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absolutebl · 3 years ago

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I saw you reblogged a few posts regarding subtitles and how they’re often not really the ~best~ lol. It reminded me how when Semantic Error was airing, some people who knew both English and Korean were a bit annoyed and/or confused at how the show was subbed because it cut out a lot of the more cheeky/rude and explicit language (in addition to there being some inaccurately or awkwardly translated dialogue). This seems to be an issue across countries too! I wonder why it happens. Things being inaccurately or awkwardly translated could just be from subbers not being proficient enough in one language to translate and keep the same meaning and make it flow in the translated language. However, I find the cutting out or censoring of bad language to be kind of odd and I’m curious what the thought process is there. That doesn’t seem like just translators who haven’t mastered the skill, it seems more intentional, but I can’t figure out why they might do it!

Why Are Subs/Captions Censored? Or different? Or inaccurate?

Yeah, those of you who got the GaGa subs for Semantic Error reportedly got better swears, but less accuracy in other regards. I only saw Viki's subs and some screen caps.

This was one of my favorites off GaGa:

And I *think* it is straight up a wrong translation.

Also there was this bit of Cutie Pie:

That was challenged by the bilingual community, then re-captioned so now this version doesn’t even exist any more. (Or something like that, I wasn’t paying very close attention.)

So why does this happen? Why are they different? And why no bad language (I get to that in #4.)

Sub Challenge # 1 - Cultural Depth & Nuance

Okay so I had to do a whole post about Daisy and Intouch’s language nuance in ONE SCENE in SCOY in order to explain what was going on in just 3 sentences. The translator even copped up to how complicated it was.

That’s just how it is sometimes with language. There is too much nuance. There actually is no way to do a direct translation.

Sometimes subbers or sub teams do put in comments saying this kind of thing. The Stay subber for Kingdom LW on Viki is hilarious. And do you any of you remember... who was it? PinkMilk? Back in the day, who did 2 Moons grey for us? What a HOOT those subs were. I kinda LOVE getting little footnotes on language and personal commentary. But I’m warped. Where was I?

For Semantic Error there was much discussion over the yaja time scene. (This is the beginning of ep 7, drinking together in the bar after hours right before the BIG kiss).

Viki translated it as “let’s be frank.” But actually yaja time is more complicated than that since it involves linguistic register shifting and role reversals. It allows the younger person to be more frank (and impolite) without consequences... or supposedly without them.

I hope you can see how this is also an issue for idioms, puns, word play, sarcasm, and humor. The translators may have English as a second language, or be translating from their second language (so the may know one idiom but not a good English one to translate into). Also the country they live in/are originally from influences them and how they translate.

Sub Challenge #2 - Platform Philosophy

The platform’s source country may make a difference in its “house rules” and subbling policy. Viki is a Japanese company, YouTube a US one, and GaGa comes out of Taiwan. But how they source subs also makes a difference. Is the subber a volunteer, a team, hired by the studio, or hired by the platform?

So Viki (mostly) does subs by volunteer teams, this means certain things are mutually agreed upon, they try to make their subs less open to interpretation but it means they can flatline, getting kind of muted. In other words their subs in English can come off as bland and businesslike - subs by committee. Also they are usually in a rush to get them uploaded fast, and can be haphazard. They had access to a lot of Korean and Japanese subbers, but not so many from other languages.

GaGa either buys ready subbed, handles them in house, or hires professionals, which means (mainly) one person is doing most of the subs for that one show. Like a translator hired to do a novel. Which means that person’s voice style will permeate their subs. Also any chronic mistakes or non-standard choices they make will carry through. You can notice this if the subber has a tick (something they never learned correctly in English).

So, for example, I think there is basically one eng subber for GMMTV who cannot let go of pluralizing the word “works.” As in “I have to go do the works now.” I mean, it’s awful cute but also, hot tip, we never say that in English (outside of ladies doing “good works” in Victorian London). They occasionally do “childs” too. Dek dek. So cute.

A lot of Thai and Vietnamese BL is subbed by someone hired by the studio, or on staff at the studio (in house). There are even some Thai actors who helped proof their show’s eng subs. Pavel is rumored to have helped with 2 Moons 2, and, of course there’s this gorgeous man:

This is why there are indie subbers who have fans, who follow them around and tip them and watch everything they translate, because the LIKE the subs.

One of my favorites is irozuku.

Sub Challenge #3 - Registers

How to translating honorifics, shifting pronouns, and polite particles from a language that has them to one that doesn’t?

This is a big one for many Asian languages into English. Since English no longer has registers (we used to, see thee/thou), but most Asian languages do have them (at least formal and informal registers if not more). Registers are indicated by the use of honorifics and polite particles, but also by use of slang and rude words, changing pronouns and titles/modes of address, and grammatical arrangements.

Base level explanation of registers for English only speakers:

Think about someone using baby talk and how different that is from “normal” English. Now imagine it’s not just for babies, that you have one way of speaking for someone older than you, another for someone younger or equal; sometimes one mode if you are female, and another if you are male; one if if you are with your parents’ generation, and another if you are meeting royalty; one way of speaking in business or with professors and another when you are home or with friends.

Viki seems to just translate all honorifics (from Japan to Korea to Thai to...) to the person’s first name in English. So if the boy calls his older lover phi or P’Dean, Viki just always writes Dean. If he calls him sempai, sensei, sunbae, hyung, hia, whatever... Viki has just unilaterally decided to make it the first name. Which is very odd for Japan in particular, where first names are almost never used.

(I actually really LOVE the translator of Love By Chance on YT, they left many of the particles and honorifics in, so you can read them and start to learn.)

As a result, unless it’s a plot point they don’t both to explain that register shifting is occurring, and even then... you kinda gotta know what you’re listening for.

So like sunbae versus hyung in Semantic Error is a big deal. (And if there is any sluttier execution in existence than JaeYoung’s yaja time hyung to SangWoo I need a link right TF NOW, for science.) But unless you’re hearing/notice SangWoo call JaeYoung sunbae the whole time and then drop to hyung only at moments of key significance/emotion, you don’t realize that hyung is important or why.

In Love by Chance the subber chose to explain Ae’s use of Koon Chai* for Pete, thus saving us all from confusion, but in KinnPorsche they chose not to explain Khun Nu for Tankhun and just look what happen to my inbox!

* Khun Chai’s a bit like Little Prince, or the UK’s old fashioned Young Master. Also Ae add’s Ai to the front which means equal/friend/peer but also is a bit rude and casual. So he amended a formal title with an informal honorific.

Translators have to decide whether to go for accuracy or precision or a compromise between the two. And they’re given like one sentence or so to explain themselves if it’s a plot point. See challenge #1, that’s not enough space.

Sub Challenge #4 - Profanity Censorship

Possibly not “exactly” censorship but basically certain platforms, distributors, web hosts, searching platforms, and integration software programs come loaded with (or subject to) profanity (AKA modesty) crawlers. I’m only familiar with the USA ones but one of the things they hunt for is... you guessed it, swear words.

Now these can crawl captions that are soft subbed (uploaded as a separate file) but not (really) those that are hard subbed (encoded as part of the image). They are looking for bad/blue language, and they find it. They were designed (originally/ostensibly) to catch porn and sex work (*clutches pearls* protect the children!) and not for moral reasons but for in-country (and intrastate) compliance reasons (the platform doesn’t want to be sued, so many platforms police themselves *waves at google*), but are now actually being used to find unlicensed IPs (the platform doesn’t want to be sued).

Did I mention the suing part?

Here on Tumblr you can imagine this as just like the tagging wars. The crawler has a list of keywords and they just flag up anything that triggers them.

The product (video) is “punished” for its infraction in various different ways (depending on the platform);

On YT, for example, a video found to contain swear words can be flagged with a notification for contestation (channel has to take action within a certain time frame), or the whole channel could get removed, or that one video could get blocked until fixed, etc... resulting in major loss of revenue.

Some BLs will simply have a few episodes behind an 18+ mature rating (the kind you have to click on, Cutie Pie did this) to avoid issues with visual content. But that can detrimentally impact your add revenue, and sponsorship deals. (Watches certain brands clutch their pearls.)

But for subs?

It’s a hell of a lot easier just to not use the word fuck. It’s just one word, after all.

Now, I would expect a platform like GaGa that specializes in high heat content just not to care much. But they also might want to be careful of pissing off host countries, and subs are easier to crawl than imagery, so they might just have a house policy in place (style sheet) not to bother with bad language, too much of a hassle for not enough reward.

For example, I’m sure as shit not tagging this mf post with “profanity” “censorship” or even “YouTube” because i don’t want this post to be flagged or attract the wrong attention.

Sub Challenge #5 - The Pay

I don’t talk about this because I don’t know any subbers personally, either pros or fans. I do number a few literary translators among my friends but it’s materially different in the publishing industry. Some discussion here.

(source)

#bl caption #kdrama caption #linguistic registers #thai language #korean language #cutie pi #semantic error #love by chance #aepete #GaGaOOLaLa #Cutie Pie #Cutie Pie the series #thai honorifics #korean honorifics #KinnPorsche #rakutan viki #viki #2 moons #2 moons 2

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taylortruther · 3 years ago

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I completely agree that you need to be media literate or read or not accept someone's version of events. IPV cases are very difficult to try out, so I'm neutral on this case because I wasn't involved, but I really respect your opinion Ray (if this question bothers you, I understand I promise you don't need to answer!) How do you feel confident that you know more than the jury?

(Again all due respect xx)

---

well the whole trial was televised, so we do have most of the information the jury does. that said, i didn't watch it, i read summaries as well as breakdowns of evidence in a few different places. and what i learned is that a lot of evidence that depp's team blocked is imo totally damning: there were texts (blocked as hearsay), medical records, therapy records, etc. where people present in their relationship admitted that johnny hit her on multiple occasions.

this is evidence that is publicly available on the internet (however, it is hard to find unless you choose to wade into the mess) but was not provided to jurors, or televised in any way, and imo it would have changed the outcome. this is the type of evidence i would hope amber could share with a judge if she appealed - but i'm not sure if this would be allowed because you aren't allowed to submit new evidence during appeal; however, i'm not sure if that affects evidence that was brought to trial but not allowed to be shown to jury.

it's also what makes the arguments of "i watched the whole trial, i know what i'm talking about!" fall completely flat to me. the trial didn't include all available evidence. plus, court television is biased - commentators have biases, and networks may rely on viewership to gain money for their parent companies. (court tv itself is owned by timewarner cable.) watching it on youtube or tiktok puts you at the mercy of that youtuber's biases with editing and commentary as well. simply watching the case at home may be unreliable due to that alone.

also, this sounds glib, but i've been part of a jury in a civil case (it wasn't ipv but it was an ambiguous case with lots of gray area) and jurors can be foolish. they can be ignorant, they bring in their biases, and they can have bad judgment, even after being carefully selected by both legal teams.

it's also a well-known understanding that juries are often swayed by the theatrics of court. that's why johnny wanted it televised and also why (i assume) he wanted it in front of a jury in the first place. judges are harder to fool, as lawyers can't do their songs and dances when there's no jury involved.

intimidating witnesses, being nasty/cruel to people on the stand, being dramatic when discussing evidence... this is pretty normal in court cases. and it's far, far worse in ipv cases because lawyers will seek to discredit abuse victims openly in order to sway the jury.

when i was on a jury, the plaintiff won, which i felt was deserved based on the legal facts of the case. but the way they and their legal team conducted themselves in court was really nasty. they exaggerated injuries while in court, had hired scammy doctors to charge insane amounts of money to win in the lawsuit, and their legal team made snide remarks to the defendant, presented evidence in condescending/dramatic ways, etc.

when i brought this up to some jurors (kind of as gossip, like "ugh can you believe how annoying that lawyer is?") they didn't pick up on it. what felt like an obvious, almost scripted theatrical performance, came across as completely genuine to others. it was a total mindfuck.

also, the depp-heard jury wasn't sequestered! that's INSANE to me. it was also not balanced (as it had more men than women)! these things factor in.

#edited 6/8 about appeal info

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tamabbyboi · 4 years ago

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All is Fair in Love and War

Chapter 5- He's like a giant angry puppy

series masterlist

main masterlist

Don't forget to read the fun facts at the bottom!

Taglist form or you can send me an ask or pm!

A/N: I like this chapter a lot solely because of the conversation between y/n and Bakugou I have been waiting to write that this whole time lmao it was one of the first ideas for this smau that I had. Also sorry that this took a little longer than usual, ADHD brain go brr. Also I made a lot of edits to the masterlist post cause I kinda hated the banner for it before and now it's colorful! N e wayz as always I really hope that you enjoy this chapter!

Series Summary: l/n y/n is a variety youtuber and streamer who makes all kinds of content ranging from makeup tutorials to baking videos to commentary. They are a part of the wildly popular streamer house/squad UA. What happens when UA merges with their long-time friends the Bakusquad and gains 6 new members? What happens when a certain angry pomeranian is roomed next to someone with no concept of self preservation who finds joy in provoking said angry pomeranian? Love, probably.

Warnings: cursing

Fun Facts:

The memes used in the conversation between y/n and Bakugou are recycled from when I made them to annoy my friends and actually spoke to them only using those memes for a full 24 hours, if you ever wonder where I get the ideas for this shit it's from me being just as annoying in real life

When Bakugou read the texts saying to ask out and kiss y/n he was blushing like a mad man

Bakugou secretly likes being annoyed by y/n, he secretly likes the attention

Most people in the house are trying to avoid this situation as much as possible, not wanting to be involved with anything that could set off Bakugou

I am about to make a few posts with all the reaction memes I've used so far so that y'all can download them. I've only seen a few people do this with their smau's and as a reaction meme collector I wish more did. They'll be linked in the masterlist

Also please ignore the like, retweet, and comment counts they aren't important I kinda just keyboard smashed to get them, dates aren't important either

Download reaction memes used in this chapter here and the 80s memes here

Taglist: @random-ass-shit-reblogged @fucktheworlddude @zyxys1 @tati-the-fangirl @insomniacwreck @sorrowfulfragmentation @the-fandoms-georgie @daydaydayz @lunamoonbby @captaincyberqueen @tanakasprayer

#bnha x reader #mha x reader #bakugou x reader #bakugou smau #bnha smau #mha smau #bakugou x reader smau #bakugou x self insert #bakugou x y/n #bakugou x you #anime smau #bakugou social media au #bnha x reader smau

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ofcowardiceandkings · 3 years ago

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I think you mentioned listening to podcasts? Do you have any favorites to reccommend? I've run out of content :(

that i do !

im not entirely sure what kind of podcast you'd be interested in but i'll throw out a few of the goodies in my huge library of stuff , i'll miss out a few of the HUGE podcasts that have been all over tumblr though

a LOT of it is true crime or human interest stuff , or history because im nerd ,, and a few of these dont have nearly enough attention so [shrug] i'll try to keep this short i guess lol this isnt EVERYTHING ive got in my library or listened series' by any measure

i AM gonna pop a shout to both Stuff You Missed in History Class and Stuff You Should Know from iHeartRadio because their HUGE archives have kept me from losing my mind many times over , and they cover a wide range of both important and wacky topics

BomBARDed (ongoing) this is the only fiction podcast i have happening right now really but its DAMN GOOD ONE .... it's an actual-play D&D 5E podcast in the DMs own musically-inspired world, focussed on a group of multiclass bards going to music school !! and all players (+DM) are members of the Texas band Lindby !! and they actually use and play music in the show with one original song an episode !! Kyle's worldbuilding and storycraft are truly incredible, and (Nick) Goodrich, (also Nick) Spurrier, and Ali's characters are in depth and interesting as well as an absolute powerhouse :') i actually made a piece for its first fanzine, Bardic Dreaming, which published earlier this year and is free to view now, all the players and the community are super wholesome its just very good overall 💙

History & Humans;

Fall of Civilisations (ongoing) legit one of my favourite podcast finds, im so glad my youtube autoplayed one of these ... it took me like 2 hours to realise it was 1) not the same as what was playing before and 2) had been on for 2 hours and wasnt near finished lmao. anyway, this is a series by historical fiction writer Paul Cooper, and is honest to all thats good one of the best documentary series ive encountered in years - and ive consumed a LOT of documentaries. it covered the downfall of various civilisations through history, and the episodes run from an hour to FOUR hours depending on the topic. its so chill to listen to and just get done, but over the pandemic all of the episodes have been given full movie-quality video versions too on youtube if youre more of a visual person.

Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast (on series break) yeah that says that lol ... its a SUPER niche topic but its very interesting and treated very well despite being kind of comical at times, the hosts are just naturally funny lol ... it delves around from the history of cannibalism in whole regions to specific incidents as recently as the 1970s, and of course the first episode is about the Donner Party, and it covers things ive never heard of despite being kind of important ?? anyway Alix and Carmella are good eggs

Sawbones (ongoing) i probably dont need to mention much here other than say that Justin and Sydnee saved me from being SO BORED sooo often, the history of medicine is wacky as hell and its what most of my history GCSE was on so [shrugs]

Cautionary Tales (on series break) this was a wild-card find lol ... it's by Tim Harford "the undercover economist" who writes for the Financial Times, and its topics kind of weave modern topics and science with how to learn from historical errors ... its a bit weird but well worth a go, also each series has a few celebrity guest voice actors which is pretty awesome

Ephemeral (ongoing) this is a very strange but thought provoking series about sounds and other things just barely saved. topics include the last castrato, the hello girls, hand-stamped records, the spread of kīkā kila music, and acoustic fossils of wild places.

Neat! The Boozecast (ongoing) history and bartending whats not to like lol ... hosted by Teylor Smirl and now their dad Tommy, they're just digging around in how important booze is to human culture

True Crime (white collar and weirdness);

Swindled (ongoing) this is an amazing show full stop. A Concerned Citizen details some of the most impactful and unruly things to happen in white collar and corporate crime. very factually accurate but given the sheer bullshit of the topics the deadpan snarking is [chefs kiss] absolutely warranted ..

American Scandal (on series break) this one is a series within a series type, and spends a few episodes at a time poking holes in some of America's biggest scandals, from a dramatised but fact-based point of view. such as what the hell was going on with Enron, how big tobacco was forced to own up to covering its own ass, how Iran-Contra happened, etc. it also now has a sister show called British Scandal, which does the same thing for British cases but with a slightly different format.

Missing in Alaska (finished) this was a fascinating series, a deep dive into what happened to two US government officials who disappeared on a small chartered flight in Alaska in 1972. it goes some really strange places, but it actually turned up a lot of previously unknown information through the audience. John Walczak's new series in a new feed is Missing on 9/11 which looks into what happened to Dr Sneha Philip.

Pretend (ongoing) Host Javier Leiva holds interviews with anyone living a lie, or who have been touched by them. con artists, snake oil salesmen, former cult members, catfishing victims, anyone and everyone.

Power: The Maxwells (finished) hosted by journalist Tara Palmeri, the story of media tycoon Robert Maxwell from nothing to empire to mysterious death and the scandals uncovered after he was gone.

Lets Talk About Sects (ongoing) Sarah Steele covering cults from around the world, in particular those in Australia - where she is from. She often has former members on the show to share their stories, and share knowledge of how they left. each story has the relevant content warnings at the start of each episode.

Brainwashed (finished) investigation of the CIA's covert mind control experiments, centred on the experiments performed at a hospital in Montreal, and its cultural impact.

Dr Death (2 series finished) two series investigating huge cases of fraud and medical malpractice, and how they were brought to a stop. series 1 covers Dr Duntsch and his horribly butchered neurosurgery, series 2 covers Dr Fata and his fraudulent cancer clinic

The Immaculate Deception (finished) untangling the weird and disturbing fertility fraud of Dr Jan Karbaat, who fathered children himself through his fertility clinic, and the impact of his deception. later episodes also touch on other similar cases.

True Crime (Violent/General);

The Casual Criminalist (ongoing) Simon Whistler of-the-many-youtube-channels cold reads a script about the case of the day, with some of his daft commentary thrown in.

Southern Fried True Crime (ongoing) Crimes from the American South hosted by Erica Kelley, she puts all the facts out there but refreshingly for true crime she doesnt hesitate to tell you if she thinks someone is human garbage lol

They Walk Among Us (ongoing) probably one of the most popular UK crime podcasts, very measured and well put together, not weird or annoying about it either.

All Crime No Cattle (ongoing, feed slowed down for now) specifically about crimes from Texas, hosted by Erin and Shay, they're very sensitive hosts and a lot of the cases they cover shed light on why the Texas criminal system is how it is or show an impact at a national level

Canadian True Crime (ongoing) Canadian crime from an Aussie who's lived there for a decade, Kristi is again a sensitive and measured host covering some important topics

True Crime (Violent/Deep Dive);

Hitman (finished) journalist Jasmyn Morris digs around in the sticky tangle around a book published by fringe publisher Paladin Press, and its apparent use as a blueprint in the killing of a mother, her friend and her 8 year old boy for financial gain.

Camp Hell: Anneewakee (ongoing) this series is exploring how a wilderness camp "correctional facility" was endorsed by the Georgia care and juvenile reform system, despite widespread abuses and shady practices the whole time. warning for csa and child cruelty throughout.

True Crime Bullshit (on series break) this one is a huge huge rabbithole but a very interesting one where the host Josh Hallmark has spent years digging into the life and potential crimes of Israel Keyes. Keyes is often mentioned as a serial killer with no pattern, but in picking it apart thats not quite true, and has sparked some re-evaluations of missing persons cases and stumbling upon information the FBI has redacted organically. there's also a series in the middle looking into the crimes of Kelly Cochran

Forgotten: Women of Juárez (finished) this series looks into the huge numbers of missing women of Ciudad Juárez, the strange circumstances surrounding them, and the potential cover-ups and corruptions on both sides of the border, trying to give a voice to all of the forgotten women and girls and their families without answers. the series itself is finished, but a spanish language edition is being released every week now.

aaaaaand i'll call it there before i list everything lol, i hope you find something to plug your boredom hole with !!

#audio #rory's ramblings #podcasts #asks #anon #long post

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amazingphanisnotonfire-imagines · 4 years ago

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Jason//don’t blame me for falling

Request: Can I request a jason/reader where Polly is jealous of the reader because she's dating Jason and she tries to break up both of them up but the bulldogs and the vixens confront Polly and tells her to back off because the reader and jason are end game and can the reader also be co-captain and Jason Captain of the bulldogs and can the reader being bestfriends with Cheryl! And thank you btw I love your writing!!!!

hey! i hope everyone is having a good day!! i don’t really get/have a lot of jason imagines so this was super fun to write. title is from harry styles’ ‘to be so lonely’. i hope you like this!! k, byeeee

Polly Cooper has done some things in her time. She’s lied, stole and caused more drama than you can wave a commentary youtube channel at.

But this time, she’s gone too far.

You knew she was jealous when you and Jason started dating. It was understandable, they’d dated and he’d essentially broken up with her for you. But thats as far as it went. There was never any cheating or lying involved, and Polly was your friend...sort of.

But everyone could see that Jason was miserable with Polly, whether that was her fault or not, nobody knew. But when your friends saw you and Jason talking to each in the corridor. When Cheryl would invite you over to hang out after school and she’d find you with Jason instead of getting a snack like you’d told her, everyone knew it was inevitable.

The captain of the football team and the co-captian of the cheerleaders...it’s just destiny. Especially if they’d grown up together. Especially if your best friend was his sister. It was bound to happen eventually, it was just a matter of waiting for the timing to be right.

And eventually, after years of waiting and pining and staring longingly at each other...it happened.

You went to a party together like you always did on a Friday night. You snuck both Cheryl and Jason out of their house with a little help from the Vixens and Bulldogs and then you were off to Hayley Grey’s party!

There, the two of you drank a little too much (it was for a good reason, Jason was upset about his very messy breakup and the fact that Polly now hated him and you, even though you weren’t even together then) and by the end of the night you’d played a very drunk game of truth or dare, made out in the bath tub, confessed your undying love for each other and then fell asleep in the back garden.

You were woken up the next day by Hayley’s dad shouting at the two of you to get off the freshly mowed lawn otherwise he’d call the police and the neighbourhood watch. You’d grabbed Cheryl, ran past Hayley being scolded by her mom and went back to the Blossom’s.

Once you got there, Mr and Mrs Blossom were stood outside the gate with their arms crossed and scowls on their faces, and stood next to them was your parents, also looking more than annoyed.

The three of you had been grounded for three weeks, but it was worth it.

Without that party you and Jason would still just be friends, so you silently thanked Hayley Thomson and her parents, while you and Jason stood beside each other, your fingers still intertwined as your parents shouted at the three of you.

And the rest as they say, is history...

Or at least thats what you thought they’d say.

But this is real life and nothing is ever that easy.

Because yes, for the rest of the weekend you were happy. Texting each other in secret with hidden phones the two of you had gotten ages ago so you could continue to talk to each other.

You told your friends, he told his and they were so happy.

Cheryl the most because it meant she didn’t have to listen to you mope about Jason whenever he was with someone that wasn’t you, or listen to Jason try to subtly mention you in conversations that related to you in no way, and failing.

Everyone was happy.

But by Monday morning, word had gotten around and one person wasn’t happy.

Polly Cooper. The older and arguably more annoying sister of the Cooper children. She’s always been a little wary of you, you did hang around with her boyfriend a lot and she’d heard the bets about how long it would take for you to get together.

But when Jason broke up with her, that was it.

Even though you two didn’t get together until like three weeks after they broke up so you don’t really know what she was complaining about.

She had a list on enemies and you were number one, Jason followed closely at two and then Cheryl was three, just because.

Her hatred started off slow. She would glare at the two of you whenever you walked past her. Then there were the whispers, laughter and of course the name calling, which then bizarrely evolved to middle school-esque notes passed during class that made you roll your eyes and Jason laugh at the crude drawings.

“Do I really look like this?” He asks, holding up the latest note that has been shoved through his locker.

“Hmm.” You think for a few seconds, glancing between him and the paper. The hair’s the same colour, but apart from that, “nah.” You shrug and he nods, looking at the drawing one last time before throwing it in the bin. “You’re much more attractive.” You say, a smile tugging at your lips as you lean over the lunch table to kiss him.

“Slut!” Polly shouts from across the cafeteria and you pull away reluctantly, both you and Jason sharing a look of annoyance.

“Do you want me to talk to her?” Cheryl asks from beside you, too busy staring at her phone to actually pay attention to anything around her.

“Its fine.” You say. “I’ve got it.” You turn in the direction of Polly and flip her off, a sweet smile adorning your lips and your friends laugh loudly. “This is the 21st century, there’s no such things as sluts Polly.”

“You’re the exception to that.” She replies.

“Well done Polly. That was actually really good for you.” You compliment. “You keep working on your insults and come back to me when you have something better than slut. Oh and how did you get in my boyfriends house to put your bra in his bed? We’ve spent hours trying to figure it out and nothing.” The room goes quiet at your revelation and Polly glances at the table, trying to regain her composure.

She looks back up a few seconds later and the usual smug grin settles on her face.

“I must have forgot it the last time I was there, which was what Jason? Last night?”

“I don’t think so Polly because I think I would have noticed you there.” You reply and hushed gasps and giggles echo around the room.

She shuts up after that, thankfully letting you eat the rest of your lunch in peace.

You know it won’t last, but you’ll take the small victory.

----

“Did she seriously put a bra in his room?” Cheryl asks as the two of you walk out of the changing rooms and towards the front doors.

Vixen and Bulldog practice both finish at the same time so the two of you wait by the doors for Jason and the rest of your friends.

“Yep.” You reply, popping the p and she looks at your amused. “I genuinely don’t know how she’s getting in there. Jason thinks she never left, she’d living in the walls.” You giggle.

“But why though? I would never leave any of my bras in anybody’s room. They’re all too pretty.”

“I agree.” You nod. “I dunno. She’s been trying to break up us since we got together. She’s spread rumors about both of us, left bras in his bed and faked texts between the two of them.”

“Well thats annoying.”

“If anything it’s just sad.” You sigh. “I kind of feel sorry for her.”

“What? Why?”

“I dunno. I mean, her boyfriend did break up with her and then start dating his best friend three weeks later. He was miserable but it still doesn’t make it any less upsetting for her.” You frown as you speak.

Despite being together for over 5 months now, you still can’t help shake the feeling that maybe you’re in the wrong. You don’t want to upset anyone, it just so happens that you’ve been in love with Jason Blossom for as long as you can remember.

“Well, you’re a bigger person than me.” Cheryl shrugs, looking around the empty corridor. “Where the hell is he, this bag is heavy.” She complains and unlocks her phone, sending another text to Jason and huffing loudly when she doesn’t get an answer immediately.

You laugh and go to rearrange your bag on your shoulder when your realize that you’ve forgotten it.

“Shit, Cheryl. I left my bag.” You say and she rolls her eyes.

“How do you forget a bag that big?” She asks and you shrug. “Go on, I’ll wait.”

“Thank you Cheryl, you’re the best.” You smile sweetly before rushing back towards the gym and changing rooms.

All the way back you feel like you’re being watched.

It’s not an intense feeling, its just makes you a little bit more aware of your surroundings, a little bit more jumpy when one of the janitors drops a mop on the floor. You look over your shoulder a little more often when you searching for your bag, and when you finally find it you walk a little quicker out of the room and into the corridor.

You start the slow walk back to the front of the school, deciding to keep Cheryl waiting for a bit longer. And it’ll be even better if Jason is stood with her, both of the Blossom’s annoyed.

But just when you think you’re safe, Polly appears and you can already feel the headache starting. You force a smile and stare straight at her, trying to feign niceness.

“Hi Polly. Great practice wasn’t it?” Thats right, she follows you literally everywhere, even to practice, despite not listening to anything you or Cheryl says.

“Stay away from my boyfriend.” She replies and your eyes widen, now fully invested in wherever this conversation is going.

“Excuse me?” You blink.

“You heard me. Stay away from my boyfriend.” She moves closer to you, effectively backing you into a corner and the only things thats keeping space between the two of you is your gym bag...of course it is.

“Polly, he isn’t your boyfriend anymore. He broke up with you, remember?”

“Remember?” She laughs bitterly. “How could I forget. You stole the love of my life away from me.”

“I di-”

“You’ve been planning this haven’t you. I mean I get it. Your friends with him for ages and then it slowly develops into something more. I understand that. You know, he always told me I had nothing to be worried about whenever I asked about you. That was a lie wasn’t it? Because here you are, happy and in love while I’m alone. But remember this. He chose me first. He was your friend for years and he never wanted you until now.”

“Look Polly, I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I don’t want you to say anything. I want you to shut up, and listen.” She says, backing you further and further into the corner.

“Okay.”

“I will get Jason back. Slowly but surely, he’ll realize he made a mistake and that he’s supposed to be with me. You’re only supposed to be his friend, nothing mor-”

“Is everything okay?” A voice asks.

Polly pauses and both of you move to look who the voice belongs to. A small smile twitches at your lips when you see your friends from both the Vixen’s and the Bulldogs.

“Yeah.” Polly says through gritted teeth. “Everything’s fine, isn’t it Y/n?”

“Are you sure? Because from where we’re standing, it looks like you were threatening Y/n. Doesn’t it?” Juliet continues and looks around at the rest of the group. They all nod, glaring at Polly.

“Jason’s chosen who he wants. Do everyone a favour and back off.” Cheryl says in a cold tone.

The group of Vixen’s and Bulldogs part to let her through, and as soon as she’s at the front, she’s backing Polly into the wall. You quickly side-step to avoid being squashed and watch as Cheryl continues to subtly threaten Polly.

Its not how you would prefer to tackle the issue, but she ignores everything else, so maybe Cheryl will do the trick. You don’t know for sure, what you do know is you’re very thankful to have friends that find you when your in trouble, even if they do want to go home.

Cheryl finishes her threats with a very sweet ‘got that?’, and even you’re a little scared as to how she can change her tone and entire demeanor so quickly. She then grabs your hands and pulls, the two of you walking towards the front doors, your friends following all talking loudly.

You see Jason stood by the door, pacing up and down while he frantically texts. Once he hears noise he looks up and the worried expression disappears as soon as he sees you.

“You okay?” Jason asks, his eyebrows kitting together as he takes in your shaken appearance.

“I am now.” You reply, sending him a small, but relieved smile. He nods, but you can tell he doesn’t believe you.

He knows when you’re lying, he knows everything about you, but he also knows you’ll tell him later if you want to. He knows right now he just needs to see you smile properly.

“Pops?” He suggests and slings an arm over your shoulder, the two of you set off in a slow walk out of the doors and towards his car. “We can split a milkshake.”

“Why can’t I get my own?” You ask, feigning annoyance.

“Because in all our years of friendship, when have you ever gotten your own milkshake?” He replies.

“Never.” You sigh.

“Exactly.” He nods. “Just because we’re together doesn’t change anything.”

“Thats fine by me.” You grin.

#jason blossom #jason blossom imagine #jason blossom x reader #jason blossom x you #jason blossom x y/n #riverdale #riverdale imagine

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agent-cupcake · 4 years ago

Note

Cupcake!! Do you listen to music while writing? If yes what kind?

Yes! I absolutely do! I really love music, I’d say it’s secondary to literature as far as my choice of creative input so this is also just my personal recommendations regarding music as a whole with explanations and unwanted commentary because I’m dumb and this is one of my favorite things to talk about.

Firstly, my ongoing(ish) story Beastie and the Bard is musically driven so here are some songs I have on my playlist for that. I tend towards pieces that are melancholy but melodic. Entrancing, perhaps.

Lolita by Ennio Morricone - Contextually, I realize this is a bizarre (even tone deaf) pick given the source material, but... Whatever. This song, in general, just reminds me of Dimitri. Although a heavy, militaristic march might suit him better, the heart rending sound of this song just works for me when I think of him. The piano sets the tone immediately, lingering on some notes in a wistful, sad way. And it is sad, the cello and flute join in to make that clear. But, at a certain point, the instruments begin to dance around together, opening up and almost seeming like they want to resolve the song and create something happier, or at least something bittersweet, only to be drawn back into the uneasy tragedy of the main motif. I dunno, for me, it just absolutely aches like betrayal.

Shallan’s Lullaby by treefin / Black Piper - This music box rendition of Shallan’s Lullaby from Stormlight was the melodic inspiration for my bootleg lullaby that reader writes for Dimitri (perhaps not the first part as much as the way it shifts around 1:07). It’s haunting.

Isabella’s Lullaby from The Promised Neverland - Pretty self explanatory, I think. This one hits the sweet spot of beautiful and sad, from the harp to the vocals it just fits.

Howl’s Moving Castle Merry Go Round of Life original and the cover by the Grissini Project - Both versions are incredibly special pieces of music and I’d be surprised if you hadn’t heard this theme before, very good for the more whimsical parts of the story (not that there’s gonna be any more of that).

Shadows of the Lowlands from Xenoblade 2 - While I’m about to recommend this entire soundtrack, this vocal piece is stunning. This guy’s vocals, no joke, sound like a Tolkien Elf. We Are the Chosen Ones is done by the same vocal group and soloist so it’s also making this list although the tone is def a bit different.

Okay now I’m just gonna point out my favorite soundtracks. For all of these, I have COMPLETELY LEGALLY downloaded most of these from other sites, I’m linking youtube just based on superficial searches to hopefully give you a taste and maybe encourage you to NOT BREAK THE LAW and acquire these soundtracks on your own

Fire Emblem Three Houses - This is obvious and I’m sure you’ve all heard it, but go have a listen if you haven’t. but first, is anyone else disappointed about the Three Houses official release soundtrack? Considering the delay I guess I kinda expected more. Granted, the soundtrack IS phenomenal. Not so much in its entirety, which is emblematic of the game as a whole in some ways, but the set pieces? Unforgettable. This soundtrack is a case study in how powerful a small pool of musical motifs and set-up/pay-offs can be. The little promise of God Shattering Star at the very beginning of the game, Those Who Sow Darkness giving a taste of Shambhala, and then the use of the main melodies of Season of Warfare (Main Theme) and Song of the Nabateans. For the most part, both melodies are used in dramatic songs, creating this unbreakable musical connection between Edelgard and Byleth. Or, if you think about it, Edelgard and the Rhea. For example: the thunder version of Funeral of Flowers doesn’t have the game’s theme, but the rain version does (those two songs were WRITTEN to be layered I stg). And then there’s that somewhat bastardized version of the main theme in At What Cost, highlighting the intended twisting of the usual heroic take on that melody. I do have a potentially unpopular opinion, however. The Apex of the World is boring and tonally dissonant with the final battle in Azure Moon. A lot of people really like Edelgard-Dimitri likes Edelgard! There’s very little heroism in that mission, at least to me, and a song like At What Cost would have fit SO MUCH BETTER. I mean, that is also Edelgard’s theme so hearing that being twisted up into this decidedly more dark song would be thematically appropriate to her ultimate choice. The title also just seems like it suits her and Dimitri. Edelgard claims that she has weighed the cost of war, she believes she is capable of taking on the cost of victory without really knowing what it would be. Dimitri's whole story was him trying to find revenge no mater what the cost and now that he has it, he’s fully understanding what it will cost him. I understand why they would use the traditional hero song to cap the route, but it seems weird that they’d be willing to subvert so many other aspects of tradition while holding to that for a song that, in my opinion, is the least interesting of all the final battle songs. As you can probably tell, At What Cost is a song that is very tonally inspiring to me. I also love Funeral of Flowers (Thunder and Rain separately and layered together), The Long Road, and Roar of Dominion for getting hyped to write.

Final Fantasy VII Remake - Ever since I got this soundtrack, I’ve been addicted. I really don’t have much to say on this one other than just to recommend you give it a listen if you’re even passingly interested in orchestral video game music. There’s some misses for me (specifically the Wall Market stuff and anything that gets into the weird electric guitar/techno stuff) but it’s overwhelmingly fantastic and can work for active listening music and for background music while you write. I’d follow up recommend you get ahold of the Acoustic Arrangements soundtrack. I can’t link you on this one but it’s worth the extra legwork to procure it COMPLETELY LEGALLY.

Final Fantasy Distant Worlds - I was actually able to see the Distant World’s tour when it swept through Houston and at that point I had no idea what the fuck a Final Fantasy was. At all. However, seeing One Winged Angel live is not something I will ever forget. Ever. This soundtrack is great for some background listening and although it is often too upbeat for my usual tastes, it’s good when I need something easier. Okay. Real talk. I was about to recommend to you a bunch of FFXIV music (the MMO), choice selections from FFXV, and try and dig up some songs that are only available in live recordings. If you like Final Fantasy music, I recommend all of these things. The games are a clusterfuck but the music is even moreso and it’s worth your time if you like this kind of thing.

Xenoblade 2 - See? Told you I was gonna recommend this. Actually, ranking wise, I would say that I like it more than Final Fantasy. This soundtrack is magical. I cannot stress that enough, there is a level of whimsy and beauty that went into this soundtrack that all at once draws upon the genre and being it’s own thing. Like, I get it, there’s a lot of misses. The electric guitar is jarring and annoying. Listen to Sea of Clouds, like, actually listen to it. Listen to Desolation. Pay attention to the motif used in connection with Elysium and then the other songs that its used in. The Power of Jin. This is a sometimes sad but mostly beautiful and whimsical soundtrack that is good for listening and for using as background music.

Xenoblade 1 - I don’t have as much to say about this one, I don’t feel as if it’s as emotionally resonant as my other recommendations. BUT it is gorgeous. The area themes are wonderful and perfect for setting tone.

Hollow Knight - Hollow Knight’s soundtrack takes one step back from the drama of the others and revels in its depressive simplicity. There are songs with a more cheerful tone, and the magical whimsy of Xenoblade 2 is very much brought to life in many of the pieces, but for the most part the soundtrack is as gorgeously melancholy as the game itself. One of my favorite things in music is when songs are given new life through new context and the White Palace --> Pale Court transition is haunting.

Diabolik Lovers - OKAY I KNOW I KNOW hear me out. This soundtrack has no right to be as gorgeous, emotional, or quality as it is. This song, Lovers, is the younger sibling of Lolita’s theme, okay? Thematically, that’s kinda hilarious, but I mean it. If you like that song, give a few of the songs from this OST a chance.

BioShock, BioShock 2, and BioShock Infinite - BioShock 1&2 are different from Infinite. A lot more grungy, a lot more angry and discordant, the strings buzz and there’s a lot more horror to it all. Infinite, on the other hand, is very pretty. Infinite’s soundtrack is about the characters and their journey and feelings. The first two game’s soundtracks are about the ruined city of Rapture. It depends on what you’re in the mood for. I write using Infinite’s music more often, but there’s pieces in the first two that capture this empty, yearning feeling that is good for setting mood.

Pathologic - “Half Life’s soundtrack directed by Genghis Khan.” It’s bizarre. It’s grungy.

Void (Typrop) - Basically the same deal. I dunno man, I like being inspired by horror.

Outlast - It’s an orchestral horror game soundtrack. Like the game itself, there’s a lot of horror movie inspiration.

Dishonored 1 and Dishonored 2 - This is mostly background music. It’s a stealth game so it’s kinda uneasy, but I think there’s something really unique. Maybe the instruments? There’s a lot of weird sounds used.

Higurashi - This is a compilation of horror themed songs from the anime soundtrack, but the VN soundtrack and the non-horror stuff is pretty good, too. Michishirube is my favorite.

Madoka Magica Rebellion - The main anime soundtrack is gorgeous. The bells, the strings, the drama... I’m recommending Rebellion specifically because it’s the more cohesive and story-driven soundtrack. This one is not as horror-ish and weird than the others, it is very beautiful and nice to listen to. Sad, in some parts, too.

Code Geass and Resurrection - Brass? Got it. Dramatic strings? Got it. Bombastic set piece songs? Triple got it. This soundtrack oozes style. In some ways, that makes it not good for writing, but in others it can. Depends on what you’re writing. I think the melodrama can be incredibly useful for getting my mind in that frenzy state.

Okay I’m done. Thank you for bearing with me.

If we’re talking what songs inspire specific things, the Ferdinand piece was accompanied by a lot of the Diabolik Lovers soundtrack and Final Fantasy. When I wrote my sad Felix piece, it was all about Hollow Knight with a spot of Bloodborne and Dark Souls.

#personal #wow it's four pm and i have done nothing with my day #what a distraction #i love music

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duhragonball · 4 years ago

Text

I think I’m just gonna ramble a bit-- nothing earthshaking-- so here’s a nice, unrelated picture of Cooler to set that up.

I managed to get through Camp Nano in April with about an hour to spare. I’m still frustrated with my pacing, because I’ve gotten pretty good at finishing the November writing goals with time to spare, but I always end up falling behind on the shorter goals I try to do during the rest of the year. July is up next, so I’m kind of hoping I can turn this around by then.

April was difficult all over, so I’m trying to use May to chill the fuck out. Somehow I find that hard to do. Like if I’m relaxing, I just get bored or feel unproductive. That’s one reason I’m writing this post. I just want to get some thoughts out of my head so I can move on.

For whatever reason, I got sucked into watching YouTube videos about the Nostalgia Critic and his various blunders from 2012 to present. That sounds pretty sad now that I write it out, because I never followed the guy that closely, so I keep forgetting the hellacious filming schedule discussed in the Change the Channel movement happened years earlier, and the movies themselves were ridiculed as debacles, so it’s not just one bad year, more like nine or ten. Anyway, watching all of this has given me some stuff to think about.

I think I first heard about the NC when he started doing that “feud” with the Angry Video Game Nerd. They did some videos together teasing a crossover, and then they finally went through with it, and it wasn’t terrible, but I had no idea who the other guy was. It was like Batman teaming up with some indie comics character you never heard of. Batman doesn’t need the rub. From the beginning, I got the sense that Nostalgia Critic was the one driving this concept. Once I heard about Channel Awesome and all these YouTube reviewers crossing over with each other, I was sure of it.

Looking back on it all, I get the sense that NC has never really had much of a creative agenda. His early work involved “reviewing” movies by playing long clips of them to recap the plot, and then making some snarky commentary. Not the worst format, except he kept getting copyright strikes from YouTube, which was why he started his own website to host his videos. Over the years, it feels like people have begun to recognize the flaw in that format. Past a point, you’re not really “reviewing” anything. It’s more like an MST3K style thing, only shorter and less authorized.

Years ago, I used to read this site called “The Agony Booth”, which sort of did the same thing but in text. Before YouTube really got going, the only way to lambast a movie or TV episode properly was to meticulously describe it in prose, with the occasional screenshot here and there. Nostalgia Critic probably represents a point where people realized they could do the same thing in video form, except it starts to cross the line from commentary to something else. Siskel and Ebert never did a blow-by-blow synopsis of a movie. Reviewers like the Agony Booth crew did, because they were often discussing old material, and couldn’t show it to you or assume that you had seen it yourself. A lot of NC’s early stuff was the same deal, where he’d recall something from his childhood and rewatch it to see how it holds up in the present. So I’m sure a lot of his content covered old, out-of-circulation things. But he’d do more recent stuff too, and the attitude surrounding YouTube at the time was that you could pretty much do whatever you wanted as long as you kept it under ten minutes.

Anyway, the Channel Awesome thing looked like an alliance of similar YouTube reviewers, and they kept appearing in each other’s stuff, and then they did the anniversary movies, which were basically “mega crossovers” with all of them appearing together in the same... story, I guess? At the time, I wrote the whole thing of as a masturbatory power fantasy. Comic books did crossovers like these all the time, and YouTube seemed to have hundreds of “reviewers” and “personalities” who would put on silly costumes and carry toy weapons like they were about to fight Thanos instead of discussing the ALF cartoon. The second Channel Awesome movie was about high fantasy tropes, and the third one was a space opera, so that seemed to support my assumption.

From watching all these videos about the movies, though, it looks more like each one was mostly about the Nostalgia Critic talking all his “friends” into another one of his kooky schemes, and they all just sort of go along with it, even though they know him to be a self-centered jerk. Then the third one ends with NC quantum-leaping out of the story itself and meeting Doug Walker, the guy who writes and plays the character. They try to sell the audience on the idea that NC had some sort of character development across the three movies, and he decides to sacrifice himself to save the day or something. This was touted as the finale for the character. Except it turned out later that Doug Walker wasn’t just playing a self-centered jerk, he really was a self-centered jerk, because he treated the others like crap during the filming and didn’t tell any of them that he was killing off their website’s top draw.

That leads into Demo Reel, the series Doug Walker introduced to fill the void. From what I’ve seen, it sure looked like he wanted/expected this to be a big hit, and he killed off his biggest meal ticket to make this happen. But everyone hated it. I think the pilot episode asks the question “What is Demo Reel?” about three times. Each time, the answer makes less and less sense. “Demo Reel” the show is about a studio named “Demo Reel”, run by Donnie DuPre, a self-centered jerk who seems to think there’s big money to be made in plagiarizing movies. The whole thing is just a flimsy plot device to explain why Doug Walker and two other actors would bother making a no-budget parody/re-telling of three Batman movies smooshed together. There’s no real-world or fictional reason for three people to do this, it’s just that Doug Walker wanted to make a YouTube video about Batman, but he didn’t want to use the NC format, and he couldn’t just talk over a Batman movie without getting in trouble with Warner Bros. And I guess just... dressing up like Batman and making jokes needs some sort of context, so that’s where the Demo Reel concept comes in.

What really annoys me is that Demo Reel has this “mockumentary” thing going on at the same time, so you end up watching their parody movie and the scenes where they make the parody movie, and you get these interview segments where they talk about talking about making the parody movie. It’s like “The Office” except every character is completely delusional. They’ve all convinced themselves that this is a really good idea, and I guess the joke is that this is a really stupid job and they must be pretty stupid to work at it.

No one knows where Demo Reel was originally headed, because it was so reviled by the audience that it got cancelled in five episodes, ending with the revelation that Donnie DuPre was the Nostalgia Critic all along, in some sort of amnesiac state. Or maybe that was the plan all along, I’m not sure which scenario would be dumber, honestly. New Coke was a sincere effort to phase out the original Coca-Cola formula, but it was such a failure that everyone thinks it was a brilliant ploy to make consumers appreciate the original. So who knows?

Anyway, this started the next phase of NC, where he would just remake scenes of whatever movie he’s covering that week, a la Demo Reel. I don’t know if that’s just a strategy to avoid YouTube copyright strikes, or a stubborn refusal to give up the core concept of Demo Reel, or what. Then he got around to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, and everyone crapped on that, big time. I haven’t seen the original movie or his “review”, but from what I gathered, Doug

a) basically did a shot-for-shot remake of the movie, only shorter and cheaper.

b) spent the whole video lambasting the movie and the band for making it.

c) offered his parody songs for sale on iTunes, calling them a “love letter to Pink Floyd.”

The big question is: Why did he put so much work into making the thing when he had so little to actually say about it? There’s no clear opinion expressed about the movie, even though the video is supposed to be a “review”. He kind of acts like he thought “The Wall” was okay, but the parody lyrics read like the awkward part of a celebrity roast. Why go to all this trouble unless you really love or absolutely despise “The Wall”?

Eventually, I started to figure out that this guy really just doesn’t have much to say. He wants to make videos, make movies, make reviews, but it doesn’t seem like there’s any real opinion or thought that he wants to express. I was watching him freak out over the credit card scene from “Batman and Robin” and thought “Are you that upset over Batman having a credit card?” That’s not even in the top twenty dumbest things in that movie. Sure, it’s worth a snide remark, but not much more than that. But he’s “doing a character”, and the NC’s whole schtick is to flip out over stuff like that.

Except it’s not a character, because NC is just Doug Walker wearing a stupid hat, right? In the movies, NC’s whole persona is that he’s a self-centered jerk who treats his friends like a personal army, and the real Doug Walker was doing the exact same thing off-camera. Donnie DuPre was another “character”, wearing a different hat, only whoops, he’s the Nostalgia Critic too. And even if he wasn’t the same guy, his persona was... you guessed it, a self-centered jerk who treats his friends like a personal army.

There was this whole era on YouTube where it seemed like all these “content creators” were trying to adopt silly gimmicks. I’m guessing the Angry Video Game Nerd started the trend, because he dressed up in a white button-down shirt with a pocket protector and glasses. He looked like a stereotypical nerd, you see. And he’d drink a particular kind of beer, and lose his temper and set Nintendo cartridges on fire, because AVGN was a character. You watch James Rolfe being himself and he’s a whole other person, always smiling and talking about horror movies and filmmaking, because that’s what the real guy is about. There’s a separation there.

I think that was the disconnect. A lot of these YouTubers saw James Rolfe playing the Nerd and just assumed the secret was to rant and rave about some topic, and he used a Nintendo Zapper to shoot a pickle monster once, so dressing up like a Power Ranger in a trenchcoat didn’t seem like a bridge too far. Well, no not if you’re trying to make a movie or tell a story. If all you want to do is talk about Star Wars, you should probably keep it simple. I think one of the consequences of Nostalgia Critic’s fall from grace is that modern YouTubers are more grounded. I’ve watched a lot of Jenny Nicholson videos and she’s pretty funny and animated, but she’s not trying to be a charicture of herself. She’s just this lady sitting on her bed surrounded by porg dolls. It works a lot better.

I used to watch the Game Overthinker unironically. Does anyone remember Moviebob? Well once upon a time he wasn’t completely bonkers. The GO series was reasonably well done and uncomplicated... until the dude started appearing on camera and introducing “characters” and storylines that killed whatever point he was trying to make in his video essays. Then I started watching him ironically, and then I sort of stopped caring about him altogether, and then he pissed away whatever goodwill he had. I can’t help but feel like he might have been better off just staying behind the camera, or if he had to be on-screen, just sit on a bed with a bunch of Mario dolls or whatever.

The fad of YouTube personality as wannabe superhero got me thinking of the whole “Mary Sue” and “self-insert” thing. They’re really poorly defined terms, and they’ve been overused in so many unfair criticisms that I don’t think they make much sense anymore. When I first got into fanfic, I saw a lot of people simply writing themselves into their stories. That’s what a self-insert was. You literally inserted yourself in the story so you could tell Wolverine to his face that his haircut looks stupid, or whatever you wanted to say to him. I always found this idea infuriating, because I know who Wolverine is, but this other guy telling him off is a complete stranger, and why should I care about him? Why should Wolverine care?

One response to that problem would be to present your self-insert like a bigger deal than you are. You could put yourself in this story and not only talk to Wolverine, but give yourself an elaborate backstory, where you’re a high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and you and Logan go way back, etc., etc. But that’s a tricky proposition, because if you’re doing it right, you’re just inventing a new character with the same name as you. Or you can overdo it and make the character too big a deal, at the risk of outshining the other characters. The Mary Sue concept originated from this, with Star Trek fanzines getting all these story submissions about young, super-talented ensigns who join the crew and immediately win over Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

The dirty little secret of character creation is that every character you write is a self-insert or an author surrogate, to some degree. You can have one that’s meant to be your alter ego, the one who’s based on you and tends to react the way you would in a similar situation. But you’re writing all the other characters too, and deciding what they think and say and do, so to a certain point they also think a lot like you do, whether you meant for them to or not. The trick is not to be super-blatant about it, or to revel in the creative freedom to break the fourth wall. Readers hate that stuff, because they don’t know you well enough to get the joke.

That’s the advice I’ve always had at the ready in case anyone ever asked me. But, watching all this stuff about the Nostalgia Critic has made me realize that it applies from the other direction. It’s very easy to say you’ve created a character, distinct from yourself, only for it to turn out to be more of a reflection of you than you intended. I can’t tell if Doug Walker is self-aware or not, but it seems like the joke with all his “characters” is that they’re extremely selfish and shallow, and yet he seems to also be selfish and shallow. So is he aware of this, and he’s trying to exaggerate his flaws for his characters? Or does he just not realize that he’s telling on himself every time he plays these roles? Or does he think everyone is selfish and shallow, and that this is just boilerplate information, like blinking and wearing shoes?

I’ll pick on myself, because it’s handier to do so. I’ve made a bunch of original characters over the years, some that were supporting players, and others who were designed to be big deals. One of my villains was this bitter misanthrope, and eventually I realized that I was a lot more like him than the outgoing group of buddies that he was trying to oppose. That hit me and I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with that ever since.

I wrote a butler in my Hellsing fic, basically an anti-Walter based on Marcus Brody from the Indiana Jones movies. He was clueless and couldn’t stand the sight of blood, and he was really old, so he told the vampires that if he ever had a heart attack and dropped dead on the job that they shouldn’t pass up the free meal. Is that me in there? I tend to think a lot about the world moving on without me, and my own obsolescence. I just didn’t think I was tapping into that when I wrote the character. I wouldn’t even bring it up, except I liked writing the guy so much, and that’s the main thing I remember about him.

A lot of my villains in Luffa are representations of things that I’d like to see punched, because Luffa is an unapologetic Mary Sue Self Insert. I made her all these other things that I’m not: brave, a woman of color, a good cook, a charismatic lover. But fuck that, this was all just a ploy to keep people from noticing any resemblance to me and my imaginary punching agenda. But the villains hold all these shitty attitudes and shitty behaviors, things which I consider to be wrong but sometimes catch myself turning a blind eye to. Jealousy, greed, fear, resentment, and so on.

You end up putting a lot of yourself into your writing, there’s really no way to avoid it. The only real trick is to disguise it a bit so it looks like a story instead of just an essay or an autobiography. I think that’s where some of the YouTube personalities got it wrong, because they would try to tell a story AND write an essay at the the same time, and that’s tough to pull off. One of the big things that came out of that whole Channel Awesome document was this problematic scene in “To Boldly Flee” where Linkara has been replaced by a cyborg duplicate, and he converts Lindsey Ellis into a cyborg, and someone hears all these suggestive noises and thinks they’re having rough sex. It’s awkward anyway you slice it, but it gets even worse because it’s basically the real Linkara and Lindsey Ellis. Their “characters” are so poorly distinguished from the real people that there’s no other way to describe it.

Also, one of the most salient points I picked up from watching all these commentary videos is that real people can’t have character arcs. You can’t just stick Filmdude and Captain Snark and Filmdudette and Movie Sniffer and The Comics Complainer all into the same scene and expect anything important to happen to any of them. They can’t learn anything or grow in any appreciable way during the story, because they’re real and the story is fictional. The only “character” to their roles are the bit where they review pop culture stuff, which might as well be non-fictional, so why bother? Even if I’m wrong, and there really is a more complete fictionalized version of everybody in the Channel Awesome Trilogy, the waters are so muddied that you can’t make sense of it.

And that’s the real danger of leaning too hard into putting a 1:1 replica of yourself into your stories. Stephen King can be a bus driver in one of his movies, and Stan Lee can be a bus driver in Avengers 3, but if Stan Lee just started kicking the shit out of Ultron it’d be confusing, especially for people who didn’t know who he was. And if Joss Whedon started kicking the shit out of Ultron, it’d be even worse, because he’s not as well-known as Stan Lee. You’re better off making up a guy like Thor or the Hulk who can do it for you, and then putting just enough of yourself into those characters that you won’t get caught.

At least, that’s how I see it.

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autumnblogs · 4 years ago

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Day 11: Melodrama

WIth Act 4 over, we’ve finished setting up the pins on the Earth Side of this story. We are now roughly one quarter of the way through the full story - and Homestuck is set up more or less in four acts, rather than in six acts as its “official” structure would suggest.

Time to start setting up the pins on the other disc.

https://homestuck.com/story/1942

But first, some more of Andrew’s prose to detail the fallout of the Sovereign Slayer’s activity. He’s been a busy man.

Also, Rose goes off the rails, but we knew that already.

This is the part of the story where Rose becomes an antagonist, in my opinion. More on that later. More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/1955

A letter from another version of Earth.

One of the very first things that we learn about Jake is that one of his all time favorite movies is Weekend at Bernie’s, an association that is part of a long list of red-herrings that link Jake up with Lord English, but of which nothing ultimately comes. It’s an association mostly because Bernie is a corpse who is also a puppet (like Doc Scratch, for example).

All that has already been pointed out by a lot of people before me, so moving on.

https://homestuck.com/story/1957

Just missed her.

https://homestuck.com/story/1993

Act 5 off to a great start, and while Karkat is in many ways a parallel to John (via their shared interests), right away, this action compares Karkat to Dave. Their reaction to being misnamed by the command prompt is pretty much identical.

https://homestuck.com/story/1994

Like I said, Karkat is pretty much immediately compared to John in terms of their shared interests, what with his Terrible Taste in Movies and his Amateur Coding.

One thing that stands out as endearing to me that I’ve probably not thought so much about before is Karkat’s practicing with his Sickle in his room. It reminds me of lightsaber wielding kids on early youtube.

https://homestuck.com/story/1995

So let’s break this and the next few pages down. Viewing the narration through the same James-Joycesque lens of “Narration is more or less identical with the characters’ thought processes,” that we have been so far, Karkat seems pretty ambivalent about existing as a troll, going as far as to describe his bad dreams as *terrible.*

Do all Trolls have dreams as bad as Karkat does? Is it a chucklevoodoos thing? Maybe it’s specifically a Karkat thing.

https://homestuck.com/story/1996

Karkat gets distracted instantly by intrusive thoughts and does something else that’s very Johnlike.

https://homestuck.com/story/1998

Aw c’mon. Early Sandler isn’t even that bad. Then again, it’s been a while since I’ve watched this one, maybe it’s worse than I remember it.

https://homestuck.com/story/1999

This section of the story is even more time-agnostic than the rest of the story, and a lot of it is told in past tense prospective action, which says to me that what we’re experiencing here is the various trolls on the meteor at the End of Act 4 collectively remembering what has taken place in the past, while the parts of this segment that are narrated in the present tense are being relayed to us via the characters in the narrative present (which is to say, the events which are being relayed to us in the panel.)

https://homestuck.com/story/2008

I wonder if Troll Will Smith is a Troll Scientologist?

https://homestuck.com/story/2010

I didn’t like the Trolls very much originally. They’re so ornery and pissy with each other all the time, with the exception of Gamzee and Tavros, but on a reread, especially keeping the things in mind that I’m keeping in mind, all of these characters are a lot more tolerable.

Using the cipher that we’ve established from reading the characters as basically attempting to perform what is culturally expected of them in the first four acts, we can immediately decode what is going on between Karkat and his friends - they are trying to be the best trolls they can be, or at least, live up to certain ideals/stereotypes the way that Dave tries to live up to the stereotype of the coolguy, or John emulates the mangrit and fatherliness and so on of his father figures.

But something is way *way* more wrong with Alternia’s role models than Earth’s.

That’s all from a Watsonian perspective. From a Doylist perspective, there are very explicit stereotypes each of these characters is designed around - commonplace annoying internet people from the ‘00s (pronounce that as Naughts).

https://homestuck.com/story/2012

There’s a lot of early installment weirdness in the first bits of Troll Stuff we get where it’s clear that Andrew was riffing and trying to find clear definitions for their relationships - it’s somewhat poorly known these days, I think, but Andrew has said in the past that he hates worldbuilding, and it kind of shows. (Did I mention that Kanaya Sollux friendship back when those two were interacting not long ago? That’s another one of those bits of early installment weirdness).

Anyway, the actual bit of early installment weirdness that I’m drawing attention to is the fact that the Subjugglators are described as being an Obscure Cult here, but later Homestuck Media (and even stuff within Homestuck, honestly) will make them out to be basically the only major aspect of being a Purple Blood.

https://homestuck.com/story/2013

Gamzee’s ignorance and his bliss are pretty much immediately linked to one another.

That said, I’m not going to dive too deep into Gamzee’s inner life. Like a lot of the trolls, in spite of his great relevance, he’s a bit of a joke character, and the joke is on us - whatever is going on inside this lad’s head is a puzzle for most of the comic.

Gamzee has a Freudian excuse in the form of his absent Lusus, which incidentally, is a parallel to Jade - the Nurture is the same, but the Nature is very differently. Unfortunately, when God was handing out Natures, he gave Gamzee one of the really bad ones, so he’s a worthless goddamn piece of shit.

https://homestuck.com/story/2024

Already into the first few troll conversations, and we’re setting up some stuff for later. Gamzee and Terezi’s very first conversation demonstrates the terrible chemistry that the two have together - Gamzee legitimately unsettles Terezi, and there’s just nothing at all she can do to bother him.

https://homestuck.com/story/2025

Sollux is probably so handy with this coding language because of his ability to hear the voices of the imminently deceased - so he can write programs that will execute along a pretty reasonable time frame.

https://homestuck.com/story/2027

Leader is a phrase that ends up being used in conjunction with Karkat a lot, and the concept of leadership is another one of those things that Homestuck Talks About but not a thing that Homestuck Is About, at least in the sense that leadership as a role is part of the comic’s broader commentary on cultural reproduction, the same way that Homestuck’s conversation about gender is, or Homestuck’s conversation about Roles in general.

What do you want to be when you grow up? Karkat wants to be a leader.

As long as Sollux is making his first appearance as a character, I want to take a second to say that as a character, he’s always been pretty tough and enigmatic for me to write, especially in the sense that he‘s frequently referred to melodramatic and sensitive or similar terms by people around him, but he actually doesn’t really seem that way in most cases - he just seems like a guy who wants to his own devices, and is generally pretty non-reactive to other peoples’ bullshit. Maybe he’s melodramatic in the way that Dave is, hyping himself up as a coolguy who is the best there is, but then again, Sollux kind of lives up to his own hype, considering that up until the last possible moment, he wins pretty much every fight he’s in handily, adapts Sburb personally, and has more romantic success than just about everyone else in the comic.

Maybe Karkat’s just projecting.

https://homestuck.com/story/2031

Roleplaying - a concept that I’ve used frequently to refer to the way that John and his chums perform rituals in order to relate to their culture and parents - is made explicit through the language of Flarping, which for the Trolls, serves as a way for them to literally act out the adventures of their long-dead ancestors, although it strikes me that it’s probably a lot more gainful for highbloods like Terezi and Vriska than it is in general for lowbloods like Aradia and Tavros.

I’ll get this out of the way up front instead of commenting it on a drip feed throughout Terezi’s upcoming courtblock roleplay - Terezi is the kind of kid who aspires to be a Cop. Or a lawyer, anyway, which in Alternian Law, is the same thing as a cop. In the wake of 2020′s scads of police brutality, and in general, having grown up into a nasty commie, it’s kind of hard to look at Terezi the same way.

While it’s clear that Terezi is remorseful later on toward her earlier attitudes and behaviors, Terezi is at least ambivalent, and at worst a purely antagonistic force throughout a lot of early Homestuck because of her authoritarian tendencies and her honestly pretty psychopathic behavior. She plays games with her friends’ lives.

https://homestuck.com/story/2047

Terezi adores having power over other people and making them helpless. For Terezi, alienation takes the form of emotional distance from the people that she’s tormenting. It makes it so much easier for her to conceive of them as wicked people who need to die.

https://homestuck.com/story/2055

Nepeta is an adorable girl who deserves all the good things. All of them.

That said, as long as we’re commentating and not glurging, Nepeta’s internet troll stereotype is probably less familiar these days, and I say probably less, but I can’t say for sure - it’s like this really specific thing that existed during the late ‘00s, where you had this highly specific stereotype, which I’ll call the Furry Artist Roleplayer, and I really hope that I’m not talking out of my ass by generalizing anecodtal evidence, but I know people who were pretty much exactly the Nepeta stereotype around the time that Act 5 was being written! Roleplaying in IRCs or on specialty forums with other people, all drawing art of their anthro OCs and writing stories about each other’s characters. That sort of thing still probably exists these days, but if it does, I’m not really part of any communities anymore where it leaks into the mainstream.

https://homestuck.com/story/2058

Okay, yup, Karkat is 100% projecting “Melodrama” on all the people around him. In a literal sense, Melodrama refers to theatrics that are exaggerated and sensationalized in such a way as to appeal to the emotions, often prioritizing spectacle and physical action over deep characterization.

Actually, if we’re taking it in the literal sense of the word, just about every character in Homestuck is pretty melodramatic - I keep talking about the way that they roleplay rituals and associate with symbols even when they fail to structures of power and culture that those rituals and symbols point to - performative participation without any actual substance. That’s practically the definition of Melodrama.

But Karkat is, perhaps, the most Melodramatic of all.

https://homestuck.com/story/2065

Aradia is one of my favorite characters in Homestuck, and possibly my favorite, something I can be up front about.

Our introduction to her is brief, and right out of the gate one thing about her is apparent - her relationship with destruction is central to her characterization.

https://homestuck.com/story/2069

While I was going to wait for the Hemospectrum to come up explicitly, now’s as good a time as any to talk about the fact that Andrew uses Troll society to comment on hierarchy a lot - hierarchy of just all kinds. Ageism is one of those, and Gerontocracy in particular in Alternia. In Alternia, just one of the ways that the oppression of the Hemospectrum manifests is the way that the Empire systematically takes advantage of its children by basically leaving them completely to their own devices. Trolls don’t have family units normally, but the fact that Troll adults are all offworld is not a “natural” part of Troll Society, it’s a decision. And while it’s a decision made by the Empress, it’s still one that, to some extent, benefits adult trolls at the expense of the children, since they’re not around spending energy on raising kids who are expected to raise themselves from the word go.

It’s honestly pretty late, and I’m tuckered out because of the steroids that I’m on, and the cough medicine, so in spite of the comparatively pretty short amount of reading I’ve done tonight, I’m going to call it here.

Cam signing off, Alive and a little High.

#liveblogging #commentary #nurture #nature #trolls

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amphtaminedreams · 5 years ago

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Film Tier Ranking 2019: A Bad Year for Bird Films

Hi to anyone reading,

I’ve finally put it together: my 2019 film tier ranking! I know tier rankings are a bit 6 months ago but seeing British crisps sorted into god, good, mid and shit tier all over Twitter, the format really resonated with me and I was like I MUST USE THIS AT SOME POINT! And I guess since there probably isn’t much of an audience for crisp tier rankings on Tumblr, it makes more sense for me to do it with films instead, especially as doing a 2019 year in film review was something I previously claimed I would do; here’s to 2020 and following through on my proposals.

I think 2019 in general was an okay year for film, with the end of the year definitely outselling the beginning. One thing to bear in mind is that a lot of films that I would’ve been able to see in 2019, I.E Little Women and Parasite, didn’t come out until 2020 in the UK so they won’t make it onto this year’s list. It’s not a snub by any means. I more fall in line with the Elsie Fisher Film Awards school of thought than the Oscars, which have yet again disregarded several incredible performances this year: Florence Pugh in Midsommar, Taron Egerton in Rocketman, Lupita Nyongo in Us, and of course, Greta Gerwig’s direction of Little Women. I’m sure there are many more but those are the first few that come to mind. Oh to be in 2017 when nominations made fractionally more sense.

This list also includes films that weren’t necessarily released this year, but that I just got around to watching; there were a couple of disappointments but also a lot of films I can’t believe it took me this long to finally watch and have definitely made their way into my favourites. My goal for this year is to get through even more of the films on my verrrry long Letterboxd watchlist, and more specifically, watch said films without going on my phone, which is a really bad habit of mine. I find it hard to sit still! Let me live!

I also want to try and put aside my prejudices about visual quality and watch more pre-2000s movies this year; it’s really bad but I never managed to get more than half an hour into Psycho, of all films, solely because I couldn’t deal with the black and white. In 2020, I am going to stop being a whiney Gen Z/cusp millenial-er and give older films the chance they deserve.

So, without further ado, here is my film tier ranking of everything I watched in 2019! If you make it til the end and have any thoughts or disagreements, let me know. I love to hear other’s opinions and get new perspectives on things and am totally open to any criticism. Happy reading:-)

God Tier

Knives Out (Rian Johnson, 2019)

Knives Out. What a film.

I feel like I waited forever to see this at the cinema. They must have started showing trailers for it in, like, August, and I had to wait til mid-November to see it. How are you gonna just dangle a film with Toni Colette and Lakeith Stanfield in my face and then make me wait 3 months? Totally unethical.

But that being said, when it finally came around and I did see it, as much as I love Toni and Lakeith, there was one stand out and it wasn’t either of them: ANA DE ARMAS. I have to admit I’d never heard of her before but she acted the shit out of a role I feel I’d ordinarily find irritating and gimmicky. Daniel Craig, whose character seemed annoying as fuck in the trailer, was actually surprisingly funny.

Stylistically, it was a very cool film and I liked the subtle commentary on class that was running throughout. Also, I thought the ending was very clever. My issue with a lot of whodunnits is that they just pick someone who doesn’t make sense for shock factor *cough, Bobby Beale in Eastenders, cough* but the shocks here were more in the details.

Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

There wasn’t one single moment of Hustlers I didn’t enjoy and it’s quite amazing that there wasn’t one single point in this film about strippers that I felt gratuitously sexualised women. THAT is why you fund female directors. It made the whole thing look like a calculated art form, which I think the unsexy amongst us can all agree that it is. Constance Wu was a fantastic lead, J-Lo was kind of robbed for a supporting actress nom, and Keke Palmer and Lili Reinhart were hilarious too.

Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019)

Midsommar was such an experience that it took me a good few days afterwards to decide whether I actually liked it. I saw it the day it came out because I loved Hereditary so much and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I kind of had an idea of the way it was going to go, we could all kind of guess evil cult was the route that was being taken from the trailer, but I just didn’t realise quite how weird it’d get.

The gore was great, the visuals were stunning and the character arcs were surprising and for that reason, I think this is another game changer for horror from Ari Aster. I didn’t love it like I loved Hereditary but it continues to play on my mind and 7 months later I still can’t resist a good “Things you Missed in Hereditary” or “Hereditary Themes Explained” Youtube video essay. That’s how you know a film fucked with you and that’s the ultimate goal of going into a horror for me. Put that on my headstone after I inevitably get myself into some mortally dangerous conflict because I want to “get fucked with” a little bit.

Booksmart (Olivia Wilde, 2019)

So here’s the thing with Booksmart: I was getting progressively more and more drunk throughout it so I might be a little biased when I say I loved it. That being said, worth revere seems to be a commonly held opinion so I’ll stick to my guns. Plus, movies like this, which just focus on girls living their lives, are few and far between. Why have we had to wait THIS long for the female Superbad?

IDK. But Kaitlyn Dever, Beanie Feldstein and Billie Lourd proved it’s definitely a genre worth investing in so hopefully we see more lighthearted female-led coming of age comedies. One Ladybird per year isn’t enough for me.

The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)

I included The Favourite in my 50 Films You’ve Got to Watch that I made earlier this year so I don’t have all that much to say about it that I haven’t said already. To summarise, it’s an instant classic: the cinematography, the cast, the lines, it’s all perfection.

Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

I also included Suspiria in my 50 Films You’ve Got to Watch list so sorry if I’m repeating myself, but I adored everything about it. If I had to sum it up in one sentence I’d say divine feminine energy, but inverted. Plus ballet. That dancing scene in the mirrored room will probably never leave my mind (if you’ve watched it, trust me, you’ll know the one I'm talking about), and if there were awards given out for creepy montages in horror, this would win all of them. It still blows my mind that Tilda Swinton played 3 characters in this film; 2 of them are so distinctly different, if anyone put two and two together without prior knowledge of this fact then I’ll blow my own head up too. This is why I got so mad when there was all that discussion around her being the new female Doctor Who and there were people asking who she was. How can you not know who Tilda fucking Swinton is!? She’s a legend!

Sorry, is the wannabe film snob in me showing?

Annihilation (Alex Garland, 2018)

Though I initially watched it because it’s branded as a horror, Annihilation ended up being a surprisingly introspective take on human nature and our self-destructive tendencies. Nothing really went the way I expected it to, even though I was constantly trying to guess that trajectory from beginning to end.

Visually, Annihilation is magnificent. Like, it’s tense, and where exactly the plot is going is shrouded in mystery, but most importantly, it’s super fucking pretty. Sure, the only thing that was mildly horrifying was the *SPOILER* end result of that bear scene but I didn’t mind too much because there was always that edge-of-your-seat possibility something like that would happen again.

Also I realised that Gina Roduriguez is really hot in this! I would just say in general but that video of her saying the n-word kind of took away shot at real world magnetism. WHY SUCH A SHITTY APOLOGY VIDEO!? WHY?!

Assassination Nation (Sam Levinson, 2018)

So I didn’t clock until I was looking up directors that Sam Levinson, Euphoria director, also directed this, and suddenly everything makes sense in the world. They both have that dreamlike, exaggerated feel that perfectly captures the emotional rollercoaster that is being a teenager, only in Assassination Nation obviously the threats are a bit more...tangible. As in its actually other people trying to kill our protagonists this time round, not just angst.

Not gonna lie, it’s not a patch on Euphoria because that show is probably the best thing I watched all year, but I did thoroughly enjoy it, even if I did feel the social commentary, despite how in your face it was, got a bit lost in translation at times. I think it’s the kind of film that, once again, would’ve felt more genuine coming from a female director, however that’s not to take away from how witty, modern, and completely relevant it still is as we move into 2020.

Sorry To Bother You (Boots Riley, 2018)

Right. WHAT THE FUCK!?

Why don’t more people talk about this film? Like it has Tessa Thompson and the world’s best earrings! Lakeith Stanfield getting more than 10 cumulative minutes of screen time! Armie Hammer being that bitch we all knew he was irl (probably)! Scathing critiques of late stage capitalism! It’s insane, in the absolute best way.

SPOILERS AHEAD: I had a mini paragraph written about the last hour of the film and the descent into pure unadulterated chaos, and how it’s like, the internet’s best kept secret, because ordinarily you lot can’t keep your mouths shut about a film or TV’s shows most crucial reveals for more than 5 minutes and THEN...My FBI agent must be feeling real cheeky because THIS tweet pops up on my Twitter timeline.

Fuck this shit, I’m out. Onto the next film. MI5 stop peeping my drafts.

Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham, 2018)

I don’t want to repeat what I said about Eighth Grade in my 50 Films you Should Watch list but Elsie Fisher’s performance in this is why I wish the Oscars also had some kind of rising star award category à la the BAFTAs. Honestly, every 13/14 year old should watch this; it’s a reminder that although feeling like an outsider is by its nature quite isolating, it’s prolific enough that a 29 year old man, 10 years out of “high school”, gets it.

American Animals (Bart Layton, 2018)

My sister and I absolutely loved this film so you can image our disappointment when we turned round to our parents at the end and our enthusiasm wasn’t matched...as in, I’m pretty sure they were both asleep for a lot of it. WHICH I DON’T GET. Because to me, there wasn’t a dull moment. American Animals is what happens when a group of university age boys with the finesse of the American Vandal Turd Burglar try and apply that to an Evil Genius stye heist, part Netflix, talking head abundant documentary, part live-action film. Splicing a stylistic reenactment with interview footage of the men who really attempted to commit the crime elevated what I probably would have put in the Good Tier™ to the God Tier™; seeing the guy Evan Peters is playing alongside Evan Peters playing him, now only the remnants of the arrogance we see in the reenactment left behind, sharply reminds you of the fall from grace these boys deservedly went through. Plus Barry Keoghan from The Killing of a Sacred Deer is in it, proving that unsettlingly stiff is NOT in fact his natural state.

Gerald’s Game (Mike Flanagan, 2017)

I wish there was a shorthand way to say I wrote about this in my 50 Films You Should Watch list so I’m gonna keep it short but here we are! This was great! If The Haunting of Hill House isn’t proof enough, Gerald’s Game (not to take away any credit from Stephen King) is a reminder that Mike Flanagan is the king of subtle, niggling sensation in your stomach that something is about to go very wrong horror. I hear he and Ari Aster have a timeshare situation going on with the crown.

The Ritual (David Bruckner, 2017)

Okay, so this is the film that made me realise we should all be very scared of forests. Nope, all the documentaries into the Aokigahara Forest weren’t enough, apparently. I subjected myself to this too, as if my unfit, cold-blooded, bug-fearing, scared of the dark ass doesn’t already have enough concerns about my survival odds in the great outdoors.

Really though, setting aside, this film maintains the sense of dread throughout and keeps you guessing what’s going on until the very end. Much like The Descent, the group dynamic and characters are realistic enough that it adds to the believability of a scenario I, in principle, know would never happen to the extent that I might keep away from vast, wooded spaces for a while just in case.

Dumbo (Tim Burton, 2019)

If film Twitter came across this post and saw I’d placed Dumbo in a higher tier than If Beale Street Could Talk I can only imagine the outrage. And sure, the latter is probably a much higher quality film. But sometimes a movie, for reasons you can’t quite put your finger on, gets you right in the sweet spot, and Dumbo did that for me. Maybe it was that the CGI elephant reminded me of my cat (I know, leave me alone), maybe I was emotional that day, I don’t know, all I know is that I cried like 5 times and was smiling for the rest of it-to be fair, the exploitation of animals for our entertainment is something that is still very much going on and that was something that was playing on my mind a lot whilst I was watching it. IRL Dumbos should be free too. Dumbo rights.

The VVitch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

This film taught me that there’s nothing wrong with joining a coven of young witches and getting naked and levitating around a fire. And that’s an important life lesson. Plus it gave us the quote “wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”, which is not only so perfectly creepy and simultaneously empowering that I had to get it tattooed but also, created ASMR. I just made that last bit up obviously but Black Philip getting his own ASMR Youtube channel?

The Descent (Neil Marshall, 2006)

For me, much like The Ritual, The Descent is a perfect horror film: it’s got the ghouls but the situation the characters find themselves in is also terrifying by its own merit. The reason The Descent made it onto my 50 Films list and the Ritual didn’t is because, let’s be honest, it’s 2020 and you can get mobile signal in most places. You could probably at least make a 999 call if you got lost in a forest. If you DID get stuck in an underground cave and it collapsed in on itself, you’d be pretty fucked; the idea of it makes me shudder and I will never set foot in an underground tunnel at any point in my life for any amount of money EVER after seeing this. Also, the women in this are great and the creatures in this are genuinely quite terrifying, especially the first time you see them.

Chicago (Rob Marshall, 2003)

Ah, Chicago, the last film on the God Tier™, proving that this list is in no particular order. Because WHAT A FIM. WHY DON’T PEOPLE TALK ABOUT THIS MORE?! Like don’t get me wrong, I know it deservedly won Best Picture in 2003 but I’m talking about right now! I mean, fucking Titanic is still out here getting referenced left, right and centre and yet Chicago gets paid dust! Can you tell I’m mad and that I think Titanic is hugely overrated?! Is that maybe coming across?!

ALL the songs are bops, Catherine Zeta-Jones is hot (I saw someone on Letterboxd say that Catherine Zeta-Jones in this film was their bisexual awakening and honestly, if I hadn’t already known I was a raging bisexual, same, because I FELT things in that All That Jazz opening) and Cell Block Tango is the revenge fantasy anthem I never knew I needed. Smart, tongue in cheek, beautifully shot and makes men look like little bitches which is probably why my dad hated it but what did I expect.

Good Tier

Zombieland: Double Tap (Ruben Fleischer, 2019)

Onto the first film of the good tier, Zombieland: Double Tap definitely exceeded my expectations. I was super worried about the prospect of a sequel as I love the first one so much and assumed it would be crap. Obviously, it doesn’t match up to the original because the original WAS so original, but it was still a fun, easy, witty ride. And I was SO glad they didn’t *SPOILERS AHEAD* kill off Tallahassee at the end because I really thought that was coming and it seemed so predictable and unnecessary. Highlight was the introduction of the lookalikes at Graceland.

Judy (Rupert Goold, 2019)

So, this is the first of two consecutive rants I’m about to go on about Oscar nominations and people’s reactions online. Prepare yourself.

I’ll start with the underlying message: just because you think something else deserves the praise more, doesn’t mean the film/album/*insert whatever artistic medium you wish here* that IS getting the praise is shit.

Like people are angry that Lupita Nyongo wasn’t nominated for best actress for her performance in Us which is COMPLETELY valid as she carried that film on her back. In the same vein, people are also angry that more women of colour haven’t been nominated for best actress. Also valid; I’ve yet to see The Farewell but I’ve heard great things about Akwafina’s performance and I love her so even though I haven’t seen it, I’m gonna take the general consensus that she should’ve been nominated too. The Oscars definitely has a problem with recognising the work of POC. BUT, because of this, people are angry that Renee Zellweger has been nominated for her performance in Judy, saying that it’s typical “Oscar bait”. I agree, it is typical Oscar bait. However, a lot of the people saying this will in the same breath say (or tweet rather) that they haven’t actually SEEN Judy.

How can you possibly say that Renee Zellweger doesn’t deserve any of the praise she’s getting when you haven’t even seen the film? Don’t get me wrong, the film itself is good but not outstanding (hence its place in this tier), but you can see Renee genuinely put her heart and soul into this film; it was powerful, and it was sympathetic but it was also nuanced and subtle where they could’ve just capitalised on all the sensationalised stories of the actions of a woman clearly deeply suffering in her final years and had it be full of shouting and screaming. The Wizard of Oz has always kind of felt like home to me because of the childhood nostalgia factor and so I’ve always been interested in Judy and I think Renee captured her heart and her spirit in a way she would be deeply honoured by. Maybe the film itself doesn’t deserve the acclaim it’s getting but I think Zellweger definitely deserves the nom and I think most people who’ve actually seen it wouldn’t contest that.

Joker (Todd Philipps, 2019)

Okay so second rant. I’m sorry. I have a lot of feelings. Most of them aimed at the annoying tendency of internet users, Film Twitter™ and Letterboxd users I’m looking at you in particular, to be wildly exaggerative.

There just seems to be no nuance online. It’s not just yeah, I didn’t like the film personally and the message could be perceived in a certain way by certain individuals, it’s I HATE THIS FILM AND IT’S DANGEROUS AND THE DIRECTOR FUCKING SUCKS. I noticed this trend when La La Land came out (which if I had watched last year would certainly be in God tier for me). It’s like, if a film initially receives a lot of praise and buzz, there’s almost this wave of compensatory vehement criticism in response that’s usually disproportionate to how controversial the film actually is. People didn’t like that Joker was popular because they didn’t like Joker so suddenly it’s the worst film ever and the possibility of it getting any critical acclaim is wrong. I even saw people berating Todd Philipps for channelling Martin Scorsese as he’s the only person to ever be influenced and take direction from one of the most dominant figures in film of the 20th and 21st century. I mean, what’s wrong with that?! If it was any other director, it’d be called homage. But because everything has to be seen through this malicious lens, its copying.

I think one of the few very valid criticisms about Joker was that it further perpetuates the idea that psychotic people are dangerous, and I can totally see where they’re coming from. At the same time, we have to accept that whilst the majority of people who are psychotic aren’t a danger to anyone apart from themselves, most “dangerous” people don’t just become dangerous because they thought, fuck it, why not? A lot of people in the prison system ARE suffering with some kind of mental illness. The character’s psychosis doesn’t make him dangerous, it’s his underlying resentment and sense of entitlement that grows throughout the film that makes him dangerous, and I think a lot of people seem to miss this point. They say that the way the film ends implies Philipps is justifying the actions of the films protagonist. However, we KNOW the Joker is an unreliable narrator, he’s one of pop culture’s most infamous villains and that being said, both in film and in the real world, few villains see themselves as the villain. Joker is about why HE thinks he’s justified in doing what he does, not why he IS justified in doing what he does because he’s not, and that’s pretty clear from the moment he shoots someone in the head on live TV. Honestly, I think there’s a bit of wilful misinterpretation going on because people don’t like that film

I liked Joker. It was gritty, it was interesting, and sufficiently dark. I didn’t think it was the best film of the year but I understand why it got the praise it did. Obviously, it’s okay that people disagree and DON’T like it. But can we please get a bit more well-acquainted with the middle ground?

It: Chapter Two (Andres Muschietti, 2019)

Okay, essays over. Back to regular scheduled programming of less impassioned reviews. Though I will say I deserved better than my Letterboxd comment of “so you can just fucking roast Pennwyise to death?” getting absolutely 0 traction. One day my grand total of 5 followers, one of which is my sister, will recognise my brilliance (lol).

It’s hard to say how much I really liked this as I think my perspective of how much I did enjoy it is warped by how much I disliked the first one. Child actors really aren’t my thing and the only cast members I warmed to in the first one were Finn Wolfhard and Jack Dylan Grazer whereas the cast here were a lot more likeable, imo. Bill Hader, Jessica Chastain and James Ransone were all great, with the only let down being James Mcavoy; I love him, don’t get me wrong, but I just think he was really miscast in this role.

Another thing I enjoyed a lot more about this instalment was that due to the more episodic/anthology-like/Creepshow-esque structure with each character conquering different monsters from their past individually, the narrative felt like it had a lot more direction, and it didn’t drag as much despite it having a significantly longer runtime. I haven’t read the Stephen King novels and I don’t know much of the pacing issues are down to them so this is me coming at it from a screenwriting angle but it felt as if the climax of the first film just kept going on and on. Every time I thought it had finished there’d be another confrontation between the kids and Pennywise whereas Chapter 2 seemed to have a more definitive third act and I appreciated that.

Rocketman (Dexter Fletcher, 2019)

So, here’s one where I WILL agree with the general online consensus: if Rami Malek got nominated for playing Freddie Mercury last year and Renee got nominated for playing Judy Garland, why the fuck didn’t Taron Egerton get one for playing Elton John? Why didn’t Rocketman itself get a nomination when Judy did? Though I personally preferred Judy because I’m more interested in her story, technically and narratively Rocketman is the better film in my opinion. This was so cleverly edited and sequenced and told with such a brutal honesty on Elton John’s part (it was co-produced by his husband David Furnish and he was heavily involved in everything from the set to the script), that I can only come to the conclusion that the obligatory biopic nomination only comes when the focus of said biopic is no longer with us as a kind of honorary thing. Whilst something like Bohemian Rhapsody was much more of an easy watch (which just goes to show how glossed over Freddie Mercury’s life was in the film), the way the story was told, by the time we got to I’m Still Standing that happy ending felt so earned.

Aladdin (Guy Ritchie, 2019)

You can hate all you want, Prince Ali and Never Had a Friend Like Me are fucking bops and somehow they were even better in this incarnation of the film. I was initially hesitant about Will Smith being cast but rather than trying to impersonate Robin Williams he went his own route and it really worked. He was the highlight of the film. It was undeniably visually stunning too. Madonna’s ex did good.

Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

Ah, I feel so conflicted when it comes to Us. Like, there were some really strong points and it’s definitely a good standalone horror movie. It’s just you can’t help but compare it to Get Out, and with that unsatisfactory exposition dump ending, I left feeling so disappointed. It seemed to me that Jordan Peele got in a bit over his head here with trying to tie such a vague social metaphor and the actual in-universe plot together, and so ended up leaving both a bit half-baked. He tried to OutPeele himself and for me, it didn’t work.

The doppelgängers were so scary as this ambiguous, vaguely threatening presence that if you are gonna give us a full blown, sit down explanation of why they exist it needs to be really bloody good. And this explanation didn’t make much sense. For example, *SPOILERS AHEAD* I imagine that the tethered just not being able to walk up the escalator into the “real world” was supposed to be some kind of metaphor for social mobility but it’s not fleshed out enough to work. In our world, there are REASONS why the idea of social mobility is flawed. In the film, it’s just like gee, if they chose to just walk up the escalator and go on this murderous rampage now, why couldn't they have decided to do it years ago back before they all lost their fucking minds? Why were they just copying the originals for all those years? HOW did they know what they were doing? See, the metaphor as I understand it is supposed to be that we depend on the oppression of others like us in order to maintain our social status, but not only is this kind of too general a statement to try and use a feature length film to make, I don’t really understand how this dynamic works within the narrative of the film. Technically, there's nothing to stop the tethered and the originals co-existing apart from the tethered deciding not to walk up the fucking escalator. We’re not talking a bourgeoisie-proletariat relationship here. The explanation of it all just being a “government project gone wrong” was too vague seeing as the plot working seemed prior to this to hinge onto something vaguely supernatural and the eventual plan of the doppelgängers seemingly had no purpose or application to the real world like the climax of Get Out did. It just left me feeling kind of like...why? Why did this all happen? When the ending and the twist was that predictable (the old Pretty Little Liars finale style twin switcheroo was blatantly obvious from the mother’s “it’s like she’s a different person” line near the beginning, let’s be real), I was expecting some final revelation that flipped my expectation on its head or at least felt helped things click into place. Instead, it seemed a bit hamfisted and like I was supposed to feel things were deeper and more significant than they actually were.

All that being said, I appreciate that if anyone other than the writer of Get Out had come out with this movie, I probably wouldn’t have these issues. Us was funny, it was fresh, and the concept of doppelgängers is something I’m so glad to see brought back into our modern pop culture database. The people are right, Lupita was incredible in this and it is a travesty that she didn’t get nominated. My sister, who was so creeped out by her vocal performance that she had her fingers in her ears every time Red spoke, still won’t let me attempt an impression of it. And that Fuck the Police sequence? Iconic.

On the Basis of Sex (Mimi Leder, 2019)

I apologise in advance for the shittiest “review” I’ll ever write, but honestly I can’t remember all too much about this film other than it being good. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I’m sorry. You’re a cool lady.

If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2019)

EURGH, THIS WAS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL FIM. The score, the shots, the rawness. I imagine it’s devastatingly real. Like, *SPOILERS AHEAD* you think there’s going to be a happy ending but there’s not. It should be disappointing but it’s an honest choice. And side note: fuck those annoying middle aged white ladies in the seats behind me and my friend who lost their shit and started giggling every time the N-word was used, JFC. I hate living in a Tory stronghold.

Cam (Daniel Goldhaber, 2018)

So, as I said, I’m a fan of the whole doppelgänger thing. It freaks me out. The point in this film where the protagonist is approaching her bedroom door whilst she watches HERSELF livestreaming from inside that same bedroom had my heart in my mouth wondering what she was going to encounter on the other side. And you see, the ending of this was a lot more ambiguous than the ending of Us, so I should’ve had less questions. Whilst I’ve seen other people saying it WAS unsatisfactory and that they felt like we were owed more of an explanation, I liked the simplicity of the answer we got and the wiggle room it leaves for our own interpretation. The way I see it, given that we were told by the fan the protagonist meets with in the motel room that *SPOILERS AHEAD* it was a case of some kind of software copying these women’s likenesses to steal their viewers and thus their profits, is that Cam is a kind of a commentary on the capitalist exploitation of women’s bodies and the demand for (and desensitisation towards) sexually violent content; we don't necessarily need to know who is behind the virtual cloning, which is terrifyingly believable given how realistic some of the deepfakes I’ve seen are, because it doesn’t matter. We're basically told money is the motive and we know the kind of lengths some people will go, and someone DID go to in Cam, to in order to make a shitload of money and that’s as true in real life as it is scary. On the other hand, if you want to believe there’s a more supernatural presence behind the events of the film, there’s enough left to the imagination that you can go down that route too. Some films are better left un-exposition dumped and this is the proof. My one criticism, is that, like many films, it would be even better if directed by a woman; I’ve seen people say that its portrayal of online sex work isn’t entirely accurate and though I can’t say with certainty that women working in this industry weren’t consulted in the first place, I imagine a female director would not only be more likely to listen to their concerns but could translate the confusion and fear that comes with being expected to makes oneself sexually desirable to get ahead in the world but then shamed and used for doing so even more viscerally. A few tweaks and it’d be God Tier.

Colette (Wash Westmoreland, 2019)

The costumes, sets, and Keira were so, so stunning. Also it was just an inspiring, beautiful story. The navigation of womanhood, so called “deviant” sexuality and self-expression against the backdrop of early 20th century Paris with a load of Edwardian era tailoring thrown in, it’s everything I could possibly want and more; 10/10 moodboard content.

The Boy (William Brent Bell, 2016)

I can’t believe this film was made in 2016, and it almost makes me move it down to mid tier based on the fact that a lot of the allowances I made for cheese factor I made on the assumption it came out earlier in the decade. BUT, that being said, I was creeped out for a good portion of this film. Most horrors I watch and I’m probably a bit too chilled (a head comes off or some witchy ass ghost screams into the camera and my only thought is some kind of judgement of the SFX), and yet I felt like watching this behind my hands. I don’t know what it is about dolls and puppets, Chucky was my childhood fear even though I never actually watched the film, but something about the uncanny valley of it all makes me just spend the whole time they’re on screen silently praying they don’t start moving or talking. So in a way, given the resolution of the film *SPOILERS AHEAD*, the premise of The Boy was actually a lot scarier to me than the reveal of what was really going on. Someone hiding in my walls? NBD. That demons are real and that they live inside creepy old dolls? Terrifying. Why does everybody I debate this with disagree!? You can't call the police on a demon! At least with a human being you can stick them with the pointy ending of something! Regardless, I enjoyed the journey and trying to work out how things would end and if there IS anybody secretly living inside my house right now, even if you are a supposedly dead murderous family member (last time I checked I didn’t have any of those so I should be all good), kindly vacate. Thanks.

Oprhan (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2009)

So the fact that this film is based on a real life case makes this all the more terrifying. It was a bit campy and tacky at times but the shot of *SPOILERS AHEAD* Esther taking off her makeup in the mirror and revealing her true age will always be iconic. Plus I love Vera Farmiga, even though I did struggle to see her as anyone other than Norma Bates.

First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2018)

A hauntingly beautiful film with a lot of room for interpretation. There were so many gorgeous shots and so much subtext, this is proper 10/10 media studies essay material.

The Invitation (Karyn Kusama, 2015)

I would say the concept and implications of this film, which don’t fully hit you til the final shots, are a lot better than the film itself. It feels very realistic though and is definitely tense.

As Above, So Below (John Erick Dowdle, 2014)

I was so stoned when I watched this that a lot of the allegory and Dante’s inferno references went straight over my head, and it just seemed absolutely balls to the wall wild. I couldn’t buy that the characters would just KEEP GOING either when things began to get terrifying, like people in horror films really out here making the most nonsensical decisions and it drives me mad. But anyway, it was definitely entertaining and there’s a lot more to it in terms of plot and mythology than most similar quality horrors and I appreciate that

Climax (Gaspar Noe, 2018)

Climax is an interesting one that I think I’ll have to watch again to judge how much I truly like it. As with Us, I know it’s a good film, but I think my expectations of what it was going to be left me slightly disappointed. See, when I read about the premise I assumed that the horror was going to come from seeing the perspective of the characters on said acid trip and that leaves so much room for any kind of terrifying visuals you want whether that be something based in realism or fucked up creatures of the imagination. Buuuuut, it wasn’t that at all; at no point does Climax take place from the first person perspective of any of the characters. Similar to Darren Aronofsky’s Mother, the horror comes from not being able to do anything but watch as everyone starts losing their minds and the situation gets increasingly more dire. It’s pure stress; the acting is so unnervingly good that you really do feel like you’re watching some unintentionally horrific incident take place. That’s not a bad thing-I like it when films make me feel something intense, whether that emotion be positive or negative. It was just a different viewing experience to the one I had precipitated.

Mid Tier

Nativity (Debbie Isitt, 2009)

I find Mr.Poppy hilarious. Does that make me a child? Probably. I’m not really one for Christmas movies but this one’s alright.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (André Øvredal, 2019)

I get that it’s based off a book so it’s not exactly like the “monsters” were a secret in the first place, but for those of us who didn’t read the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books as a kid, my main beef with this film was that they basically revealed all of said monsters in the trailer. Like how It: Chapter 2 spoiled the scene with Beverly in the old lady’s apartment but with EVERY. SINGLE. CREATURE. The only one that wasn’t was the “jangly man” and the only takeaway I have from him is the “jangly in the streets, but is he jangly in the sheets?” Letterboxd comment I read afterwards. Like the creature designs are the selling point of this film and by showing us them all before we’ve even seen it, any anticipation that would’ve built up from their reveal was kind of gone. Plus, it definitely felt like the writers were trying to ride on the hype train of “It” when they wrote this-only they made it even more childish. I mean, I know it was classed as PG-13 in the US which is maybe part of the reason it was so tame but the Woman in Black was a 12 when it was released here and it could be the bias of my 13 year old brain but I remember that being terrifying to watch in the cinema.

Also, I found it weird how *SPOILERS AHEAD* a couple of the main characters died and there didn’t really seem to be any consequences? Idk, maybe that’s because I found them all a bit one dimensional but I’ve seen others make the same criticism so I don’t think so.

Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t a BAD film. It just wasn’t super good.

Charlie’s Angels (Elizabeth Banks, 2019)

I’ve never seen the 2000s Charlie’s Angels so I really don’t have anything to compare to, but I don’t think this was THAT bad. I was fairly entertained throughout and I enjoyed Naomi Scott and Kristen Stewart’s characters. My main issue was the unnecessary inclusion of Noah Centineo, and that weird ass montage at the beginning of stock video shots of girls just...doing miscellaneous things. Why, Elizabeth Banks, why!?

Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley, 2019)

In some ways, I see why Toy Story 4 was narratively necessary: co-dependency had been a running theme throughout and we needed to see Woody (I feel stupid saying this considering he’s a fucking toy but allow it) realise that he can exist independently of Andy, and that there’s more to life than pleasing somebody else. The way Toy Story 4 ended felt like a satisfying conclusion to his character arc, and as well as the animation being top tier, Forky was a hilarious addition to the cast. However, I don’t think it carried the emotional weight of the 3rd Toy Story, which I think people had accepted as the last instalment and had used to say goodbye to the franchise, and therefore the sceptic in me thinks that the obvious purpose of this addition was a cash grab. I don’t doubt that a lot of people worked incredibly hard on it-I’m just saying that the propelling force behind the film probably wasn’t “the people need to see Woody’s character growth” and that was quite apparent throughout.

Doctor Sleep (Mike Flanagan, 2019)

There were some really beautiful scenes in Doctor Sleep; the astral projection sequences in particular were magnificent and I loved Rebecca Ferguson as the villain. Stylistically, though I didn’t find out he was the director until I was writing this up, you can definitely tell it’s Mike Flanagan, and like I’ve said, he does horror very tastefully. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t all that interested in the premise and I wasn’t hugely invested in grown up Danny Torrance either. The execution was great and the return to the Overlook was brilliant, of course, but the story just wasn’t for me and nothing much sticks out as being a particularly intriguing plot point.

Mary Queen of Scots (Josie Rourke, 2019)

What to say about Mary Queen of Scots other than...yeah, it was alright. I mean, I really should’ve liked it more than I did, because these specific events were part of the Edexcel A-Level history curriculum (Can I get some Rebellion and Disorder Under the Tudors students representation up in here!?) and I usually love seeing history translated onto screen, plus it centred around Margot Robbie and Saoirse Ronan. It was just very...meh. I feel like there’s so much more complex a story here than was told. Both women were undoubtedly a lot more complicated than this film made them out to be and I think to reduce Mary Queen of Scots to a Mary Sue-ish heroine was a disappointing choice. Plus, if we’re gonna talk historical accuracy (which all the racists came out of their caves to discuss at the time), Mary and Elizabeth never actually met; I’m sure there was a more creative way to explore their dynamic than by forcing an interaction that never actually happened.

Apostle (Gareth Evans, 2018)

There were elements of this film I really liked; the mythology behind the cult, I.E what the townsfolk actually worshipped when you stripped away all the secrecy was pretty interesting. However, I felt it depended too much on atmosphere and not enough on plot, and I didn’t warm to any of the characters.

Searching (Aneesh Chaganty, 2018)

It’s difficult because technically, Searching is obviously an ingenious film. My issue is the way it ended, which was imo, super anti-climatic, and honestly pretty predictable in that it seemed like the writers just went out of their way *SPOILERS AHEAD* to make the culprit the person viewers would’ve ruled out by default for shock value, and then work out WHY that person was the culprit from there. I was expecting something a lot darker to be behind the protagonist’s daughter’s disappearance-irl, these situations usually are-and so maybe it’s just me being a bit of a sadist but I was disappointed by how things resolved themselves.

Deliver Us from Evil (Scott Derrickson, 2014)

So, this isn’t boring. It’s interesting to have a horror navigated through the lens of something as procedural as a police investigation. But ultimately, the acting isn’t great, there’s very few scary moments, and it’s a little cheesy. As horrors go, it’s pretty shallow-it is what it says on the tin.

Dumplin’ (Anne Fletcher, 2018)

I watched this right at the beginning of the year and I can’t remember all too much about it, but I remember not hating it? See, looking at the cast, Odeya Rush and Dove Cameron are both in it which would suggest I’d come away hating MYSELF instead but yeah...I got nothing.

Lights Out (David F.Sandberg, 2016)

The concept is very scary, the execution not so much, and the actual storyline is a little cheesy. I found myself just being like OH MY GOD, IT’S BELLA’S DAD FROM TWILIGHT! And then *SPOILERS AHEAD* getting mad that they did Charlie Swan dirty like that by killing him off in the first 10/15 minutes.

The Goldfinch (John Crowley, 2019)

So I LOVED the book of The Goldfinch. I read it after the Secret History and even though most people seem to prefer the latter, the former hit me right in the sweet spot. The length was almost one of my favourite things about it; I felt by the end that I came to know the character so well he felt like someone I knew in real life. When I heard Ansel Elgort was cast as Theo, I was really happy; I’m not necessarily a huge fan of him as an actor, I've only ever seen him in shitty teen-y dramas which I forced myself to like at the time E.G. The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent, but he looks kind of exactly how I pictured Theo looking. Almost like an Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood situation. And then honestly, the actual film came around, and I found myself much preferring the young Theo sections. I get that Theo is quite a muted character and I hate to properly slate anyone’s performance, but Ansel as him felt a bit flat. The casting in general was pretty whack; I love Nicole Kidman but she didn’t feel right as Mrs.Barbour and it seemed that they added a lot to her character to the detriment of Hobie’s character who was a much bigger part of Theo’s life in the book. Also, can we talk about Finn Wolfhard as Boris? I’m sorry, but that accent was godawful. Really bad. Boris’ accent was always supposed to be kind of ambiguous but this was just butchered Russian. Another gripe that my friend and I, who also read the book, had with the Vegas section of the film (which was otherwise probably the best part) was that they never properly explored the complexity of Boris and Theo’s relationship. Obviously I’m not saying that I want 2 minors to shoot a sex scene but it could have been referenced when they reunite as adults because the kiss on the head when they part in Vegas seemed misleadingly platonic. It was heavily implied in the book that there was some kind of love that went beyond friendship between the two and I didn’t get that in the film at all.

Ultimately, when you try and adapt a book as long as the Goldfinch, you’re always going to have some pacing issues and people complaining that things were left out or that X or Y character didn’t have enough screen time. But in ways, I think the fault here was trying to stay TOO faithful in the limited time available. They definitely could have focussed less on certain relationships and more on others, and when it comes down to it, I think we lost a lot of the grittiness of the original book for the sake of pretty visuals.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

Don’t get me wrong, this would 100% be in shit tier if it wasn’t for the last hour or so of the film and all the Manson lore which is so disappointing because I love Tarantino films and I love that era. As for the first couple of hours, I loved the vibe and I love Margot Robbie, and I think it was very respectful towards the Tate family (if anything radiated through the screen more than anything else it was Sharon Tate’s sweetness), but I just wasn’t that invested in Leo or Brad’s characters-it all just felt a bit pointless. I really like Brad Pitt and even that couldn’t really save it for me. Maybe if you took away the remaining 2 hours and 20 minutes of Leo DiCaprio making vague allusions to his own career to a girl only slightly younger than the combined age of all girlfriends past I’d enjoy it more but then I don’t think there’d be much footage left. I guess we should just be grateful that Tarantino managed to refrain from unnecessarily sprinkling the N-word into every other line of his script this time, right?

Also.

SO. MANY. FEET.

But then again, this did result in Brad publicly mocking Tarantino’s foot fetish during his speech at the SAG awards so...I’ll allow it. Sometimes kink shaming is okay. Especially when it’s this guy:

Isn’t it Romantic (Todd Strauss-Schulson, 2019)

I guess as romantic comedies go it wasn’t AWFUL because it was self-aware but still just not my cup of tea and it didn’t really make me laugh. Plus, I feel like it did just follow the plot of a conventional rom-com in the end so...what was it all for, you know?

Green Room (Jeremy Saulnier, 2016)

I think my disappointment with this film was a case of too high expectations. It wasn’t as gory as I hoped, in fact, there was very little on screen gore at all. I was just expecting something very messed up and I didn’t get that. But then again we did get Maeby from Arrested Development singing a fuck Nazis song so I guess that was a nice surprise?

Shit Tier

Birdbox (Susanne Bier, 2018)

First the disappointment of the Goldfinch, and now Birdbox (although they were chronologically the other way round but for the sake of this review, let’s just ignore that). It really is a bad year for bird films.

It’s weird because when this first came out I remember everyone hyping it up and making memes about it and stuff and then I actually watched it and dear god, it was boring. Honestly, who paid you lot to pretend you cared enough about it enough to make content? And where can I get in on this action?

I mean it didn’t start off terribly but then they killed off SARAH FUCKING PAULSON and somehow managed to make SANDRA FUCKING BULLOCK unlikeable. How does one do that? The mind baffles.

Pet Sematary (Kevin Kolsch & Dennis Widmyer, 2019)

The kid acting was bad, the leads were meh and there wasn’t one creepy moment. This should be SO MUCH MORE hard hitting than it actually was given the subject matter and it just fell completely flat. I will say, though, *SPOILERS AHEAD* that the ending was appropriately doom and gloom and even though I’ve seen lots of others say they hate it it was probably the only thing I actually liked.

The Lion King (Jon Favreau, 2019)

Seth Rogen and Billie Eichner were the only good things about this which is sad because I fucking love Donald Glover and I was so excited when he was cast as Simba. Like, it was pretty but empty and unnecessary and I’m not one of these people who think CGI remakes always have to be this way-I loved Dumbo and I liked the live-action Jungle Book too! I just think the people who made this cared too much about good CGI and realism and less about heart. There was no personality whatsoever and it’s such a waste when you think about the fact that they had Donald and Beyonce on board.

Red Sparrow (Francis Lawrence, 2018)

Eurgh, I hated this. I think Jennifer Lawrence is stunning and I usually love her films but every shot of her in this felt so male-gaze oriented, even the ones which were sexually violent, which I found to be completely unnecessary in the first place. At times it felt almost torture-porn-y which was not what I expected at all seeing as the marketing made it seem like some kind of female empowerment movie.

It Comes at Night (Trey Edward Shults, 2017)

I literally can’t remember fucking anything from this film. Clearly there is a very, very fine line between atmospheric and boring.

Warm Bodies (Jonathan Levine, 2013)

Maybe it’s because I watched this about 6 years too late and the whole human-girl-falls-in-love-with-supernatural-creature hype train has long since left the station but I couldn’t even finish it. Cutesy necrophilia ain’t for me, sorry Nicholas Hoult. Still love ya. You’ll always be Tony Stonem to me xoxo

Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2005)

I’m pretty sure this movie won a lot of awards so I’m sure this is a very unpopular opinion but the way this film ended was so...depressing. SO depressing. Did it have to be THAT depressing? The Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode outsold.

This is the range Oscar winning actress Hilary Swank wishes she had.

Would You Rather (David Guy Levy, 2013)

Started off well but became cheesy and predictable as it went on. The acting wasn’t great either plus there was another unnecessary attempted rape scene here too.

Christmas with the Kranks (Joe Roth, 2004)

So I watched this movie in the run up to Christmas because my best friend and her mum were referencing it like it was this cult classic (which I guess for some reason it is?) and I’m sorry to her and her mum but what the hell is this shit?! It’s not even so bad it’s good. It’s just bad.

The plot, the characters, EVERYTHING, it’s ridiculous on every level. I wasn’t into it enough to suspend my disbelief that anyone’s neighbours would actually care THAT much that they weren’t celebrating Christmas. Go on your damn cruise, take me with you whilst you're at it, ease my seasonal depression! I wouldn’t mind so much if it was funny or if the protagonists were likeable but it wasn’t and they’re not. Nobody’s actions made any sense. It didn’t put me in the Christmas spirit at all it just made me angry that Jamie Lee Curtis’ agent made her do this shit. She’s a scream queen goddess and she deserves better.

ANYWAY.

I’m now realising that I should have started on shit tier and worked my way up to god tier because now this post has ended on the rather sour note of me getting worked up over Christmas with the Kranks, lol. As always, these are just my opinions and I love to hear other people’s; when it comes to something like this, it’s all a matter of preference and there really isn’t a right or wrong answer, so I’m open to discussion!

With the Oscars less than a week away now I rushed a little to get this out on time, so apologies in advance if anything doesn’t make any sense or there’s any typos, I will look back over it at some point over the next couple of days to check.

But if you read to the end thank you! And stay tuned for my overview of Paris Haute Couture Week S/S 2020 if that’s something you’re interested in as that will most likely be next post!

Lauren x

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iamcinema · 5 years ago

Text

IAC Reviews #011: Bloodstream (1985)

Let’s go back a few years close to when I made this blog, roughly 2013 or 2014.

Around this point, I was looking for some unique, weird, and obscure titles to share for the horror forums I was apart of and to make notes of to eventually add to my collection. If I was able to find names that had little to no available information on them, then I knew I was onto something special. This would often bring me to sites like TwistedAnger that sold copies and transfers of horror, exploitation, and mondo films to fill me in on elusive material that were often times obscure and never got an official release. This little search would bring me to find Bloodstream, and with the interesting cover art, I knew I had to find more about it - but much to my dismay, there was very little to be had or known about it.

Bloodstream is 1985 low-budget slasher film directed by Michael J. Murphy, whom A Slash Above has dubbed the Ted V. Mikels of the UK, which is quite the comparison. Given that there was very little to go off of with this beyond the site’s review, I was left to scratch my head a bit as to whether or not I’d be able to find the film in its entirety beyond a few clips, which only made me hungerier for more after reading the synopsis.

Our story centers on Alistair Bailey, an up and coming filmmaker who is suddenly fired from a project he’s working on by a sleazy VHS distributor named William King. Instead of the film being scraped like he thought, he later finds out that King plans on distributing the film globally and it becomes a critical hit with the home video market. Rightfully pissed by this, Bailey seeks revenge and conspires to go on a killing spree with vengeful employee in a similar manner as the deaths in his movie - only this time, the effects will be real.

This got me pretty excited to check this out, and once the film got added to Youtube a few years ago, I was quick to jump at this. As a full disclosure, I did see and review this for UTA several years ago, but the details of my experience are on the hazy side. So, I won’t count this as a retrospective review this time around, but I’ll reflect on what I can if it’s as good or bad as I remember it being all those years ago.

Bloodstream in One Gif:

So, let’s dip our toes into this one.

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But first, a little backstory about the film and what I was able to find. Going off the premise and opening alone, this one has a certain kind of tone to it, dare I say very pointed and self-aware. According to Murphy, the film was his response to distribution companies and presumably bad business experiences he’s had. Unfortunately, the film failed to be picked up for distribution before falling into total obscurity. I’ll return to this again towards the end to help wrap things up. The budget is also very low as one could expect; roughly £400 in 1985, or £1,053.02 in February 2020 (I’m not to sure what that comes out to in USD or CAD). Given the limited budget, I’m a bit surprised with what they were able to accomplish, and for that I’ll give it that much.

As far as our characters go, they were quite forgettable and the first time around I couldn’t remember who was who or what purpose they served. So, coming back into things with a fresh slate was helpful. Aside from our two focuses being Alistair and William, we have a couple others that will become topics of interest.

We have Judy, an actress brought into the flock by William whom he’s having an affair with to help advance her career. We also have Greg, a former pornstar who was brought in like Judy was to work under William. There’s also the matter of William’s family; his brother Simon, a misogynistic sleaze who has a thing for power while also being held under financial ransom by William at the company, his wife Sally, and his daughter Lisa - both of which whose dreams of being in the industry are held under William. All of this becomes important later on, which is why I brought this up. There’s also another focal character that ties this all together, that being Nikki, William’s secretary who acts as a mole and accomplice to helping Alistair get his revenge by adding fuel to the fire with her own hidden motives and intentions.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s begin.

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As far as the story goes, it’s not all that bad, and in a way it reminds me of some tellings of Phantom of the Opera where our masked antihero seeks to get revenge on the Opera house owners who did him wrong by stealing credit for his work after being presumed dead. In a simialr fashion as the Phantom, there’s a lot of anger and malice behind the premeditated violence, and each of the murders was dragged out with a purpose in mind to send a message.

The plot moves along fast, as we’re immedately dropped into the action from the jump and the revenge scheme starts to take off within the 30 minute mark in a 73-minute film. However, it can feel like a log jam a bit with things being slowed down or padded out in the form of Alistair watching either his own movies or those from William’s distribution company. The quality of those films is pretty damn atrocious, playing on various horror film tropes and references like vampires, cannibalism, the occult, body horror, zombies, and Exorcist II: The Heretic - yeah, that happens. While it’s quite clear why these scenes are here in the first place, the run time could be shaved down to at least 65 minutes of these weren’t here.

From a technical standpoint, it’s not all that great and is overall uninteresting. The lighting is fairly poor, though I’ve seen worse. Some shots are overlit and others don’t seem to have enough, and while it doesn’t make it hard to see what’s going on, it adds to the overall cheapness. Speaking of which, the sets themselves aren’t all that remarkable either and it shows that they did their best to work with whatever they had with the budget since some of the locations feel like sound stages with black walls if it wasn’t places the crew likely had easier access to like their homes or a basic office space to rent out. There’s also a weird flickering problem where it will go from color to black and white briefly, which is a bit annoying as well.

The sound is probably it’s weakest point of everything else stacked against it, as some moments will be decently clear and others you’ll need to rewind it and try to figure out what was going on. I had to do this three times with finding Greg’s name, because I thought they were saying “Burke” for some reason. There’s also a fair amount of bad ADR going on, which is a bit laughable when it comes up. The sound quality in general just makes for a bad time with figuring out what’s going on, particularly in crowded areas where you have the background noise to deal with on top of it sounding like the actors are on the other side of the room when they’re in front of the camera. So, unless you have a good ear, you might be a tad bit lost, but it’s not on levels of Ax’Em bad.

On that note, how about the gore and deaths? While they aren’t perfect and are on the hammy side, I’ll at least give them some credit for having memorable death scenes and succeeding in what they could do for a microbudget. Some of them give me similar vibes to other slasher movies of the decade like Final Exam, Woodchipper Massacre, and Cannibal Campout, which I think helps me to enjoy them a bit more in a way. It tried, so I guess an A for effort is fair enough - especially with a particular implied off-screen death that’s quite brutal and Murphy apparently got a lot of e-mails and letters about it.

The acting is a fairly mixed bag as well, with it being mostly meh or average for the type of low budget flick where none of the actors went on to do anything else. When it comes to Judy, Greg, Simon, and the rest of William’s family, they aren’t there much to land a solid impact. So, when they get their own individual scenes where they’re on their own, there isn’t a whole lot to see to comment on about how well they hold up. They’re okay, nothing truly dreadful though. When it comes to Alistair, Nikki, and William though, that’s a different story.

While I found Alistair (and to an extent, Nikki) to be sympathetic, they didn’t do much to pull at my heart strings to get me totally revved up for the revenge sequences. The same can be said for William as well. Yeah, he’s a total sleazy, swindling bastard, but that’s about it. As a villain, he’s sort of forgettable. The writing itself is fine, which is surprising for this type of film, but the acting is stiff and doesn’t feel natural or right. I don’t know if any of the actors had prior experience given that they haven’t shown up in any other productions that I’m aware of or if a lot of the fault could be placed on poor direction. It’s a damn shame too since this could have been much better if one or both of those things could have been resolved. Plus, it could have been much darker too by pulling out all the stops since it already took plenty of risks with the aformentioned death scene and the social commentary it addressed. But we’re 35 years too late for that now.

To return to something I said at the start regarding Murphy’s intentions behind the film, much of this is heavily reflected in Alistair’s characterization where he brushes off the films produced by William’s company as “garbage”, and rambles about censorship, on-screen violence, and belittling distribution companies during the final showdown between him and William. Subtlety isn’t in this film’s dictionary, even more so towards the end where it raises the question about whether or not horror movies and the media contribute to real-life violence; much akin to other later films like Video Violence and Woodchipper Massacre. Yeah, it’s not an original concept at all and it’s been no stranger to us since the turn of the century or even for the time when the Satanic Panic and PMRC Senate case was going on, but it’s nonetheless fun to see how different artists handle the topic at hand.

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So, what are my thoughts on this one? Well, I’m torn.

Back when I reviewed this in 2015, I was rather harsh on it for how low the quality was and that the acting was subpar at best. It left so much to be desired, as it could have been much bigger if it was given better resources to shine. I’d like to think there’s some other timeline where this could have been the success that Murphy wanted it to be, rather than his least favorite film he’s directed and ultimately faded away into obscurity - fulfilling its own prophecy in a way to become Bloodstream decades later.

With that being said, I think my old rating of 3/10 was a bit much. It’s no gem or masterpiece in any way, which again, is the sad part. But, it’s also not a total disasterpiece. If all the pieces fell in the right spot, this would be an easy 7.5/10 for me at the very least. However, with the technical issues and wooden acting, I’d give this a 4.5/10 to be on the generous side. If a day ever comes where someone wanted to do a faithful remake of this to show what we could have had, that would make for a fun night. If you want to give it a watch some time, it’s up on Youtube and it makes for a decent popcorn flick.

Rating: 4.5/10

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