#featuring Everything frankly.... this movie is a lot.

[cinememed]

₍ 🎞 ₎   men   (2022)  rp  starters  ! featuring toxic relationships, explicit language, violence & mature themes . some lines have been slightly adjusted for rp purposes .

i'm starting to wish i'd let you help.

it's exactly what i hoped for.

this kind of thing is going to happen again, and again.

what promises did we make?

you can't say something like that. you can't say that to me!

i'm saying it because you will have to live with it. on your conscience.

stop saying please. stop pleading.

it's not a threat. it's a warning.

i'm sorry you will have to live with my death on your conscience, but it's the truth.

that is last thing i would ever want. ever.

how is my life worth so little to you?

it's horrible. it tears me apart.

i'm scaring you?

how do you make yourself into the victim? you scare me.

i don't want either of us to be scared of the other.

you hide. i'll seek.

you're in pain, yes?

you should be finding somewhere to hide.

i realized you weren't praying. you're tormented.

i didn't approach, but i should have.

it felt like we could see each other. i'm not even sure if that's possible.

i think you need to be understood. and i do understand.

i can fully imagine it must be dreadful for you.

it's not nice, but it's not a capital offense.

do you prefer things to be comfortable or true?

settled in okay? no gremlins?

you and me, we're gonna have a fucking good time.

oh, you poor thing.

you don't strike me as a liar. i believe you.

i don't know what you think you're playing at, but it's not gonna sit well with me.

what are you going to do now? hurt me again?

i don't think you will, but you probably should. it'll be the last chance you get.

you're gonna stab me again? you're so mean.

this is your power. this is the control that you exert.

you are singing to me. to dash me to pieces.

[tinybeetiny]

But I guess it was all just make-believe: S.M

NonIdol!MingixAfab!Reader

This took a lot longer to write than I thought it was going to. Thank you to the anon who gave me this idea! This is inspired by the song Love by Keyshia Cole

Taglist: @n1nme4r @e3ellie If you would like to be a part of the taglist please fill out this form

Masterlist | Ateez Masterlist

You never thought your relationship with Mingi would turn out this way yet here you were staring at the Instagram in front of you. Every feature, every inch was a stark contrast to you. He still loved her, he never outright said but you could always tell. The way he would always bring her up whenever he got the chance irritated you to no end. You tried to express the way it hurt you to him but he would always brush you off "Babe. I'm not with her anymore, I'm with YOU. You have nothing to worry about. I promise" but his words did nothing to ease the pain. It would be the littlest thing from the shows you watch to the way you hold his hand. “You know my ex liked daisies too” “Well my ex always watched this show with me” “My ex never made me watch scary movies”. At this point, you knew about his ex more than you wanted. You didn’t understand why. She cheated on him, ripped his heart, and walked away without a second thought. He was still so hopelessly in love with her and he used you as a way to distract himself, you were sure of it. No matter what you did he would always compare you, sometimes in subtle ways sometimes in very obvious ways. “Hey Min, look at this new skirt I bought” You walked into the living room giving a little spin “hm. Haeun used to wear skirts like that. I don’t think that style really looks good on you though.” he said looking you up and down. "Here ya go Min, I tried to make it how you like it" You say putting the plate of Dak Galbi in front of him. He looks up giving you a small smile "Thank you babe, it smells really good." When he takes a bite his twists into an unreadable expression "What's wrong? Is it not good?" You worriedly ask "Hmm I don't know. Haeun used to make it differently and it tasted a little better"

Your final straw was when you and Mingi were out with his friends. You opted to meet him there seeing as you got out of class a little later than expected. He had told you to just come in when you got there so you told the hostess the name the reservation was under and she walked you over. "yeah I love her how could I not? She's beautiful, thoughtful, amazing and she understands me like nobody else has. I thought she was happy so I don't understand why she would cheat on me like that." Mingi sighed as the boys rolled their eyes. They were never fond of Mingi's ex, not when they were dating and especially not after she ripped his heart out. You, oh they absolutley loved you. But the only issues was Mingi. "Oh come on guys. You know I'm still not over her" he whined seeing their expressions "Mingi, what about (y/n)? Ya know, your current girlfriend who hasn't done a single shitty thing to you?" Yeosang questions pointedly "I mean... she's nice but she's not Haeun. I keep waiting for her to text me saying she regrets it and wants to get back together." Mingi muttered looking down at his lap. The table went silent, nobody knew what to say until Yunho looked over and saw you standing at the end of the table. "Oh. Hey (y/n)" San chuckled nervously. Mingi whipped his head up so fast you were sure he gave himself whiplash "(y-y/n) I-" You shushed his stuttering not interested in what he had to say "I don't really know what to say honestly. I've done everything I could to meet your standards, to be good enough for you. But I'm not going to be some placeholder while you wait for someone else. Quite frankly I feel like she doesn't deserve you after everything she's done but if you want to be stupid, yes stupid, then I'm not gonna sit here and watch it" your voice strong and surprisingly no tears came. You smiled at the rest of the boys and walked out of the resturant without a single look back.

Mingi didn't know how he felt. 3 months had passed since you left and his ex never messaged, she even blocked him on everything. He had to admit that he did in fact miss you, at first he didn't think he was going to. But the more time went on the more he missed your presence. He thought about texting you many times but Yunho told him you were better off. The little hope he had was crushed when he saw your most recent Instagram post. There you stood looking prettier than ever with a guy wrapped around you, the smile on your face was the brightest he had ever seen. Sadness crept into your heart but he couldn't help but feel happy that someone was showing you the love you deserved.

[callmearcturus]

@vmprsm replied to your post “Raw MKV rip of Mission Impossible: Fallout:...”:

Theoretically, if one wanted their own copies of the MI movies safely on a hard drive....where would one go?

​I mean, there is a site where you can acquire a lot of movies via torrent. I tend to use (rot13) 1337k.gb and I got a heavily discounted Windscribe VPN subscription that I use on almost all of my devices.

But my thing is that... I want commentary reels and special features, and sometimes you'll download a movie but the fucking subtitles are either bad or they become desynced over time and I haaaaate it.

So I've been gathering bits and pieces over the past year to get a Plex system going in my house and it works like a fucking DREAM. But it requires some investment. If you just want to have a few local copies of your favorite movies, this is way overkill. But me, I am canceling all of my family's streaming services and pivoting to our Plex.

So what I have for actually getting the files:

I don't have this model but it's similar to this, a Pioneer External Blu-ray Reader. It sits on a little shelf and is connected to my PC by a USB cable. (I think I got mine for around 68 bucks so you can wait for a sale.)

I use MakeMKV which will rip the big honking raw files from a Blu-ray and leave them as matroshka (.mkv) files.

Because these raw files are ENORMOUS, I compress them in Handbrake. Handbrake is wildly powerful, can convert file formats and make them super small. I have my Handbrake set up special to dump all the non-English language subtitles and audio tracks to save space.

(SUPER BONUS TIP FOR HANDBRAKE: If you have a dedicated GPU, you can give Handbrake permission to use it, and it'll compress shit literally 10x faster, love it.)

At the moment, I am using a Western Digital portable 5TB external harddrive because it was one sale and I couldn't beat the price. Eventually, I want to upgrade to two 10TB HDDs so I can keep a full backup of everything I'm ripping. Because this is a bit of a time and energy commitment and I don't wanna lose all my progress here!

At first I was running Plex off my desktop PC and that worked totally fine, but my family hates having to touch my desktop to wake it up every time, so I very recently grabbed one of these guys:

This is a Beelink Mini PC S12 Pro. It is small enough to fit in my hand but it is a speedy little demon that runs Windows 11. (And eventually I am gonna use it to firewall out ads from our entire home network, I'm pumped for that project but ANYWAY.)

The upside of these mini boys is that instead of being a hefty workhorse like my main computer, this is small and has a low-power draw.

So I moved my Plex Media Server to the mini PC, plugged in my 5TB drive of movies, and now everyone in the house can easily stream anything I have added to the library.

This is what it looks like, if you're curious. Any device in the house that runs Plex and is signed in can select any movie or TV show I have and just watch it like it was Netflix or something.

A month ago, I has like.... 65 movies? Now I'm ripping a few and we're gonna break 100 soon.

"But Arc, where do you get so many blurays!"

My local library.

When I lived in Broward County, FL, I had an extravagantly wonderful library system. Tax dollars at fucking WORK, y'all. Now I live in Georgia and the library system is not nearly as good, but I have still gotten my hands on a frankly ridiculous amount of blurays. Every week I'm picking up 3 to 10 movies or shows, taking them home, making good copies, and returning them.

All of this is an investment and it is work. But as someone who built my computer, built my keyboard, cracked my 3DS and PS Vita-- this is fun to me! This is what I love to do. And through doing it, I've seen more movies in the past year than the last ten years put together.

So yeah, I can't recommend this to everyone, but if you wanna get out of your subscriptions and to just have high quality shit on demand, this is what I'm doing.

Cannot stress this enough tho, if this seems interesting to you: wait for sales. All the components here go on steep sale if you wait patiently. Take your time assembling the parts and keep in mind that shit is modular, you can upgrade parts later.

[letteredlettered]

Hi, just finished By the Grace and.. I love? Unattractive!draco isn't what i enjoy cus his canon description is my type. But to see THAT as harry's version of ugly and then slowly as he falls, him finding THAT same face beautiful was painfully adorable. Also, i laughed a lot at draco's humour + found Timothy's story horribly scary. As dead beings aren't new in HP we don't actually realize how creepy it is when they 'exist' with the living. While reading, i could imagine Timothy as alive, struggling, confused and in pain. Probably tortured too before the sacrifice. His story before he was the "Timothy tree", which i find so disturbing that people still read it all as the "tree" as if the BOY wasn't the one whose spirit was forced in it. Tree wasn't sentient, Timothy was. I loved him addressing draco even though he wouldn't let draco climb. When he's freed, I love how the rot of the tree is shown.

Another point, even towards the end we see draco addressed in the fic as "Malfoy" instead of draco(except the last page) and as it's from harry's pov did you intentionally choose that? Is there anything you meant by that?

You don't have to answer me(obviously) still thanks for writing the fics! And (copying draco) i hope you too sleep beautifully. I'm sorry this is so long, forgive me.

I am so glad you liked unattractive Draco, even though you don't picture him that way! I've been frankly a little shocked at the number of people who have tried to tell me Draco is "canonically" hot. He is canonically blond, tall, and pointy. Two of those traits are actually turn-offs for me. Then I'm told that Draco is hot in the movies, which means he is canonically hot. I find this interesting on several counts. I'm not writing movie canon. I don't find Tom Felton hot (though he is a fine guy!)

Most importantly, it's news to me that objective hotness exist. I was deeply aware that there is a societal conception of hot that depends upon an agreed upon set of facial features, coloring, and body characteristics, but that is not objective hotness, and even that is under dispute, cf Benedict Cumberbatch, who half the world seemed too find the very definition of too hot to handle, and the other half of the world thought looked like an alien.

Sometimes I imagine Draco like that--a face that is wildly attractive to some and odd to others. Sometimes I do imagine him as very symmetrical and most people, even Harry, grudgingly admit he's a bit fit. But most of the times in my head he is pretty unappealing.

I'm glad you liked the Timothy Tree as well! I admit, I started with the name of that tree and only later invented why it was called that. I just liked the sound of something called the Timothy Tree!

I think Harry thinks of Draco as "Malfoy" because he is struggling so much with dealing with everything Draco has done to him, to people he loves, and to society. At first, "Malfoy" is just what Harry as always called Draco, and then, when Harry's feelings begin to soften and warm, it's hard for Harry to deal with, so he thinks of Draco as "Malfoy" to hold him at a bit of a distance.

Because Draco embraces fascist ideology and genocide at some points in canon, because he bullies Harry, physically and mentally, tries to kill him and his friends, I struggle with fics where Harry doesn't struggle with those issues about Draco. In lots of fics, Harry immediately starts calling Draco "Draco" as soon as they get to know each other a little better. It feels like a big thaw that comes way too soon for me. So, in this fic, I kept the "Malfoy" until nearly the end to show how hard this was for Harry, about how he has to give up some self-protection and be vulnerable in order to think of Draco as just another boy, and not someone who tortured him and hurt people.

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL - A Blah Week

May June 2023 Wk 1

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. Organized by which ones (in each category) I’m enjoying most.

Ongoing Series - Thai

La Pluie (Sat iQIYI) ep 6 of 10 - It’s so damn cute. Seme is still sus... but cute. I didn’t even mind the pratfall since they clearly both wanted to take advantage of it. These two are great kissers - like MaxTul level. I am PLEASED. Meanwhile, sides have a drunken MOMENT. 

Be My Favorite (Fri YouTube) ep 2 of 10? - I’m enjoying it which is fucking with my head, trash watch here! 

Luminous Solution (Sat Gaga) ep 2 of 6 - Dome has aged so pretty! Do we think the café owner doesn’t want him because he is happy in love? I’m enjoying the high school story arc a lot, and I wish we were just watching that and none of the others (Dome or no Dome). I finally figured it out the actor playing Mai is from Manner of Death.

The Promise (Weds YT & WeTV) ep 10fin - Soap opera brother relationship suddenly? Also more not communicating and more separation? Just bullshit. The best part of the ep was the interstitial cat. It feels like this show dragged on forever I am so glad it’s over and I intend never to think about it again. Full review below (although I pretty much just said it all.) 

Step By Step (Tues WeTV & Gaga) ep 7 of 10 - no ep this week, no idea why. It better not be because of the ZeeNew freakszoids or I am banhammering with a will. Our Skyy 2 (Bad Buddy & 1k*) eps 13-14 - skipped it this week as it concludes next week so I’ll binge all 4 at once.

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Our Dining Table AKA Bokura no Shokutaku (Japan Thurs Gaga) ep 9 of 10 - It’s just so good. I say it every week but it IS. Oh the running of the gays trope! Japan1 For us? How thoughtful. Awe, Yutaka’s confession in tiny was the best. SMILEY KISS! It took 3 BLs but Inukai Atsuhiro has finally actually kissed a boy. 

Star Struck (Korea iQIYI & Gaga) ep 5-6 of 8 - Oof this is such a hard show. Too much angst. It is a complicated story worth further analysis, but it’s too much for me and I don’t wanna dwell in it. Also, sweetie, you don’t get to cockblock the boy you rejected then invite him to sleep over, I don’t care how confused you are. Good for Hanjoon for standing up for himself, but holy shizz is this hard to watch. 

Vian the series (Vietnam YouTube ) - Cats are not caretakers. The neighbor is a cutie. Fun convo for a VBL - top/bottom & everything. Faen fatale showed up + a pratfall kiss and frankly I’m finding this show a bit dull now that the charm of the initial premise has worn off.

Naked Dinner AKA Zenra Meshi (Japan Fri Gaga) ep 8 of 12 - I never know what to say about this one. This was the dark separation doom episode. I was pretty blah over it. I’m just not engaged with this show. 

It’s Airing But ...

House of Stars (Thai Mon iQIYI) 12 eps - I bounced at ep 3. Will binge if told it is worth it at end.

Stay (Pinoy ????) 7 eps - It’s mostly in English and set in LA so I’m not bothering to hunt.

Let’s Eat Together AKA Aki wa Haru to Gohan wo Tabetai (Japan movie) cinema release means no inter distribution. Looks cozy: daily lives of college students and roommates who enjoy meals together, and a v codependent, adaptation of yaoi Let’s Eat Together Aki and Haru. I’ll keep an eye open for it but assume we can’t get it for now.

Takumi-kun Series 6: Nagai Nagai Monogatari no Hajimari no Asa (Japan Sun ????) ep 1 of 10 - NO ONE ASKED FOR THIS and no, I have no idea where to get it, why would I? (Say it with me everyone: Oh Japan, must you?*) 

Ended this week 

The Day I Loved You (Pinoy YouTube) ended. I have been reliably informed it’s better left a DNF.

My Story (Pinoy YouTube) ended. I bounced at ep 4. Someone tell me if I should bother with the rest?

Pure Vanilla (Singapore) - 10 min short on Gaga featuring a cafe, boss/employee, friends to lovers. It’s very sweet. Bit awkward acting. I love seeing real tats on my screen. I wish Singapore would give us a full proper BL. 7/10 RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS 

The Promise (Thai YouTube) - Although well acted this show dragged a too simple premise out into the ultimate manipulative miscommunication repeats of idiotic "why don’t you just TALK!?” Phu & Nan are childhood bffs through college (almost lovers) until Phu disappears. After looking/waiting for him, Nan gives up and self isolates, and the actual story takes place 10 years later. Phu’s “reason” and inability to say it out loud makes the whole show just frustrating, squandering good chemistry, and a stellar cast of multiple faen fatals (whose personalities would’ve made them better boyfriends). Seriously do not bother. What a damn waste of talent, time, and electronic bandwidth. Fatally flawed. 4/10 NOT RECOMMENDED 

Okay it ended a while ago but I finished it:

Make A Wish (Thai grey) - 6 part PNR (from Sammon - Manner of Death & Triage) about a doctor who can see the dead and strikes a bargain with a wish-granting irreverent tree angel - naturally they fall in love. Stars Fluke Natouch opposite not Ohm, but who cares bc Fluke has chemistry with everybody. Once again the Thai afterlife is incredibly bureaucratic but I enjoyed the premise and the unfolding of the story (it’s not predictable but still satisfying and with nice little twist). I like that the doctor is just gay af and has a fag hag bestie and everything. The cast is excellent but the comedic stylings are too overblown and tonally off. It had sad parts and did make me cry but is ultimately happy with a great sex scene, good smiley kisses, and all the agency. 8/10 RECOMMENDED 

Next Week Looks Like This:

Starting:

6/7 Love Tractor (Korea iQIYI) 8 eps - announced in 2022 from WATCHA (Semantic Error) I've been WAITING for this one. About a stressed-out law student who family obligations force into the countryside where a series of strange encounters and misunderstandings with his hunky young farmer neighbour. Will this be an extended version of Strongberry’s Some More? Or Korea’s take on Restart After Come Back Home? I'm chuffed. Country boy meets city boy is a very underused romance trope in BL.

6/9 Boys Love Omegaverse AKA The Boys Love sequel no one asked for (Japan movie) - everyone jockeyed to release the first ABO but it looks like Japan will take it. They do like to do all things BL FIRST. This seems to just be borrowing the branding of Boys Love, showing little resemblance to either original, since it's about 4 men in an idol group. (But could go very dark with that title. Boys Love is technically the first and one of the darkest BLs ever made.) Movie+Japan = no inter distribution.

Still Coming June 2023 

6/15 Tokyo in April AKA Shigatsu no Tokyo wa (Japan Gaga) 8 eps - Based on a yaoi, this is a reunion romance that takes place in an office. Japan does Our Dating Sim? Yes please.

6/22 About Us but Not About Us (Pinoy movie from 2022 on Prime) - A professor grieving the loss of his partner meets an ambitious literature student.

6/24 Why You (Khmer BL ????) - Billed as a horror romance, not sure if this is a movie or a series where it will air... nothing except that it exists.

6/24 Tie The Knot AKA Under the Same Sky (Pinoy movie on Prime) Trailer - I guess Prime is coming for our Pinoy BL? From OXIN Films (Rainbow Prince), announced for 2022 based on a true story, Briggs's family runs a bridal business but he has never had a chance to fall in love until he meets Shao, a groom to be.

6/25 Dinosaur Love (Thai iQIYI) Trailer 5 eps - from Ultimate Troop about a uni student, Rak, whose partner cheats on him with Rak's best friend. This gives bad boy hazer Dino an opportunity to hit on Rak at last. From The Yearbook people so I will not watch this as it airs. After Remember Me? Never again with them.

2023 forthcoming BL master post (see comments, some are inaccurate, NOT KEPT UPDATED)

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

From Make a Wish. 

Found my side dish. (Be My Favorite)

We asked this question literally the ENTIRE show. (The Promise) 

My point exactly! 

(last week)

Current Kpop earworm? BTOB on Killing Voice - honestly I’m ded, end this show, no one else can ever be this good. 

[moonlitempty]

Shaun of the Dead (2004), Dir. Edgar Wright, Starring Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost.

A romantic comedy, with zombies.

For a while now, I have kept movie entries in my personal journal, it feels like a tangible way to commemorate and preserve a movie I feel deserves such attention, and even before I started that habit, I was intimidated by the entries for The Cornetto Trilogy.

All three movies were just so special and influential to me, and physical writing has a tendency to, y’know, get fucked up, so it was a struggle figuring out a way to both preserve my love for these films on my journal, and make it look mildly cute. Safe to say, I think I’ve achieved said balance.

This is the entry for Shaun! I tried to feature a lot of blood splatter/bloodstain motifs, in accordance to the movie obviously, and you might think the b&w colour scheme of the printed images was intentional, but the sad and almost hilarious truth is that it was a limitation! My printer is a laser printer, and those can’t do colours. So I tried to reach a monochromatic style with these entries, where I highlight one single colour that I think is reminiscent of the movie. For Shaun, it was obviously red.

I am not a movie critic (even if I like to think I am), so the personal thoughts section of the entry may come off as shallow or void of detail, I’m sorry about that! But if we’re honest, at this point in time, my love for these films should not be a point of doubt, even if my written thoughts are lax at best.

I remember the first time I actually *heard* of Shaun of the Dead, it was via a kill count video on youtube, and even then I was intrigued by it, all the love and praise I had heard directed towards it was something that drew me in, I didn’t actively search out the movie just yet, I just kept it as a mental memo that I’d get to later.

Then, on one magical night, and by pure fate, I stumbled upon the film on cable TV, I was channel hopping and seeing the title on the screen made my eyes light up, this was my chance to see what all the *fuzz* was about. So I didn’t hesitate and I changed the channel from VH1, to experience the Shauning. My life changed at that instant.

Shaun of the Dead was the most charming and charismatic film I had seen up until that point, I had heard about how flawlessly it was edited and how well every single joke landed, but experiencing said praises in the flesh was phenomenal, and Simon’s role as Shaun was instantly memorable and you could say he was the thing that hooked me in. He was so cynical and snarky, yet caring and loving of the band of misfits he was surrounded by. Though Nick as Ed was also an incredibly charming experience.

I remember just being completely entranced by everything surrounding the film, the movie kept going on and on and I kept finding stuff to love about it. The fact that it was clearly a movie that didn’t take itself too seriously as to be a de facto horror movie, yet it still conveyed emotions in a serious and profound way just really stuck a chord with me, and I’m sure everyone already praises this particular quality, but the quick, snappy and dynamic directing and editing choices characteristic of Edgar Wright are just lovely.

They manage to make the movie feel novel and it hooks you in, without risking making it feel overwhelming and too distracting. And I haven’t even mentioned the score and songs featured in the movie! While the film is perfect on a purely visual standpoint, the accompanying music on every scene elevates the overall feel of the scene you happen to be watching. Whether it be the mundane feeling of Shaun’s daily life, or the dread of the slow realisation that something ain’t quite right in London, or the inspiration and undying will to keep surviving and overcoming.

Frankly, I could go on and on and on about how much I adore this film, about how much it helped me deepen the love I have for filmmaking, and how much it even inspired to purchase filmmaking. But let’s be blunt, you guys probably don’t want to read my ramblings any longer, (but if you do for any reason, do let me know! I love feeling like my opinion matters in any way).

So, Shaun of the Dead! If I could, I’d screen you to any person who even breathes in my direction, I love you so much and I’m sure I’ll rewatch you as soon as I get the TV to myself.

10/10.

[spiritcc]

Why were Soviet Films in 2 episodes? Like Office Romance

sup, generally i'd say it's definitely not all All Movies but also while the issue is mostly clear, it's also kinda unclear lmao

a lot of 2 parters are television-only. episode one - news - episode two kind of structure, and a nice portion of them were new year specials aka they'd be shown on january first (eg the ordinary miracle that is frankly not festive at all). ryazanov also has a couple of tv-only two-parters, which begs the question of why were they classified as telefilms while the office romance was absolutely a full-feature film meant for cinema.

my only explanation is the production specs, since different rigs are used for widescreen vs tv-only. and as to why two-parters are allowed on a wide screen, apparently there was a nice incentive that is, by movie theaters it's classified as two films therefore bwease purchase two separate tickets :) lmao. i saw people reminisce over looking forward to going to the buffet during intermission between parts so what gives. also if i believe someone who found an alleged quote from daneliya, two-parters were classified as two films internally as well, so that the crew would get paid a double rate, i guess overtime was treated fairly.

from my observations, up until a certain year you simply wouldn't get Long movies, the longest i saw was about 1.50h ish somewhere in the 50s. 1.45h is the absolute maximum i have barely seen to begin with. somewhere in the 1960s if a movie exceeded 1.40, it'd have to add more runtime in order to be split into two. minimum runtime in that case becomes 2 hours, maximum - about 2.45h. not a fan of the latter bc from experience that runtime was virtually never justified but sure besties get that coin. then we get exceptions like war and peace and moscow-cassiopea, then some stray individual mentions seeing the musketeers (3-parter tv-only) in the theaters and it all becomes a mess.

but if everything here is correct, 2 parters in cinema are a way to accomodate runtime while giving the audience a pee break, getting coin, and giving production their coin.

[hatchetation]

I’ll be the first to say that in many ways, show me love the series is a fucking mess. The writing is uneven, the editing is GODAWFUL, and there are tons of gaping plot holes 🕳️

But I’ve continued to watch and I think there are a few reasons why even if you don’t watch, it’s worth thinking about how this series fits into the larger landscape of queer media. First off, I am a shallow lesbian and I’ll never say no to women kissing women on my tv screen 🤷‍♀️ Second, I am p confident that this show is gong to give Meena and Cherine a happy ending, and a happy ending for queer women on tv is still revolutionary! Third, this show has heart and warmth despite its many flaws. Many people have put a lot of care into the show and that does come through despite everything. Fourth, I’ve watched a lot of terrible shows and movies featuring lesbians and it has allowed me to look past superficial flaws (often due to a low budget) and at the heart of the story being told. And this story, although not the height of sophistication, is fun and trope-y and at its best is like the show equivalent of cotton candy. Fifth, this is a Thai show that normalizes queerness and brings visibility to wlw in Thailand, a country where gay marriage and unions of any kind aren’t legalized.

Finally, and perhaps most interesting to me, is that this show is an offshoot of the Miss Grand Thailand beauty pageant and in many ways acts as an advertisement for them. I’ve never been into beauty pageants and frankly my stereotypical view of them has been that they are bastions of misogyny, patriarchy, and the objectification of women. If lesbians exist in the world of the beauty pageant, I’ve always imagined it was to perform for the male gaze. And yet this show is aimed squarely at queer women!! It portrays the beauty pageant as a hot bed of lesbian activity and queerness is very normalized in the world of the show. And in the real world of Miss Grand Thailand, the lead actors and the possible romance between them are the face of the pageant. The show doesn’t critique beauty pageants in any way (it really isn’t equipped to do so), but the very act of aiming itself at queer women is subversive.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

SPIDER-VERSE On The Brain

Massive SPIDER-VERSE *spoilers* are ahead... Do not read on if you haven't seen the movie...

It's been four days since I checked out SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE in theaters... And I'm still processing such a rich layer cake of a movie with all this stuff going on, just the sheer ambition of it... And... This story isn't even over, that's the mind-blowing part...

This movie did have pretty strong arcs for Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy, and even Peter B. Parker to some extent, in addition to introducing a major conflict and a soon-to-be-primary antagonist in Miguel O'Hara/Spider-Man 2099... While a larger threat, The Spot, still looms, and there's even a closer to home threat for Miles himself as the picture wraps up...

There's so much more to go, assuming that BEYOND THE SPIDER-VERSE is also going to be a pretty long movie. That this movie was, in the planning stages, getting to be so big that they had to break it up into two parts? Who knows what we're in for...

I feel a lot of ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE's narrative brilliance is within its yet to be resolved conflict...

Canon...

Back in 2018, INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE came onto the scene with its dynamic new way of rendering CGI imagery in an animated feature, while throwing in eye-candy flourishes and other dynamic art styles to really make that movie pop amongst other mainstream animated movies *and* the entire comic book movie sphere. In a neat sense, this groundbreaking new way to make an animated feature strengthened the inclusive and quite simple overall message of the story: ANYONE can be Spider-Man.

Now, if INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE said "anyone can be Spider-Man", ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE asks what that "anyone" must go through to be Spider-Man.

Can Spider-Man truly be anyone?

What is "canon"?

Miguel is adamant that every Spider, from man to woman to animal to insect, must experience some major tragedy in order to truly be a Spider-Something. A loss of a family member, close friend, or any kind of loved one... That's that about that, that's the nature of the "Spider-Verse", it is set in stone, no other way! Seems to contradict "Anyone can be Spider-Man", right? Apparently Miles can't have a relatively normal non-costumed life, someone he loves HAS to be axed... And that's the case with... How many Spiders? Over 280?

... which quite frankly sounds very controlling and lacking in imagination. And kinda dumb on paper. Miles knows that, even... It all relates back to what his mother and father want for him vs. his ambitions and desires.

"Nah, imma do my own thing"...

Such a liberating line, during such a literally and figuratively heavy moment in the film...

Between Miles' arc and Gwen's story, this autistic queer right here felt something quite resonant from all of this... I needed to see and hear these classic story tropes pulled off in such a great new way at a crucial time in my life...

Now, this works even beyond one's personal journey and how a film relates to someone: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE seems cleverly critical of contemporary superhero movie culture and most nerd-dom, from its most toxic swamps to its most boring offices. Adherence to "canon", shackling oneself to hard-set rules that mustn't be deviated from. It's especially potent coming from a movie series where the main Spider-Man is a black/Puerto Rican teenager, and his pals include a trans Spider-Woman, an older adult Peter Parker who has a child, and many more.

The insistence that Spider-Man has to be this one thing, i.e. Miguel running a Spider-Society that makes sure all Spider-People have that very "Uncle Ben" tragedy happen to them, with NO ANOMALIES... Miles' whole existence as Spider-Man, of course, is revealed to be said anomaly... In that a spider from another universe, Earth-42, got to his, Earth-1610, and bit him... Messing everything up... He's even blamed for Earth-1610 Peter Parker's death, to add insult to injury!

Or DID he mess things up?

Maybe "canon" is a bunch of bullshit.

The very kind of thing that shackles whole characters and franchises down, instead of letting those who come to the sandbox play with the toys THEIR way. INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE came to CG animation and didn't do the Pixar style, didn't do what most other mainstream animated movies were doing, didn't follow the accepted "standard" or "canon"... A friend of mine, in his review of ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE, noted something very interesting: This also ties into how a lot of very online animation fans insist that every new movie now must be like SPIDER-VERSE. And like PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH. And like any other animated movie that they consider "top tier" or "based" or "cinema". Including a relatively-panned Mario movie. Screw off if you're Pixar making "mid" movies like TURNING RED and ELEMENTAL, or Disney Animation making equally "mid" movies like ENCANTO or RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON... "Canon" in feature animation, apparently, is now movies that must be like SPIDER-VERSE or PUSS IN BOOTS or whatever. Animated movie "requirements". You have to have scary dark villains, you have to have the most amazing unseen animation style ever, you have to do it all THIS WAY...

This whole "canon" nonsense also ties into superhero movies in general, as well. Even comics, like a lot of runs of Spider-Man are apparently doing... especially in a time of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC movie-verse being clamped down by such hard continuity... That has only morphed into a bigger cluster-cuss, post-SPIDER-VERSE.

I remember when watching the LOKI Disney+ series, thinking... This series is trying to explain in FIVE 40-MINUTE EPISODES something INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE effortlessly explained in less than 5 MINUTES... Then you bring in the Doctor Strange follow-ups, all this stuff about "incursions". Incursions this, Sacred Timelines that... Why is this so goddamn convoluted and wracked head-to-toe with all these RULES? Other multiverse stories don't do this, and Marvel's characters span DECADES... And a big criticism of the recent MCU output is that the continuity, the canon... Doesn't allow for the characters to have their own unique stories, told by filmmakers with individual unique visions working within reasonable guidelines. I feel these two movies, along with EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, show what a multiverse story can still be in this day and age.

And by using Miguel's rule, ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE goes right for the jugular bearing its spider-fangs.

Anyone can be Spider-Man, Spider-Man can have ANY life.

May I also add? The Spot... He's not in the movie much, but his arc... Tying this back to the worst of toxic nerd culture. The Spot is shook by being called some villain of the week and everything else that happened to him (like getting conked by the very bagel from the first movie), and instead of using his weird abilities for something good, he's going to go great lengths to prove that he is not some villain of the week. To become a larger scale threat... And for what? To fill a literal hole in himself? What validity and happiness will this bring him? I see something similar in some aspects of nerd culture, where they take being wronged (I'll humorously compare this to being shoved into lockers, circa 1988) at some point in their life, and turning it into their literal villain origin story... Growing up to be the jocks that bullied them, growing up to be the ones making life harder for other people in the community... The very people complaining about how "w0ke" this movie is for having "forced diversity", the very people who also lob that stolen word at harmless things like the LITTLE MERMAID remake and virtually anything "W0ke Disney" puts out these days, the very people who had literal shit-fits over MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, every new STAR WARS movie, GHOSTBUSTERS 2016, SHE-RA AND THE PRINCESSES OF POWER, new MUPPET BABIES, any new STAR TREK media, the list goes on and on... That's The Spot. Funny how some superhero movies, even animated superhero movies, have these villains who feel like they've been wronged and feel like they're entitled to something...

Just more texture to this ludicrously-textured layer cake movie... Yeah, CAKE itself is a big part of the movie, too. Look at that-

All this, amidst a backdrop of hundreds of Spider-People, a surrealistic smorgasbord of visual styles and animation techniques (Spider-Punk alone, YOWZA YOWZA YOWZA!), a multiverse-spanning story, and at the end... All of it tying back to who Miles Morales wants to be. How he wants to tell HIS story... When he defies Miguel on the train, it's a monumental moment...

And the story isn't even over yet... This movie is something special.

[tyrannosaurus-trainwreck]

Spooky season

So, I live in an old house that was, when I moved in, adjacent to an overgrown feral lot that had been seized by the state as derelict and then... kept that way. The previous owner’s solution to the state’s once-a-year maintenance schedule was to build a cinderblock wall along that edge of the property as tall as the building code would let it be.

It solved the problem, but it also means that entire side of my house is basically god’s blind spot. You can’t see it from any of the neighbors’ properties, and you can’t see it from much of my property, either.

This was never much of an issue, until I was sitting home alone one night watching a movie and I suddenly heard something scratching at one of the windows on that side of the house. Not light ‘scritch-scritch’ scratching, either—something was putting some weight behind those nails. I just about jumped out of my skin. I threw open the curtains—nothing. Check out the curtains at the other windows. Same deal—nothing.

It was late and very dark out, and I generally speaking don’t want to get axe-murdered, so I convinced myself it was just a reeeeeeeally big moth attracted to the light and tried to forget about it. The next morning there was nothing out of place or unusual on the side of the house, supporting the ‘forget about it’ plan of action.

Which is what I did for about a week, until it happened again. This time it was louder, lasted longer, and definitely was not a fucking moth. This time I also played it a little smarter and went to a different window and peeked out of the curtains from a better angle on the sly, which made it more unsettling that there was still absolutely goddamned nothing to be seen.

It wasn’t quite full dark this time, so I turned the outside lights on, grabbed one of those five-pound tactical flashlights, and ventured around the side of the house.

Nothing.

No tracks, no prints, nothing’s been disturbed except me. I didn’t hear anything aside from the scratching either time. I walk all the way around the house and back to the front door. Nothing.

Maybe, I tell myself, it’s a bird. Maybe it’s getting to be nesting season and some feathered asshole is just attacking everything it can see its reflection in.

A couple days after that, it’s the weekend. I don’t have to be up for work in the morning, so it’s almost midnight and I’m still awake, reading a book. It happens again. Louder, more frantic scratching. Right fucking behind me.

On the glass fucking door.

Around the minor inconvenience of having a fucking heart attack, because it’s late and something is clawing at the least secure feature a house can have two feet from my back, at this point I was quite frankly fucking done with the whole thing. I whip the blinds open and... nothing. Then I look down.

The smallest adult cat I have ever seen is sitting on its haunches, shoulders barely clearing the stop of the step, paws braced against the glass, glaring daggers at my indoor cat, who very clearly considers this my problem and not hers.

I smack the door, hard, and the cat takes off.

The little fucker kept this shit up for the rest of the goddamned month. I have no idea what sort of beef it decided it had with my cats, who aren’t allowed outside and never have been. Whatever it was, it resulted in me getting jump-scared at least once a week and having to go outside and physically chase the cat off to make it stop scratching at the window like some pint-sized feline Freddy Krueger on three separate occasions.

So this is my annual autumnal PSA: Keep your fucking cats indoors, you goddamned heathens. The rest of us don't need to put up with their WWE Smackdown bullshit while we're just trying to live our lives.

[impuretale]

The Blair Witch Project was not the first found footage horror movie. It did catch on and kick off a craze, and its marketing increased the controversy around it and everything from websites to fake supplemental documentaries created this verisimilitude around it that fooled some people into thinking it was real for a while, and that in itself was fun to watch and appreciate and look back on. The mechanisms for which it was released to the world and unraveled was pretty unique to it.

But most would argue that the first found footage horror movie was Cannibal Holocaust, which by name alone should tell you everything you need to know about it. It would become part of a larger trend in Italian-made horror that based itself around depicting native peoples as human-eating savages in loin cloths for shock value (and actual natives featured in the films were often underpaid, mistreated, and put at risk), and the movies pretty much always universally included a lot of staged but still quite real animal cruelty to increase the violence quotient, too. But the title mentioned used the found footage element -- effectively enough, mind, that the director was dragged into court and forced to prove he didn’t murder a bunch of his actors on camera. (The courts did not care about the animals, mind.) The movie has a storied and frankly uncomfortable history.

It does not take away from the fact that The Blair Witch Project for what it was sparked a real drive toward that form of filmmaking (found footage, not cannibal films) and used various elements to make the product more interesting to consume. It still pioneered something for its time. I am not going to get angry if most people’s first foray into that particular kind of movie begins there and not with the movie that included widespread animal cruelty, racism, blatant, exploitation-film levels of sexism in all the ways you would want a content warning for, and gore that was convincing enough that again, the director was forced to prove it was all fake or go to prison.

Sometimes a thing can be a first just for being a notable entry in a genre or form of storytelling because it is what people are widespread going to be exposed to first, because it is doing something unique that nothing currently is doing, and in its own way. The rest may come later for those curious enough to look. And we can offer those things to that audience without diminishing what got them started.

So let’s maybe start to look for language that lets us do this better because nothing turns off new ears to new sounds more than “I liked it before it was cool” vibes.

[twistedtummies2]

Glamour - Chapter 2 (Trade)

This is the second part of a four-part trade story with @hooter-n-company (a.k.a. Rchlis). She is making some very special art for me, and in return, she asked me to write a story to introduce a Twisted Wonderland OC she's sort of had stewing in the background for a while: his name is Taoka Latronis, and he is based on Tamatoa from "Moana."

I absolutely LOVE Tamatoa. He's a fun villain, and a surprising crush (albeit a somewhat mild one, for me, personally). Rchlis wanted to create a character for the TW universe based on the big glam crab, and I certainly wasn't going to say no. The advantage of this being a trade, instead of a commission, was I could go and make a much longer and more detailed story, in return for much more detailed and elaborate artwork, without either of us having to pay exorbitant amounts that frankly neither of us could afford. Win-win. XD This was a LOT of fun to make, and Taoka is one of my favorite OCs I've gotten to write for that I DIDN'T create myself, if not my favorite (at least as far as TW goes, I should clarify). Hopefully a lot of you like him, too. ;)

Like with other stories of this nature, the other parts will be uploaded one a day over the coming few days. So be on the lookout! Part one went up yesterday.

WARNING: THIS PARTICULAR SECTION DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY KINKS DIRECTLY. HOWEVER, THERE ARE IMPLICATIONS OF VORE AND OTHER KINKS SPRINKLED THROUGHOUT THE FIRST THREE PARTS. (I actually think this part might be the only chapter that DOESN'T feature kinks at all, possibly.) DON'T LIKE? TOO YOUNG? DON'T READ.

NOTE/DISCLAIMER: The lyrics to the songs used in this chapter are not mine. One is a song you should all know from a Disney movie that you should all also know. I used a cover by Jonathan Young as my guide. The other is a song from "Labyrinth," composed and performed by David Bowie - it seemed appropriate. All rights to the original tunes go to their owners.

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“AND NOW, AUDIENCE MEMBERS OF TRIPLE-S! IT’S TIME TO MEET YOUR JUDGES!” The announcer’s declaration was followed by much clapping. From your place just slightly offstage, you watched the opening ceremony get underway. One by one, the announcer presented the judges for the Sage’s Solo Showdown. The two student judges - Vil and Neige - were the first to step up. Given their celebrity statuses, each was greeted with screams and squeals, as well as great applause. Neige all but pranced up to his seat on the judge’s booth, waving excitedly to the audience. He flashed a peace sign and winked at someone in the crowd, before sitting down. Vil followed him. He strutted to his place and bowed regally, smiling a sort of indulgent, almost sultry smile at the crowd. You couldn’t help but chuckle as Vil sat down: when Neige had appeared, you’d seen fangirls bouncing with giddy excitement. When Vil appeared, however, you saw them swoon and faint dead away. That said everything about each of them, you felt, in a nutshell. Divus Crewel stepped up next, as the “teaching judges” now came into play. You were surprised by how much applause he got. He was no celebrity superstar in the way Vil and Neige LeBlanche were, you supposed his recognition as a professor at NRC, along with any clout his “extracurricular activities” had gotten him, would have still garnered him a decent fanbase. “I wonder who the fourth judge is,” you murmured. “Nya! We haven’t seen any of the teachers at Royal Sword,” whispered Grim with a nod. “I’m curious, too!” The pair of you would soon get your answer. “And now, ladies and gentlemen!” the announcer’s voice boomed. “Our final judge for this year’s competition, and our chief master of ceremonies! I’m sure a lot of you know him: one of the hottest musicians in Twisted Wonderland, a native of this very island, who’s just started a new career of teaching at Royal Sword Academy! Please put your hands together for the mighty…the magnificent…MAVERICK MOKULAU!” The crowd went just as wild as they had for Vil and Neige, if not wilder. From your vantage point, you could see the latter of the young superstars bounce happily as he applauded from his seat, a look of idolizing wonder in his eyes. (Vil and Crewel, for their part, clapped politely; the latter even somehow managed to falsify a smile.) Soon, you could see the mysterious Mr. Mokulau: your first immediate thought was that he looked like some sort of rock star. he was a very large man, similar in height and build to Coach Vargas, but with darker skin and long, curly, yet well-groomed hair. While Vil and Neige were dressed in their school uniforms, and Crewel in his usual attire (fur coat and all), Mokulau was wearing a short sleeved shirt with a green floral pattern, like the canopy of a jungle, and a stylish pair of leather pants. Around his neck was a leather cord, with a shark tooth pendant, and he tipped a pair of Aviator-style sunglasses up onto his forehead as he strode towards his station. He winked one of his shimmering, almost metallic hazel eyes, flashing a grin of pearly teeth to the audience and flexing one arm in a showy fashion; both of his brawny limbs were covered in a myriad of tattoos, and you could see the beginnings of a similar tattoo on the back of his neck, no doubt trailing down along his spine and shoulders, currently unseen under the cover of his clothes. Mokulau took the microphone from the announcer and addressed the crowd; not only was he built like Ashton Vargas, but his imposing, booming voice you felt sure would give the coach a run for his money. “Alright-Alright-Alright!” he called out, slipping the shades back over his eyes, and pumping his fist into the air. “Who out there is READY?!

The crowd cheered and Maverick laughed boisterously. “Aww, c’mon, you can all do better than that! LEMME HEAR YA!” The man held the mic towards the audience and they cheered even louder. “That’s more like it!” he boomed. “Now, much as I wanna get onto that stage and go wild for you all, that’s not why we’re all here today. I know, I know, I’m the best, it’s a tragedy you won’t hear me…but maybe if we’re lucky, some of these guys and gals we’ve got backstage can almost match! Almost, heh…” Grim’s ears twitched as he heard a sound from behind you both. He looked, then frowned and tapped your shoulder. You looked to see where his paw pointed, and scowled: you could see the glitter of a familiar pair of purple eyes, peeking out from a shadowy corner of the offstage area. However, Taoka’s eyes weren’t focused on you. They were focused on Mokulau. You tried to ignore the strange thief, and refocus attention on the Royal Sword instructor…yet you were keenly aware of his nearby presence the whole time. “Seriously, events like this are really something special,” Mokulau went on, pacing before the judges bar as he continued to address the audience. “Trust me, I’d know: when I was just a kid, livin’ on this very island, I fell in love with music. I could play, I could sing, I was pretty good at it! But, well…let’s just say finding somebody to SUPPORT that music wasn’t easy. I had to leave this place to find a real chance to express my passion, get a scholarship, and eventually become the person you see now…which is, to say, AN AWESOME DUDE.” The audience chortled. Neige giggled. Vil and Crewel looked thoroughly unamused and merely rolled their eyes in unison. “So, anyway, when I found out about a chance to teach at Royal Sword, and to help judge this competition as well, I was hyped! It was a chance to come back to my roots, and to reconnect with something I…well…something I think I lost a long time ago. But we’re not here to hear my drama: we’re here to hear some cool guys try to out-cool yours truly! They’ll probably fail, mind you, BUT the one who gets the closest is gonna go home with somethin’ real special!” Mokulau snapped his fingers. The announcer dashed offstage, then returned with a cart. The audience “oohed” and “ahhed” at what was upon the cart: it looked like a huge trophy cup, made of silver. The handles of the cup arched upwards into a sort of bridge over its mouth…and in the center of the bridge, you saw an ivory-hued, triangular item, with the shape of a fish hook etched into it. “This great silver trophy,” Mokulau declared, “Is topped with my very first guitar pick! Some of my earliest and best concerts were done using that thing…I like to think of it as my way of passing the torch, and a sign of not giving up on your dreams and passions, no matter what they are. Call me sentimental, ha! Trust me, the silver’s worth a lot of money…but that pick? It’s truly priceless. And whoever gets first place in this competition will go home with that shiny puppy in their hands. SO…” He waved one hand extravagantly, and the announcer wheeled the cart and the trophy away. “...I think it’s time I stop yammering your ears off! YOU READY FOR SOME MUSIC?!”  The crowd applauded and called out a resounding “YEAH!” in various forms. “Then let’s get this party started!” howled Mokulau, and gave the mic back to the announcer before rushing to the judge’s station. He sat down with a smirk, crossing his arms and slinging his legs up onto the table in front of him. Vil and Crewel - who sat on either side - cringed and flinched away as he did so. Neige just smiled blithely, clearly unaffected. As the announcer began the proceedings, you realized it was time for you and Grim to get to work.

“Come on,” you whispered to the little imp. “Let’s go.” “Right, Minion,” Grim whispered back…then blinked as he looked past you. “Nya…where’d that purple-haired weirdo go?” You turned and, sure enough, you couldn’t see a single sign of Taoka. “Forget about him,” you sighed, shaking your head and ushering Grim away. “We’ve got a job to do, big guy, let’s move it!” Grim nodded and bounded after you as you each scuttled away to take care of business. Neither of you noticed, as you hurried away, that Taoka hadn’t really left. Purple eyes watched the two of you go, then once again the shadowy sneakthief stepped out of hiding. From his place offstage, he narrowed his eyes, peering over the stage itself towards Mokulau’s cool expression. A strange expression - something that crossed a snarl, a sneer, and a decidedly unpleasant smile all at once - crossed his face. “Well, well, well…been a while since we last met, hasn’t it? If you can call it meeting…” The gloved hand clenched tighter, the fist shaking visibly before Taoka swirled his golden coat and prowled back towards his dressing room. “This time, you won’t be able to ignore me. And to make doubly sure…I’m going to see to it nobody shines like me today.” A slightly unhinged chuckle left the young man. “Then again…way I see it, nobody shines like me at all. But, hey, no harm in remindin’ ‘em of that.”

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“I don’t get it!” squeaked Hop, the blonde dwarf from Royal Sword, as he hurriedly looked around his room. “I had it when I came in!” “I told you to keep a better eye on it!” snapped his friend, Gran, grumpily. “Easy, fellas,” soothed Dominic. “It’s gotta be around seer humswear…I mean, here somewhere!” “I’ll make sure to keep an eye out for it,” you promised with a sigh. “Thanks, Stage Manager,” Hop said, with an apologetic smile, rubbing one arm. “I-I’m really sorry about the trouble.” “Trust me, it’s no trouble,” you said, and left the dressing room. Your smile vanished as soon as you did so. “Nya! I think it’s trouble!” Grim protested, huffishly crossing his arms. “How come nobody here is able to keep track of the important things?!” “I don’t think it’s entirely their fault,” you said, softly, scratching your chin as yourself and your companion patrolled the halls of the backstage reaches, where all the singers and performers were getting geared up or resting after their number. So far, however, those who had gone up hadn’t exactly faced smooth sailing. The first contestant had lost their microphone; as a result, their performance suffered, as they couldn’t be properly heard throughout the ampitheater. It was all downhill from there: another contestant lost an important piece of their outfit, and had to hastily throw on different clothes. Not only did this make them late to their cue, but it lessened the impact of their performance, as the costume had built-in lights that were supposed to go off at a certain point during the song. Now, Hop the Dwarf had lost perhaps the most important thing he or any other performer would need: the instrument he had brought to accompany him. These and more issues had plagued nearly every single person who’d gone up so far. ‘This can’t be a coincidence,” you muttered. “It feels like someone is sabotaging the other performers.” “But why?” “Why else? So they can boost their chances of winning,” you snorted. “Oh, yeah,” Grim murmured, nodding slowly. “I guess that would make sense…right! That’s obvious! I-I totally knew that already! Yep!” You could only let out a groaning sort of sigh. “You really ought to care more,” you grumbled. “This is going to make US look bad just as much as anyone onstage. We’re supposed to be on top of things like this.” “You mean…we might not get the money?” sniffled Grim. “You worry about the cash, I’m going to worry about my grade,” you groused in aggravation. “We’ve got to figure out who’s behind this as soon as we can.”

“Well, right now, I don’t think we’re gonna have a chance,” shrugged Grim. “We’re running around too much!” You grumbled again in reply; you knew that, for once, he was right. You’d have to take care of this issue when the show was over, and report things to security accordingly. But you REALLY didn’t like it. You could only imagine how Vil and Crewel were reacting to all this, and what they’d say if they saw it as poor management on your behalf…honestly, that hurt you more than any worries about your actual welfare. Your highly concerned musings were interrupted when one of the assistant stage managers - they had been assigned, not picked by you - came over to you. “Contestant 23 is about to take the stage,” they said. “Good,” you nodded back, and beckoned Grim to follow you. “Come on, it’s our job to bring Contestant 24 into place. They go on immediately after.” Grim nodded, and the two of you went to Number 24’s room. You knocked, and a polite voice from inside called out, “Come in!” You opened the door and smiled as you peered in on the performer inside. Said performer was a student of Royal Sword. Until this day they had been all but a stranger to you. They were slender and small of frame; their somewhat effete yet clearly strong and muscle-toned features vaguely reminded you of Epel or Lilia: petit and slim, yet tough and resilient all at once. He had skin the same bronze-like tone as Maverick Mokulau’s, and hair done up in dreadlocks. He wore a reddish-pink tank top, with striped tropical patterns on it, and beige trousers, with patchwork badges that resembled some sort of yellow flower or coral. His eyes were a rich chocolate brown, and filled with a warm, friendly light. “Number 24?” you checked, just to be safe. The young man nodded as he stood up, and adjusted his personal microphone. “Name’s Keala,” he greeted, extending a hand towards you. “Keala Cravalho.” “Nice to meet you,” you chuckled. “Nya…technically, you saw each other earlier,” huffed Grim. “Yeah, but we were both in a hurry then,” shrugged Keala, and smiled as he knelt down towards Grim. “Didn’t get a chance to say hi to you, either.” “I’m the Great Grim of Night Raven College!” the imp declared, puffing out his fluffy chest. “And don’t you forget it!” Keala chuckled and reached out to playfully ruffle Grim’s headfur. “I won’t,” he said with a teasing smile. Grim growled and swiped at Keala’s hand, batting it away and blushing beneath his gray fur. He grumbled as he straightened out the fluff of his furry noggin. Keala just chuckled louder and stood up again, raising an eyebrow in your direction. “I didn’t realize you two went to Night Raven. You’re not how I expected a lot of students there to be,” he remarked. “Eh. For me, it’s just a place to stay. And learn, I suppose,” you shrugged. This was, in fact, the truth: while you had your own school pride, you’d never felt the intense bitterness towards Royal Sword others at NRC did. Maybe it was because you weren’t originally from this world. “Come on,” you said, and ushered Keala out into the hall. “The act before you is about to go on. It’s time to get moving.”

“Oh-oh, wait a minute!” exclaimed Keala, and hurried back into their room. You frowned as you watched him check the locker of his dressing room. Keala’s smile fell, a look of confusion and then worry on his face. “Is something wrong?” you checked, already dreading the answer. “No,” murmured Keala…then shook his head and spoke a bit louder. “No, no, it’s fine. I’ve just, uh…just gotta get my backup plan real quick, hold up…” You and Grim shared a look, mouthing “backup plan?” to each other. Whatever it was, Keala fetched it quickly, tucking something into his pocket. He then nodded and smiled, indicating he was ready to go. Smiling back, you led him out of the backstage area and towards the main stage itself. “You nervous?” you asked as the three of you hastened to your place. ��More than a little,” admitted Keala, brushing some of his dreadlocks from his face and giving an anxious sort of smile. “I’ll be okay, though.” “I’m sure you will be,” you smiled back. “You’ve got this.” “Not as much as OUR students have got it,” mumbled Grim. You made sure to jerk his tail for that one, giving him a strict look of reproach. Keala just sniggered at the exchange. Soon, the three of you were in view of the stage. Contestant 22 had just left, and Contestant 23 - in all his purple-and-gold glory - was now stalking onto the stage himself. “Welcome! And what’s your name?” you heard Neige’s voice call out. “Taoka Latronis,” came the somewhat snide reply. “And if I’ve prepared the way I think I have, I’m about to rock your world.” “Well, aren’t we confident?” Vil smirked, steepling his hands and leaning back slightly in his chair. “I try to be, Housewarden,” Taoka replied teasingly. “If you think being one of our students is going to help your chances, puppy, you are sorely mistaken,” Divus Crewel thought to point out. Maverick Mokulau just yawned. “Enough yammering!” he called out, and waved a meaty mitt through the air. “You’re here to perform, so perform. You can’t do anything more wrong than what some of the other clowns so far have.” Taoka’s smirk took on a slightly sinister, sneaky bend.

“Trust me, I know,” he practically purred, then seemed to shake off the aura of darkness. He straightened his back and adjusted the guitar strapped about his golden-clad shoulders. “This song is a short one, so you all know.” “Short doesn’t mean bad,” shrugged Neige, cheerfully. Taoka gave him a quick nod, then took a breath, closing his eyes as he tried to focus on his music. “Ugh…I don’t even wanna HEAR what this guy has to play,” grumbled Grim, and plugged up his fiery ears. “Hey, everyone here put a lot of work into what they’re doing,” soothed Keala. “Give him a chance.” Admittedly, you were on Grim’s side, given Taoka’s behavior…but once his fingers began to work on the guitar, you soon changed your mind. The tune he played was pounding and deep; like something primal, waiting to burst free from his very soul. Discordant, jarring jangles of the guitar strings were accompanied by melodic tones, the strong strumming rising in intensity and pitch with every couple of lines. Taoka kept his eyes closed, his expression filled with a sort of melancholy pain. This sensation matched perfectly with the lyrics he sang, which held a dark, conflicted message… “How you turn my world, you precious thing,” he crooned. “You starve and near-exhaust me. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you! I move the stars for no one. You’ve run so long, run so far!” Suddenly, Taoka’s eyes shot open. They fixed on Mokulau. There was a fiery intensity in them as he continued his song… “Your eyes can be so cruel! Just as I can be so cruel! Though I do believe in you! Yes I do!” Taoka’s eyes softened, and turned up towards the sky. His voice carried a shaky tone, as if trying not to cry. “Live without the sunlight. Love without a heartbeat…” His eyes closed again, just as they had begun to look misty. He turned his head downward again, as his fingers brushed the final, somber notes from the guitar. Huskily, he uttered the final lyrics… “I…I…can’t live…Within You.”

A few more plinking, plunking strums, and the lament came to a close. You let out a breath you didn’t realize you had been holding in. “That wasn’t too bad,” murmured Keala behind you. “Is it over?” muttered Grim, who had his ears covered the whole time. You just rolled your eyes. Meanwhile, the four judges and the audience behind them applauded. The bitterness that had been written all over Taoka’s face was erased as he smiled hopefully at the competition masters. “So?” he asked, as the applause died down, sounding perhaps a little too playfully sure of himself. “Will it pass?” “It passes for me!” chirped Neige LeBlanche. “You really put a lot of effort into that one, I could tell! There was a lot of emotion, a lot of passion, in what you were doing. It wasn’t very long, but you really sold it to me.You oughta proud of yourself!” Taoka’s broad grin indicated that he was. “Yes,” yawned Vil. “Well, unfortunately we can’t all be so forgiving.” Taoka’s grin fell in an instant. “You may be one of my dorm-mates, but - as both your dorm leader and one of your judges here - I have no choice to be critical,” Vil went on. You couldn’t help but smile slightly to yourself with mild amusement: Vil was ALWAYS critical, regardless. “The emotion you put into the song was truly palpable,” he commended. “I can tell this is a tune you are passionate about, and you did your best accordingly. HOWEVER, I feel you should have chosen a longer piece, to make a bigger impact, just for a start.” “I agree,” nodded Divus Crewel. “Furthermore, while your voice is good, there is a sort of rasping quality to it I couldn’t help but notice. In some places, it is quite effective, but in others, it makes your voice sound weak; I would strongly recommend working on developing more clarity to your vocals.” In a matter of moments, Taoka’s expression had gone from almost smug to looking rather nervous. He turned to face Mokulau. Maverick was looking up at him thoughtfully over the rim of his sunglasses. Finally, the judge spoke. “Sorry, kid, but I can guarantee you aren’t making it to the finals,” he grunted.

You swore you could hear Taoka’s heart shatter. “I didn’t mind the voice, and the song choice seemed fine by me,” explained the tattooed man. “No, my problem stemmed from the strings. Were those discordant sounds I heard intentional?” “Some of them,” peeped Taoka, in a shockingly meek tone. “Well, there’s your biggest issue,” snorted Mokulau, tipping his glasses up again to cover his eyes. “You were able to fake it to the end, but if you can’t play the tune properly, don’t compete over it.” Someone in the audience muttered a quiet, “Ouch.” You couldn’t agree with them more. “Is there anything you want to say before we move on?” Neige asked, politely, a sympathetic smile on his kind face. Taoka gulped. He looked like he’d been kicked in the stomach. You saw him lift his gloved hand. He looked at it with a strange sort of contemplation…then curled the fingers into a fist and shook his head. Once more, you noted the odd way one of his fingers didn’t curl as much as the rest. Suddenly, you weren’t so sure that was just a genetic peculiarity. “Thank you very much,” Neige said. “I still think you did very well! Keep up the good work!” Taoka gave no indication he had even heard what LeBlanche said. He stalked off towards the backstage area. He cast one last hate-filled glance over his shoulder at Maverick - the rock-star-turned-teacher didn’t seem to notice - then pushed someone out of the way as he stormed off into the shadows, golden coat fluttering behind him.

“Nya…talk about a guy who can’t take criticism,” Grim hissed. “Forget about him,” you sighed, then smiled at Keala as the announcer called for the next contestant. “Now’s your time to shine.” “Thanks,” whispered Keala with a grateful smile. He tossed his dreadlocks out of his face with a flourish of one hand, and sauntered onstage. “Greetings,” Vil welcomed, with a respectful sort of bow of his head. “We’re glad to have you with us today.” “I’m glad to be here!” Keala said, and gave a salute to Maverick. “Hey there, Mr. Mokulau! Hi, Neige.” Both of the Royal Sword members waved in greeting. “You know them?” Crewel inquired. “Neige is in my class, and Mr. Mokulau’s one of my teachers,” Keala replied. “Don’t worry: I don’t expect either of them to go easy on me.” “Well, you can be sure of that with one of us,” chuckled Mokulau. “Hey! I can be strict!” pouted Neige, childishly. “It’s just harder for me!” The two teachers chuckled. Vil just groaned and pinched his brow; it was as if every word LeBlanche uttered was painful to his mind. Then he looked up again at the newest competitor. “What is your name?” “Keala Cravalho.” “I don’t see any instrument on you,” Schoenheit observed, raising one immaculate eyebrow. A brief look of anxiety crossed the young man’s face. “Heh heh…yeeeeah, about that…” “Did you forget it?” Crewel asked, blandly. “Oh, no!” insisted Keala. “I brought it with me, but it…doesn’t seem to be in my dressing room anymore.” You and Grim shared a worried look. Whoever was taking things from the contestants had struck again. “Just like with Hop,” you heard Neige murmur sadly. “What do you plan to do then?” wondered Professor Crewel. “Sing a-capella?” Keala’s anxiety gave way to a sly smile. “Actually,” he said, and pulled his cell phone from his pocket, waggling it in the air. “I came prepared. See, my grandmother always taught me to have a backup plan, in case things went wrong. So, in case something happened to my instrument, I actually recorded a full instrumental for the song, so I could still have my own accompaniment!” “I’m impressed,” admitted Vil. “Such foresight would have helped a couple of contestants today.” “Not every contestant knew my grandma,” winked Keala. “If somebody could help me set this up to the speakers…”

You took that liberty personally. You scampered onstage with Grim, and the pair of you quickly hooked up the phone to the speakers, and reworked the mic, so that Keala’s music and voice wouldn’t bury each other or bust the audio levels. It thankfully did not take very long, and soon yourself and your trident-tailed companion hurried off again. You gave a final thumbs-up to the judges and Keala alike, and high-fived (well…high-pawed) Grim as you vanished back into the wings. “Ready now?” Mokulau checked. “Yeah. I’m ready,” said Keala, and looked back at the judges. “This is a song my grandma taught me. It’s based on the legend of a princess who used to live right here on Sage’s Island. Maybe some of you will know the legend.” “Well, let’s hear it!” cheered Neige. Keala nodded and tapped the play button on the recording before hastily scurrying to center stage. He had just a few seconds to breathe and collect himself before the music started. A slow build gave him a chance to envelope himself in the moment; you saw his face relax…and his eyes slowly reopened. He stared off into the distance, as if looking out towards the horizon…and began to sing… “She’s been staring at the edge of the water, long as she can remember, never really knowing why. She’s wished she could be the perfect daughter, but she comes back to the water, no matter how hard she tries.” The music began to build, a pumping, determined, unstoppable quality to the music. Keala’s voice strengthened in turn, from the gentle notes of a storyteller to something more powerful as he began to stride across the stage, singing directly to the audience. “Every turn she takes! Every trail she tracks! Every path she makes! Every road leads back to the place she knows where she cannot go: where she longs to be…” Keala tilted his head back as if soaking in the sunlight from above…listening to the distant waves upon the beach… “And she says…‘see the line where the sky meets the sea? It calls me! And no one knows how far it goes! With the wind in my sail on the sea, behind me, one day I’ll know! But if I go, there’s just no telling How Far I’ll Go.’” You glanced towards Grim to see his reaction. The imp seemed mesmerized, mouth slightly agape, eyes sparkling like a hypnotized kitten. You giggled, and then looked towards the judges. Mokulau had lowered his sunglasses; he was watching with very intense interest. Neige was beaming from ear to ear. Even Vil and Professor Crewel had raised their brows in apparent surprise, as the golden voice continued its song… “She knows everybody on the island seems so happy on the island! Everything is by design. Oh, she knows everybody on the island has a role on the island! She says, ‘Maybe I can roll with mine!’ She could lead with pride! She could make them strong! She’ll be satisfied if she plays along! But a voice inside sings a different song: ‘What is wrong with me?!’” As the question was asked in the lyrics, you caught sight of something else. On the opposite side of the stage, Taoka had suddenly reappeared. The disgraced youth’s eyes were exceedingly wide, and his jaw seemed to have fallen onto his chest. His skin had even turned a shade or two paler. He didn’t just seem surprised. He seemed downright SHOCKED. You couldn’t help but feel a mild twinge of satisfaction at that, even as the next chorus began to roll off Keala’s tongue… “‘See the light where it shines on the sea? It’s blinding! But no one knows how deep it goes! And it seems like it’s calling out to me: so come find me! And let me know what’s beyond that line. Will I cross that line?’” The key changed, and the music kicked up a notch. Keala’s voice soared straight to the heavens, eliciting cheers from the audience. No longer did he sing in the third person, the words coming directly from his heart as he called out the final chorus… “There’s a line where the sky meets the sea! It calls me! And no one knows how far it goes! If the wind in my sail on the sea stays behind me, one day I’ll know…HOW FAR I’LL GO!”

The final words ended in a long, powerful, strong note, and Keala’s dreadlocks whipped forward as he finished with a sharp bow, the music crescendoing and coming to a halt at the same time. The audience applauded louder than they had that whole time. All four judges clapped, and you could hear Neige laughing and cheering, “That was so great!” You looked towards Grim with a smirk. He still looked hypnotized. You snapped your fingers in front of his face. He mewled and shook his head, blinking at you blearily. “Sounded pretty good, huh?” you teased. Grim frowned and huffed, looking quite embarrassed.

“I guess so,” he muttered. “For somebody from Royal Sword.” You just scritched him behind the ears in response. By the time he started purring, the crowd had calmed down. “I don’t even have words for that!” Neige declared. “That’s gotta be one of the best performances I’ve seen and heard in a while!” “I find it hard to disagree,” Vil said, although it sounded like he VERY much wanted to, if only BECAUSE it was Neige. “While I personally feel your sentimentality was a bit overwrought, your voice is pure and your recording did nothing to negatively influence your performance.” “I second all that. And quite clearly the audience loves you,” added Professor Crewel. “Bravo, you daaahling puppy. Bravo, indeed!” Keala gave all three a grateful, speechless nod, then looked towards Mokulau. His eyes were filled with a sort of cautious optimism. Mokulau grinned back and nodded before giving a thumbs-up. “You made me proud, kid,” was all he said. ���And I bet your grandma feels the same way.” Several in the audience clapped again. You could actually see Keala’s large brown eyes go slightly misty. “Thank you,” he almost whispered. “You’re welcome!” Maverick sang back. Keala bowed to the judges, and scurried back towards you. You laughed as he whispered a hasty thanks to you, as well, and waved farewell to him. You then glanced back towards the stage to see the next contestant. As you did so, however, your smile faded. Taoka was still standing on the opposite end There were no mortal words to describe the utter and complete look of hatred on his face as he looked first in the direction Keala had gone, then at Mokulau. Then, with a snarl and a sneer, he disappeared once again.

“Come on, Minion!” Grim yowled, tugging at your leg. “We still have work to do!” “Coming,” you whispered, and hesitantly followed Grim, glancing back repeatedly to where you had seen Taoka. You had a very bad feeling inside your chest…and if your time in this world had taught you anything, it was to trust those instincts. You wished it had also taught you to learn what those instincts specifically meant.

----------------------------------------------------------

Afternoon was beginning to change into evening when the competition came to a close. You had been told who the winner was, and now waited with them backstage, ready to usher them on at the cue. The Announcer stepped to the center of the stage, and declared that the time had come to present the silver trophy - topped with Maverick Mokulau’s treasured pick - to the first place contender. Naturally, Maverick himself stepped up onstage to present the award. The announcer hurried off to wheel the cart onstage once more. The other three judges all stood a pace or two behind Maverick, hands behind their backs, as if at attention, patiently waiting for him to make the presentation. “I think my fellow judges and I can agree that picking a winner for this contest was pretty tough. There were a lot of hiccups today in some of the performances, but these kids…they knew their stuff, and they clearly all worked hard,” he chuckled. “There’s only room for one proper winner, though…and that winner is…KEALA CRAVALHO!” You grinned and gave Keala a pat on the back. “Go!” you whispered, and the Royal Sword student’s dreadlocks bounced as he jogged onstage. He shook hands with Professor Crewel, Neige LeBlanche, and Vil Schoenheit (who visibly wiped his hands on his trouser legs afterwards). Then he approached Maverick Mokulau. The rock star tipped his sunglasses back onto his forehead, his hazel eyes filled with pride as he lifted the trophy from the cart. “Congratulations, kid,” he smiled. “You’ve really earned this today.” Keala beamed, and reached to accept the trophy… …And that, it seemed, was the moment fate chose to make everything go wrong. ZAM! Suddenly, there was a blinding flash of golden light. It flooded the entire stage, and even seared into the retinas of some in the audience. Gasps and yelps of surprise and alarm sounded from all corners. “What IS this?!” you heard Professor Crewel screech, as he shielded his eyes with one fur-shrouded arm, recoiling from the flash. “Trouble,” you heard Grim hiss at your side. You couldn’t agree more: the light soon vanished… …And the whole crowd in attendance gasped in horror. Maverick Mokulau gulped, absolutely stunned…as he looked at his now empty hands. The trophy had vanished too!

To Be Continued in Part 3...

[yusuke-of-valla]

Like ok. For musicals

A lot of musicals have a two act structure not necessarily because the story is better in two acts but because your performers need a break after and hour and a half of performing

As a result, a lot of musicals, especially older ones, will have the act 2 opening number basically be pointless, reiterate a lot of information, or just be a big spectacle number that might inform a character but isn't progressing the plot.

Hairspray's "Big Doll House" is a good example of this, it's basically the characters bitching about being in jail, which they're going to be released from after the number is over.

This is so anyone who's running late getting back from the bathroom doesn't miss anything super important.

It can absolutey be a limitation and once you notice it you notice that a LOT of Act 2 openers tend to be cut from the movie versions BECAUSE the audience isn't getting that break (both Hairspray and Mamma Mia! do this)

But frankly, good musicals know how to work within the limitations of their medium, so there are a lot of act 2 openers that are good for character stuff (Our Lady of the Underground being Persephone confiding in the audience for example, Thank Goodness catching us up on the time skip and how Glinda's rationalizing everything, Stop fleshing out Karen beyond the "dumb, hot" one, etc.).

Like sure bad musicals misuse it. Even if it's the weakest song in the musical a lot of musical fans overlook it because one weak point won't detract from the whole.

But to argue the whole medium is inherently bad because of this limitation speaks to a lack of understanding of the medium and the tools used to minimize or negate the limit it (because I promise you for everything you complain about it's either a feature in which case what are you doing here, or something some examples have managed to work around) and, frankly, a lack of imagination. Sorry you can't think of how to make the act 2 opener fun and you can't suspend your disbelief long enough to forgive them making time for the folks pissing.

(Some of these songs are also just nice. Backstage Romance in Moulin Rouge fucking slaps even if it's largely pointless plot wise)

Again, long way of saying if you're in earnest making an argument that an entire medium is inherently bad, you're probably wrong.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Is It Really That Bad?

So it’s the mid 80s, and you’re tasked with one of the most exciting things imaginable: Turning a Marvel comic into a movie. Now, this is significant because this will be the first feature film based on a Marvel property; there were some TV films before in the 70s and 80s for Hulk, Captain America, and Dr. Strange, but this was going to be on the silver screen! Which famous character should be brought in for Marvel’s big debut? I mean, DC already killed it with West’s Batman and Reeves’ Superman, so Marvel should put their best foot forward! Should we have Spider-Man? The Mighty Thor? Perhaps the Fantastic Four, the first family of Marvel?

Nah, let’s do Howard the fucking Duck.

Adapting a character who was relatively obscure went over about as well as you might imagine with audiences back in 1986. After seven months of production and millions of dollars, the film bombed hard and left a lot of lives in shambles. The director of the movie Willard Huyck and the head of Universal Frank Price both ended up losing in this, as did George Lucas (contrary to what you might believe, he wasn’t the director), who ended up having to sell off Pixar to Steve Jobs to pay off Skywalker Ranch and divorce settlements, things he hoped this movie would have paid for. Frankly, Lucas was a scapegoat for Universal, who pushed his involvement despite his desire to not overshadow his friends working on the movie; Huyck had worked with Lucas on American Graffiti, Temple of Doom, and A New Hope, so he clearly liked the guy, but I guess the suits wanted some of that Star Wars money by slapping the name on. Price also really wanted to make the film similar in tone to Ghostbusters, which didn’t help matters at all.

Pretty much the only person who worked on it and doesn’t hate it is Lea Thompson, who played Howard’s girlfriend Beverly. She has been surprisingly positive about the film and owns her role in it, apparently even offering to to direct a new adaptation for Marvel Studios and lending her likeness to the comics so she could appear as herself beside her one-time fictional boytoy. You go, girl!

Ah, but perhaps the saddest victim of this film’s reception was Howard himself. Between this movie and Disney complaining he looked too similar to Donald, Steve Gerber’s wacky duck man was pushed out of the limelight for a long, long time. It wasn’t until 2009 when Bob Iger ordered the purchase of Marvel that Howard was able to start coming back, a return solidified by his awesome post-credit cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy, which got him a new series and cameos in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Endgame (where he appears for split second in the big portal scene, coming out with the Ravagers and toting a big fucking gun).

But now that we have dozens of other Marvel films under our belt, let’s take a look back at Howard’s sole cinematic solo outing. Was his big break judged too harshly by audiences of the 80s, or is the movie, much like Howard himself, quite fowl? Well, after giving it a rewatch, I’m here to tell you if Howard the Duck is really that bad.

THE GOOD

What this film lacks in… well, just about everything, it makes up for with sheer cheesy 80s charm.

Like, look at Howard himself. The suit is bad, the puppet is bad, the fact they tried using both leading to his appearance changing wildly between shots is even worse… But it’s not so bad that it’s unbearable. Like a crummy practical effect like this undeniably has charm, and it’s helped a lot by Howard’s cute, dorky voice. Would it have been better if Robin Williams had stayed on to voice Howard? Undoubtedly. Were we robbed because a young Jason Alexander was turned away after auditioning? Absolutely, and I cry every night that we lost out on this. But Howard just has a prime 80s everyman corniness to him that makes him a likable duck even if the effects don’t really convey him as well as they could.

Then of course there’s Lea Thompson, and you can see why she’s so unashamed of this film, because she is busting her ass for this film. She will make you believe that she finds a weird alien duck sexually appealing. Like I really don’t have much more to add here, she managed to pull that off, she deserved a better career. End of discussion.

Now, unfortunately, I must praise Jeffery Jones. Here he plays a scientist who gets possessed by the creatively-named Dark Overlord, and he really gets to ham it up in what feels like a prototype of Edgar the Bug. Despite the awful prosthetic work and the Saturday morning cartoon supervillain voice he uses, it ends up being moderately entertaining… and I hate saying that because Jones is an actual, literal sicko in real life. Let’s just say those scenes in Ferris Bueller where he is snooping about a teen boy’s house and leering in the windows hoping to see him is a bit more accurate to his life than you’d hope. It’s a shame, because he’s a solid actor, but it’s hard to praise him too much when he did what he did.

The Dark Overlord itself is also a pretty impressively-designed stop motion monstrosity, and its scenes in the finale are pretty awesome, only hampered by some really bad compositing. You can definitely tell where the budget went.

And then we have the song played at the end, a ridiculously cheesy slice of 80s pop cooked up by Thomas Dolby, the man behind the legendary one-hit wonder “She Blinded Me With Science.” Needless to say, Howard’s little song at the end is every bit as infectiously earwormy as that.

THE BAD

I think what really kills the film is just how weak the third act is. The film was at its best when it was about Howard being put into awkward situations, like being forced to work a shitty job or starting a bar fight. But I guess that doesn’t get asses in seats, so they have a third act where Howard has to save the world from destruction by evil aliens by stopping a gigantic sky laser. Considering how that very plot has become a widely-mocked cliché in the wake of movies trying to copy this very thing from The Avengers, Howard was truly ahead of its time in terms of comic book adaptations.

Even in the good parts of the first two acts there’s some weakness. The conceit of the character is that he’s an alien duck forced into the mundane situations the real world provides, and while we do get some of that, a lot of stuff is abandoned a bit too quickly for my liking. Sure, we didn’t need a montage of Howard applying for a bunch of crummy jobs, and I suppose we didn’t need to see him manage the band excessively or anything, but too much of what makes this movie charming in its weird and awkward way is thrown out for some souped up climax where Howard flies a little plane contraption with Tim Robbins and then fights an alien monster. It feels like a bunch of half baked plots haphazardly slapped together more than a cohesive narrative the writers gave a shit about.

On top of that, the film feels remarkably cheap. The suit and puppet thing is bad, the compositing of the Dark Overlord is bad, it genuinely blows the mind that these effects were this mediocre when the movie was relatively expensive to make. I have to imagine most of the budget went towards getting the crew cocaine to deal with the miserable shooting schedule, because it definitely doesn’t seem like it went to costumes or making the visuals look good.

And speaking of things that don’t look very good… Duck tits.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Nah.

Look, I can’t pretend this movie is amazing or anything. It is incredibly flawed, with rushed production values and more corniness than the fields of Iowa. It has trouble finding its tone, and kind of loses its webbed footing in the third act. But I have watched a metric fuckton of superhero movies in my time, and this film has a sort of corny, earnest charm that genuinely awful ones lack. Like Thor: The Dark World is utterly mediocre and forgettable, and I couldn’t tell you a single thing that happened in it, but this movie? Even with the parts it drags I could still recount some of the wacky plot beats. And maybe it has worse production values than Batman v Superman, but it’s also a lot less miserable and has a cool stop-motion alien monster instead of a shitty gray CGI blob that murders Superman. It’s just not a film that feels quite as awful in terms of comic book movies when filmmakers have gone out of their way to make infinitely worse, infinitely less fun films in the decades since.

It also helps a movie very similar to this came out that did what it was trying to do better, and you’re not gonna believe what it is: Seth MacFarlane’s Ted. It is extremely similar, a fish-out-of-water story about a fantastical being stuck in the mundanity of the real world. Ted even gets a human girlfriend, and the movie has a really weird third act that’s a bit more action packed than the rest of the film! It manages to work a lot better there, though, and that’s despite starring Mark Wahlberg! So yeah, even if the actual Howard didn’t fully live up to its interesting premise, we have something that does just that, which makes this film dropping the ball a little less egregious.

The 4.7 up there is honestly not quite as harsh as you’d think given this film’s reputation, which probably reflects how opinions of this have turned a little bit and given this film a cult following. I might even be so nice as to round it up to a 5; it’s not really a bad movie so much as a weird one, and it is filled with cheesy 80s charm if you can get on board with it. It’s probably not going to change your life, but it’s fun, mostly harmless comic book movie fluff, and if nothing else it’s unique and out there in terms of comic book movies. We wouldn’t get anything quite this weird again until they started letting people like James Gunn and Taika Waititi make comic book movies, so it’s nice to go back and see where it all began. Howard the Duck is a very interesting piece of history, maybe more for the story around it than the film itself, but damn if I don’t get a few chuckles out of watching it and a goofy grin from that cheesy end credits song.

It’s definitely more worth a watch than Wonder Woman 1984, that’s for fucking sure.

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Super 005

...

Yeah.

So by this point in the arc, we’ve reached roughly the 20-30 minute mark in the Battle of Gods film.  This is the part where Beerus meets Goku for the first time, then Goku asks to spar with Beerus, who demolishes him in two blows.  It’s my favorite part of the movie, and Dragon Ball Super Episode 5 tries to re-enact it and botches the whole thing.

This episode started a whole discourse in 2015 because the animation was awful, and fans argued over who to blame.  The artists who worked on the series seemed like the obvious pick, but then people started to point out that Toei had been running a sloppy shop for a while at this point.  There was a Sailor Moon series that had been running around the same time, and fans of that show noticed the same quality problems.  In a nutshell, Toei was trying to cash in on as many of its popular franchises as possible by churning out lots and lots of new content, without the manpower needed to actually produce it properly.  So they were hiring anyone who could hold a pen to work on shows like Dragon Ball Super, just to keep it ahead of deadlines. 

I don’t claim to understand all the details, but the result seemed to be that you had a lot of overworked, underqualified artists animating this series, and the only thing working in their favor was that the first four episodes were so slow and dull that they didn’t have to animate too much.  But Episode 5 is basically a big fight, and even though it’s a total mismatch, you still have all these shots of Goku flaling around trying to hit Beerus, while Beerus plays the artful dodger.  So the standard shortcuts don’t work here.  You’re going to have to animate Goku and Beerus leaping around, twirling and moving in every direction.  And the animators gave it a try, but wound up exposing their limitations. 

Now, to be sure, there were plenty of badly animated scenes in classic Dragon Ball.  Yukio Ebisawa supervised the animation for every sixth episode, from Emperor Pilaf all the way to Uub, and every one of his entries in the series featured comically off-model characters.  You can see a lot of animation shortcuts too, especially in filler episodes, or in spots where it just didn’t matter all that much in the long run. Nobody gets into Dragon Ball because of the high-quality animation.  There’s some real classic episodes, and a murderer’s row of talent, and frankly I maintain that Yukio Ebisawa is highly underrated, but the point is that they were making a weekly cartoon show, and sometimes quality had to take a back seat to logistics. 

However, Dragon Ball Super Episode 5 was notoriously bad.  So bad that fans were swapping screenshots of the off-model characters and openly mocking Toei for putting out such a poor work.  So bad that GT-likers were coming out of the woodwork to gloat about how their fave was no longer the worst Dragon Ball series.  And it was so bad that Toei actually went back and had some of the scenes redrawn for the home video release. 

Well, I’m here to tell you they missed a spot.

Here’s the thing.   This episode was always going to suck.  They can go back and redo it as many times as they like.  They can re-animate the whole thing from scratch, but in the end, it won’t make a bit of difference.  And that’s because they already had a good version of this Goku/Beerus fight in the movie.  Episode 5 was never going to be able to measure up to that standard, and even if it could, it would never be seen as anything more than a rerun. 

There’s three things working against this episode that have nothing to do with the production values.

1) We’ve seen this before.  I know I keep harping on it, but it’s true.  By this point, the DBS manga had published its own adaptation of this fight, so how many different ways can Toei keep repeating the same scene?

2) It’s slower.  The whole point of this scene in the movie was that Goku wanted to experience Beerus’ power, and he came at him with everything he had, immediately powering up to Super Saiyan 3, and getting jobbed out almost immediately.  It establishes that Beerus isn’t just a paper tiger.  Goku needs to solve the mystery of the Super Saiyan God, because nothing less will do.  And Vegeta needs to watch his ass, because he can’t even go SSJ3, and Beerus would wipe him out in an instant either way.

But DBS #5 pumps the brakes by having Goku fight Beerus in all three of his Super Saiyan forms.  This is probably meant to introduce them all to new viewers, or to just make the fight last longer, but it’s stupid.  Goku even starts out by saying that it would be an insult to Beerus to fight him in base form, then he proceeds to fight in Super Saiyan 1, even as he tells Beerus to hold nothing back.  It makes Goku look like a hypocrite. 

Then Beerus reveals that he can perceive Goku’s power level, and he knows Goku is holding out on him, but Goku is still reluctant to bring out Super Saiyan 3.  Well does he want to go all out with Beerus or not?  The studio and the character are working at cross-purposes here.  We know what Goku ought to do in this situation, because we saw him do it the right way in the movie.  But the studio wants him to sandbag a while, so he does.  Beerus ought to be offended by this-- or at least irritated with Goku for wasting his time-- but Toei wants to drag this out, so Beerus indulges him for no good reason.

3) This whole scene is one guy dodging the other.  Even if you had enough story here to fill an entire episode, even if you had an unlimited budget and a staff of highly skilled artists to animated it, how much can you really get out of this?   The highlight of the fight is the one new wrinkle Toei added, where Goku’s about to attack and then he suddenly stops short and backs off. 

Beerus congratulates him for somehow intuiting that he was about to strike.  Even though Goku wasn’t consciously aware of it, his body somehow reacted on its own.  Like some sort of ultra-instinctive thing.  This will become an important plot point 100 episodes later.  But right now, it’s just another minute or so of Goku and Beerus not touching each other.

So Episode 5 was a failure from conception, even without the quality issues.  With the quality issues, it became a laughing stock.  It didn’t matter if the artists were the problem or the studio failing to use their talent more realistically.  Once Episode 5 aired, the fans could tell there was something... off about this show.  Even quiet, static scenes like this one could fall under scrutiny from the viewer.   I’ve been staring at these deck chairs for a while now, because something doesn’t look quite right about them, and I can’t put my finger on it.  From here on, the damage had been done, and every episode of DBS was basically an open challenge to the viewer to find something wrong with it. 

[knight-of-ashes]

So You’re Getting Bullied By Leftists and Trans People for Wanting to Revisit Your Childhood: A Primer on Navigating the Complex Emotions Surrounding the New HP Game and How To Decide For Yourself if it’s Worth Buying and Playing

I’m writing this because my brother keeps getting messages from people who are getting bullied over wanting to play the new HP game and it’s making them less sympathetic to our cause. This sucks, but I don’t feel I can tell off my fellow LGBT and Jewish friends for being angry. So to you, dear reader who is feeling alienated and abused by us, I wish to offer an olive branch and a way to see through our anger to our actual point, and why we’re asking you not to engage with the game.

First, dispel the notion that you’re going to be pirating this game. It features one of the strongest versions of Denuvo yet, which can only be cracked by one person who calls herself Empress (and is herself pretty wildly transphobic), and she promised to crack it in 10 days. If you want to play it for free before February 20th, you’re SOL, and that’s if she cracks it as promised. It is a very real possibility that this will never be crackable. More than likely, if you want to experience this game, you’ll need to either watch a Twitch streamer or YouTuber play it, wait a month to purchase a used copy, or purchase it new. 

One of the main talking points about this game is that buying it gives money to original HP author JK Rowling, and this is true! She receives royalties for everything WB does with the Wizarding World, which is the current official franchise name. She has been spending a lot of money on lobbying politicians in the UK to dismantle the NHS’s transgender care programs. She claims that this is because she’s trying to prevent men from getting placed in women-only jails where they rape their fellow inmates, and I see this get parroted a lot, but even if it was only about that, it’s still a massive transphobic dogwhistle.

Side bar: I’m gonna be talking about dogwhistles a lot. I’m gonna explain what those are real quick because frankly I think a lot of why we aren’t getting our message across is baked into the nature of dogwhistles. See, dogwhistles are a method of talking in code where members of an in-group (and people opposed to the in-group who study them) know what a phrase really means, but it has plausible deniability to anyone not familiar with the lingo. Common dogwhistles are things like “we’re just trying to keep men out of women’s prisons” (which is a wink to other transphobes about trans women not actually being women in their eyes), “I’m just concerned about the influence of the Hollywood elite” (”all of your media is being controlled by rich and powerful Jews with a secret agenda”) and code numbers like putting 1488 in their usernames. It feels crazy to type out or read because they’re by design meant to make you feel crazy for noticing them. It’s a bit of psychological warfare. If as we get through this you feel like some of the things I’m telling you about JK’s beliefs or the contents of the game are too crazy to be true, please come back to this paragraph and remember that they want you to doubt us when we ask you not to the play the game for X reason.

Anyways, back to the money issue: one defense I see a lot is that JK already has a ridiculous fortune and buying the game is a drop in the bucket compared to what she’s already made. Frankly, you’re not wrong. If the movies had never been made JK still would’ve been set for life and able to go on her little crusade against trans people because the books alone made her a multimillionaire. With the right investment profile she would easily be at the level of wealth she’s at now without any of the other Wizarding World properties getting published. Toss in the movies, the theme park, the merchandising empire and the game really does become a drop in the bucket. But, your money is still going to her. You know what she spends it on. Even if she managed to set up a veritable perpetual money maker, the royalties from what you spend on the game go directly to someone who is spending a lot of money on making sure trans people in the UK are barred from transitioning. Is that something you can live with?

Some people have decided they can live with that. Others are donating the same cost of the game to orgs like Trevor Project to offset the impact of the royalties Rowling will get. If that’s the route you choose to go, realize that your trans friends will probably still be pretty upset with you. It calls to mind the Catholic concept of indulgences, where one could commit all manor of crimes but with a simple donation to the right priest still get into heaven. That’s harsh, I know, but we make the comparison because it genuinely feels like our charities are being used just to offset the guilt of buying the game instead of being donated to because people actually want to help us. That hurts. It’s hard to articulate exactly why that hurts so bad, but it does. Your friends are lashing out and bullying you because of real pain. And what you experience as a result of that bullying is real pain too. But consider the source. Walk it back to its origin point. When someone has been fighting for their very life, and they ask you not to spend money on the game or watch streams of it, and you try to find a way to do it anyways after they’ve illustrated the very real harm your dollar causes, and you feel hurt when they lash out at you or unfriend you, do you stop to think of the pain they were in first? This is your chance to do so.

This part is hard, I know that intimately. Again, I’m writing this post because my brother is hurting, because people who want to play the game are reaching out to him and expressing their pain. We are all hurting over this in various ways for various reasons. I know how hard it is to cut something off that was a tremendous part of your life because I had to cut this out too. It wasn’t easy. You can read my other post on this topic to see how big of a fan I was.

Which leads me to streaming. I have very bad news for you. We’ve hit a point in media where the amount of money people collectively make off of a game is not just from sales. You see, there’s a barely hidden mechanic in the stock market that rewards people for gambling on the success of a franchise, and success is not just raw sales numbers. Piracy, streams on twitch, number of concurrent players and viewers, and social media engagement all play a part. I’m benefiting those guys right now because I’m posting about the game on social media! It doesn’t matter that my post is negative, because the attention I’m giving it is part of the commodity being sold. It’s not just about the game anymore, it’s about the brand. The more popular a series is, the more the value of the stock owned by shareholders increases. The more that value increases, the more the shareholder’s portfolio is worth, which is more leverage to use against high dollar loans, which the shareholders then use to buy yachts and houses or even use to purchase stocks and futures for another company or commodity, and then pay the loan off by selling off lower value stocks. It becomes an oroboros of money, a juggernaut fueled by speculation and gambling and hashtags. I’m gonna say this right now: it’s already too late. If you want to watch someone play the game, you can do that and have a clean conscious. We’re on day 2 of the proper release and day 5 of it being streamed by various people on Twitch. The game is already second only to Elden Ring in stream numbers. If I’d written this a week ago I would’ve expounded upon how giving this game any attention just signals to WB that making more Wizarding World content is good even if you didn’t personally give WB and JK money, but the cat is out of the damn bag. This is also how a lot of us leftists are getting info about the game so we can talk about it more intelligently, so it would be a little hypocritical to tell you not to. Go nuts.

Except, maybe don’t. Here’s the final part of my essay begging you not to play or watch this game even as the bullying makes you want to play it more. We have spent a lot of time talking about trans people for a very good reason, but frankly they aren’t the elephant in the room. We need to talk about antisemetism, cognitohazards, and how choosing to consume content with an obvious bias can slant you unconsciously to that bias. Now, I am not saying that playing the game makes you an antisemite! Again, I’m not here to bully you and that would be bullying. I’m just here to help you see through the bullying. But, when we engage with such content, it does form a little bit of bias in our heads if we aren’t careful to examine and undermine that. If you continue to consume content with that bias, it cements itself further. Eventually, if you never consume content with the opposite bias, you will find yourself believing what wormed into your subconsciousness way back at the start. This is how the so-called Alt Right Pipeline works. For more information about that I would ask that you go watch Innuendo Studios’ “The Alt Right Playbook”. He’s much nicer than me and the videos clearly demonstrate the effect.

This game is meant to be part of the alt right pipeline. The original director, Troy Leavitt, runs a youtube channel that promotes alt right content meant to funnel viewers deeper into the pipeline. He stepped down from the game but not after the president of WB Games stated that he was fine with employees like Leavitt posting whatever they want to their personal social media, a milquetoast endorsement of Leavitt’s influence on the game’s antisemetism. Lest you think that Leavitt leaving the game was the end of the problems, voice actor Greg Ellis, who voices 12 of the characters in the game, is an antifeminist who’s created revenge porn of an ex, something JK is actually strongly opposed to, yet she thanked him for his work on the game. Other employees who worked on the game to the bitter end have confirmed that the plot of the game didn’t change after Leavitt left.

One final sidebar: this game is way more antisemetic than what JK wrote originally. I know a lot of people talk about JK’s antisemetism in the original books, and it is bad, but the goblins are little more than set dressing for most of the books, only becoming plot relevant a couple of times across tens of thousands of pages. Mostly she pulls from the original goblin stereotypes of the early 1900s that every other property from DnD to WoW was pulling from, being hooked noses, a penchant for banking, a very insular community, abrasive behavior to outsiders and being very protective of things they made. There’s a lot of plausible deniability in what JK wrote, which has made it very hard for Jews to speak up about the problems.

This game launches plausible deniability out the window. I’m going to copy and paste some things from my last post on the topic, and this will spoil parts of the game, but if you’ve humored me this far I think you’ll understand why I need to.

“This game presents to you a fantasy race based on antisemetic caricatures and gives the fantasy race a number of real-world antisemetic stereotypes like blood libel, greedy banking, and collaborating with their own persecutors to cause a Holocaust. We currently live in a world where a large number of people are convinced that a secret Jewish elite is conspiring to use COVID vaccines to sterilize white people so they will cease to exist in a generation. The game has its fantasy Jews collaborating with a dark wizard to wipe out the wizarding population. You can choose to join them, or you can choose to put down the rebellion. The game allows you to collect a shofar as a trophy. Joanne didn't have anything to do with this and the game is actually on a special noncanon license where WB Games can ignore or add whatever they want to Joanne's worldbuilding, and they added that goblins use shofars. And you can collect it. As a trophy.“ Further, the final boss no matter which route you go down is the goblin leader of the rebellion. Whether you’re a good wizard putting down the rebellion or a bad one helping it, you have to kill the guy who organized the whole thing. Shofars are an important Jewish instrument used in many ceremonies from synagogue services on Rosh Hashanah and at the end of Yom Kippur to every weekday morning in the month of Elul running up to Rosh Hashanah. and they look like this:

And here’s the in-game screenshot, with a little bit of extra commentary:

This is probably the single BIGGEST dogwhistle in the game. You could even call it a dogshofar it’s so loud. You wouldn’t recognize this unless you were either Jewish/very steeped in Jewish culture or if you were an antisemite. Remember what I said about psychological warfare? This is that.

Also, here’s a good article on blood libel: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/blood-libel I actually think blood libel was present in the original books, but it gets way amped up in this game, with the goblins genuinely kidnapping and killing wizard children, just like the antisemetic stereotype. A lot of people don’t know what blood libel even is so please read about it.

Again, playing this game by itself does not make you antisemetic. But if you play it and then go on to consume other media with these antisemetic stereotypes, you are getting primed to become more antisemetic, and to slide down the pipeline. You have to ask yourself, is playing the game really worth that? Do you have the fortitude to play it or watch someone else play it and stay an ally to Jewish people against the current onslaught of antisemetism? And if you do have that fortitude, then why do you want to play this game? Is it just so you can see Hogwarts again, is it to soothe the part of your soul that needs nostalgia in troubling times, and is there other ways you can do that? Is this a cultural moment that you really need to participate in, or can you sit this one out and support the people asking you to not engage for all the reasons I’ve listed above?

I can’t answer that question for you. I can’t stop the people bullying you. I can’t stop myself from feeling disappointed when friends I have engage with the game even after I’ve explained myself a dozen times. I just know that I have a responsibility to keep explaining this, and hope you can see why I’ve written this massive essay. Please, if I can sway you in any way, don’t buy the game. If you absolutely must see it with your own eyes, watch someone play it. But don’t give money to WB and JK for this.