#but the character is very distinct from the actor in the prison that is my brain even out of Designated Character Wardrobe so maybe i dont

[antialiasis]

Chess (2018 Kennedy Center revival)

So I was just going to briefly mention all the other different versions of Chess I have consumed in the big essay post I’ve been writing on and off, but there was just too much to say about this one which made it really awkward to fit it in, so fine, here is another individual chesspost. Nearly 7500 words of rambling under the cut, oh my god.

This production represents the latest official full overhaul of Chess. It sports an all-new book written by Danny Strong, also known as the actor who played Jonathan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is some whiplash (Sarah Michelle Gellar is apparently a big Chess fan, too). It was later staged again as a concert with some further modifications in 2021, but I listened to an audio bootleg of the 2018 version. (There exist some videos of it online, but only scattered bits.)

The Story Changes

This version has London’s basic plot structure with the distinctive two chess tournaments (this time four years apart, which is neither the original number nor the actual number of years between world chess championships), but rearranges Act I, adds a lot more quippy dialogue and swearing, reinterprets the characters, and recenters real-world politics in the whole thing — sort of the exact inverse of what Chess på svenska did with the material. It opens with “Difficult and Dangerous Times” to set the scene in the Cold War and features the Arbiter narrating with sardonic omniscient commentary between songs/scenes throughout, which does feel a bit more consistent than the Arbiter suddenly having a narrator role for the duration of one song in Act II.

All the main characters in this version are reinterpreted with significant new background context, which is a very interesting way to rewrite it that I definitely dig in principle. For example, Florence’s first scene here involves Walter threatening her with deportation from the US unless she can make Freddie behave for the duration of the tournament. Most versions of Chess make the political scheming very symbolic and vague — exchanges of mostly unnamed political prisoners or handwaved concessions — but this version is noticeably specific, with specific nuclear arms treaty negotiations that the CIA believes would be negatively affected if Freddie keeps openly antagonizing the Soviets. She tells Walter to go fuck himself (told you it adds more swearing) and that nobody can control Freddie Trumper, but ultimately she doesn’t have much of a choice but to reluctantly play along. This addition recontextualizes her character and her interactions with Freddie in Act I a fair bit — it’s pretty significant, after all, that she is under threat and may lose her home if she doesn’t somehow control what she really can’t.

Meanwhile, Freddie himself here suffers from a full-on mental illness which he takes medication for. Walter asserts on a phone call early that they’re dealing with a “genuine paranoid schizophrenic”, but then later calls him a “bipolar bitch”; I take the blatant inconsistency combined with the obviously insulting nature of these remarks to mean probably we’re not meant to take either of them at face value, but these two lines from Walter are the only ones suggesting any specific diagnosis. (I unfortunately suspect Danny Strong didn’t have a specific condition in mind and research it so much as just slap him with a Generic Ambiguous Mental Illness for which he takes Pills.) One way or another, Freddie’s ambiguous mental illness gives him bouts of intense paranoia, driving him to do things like trashing his and Florence’s hotel room to look for listening devices at one point. Florence keeps insistently, frustratedly telling him to just take his goddamn pills even as he’s in genuine distress; it’s pretty uncomfortable, and also definitely one of those things that are at least more human when his episodes could cost her the only home she has: she’s desperate and in distress too.

(I do kind of feel as if this whole bit would make more sense if Florence and Freddie had a strictly business relationship here to start with, instead of being explicitly portrayed as a couple — when they have a committed intimate partnership going on, one would think Florence getting deported would also be pretty obviously significant for Freddie, and Florence quietly playing along with the CIA and crossing her fingers that she can indirectly coax him into behaving with seemingly no serious thought given to whether it’d be better to just tell him why he needs to stop feels stranger. The scene with Walter sounds like Walter/the CIA are not aware of their romantic relationship and Florence wants to keep it that way — they both refer to Freddie strictly by his full/last name and as “her player” — so I guess Walter would have assumed she wouldn’t tell him, but surely the calculus would at least look a bit different to Florence herself. Even if it just prompts her to realize Freddie would still be liable to react by becoming even more erratic and vocal about his paranoias, that feels like it’d be significant enough, at least for her feelings on this relationship going forward, that it never actually coming up or being suggested within the story starts to feel marginally odd. Not a major complaint, though, just a bit of overthinking.)

Freddie in general is noticeably portrayed much more sympathetically here than usual throughout. Where other versions of Chess tend to present Freddie as an attention-seeking drama queen who plays up ludicrous arbitrary demands for money and press, here things like his walkout from the first chess game are made to come from a much more genuine place: he has major sensory issues and is intolerably thrown off balance by distracting noise and lights (which really are deliberately arranged to sabotage him). “Florence Quits”, the song with the misogyny verse, usually reads as being triggered by his jealousy and inability to accept that Anatoly’s just playing better than him, but this version makes it feel more about how he feels persistently gaslit about the ways he’s being sabotaged than anything else: he accuses the Soviets of having a hypnotist in the front row to throw him off (which they do, and Freddie literally saw him and recognized him) and Florence of working for the CIA (which she has been, if not by choice) while they deny it and brush it off, and the tense opening notes of the song play under him desperately yelling “You’re lying to me! You’re all lying to me!” (Which doesn’t make the misogyny okay, obviously, but it does make it feel more like a desperate, paranoia-fueled lashout where you don’t know how much he really means all that.)

When he subsequently forfeits the match against Anatoly, he makes a speech that sounds absolutely despairing where he says chess has been taking a toll on his health since he first became champion at eleven years old, and he doesn’t feel he can trust anyone, even himself. In Act II, before “The Interview”, he even actually apologizes to Florence for how he treated her; heck, his motivation for going so hard after Anatoly in “The Interview” itself is portrayed as being that he is genuinely disgusted by Anatoly leaving his family so callously (which is a lot of fun given Freddie’s own issues about his father leaving him and his mother behind) and wants Florence to hear the truth about what a despicable man he is, which is still unpleasant to her but clearly comes from a much more sympathetic place than either simple spite or reluctantly complying with Walter’s orders.

As for Anatoly… he was taken from his parents when he was a small child to be groomed by Molokov and the KGB into becoming a chess champion, and he’s well aware from his very first scene that the state had killed the previous Soviet champion after Freddie unseated him. (Freddie excoriates the press early on for not covering why the former champion disappeared off the face of the Earth because they’re too busy bashing Freddie, which sounds like paranoia, but the narrative has actually told us Freddie is right and they really did execute him but no one but Freddie seems to notice or care — another way in which Freddie is jarringly sympathetic here. In general, Freddie is portrayed as paranoid, and the other characters treat him like he’s just paranoid, but the narrative keeps proving Freddie’s paranoia right.)

Anatoly, though, isn’t afraid of the same fate, because “The state cannot execute a man… that is already dead.” (This general sentiment could press my buttons, but it just feels super corny and melodramatic the way it’s presented and performed, especially with that dramatic pause in there.) He is deeply depressed, thinks his marriage to Svetlana is fake and his kids hate him, and says repeatedly in Act I that he hates chess and just wants to be free of it, though he also describes a particular championship match he watched as the only time he’s felt love. At the end of Act I, he defects to the UK along with Florence as usual (his defection fully blows up the treaty Walter was worrying about despite Anatoly’s victory, so Florence’s refugee visa is indeed revoked, and that’s why they end up in the UK). Theoretically he should be free of chess now, but it bothers him intensely that he only won by forfeit (here they never finished playing a single match), resulting in him returning to defend his world champion title, and win it ‘properly’, four years later in Bangkok against Viigand.

Unknown to Anatoly, by Act II, after the election of Ronald Reagan, the Soviets are extra on edge and believe a planned NATO military exercise is actually the US mobilizing for a full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union. Walter tries to convince Molokov it’s just an exercise; Molokov insists unfortunately the generals are going to believe it’s an invasion and be ready to retaliate unless Viigand wins the championship (if Viigand wins they will take it as a ‘sign of goodwill’ from the US, which will change their minds on the apparent invasion because, uhh, unclear). Throughout Act II, the larger stakes in this version are set up to be that if Anatoly should win the match, the Soviets are liable to start a nuclear war.

Does Walter go to Anatoly to frankly tell him that apparently the Soviets have lost their minds and are basically threatening nuclear war over a chess match and try to convince him to throw on that basis? Does Molokov realize that if he’s telling Walter to go rig the chess match so the generals will call it off, he clearly doesn’t actually believe that the US is about to invade, so probably he should be trying to convince the generals not to go for the nuclear option himself? No, of course not; this is Chess, so we have to have the songs that are in Chess. So instead, Walter and Molokov just go through the same indirect schemes as usual to unbalance Anatoly and convince him to throw the game, with some minor twists. Molokov actually actively threatens Svetlana with being sent to a gulag to die if she doesn’t convince her husband to return — and Svetlana does straight-up tell Anatoly this, only for Anatoly to brush her off and tell her they won’t do that. Florence learns the same from Walter and initially dismisses him, and fully doesn’t believe him about her father being alive, but does ultimately sympathize with Svetlana and worry for her, which I like. But Anatoly is obsessed with winning this championship above all else and fully convinced Molokov is bluffing.

In the end, he plays the game to win, oblivious to the nuclear threat; as he checkmates, Walter makes a desperate phone call to his superiors to call off the training exercise. (Why he didn’t just do that immediately when Molokov told him the Soviets were taking it as an attack, instead of spending all this time playing along with this elaborate chess mind game, is a mystery.) Only… they don’t, and the Soviets watch with their fingers on the nuclear button, but ultimately they don’t fire. The Arbiter’s narration informs us this was the closest the world ever came to destruction, even closer than the Cuban missile crisis, and that this then served as the wake-up call that prompted negotiations about nuclear deescalation.

Anatoly, meanwhile, returns to the Soviet Union as usual, this time successfully exchanging himself for Florence’s imprisoned father, and Walter gives Florence and her father visas so that they can return to the US together.

Broad thoughts

I feel profoundly weird about the mixing of real-life history and completely fictitious alternate history here — you can’t just assert in narration that the fictional events in your musical were what taught the US and Soviet Union that maybe they should just talk to each other, while making a specific comparison to an actual thing that really happened, after spending the musical asserting that the Soviets murdered chess players for losing the world championship. I think mixing history and fiction can work fine if we can imagine that for all we know this is what really happened, or alternatively that this is what might have happened in some alternate universe similar to but distinct from ours. But here, we’re creating highly significant and publicized events that are obviously fictional, making it absurd to pretend this is what really happened, while also presenting these fictional alternate-universe events in objective hindsight narration alongside real events that happened in the real world and as a supposed cause of them. This ending narration just feels like it’s weirdly trying to have its cake and eat it too.

All in all, though, I think this is definitely one of the most interesting efforts to rewrite Chess. It definitely has something it’s going for, there are several neat ideas in it, and in particular I appreciate that it tries to give extra attention to the characters, more context to their actions, and more messy, humanized depth, inner conflict, and complicated motivators and stressors behind what they do. I genuinely enjoy what it’s doing with Freddie in Act I, in particular, even though it feels somehow both jarringly like it’s woobifying him (I genuinely think he ends up coming across as the most sympathetic of the three mains here, with so much of his erratic, childish and unpleasant behaviour being recontextualized to be more understandable and the way his hatred of the Soviets keeps being validated by the narrative) and like the narrative is weirdly harsh on him (this much more sympathetic Freddie who suffers from an actual mental illness is treated like absolute irredeemable scum by every other character including the fourth-wall-leaning narrator, even more than usual).

I also think the restructuring of Act I was pretty solid for the most part, though there’s definitely some awkwardness, like how Freddie’s expanded encounters with the press sort of clumsily repeat the same beats a bit. On the one hand, I can get what Danny Strong was going for in choosing to introduce everyone first and then go into “Merano” instead of doing several minutes of narrative meaninglessness before the main characters are even introduced; on the other hand, that kind of just half-defeats the sole original purpose of “Merano”, which is to provide a very jaunty more stereotypical musical theater song so that Freddie can be introduced via barging in and interrupting it with his very different vibe, and if I were Danny Strong I would definitely have just removed “Merano” at that point. But the “Difficult and Dangerous Times” opening works great, and it nicely avoids the “almost nothing of note happens for nearly forty minutes” and “several meaningless fluff songs in a row” problems of the London script, introducing conflict and stakes early and keeping the narrative going.

Ultimately, though, a lot of what it’s trying to do doesn’t quite come together to me, and some of it is variously misguided or just strange.

The Politics

To start with, I can definitely get wanting to emphasize the role of Cold War politics in the narrative, and I basically enjoyed the increased political focus and higher stakes in Act I — but I don’t think making Anatoly unwittingly almost start a nuclear war works here, or fits properly into this narrative at all. The Soviet generals have to be holding idiot balls; Molokov has to be holding an idiot ball; Walter has to be holding the biggest idiot ball of all; and most importantly, the ludicrously massive stakes being pasted on top of the match despite none of the main characters even knowing about it means we zoom thoroughly out of the character drama of the situation: “Endgame” just becomes grotesquely trivial with that hanging over it without Anatoly’s knowledge, rendering the actual drama of the climactic song completely irrelevant to what’s really at stake.

I also dislike, in a version that emphasizes the politics, how distinctly slanted it is. One of the things that I like in the London strain of Chess is that Walter and Molokov are both slimy, manipulative bastards in different ways, both sides’ political actors cruelly toying with the lives of the players for their own impersonal ends; the righteousness of each state as a whole doesn’t really matter to this story, only the impact that the whole conflict and the mutual scheming has on the main characters’ lives. But in this version, the Soviets and Molokov are cartoon villains who literally abduct children to force them into chess camp and then murder them if they don’t win the world championship, while Walter may be a condescending asshole who’s willing to threaten Florence but is distinctly the ‘good guy’ in his interactions with Molokov, which comprise most of his screentime, especially in Act II. Walter even gets a humanizing moment where he explains he has a nine-year-old son and has nightmares about him suffering a nuclear winter (Molokov, meanwhile, tells Walter in Act I that Anatoly is like a son to him but could not more obviously not care about Anatoly at all when he proudly presents his new champion material Viigand in Act II). I just find it really detrimental to Chess’s narrative to make it about Soviets Bad, US Good, and more so the more you focus on that — to whatever extent you highlight the politics in this story, it should be done in a way that’s about how the political machinations of the Cold War impact the character drama at the center of it, and it’s distracting when instead you make it into a loosely related B-plot about Walter’s desperate diplomatic efforts to stop the evil Soviets from destroying the world with their shortsightedness.

I think a successful more politically-focused Chess could definitely exist, but I think it’s always going to function best if Walter and Molokov feel at least narratively like just about equal scumbags. It’s not even impossible to imagine nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction coming up in the course of it — but it needs to be using that to make us enraged at all of this on behalf of Anatoly/Florence/Svetlana/Freddie, not enraged at Molokov on behalf of Walter.

The Character Work

Meanwhile, I do basically like the setup and recontextualization done for all of the main characters in Act I, but unfortunately none of them quite delivered as well as I hoped in the end.

Let’s start with Florence. I actually quite liked the deportation threat, putting Florence herself under personal pressure in a way she usually isn’t. I dig characters being put through the wringer and making decisions under stress. But the story doesn’t quite do anything with that other than using it as silent context behind her early interactions with Freddie and technically as the reason she and Anatoly move to the UK offscreen. We don’t, for instance, ever see Freddie learn that that’s why she moved or that he was unwittingly indirectly responsible for that, or otherwise address that in any way, and as far as Florence in the rest of the story is concerned, it might as well never have happened — we never see her having any kinds of feelings on it, or even confronting Walter about that nasty little part he played in her life when she meets him again (she doesn’t even comment on it when he offers her the chance to go back to the US at the end!). To an extent this is, of course, because Florence being deported was never originally part of the story of Chess, so of course it doesn’t come up in any song or have any significant specific impact on the core series of events — but if you’re going to add it in at all, you really ought to be taking that somewhere in the rest of your additions that isn’t just briefly handwaving that she gets to go back at the end.

Like Long Beach, this version brings Florence’s father back at the end — but unfortunately, it feels really unearned here. Compared to other London variants, it actually ditches the bit of “The Deal” where Florence is tangibly emotional and riled up by Walter’s offer of her father — she fully dismisses the idea of her father being alive as bullshit, and instead it’s Svetlana who moves her to have doubts when she sees her begging Anatoly to return on video and realizes Svetlana still loves him. I do really like that, by itself, and it’s probably my favorite thing about this version’s portrayal of Florence; her empathizing with Svetlana to the point of feeling genuinely guilty for having taken her husband from her, and believing maybe the right thing to do would be if he went back to Svetlana for her sake, is actually very good, serves as a great lead-in to “I Know Him So Well”, and makes Florence’s character feel far more sympathetic in a production where she’s otherwise pretty lacking in that department. But it leaves us with no emotional connection whatsoever to Florence’s father — we’ve only heard her mention him twice before Walter’s offer, very briefly, in Act I, and not really with any sense that she misses or is all that invested in him. Seeing her reunite with him means nothing for her or her arc; it just comes out of left field, and winds up being another thing slanting this version towards Good Guy Walter, Bad Guy Molokov, what with Walter offering her visas back to the US for both of them seemingly out of the goodness of his heart.

It would have been possible to actually build up to this in a way that would make it satisfying. Florence and Anatoly have several conversations; we could have used some of those to have Florence actually talk about her father and how she feels about him being gone, and that could have been part of building up her relationship with Anatoly, made it meaningful that Anatoly’s parting gift to her is to ensure her father’s return. I suppose Danny Strong’s thought process may have been that if he built up Florence’s father too much, that should become her main concern once Walter brings that into it, and he wanted her concern to be about Svetlana instead, which I guess is fair; it also means Anatoly only really has to dismiss the potential harm to one other person in his obsession with winning the game. But if you do make the decision to not build up her father, then bringing her father back is not an ending that makes any sense, and there was no need to do this — they could have easily cut out all suggestion of her father being alive entirely and it would only have made things smoother. I think the only reason she gets her father back in this one is in some hasty effort to make Florence’s ending less bleak, but because it doesn’t have any emotional resonance, it’s just not the right way to do that here.

Speaking of Florence and Anatoly, the romance here… once again has some neat, interesting things it’s going for but doesn’t quite come together as a whole. The two of them do have some actual conversations where they bond a bit, which is already a marked improvement over the default London script — but their very first conversation features Anatoly asserting out of nowhere that Florence has “a way of brightening his spirit”, despite not even knowing her, which isn’t super convincing and just comes off kind of creepy-awkward. Florence asserts a few times that he’s sweet and kind, but we don’t really see much of him actually coming across as sweet or kind — his lines tend to be either melodramatic or sardonic moping interspersed kind of jarringly with awkward jokes. He’s less charming or sweet and more like a lonely, kicked dog, which is fine if Florence is into that but doesn’t quite make her descriptions of why she likes him ring true.

This production actually goes back to the concept album a bit when it comes to Florence and Anatoly — namely, more than political manipulation and external pressures forcibly tearing them apart from the outside, there’s a more substantial internal tension between them as Anatoly genuinely simply prioritizes winning the chess match over her and dismisses her as she tries to question him about Svetlana. The two approaches can both work but do different things for the narrative; this internal approach puts more focus on the personal conflict and character drama and makes the relationship more interesting, which is definitely good, and in principle I think this is built up to in a pretty solid way here — Anatoly, raised to become a chess champion to the exclusion of all else, being maddened by the notion of not actually beating Freddie in Act I and needing to prove he deserves the championship to himself in Act II before he can feel “free from chess” works as a coherent reason for him to be so strikingly, unhealthily obsessive about it.

But I think the biggest problem is that Florence and Anatoly individually don’t hit well enough as characters to create investment in them. Florence is ultimately not developed enough and mostly just acts kind of unpleasant, especially to Freddie, all the way up until that Svetlana bit in Act II. More importantly, I just can’t like or understand or sympathize with Anatoly at all, beyond recognizing that core of what his arc is going for. Part of it is probably down to the writing of his lines, which I’m just not a fan of in general. I already named one example from his first scene. Here’s how Anatoly and Florence’s very first conversation starts:

ANATOLY: It’s not his fault. This game drives us all crazy. FLORENCE: I’m fine. Aren’t you even a little bit scared? ANATOLY: Of Trumper? FLORENCE: No, that they’ll kill you if you lose. ANATOLY: Oh. To quote the great Leo Tolstoy, “Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.” FLORENCE: What does that mean? ANATOLY: I don’t know exactly, but it is very Russian.

I just don’t find this dialogue very convincing. Why is he reciting a dramatic irrelevant quote if he doesn’t know what it means and just thinks it’s “very Russian”? It feels like a generic quippy exchange off a snarky TV show. Does Anatoly use humour to cope with his situation? Not really; this is pretty much the only time he says anything that might be taken as that. This feels like a joke that’s there only to get a laugh out of the audience, not because Anatoly would actually tell it — and consequently, it doesn’t tell us anything real about Anatoly. Meanwhile, Florence responds to this with “Oh, you’re funny,” as if that’s one of the reasons she falls for him when I would decidedly not name that as a character trait he has. I feel like most of his dialogue just doesn’t have a great sense of character — in stark contrast to Freddie, who oozes character. I can’t get a good sense of who he is and how he thinks. He’s just there. And this also makes it harder to see what Florence sees in him and believe in the relationship.

Moreover, this Anatoly just comes across as kind of a terrible person, not in the fun coherent intentional way Freddie is a terrible person but in a flat, confusing and kind of unintentional-seeming way. Svetlana here is actually really sympathetic, with lovely little additional bits of dialogue that make her feelings hit harder (her voice as she tells Anatoly that “You left us!” breaks my heart), and this is possibly my favorite version of Svetlana in any Chess. But Anatoly is really, really terrible to her, by which I don’t even mean the cheating on her but the bit where he keeps angrily insisting to her face that she never loved him and she brainwashed their children to hate him and of course they’re not going to kill her (hey, Anatoly, guess who’s already well aware that the Soviet government in this universe is not above executing people over chess?).

And even that could be made understandable, given his situation — he could just be in hard denial about it because the thought of them having been suffering with him gone and being punished for his actions is so horrific he just shuts it down — but there’s never any sense that that’s what’s really going on. We don’t see him privately upset about the possibility later, for instance — he just keeps insisting the same and dismissing Svetlana to Florence, too. We know it’s not that it’s true — we see Svetlana admit to Molokov that even though he ruined her life and she never wants to see him again she still loves him, and we hear her sing “Someone Else’s Story” and “I Know Him So Well”. Nor do we ever get any hint at exactly what Svetlana or his kids did to make him think this of them, if anything (his own kids!). Anatoly just seems to sort of bitterly, adamantly believe this for no reason at all. And that makes it impossible to empathize with. Okay, sure, Anatoly, you were taken from your family as a child, but that really doesn’t even start to explain any of this. There could have been ways of making it feel at least believable, tragic in a deeply fucked-up way, but the story here just doesn’t do the work. And once again, Anatoly being so unpleasant for no reason just makes it harder to feel at all invested in his relationship with Florence or sad when they part.

The best fix here isn’t quite obvious, and I can’t say I envy Danny Strong trying to put all his neat little ideas together and make them work. If Anatoly were to appear substantially conflicted about Svetlana and put any real stock in Molokov’s threat, that would render “Endgame”, where he doubles down anyway, kind of jarring and inexcusable as he’d be not just refusing to return to her but refusing to care if she is killed. So in order for this to properly work with “Endgame”, he probably does need to be very deep in denial about whether they’d really kill her. I think what I would do, if I were writing this plot where groomed-as-a-chess-champion Anatoly knows the Soviets killed Boris Ivanovich and they’ve threatened to kill Svetlana too, is to emphasize better how irrational Anatoly is being and try to show it more as a consequence of growing up among the constantly plotting KGB.

Let him go off on a proper paranoid rant to Florence about the reasons why he thinks Svetlana is just plotting against him, and some innocuous things he saw his kids do once that mean she brainwashed them. When Florence tries to challenge him on how batshit he sounds, he just storms out, saying she’s being taken in by their lies and just wants to sabotage him, and disappears — and she doesn’t see him again until he appears at the final game and plays this manic, desperate match while insisting to himself that Svetlana and Florence both just never understood him and hated his success. Afterwards, we can perhaps see him finally, quietly asking Molokov if they’re really going to kill her, showing that on some level he already knew the threat might be real and had just firmly blocked it out (in the actual ending as it is Molokov simply tells him unprompted that she really will be punished unless he comes back, and he just asks why with no addressing of his previous adamant insistence that that wouldn’t happen). His and Florence’s final conversation could then involve a bit more of a reckoning with that and with what his relationship with Svetlana was really like, through a more honest lens.

I’m actually pretty tickled by this scenario because that would really drive home a pretty fun parallel between Anatoly and Freddie — which in hindsight I think this version must in fact have been trying for, but didn’t quite do in a focused enough way for it to really hit. Anatoly and Freddie are both chess players with deeply abnormal childhoods and bouts of paranoia that cause them to behave in toxic ways, which ultimately drives Florence away from both of them.

This production shows the first chess game as the “Chess Game” instrumental playing under Freddie and Anatoly having alternating inner monologues about the game and their issues, deliberately drawing a comparison between the two of them; they both say they hate chess, that they don’t feel like real human beings. It’s not exactly subtle, but I liked the way this was used to build up their respective brain gremlins and was intrigued by the parallel being set up. I didn’t feel they ultimately did much with the parallel, though, because the story then didn’t really continue leaning into it much from there. By emphasizing this Anatoly’s paranoia as paranoia and not just as him legitimately thinking the marriage was never real and the KGB wouldn’t kill her, we could properly build the story around that parallel, and I would genuinely dig that.

The one place after the chess match where the actual thing does sort of try to get at the Anatoly/Freddie parallel again is in the dialogue scene that precedes “Endgame”. This scene is not sung (though it has the “Chess Game” instrumental in the background, which connects it neatly to that previous bit comparing the two of them), but it’s clearly based on “Talking Chess”: Freddie approaches Anatoly to tell him Viigand’s weakness lies in his King’s Indian Defense, and:

ANATOLY: Why are you helping me? FREDDIE: Jesus Christ! Am I the only one who cares about this game? ANATOLY: It’s more than a game now. There is so much more at stake than who wins or loses. FREDDIE: No! No, winning is everything. Fuck politics! Fuck the KGB, fuck the CIA, fuck them all! We are the ones who have dedicated our lives to chess. We are the ones who have given up everything for greatness — our childhoods, our sanity, our loves. Anatoly, we’ve sacrificed everything. They’ve sacrificed nothing. What’s the number one rule of a chess champion? ANATOLY: Play to win. FREDDIE: As long as you do that you can never lose, even if you do.

Much as I love “Talking Chess”, though, this on the surface similar scene just didn’t feel right in this context when I listened to it. In Anatoly’s last scene here, he told Florence firmly that he just wanted to win and that his marriage with Svetlana was never real and it’s all KGB mind games. Him going “It’s more than a game now, there’s so much more at stake” suddenly now comes out of nowhere — if he believes that now, it could only be if he actively reconsidered something offscreen, but he doesn’t say anything elaborating on what he’s thinking now or what he might have reconsidered or why, just that vague, generic line that contradicts everything he’s expressed up until this point. It’s another example of Anatoly’s dialogue just feeling really flat and meaningless to me — his lines here don’t say anything, just serve as vague filler to prompt Freddie onward. And because unlike London proper the setup leading up to this is all about him already being absolutely determined to win the game at all costs, this just feels redundant, unnecessary, going through the motions of something that’s in London without realizing that with the changed context it doesn’t quite make sense anymore.

I think that’s unfortunately the case with Freddie a bit here too. I enjoyed Act I’s quite different take on Freddie, and his establishing narration for Act II petulantly stating Anatoly won the championship last year “by forfeit, I might add”, and “The Interview” is recontextualized in a very fun way as I mentioned before — but after that it feels like Danny Strong doesn’t quite know what to do with Freddie anymore and just has him sort of arbitrarily go through the motions of London in a way that doesn’t necessarily hang together with everything he’s established of Freddie so far. It made sense that this Freddie, despite being decidedly hostile towards Walter and the CIA, conducted the interview to show Florence what a bastard Anatoly is — he’s not doing it for Walter, he’s got his own reasons to want to do it once Walter’s shown him the Svetlana video. But I find it a lot harder to swallow that this Freddie — whose usual problem seems to be that he’s compulsively blunt about how he really feels — would then be easily persuaded to play his part in “The Deal”, which involves exaggeratedly trying to be all buddy-buddy with Anatoly. Maybe if there was better setup around it, like with “The Interview” — but “The Deal” only has seconds of kind of half-assed leadup here, and from there it moves directly into “Pity the Child” (after a segue featuring the recording of Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita, because nuclear war).

Freddie’s next appearance after that, then, is this “Talking Chess”-esque dialogue where he’s realized the parallel between the two of them, how they’ve both sacrificed everything for chess and the political schemers have sacrificed nothing and that’s why he should play to win. I can appreciate how the low point of “Pity the Child” would trigger that particular realization, contemplating how much he lost and sacrificed to achieve his status in the game and perhaps afterward realizing Anatoly is the only other person here who might understand that. That feels like it basically tracks and is interesting.

But�� it also means that fun very specific contempt for Anatoly in particular based on him having left his family like Freddie’s own father did is just kind of… gone, I guess, or at least Freddie doesn’t consider it relevant enough for it to stop him from going out of his way to pep Anatoly up for the game with no mention or hint of it. (At least Freddie probably isn’t aware of the threats made against Svetlana in particular, so he doesn’t know Anatoly winning would shatter his family even further.) And we’ve lost the bit in “Talking Chess” where the notion of the political scheming actually leading to Viigand winning the match just personally offends Freddie because Viigand is not even that good; instead Freddie is just putting forward “Play to win” as some kind of general inviolable chess principle, which is kind of generic and not nearly as characterful, in my opinion. I’m not saying we ought to have had the “Viigand is mediocre” bit here — I don’t think it would quite fit in for this Freddie, whose feelings about chess itself are very conflicted and who is more concerned with showing up these political hacks who have sacrificed nothing while they sacrificed everything — but as a Freddie moment I would really have wanted to end on something stronger there than this vague assertion that “The number one rule of a chess champion is to play to win.”

Like in London, this is Freddie’s last substantial scene, but he does have a part in “Endgame”, and it’s also an interesting one: he gets Sixty-four squares / they’re the reason you know you exist (but not the preceding How straightforward the game…), but also a couple of other verses usually sung by the chorus, and the lines he gets are clearly very purposefully chosen to reinforce that final resolve regarding the sacrifices they’ve made for greatness, which I really appreciate: Listen to them shout / They saw you do it / In their minds no doubt / That you’ve been through it / Suffered for your art and in the end a winner and They’re completely enchanted / But they don’t take your qualities for granted / It isn’t very often / That the critics soften / Nonetheless, you’ve won their hearts / How can we begin to / Appreciate the work that you’ve put into / Your calling through the years / The blood, the sweat, the tears / The late, late, nights, the early starts?

All in all, Freddie is still definitely my favorite part of this Chess, but while the parallel itself is neat it’s too muddled and I find the second half of Act II pretty uneven for him. What would I do if I were writing this bit?

I’m not totally sure how I’d want to tackle “The Deal”, but as for the “Talking Chess”-but-not scene: I would ditch the bit where Freddie is trying to advise Anatoly on strategy and the bit where Anatoly is apparently suddenly not determined to play to win just so Freddie can then tell him he should be again. None of that is contributing anything in what this version has been building up. Instead, they just sort of bump into each other, Anatoly fresh off his paranoid rant to Florence about Svetlana, Freddie fresh off “Pity the Child” and the strange realization Anatoly might be the only person who’d understand him a little bit. At first they just sort of stop and look at each other. Freddie starts, guarded, with some kind of oblique accusatory prod about the leaving his family thing, which he still deeply resents.

Anatoly has calmed down now, but he tells him what he told Florence: that it was always a fake marriage, a fake family, that the video was just a lie set up for him by the KGB, that Svetlana had brainwashed their children to despise him.

This incidentally plays into Freddie’s existing preconceptions pretty well. He’s probably not instantly convinced but it checks out enough he’s willing to reluctantly leave it alone for now. Probably mutters something like, “Fucking Soviets.”

Anatoly says something like, aren’t you going to try to make me a deal to get me to throw the match and go back? Freddie says no, fuck that. Says the whole bit about how we are the ones who have dedicated ourselves to chess, who have sacrificed everything, childhood, sanity, love, and they’ve sacrificed nothing. Why should we listen to those CIA and KGB assholes? Draws out that parallel. The two of them are probably standing in symmetrical positions on the stage.

Anatoly just nods slowly, agreeing. “I would have beaten you.”

Freddie scoffs and says, “Dream on,” but not quite with the spiteful arrogance he would’ve said it in Act I.

Then they part, and we move on to “Endgame”. The scene isn’t about Freddie helping Anatoly, or about Freddie convincing Anatoly to go for the win; it’s about the Freddie/Anatoly parallel, about Freddie realizing it and in his profound loneliness finding a smidge of connection with this guy he hated because he’s the only one who sort of Gets It, and about showing how Anatoly’s conviction has developed since the first chess match where part of his inner monologue went, “I can’t beat him, he’s too good.” Anatoly is so ready to prove that he really is the world’s best chess player.

Conclusion

Man, this version is so interesting. It’s a mess, but it’s a fascinating mess with a bunch of tasty potential and a real sense that Danny Strong had some genuine thoughts on what the show was missing and how to rework it to fix that, even where his attempts were ultimately confused and don’t succeed. In some ways it’s the most me-core version of Chess and in other ways it’s deeply antithetical to me and in most all ways it’s trying to do something neat but does it in a flawed way. Special shoutout to this Freddie, who honestly deserves better than this Florence.

[khaleesiofalicante]

Then I will fix it for you,” Papa said. “Now. What’s the rule?”

You go fix your brain and your personality and the fact that you exist asshole

He was studying a lot lately – with Claude and by himself. 

I'm sorry, with Claude? How is Claude not in prison by now?? Oh my god, is the guy David yelled at in front of Max Claude?? Please tell me it's not?? Please tell me Claude died a painful death?

“I think you are ill,” Marcel whispered. “I think you know it too.”

HOW MANY ASSHOLE CAN EXIST IN A SINGLE CHAPTER??I'm so so glad we only get Albert in one fic. I'm so glad that in all the other ones he's already dead or not a part of David's life. Because the "he got away, he survived" always makes reading this part, learning what David has been through slightly easier. But here he hasn't and that hurts even worse. And we've never seen it in such detail. It makes me truly sick.

“Good,” Papa nodded before leaving the room. “Remember that’s how I feel every time I look at you.”

SOMEBODY PUSH HIM OFF A BALCONY

David was thirteen when he had his first kiss.

Okay I really liked how you separated Madeleine kissing him and being kissed by a boy. Because the first one didn't mean anything and the second one did. That is a very important distinction

Henry was in the choir too. Henry could sing really well. Although Henry wanted to be an actor – just like his dad.

Henry being the first male character introduced in this chapter I didn't want to throttle, we stan Henry. Thank you for existing Henry. When we first saw him in the Star Wars premiere I didn't think much of him, but he is one of the few people that made David's life a little brighter and we thank him for that, this bouquet is for him💐

When David returned to his own quarters, wiping away tears that weren’t there, his dairy was gone too.

What happened to his dairy? I'm scared, what happened to his diary??

David turned the copy of Paradise Lost in his hands, slow and careful, and smiled at the man. “Thank you, Uncle Lucien

BE GONE SATAN

Lucifer rebelling against God?” David asked.

“I wouldn’t call that disobedience,” Uncle Lucien tutted. “Justice perhaps. Retribution?”

Of course you wouldn't you psychopath. Can we even call Lucifer a psychopath? The actual devil doesn't seem as gratifying

Uncle Lucien smiled and touched his face. “I want you to come to Oxford

See Lucifer says he wants David in Oxford and suddenly I want David as far from Oxford as he can get. Honestly I miss TLND, the only world where David has healthy male role models/ father figures in his life (and LBAF but his memories were tampered and he is very different there plus in LBAF 5/6 we didn't get a lot of David/Jace and I feel like they are distant? Hope that never happens in TLND)

Please note that every Lucifer/David interaction kinda made my skin crawl, you've described as super creepy and his gaze kinda prickling at your skin? Amd that has been conveyed beautifully to us, I get goosebumps every time he is mentioned

I don’t need to know,” Jackson shook his head. “No reason could ever justify abuse.”

I'm so happy David always gets to have Jackson. That he is a canon event. He is to David what Malec/Rafe are to Max. Family, the person who is always there, the home you turn to when you've lost your way. It's really beautiful

He wrote the things he wanted to tell some man in the future. A man he’d probably never meet.He wrote about how he wanted to be loved. Even though he might never know what any of it might actually feel like.

I want Max to read that notebook and know he loved David in ways David himself never thought existed. He will be so proud of himself. And David will be so happy to know what he once thought was impossible is now his reality

Claude is indeed there and David is forced to spend time/share a space with him. A lot of children who are abused by people they know (which is more likely to happen than by a stranger) continue to share a space (or even a home) with their abusers, and I didn't see it being any different in David's case.

Fun fact: Marcel is mentioned in LBAF. Points if you know who he is.

I'm glad you caught the 'first kiss' bit. I was hoping someone would.

Henry was neat. Also, I named him after the rwrb character hehe.

I think a couple of people inquired about David's diary. One of the students stole it/read it. We see Albert asking Jackson to spy on David in uni. He does the same during David's school years too.

GET DAVID HEALTHY MALE ROLE MODELS 2KFOREVER.

Lucifer's obsession with David reminds me (in a very different way) of Mallory's obsession with Max. I KNOW THEY ARE PERFECT. LEAVE THEM ALONE.

David and Jackson 💜

The beautiful thing is Max never has to read that poem David wrote. He loves David without being asked. He cares for David without being prompted. And that is everything to David too.

[psalm22-6]

Source: Riverside Daily Press 13 November 1913 Yeah I like Les Miserables, my favorite characters are uh Narius and Gabroche 

Riverside is to see “Les Miserables,” the great French classic at the Loring theatre, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The pictures are said to be a remarkable interpretation. The manner in which “Les Miserables” is interpreted from the great French classic as the author wrote it to the cinematographical screen is accredited most remarkable. 

Though in the past five years America has developed a school of pantomime, which is making great progress, some actors being really stars in their spheres, the French still excel in that sort of thing, “Les Miserables” is a good demonstration of the fact.

The work was put in the hands of some very clever people, Henri Krauss of the theatre Sarah Bernhardt, was secured to play the part of Jean Valjean. 

From the half-starved, suffering, stupid Jean of the first chapters, M. Krauss seems to grow with the development of the story picturing the spiritual growth of the man who comes to understand and sympathize with the woes of the poor from his own bitter experience. The character of Jean is one few stars are as fitted to render as Mr, Krauss; his work is of great strength and intensely satisfying. 

Mlle Venture, of the theatre Del Odeon, plays Fantine, when on the Fantine, every moment she is on the screen she is in the story, the sacrifice of her hair, the subsequent persecution and rescue from the police by Valjean has made a distinct impression. Moistened eyes has been the tribute paid the work of this very clever actress. 

Javert, the prison guard and nemesis of Valjean through many years, is forcibly portrayed by M. Ettevant of the theatre de la Porte Saint Martin. The young lover Narious is capably done by M, Gavonne of the theatre Del Odeon Du Pare. Then, too, the never to be forgotten characters of the priest, Myriel, Eponine, Thenardier, Gabroche and Fauchelvent were made into very living creatures.

[project1939]

200 Films of 1952

Film number 189: Les Miserables

Release date: August 14th, 1952 

Studio: 20th Century Fox 

Genre: drama 

Director: Lewis Milestone 

Producer: Fred Kohlmar 

Actors: Michael Rennie, Debra Paget, Robert Newton, Edmund Gwenn, Cameron Mitchell 

Plot Summary: Based on the epic Victor Hugo novel, we see Jean Valjean sent to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. Meeting a kindly bishop who helps him get on his feet after his release, Valjean tries to do good in the world. He breaks his parole, however, and a malevolent French Inspector named Javert becomes obsessed with catching him. 

My Rating (out of five stars): ***¾ 

I’ve never seen the 1935 Hollywood version of this film, which everyone seems to agree is far superior to this. Without that lens to view it through, I thought this 1952 version was pretty good- not great exactly, but quite good. There are a few performances in it that make it worth watching, and Lewis Milestone’s direction was visually striking.  

The Good: 

Robert Newton as Javert. He was the best part of the film for me. He played the role with a creepy, imposing, desperately obsessive edge, which was exactly what was required. 

Javert the character. One of the great characters in literature, his obsessive drive for a machine-like “justice” combined with his traumatic past creates some damn good complexity. 

Michael Rennie as Valjean. Rennie will forever be the regal alien in The Day the Earth Stood Still for me, and I love him for it. Here he played Valjean with a lot of sympathy, conveying much through his eyes and expressions. 

Edmund Gwenn as the Bishop. Who can ever resist the charms of this man? 

Cameron Mitchell as Marius. He played an idealistic revolutionary well. 

The direction by Milestone. It was a very interesting film from a visual standpoint. The close-ups were used well, and there were a lot of cool shot compositions. It was also the ideal kind of situation where things were distinctive and creative, but it didn’t pull you out of the movie. 

I thought the film did a good job compressing a longer story into a shorter period of time. 

The courtroom scenes were particularly visually arresting (pun!)- with a truly nightmarish feel. I’m sure they were influenced by the devastating 1928 French film The Passion of Joan of Arc, because I couldn’t help but think of it. 

The political and philosophical messages were conveyed without hitting you over the head with it. 

The line by Robert near the end to Javert: “How does success taste after all these years?” Chills! 

The Bad: 

Rennie was good, but maybe a little too restrained? 

Debra Paget as Cosette. Most of the blame can probably go to the script and the Hollywood portrayal of these kinds of roles at the time. She overacted, falling into that “innocent damsel” stereotype. 

Debra Paget’s makeup. How she could have been in a mid 19th century convent school with that kind of makeup on her face is laughable. 

All the talk of a high school girl being “a desirable woman” ready for marriage. Yes, it was historically accurate to the 19th century, but it was still super gross watching it now. 

The hint of incest also grossed me out. I know Valjean was only Cosette’s non-genetic guardian, but she constantly called him father. It’s not technically incest, but... eew. 

The use of the intertitles that came on the screen as chapter dividers was inane and totally unnecessary. 

I don’t know that this is bad per se, but I find it funny that Hollywood favors using English actors to play European roles, especially if they are larger protagonist roles. I could list examples, but we’d be here forever. It’s just weird to me, because why don’t you ask an English person how French or German they feel...  

[anonymous149]

Unspoken Hearts Ch1 Friend or Foe?

This is a gay love story between Cynder and Peril. If you don't like it than you don't like gay people and not liking gay people is a very bad thing to do!

Authors note: I haven't rewatched Skylanders on Netflix in a good while, but I remember Cynder having daddy issues. And knowing Peril had stepmommy issues, I figured they'd make a cute couple! And I may have totally stolen this idea from @cy-cyborg on Tumblr, but we're pretty much besties anyway, so it's all good! Ze said I can use Zim's idea, so that's what I'm gonna do!

Also I get like no interaction on Fanfiction or Ao3 so I'm also going to upload on here!

Chapter 1: Friend or Foe?

"Attention, fellow Skylanders!" Master Eon's voice echoed through the command center, drawing the rapt attention of the Stealth Elf team. With a commanding presence, he continued, "Today, we have the pleasure of welcoming a new student. She hails from distant lands known only as Pyrrhia, and her name is none other than, Peril."

The very mention of Peril's name sent a shiver of intrigue down Stealth Elf's spine. Her heart raced, brimming with anticipation as she envisioned the newcomer. "Peril—what an apt name! It carries an air of danger and mystery."

Master Eon's laughter resonated warmly in the room. "Indeed, young Stealth Elf, she is quite dangerous in her own right. She possesses a remarkable pedigree, having killed thousands of dragons by the tender age of five."

The revelation left the Stealth Elf team in awe, their collective gasps hanging in the air. It was Commander Cullen who broke the silence, his voice tinged with concern. "Did you say... 'kill'?"

Master Eon chuckled, trying to alleviate any unease. "Ah, my dear Cullen, it seems we may need to refine our vocabulary. Perhaps we should use 'unalive' instead."

"Master Eon, we don't engage in taking lives," Cullen stated firmly, brushing a stray lock of his golden hair from his forehead.

Master Eon raised an eyebrow, genuinely puzzled. "But, my dear Cullen, you are Skylanders, entrusted with the safety of our world. Our foes are often relentless and dangerous."

Cullen clarified, "We prefer to make them see the error of their ways, and send them home with their tails between their legs."

Stealth Elf's boundless energy bubbled up. "Or we bring them to justice by sending them to prison!"

Pop Fizz chimed in with a touch of skepticism. "Though, they do have a knack for escaping. And speaking of surprises, why is Commander Cullen here among us?"

Master Eon cleared his throat, addressing Pop Fizz's curiosity. "Ah, well, as it happens, the voice actor for Jet Vac had some unfortunate views with trans people, leading to his departure. Given the unique nature of Jet Vac's character, we brought Commander Cullen in as his replacement."

The team collectively nodded in agreement, though Pop Fizz couldn't quite distinguish the voices. "I've got to admit, they sound pretty similar. Can anyone else hear the difference?" In unison, the team affirmed that only Pop Fizz seemed unable to discern the change.

Commander Cullen, however, couldn't help but express his reservations. "I'm just concerned, Master Eon. Having someone with a penchant for killing doesn't sit well with me."

Eruptor interjected thoughtfully, "Cullen, didn't you lead an army in your previous role? I recall battles where lives may have been lost."

Cullen, defensive yet sincere, crossed his arms. "I never took a life with my own hands. I had others do the fighting for me, a critical distinction."

Stealth Elf felt a pang of uncertainty. Her heart ached as she grappled with trust, torn between the prospect of Peril's dark past and her growing doubts about her comrades. The world of Skylanders had suddenly become more complex, casting a shadow over her once-clear convictions. Who was Peril, How did Master Eon know her? And can she actually tell the difference between Commander Cullens voice and Jet Vac? All or none of these answer will be revealed in the next chapter!

[hadescavedish]

Ok so @chronically-fangirls​ asked me to do an Anthony Valentine rec-list, since I posted his images all the time lmao. So here we go <3

I’ll do a brief introduction, since some of my followers aren’t familar with him: Anthony Valentine was an English actor who was mostly famous for his really wide range of roles (from passionate heroes to sinister villains, from down-to-earth street gangsters to elegant aristocrats), his alluring and distinctive voice (with more than 10 kinds of different accents). He was born in 1939 in a working class family, started his acting career since age 10, had been acting for almost all his life (to quote his words, he can’t remember a day he doesn’t want to act). Besides the acting talent, there are many things he can do, riding, fencing, dancing, and singing... I will not just write them all down lol.

I will put the links from YT in the following list:

- Raffles: this is the show made me where I am now, I did watch him from Granada Sherlock Holmes in which he played a villainous womanizer at first, and that was how I got to know him. But the show Raffles made me become a, uh, a fan. It was adapted from E. W. Hornung’s novel series ‘Raffles’ (the premise of the novel was: ‘So Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are thieves instead of solving crimes?’ Of course there are more to it but since this is a short rec-list I will keep it simple. It is heavily queer coded, it is actually... gayer than Holmes book series, and many people concluded the other (also very obvious) inspirations are Oscar Wilde and Geroge Cecil Ives, so to speak. AV along with another wonderful actor Christopher Strauli (who played Raffles’ sidekick and love of life) made the show as queer as possible for the specific time period (1970s, and some people say it might have been most explicit queer coded UK TV shows before Brideshead Revisit). Not to mention this show is a full display of AV’s various talents (especially the accent).

- Callan (pilot, S1, S2, S3, S4, scripts): while I was watching Raffles, I saw many people posted AV’s gif from this show, I am actually not specifically into spy genre, but I like its anti-Bond theme, the cynicism, the historical reference, the class conflict and social topics, and the aesthetic.. it is just so artistically entrancing for me. The main character Callan was played by Edward Woodward, who is also a very versatile and talented actor (I would recommend watching ‘The Wicker Man’ and ‘Breaker Morant’). AV played a character who is called Toby Meres (who is well received among the fans and it earned him the publicity and financial stability, his career got better and better since then), a charming but yet sadistic and sinister morally grey agent, who is in many ways opposite to the main character Callan (who was born lower middle class, whose parents were killed during WW2, who was oppressed by the system and upper class). unfortunately during that age filming tapes were expensive, and they didn’t know the show would become so popular, so some tapes from S1-S2 are lost, but even with the surviving episodes, it got me obsessed enough. Also AV was not in all episodes due to contract reasons, he was in most of S1, almost all S2 and S4 (absent in S3). There are also a pilot episode, a flim version of the pilot episode and a TV movie, I recommend the TV pilot episode (in which the original Toby Meres actor wasn’t AV, they recasted the character into him in regular series and it was successful). Well one more thing, I do ship the main character with Toby very hard, don’t judge me.

- Colditz (S1+2, some episodes from S2 got deleted from this list, the second playlist has full S2): AV appeared in almost entire season of S2 as a uh Nazi officer who was heavily wounded before and assigned to Colditz prison camp as second in command (yeah I did hesitate before) the show itself is definitely one of best UK TV shows of all time. AV was so good in the show it turned him into a sex icon (no kidding, srsly lmao, well I am gay so I am not attracted to him in that way but I understand), but also made his public image at the time somewhat troublesome to himself, along with horny fan letters, he also received many threatening letters from viewers who cannot distinguish between fiction and reality. He made a role which could have been handled in wrong ways by other actors, he gave the role just right amount of rigidity, unpleasantness, and yet you can see the humanity with glimpse, a very layered, not-so-villain kind of villain character. I watched his interview for another character in which he mentioned his interpretation to this character... not only he played just so good, also his understanding towards the role was intellectual and insightful.

- Justice: The show itself I consider is one of most liberal shows in UK in 1970s, its view is still relevant even today, it has heavy feminism tone, is sympathetic towards worker movements, and progressive in many respects, immigration, marriage, family, social equality, attitude towards law and goverment and so on. The main character Harriet Peterson was played by Margaret Lockwood, who was absolutely marvelous as a badass lady barrister (kind of like a warrior to me!) AV appeared in S3 (yeah you noticed he appeared in many things yet often was busy somewhere else lol) as young and dashing James Eliot. The fashion sense he had in the show reminds me of Al Pacino in his lawyer movie and also Bobby Deerfield.

- The Donati Conspiracy (three piece dystopian drama, I recommended this so often I can’t recall how many times)

Here are some notable mention I would really recommend after his regular shows:

- The Dancing Years (as the main character who is a romantic and sentimental composer during 1910-WW2)

Thank you for reading (there are other shows I haven’t mentioned but one step at a time) <3

[sidespart]

For the fake fic title, “who tf is Larry?”

Human AU /fake dating AU Intruality or pre relationship Patton/Janus/Remus

okay so Patton Sanders is away at collage and he is a Good Boy (tm). He volunteers Saturday, goes to church on Sunday, arrives 30 min early for his 8 am Monday lecture and brightly asks how everyone’s weekend was. He brings home made cookies to his seminars and lets everyone copy his notes and is always polite and kind to everyone he meets.

Unfortunately, a lot of this gets him labelled as weird, childish, naïve etc etc

Which he can cope with when it’s strangers, but he can’t help but get annoyed when it comes from his family.

He’s got three big brothers. Roman and Logan are both massive overachievers, Roman is super social and has had an endless parade of boyfriends, Logan claims he isn’t social but runs like 5 different clubs at his college and has an endless parade of minions. Both of them have a bad habit of talking over Patton and not truly listening to his contributions. Virgil’s a bit more chill but he’s completely overprotective and treats Patton like he’s a kid who can’t survive on his own. (Early episode vibes).

So there's some family obligation (mom wants them to...take grandma to the... old folks .. .church picnic? IDK something) and everyone just straight up assumes Patton will go because 'its not like he's doing anything else' and its just one step too far and Patton just blurts out "UM actually I'm busy that day. With Larry."

Which...who tf is Larry?

After that Patton maybe gets a bit addicted to the Larry excuse. Can't bring cookies because his boyfriend Larry licked all of them. Can't help you move this weekend, going to SeaWorld with Larry. Oh wait SeaWorld's unethical? Yeah he knows, it's a protest. Larry's going to dress as an ochrea and scream at people. Cant lend you the money - Larry needs it for bail.

(This might not have escalated so much if Patton wasn't TERRIBLE at lying, juts blurting out the first nonsensical thing he thinks of, but also has such a reputation of goody-two-shoes-ness that no one suspects him of lying. But everyone is very concerned about his association with Larry.)

The only person who knows Larry is fake is Patton's roommate Janus, who was there when Patton was on the video call and originally came up with Larry. He thinks the entire thing is hilarious and does absolutely NOTHINHG to reign Patton in, frequently helping him maintain the ruse/ escalating it further ("Patton would DIE if he knew i was telling you this, but the real reason he can't come to your birthday is Larry's old prison injury is acting up again..."). This whole thing has brought them closer than any of Patton's prior attempts at bonding with his roommate so he's a bit pleased.

Things go wrong when his brothers insist he bring Larry home for thanksgiving break. He's already told them that Larry got disowned by his family (seemed easier than making up a whole supporting cast) and is unemployed so he can't think of a great excuse (and his brothers are VERY insistent) so he ends up agreeing.

Patton and Janus get drunk in their room to toast the end of the Larry ruse. Janus insists Patton should just get a friend to pretend to be Larry to keep the game going but Patton says his only real friend is Jan and his family already know what he looks like (he has a pretty distinctive face tattoo) so that cant happen. Jan say's in that case lets just hire someone on Craig'sList to be your badass brother bothering boyfriend and Patton laughs and then has no memory of the rest of that evening.

So Patton drive's home. Hungover and resigned to having to come clean about lying for months and months. And when he walks in the door his mom hugs him and says “oh! Larry got here just before you! You never told me he had a moustache!”

So then a guy Patton has never seen before in his life is planting a big ol sloppy kiss on his cheek and yelling 'Heya honey bunch!!" and his brothers are in the background looking like they're about to have a collective breakdown and um.

He really just needs to get 5 minuets away from his family and 'Larry' so he can call Janus and ask what the fuck have you done, but with Larry clinging to him like an octopus and his brothers refusing to let them out of their sight that's almost impossible

bonus points!

Remus considers himself a method actor and refuses to respond to anything but Larry/ stop pretending to be Pat's boyfriend even when they're alone

Pattons mom is, inexplicably, completely charmed by Remus/Larry and wont stop telling him how much more confident and happy Patton has been since the two of them got together

his brothers are all horrified by Remus/Larry

Patton does eventually get in contact with Jan who is like...okay yes maybe i wrote the criaglist add after you passed out but in my defence i was extremely drunk at the time

Patton tells his mom that Janus wasn't invited home for thanksgiving (which tbf, is true, because his family's in freakin' europe) so of course she insists that he drive over an join them

this does not calm anything down, as he pisses off Virgil within the first 20 seconds of arriving, but he does distract everyone to give Patton more chances to sneak away with Remus

eventually Patton has a bit of a break down/ rant to Remus about the whole situation and Remus finally drops character to comfort him and is like "I don't get why you need to lie about yourself anyway?? Like I've spent this whole weekend learning about you and you're awesome the way you are??"

Patton: HEART EYES EMOJI

Anyway so eventually OBVIOUSLY they fall for each other and fake boyfriend becomes real boyfriend

Remus and/or Jan deliver some sort of smack down speech to the bros about how they need to have more faith in Pat/not treat him like a child etc etc

Patton learns to stand up for himself and also realises he's so lucky to have so many people who love /care about him even if they are all completely ridiculous

at some point, Remus initiates a food fight

[ariaste]

Is The Untamed actually gay or is it just like... Subtext gay?

Before I answer that, I want to draw a fine distinction between “subtext” and “queerbaiting”. One of those is okay (subtext). One of those is infuriating and lame (queerbaiting). 

Is there queerbaiting in The Untamed? Not a speck of it to be seen anywhere. There is no long drawn out UST between the two main characters that ends in “haha WOMP WOMP actually they’re both straight, here’s some gratuitous naked women to prove it to you”

Is there queer subtext in The Untamed? oh. oh honey. oh my darling. okay, how long do you have? a couple hours? We’re gonna need a couple hours to talk about the queer barely-BARELY-subtext, but also WHY IT IS LIKE THAT.

Basically, “is the Untamed actually gay” is a complicated question, because of the Chinese censorship laws.

The original novel (that the live action show, the graphic novel, and the animated version are all adapted from) is Actually gay. They kiss, they have some very kinky sex, they are canonically married, they have a son together.

In China, this is not something that a person can currently write lightly.  In 2018, one author was arrested for writing gay erotic novels and sentenced to TEN YEARS IN PRISON. (From Wikipedia: “Although the 1982 constitution guarantees freedom of speech, the Chinese government often uses the “subversion of state power” and “protection of state secrets” clauses in their law system to imprison those who criticize the government.”) 

Because of that difficult political climate, authors who want to write queer content do so anonymously under pseudonyms. And when their books become popular, and adaptations are made, the showrunners have to make adjustments – for the sake of everyone’s careers, physical safety, and actual lives. So in shows like The Untamed or Guardian (another good good show based on a canonically-gay original novel), the showrunners make it JUUUUUUUUST not-gay enough to get past the censors. JUUUUUUUUST BARELY “not gay”. Plausible deniability. Yes, they’re holding hands. But, like, as bros. Totally a bromance, guys, nothing to see here. They’re going right up to the line demarcating “gay” from “not gay” and playing Gay Chicken with it.

Except that, as you know, hours and hours of Silent Yearning Glances are actually MORE GAY than two dudes kissing. Silent Yearning Glances are the peak queer experience.

The Untamed keeps as much of the gay as they possibly can get away with. You can SEE how hard they worked to keep it there–the actors, the showrunners, the director, the scriptwriters, the SOUNDTRACK COMPOSER… 

Do the two main characters say about each other “that’s my soulmate”? Yes.

Does one of them write a love song for the other when they’re teenagers and then pine after him for years and silently mourn his death for a decade and a half until he comes back from the dead and they find each other again BECAUSE OF THAT LOVE SONG? Yes

Do they still adopt a son together? Yes, and he’s the cutest thing that has ever existed.

Does the show set up a thing where it’s like “Only your parents, your spouse, and your children are allowed to touch the sacred forehead ribbon” and then have the other character REPEATEDLY TOUCH THE SACRED FOREHEAD RIBBON? yes.

Do they kiss on screen? No. But will you be Emotionally Nourished by their obvious love? One thousand percent, yes. 

It is the difference between hearing “I love you” out loud and having someone who makes you a packed lunch every day with a post-it note inside that says “please pick up some milk on your way home ^^” , you know? The Untamed never says “They’re in love” with words, but i mean.... C’mon.

C’mon. Does it really need to?

[morgana-ren]

Pale Imitation

The front page of any porn site is always a marriage of humorous and disturbing, but he can honestly say he wasn’t expecting to see his name at the top of any list that had a direct connection to satiating someone’s libido, yet there it was, plain as day on the top ten.

He didn’t think of himself as particularly narcissistic, but this he had to see.

Rating: E

Warnings: Porn, Masturbation, Yandere, Stalker Shigaraki, Shigaraki is a total creep, Rough sex, Noncon Fantasy/Roleplay

Preemptive Note: Before you continue I just want to note: I'm not a sex worker but I have nothing but the highest regard and respect for them. What ensues in this story is pure kink and fantasy and is not meant to reinforce any harmful/mean stereotypes what so ever. My personal fantasy is degradation and I can't really seem to get off without it so it's a majority of what I write, but I swear to you it was not written with the intent to insult or hurt anyone in the profession! I realize the hardships endured by the men/women/NB/GN in the adult sex work profession and this is just intended to be a pure sexual fantasy and is by no means attempting to reinforce or normalize toxic behaviors in the workplace.

Bad wig? Check .

Poor voice imitation? Check .

Shoddy, unsealed makeup that sloughs off onto the unfortunate scene partner’s skin? Check .

All the tell-tale signs of a bad porno but with one distinct peculiarity that drew his interest.

You know, this certainly wasn’t what he was expecting to see when he settled in for his first nightly wank. The front page of any porn site is always a marriage of humorous and disturbing, but he can honestly say he wasn’t expecting to see his name at the top of any list that had a direct connection to satiating someone’s libido, yet there it was, plain as day on the top ten.

He’s no stranger to the villain kink page. Tons of civilians indulged in their darker fantasies through their nighttime excursions below their pantyline, and being a villain himself, naturally he was curious. Most of it is about what he’d expect. Villains, ancient and new, participating in copulation of all sorts. Some of it is that extremely out of character slow and romantic pornography. Other times, strangely enough, it’s the villains themselves getting taken advantage of. Sometimes by heroes, other times by random people, objects, or even tentacles. It’s interesting, to say the least.

Him though? He’d never seen himself in one, let alone being featured on the front page.

Up until recently, the media and all it’s sinful offshoots had opted to ignore him. However, his recent exploits must’ve caught the attention of the general public, and alongside it, the licentious denizens that dwell within. There had been a few forum posts, a little fan art (most of it flattering), and even a few oddly obsessive fangirls he’d come across. But this? Oh, now this was a whole new caliber.

He didn’t think of himself as particularly narcissistic, but this he had to see.

The guy they’d hired to play him was naturally a flat disappointment; Too bulky, and way too short. He could tell there was a classically handsome man underneath all that poorly done makeup that was meant to make him look pallid and dry. A sad, pathetic, and pale imitation of the real thing, missing some of his scars and moles entirely. The ashy gray wig they used to try to mimic his shaggy, unkempt hair had an awkward cowlick and kept flopping down too far on the actor’s forehead and looked far more dead than even his own unwashed mop. The voice he was using to mimic him was strained and scratchy, far too forced to be comfortable or even remotely realistic. If he had to place it, it sounded like the guy already had a terribly sore throat and had continued yelling for several hours to achieve the ‘desired’ effect.

He hadn’t expected much, but it was still disappointing. Though to be fair, they nailed the clothing, minus the brand of shoes he wears and the exact coat he’d chosen as his signature.

A part of him was ready to shut it off. Whatever lies ahead could only be utterly insulting, right? This grotesque pastiche lifelessly parroting his mannerisms was already curbing his sexual appetite toward something more violent, and not in the way he liked. Yet, out of sheer curiosity, he kept watching. What exactly did the average screenwriting porn cinematographer think he was into anyway?

It was a little ambiguous at first. At least until the shaky camera followed the Walmart brand Shigaraki knock-off down a generic hallway and into a borderline barren room, bringing into frame a quaking young woman tied up on a filthy mattress. After that, it became very quickly apparent just what type of smut he’d stumbled onto.

The camera zooms in on her face, tears leaking from her eyes and leaving trails of thick black makeup and mascara trailing down her cheeks, her begging and pleading muffled by a rag hastily stuffed in her mouth and secured with what appeared to be a bandana tied around her head. She’s clad in nothing but a flimsy tank top with the straps yanked down over her shoulders and a small pair of lace panties, covered in what appears to be made up lacerations and fake bruising. A nice touch, he notes.

He’ll admit, he’s intrigued now. It looks like they got one thing about him right, perhaps two now that he inspects the adult actress hired to play his unfortunate victim. She’s flattering, far more flattering than he expected given the low budget circumstances. Her watery eyes and quaking body coupled with the slight rope burn embedding into her chafing skin is enough to get his legs stirring and his pants tightening. She looks so pretty, so vulnerable behind all the waterworks and thick stage makeup. He thinks, just maybe, he might be able to get into this if he hyper focuses on her.

As his imposter approaches, she pushes her bound legs out, squishing herself back against the wall and as far away as she can manage from the threat encroaching on her personal space.

“Heroes can’t save you now.”

The shallow mockery of his voice grates at his ears, but he’ll admit the comment is on brand. The actor harshly yanks the bandana out of the woman’s mouth, her pouty lips trembling as she begins to grovel, blinking more tears down her swollen cheeks.

“I-I’m sorry! Please just let me go! I won’t tell anyone anything!”

All things considered, she’s convincing enough to get his blood pumping. Tomura readjusts himself in his chair, reaching his hands beneath the band of his sweatpants. If he can ignore her counterpart, he thinks watching her squirm and squeal will get him off. After all, it’s supposed to be ‘him’ violating this cute girl. Maybe if he defocuses his eyes enough, he can pretend it really is.

“I’m going to show you how much of a villain I really am!”

Ugh . Whoever wrote this dialogue clearly had never met him, or probably any real villain for that matter. It’s enough to make him want to retch, but the feel of his own hand on his cock and the soft whimpering of the actress  as the villain stand-in strips off his coat brings him back and makes him throb. The camera moves in to offer her a close up, face dropping and eyes widening in horror as she comes to the “realization” of what he means.

“No! Please! Anything but that!”

She kicks at him, trying to fend him off with bound limbs as he crawls over her onto the bed. A harsh slap to the side of her cheek is enough to quiet her down and allow the assailant to cage her to the bed with one hand, the other clumsily fumbling with the buttons of his jeans. After he shimmies his ill fitting skinny jeans down his thighs, she looks at him with eyes widened in horror, shaking her head erratically.

“No! Please Mister Shigaraki, it’s too big! It won’t fit!”

A hand far too burly to be his wraps around her neck, pointer finger plucked awkwardly upward. “Quiet! You’re my prisoner and you’ll do as I say!”

Just ignore it.

The free hand goes to grab at her tank top, a brief but noticeable pause in the filming leaves her topless with stage prop ash sprinkled along her torso, the ropes around her wiggling legs conveniently gone now. While the cinematic effect was laughably bad, Tomura can’t bring himself to care. Not when her tits are now on display for him to ogle.

Chest bare and heaving, perfect nipples perked to attention just for him. Smooth, creamy skin goose pimpled and tender, so tempting that he's aching to feel her. A quick swipe of his thumb over his sensitive, spongy tip elicits a rumbled groan from deep in his chest. It’s easier now to ignore the shitty portrayal of himself, especially when he can lose himself to the throes of lust and pretend that it actually is his hands wrapped around her little throat, other fingers drifting lower and lower down her trembling belly.

A quick hook around the seam of her panties and they’re ripped clean from her hips, legs splayed and leaving her pussy center frame, already wet and glistening. He swallows hard, the sight enough to make him salivate. She fumbles around beneath him, desperate to buck him off, but it’s to no avail. Fingers, his fingers, tease the entrance to her tight little hole, slipping one finger, and then two inside, oscillating in and out preparing her to take all of him. Just like she said, he’s so big. He doesn’t want to hurt her, not like that.

After that, it’s all too easy for him to slip into his fantasy. He strokes his cock in tandem with the pumping of the fingers, pausing only briefly as the girl mewls as the fingers slip out and the tip of his cock is aligned with her little entrance. He pistons his own hips as it slams inside, head reeling back on the edge of his chair.

The high pitched whine that escapes her throat as the fake buries himself deep inside has him biting his lip, slowing his hand by force on his shaft. Fuck, even her moans are hot. Her bouncing tits and staggered breathing as his imposter rails into her has him enraptured. The subtle way she leans into the hand on her throat, back arched off the filthy mattress, face expressing clear distress but body betraying her clever act.

It matters little that she’s being paid to partake in the scene with ‘him’. The fact she was open to it says more than he could have hoped to know, and clearly she’s enjoying the treatment. His hazy eyes focus in on her face, working his hand harder with every little nuance she gifts him. The twitch of arms as her nails imbed themselves into her palms, the parting of her moist lips. He’d be willing to bet her tongue could work magic, taking him all the way to the back of her throat. God, she’d look so cute like that. Hands tied behind her back, a sloppy, drooling mess around his dick.

“S-Shigaraki! You’re too rough!”

The hand clamped around her throat tightens, her final word more of a croak.

“You like it, you little slut!”

At least there’s one thing him and this mediocre porn actor can agree on; she certainly does like it. Rolling her hips against him and wailing in a way that has him wonderfully immersed in his fantasy. Hearing his name on those sighs only strengthen his hold, he can practically feel the warmth of her skin, indulge himself in the wet, clenching tightness of her cunt.

It’s fucking insulting that this trash gets to wear his skin, steal his countenance to fuck her. It should be him. If this whelp could get her all hot and bothered, just imagining what the real thing could do sends the remaining blood reserves rushing between his thighs, prick pulsing even harder in his palm. Yeah, he could get this little bitch squealing. She’d fucking like it too, judging by the look on her face as she gets plowed by a man wearing his visage.

Oh, he’d make her scream. Leave real bruising in place of that cheap costume makeup they’d so lazily applied to her naked form. Truth be told, the video itself was rather boring. He’d only kept watching because of how enraptured he was with the little witch being stuffed full of cock by his imitation. He’d never really been taken with an adult actress before but this one? Oh yes, he could really get into her.

He wasn’t sure what it was about her. So pretty to him, so deliciously pliable, so completely worked up about a villain using her as a toy, pumping in and out of her warm little pussy until he fills her with his hot cum and she’s overflowing with every fluid thrust. Sweet, sensitive neck exposed just for him to bite and abuse. Face stained with tears, puffy cheeks just aching to be squeezed and smacked. Probably tastes like rapture, eager to swallow whatever he decides to spill into her mouth.

And she could take it. He just knows it. Bent over for him, any hole he pleases free for him to use, hand-shaped welts raising on the swell of her ass. Fingers fisting her hair and arching that cute face back to look directly at him as he spits between her open and waiting lips. She’d swallow it like a good girl, just like a good girl, he knows she would.

He works himself faster, his own breathy whines joining the cacophony of licentiousness that echoes in his eardrums. His imagination shifts into overdrive, clumsy, irregular strokes of his hand tenting and deflating the crotch of his sweats. Soft, pillowy tits bulging through his fingertips as he kneads them, sucking on those tender nipples until they harden just for him. Fucking her mouth until her lips are swollen and red, face covered in a mixture of drool and cum with lipstick smeared around her cheeks. Legs locked around his narrow waist as he slams into her repeatedly, chanting his name and begging him incoherently not to stop, never to stop.

“P-please don’t cum inside me! Please- I-“

Oh, he’d cum deep inside. He’ll cum anywhere he wants on his little whore until it’s slick and dripping. He’ll tie her up, smudging it across her broken expression and let it dry nice and thick. Slip his cum covered thumb into her mouth and then ignore her until her thighs are grinding together and she’s begging for his thick cock again, any way he wants her.

Fuck- fuck she’d love it too. Ride him until each slap of her ass on his bony hips made his cock punch hard against her cervix, crying in pleasure and pain but never stopping until he allowed her. Dig his nails into her back, his teeth into her flesh and mark her up real good, let everyone who sees her know just what she’s been up to with him-

“Shigaraki! Fuck! Shi-Shigaraki!”

His name spills from her lips in a needy sob, voice cracking and so utterly genuine that it sends him over the edge. His cock throbs and stutters in his hand, shooting jets of sticky white seed all over the inside of his black sweat pants and staining his fingers. His entire body shudders, legs stiffening and balls tightening and clenching as his cum spills in fat ropes across the fabric. Try as he might to focus on her face as she cums for him, he simply can’t, eyes slamming shut and mouth left agape as a strangled cry erupts from his throat.

He gives a few subconscious pumps into his hand as searing pleasure crackles through his body, toes curling in his shoes as his lower body lifts off the chair to chase his high. Millions of images flash across his mind, the foremost of which is her, greedy eyes hungry for pleasure only he can give her, silky cunt milking him eagerly. A jagged tooth bites a little too hard into his blistered lip, enough to crack it open but he’s too submerged in bliss to notice. The only thing he can feel is her.

His thighs tremble as his body falls back down into the worn computer chair, orgasm leaving his entire body feeling weak and drained.  His breath comes in heaves, gulping down air as he tries his best to shake off the residual searing pleasure so hot it almost hurts. Overstimulation looms on the horizon and his heavy eyes drift open, feeling so drowsy now he can hardly keep them apart. The orange bar at the bottom of the video is all the way to the right, the video having concluded itself.

He’s never cum so hard in his life.

Her name. He needed to know her name. He needed to know everything .

He doesn’t bother reaching for the tissues. He simply withdraws his hand from his waistband, wiping his mess onto the knee of his pant leg before grabbing his mouse and scouring the page for any crumb of information he can find. The comments, while amusing, are hardly helpful.

So hot xx thanks

Who’s the guy even supposed to be?

This babe is so hot, luv her stuff everytime

Yall r gunna get rekt when he sees this shit lol

any sexy girls wanna reenact this with me? Hmu

I’m a girl and I love this!

Wish he’d do that to me <.<

He’d dwell on all of that later. For now, he settles for a quick search through the uploader’s account. It’s a small studio, only a few films out to date, most of which revolve around taboo relationships between villains and society. Following a hyperlink to their main website leads him to bio, complete with her stage name and picture, and even another link leading to an interview with a small time adult magazine, an article called “Cum to the Dark Side” that he bookmarks for later reading.

Even post-cum, she’s just as beautiful. Enchanting, sultry smile and cheeky little expression in her picture. Maybe it’s fate that he stumbled upon her. Maybe she really was just that good at acting and she didn’t have a thing for him at all. Either way, he wants some time with the talent. For research, of course.

Her personal details, as expected, are hidden. They go the lengths to protect their employees it seems. What isn’t hidden, however, is the studio’s number.

He thinks he can work with that.

[lokiondisneyplus]

Every Marvel Cinematic Universe TV series to date has had its own distinct look and feel, from the sitcom-derived pastiche episodes of WandaVision all the way back to the grim-and-gritty, dimly lit street narratives of Jessica Jones and Daredevil. Marvel’s Loki has been one of the MCU’s more distinctive-looking series, though, from the dimly lit, industrial-brown corridors of Time Variance Authority HQ to the vivid neon city of Sharoo on the doomed moon Lamentis-1.

Series director Kate Herron confirms that some of these designs were directly inspired by classic science fiction, while others were more personal experimentation. We sat down with Loki’s cinematographer, Autumn Durald Arkapaw, to break down what went into designing some of the most striking and memorable sequences from the series’ first three episodes.

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.

EPISODE 1: TIME THEATER INTERROGATIONS

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Kate [Herron]’s sensibilities led me to get the job in the first place. We shared those sensibilities, around noir films and more moody thrillers, so we were already on the same page as far as lighting and tone. So when it came to the Time Theater, Kasra [Farahani], the production designer, did a fantastic job of creating a space that had a lot of opportunity to feel textural and moody, and create symmetry. I’m big on symmetry. I like to frame center-punched, keeping in mind the architecture of the room, and framing for the architecture and the people at the same time. Stanley Kubrick does that very well. A Clockwork Orange obviously came up in our discussions. Some of our main references were David Fincher’s Zodiac and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, and the original Blade Runner, in terms of creating spaces that feel strong and weighted, with the people in them placed in a way where the conversation feels very heavy, so you’re paying a lot of attention to the lines, and where your eyes are drawn.

We did some lighting changes above, in the Brutalist ceiling. The lights move, so when we’re cutting back and forth, you see the lights change on the actors. We’re trying to time those movements to the dialogue. The editing was fantastic with that scene. We shot a good amount of coverage, and [series stars Tom Hiddleston as Loki and Owen Wilson as Mobius] play in that space a lot. So we’re trying to always keep it interesting, every time they go back there, changing up the lighting and the projections. That’s probably one of my favorite spaces in the show.

And then the acting, obviously — they’re riffing off each other, and you’re in the room with them and feeling the energy. It was very exciting. That scene was up front in our schedule, so Owen and Tom were getting to know each other in general. We got to watch that happen before our eyes, and it was very comical.

One of the most noticable things about that space is the harsh, rectangular overhead spotlights — Tom Hiddleston starts his interrogation under a spotlight, and when he gets angry, he moves himself back under it. How did you discuss that kind of blocking and framing?

The thing with Tom is, he’s a genius. He’s just a fantastic actor, The amount of things I could say about how amazing he is on set, and character-wise, the list goes on and on. You can introduce marks and let actors know where you’d like them to be for a shot, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s where they’ll go. Some actors like to be more freeform. But with Tom, I wouldn’t have to say “Stand under that light.” He just knows, and he’ll play off that because of the space. He walks in, sees how it’s lit, knows our agenda, and uses that in the character.

So there were certain moments where he asked, “Is this what you’re thinking?” or we would have a discussion. But mostly, he uses the environment around him to tell the story as well, and he took in that lighting as part of the character. Actors know how they look in certain types of light. He’s very good at that. So he played with that in that space, for sure.

When we pull back and take in the whole room, the lighting feels punitive — the striped shadows are noir-movie standards, like light coming through blinds, but they also feel like prison bars. Is that something you discussed?

We never talked about prison bars, but in designing that space, Kasra was thinking about what that space was — being arrested, and being judged. It’s a claustrophobic space. Loki is slightly free to communicate and move around, but the walls and ceiling are concrete, there’s this fake light coming in, because obviously, in the TVA, there’s no day or night. You can see the light moving above, but there’s no sun there. It’s just moving at certain moments.

I had an idea, after seeing the latest Blade Runner, where Roger Deakins moves the lights around: Why don’t we have the lights move? It’s not easy to have big tungsten light sources above a ceiling set move like that, because it takes heavy motors. But my gaffer and key grip are amazing, and they figured out a way we could move the lights without causing shadows between each of the sections of lighting. It looks all like it’s moving at the same time. That took a lot of thought, getting those lights to move, and not just creating shafts of light that fade in and out. I think it helped a lot, because it’s very subtle. You’re only going to see it as they’re sitting. You’ll see sometimes the light moves from Owen’s shoulders into his eyes at the right moment, when you get lucky in the edit, and catch it at the right moment. It was great to have the resources to actually do stuff like that.

EPISODE 2: THE ROXXCART VARIANT PURSUIT

I’m a fan of green. If we’re designing a clinical environment, or a shopping mall, and we’ve got overhead fluorescents, I like to use cool white fluorescents that have kind of a green kick. I’m a big David Fincher fan, and there’s an undertone of green in his setups that I appreciate. So Roxxcart is a bigger shop that is now closed down, and Kasra outfitted it like a big-box Costco-type place? That wasn’t a full set — we went to this big warehouse, and he made it feel like that kind of store.

Above the space where we shot in, there were a bunch of fixtures. We completely removed those and put in our own tubes. They were RGB, and we could fade them and turn them off and on to our liking, flicker them, make them red when we wanted. When they’re cool white, I appreciate that green kick. I did a lookup-table color correction as well, to give it that tone. It’s meant to be clinical, but make you feel like you don’t know what’s at every turn. And we’re keeping lights on or off depending on which way we’re looking. Kate was a big fan of that space being very dark, with pockets of light. Our antagonist is supposed to come out of the darkness as people change identities.

We’re also trying to make that space look bigger than it actually was. We’re creating depth with light. That was a bitch to shoot — we had so much rigging. My team was amazing. If you go into a space like that, a Target or something, you’d think “The lighting here is not that big of a deal. It’s just overheads.” But being able to control all those overheads and make them different colors and flicker them takes a lot of rigging, with a dimmer board and the programming. In the editing afterward, it really does feel like a space that’s a lot bigger than it actually was. The red sequence is one of my favorites, for sure.

The camera is below waist level a lot in that sequence. What are you communicating there?

I always like to shoot low! It’s just how I see things. Some of my favorite films are detective thrillers from the past, Zodiac being one of those. I’ve always just loved shooting below the eyeline. Obviously there are moments in features I’ve shot where I want to be higher, because it’s more emotional or romantic or something. But in this kind of story, where you have these amazing spaces, and you have multiple characters you’re trying to frame, all facing off and being strong, I’m just a bigger fan of seeing a ceiling than a floor. It’s an appreciation I have, as far as it feeling more mysterious. When a character is looking more mysterious, and you’re not trusting them, you’re trying to figure them out, I love that kind of framing. It’s amazing.

EPISODE 3: FIGHTING TO REACH THE LAMENTIS-1 ARK

That sequence has a great backstory. I did a lot of prep with Kate. We started prep in Los Angeles before we ended up in Atlanta. We knew that sequence was coming up. but in the script, it just says “Okay, so they end up at Sharoo, and then go on.” The description of that sequence went through an evolution, with the filmmakers discussing things, building the set, and collaborating, so early on, we spitballed about what we thought that could be. Having the support of Marvel and being able to build, and being able to do great stunts, we went bigger.

With the sequence as it evolved, Children of Men was a big reference for us. Kate was really interested in that feeling. She wanted to be with the characters the whole way. We tried to figure out, should the camera be handheld? Should it be Steadicam? We ended up with Steadicam. We looked at some previous oners, because we wanted this sequence to feel like a oner to the audience. Obviously, there are cuts in there, but we seamed certain shots together so the audience wouldn’t feel as though we cut. The intention was to feel like you’re on the run with Loki and Sylvie, racing to the ark, building up tension. You’re there with them as they’re fighting.

My husband’s a DP, and he shot True Detective season 1. That oner in True Detective was something we looked at as well, because it’s just one of those great oners that feels real and has those kinds of textural elements. We did pre-viz, we did rehearsals in the space, prior to shooting there. We went there a couple times and did camera rehearsals. We had an amazing Steadicam operator who I’ve worked with on my last four projects and features. He’s very in tune with my eye, and he’s great with those kind of moves. Kasra understood that we needed certain paths to go down, to help us get from point A to point B, so it feels like a run, it doesn’t feel like people keep entering the same space. Obviously, it’s hard to build really big sets where you can go very far. So he did a great job of knowing what we needed, and then adding stunts, and figuring out how we could feel like we were turning corners whenever we’re moving into different spaces.

How big was the physical space? How much of what we’re seeing there is digital?

Shiroo was very different from Roxxcart. At Roxxcart, we had blue at the end of the aisles, so they look like they’re going on a lot longer than they are. But we traveled to that space. It wasn’t built. Shiroo was built on a backlot. That was a set we had full control over, to build to our liking. Above a certain point, as you’re looking up at the buildings, that’s VFX. But we built the actual buildings up to a certain height, and then beyond that is a digital extension. As far as the depth as well, beyond a certain part of the street, it’s a digital extension. Obviously, the ark is an extension, and we’re using the explosions as cues to do a lot of lighting cues. But it was a very big set, a gorgeous set. It has a lot of texture.

Kasra had the idea of painting a lot of the set in black-light paint, which I’d never seen before, and putting black lights everywhere. Also, we had a bunch of units on top that lit the set for the moon color and those sources, and we had VFX helping us stitch it all together. We had to shoot the sequences and look at the overlays on set to make sure we were creating matchups that would work in the final edit.

For me, that’s a very successful collaboration of in-camera elements — that whole set was real — and having explosions on set along with lighting cues, and then the effects to seam it together and do the extension above and the depth. So everyone really had to play like a good chunk of that. But they’d be effects overall, I think taking what we shot and making it feel like something that big, you know, the buildings are falling. Obviously, we didn’t drop buildings on people. There’s some foam stuff. That was really fun. We shot all that stuff at night.

The camera work in that sequence is some of the most dynamic movement in the series. What was the most difficult part about coordinating that sequence for you?

Rehashing it now, it was the prep. When we were actually there in the space with Tom and Sylvie, running through all of this stuff, it really made sense by that time. We’d been pre-vizing it and reworking it and massaging it for so long that ultimately, once we got on the set and had to follow them with the camera, and the energy was going, and we had the extras there, it all fell together. I think one day, we even wrapped a little early, because we’d just nailed it. When you’re prepping those types of shots, in your mind, you’re always like, “This is gonna be hard, it’s going to be difficult to seam these together, I like perfect headroom.” And you also want it to feel real, and people have to jump and fly and tumble into the frame. But on the day, our execution ended up being pretty good. So that was the most surprising thing to me, because it was kind of a pain in the ass prepping, because there are so many elements. And we’re doing six episodes, so we’re always working, trying to chase the next prep. But it really fell into place nicely.

[flammentanz]

Paul Edwin Roth - a versatile character actor and Germany’s Dr. Watson

Paul Edwin Roth was born into a family of doctors in Hamburg on October 22, 1918 and grew up in the Hanseatic city. After graduating from high school at the "Johanneum" in Hamburg, he actually had other career plans and wanted to become a doctor like his father. Only at the urging of his mother did he attend the drama school of the "Deutsches Schauspielhaus" from 1937 until 1939. Roth made his stage debut in 1939 at the "Stadttheater Heilbronn" as Gustave de Grignon in the comedy "What the Ladies Like" by Eugène Scribes, followed by engagements in Karlsruhe, Heidelberg, Darmstadt and Wiesbaden.

At the end of the Second World War he was  severely wounded and probarbly traumatised by his horrible experiences he was released as a prisoner of war from the Russians.

In 1948 Roth played the leading part of Beckman in the stage play "Draußen vor der Tür" ("The Man Outside") by Wolfgang Borchert at the “Hebbel Theater” in Berlin. It was a huge success and Roth was regarded as one of Germanys most important character actors since then.

His other outstanding stage roles in the late 1940s included his interpretation of Moritz Stiefel in the drama "Frühlings Erwachen" ("Spring Awakening") by Frank Wedekind as well as the title role in Friedrich Schiller's play "Don Carlos".

Paul Edwin Roth gave his film debut in 1947 in “Und über uns der Himmel” (“And above as the Sky”) in which he played the former soldier Werner Richter, who lost his eyesight during the war but regaines it later. In 1949 he played in “Unser täglich Brot” (“Our Daily Bread”) the young blackmarketeer Harry Webers who commits suicide in the end. In his film carreer which spanned more than forty years he mostly played distinctive supporting roles.

Paul Edwin Roth's main field of activity had become television since the late 1950s. He made numerous television movies and appeared in many telesvision series. His role as lawyer Patterson in the second season of the television series “Gestatten mein Name ist Cox” (“May I introduce myself - my name is Cox”) (1965) was a big success. It was probably his excellent teamwork with the leading actor Günter Pfitzmann (Roth was some kind of his sidekick) that resulted in his most famous role two years later.

In 1967/68 the first West German TV channel ARD broadcast the only German television series about Sherlock Holmes. The series consists of six episodes originally written by BBC authors based on stories by Arthur Conan Doyle: “Das Gefleckte Band” (“The Speckled Band”), “Sechsmal Napoleon” (“The Six Napoleons”), “ Die Liga der Rothaarigen” (“The Red-Headed League”), “Die Bruce-Partington-Pläne” (“The Bruce-Partington Plans”), “Das Beryll-Diadem “ (“The Beryl Coronet”) and “Das Haus bei den Blutbuchen “ (“The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”) Strangely the credits don’t mention Sherlock Holmes but only Arthur Conan Doyle.

Erich Schellow (1915 - 1995) played the master dectective while Paul Edwin Roth  portrayed Dr. John H. Watson. They had a great chemistry (Schellow called his fellow actor Roth - whose two first names Paul and Edwin were drawn together as “Pled” as a nickname - “a clever guy”) and played the relationship between Holmes and Watson as warm but also as very ironic. The fact that the two of them are using the informal “you” (“Du” in German instead of “Sie”) particularly illustrates their loving relationship.

Erich Schellow plays Sherlock Holmes in an aristocratic manner with great dignity and much esprit. The actor wanted to add a touch of depravity to his portrayal (including the use of cocaine) but director Paul May disapproved of it and insisted on an irreproachable Sherlock Holmes.

Paul Edwin Roth (the mustache is false by the way) plays Dr. Watson not as a buffon like Nigel Bruce did but nevertheless he often provides funny moments. Watson’s constant use of his umbrella as a vessel for alcoholic beverages is the  running gag of the series. Altough he is a physician he does not appose at the least against intensive use of tobacco and alcohol. He is a very clever man who is proud of remembering every single name and address that is ever given to him. He is also a brave man who doesn’t hesitate to use his army revolver and in “Das Beryll Diadem” he even knocks down the criminal with a stick. Even if he doesn't know what’s going on he remains cool and makes some witty remarks. The dry sense of humour is an outstanding characteristic of the series.

Inexplicably, the series was not a great success. It was only repeated once in 1991. Luckily this gem was released on DVD in 2012 and re-released in 2021.

In addition to his extensive work for film and television, Paul Edwin Roth was also a renowned voice actor. Inter alia he regularly dubbed Montgomery Clift and Michel Bouquet but also Dirk Bogarde in "Accident" and Alan Bates in "Zorba the Greek" and Jason Robards in "By Love Possessed".

Paul Edwin Roth succumbed to cancer on October 27, 1985 in his home town Hamburg - a few days after his 67th birthday.

[ifeelallwrite]

Let’s talk about Hospital Playlist. (KDRAMA REVIEW)

note: does contain spoilers

When people ask me what is my favorite Korean drama of all time, with no doubt, IT’S HOSPITAL PLAYLIST. This drama has the comic relief, the emotional scenes, realistic characters-just to name a few. No toxic relationships and petty revenge fights. Nothing else will stop me for saying that this is the ultimate feel good drama.

SYNOPSIS: The drama shows insights into the daily lives of doctors and nurses working at Yulje Medical Hospital. It focuses on 5 doctors who have been friends since medical school, who also play together as a band.

This drama encompasses so many elements and characters so bear with me yo this might be real long 

Hospital Playlist is produced/written by the Shin-Lee PD and writer pairing, whose previous works were the renowned Reply trilogy and Prison Playbook (which are *chef’s kiss*) I really like that all their dramas really highlight humanism, and puts emphasis on creating a heartwarming and realistic series. There isn’t always a major conflict to be resolved, but instead it showcases how different people-in this case mostly those in the medical field-go on about their daily lives.  I also liked their reasoning to produce a medical drama which was that hospitals were where the most dramatic moments occurred, for example during births, deaths or sickness. And since we are still in the Covid-19 pandemic, it ties in greatly to be paying homage to all the medical personnel saving lives. Hence, props to those who were involved in this meaningful masterpiece <3

The drama is not the usual 16 episodes, but has 12 episodes for each season (SEASON 2 IS COMING SOON YAAS) Good thing is I felt that they were still able to weave a dynamic storyline in the first season even with lesser episodes. The writing was just top-notch with the witty humor bits. Additionally, the music is AMAZING. I love the concept of the main characters being a band and playing different songs every episode too.

Okay, now onto the characters. I thought that every character in this drama was well rounded. Starting of with the main five characters, also known as The 99ers, whose distinctive personalities and natural chemistry make all of them extremely likeable. All main characters are professors of different specialties, and I find the male OB-GYN (Seokhyeong) and female neurosurgeon (Songhwa) very refreshing. Also, I like Shin-Lee dramas always have characters that might be realistic yet hardly seen in other dramas or films. For example, Professor Ahn Jeongwon. Despite being a chaebol (inheritor/heir), he isn’t depicted as a spoilt brat or a cold character, instead as a warm Pediatric doctor who uses his wealth to secretly support patients in need. However it makes him stingy to his friends LOL

To be honest, I really thought I was gonna dislike Junwan due to his cold and tsundere nature. I pretty much believed that he was going to be the party pooper type of the bunch, but with the writer being a master of character development, he turned out to be really sincere and hilarious at times. Same for Ikjun, who apart from his enthusiastic and happy go lucky exterior, cares the most about the people around him. Although Seokhyeong seemed detached and introverted, he shows a emotional side to his friends as well as his mother. Songhwa is literally a girlboss though haha she’s smart, capable and gets along with everyone well. And she’s the most sane out of the bunch. 

With all the main characters, we have the relationships. Junwan is the first to date seriously with Iksun (the dog or Micky? jkjk) who is Ikjun’s sister. When it first happened I was like not again Jung Kyung Ho (bc he dated his best friend’s sis in prison playbook too LMAO) I think their relationship was realistic and open. It also showed a more sensitive side to Junwan who would do anything for her. I especially liked how he said he didn’t need access to her phone because he trusted her. Yet as all couples do, they have their fair share of ups and downs. Like conflicts on getting married and a long distance relationship as Iksun moves overseas for graduate studies. I don’t really know how to take the ambiguous ending for these two, as Junwan receives the returned box (that has the ring he sent) I really hope nothing bad happens to these two though.

I’m sure we all love Wintergarden couple though, tbh they’re kinda my OTP at the moment 🤣 It was pretty much a ‘will they won’t they’ relationship with a relatively slow build. I think Gyeoul turned out to be one of my favourite characters. Shin Hyun Been did a good job at portraying her as a straightforward but innocent Resident, who is pretty much openly crushing on Jeongwon. The scenes they had together were adorably awkward (and the scene where he gives her chocopies omg) And when Jeongwon battles his inner conflict to become a priest, the final decision where they kiss was beautifully shot, with the actors both showcasing their emotions extremely well. 

Then we have Chihong who pursues Songhwa, his professor. Midway through the drama, it is also shown that Ikjun and Songhwa might have had romantic feelings for each other. Songhwa ends up rejecting Chihong’s confession. In my opinion, Chihong was quite a interesting character but I didn’t really like him at the end. (I like the actor though) He did a real jerk move during drinking games, insisting on Ikjun to confess his feelings towards her even though he is already trying not to put Songhwa in an awkward spot. Although his character did end up making a cool exit and when I thought about his incredible story of soldier to doctor, I kinda regret disliking him that much. As for IkSong, In the final episode Ikjun confesses to her one last time, and we are left waiting for Songhwa’s reply. As much as I love this pairing, I don’t think that the ship will sail or maybe not as quickly as we think. I believe Songhwa would meticulously consider the sacrifices to their friendship or other aspects and might not be able to bring herself to it, but I hope it’s otherwise. 

Lastly not forgetting Seokhyeong and Minha, another Professor+resident pairing. This one’s a bit ambiguous though, mainly because there hasn’t been much romantic development. To me, the most impactful scene came from Minha who had been irritated by continuous night shifts and was on the verge of a breakdown. She ended up remarkably saving a patient, starting off surgery on her own for the first time. Oh man Minha was such a lovable character, I remember feeling so bad for her but extremely proud of her for her accomplishment. Although Seokhyeong seemed a bit aloof and distant (which was intentional bc he’s an introvert) I think the backstory and all the hardships he faced with his family really made me feel for him. I hate to break it to you, but I’m not so sure if the ship will sail because of the phone call from his ex-wife and Minha’s somewhat rejected confession. But who knows, they might pull off a twist 👀

Apart from all these characters, there are more characters HHAHAH However, I think this is the killing point of ShinLee dramas. Unlike typical dramas which usually focuses on a main character and 2-3 side characters, they like to cast a diverse range of actors (especially those from theatre/musicals and lesser known drama/movie actors) while actually give their characters personality or a reason to be there. I’ve seen many dramas where extras or side characters were kind of irrelevant thus making me feel that they weren’t needed to build the storyline, yet ShinLee dramas hit different y’all. Every role, no matter how small, holds significance to the drama. It really seemed like a collaborative work that shows off every actors skills (and not forgetting staffs) and teamwork.

Anyways because there are way too many characters and too many scenes for me to mention them all, I’ll just talk about some honourable mentions heheh

1. Sunbin and Seokmin confession scene (ahh so cute)

I kinda sensed that they liked each other at the start but I didn’t know Seokmin would ask her out on a date at the end. Even though it’s kinda awkward that they are dating and working with each other though (both are in the same department) but hey the confession was cute and awkward and just warm and fuzzy 🥰

2. MAMA ROSA IS THE QUEENN

I think we all (would) love Mama Rosa because she’s a real one ☝️ (probably the coolest mother ever) She’s feisty, hilarious and kind to others. Plus her friendship with Ju Jong Su was just adorable and super wholesome. The scenes where they were supporting one another through tough times and hanging out with each other when they felt lonely always put a smile on my face. Oh and how Mama Rosa treated Gyeoul was extremely sweet. (as well as Seokhyeong’s mother) Despite her tough exterior, she’s a likeable character for being a strong but caring woman.

3. Just Do Jae Hak

I seriously love this guy so muchhh omg he’s so funny

Do Jae Hak has a funny amd clumsy personality, though it’s clear he’s been through a lot and is strong willed person. From admitting his indecisiveness to counselling Jun Wan on his love issues, there’s literally nothing to hate about him.

4. Uju and his dadd

The father and son chemistry between these two is so good omg. The scenes with these two are so adorable and heartwarming (not to mention hilarious) It’s amazing to see how Ikjun cares so much for Uju despite his hectic workdays while going through infidelity issues with his ex-wife. Uju is matured for his age and shows his love and appreciation for his dad too, making their interaction a great portrayal of a healthy family relationship💞

5. the food stealing the show🥘

Who doesn’t love food and when a show has great food scenes? Some of the best scenes are definitely when the 99s gather to eat. It really showcases each character’s personality with the tiniest details as well as highlight warm delicious meals. Just don’t watch this when you’re hungry at 2am in the morning guys you’ll be drooling all over your screens HAHAHA

Of course there are way more aspects, like Hongdo and Yoonbok, Ikjun and Iksun’s pigeon jokes and raps, or Jeongwon drunk crying in the chicken shop with his brother (who was his coach in Reply 1994 when he played Chilbong LOL)

Most importantly, I think it is the themes and messages that you get from the drama that really create such a lasting impression. Not only does it hit you in the feels with the hardships of hospital patients, or the hardworking doctors+nurses who are working long shifts saving lives, it also tackles topics of friendships through the possibilities of platonic and friends-to-lovers relationships. However I think the biggest lesson for me came from Seokhyeong, who learns to live his life doing what he want, with the people he treasures. Although the drama might seem slow at times (mainly because there isn’t really a main plot line/conflict occurring), but this drama would still bring you on a journey where you would laugh, cry and finish the series, begging for season 2 ✌🏻

[kaypeace21]

The theme with “time” this season makes me think of the phrase, “wanting to turn back the clock.” And I then think of Will never wanting to grow up and wanting to go back to the old days of playing dnd in Mike’s basement.

And then I think of Will’s (speculated) reality altering bending powers. So could there be a possibility that Will may use those powers to “turn back the clock”?? Maybe rewrite how things happened? Maybe it would be after Mike’s “death” like you speculated earlier. Since he thinks Mike is “dead” he wants to go back, and that’s what he does accidentally.

ALSO, Hopper tells joyce that he was trying to runaway from his "past" trauma with sara- before he says that line in the letter about wanting to turn back the clock and then saying it's not possible to do so . (And that life life hurts you but eventually you get out of that cave and life goes on ). Similar to Will he wants to turn back the clock to better times, but a part of him isn't ready to accept his entire past/ the tra*uma that comes with that- in order to move on and heal for the future .

Like robin said about back to the future "he's stuck in the past .But he needs to get back to his time which is the future!"

HOWEVER- I DON’T THINK THERE’S ANY REAL TIME TRAVEL!!!!

I’ve mentioned  my time-theory many many many times- in relation to my DID theory.  even if my did theory is completely wrong (aka Will has powers so his alters/split personalities/innerworlds come to life)- 

We also see how memories are explored in a supernatural way in st - it’s not literal timetravel just El using her powers to explore tra*matic memories of others (Terry/Billy so far). Like NO TIME TRAVEL PLEASE-THAT’S JUMPING THE SHARK. I really don’t want it lol. XD I think hopper and Robin's lines allude to the theme that will be addressed: confronting the past/times that harmed you but overcoming it for the future because time goes on 'whether you like it or not '.

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In reference to my time-did theory. Look at the st s4 movie inspirations. In ‘what dreams may come”  a guy explores a heaven like world influenced by a painter’s emotions/created via immagination.We also have the movie ‘inside out’ -which involves “memory islands” (distinct worlds based on a child’s memories) which are influenced negatively by the kid being depressed she moved to California. The characters traveling to these memory islands are constructs of  kid’s mind -and 1 of them also has a guide helping them explore the ‘memory islands’.  Welcome to marwen- has an artist (attacked for being perceived as gay) imagining an abstract world based off his art- where the characters he made experience their own adventures (loosely based off the artist’s trauma). ‘The cell ‘ has characters explore the mind of a guy whose father ab*sed him- and the different alternative fantasy-worlds they explore are based off his memories. The cop exploring these memory-worlds, was also implied to be se*ually ab*sed by his dad . Also,in  Inception a guy says he’s a construct of a guy’s mind ( the guy who created the dream worlds that are like alternate dimensions/levels- also hates his dad). And leo’s character says he needs to help him escape the many different levels of the dream world of the mind. Movies like inception, total recall, the cell, enter the void, wizard of oz, Peter Pan, hellraiser 2, dream warriors, bill & ted’s bogus journey, the labyrinth,and welcome to marwen, all allude to this: because they involve entering simulated abstract worlds usually created/based on happy& traumatic memories/fears. While truman show/matrix are more about realizing your reality isn’t real. While in bladerunner 2044/total recall it has the theme of false implanted memories… probably relating to hopper/el realizing they’re alters of Will’s-and their memories were technically created by him.

Something some DiD suffers have are “innerworlds” .When someone has DID there can be multiple “innerworlds” that are separate from one another (and look very different from one another) .And are usually very abstract worlds that are based on the child’s memories (good &bad) . These worlds are usually created at different times and almost act like alternate dimensions (and the inhabitants -npcs/alters of those worlds usually don’t interact with one another) . So they can almost resemble alternate dimensions like how Scott Clarke mentions “Hugh Everett’s many worlds interpretation.” Russia where Hopper is- is probably one of those innerworlds.

HOPPER THEORY: 

tw:ab*se/r*pe. In s2 Nancy asks Steve how his “grandpa’s time in the war is a metaphor for your life?” And steve compares the mf to the germans in the war. Dr owens mentions Will has ptsd like “ (vietnam) soldiers’, Hopper saying he had buddies like Will . “In the 70s there was a study that compared the post-traumatic stress symptoms in Vietnam veterans and adult survivors of childhood s**ual ab*se. The study revealed that childhood s**ual ab*se is traumatizing and can result in symptoms comparable to symptoms from war-related trauma.” Hopper isn’t actually in Russia -but in one of the innerworlds (after he jumped through the rift of the machine- into Will’s mind). We’ll see flashbacks but also present circumstances of his imprisonment echo Will’s past with Lonnie (if the movies indicate anything)- being starved, guards getting payed in order to let other prisoners  r*pe a gay prisoner (than claim incorrectly because of his sexuality he wanted it) , as well as a gang of sadist men who r**e others and a warden using that as a threat to be compliant , being thrown in a dark room of solitary confinement and starved when they didn’t obey the warden, the warden being religious, etc. And the American soldiers (in Vietnam) in the movies aren’t much better and do similarly horrific acts to civilians like r**e and bragging/ happily k*lling women, children, and the elderly. The drill sergant in vietnam calling them homophobic slurs & women, and chocking one of the soldiers with one hand (like the mf/russian), slapping one for not believing in christianity. Tying up a soldier in a bed , gagging him, beating him and saying “remember it’s just a dream.” Only praising them when good in fire arms.(movies : fullmetal jacket, papillon, shawshank redemption, platoon, welcome to marwen, etc ) . My assumption is flashbacks of his life-  hints about him being an alter -the boxes in the basement are “vietnam” ,���dad”, and “ny” (and these are the memories of his we’ll see).or after escaping the prison he’s stuck in diff innerworlds of memories. And some of the bad characters in said stories will also parallel Lonnie . Like how in  the s4 film ‘peterpan’- the young girl Wendy imagines netherland and the villain -captain hook- is based off her father ( in the movie they have the same voice actors/while in all stage productions the 2 characters are always played by the same actor). Similar to the other s4 film- ‘wizard of oz’ where the wicked witch of the west from the mythical land of Oz (is played by Dorothy’s real life mean neighbor in the real world/kansas).Or in ‘the cell’- all the alternate dimensions of the dream world that were created by a guy with a ab*sive h*mophobic dad -had the same actor play the villain in each very different dream dimension. ”Not sure if they’d use Ross Patridge (actor of Lonnie) in this way . But it would be very interesting if (In makeup) Ross played many negative people in Hopper’s life.  

Also, in  s2, Jonathan mentions Indiana writer Vonnegut- In his book ‘slaughterhouse 5′- Vonnegut begins the story of Billy (William) Pilgrim, a man who has “come unstuck in time”. (time ref of Hopper saying he wants to ‘turn back the clock.’ or’ runaway from his memories.‘It accounts of Billy Pilgrim’s capture and incarceration by the Germans during the last years of World War II (Hopper captured by the russians), and scattered throughout the narrative are episodes from Billy’s life with his dad, and his own wife and kids.Billy is forced to be part of the war and similar things against his free will. The moments start from his childhood when his father throws him in the water to teach him how to swim. He was unwillingly drafted into the war. Later, he is kidnapped by Tralfamadorians  (aliens that are implied to be caused by his mental health issues/trauma) against his will. Therefore, he realizes that this concept is just an illusion.in bladerunner 2044/total recall it has the theme of false implanted memories… probably relating to hopper realizing he’s an alter and his memories are technically ‘created’ . Like in total recall- the bad ass spy is told all his memories: his wife/ years of marriage,  his name, are just implanted memories. And she says “you’re life is a dream.” We also have ‘Arrival’ -the parent’s daughter died young cause of terminal cancer- and the mother later realizes time is also just a abstract construct (a thing she can experience differently than others), but she still finds meaning/happiness in those memories/times.

I also talked about how sarah as an alter could come back and the 2 would explore the “innerworlds” of Will’s mind together (you can read the details there). 

El and Will theory 

I’m thinking of the s4 movies and 1 matrix scene comes to mind that could be an obvious hint to Did (and Will’s importance). Mr smith (the suited calm villain/ who is a literal computer program of the matrix world -cough alter/npc of Will’s) kidnaps/ ties up Morpheus to a chair (like Will in s2), injects him with drugs in the neck ( like s3 steve/ will’s arm in s2).  Then Mr smith says as everyone leaves the room “I’m going to be honest with you. I hate this place, this prison, this reality or what you call it.” (grabs Morpheus’ head and glares) “ I need to get out of here! I need to be free! And this mind is the key.”(referring to morpheus).morpheus also translates to ‘god of dreams’. Also Morpheus was wearing head gear similar to El in s1/Will in s2 . or in 12 monkeys the guy sent to psych ward -starts believing he’s just “crazy” and says “i created a world with those people in it.” “It’s not real .I’m just mentally ill, like you said ” when you know- it is all real,cause of the supernatural angle involved. in 12 monkeys a patient even tells him the fictional world he created would dissappear once his mental health was in order.

Then there’s the El stuff.  Hellraiser 2- has a normal psych hospital, but the basement floor has an evil psychiatrist experimenting on teens to open a portal to another reality. assasains creed/dream warriors -  has the psychiatric facility be similar to the s1 lab with sensory deprivation tanks, cameras, solitary confinement in dark rooms.The doctor experiments on them- and forces a character to go into the memories of another individual (we know El has memory powers).The dr reveals how the character’s reality/whole life isn’t what they think it is (and that the memories they saw with their powers-was their past life and they are that person’s reincarnation) . Aka Will is the host- and El is an alter (alters can see memories of other alters/the host irl-aka billy/terry were also alters ).

In assasain’s creed there’s 2 psychiatrists- one bad / one who is good (but influenced by the bad dr). One dr annoyed at the lack of progress, says about the patient “he doesn’t want to remember his father.” While one dr doesn’t want to rush the therapy/ the other dr wants the patient to go back into his memories regardless of how it affects him. (which could be Brenner & maybe Owens referring to Will’s dissociative-amnesia and not remembering all the ab*se Lonnie did. And Owens not wanting to rush it/hurt el by making her go into said memories …but Brenner not caring.

also other hints : Cough s4 using the movie wizard of oz refs “we’re not in Hawkins (kansas) anymore”-hint at russia. David on instagram posting st stuff and captioning it with and quotes, pretending to be dorothy from the film. Hopper in s1 saying hawkins lab was “emerald city” (referencing El- it’s also why they reference El entering our world in ep 1 and the alice in wonderland song plays) . Murray says about the supernatural “no one wants to see behind the curtain” (what was behind the curtain in wizard of oz-was a wizard aka Will). Or you know right before Will sees the mf for the first time -a clock turns rapidly/ he  has goosbumps at the back of his neck. Which he later grabs/states  are from “memories” he can’t remember that are like a “dream”. 

If i’m right-not sure how much of this may happen in s4 vs s5, though. But I think something like this is possible.  For all we know-Will/El being trapped with Brenner while Hopper escapes ‘russia’ could be how the season ends? The timeline i’m a bit iffy about-tbh.

[theradioghost]

Do you have any podcast recs that are super easy for those of us with audio processing problems? For me specifically that means one voice (or maybe two if they’re very distinct) and minimal complexity in the soundscaping, though if you have recs that don’t fit those that you think might apply to other people w/ different audio processing issues you can talk about those too! :)

I can certainly try! I feel as though I should put it out there that I often have a difficult time gauging where a podcast sits re: audio processing/HOH listeners; the literal entirety of my day job is being good at telling what people are saying in audio, and my own audio processing problems mostly just result in my near-inability to keep up with actual plays, so if any of these are misjudgements on those terms I apologize in advance.

* means that I know there are also transcripts available for the podcast in question!

SAYER: scifi dark comedy/horror. In a morally questionable tech corporation’s moonbase facilities, advanced artificial intelligence SAYER directs employees about their daily routines; this then turns over time into possibly the best story about AI I’ve ever heard. Especially in the first three seasons, virtually all speaking is done by one voice. (Caveat that a few other characters come in later, and they’re actually all voiced by one guy with different filters, but the filters are pretty distinct and characters tend to identify themselves by default at the beginning of every conversation.)

*The Cryptonaturalist: comforting supernatural folksiness. The titular expert on all things strange and wonderful reads poetry, admires nature, and talks about wonderful creatures like foxes that live within library shelves, stick insects that camouflage themselves as whole trees, salamanders that swim in parking lot asphalt, and Owls.

*The Hidden Almanac: comforting supernatural weirdness. Hagiographer, avid gardener, and Mysterious Dude In Plague Doctor Getup known as Reverend Mord gives tidbits of the history of his strange and fantastical world, along with gardening advice. Sometimes his tequila-swigging accidental necromancer best friend coworker Pastor Drom shows up. Written by fantasy author Ursula Vernon and mostly voiced by her husband Kevin. Extremely relaxing to listen to; the show ended last year but they put out five-minute episodes three times a week for eight years so there’s plenty of it. The first year or so actually doesn’t appear on most podcatchers so maybe check out the website.

Everything Is Alive: poignant, heartfelt interviews with inanimate objects. While there’s a different object featured each episode, it’s mostly just them and the interviewer, plus occasional phone calls with an expert on some subject brought up during the interview. Hits so much harder than you could possibly imagine given the summary. You WILL be upset about a can of off-brand cola.

*Quid Pro Euro: bizarre comedy mockumentary. A satire of the European Union in the style of a set of instructional tapes for EU employees made in the ‘90s, predicting what the EU would look like in the 21st century. Their predictions are somewhat off. Only one voice and delightfully it is Felix Trench. I don’t know anything about the EU but I still think it’s hilarious.

*Glasgow Ghost Stories: spooky supernatural. A resident of Glasgow is unexpectedly able to see the many ghosts that reside in the city -- but the ghosts have started to notice her too, and not all of them are friendly. A beautiful and atmospheric single-voice show; plus the feed also contains the very good miniseries Tracks.

*Palimpsest: poetic and haunting. An anthology series about young women experiencing supernatural happenings, each 10-episode season tells a different story in monologue (I think there are literally two episodes with other voices in them). Poignant, gorgeous, and sometimes heartbreakingly sad in the best way. In season one Anneliese wonders about the strange neighbors at her new apartment. In season two, Ellen takes a new job as companion to a supposed fairy princess imprisoned in a strange showroom in turn of the century America. In season three, former codebreaker Josie begins to see the spirits of the dead on the streets of London during the Blitz.

*Within the Wires: alternate history scifi found footage. From a world where a calamitous global war resulted in the installation of a new Society where nations and family ties are banned, an anthology of voices telling their stories. Each season is a single voice. Season one, a set of relaxation tapes deliver unexpected instructions to a government prisoner in a strange medical facility. In sSeason two, a series of museum exhibit guides spin out the mystery of two artists and their work. In season three, a government employee dictates notes to his secretary and begins to suspect a plot. In season four, the traveling leader of a secretive cultlike commune leaves sermons for her followers, and instructions for her daughter.

*Alice Isn’t Dead: lesbian americana roadtrip weird horror. Keisha’s wife Alice was missing, presumed dead. Now Keisha is a trucker, traveling the vast American emptiness to seek her out; but she’s about to become embroiled in the same vast secret war that may have drawn away her wife, and she’s not alone on the roads. Starts with one voice, adds a new one each season for a total of three. Also is finished.

*Station Blue: psychological horror. Matthew takes a job as the lone caretaker of an Antarctic research station for several months. This goes about as well as you’d predict. Very much a slow burn, strange, brooding horror of isolation. Heavy themes of mental illness based on the creator’s experiences of bipolar disorder. 

*Mabel: dark, poetic faerietale horror. Live-in caretaker Anna attempts to contact the absent granddaughter of her elderly employer, the lone resident of a strange and ancient house in Ireland. A love story, a haunted house story, a fairy tale with teeth. This one might be hit or miss; it sometimes tends to the abstract a bit, and there’s more soundscaping and some other occasional voices besides the main two protagonists. Definitely worth trying out, though, this is absolutely an underappreciated gem.

*Janus Descending: tragic scifi horror. Two researchers, Peter and Chell, travel alone to a distant planet to survey the ruins of its extinct civilization. Unfortunately, they discover exactly how that civilization died out. Excellent if you like movies like Alien, and also being extremely sad. Only two voices. Really unique story structure: it’s told via the two protagonists’ logs of the events, but you hear Chell’s logs in order, and Peter’s logs in reverse, with their perspectives alternating. The result is a tragedy where technically you know the ending from the start, but it’s told so cleverly that just what happened and how remains a tantalizing, tense, heartbreaking mystery right until the end.

*I Am In Eskew: poetic, surreal horror. Only two voices and few sound effects. David is a man trapped in the twisting, malevolent city of Eskew, where the rain always falls, streets seem to lead the same way twice, and nothing can be trusted. Riyo is an investigator, making her way through rumors and questions in search of a man long missing and a place that seems not to exist. Maybe my favorite horror media ever? Deeply disturbing and yet even the most awful things are somehow beautiful. Like if Lynch, Escher and Mieville had a terrible, wonderful baby.

*Tides: contemplative hard scifi. When biologist Dr. Eurus is wrecked alone on a distant alien world shaped by deadly tidal forces, her struggle to survive also becomes a meditative exploration of the ecosystem around her, and a recognition that here, she is the alien. Mostly it’s Dr. Eurus; sometimes you hear from her coworkers. It’s got Julia Schifini, what’s not to love?

*Midnight Radio: ghost story/romance. A 1950s radio host who broadcasts a late-night show to her small hometown begins to receive letters from a listener and respond to them on air. I wrote this! It has a total of three voice actors and virtually no soundscaping. I promise it’s good.

[abbybubbls]

A Hunch: The District Attorney is different from the viewers in other “with Markiplier” projects

I’ve always seen a bunch of theories over the years of the District Attorney and how they affect the rest of the Markiplier Cinematic Universe. Theories like “How did they escape the mirror? Dark must have done something to the mirror to get them out! You’re free from the mirror, which means you get to go on all these adventures again!”

Let me remind you that Dark stole the District Attorney’s body, leaving their soul in the mirror at the end of Who Killed Markiplier. Mark said it himself that Dark had no empathy for the District Attorney at all, and would never set them free. Dark used them for his own benefit, and simply walked away.

“But wait!” I hear you say. “The District Attorney is supposed to be YOU, the viewer! And the viewer is a character! If you’re stuck in the mirror, how do you go on all these adventures with Mark in Date and Heist? And besides, in Date, Actor Mark said that you looked familiar to him, so it must have been the District Attorney after being freed!”

I NOW PRESENT TO YOU MY HUNCH! The District Attorney can be different from the viewers in Date and Heist, just like how all the characters that Robert Rexx, Mick, Tyler, Ethan, Bob, Wade, and especially Mark have played are different from each other in every project that have had them included in! The District Attorney is basically given the Ego Treatment™, where there are people out there that look just the same as the District Attorney did, but are completely different from them in many ways.

Let’s use Eric and Captain Magnum as an example. Eric and Captain Magnum have the same face, and they both lost their legs due to freak accidents. Does that mean they’re the exact same character? Absolutely not! Eric is always anxious, stutters, is accident proned, and has a terrible relationship with his dad. Captain Magnum is a friggin PIRATE, so of course he’s gonna be the exact opposite of Eric in every way possible. He’s adventurous, huge, a quick thinker, and acts very fatherly towards you after being a part of his crew.

Yancy and Illinois look the same, but do they have the same backstories? Personalities? How about Dark and Wilford? Bim Trimmer and Silver Shepherd? The Host and Ed Edgar? The King of the Squirrels and the Jims?

The District Attorney and the viewer from Heist are VERY different from each other, even if we insert ourselves as these characters so they basically have our personalities.

In WKM, we insert ourselves as the District Attorney, but we are never given a choice to do certain things that could show how different one person can be from another if we are in a situation like being a witness in a murder. Famous actor is dead? Oh no! A detective offers you to be his partner, even though his previous partners have died in horrific ways in the past? You’re his new partner anyway! A pretty lady you never heard of pops in from out of nowhere and offers you to help her in a spooky séance to commune with the dead? Join her! This will go out so well for you!

In Heist, the viewer is given a choice in nearly every single thing that is thrown their way. And you can see through just the hands behind the camera that the viewer actually has a distinct personality! They’re sassy and playful, but confused and naïve! Alarm went off at the museum? Let’s go find a helicopter that you have absolutely no idea how to fly! Stuck in a prison cell with a magical box that contains supernatural vibes that could easily break you out with your dumbass partner in crime? Act out that said dumbass is dying and needs to call his sick grandmother, and hand the emotional guard a tissue! A scientist mistakes you as an anomaly for time overlapping and causing the zombie apocalypse, and the only cure for it is to kill you? Nah, you’d rather live than save the entire world, let’s get outta here!

You could say that I’m overthinking this with all the comparisons I’m making, but... I’ve now completely lost my train of thought on how to finish this. This is just something that I thought I should share, because I find this kind of stuff very fun to do. Let me know what you think if you have anything in mind!

[oswincoleman]

I know there have been many interviews with Jenna Coleman today, but this one is really fantastic, by far the best one with her today. If you read any of the interviews that I’ve shared today, this is the one to read. It features very many great parts that I will quote below: 

BT: Including Tahar, you’ve had some incredible and very giving scene partners over the years in your illustrious career. Michelle Gomez and Matt Smith from Doctor Who, Sally Field from All My Sons, and of course the rest of the tremendous cast on The Serpent. Who have been some of your favourite scene partners over the years that you’d like to collaborate with again?

JC: I feel really spoiled in that way. Obviously I’d work again with Tahar in a heartbeat, time and time again. I really enjoyed working with Rufus Sewell on Victoria. We had a lot of fun together, he’s a really generous actor. Matt and Peter (Capaldi) taught me so much on Doctor Who. That was kind of one of my first lead roles in terms of being on set all the time and the nature of Doctor Who is all about spontaneity and options for the edit. They’re both such adept actors so I feel like I learned so much from them. And Michelle Gomez is hilarious! She’s just so bonkers. She was a lot of fun to work with! Oh and Sally Field, yes! I adore her. Sally was incredible to work with, an absolute powerhouse of an actress. I’d watch her in rehearsal and then every night on stage, and she was an amazing support to me as well.

BT: Looking back on the roles and characters that you’ve portrayed, which performances of yours are you particularly proud of yourself for having achieved?

JC: Oh my goodness. It’s very hard to be objective in terms of my performances because I don’t really tend to go back and watch them and analyze them. In terms of the processes and in terms of the jobs, I tend to love my last one the best. [laughs] So The Serpent is definitely a favourite. I also feel like it’s so rare for you to get that kind of material, to play a character so far away from yourself and go on such a journey with it. Victoria, obviously, for different reasons. The Cry was very emotionally challenging, it was a bit of an emotional marathon. I tend to love the characters that are further away from me. I mean Annie in All my Sons, there was a lot for me to grasp hold of there. It’s very different from me culturally, accent-wise, as well as the period, too. And, to be honest, I’ve just finished on a film two days ago and I play a very, very different character to me on that one. [laughs] It’s quite a swear-y character, let’s say.

JC: People seem to really engage with the story and there’s been a lot of binge watching, with people being very invested. There’s been a lot of really interesting reactions, to my character in particular. There doesn’t seem to be a decisive view on victim versus accomplice; it seems to be very divided opinions, which is great. People just seem to be very invested. Apparently it’s very anxiety inducing. [laughs] Also very uncomfortable, edge-of-your-seat watching where you don’t want to look but you can’t help but look. That’s the kind of experience that I’ve been hearing from people.

JC: I’m a massive geek and I always write things down in a book, and I received and wrote two quotes. One of them was that she was a victim of love, and I think it was Ajay (Chowdhury) that said “she’s steely”, she’s no willow in the wind. She isn’t just this innocent girl who was brainwashed. She actively went after Charles and actively didn’t want to leave either. I feel like there’s a constant push and pull between her choosing to be there and not being able to leave. It’s really muddy and complicated, and I think what makes the storytelling distinctive is that it sits in both spheres.

JC:  I think [the real] Nadine was quite weirded out [laughs] seeing us all in costume and full character. She said I looked very much like her.

BT: You have a lot of moments in this show where you express so much without any dialogue, with your body language and face, which makes your two final confrontations with Charles that much more explosive.

JC: Yeah, I mean just dramatically, I loved those scenes so much. I feel like in that story and in our arc of it, that’s somebody who is completely undone and unravelled, and has been pushed past the point of no return, and has been emptied out as a person and ripped apart. That was what happens when somebody has really hit rock bottom and wonders ‘what’s next?’. So dramatically, to explore that complete undoing of her was so fun. It’s where she finally accepts the truth and sees Charles for what he is. I think someone becomes dangerous when there’s nothing left to lose. She’s already been through the worst, she’s already lost everything, there’s something so depraved about it. And then obviously the end scene where she’s truly arrived in a very different space and has found God again…her mentality is so fascinating. When I listen to her tapes from when she was in prison, it’s like she’s lived with a new form of delusion to live with her actions. I think she convinced herself….it’s all about survival, and she convinced herself that she was good, I think. It was her coping mechanism.

BT: I read that you had been an admirer of Tahar’s work since A Prophet, so what was it like collaborating with him?

JC: There’s always the fear of working with someone who you’ve really admired from afar, but he exceeded every expectation as a scene partner and as an actor. Working with him was so easy because I feel like our instincts are the same. It was just so easy, and challenging in a way and surprising. He’s a really dynamic actor. Also, their relationship is so complicated, so the two of us went on a real journey of exploring that. He’s just the nicest and has got the most beautiful soul. He’s such a graceful man and made me feel very safe at work, which meant that the two of us could really play with Tom and Hans (Herbots), our directors, and explore the dense material.

BT: It is very dense material, so what did you do at the end of the work days to dissociate from it temporarily?

JC: I think there’s enough distraction in Bangkok [laughs] that I feel like we could work hard during the week and there’s enough fun distractions on the weekends.

BT: So people all around the world are going to be binge watching The Serpent very soon. What have you been watching lately?

JC: I watched The Undoing quite recently. Oh gosh, I feel like I haven’t watched TV in ages! I mean I loved The Queen’s Gambit, obviously. Everyone adored that one. I’m probably forgetting all the brilliant things. Oh, Call My Agent! Ah, so good. And the series My Brilliant Friend as well, just because I love Elena Ferrante’s books.