*putting on a moustache and sunglasses*
So like what’s the deal with ghosted what’s that about
now see the deal with Ghosted is that it's not what happens within the events of the film that captivates me so much, though don't get me wrong i love this film to bits, but rather, it's the idea of what happens after the whole thing that makes me FUCKING NUTS
because the whole thing is relatively cut and dry in the sense that we don't have to guess about what happened before and we don't have to guess about how everybody is feeling in the present. we know (MOST) important characters backgrounds and what they're doing at Falkhill and slowly revealing Paul's context was pretty interesting if not a little abrupt at the end there but its the very last scene of this film down to the very frame that flips the whole hour and a half you just watched over on its head and prevents me from getting a good night's sleep because i can't stop thinking about it
ELABORATING WITH A LOT OF SPOILERS UNDER THIS
explaining the plot of this movie is hard without sounding like im writing a pretentious review and not just talking out of my ass on tumblr but for my followers who haven't watched this movie and dont care enough to: Ghosted (2011) is set in a british prison in which Jack (John Lynch) is a long time prisoner who's wife just dumped him apparently on the anniversary of their sons death (tough break) and is being advised by his friend and cellmate Ahmed (Art Malik) (who does NOT get HALF as much screen-time or plot relevance as he DESERVES,) to find something to put his mind to and be proud of outside of his failures
Paul (Martin Compston) is a prisoner who was just transferred out of a Young Offenders prison AS FAR AS WE'RE TOLD... though its noticeable from the beginning that hes not a very good liar and his story is suspicious at best
Clay (Craig Parkinson) is kindof The Guy of their prison wing whos dealing drugs to other prisoners and assumes the position of authority over everybody else, though compared to other inmates with bigger cliques, his foundations are shaky. the description of this film on letterboxd calls him "the wing beast" and i have never cried laughing so hard reading something in my life
Clay and Jack both hone in on Paul immediately for different reasons. Jack, after his pep talk with Ahmed, sees Paul as a source of "a little self belief, something to be proud of", but Clay scoops him under his wing for being relatively young and impressionable. This puts Jack and Clay at odds with each other.
after some plot, Paul gets into very big trouble with Clay and after An Incident is promptly plopped into Jacks hands, who had requested Paul move into his cell earlier but didn't have a good enough excuse for it. Well You've Got A Bloody Good Reason Now ect ect
Jack and Paul buddy up immediately and its noticable that Paul is sort of filling in the empty space where a son would be for Jack, however we discover that Paul has been lying about his past to everybody, including Jack. he lied about his family and he lied about having only just been transferred from Y.O. and hadn't been telling the whole truth about his sentence. what the truth ends up being, in a nutshell, is that Paul is accidentally responsible for the death of Jack's son, having been the one who started the house fire he died in (we were never even told that Jack's son died in a house fire before this, we are only told this in Paul's flashback at the end of the movie and are supposed to act, like, surprised?? whatever). consequentially, Jack flips his lid and prompts my personal favorite scene in this film in which he beats the living shit out of Paul with his bare hands and immediately regrets it the second the adrenaline wears off, hitting an alarm button within the cell that alerts the guards.
the guards whisk him away and he is put in solitary confinement, which we find out was actually the first sequence of the film where hes shown with an absurdly long beard, and considering every other fucking scene he's in is of him shaving his face, i assume this is to show just how long he's been kept in solitary confinement, which quite honestly was kindof exciting to realize at the end of the film.
and then. the end scene.
after solitary, Jack is put in cuffs and brought to see Paul who looked Extremely Dead after Jack had him, but hes not dead! just almost dead.
Jack is sat next to him and tries to apologize but starts to cry, reaching out a hand to hold Paul's but retracting it regretfully. Paul, having looked unconscious not five seconds before, moves his hand to place it over Jack's...
and then the movie ends. and i am left writhing on my floor in anguish BUT NOT BEFORE I EXPLAIN TO YOU THAT THIS
THIS is what the deal is with Ghosted
the pathetic gestures of "im sorry" and "its okay" are what kill me. sorry is nowhere near enough to justify anything that EITHER of them did, NOR should they be forgiven. AND YET.
and what gets my gears going is the thought of what everything looks like AFTER this scene. after they've bonded so close and after Jack already thought that Paul stopped lying to him, thinking that he could protect Paul from Clay now... after they started to fill the spaces for people they were missing in their lives... and after they've RUINED each others lives. They Have Ruined Each Others Lives and yet Paul probably would have had to DELIBERATELY ASK for them to bring Jack to see him because he just BEAT Paul within an INCH of his life and would NOT !! have brought Jack to see him upon Jack's own request!! Paul would have wanted to see him too!! after all this
what does their relationship look like now... the image of father and son has been all but shattered in each other's eyes, one can assume, but are they still close... does the guilt and responsibility drift them apart or does it pull them inseparably together? Ahmed tells Jack that "there is no such thing as coincidence, only fate" but what does their fate look like... does it end here or does it mean that they're together indefinitely? the end of this film swings the door wide open and i think about it. way too often. unacceptably often, even.
all in all theres no reason that this should be my favorite film but it is. if nothing else it's made me look into the other actors involved and branch out with a to-watch list as long as my arm that will only get longer once i branch out from there. is it the perfect movie? no this film is mediocre at best. have i made a number of my friends sit down and watch it and listen to me yell incoherently about it? of course i have.
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story time about a (possibly) new hobby(?)
(it got kinda long, so feel free to skip hahah)
so. part of my this year's resolution was to learn an erhu... or any musical instrument, really. and i attended an introductory chinese instruments workshop recently.
it was super fun!! they let us try a few instruments, like...
the smiling frying pan (zhong)ruan, which is like a guitar, but round.
dizi ー although since it's a wind instrument they didn't let us actually play it, because. you know. hygiene reasons. kinda amazing to think that the instrument's life and blood is pretty much a small sheet of rice paper... the xiao was also kinda interesting!! such a low and unique sound ✨
pipa... it's a very cool and pretty-sounding instrument for sure, but i don't think i'll have the brainpower to remember and learn the finger techniques ;;;
erhu. while i only managed to make noises akin to killing chickens didn't really manage to make a decent sound on it, it's definitely an instrument i might want to learn more than the others!! we got to see a true expert play in person, and. man. it does sound so... idk how to describe it. soulful? but also, i might be biased bc zhongli's theme has an erhu in it hahahah also the way zhonghu sounds??? 💗
guzheng!!!! they sound soooo good in-person... especially the expensive one.... figures orz also i found this while doing my own research but did you know that guzheng has areas on its back called 'phoenix eyes' (to insert the strings), 'dragon cave' (sound hole 1), and 'heavenly pond' (sound hole 2)? plus, the hanzis for certain top parts also contains the dragon/phoenix/mountain characters and i think it's neat lol
i've tried piano and guitar in the past, but i never really felt attached to them. but... i fell in love with the guzheng. i wanna learn it so badly.
but the (decent) instrument is so expensive, it's incredibly massive (the travel-sized ones are even more expensive orz), and the maintenance seems like a nightmare???? (although i think musical instruments maintenance in general is a nightmare anyway?? idk)
anyway, i did book a trial guzheng lesson. and maybe if it really hooks me up i'll attend a few normal classes... and if my interest holds up, i might consider buying a secondhand one? on the other hand, it also feels like i should try to fully ride the waves while this excitement is going 📈🔺⏫.... hrhsldkjflsjd idk anymore ;;;;
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who is the scoundrel? I see you posting about them(it? Idk) all the time but I haven’t figured out who they are
my fallen london OC! i made them by accident a few months ago and as you can tell ive very quickly developed scoundrel brainrot. it's a terminal illness for which there is no cure and the symptoms are instead of brain there is scoundrel.
in terms of actual character rundowns, their full moniker is The Bandaged Scoundrel, though i tend to call them "the scoundrel" for short. their real name is D█████, but they'd sooner die permanently than respond to or even acknowledge its existence.
they are! a bastard! a rat! a son of a b___! a motherf______! they are vain beyond your wildest imagination and they think they're the most infallible perfect being in all of existence and they have the exact attitude of a saturday morning power-hungry cartoon supervillain on cocaine.
and also, perhaps most importantly, they're Really Fucking Stupid. because of course they are.
they are resplendently awful. they are inevitably going to cause their own demise in an act of pure karmic retribution. they are a speck of dust in history that desperately keeps trying to insist they're actually a tornado. i love them dearly.
in loose conclusion while also acknowledging ive explained literally nothing; my goofy silly victorian london browser game player character that deserves to get timetraveled against their will to the 21st century specifically so they can get hit by a truck
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I’ve been thinking about the portrayal of SA and misogyny within fallout new vegas, from the Fiends and Caesar’s Legion specifically
I think new vegas does a pretty good job at portraying oppression and abuse without seeming... for lack of a better term masturbatory. It’s by no means perfect obviously but i think its a solid attempt. The(living) victims of rape that we see within New Vegas( Pretty Sarah, Corporal Besty, and Siri) all have stories that i found pretty moving, relatable and truly heart wrenching.
I think Betsy and Siri are the two that really stick out to me the most( sarah i struggled with getting involved in that quest line as it was too triggering ). Betsy is the definition of a “messy” victim. What Cook-Cook did to her left lasting scars, ones she refuses to acknowledge. And she’s angry she’s angry and she’s hypersexual and she’s lashing out at everyone in her life about it. She doesn’t want to be seen as weak and she doesn’t want to be a burden( i think her being a lesbian and very proud of that further bothers her as well, the fact a man was able to assault her weighs on her). Though her actions(especially her more pervy behaviour) aren’t excused by the narrative it’s very clearly a side affect of the severe trauma she experienced. I think it would have been really easy to have turned the Cook-Cook bounty/quest into a rape revenge story and I’m glad they didn’t. Sure she gives you some cash if you kill the bastard but the main way to help Betsy isnt (rightfully) killing her rapist but to help her get the help she needs, convincing her that her fellow soldiers care about her. It’s not common for more “messy” victims to be portrayed in media and personally Besty means a lot to me for that.
Now contrast her with Siri, who is the complete opposite and equally strong because of it. Siri is a slave for Caesar’s Legion and given that she’s also a woman its not hard to guess what that entails. There’s been moments in video games where I’ve cried or felt disgusted and scared but when Siri warns a female legion courier about what legion men do and what they’ve been saying about her it makes me so... I dont even know how to put it into words(as my feelings on this topic are much harder to pin down and articulate compared to betsy). Even if you’re aiding the very men who are doing the awful things to her and the other women she doesn’t want you to experience what she’s gone through. She’ll warn the courier of what the legioners say about her of what they want to do and it’s just... god. I realize this isnt very well put together but its hard to know what to say about Siri other than she fucks me up.
I realize there isn’t much of a thesis to this post but if there was it would be that I feel very seen by these women, and their stories and experiences manage to affect and move me greatly, while not being profoundly irritating and disgusting like so many other rape stories(especially written by male authors) are.
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