#just remember that its faith not fact and there are zero issues

[skin-slave]

I know that there are those who claim to never engage with faith (chosen belief in literally anything that isn't an established fact). I cannot discount that possibility. However, ime, ppl just don't recognize when they're doing it.

Things like suspending disbelief for entertainment, or thinking that their dog understands that they're going thru a breakup, or that honoring a deceased person's wishes matters to that person, or that anyone will beat a statistical disadvantage, or that spinosaurus was a wading predator... None of that is factual. It's faith.

Faith is not being mistaken about a fact. It's knowing that something has not been shown to be fact, and choosing to hold it to be true. It's not a replacement for evidence-based belief. It's also not inferior to evidence-based belief. It's a separate thing that serves a separate purpose.

To the part that matters...

As soon as we start thinking we're too X for Y, we make ourselves vulnerable to Y. If I'm sure I'm too careful/smart/grown-up/logical to ever engage with faith, I'm not examining my beliefs. I'm not actively maintaining perspective. I'm not thinking about it. I don't need to. I'm not like that.

That's a huge blind spot, begging to be exploited. And exploiting blind spots is a career for some ppl. The way we protect ourselves is to recognize that none of us are too X for Y, and pay attention.

humans need a healthy dose of believing in benign bullshit. four leaf clovers. salt over the shoulder. if you don’t let it out in little ways it builds up inside of you where it rots until you join qanon.

[tumblingxelian]

So, I am going to try and address this in good faith but I think there's a lot of misunderstanding or inaccurate readings of the shows canon.

Off the cuff, thw main cast spends most of their time either around explicitly disarmed civilians (Mantle) places so secure that having soldiers stationed everywhere would be pointless (Atlas, Vale) or cut off from the main bastions of society (Travelling Remnant).

In essence. its integral to remember RWBY is not a show with an obscene budget, and showing all the defenses, all the defenders, all the everything is not a good use of time unless it directly serves the story.

What's more, basically all the additional material serves to reinforce that there are more defenses than what we see or hear about in the show.

The Grimm Campaign we're shown that Mistral has anti aircraft guns, supersonic fighter/bomber aircraft and standard issue Lotus Tanks even in remote cities like Kuchinashi. RWBY Grimm Eclipse shows us just some of the defenses outside the walls with massive gun turrets. World of Remnant Between Kingdoms reinforces this as well. Plus we know that bombs & other unseen weapons were deployed on Monstra in V8 based on dialogue.

But again, RWBY doesn't have an infinite budget, if its not directly relevant or of lesser relevance than other factors we aren't going to see it .

This isn't putting no thought in, this is the writers trusting in their audience to put the pieces together without hand holding.

Moving on from that, I do feel its worth noting that we don't explicitly know if there's zero military in other nations. Though it wouldn't bother me given I think it makes a lot of sense actually for the following reasons.

1: Armies are controlled by the state or generals, both of whom can and will use soldiers for their own personal goals.

2: Military training evidently doesn't allow one to make highly skilled and powerful Aura users and get rank & file soldiers. Which is why entire platoons are needed just to bother moderately large Grimm that students can kill easily.

3: The Great War was a nightmarish borderline apocalyptic loss of life that likely fucked every nation over population wise for a generation and all for nothing. Armies are tools of conquest, not a worthwhile means of fighting the Grimm, something that was also demonstrated in Atlas when the Fleets bombing the Grimm failed to do real damage. Soldiers can support elite fighters, they cannot replace them.

4: The King who instituted the policies could easily have made himself world dictator for life, he had the power to do this.

5: Pretty sure the White Fang qualifies as the Kuo Kuana military given they are allowed to operate there and have representation and connection with the local government.

However, this all assumes you two are even correct, as matter stand this is what has been said on the matter of Remnants military:

While most kingdoms only call on its citizens to serve when needed, others find it important to be... prepared. He would teach the world to fight, so long as we promised to fight for ourselves and never against ourselves. Ironwood: How about the world's strongest military power?

This is all that's been officially said about it and only the first one really indicates Atlas as being exclusively military having. Even then there's more than enough nuance in language to assume that this just means the other kingdoms don't utilize armies. It likely just means that they utilize an army reserves system as opposed to Atlas's Standing Army system.

A system I might add which is bloated, the only thing the government cared about spending money on, left Mantle a barely defended and dilapidated and consistently proved to not be half as useful as the people trumpeting it claimed it to be. All of which aligns with the fact Atlas is explicitly, by the creators own words, based on the USAs.

Outside of that first statement, the second only emphasizes the fact that armies are tools of state conflict, hence a shift towards a system less reliant on what politicians wants. While Ironwoood's statement emphasizes only that Atlas has the "strongest" military, not that it is the only military.

Long story short, I think you're both being more than a little unfair.

I try not to think too hard about RWBY's worldbuilding (bcs frankly I'm not sure even CRWBY thought too much about it outside of the bare minimum) but one thing that'll never sit right with me is how... disarmed, the nations are. In a world where monsters roam the countryside freely and are a constant danger, relying on a small class of specialists to deal with everything is frankly kinda stupid. Atlas being the only Kingdom with a large standing army doesn't make sense no matter how much suspend your disbelief.

[clowniconography]

Someone told me that there were 2 satanic temples and one of them was kind of wack but the other was cool

omg thank you for giving me an excuse to talk about this!! also sorry in advance for the long ass two part explanation but satanism is definitely becoming a new hyperfixation for me and you asked for it soooo (TL;DR at the end for your reading leisure).

ok so the two most well known satanic organizations are the satanic temple and the church of satan and most likely these r the ones you were told about. like I said I actually ended up having to cut this post into two parts because it ended up being so long so here's part one:

1.) the satanic temple

the satanic temple was founded in 2012 by lucien greaves and another guy who doesn't matter (jk his name is malcolm jarry and he's actually a musician but he's not really associated with the temple anymore) and they're probably the "cool" church out of the two. this is the one that's always doing all that cool pro-choice and pro separation of church and state activism you're always hearing about, as well as famously performing a pink mass to posthumously turn the dead mother of the founder of the westboro baptist church into a lesbian for eternity. While in general I agree with a lot of the positions that the satanic temple holds, and i think their activism and the way they intentionally try to make fundies mad is very cool, i have a few issues with them.

first of all, they are basically an athiest activist group in a satanist hat. They espouse basically zero spiritual beliefs related to actual satanism and are described on wikipedia as a "nontheistic religion". on their website they generally use a horribly patronising "we're not one of those silly superstitious religions that actually believes in our diety" tone in regards to religion which I honestly find so gross. I understand that they use satanism specifically to draw attention to themselves and draw the ire of fundamentalist christians, and as I said I can definitely respect that. however I personally am not an athiest and I think its kind of dumb to do all that just to be a bunch of basic ass athiests who happen to have a shared value system at the end of the day, especially since there are a lot of other very real religions that actually have pro life and anti child abuse messages that are already part of their religious teachings. So, i'm not necessarily going to get mad at anyone for being a member of this particular satanist group but i'm not a big fan.

my second issue is named lucien greaves. he's the one of the two founders who's the most publicly associated with the temple and acts as its spokesperson. he is a very controversial figure. I don't really have much else to elaborate on except that I just kind of think he's a dick. I already hinted at this a little bit in this post but the fact that the satanic temple was founded so recently by someone I like so little means that I, personally, can't in good faith separate the ideology of the temple from greaves' own shittiness (for example, based on the way he talks in interviews im pretty sure a lot of the anti-spiritualism sentiment comes from him). remember the pink mass I mentioned earlier? well, if you clicked that link you'd know that during the ceremony (which otherwise included two same-sex couples kissing over the grave which is fine and harmless obviously) greaves took out his penis and laid it on top of the gravestone???????? Pretty much every article and video i've seen mention this part has treated it like a funny haha moment but to me it comes off as......incredibly unnecessary and disrespectful overkill. So, yeah, I don't like him much, but once again I don't really fault anyone who decides to support the temple for activism reasons.

[posi-pan]

Is it possible to get some reassurance about identifying as pan. I get so manny hate asks about it that it’s starting to make me think I should call myself bi just to get them off my back...

of course! i don’t know if the kind of reassurance you’re looking for is the nice words positivity kind, or the facts/history to debunk hate kind. but i’ll do both just to cover my bases.

identifying as pan does not harm anyone. the words people call themselves in good faith do not affect or threaten anyone else. someone being hurt by the problematic explanations other people give for pan is not on you or the pan identity, it’s solely on those individuals.

you are not responsible for anyone other than yourself, and if you’re just labeling your identity in a way that makes sense to you and feels right for you and it’s what you’re comfortable with, then you have nothing to worry about.

every queer group has queerphobes, not just the pan community, so anyone zeroing in on biphobes or transphobes in the pan community, while conveniently ignoring the same in other communities or the issues in their own community, because they want to generalize us and make us look disproportionately bad, is not operating in good faith.

pan is not biphobic or transphobic. like i said before, individuals are the issue, not the community the belong to or the label they use. the origins of pan are not biphobic or transphobic. before it sort of gained ground and started becoming an identity on its own in the ‘90s/’00s, pan simply existed within the bi community as an alternative mspec label; along with other labels such as polysexual and omnisexual.

this “feud” between pan and bi is entirely fabricated by people who want to divide the community. are there biphobic pans and panphobic bis? of course, they’ve bought into the idea that these two identities and communities are at war with each other and all the misinformation and lies that are spread to maintain that idea. but history tells a completely different story. and even now when you look most bi organizations and activists, the story there is not what this online “discourse” would have you believe.

i know it’s stressful and hurtful and at times scary, but it’s important to remember that the people who spread hatred and lies online in order to divide or homogenize the community, no matter how loud they might be or how many it seems there are, they are a small group that does not reflect the greater community.

this type of online “discourse” kicks up every so often with a new identity that people think will be an easy target because it’s less known or less visible or less understood or already less accepted. pan is just the latest one. and it’s also important to reminder yourself that nothing panphobes say about pan is true. literally nothing. everything they’ve claimed has been debunked.

so again. identifying as pan isn’t hurting anyone. pan itself isn’t hurting one. it’s a perfectly valid, valuable identity label. not only because we as individuals decide what labels we want to use and give them meaning based on our personal feelings and experiences, because that’s how identity labels work (they’re personal, not universal or prescriptive), but also because history and facts back this up.

if you’re interested, i have a resources page that has links to my reference tag, the pansexual timeline i made, the history of the bi community accepting alternative mspec labels i put together, some pan inclusive queer research and pan statistics. i also have a faq page that debunks a lot of the things panphobes say and includes links to further read up on the topics.

i hope this helps, and i hope you stick to the label that you actually want to use and feel comfortable with and represented by, because everyone has that right and we shouldn’t be bullied or shamed or scared out of that. 💜💜

[oceanspray5]

Just wanted to say that as a Muslim woman, I too agree with your critic of that upcoming French movie about Cuties. I get that it’s about her own story, and I truly respect that, but is so frustrating and tiring that this is the only trope we see about Muslims in the West, that it’s always, always Islam at fault. Hardly ever about the positive experiences that many of us have as well.

Thank you! I’m so glad to hear you agree with me. I knew many people were frustrated but there were also people coming in defense of the movie and that simply isn’t it! They’re also bringing race into the mix and I’m literally so confused like...NO? The fact that the director is a black woman has ZERO ZIP NADA to do with the fact the movie is problematic and very very islamophobic. I would be criticizing it the same if a white Muslim director had created it. My issue is that its a Muslim director behaving no better and coming up with an awful story that once again victimizes Muslims as if we’re oppressed and in need of saving from white people!

Its true that Hollywood Executives are the MAIN reason to blame behind these pathetic excuse of representations we get in mainstream media but the fact of the matter is, we can blame them but the blame won’t stick because they’ll always have the ‘We aren’t Muslim so we didn’t know’ excuse. This time a Muslim director had a chance to create a film to stream on a widely used platform which is something so few Muslim actors get a chance to do let alone directors and producers!

Instead of maybe showing the struggle of a Muslim girl in France with the Hijab Ban restrricting her freedom of choice, she did what every other white male Hollywood non Muslim exec did and the fact that she’s Muslim doesn’t excuse her because it doesn’t excuse the white males either.

If the director didn’t want to add a positive storyline, she always had the option of excluding any religious plotline altogether. Why must religion be relevant and important to frame the message of the movie? All it does is make Islam and Muslim parents abusive villains when that is not the case for the majority even if it is for the minority. If you remove Islam, the story remains the same and the ‘battling hypersexuality’ part of the story takes center stage with no unnecessary religious debate mixed in!

I am furious to no end and I want to scream and shout at everyone trying to justify this action or trying to defend this decision. I’ve had more than enough of being labeled as oppressed and I realize that a lot of people are held victim to the cultural patriarchy but Islam has nothing to do with that. It’s a religion! Not a culture! And everything oppressive is a byproduct of culture and yet its always Islam getting the blame! 

Why must these inaccurate stories be told? Why can’t the stories with supportive parents, with Muslims leaning on each other for help, with asking Allah SWT for strength and help and gaining success through their faith be told? Those are the stories of the majority and yet only the negative stories are told and rehashed the same way every time.

It’s pandering, pure and simple to predominantly white Islamophobic audiences. And at the end of the day, no one will remember this movie for being ‘anti-hypersexual’. It will be remembered as just another movie that stereotypes Islam and people will applaud the little Muslim girl’s ‘victory’ where she escapes her parents making them the villains instead of the society that sexualizes them. If the director wanted to focus on the horrors of hypersexualization, she should have left religion out of it completely.

I have refused to watch any and all content in Western media because of the explicit fact that I loathe seeing myself misrepresented on screen and my hijab and my choice and the reasons behind why I wear it thrown away and disrespected in such a way. The fact that this movie is directed by a Muslim woman is the absolute last straw.

I refuse to watch this movie. I have said it before and I’ll say it again. A trailer is what ‘sells’ the movie to an audience. The trailer for Cuties disrespected me and hijabi Muslim girls all around the world for the nth time. It has only convinced me that it is worth boycotting and forgetting it ever exists. It has only led me to hoping it bombs and that no one remembers it and uses it to hate Muslims and see Muslim women as victims because most of the time we are NOT. 

I do hope the director stops getting death threats cuz she doesn’t deserve those but I hope she learns to not meddle with religion unless she wants to undo the damage the Western industry has already caused.

One can criticize something only if the opposition also exists to make an argument and currently there is none. The director has lost my respect completely. She may have had a negative experience growing up and that is truly tragic. But that doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to accept or be happy about the story she’s telling because at this point she only seems to be adding Islam to villiainize it, especially since the movie could have worked just as well without any religion at all.

Sorry... I went on a little tangent there again. I’ve just been fuming since yesterday so its taking a while to get all the frustration out. I’m really glad you voiced the fact that you agree with me and that the majority of Muslims I’ve seen are also angry about this film for the exact same reasons as it once again fails to do justice to our experience and our faith.

I pray Allah SWT gives us the opportunity to see actual good mainstream representation soon that fixes peoples’ negative perceptions about Islam and Muslim families instead of us having to silently fume through more and more awful caricatures of Islam and Muslims that these people in the industry make as an obvious cash grab. Ameen.

[ordinaryschmuck]

Top 20 BEST Animated Series of the 2010s-4th Place

To anyone who plans on making a reboot of their favorite show in the future, you might want to take notes on this next pick. Because if you ask me, this next series that I'm going to talk about is the best example of how to do a reboot properly.

#4-Ducktales (2017-2021)

The Plot: Scrooge McDuck is the richest duck in the world, who made it big by also being one of the greatest adventurers of all time...ten years ago. Sadly, after an unfortunate accident with the family, Scrooge is forced to live the life of a normal businessman-er-duck. Up until Donald Duck asks Scrooge to watch over his nephews: Huey, Dewey, and Louie. What starts off as a single day of babysitting soon turns into a life of adventure as Scrooge gets back into the adventuring spirit to show his new family what the world really has to offer.

Now I want to make one thing clear: As of the moment of me writing this review, I have seen a total of zero episodes of the original Ducktales. That being said, despite my limited knowledge of the series, I still think it’s fair of me to point out how this is hands down the best reboot as of late (and I’ll explain more as to why that is later). And besides, from what I’ve heard from fans who have watched the original, Ducktales (2017) is a pretty faithful adaptation of the beloved franchise. The reason is that I believe this show remembers the two most important rules of making a reboot.

The first rule of a reboot is to try something new while still being faithful to the source material. Doing something like that is simple as a writer just needs to keep what the fans love and change what they hated. And trust me when I say that the writers of Ducktales (2017) knows how to do just that. For the most part, the show is about a family going on crazy globe-trotting adventures while still learning that family is the best adventure of all, much like the original. As for the characters, most of them keep their fun personalities. Scrooge is still a stingy miser with the heart for adventure, Launchpad is still the lovable idiot who can’t fly a plane, and Donald Duck still remains the one who gets stuck with all the bad luck. Then some characters have their personalities/roles revamped into something that improves upon the original. The best example is Fenton, who is still the wannabe superhero but is now a scientist in this show, wherein the old one was just Scrooge’s accountant. This way, both the hero and the man-DUCK-who’s behind the mask are equally capable of saving the day. There’s also Mrs. Beakley, who was originally a nanny that nagged Scrooge’s ear off for putting the kids in danger. In the reboot, she’s treated more as the anchor of reality to the more oddball characters, who also used to be a kick-butt super spy in her younger years. It is still the same role, but a different interpretation.

Now, some characters receive grand changes to their original personalities. But from what I’ve heard, those changes are made for the better. And there are no characters that need it more than the children. More specifically, Huey, Dewey, and Louie. This show does something that I’m eternally grateful for, and that’s giving each of these three their own distinct personalities and quirks. For years I couldn’t for the life of me tell the triplets apart. They had the same design, the same voice, the same personality, and the only difference people had to go off of are their different colors (which really didn’t do much to help). Here, they have different designs, voices, and now defining character traits for each of them. Huey is the smart and responsible boy scout, Dewey is the annoying attention seeker, and Louie is the best character in the entire show, and I WILL FREAKING FIGHT YOU ON THAT! And let us not forget the most appreciated change: Webby. From what I’ve heard, fans hated the original Webby, as she was nothing more than just the stereotypical girl of the group. Here, she’s given an actual personality and a fun one to boot. Webby is the ecstatic thrill-seeking adventurer who is skilled in combat training (thanks to her grandma) and is (of course) a socially awkward girl who wants to make friends. Like I said, this show took the idea that the fans hated and changed it into something that they’ll love. Which makes sense why the writers mastered this because they themselves are real fans of the show.

It is clear how much the writers are fans of the Ducktales franchise as they filled Ducktales (2017) with many references. And not just references to the original series but also references to the classic comics by Carl Barks and even the NES video game from the 1980s (seriously, this show will make you feel things about the “Moon Theme” you wouldn’t think was possible!). Even the show’s animation seems to be a homage to both the cartoon and comics. Not only do the characters and backgrounds have a more comic book style to them, but the characters also work on a mix of realistic and cartoony logic. And let me just say, it is refreshing to see characters in a Disney show have cartoon logic to them since Wander Over Yonder got canceled. And it’s not just Ducktales that the series reference, but even classic Disney movies (of course) and other shows in the Disney Afternoon lineup. And when it comes to these references, it’s more than just a subtle wink to the fans. The writers actually go out of their way to write a story around these beloved characters, so people who don’t get the joke won’t be one-hundred percent lost. For instance, without giving anything away, the writers found a brilliant way to reintroduce Darkwing Duck in this universe that feels right for this famous character. And if you ask me personally, these are the best ways to handle references for a reboot. Make them work within the story, even if you don’t fully get the joke.

This brings me to the second most important rule of a reboot: Make a quality product even though it is based on something else. Let us pretend that the original never existed. Would Ducktales (2017) still be as good as it is now? Personally, as a person who has never seen the original, I think it is.

This is another show that mixes slice of life episodes with adventure ones, similar to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. And just like Friendship is Magic, both are equally interesting because the characters themselves make them so. No matter what situation the Duck Family are in, the audience will care about it because the characters care about it. In fact, I think Ducktales (2017) handles the mix of slice of life and adventure much better than Friendship is Magic. In MLP: FiM, the adventure-based episodes force the characters to stick to their simple personality traits to move the story forward, and character-based ones help them grow. In Ducktales (2017), because the characters regularly go on adventures, they grow as characters no matter the situation. For example, my favorite episode is “The Great Dime Chase” where the main plot is Louie finding Scrooge’s #1 dime after accidentally spending it. While in that same episode, Dewey and Webby try to solve a mystery around the boys’ mom. We get a great lesson about the importance of hard work and a fascinating plot of an overarching mystery within the season, all taking place within the same episode. Both are interesting, neither feels as though it overshadows the other, and the characters develop along the way.

Another thing this show mixes well is comedy and drama. A lot of shows recently tried way too hard to find that perfect mix. Ducktales (2017) is one of the few examples that nails it. The comedy is hilarious, the drama is endearing, and neither feels like it’s prioritized over the other. The show starts off with this mix as well, where others that I’ve talked about seem to start off as purely comedic only to take themselves more seriously later on. That isn’t entirely a bad thing, but I feel as though Ducktales (2017) is the best way to go about the method. That way, fans won’t be complaining about how much “better” the show used to be in its first batch of episodes, much like Star V.S. the Forces of Evil.

Unfortunately, while I recommend this show, it’s not without its fair share of issues. Or rather, issue, as there really is only one problem I have with it. And that problem can be summed up with one name: Dewey Duck. For the most part, I dislike Dewy. Because he’s nothing more than a Ben Schwarts character. No disrespect to Ben Schwarts himself, but lately, it feels as though he only plays the one character from time to time: The egotistical attention seeker slowly and surely learning to be a better person who realizes that not everything is about him. That’s the character he plays in both Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), and it’s the character he plays here. And the thing about these characters is that they’re not as lovable as Ben Schwarts thinks they sound. In fact (and, again, I mean no disrespect to the actor. I’m sure he’s a lovely person in real life), every single one of these characters comes off as kind of annoying rather than as the lovable rapscallions I’m sure they’re meant to be. However, there is one thing worth mentioning about Dewey. While he’s portrayed as annoying when used for comedy, Dewey is surprisingly a compelling character when used for drama. The thing is, he’s rarely used for dramatic moments and is meant as a source of comedy. Hence why I said I disliked him for the most part.

Other than that, there aren’t really that many problems with the show. Well, there are, but they’re mostly nitpicks that the series more than makes up for. Is it weird that the kids are voiced by adults? Yes, but the actors do a great job at being sincere and have great comedic timing than any kid could have. Are there changes to characters that fans might not enjoy? Probably, but I have yet to have seen anyone that has annoyed me as much as Dewey has. Are the villains just evil for the sake of being evil? Yes, but that’s not really a big deal. In fact, a villain doesn’t need a heartbreaking backstory as to why they’ve become so evil. They just need to have a great personality that’s fun to watch, which every villain in the show has (aside from season two’s antagonist who’s basically a Disney surprise villain. And I hate them with a fiery passion). Does it feel as though the show suffers from “too many characters” syndrome? It sometimes does, but each character has such a fun and unique personality that I find it hard to forget most of them.

So really, Ducktales (2017) is the best reboot in recent memory. This is crazy, seeing as how lately it feels as though Disney doesn’t even know how to properly reboot their own movies to save their lives. This is why I feel as though people should take notes on what Ducktales (2017) does if they ever feel like rebooting something they loved as a kid. Because this is more than just a retelling of the same story that people know by heart. This is a fantastic show with even better characters, stories, and tone. Whether you’ve been a fan since the beginning, or a part of the new generation of viewers, odds are you’ll be screaming Whoo-Ooo with every episode.

(Also, a word of warning to those who haven’t watched the show yet: Beware the theme song. Trust me when I say it’ll be stuck in your head until the day you die)

[muwitch]

Why the Fullbringer Arc is an important plot milestone - 2

the continuation of this post and I’m bak on my bullshit~ remember my brain will jump to things

also CFYOW spoilers

so part 2/?

key figures and themes of the arc

So last time I said that ppl disliked the majority of new characters because, as opposing to the ones we grew familiar with, the arc was differently paced and so we didn’t have time at large to form some sort of solid connection to them.

And here the magic happens, because we do not have time to get attached to the characters and they seem to be faded against the background of all the others.

But apart from COMPARISON Fullbringers are quite an independent unit that focuses not on how much reiatsu you have, but on skill

In the Can't fear your own world novel the origin of Fullbringer power is revealed and it’s shown how actually universally badass those powers are, take Tsukishima for example, who grows a tree in a second to ward off lightning, simply adding himself to the past. Atomic.

For living people even just getting close to the level of those with whom they fought (three captains and three leutenants) and not dying in the first moment (except u Giriko) is a great achievement. For people who are not Ichigo Kurosaki with a family tree rivaling GoT of course. 

There is another important motive associated with fullbringers, which I mentioned above, and this is LONELINESS. And it's served so brilliantly that I'm going to die now.

If you look and read carefully, it becomes clear that even the fullbringers gathered together are unusually, exasperately lonely. (See the cover? They reach out but never do truly connect) This is the curse of their power. This is their main weakness. This is their unusual humanity and kinship with the Hollows.

This is also why, but that’s my guess, their whole presentation is very lacking, to show how they fall out of everyday life and proper sozialising, so even we, as readers, cannot properly connect to them. Same reach out, but not hold symbolism. Or I am giving too much credit, we just don’t know?

Even the one who has assembled the whole group, Ginjo, is an even lonelier person who has terrible trust issues, who survived betrayal and persecution, and everything that he once believed in was set upside down. And even knowing what kind of person he is, fullbringers, driven by loneliness, followed him. (Though, we must admit, he weilds his words well and rolls +20 on persuation)

Because, although for a short time, he helped them to bear the burden of this loneliness.

Needless to say, the entire initial situation with OG fullbringers happened not only bc of some noble meddling, but also due to the fact that Ginjo gathered people to TAKE POWER FROM THEM SO THEY COULD LIVE A NORMAL LIFE

Ironically enough, each Fullbringer posesses a piece of SOUL KING, which is the source of their power and lures Hollows to pregnant mothers, which is such an important piece of information it makes me mad it was only explained in CFYOW. 

Although it is understandable why Kubo chose not to focus on it during the arc. My take is he planned to show the importance of Fullbringers and their origins during TYBW, but we all know it didn’t happen.

Another common theme that follows from the previous two is PTSD, which unites the characters and key figures of the arc, and the paths of experiencing trauma constitute another conflict, where Ichigo overcomes it through friends and the return of strength and motivation, as opposed to Ginjo, who choses destuctive way to handle his own trauma.

In short flashbacks shown during “Pray for Predators” chapters, we can also clearly see PSTD practically in every person’s past. Each of Fullbringers go about it differenly, most proactive being probably Riruka and most reactive being Tsukishima and Ginjo. Which is also symbolically shown that people, who can go own with their lives and finally integrate into society stay alive. Those, who cannot, go to SS and are set into new path by more drastic measures.

I will surely attribute to the pluses how Kubo shows Ichigo's PTSD, literally in 3-4 chapters showing how he cannot, like Remarque's hero, settle in peacetime, because he constantly catches triggers, for example with his substitute badge.

Through Ichigo’s thoughts is shown how he merged with his position as a substitute shinigami and constantly thinks in categories that are not very applicable to his normal life, which he seemed to have dreamed of for 16 years And now he actually got it, but absolutely does not know what to do with it.

Kubo skillfully fuels PTSD and Ichigo's anxiety which is why he is being swayed by Ginjo's words correctly spoken at the right time.

 Example: Karin speaks of his brother, they say he always fought to protect  Ginjo fuels Ichigo’s doubt , saying he must act to protect his family

Accordingly, the theme approaches the climax for a push into the plot at the time of the attack on Ishida, Ichigo gets a punch in the gut twice: first from Ishida himself, who, with his unwillingness to tell things, pokes Ichigo into his helplessness and excludes him from the circle of trust, which IS the last blow 

And then from Ishida's father, who by his behavior shows that Ichigo's efficiency now amounts to zero, so much so that he cannot even protect Orihime while she walks home, which is why he runs away in frustrated feelings, realizing the message. So this intro is absolutely veritable and ingenious.

And so that you understand how desperate Ichigo is, if not yet, then here is a panel where FATTEST visual forshadowing happens. And here is an absolutely genius moment to understand that Ichigo is not a child but a teenager with all that it implies

He may be battle-hardened, but this is a 17-year-old living boy with trust issues, and if we remember that through his manager's lips we are given a direct hint that Ichigo is still immature in a way, so the meaning of this arc as a stage of Ishigo's psychological maturation becomes clearer.

Just look at the face he has when Ginjo promises to return his powers (not to mention the hysterics after that) Is this a healthy person's face?

And here my hands are literally itching to start talking about Ginjo, because to give an antihero who, in addition, will have a much closer dynamics with Ichi than Urahara, plus for the duration of the arc  will act as a mentor and father figure, this is just genius. Don’t @ me.

But the next plus, which will then bring us further, and this is THE Forshadowing 

Everywhere, just everywhere, starting from the very first pages.

And Kubo still confuses us in the course of the narrative, but my god, when you re-read, Easter eggs are crammed almost in every chapter and I think its beautiful. Both verbal (Ginjo is such a bad actor that he has to change his memory badumts) and visual

The plus that I mentioned earlier is 100% more lively dynamics between Ginjo and Ichi, because both are people and in fact, there is much more than it may seem at first, that brings both together. And the friendly connection that they establish with each other in this arc still not 100% false placeholder. (Which is easily spotted by the way Ginjo adresses Ichigo through the arc especially last chapters). 

And at the same time, they are in many ways the antonyms of each other, in age, color scheme, design, even names and also in what gives them motivation, in how they react to this or that event. For example, Ichigo is quite an emotional guy and puts his soul into everything, so to speak, then Ginjo, for example

Plus, the latter is not only skillful manipulator, but also embittered. And through such contrast, with generally the same input data, Kubo shows us that there is always a different path, leading to the topic choice, and where each specific one can lead a character.

Which absolutely doesn’t stop Ichigo from familirizing himself right off the bat and the two of them have comedy gold moments from the start. It is more lively, than being set against 300+ y.o. Urahara (whom I love as a character).

And, cross my heart Isshin is a great character, but he’s got that father of the year award, and Urahara can only give like a little itsy bitsy of information at a time only if it benefits him or a bigger picture, so the mentor’s role goes to Ginjo, which is well earned as he is technically the First Substitute. 

Ginjo is a mentor, a guide, and the main antagonist of the arc, which in itself is an unexpected and interesting combination within the framework of  Bleach. Here is a living example, in the moment of training he can go so far as to help Ichigo overcome his psychological barrier by simply and cruelly breaking him.

Which he does in the most painful way, through the trauma and inability of Ichigo to protect his loved ones. And from the reaction of the latter, childish and naive, his immaturity can be clearly seen (see the previous points). Although we do not know this yet, Ginjo is constantly trying to teach Ichigo one lesson that he himself learned the hard way. 

Combining this with such an important praise for a teenager and faith in Ighigo’s powers, which Ichigo was deprived of for 17 months as soon as he lost his powers as a shinigami ( all relatives are trying to isolate him from this, no one believes that he can and is able to stand up for him). This is another plus of the arc, namely the whole depth of the betrayal that Ichigo experiences when the cards are revealed.

Maybe the quincy arc would go completely differently, if Ichigo felt Ishida's betrayal or reacted to the truth about his mother in a different way. Did Ginjo not temper/prepare Ichigo in the way he did, did he involuntary not strengthen Ichi internally... Who knows how Bleach would end in general.

 This is to the question of the importance of this arc yes 

P.S  Strengthening the body also benefited Ichigo.Friendly reminder that he fights in his physical body for the entire arc except the end.

And the training episode immediately appears in a different light, right? 

And in my next hot take I will focus on another really important thing which is salvation and my own bitterness of why didn’t Kubo explore the whole SS thing and now we have to fee ourselves

[lokisasylum]

Map of the Soul: 7 Album - First listen review

[I won’t bother reviewing the ones from PERSONA that were added, since I already did a post for Persona when it came out. Only the new songs]

#1. Interlude: SHADOW

WOW.... just when you thought the first version hit hard/differently. The extended version comes in to choke-slam you against the wall.

#2.  Black Swan

Our new Royal to take a spot in the throne of power along with Blood Sweat & Tears, Spring Day, Fake Love, and Outro: TEAR.

Do we even need to add more additional to what we’ve been saying since its release? As an artist, the lyrics still pull at my heart strings the same way they did the first time I heard it. Especially the verse that says:

‘If this can no longer resonate No longer make my heart vibrate Then like this may be how I die my first death But what if that moment’s right now Right now .’

This verse can be applied to ANY time we loose faith in ourselves or have to give up on a dream/passion and how that separation slowly kills us inside.

#3. Filter (Jimin’s solo)

....Not gonna lie, this song gives me TRUST ISSUES just because its Jimin LOL!

‘Cause I remember seeing & hearing Serendipity for the first time and it was such a lovely melody and the lyrics were so soothing like a lullaby expressing Love in its purest form.

But then you see the choreo and it all went Magic Mike SO FAST X”D.

Because on one hand the lyrics (at first glance) can be interpreted as Jimin seeing himself through Army’s eyes. How WE see his “Duality” - cute/adorable/lovely one minute and then sensual/tantalizing the next.

That boring expression of yours, boring feet Please look at me now Put down your phone, don’t even think about turning your head Let me know your type You can choose and use me yeah

Oh I cover your eyes with my hand Oh go towards the secret I’ll take you to a brand new world Yeah open your closed eyes now go!

Mix the colors of the palette, pick your filter Which me do you want? The one who’s going to change your world, I’m your filter Cover it over your heart

(Ok) How is it, do you feel it a bit? Is it still not enough? (Yes) Girl you have your chance I can be your Genie How ’bout Aladdin? I’ll become anything [for you] You can choose and use me yeah

That first part really does sound like how he would accommodating his “Persona” to make us happy.  And every-time something he does isn’t enough he changes again. 

Of course this doesn’t have to mean what he’s doing in the present, “Filter” could be just like “Lie” which spoke of his past-self and how he used to blame himself for the group’s failures. So maybe he’s expressing how’s he’s had to change himself throughout the years to please the fans as long as they understood and accepted who HE REALLY IS beyond the Idol persona.

Or y’know, this is just a very sexy number he wanted to try and shy away from his comfort zone XD. And I’ll bet all my money that the choreo’s gonna be SEXY AF and WE AIN’T READY FOR IT.

P.S. that moment when the music stops and he goes: “OKAY.” WITH HIS SEXY DEEP AF VOICE, JESUS!!!!

#4. My Time (Jungkook’s solo)

Kook’s solo not only reminded me heavily of “Begin”, but it also sounds like what “Decalcomania” should’ve been if he had released the full version.

He’s seeing himself not as an Idol, but not quite as Jeon Jeongguk either.

Like he’s just standing in the middle watching his two selves, his two Personas and trying to find which one is his. Which reality he is living in--or should be living in. Which part of his life belongs to his “normal/non Idol self” and which one is part of the mask/Idol self he puts up for the fans.

And yes, you know, yes. you know Oh I can’t call ya, I can’t touch ya Oh I can’t Let me know Can I someday find my time? Finna find my time Someday finna find my time 

This verse sounds like he’s still experiencing that loneliness that all artists experience during stardom very often (Note on how in Shadow Yoongi is the one who says: “Nobody ever told me how lonely it is up here.” ). Like how he sometimes wishes he could tell someone, but can’t?

#5. Louder than bombs

All rise for our National Anthem!

If Shadow hit hard while choke slamming you. Then this song is the overkill.

The vocals are insane, and the lyrics mixed with the music tell one story through two points of view. Actor in the spotlight and Actor as a Spectator.

This is BTS telling us how people view them and having to keep their emotions in check in the face of criticism from general audience and even antis, versus how they truly feel inside and behind close doors.

Break, unwind, let it out, breathe out, stand up, pray for better days and keep moving.

#6. ON

THIS👏SONG👏FUCKING👏SLAPS👏PERIOD👏!

The energy, the rap line, the vocal line, the CRAZY FOOTWORK AND INSANE CHOREO.

THE JIKOOK NIP-SLIPS

THE BODY ROLLS

THE TATTOOS---

THE SUBTLE “GO FUCK YOURSELF!”

I LOVED IT and it gave me such a strong throwback to NOT TODAY.

#7. UGH!

This is CYPHER_pt3 Killer, CYPHER pt. 4, TEAR & DDAENG’s lovechild.

This song is the Rap Line going like: “THESE MOTHERFUCKERS WANTED TO TRY ME (AGAIN) AND IMMA GIVE THESE BITCHES A CYPHER.

BITCHES LOVE CYPHERS.”

#8. 00.00 (Zero o’ Clock)

When I saw that we were having another Vocal Line unit song the first thing I kept praying for was: “PLEASE don’t let this be another Truth Untold...”

Because I absolutely HATED the hypocrisy that came out of this fandom ESPECIALLY the toxic Solo Stans who did nothing but hype up their faves while shitting on other members (I will never forgive those who went so far as to defame and even act as if Jimin wasn’t part of the Vocal Line, ya’ll are still trash for that).

But I gotta say Zero o’ Clock was totally something I can see them enjoying while performing. Despite, of course, the song talking about hardships and finding a new way to be happy throughout the tough times even when you don’t feel like smiling.

I liked it, the vibes are a bit like “2,3″ and “Magic Shop”. A song for HEALING.

#9. Friends (VMIN sub-unit)

VMIN

SOULMATES FOREVER.

I also LOVED that they added the voice messages Jimin & Tae used to leave each other since their recording schedules were different and they didn’t see each other. That was such a nice touch. T_T

That little “Hello my Alien” .... that made me emotional. I kept imagining those mischievous kids running around playing pranks on the other members, like that one time they made Hobi fall off the chair and got chased by him XD ...*SOBS*

#10. Inner Child (Taehyung’s solo)

All the time I kept listening to this song I kept imagining Taehyung sitting in a park next to his Younger Self, like the way a father sits with their youngest son and talks to them about life. What to expect, what will change and how to go about these changes.

Really heartfelt song.

#11. Moon (Jin’s solo)

Just like Tae’s song, “Moon” makes me thinking of all those moments when Jin kept doing his “Heart Event” where he kept pulling out hearts out of nowhere. Each time more clever than the first, just to show ARMY how much he loves us.

I wonder all of a sudden, do you really know yourself? Do you know how pretty you are? I will orbit you I will stay by your side I will become your light All for you 

This part in particular makes me think of Jin up on stage staring at a stadium full of bright little stars that are in reality Army Bombs.

#12. Respect (Namgi Unit-song)

Fave verse from this song is:

“Re-spect”, it’s literally looking again and again Looking again and again and you’ll see faults But despite of that you still want to look

And the fact that you have two members of different ages (Hyung/Donsaeng), in a sort of conversation that goes back and forth between what the real meaning of “RESPECT” is and how people throw the word around, even those who speak ill of others behind their backs.

And were they talking in Satoori in the end??? That was nice XD

#13. We are Bulletproof: the Eternal

Throw stones at me We don’t fear anymore We are we are together bulletproof (Yeah we have you have you) Even if winter comes again Even if I’m blocked off, I will still walk We are we are forever bulletproof (Yeah we got to heaven)

#14. Outro: EGO (Jhope’s Solo)

EGO is Jhope and Jhope is EGO in all it’s glory.

Like “Just Dance” i like the contrast how in EGO he’s doing a back-track to his younger self, how he used to dance to prove something TO OTHERS, where as now that he’s older he just accepts that everything that happened is just part of life. So he’s a happier now doing what he loves BECAUSE he loves to dance.

#15. ON (feat. Sia)

....WHY?

Like... I don’t wanna be THAT BITCH and drag nobody, but like... was this really necessary?

I mean atleast Nicki Minage and Halsey had their own parts that they owned like the bad bitches that they are.

But like...

Yeah, Imma stop right here.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 12/4/20 – HALF BROTHERS, THE PROM, I’M YOUR WOMAN, BLACK BEAR, LUXOR, ANOTHER ROUND, ALL MY LIFE, NOMADLAND, MANK and Much More!

I hope everyone had an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving. Mine was relatively uneventful, and I only spent most of my time watching movies.  And holy shit, there are a LOT of movies out this week, but at least a few of them I’ve already seen and reviewed, and there are others that are actually pretty good, so I might as well get to it, hm?

First up is this week’s Focus Features theatrical release, HALF BROTHERS, a buddy road comedy directed by Luke Greenfield (Blue Streak, Let’s Be Cops) that’s fairly high concept but also with quite a bit more depth than the director’s previous movies. It stars Luis Gerardo Méndez as Renato Murguia, a wealthy Mexican businessman whose father left him to come to America when Renato was just a child. Just as Renato is about to get married while having issues connecting to his future stepson Emilio, he gets a call that his own father is dying, so he begrudgingly goes to see him. Once there, Renato’s dying father sends him on a scavenger hunt to find someone named “Eloise” with his annoying slacker half-brother Asher (Connor del Rio), because that will provide all the answers Renato is looking for on why his father never returned from America, remarried and had another son. What could possibly go wrong?

If you’ve seen any of the ads for Half Brothers, you may already presume that this is a fairly high-concept buddy road comedy that is constantly going for the zaniest and craziest of laughs. That probably would only be maybe 25% of the movie. Instead, this fairly mainstream comedy finds a way to take a very common comedy trope and throw in enough heartfelt moments that you can forgive the few times when it does go for low-hanging fruit. We’ve seen so many movies like this where two guys (or sometimes ladies, but not as often) are paired with one having zero patience or tolerance for the other, who is beyond aggravating to them. (Planes, Trains and Automobiles is one of the better ones.) Obviously, Renato fits snugly into the first category, and Asher could not be more annoying, very early on stealing a goat for no particular reason.

The Mexican angle and the fact that a lot of the film is in Spanish – Focus getting into Pantelion territory here? – does add to make Half Brothers feel like more of a personal story than we might normally see in this kind of movie, touching upon the immigrant experience, from the viewpoint of a low-paid worker as well as a well-to-do industrialist. It also deals with things like fatherhood and brotherhood and what it means to be one or both, so everything ultimately connects far better in the end than some might expect. I also want to give the filmmakers credit for putting together a cast of mostly unknown or little-known actors and getting such great results out of them.

On the surface, Half Brothers seems like just another buddy comedy, but underneath, it’s a heartfelt and emotional journey that touches in so many ways and ends up being quite enjoyable.

Another movie opening nationwide this Friday is ALL MY LIFE (Universal), starring Jessica (Happy Death Day) Rothe as Jennifer Carter and Harry (Crazy Rich Asians) Shum Jr. as Solomon Chau, whose wedding plans are thrown off when he is diagnosed with liver cancer. They realize they have to get married sooner since he might not live to make their planned date, so their friends launch a fundraiser so that they can get married in two weeks. The movie is directed by Marc Meyers (My Friend Dahmer), who is a more than capable filmmaker with this being his third movie in the last two years.

Now that I’ve actually seen the movie… I’ll freely admit that this is not the kind of movie I usually have very high expectations for, and maybe that’s because I’ve already been burnt twice this year with real-life romantic dramas, first with the faith-based I Still Believe in March and then more recently with Two Hearts. In both cases, I could count the issues and why they failed to tug at the heart strings as they were meant to do.  Even though I’ve generally enjoyed Meyers’ past movies, I wasn’t even sure he could pull off this type of studio romance movie without having to cowtow to the corny clichés that always seem to slip in – or at least find a way to make them more palatable. (And let’s be realistic. This is the kind of movie that snobby film critics just LOVE to trash.)

First of all, Meyers already has two truly fantastic leads working in his movie’s favor.  I’ve been a true Jessica Rothe stan ever since seeing her kill it in Happy Death Day and its sequel. Shum is perfectly paired with her, and the two of them are so good from the moment they first meet and we meet them.  In every scene, you feel like you’re watching some of that rare on-screen romantic chemistry that’s so hard to fake. Their relationship is romantic and goofy, and you’re just rooting for them all the way through even if you do know what’s to come.

Eventually, Sol does fall ill, and it does lead to some more dramatic and tougher moments between the couple, but all of it is handled so tastefully, including their need to raise money so they can have their wedding rather than waiting. I am living proof that people really do come together to step up when they see someone in real need, so I couldn’t even tut tut at something like their fundraiser getting so many people to chip in. On top of his two leads, Meyers has assembled such a great cast around the duo, the most recognizable being Jay Pharaoh from Saturday Night Live, everyone around Jess and Sol handles the requisite emotions with nary a weak link.

There’s just so much other stuff that adds to the enjoyment of watching All My Life from the use of Oasis and Pat Benatar in the soundtrack just to the quality storytelling that makes it all feel quite believable. These sorts of movies tend to be rather corny and the diehard cynic who doesn’t have an ounce of romance or love in their body will find things to hate.

All My Life finds its way into your heart by being one of those rare studio romance movies that understands how human emotions truly work, and there’s nothing corny about that. It’s a beautiful movie that entertains but also elicits more than a few tears. Watch it with someone you love.

This week’s “Featured Flick” is Chloe Zhao’s amazing film NOMADLAND (Searchlight), which I reviewed out of its Toronto International Film Festival premiere, but it’s (sort of) being released in theaters this week. It stars Frances McDormand as Fern, a woman living in her van as she moves from place to place taking odd jobs within a community of nomads. It’s another amazing film from the filmmaker behind The Rider, who will make her foray into the Marvel Cinematic Universe next year with The Eternals, which I’m just as psyched about. There’s no denying that McDormand gives a performance that’s a knock-out, even better than the one in 3 Billboards if you ask me, and there’s also a great supporting role for David Strathairn, who I’ve been hoping would have another role as good as this one. Zhao is just a fantastic filmmaker, and I’m glad to see that The Rider was no fluke.

Unfortunately, Nomadland is only getting a one-week Oscar qualifying run, and I’m not even sure where it’s getting that run since theaters in New York and L.A. aren’t even open yet. Maybe Searchlight will do some drive-in screenings like they did for the New York Film Festival and Telluride? It will get a stronger theatrical release (hopefully) on February 21, just to make doubly sure it qualifies for Oscars.

Opening in theaters this week before streaming on Netflix December 11 is Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of the Broadway musical THE PROM, the first feature film he’s directed in ten years. The multiple Tony-nominated musical is about a high school girl named Emma (newcomer Jo Ellan Pellman) who wants to take her girlfriend (Ariana DeBose) to their senior prom, but the head of the PTA (Kerry Washington) cancels the prom instead. The national outrage the situation creates gets the attention of a quintet of self-absorbed Broadway actors who decide to improve their PR by taking up Emma’s cause. Oh, yeah, and those actors are played by Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, and actual Broadway stars Andrew Rannells and Kevin Chamberlin. What could possibly go wrong?

I’ve never had any sort of positive or negative gut reaction to Murphy’s work on television over the past few years, but I’ve definitely been mixed on the three movies he’s directed to date. I wasn’t a huge fan of his Eat Pray Love, though I vaguely remember enjoying his debut, Running with Scissors. Either way, he certainly has found his niche with musicals from Glee (a show I’ve never watched)  and finding a musical like The Promseems to be a perfect fit between filmmaker and material.

Having not seen The Prom on Broadway – surprise, surprise -- I was a little worried that it was going to go down the path of nudge-nudge wink-wink inside Broadway path that helped Mel Brooks’ The Producers become a Broadway hit. That I saw, and I didn’t hate the movie based on it, although I’m by no means a total movie-musical stan. There’s some obvious older ones I love, some newer ones that others love but I hated – Rob Marshall is about 50/50 for me -- and you might be surprised by which of them I liked best.

What I thoroughly enjoyed about The Prom is that Murphy manages to truly surprise everyone watching it, whether it’s in Kerry Washington’s single song – who knew she had such an amazing singing voice? – or how enjoyable Keegan-Michael Key is as the school’s Principal Hawkins, who not only loves musicals but actually admires Streep’s two-time Tony-award winning Dee Dee Allen. Considering my frequent disdain for Streep’s over-confidence, knowing full well that she’s one of the best living actors working today, she’s actually pretty amazing in the role of what many must assume Streep is like in real life, which makes her character more than a little META. In some ways, I can say the same for Corden, who is pretty fantastic as Dee Dee’s frequent stage co-star Barry Glickman, who has his own connections to Emma’s plight having been disowned by his mother (Tracey Ullman, who only shows up for one brief scene late in the movie) when he came out to her. Corden has one dramatic moment so powerful I was taken quite aback.

Even with those two actors and Kidman likely to get much of the attention, there’s no denying that the romance between Hellman and Debose, and the three or four numbers they have together, makes up the true heart and soul of The Prom. So here you have this amazing cast, and it’s a musical made-up of very fun and quite catchy songs, and that’s long before you get to Andrew Rannells as out-of-work actor Trent Oliver, who practically steals the whole movie with his showstopper of a number, “Love Thy Neighbor.” And then watching Key holding his own with Streep, both musically and dramatically, you might start wondering, “What is going on here?”

Like I said before, it’s pretty obvious that Murphy has fully poured his passion of movie-musicals into every second of The Prom, and it shows on the face of everyone joining him on this adventure. As much as the subject at the film’s core is fairly serious and a hurdle that many gay kids across the world every day, it’s also quite funny. Kudos must be given to Murphy for being able to emphasize those moments as well as the more dramatic ones. Besides that, Murphy really takes advantage of being able to go to different locations, including a sequence on Broadway that could have been done during the pandemic (it actually was built on a soundstage), another number at an actual mall and even at a monster truck rally. It also doesn’t hurt that Murphy hired Matthew Libatique, a god-like cinematographer in my book, to film the movie either.

Like most musicals, The Prom might lose a little as it goes along, since it gets to be too much that goes on for too long, but then there are more than enough great moments to pull you back. It’s by far one of the stronger movie musicals I’ve seen in a very long time, and just the right feel-good experience we all need right now.

I’ve already reviewed David Fincher’s MANK – a few times, in fact – but if you’re in one of the places where it opened theatrically in November, you can finally see it on Netflix starting this Friday. This is the general problem with the way things are these days because even though this only opened a few weeks ago, I already feel that it’s been discussed and forgotten before most people will have a chance to see it.  Anyway, if for some reason, you’ve managed to avoid things about the movie, it essentially stars Gary Oldman as Herman Mankiewicz, the Hollywood screenwriter who ended up co-writing Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane in 1940. The film follows Mankiewicz as he mingles with the Hollywood elite in the 30s, including billionaire William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) and his young ingenue girlfriend Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried) who would be the influence for his Oscar-winning screenplay. I expect to be writing a lot about this movie as we get closer to Oscar season sometime next year.

Also on Netflix this week is Selena: The Series, starring Christian Serratos. It’s the kind of thing that I probably would never watch unless I have an excess of time, and as you’re about to learn from the rest of the column, that doesn’t happen frequently.

The third chapter of Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe Anthology,” RED WHITE AND BLUE, will debut on Prime Video this Sunday, starring John Boyega as Leroy Logan, a young black man who joins the Metropolitan Police after seeing his father assaulted by police and wanting to make a difference in the racist attitudes from within. You might remember that I reviewed this out of the New York Film Festival a couple months back, so not much more to say there.

A week from Sunday, on December 13, McQueen’s fourth film, ALEX WHEATLE, will hit Amazon, and guess what? I’ve already seen it, so I will review it now. How about that? Alex Wheatle is also a true story, this one starring Sheyi Cole as the award-winning young adult writer when he was a younger and just learning the ropes as a drugdealer/DJ in Brixton before his involvement in the 1981 Brixton riots gets him thrown in jail.

As with the other three movies in the “Small Axe Anthology” there are recurring elements and themes in Alex Wheatle, mostly about the way the immigrants to England from Jamaica and other islands are treated by “The Beast” aka what they call the Metropolitan Police. It does take a little time to get to that, as McQueen, working from a screenplay co-written by Mangrove’s Alaistar Siddons, takes a far more non-linear approach than the other three films. We first see Wheatle being taken into prison where he’s thrown into a cell with a constantly-shitting Rastafarian, but we then cut back to his schooling for a short sequence that reminded me of Alan Clarke’s Scum. Both in prison and in school, we see Alex being abused by classmates and head matron alike, and this portion of the film includes another one of arty moments of actor Cole laying on the ground eyes wide open staring for what seems to go on forever. In some ways, this sequence reminds me of McQueen’s fantastic early film Hunger, since it seems to be cut from similar cloth.

Eventually, Alex gets to Brixton and that’s where this chapter in “Small Axe” really takes off as we see how naïve and green he is while dealing with quite a tough crowd and trying to adjust to city life among the Rastafarian community.

As with the other “Small Axe” chapters, I love how McQueen and his team used reggae music to help set the tone and vibe for the episode, because like Baz Lurhman’s Netflix series The Get Down, the music is frequently a key to this biopic working so well. Of course, it’s also due to the performance by Cole and the actors around him that helps make you feel as if you’re seeing a real part of history.

As with Mangrove, this chapter culminates with an amazing recreation of the 1981 Brixton Riots, done in protest after a house party fire in New Cross that the police don’t bother investigating. The actual riots were a much bigger and scarier event going by Wikipedia which says that 279 police were injured and 56 police vehicles set fire, which makes it sound more like the ’92 L.A. Riots.

I’m not sure Alex Wheatle does as good a job explaining how the young man goes into prison as a DJ and comes out as an author, but like Red, White and Blue it’s still an important and inspirational story that adds quite a bit to the previous three “Small Axe” films.

And once again, here is my interview with McQueen from over at Below the Line.

Also, I should mention that Darius Marder’s excellent Sound of Metal movie, starring Riz Ahmed, hits Amazon Prime Video this Friday, too. Check out my review!

The magnificent Andrea Riseborough stars in Zeina Durra’s LUXOR (Samuel Goldwyn), playing British aid worker Hana who while spending time in the ancient city of Luxor, runs into her former lover Sultan (Karim Saleh), as she reflects on past decisions and her current uncertain situation.

I was quite interested in this one sight unseen, not only because it’s another great starring role for Riseborough. (Honestly, she is one of the best actors working today, and I strongly believe she is just one role away from being the next Olivia Colman, who had been amazing for years before everyone in America “discovered” her in The Favourite and then The Crown… which I still haven’t watched! ARGH!). I was a little anxious about the movie, having seen Rubba Nadda’s Cairo Time, starring Patricia Clarkson and Alexander Siddig, which seemingly had the exact same plot.

Durra is a much more capable and confident filmmaker and there’s a lot more overall value in watching Riseborough exploring Egypt as Durra quietly allows Hana’s story to unfold through her interactions with others, as well as her time alone, often languishing in one luxurious hotel room or another.  Then there are the quiet and sometime awkward scenes between her and Saleh, the two of them having been lovers when they were both much younger. We also see Hana in far more vulnerable moments, so we know that she’s by no means actor, and it takes a great actor to really pull off such a dichotomy and bring such dimension to a character with so few words.

There’s something that’s almost comforting watching her dealing with emotions like loneliness in such a tranquil way. I’d even go so far to say that Luxor works in many ways similar to Nomadland, which obviously is getting the far more high-profile release with lots of festival love long before its actual release.  Like that movie, Durra’s film benefits from having masterful cinematography by Zelmira Gainza and an equally gorgeous score by Nascuy Linares, to boot.

Luxor is a quiet, beautifully-made film that really took me by surprise. It acts as much like a travelogue of the title city as it does a tourist’s map to what it must feel like being a woman very much on her own in a foreign land.

I also spoke with Luxor filmmaker Zeina Durra, an interview that will be up at Below the Line hopefully sometime later this week.

With all the talk about Aubrey Plaza in Happiest Season (now on Hulu!), this would be a great time to release another one of her indies that played at the Sundance Film Festival this year, right? What can possibly go wrong?

In Lawrence Michael Levine’s BLACK BEAR (Momentum Pictures), Plaza plays Allison, an actor/filmmaker who arrives at the remote lake house of Christopher Abbott’s Gabe and his pregnant partner Blair (Sarah Gadon), to relax and work on a screenplay, only for the night to turn into philosophical discussions that transform into angry and even violent squabbles. In the second part of the movie, Gabe is the director, and Allison his actor wife, who thinks he’s sleeping with Blair, who is also acting in Gabe’s film.

That plot might seem a little vague, and I can’t exactly tell you whether there is much connection between the two parts of the movie other than it features the same three characters. The first half turns from a drama into a thriller before ending abruptly, while the second part is equal parts comedy and drama as we see a larger part of the world around the trio. In fact, the second part of Black Bear reminded me somewhat of Olivier Assayas’Irma Vep, one of my favorite movies, and that might be one of the highest compliments I can pay a movie.

But first, you have to get through the more quizzical and dramatic first part, which easily could have been done as a three-handed stageplay as we see the changing dynamics between the three people as things get crazier and crazier with one “Holy shit!” moment after the next. (It reminded me a little of Mamet or the play “Gods of Carnage,” although I only saw that as the movie version Carnage, directed by Roman Polanski.)

The fact the connection between the two parts is never explained might confound some people who were otherwise enjoying what is a pretty decent three-hander, but the common theme involves jealousy between the two women. Plaza is a fine dramatic actor when she wants to be, and Gadon is absolutely fantastic, which makes Abbot almost literally the odd man out, but the three of them just have great scenes together.

Black Bear is certainly an enigma of a movie, as much a mystery about what must be going on inside Plaza’s head during some of her softer and crazier scenes, but if you want to talk about range, this gives her so much material for her demo reel that no one could possibly doubt her as an actor again.

Thomas Vinterberg’s new movie ANOTHER ROUND (Samuel Goldwyn) reteams him with his The Hunt star Mads Mikkelsen for a comedy…. Ish… about a group of four middle aged Danish teachers who decide to hold an experiment to prove a theory that people only reach their maximum effectiveness and creativity when they’re .05% drunk. It starts out innocently enough but soon, the men are drinking heavily at school, leading to horrible and unfortunate side effects. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Even knowing Vinterberg’s knack for strange and twisted “comedies,” Another Round is definitely on another level, opening with a scene of drunken kids playing a drinking game that gets them so out-of-control drunk and rowdy. We then meet Mikkelsen’s Martin, a history teacher, whose rowdy seniors are so bored by his classroom technique that Martin is put in front of an inquisition of parents who think he’s going to make their kids fail their final exams. Martin’s home life isn’t much better with his wife Anika (Maria Bonnevie) or his own teen sons. Although Martin says he won’t drink when he has to drive, his friend Nikolaj (Magnus Millang) convinces him by announcing his theory about how everyone needs to always maintain a certain percentage of alcohol in their system.  Over the course of the rest of the movie, we’re shown the alcohol level of our “heroes,” although most will see their behavior as some kind of synced-up middle life crisis. For Martin, it’s a breakthrough, as he starts feeling more confident and assertive towards his students, even trying to connect with them via their drinking activities, as seen in the opening montage.

Another Round is quite a different beast from The Hunt, because there’s a more humorous tone to the point where I could totally see an American studio trying to remake this with the likes of Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler, which would probably lose a lot of the poignancy of what Vinberberg was trying to achieve here. At one point, he throws in a montage of seemingly drunk world leaders, which is kind of amusing even if it’s not quite so apparent why it’s there. There’s a lot of really bad white guy dancing, too, for anyone who is into that sort of thing.

There is definitely a good amount of grief and sadness to the way this story resolves, although Vinterberg still finds a way to leave Martin in a place of joy with a closing scene that may surprise a lot of people. Another Round is another tremendous feather in the cap of the Vinterberg/Mikkelsen collaboration, and it will be in select theaters this Friday before going to digital on December 18.

Another Round will be in select theaters this Friday and then on digital December 18.

Fast Color director Julia Hart returns with I’M YOUR WOMAN (Amazon), once again co-written with husband Jordan Horowitz. It stars Rachel Brosnahan from The Amazing Mrs. Maisel (which I haven’t seen) as Jean, a woman unable to have a baby with her small-time crook husband Eddie. One night, Eddie brings home a baby for Jean, but then he quickly vanishes and Jean finds herself on the run with a stolen baby and one of Eddie’s accomplices, Cal (Arinzé Kene), and there are bad men wanting to question Jean about her missing husband’s whereabouts.

This is another movie where I really didn’t know what to expect, and having not watched Brosnahan on her award-winning show, I was watching this movie trying to figure out what all the fuss was about.  It’s evident from the start that Hart/Horowitz were trying to make a ‘70s-set movie with all the trappings of ‘70s fashion and music, but when you throw in the crime element, it comes across a little too much like last year’s The Kitchen, which wasn’t very good but also wasn’t based on very good source material.

One would presume that the genre elements and a few scattered set pieces, like a shootout at a club, would be the main draw, but it’s almost 30 minutes before we even get any sort of plot, and that’s a big problem. An even bigger problem is that I’m Your Woman just drags for so much of the movie, and it’s pretty obvious that Hart-Horowitz were trying to create a ‘70s movie like some of the films by Scorsese and the movies John Cassavetes made with wife Gena Rowlands. By comparison, I’m Your Woman is stylized almost to a pretentious degree.  Brosnahan does show a few glimpses of there being a good actor in there, but the material just really isn’t quite up to snuff. It also doesn’t help the movie to have the baby crying almost non-stop throughout.

Jean eventually pairs up with Cal’s woman Teri (Martha Stephanie Blake), her son Paul and Cal’s father (played by Frankie Faison), and this is when she learns more about Eddie’s life that she doesn’t know about. Eventually, things start to pick up in the last act, but the multiple problems Hart has with maintaining a steady pace or tone only mildly is made up for by her terrific DP and whoever put together the musical score.  Essentially, the last 30 minutes of I’m Your Woman does make up for the previous 85 minutes, but it’s going to be very hard for many people to even get through how dull the movie is up until that point.

This is a week with some very fine docs, the first one being Weixi Chen and Hao Wu*’s cinema verité film 76 DAYS (MTV Documentary Films), which goes behind the doors of the Wuhan ICU Red Cross hospital over the first 76 days of the COVID pandemic after it hit the rural area of China. (*One of the film’s co-directors/cinematographers shot the film anonymously.)

Here I thought that Alex Gibney’s Totally Under Control would be the best or maybe even only movie about the pandemic released this year, but here we have a fantastic documentary that captures what it was really like in one Wuhan hospital as it was nearly overrun months before COVID started to rear its ugly head in the States. The film begins in January 23, 2020 and follows a number of cases as we watch the personnel, all decked out in head-to-toe PPE, trying to save lives and keep people calm while trying to struggle with all the stresses that come their way. There’s actually a little bit of humor in a cranky elderly man (clearly with some form of dementia) who keeps wandering around the hospital, frustrating his tenders, but there’s also a very moving story of a young pregnant woman who has contracted COVID, who ends up being separated from her baby after a Cesarian section.

There are moments early in the movie where you can see panic starting to set in as we see how out of control things begin, but the anonymous health care workers soon get things underhand and manage to find a way to deal with the panic that’s setting in. There’s no question that these doctors and nurses – many whose faces we never even see -- are the definition of frontline workers, trying to deal with this unknown virus without all the answers and solutions that have been discovered over the past ten months.

76 Days will open via the Film Forum Virtual Cinema as well as other places presumably.

I’m glad I had Dana Nachman’s DEAR SANTA (IFC Films) to watch after 76 Days, because I don’t think I could have handled another dark or deep movie after that one. This doc is all about “Operation Santa,” the amazing group of volunteers and adopters who receive the letters young kids write to the North Pole and go out of their way to fulfill the kids’ wishes.

I was a big fan of Nachman’s Pick of the Litter, so I’m thrilled to say that Dear Santa is just as wonderful and joyous, starting with a bunch of kids explaining Santa Clause enthusiastically, because they really believe in Jolly Saint Nick. Over the course of the film, Nachman profiles a number of Adopter Elves, who look through the letters written to Santa by unfortunate kids and pick a few to fulfill their wishes. A lot of them are in New York and Chicago where the program has led to a number of non-profits, but Nachman also goes to Chico, California where many of the families from Paradise, the town destroyed by fires in 2018, ended up relocation. One story of an Adopter Elf named Damion is particularly wonderful, since he, like many of those who get involved in the program, are trying to give back and pay it forward.

Operation Santa is such a great program and Dear Santa is such a wonderful movie, I challenge anyone to watch it and not tear up from how big their heart will grow while watching it.

Julien Temple’s doc CROCK OF GOLD: A NIGHT WITH SHANE MACGOWAN (Magnolia Pictures) is pretty self-explanatory from its title, but as someone who was never really a Pogues fan, I was almost as entertained by Temple’s film as I was by Alex Winter’s Zappa about a musician who I actually was a fan of. Temple uses MacGowan’s own narration to tell his story from growing up in Ireland, the early days of punk that led to the Pogues and eventually, mainstream success.

My absolute adoration of well-made music docs is fairly well-known at this point, and you can’t really get much better in terms of music doc makers than Julien Temple, who had his cameras rolling in the early days of punk, captured one of David Bowie’s more interesting mainstream phases and also made a very cool movie about The Clash frontman, Joe Strummer.

Although I never really cared for The Pogues, that’s probably because I didn’t know them from their rowdier days and more from their mainstream success from “Fairytale of New York” but Temple’s movie rectifies that with some amazing footage from the band’s earlier days. Even more impressive is the footage and pictures of MacGowan during the late ‘70s dancing in the audience at Sex Pistols and other punk shows. (Temple even interviewed MacGowan during this period in the ‘70s, then put the footage in the movie.) As MacGowan tells his own story about growing up in Ireland, Temple frequently uses varied animation to recreate the stories being told, and that does a lot to embellish the cartoon nature of MacGowan’s storytelling.

I still think MacGowan is a bit of an asshole -- I’m sure he’d agree with that assessment -- but Temple has found a way into this very difficult musician, sometimes using close friends like Johnny Depp (a producer on the film) and Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream to try to get MacGowan to open up about as much as he ever might. Crock of Gold is certainly an eye-opening portrait of the Pogues frontman that surprisingly offers something to enjoy even for those who never got into his music, but it also shows another dimension to his many fans. If nothing else, it’s a fine testament to why Temple is one of the best music doc filmmakers.

Magnolia held a bunch of one-night only theatrical screenings on Tuesday and will have more on Thursday, but if you miss those, you can catch it On Demand/digital this Friday. (I also have a really enjoyable interview with Julien Temple over at Below the Line that you should check out.)

A.J. and Jenny Tesler’s doc MAGNOLIA’S HOPE follows four years in the life of their young daughter Magnolia (aka Maggie), who has Rett Syndrome. Maggie’s filmmaking parents talk about noticing her strange behavior and finding out that she had a genetic disorder that makes it harder for children to retain what they’ve learned in terms of movement but also might led to far worse disorders. It makes it almost impossible for her to communicate with her parents, which makes it heartbreaking but also quite inspirational that the parents would allow us into their very own difficult journey to try to get their daughter to use and develop all of the skills she learns by making her practice them every single day. The movie will be available to watch for the month of December on the streaming platform Show and Tell, but it’s such a personal movie and another one where I think it will be hard for many to watch without getting a little teary but more out of joy than sadness.

Also out this week is David Osit’s MAYOR (Film Movement), which follows Musa  Hadid, the Christian mayor of Ramallah during his second term of office and determined to make his city a beautiful and dignified place to lived despite being surrounded on all sides by soldiers and Israeli settlements. It will open today at the Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema in New York after winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 2020 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

What there’s more? How about Braden R. Duemmler’s WHAT LIES BELOW (Vertical Entertainment), a thriller starring Ema Hovarth from Quibi’s Don’t Look Deeper as Liberty (aka Libby), a teen girl returning from camp only to learn her mother (Mena Suvari) has a hot younger boyfriend named John (Trey Tucker), who Libby soon begins to question whether he’s human. What could possibly go wrong?

I knew I was in trouble when Suvari is picking her daughter up from archeology camp (that’s a thing?) and I misheard her asking her daughter “Any nice digs?” (think about it), especially since Suvari is playing a stereotypically over-sexed cougar, something that becomes far more obvious once we meet her boyfriend that she’s been sexing up at her lake house. There’s certainly a danger of What Lies Below turning into a prequel to a Pornhub video, but thankfully, Duemmler gets away from the inappropriate sexuality inherent in John’s presence and into the weird behavior that gets Libby suspicious.

Sure, maybe calling the movie “My Stepfather is an Alien” would have been more apropos, and there’s elements of the movie that reminded me of the Tom Hanks’ movie The ‘burbs, and not in a good way. Even so, Hovarth, who really looks like Suvari’s daughter, does a fine job holding this together and keeping you invested in how things might pan out, as things get weirder and weirder and the movie eventually transforms itself into a halfway decent and creepy “body horror” flick.

Weird but well-done, What Lies Below is not even close to the worst thriller I’ve seen this year. That might seem like damning praise, but it’s the best I can do for this one.

Debuting on Shudder this Thursday is Justin G. Dyck’s ANYTHING FOR JACKSON (Shudder), a “reverse exorcism” movie in which a seemingly kindly couple, played by Sheila McCarthy and Julian Richings, kidnap a pregnant woman (Konstantina Mantelos) in hopes of getting the spirit of their grandson Jackson, who died in a car crash, and put him into her baby… with the help of demons. What could possibly go wrong? (If you hadn’t guessed, this is the theme of this week’s Weekend Warrior.)

I’ve been thoroughly impressed with the horror delivered by streamer Shudder this year, and Anything for Jackson is no exception. In fact, going over Dyck’s filmography, it’s kind of surprising how decent a horror filmmaker he is, because most of his other movies seem like Hallmark-style Christmas movies? Crazy. There are aspects of Anything for Jackson, written by Keith Cooper, who wrote some of those holiday movies for Dyck. I honestly can imagine the two of them making this movie just to be able to do something different, so they come into the horror realm with tons of fim making experience and easily transition into horror.

At the heart of this movie are McCarthy, Richings and Mantelos, who are all fine actors who do a great job selling the horrors but do just as well during the quieter dramatic moments.  Not that there are that many of them, as Dyck/Cooper throw so many absolutely horrific moments at the viewer so that diehard horror fans will not be disappointed. Things shift into another gear when Josh Cruddas joins in as a Satanic cult leader they bring in to help them when they realize they’re out of their league. The results are something akin to Insidiousin terms of the types of demons and ghosts thrown at the viewer.

At times, Anything for Jackson was a little hard to follow, maybe due to its non-linear storytelling, but at least it has a substantial amount of decent replay value, since the demons and kills are so gloriously gory.

Eric Schultz’s dark and trippy sci-fi thriller MINOR PREMISE (Utopia) stars Sathya Sridharan as neuroscientist Ethan, who gets caught up in his own risky experiment involving memory loss when he becomes trapped in his home with his ex-girlfriend Allie (Paton Ashbrook), and he doesn’t remember how they both got there.

For his directorial debut, Schultz has taken the cerebral indie sci-fi film route that we’ve seen in other filmmaking debuts like Shane Carruth’s Primer, Darren Aronofsky’s Pi or Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko, and if you’re a fan of those movies, you’ll already know if this would be for you or not. This is also the kind of movie that really requires the closest attention and fullest focus, which is not something I’m great at right now. Because of that, I don’t have a ton to say about a film that does a good job pulling the viewer in with its intriguing premise.

Schultz is a pretty decent filmmaker and discovering Sridharan, who has done a lot of single-episode TV appearances but nothing major, is quite a coup since this is quite a solid showcase for the young actor. I wasn’t as crazy about Ashbrook, which makes it for a rather uneven two-hander.

Minor Premise is just fine, and I think some people will definitely like it more than I did. I definitely will have to watch it again when I’m not so distracted by ALL THOSE OTHER MOVIES ABOVE THAT I JUST FUCKING REVIEWED!

It will be in theaters, in virtual cinema, and digital/On Demand this Friday, so check it out for yourself.

And finally…

Director Dennis Dugan of Big Daddy and Happy Gilmore directs LOVE, WEDDINGS AND OTHER DISASTERS (Saban Films), a “Love American Style” rom-com anthology with a cast that includes Maggie Grace, Jeremy Irons, Diane Keaton and more. Grace plays Jessie, a fairly inexperienced wedding plan hired to orchestrate the high-profile wedding of Boston mayoral candidate (Dennis Staroselsky), and then… oh, you know what? I’ll leave the rest of the description to the review portion of our review.

We meet Grace’s character as she and her soon-to-be-ex boyfriend are skydiving, which goes horribly wrong as they end up fighting all the way down and crashing through an outdoor wedding, caught on a viral video that gets her dubbed the “Wedding Thrasher.” Imagine what a PR disaster that would be for mayoral candidate Rob Barton to have her planning his wedding, but Jessie quickly bonds with his fiancé Liz (Caroline Portu) and begins preparations. Meanwhile, Barton’s problematic brother Jimmy (Andy Goldenberg) has gone on a game show called “Crash Couples” (that’s hosted by no less than Dugan himself) and he allows himself to be chained to a Russian “lawyer” named Svetlana (Melinda Hill) who is actually a stripper. They’re willing to stick it out since the winner gets a million dollars.

Surely, that’s more than enough stories, right? Nope. Turns out that Jessie’s main competition to plan the wedding is a legendary caterer named Lawrence Phillips (Irons) who is set-up on a blind date with Diane Keaton, who is blind. Oy vey.  Also, there’s Andrew Bachelor as Captain Ritchie, who gives humorous sightseeing tours of Boston via the Charles River in an odd land/water vehicle, but one day, he encounters a young woman with a glass slipper tattoo, and he becomes quite smitten. We’ll get back to him. Maybe. In fact, Duggan spends so much time setting up different stories and relationships without much connection that you wonder whether he can tie things up in the oh-so-predictable way these things normally go.

Although the movie starts out fine, and it’s actually not a bad role for Grace, as soon as Duggan introduces the game show, then we learn that Svetlana (real name Olga) is a tripper connected to the mob and they get involved, things just start going downhill very fast. Also, the idea that Keaton -- who I haven’t seen in a good movie in almost two decades --  would not think twice about playing a klutzy blind person. As soon as she shows up and immediately knocks over one of Phillips’ signature champagne glass fountains, I knew we were in for a very long haul. I didn’t even mention the other storyline involving a musician named Mack (Diego Boneta) whose band Jessie is trying to get to play the wedding – one of the multiple meet-cutes in the movie -- although Mack is squabbling with his bandmate Lenny (Jesse McCartney) who has a new Asian girlfriend who is intruding in their friendship.  (I’m sure the fact her name is “Yoni” is meant as as Yoko Ono reference.)

Then on top of that, Dugan steals the gimmick from There’s Something About Mary, by constantly cutting back to Elle King and Keaton Simmons as they’re playing folksy songs in the park. Okay, the fact that Dugan wrote many of those pretty decent songs they perform is pretty impressive.

But the movie is very predictable, especially how it all comes together for the finale, which obviously has to take place at the wedding to which everything has been building up to.

Otherwise, Dugan’s film is maybe 20% an okay movie but the other 80%? Yeesh!! It’s about as romantic as a date with the Marquis de Sade, and it somehow manages to be an equal opportunity offender... in terms of offending blind people, Asians, Jews, Arabs, gay people and even strippers and Russian mafia. It took Dugan 14 years to get this passion project made, and it’s pretty obvious why.

As usual, there were a couple movies I didn’t have time to watch, but not quite as many as the ones I did make time to watch:

King of Knives (Gravitas Ventures) End of Sentence (Gravitas Venture) Billie (Greenwich) Godmothered (Disney+) Wander (Saban Films) Music Got Me Here (First Run Features) Stand! (Fathom Events, Imagination Worldwide) HAM: A Musical Memoir (Global Digital Releasing) In the Mood for Love (4k Restoration)

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

[megrimlocke]

How We Are All Going to Die Laughing

The other day, I was looking at a post made by one of my favorite internet comic artists.  The guy used to be something I’d read in the army newspapers, next to the adds for cheap TVs at the post exchange, but these days it’s mostly a facebook feed I occasionally read.  The artist and writer behind “PVT Murphy” (though these days Murphy’s a sergeant, I’m aging after all it seems) was annoyed at Facebook showing him a shopping page offering what amounted to white nationalist (US neonazi, if you prefer) paraphernalia.

Now, I pointed out that this was what the robot had concluded he wanted to see, and honestly none of us should be surprised by this.  Military members lean right, and in the age of Trump this means that radicalization is around every corner- though for the record it always has been.  In some insidious ways with a cancer of racists and bigots among our ranks, sure, I know because being gay I was targeted by a few myself, but also in more subtle ways.

I once watched a man scream at some Iraqis who were emptying a waste bin nearby, screaming that they didn’t get him, because he’d been the target of an IED attack two hours prior.  Those men had no way in hell of having anything to do with it, but the guy that hit us got away free and the trash guys looked like someone he could defiantly vent his feelings of helplessness and victimhood upon in a vain effort to reclaim his power.  I’m not condoning it, I’m just saying that sometimes the path to prejudice isn’t paved with propaganda and privilege.

I have every faith in the artist who draws PVT Murphy himself, but if you attract the attention of a lot of white supremacists, then probably the robot is going to conclude that you might want to look at some of the things that all the people who like your posts are looking at.  Hence the shop page that offered a wall pinup of a templar knight preparing to smite the saracen to defend (white) Christendom with a few crass remarks about Islam written on it.

Now I explained, in truncated terms, how the robot made this call.  The artist wasn’t excited about this explanation, and in fairness no one is excited about the black mirror showing them something ugly, it’s almost like an automated attack.  But the machine was really just trying to be helpful.  It wasn’t programmed to be sensitive to racial issues, and certainly the people who took out the add didn’t take that into their considerations.  It identified a pattern and arranged the delivery of data that conformed with its instructions based upon the data input.

Now, some right wing dude decided to join in this discussion to point out that the robot didn’t know what it was talking about, included the terms “lib” and “snowflake” in his post, and suggested that if the robot had any idea who he was it wouldn’t keep showing him liberal content- after all he always used the laugh react on it.  I pointed out this part as well, but I’d like to go into a deeper analysis for this discourse.

The right, and perhaps a lot of people using the reacts on facebook, has decided that you can use the laugh react to express a dismissive chuckle to the words of others.  I think this has several sweeping, problematic implications.

First, the people using the internet are using it to each other, and are either unaware of the robots they share the internet with or ignorant regarding how they function.  The robots do not interpret Laugh as a dismissive gesture.  The data they gather from this is that you were paying attention to something and decided to put a reaction on it.  The Laugh react is not a downvote on reddit, the robot, innocent little helperbot it was made to be, assumes you are amused by the thing you clicked on, and so endeavors to further tickle your funny bone.  In short, it’s your good-natured wholesome friend who doesn’t understand the difference between you laughing with liberals and laughing at us.  It thinks we’re all friends.

This leads to the second problem.  If you are a conservative and you do not care to be bothered with leftist posts, then using the laugh react doesn’t help you at all.  It further engages you with the content that annoys you.  The stuff that caused you to try and put on your dismissive “ha ha tawdry communist drivel” mid-atlantic aristocrat voice is going to keep appearing.  If you’re the sort given to conspiracy theories (and you are my bro, you still hate Hillary for the pizza thing), you might draw the conclusion that you are being targeted by leftist internet operatives, spamming your feed with leftist propaganda.

The truth is you’re spamming yourself with leftist content because your socially clueless helpful robot pal is gonna go out and find more things for you to laugh at.  You’re not special or important enough for leftist internet operatives to target your facebook feed with propaganda attacks, and you have damned yourself to an experience on facebook in which you are bombarded with annoying or even blood-boiling content.  All of this guidance, by the way, is equally applicable to left leaning users of the laugh react as a dismissive gesture.

What this does is contribute to people’s paranoia.  It makes them believe that an enemy that doesn’t exist is trying to get into their heads.  It fills their electronic lives with incendiary content that makes them angry and it encourages them further to continue to have generally unproductive electric arguments with people that they disagree with, leaving them exhausted by a brain full of cortisol.

Personally, I think the Left’s electric sin is more to do with our frankly superior witticisms (sorry Right, you invented and stuck to Nobama, you’re just not witty) and the craving so many of us seem to have for delivering that sick burn one-liner so cutting and succinct that it stops the conservative dead in his rhetorical tracks seems to consume online political discourse on the left almost as aggressively as call-out culture does when arguing among our own.

In the effort to sell us more things by pandering to our professed passions, the capitalist internet has created an electric rage engine that wraps you into one heated argument after another among people who are not listening to one another and who are learning to disengage from hard discussions.  This last part is so dangerous to our democracy.

To be clear, I’m not lamenting the death of compromise specifically.  There can be no compromise on the income gap, healthcre, free elections, or the rights of people who are darker in skin than I.  But the electric rage engine makes it difficult to even have conversations about these things in the real world, and if you’re not talking to the people you disagree with face to face in the here and now, your chances of finding compromise are precisely zero percent, nevermind actually changing their views.

Have you noticed yourself having conversations with people that could just be copy pasted almost word for word off the tumblr where they “informed” themselves about this topic?  I’ll bet that you have.  Or else, more dangerously, you have begun to avoid having such conversations at all with people.  Have you ever been in a discussion turned friendly debate with your friend and realized after a few moments that the debate isn’t suddenly so friendly?  I’m willing to bet it’s been a while, so much so that you might even be shocked if it happens.

People like to go on about how fraught the holidays can be because of how politically charged family dinners can be, but I can’t remember such an experience within the past ten years.  No throw down arguments, no discussions about the merits of one tax policy or another- we can’t even seem to discuss weighty matters with people who are blood kin anymore unless we already know they agree with our own views- and thanks to the electric rage engine, we can know, in precis, what their views are and what we think about them as a result long before we ever think about what to put in our covered dish.  The opportunity for someone stepping into a landmine social or foreign policy issue at family and social gatherings has been eliminated, and with it the ability of the dinner table to serve as a place for families to reach consensus by resolving their arguments.  We don’t talk politics with people who disagree with us in the real world anymore, we all just avoid it and spit our venom on the internet, achieving nothing but our mounting unhappiness and dislike for one another.

I have a young colleague at work, maybe 25, who demonstrated the ability to just promptly end a discussion last week.  Now it was a nonsense discussion and in fairness the participants had gotten into trolling him for kicks, saying a blue shirt was green on purpose or some other nonsense, I don’t remember the particulars.  But what I do remember vividly was the ease and efficiency with which he was able to simply end the discussion, how disengagement came so very naturally to him.  I despise the phrase “agree to disagree” because it means that the argument hasn’t been resolved, but it is at least a sign that there was actual thought going on between participants.  No such gesture here.  My colleague put down the conversation and simply went back to his work with all the ease with which you might put down your phone when you decided you were done arguing with someone, and the ability to do this in realspace chilled me to the bone.

Moreover, there is a certain epistemological nihilism that has arisen among us, suggesting that no one can truly know anything because the sources of information, with whatever omissions or biases they may possess, are a matter of consumerist choice rather than objective fact.  We can’t agree on what is real anymore because if you dislike someone’s account of events, you can simply get someone else to present a more palatable story and declare the other people liars.

If you don’t like what you read on NBC, you can simply tune to Fox to hear it told in a way that you choose to consume, often playing to your appetite for validation rather than your need for actionable information.  We like feeling right, and the consumerist information economy has identified that as a means to get our attention long enough to upload some ads along with our news video of choice.

If the very identity of a person can be expressed by a computer algorithm and 4 or 5 hundred clicks across news articles, think pieces, and shopping pages, how easy will it be for the people who do understand how the machines work to begin influencing who we are?

In closing, I think every single one of us is developing a progressively more toxic relationship with the internet, particularly when it comes to political discourse, and I think that if we aren’t especially careful our ability to simply shut down and switch off, while healthy on the web, is going to begin invading our lives in the waking world in insidious ways that will hurt our ability to function as a cohesive society. I think that the marketing robots and the very act of making a profile and posting to it things that are important to you are dangerous influences on our sense of identity, and that by wrapping our sense of identity in the ideas and products that we consume in such a contrived, calculated fashion that we are restricting our ability to be flexible in our thinking, making us less able to get along with one another.  

I’ve been on a soft departure from Facebook for a good while now, making it my loose rule to stick to messenger and instagram because I like indulging my vanity but for the most part I want to be interacting with people directly and not selling myself for likes when I use these things.  Real attention from real people  is much much better.  

In 2020, I invite you to join me in kicking facebook or your own social media vice altogether and bringing our political lives and our debates back into the real world so that we can practice and re-acquire the skills of persuasion and discussion; not as a cynic call to begin trying to convert every conservative we can find, but for the sake of a political discourse that serves as less of a battleground with immovable ideological fortresses and more of a crucible in which the useless can be burned away and useful consensus and meaningful, mind changing-discussions can be had once again.  We cannot afford to keep unsubscribing from one another if our democracy is to survive. (<- leftist witticism addiction in demonstration)

[mittensmorgul]

Hi Mittens! Based on what you've heard/read so far - with Dabb's comments and how Jensen has reacted - saying he had to be "talked into" liking the ending...what do you think - and I know it's a guess....what do you think will happen to each character? can you respond a bout: Sam, Dean, Cas, Jack, Rowena, God, and Lucifer? And we know Adam and Eileen are back, what about them? Will Lisa/Ben return? What ending do YOU expect?

Hi there! I’ll start this off by reminding everyone that while I do occasionally speculate on the Big Themes and the big picture direction of the story, this sort of specific speculation is something I normally… hate… :P

Since you’re not asking about Big Themes here, but specifically character stuff, I’ll just give you general thoughts on how I think each character’s arc will eventually unfold, because it’s impossible to know specific character beats yet.

Sam: I think he will have a difficult time reconciling his lifetime of hope and faith in a benevolent divine creator. remember he’s the one who always prayed, who wanted to believe God was out there, and when God came back in s11 he was DELIGHTED at first… Like fanboying over Chuck. And he was the one to finally see behind the curtain in 14.20. This fundamental belief and hope that Sam’s held on to his whole life has just been shattered, and he can no longer deflect the truth he’s learned. I hope he’s able to face it head on, and finally be able to reconcile the fantasy life he’s always dreamed of with the reality he’s been forced to live because of Chuck’s meddling.

Dean: he’s always lived his life for other people, for the mission, for “saving people, hunting things.” I want him to be able to live in a world where the entire world’s fate isn’t weighing on him personally, you know? I want him to get to a point where he can let that burden go, and actually choose to live for HIMSELF for once. To even get a chance to figure out what would truly make him happy. And then for him to be free of that enough to go out and BE happy.

Cas: We knew he’s long doubted the righteousness of Heaven’s mission, and that he’s struggled with who he is and what he wants to be. He’s long since put the Winchesters first, but I think he will be continuing that journey, learning it’s not how useful he can be that makes him indispensable in their lives, but just HIM, HIMSELF that has inherent value to the Winchesters (and especially to Dean). And that he doesn’t need to sacrifice himself for his family in order to truly be part of it.

Jack: my thoughts on Jack in s15 are by necessity hazier than the rest, because as a mirror character for all the others as much as a character in his own right, on top of the fact that something game-changing is about to go down in the empty and we can’t yet guess how that will play out, I suspect a lot of his journey will mirror parts of what I’ve said above for Sam, Dean, and Cas, but where that will end, I really can’t say yet…

Rowena: AAAAHH. I love her, and I think her journey will continue along its current trajectory, working more and more closely with the Winchesters (and especially Sam), and my main hope for her is that she and Sam both find a way to redefine their supposed “fate.” Go back and watch 13.12 and 13.19, the vulnerability she’s shared with Sam, and the heartbreak when she realized Sam actually could pull the trigger on her… which he immediately regretted… Sam: You changed other people’s fates. Maybe we can change yours. And she’s been actively working toward that since then, based on the solid foundation of resting that redemption on SAM. So. :’)

God/Chuck: He’s gotta go, one way or the other, right? Can there ever truly be free will for any of them when he won’t let go of his story? Humanity must be allowed to pick up their pens and begin writing their own stories now. Don’t know how that will look in a non-metaphorical way in the show, but there’s the show’s own metaphor version of it :’D

Lucifer: He dead-dead.

And now on to the returning faces:

Eileen: I really hope the show gives her a solid story for her return, but I’m not setting myself up to assume that she will be back for more than one episode. I suppose I’m hoping at minimum that she’s done right by, after 12.21 did her so, so wrong. Her death was needlessly, pointlessly cruel not just to her character, but to real humans who watch this show– women, d/Deaf people, disabled people in general… and didn’t even really serve the supposed intended purpose of fueling Sam’s manpain. We were all so in shock from the graphic pointlessness that most of us were incapable of even watching the rest of the episode, only made worse by the simpering tone of the letter she’d apparently sent Sam before she died. So at the very least, I need the show to issue her a formal (if metaphorical) apology for that bullshit.

Adam: What I would personally like most from a return of Adam, (and I was yelling about this to someone in chat bubbles recently and I can’t remember to whom), but knowing Dabb’s personal sense of humor, and knowing the spirit in which Adam’s character was first introduced way back in 4.19 (link for what I mean here: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184474002825/when-daniel-loflin-and-i-came-up-with-the-idea), but especially this bit: “We leaked that we were doing an episode with another Winchester brother and let photos go out to the various websites, and then we let them all panic. “We were laughing because we knew the whole time that he was actually never really their brother. I have to admit, we take sick pleasure in making our audience anxious. We like stirring the pot when we know everything is actually well under control.” 

So to me, the absolute BEST way to bring Adam back would be definitively proving he has been in Heaven all this time, and was never in the cage at all. That, to me, is the only way to end a 10 year long con on the entire fandom, paying off Adam’s entire character in the exact spirit in which he was created. It would be fucking poetic, is what it would be. And we all know how Dabb loves his poetry.

(and for the sake of completeness, have my rewatch notes on 4.19 too)

(since I see Billie as Dabb’s self-insert character, like Kripke’s was Chuck, and Carver’s was Metatron)

and finally,

Lisa and Ben: I most sincerely doubt they’ll be back. There is zero narrative reason for them to return, but I already wrote a kinda long post about them a few days ago: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/186471109135/gosh-bringing-lisa-back-would-be-an-awful-idea-i. I really, really really do not think the show is gonna take that route… there’s just waaaay too much skeevy baggage to unpack to bring them back to the story, and with only 20 episodes left to go, I don’t think they have time to do that in a non-skeevy way. Better not even try to unpack that whole can of worms at this point.

As to the ending I expect? I expect Sam and Dean (and hopefully alongside Rowena and Cas) to be at a point where they’re ready to go out into the world to truly seek their own destinies, unburdened by the Cosmic Story that’s prevented them from truly making their own choices for themselves all their lives. That’s it. 

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

Yesterday, the world watched in open-mouthed horror as Notre Dame Cathedral, an 800-year-old monument in Paris, France, burst into flames. As the Paris fire department scrambled to saved the priceless relics and artworks inside, French officials gradually started to take inventory of what had been recovered from the wreckage and what had been lost forever, with many — particularly Catholics, who had flocked to the city to celebrate Holy Week — gathering outside to sing hymns and mourn.

But while the spire of the building — which famously dates from the 19th-century restoration, not from medieval times — and much of the roof are destroyed, the iconic facade, the three large stained glass rose windows, and much of the internal structure, as well as many of the priceless artworks and relics contained within, appear to have been saved. “I have to say, it’s terrible, but it also appears it could have been much worse,” says Jeffrey Hamburger, a professor of art history at Harvard University whose research focuses on the art of the High and later Middle Ages.

The fact that the building did not collapse — a concern in the hours immediately following the blaze — serves as a “powerful testimony to the skill of medieval builders,” Hamburger says. He credits the survival of the structure to the building’s iconic rib vaulting and flying buttresses, which prevented collapse. “It’s worth remembering why they went through the trouble building it this way — it wasn’t for aesthetic reasons, it was for fire-proofing,” Hamburger says. “In a way, what we have here is proof of concept.”

In the wake of the destruction, French billionaires such as Francois-Henri Pinault (perhaps best known in the United States as the husband of Salma Hayek) and Bernard Arnault, chair of luxury goods brand LVMH, have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars toward the reconstruction of the cathedral, and Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron has issued a public statement on Twitter vowing to rebuild. Yet the damage wrought by the Notre Dame fire has also raised important questions about the cathedral’s symbolic significance in an increasingly divided France, and how to rebuild (or which version of the cathedral should be rebuilt) going forward — and in some ways, these questions are one and the same.

Over the course of the past few centuries, the cathedral has played a role in major historical events, from the coronation of kings to the crowning of Napoleon to the requiem mass of President Charles de Gaulle. And Notre Dame has served as a symbol of not just French historical identity, but Catholicism in general. “It has a double meaning,” says Jean-Robert Armogathe, a French Catholic priest and historian who served as the chaplain at Notre Dame from 1980 to 1985. “It has been the center of Catholic life and of France for 800 years.” As Armogathe points out, it is also quite literally the center of Paris: a gold star outside the cathedral marks Point Zero, the supposed center of the city.

But for some people in France, Notre Dame has also served as a deep-seated symbol of resentment, a monument to a deeply flawed institution and an idealized Christian European France that arguably never existed in the first place. “The building was so overburdened with meaning that its burning feels like an act of liberation,” says Patricio del Real, an architecture historian at Harvard University. If nothing else, the cathedral has been viewed by some as a stodgy reminder of “the old city — the embodiment of the Paris of stone and faith — just as the Eiffel Tower exemplifies the Paris of modernity, joie de vivre and change,” Michael Kimmelmann wrote for the New York Times.

Despite politicians on both sides of the French political spectrum discouraging people from trying to politicize the Notre Dame fire, it would be a mistake to view the building as little more than a Paris tourist attraction, says John Harwood, an architectural historian and associate professor at the University of Toronto. “It’s literally a political monument. All cathedrals are,” he says. For centuries, the cathedral was the seat of the bishop of the Catholic Church at a time when there was virtually no distinction between church and state. “It was the center and seat of political power not just in Paris, but in France,” he says. “And that remained the case even after the French Revolution and through successive revolutions and political power and regimes.”

Notre Dame acquired even more overtly nationalist symbolism following its renovation in the Nineteenth century by Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, who is widely considered the godfather of modern historical architectural restoration. Viollet-le-Duc sought to restore the edifice’s Gothic past, a style that was largely unpopular at the time; his restoration that accounts for the western facade, the (now-destroyed) spire, as well as modifications to the choir and the additions of gothic stained glass-windows.

Viollet-le-Duc’s restoration of the church was highly controversial, and to an extent still is today. “His approach to restoration was not, ‘Let’s fix the building as it is and put it in decent structural condition,'” says Cesare Birignani, assistant professor at the Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York. “In fact, he acted in a much more inventive and problematic way, because he claimed to reestablish or restore the church to an image that it may never have had. [It was] his own reinvention, or his own idea of how the church may have existed at the beginning of the 13th century” — an idealized version of French history that arguably never existed in the first place. The restoration also led to the reappraisal of the Gothic style as “a kind of the ultimate symbol of French architecture,” says Birignani. Unlike Renaissance-style architecture, the Gothic style was something the French people could claim as their own, which led to it becoming “a kind of collective symbol…[or] a collective creation of the French people,” he says.

What it means to be “French,” however, has obviously changed a great deal over the past few centuries. While France is still predominantly Christian, the number of practicing Catholics has fallen year after year, from 64% in 2010 to 56% in 2012, according to one census figure. The number of Muslims in France is also growing, comprising more than 5% of the population (up from 3% in 2006) giving rise to rampant Islamophobia and the birth of far-right extremist parties like the National Front, headed by extremist Marine Le Pen. A profound income gap has also led to the explosion of protests from so-called “yellow vests,” a movement primarily made up of lower-middle-class and middle-class youth on the left who have vandalized many similarly historically significant French monuments (and whose latest actions Macron was expected to comment on in a scheduled press conference, which was postponed when Notre Dame started burning). In fact, in the hours following the fire, many started blaming the accident on the yellow vests; there was also a flurry of Islamophobic posts on social media attributing the fire to Muslim extremist terrorists, despite the fact that all evidence currently indicates that the blaze was accidental.

Despite the lip service many French people and politicians have given to the symbolic significance of Notre Dame in the hours following the fire, Birignani says that as France has changed, so too has Notre Dame lost some of its weight as a totem of national identity, and is skeptical of some of the effusive rhetoric that has been borne from the flames. Now that the world has rallied in support of the rebuilding of the cathedral, however, and donations have started pouring in from all over the world, there’s likely to be renewed interest around the cathedral as an emblem of French history and culture. For some, this is deeply concerning. “One of the things that worries me about this event is that in a country that is deeply divided right now like France is and having this assumption of [Notre Dame] serving as a bedrock institution, it creates a hole and you have to imagine what it has to become again and who does the imagining, and that is a really loaded question,” says Harwood.

Although Macron and donors like Pinault have emphasized that the cathedral should be rebuilt as close to the original as possible, some architectural historians like Brigniani believe that would be complicated, given the many stages of the cathedral’s evolution. “The question becomes, which Notre Dame are you actually rebuilding?,” he says. Harwood, too, believes that it would be a mistake to try to recreate the edifice as it once stood, as LeDuc did more than 150 years ago. Any rebuilding should be a reflection not of an old France, or the France that never was — a non-secular, white European France — but a reflection of the France of today, a France that is currently in the making. “The idea that you can recreate the building is naive. It is to repeat past errors, category errors of thought, and one has to imagine that if anything is done to the building it has to be an expression of what we want — the Catholics of France, the French people — want. What is an expression of who we are now? What does it represent, who is it for?,” he says.

Hamburger, however, dismisses this idea as “preposterous.” Now that the full extent of the damage is being reckoned with — and is less than many initially feared — he sees no reason to not try to rebuild and preserve one of the few remaining wonders of medieval architecture. “It’s not as if in rebuilding the church one is necessarily building a monument to the glorification of medieval catholicism and aristocracy. It’s simply the case that the building has witnessed the entire history of France as a modern nation,” he says. “[You] can’t just erase history. It’s there, and it has to be dealt with critically.”

[raendown]

Soooo remember how we talked about the fact that I don’t like to write crossovers but I would try to write one of these? I had zero inspiration for this. I ended up just running with MadaTobi as Royai but something is better than nothing I guess!

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Rated: G Word count: 1568 Summary: Madara finally has a chance to have his eyesight restored after being left blind by the Truth. As he always has been, Tobirama is right there at Madara's side.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

Break The Dark In To A Sea Of Light

“Are you ready?”

Tobirama’s voice drew his attention to the other side of the room. After months of being blind, his eyesight taken in payment for forbidden knowledge, it was almost second nature for him to catalogue and memorize the people around him, their positions, the patterns of their breathing. Madara smiled at the breathiness in his Lieutenant’s voice. Tobirama sounded more nervous than he felt himself.

“I was born ready,” he boasted.

“No you were born stupid. This Philosopher’s Stone can only heal your eyes, not your idiocy.”

“That is insubordination!”

He nearly broke out in to a smile when Tobirama’s familiar snort graced his ears. “Alright, court martial me then – after the Doc here fixes your eyes.”

“Did she–?”

“Yes,” Tobirama cut him off, relief heavy in his voice. “Gai was transported safely back to Central and we were able to completely heal his legs. There should be just enough of this Philosopher’s Stone left to return your eyesight and if any remains afterwards it will be safely destroyed.”

Madara nodded slowly, letting it all sink in slowly. He noted that Tobirama had said ‘the Doc here’ which should mean that Tsunade had arrived and yet he’d heard not a peep from her. That was unusual. Disgraced and scarred and still too interested in medical experiments for her own good, Tsunade was usually one of the loudest voices in the room. Her silence provoked the first hint of nerves where until now he had been completely confident that nothing could go wrong.

Alright so he was intimately aware of just how many things could go wrong in an instant but surely he had earned some good karma to rely on at this point.

He perked up at the sound of Tobirama’s footsteps, softer than most peoples with the way he precisely placed each footfall. Madara turned his face to where he heard his subordinate stopped and offered a cocky smile.

“Well, it seems like everything has gone according to plan so far. What use is there in worrying now?”

“I hate you – sir,” the other man muttered. Madara’s smile widened, the small flash of nerves completely washed away in the comfort of familiarity.

“No you don’t.”

“Can we leave the flirting for later?” Tsunade threw her two cents in finally. Madara couldn’t see but his eyes still flew wide open and he was damn certain his face had just turned cherry red. He would have paid a great deal of money to see his Lieutenant’s reaction as well but life was cruel and Tsunade always did have the worst timing for everything. She was sort of infamous for her bad luck.

Also for her inhumane-though-well-meaning experiments though he preferred not to think about that. Human experimentation was never the most forgivable of crimes even if she had been acting under duress but Tsunade was doing what she could to make up for the things she had done and that was more than he could say of most criminals.

“Stay still,” her voice instructed him, sharp footsteps approaching the opposite bedside. Madara reluctantly turned his face towards her instead and flinched when she grabbed his face without any warning.

He wasn’t sure what he expected. Using a Philosopher’s Stone seemed like a momentous occasion in itself considering the cost of creating one; he almost thought there should be some sort of ceremony behind its use. Instead all he felt was the press of jagged crystal to his forehead, a massive conduit of human suffering condensed in to this tiny sliver held between two fingers, cool and warm at the same time. Then his body was light and his skin was tingling with something like electricity and it was over before he knew it.

The world came back to him gradually, like blinking away the afterimage of a too-bright light. Madara whipped his head to the other side again and tilted his chin up until something pale and angular sat in the center of his vision. He grinned and reached out to brush his fingertips against the red lines that had been guiding and protecting him for many years. Tobirama’s startled expression was the first thing he managed to see clearly with his newly restored vision and if Madara were more given to romance and poetry he would have thought that quite significant.

“You look terrible,” was what he said instead. “Should try to sleep more, eh?”

“Fuck you, sir,” Tobirama snapped, although he very notably did not draw away as Madara continued to trace his tattoos. His eyes were softer than Madara could remember seeing them and everything about him was almost dripping with relief. It was all the welcome he needed.

Tsunade’s groan of disgust made both of them jump and return all limbs to where they should be. “Well I assume that means it worked. Look, take it easy for a few days. Avoid bright lights until you readjust. I’m sure your partner over there will be more than happy to stay with you until we can be certain there are no lingering effects.”

“But–?”

“Doctor’s orders, Lieutenant,” she declared with venomous cheer. “I’m putting his well-being in to your hands.”

“You’re a stone-cold woman,” Tobirama grumbled.

“And you’re not the first to tell me that. Right, I did what I came here to do. Time for me to get out of here. You still planning on solving the Ishvalan problem all by yourself, General?”

Madara’s spine straightened almost without thought. “We were the ones to break them. It should be up to us to help them rebuild.”

“I didn’t ask you make mushy statements or anything. I just wanted to know if I would see you there. I have my own hurts to make up for, you know?” Tsunade shrugged and turned to leave with as little fanfare as she had entered with.

As soon as she was out of the room and the door had clicked shut behind her Madara felt hands on the collar of his standard issue hospital garb and his startled protest was cut off with a pair of chapped lips. Tobirama swallowed the muffled exclamation of surprise, tilting his head to deepen the kiss until Madara felt his body melting in to it, both hands fisting in the blanket spread across his knees. It ended much too soon for his liking. He would forever deny the pitiful keen that slipped out when Tobirama pulled away, even if it did earn him one more quick peck.

Dazedly, he lifted his chin higher to stare questioningly up at the man who had faithfully watched his back for more years than he cared to count, nary an unwarranted complaint or question, quietly enduring every mess that Madara saw fit to throw himself in to in the name of fixing his beloved Amestris.

He’d thought about this, of course, quite often over the years. Tobirama wasn’t the sort of man you didn’t fall in love with. But there never seemed to be time for relationships and Madara never had liked showing his cards unless he was one hundred percent certain he had the winning hand. He’d always thought someday he might carefully tread this path but only if he managed to crack the other man’s unreadable façade and figure out if he even had a chance.

Apparently Tobirama had been waiting on him all the while. Madara winced. His lieutenant was not patient and he certainly had no qualms about speaking his mind to idiots who wasted his time.

“I was going to do that myself,” he mumbled.

“Of course you were,” Tobirama allowed generously. “Right after you become Fuhrer, fix all of Ishval, and bring this country in to a new age of peace, yes? Lofty goals, general. I thought I would just speed this right along and take at least one worry off your plate.”

“How kind of you.” Not even the dryness in Madara’s tone could hide his delight. He would have been embarrassed if not for the possessive light of satisfaction in Tobirama’s eye, the cat that caught the mouse. If he’d ever thought of himself as the cat before he realized now how wrong he was. Tobirama was no mouse.

If this was how things were going to be between them then Madara felt no shame in allowing himself to openly admire the shape of Tobirama’s lips smiling down at him, staring the way he’d never let himself before. He wasted no time wondering about all the years behind them and the things that might have been. Now more than ever he believed there to be little use in looking back at the past. The world was better served looking forward to the future and all the things still to come, the things he could still change.

Tsunade had changed his eyesight. Obito had changed the world. Tobirama had changed Madara’s world. Now it was his turn to do what he could.

“Well, I was going to offer you a promotion,” he said quietly. “Perhaps instead I might offer you dinner?”

“You’ll have to get out of this hospital bed first.”

“Help me break out?”

Tobirama rolled his eyes but Madara could see the nearly undetectable curl of the man’s lips and he knew, just like always, that his faithful partner would not let him down. Amestris could wait one more night. Madara’s heart could not.

[chiseki]

Figured I’d make this an intro post, since I’m pretty much using this alternate url as an “out” url compared to my usual vagueness.

I’m Joshua. Yes, that matches the sidebar, so it’s not really surprising here.

And that would surprise an entire two people following my main blog that know me irl because the rest were previously informed. Maybe three people, I forget if the last one is on tumblr or not.

Which is, by the way, ““““““““fun”““““““““

Yup, having like three local friend circles that had relations to each other outside of myself, and only one of them being in the know is fun.

You can basically stop reading at this point, because from here on out is just gonna be a massive time rewind to.....jeez, fuck if I know when, my childhood? I promise there will be time skips, we don’t need that mess played at normal tempo. (Also some funny stories after the giant gap in the text, if you want to scroll for that).

Most of this story is actually located in college, but the only real indicator (aside from having a general dislike of dresses) was way back when I was in all of second grade--apparently I was so damn insulted I burned all these facts into my memory--and an older kid was brought into the classroom, gave us this cool sales pitch about do we want to learn to shoot a bow, go camping, build campfires, etc

and then was like “OH YEAH THIS IS THE BOY SCOUTS IT’S BOYS ONLY”

I was so hyped lol.

Wound up being in a mediocre girl scout troop later, and my brother obviously got directed into boy scouts. At which point I got to find out that their camping trips were mostly getting rained on and finding black windows and getting taught woodworking by a dude missing a chunk of finger.

So more suffering than child me would have expected, but they still got to build fires and go REAL camping and shoot bows and rifles and shit.

Meanwhile, in girl scouts, we went to this one set of cabins every year. We never stayed in the damn cabins, because someone would find A Bug in there, or a spider, and then someone ELSE would have the same issue, and no one wanted to be in a cabin alone let alone be the only one in the cabins at all, and we always wound up sleeping in the air conditioned lodge that was visible from the damn cabins.

Except the one year where we went to a different camp, stayed in the legendary caboose, and there was a bat sleeping on the outside of the window so no one wanted to sleep there except me.

My scout group was weak.

I miss the cookies, though.

Anyway, due to not being forced into gender-targeted toys and getting to play with whatever the fuck I wanted, I also have jack shit for anything resembling an early warning sign aside from the above.

Actually, scratch that, I was not really a fan of dresses. I mean, this was fair in general, since they were usually scratchy, didn’t fit my arms/shoulders right, were designs I had no say in, and everyone would get on my case if the dress might get even a LITTLE dirty. Had some skirts I liked in middle school, but even that was a mess of having to wear tights because my genes have never resulted in anything resembling a thigh gap.

And I was like, constantly trying to play with the guys in grade school. And they’d periodically get that “NYEHHHHHHH GUYS ONLYYYYYY” shit going on. That was never not infuriating tbh.

Flash forward to high school, still basically left to my own devices. Only indicator here was that I was just tickled fucking pink whenever I heard that I either passed at cons or was at least tossed in the “maybe.......?” zone.

Flash forward to college. I honestly don’t remember what set me off on thinking about it, but started eyeballing my gender with a microscope. Unfortunately I couldn’t apply a litmus test like sexuality, so there was a lot of “uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhfuck” going on.

Actually, I think part of it was that on the forum I hung out on, a lot of the old regulars had assumed I was a dude until a childhood friend had dropped a pronoun several times in succession & asserted its correctness, which then led to a discussion along the lines of “whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat”.

But yeah, started testing the waters.

Also tried going to a LGBT+ club like, once. With the gal I was either dating at the time or was about to be dating, my memory is shit tbh. “HEY SO HOW ABOUT WE ALL JUST COME OUT TO EACH OTHER, A BUNCH OF STRANGERS <33333333″ still freaks me out, honestly. I get why it’s generally done, but like, no thanks. But I was horrendously obvious in ducking about the gender question and she totally called me out on it later in private lol. Also got me my first binder, but I digress.

Anyway, basically spilled on “I’m.....probably..............? a dude...........? jsyk??????” to my immediate friends, which was met with a lot of “.....YEAH ACTUALLY THAT MAKES SENSE” and a “hang on I need a dictionary........ok I get it”

I think I was the least smooth part of anything resembling a coming-out just due to like, me not wanting to have to tell people to do things for me? It’s something I find extremely awkward, like I know it’s that horribly stereotypical dating thing of “what’s wrong, bby, what do I have to do” “I DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO TELL YOU WHAT TO DO” but.

And that’s an entire digression about how my relationship with my mother often included me saying a lot of shit I had to say convincingly, but didn’t mean at all, and probably led to me having fuckall faith in what people say, most especially when under a forced prompt. I could do an essay on that, but not here.

Which, admittedly, I’m gonna rewind here because I think it’s funny in hindsight, but it means the dictionary reaction went like “SO...........I’M.............TRANS?” “What?” [thinking this is pushback on the idea] [PANIC MODE] “UH” “Like, literally, what does that word mean, I've never heard it in my life.” “OH. WELL. Heh. Uh. That internal reaction I had was embarrassing then, oops.”

Anyway.

Then the collective action was, “well, have you picked a name what do you MEAN you haven’t picked a name, we can’t just run about calling you by your deadname after all that”

And I tossed some names out, that I’m not going to list, because they were just fucking awful. So I got interventioned and the method became throwing names at me until they stuck.

Adam? Nah I knew an Adam and I can’t unassociate with that

Noah? Violin teacher’s third kid was named Noah. Same issue with Gabriel and Caleb.

Benjamin? I fucking grew up with a Benjamin he would kill me.

you get the idea.

And those were like, actual reasonable rejections. At least half the time I was just like “I DON’T LIKE HOW IT SOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNDS.” Take, for example, Josh. I 1) knew one in high school and he was a piece of work and 2) I just, inexplicably, don’t like how the word sounds.

Which is part irony and part masochism that JoshUA stuck.

I mean, that name had pre-existing connotations for me. I had played..........a game.........in high school. And given that my options were pretty shafted to Stereotypical White Boy Names if I didn’t want to stick out like a sore thumb, some positive(?) pre-existing connotations were going to be needed.

Incidentally, I had a v. sweet trans girl offer me her deadname, which was a cool name, but just, like, didn’t fit me in particular so. She also picked her name by RNG tournament, with the top 10 baby names for her year being the competitors. Which was neat and worked well for her, but I know I would have just re-run the fucking tourney if I didn’t like the winner lol.

But anyway, continuing on to a less flowery story. I’ll add some blank lines so it’s skippable. No need to set off every other person with gender issues here.

Decided to come out to my family. Apparently time fuzzed down my memories of being devoured by mosquitos outside while my parents were trying to decipher that their kid was holding hands with a girl in the back of the van and that girl had been planned to sleep over that night, and despite the fact that booth teens wouldn’t be jumping to sex that fast nor had the equipment to make a kid between them....it was Reason For Concern like a straight couple sharing a bed.

I mean, my mom was convinced that anything touching the nether regions was SEX and PREMARITAL SEX was EVIL. But I digress.....again.

So. I tell them. And the reaction ranged from “well ok I mean you’ve always been weird” (thanks, bro) to “uh I guess my last name’s odds of getting inherited just doubled........?” to “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME”

Yeah. That last one was word for word. Some stuff was thrown, lots of crying (”I CAN’T EVEN DO MY MAKEUP AND IT’S YOUR FAULT”)--both of which were not my doing, though I got shocked(?) into my own set of tears iirc.

I think I set a speed record for climbing back into the closet. Like, a week later, everyone was pretending it never happened. I sorta emotionally cut ties with my mom at that point--kept it civil, but Did Not Want to discuss my life or friends at all with her or in any way that would get back to her.

So obviously, no one in my family knows I go by Joshua. If they asked, I would tell them, but lo and behold, zero questions, they never brought it up again, etc. And I’ve been very careful about not letting that knowledge spread, not putting it on the internet in a way that connects back to my legal name, being primed at any point to pretend “Joshua” is a mutual friend and to not respond to that name if someone accidentally calls me by it.

Incidentally, during Yet Another Family Counseling that was at least performed at an individual level this time, my mom apparently told the counselor that she thought she handled that well. Last I checked, making the situation about yourself and doing the whole “woe is me, the mother, with a child like this” shpeal was not “well”.

And I mean the WHOLE shpeal. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to see the posts by parents of trans kids that wax soliloquy about losing their child and mourning their “death” (especially the ones that aren’t all “but I got a new kid!”) like, the ones especially cut from the same cloth that would be like “my child is autistic but ~I~ am the inspiration for waking up in the morning” like no, your kid is the inspiration for dealing with you.

And if anyone is wondering, this is basically the Midwest Stereotype for....LGBT, interracial dating, etc rejection imo. Seemingly ok with it, but NO WAIT HANG ON, NOT MY CHILD. Like, I legit had trans kids explained to me (albeit without terms for it) at a relatively young age by my mother and yet. “X exists but not in our good christian neighborhood” attitude. Ugh.

So where was I? Hmm, yes, funny Joshua stories. Ok I have like ONE story. One of my friends that was in the know finally got me to play Trails in the Sky. Now, this sucker has a chunk of text lead-in with a ~mysterious~ boy that young Estelle’s father has brought home, and the whole discussion skips his name, ending on “my name is....”. Then it time-skips to present day, finally casually dropping this dude’s name, which, obviously, is Joshua.

My friend did not tell me this.

No warning, nada. Only Estelle had really come up in conversation.

And then we collectively dragged another friend into the abyss with us, except he wasn’t in the know. We also had him streaming his playing sessions when our schedules coincided, which led to--because of a shitty accuracy stat--him yelling (as we did) “JOSHUA!” frequently in combat.

I debated on just responding “Yes?” randomly one day in the most casual closet-exit possible. Then procrastinated by deciding to just be out with it at the end of the first game since he’d also played twewy.

Some of you have probably started to eye my avatars with judgement in your hearts. That’s fair.

Anyway, we had forgotten about another character that practically had his name, so at least I had someone to share my weird feelings with.

And then, he started the second game, and I didn’t hold back on responding “yes?” every time “Joshua” was used as an interjection.

Also because of that one post about biblical names, I will respond to any use of “Jesus”.

[thisweekingundamwing]

TWIGW February 11 - 17th

Happy Sunday Gundam Wing Fandom!

We have some super awesome things for you to check out this week!  Many many thanks to those who submitted and tagged us in content - it makes our job so much easier! Especially with the archiving happening on AO3! If you’ve created something we missed, please feel free to let us know so we can feature you too!

Remember, if you find something you love, please please make sure you let the creator know how much you enjoyed it!  Every little comment/like/reblog goes a long way towards fueling their desire to do more!  

Thank you for all that you do, and keep submitting your great content to us!

-Mod CB

Fanfiction:

A Little Piece of Gundam Wing

The archive is being ported to AO3! Check it out!

@ahsimwithsake

Fickle Faithful

Heero-centric, implied future 1x5x3. This might grow into something more.

Late entry for @gwblockparty Rewrite the Romance

Rated T for swearing

Amberly

Knife in Hand

When Duo learns there's a hit out on him, he turns to the only person in Chicago he believes capable of helping him. But will the cost of the Broker's help be too high?

Pairings: 2x3, past (underage) 6x2, past 1x3

Warnings: Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Consent Issues, Organized Crime, Assassination, child trafficking, Past Abuse, Federal Agents, Abuse of Power, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Gender Issues

Amberly with @yourbloodlikewine​

In This Light

Duo spent the last semester working in his older brother's coffee shop. He's resigned himself to a boring spring when a stranger appears, shaking up his entire life. Eli left home last fall, choosing to spend the last six months living out of his van on his travels from the Midwest to the East Coast. By the time he arrives at Ink's, the novelty of traveling alone has started to wear off. Still, the last thing he's expecting is to meet someone who's going to change all that for him

Pairings: 2xOMC, 3xOMC, Solo x OMC, 

Warnings:  Rape/Noncon, Original Characters - Freeform, Alternate Universe, child abuse mention, Sexual Assault Mention, homophobic parents, Re-Written Characters, Drug Use, Violence, off screen murder, gratuitous author indulgence

@anaranesindanarie​

Cocktail Friday

Cocktail Friday drabbles.

Pairings: 2x3

Warnings: bar, diplomats, Russian accent

Death Unspeaking

What happens when a Gundam Pilot is mute? What happens when the other Pilots look down at him because of it? Will he overcome the odds or will the odds overcome him? For Manny who encouraged me to work on this.

Pairings: 2x3

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage

Designation01

War Tactics

Heero's perception leads to an interesting discovery: Duo Maxwell avoids mirrors. An introspective ficlet that aims to explore using BDSM and possible lack of body autocracy to overcome self-image issues.

Pairings: 1x2

Warnings: Mirrors, Body Image, Body Horror, Hand Jobs, NightmaresComfort, Emotional Discomfort, Control Issues, Complete

@duointherain​

To Be Human is to Love

Duo and Heero are working a damaged part of their new colony, things go wrong.

Pairings: 1x2

Warnings: Spaced

EclipseMage

Broken and Bloodthirsty

Duo is terrible-awful at coping. Quatre gets the brunt end of it after a reckless mission-gone-wrong.

Pairings: none

Warnings: Pilot angst, Physical fight ensues, Underage Drinking

flamingofics (hey @idkmybffflamingo​ is this you? let us know!)

Will You Have Me?

Duo returns from a Preventers mission on the fourteenth of February. Trowa takes the opportunity to attempt to confess his feelings for him.

Pairings: 2x3

Warnings: Fluff and Angst, Confessions, Misunderstandings, Gundam Wing Valentine's Day Fan Exchange

Gift fic for @claraxbarton​ from a GW Valentine’s Day exchange in 2016

Ginnybag

Past Tense

'Milliardo.... I'll be waiting on the other side....' A quarter of a century after the fight at MOII, the Epyon System follows the last command given by its maker, returning him to where he will, once again, be needed. But 25 years is a long time and the world he left behind is not the one he wakes in, and fighting to be more than the ghost that he has become to his friends and family may be one battle Treize Khushrenada really cannot win.

Pairings: 6x13, 3x11, 5xMariemaia, 4xR, 2xDorothy, 13,OMC

Warnings: Newtypes, POLITICS!, Sanc, Past Heero/Relena, Past Treize/OFC, Past Treize/OMC, Dysfunctional Family, Family Issues, Parents & Children, Discussions of Politics/War/Abuse/Sex, References to Drugs, Romefeller Foundation, Mentions of Past Nastiness, ZERO System, Canon - to a point

Poison Seven - A Thousand Words

Part 7 of Poison

Pairings: 6x13

Warnings:  none listed

Wild Roses: Cold Comfort

December AC 191: Six months after creation, Treize's new Wing is rapidly gathering a reputation as the best of the best. A routine patrol in space cements Zechs's status as an Ace and leaves Treize injured, revealing the depths of his religious beliefs.  As the 10th Anniversary of the Fall of Sanc combines with the fallout, Leia begins to doubt her husband, Lady Une summons the Zodiac to form, and Noin earns her wings. On Christmas Eve, Treize marks his 21st with a mission he did not expect, culminating in professional triumph and personal revelation for both men.

Pairings: 6xOMC, 6xOtto, 13x11, 13xLeia Barton, 6xOttoxOMC, 13x6, 6x9

Warnings: Nuclear-powered suits, The Duchess of Richmond's Ball, Medical Euthanasia

JunaAzumi

Aún existen los príncipes azules

Trowa sabia que habia separado a los 5 pilotos pero no se arrepentia de nada.

4x5

Bailemos hasta que se acabe el mundo

Quién puede tener una cena en medio de una guerra? Quatre y Heero te darán la respuesta

1x4

Quatre vs Duo

Los chicos se van de vacaciones a Playa del Carmen, Quatre y Duo compiten por las atenciones de Heero ¿Quién ganara?

1x4

Quiero Acordarme de ti

Resumen: Quatre encontró a Trowa, estaba preparado para cualquier cosa menos menos para lo que encontró 04x03 escena perdida del capitulo 38

3x4

facetiousfutz

Short Oneshot Requests

Occasionally I open the floor to short fic and drabble requests on my personal Dreamwidth account (same username, if you want access), and these are the fills I've deemed worthy of lurking eyes. I have a ton of fandoms. This will focus heavily on humor pieces and M/M and F/F ships, with some exceptions. If any archive warnings ever apply, I will make a note of it in the beginning.

Multiple fandoms/pairings, please see chapter specific warnings

All characters underage in canon are aged up accordingly in smut fics

@kangofu-cb​

If You Let Me

If Trowa could give the new residents one rule for surviving the ICU, it would be ‘Don’t Touch Anything. (Especially The Patients.)’.  In reality, he’d actually give them a lot of rules, possibly with diagrams for clarity.  But his main rule essentially covered the bases. When you worked in one of the largest ICUs, in the biggest medical center in the country, at a hospital known for taking on unstable patients for the most complex and risky surgeries that were performed no-where else, new residents were a menace. Until he meets Dr. Maxwell, the newest anesthesia resident.

Pairings: 2x3, background HxD

Warnings: Alternate Universe - Medical, Doctor/Patient, Nurses & Nursing, Fluff and Smut, this is literally my feel good thing guys ok, I mean I'm not saying there won't be any angst, but basically this is all WAFF

@ladyjstruth-blog​

Going Home

Quatre has a secret that comes out unexpectedly and now everyone has to deal with the fallout. The news is hardest on Trowa, who still loves him, even after years of breaking up.

Pairings: 3x4

Warnings: Drama and Romance, Post-Canon

Lil_1337

2018 Comment Fic_Feburary

Drabbles and short fics written for the Live Journal community Comment Fics which can be found here: http://comment-fic.livejournal.com

Multiple fandoms/pairings, please see chapter specific warnings

Maldoror

The Source of All Things

Center, a planet where magic and technology blend. Or more accurately, fight tooth and nail. A planet of Sources, holes in our boring dimension letting through arcane power, chaos and pseudo-deities. In this hot-house of myths and very real dangers, Trowa and Quatre find a mysterious man at the end of a shamanic voyage. Portents suggest this Heero Yuy is crucial to Center’s survival. He’s important enough to have some interesting enemies after him, at any rate: a devious killer and thief called ‘Shinigami’, and a very irate Dragon. Beyond them looms an even greater threat. Indeed, the greatest of them all.

Pairings: 3x4, 2x5, eventual 1x2x5

Warnings:  alternative universe, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Plot Twists, fairly graphic depiction of sex, Mild description of self-harm, Mathematical Magic, weird science, crones - Freeform, Magic and Technology brawling and eventually screwing, Eventual Threesome, Kinda, Insanity of arcane origin, The universe is a pile of marbles and other dubious allegories

Two Halves

The two kingdoms of Sanq and Lin were at war for years; a conflagration involving magic, armies and political murder. The conflict left both nations devastated and strewn with refugees. The king of Sanq finds his infant son, lost at birth, among the death and the ruin, a miracle he barely dared to hope for. But there isn't just one boy, there are two, clinging together like two halves of a whole that cannot be separated. Decades later, the truth behind that second child’s existence will put a hole in the world, or possibly save it.

Pairings: 1x2

Warnings: Fantasy AU, medieval setting with magic, starts with our heroes as children, Cousin Incest, sort of, eventually, being royalty this is in fact the norm and rather expected of them, Canon-Typical Violence

Shinohoshi13

By Demons Be Driven

For years she struggled to live, burdened by a long-forgotten past, an unclear present, and a non-existent future. War consumes her life, forcing her to live as if every day is her last. Fate has seen fit to gift her with unnatural abilities far beyond the normal human capacity. With those abilities, she leads a daily game of tag, putting her life on the line over and over again. Will a chance meeting with a young man give this tired young woman the will to keep fighting? And with the war escalating higher and higher, will she have the time to find out who, and what, she really is?

Pairings: 5xOFC, background 1x2, 3x4, 6x13, unrequited Rx1

Warnings: Relena bashing, Adult Content, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Crude Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Strong Language, Torture, Violence, Psychological Horror, Magical Realism

Sol1056

Tetractys

In a reality where Kushrenada won, the five gundam pilots live a half-life, effectively prisoners. An unexpected chance at freedom may let them regain what they'd lost, but it also means a return to battle. Some things, once lost, cannot be regained. | Significant rewrite of original version.

Pairings: 4x5, 1xR

Warnings:  Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Multiple Universes Colliding, Post-Canon, Mecha, Alternate Reality, War, Politics, Rebellion, Slow Burn, Accelerated humanity, Paranormal skills, Butchered scientific theory, Global warfare, Significant battle scenes, Mecha reduxes, Multiple Pairings, Female gundam pilots

Thai_Tea_Addict

Wolves and Lambs

On the cusp of war, Remus Lupin discovers he has a son. Facing a prejudiced wizarding world unwilling to believe Voldemort has returned, Remus must now navigate his duties as both a member of the Order and as a father to one Duo Maxwell. Duo doesn't know a lot about families, but he knows war. HP Fifth Year, Post-GW main series

Pairings: 1x2, 2xHP, 3x4, Romione

Warnings: Harry Potter crossover, Family Reconstruction Act, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Politics, Wizarding Politics, War, Disturbing Themes

@vegalume​

Ellion - Book 1

Set in a world where one mad man tries to rule all and destroy the last traces of magic, one young man must overcome a life filled with war and death in order to save those he holds dear.

1x2, 13x11

A/U, Fantasy, Angst, Mpreg, Character Death

Snippets:

@chronicwhimsy

WIP Wednesday - Post-canon 2xR snippet for @gwblockparty Rewrite the Romance

@kangofu-cb

We Won’t - AU RxH snippet for @gwblockparty Rewrite the Romance

@lifeaftermeteor​

LAM!verse snippet featuring Relena on the Warpath

@remsyk-blog

Thrill of the Chaste - AU 2x3, HxR Amish Romance for @gwblockparty Rewrite the Romance

@terrablaze514

Flu Aftermath Writing Prompt

@thefallenstar-treizekhushrenada

Valentine’s Day drabble about cake, 13x11

Photo Edits/Manipulations

@zechs

Incorrect Zechs Quote

Headcanons / Meta / Discussions:

Multiple Contributors

Self-Destruct suit discussion

@gundamwing-ellesmith

Otakon’s Gundam Wing Panel thoughts

Fanart:

@arubees

Heero and Duo

@cree8ions

Dorothy Catalonia

@hainekoken

Heero Yuy

@hasuyawwn

Duo Maxwell

@noelleian​

Quatre Raberba Winner

Trowa Barton

Sally Po

@outofworkshinigami

Duo twin commission for @anaranesindanarie

@oxymoronicidiosyncrasy

Heero Yuy

Duo Maxwell

@rockmandash2

Duo Maxwell

Duo Maxwell sketch

@vegalume​

Taste the Rainbow

@versari-arts

Hilde Schbeiker

@xan-drei

Heero and Duo  from LAM!verse, commission for @lifeaftermeteor

Cosplays:

@18thcenturylove​

Duo Maxwell 

Calendar Events:

Cocktail Friday

https://gwcocktailfriday.tumblr.com/

A new prompt every Monday!

Submissions should be posted Fridays between 3 and 5pm EST, and tagged with @gwcocktailfriday

Interview with a Creator by @remsyk-blog @interview-with-a-creator

Remsyk has created an online interview for fandom creators to fill out and then she features one each week so that everyone in the fandom can learn a bit about each other.

If you haven’t filled out her interview, go! do! now!

Honorable Mention:

@kangofu-cb​ was mentioned by AO3 Admin as a winner in the 2018 Feedback Fest Challenge, and won a prize!  Thanks to everyone who recc’d something on their post as part of the challenge! Over 500 fanworks (in total, not just Gundam Wing) were mentioned as part of the challenge! And special thanks to @terrablaze514​ for bringing this to the attention of the mods!

[alanaknobel99]

Red Lipstick and The Green New Deal

Have you ever been told as a child, if something isn’t working then find a new solution? At this moment, our country is like that child, and it needs to be told to find a new solution. The way the United States of America has been operating works, but not for everyone, and our climate is changing. Not just our environmental climate, but the political climate as well. Our country is depleting, poverty is soaring, healthcare is unaffordable, student loan debt is atrocious, and climate change is quite literally killing people. Young people feel our country is stuck. The older generation is holding onto it like their youngest child leaving for college. Ultimately, no matter what, that child will leave. Everyone has to grow up, even this country, and it’s going to happen whether the parents like it or not. Every movement, and this is a movement, to push our country forward needs a voice. For us, that is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or AOC is a 31-year-old Latina-American born and raised in the Bronx of New York City. Her parents ended up moving 30-50 miles north of the Bronx to a better neighborhood to afford better education and a future for their children. In a 2019 TIME Magazine article, AOC said that those 40-minute drives taught her that zip-code matters. What a lesson to learn, that where you grow up has more impact on your future than you do. Her mother cleaned houses, and her father owned a small architecture business. In 2008 her father died which spun the family into financial turmoil. This caused AOC to pick up multiple jobs, working for a nonprofit by day, and bartending by night. She has constantly said that she never saw herself going into politics, but it’s hard to deny that she was built for the political stage. Her brother submitted her for Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats who are actively looking for young people to run for Congress. They want people who are working class, poor, educated to be the Americans who represent other Americans. I believe it was on her way to a protest at the Dakota Access Pipeline when she received a call asking if she wanted to run for Congress. From there on began the development of a grassroots campaign, that is the ultimate underdog story.

She was running against Joseph Crowley, an incumbent who hadn’t been challenged since 2004. He was your average democrat, swearing loyalty to fight Donald Trump, and that was a majority of his campaign. What he didn’t pay attention to was AOC, who ran on true issues and the need to help the residents of the 14th district in New York. Her campaign was made up of volunteers, a majority of whom were actors, and they knew how to put on a good show. They didn’t accept any lobbyist money, and were completely donation based. That was quite fascinating that she was able to beat someone who had millions of dollars being poured into his campaign fund. However, her winning wasn’t about the money, it was about this newfound energy and spirit that she has that led her to victory. She really cares about people, she cares about what policies are being put forward in order to help those people in the future.

She continues to radiate this fiery passion to fight, even into her 3rd year in Congress. This passion and honesty are what make her so radical, likable, and attention-grabbing. Allowing her presence on social media to skyrocket over the years. We can see this in news clips that have gone viral of her during committee hearings where she pours her heart out. In one of her most famous clips where she exclaims, “People are dying” while using her passionate words to defend the Green New Deal. In this specific video, she is speaking the absolute truth. The climate crisis is about human lives, and there should be no debate around that whatsoever. It’s come to the point in politics where people need to speak up and fast because the climate crisis has a ticking time bomb, and if we do not tackle this issue before it’s too late there is no turning back. AOC is the person speaking up, she doesn’t sugar coat anything, and she does it with grace. Even if people don’t like her, whether that’s the haters and trolls online or her coworkers across the aisle, continues to not let others silence her.

I remember when a Republican congressman called her a “fucking bitch” she spoke up. Whereas others, I feel, would keep quiet, I’m sure Nancy Pelosi has been called that by some of her coworkers, but the world has never heard it. Alexandria took the time to approach the situation like the female hero everyone knows she is. There is no politician filter when she speaks, it’s raw, and it’s fully and truly her. She is not afraid to use social media to call out people on their stupidity, wrongness, or even disagreement with others.

Some will say that she just became a congressperson at the right time, during the social media boom. While that may hold some truth, it’s really how she uses social media to create a space of transparency that has caused the public to flock to her accounts like a moth to light. At the time the TIME article was written they said, “her Twitter following has climbed from about 49,000 last summer to more than 3.5 million.” Her Twitter following is now at 12.6 million. I believe, just from my own research, she has the most Instagram followers of her other coworkers at 8.8 million followers. When I look at her Instagram feed compared to Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Cruz, and other big political names, her feed is very different. Others have a lot of information pictures, news clips, and statistical slides that may grab some people's attention, but it’s very political because there is no connection. When you look at AOC’s feed a majority are videos of her doing live Q&A sessions. I haven’t seen this on any other politician's platform. She is directly and in real time, answering questions about current legislation in which she is able to clear up misinformation. I watched her live Q&A about what was in the second COVID relief bill, and I learned so much. She has created this space of truth, transparency, and faith all because she chose to include people in what she is doing for them. Just a few days ago she posted a short weekly vlog where she explained what she did during that week. You don’t see others in her same position doing that. Many may think it’s irresponsible, not politician-like, but in actuality it’s what they should be doing.

Now, is this a generational thing or something else? She’s 31 years old, grew up during the social media boom, tends to have younger interns, is more in tune with the “lingo” as the older people may say. While it may be all of the above, she has actively chosen to use her social media like this. Others can use their accounts like this but choose not to for some reason. AOC is one of the only people actively getting the younger generation involved in politics, and she does this through the internet. During the pandemic, she live-streamed her playing the vastly popular game, Among Us, where she talked about legislations and let people ask her questions. She has made countless statements that the older generation in Congress always talks about young people, but never makes space for us, allowing us to show our potential. It’s always, “it’s not your time yet” never “come show us what you can do now.” AOC is leading the path for young people to have a space in the political circle. There is also one more major reason why people like her so much, and that’s because she is a working-class American.

I have said my entire life that I would love to see Republicans switch shoes with a steelworker for one day. The majority of people who run our government have grown up in a life of privilege that afforded to get them there. They don’t know what real working class, poor Americans go through every day. Our government has a real problem that if they can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. AOC has lived check to check, been on the other end of taking someone’s order, worked overnight just to have some extra cash to pay off student loans. I’m not disavowing anyone's upbringing, but she has consistently put forward a policy that helps the average American. Even policy that helps everyone, like The Green New Deal.

The Green New Deal is a Resolution put forth by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts. It is not a piece of legislation, but a call to action that the federal government takes steps to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases to zero by 2030. The 14-page resolution has a ton of what seems like radical changes. This includes updating the country’s infrastructure, energy grid, and ensuring livable wages for all American jobs. There is a lot to discuss when it comes to the Green New Deal, as within those 14 pages the goals outline almost everything that makes up the US economy. There are so many benefits that could happen to our country if something like this is passed. For instance, guaranteeing higher education for everyone in order to receive the knowledge needed to acquire a job with a livable wage. The Green New Deal also addresses issues such as systemic racism and puts forth proposals to invest in certain neighborhoods. These are the types of legislation that need to be put forward in order for our country to evolve. The fact that not everyone is guaranteed higher education, shelter, clean water, healthy food, is unacceptable.

Most of the rebuttal to the Green New Deal is that it’s too expensive, unrealistic, and the federal government shouldn’t have that much power. While the GND is expensive, estimated to be around 50-90 trillion dollars, the federal government will end up spending more money in the long run from disasters related to climate change. The Green New Deal says the federal government could spend up to 500 trillion dollars in economic relief by 2100. The more we wait, the more money we will have to spend in the long run catching up to those problems, until we cannot. To those who say the Green New Deal is unrealistic, I ask them to read a history book and identify all the major life-changing events that others have said were unrealistic as well. Americans freeing themselves from Britain, the abolishment of slavery, the civil rights act, The New Deal. For my response towards the issue of government power, if the federal government isn't the ones putting forth legislation to protect American lives I don’t know what they are there for.

With all that being said, is AOC the right person to bring forth this Green New Deal? To that, I say absolutely yes. She represents the new millennium, the rise of the younger progressive generation who is fighting to make real change in this country. Her use of social media, and how she connects to people across the world set an example as to who we want our elected leaders to be. Transparent, honest, and inclusive in their media. Her story, who she is as a person, what she stands for is what the Green New Deal stands for. Rightfully so when someone mentions her they think of the Green New Deal, and vice versa. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is what the future of this country will look like, and she will continue to lead the pack.

Bibliography

Alter, C. (2019, March 21). Inside rep. Alexandria Ocasio-cortez's UNLIKELY RISE. Retrieved April 19, 2021, from https://time.com/longform/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-profile/

DSouza, D. (2021, January 26). The green new deal explained. Retrieved April 28, 2021, from https://www.investopedia.com/the-green-new-deal-explained-4588463

What is the green new deal? (2020, December 08). Retrieved April 28, 2021, from https://www.sunrisemovement.org/green-new-deal/?ms=WhatistheGreenNewDeal%3F

Grunwald, M., White, J., Sitrin, S., & Gerstein, B. (2019, January 15). The trouble with the 'green new deal'. Retrieved April 28, 2021, from https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/01/15/the-trouble-with-the-green-new-deal-223977

(2019, June 12). The Green New Deal Explained [Vox]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxIDJWCbk6I

'People Are Dying:' Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Defends Green New Deal | NBC News [Video file]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGtuDCZ3t2w