#ive only seen the movie once and that scene stuck with me for no reason but i remember where i was and what i was doing while it happened

[akascow]

anakin skywalker getting burned to not death was like a core memory for 9year old me i stg

[heyitsyn]

Keeping Up With Seijoh Ep. 1

a/n: this is a mini-series that are based off of your asks and once i,,,,, finish,,,, my seijoh phase, i will also do this for the other schools but pls take these offerings in the meantime as i work on the next part of my manager!seijoh and the time traveler au 

for more seijoh content, check this masterlist out!

anon request: 

Wow, your series of Seijoh managers is so cute.🥺👉👈 After starting to read, I can only think about Oikawa and y / n on a Saturday night seeing mean girls, painting nails, taking care of the skin and the another day Oiks rubbing the face of everyone who spends much more time with his dear businessman LMAOO Anyway, congratulations on your work 💕💕 seriously, I LOVE this series omg-

I MIGHT BE AN IWA AND KYO STAN BUT OIKS IS DEFINITELY THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND PRETTIEST DUMPSTER IVE EVER SEEN

yep lets start the pilot

so basically, oikawa was being oikawa again

what might i mean, you ask

well, he was starting to work much harder than before since this was his last ever inter-high and his last ever chance on beating ushiwaka 

even though they finally have the team assembled avengers assemble! with kyo back on the team, he still felt lacking and wanted to use every single free time to work on becoming better

yall fun fact about me, oikawa is actually my favorite character bc of how hard he works and the pain i have in that once scene during the karasuno match when he slammed into the tables and was struggling to get up bc of his knee----NO IM SOBBING AGAIN

iwa noticed him doing this again so he sent you out to drag him out and distract him from this 

‘cmon oikawa-san-’

‘NO, Y/N-CHAN! I HAVE TO-’

‘no, the only thing you have to do is spend time with me bc i miss you and i want to have that movie you kept talking about’

bahahaha he is so whipped that a single ‘i miss you’ from you will literally make him break his back and bend for you

it was successful and you were in your room, your parents understanding oikawa and his antics since youve complained about it before, and he was sitting on your floor while looking through movies

‘y/n-chan, do you have no alien movies in here? or barbie?’

IN MY CONTENT, IT IS CANON THAT OIKAWA LOVES THE BARBIE MOVIES FITE ME

you laughed from your spot on your bed and shook your head

‘no, oikawa-san. natsu took all my barbie movies and i get scared of alien movies’

he pouted but continued to look until his eyes literally lit up

it was like god took a picture of him and you saw the flash

‘MEAN GIRLS! Y/N-CHAN I DIDNT KNOW YOU LIKED THIS TYPE OF MOVIE!’

he shrieked but you shrugged

‘meh. katsuki, natsu’s boyfriend, gave it to natsu as a joke but he gave it to me instead bc he cannot stand regina george’

you reasoned while picking out nail polish colors and looking through the ingredients of your face masks

‘WE’RE WATCHING THIS! PERIODT!’

omg hes so loud but i am too so we compatible

ugh i hate my logic

then later,

as the movie played, you were arguing with oikawa as he refused to wear the unicorn and wanted the panda one, which was your favorite

‘OIKAWA-SAN, I LIKE THIS ONE!’

‘Y/N-CHAN I LIKE IT MORE!’

you sucked in a sharp breath before relenting bc you wanted oikawa to be relaxed per request of your beloved senpai

‘fine. but i get to paint your nails’

he nodded eagerly and you handed him the packet, to which he simply stared at it

‘y/n-chan, can you,,,, put it on me?’

he sheepishly asked and you gave him a confused and bewildered look

‘oikawa-san, have you never put these on yourself?’

he shook his head, cheeks flushing and eyes focusing on the blue blanket

‘my sister always put it on for me. or iwa-chan’

‘IWA-?! wHAT-?!’

but you nodded anyways and he made you sit on his lap to put it on

‘um, oikawa-san, this position-’

he smiled at you, a gentle and real smile, not the ones for his fangirls

‘nuh uh, its fine, y/n-chan. oikawa-san loves you so he likes you right here’

he mumbled, blushing and wrapping his arms around your waist to pull you closer making you giggle and nod

‘okay. close your eyes then, oikawa-san’

he excitedly nodded, expecting a kiss from you but you flicked his forehead making his eyes fly open and wince at the pain

‘so perverted, oikawa-san. pervert-oikawa-san’

you scolded and he pouted

he said something but you didnt listen, instead placing the mask on his face and smoothing it out

his fringe was about to touch the wet material so you hastily grabbed a clip and held his hair up

he looked so cute that you couldnt help but reach over and snap a picture of him

‘ara ara gomen did y/n-chan just take a picture of oikawa-san?’

he teased but you shook your head

‘no. what are you talking about?’

he did the same thing to you and now you were both painting each other’s nails, ofc staying loyal to your school mint green and baby blue on the ring fingernail

lmao dont blast me for not being exact w the school colors but it looks mint green to me

he finished yours first and omg?? hes so??? good?? like what???

you were holding his large hands with your small fingers and his heart started thumping really fast at the simple touch 

‘thank you,,,,, y/n-chan’

you looked up to him with large eyes, still unfamiliar with the softness of his voice

it was such a contrast compared to his usually loud and obnoxious, mocking tone

‘oikawa-san is not a really good captain since he burdens and bothers everyone but you always fix it all and keep everyone together. so, sorry for everything’

he mumbled and the eye holes from the mask let you see his sad eyes, genuinely sad about himself

you made the last paint stroke and capped the nail polish before leaning forwards, hands on his thigh so you could be closer

oikawa ofc freaked out because wow youre so much prettier up close and he doesnt?? deserve you??

your eyes blazed with anger and he stuttered your name but you cut him off

‘OIKAWA-SAN IS NOT USELESS. HE IS A REALLY GOOD CAPTAIN WHO LED HIS TEAM TO BATTLE THE ULTIMATE RIVAL AND EVEN THOUGH THEY LOST, THEY STILL WON IN MY EYES. YOU GOT KENTA-KUN TO COME BACK EVEN THOUGH HE DIDNT WANT TO BUT HE DID BC HE KNOWS HOW GOOD YOU ARE. HE WANTS TO PLAY ALONGSIDE A PLAYER WHO DESERVES TO BE ON THE COURT AND EVERYONE ELSE THINKS THE SAME THING. ME, Y/N, IS JUST A MANAGER WHO MIGHT NOT KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT VOLLEYBALL OR THE TECHNIQUES AND ALL THAT BUT I RECOGNIZE YOUR TALENT AND YOU WILL MAKE IT BIG SOMEDAY, OIKAWA-SAN! I PROMISE! AND WHEN YOU DO, I WILL SUPPORT YOU AND COME TO YOUR GAMES BC YOU ARE MY CAPTAIN AND I DONT REGRET EVER MEETING YOU. SO DONT APOLOGIZE AND SAY SORRY TO ME, INSTEAD TELL ME YOU ARE HAPPY TO BE IN THIS TEAM AND SAY YOU LOVE THE TEAM AND YOU LOVE VOLLEYBALL AND YOU LOVE-’

but he cut you off, placing a chaste kiss on your exposed nose

yall really thought it was the,,,, speaking function part of your face

nahnahnah that is only for the doggie

oop what

 you stopped, flustered at the sudden action but oikawa smiled

‘i love you, y/n. i really love you so give me a chance, okay? i will wait, no matter how long it takes but,,,, let me catch up and for now, think about me, okay?’

BRUH HOW IS THAT RELEVANT TO HER LONG RANT LIKE WHAT---

you tilted your head to the side, confused

she is deadass naive like bls protect her

‘a chance for what? you want to catch up for what? youre already good, oikawa-san’

then he laughed

so much more different than the ones he let out in public

it was so,,,, beautiful

you found yourself grinning with him and he calmed down, brushing away the stray hairs that is in danger of getting stuck on your mask

‘come on, y/n-chan. lets go take this off’

he stood up and offered his hand which you took

after the moisturizing and final touch-ups for your skin, you finally settled on the blanket fort and dozed off, the movie still playing but you were too comfortable in oikawa’s arms that you didnt even notice the credits rolling

the next day, you didnt feel the need to mention it at all

but oikawa did and it was still truly an accident

iwa heard about him staying late again and you having to drag him out of there and he was hitting him and kicking him again

you were so used to this that you were just writing down your notes at the corner, oblivious to oikawa’s crying

finally, he had enough of it

‘SEE THIS IS WHY Y/N-CHAN DOESNT LET YOU SPEND THE NIGHT WITH HER! BECAUSE YOU ARE SO MEAN!’

um, sire what did you just say

that was completely taken out of context and everyone, omg, especially iwa and kyo just froze

‘what,,, did you just say?’

iwa asked in a dangerously low voice and you shrugged

‘you told me to distract him, iwa-san, so i did. he was happy and satisfied and thats all that matters, right?’

you shot them a smile and oiks had such a smug smile when iwa looked at him and he was about to hit him when kyo just came out of nowhere and YEETED the smile off of his face

oikawa screamed

just a wittle blurb about this bc i totally love this :( and he totally needs more love and some of my readers love oikawa and want oikawa manager content so here it is!!! feast on these crumbs!!!!

[lesbianaglaya]

how like gross is the terror? i've been meaning to check it out for a while but also i'm not great with gore. also love your eskew/silt verses posting! ty!

ahh thank you!!! okay i will preface this with the note that it takes rather a lot to get me to be icked out of watching something so. grain of salt with what im about to say. anyway on to grossness levels of the terror! (under a cut for space reasons and also for descriptions of gore, but no screenshots):

okay so what i will say from the offset is there is definitely gore in the terror. like in almost every episode someone gets maimed, a central plot point is that the crew is being hunted by a polar bear-esque being through out their journey. you see shots of stumps of legs, cracked skulls, and blood on ice. 

i will also say is that another common thing is medical stuff? which i mention because that is something im not great with and it’s like. gore-adjacent. there are shots of bullet wounds, an autopsy, and two amputation scenes (but one of them cuts away as the blade goes down). also you are slowly watching these men’s bodies decay from a mix of exposure, lead poisoning, scurvy, and injuries by the end. there were a few moments where i had to look away because they would be looking over their bodies for sores etc. which is my big no thank you <3. 

one more thing i should mention (im so sorry) is that there is cannibalism in episodes nine and ten, and it is graphic. the worst of it is definitely in episode ten, where you see a character’s carved up body laid out on a table. i will be honest, i knew that this happened and i thought it would definitely be more than i could take because the last movie i watched that actually made me flinch was raw which is like. two hours of cannibalism lol. but upon watching this scene i was surprised that i was able to look at it and sort of. not feel disgust or fear but sadness. this is likely because i had nine episodes previously of grievous injuries to prep me and obviously not everyone will react the same but i wanted to mention it.

now that ive probably talked you out of this show, i will say is a lot of the worst maiming scenes happen in winter when its night all the time, or in fog so you cant see it as well. the ones i remember as being the most graphic were a scene at the end of episode three, a scene at the end of episode five, and the final confrontation midway through episode ten. ive only scene the show in full once though so im probably missing moments, but these are just the ones that stuck in my memory.

another thing i will say is that i have never seen a show use gore more effectively. there isnt a scene in the terror that isnt thought out or doesnt hold some meaning, and this goes for the gore as well. it isnt at all, in my opinion, like slasher movies where there is just gratuitous blood and guts for the sake of it (which can be fun! but would have no place here). each scene where someone gets injured serves a purpose, and it’s all framed very well in that it keeps you in the same mindset as the characters you’re watching. each decision is understandable, sometimes there are no good answers. sometimes shots of injuries would be so fast that i wouldnt even register them till later because there was so much happening, which made me feel like i was with the characters as their adrenaline faded and they started breaking down.

it is also one of the most darkly hilarious shows ive ever watched. episode ten which is a masterclass in cathartic misery managed, in the middle of it after almost making me cry ten minutes before, to give the funniest line of the series (shout out to jared harris’ delivery). this helped me almost lighten the gore i suppose? like sometimes things got so horrible i had to laugh. which, well. so did the characters.

the gore kind of fell away for me as i got more and more invested in the characters emotional states, and the show does a really good job of making you feel like you’ve earned something by the end. i will say that i simply turned my head away at certain scenes and was okay but of course that strategy wont work for everyone. 

if you decide to watch it, have fun!! its one of the best seasons of television ive seen in a long time. but i completely understand if after reading this you dont want to watch it! its fantastic but there certainly is gore in it.

[afaithy]

150: “I didn’t know I was allergic to coconut oil until I went to this one strip club and now look at me - in the emergency room of a hospital on the night of my bachelor/bachelorette party" Koushiro and Jou and no, I am not sorry

THIS WAS THE WEIRDEST PROMPT EVER LOL. I was a little conflicted between making it serious or comedy, but well, this came out.

As a note, this would be the prequel to this prompt here  :)  All of my drabbles happen in the same universe, so I follow my headcanons lol.

SEND ME ASK & MASTER POST

I didn’t know I was allergic to coconut oil until I went to this one strip club and now look at me: in the ER of a hospital on the night of my Bachelor party

“Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.”

― Flannery O'Connor

“Ah...you’re a blessing of the gods, Dr. Kido. If you ever feel lonely, don’t hesitate to call me. I am always free.” 

Jou smiled nervously as old grandma Fujita walked out of his examination room giving him a wink. A cold shudder ran down his spine, but he kept his professionalism and waved the old woman goodbye for the tenth time that week.

“Someone is popular” Hikari chuckled, covering her laughter with her hand.

“I prefer not to talk about it.” he replied, hiding his face behind his hand, in shame “Who’s next?”

“Mrs. Itou…” Hikari smirked “again…”

“What? What now?”

“She says her stomach hurts…” Hikari replied, checking the papers in her clipboard “She will run out of diseases...eventually.”

Jou clicked his tongue and pinched the bridge of his nose in disapproval. The emergency room was a serious place; Many lives were at stake and it was not a place for a group of older women with plenty of time to come and bother medical personnel with imaginary illnesses. Of course, Jou would never say anything, he was a gentleman and respectful of his elders,so he just examined the women and repeated that there was nothing wrong with them and sent them home with some vitamins.

“Should I call her in?”

Jou was about to respond when familiar screams made both Hikari and Jou's eyes widen. The pair rushed out of the office and to their surprise several familiar faces were in the middle of the room making a stir, while some of the other nurses tried to understand what was happening.

“Kidooo, find Dr. Kido!!! Or ….”Taichi screamed in the room.

“Taichi-san...lower your voice, Jou-san is probably busy!” Takeru said, pulling his arm and giving the nurse that attended them an apologetic smile.

“Then bring out my sister…” Taichi continued “My sister...do you know her?”

“Your...sister, sir?” the nurse asked, a little scared. 

“Yeah! My sister...baby sister. She married this...guy!” Taichi said, catching Takeru under his arm “Lucky boy this one, haha…”

“Onichan!” Hikari said, horrified. She rushed into the scene, apologized to the nurses and told them that she would take care of this.

As Hikari was busy calming down the rest of the nurses, Jou approached the group and took a look.

As Hikari tried to explain the situation and apologized for her brother's erratic behavior to the other nurses, Jou approached the group and looked around. Taichi was clearly intoxicated, judging by his goofy grin.

" You better have an explanation for this…” Jou said sternly “This IS a hospital.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Takeru apologised trying to pull away from Taichi’s uncomfortable hug “We do have a reason...for...Taichi-san, please stop it…”

“Good heaven” Jou said, pressing his temple “What did I say about drinking too much today?”

“JOOOUUUUU:...”Taichi said, smiling like an idiot.” Just the man I wanted to see. My good old friend! He’s my childhood friend! Did you all know that? He was a skittish neurotic boy...but now Look at him! A full on Doctor! I am SO proud of you my friend!”

He released Takeru and turned to Jou in a clumsy attempt to hug him, but this was not the first time that Jou had had to deal with a very drunk Taichi, so the doctor evaded him and looked at Takeru -who was, clearly, the sober one - asking for an explanation.

“Long story short…”Takeru sighed “something...bad happened in Koushiro’s party.”

“Ah...I knew it….” Jou groaned “That is why I said you should have done it on the day I could actually go!”

Jou made his way to a private room, where the rest of the group was supposed to be. Hikari had already gone ahead of him, and the doctor found her hovering over someone on the bed. Someone that was struggling to get up while making unintedibble sounds.  When Jou approached the bed, he was shocked to see that it was Koushiro. 

His friend showed the worst case of swelling that Jou had seen in his entire medical career so far and judging by Hikari's horrified look, the girl shared his thoughts. The boy was unrecognizable and judging by his incoherent and unintelligible mumbling, he -like Taichi- was awfully drunk.  Hikari and Jou managed to push him back down and keep him from moving, so that Jou could actually examine him to understand what had happened to his friend. 

Ignoring the fact that he was treating a friend, Jou began to look at Koushiro with a clinical eye and began to list up  his physical symptoms: swelling around the eyes, face, mouth and possibly other areas of the body covered by the clothes; the eyes were reddened , there were rashes and dermatitis on the arms, legs and necks; judging by his difficult breathing, there was possibly inflammation of the airways and his heart rhythm was abnormally fast . Koushiro was conscious, but it was clear that he was confused. Whether this was a symptom of what was happening to him, or simply because he had drunk too much, they would only know it with a toxicological examination.

“Pressure?” Jou said, checking on the boy's eyes.

“90/ 60…” Hikari said, scribbling in the clipboard “ A little too low. Saturation level is at 93…”

“Mild hypoxia…” Jou said “Koushiro...Koushiro...can you hear me?”

Koushiro didn’t answer, or more accurately he couldn’t. He had tried to speak, but the swelling was so severe that he couldn’t that he couldn’t articulate a word.

“Koushiro, if you can hear me blink twice.”  the boy blinked “Good, now...blink twice for yes and once for no, okay?”

Koushiro blinked twice.

“Are you in pain?”

Two blinks. 

“Does your chest hurt and is it difficult to breathe?”

Two blinks.

“Does anything else hurt?”

Another two winks.

“Your stomach?” 

Once again two blinks.

The conversation continued like this for  some minutes, while Hikari took note..

“His airways are swollen, he still can breathe, but until we find out what’s causing this, we need to avoid further sweelling.  Give him 50 mg of prednisolone on an IV with 50mg of tramadol for the pain. Keep an eye on him. I want a  full blood scan and thoracic plaque. I want to see whether there’s pleural effusion or not. Ask for a toxicology test. I want to know what’s running in his system...”

“Yes, doctor. What are you going to do  in the meantime?”

“Try to get the story about what on earth happened to see where this problem came out from...”

“Well, that’s going to be a challenge with how drunk my brother is.” Hikari said, looking at Taichi, who was sitting in a corner singing a foolish and very out of tone song as Takeru tried to keep him still.

“Well lucky for me, your husband has a knack for storytelling.” Jou gave her a meaningful look and Hikari chuckled.

Takeru was having troubles trying to keep his brother-in-law from making a fuss. Taichi was the kind of person who would turn into a childish and silly kid whenever he was drunk, and even though it was funny at first, it became very tiring later on. 

“Alright, that’s enough...Taichi-san Stop it!” Takeru growled sternly.

Taichi’s only response was a pout.  He then began to wave his arms in a bvery childish manner.

“Takeruuuu….meanieeeeee….you don’t treat your awesome….greatest brother-in-law in the world like thiiiiis….”

“Yeah...well, you’re acting more like a naughty kid than my “awesome” brother-in-law, though…” Takeru sighed “Stop moving already! And keep your voice low...this is a hospital.”

Taichi pouted again and looked at Takeru with a scolded kid look. He stuck out his tongue at him with “Hmph” and turned away, making Takuro sigh. 

“I don’t know if I should laugh or be concerned that your first parenting experience is taking care of your intoxicated brother-in-law, Takeru.”

Takeru laughed and rolled his eyes. 

“I hope for my mind health’s sake, that I never get kids as feisty as Taichi-san…” 

“With your genes and Hikari’s...I think the chances are low. I can’t speak of the potential nephews however” Jou nodded, and Takeru wasn’t sure whether it was a joke or not, since Jou had kept a serious look. “ Where’s Yamato?”

“Well, after trying to kiss his way all over the club, he was knocked out. He must be still sleeping in the car. Don’t worry, Gabumon and patamon are with him. Daisuke and the others must still be in the party, I’m not even sure if they noticed us leaving.”

“Right.” Jou said with a sighe “Ok, so...care to tell me the story?”

Takeru gave him an ironic look. A story? He could write a full short novel with the events from that day, but he took a deep breathe and began telling Jou all the things that had transceded that night. 

“Well, it was Daisuke’s idea and well, my brother and Taichi were foolish enough to follow it, I guess? Honestly, I just found out today when I arrived.” he explained “Somehow they thought that it would be a pity that Koushiro didn’t experience a little bit of a “bachelor’s life” before tying the knot and well...they dragged us to this...night club.”

A night club! Jou thought, horrified. Those were the kind of silly things that happened when he wasn’t there to keep an eye on those kids. That was the worst possible place to take a man days before his wedding, then again, the fact that this was Daisuke’s idea shouldn’t have surprised him.  That kid had been watching too many american movies. 

“Alright...I need to know everything,” Jou sighed, taking out his pen “Everything that Koushiro did. What did he drink, eat, touch...all of it.”

“Ehr...sure…” Takeru said, trying to recall all the things that had happened earlier. It was hard since what had not happened that day. 

Daisuke’s plan had totally taken Koushiro by surprise.  He had expected a causal night on some local bar drinking a couple beers with friends and telling stupid stories, before going home and sleeping until the next day. The computer genius was speechless when his friends had pulled him into this exotic night club in which, apparently, women danced and took off their clothes as they did. He didn’t even know those places existed in Japan. 

The night had started calm, all things considered. Koushiro was visibly feeling awkward and Takeru couldn’t blame him. Supposedly, Takeru was the one famous for his suave style and his ease dealing with girls, but even he had to admit, the whole place intimidated him.

Taichi and Yamato had been awkward at first too, but after several drinks they began to loosen up and their usual drunkish traits began to surface. Half an hour and many drinks later, all of his friends were pretty much drunk and  even Koushiro was much more relaxed.  Then it happened.  Daisuke had reserved some popular dancers or whatsoever to "assist" at his friend's bachelor party. The girls, who Takeru made sure to describe as absolutely not his type, just in case Jou decided to share the tale with Hikari, had given Koushiro a very...intense and provocative lap dance. Koushiro was so shocked that he had fainted on the chair. The pattern was repeated several times during the evening: a random dancer would come, give the bachelor a lap dance, Koushiro would faint, then wake up to drink another cup of liquor, and it would start all over again. 

“And you were the only one actually sober?”  Jou asked.

“I did have a beer…” Takeru admitted “but hey I am married, okay? Daisuke kept teasing me for being the grumpy married guy of the party whenever I said that I thought it was a bad idea. ”

“GRUMPY OLD MAN...hahaha…” Taichi laughed loudly pulling Takeru’s shirt. He slapped the older boy’s hand and glared. 

“Taichi-san ...quiet!”

“Well, at least someone had a cool head there. Embarrasing enough, it was the youngest of the group.” Jou said, rolling his eyes  and looking at Taichi disapprovingly “alright, lap dancing aside. What did Koushiro eat?”

“I think he had some of those peanuts on the table and some chips and a sandwich.”

“He ate those damn peanuts?” Jou said horrified “Do you have any idea of the sort of things you can find in those plates? Do you have any idea of how many people touch those things without washing their hands?”

“Believe me, I know…” Takeru sighed. His wife wouldn’t let him forget it whenever he went out for a drink with the guys “but I think Koushiro has his mind somewhere else to actually think of that detail. Do you think it caused this?”

“Well, no...that was just an outburst of indignation. Continue….” 

“He had several beers, then Daisuke suggested moving to stronger drinks. I think he had several margaritas and cocktails. Other than that...it was all good.”

“Any fruit in those cocktails, aside the lemons?”

“No, I don’t think so…” Takeru said “Why?”

“Just checking.” Jou said “Was he okay before...the party?”

“Yeah, he was fine. He was talking with Mimi before we left his office.” 

“So when did he begin to feel sick?”

“Eh...I’m not sure. After the twelfth lap dance maybe?”

“ Number twelve smelled niiiicce. Hawaian lotion smelled so good… made me want caaaaandy…” Taichi giggled “remember that coco candy? Hehehe…”

 The two men ignored Taichi’s incoherent comments and continued speaking. Takeru would have laughed if the situation wasn’t so serious right now.

“So he didn’t eat or drink anything unusual?”

“Not that I noticed…”

“Coco….Coco….cococoooo” Taichi sang sillily.

Jou ignored him and looked at the notes he had in his clipboard. 

“Huh...I guess I’ll need those results before I can do anything. This doesn’t tell me much...”

The good news was that the medication was helping Koushiro a little. The swelling was still there,  but it had gone down a little and he wasn’t in pain. He still couldn’t move, but it seemed to be a lot more conscious compared to how he had arrived.  About one hour later, Hikari came into the room with the lab results and Jou looked through the papers carefully. 

“Eosinophils count is high…” he said “he’s pretty intoxicated, however, it shouldn’t be enough to altere his white cell count. Aside from the drugs we gave him, he’s clean...so it wasn’t a case of accidental drugging or poisoning. Inflammatory indicators are high, as expected and no pleural effusion. Good. Let's keep on with the prednisone and the tramadol until we find out what's the cause. At least we know it is not Lupus… ' Jou said.

Hikari chuckled.

“Quating Dr. House there?”

“Just to break the tension” Jou smiled with a shrug " let's monitore these indicators just in case. I want to make a scrap of his rash to see what we find there." 

"Full test?" Hikari asked.  

Jou nodded and Hikari did as she was told. Considering how his friend had come in earlier, Koushiro was evolving really well. The steroids were helping with the inflammation and that was letting him breathe better. The question,now, was: what had caused it? 

"You sure had a hell of the night, huh Koushiro?" Jou said with a raised eyebrow. 

Two blinks and a pathetic look. Jou looked at him sympathetically , he was going to develop a trauma after tonight, that's for sure and he would have to thank Daisuke and his friends for it.

The results came in later that night. The blood test seemed better, so they continued with the treatment as it was. The skin scraping had come negative for fungi, parasites and bacteria. However the note from the analyst caught his attention. It read:  presence of oily substance. It was identified as vegetable oil, most likely coconut. 

Coconut?

 Suddenly, some of the  things he had heard that night  began to click. Taichi had sillily said something about someone smelling like a Hawaiian lotion that reminded him of the coconut sweets he liked. Now, the pathologist said there was coconut oil on the samples. It was as if a light bulb had been lit in his head and the answer became clear. 

Koushiro had had a bad allergic reaction to coconut oil. Coconut allergy was rare, but the chances were high, since he was allergic to walnuts and cross reaction with coconut were common. An hypersensibility reaction would explain the result of  eosinophils  in his blood test. His symptoms also pointed to a severe allergic reaction.How had he not seen it earlier? 

Poor Koushiro. Ending up in a hospital on his bachelor party night, just because one girl had danced on his lap after a skin treatment with coconut oil. He'd have to message Mimi and tell her to get rid of all her coconut skin products, or she would get a not very nice surprise on their wedding night. 

The whole thing was so ridiculous that Jou burst into a fit of laughter, just when Hikari stepped in to the office. The girl stared at him dumbfounded and the older man tried to compose himself, but looking at his friend’s face, he knew he'd already failed poorly. 

"Y-Yeah?" he said, smiling .

"Mimi is in the hall demanding to know what happened to her fiancé…" Hikari said shyly "I wasn't sure what to say…" 

"Right.” Now he had another problem. A feisty Mimi who wouldn’t be too happy about the way her fiancé had decided to spend his bachelor party “Leave it to me."

“ Good luck...she’s angry.”

Jou gave her an amused look as he fixed his doctor’s coat and stepped out of the office. This was probably the strangest night he’d ever had in the ER, but one way or another, he had saved his friend, and that, was enough to make him proud, even if it had only been a silly allergic reaction to coconut oil.

SEND ME MORE ASKS! X3

[buckybabybaby]

Mr Hollywood (Epilogue Part III)

Summary: Bucky Barnes, an underpaid teaching assistant in a small English village, dreams of a movie career back in his home country of America. He finally gets the break he's always wanted, and if it wasn't for you, his best friend, he wouldn't have been able to take it.

But is that fact enough to save your friendship when it's tested by the pressures of Hollywood?

Pairing: Bucky Barnes/Reader (Gender Neutral)

Word count: 1532

Chapter summary: The peace of normality, for once.

A/n: Probably the last epilogue, but who can say?! I think this rounds if off nicely though...

(If the picture is all blurry, opening it in a new tab in browser helps!)

Warnings: Just fluff.

Previous: Epilogue Part II

Mr Hollywood Masterlist | Main Masterlist

*****

“Do you mind it when Mr Barnes kisses other people?”

You don't have to look up to know Isabella is staring across your desk at you, eager to know the answer. Her younger sister Emilia has also drifted in to your classroom this evening, dragging with her a box full of building blocks, and is currently creating a mini town on your window sill and ignoring everything else, not quite old enough to be interested in gossip.

If you can call it gossip. Even with Bucky's dramatics over the month you spent in America, the paparazzi didn't catch on to anything and you returned to England and your work just as anonymous as you left.

That doesn’t mean, however, that curious little eight year olds can't figure out that something has changed between you and him. Edwin and his wife Ana both work full time, which isn't usually a problem as the two girls attend after-school clubs most days of the week, and even on Fridays when there aren't any running it's still not a problem as there is plenty to keep them occupied while they wait to be picked up. The music room seems to be a favourite of theirs, the lure of bashing around on the drums or piano unsupervised too hard to resist, but more often that not recently they can be found with you.

Isabella's continuing. “And do you make him clean his teeth before he kisses you afterwards?”

You laugh, still surprised at how direct she is. It only took her a couple of minutes to wrangle out the truth about you and Bucky on you the first day back, and so far it seems like she's stuck to her vow of keeping it to herself, in exchange for stories of your time in Hollywood.

She's still talking. “Does his character kiss other people? I haven't seen the show, daddy says I can watch it when I'm a little bit older.”

“Your daddy's probably right,” You say, not answering her other questions.

That doesn't stop her asking, “Will you get married to him now?”

“We'll have to see.”

“Will daddy get an invite to your wedding? 'Cos then I could come too! Emilia's too small but I could come, couldn't I?”

“Don't get too excited, Isabella. Nothing will happen for a few years yet, probably.”

Resting her head on her crossed arms, her brow furrows in obvious disappointment and you feel guilty.

You can't have that. “Tell you what.” Holding out your hand, you offer her your little finger and she wraps her own much smaller one around it with a grin. “When we get married, I'll make sure you get an invite, okay?” She gasps happily, and you add, “And one for Emilia, because I'm not planning on marrying him any time soon so she'll be old enough by then.”

“If you wait a few more years then the new baby can come too!” Isabella's hands clap over her mouth as you both realise what she's said. “I wasn't meant to say!”

You feign confusion. “Say what?”

She slumps back into her seat in relief, giggling quietly when you wink at her.

Then a soft knock interrupts from the classroom door and you look up to find Ana leaning against the frame.  Not so subtly you glance at her tummy, trying to see if you can make out a bump, and from the look on her face, she notices.

Isabella and Emilia jump up at her arrival, gathering up their belongings as she comes to perch on your desk.

“I'm guessing she told you?”

“In her defence, it was an accident.”

Ana shakes her head fondly as she watches her oldest collecting her pens and zipping them away in her bag. “We didn't really expect her to not too. We're in the process of telling people so it doesn't really matter, and I'm just so pleased she's excited.”

Her daughters have finished fastening their coats and are hovering by the door, tired now after a long week and more than ready for dinner and bed.

“Thank you for looking after them.”

You whisper your congratulations as you hug her goodbye, waving as they leave, and you've nearly packed up your own book bag when you're interrupted again.

“This place really doesn't change, huh?”

Spinning around, you're met with the most beautiful sight you can imagine on a Friday evening. Bucky, taking advantage of a break between his scenes to visit you for the first time since the summer, is stood in your doorway in the outfit he tends to wear every time he travels, and before you can stop yourself you're skipping across the room and into his arms.

“I thought I was picking you up from the airport?” You mumble against his shoulder.

He shrugs and holds you closer. “Got an earlier flight. So I thought I'd come and surprise you.”

“You're the best sort of surprise I could ask for,” You admit. “If you'd been here ten minutes ago you could've also surprised your biggest fan.”

“Edwin's daughter, 'bella?”

“Yeah. She's first on the guest list when we get married, too.”

He leans back slightly to catch your eye, grinning widely. “Oh, it's 'when' now, is it? Not 'if'? That's encouraging.”

Your smile matches his. “But we'll have to wait until both of her siblings are old enough to attend too, I've made a solemn promise I couldn't possibly break.”

Bucky frowns. “Both her-oh, a new baby?”

“Yep.”

“And you don't want screaming babies ruining your big day?”

“Nope. Well, not ideally.”

“So, three to four years is how long we've got to wait?”

“If you're prepared to?”

Bopping your nose, he slides his lips briefly across yours. “Don't worry doll, I'm a very patient man.”

*****

“He's going to spoil your little girl rotten, I hope you know that.”

Sat on one side of your lounge with Sophia, you watch Bucky on the other side of the room cradle week old Amelia like she's make of tissue paper. The timing of his trip back 'home' is perfect as his baby niece was born just days ago, a much easier birth than her older brother so the whole family's able to come round to your house for the afternoon when she's still so young.

“Well, not rotten,” You acknowledge. “Never rotten, not one of your children, but he's still going to absolutely treasure her like he does Benjamin.”

“I know. I don't really think there's anything I can do to stop him.”

“Nah, you've just got to embrace it.”

“And what about you? Does he spoil you too?”

You flush at the knowing look she gives you. “He tries to.”

Not elaborating nor giving her a chance to pry any further, you get up and saunter over to admire the newborn, sitting next to Bucky on the sofa as Dayton slips away back to his wife, leaving the two of you alone for a minute.

Bucky turns to you. “Do you want to hold her?”

“Oh, er-”

“Here.” He holds Amelia out to you carefully. “Just keep her head supported and she'll be fine.”

“O-Okay.��

Waiting until you settle comfortably, he then passes you the precious bundle. You're tense at first, terrified of holding her incorrectly and causing her pain, but when she doesn't stir in your arms, you sink back into the sofa and watch her sleep. She looks almost exactly like her brother did when he was born, just that the soft hair across her forehead is darker, the same colour as her father as opposed to Benjamin's blonder curls, matching his mothers.

“She's so tiny,” You murmur in awe.

Bucky nods, smiling down at her when she stretches. “But she won't be for long. Which is yet another reason to come back more often.”

*****

It may be October half-term, but with the sun shining down it's warm enough to enjoy the fresh air in the garden, at least for a little while. Benjamin drags himself away from his little sister long enough to offer the chickens some corn, and under the watchful eye of both his parents he hesitantly holds out his hand to them, even after you warn him their beaks may hurt. Just like his dad and uncle, he loves a challenge.  

Bucky guides you away from the others, ambling around the edge of the borders as he tells you about his and Sam’s latest antics, finally stopping at the base of the apple tree that holds so many memories.

“I miss you Y/N.”

“I'm right here.”

“I know, but when I'm gone, I-” He pauses, sighing. “I wish it could be like this all the time.”

“Me too.”

“I was thinking, for the next project, I could find a role a bit closer to you. Maybe a British production?”

“You shouldn't limit yourself for me.”

“No. But if something came up...”

“Then that would be very nice.”

“Wouldn't it?”

He holds you tight as he kisses you in a sunny patch under the slowly yellowing leaves, and you know that, whatever comes your way, as long as you have moments like this nothing will ever tear you two apart.

*****

Epilogue Part IV (Final!)

*****

A/n 2: if this is this last part I just wanna thank everyone who read and commented on this over the last eight months! It's been quite a while, so if you've stuck with it, thank you!! Once again I find it hard to let go when I feel like I've built a little safe family around Bucky, but there's always more stories to write, and different ways for him to fall in love with y/n, so watch this space ;)

[wolferals]

audition

Arón Piper imagine

*

saturday, january 18th 11:22pm • Today was Monday, August 22nd and all I've seen since 8am were wannabe actors reading their stupid lines to us pretending they were fucking Johnny Depp himself. God I was so sick of it, but since I've been grounded my dad made me cast people for this movie he was going to direct. Why were you grounded, you may ask. Well let's say, we just moved to Madrid basically to the end of the world since I grew up in America all my life. Yeah, my first days of school didnt really turn out to be super great, my english teacher was super racist in my opinion. She kept making „jokes" about my country/ and at some point i just snapped and told her how she dared to be so fucking racist. My class agreed with me yet my teacher didnt and put me in detention first and then called my dad. So yeah, thats why he's making me do this.

Some might think, its not a punishment to cast people for a „super cool movie" but have u ever been in a all white room for 10 hours listening to the same sentences over and over, being read by the worst people ever? No, exactly.

Its been exactly 4 hours now, its been around 12 when we decided to take a short break to get some food. I walked around the building for a while, grabbed a iced coffee at the bar and then sat down on a couch in the foyer to immediately text my friends from back home about how horrible i was feeling.

I didnt even get to text 5 words until my dad came around the corner saying something like:"Y/n, lets go. The people wont cast themselves. I mean they'd love to but that's our job." He then laughed loudly and almost couldnt stop. One thing about my dad: He thinks he's hilarious but in my opinion he's a little too full of himself. No offense, i love him of course.

Therefore I walked back to the cruel looking white room and sat down on my chair sipping my iced coffee. „Alright, next up, we have a Joshua Hamilton reading for the part of Jamey." I rolled my eyes. Yet again another Jamey. Ive heard the line:"No way Daniel, are you insane?! Have you even thought about the fact that you could get fucking killed?" about 50 times today.

And to be honest, the only person i'd like to get killed right now would be myself.

„Hello, my name is Joshua Hamilton, I'm 22 years old and I'll be reading for the part of Jamey." The tall, skinny looking guy then spoke after *extremely happy looking* entered the room. Well no offense but super happy people make me puke.

He then read his lines, horribly. He was just too enthusiastic and grinning through the entire thing. It was supposed to be a mad Jamey yelling at his brother who was about to attack his ex girlfriend's killer.

Dad then told him, they will call him. But lets be honest here, obviously they wont. • Alright so another 4 hours passed and we had almost all important characters casted, except Jamey. The crew was getting impatient and we were all super tired. „Dad how many are left?" I then asked because I wanted nothing more than this to end. „26." he answered, sounding annoyed. So was I. „Jeez, for fucks sake." I exclaimed and leaned back in my chair. „Y/n, watch your language!" He scoffed and took a sip of his water before leaning back as well.

„Okay next off we have a Arón Piper. He is Spanish-German, which wouldnt quite match with the way we pictured Jamey. But lets get the guy, kay?" Evan, the producer spoke after reading some reviews.

„Mhm." my Dad hummed. He seemed extremely tired and messed up to be fair.

As I said, I was annoyed and super damn hungry but the second this guy walked in, all my senses were on and I couldnt help but stare at him. He was tall, had curly hair, an earring on his left ear, chocolate brown eyes and a smile that could kill. „Hola,, I'm Arón." My dad seemed to like him too because he sat up straight scanning him up and down. „How old are you Arón?" Lucy, the executive producer asked him, smiling as well. „I'm 23." The handsome guy answered calm and sent me his billion dollar smile.

fuck • I smiled back and for whatever fucking reason I just said:"You must be working out, am I right?" Everyone looked at me but I didnt care, I just looked him right in the eyes and saw him laugh. „Y/n what the hell?" My dad whispered sounding pissed yet confused. „Jamey is a fit dude, he goes to the gym 6 times a week. We have to consider the fact that the actor has to be healthy and all as well." I tried to get out of the weird situation but actually I was just wishing for him to take off his shirt to show us -okay, me- his amazing abs I bet he had. „Uhm to be honest, I just dance, thats it. But you could call that a work out since Ive been doing it since I was 7 years old."

The others seemed impressed too, so Lucy cockily said:"So if acting wouldnt work, youd become a professional dancer?" Arón laughed again and answered:"Yeah, probably. But i havent even read my lines yet."

The entire time he was acting his lines, I was just staring at his god like face, every emotion, every move, every little change in his body language was perfect. My dad looked like he was impressed too and he then, after Arón had finished, spoke:"Thank you, Arón. That was amazing!" He smiled happily and answered fully paying attention:"Oh gracias, it means so much coming from you!" He walked up to my dad to shake his hand and then took back his portfolio. „Honey what do you think? Should we put him in round 2?" I looked over to my dad, took a glance at Arón who was smiling cutely at me. „Nah."

Everyone gave me a confused look and in Arón´s eyes I could see pure fear.

„I think we should give him the part.“

My dad smiled, nodded at me and then spoke:“Alright, Arón Piper, congratulations.“

Arón walked over to me and stuck his hand out for me to shake it. I slowly took his hand and, okay that might sound weird, but it felt so damn good to touch him. God I sound like a creep. No but for real his hand was a lot bigger than mine and really warm compared to my -always cold- claws. „Gracias." he said quietly and stared directly into my eyes while smiling. I wanted to say something like:"Of course, you deserve it, you were amazing." but i just couldnt, i wasnt able to look anywhere but into his beautiful brown eyes.

My dad saw that and cleared his throat loudly. „Thank you again Arón, we will call you next week for further information. But for now, since Jamey is the main male protagonist and we will be filming most of the scenes with you, we'd like to invite you and the other main actors to a dinner party tomorrow night. We hope you're free and we would text you further dates later on today."

-„Yes I'm free, that'd be amazing! Thank you so much! See you tomorrow then, bye guys." He grabbed his jacket from off the floor and left the room smiling brightly.

-„We've got it! We found, first of all the perfect Jamey, and we finally have all the actors, people!" Lucy shouted and sighed relieved. „Alright then, lets celebrate!" My dad exclaimed happily and the others stood up after him. „I'll be right out, I'll go to the bathroom real quick." I informed the guys and just simply hit the bathroom next to the audition room. When i checked back to see if the room had been locked, I noticed that a portfolio book was left on the table. I grabbed it, opened it and and noticed it was Arón's.

Right, he grabbed it before, then shook our hands and put it down again. Then he walked out without it.

So I quickly locked the door and ran through the building, past my dad saying:"Be right back." I figured, Arón couldnt have gotten very far, so I sprinted down the stairs, out of the front door of the building and i looked around if I might spot him. I then saw a guy that looked like him walking down the street towards a silver car and i ran as fast as i could to reach him.

„Arón!" I yelled and stopped once I finally reached him. „Yeah?" he was about to get in the car but turned around. „You forgot that." I passed him his book and tried to catch my breath real quick. „Oh god, thank you! I totally forgot about that. Gracias." He took it smiling.

While I was trying to breath, he opened the car door and said:"Just a second." Me, still dying from all the running, I was now leaning against a wall. „You okay?" -„Huh? Yeah. Im.. good." I was kind of embarrassed at how unathletic i was. „U sure?" he came closer and looked actually quite concerned. „Ya dont worry. Uhm.. See you.. tomorrow..at the.. party?" i tried to play it off and stood straight again Arón smiled again and answered:"Of course. Cant wait!" He then walked back to the car and sent me another smile before getting in.

Damn, this guy.

[natsubeatsrock]

So, I watched The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and...

The Endless Eight arc is one of my favorite arcs in anime.

No, I'm serious.

It's legitimately one of my favorite arcs.

It's not a particularly fun arc to go through on the first watch. I wouldn't be shocked if you went through this arc and felt like something wasn't wrong. Many people have decided not to watch this season or even the series because of this arc.

But I think that this arc very accurately shows how frustrating being stuck in a time loop would be. It also shows a taste of how Yuki Nagato must have felt simply observing the whole thing going down. Not to mention, it's one of the reasons the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya is one of my favorite anime movies, ranking as the best among movies related to a television series.

Now that I've checked off MAL and r/anime's Endless Eight praise checklist in one paragraph, onto what I want to talk about.

I find the big criticism for this story arc to be hilarious and worth talking about more than any of the other things I've talked about. The big criticism with this arc is that it's basically the same episode done over eight times. Certain things are different, but it's essentially the same thing over again.

And you know, they're right.

But that's not as bad as they'd have you believe. After all, as King Solomon once said, there is nothing new under the sun. Essentially everything that has ever been done is a version of some other thing.

For example, Kyon from Haruhi has basically the same personality as Tomoya Okazaki at the start of Clannad, Hotaru Oreki for most of Hyouka and Hachiman Hikkigaya for a large portion of My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU. All four of these characters learn to see the world differently after joining a club which includes a female character they have to learn to like throughout their respective series. 

Now, I know what some of you might be thinking: those guys aren't all the same. Sure they may seem similar, but they're not the same character. 

And, you're right.

I would be seeling those characters and their series short by saying that because they share similarities. And I would be lying if I said that I like these characters exactly the same for the same reasons. I understand that might seem like a weird example, so let me give another.

As far as the European system goes, music is written using any combination of the same twelve notes spelled in any number of strange ways, and entire genres of music are built on repeating and reusing the same patterns over and over. If this sounds familiar, you may have heard of the infamous I-V-vi-IV (1-5-6-4) chord progression. To be fair, the reason this pattern exists is that each chord naturally leads to the next one. (A gross oversimplification, I know) However, you'll still find iterations of this in every key in music from Bach to Bieber and everywhere in between. And that's just one chord progression. There are plenty of other popular chord progressions, song structures, musical forms, lyrical topics, and instrumentation combinations that have been done time and time again. This has gotten to the point that one could almost be forgiven for thinking all music is the same.

Except it's not all just the same thing. Many are similar within a specific genre and many genres often feel like they're similar to each other. However, they're each doing something different enough to be called a new thing. As the famous musical theorist, Heinrich Schenker put it "Always the same, never the same way." A quote that means a lot more the more you know about his thoughts on music.

And the Endless Eight arc understands this amazingly well. Each episode shares a similar line of events. However, each episode handles these events differently. It would be one thing if each episode were only animated differently. The things that get fixated on are different each time. The musical score implies different tones in each episode. Some events get less time in some episodes than others. Certain small events don't even happen in some of the episodes like the trip to the movies, the trip to the store to get yukatas, the batting cage, the test of courage, or Kyon talking to Yuki after the SOS Brigade shares lunch the first day. 

On my second time going through it, I decided to make note of my favorite versions of each moment in each episode. The idea that you only need to watch the first two episodes and the last to get the idea of the arc is fine if you want the gist of it. But doing that means you would miss the cold open in episode four where Kyon finished Haruhi's request and only realized afterward. You'd miss Kyon saying what Haruhi's introduction to the kids in episodes four and seven. You'd miss Kyon answering his phone as if he were an answering machine in episode five. You'd miss Kyon doing the math for how much time the loop lasted on a calculator in episode six.

Now, let me be fair. Does the fact that these episodes aren't exactly the same, but only slightly different mean that there is no reason to be frustrated by the fact that you've basically seen the same things happening already? No.

And that's totally fine.

While some people find the repetition of aspects a reason to be a fan of those aspects, the same repetition can cause others to be turned off to it. If you didn't like something once or twice, you're probably not going to enjoy seeing it again and again. There might be a version you'll like, but that will probably be an exception to the rule. Of course, this is part of the reason this arc is so hated. After one or two times through the time loop. Many feel like the point was gotten and this arc had overstayed its welcome.

But, in the defense of Endless Eight, the characters are also sick of this arc. Why else would you get cold opens where Kyon says something feels wrong, even before learning what was the issue? Why else would there be scenes where Kyon thinks it's strange that he remembers things that haven't happened yet for him? Why else would Kyon try to understand what Yuki's reasoning for letting the loop happen after learning about it? Why else would every episode after the first have an ending where Kyon clearly recognizes that he has to stop the loop predicated on a strong feeling similar to the ones before? What's more, whenever he fails, why would it matter to him to do his homework?

I think it's fair to say that one of the best moments in the arc for most people is in its final episode. You've seen this scene already seven times. Haruhi is heading out the door. After the first episode, Kyon is hit with a wave of anguish, similar to what he's felt throughout the past two weeks. And every time, he wants to stop her but can't think of the right thing to say or do to stop her. This last time, Kyon figures he ought to do something different than normal if he's going to stop the loop.

Now, I can imagine that the fact that the thing that was missing was a last-minute cram session could be annoying. I got to that moment the first time and felt as much. "Really? This is how the loop stops?"

However, this didn't come out of nowhere. The idea that homework was a looming certainly was brought up during every episode, unlike many smaller events. This was something you were supposed to have in the back of your head as the episode would play out. At the end of the first episode, it's a matter of how all the homework Kyon put off will get done. Starting from the second episode on, it becomes a matter of why Kyon doing homework matter at all. Either way, Kyon decides that he isn't able to completely address the issue in one night by himself.

The last episode deals with both issues with a single scene. He gets all the homework done by working with the rest of the SOS Brigade. And by hosting them, he stops them from looping any more times. He was right to assume that he couldn't handle all of the homework by himself. He was wrong to assume that he was the only one who would end up fixing the issue.

Of course, a great thing about this moment is that it also marks a great difference in the episodes in the arc. As previously mentioned, there were smaller changes to and differences in episodes which are all good and interesting. However, since the second episode revealed the time loop, there wasn't a major change to the formula of the episodes. By actually trying something different, Kyon effectively changes the pattern of the episodes in the arc.

This moment changed the way the rest of the arc is to be interpreted. A lot of people complaining about Endless Eight seem to talk about this arc as if it's just another supernatural set of events. A weird shift from what we'd expect to happen and not much else. While that isn't untrue, I don't think that's all that's happening or the correct way to view the arc.

With this change, the arc continues in the vein of mystery. If you've gotten to Endless Eight, you've definitely seen the Remote Island Syndrome episodes and Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya VI. Mystery isn't something that this show hasn't dealt with before. In fact, depending on how you see it, Disappearance was also one big mystery regarding the nature of the drastic world change.

In a mystery, there's one important rule regarding the solution to the problem. It should be something that makes sense within the world but wouldn't be easily guessed on by the audience. The breaking of the cycle fits that bill amazingly well. We know that Kyon has homework to finish, especially considering every episode ends with him unable or resigned not to complete it. Haruhi says each episode that she was quick to get through the work to enjoy the rest of break.

It took Kyon 15,532 times, but he sure cracked the mystery and gave us an amazing arc to boot.

To wrap this up, I took note of my favorite versions of scenes the last time I watched this show. Fun fact: another big thing that helped me get through this is my love for Season 2′s OP, sung by Aya Hirano, Haruhi’s Japanese voice actor who’d later go on to voice Lucy Heartfilia.

Intro: 4, 6 & 7 (especially 7)

"You're Late!": 2, 5 & 7

By The Pool: 2, 3, 7 & 8

Introduction: 4 & 7

List: 2,4 & 5

Yukatas: 1, 2, 6 & 7 (no yukata picking scene in 5)

Festival: 3 & 8

Fireworks: 1, 5 & 7

Homework?: 3

S.O.S.C.C.C. : 1 & 5

Part-Time Job: 3, 5 & 8

"Ah! Kyon!": 3, 4 & 5 (especially 5)

Explanation: 2, 3, 6 & 8

Stargazing: 2, 5 & 6

Batting Cage: 2 (no batting cage scene in 3 or 5)

Test of Courage

Other Stuff: 1 & 4-8 (obviously especially 8)

Homework...: 3, 5 & 8

[itsybitsybatsyspider]

Why Freddy Freeman Has Anxiety or ADHD: an analysis written by a person with both

Okay so...where to begin. First off, Id like to say how incredible Shazam is, it’s a fucking gorgeous and amazing movie and i could watch it all day, any day, and I sure as hell wish I can. 

But I would really like to talk about my boy Freddy Freeman. This beautiful bean boi cinnamon roll who is just an incredible character portrayed by an incredible actor in an an incredible movie. 

One thing that stood out to me in Shazam, was how jittery Freddy was, and how he was always moving in one way or another. It just kinda stuck with me and it was such a subtle thing that im not sure a lot of people picked up on it. One thing about anxiety and ADHD, is that no matter what’s going on, you have to stimulate yourself. Whether it be bouncing your leg, twitching your fingers, reading everything and anything in a room, flexing your muscles, swinging your legs, or anything that resembles that. But you have to stimulate. 

And another thing about anxiety and adhd, is that anyone with those two things tend to hyperfixate on something that they may find an interest in. It can be seen as an obsession from other people’s points of view, but really it’s hyperfixation. Which is what people with mental illnesses tend to do. But here, we’re focusing on adhd and anxiety. 

And another thing that these two things tend to do to a person, is not being able to read a room or know when to jump into a conversation or social cues. Like make a conversation awkward with a wrong word, or try to speak over a person and still not being hear so you tend to keep repeating yourself until someone notices you. 

All of these are symptoms and signs of anxiety and adhd. And Freddy has shown all of these signs. 

From the first moment we meet him, Freddy is instantly awkward in the conversation he has with Billy, and his next instinct is to try and find some common ground between the two of them. Freddy’s trying to fix it and make the air comfortable again for the both of them, hence talking about superheroes. 

And superheroes are Freddy’s hyperfixation. There’s no other way for me to see it really. Because once you become hyperfixated on something you kind of do become obsessed with it or you become an expert in that ‘field’. I, for example, was just obsessed with ancient Greece and I could probably give you a one hour lecture that could rival a college professor’s. 

And in the beginning of the movie we see Freddy continually talk about superheroes with Billy, because not only does it make it clear that he knows a lot about superheroes, but also because it’s the ONLY thing Freddy can think of to talk to Billy about. He doesn’t want to make the conversation awkward again, so he falls back onto his hyperfixation. Which leads to the cafeteria scene...

Also not to mention, the one speech that Freddy says, the one that EVERYONE loves! The Invisibility Speech. 

Now, from personal experiences, Ive also felt like I was invisible. Anxiety is often written off as being nervous and also, when a kid is undiagnosed with adhd they’re labled as a troublemaker or a troubling kid and are ignored. Add that with the fact that Freddy needs a cane to move around and it makes sense that he would feel that way. Plus, being a kid doesn’t help, when there are adults everywhere babying you and telling you what you do and don’t know. But im getting off track.

Point is, Freddy definitely has ADHD or anxiety or maybe even both! And thats one of the reasons why he’s my favorite character in the movie. 

[arabian-bloodstream]

Star Wars: Flashback Cut (and why)

I know I just posted this, BUT... I also posted it on a Star Wars subreddit I’m a member of and someone had an awesome suggestion in the comments and so I made a change that I think works so much better:

If you’re stuck at home and feel like giving Star Wars a binge-watch, here’s a potential new way to watch it. This is my preferred way of watching The Star Wars Saga. It keeps the vast majority of big surprises intact, while preserving the story integrity. It also links narratives and character arcs, and strengthens those narratives and arcs overall, in my opinion. I also feel that in doing so it makes the Prequel Trilogy and Rise of the Skywalker (some of the weaker films in the saga--again, my opinion) feel more seamless and part of the greater whole, thus making them stronger.

*Note if you prefer The Skywalker Saga you can leave Solo out.

STAR WARS: THE FLASHBACK CUT

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Episode IV: A New Hope

Episode I: The Phantom Menace

Episode II: Attack of the Clones

Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

Episode VII: The Force Awakens

Episode VII: The Last Jedi

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Episode IX: Rise of the Skywalker

AND WHY THIS WORKS (FOR ME) …

Rogue One

- R1 makes perfect sense having no scrawl because the A New Hope scrawl recaps the events of R1 whereas R1 started the story.

- Everything with the single reactor blast destroying the Death Star explains that “plot hole” in ANH now.

- Knowing all of these people and all they’ve done and their sacrifice adds so much resonance and power to the Rebellion and what they’re doing/fighting for before we hear Luke talk about them in ANH.

- Bail shows up and has focus and it’s like why? But then towards the end, his final scene explains that he has to get back to his people on Alderaan but he has someone he trusts with his life to help, leading to the Leia scene at the end. This not only sets up and leads to ANH, it   also means that when Alderaan in ANH is blown up, we actually know someone on that planet now. That gives it some more emotional heft too.

A New Hope

The Phantom Menace

- Doing this gives us a much broader history of the Jedi, we find out more about Obi-Wan's history and we feel his loss much greater, and we really mourn the fact that Luke never knew his father.

- In about a minute into the film, young Obi-Wan is introduced. He is the first character’s whose name is given and coming into this from ANH, we know who he is and it's clear that we're going to find out his story.

- Just a quick note, but I wanted to point out why I feel the Machete Cut (which completely excises TPM) doesn’t work. The entire Trade Federation story is not only the entire backbone  to how Palpatine rises to power, but it’s also why Amidala (and thus Anakin) has the relationship with him that she does. These are two huge reasons as to why the Machete Cut doesn’t work.

Another is the scene where young Anakin is being questioned by the Jedi Council. That scene right there, in a nutshell, tells us what will be the main turning point that starts Anakin on the Dark path. He’s asked about missing his mother. Young Anakin questions what that has to do  with anything and he’s told it has everything to do with it. He fears what will happen to her, and fear leads to anger and aggression and aggression leads to the Dark Side. And we all know that is *exactly* what happens.

Attack of the Clones

- Another reason that the Machete cut doesn't work is that it's several minutes into the film before we meet any character we know from the Original Trilogy (in the elevator scene with Obi-Wan and Anakin). Also, it’s a bit longer before Anakin himself is referenced by name. Amidala calls him "Ani" instead. So as a starting point into the Prequel Trilogy (and definitely as a Flashback between ANH/TESB and RotJ) the Machete Cut is very confusing. (And, again, this doesn't take into account the issues mentioned under TPM.)

- Now we see Luke's father, roughly the same age as he was, so similar as the boy we met in ANH and we also know that the girl we met in TPM is his mother. So, we've met both of his parents, we've seen them fall in love. This beautiful tragedy is going to play out soon enough, we just don’t know how. And at this point we (well, new viewers) don't know that Anakin becomes Darth Vader.

The Empire Strikes Back

-  The explanation of the Dark Side of the Force, how it works, how it brings people in, and how Obi-Wan lost Anakin… I know that is set up for the reveal of who Luke is and the redemption of Anakin in the third act of Return of the Jedi, but watching this before the Prequel Trilogy as if they are a Flashback set of films telling the story of what happened really strengthens that   narrative. And it does so beautifully.

-  It’s very, very obvious from TESB that a love triangle was VERY much in play between Luke, Leia and Han. The beginning sets up Han/Leia with a  bit of Luke thrown in with that kiss, and then the bulk of the film is  with Han and Leia. However the final bit has Luke and Leia with their connection, her kissing him (again) on the lips, and the two together while Lando and Chewie are off to find Han.

They could have easily set it up so that by the time the third film had rolled around, Leia and Luke were involved–and the “other one” was to be introduced fresh in the third film. (As was originally intended.) Now, I still think that if they had done that, it would have been Han and Leia in the end as the bulk of the love story we saw was Han and Leia, but they did still definitely set up the triangle (that was hinted at in the first film) to go full throttle in the third movie.

Going with The Flashback Cut actually helps eliminate any sense of that once we return to the trio because of the reveal of Luke and Leia being twins at the end of Revenge of the Sith before you go into Return of the Jedi.

- Aha! By having TPM and AotC before this one, we've only met Anakin, but we really know him now. So to find out that *he* becomes Darth Vader will truly, deeply have an impact like HOLY SHIT!

-  Having Luke asking Ben “Why?” a couple of times regarding the Anakin/Darth Vader lie at the end of TESB before going into Revenge of the Sith to find out how it happens makes so much sense. It sets it up that we are going to be told why.

Revenge of the Sith

- With TESB ending on Luke asking Ben “why?” we follow up immediately with the answer in full detail.

- Bringing baby Luke to Tatooine at the end of the film signifies that Anakin��s story is over and settles us right back in for the return to Luke’s story. It segues beautifully into the title of the next one: "Return of the Jedi”  in a couple of different ways. We’re done with the Sith story and now we’re going back to the Jedi. Also, Luke is the Jedi and we’re returning to his story: Return of the Jedi (aka Luke).

Return of the Jedi

-  Watching Yoda’s death scene really is enhanced by having just watched the Prequel Trilogy, especially the last third of RotS, before it. Him talking to Luke about not underestimating the power of the Dark Side as they are talking about Anakin/Vader adds so much depth and emotion for the viewer to that conversation.

-  Leia being revealed as his twin was just not this big OOH! moment; it just seemed kinda, throwaway? So being revealed in the PT is an OK loss  in my books for all we get in return.

- Finally, the biggie... we just watched Anakin's entire story play out from a young, innocent enslaved boy to becoming a slave to the Dark Side and Palpatine's power and control. And here we see him break free, once more the emotional pull between a parent and a child being the catalyst, but this time it's the reverse. Anakin is the parent, and it's love that is the motivator not hate.

The Force Awakens

The Last Jedi

-  There is the dice that we saw on the Falcon and that dice comes into play in the closing scenes with Luke and Leia, and then especially Kylo/Ben as he’s kneeling before the Falcon that  disappears in his hand.

It's OK that we don't see Solo before TLJ, because we don't need to know where the dice come from because they’re just symbols at this point–they were important to Han and that was their only needed key point in this film. Also, since TFA ended on a cliffhanger, having a flashback film between them would completely throw the balance off. TLJ *has* to come immediately after TFA for that reason.

Solo

- On the other hand, it is cool to find out why the dice we’re important to Han and we do in Solo.

- As well, the talk of the stuff that’s happening with the Empire/the Emperor in Solo sets up the horror of what could happen with the Emperor coming back in The Rise of Skywalker.

- Also, seeing Kylo/Ben’s father going from a good kid who loses his way, lost and trying to find himself just as Kylo was at the end of TLJ (and like Han, he didn't get the girl) works well.

- Plus, it also gives a breather that helps fill the stretch of time between TLJ and TRoS.

- Even though, the opening crawl is written differently than the other films, unlike the R1 story, Solo still at least has the crawl, and by not being the traditional crawl, it lets us know right away that  something different is going on. Then, boom! We meet a young Han in the first scene and we're on our way, but it was that untraditional crawl that already set us up to expect a swerve away from the continuation of TLJ.

* As I stated atop, if you just want to do The Skywalker Saga binge, Solo can easily be dropped from the watch-list.

The Rise of Skywalker

-  With the horrors that the Emperor and his Empire made of the galaxy fresh in our mind, viewers really will not want to see a return of the Emperor. (OK, not that they would anyway.)

-  We just saw a young Lando come out of the shadows deciding to fight the good fight… and here he is forty years later, doing it all over again.

- Just having watched Ben’s father’s idealistic self turned into a cynic by what the Empire/the Dark Side had created of the Galaxy visited upon his son–and turned him even worse–and then flipped on his side is a beautiful thing as Ben helps to keep that from happening all over again.

So there you go, my Star Wars: Flashback Cut (and why):

The Star Wars Saga - All released SW films: R1, 4, 1, 2, 5, 3, 6, 7, 8, Solo, 9

The Skywalker Saga - All SW films w/Skywalker characters: R1, 4, 1, 2, 5, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9

[bibhabmishra]

The Princess Bride

It feels downright inconceivableI to devote only one chapter in a book about lessons gleaned from eighties movies to The Princess Bride. Why, just off the top of my head, while standing on my head, I can name five life lessons that this movie teaches you that you don’t learn anywhere else:  1. “Never go against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line!” 2. “Love is the greatest thing—except for a nice mutton, lettuce, and toma- to sandwich when the mutton is nice and lean.” 3. “Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” 4. Eventually, you learn not to mind the kissing parts. 5. And most important, “As you wish” = “I love you.”  Such is the depth of wisdom in this film that in 2013, twenty-six years after its release, BuzzFeed devoted a listII to the lessons gleaned from it. A BuzzFeed list! Who needs the Oscars, Princess Bride, when you have that ultimate of mod- ern-day accolades? The Princess Bride is so adored that it’s probablyIII now a clichéd response on Internet dating websites: walks on the beach, an open fire, sunsets, and The Princess Bride. And yet, despite this, love for The Princess Bride is not seen as desperately hackneyed or cheesily safe. The Princess Bride is what you’d need a prospective love interest to cite as their favorite movie for the relationship to progress,IV it’s the one film that would make you rethink a lifelong friendship if you found out your best friend “just didn’t get it”—not that they would ever say that, because I honestly don’t know a single person of my generation who isn’t obsessed with this film.

And not just my generation: in As You Wish, a very enjoyable book about the making of The Princess Bride, Cary Elwes—who played Westley the farm boy, of course—recounts being told by both Pope John Paul II and Bill Clinton how much they loved the movie, proving that The Princess Bride appeals to saints and sinners alike.V Now, having said all that, I have a confession to make. I was not the big Princess Bride fan in my family when I was growing up. That title instead went to my sister, Nell. Our mother took us to see it at the movie theater when I must have been nine and Nell was seven, and even though the film was— incredibly—something of a commercial disappointment when it came out, the cinema was absolutely packed with kids like us. In my mind, everyone in the audience was utterly in thrall to this tale of Buttercup (Robin Wright), her true love Westley (Elwes), and their battles against Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon), Vizzini (Wallace Shawn), and Count Rugen (Christopher Guest), and their eventual assistance from the brave swordsman Inigo (Mandy Patinkin), the giant Fezzik (the professional wrestler known as André the Giant), and Miracle Max (Billy Crystal). Afterward, we stood in the cinema atrium as our mother bundled us back into our coats. “Did you girls like it?” she asked. Standing there in her corduroy dungarees and T-shirt, Nell looked in a state of semi-shock. “I LOVED IT. I WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN RIGHT NOW!” she practically shouted. Now, The Princess Bride is wonderful, but in order to understand how unex- pected this proclamation was, you have to know a little bit about my sister. Ever since she was old enough to throw a tantrum, my sister refused to wear dresses. She never played with dolls. She refused to let my mother brush her hair and had apparently no interest in her physical appearance. She did not like mushy stories—she didn’t even like reading books. In other words, she was the complete opposite to me. How much of that was a deliberate reaction against me, a younger sibling defining herself in opposition to the older one, and how much of it was simply an innate part of Nell was already a moot point when we went to see The Princess Bride: Nell’s parameters were so firmly set by then that her nickname in our family was “the tough customer.” She would consent to drink only one kind of fruit juice (apple), and buy only one brand (Red Cheek), and only if it came out of a can (never a carton), so there was absolutely no negotiating with her about mushy princesses. Lord only knows how my mother got her to see the movie in the first place. She must have hid- den the title from her. And yet, like the grandson in the film, Kevin Arnold,VI Nell found that, against all odds, she did enjoy the story, just as Kevin’s grandfather, Columbo,VII promises. I think Nell made my mother take her to see the film at the cinema at least three more times. As she wished. When it came out on VHS, we bought it immediately and it was understood that the videocassette was officially Nell’s, just as the videocassette for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was officially mine. When she found out that the film had originally been a book by William Goldman, who also wrote the screenplay, she asked my amazed mother to buy that, too. Nell read it over and over until the pages fell out, so she stuck them back in and then read the book again. The Princess Bride was the book that taught her to like books, as much as the movie taught her to relax some of her other rules. She developed a lifelong crush on Westley and, not long after, she started wearing dresses, too. The reasons why Nell loved this film so much exemplify, I think, why it is universally adored in a way that, say, the vaguely similar and contemporary The Never-Ending Story is not. It’s a fairy tale for those who love fairy tales, but it’s also a self-aware spoof for those who don’t; it’s an adventure film for boys and—for once—girls, too, but without pandering to or excluding either; it’s got a plot for kids, dialogue for adults, and jokes for everyone; it’s a genre film and a satire of a genre film; it’s a very funny movie in which everybody is playing it straight; it’s smart and sweet and smart about its sweetness, but also sweet about its smarts. Unlike, say, Shrek, there are no jokes here for parents that go over the kids’ heads: all generations enjoy it on exactly the same level. It’s a movie that lets people who don’t like certain things like those things, while at the same time not betraying the original fans. But most of all, The Princess Bride is about one thing in particular: “The Princess Bride is a story about love,” says Cary Elwes. “So much happens in the movie—giants, fencing, kidnapping. But it’s really a film about love.” This might seem like a statement of the obvious, but it isn’t, actually. Yes, the film is ostensibly about the great true love between Buttercup and Westley, and their most perfect kiss that leaves all the other kisses in the world behind. Both Elwes and Wright were so astonishingly beautiful when they made the film that, watching them, it’s hard to believe any love ever existed on this plan- et other than theirs. And they, rather pleasingly, were quite taken with one an- other. In his book, Elwes talks at length about how “smitten” he was with Wright, and she says precisely the same about him: “I was absolutely smitten with Cary. So obviously that helped with our onscreen chemistry. . . . It doesn’t matter how many years go by, I will love Cary forever.” Disappointingly, however, Elwes insists that they remained just friends. “Everyone asks if there was more!” he says, sounding a little exasperated, apparently unable to see what everyone else can: namely, that it seems against the laws of nature for two such beautiful people not to have had sex at least once. The last scene that Elwes shot was of him and Wright kissing on horse- back, creating “the most perfect kiss” of all time against a sunset. Surely that was romantic. “Well, not really. Robin and I were friends by that point so we kept laughing, and [the director] Rob [Reiner] was going, ‘Touch her face, touch her face!’ ” He laughs. But Westley and Buttercup’s love is only a part of the film, and only one of several love stories in the film. There is also, for a start, the great love between Inigo and Fezzik. The scene in which a drunken and broken Inigo looks up into Fezzik’s face in the Thieves Forest and Fezzik says a simple, smiling hello is much more moving than the moment when Buttercup realizes the Dread Pirate Roberts is actually Westley (not least because she’s just pushed him down a hill). Even if Inigo does become the Dread Pirate Roberts at the end of the film, as Westley suggests he should, it is as impossible to imagine him going off without Fezzik as it is to imagine Buttercup and Westley being severed. This love between the two men is at the root of one of the film’s subtlest lessons. Bad guys teach audiences how to think of opponents in life, and this is especially true of bad guys in books and films aimed at kids. Because stories for kids tend to be relatively simple, villains in these films are almost invariably evil, and that’s all there is to be said about them. Cruella de Vil, Snow White’s stepmother, the witch in Rapunzel: WHAT a bunch of moody bitches. This is also certainly true of movies for children in the 1980s, from the frankly terri- fying Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) in Who Framed Roger Rabbit to the enjoyably evil Ursula in The Little Mermaid. It’s a pleasingly basic approach, and one that validates most kids’ (and adults’) view of the world: “I am good and anyone who thwarts me is wicked and there is no point in trying to think about things from their point of view because they have no inner life of their own beyond pure evil and a desire to impede me.” The Princess Bride, however, does something different. It’s easy to forget this once you’ve seen the movie and fallen in love with the characters but Inigo and Fezzik are, ostensibly, bad guys. When we first meet them in the movie, they knock our heroine, Buttercup, unconscious and kidnap her for Vizzini. We are also told they will kill her. Our princess! In the eyes of children, you can’t get much more evil than that. They are hired guns in the re- venge business, which is not a job for a good guy in any fairy tale. But Gold- man flips it around. We quickly see Inigo and, in particular, Fezzik being ex- tremely sweet with each other, doing their little rhymes together and trying to protect one another from Vizzini’s ire. Their love for one another shows us there is more to these villains than villainy. Goldman then ups the ante even further by having Inigo describe to the Man in Black how he has devoted his life to avenging the death of his father, thus giving him the kind of emotional backstory kids can definitely understand, as well as adding another mission to the movie. Soon after beating (but not killing) Inigo, the Man in Black fights with Fezzik, who we already know has a similarly sad past (“unemployed—IN GREENLAND”). Plenty of villains were once good before crossing to the dark side: Darth Vader, many of Batman’s nemeses, Voldemort. The point in those stories is that the difference between true evil and true greatness comes down to one wrong decision, one wrong turn, and there is no going back from that. But The Princess Bride does something more subtle: it suggests that good people some- times end up doing bad things, but are still good, have stories of their own, and are capable of love. Inigo and Fezzik both killed people in the past for Vizzini, but they’re all still good people. This is quite a message for kids (and adults) to take in: not everything is clear-cut when it comes to good and bad, even in fairy tales. In the original novel, William Goldman goes into much greater detail about Fezzik and Inigo’s friendship, and this is one of the reasons why I—in all hon- esty—pre-fer the book to the film.VIII But the film alludes to it enough in order for audiences to understand the real bond between the men, and partly this happens through the script and partly through the actors, especially one actor in particular. At one point, Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered for the role of Fezzik, but, thank heavens, he was already too expensive by the time the film finally started shooting. Where Schwarzenegger is all jarring rectangles and jut- ting jaw, André the Giant was all soft circles and goofy smiles. Where Schwarzenegger palpably punished himself to a superhuman extent to get the body he clearly wanted so badly, the man born André René Roussimoff suf- fered from gigantism due to acromegaly and had no choice about his size, just as Fezzik didn’t, much to the latter’s misery (“It’s not my fault being the big- gest and the strongest—I don’t even exercise”). It would be a patronizing cliché to say André was born to play Fezzik, but he was certainly more right for the role than Schwarzenegger. By the time he made The Princess Bride, André was seven feet, four inches and weighed more than 540 pounds. Easily the sweetest stories in Cary Elwes’s book come from the cast and crew’s memories of the wrestler, who died in 1993 at the age of forty-six, and this is not mere sentimentality. Quite a few of The Princess Bride’s cast have, sadly, since died, including Mel Smith, Peter Cook, and Peter Falk, but none of them prompts the same kind of fondness as that felt for André. “It’s safe to say that he was easily the most popular person on the movie,” Elwes writes. “Everyone just loved him.” Partly this is due to the extraordinary nature of the man. Robin Wright re- calls going out to a dinner with him where he ate “four or five entrees, three or four appetizers, a couple of baskets of bread, and then he’s like, I’m ready for seconds. And then desserts. I think he went through a case of wine and he wasn’t even tipsy.” But it was André’s innately gentle nature that made him so beloved. His “compassion and protective nature,” Elwes writes, helped Wallace Shawn over- come his almost paralyzing fear of heights when they were filming the climb up the Cliffs of Insanity. When Robin Wright felt chilly when filming outdoors, André would place one of his huge hands on top of Wright’s head. “She said it was like having a giant hot water bottle up there. It certainly did the trick; he didn’t even mess up her hair that much!” Elwes writes. When he died, William Goldman wrote his obituary in New York magazine. The last lines were as fol- lows: “André once said to Billy Crystal, ‘We do not live long, the big and the small.’ Alas.” Next, on a smaller level, is the love between Miracle Max (Crystal) and his aged wife, Valerie (Carol Kane). Initially they seem simply like a squabbling old couple, playing purely for broad comedy (and their scene is the broadest comedic one in the film). But it soon becomes clear that Valerie is needling Max only because she wants him to get back his confidence in his work after Prince Humperdinck destroyed it by sacking them, and her little cheer when her husband agrees to make a miracle for Inigo is really very touching. By the end of their scene, they’re working together, finishing one another’s sentences, holding each other arm in arm, and whispering little asides to one another. As a portrait of elderly marriage goes, this one is a pretty lovely one. Finally, there’s the great love story that frames the whole movie: the one be- tween the grandson/Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage) and the grandfather/Columbo (Peter Falk). In the beginning of the movie, the grandson is irritated by his cheek-pinching grandfather and can hardly believe that he has to stop playing his adorably primitive-looking computer baseball game to listen to grandfather read a book.IX As the film progresses, the relationship between the grandson and grandfather progresses almost like a traditional love story: the grandson slowly gets more interested, clutching his covers anxiously when Buttercup is almost eaten by the Shrieking Eels; then he gets angry, banging his bed with his fist when it seems like Westley has been killed; and finally, he comes around entirely and tells his grandfather to come back the next day to read the book again. “As you wish.” His grandfather smiles, and the film ends. “That wasn’t actu- ally in the script,” Elwes says. “They came up with him saying that on, I think, the last day, and it really captures the love between the grandfather and grand- son. You can also see the tenderness between Fred Savage and Peter Falk.”

[mst3kproject]

1204: The Day Time Ended

Remember Charles Band and David Allen, who respectively directed and did the stop motion for Laserblast!?  Remember I mentioned they made more movies together?  Here’s one.  I actually had about a third of an Episode that Never Was written up for The Day Time Ended when the trailer came out, and I debated what to do with that. I could have used it on the 23rd, like I posted the review of Reptilicus just before Season 11 debuted, but I decided it was more in the spirit of Season 12 to do the episodes in order one after the other.

A family, consisting of Mom, Dad, daughter Jenny, teenage Uncle Steve, Grandma, and Grandpa, have just moved into their new solar-powered ultra-modern-for-the-70’s house in the middle of the desert.  There’s nothing like living a hundred miles from anywhere, alone under the skies without road noise or partying neighbours… until, of course, you’re besieged by aliens in the middle of the night.  I will bet you cash money there are people who claim this actually happened to them, except they would probably say they just got probed and dropped back into bed, instead of their whole house being transported to another planet.  What are the family going to do?  Is there anything they can do, or will they be killed by the monsters and aliens lurking outside, or even by the space/time warp itself?

There are quite a few honestly cool things in The Day Time Ended.  The tiny aliens that run around the house are cute, although not as charming or communicative as the ones from Laserblast!  The two monsters who fight outside the barn at one point are similarly well-animated and have a bit of personality of their own.  They look like something you might see in the original Star Wars trilogy.  Most of the UFOs are merely lights zipping around in the sky but the one that invades the house is fun, with several moving parts and an overall design that looks, as Jonah and the bots observed, something like a Betamax Roomba.  The final matte painting of the alien city is nothing special but the one that represents a sort of interstellar junkyard is detailed and blends well with the action.

The acting isn’t great, but it’s not terrible – most of these people were in something approximating a real movie once, and they do their best with what they’re given.  The innate hostility of the desert landscapes underscore the isolation and danger the family are in.  Aesthetically, The Day Time Ended works well and a lot of very good decisions were made.

It’s still a terrible movie, though.  I bet you’re wondering what MST3K cut from this film to make it fit the time slot.  I bet you’re thinking there must have been a scene like the one in Lords of the Deep where Chadwick tells McDowell about the aliens, or like the one at the end of Time of the Apes where EUCOM explains everything.  Something in which somebody speaks to Mom, Dad, and Jenny and tells them exactly what the fuck is going on and why they don’t need to be afraid of it.  Well, in the long and by now firm tradition of stuff MST3K didn’t cut… there isn’t.  Never once do we have even the slightest idea of why all this is happening.

Being as The Gauntlet is the first time I’ve watched an entire sequence of the movies in a row before I’d seen the episodes, I’m beginning to notice patterns, and one rather prominent one is how little I miss the stuff that didn’t make the cut.  It never interrupts the flow of the story.  It’s only afterwards that I find myself thinking “hey, wasn’t there a bit in the car where they talk about Eric’s teddy having new microchips or something?”  And there was, but it didn’t matter and it certainly wouldn’t have added anything to the experience if they kept it.  The only time MST3K ever seems to have cut a scene that would have been worth keeping was the bit where Vadinho tells Tony he’s the worst Pumaman ever.

Unfortunately, this leaves The Day Time Ended without anything that might remotely be considered a plot. This story has a beginning, in which strange events plague the ranch, and an end, in which they reach a place of safety, but there’s no middle to speak of.  The weird stuff going on escalates from lights to monsters to finally the entire house drifting through time and space, but it never even comes close to making sense.  Nobody in the family is ever able to come to any conclusions about these events or to really try to take any action, and none of the characters have an opportunity to grow.  We don’t even know if the little aliens caused the warp (perhaps to rescue the family from something even worse) or if they’re merely reacting to it.  I guess it’s supposed to have been triggered by the ‘trinary supernova’ they mentioned on the radio, but by halfway through the movie I’d forgotten all about that.

It’s not entirely true that none of the characters know what’s going on.  None of the characters we follow do.  We stay at the house with Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Steve while Mom, Dad, and Jenny are all consumed by the vortex, and later we meet up again with the Mom who tells everybody else that there was nothing to fear.  Within the movie this is just frustrating, because she never actually explains, but it is a little interesting when we’ve watched it, as I did, immediately on the tail of Lords of the Deep.  In that movie, we were following Claire McDowell as she learned the truth about the glitter goo.  In The Day Time Ended, we are in the shoes of her colleagues, dealing with a nightmare and having only her gut feeling to tell them there’s no danger.

This could have been kind of a cool take on the ‘chosen messenger of the aliens’ trope, if only it had been used for that.  Jenny does, a couple of times, talk about the little aliens being her friends and seems quite unworried by the goings-on, but she’s five, and the adults have no reason to actually engage her in conversation about this.  The Mom could have filled this messenger role, but she communicates with the creatures too late to affect the story. She’s merely a sort of deus ex machina by proxy, swooping back in at the end to reassure us that everything’s okay.

Is this movie trying to tell us anything?  Possibly… Laserblast was supposed to be about how you can only push somebody so far before they start pushing back.  That was fairly obvious in the narrative, but I’m not as sure about The Day Time Ended.  I think it might be about how nobody can truly be self-sufficient.  The family in the movie believes they have everything they need to cut themselves off from the rest of humanity, but this only leaves them vulnerable when the universe throws them a curve.

The introduction makes a big deal out of the house’s self-sufficiency.  They have their own water supply, and with solar power they have their own electricity. They are therefore able to live far away from the noise, crowding, and lights of a city with minimal inconvenience to themselves, and they rejoice in this isolation.  Then the vortex, wherever it came from, moves in, and their isolation becomes their worst enemy – they are unable to call for help, and help, in the form of the Dad, is unable to get to them.  It seems like all will be lost until their unseen benefactors bring them all back together and guide them to exactly what they sought to abandon: a city.

Lucky them. The rest of us are stuck here on Earth while the ants enter Phase IV.

The thing that really makes me want to see dependence on society as an intentional motif is the bit where the Dad needs gas for his car and the man at the gas station goes out of his way to make sure he obtains it, despite the considerable obstacles presented by the weather and the power outage. He gets no reward for this help, he does it simply because it’s the right thing to do, and without his assistance the Dad would probably have never seen his family again.  Our fellow human beings are not enemies we need to escape from – they are allies who can save us when we are in need.

And yet I’m still not sure.  The house’s self-sufficiency may just be an explanation for why they can still turn the lights on when they’re trapped in the vortex.  The isolation may just be to avoid having to pay for a bigger cast or more sets.  The issue of where they get their food from is never addressed, and remains as their most obvious connection to the outside world. The family doesn’t really seem to be rejecting society, they just want to live a little closer to nature – the Dad even still has a perfectly normal office job.  When danger surrounds them, they don’t try hard enough to leave or to call for help, or even to think about how this situation would resolve differently in a city.

The total lack of plot and character development, with only the ghost of a possible theme, leaves us with a movie in which it feels like nothing happens even thought a lot of stuff actually does, because none of what happens is meaningful.  The strange events at the ranch have nothing to tie them together into a proper story, and as a result I find I can’t really remember them or what order they happened in.  The only part of the film in which it feels like something was accomplished was the father’s struggle to get home, which started with a goal and a reason for the character to pursue it, and ended in success.  The rest is just a muddle.  It’s a visually impressive muddle at times, but a muddle nonetheless.

In summary, I think Leonard Maltin would have to give this one only two stars.

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Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure

I’m actually approaching these next two reviews with a sense of trepidation.  While I remember loving the Ewok movies as a kid, it’s been years since I last saw them.  I think the last time I watched them prior to this moment was in the early 90s when they’d air on television.  So I have absolutely no idea how they’re going to hold up now, or how they’ll come across to my adult brain.  Before I begin, I am aware that the Wiki page states this movie is supposed to take place before Return of the Jedi.  But something happens in the movie that makes me feel as if it makes more sense for the events in this film to have occurred after Return of the Jedi rather than before.  I’ll explain what I mean when we get to the scene in question.

The movie begins with a prologue of sorts, with a mother and father searching for their missing children.  Throughout the movie, it becomes apparent that this family of four, the Towani family, were traveling somewhere in their star cruiser, but something went wrong and they crash landed on the moon of Endor. Because they didn’t know where they were, they could hardly send a transmission for help, so they were pretty much stuck there until they could get the ship repaired.  But on the night the movie opens, the two children, 14-year-old Mace and 5-year-old Cindel, have apparently wandered off, despite their parents’ instructions to stay near the star cruiser.  While the parents, Catarine and Jeremitt, are out looking for them, they are ambushed by a giant troll-like being called the Gorax.  The Gorax ends up capturing Catarine and Jeremitt for reasons that are not made clear.  Did the Gorax plan on eating them?  Did he just want to keep them as human pets?  It’s never really addressed.

But anyway, the movie then cuts to the star players of the movie- the Ewoks.  Specifically Wicket and his family, which consists of his father, Deej, his mother, Shoudu, his two older brothers, Weechee and Widdle, and his baby sister, Winda.   (Incidentally, you might recognize Widdle as one of the two Ewoks who hijacked the Walker with Chewbacca during the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi.)  On this day, Weechee and Widdle have also gone missing.  So Deej decides to go off looking for them, utilizing a hang glider to search the forest.

So, remember how one of the biggest issues with The Star Wars Holiday Special (not the only issue, but one of the biggest) was the fact that they were mostly focusing on a family of Wookiees and didn’t give us any subtitles, expecting us to just figure out what was happening on our own?  Well, in this TV movie, they did learn their lesson.  Sort of.  While they don’t give us subtitles in this one, either, we did get a narrator. Yeah, they got Burl Ives, who you might remember from the Rankin Bass version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (among other things), to narrate this movie. Unfortunately, this really doesn’t work to the movie’s advantage.  There are times when it feels as if the Narrator is talking down to the audience. And at first, the use of a narrator makes the movie seem more like a nature documentary on Ewoks rather than a plot-driven movie.

Deej eventually locates his wayward sons. They were apparently climbing a rocky cliff but got stuck halfway up.  After Deej helps them get out of their predicament, the three Ewoks start making their way back to their village.  But first, they have to make a detour.  While he was gliding over the forest on his hang glider, Deej saw something glittering in the sunlight through the forest canopy, so he decides to take his sons with him to investigate what it was.  And that’s how they discover the crashed star cruiser.  They step inside to investigate their discovery, and thus end up finding Cindel hiding behind a panel.  Not sure if we’re supposed to conclude she made it back to the star cruiser after her parents ran into the Gorax or if she’d been there all along and the parents just didn’t look hard enough.  Either way, Cindel, being 5-years-old, instantly decides the Ewoks are friends based on how cute they were.  Her brother, Mace, on the other hand, is less trusting of the little teddy bear Aliens.  Instead, he charges in and aims his blaster at them, stating that they might be the beings who took their parents.  I’m guessing it’s been a few days since the events of the movie prologue. Eventually, the Ewoks take the two kids back with them to their village.  Though they take Mace back by tying him up and carrying him.  Rather similar to how they initially treated Han, Luke, Chewbacca and R2 in Return of the Jedi.  The Ewoks must really not like human males.  That, or they just don’t like the hostile ones.

Now, I gotta pause to talk about the two kids. There’s no sense in denying that neither of these two give a good performance, even by child actor standards. In fact, with the kid who plays Cindel, Aubree Miller, this was her first acting role.  And believe me, it shows.  But I can forgive her for that because, again, she’s only 5-years-old. Mace, on the other hand?  I don’t think he’s even trying sometimes.  There are some points in his performance when he seems to think all you need to do to convey emotion is to shout your lines. Also, I sometimes get the feeling that the movie was trying to make Mace a discount Luke Skywalker.  Sure, he shows no indication of being Force Sensitive, but his costume throughout the movie bears a strong resemblance to Luke’s X-Wing pilot outfit.  Even his haircut seems similar to Luke’s.

When they get back to the Ewok Village, it soon becomes apparent that Cindel is sick with a fever.  Fortunately, Deej and his wife, Shoudu, are able to give Cindel some medicine that helps her, but when Cindel is still ill in the morning, they have to go out and gather more medicine for her.  To get the key ingredient for the medicine, they have to travel to this tree in the middle of the forest.  Because this specific tree emits a special kind of fluid that the Ewoks have used to treat their ailments for eons.  (I wonder if this is the Tree of Life they mentioned in The Star Wars Holiday Special.)

It’s at this point where we first start to see how much of a dingbat Mace is.  While the Ewoks are harvesting the tree’s curative sap for Cindel’s medicine, Mace spots a large hole in a nearby hollow tree.  And there appears to be some kind of cute little fuzzy critter inside this hole. For some reason, Mace decides to go over and stick his hand into the hole in order to get this critter.  Yes, I know Mace is supposed to be 14 in this movie, but at the same time, he’s presumably grown up in the Star Wars universe. You’d think he’d know better than to go about touching random fauna like this.  The moment he reaches inside, a larger creature ends up biting down, latching onto his hand.  Apparently this creature is a predatory animal called a Temptor.  The fuzzy creature Mace saw was part of the creature’s tongue.  I guess this creature is a bit like an alligator snapping turtle, in the sense that it lures prey to come closer with their tongue.   So the Ewoks have to drop what they’re doing to come to his rescue.

Despite Mace’s stupidity, the Ewoks are able to gather up enough tree fluid to manufacture more medicine for Cindel. The following morning, the medicine seems to have done the trick, as Cindel is feeling all better.  And right away, she develops an instant friendship with Wicket, possibly because they’re supposedly around the same age.

Also, it’s here that I noticed something a bit off-putting about the movie.  This is supposed to take place in the Star Wars universe, in a galaxy far, far away.   So can someone please explain to me how the Ewoks share their home with animals commonly seen on Earth?  I’m not kidding, here.  By this point in the movie, we’ve seen the Ewoks have ponies, goats, rabbits and ferrets.  Is this movie is suggesting that those particular species are actually native to the moon of Endor and somehow ended up on Earth as an invasive species?  I mean, the events of the Star Wars films are supposed to have happened a long, long time ago.  So maybe, by the time then became now, the native people of the Star Wars universe somehow found their way here to the Milky Way and ended up colonizing Earth, bringing with them an assortment of critters that we now associate with our planet.  I guess that’s as good of an explanation as any.

Anyway, Cindel starts trying to communicate with Wicket about how they ended up on the moon of Endor, explaining how their star cruiser crashed.  Out of nowhere, Wicket starts repeating Cindel’s statements in comprehensible English. Or Basic, to use the Star Wars terminology.  Yep, this movie shows Wicket starting to develop the ability to speak Basic.  By the time the sequel, The Battle for Endor, comes along, he is able to speak Basic fluently.  And that is why I take issue with this movie supposedly taking place before Return of the Jedi and therefore think it makes more sense to set this movie after the Original Trilogy ends.  Because if this did take place before Episode 6, then there is no reason why Wicket wouldn’t have been able to actually engage in a conversation with Leia.  Or why the other Ewoks seemed to be so hostile to Luke and Han upon seeing them.  If they’d already met Mace and Cindel by that point, then they must have noticed the fact that Han, Luke and Leia were from the same species.

Because of her newfound friendship with Wicket, Cindel suggests to Mace that the Ewoks could help them find their parents. Mace, however, isn’t convinced, dismissing the Ewoks as animals.  Which is weird, because he must have realized by this point that the Ewoks are sentient beings.  And, being from the Star Wars universe, he should be at least somewhat familiar with non-humanoid Aliens.  Regardless, Mace decides to take Cindel and sneak away in the middle of the night so they could continue the search for their parents.  Which was really stupid on his part.  Once again, they’re on a planetary moon they’re not familiar with and therefore don’t know what nocturnal fauna there might be.  But that’s what Mace decides to do.

After traveling for a bit, Cindel insists that they’re lost and she can’t walk any further, so Mace sets up camp, building a campfire to keep warm.  As they’re sitting around, they start to discuss their parents, and whether or not they’re dead.  Mace then starts to confide in Cindel how he wishes he’d been a better son.  I guess the implication is that Mace sometimes misbehaved.  And it’s possible that this is basically him saying that he shouldn’t have wandered off the night Jeremitt and Catarine went missing.

At that moment, this wolf-boar creature suddenly appears and starts to chase the two kids, forcing them to take refuge inside a hollow tree for the night.   When morning comes, we see the Ewok family had managed to track them down, as they are trying to fight off the wolf-boar.   And there’s no denying the stop-motion effect they used with the wolf-boar did not stand up against the test of time, as it looks really dated.  Nowhere near as good as the Rancor.  Yes, I know this movie was made on a considerably smaller budget, but even so.  Eventually, the wolf-boar is brought down by a well-aimed poison dart from Wicket. And, when they get a close look at the dead wolf-boar, they see he’s wearing a collar. Meaning he belonged to someone.  But what really catches Mace and Cindel’s attention is the fact that their father’s Life Monitor is stuck to the collar.  Life Monitors, from what I gather, are a type of bracelet that you can wear, which is used by groups of people to keep track on the life status of everyone else wearing the bracelet.  Since Jeremitt’s Life Monitor states he’s alive, the children have a renewed hope that they’ll find their mother and father.  

But before they can hope to reunite with their parents, Mace and Cindel have to figure out where the wolf-boar came from. Because knowing that would most likely help determine where the parents are.  To help Mace and Cindel, the Ewok family take them to Logray, the village shaman, in the hopes that he could help determine the parents’ location. Thankfully, Logray can help them. Because he has some kind of magical spinning top thing that can enable you to observe things in other locations. That’s right, magic now exists in the Star Wars universe.  Even though it’s never mentioned at any other point in the Star Wars media.  Though I guess it’s possible what the Ewoks call magic is actually the Force.  Does this mean Ewoks can be Force Sensitive, too?  Anyway, Logrey’s magic top helps them learn that the missing parents are prisoners of the Gorax.  Upon seeing the danger her parents are in, Cindel begs Deej to help them rescue them. After some hesitation, on account of the fact that the Gorax lives in a Forbidden Fortress that no Ewok has ever returned from, Deej ultimately decides to accompany Mace and Cindel on their quest to rescue their parents.  And his three sons, Weechee, Widdle and Wicket also volunteer to go along.  

Here, we do get a rather nicely acted scene, considering the actors are wearing Ewok costumes.  During the night, we see Shodu mournfully looking around at her family while everyone is sleeping.  It is clear that she is fearful about the safety of her family and is terrified that she might not see her husband or sons again.  After all, the Gorax is suppoed to be very dangerous.  Eventually, Deej wakes up to comfort her, even though he is probably equally as scared.  I don’t know why, but there’s just something about this scene that I really appreciated.

When morning comes, we finally get to the whole caravan thing this movie’s title promised us, as Deej, Weechee, Widdle, Wicket, Mace and Cindel prepare to leave on their journey to the Gorax’s lair in order to rescue Mace and Cindel’s parents.  And it only took four days in the show’s timeline for the actual plot to begin.  Before they leave, Logrey performs some sacred Ewok ritual, in which each of the travelers are given a special totem.  According to the Narrator, these totems were all once owned by the Legendary Ewok Warriors.  (Shame we couldn’t get more clarification on who these Legendary Warriors were.)  The first three totems are all basically feathered headdresses, with each one supposedly representing a different attribute. Deej gets the White Wings of Hope, Weechee, the oldest son, gets the Red Wings of Courage and Widdle gets the Blue Wings of Strength.  The other totems have a bit more variety, however.  For instance, Wicket is presented with a magical walking stick and Cindel receives a candle that’s called the Candle of Pure Light.  As for Mace, his totem is a rock.  But because Mace is a twat, he dismisses the rock as useless and purposely drops it as they leave Logrey’s hut.  While I understand why he might not see the significance of a rock on this journey, it’s not as if Cindel’s candle or Wicket’s walking stick had an obvious significance at this point.  And at least a rock is somewhat useful.  What did Deej and the two oldest Ewok sons get?  Feathered headdresses.  While I’m sure they are ceremonially significant to the Ewok culture, they’re not going to be of much use in a fight with the Gorax.  Anyway, the last two totems in the ceremony that Logrey performs are an ivory tooth and a crystal.  Deej brings these last two totems with them in order to present them to two other Ewoks, in the hopes that they will join them on their quest.  With the totems all gathered up, they all set off. Though, since Cindel and Wicket are the youngest ones there, they are allowed to ride in a special tent-like compartment strapped to a horse’s back.

The first Ewok the group end up seeking out is Chukha-Trok, who I gather is a renowned Ewok warrior who works as a woodcutter, considering how the movie introduces him.  He ends up felling a tree that just narrowly misses Cindel.  Which immediately puts Chukha-Trok on Mace’s bad side.  So Mace isn’t pleased when Deej offers Chujha-Trok the Ivory Tooth, offering the Ewok woodcutter a place in their company.  At first, however, Chukha-Trok doesn’t seem willing to go, until Mace starts insinuating that he’s not a real warrior.  Which obviously is a huge insult to Chukha-Trok’s pride.  This leads to Mace challenging Chukha-Trok to an ax-throwing contest.  A contest that Chukha-Trok quickly wins.  As a result, Mace begins to respect Chukha-Trok, and he asks him to help them find their parents. This time, Chukha-Trok decides to join the caravan. I do have to give Mace a bit of credit here, to be honest.  While his transition from being dismissive of Chukha-Trok to respecting him as a brave warrior might have occurred a bit too quickly, this was obviously the movie’s attempt at giving him some character development.

Next, they visit Kaink, an Ewok Priestess and the only female apart from Cindel.  Her totem is, of course, the Crystal.  Kaink agrees to join, on one condition- the children have to pass some kind of magical test.  But this test is not exactly clear.  Kaink places the Crystal totem in Mace’s hands and it transforms into a lizard, which he drops in shock.  Then, when Cindel picks the lizard up, it transforms into a mouse.  Apparently, this is enough to convince Kaink to join the rescue mission.  But it’s not clear what this magic test was.  The crystal becomes a lizard and then the lizard turns into a mouse?  So what?  What was this supposed to convey?  The all-knowing Narrator is completely silent on the matter, offering no explanation.  So if anyone from the die-hard Star Wars fan base can offer any insight on what this was, I would love to hear it.

Of course, that’s not the only time the Narrator fails to explain things.  At some point, the group stops to rest and Mace notices a nearby lake.  For some reason, the sight of his reflection in the water makes him curious and he tries to touch the lake.  The moment his finger makes contact with the surface of the lake, he’s instantly trapped beneath the water.  When Cindel sees her brother is in trouble, she calls the other Ewoks to help. They try to extend a rope or a tree branch for Mace to grab so they could pull him out, but the rope and branch are also zapped into the lake the instant they touch the water.  But Wicket has the magic Walking Stick he got from Logrey. Only that is able to successfully penetrate the surface of the water, enabling them to successfully pull Mace out. Like with the magic test Kaink performed, we’re not given any clarification on what this lake was, or why it trapped anyone and anything that came in contact with the surface of the lake beneath the water.  It’s just something the movie included to add some tension.  And to give Wicket’s Walking Stick some significance.

Speaking of scenes that only exist to provide tension, we then get a scene when the Ewoks are getting ready to continue on. Wicket is swinging around on a tree branch, but when he’s told the others are about to leave, he abruptly lets go, which ends up scaring the horse carrying Cindel, prompting the horse to bolt.   So Chukha-Trok has to chase after the runaway horse and keep Cindel from getting hurt.  Once that crisis is averted, they can continue on their way.

When night falls, the Ewoks end up setting up camp. Out of nowhere, there are a bunch of fairy like creatures flitting around.  These creatures are apparently called Wisties, and I guess they were featured in the animated TV show, Ewoks, at some point, but since I only remember watching one episode of that show, I couldn’t say for certain.   The Wisties end up catching the attention of Mace and the other Ewoks.  Well, all except for Widdle, who steps outside his tent, looks around for a second and then decides to go back to bed.  Needless to say, it’s at this point that I found myself really liking Widdle.  Anyway, when Cindel comes out of her tent to see what’s going on, the Wisties start to flit around the Candle of Pure Light, which she just happened to be carrying at the time.  Noticing their interest in the candle, Cindel places it on the ground, and the Wisties, I guess, get absorbed into the candle and merge into Izrina, the Queen of the Wisties.  Once again, we get no explanation as to what just happened, but Queen Izrina ends up joining Mace, Cindel and the Ewoks on their quest.

At long last, after crossing the Desert of Salma (because there’s now a desert on this forest moon), they reach the mountains where the Gorax is supposed to live.  But the entrance is hidden from view.  That’s when Kaink gestures to Mace, pantomiming him to use the rock he got from Logray.  Mace sheepishly admits he threw the rock away, much to Chukha-Trok’s exasperation. Fortunately, Wicket then reveals he’d picked up the rock after Mace dropped it.  When Mace thankfully takes his rock back, he finds out that it’s actually hollow and that something is inside the rock.  He throws it to the ground, revealing this arrowhead.  The arrowhead, as if pulled by a magnet, slides across the ground and slips under a particular stone on the base of the mountain. Which indicates that this is where the entrance is.  Mace ends up using his blaster to blow up the stone blocking the entrance.  Okay, who gave this 14-year-old kid a blaster so powerful, it can blow up a stone?  And if they had blasters with this much capability, why didn’t they ever utilize it during the Original Trilogy?

So they enter the cave, and it’s decided that Widdle, Wicket and Cindel should hang back, on account of them being the youngest members of the caravan.  Widdle in particular isn’t happy about being left behind, but he still abides by the group’s decision.  As such, Deej, Weechee, Chukha-Trok, Kaink and Mace continue on while Widdle and Wicket keep Cindel company.

Deej’s group soon come to this seemingly bottomless chasm. Taking note of what is so obviously a spider web stretching across the crevasse, Mace decides to use the web as a bridge, and they start to cross. But as they neglected to observe, where there’s a spider web, there’s most likely a spider.  Sure enough, a spider attacks them.  Mace strikes back at the spider with a knife, and the spider falls into the abyss.  But as Mace and the Ewoks are crossing the divide on the spider web, another spider appears and stars to attack  Deej.  This time, it’s Kaink who comes to the rescue, as she uses her Crystal totem to hypnotize the spider, resulting in that one to fall into the pit as well.  Meanwhile, we see a third spider has found his way to where Cindel, Wicket and Widdle were waiting.  This third spider is quickly dealt with thanks to Wicket and Widdle, though.

Eventually, Mace and the Ewoks find the lair of the Gorax, where they see the parents trapped in a cage suspended from the ceiling. But the Gorax is also there, currently eating something.  Weechee, partially inadvertently, ends up luring the Gorax out of his lair, allowing the others the chance to free Catarine and Jeremitt.   The rescue attempt involves using the Gorax’s ax as a catapult and providing the parents a rope to climb down on.  But while the rescue is still being carried out, the Gorax, having lost interest in Weechee, returns.  So everyone has to make a run for it.  But Chukha-Trok stays behind to face the Gorax, repeatedly striking at the Gorax’s leg with his ax, despite Mace’s attempts at urging him away.  

At that moment, Queen Izrina remembers she’s involved in the movie.  She’s been hanging out in Mace’s pocket this whole time.  At Mace’s request, she flies at the Gorax and disorients the giant by darting around his head.  As the Gorax is flaying around, he ends up hitting the sides of his lair, causing a bunch of rocks to fall.  Chukha-Trok ends up getting hit by the falling rocks, much to Mace’s shock and horror. Mace runs out to try and help the fallen Ewok, but Chukha-Trok was too gravely injured by the falling rocks and ends up dying in Mace’s arms.  Before he dies, Chukha-Trok ends up giving his ax to Mace, which was probably meant to indicate that the two have come full-circle in their relationship and now consider each other as friends.   Mace momentarily grieves his friend’s death, but, due in part to the sub-par acting, he gets over it relatively quickly, and he hurries off to rejoin the others.

Meanwhile, the Gorax is trying to go after the other Ewoks, but Catarine and Jeremitt and the Ewoks team up to create a makeshift trip-wire that they use against the Gorax.  This almost results in the Gorax to fall into the bottomless pit, but he lands just short of the edge, so he doesn’t fall.  It takes the combined efforts of Kaink, who uses her Crystal totem to drop a stalactite onto the Gorax’s head, and Catarine, wielding Mace’s blaster, before the Gorax falls into the crevice to his apparent death.

At this point, the movie seems to be wrapping up. Mace, rejoining the others at this moment, embraces his parents before showing Deej Chukha-Trok’s ax, explaining the warrior’s sacrifice.  And then, Cindel appears on the other side of the chasm with Wicket and Widdle.  And she’s overjoyed to see her parents safe, and vice versa.  However, it turns out the Gorax still has a few hit points left, as he reappears at this point, trying to climb back out of the pit, right in front of Cindel.  When the Gorax tries to grab Cindel, Mace jumps into action and throws Chukha-Trok’s ax at the Gorax.  The ax lands home in the Gorax’s back, forcing him to fall into the abyss once again.  This time, the Gorax is defeated for real.  So Cindel is safe, and the Towani family can be properly reunited at last.

The Towani family then travels back the Ewok village with the Ewoks.  After Mace bids goodbye to Queen Izrina, thanking her for her help, he rejoins the celebration going on.  Because it’s not just the Towani family that’s been safely reunited, but the Ewok family as well.  And because of the friendship between the two families, I guess, Deej gives the White Wings of Hope to Cindel.  The movie ends with the Narrator delivering one of the cheesiest closing lines ever. About how the movie’s protagonists all learned what they already knew- that courage, loyalty and love were the strongest forces in the universe.

So that was the first Ewok movie.  While I can see why I liked it as a kid, now that I’m an adult, I realize that a lot of this movie didn’t make a lot of sense. Obviously, Kid Me was a lot more accepting of stuff.  Not only that, it dawned on me how this movie might actually be seen as boring.  For the most part, it’s just these two kids interacting and walking around with some Ewoks.  In fact, I think it’s safe to say that if you threw Lord of the Rings and Care Bears into a blender and mixed them together, this is pretty much what you’d end up with.  But at the same time, this movie is clearly meant for kids.  And it must have kept enough kids entertained back in the 80s, because a sequel was released the following year.  Check back next week for my review on that one.

(Click here to go back to the directory)

[yoonxiskitten]

Teach Me

Jungkook x You

Genre: Smut

Warnings: Noona Kink, Dub/Sub, Slight Spanking & Dirty talk, Orall

I was in my apartment with the BTS. They had all missed me and we decided to have a movie night at my place. We, for some odd reason were watching 50 shades darker. Well me and Jungkook were. The others fell asleep. As the first 18+ scene came on I peeked over at Jungkook to see him hiding behind his hands, peeking between his fingers every now and then.

"Jungkook-sshi. You dont have to cover your face. You are of age now. I spoke, removing his hands. He cloaed his eyes tightly.

"Noona, Im not comfortable around girls, what makes you think I can watch when they are doing...that." he spoke. I giggled.

"You're not uncomfortable around me." I spoke in a matter or fact tone. He scoffed.

"You're not a girl, you are-" my eyes widened at his statement.

"Yah! I am a girl. Do you need a reminder? Are you hanging out with me too much?" I spoke, a wide grin on my face. He laughed and nodded.

"No, I mean- actually yes. Yes we do." He spoke. I giggled and focused on the movie.

"You'll regret that Kookie." I spoke. He smiled.

"Okay." He spoke.

_The Next Morning_

I woke up on the floor with Jungkook's sweater on. How? Beats me. I looked around to see nothing but a note from Jin.

'Went to take the kiddos to the boardwalk. You and JK looked tired so we didnt bother. Join us whenever.'

I sighed and made my way to the bathroom in need of a hot shower to wake me up. I stripped and jumped in the shower freezing myself first before gettimg the right temperature. After I was washed up, I grabbed a towel, wrapped it around my body and walked into my room. I grabbes a matching panty and bra set and put it on. I grabbed some lotion and lotioned my body before looking for an outfit. I grabbed a cute floral shirt and put it on my dresser. Just then the door opened and in walked Jungkook with Jin's note.

"Hey Noona, are we gonna-" we froze as we made eye contact with one another. I opened my mouth and closed it stupidly like a fish would. His eyes trailed down my body slowly, taking in every exposed inch. Once he made his way back to my eyes, his head dropped in shame. I smiled at him. Not ashamed or embarrassed that he had seen me half naked. Its no different than a bikini right?

"Oh-Im sorry. I- uhm. Sorry." He stuttered. I giggled and walked closer to him.

"Atleast you are reminded that I am in fact, a girl." i joked. He smiled a little.

"Uhm Noona, can you maybe put on some clothes?" he asked. I scoffed playfully and walked to find my jeans.

"Aw. My shy Jungkookie, scared of me being half naked around him." His head lifted up as I reached for my jeans that somehow got on the shelf that I cant reach.

"Ani. Im not scared of you being half naked in front of me." he said. I jumped for my jeans still not being able to reach them. I then felt his presence behind me and he grabbed my jeans handing them to me. I smiled at him.

"Im scared of what I might do to you with you being half naked." I looked at his face as it held all seriousness. I walked past him to my shirt.

"You wouldnt know what to do with me." I exclaimed. He nodded.

"You're right."

"I know."

"Thats why you should teach me." I froze and turned around, scanning his face for any type of joking around.

"What?" I asked, making sure I heard him correctly.

"You could teach me. Teach me how to have sex. What to do and how to do it." He spoke. I laughed.

"Jungkook are you insane? You do hear yourself right?" I asked. He nodded.

"I hear myself. Noona, you don't understand how hard it is for me to see the hyungs bring girls or stay out with them. I wish I could." He spoke. I shrugged.

"So why dont you? I asked.

"I dont know how and I dont want to embarrass myself. But if you could teach me it wouldnt be so uncomfortable. I know you." He spoke. This was one of the hardest decisions Ive ever had to make. I mean I love him and all the other boys so much and would do just about anything for them.

"Kookie. You know that I love you and would do just about anything for you but dont you think you may be asking me for just a little too much?" I spoke. He nodded, stepped closer and looked down to me, and I looked up to him.

"I know. I just- There are middle schoolers with more experience than me. You don't have go to sleep with me today. We can even ease up to it. I just want you to teach me. Please?" He asked. I looked up at him as he pulled me closer. I was a little jungshook if you know what I mean.

"We'll both enjoy it." He said. I bit my lip in temptation. Oh if he wasnt so cute...

"Okay." I spoke. He let me go and let out a breath it seems he was holding.

"Okay." He spoke. I smiled.

"Do you need to mentally prepare yourself or-?" I asked. He sighed and nervously rubbed the back of his neck.

"Im fine." he spoke. I smiled.

"Kiss me." I spoke. His eyes widened and he nodded. He wrapped his hands around my waist and pressed my body against his. He slowly leaned down to kiss me. Our lips moved slowly against each other. I stuck my tongue out and swiped it against his bottom lip. He slowly opened his mouth as I shoved my tongue inside of his. Our tongues danced together, fighting to pin one another down. He rested his hand on my hips squeezing every once and a while. I rested my hands on his thighs and slowly moved them up. He seemed to sigh in pleasure in my mouth. I smiled and kissed him harder. To be honest, this is the first time being a dom and I was enjoying it. I ran my hands over his crotch area and he whimpered into our ongoing kiss. I pulled away from him and lifted his shirt over his head. He looked at me as I worked on his drawstring.

"I shouldn't be the only one in my underwear Kookie." I spoke, teasingly. He bit his lip and kicked off his sweats. Once I ridded him of his clothing I pushed him back. I climbed on top of him, straddling his hips. I kissed him passionately and he returned the kiss. His hands clenched into fist at his sides, restraining himself from touching me. I slowly begin making my way down his jaw, kissing his neck. Once I found his sweet spot he groaned deeply.

"Noona. Can I touch you? Please let me touch you." He spoke. I smiled against his neck.

"Touch me anywhere you'd like. For now, Im yours." I whispered. Thats all I had to say. His hand immediately fell to my ass as he molded and played with it. I sighed in bliss, my ass being a hot spot for me. He shuddered at me breathing on his neck.

"Aaahh Y/N. I-" I gasped as he flipped us over putting himself on top in between my legs.

"I wanna try something." He spoke. I smiled and raised an eyebrow, which he caught.

"Just guide me." He spoke and kissed me softly before slowly making his way down to my chest. He dipped his tongue between the valley of my breast causing goosebumps to arise on my skin. He reached around and unclipped my bra, taking it off of me. He stared at my breast a small blush tinting his cheeks. He leaned down, attacking my hardened nipples he twisted and played with the other. I moaned and took my bottom lip into my mouth. His hand trailed down my body and played with the hem of my underwear. He looked up at me.Lee

"Can I?" He asked. I nodded. He hesitated as he stuck his hand inside of my underwear. He slowly ran a finger up and down my slit.

"Wow. You're so warm and...wet." My body shuddered as he slowly began to pump his fingers inside of me. He leaned down and began to kiss my neck. His lips ghosted over my sweet spot and I let out a whimper. I could feel him chuckle a little in my neck. Before I could ask him whats so funny, he added another finger and curled them hitting my spot. I gasped loudly.

"Oh God Jungkook! Right there!" I moaned out. He sped up amd continued to finger my G-spot. My mouth dropped open as mixtures of pants and moans escaped my mouth. My eyes screwed as tight as they could be as I felt the sensation slowly building up. Jungkook lowered himself so that he was face to face with my area. I grabbed his hand to stop him but he had already dove in. He slowly flicked his tongue on my clit repeatedly.

"Oh my- shit Jungkook!" I moaned, louder than I should have. I came as my body twitched a little due to the aftermath. Jungkook crawled towards me and kissed me as I tried to catch my breath.

"Did I do good Noona?" He asked. I nodded and kissed him slowly.

"Thay was amazing Kookie." He smiled brightly and kissed me back. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him to lay on top of me.

"Noona. Im ready." He spoke aginst my lips. He looked nervous and excited all in one. I smiled and flipped us over, pulling my painties down. He pulled his boxers down and his member sprung forward. I stared at it in shock. It was probably one of the biggest dicks i have ever seen in my life. Wow. The maknae was really golden. He must have felt self conscious because he cleared his throat snapping me out of my thoughts.

"I-I wow." I spoke and grabbed his member. He sucked in a breath and closed his eyes as I began to move my hand up and down on him. After a bit of precum was visible, I slowly licked his member from base to tip. Jungkook groaned so deep an sexy that I grew even more wet. I then took as much of him in my mouth as I could. Lets be honest, a dick as big as his was impossible to fit all in. I bobbed my head up and down as Kookie struggled to hold in his whimpers and moans. He was breathing loudly. He sat up on his elbows and watched me. I looked at him through lidded eyes and sucked him a bit harder.

"Fuck." He growled and bucked his hips up. I moaned over his dick as he continued to curse. I stopped and ran my hand over my work.

"How does it feel to be blowed for the first time?" I asked. He sighed and leaned back.

"Please. Im so ready. I need it Noona. Please." He begged. I smiled at him. I love it when he begs. I crawled up his body straddling him but before I could sit on it, he flipped us over... again. He looked in my eyes and silently asked if this was okay. I nodded. He looked up at me and breathed in before slowly pushing inside of me. I held his biceps and gasped as he let out an extremely deep groan. The feeling of his member stretching my walls taking me by surprise. Once he was fully inside of me I wrapped my arms around him, restricting him from moving any farther.

"Always make sure your partner is okay. You don't want to cause them any pain." I spoke. He buried his face into my neck and let out a shaky sigh.

"Are- are you in pain?" He asked. I shook my head.

"No. I'm o- aaahhhh!" Jungkook began to pound into me. Almost relentlessly. I moaned out in pleasure as he groaned with every thrust. He lifted his body off of mine and put all his weight in his hands. I looked down between us, seeing us being connected as one and moaned.

"Jungkook-ah~." I moaned. He leaned down to kiss me a he continued to thrust.

"You feel so good baby. So tight." He spoke. Those words alone almost bringing me to my realease. I pushed him back and he backed away quickly.

"Lie down. Im gonna ride." I spoke. He quickly lied down. I straddled him and lowered myself down on his member. He sighed loudly as I moaned out in pleasure. I began to slowly move up and down on him. His hands held on tightly to my hips. I moved at an enjoyable pace for us both.

"Faster." He spoke. I obliged and began to move faster. His hands went down to my ass and smacked it lightly causing shivers to run down my back.

"Smack my ass again." I spoke. He groaned and smacked it again. I whimpered and the feeling of my high approaching made an appearance again.

"Oh God kookie! You're so big!" I moaned. His eyes flashed with last before he sat up, meeting my eyes with his. He began to buck his hips up to mine.

"Oh fuck! Don't stop!" I moaned. He moaned and attached his mouth onto one of my nipples.

"You take me so well baby girl. You take it all." He moaned. Shocked to hear those words out of his mouth once again my stomach approached my high and it was not going away.

"Shit Kookie! Just like that! I'm gonna cum! Aaaahh!" I moaned loudly. He bucked his hips quicker.

"Me too. Fuck. Noona." He groaned loudly. I kissed him as I clenched around him, whimpering into his mouth as I came, my body convulsing. He thrust started to get sloppier, his breathing uneven. He held me tighter as his orgasm took over. He called out my name as he thrusted a few more times, riding out his orgasm. Luckily I'm on the pill.

"That was amazing." He spoke, out of breath. I smiled and pecked his lips once before laying down, kookie following my actions.

"How do you feel Kookie?" I asked. He chuckled.

"Like a man. Thank you." He said. I nodded.

"Anything for you." He seemed to quirk up at the thought.

"Anything?" He asked. I nodded. He smirked and climbed on top of my body.

"Round 2?"

[eldritchsurveys]

876.

5k Survey IV

151. What is louder and more annoying: 200 adults talking or one four-year-old screaming? >> I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard 200 adults talking at one time. Regardless, I’m sensory-defensive, so many things register as the same level of “too loud” for me. Both of these things would be simply “too loud”. 152. Do you believe the stories about planes, boats and people mysteriously disappearing into the Bermuda triangle? >> I find them vaguely interesting. I liked the X-Files episode about it, Gillian Anderson’s character (it wasn’t Scully, technically...) was excellent in it lol. 153. Who are you the most jealous of? >> I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it. 154. What is the happiest way you can start your day? >> In an Inworld cuddle pile. 155. Do you ever have moments where you feel like everything is all right in the world? >> Occasionally.

156. Who thinks that you are offensive? >> I don’t know who thinks I’m offensive. It’s not like people go out of their way to tell me that or anything. 157. If you had to teach a class in something, what would you be able to teach people? >> I’d rather not. I greatly prefer being a student, anyway. 158. Have you ever had a spiritual experience (an experience that cannot be explained by science)? >> I’m sure science could contrive a reasonable enough explanation for the things I experience (and if it can’t now, it probably will eventually). Regardless, I prefer my explanations, and I’ll stick to them. 159. Do you believe that this experience was truly mystical or do you think there is some scientific explanation for it, only you don’t know what it is? >> An experience being explained in a scientific fashion doesn’t prevent it from being mystical. There are plenty of mystical experiences that science has an explanation for, after all, but the people involved in those experiences keep their own counsel. I think both a mystical explanation and a scientific explanation can exist comfortably side-by-side in my brain; they’re both useful for different reasons, particularly when it comes to communicating the experience to others (I wouldn’t use a mystical explanation when speaking to a hard materialist, for example, because, like... what would be the point...?). 160. Do you get offended easily? >> I wouldn’t say that, no. But I tend to be automatically distrustful of people who seem to go out of their way to be “offensive”. Just because whatever they’re saying doesn’t directly hurt me doesn’t mean I want to hang out with someone who says the kinds of things they say. 161. Would you still love and stay with your significant other if he or she had to have a breast or testicle removed? >> I can’t imagine being affected by that sort of thing at all. 162. Do you believe in fate or free will? >> I don’t care to choose a side. I think the discourse around it is interesting. 163. Do you believe that only boring people get bored? >> Of course not. That’s a rude (and, of course, entirely inaccurate, but mostly rude) thing to say. 164. Can life change or are we all stuck in vain? >> What does this even mean? 165. What changes are you afraid of? >> The kind that cause me pain. 166. Are you a day person or nocturnal? >> I prefer to be awake in the daylight and asleep at night. 167. What one CD could you listen to for an entire week (no mixed CD’s, it must be an album)? >> Why would I even have to do this anymore? It’s 2020. 168. Which is worse, working in retail, food service, or an office? >> For me, all of them are equally bad. Well, okay, maybe food service is worse because there’s the added layer of having to handle food and be around mucky gross things. 169. What’s the coolest job you ever had? >> Manning merch tables at local shows. 170. What is one central idea that your thoughts seem to come back to? >> There is no central idea...? I’m not sure how one even determines this. 171. Have you ever wanted to be an actor/tress? >> I was one in Inworld’s first iteration, when I was physically a child. But I have never really had interest in being one in this world. 172. If you had the power to control one person and make this person do anything you wanted for a whole day, who would you pick and what would they do? >> Total power exchange is totally not my scene, I’d get bored of it way too easily. I could absolutely see myself snapping, “make a fucking decision for yourself for once” after like an hour or two, lmao. 173. What star sign are you and what is your sign like? >> Gemini. I’m not going to go into an explanation of Gemini’s commonly-recognised traits, Google can take care of that for you. 174. Did the Blair Witch Project scare you? >> I haven’t seen it. The new Blair Witch game looked vaguely interesting. 175. Are you in constant fear of death? >> Not constant. I did spend about a year or so like that, recently. It sucked pretty bad. 176. Does fear of death keep you from building a life? >> No. Sometimes I get that bone-deep “what’s the point” feeling, but like... that feeling will just have to exist on its own while I go ahead and keep doing stuff. I can’t give in to that. 177. Do you like all your movies to be in wide-screen? >> I’m not sure what the alternative is, or what the difference is or whatever. 178. Are you a fan of any comic books? >> Sure. 179. At what age did you attend your first funeral? >> I don’t remember. I vaguely recall one happening when I was young, but I have no idea what exact age I was. 180. What do you smell like (lotion, cologne, sweat)? >> Just... like, a person. I showered this morning, but the fragrances from soap and lotion don’t linger very long, and it hasn’t been long enough for me to start smelling like sweat or anything. So I’m somewhere in the middle. 181. What are your greatest sources for wisdom? >> Oh, you know. People. 182. When you were little, where did your parents tell you babies come from? >> My father never had that discussion with me, I figured it out from reading books. 183. What is your favorite band? >> I don’t have one. 184. What’s the best cheesy 80’s song? >> Come On Eileen. /picks one at random 185. What’s the best kind of movie to see on a date? >> I’m not the person to ask. 186. Do you like to sit in the front, middle or back of the Movie Theater? >> Back, absolutely. And woe unto the people who have the same idea and try to sit near me. 187. Have you ever been inside an abandoned building? >> Yeah. 188. Under what circumstances would you agree to work for free? >> The circumstances where I really just want to do whatever-it-is and it isn’t too intensive, I guess. And where I feel like my work is valued in some other way if not financially. 189. Candles or strobe lights? >> Candles. Although sometimes in a dark area, a candle flame dancing around on the wick will have a kind of strobe-y effect, and I hate it. 190. Do you think the Lord of the Rings movies are true to the books or did Hollywood change the story too much? >> I don’t know, I didn’t read the book. 191. When you see a stranger on the street does your first reaction lean towards thinking of this person as a potential friend or as a potential threat? >> I don’t think of them as a potential anything.  192. Is it natural for human beings to fear and distrust each other, or is it cultural? >> Obviously it’s cultural, or every human being in every society on earth would fear and distrust everyone else with or without cause... which... is not the case... 193. What do you really want to buy? >> Nothing. I don’t have the money to buy anything right now, anyway. 194. You have to choose. Would you be happier marrying someone rich for their money or living in the streets and subway tunnels with someone you love? >> God, do I hate this question. First of all, neither money nor love are “everything”, but “love” is work, not some kind of magic bubbly gushy feeling that happens no matter what, and that work starts to take a backseat when all one’s energy is devoted to simply surviving from day to day. How do I know? Take a wild guess. Second of all, the question doesn’t take into account whether you can also love someone you’ve married for the sake of financial security. (Spoiler: remember, love is action and will and intent, not magic, so yeah, you can.) Third of all, can I stress that there’s nothing fucking romantic and movie-like about being homeless? Because sometimes I feel like people imagine “we’ll share a cardboard box and be free of the shackles of modern society <3″ or some shit and meanwhile I’ve seen homeless couples, many homeless couples. I’ve been homeless couples. It sucks. That’s the end of the story. It sucks. (There’s probably similar romantic notions about marrying some tycoon and being a kept lady/boy, or whatever, which do not at all measure up to the reality. I’m sure a lot of people end up abused and neglected and miserable in their gilded-cage master bedrooms, afterwards. But since that’s not my experience, it wasn’t the focus of my fathomless ire with this question, lol.) 195. If someone wanted to understand you what book could they read that would help? >> That’s not going to happen. 196. Do you think it’s odd that Americans have freedom of religion and yet call themselves ‘one nation under god’? >> I don’t think it’s odd because I’m pretty used to how the United States works in that respect. I know it operates under conservative, Christian hegemony while playing the role of secular, progressive Western nation on the outside.

197. In what sense are you a minority? >> I’m Black, disabled/neuro-atypical, socially considered female, trans, and queer. I think that covers it. 198. Are you anti social? >> No. I have a few asocial behaviours and inclinations, but I’m not anti-social. 199. Do you photograph well? >> Sometimes. Not often, in my opinion. 200. Do you think that human beings would survive through a nuclear winter? >> I don’t know. I’m not knowledgeable enough about either human biology (and psychology) or the specifics of nuclear winter to say.

[raepritewrites]

More fanfiction nobody asked for

this is a personal project ive been working on for a few months now. its not much but id love to have feedback! thanks guys, enjoy! ^_^

This is Not a Love Story

 Why is it we can’t always remember when something important happens?

I can tell you the date and time of my birth (thanks mom, but, too much). I know when my parents got married. I know that Thanksgiving falls on the last Thursday of November… yet, I can’t tell you when things changed. Just that they did. One minute, my world looked a certain way, the next everything was different. One minute, there’s a person. Then suddenly she’s a girl. A cute girl. A sexy girl. A girl I like.

And then things change again.

Offhand, I can’t remember when we met. Not exactly. Probably at a party, one of the many that Quinn threw together and I somewhat reluctantly joined in on. It was hard not to, seeing it was at my house. Well, our house – me, Quinn, Todd, and Ben, we all roomed together at the time. At first, it was Quinn and this guy Frank and the others at the house. Then Frank got married, and I needed some new scenery – that didn’t involve my parents – and Quinn offered me the spare bedroom.

It made sense, in a weird way, to all room together. I’m pretty sure Quinn could have afforded to rent the house on his own, but he’s one of those guys that thrives on people. I think if you stuck him on a deserted island, he’d die of loneliness before he ever ran out of coconuts.

For Todd, it was a matter of independence – not really him declaring it, as much as his parents forcing it upon him. He wasn’t so bad, as far as roommates go, but I learned quickly not to ever rely on him to clean… or cook… or shop for groceries… or really do anything particularly useful. He hardly ever came out of his room, except to go to work and eat, and whenever there were people over he never hung out with us. It was kind of like being roommates with a ghost. A ghost who drank orange juice straight out of the carton and then put it back.

Ben was somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. Not super social, but not a recluse. I’ve been informed – subtly and not so much – that I’m a bit of a nerd and a geek. Fair enough, but I don’t think those people have seen Ben in action. Ben took everything to the next level. He’s played more rpgs, more video games, and went to more cons than anyone I know. In thirty years, I picture him as the comic book store guy from the Simpsons, though hopefully with less jaundice.

I’m sure you’re wondering where I fit into all this. Let’s just say, I was voluntarily seeking independence, desiring a little more social interactions, drinking O.J. out of a glass like a normal person, and improving my skills in Dungeons & Dragons.

Now it’s just Ben, his girlfriend, Cassie, and me rooming together, while everyone else has moved on. But that’s not what this story is about. Honestly, I don’t know what it’s about. I guess… when you get right down to it, it’s about her.

So, there was a party, or several parties, and there I was. There she was. And it didn’t mean a thing. Because I didn’t notice her. I mean, we were friends, casual friends, but that was it. Looking back, I don’t know how I ever could have missed her. I chalk it up to being the type of guy who doesn’t notice jailbait (she was younger than me). It’s one of my better qualities, if I do say so myself.

She and her sister were old friends with Quinn, because everyone is old friends with Quinn, and they ended up at our house a lot. We mostly just hung around talking, or playing pool, or occasionally pulling out the Risk boards to try to conquer the world for as long as we could. What I remember from those nights, mostly, was her sister Victoria.

Victoria and her sister, Ava, were a lot alike. Both short, both fair, though Victoria was tanner. They were both funny, and both friendly. They even looked similar. Blondes, though Victoria was dirty blonde and Ava was ash blonde. Round faces, small mouths, and button noses. You only saw the differences between them if you paid attention. Victoria was athletic, cool, and unreadable. She was nice to everyone, but she played her cards close to the chest, and you never could tell exactly what she was thinking.

Ava wasn’t an open book, exactly. There was always some small, secret smile hiding at the corner of her mouth. But ninety percent of the time, one look at her face could tell you almost everything. She was curvier, more sarcastic, and opinionated. Even back then, I knew she didn’t hold back. Whatever she thought of you, she could sum it up in one word, or one smirk. That’s not to say she was mean, or at least, she didn’t try to be. It was nice that someone finally said what they were thinking, it took the guesswork out of everything.

I’m not sure when I started to pay more attention to her. As time went on, Victoria and Ava were always around, hanging out with us. They became kind of a unit – it was weird when you didn’t see both of them together, like they were missing their arm. They weren’t very close in age. Victoria was about five years older, I think, but it hardly showed. Victoria was a little immature for her age, Ava was more grownup so they balanced each other out.

As time went on though, Victoria found other social groups and we didn’t see her as much. Ava still came though, for the parties and the game nights. We’d ask where Victoria was on those nights when Ava appeared alone at the door, but all Ava would ever say was she was out somewhere else. Had other plans. Sorry, couldn’t make it. Next time, honest.

I guess it was at that point that I started to really pay attention to Ava.

Around Victoria, she had always seemed a little muted, like Victoria did enough of the joking and laughing and talking for both of them. Or like she didn’t feel the need to interact much when Victoria supposedly had it covered.

Underneath the affection they shared, there was a faint tenseness to their relationship. You’d never pick up on it unless you were hanging around them for as long as I did.

Victoria liked to ‘rein in’ her sister’s sarcastic jokes; she’d shoot her a look whenever she felt that Ava was getting a little too loose with her humor and her comments. “Because I’m her big sister, and it’s my job to look out for her,” I’d overheard her quietly explain this once to someone. Most of the time, Ava would back down, blushing occasionally at her own cheekiness. But sometimes, Ava would stare right back at her sister, defiant and irritated, which made Victoria back down instead.

With Victoria out wandering the world Ava-free, it was like looking at a new person entirely.

Ava laughed louder and more freely at anything she found funny when Victoria was missing, and she had a sense of humor that was both broad and obscure, dry and wet. Almost anything could make her giggle: puns, nerdy jokes, little-known references, sarcasm, and bad movies. I liked that about her.

Ava was also a giant nerd, which was even better. She loved Star Trek, cartoons, fantasy and mystery books – she even wrote fan fiction. I’d nearly lost it when she mentioned that.

“Fan fiction?” I asked in disbelief.

Ava was smiling, a little uncomfortably, and blushing bright pink. “Yeah. I started when I was eleven. I don’t write as much as I used to, but I really like it. I like taking a part of a world I know really well, and putting it back together in a way that I think works better. I love thinking of all the little in between scenes that don’t make it into a book or movie. How this, led to that. And I really love falling down the rabbit hole into the endless Wonderland of ‘what ifs’. Is that crazy?”

I thought about it. “No, not really. I’ve just never met someone in real life who does it. I thought only kids in middle school and recluses wrote fan fiction.”

“I take some offense to that,” Ava said, trying to look affronted but only succeeding in smiling. “I’ll have you know I was the most reclusive middle schooler in the world. I’m a prime candidate for being a fan fic author.”

“What kind of stories do you write? You don’t write slash, do you?”

Ava laughed now. “No! I write about superheroes, and all the reasons they get PTSD and should be in therapy. Seriously, why hasn’t Batman consulted a shrink yet? He’s got ample reason to. Mommy and Daddy issues to fill an entire wing at Arkham Asylum.”

It took a while, a long while, after Victoria floated off to other locales that I learned just what a deep well of nerddom Ava drew from.

Ava guarded her nerdiness like Smaug guarding dwarf treasure. She only made inside jokes or talked about her favorite comics with those she knew were in on the secret. I wasn’t sure why, but I always got excited when I found a new aspect of her fangirl personality. It was like discovering a new (blah blah I’ll edit this simile later) every time we talked.

I’m not much of a talker. Or a smiler, so I’m told. But when I’m with Ava, I want to laugh. She’s funny even when she’s not trying to be.

[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2018, Part IV

Scroll down for Parts I, II, and III. VERY GOOD MOVIES THAT STILL AREN’T TECHNICALLY GREAT--SEE, I LIED, NEW CATEGORY, WHICH REALLY SAYS SOMETHING ABOUT THIS TIER IN 2018 AND MAYBE HINTS THAT THERE WEREN’T MANY MOVIES THAT I GENUINELY LOVED

44. Hotel Artemis (Drew Pearce)- It should be illegal to watch this movie before midnight because it is an exploitation flick to its core. Is it a problem that it's shaped like a triangle, that it starts wrapping up its answers the minute we understand what the questions were? Yes. Is that a problem that Jeff Goldblum, playing the Wolf King, wearing a double-breasted camel's hair coat like a shawl, can't fix? No.

43. Sicario: Day of the Soldado (Stefano Sollima)- Considering how much I liked Sicario, I'm impressed by how close its sequel came to its chilly hardness. Strangely enough, the craft suffers more from the absence of Jóhann Jóhannsson than it does from the absence of Denis Villeneuve. Aside from a lull at the two-thirds mark and the pulling of exactly one punch, this entry feels as vital and astute as the last one.

Which means the real auteur must be Taylor Sheridan. His script mimics the structure of the original while twisting its characters just askew enough to breathe new life into the material. His screenplays just sort of unfold in a way that I find organic--it's hard to even say what the conflict is until halfway through most of the time. And if he wants to write five more of these, I'll gladly take them.

42. The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles)- Like almost anyone else, I'm grateful that The Other Side of the Wind exists at all. The fact that it's so more personal and experimental than I expected is a bonus. It's kind of a mess until it congeals at the drive-in, but every choice still seems labored over. (The claustrophobic nature of the party versus the wide open spaces of the film-within-the-film, for example.) Nonetheless, it's hard to go to bat for a movie whose backstory is more captivating than the final product.

41. The Mule (Clint Eastwood)- Besides the breezy glide of the pacing, the performances stand out. Eastwood's is the type that we haven't seen from him in a while. He smiles a lot. He sings and dances and flirts. He's generally carefree and loopy. And he's contrasted with* a nervy Bradley Cooper in one of those humongous-star-taking-the-back-seat performances, sprinkling charisma the way Sean Connery did in The Untouchables.

But there is no elegance at all. Besides Chekhov's cough and the cheesy elbowing of "If only somebody had $25,000 to save the VFW Hall," we get the messy racial politics of Eastwood once again. Whereas Gran Torino worked for me because it's aware of its own racism, this one thinks that it's doing some good. The subtext is that an old White man would never catch trouble from police, but the text is a Hispanic man getting pulled over and nearly pissing himself for laughs. Hard to argue this isn't a fun time at the movies though, despite the fact that it's almost entirely about regret.

40. If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)- Too theatrical and outre for my taste, but it's easy to get lost in its cosmetic pleasures: the lush colors, the lavish costumes, the immaculate close-ups, the best score of the year. I liked it, especially the Brian Tyree Henry tangent, but as the movie is swooning over itself, it's easy to catch yourself thinking, "What is this even about?"

39. Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller)- Can You Ever Forgive Me? hits every beat you would expect from an "in over her head" crime movie, but the time that the film dedicates to the central relationship creates a rare intimacy. If you stopwatched it, I imagine the majority of the film would be McCarthy and Grant talking to each other. That focus, along with a resistance to smoothing over the characters' rougher edges, elevates a kind of boilerplate story.

38. Blockers (Kay Cannon)- Even if the ending is kind of exhausting, desperate to give each character his or her moment, this is hilarious. Not so much in the setpieces showcased in the commercials but frequently in an expression or line reading. The Blu-Ray has a line-o-rama gag reel that is funnier than some entire movies. It's pretty progressive and fair in its portrayal of young female sexuality too.

37. Game Night (John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein)- It gets a little tidy and full circle for my taste, but this movie has some great laughs while being a good example of a film that nails both the characters' "want" and the characters' "need." Rachel McAdams is winning, and Jesse Plemons steals all of his scenes.

Game Night also has way more of a filmic identity than one might expect, since it doubles as a sort of Fincher parody. Besides Cliff Martinez's insistent electronic score and some CGI-for-no-reason establishing shots, Daley and Goldstein borrow the auteur's desaturated palette, locked-down camera, and narrow light range. There's even an elaborate one-r. The visuals elevated a premise that had the potential to be really dopey.

36. First Man (Damien Chazzelle)- I think this is exactly the movie Chazelle wanted to make, but, to match my expectations or his filmography, it's not quite good enough. Cool to the touch, though anything else would be antithetical to who Armstrong was. In the shape of suspense, but with an outcome that is obviously never in doubt. Flipping to the IMAX ratio the second the crew docks onto the moon is a cool trick, but it's as innovative as things get.

The cast is game. Gosling's fastidious brooding resists any of his Movie Star charm but still holds every scene, and the framing of Armstrong's motivation works very well. Foy's reading of "a bunch of boys" is about to become a t-shirt. Kyle Chandler and Jason Clarke and the suddenly mature Patrick Fugit all get their moments. The final scene places the film into the Chazelle tradition of people whose calling is greater than even their most transcendent relationships, and a protest sequence is a welcome break from the eraser-streaked perfectionism.

I'm sorry that I wanted Apollo 13 instead of a hipper Apollo 13.

35. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Perischetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman)- Within the course of one year, we got two possible solutions for the "problem" of inspiring but self-serious origin stories. At the beginning of the year, Black Panther mastered the form and presented it so solidly that it couldn't be argued against. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse goes the other way, so impressionistic that the final sequence is people flying through abstract shapes and colors, so irreverent that a character cuts someone off mid-sentence as he says, "With great power comes..." Though I would have trouble explaining the film, all of the dimensional comings-and-goings make sense in the moment, and it's easily the funniest Marvel movie ever made.

Maybe purposefully, it is overstuffed though. Six different iterations of Spider-Man is enough to juggle; I definitely didn't need a cadre of villains that was even less defined. I have to admit, even though I couldn't tell you what to cut, I was exhausted by the end, even if I was huffing and puffing fresh air.

34. Boy Erased (Joel Edgerton)- Many characters do bad things in this movie, but they're people trying to help and doing their best, justifying the pain that they're causing. This is a film that easily could have been drawn in caricature, and it never is. It does, however, draw the characters as fairly as they deserve, so the Joel Edgerton gay conversion therapist does wear bad ties and pronounce some words incorrectly. The Russell Crowe character, especially in the powerhouse final scene, is more complex and real, at least if I'm to judge by my own father, who has disturbingly similar moral authority and power moves k thx bai.

33. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (Morgan Neville)- This one is more cohesive than 30 Feet From Stardom, but these Morgan Neville docs are sometimes too slick for their own good. If you've never made the "jerking-off motion" with your hand, then you'll be tested when he asks his subjects to close their eyes and imagine someone special to them.

That's not to say that the nearly pornographic reverence of Fred Rogers is not deserved or effective. And one of the most daring notes of the film is the suggestion that, in our hostile times, Rogers's message might not have stuck. The jabs at Trump aren't overplayed, but the president is sort of a pall over the entire film. When Rogers says, "The most essential things in life are invisible," it's hard not to imagine the person on our TV daily who is the antithesis of that idea.

32. Hearts Beat Loud (Brett Haley)- This is a heartwarming movie that ends on a high note with solid music. (Important because, if the music that the father and daughter made had been bad, the whole thing would have fallen apart.) Occasionally, it falls into that ensemble problem of "Good news: We got Ted Danson. Bad news: We have to find something for him to do." And it's a weird sideways ad for Spotify. But if I gave Begin Again three stars, then I have to kick this Once-core entry up to three-and-a-half.

If I may, though, I would like to analyze a recommendation that Offerman's record store owner makes to Collette's character. Since she's buying Dig Me Out by Sleater-Kinney, he puts her on to Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, an album she has not heard of. Which is absurd. Forget that Animal Collective should not be recommended to any woman ever. Any person who knows Sleater-Kinney also knows Animal Collective. She would have heard of them if only because they would be a bad match for someone who likes Sleater-Kinney. But here he is all like, "Check out 'My Girls'--killer song." You're going to recommend the lead single, fam? You're not even going to go out on a limb and push "Bluish"? No wonder your store is shutting down if you're pushing free folk/art-punk onto riot grrls.

31. Western (Valesta Grisebach)- While I was watching Western, I can't say I was having too much fun. It seemed like an adequate story told in a patient, austere way. But in the days since then, I haven't been able to get it out of my head. The way that Grisebach gets so much out of non-professional actors, the way that each character seems to exist not so much as a person but as a totem for something like aggression or labor or exploitation or occupation. Like few other movies--though Beau Travail comes to mind--it's a portrait of masculinity that seems really resigned about its conclusions. 30. American Animals (Bart Layton)- I worry about the potential Boondock Saints effect of this movie: Do I want to be in the same number as the college dorm crew attracted to it only for its style? Is it only style? I don't think it adds up to much ultimately.

But it does have style, and it's way too fun of a caper flick to resist. It presents an interesting bridge in Bart Layton's career, from non-fiction that is a bit too fictional to fiction that is a bit too factual. The segments with the real people involved in the heist serve as decisive punctuation to the florid sentences of the narrative. I also appreciated that the film didn't dwell too much on the trial, since we know exactly where the boys faltered and what evidence did them in.

29. The Land of Steady Habits (Nicole Holofcener)- I loved the rich characterization of the first half, which resists hand-holding as it plops the viewer into a post-divorce setting that is familiar but specific. The film bounces off into tangents from there, some of which are great, but Edie Falco seems to draw the short straw. There are three actors on the poster--weird-voiced Ben Mendelsohn, Thomas Mann, and Falco--but her character is left undeveloped, a bit unfairly, as the proceedings favor the men. The film is still another ground-rule double for Holofcener, a filmmaker who gives the impression that she has no idea what a ground-rule double is.

28. Private Life (Tamara Jenkins)- I don't know anything about Tamara Jenkins's personal life, but there's no way that the details and emotion of the central couple's infertility don't come from her own pain. That frustration and obsession take center stage, and we get filled in with the rest of the details patiently as the film goes on. I don't think we even know what Giamatti's character does for a living until forty-five minutes in, and that's okay. The movie cares more about the supporting characters than I did, but I appreciated the lived-in realism of an apartment with books filling up the fireplace.

27. Flower (Max Winkler)- Although I didn't believe Zoey Deutch as a seventeen-year-old, I was impressed by this script, which moves slowly until it doesn't. I guess "Flower" is good branding since there doesn't appear to be a movie called that already, but I kind of wish this had just been called "Erica." It builds that character carefully, plants her in an impossible situation, then unleashes hell upon her.

An advantage of a movie with teenage characters is that they don't necessarily have to make the most logical decision in a given moment, so even when these characters are being dumb, they're being true to themselves. As the most prominent Zoey Deutch stockholder in North America, I actually thought about bumping this up an extra half-star.

26. Leave No Trace (Debra Granik)- Leave No Trace is partly about how existing outside of society can be as much of a contrivance as buying in, but the way the movie delivers that message is less ham-fisted than my description due to the intense performances at the center. Ben Foster, uncharacteristically restrained here, reportedly worked with Debra Granik to excise 40% of his dialogue, and that choice speaks volumes about the trust the film has for the audience in limiting the exposition.

The only thing holding me back was how exclusively internal the father-daughter story is. Unlike Granik's Winter's Bone, which functions as both a (similarly compassionate) coming-of-age story and a race-against-the-clock thriller, Leave No Trace is tracking only emotional growth. Will and Tom aren't headed anywhere in particular, which is part of the survival-versus-living point. But, you know, get you a Debra Granik movie that can do both.

25. Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham)- Socially terrifying when it isn't being effortlessly funny. Sometimes the protagonist is downright frustrating, which the film doesn't shy away from, but the vulnerability of Elsie Fisher's performance grounds everything around it. Besides nailing adult condescension, Burnham's script works because the big social disaster is always averted until it suddenly isn't, and that's when the moment hits the hardest. Somewhere in the back of my mind though, I kept thinking that perceptive realism is easy to do if that's your only goal. To quote the kids: "Some shade."

I spent most of the movie thanking God that YouTube channels didn't exist when I was thirteen.

24. Three Identical Strangers (Tim Wardle)- I'll be the millionth person to write "truth is stranger than fiction" with regard to this movie. And sometimes having no idea where a movie will go is enough. 23. Green Book (Peter Farrelly)- When a dramatic director makes a comedy, it often feels self-conscious and overt. I'm thinking about Von Trier's The Boss of It All, in which the technique is more important than any audience joy or release. Or Michael Haneke explaining tirelessly why he thinks Happy End is "actually a comedy." Unsurprisingly, the results work a lot better when a comedy director of twenty years decides to go more serious. He knows what audiences want, he already understands how to wring tension out of each scene, and all he needs is the right subject.

The last item is where Green Book suffers. In the end, this is still a movie in which a White guy learns not to be racist. The first third, there seemingly to insist that Tony is the main character, is shaggy. I would wager the men don't get into the car inside of forty minutes. But once we're on the tour? Man, is this a crowd pleaser. The men's respect for each other grows gracefully, and the film's proud sentimentality powers its best moments as they fly by at a clipped pace. I had given up on Farrelly after Hall Pass, which felt amateurish, so a work of such professionally manicured (manufactured?) emotion was a shock.

On a different note, are any of you interested in a thousand words on Linda Cardellini's posture?

22. Den of Thieves (Christian Gudegast)- Despite the February release date, a director with no track record, and the most #basic studio lead there is, Den of Thieves is a caper film as sprawling as it is humane. Even Potato-face Butler is perfect for his role.

I watched the unrated version, which should be called the "depressing version," since I know exactly what was cut. (Hint: The wordless scene of Butler's jilted family ignoring him when he sees them in the grocery store, not anything from the shoot-out.) There's a spot where I would end the movie, and it's way before the Keyser Soze epilogue, but this was a welcome surprise for me. The movie seems to find its star in O'Shea Jackson, Jr. as it goes, and I completely agree. Many more like this please.

21. The Front Runner (Jason Reitman)- Reitman starts with a complicated oner that cranes up and down, zooms in and out of new characters, and times itself perfectly to catch snatches of conversations about "how can you even lay this much cable?" And in all of its Altman-esque indulgence, it's kind of the movie in a nutshell. Something simple--a scene shot with one take--commenting on how damned hard it is. What seems like a straightforward thesis moves at a breakneck pace with a game ensemble until you realize that it was all more complicated than it seemed.

Hugh Jackman has the challenge of playing someone essentially unknowable, but he has an amazing moment in the first third. On the chartered boat called Monkey Business--such a bad look, dude--Gary Hart is composed and dignified until a woman we don't see* sits down across from him, and his whole affect changes. His guard drops, and he seems absorbed by her, giggly. We can't hear what he's saying, but he's asking her about herself and joking about himself. Both or one or neither of those personalities is the real guy. The Front Runner is a movie about a tragic Great Man, and they're always described as if they can't help themselves, as if they're fighting their demons until the magic moment when they aren't. Jackman made that magic real for me when Hart's personality fell out.

20. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)- Patently uneven and bizarrely sequenced, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs doesn't stack up to the Coens' major works--though it demands another viewing. I did think, in all of its bleak absurdism, that it belongs in their neighborhood. To me, there's a dichotomy that most of the brothers' films trace. We're all doomed, but the force that does us in is sometimes fate (A Serious Man, Inside Llewyn Davis, The Hudsucker Proxy, No Country for Old Men) and sometimes the stupidity of other people (The Big Lebowski, Blood Simple, Burn After Reading, Miller's Crossing). This new movie seems to start with the latter, waver sometimes in the more interesting middle stories when Zoe Kazan and Tom Waits break my heart, then end up at the former. Tracking such a thing in miniature can be really instructive.

19. The Tale (Jennifer Fox)- If you can look past Common's goofy voice and the more afterschool special aspects of this movie, then you can realize that it should actually, as disturbing as it is, be an afterschool special. It spins its wheels sometimes, but the questions that this movie asks about memory and abuse are invaluable. Presenting a downright shocking portrayal of grooming and secrecy, it avoids easy answers and over-sympathizing with the protagonist all the way through. (Especially notable because the character is "Jennifer Fox," and the director is Jennifer Fox.)

Laura Dern remains Laura Dern, but I loved Jason Ritter in this. Exactly because he has been in a hundred failed sitcoms, he is terrifying here as a devilish knock-off of the type of guy approachable enough to be on TV.

18. Paddington 2 (Paul King)- At first, during the extended introduction, I was worried that Paddington 2 was falling prey to the curse of the sequel: more, not better. But as each family member pays off what we learned about him or her in the introduction during a sprightly train setpiece that owes more than a little to Keaton, I realized that I shouldn't have doubted the Paddington empathy machine. This one carries over the humor and sweetness but goes even harder on the pathos in its attempt to convince us to have good manners and care about the people around us. I'm not sure any other movie this year hit me harder than when the Browns don't show up for their weekly meeting at the jail.

Hugh Grant, an actor who always seems to be having fun, has never seemed as if he is having more fun.

17. Set It Up (Claire Scanlon)- I guess I believe in true love now.

16. Blindspotting (Carlos Lopez Estrada)- The stylized climax is going to be polarizing, but I thought it was a heightened, artful moment whose seeds had been sown throughout. The film meanders, but its angles on subjects like gentrification and probation and identity show tenderness and openness, and Estrada's visual energy recalls early Spike Lee or Jarmusch or Aronofsky. It's worth seeing if only for its fresh sense of place.

The two leads play off each other especially well. If Daveed Diggs is the fourth lead or whatever of Hamilton, then I guess I finally have to see it.

15. Incredibles 2 (Brad Bird)- Incredibles 2 is a good example of a sequel rhyming with the original in a way that doesn’t feel like a retread. Accidentally topical in its subtext about just rule of law, the film hits upon some of Brad Bird’s ideas of exceptionalism and hope for the future while being slightly more cogent in that messaging than the original. (Slightly. The villain problem is still there. If superheroes are already illegal, then why employ and promote them at all if your goal is to make them even more illegal?)

This entry is a bit more overstuffed, less timeless, and less funny than the original. There’s nothing on the level of “Honey, where is my super suit?” which I still say to my wife fourteen years later. But the fight choreography and the textural animation take advantage of the gap in between films. The Paar family dynamic is altered only slightly, but it’s enough to re-invent the proceedings. Violet has more confidence in herself, Dash is more in control of his powers, and it’s the, yes, thicc Elastigirl who is working solo this time. Especially in the opening sequence, we see how each character’s skills complement the others’. If Finding Dory is the bar for “sequels to Pixar movies that didn’t need sequels,” then Incredibles 2 leaps over that bar.

14. Chappaquiddick (John Curran)- "We need to tell the truth. Or at least our version of it."

After the Kennedy Curse claimed JFK Jr., it seemed as if the culture reached a saturation point with Kennedy coverage. Aside from the occasional "Look who's dating Taylor Swift," we gave them their space. Who would have thought that twenty years later would be the perfect time to dust off the coldest case in the dossier?

See, now that we're having a national conversation about who gets the breaks, there's a little bit of extra weight lent to a scene of Ted Kennedy waiting for a sheriff he summoned as he drafts a statement at that absent sheriff's desk. A sheriff who then helps Kennedy to escape through a backdoor lest he answer any untoward question about his manslaughter. The film is delivered with an even pitch--especially the Jason Clarke performance that could have been overdone--but it makes no mistake about its real subject: privilege.

The attempts to keep Kennedy safe become more brazen as the film goes on, and each dodged consequence--getting Teddy's driver's license renewed on the low, for example--is balanced by Ed Helms's desperate performance as a voice of integrity. In all of the best tragedies, we know what's going to happen in the end. All along, the Kennedy Curse was that they are not like the rest of us.

13. Love, Simon (Greg Berlanti)- Can we all agree that an anonymous gossip web site for a high school is a bad idea? And that, though the film doesn't pursue this angle, the vice principal is the one maintaining it?

This propulsive, observant, and witty movie is an outright pleasure from beginning to end. Hocking spitballs at its PG-13 rating, its greatest strengths are having the courage to get dark and having the wisdom to give every supporting character his or her own moment.