#i was obsessed with wb from the moment i saw it
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Inside ‘Supernatural’s’ Evolution From Monster-of-the-Week to Psychological Horror
by Danielle Turchiano | Oct 1, 2020 | Variety
A little boy sits alone on the floor of his bedroom. Backlit by a window, he leans over pages of construction paper on which he is obsessively drawing. A platoon of little green Army men guards the pages, and ultimately the boy. As the camera pans around him, he does not speak — in fact he has not spoken at all since his father drowned in a local lake the year before.
This is not the first time the audience, or even the main characters of “Supernatural” are introduced to this boy, as the moment comes a little less than half-way through the third episode of the series. But through the scene setup and shot style, it is the first time the audience gets a glimpse of the boy’s psyche, which will prove to be indispensable as the Winchester brothers work to solve the case of the mysterious lake deaths. It is also a turning point for a first-season show that would eventually run for 15 years.
“I watched Kim [Manners, director] set up this one shot and I thought, ‘That’s the way the show should be shot. This is the look we should be going for,'” executive producer Bob Singer tells Variety.
Creator Eric Kripke originally pitched “Supernatural” to studio Warner Bros. and eventually then-network the WB as a monster-movie-of-the-week drama about two brothers (Dean and Sam Winchester) who travel the backroads of America hunting the things the audience would remember from urban legends. But his main goal in his original pitch document was that “the weekly stories have to be SCARY AS S—.” (And yes, the all-caps was his emphasis.)
While he wanted to make “this series as scary as I can,” he wrote at the time, not all fear comes from an external source. Soon enough, it was the characters’ own trauma and internal struggles that were driving story and adding rich complications to an already well-known genre.
“We set out to make a horror show, and those were the initial stories we wrote. But you learn and adjust as you start watching the film, and a few things conspired to tell us, ‘We have to focus a lot more on the characters than we’re currently doing,’ which is we realized the actors we had,” Kripke tells Variety now. “We saw that they were just both wildly charismatic and emotional and were knocking everything we gave them out of the park. So we were like, ‘We should start giving them harder things to do because they can handle it.'”
The pilot introduced Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam’s (Jared Padalecki) trauma briefly, first by revealing that their mother died under mysterious circumstances in a house fire, resulting in their father devoting his life to hunting what killed her — even when it meant dragging his school-aged kids on the road and leaving them alone for days on end in rundown motels. When Sam’s girlfriend dies in a similar way in the present-day portion of the episode, a deeper, psychologically-scarring mythology is hinted at — but the focus of the first few episodes of the series is really more on the “task at hand” of taking out whatever creature is right in front of them — from a Woman in White in the pilot, to a wendigo in the second episode and a ghost in the third.
“When you get hired as staff on a first season show, you get handed the documents they used to sell the show, and that included some of the family secrets and what was going on with Sam. But it’s more like it was a headline that these children had been through a lot because of, we’ll call it, their unconventional life — and the details come when you start to have more space to tell the story,” says Sera Gamble, who penned “Dead in the Water,” the pivotal third episode of the first season with Raelle Tucker, and later went on to run the show in the sixth and seventh seasons.
When breaking the story for “Dead in the Water,” Gamble recalls a conversation with Kripke about how “most young children, especially who have been through something, [are] not just going to open up and give you all of the procedural information you need as an [exposition] dump in the scene.” In discussing how it needed to be harder to draw information out of that child, Gamble says she was inspired to “dig deeper into the psychology of the characters in that script,” which became a baseline for episodes going forward.
“Now I can’t imagine approaching anything with a fantasy element without starting from that place,” she says. “These stories were scary to us because they feel like they tap into something true. Your road as a writer to something that’s going to terrify the audience is through human psychology.”
What each audience member finds scary can vary — and often comes from factors outside a show’s control, from the person’s own upbringing and experiences to the kinds of other stories they consume. In order to to make sure to deliver unique horror elements in each episode, Singer says that from the beginning, “one thing we always said was that the shooting style should be commensurate with what the monster was or what the tone was, so we didn’t feel like we were doing a cookie-cutter horror [show].”
The characters within each of those episodes also had to be unique, even if the type of creature the Winchesters were fighting was something they’d encountered before. “Halfway through Season 1, the first run of the scripts, we realized we were going to run out of monsters in a hurry,” if we didn’t, Singer says. “So if we did a vampire story, each version would not be what you’ve seen before — each version had their own story.”
Often these characters had traumatic backstories of their own, such as Gordon (Sterling K. Brown), a hunter who was on a one-track mission to eradicate the supernatural from Earth after his sister was taken by a vampire when he was just a teenager. (In the most heart-wrenching twist, he later was turned into the thing he hated the most.) Sometimes they even brought out complicated issues for the main characters, such as when Sam fell for Madison (Emmanuelle Vaugier), a werewolf who he was going to have to kill, reigniting the fears he had about losing the women he loved.
And as time went on, those issues and fears began to pile up and often go unresolved. Dean never truly mourned his mother and Sam didn’t fully get to grieve his college girlfriend Jess (Adrianne Palicki) and both had complex feelings about their father and the way they were raised. But then Dean traded his life to save Sam’s, sending the older Winchester to Hell (literally), while the younger one had to carry on alone. Being the true vessels for Michael and Lucifer could have pitted the brothers against each other but ultimately this time it was Sam who went into the pit to Hell, leaving Dean to move on. Sam also lost his soul, got addicted to demon blood and never quite could shake his PTSD from his time with Lucifer (Mark Pellegrino); Dean ended up with PTSD after getting back from war-like Purgatory. Both brothers struggled with wanting to believe in Team Free Will, even when learning they are literally God’s (Rob Benedict) favorite television show and their lives have been manipulated for it. And of course along the way they’ve lost countless other friends and loved ones, from surrogate uncle Bobby (Jim Beaver) to Charlie (Felicia Day) and even their mother (Samantha Smith) again after she was brought back from the dead, only to eventually be killed by Lucifer’s son Jack (Alex Calvert).
“Sam and Dean both went through a ton of trauma. Sam probably had more reminders of his trauma because, obviously Pellegrino remained as Lucifer for many, many years, and Sam had to be facing his No. 1 offender in causing his PTSD,” says Padalecki. “The writers, obviously, always were aware that Sam had been through what he’d been through with Lucifer so they peppered that in [but they] allowed me to take it further if I needed to.”
While Kripke acknowledges that the broadcast format — especially back in 2005 — lent itself well to a slow burn on mythology in the beginning, he also believes characters are more interesting if you “peel back those layers one at a time” as the show goes on. But there is also a more pragmatic reason behind easing the audience into the more psychological horror of “Supernatural” according to Dr. Lynn S. Zubernis, a licensed clinical psychologist, professor and author of several “Supernatural” books, including this year’s “There’ll Be Peace When You Are Done: Actors and Fans Celebrate the Legacy of Supernatural.”
She explains: “One of the reasons that we as humans have so much trouble processing trauma is that we literally store those trauma memories in a different way to store our regular memories and then we can’t get to them and they just end up split off and unprocessed and we don’t want to go there. So we have a lot of defenses against looking at our own trauma. That’s why projecting onto fictional characters is such a great way to do it. But if it came at us all at once, our brains would be like, ‘No, no, no no; we’re not going there.’ You have to go slow in the beginning and then be hooked in and trust the storytelling, in a way, before it goes that deep.”
The same was true for the actors. “Early on, we maybe had to use some techniques or some tricks of the trade to get to a certain point emotionally, but as time went on and the seasons went on, we didn’t have to use those tricks,” says Ackles. “Living with this story — not just living with the characters but living with this story — when things happen, we’re able to really feel it from a character’s perspective because we have lived with it so long and we understand their hurt and their pain and their laughter and their joy.”
Adds Padalecki: “We lost so many characters, I feel like we had a lot of chances to deal with what Sam and Dean would go through with the loss of a character or friend, and so, after the 30th time, it was like, ‘OK I remember what Sam goes through; I remember how he feels; I remember how to be and where I want to be in the storyline as a whole.’ If God forbid there came a situation where they were like, ‘Hey we need to shoot this scene tonight, it’s two pages, it’s you and Dean and Lucifer, then I could have done it — and Mark and Jensen could have done it as well.'”
As the show evolved, the type of horror it delivered week after week would consist different ratios of a combination of jump scares and more of a “disturbing fear that doesn’t leave you — the kind of fear that gives me chills, instead of making me want to scream,” as Zubernis puts it.
“I remember getting a note from Eric that changed the way I wrote the show and kind of cracked the show open for me,” Gamble says. “It was [for] an episode where a demon in the body of a woman has, I want to say, Bobby tied up and they are snarky back and forth but he is her prisoner. And what Eric said was, ‘You’re writing these lines where the demon is very witty and funny and smart, but the thing that is so terrifying about a demon, even as you are entertained by it is that they can see straight into your soul.’ So this thing that they will say to you will be the thing that hurts the most. And so, that was the guiding principle for writing the bad guys: They had to be incredibly insightful to find these guys’ Achilles heels.
“It was also the guiding principle in writing Dean, who was very much going to say the funniest lines in episodes, but he’s never trying to crack you up — he’s actually speaking from a deep well of pain and his way of processing that is to say something hilarious like he’s tough and it doesn’t matter,” Gamble continues.
“We knew the guys had deep trauma and deep pain and were frequently struggling quietly with something, and we always held the monster peril or the danger to a high standard of, ‘We’re not going to make this a joke. This is going to really be life or death.’ So if you have those pieces of the puzzle where the life or death stakes are there, the emotional truth is there, and then you have characters who crack a joke in the face of death, then you can go a lot of places tonally.”
This included expanding the world out to get inside the heads of other core characters — from Castiel’s (Misha Collins) own struggle with how he allowed power to corrupt him, to Jack’s guilt over killing Mary, to diving into memories of Bobby losing his wife and Jody Mills (Kim Rhodes) losing her own family. In some cases, it meant quite literally spending the majority of episodes inside characters’ heads, as well — from Season 2’s “What Is and What Should Never Be,” in which Dean’s psyche is in an “apple pie” alternate reality while he is losing his life to a djnn, to Season 4’s “The Rapture” when Sam is detoxing from demon blood, to Season 7’s “Death’s Door,” which sees a dying Bobby trying to outrun his reaper.
In the latter episode, Gamble reminds, the show was “exploring his core wounds by seeing the memories that are the most important to him.”
“We observed from just watching so many shows in this genre that the Big Bad gets bigger and bigger every season and the war gets more massive and pretty soon you’re a tiny little Lego guy and you’re literally facing God,” she explains. “So part of our job from very early on was to slow down or to avoid running into plot that was so massive that you’re just little specs in a giant galaxy. The way to approach that is always to come from what is personal inside of the story to the boys.”
After all, at the core of the show was always the Winchesters — whether the danger they were in was because of a literal demon in front of them or an internal demon they had yet to conquer.
“If you put them in real jeopardy — believable jeopardy for our world — then the scares will take care of themselves,” Singer says.
(Pictured: Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki in “Supernatural,” which returns with its final seven episodes beginning Oct. 8 on the CW)
#eric kripke#sera gamble#robert singer#jared padalecki#jensen ackles#spn#spn bts#just wanted to save this article#ptsd#childhood trauma#psychological horror#long post
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Hello ryin! I saw in a recent post of yours that you dislike the "class warfare" reading of the Havoc in Heaven arc in JTTW and would honestly love to hear more about your thoughts on that! Your takes have been really interesting.
Thank you!
My biggest problem with the "class warfare" reading is, first and foremost, what it has been historically used for.
Like, after the Havoc in Heaven opera and movie came out, the propagandists absolutely ate it up; SWK was associated with Mao Zedong and used to promote Mao's personality cult, and soon after, the White Bone Spirit story would be interpreted as this fable for the Sino-Soviet split.
Whereas Havoc in Heaven was intended and viewed as a metaphor and love letter to the victory of Chinese revolution, the White Bone Spirit story was interpreted in the context of the horrific fuck-up that is the Great Leap Forward, where the party were starting to doubt its leadership, and the path to the future seemed an uncertain and arduous one——much like the pilgrimage.
So, in the new twist on the "class warfare" narrative, Tripitaka and Pigsy became the poster-boy for "party members who were easily captivated by revisionist ideas" and needed to see how wrong they were, the WBS became the personification of Khruschev, imperialism, capitalism, revisionism...you name it, and SWK the Mao expy who could do no wrong yet was unfairly blamed by everyone.
Came the Cultural Revolution era, SWK would then become a sort of hero and role model for the Red Guards, smashing down all that was considered archaic and backwards, tearing down older authority figures and perceived "class enemies" alike, all the while emboldened by Mao's saying that "To rebel is justified" (造反有理).
Yeah, no, fuck that shit.
Terrible historical baggages aside, it is also a reading that reeks of presentism, and Lin Geng, a renowned professor of literature, had done a thorough takedown of the "SWK as peasant rebel" idea in his 西游记漫话.
Namely, it neither fits the circumstances of Havoc in Heaven, nor SWK's backstory and motivation. He's not rebelling because his monkeys are oppressed by the Celestial Realm, he's doing it because he feels personally slighted.
His mindset is also not that of a traditional peasant; compare and contrast that with Zhu Bajie, whom the author argues is very much peasant-coded in terms of his obsession with going back to Gao Laozhuang, his rake, and his comedic ignorance that stems from urban stereotypes of rural farmers.
To paraphrase Lin Geng, "Not all rebellions and rebel narratives in Chinese history are peasant ones, and we shouldn't just cry 'peasant rebellion metaphor!' the moment we saw a rebellion in fiction."
Lastly and more personally? This reading also tends to remove SWK's depth as a character. The representation of the Mind can be both heroic and flawed, capable of great feats and fuck-ups alike, but the representation of The Revolution has to be heroic and his opponents, whether celestial or demonic, must be evil oppressors and political boogeymen.
Like, the demons in the novel are representations of the mental obstacles a person will face on the path to Enlightenment, but they are also capable of being funny and very human characters, and not all of them wanted to eat Tripitaka.
The Celestial Realm is a satire of the imperial bureaucracy, sure, but the novel is also a product of its time and cannot magically promote 20th century ideas of revolutions and political reforms 500 years before they were a thing. Besides, SWK can still get help from them on the Journey and their relationship is more complicated than "oppressed rebel and oppressors".
And that's exactly why I dislike the "class warfare" reading: it creates a simplistic opposition of good and evil, and tries to squeeze the work into a narrow political framework that is neither nuanced nor accurate.
#journey to the west#xiyouji#jttw#chinese history#chinese literature#sun wukong#JTTWR has a pdf on his website about JTTW and PRC mythology-making#Lin Geng's book doesn't have a translation but can be found on WeChat read#Transforming Monkey also has a chapter that talks specifically about SWK's transformation into a revolutionary hero
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ah this moodboard event seems so fun! >.< I’m gonna do my best to send enough detail but not go overboard!!!
so my selfship is with Tsubakino from wb, I just adore him sm!
I don’t entirely know what to put so I’ll do my best! very coquette with outfits and style, literally one of my favorite aesthetics I can only dream of wearing irl because of my job :( but also loves playing volleyball, bc that sport is genuinely so fun >.<
w tsubakino they’re outfits are always coordinated and on point, envy of all couple outfits because it’s tsubakino so obviously— shopping dates, coffee dates, at home spa nights, movie nights, etc. just soft and loving, and they’re each others best friends
they both love decorating for the holiday season— their apartments, their classrooms, helping the town decorate, helping (forcing) kotoha to decorate her cafe as well! as well as being able to give presents to show their friends how much they mean to them, even tho in Japan chrismtas is mostly about romantic love they also love showing platonic love for their friends as well
always at some point get caught under the mistletoe by “accident” w out fail
no colors or things I don’t want! i love this time of year >.<
Number one can I just say how obsessed I am with your selfship??? Like HELLO?? Honestly an OTP, me and Satoru Nii just got off the phone and he told me its canon now. Tsubaki is so slept on and doesnt get the love he so deserves so this makes me so happy.
The matching outfits?? Decorating together?? Its all so stinking cute and I'm officially obsessed with the both of you. I can just imagine you both going to a cozy cafe in your matching outfits looking like ICONS (me and Suo are shipping you both for sure!)
I kinda took the coquette thing and RAN with it, I hope you enjoy!
Suprise! A little drabble for you (ฅ́ ˘ฅ̀*)♡
Tsubaki hummed, making sure his lips were perfectly glossed as he headed towards where you were waiting for him. There was nothing more he adored than the way his signature red looked against you lips. He had been very strategic when asking for you to wait while he got two mugs of cocoa. He knew every place where Ume had sneakily hung a bushel of mistletoe. Smiling to himself when he saw you exactly where he wanted you, away from your crowd of friends at Ume’s annual holiday party. He swooned, even after all this time you still managed to get his heart racing, it pounding in his ears much louder than the clack of his heels against the snow coated cobblestone.
“There you are, my love.” He smiled, approaching with the two mugs. “Its so pretty out here with all the lights and the falling snow.” He hums, before smiling at you and handing off the cocoa. “Not as beautiful as you of course, but close enough I guess.”
He giggled, launching you to repeat the action before teasing him calling him sappy before taking a sip of the warm liquid. Shaking his head, before taking a drink of his own. Only to feign a noise of surprise a moment later. Pointing upward, your gaze following a manicured finger to where the touch of green hung in the archway of the gazebo.
“Would you look at that, mistletoe.” The tone in Tsubaki’s voice absolutely gave him away, that this was not as “accidental” as he would lead you to believe. “Well, you know how the tradition goes, angel.”
He smiles, taking a step forward, tucking a strand of blonde hair behind your eyes, admiring the way the lights reflect off the beautiful blue of your eyes. Wasting no more time as he dips his head, capturing your lips with his own. The hand not holding his mug comes up to cup your cheek, pulling you closer to deepen the kiss. He lets out a contented him against your lips, lingering for a moment before pulling away and pressing his forehead against your own.
“Merry Christmas, my love.” He coos, awarded with the sight of his signature color against your lips, sure he may have tricked you to get you under the mistletoe, but he was sure you didn’t mind too much. Especially not with the way you connect your lips once more.
#₊⊹⁀➴ — events#૮꒰ ˶• ༝ •˶꒱ა — samsrambles#dividers by me#this was so fun#I loved hearing ab your ship so much!!#so so cute#i hope you like it
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For the tokusatsu ask game!
1 and 19 :)
Oh, those are good ones. Thanks, @nieves-de-sugui!
How did you get into toku?
When my kids were three or four (they're twins so they always share the same age), my son saw a toy Godzilla and got obsessed with it. So we started showing my kids Godzilla movies, then branched out into other Toho kaiju like Mothra, King Ghidorah, etc. Just to give you an idea of how deep this got, at one point my kids were both obsessed with Biollante, a monster that was created when scientists fused some of Godzilla's DNA with a rose and the soul of a young girl that looks kind of like the thing from Little Shop of Horrors on steroids. This continued for a while. Then we watched Godzilla vs. Megalon, which features Jet Jaguar, a kaiju-fighting robot who they immediately adored. We were already tracking down toys of the various monsters they liked and they wanted a Jet Jaguar one really bad, but when my partner went looking, there weren't any options out there. (I think since then a JJ figure has been issued, but it wasn't around at the time.)
Then a fateful moment occurred: my spouse saw an Ultraman toy someplace, though it kind of resembled Jet Jaguar, and got it for the kids to see if they'd like it. They were immediately obsessed and wanted to know all about Ultraman, but we barely knew anything about it. I'd seen a little bit of the weirdly dubbed version of Tiga that aired on the WB on Saturday mornings at one point, but that was it. So we started looking things up and checking out shows, which led to more shows and more toys and so on. Our first series was Tiga and we just kept going from there. This was also around the start of the pandemic, so we were in desperate need of an exciting new collective obsession. Actually, I don't know how we would have gotten through that period without Ultraman.
So we mainlined Ultraman for months (maybe even a year or more?) before we checked out any other toku stuff. Then we were talking to a friend who's knowledgeable about this stuff and he suggested we try branching out into other tokusatsu franchises. Our first Super Sentai series was Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, which we all loved right away. I think our first Kamen Rider series was actually Ex-Aid, so it’s kind of a miracle that we kept going with it, because I really dislike that series--I never even finished watching it. Our second Kamen Rider was Saber, which was a way better fit for us (if not exactly representative of the franchise) and remains one of my favorite Kamen Rider series.
Kamen Rider Ryuki was a kind of milestone because it was the first tokusatsu show that my spouse and I watched without having to have kids present and paying attention all the time. It's a bit on the mature side so they only wanted to watch it intermittently. That's when we figured out that some toku shows filled that niche really well--things that we could watch without worrying about kids feeling left out but that we didn't have to refrain from watching in their presence or censor somehow (at least, most of the time). Which led to even more tokusatsu-watching since things you can watch in that way can be hard to come by.
Incidentally, a big part of the reason I first got into BLs was because of my tokusatsu fandom. Before I saw my first BL, my twin sister had already seen KinnPorsche and told me about it, so maybe she would have continued with BLs and eventually gotten me into them anyway. It's hard to say. But as it happened, I was looking for something short and not too gut-wrenching to watch on Viki one day when I saw the listing for Senpai, This Can't Be Love and got curious about it because the leads were played by Naito Shuichiro from Saber and Seto Toshiki from Ex-Aid. I talk about the tokusatsu to BL pipeline for actors, but I myself traveled down the viewer equivalent of that pipeline.
19. If you could go back and change one show, what would you change?
My first thought was something relatively small. If I could, I’d change the fact that Takano Hassei’s character in Kamen Rider Ryuki was (spoiler!) killed off so quickly. I get that the battle royale premise of the series necessitated some painful character deaths but he was so likable and made the story so much more compelling as soon as he showed up and then suddenly he was gone. They should have let him stick around at least a while longer.
But the main series I’d change is Kamen Rider Kiva. I have such mixed feelings about that series in a number of areas, but the main thing I’d change is its treatment of women characters. It's kind of confusing, though. I keep thinking over how things turn out for the women in Kiva and trying to figure out exactly what my problem is with it and what I think should have been done differently. Basically, the women in Kiva face a lot of sexism in different forms, and the show makes this pretty explicit. Women in Kiva can be incredibly competent and smart, much more than their male counterparts, and they still don't get the same opportunities. Whenever men in the show are interested in a woman romantically and/or sexually, tons of sexism also comes into play, usually in the forms of benevolent sexism and/or objectification. In one arc, for example, two men fight over a woman as if she's a prize to be won and she doesn't have a say in the matter. Otoya often insists on rescuing Yuri from situations that she's arguably better equipped to deal with than he is, with occasionally disastrous effects. These things aren't portrayed as neutral. At times, sexism is called out explicitly. At others, it's shown in a way that seems clearly designed to make it visible.
I'm used to media texts that highlight sexism giving me some kind of catharsis about it. It would be ridiculous for a story to solve the problem of sexism completely, but there's usually some kind of progress that's made, or at least a character removes herself from a sexist situation if it doesn't improve. But Kiva doesn't do that. Not really, anyway. Both of the women who want to be Riders do get to do that, briefly, which was pretty remarkable when the series aired in 2008/2009. Unlike in some Kamen Rider series in which characters always have their own distinct Rider identity, a bunch of the people (basically, all of the human beings) who become Riders in Kiva use the same tool, the Ixa System, and become variations on the same Rider. Both Yuri and Megumi, a mother and daughter shown in different time periods, become Kamen Rider Ixa at some point. But their time as Riders is short-lived, and only happens after they've proven themselves again and again while watching the dopiest men imaginable get to become Ixa first. So that doesn't constitute much progress. (Did I mention that Yuri's deceased mother/Megumi's grandmotherdesigned the Ixa System? And they each still have to fight tooth and nail for a brief chance to use it!)
Watching Kiva actually made me notice the extent to which I expect some kind of catharsis once a piece of media foregrounds sexism somehow. And as soon as I noticed it, I questioned it. Does that kind of catharsis really need to happen? Might it not be better for us to have to sit with that discomfort? Catharsis discharges tension, but maybe it's better not to do that. But I don't think the uniformly shitty outcomes faced by the women on Kiva serve any sort of useful purpose in that way. (I'm including Megumi marrying Nago as a shitty outcome. The show may treat it as cause for celebration but that guy sucks and she's totally settling.)
So what would I change? First, I'd make the sexism the women face more explicit, with more characters labeling it as such more often. Since the show features two timelines, one taking place in 1986 and one in 2008, it would make sense and provide at least a little bit of hope if the 2008 storyline involved a bit less sexism or a bit more progress toward counteracting it. Maybe some individual characters could even learn something from their experiences and become a bit less sexist. At the very least, the leaders of the Wonderful Blue Sky Organization should have learned from their mistakes since they were present for the events of both 1986 and 2008 (the other 2008 characters are too young to have been present then except as small chidren).
When the two Kurenais, Otoya and Wataru, go through a body-swap situation across time and Otoya finds himself in 2008, his attitudes seem even more egregious in the context of 2008. I'd look for other ways to use the differences and similarities between attitudes in the two time periods to make a similar type of point.
I'd definitely give Yuri and Megumi more of a chance to be Ixa. Especially Megumi, since she's in 2008 when people should be at least a little bit less sexist. And for fuck's sake, I wouldn't have Megumi marry a douchey clod like Nago in a million years.
Well, that ended up being longer than I expected! Thanks again for the questions, nieves!
#tokusatsu#tokusatsu ask game#toho kaiju#biollante#jet jaguar#ultraman#ultraman tiga#kaizoku sentai gokaiger#kamen rider saber#kamen rider kiva#senpai this can't be love
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CHILDREN’S FICTION often belongs to children in name alone. After all, narratives of childhood are largely written by adults, usually to reinforce what Henry Jenkins has called “the myth of childhood innocence”—an ideal that envisions the child as somehow universal, apolitical, and sacred. “Too often,” Jenkins writes,
our culture imagines childhood as a utopian space, separate from adult cares and worries, free from sexuality, outside social divisions, closer to nature and the primitive world, more fluid in its identity and its access to the realms of imagination, beyond historical change, more just, pure, and innocent, and in the end, waiting to be corrupted or protected by adults.
Bound by the contradiction of being vulnerable to politics and at the same time magically beyond its purview, the figure of the child in popular culture does not reflect material realities. Instead, as Lee Edelman says in his 2004 book No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, the image is of a “fantasmatic Child”: a repository of utopian hopes and dreams but also a battleground of deep-seated and incoherent cultural anxieties.
Two examples of popular media from this year, the viral Max/Investigation Discovery docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV and the A24 sci-fi/horror film I Saw the TV Glow, reveal the limits of the childhood innocence myth. They both also happen to draw attention to two major cultural forces so often blamed for corrupting the innocent child: television and queerness. Interestingly, both texts link these two forces together, albeit in distinct ways and to different ends. In Quiet on Set, viewers witness the toxic treatment of child actors working for the popular kids’ cable network Nickelodeon in the 1990s and early 2000s. The majority of the docuseries attributes the on-set abuses to a handful of “bad apples”—including two queer Nickelodeon employees—and each episode unpacks in detail the specific nature of their transgressions. By compiling and displaying evidence of Nickelodeon’s mishandling of child stars in the making of its shows, Quiet on Set proposes that television for children comes at a significant cost to children. As the title suggests, the making of kids’ TV must involve a “dark side”—one that includes but is not limited to the suppression, abuse, and manipulation of vulnerable young stars by adults who may care more about the business of “kids’ TV” than they do about actual kids.
I Saw the TV Glow, written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, also links queerness and television. Rather than present television as threatening in the “bogeyman” sense, the film suggests that TV is a disruptive force to the status quo; in the film, it threatens both the imaginary separateness of kids’ TV from other types of media and the myth that childhood is somehow devoid of or separate from queer and trans ways of life. The film centers on a different kind of youth-focused television that emerged in the same historical moment as Nickelodeon: the meteoric rise of the WB and UPN networks in the year 1995 and the “youth market” that became their demographic targets. The two main characters, teenagers Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), share an obsession with a coming-of-age, supernatural horror series called The Pink Opaque that airs on the “Young Adult Network,” a fictionalized WB/UPN counterpart. When both Owen and Maddy become hyper-identified with the two teen protagonists at center of the program (whose mission is to slay villains sent by the “big bad” Mr. Melancholy week after week), their existence as suburban teenagers—and their desire to eventually lead normal lives as adults—is thrown into doubt.
Described by the director as an allegory for the experience of coming out as trans, I Saw the TV Glow constructs an analogy between the fantasy worlds that television may provide us and the not-so-distant fantasy of creating a queer life outside of the norms often prescribed for children. The choice between what is queer and what is normative materializes when The Pink Opaque eventually impels one of the teens, Maddy, to reject the reality of suburban life in favor of a different universe, while Owen is left with the choice to remain in his current reality—despite knowing there might be a challenging but fulfilling alternative—or to follow Maddy to an unknown plane of existence.
Both Quiet on Set and I Saw the TV Glow explore anxieties around television, gender, sexuality, and queerness, but both also confront the impossibility of “kids’ TV.” Each text, in its respective style and subject matter, points to the potential hazards of seeing both kids’ media and children themselves as existing in a vacuum, apart from the realities of adulthood. Both texts also suggest the inevitable damage that results from adults’ investment in producing certain ideas of the child—harm that ranges from the literal and physical to the figural and symbolic—and in pushing on children ideas of the good life grounded in financial and commercial success, rather than other metrics of happiness and fulfillment. The medium of television at the center of Quiet on Set and I Saw the TV Glow becomes an interesting zone to challenge the tensions at the heart of what we consider “good” for kids, in part because television itself is so often assumed to be “bad” for them. Quiet on Set and I Saw the TV Glow suggest that it is not television itself that is inherently good or bad; instead, they illustrate how TV becomes imbued with specific values to different and sometimes disparate ends. If both I Saw the TV Glow and Quiet on Set show the figure of the child under threat, the former locates that threat not in television but in the surrounding culture. By contrast, Quiet on Set seems to hold out on the promise of television’s “good” (consumer) influence on children, if only it can be saved from a few “big bad” executives and crew members. ... (click link to read full Article)
#article#lgbtqia#child abuse#child actors#I Saw The TV Glow#los angeles review of books#la review of books#The Impossibility of Children's Television#Kids TV#Nickelodeon#Jane Schoenbrun
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who do you think is the most obsessive when it comes to their partners? i think the top of my list would be deku totes oblivious he’s doing it he has like tons of journals just based on u
Questions like this always make me laugh cuz *victoria justice voice* I think they're ALL obsessive. That being said, how exactly are we defining obsessive, though? For this, I'm just gonna go w/ "obsessed😍"
Anyway... Deku OBVIOUSLY, like you said, and not just w/ journals ("y/n made _ for dinner today") but like. drawings of you, too. Whenever he has a spare moment and a pencil, be it in meetings, or even on the phone, you're the first thing he sketches out. Or it's the outfit you were wearing when he last saw you. Or the activity you were doing, like a little doodle of your sunscreen bottle or... idk. Your morning drink.
He leaves that shit around the house, too. You're constantly stumbling across sticky notes with your face on them cuz he forgot to pack up his work stuff.
Bakugo is also obsessive... but more in the way of like... looking up your location. He doesn't even care where you are or what you're doing... he just wants to know. And it's funny cuz someone will walk in his office and the map will be up on his desktop... and even though he's hardly paying attention to it (except to refresh every 20 minutes) it's almost as if he's like. on a date with you except from far away LOL.
He'll also like... text you about it throughout the day or ask how your Starbucks was even if you didn't tell him you went. Also I feel like he always needs to drive you to + from everywhere.
And Todoroki is obsessive because he's the one who constantly wants to be on video call with you. Not even talking really but like. just being there and listening and/or watching whatever it is you're doing while he does his own thing.
It's funny in a way too, cuz Dabi is also kinda like that, actually. Not so much w/ speaking but... in how he always wants to texts. Even though he sucks at it.
"sup" + "hey whats up?" + "nothing wbu" + "oh i'm _" + "cool. wyd now?" + "the same thing?" + "oh ok nice. wb now?"
Like... lmao. And now that I think about it... Shiggy is worse because he's like Sho and Dabs COMBINED. His stupid little face peaking out of your pocket at the grocery store complaining about how he can't see what you're buying or who you're talking to. The cashier, you bung nut.
Lmao also Shinso. Obsessive in the "I need to participate in all your hobbies" way. Can't watch a TV show by yourself without him watching it the next day, too. Can't start an art project without him needing to sit there all sleepy next to you. Even go for a walk, or it's "let me put my socks on."
;jaosdfjasdjf idk. I think they all have something. Kirishima's is that he's always gotta be touching you in some way. Even if that means touching feet in a restaurant.
#bakugo#shinso#deku#dabi#shigaraki#kirishima#todoroki#sorry if this is bad#i wanted to do denki and sero too but *fart*#caitie things#ask#anon
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Regarding how Supernatural sees and literally portrays its own fans: there are the cringy loser man (who also turn out to be gay which is of course even worse), the straight fetishizing women and the delusional queer fangirls. What I don't understand: where are the fans that Supernatural actually wants? The 'real' fans, the actual target group, so I suppose cool straight dude bros? They're never shown as fans of the show! Because how Supernatural portrays is, it's actually cringe to like Supernatural at all which is funnily just the show shitting on itself (and also true). Or what do you think?
I mean I think you hit the nail on the head, it’s cringe to like supernatural! specifically it’s cringe to like supernatural with a passion, which is funny because like, kripke’s original pitch mentions buffy, the x-files, star wars, properties with active fan communities who rooted for pairings and continue to write fic. it feels like those fans come with the territory! it’s genre fiction! but of course supernatural also came up at the perfect time for its writers to have a better awareness of their fan communities than most of the stuff that came before them, and, what’s more is they chose to do that. becky, demian, and barnes are all names of forum mods from back in the day. they’re mean-spirited caricatures, but they are also currency! in-text acknowledgment! that’s a powerful drug. how mad can you be that you’re getting made fun of for having no life outside a silly tv show that thinks you’re a loser when you’re now a character in that tv show!
it’s difficult to source who supernatural was technically supposed to be for, there’s no actual quote of kripke naming teenage white boys as his target audience, but I did dig up this bad boy from 2009 that suggests dawn ostroff (the cw’s president at the time) was not happy the property pitched as being for males ages 13-25 was instead attracting women 14-45. I mean, we know the first two seasons of supernatural were “the DVDs most requested by armed forces personnel in iraq and afghanistan,” so clearly on some level the “intended audience” was being reached, but it seems at least the perception on the inside was those poor boys were getting massively outflanked by women. there’s a couple levels to this. first of all, the show premiered on the wb. it’s not to say the network couldn’t attempt to attract new viewers (and this was probably part of the intent of the show), but teen soaps were in its dna. they had no way to STOP the women already tuning in for gilmore girls from keeping the tv on another hour. second, though the show is purportedly “about” topics that read as exclusive to men (cars, rock, violence), there’s an obvious appeal to people attracted to men in its casting choices and the way its shot. like jensen didn’t do that fucking titantic necklace ad because he’s the epitome of masculinity, he did it because he was an androgynous dicaprio-type cutie! sure, his look may have been aspirational to teenage boys wanting that same type of attention, but again, there’s no way to prevent women from getting it directly from the source! and for all the show claims to tell us about the single man tear stoicism of it all, dean cries like a little bitch. because he’s not the action hero, not at first! he’s a scared kid who was forced to grow up. and sam’s fucking dean from gilmore girls! he’s got the bangs and the goofy smile! these aren’t the guys the women watching wanted protecting them, they were guys they wanted to provide comfort. and the camera plays into it! as our good friend sheila o’malley puts it, jensen and jared “are objectified in a way usually reserved for female stars.” you can discuss this in terms of a male objectification fantasy, there’s a wonderful post out there equating the compromising positions sam and dean find themselves in on hunts to a sort of bodice-ripper erotic thrill in being taken control of, but that only provides more space for the comfort fantasy. and this is nothing to say of just being interested in the genre! that the attention of female fans is devalued and assumed to have less complexity than the relationship men have to their beloved works. which is CRAZY because lgbt fans and women in fandom are the entire reason supernatural even made it this far! yes, there are swaths of “regular” people at home who watched supernatural in a non-obsessive way, but they weren’t the reason the show saw a 27 percent increase in its audience over the ninth season. that’s passionate fans, and fan communities encouraging passionate fans of other things to join them. supernatural might not have explicitly wanted these fans, but they are the reason for its success at almost any stage of the show’s airing and, while they may have been creating fanwork outside the bounds of the text, their reasons for coming to the show were not invented. what gets me riled up about “fan fiction” is I enjoy 99% of it, the one thing I can’t stand being the suggestion that what the fans are doing is based on a reading of the show the text itself doesn’t support. the text supports it because YOU put it there! just like you put everything else there that already made the show appeal to people outside the “target” audience! all of which is to say. I don’t know who the fuck supernatural was meant for. I don’t really care except in the moments it illuminates something within the text for me or when this idea is wielded effectively in the “ring ring! eric!” type jabs on here. because the show had the audience it had! it didn’t have any other! it took all that fucking con money and continues to do so, I don’t think there’s any better metric than cold hard cash.
#honestlyhaunted#every day i say i will not do fandom studies. and then i do fandom studies. well#spn#answered#rereading this sheila piece before i post it and like wow. this woman makes me feel deeply normal#i understand i am ignoring something here and i am choosing to ignore it so if you send me an ask like 'also this' well. i'll ignore that
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Two cents from a female cis-het passing queer person who grew up in a deeply compulsory heterosexual environment. Media and mainstream het culture socialises girls and women to identify so much deeply problematic and violent male behaviour as perfectly normal, romantic behaviour. Prime example, Spike and Buffy. imo this is heavily reflected in the mlm slash ships that straight people love to fetishize, prime example St*r*k. When I discovered they were a ship it made me really sad.
Oh, you're preaching to the choir.
That was a pattern I picked up on years ago, one that I actually had to look for, because as a guy, I was told that it was okay to behave like the men we saw on television. Well... half told. My grandmother always told me to be nice first, because if you start off by being an asshole, no one's ever going to think your anything but an asshole. I also realized all on my own that maybe I should just care about other people, but that's just me.
The thing that really gets me about this phenomenon is that it's on here. Naturally, I don't expect Tumblr to be completely absent of this, but come on! This is Tumblr! You could throw a stick and hit a post about how men shouldn't treat women like that, or how women shouldn't put up with it, but then those very same people turn around and make apology posts for Kylo Ben, or Snape, or Damon Salvatore or Klaus Mikaelson or Spike. Oh, god, Spike! That whole "romance" (see: obsession) between the two just blew my mind, even back when the show was airing (yes, I'm old enough to remember when it aired on the WB and then UPN).
The fact that anyone can look at the intersections between Buffy and Spike and call that a romance disgusts me. And that's without even including the attempted rape. Just his obsession with her since the fourth season and how that spiraled into everything. That show really should have just ended at season five.
Spike is actually the earliest example that I've seen of a fandom loving a villain so much that the production decides to keep bringing them back. Except, you can't keep them around as the villain (y'know, the version of the character that everyone fell in love with), because it eventually gets to the point of "why can't the heroes beat the villain?" Simple, we'll give them a Tragic Backstory™, have them make the sad puppy eyes, and bam! We got us an antihero.
And people just eat that shit up.
It happened with both Damon and Klaus on The Vampire Diaries and The Originals. We have two characters who are introduced as these outright villains, killing people for their own amusement or to prove a point, but fans loved them so much that they got turned into antiheroes and all their bad deeds forgiven. I mean, its outright nauseating to see the way Damon treated Elena throughout the run of the show, invading her personal space, trying to compel her into kissing him, manhandling her, taking her choices away, and fans calling that love. Same with Klaus, who repeatedly threatened Caroline, actually tried to kill her (twice!), and Kl*r*line shippers thing that's the peak of romantic behavior because Klaus makes the sad puppy eyes. (See also: Theo from Teen Wolf)
And don't even get me started on the fandom fixation on Bonkai!
It all stems down to this weird phenomenon where one of the two characters is a self-insert for the reader/viewer, because they want to bang the male character/actor. That's why Rey is usually written so one-dimensional in R*ylo fics, because the reader is thirsty for Adam Driver. And that, of course, just leads us back to Teen Wolf and St*r*k. Although, that one's a little tricky, because you'd think that so many of these St*r*k shippers would insert themselves into Stiles (which there are a fair share that do), but more often than not, Derek acts as the self-insert, because most of the fans want to bang Dylan O'Brien. Seriously, I will never understand fandom's fascination with white twinks, but it's an all-encompassing thing.
Part of me understands because I'm old enough to remember the early years of internet fandom. Okay, I was there for FF.net before the purges. I remember Anne Rice's militant legal campaign against her own fans. I remember when the BNFs started gatekeeping, harassing the self-insert OCs in fanfic. Hell, I remember Ms. Scribe and the Inner Circle! I have seen things! And that crackdown against OCs was what led to the rise of fangirls in the slash fandom. Equal parts hiding from the BNFs and fetishizing mlm sexuality for their own amusement/pleasure.
The thing that really baffles me about it all is why St*r*I. Ignoring the obvious reasons (*cough*racism*cough*), why them. As I already pointed out, Tumblr loves their posts about self worth and not standing for abuse, but then turn around and advocate for one of the most abusive crack ships I've ever seen. Why not, say, Scott and Danny, who had actual moments that, if taken out of context, could be portrayed as moments of a building romance ("its Armani"), or Scott and Isaac ("Be careful"/"I don't want you to get hurt" and "Dude, I love Mexican"). Like, the subtext between Scott and Isaac was so strong that one could just call it text.
We had four canonically gay characters (Danny, Ethan, Mason and Corey) and yet the focus is still on two straight characters. Hell, Mason was literally the version of Stiles that fandom cooked up (incredibly smart, did the research, openly gay, had a crush on a hot werewolf that he was very open about) and yet he doesn't get even a fraction of the attention that Stiles does, despite fulfilling the criteria they claim they want in the form of more queer representation. It can't be because he's black, right? I mean, they've told me they're not racist, despite numerous examples of racism, so it's hard to know what to believe (insert sarcasm here).
But still, fandom put these two characters that couldn't stand each other, and who both had much stronger connections to Scott, together in their heads and then cried queerbaiting when they didn't get what they wanted. There comes a point where you have to question whether these people are that influenced by media and propaganda or they're being willfully ignorant.
Anyway, thanks for listening. Apparently I had more of that bottle up inside than I thought so thanks for giving me an outlet to express my frustration. And now, back to your regularly scheduled blogging.
#ask and ye shall recieve#fandom racism#fandom nonsense#anti sterek#anti reylo#anti klaroline#anti delena#anti bonkai#anti spuffy#teen wolf fandom problems
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listen this fanfic I just read
So uhhhhhhhhhhhh ok backstory: In high school, we had to do independent research projects on an author, and my favorite English teacher assigned me Lady Gregory, who you probably haven’t heard of but she was a patroness of WB Yeats so just sort of, waft your mind around that sort of era and you’ll get the idea. Anyway one of the things she did was to translate some of Ireland’s old myth-cycles into English, very poetically and Victorian-ly.
So i read them, and this was 1996 and I was very impressionable, and anyway within short order I was utterly obsessed with the Tain, and read a bunch of other translations of it, and took a few classes on that and the Mabinogion and such in college-- even took a semester of Medieval Welsh which was largely useful in that it taught me I was not cut out to be a scholar and stopped me from applying to grad school, so, thanks for that.
Anyway. The point this really boils down to is that there was not yet really an Internet, and there was nowhere outside of classes for me to talk to anyone about these stories I was so obsessed with, and so for years I’ve had the books and occasionally go back and suck myself into them again and get obsessive again (I can see Gods And Fighting Men from where I am sitting right this moment, it’s face-out on a bookshelf next to the couch), and it wasn’t until a reblog of something unrelated crossed my dash here on this Tungle hellsite that I saw the person’s URL and it was something about Cúchulainn and I was like... wait... there is... an online fandom... now... about the Táin... of fucking course there is.
so anyway I just very happily spent several hours reading a self-described “ridiculous college AU of the Tain” in which Láeg is a depressed grad student and Cú Chulainn is his precocious freshman flatmate. It’s part of a series called Group Chats Of The Ulster Cycle. It is unreasonably good, for such an unprepossessing description. There’s half-revealed backstory drama with a university official’s sexual harassment scandal that’s actually the tale of Dierdre of the Sorrows, and as part of it, there’s a side story where Dierdre, in exile, is trying to get Naoise’s cousin to bring her a strap-on because she can’t shop online from her exile in Skye and Naoise! needs! to! get! pegged! (oh my god he does, in every translation available, this is canon and i just didn’t have the knowledge to make that analysis before)
Also Cú Chulainn is trans, which-- yes, obviously that makes a shitload of sense if you consider the original source material, in which his origin story is a garbled mess of confusion and throughout the entire saga his opponents consistently refuse to fight him because he is small and has no beard and they refuse to believe he’s a grown man. Oh my god. In 1996 I did not even know people could be trans but now I can see that it’s like, the best fucking interpretation of the text. (Láeg drives him around sometimes in his shitty car. Oh my god. [in canon Láeg is his charioteer, that’s it, that’s the joke, it’s fantastic. Of course the precocious Cú doesn’t have a driver’s license in this story, he’s barely old enough.])
Anyway tl;dr sometimes you learn something so early in your life there’s no context and your life grows up around it and you need to re-experience it later to develop a new understanding of it and so like thanks for that, @trans-cuchulainn, you don’t know me but I love you.
My only concern: the current plot is developing around Cúchulainn’s burgeoning relationship with his new ballet dance partner Ferdía and uh well we know how that ended in canon so I am really really really nervous of where this dance competition storyline is possibly going, there.
All play, all sport until Ferdia came to the ford. I thought beloved Ferdia would live forever after me --yesterday, a mountain slope today, only a shade.
(why yes, that is Thomas Kinsella’s translation, which took me twenty-five seconds to find because it was on a shelf in the other room, not shelved next to the Gregory translation. The page was marked with a piece of paper on which I’d scribbled down the courses required for an English lit minor.)
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thoughts about being 29 on the internet that i just had in the shower...
...and had to write down. they were all basically just about how f**king - NEW. and surreal. the internet, its capabilities, and its fandoms can still be to me sometimes. i feel like i forget this a lot. but when i think about it, i can easily recall my wonder at discovering that it all existed in waves of smaller finds. and because i know there are others like me, i thought i’d share some of my own experiences. because honestly, i’ve had fewer years on tumblr and sites like it than some people much younger than me. i’m catching up and enjoying it.
firstly, i know i’m old to some of you, but i’m not really old. not really. i’m still a millennial, screwed over by student loans and old white men and viewed as part of the technological generation. i’m a phd student, and because i’m always on a college campus, i’ve been mistaken as a freshman. a few times. but it’s been fascinating to witness actual freshman and other college students and consider just how different things are for them and honestly? i’m sort of jealous.
because...
i can remember when i first discovered that fanfiction existed. i was in third period tech skills as a junior in high school - 16 years old - and got a little off-topic and searched for spoilers for a new supernatural episode. this was in 2005 and the show had just come out (yes i still watch, i can’t escape).
and what did i find? somehow? fanfiction.net. i was, no exaggeration, shocked. i sat and read a full-length chaptered fic in episodic format. my mouth was hanging open. i saw thousands more fics in hundreds of fandoms and suddenly felt less strange for envisioning full-scale episode re-imaginings in my head as i laid in bed, dissatisfied with what i had just watched. (btw, i watched new supernatural episodes the sunday after they used to originally air on the wb on thursdays, at my mom’s house where i had my own room and own tiny tv, because no one at my dad’s house wanted to watch and streaming episodes wasn’t something i could even imagine. plus i didn’t have internet at my dad’s house. i know.)
not only that, but i was impressed as hell. here was me, not even aware that you could somehow upload your own text to the internet, and people were not simply writing polished stories in private but posting them somewhere that allowed for chapters. that allowed for people all over the world to read their words. that categorized everything into a huge virtual library. and, most incredibly to me, that allowed for reviews from people around the world.
i couldn’t believe that this new world was open to me. that people would be so generous as to offer amazing stories to me to read FOR FREE. that i had a limitless supply of content to read and review. i barely had functioning internet at home, so i had been sheltered. i told the people sitting next to me in class about it and encouraged them to check it out, mostly to blank stares. i may have even told the teacher, but no one cared. i didn’t understand. who wouldn’t be interested? i told my dad and my sister about it when i got home from school. i was mind-blown.
months in and many reads and written reviews later, i wrote my first fic. it was for smallville. 6 chapters, with updates every few days, that received 14 reviews in total. i read them all multiple times. i showed my sister. i checked the story stats every half hour. i cried. i wrote on the family computer secretly in the evening when most of my family had gone upstairs, because i was about half a year away from owning my first laptop. i wrote more stories sporadically for about 6 years, gradually getting better, but also gradually becoming more stressed and aware of negativity, online arguments, and the embarrassment and shame i suddenly felt about having an online presence. i found a supernatural forum at tv.com (the forums sadly no longer exist), learned about fandom, and immersed myself in posting and being part of a community that i thought understood me more than my friends. like a secret life.
during my first year of college, in 2007, i was in a friend’s dorm when he asked everyone if we wanted to watch an episode of scrubs. i laughed. surely he was joking. “how can we just watch an episode? it’s not on now and you don’t have the dvds.” i literally didn’t consider that there may have been a way. he excitedly told us that he had found some website that had episodes just... pre-uploaded. and that you could just click. i didn’t believe him. the stress of having to be at the tv at a certain time each week for fear of missing an episode entirely and forever was just part of being a fan, right? buying the tv guide and checking listings was necessary. but he found the episode. and clicked. it only took a few full minutes to load and there it was. again, i was astounded. this memory is so shockingly clear to me. it changed how i spent much of my free time, for one. just that moment.
sometime during this first year of college, i was home for break and came across a video on youtube, this new website i had started to use. it reminded me of ebaum’s world, which my friend would show me at her house sometimes because her computer was faster than mine. it was called “cat soup”, and by two guys that called themselves smosh. it had more views than i could comprehend - probably not much more than 5 digits, but still. they were just two kids i could have gone to school with who could create a funny video and get famous. again, i was shocked. mind-blown.
i showed my sister, my mom, and all my friends. they appreciated it a bit more than the fanfiction, but no one seemed to grasp how incredible and revolutionary it was. they all liked “shoes”, with the kelly persona by liam kyle sullivan (we still quote it today), probably because its budget and effects made it a bit more familiarly professional and it appeared less homemade (though it definitely was). but i couldn’t forget smosh. i was so impressed by them. i watched more videos and eventually found communitychannel and jenna marbles and eviliguana and shane dawson. i even found fan edits for my faves, buffy (maybe i saw one of phil’s, lol) and supernatural and smallville, and tried making my own. i freaked in 2009 or so when fred reached a million subscribers. a million. i couldn’t wrap my head around that. again, i told my sister and friends, expecting them to see the enormity of something so crazy happening, and they just... didn’t.
back in 2008, after watching “stick it” again, i recalled the name of a gymnast my cousin used to always talk about when we were kids - from the 1996 olympics - and looked her up on youtube. i realized that all gymnastics competitions imaginable had been uploaded. again - not to be repetitive - but i was shocked. there’s no better word. i gave myself a thorough education on the sport, traveling through time. i am still so grateful that i was able to do that.
sometime in 2009, my friends started pestering me to create a facebook account. i was a junior in college. 20 years old already. it sounded weird - pictures of me online? why? but i gave into pressure and made one. my mom had never allowed us to make a myspace; we were a bit young, and she hated the idea (now, she’s on facebook more than i am). around the same time i got my fanciest phone yet - an LG Env3. i figured out that it could access the internet and that i could use songs to create ringtones. again, sufficiently mind-blown. considering my first cell phone had been a flip phone with no camera that i shared with my sister during emergencies when i was 13, i felt that technology was coming along fast.
smart phones were foreign to me for a long long time, until recently actually. i thought they were unnecessary for quite a while. i don’t even remember what phones i had at the end of college and through grad school, but i’m pretty sure they consisted of a series of cheap pay-as-you-go phones from walmart. in 2013, i went to china for a year to teach. i got a cheap phone there and used it for about 7 months. one day, a friend of mine gave me his old htc smartphone because he was getting a new one. i didn’t know how to use it, but i played one app on repeat before class and snapped some low-quality photos. after that, i almost immediately went to indonesia for another 9 months to teach high school (2014-2015). the htc phone died very quickly, so i used the nokia brick phone given to me by the organization. it was fine. i had never even used my old smartphone to access the internet, aside from wechat, thanks to china’s internet blocks. it wasn’t until i got home, in the summer of 2015, that i finally got an iphone. it was a huge deal and a big learning curve. it was also around this time that i found dan and phil and tumblr. i only got my macbook two years ago and finally think i have some things figured out.
so i may be old in some ways and remember floppy disks and the card catalog and using encyclopedias to write my middle school papers and huge computers with black screens and green text that displayed math problems in elementary school. i may be able to remember the sound of ancient, huge printers that used reams of paper with perforated, tearable strips down each side. i may remember aol red, dial-up, and not being able to connect if someone was on the phone. but i can also remember watching technology evolve in front of me, discovering fandom and the huge world of content and friendship that lay ahead. and when people try to say i’m too old to like dan and phil, i remind them that dan and phil can also remember. we’re the same age. i relate to them and their stories. to phil’s buffy obsession. to dan’s love of smosh. i’ve only had about 10 fully-cognizant years here on the internet, and only a couple in the world of tumblr and iphones and mobile apps. i’m young in those ways. and i look young enough that strangers sometimes think i’m a teenager.
that’s laughable to me in some ways, because i’ve lived so much since my teen years. so much has happened. but in others, i don’t feel much different. there’s no age where you just feel grown up. that your interests vanish. that things suddenly seem childish and dumb. yes, i cringe about some things i wrote or did back then and i think i’ve matured, but my interests are all still relatively similar and i can finally explore them in ways that i just couldn’t before.
i hope that this has made sense. and i hope that some can relate.
#fandom#text post#sorry about this#i had to get it out#stories#me#dan and phil#kind of#well i mention them
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My problem with DCEU’s Birds Of Prey
I was excited that we are gonna see Black Canary, Huntress and Montoya as the Question and possibly Barbara as Oracle and Cassandra Cain’s live action debut. But then I read the rumored synopsis.
"After splitting up with The Joker, Harley Quinn and three other female superheroes – Black Canary, Huntress and Renee Montoya – come together to save the life of a little girl (Cassandra Cain) from an evil crime lord."
Okay if this rumor is true. I honestly have no interest in this movie.
It is rumored that Black Mask will be the villain of the movie and are you serious? Do you honestly expect me to believe that Black Mask can subdue and hold Cassandra Cain hostage? It would be ONE THING if this were Lady Shiva or David Cain. But Black Mask? Cassandra Cain would absolutely DESTROY Roman Sionis. The mere thought that Cass needs saving from Sionis is preposterous and idiotic. This is how you’re gonna introduce Cassandra Cain, the best Batgirl, Bruce’s daughter and one of the best combatants in the DCU? What the actual fuck are you even doing?
Now to my issue with Harley.
“Harley joins The Birds Of Prey” Let me stop you right there. It is already canon in the DCEU that Harley Quinn helped The Joker murder Jason Todd. Do you honestly think Barbara and Helena would ever accept Harley’s help? Do you honestly think there is a force alive that could stop Helena Bertinelli from killing Harley Quinn for what she and Joker did to Jason? And if DC chose to keep Zack Snyder’s bullshit of Dick being the Robin who died, do you fucking really expect me to believe Barbara to ever accept Harley Quinn’s help if Dick was the Robin who died? The mere concept that Barbara and Helena would ever accept Harley’s help after what Joker and Harley did to Jason is complete and utter bullshit. Harley has already shown in Suicide Squad that she’s a villain. “We’re bad guys, it’s what we do” Harley and Joker are in love in these movies. Harley willingly went home with The Joker, showing that she loves him. Whether Margot Robbie, WB/DC likes it or not The Joker and Harley love each other.
And now I need to address the real problem I have with how DC treats Harley.
Harley Quinn is a villain.
Harleen Quinzel chose to become Harley Quinn. Harleen Quinzel was not tortured or thrown in chemicals to become Harley Quinn. Harleen Quinzel fell in love with The Joker in therapy. There is a large portion of manipulation on The Joker’s part, but it was Harleen’s choice to become Harley Quinn. She’s not a victim of The Joker’s madness, she chose to become who she is.
Their relationship isn’t one sided abuse it’s an on and off again relationship. The Joker and Harley are both insane and dysfunctional, there is no way this can be a normal and healthy relationship because that is the complete opposite of these two characters. No one is saying the relationship is healthy nor do I suggest it to be healthy or a relationship to strive towards. It’s meant to be a violent, unstable relationship. It’s also fictional. It’s a fictional relationship between two horrible, demented murdering clowns. To pretend the relationship is a run of the mill one that’s portrayed as healthy is just preposterous. Same with pretending the relationship isn’t also filled with a sick, twisted romance. Romanticizing Joker/Harley isn’t the problem. The problem is encouraging the behaviors, which no one is. And I love them together, they are like the psychotic clownish super villain Bonnie And Clyde. The Joker DOES love Harley, he is incapable of showing it normally because he has never felt love for anyone and because he’s trash. If he didn’t love Harley he would have killed her ages ago, if all he needed was a way out of Arkham, Harley would have been killed. He tries to kill her to push her away because he thinks that romance is a distraction and alien. Really, Joker sees Harley as the perfect partner. and this is according to Harley’s creator Paul Dini, The Joker himself Mark Hamil and Harley herself Arleen Sorkin “He loves her as much as he can. He loves her in his way.” -Paul Dini “…That, to me, is kinda their private life. Joker opens up and in those moments he is whatever he is at his core and all his demons come in. And the only one he trusts with that is Harley, or Harley’s the only one who knows how to deal with him in those moments.” -Paul Dini “Expressing emotion in any way that’s real and meaningful is alien to The Joker, but he’s learning those parts of himself, however unconsciously, through Harley.” -Mark Hamil “Everyone else sees The Joker laugh; only Harley has ever seen him cry.” -Arleen Sorkin She’s completely and utterly obsessed and in love with The Joker. She loves Ivy too, but her heart is primarily with Joker. Hell there was a comic where Joker was all nice and sweet to Harley and eventually Harley became bored and tried to get the old Joker back. Harley is in love with the mad clown, Harley wouldn’t have it any other way.
Harley Quinn is not a hero nor is she a anti-hero as DC has been trying to reshape her as. Harley Quinn IS A VILLAIN! Harley is not this role-model, she is a psychopath and a villain. Harley is not as psychotic as The Joker, Harley Quinn can be just as dangerous. Harley isn’t this precious baby, she isn’t a precious teddy bear and she isn’t someone to coddle regardless of how much you love her. She doesn’t need to be protected from The Joker when she’s a super villain who has murdered her fair share of people and can hold her own against The Joker. She’s also crazy exuberant and peppy. She’s lighthearted evil.
Harley Quinn isn’t a pushover or defenseless cinnamon roll “that must be protected at all costs”. Harley can defend herself and kick Joker’s ass, she can hold her own against Batman(Harley came the closest to killing Batman) or any of the rouge’s gallery and she can fought Mercy Graves and she won that fight!
Harley works best as a second in command/follower. Why? Because she became a villain in the first place to follow someone. And she as a villain only follows two people, Joker and Ivy. She has no motivation if she’s not following someone else, and her character is not meant to be heroic or quirky. She’s obsessive, lovesick and is solely devoted to her two loves. She kills for Joker and Ivy, she steals for them, she collaborated with them. If she’s not with one of them, her heart isn’t in it. And having her own solo series had rendered her into just another generic female anti hero. And since she was created to be a sidekick, she really works best in small doses. Trying to overwrite her character weakens the complexities of her.
Harleen Quinzel did not come to Arkham Asylum to help people. Harleen was power hungry and saw the inmates as a get rich quick scheme for a book and wanted to be the one to understand The Joker’s secrets and what made him what he is. In her own words. “I’ve always had an attraction for extreme personalities, they’re more exciting more challenging. You can’t deny there’s an element of glamour to these super criminals.”
Harley’s dad was and is a con artist. He’s been in and out of jail, constantly cheating on Harley’s mom, duping rich women for everything they have. Growing up in Bensonhurst around her constantly cheating and lying father, being left in squalor with her bitter mom and slacker brother, Harley vowed she’d be different, make a difference and actually be somebody. But it’s the classic tale of growing up to be what you hate. Harley loved cutting corners like her dad, though I imagine she always justified that to herself by saying she was actually going to make a difference, unlike her con artist father. And then she also became her mother, by falling in with The Joker, who is scarily a lot like her father.
Harleen Quinzel was already traumatized and unstable from her fiance committing suicide right front of her but went into Arkham right after that anyways because she wanted to study the inmates from Arkham Asylum and wanted to study The Joker so she could be famous for learning his secrets, which we all know what happened. I would say the madness was already in Harley just buried underneath, The Joker just helped it surface.
Like it or not The Joker and Harley are made for each other. Harley’s entire character is built around The Joker. The only way Harley would ever be free from Joker’s influence is if she stripped away the clown aesthetic, stopped calling herself Harley Quinn and became Harleen Quinzel again. Harley is supposed to be obsessed with the Joker and no one else, she was created for The Joker. In my opinion, taking away the obsession a character is literally built around will not improve it. Everything would have been different if Harley hadn’t been built around the Joker, but she was created for him, therefore taking her away from him not only is out of character, but is also bad for the character itself. Joker, like it or not, was and still is what made Harley a special, complex character. Harley Quinn does not work without The Joker and does not work by trying to make her a hero or an anti-hero. She was created to be a villain and taking that away does not work at all
The issue with Harlivy. I love Harley and Ivy together but I hate what The New 52 and Rebirth and Jimmy Palmiotti & Amanda Conner have turned them into. This has to do largely because Poison Ivy is no longer Poison Ivy. In the New 52, Poison Ivy is no longer an eco-terrorist/feminist, she no longer hates humans, she has no character and is just a cardboard cutout who is Harley’s love interest. And if you hate Joker/Harley because it’s an abusive relationship that’s fine and dandy but do not act like Harley/Ivy are the perfect girlfriends. Both relationships are not good for Harley. Ivy is abusive and manipulative of Harley. Ivy has beaten Harley, guilt-trips and manipulates Harley to abandon Joker for her, and further toys with her mind, restricts her daily life, and threatens her if she ever shows any interest to leave Ivy to go back to Joker. Ivy has poisoned her, left her for dead, had fantasies about strangling her, and all because Harley annoyed Ivy and either messed up their plans or put her plants in danger. Ivy is not the perfect girlfriend for Harley that the fans choose to picture, Ivy is a super villain who has no regard for human life, Harley is the only exception, but even sometimes Ivy wants to kill Harley and has tried many times to do so. She is not the character The New 52 and Rebirth keeps telling you she is. I love Harley/Ivy but the New 52 and it’s fans have pretty much driven me away, I love them in DCAU and in the pre-DCU but I do not ignore the abuse.
I don’t think some fans love Harley. They are in love with the idea of who they think Harley Quinn is and they reject the previous universe/classic version of Harley. Fans are willing to accept the New 52 version over classic. In the New 52 Harley is no longer the villain we love. She’s a looney toon female deadpool. I love that they made Harley/Ivy a thing but the writers do not understand either character AT ALL. It’s sad really. A character who is so well written in the past but instead the majority of her fandom prefers a watered down version that is not her, but a generic Deadpool clone and prefer to have Ivy be totally out of character just so Harley and her can be in a relationship.
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What are My top ten favorite Movies and TV shows ???
Hi everyone you for a while now you may have caught on by reading my nature blog that I am kind of a nerd for more than just nature. I am now opening my blog to more than just nature but at about all my interests as a whole. You may think of me as more of a naturalist but there is a whole side of me that I would like to talk about.
It is convention season for all of us Nerds. The Dallas Fan Expo will be starting in Dallas pretty soon which I will not be able to attend this year but I am going to a con this year with my brother. I thought it would cool to talk about my top 10 favorite TV and Movie franchises to kind of give you a window into the other part of my life that I hold most near and dear. Note that these franchises are not necessarily in the correct order because I can’t really decide which ones are my true favortie as a whole. (Hint I go over this in earlier posts.) So lets get started.
Cartoons! are one of my favorite things to watch when I am in need of a good laugh so I nearly always turn to a few like Talespin, Darkwing Duck, Chip n’ Dale Rescue Rangers, Pokemon (only up to seasons 1-8) or a whole load of others. One has earned its place really near and dear to my heart and that would be this fan favorite
Who doesn’t love a good runabout with the Warner Brothers Yakko, Wakko, and the Warner Sister Dot on the 90s classic Animaniacs. I grew up in the 90s and absolutly loved Animaniacs from the start. Ever since I was little I was obsessed with the WB kids block and this show had me laughing the whole time. It makes fun out of pop culture as a whole, has catchy songs, goofy wit, classic slapstick, and tons of references and entertaining songs. I love this show and have gone back and watched many of the episodes and the truth is they still have me nearly laughing till I am on my butt doubled over. I love their jabs at Star Trek, Disney films, and many of the other things I watched as a kid. That is not all they make fun of they make fun of artists and many other icons from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. I didn’t realize just how much stuff they make fun of but every time I watch it I am always finding something new to laugh out loud with. I enjoy watching the others to the series like Pinky and the Brain, Tiny Toon Adventures, Histeria, and Freakazoid. I have always been a fan of the whole line up of the spin offs but I don’t always revisit them as much as I do as this one.
When I was a little boy I always wanted to grow up and be a Paleontologist. I loved dinosaurs with a passion. I was about four years old when I first said Paleontologist the correct way and that is what I told people I wanted to be. I was a big fan of Land Before Time growing up and I also liked the Disney Sitcom Dinosaurs, as well as Disney’s movie about Dinosaurs called Dinosaur. It was back in about 2005 or 2006 and I was finally allowed to watch Jurassic Park and it’s sequel The Lost World Jurassic Park. My aunt had both on VHS and I popped the first one in to the VCR player and didn’t quite know what to expect but this film had me at the moment Ellie Sattler and Alan Grant saw that Brachiosaur. I loved the story, the characters, and most of all the dinosaurs. It is a classic for any science fiction nerd or dinosaur nerd. I am a big fan of Steven Spielberg works and Jurassic Park and all of its sequels including Jurassic World and its sequel have always been a big part of my movie watching experience. If I had to rank them from best to worst The Lost World would always come first. For some reason I loved that one as a movie better than any of the others for some reason. I didn’t necessarily like the book that was called the Lost World that I read in high school but I did love the book called Jurassic Park both written by the late Michael Crichton. Next would be the original, then Jurassic World would be next, followed by Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and then Jurassic Park ///. I have always been a big fan of them but Jurassic Park /// was kind of awkward but don’t get me wrong it is starting to grow with me the more I watch it even with the hidden Lore that the latest two movie sites have put out. I was a little befuddled with the last entry in the Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom but I thought it was an okay movie and I have a feeling that it will lead up to a better follow up story. I tend not to really be overly critical when it comes to the franchise as a whole because most of what we get comes from the pages of the two novels as a whole. So Jurassic Park is and always shall be one of my favorites. If I feel like I am in the mood to have a movie in the dark night. I will most likely watch a Jurassic movie or the first Jaws film which I also love but I only like the first Jaws movie and somewhat like the second one but the last two are just downright terrible and I am not a huge fan of those unless I just want to watch them to get a good cheesy laugh out of them. I have a lot of Jurassic park themed stuff. I have two egg toys one featuring the injured T-rex baby from lost world and a raptor from JP///, I have Pop! figure of Blue, and have the Jurassic Park: Danger Board game, the a few shirts and a a hoodie and a few other things from earlier films as well as all of the movies on DVD.
So when I was a kid my greatest obsession was Star Wars that was the main thing that I would watch and collect memorabilia and action figures from. However after the release of Revenge of the Sith it began to run kind of thin with me and I was not much as a devoted fan anymore. I mean I read the Expanded Universe stories which I love better than this Disney stuff that they have been spewing out for the last few years. However back in 2009 the new Star Trek reboots were just coming out. I went down the cereal aisle and found ads for Star Trek with limited edition Beam Up badges so I decided to see what it was about. I had never really been a big fan of Star Trek. I would only watch it occasionally when my parents would watch it but I hardly understood it. They watch the later series with Jean Luc Picard, Benjamin Sisko, and Katherine Janeway as the captains. I decided to watch my first full Star Trek episode called the “Corbinite Maneuver” In an instant I was hooked. I started with the the Original with William Shatner and it instantly became a big time obsession. I bought some more cereal and collected cut out tokens so I could send away for a Star Trek uniform Tee shirt which I still have to this day. I went on to watch the first six Star Trek movies, the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, (sorry folks was not a big fan of enterprise) but I was totally hooked. In high school I even learned how to speak a little bit of Klingon. Mostly if I speak Klingon now I am singing Klingon opera like the “victory song”, the “battle anthem”, or “Klingon Drinking song”, or the song that they sing on the night before one’s wedding sung on the Deep Space Nine Episode “You are cordially invited” which is one of my top picks for that series. I am a huge fan of Deep Space Nine more than anything for its dark under tones and more serious manner. It tends to be the darkest series of the first five series. Don’t get me wrong Voyager had some pretty crazy and dark twisted episodes but my goodness is it good. I also got to meet a few Star Trek cast memebers along the way as I became more into wanting to go to more nerd conventions.
Here I am with Captain Kirk himself at my first ever Dallas Fan Expo in Dallas TX. I was so excited to meet William Shatner and get this photo taken with the second Captain of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701. It was a truly awesome experience. I also got to meet Brent Spiner who played my favorite TNG character Data. I also got to meet Nichelle Nicholes. I got both her’s and Brent’s autograph. It was quite fun to go to those cons. I went three years in a row to the Dallas expo. My last time was in 2016. It was so cool to meet the rest of the people I met like Veronica Taylor from Pokemon, Christopher Lloyd from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Back to the Future, Cyber Chase when he played the Hacker, I also Met Nathan Fillion from Firefly and Castle I am now watching his current show on ABC called the Rookie which me and my aunt are both obsessed over right now. I also met Dean Cain from the Superman series Louis and Clark, I also met Bill Farmer who plays Goofy on most of the modern Disney stuff, Jim Cummings who played Darkwing Duck, Winnie-the-pooh, Ed the Hyena on Lion King, and many other characters from most of our childhoods. I also met a few others but my goodness I have met a lot. So Star Trek to say has become one of my favorites surpassing Star Wars even though I have not been too sure about the new Discovery show. I am more of purist when it comes to Star Trek but that is just me. That doesn’t mean that the Reboots and Discovery have a few redeeming qualities I am just saying I like the way it intended to be. I since have collected books, a few models of a couple of the USS Enterprises like the original, D, and my personal favorite E, along with a model of Spock, I also made myself a do it yourself tribble because I am a huge fan of that episode Trouble with Tribbles as most of us Trekkies do. I still like Star Wars so don’t get me wrong I still have all my old Star Wars toys and things so that will never truly go away but I am still more toward the pre-Disney era and think that the legends are the only canon in my book. I still like both and each one brings something to the table so there is no reason to totally be at odds with each other when it comes to our two respective fandoms.
Next is one of my favorite British TV Shows that I have grown to like since the year 2014 when I went to my first Dallas Fan Expo.
Doctor Who will always be one of my all time favorite Time Travel shows. I have to admit when my mother watched this on TV when I was younger on PBS. It scared the pants off me. I hated the show at first. I was born with autism and some of the weird off set and loud noises from the original run episodes really bothered me with my audio issues with my ears. It took me a long while to develop a taste for this classic bit of BBC programming. I have watched PBS shows all my life from Keeping up Appearances, Are You Being Served, and many of the other British Sitcoms but I never really got into their science fiction stuff I was more into their comedies like Monty Python’s Flying Circus and what not but I gave it another go and instantly got into it. You may think that I started with what we call the NuWho but I began to watch the Third and Forth Doctor series from the 1970s working my way to number 5, 6, 7, and then I watched the movie with the eighth Doctor, and then got into the new stuff. Tom Baker, David Tenant, Matt Smith, John Pertwee, and Peter Capaldi were among my absolute favorite Doctors. The stories are insane and and very fun. They deal with a lot os issues saw into day’s world. It almost reminds me of Twilight Zone and Outer limits some of the time with a few of the stories but has its own vibes and style to it. I love the show and have a few Tee shirts, a 11th Doctor fez, a replica of 10′s sonic screwdriver, the Lego Tardis set along with the Lego Dimensions add on packs with the 12th Doctor, K-9 (who is by far my favorite side character of the series), I also have the Dalek and Cyberman add ons. I have a couple of other things like a 4th Doctor pop figure too, as well as a Doctor Who 4th Doctor scarf and blanker which I often wear and have when I am watching a marathon or when I am down with a cold or sick with something else. So yeah I am a huge fan of this but was not too impressed with the writing from the last Doctor’s run it wasn’t the Doctor being a woman or the acting which I though the change was very interesting and I had no problem with it but I just feel the writing could have been done a little differently. However I was sad we didn’t get a Christmas special last year so that broke tradition with the Doctor Who show. Still I don’t mind travailing with the good Doctor when I watch the show. It is an emotional roller coaster and a thrilling story of a mad man in a blue box.
One of my other favorites and one of my regular go to movies and Cartoons is the Men In Back franchise. I am a fan of both the live action and the series they used to play on the WB kids block. Men In Black has always been one to get me laughing my head off. My favorite character is Jay because for me I kind of find his antics way off point for what Kay is trying to teach him to be. Jay is never low key about trying to keep things about global destruction low key like the MIB do. Jay always has the best lines and is kind of a good ball compared to his partner Kay. I first saw Men In Black movies in the early 2000s but I watched the series when I was a kid. I often revisit the series because I like how it was done. Dark a little bit, sarcastic absolutely, and full of action you bet. The cartoon doesn’t have a lot of deep seeded issues or things to reflect on like the movies do. The movies always get me to thinking and always having me laugh my head off till I nearly puke. Seriously every time the Worm Guys come on the screen I am on my butt nearly double over. They are my favorite aliens of the series in both the cartoon and live action universes. These films are just my kind of weird. I like Ghostbusters too for the same reasons there is a lot of fun characters, crazy villains, tons of gross out moments that either make you gag or laugh, and there is a lot of action involved. Seriously this film has it all space cops, evil human challenged aliens, and tons of shiny things. This series is a must for any science fiction fan. It is just simply put a fun series. I don’t know how the next one is going to go seeming that Agent K and J are not going to be in this film so far as I know but I will go see it just to see what they do to the franchise as we explore another branch of the MIB. I have all three on DVD and have some old wendy’s toys back when the cartoon series was out. I love this series too because in a few episodes in the cartoon and in the first movie they had to deal with Space Bugs so that kind of made me into it more. I love the whole fight scene with Edgar and Jay’s antics it was kind of a funny fight scene with an awesome gross out with the slime at the end when the space roach gets blown to bits. I find the episodes in the cartoon featuring the bugs funny. All of that has a great blend with sci-fi and comedy. Some of the cartoon stuff is pretty dark but heck man I still love it for what it is worth.
Space Jam was one that I loved from the moment I saw it for the first time in the 90s. I have always been a Looney Tunes kind of guy. I love the classics, Tazmania, Loonatics Unleashed, Duck Dodgers, and I really didn’t think the Looney Tunes Show was all that bad in fact I think over all it was good but I still think they should have made a few changes to a few of their characters. I love the straight to DVD movies too. Space Jam is one of those films that is kind of off the rails but it is one that all 90s kids like to be honest. I have always been a fan of the blend with cartoon characters intermingling with humans and interacting with them. It is a fun movie and I really enjoy watching it. I have it on DVD and watch it often. I love the sport of Basket Ball I used to play it when I was young on a little league team and love to watch the Dallas Mavericks play so seeing a blend of two of my favorite things blended together is kind of fun. There are a lot of funny moments in this film and a few classic references to a few other movies. When I watch a new movie I always love to see what kind of other references I can find and laugh when I figure out what they are. Space Jam is one of those that is a fun film and sometimes fun films don’t get a lot of good press with critics but there is nothing wrong with watching a fun film. Sometimes life needs to be taken a little less serious and you need a good laugh or just need to take you mind off things and this is one of those films that is just down right ridiculous but we love it. Shoot I can watch this basket ball match between the Tune Squad and the Monstars anytime over and over again.
Another one of my absolute favorites is this Toony Mystery film. Roger Rabbit is one of the few cult classic movies that I have seen and for me I love this one. I love mysteries I read a lot of mystery books like A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket and I have not been a stranger to reading a Sherlock Holmes mystery. I find this movie to be more for older kids but it has always appealed to me for its fun nature and its really interesting blend of Noir style with cartoon characters. It is one of my favorite crossovers using mainly Warner Bros., Disney, and Universal characters along with the original characters like Roger Rabbit, his wife Jessica, Baby Herman, the Weasels, and Benny the Cab. the one scene in this whole film that makes me laugh extra hard is the Droopy Bellboy scene were Eddie is entering the appartment building trying to track down Jessica but is actually following a bonkers Toon Named Leena who looks like Jessica but is not Jessica at all. The elevator scene is so funny the way that Droopy looks so emotionless and says his lines while Eddie gets flattened and then flung up to the ceiling. I am a fan of a lot of classic cartoons and Droopy is one of them so that is why I laugh so hard at that scene and I have been known to do an impression of him when I enter an elevator with my family. That"going up sir, mind you step sir, hold on sir, have a good day sir” line has always stuck with me. Now I watched this as a child and any fan of this movie knows how terrifying Judge Doom was toward the end. For me the most horrifying scene in this movie (and I am sure I speak to most of the fans of this here when I say) The most horrific scene for this movie (SPOILERS IF YOU DON’T WANT TO READ THIS BECAUSE YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FILM TURN BACK NOW.) Is where Judge Doom and Eddie get into the epic battle and Eddie grabs a tub of glue and Judge Doom breaks it open and winds up getting stuck to the end of the steamroller and instantly flattened. That is not what makes it so freaky it is when Roger yells to Eddie to look then you see a flattened Doom start to peel himself off the ground and start to flop around trying to get his balance. His partial Toon features are only freakier to whitness the burning red eyes, the high pitched voice that could break glass, the eye daggers, the arm saw makes him a formidable foe and one of the creepiest characters in this film. However besides that it is one of my favorites because I laugh and I think it is another one of those fun and silly films. I also like that is one of those very special films that allow for other film groups to correspond with each other. I feel that we need more films like these where characters from different franchises come together. I don’t think we will get another film where Mickey and Bugs, or Daffy and Donald share the same screen time ever again on the same playing field but that is another reason why I get a kick out of this film it is not totally one sided a lot of characters are in this movie sharing the spotlight from different film industries which still amazes audiences today. And too I like the crazy wit of Roger. I have actually played the NES game for this film but have never really completed it.
Okay so now we are getting into more down to earth comedy which I do like. A friend in college a couple of semesters back told me about this movie after I told him that I was a naturalist and a birder. This movie is about the annual Big Year that happens every year. It is a comedy of three men trying to get the most amount of birds in a calendar year. It is one of my favorite nature based hollywood films. If you get into to birding though and want to see this movie DO NOT TAKE THIS MOVIE FOR SCIENCE ACCURACY! It will drive you nuts. It is a great movie about birds and many people who watch it are bird watcher and members of birding clubs like I am but there are many birds that are out of place in this film but heck it is still a fun movie to watch and get a laugh out of. I watch it every time during the new year or before a big birding event. Sometime I will watch it before the Christmas bird count or before I go to volunteer for the Great Backyard Bird Count. I love this movie for many reasons it is heartfelt, has birds and I love birds and have over 170 on my life list so far. It is also just a good film to watch if you are a nature lover. It is funny but has a good message to it. It is one that is good for the whole family. I like it because I like all three of these actors. I watch a lot of their material often. Steve Martin has always been one of my favorite actors for his roles in Cheaper By the Dozen, Pink Panther 1&2, my personal favorite The Three Amigos, among others. I think this is another one that is really fun I know I say that a lot but this one is kind of cool because it really does show what birder do minus Owen Wilson’s character being kind of a big jerk to everybody in this film. It shows a day in the life of a birder in most cases and what we do when we are caught in certain situations in a more comedic way but it is till a reflection of ourselves when we travel and when we all get together and go birding. So this movie really hits close to home for me. It is neither a cartoon or a science fiction it is a comedy and a pretty good one too. So I give this one a spot on my list.
I mentioned this one earlier but this is one of the only horror movies I have ever gotten into. I had not seen the movie previously to 2010. I have seen bits and pieces and to be honest I was only a small kid when I saw the bits and pieces and this film creeped me out big time. In 2010 in one of my classes in high school we all got DVDs and my teacher knowing how much I loved animals gave me this one. I was not really allowed to watch it I lived a pretty sheltered life but I watched it and I was totally blown away (no pun intended to the ending). This film was truly amazing and one I watch again and again. I love sharks and I know this shark is viewed as a bad guy preying on poor beach goers who are just trying to enjoy themselves while having a swim at the beach. I really like the Matt Hooper Character portrayed by Richard Dryfuss. My grandmother said it must have been devine intervention that I saw this film because it made me study the truth behind sharks, shark attacks, and made me develop a new appreciation for sharks. This film may have scared the pants off of me when I was younger and may have scared everyone that went to go see it back in the summer of 1975 or who read the novel by Peter Benchly which I have read back in high school around the same time I read the two Jurassic Park Novels. This film is by far one of the darkest films and maybe the darkest film I will ever watch all though Star Trek: First Contact was really dark in some spots but I liked it. Jaws for me was fun and had a lot of nice dark undertones especially when you get to Captain Quint’s famous USS Indianapolis speech. The movie is good and reflect heavily on the 1916 shark attacks even though it happens on an island that doesn’t exist and the setting of the attacks was changed but it was meant to be a fictional story but it does have echos of the events that played out during the summer of 1916. I love this movie for many reasons but it was really well played out even as it turned out to be one of the toughest movies to make and was almost never made. I love the characters in the movie. I can see why they changed them from their book counterparts all of the characters were not that likable and were jerks to everyone it seemed. The movies puts heart into to some of the situations that play out and has a deep suspense theme to it. Number 2 was the one I enjoyed the second most. Number three I can’t even take seriously and number four only has that one genuinely terror scene at the beginning then it is a complete cheese fest. Don’t get me wrong I am one for cheesy movies I love a lot of the cheesy stuff from the 60s, 70s, and 80s but Jaws isn’t one that I would associate for trying to be totally cheesy then it turned out to be. I know they were just milking it for all it was worth but it was really unnecessary because the rest of the films didn’t take anything from the source material like you see in Jurassic Park. That is why I don’t criticize Jurassic Park that much because all of that stuff comes from the pages of the book. Jaws only does it justice one time then totally goes down hill from there. That is why I say that there will never be a movie with a shark half as good as Jaws one. Jaws one was tops for shark movies but no one has come even close from trying to break the cheese barrier. The Meg came a little close but not too close. So yeah Jaws still holds the record for being the best shark film.
Okay now I am getting into some Superhero stuff. I bet you are wondering who like better DC or Marvel. Well I like both but I only like certain things from DC. DC I only like for the 1960s Batman TV show even though it was a campy series I still loved it and love to laugh at it and watch it just for fun. I also like the Michael Keaton stuff like Batman 1980 and Batman Returns; Don’t judge me on this but I also like to watch Batman & Robin and Batman Forever just for the cheap giggles and laughs. I also like the first four Superman Films, the original Wonder Woman series, and the early DC comics and things. I am not one for the darker films that much. I am just not that kind of guy. However I do love the Marvel comics and the Marvel cinematic Universe. What is a nerd without liking superheroes. This is one of my favorites. I first saw an ad for this trailer at the Dallas Fan Expo in 2014 and I instantly wanted to go see it. It looked funny and the song “Hooked on a Feeling” was played and I love that song just as much a Peter Quill so yeah I had to see it. I love things about renegades and rebels on the loose like Star Wars, Firefly, and several western flicks like Young Guns I&II and several others. Guardians of the Galaxy is one of my favorites for its sarcastic nature (I like a lot of stuff with sarcasm for my family tends to be pretty sarcastic and me I tend to be a wise guy sometimes and like to smart off so I would fit right along with the Guardians of the Galaxy crew if I was able to) The humor in this film is my kind of humor and the action is good; but what gets me with these films is the connection these outlaws have with each other and how they over come their troubles and woes. They were “losers” but they found strength with each other even if they were contemplating to kill each other at some points in the film. They still had their issues but isn’t that what happpens in a family. I love the story of the first one and love the follow up. These films have a place on the list because to me I can relate. My grandmother had cancer and died from it much like Peter’s momma at the beginning of the film and My grandmother got me hooked on a lot of the stuff that she got me into like vintage black and white comedies, old songs from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. So there was a deep connection I had with these films that really hit me hard minus the being abducted by aliens thing. So this film is one of those that makes me think about my own life in certain ways.
So these are my top movie and TV show picks. You may see that I have a lot of things that are relate-able to my sense of humor and my life and the way I work. So there is much more to me then just picking up a camera and going on a hike. No I am a pretty big nerd in the long run. I have not go into Anime that much I do like some but I don’t really like a whole bunch of it. It has always been hard for me to get into. Normally I like comedies, western cartoons mainly classic cartoons and things, I am also into a lot of science fiction. Just to name a few other things I am into (Lord of the Rings, I am somewhat of a slight Hobbit guy, Battlestar Galactica 1978, Godzilla most of the films, King Kong, Scooby Doo and many other Hanna Barbara Cartoons, the Chronicles of Narnia, a whole multitude of Disney films from the past to today. Just to name a few things)
So until next time I am Galactic Bug Man. Live Long and Prosper and I will see you on the trail. This transmission ends.
and May the Force Be With You! Good Night Everybody!
#movies#interests#who framed roger rabbit#jurassic park#star trek#space jam#guardians of the galaxy#the big year#jaws#men in black#mib#doctor who#nerd#geek#fandoms#comedy#adventure#cartoons
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The original TV series Roswell (not to be confused with the new CW show Roswell, New Mexico) ran for 3 seasons on The WB (seasons 1&2) and UPN (season 3), from 1999-2002, for a total of 61 episodes. The show was very loosely based on the YA book series Roswell High, written by Melinda Metz. Jason Katims (who later went on to create Friday Night Lights and Parenthood) created Roswell and stayed on as showrunner for all three seasons.
Roswell takes places in the real life small town of the same name, in southern New Mexico, where a mysterious crash in 1947 has become legendary in the decades since it happened. The alien spaceship crashed out in the desert, leading to rumors and guesses about what really happened, which quickly led to a government cover up. Roswell houses a military base which took part in an investigation of the ship and secret alien remains. The town itself has embraced its notoriety as an alien and UFO Mecca, with businesses and events throughout the town sporting space themes and catering to alien-hunting tourists.
At least one adult alien survived the crash and was captured. It was treated brutally and subjected to inhuman experiments, supposedly in the name of science. The alien eventually escaped, leaving a trail of violent retaliation in its wake. It then went underground, disappearing for decades, but leaving the institutional memory of its existence and its ability to harm humans behind.
Several pods, containing the embryos of alien children, also survived the crash and were safely moved to a cave by the adult survivors. In the 80s, three seemingly human children, Max Evans, Isabel Evans, and Michael Guerin, came out of the pods. They looked like they were about 6 years old, but they couldn’t speak, and had no memories. They wandered out into the desert together, but were separated.
Max and Isabel were found by a married couple, Philip and Diane Evans, who adopted them. Michael ended up in abusive foster homes, but he stayed as close to Isobel and Max as he could. Together, they discovered their powers and figured out that they must be aliens. They resolved to keep their true identities secret from everyone but each other. The danger and the secrets helped them bond and form especially close sibling relationships.
Max always had a crush on Liz Parker, but mostly watched her from afar. They were friends, and she noticed him staring at her sometimes, but neither made any further moves. Until there was a shooting at her father’s restaurant, where she was a waitress.
The shots were unexpected, and Liz was down before anyone understood what was happening. Almost everyone ran from the diner, but Max stayed to check on her. He realized that the bullet must have hit an artery in her abdomen, and she was going to bleed out before help could arrive.
He had to make a choice. Let Liz die, or keep his secret? He couldn’t let the girl he’d always loved die just because he was afraid of something that might or might not happen. He healed her, then pretended that a bottle of ketchup had broken on her and ran out of the diner.
That’s the start of everything. The Sheriff is from an alien hunting family, and he becomes suspicious of Max. Gradually Liz’s closest friends, Maria and Alex, also learn the secret, and the Scooby gang is complete. Liz’s ex-boyfriend, Kyle, doesn’t want to give her up without a fight, so Max has some competition. Various other humans and aliens help and harm them, becoming part of their adventures.
Season 1 is low-key, focusing on the kids as high school students and friends, keeping their issues close to home and largely within the show’s cast. This was Jason Katims’ vision for the show, especially the first 13 episodes. Those first 13 are incredible, and I wouldn’t blame anyone who stops there. The network started interfering after that, but season 1 still mostly makes sense, I think. The biggest change is the introduction of Emilie de Ravin late in the season, as a fourth alien, Tess, who can’t be trusted.
In Season 2, the show reinvented itself, bringing in new characters and a race of alien villains called the Skins. The characters forgot that they were still in high school and became alien fighters. It seemed like they were more concerned with past events on their home planet than current events in their own lives on Earth. But they had really great hair, makeup and clothes. And the writing was as witty and heartfelt as ever.
In season 3, Roswell changed networks, and reinvented itself again. This time, it went from a cracky, brightly-colored, alien version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to a darker, more intense, more mature version of itself. There wasn’t supposed to be a time jump, but the characters seemed to age five years. They were facing more adult situations such as marriage, divorce, children, leaving home for good, and when and how much to sacrifice themselves for others.
Along with these adult situations came attempts to add more nuances to the characters, which didn’t always work. Tess benefitted from being softened and redeemed, but Max experienced character assassination from being given a dark, obsessive side. This season made the least sense of the three seasons, but there were still some great episodes and great moments. And great looks and great songs.
As I mentioned, Jason Katims saw the show as Dawson’s Creek, with aliens, while the networks wanted Roswell to compete with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Jason Katims has never done scifi or supernatural before or since, and I don’t think he was prepared for the level of detailed and consistent world building it would require.
He wanted the show to be a character driven drama (similar to his other shows) where the aliens don’t use their powers much. To him, the powers were just supposed to be an occasional plot device. This goes against traditional storytelling wisdom and common sense. You don’t get your backers and your fans excited about aliens, then forget to show the aliens.
Ron Moore, veteran of the Star Trek franchise who went on to create Battlestar Galactica and Outlander, was brought in for the second and third seasons to help improve the ratings. But the production was already too far adrift, and had lost too much of its audience.
Roswell had a killer soundtrack when it aired. The original soundtrack remains on episodes aired in syndication, but many of the songs have been replaced on the DVDs. However, the songs from important moments do remain intact on the DVDs. The songs used in the episodes and as the theme song (Dido’s Here with Me) became hits. Both Jason Katims and Ron Moore are known for giving each of their shows a unique “look”, and Roswell is no different. It’s beautifully shot and designed.
The characters are varied, funny and interesting. Women are well represented and aren’t held back because they’re female. There could be more diversity, but Roswell was made before there was pressure on studios to diversify their casts. At least there are a couple of regulars who are Hispanic, are a recurring character who is Native American.
The cast of Roswell included: Shiri Appleby as Liz Parker, Jason Behr as Max Evans, Katherine Heigl as Isabel Evans, Majandra Delfino as Maria DeLuca, Brendan Fehr as Michael Guerin, Colin Hanks as Alex Whitman, Nick Wechsler as Kyle Valenti, William Sadler as Sheriff Jim Valenti, Emilie de Ravin as Tess Harding, and Adam Rodríguez as Jesse Ramirez (season 3).
Despite its issues, there are many great episodes and moments in Roswell, when the writing, the acting and the production all came together to create something special.
So, in lieu of a grade, we put Roswell in the category of Brilliant But Flawed.
Favorite Episodes:
Season 1: Pilot (101), Heat Wave (109), The Convention (113), Blind Date (114), The White Room 121)
Season 2: Summer of ’47 (204), The End of the World (205), A Roswell Christmas Carol (210)
Season 3: A Tale of Two Parties (310), I Married an Alien (311)
Images courtesy of 20th Century Fox Television, Jason Katims Productions and Regency Television.
Quick Review of Roswell: Entire Original Series The original TV series Roswell (not to be confused with the new CW show Roswell, New Mexico) ran for 3 seasons on The WB (seasons 1&2) and UPN (season 3), from 1999-2002, for a total of 61 episodes.
#aliens#Brendan Fehr#Jason Behr#Jason Katims#Katherine Heigl#metacrone#Original Roswell#Quick Review#review#Roswell#science fiction#Shiri Appleby
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IN DEPTH FANDOM QUESTIONS: Charmed and FDTD! 💖💖💖
It’s kinda long, so I’m gonna have it under the cut lol.
Charmed
Top 5 favorite characters: Piper Halliwell, Prue Halliwell, Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthews, Andy Trudeau Other characters you like: Darryl Morris, Leo Wyatt, Cole Turner, Barbas Least favorite characters: Billie Jenkins, (Adult) Chris Halliwell Otps: Prue/Andy, Piper/Leo, Phoebe/Cole, Prue/Bane Notps: Prue/Jack, Phoebe/Coop Favorite friendships: The Halliwells and Darryl Favorite family: The Halliwell sisters (Paige included) Favorite episodes: “Murphy’s Luck,” “Ex Libris,” “A Witch’s Tail,” “The Day the Magic Died,” and “Oh My Goddess.” Favorite season/book/movie: Season 2 Favorite quotes: “I know it’s not very P.C. but I want romance. Long, slow kisses, late night talks, candlelight. I love love.,” “It’s the 21st century. It’s the woman’s job to save the day.,” “I don’t obsess. I think, intensely.,” “I think from now on I’m gonna stop trying to control every little moment. The best ones kinda sneak up on you, anyway.” Best musical moment: All the musical guest at the club, P3. Moment that made you fangirl/boy the hardest: I think when I saw Bane make a re-appearence when he kidnapped Prue 😂 I don’t think I fangirl'd too hard, I was calm and surprised about it haha. When it really disappointed you: When they added Billie. I don’t know, I didn’t really like much of season 8 ‘cause I felt like they were making the focus on her and didn’t know what to do with the rest of the main characters. I hardly watched that season anyway, it just felt dragged out and confusing. Saddest moment: When Phoebe vanquished Cole Most well done character death: I don’t know, I guess Andy’s. Favorite guest star: John Cho Favorite cast member: Holly Marie Combs Character you wish was still alive: Prue Halliwell AND Andy Trudeau. One thing you hope really happens: I don’t know. It would’ve been nice to see the next generation of Halliwells kicking demon ass lol. Most shocking twist: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ When did you start watching/reading?: Probably around the time that s4 aired. I always saw glimpses of episodes on TNT when my mom used to do my hair before taking me to school, and I just decided to sit and watch it with her when they were showing new episodes on WB (CW). Best animal/creature: I think the Grimlocks. They kinda scared me when I was a kid lol. Favorite location: The Halliwell house Trope you wish they would stop using: I don’t know... I don’t know if it’s necessarily a trope, but I kinda noticed how they would make the big sisters seem a little bossy. Like Prue was the big sister and she was bossy, and then when she died and Piper ended up being the big sister, she became bossy later on, too. It’s like they have to have one of the sisters being the boss in the trio and it’s like why??? lol. One thing this show/book/film does better than others: It’s three sisters that are witches and kicking demon ass. How cool is that lol Funniest moments: Piper on the ground kicking and screaming in that episode “Is There a Woogy in the House,” and Piper calling some dude skid mark lol. Couple you would like to see: I don’t know. Actor/Actress you want to join the cast: I’m not sure. Favorite outfit: Phoebe’s outfit here [Link] It’s always been my favorite. Favorite item: The Book of Shadows Do you own anything related to this show/book/film?: No What house/team/group/friendship group/family/race etc would you be in?: I don’t know. Most boring plotline: I don’t know, I kinda stopped investing in the show when they did the whole Wyatt going to magic school like going to Hogwarts, and the warlock running the school wanted to steal Wyatt and make him evil so he could be evil!Wyatt in the future. It was like around that season and when Oded Fehr played that demon (I forgot his name, but I know it starts with a “Z”) and when Billie showed up, it just got boring later on. Most laughably bad moment: Piper’s Halloween costume as Gilda the witch from The Wizard of Oz. Best flashback/flashfoward if any: Idk, I can’t remember. There were so many 😂 Most layered character: Piper Halliwell Most one dimensional character: Uh... I don’t know. I wanna say (Adult) Chris Halliwell lmao. Scariest moment: I think a reporter was in the sewers trying to report on the Charmed Ones, but then a Grimlock popped up in front of the camera and attacked the reporter. Grossest moment: I don’t remember. Best looking male: Bane Jessup (let’s be honest here, people, lol) Best looking female: All of the sisters are good looking, lol. But I’ll say Phoebe Halliwell. Who you’re crushing on (if any): Nobody lol. Favorite cast moment: I don’t know. Favorite transportation: Orbing Most beautiful scene (scenery/shot wise): The dream sequences in the “Dream Sorcerer” episode. Unanswered question/continuity issue/plot error that bugs you: I know the reason (the Shannen and Alyssa beef while filming), but it’s weird that Prue’s spirit never shows up whenever the family’s spirits are called upon, like Grams’ and Penny’s spirit. Even in the last episode of the show, Prue never showed up, and even the characters questioned that! 😂 Best promo: I have no idea. At what point did you fall in love with this show/book: I don’t know, it kinda grew on me lol. I liked the idea of witches fighting evil, and the show gave off this warm nostalgic feeling (kinda like Practical Magic), and I think that’s what drew me to the show, as well.
From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Top 5 favorite characters: Seth Gecko, Kate Fuller, Richie Gecko, Kisa, and Eddie Cruickshank. Other characters you like: Freddie Gonzalez, Scott Fuller, Ximena Vasconcelos, Jacob Fuller, Burt, Kalinda, Dakota Block, Rafa Infante, Vanessa Styles, Celestino Oculto 😎, and Kalinda Least favorite characters: Aiden Tanner, Carlos Madrigal, Sonja Lam Otps: Seth/Kate, Richie/Kate Notps: Scott/Kate, Seth/Richie, Kate/Carlos, and shipping anybody with Aiden lol. Favorite friendships: Seth and Kisa, Seth and Kalinda (even though it was extremely short, their interaction was just so nice to see), Kate and Rafa, and Richie and Kisa (I wanna say they’re otp, but I also like the mutual relationship they have) Favorite family: The Fuller family including the Gecko brothers... and Uncle Eddie 😂 Favorite episodes: “Let’s Get Ramblin’,”Santa Sangre,” “Shady Glen,” and “Dark Side of the Sun.” Favorite season/book/movie: Season 2 Favorite quotes: “And every spidey since I got is tingling in every nook and cranny from eyeballs to balls-balls.,” “’Got your balls on?’ ‘Screwed on tight.,’” “’Are you here for redemption? In whose eyes? Your God’s?’ No. In the eyes of the people I love.,’“ “My family might survive if we stick together because we’re better together. When we’re alone, we’re lost.,” “Now like it or not, we are a family. A broken, messed up, sad excuse for a family. But goddamn it, we got love for each other, don’t we? Love and forgiveness. That’s how you get through the day, right?,” “Next one that pipes up gets a stake through the heart. Reptile, regular jackass, I don’t really give a shit. Got it? Fantastic.,” “You, be cool.” Best musical moment: Uh... Every musical moment was pretty mediocre, so I guess Fanglorious on stage was pretty great (those are the only 2 musical moments I know). Moment that made you fangirl/boy the hardest: Los Tres Geckos robbing a bank at the end of s3 lol. When it really disappointed you: How the creators just decided to change Sex Machine’s character from the movie into this total perv/predator in the show, like wtf. Movie version Sex Machine was my fav. AND THEY KEPT BRINGING HIM BACK EACH SEASON WHEN NO ONE WANTED HIM BACK, LIKE MAJORITY OF US COLLECTIVELY WANTED HIM TO STAY DEAD! Saddest moment: In the “Straightjacket” episode when Seth was tied up and trying to talk to Richie to get his normal self to come back while his shadow-self took over. They really got me with that one. Most well done character death: Carlos getting butchered by the main characters, leaving Scott to finish him off by decapitating his head. That was some pretty poetic shit right there lol. Favorite guest star: Tom Savini Favorite cast member: D.J. Cotrona Character you wish was still alive: Pretty much majority of the ones that have died 😂 I’ll just say everyone except Malvado, Carlos, and Aiden Tanner. One thing you hope really happens: Dude, I just wanna see Seth and Kate kiss, that’s all man 😆 Most shocking twist: I mean I wasn’t expecting Kate to show up with the brothers robbing a bank, so that was a shock lol. When did you start watching/reading?: Pfff, pretty much five years ago, now, in March! Lol. Best animal/creature: Culebras Favorite location: I’d say the run-down motel in the beginning of s2 😂 Also Uncle Eddie’s shop. Trope you wish they would stop using: Idk... Idk if it’s a trope, but it kinda sucks seeing innocent girls getting treated like shit and killed, and then they come back from the dead and like some part of them is stripped away like they’re not as they used to be, and they’re out for blood. I don’t know... One thing this show/book/film does better than others: As cheesy as this show is, it has Robert Rodriguez all over it, which kept me hooked. It also incorporates Mesoamerican mythology and folklore, which I’m a huge sucker for, AND VAMPIRES!!!!! Funniest moments: Richie sliding out when Seth told him to shut up at the liquor store, Carlos pretending to hand something to Malvado when he’s handing him nothing and saying he’s all out of fucks to give, Seth shooting a gun in the garage with a straight face, and Seth protecting his crotch before he attempts to shoot a gas tank. Couple you would like to see: Idk, I guess Seth/Kate??? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Actor/Actress you want to join the cast: Salma Hayek (I still wanna know why she wasn’t on the show. She would’ve been amazing as one of the nine lords) Favorite outfit: [Here], [here], and [HERE] Favorite item: Kate’s cross? Idk. Do you own anything related to this show/book/film?: Yep! A shirt of a fanart of the Gecko bros., a sethkate cup, and a fanart sethkate iTouch case. What house/team/group/friendship group/family/race etc would you be in?: I don’t know. Probably a culebra lol. Most boring plotline: None of them were really boring. Most laughably bad moment: Richie just staring off into space as he’s drawing circles in his book like right after Seth said that Richie wasn’t crazy lol. Best flashback/flashfoward if any: Kisa’s flashbacks. Most layered character: Idk, there’s a lot of characters that are equally layered. Most one dimensional character: I don’t think there’s any 😂 Scariest moment: The Head Games monster taking the skull out of his victims was pretty crazy. Grossest moment: When that dude peed on Freddie while he was tied up. I’d say that was disgusting. Best looking male: That’s a tie between Seth and Richie. Best looking female: Kisa Who you’re crushing on (if any): SETH GECKO Favorite cast moment: When they all went on a group chat, and reminisced on the show and shared pics when they were on set filming. Favorite transportation: The rv, even though that rv needs to be cleansed thoroughly. Most beautiful scene (scenery/shot wise): Kate swimming and floating in the pool (before the water turns red lol) Unanswered question/continuity issue/plot error that bugs you: Like... there’s no way anyone could come out cold turkey that friggin’ quick within a couple hours. It usually would last within three days. Best promo: Season 3, I think. At what point did you fall in love with this show/book: I think it was the scene when Kate had the conversation with Richie by the pool. I loved how the creators made the interaction less creepy compared to the movie, and I found it pleasing with all these changes they made from the movie for the show. There were a lot of things they changed that I found it appealing, AND THEY CHANGED SETH’S ANSWER AND WANTED KATE TO ACCOMPANY HIM, LIKE THAT’S WHAT I WANTED TO HAPPEN FOR 20 YEARS, AND IT HAPPENED! 😩🙌🏽 It’s like they gave me everything I wanted, but wasn’t expecting to happen lmao.
Geez, sorry this took so long lol! Thank you so much for asking me these!!!! 😁💗
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Justice League Rant
I guess I’m writing this because of frustration. I am frustrated because talent and material is being squandered. No one wants to risk anything so they bend to the will of a mob. When this happens it can only mean one thing: there is a lack of VISION. The Marvel movies are safe. You know that no one is going to die and that there will be no serious consequences. But you also know that you’re about to enjoy a movie. That is because Kevin Feige started the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a vision. He knew where he wanted the story to go so he plotted a course and let all the writers on subsequent Marvel movies know where they had to steer their stories. I feel that the same cannot be said of the DC Extended Universe. Why is the DCEU broken? To me, the simple answer is that Man of Steel wasn’t Superman. It starts with this version of Superman. BvS is one of those movies that if you think about it too much then the cracks start to show. But as nerds it’s second nature to obsess about things. It’s what makes us nerds. I couldn’t find the words so I hoped the internet would. Boy did it. Devin Faraci wrote an article called Superman and the Damage Done. In the article Faraci goes on to compare the Donner Superman and the Snyder Superman. The most striking comparison made between the two was the take-off and landing. It is a perfect comparison in my opinion. Donner’s Superman is strong enough to hold up a 747 when an engine gets taken out but graceful enough to land softly with Louis Lane after their flight. Snyder’s Superman explodes into the sky creating sonic booms whenever he does. He often lands with a crash and creating craters when he does. “There are no soft landings for this Superman” says Faraci. I would have to agree. The other difference is the visuals. Donner’s Superman had a fantastic contrast of colors. Around the city you saw a lot of gray from the streets and the buildings. There was a lack of sunlight and illumination comes from street lights. Then, in flies Superman with the flowing red cape and bright blue suit and the red of the S in stark contrast to the yellow of the shield. Your eyes immediately latch on to him because of how bright his colors are. You know he’s the good guy even if you just walked into the movie half way in progress. In Man of Steel his suit is muted. It blends in and with the exception of the cape there is no difference between Superman’s super suit and Zod’s suit. Donner’s Superman is peak Superman. It was Superman at his very best. I understand that time’s change and so the Man of Steel should change with them. But these were not the changes that were needed. The world is a more nuanced place and it needed a scalpel not a sledgehammer with a meat cleaver taped to it. Avengers changed the game of movies in general. It was a grand experiment that took 4 years and a half billion dollars of investment. They took a risk and it paid off in spades. Phrases like “shared universe” entered the American lexicon. Movie studios began poring over their properties and licenses to see what shared universe movie they can make. Universal with Dark Universe, Legendary Pictures and Monsterverse , and Sony was trying to make a Universe with Ghostbuster and Spider-man respectively. Warner Bros, the company that owns DC and the film rights to Batman and Superman, may have not realized the potential of a shared universe series. They had been trying to make a Superman movie since 2008 after the runaway success of The Dark Knight. They wrapped up the The Dark Knight Trilogy and were relying on Superman to take up the mantle because the year after Nolan wrapped up his trilogy Man of Steel was released. Here’s where the tin foil hat needs to be put on. I don’t think WB realized how profitable a shared universe can be at the time Man of Steel began filming in 2011. That was the year Captain America and Thor came out to decent success. Avengers premiered 3 months after principal photography wrapped in February of 2012. It was too late to change the story elements that would make a shared universe harder. So they plowed ahead and the Man of Steel went on to be a successful in that it made more money than it cost to make. If I had been studio chief I would have put Zack Snyder in movie jail along with Josh Trank.
Lastly, the lack of consistency when it comes to these movies is astounding (Spoilers ahead for all DC movies). There are moments in the films that legitimately make no sense because it will contradict a moment in a previous movie. For example, at Superman’s funeral in Batman v. Superman we saw the dirt on his coffin rise. We are used to seeing pieces of earth rise around Superman when he is preparing to fly. To the audience this indicates that Superman is still alive. In Justice League, the league members have to spend 20 minutes of movie time to bring back Superman. Why? He was left alive in the last movie. This movie was even made by the same director. Did he forget? What happened? Was it supposed to be some huge reveal because Superman is absent from the marketing material? It made no sense. Then when he wakes up the first thing he does is grab Batman by the neck and ask him if he bleeds. Did he not remember that Batman saved his mom and stunned Doomsday to give him a shot with the spear? Why is that entire scene there? Why isn’t Superman’s coffin just empty one day? Martha hears that someone desecrated his grave and this can go either way. It can destroy her or she can whisper “he’s alive” and the movie moves on without the grave robbing. The second inconsistency is Batman calls out Wonder Woman for being absent and not getting of Steve Trevor. The very last scene of Wonder Woman is her jumping into action in full Amazon battle gear after hearing the klaxon of a police car and heading towards danger. That showed us that she was finally able to get out and fulfill her charge as a warrior. Then, there is the mourning over Superman’s death in Justice League. The film opens with shots from around the world of black banners with a white S. We see a world in chaos. People are attacking each other and crime running rampant. We are then told that it’s because “he’s” gone. Who? Do they mean Superman? Superman’s mother tells him that he should just fly off because he doesn’t “owe the world a damn thing.” The worst part is it looks like he considers it. To me it looked like he took no pleasure in helping others. In Justice League he just killing Steppenwolf with the one liners. Where did this come from? Where has this guy been? Aquaman says that you lose something when you die. Maybe Superman lost his angst? While this Superman is a whole lot better than the brooding one we saw in Batman v. Superman and Man of Steel it was a complete departure from the character we saw. Clark has a crisis about the responsibility of saving people but thinks that death “feels fuzzy?” What the shit?
The DCEU movies lack the vision of a person who is willing to take a risk. That person must put a product on the screen similar in scope to what Marvel has done but it can’t be an imitation. It is a fine line that can be walked with the right person. However, that is not how these movies are being made. They are created by focus groups and trending twitter analytics by people who see movies as just a business instead of the business of artistry. If it were my studio and Justice League was my baby I would use the Flash’s movie and make Flashpoint and start over.
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Kevin Cage of @spotlightsaga reviews... Riverdale /S01\/E10\ Chapter 10: The Lost Weekend Airdate: April 13, 2017 @cwnetwork Ratings: 0.872 Million :: 0.32 18-49 Demo Share Score: 8.5/10 @riverdaleseries @archiecomics TVTime/FB/Twitter/IG/Tumblr/Path/Pin: @SpotlightSaga **********SPOILERS BELOW********** Four Months late isn't too bad, right? See, in Miami, it's never cute to be the first person at the party, and really the party never ends until someone actually says it does... And clearly the Riverdale Party is still very much in full swing. So consider this 10th Entry 'Riverdale Revisit'; the after party to end all after parties. Of course, we're going to be set up for S2 when it goes live. This is definitely not one of the tv shows that Spotlight Saga will be dropping in the coming, world famous, 'fall tv' season frenzy. But don't get it twisted, there are many on the chopping block... OUR chopping block. We're looking at what gets our blood pumping and our thoughts racing, giving us something more to talk about than "Last Night on ___insert uninspired show number #45 here___." 'Riverdale' has made a massive stir across social media and of course on The CW & their worldwide dominating partner, Netflix, as well. I love that due to streaming, the new large amounts of cash pouring in from its subsequent deals, and actually several generations full of 'cord cutters', there are no longer rules to watching and writing about television series and films... Get to them when you can, some will watch them live, some will stream them later, some will wait until they can binge them all at once like a Weekend Warrior with a pocket full of Ecstasy and a head full of hallucinogens. It's our world now, and CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, and more (or less) importantly 'Nielsen Holdings', no longer control what, when, where, why, and how much. Smell that? That's the sweet smell of change... And the remnants of murder and sticky maple syrup, obvi. Ive been extremely careful not to overpraise 'Riverdale' in the past. Similar series have only led to frustration or feelings of complete frustration. Its hard to know what to expect from a show like this in the near future... We all saw the demise of similar series like 'Pretty Little Liars' and other shows that run through the same type of vein... Kind of like many of the other ones attempted over at the now defunct ABC Family where PLL first started. Like The WB, UPN, and now The CW, ABC Family has also gone through a newly rebranding process that didn't do much to help the sinking ship they now call Freeform TV... A network that only 'The Fosters' and its cheesy sister show 'Shadowhunters' seem to be keeping afloat. We aren't being negative, we're being real... And when you're at a party, or in this case, 'After Party', you've got to be real. You just gotta... Even if no one ever wanted the party in the first place. If you don't know what I mean, let me spell it out for you. Ready? Set? Spell! Ah fuck it, we'll just spill the tea... 'Let's have a Kiki! Lock the doors tight!' I sometimes wonder if my obscure pop culture references I often sneak into these articles ever actually connect. They probably don't, but to that one person that got it, FUCK YEAH! It's the birthday of Jughead (Cole Sprouse)... And much like the very similar, fellow female counterpart, Sheila the She-Wolf, another introverted style character from 'Riverdale's sister show on Netflix, 'GLOW'... Jughead is not really into parties and/or making a big fuss about a birthday or bringing any unnecessary & unwanted attention to his person. Unfortunately for Betty (Lili Reinhart), Jughead isn't really big on camaraderie, most definitely not in the spirit equivalent to the 'Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling'! The reasons behind throwing these two characters' each their own impromptu birthday bashes on their respective tv shows are done for totally different reasons. With 'GLOW', it was slightly annoying at first (for Sheila, anyway), but eventually it turned from an apprehensive & anxiety filled event to a touching, sweet moment, where a closed off character had a major breakthrough that was captured in the perfect beam of light, allowing a significant development and enabling an insight into another character's backstory, bringing the whole cast together for the most part. In a great juxtaposition, on 'Riverdale', the psychology behind this one is actually much, much different... It's still got the 'trepidatious yet possible potential for a surprise moment of gratification' aspect down to a certain degree, but it doesn't go down the path of the balmy & charming. The reasoning behind Betty's sudden obsession to give Jughead the party that he never wanted, and the background as to why he's so against the idea in the first place certainly doesn't inspire camaraderie or any kind of 'feel good' moments, especially at the party itself. If anything, the intent is slightly bordering on the side of creepy. Riverdale?! Creepy?!? Yup! Keep up! It's only getting creepier. You see... We've been up on 'Riverdale' and then back down, and then back up and down again... And I think everyone here will openly admit that it's mostly due to a shaky CW track record, as well as similar networks just like it, though there has been a few inconsistencies outside of this oddball tone & beautiful color scheme we're always raving about. However, when the show fully embraces its complete and total anomalous, almost freakish eccentricities, we all just fall right back in love with the show again. It's episodes like 'Chapter 10: The Lost Weekend' that completely make us forget about past network follies and shows like PLL completely losing their way after gaining our trust and enthusiasm in its beginning stages. Reinhart is effortlessly serving up 'Bizarre, Bilateral, Betty Bananas' like a full-on, award ready, seasoned vet. Seriously, I don't want to blow too much smoke up the kid's ass, but I'm pretty sure her breakthrough performance here would even make the likes of decorated actress such as Nicole Kidman proud. Betty Cooper has a duality that Reinhart not only highlights with strong, hearty performances... But it's also the efforts of Director Dawn Williamson, a phenomenal Art Department (you guys KICK MAJOR ASS), Cinematographer Stephen Jackson (this guy was award-worthy in this episode), and Costume & Wardrobe (hell, everyone involved in the smallest, minute details) framed from shot to shot... The absurdity of how tight & perfectly situated her ponytail is, how hard she clenches her hands (leaving scratch marks on her palms), even the way she holds the cake & dawns the signature 'Jughead Crown', to whoever made the call of having those weirdo party goers in horse masks in the background - Good call, guys! That was freaking CRAZY! It's all those little things that make the picture such a pleasure to watch... Turning what seems like a normal teen drama at first glance, to a finely tuned, surprisingly compelling theatrical spectacle. The crazy is in full on abundance, though... It's not just Betty. Suddenly after a string of a few disappointing episodes, I come back after a break and either see things in a totally different light, or it could be that this was just slowly building right under our noses the whole time, or *the most plausible of all three options* is that the ironically lowest rated episode of the series, according to the great analysts over at Nielsen, is actually the most technically sound, character driven, insanely atmospheric entry of the entire 1st Season. Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes) finally lets go of some deep resentments she's been bottling up and goes after Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch). This is a task that I wouldn't suggest to any person of sound or capable mind to attempt in any way, shape, fashion, or form. The act is crazy in and of itself, and pissing off the 'Ravishing Redhead' that literally wears the letters 'HBIC' on the back of her cheerleading uniform, that's 'Head Bitch in Charge' for anyone too young or too old to remember Tiffany Pollard of VH1's 'I Love New York', is obviously going to lead to a backlash that Veronica won't likely forget. Sure she might get her big 'W' now, but we must remind you... There's no 'W' in 'HBIC'. Meanwhile, Cole Sprouse & Skeet Ulrich, who plays Serpent Gangster FP Jones & Jughead's father on the show, are literally close to actually convincing me that they are really father and son in real life. The little ticks and nuances that they share are out of this fn' world insane. Either these two have spent a week in a trailer together mirroring their every move or we seriously need to ring in Maury Povich for a DNA Test! Oh, and apparently there's some guy on the show named Archie Andrews (KJ Apa)... The only drawback is that they've failed to make the main protagonist (is he tho?) even remotely interesting. He's good looking, but he's not a convincing redhead, and I'm still not hooked into his arc. Hey, that's ok... Enter Mary Andrews (Molly Ringwald - ChaChing!), Archie's long lost mother. So nice of you to finally drop in, Molly! Fred Andrews (Luke Perry) is ready to finalize the divorce, but we're just biting on all the possibly juicy dramatic scenarios! Who is Archie again? Back at the party, that burgeoning rivalry between Veronica and Cheryl hits its boiling point when Veronica gets a bit too carried away and accuses Cheryl and her deceased brother Jason (Trevor Stines) of having an incestious affair. Ah, gotta love seedy underbelly of the United States! The more money, the crazier the family!!! Oh but there's more! Good ol' All-American Chuck (Jordan Calloway), who actually WAS almost boiled alive, attempts to out Betty on her 'Dr. Jeckyl/Ms. Hyde' issue that surfaced when a hot tub prank got a bit too out of hand earlier in the season. To our surprise, and viewer delight, Jughead and his Dad actually had a moment, which was completely unexpected, yet felt completely real. Like I said before, Ulrich & Sprouse have stellar chemistry, and the writers seem to know this and obviously derive great pleasure in giving us this moment where the two aren't at total odds and Jughead not only carefully considers, but actually takes his biological father's advice... Providing solid proof that the series isn't trying to meander or stretch out any unnecessary storylines at all. No disrespect to fans of other series broadcast on The CW, but clearly this isn't 'The Flash'. These storylines seem to be heading into important territory at a reasonable pace, and not just hanging around to fulfill an episode number requested by an executive to make sure ad-space quotas are filled... Although I have considered that this could be an issue that the show could run into in its expanded 22-Episode Run that it's been greenlit for S2. There's plenty of juicy drama to go around, but when we see that drama making moves instead of being drawn out, then you know you've got a potentially good show on your hands. For now, 'Riverdale' is back on a solid trajectory, delivering what appears to be a set-up episode for the impending S1 finale... A set-up episode that was easily the most consistent entry to date from start to finish. The impression that an episode as good as this exists to move its characters like chess pieces, seemingly just to put everyone in place for the final three episodes is an exciting notion for the last 3 hours of S1 of 'Riverdale' to come!
#Riverdale#Riverdale 1x10#The CW#CW#cw riverdale#Chapter 10 The Lost Weekend#Chapter 10#madelaine petsch#Luke Perry#Molly Ringwald#Archie Comics#Jordan Calloway#Casey Cott#Mädchen Amick#Marisol Nichols#Cole Sprouse#Jughead Jones#Camila Mendes#Veronica Lodge#lili reinhart#Betty Cooper#KJ Apa#Archie Andrews#Noir#Teen Drama#Dawn Wilkinson#roberto aguirre sacasa#Torombolo#Afterlife of Archie#cheryl blossom
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