#he's an auteur imo

[what-have-i-unleashed]

guys... the nonexistent rumor is true... i am a kpop enjoyer 😔🙏💔

so i humbly offer this song to killer: Limbo - DPR IAN

I took you out of my existence Only to crawl back into your arms Knowing how much it would take away

can mean so many things! either his relationship with nightmare and/or chara. or it's about his relationship with his own stages. the possibilities are endless >:]

[cctinsleybaxter]

something something about fIanagan being an excellent stephen king understander + king really liking gothic horror while not understanding how it operates

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 9/24/2024

you might be wondering “is my dear friend tumblr user girlfriendsofthegalaxy still unemployed?” the answer is yes. take this cat off my hands please i don’t think he’s causing the unemployment but he certainly isn’t helping

listening

via Wendy @dying-suffering-french-stalkers, Huoy Meas' ប្រគល់ក្ដីស្នេហ៍មកខ្ញុំវិញ. figuring out what this incredibly zippy Cambodian rock song is named and what it's about was really difficult bc spotify is a bane upon this earth and won't let you fucking copy-paste and OCR was not working on the Khmer script. i ended up listening to the first couple seconds of each of her songs on apple music, and finally figured out this roughly translates to Give Me Back My Love and is about begging a fuckboy for closure.

via the spotify discover weekly, Night Club's Pretty Girls Do Ugly Things. all Night Club's songs sound the same so if you like one, great news! i had this song on for a full gregorian hour bc, i am only a tiny bit ashamed to say, i was storyboarding a The Man With No Name fancam to this. i think it would go pretty hard.

Smoke you like a cigarette Choke you like a lariat Fatalistic tourniquet Do you want more?

-

reading

thank you mackintosh.

i did not Adore any of these comics from the library. i sort of enjoyed Night of the Ghoul, a one-volume TPB by Scott Snyder and Francesco Francavilla. i think ive blogged about this before but every once in a while i'll get a bee in my bonnet to read some horror comics even though i am a giant baby about horror movies.

Night of the Ghoul is about how you can't save your dad from PTSD but also about a lost horror film and also about the extremely dad behavior of tracking down every scrap of info about an auteur. there's also a monster.

the subtle art changes from present day to the remains of the film to the non-film flashbacks are well done, imo. the cover screams mignola but the inside pages are really fun pulp nonsense. i love a piece of genre writing that rolls around and delights in being a piece of genre writing.

im doing my level best not to get sucked into tiktok but i DO love watching this lady revive antique nail polish and look for dupes for shades from like the 20s. she found an almost exact dupe for a shade produced during wwii which is crazy insane to me!!!

-

watching

The Asphalt Jungle (1950, dir. Huston), it's a very painterly heist noir. i even like Sterling Hayden in one of the more prominent roles, even though i think he generally has the appeal of undercooked dough.

much like Fritz Lang's M, it presents the criminal element of the city as its own class with its own reputation and reference systems. it got in some trouble with the censors for having a VERY clearly laid out heist plan and execution. it's also got the babiest Marilyn Monroe in one of her earliest roles

this was such a gloriously messy movie. everyone is such a fucking mess. this woman only known as Doll is heartbreakingly, head over heels in love with Sterling Hayden's character. she's a little flighty and bumbling and silly, but determined! they're constantly orbiting the gravitational weight of her desire for this man and desire for a real life with this man. and that's just one subplot! she has maybe five minutes total screentime! she should have gotten a supporting actress oscar!!! everyone acted their fucking hearts out and it was so much fun to watch!

-

playing

monument valley is in the netflix games library this month (i don't actually know what their liscencing agreements would even look like, they and the studios they worked with were very tightlipped about that when they were rolling this out three years ago) but i assume it's going to be on the service for a while. i have never played this game, which makes me feel a little bit like a bad gamer. you can tell it's ten years old from some of the color and texture choices, but WOW did literally everyone take inspiration from this game.

this is the platonic ideal of a phone game. i get why everyone went insane about it and there was a brief boom of geometry-based puzzle mobile games. it is MUCH much harder now to get people to pay money to play a game that has a planned endpoint and planned number of levels, so netflix is a good home for it.

i was often frustrated but always delighted. the level below involves making something happening that made me genuinely gasp out loud in glee. well worth the annoyance of downloading the netflix app and scrolling through the poorly labeled and poorly sorted carousel of games.

great retrospective, a bit about how you need to have tiny teams go off and just kind of fuck around and bring weird stuff back, and a lot about how they actually designed the levels

The end result had a pixel-perfect axonometric aesthetic that not only went hard on its references to Dutch master artist and printmaker Maurits Cornelis Escher, but also dug deep into classic video game design, going right back to early arcade machines and 8-bit titles. Each of the ten levels is like a piece of fine furniture, built with invisible dovetail joints and inlaid with marquetry, stuffed with secret compartments and little design flourishes. Gray cites the world of theatre and stage design, as well as graphics, as important keystones in the way the levels were constructed. ‘Ken would always talk about flower arranging, and how you frame a silhouette of a level on the screen,’ he says.

-

making

update on the Phantom Menace fabric: pinked the raw edges and threw it in the laundry again with a very large quantity of vinegar. 50% poly was too high for it to really do anything, which is interesting. it didn’t lessen the seam edge effects either, which is a little annoying bc the seams were so gigantic and that’s a good chunk of fabric to lose. i am going to buy a camp shirt pattern at some point when i have money again but for now it goes in The Box

also! thrifted a pack of o-rings for jars for a dollar and finally put my grains etc in my pretty jars. they’re going to live in the pantry but today they live out on the countertop

[wallbeatjournal]

Have you ever noticed there are loads of surface level plot similarities between the pilots of riverdale and dawsons creek. Also mr honey is the actor who played jack and greg berlanti worked on both projects. Just a topic i used to like to think about a lot….

yes yes yes omg yes!! sibling shows!! and this is intentional for sure, i was looking at articles about riverdale from pre-series (circa 2015-16) yesterday to cite the perks of being a wallflower movie as a core inspiration for s1 and roberto mentioned dawson's creek regularly, too. actually way before the twin peaks pastiche started getting promoted, dawson's and perks were coming up.

it's really really wonderfully apparent if you're into the gay-auteur genre of teen dramas or the intersection between teen dramas and gay horror media. dawson's creek ran so riverdale could soar (lean in even harder on genre-archetype-and-trope-as-social-construct, not be hung up by don't-ask-don't-tell era tv writing restrictions...except by choice for queerbaiting fun and spite). and even failing to soar, dawson's creek season 2 might remain a perfect season of television for me.

(note for the readers who aren't operating in the 5th dimension like me and anon, yet: kevin williamson made our favorite genre-aware homoerotic slasher movie, scream, and dawson's creek both, and the only functional difference between them is what genre conventions he was allowed to play with to make it. in scream he got to have his repressed closet cases do murder. in dawson's creek, dawson must pick up the camera and make his friends into Characters, instead.)

dawson's creek and riverdale are suuuuch spiritually similar shows, at least the parts of DC that williamson was involved with - so for sure seasons 1-2, and then his comeback many seasons later for the finale (which i think the riverdale finale also riffed on heavily. mwah). you've got:

the original controversial "teenagers don't fucking talk like this omg cringe" ft. heightened theatrical hyperstylized dialogue full of movie references

comphet camp. no character is truly coherent unless you pepper in the fact that they're lgbt and repressing it as hard as they can. barchie, meet dawson/joey. it sucks here sooo bad but it's certainly in the social script and legacy expectations. might try to make it last a lifetime!

meta plot about the whole show possibly being the creation of the most repressed and judgmental (and asexual) control freak main character. plus many in-universe metaplots where said character makes autobiographical work romanticizing/projecting all over his friends

titular location (riverdale, the creek) is both a story setting AND a narrative mousetrap that the characters are trapped in.

there are tons of direct DC<>rvd plot and character riffs and web-weaves. like anon mentioned, principal honey really does play like a later-in-life continuation of kerr smith's role as jack in dawson's creek, with dawson creek jack's values and beliefs. most of the s1 rvd characters make more sense in the context of dawson's creek archetypes, too (especially jughead, veronica, kevin imo). many plots seem yanked off a teen drama tropes bingo card that dawson's creek filled out for them (complimentary!!!!).

they also both just have a really similar character writing approach to their campy genre pulp. the shows are very arch and into their coding games and doublespeak, the text is a fluid thing never taken too seriously or held too dearly. but the characters are nearly always treated earnestly and with love, we're allowed to grow so fond of them as an audience bc the narrative is one of love (sometimes an oppressive love full of meta-projections from its unreliable narrator-creator, but LOVE!!). it's a priority that while the weird tropey shit is happening, we still really are allowed to care about how it feels to be archie or pacey or jen or betty, and the emotional repercussions of any weird tropey happenings are carried through fairly consistently*. dawson is THE WORST. but he's beloved. he's vivid. he's coherent. his feelings are wrong but they're real and we do care. we do!! we must!!

anyway. you made me go back and look at posts from when i went back and rewatched dawson's creek in 2022. here's an assortment of random hot takes and fawning fond adorationisms, if you even care. look at my closeted friends from the creek. they're stuck like this!

PS: i made a list one time of the 6 essential dawson's creek episodes (i would add the 2-part whole series finale to this list in retrospect, so 8 episodes total) that one could watch out-of-context to open their <understanding gay-auteur camp teen drama comphet-lamenting queer-coding tropes and conventions> third eye. it's here on my personal blog! most recommend the daddy/mommy issues fishing trip ep (parent<>child dynamics and gender...riveressentials) and the gay two-parter (principal honey!!).

PPS: @kevin-keller-artistic-director used to post about rvd and dawson's creek semi regularly and probably would have great thoughts about this topic beyond what i just dredged up <3 also interested if anyone else wants to riff on the topic of riverdale as a successor/sibling to dawson's creek 👀

*pacey's CSA plot (DEROGATORY) a notable exception to this. but that's because dawson's creek isn't trying to depict abuse, it's trying to do a queer closet metaphor, where "being in high school but dating an adult woman" is the same as "having a same-sex relationship with a peer" in terms of secrecy and shame and social impact...just NO thought to power dynamics or trauma AT ALL. it's basically the kevin/moose plot from riverdale and pacey is impacted by it like kevin is. gross!!!!

[queenlucythevaliant]

Story ask game for Lawrence of Arabia, if you please, with a 4, 14, and 21 (for that, assume the "author" is David Lean).

Lawrence! Lawrence! Lawrence!

4: assign the story a hyper-specific genre name

Epic historical wartime adventure biopic tragedy. With camels.

14: how likely do you think the story is to break the reader's heart?

I think it's very much a matter of personal buy-in. If you're the sort of person willing to invest emotionally in four-hour epics from the 60s, then it 100% will break your heart. This movie is devastating. I can quote chapter and verse of all the lines and scenes and moments that wreck me, if you want, but really what it comes down to is Lawrence in the empty Arab Council saying "And that would have been something." Ahhhhhhh. It's a story about reaching and failing to grasp, and those are always the most effective tragedies imo.

21: based on this story, would you be interested enough in the author to read their other work?

I would love to watch every David Lean movie over the course of my life. I've already made a pretty big dent in it! Doctor Zhivago is my next favorite after Lawrence, being a better literary adaptation than 99.9% of amazing novels get. Zhivago is such a literary favorite of mine, and it should be high praise that I love Lean's movie almost as much as I love Pasternak's bittersweet beautiful heartbreak of a novel. Ask me about the book sometime, if you're interested.

I also recently watched Brief Encounter for the first time, which I just loved to pieces. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. The best tragedy of timing that I've experienced in a long time. Will definitely be revisiting in the future.

I will admit, I giggled my way through Bridge Over the River Kwai. It was an excellent movie, but I think the whole "we are BRITISH we are going to build THE GREATEST BRIDGE EVER" thing, which is supposed to be a sign of a semi-broken mind, was just too funny for me to move past in favor of the serious tragedy. Having already seen Tom Hank's The Volunteers, which parodies Bridge Over the River Kwai, didn't really help either.

I will probably give A Passage to India a try next. That's also an adaptation of a novel I thoroughly enjoyed, albeit not in the way I love Zhivago. I'm sure I'll get to his Dickens stuff eventually too, although those will be a harder sell for me. It's a shame he never directed A Tale of Two Cities. I know he's got a bunch of other, lesser known movies too, and I will definitely get to those eventually as well.

So, in short, a resounding yes to the question. I'm not, like, a film person in the way that many people are, but I think I can say with some confidence that Lean is my favorite auteur-director.

[thienvaldram]

The Book of the Snowstorm – Readthrough/Review Part 7

Framing Story (Scenes 16-18)

Did that just imply… Urizen was God. Like the ‘God’ mentioned by the Toymaker in the Giggle was actually Urizen (and thus Rassilon)? Also a Church on Ruby Road reference with the goblin. I like Rich’s little section, and in general I’m curious as to how the events in the 925 Universe tie to the Snowstorm in the library and how the mysterious-99-per-cent-sure-he’s-not-Auteur stranger factors into it, if they do at all.

The God Who Came For Christmas

Hello again FASA War Chief. The glimpse into the Archon’s perception of one another was fascinating and I think I get what it’s trying to do. Imply the FASA War Chief is a Self-Hypnotised Master trying to disguise. Either way, fun little piece even if (IIRC) it’s a sequel to a DW RPG story that I have not seen.

Presents

Interesting piece. The Fantastic Realm is an interesting setting and I like the use of comic book terminology alongside more DWEU concepts. As well as the general exploration of the infinitely variable constantly resetting characters of comic books. Captain America, or well… Captain Yank, was a good choice of character for that IMO and I appreciated the references to other suspiciously similar substitutes for Marvel’s other cast members.

The Cathedral of Winter

Ok so first of all, Abraytha is really fun, and I appreciate his general upbeat demeanour and sense of adventure and fun. Also his aesthetic is cool. The Archons of Winter were really funny, and have similarly funny implications for their temporal counterparts (In that a Multiversal visitor with the appropriate equipment could in theory bypass their defences almost as easily as Abraytha did to the Archons of Winter). The cultural differences between Xiantio and Abraytha were also really fun. Aesthetic was great too, just the general winter theming. (Also Lotto cameo?????)

[margridarnauds]

Where can I get a full The Green Knight (2021) tirade?

Ohohohohohohohohoho.

Alright, so there are things I can discuss, things that I can't, because they're things I've either used before or might be using in the future.

Suffice it to say, I think that it's self-satisfied. There's this notion that the film is somehow both true to the tone of the original text while also being willing to deconstruct it, raising Hard Truths about Arthuriana.

The problem is that...it isn't. It's your typical Mediocre White Male Auteur Tries To Take On the Classics film. It doesn't do anything that authors in the middle ages weren't willing to do themselves.

"Oh, what if King Arthur was a dick?" Boy, I have some news about a little text...called Culhwch ac Olwen....and another text...called The Alliterative Mort d'Arthur....and another text....called Sir Gawain...and the Green Knight...

"We should discuss how the system of chivalry can be hypocritical!" I have some news for you...about the French tradition...and about a little book...called Le Mort d'Arthur.

"Arthurian...imperialism?" ...Peredur.

And it's presented in such a smug, self-satisfied way that it's not "look! Here's a part of the tradition that we don't talk about!" so much as "Hey. Hey. Guess what? Guess what? Did you know that like. Chivalry was mainly a thing for a bunch of bloodthirsty aristocrats?" NO I HAD NO IDEA. NEITHER DID ANYONE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. And it does it while relentlessly portraying the middle ages as this bleak, moody, colorless world, aka The Visual Cliche We Have Seen A Thousand Times Over Again. Wow, look, a brothel. Wow, look, sex. Wow, look, violence. I bet you watched Game of Thrones once.

I hold a certain belief that if you're going to deconstruct a text or a tradition...you've got to do it better than the originals. And I feel like it isn't willing to take tips from what people in the middle ages were actually willing to do.

The characters don't act like PEOPLE, they act like Lowery's obnoxious mouthpieces. "Make me your LADY, Gawain!" He will NOT make you his lady and you KNOW that. Essel is seemingly there to establish Gawain's heterosexuality and be Lowery's own moral mouthpiece and ask pithy questions that seem to be deep. "Why greatness? Why not GOODNESS?" No one would ever think about that, Essel. We definitely don't have people from the Middle Ages...asking these questions.

...Alicia Vikander, you were wasted on this film.

And she doesn't escape it as Lady Bertilak, either, giving that long, self-indulgent monologue about the color green. I've seen people say that it sounds like something that could have come out of a medieval text and, with respect to them...no. It doesn't. It sounds like something that someone wrote in an attempt to be deep. Vellum is precious in the Middle Ages and you're going to waste it on THAT? (Instead of a long, long listing of Arthur's court, looking at you Culhwch ac Olwen.) Like the rest of the film, it's pretty on the outside, stylized almost to perfection, and empty on the inside. And then you have the scene in the Lowery where she somewhat teasingly, somewhat smugly imo talks about how "sometimes...don't tell anyone...when I see room for improvements, I make them " the texts she transcribes. What if the text didn't need to be improved, Lowery? What if it was FINE as it is? Like, say that you made changes in order to better deliver on the themes you wanted to convey, sure -- I still think his vision is shitty, but at least I could accept it. But an improvement? No. That's just hubris. It's rancid. That isn't Lady Bertilak talking, that's Lowery's ego.

You have the treatment of Lord Bertilak, which is...also rancid imo. Like, I don't give a single fuck what Lowery says, the kisses should have been in there. If you could give us a green kirtle cumshot and an entire plotline of Essel sighing dreamily and Emoting, you could have given us two more kisses. Or made the one kiss we got...actually consensual. But we didn't get that. Why? Why did we highlight heteroeroticism and downplay the homosociality?

And what does it all lead to? Nothing. You introduce Arthur as an imperialist, you introduce Camelot as this world that's falling apart, you introduce, but there's nothing that you leave to remedy it. Lay down and die, that's what you do when the world sucks. Can't improve it, might as well die, surrender your neck to the axe.

It encapsulates the worst elements of bad arthouse films -- the surreal is mistaken for the substantial, it's all style, no substance, and what substance it does have is rotten. I see very little of the Green Knight there, it's all Lowery.

[roydeezed]

Some thoughts about D&D: Honor Among Thieves

So I was watching the dnd movie and to avoid spoilers, cause it was a damn good film, I've got some thoughts below the cut:

I'd been looking forward to this ever since I heard this director duo behind Game Night would be directing this. If you haven't watched Game Night by the way, go watch it, it's imo one of the best comedy movies of the past few years.

But there's a lot to talk about with this movie. Especially the directors style being more in service to the movie than it is in service to them. They have the chops to do auteur-esque films where each movie has their distinct thumbprint on it but they choose not to. In Game Night they used tilt shift lenses to simulate the look of game pieces on a board and in this they use the structure of a heist movie to simulate an actual dnd game, where most parties put a lot of time into the plan. And the flowy camera work does it's best to keep the same rhythm. The practical effects used in this film were also quite amazing, and their marriage with the CG worked great.

But since I am a story typa person, I want to talk about the story itself. Or more like, break down what I believe the core theme to be.

And it all comes down to Forge and Ed. And the title of the film in a weird way. Ed and Forge aren't necessarily bad guys to start off with and up to a certain point they make the same type of decisions. They steal and lie and to a point betray, though Forge's crimes are of a larger magnitude. Ed stole the Red Wizard's gold and lied to the rest of the group about Simon's confidence about the helm and betrayed their trust in the process.

What separates the two and what scene really highlights the difference is where after capturing and sending Ed and Holga away the first time, Forge sits Kira down and talks to her, lying to her about how her father abandoned her. He tells her "The fact that you see good in me makes me believe there might just be some in me." It's an honest sentiment but it's tainted by the fact that just minutes earlier he admitted to lying to Kira and enjoying being a father because he could have her look up to him and let him shape her in his own image.

Contrast that with Edgin. He had lied for a long time. And even lied in securing Doric's help when getting the helm. But there's two key differences in why Edgin makes the right decisions while Forge loses everything. The first being that Edgin has peers that can set him on the right path while Forge only has someone who looks up to him and listens to his every word. And that difference being friendship gets to the heart of dnd so well. Despite what the edgelord in your group may have you thinking, DND is about collaboration and more importantly, friendship. To Ed, his friends are a lens for him to see himself through and be better.

But that's not all. In a story about lies and thievery, what it all comes down to is honesty. Because at the end of it all, Edgin makes two decisions directly influenced by his daughter. He turns the boat around and saves Holga because of his daughter. A daughter that was also there for Forge. So why did she not set him straight?

It's because at every crucial turn Forge lied to her, whereas in every crucial turn, Ed tells the truth. He admits his lies about Simon and his weakness and his thieving ways to the group and he tells his daughter that he made a mistake. And it's through these admissions, this honesty, that his friends and his daughter are able to see him for who he is, and thus depend on him for who he is.

In a weird way, with Honour and Honesty being related etymologically makes so much sense as it is also one of the core themes of the films alongside friendship.

[lautakwah]

i KNOW the book is abt his auteur films made in the late 90s-mid 00s focusing specifically on action movies bc thats what hes most known for but imo theres a lot left out if you dont also take into account johnnie to's start in tvb and how those dramas (generally melodramatic, from soap opera-esque contemporary stuff to costume dramas & wuxia classics adaptations) influenced his later works ntm how these will always be in conversation w each other bc u cannot divorce the influence tvb has had on the hk filmmaking landscape when so many of hk's most well-known filmmakers and actors from the 80s-90s have had some ties with the network. AND you can just. see echoes in classic 80s tvb in johnnie to's "auteur" works, the way that he mixes genres, the tonal shifts, the humor, etc... while the dramas of the 80s he worked on weren't highly stylized and he didnt have as much creative control, you can see how the dramatic beats borrow from these dramas. like... idk it just does a disservice to his work and growth as a director not to take that into account

[finniestoncrane]

I saw you had horror in your fandom list!

Have you seen pyscho (1960s)? If not I'd suggest it

Its a good psychological horror/slasher, a cult classic, and norman bates is kinda fine ngl imo, he has baby girl energy

i have!! i love psycho, i'm not like a huge fan of hitchcock as an auteur (i feel so gross but i need to use my film degree for something lmao) BUT i think i preferred the book actually!! although i do think the scene with the stairs is an exceptional, if very early and tenuous, jump scare!!

norman bates is a cutie patootie though, and not to get too into it here, but his basis in ed gein (who is an oddly sympathetic person actually, i can recommend some good books!!) is what makes him so weirdly endearing and super terrifying

i understand why they made him handsome and cute for the movie, had to get us to fall in love, but i like fat norman from the book lol

[tanadrin]

Considering your recent musings on worldbuilding, fantasy, and magic realism, would be interested to hear your thoughts on superhero worlds, where practically all those subgenres crossover (soft science fiction for the technology, dark fantasy/horror for the magic, high fantasy pantheons loosely based on mythology and entirely made-up and genre-busting ones, space opera for the occasional interstellar travel, etc.) and yet from some point on it gets merged into the background of an universe supposed to be just like our world until noted otherwise (particularly in social trends, etc.), in true magic-realist fashion.

i gotta say, superheroes are just... basically uninteresting as a concept to me. whether you're deconstructing or reconstructing or playing it straight, you have to torture basic narrative plausibility (irrespective of SF/fantasy/realist plausability) to make the genre function that i simply tend to lose interest.

also, i don't think "a universe supposed to be just like our world until noted otherwise" is a very good definition of magical realism. magical realism is, IMO, about emotional logic overwhelming other systems governing the narrative at specifically heightened points, in a way that should break those systems (but apparently does not). but not everywhere in the narrative (that's more like surrealism), and typically not in ways that are marked as unusual within the narrative (characters don't go "wow, that was weird/amazing/terrifying!"). your definition seems to me to be a better definition of "low" or "urban" fantasy, or certain kinds of near-future science fiction, than magical realism.

because in superhero fiction, the weird/amazing/terrifying nature of the fantastical elements are part of the point. superman is a hero because he is remarkable and, well, superhuman. it would only be magical realism if clark kent was an ordinary guy who one day caught a building that was collapsing and saved lois lane because of his overpowering love for her, and his sense of personal alienation from the rest of the human race, and everyone acted like this was pretty normal and it was never brought up again. as soon as you make him an alien, as a causative factor in his supernatural abilities, you just have regular science fiction.

i do think it's kind of fun that the superhero genre is one of those genres that borrows freely from others--narratives where tropes from horror, fantasy, and science fiction can coexist comfortably are neat. i have friends who are english major types, you know, real insufferable book nerds, who speak of the superhero genre not unlike you do: they evoke the image of a febrile amalgam of different artists in the same shared universe, where the contradictions and paradoxes only add to a kind of semi-surreal character; and of more independent auteur-style projects like Watchmen and Worm which comment cleverly on established tropes of the genre.

but whenever i dip my toe into superhero fiction of any flavor, i feel less that i'm sampling from a roiling cauldron of imagination too rich to be contained by any single narrative approach and more that I am tasting a bland wafer of something whose foundational characters and stories were almost instantly converted into an undifferentiated paste by particular commercial and cultural demands; and rather than injecting new and exciting material into that paste, most innovations in the genre have taken that paste and tried to sculpt it, like making little sculptures out of spam and calling it cuisine.

this is not to say i have never enjoyed a superhero movie; just that even the works praised as daring innovators within the genre seem to me to be basically more of the same. like licensed star wars media or video game tie-in novels, it's incredibly difficult to transcend the limitations of your genre when the thing that crystallized the genre in the first place, the thing that has your audience present in the first place, are those limitations. i don't think it's possible to make a superhero story very interesting for the same reason it's not possible to build the burj khalifa out of spam: spam is not steel, and in order to make spam have the properties of steel, it would have to cease to be useful as spam.

[marypsue]

For argyle, I can’t say much but I will say my dad is Chicano and grew up in LA area and he appreciated the Cheech and Chong references ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ IMO, I feel like his character was exciting in that it was a chance to give the Byers some interesting development, especially Jonathan, but in reality he was more an excuse for weed jokes. I also feel like sometimes the fandom in more excited to show that they can like a brown man actually, than actually giving his character depth (necessary caveat this may just be the corners in lurking on). He mainly exist for car and pizza plot points, and also deus ex machina moments where the writers clearly decided if a high person has an epiphany that coincidentally solves everything, it doesn’t count because they’re high and it’s humorous.

Apologies if you could hear me rolling my eyes over that last point from all the way over here. Everything I hear makes me more and more convinced that I made the right call dipping halfway through this last season. This show is very much no longer being made with me in the intended target audience.

(To be fair, this tendency toward stock comedic characters with cardboard personalities started with Murray back in season two, and just got fucking egregious when they decided he should be a main cast member and an important load-bearing plot element. I cannot stand the man. And yeah, season one had its share of dopey deus ex (Jonathan, why are you taking pictures in the woods in the middle of the night?), but usually it was to get the characters into Situations, not out of them.)

Like I do think it's important to be able to draw that distinction between 'this is what the author/showrunners/writers/story actually did, in our real world, where this is a fictional story that someone had to make all the choices about' and 'this is how I could explain this within the context of the story, as though it were a Thing That Happened and the people it happened to were real, and no deliberate, conscious choices shaped those facts'.

Maybe it really is just that I'm not the target audience here. Or maybe I just don't appreciate weed jokes. But it seems pretty clear to me that nobody on the writing team put in the time or the thought to give that actor much more to work with other than 'weed joke'. (Most likely because they didn't have the time to put in the thought. Or, possibly, that there was no one left on the writing team with the perspective to do so. Minirooms are bad, 'auteur theory' is bad, support the WGA.)

But I know fandom can Do Things with characters whose writers Didn't. I've done it myself! In this case, though, I can't get past how much he annoys me. Which is rough, because I agree with your point - having him there opens up a lot of really interesting possibilities for development for the Byers! It could have been really good! I just can't get there on my own. And I'm hoping somebody has the hookup for the good stuff, so that I don't have to try to sort through a lot of fics and headcanons about a character I am already irritated by for Meta Reasons, without a trusty guide.

[peppertaemint]

WayV the Rolls Royce of NCT like saaaame lmao i love NCT but WayV like wow.

WayV are definitely the exclusive and "high-end" brand of NCT. If you liken NCT Dream to the BTS/Disney demographic, NCT 127 the more experimental and "adult", WayV are certainly in a category of their own.

Should you watch this fancam? Yes, yes you should.

WayV (WēiShén V) are C-pop, Chinese pop. They're on Label V, the Chinese sub-label of SM. I think one could argue they are a C-pop/K-pop fusion, and that's quite interesting in itself. The active members are Ten, Kun, Winwin, Yangyang, Xiaojun, an Hendery.

Essential song: Take Off (2019)

Their music has a sexy sophistication to it, along with their concepts. Ten's auteur-level dancing often sets the tone for their impressive performances. Album designs also reflect this "special" brand image.

There are two things that make WayV life a little difficult imo. 1) The on-going tensions between SK and Mainland China and b) Lucas-gate.

Popular Korean entertainment, including K-pop (the music), was banned from distribution in Mainland China for six years. It was only in November 2022 that K entertainment started to stream on Tencent once again. The ban was believed to have started due to the US missile defense system installed in SK in 2017. WayV is C-pop, so they circumvented this ban, but their Label is still owned by a Korean company.

There is also a culture of conservative backlash against fandom in Mainland China. This came to a head with the Yi/Zhan Ao3 fanfic debacle, but it had real-world consequences.

Fandom is big business in Mainland China. I'm sure this is why SM is interested in working in this market with a C-pop outfit, given that tensions haven't eased quite enough for K-pop groups to re-enter the market with tours, fan meets, brand ambassadorships, etc.

The culture of fandom backlash is against morals and consumerism in general. I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that there are laws now in place to limit fandom activities and that stars are legally responsible for their fandoms' actions through their studios (even idols need to set up studios as business fronts for their work). Anecdotally, I've heard of things like teachers getting fired for mentioning actors or idols or using them as examples in teaching.

One of the rules that came out of new legislation in the past couple of years is the limitation of "feminine" looks for men. Essentially, the flower boy K-pop look was effectively banned. Traditional masculine aesthetics were expected, and for quite a time, many who used to have flower boy looks reverted to the opposite. I think it's cooled a little bit, but it's still not what it was.

So imagine being WayV amid all of this political and cultural tension. You're a C-pop group whose "parents" (NCT) are K-pop. That's... not gonna make anything easy. I've heard that WayV fans are unsatisfied that the group don't get to do enough Korean content during their comebacks. Yet, I think it's a game of chess for SM and Label V. They want to do enough to make a splash but they don't want to make such a big splash that problems are caused.

The second challenge, and probably the more immediate one despite all of the above, is the Lucas situation. WayV should be further along and have more albums/releases under their belts by now, but the indefinite hiatus of Lucas seems to have extended to WayV in some respect. We don't know what goes on behind the scenes. What we do know is that there is enough evidence that Lucas was shady, and that he probably won't return. WayV have now come back as a 6-person group, so I can't see them reverting.

If you're not sure what happened with Lucas, you can read about it here (just use a translator browser add-in). The allegations were gaslighting and financial exploitation, which are quite serious. In cases where the claims are unfounded, SM has stated such and pursued legal action. That's not what has happened here; instead, both Lucas and the company issued apologies for the wrongdoing, which is indeed admitting wrongdoing.

My bottom line on WayV? They've been dealt some difficult cards, but their music and performance are outstanding, so over time, I think they will continue to attract attention and convert fans. They've just announced a global fan meet tour, which will be a huge treat to all those who have waited so long for them to return.

[chappell-roans]

It’s obvious Bradley Cooper wants to be a Warren Beatty type of auteur but he falls short

Oh, I don’t think that’s super unpopular opinion, at least from discussions (and disses💀) I’ve seen on Twitter. Maybe he’ll get there but yeah he’s not like an all-timer imo.

[zendyval]

It sounds like it was more an hbo decision than a sam decision. And I’m not one to defend Sam. But imo HBO is the culprit just like they were with the idol and making him come on to direct.

I really don't know who was responsible for what part of things but I tend to agree that I don't think Sam's skills are really writing unless it's something that he intimately knows about, like the Rue stuff. Or maybe times where he's opened up enough to consult with others on areas that aren't his strength- I'm thinking of the Jules special.

That is the annoying part though. I think the specials were done really well. He can do some great stuff at times, but if he's going to write I don't think he's meant to be an auteur. I also think he and Abel absolutely fed off the worst parts of each other. It's not Z's job, but oddly, I think she keeps him in check more.

[preraphaeliteknight]

I think Joe wants to employed as an actor but not interested in the fame part of it that's why I think he is very picky with his projects imo

Yeah, I agree with this. He’d rather have a long career with smaller roles in auteur-directed movies, than a short career with big roles in blockbusters. It’s a smart approach and one I’m sure he’s purposefully planned with his agent (who has the same approach with most of his actors)