#characters presenting as different genders in the vhs

[foreos]

honestly this season feels so transgender

[deliriumzer0]

Another GenLoss thought re: "The Hero"

Okay so this has been bugging me and I couldn't stop thinking about it, it's been creepin' & crawlin' around in my head for the last two weeks.

Awhile back Nathan Hanover posted a bit of "The Hero," from the Gen 1 OST, and he talked about how the track was originally called "The Main Character", but it was changed to the more "thematically appropriate" title "The Hero."

I'm sure I'm not the only one who didn't initially read too much into the term "Hero" being used for GL!Ranboo, and in my head it was basically synonymous with "protagonist". But the above tidbit of info gave me some pause on that and I couldn't stop thinking about it. Why "The Hero" specifically??

In the stream, Hetch refers to the other characters dying on his behalf as part of what makes GL!Ranboo the hero, but I mean, it's Hetch. We can't rule it out as relevant, sure, but we can't fully trust it as being anything more than a taunt either, so I kind of threw that away.

Then the other day I had a shower thought about the Hero's Journey.

At this point, a lot of my corner of the internet knows of Joseph Campbell's theory of the monomyth, and if you're big into storytelling, writing, story structures, human history, myths, etc. you probably know the Hero's Journey story structure by heart at this point. I've certainly used it as a jumping-off point for stories in the past (and to help me when I got stuck). But for those who aren't aware, it'd be too long to get into it on this post so I highly recommend checking out the wikipedia page on the concept. There are some pieces of it that are more gendered than they need to be, but a lot of the story beats are undoubtedly a bit familiar to you if you've ever seen a movie.

While Gen 1 has a ton of hero's journey story beats (most are in common between a majority of "hero faces a challenge and overcomes it" stories in the western world, tbh), a lot of Gen 1 does NOT seem to follow this journey, so my shower thought was like "Eh, maybe? ...nah" and then I thought about it some more, and remembered one VITAL aspect of the hero's journey: the freaking LOOP.

Graphically/visually, the hero's journey is almost always depicted as a cycle because it has the hero starting at one "normal" and then returning home having carried what they learned forward into a new "normal." The Hero leaves one person, and then comes home as another. I think this fits a lot of the fandom's theories about Gen 1, and fits in with my theory about Gen 1's entire universe being on a VHS tape that gets replayed & re-recorded over and over.

That's why GL!Ranboo is "The Hero," not because he's an actual heroic figure, but because he leaves his origin point and then returns changed over and over again, slightly different each time it happens. Y'know, like how generation loss works, except hat generation loss is a negative effect, a degradation in quality over time, and the hero's journey is typically presented as a positive, being an augmentation of the hero's knowledge, skills, and experience.

Kinda makes you (over)think...

[foster-the-moths]

hi so i heard we’re dropping headcanons ^_^ can i get some about sarah or evelin maybe

ABSOLUTELY you get a little bit of both of them. as a treat.

Sarah:

-i think sarah can hold a MEAN grudge. if u wrong her/she thinks u wronged her she will never let that shit go. its why she sends thatcher those emails and why she never really got along with adam after the whole hand hallway thing.

-i think shes p fem gender wise/presents very feminine but also has middle aged dad hobbies. she loves fishing and can tell u everything abt what bait/flies she uses in which areas for hours.

-i think similarly to mark she has a lot of issues with emotional regulation but she takes the 'bottling shit up then exploding' route. she can keep her cool for a few months before she has some sort of breakdown/lashes out. she feels really guilty about it if she takes out her anger on someone who doesn't deserve it and is trying to work on recognizing when she's about to blow and taking space.

-i also think where mark was very timid and avoided confrontation sarah is the opposite. she WILL stand up for herself, even when it would be better to bite her tongue. this definitely contributed to how the BPS ended up being wanted LMAO she has a lot in common with mark (when he was. alive at least) but she also has a lot of differences

-she is ALSO very stubborn. she does try her best to see other people's perspectives on things but if she feels like they are doing something 'wrong' she is going to have a hard time changing her perspective

-honestly i think a lot of female characters get the girlboss treatment and yes!! i think she is very competent but i also want to explore her flaws and mistakes!! i want her to have messy emotions and relationships with the world around her and i want to talk about her flaws!!!

-??had a dream recently in which i was sarah i think?? and the tips of my hair were dyed red. it looked cool might draw that tbh.

Evelin:

-i will be honest. i do not have a whole lot of evelin hcs :((( i havent gone insane over her enough yet. but i do have a few

-for some reason i think she is supporting a sick family member and that is why she is so desperate to keep her job at MandelaTech. i know shes probably just living alone and trying to support herself but?? idk

-i think she also just really likes routine. she loves stocking those vhs tapes on shelves and i cannot blame her that shit is fun <-sometimes get to put vhs tapes on shelves at work irl

-her and dave are very much friends! they do not really know each other outside of work and really don't know much about each other but theyve always gotten along very well and talk a lot when theres no customers. she would be devastated if she found out what happened to dave.

EDIT:very important to me i know in canon shes the shortest character apparently? but to me she is very tall. thsts all

[betty-bourgeoisie]

What do you think of Nyo America? Like how do you think she grew up and had to deal with societal norms? Do you think Arthur gave her an education, treat her fairly? If you feel comfortable, do you think she was treated differently than Alfred in any way when she was a kid?

I've talked about nyo America's adulthood here.

In terms of early life, I'll be honest 16 & 17 hundreds women's history is not my strong suit. However, I did watch the vhs box set of that BBC 'Colonial House' reality tv show on repeat as a tween so I'll do my best 😜

Anyway, I tend to headcanon most nations as intersex. With some notable exceptions, they do usually end up choosing a binary gender to present as, sometimes because they identify strongly as that gender, though more often because it makes interacting with their people easier. But regardless, gender for nations it's not like,,, a trait assigned at birth the way that it often is in say, modern American culture

All of that is to say that in my mind nyo America is essentially just Alfred if Alfred had chosen to present as a woman instead. She's not a separate character.

Which means early childhood is really not that different for nyo America. Interactions with human colonists are challenging. Being an immortal toddler in a small offshore colony isn't easy and we have court documents from that time indicating that at least one early American colonists was actively taken to court simply for being intersex, so that part of nationhood wasn't going to fly either (I highly recommend the essay "An Indentured Servant Identifies as Both Man and Woman: Jamestown 1629" by Mary Beth Norton if you want to learn more about this). I think it often goes under-stated just how much everyone in the early Jamestown and Plymouth colonies were up in each others business like all the fucking time. These people had a gossip mill running at full speed and there was no where to hide. Baby America simply wasn't going to escape from that unscathed.

Which is where Arthur steps in. Arthur squirrels baby America off to England where she's raised in a country manor, isolated from humans who might take issue with her.

For the sake of this ask we'll say that America begins to show an affinity for girlhood at an early age (5-6ish). She wants to be just like her aunt Bridget! If that means dresses and jewelry and she/her pronouns that's what it means.

Arthur isn't upset about this per say, in fact, America leaning so far towards one particular binary gender actually makes it much easier to take her out in public or to show her off around the royal court. It allows her to visit her own country more often as well. But Arthur does... kind of hope it's just a phase.

He knows perfectly well that presenting as a woman will be harder for America. He worries that it will get her taken advantage of on the world stage, and if anything he is maybe more insistent that America learn about things like politics, warfare, and how to fight as a result.

On the other hand, Arthur is also an English lord and he has appearances to keep up. If America is going to dress as a young lady she also needs to act like a young lady. She gets all the same schooling in politics that Alfred would have, but her education also has a much larger focus on traditionally feminine skill sets and being ladylike.

Tldr: I don't think her education was necessarily different but I do think her socialization around how to behave around other people would have been different.

[athenathegrace]

Becoming Filipino: Reflections

"Becoming Filipino is frustrating and tiring sometimes, so why not, make it Analog Horror?"

This is literally what I had in mind when my group mates were planning our big project for the digital storytelling class. We're on the same ground and foot as the others - They are also tired of the atrocities and injustices manifested from the system, so why make it into an actual horror project right? My group mates are also interested in exploring the depths of the Filipino class and working sectors, gender norms, and analyzing and exploring different socio-cultural issues surrounding the landscape today. The usage of three prompts, mainly the scientific, the social commentary, and the personal, all of this fuel and ignite the spark of actually constructing this project. This gives us the closer edge to connect all of them in one story - how this could also potentially highlight important themes in our project.

That's the big-brain moment that we shared. The horror genre is booming these days, let alone Analog Horror. As a person who has been chronically online since God knows when, it has been a privilege for me to scour and explore the internet, even if it's as weird as normal people would think it to be. What made the Analog Horror boom so much is that it generates discomfort, where dozens of analog horror games have yet to be widely accepted by the public. Many horror game mechanics were introduced, significantly that deal with the focalization of fighting the horror, and getting through it.

Story design is also heavily influenced in gaming, where dozens of plotlines were introduced to denote heavy emotions, conversations, and experiences brought by the characters themselves, or the symbolic manifestations of their upbringing.

Due to it being diverse and interactive, many creators would cater to odd, weirdly deranged game designs to lure the audience – especially if it’s not conventionally horrifying in the first place. Over the last two decades, the field of digital storytelling has expanded considerably, pushing the frontiers of creativity and immersion. Analog horror is by far the most interesting subgenre that has arisen within this landscape.

One of analog horror’s primary qualities as a digital storyteller is its ability to delve into basic fears that are profoundly established in human psychology. Analog technology from the past, such as VHS tapes, audio cassettes, and CRT monitors, evokes nostalgia and a strange sense of familiarity. When these antiques from a bygone age are combined with scary or disturbing content, they inspire sentiments of nostalgia and comfort.

The utilization of analog technology in a digital format heightens the dissonance between the known and the unknown. Watching a low-quality VHS-style film or video with distorted graphics and audio, for example, can elicit an uncanny experience that corresponds to our feat of the unknown. This distinct blend of the familiar and the uncanny is what makes analog horror so powerful at instilling fear and unease in the audience, allowing writers and even creators to tap into primordial concerns that transcend cultural boundaries. While presenting examples and existing analog horror series in the web, I overheard some of my classmates saying that the content is absurd. Not to think of it negatively, but it is definitely true! It is and should be absurd! Just think of how this concept can tickle your senses and not intentionally scare you for the giggles and the shock factor, instead, try to think of it as if you're having a lucid dream - a sleep paralysis for horror fanatics and interested audiences.

Crafting the Project's Discourse

As a gift to feast my fascination with horror, making an analog horror was our task to effectively visualize our message of grief, frustration, and anger, of what we experienced in this godforsaken country for two decades (as I have and only a little age gap with my group mates). The discourse of the project includes the exploration of the elements of becoming Filipino - what we do, what we have, and what we "wasted", metaphorically. This is also a good thing because we're actually utilizing a website fit for the plot of the story! (Augmented Reality-esque cough cough), an inspiration of Hotel 626 (Good times!)

Analog horror frequently plays with the audience's assumptions and perceptions by subverting typical storytelling conventions. The concept can challenge portrayals of socio-cultural identity by incorporating narrative subversion techniques, prompting the audience to question preconceived notions.

The process was initially hard to grasp because we had to connect everything for a unified message. Hence, we had to construct a proper storyline to connect and fit the intended images and messages for the theme. It's a communicative situation where, the viewer, as the product and object of enunciation, is desperately trying to generate and register for his/her/their national ID, which ultimately leads him/her/them to a mental crisis (Hopefully not in a bad way). This gives us a glimpse of also generating the said ID - there are numerous issues surrounding this registration, for almost a year, some of the registered individuals still haven't got their physical IDs, and instead we're given a digital version of their IDs (Which is a laughing stock).

What could've been a better way to actually craft PSAs (Public Service Announcements) to briefly prompt the viewer about the Philippines! Inspired by different PSAs in the past, this also solidifies anachronism within the country's status, and how horrifyingly still exists and the same in the current timeline. Let's say these PSAs were made in the 80s, because of Analog Horror, this gives a feeling of uneasiness and nostalgia. This approach would be made easier without actually using fancy graphics and only utilizing symbols and good structural flow.

Analog horror’s distinct look and storytelling technique allows the project to produce a gripping narrative experience that stays with the audience long after they’ve finished viewing or interacting with the story. The intentional use of analog technology, frequently combined with a lo-fi and vintage style, sets the atmosphere for an extraordinary adventure into the unknown.

Storytellers like us can create narratives that are both original and deeply atmospheric by making use of the limitations of analog technology. The limitations of analog formats promote ingenuity in expressing horror components, such as audio and video modification to generate unpleasant sights and spooky soundscapes. This method opens up a world of storytelling options that both attract and challenge the audience’s imagination.

Somatic Simulation, Paracosm, and the Pharmakon

The sensory and physiological sensations that elicit emotional responses and generate a sense of immersion in the audience are referred to as somatic simulations. In the context of our project, the somatic simulation could be accomplished through the use of various sensory elements such as audio cues, tactile props, and ambiance techniques. The project is heavily involved in incorporating certain sounds and visual aspects that could elicit a strong sense of unease or discomfort, therefore this could improve the audience's immersive horror experience and social awareness.

A comprehensive imagined universe, typically created by individuals, with its own set of rules, geography, and population is referred to as a a paracosm. In the context of the project, the use of paracosm could imply the creation of a fictional but credible and believable realm that ultimately represents the Philippines' social and cultural landscape. This may be fictional and thus not account for a real experience suffered by many Filipinos, but rather an amalgamation of different things that make the Philippines a horrifying place to live in. This type of paracosm could depict the Filipino's concerns and sufferings, which would result in an immersive narrative that compels the audience to address social and cultural issues in a heightened, metaphorical manner!

Lastly, the Pharmakon, which is an ancient Greek philosophical phrase, refers to a material that can operate as both a poison and a cure. In Becoming Filipino, the pharmakon could signify the complexities of the socio-cultural identity being explored. It represents how exploring these challenging and realistic themes can both expose the harsh reality that the Filipino people face and function as a remedy by generating awareness in the targeted audience and constructing praxis to these concerns and issues.

Hopefully, this would turn out beautiful and good once executed. I'm dying to work on this and consider my passion project, in lieu of my group mates' skills and talents, since I worked with most of them in the past!

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Too Much Too Often! (Wishman, 1968)

Doris Wishman essentially remade Too Much Too Often! in 2001 as Satan Was a Lady (not to be confused with the 1975 Satan Was a Lady, a hardcore film she did with Annie Sprinkle that has little do with either of these), and probably the most drastic difference aside from the wide gulf in quality (cannot stress how much more entertaining this one is) is that the gender of the protagonist differs between the versions. In Satan Was a Lady, the evil scheming dominatrix who sets out to blackmail a client and seduce the client's son for easy money is female. In Too Much Too Often!, the evil scheming dom...inator? (that sounds like a killer robot; looks like it's just dom) who sets out to blackmail a client and seduce the client's daughter for easy money is male.

From having seen my share of sexploitation movies, this character type feels so distinctly female that having their gender flipped colours the proceedings interestingly. These movies were made for primarily straight male audiences, so it's no surprise that the female dominatrix types, even when presented as the protagonist, were an object of desire as much as a point of audience identification. Switching the character to male, the audience identification is still there (the somewhat aspirational story arc kind of forces this on the material), but surprisingly so is the sense of desire. I wouldn't call this a particularly homoerotic movie (the one gay sex scene, a whipping session between the main character and his client, is presented in frantic and shadowy contrast to the more sensual straight scenes), but the character is one defined by his charisma and sexual potency. Wishman seems to be in love with this character, even if the things he does (blackmailing his client, beating his pregnant ex-girlfriend) should make us hate him. It helps that the actor playing him, Buck Starr, is pretty magnetic even when he's being dubbed over.

Other than that, this is pretty classic Wishman, with the visual style maybe a bit more forceful and adventurous than usual. (The Something Weird / AGFA Blu-ray for some reason has this on an S-VHS transfer. It actually doesn't look that bad, but I wish this had gotten a proper restoration. Wonder if there's an elements issue.) There's one sex scene between the protagonist and his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend that has a nice playful energy, especially when the camera gets up nice and close and starts tilting on its axis and moving along their bodies. And you get late appearances from Wishman regulars Sam Stewart and the great Darlene Bennett. The latter is seemingly dubbed by someone several years her senior (possibly Wishman herself), and is introduced her nipple perfectly framed in a hand mirror, which is just great cinema. Now, things maybe don't turn out too well for either of them, but that just drives home what a POS the protagonist is.

[bashonline]

[ SEBASTIAN ‘BASH’ EVERGREEN, HE/HIM, CIS MAN, FIONN O’SHEA ] is a TWENTY SIX year old TAPE REWINDER AT COAL CAMP from PROSPER, WV. They are GENEROUS and UNDERSTANDING but also RESERVED and NAIVE.

BASICS

FULL NAME: sebastian thomas evergreen

NICKNAME(S): bash, bee

BIRTHDAY: january 5th, 1971

AGE: 26 years old

HOMETOWN: prosper, wv

GENDER IDENITY: cisgender man, he/him

SEXUALITY: homosexual

FAMILY

MOTHER: delilah evergreen ( nee. weill )

FATHER: thomas evergreen

SIBLINGS: three younger sisters. esther & eden ( twins, 22), and gloria ( 18 )

PET(S): bash is the proud owner of a pet western painted turtle named francesca, also known as franny.

APPEARANCE:

HEIGHT: 5′7″

EYE COLOR: blue

HAIR COLOR: light brown

HAIR STYLE: bash keeps his hair short & neat, although he has been known to keep the front section of his hair out of his face while working by clipping it back with his sister’s butterfly clips.

MAKEUP: when making the trek out to any local gay bars, bash will let himself put on some colorful eye makeup, using a blue eyeliner pencil he found in the bathroom of a bar one time. one man’s trash!

STYLE:

bash enjoys a style that is greatly inspired by the fashions worn by the characters on blossom - bash’s favorite sitcom. lots of large hats adorned with flowers, patterned button up shirts paired with blazers, cardigans or windbreakers and sensible bottoms & shoes. depending on the occasion, this can also be layered with flannels & denim. the heavy layers also help with covering the light bruising always present on bash’s stomach and arms from his insulin injections as a type 1 diabetic.

examples x x x x

FAMILY:

bash is the oldest in his family, and the only son. although his more...conservative family members will happily crack some jokes about how the evergreen’s actually have four daughters.

bash’s family is pretty tight knit. they have game night the first sunday of each month and bash always puts some vhs tapes aside for any upcoming movie nights with his sisters.

bash’s mother & father both work at the DMV and actually met on their first day on the job when they got themselves locked in a storage closet together while looking for staples. and then nine months later, bash was born!

WORK:

having decided that collage wasn’t in the cards for him, bash has worked in almost every job available to him in prosper. unfortunately, his reserved nature made him not exactly ideal for customer service and he has terrible co-ordination so be couldn’t wait tables, so bash was more than happy to sit in the back of coal camp all day, rewinding the tapes for people who chose to ignore the ‘be wind, remind’ messages.

it barely pays enough for bash, who is also a type 1 diabetic, to afford his medical equipment but he’s got his own ways of covering the extra costs.

RIVALRY:

bash just wants everyone to get along. if anyone asks him, he’ll diplomatically say that he believes that everyone is equal - regardless of where they reside. but he still has no intentions of ever leaving prosper, and has a connection to it that he could never get from hazzard. as far as bash is concerned, the people are all equal, but the locations themselves have two very differing vibes.

[huskeddevotee]

Borderlands 3 and the Powerful Man + Crush on woman = Powerful Woman phenomenon

A common complaint in BL3 is how we get spoon fed a narrative of powerful women and girl bosses, without ever seeing strong female characters. No one is actually interesting or with much substance. With the problem of a false feminist narrative, I've had a nagging question in my mind since I first played:

What's up with the crushes?

Zer0 has a crush on Lorelai.

Fl4k has a crush on Ellie. 

Troy has...a thing, for Aurelia. 

Lorelai is an enby who presents and mostly uses feminine pronouns, and is a leader of a small Atlas soldier group fighting Maliwan. Zer0 is an enby/of indeterminate gender who presents and uses masculine pronouns, and is an Atlas spy and assassin. 

Ellie is the owner of the Catcharide and the Sanctuary III's mechanic. Fl4k is an enby bot who is obsessed with death and the hunt.

Aurelia is an older woman who is rich and full of bravado, though not to the point of unclassiness. Troy is a leader of a cult and is both aggressive and intelligent. 

So, this doesn't look bad so far. But look closer and it looks...weird.

We never see Lorelai and Zer0 interact bar an Echo log and a dialogue that may or may not play from Zer0. Troy and Aurelia are fundamental opposites; Troy is a grungy, crass, lowerclassmen, Aurelia is an elegant, classy, hyper-class-motivated woman who detests reprobates. Aside from a one-night stand which is ooc for both, they have no relationship. 

And Fl4k and Ellie…

Fl4k flirts with Ellie once. 

And its not even flirting. 

When the player meets Ellie, if they play Fl4k, their line is "You've got admirable heft, girl."

I am a fat girl. If someone tried flirting with me by telling me I was fat enough for them, that person would be maced. That isn't flirting. It has no grounds for a relationship, but because GB says so, Fl4k says this as a way of showing they like Ellie. 

Now, let's take a look at the boy and enbys.

Troy is a ruthless maniac with a taste for violence and attention. He controls the CoV, even killing a powerful Siren, Maya. He is dangerous. He is depraved. His thing is that he has the masses to throw against whoever oppose him, and years of being out of the spotlight has even turned him against his sister. He's off the rails and taking control. 

Zer0 is a hyper-skilled assassin that is 10 steps ahead of everyone they encounter, predicting enemy plans before they are even made. They are lethal with the blade and incredibly agile, striking fear into their victims with their mystery and oddness. 

Fl4k is a bloodthirsty stalker of men, obsessed with appeasing death after gaining sentience and revels in the fear of their enemies. They've tamed vicious beasts and what they can't sicc the pets on, they take down with a bullet to the head. 

Ellie is a mechanic.

Aurelia is a rich woman who's good at hunting.

Lorelai is a murderous batista. 

Now, the girls are not bad characters. I like them all.

But why do these men like them?

There is no reason or precedent. We have no reason to think these characters have chemistry bar being told there's something there. And all of them are straight - this is notable because the samesex relationship was done wonderfully. They showed chemistry and genuine romance between Wainwright and Hammerlock, why couldn't they with the trio of heteros? 

Because there was nothing to push with Wainwright and Hammerlock.

Every single female character that didn't die, we are told is powerful, a strong woman, a boss lady. 

They weren't. They were stupid, brash, arrogant, and did nothing to advance or control the plot. They told you where to go, and someone else told you what to do. Lilith has nothing to do until the end of the game. Tannis is a factor for 3 things. Ava does nothing ever. Ellie doesn't do anything. Lorelai doesn't do anything. 

Not even Tyreen or Aurelia do anything. Troy does everything for Tyreen until he dies, and Aurelia just taunts you over the Echo and shoots at Hammerlock. On Promethea, Rhys tells you what to do. On Eden-6, Wainwright tells you what to do. On Nekro, Typhon tells you what to do. 

For a game all about strong women, the women have no autonomy and its the men doing everything and moving the plot forward. The only female character that does something significant is Maya, for dying and directly encouraging Troy's abandoned character arc. 

So, we have female characters who aren't convincing as strong, powerful women. 

We know Ellie and Aurelia are powerful and strong - they're fan favorites. Everyone loves Ellie, and for the ten people who like TPS, Aurelia is great fun. Lorelai needed convincing the most. 

What's the easiest way to hammer in "See? They're strong and powerful!"?

Make a strong and powerful male/male presenting character have a crush on them. 

Zer0 is scared of Lorelai and likes it, even messing up the haiku when meeting her. Fl4k admires Ellie’s body - which I’ll get into in just a moment. Troy bottoms for Aurelia. These guys are intimidating and dangerous, so them falling for x woman means x woman is a strong, feminine force that allures them with her strength. 

Wainwright and Hammerlock are good because they were allowed to be a couple. They were just in love and you can see it. The trio never romantically interact beyond telling you "I, scary man, want this woman to step on me" in different flavors.

And what bothers me the most out of all of them is Fl4k and Ellie. Ellie was never a sexual character. She didn't care how people saw her, and didn't care about whether or not she had a man. As a fat girl, I adored her because it was nice to just see another fat girl not be just a Rebel Wilson fat girl. She talked about her body and was happy with it, but it wasn’t just “I am fat and like to f*ck.” 

In BL3, we are constantly reminded that Ellie is desirable and sexy. She tells us she wants to 'show city boys things they only see in nature documentaries'. Everyone's (Sans Zane, bless him) first comment upon meeting her is on her weight and how hot or good it is, rather than saying an actual greeting. You don't do that. You don't greet someone by saying "Wow! You're fat!"

They were trying to be positive about Ellie's body, but instead made the VHs look like feeders. Ellie was positive because her weight did not matter. Making it the only thing about her just...made it weird. 

And Ellie and Fl4k's only flirty interaction is Fl4k telling her they like how fat she is.

At least Lorelai and Zer0 clearly say they like something normal about the other. Lorelai comments that Zer0 is tall, Zer0 says Lorelai is scary in good way. Troy and Aurelia is just an allies-with-benefits, they don't have a romantic connection.

Fl4k, if that line was meant to be flirting, outs themselves as a fetishist. 

This bad character writing and interaction writing happens because we had to be reminded that these characters are powerful, and the only way was to make other characters say "Wow she's hot." The only reason this didn't happen to the main female cast is because they had a main part in the story - Lorelai, Ellie, and Aurelia are all blink-and-you'll miss it. 

The three women not being part of the overarching story means that they don't have a lot of opportunity to show off how capable they are - we have to be told directly, or be shown that they are because someone powerful thinks they're hot. And the thing is, these characters are strong characters, but we aren't allowed to see them be. Ellie was one of the best new characters in BL2, Aurelia one of the favorites of TPS. Lorelai could have been a great character, too. But they just didn’t do anything with them. 

And even stranger, they did this thing with Maya and Krieg.

When Krieg first saw Maya, his thoughts were 1, she's a Siren and could kill me, and 2, I am completely enamored with her. In that exact order. But this doesn’t come off as an attempt of spoon-feeding faux girl power because Maya is blatantly a strong female character. Every second with her, she is in control of the situation and active in the plot, both in BL3 and BL2. You don’t need to be convinced that Maya is a powerful woman, so Krieg being in love with her not only works via genuine chemistry, but because how could he not be? 

But the difference is, with Maya and Krieg, we actually had decent writers who knew how to write relationships between characters and how to, y’know, develop good female characters. 

Which we don’t anymore, evidently. 

[brawltogethernow]

Have you read Phil Jimenez’ Tempest miniseries from the mid 90s? If so, what are your thoughts?

No, but it’s four issues long. Gimme a minute.

Okay, I’m back. That was VERY stupid (compliment). Absolute camp nonsense. Unfortunately it's also kind of bad?

Obviously these aren’t finely aged takes. Plus I have picked up exactly one (1) back issue of Aquafam content prior to this in my life, usually absorbing them exclusively through team titles, and lack of preexisting attachment to the lore here definitely doesn’t do it any favors.

Okay, so. In this title, AQUALAD (Garth), who is already not going by that at this point, has decided it’s time to STAB HIMSELF IN THE CHEST WITH A MAGIC KNIFE to absorb some kind of ANCESTRAL ELEMENTAL POWERS so he can finally update his name and outfit like every single other og Titan did in the eighties. You grow up slow when you’re not very popular! Complicating the planned KNIFE RITUAL, AQUAGIRL (Tula) has SPONTANEOUSLY COME BACK FROM THE DEAD and REFUSES TO ANSWER LITERALLY ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS. This coincides exactly with Garth’s MENTOR GUY who looks like HE-MAN WISHES HE DID being kidnapped, also Tula immediately begins picking fights with Garth’s only other ally present, an EDGY SHARK MERMAID who is trying to enemies-to-lovers route their relationship and doesn’t appreciate being cuntblocked by a rude corpse. Garth decides to COMPLETELY IGNORE this BULK ORDER OF RED FLAGS because of love, which done well could be touching and tragic but in practice makes him look like a moron. He tells his SHARK GIRLFRIEND to gtfo for saying his DEAD GIRLFRIEND is going to fuck up the KNIFE MAGIC, allowing her to FUCK UP THE KNIFE MAGIC IMMEDIATELY. She’s revealed to be a pawn of Garth’s UNCLE, who is a NECROMANCER TRAPPED IN ANOTHER DIMENSION. So NECRUNCLE escapes and uses their (*communist Bugs Bunny meme*) ancestral mojo to summon a SOGGY UNDEAD ARMY. Garth is rescued by his community he thought were all dead but were actually just avoiding him. They reveal that they knew if he tried to claim his family magic his uncle would escape, so they tried to leave him for dead as a baby, and when they found out that hadn’t worked they decided to lie to him instead of telling him not to stab himself with a magic knife, also the knife was just an unnecessary bit of danger they added to the ritual at the last minute for fun. Did they mention they’re pacifists? Except for when they executed Garth’s dad for trying to fight off his necromancer brother, because they felt that was kind of over the line. They’ve been hiding out in a bunker full of COMICALLY NORMAL-LOOKING ANTI-ZOMBIE GUNS, which Garth takes to go fight his UNCLE and his DEAD GIRLFRIEND and his DEAD PET WALRUS, but he still needs to be rescued by SHARK GIRLFRIEND and her family, who she went to get instead of leaving Garth to die of his own dumbassery which he tbh deserved. So Garth yeets his uncle back into the PHANTOM ZONE BUT WET and levels up his magical abilities an unclear amount, the end.

Every single character is as dumb as a plank and deeply unsympathetic, except Letifos (edgy shark) and Atlan (He-mentor), who can get away with acting mostly normal because they are forcibly removed from the bulk of the plot. Every single thing that happens including all of the backstory could be avoided if the cast weren’t completely stocked with dumb jerks.

Great color palette choices, slightly tortured digital coloring on the version online. Nice underwater art that never forgot everything was underwater or succumbed to the urge to just put everyone in a blue void. My inner four-year-old, who is on some level still sitting at the bottom of a pool trying to manifest an uncanny lung capacity and a magical fish companion, was really vibing with it. This is approximately the age I was the last time I interacted with underwater civilization content, but it turns out I still appreciate it as an aesthetic, and this mini nails it.

It was actually slightly too good at remembering literally everything was underwater, in the sense that I had trouble turning my brain off about the logistics and kept pausing to go, “Underwater...blanket...? Why...? How does that...” I am very ready to allow the ocean zombies, however, for cool factor reasons. Although skeletons are also cool and don’t raise questions about underwater mummification.

This was my introduction to the fact that in post-Crisis DC Neptune and Poseidon are two separate dudes, one of whom is blue and has a bubble beard and one of whom is a bald white merman. And they hate each other? Alright! Okay, okay. Like did DC accidentally establish both and they just decided to roll with it?

Now, you know I love me some undead women.👍 Unfortunately Tula’s agency and interiority are lower than zero, just steeply in the negatives.👎👎👎 Tula is Charlie Brown and agency in this plot is the football. Jimenez’s entire approach to women in this gives him an extremely punchable vibe. I would not go to a bar with this man. He remembers the girls have super strength (and doesn’t keep the violence completly divvied up by gender), at least, but doesn’t seem aware that they’re people, which is unsettling. You could have turned around a LOT with like, a single scene from Tula’s POV after it’s established that she’s been bespelled to experience a completely different set of events from reality so that by the end she’s experiencing her ally losing it and attacking her, or just by working harder to convey that experience through her reactions. But lol no it’s fine that she’s basically a hand puppet, because what matters is the lead’s reaction to her! Jail. Go to jail. Also as it stands I’m confused about how her deal shook out to be that she was both not actually Tula and being mind controlled, and also her real experience of love for Garth was critical to the villain’s plan? Explainy-looking words happened but the zombie logistics absolutely went unexplained in spite of them. While we’re at it, why did Letifos come back for a big damn heroes scene at the end. Devoting a thought bubble to addressing this turn around wouldn’t have even had to break the binding contract that seems to be in place forbidding any lines from her not directly about Garth.

Right, the villain. Great design, very gross. I do kind of want to boil him and then try to crack him open and eat him like a crab. Love that Garth lampshades that Slizzath is a ridiculous evil name by saying he can’t pronounce it, right next to the reveal that Slizzath is his uncle. It doesn’t seem like he took that on as his necromancer title or anything. Garth’s grandparents just named their kids Thar and Slizzath. Really, the way that his face is a skull now is their fault.

I was surprised to see that the contentious dick towers from the Little Mermaid VHS cover have taken refuge in this version of Atlantis.

I feel like I should segue from there into something about Garth’s shrinkwrapped costume’s gratuitously pronounced crotch bulge, but like, I don’t know. Whatever. We’re just uncomfortably up close and personal with absolutely everybody’s anatomy consistently, it’s whatever.

So yeah, that was not good. I enjoyed it. I would punch Phil Jimenez in the mouth without hesitation.

[themagichour]

I had a dream about being in a production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show last night, and it's gotten me to thinking about it. I do that a lot. I wrote a little bite-sized "essay" on it last year, which I'd like to share here. It's taken me till my early 30s to realize my queerness and the fluidity of my gender... and I'm lucky to have had this film as a foundation from the time I was, um, a toddler.

Exhibit A: a drawing I did at age 4. Fat Frank N. Furter my beloved. <3

I mention this a lot, but my parents introduced me to The Rocky Horror Picture Show around age two; it became my first-ever favorite film, and I watched it over and over and over and over and over again, exhausting the VHS tape the way another child might stretch thin some clamshell-cased Disney din.

Most people consider this bad parenting, but I am so thankful for it. Before I had any functioning grasp on language, and FAR before I knew ANYTHING of society, I watched boys and girls wearing pretty outfits and makeup, singing the most fun songs, dancing and smiling and living life fully and enthusiastically.

It wasn’t all fun, of course – there was fear, jealousy, anger, sadness, violence, and death – but that was life. And ultimately, those things were worth the joy and experience of being alive. And I’m glad I learned that sooner rather than later.

Sexuality was not a concept at that age, and I had only a base understanding of the difference between “boys” and “girls”. When I watched Rocky Horror, I saw that boys and girls were the same, and that sometimes boys were girls, sometimes girls were boys, and sometimes they were both, and sometimes they were neither.

Boys kissed girls, and boys kissed boys, and girls kissed boys, and girls kissed girls. People kissed people. That was love. And bodies were fleshy and present and alive: they were what made us, and they let us do things like sing and love and dance and laugh. And we could make them pretty like Christmas trees, dress them in anything we liked. Dress them and paint them in whatever way made us happy, and use them to do whatever made us and others happy.

Unfortunately, as I grew, society very quickly taught me shame surrounding my own gift of a conscious, human body. But luckily, what society NEVER did, was convince me that gender and sexuality had to be a certain way. My favorite childhood movie had already shown me the truth of those things, before I knew really anything of the world, and before I knew what the characters were saying when they spoke and sang.

In the summers and winters, we’d fly to Ohio and live with Grandma for a few weeks or months. Kip and Kevin rented the other side of her duplex, and they had two happy dogs, one big one and one small one. I’d play with them in our shared backyard, and loved how they wore little knit booties in the snow. I threw balls and sticks for them with Kip and Kevin and Mom, and those are some of my happiest memories.

I knew Kip and Kevin loved each other the way Mommy and Daddy loved each other. There was nothing “odd” or “strange” or “different” about it at all; certainly nothing “wrong” or “bad". It just was.

When I first became aware of the words “gay”, “lesbian”, and “homosexual” — when I first became aware of slurs — I could not for the life of me understand it. I didn’t understand why there were words for it, and I especially did not understand why there were bad words for it. I hadn’t even realized there was an “it” at all. And I hadn't realized there was a difference between me having a crush on Brad and me having a crush on Columbia. It was “okay” that I thought Brad was pretty, but “not okay” that I thought Columbia was pretty? Not okay that I wanted to look and dress like both of them?

Over the years, society tried to make me ashamed of who I was, and who and what my beloved characters in Rocky Horror represented. Worse, it wanted me to hate those things. And I refused. But the one black-cloud-looming idea that sadly did poison me was that of fear. I spent my childhood, teenage years, and young adult life afraid to let anyone know that, yeah, I wanted to kiss Brad – but I wanted to kiss Columbia, too. (And maaaaaaybe I had a little thing for Frank. But let's keep that under our hats.)

I’m happy to say I fear that less and less with each passing year. And I’m trying to take back love for my body, too. I’m trying to remember what I saw before I was “taught” anything: that I can do what makes me happy with it, and that I can love what and who makes me happy with it.

My mother always says how she “didn’t know gay people existed” till she was twenty-two and in college. Just a few months following this realization, in 1975, The Rocky Horror Picture Show was released. It played for just one weekend in the United States before it was pulled from theaters.

Imagine if my mother had not been cisgender and heterosexual in small-town Ohio in 1975. Imagine she had instead been her close friend Mel. Mel, whose close friend Kathleen had not even known he'd “existed” till they'd both entered college.

Imagine what Rocky Horror’s release and stuttering rise to cult fame did for people like him. Barely anyone noticed its birth at the time, but when it was rediscovered one year later, it became a space for those in the queer community to celebrate themselves. And it taught those who weren’t a thing or two, as well. They also came to love it. And in those cramped midnight cinemas, there were humans. Nothing more, nothing less. “And crawling on the planet’s face…”

So, yeah. Rocky Horror is important, and it always irks me when people pan it as “stupid” or “weird” or “annoying” or “overrated”. While my Mom was learning in college the truth of gender and sexuality, I was learning in college that the old Hammer and Universal movie monsters were often portrayed as being effeminate, posing a threat to society, and having a knack for disrupting the engagement between two young, straight, white, apple-pie-wholesome lovers.

Sound familiar?

Thank god for the passage of time. A pox upon the steps the rotten bits of modern society shoves us down. But we brush off our knees and resume climbing. And thank god for The Rocky Horror Picture Show, you know? Bad parenting? Nah. What my parents and Richard O’Brien gave me was a gift: I saw humanity in its (literal) naked truth, nearly right out the womb. For the first few years of my existence, I knew that biology, sexuality, gender, individuality, fun, and love were what made life. And it was so very, very pretty.

I was watching The Mighty Boosh with my niece in 2009. She was just shy of six years old, and when Vince Noir kissed Howard Moon upon a rear-projected rooftop, she didn’t bat an eye. I sat there on the couch with her and smiled as she took in the wacky costumes and colors and musical numbers with joy, and I believed in humanity. I continue to, despite everything. And I know that art does, in all cheesy sincerity, move mountains.

Exhibit B: 20 years after my Fat Frank doodle... painting my face and badly but lovingly singing and playing the intro number. (I was trying to emulate Tim O'Brien's voice, for the record, that's not my natural singing voice lol.)

Anyway... it means a lot to me. And sometimes I just gotta think aloud about it. If you've never watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show, you should go and do that!

[kirrtash]

It’s only after their mother dies and they get in contact with the first, unfriendly, demons that Inuyasha finds out that the human’s obsession over fitting everyone in one gender it’s weird for them too. They have already learned to keep quiet about what they think about themselves. What their body is, and isn’t, to them, they don’t tell the humans in the castle. Inuyasha doesn’t even tell their mother.

It has been a few years since they stopped living in the castle, when they have again the occasion to meet an human, on a moonless night. That particular one, as every other, is immediately concerned with their appearance, assuming their gender without even letting them speak.

Inuyasha doesn’t feel particularly attached to one nor the other, on a good day doesn’t even think about it.

(On a bad day somebody just has to remind them, usually while trying to kill them, and aren’t they lucky?)

They don’t go near another human settling for years after that night. Those are safer than the forests and fields, at least when they are weak, but they don’t have it in themselves to deal with stupid humans and their stupid way of thinking.

In a way this hurts more than being half breed. Their mixed heritage is on plain sight for everyone to see, and there is no mistake to be made (with the exception of one night per month): one look at their ears and the story of their birth is on plain sight for everyone to deduce.

But the way humans expect them to adapt to their roles, to dance to this tune they don’t fit in, just after one look at their body, that’s worst. Humans and demons alike hate them for their blood, but both of them just ignore how they feel about their body. It’s just irrelevant.

So Inuyasha makes sure that it’s irrelevant for themselves too. In any case they don’t even have the words to explain it, so why bother? It’s not like they have someone to tell, and the most important thing right now it’s to survive.

They never get around telling Kikyo about this too. She barely accepted their mixed blood, Inuyasha is not sure she can take more. They don’t want to take the risk of another rejection. As for the sacrifice they are willing to face, it’s not that different from the other one they already accepted to make when she asked, just another part of their identity they will have to renounce to.

Kagome is strange. She doesn’t question them and the way they present themselves, doesn’t even seem to notice. The girl has bigger problems anyways, it’s her fault if them both are on this quest. But she always looks at them with a bit more intention when they slip, in the way they refer to themselves, when the hyper masculine terms they use out of habit, to comply with the image others have of them, to not raise questions, get stuck in their throat. She always notices.

She asks one night, when everyone else it’s sleeping. They have just met Sesshomaru again and Inuyasha is quite proud of their victory, even if in reality the bastard run away just before Tessaiga could break definitively. Inuyasha still counts it as victory.

“It’s something that I have noticed before, but why did he refer to you with neutral terms?”

The asshole has never had anything to say about their gender obviously, as it’s normal for a demon, but Inuyasha doesn’t really want to explain to her. They huff and try to dismiss the question with a vague gesture and a “whatever” but she just keeps waiting patiently, peering at them from under her eyelashes. They both know that the answer it’s not simple, and the question is bigger than it could look to a mere bystander.

Inuyasha takes a breath. She has been on their side for a while now, and they don’t want to lose her. But at the same time she has already told them how irrelevant their mixed blood is for her. No. Not irrelevant. A part of them. Just a part of who they are, as normal as their hands and eyes, something that makes them THEM. If she could accept that, then maybe, just maybe…

Inuyasha doesn’t know how to explain, but Kagome is patient. It’s like a flood. When dawn comes, and, how? When? She stops them, shakes Sango awake and quietly informs her that she and Inuyasha are going back to her time. She then calls for Inuyasha and they start walking away from the camp. As soon as they are out of ears’ reach, she resumes the conversation.

She looks among books and books in the public library. Inuyasha just stands aside, the hat flattening their ears, trying not to draw attention and not to be in her way. They didn’t even stop to her house to say hi to her family, she knew she didn’t have anything of what she was looking for there.

“There must be something! I have read a couple of things but I cannot remember where I found them again!” she looks possessed, and Inuyasha is not going to bother her.

She comes up with a few books and articles from magazines, and is eyeing critically the huge computer in the backroom, pondering if to search on that too, since the Higurashi family doesn’t have one.

Inuyasha is not really listening to her. They are scrolling through the written text, trying to make good use of what little reading abilities they have, and to interpret the futuristic language and culture. Their worldview is being thrown off right now.

If for demons gender (and now they know the difference between gender and sex, and gender expression too, isn’t that neat?) is inconsequential, humans 500 years in the future keep spending a lot of time thinking and talking about it. Still, the revelation is another one. Demons don’t care about gender, you can’t use it against them. Humans don’t care too, they know where they fit and it comes natural to them to abide the unwritten rules that concern the sociality. Despite this, here Inuyasha gets a glimpse of another world. These books give them a place, among others, give their struggle a name and a reason and companionship. They are not the only one. There are humans too, here, going through something that might, with a stretch of imagination, be considered similar to their experience.

Kagome takes some books back home, essays and narrative ones, and some vhs to see on the television. Her family is nowhere to be seen and they are back to her room. Inuyasha feels safe there, the day has already been a mess, and their head is still spinning. “I don’t know where to look for more, but we need to understand better, honestly Inuyasha, why didn’t you speak sooner?”

They know her temper is without fire, that she is just worried, but it hurts the same. She must see their look, the flattened ears, because she backtracks immediately. “I’m sorry, I can understand why, it was a stupid thing to say. It’s just… I want to help. I would like for you to tell to the others too, but it’s your call. I’m sure they will want to understand though. That’s why I need to find more…” she is off again, checking on the list she compiled while looking for materials, and Inuyasha watches her go in the direction of the stairs and the living room, still shell-shocked.

“I didn’t even ask you!” She seems to have realized something, her voice still audible from the other room “I’m so bad at this, I’m sorry! Which pronouns should I use?”

Inuyasha can’t help the laugh that escapes their lips, they don’t know what to answer. But they will find out. There are words out there for them, just waiting to be discovered. Their experience can be told, and damn them if they are not going to.

—

 A disclaimer: I am a cisgender woman, so my knowledge and undersanding of genderqueer identities can only be a secondhand one. This to say that I hope that I have not offended anyone with this depiction of this identity, and if I have I am deeply sorry, since it was not my intention.

For something so short I really had trouble writing this. First my native language doesn’t have the option of singular them, and I never had any occasion for using it before, so I’m sorry if I made mistakes. Second, Inuyasha the character, in the anime, while referring to themselves, uses Ore, an highly masculine way of saying me, and I didn’t want ignore canon completely even if I played fast and lose with the timeline, since I don’t remember what happened when. Additionally, and I never looked into the language so I’m not sure, I suspect that there are A LOT of pronouns whit different nuances in the spectrum between masculine and feminine in the Japanese language. So I had to take in account three language shifts while writing this tiny little thing. I’d like to add that while il like to think that my personal knowledge on transgender and genderqueer identities is not that bad, I haven’t the faintest idea of what 199something Japan might knew about it, so I kept on the conservative side (considering they are still a really closed off country about LGBT+ issues, I feel that it’s the most realistic portrait)

I cannot help but think about Inuyasha and a nonbinary or genderqueer identity. Assuming that for demons gender is something much less regulated by social norms than for humans, and that because of their upbringing Inuyasha didn’t get to receive a positive and validating explanation of gender and sexuality by none of the two cultures, I suppose that (in the feudal era!) it would have created in them an even higher sense of isolation and oddness. That’s probably why I love the idea of Inuyasha going to the pride for the first time (first gay pride in Tokyo was in 1994…)  and in general realize that they are not alone. 

It is a deeply difficult and isolating situation, not having the words to describe, even to ourselves, our identity, and I am happy that the modern ways of connecting with each other are lessening this kind of isolation.

this was written for day 5 of @inuyashapridemonth2020​

[princesssarisa]

22 questions

Thanks, @cinefantastiquemitho!

01. The book that transformed your life. Freak the Mighty. It traumatized me so much in middle school, I think it singlehandedly changed me from a mostly happy (if quiet and overemotional) child into a moody, anxious teenager. The same goes for it’s ‘90s movie adaptation, The Mighty, starring a young Elden Henson and Kieran Culkin. It’s about the unlikely friendship between two misfit middle school boys: Max, the big, hulking, “stupid,” somewhat mentally disabled protagonist with a traumatic past, and “Freak,” an intelligent yet small, severely crippled, and (spoiler alert) terminally ill boy who rides on Max’s shoulders and serves as his “brain,” leading him in modeling their lives after the knights in the Arthurian legends he reads. Basically, it’s like Bridge to Terabithia meets a PG-rated Midnight Cowboy with Arthurian themes. I was forced to read it and watch the movie in school and it shook me to the core because I identified too much with Max. Not that I ever thought I was stupid, but since I was also a physically heavy, intellectually disabled, socially awkward, often teased, withdrawn misfit, I saw myself in him, very, very much. So to watch his struggles, and then in the end to see him devastated by his only friend’s death, hit hard. If that spirit medium I recently talked to was telling the truth about my past life as Emily Brontë’s best and possibly only friend, then maybe subconsciously I saw her in Freak (since she was also a “freakish” misfit who nonetheless was highly intelligent, witty and imaginative) and relived her illness and death in his. At any rate, it plunged me into a long depression that must have seemed inexplicable to the adults around me.

02. The movie that changed your way of seeing the world. The 1983 telecast of Madama Butterfly from the Arena di Verona, starring Raina Kabaivanska as Cio-Cio-San. In hindsight, it was a flawed production. Kabaivanska was a 49-year-old Bulgarian grand dame, not the least bit convincing as a 15-year-old Japanese girl. The tenor, who was supposed to be her worldly seducer, was young enough to be her son. There wasn’t a single Japanese person in either the cast or the creative team – it was all a European fantasy of Japan. For that matter, Madama Butterfly is inherently problematic with its racial and gender issues (in other news, water is wet). But watching this old telecast on VHS, out of curiosity about Miss Saigon’s source material, was the real beginning of my passion for opera. I was already familiar with The Magic Flute, but this was the start of my love for opera beyond that one. The tragic romance of the story, the visual beauty of the sets and costumes, and Puccini’s sumptuous musical score captivated my fourteen-year-old self. It led me to VHSs of La Traviata, Carmen, La Bohéme, Tosca, Rigoletto, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, L’Orfeo and Turandot, as well as other videos of Butterfly, and then to opera performances onstage. It gave me a new passion and gave me something beautiful to share with other people through “Opera Quest,” the program I’ve created to introduce opera to elementary school students. I’m so, so grateful to it!

03. The music that makes part of the soundtrack of your life. Opera, Broadway/West End show tunes, and Disney songs.

04. Define longing. It’s wanting, but deeper and stronger. It’s constant wanting, painful wanting, wanting that almost becomes obsession.

05. If you got back in time, which scene would you visit of your life? Any of my Thanksgiving visits to my grandma in Mesa, Arizona. Of course I’d love to see her again – she died 12 years ago – but I also loved wandering around the pretty retirement community where she lived, listening to Les Misérables or to Andrew Lloyd Webber on my headphones, and then sometimes swimming in the outdoor pool. I also loved the restaurant we always went to for Thanksgiving dinner, and if possible, going to see the lavish Christmas lights at the Mormon Temple a day or two later.

06. The place where your heart is. Los Angeles. Even though I wasn’t born there, it’s the earliest place I remember. I grew up there and it’s only been four years since I moved away. Every time I’ve gone back to visit since, I I’ve had the overwhelming feeling of “I’m home!” Even though I’m glad not to be living in a big city right now, I wish I lived closer and could visit more often.

07. The travel of your life. I haven’t travelled very much outside the US, though I have been to Canada, London and Ireland. Within the US, I was born in Connecticut, I’ve lived most of my life in California, and I’ve spent a lot of time in New York (relatives live there), Washington State (more relatives live there), Arizona (my grandma lived there), Florida (other grandparents, plus Walt Disney World), Montana (still more relatives), North Carolina (still more), and Minnesota (family friends). Once each I’ve been to Chicago, Boston, Cape Cod, and small towns in Vermont and New Hampshire, and I’d love to go back to each of them one day. I’ve also been to North Dakota, but don’t remember it very well, and I’ve spent at least a few hours each in Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, but not long enough to do much of anything.

08. An author that you have met recently, and whose works you want to continue to read. Not too long ago I took a writing class taught by April Halprin Wayland, who wrote the beautiful Jewish children’s book New Year at the Pier about the tradition of Tashlich on Rosh Hashanah. I’d definitely like to read more of her books, especially her Passover children’s book, More Than Enough. I’d love buy them for my little cousins on the Jewish side of my family.

09. Coffee or tea? Herbal tea. Rooibos chai is my favorite.

10. Who's your Doctor (if you don't watch Doctor Who, who's your favorite character from a TV series)? I couldn’t say. I don’t watch Doctor Who or much TV at all anymore. Let’s just say I love the main characters from all the TV shows I watched when I was little.

11. If you could just throw everything away and live your dream, what would you do? I’d buy a safe and luxurious self-driving RV (this is a fantasy, after all) and travel all over the US, living in a different place for a week, two weeks, or a month at a time. In this fantasy, there’s no pandemic going on, so I have the freedom to go anywhere. I’d visit every big city, every cozy small town, and every notable place of natural beauty, I’d go to the opera and see local productions of Les Misérables wherever I could. I’d visit my relatives whenever I liked. I’d present “Opera Quest” at a local school in each place I visited. But I’d also spend plenty of alone time in my RV, or in whatever hotel or inn I chose to stay in for a little while, and work on the books I’m writing, listen to music and meditate. There would be no pressure on me from anyone to do anything. That would be amazing.

12. If you could choose to be a character from a book, TV series or movie, who you would be? None. Some of them have nice lives, but they all have their problems too, and I’d rather keep my own problems than take on theirs.

13. What makes you not like a story? Characters we’re supposed to like being cruel and spiteful to each other and neither regretting it nor being properly called out for it. If their behavior is clearly supposed to be bad and treated as such within the story, it’s one thing. Even if they never regret their own behavior, that’s fine as long as the other characters call it out as bad. But when they don’t, I feel like the author is saying that anyone would be just as cruel and spiteful in that situation. That it’s no big deal, it’s just human nature and anything better would be unrealistic. I hate that.

14. Do you like romance in stories? Why? Yes, I do like it. Not if it’s badly written, but when it’s well written, I love it. I love watching two characters come to care so deeply for each other, fill each other’s deepest needs and bring each other happiness. Of course that happens with platonic love too, but romance is the way it most often happens in stories.

15. Which book did you hate having read? Well, I didn’t like having to read Candide as a college freshman, because despite all its humor, it’s cynicism depressed me. I was going through a stage where I was feeling overwhelmed by the world’s problems and had turned to idealistic spiritual beliefs to comfort myself, so I hated having to read a book that essentially said “Optimism is stupid, the world is a terrible place, there is no God and no good reason for anything, and all we can do is try to make the best of our individual lives.” (Yes, I know that’s a vast oversimplification of Voltaire’s philosophy – it just came across that way to me at the time.)

16. Which movie did you hate having watched? I’ve already mentioned The Mighty, above, so... another one... When I was seven or eight, I saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for the first time, and I was very disturbed at the end by Wonka’s angry outburst about Charlie and Grandpa Joe stealing the Fizzy Lifting Drinks. Of course everyone can agree about how scary and mean Gene Wilder acts in that scene. But imagine how much worse it would be to an ultra-sensitive little kid on the autism spectrum, especially since I wasn’t expecting it. I had read the original book already, so the fates of the four bratty kids and the infamous boat scene didn’t phase me because I knew to expect them. But movie-Wonka’s final test is a movie-only addition, so I had no idea he was going to start screaming at poor Charlie, and to me at that age, an adult suddenly screaming in rage at a child was scarier than a child turning into a blueberry any day. Yes, it’s only a test, Charlie passes it and all ends happily, but it still upset me.

17. Do you like anime/manga? Any favorite? It all looks very nice, but apart from seeing Kiki’s Delivery Service and a few episodes of Pokemon as a kid, I haven’t experienced much of it. Maybe I should explore it more.

18. Who is the best villain you saw in a story? I don’t think I can choose just one from all the stories I know. For the best villain from Shakespeare and opera, I’d probably have to say Iago, because of how thoroughly effective his scheming and manipulation are. For the best Disney villain, I’d have to say Frollo, because of how horribly realistic he is: as an abuser of power, a racist, a religious bigot, a sexual predator, a psychologically abusive foster parent, and in the way he believes everything he does is holy and right. But there are so many good villains in all genres of fiction, choosing just one favorite is impossible.

19. If you could do an interview with any person, alive or dead, from our world, who would you choose and why? William Shakespeare. I have so many questions about his plays. They’ve all been interpreted in hundreds of different ways and I’d like to hear what his real intentions were when he wrote them. And for that matter, if he really did write all of them or if there’s any truth in the anti-Stratfordian theories.

20. If you could meet and and befriend a writer, who would it be? I just said Shakespeare, but I don’t want to repeat the same answer twice... Well, if that spirit medium was right, then I’ve already met and befriended three famous writers in a past life: Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Supposedly I spent “many hours” with all three of them, but was especially close to Emily. If that’s true, then I’d love to meet them again, do some catching up, and talk with them about the modern controversies surrounding their books... especially Wuthering Heights, which seems to defy easy interpretations of its characters and themes.

21. Cats or dogs? Dogs. I just adore them!

22. If you could choose any time period or society to live, which it would be? A year ago, I would have said “right here, right now.” But with this global pandemic taking place and the future of the world and of America in particular feeling so uncertain, I’ve changed my mind. I’d rather live in one of the fantasy worlds I’ve created: either the Sisterhood of Nira’s valley (the setting of my completed but unpublished novel An Eternal Crown) or Zalina Island (the setting of the Beauty and the Beast and Little Mermaid retellings I’m working on). Those places might have flaws of their own, but at least they’ve made social progress that this country hasn’t made, and they have magic too. If I could I’d move to one of them, at least until the pandemic is over and we have a new president.

I tag @simone-boccanegra, @astrangechoiceoffavourites, @nitrateglow, @thatvermilionflycatcher, @sunlit-music, @theheightsthatwuthered, @fairychamber, @wuthering-valleys

[in-tua-deep]

While genetically the Boy and Five are the same there has to be an aspect of nature vs nurture. So how do the two differ? Does the Boy want his own name and not simply a gender or does he want a name to symbolize becoming part of a family? Do the two of them react to situations differently? I love this AU so much and I need more!

(for more commission boy au/clone five au check out the previous posts on it one, two, three, four, five)

oh absolutely they’re as different as they are similar - even identical twins raised together are different people, after all! And that’s identical genes (like Five and Boy share) and similar upbringings ;3c

they’re both traumatized in very different ways (with overlapping similarities, like both of them don’t trust strangers/adults they don’t know as they’re both used to adults only wanting to use them/cause them pain)

Five is fucked up about the apocalypse. Fucked. Up. He still has minor meltdowns over what if the apocalypse happens today despite them having stopped it. Probability maps are scrawled across the walls in whatever was closest at hand when Five’s brain went into meltdown mode

The Boy doesn’t use math as a crutch like Five does (or as a way of keeping his mind busy, or as a self soothing habit, or anything else) because he wasn’t allowed to write on,, pretty much anything. He had to give verbal reports. After Five’s whole “hide my equations and plans from the commission by writing them in secret in a book” thing, they didn’t trust the Boy with any kind of planning materials. The only reason he knows how to write is because he pretty much taught himself, tracing letters with his fingers in the dust or on steam covered mirrors tbh

(his handwriting is. atrocious. borderline illegible. he really struggles writing with a pen or pencil but can fingerpaint letters/numbers just find. it’s a work in progress and on god five is going to get his little clone as fast as five himself is at writing shit on walls)

the Boy is still a little math prodigy but he’s only done enormous mental equations, which he is very good at!! but it’s definitely limited him (so he wasn’t capable of doing the complex time equations that Five figured out)

The Boy and Five present their nerves about new situations very differently - the Boy goes small and quiet and anxious whereas Five deals with it by going on the aggressive and yelling. This is because the Boy is way more afraid of punishment/rejection than Five is and is more unsure of his position in the family and his default is “obey, do what they say regardless of how you feel just power through it or face the consequences”. 

Meanwhile Five’s default was ‘rebel, yell, bring attention to himself because if the spotlight was on him then it was off his siblings’ which is depressing in its own way. The Boy didn’t have siblings to protect, he was alone. Five himself probably wouldn’t have drawn attention to himself if there wasn’t anyone to protect, but there was and he did. He bristles like an offended cat and yells

(but tbh, Five doesn’t actually expect anyone to actually listen to him. both him and the boy learned a long, long time ago that their opinions didn’t matter to the adults, that they might as well not be saying anything at all. The Boy went quiet. Five got louder.)

The Boy is definitely more willing to embrace childish things than Five is, because Five feels he has to protect his reputation and prove that he isn’t a kid 

and if there’s some residual trauma there of children vs. adults where Five is fairly convinced that status as an adult offers him some measure of protection against people like Reginald and the Handler, there’s always that. But Five is also probably more willing to be one of “the children” if that means the Boy isn’t alone as the only child because Five’s “protect” instincts overpower his “self preservation” instincts tbh

the Boy is really enthusiastic about things when he thinks he allowed to be (so basically when he’s around Five bc he sees Five as an ally - though he’s getting better around the other siblings without five as a buffer)

his favorite movie is lilo and stitch no you can’t change my mind. it’s the movie he plays constantly as a comfort thing that he never gets tried of. If this was in the era of VHS he would have worn out the tape. Why??? because the boy points at the screen and is like “!! i’m an experiment as well!” and then watches this little blue alien find a family for himself and he’s like “it me!”

…does that make Five the Lilo in this?? possibly. Allison says that it’s more like the Boy is Lilo and Five is Stitch considering Five is the chaos gremlin between the two of them but whatever

(“This is my family. I found it, all by myself. It’s little, and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good.”)

I keep wanting to say the Boy is more skittish than Five but that’s?? not quite true? they’re both skittish and don’t trust easily and cling to the idea of family but in different ways idk like the end goal is the same but they take very different paths to it u know what i mean?

i think the Boy probably does eventually get a different name. Maybe not a name-name since the Boy’s idea of what a name is?? is kind of skewed? like his fav character is Stitch and his brother is Five and he was raised by someone names the Handler like this kid was never gonna have a normal name let’s be real

honestly he probably ends up stuck with something like. Kiddo. Because i HIGHLY doubt the family actually calls him ‘boy’ and in absence of an actual name to call him by end up with nicknames and to differentiate him from Five “Old Man” Hargreeves they probably call him kid and kiddo

i’m thinking about differences and similarities between them again hmm

Five is definitely more assertive?? Five can read the Boy really well (and vice versa) and tends to act as the Boy’s spokesperson when the Boy isn’t comfortable or something. Usually it’s just Five cutting in abruptly like “back off idiot he wants a ham and cheese sandwich not whatever the fuck that is”

the Boy is more likely to approach an issue with violence whereas Five tends to swear and yell and threaten as a first step. Where’s that one meme?? the Boy is “stabs without warning” and Five is “warns (loudly) before stabbing” 

the Boy is arguably more deadly than Five since he’s been trained in assassination since basically infancy where Five was taught to be a hero which are arguably very different skillsets (the Boy was never taught about minimizing casualties or saving anyone rip) BUT Five is more experienced and has arguably more creativity than the Boy. 

Five is a lot more playful in his fighting because he was because when he was little, fighting was playing. That’s how Five and the other umbrella academy kids bonded - by beating the tar out of one another and outdoing each other. They showed off for each other. The Boy is more straight forward because to him, fighting is a job to get over with as soon as possible

ironically it’s five who has to teach the boy to play, and not the other way around. Jump Tag is a favorite between the two where they just zoom through the house trying to catch each other - Five is a lot better at jumping than the Boy since the Boy wasn’t permitted outside of missions and training, but he’s catching up quick (after all, Five did take a brief 45 year hiatus because his powers burned too many calories in the apocalypse, but it’s a bit like riding a bike in that he never forgot)

even so Five is NOT the person to teach others to play because his childhood was messed up as all fuck

so it’s probably claire that really teaches them how to play

Claire is a well adjusted kid whose confidence, unlike Five’s, is not faked. She has adults she knows, loves, and relies upon. She has healthy relationships with peers. She goes to public school and knows and is friendly with a lot of different people. 

So this like, 8-year-old walks in and meets her two skittish emotionally immature uncles (cousin? depends on if they consider the boy to be five’s brother or son) who don’t know fuck all about anything and is like “ah yes. i am your big sister now. i am in charge here.”

and while Five at least rails against the “big sister” charge, neither of them really protest Claire taking charge?? they’re both very willing to follow along behind her tbh neither of them are leadership material and they both know it. they’re probably both very protective of her

if claire is ever bullied god help whoever chose to pick on her bc Five is absolutely willing to maul a middleschooler and the Boy would be right behind him

well i mean. Five is a follower but he’s a little bitch about it, you know? like he’s willing to go with whatever but also if it’s a dumb idea then fuck you. So he’s confrontational with his siblings but if they were ever like “okay then five you take charge” he would be like “oh no. nuh uh. i’m not taking responsibility over all you idiots my blood pressure would go through the ROOF.”

Five loudly declares that Claire is way more sensible and sane than any of the rest of his family so she’s the only one he’ll take real orders from.

(and then Grace walks in and Five will absolutely listen to her as well and not just because the Boy is lowkey scared of Grace and Five is trying to set a good example - as much as he’s capable of setting a good example)

i feel like i’ve talked about their different issues with food, where Five hoards, is food aggressive, and will eat everything whereas the Boy is used to bland nutrition bars and sludge with everything he needs for the day so his issues are more him not knowing what the fuck anything is, being iffy about any strong tasting foods/spices, struggling with eating outside of allotted food times/getting his own food 

there’s a whole post about their differences in nightmares/how they deal with those floating out there somewhere

their fashion sense definitely differs in their own ways? The Boy accepts anything he’s given with no questions and has no style of his own where Five tends towards what Klaus calls “hobo chic” in that he discards clothes he deems not useful to survival. You won’t catch Five in ripped jeans or tight pants that restrict mobility (though admittedly tight restrictive clothing would make the Boy uncomfortable as well but he’ll wear what he’s given with no questions)

both boys struggle with capitalism in that there’s Way Too Many Options for things that are dumb. It’s really overwhelming for them both when they’re sent to the store for like, toothpaste and have to enter an aisle with a bajillion different options for one (1) whole thing

OH the Boy doesn’t shoplift. Five frequently shoplifts because his idea of possessions are “it’s in my hand or in my claimed space/room/etc. it’s mine” regardless of the passage of money whereas the Boy’s idea of possessions is “nothing belongs to me ever” and they’re still working on both of those things

they’re both kind of wary around animals because neither are used to them or know what to expect from them. Mr. Pennycrumb is a therapy dog and no one can convince me otherwise and both boys are instantly smitten with him (but they’re still kind of iffy around like. big dogs that bark. or horses. fuck horses they’re scary motherfuckers.)

the Boy doesn’t like bugs very much after living in the very sterile Commission science rooms but Five will literally pop a wolf spider in his mouth for a snack so yEAH they both have. very different perspectives on that. The Boy is absolutely horrified and the first time he witnesses this hides behind Klaus for half a day because what the FUCK FIVE while Five is unapologetic

they protect each other and support each other and figure things out together bless

it’s secretly a very wholesome au behind the horror of the commission cloning five and training a small child to be a murder machine

[missholson]

SHIP HISTORY MEME

Embrace your past and get to know your friends’ fandom origins!

Rules: Post gifs of your fandoms / ships starting with your most current hyperfixation and work backwards. (Bonus points if you share any stories about how or when you got into that ship! But not necessary!!) Then tag anyone whose fandom history you’d like to learn about!

Tagged by the sweet @unwillingadventurer​, thank you girls! <3

Hoffmann & Tennstedt (Das Boot) The baby face & the stone face. :) The biggest reason for this series is my sister, who tried to lure me into the fandom already last summer by showing the first episode. Sadly it was a far too distressing experience. The story is about a WW2 German warfare, so it isn’t very light entertainment for Saturday night. The show seemed like a worth watching production, though, but I doubted if I could ever watch it completely. After visiting Berlin now in February 2020 there was no hesitation anymore. The story focuses on the Nazi German submarine, U-612, and the occupied city of La Rochelle in France. However, not everything is as black and white as one might expect. One of the biggest messages of the show is that war is always brutal, no matter which side you fight. The innocent are always suffering. It also shows how the ideal thoughts of warfare crumble, if it comes at the cost of greed, deception, health or life. There is disagreement among the leaders on boat, too. The new commander, kaleun Klaus Hoffmann, is young and inexperienced but kind-hearted and wise. Next on the scale, IWO Karl Tennstedt, is an experienced sailor and an glory-seeking soldier, who envies Hoffamann's position. He regards Hoffmann as incompetent and a disgrace to Germany. So, there is plenty of tension between these two!

Louis & Philippe (Versailles) I started watching the show sometime in 2015, but found it quite distasteful. It was more brutal than expected, and I was overwhelmed by people's greed and dirty behavior, so I stopped watching after a few episodes. Every now and then I saw pics/gifs on Tumblr, especially of Monsieur and Chevalier, that I finally wanted to give another chance in January 2020.  This time the experience was the opposite, and I got a better grip on the story. I was surprised how little I liked the popular Monchevy pair and, instead, so much the quarreling brothers. I was very moved when they joked with each other and showed brotherly love. In the scenes of conflict, I missed their compassion. I haven't watched the rest of seasons 2-3 yet, so I don't know if they get better. I hope so because together they would be a powerful duo.

Matt & Cherry (Red River) I had recorded Red River (1948) on my set-top box, and the closing date was expiring in December 2018. It was Montgomery Clift’s breakthrough movie, so it was a must see. The movie was a refreshingly different western, where the hero is not a macho cowboy and John Wayne a bad guy for a change. But most of all, I was amazed how Cherry Valance's behavior towards Matt Garth was so heavily double entendre. At first they are presented as challengers and opponents of each other. Slowly Cherry starts to show admiration for Matt, and increasingly talks about his gun. In return, Matt needs Cherry's shooting skills to herd cattle. Eventually they become each other's trusted ones. I always find it fascinating, if tension begins to develop between the opposing characters. If the story has a couple that doesn't change, develope or lacks dynamics, it probably won't arouse interest.

Fritz & Dr. Frankenstein (Frankenstein) I had seen a Tumblr gif of Renfield crawling in Dracula (1931) in August 2018. It was Dwight Frye’s breakthrough role. The movie inspired me to watch other Universal monster movies, of which Frankenstein (1931) became my favorite. The work pair of the story, these two outcasts of society, melted my heart. For unexplained reason they have joined their forces and seem to be working well together. They have a mutual partnership, where they can act naturally without fear. Their work is unique, e.g. digging the graves or snatching hanged bodies, but they treat it like any other dayily job. Somehow, I like this way of approach. Actually I have written about Fritz already earlier, where I take a closer look at their relationship. The text can be read here.

Adrian & Antony (Sebastiane) Well, this couple is a specialty of its own. They are another ones found through Tumblr. I saw a picture of them in June 2018 which led me to watch the film. In terms of story or acting, it's not a very special movie but technically professional level. First of all, it was shot under the blazing Sicilian sun on 35 mm film. The light is a vital factor when using a film camera, so the pictures look very rich. The scenes, where these two are having fun together in slow motion, are breathtaking. I had never seen anything like it before and, in my opinion, stole all the attention of the story since they were just characters in supporting roles. It was like a gay paradise on earth.  Here I realize the importance in the way how the characters are presented. The technical presentation can play a surprisingly huge role when we try to read and understand the characters. It can influence us either to share their thoughts or to move even further away from them. Bonus points I give for Latin, which the entire cast is speaking in the film. I would also like to clarify that this is not a p**n movie or a family movie either. It’s a gay erotic story with some full frontal nudity.

Reinhold & Conrad I’m not sure if this is a ship or fandom, but I feel extreme warmth and joy for this pair (the Berlin trip may have something to do with this). They are also the only people from real life instead of characters. I’d like to share my story about them, unfortunately it's very long (I've never been a fluent writer) but explains my interest in more detail. I got to know Conrad Veidt already in high school at the turn of the millennium, the time before DVDs. Near the school there was a buy-sell-exchange movie shop, where my sister and I visited regularly. Somehow we ended up with the idea that we wanted to see The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), so we went to the store again. There was no copy, as expected, but the seller said he would keep in mind if one came up. Months passed and after a long break we visited our regular place again. This time, the man had news for us: he had received a copy and kept it in safe for us. We couldn’t believe our eyes and ears. First of all, the kindness of the man made us speechless, and secondly, we never thought we would get our own copy of such popular rarity. At that time movies were not re-released as often as they are today. It was a VHS cassette, bw, not tinted like the original version, and its quality was far from the 4K richness and sharpness. My sister still has the tape and is one of the treasures she will never give away. For years the film was the only Conrad movie we saw, along with Casablanca - until the digital age and the social media arrived. Again I have to thank Tumblr, where I found the actor Anton Walbrook. One of his most famous films, Viktor und Viktoria (1933), is directed by Reinhold Schünzel, whom I knew from Conrad's film Different from the Others (1919). I began to study Reinhold's background more closely in December 2017, and it turned out that he is a forgotten multi-talent in the film industry: He was a versatile performer in comedies and dramas, a prolific director and an idea-rich screenwriter. He had an eye for creating stories that were told in the minds of people in addition to acting and lines. He questioned gender roles and built juicy plot twists around them. He loved theater and was a popular celebrity in 1920’s Germany. He was also a colleague and friend of Conrad. They began their film careers at the same time in Richard Oswald's films, shared the ups and downs, even their wardrobe, and reached fame. Eventually they both had to emigrate from the national socialist Germany, so their paths parted. The following reunions were always a joy, “like the meeting of comrades who fought in many wars together”. Reinhold was supposed to direct Conrad’s first film at MGM in Hollywood, but the plans were changed. They never got to work together since the German years, when Conrad died suddenly. “Part of my life is gone forever”, as Reinhold wrote in his tribute to Connie's death in 1943. He returned to Germany in the end of 1940s and died in Munich in 1954. This is why they are so precious to me and why I find it important to share the memory of these two lifelong friends. The picture is from Eerie Tales (1919), one of their earliest movies together with the director: Reinhold, Richard and Conrad. Reinhold’s full tribute can be read here.

I’m tagging: @wohlbruecks, @perfides-subjekt, @kennyboybarrett, @chapinfan69​, @electricnormanbates​, @ars-historia-est​, @suchamiracle-does-exist​ and anyone who likes to do it. Would you like to share your stories behind your otps? :)

[theburningbright]

XAVIER DOLAN By Jessica Chastain (interview magazine)

When Xavier Dolan presented his first directorial effort, I Killed My Mother—an autobiographical psychodrama about an unruly teenager and his teetering, at-wit’s-end mother—at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009, he had just turned 20. The film received an eight-minute standing ovation, and the labels subsequently affixed to the now 25-year-old Québécois writer, filmmaker, and actor-wunderkind, enfant terrible—certainly spoke to Dolan’s precocious emerging voice. But in the past five years (and with four more feature films), he’s put together a body of work and a distinct point of view that might just make him contemporary cinema’s next great hope.

The stories he’s told—a pair of best friends falling in love with the same man (Heartbeats, 2010); a transgender woman and her partner coming to terms with her choice to transition (Laurence Anyways, 2012); a twentysomething menaced by the brother of his dead boyfriend (Tom at the Farm, 2013); and his latest film, Mommy, a scrappy widow and her troubled son fighting against the world for self-preservation—examine the intimate experiences of characters typically beyond the range of quote-unquote normalcy, moving toward emotional or revelatory catharsis.

Last year at Cannes, Dolan’s film won the Jury Prize (an honor he shared with Jean-Luc Godard), but it wasn’t just the jury who was impressed. Jessica Chastain, who saw the film at the festival, reached out to Dolan via Twitter, and not only have they embarked on a friendship, Chastain will star in Dolan’s first English-language feature, the upcoming showbiz drama The Death and Life of John F. Donovan.

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In late November, while she was on a brief break from promoting her film Interstellar, Chastain phoned Dolan at his home in Montreal to talk about growing up among women, the intoxicating power of James Cameron, and Mommy, Canada’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

JESSICA CHASTAIN: Hi, sweetheart! This is the first time I’ve ever been on this side of an interview. The first time we properly met was in New York, but I saw Mommy at the Cannes Film Festival this year and I was so blown away. I tweeted, not even really expecting anything, how much I loved the film, and then you and I had a very funny exchange.

XAVIER DOLAN: Should we have a recollection of that?

CHASTAIN: I think people should know how charming you are. I think we should tell them, first of all, that you’re my beard. Is that correct?

DOLAN: [laughs] There’s an awards season coming, and if I’m a part of it, I’m going to need a beard!

CHASTAIN: If you ask me, I am there for you, babe, 100 percent, but you have to take me to dinner first. Do you remember the video you sent me?

DOLAN: Celine Dion—is that it? I first sent you “Take You” by Justin Bieber, and then I deleted it because I was ashamed. How provincial of me, to send you our national treasure. Justin Bieber, Celine Dion—generations of Canadian national gems.

CHASTAIN: You wooed me with Justin Bieber, and so now I am forever your beard, my friend. [laughs] Okay. So where were you born?

DOLAN: I was born in Montreal at the Children’s Hospital. It sounds very cute, but that’s the actual name.

CHASTAIN: Did you grow up in an artist household?

DOLAN: My dad sort of did everything. He’s a musician, a composer, an actor—he’s an artist in all possible ways. He drew and painted—he still does. But even though he was composing his music, they were pop songs, like “Take You.” [both laugh] Not the same budget, though. My parents divorced when I was very young. My mother moved to a faraway land—suburban Montreal. I was brought up in a mainstream environment, culturally speaking. I watched all the kids films—Matilda [1996], Jumanji [1995], Home Alone[1990].

CHASTAIN: What brought you to acting?

DOLAN: My aunt Julie was a production manager and she heard of an opening. Some show was looking for children to run around the house or whatever. I auditioned and got the part, and I showed up in all of my monstrous energy, bouncing everywhere like an electron. I loved the experience, and I think it was important to my mom because she watches every show on TV, like 20 of them, and records with her VHS—yes, that’s correct, VHS. Anyway, sorry, I got lost on my mom again. I digress on my mom. Then I just started auditioning for commercials and shows and films. I got a part in a package of commercials for this big drugstore, from the age of 6 to 10. For four years I shot those commercials and old ladies would stop me on the street and grab my cheeks. That’s how it started.

CHASTAIN: So you digress to your mother. [laughs] It’s interesting going through your films—I want to know how much of it is autobiographical. You were just talking about your mother recording television shows. In your films, the television is an obstacle for bonding between a parent and a child. Is that something you directly took from your life?

DOLAN: In what movies have you noticed that?

CHASTAIN: Laurence Anyways and I Killed My Mother.

DOLAN: You’ve seen I Killed My Mother?

CHASTAIN: Of course, honey! I do my research.

DOLAN: [laughs] Well, I’m very flattered that you would research. When, at night? [laughs] How very extrastellar of you to watch these. Well, you’re right. I Killed My Mother is autobiographical. I would say the percentage of accuracy is 250 percent. I’m kidding—it’s, like, 240. The other films aren’t really. I’m very far from Laurence Anyways. I haven’t experienced heterosexual love and then a gender switch. I haven’t been held hostage like Tom is in Tom at the Farm. I haven’t lived any of these things, but every character is very personal because there’s a lot of me in their anger, their loneliness, and in their rage against society, against people who ostracize people who are different. Even the characters that seem so far away intellectually or socially, for me, when they speak, it will always be my words. There’s a lot of my mom in these characters because you write characters with the things that you’ve watched. As an actor, I’ve been recording forever. I’m a watcher. I’m a stalker. I love everything about people: the way they walk, the way they talk, the way they cry, the way their mouth is distorted whenever they do this or say that. It’s always been a passion for me to observe.

I’ve been recording forever. I’m a watcher. I’m a stalker. I love everything about people . . . It’s always been a passion for me to observe. Xavier Dolan

CHASTAIN: You started acting when you were 4. What brought you to writing and directing?

DOLAN: I always wrote. I’ve written stories since I was 9. We didn’t have a computer at home, but my aunt Magda had one. Whenever I’d go to her place, I was in the basement working on her computer, writing stories. Then I would save them on a … Fuck, what would you call these? They’re so gone right now.

CHASTAIN: Floppy disks?

DOLAN: Exactly! Yes. [both laugh] Floppy disk. I love you for bringing the words to my illiterate mouth.

CHASTAIN: Stop it! You have to remind everyone that this is not your native tongue.

DOLAN: My first language is French. I just love words so much, and in French it feels like I can say whatever I want however I want. In English I feel like I’ve got some words … [laughs] It often feels like I’m lacking the precise term, and it’s really annoying to me. So I would save these stories on a floppy disk until the next time I would go to my aunt’s, when I could continue to write the story of guardian angels sent to Earth to protect the mere mortals.

CHASTAIN: Oh my gosh.

DOLAN: That was the sort of stories that I would write, called The Indispensables or whatever else. There was one called Pink Wings. It was very, very gay. There were always angels.

CHASTAIN: How old were you when you wrote this? You’re saying it was pretty gay—at that time, did you actually know that you were?

DOLAN: I think I always knew. But, then, I didn’t know. I had girlfriends when I was young. [laughs] I was a crazy child. It was such a special childhood. When I was 8, I saw Titanic [1997] with my mom—I rarely went to the movies with my mom—and then we saw Finding Nemo [2003]. One day she brought me to see As Good as It Gets [1997], and I was pretending I was going to the bathroom when I was actually watching Titanic again in another room. When we saw the movie, it transformed my childhood into something else. I was a dreamy kid, and I was dressing up and pretending to be characters, and I was acting out and everything, but when I saw the movie, it made me crazy. I started designing costumes, drawing something like 2,000 outfits. All of that stemmed from seeing the costumes and all the production design and how big it was. It was so vast. It had such a huge impact on my childhood, telling me that it was legitimate to dream that big. The other kids were playing hockey, and I was drawing these clothes and writing letters to Danny DeVito and Leo DiCaprio. “Dear Leonardo. I’m 8 years old. I go to school. I love school.” The letters started like that. Anyway, he never answered, and now it’s too late.

CHASTAIN: Aw.

DOLAN: There will be hell to pay. [Chastain laughs] I didn’t know I was gay, but I knew I was quite different—and not in a special way. My obsession with DiCaprio and [Kate] Winslet and the costumes and everything was so disproportionate. It scared everybody. Actually, I think everybody knew but me. I knew for sure when I was 11 or 12. I came out to my cousin when I was 13. I said something so stupid. If a kid said a line like that in a TV show, the screenwriter would be fired and killed immediately. I told her, “I love women in my heart but not in my undies.” Something like that.

CHASTAIN: No, you did not! [laughs]

DOLAN: She reminds me of that often. It was horrible.

CHASTAIN: Do you feel that with your writing and directing and acting you can delve into what it was like to be that 8-year-old kid watching Titanic and trying to figure out their sexuality? Is it a way for you to explore that within yourself?

DOLAN: I think it’s a way to channel rage. I was a very violent kid. I think movies and writing and art have been a way of channeling this. But I have this will to defend people—it can be all sorts of people. In Laurence Anyways it was a transgender woman; in I Killed My Mother it was an adolescent who was rejecting his mother because he is going through his coming-of-age crisis; in Mommy it’s a more existential thing. These characters are expressive and they’re flamboyant, but they have nothing to do with the other characters from the other movies—it’s always about the things that marked me when I was young. Batman Returns [1992], Titanic, those are the movies that have printed something very deeply into me. I recently realized that most filmmakers start making movies when they’re 30. So they’re looking to the films that they saw when they were 17, 18, 25. Most of them have an education, and if they don’t, they spend years watching films. The only years I’ve spent watching movies were the years when I was a kid, and my father brought me to Jumanji. He didn’t tell me, “Kid, I’m going to show you Bergman and Eisenstein and Citizen Kane.” No.

CHASTAIN: Mommy was in the main competition at Cannes, and it won the Jury Prize. This is your fifth feature film that you’ve made, correct?

DOLAN: Yeah.

CHASTAIN: How old were you when it won the Jury Prize?

DOLAN: I was 25, the age I am right now. And by the time this interview is published, I will still be 25. I will be 25 forever.

CHASTAIN: First of all, congratulations, because Mommy has been selected as Canada’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film for the Academy Awards, which is huge, hello. The film hinges on this imaginary Canadian law that allows parents to give their children up to the state without involving the courts or a fee. What brought this to your mind?

DOLAN: That law is something I read about that had been voted on in Nebraska in the early 2000s. It’s been abrogated, but it was a Safe Haven law that applied to older children. It was used by parents who were barely scraping by, but were also endangered by their behaviorally disordered children. I read about that through a mother’s story, a mother who had abandoned her child in one of those hospitals. She was completely helpless. Her son was younger than the one in Mommy. She had another son, I think, and her son would be very violent, physically and verbally abusive, to her other son and to her. He was a good-hearted kid, of course, and he was mentally ill, and there was no health care whatsoever. She’s completely at the end of her rope, and she sees a future where one day she won’t be able to stop her kid from killing himself or killing someone, so she brings him to this place. I was really moved by the story and thought, “Well, that’s one for a movie eventually.” Then one day I shot with Antoine-Olivier Pilon, who is the lead in the film, in the music video for “College Boy” by this French band, Indochine. I had a major artistic crush on him.

CHASTAIN: He’s also in Laurence Anyways, right?

I was a very violent kid. I think movies and writing and art have been a way of channeling this. Xavier Dolan

DOLAN: He appears briefly in Laurence Anyways. He was already strikingly charismatic and impressed everybody. He really impressed me. I saw him and I was like, “This is the kid from this movie I’ve been planning on doing.” He was one of the elements that impelled me toward writing Mommy. Him, and hearing Ludovico Einaudi’s song “Experience”—he’s an Italian composer; that is the piece you hear in the movie when Diane, the mother, dreams of the future. When I first heard it through a friend at a random party, I was like, “Oh my God. This is a song for a mother who sees the future that she will never have, who dreams the life that she will never have.” I wrote that scene not knowing it would be in Mommy.

CHASTAIN: Anne [Dorval]’s performance is so incredible. Everyone’s performance in the film—Suzanne Clément … In all of your films, the female characters are so inspiring to watch. They’re not stereotypes of an idea. You allow the women in your films to have flaws and strengths. Speaking as an actress, I can tell you it’s very rare to get scripts like that. When you won the prize in Cannes—and the president was Jane Campion—you said, “The Piano [1993] was the first film that I watched that defined who I am … [It] made me want to write films for women, beautiful women with soul and will and strength.”

DOLAN: I was brought up with my grandmother, with my great aunt, with my mom, with my babysitters. All the ladies, “All the single ladies.” [both laugh] It’s who I am. They are the people I want to talk about, they’re the people I want to protect, they’re the people I want to put in my movies and see fail or win. As a writer, as a human being, and as a young man, it’s easier for me to express my anger, to ask questions, to seek answers, to talk, to cry as a woman in a movie. I connect with those figures more than I connect with men. Men are born privileged in the scale of things—I’m generalizing, but it’s true. Women have to define themselves in the eyes of men. They have to fight for their rights, especially in a society that will pretend that there is no fight or no battle, that it’s a cliché, that feminists are reactionary, all these things. As a young man who struggled to find his identity and to find his place, I relate to that quest for belonging in society. With mothers, especially, with their flaws, the way they have made huge sacrifices in order to be good moms or just moms. They probably sacrificed a part of their career, they sacrificed some desires, some dreams. I cannot relate, but I love to talk about it.

CHASTAIN: Where have you been all my life?

DOLAN: Well, I’m here now.

CHASTAIN: Thank God!

DOLAN: And I’m not going anywhere.

CHASTAIN: In I Killed My Mother, your character leaves a note that says that he can be found “in his kingdom.” I’m wondering where your kingdom is.

DOLAN: I hope you’re not disappointed by the answer. Geographically, I can’t name a place, so I will talk artistically and emotionally. My kingdom is on a set. It’s the only place on Earth where I feel I’m not waiting for something. Except when I’m waiting for the touch-ups, the fucking touch-ups.

[doomonfilm]

Thoughts : Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (2014)

The Austin-born Zellner brothers have apparently been circling my radar for a while.  The Austin connection aside, I remember finding a score for a film by The Octopus Project on vinyl for cheap one day, and nabbed it.  Years later, after a screening of Damsel, I put two and two together that the soundtrack was for the Zellner brothers film Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, and every since that moment of realization, I’ve had it on my radar to watch this film.

Kumiko (Rinko Kikuchi) is a 29-year old OL living and working in Tokyo.  She lives in solitude, accompanied only by her pet rabbit Bunzo and the treasures she collects on her adventures in isolation.  During an excursion into a cave, she finds a VHS copy of Fargo, and the only scene she is able to view is the scene where Steve Buscemi’s character buries a bag of money in Minnesota.  Convinced that the events she is watching are real, Kumiko takes on a conquistador mentality in hopes of discovering the treasure.  She attempts to steal a map of Minnesota from a library, and after a confrontation with her boss, Kumiko decides to move forward with the search for her ultimate treasure she discovered in Fargo.  With her former boss Sakagami’s (Nobuyuki Katsube) corporate card in hand, Kumiko leaves Bunzo on a train and boards a plane to Minneapolis, Minnesota in hopes of reaching Fargo to discover the hidden treasure.

The fact that Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter is a recount of a story based on true events that were inspired by a recount of a story based on true events creates one of the oddest (yet subtle) meta-narrative structures I’ve ever encountered.  Setting the story in Tokyo adds the dissociative aspect that forces the viewer to search for connection (in this case, it’s the cultural gap played against the shared interest in Fargo), which further enriches the viewing experience.  A third layer of experience is added when the film fully kicks into the adventure portion of the film, going in on the conquistador and new world aspects, as well as the shared stories leading to the possibilities of true treasure aspect.

Having the inciting incident for the narrative of this film be based on a key aspect to another film is a very intriguing element to build your story around.  It’s impossible not to connect the films once Fargo is introduced, so when mirroring story elements present themselves, it evokes a unique emotional reaction based on our knowledge of how the events in Fargo played out.  In turn, the adventure becomes a roller-coaster of emotions as Kumiko navigates her way through a strange new world in hopes of discovering hidden riches.  The film provides one of the best meditations on the state of being that is loneliness, landing in the same company as films like Her or Jeremiah Johnson. 

The Zellner brothers utilize an extremely playful camera considering the sullen nature of the solitude it captures, often times punctuating a visual joke by stopping and allowing the character to return to the frame for the button of the joke.  The score provided by The Octopus Project punctuates each moment brilliantly, heightening the emotion connected to Kumiko’s mental state from scene to scene.  The vivid reds and oranges that emit from frames that involve Kumiko doing something for herself keep our spirits up as we partake in her adventure alongside her.

Rinko Kikuchi embraces both the reserved nature of person who chooses solitude with the bold determination of a conquistador, resulting in a strong, silent protagonist being pulled by emotional hopes.  Nobuyuki Katsube and his stern adherence to Japanese tradition stand in stark contrast to Kumiko’s uniqueness.  David Zellner’s kind-hearted police officer portrayal is an example of the kindness of strangers, and allows for an awkwardly funny cultural and gender gap experience.  Yumiko Hioki provides a brilliant voice-only portrayal of an overbearing mother whose ‘good’ intentions turn into the element that drives her own daughter further and further away.  Most of the additional characters play small, transitional roles, peppering in different shades of outgoing nature to further drive home Kumiko’s choice to remain alone.

Damsel is one of my favorites of 2018, and having now seen Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, I think it’s safe to say I’m a huge fan of the Zellner camp.  I can’t wait to see what the brothers have in store for the future.