#ben reviews

[bengiyo]

Ben’s Queer Cinema Reviews #1

I often spend a lot of my writing time on BL reactions and reviews. However, I came to BL through queer cinema, and so I want to devote more space on my blog this year to the queer films I also watch along the way. Like the BL Blurbs, I’ll post these probably once a month as a round up of what I’ve watched recently. Today I’ll react to Queer, High Tide, and Paradise of Thorns. Spoilers ahead.

Queer:  A Disturbingly Charming Look at Addiction

When I first learned of this film, I was really excited to see Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey cast as the leads. Both are well-trained and extremely talented actors, and I knew they would give earnest, committed experiences. We got far more than I expected from these two in what evolves into a mesmerizing display of addiction. Yet what lingers with me the most is how singularly I understood the emotional gap between the characters and its commentary on queer existence. 

Craig uses his quintessential charm in what might be his most unlikeable character to date, and I was compelled by how much I couldn’t look away from the mess that was William Lee, an American expat living in 1950s Mexico to sate his desire for drugs and flesh. His pathetic attempts to cajole and entice men to his bed consistently land as weak and a bit sad rather than aggressive or perverse. The consistent layer of polite disdain most characters express for Lee stands out alongside Lee’s clear decision to ignore it. 

Starkey plays the hot twink in a way that comes across as effortless. His character remains completely unknowable throughout the film, and yet the ravenous way he plays Eugene Allerton’s food and sexual habits makes him so alluring. Eugene constantly surprises William and viewers with his willingness to partake in Lee’s escapades, and even care for him when Lee gets sick. Yet, every time he goes cold on Lee it’s completely reasonable and expected. I sympathized with Lee’s desperation to know and understand Eugene, even as I understood that there was no way that Eugene could ever give Lee all the things he needed. 

As we get deeper into the film, we learn that Lee is addicted to narcotics, and he cites it as the primary reason he couldn’t remain in America with his “condition.” He takes Eugene with him on a mission to meet someone who can give him access to ayahuasca, and the two go on a psychedelic journey that unlocks a deeper connection within them than I think either was ready to experience. The two separate in a way that leaves Lee forever incomplete in a way that I think properly honors the unfinished source material from a controversial writer. Still, I found myself attuned to Lee’s desperate loneliness and self destructive tendencies, as well as the affection and loyalty his friend Joe (Jason Schwartzman) showed him. 

Final Verdict: 8.5, Recommended With Reservations. This is a beautiful, if difficult, film in quite a few ways, what with its surprisingly lurid depictions of sex, frank presentation of drug use, and gross behaviors Lee exhibits. However, for the types of queer cinephiles who still yearn for the complex depictions of queer men before the AIDS crisis, and for those who love to see charmingly messy gay men, I do recommend the film. The painful emotional gap keeping all of the gay men in this film from full connection and community with each other. It lingers like a bad taste on the mouth as a reminder that most of these men are playing around in what would be exotic settings for them to take advantage of what they can’t get back home, and that many of their peers back home will end up selling out their own community when things turn rough.

High Tide: A Melancholic Look at Moving On

In High Tide, Lourenço (Marco Pigossi), a 30-something year-old Brazilian man finds himself floundering in Provincetown at the end of the big tourist season struggling to move on from an unexpected breakup. He traveled to the US to be with his boyfriend, but is abandoned and left in the wind with nothing but a tourist visa. Cared for by the kindly Scott (Bill Irwin), Lourenço makes ends meet by working under the table cleaning short term rentals. One day while swimming, he meets Maurice (James Bland) and a spark grows between them. 

I enjoyed the complex intersectional nature of this film and its look at the cruising culture of places like Provincetown. We get to explore the effects of an HIV exposure and how quickly that can happen alongside the ways wealth and race intersect in queer spaces. Maurice, a tall, beautiful Black man, feels isolated and alone in such a white environment, and yet his wealth and citizenship in some ways makes him more secure than Lourenço. Maurice also offers us the opportunity to examine our presumptions about Black queer masculinity and what pleasure looks like between two men. A difficult moment between Maurice and Scott lingers with me. 

This film had a lot of complex feelings about queer friendship, family and faith, how drugs fit into party culture, and how generational gaps inform queer interactions. The spiral of this film was tense and gripping. My friends and I commented as we went along how expected each new crushing moment felt as things fell apart around Lourenço, and how the film made sure to not paint anyone as unbelievably perfect. The recognizable humanity in every character underscores the emotional conflicts and connections across the entire film. 

Final Verdict: 9: Highly Recommended. This is definitely my favorite of the three films. I found myself revisiting many of the emotions I felt in the untimeliness of the connection in Weekend (2011), and the pain of trying to move on as you age up in the closet in Pit Stop (2013). The bittersweet ending of this film left a memorable impression on me, and I know I’ll be returning to it as a meditation many times in the future. Lourenço’s grief may be one of my favorite experiences I’ve had with queer angst in recent years, alongside All of Us Strangers (2023). Also, Marisa Tomei is a producer and actor in the film!

The Paradise of Thorns: A Violent Glimpse Into Greed and Avarice in a Declining World

The Paradise of Thorns sets us in the fallout of a succession battle after the partner of a gay man dies unexpectedly, and the durian orchard they spent five years building together passes to the partner’s mom instead. While I went into this film with a lot of excited about Jeff Satur playing the lead role of Thongkram, along with Engfa, in a story directed and produced by Boss Kuno, this was not my favorite outing for everyone involved.

Thongkram (Jeff Satur) loses his partner, Sek (Pongsakorn Mettarikanon), to an accidental head injury on their farm. He rushes Sek to the hospital, but he doesn’t possess the legal authority to authorize treatment on Sek’s behalf. Meanwhile, Sek’s mother Saeng (Srida Puapimol) and caretaker Mo (Engfa Waraha) struggle to make the three hour journey to reach the hospital (Saeng no longer has use of her legs, and Mo is on a borrowed motorcycle). Despite humiliating himself, doctors cannot authorize treatment on Sek and he passes away before they arrive.

After they bury Sek, Saeng and Mo move onto the farm and steadily push Thongkram out of his own home. Thongkram tries to fight this in court, but loses badly. Meanwhile, Saeng and Mo bring another young man, Jingna (Harit Buayoi), onto the farm to learn from Thongkram so they can get rid of him. A series of mind games plays out across the film as Mo and Thongkram vie for the trust of Saeng in the hopes of gaining control of the farm after she dies, culminating in a brutal showdown at night.

Final Verdict: 7.5, Recommended With Reservations. For this film, I think many of the ideas rushed ahead without grounding them in accessible character motivation. I think, in particular, Thongkram’s romance with Jingna didn’t track very well for me, nor did the wavering relationship he had with Mo. I think there are probably two or three scenes missing that would have given us the belief that the two of them and Jingna could have made it as a trio before things went to shit, but the film didn’t seem to know how to accomplish that with Saeng holding all the power in the dynamics here. Moreover, I think this film undercut its own messages about queer rights by complicating Sek’s relationship and role in all of the drama here. This film feels strongest as a commentary on poverty and greed as people fight over a durian orchard planted as a monoculture on degraded land more than as a queer film with strong themes and ideas there. Still, it is a beautiful film with compelling performances from Jeff and Engfa. The final showdown is extremely brutal, and I’d advise viewers sensitive to all kinds of violence to watch with caution.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Palantir’s NHS-stealing Big Lie

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then SAN FRANCISCO (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

Capitalism's Big Lie in four words: "There is no alternative." Looters use this lie for cover, insisting that they're hard-nosed grownups living in the reality of human nature, incentives, and facts (which don't care about your feelings).

The point of "there is no alternative" is to extinguish the innovative imagination. "There is no alternative" is really "stop trying to think of alternatives, dammit." But there are always alternatives, and the only reason to demand that they be excluded from consideration is that these alternatives are manifestly superior to the looter's supposed inevitability.

Right now, there's an attempt underway to loot the NHS, the UK's single most beloved institution. The NHS has been under sustained assault for decades – budget cuts, overt and stealth privatisation, etc. But one of its crown jewels has been stubbournly resistant to being auctioned off: patient data. Not that HMG hasn't repeatedly tried to flog patient data – it's just that the public won't stand for it:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/nov/21/nhs-data-platform-may-be-undermined-by-lack-of-public-trust-warn-campaigners

Patients – quite reasonably – do not trust the private sector to handle their sensitive medical records.

Now, this presents a real conundrum, because NHS patient data, taken as a whole, holds untold medical insights. The UK is a large and diverse country and those records in aggregate can help researchers understand the efficacy of various medicines and other interventions. Leaving that data inert and unanalysed will cost lives: in the UK, and all over the world.

For years, the stock answer to "how do we do science on NHS records without violating patient privacy?" has been "just anonymise the data." The claim is that if you replace patient names with random numbers, you can release the data to research partners without compromising patient privacy, because no one will be able to turn those numbers back into names.

It would be great if this were true, but it isn't. In theory and in practice, it is surprisingly easy to "re-identify" individuals in anonymous data-sets. To take an obvious example: we know which two dates former PM Tony Blair was given a specific treatment for a cardiac emergency, because this happened while he was in office. We also know Blair's date of birth. Check any trove of NHS data that records a person who matches those three facts and you've found Tony Blair – and all the private data contained alongside those public facts is now in the public domain, forever.

Not everyone has Tony Blair's reidentification hooks, but everyone has data in some kind of database, and those databases are continually being breached, leaked or intentionally released. A breach from a taxi service like Addison-Lee or Uber, or from Transport for London, will reveal the journeys that immediately preceded each prescription at each clinic or hospital in an "anonymous" NHS dataset, which can then be cross-referenced to databases of home addresses and workplaces. In an eyeblink, millions of Britons' records of receiving treatment for STIs or cancer can be connected with named individuals – again, forever.

Re-identification attacks are now considered inevitable; security researchers have made a sport out of seeing how little additional information they need to re-identify individuals in anonymised data-sets. A surprising number of people in any large data-set can be re-identified based on a single characteristic in the data-set.

Given all this, anonymous NHS data releases should have been ruled out years ago. Instead, NHS records are to be handed over to the US military surveillance company Palantir, a notorious human-rights abuser and supplier to the world's most disgusting authoritarian regimes. Palantir – founded by the far-right Trump bagman Peter Thiel – takes its name from the evil wizard Sauron's all-seeing orb in Lord of the Rings ("Sauron, are we the baddies?"):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/01/the-palantir-will-see-you-now/#public-private-partnership

The argument for turning over Britons' most sensitive personal data to an offshore war-crimes company is "there is no alternative." The UK needs the medical insights in those NHS records, and this is the only way to get at them.

As with every instance of "there is no alternative," this turns out to be a lie. What's more, the alternative is vastly superior to this chumocratic sell-out, was Made in Britain, and is the envy of medical researchers the world 'round. That alternative is "trusted research environments." In a new article for the Good Law Project, I describe these nigh-miraculous tools for privacy-preserving, best-of-breed medical research:

https://goodlawproject.org/cory-doctorow-health-data-it-isnt-just-palantir-or-bust/

At the outset of the covid pandemic Oxford's Ben Goldacre and his colleagues set out to perform realtime analysis of the data flooding into NHS trusts up and down the country, in order to learn more about this new disease. To do so, they created Opensafely, an open-source database that was tied into each NHS trust's own patient record systems:

https://timharford.com/2022/07/how-to-save-more-lives-and-avoid-a-privacy-apocalypse/

Opensafely has its own database query language, built on SQL, but tailored to medical research. Researchers write programs in this language to extract aggregate data from each NHS trust's servers, posing medical questions of the data without ever directly touching it. These programs are published in advance on a git server, and are preflighted on synthetic NHS data on a test server. Once the program is approved, it is sent to the main Opensafely server, which then farms out parts of the query to each NHS trust, packages up the results, and publishes them to a public repository.

This is better than "the best of both worlds." This public scientific process, with peer review and disclosure built in, allows for frequent, complex analysis of NHS data without giving a single third party access to a a single patient record, ever. Opensafely was wildly successful: in just months, Opensafely collaborators published sixty blockbuster papers in Nature – science that shaped the world's response to the pandemic.

Opensafely was so successful that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care commissioned a review of the programme with an eye to expanding it to serve as the nation's default way of conducting research on medical data:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/better-broader-safer-using-health-data-for-research-and-analysis/better-broader-safer-using-health-data-for-research-and-analysis

This approach is cheaper, safer, and more effective than handing hundreds of millions of pounds to Palantir and hoping they will manage the impossible: anonymising data well enough that it is never re-identified. Trusted Research Environments have been endorsed by national associations of doctors and researchers as the superior alternative to giving the NHS's data to Peter Thiel or any other sharp operator seeking a public contract.

As a lifelong privacy campaigner, I find this approach nothing short of inspiring. I would love for there to be a way for publishers and researchers to glean privacy-preserving insights from public library checkouts (such a system would prove an important counter to Amazon's proprietary god's-eye view of reading habits); or BBC podcasts or streaming video viewership.

You see, there is an alternative. We don't have to choose between science and privacy, or the public interest and private gain. There's always an alternative – if there wasn't, the other side wouldn't have to continuously repeat the lie that no alternative is possible.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/08/the-fire-of-orodruin/#are-we-the-baddies

Image: Gage Skidmore (modified) https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Thiel_(51876933345).jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[solemnpancake]

[pokemon1oadvanced]

Watching spoiler free reviews for season 3 was a bad idea. Whats worse? Reading comments that the original poster replied to

POTENTIAL SPOILERS BELOW

New fear unlocked: Yasammy break-up

Like what does tension mean

Also found out baby isn’t named Speckles so💔

[chubearr]

jw: chaos theory

just finished s1 of chaos theory... im not gonna go in depth bc i dont have that dawg in me anymore. BUT I JUST WANNA SAY? 10/10. IMPECCABLE. ANIMATION, PACING, TENSION, EMOTION, CHARACTERS, STORY (well.. minus a certain reveal for a certain main character) WAS PERFECT!!

also that ending reveal? i 100% called it. never stopped believing for a moment 😆

i love these kids sm and kenji is my top pride and joy... i soo look foward to the next one.

AHHHHHHHH💙💙💙

[soapdispensersalesman]

After finishing Severance, I wanted to check out The Secret Life of Walter Mitty as it was directed by Ben Stiller and featured the music of Theodore Shapiro as well and damn Ben Stiller really has been this great director all this time, such a beautiful film, relatable story for an avid daydreamer like me and I hadn't realised Adam Scott appeared in it as well playing a character similar yet completely different to his Severance character!

Definitely a great film worth checking out post Severance!

[doyoubuyallyourmurderweaponsathd]

The Significance of the Cult of Cybele (and Greek Mythology) to Yellowjackets

(tw for discussion of castration)

I'm not sure if anybody's made a similar post already but this was something I was thinking a lot about in the context of the mythological themes we've seen so far in the show and I'm really curious to see if anyone else has thought the same!!

So for those of you who don't know, Cybele (or Agdistis) was a Phrygian goddess that was later adopted by the Greeks and Romans and associated with the worship of the harvest, the earth, disorder in the vein of Dionysian worship, and particularly the mountains, especially in the context of a more "wild" land compared to civilization. She's often pictured with lions as well.

(Statue of Cybele, from Wikipedia)

What makes Cybele particularly interesting as a goddess figure is that she originally had both male and female genitals, which was a no-no for the other gods, so they cut off Cybele's male genitalia which grew a tree and through that tree Cybele fathered a male child named Attis. Attis was then raised by... a goat. Already a little interesting with the amount of goat imagery we've had, right?

(Akilah with her baby goat)

Attis is also commonly depicted with a shepherd's crook and youthful beauty, emphasizing innocence. As Attis grew, Cybele took him as a secret lover (standard mythology ick), but then the king (commonly depicted as King Midas, although the Midas inclusion was a later thing, but I think he's a relevant figure to this analysis) learned of their relationship and decided to give Attis his daughter's hand in marriage as a way out. However, this ends up making Cybele crazy jealous, so she crashes the wedding and makes everyone go mad. This madness leads both Attis and King Midas to castrate themselves and die as a result. Since Cybele became distraught over the death of Attis, she reached a deal with Zeus to keep Attis in a kind of zombified immortal state as her eunuch.

Now to get into more of the parallels! The castration of Attis occurred under a pine tree, and depictions of Attis are often with pine trees or pinecones.

(relief of Attis collecting pinecones)

We've seen this imagery in Yellowjackets before during Doomcoming, when Lottie places the pinecone in Travis's mouth. I've also thought that this action is really interesting in the larger context of Travis's character, because we see early in the season him being derogatory to Nat and saying she's only good for sucking dick, and later we find out that that was mostly projection from the true meaning of the Flex nickname. Now we have Lottie as the one inserting the phallic object, a subversion of gender roles.

(Lottie places the pinecone in Travis's mouth)

I believe that we mainly see the parallels here as Cybele/Lottie and Attis/Travis. The introduction of Akilah as a shepherd figure and another prophet this season kind of split the Attis role up between Travis and Akilah, but I believe that Travis fits the role better than her with what we've seen so far. The Yellowjackets interpretation of their relationship seems to be less explicitly romantic but following the themes of motherhood and familial bond more closely, as we see largely in season 2 when Lottie comforts Travis and Travis hallucinates Lottie in a nurturing role.

(Lottie calming Travis down)

There are still some vestiges of their relationship being more romantic or sexual in nature though, since Travis has the... reaction to Lottie comforting him and hallucinates Lottie while having sex with Nat. Within the theme of castration, we don't see one literally happening, but this appears to be what is metaphorically happening to Travis, or at least a sort of transition in his perception of his gender. After Doomcoming occurs, Travis doesn't bother with trying to be masculine anymore, instead blending in with the girls. I view Travis's character in the second season and onward as the beginning of a shift further into the cult of Lottie, which gets me into my next point: Ben and Nat's roles in this analysis.

(Ben and Nat during Doomcoming)

A lot of people view Ben and Nat's relationship as a kind of father and daughter one, which I think makes a lot of sense in this context. Nat was originally a firm non-believer in the wilderness worship and serves as Travis's connection to pragmatism and the real world, very different from the spiritual connection he builds with Lottie. Ben blesses their relationship in a way when he gives Travis The Talk in season one, and this is really the only time we see their characters actually talk. Travis saving Ben in the latest episode seems to have extra importance, as in the Attis myths, King Midas is the one to die while Attis becomes saved and venerated. There is a LOT of contradictory stuff in myths about King Midas, but I think the thing most relevant to Ben is the humiliation of Midas with donkey ears, similar to the humiliation he faces after his leg is cut off. The severing of his Achilles tendon in the latest episode can also be viewed as a metaphorical castration. Nat clearly has a much stronger role in this story than the daughter of Midas, but that pragmatism she displays is a good analogy for the safe and respectable marriage that Attis would have had, as we see in the more normal relationship Nat has with Travis compared to Travis and Lottie in season three.

(Lottie offering the bear's heart to the wilderness)

But how does the group's wilderness worship factor into this? The cult of Cybele's forms of worship also have significant parallels to what we've seen the girls do so far in the show. Particularly significant is the Hilaria, a Roman festival taking place the two weeks after the Ides of March. During Hilaria, worshippers of Cybele are actually primarily reenacting the story of Attis. The Hilaria begins with a fast of sorts, which can easily be compared to the starvation we see the girls go through. A pine tree is cut down as a symbol of the castration of Attis under the pine tree and lamented, and we see both the pinecone and Lottie sacrificing the bear's heart to the tree. Blood sacrifices of the devotees were also given in worship of Attis, which included self-castration in his image, although due to Roman laws on castration, animal sacrifices were made in its place. We see the girls shedding blood for the wilderness time and time again, whether of animals, Shauna's nosebleed onto the symbol, or Travis giving blood for Shauna's baby.

Unrelated to Cybele but relevant to the Doomcoming plot is the tragedy of Iphigenia. In this story, Agamemnon, in preparation for war against Troy, kills a stag that was sacred to Artemis. As punishment, he is made to sacrifice his eldest daughter, Iphigenia, in order to appease her. Iphigenia doesn't know she's to be sacrificed, and travels to Aulis with her mother Clytemnestra believing that she is there to marry Achilles. Different versions of the tragedy show Iphigenia's knowledge and acceptance of her fate in different ways, but in one version (the play Iphigenia in Tauris), Iphigenia is rescued by Artemis and becomes her priestess. Later on Orestes, the younger brother of Iphigenia, is caught by Iphigenia, but she doesn't recognize him and it is her duty to sacrifice any trespassers. To compare this to Yellowjackets, the human sacrifice in place of the stag is the role, also unwillingly, forced upon Travis (terminal case of eldest daughter syndrome). Jackie "took something that didn't belong to her" and unwittingly started the first hunt. Nat's salvation of Travis means that he no longer has a sacrificial (or even gendered) purpose to the girls, which in turn leaves the opening for Lottie to comfort him and eventually use him for her own plans, turning him into her own priestess. The sacrifice of Orestes/Javi also has interesting parallels, but ultimately Yellowjackets has the more tragic ending. (poor Javi :()

(Sacrifice of Iphigenia from a fresco at Pompeii, also check out the similarity between Clytemnestra's pose here...)

(...and Nat's pose here)

One last comparison that a lot of people have already pointed out: the Pentheus story. Pentheus, the new king of Thebes, banned the worship of Dionysus due to his distaste for it. Similarly to the jealousy of Cybele, the wrath of Dionysus caused the women of Thebes to become frenzied, viewing Pentheus as an animal and ripping him apart. The animal comparison is moreso what happens to Travis during Doomcoming, but the role of Pentheus is more similar to Ben's relationship with the Yellowjackets. Travis completely participates in all of the activities that cement the Yellowjackets as a hive (the seance, the Jackie feast, the offerings, the blessing of the sacrifice) while Ben is perpetually an outsider. We even see Ben spying on the girls as Nat is crowned queen, and he appears disgusted with her for finally giving into their formed society. That spying is what leads to his eventual capture, and while he's still alive, his fate remains to be seen.

(fresco of Pentheus being torn apart)

Now that I've gone over these comparisons, I think the biggest question is where the plot will go from here. In order to temporarily escape from Lottie, Travis shifts attention to Akilah, but swiftly realizes he's fucked up when Akilah starts actually having visions similar to the ones that Travis is having. He seems to genuinely like Akilah as well, so he begins to take responsibility for her and protect her to the extent that he can while still doing what Lottie says. Since we still don't know what Akilah's fate is, it's possible that either Lottie or Travis through the direction of Lottie are going to end up harming or killing Akilah through these rituals.

If that is the case, we've seen before that the wilderness loves a sacrifice, so I think this would shift them to a higher position within the community. Them saving Ben (but then mutilating him further through a group decision) keeps him alive longer, but as we proved in the trial, no matter how much love Ben has for the girls, he will always be an outsider. We may still see Ben killed soon as a sacrifice to appease whatever may be angered. Nat is also at a pivotal point in her amount of power. She has so far been a good leader, but the trial also proved that she doesn't have any real power over the girls, and she was uncomfortable with the antler crown. A still of a later episode shows all of the Yellowjackets pissed at Nat for something, so this may be where she's deposed.

I can only see sacrifice becoming even more important to the girls as the show progresses, so depending on their actions, the one who gives the most to the group is likely to become the next Antler Queen. Personally, I think a very dramatic choice would be for Travis to wear the crown, instead of the (mostly) level-headed Tai or the power-hungry Shauna. Shauna and Travis have so far been narrative foils, both of them having lost the most to the wilderness and having the biggest shifts in personality, both of them eschewing gender roles in how they're supposed to process grief and traumatic events. Shauna is volatile and not liked by the rest of the girls, setting up some sort of doomed Macbeth situation with her and Melissa, so I don't see that approach going well for her. However, what better way to endear yourself to the group than to continually sacrifice, to always do what's asked of you, to show grace in every situation and mourn appropriately and quietly? Being reborn free of manhood and worshiped as did Cybele's Attis, Travis could easily find a new role in their society as the puppet queen of Lottie, letting the wilderness speak through him as a sort of demigod, the sacrificial stag that appeases and protects them from harm.

(Akilah and Travis, about to enter the caves) (I love it when found family siblings recreate Plato's allegory of the cave like yes girl the world of the cave is superior to the world outside!!)

[sam-reid]

guys i'm getting more and more hyped for julien this season. hello??

[waywardsou2]

Im listening to Marcus Skeens new album and I'm going to give my thoughts in each song

Strangers

Ok but seriously? It took me a second to pick who's perspective this was. But when I twigged it was Viktor's. Gods ok I almost cried listening to that line

Because it shows how much Viktor really did want Jayce. How clear as day it was and yet he was so sure he couldn't have it. He was so sure it was unconditional. And tbh the way Jayce looked at Mel (talking from the perspective of Infinity End) I can't blame him. Wow that's really sad but it was really beautiful. I liked how clear the guitar was as well. The scratch of the strings was a nice touch

Event Horizon

Oh I'm excited for this one based on title alone

Ok fuck I know a lot of people say things like "I'm literally crying omg" and usually I don't believe them so I get it if you think the same. But the way I tell you I burst into tears when I heard these two lines. Like instantly tears in my eyes and then running down my face...

Again took me a little while to understand who's perspective that was. But I think these are all from Viktor's perspective. Which is really interesting, but I would love to see him make a parallel album answering these songs from Jayce's perspective.

But holy fucking shit. The turn from "I wish you would lie to me and tell me you love me" to "Shit wait you might be serious and now I have no clue what to do because I've been pining for so long"

This honestly hit me like a slap in the face

This has to be my favourite by far. I do still have three others to go thought

Better

Just end me now. That one may be my second favourite but holy fuck.

The way I wanted to scream like Vi did in Jinx's final scene. Because that was fucking brutal

This...this is just Viktor all over. He thinks he's broken, he fully believes it. Jayce doesn't want him to say that he is because Jayce doesn't see him that way.

Him saying he wants to be better deeply parallels Jayce telling Viktor he's perfect the way he is. As well as hinting to the previous song. Now that Jayce's eyes are on him he feels unworthy because he is so broken.

Oh that really fucking hurts.

Changes

Shit omg ok. Not as gut wrenching but still powerful. Not my favourite music but it's the message for me

Viktor is clearly very closed off, very reserved and as far as we know he doesn't have any friend apart from Viktor and we don't know about his family either. The idea that he's been hurt and has to learn to love again is heartbreaking but the fact that he wants to do it for Jayce is so powerful.

He's willing to risk getting hurt again because of how much he loves Jayce

The idea that Viktor feels like he darkens Jayce's shine. That because he is less standing next to Jayce he makes him look like less. As if he is a stain of some kind. That was fucking brutal. Just brutal.

Also calling Jayce lover?! Excuse me?!

Also comparing Jayce to a Renaissance painting? Hello? How gay can you be?

Oh love it

Until Next Time

Top 3. Fuck!

The fucking idea that Viktor had lost sleep, crying over the unrequited feelings he has for Jayce that he realised aren't unrequited...that hurts so much to think about

And and and I think this is from Mage Viktor's peresotivs. This feels very him. Especially with the "timelines" and "possibilities" lines. That has to be him.

It really is just song form of what he said to Jayce. No matter what they will do whatever they can do to pull themselves together. Jayce will always choose Viktor and Viktor can't stand the idea of letting Jayce go. They just can't.

But the fact that he says "you don't need to say it back" makes me think that maybe. Just maybe. Mage Viktor's Jayce never got the chance. Viktor turned him before he realised what he had done and Jayce never got to say it back...

And the emphasis on Viktor saying I love you makes me think he didn't either.

Oh this is so damn tragic. But it's amazing story telling

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Please go listen to these songs for yourself. It's Marcus Skeens' Infinity End album on Spotify. I need to go kiss this man and then cry.

[chasingshadowsblog]

Unicorns (2024) dir. by Sally El-Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd

[dikisliyaralar]

I never let you go, let you go

[co-mixed]

Fantastic Four (& FF) by Jonathan Hickman

Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four equals a ton of expectations. Capital E. After the original one by Lee and Kirby, this one is probably considered to be the most defining for the team. At least that’s what I kept hearing before picking it up. It’s a fan favorite, hence the E.  So it doesn’t need any extra introductions. 

Next — spoilers, questions, enlightening conclusions, and more reasons to despise Reed Richards...

When I couldn’t come up with anything to say about the previous Millar run, I thought that was because the run didn’t affect anything (seriously, you should see my review — it’s pretty much me going on and on about how Reed messed up again). Turns out, I was wrong. Not about Reed, about the run. It was just a prelude to Hickman’s cooking. 

Almost everything makes a comeback: dead Galactus, living Galactus, Nu-Earth, Doom, Val’s brilliant mind, etc. Topped off with Hickman’s love for large-scale events, his style of storytelling (where time is a flat circle), and even text pages. Don’t worry though, they make an appearance but don’t take up half of the book (yet). 

A lot is going on in this series. When I say a lot, I mean almost overwhelmingly. Hickman’s style is throwing bits and pieces at you at random points and making them come together at another point. Now when’s that gonna be — you never know. This makes his runs fun and just a little chaotic, kind of like life. And if you pay attention, the bits come together like a puzzle where everything fits and nothing is left to chance. 

The narrative also happens in two books: at some point he introduces FF as in Future Foundation, thus solving the question that plagues many a writer — what to do with the kids. 

As much as I don’t care for kids' adventures, these worked just fine, so I don’t even feel the need to defend their existence or convince anyone not to skip them. 

Too many Reeds

There is a whole council of Reeds and we learn that despite being so obviously the worst of all humans on Earth, our 616 Reed somehow turns out to be the best Reed out of all Reeds. Imagine how low the bar is…. Oh wait, there’s no need to imagine if you check out the story of Reed-98570 (Fantastic Four #605). And that creep is one of the founders of the council. 

So between the nazi scientist Reed who stole Doom’s brain, other Reeds who turned their back on their families, and Reed Reed who is just garbage, there’s really only one question: why are all Reeds so awful? 

Hickman proposes a possible answer — his father wasn’t around. Kind of sounds like bs. Look at the Marvel Universe: how many heroes still have their parents? And some parents had been awful. Not everyone turned out like this (except maybe Stark…). No, I say, Reed is bad because of Reed. And Val is probably gonna turn out just as bad. 

There is so much to choose from. At this point, the list of his misdeeds (as I just mean Reed 616) exceeds the list of Daredevil’s dead exes.

It doesn’t take Reed 10 pages of the new run to start lying to his wife. 

But that’s not news. What blows my mind, is how obsessively Reed is trying to prove to Wizard that he’s going to raise his clone into someone better. Pffft, Reed. Take care of your own kids – they’re out of hand. One is making deals with your arch-enemy, and the other is doing god knows what in the middle of the night in his own universe. You have your hands full.

And that is not even remotely close to being all that Reed’s been up to. He starts Future Foundation as a way to bring young forward-thinking kid geniuses together and solve everything. Ambitious and fair, fair because he sees how the existing scientific community has stagnated. The old, experienced scientists have no interest in building a future they won’t get to see. But kids, they do. Val is a perfect fit for this foundation (and so is Bentley-the-Wizard’s-clone) and that’s a great excuse to start neglecting Franklin. You know, build a little competition. If Odin’s guide to healthy parenting has taught us anything, it’s that kids should fight for their parents’ love and approval... Fine, I’m exaggerating but just a little. After all, Reed manages to neglect FF too. Whenever he does, he usually dumps it all on Johnny. 

Johnny’s reign

It’s on one of such days that Johnny ends up locked forever in the Negative Zone. He is presumed dead and it’s all very tragic for the next few months. But it does bring Spider-Man out of his neighborhood and into the family drama. He actually fits in quite well, with nothing to prove and his easygoing attitude (but even he wonders if Sue is fine with whatever Reed’s doing at a given moment). Still, it’s not about him, so none of his personal tales make it into the book.  Of course, Johnny soon returns.

Not only he shows up at the best possible moment, he has Annihilus on a leash and complete control of the Zone (which gives us the ‘hold my Annihilus’ panel). I swear, whenever Johnny sends his ships and troops somewhere, you can feel Reed’s green envy. Reed probably thought he deserved it more… (I don’t have any proof but it seems like something Reed would experience.)

Johnny seemingly matures, he’s supposed to be 2 years older now too, but that doesn’t last long and he quickly reverts to his classic irritating self. As if dying and coming back doesn’t mess with one’s mind. 

What’s worse, he gives the Zone free elections, and guess what? They vote for Annihilus. Again. They got rid of him with pain, sweat, and blood, and they voted him back in. Now that’s just unrealistic! Can’t happen. Right?

That’s probably everything of note that happens with Johnny. I have to assume that writers, for the most part, still don’t know what exactly to make of him. But my guess is his image needs a serious makeover. I don’t know where he’s at right now, but I don’t think this party-hard, drink-’till-sunrise, never-be-on-time, have-no-purpose persona should live past 2012. 

Sue’s enchantment under the sea 

How did Johnny even end up on the other side of the gate to the Zone? Well, Ben was human, Reed was busy with Nu World and Galactus, and Sue… oh, Sue was ruling the seas. 

No, unfortunately, she still hasn’t left Reed for Namor or any other fish person. But she did spend a ton of time negotiating a truce between Namor’s kingdom and other fish in the sea. Even punched Namor, which only made him want her more. 

And I know that’s a whole other book but there was a jealous vibe from Emma, who also makes an appearance, and I don’t know what to make of it. From all we know, she can still have him as a backup if she wants to. Maybe she just hates being a second choice and Sue doesn’t exactly have Jean’s habit of dying and vacating the partner. 

Other than that, Sue waters flowers, kicks celestial ass, and wonders if she’s a good parent. She is (her husband isn’t). She has confidence which is very nice to see. But she still doesn’t give Reed the grief he deserves. He keeps lying to Sue and deceiving her, which leads to bigger and bigger problems and she, along with other heroes, ends up having to deal with it. It’s a vicious circle and it’s an exhaustingly old issue even at that point (2011-12, people, the Avengers just came out!) Don’t get me wrong, I would be complaining if their married life was all suns and rainbows, because that’s just boring. But I need to see her confronting Reed. At this point, she just looks the other way and leaves him to his devices. I’m almost not surprised she jumped at the chance to hang out with Namor, even though he once again showed his more obnoxious side. At least he isn’t spending time with a bunch of himselves instead of her. 

I never not feel bad for Sue, mostly because we still don’t really know her. Writers make small improvements and adjustments for her, and they reassure us that her love for Reed is real, but I can’t believe that. She has nothing of her own, nothing that isn’t attached to her husband, kids, the team, or Namor. She makes sandwiches and cuts off the crust. 

The week of Ben

Now back to Johnny’s trip to the Negative Zone, where was Ben? Right beside him. Only Ben was human because the FF kids created a serum that could turn him human for a week every year. That was so shocking to everyone — the kids have figured out something Reed never could. Only that’s not true at all. Throughout the FF's history, Ben’s become human again at least 5 times, maybe more. Several times Reed figured out how to change him for good, some times he gave Ben the option to turn into The Thing at will. It never lasted but not all of that was Reed’s fault.

Regardless, Ben became human for his week, spent it hanging out with Johnny (worst choice ever if you ask me), but he also reunited with Alicia. The part that does bug me is he still thinks she loves him only for his looks. You know, as if his charming and not-at-all-angry personality is not enough. Also, no one is even mentioning Debbie who just a week ago was the love of Ben’s life and nearly became his wife and Sue’s best (only) friend in the process. But no sense in dwelling on the past. 

Of course, after failing to sacrifice himself instead of Johnny, Ben takes a guilt trip. No, he actually leaves the team to go mope around in the Avengers mansion. And feels that it’s really all he does during this run aside from backing up the team and announcing clobbering time. But we do take a little trip to the future with Reed’s father, and we see what the kids’ serum does to Ben – he only ages a week every year so he gets to outlive everyone and that’s when we get a little moment that reminds us that he and Reed are actually best friends. Something that’s been buried under Ben’s loyalty and resentment, plus occasional (permanent) selfishness on Reed’s side. 

Moloids though, they worship Ben. So that’s something.

The kids won’t be all right

We get to see future versions of Franklin and Val. To call these kids shady is an understatement. They are straight-up nasty creeps. And in a very mutant tradition, they come back from the future to mess around with history. Franklin gives himself his powers back, Val constantly states how much she doesn’t like her kid self.

Meanwhile,, their younger selves, accompanied by the FF, constantly get into trouble. We do address kid Franklin’s issues that I felt were dropped by Millar, his budding envy for Val. And when it comes to Val, I don’t think she’s going to change. She is Doom’s child at heart… everything about her is Doom, her arrogance, her sinister ideas, her elaborate plans. She did get one thing from Reed though — lying. Sneaking around and doing shady things – that’s all Reed. It makes me curious, the more I read about her, the more I want to see her turn into a self-righteous villain. She has everything for the part and she’d make a far more exciting villain than even Franklin with all his world-ending abilities. Val is also more suited to rule Latveria than Kristoff. Not trying to give Doom advice on how to run his land but… just something to think about. 

What’s There to Do(om)?

The Reeds have historically been very unkind to the Dooms. And before we get into it, remember that I’m not giving props to a dictator, but let’s agree that turning Dooms into talking plants or brain donors is certainly not the way to achieve your goals of universal peace and prosperity. But the council of Reeds hunts down every Doom in existence, which I don’t know if it does make our 616 Doom special. He keeps jumping higher and higher up in the power ranking, and at this point, it’s hard to imagine he could be defeated. With some help from Val, he even obtains an Infinity Gauntlet (from a different universe) and creates a whole world. That makes him a god and I know this Doomiurge will return in Battleworld. 

To make things worse (for Reed), through the course of the run, Doom is saving Richards and his family left and right. First, he saves Reed’s absent father (by killing his variant), then he sacrifices himself during the fight with the Celestials, and so much more in between. All while being very nice to Val and not breaking his word once. Oh yes, he’s a better parent to Val than Reed is.

This is once again, a story about the family. Reed’s family, because even when they all deal with their own things, they can be sure that somehow Reed is going to screw up everything and bring about the end of the world.

All of it makes me understand one thing. When you’re writing a Fantastic Four run, you gotta be either pro-Reed or pro-Doom. If you’re pro-Reed, you’ll go out of your way to prove that Reed’s doing the right thing. Even when he does the wrong thing for the right reason, which is a - always, b- a clear sign of a villain. 

Pro-Doom writers don’t argue with Doom being evil and ambitious, but they always try to remind us how honorable Doom is and that his heart may be black but there’s a soft blueish spot in it for Valeria. A bit of healthy disdain for Mr. Fantastic usually correlates with at least some Doom apologism. 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Matt Bors’s “Justice Warriors: Vote Harder”

On SEPTEMBER 24th, I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!

There's no political satirist working today quite like Matt "Mr Gotcha" Bors, whose 2023 masterpiece Justice Warriors just got a timely – and brutally funny – sequel, Justice Warriors: Vote Harder:

https://www.mattbors.com/store/p/justice-warriors-ffzgn

You've doubtless seen Matt Bors's work, which has repeatedly attained viral liftoff, most notably with his Mr Gotcha strips, easily one of the most useful additions to online political debate in internet history:

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

Last year, Bors, along with Ben Clarkson and Felipe Sobreiro, published Justice Warriors, a postapocalyptic cyberpunk graphic novel in the vein of Warren Ellis's classic Transmetropolitan:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/22/libras-assemble/#the-uz

Justice Warriors is the tale of Bubble City, a domed enclave walled off from the teeming masses of the UZ (which stands for "Uninhabited Zone" – see what they did there?). Bubble City runs on vibes, therapy-speak, social media nonsense, memes and garbage hot-takes. And while there's a lot of broad satire here, the thing that makes Justice Warriors stand out is how its creators do the relatively straightforward futuristic exercise of asking themselves, "What if deeply unserious nonsense was taken seriously?"

Others have done this before – Mike Judge's Idiocracy, say – but Bors, Clarkson and Sobreiro attain a density of sight gags, trenchant wordplay, and outrageous cyberpunk imagery that is just next level. Think Al Jaffee meets William Gibson, with art direction by Vaughn Bode, who's had one too many at the Mos Eisley Cantina. To that, mix in all kinds of MAD Magazine style fake ads and social media postings, layering joke on gag, all of it walking the fine line between "you gotta cry" and "you gotta laugh."

Justice Warriors did big numbers, selling out three printings, and now the gang is back together for the sequel, Vote Harder, which drops just in time for the final, all consuming election-season media apocalypse.

Vote Harder sees Bubble City facing its first election in living memory, as the mayor – who inherited his position from his "powerful, strapping Papa" – loses a confidence vote by the city's trustees. They're upset with his plan to bankrupt the city in order to buy a laser powerful enough to carve his likeness into the sun as a viral stunt for the launch of his comeback album. The trustees are in no way mollified by the fact that he expects to make a lot of money selling special branded sunglasses that allow Bubble City (and the mutant hordes of the Uninhabited Zone) to safely look into the sun and see what their tax dollars bought.

So it's time for an election, and the two candidates are going hard: there's the incumbent Mayor Prince; there's his half-sister and ex-girlfriend, Stufina Vipix XII, and there's a dark-horse candidate Flauf Tanko, a mutant-tank cyborg that went rogue after a militant Home Owners Association disabled it and its owners abandoned it. Flauf-Tanko is determined to give the masses of the Uninhabited Zone the representation they've been denied for so long, despite the structural impediments to this (UZers need to complete a questionnaire, sub-forms, have three forms of ID, and present a rental contract, drivers license, work permit and breeding license. They also need to get their paperwork signed in person at a VERI-VOTE location, then wait 14 days to get their voter IDs by mail. Also, districts of 2 million or more mutants are allocated the equivalent of only 250,000 votes, but only if 51% of eligible voters show up to the polls; otherwise, their votes are parceled out to other candidates per the terms of the Undervoting and Apathy Allotment Act).

Despite the structural advantages afforded to Mayor Prince – like the fact that residents of District 12 on floors 120-145 of the Bubble each get 2048 votes, while District 1 (floors 1-7) only get a single vote – he's not taking any chances. Officer Schitt (a humanoid poop emoji) and the lovelorn Officer Swamp (an anthropomorphic catfish) are each prowling the Uz . Swamp – suffering from a head injury and gripped by a delusion that a TV cowboy has sent him to infiltrate the Flauf Tanko campaign – is playing spy/provocateur, while Schitt hunts dangerous subversives.

What unfolds is a funny, bitter, superb piece of political satire that could not be better timed.

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/11/uninhabited-zone/#eremption-season

[aleppothemushroom]

Sonic Movie 3 Review

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is easily the best of the trilogy and quite possibly the best video game movie made (as of now) but a few hiccups keep it from being truly great.

Firstly, positives.

I'm glad these movies have finally embraced the corny, action-packed tone of the games. Seeing the approach to story and dialogue in this one really brought me back to playing Sonic Unleashed on my PS3. Themes of friendship, family, and making good choices are played unapologetically sweet as a Saturday morning cartoon. While, yes, it may not be for everyone, it feels far more honest than trying to make Sonic the frickin' Hedgehog more "mass appealing."

Speaking of Sonic, Ben Schwartz continues to be my favorite portrayal of the character. He's the right amount of snarky, energetic, and kind-hearted while his "coolness" is portrayed more as a kid trying to look cool than "actually" cool.

Jim Carrey is as fun as always, especially since he's acting against himself now. I also really, really, REALLY like Robotnik/Eggman's arc here. I won't give too much away, but I'd be perfectly fine with this being Jim Carrey's last acting role for a while.

And Shadow. Holy crap Shadow. From Keanu Reeves wonderful voice performance, to his tragic backstory that's done expertly well and may even get you a little emotional (of all the movies I expected to get me teary-eyed, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was not one of them).

The visual effects have also really improved here. Seriously, the last two movies had many shots that looked fake, which is pretty much absent here. I hope this means the VFX team was given the proper amount of time to do their craft, something that they don't usually have the luxury of getting.

And while I've never really cared for these movies need to focus on boring humans, this movie finally find a good supporting roles that give them time to shine while not overshadowing (not a pun, I swear) the actual main characters.

Now, for the negatives.

While Act one and act three are "peak" as the kids say, act two is where things start to drag. Lots of exposition dumping, lots of backstories that need to be covered. While the plot marches on, actual story development all but stops. It ends making a lot of scenes feel like padding, which I feel is VERY unintentional.

And while I like the idea of Sonic's character arc mirroring Shadow's (there's probably a pun there somewhere), it should've been spread out more across the movie rather than just the last third.

And Knuckles and Tails, while I love them, feel a little shafted here. Their own arcs with Sonic feel incredibly rushed, even if they are still sweet.

But other than that, I'd personally call Sonic 3 good, which is one step above the its predecessors' just okay. If you're a fan of Sonic or you liked the previous two movies, I'd highly recommend it. If you didn't really care for those last movies, or you're just not a fan of Sonic in general, this won't convince you. I'm glad these movies are getting better with each entry and even more glad that the team behind them are receptive to feedback. That's a rarity for people making Hollywood blockbusters.

[marie-loui]

Any one think he's kinda

Just me?

[chxrrymwah]

ok i finished solitaire and while i didn’t cry (surprisingly) i think the main reason it stuck to me is because of the way tori narrates. no spoilers but the writing makes it seem like you are genuinely in her head, hearing her thoughts while in a lot of other books, even though you you do get the main character(s) thoughts, they aren’t as genuine as tori’s are here and i really like that

amazing book, would read again