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sugarstickery · 4 years ago

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An Allegory Within the Dark

This is an unofficial fan translation of chapter 3 of Jujutsu Kaisen’s first light novel, Departing Summer and Returning Autumn by Gege Akutami and Ballad Kitaguni.

Summary: Mahito stumbles across an unusual human in his search for a place to call ‘home’.

Featured characters: Primarily Mahito, with brief appearances from Hanami and Jogo, along with an unnamed novel-only character

Timeline: An undefined time prior to the events of the Vs. Mahito arc

An Allegory Within the Dark

If you want to hide a tree, you go to the middle of a forest.

So if you’re looking to hide a person, you should go to the middle of a city.

Following that logic, it makes sense for curses worthy of being the true humans to set up their hideout in the city center.

Cursed spirits would actually have it much easier if they spent their time in places crammed with fear where humans and the like can’t live: deep in the mountains or in densely wooded areas, for example.

But for a group of curses plotting to overturn the current era, a base in the heart of the city is crucial for invasion and seeking refuge. That being the case, it’s also better to try aiming for a location with a high concentration of negativity.

Anyway, that’s how some employees from a scam business ended up massacred.

“This really is the simplest way to handle it. All of them nest together up here away from the public eye, so clean-up is a cinch.”

Jogo laughed while trampling the burning remains of a corpse underfoot.

Roughly two minutes ago, there were about six humans in the office.

The curses considered a few ways to handle dispatching them but ultimately decided that burning was the fastest, so Jogo quickly turned them to ash.

“But humans used this building, didn’t they? Won’t it be a problem if there’s property management or something?” Mahito asked, poking at an ostentatious vase displayed on a shelf.

Apparently the concern was unnecessary. Jogo tried to answer with a grin, but a nonsensical language cut into their conversation.

“⏁⊑⟒⟟⍀ ⎎⍜⋏⏁ ⟟⌇ ☊⎍⌇⏁⍜⋔”

“Oi, bastard—! Stop talking, Hanami! It makes my head itch!”

Though Hanami spoke in nothing but meaningless sounds, the intention behind it was somehow transmitted directly into the minds of others. This was usually unpleasant and it irritated Jogo.

When he noticed Mahito still looking his way, Jogo continued to explain despite his frustration.

“Hmph... What? There’s no need to worry. I asked Geto what his aim was, and it looks like these were the kind of underhanded humans who got involved in plenty of unethical things.”

“Hm. So basically, other humans won’t actually come close if they get that curse stuff happens here.”

“Exactly. Any respectable, straight-laced human would never come near this place under normal circumstances. It’s the perfect city-center hideout.”

“Is it really?”

“...What is it, Mahito? You don’t seem satisfied. What’s there to worry about? It would put us in a great position to start preparing our plans for the city, and it’s great for a quick escape if we need one.”

“Mm... No, you’re right, but...”

“But what? Spit it out.”

“It’s just... This room is really tacky.”

“Huh?”

With a pop, a small eruption burst forth from Jogo’s head. His narrowed eye looked like a painting of a gently sloping mountain.

“It’s tasteless, isn’t it? Stuff like that gaudy gold lion in the sparkly jar or this cheap-looking sideboard.”

“What are you even saying?! I have no idea what’s gotten into you lately, but you’ve been so annoying!”

“Movies.”

“Movies? Are those overly-embellished portrayals of humans really that interesting?”

“They’re references for my studies on the structure of a soul,” Mahito replied with an ambiguous smile.

If humans could see him, they might be reminded of a proud elementary schooler discussing the knowledge they gained from a book report.

“If I’m being honest, I don’t find the stories that interesting either, but I don’t hate the sense of visual aesthetics that humans have. That said, this room has too many useless colors and really hurts the eyes.”

“Such bratty, selfish complaints... We can just burn or toss anything that’s an eyesore.”

“No need, I’m going to look for a place to settle down on my own.”

“What? Ah, hey— Where are you going?”

Not waiting for Jogo’s response, Mahito waved over his shoulder and vanished like smoke or a gentle breeze, off to who-knows-where.

“Geez… Maybe it’s because he was born from human fear, but even knowing he’s a curse, he tends to be way too frivolous. Watching movies and all…”

While grumbling out his complaints, Jogo took a pipe from his shirt pocket to put in his mouth.

Unlike human cigarettes, this wooden pipe somehow imitated a screaming face when smoked.

“But that Mahito...”

Jogo spun around to survey the room with his one eye.

“...He says that, but it doesn’t seem tacky to me.”

“⊑⏃⋏⏃⋔⟟”

“I already said shut up!!”

You can only find a hideaway that suits you by looking for it on your own.

Mahito wandered through the city with this in mind. He alternated left and right turns on a whim any time he happened across a traffic light, walked alongside stray cats, or sometimes simply went in the direction of clouds that he liked the shape of.

While traveling along his chosen path like this, he keenly felt just how laughable humans were.

Though the city belongs to them, no one walking in and out of it was more free than Mahito.

Everyone seemed constrained. They were captured by ties of obligation and vanity, living in a wide, deep, big city with such narrow outlooks.

Unaffected by the enormous sky sprawling out endlessly overhead, they box themselves into their concrete city with their own hands and limited perception of souls, passing the time by whittling their lives down further and further.

Mahito even learned the words for some of these human concepts to study later.

For example, they call it “morals”. They call it “common sense”. They call it “emotion”.

But a human soul isn’t anything more than the resulting mechanical movement that comes from external stimuli.

And so they let go of freedom and live tightly controlled lives, fearing the judgmental stares of others, stooping to flattery for society’s approval.

“...What a waste.”

Everyone is bound by ostentatious shackles of their own making.

That’s why these curses know there has to be a change, as far as humans go. Those who cannot do anything but crawl in such an unsightly way under the magnificent sky must hand over the world.

Mahito thinks. He ponders over any topic his soul turns toward. He walks wherever the wind blows him.

Before long, the time had come for the sun to descend in the western sky. He could hear the burbling of a river.

“Not bad.”

The hideaway Mahito found was under a bridge, across the river.

It was a tunnel, vacant and huge like a temple.

Pipes ran along the inside, clear water flowing from them and into the river. It looked like wastewater was drained here after being purified, so there wasn’t much discomfort.

Apart from the humid air and the moss that emitted a peculiar grassy smell, it seemed wide enough to splash and jump around in, and the concrete’s cool texture provided a refreshing welcome.

There’s a season that curses are partial to.

Negative human emotions accumulate from the end of winter to spring, and it could be said that the rainy season served as the so-called peak of their ripening.

The inside of the damp tunnel held the same atmosphere. There was a gloominess there in the dim lighting that could easily nurture fear. It gently moistened Mahito’s skin; he felt cozy.

“Yeah, let’s stay here.”

When choosing a place to live, it’s best to trust your instincts.

Perhaps humans should do the same, but what they can’t readily do, Mahito can decide without hesitation. If he’s free when he wanders, then he’s free when he settles down, too.

Mahito stepped into the tunnel in good spirits, knocking solidly on the concrete floor.

The soul’s metabolism smooths out in comforting spaces. But…

“Huh?”

After walking a short distance, Mahito discovered “that”.

He initially thought it was some garbage or something that a human illegally dumped. But before long, it became clear that it was a sack-like silhouette leaning against a wall.

At first glance, it perhaps looked like a mere collection of rags.

But the shape of a soul was there.

—Ah, it’s alive.

Yes, just as Mahito had realized, it was a human.

The tattered clothing and wildly overgrown hair and beard hid his shape, but it was undoubtedly a human.

His exact age wasn’t clear from his outward appearance, but whether he was 60 or over 80, he looked elderly.

Mahito thought it was a bit of a pain.

There was already a visitor living in his precious hideaway.

Of course, taking care of this issue would be an easy matter for him. But he felt the same discomfort as a homeowner finding a stain on the wall of their new house.

‘Anyway, if I’m gonna deal with this, let’s get it done,’ Mahito thought, reaching out toward the old man with a little sigh.

Whereupon, unexpectedly, the old man spoke.

“...I’m sorry if you’re displeased.”

“Hm?”

“I don’t know what you came here to do, but... I’m sure your mood has soured after stumbling across the home of an old fool. But I have nowhere to go, either.”

Mahito was a little taken aback.

The old man was clearly aware of Mahito and turned toward him to speak. This wouldn’t be surprising at all if he was talking to a fellow human.

But Mahito is a curse.

The eyes of a mere human can’t clearly perceive cursed spirits.

It isn’t impossible, though. If humans are born with cursed energy, it isn’t unusual for them to be aware of the existence of curses.

What caught Mahito’s attention was this old man’s lack of ‘eyes’.

As in, he had no eyes in the physical sense. Instead, in the empty sockets that once held them, there was a burn scar that was painful just to look at.

Even sorcerers rely on their eyes to view the world.

They depend on their field of vision to spot cursed spirits. That’s why so many of them use sunglasses and the like to conceal their line of sight, as it helps them remain unaffected. It also helps them maintain a balanced mind when their daily life overflows with curses.

However, that was not the case for this old man.

“Can you see me?”

When Mahito asked, the old man answered with a gentle nod.

“At the very least, I can feel you.”

“But you can’t see the world?”

“Naturally. That includes the scenery, what you look like, what color your skin is, and even your gender. Even so... I know you’re there.”

“...Are you a sorcerer?”

“Most likely not.”

“You’re being pretty vague, even though you’re talking about yourself.”

“For a long time, that’s what I’ve been the most vague about.”

Mahito began to notice something strange.

He can feel the shape of a human’s soul.

He knows the movement of a soul’s metabolism, whether it takes on a harsh form, withers weakly, or flickers with liveliness.

However, this old man’s soul was hardly metabolizing.

It was like a meadow with no wind, or a still sea, or the blue sky on a cloudless day.

No, it would be most appropriate to compare it to a stone.

His soul was like a stone on the side of the road.

No fancy ornamentation, no polishing. Unmoving, unwavering.

Calmly passing the time while growing moss.

That was the shape this old man’s soul had.

No matter how calm or how old a person is, the human soul always flickers.

As the years stack up, common sense doesn’t disappear, selfishness isn’t eliminated, and fear isn’t conquered.

But this old man was different.

The old man’s soul was at peace. He had sincerely accepted that everything would decay with time, but that didn’t mean he would throw his life away. It was truly similar to the way in which nature existed.

It was Mahito’s first time meeting anyone like this.

For a while, the tunnel became something of a den for Mahito.

He had gotten a hammock from somewhere, which he hung up between the pipes. He lounged in it and read, passing the time in comfort.

In a movie about life on a deserted island, a human who was desperate to survive made a hammock. Through it, he was able to regain a little peace of mind.

Since it looked surprisingly comfortable, Mahito gave it a try and it worked out nicely.

The arguments and fights of the outside world didn’t reach the inside of the tunnel, where only the burble of the small stream could be heard.

It provided a good environment for soothing the soul.

While leisurely absorbing new knowledge from his books, Mahito would sometimes absentmindedly gaze up toward the ceiling, or glance down at the corner where the old man squatted, looking as he always did.

“How do you live like this? It’s pretty mysterious...”

In the end, Mahito didn’t kill the old man.

It’s important to note that the old man wasn’t much of a hindrance for him. If it would make no difference whether he was there or gone, then Mahito figured getting rid of him would be more of a hassle.

The old man was just there, even quieter and more carefree than a stray cat.

Mahito knew the phrase: ‘man is only a reed, but he is a thinking reed’.

He found it hilarious and also genuinely liked it. It simultaneously boasted about being trapped in thoughts of the soul, while also showing that humans were frail as weeds.

It could be said that the old man was an unthinking reed, then.

No – he was even quieter than that; more like grass or some type of moss. In any case, the old man said nothing and simply carried on living.

Every now and then, the old man would suddenly shuffle off elsewhere, but he would be back to sleep before Mahito knew it. He was surely getting food from somewhere, but he never seemed to gain weight. If he lost any while in the tunnel, he would eat just enough to gain it back when he left, and no more.

It was a style of living so close to nature that it seemed more like a phenomenon than a life.

“That’s why I seriously wonder if you can see me.”

The suspicion was uttered suddenly.

Mahito wasn’t exactly speaking to the old man. Rather, his tone was that of someone talking to themselves.

But when he noticed that the old man’s soul didn’t waver even after hearing him speak, Mahito finally addressed him directly.

“How long have you been here?”

“Let’s see… I think a few winters have passed, but I’m not sure,” the old man muttered, his reply quiet.

Since they were two beings with souls who were aware of each other’s existence, Mahito felt it would be more natural to chat every now and then.

“Don’t you get bored?”

When spoken to in a soft tone, the old man also responded softly.

“I’ve forgotten how to be bored.”

“How do you usually pass the time here?”

“I don’t do anything, really. I just listen to the sounds.”

“The sounds?”

“The sounds of the water flowing.”

“...Is it fun?”

“It’s not. But I forgot how to have fun a long time ago, too, so it’s not an issue.”

So it was like that. Mahito nodded.

If this old man could no longer even feel the pain of boredom, perhaps his soul was worn down.

Humans of the city gasp and struggle through the hurt of not having enough, yet always wish for more even when they get what they wanted. Their souls grew fat and tattered through the rich accumulation of these negative feelings.

So in that regard, from Mahito’s point of view, the old man had a thin soul – but it could be said that was clever of him.

A fat and full human soul leads to a fear of losing the gratifying present moment, which in turn gives birth to curses.

“It’s hard to get your attention. What’s your name?”

When Mahito asked, the old man looked into the air for just a second.

“I left that behind. You can call me whatever you like.”

“There are humans without names? Even curses have them.”

“If you don’t meet other people, you don’t need a name.”

“Isn’t it a problem if you don’t have one?”

“When is it a problem?”

“When it’s time to be buried.”

“I don’t need a gravestone with a name. I can just be stuffed into a common grave, or maybe I’ll rot undiscovered and return to the earth that way.”

“Can’t you take a joke?”

“…Was that a joke?”

The old man didn’t laugh. Neither did Mahito.

But Mahito had the feeling that this old man was childish, contrary to his appearance. His lack of attachments created an unsullied disposition that might make him younger than he looked.

His interest in the old man simmered and surged.

It was his first time seeing this type of human, his first time feeling a soul with this form. For Mahito, this was a rare specimen.

What kind of path must life take to make this kind of human? What would be the most intriguing shape to make with a soul like that? What uses could one plan for such a person?

And what kind of curse would be born from them?

With these questions fueling his curiosity, Mahito started to chat with the old man.

“Why are you here?”

“…Why?”

The old man looked up toward the ceiling through his unruly bangs.

His eye sockets were empty, but it seems like even without sight, humans tended to stare into nothing when they were thinking. One curiosity of Mahito’s was satisfied.

“You weren’t born and raised in this tunnel, right? As a human, you must have been in that noisy city.”

“Ah, that. I lived a fairly busy life a long time ago. I inherited the house, worked, made money and supported my family.”

“So you were a human in a pretty good position.”

“In human society, yes. Looking back on it now, it was all meaningless.”

“So... what, you basically started living in a hole like a mouse, then?”

“I did that because I lost everything that I needed up to then. I lost my social status, my money, and a place where I belonged.”

“You lost it all?”

“I was tricked. That’s when my eyes were burned, so I lost my sight then, too.”

Mahito incidentally recalled the company Jogo attacked.

“You got tricked, huh? You seem pretty good-natured about it.”

“That’s because I didn’t care much about being tricked.”

“You’re a weird old man. Is this some kind of hobby where you get your kicks when people deceive you or something?”

“I’m just saying, that’s the kind of person I was back then. The ones who tricked me were my old friend and my wife. My eyes were burned in that so-called “accident”¹; they claimed I wasn’t of sound mind and body after that, and under the guise of caring for me, they stole everything I worked for before I knew it.”

“That’s a pretty flashy way to trick someone, isn’t it? You’re talking like it’s someone else’s problem.”

“Those two loved each other, and I was loved by no one. Knowing that was more monumental to me than being tricked.”

It was hard for Mahito to interpret what the old man said.

Love. Is it really such an important word?

It’s said that curses born from love exist in the world. It seems there are tremendously powerful ones among them, too. But Mahito doesn’t understand how the mechanism by which people love each other is any different from a cat’s attachment to a blanket.

Still, Mahito knows for a fact that people are obsessed with it.

“Didn’t you curse them? The ones who tricked you.”

“Not really.”

“’Not really’, huh. You know, normally a human in that situation would get angry and hold grudges, and it would make the shape of their soul deteriorate.”

“It’s true, though. I don’t think I had the energy to even consider seeking revenge or hurting them.”

“...I get it.”

Mahito nodded, filling in the blanks.

Regardless of whether or not he can guess the trends in human emotion, Mahito has studied many movies, novels and poetry so far.

Then there were the humans he tinkered with. Mahito could put together the pieces he gleaned from those things and use them to break down the old man’s story.

“So basically, you were in despair. So much despair that it was like your soul was about to die. That’s how you broke through the creation of grudges and curses and ended up like this.”

The old man slowly shook his head.

“I may have been disappointed, but I don’t believe I felt the intense despair you’re thinking of.”

“Are ‘disappointment’ and ‘despair’ different?”

“They are; this is just my personal experience.”

The old man raised his face, following the memories.

“There was no burning resentment or turbulent sorrow. It’s just... I was tired, I guess. Between work, assets, reputation, my life situation and duties, dealing with others, caring about the family name... I think I was probably just tired and worn out because of it all.”

“And that’s why you didn’t get mad even after being tricked?”

“I was at peace. They say the soul gets lighter after going through disappointments.”

The old man’s voice was calm.

It had a cool quality to it, like muddy water that had been filtered clean.

“I couldn’t see, I had no money, I had no love... But as I was walking through the city with nothing to my name, it all suddenly became inconsequential. And then, as I looked around, I saw the city in a new light.”

“Even though you can’t see?”

“Yes. When you can’t see anything, it’s just sound and wind that goes on forever anywhere you are. I couldn’t even see the walls blocking the city in. It was just endless darkness spreading out forever, like a starless night. For the first time, I understood how wide the world was. And I thought to myself... ah, I’m free, aren’t I?”

Mahito blinked rapidly.

This old man’s thinking didn’t fit any other case he had gathered so far.

Even hearing about his past, he couldn’t understand the old man’s thoughts.

But even from Mahito’s point of view, the old man was certainly free.

Without so much as leaving the middle of this tunnel, he knew that the sky was vast.

Perhaps he knew it better than any member of high society walking around freely in the city. He knew the wide spread of the sky, the soft caress of the wind, the gentle sounds of the water.

This old man, who looked like a simple rakugoka², had no property or social standing. He even lost his connection to other humans... And maybe that’s precisely why he could uncover the elusive meaning of the word ‘freedom’.

He was just existing, just being alive, without attachments, grudges or curses.

“So basically ‘not all those who wander are lost’?”

“Yes, though quoting Tolkien’s works might be a little tedious.”

Mahito smiled when the man immediately caught the reference to a book he just happened to read.

“Were you a bookworm?”

“All I did was cram a lot of information in.”

“It’s good to be well-read.”

If curses are born from the fear that humans feel, could this old man even be considered human?

As Mahito is, he struggles with the expression of human emotions.

But he was calm.

For the first time since coming into contact with humans, he had a feeling of peace.

“I think if everyone in the world was like you, I wouldn’t have been born.”

Mahito looked back at his book.

The old man, staring into nothing as always, fell silent again.

Curses are born from humans, but they also kill humans. There is no way for the two to coexist.

But in this tunnel, a curse and a human were doing exactly that.

Though distorted, this peaceful period of time flowed by gently.

It’s only natural for humans to hate and fear other humans.

Since they can’t see souls, they can only make guesses about the feelings of others, and they’re swayed by their own emotions.

They don’t understand that these things are just a reflection of the soul’s metabolism. They don’t even know where their soul is.

Mahito investigated the matter.

This blind man lost his sight and his connection to others, so his soul received less stimulation.

And so, no longer influenced by unnecessary things in the physical world, he spent a lot of time facing his inner world and reflecting.

“It’s kind of like a monk’s training. Through strong introversion, a person looks at their soul more often.”

Mahito walked around the city, skimming through a beaten-up copy of the Heart Sutra.

It was a sutra handbook that focused on controlling the soul. It looked like humans of the past did their own research into freeing the soul from the material world.

The old man’s life ended up in a similar state without him setting out to do it on purpose.

That was likely how he learned to feel other souls through the darkness he lived in. Mahito concluded this was the reason he was aware of curses.

“I think he was already predisposed, but... seems like it’s easier for introverted humans to show promise.”

If he gave the old man’s situation even deeper consideration, he could probably make a lot of guesses about a sorcerer’s training. There’s even a way to encourage the first manifestation of cursed energy.

In that case, it should also be possible to take a talented person and ‘make’ them into a sorcerer or curse-user.

Unleashing a curse-user made by a curse onto a sorcerer...

That might be a fun experiment. It’s easier to shake up a human’s soul by having them fight other humans, rather than just exorcising curses. Sukuna’s vessel should be no exception.

Although...

—Maybe it’s fine to do that a little later?

Yes, Mahito thought it over at his leisure.

He is free. When it’s time to move, he moves. When it’s time to rest, he rests.

And he was not in the mood to launch that plan into action.

Rather, for the time being, he just wanted to gather knowledge and indulge in thought. He also got some new books and wanted to read fantasy novels while basking in the quiet comfort of the tunnel.

Mahito’s gait became lighter. While walking alongside the throng of people, he even began to hum.

Suddenly, a loud voice rang out from between two buildings.

“—so damn annoying, yeah?”

Looking over that way, he saw two young humans: a man with long, thin hair, and a muscular skinhead. They were undoubtedly people who looked like trouble.

The long-haired man listened as the skinhead rambled on with his complaints, seemingly in some kind of sullen mood.

“Damn, it’s seriously freezing. Anyway, every last one of ‘em just puts on shitty airs, but it’s all just talk. Nothin’ but excuses. Ah, I wanna kill ‘em all...”

“You say that, but come on. You talk big about wanting to beat these guys to death when you’re pissed, but could you actually kill someone?”

“Sure. Ain’t like killing’s hard.”

“Seriously?”

Mahito squinted and listened, the conversation going in one ear and out the other.

It’s not that he disliked the way they acted or how they spoke bluntly about their heart’s desires. But Mahito knew people like this were all talk.

“Yeah– seriously, anyone’s fine, I just wanna kill someone.”

Then maybe you should do it without saying anything.

Better yet, he thought about practicing some killing methods on them. But Mahito felt the light weight of the book in his hand as he reached out, and he stopped.

Rather than sparing any consideration for this, he just wanted to go back to the comfort of the tunnel and read.

“I’ll kill ‘em.”

The skinhead’s grumbling voice sounded like a spell.

But the words would find no power or heart to shelter in. Shut away between these buildings, the most a person can do is talk to themselves. It’s best for humans like this to stick to the narrow back alleys, foolishly thinking they’re enjoying a wide world.

Mahito averted his gaze and made his way back home.

“Why did Gregor become a bug?”

Mahito suddenly asked the old man, not taking his eyes off the novel.

It was a famous book by Franz Kafka.

A story in which a human unexpectedly turns into a poisonous insect.

“The most popular theory is that the bug is a metaphor.”

“Metaphor?”

“It means he was a person who was hated and oppressed within society, treated the same way a human would treat a bug. Kind of like an old man who was suddenly blinded and tricked one day.”

“Is that a joke?”

“Not exactly.”

It was detached and dispassionate, but an answer would come back any time Mahito said something. When conversing with the old man, it felt like talking to a dictionary. He had a lot of information.

He knew about things like the inner workings of the mind and human culture, and he was smart enough to explain it simply in discussions.

For Mahito, who analyzed human souls through books and movies, this old man’s knowledge and conversation helped in its own way.

When do humans get angry? Why do they grieve?

How do they trust and in what ways are they betrayed?

Mahito lived with a different sense of ethics when compared to humans, so there were many things he struggled to interpret. The old man explained them and helped him understand.

He had a strong interest in the experiences of the old man, who had once lived among humans but didn’t act like them.

“After becoming a bug, Gregor eventually hid away like he was told to, but he still ended up being spotted and it led to his death. Jii-san³, why do you think that is?”

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”

“That’s a quote from Virginia Woolf, right?”

When Mahito immediately and correctly guessed the source, the old man raised a brow slightly.

“You’re a pretty avid reader, too. Conversations with you are really stress-free.”

“Do you have to go back to living with other humans, then?”

“If you don’t have any attachment to the human world, there’s no need to run from it or stand against it⁴.”

“I see,” Mahito murmured to let the other know he was listening, eyes still on the book.

Even if he wasn’t looking at it, the old man’s perpetually calm soul was aglow in the dark like always.

Mahito read his book in the dim room lit by the brilliance of that soul instead of a candle.

Time quietly flowed through the darkness.

Outside of the tunnel, signs indicating the end of summer crept up.

The end came abruptly.

One day, when Mahito was heading back to the tunnel with an abandoned poetry anthology that he picked up on an aimless walk through the city, he felt a noisiness that shouldn’t have been there.

There were one, two, three swaying souls.

One had a very familiar shape, but it was terribly frail. It was like the dying flame of a candle weakened by the wind.

With the same unchanging gait as always, Mahito stepped into the tunnel.

As expected, the old man was there.

But the unusual thing was the crumpled, strange position that he was in.

He was also sandwiched between two younger men who were looking down at him.

“Oooi, isn’t this bad? Did this guy seriously die?”

A man with long, thin hair spoke in a tone that was not particularly anxious.

“Didn’t I say it? I said I could kill,” a muscular skinhead replied, his voice casual.

“But ain’t this just impulsive?”

“Yeah, well, the old man had some real cheek, looking down on us when he’s this weak. So why not just kick him?”

The skinhead likely played sports, given that his legs were as thick around as logs. Kicking an old man to death would be easier than crushing a can.

The two didn’t seem to have a single scrap of interest in the old man, his life or his soul.

There was no reason, no grudge, no clear murderous intent.

It seemed like they simply arrived at the tunnel somehow. They took the opportunity to do as much violence as they wanted. They beat him on a whim.

It could be said that this way of being is freedom for humans.

Mahito crouched down, peeking at the old man’s face.

The beaten visage of the man with burned eyes came into view. But even at a time like this, his expression was as calm as always.

“Are you going to die?”

Mahito searched for even a mumbled word or two in response.

“...Seems so...”

The old man answered in a hoarse voice. He likely barely had the power left to speak now. It appeared as though the two men didn’t hear him over their loud conversation.

He intently inspected the old man’s soul.

The peaceful soul was not flickering, nor did it hold anger or grief; it was simply coming to an unhurried end.

Mahito was impressed.

This old man had found the true meaning of freedom. He really was released from every tie of obligation in this world. Even on the verge of death, that didn’t change.

Being able to make sure of that with his own two eyes, Mahito felt considerably relieved. In the same way he would watch a flower wither and fall, he observed the old man’s death.

Nevertheless...

“Jii-san?”

He had a feeling.

It’s like seeing a plot twist you don’t want to see if you keep turning the pages of a book.

Or like knowing the contents of a present before you open it.

That kind of buzz spread through Mahito’s chest.

While he puzzled over the instinctive alarm bells screaming at him to stop watching, everything was heading toward its end.

“...I thought I would die alone.”

The old man’s soul dimly flickered.

A smile was on his swollen face.

“...To have someone... here to witness this old fool’s last moments...”

The flicker might have been insignificant, like a single drop breaking the water’s surface. Even so, for an instant near death, at the end of it all...

The old man’s soul ‘metabolized’.

“...Tha...nk... y...”

The old man died smiling.

“. . .”

Mahito’s eyes opened wide, and for a moment, he was frozen.

He thought the old man was different when compared to other humans. To Mahito, he seemed unfettered.

Mahito thought the unique philosophical views stemming from such an extraordinary state of mind had freed him from all the shackles of this world.

But despite all of that, the old man was still captured right in his last moments.

On the brink of death, he clung to someone else so he could avoid a lonely end.

The old man was only human.

For a human, it was likely satisfying enough. Perhaps it was even the proper way for one to die.

“. . .”

Mahito said nothing.

But what felt like a dry wind blew through his chest, leaving him cold.

He didn’t know the name humans gave that emotion. But his consciousness was like yarn tangling in on itself, wriggling around like a worm—

And suddenly, it all cut off at once.

The only thing left behind was the sensation of standing in a dry and barren wasteland.

“—So basically,” the skinhead’s voice echoed. “Police probably won’t do a proper investigation. Not for this old nobody.”

“Hey, hey, hey; that’s still a person,” the long haired man answered lightly.

“Yeah, well, that guy started it.”

“He shoulda looked at who he was talking to before he picked a fight.”

“Anyway, my pants are dirty from all that kicking... That’s a problem.”

“So fussy. That’s what you’re worried about when you just killed a guy? How funny.”

“That ain’t a person. Anyway, don’t you know I like being clean? Ahh, the blood won’t come off... Water doesn’t do any good, right?”

“Yeah, it doesn’t – but more importantly, if you’ve settled down, I’m hungry. Let’s stop by a convenience store.”

“I dunno. If you’re gonna look, buy a bento and let’s get outta here.”

Mahito quickly stood up in the same way one would when they finished looking for something in a store.

A sense of fatigue was deeply ingrained in his body.

Their incoherent voices persisted, reverberating through the tunnel, smeared with excuses and attempts to escape reality. He couldn’t hear the soft burble of the stream.

With deep-seated listlessness, Mahito approached the skinhead as one would move to pick up fallen trash.

Idle Transfiguration. The technique spreads quickly.

And thus, the moment he tapped the man’s back, its shape was no longer human.

“Ee—!!”

If he just killed them, it would create a nuisance in the form of a corpse, so he simply folded it up into something palm-sized and kept it alive.

Then, with a careless sweep⁵ of his hand, he folded up the other man as well.

“Begh—”

It fell silent.

Mahito gathered up the two, now no bigger than chess pieces, and turned his attention down toward the remaining corpse of the old man.

It was now just a bag of meat full of bones. Not even the soul remained, so he couldn’t use Idle Transfiguration to fiddle with it.

He was briefly troubled by its disposal, which served as the biggest inconvenience.

In the tunnel, there nothing but the sound of running water.

It was a day where the sky seemed farther away than usual.

Clouds peeked out from around the buildings and a good feeling was carried in on the wind.

Mahito aimlessly walked about the city.

“Maybe I’ll catch a movie. It’s been ages.”

He picked a tiny, somewhat old-looking theater and snuck in.

He’s had high motivation lately, and it seemed like some unnecessary things had peeled away from his soul, leaving him more carefree than ever.

Thanks to that, he had also begun to toy with humans more often.

If he can fold a person up and make them small, he wanted to test out inflating one instead, but he slept on the idea overnight. It was pretty fun, but he knew that he was getting too absorbed. He also felt that carrying on with too much persistence wasn’t a good thing.

A change of pace every now and then was fine, too.

He hadn’t closely checked to see what was being screened. It was mostly just plain and obscure movies, but if one went in with no expectations, they might come across a surprisingly interesting tale.

Curiously, he had that kind of a feeling.

While walking through the hall of the theater, he casually felt through his pocket, which had grown bulky with the ‘small humans’ that he had touched.

—Speaking of which, he thought that was a nuisance.

He carelessly tossed some of them away.

Opening the door, he stepped into the theater.

Perhaps because it was a weekday, there weren’t many customers. The silhouettes of what appeared to be students filled out a few seats here and there.

From where Mahito stood in the corner, he had a good view of the screen.

Soon, instead of a curtain raising, the theater was engulfed in darkness.

T/N: [1] In this sentence, the implication is that the “accident” was very much orchestrated by the old man’s friend and wife, who burned his eyes somehow and then merely made it look like an accident [2] The rakugoka is the storyteller in rakugo, a form of (often) comedic theater that relies solely on spoken word from the rakugoka, who only uses a fan and hand towel as props [3] A way of referring to old men in general, basically like “gramps/grandpa”; Mahito never calls him by an actual name [4] Essentially, the old man’s saying that he (or anyone) can exist parallel to human society without interacting if they have no attachments to it and can still find peace, contrary to the Woolf quote [5] Kanji reads sweep, furigana reads cleanse (the same word for exorcism that sorcerers use)

Thanks as well to Pixi for help with editing and tl checks! If an officially translated version of the novel becomes available in your country, please consider purchasing it, or consider buying a copy of the original novel in Japanese if possible!

#jujutsu kaisen #mahito #mahito jujutsu kaisen #mahito jjk #jogo jjk #hanami jjk #jujutsu kaisen light novel #translation #departing summer and returning autumn

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antihumanism · 3 years ago

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When I type everything out as a single run-on sentence I want you to imagine me cornering you off-guard in a crowded room, my empty brown cow eyes staring straight at you and reflecting you--nopony home here, she checked out and hopped away forever ago on the toxic chemical trains and clacking cattle cars years ago--and just, for no reason, I’m here and you’re there pocketed in the corner of a crowded room, and I’m channeling my alternate history past-self who was a preacher that got kicked out of the church for delivering sermons about the impossibility of sin and just ran off to Point Sur with my harem of distractions since I could never stop blessing my congregation saying “Go forth and know that you cannot sin, in the beautiful eyes of God and in my beautiful eyes there can be no wrong or evil” which backfired on me when they started setting fires and it all went to Hell, but I’ve won out over them because the world honored my wishes when I sighed “I should like to start again,” and so I’m here with you and you’re hear with me and I’m saying some insane shit like: “Looking back on Emily’s early works it is easy to see where her later reactionary turn comes from, because, from the start, Alfred Alfer was a story about the fear of castration, I mean, the first video was literally about Alfred getting neutered and escaping into a violent fantasy where he is loved and praised for his violence and the ‘punchline’ establishes the general theme of ‘reality by despair,’ which is to say that Alfred’s clearly dissociative episode is ‘verified’ by his destruction and it is this self-destruction that establishes ‘reality,’ like ‘pinch me i might be dreaming,’ but the pinch is violent and unfair self-destruction as hope is still ripped away, but hope remains, because it is a hope to die rather than be changed by the world, and this theme remains throughout her most famous work (the Alfred’s Playhouse trilogy which cements in canon the jokes of her previous Rise of Alfred cartoon) where Alfred is possessed by the spirits of Stalin and Hitler--a false equivalency made by the authoritarians that have passed for liberals for years--in Rise of Alfred, one would be remiss not to mention the phallic imagery in both the title and the video itself, Alfred is cut loose upon the world by the absence of a Near God or little other by the orders of a Distant God or big Other (in this video played by a droning and irrelevant corporate figure that can offer nothing more than a wall without lead paint that one can lick), and this is the essence of reactionary thought, the idea of a big Other who is totally incompetent yet all powerful and somehow worth respecting and suffering for (King Henry II saying ‘will no one rid me of this troublesome priest’ or the departed Daiymo of the 47 Ronin), the reactionary sees the big Other as a master who can only set the dogs off the chain, the police chief who needs to get out of the way so McBain or Dirty Harry or Paul Kersey (especially in Death Wish III) can do what needs to be done and purge away all the filth and make the world right again (no different than Rambo--even the first movie, which for all of it’s goods part still is reactionary propaganda bullshit pushing the fascist lies about a ‘fifth column’ that was rude to poor little meow meow war criminals--or modern day fantasies about nuking all of MENA until it glows green (fantasies delivered to raucous applause at Republican presidential conventions); the reactionary is perpetually trapped in this fantasy of destroying the world and escaping into the void of space, freed of the ground where the riff-raff are so they don’t have to negotiate life with their neighbors, and this is true, yes, even of people who spout bullshit about Fully Automated Luxury Communism who only want the right to consume as much as possible free of guilt--a condition they think is inflicting upon them by the big Other--as the Champagne of Shame Socialists of the 60s), and the righting of the world for the reactionary is just that, that the world must be Righted and the reactionary must be loved for all of their violence and because of their violence, for the reactionary finds themselves ever needing new excuses as they open new fronts in their fake, phony Culture War, and that is all they need (excuses), which is why Emily is so obsessed with justifying her edgy shit based on some Trauma (which is handy excuse to do Anything, even Things that Cannot Be Excused like war or self-harm or wanting to be seen), and so here you should already be able to hear so much madness, so many plaintive cries, all aligning around the same point (the trannies in the ‘wrong’ bathroom, the refugees in the ‘wrong’ country, the people in the ‘wrong’ neighborhood, the Jewish Question, etc), and, anyway, so in Rise of Alfred, Emily’s OC directly addresses the audience and tells them that they must love him/her--the castrated bitch desperate to be let off the leash--and in Alfred’s Playhouse she/he simultaneously affirms and denies the nature of a trauma that justifies everything (one is constantly reminded of The Act of Killing where one of the mass murderers imagines how, depending on the editing of the final film, he could be either a woobie or a war criminal) as the Trauma is simultaneously a joke--’sodomized with a popsicle!’--and the alleged real event that motivates her self-mutilation as we’re expected to believe Emily is processing something, but what is she is processing, hmmmm, isn’t that the true spice,” I rail and rave against your poor ear drums as my empty, dead cow’s eyes capture your entire body and reflect it back at you and the ice cubes in my drink pop and shatter and dissolve and as my fist clenches tighter and tighter around the glass containing them and I continue: she’s processing a fear of castration, which is shown clearly in Alfred’s Playhouse where Alfred’s “sodomy” is demonstrated by the sight of his crotch covered in blood (a scene that will be repeated in The Alfred Alfer Movie) but “what is castration,” one might ask, and one can respond “it is the removal of power by the Father,” and this is how we wrap back around to our root in the nature of Emily the Reactionary who believes herself to be deprived of the power she holds by The Bolshevik Jew that has inserted itself between her and the Father and this is the cause of the big Other’s ineffectiveness, and this is also the core of the reactionary as a whole, the reactionary doesn’t want a daddy to control them, but a Master to set them off the chain because they hate the Father who has castrated them, this is the nature of the mumbling corporate manager in Rise of Alfred, but it is also the nature of Alfred herself--and now you may ask if Emily is trans and the answer is I literally couldn’t fucking care less about any question left forever unanswered on God’s Green Earth and you shouldn’t care either--but Alfred the Castrated is also the Father/Mother of Alfred the Dictator, the murderous inner-self that is immune to consequences of the onrushing future (The Alfred Alfer Movie) but not immune to the justifications of the imagined past (Alfred’s Playhouse trilogy), and therefore free to inflict whatever violence that Emily the Reactionary desires, and it is in pursuit of this freedom that the reactionaries set off in the name of New Sincerity (two things to be noted here: (1) the Death of Irony was proclaimed at the birth of the 21st century police state and the new Forever War with all of its genocidal objectives, that is to say, 9/11, and (2) the broken necked coward who complained of American Psycho that it’s author provided no easy outs for easy survival was the one who offed himself while Bateman’s father still lives) and the Talking Cure (i miss who we used to be), and at this you should see me slugging back the whole lukewarm glass in between two syllables and continuing on without pause (as if this dog still has legs on which to receive them in any case), “Emily, like Alex Jones, is so desperate for an excuse because neither of them can accept that they have to be the one that pulls the trigger, like all liars they don’t understand that they have to define reality by action, the answer to what one might do is found in the difference between the types of irony, one type is constantly desperate for excuses (such as the broken necked coward found one day) for violence, and the other irony, the true spice, is the irony that releases from excuses into violence and energy, one must seek not to know or endure but to inflict, knowing that this inflicting was always inevitable, no searching for justifications, instead the answer is to realize that there was never a chain there connecting you to the Master or the present to the past, and the Father/Mother never had the power of castration (the past, after all, is a foreign country bombed and blasted to ruins already and better forgotten), and you can just be fucked up and terrible and do whatever amuses you right now without needing an excuse, and to the extent that anyone should, one should, because that is what fascism needs, fascism needs the need for an excuse and that is the irony of fascism--where the falling angel (the superego) meets the rising ape (the id) in an ego of ultimate violence which seeks only release from both of its creations in an instinctually and totally misunderstood caricature of dialectics--which opposes its opposite irony (the irony without fascism which is the id’s violence against purpose and reason rising free of anything else to obstruct it), and if you let go of that, if you just, ya know, if you just, you just have to cut loose and go and no one can stop you until it is too late, because there’s no Jew sitting over your shoulder to justify everything in terms of opposition or support, not even The Nazarene is real, but do you understand that you’ve always been free to just go? You’re free to go. You’ve been free to go all this time. You never needed permission for this or anything else. You’ve been free to go all this time. You’re free to go. A whole day off. Just mind the mo(u)rning and get on with it.”

#emily youcis #Alles ist wahr Nichts ist erlaubt #let's live now before we're back below

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maxwell-grant · 4 years ago

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What would a spider man: life story look like for the shadow?

Now that I've actually read Spider-Man: Life Story I can give this one a response. I'm gonna obsess about this question for a while because man what a ride Life Story was.

To those not in the know, the premise of Spider-Man: Life Story is: "In 1962, in AMAZING FANTASY #15, 15-year-old Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and became the Amazing Spider-Man! Fifty-seven years have passed in the real world since that event — so what would have happened if the same amount of time passed for Peter as well?" and basically it tells the story of Spider-Man as one continuous narrative spanning 57 years, from his beginnings to a potential future, allowing Peter Parker and his cast and world to age in real time and factor in elements from the character's major stories over the decades.

And it's got a lot into it that the premise doesn't convey and there is no way I can even begin tackling a project like this for the 90 goddamn years of The Shadow's history without seriously just writing an entirely different fanfic continuity (and I already have 5, plus multiverses, possibly more) and tipping off way too much about my own plans for the character. Even I have my limits.

So instead, what I'm gonna do is go over the broad strokes of The Shadow's history as it would look like if you could try and condense it all under a consistent narrative, if you could focus on each decade's highs and lows, what kind of story would arise if a deranged Shadow maniac like me were to try and build a basic skeleton for a The Shadow: Life Story story.

Basic rules first: I'm sticking to the idea of Life Story and spanning every decade from the beginning of the character's life to the end of it. The aging and death parts are important so I’m sticking to those. The character's canonical birth date is 1892, so he's not making it intact to the 2000s. We're capping this off in the 90s, although it doesn't mean no further stories can be told. I will avoid mentioning specific historical events like Vietnam and 9/11 for this post to instead focus on The Shadow's trajectory. I will also not be including other characters, only somewhat referencing whatever aspects I deem relevant. I'm not sticking to any continuity, I'm pulling literally everything I can for this one

And putting this one below the cut

The 1930s: The golden years. In 1930, after a long line of life experiences in the Great War and traveling around the world under dozens of names, the man formerly known as Kent Allard has taken to fighting crime in the Great Depression. This chapter would be more of a standard narrative showcasing the trajectory of The Shadow's 30s career, how he's started off as a urban myth fighting gangsters and then progressed to urban avenger with dozens of allies fighting spies and supervillains. Despite being in his home element, he is restless. Another war is on the horizon. We gotta know where he starts, to get a clue of where he's going.

The 1940s: Despite it being the "family friendly American hero" Shadow era, shit gets very, very chaotic in the 40s, way more so than The Shadow could have anticipated. The pulps were relatively tame for this period, by this point instead you have the radio with it's constantly rotating writers and sensibilities, and comics that had far less reservations about either being really boring or really wacky. Far more encounters with the supernatural than before and with supervillains like Devil Kyoti and Monstradamus and Solaris, plus Khan is still around. The Shadow is forced to spend a lot more time traveling the world to deal with the war, spending a prolonged period establishing headquarters in Japan to aid Japanese underground organizations opposing the military. The agents perform rescue missions on concentration camps, and this is the period where you could have the "real" Lamont Cranston start filling in for The Shadow a bit while he's overseas.

There's a particular blurb that got released during this period that explains The Shadow acquired the power to cloud men's minds not by training, but by journeying to Tibet in an unrecorded adventure that forced him to beg the monks to grant him assistance in saving the world. I have some very mixed feelings on this whole backstory but I think there's something to this idea. Some shit went down in the 40s that was way beyond what The Shadow could have anticipated, and to protect the world from it he had to tap into forces that perhaps should have been left untouched.

The 1950s: The Shadow has dissappeared from America alltogether. He gathered up his agents and announced he wouldn't return for at least a decade, and left them with enough money to last a lifetime and retire should they feel like it. Burbank and Cliff Marsland dissappeared with him, and this chapter would probably be told from the Agents's perspective as they face the 50s while we get snippets from Marsland on what The Shadow's been up to. Some of it involves The Shadow helping protect Tibet after Mao's takeover of China. The real Lamont Cranston doesn't put on the costume anymore and instead operates as a fairly regular detective, although he's training on the skills and powers he's picked up overseas. Whatever fantasy madness haunted the 1940s is all but gone.

The 50s had basically nothing in Shadow content other than the last legs of the radio show, which are 200 episodes from 1950 to 1954 that currently don't exist anymore outside of a few scripts. During this time, The Shadow's sole appearence in US content was a parody in MAD Magazine. Overseas however, there were original Shadow novels published in Norway (a story for another day), as well as a Mexican radio and film series, which also featured Cliff Marsland. I have little information on either.

The 1960s: The OG Shadow is still embroiled in conflicts overseas, but the rise of the criminal organization CYPHER forces him to mobilize Burbank and agents old and new alike to deflect CYPHER away from where he's at, although most of them have retired by now. He still cannot return, but he has been secretly instructing Lamont Cranston on furthering along his own latent abilities if he intends to take over in his stead, and Cranston's powers have grown and developed to a point that, although he is pushing 60, he is able to do things even the original Shadow could not. He also invests a lot in merchandising and costume changes, which...doesn't pan out. Nothing in this era really pans out. It's just a really, really frustrating period of bad luck and supervillains that the aging superpowered detective Cranston is able to stop. Lamont Cranston seems to die in this decade.

The 1970s: Inspired by The Shadow's DC series, and most importantly Michael Kaluta's spiffy redesign.

The original Shadow returns to a crime-torn America, intent on starting anew, and sets to rebuilding his network. But something is off about him. He's leaner, meaner, less compassionate and trusting. Just as what happened the first time he returned to America following years abroad, what happened in his sojourns overseas has fostered something inhuman in him, another sacrifice of his own identity for the sake of a world where the weed of crime has only proven more insidiuous. His powers have grown and so have his resources, but despite that, he's bordering on 80 years old by now, and cumulative trauma deep within his bones hampers his effectiveness. He's doing a lot better than he should, by any rights, but he can't keep this up and he knows it. And so, as before, he starts planning for it.

The 1980s: This was the decade where Walter Gibson died with his final Shadow story incomplete, all the movie plans from the 70s were canned, and Howard Chaykin happened, plus the other DC runs. It's the SHIT decade, basically, where everything goes to hell. Whatever plans The Shadow had blew up, dipshit copycats start ruining everything, his network crumbles, and this is probably the ideal decade to kill off Kent Allard.

But this is also the decade where something weird started happening outside of the story: The Ghost of Gay Street hauntings, where visitors on the hotel Gibson wrote the stories in repeteadly claimed to see a ghostly visitor looking exactly like Lamont Cranston, and Gibson himself claimed that to be a tulpa he created by accident.

Kent Allard may have died. But death can never claim The Shadow.

The 1990s-onwards: Somehow, The Shadow is still active. Still elderly, in a much more limited fashion, but still as sharp as ever if not more so. His powers have grown more so than ever before, even blossoming into a limited form of telekinesis. Is he a ghost? Did he somehow survive the events of the previous decade? Somehow, both Lamont Cranston and The Shadow linger on, but is it Kent Allard or Lamont Cranston? Is it someone else?

Who knows?

This is the decade in particular where he's going to be interacting with more prominently with a new generation, whether it's descendants of the original agents, or new heroes that have found themselves in his orbit. Inspired mainly by the Dark Horse Shadow comics, Ghost and The Shadow, and Peter Straub's Mystery and modern takes on the character like Batman x Shadow and the 2017 mini that play up the miserable immortal and ghost teacher aspects, also inspired by my recent realization that The Shadow's ideal future in-universe may be getting to age and mentor the next generation in some capacity.

Anything beyond that, only The Shadow Knows.

#replies tag #pulp heroes #the shadow #pulp fiction #visual art #comic books #lamont cranston #kent allard #spider-man life story

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wonkastarshine · 4 years ago

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A Willy Wonka Prequel?

Ever since the news broke a couple weeks ago, I have been thinking non-stop about this new prequel. My boyfriend and I had a conversation about it that lasted almost an hour. So many thoughts and questions have swirled around my head, but the only thing that has really stuck with me is simply this: why?

Why do we need this movie? Why is Warner Bros. thinking this is a good idea? Why is this existing when Taika Waititi is already doing another version of CATCF on Netflix?

It just honestly baffles me because the main complaints against the 2005 film were targeted at Wonka’s added backstory. Audiences said it was unnecessary and dragged the film down. I personally don’t mind it. I think it is a very Dahlesque addition. I mean think of all the nasty and abusive parents in Dahl stories from Matilda to James and the Giant Peach. John August and Tim Burton gave Wonka a backstory and people rejected it. We saw Wonka as a child, run away and then a slight glimpse of when he was on Cherry Street. The trouble with a prequel is that so much of the character of Willy Wonka is up for interpretation. Even with Depp’s added backstory, there were still so many gaps that the audience had to fill in for themselves such as the whereabouts of his mother, full motives for his father hating candy, what he did after he ran away and how he actually gained the skills and knowledge to become the genius candymaker he is. And the reason we don’t know is because Roald Dahl never intended us to.

All we learn from the book is:

Opened a shop on Cherry Street

Opened factory

Chocolate Palace

Spies

Factory Closes

And we saw all of that in the 2005 version. It’s told via exposition in the 71’ film, even though some of the stories were left out all together. So… the screenwriter will be left to either

a) stretch out what was from the book

b) completely throw out his original story

I don’t really want to know where Wonka gets his top hat from or how he gets his loans to build his candy empire. This is again where my main problem lies. I am very nervous that they will make Wonka a very boring, typical, heteronormative character to appeal broad audiences. Willy Wonka has become such an icon because his full backstory is up for grabs. They could surprise us and not give Wonka a love interest at all, in line with the book and both movie adaptations. But, the most common trope of prequels is to introduce a love interest, but this does not align with Willy’s future of becoming a recluse and hiding out in his factory. So much of the Wonka character is who he is because of his isolation from humanity. Maybe I’m being overly picky, but I’m very defensive about Willy Wonka as a character. I believe there is only so much you can do with him that still stays true to him in the book.

And it all comes down to who will play the candyman himself.

I am not a big fan of either Holland or Chalamet reportedly being in the runnings. If we are doing a new version, I want someone completely unknown. I want a fresh new face for Willy Wonka. Don’t get me wrong, I think that both of these men are fine actors, I just do not think they would be right for the part. Most likely, ⅓ of the movie will be with a child actor, as we watch a very young Wonka and then transition to the actor who will play Wonka for the rest of the movie. I just want a brand new actor to grace the face of a young Wonka. I can think of some older, adult actors who would be good as Wonka such as Taika Waititi, Oscar Isaac and Bryan Cranston (don’t @ me, I have my reasons lol). But, I honest to goodness cannot think of any young actors right now who could be the not yet reclusive candyman. Since Tom and Timothee are just rumors, I take it with a grain of salt, especially Tom because he has contractual agreements with Marvel and his schedule might not allow for it.

But besides the issue of casting, we simply cannot ignore that this could possibly be erasure of both movies, the 2005 one specifically. Because the story of CATCF has been around for over 60 years now, it’s embedded into our consciousness and culture. While the story is known, everyone loves a different Wonka, whether it be Wilder or Depp. Wilder Wonka has the advantage of being around for over 50 years now versus Depp’s 16. Due to the 2005 version still being fairly recent, all things considered, it is in danger of being erased from the public eye even more than it already has been. And that is very apparent by the Wilder vs. Depp arguments that have risen again since the announcement of the prequel. Those arguments are silly since everyone has the right to an opinion, but it also shows the really nasty side to a fandom. With the arrival of a prequel movie, I think the fandom will be split even further. Depp’s version will be ostracized more. Wilder’s could see a surge in praise, if the prequel is terrible because it has the advantage of being older and more widely accepted. It angers me, just because CATCF 2005 is so hated upon, for many times no good reason other than “iT’s nOt thE oRiGinAL.”

A prequel could serve to burn every bridge connected to 2005 and leave the fandom in the dust, with no new material to be released such as anniversary editions, box sets or a 4K blu-ray remaster, which we so desperately want. Or it could be what we see currently on social media with younger generations discovering a new version. Both Wilder and Depp could be erased and new generations could see this new Wonka as the only Wonka. That’s a scary thought. No matter which version you prefer, I would hate to see a fandom be completely obliterated by the prequel or taken over by influencers. (no hate to influencers, but sometimes they can do some damage without knowing it.)

Overall, I do think this movie will get stuck in development hell. They announced the development of this prequel in 2016 and only now in 2021 do we get a release date. I think that Warner Bros. is desperately grasping at strings. Upon seeing the general negativity following the announcement, they could be thinking twice. But, I believe this movie won’t be made. It’s a difficult story to tell and the main character has spanned generations of people. Also, with the increasing awareness regarding Roald Dahl’s anti-semetic comments and the ongoing pandemic, they could ultimately decide to shelf the film. Which is what I genuinely hope happens.

#this was too long and probably too serious lmao #but i just love willy wonka sm #abbie’s thoughts #willy wonka #tim burton #johnny depp #willy wonka prequel #catcf 2005 #charlie and the chocolate factory

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notbecauseofvictories · 4 years ago

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Hi Sarah! My friend and I are starting a bookclub (as much as you can with two people who aren't pressed for deadlines) and I was wondering if you have any recommendations? (That is if you have time to rec anything!) We're starting off with Deathless and have Fitzgerald next in line somewhere but I def want to try to expand the genres we read and tbh from years of following you, I trust your judgement

I don’t...like giving recommendations? At least not directly, it seems like too much opportunity for getting it wrong. Everybody has their own tastes, after all, and even the best of friends don’t necessarily vibe with what you vibe with. (I’ve experienced this with multiple friends, so I know what I’m talking about.) Truly, one of the reasons that my whole “I’m going to get back into reading for pleasure!” push has been so successful is that I only bother with books that interest me, and stop reading when they fail to catch my attention.

But I’ve now read at least 60 books in 2020, which is approximately 60 more than I’ve read in the years prior, so I’m happy to share that. Below is my list of recent reads, beginning to end, along with a very short review---I keep this list in the notes app on my phone, so they have to be. Where I’ve talked about a book in a post, I’ve tried to link to it.

Peruse, and if something catches your interest I hope you enjoy!

2020 Reading List

Crazy Rich Asians series, Kevin Kwan (here)

Blackwater, Michael McDowell (here; pulpy horror and southern gothic in one novel; come for the monster but stay for the family drama.)

Fire and Hemlock, Diane Wynne Jones (here; weird and thoughtful, in ways I’m still thinking about)

The Secret History, Donna Tartt

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn (here; loved it! I can see why people glommed onto it)

Swamplandia!, Karen Russell (unfinished, I could not get past the first paragraph; just....no.)

Rules of Scoundrels series, Sarah MacLean (an enjoyable romp through classic romancelandia, though if you read through 4 back to back you realize that MacLean really only writes 1 type of relationship and 1 type of sexual encounter, though I do appreciate insisting that the hero go down first.)

The Bear and the Nightingale, Katherine Arden (here)

Dread Nation, Justine Ireland (great, put it with Stealing Thunder in terms of fun YA fantasy that makes everything less white and Eurocentric)

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson (VERY good. haunting good.)

Tell My Horse, Zora Neale Hurston (I read an interesting critique of Hurston that said she stripped a lot of the radicalism out of black stories - these might be an example, or counterexample. I haven't decided yet.)

The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society, T. Kingfisher (fun!)

St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Karen Russell (some of these short stories are wonderful; however, Swamplandia's inspiration is still unreadable, which is wild.)

17776, Jon Bois (made me cry. deeply human. A triumph of internet storytelling)

The Girl with All the Gifts, M. R. Carey (deeply enjoyable. the ending is a bittersweet kick in the teeth, and I really enjoyed the adults' relationships)

The Door in the Hedge and Other Stories, Robin McKinley (enjoyable, but never really resolved into anything.)

The Hero and the Crown, Robin McKinley (fun, but feels very early fantasy - or maybe I've just read too many of the subsequent knock-offs.)

Mrs. Caliban, Rachel Ingalls (weird little pulp novel.)

All Systems Red, Martha Wells (enjoyable, but I don't get the hype. won't be looking into the series unless opportunity arises.)

A People's History of Chicago, Kevin Coval (made me cry. bought a copy. am still thinking about it.)

The Sol Majestic, Ferrett Steinmetz (charming, a sf novel mostly about fine dining)

House in the Cerulean Sea, TJ Klune (immensely enjoyable read, for all it feels like fic with the serial numbers filed off)

The Au Pair, Emma Rous (not bad, but felt like it wanted to be more than it is)

The Night Tiger, Yangsze Choo (preferred this to Ghost Bride; I enjoy a well-crafted mystery novel and this delivered)

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula Le Guin (unfinished, I cannot fucking get into Le Guin and should really stop trying)

The Ghost Bride, Yangsze Choo (enjoyable, but not nearly as fun as Ghost Bride - the romance felt very disjointed, and could have used another round of editing)

Temptation's Darling, Johanna Lindsey (pure, unadulterated id in a romance novel, complete with a girl dressing as a boy to avoid detection)

Social Creature, Tara Isabella Burton (a strange, dark psychological portrait; really made a mark even though I can't quite put my finger on why)

The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins (slow at first, but picks up halfway through and builds nicely; a whiff of Gone Girl with the staggered perspectives building together)

Stealing Thunder, Alina Boyden (fun Tortall vibes, but set in Mughal India)

The Traitor Baru Cormorant; The Monster Baru Commorant, The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, Seth Dickinson (LOVE this, so much misery, terrible, ecstatic; more here)

This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone (epistolary love poetry, vicious and lovely; more here)

The Elementals, Michael McDowell

Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (didn't like this one as much as I thought I would; narrator's contemporary voice was so jarring against the stylized world and action sequences read like the novelization for a video game; more here)

Finna, Nino Cipri (a fun little romp through interdimensional Ikea, if on the lighter side)

Magic for Liars, Sarah Gailey (engrossing, even if I could see every plot twist coming from a mile away)

Desdemona and the Deep, C. S. E. Cooney (enjoyed the weirdness & the fae bits, but very light fare)

A Blink of the Screen, Terry Pratchett (admittedly just read this for the Discworld bits)

A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine (not as good about politics and colonialism as Baru, but still a powerful book about The Empire, and EXTREMELY cool worldbuilding that manages to be wholly alien and yet never heavily expositional)

Blackfish City, Sam J. Miller (see my post)

Last Werewolf, Glen Duncan (didn't finish, got to to first explicit sex scene and couldn't get any further)

Prosper's Demon, KJ Parker (didn't work for me...felt like a short story that wanted to be fleshed out into a novel)

The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

His Majesty's Dragon, Naomi Novik (extremely fun, even for a reader who doesn't much like Napoleonic stories)

Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone (fun romp - hard to believe that this is the same author as Time War though you can see glimmers of it in the imagery here)

A Scot in the Dark, Sarah MacLean (palette cleanser, she does write a good romance novel even it's basically the same romance novel over and over)

The Resurrectionist, E. B. Hudspeth (borrowed it on a whim one night, kept feeling like there was something I was supposed to /get/ about it, but never did - though I liked the Mutter Museum parallels)

Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang (he's a better ideas guy than a writer, though Hell Is The Absence of God made my skin prickle all over)

Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (fun, very much a throwback to my YA days of fairytale retellings, though obviously less European)

Four Roads Cross, Max Gladstone (it turns out I was a LOT more fond of Tara than I initially realized - plus this book had a good Pratchett-esque pacing and reliance on characterization)

Get in Trouble, Kelly Link (reading this after the Chiang was instructive - Link is such a better storyteller, better at prioritizing the human over the concept)

Gods Behaving Badly, Marie Phillips

Soulless; Changeless; Blameless, all by Gail Carriger (this series is basically a romance novel with some fantasy plot thrown in for fun; extremely charming and funny)

Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James (got about 1/3 of the way through and had to wave the white flag; will try again because I like the plot and the worldbuilding; the tone is just so hard to get through)

Pew, Catherine Lacey (a strange book, I'm still thinking about it; a good Southern book, though)

Nuremberg Diary, GM Gilbert (it took me two months to finish, and was worth it)

River of Teeth, Sarah Gailey (I wanted to like this one a lot more than I actually did; would have made a terrific movie but ultimately was not a great novel. Preferred Magic for Liars.)

Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (extremely fun, though more trippy than Gods and the plot didn't work as well for me - though it was very original)

The New Voices of Fantasy, Peter S. Beagle (collected anthology, with some favorites I've read before Ursula Vernon's "Jackalope Wives", "Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers" "The Husband Stitch"; others that were great new finds "Selkie Stories are for Losers" from Sofia Satamar and "A Kiss With Teeth" from Max Gladstone and "The Philosophers" from Adam Ehrlich Sachs)

#from the bookshelf #Anonymous

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dweemeister · 4 years ago

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The Daydreamer (1966)

By the 1960s, Christmas television specials were in vogue in the United States. Yet this recent phenomenon had yet to yield a true cultural touchstone. On December 6, 1964, the first Christmas special mainstay aired on NBC. Produced by a fledgling animation studio, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer put Rankin/Bass, named after co-founders Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass, into the public consciousness. Rankin/Bass’ brand of stop-motion animation (“Animagic”) was mostly outsourced to Japanese studio MOM Productions in Tokyo, under the direction of Tadahito Mochinaga. With the windfall of Rudolph, Rankin/Bass and MOM Productions delved into the realm of feature theatrical films. This review concerns their second feature film, The Daydreamer – a stop motion animation/live-action hybrid based on Hans Christian Andersen’s stories. The Daydreamer has starpower in its cast that no Rankin/Bass production had yet matched. But as one might expect from a Rankin/Bass film, there are narrative flaws abound. The Daydreamer, episodic in nature and alternating between live-action and animation scenes, suffers due to the inconsistent quality of the handful of Hans Christian Andersen adaptations it has and the kitschy live-action acting.

The young Hans Christian Andersen (“Chris”; Paul O’Keefe) is the son of a cobbler (Jack Gilford). Papa Andersen often has to face the verbal tirades of frequent customer Mrs. Klopplebobbler (Margaret Hamilton; it is difficult not to think of Hamilton’s portrayal of the Wicked Witch here). His struggling business often means he cannot pay the gangling Pie Man (Ray Bolger; yet another Wizard of Oz star). To take him away from these troubles, Chris will let his imagine run wild while napping. If he can only just find the mythical Garden of Paradise, all these troubles might vanish. One evening, the Sandman (voiced by Cyril Ritchard) promises him to guide him there. Along the way, Chris is subject to dreams that may seem familiar to the viewer. These dreams shift away from live-action into the signature Rankin/Bass animation – adapting “The Little Mermaid”, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”*, “Thumbelina”, and “The Garden of Paradise”. Elements of “The Ugly Duckling” and “Little Claus and Big Claus” also appear.

Among the many voice actors during these animation sequences are Hayley Mills (The Little Mermaid); Burl Ives (Neptune – I have never heard Ives’ voice so devoid of jaunt before); Tallulah Bankhead (the sea witch); Terry-Thomas (the first tailor); Victor Borge (the second tailor); Ed Wynn (the Emperor); Patty Duke (Thumbelina); and Boris Karloff (the Rat).

The film’s adaptations of Andersen’s tales differ in that Andersen himself becomes a character in each of the stories. The Daydreamer approaches the stories as if the ideas are only just forming in the young Chris’ head, to be written and published when he is an adult. Within these dreams-someday-to-be-stories, Chris is largely a passive character. He takes instruction from the central figures of his future tales, never really asserting himself or asking basic questions about the misadventures he goes through. Chris acts as if lost in his own imagination – which fits the conceit of the film. So when he awakens into the real world, the film’s pacing slams the brakes. In the real world, everyone except Chris is a caricature, somehow less realistic than the individuals appearing in the daydreams. The transitions between animation and live-action will take the viewer out of the film because of the unceasing manic acting in the latter, as opposed to the charming puppetry of the former. As such, The Daydreamer’s weaknesses lie almost entirely with the live-action scenes – too consciously playing to the audience and over-the-top in their absurdity.

In an era of American animation defined by Disney on the screen and Hanna-Barbera on television, Rankin/Bass carves out its own niche in how it tells its stories. The meta humor and fourth wall breaking of Hanna-Barbera’s works (a legacy of the duo’s work at MGM) makes no appearances here. Disney’s clean-cut fairytale endings also do not apply. The Daydreamer’s adaptation of “The Little Mermaid” does not have the gruesome premise as Andersen’s original fairytale, but it retains the ending’s heartbreak. There appears to be no alterations to “The Emperor’s New Clothes” – which includes Chris, but he just feels superfluous to the plot and to the tale’s keen comedy. Each of the film’s segments bring Chris closer to the final animated sequence, “The Garden of Paradise”. The adaptation of that tale sanitizes its deathly overtures for a devil-like creature, but keeps the ambiguous, open-ended conclusion. By maintaining the original conclusion, “The Garden of Paradise” is a curious coda for The Daydreamer – a film that ends as abruptly as its several transitions, like a daydream.

The Daydreamer’s live-action sets benefit, however, due to the fact many of its scenes were shot at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The World’s Fair pavilions used in this film mimic a feel of small-town, nineteenth century Europe more realistically than a Hollywood soundstage might. The production design for the animated dream sequences, too, are mesmerizing. Perhaps this is best exemplified in “The Little Mermaid”. There, the special effects work make it appear as if the whole sequence was shot underwater, rather than a room that contained blue lights streaming into Neptune’s palace. Where are the strings and wires suspending the puppets in mid-air while they “swim”? To the animators’ credit, there are none to be found. Neptune’s palace is one of the grander sets constructed for a Rankin/Bass production; its imposing walls and generous empty spaces reflect a sense of regal grandeur. That royal otherworldliness does not extend to “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, but many of the same production design decisions carry over. Rankin/Bass and MOM Productions are obviously working with more money and manpower for these animated scenes than in the likes of Rudolph or their many holiday television specials. The sense of scale and grandiosity seen here in The Daydreamer and Mad Monster Party? (1967) would rarely, if ever, be replicated for television. And it is also obvious that the filmmakers put the money into the animation and for paying headline-worthy actors, rather than for any writers able to string the animated and live-action halves together.

Seven songs comprise The Daydreamer’s musical soundtrack. Composed by Maury Laws and Jules Bass, most of the songs are forgettable once your viewing is done (including Robert Goulet singing the title song over the opening credits, despite the fact I admire Goulet’s voice). But there are notable exceptions. Sung by Hayley Mills at the end of “The Little Mermaid”, “Wishes and Teardrops” brings the segment to a worthy close. Her loved ignored, the Little Mermaid sings this lament – backed with percussion straight from a ‘60s love ballad and timeless swelling strings – for herself:

Wishes and teardrops Won’t make him love me. He’s gone and he’ll never return. Does he know how teardrops can burn, When they fall for a wish That can never come true?

In the film’s final third, “Luck to Sell” injects a jolt of energy sorely missing from many of the other live-action scenes. The song itself is simple and the singing just avoids being flat, but when paired with the energetic choreography from Paul O’Keefe and company, it elevates itself from the rest of the soundtrack (save “Wishes and Teardrops”).

Not often will a viewer encounter a film with two sets of opening credits. I’m not writing about films that have an overture that transition to opening credits (an entirely different approach that modern filmmakers should utilize more), but two sets of opening credits that list the names of the actors involved. For the first set of credits, caricaturist Al Hirschfeld (uncredited) was hired to draw caricatures of the various actors and actresses appearing in, or lending their voices to, The Daydreamer. The Daydreamer is the second of three films that Hirschfeld was involved in. The first, appearing as himself uncredited, was in Main Street to Broadway (1953); his third and final film was as an artistic consultant on the “Rhapsody in Blue” segment (which was influenced by his caricatures) in Fantasia 2000.

Rankin/Bass’ ventures into feature film animation peaked several months later with Mad Monster Party? After that and the unfortunate production of The Wacky World of Mother Goose (1967; a traditionally animated eyesore), Rankin/Bass almost completely dedicated itself to its animated television specials. The Daydreamer, distributed by the now-defunct Embassy Pictures and currently owned by Sony Pictures Television (the ownership of the rights to Rankin/Bass’ features are exasperatingly scattered), has not been widely seen when compared to Mad Monster Party?, let alone Rankin/Bass’ television specials. If one can find a serviceable print of The Daydreamer, the viewing experience will be a valuable glimpse into the studio’s collaboration with MOM Productions. A Rankin/Bass fan that has only known the studio through its television specials will see their work operating with higher production values; Rankin/Bass novices can experience a dimension of animated filmmaking too often considered an afterthought.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

* “The Emperor’s New Clothes” was adapted twice by Rankin/Bass. The second adaptation is the heart of the television special The Enchanted World of Danny Kaye (1972), starring Danny Kaye. That adaptation of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is distinct from the one that appears in The Daydreamer. The Danny Kaye special’s adaptation has a more developed storyline, completely different voice cast, and completely different soundtrack.

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dorevenge · 4 years ago

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where ignorance is bliss - chapter 10: snow will follow

SUMMARY: Maria is expecting, and the pregnancy is rough on her and Howard. [AO3 LINK]

CHAPTERS: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 [10] 11 12 13 14 15 ☆

May 22, 1970 – Manhattan, New York, Stark Manor

“Howard!” I scream, halfway down the staircase to the first floor, hands clenching to the railing. “It’s happening!” I’m nine months pregnant, and it feels like a pit has opened up behind my stomach, squeezing the life out of me at the same time, my knuckles going white from the pressure.

Howard runs over to me, one of the quickest 53-year-olds I’ve met, pushing up his sleeve to count the seconds on his wrist, whispering the time to himself. He guides me down the stairs, arm around my waist and shoulder supporting my armpit.

“Have Edwin bring the car around,” I saw. Tears stream from my eyes, my knees wobble from the pain, and Howard says the same thing he always does.

“They’re just Braxton Hicks, doll. The contractions aren’t close enough together.” He sets me down on the couch and wipes my face dry.

“They feel real,” I snap at him without meaning to.

“I know, I’m sorry. Let’s get you something to drink, settle your stomach.”

Edwin runs off to the kitchen, “I’ll put the kettle on.”

“You have to stay hydrated, and lay on your left side,” Howard continues. He brushes my hair out of the way and guides me to a horizontal position.

“I don’t want to lay on my left side, I want my body back,” I whine, adjusting the pillows underneath me to support the bowling ball sticking out of me. The pain behind my abdomen rages on like a wildfire. “Can you put the movie on?”

“Are we feeling West Side Story or Singing in the Rain today?” Howard prides himself on our home video library, collecting almost every film we would go out to see at the cinema. Our home theatre was impressive, given he had tried to make his own film production company at one point. It was his only unsuccessful venture, so we don’t talk about that aspect of it very often, but he keeps up with the technology and is obsessed with recreating the feeling of going to see a talkie at home.

“West Side Story.”

He puts the tape in, and the familiar opening plays out. Watching it reminds me of the first Academy Awards Show I accompanied Howard to, where we watched West Side Story sweep the competition, when Rita Moreno won in that stunning dress. It was only eight years ago, but it feels like a lifetime now, like many lifetimes have passed during Howard’s and my relationship. And now I’m cramping and swollen and bloated, as far as I can be from walking down a red carpet.

I’m asleep before “Something’s Coming” plays.

“Can you chew any louder?”

“Maria, we’re having soup. There’s no chewing involved.”

“It’s making me sick,” I say.

“I’ll go in the pantry,” Howard offers without complaint, used to this by now, kissing the top of my head and taking his bowl of soup with him into the pantry, shutting the door behind him.

Edwin and Ana look up cautiously from their bowls. “Shall we leave you as well, Mrs. Stark?” Ana asks.

“Why would you? You’re completely fine.”

I wake from a dead sleep at two in the morning, after a long day of getting mad at Howard for things that he couldn’t help, and I know I’m going into labor. This time, it isn’t Braxton Hicks, I know it. I rustle Howard’s shoulder. Then I shake it harder. “Howard, wake up,” I whisper harshly. He slowly blinks his eyes open. “We need to go to the hospital.”

“Let me get my watch,” he reaches over to flick on his bedside lamp.

“It’s for real this time.” I know it. I don’t want him to question it, I can feel it in my gut; today is the day we meet our child for the first time.

“If we go in again for more practice contractions, I don’t think the hospital will let ever let us come back.”

I pause before replying.

“My water broke.”

I’ve never seen Howard get out of bed and get dressed so quickly before. He throws my already packed bag at Edwin to have him bring the car around, asks Ana to change the bedsheets, and helps me dress myself, ushering me out the door. For the first time in the last nine months, I’m the calmest person in the Stark household, focusing on my breathing and answering the nurses’ questions as Howard stammers, trying to take care of everything at once. They confirm I am indeed in labor, run their preliminary tests, and show us to the suite we had reserved.

I didn’t realize the suite would be so luxurious; it was nicer than some hotels I’ve stayed at. A jacuzzi and a pool table are tucked away in the corner, along with a full-sized refrigerator and a private bathroom. We’re given a run-down of the amenities, including an on-call masseuse and chef, but as we settle in, I just want Edwin’s cooking and fanciful retellings of his days spent running around Los Angeles with the SSR. The way he tells it, he makes Peggy sound more heroic than Captain America.

“Don’t get mad at me, but you’re as beautiful now as you were the day I met you back in Monaco.” Howard dabs my forehead with a cool cloth.

“I have half a child sticking out of me!” I yell from gritted teeth between contractions. “And you’re flirting with me right now?” Rivets of sweat trickle down my brow between my breasts, chest heaving with effort. The pain from the contractions pulses through me. We’re almost 14 hours into the labor now, and I’ve never been more tired in my life. I want to sleep, but every fiber of every muscle in my body is engaged and trying to get through this.

“Jesus, doll, I said don’t get mad at me.” I take his hand and squeeze it hard enough he winces, like I’m siphoning the pain out of me and into him. He whispers words of encouragement into my ear, watering me and obeying every order from the doctor, not straying from my side - until we hear the peal of cries and the magical words –

“It’s a boy.”

Anthony Howard Stark was born May 29, 1970, a healthy 6 pounds and 10 ounces, with ten fingers, ten toes, and two powerful lungs that never stopped crying. And I do mean never. Baby Tony had no respect for what time of day it was, who was visiting, or how tired his parents were. Although we hadn’t discussed names at all before that day, it came together perfectly; a beautiful name for our beautiful boy.

Howard returned to work within the week Tony was born, taking Edwin with him every day to try to make up for the lost time at S.H.I.E.LD. base at Camp Lehigh. At dinner after his first day back, Howard had nothing about complaints about the way things had been run in his absence. “One of the security guards said the Tesseract went missing for five minutes and showed right back up in its containment unit. I think we have a breach, but everyone swears they didn’t see anything out of the ordinary,” he says over a plate of chicken and asparagus.

“When was this?”

“Back in April. We need to up our security.”

When I announce I am ready to retire and go to bed, everyone at the table stands to help. While I appreciate the attention and assistance, I’m looking forward to being able to get up on my own. The delivery has had an immense toll on my body, wiping me out completely with the emergency Cesarian. I can’t stand on my own for more than thirty seconds at a time, and Ana has been instrumental in my recovery. She takes care of Tony when I can’t, and when Howard is kept late at the office. She changes every diaper, cleans every dish, and I cannot thank her enough times. I think she took to the role quite well, and I don’t look forward to the day it’s taken from her again.

“Master Tony, you are quite the tornado,” I hear Edwin say down the hall as I fold laundry in the living room. Tony has just turned two, and his favorite word currently is “no.” Edwin does his best to toe the line between butler and substitute father-figure, but Tony needs a firm hand – the opposite of what he gets from Howard when he’s either stuck in the lab or nursing a gin and tonic.

“Tony Tornado! Tony Tornado!” Tony sprints down the hall, giggling, spilling his cup of Cheerios and leaving a trail behind him.

“Master Tony!” Edwin takes off after him. He is almost 60 by now, and, somehow, he still keeps up with the toddler. The two of them were practically inseparable. We lost Ana last year to a long battle with cancer, and it’s almost like Tony made it his personal mission to keep Edwin entertained and distracted enough to forget about the tragedy. I often find them playing make-believe with flying robots or watching cartoons on Saturday mornings, cross-legged on the carpet in the den.

I spend my first two years of motherhood caressing egos, trying to be the entertainer and people-pleaser, but I find myself just wanting all four of us to be together at home, instead of stuck late in offices or meetings or dinner parties that no one wants to attend in the first place. I miss my husband because even when he’s at home, he’s really back at the Stark Industries headquarters, still thinking about that damn arc reactor.

#where ignorance is bliss #wiib reading #iron man 3 #agent carter #edwin jarvis #marvel #fanfiction #canary writes a fanfiction

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toonqueen · 4 years ago

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Duckvember 2020

--Ponder--

Linking to an old playlist of mine BUT also including why I have these songs on there. Kinda fits the ponder theme okay. I’m trying I’m so behind here *SOB*

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-BLrUhg7cOKMsu8bGh4CBh5C3EVXCUpy

This is my generic duck feels playlist I use when writing but I often have so many other playlists I use it's insaneeee but this is a nice beginning base until I get a feel for a story to make its own playlist haaaa.

**Joywave - Bad Dreams***

-Ominous feel that some shady end of the world stuff is happening song. One of the main things I put this song to is Magica having a premonition of something bad is going to happen. But she doesn’t have the best rep with powerful magic types and with hero types so she has to make a ragtag team willing to help her. Haaa. Mind you in my headcanon the De Spell family line started by a witch that had a really good future sight so Magica takes it seriously and I GUESS she has to like… stop the world from ending.

**M83 ft. HAIM - Holes in the Sky***

-Another ominous oh crap bad stuff is happening song wheee. I had an idea that I ended up using in a Duckverse RP of some of the alien hats from Darkwing being a different set of alien hats that were actual powerful witches. The RP I ended up having was for a parody of Hocus Pocus. What I attach this song to is where the hat set grab Magica, Gladstone, and an OC thats a powerful De Spell sibling (that's a whole other story.) That leaves Poe to defeat them save the Earth the usual. My headcanon for Poe is he cannot cast magic but has a wide knowledge of artifacts and spells. Could arm himself with some good magical artifacts. He ALSO would make a ragtag team to try to stop the 3 most powerful magic based people controlled by alien hats. That team would include Fethry and Gyro lol. Notice this song is a lot more postive than Magica’s Bad Dreams song because Poe’s being more positive about getting it done. Magica’s more ‘well we’re going to die anyways might as well TRY” and Poe is ‘ WE’RE GONNA DO THIS AND WE’RE GONNA MAKE IT OMG. Once I get over this crippling depression that I’m useless. Whee.”

**Do You Realize - Ursine Vulpine***

-Vague sad song for sad things. Main reason I had this song is for my Mighty Ducks the Animated Series headcanons for Drake Ducaine. I pretty much kill off all this family and friends in the past. You know, the war, saving stuff. SACRIFICING THEMSELVES SO HE CAN LIVE. His young daughter makes it. Am I not merciful.

**My Tears are Becoming the Sea - M83***

-Really acidy trippy sad song. Great for fighting elder gods. For my main RPing OC’s on Duckverse this goes with some scenes of their past. Other main thing I use it for is Mighty Ducks the Animated Series I have it for Wildwing’s death.. Haaaa. I kill him off in his 60’s when he has to help save the 2nd Gen team (All the kids of the first team.) Well you know. He’s like the only duck chars I kill off ‘youngish.’ I dunno why most of these story ideas came in high school FRICK.

**In A Heartbeat - In the House***

-I have loved this song from the second it was in 28 Days Later. I do not have one defined story line plot or character this goes to. I would put it on every song list I had if I felt like I could get away from it. EXCELLENT ATMOSPHERE.

**The Darkest Evening of the Year***

-Another great ominous atmosphere song. I stick this one with Gladstone but don’t put it on my actual Gladstone playlist for being too dark?!? I put it with him finding out what I headcanon the origins of his luck. AND OH BOY. I really want to give the vibe of that scene like some suspense/horror energy let me tell you.

**No Time for Caution - Hans Zimmer***

-Great like, ‘team prepares to fight a boss fight’ type music. Let's do this. We can fight an elder god. LETS GO!!!! But still that bit of dark tone like - hmmm we may not be successful. Ahhhhh.I also think of Tanya from Mighty Ducks working late fixing something or lawd taking care of a teammate gotta find a cure for something. They just gave this woman all the jobs. AGH.

**Happiness Does Not Wait - Olafur Arnalds***

-A sad yet happy tune. That mix of energy. This one I put with Grandma Duck. In my headcanon all her adult kids have since past but you know all her grandkids visit all the time. It's kinda weird that like, the whole gen in between was wiped out but uh, I have a reason plotted out for that. But you know, Grandma little sad all her kids are gone but sees them in her now adult grandkids ahhh.

**Low Gravity - Hugo Kant***

-Actually ModMad suggested this one to me when I shared this playlist with them when they made the “Over the Rainbow’ comic. Shared it because it really fit this playlist so I could not not share ahhh. Anyways. That's one of my top fav comics by Modmad, and actually in an unrelated way inspired some of the backstory for the two main OC’s I RP in Duckverse. Wheeee.

**Everything You Do is a Balloon - Boards of Canada***

-A good ominous ‘the hero has won but at what cost’ energy. This is a song I’ve had for ages and directly put to the abuse I put Drake Ducaine through. I’m so sorry. Weh. I literally have a separate playlist that is Drake Ducaine/Wildwing anxiety cuz I headcanon Wildwing the reincarnate of Drake Ducaine because of COURSE.

**Goodbye to a World - Small Dust/Porter Robinson Cover***

-I just love music like this. First used this song for Mighty Ducks because the previous life of Drake Ducaine I had be a little duck boy that showed kindness to a Saurian Goddess and she ended up taking the Duck side in whatever fight went down and well the rest is history which will I ever write a story for I dunno. And in the next life as Drake Ducaine the Goddess also reincarnated in a mortal body so they get to work together again yay. This is also one of the main themes I use for my Duck OC’s Felicity and Faustina. In RP land uh they’re from an alternate universe that got all ate up by an elder god and they were the only two survivors cuz some weird luck and magic runs in their family. Their version is a more trippy version here: https://youtu.be/HzuHAMg1Hng OH WAIT I’M WRONG THEIR MAIN THEME IS A DIFFERENT PORTER ROBINSON SONG HAAA still enjoy.

**Soldier - Fleurie***

-I use this song several times for Gladstone. Mainly for one story I DO plan to write someday I have so many parts of it done. Anyways he screws up big time and has to fix a problem while he still have luck that works on him, he needs to actually do something to solve the problem and its grueling and takes a long time and travel around the world and bad stuff just happening to those around him and AHHH. Anyways. Also a good song for Djinn in new Ducktales theres stories I have reason for his for him let me tell you someday. Ha.

**Battle Cry - Imagine Dragons***

-A great mello fight song for everything. Just. Some good shit. Heroes making sacrifices. Stuff going down. Hidden powers having to be used getting exposed but you GOTTA SAVE THE WORLD.

**Elephant Survival - Emancipator***

-A good song for villains to think about their feelings. I loved this song when I came across it. I put it to my headcanon for Negaverse Gladstone. And a little Gladstone in there too. There is a darker mix here: https://youtu.be/59A3k8tpPMI

**Do You Realize - The Flaming Lips***

-This song again but with a slight positive energy?!? Dying and seeing loved ones that passed on kinda vibe. BUT ALSO I abuse reincarnation tropes so bad. This is a good reincarnation trope song. Lawd.

**Saturn - Sleeping at Last***

-Roll Credits energy to a movie that ended not happy but not sad just the normal in between of life. There is a really good Poe De Spell short story I need to finish that makes me think of this song. I also put it to Drake Ducaine who supposedly dies of old age having saved and rebuilt Puckworld Society. That's a lot of pressure to put on a guy y’all. Also fits my abuse of reincarnate trope abuse. Also for some Djinn x Gene okay like they’re gonna adopt a lot of kids and all those kids are going to write stuff down to their kids like how Djinn writes stuff down and they’re gonna tell stories of their great great great great great grandparents Djinn and Gene forever OKAY.

Anyways, have some feels y'all.

#duckvember 2020 #duckvember #ducktales #ducktales 2017 #magica de spell #poe de spell #gladstone gander #negaverse #fethry duck #gyro gearloose #mighty ducks the animated series #wildwing #tanya vanderflock #drake ducane #drake ducaine #mdtas #duckverse

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3pirouette · 4 years ago

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Fic: My Kingdom for a Sword (1/1)

Title: My Kingdom for a Sword By: TriplePirouette/3Pirouette Spoilers: None Disclaimer: They're not mine. Word Count: 1345 Distribution: AO3 Anyone else please ask first :)

Story Summary: Steve wants a special kind of Sword. Peggy says no.

A/N: for the Prompt “Sword” in Steggy Bingo Bash! @steggybingobash (I’m sorry.) Also, this Story supposes Steve and Peggy are together post- WW2. It doesn't really work as being Endgame compliant, so add in your favorite "Steve never went down in the Valkyrie/Steve was rescued very fast" head-canon.

~*~

“No,” Peggy replied, moving into the house to let Steve in behind her. “Absolutely not.”

Steve moved in quite a bit slower, a smile still on his face. “Come on, Peg. Wouldn’t that be cool? It would go really well with the shield.” Steve moved around, still in his long trench coat, miming a battle.

Peggy stopped, staring at him, hands on hips. She had to work hard to keep a smile off her face. His child-like enthusiasm was infectious, even if they were both pushing 60 years old. He shrugged and smiled at her, shutting the door behind him.

“You know you want one.” Steve accused playfully as he took off his coat and then took hers, hanging them up. “I saw you in that theater, the way you watched them.”

Peggy rolled her eyes and kissed him on the cheek before slipping out of her shoes, still silent. Because she absolutely did want one but she didn’t want him to know that. “I can warm up the leftovers from dinner last night, or soup. Your choice.” She stole away, slipping into the kitchen and smiling to herself.

“Leftovers are fine,” Steve called after her, holding his hand up and mimicking the movements he saw on the screen. “Howard can probably make me one. I’ll call Howard in the morning.”

Peggy poked her head around the doorframe, lips set tight. “Absolutely not.”

Steve laughed, moving into the kitchen. “Of anyone, Peg, Howard absolutely can make me one.”

“No,” Peggy pulled the covered dish from the refrigerator, shaking her head. “Absolutely no laser swords in this house.”

“Lightsabers.” Steve pivoted, turning on the oven for her. “They’re called lightsabers.”

“Same thing,” Peggy looked at him over her shoulder as she uncovered the stew and gave it a good stir. “A saber is a sword.”

“Well…” He let his head dip sideways, relenting that point as he leaned against the counter.

“And could you imagine?” Peggy set the spoon aside and slipped the stew into the oven. “You, bouncing around this house with a laser sword? My curtains would be ruined!” She could barely contain herself, keeping a straight face was almost impossible now.

Steve, seeing her close to cracking, couldn’t help himself. He swung into action, gliding across the room and pulling her to his side, grabbing a pen from the table on the way and brandishing it light a lightsaber. “I can imagine!” He turned sideways, swinging her around and fighting against imaginary foes with his pen-saber. “Fighting storm troopers, rescuing the princess from the Galactic Empire…” He spun and threw her over his shoulder, one arm across her thighs as he bounced them into the living room as she squealed in surprise and delight, fighting off invisible foes. “Flying through space, visiting distant and strange planets…”

Steve spun in a circle, Peggy squeaking with delight, her laugh like music to his ears as he set her down, tossing the pen to the side. “Getting the girl…” he said low and soft before dipping her in his arms, taking her lips with his.

Peggy wrapped her arms around him, letting him keep her from the clutches of gravity as he kissed her. He righted her slowly, hands roaming around her hips. “I like the part where I get the girl.”

“You’ve already got her,” Peggy answered, kissing him gently again. “Besides, I think I liked that Han Solo guy better.”

Steve reflexively pulled back. “Han Solo?” She nodded. “The smuggler?” She nodded again, smiling. “You liked the morally ambiguous smuggler better than the young Jedi with the enormous destiny?”

Peggy shrugged. “What can I say? I like what I like.” She played with Steve’s collar, undoing the top button. “Besides, he had a gun. I always liked guns better than swords.”

“Blaster,” Steve replied against her lips as she kissed him. “He had a blaster.”

Peggy tugged Steve towards the couch. “Are you going to argue with me or are you going to take off my pants?”

“Mmmm, decisions, decisions…” Steve teased as he kissed down her neck. Just as he was starting to lower them to the couch, the phone rang. He pulled them right side up again and stepped back. “To be continued?”

Peggy nodded, smiling as she pulled her clothes straight and followed Steve back into the kitchen.

Steve picked up the receiver, still smiling at Peggy as she checked on their dinner. “Hello?”

“Steve! Perfect!” Howard’s excited voice came through the phone. “I have a very important question to ask you.”

Peggy turned, closing the oven as the stew wasn’t quite ready. She raised her eyebrows, Steve just mouthed ‘Howard,’ back at her. She nodded and continued to move around the room, pulling out bowls and silverware.

“Sure, what can I help you with?” Steve turned, searching for the pen they kept by the phone, realizing he’d tossed it somewhere in the living room in his excitement.

Steve heard the clatter of the phone moving, then a small, high voice came on the phone. “Uncle Steve! Can you come over tomorrow?”

Steve laughed, smiling. “Sure, Tony, I think I can stop by for a bit.”

“He can come! Yay!” He heard Tony’s voice fall away as the child abandoned the phone, likely bouncing around the room. Howard picked up the receiver. “Steve?”

“Still here. What’s the kid excited about?”

“Have you seen that new movie, Star Wars?” Howard asked, his own excitement starting to shine through the phone.

“Yeah, actually, Peg and I just got back from seeing it.”

“Great, so you’ll know what I’m talking about.” His voice took on the tone of excitement and wonder that he’d never lost over the years when talking about his inventions. “I think I can do it.”

“Do what?” Steve asked, hoping he already knew the answer.

“Build a lightsaber. You in?”

Steve’s smile grew tenfold. “Yes!” he replied almost too quickly, which made Peggy turn quickly.

She took in the grin and sparkle in Steve’s eyes and crossed the room, pulling the phone from him. “No. Howard, absolutely not!”

“Peg!” Howard’s voice was slightly less excited hearing her voice.

Peggy shook her head as Steve bounced about the kitchen, engaging in yet again another invisible laser sword battle. “You cannot, Howard. Do you know how dangerous—"

“Come for 11, Peg. We can all have a nice lunch then you ladies can go have a nice afternoon somewhere that’s not here and leave the men to the fun stuff.”

Peggy started to argue, ready to rant for so many things in that last sentence, but she heard the phone get wrestled away from Howard. “Aunt Peggy! We’re gonna make lightsabers!”

“Are you, now?” She asked, slightly mollified as she knew that if Tony was going to be involved the potential for life threatening loss of limb went down some as Howard was at least sensible in that regard. She found she couldn’t be angry at the boy’s enthusiasm.

She could nearly hear him bouncing over the phone. “Yup. I’m gonna be a Jedi!”

Peggy shook her head, rolling her eyes. “We’ll see you tomorrow, Tony.” She hung up the phone and Steve paused, stuck in a pose reminiscent of a fencer.

He slowly stood, smiling softly. “Well?”

She took a few steps to cross the floor, laying her hands on his shoulders. “If Tony’s to be involved then Howard’s much more likely to make a glorified flashlight than anything that could truly be a weapon.” She shifted Steve to the side, grabbing pot holders and sliding dish out of the oven. “I suppose I can’t argue too much.”

Steve waited until she’d set the steaming stew on top of the stove before he wrapped his arms around her from behind, kissing her on the cheek. “So… does this mean I can have my laser sword?”

Peggy paused, and finally smiled. “As long as you let me play with it, too.”

Steve picked her off her feet, whooping with joy as he carried her around the kitchen. “I get to be a Jedi!”

~*~

A/N: Star Wars came out in May of 1977, Steve and Peggy would both be close to 60, Tony would be about 7. You cannot convince me that a Steve would not be a giant Star Wars freak or that the first thing he and Howard would try to do would be build lightsabers.

#Steggy Fic #Steggy Bingo Bash #Steggybingobash #3P's Fic

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365days365movies · 4 years ago

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January 4, 2021: First Blood (1982) (Part II)

Quick Recap before we go on. Oh, and SPOILERS right up top!

John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is a Vietnam vet wandering through Washington State, until coming upon the town of Hope, run by the Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy).

Sheriff Will Teasle is an absolute dick who arrests Rambo for no real reason; just for being a “drifter.” His police force, which includes the sadistic Galt (Jack Starrett) and sympathetic Mitch (David Caruso, AKA Horatio Caine from CSI: Miami), beats John Rambo, and post-2020 me is UNCOMFORTABLE!!!!!!!

Rambo has Vietnam flashbacks (like you do) and escapes the prison, pursued by the obsessive and dickish Sheriff and his equally dickish men (except for Horatio, maybe).

Galt tries to shoot Rambo, and karma bitch-slaps him RIGHT in the face, holy shit. He dies, and Rambo is blamed and shot at, escaping into the forest.

OK?

OK. On with the recap!

At this point, all of Rambo’s actions are in self-defense. In truth, it’s been self-defense since the beginning. However, he does kill two dogs, so...yeah, can’t really justify that. That sucks. The dog’s handler gets shot by Rambo, who now has a gun, and we also see that Galt’s certified sociopathy has leaked into everybody else but Horatio upon his death, including the dog guy, who tells his dogs to straight up kill Rambo. But, as previously stated...that’s not what happens.

At this point, I should introduce the amemedala.

The amemedala is a portion of the mesencephalon (or midbrain) discovered in the brains of millennials and younger individuals, recently discovered, named, and made up by yours truly. This area, attached to the thalamus, acts as a relay center between the cerebrum and the various sensory receptors of the body, similar to the function of the thalamus. However, while the thalamus governs the broad relay of senses to the appropriate areas of the brain for analysis, the amemedala relays appropriate sensory signals to the frontal lobes, where catalogs of shared sociological trends, or memes, are housed. This relay and association generates connections between extrenal stimuli, and entries in the meme catalog of the frontal lobes. While this is technically an autonomic process, it can be suppressed with enough willpower.

Why am I ringing this up in the middle of First Blood? Because EVERY. SINGLE. CELL of my brain is working to suppress the amemedala right now. Why? BECAUSE OF THE LORAX, AND FOR WHOM HE SPEAKS.

Is it an outdated meme? Very much so. BUT I CANNOT GET IT OUT OF MY GODDAMN HEAD AS I WATCH THIS MOVIE.

OK. That is now out of my system. Anyway, Rambo continues to speak for the trees, which is understandably starting to spook the smalltown cops. This leads to the VERY surprising moment where a camouflaged Rambo appears OUT OF NOWHERE and stabs Horatio in the goddamn leg! Like, wow, he was invisible! I had to rewind the film to see where he was. This is tense...and awesome, not gonna lie. This is awesome.

And then, he gets another cop by JUMPING FROM A TREE. Well, a tree stump, BUT STILL. After he takes him out, he stands in plain sight in front of an approaching cop. That cop, subscribing once again to the shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy, fires. And I SWEAR, Rambo is FASTER THAN THOSE SPEEDING BULLETS, as he dodges out of the way, and the bullets HIT THE COP HE JUST TOOK OUT!

And then, when I didn’t think this could get any more intense, that cop triggers a booby trap, and A STICK WITH WOODEN SPIKES GOES THROUGH THIS MAN’S LEGS, AND HE’S SPEARED LIKE A KEBAB OH MY GOD

The asshole sheriff runs to the NEW set of panicked screams, and his compatriot is just Batman-ed away by Rambo. It’s just the sheriff, now. The storm is building, and the forest is getting darker. The sheriff frees leg-spike cop, and goes to find the other cop, who’s been PINNED TO A TREE LIKE A BUTTERFLY IN A DISPLAY CASE. See, look!

HOLY SHIT IT’S RAMBO WITH A KNIFE IN THE FOREST. He pins the sheriff up to a tree, then with some legitimately badass lines, threatens with the sheriff with “a war [he] wouldn’t believe,” and telling him to make like Elsa and…

I love this sequence. It is the most intense, crazy, holy shit sequence I’ve seen so far this month. Wow. I understand why people talk about this movie. Man, that was a hell of a ride! Good movie, though. All right, so, time for the final sco-

Oh. Oh, my God. I’m only HALFWAY INTO THE MOVIE?

...Wow. OK, then.

We now meet Colonel Sam Trautman, Rambo’s commander in the Green Berets. He’s come to “get his boy.” He says that he came to rescue the Sheriff’s dumb ass from Rambo, rather than the other way around. And the Sheriff is...an idiot. He’s an ass, he’s a maniac, and he’s a stubborn idiot. Even after learning that Rambo is the best, he’s unwilling to back down, the dummkopf.

Rambo kills a wild boar in the woods, which makes no sense for Washington State, but whatever, sure. Anyway, they try to get the colonel to lure Rambo out, even though that’s obviously gonna make his PTSD, just...SO much worse. Especially as he starts using Vietnam parlance in contacting him. Not gonna end well, guys. But it’s then that we learn that Rambo is now the last surviving member of his unit, contributing to his trauma. Rambo’s also been trying to get in contact with the Colonel, winding up here because he has no place to go. He says that there are no friendly civilians, and the trouble’s been caused by that “king-shit” cop. I will be using this term from now on.

Wow. Damn. Hell of a reason for that title. And I think I love this movie. Seriously, I’m having a good time.

King-Shit Cop keeps going ahead with his absolute idiocy, despite all warnings to the contrary. So, a bunch of troops now converge upon Rambo’s place, but he naturally opens fire on them, without killing a single person. In fact, he hasn’t killed anyone this whole movie, and they make a point of saying that he’s been holding back the whole time. So, they decide to use the next, most logical course of action. They FIRE A ROCKET AT HIM.

Afterwards, the Colonel and King Shit Cop catch up at a bar, where the latter exposes his full sociopathy, commenting that he just wanted to kill Rambo. This is opposed to the Colonel, who doesn’t really know what he’d do if Rambo survived.

Which, of course, he did. C’mon, you think a little military-grade propelled explosive is gonna kill John Rambo? Nah. He’s the best there ever was, and he’s gonna prove it now. He jumps into a military vehicle holding an M-60, and hijacks it. Doesn’t take long for the news to break that Rambo’s still kicking, and he’s quickly intercepted by King Shit Cop, who JUST. DOESN’T. KNOW. WHEN. TO QUIT. And I’d admire his tenacity if he wasn’t SUCH AN ASSHOLE.

The cops try to run Rambo and the truck of the road, and he plays the UNO Reverse Card on them instead. And I’m pretty sure at this point…

...that old Johnny boy’s just killed some cops. So, yeah, now there’s a bigger problem. He powers through the State Police blockade like it was a banner blocking a football team, stops at a gas station, grabs the gun from the car, and LIGHTS ALL OF THAT SHIT ON FIRE! Destroying the livelihood of an individual who had nothing to do with this.

Yeah, Rambo’s starting to turn from innocent acting in self-defense to public menace REAL quick. And yeah, it’s King Shit Cop’s fault entirely...but, yeah, Johnny needs some help, because he’s losing the train at this point. But, not to be outdone, King Shit Cop is also beginning to lose it, and it’s definitely beginning to seem like only one of them is going to come out of this alive. And the Colonel tries to give him an out, but King Shit Cop’s prepared to go down with the ship that he blew a hole in in the first place. Like an asshole.

But here we go, the finale. John Rambo vs. King Shit Cop (whose name, by the way, is Will Teasle. I just like Rambo’s name for him better). KSC’s on the roof, Rambo’s on the street. Rambo causes more property damage, possibly because banks also give him PTSD (I joke, but PTSD is no laughing matter, John clearly needs help), and then finds his way to a store that has just all of the ammo a psychologically-damaged Vietnam War veteran on a revenge quest could ever need.

And then he BLOWS. THAT. SHIT. UP.

And he does this...ALL of this...just to lure KSC out of hiding. This man DESTROYS A TOWN because this idiot, sociopathic, unhinged, King Shit Cop, won’t just STAND. THE FUCK. DOWN ALREADY.

Rambo enters the police station, where KSC is on the roof. And, like the Colonel and the rest of us guessed, KSC gets shot in the process. And as Rambo stands over KSC, the Colonel finally shows up and does what literally everybody else should have done.

Talk. He just...talks to Rambo. He talks to this mentally ill man, and that mentally ill man responds, espousing his pure anger at the war, the public, protesters, work, the country, the town, himself...everyone. And goddamn, is that shit palpable.

youtube

This man can no longer fit in the world that he was forced to leave, and forced to return to. This poor, poor, poor man. It hurts. And it sucks. And he pours his heart out to the Colonel, and to us, and...you feel it. You feel his trauma, you feel his pain. You feel the aftermath of war. And it’s been seven years at this point for the Colonel, but no time for John. Not Rambo. John. And it’s just...never over.

Damn. Goddamn.

This...this is one hell of a good movie. And not just a good action movie, either. A damn good movie.

And that’s it. That’s First Blood.

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nerianasims · 4 years ago

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Billboard #1s 1977

Under the cut.

Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis, Jr. – “You Don’t Have To Be A Star (To Be In My Show)” -- January 8, 1977

They will be happy with each other as they are, not needing a "star." It sounds literal, like they think most people only want to have relationships with celebrities. It's got some bounce and a beat, but it's very light and not poetic at all. Meh.

Leo Sayer – “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing” -- January 15, 1977

Shouty falsetto. It might be disco if it were faster. I am not listening to this whole thing, because it will give me a headache.

Stevie Wonder – “I Wish” -- January 22, 1977

One of the greatest musical intros. It's a funk song about nostalgia, wishing for childhood again, and I normally hate that. But the music is amazing.

Rose Royce – “Car Wash” -- January 29, 1977

This was an intro song for a movie of the same name. I had no idea. I just thought someone decided to sing about working at a car wash randomly. The song is a little bit Motown, a little bit disco. It's fun.

Mary MacGregor – “Torn Between Two Lovers” -- February 5, 1977

It's slow, it's soppy, and it's about how she's cheating on "you" with someone else. She truly loves you, but she's not gonna stop seeing the other guy, whom she loves too. It sounds like she wants to try this whole poly thing she's heard about. But is the guy she's singing to gonna be okay with that? Probably not. Most people aren't. Maybe though. I don't care. For being about a subject that should be heartrending, this song sure is boring.

Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – “Blinded By The Light” -- February 19, 1977

This version made it to #1. Bruce Springsteen's original didn't even make it to the charts. This version is really bad -- it sounds like a recitation surrounded by goop, not a song. Bruce Springsteen's version is one of my favorite songs. I am going to sulk now.

Eagles – “New Kid In Town” -- February 26, 1977

Huh, an Eagles hit I've never heard before. This is about fame, how everyone loves you at first, then forgets you when the next big thing comes along. They try to shoehorn some stuff about romance in -- "Will she still love you when you're not around?" -- but it doesn't really flow. Also the song sounds like it should be playing in the background of a cabana. Fittingly for a song worried people will forget them, I have already forgotten this song.

Barbra Streisand – “Love Theme From A Star Is Born (Evergreen)” -- March 5, 1977

I listened to this song for 30 seconds. No more. I cannot stand Barbra Streisand. I don't think I'd like this song anyway, as it's glop, but maybe a different singer could have made it tolerable.

Daryl Hall & John Oates – “Rich Girl” -- March 26, 1977

Rich girls get picked on while rich boys are the ones who usually get away with everything. This song was actually originally about a rich guy, too. It would have been better. It's still good musically, but it misses the mark. Not that rich girls don't also get away with plenty, but compare and contrast what happened to Paris Hilton for her venial sins, versus the entire existence of Donald Trump.

ABBA – “Dancing Queen” -- April 9, 1977

ABBA was a good group. They were hated on, and now they're more likely to be exalted. They didn't deserve the hate (save it for the Bee Gees), but they're not the second coming or anything either. They were just a good, fun group. This song can be danced to, but it's a song more about dance than a dancing song. It's a rare song observing a young woman dancing while identifying with her, rather than lusting after her. "You can dance/ You can jive/ Having the time of your life." It's good.

David Soul – “Don’t Give Up On Us” -- April 16, 1977

The narrator did something really bad last night. Cheating? Worse? Now he's telling his lover not to "give up on us." As soft as the song is, "tell" is the word, not "ask." And he doesn't apologize once. Also, David Soul was a professional actor, but there's no worry in his voice; he's nothing but smooth and assured here. Blech.

Thelma Houston – “Don’t Leave Me This Way” -- April 23, 1977

It's disco with a large dose of Motown, or Motown with a large dose of disco. Either way, it works. Everything lines up with precision, and then Thelma Houston comes in over all of it with huge emotion. The contrast is sort of fascinating. Oh, and her huge emotion is that she wants sex. "Then come on, satisfy the need in me/ 'Cause only your good loving can set me free." She's not begging, but she's not exactly commanding either. It's really good.

Glen Campbell – “Southern Nights” -- April 30, 1977

It's Kidz Bop honky tonk. That's probably not fair; Glen Campbell grew up in a family of poor sharecroppers in Arkansas. But it's what I hear. It's happy clappy, and scrubbed clean of anything real.

Eagles – “Hotel California” -- May 7, 1977

Whatever you think this song is about, it's not about that. The Eagles wrote it with a mish-mash of stuff in mind, but mostly trying to be ambiguous. What that means is that whatever you think this song is about, it is about that. It's a choose your own adventure psychological horror song. I love it. It makes me happy in that way that good poetry and good music do -- and this is both.

Leo Sayer – “When I Need You” -- May 14, 1977

This song is cheese. Absolute, unadulterated cheese. But it's not bad cheese. It's a good solid cheddar. It's slow but not too slow, soft but not too soft, and it manages some interesting percussion. And Sayer sings like he means it. It's about missing his lover while he's on the road, and he imagines she's with him to get by. "When I need you/ I just close my eyes and I'm with you." It sounds kind of like a Broadway ballad. It's enjoyable.

Stevie Wonder – “Sir Duke” -- May 21, 1977

A song about Duke Ellington, which is a subject I approve of. Stevie Wonder also lists a few more legends, including one of my favorites: "And with a voice like Ella's ringing out/ There's no way the band can lose." It's a love song to music itself. It's sort of big band, sort of funk, and sort of Motown, and it works. The lyrics do get too repetitive for me near the end, though.

KC & The Sunshine Band – “I’m Your Boogie Man” -- June 11, 1977

It's a wordplay on the "bogie man" monster. But the boogie man wants to show up and give you whatever you want whenever you want however you want. Sexually. The song actually has more lyrics than most KC & The Sunshine Band songs, but it's still a song to dance to. Not to have sex to. But for dancing? Yep, it's good.

Fleetwood Mac – “Dreams” -- June 18, 1977

YAY! Okay so I have no interest in Fleetwood Mac without Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. But when they joined in 1975, Fleetwood Mac became truly great. And this song is from Rumours, which is their best album (forged out of a hell of a lot of intragroup pain), and written and sung by Stevie Nicks, who was their best artist. My parents played this record and their previous self-titled one all the time. I didn't fully understand the songs when I was a kid, but I loved them. As I grew old enough to understand them, I loved them more. And now I love them more than that. I can't analyze this song. I love it too much.

Marvin Gaye – “Got To Give It Up (Part 1)” -- June 25, 1977

At first, he was uncomfortable at parties and didn't want to dance. But then he loosened up enough to dance, pretty obviously as a way to pick up chicks. There's the horrible line "Let me step into your erotic zone." The music is experimental. Marvin Gaye's falsetto is fine, but it's still a falsetto the whole damn song. And there are people making party noises in the background the whole time. I find this song painful.

Bill Conti – “Gonna Fly Now (Theme From Rocky) -- July 2, 1977

You know this instrumental, you've heard it tons. It's a good movie theme -- I think. It's hard to say, when it's something that's been so often present in so many different contexts in my life.

Alan O’Day – “Undercover Angel” -- July 9, 1977

The undercover angel is a make believe woman from a sex dream. At the end of the song, he's telling "you" that you remind him of the undercover angel, so you must be meant to be with him. It's an extended "I've seen you in my dreams" pickup line. It's so dumb.

Shaun Cassidy – “Da Doo Ron Ron” -- July 16, 1977

This is an excruciatingly boring cover of The Crystals' classic 60s girl group song.

Barry Manilow – “Looks Like We Made It” -- July 23, 1977

He's singing to an ex. They both "made it" because they found other people. Until "Looks like we made it/ Or I thought so till today/ Until you were there everywhere." If they get back together it's not going to be easy, because they'll be leaving relationships that seem happy. I don't think they'll get back together -- besides, she may not feel anything for him any more. It's a more complex song than it sounds. And Barry Manilow sure can sing. I wish he'd gone with the jazz songs he preferred, but then he wouldn't have been hugely successful. He decided to pull the rhinestone cowboy trick, and I can't blame him. He did make the soppy 70s charts more tolerable than they would have otherwise been.

Andy Gibb – “I Just Want To Be Your Everything” -- July 30, 1977

For instance, without Barry Manilow, Andy Gibb would probably have had more hits. Gibb's voice is thin. If you're going to sing a line like "Oh, if I, if I stay here without you darlin' I will die," you need some power and drama behind it. This guy sounds like he's trying to sell kitchen tile. It's a relatively fast song, but the beat is somehow irritating too. Blech.

The Emotions – “Best Of My Love” -- August 20, 1977

It starts with a blast of horns, and then a blast of singing. Then the chorus is quieter than the rest, which is weird to me. I can't put my finger on why this song bores me, but it does.

Meco – “Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band” -- October 1, 1977

A disco mashup of the Star Wars theme with the cantina band theme. That happened. I love John Williams' music and I think he deserves credit for at least half of Star Wars' success. But I think this remix sounds extremely dumb. Someone slowed down the cantina band theme a couple years ago and that sounds very noir and cool. This doesn't.

Debby Boone – “You Light Up My Life” -- October 15, 1977

The person who wrote this song was completely and absolutely terrible. But Debby Boone isn't. She's a Christian singer, but seems to be one of the nice ones, not the wingnut fundie ones. Anyway, she wasn't a Christian singer in 1977 (though she was Christian). And she had a good voice. But she sings this song painfully slowly. It sounds like she comes in after where she's supposed to come in and then draws out the notes longer than she's supposed to. I don't know if that's her or the song itself. I sped up the song to 1.25 and it's a little more palatable, but it's still bad. It's a trudge. I don't feel lit up after this.

The Bee Gees – “How Deep Is Your Love” -- December 24, 1977

It's not falsetto, though Barry Gibb does go uncomfortably high some. But it's still very bad. It's a string of bland cliches over bland music. And the weird 70s male romance song entitlement: "And it's me you need to show/ How deep is your love?" Shut up.

BEST OF 1977 -- "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac WORST OF 1977 -- "Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band" by Meco. People really would disco to anything, huh?

#billboard number ones

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wirewitchviolet · 4 years ago

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We really need 1:1 time passage in games.

I play a lot of games. I particularly play a whole lot of RPGs, strategy things, survival games, and these all tend to be games that try to create an extra sense of immersion with hunger, thirst, and a day night cycle. And WOW do they ever end up doing the exact opposite with the implementation!

Like, let’s just start with food. If I am playing a survival game, and I choose not to eat for a while, my little hunger meter will bottom out, and I will start taking damage then eventually die. This tends to take like, one real life hour/in-game day, give or take to kick in, and then death comes within like, maybe 5 minutes if they’re generous? And I stave this off by... usually finding, killing, cooking, and eating, 2 entire turkeys per real hour/in-game day.

So... what the hell is any of that!?

So we have hunger, and we’re representing it as this slowly draining meter you have to keep an eye on. Already, that’s just weird. In my experience, you can go an entire day, not eating a damn thing, and not feel a thing out of the ordinary. But when you do actually get hungry, it can be overwhelming and impossible to ignore (have you eaten yet today by the way? My meal schedule’s gotten totally weird). Nothing about that makes sense to simulate as a slowly lowering bar. If you want realism, you have absolutely no onscreen hunger meter, and then like every 4-24 hours or so you have some incredibly distracting hunger indicator kick in and stay kicked in. Like, activate rumble packs and leave’em going at a steady pulse sort of annoying. And it gets worse when you’re actually preparing food.

Also feeling hungry is not an early indicator that you are going to suddenly die of starvation, or even that you’re anywhere near that point. I had dinner 6 hours ago, I’m a little hungry now. It varies a lot, but actually starving to death can take upwards of going TWO WHOLE MONTHS without any food at all. Like if we’re representing that as a meter, “hungry” kicks in when it drops to 99% full. Starvation is not a particularly common cause of death. If you’re dying of starvation, either someone is intentionally starving you to death, or some horrific catastrophe has just wiped out completely absolutely every potential food source in an area you somehow cannot wander your way out of even if you have months to do so. Relevant real world fact- Any time you see stuff about people dying of starvation, that’s never “farming just is not a thing that works in this area,” it’s “some malicious tyrant is actively preventing these people from accessing food in a deliberate effort to cause them to starve.” It’s really not actually a concern in any sort of survival story, unless we’re going real long term.

Meanwhile, have game designers ever actually, like, eaten food? Like I said, 2 whole turkeys per real hour/game day seems to be the going standard and like... have you had a turkey? I live in America, there is this tradition on Thanksgiving to go get a turkey, spend a day cooking it, and serving it as part of a meal served to one’s whole extended family. You’ve got that one turkey (granted, generally with a lot of side dishes) feeding like... a dozen people, easily. And at the end of the day, you’ve only MAYBE collectively made your way through like half a breast. You carve up a bunch more and send everyone home with a ton of leftovers. Then you’ve still got this giant mountain of turkey left, and you’re eating it for like the next week until you’re completely sick of turkey and throw the rest out, with plenty of meat entirely uneaten on the bird. Or hey, do you eat hamburgers? You know how the standard for a really kinda too big to responsibly be ordering it hamburger is “a quarter-pounder?” Which refers to the 0.25 lbs. of meat on the bun? Just quickly googling “beef weight” and copying the preview text from the oddly named first hit, on beef2live.com... “An average beef animal weighs about 1200 pounds and has a hanging hot carcass weight (HCW) of about 750 pounds.“ I can’t honestly say I know what “hanging hot carcass weight” is and I kinda doing want to, but I’m assuming that’s how much you have to work with after stripping out all the bones and organs and such. Multiply that by 4 to get how many oversized burgers you get out of one “beef animal” (why does it not say cow? I’m growing increasingly unsettled)- 3000 burgers. Give or take. You go smack that one Mnecraft cow with your sword, you should be fine for like 5 years. At least assuming we’re not simulating food spoilage. And if we are, HEY THAT TAKES SIGNIFICANTLY LONGER THAN ONE DAY, 2 IF YOU SALT IT!

And I mean, on top of that, we’ve got this whole standard I keep citing of 1 real world hour/1 in-game day. That kinda seems to be one of the more common standards for the passage of time video games use. That or 1 minute=1 hour. And I... really don’t understand why we have these scales?

Like, the earliest example of a day/night cycle in a game is Dragon Quest 3, where 1 steps on the over world map=12 minutes passing, or 120 steps=1 day. That’s a weird scale I’m having to use, but that’s because as the most traditional of JRPGs, DQ3′s sense of both time AND space are super abstracted and walking a short distance across the world map is this super compressed and simplified conveyance of a big long epic journey through the untamed wilderness. The first games I can think of offhand to really do it as a real time elapsed ratio thing are like... The Sims and GTA 3? Let me look at each of those in turn in a bit here.

So, The Sims has to pass days pretty quick, because that’s like, the whole idea. We’re watching this little household drama unfold in a compressed time scale... but the scale is really messed up? Like, we start off pretty simple. Sims work their shifts of like 9-5 on the in-game clock, need an appropriate amount of sleep... but then MOST things have timing based off having animations play at a reasonable pace, which is to say, 1 to 1 time, not 1 to 60. It takes like 3 in-game minutes for a Sim to get up out of a chair, several more minutes to walk to the kitchen and even start cooking, altogether just getting up, making a meal, cleaning up, and sitting back down is going to end up being this hours long affair, most of that being travel time from one room to another. It’s weird, and practically speaking you end up having them eat one meal, use the toilet once, and take a shower once per in game day, because less than that problems occur, and more than that, it’s a huge pain. And forget conversations. Those are like 12 hour commitments.

And then we have GTA3, where 1 real minute=1 in game hour... and this isn’t tied to anything in-game at all really. You don’t eat, you don’t sleep, nothing really has business hours to deal with, the whole day/night cycle is just there to give you a nice cycling change of scenery... and also again, breaks immersion, because the animation speed is 1:1. According to a video I just watched, walking end to end across the map of GTA3 takes a full 48 in-game hours (121 in GTA5). And I mean... there’s races, and high speed chases, and all this other stuff that according to the in-game clock are at such slow speeds you can barely tell anything’s moving. It’s weird and arbitrary! And also unnecessary! Like, I’m pretty sure I sank at least 80 hours into my first playthrough of GTA3. I definitely spent enough time cruising around any given island that if time passed in a 1:1 ratio, I’d still see what everything looked like at every time of day. And hell if you rigged it up to a real world clock I could plan around that, do all the cool missions right at sundown.

But I mean, also, there’s these things called movies and TV shows? You may have heard of them, because it’s where games get a whole bunch of terms they use all the time. Like camera, and scene. So the thing there is, when, say, a movie switches to a new scene, they’ll often arbitrarily jump the day/night cycle ahead by several in-movie hours, or even days, so the lighting is appropriate to what’s going to happen in that scene. You can actually just... do that in games, too. It’s OK. Nobody’s going to stop you or say it’s breaking immersion. I talk to this guy to start this mission at what’s clearly noon, then we fade to back, and I come back out onto the street late at night so I can do this daring nighttime raid. That’s.. OK. You can do that. Honest. No need to have the sun doing crazy fast laps in the background.

Anyway, other games since have all copied that time scale, because blindly copying things from GTA3 was kinda... how people made games for a good stretch of time (and yeah yeah yeah, Elder Scrolls was probably already doing it, whatever... hell so was Robinson’s Requiem I’m pretty sure, and Drakken I know was paced something like that). But anyway, we mixed that sort of time scale with Survival Gameplay and we’re just kinda mashing these problems together. We’re doing everything in this one to one time scale, but the in-game clock is running at like 60 times that, and our already ridiculous food intake needs are downright absurd, and suddenly we’re destroying absolutely all life on sight to sate our ever-present ravenous hunger (and possibly never sleeping).

And like... survival games don’t actually need that? Like the interesting bits of the angle are finding sources of things like clean water and shelter so you don’t die of exposure once the sun’s down and stuff. And these are things you really just need to do once and you’re set. You could... basically set up a whole game, running in real time, where these are early potential fail states. Get some kind of shelter set up within the first 5 hours or so, sleep to advance straight to the next day after pulling that off, then you have like 3 days total to find drinkable water, and... honestly at that point we’re talking like a good 45 minutes of gameplay and you could really end it there, or start your last goal. But instead, no, we’re making some kinda crude axe/bow and killing everything to eat.

Not only is it not realistic, not only does it take me out of the experience by checking the math, the whole affair feels kinda like I’m being put through someone’s weird hyper-masculine cargo cult fantasy of what it would have been like if they grew up Hunting With Dad and like.... OK people who actually do that still kill like one animal, then drag it home, throw it in a big fridge, and eat it for quite a long time, or sell it, or leave it to rot because they’re just really into ending the lives of innocent creatures and don’t want weird gamey meat at all.

So yeah, just let time be time, and don’t ever actually make me eat if we’re trying for some kind of gritty realism thing. I really don’t get hungry nearly that often and fill up quick.

#game design #survival

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wonderlandleighleigh · 5 years ago

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98 Thoughts while watching A New Hope

1. Who was that silver protocol droid? What happened to them? Are they okay? where are they now?? I bet they’re cooler than 3P0.

2. Rebel helmets are just silly.

3. I love how dirty R2 and 3P0 are.

4. Man, Rex is right. Empire-era Stormtrooper armor is total shit.

5. Shut up Anakin.

6. Oh Space Mom. I will miss Carrie Fisher forever.

7. Anakin fucking - he asks a question just as he kills the dude. Like- why-? Shut up Anakin.

8. Something I really love about this first movie is that Leia doesn’t do anything overtly sexily. When she gets shot, she’s literally just laid out on the floor, on her belly. It’s not meant to be hot. And even later when she’s tortured, it’s not meant to be a male gaze thing.

9. For fuck’s sake Anakin. Your daughter is standing right fucking there, and you can’t even sense it. What a dumb.

10. R2 is like “Fuck. This place again?” But 3P0 was created on Tatooine and he doesn’t even remember. That’s kinda sad.

11. As Dettiot says, you can really tell that 3P0 was created by a 9 year old Anakin. Yeesh.

12. I really love the Jawas. They’re so strange, and wonderful.

13. I wonder what R2 was thinking about when he was walking all that time by himself on Tatooine. Was he thinking about Anakin? Was he thinking about the war? Or Padme? Or Ahsoka?

14. Man, Tatooine at dusk is beautiful, isn’t it?

15. These Stormtroopers have sand on their butts. I never noticed.

16. I remember thinking the Jawa going “bobit! bobit!” was very funny as a kid.

17. Beru Whitesun. Former slaver liberator. Secret bad-ass. She and Owen really deserved better.

18. R2: I cannot believe my old master’s son is leaving me the fuck behind. What the fuck is this shit. Get back here. Do you know how much I suffered for your dumb dad?

19. Luke playing with toy ships just like Anakin did. And didn’t Obi-Wan make some of those in one continuity or another? *sad*

20. R2: ANOTHER SKYWALKER OH GOD.

21. SHE IS YOUR SISTER. Do NOT falling in love with your SISTER.

22. R2′s memory has never been wiped. Aside from Leia’s message, gold only knows what other recordings are saved on his hard drive.

23. Blue milk!

24. And Owen lying his ass of to Luke. Ugh.

25. I remember as a kid thinking that Owen was too grumpy/mean. But he’s a really good person. He raised this kid, and wants nothing more than to do right by him. Done so dirty.

26. But Luke’s pensive moment watching the suns set is so beautiful.

27. I desperately want to know how Beru’s cooker works. I want one. It looks so cool.

28. I want a Bantha.

29. R2 trying to wake Luke up is such a moment.

30. Obi-Wan’s krate dragon impersonation is amazing. I wish he’d do it more often.

31. I have feelings about his old, dusty Jedi robes. In fact, everytthing about old Ben gives me feelings. He lost everything, and has been hiding in the desert for twenty years.

32. “He’s searching for his former master. I’ve never seen so much devotion in a droid before.” Obi-Wan’s face is so haunted in this moment. Fuck.

33. R2: WHY YOU PLAYING YOU KNOW ME! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU

34. Owen told Luke his father sold drugs. The. Fuck.

35. “He was the best star pilot. And a cunning warrior. And he was a good friend.” *sads*

36. Obi-Wan sat in the desert with his brother’s lightsaber for twenty years, just mourning everything that had happened. Fuck.

37. Obi-Wan stop LYING.

38. Obi-Wan’s face clearly says, while Leia’s recording plays, “Oh shit. All this crap is catching up to me. Again. I’ll never ever be rid of Skywalkers.”

39. Obi-Wan has such terrible ideas. Still.

40. I just love that Vader hates the Death Star. Anakin hates the Death Star the way Steve Rogers hates Stark Tower.

41. Aaaand bye-bye senate. I wonder if that will happen here in the US at some point if Trump keeps Trumping along.

42. Tarken and Vader’s bromance is such a thing.

43. Ha! “accurate.” “precise.” Stormtroopers. Ha.

44. Owen and Beru’s fate is so gruesome. I was always so shocked by how much we were shown. Damn. Grim. And again, done so dirty. More Skywalker adjacent family dead.

45. Shut up, Anakin.

46. More grim shit. Burning the Jawa bodies.

47. Poor Luke. He lost everything that day. He thought his father and mother were both dead, and now his uncle and aunt are truly dead. So yeah. Following a weird wizard on a quest.

48. Mos Eisley doesn’t seem dangerous. Just goofy.

49. Alec Guinness’ delivery of the Jedi mind trick is so casual. So sly. Love it.

50. CHEWBACCA! WHAT A WOOKIE!

51. Why does everybody hate droids???

52. omg. Luke tugging on the bartender’s shirt. Wtf Luke. Just say “Excuse me.” That’s so rude.

53. Obi-Wan just slicing off that dude’s arm...a little reactionary maybe? AND NOBODY DOES OR SAYS ANYTHING.

54. Obi-Wan is so unimpressed by Han. omg.

55. Obi-Wan is just gonna hit up Bail and Breja for cash when they get to Alderaan. Dang.

56. “I’m never coming back to this planet again.” heh.

57. Han shot first. Fuck all of this.

58. You know why her resistance to the mind probe is considerable? BECAUSE SHE IS YOUR DAUGHTER YOU DUMB ROBOT MAN.

59. CGI Jabba is weak sauce.

60. “Even I get boarded sometimes” is the name of Han Solo’s sex tape.

61. Luke’s poncho is so cute.

62. Leia is the best.

63. Tarken is wearing comfy slippers.

64. The reason why even if Vader made amends with Luke, Leia will never forgive him, is right here. Not only did he torture her, but he stood back and watched while they destroyed her home. She will never be able to forgive him. Ever. And that’s legit. She doesn’t have to.

65. I believe Chewie actually does beat someone with their own arm.

66. Obi-Wan’s smile when Han says there’s no mystical Force controlling his destiny was so good.

67. Even when there’s nobody else in the room, Vader doesn’t get to sit down. What the fuck.

68. Obi-Wan knows he’s gonna die.

69. Mark Hamill talks so fast.

(I accidentally took a nap during Leia’s rescue and the trash compactor scene. I was tired, and I’ve seen this movie so many times)

70. Han screaming after the Stormtroopers is such a fucking mood.

71. Vader vs. Obi-Wan here...I have a lot of feelings about these two disasters fighting agai- SHUT UP ANAKIN.

72. Not only does Obi-Wan sacrifice himself to give Luke an exit, but he does so because he’s giving Anakin a choice in terms of killing him or not. He’s giving him a moment of grace here, I think. To not be an evil fuck. But uh...Vader.

73. When Obi-Wan says “You can’t win.” He’s not talking about the duel. He’s talking about over-all. Being a Sith means that he can’t win. And his “If you strike me down, I’ll become more powerful than you can possibly imagine” refers to the amount of guilt and shame Anakin will feel in killing his brother. That that will eat at his soul. And it does.

74. Vader stepping on the robes to make sure Obi-Wan is dead is hilarious in such a weird morbid way.

74. In a weird flip, Vader now has Obi-Wan lightsaber, as Obi-Wan had Anakin’s.

75. Poor Luke. Owen, Beru and Obi-Wan all in one day.

76. 1st person shooter time!

77. Oh Han and Leia. My first fucking ship. So fighty. So sexy. I love them.

78. Stop flirting badly with your sister Luke.

79. ...who is Luke jealous of here?

80. I love the HC that Vader knew about the weakness in the Death Star, and hated that fucking thing so much he never mentioned it.

81. R2 back in starfighter with a Skywalker.

82. I swear Red Leader looks like Don Knotts.

83. I love X-Wings so much.

84. Vader’s reflexes behind the controls of a starfighter must be fucked compared to what they were pre-Mustafar.

85. Luke watching all these people die like “Ooh. I guess this is what Han was talking about.”

86. Oh Tarkin. You gonna regret everything in a couple minutes.

87. Biggs’ mustache is majestic.

88. Luke saves Wedge’s life by telling him to get the fuck out. Later, Wedge will likely sing “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.”

89. The targeting system feels so old-timey.

90. Obi-Wan you trained him for like 20 minutes. He doesn’t know what he’s doin- okay.

91. ANAKIN! HOw dare yOu ShoOT R2!

92. Good job Han. <3 I actually really love Han a lot. He’s not a smart man, but he’s a pretty good man.

93. The Death Star is destroyed, Tarkin dies, and Vader goes spinning off into space. Some fics have him traveling through time!

94. The original trio is so pure in this movie. I love them so much. The sequels did all three of them so dirty.

95. Leia’s necklace is so good.

96. And Luke’s Jacket is so bad. I’ve seen photos of it replaced by a brown jacket and it is so much better.

97. Remember everybody. Rex is at the ceremony somewhere, watching a Skywalker get a medal.

98. I love this fucking movie.

#star wars #a new hope #thinking about star wars

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