#he does the whole broadcast and the entirety of the internet is 'one we know; two holy shit'

[milkywayco]

imagine, the dabi is touya reveal, but everyone except endeavor was aware. shouto put it together after dabi called him by his full name at the summer camp, katsuki put it together after his kidnapping (probably from some stupid tiny habit), most of 1-A was convinced by shouto. natsuo figured it out from high-end. it was a theory on forums that dabi was endeavor's dead kid for awhile endeavor is the only one who doesn't know, and i can't decide if dabi should be aware of this fact or not

[pla-teau]

WANDAVISION EPISODE SEVEN THOUGHTS

GIF NOT MINE

SPOILERS AHEAD YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!

BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL MORE LIKE BREAKING MY BRAIN AND HEART

wanda’s mood | as she talks to the camera, she treats her expanding the false world she’s created to having a bad night out. we’re seeing how tired she is from expanding westview - it damn near drained her it seems. the last episode was a lot to take in, keeping up with her torn emotions with pietro, her relationship with vision crumbling, worrying about her kids, expanding the hex — it’s enough to fry out your nerves. wanda also categorizes what happened in the last episode as reckless and decides to stay in to punish herself. even her kids notice that she’s out of it because she doesn’t stop them from fighting and doesn’t say a word as she heads to the kitchen. she’s drained, she’s tired - she doesn’t want to deal with anything today. wanda’s not being the doting mom she’s been since the birth of the twins as when billy talks about his head being too noisy, she ignores his complaints and lounges in bed a little longer. she’s drained and is acting out of character throughout the whole episode.

wanda’s reality is starting to break | right off the bat, we see how the reality in westview is going haywire. the boys mention their game freaking out. it switches to games from different eras. then we see it with wanda’s milk - switching from black and white to color and even changing shape to fit the style of a past era like 50s with the milk being in glass bottle or a milk carton with the ‘missing’ label on the side. we’ve seen the trailer/promo footage of different objects/furniture in the house glitching in this same manner and it seems that wanda’s power is not strong enough to keep everything together - physically or mentally so it seems in this episode.

“thanks for tuning in to W.N.D.A.” | as wanda is in the kitchen making herself some cereal, you can hear the tv from the living room say this. this sets up the opening credits for the show as everything is about wanda. if you turn on the subtitles, you can read exactly what the anchor is saying on the television. he says “not a thing weighing heavily on your conscience. i hope your little ghosts arrived home safe last night. it’s always such a treat to see those creepy kiddos out and about once a year.” it seems as though it’s wanda’s mind we’re hearing. nothing’s weighing heavily on her conscience - kinda is with expanding the hex. the little ghosts is in reference to all the kids that we finally saw come out for halloween in westview. calling them creepy kiddos could mean nothing but i thought about tommy and billy? since the two gained their abilities on halloween and weren’t doing much to conceal their powers (at least tommy wasn’t). i also say it’s wanda’s mind we’re gaining insight to cause when it goes on to the bit about giving tips about resisting temptation of the leftover candy or just eating it all - wanda is skeptical of what’s happening with the milk but still takes a big spoonful of cereal.

opening credits | we don’t have some super catchy lyrics this time around for the opening credits of the show - making me think that this is a nod to the office. but we do get ‘wanda’ splattered in every frame of the credits. the one that stands out to me is the ‘i know what u are doing wanda’ since everything else it seems to be replacing random words on signs like restaurants and other shops. comes off as a tad bit scary/creepy since it’s written with cut out letters from different new articles/magazines. could be a hint to vision knowing that it is all wanda’s doing. or as we later find out, it can be a set up to agnes’ reveal since she plays a more sinister role in all of this. this is the first we’re seeing any sort of credits in the opening sequence. created by wanda maximoff - again driving home the fact that the hex and everything we’ve seen so far has all been wanda’s creation or so we’re forced to believe...

SWORD retreat | we learn that the broadcast has been taken down - all they get is dead air supposedly. maybe that’s just a result of wanda’s expansion of the hex but i think it’s too weak given how har out they are and since they are farther from wanda as she doesn’t live right at the edge of town. we also learn that haydick hayward is planning to launch a missile or some kind of powerful weapon on/in to the hex to stop wanda. let’s hope it fails or if it goes through, wanda can point the missile/weapon back at SWORD and let it go.

“if he doesn’t wanna be here, there’s nothing i can do about it.” | wanda’s comment about vision not being home and response to billy asking if they should go looking for him. this clearly speaks to wanda not having any control over vision anymore. this is the first time we’ve seen the couple apart for the entirety of the episode. he’s gained enough sentience within the hex to not be controlled by wanda as other residents are. she knows she can’t rewrite or edit the scene for him to suddenly come through the door and have everyone be a happy family.

“he is not your uncle.” | wanda confirms to us that the pietro we’ve seen so far is a stranger and not some multiverse version of her dead brother. this to me also shoots down the theory of the multiverse existing at this point and wanda being responsible for it even though evan peters does play pietro in the x-men universe. i think it was a wink to fans about marvel gaining rights to the x-men franchise. i could be wrong but until then, ‘uncle p’ is sus to me.

“i don’t have all the answers” | wanda going on about how despite being their mother, she doesn’t have all the answers. this is the third time wanda’s been asked about the truth and she doesn’t have an answer. first with vision when he asks how all this happened. second with ‘pietro’ also asking how she created westview. now, it’s the twins seeking answers about their not-uncle if she’s claiming he’s an imposter and a liar. if anything, wanda has been consistent in this claim of not knowing anything. she knows she created westview but she doesn’t know how it got to be this way. i still believe she was offered something or was taken advantage of from the get go by someone else to get to her and observe how powerful she is. i personally love the twins’ reaction to her speaking on not having all the answers. hello yes i love them.

hayward’s interest in vision | we learn that project cataract is/was hayward’s plan to bring vision back to life. this man was trying to make vision into a weapon for SWORD and that’s why he’s so focused on vision inside the hex. wanda somehow brought him back to life despite hayward’s various attempts. i hate this man and i’m sorry but i hope monica and/or wanda beat the shit out of him. obviously, hayward was using SWORD’s resources to try and bring vision back to life but it’s a question of whether or not other people within SWORD knew this was happening and what the intentions were. because we also have monica’s contact be another agent working in SWORD. so why do i get the feeling that we’re gonna be dealing with a SHIELD 2.0 in which bad guys operate within the agency and it’s going to eventually fall like 2014?

“do you think maybe this is what you deserve?” | the interviewer asking wanda this question after we see her house starting to glitch like there’s no tomorrow. while later we do find out agnes is behind the mic, it made me think that this was mephisto finally coming out a bit since the question is very pointed at wanda. the interviewer wants to see wanda suffer because why would anyone ask such a thing let alone say that? they’re taking joy in wanda losing touch with her reality. this is the lowest we’ve seen wanda throughout the series. she’s usually put together - has a slight moment of crisis - but gets back on her feet for tomorrow to enjoy her life with her family. slowly it’s been building up to this point in which wanda just...crashes. she’s lost control in this reality so for the interviewer to pose that question, it’s a signal that someone else is in charge and going to come for wanda at her weakest.

the nexus commercial | this commercial is definitely referencing wanda during infinity war/endgame. the world goes on without you? could be talking about how the world keeps spinning after wanda lost the only family she had left or how everyone moved on in endgame despite losing the person she wanted to spend her life with. wanting to be left alone? all wanda wanted was to be with vision and now to be left alone as she lives out her life with vision in westview. i know the word nexus itself has a double meaning in marvel. nexus was first name dropped in aou, with it being the center of the internet located in oslo. in the comics, i know wanda is referred to as a nexus being in which this could definitely set up the multiverse as the commercial does state that the medication ‘anchors you back to your reality. or the reality of your choice.’ i’m guessing this is on purpose since we’re conditioned to see everything marvel puts out or puts emphasis on to have a double meaning. maybe wanda discovering that she is a nexus being in multiverse of madness could be what the side effects are talking about. if she’s confirmed to be this being, she’d feel a lot of feelings, confront her truth (maybe her role in westview and hopefully her trauma), seizing her destiny (taking control of her life and bigger role in the world), and possibly more depression (i don’t think she needs more of it but with her, it’s almost inevitable especially given where these next two weeks might be heading). given that it does hold two meanings for marvel, it could explain the scenes we’ve seen in promo footage of her time in sokovia with the mind stone. we were told that the show would explore more of wanda’s past from aou so maybe it is going to give nexus a double meaning in the mcu: the largest internet hub and wanda’s confirmation as a nexus being.

the twins with agnes | this scene had me anxious. billy commenting about it being quiet heavily hinted at how agnes isn’t like anyone else in westview. again, we’ve never seen her husband ralph and we still don’t see him in this episode. we get another glimpse of señor scratchy with billy holding him but that’s about it. the house is also a big contrast to wanda’s house and westview’s scenery overall. there’s usually a lot of light and warmth in westview but agnes’ interior is toned down and has darker tones throughout our time in it. clearly, a set up for the big reveal that everyone’s been echoing since the show started. this is also the last time we see the twins in the episode.

monica | after the SWORD rover failed to get through, monica goes right in and clearly her passing through a third time has a permanent effect. she’s finally got her powers and is more badass than before. i loved how we got bits and pieces from her, maria, carol and fury in captain marvel. monica has been one of the best characters in this series and i can’t wait to see what happens next with her.

it’s all about vision | monica’s explanation to wanda about hayward. i said this before about the end credits in the show always zooming in on vision’s eye to segway into the crystal sequence. we’ve learned that hayward was trying to bring vision back and somehow wanda managed to do this once she took his body. i wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of the season we see vision being the key to saving everyone in westview since hayward just wants what he believes is his and is willing to blow up a whole town to get it or cover his tracks. while this whole series has been focusing on wanda, this all boils down to vision.

agatha all along | of course the big reveal is agnes being agatha harkness and the mastermind behind a lot of the weird occurrences in westview. what is interesting is that she’s choosing to reveal herself to wanda in this way. it doesn’t seem like it was her plan to do it at the time she did but seeing that monica could’ve swayed wanda to go off script in agatha’s plans, better sooner than later. i think señor scratchy is none other than mephisto and maybe in the next episode we’ll see the other big bad reveal himself to wanda and us. when’s that bop dropping on spotify

snooper’s gonna snoop | finally, we get a post credits scene with uncle p and monica. we’ve learned that agatha was behind the ‘recasting’ of pietro but who is he?! he could be a multiverse!quicksilver we’ve never seen before - which could explain his skewed memories with wanda. right when the camera comes to view with monica, it cuts to the credits. i believe that maybe this pietro shapeshifts into who he really is - who this might be? i don’t think mephisto but possibly agatha’s son nicholas scratch since he seems to be an accomplice of hers?

ugh god so much to unpack and we have another two episodes before shit really hits the fan.

[monotonous-minutia]

My super long autobiographical essay recounting the harrowing tale of my experience with my favorite opera

So I think it’s about time the world knows the story of my experience with Don Carlo, specifically, the Met 2010 production that will be streaming Thursday night. It’s a long story and some of it is ridiculous and half the time people don’t believe me when I tell them about it, but if you’re interested in my nerdy ramblings, read on.

On February 27th, 2010, my dad turned on the radio in the living room thinking noon would be a good time to hear the news. Instead of the NPR news anchors, however, we heard the sound of a tenor singing, a strong orchestral accompaniment, and the sounds of a live audience reacting.

“It’s an opera!” I said. (For curious parties, it was La Boheme.)

I was 14. I was a nerd. I was in love.

Up until that point I’d heard a few operas (Zauberflote, Barbiere, Carmen, Nozze) because my mom randomly brought them home from the library. From the moment I first heard the opening chords to the Zauberflote overture, I was madly, ridiculously, insufferably in love.

Tuning in at noon on Saturdays became my new favorite thing. “Live from the Met” broadcast a live performance each week of one of the Met’s shows. I loved not only hearing the operas, but the commentary as well. I learned so much about the genre, as well as history, music theory, literary criticism, acting, and the life of a singer. I dedicated an entire journal to writing notes on what I heard each week. Yes, I was that nerd.

I found out the hard way that operas have seasons. One sad day in May I tuned into NPR at noon and, tragically, the voices of news anchors met my ears.

I wasn’t always able to listen to the entire opera each week, because I had four cats and three annoying brothers to take care of. (Two of the brothers were older than me. Figure that.) I’d missed the announcement that the season was over.

So I waited all summer. I was still listening to operas, but I missed the hosts and the interviews. Plus, I didn’t have access to the Internet, so finding new operas on my own meant relying on my library’s tiny collection. Hearing them on the radio let me hear a new one every week.

After several boring months, I finally heard the news that the first opera of the broadcast season was going to be on December 18th. The opera? Don Carlo.

Two important facts to know right now. 1) There are many different versions of this opera. 2) The opera can be up to 4 hours long.

The one I heard on this day, December 18th, 2010, was the “five-act Italian version with the shortened first act.” About 3.5 hours long, it begins with an exhilarating fanfare that does a terrible job of telling us what the opera is going to be like. Listening to that music--the burst of horns and strings--I actually cried because I was so excited.

I told you. Nerd.

The story of Don Carlo is really complex, but if you’re taking the time to read this and have come this far you probably know at least a bit about it. Because I wasn’t able to sit and listen to the whole thing, just bits and pieces, the day ended with me knowing the following things.

1) Carlo is a prince who is in love with Elizabeth, who then gets betrothed to his father.

2) Carlo’s best friend (Rodrigo) is a baritone which automatically made him more interesting than the lead, and was also a revolutionary who was so firey he was in danger with someone called the Grand Inquisitor

3) Princess Eboli loves Carlo and is enraged when she finds out he’s in love with his mother and Rodrigo almost stabs her

4) Carlo tries to stop some Flemmish people from being burned at the stake but is stopped himself when Rodrigo takes his sword.

And that’s where I left off.

Again, no Internet access, so I wasn’t able to look up a summary and find the ending. So I waited around for days wondering what happened next. I was especially concerned about Carlo and Rodrigo’s relationship, which was (and still is) my favorite part of the opera.

On Christmas I got a book that was full of detailed summaries of famous operas. The good news: Don Carlo was considered famous. The bad news: I read that my favorite character died and spent the next hour or so locked in my room trying unsuccessfully not to cry.

I got a few operas for Christmas as well, so when I decided I had to see or hear Don Carlo in its entirety, it got put at the bottom of the list, because I’m borderline OCD (seriously, my diagnosis is literally “borderline OCD”) and couldn’t mess up the order of things. Since I was also listening to the Saturday operas, as well as taking a lot of time to process each on my list as it came along, it was almost spring before I finally got to Don Carlo.

In the meantime, I couldn’t get the opera out of my head. For one thing, as anyone who’s seen it knows, it’s the kind of opera that just grabs you and won’t let you go. For another, in a bizarre series of events, it literally popped up almost everywhere I looked. Open to a random page in my opera book? See a reference to Don Carlo. Tune into the  “Live from the Met” broadcasts? Somebody mentions Don Carlo. Grab the closest volume from a 7-book collection of Schiller plays? It’s the one that has Don Carlo. Find a random copy of the Met’s opera magazine on the free table at the library? It’s the issue that has the review for, and a dozen glorious pictures of, the Don Carlo performance I’d heard on the radio. I looked at those pictures a lot. Finally I had faces to match the voices of the singers I’d heard.

In a crazy coincidence, it was the first week in April of 2011 that the next event occurred. I engaged in some poor planning and finally checked out a CD recording of Don Carlo the day before our yearly family trip. I didn’t have any time to listen to it and I knew it was going to bother me the entire week.

We took the 13-hour drive to visit my grandparents, and at my mom’s parents’ house, somebody randomly turned on the TV. My grandparents watch a lot of PBS so that’s what was on. And what was on?

The Met’s 2010 production of Don Carlo.

I died about a million times.

It took me a while to figure out what it was; I hadn’t heard it all the way through yet, so the music wasn’t familiar to me. But after watching for a minute, I realized that the actors all looked familiar to me. I was watching Simon Keenlyside as Rodrigo hand Marina Poplavskaya’s Elizabetta a letter. When she opened it and read the name “Carlo,” my head exploded.

What are the odds that when someone randomly turned the TV on that the opera I’d been dying to see just happened to be on? And not only the same opera, but the exact same production I’d listened to live four months ago?

Of course I couldn’t watch the whole thing because we had family stuff to do, which was probably okay in the long run, because I can’t imagine people’s reactions if I started bawling watching Rodrigo die, which may very well (as in totally) would have happened.

Life goes on. I listened to the Don Carlo CD and cried, got a DVD of the Met’s 1986 Don Carlo and cried, looked at the pictures in my magazine and cried. The broadcast season of “Live from the Met” ended and I cried. I was a very emotional teen. (Keep in mind I was home-schooled by agoraphobic parents and literally had no friends. The radio was my friend.)

Two years later I was in college. Sophomore year I started spending breaks on campus to avoid my abusive family. I still didn’t have any friends, but I did finally have access to the Internet, in addition to listening to the Saturday operas whenever I didn’t have homework. I had also watched the Royal Opera House’s version of the same Don Carlo production, which someone had posted on YouTube. This was back when YouTube still had a time limit on videos that were posted, so the opera was broken into about forty pieces and none of them were listed in order. I probably spent more time piecing the thing together than actually watching it.

On a day during sophomore winter break, I was particularly bored. I decided to listen to the advice of the Met hosts and signed up for the 7-day free trial of Met Opera on Demand, their version of Netflix.

And of course the first opera that popped up on the screen was Don Carlo.

I died another million times.

I watched it twice in the span of 24 hours. I may have taken some screen shots. I felt like a criminal, but I also felt like I deserved it at this point. This whole thing was just bizarre and I couldn’t be happier that I was finally seeing the production of the opera that had been following me around for the past four years.

About a year later I took a study abroad trip to Germany. And because I was in Germany, I had to see an opera, of course. We had one free weekend during the month-long trip, and while my classmates were off getting high in Amsterdam, I took a train to Frankfurt to see the opera that just so happened to be playing at the house that Saturday.

Which opera, you ask?

I think you can guess by now.

[btsybrkr]

What A Time To Be At Home!: The Best And Worst Coronacontent The Internet Has To Offer

Remember that joke that’s been around for ages, but was being told literally everywhere back in 2019? The one that went something like, “I hate it when people ask me where I’ll be in a year’s time - I don’t have 2020 vision!”?

Well, I bloody wish someone did.

In fact, in early January, I wrote out my own predictions for the decade ahead right here on my blog. They were obviously entirely hypothetical and - I thought - ridiculous. They were just a series of daft ideas that I thought I could take the piss out of, in the hope that people might read it and take a second out of their day to do an amused little nose exhale for me. But now, even the post-apocalyptic TV show ideas I pitched in that piece seem less ‘far-off dystopian chaos’, and more like they could be pleasant additions to the BBC Summer schedule.

The world is in the throes of a global pandemic, the likes of which haven’t been seen since… I don’t know, The Black Plague, maybe? As a result of that, the instructions have been clear: stay home, save lives. 

At first, the thought of being given a period of Government-sanctioned laziness seemed like a dream to many. We could write our autobiographies! Learn Klingon! Build ourselves a whole new house! But six weeks in, it appears to have started messing with the collective consciousness of the human race. Brains are fried, your Weekly Screen Time is up 103%, stomachs are full to the brim with banana bread and dalgona coffee, and certain celebrities’ egos are in a fight to the death with their common sense. In a time when we’re all supposedly doing nothing, there’s still so much going on. 

With that in mind, I thought we could recognise some of the things we’ve seen online that have kept us talking in lockdown, not just because of Coronavirus, but in spite of it. 

Welcome to the first (but hopefully not annual) What A Time To Be At Home! awards. The WATTBAH!’s, if you like.

The ‘Why On Earth Did You Think This Was A Good Idea?’ Award

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen a sizable handful of blunders by the rich and famous that have, at worst, knocked them down a fair few places in our estimations and, at best, have left us scratching our heads, wondering what response they were expecting in the first place. 

With that in mind, it’s only right that this title goes to the original celebrity lockdown mistake: Gal Gadot’s ill-advised acapella cover of Imagine, featuring a variety of different Hollywood stars - not one of whom had the foresight to ask ���are you sure this doesn’t make us look like complete arseholes?”, which, unfortunately, it absolutely does. 

Between the bizarre and insincere ‘I have a dream’-style speech at the beginning, the boldness of some of those featured to be quite clearly just taking the piss, and the fact everyone appears to be singing ever-so-slightly below the note without ever actually hitting it for the entirety of the song, this was tone-deaf in more ways than one. It’s even worse when you realise that this was posted less than one week into the lockdown, but then what would I know? Maybe madness sets in faster in multi-million dollar mansions. Probably because it echoes louder and bounces off the walls of your massive living room.

The ‘I Had To Suffer Through This, So You Do, Too’ Award

This award recognises content we’ve been witness to over the last few weeks that was so awful, so completely uncomfortable to watch, that after you’d gotten over the initial disbelief at what you’d just seen, you immediately had to send it to somebody you know, so that you can suffer through it together.

Despite how many celebrity lockdown moments have left me with my head in my hands over the last few weeks, this award could only go to a very recent contender - one which isn’t simply an embarrassing piece of celebrity lockdown content, but will likely haunt the inner corners of my brain long after this virus is simply a topic taught about in GCSE History lessons of the future. 

I am, of course, talking about Olly Murs. I’m talking about Pringlegate. I’m talking about Olly Murs removing the bottom of a can of Sour Cream and Onion Pringles to trick his own girlfriend into touching his penis. On video, on TikTok.

Twitter: @buckyw1ng

There’s something inherently quite chilling about Pringlegate. It might be something to do with the 10,000 watt grin on Olly’s face as we watch him carefully maneuver a tin opener around the bottom of the can, or perhaps it’s just the question of how long he’d been sat there holding it around his naked penis as he and his girlfriend watched a film, patiently waiting for the moment to strike. Perhaps it’s the way the video freezes as she reaches over for a Pringle, allowing time for Olly Murs’ to add in an audio clip of himself, shouting “SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND”. 

Maybe it’s the uncontrollable show of amusement he launches into as she snatches her hand back in shock, laughing away, heartily, as if to say “Ha! You thought it was a normal can of Pringles, but it was actually my PENIS covered in Pringles crumbs! You just got PUNKED!”, like it was all simply a clever ruse. 

Above all else, I think the most uncomfortable thing about it is that I can’t help but feel like all bets are off in 2020, and that this is a fairly tame warm-up for things to come.

So, Olly Murs, you are inarguably the rightful winner of the ‘I Had To Suffer Through This, So You Do, Too’ award. Congratulations! Don’t do it again, yeah?

The ‘Are You Actually Aware Of These Words Coming Out Of Your Mouth?’ Award

I’ve said some stupid things since this lockdown started. Personally, I put it down to the lack of social interaction, which I think might be frying my brain a little bit, or at least that’s what the ornament of a turkey that sits on my kitchen windowsill told me the other day. However, I don’t think I or anybody I know has said anything even one fraction-of-an-iota as void of intelligent thought as Vanessa Hudgens’ terrible opinions on social distancing, shared in a now-infamous Instagram live last month. 

“It’s a virus,” she clarified, helpfully, before going on to explain, “I get it. I respect it.” 

I’m sure your respect means the world to it, Vanessa, but do you ‘get’ it?

“But even if everybody gets it, like… yeah… people are gonna die,” she explains, in a tone so chirpy that the word ‘die’ might as well be replaced by the phrase ‘have such a bloody lovely old time’, “which is terrible, but, like… inevitable?” 

In all fairness, death is inevitable, but I don’t know if suggesting speeding up that process for thousands of people because you were disappointed that Coachella was cancelled is an equally logical take.

After a brief - and probably quite profound - moment of self-reflection, she laughs “I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t be doing this right now”. Oh, you think? Which bit? Just holding these insane ideas, or actually broadcasting them to your 39.1 million Instagram followers? 

She did post a video the day after, clarifying that - despite what she said - she is staying at home, and is urging others to do the same. I guess she does respect the virus after all. Now, if everyone could hurry up, catch it and die from it, so that she can go to Coachella 2021, Vanessa Hudgens might respect you, too. 

I guess We’re All In This Together, after all.

The Show Of Support Award

I’ve already talked a lot about the rich and famous here, so maybe it’s time to take a break from that madness - although, I get it, I respect it - and have a look at how the rest of our lives look at the moment.

One weekly occurrence that seems to be set to stick around is the weekly round of applause for the NHS. Whilst it’s nothing short of blood-boilingly annoying seeing Boris Johnson absent-mindedly clapping in celebration of a service that he recently admitted he hadn’t even noticed the strain on until he, himself, nearly died of the virus, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the rest of us getting involved. If anything, it’s heart-warming to see the videos of NHS staff being applauded by neighbours as they leave for work, and to hear the cheers echoing through the streets at 8pm every Thursday. There’s a lot of people being quite cynical about it. We obviously know it’s not going to stop Coronavirus in its tracks, but sometimes it’s just nice to be nice, alright?

One thing I’ve noticed recently is how many people have adopted different noise-making strategies, possibly in an effort to effectively boost their support by a factor of 300%. Banging pots and pans together appears to be the most popular, but the winner of this award saw your pots and pans and said “how sweet”, before showing us how it’s really done.

I present to you, a genius. The ultimate hype-man.

Twitter: “a deeply disturbed national psyche” - @willuminare

There’s something so chaotic and angry about the energy in this video, just one man, a cricket bat, and a wheelie bin, banging away to show his gratitude. Just living in the moment. I wish the neighbour who’d captured it on camera had caught more of it, or at least just enough to edit the footage with Electric Youth’s soaring synth anthem  ‘A Real Hero’ from the soundtrack of the movie Drive against it.

I’ve been trying to learn to play the keytar in lockdown, to near enough no avail. Maybe at 8pm next Thursday, I’ll just take it outside and smash it against the pavement. You know, for the NHS.

Honourable Mentions: The Very Best In Coronacontent

It’s not all been so questionable - there’s been a lot of uplifting, funny, positive and thoughtful things shared online over the past few weeks. John Krasinski’s YouTube series Some Good News has provided a much-appreciated contrast from the bleakness of traditional current affairs programmes. There’s five weeks worth of episodes on his YouTube channel at the moment, so I would definitely recommend checking it out, especially if you feel like you need a lift! 

Over on Twitter, there’s been a lot to laugh about, as ‘front camera comedians’ are well and truly in their element (my personal favourite recently has been Alistair Green), as well as plenty of other users who are utilising their free time to create some brilliant stuff - this six-part opera based on a 2007 Facebook argument by Archie Henderson is genuinely one of the funniest things I’ve seen in weeks.

Twitter: “I made a six-act opera out of a conversation between some 14 year olds on my Facebook from 2007″ - @jazzemu_

All in all, these are obviously bizarre times that we’re living in. We don’t know how many more weeks of lockdown we’re going to have, when we’ll get back to normal, or even if ‘normal’ will mean something completely different from now on. 

What we do know is that the internet, and everyone on it - whoever they are or whatever they’re saying - will continue to surprise us, inform us, entertain us, provide a place for our quizzes and conversations, and keep us together in some sense, when we have no choice but to be apart. 

Thanks to anyone who’s read this far. I hope that you and your friends and families are keeping well, and that you took even a slight shred of lockdown enjoyment from even one thing I’ve said over the past couple thousand words! 

Finally, before I go, I thought we might share a little song. It goes like this:

Imagine there’s no heaven....

if you like, can follow me on twitter here or instagram here :-)

[cannibalghosts]

Blade Runner & Rape Culture

You know those grim realizations you have about the things you’ve loved for a really long time? You know what I’m talking about. The ones that kind of come out of nowhere and totally upend your whole idea of what you used to think. They hurt, right?  Well, I recently had that happen with Blade Runner, one of the most influential sf movies of the last fifty years, and, until very recently, a personal favorite.

Without any context, without any of the before or after, I’d like you to take a couple minutes and consider this scene (start at 2:20 for the cliff’s notes version):

…Yeah, that’s, uh, that’s fucking atrocious.

That scene always made me sort of uncomfortable, but only when I was rewatching this movie for the first time in ten years was I physically outraged. I just kept thinking to myself, How did I miss this all these years? How the hell did I miss how monumentally fucked up that is? Have I spent all this time looking at this movie all wrong?

And I suppose the answer is, Yeah, I think I have.

Let's rewind here for a second.

For the uninitiated: Blade Runner is a 1982 science fiction film by Ridley Scott, adapted from the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Half of the plot concerns Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), the eponymous “blade runner,” a special sort of detective in near-future Los Angeles tasked with the hunting and “retirement” (read: trial-less execution) of human-identical (and human-adjacent) androids, known as “replicants,” whose presence has been declared illegal on planet earth.

The other half is centered around Deckard’s assigned quarry, four renegade replicants: Roy Batty, Pris Stratton, Zhora Salome and Leon Kowalski, an unofficial “family” that has returned to Earth from offworld, simply seeking a way to extend their factory-warranty-limited lifespans while avoiding Deckard’s grasp (and his gun).

Over the course of his investigation, Deckard finds himself involved with a young woman named Rachel, who we all just watched get brutalized in that clip up there. Rachel’s a replicant who doesn’t know she’s a replicant—she’s an experimental model who’s had memories implanted in her software to make her believe she’s a human being, and this naturally leads her to discovering her own thoughts and feelings and experiences.  It leads her to actually become human.

And Deckard rapes her.

Given that perhaps the BIGGEST THEME OF THIS MOVIE is the ever-shifting nature & definition of humanity, and whether or not the replicants are in fact “people” as traditionally defined, or if it’s possible to grow beyond your original “programming,” it’s a HUGE MORAL/THEMATIC PROBLEM that the ostensible protagonist forces himself on her, because either:

A) He doesn’t consider her to be a person, or B) He doesn’t care whether she is or isn’t, or C) He recognizes her burgeoning humanity and does it anyway.

No matter how you slice it, that’s SUPER FUCKED UP because, and I can’t believe I have to spell this out, but:

She says no.

She does not consent.

And then he does it anyway.

Now, across the wasteland of the internet, the common defenses of this scene (also, two quick asides: 1. That there’s such thing as a “common defense” of this scene should broadcast that there’s something really wrong here, and 2. It’s pretty much always some condescending dude defending this scene and maybe that should tell us something) tend to come down to, in no particular order: 1. ”It was purely an act of passion! Sometimes passion is violent! That’s some people’s kink, you know!” 2. ”He was teaching her to be human! She was only just figuring out her own emotions!” 3. ”She’s a replicant, which means she’s an inanimate object, not a human being! You can’t rape the inanimate!” 4. ”Oh come on! She just shot Leon in the head, so she was going through a lot! Deckard was only helping her sort through that trauma!”

But none of those hold up, even when placed under the lightest possible scrutiny. Check it: 1. They don’t know each other. They haven’t discussed kinks/safe words/whatever. In no way was this safe, sane or consensual. This wasn’t passionate, it was a violent power move. It was rape. 2. Rape is not a rite of passage. It’s just not. Full fucking stop. 3. She’s not an inanimate object, she is absolutely a person. That is literally the entire point of the movie. 4. Remember how I just said Rape is not a rite of passage? Forgot to include this: it’s also not a way to help someone sort through the trauma of having committed their first murder. Duh-doi.

Or, put another way: 1. She said no. 2. She said no. 3. She said no. 4. SHE SAID NO.

By any definition of the word, Deckard rapes Rachel. Per the written + performed narrative and the thematic content of the movie, she is a thinking, feeling, sentient being acting of her own accord that is, at that very moment, trembling and on the edge of tears, and Deckard bullies, cajoles, demands, orders, restrains, makes clear (and follows through on) the threat of violence, and ultimately forces himself on her, regardless of her opinions or feelings on the matter.

I don’t know about you, but that sort of behavior sounds kinda fucking familiar to me.

Oh. Right. Turns out sick, entitled fucks in positions of power do this all the time.

Now, look: a lot of this movie is centered around the mirroring going on between Deckard and the replicant leader, Batty, and the similar-but-different (however both often violent) paths they cut through ruined-future Los Angeles. They hit the same beats, they shadow each other, over and over.

So, let’s just go ahead and run the numbers on these two dudes from opening crawl to end credits, shall we?

In a fit of grief and rage, Roy Batty kills Eldon Tyrell, the genius creator of the replicants, when it comes to light that this God/Father is in fact just another mortal, powerless to grant any more life to his children. Remember this. It gets important later. (Also, in the same scene, Batty also probably kills JF Sebastian, one of Tyrell’s contemporaries, except we never see it actually happen, so your mileage might vary).

However, I think it’s more telling that Batty also goes out of his way to spare Deckard’s life in the climax of the movie; moreover, Batty actually rescues the piece of shit from falling to his death. Consider that for a second: in the final moments of Batty’s life, he uses it to save the man who has hunted and killed his entire family, and he does so selflessly and earnestly. He’s not a terrorist, he hasn’t come to earth looking to do any damage to anyone. He just wants to live longer, wants it so desperately that it was worth coming back to a place where his very existence was a death sentence if he and his loved ones were discovered. Have you ever wanted anything that bad? Can you imagine the depths and complexities of emotion required to take that risk?

(Also, side note, BATTY NEVER RAPES ANYONE. Writing tip: if the alleged villain in your movie rapes less people than your so-called hero, you’ve got an enormous problem because, obviously.)

(Also there’s some breaking & entering, property damage and general menace perpetrated by the replicant family, but it’s so low-involvement it’s barely worth mentioning, but let’s try and be somewhat comprehensive here.)

So for the sake of fairness, let’s look at the frankly astonishing laundry list of the crimes committed by Rick Deckard, sociopathic government-backed murderer:

He executes two people, Zhora Salome & Pris Stratton, for no crimes other than having the gall to be alive on earth. Neither are self defense, either - Zhora is running away when she’s unceremoniously gunned down, and while Pris attempts to defend herself by any means, let’s not forget that the framing of that scene is that Deckard came to her hideout with the express purpose of putting a bullet in her brain.

He gleefully smashes apart Rachel’s illusions of humanity, seemingly for no reason. Remember, kids: Rachel thought she was a human being, and early on in the movie, in his contempt and his pettiness, Deckard disabuses her of that notion because he can, or because he hates replicants, or because whatever.  The result’s the same: Surprise! You’re a robot, and fuck you anyway. After he does this, she understandably leaves his apartment in tears, and he seems BAFFLED by this reaction.

Later, Deckard calls Rachel from a bar to harass her into meeting up with him (again, this is not long after he’s torn her world asunder), and she hangs up on him. Yet this does not deter him.

Later still, after Rachel saves Deckard from a lethal curbstomping at Leon’s hands by shooting the other replicant in the brain, Deckard, instead of “retiring” Rachel like he’s been ordered, takes her back to his apartment under the guise of comforting her in the aftermath of her having killed another person. When she rejects his clumsy romantic advances and tries to leave, he gets angry, and vicious, and brutal. As if he’s owed something for saving her life. That brings us back to the scene up at the top.

In the fiction of the movie, Replicants have a lifespan of four years. We’re never told how old Rachel is specifically, but since she’s walking and talking (and yeah, thinking and feeling) we can safely assume it’s somewhere under that wire. Now, she’s got implanted memories and all, but as previously mentioned, Deckard viciously dashes those apart pretty early on, causing what has to be some very serious mental damage. I’m not sure the formula to calculate age of consent from physical age/mental age/amount of trauma received, but Rachel acts pretty fucking scared and childlike in basically every scene she has after she meets Deckard, for good reason. From every angle conceivable, this gets really sick, really fast.

In fact, Deckard exclusively hurts/kills women through the entirety of the film. Never men. Sure, he swings on Leon once and Roy a few times at the end, but Roy and Leon shrug his attacks off like they’re nothing because they are nothing to them. He is an ant struggling against Panzer tanks. But that’s exactly the point. Deckard is repeatedly emasculated and dominated by every other major male character he interacts with in the movie: -Bryant, sociopathic old cop that he is, bullies & threatens Deckard into taking his old job back -Gaff, for most of the movie, speaks in a language that Deckard doesn’t comprehend, only deigning to communicate in english when he’s got something to shove in Deckard’s face - a power move if ever there was one -Tyrell can’t help but lord his intelligence + achievements over Deckard’s head -Leon, who is kind of an idiot, bests him in single combat -Roy also bests him in single combat AND THEN LETS HIM LIVE WITH THE SHAME OF DEFEAT! (As Rutger Hauer, Batty’s actor, puts it, at the climax of the film, Roy Batty “shows Deckard what a real man is made of.”)

Deckard. Is. Impotent.

And he takes that broken, impotent man’s rage out in some very ugly (and sadly predictable) ways. Even in the fight with Pris, he’s nearly beaten to death, saved only by a lucky shot from that gun of his.

Speaking of guns: it’s worth noting that only Deckard and Leon use firearms in this movie (with the brief exception of Rachel that one time, which I will get to in a second). I know that the gun-as-penis/replacement-penis metaphor is not new or dynamic, but the way it’s deployed across the board here is, if nothing else, both interesting and telling: –Leon shoots and kills another blade runner, Holden, early on in the movie. The force from the shots is, well, potent enough to blast Holden through a wall, establishing Leon’s typical—if overwhelming—masculinity. –However: Batty, the most dangerous of all the replicants, never uses a gun, because he doesn’t have to; his identity, his value are never in question. He loves his friends. He wants them all to live longer, he cares for them and he grieves when, one by one, they die. In combat, he uses his hands, further emasculating Deckard, both directly (the final battle) and indirectly in the viewer’s mind (literally the rest of the movie before the two of them ever meet). –Deckard’s gun is on full display when he goes, barechested, to pour himself a drink moments after tearing apart Rachel’s reality in their first scene in his apartment. –The only time a woman uses a firearm in this whole movie is when Rachel picks up Deckard’s pistol and puts one in Leon’s head when he’s about to kill the shit out of Deckard. There’s a lot of subtext going on here, but I don’t think it’s off the mark to read this as a further emasculation of Deckard, him having to be “rescued from the bad man” by a woman he’s viewed up until this point as a damsel in distress/possible sexual conquest. He is castrated by this woman who turns around and utilizes his own genital metaphor far better than him (earlier in the film, Deckard had to shoot Zhora twice to take her down, whereas Rachel does Leon in one, from about the same range). This goes a long way toward ratcheting up his insecurity and aggression, both of which metastasize later in the film. –Go back and watch that scene at the top again (if you have the stomach); dude starts the scene off barechested and sweaty, again signalling toward the traditional masculinity that’s thus far been denied him (and will continue to be so) throughout the film; a portent of what’s to come immediately after he moves to kiss her and she recoils.

I really used to love this movie. I’ve watched it a ton, and I got something new out of it every time. But this most recent screening might be the last. Don’t get me wrong, I do recognize how hugely influential it’s been on a genre that I love over the course of the last thirty-five years, but this isn’t something I think we can or should quietly ignore anymore. Something like this should be treated as repugnant, because it is.

I think I’m done, and I think I finally understand why Batty kills Tyrell:

If your gods fail you, then they’re not gods. It doesn’t matter how how influential they’ve been, it doesn’t matter what they changed, or how, or why. And if they’re not gods, then they’re just shitty, fallible mortals like the rest of us, destined to wither and die and rot, and should be held accountable as such.

Maybe it’s time for me—for all of us—to stop worshiping.

###

Stray thoughts:

*How many other Harrison Ford movies feature some sort of scene where he, in one way or another, forces himself on a woman? None so blatant or mortifying as Blade Runner, but just off the top of my head, there’s: Empire Strikes Back Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ...oh, shit.

*I know that “female roles with shitty in-universe jobs” is not a new thing in Hollywood, but in a movie with this many problems with women, it deserves special fucking mention: Rachel is a Secretary, Zhora is a stripper, Pris is, *ahem*, a Pleasure Model, and every other woman in this movie is a cook, a showgirl, or a geisha. Uh, yeah, one quick question about all that: Are you fucking kidding me?

*More Deckard’s Gross Views On Sex shit: in the scene with Zhora at the strip club (just before he runs her down and murders her in cold blood), Deckard gains access to her dressing room under the pretense of being a moral watchdog protecting the integrity & safety of the dancers on staff. Is this his/the movie’s idea of a sick joke, or is he/it really just that dense?

*Just going to leave this one Batty quote here at the end: “Not very sporting to fire on an unarmed opponent. I thought you were supposed to be good!”