#does this track or is it too absurdist

[dreamyintersexouppy]

calling her early breast growth air buds the way they’ll be playing basketball someday soon

[tyrantisterror]

Your recent train of posts about you-know-who’s book series got me thinking. You once said “The Owl House works as a sort of rebuttal to Harry Potter in a lot of ways”, care to elaborate on that statement? Especially in regards to how The Owl House’s worldbuilding and themes clash with Harry Potter’s?

Oh man... I don't want my blog to be consumed by Harry Potter Hot Takes. I'd prefer to vent most of those feelings through my wizard books instead, it's more productive that way.

So, ok, short version: The Owl House is about a teenager from the mundane world discovering there's a magical world hidden away, goes there to learn magic, and in the process uncovers a plot by an abominable fascist to commit genocide. In very simplistic terms, that is more or less the same plot as Harry Potter.

But the devil's in the details, isn't it? Luz doesn't have any grand inheritance to claim, no prophecy to fulfill, nothing that makes her the most special specialest special person of all time. There's even a whole episode early on where a villain tries to lure her to her doom by claiming she's the chosen one, and the lesson is that NO ONE is "chosen" for greatness - greatness is something you make yourself, not something that's thrust upon you. She is not inherently gifted as a witch - in fact, she struggles harder because she doesn't have a a special bladder true witches are born with, and has to learn an ancient and forgotten method of spellcasting basically from scratch to cast spells at all. She is, emphatically and at times definitely deliberately, the opposite of what Harry Potter is.

So is her academic experience. There's a magic school in this setting, and (at first) it wants nothing to do with Luz because she's human, not a witch, and thus is believed to be incapable of casting spells. So Luz's primary mode of education on magic comes from a private mentor, Eda, who is also a wanted criminal and social outcast because of her disdain for the draconian rules of their society. Eda is an unconventional but magnificent mentor, one who is as willing to try new things and learn new methods as Luz herself, and who helps Luz discover ways to make possible what everyone else claims is impossible. Eventually Luz does convince the magic school to take her in, but in the process she changes how it runs, challenging a lot of its preconceived notions and forcing them to do better.

Which is vital, because the biggest problem facing the society of this magical world is narrow-minded reliance on outdated social categorization. Like HP, people are sorted into categories (covens here instead of houses), which they are then forced to stick to and never dabble in the others. It is explicitly compared to both the concept of tracking in real world education (i.e. forcing kids into a career path early and ONLY giving them education relevant to that one career) and the house system of HP:

And it's wrong. It's both presented as needlessly limiting, terrible for encouraging advancement and growth of both the students and society as a whole, and an immoral system that's only kept alive by the "Well, this is how we've always done it" inertia that keeps so many awful traditions in education alive. And I really do mean it's immoral, because it's the brain child and secretly crucial evil tool of a genocidal fascist.

I kind of cringe at writing those two words since I feel people have been WAY too quick to accuse cartoon villains from children's shows of fascism and genocide - like, Chairface Chippendale writing his name on the moon with a laser would probably kill a shitload of people in real life, but that doesn't mean he's an analogue to Hitler. But Belos, like fellow Disney villain Frollo, is clearly intended to be exactly that: a genocidal fascist. In a world full of magic-fueled absurdist black comedy beats, Emperor Belos stands out as a consistently serious threat, tonally dissonant with his surroundings in a way that makes him chillingly effective as a villain. And like real world powerful bigots, his power primarily comes from the fact that the systems of society favor his mindset over those of outsides like Luz and Eda - all the systems of oppression our heroes chafe against were either created by or worsened by him, with the express purpose of using them to kill everyone and everything in the magical world.

Luz could not be more thematically opposed to her enemy, and the story is incredibly consistent in showing how defeating Belos alone isn't enough, but that the systems that empowered him have to be disproven and dismantled. His enablers must be destroyed or humbled, the prejudices he encouraged must be torn down and fought at every turn, and innovation and progress must be embraced for the good of all. There's so much stuff you could analyze about the themes in that show regarding oppression and the othering of people who are different, and it's all so, SO much more consistent than the discussion of the same themes you'll find in Harry Potter.

[soupthatistohot]

BSD: An Absurdist Analysis - Chapter 10

Friends and Foes

[Masterpost]

The chapter opens with the agency getting news of Atsushi’s capture after last chapter’s events. At first Ranpo and Kunikida respectively argue that the ADA isn’t responsible for saving Atsushi and that they have too much other work to worry about on account of a job involving the ministry. 

But then Fukuzawa appears, demanding everyone to suspend their work to track down Atsushi. Ranpo tries to argue with "logic," but Fukuzawa completely bulldozes him, asserting that Atsushi is their comrade and that he must therefore be their top priority. 

Fukuzawa stands out as the absurdist here to me, forgoing all typical professional protocol simply because one of his employees is in potential danger. Bureaucracy would want the agency to continue work as usual, favoring completing the assignments given to them over Atsushi’s safety, but Fukuzawa is not one to bow down to greater powers (at least, in this instance). 

Fukuzawa’s argument is one of humanity. Empathy. Care. For him, all these values trump Ranpo’s cold logic as he prioritizes the life of his employee over a government assignment. It's quite absurdist of him.

And finally… the moment we all have been waiting for… the infamous soukoku dungeon scene with the one and only babygirl himself, Chuuya Nakahara. What a lovely view indeed.

But in all seriousness, there’s something inherently absurd about the whole situation. Dazai has allowed himself to be captured by not only an enemy organization, but one he is a traitor of— all in the hopes of gaining information. Let it also be noted that Dazai’s coworkers have no idea of his plan at the current moment, he’s gone completely AWOL. And on top of that, he has willingly put himself in the position to converse with his former partner who undoubtedly resents him not only for his betrayal, but also for merely existing. 

And it works. 

His plan works! Despite not having seen or interacted with Chuuya for four years, he is able to flawlessly manipulate him into revealing the information he came for and gets off primarily unharmed (except for the bruises I’m sure will form from Akutagawa and Chuuya’s hits). Yes, Chuuya calls him out on his bluff (he knows he got captured on purpose), but Dazai is still able to convince Chuuya not to kill him. 

This is an example of a protagonist embracing the absurd and it working in their favor. Dazai could have tried a more conventional way of obtaining his intel, but he opted for this seemingly insane method instead. Very often, the absurdist protagonist has to take a wild chance on something despite the possible pitfalls. Put simply: you’ll never know if you don’t try.

Not only is the situation inherently absurd, but so too is their interaction. They bicker. They tease. Dazai makes Chuuya do an impression of a rich girl. It’s fucking ridiculous and it’s also all par for the course for their relationship.

I would like to quickly note here that in these analyses I will not be making a case for any ship, and that includes soukoku. It is no secret that I very much ship these idiots, but I can also acknowledge that Asagiri did not write these characters with the intention of building a romantic relationship and reading it as such is simply my interpretation. However, this does not mean that soukoku don’t have a very complicated, close, soulmate-esque bond. Platonic interpretations can still involve these traits.

Admittedly, I am jumping the gun a bit here, as this interaction doesn’t resolve until the next chapter, but I’ve read this scene so many times that I know what I want to say about it, so there it is!

As always, I’m always open to chat about my analyses! I love hearing feedback and additional thoughts, so feel free to reblog or drop questions in my ask box :)

[Previous]

[tipsygnostalgy]

"It was never that serious," said Rose Lalonde calmly. — a deranged rant on update rose + philosophy

now that rose has officially hopped onto the "nothing matters" track of things i'm inclined to believe faux-absurdism is a sleeping agent in the strilondian neuroticism paradigm moreso than a real plot point but yeah anyway i have mixed feelings

on one hand i can definitely see why people don't like her / think she's ooc. the classic process of "cause major change in a character" goes inciting incident -> development -> big blowout moment demonstrating the change (appropriated + bastardized from mr freytag himself), and in my personal opinion the comic jumped the gun on this one? we get the inciting incident (candy timeline's irrelevancy) and both irl timeline and character arcwise are plunged straight into the blowout with very little time in between. there's a tiny hint with the light symbol playing a role (more on this later) but for the most part it feels sudden and unjustified if you're insane about rose + understand sufficient epilogues metaphilosophy + and are coded specifically to like this type of shit you Get Exactly What's Going On and fucking dig it. if you don't, you think they've put her through a meat grinder and i can see both

on the OTHER. dear god i'm sucking on the sweet teats of knowledge and absurdism like a baby at the bath. her swapping her constant need of "why" to "why not" and both rose's constant struggle with Light mixing with the irrelevancy of candy and coalescing in one big idgaf war except.

except on the third hand it's worth mentioning that she's also half-assing absurdism so bad that it gets pathetic. her last line "I knew you would forgive me anyway" actually solidifies this arc as one big tantrum that they plan on developing into Not A Thing (hopefully) because she doesn't tell kanaya "I knew it wouldn't matter." the forgiveness is what she focuses on. the forgiveness matters. kanaya still matters to her whether this dumbass light player is consciously aware of this or not and i think ironically KANAYA knows this better than she does which is part of her saying she refuses to mediate this one. on a rosemary level this is jaw-dropping on a character level BOOOO

MAKE HER ABSURDIST! make her sit there and do things not for the sake of kanaya but literally only to do them. make her sit there and genuinely believe the only obligation in reality is to live it. dirk fails at being a true absurdist too he starts injecting meaning into life like there's motherfucking nothing and rose actually acknowledging there's zero meaning whatsoever but living anyway and in that process learning to love life (juxtaposes jake's adventurer) would juxtapose her to him but NOOOOOO she has to sit there and go Well there's no meaning to Life. It was Never that serious. Fuck you. but then refuse to kill herself (thereby proving camus right once again) then now what. now What. Ohhhh "nothing" matters cool then die. dirk's suicide was meaningful because he broke that formula okay he went There's no meaning to life? Ok. then immediately hung himself he DEVOURED that sequence he subverted absurdism back into existentialism which is cool but ROSE COULD PERPENDICULAR THAT!

[arvensimp]

This is not a request, but what do you think the gang does for fun in between classes? For some reason I feel like they'd all be playing hacky sack or some shit lmaooo

Hm... NGL part of me lowkey feels like the meme squad is kinda like the breakfast club in that they probably didn't spend much time together in school after their ordeal. Like they would acknowledge each other in the halls or whatever, but... I dunno, I think they'd all be too focused on their own thing, especially since the player and nemona are the only two in the same track.

Nemona's got a lot on her plate as a champion rank trainer and class president

Penny...just straight up is not a social child lmfao

And Arven? I don't really see him as the sort who reaches out to others to just hang out. Boy's been alone for too long and isn't used to asking for help.

THAT SAID. I think after graduation with Nemona, Penny, and the player all working for the league, they would find a way to bring Arven into the fold. I'm thinking they play board games and like...jack box or mario kart on like a weekly basis. Penny has the sweet set up, Arven brings snacks, and Nemona and the player bring actual skills to the games lmfao

They also probably get a group chat going that is 100% memes, but everyone has different meme styles. Like Penny is v much gen z absurdist "me n the boys @ 3am looking for some BEANS" type of haunted humor.

Nemona loves pokemon humor, like she spams videos of igglybuffs getting yeeted away by the wind or of fuecocos being just DUMB AS HELL

meanwhile Arven loves the pokemon equivalent of minion memes. don't ask him why, he just...he fuckin loves those lil guys. he has all the humor of a facebook mom wrapped up into one hot guy.

god i love him so much.

everyone also constantly posts cute pictures of their pokemon doing just the most mundane shit like it's the most important thing in the world

[black-arms-hivemind]

I love how my silly little brain prescribes like a significant chunk of the vocal tracks of ShTH to the Black Arms in some way

I Am (All of Me) is Doom to me - especially the bridge but I do kinda see the whole song as Doom's POV with bits from other characters interlaced within

Almost Dead really fits my interpretation of the Black Arms well but honestly I think that one is meant to be a Black Arms theme like actually so. Lol.

All Hail Shadow, I appreciate what you're going for. But consider - Black Arms Leader Shadow theme. Am I, the creator of an AU of that caliber, biased? The world may never know /j

Alright now it's time for the kinda absurdist ones. No basis in canon (well I guess the last one was kinda like that too but whatever), just me being a blorbo brained bafoon

Maybe this has come about because I really like Chosen One but I have so many gripes with the semi-hero ending and how it's executed but. To be I ended up associating that song with Eclipse of all people a lot LOL. They were meant to be the Blarms' Chosen One but. Man.

Does taking from the "lost songs" that never actually made it into ShTH make this more or less absurdist? Whatever. Broken fits Shadow's characterization in Shadow Fall so well to me

And uh. An honorable mention of a vocal track that's not from ShTH at all but I do wanna bring up as it's tangentially related to this whole post theme

Truly the most absurdist of all as this straight up involves one of my OCs but I like to imagine the one singing Sonic Boom (the Sonic CD US Opening music) is Tsunami. That is all.

[sacred-algae]

what's your favourite thing about writing dirk?? any extra hcs or personal things you like to add when writing him?? (coming from someone who adores how you write him being autistic)

I am so sorry I haven't gotten to this until now! I was busy when you sent this in... I still am busy (I'm procrastinating, send help) but we're doing it now! And AHHH TY! I'm glad it hits for you! I said in another ask, my favorite thing about writing him is hands down the voice. I love how absolutely absurd the things he says are, and he says them with complete mundanity. For Dirk, the absurd is mundane and I think there is something so fun in that. It's also very autistic. I think autistic people see the world with a greater sense of absurdism than allistics, whether that be positive or negative (because honestly it does depend! autism is beautiful but it still is a disability and Dirk is an excellent example of this.)

I think my favorite absurdist Dirk quote I've ever written is from chapter five of the Muse fic, Hate This And I'll Love You (I added the bits before it for context. Really it's the bovine burglar bit that's my favorite):

        The apartment was dark, save the TV that shuffled through Netflix’s screen saver slideshow. Odd, Todd never leaves the telly on.          So what’s a detective to do? He investigated.          He called out once more, “Todd?”          He tip-toed his way into the living room, he wasn’t quite sure if it was Todd or a mysteriously bovine burglar watching their television so he aired on the side of caution. One never knows when there might be a cow stealing back your, or rather it’s milk.

HTAILY was really an autistic indulgence in every possible way, and not only with writing a favorite character as autistic and highlighting it. When you take into consideration I wrote this before I read Dorian Gray, this was the original Jack Harkness/Dorian Gray fic for me. Crossing over my niche special interest (Muse) with a hyperfixation (DGHDA), which is why I consider it my favorite/best finished fic I've ever written. And I'm so glad it's gotten the love I think it deserves!

The famous "Angst Song" scene was actually a personal detail to answer that part of your question! Muse's "The Small Print" is a song I have a lot of childhood memories attached to! Back before Muse's Origin of Symmetry was my favorite album, Muse's Absolution was my favorite and "The Small Print" was hands down my favorite track on it. I have vivid memories of dancing like a madman to it in my kitchen while unloading the dishwasher, which was my main chore as a child. I played what I called "the silverware game" where I had to only unload one type of silverware, starting with the butterknives and ending with the small spoons, and not mix up the sizes of the forks or spoons when picking them up, otherwise I lost... and I think that really speaks for itself with how autistic it is.

So yeah, when crafting a Muse-inspired fic, having Dirk dancing and stimming to "The Small Print" at some point was an absolute no-brainer. It was always going to be there one way or another. And it honestly makes me a little emotional to know that when people think of my writing autistic Dirk, that scene is the one they remember. (iirc you mentioned loving that scene before, and I know other people have said that too)

[wellntruly]

M*A*S*H - Season 6 misc. notes

Oh my god, this round-up is so unwieldy. Long. Just, had a lot comments. And if you were waiting for my whole manifesto on the ‘Comrades In Arms’ question, have I got that herein!!!!!

— — —

You guys gotta stop re-orchestrating the song, I’m too sensitive to this! This is how far we’ve gotten, listen: these worn-in, mellow guitars & horns of S1, this jangly extended situation

Camera’s getting in closer this season I notice. Do you know what else I noticed: HY AVERBACK. Haven’t seen that name since the change-up, since he was directing seemingly every other episode, since [quiet swallow] Trapper and Henry. Since this show was significantly nuttier and also I miss it like crazy. Hy…hi.

Klinger: “What am I, the only medic in the shop!” BJ: “You’re loved, you fool.” Klinger: “Command me, oh tall one with the Presbyterian features.” It’s like I was just saying—!

Hawkeye: “Where you from, Charlie?” Major Winchester: “Charles.” Me: “So, like the river, then?” Potter, a moment later: “Impressive, Doctor. Harvard Med, Massachusetts General…” Me: “Oh my god, like the river.”

BJ has never gone as Berkeley than when now being confronted with Beacon Hill, and fuck that is Correct. The natural challenger. Maine and the Midwest can contribute but California must put up our champion. Back Bay vs. The Bay: Fight !

Really good papers toss Mike Farrell, that’s not easy

“Creative Consultant”! Alda :)

Margaret & The Boys ‘Silly Mood’ but now it’s Babe! Babe Tell Us What’s Wrong! [Keke Palmer in Nope voice] You Look Pretty :)

Klinger’s sling-armed lawyer…this season is already pleasing me so much

Absolutely obsessed with the moribund injured Dr. Berman, whose entire affect is the part where Cameron wakes up and fixes him with a weird stare and drones “Ferris Bueller you’re my hero.”

Charles: “Colonel I, I think I should tell you that my father knows Harry Truman.” Sure, and my own rich Massachusetts friend’s dad knows Mitt Romney, this is just how this goes (Haha I’m DYING.)

Ahh, nice way to even it out. He’s a very skilled surgeon, and smug about it, but they have a skill-set that he doesn’t: move fast, not pretty, save all the lives you can, don’t fall until you reach your cot.

Ahh and yeah he’s so much smarter than Frank! God this is gonna be great. Not that he can’t be tricked, but he can also trick you. Hey let’s make this interesting, the sixth season says. Let's.

“What’s up, you look down?” is such a smooth joke that the laugh track editors didn’t even notice it

Radar: “Um, well I’m very concerned about something that concerns my life here.” Hawkeye: “What’s the trouble, Andy?” Radar: “Well, I don’t think that this place is turning out to be that great an experience for me. I mean I work under terrible pressures and there’s lots of death and destruction and stuff, but other than that I don’t think I’m getting much out of it.” Heeheehee, heeheehee, okay you know what: this is exactly the energy this show has been missing. I needed this deadpan absurdist commentary.

Radar: “I’m the only one that’s gonna leave this place younger than I was when I came.” ASLDKJFL THIS IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN SAYING. HE’S GETTING YOUNGER. Oh lord they're saying it!

They play this reveal well I gasped!

Hawkeye, drunk & maudlin at Rosie’s: “You know that my hands were shaking? I had butterflies. I’ve held people’s hearts in my hand and with him I was nervous. Am I boring you?” BJ, tired: “I’ve heard this four times already, I know how it ends.” Hawkeye: “How does it end, I wasn’t here for the early show.” BJ: “You start crying and sing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’—can we go home?” [hard cut to BJ half-carrying Hawkeye to bed while he warbles: “If funny little bluebirds fly—!”] GOD THIS SEASON IS SO GOOD

Sparkly sparkly sparkly blue-gray eyes, all barely held tears

I think a lot about… There’s a casual detailed realism to Alda and Farrell’s acting with patients. I think what it is is this thing where they’re delivering the light dialogue to reassure, but it’s laid over something still attentive and thoughtful. Underneath the blithe jokes you can see them actually assessing how they’re doing, taking in and gathering information. Here it’s this quick beat amidst quips of Hawkeye bending his own elbow and asking “Can you do that?” and watching as Radar mirrors him.

Wooo I had to pause for a second to feel some feelings!!!!! God Alda I can’t stand that you wrote this, you wrote all this…tearing into your character’s faults and vulnerabilities…god I love you

Father Mulcahy is incensed!! He’s outraged!! </3/3 I’m losing my mind

Hahhhh Margaret like no no no, I pre-DATE you with him, Colonel, I get to yell at him first

I looooooove this episode. I love how unfair it is. It’s so unfair for Radar to be wounded and let down, and to be yelled at for this by this person he relies on, to be yelled at for feeling betrayed by Hawkeye because he loves him. And it’s so unfair for Hawkeye that it’s because he loves Radar that this even happened, that he's only fallen because he was and is so messed up over Radar getting injured. And that it doesn’t matter to the sequence of people now coming to shout at Hawkeye for shouting at Radar for holding him to this higher standard he’s stuck being held to because usually he is strong, but currently feels completely incapable of maintaining because Radar’s hurt and shouting at him. It’s all just so unfair and it’s all because everyone LOVES each other and I love that.

Can’t believe the course my life has taken has resulted in Klinger naming his imaginary camel the one Arabic word I know: Darling

Oh man, wasn’t there an episode where Henry actually pulled rank and was like oh no, you can’t arrest anyone here without going through me? Any time this happens, well I like that.

God, guess whose rampant bisexual behavior is back being tossed around in public. I’m blissful.

Also: “Knock off the didos, Pierce, we’ve got work to do.”

Wowzers

“How would you like to be up to your knees in floor.” Margaret 😂

Hawkeye is So Bothered that this guy got BJ arrested. He’s not letting this one go. He’s already called him a creep—one of the more damning designations from him! This is actually rather rare in their arrangement as has been, that Hawkeye is the one getting worked up protecting BJ—usually it’s swapped. He’s almost a little scarily unforgiving. I’m very interested by this.

Noooo your therapist has a head wound! Terrific dramatic irony, Alda. Please don’t comment on it, make me proud… Aw you make me so proud. And my goodness you love this character.

BJ: “You touch his nose, Charles, you’re gonna have to marry him.” GOD we’re back :)) Thanks for seeing me, M*A*S*H

Aw Sidney my dear

Demerit for ending with ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ though. [pleasant BJ voice] Fuck off, Ivor Novello.

Hawkeye: “Charles, come on, as a friend?” Charles: “Not eeeven as an enemy.” God, tasty. Tasty dialogue.

Why is everything Charles Winchester says so fucking funny. I go to write it down and it’s half just in his delivery—David Ogden Stiers is good stuff.

Hawkeye: “Thank you, thank you, I’d give you a hug but in my condition I might not be able to stop.” Ohoho, nyhaha, ah. The dressy khakis in an apron and splashed all over with plaster of Paris is also unfortunately some kind of look. It’s just novel, but we shouldn't undercount that effect.

Charles: “One of my tent mates is a relatively inoffensive chap named BJ Hunnicutt. Excellent surgeon, in spite of the fact that he was, born, raised, and studied in….California.” What did I say! What did I say!!

The fact that one of BJ’s strength is that everyone thinks he’s a sweetie, and he is, but also he’s sneaking around playing tricks, is delish.

Know that they’re beaming with love & glee while pretending to polish their shoes (BJ’s is a rubber chicken) for this entire exchange: Hawkeye: “You’re a vicious fiend.” BJ: “Worse than you?” Hawkeye: “By far.” BJ: “Nicest thing you ever said to me, thank you.” Hawkeye: “Oh my pleasure.” BJ: “My pleasure.” Hawkeye: “Any time.”

The bit where they just collapse in pure exhaustion and never makes it to their planned romp in Seoul is an oldie but a goodie

The instant I’m looking at scrubs over sweaters, I know I’m going to be enjoying an episode

God they’re all so cute when they’re cold

Charles’ clipped accent keeps making me think he’s saying “Hanukkah” when he’s actually addressing “Hunnicutt”

God they’re all so cute when they’re trying to solve a mystery novel together

Make-out fade to black. Classy.

Mike Farrell’s golden arms.. Reblog if u agree.

What kills me is that the final button of Hawkeye & Margaret is easily 10x as good as the rest of the episode, which I know is a relationship that will be forgotten by the show immediately so could never buy it for a second, but this I’ll buy every day, I’ll take out a subscription, long term. You two!

Potter: “We’ve staggered down this road before. You’ve got a razzle dazzle going.” Klinger: “Wrong sir, respectfully.” Potter: “I’m gonna love this one, it’s got a lot of reverse top-spin.” I love him. I love them.

Why do I so like a tie tucked into a shirt

Wait, so I didn’t spend enough time having a reaction to this when they’ve gotten their pay in the past, but they’re being paid in like, notgeld? What kind of company town is this! How are they paying Rosie??!

I swear Alda is getting greyer and skinnier every time I see him this season. Don’t become an actual ghost, babe.

BJ’s hair is getting longer & fluffier, too

Klinger’s first name is Max?? Well I love it

This sweet baby nurse reminds me of Marcia Strassman—I miss her! Hawkeye’s best girlfriend, in five seasons haven’t met her equal.

Why are you playing cat’s cradle with your own face, he’s right there

Huh, we’re really against tattoos now? Weird hill to die on, but okay

Potter: “Pierce, Hunnicutt, you mind going up against each other as team captains?” Hunnicutt: “What do you say, powder puff?” Pierce, big gay leg cross: “Well it will prove who’s the fairest in the land.” These moments happen and I literally say aloud, “Thank God”

Loretta!….LEGS <3

BJ Hunnicutt, I would like an entire oral history of your choice to wear your pink armband tied around your upper thigh

Watching this historic Olympics footage really makes me feel like we’ve gone too far with athletes

Just, a lot of symbolic-looking yarn winding with Hawkeye and BJ, huh. What threads tie you together, et cetera.

Charles: “Haven’t you ever seen truffles before?” BJ: “Nobody knows the truffles I’ve seen.” [Alda: might actually laugh for real, as this is so goofy and not his usual HAH] Charles: “Here you are, gentlemen.” BJ: “Oh, goody!” Hawkeye: “Mm-mm, chopped liver!” Charles: “It’s pâte de foie gras” BJ, gesturing to his mouth: “I happen to know Paddy De Foie Gras and this definitely isn’t him.” Okay who wrote this one, they get it

I like Potter pointing out Hawkeye’s hypocrisy of “railing against violence and insensitivity, then to prove your point you attack a man.” Many people could stand to hear this I think! Not to be bold!

[reminiscing about some dance hall in Toledo] “I gotta go kid. I’m breaking my heart.” Klingerrrrr <3 <3 <3 Me about the theme song.

I love irritated Potter, he’s so punchy. “Explain to me, why am I here?”

It’s been a while since we’ve had an episode where some random brass is like “I hate Hawkeye!,” and then they watch him do surgery for 48 hours straight, and are like “Never mind, he’s allowed. Also, related, I would like to never be here again.”

The Alda Two-Reveal Slow Camera Pull-Back but it’s adding BJ showering next to him singing his own opera part, then Charles in a robe crossing in front of them combing his hair. Oh and my review of this is: choicechoicechoicechoice

BJ: “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Hawk: “What don’t you do?” BJ: “I’ll think of something.”

Margaret: “HOW CAN A GROWN MAN BE SO MECHANICALLY INCOMPETENT.” Hawkeye: “I take a lot of cabs.”

Oooo I like BJ pacing in his doctor’s coat, fretting, gnawing a nail

[getting out the shrapnel] “There. You wanna look at it?” “Don’t be morbid! Just clean it up and put a dressing on it.” Love that these speakers are not who you might guess they are :)

Margaret to Hawkeye: “Do you know what it feels like to give your heart to somebody? To live just for a glimpse of his handwriting in the mail?” Hm pardon me while I just scoop this up nicely and hold it for a moment, emotionally panicking!

“Oh, I think I should warn you. If you come over here for any reason during the night, announce yourself. I intend to swing this to kill.” I fucking love her sometimes. Alan, this line, Loretta, this delivery. He’s so good at writing for her, and she just takes it and Runs.

Welp, look at that—suddenly need to qualify that last part!! Hey Part 2 what is this???

Y'know the thing is though, I sooooooo support Margaret & Hawkeye boning. Oh do I. But this, is not it! This is supposed happen in an episode where they’re mostly squabbling with each other, this is right. It keeps it part of the way they squabble. If it came out of them being all tenderness, the risk there is that then it feels like it needs to become a real thing, and it won’t work as a real thing. Or not real, this is so real, I mean as like a usual romantic relationship. Their relationship is not romantic, but frankly has always been erotic. It’s sort of the opposite of how Hawkeye has mostly been with BJ, really. (That the biggest mix of both was with Trapper is why I still can’t really talk about that !)

Anyway Hawkeye & Margaret are the horniest characters on this show, and that’s why this should so happen. For both of them, sex is a major part of the way they experience & process the world and other people in it. And with them always sparking as much as they have, absolutely should it come to this someday. And it’s so good to wait until this far in, because at this point they’ve also grown to genuinely respect each other. This can actually be a kind of gesture of mutual respect between them, a meeting as equals (on the sexy field). I mean the set-up here is actually quite good: bickering and stressing under intense fear and danger, but I want it to be a tiny bit more of a decision, again a kind of meeting at the table, not this accidental brush of lips. Maybe we keep the shelling and the shouting but do it simpler, Margaret screams and Hawkeye yells out in the dark "Margaret!" "[sobbing] What?!" "I'm coming over there!" "You'd better!" And then they're just cowering tightly in each other's arms under the blanket, and it becomes clear he has his hand clenched in the back of her hair, and she has hers gripping the open collar of his shirt, and then we just take it from there. Still keeping it simple, maybe: "Hey?," a request, and "Yeah," an acknowledgement of same. Yeah. Take comfort. Take distraction. Both be a little prideful in how good you can do ‘em—a little bit of a competition, where everyone wins. This is what I want.

And then here’s what’s not all supposed to happen next: what happens in Part 2! Margaret has always been a character who knows her own mind, knows what she wants, almost to a fault at times, and there’s no way she wants to pursue this as a romance. Even just later this same season, she’s going to think she’s pregnant, and in 1952, be like, I do not want this baby. This does not align with what I want out of this marriage or my career. There is zero way she wants to commit herself to dating Hawkeye, and Hawkeye of course does not want to be dating Margaret, and that should be the miscommunication driver of the next episode: they’re both worried the other is going to think this is a romance now when that is not what this was or is, and in their equivalently nice & awkward handling of each other the next day, are of course absolutely going to think the other is nervously smitten, and be smiling weakly at each other while privately they’re both Wirt dragging his fingers down his face whisper-rasping “Noooooo.” And then finally they manage to get it out, possibly they both start making the same confession at once like they’re Radar and one of his colonels, and then are just collapsing in relief like OH THANK GOD. Listen that was good, but that was just an elevated facet of our existing relationship, it's own weird thing that can stay its own weird thing, and (nice little ‘Aid Station’ call-back, and it’s Margaret this time doing the deliberate reprise): “If you tell this to anyone, I’ll deny it. <3” And Hawkeye’s like, “That’s why I love you :),” and it’s sweet and understood and joshing and cute.

But, all this is not what we get. An error! Well, we do eventually end in a place somewhat akin, an understanding of friendship, and they’ve each had a bit where they like, have ~learned something about themselves~, and each other, but even that part feels a little falsey, and in between, a lot of positively agéd woman-pursues-resistant-man nonsense. But we can FIX IT just call me up with time travel abilities and we’ll get this banged out right, no pun intended.

Okay where were we. Oh, something unexpected!! Well first, this:

Potter: “I hope you’re shaking a leg, Winchester.” Charles: “Colonel, my graceful fingers are dancing o’er the innards of this hapless doughboy, and when I am done, I shall be done.” Potter: “I’m sorry I asked.” Charles: “That’s what I had in mind.” Tasty.

And then: BJ saying he can’t sleep because he keeps expecting Hawkeye to walk through the door. BJ saying he wishes his heart was in the right place, as right now it’s in his mouth. BJ risking life & court martial to get a chopper and find them. BJ singing a welcome back song about how he adores ya, please don't put him through this again. How is BJ ending up being the biggest romantic choice of the Margaret/Hawkeye two-parter, that’s the sort of thing you make up on Tumblr, not the sort of thing that actually happens?? Alan??!

Hawkeye: “How’d you like to save my life again?” BJ: “Sure, you want me to fight her for you? [little committed sigh]” Mike???!

Finally looked up the inflation on 1952 money: you can baaasically just multiple it by 10 for a rough estimate. This will be useful.

Ooo! Been a few years since you’ve identified as female in dialogue, Mother Hawkeye!

“See you for dinner, Beej?” “Our little spot.”

HYANNIS PORT. I CHOKED ON MY WINE. Oh fuck, haha fuck—this is a Kennedys joke isn’t it. GAWD.

Hawkeye just amiably hosing down Nurse Kellye and her pal's outstretched limbs in the heat. You love to see this. This is so domestic.

Maaaargaret, the halter top!! Whew now I’m feeling toasty!

You two are sweating through your shirts but you gotta be close, huh

The way she slides his hand on the line like a piece of laundry, lol. This is the Margaret & Hawkeye I love, thank you. (What went wrong! The rest of this season is so right!)

And we get to see Mulcahy in short sleeves? What doesn’t this episode have

I like the theme that Hawkeye’s boyfriends are always golden gods to his iron-haired slump

The new bit where everyone makes fun of Hawk for being basically a surgical idiot savant who knows shit about fixing anything else is really good.

[Knock knock] “Enter the mausoleum.” “Hello goils, hello.” “What do you two want.” “Love and respect, but we’ll settle for love.” I love everyone in this nurses tent

Hawkeye & Margaret are so cute this episode. Seriously, the two immediately after ‘Comrades In Arms, Part 2’ are both showing up ‘Comrades In Arms, Part 2’ hand over foot

A bit everyone seems to have immediately wanted to keep up, probably because it’s so odd and funny, is Charles for some reason clearly believes Margaret must be cultured, and he’s so thoughtlessly certain of this that absolutely no hilarious thing she replies with immediately proving the contrary seems to register with him.

Deploying his warm, tireless, rail-at-me-if-you-want steadiness to helping a morphine-addicted patient get through withdrawal is SUCH a BJ plot. Amazing we hadn’t done that yet.

“Oh no thanks, when I lose I like to know why.” Sometimes Radar is incredibly profound while he’s making me laugh so much.

I swear the new writers who have come in this season fell for it in those first few years. This show is running long enough that it can start referencing its own eras.

Margaret playing Charles the world’s smallest violin!!!! BABE?

I gotta say, I don’t think you all understand how blood types work. You can give the AB negative kid A, B, or even O, as long as it’s also negative. He could literally only take more blood types if he was AB positive. The one you really want when you’re doing these plots is O negative, because they can only take other O negative, and that’s always gonna be in short supply because it’s the universal blank slate, you can use it for any other type you’re running out of, or if they’ve lost their dog tags and you don’t know their type at all. That's the one you want for this!

Klinger is trying to drag Hawkeye off to bed as BJ sleepily encourages over his protestations: “Don’t ask, just take him.” BJ [chinhands] I have so many thoughts about you

“Come on, if you can’t tell your number one nemesis who can you tell?” Again, this is exactly what I love about you guys. This is, in fact, the best Margaret & Hawkeye season yet, despite my one complaint!

Hawkeye genuinely so excited and sweet, exclaiming that all they see is death and destruction and now here’s life thanks to her. And Margaret going no, no this is not good, I do not want this baby right now. This kinda extremely rules.

Waitaminute. We won’t…we wouldn’t???! Will we??!!

We will not, but I will learn how you did a pregnancy test in the 1950s! Wow!!

Klinger: “Excuse me for saying so—your mail is leaking, Colonel.” Potter: “Honey.” Klinger: “Your mail is leaking, honey.”

Wait I love the Pierce & Mulcahy live show. They’re dueting.

Hawkeye: “What do you say I take you home and put you to bed.” BJ: “Aw you service men are all alike.” It’s giving Trapper era... I’m in a tidal pool of emotions.

Hawkeye: “May your fingers never lose their cunning.” Father Mulcahy: “Ah, see you in church!” Lot going on in the officer’s club tonight

Oh! Hawkeye Pierce is the only child of a widower. In Maine. Yeah, that might make this.

I don’t know why BJ character reveals always feel worth their weight in gold, but: what has him so distressed is the idea that Peggy might not need him any more. He needs to be needed. No wonder you took one look at lorn bedraggled weird Hawkeye Pierce and said, hi, I’m BJ.

If this means this episode we’re going to get BJ alone with Charles going full maniacal to make up for Hawkeye’s absence, I’ll so support it.

“A little to the left, dear”—it begins.

Oh em gee Margaret’s old bestie??! :)) They were such scamps!

Oh em gee, the boys be plotting! The boys being BJ & Charles. Wow Hawk’s gonna come back and not only is Charles going to be like oh thank god, but also he and BJ are going to have An Understanding—this is gonna come up pluses all around.

THIS IS SUCH A GOOD MARGARET EPISODE, MEANWHILE

“They hated me. The doctors, nurses, everybody. Kept telling me I was dull.” You could say a whole lot of things about Captain Pierce, but they managed to find the one thing that would make that other MASH seem completely deranged. They said you were what?

Charles literally exclaiming how much he missed him and grabbing him into a bewildered hug, only for BJ to then happily tackle them both with his long arms—great!!!!

It’s now one year until Potter retires. This whole season has lasted: two months.

Counterpoint, Charles - he has been here: six months. I love this :)

“Look at that brazen hussy over there. And the woman he’s with,” BJ, glowering in sexual jealousy at Hawkeye across the party. “You’re all lunatics,” Margaret, in a cream turtleneck, correctly.

I just love Charles being like PLS, that is so not the tactic I would have taken, you want this angle. The thing is, Frank was always a dumbdumb—and for all his posturing about it, Charles actually is intelligent. He just uses it in ways that displease us. But, once in a blue moon, he can turn around and use it in ways we want, ways to help, and it’s a Thrill. God, when we finally reach the point where Charles unbidden uses his influence & largess to save or protect one of them, easy money’s on Hawkeye but more interesting money is on BJ, it’s all over for us, huh. Meaning our cool.

Gary Burghoff is going next level with this mailbag protection performance and I am hortling

This drop to beneath the table! Great little bit of direction

Hawkeye to Potter, in a way I can’t quite describe but will stick with me a long time: “You could give me a hundred good reasons to leave, and I can’t give you one good reason to stay. Stay anyway.”

Why do you have a whole bottle of amphetamines in stock?

God remember when House drugged Wilson. “I’m on speeeeed!”

“Who wrote that?” “Charles Emerson Winchester, while still in undergraduate.” “It sounded very…collegiate.” FATHER.

“Good night, BJ.” “Good night, Hawkeye.” Together: “Good night, Charles.” Charles, sing-songing: “You promised.”

Marine: “Hey Radar—you and your mouse, are okay.” I’m McLosing it.

That Charles is always reminding us he was almost the head of thoracic surgery is so funny. He wasn’t actually.

Five points to Harry Morgan for how my pulse picked up at the way he asked Hawkeye to close the door because he has something to disclose to them. What is it gonna be!!

Fuck. Yes. The Placebo Plot. Oh what a fun little finale for me, as a weirdo.

— — —

Season Viewguides

These

[ccthewriter]

CC's New Watch Ranking - April 2023

Every month on Letterboxd, I make a list of the 10 best films I’ve seen for the first time. It’s a fun way to compare movies separated in time, genre, and country of origin, and helps me keep track of what I’m watching! This is a breakdown of those films.

April! An early heat wave broke and gave us the rainy, misty days that this month is supposed to contain. My vegetable garden is starting to take root. This is the first year I’m planting in earnest, prepping trays of seeds to make their way outside. I’ve been learning a lot, and keeping my eye on the backyard window as I’ve been settling in to watch these films. Plants like music - do they like film scores? Maybe I’ll take my speakers outside and find out. I bet they’d love Angelo Badalamenti, whose work is featured heavily in this month’s list. After a slow start due to several exciting new work opportunities (yay!), this month ended up containing some cinematic heavy-hitters! 

Click below to read the breakdown! Click HERE for the list on Letterboxd! 

10. The Hawks and the Sparrows 

1966 - Pier Paolo Pasolini

A delightful absurdist tale by one of Italy’s greatest directors. A father and son, whose attitude seems ripped right out of Waiting for Godot, wander a road with indeterminate purpose. Along they way they meet a philosophizing talking bird, and fall backwards in time to the life of St. Francis. Interspersed are some scenes of modern (1960s) Italian life, including the real funeral procession of a Communist leader. It’s a strange, lopsided work, perhaps not achieving the thought-provoking or artistic heights that the director intended, but contains some brilliant gems of absurdism. I’m particularly struck by several shots and discussions that focus on the Moon. You may know, reader, that I am obsessed with Fellini’s Voice of the Moon. That is an absurd, wandering meditation on the moon’s symbolism and power, and echoes of those ideas are found here, too. It gets me wondering about what Fellini and Pasolini shared, the experiences that united their thought, and got them to create such interesting, parallel pictures. 

9. For a Few Dollars More 

1965 - Sergio Leone

Impeccable craft. The platonic ideal of a Western that so many movies/other media try to grasp, but can never quite achieve. (Looking at you, Mando.) While The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly might be the ultimate piece in this trilogy, For A Few Dollars More still manages to hold all the compelling, subtle characterization and breathtaking conclusion that makes that capper so legendary. Two bounty hunters seek out a mad fugitive - they all double-cross one another in pursuit of victory. There’s just grand vibes within this thing. A legendary score, gorgeous shots, handsome sweaty men trying to kill each other (aka flirting), and other tiny design choices that are beyond iconic. What’s not to love? Toss this on with a bourbon, pardner, and watch them shoot a hat. 

8. Bitter Rice 

1949 - Giuseppe De Santis

What if we fought back against systems that oppress the workers of the rice fields AND we were both girls 👀. First and foremost watch this if you love wlw - there is some subtext that occurs between the main pair as they squabble. A jewel thief, coerced into crime by her shitty boyfriend, hides out among rice workers with her stolen goods. She meets Silvana, a peasant who catches onto their scheme and ultimately gets entangled in their lives. It feels like both the thieving pair lust after her. The politics of this one are messy, to say the least. Francesca, the thief, sides with some scabs who want to work the fields despite not being part of the union. Silvana organizes the workers against them, but ultimately they come to a patronizing compromise to let both sides work together. The film doesn’t care about the details that would make this labor struggle real - what does it take to join the union? Who organizes it? Do the members get to vote about how they feel about the scabs? Pulling those threads makes the movie collapse, along with the shoe-horned melodramatic ending for Silvana, which seems born out of an American Hayes Code sense of what must happen to a woman who "chooses wrong." Despite these elements, the film is shot beautifully by Otello Martelli, Fellini’s cinematographer, and contains one of the greatest framing devices for a neorealist film ever devised. A voice over telling you that what you’re about to see is the real testimony of rice workers, which diegetically shifts into a radio announcer present at the scene, is inspired. A film to yell at as you enjoy it. 

7. Touch of Evil 

1958 - Orson Welles

The film opens with a bomb being place in the boot of a car. Then there is an unbroken shot lasting about 5 minutes of that same car driving slowly through a crowded street. It is breathtaking tension building. Hitchcockian perfection. What follows is a surprisingly nuanced exploration of police corruption. These pigs live in paranoid fantasies sustained by evidence that they plant - hatred, ignorance, and alcohol let them forget that they created the justification for their hate themselves. This film drips with noir style and culminates in a chase scene that’s just as satisfying as the end of The Third Man. Who else understands noir like Welles? He gives a remarkable performance here. 

6. Inland Empire 

2006 - David Lynch

Lynch was doing creepypasta lo-fi found footage before it was cool. Seriously, watch this film and be surprised that this came out before Marble Hornets! Lynch’s first foray into digital filmmaking follows the story of actor Nikki Grace, played by the inimitable Laura Dern. (Consider her!) She is cast in a film that she later discovers is an adaptation, derived from a production that was shut down due to strange events happening to the cast. This grounded framing quickly dissolves into classic Lynchian surreality. The narrative is intersected by stories of 19th century Polish sex workers, modern day drifters, an unnamed woman who watches the film’s events on a TV screen, and more flashes of disconnected images than I could ever try to remember. Terry Crews is there for a few minutes. Lynch’s films defy simple explanation, as their very structure seems to repel logical attempts to define them. It is enough to say that this all builds into a moving tale of the exploitation built within the Hollywood machine. To be an actor, even with all the progress we’ve made, is to give yourself up to depersonalization, to completely vanish in the eyes of the viewer. Audiences want to see a self that is inside you, but is not you. You can get lost pulling on that thread. And there are dark figures who are only too happy to encourage you to get lost, who want to sit behind a camera and watch your selves separate, so they can bottle it up and sell it for massive, massive profit. Fascinating to see such a film come from Lynch, who by all accounts is a highly ethical filmmaker and whose crews (particularly Dern!) adore working with him. I think it takes a fundamentally good and kind person to truly understand evil - they must have the good grace to recognize what lives within them, what lives within all of us. 

(Also, these fucking rabbits terrify me in ways that I'm still understanding. I think I saw the short film Lynch made with them while I was under the influence of certain substances. They know what I'm thinking and will show up at my doorstep one midnight, I just know it.)

5. Lost Highway 

1997 - David Lynch

Whereas Inland Empire explores the loss of self that’s a feature (not a bug) of acting, Lost Highway explores a broader loss of self that can happen any time, anywhere, to anyone. Recapping the plot, again, seems a little pointless, but in brief, it’s about a jazz musician who appears to be stalked by a shapeshifting entity. As he tries to understand why he’s being targeted, he gets arrested for (apparently) murdering his wife - but while in jail, he mystically transforms into another person entirely. This new character lives an entirely separate life that eventually intersects with the original one in shocking ways. It’s all very cyclical, and vague, and contains a host of implications that are too broad to clearly explain. Lynch is the ultimate Oneric filmmaker in this way - the content of the dream is so different than the lasting impression it gives you. Towards the beginning of the movie the main character has this exchange: 

Fred: "I like to remember things my own way"

Cop: "What does that mean?"

Fred: "How I remember them, not necessarily how they happened"

That’s the ultimate explanation of how these films function. They are truly symbolic masses that pass through you, live inside you, and then transform into something greater than its sum ingredients. 

4. Bound 

1996 - The Wachowskis

So after dipping our toes into that Lynchian, vaguely defined dreamscape, here we have a much more straightforward film. What if the hottest most gorgeous most sapphic most jaw-droppingly sexy women imaginable did a crime together??? Wouldn���t that be cool?????? There really isn’t much in the way of symbolic nuance in this picture like there is in some of these other recommendations. This is just a straight-forward, tightly constructed crime thriller, starring (cannot emphasize this enough) just the biggest queerest icons you can imagine. I knew this movie would rewire me once I saw it, and am pleased to report that it really, really has. If you’re in the sapphic camp please check it out - it’s as required viewing as But I’m A Cheerleader is. Corky is a stone-butch ex-con who’s hired to renovate an apartment. She discovers that living next door is a mobster and his disaffected trophy girl Violet. Violet seduces Corky in the most noir femme fatale porn-adjacent way imaginable - quite literally “can you fix my pipes?” - and the two agree to pull one over on the mob so they can run off into the sunset. What follows is tightly constructed, steaming tension, as Hithcockian in perfection as Touch of Evil’s opening oner, but with a little more pulpy crass. Gays and theys, please, do not hesitate to watch this. It’s the film that let the Wachowskis make the Matrix, it is truly that spectacular. 

3. The Immortal Story 

1968 - Orson Welles

Welles is a master storyteller, a magician, a ponderous and monologuing baron of Art whose work is now embedded in the history of this medium. When he’s not playing himself, he’s playing corrupt, ignorant men. What do you think compels him to do that? He had the power and resources to play anyone he wants - why was this the role he chose? These questions will naturally rise up when you’re watching The Immortal Story, Welles’ last feature fiction that he would ever direct. It follows the story of a wealthy businessman who has a meeting with his assistant late one night. The businessman - this baron - reveals that he despises fiction, and only wishes to tell or hear things that are true, like data in a ledger. But then he reveals a story a sailor once told him, about a wealthy man who once paid the sailor to sleep with his wife and produce an heir. His assistant knows the story; he says this is a common folk tale, repeated in every port, on every ship, and that his master is incorrect in believing he heard it from the person it actually happened to. This sends the businessman on an obsessed journey - he commands his assistant to recreate this tale, to hire a courtesan, to find a poor sailor, and reconstruct this tale exactly as it was told to him, line-by-line, so that… well, the baron’s reasons for recreating this tale are obscure. Obsession? Stubbornness? A late-life spark of creativity? These questions intermingle with the first few I proposed. What impresses me so much about this film is that it is Welles clearly exploring his own creative drive, questioning all the motivations that have driven him to the life he has been leading for decades. It’s an incredible meditation from one of cinema’s greatest filmmakers. I firmly believe it sets the ground for the future explorations of truth and fiction that Welles accomplishes in F for Fake. How appropriate that this is the capstone towards his fiction-telling career. 

2. Mulholland Drive 

2001 - David Lynch

The perfect fusion, and appropriate mid-point, between Lost Highway and Inland Empire. Lynch explores the fundamentals of identity as two people try to discover who they are within the mad dreamscape that is Los Angeles. A woman stumbles out of a car crash into the home of a newly-arrived dreamer, ready to go on an adventure and help this woman restore her identity. Or, perhaps the real story is that a jealous actress clings to a more successful starlet, but gets her heart toyed with and torn to pieces as part of some power-tripping game. Lynch is a master of montage, assembling seemingly random moments into a cohesive whole that leaves a distinct emotional message. The competing, lopsided, cyclical narratives that make up this film are no exception. All the cutaways to different characters that intersect with the main pair’s lives are incredible, too. This is the Lynch film that most feels like it captures life itself. Its many contradictions and absurdities, its passion and revulsion. The highlight is the scene where the protagonists sit and watch an underground show. “It's all just a recording,” the performer repeats. This film is just a recording. Our lives will become a recording, once we’re gone and can only be remembered by artifacts. In this moment the movie seems to speak to the viewers directly, reminding them that everything they’re watching is false - and they’re allowed to let it transport them to other realms, anyway. 

1. The Music Room 

1958 - Satyajit Ray

One of the things I like most about movies from before, say, 1975, is that they don’t mind really lingering in a certain mood. Much of this movie shows a bored man, descended from royalty, lounging around his dilapidated palace. He hides from responsibility, debts, and truths he’d rather forget. But one doesn’t get bored watching him linger. Almost like a survivor in a horror movie hiding from a monster, Biswambhar is actively hiding, actively moping and avoiding the reality of his situation at any cost. It is a remarkable effect. Biswambhar’s only passion in life is live music, and his music room is his treasure. When his family meets a tragic turn of fate, he is left alone in his palace, situated on a flood plain that will eventually sweep away all his land. He decides to spend the rest of his life waiting for the day, living on ever-dwindling reserves of treasure and sherbet. Destiny seems to call to him at one point, and he decides to spend the rest of his reserve on one final, grand act, like in the good-old-days. He hires a musician, invites all his neighbors, and acts like he hasn’t been a reclusive hermit for several years. We understand him the most in this moment. The way he lights up, reopening the music room. The fantasy he embodies. As the musician plays, and we linger in the majesty of her dance and the hammering tabla, we are mesmerized just as he is. Cascades of meaning become clear. This man has sacrificed everything just for this moment, has given it all away to live inside a happy bubble, shunning the outside world… and can you blame him? How can anything life offers compare to the astral travel music can provide? If only he could have found a way to balance his obligations and this passion. Maybe if he had been a musician himself. But no. He can only watch… just as we, watching this movie, are now. Satyajit Ray is a director most capable of making the audience question itself, whose films seem to provoke deep thought and lingering wonder long after the work is over. This film might be the greatest example of that ability. As our own world changes in uncertain times, with an unclear future, a film like this forces us to question just what we’re doing consuming so much media. Like Biswambhar, I think many of us are turning a blind eye to environmental change so we can linger in the happiness of the music room, too. That’s the lesson to take away from this film. One can’t live their life waiting for that room to contain magic once again… 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for reading! If you liked any of these thoughts feel free to follow me on Letterboxd, where I post reviews and keep meticulous track of every movie I watch. Look forward to more posts like these next month! 

[yessadirichards]

What to stream this week: 'Indiana Jones,' 'One Piece,' 'The Menu' and tunes from NCT and Icona Pop

LOS ANGELES

”Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and the second season debut of the third “Power” spin-off “Power Book IV: Force” are among the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you

Among the offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists are the new musical game for the Nintendo Switch called Samba de Amigo: Party Central, the fine-dining satire “The Menu” being served on Hulu and a new album from the 20-member K-pop super group NCT.

— ”Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” Harrison Ford’s last outing as the adventure-seeking archaeologist, is finally available to watch at home starting on Tuesday via video-on-demand. This fourth installment might not be quite as great as “Raiders” or “The Last Crusade,” but it’s also more fun than many gave it credit for on its bumpy release this summer. Veteran director James Mangold took the helm from Steven Spielberg and does his best to capture all the things we love about Indy, including a possibly too-extended flashback featuring our hero de-aged to 45. It’s really not necessary because Ford, at 80, is firing on all levels — as funny, vibrant and game as he ever was. Plus there’s the added bonus of a great new character played by “Fleabag’s” Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

— It being the beginning of the month, Hulu has a lot of great new offerings coming on Friday, Sept. 1, including the Coen brothers “Hail Caesar!” and “Raising Arizona,” Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia” and the always re-watchable “The Devil Wears Prada.” And on Sunday, Sept. 3, Mark Mylod’s fine-dining satire “The Menu” arrives, too, with its terrific ensemble, including Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult, and sharp critiques of wealth and privilege. In his review, AP Film Writer Jake Coyle wrote that while it may be aimed at “somewhat low-hanging fruit,” that Mylod brings an icy, stylish flare in another kind of cleverly staged eat-the-rich comedy that — particularly thanks to the elite eye-rolling of Taylor-Joy and Fiennes’ anguished artist — is still a very tasty snack.”

— And if “Gran Turismo” has you feeling the need for more speed in your life, The Criterion Channel has the answer with a '70s Car Movies anthology pulling into your living room starting Friday, Sept. 1. Among the offerings are Steven Spielberg’s 1971 nail-biter “Duel,” Lee H. Katzin’s Steve McQueen racing classic “Le Mans,” Michael Cimino’s Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges crime caper “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” and the original “Gone in 60 Seconds.”

— AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr

— They came from Sweden by way of outer space and now the explosive electropop duo Icona Pop return with their third full-length album and first in 10 years, “Club Romantech.” Members Aino Jawo and Caroline Hjelt made sure the wait was worth it. The release is stacked with post-hiatus cosmic pop, earworm hooks as addictive as the one in the Charli XCX -penned hit “I Love It” that put them on the map in 2012. That’s evidenced in their single with Galantis, “I want you” and the playful chorus “I want you/We don’t have to play these games, play theses games/ ’Cause I want you.” It pays to be direct.

— In their lead single and title track from their fourth full-length album, the 20-member K-pop super group NCT announce they’ve entered their “Golden Age.” Who could argue otherwise? The track, which serves as the LP’s closer and its thematic anchor, is an eclecticist’s dream: absurdist trap, glossy vocal harmonies, and an interpolation of some Beethoven — Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13, “Sonata Pathétique” II. Adagio cantabile — in one. And that’s not even the best part: all 20 members are heard on it, a rarity and feat in itself, which of course includes NCT’s famed subunits, NCT 127, NCT DREAM and WayV. No matter your bias, there’s a lot to love.

— AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

— “One Piece,” a new live-action fantasy series coming to Netflix has been adapted from a beloved Japanese manga and anime series. The graphic novels by Eiichiro Oda have sold more than 516 million copies across 103 volumes in 61 countries, making its success similar to the “Harry Potter” book series. The story follows a protagonist named Monkey D. Luffy who sails the ocean in search of treasure with his band of pirates. “One Piece” debuts Thursday on Netflix.

— The fantasy series “The Wheel of Time” returns to Prime Video for its second season on Friday, Sept. 1. Rosamund Pike stars as Moiraine Damodred, a member of the Aes Sedai, a group of women with magical gifts. We meet Moiraine on a quest to find the Dragon, a long dead leader with the ability to save or destroy the world. “The Wheel of Time” is based on a 14-book series of the same name created by Robert Jordan. A third season has already been ordered.

— The third “Power” spin-off, “Power Book IV: Force,” debuts its second season on Starz on Friday, Sept. 1. It centers around Joseph Sikora’s Tommy Egan character, a convicted drug dealer who leaves New York for Chicago to continue his criminal enterprise.

— Alicia Rancilio

— This summer’s Final Fantasy XVI brought dramatic changes to the storied franchise — and made some of us a little nostalgic for the FFs of the 1990s. Canada’s Sabotage Studio aims to scratch that itch with Sea of Stars, its new retro-inspired adventure. Its pixelated, top-down graphics and turn-by-turn combat are designed to induce flashbacks in fans of old-school role-playing games. And then there’s its story: Two mages, the Children of the Solstice, team up with other do-gooders to stop an evil alchemist, The Fleshmancer, from destroying the world. It even has fishing and cooking minigames! You don’t need to travel back in time 30 years; this epic begins Tuesday on PlayStation 5/4, Xbox X/S/One, Nintendo Switch and PC.

— Speaking of old-school, Sega has decided it’s time to revive a long-dormant character from the ’90s: Amigo, the sombrero-wearing, maracas-shaking Brazilian monkey. He’s back in Samba de Amigo: Party Central, a new musical game for the Nintendo Switch. It turns the Switch’s palm-sized Joy-Con controllers into a pair of maracas, and your challenge is to shake them in rhythm to an assortment of dance hits. The 40-song soundtrack ranges from current stars like Ariana Grande and Carly Rae Jepsen to geezers like Culture Club and Gloria Gaynor, with more downloadable tunes on the way. Amigo is ready to bring the fiesta to your living room on Tuesday.

— Lou Kesten

[sinceileftyoublog]

Protomartyr & Stuck Live Show Review: 7/13, Thalia Hall, Chicago

BY JORDAN MAINZER

“Tap calls the time,” Joe Casey sang last Thursday at Thalia Hall as Protomartyr performed “Elimination Dances”, a standout track from their new album Formal Growth in the Desert (Domino). Like many of the band’s best songs, its inspirations are obscure, this particular instance taken from a game in a 50′s dance manual: Once you’re tapped out, you stop. Given the Detroit punk band’s generally bleak nature, it’s not hard to find the referenced game a fitting metaphor our everyday life, trying to survive in a capitalist hell world. But consider that Formal Growth was written in the context of the death of Casey’s mother, recorded in an actual desert at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, TX with producer Jake Aron. Casey didn’t aim to create something or find meaning out of emptiness, per se, but answer the question, “Once tap calls the time, how do the rest of us move on?” Luckily for him, and for us, there’s music.

I’ve seen Protomartyr a bunch of times. I never would have thought to describe one of their shows as life-affirming, but Thursday’s was, from the younger segment of the crowd’s persistent moshing to the unexpectedly anthemic quality of the band’s performance. The live version of Formal Desert opener "Make Way” traded the studio version’s openness for a much mightier, choppier stomp. The crowd reframed the anxiety-riddled namesake refrain of Relatives in Descent chugger “The Chuckler”--“I guess I’ll keep on chucklin’ till there’s no more breath in my lungs”--as an absurdist call to arms. The normally stoic Casey performed the entirety of The Agent Intellect’s “Why Does It Shake?” on the barrier between the stage and the crowd, about as close to spirited as he’ll ever be. Even the band’s chosen setlist seemed authored specifically to amp up the crowd. I mean, they could have played “Let’s Tip The Creator”, which chides the way tech billionaires treat art as a commodity, just as much of a charged bummer as the rest, but its subdued timbres are harder to dance to. Protomartyr’s instead taking the Gang of Four route, favoring, say, the skittering drums of “Fun in Hi Skool”. 

As this was the last show of the tour, Casey joked, “We’ll either be so tight, it will be the best show of our lives, or so tired it’ll be the shittiest.” Guitarist Greg Ahee, bassist Scott Davidson, and drummer Alex Leonard at least made sure it wasn’t the latter, of course. But it was the addition of The Breeders’ Kelley Deal as a full-time touring member of the band that elevated older songs even more than it provided faithful renditions of those whose studio versions she was on. Her voice subbed for the “I have arrived” echo on Under Color of Official Right’s “Maidenhead”, and her backing harmonies beautifully contrasted the ugliness of “Pontiac 87″. And her guitar tones on "Polacrilex Kid” seemed lifted straight from the Hawaiian twang of Last Splash’s “No Aloha”, an inspired replacement for the studio version’s pedal steel. Casey clearly remains eternally thankful. He once said in an interview with NPR, “Basically, the band comes up with amazing music and it's my job to not screw it up too much.” It’s all I could think about as I watched him sip from a Budweiser can, nodding like he was impressed while watching Leonard hammer away during the extended intro of “Jumbo’s”. If he sings on “The Author”, “Time's your enemy / Every gift you see will be taken for sure,” live, he demonstrates the unspoken flipside: Enjoy the gifts while you can.

Local post-punk band Stuck, who I saw open for Metz last winter, was the perfect primer for Protomartyr. They, too, sing about the effects of the decline of America, albeit with a nervy, wiry yelp that recalls bands like Devo and Squid. Lead singer Greg Obis was quick to point out how honored the band was to open for Protomartyr, one of his favorites. It’s easy to see the influence on their new album Freak Frequency (born yesterday). A track like “Fools Idol”, its descriptions of “violence unending” and “the boss descending,” is very Casey-esque in its brand proclamations. And like Protomartyr now, Stuck is that much more loud and urgent live, foregoing, for instance, the studio acoustic instrumentation of “Scared” for all electric jitters. However, unlike those of the perennially offline Casey, Stuck’s songs are riddled with technology-induced worries. At Thalia Hall, drummer Tim Green’s disorienting use of sample pads was an effective mirror for Obis’ admission he’s “distracted all over again” on “Loose Your Cool”. Green’s motorik drums and Obis’ and Ezra Saulnier’s sharp guitarwork reflected the pain of similar cycles of smartphone despair on “Time Out”. The almost hilariously plodding pace of “Planet Money” made a circus out of the song’s targets, the pundits who comment on the health of the economy as if it truly affects the everyday life of our most vulnerable. And then there was set closer “The Punisher”, the only song that saw Obis sing harmonically, sans paranoid screams. On the track, he deftly summarizes the absurdity of the January 6th insurrection, facetiously winking and nodding, “The future never looked so bright.” Even if the world that Protomartyr and Stuck envelop does everything in its power to suggest otherwise, upon leaving Thalia Hall on Thursday, you could, perhaps, agree.

[fairest]

Staying Alive

Interesting dinner party conversation last night that the only interesting thing about literary prizes would be the author refusing them. Of course we’re all vegetarians but even the cat meowed.

*

Reading Søren Kierkegaard’s Either/Or I learned that “interesting” is a modern concept. I thought that was really interesting. I watched café patrons look at their phone instead of the book in front of them, which was always Elif Batuman’s Either/Or, and I too participated in their uninteresting failures.

*

I did not take off from work for Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. I did not repent. I did not pray. I lied to my father a few co-workers and some friends about all of those things. I did read the first three pages of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time. I did see and read a tweet about Tao Lin’s poop, which meant I had to read even more about his poop than I had to read while reading Jordan Castro’s The Novelist. God will never forgive me.

*

There’s always so much talk about how literary criticism has gotten shallow, but what if the books themselves are shallow. What if authors are more interesting than the books they write, and even the authors themselves aren’t really that interesting at all. You know what’s missing from good books? Joy. And sensibility.

*

A new and precise line in Butler’s substack about “the slowly dying Lishian school of the sentence” has gotten stuck in my head, this playoff season, like Cubs in Five. The Phillips Corporation will admit they made an awful mistake before young men give up writing their Lishian sentences, but there does seem to be a new wildness in American fiction, and it’s mostly coming from those who promote their work as anti-woke, not from proper books birthed into a perfect world.

*

I play the music I own on vinyl. I play the music I own on CD. I give the music I learn about in Recommendation Corner the old college try, I’m more an Ian guy than a Steve. I defend the playlists. I delete the songs. I move the box sets to the basement and lug the American Record Guides back up. I don’t own E.S.P. on CD but the title track is on the CD of Miles Davis’ Greatest Hits which we listen to during the dinner party and then during the pot party I play E.S.P. on vinyl and Mattie asks do you like jazz and I say no I don’t like jazz, I like Miles Davis. I write out Don Giovanni arias in languages I can’t read. I listen to Good Morning’s Country and I think about you, during the Modafinil line, because that’s the line that would make you think of me. I like the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs song “Different Today” even though every day feels more or less the same, and the 1975’s “Part of the Band” is the first Dylanesque song since Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature. “The worst inside of us begets / that feeling of the internet / it’s like someone intended it.” I remember how tears of joy streamed down my face the day Dylan won the Nobel Prize, thinking there was hope for the written word and how all you phonies who think there’s some august tradition of literature got what was coming to you. Just for a sec. I hope it still hurts.

*

Why does the writer of the lamestream media piece that dissects some “dangerous moment on the Right” always editorialize themselves as “studying the right wing for a long time." Imagine the writer of stock buybacks who has been “studying the habits of tycoons for a long time.” Or the cultural critic on the Dimes Square beat who has “studied Dimes Square for many decades now” and looks forward to getting a little skirt in the backseat of the taxi.

*

Absurdist Jesse Ball published a book called Autoportrait and it’s fine, but it’s nothing like Édouard Levé Autoportrait, one of the most charming books of all time, which Ball, on page XIII of his hardcover, calls a fruitless clump! On the last page, Ball claims he wrote his pages in one day, on John Grisham’s Mississippi estate—another prolific writer he then insults. This is Harold Bloom claiming he read Ulysses over Indigenous Peoples v. Columbus weekend, a case still held up in the court of jester appeals.

*

Eve Sedgwick’s distinction between reparative and paranoid reading. The reparative cleans you up, the paranoid leaves you in a Christian frenzy. I find this instance of writing reparative. Even when I am being dirty with someone I feel spotless. Filth is pure. I just love it.

*

After what feels like forever, a dozen college students get off the train. The guy across from me says my god, were we that bad? I say to him we were much, much, worse. Those guys were drinking Bud Freedom.

*

The purpose of a story, Sontag wrote, is reclaiming the rights of intensity. If I am going to distinguish myself as a writer I must make a break. I cannot live “in the break” as the other writer must, they have no choice, I do. I must reclaim the rights of Shel Silverstein’s forgotten language. I must smile in secret at the gossip of starlings.

*

I discovered Avital Ronell a few weeks ago, through Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom, which was an education in itself and refreshed my memory about Sedgwick’s reparative. On Saturday morning I sat in Oz Park while my child played and I read Ronnell’s Crack Wars. I may as well have been reading Reading Lolita in Tehran on the playground. A page of Ronell being bored is the greatest page from any boring writer, although I fear she is too smart for me and I’ll never keep up, I only have a Master’s Degree and I only speak two languages and one of them is music. On the internet I discovered Ronell was cancelled for giving one of her students a real hard time. Andrea Long Chu popped up again, with a convincing essay about how white-collar work sucks, which I agree with. Ronell wrote a biggish book called Stupidity. Not On Stupidity, just Stupidity. The amount I miss is interesting.

*

On Monday I told my wife I was depressed because it was Monday and she said, “if it’s not Monday with you, it’s something else.” We fucked every night this week. I am losing my summer tan and the beaches closed so I started viewing pornography again. Logging on, I felt like Li from Tao Lin’s Leave Society, the afternoon he relapses and views pornography with anger and glee. I said to the girls, pregnant in their Hollywood Squares, how could I give myself over to only one of you, when all of you missed me this much?

*

I was in a hurry and said excuse me, miss! to a woman blocking my path off Broadway. Only after I boarded the train did I realize it was Katia. The last time I saw her she was screaming at her then husband about “growing the fuck up,” which made my child, and her child, cry. It wasn’t just Monday with that guy, it was Tuesday and Wednesday and Friday too. The thing about raising children is that, unlike your then husband, they rarely become your then children unless your goal in life is true crime. It’s one reason you can never trust the childless on the future, and you can never trust the childless on the past. It’s only the present the childless commandeer. They can’t throw their arms around stupidity like daddy can, they can’t swing it from a star.

*

After finishing Jordan Castro’s The Novelist I re-read the first 100 pages of Don DeLillo’s Mao II and then became bored with its profundity. Bill Gray also suffers from writer’s block, like Castro’s unnamed novelist, although unlike him Gray has published books and the reader believes Gray’s novels have changed people’s lives, and also changed the way writers think about composing the sentence, the sentence being “the writer’s will to live.” It is no surprise that Mao II is dedicated to Gordon Lish. Bill Gray, a “thick-bodied man,” like Castro’s Facebook friends, doesn’t have Twitter, he has cigarettes, but if he had Twitter he would smoke that, too, because he knows it’s the “self-important fool that keeps the writer going,” what Castro, writing about Twitter, identifies as pride. Gray’s in a rut because he knows writers no longer make “raids on human consciousness,” because they have all been “incorporated” and the only thing publishing—indie or mainsteam, anti-woke or do-the-work—really wants is a dead writer, because “the secret force that drives the publishing industry is the compulsion to make writers harmless” and pretend they’re part of some “august tradition.” Très pleased that Don DeLillo won, she’s great, she’s an august tradition. Published in 1991, Bill Gray’s problem isn’t that ornamental despair of kings like Jonathan Franzen or Joshua Cohen—prestige television and/or Twitter has ruined the Novel, if not necessarily Their Novels—it’s that writers aren’t as important as terrorist attacks. In 2022, that complaint sounds racist. DeLillo is a führer not a prophet. Remember Karlheinz Stockhausen, the composer of a piano piece that begins by repeating the same chord 140 times, who wrote, 10 years after Mao II, that 9/11 was the greatest work of art he had ever seen?

*

The ubiquity of the autumn trench. Elisabeth Shue’s in Adventures in Babysitting but less wintry. Are wicked city women wearing these in Zuck’s metaverse? Can you lease an autumn trench from Plato’s Closet in Yarvin’s Urbit? Sometimes they feel cream, sometimes tan. The other night at Siena Tavern I counted no fewer than five cosmopolitans in their “absurdly early thirties,” as DeLillo writes of Brita Nelson in Mao II, wearing some version of the autumn trench. They leave me in the brooch.

*

After the show I walk outside and scream, who here owns The Garbage & The Flowers on vinyl? I see a punk and think about how much I hate punks but the boy in the cowhide vest has a Camel Blue and the conversation doesn’t need to progress from there. The only thing I can tell you is that the saints are marching in and the photographers are sticking out and the horses are pulling up with Bluetooth speakers tickling their manes and there’s no vacancy at Trump International and the bar at the Langham has a private equity party and pandemic racism won because even I’m scared to ride unstrapped the Red Line after 11pm. I check my Lyft app, startled to see the picture I added the night of Danny’s wedding, and then compare it to the Curbed price, also the cost of a Club Monaco t-shirt. I kick up my leg. A yellow cab flashes their brights. In the cab, which will cost $10 less than the Lyft or the Curbed, the news segment on the backseat TV features a young Black man being arrested for assaulting an elderly Black woman on the Red Line. I can’t turn it off. I ask the driver to pass me the aux and soon we’re singing Kevin Johansen’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” with fake drifter blues. By the time we commit to Michigan Avenue I’m too drunk to see anything but the champagne brown mannequins in the Max Mara windows. They wear flesh-colored trenches. But what color is flesh-colored, anyway? Count me out.

*

I write because Gordon Lish used to brush my girlfriend’s Egyptian ass at the old NYU bookstore. Another thing I do is keep Lish’s Collected Fictions on eBay at a hideous price and sometimes people offer to buy it at that price, and then I raise the price. It costs me nothing.

*

Nobody asked me, but I do not believe art has the ability to change the world. I believe the redistribution of wealth from the 1% has the ability to change the world.

#

[robininthelabyrinth]

Rise of the Guardians and or Stardust AU?

“Oh, well done,” Yu Ziyuan said approvingly. “Very well done, Wei Wuxian! Good boy! Look at that, he got them all well and good and he didn’t forget about the aesthetic.”

“I suppose that really was always the one thing on which you and A-Xian always agreed,” her husband said, long-suffering. A little pleased, as he always was when she and Wei Wuxian would share looks of despair at their most distinctly uninterested family members – none of them had ever really appreciated the joys of a proper look. Even Jiang Cheng, who was exceedingly stylish in his own way, had his own thing going on, more good taste than a real commitment to a style.

It wasn’t really an aesthetic if you weren’t willing to stick with it for good and for bad.

Especially for bad.

“Well, yes,” she agreed. “At least someone understood the importance of making sure your actions fit the right aesthetic – and I think it’s clear that this, at least, is very aesthetic.”

“I’m not sure I agree,” Madame Lan put in with a slight frown. “Lots of corpses, yes, but what’s the aesthetic in that?”

“The ravens, obviously. Look at that, he’s more or less created a bird tornado.”

“Bird tornado,” the former Sect Leader Nie coughed into his hand, looking vastly amused. He always did have a good sense of humor, that little extra bit of ruthless edge that most Nie sect leaders lacked in their earnestness giving him the remove necessary to laugh at terrible things – his too-early death really had been a pity. “What aesthetic does that match, exactly? Is he going to be the bird patriarch?”

“Ravens are obviously aligned with demonic cultivation,” Yu Ziyuan argued, affronted on behalf of gaudy over-the-top taste everywhere. “Red eyes, ravens, corpses – it’s a death theme.”

“Then why isn’t he wearing white?”

“…a darkness theme, then. Not everyone can go with the funeral attire all the time - if you want that, why don’t you go look at what’s-his-name, the new star that fell down east? Xiao Xingchen or whatever he’s called himself?”

“Maybe he just doesn’t want to look like a Lan,” her husband suggested, getting back on track to stop the tide of rolling eyes.

“There’s nothing wrong with looking like a Lan,” Qingheng-jun murmured, his eyes drifting over to his wife. They were still working out their issues, which seemed to Yu Ziyuan to be in a bit of bad taste; they were all dead, after all.

Still, she wouldn’t comment. Maybe they were going for absurdist.

“Better look like a Lan than something like A-Han’s style,” Sect Leader Nie agreed cheerfully. “White and garish red – awful. Like blood on snow.”

“See, this is why everyone thought you were fucking before he killed you,” Yu Ziyuan told him, rolling her eyes. “Who the fuck calls Wen Ruohan by a diminutive?”

“Me,” Sect Leader Nie said. Still cheerful.

Sometimes she wanted to kill him, and he was already dead.

“I’m not sure why you think having killed him was an indication they weren’t fucking,” Madame Lan said, and nudged her husband pointedly with her elbow. She was a lot less subtle than he was, but then again, she wasn’t a Lan. Qingheng-jun had that vaguely constipated look that suggested he was both happy and regretful about her attention – Lans!

Yu Ziyuan really wondered about Wei Wuxian’s taste sometimes. All that wonderfully dark aesthetic he had going on, and he had to fall for a coffin-face?

Hmm. On second thought, maybe it did match. Now that was commitment to a theme…

“No comment on the fucking,” Sect Leader Nie said, the way he always did. “Anyway, looks like Wen Chao’s going to be joining us soon enough, once your Wei Wuxian is done playing with him.”

“Deserved, every inch of it.” Yu Ziyuan announced, and for once Jiang Fengmian held his tongue about her being unduly vicious. In fairness, the man had led the attack that killed them both; they were entitled to some bitterness. “I may hate his guts, but one really has to have some sympathy – I really have no idea how someone as fiendishly intelligent as Wen Ruohan turned out such an awful stupid child.”

“At least we finally got rid of Wen Xu,” Sect Leader Nie said, and showed his teeth – his son had been the one to execute that waste of space in the world of the living, and Sect Leader Nie had been the one to do something or other to get rid of him in the world of ghosts.

Yu Ziyuan half suspected that he’d eaten him.

Let it never be said that the Nie sect didn’t know how to bear a grudge.

“Well, aesthetic or no aesthetic, I’m concerned for the poor boy,” Madame Lan said. “People won’t respond well to demonic cultivation after the war is won, and it’s not as if he has other choices given – all that happened.”

Yu Ziyuan made a face, but nodded, agreeing – she’d always resented her husband’s obvious preference to Wei Wuxian, but she’d generally trusted the boy to take care of Jiang Cheng, and he’d lived up to that in full. In full and beyond, no less.

Poor child, she really had misjudged him. She’d have to tell him as much when he eventually died.

Sadly, Madame Lan was right that it probably wasn’t that far away now.

She hoped Jiang Cheng would be all right without him. If there was one person who wasn’t going to be allowed to join their little crowd of commentators, it was him!

[browncesario]

god i want your version of camp rock 2 so bad, i honestly think a lot about what you’ve said in the chat of kids deserving good media too and it’s like paul hoen looked at the prospects of camp rock 2 and was like “yes i agree children deserve media” and forgot about the good (which is not me making fun of camp rock 2 because i do lowkey have the whole thing memorized from watching it so much when it premiered). and i also understand what you said about the play on kids just wanting to be rockstars when they grow up and trying to capitalize off that, but i feel as though there are many projects that do that trope well without sacrificing what makes a good story (example: literally the first camp rock, paul, it wasn’t that hard) all this to say is that i’m fascinated with the way you perceive and talk about media and the ideas you have to improve it because you do have really good, interesting ideas.

anyway lol tell me how you came to the conclusion of when shane gray’s birthday is because he definitely has the energy for that being his birth date. - 🐻

bro that's SO nice like actually thank you i literally like. i take everything way too seriously but i have fun with it so it's fine. it's fine. i think. and yeah!! like i think hannah montana was a good famous kid show because the whole premise was she wanted the dream without the demise and when she took off the wig there was an entire arc about how it was affecting her life in very real tangible negative ways but she knew what those ways were going to be. you totally caN do it. do you have thoughts on what other ones work?? icarly i think is fine because its already absurdist and its internet fame but austin and ally i think does it very much not well despite me loving the show.

ok shane's birthday is the 31st because his story is about rebirth and redemption, but he as the character isn't fresh and new he's the charred cinnamon roll meme. he's not new years day, he's new years eve. he's the moment before you come into the new year and and sometimes you feel so alone but sometimes you're surrounded by friends and you're singing about how sad everything is and hope that maybe things might be different tomorrow. and they won't be. they won't be different tomorrow. but they will be this time next year. and that's his entire character arc.

also astrology is only real because we make it real but i did inadvertently make him a capricorn which i think totally tracks esp because i inadvertently made mitchie a virgo and that is. very compatible and in line.

[chiropterancreed]

I'm so tired of murderous psycho joker who's somehow able to best batman at every turn. I'M SICK!!! SO SICK OF IT!!! I want a joker who was just a guy who decided to fuck with people. he was a new wave comedian who had his own public access show where he played absurdist pranks on people on the street.

dressing up as a cop and arresting people for stupid shit, and when an actual cop comes along, he keeps going until the cop catches on. then he books it down the street with the cop and camera man chasing him.

another time where he dresses as a bee keeper and brings bee boxes (empty but with mobile speakers playing loud bee sounds), when he drops them and scares all the people in the car.

he and his camera crew go in to a bank to "rob" it (without alerting the cops that it's a bit for TV, and one of the tellers and security guards are plants) and batman crashes the robbery, beating up joker and his crew of hired actors. he's irate when he notices the cameras, yelling at the crew. it's the highest rated episode, and it lands jokers weird little comedy show an actual spot on a television network.

the joker is so high off of his success and the network feedback, that he takes it even further. he does stunts and capers with the intention of getting batman's attention and network ratings. he crosses the line when he accidentally kills a civilian with a stunt bomb, running from batman into the ace chemicals building.

ever since his dip in that chemical bath, he's felt like he's too far into the joke, and needs to keep it going for it to be worth it. he's lost track of the punchline, and doesn't want to back out now.

he doesn't make decisions based on the logical nature of it, but on whether or not it's funny.

running from batman in a warehouse, do you hind behind the massive stacks of crates or behind the thin support pole? pole, of course.

when you sneak through a museum to steal the original pagliacci costume, do you do it quietly and quickly? no, you play the pink panther sneaking music while dressed as a court jester and wearing long ass medieval shoes with bells on the toes.

quick, you set off a bomb and building is about to collapse around you, do you leave as quickly and safely as you can? nope! now's the time to practice your favorite buster keaton stunts.

I want a joker (if there has to be any) who's actually into comedy and not just a clown themed gangster. he does things to get batman's attention and for shits and giggles, not just to be "evil".

[adultswim2021]

The Brak Show #1: “Leave It To Brak” (AKA “Mr. Bawk Ba Gawk”) December 21, 2000 - 5:15AM | S01E01 regular series version aired October 7, 2001 @ 11:00PM

I’m trying to break the habit of assuming only my friends are reading my various blogs, but I failed in one fundamental way: I didn’t really describe the premise of Sealab 2021, like, at all. Despite digging into it’s roots somewhat by watching it’s various pilots, I failed to include even a paragraph with the basic premise of the show. I’ll try not to make the same mistake with Brak. Instead I'll make a DIFFERENT mistake by writing way too long of a blog entry.

On December 21, 2000, after Sealab 2021, The Brak Show, then titled “Leave It To Brak” debuted. Who the fuck is Brak? Brak began life as a villain on the 1960s iteration of Space Ghost, a fairly garden-variety Saturday morning action kid’s show. He appeared in, I wanna say, a very small handful of episodes. I’ve seen the whole series, and I don’t think he was like, a regular or anything. Without looking it up I'll say he was on it twice. In the show he was a space pirate and had whiskers. He has a very memorable design. I’ve never been sure if we’re actually looking at Brak’s face or if he’s wearing a helmet. His fangs imply that we’re looking at his actual face (or at least his actual jaw), but that little curtain thing that hangs down from his, uh, ears? Is that a naturally occurring part of his head? It suggests that his wardrobe is actually his body, and vice-versa. He just looks absurd, making him perfect fodder for an absurdist revision.

Brak as we know him today was first used (barring some kind of Cartoon Network commercial that I’m unaware of) in Space Ghost Coast to Coast, appearing with Sisto. Sisto is his twin brother who appeared in the 60s show. Why Brak was targeted for comedic revision and not Sisto eludes me. I’m guessing “HI MY NAME IS BRAK” just sounds funnier than “HI MY NAME IS SISTO”. Anyway, in the first Coast to Coast episode they are voiced by C. Martin Croker (RIP) doing a Beavis and Butt-head parody. Eventually Andy Merrill took over the role, basically turning Brak into a, uh, childish adult. Okay, he’s basically doing a retarded guy voice. Sorry, but it’s time to grow up.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast debuted in 1994 and remained a cult hit on the network until it was moved to Adult Swim and eventually canceled in 2004. The concept of Space Ghost Coast to Coast was Space Ghost, a super hero from the 60s, now hosts a modern 90s late night talk show, interviewing live-action celebrities on a monitor that hangs over the set. Random obscure Space Ghost villains would show up with skewed personalities from their original 60s counterpart. Brak was easily the runaway star of the touted rogues gallery. He would come in and cheerfully sing a song about beans or something else equally wacky. He rarely had a definable role on the show, he was just a figure that was around and would wander into the set.

A second 90s Space Ghost spin-off was commissioned called Cartoon Planet. This was an actual kiddy show that aired during the day as opposed to Space Ghost Coast to Coast which was kid-friendly but meant for adults. This time Space Ghost, Zorak (Space Ghost’s bandleader on Coast to Coast), and Brak would host an hour of classic cartoons, with little absurd skits between segments set in a studio SORTA like the Space Ghost Coast to Coast set but different. LOTS of Brak’s fandom is based on these skits, which were a little more silly and lighthearted than the material on Space Ghost Coast to Coast. The skits were popular enough that they repackaged them into their own half-hour show, sans classic cartoons. This was an early point of confusion for me. Beloved Brak songs turned out to be from Cartoon Planet and NOT Space Ghost Coast to Coast, so I'd tune into Space Ghost wondering if they cut out all the Brak segments or what?

Cartoon Planet would answer viewer letters (conceivably real ones; they DID include various ways to contact “Ghost Planet” at the end of both Space Ghost Coast to Coast and, I’m guessing, Cartoon Planet, which I never did see in it’s original form). They actually answered the reason for Brak’s lack of intelligence (brain-damage caused by Space Ghost, using an actual clip from the 60s show). I bring this up not out of genuine concern for continuity or canon; these aren’t huge concerns for the writers of these shows. The real reason Brak is dumb is because Andy Merrill thought the voice was funny, probably. I bring it up because generally the premise of Space Ghost in the 90s is that even though he IS a super hero with super hero abilities, he’s also an actor who makes cartoons about being a super hero. So, it can be concluded Brak’s brain damage is from a stunt gone wrong and not carried over from the fiction of the show.

The premise of Space Ghost Coast to Coast is that Space Ghost has captured evil villains Zorak and Moltar and is forcing them to work on the show. But they also freely reference their personal lives outside of the show, breaking character. They are actors who are sticking to a premise only when it’s convenient. Yes, it’s fun for the kids to pretend that Space Ghost has enslaved his enemies to work on his talk show, but the reality is that when the camera turns off they all go home to their apartments or wives or whatever. This concept feeds directly into The Brak Show: we aren’t watching Brak’s real home life; Brak, cartoon character and actor, is playing himself in a sitcom. His mom isn’t his real mom. His Dad isn’t his real dad. Zorak isn’t his real best-friend. They are all actors. This isn’t played up in any significant way on the show itself except for a few moments and certain episodes, but THAT IS WHAT’S HAPPENING and you wouldn’t really understand that just by watching this episode and nothing else. You would have to have been paying attention all this time to Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Cartoon Planet, and also, yes, Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak.

Okay, Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak isn't REALLY required viewing for this series. But guess what? I watched it for the first time ever in preparation for this and now we all have to deal with Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak. Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak (sorry I keep repeating the full title which is Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak) was a two-episode special presentation that aired on Cartoon Network while Space Ghost was on hiatus and before The Brak Show's stealth premiere. It (Brak Presents The Brak Show Starring Brak, that is) was a Sonny and Cher style variety show, featuring Brak and Zorak on stage together performing songs, intentionally corny sketches, and a LITTLE BIT, but NOT A LOT of backstage drama; which could be argued to have been part of the show itself. Variety shows doing sketches fictionalizing the backstage antics of the production is nothing new. There are also live-action integrated celebrities, and the show comes to a screeching halt whenever they show up. Maybe their performances are hampered by having to perform on a green screen, but these segments come off lame and pandering. Space Ghost Coast to Coast would make it's name featuring washed-up, kitschy, or counter-culture celebrities. Here we are treated to Monica, Freddie Prinze Jr. (whose segment in particular really drives me up a wall), some wrestler guy, and a lady who's name I don't remember. Okay, I admit I fast forwarded through the second of the two episodes a LOT. Sitting through one episode in real time was just too much to bear.

Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak is written off by a lot of Brak fans as a substandard product, and they're not wrong. I myself never sought out the whole special until I started writing this blog. But there's one thing I'll give it, the visuals (minus the live-action celebrity parts) are actually pretty fun. There's a lot of weird character designs, and the same playful use of stock footage and kinetic editing from Cartoon Planet carries over into this. Skipping past the celebrity guests and watching the special on mute would be the preferred viewing method here. Honestly, I've never been that charmed by Brak's songs. I never cared much for Cartoon Planet.

Brak Presents the Brak Show Staring Brak eventually became The Brak Show, but with one more step: a scrapped audio-only pilot. This pilot appears as an audio commentary track on The Brak Show Volume 1 DVD set. I discovered it by accident. In preparation for this blog I popped the DVD in, saw there was commentary for Mr. Bawk Ba Gawk, and pressed play. Instead of Andy Merrill and Pete Smith dryly talking about their creative process, I was treated to what would have been the audio for a Brak Show pilot (there are stage directions being read in lieu of visuals), roughly the length of an 11 minute episode. This version plays up the backstage antics of Brak's variety show much more, kinda like Larry Sanders meets Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak. Returning from the show is Brak and Zorak, along with Allen Wrench, a talking Allen wrench that appeared in Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak. On Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak, Allen had a crazy high-pitched voice. In this audio pilot he sounds closer to Meatwad from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Also present in the audio pilot is Thundercleese, who curiously sounds like the regular series version of Thundercleese. In “Leave it to Brak”, Thundercleese sounds slightly different. Maybe they went back and rerecorded Thundercleese for the DVD?

That FINALY brings us to the actual episode. “Leave it to Brak” was the first episode of “The Brak Show” proper to air (though if I remember correctly from what was reported way back when, they wanted to call the actual show “Leave It To Brak” but couldn't for legal reasons). It feels more like a first episode than Goldfish does, which was the first episode I saw when Adult Swim officially began in 2001. “Leave it to Brak” introduces each character with fake studio audience applause. They even introduce Sisto, who simply walks in front of the camera, farts, and is not seen again. The premise of the show is this: Brak stars in a family sitcom. His mom belongs to the same species as Brak, but his dad is a tiny human voiced by George Lowe doing a Ricky Ricardo voice. According to this episode; Brak is roughly high-school aged, but it's all a pretense to get this cast of weirdos together under one roof. Again, Brak is a cartoon character playing himself here, so we're not meant to actually think these are his real parents; Brak is not half-human, necessarily. It's all just for the sake of this dumb show.

The plot of the episode is this: Zorak, Brak's best friend and worst influence, convinces Brak to help him kidnap the mascot of their rival high school, a chicken named Mr. Bawk Ba Gawk. Having done this, Brak grapples with the morality of his actions, tries to deceive his parents by dressing the chicken up like a little man, is caught, and is taught a lesson. There's a comedic final scene that reverses the lesson Brak supposedly learned, and then it ends. Somewhere in there we are introduced to Brak's giant robot neighbor who blows up Zorak for ripping up his lawn.

The Brak Show was possibly the most anticipated show when Adult Swim was announced. We all quietly ignored how much Brak Presents The Brak Show Starring Brak sucked; mostly because this was touted to be a show for adults. Afterall, Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak's biggest shortcoming was the fact that it was the first Brak-centric product to pander directly to children. Brak was always seen as a uniquely weird creation that just so happened to appeal to kids, kinda like Pee Wee Herman or Joe Camel. Also the idea of parodying the sitcom genre seemed novel, despite the fact that it wasn't really a new idea. Now it just comes off like a shallow observation: boy, old sitcoms sure were corny, right?

I don't know exactly how to pinpoint what was so disappointing about this show. I can see there was a genuine effort to make it funny. Dad was a decently funny character. They weren't just trying to mock sitcoms, they were trying to build a genuinely strange world that resembled our own. Brak lived in the suburbs but there were aliens and robots everywhere. Sci-fi situations casually reared their ugly heads into the lives of these characters. I mean, look at the plot description of Brak stealing a high school mascot; it's an ACTUAL SITCOM PLOT. There's no real subversion to it other than the fact that Brak and Zorak from Space Ghost Coast to Coast are doing it. This could have been decent as a one-off special like Tim & Eric's Bag Boy staring Steve Brule. But they made more.

Oh wait, I figured out why The Brak Show sorta sucked. It's the fact that the show was a musical. Fuck, I hated that so much that I blocked it out of my head until this moment. Every episode had musical numbers in it sung by Brak and the family. Ugh. They were supposed to be funny nonsense but I never liked it. In fact if there were ever an edit of the show without the songs I would probably remember it much more fondly.

This version of the pilot had very simplistically drawn backgrounds. When the show went to series they redid the backgrounds with photo-realistic settings and props. It's a much more appealing look. This version of the pilot was briefly featured in an episode of Sealab, where Murphy was flipping through the channels on his monitor. He flips past this and Aqua Teen Hunger Force and maybe Space Ghost? This was back in the early days when every show seemed like it was connected to each other. I miss that. The “regular series” of The Brak Show used to give the show a different parodic on-screen title; “Mr. Bawk Ba Gawk”, which aired fifth on Adult Swim, had the opening title “B.J. And the Brak”. “Goldfish” used “Leave It To Brak”, which causes some episode guides to get confused over which episode is which. In fact, Adult Swim's website features the pilot version of this show and incorrectly uses the plot summary for “Goldfish”. I'm not linking to it because the listing says it expires today. But go look for it if you want.

The other big difference between this version and the “regular series” version is there are a few missing bits here and there. For example, the pilot version starts with Dad asking Mom for another biscuit. She sighs and says “maybe later”, to which dad just shrugs off. There's also a cut song I call “Kiss you hot” that dad sings to mom. There's probably other differences here and there. Oh, Brak's clock is the beeflog illustration from Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak. Isn't my life fuller for being able to make that connection? God, I'm so glad I watched Brak Presents the Brak Show Staring Brak last night instead of getting an extra hour of sleep.

So what's good in this? I REALLY like the scene where Bawk Ba Gawk is at the dinner table and everyone keeps stealing his little hat to wear. Mom scolds Dad for wearing the hat, to which he mutters “I'll do what I damn well please”. Mom then plucks the hat from his head. When we cut to the wide shot, she's wearing it. Funny! SOLIDLY VERY FUNNY. But the series generally suffers from them trying to cram in weird pointless bits of absurd comedy. Only sometimes does it work. Not sure why. But that's how it goes, I guess.