#before anyone who knows shit about scripts calls me out for combining how filmed and theatrical scripts are written. i know

[crimes-self-ships]

okay i was gonna do a comic of this but honestly i wanna work on other things so here in script form meet the new boys

EXT MANOR - A large building containing Crimes and their F/Os, reminiscent of 2012 fan fictions where large groups of characters would live together. It’s raining.

On the porch stands BUBBA SAWYER from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He looks nervous and uncomfortable, making whining noises as he tries to protect himself from the rain. He tries to peek in through the windows.

INT MANOR - CRIMES and their F/Os stand in the foyer. Crimes stands near the door, facing everyone else as if addressing a class. YANCY, DARK, and HABIT stand closer to the front.

CRIMES: So, what does everyone think?

Yancy looks a little uneasy. Dark looks only mildly interested. Habit looks flabbergasted.

YANCY: I mean… he seems… alright? Like, from what youse’ve told us, I, uh, don’t see why not.

DARK: Just let the poor thing in. He’s been whining for days now.

HABIT: Is that fucking Leatherface?

Cut to the crowd, where FREDERICK and SHOUTA stand near each other. In the background, Habit can still be heard.

FREDERICK: I don’t like this… There’s already enough deranged criminals in our midst.

SHOUTA: I hate agreeing with you.

HABIT: From fucking Texas Chainsaw Massacre?

Cut back to Crimes, who sighs. In the background, some F/Os continue to talk.

CRIMES: Alright, I guess… Fine, yeah, we’ll let him in.

HABIT: I own merch of that guy. What the fuck?

DARK: Do you now? I thought-

HABIT: Yeah, yeah, Evan owns it, whatever. Still. It’s weird.

Crimes claps their hands together to get everyone’s attention. They look pointedly at a few specific people in the crowd, who all roll their eyes or sigh to various effects when speaking.

CRIMES: Alright, you all know the drill by now, don’t you?

FREDERICK: Don’t psychoanalyze anyone without your supervision.

THE DISTORTION: No torture of any kind.

HABIT: Sharing or whatever.

VEILS grumbles in agreement behind him. Crimes makes a choice not to correct them.

CRIMES: Exactly! And I want you all to be especially nice to him ‘cause this is gonna be a big adjustment, alright?

Half the crowd nods politely, the other half nods with some grumbling.

CRIMES: Oh, and I know this normally goes without saying, but Asmo?

ASMODEUS perks up in the crowd, looking surprised to be called upon.

ASMODEUS: Hm? Yes?

CRIMES: Cool it with the lust stuff around him? I know you’re good about consent and all and y’all know I think it’s okay for you all to have relationships with whoever you so choose, but well… Bubba doesn’t know a lot about any of this stuff and doesn’t need to be plunged into the deep end.

Asmodeus nods.

ASMODEUS: You’ve just made it so tempting, but I’ll do my best.

Crimes nods, taking one last look about the crowd.

CRIMES: Alright. Let’s let him in.

EXT MANOR - BUBBA still stands on the porch, rocking himself back and forth slightly and fidgeting with his hands. The door opens and he stumbles back in surprise for a second before approaching cautiously. CRIMES appears in the doorway.

CRIMES: Hey there, Bubba. Sorry you had to wait out there so long, come on in!

Bubba looks about nervously, quickly scanning the area to see if this is a trick before slowly walking in. He makes small cautious noises to himself.

INT MANOR - CRIMES stands next to BUBBA, looking up at him, smiling softly and trying their best to be welcoming.

CRIMES: Alright, Bubba, welcome to-

CRASH! Wide shot as BRAHMS HEELSHIRE breaks a mirror on the wall of the foyer and crawls out of the wall. F/Os jump, scatter, and square up accordingly. Brahms stands up to his full height slowly and scans the crowd before walking over to Crimes and standing on their other side. Crimes stares up at him and Bubba’s covering his ears, hunched over.

Beat.

CRIMES: WHEN THE FUCK DID YOU GET IN HERE?

[onlydylanobrien]

Dylan O'Brien - NME Magazine Interview

Dylan O’Brien: “I was in this transitional phase – close to a quarter-life crisis”

From YA heartthrob to legitimate leading man – how the 'Maze Runner' star hit his stride after a whirlwind decade

Definitely!” hoots Dylan O’Brien when NME asks if he still has to audition. “I’m not Tom fucking Hanks, bro.” He’s clearly amused by our question, but forgive us for thinking the 29-year-old actor gets cast on reputation alone. A decade into his career, and he’s making an impressive transition from teen TV star and YA franchise hero to charismatic leading man.

New York-born O’Brien cut his teeth on MTV’s hit Teen Wolf series, before landing the lead in the Maze Runner film trilogy based on James Dashner’s hugely popular novels. Leading a band of bright young things that included ex-Skins tearaway Kaya Scodelario, Game Of Thrones’ Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Will Poulter, he honed his craft while racking up nearly a billion dollars at the box office. “My career is a constant acting class,” says O’Brien. “To be able to do the Maze Runner movies simultaneously with Teen Wolf was amazing in terms of getting in reps and working my [acting] muscle.”

Now for the sometimes tricky bit. Many actors struggle with the post-breakout period, but O’Brien is making it look easy so far. This year’s Netflix hit Love and Monsters proved he can carry an old-school family adventure, and new film Flashback (out next week) reveals an appetite for weirder, more cerebral work. He stars as Fred Fitzell, a young man reluctant to buckle down to life as a nine-to-fiver with a boring corporate job and a long-term girlfriend (Mindhunter‘s Hannah Gross). When he runs into a freaky-looking acquaintance from his teenage years, Fred becomes obsessed with finding an old high-school friend he used to drop a mind-bending experimental drug called Mercury with. It’s difficult to say any more without entering spoiler territory, but Flashback is a wild ride underpinned by the idea that we can exist in several realities at once. Even if you follow every plot twist, you might not fully understand the end. “Oh, it’s definitely a headfuck,” O’Brien agrees. “There’s not totally an answer to figure out. There’s a lot of different things that people can take from it.”

Speaking over Zoom from his LA home, O’Brien is bright, thoughtful and really good fun to talk to, especially when he relaxes into the interview, but he clearly knows where his line between public and private lies. When he first read the Flashback script, written by the film’s director Christopher MacBride, his “mind was blown” by just how much he related to Fred. “I felt like I was in this transitional phase of my life that was, you know, sort of close to a quarter-life crisis type thing,” he says. “For whatever reason, it was like me and this script were meant to be. I remember reading it and thinking: ‘I am this guy right now.'”

“There were a lot of things in my personal life that were neglected for a while”

When we ask why O’Brien felt as though he had reached a “transitional phase”, he gives an answer that’s vague but not exactly evasive. For understandable reasons, he doesn’t mention the incredibly traumatic motorcycle accident he sustained while shooting the final Maze Runner film in March 2016. O’Brien suffered severe trauma to the brain and said in 2017 that he underwent extensive facial reconstructive surgery after the accident “broke most of the right side of my face”. Tellingly, he’s never really revealed what happened on set or how it affected him.

Today, O’Brien dances around the details of the accident and other issues he was dealing with at the time, but doesn’t shy away from discussing his inner conflict. “You know, it was a lot of personal things combined with at-a-point-in-my-career things,” he says after a brief pause. He says he’d have been going through some of this stuff anyway, simply because of his age, but it sounds as though success intensified it all. “It was like this whole fucking storm of shit,” he continues. “I was simultaneously so fulfilled and happy about these, like, otherworldly and surreal things that I had experienced in terms of where my career had brought me. I had all this confidence and fulfilment and beautiful people [in my life] – such amazing things to experience at a young age. But at the same time, there were a lot of things in my personal life that were unchecked and sort of neglected for a while.”

O’Brien says that in time, he realised he had to “stop for a second” and “re-explore how I wanted my life to look going forward”. In fairness, you can see why he needed a breather: his career took off while he was still a teenager. After his family moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles County when he was 12, O’Brien contemplated a career as a sports broadcaster – his Twitter bio still bills him as a “no longer suffering Mets fan” – then began posting YouTube videos as moviekidd826. A funny, slickly edited skit titled ‘How to Prepare for the SAT in 45 seconds’, shared when he was just 17, shows he was a born performer and storyteller. YouTube success led to him getting a manager, but his breakthrough role in Teen Wolf still came out of the blue. At the time, he was treading water at a local community college and taking auditions on the side.

Still, he has since taken a rather fatalistic view of this career-making moment. “It’s totally weird because, when I think about it now, I don’t see how it could have happened any other way. I can’t picture myself doing anything else now,” he told Collider in 2011. “It was really sudden and a little random, and not provoked by anything. It was just out of nowhere. It wasn’t my intentional doing.” Today, O’Brien summarises his skyscraper career trajectory succinctly. “I guess I just graduated high school and started acting,” he says. “And then I felt like I was just flying by the seat of my pants and never got a chance to stop.” Thankfully, straight-out-the-blocks Hollywood success hasn’t taken away his sense of perspective. When I say how easy social media makes it to compare yourself unfavourably to others, O’Brien jumps in: “Yeah, that’s very true. I was watching the Billie Eilish doc the other day, and I was like, I’ve done nothing. I’m not an artist at all!”

“No one thought ‘Love and Monsters’ was going to be good!”

O’Brien is also self-deprecating when he talks about being cast in Flashback, suggesting it happened because he had such an intense connection with Fred. “I was honestly like, ‘Who is watching me right now?’ That is the best way I can describe how I was feeling when I came across this script,” he says. “Chris [MacBride, director] and I had this conversation that went so well in terms of [my] understanding this script that I think he’d sent around a lot and [that] very commonly wasn’t understood. I think Chris has even said that the night before shooting, he suddenly had this thought, like, ‘Wait, do I even think he’s a good actor?'”

Though O’Brien has firmly ring-fenced elements of his private life, he’s actually pretty frank about his acting vehicles. He readily admits he was expecting a snobbish response to Love and Monsters, a CGI-heavy hybrid of post-apocalyptic action and romcom that dropped on Netflix in April and topped the streamer’s daily most-watched list. “It means so much that Love and Monsters has gotten the response that it’s gotten,” O’Brien says. “No one thought this movie was going to be good.” His blunt honesty makes me laugh out loud. “No one did though!” he says in response. “And so, fuck that. You know, most of the people who say something to me about the movie, they’re like: ‘I watched Love and Monsters, and it was… good?’ And honestly, that just cracks me up.” For obvious reasons, we hastily decide not to share our response to the film – namely, that it was a whole lot better than expected.

In Love and Monsters, O’Brien plays Joel, a survivor of a so-called “monsterpocalypse” that has bumped humans to the bottom of the food chain. Though he’s known in his colony as a bit of a coward, Joel sets off on a treacherous 80-mile journey to find his high school sweetheart Aimee (Iron Fist‘s Jessica Henwick), which means evading the hungry clutches of various supersize grizzlies including a giant monster-frog hiding in a suburban pond. It’s a simple but pretty out-there premise that wouldn’t work if O’Brien’s performance was even slightly condescending. Instead, his unselfconscious sincerity really sells a film that has as much in common with the family-oriented Robin Williams movie Night at the Museum as darker fare like The Walking Dead.

His obvious affection for the project really comes across during our interview today. “When I read the script, I just thought it was so sweet and funny and smart and unique, but at the same time reminiscent of all these movies that don’t really get made any more,” he says. That’s a fair point: Love and Monsters is neither a fail-safe superhero movie nor a slice of classy Oscar bait. “And when they were talking about how to market this movie, it was so funny hearing all these conversations like, ‘How do we actually get people to watch it?'” he adds. “But that’s a big part of the reason I wanted to do this movie: because it felt like something I missed seeing.”

“I’m lucky to be surrounded by people who want to make something out of love”

So in a way, Love and Monsters was a risk for an actor seeking to establish himself outside of a bankable movie franchise and a hit TV show. O’Brien has only made four films since his final Maze Runner outing in 2018, and insists he hasn’t been tactical with his choices. “I don’t have anyone saying, ‘We need to get you in an Oscar vehicle’, or any of that kind of shit,” he says. “I’m really lucky to be surrounded by people who think like me: that you should do what you’re drawn to, and make something out of love.”

He’s recently finished shooting a mysterious crime thriller called The Outfit in London with Mark Rylance. Directed and co-written by Graham Moore, who won an Oscar for his screenplay to Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game, O’Brien calls it “quite possibly one of the most special pieces of writing I’ve ever experienced”. He first read the script on a plane and says he “actually stood up and clapped” when he got to the end. Considering O’Brien probably wasn’t flying Ryanair, this reaction presumably attracted a few baffled glances.

Anyway, it must be pretty intimidating walking onto set with Rylance, a multi-award-winning actor revered by his peers – Al Pacino once said he “speaks Shakespeare as if it was written for him the night before” – but it sounds as though O’Brien took it all in stride. He says he’s confident in his abilities, but admits to having a slight wobble whenever he begins a new project. “I’m always sort of re-questioning everything – like, ‘Can I even act?'” he says. “But I think there’s something very natural about that. I think even Rylance could relate to that feeling. Acting is like starting a new year at school every single time.”

At this point in his career, O’Brien has made peace with the fact that some people will have preconceptions about him based on what he’s known for: Maze Runner and Teen Wolf. “People will put you in a box no matter what,” he says. “There was definitely a time when that would get to me, especially when it felt like somebody had a perspective on me that in my soul, I just felt wasn’t accurate.” Still, there’s no doubt he wants to show us what’s really in his soul with more films like Flashback. “If anything,” he adds bullishly, “it just makes me think: ‘Right, I’m really gonna show them now’.”

‘Flashback’ is out on digital platforms from June 4

[redspiderling]

Lets Talk About the Spoilers

After lots of traumatic experiences in the MCU, I read the spoilers for self preservation. I like to be prepared and I’m well aware of the fact that I don’t actually lose any enjoyment in the experience due to knowing what happens, as long as the film is well made. 

There’s this film called the Black Widow that we were supposed to be seeing this week. It was clear from the moment the film was announced that its only possible issues would arise from the script.

Given that we’re already familiar with the character, that the director is excellent and that it’s a solo film (which means there isn’t a chance for it to lose focus) the only thing that could go wrong, is the script.

What could go wrong in the script, you ask?

For one thing, they could shoehorn a lot of shit to be introduced for the next phase of the MCU and exhaust us with unnecessary references to other characters we “miss”. Combine that with no new information that is significant enough to make us interested in the story of a character that is presumed dead, and you’ve got yourselves a mess I’d rather pretend never happened than consciously pay real money to watch in the theatres.

This is why scripts are important, in case anyone was wondering. No amount of gorgeous cinematography or Natasha’s braided hair can save that shit.

Thankfully, Scarlett had already said she wasn’t actually interested on making a film that was “the same old shit”. Well, she said it more eloquently but that was the point. Unfortunately for us, what’s interesting to the actress might not necessarily mean it’s of interest to us. Because while Scarlett might enjoy the chance to finally have a script that acknowledges Natasha is a human being with emotions, we are a bit beyond that point after what Endgame put us through. Which is why I’m here, needlessly over analysing.

I’m a control freak like that.

Here’s “Scarlett Anounces Black Widow to the World” level of happy, to make you feel better.

Attention! Do not open this read more if you don’t want to read potential spoilers about the Black Widow movie.

Before anyone freaks out, I’d like to point out that spoilers are usually out of context, and as such don’t necessarily mean what they say. 

Let’s start with the stuff that appear particularly bothersome:

The End Credit Scene

The spoiler that has made the most rounds in news sites and one that’s actually really easy for people who don’t dwell too deeply into storytelling and just write Marvel articles for the clicks to make some guesswork on, is that after the end credits the Burton family can be seen in front of Natasha’s grave. 

On a superficial “eNDgAMe waS AmAZIng pOor NAtasHA FinaLLy gOT her FunERal” level, that scene seems obvious, and understandable, and acceptable.

On my level of “Has been involved in the MCU specifically for Natasha Romanoff and has spent years learning about and making films”, that sentence makes me want to buy an MCU Blu-ray box set and burn it in my garden while I dance around it and holler in fits of rage. 

So which one is it, you ask? What if the end credit scene IS Marvel attempting to “pay its respects” in a spectacularly too-little-too-late way?

My answer is: It Depends.

What’s the context? Because if the last I see of Natasha before that end credits is her joining Cap in the mindset we met her in when IW happened, welp, Phase 3 on Blue-ray is £45 that I’ll never see again. I’ll make sure not to inhale any fumes while I burn that shit to the ground.

BUT, if the plot of the film gives us reason to believe that the news of Natasha’s demise might have been greatly exaggerated then that end credit scene is the most perfect way to say goodbye to Natasha Romanoff, Superspy extraordinaire. In this case, the news of Hawkeye are even more welcome because lets remember, he’s the only one who was there in Vormir, the others just had to take his word that Natasha died and, we the viewers? Well, we’re the ones most easily fooled in cases like these. 

So I’d be glad for that end credit scene if and only if Natasha remains out there after having saved her family and is now moving in the shadows, free of the burdens of her past, which brings us to the other spoiler available online

The MacGuffin/ Foxcharge

According to one rumour, the Foxcharge is "a sort of clean slate digital eraser that gets rid of your prints, face, DNA in any government databases” 

I hate MacGuffins. I really do. I hated them before Endgame, and I hate them with a passion now. As long as it takes an entirely secondary role to something else, or works as motivation for other things I don’t mind them. 

Since the entire cast has been that exuberant about their characters and how deeply they’ve been examined in this film, I’m going to assume the MacGuffin does indeed take a secondary role in the greater plot so, ok. 

On a first glance it doesn’t exactly sound like exhilarating storytelling material but, again, it depends a lot on the context. If this film takes place after Civil War, and not after Winter Soldier, why would Natasha be looking for ways to erase her data from databases? It depends a lot on how the film handles it. As a storytelling element it could range anywhere from derivative to exhilarating. Exhilarating it being something that Clint or Yelena use that allows Natasha to disappear entirely after the events of Endgame like the badass superspy she is.

The other theory is the one that insists the stuff Natasha was seen carrying (and is holding in one of the Funko dolls) were Pym Particles, but I find that highly unlikely. Like we’ve said before, if they want to bring Natasha back there’s countless ways for them to do it. I don’t think they’d like to go down the Time Travel road again so while I can’t be entirely sure, I doubt that that’s what this is about.

Yelena is Actually a Bad Guy/Double Agent

That would actually be on brand. If Yelena is to be a member of an as of yet unannounced Thunderbolts team for the MCU and works for Ross during the events of the Black Widow film, it would actually be a good call. 

Because if there’s some kind of “passing of the torch” happening here, at the very least they should make sure to make Yelena and Natasha as different people as possible. It’s bad enough that right now Natasha is considered dead in the MCU, I would’t like to rage for also having her traded in for a younger model. Ew.

Taskmaster Doesn’t Actually Die

Very much a plot element and, to me at least, inconsequential, one way or the other.

Melina Is Actually the One Who Restarts the Red Room

That would also make for a very interesting character, not to mention interesting dynamics within the little family-like unit the characters seem to have in the film.

The Film Makes Natasha Appreciate the American Family She Found in the Avengers

Um.... Duh. That’s not much of a spoiler, although if this is a “Russians Bad, Americans Good” kind of thing- No. Cate wouldn’t do this to us.

We’ve talked about this before, but it seems that this film will help Natasha figure out the things that matter to her, that make her life worth living, that make her realise there are things to live for, not just to die for. And like we’ve said before that makes for a satisfying film, in and of itself, but within the context of Endgame it does come a bit as too-little-too-late.

I did say in the past, and I still believe it, that in order for this film to be satisfying for the fans of Natasha, it can’t pretend Endgame didn’t happen. Or even worse, pretend it didn’t happen and then have an “oh wait, here’s a fake funeral moment with only the Burtons paying their respects to Natasha even though she led the Avengers for 5 years and interacted with almost every single MCU character” moment.

When asked during an interview, Scarlett said that Feige announced to her the Black Widow film, AND Natasha’s death at roughly the same time. And while the Endgame writers chose to ignore Natasha’s film, I’m hoping the Black Widow writing team didn’t ignore Natasha’s fate in Endgame. 

To conclude, while they don’t seem like much, these spoilers show potential. I can understand if some would rather hold their hopes, and to a level I do so as well, but I have placed a lot of trust in the creative team here. We can only hope that they won’t let Natasha down.

[justformyself2]

Notthing Hill.²

A/N: Hi, back again with part two,if you are reading this right now i hope you know you are awesome ♥

This is my participation on my friend’s @lullabieswrappedinlies​​ Rom-Com writing challenge (go check her out, she is so damn creative and amazing).This story is based on the movie Notting Hill and will be added on my MASTERLIST. or tell me you want to be tagged if you want to keep up.

BEFORE YOU JUMP IN BE ADVISED.

 Pairing: Reader x John Krasinski.  Contains strong language.

"There is no way she still sleeping. She doesn't want to see me."

Restless, Alexis occupies the empty chair in front of you, once again, pretending to care about her manicure, lashing out on her right thumb by sinking her teeth into it. Her eyes were darker, tired, but still somewhat attentive to the stair at random times. You didn't need to ask why she was wearing the miserable beige turtleneck shirt. Several times, she promised to donate boxes, like a martyr, with no other way of portraying it. She was torturing herself. She hasn't slept.

"Shame on her, it is exciting to watch you trying to eat your fingers."

She laughs, and you know she is pissed, Alexis at her best only giggles, and laughs are only separated for dramatic times.

"You can tell me that when you have your kids."

"I have you."

"Why is everything a joke to you?"

"She is fifteen Alexis, it could be worse."

The corner of her lips curved down.

"Yes, it could, and it is...for both of us."

Her irises went cold while watching over you, bowing over the coffee mug. The image of Rudolph and Santa, swinging outside, blinked on your memory in the firefly pattern. It wasn't mourning material remains of the past. It was a sarcastic move that turned into a premonition growing for weeks into the back of your imaginative thoughts, crashing ever now and then like weaves.

"What did Kyle said?"

Your itching tongue asked, without conscious permission, breaking the sacred rule you could pretend not to live by, so the feeling of being in control was maintained. You wondered, yet you knew it, and Alexis was respectful towards the way dealt with it, to a point.

"Ghost from Christmas past called, he wants you to get that shit out of your front door, by the way, I'm going upstairs."

"Are you kidding me?"

"What was that?"

"She is breaking up with me, on a three-line text, what the fuck!"

Kyle pats my back in a way that is supposed to be some type of comfort as I try to read between the lines of a very simple "This is not going to work." 

"At least you saw it coming."

He says, then takes a sip of the London Pride, looking down at his phone. He was right. I saw it coming since the last phone call, we were bored with each other, her more than me, and I couldn't even blame it on the day-to-day routine, not satisfying enough for Naomi, between the several months apart. I wasn't as adventurous as she needed me to be or that I purposely pronounced the "I love you." right close to an inevitable end to show that I, at least, cared at some point, which was pitiful in the end, considering we weren't that much introduced to the expression. I could blame the fact that I wasn't the one who did sooner to spare her from doing it over text. I deserved it.

I put the phone back into my shirt pocket as Kyle got the eyes fixated into his, sighing a tone louder than before, letting me know it is my turn to ask, just as yesterday. He fixes the Patriots cap once and twice, making it possible to spot his sweaty forehead amid the chilly weather.

"So, what is up, Alexis?"

"Nothing yet."

He drops the phone over the green tablecloth. I noticed how easier it became to spot frustration on another human being as if I could feel it on my own skin, and how it was sad. However, a valuable trait I would carry from my now, past relationship. Kyle could be more straightforward than Naomi ever was, shifting to a slightly nauseated expression at each glare towards the phone.

"You talked to her yesterday, how was it?"

I aim to ask the necessary questions so he could be comfortable enough to vent the rest organically as he's has been waiting for. 

Kyle shrugs and inclines himself over the table, readjusting the cap again.

"I left when my daughter was barely ten, I appear once in a lifetime so she can be reminded of the daddy she has, how do you think it went?"

"Not great."

"Yeah, not fucking great."

A resentful laugh comes out with the answer, causing me to come down from my simple perspective, realizing that Kyle was more than a frustrated man who just couldn't make it work, we weren't neighbors of the same pain although linked by two different women with the same last name.

"What is changed now? It this just regret, or do you still think you love her?"

I ask, remembering to taste the beer becoming hotter in front of me, with the clear image of Portobello Road filling my memory, opening a box of its other branched memories. At least there was some pride in knowing I hadn't let myself wander around the thought for some months, months spent with Naomi, who hated people who remained in the past. I began to love the irony of our combination, convincing myself by using the 'fair balance' argument. Now she could be making her bags with recently brought tickets to whatever exotic place she wanted to go. At the same time, I was dragged back into the past. 

"I... I want to see my daughter man, I want to stay for good in her life, fuck everything else, I want to do the right thing now, I didn't do it with Alexis, but I want to do it for Nova."

"And by the way, you are sweating over your phone, she hasn't decided yet."

"No, she is going to make me suffer for it, and it is not like I don't deserve it, but I won't give up, I won't give up."

He takes, shaking his head and looking over his shoulder, apprehensive.

"Well, you already know what I think about this."

His eyebrow raises in response to the remainder of our previous conversation.

"I know... I know, I won't force them to forgive me or love me, accept me back or whatever, but I want to try."

He cleans the remains of alcohol out of the mustache. I remembered how Alexis didn't even recognize him at first because of it. It made me wonder how (Y/N) would have reacted it.

"Is Y/N still there?"

He laughs, elbowing my arm.

" Oh...What? Are you also wanting round two, hun? Now I get it."

Kyle's second laugh echoes on the bar, attracting every British look a mile away. I can't help but incline over the table and bow my head, holding a grin while he looks around for a second, managing his tone.

"I'm only asking, man."

His attention bypasses my answer, causing me to regret asking him about (Y/N).

"Do you think it is funny that we only took this stupid job to get back to them? This movie is already busted. That fucking script could have been written better by a twelve-year-old who watched a bunch of Transformers movies."

"Transformers actually made about four billion, and no, I didn't take the job to get back to anyone."

"I know that you, in fact, did exactly that, and I know because Naomi told me you were ready to pack to some shit she hooked you up for, and when I got hold of you later, you didn't even want to listen till I told you the location we were filming. You changed your mind too, fucking, quickly. Tell me I'm lying, chowderhead."

I chuckled at watching his overexcitement. Besides my father, who still inhabits the same house in Newton for the past 40 years, Kyle always carried the Bostonian slangs, using words such as 'chowderhead' at random times. However, he is still fixed in California for decades. Mr. Krasinski would be proud of him.

"I'm not here because of her." 

"And now Naomi did puff."

He shrugs smirking.

"She broke up with me."

He raises the bottle.

"Yeah, it means that you are in luck, enjoy it. You can come with me if you want after you pay the bill."

I roll my eyes before noticing more people starting to fill the tables around us, most of them looking under the drinking age.

"What place is this again?" "Walmer Castle pub."

[jgroffdaily]

[This story contains spoilers for season two of Mindhunter on Netflix.]

If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you: That well-worn Nietzsche quote might be the best explanation for what happened to Holden Ford, the impetuous FBI wunderkind played by Jonathan Groff, in the season one finale of Mindhunter. Holden, alongside his partner Bill Tench (Holt McCallany), had spent months interviewing incarcerated serial killers in order to glean insight into their mind-set, pioneering the science of criminal profiling.

Having demonstrated an uncanny knack for getting truths out of monsters, Holden started to ride way too high on his own brilliance, alienating his colleagues and jeopardizing the already uncertain future of the fledgling Behavioral Science Unit. In the season finale he paid an ill-advised solo visit to the serial killer Ed Kemper (Cameron Britton), who responded by giving him the most menacing hug ever committed to film. The season closes with Holden in the grips of a long-overdue panic attack after escaping Kemper, the darkness of his work and the recklessness of his approach finally catching up to him.

Season two, which picks up directly after the finale, sees Holden continuing to struggle with panic attacks in private, while still letting his ego run away with him at work. “Though Holden is still engaged with doing interviews with serial killers, now he's getting a little snobby about it,” Groff tells The Hollywood Reporter. “He only wants to interview the killers that he personally deems worthy.” That new attitude, combined with his mental fragility, seems like a recipe for disaster — particularly once Holden travels to Atlanta to tackle the most difficult case of his career to date.

Groff spoke to THR about depicting Holden’s mental breakdown, what’s different about season two’s interrogation scenes and how the Atlanta child murders case unfolds onscreen.

At the end of season one, it feels like Holden has the air punctured out of him by Kemper. He goes from incredibly cocky to total psychological collapse. What was it like to play that very dramatic shift in the new season?

I was so interested to see how the writers were going to pick Holden up off the floor after the finale. In terms of the continuity between his panic attack in the hospital [after seeing Kemper] and his panic attack at the end of episode one after Shepard [Cotter Smith] talks to him, I realized that any time there's a mirror held up to Holden and he can sort of have a moment of self-awareness and really look at himself, it sends him into panic mode. That’s what Ed Kemper did at the end of the first season, he was turning the mirror back on Holden, and I think that’s also what Shepard does at the end of the season two premiere.

He’s in his element when he’s probing into other people’s psychology, but when it’s turned on him he can’t handle it.

Yeah, and when he’s in work mode, and he's a dog with a bone, it sort of evaporates and he's fine. It's just these little moments when his blinders are removed that he sinks into panic. The minute he pulls his shit together for the [David] Berkowitz interview, and Tench says “I think he’s back,” I love it because it adds a layer of drama to every scene moving forward. We’ve logged this information as something that can happen to Holden, and now that factors into every interview, knowing that potential is there.

What goes into depicting a panic attack onscreen?

I’d forgotten about this until just now, but when we were filming the season one finale, in the moment right before Kemper hugs me, David [Fincher] had me do this (inhales and exhales rapidly), just a lot of breaths really quick in and out, I think just to get all of the blood out of my face. I did almost pass out. That was the scene right before I run out of the room. The panic attack scene in the season two premiere was sort of the same thing — we did it at varying levels, and I started out by overdoing it. I think I was making noises, it was a lot, and David was like, “OK, Groff, take it down a notch.” I love working with him because he can say something like, “Take it down 50 percent from that,” and I’ll know what he’s talking about. I tend to just throw it out there, and then he shades and shapes the level of explosion.

The Atlanta child murders is the most contentious case that the show has tackled so far. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about the case itself, and the FBI’s role in it was specifically controversial. How does the show approach the case?

I listened to [podcast] Atlanta Monster and read James Baldwin’s book, The Evidence of Things Not Seen. And Courtenay Miles — who was our first AD in season one and one of our head writers on season two — could have a degree on the subject of Atlanta between 1978 and 1982. She did so much research, she spoke to police officials that were there during that time, and tried to really get all the conflicting opinions and ideas about what happened. They really try to lay out in the scripts the political atmosphere of what was going on at that time in Atlanta — the first black mayor had just been elected, “white flight” was happening in the city center, the new Atlanta airport that we now know as this giant hub was about to open in 1980.

It was just a huge moment of change in Atlanta, and the last thing that the city needed — in some people’s minds — was a lot of publicity about these children being murdered. On top of which you have the FBI coming in there and trying to prove this core theory of the Behavioral Science Unit, that you can actually take this psychological work and these interviews, and make a profile of someone and use that to catch an active criminal while it's happening.

Why is Holden so stubbornly determined that his theory of the case is correct?

One of the conclusions the BSU has drawn is that serial killers rarely cross racial lines, and so Holden firmly believes that this killer is black. A lot of other people think it’s the Ku Klux Klan, some people think it's a child pornography ring, there’s a bunch of different theories. But Holden is there to help catch what he believes is a serial killer, in order to help the city of Atlanta and also to prove his theory right, to prove that this method of profiling works.

Season two brings back Jim Barney (Albert Jones), the African-American agent Bill wanted to hire in season one. What’s the dynamic when Holden is doing interviews with Jim versus Bill, whom he’s used to working with?

I love Albert, he's a phenomenal actor, and they knew in the first season when they cast him that he was going to come back to play this bigger part. What’s interesting in those interview scenes is that this season, though Holden is still engaged with doing interviews with serial killers, now he's getting a little snobby about it. He only wants to interview the serial killers that he personally deems worthy, which is a stark contrast from the first season where he's like, “Feed me, I want everything, I want all the information! I want to meet everyone!” Now he’s a little more picky about who he’s gonna spend his very valuable time with.

So in episode three, he sort of begrudgingly agrees to go to Atlanta to meet with these killers who he deems unintelligent, and Barney ends up being sort of the Holden in those interviews, in that he's the one that's actually engaging with the person in a deep way, and ends up gleaning the information that Holden would normally glean. I loved reading that when I got the scripts, because there’s a clear evolution of these interviews in the second season, now that Holden kind of thinks he’s above it to a certain extent. Obviously not Charles Manson or David Berkowitz, but he maybe feels he’s outgrowing the interviews a little bit, and the character of Jim becomes my foil in that regard.

John Douglas, the real-life inspiration for the show, eventually moved away from FBI work and became more of an author and consultant. Holden is only loosely based on Douglas, but do you think he could take a similar path?

Well, I don't know this for sure and I'd have to ask John, but my feeling from meeting him and reading his stuff is that he didn’t move away from the FBI because of disinterest. He had a total mental and physical breakdown from how intense the work was. He was, I think for his whole career, a very obsessive worker. His breakdown happened much later [than Holden’s], when he was a little bit older and had been in the thick of it for much longer, so I think Holden’s panic attacks are kind of a nod to that. We deviate a lot in terms of the characters’ personal lives.

When Holden is hospitalized he calls Bill — who’s not thrilled about having to fly across the country to get him — and says he didn’t have anyone else to call. That line was interesting. Does he not have family?

I think at the end of the first season, we saw him kind of shut everybody out and go off on his own, so in my mind when I was reading that, when he says, “I didn’t have anyone else I could call," it was a moment of self-awareness. He realizes that he has put himself on an island. I mean, the only person he could turn to at the end of season one was Ed Kemper! But when he calls Bill, I thought it was kind of a beautiful nod to the fact that at the end of it all, the person I'm gonna call, for better or for worse, is the guy that I've been through all this shit with. Sometimes we have those people where we experience something insane, and the only person who gets it is the one who was in the room too. I think that line from Holden is a reminder, at the top of the season, that these two are kind of bonded forever, in a way. As different as they are, they have this very specific fucked up world that will bind them together for the rest of their lives.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

[artificialqueens]

rhythm of a wild heart (branjie) - holtzmanns

A/N: Based on Brooke’s comments from the Roscoe’s viewing party - “He was like my safe space, so like when I would get stressed out and stuff, I could go and he would give me a hug and a kiss.”

Brooke overthinks things.

It’s in his nature, and it’s what’s gotten him this far. He’s used to striving for perfection in fields where perfect doesn’t exist, where there’s always room for improvement. It’s given him a work ethic rivalling that of an Olympic medallist, but also a mind that doesn’t let him rest. One that concocts scenarios that outline all of the areas where he’s going wrong, where he can do better, how he’s not enough-

But it works.

He has ridden his tendency towards perfectionism to principal roles in ballet, winning fucking Miss Continental, and now to national television with the world watching his every move.

It’s exhausting sometimes, all of the overthinking. He’s tried to find an off switch for it before, taking vacations from his work to calm the voices in his head that are always on the run. Doing so only makes them spiral more, latching onto possible areas for missteps like vine tendrils (there’s so much to do and not enough time, you can’t rest, go back to work).

So, Brooke works. He makes it onto the show where he stresses over each challenge like it’s going to be his last. The voices in his head are still there and draining, telling him that he can’t rest until he’s prepared enough to be able to do each challenge in his sleep. He learns the lip-sync song each episode just in case he hasn’t done enough, not accepting that he’s made it to another week until he’s standing safe at the back of the stage. And then the entire cycle begins again the next morning.  

The swirling thoughts are draining but they have gotten him this far, so who is he to complain? He accepted long ago that things are always going to be this way. He’s always going to have this feeling of not doing enough, not being enough. He just wishes that it exhausted him less.

His brain tires him out again the evening before the magic challenge. He’s gone in circles with Nina and Shuga all day, trying to find a way to combine their talents into a script that’s actually entertaining. They’ve second-guessed all of their decisions, rewriting over and over again until the words in the pages start to blur together.

They’re all still on set, waiting for the van to take them back to the hotel for another night of fitful sleep and dreams that detail all the ways the challenge the next day could go wrong. His mind has tuned out Nina and Shuga beside him as they fret over one of the magic tricks. He’s trying to use his dance background to come up with some choreography, any presentation skills to pull their performance together. He’ll make them practice tomorrow morning until their show looks nothing short of professional. It has to.

“Hey.”

There’s a hand on his shoulder, and he looks up to see Vanessa’s inquisitive face studying his own. She looks as exhausted as he feels, after the long day of filming followed by hours of practice off camera.

Brooke wordlessly pulls her into a hug, her head fitting perfectly under his chin as she buries her face into his chest. It hits him, as it always does, how they fit together like puzzle pieces. How kissing the top of her head and comforting her helps calm down the heart beating out of his chest, too.

Vanessa lifts her face to look up at him, raising a hand to smooth the crease that’s formed in between his eyebrows. He feels the tension he didn’t even realize he was holding drop under her touch.

“How’s your team faring?” Brooke barely finishes asking the question before Vanessa’s face wrinkles, indicative of a frustrating day.

“It’s just tough, y’know?” she sighs. “Trying to please them all is harder than winning the fucking lottery or some shit. Silky and A’keria want to wing it, Miss Yvie is over here hemming and hawing and writing out a full script without consulting anyone first. I’m feeling like a mother hen trying to control all her wayward chicks.”

He snorts at the mental image, remembering loud, argumentative noises coming from her group’s side of the room more than once during the day. “Too much personality, huh?”

She groans. “Picking the loudest bitches aside from myself was not the smartest shit to do, let me tell you.”

He tilts her chin up, placing a soft kiss on her lips.

“You’ll kill it. You’re funny, you’re magnetic. I’ve seen you practicing your trick a million times today already.” He wants to convince her with more than just empty words; he wants her to believe them too.

She smiles at his attempts at reassurance. “How’s your group?”

Brooke is rambling before he even realizes it, telling her about their uncertainties and complete lack of decision-making ability, and how all of them want to fall back and have someone else lead the group. He walks her through their tricks, all the dropped props and the stumbling and the magic abilities that have not quite come together yet.

“Tucking panties? Y’all are nasty.” Vanessa’s face wrinkles at his description of Shuga’s tentatively planned trick, and he laughs despite himself at her reaction.

“Hopefully both nasty and funny.”

He’s not sure if he’s trying to convince Vanessa or himself. What happens if they’re not? What happens if he falters and he messes up the bubble trick? What if he brings his team down and they’re judged in groups and suddenly he’s in the bottom, potentially sending one of them home for his mistakes or going home himself-

“Hey. I see your head spinning already. Don’t go there, baby.” Vanessa’s voice is uncharacteristically soft. She tugs on his hand, stepping even closer into his space. “You can’t plan for things that haven’t happened yet. Don’t be making up those scenarios with the bad juju.”

“I’m not,” he says weakly. She only raises her eyebrows at him in response until he sighs. “Okay, maybe a little.”

It surprises her every time when she catches the moments that his anxious thoughts start to take over him. He’s used to keeping everything inside, his metaphorical brick wall giving off a façade of calm and fearlessness and keeping his emotions safely inside. He’s used to being an ice queen, to everyone else believing that everything he does is effortless and confident.

Vanessa is the only one who can catch the wavering in his eyes every time that his mind starts to crumble, sending him glances across the workroom throughout the long filming days. It’s no different now, with her standing in front of him.

Brooke sees the gears turning in her mind, trying to come up with something to distract him. It doesn’t take her long. “Silky said to me and A’keria that she got the PA on her hotel room floor to bring her Taco Bell last night. And she didn’t even order a Crunchwrap Supreme!”

A corner of his mouth turns up at that. “I don’t know, you always strike me more as a Dorito taco fan.”

“Ooh bitch, don’t even go there.” She makes a face. “Dorito taco shells are fucking nasty. I need me a good classic Crunchwrap. I don’t know how Silky did it, though. I tried asking the PA on my floor for Gatorade last night and she brought chocolate milk instead! I mean I’m not pressed about it, I fuckin’ love chocolate milk, but what part of that screams Gatorade? Do you think she has a bias against Gatorade? What did the Gatorade family ever do to her?”

She rambles on at him for ten more minutes, making him crack up every so often despite his mood, until the van arrives and all of the queens pile in.

The two of them end up in the back row on their own. The van has become less crowded as every episode passes and more and more queens continue to go home. It’s nice, the extra room, but also unnerving when he compares it to the first few days of filming when fifteen of them were squished together like sardines in a can.

Vanessa leans into his side easily once they sit down, pulling one of his arms around her shoulder and grabbing his hand with both of hers. They’re quiet, watching the cars on the highway pass outside their window. The fingers of his free hand trace patterns on her shoulder.

He feels safe. She’s his safe space, his place to let go and just be.

Brooke doesn’t know how Vanessa does it every time, how she can take the anxious ramblings that have an iron grip on his brain and distract him with her laugh and soft kisses.

The swirling waves in his mind are quieter now. He’s not thinking about the challenge anymore, but rather about how her breathing has synced to his and how he never wants this van ride to end, the way it does too soon every day when they have to part at the hotel and head for their individual rooms.

Vanessa slides out of his arms reluctantly once they get to the hotel, not wanting to separate from him either. Brooke wishes that he could just pull her with him into his own room, bringing her close and not having to let her go at all.

They walk slowly behind the other queens, as if it’ll make their time together last longer. They ignore the PA calling both of their names (“the elevator doors are going to close, hurry up”) as they eventually shuffle in.

Vanessa squeezes his hand in the elevator. “We’ve made it through all of the episodes so far. We’ll make it through this one too, and we won’t stop till I’m lip syncing you for the crown and I win, bitch.”

She winks at him when the elevator dings at her floor, sauntering out but not before blowing him a kiss. Brooke smiles despite himself, ignoring the knowing look that Nina is shooting his way beside him.

He doesn’t know what will happen tomorrow, if his group will be able to pull themselves together in time and put on a magic show that won’t end in disaster. He does know that he has her, and that somehow - despite his anxious mind - she makes him feel sometimes like that it’s all that matters.

[skinfeeler]

I watched Joker (2019) at the cinema last night. It induced in me a lot of thoughts about the film, but also about the nature of criticism and art in general. Because I respect people’s time and general sensibility, I’m putting the rest of this post under a cut. Content warnings surrounding discussion of (sexual) violence, and obviously a number of spoilers.

I left the room feeling uncertain how to interpret what I had just watched, and for this reason (and others) quite uncomfortable. As a narrative the film seemed disjointed and overly metaphorical, certainly as a movement of set-up, crescendo, climax, and denouement the film made no sense because the film for the most part utterly denied itself a clear and uninterrupted line in events. This was because of certain scenes in the film that can with certainty be said to not possibly have happened in the way they did on the screen, even with suspension of disbelief intact, but also in general the solipsism of the film— Arthur Fleck seemed like the only character in the film with everyone at most taking a rather symbolic, flat, role (Thomas Wayne) or only purposefully serving as a source of narrative unreliability and confusion (Penny Fleck). Most characters, however, were simply part of an unindividuated antagonistic bloc whose sole purpose seemed to truncate both its own humanity and Arthur's— perhaps this is what we could call 'society', or something.

It took me a moment of talking to friends to find a method through which this film perhaps not quite become intelligible, but at the very least that I could get something out of it. This method is one of doing away with the narrative and instead, trying to view it as a character study.

Certain parts of the film become immediately more palatable when viewed this way, or at least, easier to parse as meaning anything at all. For example, we don't have to accept the pop criticism analysis of that his relationship with his neighbor is something Arthur hallucinated and then realised he hallucinated. Instead, we can take each of the scenes in which she is present as something that tells us something about Arthur even if not extant in the ‘real narrative’— while he is truly and actually maligned by society, it can't be said that Arthur himself is particularly sensitive to the complicated humanity of those around him. For example, when it comes to Penny, he seems to have absolutely no regard for the simultaneous plight and guilt surrounding her character, that of a woman who, yes, let him be abused by her boyfriend but who herself was also being abused by him and presumably had her own troubled past.

Likewise, we can state that if his neighbor were to be present in the scenes in which she couldn't possibly have been (since it would defy all plausability of that relationship developing in that way), Arthur would actually have seen her as how she acted in those scenes: A symbol, at most. An anchor. Something without particular agency or drives or motives of her own, which she only reclaims in the final scene that she's in, where she is concerned with the safety of her daughter and Arthur leaving her apartment. The disparity between her as a an agent and the scenes in which her presence was imaginary (as opposed to unreal) tells us something about Arthur, even if it tells us nothing about the narrative.

When it comes to Penny, perhaps it doesn't matter so much to Arthur whether she had her own complicated reality of pain and powerlessness. In the moment where Arthur killed her, he was simply reclaiming a kind of power he never had. Arthur has no social means to power, so he resorts to presocial means, or really just only ever one, which is murder. And not just any kind of murder, not the kind of violence of slowly strangling someone, or beating someone into a pulp until they pass away as a combination of factors such as lung failure, neural trauma, and internal bleeding, but the kind of violence with a huge power differential where the moment he decides someone dies, they're already dead, a wish spoken to remove someone from this world that one immediately grants oneself. A terminally ill woman can't defend herself against smothering, and even an able-bodied adult man stands no chance in the second between the revolver being unholstered and being shot in the head.

Hypnotising, really. In particular that moment where the third businessman who was first harassing a woman on the train and then beating Arthur up is now slowly limping away as Arthur casually follows him, you can see every aspect of his fear, the sheer realisation that the social dominion he enjoys means nothing when faced with a cartridge of sufficient caliber.

I feel that this is significant somehow, the fact that Arthur is both traumatised into being unable to parse the very intricate and individual drives of the people surrounding him, and the fact that he recognises that this is happening to him, constantly, and acts very purposefully to circumvent it through means which in turn allow no resistance in any sense whatsoever. All of this can, of course, be attributed to trauma as an aspect of the character study of the film, and for this reason I believe that the scenes-that-couldn't-possibly-have-happened and the very real violence he enacts are part of one and the same network of themes.

The fact that for most of the film Arthur is simultaneously treated by the narrative as the one person with humanity (but having this unrecognised by society) but Wayne and everyone else is portrayed as not possessing it (but at the very least conditionally having some of it bestowed upon them by those around them) is an important part of this conceit.

The inherent hypocrisy of Arthur’s character as maligned but having no qualm with truncating the subjectivities around him shows us both that the way he views things is disturbed and that he is legitimately cut off from others, that he genuinely cannot conceive of why he should not act as he does, but the harm he does is real. It’s obvious that we know Arthur did not have any choice in becoming the kind of person he ended up being, but also that he's not in particular a 'good person', if that means anything at all. One could possibly draw parallels to Brad in LISA: The Painful RPG, but to anyone who has played that game I shouldn't have to explicitly draw the links.

Furthermore, this baseline of the ineluctable unpleasantness of Arthur's character helps us differentiate between the parts of the film where he can meaningfully choose what to do, actions he undertakes without the force majeure of trauma and mental illness making any other options not even appear in his head. From here we could possibly draw a parallel to the utter meaninglessness of Alex’ actions in A Clockwork Orange post-Ludivico, a film in which this particular theme is much more explicit, although there’s a contrast of the ability to be compassionate being truncated as opposed to the ability to be cruel.

(To be clear, I'm working with the framework of "what could you reasonably expect from someone who has had their psyche malformed like that?" whether it is the lack of 'good' deeds from Arthur or the lack of 'evil' deeds from Alex as opposed to a blanket condemnation/sanctification of character.)

This is where directorial fiat starts meaning anything, or from a more in-universe perspective, what little agency Arthur himself has left— Watsonian or Doylist analysis, who gives a shit, you know what I mean.

There are a couple actions Arthur took that were completely unwarranted, which were neither reactions to imminent threats or reactions to people who had wronged him in the past. In particular, I am referring here to him sexually assaulting his neighbor — even if not a real scene within the narrative, it still tells us something about Arthur as within the aforementioned parameters — and later the woman on TV.

Were he not to have taken those actions, a meaningful moral judgement — a positive one but in particularly the negative ones — could not possibly have been ascribed to him, because all of his actions could have been conceivably reduced to simple learned traumatic behaviors and reactions to impending harm. The story of Arthur could have been one of a gun cocked by SOCIETY and then exploding in its own face.

However, since not all of his actions can be placed within this framework, we can say something about Arthur for certain that I don't feel we could unequivocally have before: He is not the hero of this story. There are actions of his to which morality meaningfully applies, and in a negative light— as opposed to not being a bad person, the 'not' here referring to the futility of trying to ascribe morality to the actions of those who have certain faculties truncated from their psyche. But why opt for this in the script?

If Arthur could possibly have had all of his actions justified or at least hypothetically justifiable, he would have been the hero of the story. And 'the hero of the story' implies 'story', it implies 'narrative', it would have meant a regression to the narrative structure that the film explicitly seemed to be avoiding, at least most of the time. Joker (2019) wouldn't have been a character study, it would've regressed to a relatively standard narrative with an antihero. Thus, I think it makes sense to insert these actions as a diversion of the baseline of things which could really not have been any different in any categorical way (the killings in self-defense, general acts of revenge, the general insensitivity to the humanity of all others).

All of this is very complicated and challenging, perhaps in particular to those who aren't familiar with the larger lines of the subjectivity that is Arthur: One of a kind of mental illness that not even provisional accommodation exists for, particular economic dependence and destitution, and a general sense of being cut off from the world soul or whatever metaphysical metaphor you would like to use.

(The reason I want to use a metaphysical metaphor is because the longer you are both stuck in and at odds with society, the more everything that happens feels like a presocial fact, something that is intrinsic to you, rather than something that is occuring for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with you. One could choose to draw a distinction between saying that all of it is absurd, that the very construction of value in a Marxist sense creates an impersonal system of domination upon us all, or that the reason why things are as they are is the result of the enforced interests of certain blocs, but this doesn't really matter here. The fact that this reality is rapidly occluded from those who are subjugated to it remains, and that education to circumvent this occlusion and being reminded of what one knows by oneself and others is necessary to not keep returning to a mindset where one feels like something is intrinsically wrong with oneself rather than with society or whatever.)

All art produced by humans, even mass-produced art, is the result of the labor of those who even if they have no particular personal creative input, still levy the aspects of the contexts they are embedded in within the film. No film about a truly alien universe is possible, if it were, it would intrinsically not be possible for humans to conceive of and portray on any medium. Thus we have to conclude that this film, too, says something about perhaps all of us, and those around us.

This is very difficult. The morality of the film is so contradictory as to be completely reprehensible to anyone with any worldview at all, and trying to view it as a character study protects us from being impacted by it. It's a film about Arthur, after all, not us, a twisted person who does not deserve our sympathy. This contradiction doesn’t matter if we abstract Arthur away from ourselves.

I would call this cowardice, or at least, a kind of fear. There is a difference between consuming art from a critical, analytic distance, and really engaging with it. This is of course scary to most people, and I think many of us, even or perhaps especially those who claim to be hardcore critics and analytics are often unwilling to do this. After all, if we really open our minds and hearts to the art we interact with, we don't know how we will end up on the other side.

Will we come to question our preconceptions about who deserves sympathy? Does anyone, even, does the concept retain meaning in a world in which we are all traumatised? Does everyone, perhaps, which may be much scarier to some of us? Why do people behave in the way they do? It would be so easy to assume that the people we hate are behaving either irrationally or from a position of malice, and the idea that everyone has reasons to do what they're doing is a difficult one when we have been hurt by others.

There are a lot of questions like these that pop up when we truly take art for what it is, and I think most of us just can't be bothered. Certainly I couldn't while watching this film, or immediately after it.

This is why I think why a lot of both professional critics and more casual consumers seem to have trouble taking this film in. As a narrative, this film is obnoxious, frustrating, incoherent. As a character study, however, it is still painful, but if you dare to see it that way, you will get way more out of the film than you otherwise would. However, I feel even this is still a layer of abstraction too far removed from the meaning that the film could potentially confer upon us, but it’s one that people seem to be consistently refusing, judging by the state of discourse surrounding this film.

There are certain areas where analysis and ideology fail, or even if they succeed at a totalising idea of how to organise communities and lives, they don't suffice to let us truly perceive ourselves and others. There are certain things that can only be conveyed through art in this way, and at times, even the methodical structures surrounding art can prevent us from getting out of it what we can from nowhere else.

If Joker (2019) fails at any point, I would say it fails here, the parts where it fails to commit to disemphasising the narrative, where they return to the frame of a monomyth with an antihero, where it pulls punches about Arthur and why he does what he does, where it is altogether too subtle about the fact that there are more commonalities between Arthur and everyone else in the film than there are differences. Its cowardice makes it too easy for its audience to, in turn, also hide and scurry away from feeling what they could potentially feel, from having their psyches touched in a particular way.

There is, however, an artist whose work I feel consistently successfully eschews structures and their intrinsic problems, and whose art is extremely impactful as a result.

Play Vesp, by Porpentine.

[atomicfilm]

The case for (maybe) being an INTP:

- Overanalyzing

- I try to establish my own opinion before engaging in conversations with others to gain their perspectives. However, I will engage in these conversations, but this is apparently a shared trait btwn the INTP/ENTP.

- I debate one person consistently, we’ll call her M, and most other people will give up when they talk to me and/or agree with me. I don’t argue with people to change their opinions, which I think is the ENTP way of doing it, I argue because I find logical fallacies in their arguments and believe they’re incorrect. Which just so happens to be all the time. I think this is why I thought I played Devil’s Advocate, and because I was thinking about 1 occurrence, but ignoring that a lot of the time I will end a debate simply because I agree with them.

- I feel uncomfortable with directly offensive jokes and offensive humor. It takes a lot of continual anger for me to generalize a group of people and write them off. 

- I like to think I’m an optimist but I’m more of a pessimist to my own dismay. I think we’re gonna die because of climate change but I suppose nature’s way is better than mass genocide. When I debate I always prefer to take the negative/con side, which may suggest pessimism.

- I require someone to provide evidence to back up every statement of theirs and I do the same. If you don’t have this evidence then you had better find some or I will not listen to you until I’m satisfied with your sources.

- If I don’t know much about a topic then I will either say “I don’t know, do you want to look it up together” (usually option A) or stay silent. I’m too much of a perfectionist to say something too illogical that I won’t be able to correct later.

- But I also won’t agree with someone just to agree with someone because that’s the biggest piece of B.S. I’ve ever seen.

- I can spend all day googling random things instead of talking to people. And I mean all day.

- I prefer writing over talking any day. I famously like to say that I’m good at debate and terrible at speaking, refer to an earlier post of mine. I like to have the time to painstakingly process all of my ideas, weed out which ones I can’t support effectively, and then take a while to present my ideas. I teamed up with guy I really hate to pitch my film script ideas once because I’m not a good salesman.

- I think I can play the character of an ENTP really well. It’s not hard. It’s stereotypical vine material combined with a little intellectualism. One of my friends had said that I hadn’t done anything “crazy” in a few years and that I didn’t seem like myself, and my response to her was like “that’s not me, that’s a character”. It’s also the same as an INTP but more exaggerated. Now, I think ENTPs play lots of characters too generally, but I think I’m being very meta and playing an ENTP.

- A lot of people used to think that I partied hard/was a drug dealer but I mostly write and watch murder mysteries with my cat all day while contemplating the modern human’s relationship to early homo sapiens.

- I can be loud but that’s because I know how to put on a show, if that makes sense. I usually have a flair for the dramatics when I’ve decided I have a crush on them and it’s not a light one. With light crushes, I will ignore a person’s existence. The end. Otherwise, I can be silent as a mouse for months and the only person in the room who will know I’m smart will be the teacher/my bff/my mom/whoever. Likewise, the narcissism thing is totally fake. I don’t think I’m hot, I just say that because you’re supposed to believe it eventually and also because it’s some big societal upheaval for women to be confident.

- My default mode is accidentally flirty. Lots of sex jokes. Unless I like you, then any time you mention sex I will say “ew” or “cooties”. Apparently, I’m good at giving this look that says “hey stranger, come on over” but then I’ll scoot away because you’re a stranger and hello, personal space. I can be very friendly when I get over the fact that you’re a stranger talking to me though (but I had to develop this as a job skill). 

- I think I’m blunt and direct but I’m actually not usually directly blunt. For example, there was this guy at my school who kept sexually harassing me and to him, I just glared at him all the time and kept moving away from him because I didn’t want to start shit, but I told his best friend about it and was like “I hate the dude”. Dunno if this points towards being an ENTP or an INTP. I’m very blunt but not in a personal way, if that makes sense. I can be like “this is why I think that’s wrong” and openly criticize an idea, but I don’t openly criticize people I know.

- I’m not totally oblivious to other people’s feelings. I understand where they come from sorta. But I don’t really understand them themselves. If that makes sense. I can be like, oh she is hurt because I said this and now she has a lowered her eyelids. But then I’m like, okay, but I wouldn’t respond the same way emotionally so why did she? 

- I’m naturally basically a hobbit. I actually hang around a lot of very stable people (shoutout to ISFJ) and usually I leave behind friendships/relationships because they have upset this state of comfort by being toxic. I like to eat the same thing every time I go to a place, I like to do the same activities. But I like a little adventure, I like to have new conversations and try on different styles (but my go-to style is classic), I like to listen to new songs (but I have a soundtrack of songs I will sing over and over).

- I cannot handle authority. If you are an authority member and you raise your voice at me, I will cry, and those will be real tears.

- In middle school, people used to get mad at me for being afraid to do a lot of things like ziplining, so basically I force myself to go out of my comfort zone because I know that as much as I hate to do it and as much as I will procrastinate to do it, there’s a chance it will better my life. This could be where my ENTP character comes from. It could also be from being in theatre and imitating the average theatre kid. Either one.

- I hate stages. I hate them. I hate being in front of people. I hate talking to people a lot of the time. But I just do it anyway because it will hurt me if I don’t even if I’m about to throw up.

- I can be a loud person but I can also be extremely quiet. And when I observe people I usually think they’re being way too loud for my poor ears. 

- I’m not a true leader. I take a lot of leadership positions but really I’d prefer to be an individual but have recognized the need for a guide and no one else has taken it on. I also hate group projects. I have done 0 group projects (outside of AP Bio because I worked w/ my best friend who’s very capable) in the past three years of high school that I can remember. I don’t like carrying the deadweight of other people.

- I hate liars. I hate them. I hate them. I hate them. And they’re easy to spot. It’s my biggest pet peeve and I frequently say it when I’m judging someone’s character.

- Likewise, I’m very good at spotting psychopaths. My friends made a game out of this using their blocked-out forensics textbook. I think this is also an ENTP thing.

- Theoretically, I think I do think very similarly to an ENTP. For example, I can buy into existentialism, but I think there’s a basic starting point for morality that’s universal. I.E. murder is inherently bad. Slavery is inherently bad. Y’all can look at my older posts. An ENTP, however, really and truly does believe that a universal morality doesn’t exist and furthermore, that they don’t have an innate moral compass. This is one of the big red flags to me and part of the reason why I started looking into INTPs (I had initially been comparing myself w/ ENFPs but I ruled that out). I do immoral things, but I think these things are immoral and I feel guilt for them. I follow laws, but I don’t think laws are inherently moral and every once in a while you’ll come across a law that shouldn’t be followed because it infringes upon natural rights.

- Again, with reflecting on the past a lot of ENTPs don’t think their past is a concrete thing. And I logically agree with that. So many of our memories are made up and distorted, some people even steal other people’s memories and adopt them as their own. But I think of my past as a part of me all the same and I recognize that I’ve gathered as close to an objective understanding of it that I can.

- I think I naturally act like an INTP without any intense external stimuli. Which is to say, I’m an INTP and appear like one unless I feel like looking like an extrovert will aid me somehow.

- Every time I say I’m an extrovert to anyone they’re like “no, you’re definitely an introvert”. This was another red flag. I don’t put much value in other people’s perspectives of me typically but figuring out where I get energy from has been a long process. It turns out, I don’t get lasting energy from people or from being alone. I do get short-term energy from having really good conversations with people and I like to be near people but not necessarily speaking to them all the time (I’d rather fall asleep on them most of the time). They drain me out so fast too. My family was just in town for a few weeks and it will take me a few weeks to cope. Most of my energy comes from dance. It might not make sense to most people, but it’s true.

- And then I learned that some people think being an extrovert means you’re focused on external stimuli. Well, this certainly isn’t true for me. I think so much in my head that one day I decided to focus more on the outside world because it was just too much for me to handle emotionally.

- I socialize like an introvert. Even in a crowd of people, I find one person to pay attention to and they get all of my attention.

-  I’m slow to decide if someone is friend material. You may think we’ve been friends for five years and I’ll be like “dude, I know one thing about you and I don’t trust you”.

- I used to be very oblivious to social cues but then I researched them and practiced them so now I’m pretty good at them.

- Si wise, if you say an adjective I can remember my associations with it very easy. This makes reading horror novels a gruesome experience. I’m a pretty nostalgic person sometimes. I’m not too sure about this one but I think it’ll be the deciding factor in whether or not I’m an INTP.

- INTPs – > small pictures within a bigger picture. When I start learning about a subject, I find a nuanced part of it very quickly. Mass incarceration for example. When I started researching about it, I became very focused on teenage drug abuse among impoverished groups in the Northeast and case studies of police planting drugs on teens to arrest them.

- I will waste 12 hrs. fixing my typos in a script. I wrote a 40 pg. script in about 8 and the rest of the day was just making sure that every word was the perfect one to use.  

- One of the videos I watched said that INTPs like to intellectually support others and bring them up to their standards. This is very true for me. I’m always the friend that people ask to explain a concept to. I don’t mind taking the time to explain anything that I know about. I just want you to learn so that you can go on to have a great conversation later in life.

- When I meet other ENTPs I don’t really see myself in them a whole lot. I do relate to their need for mental stimulation. But the INTP I know and I have been told we have the same personality on more than one occasion.

- I have 3 friend groups, so technically I have a lot of friends, but I really only hang out and talk to 2 of my friends regularly. I have go-tos for my rants.

- My friend just called me and my response was “hello, why did you make me charge my phone for this when I could have texted you on my laptop instead” . I do like talking on the phone, but the act of calling someone and having to think of things to say makes me nervous. 

- I have three main intellectual focuses. Human rights, zoology, and cinema. Outside of those, I usually feel like I don’t know what to say until I take a hot second to learn everything about that subject ever written.

- I do have a kind of dark sense of humor but it’s delivered in a light-hearted way. And really dark stuff makes me super uncomfortable. I also don’t show this dark humor to anyone but close friends.

- When talking about poverty or other social issues I do use my own experience (INTP) on the subject rather than using universal hypotheticals (someone thought this was more of an ENTP thing)

- Don’t like being touched/cuddled that much but do like cuddling other people and taking care of them.

- I think my friends Jake and Sebastian are ENTPs, in which case, we click really well and I’m one of the few people who don’t get mad at them. But I will call them out for being offensive. And a very notable difference between us is that Jake will challenge everything anyone has ever said ever. I will only challenge it, once again, if I disagree with your foundation of logic.

- When I’m around over three people I don’t really know what’s happening aside from the people I’ve focused on.

- I think in my head so much that it tires me out to exhaustion. I remember one day deciding that I wasn’t going to think to myself so much and instead focus on external things because I was just tired of contemplating things without having concrete information to make a definite answer. 

- I feel alone in large groups and like to latch on to one close friend. 

- I feel like I can “adopt on” other people’s personalities but it’s not really true. I’m always myself I’m just sometimes more talkative. 

All that being said, I don’t think I’m a stereotypical INTP if I even am one. I think I probably am more emotionally developed than a lot of rational types and I’m learning how to be there for people and just be empathetic. People are constant works in progress and I consider myself a constant work in progress.

I’m externally very dynamic (or at least appear to be) and open to my opinions being challenged, but I’m also very stubborn and static unless I arrive to those logical conclusions too.

I really thought when I started saying I was an ENTP that my INTP tendencies were just the depressed version of me. But I’m not currently depressed and sometimes the evidence becomes too big to ignore. But I wouldn’t mind hearing other opinions since I’ve only been into MBTI for a month and recognize that there are other, more experienced people out there.

- It’s 12:29 AM I have been working on this post for 2 hrs. so I’m definitely an NT.

--- 

There’s not a whole lot of information out there distinguishing between ENTPs and INTPs without relying on stereotypes. But I have seen a lot of what is out there and I will personally be typing myself as an INTP for now. 

I really have never wanted to be an introvert,  and maybe I’m not one, but I think I’ve been too biased against it to act objectively. 

@confusedinfj I’ve taken this off of private mode so you can take a gander. 

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

“Another Life” Review: Another Hour of Mine I Won’t Get Back

One of the good things about Netlix (particularly compared to traditional TV channels) is that its ability to deliver a wide variety of content simultaneously allows it to experiment with things that might not have wider appeal. This is particularly important where genre fiction is concerned, because you can’t rely on formula to develop something genuinely good in that area. Who’d have thought that a ‘cursed object’ story set exclusively in the art world where everyone talks like they’re delivering a devastating Gustav Klimt review would turn out to be one of the best horror movies of recent years? And yet Velvet Buzzsaw blew me away and gave me a reason not to give up on western culture completely. Likewise, who expected a revenge saga about classical music with (at most) one or two truly graphic scenes to be the most gut-wrenching and powerful psychological thrillers of recent years? Yet The Perfection was one of the only truly transcendent films I’ve ever had the privilege of watching. The same goes for series- it’s hard to imagine that an overwhelming blend of surreal and dystopian imagery, hard-to-grasp technological concepts, semi-obscure literary references, needlessly brutal violence, gleeful depravity, whip-smart humour and a borderline-sociopath with a Hello Kitty rucksack would ever be aired on a proper channel. Altered Carbon, however, turned out to be one of the best sci-fi series of the last decade, missing the top spot only thanks to the existence of Rick and Morty.

The reason I’ve started with all this gushing praise, however, is merely to provide context and a necessary counterbalance to the excoriating review that follows. For you see, an ability to deliver niche or experimental content can lead to abject failures as well as shining successes. For every underrated gem, there must be a meticulously-polished turd waiting to ambush the unsuspecting connoisseur. Ladies and gentlemen, Another Life is that turd.

On paper, Another Life sounds like good, solid sci-fi. A starship captain has to travel across the universe to ascertain whether an alien race that recently dropped probes on Earth is hostile or just curious. Along the way, her journey will be complicated by a crew who’s used to working under a different captain with a radically different style of leadership and all the usual, real-life-plausible dangers of travel through uncharted space (along with a few blatantly made-up ones). It’s not a terrible idea, but every bad creative decision that could be made is made and so the whole things collapses like a poorly-made soufle before the end of episode one.

For a start, let’s talk about the show’s aesthetics and visual decisions. the CG budget clearly wasn’t huge (which is fine), but the show tries to realise as many of its effects as possible using CG anyway, which stretches that minimal budget far too thin and draws attention to how artificial and contrived everything looks. For example, the decision to make the alien probes on Earth giant shimmering walls of crystal that can only be realised through CG is particularly baffling, given that they could just have been big fuck-off metal things that could have been physically built as a set. Meanwhile, the show‘s overall look is... well, bland. If you’ve seen literally any space sci-fi before, you’ve seen the individual elements of the tech in Another Life. I think it’s aiming for Archetypal, but it just looks lazy. It doesn’t help that they liberally borrow terminology from other sci-fi. I know that ‘Impulse Engine’ is technically (probably) the correct name for a slower-than-light engine that works in a particular way, but calling your space engines that just invites comparisons to Star Trek, which won’t be favourable. Back to the point, though: in addition to cribbing heavily from superior shows, Another Life also makes everything look far too smooth and clean. A spaceship is a working vehicle filled with people doing dangerous, difficult, often dirty jobs. Its interior shouldn’t look like an iPhone fucked a trendy west-end bar. Seriously, the ‘future’ set in fucking Crystal Maze looks more convincing.

The problem of everything seeming too smooth and clean extends beyond the visuals and into the casting. Practically everyone in the core cast is in their early twenties. They’re not bad actors, necessarily, but they clearly need older, more experienced hands around them to guide their performances and the absence of these more seasoned actors is felt acutely. There’s a reason why mature sci-fi shows usually cast across a broad age range- you’re asking your cast to deal with conceptual and scientific abstractions that can be challenging for people who don’t have a few performances under their belt. It also feels wildly implausible that a dangerous space-mission would feature a bunch of hormonal twenty-somethings who’s personal drama might get in the way of them making clever decisions. The main lass (whose name I’ve already forgotten), is played by a noticeably older woman. Indeed, that age difference is a big part of her character: can she win the trust and respect of the young hotheads? Unfortunately, one older actress does not a seasoned cast make. Besides, the character she’s playing just isn’t worth rooting for. It’s not that she’s a terrible person- she’s coldly aloof, but so was Picard and everyone loves that dude. It’s just that she has no depth. She has a family back on Earth, and we’re told that she’s missing them and trying to ensure the mission’s success so she can see them again, but the supposed internal conflict has no effect on her behaviour. She just goes about robotically calculating and minimising risk, even though doing so ensures that she’s going to be in space, away from her loved ones, for much, much longer. Within the narrative of the show, she’s making the correct, mature decisions, but shouldn’t they be causing her some introspective strife? No? Yes? Does this fucking show care one way or the other?

Of course, janky characters and budget set designs are kind of par for the cause with sci-fi of a certain type. Sometimes it can be endearing (the fact that the sets literally wobbled sometimes in early Doctor Who was part of its charm, for example). A much bigger problem is Another Life’s total lack of narrative logic. The main character (no I still can’t remember her name, nor be bothered to check) managed to get ten people killed the last time she was in charge of a starship. Surely that’s the point at which you politely ask someone to retire? Even if there were mitigating circumstances (which there probably were because showing fallibility in its lead is not something this show feels comfortable with), why on Earth would anyone put her in charge of a crew of emotional 20-somethings she’s never met before while their previous, trusted captain is still on the fucking ship and clearly feeling mutinous? That’s just bad management on behalf of planet Earth’s top brass. I can only hope that someone in HR got the sack for that one. Or, better yet, that a giant hammer will spontaneously fall out of the sky and hit this show’s script-writer so hard in the head that he loses control of his motor functions and bowels and is forced to retire to a convalescent home for the incontinent.

The captain’s own decision making processes are just as baffling as her bosses. There’s a bit where the crew figures out that they can get back on course and cut down on journey time by slingshotting around a slightly temperamental star using the same shielding they use when traveling at FTL (yeah- FTL space travel is a common thing in this universe, yet humans have somehow never met another alien race before- make of that what you will). They already tried to slingshot round the star once and were forced to abort and break orbit because of the strain on the ship. The plan has an 89% chance of success. The 11% chance of failure doesn’t equate to instant death or anything- logically, it just means the shield would fail and they’d have to break orbit again (because that’s what happened before: remember that we’ve already established that slingshotting around the star doesn’t do anything worse than rattle the ship and give everyone plenty of time to back off). For some reason, Captain Caution decides that the high chance of success, negligible risk of serious repercussions and massive potential benefits just aren’t good enough and vetoes the plan, thereby adding months to the voyage. Isn’t establishing whether the new, technologically superior alien neighbours are friendly or not something of a time-critical op, by the way? Naturally, the crew mutiny (under the leadership of the previous captain), try their plan and it fails miserable.

And there’s the final nail in the coffin for Another Life. It doesn’t play by its own rules. Its established that the FTL shields can’t use much power, because they’re on all the fucking time during FTL. It’s established that nothing particularly terrible happens when you try to slingshot round a star and have to abort. It’s established that combining those two facts to get a speed boost has an 89% chance of success. And yet, when the crew try it without the Captain’s express permission, bits of the ship start to explode, everything goes to shit and the vessel ends up in a decaying orbit around the sun, somehow drained of power. The show’s in such a hurry to show that it’s main character is right and correct and noble in everything she does that it forgets rules it laid down literally five minutes earlier.

The whole shoddy shebang has a weirdly patronising and conservative ethos. “Listen to your elders and official superiors”, it whispers smugly. “They always know best, even when they’re responsible for the deaths of ten or more people in the quite recent past. Don’t think for yourself. Don’t try to improve your situation. The old, safe ways of doing things are always best, even when they seem neurotic or unworkable.” It’s weird, because it’s the exact opposite problem that sci-fi normally has. Normally, sci-fi tries so hard to be forward-looking that you end up with a bunch of wide-eyed fuckwits trusting the power of friendship and love over a more measured, carefully-planned approach. Both sides of the coin are equally annoying since they involve sacrificing the internal logic of the fictional universe on the alter of Some Hack’s personal ethos. However, Another Life earns my full, unmitigated disapprobation, not just a mild slap on the wrist, because it doesn’t even bother to be a good sci-fi show before jumping into the message-mongering bullshit. Remember, all this shit is from episode one. My advice to those of you craving some hard space sci-fi is to re-watch Nightflyers instead. It’s weird as balls, well-scripted, has a properly-established set of hard sci-fi rules and there’s even a romantic subplot involving the hologramatic projection of a hideous mutant. Yeah. Go watch that instead. I think I might, too, come to think of it.

[sturlsons]

french in 1.5 years anon

Kinda random but I just found out that I’ll be required to be intermediate/advanced in French by the next 1.5 years; ALL I KNOW IS THAT MEIRDE IS A BAD BAD WORD! Idk if you’re a native speaker but I was wondering if you could provide me of any good French language resources (or language in general since I’ll be needing to learn Arabic soon as well), and like tips for language learning and how to go about it? Sorry to bother you haha this is MY stress but I appreciate any help! Have a great day!

HEY. so i really fucking dropped the ball on this one, i’m sorry. 2019 has been one health fiasco after another (or more like the same fiasco again and again) and i kept telling myself i want to sit down and make a proper post for this, until i realised that that’s just never going to happen given the way things are rn. and i’d rather give you a quickly-written post which is actually helpful than never write that perfect bullet-pointed one. 

first of all, i’ve been in your EXACT position (so no, i’m not a native speaker) except i had about...six months to go from je m’appelle teesta to voyez-vous, le problème qui se cache derrière tout ça n’est pas le manque de respect mais la personne dont il s’agit or whatever. i was like, i can so do this. (spoiler: i didn’t, because i was 18 and overconfident and stupid and didn’t actually know how to learn a language.) GOOD NEWS: having learned 3 more foreign languages since then, i am now REALLY GOOD at learning languages REALLY FAST. 1.5 years is a good amount of time, so don’t stress.

i’m going to go generic on this, with some extra tips about french since i speak it, unlike arabic. 

first thing, that typical thing everyone hates to hear but knows is coming from the mouth of an accomplished person (pat on my back) in any field whatsoever: you’re going to have to work really hard and practice like fuck. 

there’s just nothing else that can replace it. i’ve filled up notebooks and notebooks with japanese verb conjugations, once i did like 1800 of them in one sitting. but you better believe that a bitch will never forget those now. resign yourself to putting in at least three hours of your day to this until you get to the level you need. (and three hours is...kind. at my peak i was literally reading through french dictionaries at the library, 10 AM - 8 PM. i treated it like a workday.)

now, what you need to establish is: are you a hands-on learner or a digital one. 

i don’t really care for all the auditory learner and visual learner stuff, i don’t know about anyone else but i personally used those as excuses to avoid certain exercises. unless you have actual disabilities preventing you from accessing certain methods of learning, you can train yourself into anything. it’s a matter of practice. i could barely understand a new song without reading its lyrics first, now i eat up podcasts. 

SO. the question here is different. a hands-on learner, like i used to be more or less throughout my bachelor’s, is someone who absolutely cannot retain information unless they’ve written it down BY HAND at least once. pen and paper. (i’m still like this but i’ve learned to combine it with digital methods to go faster.) if this isn’t a hurdle for you, congratulations. your process is going to go that much faster, at least for french. (you’ll have to spend hours practicing your written arabic however, if you’re not familiar with the script.) 

now, if you’re a hands-on learner, you need to add an extra hour to your daily time. no matter how fast you write, you will take that time. and you cannot shorthand your way into languages. you need to understand how french is spelt, what accents it uses, that they put a space before exclamation points, question marks, and semicolons. (side tip: learn the IPA. it will be useful to you forever in language learning, at least for the romance languages.) i’m not gonna teach you how to make notes since i’ve never benefitted from copying someone else’s style, so if you don’t have a set method start establishing that. you need regularity and rhythm when you learn a language. my grammar notes look the same regardless of the language. i don’t have my french ones since it’s been years and i didn’t take good ones then anyway, but here’s my japanese and russian stuff. 

JAPANESE NOTES // RUSSIAN NOTES

now, it bears mentioning that these notes are NOT the notes i take when i don’t know shit. these are final level notes. they’re brief, idiosyncratic, and only reminders. something to refer to when i’m revising and suddenly forget a rule. the first notes i make are much more elaborate, whether they’re pretty or not. i’ve gradually lost the fucks i had about really going ham on academics so my russian notes are very messy, but my japanese ones from back in the day are magnificent. here’s a look. during lesson one i realised that japanese and my mother tongue, gujarati, are syntaxically similar as shit, and i started taking notes with references in gujarati. it sped up my learning process 2x while my french classmates were still going “BUT WHY IS IT LIKE THAT”. 

PRACTICAL GRAMMAR // THEORETICAL GRAMMAR

if you plan to learn more languages in the future, this will be so valuable. sometimes a phrase i learn in russian doesn’t make sense in its french explanation, but a phrase in english might use the same logic. bam, put down the translation in english then. you get what i’m saying? the more languages you learn, the easier it gets to learn languages. 

now if you’re a digital learner, i’ve got great news for you. duolingo and anki are your best friends. duolingo’s memed to hell and has a system that might not work for everyone, but they’ll do the brunt work of compiling grammar notes for you in the beginnings/ends of their lessons. note those down and transform them into anki flashcards, and you can learn grammar concepts without doing 20 exercises. (do those exercises if you can, though, nothing beats mindless practice.) now anki is an intimidating-looking but actually super intuitive app that basically builds digital flashcards for you and shows them to you in a rhythm based on your own learning speed. it’ll show you the front of a card, let’s say merde. you say the english translation out loud, shit, and hit enter. correct! was that easy? anki’ll show it to you in 10 minutes. hard? it’ll show you in 1 minute. super easy? merde won’t come up again until tomorrow. eventually you get so good at it that you can bury a card for 2 months. anki will also show you the same cards reversed, which is harder but trains you better. you’ll see shit and have to remember what it’s called in french, which is more difficult than you’d think it is. 

you can use anki for more than just vocab, like i mentioned. it’s a little tricky learning to convert grammar concepts into front/back flashcards, but you can do it. for example, here’s a sample of one of my russian grammar cards: 

front ^^

back once i hit enter^^

see? not that difficult. now don’t be an idiot like me who manually entered every single flashcard into anki. you can find pre-made packages online (but you can’t guarantee they’ll be correct) or you can make your own without killing your fingers. what you wanna do is open up a spreadsheet and make two columns, A for front of the card and B for back. it’ll look like this:

then you’re gonna save that spreadsheet as a .CVS (comma separated values) and import that into anki. bam, your flashcards are made for you with half the effort. there’s also a script floating around somewhere to make excel translate words automatically for you, but i don’t recommend that unless they’re really easy words. google translate can fuck up. reverso is your friend. 

you need to review your anki cards every day. it’ll take less and less time as you go along. i can review 300 russian cards in 15 minutes now. but you need to keep the rhythm going. download ankiapp and sync your cards, review them on commutes or in the hallway or whatever. trust me, it’s magic. 

apart from this, if a traditional textbook helps, go for that. i’ve always used textbooks and workbooks, more as supports than as principal methods, but it does help. it’s structured and organised and these people know how to train you. bescherelle is a good go-to for french. 

media is always a great way of immersion too, until you get to the country itself. it’ll show you how french people speak french. when i first came to france i didn’t have that experience and even though i spoke an arguably decent amount of french when i got here, it was like, if this is french then what the fuck was i learning in high school. if you like watching movies this is your chance. watch the classics first so that you can get an idea of french pop culture. amélie (though the pop culture aspect here is about shitting on it) and les intouchables, for starters. watch your favourite films, first subbed, then subbed and dubbed, then just dubbed. i watched all ten seasons of friends with french subs, it was wild. with music you want to start off with some indie-ish singers since they will universally sing softer and slower, making things easier to understand than idk, la tribu de dana. (if you’re into bts there’s a hilarious video of their baepsae choreo set to la tribu de dana.) anyway - angèle, cœur de pirate, céline dion, fréro delavega, uhhh that fucking french sufjan stevens. what’s his name. VIANNEY. don’t fucking listen to biglo and oli or like, fatal bazooka right away. you will not understand shit. i barely understand it. white people are wild. ooh listen to stromae. orelsan too, he’s a rapper but he has a relatively clean diction imo. he also sang the french opening for OPM. they call him orelsan-san in japan.

last but not the least: if you have the opportunity to interact in french with people, DO IT. native speakers will do their best to help you and be kind about it. people who learned french might sometimes be assholes from experience. it’s a whole superiority complex thing, and very hypocritical. anyway - online or IRL, wherever you can practice your french, do it. it’ll be immensely helpful. there’s nothing like the frustration of not being able to express simple things to get you motivated to get better. do your best to immerse yourself - changing the language on your devices can make a difference too. 

i think that’s all i have and again, i’m sorry for taking this long to finally deliver, thanks for your patience! if you have any specific questions don’t hesitate to hit me up, on anon or not. 

good luck - it’s not going to be the easiest but nothing is as gratifying as beginning to understand the workings of a language. you’re gonna love it!

[reallylonglies]

Taylor Swift - Demon Hunter : Part 4

Blake was exhausted. She had work. She had kids to chase around. She had a husband. She didn’t have time to pass messages between a demon and a lightning rod like they were in a really messed up fifth grade class. 

She stomped down the stairs to Taylor’s gym. It was quiet there when Taylor was touring and she needed some time to get a little work done. She found a semi-comfortable seat and began to leaf through a script she’d been sent. It was quiet and cool in the gym, and the script was actually good enough that she found herself engrossed. An hour passed before she realised she wasn’t alone. 

There was a faint hum in the air and a warm, spiced scent. She slipped the script into her bag, took off her earrings and readied herself for a fight. Only two people had the combination code for the door, but all that meant was that whatever was in here definitely wasn’t a person. Tucking her hair into a neat ponytail, she called into the darkness.

“You can come out now, she’s not here. Just little old me,” her voice echoed, the comfortable cool of the gym had become spine-tingling chill. She felt the air moving around her. 

“A breeze in a basement,” she muttered to herself, “Happy Tuesday to me.” 

Suddenly, it was in front of her. She sensed it before she saw it. Every inch of her body told her to run and never look back. From experience, she knew that this was the most important time to stay completely still and focussed. The discomfort she was feeling began to take shape in front of her. Despite her thudding heart, she found herself rolling her eyes at the over-dramatic process of manifestation. She really didn’t have time for this shit, even if it was scaring the living daylights out of her. She needed those living daylights to get through the rest of her busy life. 

After a minute or so of overdramatic swirling, the spirit manifested in front of her. She’d never seen anything like it. Except she had, she’d seen something exactly like it, but she’d never seen that thing manifest in front of her. Taylor usually just entered the room through a door, not as a swirling cloud of vapour.

“If you’re trying to convince me you’re my friend, you’ve already made several mistakes,” she said, sounding nonchalant is second nature when you’ve spent as many years in teen dramas as Blake had. 

“I’m not trying to trick you,” it said, it’s voice was not right either. Taylor had a human voice, this was a low growl with a rasping quality that made Blake want to dive for a packet of vocal zones. 

“What do you want?” Blake asked, slowly moving her hand up her back, between her shoulder blades. She grasped the handle of the small dagger she kept there, and silently thanked Gal Gadot for inspiring this little trick. 

With unseeing eyes, the spirit tilted its head at her. The eyes roamed up and down Blake’s whole body as if they had never been set on a human being before. 

“She took my friend, put her in a song,” the figure circled Blake, Blake concealed the dagger behind her wrist. 

“What are you doing?” she asked it as it passed behind her, when it stood in front of her, she took a sharp breath. 

“Learning,” the word escaped from Blake’s lips in Blake’s voice. Staring in horror at the uncanny figure before her, the real Blake stifled a scream. She slashed with the dagger at the demon, who dodged, then looked down at her own right hand. It revealed its identical dagger. The stifled scream became a roar of frustration. Blake threw herself into battle for the first time in over a decade. 

*****

I don’t attend awards ceremonies as a rule. There’s enough awful people there, I don’t need to add any more malice to the mix. I once had to find one of my old apprentices at the Oscars, the stench in that room… it was like garbage, emotional garbage. Everyone in there has so much hanging on a little golden statue. And people mock me for my crucifix intolerance. 

I sensed almost instantly that something bad had happened to Blake. I don’t know what gave it away. Was it something she said? Something she did? The fact that she had obviously been replaced by a powerful fallen angel out for vengeance? 

One of those things definitely set my alarm bells ringing when I went to her with a message for Taylor. Fallen angels are honestly the worst because if you bump into one unprepared they can do a lot of damage. They can stop you manifesting, give you a headache or in this case they can force you to possess the husband of a good friend against your will. 

She gestured to him, cowering gently in a corner. 

“Get in,” she said, she’d really nailed the voice. 

I have to tell you inhabiting a human host is gross enough but this guy had only recently been exorcised and whatever slovenly spirit he’d been possessed by did not clean up after itself. Anxieties everywhere. Nightmares left unfinished. The guy even left an existential crisis just lying around for me to trip up on. What a hack.  

We so rarely talk about what it feels like to possess someone, allow me to describe it. It’s a little like tapping into a phone line except the phone line is the person’s physical presence in the mortal dimension. Unfortunately, the host is still using the phone line so you get a live feed of all their thoughts, and this guy was a big thinker. A lot going on in his mind. Gave me a migraine almost instantly. 

Walking the red carpet, I saw Taylor at a distance. Unfortunately there was no way for me to signal to her in front of that many photographers. I didn’t want to risk the exposure of the entire demon realm over something so small as a potential apocalypse. Also, any time that a person is working hard to perform the act of “being myself” it is actually surprisingly difficult for an incumbent Demon to take over. They’re too conscious of everything, all their boundaries are up. It’s sticky and gross and I hate it. 

Fallen angels love, love having their pictures taken. Ever seen those old-timey exorcism pictures? All that ectoplasm shit? Fallen angels, they love to showboat. As soon as they get in front of a camera they have to show off. If you look at any pictures of Blake from this awards ceremony, you might be able to see the image warping a little at the edges, or get a chill when you look at her eyes. 

So anyway, the red carpet probably was simultaneously the best and worst place to attract Taylor’s attention. Demon Blake was distracted having her picture taken. Great. Stupid human host Ryan was on his best “being myself” behaviour. Not great. 

As luck would have it, my host needed the bathroom. Admittedly, I had spent the entire afternoon making him thirsty in the hope that this would give me the out I needed. Slipping through the crowd, he passed Taylor and I pushed myself to the top of his psyche so that she couldn’t fail to hear my tune blaring out over the shouts of journalists and photographers. 

Her eye met Ryan’s and she filled with fiery rage. I fist bumped, there was no way she could ignore this. 

She stormed into the bathroom while my host was washing his hands. Another insignificant human squealed at her, she swore at him and he left in a panic. It wasn’t classy. I loved it. 

“You,” she fixed me with her hardest stare, “get out.” 

“You’re blocking the door. I’m also really not sure you’re meant to be in here. This is the men’s room and you’re not a men,” Ryan’s babbling continued until he looked in the mirror above the sink and saw my face beaming back at him, “Oh God, not again, how does this keep happening to me? Do I have a possess me sign on my back?” 

He was still chattering as I drifted gently away from his feeble human body and manifested next to him.

“Wait why is he wearing a tux, do demons wear tuxes?” he asked. 

“No,” I said, “It’s a special occasion I wanted to look nice. Do you always wear a tux, dumbass?” 

“No,” he asked, “Why do you look like John Mulaney?”

“It’s a passing resemblance, why do you look like Picasso’s biggest mistake?” 

Taylor interrupted our vocal sparring by aggressively grabbing me by my bowtie. I had manifested too solidly for that not to hurt. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked, twisting the bowtie tighter. 

I made some garbled gasping sounds, she relented and loosened her grip. 

“Blake… fallen angel… very bad… big event… tonnes of demons…” partly I was getting my breath back, partly I preferred talking in bullet points. 

“How many?” she asked, taking a series of silver rings out of her garter and slipping them onto her fingers. 

“Sevent…” I deliberately mumbled the second half of the word. 

“Seventeen? That’s not so many,” she shrugged, I made a guilty face “Oh, seventy, that’s many, a lot of many. Is there anyone we can call?” 

Zendaya was out on a film shoot somewhere. Aniston was retired. Dunst had a lifetime ban because of the Bettany fiasco. I racked my brains. 

The door opened. Two figures in black suits appeared. 

“Miss Swift, pleased to meet you, we’ve heard a lot about you,” the one that spoke had a gentle accent and dreamy eyes, the other one was Keanu Reeves. 

“It seems you have a bit of a situation on your hands,” Reeves answered, “How can we be of service?” 

Taylor looked taken aback. I looked taken aback. Ryan looked deeply confused. 

“What the hell is going on? Why is Neo here with this tennis player? Are we giving Golden Globes to tennis players now?” these were all logical questions. 

“This must be confusing for you,” with perfectly applied pressure from his palm, Reeves gently put Ryan to sleep. The other guy caught the body and slid it under the sink, where they kept the hand towels and soap refills. Watching these two work together, stirred a memory in me, something from an impossibly long time ago. 

“Holy shit,” I said, “You’re Reeves and Federer.”

“Who else would we be?” Federer asked as he arranged some hand towels under Ryan’s head to make him more comfortable. 

“Wait, the Reeves and Federer?” Taylor chimed in, “I thought they were from like, the 18th century.”

“We are,” they answered in unison. 

Reeves and Federer: immortal vampires. I couldn’t believe they were still around, which in hindsight felt particularly foolish. They were immortal vampires, of course they were still around. 

“Alright,” Taylor and I didn’t have time to fangirl the way I wanted to over these two absolute heroes of the dark world, “I have a plan for this but it’s going to take a lot of work. What weapons are we working with?” 

Reeves and Federer opened their jackets. I gasped audibly. 

“What do you need?”

******

Blake woke in the gym, her hands were tied to a leg press machine. She rolled her eyes, and without even flinching, dislocated her thumb to break out of her bonds. She sighed, popped her thumb back in and straightened her dress. 

“Fallen angels,” she muttered, collecting her handbag, “Amateurs.” 

*****

Demon Blake waited for the ceremony to begin before starting her big show. The sound system began to crackle and pop like a nervous bowl of rice krispies. The host apologised for technical difficulties. The technical team shook their heads in confusion. 

The lights went out. A room full of expensive people gasped expensively in shock. 

“Silence,” a voice throbbed from the center of the room. Blake had risen to her feat and was glowing blue in the darkness, “Stand.” 

A bunch of bozos in suits stood up. Taylor sighed, we were concealed behind a thick velvet curtain. 

“There are so many,” she whispered, “Reeves and Federer had better remember the plan. Are you ready for it?” 

“I was hewn ready,” I replied. It was a lie, if I was physically capable of wetting myself I would have done. 

“Ew, that’s gross,” she answered as we watched Demon Blake rise into the centre of the room. I get telepathic when I get nervous. 

There was a shuffling sound behind us, Taylor turned, instantly ready for a fight. Blake, the real one, not the floating ball of demonic rage, appeared from the shadows. 

“Hey,” she smiled, “What did I miss?” 

“Oh, nothing, just that your demon twin is trying to take over the world,” Taylor answered as Blake rummaged in her handbag and changed her heels for comfortable pumps. 

“So, just another Tuesday then,” she answered, “Where do you want me?” 

“The tech desk, I need you to raise the curtain when Reeves and Federer give the signal,” Taylor kept her eyes pinned on demon Blake, who was now floating through the audience monologuing about mortals heeding her will or something. Typical fallen angel garbage, these guys are 80% propaganda.

“Wait,” Blake paused on her way to the tech desk which was hidden at the back of the room, “The Reeves and Federer? I thought they were a myth.” 

“Yeah, me too. Now it makes sense that John Wick looks so fighting fit at fifty,” Taylor gestured that Blake should hurry, the possessed hordes were beginning to bar the doors. 

Just as the tension in the room mounted to a peak, there was a loud shout from a balcony above the stage. 

“Hey, crazy demon!” the words were less than poetry, but they sounded so good in a swiss accent, “Possess this!”

He threw what looked like, but certainly wasn’t a tennis ball into the air, jumped and served. The point blank blow knocked demon Blake out of the air, she crashed dramatically into a table surrounded by influential aged filmmakers.

It occurred to me suddenly that I had no idea where he’d been hiding that tennis racket.

Taylor was still biding her time, she made her way towards the center of the stage, behind the curtain. 

Reeves had made his way to the middle of the room, gently bringing protective posessees to their knees on the way. It was good that he was used to hurting people without actually hurting people, that was working in our favour. 

Demon Blake saw him coming and aimed a bolt of lightning squarely at his chest. He dodged it, letting Quentin Tarantino take the hit. Boy howdy he was going to have a headache when he woke up. 

Federer had climbed athletically down from the balcony and was approaching Demon Blake from behind, apologising courteously as he elbowed his way through the crowd. 

Reeves cricked his neck as Demon Blake moved towards him, real fire blazing in her eyes. 

I’ve rarely engaged in hand to hand combat with a fallen angel. In fact, I would go so far as to say I have never in fact engaged in hand to hand combat with a fallen angel. It’s risky, and hard, plus in high stress situations I have a habit of turning into a cloud of greasy smoke so it’s difficult to keep up with the “hand to hand” thing. With that for context, let me tell you that I was impressed with how long Reeves held out. 

First she came for him with a left hook. 

He caught her fist in his and forced her backwards. 

She burst into flames and he was almost incinerated. 

Stumbling backwards, he pulled a chair out from under a possessed Jude Law and shattered it. 

He struck out with a chair leg and clocked her across the face. 

At this point she lost control and contorted briefly into her true shape, horns, wings and all. 

Taylor motioned to me to move to the orchestra pit. My part of the plan was, though I say myself, a big challenge. I was being very brave. Landing in the pit I centred myself and extended a telepathic field across all of the musicians. 

Just as I got the last flautist under control, I heard Reeves and Federer give the signal. It was meant to be “now” but it came as a slightly garbled scream somewhere in the vicinity of now. 

Luckily Blake got the message and the curtain on the stage rose. I connected myself with Taylor, a conduit for her to control the orchestra. She let out a single, incredible note. Demon Blake turned, dropping both Reeves and Federer to the floor. 

“You,” the Demon floated towards Taylor at an alarming pace. 

Taylor replied with a low hum, the orchestra started up, perfectly in tune under her control. 

“You hid my friend in that stupid song,” the demon had dropped its Blake disguise in its fury. Fallen angels, not pretty. Would not recommend this as a Halloween costume. 

Taylor started the song, the orchestra was building with her. I’d never heard this one before, it was incredible. 

The angel was uncomfortable, its tune was hiding under the verses, woven tightly into the chorus, but it fought back. Blue lightning flew out of its hands towards Taylor. She dodged, rolled and didn’t miss a line of her song. 

The Angel looked upwards as it began to weaken under the intensity of the music. Taylor nodded at me, as we had planned, I extended the telepathic field to include everyone in the room. Hundreds of voices raised in unison and the fallen angel writhed and glowed with pale fire. 

Reeves and Federer gazed up at the demon, Blake’s eyes were fixed on Taylor as she fought her greatest battle. In an explosion of fire and fury the fallen angel dissolved. The song came to an end, Taylor fell to her knees on the stage. Silence fell across the room, followed by a low whooshing sound as if a gale was blowing through the building. Seventy demons evacuated their influential hosts, eager to escape the wrath of the most powerful lightning rod they had ever seen. 

More silence, then Reeves clapping, Federer joining him, Blake whooping - the whole room erupted with applause. 

She stood, shakily. Smiled the same smile she had on her face the first time she vanquished a level five fire demon, and bowed.

As the applause died down, and I began gently wiping the memories of everyone in attendance. Taylor had a sudden flash of memory, she turned to Federer, who was folding napkins and straightening cutlery. 

“Did you leave Ryan locked in an under-sink cupboard?” 

“Oh, shit, yes,” he looked at Blake with panic in his eye. She was tucking into a tray of canapes. 

“Leave him there, it’ll be good for him,” she said, through a mouthful of salmon puffs, “I’ll get him out in an hour.” 

[grimelords]

very long post about podcasts because someone sent me an ask about podcasts and I love podcasts and you can't do read mores on mobile sorry.

Hello I just wrote this incredibly long post about all the podcasts I listen to and would therefore recommend. Before you ask, I work alone so that’s how I have so much time for this many podcasts, plus audiobooks and music listening and everything.

Comedy Shows I Listen To Every Week

Comedy Bang Bang - always good, always funny, and if you have howl or stitcher premium the month of tour shows they did last year is really the best thing the medium of podcasts has ever produced, I really love it.

Hollywood Handbook - the best podcast. notoriously ‘hard to get into’ because it apparently takes people a little to adjust to the mindset these guys are in, and it requires you to be a little bit of a podcast person and also to have listened to this show for 100 eps to get certain things but it’s really incredible if it’s your thing. Their latest episode where they designed cards is maybe one of the most accessible episodes they’ve done in a while and if you’ve ever listened to Spontaneanation the episode they did with Paul F Tompkins a couple of weeks ago had me absolutely crying laughing.

With Special Guest Lauren Lapkus - Lauren Lapkus is the funniest person on the planet, undoubtedly. This show varies pretty wildly depending on the guest because it’s so conceptual but it’s never ever bad. Also please watch the web series The Earliest Show she did with Ben Schwartz because while the show is really good, the hour of outtakes is one of my favourite videos ever.

My Brother, My Brother And Me - you already know what it is. Good show, fun time.

Spontaneanation - Paul F. Tompkins really is a gift and this show is very very good, it’s fun and silly and good natured which is a nice change of pace from a lot of the world. The recent episode with Lauren Lapkus and Tatiana Maslaney is really really good on both sides.

Comedy Shows I Listen To Sometimes

Hard Nation - this is a really good political satire that almost always becomes very absurd. I’ve stopped listening to it as much in the last few months as politics news has sort of outstripped the pace of a weekly satire which is insane, but the show is still great every episode.

Never Not Funny - pretty easygoing chat show that I’ll listen to depending on the guest, it’s always good even if it’s someone I don’t know.

improv4humans - Matt Besser is one of the worst human beings alive and I really wish literally anyone else would start a show with this exact format but for now it’s all I’ve got. Any of the Wild Horses eps are incredible if you want a recommendation.

The Adventure Zone - you already know what it is, it’s those brothers playing dungeons and dragons. I’m lightyears behind but I listen to this sometimes and I’m slowly catching up.

Victrola - Improv combined with tight editing in a similar vein to Superego.

Pappy’s Flatshare Slamdown - a british panel show in podcast format, very good.

Handsome Rambler - Hannibal Buress’ podcast, great if you’re a fan and pretty infrequent so it’s easy to keep up with.

The Todd Glass Show - Todd Glass is an incredibly odd man and his show really reflects that. There’s a live band and lots of code words. The recent ep with Paul F Tompkins is an all timer, please listen to it if nothing else.

The Smartest Man In The World - I have no idea what this show is. As I understand it it’s just Greg Proops talking to a crowd about whatever’s on his mind and sometimes they bring him books to read out of? Very strange but Greg Proops is so incredibly good at just talking that it’s a great listen.

The Comedian’s Comedian - Stuart Goldsmith interviews comedians about making comedy. Really illuminating if it’s someone you love. Bizzare if it’s someone you don’t like cause they’ll explain their incredibly involved process for coming up with shit and boring jokes.

Politics Podcasts I Listen To Most Days

Is It On? - Buzzfeed Australia’s politics podcast. Really good light wrap up of the week in federal politics mixed with interviews with politicians that are a lot more personal and engaging than a lot of political interviews.

AM - ABC Radio National’s daily morning show. It’s only half an hour so it’s a really easy way to stay in the loop on the way to work or something.

The World Today - same thing but about world news and longer if you’re really interested.

The Daily - The New Yorker’s daily podcast. Great way to keep up with whatever the fuck Trump is doing today without having to go scrying through half baked twitter takes every morning.

Podcasts That Most Closely Fit Into The Genre Of ‘Podcast’

Song Exploder - breaking down songs note by note with the writers, incredibly well produced and a pleasure to listen to.

Reply All - really interesting show about the internet and all the evils it contains. Their episode Very Quickly To The Drill is the most interesting story about locksmiths you’ll ever hear.

Heavyweight - Jonathan Goldstein helps people make peace with their past. This is one of the best podcasts I heard last year and I really cannot wait for a second season.

Black List Table Reads - full quasi-radio plays of unproduced film scripts from The Black List. An incredible show that I wish were more popular.

99% Invisible - great stories about architecture and design.

Invisibilia - similar but about your emotions and brain

Gunsmoke - oldtimeradio.com presents the original 1950s cowboy radio serial Gunsmoke! and thank god!

Radiolab - it’s podcasts baby!

This American Life - baby, it’s podcasts!

Shows That Are Finished Series

Wiretap - Incredible show that I can’t believe I never heard of before. Hard to explain but it feels kind of like if Seinfeld was a radio show and happened mostly via phone calls.

Reality Show Show - the Hollywood Handbook guys’ previous show. A lot more accessible and incredibly listenable for what you’d think would be a pretty time specific show about reality tv.

Dead Authors Podcast - Paul F. Tompkins as HG Wells interviews comedians in character as famous dead authors. Surprisingly well researched and incredibly funny.

Wild Horses: The Perspective - I am absolutely begging for more episodes of this show from Lauren Lapkus’ improv group because it is so so good.

U Talkin’ U2 To Me? - please listen to this show, even if you don’t like U2. In face especially if you don’t. Adam Scott and Scott Aukerman try to review U2’s discography but very quickly devolve into some of the most absurd podcasting ever.

Superego - tightly edited improv with music and everything. Incredibly strange in a good way and it takes a little to adjust to the tone but it’s a great show.

Mystery Show - still gutted this never got a second series. Detective show in the vein of Serial about incredibly benign mysteries like how tall Jake Gyllenhaal is.

Rum, Rebels And Ratbags - great Australian history podcast from David Hunt who wrote the very good Australian history books Girt and True Girt.

Not Available On Stitcher But Very Good

Dead Pilots Society - like The Black List Table Reads but for unproduced comedy show pilots. Hilarious, well produced and an interesting look at how getting a tv show made works.

Night People On WMFU - this show’s finished, but it was a late night call in show on some american radio station. Perfect oddball show for driving at night or falling asleep to.

Please reply to this post and tell me more podcasts you think I’d like, or even ones I wouldn’t but you do - who cares. If you reply to this post and tell me to listen to Cum Town I will block you.

[trickstercaptain-archive]

      so I saw the film again and actually disliked it less the second time around. I’ll stick this under the cut in case people are genuinely fed up with me talking about this movie lmao but I gotta get my thoughts out

I actually kinda ship jack and francis???? she showed some Concerned looks during the whole hanging sequence and I’d like to think that jack cared beyond his completely blanking moment right at the start when he was trying to figure out that yes this is a bank and yes I’m robbing it. basically I already have some headcanons figured out there. also with that wave at those girls ( I LOVE ) as he was being dragged behind the bank I wonder if he’d fucked half of the town by that point honestly how did people not know he was there before now

jack’s compass pointing at the horizon. I approve

the guillotine scene was actually funnier second time around imo lmfao

uncle jack is the chillest man on the planet and this is where jack gets his chill factor from in this family. ‘best stay on dry land’ ‘i’m about to be executed on dry land’

there’s also another ghost of trilogy jack moment when henry is about to jump out of the rowboat and jack has his pistol out and is annoyed that he’s being left and is like ‘you men are all alike’ and the LOOK ON HIS FACE. it came completely out of left field and he was being needy af and ridiculous with henry in that scene but abandonment issues anyone. I loved it and johnny killed it in that split second before once again jack returned to being the clown and it was just so random but??? it’s jack showing depth and I’m taking it

does gibbs have a problem with scrum I’m unaware of??? like I feel as though there’s a grudge there somewhere lmfao because wow gibbs. also he should have never pulled a pistol on jack that bothered me FAR more than his whole ‘the turner boy paid us 10 pieces to save your ass’ thing

scrum nailed all of his comedy. seriously, stephen graham was a gift to this movie

jack called barbossa ‘daddy’ and I don’t know what to do with this information

carina and barbossa were seriously shafted. I needed like ten more scenes with them together pls and thank

I still hate the pearl scene with a passion. but. I think half of my problem with it results from the scene being torn to ribbons during post-production because the editing of that scene is really weird?? they focus on hector first ( after she sinks ) and jack’s sort of in the background and he has what looks like an Emotional face but he’s not in focus. and then suddenly when it cuts to jack he’s like ‘she was a good ship.’ idk, combination of terrible choices in post-production and terrible scripting?? I really could have done with jack charging forward towards hector like ‘you shouldn’t have thrown it in the bloody sea you moron’ because even OST jack would have done that

similarly, there are other moments when jack is doing his Emotional or Thinking face except he’s stuck in the background and not in focus. it’s like the camera only wanted to focus on jack when he was making weird noises and being the clown, especially in the second half and that bothers me

I actually really disliked jack’s sendoff for hector. he should have said nothing in that scene and they should have just let johnny do his thing with his eyes, I think that would have been more powerful and more reflective of how conflicted jack is over his death

also, ‘this is my bestest mate in all the world’ uh no thank you

there are some definite deleted scenes that I remember reading in the carina novelisation and don’t appear in the film, one involving carina and jack on saint martin and another once they reach the island with all the diamonds. here’s hoping they’ll make the dvd

‘jack, they’ll kill us.’ ‘I DON’T CARE’ lmfao okay but seriously. give me jack who really doesn’t give a shit about dying because he’s lost his purpose in life thank

I still like the young jack aesthetic. a lot

and finally, geoffrey rush carried this fucking movie with his own bare hands

[vohalika]

I suffer for my art

For an article appearing on thefandomentals.com, I actually sat down (with a lot of booze) and subjected myself to watching the Lightning Thief movie again. Here are unfiltered live notes, so everyone can suffer with me.

(Why yes I do channel cinema sins. just a little bit)

·         The first 10 seconds do away with the one core rule of the franchise; as Poseidon for some reason steps out of a river, a fisherman SEES him. The books avoid this by having a thing called “mist” exist that keeps mortals from seeing ancient greek mythology stuff going on. Unless, of course, that particular fisherman was blessed with clear sight and is destined to be the next oracle. Suck it, Rachel.

·         Oh god, Sean Bean is in this movie, and he doesn’t even die. That alone says everything about the quality you need to know.

·         Why the fuck are they meeting in mortal forms on the empire state building? Yes, that’s where Olympus is, but Olympus is metaphysically ABOVE the fucking building, not the deck they’re on, which would be crowded at any and all times of day.

·         Okay. So they meet here to discuss exposition. Zeus knows Poseidon has a son. Zeus is also to blame for Poseidon never contacting said son. I mean, technically it’s a pact the two of you made with your other brother after he spawned Hitler and a world war happened, but, uh, is that even canon to this movie?

·         Okay, Sean Bean establishes the summer solstice as a deadline. Keep that in mind. SUMMER SOLSTICE.

·         Why do we put the plot into the first three seconds of the film? Was Columbus afraid we’d fall asleep after this and wouldn’t be able to catch up?

·         Okay real talk Logan LErman would have been the perfect Percy about 5 years before this movie was made. He grew up a little too baby faced to still be a good fit for battle hardened don’t fuck with me Percy of the follow up series, but still, such a missed opportunity.

·         Okay so Percy regularly hangs out at the bottom of the swimming pool for 7 minutes to think. That’s, ah. Weird. You know. If you do that regularly, people might notice. And Grover, whose job is to keep him safe, and also to technically keep him from realizing he’s not quite human, is encouraging this. Because. Sure. Why not.

·         OKAY. SO. They kept the NAME of the school, but not the boarding school aspect. They turned Mrs. Dodds into an English teacher so she could make a joke about the word fury in Othello. And they choose to establish the dyslexia and ADHD thing during dialogue while not actually showing any ADHD symptoms. I can’t quite talk about how well they do with the dyslexia, but from what we see, it’s the letters just fogging over and randomly turning into Greek letters which is not how it is described in the books at all. Seems more like Percy needs glasses here.

·         Oh my fucking god. Gabe comes home, sits down in the uncomfortable kitchen chair, demands beer and smacks Sally on the ass, and both Percy and Sally treat him like a rude house guest maybe, not like the abusive asshole he’s actually supposed to be. Percy even stands up to him and thinks it’s necessary to explain that this is his mother and he will not have her sexualized in this kitchen. Gah.

·         How can this house both be Gabe’s while at the same time, he never held down a job?

·         Also Percy comes into the pretty house at the ground floor and calls for his mother who is like on the third floor. Is that entire house theirs? If so, damn, Gabe is a rich unemployed white trash person.

·         Oh and now Poseidon just randomly wanders around New York to stalk his son amazing

·         Percy wears headphones during the plot related exposition at the MOA

·         At least he’s fidgeting now. That’s progress.

·         OKAY. So Ms. Dodds pulls Percy aside in the middle of the lesson, and Grover and Mr. Brunner can totally leave too to help him. They also cut the action sequence but sure, whatever.

·         Percy gets weirdly ableist when Grover says he’s his protector. Like, in the books Percy’s objection to that was that Grover was constantly being bullied and Percy had to stand up for him.

·         In fact, Percy and Grover could possibly pass for cool kids here; neither of them look like losers. Percy is pretty and has amazing abs. That’s… Completely contrary to how book!Percy feels. Like, he gets better once he reaches the age where boys stop looking like cave trolls, but, uh, that takes a while.

·         Then they go home to Sally, Grover downs Gabe, and they run off, and Gabe’s poker buddies just let them be. What.

·         They start conversation about the father while the sun is setting in New York City, and only commence it in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere

·         The minotaur who just toppled their car is suddenly all the way up the hill. Wow.

·         Sexist edit: In the books, Percy’s mom explains to him how to fight the minotaur. Here, he just kinda figures it out himself.

·         Okay. Two dumb things: With the mom evaporated just before the camp gates, why do they fight the minotaur at all? In the books, Percy is half a mile away from the camp when the showdown happens and he fights to save himself and his mom. Here, he just charges out there to avenge his mom even though the magical gate is right there.

·         Second: instead of going for his sword, the actual weapon, Percy goes for the horn stuck in the tree, almost getting skewered himself. Now, the narrative for some reason rewards him for this, but this is just dumb. And there was also no indication that the horn was going to work better than the sword, which is also right there and not stuck in a tree.

·         The fury roughed him up more than the minotaur did, and yet this is the part where he falls unconscious

·         Grover is BUFF

·         He’s supposed to be a scrawny loser kid with anxiety issues

·         Also nursing Percy is Annabeth’s part. This is important. Ish.

·         Yeah, okay, Grover giving Percy the tour is… Unfortunate. In the books, there were actual adults giving him these talks, and also Annabeth, and you get the feeling Satyrs are veeeeery low on the pecking order. Also, Mr Brunner was there to actually take him seriously

·         Also, the camp just looks wrong. Way wrong.

·         UGH

·         UUUUUGH

·         OKAY

·         We’re introduced to BRUNETTE Annabeth while a bunch of people do badly choreographed battle around her. This is wrong. This is so wrong.

·         Annabeth is good in a fight, yeah. But her main asset is her brain. And the first glimpses we get of her is taking care of Percy, both nursing him and giving him the tour, because she piecing together how he fits into a prophecy that concerns her and is her ticket out of there.

·         Also they kind of combine her role in this movie with that of Clarisse, who is a daughter of Ares and a bully like the ones Percy never had to face here. I have no idea why they did that, and it’s even more ridiculous since Clarisse appears in the sequel.

·         Why did they have to put more than one centaur in here, they’re supposed to be party animals roaming the countryside, EXCEPT for Mr. Brunner who is Chiron fuck everything

·         Okay. They also conflated the daughters of Aphrodite with the naiads that are around, and both groups would NEVER give Grover the time of day. Buuut I guess considering where this leads, we do have to play up his sex appeal, huh?

·         OKAY. The cabins in the books are actual fancy and pretty houses, befitting Greek gods. Being claimed by a god is also a special thing, and the fact that it is special contributes greatly to the 5 book story arc. Here, they just shove Percy into a weird wooden structure full of sailing paraphernalia specifically built for him.

·         Okay so apparently the only danger kids of the big 3 pose is making the other big 3 jealous for some reason, not because they literally kicked off the world wars

·         And apparently, Gabe’s smell isn’t supposed to keep monsters away, but the other gods?!

·         Well I mean everyone seems to have known about Percy, sooo

·         Also Percy has no way to integrate into camp or anything , has no connection to any of these people, anything

·         Luke is missing a scar, and is also completely creepy from the get go

·         Why do we keep getting meaningful close ups of Annabeth, what is she supposed to mean to anyone at this point

·         Why was she fighting with a knife minutes ago and is nnow using a bow and arrow, it’s Athena not Artemis

·         This game of cpture the flag is stupid

·         And also undercuts Annabeth’s actual point

·         In the books this involved like tactics and shit

·         But like, I commend the script for making Percy lampshade how ridiculous this all is

·         It’s just that capture the flag had a narrative purpose, too, which is null and voide when he was already claimed

·         Also Percy is such an idiot for just going for the flag like that

·         Annabeth has boob plate

·         "My mother is goddess of wisdom and battle strategy. You know what that means?" - IT MEANS YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER THAN TO TAKE OFF YOUR HELMET WHILE FACING AN ENEMY WITH A SWORD.

·         AND ALSO YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER THAN TO MONOLOGUE AT AN OPPONENT

·         WHAT IS HER BEEF WITH PERCY? Yes, he rudely stared at you for a while, but why do you need to cut him up like that?!

·         She just beats him down and nobody does a thing they all just stand around staring what the fuck

·         And then everyone cheers when she’s done beating down the completely untrained new kid?! WHAT THE FUCK

·         ArE YOU ALL BRAAVOSI WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON

·         THERE ARE BLUE FORCES RIGHT BEHIND YOUR FLAG WHY ARE THEY NOT DOING ANYTHING

·         Percy, who already knows he’s a son of Poseidon needs to be told by divine intervention to go to the water, the only place he actually liked before

·         Brief contact with water then turns him into superman and has him actually sort of beat Annabeth

·         Though not as cruelly as she beat him

·         And then everyone just lets him walk to the flag. Why the fuck.

·         You know who actually figured out how the water powers worked? Annabeth!

·         You know who actually made a battle plan to get the flag for the blue team? ANNABETH!

·         Gaaaaaaaaaaaaah

·         Percy gets party invitations. The fuck.

·         Annabeth chases them away and then flirts with him for some reason. Percy is also completely turned on by a public beat down.

·         “I definitely have strong feelings for you” whaaaat the fuck. Whaaaaaaat the fuck. This is soooo weird.

·         WHERE IS MY FIVE BOOK AWKWARD PUBERTY SLOW BURN

·         Oh hello flame demon. How nice of you to just show up like that and deliver the plot to us

·         Okay. So. Hades wants the bolt, but outright states that he doesn’t have it. So far, the plans are to talk to one of two enraged gods and convince them he didn’t take the bolt. That’s…Not much of a plan at all unless someone here knows how to cast a zone of truth spell or something

·         Hades now comes along and offers his mom in exchange for the bolt, instead of being framed for everything like in the books, and the camp counsellors just… leave Percy alone after that?

·         Like, not only Grover, but the random chick who brutally tore into him in front of a crowd figured out he was going to bail without ever receiving a tiny bit of training, guys. This is stupid.

·         Annabeth wants a quest. Sweetheart, this is not a quest. There is a protocol to these things, as you would know. A god has to assign it, there has to be a clear objective, and at least according to camp regulations, a prophecy, and the entire thing has to be official. But sure. Tag along with the random unprepared kid who’s going to get his mom.

·         OH THAT’S JUST GREAT YEAH Annabeth would not know how to get to the underworld, she has to go ask A MAN for info SOMEONE SHOOT ME

·         Luke is in a completely empty cabin with a gaming console and flat screens and pokes fun at the ren faire feel

·         Luke, Annabeth has daddy issues completely independent from her godly parent but okay fine

·         YEAH LUKE LECTURE US ON GREEK MYTHOLOGY

·         NO NOT LIKE THAT

·         Okay so my personal interpretation of Persephone is more that of an ancient times beauty and the beast kind of deal, so that she’s not entirely unhappy

·         Also like, Greek mythology has a maaaaaajor Madonna/whore complex. Maaaaajor. And while she’s not one of the chastity goddesses, Persephone kiiiinda doesn’t fall in the dedicated adulteress part of that spectrum

·         But foreshadowing. I get it.

·         Convenient map is convenient

·         Super literal soundtrack

·         Also they still haven’t told us where the underworld is or how to get in there, just that it’s easy

·         “Let’s split up, check everything” Greeaaat plan, Percy. And then just go looking around without actually looking thoroughly

·         Now Annabeth is dragged along screaming and Grover actually knows how is greatuncle died and is the one to figure out what’s going on. Great.

·         Like, in the books, he still finds his uncle Ferdinand, but no one ever knew what happened to him because he got lost during a search at a place where no one really returns from

·         Annabeth is the first one to figure out that the nice woman giving them burgers and asking them to pose for pictures is not their friend and saves both Grover and Percy, and Percy figures out who she is himself immediately after, before the veil comes off and the snakes start hissing

·         Oh, Uma Thurman, you are too good for this

·         I need to watch Kill Bill after this just to calm down

·         It’s weirdly cathartic to fight your own murderous instincts

·         CALL ATTENTION TO ANNABETH’S HAIR JUST TO RUB IT IN WHY DON’T YOU

·         Annabeth knows this story dammit

·         Also villain monologue

·         I dunno, Uma, you’re still pretty hot like that

·         At least Percy figures out the reflection thing

·         Ugh Annabeth has to get rescued

·         How can you sense him if you were surprised by his presence before?

·         Percy says he can look at her reflection and then throws away the phone he’s using to look at her when he actually sees her

·         Where the fuck did they get the car

·         How did Annabeth learn to drive at camp

·         She can sense him, sees him coming, and he still gets to cut off her head from behind

·         And then she conveniently carried around the pearl with her

·         DID THIS MOVIE JUST IMPLY PERSEPHONE GOT FREAKY WITH MEDUSA?!

·         How do they get a motel room, do they actually have credit cards or something? What the fuck.

·         Yeah okay I don’t feel creepy at all looking at Logan Lerman’s naked torso some more

·         So I guess Percy’s ocean powers in this movie work like waterbending and can also heal other people

·         How he figured that out? No idea. Why he doesn’t start carrying around water everywhere he goes for just this purpose?

·         And aaaalso I think the more significant story for the animosity between Athena and Poseidon would be how he fucked Medusa in her temple, but sure. The story about Athens.

·         Book!Annabeth, when prompted, brings up both, by the way.

·         Why is it forbidden for all gods to interact with their kids?

·         DID SHE SAY SALLY UGLIANO?! SALLY JACKSON NEVER TOOK HIS NAME AND THAT IS FUCKING IMPORTANT

·         Why is there laundry service in the middle of the night?

·         And how did they get to check out after that?

·         Yeah okay this Parthenon business is completely not in the books

·         “I wonder if she really looks like that” Okay okay cutting out the field trip is fucking stupid

·         No one checks the bathrooms before closing up the place?

·         And no on turns off the lights in the bathrooms?

·         Cleaning staff ruining the day yet again

·         Every time Annabeth shoots anything in this movie I die a little on the inside

·         Also hey, there are more black people in this movie than Grover and Persephone, and they all work in maintenance

·         Ugh, son of Poseidon taking to the air

·         Aaaand the maintenance squad has been possessed

·         Annabeth gets to point out the obvious, Percy is on fire like it’s no big deal, and Hail Hydra isn’t even a thing yet. At least not in the main stream.

·         Flying shoes are now fully attuned and working for him

·         Annabeth shoots shit again

·         At one point, it is a plot point that children not of Apollo aren’t that good at archery

·         And Annabeth in the books fights with a knife, an invisibility cap, and her wits, and never shoots shit

·         Medusa petrifies the hydra through fire

·         Okay then

·         Where do they get their money for food from

·         That’s a major obstacle in the books

·         The credit cards they totally have?

·         And the gas money for that car

·         Okay so the underworld is actually visually striking and could have had potential

·         Hades is actually vengeful and out to kill the other gods

·         Persephone mentions her allotted time away from him, but is still there before the solstice.

·         She double crosses Hades because she hates him and shit, it’s weird

·         And then she hits on what for all intents and purposes is an underaged boy

·         The staredown is sooo unsatisfying and thematically rrelevant

·         Luke just conveniently happened to flutter around the empire state building close to midnight because….?

·         Does this camp have no security?

·         The fight is badly, badly choreographed

·         Luke also just has delusions of grandeur and wants to ascend to gdhood or something

·         “You’Re no hero” – actually, per definition, he is.

·         Also, this fucking lightning bolt is supposed to be more powerful than nuclear bombs, STOP USING IT IDIOTS

·         And then Luke just kinda chills on top of the building, waiting for Percy to come and angage him in aerial combat like a video game boss

·         Okay if you’re using the lightning bolt, fucking use it

·         HOW CAN PERCY’S SWORD REFLECT IT DAMMIT

·         No, really, if a celestial bronze sword can do that, what’ so great about it in the first place

·         They use this thing like a flashier version of a tazer

·         Also, they’re right underneath Olympus, you’d think the gods might actually intervene this close to their home turf

·         Luke then uses Percy’s lack of proficiency at aerial combat to suggest he might be no son of Posedong after all… Which I agre with, actually, because Zesu would blast any sons of Poseidon out of the air immediately

·         He also effectively reminds Percy of his waterbending powers, so he can make water tanks explode for dramatic final battle poses

·         The bolt somehow doesn’t electrocute Luke when caught in a tidal wave

·         Water somehow knocks Luke’s shoes off

·         Mortals are allowed to go to Olympus

·         Ah wait, just to ride the elevator up there

·         Athena has a random British accent

·         And the gods are arguing, completely oblivious to what’s going on, but also totally prepared for imminent war

·         With each other in a council chamber

·         Riiight

·         Also the movie gave absolutely no reason for Luke to be angry

·         Athena and Poseidon are conveniently already standing

·         Zeus just like that agrees to bring Grover from the underworld WHICH IS NOT EVEN HIS DOMAIN

·         Poseidon gets to talk to Percy and doesn’t even shrink down to do it. They never say why the gods aren’t allowed to talk to their children

·         …Gods become human when they spend too much time with mortals? AND THAT’S WHY THEY’RE NOT ALLOWED TO VISIT THEIR CHILDREN?! WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT?!?!!?!?!

·         Zeus and Poseidon are RIVALS. Godhood can be BESTOWED. The rational thing to do would have been to let him become human and appoint a new god of the sea loyal to Zeus

·         You’d think some tactical minded deity who doesn’t like Poseidon very much would have thought of that

·         Sally can just kick out Gabe, just like that

·         Chiron is totally into students disobeying. Let word of that get around, and everyone will run away and be eaten by monsters, defeating the entire purpose of the camp

·         Gd dammit you kids have no chemistry and with the intense eyes and same hair color look more like siblings

·         Making this almost kiss really uncomfortable.

·         Also, how is Percy suddenly able to stand up against her clunky pirouette fighting without having stepped into water first?

·         Ugh

[crossedbeams]

ROSE REVIEWS… THE X-FILES - S1.E8:  ICE

<< 1.6 The Ghost in the Machine ————————— 1.9 Space >>

What a week it has been! What a month in fact (because that’s how long ago I started this recap). Ice is one of my favourite early episodes which explains why this is longer than the combined beards of ZZ Top. Someone teach me self control? Please?

Go under the cut at your own peril, here there be worms.

The Plot

Some dudes playing with ice have gone radio silent and left a creepy message, Mulder and Scully get sent up to investigate with a ragtag team of socially inept scientists and then cut off by bad weather with some seriously suspect wormlike organisms, and more sexual tension than you can shake an oversized drillbit at.

My Stream of Semi-Consciousness

YAY! ICE!

I’m glad they start out with the dog just nommin on something spilled instead of one of the dead people. It makes it easier to root for him later which is good coz it’s a cute dog. Apparently it’s also Blue’s dad!

Then there’s what appears to be a disembodied limb in a box. Why I have no idea. but I am soon distracted by the entry of this dude who appears to have been scorched, stripped and then attacked in an incredibly symmetrical fashion by a pair of clawed ketchup bottles.

Like c'mon prop monkeys! Blood is NOT that colour and when did you last see someone with matching pectoral wounds (given it’s not sex related… probably). Also now I’ve been looking at it for too long and I feel like he has one nipple that is significantly bigger than the other and I’m having trouble moving past it.

And WHY is he shirtless. At what point in the whole fighting to the death in the ARCTIC was he like… wait mate… I need to take off this shirt off because #aesthetic.

Though to be fair I probably would.

Aaaaanyway

His radio makes more noises than the tardis.

We’re not who we are. Okay. We get it. But on a serious note do they ever actually discuss why he says this. Because I feel like grammatically it’s questionable and the space worms seem more into murdering each other than making dramatic speeches.

His assailant looks very heeeeere’s jack" and is wearing a shirt. I’m rooting  for him until they get into the worst duel ever. Don’t put your guns so close. This whole bit tbh. The worms seem to have very complicated motivations and choreography, Maybe they’re abstract prehistoric space worms. Am I making sense. I don’t think I’m making sense.

It’s okay though I can compose myself during the CREDITS.

This video from the dead science dudes is the dorkiest thing I have ever seen. There are quilted body warmers, pasted on smiles and overenthusiastic high fives. You can see why these guys are extras and not the series stars. But at least they were all having fun before they brutally killed one another.

Mulder and Scully are watching this video in a room with both a blackboard and a window. Where are they? Is the basement being cleaned? Is this Scully’s office? If so why does she have so many damn tables!

Why do people insist on digging into old ice/trenches/under the sea. It always ends badly. EVERY DAMN TIME. Cthulu is down there people. Or godzilla or some shit. Just leave it alone and make nachos. Much better.

Not to be pedantic (okay who am I kidding) but pretty sure the background here doesn’t match what was behind him in the scene.

It’s only 1993 goddamn and Gillian Anderson is already learning how to ruin us all with her exquisite face. We were all screwed from the first time someone pointed a camera at her. All her tiny facial nuances remind me of the queens of old Hollywood and the things they could do with a quirk of the lip.

Then Mulder squats down and grins at her and though he’s basically implying they’re being sent as sacrificial lambs he doesn’t seem too sad about the concept of being trapped in an igloo full of corpses with his partner. He goes from amused to gleeful when he tells his teeny partner to bring her mittens and I’m thinking Scully seems excessively perturbed at this stage… is she having a moment of forboding? Or does she just really hate Alaska? I mean this is pre Palin so there’s no good reason to be quite so down on it…

And heeeeere’s Denny

Not content with really loving rocks (geologist) and being called Denny he also likes to do this in public places.

Denny is not getting any.

I do miss cassettes though.

Enter small winterwear troll AKA Dana Scully in a jacket so big she may be wider than she is tall. Mulder in contrast appears to be wearing jammies, jeans and a jacket, which are - incidentally - my three style essentials. Well those three and a resting bitch face.

Mulder makes awkward chat about San Diego while Scully pulls a face like she didn’t used to live there and then the other scientists arrive and they engage in a charade worth of the Chuckle Brothers with IDs, “It’s me! It’s You!” Mulder even checks Scully in case, one assumes, somebody else was hiding in her coat and has leaped out to replace her since he introduced her to Denny less than 30 seconds ago. Possibly he just uses it as an opportunity to sniff her. He’s only human and I would… I also feel like at this point  the writers were overly concerned with linking back to “we’re not who we are” from earlier. Every single combination of the words “we”, “who”  and “are” is well and truly thrust in. And we’re only at 7.12.

Also hello Felicity Huffman.

“Two federal agents, a geologist, a medical doctor and a toxicologist” sounds like the beginning of the worst walked into a bar joke ever. It would have some incredibly scientific punchline probably involving the word ampule. I’d try and write it but… we I can’t be bothered!

Everyone is so weird and cagey. The script must have been full of side-eye instructions. A word to the wise - if you’re ever asked to go on a business trip where people are behaving like this, don’t go. It’s the start of a horror film and you will die.

Especially if someone else there is called Bear.

Bear could be Steven Tyler’s brother. Or maybe they just have the same surgeon. His car is the only car in the universe dirtier than mine.

And after Scully standing weirdly close to Huffman (I forget her character name) for way too long (like seriously? SO strange), Mulder trying to reassert his Scully monopoly with some unnecessary touching (DRINK!) we see some stock footage which can only mean we’re up, up and away.

Icy Point and the power’s off. Of course. Do they ever investigate why the second they arrive anywhere the lights stop working? That’s a damn X-File.

For guys who blew their on brains out these dudes are artfully arranged. And pretty sure one of them is tensing. You’re dead man. Nobody cares about your abs anymore.

Scully says ‘flashing’.  She means the camera. Epileptics on set can thank her but I can’t help being disappointed. Imagine if she meant her boobs…

Mulder comforts Felicity Huffman with his intimate knowledge of arctic research generator noises. Who knew Oxford university offered so many eclectic courses. Unfortunately they didn’t offer one in dog combat because Mulder goes down. Pretty sure Huffman falls over too but only out of shock or being knocked off balance by her coat.

Poor Bear is bleeding ketchup so we know he’s fucked. It’s fine though, Scully is a medical doctor and she finds some super gross disease beans in the doggo’s armpit which means she will also save the day. Standard.

Worm under skin, WORM UNDER SKIN! Ths grosses me out every time so drink every time we see unnecessary subdermal wriggling. *drinks*

Scully has completed five autopsies before anyone else has done more than get their coat off and get infected with a space worm, but ruins the effect by brandishing a used and  uncovered needle with gusto whilst doing her jargon spiel. She may just be trying work out how to rescue her hair from it’s current anti-gravity state, her fringe is levitating at a sweet 120 degrees from her forehead which has got to be upsetting when you’re as put together as Scully is. Regardless,  

Mulder seems unperturbed but may just be distracted by Bear wigging out about his own personal armpit beans.

There are some high quality knitwear/ winter neutrals going on in this episode. Maybe they were sponsored by fruits of the loom or some shit.

Mulder and Denny get all excited about satellite pics, apparently Mulder’s interpreting skills around some sort of bizarre geological scanning are rusty. TRY NON-EXISTENT MULDER. YOU DON’T KNOW SCHIST ABOUT GEOLOGY! Sorry. For the pun and the yelling. But seriously. If I made a list of all the things Mulder and Scully know that they shouldn’t…

DINOSPERM! Dinosperm. Does whatever a dinosperm does.

The second Mr Bodywarmer (I can never remember anyone’s names so tis is what I’m calling him) disses Scully’s autopsy skills you know that Mulder’s gonna disagree with him. Contagion be damned, suggesting Sculy has missed something is a no no - even in Season 1 - and especially when she’s pouting like this.

Oh no! Mulder says they have to stay (my favourite trope), Scully pulls the doctor card to seal the deal and now there is no way they’re not having arctic sex right? Everyone gets some… well except Denny who kills the mood by opening up way too easily about his bowel movements. Poor Denny. High school can’t have been easy for you.

But it’s fine because Bear flips his shit, or more specifically flips out about a shit, and everyone has other things to worry about. After some arctic democracy which really draws a solid line between Mulder/Scully and Huffman/MrBodywarmer (in case you’d missed all the other clues) and emphasises the disposability of poor Denny, they pull a gun and shit gets real.

Down goes Mulder!

Down goes Scully!

Turns out big man Bear is no match for Macho Moose and Flying Squirrel. The others prove once again to be utterly useless, standing about and watching. Honestly, given how much Mulds and Sculls know about other science they should absolutely not know, the the rest of the cast seem kinda superfluous other than as human coathangers for knitted beige monstrosities.

WORM UNDER FLESH, DRINK.

Impromptu surgery always makes me squeamish so lets not talk about this. Suffice to say its gory and ends poorly for Bear. RIP buddy, you were kinda a douche and your hat was stupid but nobody likes a neck worm.

Just keep drinking till it’s over.

The woman on the radio is semi-peppy given she’s just told them they’re stuck. Maybe she’s drinking whatever Sarah Palin is on.

Sculy’s OCD hand washing is adorable and I want to pet her. And the others are all still just standing there though now with a corpse centrepiece. React people! Do something!

Top quality CGI right here! Wormeo is looking fine and definitely three dimensional.

The worm theory is all very plausible, except that the last bit makes no sense. The worm doesn’t want to kill it’s host, just the hosts with its pals in… so what is the worm’s end game? Last worm standing? Any thoughts?

I am all about the aesthetic of this next scene The half light the corrugated metal with shadows and the height difference all in silhouette. It’s even added to by Mulder’s signature monotone rant. But the problem is, I’m so MSR thirsty that when this happens…

I just want them to throw down and get it on on the floor. KISS! NOW! Corpses be damned. See, This is what this show has done to me. I used to have standards.

Denny is not down with all the tension so he retreats to baseball while Huffman and Bodywarmer, who bicker like Mulder and Scully but lack ANY sort of chemistry (this is the show we might have gotten if the Gillian/David alchemy  hadn’t happened) conspire like a pair of whiner babies. Bodywarmer is as paranoid as Muder, but he’s also an assclown.

Then Mulder and Scully take their coats off in a dramatic way and once again my mind is in the gutter. Which is actually appropriate as it’s naked spot check time and things are about to get a little homoerotic. Pretty sure Mulder lost some sort of bet when Scully was the one to suggest a naked group activity. Also pretty sure he was disappointed that it was just another spot check and that he wasn’t invited.

Leaving this here for science.

There are multiple documentations of the exceptionally sapphic encounter between Scully and Huffman, whoever decided to light them in red while the dudes got to strip off in a normally lit room was certainly only aided by the fact that Scully's jabby doctor hands from later series have not yet developed. 

My main takeaway other than this being basically the only scene in which Huffman doesn't irritate me (and I think I quite liked her in DH though I can't remember a damn thing that happened on that show), is that Gillian Anderson has more chemistry in a fraction of her lower lip than most people have in their whole body. I mean seriously: authority, vulnerability, comfort and a little sex all in one move. This little thing? 

She would probably have chemistry with a rock if she needed to. How is it so effective? How does one scene that lasts less than a minute have more relationship in it than all of Huffman and Bodywarmer's interactions combined? How is the entire world not worshipping at her tiny feet?

And the award for least comforting bedtime sendoff goes to Mulder, for both bringing up bugs biting (as if they're not already freaking over dinosperms getting all up in their spines) and then shooting down Scully's attempt to normalise things. "The spots on the dog went away". Really? She's lingering outside her room, and instead of being nice, or comforting, or taking her mind off things with some vigorous shagging you give her puppy eyes  and a shortcut to nightmare town?

Go to bed and think about what you've done Mulder. Leave Scully alone with your comforting words, ominous lighting and a dead man's half naked lady posters. 

Cue montage of nobody coping in different ways with Mark Snow blinky-blonkiness to up the tension.

As a an unapologetic Scully fangirl I do sometimes forget that at this stage, Duchovny was very much the star and focus. Scenes like this remind me, where we watch him get dressed (I am fine with lots of shirtless Mulder), wander about, do reacting, hang out a little with this cabinet that definitely looks like it has a face and could just have eaten Denny on it's own...

Anyway my point was that as much as Gillybean is growing as an actor and making herself felt in the episodes, studio intentions be damned, this is all DD, prowling about with drama and he does it well. Also you can see his nipples through his shirt. Clearly my priorities are straight. Well... mostly.

That said. Mulder is an idiot. When a cabinet is bleeding, what sensible person opens it while squatting in front of the spot where clearly a corpse is going to fall out. He didn't learn that brand of idiocy at the VCU.

Speaking of Scully asserting herself, Bodywarmer (I think his name is Hodge?) and Mulder get in to a sweaty macho shout off and teeny Sculls gets in the midde. Huffman just kinda floats about.

And we have a series first! Mulder and Scully hold each other at gunpoint! Loud noises! Angst! Betrayal! Delivery of the episodes motto which STILL makes no sense."You may not be who you are?"" Well no he is him, he just might have a worm in his brain But points for consistency. Shame it doesn't apply to the series overall plot arc!

Anyway, in the end it's fine because Mulder relents when it becomes exceptionally clear that for all that she's smol and mostly calm, Scully will shoot his ass, though she'll feel a bit bad about it. At this realisation Mulder goes full puppy and lets his owner put him in a pen. But he doesn't get shot. Yet. Little he knows...

So Mulder gets shut away. It's totes emosh. Like Celine Dion backing track emosh. Mark Snow step aside because this bish has spare time and windows moviemaker...

Moving on...

Pretty sure that fluffy!Scully striding in a plaid shirt with a gun is my spirit animal.

It's super convenient that both members of team non-MSR are sleeping in ridiculously uncomfortable positions, despite the recent excitement, so Scully can be forced to surrender her weapon. But hey - we only have 10 mins left and the plot must go on.

Bodywarmer decides the time has come for him to be alpha male but unfortunately, everyone still hates him, Scully doesn't want in on his shitty duet, especially when it's clear that he'd toss his partner in a second. Huffman finally grows enough balls to suggest Scully might have a point about not turning on each other and looking for treatment but his ego is out of control.

I really wish Bodywarmer had gotten eaten instead of Denny, Denny and Huffman could have been useless fuzzballs together and the only thing I ship Bodywarmer with is my booted foot making hard contact with his testicles after his misogynistic asshole moves in the lab. I'm starting to understand why Huffman has no personality. Scully starts to realise she got preeeety lucky that Mulder's just an alien obsessed puppy and not an utter fuckboy, before snapping back in to science mode for wormageddon.

I'm gonna take a moment here to shout out Lila (@startwreck for the following graphic). Theses two animated worms even have more tension than Bodywarmer and Huffman. So when we did the group rewatch we may have turned it into a fix that the worms were in love...

Me and the space worms have one thing in common. We do not like company.

WORM IN DOGGY EAR! DRINK!

Not sure how a stethoscope would prove the worms inside the dog were dead but I'm not a medical doctor. Either way, Mr Woofty is okay and lets be honest, aside from Mulder and Scully he's the only one I care about at this stage.

Tfw bae may have a brain worm but you wanna be sure and one of your companions is an asshole and the other one is actually the neck worm's host.

Poor Mulder isn't even allowed to accustom his poor little molerat eyes to the light before having to defend himself. Which got me thinking... the light switch is inside the room. We saw him turn it on earlier. So he's sitting in the dark of his own choice, just to make himself more tragic. Precious baby.

This face could have been avoided.

This scene though, this could not, There is now a section in the FBI handbook called, "Protocol for the investigation of possible parasitic space worms", this inspection is the example of how not to do it. Ably assisted by D'Angelo and my amazing video skills once again I give you - "this would be sexual harassment if they weren't both so into it - so don't try this in the workplace kids"

Scully comes out with Mulder in tow like the kid who came home from school with a friend who wasn't invited. "Mom I know you said no but look at him". After a quick round of, my partner is less infected than your partner, they get ambushed, Scully makes the squeakiest squeak of a no that is still audible to the human ear and finds herself in the sex cupboard.

Commence a struggle scene worthy of You've Been Framed, drink for Huffman's neck worms and also for this face.

In her struggle to escape a worming, Huffman pauses long enough to through some vials off a freezer shelf, that she has to open. Before she goes for the gun. Logical. And then they all have sex on the floor. I mean seriously. 

But it's all good coz she gets to gnaw on Mulder's pec while the worms do battle royale in her pituitary gland and everyone makes it. Well except Bear and Denny. Huzzah! Scully gives Huffman (whose name I have just discovered is Silver or Da Silva which I'm sure I knew when I started this but honestly that was weeks ago so...) a celebratory belly rub. 

I'd take it.

They finally escape, and Mulder of course wants another round trip to hell but hell has been torched. Scully does a good job of looking sympathetic in front of Bodywarmer, but as soon as they're alone she tells Mulder how she really feels. To paraphrase, no, she doesn't want to play with ice worms of death any more and yes she would rather be in Aruba. But she does wait for him. Maybe so they can finish what they started in the sex cupboard in the SUV. 

I hope,

And so it ends..

Quick Score (Full Deets in the top pic)

Story: Original, bold and pacy - 9/10

Mulder: Broody, ballsy, sexy - 8/10

Scully: Smart, sceptic foil to the crazy - 8/10

UST: The first suspense episode, creepy original goodness 5/5

Other Cast: Solid ensemble of misfits delivers - 8/10

Bonus Points: Hot damn sexy moments, extra gazing, partner doubting, memorable, my fave 5/5

TOTAL - 42/50 - Grade A and new topspot sitter!

Join us next time for more ridiculously overthought brain farts

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[chrismaverickdotcom]

Mavademics Recap: My Crazy Dumb Month of Conferences and Podcasts

I kind of wonder if anyone notices when I don’t update my blog. Most of my readers see it through the Facebook feed version, but I’ve been so busy that I haven’t even had a chance to go see a movie to review in the last couple weeks. If you follow me on twitter (@chrismaverick) or see the Facebook syncs from there, you likely know why. For some reason I got it in my head that it would be a good idea to do three academic conferences in a row. Like literally three weekends in a row. I’m glad I did it. I had a good time doing all three of them. But this was not a good idea… so very very not… I’m getting too old for this shit!!! But I wanted to have a recap of it on my blog as well, maybe for other people, but also just so I have a record for myself (if only to remind myself never to do it again!) So I figured I’d write this up really quickly now that I’m done.

From the top…

The first conference was the Pop Culture Association/American Culture Association(PCA/ACA) national conference, where I presented in the Comics and Comic Studies area. I go to this one pretty much every year, because it is more or less everything that is perfect about academia for me… an opportunity to apply complex literary theory to funny books. This one was in Indianapolis, so I drove there. My talk this year was titled “In Defense of a Thundering Dumbass: Marvel’s Self-Conscious Critique of White Masculinity in Iron Fist and The Defenders” and was about what you can probably guess it was about. Basically, I looked at the the Netflix version of Iron Fist, in comparison to the 1970s original comic version and used Edward Said’s Orientalism theories in conjunction with some Judith Butler gender performativity concepts to argue that the character of Iron Fist can only exist, in any medium — film or comics — as an exploration of the place of whiteness and masculinity in an transforming multicultural landscape and a response to white male anxieties of the specific era the story is taking place in. See… I told you… complex literary theory applied to funny books. Anyway, the short of it was that the TV show Iron Fist may not be the greatest thing ever, but it doesn’t really “suck” so much as it is an exploration of whiteness and masculinity in the “woke” era… and that’s sort of important but not for everyone. Along the way, I also made jokes about Tarzan, Manimal, and Kung-Fu Panda… I swear it all made sense at the time.

At the same conference… in fact, just a couple hours after I gave the Iron Fist talk, I was delighted to win the “Lent Award for Excellence in Graduate Comics Studies” for my paper that I did at the same conference last year, “Oracle of the Invisible: Sexual Assault and Rape in The Killing Joke” which was a super depressing deconstruction of how rape and sexual violence work in that book to build both Joker and Batman’s relationship in a hypermasculine economy based on violence and sex where Barbara (and Jim Gordon) effectively serve as necessary, but passive currency. That one was super technical and… well, obviously dark. So dark that I kind of didn’t think anyone actually liked it, so I was really surprised to win the award for it. But happy… for a brief shining moment it was almost like this whole pop culture academic criticism thing isn’t a complete and utter waste of time. 😁 And hey, I apparently get a trophy or plaque or something mailed to me, which is awesome. Because, after all, with my win of the Lent, I am now one step closer to completing my run at the fabled LEGOT, a feat that I don’t think anyone else has ever accomplished and yet, I’m on my way. I just need a Tony, Oscar, Grammy and Emmy and I’m done. Yeah, yeah, yeah… Fuck you! I’m closer than Philip Michael Thomas!

The next weekend I flew out to the Southern Sociological Society(SSS)‘s annual conference. This was a first for me. The conference was held in New Orleans this year, with a sub-theme of “Racial Theory, Analysis, and Politics in Trump America.” The same weekend, New Orleans also happened to be hosting Wrestlemania. So it seemed obvious to a few of us in the Professional Wrestling Studies Association (yes, that’s actually a thing, dammit!) that there should be a panel or two devoted to an analysis of Trump’s connection to the wrestling world and how it relates to the current sociopolitical landscape. Because, of course we did. I ended up giving a paper I called “Heel to the Chief: Donald Trump and the New World Order of Politics” which was a look at the rhetoric and semiotics of Trump speeches in comparison to professional wrestling promos and an analysis of how and why this was able to use hypermasculine performance to appeal to the working class American voter… by comparing him to other great wrestling promo givers: Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, The Undertaker, The Ultimate Warrior and Abraham Lincoln (yes, he was a wrestler… LOOK IT UP!). This seemed to go over pretty well, and after it was over I got interviewed by a New Orleans paper about my talk, research and my past as a professional wrestler. This does not get me any closer to my LEGOT. But I’m still closer than Philip Michael Thomas… and I’m pretty sure I’ve now been interviewed more recently.

Finally, this last weekend, I went the Northeast Modern Language Association(NeMLA… and yes I know how unfortunate an acronym that is)’s annual conference, which at the very least was here in Pittsburgh, so I didn’t have to travel. There I presented a paper that I called “Captain Falcon vs. Captain Hydra: Marvel’s Struggles to Address Multiculturalism and Identity Politics in Trump’s America.” This was about what I call “identity commodification” or the packaging of cultural identity, be it race, gender, sexuality, religion, politics or other aspects into a product that can be marketed in a world that privileges identity over character or narrative. That is, in the current identity politic driven, SJW wokeness vs alt-right conservatism, acronymerific (LGBTQIA+POCMRAKKK — and I swear to HOVA there’s got to be at least one person in this world who that accurately describes), Trumpian world, identity has become paramount over anything else, even in our funny books. This is maybe unsurprising; superheroes are sort of emblematic of ideology. That’s sort of the point. And since corporations are profit driven, even if the identity focused audience is ideology focused, capitalism essentially demands that there be a way to commodify that in order to monetize a product. So yay! We’re all part of the machine. Sadly, I did not win an award or get interviewed or anything after NeMLA… probably for the best… it’ll keep me from getting a big(ger) head. And Philip Michael Thomas didn’t even get to present, so I’m still WAY ahead there.

Running around the country doing these things totally fucked up my sleep schedule and I’ve literally been exhausted to the point that I sometimes forget where I am for the last week or so. And all during this, I also started and recorded the first three episodes of my new podcast, the first two of which are now up and available for listening. It’s called VoxPopcast and basically, it’s a combination of all of these academic thingamajigs I do PLUS the kinds of stuff I do on my blogs and the kinds of conversations one might have in a comic book store or bar. Pop culture academia and bullshitting all mixed together, with a floating roundtable of participants in the discussion from all walks of life (academic and non). So please, if you like the kind of stuff I do, follow the blog (http://voxpopcast.com), subscribe to the twitter (@voxpopcast) or the Facebook group, subscribe to it on on iTunes or Sticher or whatever it is you use, and leave us comments, suggest topics, volunteer to be a guest and write us podcast reviews and whatever it is that 1) gives us something to talk about 2) makes me famous so that I can earn a living and somehow get considered for the other four awards that will complete my LEGOT before that bitch Philip Michael Thomas passes me.

Samantha Jordan, Stephanie Siler, Kash Mira, Cenate Pruitt, Meron Langsner, Joe Darowski, Brandon Link Copp-Millward liked this post

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Mavademics Recap: My Crazy Dumb Month of Conferences and Podcasts was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom