#i wanted to at least partly disguise how much I edited

[im-still-a-robot]

This chuffed my dm, thought yall'd like it

[mst3kproject]

Battle of the Worlds

Several times on this blog I've featured movies that have more than one title.  In almost every case, the new titles were better than the original one, and this is not an exception.  Battle of the Worlds is fairly bland, but it tells you that you're going to be seeing a movie about some kind of space-based conflict, without giving away the details.  The Italian title was Il Pianeta degli Uomini Spenti, which is a fucking spoiler.

An earlier draft of this review contained a couple of jokes about the classically phallic 60's spacecraft in the movie, but I went back and took those out.  Bezos has really set a whole new standard for Giant Dong Rockets and I can no longer accept anything less.

A group of astronomers have just discovered a rogue planet, which they have dubbed the Outsider, is entering our solar system. Everybody is worried about it hitting Earth except for nasty old misanthrope Professor Benson, who says it'll be a near miss.  As it turns out, nobody's exactly right – the Outsider doesn't hit us, but it doesn't just pass by, either.  Instead, it settles into orbit, and when humanity attempts to explore it, it responds by sending out squadrons of flying saucers to blow our rockets out of its sky!  After one of these crashes on Earth, Benson is able to learn how to deactivate the Outsider’s defences and land on it, where humanity can finally confront its inhabitants... or can we?

Well, if you speak Italian, you already know the answer, because this is The Planet of Extinguished Men. The aliens are all long dead and their spaceship has been following its programming for millions of years without them, including the part telling it to destroy the Earth.  Bummer.

I actually have quite a bit to say about this movie.  It centres around some interesting musings about human emotion and curiosity, though it never comes to any solid conclusions.  As a movie, unfortunately, it's not very well-made.  This is a story in which the world as we know it nearly comes to an end more than once, and yet very little seems to happen in it.

The opening sequence is terribly clumsy and does very little to place you within this world.  We start off with two characters kissing and being excited about starting a new life together, but we have no idea at this point who they are or why they want to leave this place. When the Outsider is discovered, the scientists beat around the bush and try to keep it a secret, even from the audience.  Only Benson is willing to be upfront about it.  This does establish him as a realist while making his colleagues seem spineless, which is what the movie wants, but it's also terribly frustrating for the viewer.

Later there's a sequence in which a craft attempting to land on Mars is nearly destroyed by the gravity of the Outsider, and some quick thinking saves the astronauts' lives, but this is directed like the battle sequences in Invasion of the Neptune Men. We have no idea where any of these craft or planets are in relation to one another, and have to rely on characters sitting at desks to tell us what's happening.  Even worse, we never see the chaos the looming end of the world wreaks on society.  Astronauts who have recently returned to Earth note that they've heard there have been suicides and riots as people fear the Outsider will impact our planet, but we never see any of this.

The movie does a little better later, when the Outsider's close approach causes disastrous tidal forces... these are represented by black and white footage of floods and volcanic eruptions tinted red to try to make it match the rest of the colour film.  As always, this fails, but at least they tried. Other special effects are equally pathetic.  There are the inevitable plastic model kit rockets with their flame exhaust that rises in what's supposed to be a zero-gravity vacuum.  The 'flying saucers' the Outsider launches to defend itself look like nothing so much as giant fried eggs.

The Outsider itself is particularly sad to look at.  They have a model they use for it in a few shots, but this is about on a par with the original MST3K spaghetti ball.  In other shots, the Outsider is represented by a photograph of the Moon.  Absolutely no attempt is made to disguise it, and so of course the effect is a dismal failure because everybody knows what the goddamn Moon looks like. They couldn't even, I don't know, turn it upside-down or something?

On the other hand, the inside of the Outsider is actually pretty cool.  The sets aren't exactly believable, but you can see what they were going for.  Upon entering the caverns, the explorers find themselves in a series of tunnels full of strange red tubes and textures that look more organic than geological. Entering the Outsider is like wandering around within a living organism.  My favourite part of this is that absolutely nothing we see here is comprehensible.  Professor Benson, the genius, claims to be able to figure out what's going on, but his declarations seem arbitrary and nothing we're looking at makes visual sense.  Even the aliens don't look like anything in particular.  Were it not for Benson, we would not recognize them as living (or dead) creatures.

Like First Spaceship on Venus, Battle of the Worlds is much more interested in its ideas than in anything else, including what is supposedly its plot.  The characters are important mostly as the embodiment of those ideas, rather than as people in themselves, and the ideas the movie wants to study are about logic and emotion and how they affect human priorities.

The character of Dr. Fred Steele finds himself facing the potential end of the world, and decides that the most important thing to him in this situation is the love between him and his fiancee, Eve Barnett. Professor Benson, on the other hand, thinks the most important thing is to understand the threat they're facing.  Partly this is so that humanity can save itself from destruction, but knowledge for its own sake is also important.  In between these two men is Eve herself, who thinks love and science are both important and tries to find some middle ground between the two.  This is difficult for her, because Benson wants her to stay at the observatory and assist him, while Fred wants her to leave with him so they can get married.  When Eve tries to convince Fred to stay with her, both men see this as her having chosen Benson, and it poisons the relationships between all three parties.  Only with Benson dead are Eve and Fred able to strike a balance again.

But the movie doesn't want us to think that there is no middle ground.  The movie's other romantic couple are the two scientists from the Mars Base, Bob and Cathy.  They got married because they were both lonely and a psychological evaluation suggested that they had compatible personalities.  As the story progresses, however, they find that they have indeed fallen in love and want a future together that would include things like children – but this is ultimately denied to them, as Cathy is crushed by falling debris while exploring the Outsider.

Benson dies when insists on staying aboard the Outsider to try to decode its computers despite the fact that the military is about to destroy the entire object.  As the others escape, Fred intones the movie's beauty killed the beast line: “poor Benson, if they opened his chest they'd find a formula where his heart should be.”  And yet Benson died happy – as the Outsider explodes he is triumphant in his ability to understand its secrets, and laughing at the foolishness and cowardice of his fellow man.  It is the survivors who are miserable, mourning the loss of Benson himself as well as of Cathy, whose death was entirely meaningless.

I'm not sure what the movie is trying to tell us about these different approaches to life.  It seems to present them as ultimately incompatible, that attempts to give logic and emotion equal weight can only end in tears.  Only Benson, who was unswerving in his devotion to science, is ultimately satisfied. Perhaps the take-home message is that whatever your principles are, happiness lies in following them to their conclusion.

There's a second message, too, in different approaches to science itself. Modern physicists will often describe themselves as either theoretical or experimental... the two fields do compliment each other, but they often take place in different rooms, and one will be seen as leading the way for the other.  The search for the Higgs Boson was theory-led: people were pretty sure it existed, they just had to find it.  A great deal of astrophysics, however, is result-led: what we see tells us that there are things going on, like dark matter and dark energy, that we know nothing about, and the theorists must do their best to figure it out.

For most of his life, Benson has been a theorist.  He sits in his greenhouse chalking on the floors, spinning theories out of other people's results or out of pure mathematics.  Until the arrival of the Outsider, he had no interest in going out and exploring or experimenting.  But it quickly becomes clear to him that he cannot understand the Outsider through pure theory, as his calculations cannot account for the decisions of its makers.  In order to know it, he must see it for himself, so he grandly announces his intention to leave his 'den'.  Nobody ever asks him if it was worth it, but his maniacal smile at the moment of his death suggests that it was.

Battle of the Worlds had potential to be a really interesting movie, but ultimate the way its shot and edited make it mainly a very dull one.  Like its own characters, it fails to find the balance it needed.

[psychosistr]

Don’t Cost a Thing- Part 4

Summary: After being cooped up in meetings all day, Steelbeak and Domino take advantage of a mission together to stretch their legs...and kill a bunch of S.H.U.S.H. agents.

Notes: Warning, there is a lot of shooting, blowing up, and savagely beating up people in this chapter. More brutal than a standard DWD episode, but right up there with most spy movies.

-First Part-

Stuck on a mission after THIRTEEN friggin’ hours. Steelbeak seriously wished he’d bet money on them having to work after review day was over- he really called it.

The chief officer and his partner were currently raiding a minor S.H.U.S.H. base that had sprouted up too close to their own territory for comfort. It was cleverly disguised as a mid-grade bar that had undergone recent renovations after changing management and ownership. To everyday citizens this would be a good cover- but not for F.O.W.L.’s comprehensive information network. They’d discovered that pretty much all of the staff had slowly been replaced by S.H.U.S.H. agents over the past few months since the bar’s “re-opening”, and, going in at the end of the night, the only ones left there would be the S.H.U.S.H. staff and the few plain-clothed agents pretending to be last-call drunkards until the bar closed. High command wanted the facility annihilated as a warning to S.H.U.S.H., and chose to leave the method of doing so at the discretion of their top agents.

That meant they could either be stealthy about it and sneak in through the back to take their enemies out one at a time…or they could do it in a much more satisfying way.

Arriving at the bar in Steelbeak’s flashy gold-painted Lincoln Continental (a mark iii edition with upgraded internals and a white leather interior, of course- had to pay respects to the godfathers of organized crime, after all), the two figured, with how bored they’d been all day, that they might as well go in with guns blazing.

Literally.

At a nod from Domino once they were at the entrance, Steelbeak opened the door and sauntered in, dragging something heavy on the floor beside him. “Hey, did we miss last call? Don’t worry, we heard it was B.Y.O.B., so we brought our own shots!” And with that line delivered to the confused and stunned agents around them, Steelbeak picked up the heavy object he’d dragged in to reveal an m134 minigun. He opened fire in a sweeping motion, starting at the left side of the bar and slowly moving the barrage of bullets around to the right. Steelbeak kept firing until the large gun was out of bullets, tossing it aside once the first wave of devastation had been brought down on the bar.

Half of the enemy agents were dead before they even had a chance to blink. Another quarter of them were severely injured. The rest that had managed to duck behind the tables and bar in time were scrambling to get their own weapons ready.

Unfortunately for the remaining agents, it was Domino’s turn once Steelbeak was done with the initial attack. “It’s a little cold in here.” He commented before pointing one of his usual guns at the bar. “Let’s turn up the heat.” He pulled the trigger and, instead of bullets coming out like the agents behind the bar likely expected, burning hot flames erupted from the barrel of the gun and shot out towards the broken liquor bottles lining the wall.

The area around the bar was engulfed in the agonizing heat of alcohol fueled fire within seconds, the agents who had been taking cover behind and beside it running away as they tried to put themselves out. For many of them, it was already too late and they were left to burn away in the torrent of flames. Those who’d managed to get away with less severe burns were left laying prone on the ground from the pain they were in.

The remaining agents that had survived the first assault had finally drawn their guns and were attempting to fire back at the duo as they made their way further into the building. However, Steelbeak and Domino knew what to expect and promptly shoved over one of the less damaged tables nearby and dove behind it for cover.

As the barrage of bullets chipped away at the hard-wood table, Domino focused on reloading his pistol with a new clip of ammo and pulling out its counterpart in preparation for the next phase of the assault. Not one to be out-paced by his partner, Steelbeak reached into his jacket and pulled out a pair of grenades.

“Whattaya think, Deedee?” He asked with a smirk when the doors to the kitchen burst open on the other side of the room with reinforcements pouring in. “Too much?” He held up the two grenades in indication before pulling out two more. “Or not enough?”

Domino peeked over the edge of the table before looking at the grenades. “I’d say you’re still coming up short.” He began giving them cover fire with one gun using regular lead bullets and the other using electric rounds to incapacitate any of the more challenging targets.

“Well, in THAT case-” Steelbeak opened up his jacket to reveal a larger arsenal of explosives ranging from grenades to flashbangs to C4 as well as a decent variety of handguns. “Guess I’d better go big or go home.” He pulled the pins from the grenades in his hands one at a time and began tossing them across the room, causing loud explosions as well as screams from the S.H.U.S.H. agents that got caught in the blasts.

Once those were used up, Steelbeak switched over to a flash bang, waiting for half a second to make sure Domino saw the bright explosive and had ducked back behind the table to avoid the ensuing blindness that would occur before activating and lobbing it across the room. Even from behind the barrier of the table, the light was painful to see- but the pained screams of their enemies suggested that it was considerably worse from their angle, which worked out well for the F.O.W.L. agents.

The rain of bullets from the other side of the table ceased for a moment as their opponents tried to regain their vision rather than shooting blindly at the risk of causing further injury to their own comrades. That was one of the downfalls of being a “good guy”: When your moral compass and level of compassion is that high, you hold back to avoid hurting “innocent” people. When you’re a bad guy, you don’t care- you just keep going until the opposition is annihilated.

A perfect case-in-point of this would be Domino & Steelbeak and their current assault entering its next wave.

Domino reloaded his guns during the confusion and Steelbeak switched over to a long-barreled Smith and Wesson .38 revolver. The two soon emerged from behind the table and advanced further into the building, shooting down anyone remaining in the main room before they could regain their sight.

Reaching the doors to the kitchen, Domino looked up at Steelbeak with the corner of his beak turned up in a half-smirk. “It would be rude not to knock first.”

“Oh, please, allow me.” Steelbeak replied in a sarcastically over-polite tone. He grabbed another grenade and pulled the pin before opening the door just a crack to toss it in. There was a pause, an explosion, but no screaming. “Guess no one’s home.” He opened the door and walked in to take a look around, disappointed and a little aggravated to find that the kitchen was empty and a trap door on the floor inside was currently open. Partly to make sure no one was still waiting down there, and partly for his own sick amusement, Steelbeak tossed a grenade down the hole to see what would happen- he was bitterly disappointed when he didn’t hear any screams in return. “Guess they decided t’ jet, eh, Dom?” He didn’t receive an answer right away, prompting him to turn his head and check the doorway. “Domino?” Warning bells went off in his head when he noticed the loon’s absence at the kitchen doors. “That can’t be good..”

After reloading his gun for good measure, Steelbeak peeked out through the windows on the kitchen doors. Through the glass he could see a large group of S.H.U.S.H. agents in the bar, the group walking around to survey the damage with mixed expressions of shock, anger, and sadness at the sight of their dead fellow-agents. Most of them were carrying standard grade handguns, though one of them had what looked like a modified sniper rifle. That one in particular seemed the angriest about seeing the faces of his dead comrades.

Speaking of comrades, Steelbeak spotted his own lying unconscious a couple of feet away from the door with a tranquilizer dart sticking out of his neck (likely from that modified rifle, and why neither of them heard a shot being fired). It was a small one, likely enough to keep most men down for a few hours, but, knowing Domino and how often he’d been around poisonous substances while dealing with his own ammunition, he’d probably be up fairly soon.

Before he had a chance to open the door and drag his partner inside with him, the agent with the rifle, a large pit bull in a suit, started barking orders at the other agents- one of them apparently being to grab Domino. In doing so, the enemy agents spotted Steelbeak at the window and pointed their guns at it in warning. The one who’d been sent to grab Domino did so quickly and held him at gun point in warning to Steelbeak.

“Come out of there!” The pit bull with the rifle shouted at the door. “And don’t try anything or we’ll blow your ally’s head off!”

Steelbeak rolled his eyes at the classic tactic. So cliché. Still, Domino would be up sooner than those losers thought and it would be best for everyone involved if they put him down before he realized what was going on. “Alright, alright, I’m comin’ out.” He said loud enough to be heard. Taking a minute to holster and hide his gun and close his jacket again to hide his remaining weapons from plain sight, Steelbeak stepped out of the kitchen with his hands raised to show he was unarmed (for the moment, at least).

The pit bull glared at the rooster with a growl. “Steelbeak! I should’ve known this was your handiwork!”

Steelbeak shrugged calmly, cool under pressure even with at least thirty armed goons pointing their guns right at him with plenty of motivation to kill him on the spot. “What can I say? I hate gettin’ my hands dirty, but I LOVE puttin’ you S.H.U.S.H. suckers through the wringer.” His eyes shifted over to where Domino was still being held at gunpoint as a warning- thankfully the loon was still unconscious. “Say, Fido, you mind gettin’ your boy there to drop my partner? He don’t exactly like t’ be TOUCHED…”

“Your partner?” The dog sneered at him. “As if someone could actually tolerate working with a psychopathic egomaniac like you.”

“If he were awake, he’d probably agree with ya.” Steelbeak kept his eyes on Domino, looking for any signs that his breathing was changing. “Seriously, though, put ‘im down or everyone in this room’s gonna be sleepin’ in a pine box tonight..” He tried not to let on how nervous he was starting to feel when he spotted one of Domino’s fingers twitch. Crap, he was running out of time-

“You’re hardly in the position to make threats, F.O.W.L. scum.” The pit bull held up two fingers, a couple of his agents moving closer to Steelbeak to make sure he wasn’t about to try anything.

“More like a warnin’ because I don’t wanna get caught in the crossfire..” Despite the immediate minor threats around him, Steelbeak kept his eyes glued to the major one brewing elsewhere- a slight muscle spasm by Domino’s eyes that time. This was gonna be bad… “Look, you can tie ‘im to a chair or somethin’- heck, you can even keep a gun t’ his head for all I care! But you do NOT wanna see what happens when someone touches him.”

The pit bull rolled his eyes. “Oh, please..” He hoisted the rifle up to rest on his shoulder. “This is S.H.U.S.H.’s newest top-of-the-line incapacitating rifle. The special tranquilizers it fires could keep a full grown elephant out of commission for at least eight hours. I doubt some loon would-” He was stopped by the sound of bones snapping and a pained scream tearing through the air. “?!!” The pit bull and his cronies turned to where the other agent had been holding Domino, every single one of them shocked to see the dark-feathered bird not only free of the hold he’d been in mere seconds ago, but currently pinning the agent that had held him against the ground with a knee bearing down painfully on his spine and his arm being pulled backwards to break and dislocate it. “Wha-?!” The pit bull sputtered for a moment, confused and clearly out of his element now. “That’s impossible! H-He should be asleep for at least a few more hours!” Another pained cry from the agent below the loon snapped him out of his stupor and caused the leader of the pack to look at his cronies. “Don’t just stand there, you idiots! Get him off of him!!”

Steelbeak groaned in annoyance when, instead of trying to shoot Domino off of the agent he was now beating to within an inch of his life, the appropriately titled “idiots” tried to grab Domino by the arms and pull him off of their comrade. “Didn’t you hear me when I clearly said ‘do NOT touch him’?” No sooner was the question out of his beak than the wave of carnage (and karma, really) began.

The two larger agents that grabbed Domino by his arms were the first to go once they’d pulled him to his feet, surprised when the smaller man suddenly used their grip against them to swing himself back slightly, kick them each in the back of the knee closest to him, and then swing forward again- the resulting momentum toppling them onto the ground. Once they hit the floor Domino tore his left arm free, ignoring the way his coat’s sleeve tore a bit in the process, and rolled to the right so that he could begin punching the poor fool still holding his other arm repeatedly in the face until he fell unconscious and let go of the agitated F.O.W.L. agent’s limb. With the first man down, Domino dove at the other one, delivering a sharp elbow right into the already downed man’s diaphragm before grabbing him by the top of his head and slamming his skull into the ground a few times.

The rest of the group apparently didn’t learn their lesson, deciding the best course of action would be to tackle him all at once. Seriously, Steelbeak wondered, was there any sort of testing for basic intelligence or survival instinct required to become a S.H.U.S.H. agent, or did you just have to sign a waiver saying you weren’t gonna sue them if you were killed or maimed in combat before they handed you your badge & gun?

While the rest of his enemies were focused on Domino and making sure he stayed down (he wouldn’t, no matter how many of them piled on top of him), Steelbeak took advantage of the chaos and drew his revolver again. The pit bull had his back to the rooster at the moment, keeping his rifle aimed at the cluster that had surrounded Domino to look for a clear shot if it presented itself.

Unfortunately for him, he never got the chance to take said shot as he suddenly had the rifle knocked out of his hands and the still warm barrel of a gun pressed to the side of his head. “?!” He yelped when one of his arms was drawn back in a bruising grip, glancing back to see the rooster looming behind him. “You-!”

“I’m done playin’ games with ya.” Steelbeak said coldly, pulling back the hammer of his gun in warning. “Now, either call off your boys so they can all die nice an’ quick..or let ‘em keep dealin’ with my partner- your call.”

Before the dog could make his decision, several of the agents who’d been piled on top of Domino were suddenly thrown off of him violently. To the surprise of everyone involved, including Steelbeak himself, the darker bird stood to his feet despite the men and women still trying to weigh him down.

A low, bone chilling voice cut through the air like a knife. “Don’t…touch…me….!” The words had the slightest drag to them before clipping slightly at the end, hinting at both possible intoxication as well as a deep, burning rage that was about to explode.

And explode, it did.

With a loud yell, the chaos from before began to look like a playful scuffle. Dark fists punched the lights out of whoever they struck first. More bodies were sent flying. Bones were being broken and blood was being spilt in large quantities. The black and white coat ended up getting torn and stained red in several places over the course of the fight, but its wearer seemed too far gone to care.

By the time Domino had cleared away enough of the goons around him to turn in Steelbeak’s general direction, the chief officer was beginning to feel nervous. “Deedee..?”

“……” There was something wrong with him. He didn’t respond to Steelbeak’s usual nickname at all. Then there was the matter of his eyes…there was just something off about them.

“Domino?” He tried to get his partner’s attention again, but it still seemed ineffective. When he started slowly advancing on them, Steelbeak felt a chill race down his spine. “!!” Steelbeak got lucky and a pair of agents intercepted Domino, becoming the new target of his hostility as he proceeded to beat them soundly just like their fallen friends. Looking between his partner, the growing number of bodies around them, the remaining S.H.U.S.H. agents still trying to take the loon down, the leader in his grip, and the gun in his other hand, Steelbeak finally let out a long sigh. “This is NOT gonna be pretty..” He said while raising his gun, already dreading what he would have to do…

<-Previous Part Next Part->

End Notes: Warned you guys that there would be blood. There’s still a bit more that needs to be shed, though...

Also, fun little fact, Steelbeak’s car and gun are both based off of classic mobster paraphernalia. His car was one often driven by mob bosses, and I modeled his gun after the one used by Al Capone ^^

[strangledeggs]

The 1975 - A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships

Who’s comparing this to OK Computer? Who’s calling it “political”? If you want politics, Parquet Courts released a whole concept album about being “woke” earlier this year. No, this album is about one subject over all: Matt Healy. Everything else, all the quoted tweets, the internet “critique”, the so-called “politics” - it’s all just a backdrop, a stage on which Matt Healy can dramatically perform at his Healy-est for us, the audience/internet.

Needless to say, if the title didn’t give it away, there’s a lot of conceptual fuckery going on here. Or is there? Are we to believe that all the open-heartedness of the grandiose production is inviting us to believe that we’re getting some kind of confessional affair here, getting to hear the “real Matt Healy”?

The answer is obviously “no”, or he wouldn’t need all the conceptual smoke-and-mirrors. So that means this album is primarily a formal exercise, one in which Healy performs some version of what he thinks we want to think of him and hopes that we’ll focus on the performance rather than the man behind the curtain. The play’s the thing. It’s actually a bit reminiscent of David Foster Wallace’s unfinished posthumous novel, “The Pale King,” which I happen to have been in the midst of reading when I decided to take a break to give this album a first listen; both writers employ similar techniques of “decoy” autobiographical details, “false selves” displayed to psych the audience out by luring them into a false sense of familiarity with what they believe to be the artist. Very “meta”.

Except unlike Wallace, Healy has chosen to stage his play in a medium that people actually expect to be enjoyable - pop music, rather than a novel. So the question that’s on all our minds isn’t so much “How clever is it?” as it is “How does it sound?” And the answer to that question is no more easily determinate than the answer to the former.

For one thing, it’s a general truth that a strong singer is often what marks the dividing lines between the territories of “upstart punks” and full-on “pop music” for a band with the 1975’s ambition. But Healy’s not exactly a “strong” singer - he’s got two modes: breathy to the point of intangible, and belting it out in his best Bono impression (which, I’ll add, isn’t nearly as dynamic). He seems to catch on to this himself and piles on the vocal production, auto-tune, choral backups and everything to disguise his weakness.

Or is this part of the “meta-performance”, another “false self” by way of obscured vocals? This kind of thing was annoying enough in “The Pale King”, and it’s not necessarily alleviated by Healy’s tastes in production, which are...intriguing, to put it politely. For one thing, it sounds like he picked up the band from Chance The Rapper’s Donnie Trumpet sessions, particularly on the trumpet-heavy “Sincerity Is Scary”. Everything’s drenched in a sort of “lite”-sounding production, drawing from soft rock, the more bombastic end of new wave and ‘’’the 80s’’’ (as filtered through the 2010s’ increasingly warped understanding of what that means). This could bore quickly, slipping into “easy listening” or “muzak”, except for the fact that Healy’s written some really killer hooks in here; I wish Prince were alive to cover “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)”, which has a Purple Rain-worthy riff, and “Love It If We Made It” makes a convincing bid for song-of-the-year with an excellent chorus interpretable from at least three different angles. “TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME” (yeah, I know) manages to make an impression over its artless dancehall-lite groove on its sheer playfulness.

But Healy doesn’t know where to stop, and the album is at least four songs longer than it needs to be. Paradoxically, as the production is stripped away on some of the (ugh) “ballads” and we hear more of the “real” Healy (“Healy Unplugged”), the hooks disappear and the music becomes forgettable; “Be My Mistake”, “Surrounded By Heads And Bodies” and “Mine” are all total wastes. On the other hand, the album’s weirdest experiment, a two-part electronic Burial/Radiohead-impersonation called “How To Draw / Petrichor”, is mostly memorable for its weirdness rather than for any substantial songcraft or sonic flourishes; it was probably Healy’s idea of something to “challenge” listeners, but it ends up more like a chance for them to space out.

Even if we forgive these mis-steps, not everything that works is as successful as the aforementioned earworms. The dramatic closer “I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)” (again - I know) veers a little too close to Coldplay for my comfort. Opener “Give Yourself A Try” has some obnoxiously inconsistent phrasing and a riff stolen note-for-note from Joy Division’s “Disorder”, which is again one of those things that’s almost clever, but more annoying the more you think about it. Not to mention cloying lyrics that cast Healy as a “man who’s been there and knows what’s up” in the most self-deprecating postmodern way he’ll later mock in the opening lines of “Sincerity Is Scary”.

About those lyrics: there are spots where they really shine. “Love It If We Made It”’s headline-pastiche is one obvious spot, even if it also comprises a vague nod toward “We Didn’t Start The Fire”. But “I Like America & America Likes Me” also has some of the most genuine-sounding lines on the album in its chorus, begging listeners to “please listen” and “believe in saying something”, even when it doesn’t know what exactly to say itself. Likewise, “It’s Not Living” is an honest account of addiction that manages to tie Healy’s romantic drama into it as well. “I Always Wanna Die Sometimes” has one of my favourite lines on the whole album: “Am I me through geography?”

But it also has the lines “You win you lose, you sing the blues”, and this reminds me of the fact that lines like the ones I was so impressed by comprise maybe only 30% of the album. The other 70% is partly smoke-and-mirrors, but largely worse: it’s just plain filler and cliche. So the real best line on the album goes to “I Couldn’t Be More In Love”, the best ballad on the whole thing, in which Healy temporarily transcends his vocal limitations to deliver an emotionally charged chorus: “What about THESE FEEEEEEEEELINGS I’ve got?” No, that’s not the best line; the best line is in the second verse, when Healy sings “I could’ve been a great line, I could’ve been a sign, / Overstayed my time, say what’s on your mind”, because I’ll be damned if that isn’t the whole album in a nutshell. Until he learns to edit down some of his pretentious impulses and filler-y dreck, I can’t see myself re-visiting this album in full anytime soon.

That being said, it’s the streaming age, albums have never meant less, and I’m not above distilling this unwieldy thing down to a fully-listenable playlist. So skip the intro, skip the ambient electronica, skip the ballads, and maybe leave in that joke-y Her/Radiohead parody in the middle if you still find it funny after a few plays and Give This Tracklist A Try:

1. Give Yourself A Try

2. TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME

3. Love It If We Made It

4. Sincerity Is Scary

5. I Like America & America Likes Me

6. The Man Who Married A Robot / Love Theme

7. Inside Your Mind

8. It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)

9. I Couldn’t Be More In Love

10. I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5hp63LWKr3Kfkdwvq9pCrw

[sootonthecarpet]

if it's not too much trouble to answer, can I ask what's been the going on with doctor who that's bad? I've seen little bits of it when my parents watch it in the other room but not enough to really get a good sense of it?

heyyy sorry to keep ya waiting on this. i tried to keep this as short as i could, but it’s about five paragraphs long, sorry. it’s not in any way a comprehensive list of problems with the last few seasons, just a quick tour of the moments i shouldve let be my ‘i can’t keep watching after this’ point. i wanted to write it objectively but i got pretty aggro, bc this show that in some part i genuinely adore has been producing unforgivably bigoted content. (it’s kinda a ship of theseus situation, except where the parts of the ship were replaced with worse, shittier, fake-woke parts.) i ask ppl to avoid reblogging this, because i don’t want my words to contribute in any way to online buzz surrounding this show or make anyone want to see it, even if ONLY to hatewatch or criticize.

content warning for misogynoir/antiblackness, racism, bury ur gays, some shit with nazi germany (yeah lol) and just the slightest kiss of antisemitism.

(edit: i seem to be having some problems with the read more cut. it’s there on dash view and when i edit the post, but doesn’t show on some instances of my blog. i can’t fix this but gksfkgls. wanted to at least be overt that i wouldn’t post this kinda long ranty stuff without a cut.)

in the last season where peter capaldi was the doctor, two seasons ago now, he had a new companion, Bill. she was a black lesbian and literally the only reason i started watching doctor who again. i loved her, and i was really glad to see the show moving back towards the more diverse cast of characters that we saw in the late aughts. then the season had a repeated theme of FORCING her to either repress or not feel her emotions. there are two scenes that stand out most to me. in an ep set in like, early 19th century london, she and the doctor are talking to a racist rich white dude who is being super nasty to Bill. the doctor keeps telling her to cool it and not show how angry she is. then HE gets to punch the guy out and knock him to the floor.

this theme of the white man being the only one allowed to get angry was big all season, iirc. then at the end of the season, Bill is turned into a cyberman. they’re usually like. soulless scary automatons, but some characters keep their individuality, which has been explored in a few past seasons, usually leading up to a tragic/heroic death. in Bill’s case, they did this trick with filming where we could see her perspective of herself in some shots–an intensely emotional performance, Bill was completely traumatized and her actress was working her ass off–and in others, just this metal body incapable of expression, scaring people like she was a monster and monotoning these otherwise very emotional statements. it’s an interesting narrative device, but after a whole season of this show putting Bill through all kinds of terrible shit and forcing her not to show her feelings on the matter, it hit me as like. this nauseating exaggeration of how society treats actual black lesbians as monsters and tries to make them bottle up their emotions and especially their justifiable anger. anyway, then Bill died and got to be with her dead girlfriend from her first episode. wow, cool.

idk what made me watch the season after that. i guess i wanted to see the new doctor, and i liked her companions (one was like. a young man with disabling neurological symptoms, tbh even if i’d missed Bill’s season that might have had me back on board). i had plenty of problems with how the season played out, obvs, but nothing was standout horrible to me the way the shit with Bill had been (except maybe the episode that started out like ‘space amazon is a hellhole’ and somehow ended with ‘space amazon was taken advantage of by a broken AI that hurt some people and they didnt fix the infrastructure we explicitly showed harmed their workers but now it’s fine!’ if that sounds weird and heavy handed with an unsatisfying ending, it’s because it was). the new season tho? the OPENING EPISODES OF THE NEW SEASON, THO? it opens with alexa product placement, in an episode about how a fictionalized google was actually run by a black man who had ties to a large number of aliens who had secretly infiltrated our society, altered our dna, and shit like that. so uh, 1. brand war lmao, sellouts etc etc 2. y’all remember those conspiracy theories about jews? and white supremacist beliefs that black people are ruining the world but aren’t smart enough to do it on their own so they must be agents of jewish corruption? HUH. HUH! that’s not even my big problem with the fuckin thing, but it’s FOR SURE a suspicious writing move from a tv show with suuuuch a huge viewership. (and it’s just plain embarrassing for a show with alexa product placement to try to go all scary panopticon tropes specifically @ a google analogue.)

anyway, we run into an old recurring antagonist, the master, a time lord like the doctor. he’s a guy again after having been a woman for a few seasons, and now played by an actor of color. i figure the reasoning at least partly relied on “dude, how fucked up will it be if we force the doctor’s black friend to call a white dude master” but i was immediately afraid it might go to the like…. Righteous White Woman Gets The Better Of Evil Brown Man tropes and oh boy!!!! i tried to be good and give it the benefit of the doubt until i saw something racist but it wasted no time. the doctor got stuck in the past at one point, and met the master, who was currently a military official with the third reich. oh boy. so she asks him why they let him work with them and he explains he’s using a device to psychically disguise himself, they see him as white. (we missed a great chance for him to monologue about how they were willing to bend their morals when they saw how evil he could get or something.) this was awkward enough for me as a viewer, but i wasn’t prepared to go into it, in case there was some tiny shred of nuance somewhere that would make this situation anything but a clusterfuck.

well, the doctor executes a genuinely clever scheme and makes a radio transmission to the brits that she knows won’t reach em, talking about how helpful this officer has been–setting up the master to be falsely outed as a double agent when the nazis intercept it. she tells the master this and then skedaddles, letting him be arrested by his own men. could be a satisfying karmic victory where he presumably gets a military trial and weasels out of his fate, although i don’t like the implications of a white woman punishing a brown man for racism. BUT IT DIDN’T STOP THERE! she disables his psychic filter, causing his men to see his true identity as a man of color–she exposes her oldest frenemy and Basically The Only Time Lord Who’ll Talk To Her to nazi racism when he was ALREADY about to fall into their hands as a prisoner. what could have been a marginally satisfying defeat was instead a kind of emotional horrorshow for me as i had to stop and wonder what kind of hell they’d put him through and why the writers decided that the doctor (who has literally since the show began in like the sixties been set up as an enemy of naziism via allegory and has always been firm in the idea that NOBODY, including literal maneating space monsters, deserves to be treated as less than human) would DO that. IT’S LATER IMPLIED HE ESCAPED FROM A CONCENTRATION CAMP. the narrative DOES NOT allow time for that to sink in before moving on.

i dont have a conclusion 2 this. im just hurt as fuck about it. i hope i gave u the info u were looking for without getting too deep into my personal feelings, but it’s difficult, maybe impossible to be objective about stuff like this.

[academiablogs]

Learning to Re-Read the Novel

In Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), often considered the first English novel (as we now define the term), the book opens with the words “I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family...” and ends some two-hundred pages later without a single chapter break or exchange of dialogue. Though one of the most influential books written in English, everything about it now seems hopelessly old-fashioned and a tedious chore for the modern reader (weaned on YA lit, especially) to wade through. For this reason it appears less and less frequently on college syllabi, and not at all in the high school classroom, where it was once enjoyed a popularity similar to—and perhaps even rivaling—Harry Potter.

And yet, the story has all the hallmarks of a modern fantasy tale: a man captured and sold into slavery; a daring escape which eventually leaves him shipwrecked on a deserted island; difficult, painstaking attempts to keep himself alive without a single soul to converse with; and ultimately, the invasion of his island by neighboring Cannibals—and the blood-thirsty Spanish! Crusoe, too, is the model of an engaging narrator: he is completely unreliable as he hides details, fudges facts, and proclaims a miraculous conversion only to forget it a few pages later. I honestly believe more adventure stories, unreliable narrators, and simply great novelists sailed out of Crusoe’s island than any other locale in print.

So why do readers have such problems with Robinson Crusoe? While the older language and slower pace is partly to blame, the most obvious reason is also the most visible: it no longer looks like a novel. Without chapters, most people won’t even wade through a 200-page novel, since we don’t know where to stop to take a breath. And how do characters talk to each other without dialogue quotes and tags? With Crusoe, the entire book is in the narrator’s voice, so he sums up dialogue or else apes their voices in his own, since the story is in the past, as is the dialogue (only the speaker is with us in the present, as we read the story). Defoe takes Crusoe as literally as possible, making the reader think that Crusoe is alive and telling the story right in front of you, on the spot, in a single evening. Indeed, the first editions of the novel omitted Defoe’s name entirely from the cover, attributing it to “Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner.” How’s that for verisimilitude?

While the early novel wasn’t even a novel, but a modified romance, a story of fiction with realistic embellishments, I’m not sure Defoe would have (or should have) changed a thing. With chapters Crusoe would become too fictionally distant, a work of art rather than a crude, on-the-spot narrative that seems to have washed up in a bottle on storm-tossed seas. The rambling, discursive nature of the work makes it read like an actual document; Defoe even includes Crusoe’s diary entries and his painstaking attempts to plant corn and later on, to discover the identity of a mysterious footprint in the sand (is he imagining it? Was it his own? Is it the Devil?). Even in 1719, Defoe wanted this to look like a real work and not a work of fiction, so he cleverly disguised it to look like a contemporary travel narrative. Readers largely took the bait, finding it the most readable, captivating, and miraculous story of life on the high seas. With a little effort, we can do the same, mindful of the skill it took Defoe (with almost no literary models) to create such a living-and-breathing hero, who in the end isn’t all that heroic.

Reading Robinson Crusoe makes me question the very mechanics of the modern novel itself. Does a novel need chapters? Dialogue? Short paragraphs? Modern language? Glossy covers? A genre? Crusoe frustrates almost all of our conventions of what a novel does, and yet continues to succeed as a work of art on its own terms. Yet imagine if someone tried to write a novel without chapters today? Or if a writer queried a literary agent and admitted, “my book has no genre...it creates its own genre.” For all our talk of diversity and experimentation, today’s readers are wildly orthodox when it comes to what we read and how we do it. It should follow a very rigid formula and basically hit all the marks we’ve come to expect...then we can look for things like novelty or innovation. And yet, form always follows function, so what if a story requires a dramatic break with the past? Wouldn’t some stories benefit from a single, continuous chapter?

For example, imagine a modern Crusoe story...a space pirate who becomes marooned on a hospitable, yet remote moon in a distant solar system. As his technology falls away, he’s forced to rely on the most rudimentary means of survival, including a simple notebook for his daily reflections and fears. In the end he perishes, and all that remains is his book—discovered a thousand years later by an entirely new race of creatures colonizing this forgotten moon. “We” become that race, puzzling over this strange, claustrophobic narrative. Who was this man? What chance did he have? Did he almost make it? Does he have a lesson to teach us from beyond time and space?

Chapters would break up the terror of his existence into ordered, predictable patterns. With each one we would know we’re getting closer to the end, or to some big plot development...after all, each chapter begins and ends with something happening. A series of relentless pages, however, is simply that—the possibility rather than the inevitability of drama. We have no idea what to expect, or when, or how it stops. Andy Weir’s The Martian captured something of this flavor in his terse, hilarious entries of a modern-day Crusoe trying to make something of his existence on Mars. I found every page of it riveting and exciting, since I had no idea where (or how) it ended. In some ways, it was disappointing when he introduced chapter breaks that took us back to Earth and into other people’s perspectives—it became a much more traditional novel. And yet, this had the effect of smashing two fictional worlds together: the realistic, anti-novel of Crusoe with today’s modern genre novel. Whether or not he did this consciously, it’s a bold experiment and only works because he dipped his toe into the waters of Crusoe’s island, at least temporarily.

I would like to read more novels that challenge how we read them...perhaps not drastically, or confusingly, but in small, subtle ways. Why not make dialogue look more natural, more as part of the narrative itself rather than a play script that intrudes upon the story proper? Could chapters function less as plot points or reading breaks than as the arbitrary creation of the narrator(s)? The joy of reading is the same as the thrill of adventure: you want to get where you’re going, but not right away, and not the way you expected. A book should make you lose your bearing a few pages in, so you temporarily worry, and even fear you might never reach the end. That’s how Robinson Crusoe always feels to me, like an adventure in danger of running aground—and it very nearly does several times, thanks not to Crusoe’s incompetence, but Defoe’s artistry. After all, the novel is “novel,” something new and unexpected: the better we think the we know it, the less we should.

[uncheckedtomfoolery]

On Mimics

Because this blog wouldn’t be the same if I didn’t occasionally dump random bits of fantasy worldbuilding on it and bug people who are here for basically anything else (I’m not rightly sure what anyone’s here for, but I digress). Actual writing below the cut.

So, mimics. To the best of my knowledge, it originated with D&D, on the basis of “wouldn’t it be funny if the players fought hard for treasure, and the treasure murdered them?”, because that’s the kind of guy Gary ‘Tomb of Horrors’ Gygax was. The idea crept into all manner of games (though not much fantasy outside games, I’ve found), but mostly just in the treasure chest form, while D&D itself made a bunch of ‘monsters pretending to be stuff’ mimic offshoots, though many didn’t stick for good.

The thing is, though, the mimic is extremely... game-y. The whole ‘creature that exists solely to be a fake treasure chest, and eat the player’ thing. Gameplay-wise, great, but it’s a little hard to justify outside of that, no?

In this case, I’ve drawn inspiration from the ocean, home of all things weird and terrifying (yes, fine, you too, South America). Namely, the octopus and the cuttlefish. Given that the D&D version has adhesive and pseudopods, they can be biologically related however distantly if you like.

The mimic is mostly amorphous. It does not have a shell per se, but can make any part of its body rigid, giving it a sort of on-demand harder outer layer so it’s not just a blob, without sacrificing flexibility. A shell, teeth, that kind of thing. It also has a bunch of organs in a general ‘bag of stuff I can’t afford to lose’ pocket and the usual mess of muscles and internal wiring like any animal, but an enormous amount of leeway on where this goes.

This means a few things. One, good luck hitting a mimic where it hurts except through sheer blood loss or something (in D&D, probably forget about crits/sneak attacks). Two, think of the whole ‘cats are liquid’ gag, or an actual octopus. They’re very good at squeezing through narrow spaces. Three, they can change their shape.

This is combined with a whole mess of pigments, and possibly texture-changing, or alternatively, feeling like you poked a snail or something is your first sign that the mimic isn’t what it pretends to be. Your call. The above makes it an incredible camouflage predator. The one issue is size. I have a few possible takes. You could have them obey conservation of mass, or magic around it. If you care, D&D takes the former approach (I figure repeated references are fitting, as it’s the inventor of such), at least in 3.5, which is the one edition I can readily access. Additionally, in the former case, the mimic might have to learn new disguises as it grows through its life. Do they have a final size or, as some animals do, basically just grow for their entire life? That’s up to you. Remember, though: Mostly amorphous. They may have to stick to a certain amount of overall mass, but they can have a lot of freedom in how to spread it around!

As a side-effect of this, rather like cuttlefish, this has crept into some mimic interactions. They mostly communicate through gestures, shape-changing, and colour changes. If they also have a language (surprisingly, in D&D, they speak Common and are as intelligent as humans), this might just be a heavy component of their communication. Individual mimics might have favoured shapes to take, or colours to adopt. It’s partly a hunting style, partly the equivalent of ‘I like it, okay? It’s a good word.’ Personal quirks.

The elephant in the room, though. Why a treasure chest? Well, for one, it may be clear by now that I don’t intend to stick solely to that. There are a few options, though. One is that mimics pick things near them so you’re only going to get a treasure chest if it sees more around, and figures it’ll fit right in (depending on how bright it is, the context might still be off).

Another is that mimics are, say... telepathic. Now, it might have no idea what it’s seeing in your head, but it can pick up on what you expect or want to see, and get a picture. Good enough, it doesn’t need to know more. A third option is that they’re about as smart as people and have no trouble knowing what’s a good idea. In all cases, depending on how social they are, mimics might share tips on disguises, what works on each kind of prey, or what seems to do best in particular environments, little techniques, things like that. Maybe a community’s passed down how to make really convincing fluted columns for generations. 

If they form communities, a warren or whatever of mimics is obviously one of those rooms where everything - the ceiling, the walls, the doors, the floor and most of the objects if not all - turn out to be mimics. 

Optional bonus round: Animated suits of armour are basically the hermit crab version of mimics (except with less shell-switching).

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on manga license announcement stuff from day one of Anime Expo under the cut

OK to get the anime stuff out the way first since there’s less I wanna say, I’m still annoyed at Funimation for not giving any details about their release of Yuri on Ice. Like seriously I just wanna know when it’s gonna come out and what bonuses it’ll have and how much it’ll cost. Ugh.

I’m happy that Orange is getting a physical release. I probably won’t buy it, but I appreciate that it exists. I really loved that anime, even if it had kinda crippling production issues, and a few elements of the ending were iffy. Oh well.

I thought Utena had already gotten a BD release, but I guess not. Definitely interested in that. It’ll probably be too expensive for me, though. But this does align well with the recent manga box-set. I’m really happy this series is getting more recognition and availability.

ANYWAY onto manga.

Looks like it was just Viz Media and Yen Press today. Seven Seas should be in a day or two. Kodansha and Vertical seem to have a joint booth going on, so I hope they can show off some licenses. I feel like it’s been ages since we’ve seen physical licenses from either of them. Kodansha’s been going all in on digital manga recently.

There’s really not much to say about Viz since they barely announced anything. Wow. I feel like it’s been MONTHS since they announced anything and now all they have is one shonen manga, one shojo manga, two kid’s books, and a novel??? Wow. Are they just saving some announcements for later? This is bizarre.

I’m very happy to see Fire Punch get licensed. I was actually about to suggest it to Seven Seas soon but I guess I don’t need to anymore. I definitely expected this to happen eventually, but it’s still a bit surprising. It makes sense, though. Since this is at least their third release from the Shonen Jump+ magazine, I really hope this is a good indicator that they might license Ao no Flag eventually. I’d LOVE to see that happen. I’m already planning to import it, and I’m going to still try and suggest it to Seven Seas, but Viz would be fine. Anyway, as for Fire Punch, I don’t actually know a lot about it but I feel contractually obligated to buy it because one of the major characters is apparently LGBT. So that’s amazing. Apparently they’re a trans man, which is even better. The only other trans male representation in manga I know of is in Shimanami Tasogare, so it’s a big deal. But the vague things I’ve heard about the story definitely intrigue me. And also I really like the design of the covers, so that helps. I’m probably going to buy this as it comes out, but I might still read it online first. Maybe.

I’m sorta let down that Shojo Beat’s new license is just Kenka Bancho Otome. Partly because it’s only two volumes long, and partly because the anime version of it isn’t super great. But I just have a personal issue with the ‘girl has to disguise herself as a boy for REASONS and oooooh romantic drama and misunderstandings ensue’ trope. Oh well. I wasn’t really expecting much from Shojo Beat anyway. I still want to buy some of their stuff, though.

I’m DEFINITELY gonna get the FMA Fullmetal Editions. That’s a pretty huge deal. Even if it’s . . . not really a NEW license, just a new edition of an existing series. I’ve never actually read or watched FMA, and part of that’s because I dislike the look of both the single editions of the manga and the omnibuses. I was gonna cave in and decide to get the omnibuses next year, but thankfully with this announcement I can just get these editions instead. Sadly this is gonna be eighteen volumes long, so it’s gonna take AGES to come out. And it’ll be expensive. Oh well.

Onto Yen Press, who definitely beat Viz in terms of sheer number of licenses, at least. Considering that a few months ago they licensed like 14+ titles, and this is another 20+, I’m starting to get genuinely concerned about them as a company. Can they keep this up? I’m just terrified of another Tokyopop situation happening. We’ll see.

I’m definitely vaguely interested in checking out Silver Spoon, but it wouldn’t be a huge priority. It’s hard to justify getting a series that relatively long if I’m not super into it, especially since it seems very . . . mellow and SoL-y. I’m happy for Arakawa fans, though. People have obviously been waiting years for this license to happen. The coincidental paired timing of this and the FMA Fullmetal Edition license is kinda amusing.

Hatsu Haru seems like it might be cute, and it’s nice to see Yen Press get more shojo titles. Not sure how interested I am in this, but I support their intent in getting it. Same with them picking up Stupid Love Comedy and Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts. More shojo is always nice.

I’ve been vaguely interested in checking out Thou Shalt Not Die for a while, but if it’s just a digital license I’ll wait until they potentially do it physically. Which may not happen at all. Though they’ve been fairly good at bringing over a lot of their digital titles to physical format. I’m mostly interested in this because of Yoko Taro’s involvement. It’d be great to own something by him like this. Though I’ve heard iffy things about the manga itself. But then again I also like how he writes his video games whereas a lot of people don’t, so who knows how I’d feel about it.

Oh man they licensed the goddamn vending machine isekai manga. Holy shit. I feel like we’re quickly approaching a breaking point for the isekai genre in the west and soon enough it’s just gonna really irritate people.

I at least think there’s other LNs they could bring over that’d do better. Oh well. They got HakoMari and that’s all I care about.

And finally we have one of the more genuinely shocking announcements thus far. A goddamn Pandora Hearts box-set. HOLY SHIT. And it’s going to be done in a larger trim size? With preserved colour pages? Oh man. This is so genuinely agonizing to me. I just got the entire series less than a year ago, and now they announce a fucking box-set that’s gonna cost a few hundred dollars. Argh. I’m probably not going to be able to get this even though I desperately want to, and it’d be a nice way to re-read the series like I want to. Oh well. If the box set itself looks nice, which it probably will, that’ll be even more agonizing.

If they’re gonna do an entire box set for the series, for the love of god, I need an English version of the second art-book. I own the first one already and I love it but I’ve held off on importing the second one in case it gets licensed. I’d be amazed if it doesn’t get licensed eventually. I mean, it getting a box set is a pretty good indication of it’s popularity, and they have a good track record of doing multiple art-books for stuff like Black Butler and Soul Eater. So I just need the second Pandora Hearts artbook in my life.

I’m gonna be so fucking envious of people who can get this box set. ARGH. I want it so bad but it’s gonna be so impossible to buy, let alone justify buying.

So that’s basically it for today. Now to see if Kodansha and Vertical license anything at this con. And yeah in a day or two we’ll see Seven Seas’ licenses. I don’t think we’re getting anything more from Viz for now. Maybe at Comic-Con? Who knows.

I don’t have any clear wishes for what Kodansha or Vertical could license, though I guess I could see Vertical picking up March Comes In Like A Lion, which would be great.

For Seven Seas, literally all I care about is if they license Shimanami Tasogare, that’s it. That’s all I want from them. I’m gonna keep suggesting it every single month to them until they pick it up, or someone else does. I know that they might not have access to it since it’s a Shogakukan title, but who knows. I know that Viz would be more able to pick it up, but I just . . . doubt they would. They at least didn’t announce it at their panel, obviously. Mostly I’d just have my doubts about a company as ‘mainstream’ as Viz picking up a manga all about the topic of LGBT communities/discrimination [and also housing renovation in sea-side Japan, I guess]. Seven Seas seems far more likely to get such a title since they’ve made far more overt steps into the queer manga market, especially with My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness, which was apparently a huge success for them, which is why I could see them picking up Shimanami Tasogare since it’s relatively similar in theme. But, honestly, Viz isn’t entirely out there as an option. They don’t exactly have much of a history with licensing manga with queer representation of any kind, but they’re improving. I’m quite excited for their upcoming release of Sweet Blue Flowers, in particular. I also highly appreciate that they licensed After Hours. That’s one of the main reasons why I think there’s a chance, since that’s a lesbian romance manga from the exact same magazine as Shimanami Tasogare. And they were hyping it up a fair bit on their twitter before. So it’s not too much of a stretch. I guess they also have experience with this magazine through their Dorohedoro license, as well. And this panel actually gives me slightly MORE hope than before, since Fire Punch is one of the only shonen manga running at the moment that has actual, legit queer representation in it, in a major way. I’m also SORTA sure it’s something people talk about a lot when the series comes up? So I assume Viz is aware of it on some level. So these recent steps into licensing manga with queer representation gives me hope that they might license Shimanami Tasogare. Until then, I’m gonna keep suggesting it to Seven Seas.

On a similar topic, as said above I’d love to see someone pick up Ao no Flag, and yeah I can see Viz doing that eventually. It all depends on how much of a western following it gets, though. Which it doesn’t have much of thus far. I probably wouldn’t expect any sort of a license announcement until next year at earliest. Oh well. But that’s another case of queer rep in shonen manga I want to see get licensed in English. At least, the manga definitely seems to be going in that direction. I’m fairly confident about it. I mean, it’s published in the same magazine as Fire Punch, so it’s not impossible.

Oh yeah, that reminds me that Viz also licensed Astra Lost in Space, which is also part of Shonen Jump+, and I think also has some good queer rep in it. Not sure what sort, though. But either way yeah that also adds a bit to what I’m saying about how Viz is getting better at getting manga with queer representation in them, which gives me a lot of hope in general. We’ll see.

Either way I’m gonna cross my fingers and hope for the best from Seven Seas’ upcoming panel. Even if it might not be until the day after tomorrow.

[alexisnoir]

Something occurred to me. Like an hour ago but I needed to re-watch the episode to certain moment to be sure.

It’s long so I’m posting this under the cut.

When Sherlock is deducing The Lady In Red - Eurus, on the bus stop, while eating chips, he says something about her relationship and her break up.

Later in the episode, practically at the very end, we get THE NOISE, Irene Adler text and a message. Why would they include that?! What if they wanted to remind us of something.

Remember what Sherlock told Irene at the end of Scandal in Belgravia, when he realized the code to her phone?

Irene Adler:   Oh, dear God. Look at the poor man. You don't actually think I was interested in you? Why? Because you're the great Sherlock Holmes, the clever detective in the funny hat? Sherlock Holmes:   No... because I took your pulse: elevated; your pupils: dilated. I imagine John Watson thinks love's a mystery to me, but the chemistry is incredibly simple and very destructive. When we first met, you told me that disguise is always a self-portrait; how true of you. The combination to your safe: your measurements - but this... Sherlock Holmes:  [taking her cell phone] ... this is far more intimate. This is your heart, and you should never let it rule your head. You could have chosen any random number and walked out of here today with everything you've worked for, but you just couldn't resist it, could you? I've always assumed that love is a dangerous disadvantage. Thank you for the final proof.

Love is a dangerous disadvantage. - Remember that.

And from episode 1 in season 1? When Sherlock talks to Hope, the serial killer cabbie?

“Bitterness is a paralytic. Love is a much more vicious motivator.”

Love is a disadvantage and a vicious motivator. If I’m right a little bit then this is what happened and probably is going to happen.

Eurus, wherever she was for the last years (we don’t know how many) met Jim Moriarty and fell in love.

But they fall out for some reason. She still loves him, Jim does not because he finds someone more interesting.

Sherlock Holmes. Yes, that’s right. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jim from IT - Jim Moriarty, had an eye on Sherlock for years. Studying him, learning all about him.

Let’s jump all the way to TRF. Sherlock wins (partly), Jim kills himself, Sherlock fakes his death.

But Jim is really dead. And since Eurus is still in love with Jim then...?

She would blame SHERLOCK for Jim’s death.

Besides, how would anyone of us explain Jim’s fixation with Sherlock if not comparing him to Eurus? As John said himself in the Lying Detective: “And this girl just smiled on me. That’s all it was, just a smile”.

Just a smile. A smiley face...Miss me?

She will want revenge on the person Sherlock Holmes loves the most. From the Lying Detective I could tell she’s practically as good as Sherlock if not better at reading people. She could easily read John and just know that he “likes” (*cough* loves *cough*) Sherlock.

But what about Mycroft? Isn’t he in on it too?

Wherever Eurus was for the last years has something to do with Mycroft too. Maybe he kept her in a mental facility (Sherrinford’s Institute) far away from England (maybe in Greece, who knows). Then she’s released on the ground of being mentally stable. She could easily hold a grudge for that too. She might think she’s not a psychopath or something when in reality she really is.

And I think Mycroft will find out what it means to loose someone you love.

I believe Lady Smallwood will die in The Final Problem. Because you can’t always get what you want and Mycroft’s ice needs to melt. He needs to know what it feels like to love and how it feels like to loose that love in the most brutal way possible. There won’t be any silly break up. There’s death waiting in Samarra for Lady Smallwood and she’s walking there with Mycroft, step by step.

That’s why Mycroft with Sherlock and John in the trailer in that bunker.

This is my small meta. It’s a bit confusing here and there (I think) because of the way I write. It’s always harder to say what you mean in another language. I at least hope I’ve got my message through somehow, that you guys understand what I am trying to say. If you have any question, please ask them and I’ll try to answer them the best way I can.

EDIT 15.01.17 Well, after watching the leaked Russian version (and again the episode tonight) I can tell you one thing. I’ve got one thing ALMOST right.

[ecuenglishprof-blog]

Learning to Re-Read the Novel

 In Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), often considered the first English novel (as we now define the term), the book opens with the words “I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family...” and ends some two-hundred pages later without a single chapter break or exchange of dialogue. Though one of the most influential books written in English, everything about it now seems hopelessly old-fashioned and a tedious chore for the modern reader (weaned on YA lit, especially) to wade through. For this reason it appears less and less frequently on college syllabi, and not at all in the high school classroom, where it was once enjoyed a popularity similar to—and perhaps even rivaling—Harry Potter.

And yet, the story has all the hallmarks of a modern fantasy tale: a man captured and sold into slavery; a daring escape which eventually leaves him shipwrecked on a deserted island; difficult, painstaking attempts to keep himself alive without a single soul to converse with; and ultimately, the invasion of his island by neighboring Cannibals—and the blood-thirsty Spanish! Crusoe, too, is the model of an engaging narrator: he is completely unreliable as he hides details, fudges facts, and proclaims a miraculous conversion only to forget it a few pages later. I honestly believe more adventure stories, unreliable narrators, and simply great novelists sailed out of Crusoe’s island than any other locale in print.

So why do readers have such problems with Robinson Crusoe? While the older language and slower pace is partly to blame, the most obvious reason is also the most visible: it no longer looks like a novel. Without chapters, most people won’t even wade through a 200-page novel, since we don’t know where to stop to take a breath. And how do characters talk to each other without dialogue quotes and tags? With Crusoe, the entire book is in the narrator’s voice, so he sums up dialogue or else apes their voices in his own, since the story is in the past, as is the dialogue (only the speaker is with us in the present, as we read the story). Defoe takes Crusoe as literally as possible, making the reader think that Crusoe is alive and telling the story right in front of you, on the spot, in a single evening. Indeed, the first editions of the novel omitted Defoe’s name entirely from the cover, attributing it to “Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner.” How’s that for verisimilitude?

While the early novel wasn’t even a novel, but a modified romance, a story of fiction with realistic embellishments, I’m not sure Defoe would have (or should have) changed a thing. With chapters Crusoe would become too fictionally distant, a work of art rather than a crude, on-the-spot narrative that seems to have washed up in a bottle on storm-tossed seas. The rambling, discursive nature of the work makes it read like an actual document; Defoe even includes Crusoe’s diary entries and his painstaking attempts to plant corn and later on, to discover the identity of a mysterious footprint in the sand (is he imagining it? Was it his own? Is it the Devil?). Even in 1719, Defoe wanted this to look like a real work and not a work of fiction, so he cleverly disguised it to look like a contemporary travel narrative. Readers largely took the bait, finding it the most readable, captivating, and miraculous story of life on the high seas. With a little effort, we can do the same, mindful of the skill it took Defoe (with almost no literary models) to create such a living-and-breathing hero, who in the end isn’t all that heroic.

Reading Robinson Crusoe makes me question the very mechanics of the modern novel itself. Does a novel need chapters? Dialogue? Short paragraphs? Modern language? Glossy covers? A genre? Crusoe frustrates almost all of our conventions of what a novel does, and yet continues to succeed as a work of art on its own terms. Yet imagine if someone tried to write a novel without chapters today? Or if a writer queried a literary agent and admitted, “my book has no genre...it creates its own genre.” For all our talk of diversity and experimentation, today’s readers are wildly orthodox when it comes to what we read and how we do it. It should follow a very rigid formula and basically hit all the marks we’ve come to expect...then we can look for things like novelty or innovation. And yet, form always follows function, so what if a story requires a dramatic break with the past? Wouldn’t some stories benefit from a single, continuous chapter?

For example, imagine a modern Crusoe story...a space pirate who becomes marooned on a hospitable, yet remote moon in a distant solar system. As his technology falls away, he’s forced to rely on the most rudimentary means of survival, including a simple notebook for his daily reflections and fears. In the end he perishes, and all that remains is his book—discovered a thousand years later by an entirely new race of creatures colonizing this forgotten moon. “We” become that race, puzzling over this strange, claustrophobic narrative. Who was this man? What chance did he have? Did he almost make it? Does he have a lesson to teach us from beyond time and space?

Chapters would break up the terror of his existence into ordered, predictable patterns. With each one we would know we’re getting closer to the end, or to some big plot development...after all, each chapter begins and ends with something happening. A series of relentless pages, however, is simply that—the possibility rather than the inevitability of drama. We have no idea what to expect, or when, or how it stops. Andy Weir’s The Martian captured something of this flavor in his terse, hilarious entries of a modern-day Crusoe trying to make something of his existence on Mars. I found every page of it riveting and exciting, since I had no idea where (or how) it ended. In some ways, it was disappointing when he introduced chapter breaks that took us back to Earth and into other people’s perspectives—it became a much more traditional novel. And yet, this had the effect of smashing two fictional worlds together: the realistic, anti-novel of Crusoe with today’s modern genre novel. Whether or not he did this consciously, it’s a bold experiment and only works because he dipped his toe into the waters of Crusoe’s island, at least temporarily.

I would like to read more novels that challenge how we read them...perhaps not drastically, or confusingly, but in small, subtle ways. Why not make dialogue look more natural, more as part of the narrative itself rather than a play script that intrudes upon the story proper? Could chapters function less as plot points or reading breaks than as the arbitrary creation of the narrator(s)? The joy of reading is the same as the thrill of adventure: you want to get where you’re going, but not right away, and not the way you expected. A book should make you lose your bearing a few pages in, so you temporarily worry, and even fear you might never reach the end. That’s how Robinson Crusoe always feels to me, like an adventure in danger of running aground—and it very nearly does several times, thanks not to Crusoe’s incompetence, but Defoe’s artistry. After all, the novel is “novel,” something new and unexpected: the better we think the we know it, the less we should.

[eificopper]

Title:  Spitefulshipping - 50 things (Alt: Howthefuck…) Series/Timeline: Twinkle - timeline all over the place Characters: Shira – Techny – Citinea – Denika - Indigo (hinted) - Nozomi Length: 1851w

WHAT AM I DOING HAHA So I was like alright I’m just missing 10 more for the 50 themes brighship sentence challenge let’s do this //does 17 for spitefulship //whispers Howthefuck…?? So yeah why not? I’m at 31 and counting so let’s do this Not gonna put them in chronological order because LOL what is timeline with these two (I’m so sorry) have them in the order they’ve been written instead

Edit: 45 I’M YELING HOW ON EARTH XD also tried to organize them a bit more buth uhh;;; Edit2: Hallelujah I’m done and very happy with this <3

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1- Team “So we’ll be working together” Shira said when they were left alone “That will be interesting”

2- Neutral The two of them get into yet another argument and Citinea just sits there and goes “I’m neutral”

3- Spark The first time their bodies were so close together (due to that one tango presentation they did) Shira felt a certain jolt of electricity; she reasoned it was simply because they are both electric types.

4- Kick When one of Citinea’s little pranks somehow ended up with them in a rather suggestive pose she could only yelp in Kalosian (“C-Casse-toi!”) with a red face and push him away with a kick of her hooves, as he then yelled something about “now using it as a proper move” while Citinea laughed in the background.

5- Kiss All of the sudden his face is close, too close, and her legs are frozen in place as she feels his hand on her chin, and their noses touch and her face is growing warm, then hot, then cold, because Citinea just pulled him apart (muttering something about “males” and “disgusting”) and she lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.  

6- Envy The Meercle doesn’t know when exactly she stopped being envious of the Coil and rather started being so of the Dokucale but it sure was a very odd feeling.

7- Line Shira was starting to believe the whole “there’s a thin line between Love and Hate” was a true fact after all; and she was dancing and tiptoeing around that line more and more as time went by…

8- Curious Despite not really enjoying that much her feeling-reading abilities she always thought she’d be weirded out if she ever met someone she could not read; turns out she found him ridiculously intriguing.

9- Opposites Shira wished she could say they were total opposites but actually they were more similar than she’d dare to admit.

10- Epiphany She had been simply overthinking her life in bed unable to sleep when she suddenly came to the conclusion that she wholeheartedly wanted to become his light; and then stayed awake the rest of the night wondering what to do with this new realization. 

11- Weakness Forget type matchups, she was his weakness and he knew it.

12- Hate Those who don’t know better will just say they really can’t stand each other but Citinea knows they’re just trying to convince themselves of that.

13- Smirk He smirks smugly and Shira is, partly, irritated that he’s looking so fucking proud of himself, but also just a slightly bit turned on because oh lord Xerneas who gave him the right to look so hot?

14- Question When Shira came to her one day commenting that she had a problem and Citinea jokingly asked if it was “unresolved sexual tension with Techny” she sure as hell didn’t expect the answer to be yes.

15- Friends “Friends? No, not a chance” Not when there was so much more than that.

16- Hostility The animosity she showed towards him since day one (be it due to her rivalry skyrocketing or natural dislike) seems like nothing at all compared to the hostility she shows to the new dark-type member; and strangely enough, he feels a certain relief.

17- Breathing He pulls back just far enough to get some air but still close enough so he can feel her breath on his lips, and says “we should have done this way sooner” before leaning in again.

18- Senses She has a hard time reading his feelings and he barely feels the warmth of her horns but even so they both stay still peacefully for a few moments, just basking on each other’s presence.

19- Sign Denika didn’t really notice the signs beforehand, but when she walked into Shira’s office to see them making out at her desk she began to realize how obvious it was in retrospect.

20- Hurt No matter how many times he said it was alright and carelessly dismissed it (“it’s just some metal I’m fine”) Shira still got really distressed whenever he got “hurt” and broke something; Well at least she didn’t faint, he figured. 

21- Nap Techny’s not sure how this happened but she’s fast asleep with her cheek pressed against his shoulder and he doesn’t dare move until she stirs awake, wipes her eyes and blushes through an unneeded apology.

22- Imperfections Under the eyes of the world they were both strong and confident; it wasn’t until the night had fallen and the lights had been turned off that they revealed their many cracks.

23- Note Techny stared for almost a solid minute at the small sticky note in a corner of his laptop’s screen that simply read “Je t’aime! =D <3” then decided to just leave it there and start working.

24- Touch Gloved fingers extended and brushed softly at the leaves in her neck while she was distracted and the Meercle shivered in response, tossing him an embarrassed frown when he let out a chuckle at her reaction.

25- Sarcasm Sometimes it was amusing to see her so confused and/or embarrassed when she took his sarcasm literally, and sometimes… it was just a headache for everyone involved.

26- Break It was perhaps because her relationship with him had initiated that way, because she actually loved butting heads and a challenge or maybe just because of her pride and rivalry instinct, but Shira simply loved to compete and spite him, to see his aloof strict posture break, and get all flustered and curt.

27- Addiction He was addicted to her, to her smiles, her touch, her kisses, her voice, her company… and couldn’t find an answer as to when and how that even happened.

28- Quiet Shira insists that she’s fine, which Tech considers and insult to his intelligence since the grass-type is wearing the fakest smile he’s ever seen and is never this quiet unless she’s asleep.

29- Hug For someone who claimed she didn’t want to be touched most of the time the Meercle could be incredibly clingy, he noted.

30- Coat With his longcoat casually draped over her shoulders while reviewing some folders, Shira wonders out loud (and it’s just to mess with him, he knows it) what would be his reaction to her wearing only that and nothing under; unknown to her the mental image sticks in his mind all day long.

31- Patience Lying down in the bed boredly looking at the ceiling she asks him to teach her some coding and/or hacking; without even looking away from the screen he replies neither of them have the patience to attempt that, and she huffs and mumbles a “touché”

32- Soul He was supposed to keep his emotions in check, or to have one emotion be shown to disguise all the rest, but when she started to see through that mask, he made no attempt to improve his skill around her.

33- Body She is smooth and soft and warm, an organic kind of beauty, and when pressed against him it was the best thing in the world.

34- Enough He has enough pressure already managing SO almost by himself, but when she decides to start destroying herself with alcohol he just can’t stand it anymore.

35- Drunk He’s given up on saying anything and just sighs half-irritated half-disgusted as he sets away the glass from her hand and tries to get her to stand up; in response she doesn’t utter a word either but instead suddenly puts her arms around his neck and kisses him hard, and her lips are like something of an apology even though they taste like that last shot of tequila she just downed.

36- Remorse      Shira’s life is largely ruled by guilt, that is an undeniable truth, but one of her biggest regrets is honestly having hurt Techny so badly while inebriated. 

37- Evolution “You just went from a small paralyzing goat to a huge paralyzing goat, is not that much of a change” “Shut up I’m a majestic creature, besides, you’re just a bigger cluster of screws and metal you have no right to talk”

38- Sing She thinks she has the place to herself and her voice grows from a soft hum into a full-fledged song, only to stop in embarrassment when she realizes her boyfriend staring at the doorway entranced.

39- Duty He felt it was his duty to protect her, not just because she was female but rather because she was his dear Shira.

40- Sensual Never did she think one day she’d be moaning his name quite like that, and he never imagined it’d sound as sweet and gratifying.

41- Happiness Everyone claims happiness is a feeling, a feeling fleeting and elusive, but Techny knows his happiness is much more concrete than that, with unique curled back horns and a smile to light up the world.

42- Sunset Shira is not just one color, easy to figure out and completely boring, no, Shira is a gradient of colors like a sunset sky, a million different things that Techny could never work out but would spend the rest of his life trying to.  

43- Surprise He likes to keep his cool even in most dire situations; however his face was positively a poem when his wife casually mentions one day that she wants to have a kid.

44- Change Her poor husband is acting so ridiculous and vulnerable (in a way she had certainly never seen before) that she’s almost starting to feel bad for teasing him and pushing at his buttons, but is just sooooo tempting and mesmerizing to see him now as a Rentorar.

45- Innocent Little baby Nozomi paws around in his father’s grasp and actually tries to grab at his headset visor despite Techny’s protests and Shira thinks it’s just hilarious and watches him struggle instead of helping and picking up the child.

46- Climb Techny just sighs and presses two fingers to his forehead, thinking it’s honestly utterly ridiculous to see his wife getting so worried and panicked over Nozomi climbing up that high, after all, who did he learn it from?

47- Alone Her mom used to warn her, tell her to “be prepared” for being a widow, for all the females in their family outlive the males; Shira just didn’t think it’d happen so soon...

48- End It both confused and irked Shira to see other people smiling and laughing like nothing had happened, she felt so miserable not even her children could cheer her up.

49- Ring Nozomi can easily identify when his mom is feeling anxious or troubled without even needing to read her feelings, for she starts unconsciously tapping and fidgeting with her wedding ring non-stop.

50- Victory Shira leans on the sidelines with a small smile as she sees her kid win one of his battles, he strongly reminds her of herself, but when he smirks just the right way after victory she can clearly see his father on him.