#it just baffles me that people i follow and are larries follow them and seem to be friends like

[kiwikiwiandkiwi]

.

[alarrytale]

What do you think of Louis fitf promo and the doc afterwards? It seems to me they miscalculated badly with their dad/lad/son promo and attracting more male audience.. it baffles me how much he and his team were not flexible and not willing to change tactics when the fandom has been obviously unhappy (which affected the sale/listening numbers)

Ugh, don't get me started lol.

The doc was doomed because of the F content. The one's with the drive in them to really get this hyped and spread beyond the fandom, aka the larries, were mostly 'no thanks' because of the unneccessary inclusion of Clark jr. Regardless of what audience lthq are targeting, the dad and lad angle is a bust. Either people don't care or they hate it (cause they know it's fake).

Lthq made some blunders along the way (i'm being generous here lol), but i think the promo budget was small to begin with because they assumed the fandom would do most of the heavy lifting. There were no incentive for us to do that though. We do promo and what do we get in return? More lies about the kid and a new beard. The loudest voices with the most followers were tired.

The targeting of the male audience and maybe also the indie crowd is, to me, trying to be everything to everyone at once. I think that's also why everyone is so puzzled by his promo tactics and choices. And also why he's losing fans in the process. While trying to broaden his fanbase, he forgot to first off all cater to the hardcore fans. The cancellation of the Asia-part of his tour was so badly handled i just don't know anymore.

Will a 30 yo male indie/alt leaning from the gp want to listen to music from a 31 yo dude who was in a boyband and is now picking up 22yo pinterest-loving college girls in LA? I doubt it. Will a 15 yo pop/kpop loving girl from the gp want to listen to music from a 31 yo dude who's only personality is deadbeat dad, heavy smoker/vodka redbulls and ladsladslads? I don't think so.

Would either of them listen if wayof was a single and Louis showed his multidimentional personality again? Stopped lying about being a dad, get in touch with his fandom again with better communication? Get in touch with himself again? Would the fandom then be more inclined to help with promo? Yes to all the above. That would require them to listen to the fans, and this time they chose not to.

[ofstormsandwolves]

cheerleaders and fighter pilots

Teen

Wishverse

Buffy, Giles, Oz, the Master, Anyanka

Canon divergence

Read on AO3

In an alternate timeline, Giles fails to destroy Anyanka's amulet. What happens now?

Summoning Anyanka had been a foolish idea, Rupert Giles realised almost instantly. As if it wasn’t enough that he was very clearly a male and Anyanka dealt with scorned women, she also hadn’t taken too kindly to being told she had to undo her spell.

Which was how Giles had ended up pinned to the wall of his apartment by his neck, the vengeance demon squeezing hard as she slowly cut off his oxygen.

“This is the real world now,” Anyanka sneered, and Giles felt his vision narrowing. “This is the world we made.” She smirked. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

Giles struggled against the demon’s grip, but it did no good. He could feel himself fading fast, as he gasped for breath, and he knew there was nothing he could do to stop the inevitable end. But just before his vision faded entirely, he saw Anyanka’s amulet glow green. He clawed at it with a hand, and the next thing he knew...

He was falling.

The Master had Buffy in a death grip, pulling her towards him with a look of triumph. Jaw clenched, Buffy thought quickly. How did she get out of this? What should she do?

There was a thud, followed by a growl from the Master, and suddenly the death grip was gone. The Master had turned his attention elsewhere. Not wanting to let the opportunity pass her by, she lunged for her stake, having dropped it as she sparred with the master vampire. Spinning round, Buffy plunged it into the Master’s back, and watched as his body turned to dust. His skeleton seemed to hang in the air for a moment before clattering to the floor.

Lifting her gaze from the pile of bones, she glared at the boy who had been stupid enough to antagonise the Master.

“You could have gotten yourself killed,” she told him lowly.

To the boy’s credit, he simply stared back impassively.

“I didn’t need your help, you know,” Buffy added with a frown.

The boy gave a small smile at that. “I know.”

Something about the calmness of the boy threw Buffy, so instead she distracted herself with looking around the warehouse. There were bodies everywhere, as well as plenty of piles of dust, but it looked like everyone else had vacated the premises while she’d confronted the Master.

The boy was staring down at the bones. “So, uh, what exactly are we going to do with these?”

Buffy shrugged. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “They don’t normally leave bones.” She nudged the skull with her foot. “I suppose I should take them to Jeeves.”

“Giles,” the boy corrected, and a look of recognition seemed to flit across his face. “You’re the Slayer. Giles said you weren’t coming, that he couldn’t contact you.”

Buffy shifted uneasily at that. Something about the way the boy was scrutinising her made her feel uneasy. It was like he was observing her, analysing her. “Yeah, well,” she shrugged again. “I’m here now.”

“You are,” the boy agreed. “I’m Oz, by the way.”

Buffy, however, was busy looking around the room. “We’re going to need something to carry the bones in,” she said.

As she and Oz started looking around for something to use as a bag for the Master’s remains, a silence fell over them. Picking over the dead bodies, Buffy eventually found what seemed to be a dust sheet, and quickly moved back to the remains. Seeing that she had found something, Oz moved to help her with the task.

“I’m Buffy,” she said after a few moments of transferring the bones to the middle of the dust sheet so they could gather the four corners together.

Oz smiled softly at her then, and said nothing. The Master’s remains gathered, the two teens straightened up.

“My van’s outside if you want a ride,” Oz offered. “It will be quicker than walking.”

Buffy surveyed him for a moment before finally nodding. “Fine. Lead the way.”

 The drive to Giles’s apartment was one filled with silence, but it wasn’t anywhere near as awkward as Buffy had expected it to be. The boy- Oz- seemed quite comfortable with the whole not-talking thing, and she couldn’t help but feel a little grateful about that.

When they finally pulled up outside the apartment block, they climbed out of the van and ascended the steps. As they reached the courtyard, however, Buffy froze, and frowned.

“What is it?” Oz asked with a small frown.

“Stay here,” she responded, shoving the Master’s bones at him and creeping across the courtyard.

The door to the Watcher’s apartment was slightly ajar, and Buffy balled her hands into fists, ready for a fight. But as she kicked the door open, she saw nothing but chaos. And a body slumped on the floor.

“Giles,” Oz breathed, and he must have followed Buffy even despite her telling him not to.

She couldn’t help but roll her eyes at that, as she stepped into the apartment. She crossed to the body, scowled at the bruises around the man’s neck, and bent down to press two fingers to his pulse point.

“He’s alive,” she stated, before looking around the room.

The remnants of a casting were evident on the wooden desk- herbs and candles and jars of things Buffy couldn’t identify.

“He tried to summon the demon,” she said as she took it in. “He tried to break the spell.”

“But we’re still here,” Oz said unnecessarily.

“Well, obviously it didn’t work,” Buffy responded, before surveying the Watcher again.

The man- Jeeves, or Giles, or whatever he was called- groaned, and for a brief moment Buffy thought he’d open his eyes. But he didn’t, and she sighed.

“Where’s the nearest hospital?” she asked Oz.

“Sunnydale General,” Oz answered promptly. “Maybe ten minutes in the van.” Then, without her needing to ask, he said: “I’ll take you.”

Giving the boy a swift nod, Buffy bent down to haul the unconscious Watcher up. Oz moved to support some of his weight, but he was about the same size as Buffy and she could already tell he wouldn’t be much help. So she was more than marginally surprised when he managed to take more of the man’s weight than she’d anticipated.

“You know,” Oz said, seeing her eyes widen slightly, “you’re not the only one with a secret identity.”

He gave an enigmatic smile then, that left Buffy wondering about him, as they slowly moved towards the door.

 Sunnydale General was a large, bland building full of confused and crying teenagers. Apparently those who had escaped the Master’s warehouse had sought out medical attention for their wounds, and Oz and Buffy had to pick through clusters of baffled high school students to reach the admissions desk.

“Rupert Giles,” Oz said succinctly to the bored receptionist. “We think he was attacked. He was unconscious when we found him.”

The receptionist took one look at Giles and called for an orderly, who showed them to the bed. The bed was in a corridor, along with a dozen or so other beds, and Buffy realised that Sunnydale General apparently wasn’t equipped for a sudden rush of patients.

“I’d have thought living on a Hellmouth would mean they’d be more prepared for this sort of thing,” Buffy mused as they hauled Giles onto the bed.

Oz shrugged uncomfortably. “Usually people patch themselves up at home. It’s not usually safe to be out at night here.”

“It still isn’t,” Buffy retorted. “Just because the Master’s dealt with, doesn’t mean everything’s suddenly safe.” She glanced pointedly at the bones Oz was still carrying around in the dust sheet.

A nurse came by to check Giles over then, and Buffy wasn’t the slightest bit surprised when Oz explained that the man had had several head injuries previously.

“So he makes a habit of getting knocked out,” Buffy stated once the nurse was gone. “Figures.”

Oz eyed her carefully. “Giles said that you were supposed to be in Sunnydale, long before tonight,” he ventured carefully.

Buffy folded her arms, avoided his gaze. “So I heard.”

Sensing she didn’t want to continue the conversation, Oz turned his attention back to Giles. He didn’t like feeling so helpless, particularly when it came to Giles. He was the leader, the one in charge. The adult. There was something unsettling about him being out cold like this, even if Oz had seen it before.

He just hoped Giles woke up soon.

 Giles was taken for tests, and when he was finally brought back, most of the teenagers had been kicked out and the sun was beginning to rise. Oz and Buffy sat on either side of the man’s bed, Buffy feeling a little awkward about the whole thing, and waited for him to come round.

“You said this has happened before,” Buffy said after a lengthy silence. “Does he usually take this long to come round?”

Oz blinked, and considered the best words to use. “No,” he responded eventually. “It’s never taken this long.”

Buffy eyed the man in the bed. “Well, that’s what happens to a guy who summons demons for fun.”

“It wasn’t fun,” Oz said, and Buffy wasn’t sure if she’d offended him or not. He was kind of hard to read. “He was trying to save us.”

“I was trying to save us,” she countered with a shrug. “That’s why I went after the Master. Jeeves here was summoning demons on a hunch he might be able to undo this supposed spell.”

There was a groan from the bed then, and the man in question opened his eyes briefly before closing them again.

“W-Whoever is talking,” he said in a strained, hoarse voice, “please shut up.”

Buffy snorted. “I killed your supreme vampire for you and you tell me to shut up? Well, that’s gratitude for you.”

Giles opened his eyes again, and peered at Buffy in confusion. “Buffy?” he asked. “Buffy Summers?”

“Yeah, we’ve already covered this, several hours ago,” Buffy told him, before looking to Oz. “You weren’t kidding about the head injury thing.”

Giles followed her gaze, and blinked at Oz, a delighted smile tugging at his lips. “Oz,” he greeted, “you’re alright.” He frowned. “And everyone else?”

Oz responded with an apologetic shrug. “Quite a few people escaped, but I don’t know who,” he admitted. “I lost sight of Larry during the fight. I would have checked the bodies to see if I recognised anyone, but the Master left us a leaving present and I had to help Buffy with it.”

He held up the bundled dust sheet then, and Giles frowned, moving to push himself into a sitting position.

“What’s that?” he enquired even as he winced.

“The Master’s bones,” Buffy stated. “I figured you’d know what to do with them. Usually the vampires don’t leave me a ‘going away’ present.”

A doctor entered the room then, cutting off all conversation.

“Well, Mr Giles, it looks like you had quite the night,” the doctor noted in a cheery tone. “There doesn’t seem to be anything too wrong, and nothing’s broken, but you do have some cracked ribs as well as a bruised larynx.” The doctor frowned then. “May I ask what exactly happened? Your... Friends here weren’t able to fill in all the details.”

“An intruder,” Giles rasped. “Most likely trying to steal from me.”

Buffy almost rolled her eyes at how easily the doctor accepted the explanation.

“Well, you’ll have to take it easy for a few days, and be sure to drink lots of fluids, but I see no reason to keep you here any longer. I’ll just go see about getting your discharge papers.”

 It took all of about ten minutes to discharge Giles; apparently Sunnydale General had a quick turnaround regarding patients. As the three of them made their way out to Oz’s van, Buffy glanced up at the older man.

“I’m guessing the thing with the demon didn’t work out, huh?”

Giles scowled at her. “She must have escaped while I was unconscious. The spell worked fine, but she was stronger than I anticipated.”

“You’re lucky she didn’t kill you,” Buffy said as they reached the van. “Most demons don’t let their victims live.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Giles snapped, before wincing at the pain in his throat. “We’ll simply have to summon her again. I’m fairly certain the amulet around her neck is her power source- it was glowing.”

Oz had already climbed into the vehicle, and watched as Buffy and Giles climbed in. “Well, maybe we should probably wait to summon her again,” he said as he started up the engine. “Between the three of us, we might be able to take her.”

“Or next time she gets to kill two men,” Buffy frowned. “I don’t see why you’re so fixated on what this girl told you anyway. Who says this is a result of a spell? What if this is just life?” She shrugged, folding her arms across her chest. “Maybe you both need to let go of this fantasy that there’s a better world out there.”

Oz and Giles glanced at each other and said nothing.

 Giles was immediately sent to relax on the sofa when they reached his apartment. Oz busied himself tidying up the debris from Anyanka’s visit, and Buffy leaned against the wall and watched.

“Buffy,” Giles said after several long moments, “why don’t you bring the Master’s remains over here? Let me take a look?”

“Sure,” she shrugged, crossing the room to dump the remains on the coffee table. “But they just look like a bunch of old bones to me.”

Giles said nothing, and instead slipped a pair of glasses on before unfolding the dust sheet. A heavy silence filled the air while he examined the bones, and Buffy quickly grew tired of watching him. If she hadn’t believed he was a Watcher already, the way he scrutinised the remains would have proved it to her. He looked fascinated, in a way that she had only ever seen on her other Watchers’ faces.

“We should bury these,” he said after several minutes. “In consecrated ground.”

“We should destroy them,” Buffy countered. “I’m not about to give some vampire a nice little funeral.”

Giles blinked, and Oz watched the scene from where he was finishing tidying up the desk. “Well, I, I understand your feelings,” the older man began slowly, “but I don’t think destroying them is necessary-”

“Isn’t it?” Buffy interrupted coolly. “And how many supreme vampires have you fought?”

Giles stuttered a little more at that, and Buffy folded her arms across her chest.

“We’re destroying them. We’re destroying them, and then I’m leaving.”

“Now hang on,” Giles protested, finding his voice even if it was a little hoarse. “What about Anyanka? We still need to break the spell!”

“You can do that without me,” Buffy dismissed. “You have Oz to stop you from being beaten to a pulp again.”

“But Anyanka deals with scorned women,” the man continued. “I’ve already tempted fate summoning her once-”

“Fine,” Buffy said loudly, cutting him off midsentence. “We destroy the bones, summon this Anyanka, and then I leave.”

Giles seemed to sense that this was the best he was going to get, so he nodded after only a brief hesitation.

Buffy looked at the bones set out on the coffee table. “Have you got a sledgehammer?”

 Although he didn’t own a sledgehammer, Giles had the money for one. They all piled back into Oz’s van with the bones and drove to the nearest hardware store, before continuing on to the woods.

“I do vaguely remember something about my taking it easy,” Giles muttered as Buffy led them deeper and deeper into the woods.

“You could have waited in the van,” Buffy countered over her shoulder.

“Absolutely not,” came the rasping reply. “You are the Slayer, and I am a Watcher, and it is my duty to-”

“Yeah, yeah.” Buffy sounded extremely unimpressed. “I’ve heard it all before. A Slayer slays, a Watcher watches. You’re here to watch me pulverise some bones just so you can make sure I’ve done it. Haven’t you guys ever heard of trust?”

She came out in a clearing then, and dumped the bones onto the ground. Giles and Oz came to a stop just at the edge of the tree line, and Buffy moved to take the sledgehammer from the younger man.

They watched in silence as the Slayer got to work methodically smashing the bones into the ground. Shards of white bone jumped through the air, buried their way into the dirt, scattered across the grass. There was an angriness to the girl’s movements, and when Oz glanced towards Giles he knew that the older man had seen it too.

Buffy didn’t stop until the shards had been hammered into the ground, until every last bone was barely more than dust, and when she turned to face them, there was a furious look in her eyes. As she walked past Oz, she shoved the sledgehammer at him and he took it without thinking.

She didn’t stop walking until she reached the van.

 “Just tell me what to do.”

Giles surveyed the stubborn Slayer with a slight unease. None of them had talked about Buffy’s actions in the woods, but he couldn’t help but feel the reason for her anger might have been at least in part linked to her failure to show up in Sunnydale. Still, he could tell that forcing the matter would only anger the Slayer, and he knew their current priority needed to be undoing the wish.

“I’ll do the mixing of the ingredients,” he told her carefully. “I simply need you to recite the spell. When Anyanka appears, you will need to grab her amulet and destroy it. That will reverse the spell.”

Buffy didn’t look convinced, but Giles pointedly ignored that and instead set to work mixing the ingredients. When he was ready, he nodded to Buffy.

With a sigh, she leaned over to read the words for the spell. “Anyanka, I beseech thee. In the name of all women scorned, come before me.”

Oz startled as the demon appeared in the middle of the room, and even Giles unconsciously backed away. But Buffy just arched an eyebrow at her.

“You know, I was expecting something a little scarier,” the Slayer said as she scrutinised the demon in front of her. “Oh well. Let’s just get this over with.”

She darted forward then, and aimed a blow at the demon’s head, but the demon blocked it.

“Slayer,” Anyanka greeted with a smirk. “How nice of you to join our little town.”

Buffy said nothing, and instead blocked a blow from Anyanka.

“B-Buffy,” Giles’s nervous voice came from a few feet away. “We might have a problem.”

Landing a blow to the demon’s stomach, Buffy glanced over her shoulder with a scowl. “What?”

“T-The amulet,” Giles said, wide-eyed.

“Yeah?” Buffy prompted.

Oz pointed towards the demon. “She’s not wearing it.”

The Slayer blinked, and looked back at Anyanka. There was no amulet around her neck. Anyanka laughed.

“Do you really think I didn’t know what you were planning?” the demon sneered. “I wasn’t falling for your little scheme! My amulet is safe and sound somewhere you’ll never get your hands on it.”

“Without the amulet, we, we can’t reverse the spell!” Giles informed them, sounding more than a little anxious.

“Oh, you won’t be reversing anything,” Anyanka grinned. She looked around wistfully. “I hope you enjoy your new lives. They were so much fun to watch unfold.”

And before anyone could react, Anyanka had vanished. Buffy blinked at the spot where the demon had been just a split second before. A heavy silence filled the room.

“I take it that wasn’t the plan?” Oz said at last.

“No,” Giles agreed quietly. “It wasn’t.”

 Oz left a little while later, sent home by Giles to get some sleep.

“I should go,” Buffy said, standing by the front door.

“Back to your Watcher?” Giles asked, perched on the arm of the sofa.

Buffy shrugged and avoided his gaze. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

Giles frowned. “You know,” he said after a moment, wincing at the soreness of his throat, “when I was first told I was destined to be a Watcher, I was told that the most important thing for a Watcher was to be trusted and respected by their Slayer.”

Buffy watched him suspiciously then. “What are you getting at?”

“Oh, nothing,” he said, looking away across the room. “Just that I don’t think you trust your Watcher, if you’re so reluctant to return to him, and that isn’t right.”

The Slayer scoffed. “Look, I can handle myself,” she said, frustrated, “and-”

“I’m sure you can. But it isn’t right that you are stuck with a Watcher you don’t feel a connection to. A Watcher is there to train and guide the Slayer, and the Slayer must have absolute faith in them. Otherwise people get hurt.”

Buffy stepped a little closer then, arms wrapped round herself and a hint of vulnerability on her face. “My Watcher hates me,” she said after a moment. “The one before hated me too. And the one before that. They all had these perfect ideas about a Slayer, and because I didn’t fit into the mould they tried to force me. And when that didn’t work, well...” She shrugged, not meeting Giles’s gaze.

“I remember,” Giles said slowly, watching the small girl in front of him, “that Cordelia Chase knew you were meant to be here, in Sunnydale. That I was sent here to await a Slayer by the name of Buffy Summers, that I was to be your Watcher.” Buffy met his gaze hesitantly. “That there was another world, a- a better world than this, where you made it here and I did my duty.” He swallowed, dropped his eyes to his hands, unable to look at her any longer. “We might not be able to reverse the spell, to undo this nightmare entirely, but perhaps we could- could make this world a little more tolerable.”

“How?” Buffy asked, though he sensed she knew what he was hinting at.

“You have no connection to your Watcher, Buffy, perhaps because he was never meant to be your Watcher. By the time I was made aware of your not arriving in Sunnydale, I had started building a life here, and I was informed by the Council that alternative arrangements would be made for you. But what if those arrangements were doomed to fail? What if the world Cordelia came from got one specific thing right? You being in Sunnydale as the Slayer, I as your Watcher?”

“What if my presence here changed everything, you mean?” Buffy asked, and she looked vaguely ill at the thought. “If I’d arrived when you were expecting me, how much would have changed?”

“Exactly,” Giles agreed, and he couldn’t help the excitement building in him. It would be a lie to say that he hadn’t been disappointed when he had been informed of the change of plans, that he would not receive a Slayer. And to have her here, now, albeit a couple of years later than planned...

“You can’t put that on me,” Buffy said, voice quiet and angry. “You cannot hold me responsible for the way things turned out here.”

The man frowned, and suddenly realised how his words had been misinterpreted. “I- I don’t,” he hastened to assure her. “I, I merely meant that your presence here in Sunnydale might help this world find its balance. Clearly Anyanka has taken extra precautions to keep us from getting her amulet, and while we could try summoning her again, I’m quite certain she’ll avoid Sunnydale in its entirety for the foreseeable future.” He sighed. “I just wanted to offer you an alternative, to going back to a Watcher you don’t trust, or, or being on your own. You were meant to be here in Sunnydale, and so the Council can hardly protest at your staying here. I just thought you might like the option.”

Buffy frowned a little at that, apparently confused by the idea of choice. She moved across the room, and sank slowly onto the sofa, causing Giles to have to move in order to see her.

“Options,” she echoed softly, before meeting his eyes. Suddenly, she wasn’t that cold, hard Slayer who had found him at the side of the road; she was a scared, lonely teenage girl. “I haven’t had options for a long time.” She gave him a tight smile, and the action looked foreign on her face. Giles was willing to bet all his good scotch on the fact she hadn’t had a reason to smile for quite a while. “You know, when I was a kid, I was gonna be a cheerleader. Or an ice skater. My biggest concern when I started high school was getting on to the cheerleading team. It was all I cared about.” Her brow furrowed. “Then it became all vampires and demons and death.”

She lapsed into silence then, and Giles felt compelled to say something.

“When I was a child,” he responded quietly, “I wanted to be a fighter pilot, or a grocer. I was rather quite put out when I was told I’d be a Watcher instead. I think part of the reason I hated it was because I wasn’t given the luxury of choice. It was like what I wanted didn’t matter. I even ran away for a while; I dropped out of university, ran off to London. Did everything I could to avoid the call of the Watchers Council and my destiny as a Watcher. Eventually I went back, of course, but only when I felt ready.”

Buffy seemed to process this. “I don’t think I ever felt ready,” she admitted, voice barely more than a whisper and a pained tone to her words. “I even tried to quit, after my first Watcher died. They wouldn’t let me.” She glanced up at Giles, gave another smile, and somehow this one felt a little more natural. “It’s nice to know someone gets it. My Watchers have always been pretty smug with themselves for being picked. I think it’s why they hate me so much. They can’t understand why anybody wouldn’t want the job.” She thought for a moment longer. “Is the offer to stay still on the table?”

Giles smiled back then, a soft reassuring smile that made Buffy’s eyes light up just for a second. “It is,” he nodded. “I’m afraid the spare room is rather full of things right now, but I can make up the couch for you until we get it cleared out?”

Buffy nodded, though he could see she was trying not to let on how affected she was by his words. “Sounds good.”

Giles stood then, and paused briefly before turning back to her. “I know you’ll probably say no, but I’ll ask anyway. Did you want to call your Watcher?”

“No,” Buffy responded calmly. “But we should probably call the council. Make my move official, and all that.”

Blinking at that, Giles found a slow smile spread across his face. “We should?” he asked, not wanting to get his hopes up just yet.

“Yep,” Buffy said, getting to her feet. “You’re back on the clock, Watcher.” She moved past him to the kitchen. “Got any cereal?”

And as the Slayer began rooting through his cupboards for food, Giles couldn’t help but smile. This world wasn’t perfect. In fact, it had been downright horrific for the past two years. But something told Rupert Giles it was about to get a whole lot better.

[julilentille]

No problem! This is going to be a long thread if you don't mind. Obviously I don't have a sure answer, but I think its because I have a pretty big blog (I'm not ready to share it right now though, I'm cleaning my dash). I used to model when I was a teen (which if you've reading my ask, is the reason why I hate following celebs. Seriously don't meet your idols) so I have a lot of following. I usually post reviews on movies, series, and albums, which get decent reblogs. (1)

So I reviewed fine line, track per track and as a whole. I loved the album a lot. One particular moment that piqued my curiosity was the voice in cherry, I had no idea what was going on but was curious. I also wanted to know what watermelon sugar and sunflower meant. This was my first post which got some attention. I did my own research and learn about Camille as the voice and the entire album being about her. Also a bit about who she was because I've never heard of her. (2)

I posted that detail again on my blog, and I said learning those details and especially that the album is one whole love story makes it better. I posted how much I like albums that tells a story and that it was a very sweet love letter Harry made for Camille. This got a lot of attention as well and my ask blew up. Some were the decent ask like which one is my fave song, what do I think this song means. A lot were those trying to recruit me, not just larries but as a Harry stan. (3)

I clarified that I never follow celebs ever, so I will only appreciate the music but won't turn into a stan. Larries were correcting me that Camille isn't who the album was about but Louis, but I was irritated that some ask were plain out vile to her. I was respectful at first, saying I would take Harry's words over fans. I also replied defending Camille against insults that were thrown at her. But the more I defend her the more they insulted her and I never look away against bullying (4).

So they got mad at me for insulting them and implying Harry was evil when I said if Camille was so disgusting then maybe Harry isn't as far off. I also posted Camille's closet video and they believed I was a stan. So I guess it was my big mouth that got me flack. Some would say just ignore and block. Me I bite back and block because I think they deserve to be spit on the face for bullying. I received a lot of threats, but I'm a fighter as you can see and they don't scare me. (5) 

As for how I learned about Harry. Everybody knows who he is don't get me wrong. But I was never into 1D, just not my cup of tea. His first album didn't do anything for me also sorry. But my bf loved Fine Line and recommended it to me. Some of my fave albums are ones that tells a story such as downward spiral and melodrama, so my bf thinks I'd like it as well. He's not wrong, I loved the album very much. As I said though I never follow celebs. I appreciate the art and go. (6)

————————————

First, Sorry for the late posting (I want to respond properly but went off the internet for a few days).

Second, thank you so much for taking the time to do it and of course for not sharing your blog.

But yeah, if your blog is big enough it’s probably why you got the worst of it from the start. And seriously, I understand people who don’t want to be submit to the larries and other stan war bullying but we need people to “fight back” too. So even if you are just appreciating the music (which I respect so much) thank you for doing this.

It seems like half of this fandom auto censure themself which still baffled me a little bit to avoid the anon hate (which I understand) or worst just not to lose notes/followers (which I don’t) . But there is a little bastion of headstrong people in this fandom (you know who you are, love you 3000) who do the dirty work.

Euh I have no idea who he was before seing him on my tv singing Sign Of The Times!! I probably was in the minority tho.  And I’m so glad your bf recommended you Fine Line and you giving it a shot (would love to read your review). There is nothing better than to be recommend an album by someone and loving it. And trust me I will probably hate one of his future album so I’m absolutely not taking badly to you not having liked self tittle ;-). I got to listen to 1D after discovering Harry and there is some jams cramed into those 5 albums but probably not your cup of tea if you like a narrative.

Again thank you for humoring me.

[rose-of-pollux]

Inktober for Writers, Day 21

Prompt: Treasure Fandom: Perfect Strangers (with a touch of Kid Icarus) Title: In the Lap of the Gods Summary: [Post-series] In which, while on assignment in Athens, Larry gets separated from the others and meets a woman who claims to be the Goddess Athena.

Notes: Takes place post-series; it also takes place directly before Day #9’s entry (“Wrong Place at the Wrong Time”) from earlier in this Inktober collection, as I’d briefly mentioned the squad traveling to Athens for Larry to get a story on the uncovering of a previously undiscovered temple to Athena.  My portrayal of Athena in this vignette is meant to be Palutena from the Kid Icarus/Super Smash Bros series, and the artifacts that she shows off to Larry are meant to be the Three Sacred Treasures; I try to have all of my fics across different fandoms in a shared timeline.

Cross-posted to AO3 & FFN.

The discovery of the previously unrecorded temple to Athena Parthenos had garnered a lot of attention indeed.  Athens was a veritable maze of people trying to get a look at the uncovered ruins and see if they could uncover some possibly hidden treasures.  Jennifer and Mary Anne took one look at the crowd and opted to stay at the hotel with Tucker and Robespierre.

Larry’s press badge had gotten him farther than most of the crowd, with Balki sticking close to him as his interpreter.  Still, it wasn’t long before parts of the crowd managed to get past the barriers and into the restricted areas.  Larry and Balki found themselves separated by the mad tide of people, and in his attempts to fight against the crowd and find his cousin, Larry found himself further jostled by the swarm of people.

It only ended after Larry, pressed up against one of the temple walls, suddenly felt the wall move.  The portion of the wall he was pressed up against spun 180 degrees, depositing him in a dark tunnel.  And a search with a flashlight offered no way to activate the wall into spinning him back to the outside.

“Ohhh, no…” he murmured, in the verge of panic.  “Oh no, oh no, oh no…”  He frantically hammered on the stone wall with his palm.  “Balki!?  Anyone!? I’m trapped behind the wall!”

The crowd would be too noisy for anyone to hear him, he realized.  He would have to take his chances and follow the tunnel, hoping that it would lead to a way out and not into an ancient trap.

He barely paid attention to the carvings and ancient writing on the tunnel walls—the only thing that got his attention was a light at the end of the tunnel.

Larry broke into a run, eager to find a way out, but the tunnel didn’t lead to the outside; he found himself in a room made completely of marble, the light coming from lit torch brackets on the walls.   There was a small reflective pool of crystal-clear water in the center of the room that had a large marble column rising from it, and, sitting on the edge of the pool, looking at Larry in curiosity, was a woman in very odd clothes—her dress seemed like something from ancient times, like Larry had seen in carvings and statues, and her hair was bedecked with ornaments and jewelry. And a staff rested in one hand, with a shield in the other.

“Ah, excuse me,” Larry said.  “I’m not sure who you are or how you got here—but if you know the way out, I’d appreciate you telling me.”

“Certainly, I know the way out,” she said, with a gentle smile.  “This temple was built for me.”

Larry blinked.

“…This temple was built for Athena Parthenos,” he said.

“Yes, that’s one of my names,” she said.  “I have had many over the centuries—Athena, Minerva, Parthena, Pallas Athena, Palutena…”

“…You know what?  On second thoughts, I think I’ll just try to find the way out myself.  Sorry to bother you,” Larry said, moving to make a hasty retreat as he presumed the woman to be out of her mind—why else would she claim to be an ancient Goddess!?

He turned, contemplating going back through the tunnel when she spoke again—

“I really can point you towards the quickest way out, Lawrence.”

He turned back, momentarily wondering how on Earth she could’ve known his name—until he realized she must have seen it on his press badge.

“Oh, that’s good.  That’s really good.  You really had me going there for a moment,” Larry said.  “But I really have to get out of here before my family starts worrying about my disappearance.”

“That isn’t the way out, Lawrence; that tunnel only goes one way—in,” the woman chided, as Larry moved to go back through the tunnel.

He ignored her, and, all of a sudden, Larry walked smack into what felt like a glass wall.  Blinking, he saw that a reflective, glass-like material was blocking the way through the tunnel that had not been there only moments before.

He whirled back around, gingerly rubbing his nose and staring as he saw the woman holding her shield up; an unearthly aura surrounded her.

“I told you, you’re going the wrong way!” she chided.  She indicated another exit behind her, at the far side of the room. “That is the way out.”

“How…  How are you doing that…?” he stammered.

She lowered the shield, and the aura vanished; Larry turned back and waved his hand in front of him, but the barrier had vanished.

“Okay.  Okay,” he said, running a hand through his brunet curls as he turned back to face the woman.  “That’s also a really great trick—very nice.”

“You truly are a stubborn one, aren’t you, Lawrence?” she asked, amused. “I’m sure Balki would readily believe my identity.”

“Balki would believe almost anything…”  He trailed off again and then pointed at her.  “Aha, you heard me calling for him back there!”

She responded with a serene smile before speaking again—

“But you didn’t call for Jennifer or Mary Anne—but that makes sense, since they didn’t come to my temple.”

Larry struggled to come up with an explanation for that; even as he did, the woman continued—

“You are Lawrence Appleton—in some ways, a truly ordinary man.  You are the modern equivalent of a scribe, seeking to have your words read by others.  Yet, you also yearn for comforts of wealth and luxury.”

“…Doesn’t everyone?” Larry defended.

“But in other ways, you are quite extraordinary,” she continued.  “By all accounts, you should not even be standing here alive—I understand that, six years ago, a seer predicted your demise at the hands of a Reaper.  I must tell you, Thanatos was certainly baffled by your escape from that fate—he thought he had you, quite literally, dead to rights…”

Larry had no retort for that; the only ones who knew about Claire Hayden’s prophecy were himself, Balki, Jennifer, and Mary Anne—not even Claire herself had been able to remember what she had said in the trance.

The woman stood up now.

“You came here for a story, but you also came here for treasure, did you not?” she said.

“…Um…”

“Then gaze upon this!” she finished, raising her glowing staff.

The marble column in the middle of the pool suddenly opened up to reveal that it was hollow—and levitating inside of it was a suit of ancient, winged armor that looked as though it was lined with gold, a reflective shield also edged with gold, and a golden-edged bow with a quiver of brightly gleaming arrows.

“…Oh, my Lord…!” Larry sputtered, his eyes wide.

“I am willing to give all this to you—all I ask a small personal token in exchange,” she said.

“Name it!” Larry exclaimed.

“Hmm, let’s see…  Gold for gold?  That ring on your left hand?”

Larry’s face fell as he glanced at the ring she was talking about.

“Wha…?  But… This is my wedding ring!” he protested. “I haven’t taken it off since Jennifer put it on me…!”

“Hmm, perhaps that is asking too much…” she admitted.  “Very well, how about that watch on your wrist?  Or that silver tie clasp?”

Larry glanced at the watch and the tie clasp.

“Well…  Well… It sounds like a great deal but…” He sighed, wincing.  “Balki gave me the tie clasp and Mary Anne gave me the watch.  They didn’t even have a special occasion for it, either….”

“Very well; let’s see…” she mused.  “Ah, surely you don’t mind parting with that handkerchief in your chest pocket—the one with the tassel tied to it?  It looks like a child scribbled on it!”

“…That’s exactly what it is,” Larry said, placing his hand on the handkerchief. “My son got ahold of a Sharpie, and… improved on it, I guess.  …The tassel was from Balki and Mary Anne’s son.”

“…So that’s a ‘no,’ as well?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Larry sighed.  “I bought the cufflinks myself—I don’t suppose you want those?”  He wasn’t surprised when she shook her head. “Yeah.  Yeah, I thought as much.”  He glanced, wistfully, at the treasures in the marble column.  “…You really are Athena Parthenos,” he realized.

“What makes you say that?”

“The Goddess of Wisdom and Light?” Larry said.  He indicated the treasures in the column.  “I realize the point you were trying to make.”

She smiled again, the column closing back around the treasures as she lowered her staff.

“Then I’m glad you realized it,” she said.  “You are loved, Lawrence—so very loved.  There is nothing wrong with chasing fortune as long as you never forget that, for you will never find treasures as fulfilling as the ones you carry with you now.”

Larry nodded, slightly overcome.

“I, um…  I need to get back to them…”

She waved her staff again, creating a door next to Larry.

“Then go to them,” she encouraged.

He didn’t question how she had made the door; after only a moment’s hesitation, he went through it, suddenly stumbling as he ended up instantly outside the temple walls, nearly crashing into Balki, who was trying to explain what had happened to Jennifer and Mary Anne, who had arrived with the children.

“Cousin Larry!” he exclaimed, hugging him in relief.

“Oh, Larry, are you alright!?” Jennifer asked, placing her free hand on the side of his face.

“Balki called and said you got separated from him in the crowd; we didn’t know where you’d ended up, so we came over here hoping to find some sort of clue as to where you went,” Mary Anne said.

“I’m okay,” he promised them.  “But am I ever glad to see you all again…”

He hugged Balki back, and then Mary Anne and Robespierre, before kissing Jennifer and taking Tucker in his arms.  Tucker, happy to see his father again, babbled in baby language, apparently telling him about his day.

Larry listened intently, only pausing to turn to the others and silently nod in the direction of the hotel.

“Cousin, are you sure?” Balki asked, knowing that Larry probably hadn’t had much time to talk to the excavation team yet.

Larry responded with a nod; there’d be plenty of time for interviewing later—perhaps after the crowd dissipated.

For now, he would take Athena’s advice and appreciate what he had.

[ask-anyone-from-the-tick]

Bellow the cut are my spoilery thoughts after watching season 2 of the Tick

I’m kind of glad Dot turned out to have a super power because being the only hero with no powers is sort of Arthur’s whole thing. I also like that she didn’t outshine Overkill and just step over him, but still looks up to him a bit and appreciates his approval. They feel like equals, and he’s still an awkward turtle socially.

THEY WERE SO CUDDLY AND AWKWARD ON THE COUCH, Overkill is def the kind of guy who can’t move if there’s a pet on his lap. He’s so soft I can’t...

I LOVE that we get to see more of Joan and her relationship to her family, she’s awesome and I love and support her. She’s just doing her best, and I hope those lobster babies come to visit.

Superian and Larry’s relationship continues to baffle me just a bit. Larry seems to just be a willing servant to cater to his whims I guess. I kinda hoped they were more buddy buddy than that. Apparently it makes Superian feel better to toss him way up and catch him lawl

The way Hobbs reacted when Tick broke the arm wrestling machine thing makes me wonder if Tick is actually the strongest superhero in the world, maybe second only to Superian ??? Or at least the strongest ever registered with AEGIS.

I really, REALLY like Sage. He’s fantastic. He’s also really attractive, is it just me? DAT VOICE THO. [take me on a wild nipple ride! jk omg I’m sorry]

That twin woman who was impressed with Arthur’s nerdy organization came off as REALLY OBVIOUSLY flirting with him, and his reaction was to just shrug it off like he wasn’t in to her, even though she was gorgeous, and Tick immediately picked up on it that she was flirting and got DEFENSIVE AS HELL like she was taking Arthur away and I just-- that’s pretty gay guys. That’s really... wow. And then she comes back and continues to hit on Arthur and he never once acts like he’s in to her, I don’t... I don’t know what to say but if Arthur suddenly starts pining over her in season 3 out of no where I’m gonna kms [not because he’s not gay but because it’s pretty clear he’s not interested in this woman. Don’t establish this and then force romance after we’ve seen there’s none.] Also when Arthur was picking out fancy clothes Tick had REALLY specific fashion descriptions and opinions on what looked good on him. He was like enjoying Arthur modeling clothes ajdlfdjas

Someone needs to draw Overkill being lovingly rescued by dolphins STAT

I honestly, unironically, think Edgelord’s entire look is cool and he’s very handsome. I think he looks like if Johnny Depp and Adam Driver had a baby.

SUPERIAN FEARS THE TUMBLRS. We’re his kryptonite. 

Dangerboat... plane... whatever he is, kinda deserved a little more attention toward the last half of the season. The episode centered around him was the most emotional and it brought everyone together more, I really dug that. It made me cry. ALSO WE STAN MICHAEL, HE WAS TOO GOOD FOR THIS WORLD. I’m so proud of Arthur for seeing Dangerboat more as a person and making an effort to connect to him as a friend. <3 good job Arthur-- at the same time--

I HATE they way Arthur acted like Dot has a specific thing she should or shouldn’t be that was out of character. It’s like the writers wanted the female character to undergo some sort of oppression to rise up against, some form of misogyny from her male family member that she had to point out. You shouldn’t have to tear down a good character because he’s male, to make the female look good. If misogyny was gonna come out of Arthur, let it come out another way other than “this isn’t want you’re supposed to do” like mother fucker, she’s been taking care of you your whole life, she’s done martial arts training, she’s a paramedic, she is way more qualified than you. He’s the last person to talk that way to anyone and it’s pissing me the fuck off. He’s the one struggling with mental illness and no phyical ability to fight anyone, it makes no sense.

Arthur’s actor Griffin Newman, he just does such a fantastic job. The whole undercover scene was so perfectly on pitch, like... just the right level of second hand embarrassment and pride came outta me. He was so close to  blowing it because he’s an anxious person by nature, but he pulled it off and came off more as just an awkward criminal with tons of money that was just believably nerdy. I loved it, it was so funny. Please give him all the awards. And that scene where Tick is on one side of Lint, way too close to her, and Arthur is on the other, and they just work her forking nerves was so hysterical. I died. I think they need to play up that comedic chemistry more often because Tick and Arthur bounce off each other really well when they’re not busy trying to solve serious problems. 

Ok so the whole human furniture thing caught my eye immediately. The pose we are first introduced to is an infamaously disturbing pose by a real life serial killer who ate people and posed their bodies in weird positions and used them for sex and I forget what else. Anyway I tried to brush that off as coincidence, but then later on Dot and Overkill go to where they think this Duke guy’s lair is, and his house looks exactly like John Podesta’s house that had a statue of that EXACT same serial killer’s victim in that pose, and podesta’s walls were covered in creepy pedo art of little girls and drowning women. And the walls of Duke’s lair were covered in creepy human furniture art. I mean there are all kinds of parodies this season that are in your face, but I don’t think anyone who didn’t follow pizzagate carefully would catch this one.

Speaking of parodies OMFG I lost it when Superian reenacted that Superman scene where he’s like “Can you read my mind?” as he’s dragging the screaming guy across the night sky. 

Ugh, I’m so sad that Tick and Arthur don’t get to keep those precious baby lobsters, and where did they get all the cute toys?? I wanna think Joan picked those up for them. Kawaii lobster voice: “Joaaan!” Tick is such a good dad...  A family can be a giant Tick man, a moth boy, a hobo, a mimaw, and a bunch of singing lobsters. "SHE'S THE MOTHER OF OUR CHILDREN!" Tick drinks respect woman lobster mom juice.

I think I don’t know what to make of the reverse Green Goblin twist going on with Ms. Lint. The creepy voice is telling her to become a hero I guess, but not really? I think the joke is we think it’s telling her to be a hero, but really it’s teaching her to be a  better villain LMAO

I’m glad kevin has a power and he was welcomed to come help even before said power was revealed.-- woah wait where tf is Karamozov?? I gotta tweet his actor he loves this show and he wasn’t in this season ???

I don’t blame Dot for being upset they want to defrost The Terror, but at the same time due process is a thing. I don’t know how that would work in a society full of super powers though. Because the moment you defrost him he’s going to find a way to escape. He’s the oldest, and the worst super villain of all time. This is why I’m ok with the death penalty and killing villains lol

I was expecting Walter to be some sort of MK Ultra sleeper agent, but the plot twist was, that’s what Overkill would become I guess. And Lobstercules. OH BTW I think she’s voiced by the same actress who played Captain Liberty in the old Tick sitcom! “Walter isn’t Walter? My feet don’t feel so good.” Aw Tick

Ty Rathbone drinks respect mothers juice.

Acting agent commander doctor agent Hobbs, honestly I suspected he was the main villain like the moment he was headed toward Lobstercules because something about the lighting and the camera work seemed to telegraph that.

I bet the reason Ty Rathbone feeds his black hole heart monster mice, is because it requires frequent blood sacrifice and that's the smallest sacrifice he can think of that he can quickly just put in there and placate it and go on with his day. I don’t know if he’ll be season 3′s villain or if it’s the aliens that just came back to reclaim Superian. 

Which btw, I called that shit from season 1 episode 1. Superian showed up crash landing inside Big Bismuth which is the only thing that could trap him. He was a prisoner, probably because he did some bad shit, and he told Arthur he helps humanity because he just wants to be a good person. Like he wasn’t one before and now he wants to try to be one.

I want to talk about these, nearly involuntary dance parties Overkill rewards himself with... but I uh... I still can’t compute that that’s actual canon. That that’s a thing Overkill and Dangerboat enjoy together and he... he can’t seem to control himself when the music plays... And also that Dot AND Overkill both know how to floss dance... I just... wow...

Oh and that hug with Overkill made me an emotional mess, he just... he really needed that, thank you Dot.

This concludes my rant and ramble.

[chiseler]

Larry Cohen Isn’t Alive

Writer, producer and director Larry Cohen, who died on March 24th at age 77, rightfully earned his spot among the Pantheon of low-budget independent American filmmakers.

Like so many great satirists before him, Cohen had a knack for using a good story, off-beat characters, misdirection, humor, and monsters to disguise some pointed commentary about the most sacred of our sacred cows: childbirth, religion, cops, race, the military, AIDS, health care, and consumerism. And he always did it in a hugely entertaining way, squeezing the very most out of tiny budgets, small, fleet-footed crews, and simple guerilla tactics.

The artist responsible for Q: The Winged Serpent, God Told Me To, and the It’s Alive! films was a maverick, an independent’s independent, who wasn’t afraid to put a wild story on the screen and populate it with oddball characters (that Michael Moriarty would become his standard lead in four films in the ‘80s says something). If Cohen owed a lot to Sam Fuller and Roger Corman, then most indie directors who’ve come along since owe a lot to him, and the evidence is right there in their films.

Even when he was making low-budget monster pictures, Cohen’s films were always character-driven, so when it came to casting even the smallest part he was looking for people with interesting voices, faces, and personalities. He populated his films, in short, with the modern equivalent of Forties character actors. It’s no surprise that he would so often choose to work with like-minded maverick young actors like Moriarty, David Carradine, Karen Black, Sandy Dennis, Candy Clark, even Andy Kaufman. At the same time, though, Cohen also went back to those old films, hiring great character actors like Sam Levine, Broderick Crawford, and Sylvia Sidney.  With casts like that together on the screen (many of them there simply because they wanted to work with Cohen) it’s sometimes easy to forget you’re watching a horror movie.

It seems Cohen was born with a little too much energy. Years before getting his degree in film from the City College of New York, he was already selling scripts to television. In the short years following his graduation in ‘63, he was creating shows that would go on to become classics, like Branded and The invaders. Hearing it now, he almost sounds like the kind of guy you’d like to punch.

After ten prolific years as a television writer, Cohen finally made the expected jump into film directing. But Cohen didn’t go to Hollywood to do this, and lord knows he didn’t aim for the mainstream. Although considered a blaxploitation picture today for some reason, Cohen’s directorial debut, 1972’s Bone, begins like a standard home invasion film a la The Desperate Hours or Five Minutes to Live, as would-be burglar Yaphet Kotto  takes a wealthy white man and his wife hostage in their palatial home. When he sends the husband out to get money, though, the crime film becomes a social satire about both race relations and the generation gap. The wife begins to fall for her kidnapper, and the husband starts falling for a young hippie chick he meets on the way to the bank. In later films, Cohen would mix and match genres in a way that hadn’t been seen since the W. Lee Wilder wierdies of the Fifties.

His next two films were both fairly straightforward blaxploitation numbers, and both Black Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem would become  genre standbys.

It was in 1974 that what is considered Cohen’s golden era would begin. Between ‘74 and the early ‘90s, Cohen was writing and directing the films he wanted to make. They were films that were completely his own, more than a little odd at times, and utterly memorable. For a career that lasted over half a century, having a Golden Era that ran nearly twenty years ain’t too shabby.

Switching from blaxploitation to horror, Cohen made It’s Alive! starring the great John P. Ryan. On the surface it’s a horror film about a killer baby. It’s also a conspiracy film about some nefarious shenanigans at a large pharmaceutical company, and a social commentary about the power of the press to destroy innocent lives. At it’s heart, though, it takes The Bad Seed a step further in exploring our deep fear of children and the screaming bloody horror of that most beautiful of miracles, childbirth.

Using the power of suggestion and some fantastic performances (many of the actors here would become members of Cohen’s stock troupe), coupled with some solid direction, clever cinematography, Rick Baker’s special effects, a Bernard Herrmann score and one of the most effective trailers of the Seventies, this low budget killer baby film caught a lot of people off guard. It was smarter and slicker than anyone would’ve expected given the budget, and was a big hit for Cohen.

After that success he came back two years later with a film that was even stranger, more complex, and much harder to categorize. Trying not to give too much away here for those who haven’t seen it yet, God Told Me To stars Tony Lo Bianco as a New York cop who’s never been sick, feels he has some strange powers, and whose early biography remains a little up in the air. As the film opens, he’s  investigating a series of seemingly inexplicable and unrelated rampage killings. A soft spoken gay man climbs atop a building with a high powered rifle and begins shooting. A cop (Andy Kaufman in his big screen debut) shoots up the st. Patrick’s Day parade. A man slaughters his family for no apparent reason. The only explanation any of them can give is that, yes, god told them to. Well, his investigation leads down some strange channels, including stories of  an alien abduction, a secret cabal of wealthy  executives, and reports of a glowing figure who had contact with all the killers and who may or may not be god incarnate. In short it’s a film that asks the eternal question, “What if Jesus was a Venusian?” It may also be the best film Cohen ever made.

Although the film looks great (and brings together a remarkable cast), it represents a perfect example of the guerilla filmmaking Cohen would come to be known for. All the location shots, from the parade to the subway to the shooting of half a dozen people outside Bloomingdale’s were stolen. Cohen saw where he wanted to shoot, set up his crew, and shot. If he were to try doing that today there would likely be casualties, but because he did it then he captured a portrait of a city long gone.

On the downside, in his excitement  to grab shots of actual events as they were happening, one sequence finds Lo Bianco racing from the st. Patrick’s day parade in March and ending up some 70 blocks to the south  at the San Gennaro festival on the Lower East Side in September. It was a hell of a run.

The film was picked up by Corman’s distribution company, New World. Before releasing it, they decided that title of his was too long and too complicated, so needed to be changed. They decided to call it The Demon, and changed the font on the poster to match the font used recently on the posters for the incredibly popular The Omen. It didn’t seem to help. Whether it was the title or audiences were merely baffled by the film itself it’s hard to say, but it was a definite step down from the success of It’s Alive. Still, in subsequent years it has become one of the most popular of Cohen’s films, and in terms of influence, well, all you need to do is watch the last few seasons of the X Files to see for yourself if anyone was paying attention.

Following God Told Me To, Cohen took a radical turn in more ways than one. After making three blaxploitation films and two sci-fi horror movies, he took the next logical step down the genre trail by making, yes, a J. Edgar Hoover biopic.

A clear though uncredited influence on the 2011 Leonardo DiCaprio Hoover picture, 1977’s The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover makes for an intriguing double bill with another AIP film from around roughly the same time, John Milius’ Dillinger. It stars screen legend Broderick Crawford in a brilliant turn as the enigmatic and all-powerful head of the FBI, and co-stars a slew of famed character actors, from Lloyd Nolan and June Havoc to Howard DaSilva and Rip Torn.

Couching the story of Hoover’s life within the frantic scramble across Washington to gain access to his titular secret files after his death, Cohen does something I don’t think anyone was expecting. In spite of Hoover’s reputation as a neurotic, paranoid, cross-dressing monster, Cohen treats him fairly, even sympathetically at times. There’s no real secret about his sexuality here, but it’s never made cartoonish. It’s a portrait of a deeply flawed man and a publicity whore, yes, but one who was trying to do right. Oddly enough the historical figures who get slapped around more than anyone here are the Kennedy brothers, who come off like a couple of smug rich, asshole college boys. Martin Luther King doesn’t get off too easy, either.

It’s an odd man out in Cohen’s filmography, but what the Hoover film proved without a doubt is that he was a director who knew pacing, who knew editing, and who could, even without monsters, turn material like this into a gripping story.

Good as it was, The Private Files wasn’t a big hit either, so Cohen returned to killer babies  in ‘78 with It Lives Again. Not interested in simply rehashing the same material, Cohen expanded the original story, broadening the idea of a conspiracy (conspiracies would play a larger and larger role in Cohen’s films), and multiplying the number of killer babies afoot.

As more and more mutant babies are born throughout America, a renegade group of scientists and parents (including John P. Ryan and expecting father Frederic Forrest) criss-crosses the country trying to save the mutants before the government can terminate them with extreme prejudice. The hope is to be able to raise the mutants in a reasonably loving environment, rehabilitating them and making them contributing members of society. Let’s just say their success is limited.

The later ‘70s and early ‘80s were kind of rough for Cohen. His teen horror comedy Full Moon High bombed, and a made-for-TV mystery was ignored. He planned to resurrect Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer character in a film version of I, The Jury starring Armand Assante, but after a major studio picked up the project, they promptly fired Cohen.

Knowing he had to get right back on his feet, Cohen had a new independent film in production within a week. He started grabbing some location shots around New York before he had a cast, and started filming before he had any backing. Still, he was able to wrangle together another great (in B film terms) cast, and he had a fantastic story to tell, even if it owed a bit to 1948’s The Flying Serpent. He had some more wonderful characters, he had a monster, and once again all of New York was his playground. Samuel Z. Arkoff, who’d just sold AIP, fronted him a little cash and they were off.

Cohen’s mixing and matching of genres was never more evident than it was in ‘82’s Q The Winged Serpent. It’s a bungled jewel heist/cult murder/police procedural/giant monster picture with Michael Moriarty as an ex-con and failed jazz pianist who’s forced to participate in a heist that goes very, very wrong. He’s a neurotic to begin with, and this doesn’t help. David Carradine, meanwhile (who filmed his first scene before he’d had a chance to read the script or find out who his character was), is a detective investigating a series of murders in which the victims have all been skinned alive. And then there’s that pesky Aztec god who keeps flying around New York plucking people off rooftops and construction sites.

They all eventually do come together inside the cone atop the Chrysler Building (it was actually filmed up there too, even though Cohen and his crew didn’t exactly have permission). Before all these storylines and genres come together, Cohen has us so wrapped up in these individual character’s )and the countless little stories and side characters we encounter along the way) that the monster barely matters, save for providing some of the best aerial shots ever taken of NYC.

It’s a film packed with great small bits, set pieces, and locations. And Moriarty, crazy and pathetic and fucked up as he is, is a gem. In one of the best (and mostly ad libbed) scenes in the film, he attempts to negotiate a deal with city officials and the cops. He knows where the creature’s nest can be found, and wants money and amnesty in exchange for the information. It’s a real tour-de-force of sniveling bravado and desperation.

Cohen had more stories to tell about the making of Q than any of his other films (and he was a man with a lot of stories). The final joke of it all being that Q opened the same day as I, the Jury and made four times as much money.

It occurs to me that any young would-be indie filmmaker would be better served by watching the film and listening to his commentary than anything they’d learn after 3 years of NYU film school. He knew how to work fast and work cheap, yet still come away with a film whose production values matched anything being produced in Hollywood.

Cohen was back on a roll after Q, and even when he wasn’t working on a film himself he was selling  scripts that had that unmistakable Larry Cohen feel to them. The William Lustig-directed Maniac Cop and Uncle Sam come to mind as prime examples, though Abel Ferrara dropped the ball, and dropped it hard, on Cohen’s reboot of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It’s a film I keep trying to like, but just can’t. Cohen’s understanding of character is something Ferrara’s never been able to grasp. It had so much going for it, it should’ve been so good, but Christ it’s just a tedious fucking mess. Okay, I’m starting to ramble.

After making a few straightforward thrillers, Cohen returned to horror and social satire in 1985’s The Stuff. There had been elements of social satire and commentary in his previous films, but usually so well disguised it was easy to miss. Michael Moriarty’s gift for the ad lib and his ability to play crazy and manic so brilliantly allowed Cohen, in their second film together, to slap the satire right there on the surface, plain as day.

When a thick white goo coms bubbling out of the ground at a mining operation in Georgia, one of the miners unwittingly discovers it’s not only delicious—it’s downright irresistible. Before you know it, “The Stuff,” as it’s marketed, has become the most popular dessert item in the country, helped along by a celebrity-laden ad campaign (though many of the celebrities may no longer be recognizable to most audiences) and the small fact that it’s five times as addictive as crack. Yes, it’s mighty good right up to the point when it makes you explode. But no one talks about that.

Moriarty plays an ex-FBI man turned industrial spy who’s been hired by a now-struggling ice cream company to find out what’s in The Stuff. What Begins as a simple bit of industrial espionage quickly becomes much more than that when people start dying, small towns start vanishing, an ex-FDA employee (Danny Aiello in a smart and funny cameo) is killed by his stuff-addicted Doberman, and Moriarty uncovers a sinister, far-reaching conspiracy.

Along the way he’s assisted by Garrett Morris as a Famous Amos clone who’s cookie company was stolen from him, a young boy who realizes there’s something evil going on with The stuff, and  Paul Sorvino as an insane and paranoid militia leader/radio show host who’s more than willing to spread the word and lead a commando raid on the stuff factory.

There are nods throughout the film to everything from Dr. Strangelove to White Heat, but the one film that kept coming to mind was Halloween III: Season of the Witch from three years earlier. Both, after all, are horror conspiracy films concerning the potentially diabolical threat posed by marketing and consumerism. The ironic thing there is that when Halloween III came out in ‘82, I assumed given the way the story was structured that it had to be a Cohen film, or at least based on a Cohen script. I was wrong, of course; the film had been written by the equally great Nigel Kneale. So it only made sense that here we got Cohen’s version of a similar storyline. While Halloween III was very sharp and dark, The Stuff reaches for some broad, heavy handed laughs and often falls short. Maybe Cohen figured if you wanted to reach an audience in the Reagan era with a dire warning about rampant consumerism, subtlety would get you nowhere.  The film does have a number of moments, though, and I love the fact that the “monster” here is a smooth, white, featureless dessert. I also love the fact that a paranoid Right Wing nutjob saves the day in the end.

Two years after The Stuff, Warner Brothers offered Coen a deal to direct two straight-to-video pictures: a second  sequel to It’s Alive, and a sequel to Tobe Hooper’s TV version of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. Cohen, anxious to work with Moriarty again and push the story of the mutant babies a little further, signed the contract.

Working fast and cheap as ever (he said all of his films were shot in 18 days), Cohen returned to form with It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive, with one difference. While the previous two films had been stark and ultimately quite grim, with Moriarty aboard Cohen was able to bring out a lot more humor.  Mixed more evenly with the violence, the blood, a half-hidden AIDS parable,  and Cohen’s trademark strangeness, here it works more effectively than it had in The Stuff or his straight comedies.

This time around, Moriarty is a struggling actor who finally gains fame after he and his wife (Karen Black) become the proud parents of another monster baby. That’s pretty much it for the marriage, but instead of destroying the baby, a judge orders that all the mutant babies be sent to, yes, an island where they can roam free and pose no threat to anyone.

Moriarty’s life, meanwhile, collapses under the constant questions and accusations until he finds himself working in a children’s shoe store. In a delightful set piece, he finally cracks and gives the what-for to all the rotten little brats and their obnoxious parents. There’s just something both terrifying and hilarious about Moriarty when he loses it.

Anyway, he joins a government-sponsored expedition to the island to study the mutants and run a few tests. Along the way, we learn the government has stopped trying to destroy the mutants after deciding instead they represent a new stage of human evolution, quite possibly a form of human who could survive a nuclear war. Moriarty, who loves his child and wants to protect it, tries to warn the babies to stay away from the researchers, which does not endear him to the researchers. No matter, it isn’t long before all the members of the expedition are dead save for Moriarty, who finds himself alone on a boat with four mutant babies. And that’s when things start taking any number of strange turns.

Island of the Alive is also marked by a fantastic opening sequence, in which a woman gives birth in the back of an NYC cab as the cab driver panics about the mess. Or maybe that scene’s just memorable to me because it was shot in an alley behind the building where I used to work.

After the film was wrapped, Cohen packed up his crew and several members of the cast and flew to a small town in Vermont to start shooting the Salem’s Lot sequel, a sequel in name and font alone. Compared with Island of the Alive, A Return to Salems Lot seemed almost an afterthought. Maybe people were just tired after the previous shoot, but the cinematography has all the flat earmarks of a TV film, and the music, usually so rich in a Cohen picture, has been reduced to a cheap, cliched electronic score. Even the actors, apart from Cohen’s usual suspects (like Andrew Duggan), are abrasive at best.

Story’s still good, though. In their fourth and final collaboration, Moriarty is a famed anthropologist whose ex-wife saddles him with his troubled and foul-mouthed teenage son. Not knowing what else to do with the kid, he takes him to Salem’s Lot. Moriarty had visited an aunt there once when he was young, and when she died she left him her (now decrepit) house. It doesn’t take long to figure out the town is home to a colony of vampires.

Cohen’s script plays around quite a bit with the mythology, with the anthropologist being conscripted to write the vampires’ history to set the record straight, but the film is memorable for one reason. Sam Fuller appears for the second half of the film playing, well, Sam Fuller. He’s given a different name of course, and he’s playing a Van Helsing-type vampire hunter, but it’s Sam Fuller all right, as short, gruff, and straightforward as ever, and always chomping on that ever-present cigar. Cohen’s homage to the king of independent filmmakers is the only thing here that lifts the picture above second-tier Cohen fare (which is nevertheless still more interesting than most vampire films made in the last 20 years).

Cohen went on to make another straight thriller and a comedy about witches that turned out to be Bette Davis’ last film before returning to the horror, conspiracies, and New York that always brought out the best in him. It would be the last of the classic Larry Cohen films.

In 1990’s The Ambulance, Eric Roberts plays an enthusiastic young comic book artist working for Marvel (Stan Lee has a few cameos as himself) who sees a young woman on the street and falls immediately and stupidly in love with her. When she collapses to the pavement while they’re talking and an antique ambulance appears out of nowhere to whisk her away, he sets out to find her without even knowing her name.

It sounds like fairly standard romantic comedy material and there’s no denying that’s at play here, but as usual there are a few other genres at work, too, as we learn the drivers of that creepy antique ambulance are making their own victims all over the city.  It’s best to leave the story there and not mention the organ harvesting ring, but the film does include James Earl Jones, Eric Braedon, and a grainy, dirty, street level Manhattan that, even circa 1990, still seems so ancient and alive.

Moving into the later ‘90s and 2000s, as films like his were no longer really viable in a marketplace so fixated on formula and empty pointless characters, Cohen concentrated more on his screenplays, but even if the stories had that old Cohen spark and warp, the films that were made from them tended to be sadly conventional. He was behind Phone Booth, Cellular, Messages Deleted, Captivity, and rewrote his own script for the reboot of It’s Alive.  

He once made the excellent point that B films tended to have a longer lifespan than A films, because it’s the genre pictures that find a new audience every generation. Kids have no idea who Robert Taylor or Greer Garson are anymore, but they will always know Karloff and Lugosi, because people will always be going back to horror films while the big dramas, so important at the time, will fade away.

Cohen made films that weren’t like anything else (except maybe Halloween III). They weren’t aimed at teenagers and they weren’t slasher pictures. They were intelligent, textured, character-based, and they dealt with adult themes. Plus they had monsters in them.

Cohen’s career, as noted above, spanned some fifty years, and fifty years from now, I can almost guarantee no one will remember Titanic or whatever the hell nonsense won a Best Picture Oscar over the past two decades, but they’ll still be watching God Told Me To.

At the time of his death, Cohen left behind dozens of unproduced screenplays. If anyone had seen fit to toss him the funding to make the films he wanted to make, who knows what else he might have left us?

by Jim Knipfel

[swiftlore]

I really want to believe in Kaylor, but theres a nagging part of me that keeps wondering how its any different from Larry. people really believed in that too, but didnt they end up saying that all the rumors and shippers actually damaged their friendship? I don't want that to happen to Taylor and Karlie, and I don't know how we know that its real this time when it wasn't then.

Okay, I’ll be blunt…I have never shipped nor followed Larry, but coming across Larry posts over the years have straight-up annoyed me because it seemed like a lot of reaching. However, this ask made me look into it more, and here’s what I believe happened there.

To me, Harry has always pinged my gaydar. Louis…not so much, which is why it always baffled me that people could get so into the ship in a way that was more than shipping. A lot of Larry shippers went too far. Not two weeks ago I saw one of them practically yelling at Louis to say he’s in love with Harry in the comments of one of his tweets. Looking in from the outside, to me it seems like the two were best friends. Good best friends. I also think that Harry had a crush on Louis, which is why he went above and beyond many times, resulting in “proof” of Larry. All the rumors and hardcore, rude shippers definitely played a part in damaging their friendship. However, I also believe that if they were two straight men, it wouldn’t have. Harry’s not straight though, and that could’ve led to confusion and distance between the two if Louis thought Larry shippers had a point about Harry’s actions being more than friendly, or Harry just became distant because he felt scared. I had a best friend once that I fell deeply in love with. We even lived together for a while, like Larry, which didn’t help my feelings, either. If we were in the spotlight like they were, with scrutinizing, over-the-top shippers…I have no doubts it would’ve harmed our friendship as well. 

Clarification: I am not calling all Larry shippers over-the-top. If you believe in them, that’s fine. I personally don’t, and the evidence seems to point more towards my theory than a secret relationship, to me. I just know that many have been/were over the top and outright rude and disrespectful about things. I know that some Kaylor shippers can also go overboard, and that’s something I’m ashamed of in this fandom. However, it does seem like the overboard shippers live more on Twitter and Instagram than Tumblr, which is why I have my blog here, and not on either of those platforms.

As for Karlie and Taylor…there is insurmountable evidence pointing towards it. It’s in Taylor’s lyrics, in their instagram posts, and not only is there evidence of them, there’s also evidence and rumors that both Taylor and Karlie have dated other women before. Karlie with Toni Garrn, and Taylor with Dianna Agron, Emily Poe, and several others. There are posts with Taylor’s old Myspace updates that have some pretty gay things in them. Where Larry seems to be based off of interactions and doing things for each other best friends would do, Kaylor is based off of both of these women’s histories with other women, with telling lyrics, and obvious PR romances paralleling not only each other, but Kaylor’s relationship. That’s where the difference is, in the amount of evidence, and the type of evidence. Also, honestly, both ping my gaydar like mad. If Taylor and Karlie are both straight women, the rumors wouldn’t ruin their friendship. Especially since the rumors and the shipping has never nearly gotten to the intense level that Larry did, with the passionate, intense shippers. This means that at least one of them isn’t straight, and there’s plenty of credible evidence that shows that neither are. As long as Kaylor shippers remain respectful, don’t pass the boundaries and let the girls come out on their own time whilst respectfully analyzing lyrics and drawing the connections between things…I think we’ll be good. 

Hopefully this made sense, because it’s like 4am for me where I am and I didn’t get much sleep, lol. 

[zot3-flopped]

I know we say this very often on the blog, but larries and louies are a really mentally disturbed group of people. Seriously, there are severe mental health problems going on there. They believe some of the most ridiculous things and im not sure if they genuinely believe them, or if they know deep down it isnt the truth. The whole situation is quite crazy and Louis has a fanbase comprised solely of this absolutely insane behavior. PART ONE.

PART TWO. To me, it is kind of similar to some bizarre religion where the followers preach their beliefs to anyone who will listen. They infiltrate daily mail comments for example and twitter threads, youtube comments. Lately it just seems to be even more unhinged. Surely louis cant know the full extent of the crazy? Otherwise who in their right mind would want to call these people fans? Im endlessly baffled by it all, just cannot understand it.

....

Larrie is a form of erotomania which IS a mental illness so they're not going to behave rationally (or seek treatment).

[leaves-of-three]

Could you write about Connor dating a vegetarian reader and the Murphy's having them over for Thanksgiving for the first time?

Connor pulled his car into the long driveway leading up to his large house. He made no motion to get out. You simply followed his lead and quietly sat in the passenger seat, waiting. He tapped his hands on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead.

Finally you cleared your throat, “Are we going inside or does your family spend Thanksgiving in the car? A bit unusual but if that’s the way you do things…”

Connor grumbled. He shot you a look of annoyance, “Shut up. I’m stalling. You don’t know what you’re about to walk into. This will be the day we break up.”

You rolled your eyes. “Okay, drama queen. I’ve met your family before. It’s just a dinner. I think I’ll manage it.”

“No, it’s not just a dinner,” he replied. “It’s a holiday dinner. There’s a difference. It’s like I’m willing letting you walk into a lion’s den.”

You leaned over and planted a kiss on his cheek. He scrunched up his nose in feign disgust of the affection you were giving him. It only made you leave more little kisses along his cheek until he cracked a smile. “Okay okay, fine! Are you sure you don’t want to run? I can pull this car out of here right now. We can flee to Canada. You just say the word.”

“Connor, my god. Let’s go. I’ll protect you from your big, bad family.” You gave him a playful smile and finally left his car.

A gust of wind caught under your maroon skirt causing the fabric to loosely dance around your legs. You had wanted to look extra nice today. Despite the confidence you were displaying to Connor, you were secretly very nervous. This would be the first time you’d meet some of his extended family. Larry’s brother was supposed to be eating with you as well. Connor had loudly expressed his animosity for his uncle on the ride over here. It was hard to know exactly what to expect when you met him. Your boyfriend was an expert at making people sound much more awful than they actually were. When you first met his mom, you were honestly expecting a witch of a woman. It turned out she was actually really sweet and caring. You couldn’t always trust Connor’s word when it came to his opinions of others. He was a half glass empty kind of guy.

You straightened up your skirt and reached into the back seat for the cookies you had made and a bouquet of autumn flowers for Cynthia. Never show up to someone’s home empty handed. Your mother had taught you that long ago. Connor jogged around to your side of the car to help you carry the plate of cookies. He slipped his hand under the clear wrap covering the plate and stole a cookie, popping it into his mouth. You gently swatted his hand, “Those are for dessert!”

“‘ere ‘eally ‘ood,” he tried to speak with his mouthful of cookie.

“You’re awful. Let’s go get this over with.” You both unconsciously reached for the other’s free hand as you walked up the path to the house.

Cynthia opened the door before you had even reached it. She beamed down at you, “You made it! Happy Thanksgiving, sweetie. It’s so wonderful to have you.”

You handed her the bouquet of flowers after she smothered you into a tight hug. The smell of cooking food wafted out the door. It smelled amazing. Your stomach growled in response to the delightful scents. Cynthia seemed truly in awe that you had brought her flowers, “These are beautiful. I’m going to make them the table centerpiece. Thank you so much. You didn’t have bring anything.” She looked over at Connor and frowned. “You’ve got crumbs all over you face, Connor. Clean yourself up before you come inside, please.” An alarm started beeping from inside. “Oh the turkey is ready! Excuse me,” she turned and ran off.

Connor side glanced at you, “Welcome to hell.”

You pulled your sleeve over your hand and brushed the crumbs off his mouth, “Hell doesn’t seem that bad if you’re there with me. I think we’ll manage. Come on.” You tried to tug him inside. His feet stayed rooted on the top step. “Jesus, Connor!” You had to laugh. He was just being ridiculous now. “If you come inside I’ll make it worth your while later tonight…” You gave him a quick wink.

His brows raised while he pretended to think over the offer, “Alright deal.”

“You’re so predictable. That literally gets you every time.” You walked inside. A warm fire was crackling in the fire place. The warmth pulled you deeper into the Murphy house. It was a nice contrast to the chilly November air outside. Larry was leaning against the mantle with a glass of whisky in hand. He let out a boisterous laugh at something the man sitting across from him said. He looked over when you walked in and smiled, “And this is who I was telling you about, Paul!” He gestured to you and walked over. “This is Y/N. Connor’s girlfriend. We were trying to figure out how he could have ever managed to trick someone like you into dating him.” His large hand clamped onto your shoulder as he laughed. “Y/N, this is my older brother, Paul.”

A middle aged man with grey peppered through his dark hair stood up to shake your hand. The smile on his thin lips didn’t quite reach his eyes. Something about him seemed a little off. The moment he released your hand, you pulled it back to your side. You tried to give him a polite smile regardless. You didn’t like the way Mr. Murphy was speaking about Connor. While Cynthia was always lovely, you were never fond of Larry. His ways were too old fashioned for your liking. “It’s nice to you, Paul, and it’s nice to see you again Mr. Murphy.”

Paul looked past your shoulder and gave Connor a harsh look. “Take the girl’s coat, will ya? My father would have belted you for just uselessly standing there. I would have thought my brother would have taught you how to be a proper gentlemen by now.”

Larry shook his head, “I’ve tried. He doesn’t listen. Trust me. Here I’ll take your jacket for you.” He placed his whiskey on a near by table and took your coat from you, going to hang it up in the closet. “Connor go see if your mother needs help in the kitchen.”

You turned to look at your boyfriend. You were well versed in his micro expressions by now. You could tell he was fuming over what Paul had said. His hand gripped tighter onto the plate of cookies. He was doing his best to hold his tongue. You stepped forward and took the plate from his hand, giving him an apologetic look. “Come on,” you whispered him. You gently nudged him towards the kitchen and away from the men.

The Murphy’s kitchen was about twice the size of your own. They’re home was truly very beautiful. It looked like it could be something out a magazine. Cynthia was throwing the final touches of food onto plates and bringing them into the dinning room. Zoe was carrying whatever her mom left behind. You placed the cookie plate by the other desserts on the counter. Zoe looked over her shoulder as she carried food to the next room and gave you a welcoming smile. You liked Zoe. You didn’t know her very well. Anytime you were actually over, you were always with Connor and he never spent much time with her. But you could tell she had a good heart. You gave her a little wave.

“Dinner is ready!” Cynthia called from the dinning room. “Everyone come take your seats!”

You turned to Connor. He was still pissed off. His jaw was tight and his eyes glared angrily out a kitchen window. You sighed quietly, moving to wrap your arms around his waist and hide your face in his chest. “Just think about tonight,” you whispered into his shirt. “Make a mental list of everything you want to do later. Whenever they start to piss you off…think about me naked.” You smiled and stood on your tippy toes to kiss him. You could see his broody exterior melt a little. A smile twitched at the corners of his lips. “See? It works, right?” You took his hand in yours. “Let’s go sit down.”

Larry sat at the head of the table. Cynthia sat to his right with Zoe beside her. While you and Connor sat across from them. Paul took up the opposite end of where Larry was seated. Cynthia said a long, drawn out grace while you all bowed your head…minus Connor. He kept staring at the wall across from him until she was finished. You didn’t want to be rude so you just tried to mimic whatever Zoe was doing. Your family never said a prayer before you ate.

Once grace was said, Larry took charge of carving the turkey while the side dishes were passed around the table. You loaded your plate with mashed potatoes, cooked vegetables, a bit of squash, some salad, and a buttery roll. It all looked amazing. Larry held out his hand for your plate to served you a hardy piece of the turkey he had cut. You smiled politely and shook your head, “Oh no thank you. I’ll pass. Everything here already looks so good.”

Larry look at you, baffled that you would turn down his turkey offering. “What’s the matter? It’s Thanksgiving. You’ve got to eat turkey on Thanksgiving! Connor, hand me her plate.”

He shot his father a rude look, “She’s vegetarian. She doesn’t eat meat. I’ll take her piece.”

Paul snorted from the other side of the table, “What’d you mean she doesn’t eat meat? Kid’s these days are so self righteous. When we were growing up you’d eat what was put in front of ya’ and you’d be damn thankful for it. Some people would kill to have this kind of meal.”

You shrunk into the back of your seat. You hated people like Paul. Why did he care so much about what you put into your own body? It was none of his business what you did or didn’t eat. “I’m very thankful for this meal. I don’t eat that much anyway. These side dishes are more than enough. They look wonderful, Mrs. Murphy. You must have worked really hard on them.” You tried your best to divert the conversation onto someone else, giving her a small smile.

She smiled warmly back at you. “Thank you, honey. Zoe and I spent the morning cooking together. You’ll have to bring some left overs home to your mother. I’m sure we’ll have plenty to share.”

“Yeah, since she isn’t eating the main course,” Paul muttered under his breath.

Larry waved off his comment and handed your slice of the turkey off onto Connor’s plate. “You know, Zoe wanted to be a vegetarian once back when she as in middle school.” He laughed. “She lasted about a day and then we made bacon for breakfast. She couldn’t resist.”

Zoe swallowed a mouthful of food before speaking, “It’s a noble cause. It takes effort to stick to it. I think it’s cool.” She smiled at you.

Paul snorted again as he downed a glass of red whine. “Noble. Ha. Bunch of hippies. Do you also skip out on showering to to save water?”

“Paul, please.” Cynthia gave him a warning look. “She’s our guest.”

You were starting to lose your appetite. You didn’t like being the center of attention and you didn’t appreciate being berated by someone you just met. Connor had been right earlier. No wonder he hated his uncle. He was an asshole of a man. You pushed some mashed potatoes around your plate with a fork.

Connor’s foot tapped against yours under the table. You turned to look at him. He had remained quiet so far but he was giving you a sympathetic look. His foot stayed pushed against yours. You knew it was his little way of giving you strength without actually speaking. He leaned in closer to you and whispered, “Think about tonight.” It got you to smile.

If he was willing to suffer through this meal than so were you, as long as, you both agreed to make it up to each later in the privacy of his bedroom.

[ssfoc]

I have noticed that none of the Harrie Larries I follow did anything but a bare minimum reblog about the charity single. Except for several implying that because Louis' vocals sounded good, it was probably due to the sound engineer. It's so petty and shitty.

I’ve seen on my dash people praising Louis’s voice all day. To be honest, I don’t know if they are mostly Louies Larries or Harrie Larries. I don’t keep close track, I admit, because Larrie politics makes me tired and crabby.

In my heart I believe Harry and Louis work together. They don’t deserve a fandom that pits them against each other. Their managements are baffling / shitty sometimes, but that’s not on them, sister, and they don’t deserve hate.

We got stalkers tailing their every move, digging through their trash, for Pete’s sakes, to find information that is potentially devastating. Let’s not add to the terrible things for them.

People can blog & reblog what they want. The “unfollow” button is there if you don’t want to read it. Just remember, everyone has a bad day now and then. Forgive, be understanding, be nice. People’s lives are harder than we imagine, and we’re all doing this for free, for fun. Let’s be family for each other.

Now let’s talk about Louis’s and Liam’s parts.

I heard the song, and I thought the engineering was really good, at least, on first listen.

All the singers sounded like their best selves, the nuances in their voices captured but the rough patches smoothed. They recorded on 18 June and the single was released 21 June, so there wasn’t that much time to do much engineering. They were auto-tuned… but there is no studio recording that isn’t, these days.

I was listening to this podcast:

http://andthewriteris.libsyn.com/ep-20-desmond-child

Desmond Child is a songwriter who’s worked with Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Cher, KISS, Alice Cooper, Zedd. He’s also gay.

He said that it takes a great singer, a singer who is a great actor, to draw you into their story for the 3 minutes of their song. For that moment, you are living the emotional experience of that song, the emotional truth of their story.

He has a lot more to say about archetypes, androgyny, role playing, closeting, and being gay in the industry, that I found fascinating.

(A short transcript: https://seasurfacefullofclouds.tumblr.com/post/162095382040/ross-golan-interviews-desmond-child)

If a three-minute song seems short for telling a story, then what are four or five words? Seems inadequate, right?

I’m trying to work on a write-up of Lucozade. I don’t follow Zayn closely, but this song seems to mean a lot for Zayn fans. Zayn’s delivery of his story seems to match the message of the song– hazy, slurred, going in and out of passion, in and out of focus, the pain subdued and then reignited.

Louis and Liam, on the other hand, are singers who enunciate their words (thank God– I needed lyrics for Lucozade). Their articulations are, by now, second-nature to One Direction fans. We easily identify their voices because we’ve unconsciously memorized their vocal habits, the sound coming from their mouths and throats. We love them. They sound like family.

Yet they’re growing older, and learning, at last, how to use their voices fully. To hear their full potential is glorious, just like listening to Harry’s full album and realizing THAT was in him (I still can’t believe it).

Liam’s words, “I’m on your side,” was sung with beauty, sympathy, and strength. We know what kind of person Liam is: loyal, hard-working, with huge talent and a heart to match. He’s doing great in the charts. This song was a tiny promo for him; I’ve loved his solo appearances, and he totally smashed the Capital FM summertime ball (Niall too). But the truth of his story is: we know he’s on our side. His vocals feel honest because we know him, we’ve seen him do charity work, we know he feels sympathy and love. And he did sound fantastic, his voice deeper and smoother, yet always sounding like Liam.

Louis’s part, “I will lay me down,” also sounded exactly like Louis, but deeper, bigger, as if he opened his chest and the sound came from the deepest bellows. His voice sounded notably bigger and deeper than it did on Just Hold On (which was admittedly in a higher part of his range– a high part of any male singer’s range, tbh). He still has the telltale Louis-hitch at the end of the word “down”– something many people caught. Louis’s voice always has that quality of feeling both personal, and empathetic, communal. It’s very painful & intense, yet reassuring at the same time. I think he has been doing voice training, and I haven’t seen him smoking as much (but he was smoking in the papped Donny photos). Yes, it was great engineering, but also yes, his voice has undergone a nice improvement.

As for the charity, I saw many reposts for it.

Last– the boys are doing their solo careers, and it’s not realistic to expect equal enthusiasm from the fandom for everything they’re involved in. I didn’t say “fair”; I said “realistic.” They know this, they expect this, or they should. They’re not going to get uniform support from the fandom, they’re not going to get the same support they got as One Direction. Every aspect of fandom has changed– the number of fans, the number of blogs, Twitter accounts, fan fiction being written and read, art, charity drives. Hiatus lowers enthusiasm. That’s the truth.

But that’s okay. Life can’t stay static. Art doesn’t stay static, or it gets stale. That means successes and failures. They’re in an industry where one failure can mean a fade into oblivion, but they are persistent people, and also experienced professionals. Harry’s tour sold very well– not at 1D levels, but he wasn’t expected to. If Louis or Liam or Niall tour, they will also sell well, but again, not at 1D levels. That’s what they’ve chosen. Industry already pits them against each other. Let’s be better.

S

[c-e-d-dreamer]

Hi, I'm a big fan of your writing! You were one of the first people I ever followed on tumblr! If you are still taking prompts I would love any fake dating Larry possibly with some bed sharing? Thank you

Oh my gosh you are just too sweet! I’m also sorry you’ve been following me so long because I am lowkey 100% a weirdo and this blog is 100% a mess sometimes! But please enjoy this fake dating drabble! It got hella long, but I wanted to be sure to include your bed sharing request :) 

“You’re bringing your boy home for Christmas hols, right, H?” 

Harry’s eyes snap away from the pasta he’s making and back towards the laptop he left abandoned on the counter-top. His mother and sister’s faces are still up on the Skype screen, looking at him expectantly. He’s pretty sure his mouth is hanging open lamely, and he has to forcefully will himself not to bring his hand up into view and fidget because it’s a tell both will zero in on in a second. Instead, he turns back to the stove, using the reprieve of having his back turned to try and stutter his lungs back into working. His brain is even slower with kicking back into gear. 

“Um...” 

“Oh please say yes!” Anne chimes in. “I want to meet this Louis!” 

“I’ll um ask him I guess?” 

“You two haven’t talked about what you’re doing from Christmas?” Gemma asks. 

“No...?” Harry turns back around, takes in both their suspicious expression through the pixelated screen, and is quick to add on, “but I’m sure it’ll be no problem. We’ll both probably be there.” 

“Oh wonderful!” Anne claps her hands, a wide smile pulled across her face now. “I can’t wait.” 

“Yeah, me either,” Harry mutters. “Anyways. I have to go. See you both soon! Bye!” 

Harry barely lets his family get out their own goodbyes before he’s closing his laptop screen and letting his head fall against the counter-top. The cool granite feels nice against his skin, but it does little to soothe the dreadful panic stirring in his stomach. He’s screwed. 

~ * * * ~

Harry stands outside the coffeeshop, his hands stuffed in his pocket and his mind running in circles. He can see Louis behind the counter through the window. His eyes are bright and his smile is wide as he chats to a woman while preparing a drink. The yellow lighting of the coffeeshop paints his skin more golden than usual and leaves strands of his hair glowing. Harry can’t help the sigh that pulls its way past his lips, and he contemplates just smashing his head against the window. 

Instead, he pulls the door open and puts on his best smile. It becomes a bit more genuine when Louis offers a smile right back. 

“Hey, Harry. The usual?” Louis greets.

“Yeah...” Harry says, sidling up to the counter and pulling out his wallet. 

Louis sets about making his drink, and Harry fiddles a bit with the packaged sandwiches in the cooler in front of him. He has to clear his throat a few times before he finally finds his voice again. 

“So um have any plans for Christmas?” 

“Not really. I spending Christmas alone unfortunately because my family is going on a cruise without me.” 

“Oh...” 

“You know I always thought those online contests were a scam. Thought they just wanted you to enter your email so they could add you to a bunch of email lists and send you a bunch of spam, but my mum actually won! Can you believe that? And now she’s taking my whole family on a cruise except me because I couldn’t get the time off.” 

Louis shakes his head, but there’s still the soft edges of a smile there. He hands Harry his drink. Harry takes it with a grateful smile, but he stays rooted to the spot, picking at the protective sleeve nervously. 

“Would you um maybe want to uh maybe you know uh cometomyhouseforChristmas?” 

“Sorry?” 

“It’s just...” Harry sighs. “You’re going to think it’s stupid.” 

“Harry,” Louis says, his tone gentle and encouraging, and somehow it causes the words to coming pouring out. 

“It’s just that ever since I moved to London, my mum and sister kept giving me flack about going out and meeting people and finding a nice boy and I just couldn’t take it anymore, so I told them I was seeing someone, just to get them off my back, but then they asked for a name... and well, I had just come back from here, so I had my tea in my hand and I looked down at the cup and...” 

“And my name was the first name that popped into your head.” 

“And your name was the first name that popped into my head.” 

A silence falls between them, and Harry lets his eyes drop to the floor, not wanting to see what expression might be painted across Louis’ face. He curls his toes in his shoes and holds his breath for the subsequent laugh or scoff he is sure to come. 

“Well I guess I should be flattered.” 

“I told you it was stupid. Just forget I said anything.” 

“But I’m going.” 

“What?!” Harry’s eyes snap back up to Louis’ face. “Louis, no. I’ll just tell them we broke up or something.” 

“You can’t do that! They’ll hate me. I’ll be that bloke that broke up with you right before Christmas.” 

“Louis.”

“I’m going, Harry. I’m an accomplice to this crime now.” 

Harry sighs, but it’s fond and he can feel a smile tugging it’s way across his face of its own accord. 

“But you’re driving. I hate driving long distances,” Louis adds with a teasing smile. 

And that’s how Harry finds himself in his car, Louis sitting in the passenger seat with his feet propped up on the dash, heading north. 

“So what’s your favorite color?” Louis asks. 

“What?” 

“Well if we’re going to pass off this whole fake dating thing, I’m going to need to know more about you than just your tea order.” 

Harry thinks about the piercing blue of Louis’ eyes, the way they seem to change shades with his different moods and the gold flecks that hide in those seas, and has to readjust his grip on the steering wheel. 

“Blue,” he mutters after a moment. 

“Really? Mine too.” 

By the time, they make it to Harry’s family home, it’s late, and Harry is grateful to learn that Gemma has already gone to bed. His mother is still awake though, and she greets them both at the door with a tired smile and warm hugs. 

“Oh, Louis it’s so nice to finally meet you.” 

“You too, Anne,” Louis says, pulling away from her embrace. “I’ve heard so much about you.” 

Anne smiles again at the comment, but then she’s herding them towards the stairs. 

“Now I’m sure you both must be exhausted. Off to bed. You’ll be staying in Harry’s old room.” 

Harry’s steps stutter to a stop at that. He turns to look back at his mother, trying to keep his voice teasing and devoid of the actual panic clawing inside his chest. 

“You’re not going to make Louis stay in the guest room, mum?” 

“Oh don’t be silly, H. It’s not the 1900′s. Besides, I’m sure Louis stays over at your flat all the time anyways.” 

“Great,” Harry mutters under his breath, turning back and leading the way up the stairs. He hears Louis snicker from where he’s following behind, and if his mum wasn’t still watching the two of them, he’d reach back and whack him for it. 

Once upstairs, Harry shows Louis to his bedroom so they can drop their bags before pointing out the bathroom so Louis can brush his teeth. Harry is digging through his own bag when he hears the snick of the door closing. 

“Let me wear one of your shirts to bed,” Louis says. 

“What?” 

“When your mum comes to wake us in the morning, it’ll really sell it if I’m wearing your shirt.” 

Harry looks up from his bag then, turning a baffled look on Louis, but the barista just crosses his arms and cocks his head. 

“Have you ever been in a relationship, Harry? This is like dating 101.” 

“Ha ha,” Harry says indignantly, reaching into his bag and grabbing a simple tee. He throws it directly into Louis’ face, who splutters in annoyance, before returning to trying to find his toiletries at the bottom of his bag. He hears the shuffle of clothes, but Harry pointedly keeps his eyes down.   

“Wow. This is so soft. What detergent do you use?” 

Even though Harry knows what to expect when he turns back around, the sight still causes him to almost choke on his tongue. Harry’s always liked his shirts a size larger, and with Louis tugging on the hem, the neck line gapes and exposes the sharp lines of Louis’ collarbones. The way the shadows of the low lit room lick at the skin doesn’t help, and Harry’s tempted to let his own tongue follow the lead. 

“How attached are you to this shirt? Will you be mad if I don’t give it back?” 

Harry has to clear his throat, tightening his grip on the bag with his toothbrush and face wash in it. 

“It looks better on you anyways,” he mutters as he leaves the room. 

When Harry returns from the bathroom, Louis is already curled up in bed, only a mess of hair peeking out from under the duvet. Harry has to take a deep breath and swallow hard, but then he switches off the light and trudges over to the other side of the bed. 

As Harry lays there, counting the speckled swirls in the ceiling, all he can think about is how the next five days might actually kill him. 

// Send me Larry or Andeil prompts! //

[notesonfilm1]

A film of Arthur Miller´s famous play that made me think about Pauline Kael’s views on Long Day’s Journey Into Night, something like, ‘People argue about whether this is cinema or merely filmed theatre. I don’t care, whatever it is, it’s great’. The play, now considered a great American classics, opened to mix reviews in 1947, its run prolonged mainly by Brooks Atkinson´s appreciation in The New York Times which, according to Christopher Bigspy in Arthur Miller, ´welcomed a new talent and praised All My Sons as an honest and forceful drama, identifying Arthur Miller´s talent for unselfconscious dialogue, for creating characters as individuals with hearts and minds of their own (p.282). Word of mouth made it a hit, and in April of 1947 it won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award as best play over Eugene O´Neill´s The Iceman Cometh.

I saw the film in two stages. In the first, which amounted to the first act,  you’re introduced to the characters: Joe Keller (Edward G. Robinson), a rich industrialist who’d been taken to trial for manufacturing and shipping defective plane parts that caused the death of 21 airmen but found innocent by a jury; His wife Kate, (Mady Christians), warm, dutiful, and with a core strength, who nonetheless seems to be living in a fantasy world where horoscopes matter and her son Larry, a pilot who’s been missing in action for three years, is still alive; their other son, Chris (Burt Lancaster), back from the war, working with the Dad he seems to worship, and having fallen in love with Anne (Louisa Horton), who used to be Larry’s girl.

Watching the first part, it seemed to me that the film was going to be about Chris being able to marry Anne without sending Kate to an early grave. It had brilliant dialogue and the actor are magnificent. But it looked so dull. The direction is atrocious, like a film made by someone who knew nothing of the medium, the camera first using establishing shots and then merely following or focussing on whoever’s speaking next. I see that that’s not actually the case and that aside from filming many of the films in the Falcon series, Irving Reis also directed films that are still remembered including The Big Street (1942) Crack-up (1946 ), and The Batchelor and the Bobby Soxer (1947). But let’s just say he’s not a major visual stylist.

After I returned to the film, I saw the last two acts in one swoop, and it made me better understand those who go to cinemas to see filmed plays even without a live broadcast. This is such a great play and it seems more relevant now than ever. According to Kate Burford in her great biography of Lancaster, Burt Lancaster: An American Life, the film was made at a time when ‘the mistakes, chicanery and treachery of the home front’ during the war had become the stuff of daily postwar headlines. The New York Times would suggest that screenwriter Chester Erksine, had carefully deleted from the original play anything that might explicitly suggest that there are ‘faults in the capitalist system’ and had confined the drama to the greed of one man (Loc 1455 on Kindle). But what drama!

As the play unfolds, we find out that Anne, the girl Chris wants to marry ,is not only his brother’s ex but that her father is the man who’s taken the fall for sending defective equipment, and that Larry is not just missing in action but that he committed suicide out of shame for what his father had done. After worshipping him all his life, the son even raises his hands to the father, which when it’s Burt Lancaster raising it to Edward G. Robinson, is really something to see: ‘You can be better’, he tells him, ‘Once and for all you know that the whole earth comes in through those fences. That there’s a universe outside and you’re responsible for it’.  In the end the father realises that all those young airmen who died because he shipped defective equipment were also his children, thus the title, All My Sons.

  The film might not be great cinema but it does offer the opportunity of seeing two great stars — Burt Lancaster and Edward G. Robinson — performing in one of the great plays of the era. The casting might at first seem incongruous: Burt Lancaster as Edward G. Robinson´s son? But movies have their own logic. They´re both movie stars and so they belong together, they share a consanguinity of stardom. Plus their differences in shapes and sizes also evoke something of the ideology of the era and the message of the play. The parents not too distant from the old country and the journey that brought them to America, building a base there so that the next generation can be safer, bigger, better, stronger; and then how that their focus rests so squarely on themselves and their immediate family blinds them to a larger community, to full citizenship and its inherent responsibilities.

I found passages in the film like the one above very moving. It´s the siren song of immigrant parents, the dream that gives their life strength, meaning and purpose. To hear a truly great actor like Edward G. Robinson say lines like this is, as you can see above, a thrill: ‘I want a clean start for you kid…I´m going to build you a house….I want you to use what I made for you …with joy not with shame. Sometimes I think you´re ashamed of the money…..Because it´s good money. There´s nothing wrong with that money´

    Edward G. Robinson´s other aria, sparked by the moment when Burt Lancaster as the son begins to clock about his father´s actions on the line, ‘If you want to know ask Joe,’  I find unbearably moving, ‘Can´t you trust your own father? …. My own son…. Going behind my back’. The betrayal Joe feels, the hurt Chris knows he´s inflicting on someone he loves. The lashing out by the father. It´s familiarity crept up on me and its resonance moved me:   ‘I don´t have to explain. Not to you. You´re my son. You´re in it with me. My flesh and blood. You wear my clothes. Eat My Food. You live in my home. I don´t have to explain to you. If I´m guilty, then you´re guilty too’. And of course, it´s a thematic pivot: Joe´s actions have also become Chris´s responsibility. His very father tells him so.  And thus he must make his father answer.

  Burt Lancaster here plays the juvenile role. The quiet, All-American, typical boy next door. But Chris has been to the war. He´s survived it. And he´s now in love and wants a future. And he feels guilty, probably about both surviving the war and having fallen in love with his brother´s girl. Lancaster well conveys the sensitivity of Chris, his love for his father and his mother, the slow dawning that his father and therefore he himself is also responsible for what happened. He doesn´t offer the nuances or the bravado that Edward G. Robinson does. In much of the movie, he represents rather than acts. But the scene where he jumps on his father, the violence of an action both of them would have found unimaginable a few weeks before, is truly frightening and heart-breaking.

It´s also another part he´d had to fight for. According to Burford, ‘Ignoring (Hal) Wallis´doubts and Erskine´s protests that signing him was ´like casting Boris Karloff as a baby sitter,’ Lancaster pushed hard for the untough guy loanout part of Chris…’I wanted to play Chris Keller,’ he told one reporter, ‘because he had the courage to make his father realize that he was just as responsible for the deaths of many servicemen as if he had murdered them’. Happy for the chance to portray ‘an average guy — a solid character with high standards,’ his own best dream of himself, he insisted that his choice was a step forward in the direction he, not any studio, had chosen. The overnight star that Universal called ‘the hottest thing in pictures’ was not acting like one. ‘(Burford,  Kindle location 1466)

According to Christopher Bigsby in Arthur Miller, Miller himself derided the film, ´Watching the film forty years later, he found the result, starring Edward G. Robinson, a laughable melodrama that ought to be burned. His speeches had been re-written and all the subtleties blasted away(p.282)´ If so, he’s quite wrong. It’s not a great movie, but it’s a thrill to see great actors attack a great play like this. In the clip above, after Robinson has displayed his genius in the aria where he accepts responsibility it’s left up to Burt Lancaster to once more underline the theme of the play, the taking of responsibility : ‘It’s not enough to be sorry…you can be better….that’s there’s a universe outside and you’re responsible to i’ and then that great moment with the mother as she goes into the father’s room. It’s not a great movie. But I found the experience of watching it very moving.

  The film is often described as a noir, which baffled me a bit. As you can see in the images there is noir lighting throughout, very effectively deployed, particularly in the scenes where Chris and Anne first kiss, their faces barely visible, the relationship haunted by the past and the actions of their parents, and there are more examples of that throughout the film (see examples below).

    It didn´t seem to me too be a noir but I was perhaps stuck on it being an adaptation and overly focussing on noir in terms of recurrent techniques  (though see examples of Russell Metty´s superb noir cinematography above) or narrative conventions (though there are flashbacks). However, if one focusses on thematic and atmospheric attributes one might come to a different conclusion. According to Robert Sklar in Movie-Made America, ‘the hallmark of film noir is its sense of people trapped — trapped in a web of paranoia and fear, unable to tell guilt from innocence, true identity from false (p.253) ‘.  Thomas Schatz in Boom and Bust: Hollywood in the 1940s, notes that David Cook follows a similar tack, describing film noir as a ‘cinema of moral anxiety’ whose films thrived upon the unvarnished depiction of greed, lust, and cruelty because their basic theme was the depth of human depravity and the utterly unheroic nature of human beings.’ Cook notes that this style first emerged during the war but reached full maturity only with the paranoia, pessimism, and social angst of the postwar era(p.232).´

  Seen that way, All My Sons is a noir. But more importantly, though not a great movie, it remains a great opportunity to see great actors perform in a great piece. I for one was surprised at how moving I found it.

José Arroyo

  All My Sons (Irving Reis, USA, 1948) A film of Arthur Miller´s famous play that made me think about Pauline Kael's views on…

[ciathyzareposts]

What’s Your Story – Mr. Sack

Answers: Mr. Sack Introduction and Captions: TBD

And today, we have somebody who sent in their What’s Your Story answers before commenting on the blog. It’s time to welcome the self-described “long time fan, first time caller,” Mr. Sack!

My home country is… USA! USA! USA! Heh, sorry. I’m not jingoistic, but I couldn’t resist.

My age is… 40, but I still feel 23…not physically, but mentally. I remember turning 23, graduating college, 5 years into legal adulthood, expecting to be a full-time adult and yet not knowing if I was ready for that privilege or responsibility. It seemed like I was faking it and everyone else had it together. Now that I’m 40, with a wife, two kids, and a job that isn’t exactly dead-end but isn’t exactly fulfilling, I realize everyone is pretty much faking it; I still feel young and irresponsible, but at least I’m better at faking it.

The first adventure game I played was… Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards…when I was 8 years old. My dad brought home his work computer for my little brother and me to play the casino games and exploring the virtual world (making sure we didn’t wander off into the dirty parts…not that we would even understand it). Years later when we got our own computer, I tracked down just about every available Sierra game both old and new. I ended up playing all the Leisure Suit Larry games before ever having a girlfriend. In a way, the games helped to shaped my attitude towards sex and masculinity (both are HILARIOUS), and taught me to respect women, to see them as people with their own needs and desires that should be fulfilled before I get what I want (and sometimes I don’t get what I want, but I make the best of it).

I’m surprised you can get past the title screen without finding some dirty parts!

My favourite adventure game is… really hard to pick. Growing up, I almost exclusively played Sierra games both out of ignorance for any other quality games from other companies and satisfaction from their catalogue. When I discovered LucasArts games, the whole world opened up and it amazes me I managed to do anything as a kid other than play these games. At one point, I would have said King’s Quest VI was my favorite, though it is my favorite of that series. Leisure Suit Larry 3 is the perfect balance between a real adventure game and Larry’s comedy trope of dating and societal mockery and the best of that series. For a time, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers could not be dethroned because of its dark story and incredible style. Space Quest V is criminally underrated among that series and I’m surprised it doesn’t get more love. Really, the golden age of adventure gaming, from King’s Quest I to Grim Fandango, those games are the games I remember so fondly.

As for my “gun to the head” answer, when I think of the game that I enjoyed from beginning to end, that was the perfect blend of hilarious sharp writing, visually pleasing, and just plain all around fun, it’s probably Sam & Max Hit the Road. I loved that game so much, it made me a fan of the Steve Purcell comics and visual style. While I enjoyed the Telltale series, the Lucasarts entry is just so good and I lament we never got to experience the cancelled sequel.

A lot of people with guns to their heads pick Sam & Max – I wonder why?

When I’m not playing games I like to… keep myself entertained. I watch movies and online videos like The Spoony Experiment, read books, comics, blogs, cereal boxes, anything that stimulates my mind. Boredom is my worst enemy. Having two young kids has helped me rediscover playing with toys.

I like my games in (a box, digital format)… young me would have said box with all the trimmings of manuals that seemed like they came straight from the game and devices that either served as copy protection or simply cosmetic dressing…but now that I’m older and space is limited, plus having games easily portable on my phone and my Nintendo Switch, I’ve no problem with digital format. In fact, having replayed classics like Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle on my iPad, not to mention so many new adventure games from Wadjet, Zojoi, and the new Leisure Suit Larry game, I want every single adventure game past, present, and future available on my digital platforms of choice.

Unavowed from Wadjet Eye Games – available now on most digital platforms!

The thing I miss about old games is… the risks of experimental games by big studios. Sierra and Lucasarts brought out some incredible pieces of work in their glory days before they went seriously corporate and eventually disbanded. Even other companies like Capcom were much better when we got games like Darkstalkers, ones that developed cult followings and had real character. With games having blockbuster-sized budgets and a need to recoup such high production costs, they tend to play it so safe and formulaic, especially with things that, for their time, would have been considered bold. Also, I miss the sense that I had so much time to play them all. Becoming an adult has really made me aware of time and responsibilities that must be fulfilled before I can do anything else, and that usually leaves me with little time for gaming.

The best thing about modern games is… the stigma of gaming being for nerds who don’t leave their parents’ basements is gone…for the most part. There are games for everyone, and despite what blogs on both sides of the political spectrum say, we can all unite over our love for them, regardless of genres and flaws. It baffles me that there are those who seem to want to dictate what gaming is, who believe games on phones are not “real games”, or that games from the past are terrible due to either gaming conventions of the time or the lack of inclusion and pandering to the “old guard”. Gaming shouldn’t be so divisive. Preferences in genres will be there, but it’s our differences in preferences that should bring us all together. Also, I love the indie gaming scene that allows for blockbuster games from the big studios and small, experimental pieces from everyone else.

The one TV show I never miss is… Mystery Science Theater 3000, no question. My all-time favorite television show. It pretty much shaped my sense of humor and outlook on life. While it’s never quite managed to evolve past being a cult show (albeit one that has a lot of big name fans and the idea of a bad film being “MST3K-worthy” is parlance I am glad to see), its influence is undeniable in this era of online cynicism and critique. Whether that’s good or bad is up to each person’s interpretation, but for me, the world can take itself way too seriously, and sometimes I just want to hear the riffs of a guy trapped in space with two sarcastic robots. I’ve said that, in the era of DVD commentary tracks, every film, regardless of quality, should have a mandatory MST3K track, complete with silhouettes (the Ghostbusters DVD had this, so it’s possible).

Unfortunately, the MST3K revival was recently cancelled after Season 2

If I could see any band live it would be… Gorillaz, just to see how they pull it off.

My favourite movie is… The World’s End. When I bought it on Blu-Ray, I probably watched it at least once a day for half a year, making it easily my most-watched movie. The dialogue is so sharp (no surprise if you’ve ever watched any other Edgar Wright production) and the fight scenes so impressive, and yet most people mark this as inferior to Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, which baffles me; those two films set the bar very high, for sure, but The World’s End matched it. But again, that’s a gun to my head choice (though a much easier one to declare than my favorite game), I’ve grown up watching movies from all eras, and I’m always up for watching a good (or bad) movie with friends, no matter how many times I see it. In fact, the best way to experience a film I’ve already seen is with someone who hasn’t.

If this is the guy with a gun to your head, I think he was hoping for a different World’s End movie

One interesting thing about me is… I joined a local community theater just to be in a production of Avenue Q, and that pretty much opened up a whole new world of interest for me, allowing me to fulfill an acting bug I never knew I had.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/whats-your-story-mr-sack/

[usnewsaggregator-blog]

Here's why David Cone could be perfect candidate for Yankees

New Post has been published on https://usnewsaggregator.com/heres-why-david-cone-could-be-perfect-candidate-for-yankees/

Here's why David Cone could be perfect candidate for Yankees

Would Brian Cashman really hire someone like Josh Paul as the next Yankee manager, even if most fans in the Bronx have never heard of the guy?

More to the point, would Hal Steinbrenner be OK with that?

On Friday I asked that question of multiple people close to the situation and didn’t get a no, apparently because the owner trusts Cashman to make the right call and isn’t really concerned about name value now that the Yankees have young stars and a bright future.

OK, but if the GM is looking for an outside-the-box, analytically-savvy candidate, I’ve got one for him that does have name value:

Yankees coaching staff in limbo as search for manager is on

David Cone.

If you listen to him doing Yankee games on YES, you know Cone was ahead of the curve on analytics, in terms of bringing it to the audience for years now, and he offers smart analysis about all phases of the game.

David Cone, who celebrates 1999 perfect game with Joe Girardi, appears to have all the skills Brian Cashman is looking for to replace his former teammate as next manager of the Yankees.

(JEFF ZELEVANSKY/AP)

No less significant, as a top starting pitcher Cone was a big part of the Yankees’ dynasty in the 1990s, a player that teammates considered a leader in the clubhouse, and someone who was great with the media.

The former Cy Young Award winner always had plenty of ideas about the state of the game, as a player representative who was involved in then-contentious bargaining discussions between the players union and owners.

Naehring not interested in being next Yankees manager: report

On Friday, Cone didn’t want to get into discussing himself as a potential candidate, but I’ve talked to him enough to know he’d be interested in talking to Cashman about managing.

The GM ought to make that call, as one Yankee person on Friday agreed:

Joe Girardi’s Yankees career through the years

“I think he’d do an incredible job – he was more of a leader than most people knew, great at talking man-to-man with teammates. I just don’t know if Cash would go that far outside the box.”

There is precedent for it. Then-Astros’ GM Gerry Hunsicker pulled Larry Dierker, also a former pitcher, out of the TV booth to manage in 1997, and his teams won four division titles in his five years on the job, before he moved on due to health reasons.

Yuli Gurriel mocks Yu Darvish with racist gesture

One thing that is becoming clear: if Cashman thought it would work, he could sell it to Hal Steinbrenner.

“Cash has built up a lot of equity with everything he’s done to improve the team and the farm system in the last few years,” was the way one Yankee person put it. “He already had the trust of ownership, but now it’s on a different level.”

And then there’s this:

“Hal knows he has a team with young stars that fans love again and doesn’t need a name manager to help sell it,” another person said. “And he’s bought into the analytics philosophy that the team is good enough to win no matter who is managing, as long as he’s competent.”

Why the Yankees should hire Willie Randolph to be next manager

David Cone could be just what the Yankees are looking for in a new manager.

(Al Bello/Getty Images)

That would seem to open the door for someone like Paul, the organizational catching coordinator who I’ve heard Cashman speak highly of in the past, in terms of his coaching and people skills, though not specifically as a managerial candidate.

Would the GM really go that route? Well, I do remember him telling me a decade ago that if he hadn’t hired Girardi in 2008, the guy he liked was Trey Hillman, then a Yankee minor-league manager who never played in the big leagues.

I’m not sure Cashman actually would have had the guts to hire someone that unknown to follow a legend like Joe Torre. But as it turned out, Hillman eventually did get hired by the Royals and flopped badly, lasting barely more than two seasons.

At least Paul played in the big leagues as a backup catcher for nine seasons, though none with the Yankees.

Joe Girardi will not return as manager of Yankees

Anyway, people I spoke to on Friday said that Cashman does think highly of Paul, but none of them knew how seriously the GM is considering him as a candidate.

The same people seemed to think bench coach Rob Thomson would be very much in the running, with one saying, “He’s analytics-savvy, and has a lot of Girardi’s qualities, only more easy-going.”

As for reaction to a couple of other potential candidates:

Jay Bell, the former major leaguer who is the Yankees’ Class-A manager in Tampa?

It may not be fair to Girardi, but time was right for him to go

“Too much like Girardi,” one person said. “Pretty high-strung.”

Kevin Long, the Yankees’ former hitting coach who was once a Cashman favorite, but wound up getting fired after the 2014 season? After two years as Mets’ hitting coach, Long made a good impression interviewing for the Mets’ job, before losing out to Mickey Callaway.

“There’s some kind of issue there,” one person said, meaning between Long and Cashman. “It might be that he talked too much (to the press) or that he was too close to A-Rod. But I’d be surprised (if he got hired).”

SHOWCASE VIN

That little theater performance Vin Scully put on before Game 2 might be what I remember most from this World Series. It was a gem, wasn’t it?

By moving on from Joe Girardi, Yankees are Brian Cashman’s team

If you didn’t know Scully’s story as the legendary Dodger broadcaster, you’d never believe that he will be 90 years old next month, as he captivated the big crowd with his storytelling magic.

Ah, but I was sure when he faked the shoulder problem and asked if there was another lefthander in the house, that Sandy Koufax was going to pop out of the dugout.

Fernando Valenzuela is a beloved lefty to Dodger fans himself, but there’s only one Koufax. He would have brought down the house.

He was in attendance too, but as much as he has avoided the spotlight all these years in retirement, Koufax probably turned down the part.

5 leading candidates to replace Joe Girardi as Yankees manager

BIRD IS THE WORD

When all was said and done, in the Yankees’ postseason, Didi Gregorius, Aaron Judge, Greg Bird, Gary Sanchez, and Todd Frazier all hit important home runs, but which was the most memorable?

To at least one major-league scout, it was no contest, as he cited the home run Bird hit off Indians’ lefty Andrew Miller, the only run in the Yankees’ 1-0 win in Game 3 of the ALDS.

“I mean, Miller doesn’t give up home runs to lefties,” the scout said. “And in that at-bat, he started him with two sliders, and Bird had a good swing to foul off the second slider, so Miller is probably thinking he’s sitting on it.

“He tries to come in on him with 96 (mph), and Bird turned on it like it was BP fastball. That kid is some hitter. Great plate discipline, easy power. If he can stay healthy, and the ball is flying again next year, he’ll hit 40 home runs.”

Derek Jeter and other Yankees react to Joe Girardi not returning

In that case, Judge, Sanchez, and Bird could combine for what, 140 dingers? Should be quite a power show.

SABER-RATTLING

This is the All-Analytics World Series, of course, as Dodgers vs. Astros features two of the most sabermetrically-driven franchises in the sport.

And obviously it’s working for them, but Game 2 was a reminder that managing-by-the-numbers has its risks as well. There was absolutely no reason for Dodgers’ manager Dave Roberts to pull lefty Rich Hill after four scoreless innings, no matter what the analytics said about facing the lineup a third time.

Was Roberts not watching Hill completely baffle Jose Altuve, among others? More likely he didn’t really have a choice, as such decisions are made ahead of time, in concert with the front office.

Many Yankee fans sad to see Joe Girardi leave

Sure, the Dodgers’ pen has been practically unhittable in the postseason, but going to it so early produced a ripple effect that led to Kenley Jansen needing to get a six-out save.

And when Jansen gave up the game-tying home run in the ninth, the Dodgers paid for it needing to use Josh Fields and Brandon McCarthy in the extra-inning defeat.

Sometimes it still pays to let managers make decisions based on what their eyes are telling them during the game.

THROWN FOR A CURVE

He may be the Mets’ new manager, but no doubt Mickey Callaway will be expected to work some magic with the starting rotation after such a disappointing season.

Joe Girardi, by the numbers as Yankees skipper

Callaway had great success as the Indians’ pitching coach at least partly by emphasizing the use of curveballs. According to a story on MLB.com, the Tribe staff threw the highest percentage of curve balls of any in the majors – and more than 1,000 more than any other staff over the last two seasons.

For Seth Lugo, who rather famously has the highest spin rate of any curve ball in the majors, Callaway could be a big benefit. Steven Matz and Noah Syndergaard have good ones as well that perhaps they’ll use to more effect now.

Tags:

mlb

new york yankees

joe girardi

david cone

brian cashman

vin scully

los angeles dodgers

world series

houston astros

new york mets

mickey callaway

Send a Letter to the Editor

Join the Conversation:

facebook

Tweet

Original Article:

Click here