#but that’s because it was 1942

[philsmeatylegss]

Decided to do the Abu Ghraib prison as a project for one of my history classes. Not too big of a project; I have to do three a semester and they have to be detailed, but not like a final. Knew of Abu Ghraib, knew it was bad and a war crime and all that. I’ve skimmed only a few articles and yall,,,, I have never felt more like an ignorant dumb American than I have right now. Dark shit doesn’t affect me. I’m really interested in it. This is really one of the first times I’ve researched something and I’ve had to look away. I love history so much and I am so happy I am studying it and choosing to go into the field for a job, but sometimes you stumble upon something and you realize why ignorance is bliss.

[bbbrianjones]

“HE BLEW HIS MIND OUT IN A CAR... HE DIDN’T NOTICE THAT THE LIGHTS HAD CHANGED”

TARA BROWNE [04.03.1945-18.12.1966]

“He looked like something that had fallen from the ceilings of the Sistine Chapel. He was like a king in his own terrain. He was miles ahead of his years. I’d never met anyone like him. He was completely unique.” - Glen Kidston, a friend of Tara’s

“He was this charming, very young-looking, rather frail-looking child. Very blonde, with big eyes and I think clad in something that put me in the mind of Little Lord Fauntleroy. And he was dancing in a very wild and deranged fashion. I’d never clapped eyes on him before and I thought, “Who is this strange flower that’s suddenly sprouted in the garden?” - Christopher Gibbs

“It was like a death knell sounding over London. I think it was a definite turning point for a lot of us. It was the end of the sixties for many people. To have someone who was so full of life and so full of joy suddenly taken from you, it made you very pessimistic and cynical about the world, which is what we'd all been trying so hard not to be.” - Marianne Faithfull

[ducktracy]

A quick John Carey adjacent pig… I think black suits him best

[achillesuwu]

Post-return arthur that is so bored that he tries to make some food but he falls miserably because 99% of merlin house work with magic.

Electricity? Gas? Plumbing? Merlin never heard of her. The only non-magical technology in his house is an "cat" (*cough*dragon) toy that his new baby dragon wanted. That's it.

Arthur that got locked outside because the house was cross with him.

Arthur that tried once (1) to go into merlin office and— (Arthur : *glare*we don't talk about it) hem, never went alone in it ever again (hegotbluehairandturnedintoafrog.simultaneously)

Merlin house being strange enough to keep arthur entertained (by frustration) but also familiar enough in its lack of technology to not overwhelmed Arthur

[technicolorfamiliar]

Technicolor Familiar Watches Too Many Conrad Veidt Movies Part 5 of ?

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4

Contraband (Blackout), 1940 Dir. Michael Powell ⭐4/5 Watched Dec 18, Archive.org Uncle Erik: Your Captain, he is a beautiful man! From the first moment, I loved him! Me: Hard same. So much fun. By far my favorite of the Connie Spy Thrillers I've seen so far. Valerie Hobson is so slick, and the rest of the ensemble is pretty good for a change, especially the guys at the Danish restaurant. The bondage scene (not really, but... yeah, it is) lives up to the hype. The screenwriters really went off on this one, didn't they? I mean, this movie gave us Conrad Very-Serious-Actor Veidt whispering lovely things in the dark like "good girl" and "do you trust me?" The scene with the music box in the pocket watch? Too much, can't handle it. Connie's dry humor is a delight and all the sexy, flirtatious fun he's having in this role is like a precious balm for my tortured soul.

Above Suspicion, 1943 Dir. Richard Thorpe ⭐3/5 Watched Jan 3, Vudu Oh, filmmakers. Bless you for having Fred MacMurray get strangled in greeting by Conrad Veidt. A great film it is not, but it's definitely cute. And while it's a semi-tough watch as Connie's last film, I'm so glad it was this one where he's clearly having a ball -- whether on the dance floor (does Hassert always go out in the middle of the day to tango with mature, voluptuous women?), getting stepped on by Joan Crawford, sticking his fingers in bowls of cake batter, or climbing down trellises with his knees all out in the wind. He's very obviously living his best life and I love that for him. The movie is riddled with very silly, eyeroll-worthy one-liners, but the plot is enjoyable. Joan Crawford looks like she's having a good time too, and Fred MacMurray is pretty tolerable. I haven't seen Basil Rathbone in a lot of other movies, but I wish he got to be nastier and that he and Connie got to have some scenes together. Connie's physicality is so subtly funny, I really wish he had gotten to do more intentionally comedic films/roles.

Lucrezia Borgia, 1922 Dir. Richard Oswald ⭐3/5 Watched Jan 10, Archive.org I've been trying to watch at least one silent every once in a while. And while I have to lodge my typical complaint of these older films being a bit too long, this film is clearly a feat of production for the year it was made. The huge, open sets and beautiful costume details were incredible. As always, Connie 100% steals the show. He's delightfully wicked and nasty, slimy and pathetic. I wish he had better scene partners to receive and react to his intense performance as Cesare Borgia. But it's ok, it's like a Game of Thrones episode without the dragons or misogynist nudity.

Nazi Agent, 1942 Dir. Jules Dassin ⭐4/5 Watched Jan 14, Youtube I admit I chose to watch this one because I was charmed by the idea of Double Connies. But not even five minutes in and Otto had won my heart. I didn’t know anything about the movie itself going in, but was completely prepared for it to be cringey and mediocre. So I was pleasantly surprised that it was actually decent. Maybe I'm rating this one higher than it really deserves, but really those four stars all belong to Connie's performance/s. Daggers in my heart. So many moments in this little movie affected me more than I expected: Otto's line to Richten about being only one of however many million citizens willing to rise up against fascism; his look toward the Statue of Liberty at the end; the little glittering tears in his eyes when Fritz says, "We do what we're told because we must…"; his gentleness and deeply tragic sense of loss that permeates the film. And, perhaps most of all, how cute he was with his pet canary. Cue the waterworks. I have so many more thoughts about this and about his time in Hollywood in the 40s in general, but I'll save that for another time.

Kreuzzug des Weibes, 1926 Dir. Martin Berger ⭐3.5/5 Watched Jan 20, Snowgrouse's masterpost This movie was made nearly 100 years ago and we're still having the same conversations about reproductive rights today, especially now in the US after Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022. It's pretty disturbing how much of the script could be lifted from a dozen different arguments between contemporary conservative lawmakers and the people trying to better advocate for and provide safe reproductive healthcare. It's a pretty bare bones film, the story and performances clearly more important, appropriately so, than cinematic bells and whistles. Thought it was an interesting choice to have the lawyer's office so stately and huge, like the patriarchal systems he's operating in -- overbearing, empty and impersonal. The movie does feel like a public service announcement (which I guess it was), but that didn't really bother me. What bothered me was the ending, because OF COURSE the woman has to comfort the man even though she's the one who went through a major trauma. But the way Connie's character broke after the doctor told him what happened to his fiancée? I've never seen anything like that. He went fully offline. His whole nervous system got unplugged and rewired. P.S.: The extra half star in my rating is for all the monocle twirling.

[museumofbuildings]

455 Ash St., Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Built 1942.

[mariocki]

Night Monster (1942)

"Why don't you have Millie do that, Miss Judd? That's a maid's work, not a housekeeper's. You needn't answer because I know the reason: that spot under your hand is blood and you didn't want anyone to know."

"Blood? Ridiculous."

"Yes, it is ridiculous. It couldn't be blood, but it is. I've seen those spots before and I've seen you trying to scrub them out because you knew what they were. Blood, the whole house reeks of it. The air is charged with death and hatred and something that's unclean!"

[ophelia-thinks]

But one must go beyond encircling flames. Ancestor worship is a process. The exact nature of the relationship between an ancestor and their descendant is always to be determined. The sun on the wall, to the right of the mirror, is hot, and in the shape of a portrait, from which individual personality has been effaced.

Brandon Shimoda, Hydra Medusa

[partrin]

oh no, another writing idea: i've read so many fics about rin and haru in australia, rin and haru in japan (for obvious reasons), rin and haru in america, and other non-asian countries, but i've never read a fic about them being based in a southeast asian country (but to be fair, i've obviously not read all the fics there are available under their tag so i wouldn't know for sure).

today, i was thinking about the local sports scene—primarily football (as in soccer), because 1. when i think of sports, my favourite one is football. i enjoy football, used to even play it regularly, but i mainly watch the english premier league, and on occasion the la liga, and 2. i was wondering, "why is albirex niigata, an originally japanese team, playing in the singapore (where i'm from) premier league?"

so i found out that albirex niigata singapore fc is the satellite team for the original albirex niigata of japan, and even so, the team is made up of all (but one) japanese players.

and then i thought:

what if, in some alternate universe, rin is a football player on albirex niigata singapore fc, a player on loan, and haru is an exchange student studying in a local arts academy (idk, either the NAFA/nanyang academy of fine arts or la salle college of the arts or SOTA/school of the arts)?

and what if, one day, haru is dragged to a football match by his classmates who thought it would be a splended idea since it's the premier league finals and albirex niigata, a club that has been dominating the table, is playing, and haru, you're literally japanese—you should support your fellow countrymen even if you're in singapore right now? and haru (begrudgingly) relents, so here he is, in a stadium full of people, munching on shrimp chips and witnessing a sport he has little care for.

rin is a bench warmer. and after the finals are over, haru bumps into him in the washroom. he recognises him from the match because of his vibrant, carmine hair, even though rin's barely had any play time, and he feels obligated to congratulate him if only for the fact that he wants rin to know that he, too, is a japanese man in a foreign country. he wants to connect, desperately, to some who reminds him of home. but there's only one problem:

haru is mute.

so he resorts to fishing out a notepad he always carries along with him in case of occurrences such as these (because he can't assume that he knows japanese sign language) and quickly scribbles out a congratulations—in hiragana, because he wants rin to pick up on the fact that they're both from japan. at first, rin thinks he's merely an excitable fan who's showing off the fact that he's learnt japanese to a player of his favourite club, but no, haru quickly clarifies in messy characters, and they fall into a natural conversation.

one conversation turns into many, face-to-face and text, conversations and eventually meetings. haru, despite being somewhat of a technophobe, burries his dislike for technology and abandons the notebook in favour of typing out his responses whenever they converse. (rin asks him to tear out the pages where he'd first scribbled in hiragana to him so he can keep it, for memories' sake). he finds that he likes rin's company, and finds his voice beautiful—and after several visits to rin's trainings and official matches, he starts to feel sad because the cheering at his matches are a loud cacophony of voices, and he knows his will never be a part of it. he falls further into despair when he finds that having rin read off a screen would pale in comparison to him actually being able to speak his mind, emotively, expressively. he wants, so badly, for rin to be able to hear him speak—to hear rin's melodious, sing-song voice, or his child-like laughter in response to something haru says.

and so he makes a decision.

and he isn't sure if rin would approve of it.

[chainsawworld]

Freddy krueger was 26 when he died?????

[baronmagikcarp]

This is made up.

[awesomephd]

Watching Through My Collection: Day 58/67

Black Dragons (1942)

Day 57 / Day 59

Bela Lugosi's only spy film and an interesting bit of history as an early bit of anti-Japanese propaganda.

While I'm less versed in the finer tropes of spy movies, I liked the pacing of this one. Giving just enough code phrases and halves of phone calls to keep the mystery going.

I couldn't care less about the detective that spends the movie trying to solve the murders happening so I was highly entertained when it turned out he was a step behind just about everyone else at the end, even if he did eventually figure out what was happening.

At least it was made up for with Bela Lugosi's morally dubious and suspicious character who seemed (and was) a few steps ahead of everyone else.

[amarriageoftrueminds]

A Timeline of CATFA in images

from this meta. 

[allineedisonedream]

Redrawing old panels out of context because I can

old panel

ngl, I'm not sure whether it's Jason or Dick in the panel or where it's from, but it looked fun to redraw.

Edit: The panel is from Batman Vol. 1 #13 (1942). (Thanks, anon! and everyone in the comments:)

And I got some asks about this; sorry for offending anyone. I really meant no harm. I didn't consider the context. I'll try to do more research next time, and to clear some other things up, it's Dick in the original panel, and it's supposed to be Dick in the redraw too

[cognito-ergo-hazard]

literally everyone watching Casablanca (1942) for the first time like

i swear to god NOTHING makes me more pissed off then when everyone is like “oouheuehghoughough ough [thing] is so good it’s a classic you’ll love it” and they say it SO OFTEN that you resolve on principle to loathe [thing] with your entire being but when you actually get around to experiencing [thing] it literally IS That Good. physically trembling with rage at the fact that hamlet actually is one of the best plays ever written. DIE

[the-microphone-explodes]

Well for one thing, you (or the West for that matter) didn’t create the word genocide, it was coined by a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin. In his book, the Axis Rule in Occupied Europe he showed his research of the way the Nazi occupied Europe and narrated how he thought the crimes the Nazi committed against the Polish during their occupation came down to 5 main policies that displayed their will to completely destroy the Polish nation which included:

1) The mass killings of Poles

2) Bringing “serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”,

3) Planned deterioration of living conditions "calculated to bring about their destruction

4) Implementation of various "measures intended to to prevent births within the group" such as promotion of abortions, burdening pregnant women, etc.

5) Forced transfer of Polish children to German families

He used these instances as proof for the Nazi plan to completely terminate the Polish identity and these markers are still used by the Genocide Convention as proof of genocidal intentions. He also used this word to describe the atrocities that Nazi committed against the Jewish people during the Holocaust. Lemkin also spent the rest of his time advocating for an international convention to stop the rise of “future Hitlers”, and on December 9, 1948 the U.N. authorized the Genocide Convention, which had many of its clauses based on Lemkin’s own research and proposals.

Also this is a very narrow idea of racism and discrimination. Anti-semitism was rampant in American and Western society years before Hitler came into power. I mean in 1942, American literally turned away a boat load of Jewish people seeking refuge. People didn’t look at Jews and think “Oh man they look just like us, so their murders must be important and we have to create a word that describes their condition and the crimes being committed against because we care sooooo much about them”. In reality, most people didn’t really given a shit about all of the Jews being murdered, only when America and the West was being directly threatened by war did they retaliate.

So no, the West didn’t coin the word Genocide to describe the atrocities that Nazi Germany inflicted because the victims looked like them or whatever, the word was created by Polish-Jewish lawyer to describe the oppression that his people were put under.