#like The Fourth Kind (2009) movies | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

derseprinceoftbd · 1 year ago

Text

An explainer for Homestuck, typed up on a Google doc for Reddit, and now transplanted onto Tumblr, with the hope of crossposting it onto Reddit. Most explainers I've seen utterly fail to get the tone of the series across, thus not answering the main question I see: "what is Homestuck *and why is it like this*". Why does it evoke the reactions it does? Why are so many things considered a reference? Who is Vriska? (I can't actually explain that one in under 3000 words, it turns out.) But, here's a briefer briefer (heh) on the subject of "What the actual fuck is Homestuck":

#Homestuck, A History;

Andrew Hussie, a person (now going by any pronouns) then known for various obscure things around the net, made an interactive reader-driven comic-type-thing called Jailbreak where he would draw panels demonstrating the events of the story as dictated by other posters in the thread, putting his favoured suggestions in the narration and responding in kind. The happenings and variables were influenced by his own strange brand of humor and set of fascinations, such as rap, the Starsky and Hutch movie and the cast thereof, horses, clowns, and H!rry P!tter as a cultural presence. He would eventually compile this, along with the unfinished followup, Bard Quest, on its own website.

The third installment of the so-called MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth, was a massive step up in production value, featuring impressive art and output speed as well as evolutions such as some pages being flashing gifs. This sort of thing was considered to be one of the best demonstrations of the potential of the internet. It ran for 1674 pages over the course of about a year.

Homestuck was the followup to that, running 8123 pages from April 13th 2009-2016 with numerous hiatuses in the latter half of that time. It featured such advancements as colored panels as default, videos with sound, small WASD-controlled computer games on various pages, and most importantly, actual conversations between characters, allowing them to become three-dimensional and truly sympathetic. (Hussie, it would soon be revealed, was heavily skilled at writing compelling and unique character voices and dialogue writing in general.)

Homestuck was definitely the most complex MPSA, with a grand overarching plot being integrated into the results of the actions of the readers. The plot revolved around an in-universe game called SBURB with the power to influence reality, sort of a Jumanji with time-travel mechanics that would soon be revealed to be the centerpiece of reality itself, a program that destroys the home planets of its players to motivate them to enter the world of the game and fulfill an unknown grand purpose, complete with millions of fully sentient NPCs.

Homestuck has been described as "a story that's also a puzzle", and this lens has gained authorial approval. This is the sort of story where the Author appears as a character to explain things to the audience, another character ends up changing the color of the site to his own scheme and narrating in his own voice, and the Author bursts through a literal fourth wall into the world of the story, hunts him down, and beats him with a broom. This is the sort of story where one specific person has killed another three times across multiple iterations of both themselves and the universe, and three of the killee are alive at the end, despite all of them being versions that were killed by the killer, who himself has one alive at the end, and both of those people have four-letter names, the first two letters of which are the same.

Eventually the suggestions from readers became so numerous and difficult that the suggestion boxes were closed near the end of the first year, but their influence carried on; one easy example is a character only seen from the top half initially being theorized on the official forums as using a wheelchair, a fact which would not only become Canon, but highly relevant.

The early MSPAs curated an audience through programming humor and 80s-90s film references as filtered through the styles of Terry Pratchett, Mark Twain, and the Something Awful forums, but the audience for Homestuck, due to the nature of the characters, was markedly different, especially after the Trolls showed up.

You've probably seen them.

The Trolls, initially presented as some extremely odd and bothersome fellows on the internet, were soon shown to be a race of grey-skinned, orange-horned aliens that had undergone a SBURB Session that they claimed had been influenced by the lead human characters. Trolls possessed multicolored blood in both organized castes and clear deviations, psychic abilities, unique typing styles, insectoid traits as opposed to hominid, near-universal bisexuality with the sole known exception being Sapphic, and a complex romantic system with its own symbols, comically vague-yet-comprehensive reproductive system, and of course, relationship dynamics.

I cannot express how perfect the Trolls were in terms of catching on. Tumblr loved these fuckers and it's not at all hard to see why.

It's also worth noting that this wasn't the only market-perfect part of Homestuck; Classpecting, the equivalent of Hogwarts Houses, featured a 144/168/288/336/384(depending on who you ask and what they count, I've always thought 192)-strong grid system of human personality traits that not only seemed eerily accurate as a personality mapper, but corresponded to what elemental powers one received in the game of SBURB.

So... yeah. Homestuck was an incredibly complex and engaging work in both plot and presentation, driven by a single incredibly talented and flawed creative voice above all, and which was perfectly made to attract a massive, unabashedly bizarre/proudly cringe, and notably largely queer fanbase across a younger internet. The style of presentation, art, and character writing was instantly recognizable and relatively easy to imitate, leading to fanfiction and even fanmade adventures galore, most of the latter hosted on MSPFA.com.

The main site for Homestuck is broken now-it's recommended that new readers download the [Unofficial Homestuck Collection](https://bambosh.dev/unofficial-homestuck-collection/), and starting with Problem Sleuth to ease into the format and writing is a pretty popular choice. The ending is also considered generally quite poor in a number of ways, particularly regarding unfollowed forshadowing and blatant abandonment of character arcs, with some fans even [making](https://friendlybatteringram.tumblr.com/tagged/altstuck) their own [works](https://mspfa.com/?s=44153&p=1) as [substitutions](http://mspfa.com/?s=12003&p=1). Few speak of the epilogues. Fewer still speak of the sequel.

Content warnings for Homestuck include: blood, clowns, dicks-out furry art in the background of like ten pages, brief black-and-white nudity, swearing, the R-slur, a joke about an acronym organically forming the F-slur, child abuse, discussed child abuse and homophobia, mocking of the disabled (as an unsympathetic action), cartoonish levels of sexism (as an unsympathetic action), mocking of otherkin, minor characters being racial stereotypes of Black (Meenah) and Japanese (Damara) people, minor characters being stereotypes of disabled people (Meulin and Mituna), a controversial and prominent depiction of blindness, underage alcoholism, written depections of noncon (as an unsympathetic action), jokes about pedophilia, and child grooming (textually 100% non-sexual, but sexually-coded).

Also: when I said the Trolls type weird, I wasn't kidding. Every character gets at least one color for their speech text, plus a pattern for how they type, generally worse for the Trolls, ranging from "no caps" to "British" to "drunk" to "ebonics" to "aLtErNaTiNg" to WH4T3V3R TH3 FUCK K1ND OF L33TSP34K BS T3R3Z1 1S DO1NG. So that's worth a warning.

And that's as abridged as you can get when summing up Homestuck.

#homestuck #andrew hussie #altstuck #tlcstuck #csau #crow strider au #Double-Death Of The Author #Homestuck explained #contains references to Priest-Scribe theory #explainer

18 notes · View notes

nickmaghighlights · 2 years ago

Text

Nick Mag Highlights - Nick Mag Presents: The Fairly OddParents (Spring 2004)

Welcome, one and all, back to Nick Mag Highlights! Today we’ll be checking out an installment of the Nick Mag Presents magazine that’s all about The Fairly OddParents, from Spring 2004!

(Lots of two-page screenshots in this one, loading may be a little slow!)

For those unaware, Nick Mag Presents was a separate publication that ran alongside the usual Nickelodeon Magazine we all know and love. These books acted as a way for Nickelodeon to compile content from Nickelodeon Magazine that was based around a specific show or theme, and release it to stores. They would sometimes coincide with special episodes or Nickelodeon movies that were releasing around the same time. For example this issue we’re looking at today is based on a then-upcoming half hour The Fairly OddParents special, “The Big Superhero Wish!”.

Nick Mag Presents ran from 1999 to 2008, and presumably was a pretty successful venture for Nickelodeon. People I’ve talked to that didn’t have a Nickelodeon Magazine subscription still remember grabbing an issue or two of these compilations while they were out shopping with their parents. It was another way to deliver Nickelodeon Magazine goodness to people, and that’s quite alright by me!

But wait a minute, why am I covering a supposed compilation of old content, when I could just be covering the magazines the content came from? Well for one, someone requested it, and I’m a nice guy. Second, Nick Mag Presents was the way a lot of people experienced Nickelodeon Magazine and I think it’s fair to show it respect. And third, it’s not just a compilation of old content! Yes, there is new stuff to be found here, from comics that are way longer than the usual Nickelodeon Magazine fare, to exclusive articles and activities. There’s some particularly good stuff in this magazine, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Special Addendum

In my previous NMH post on Issue #150, I brought attention to a challenge Nickelodeon was hosting online and in-print to celebrate the 10th anniversary of SpongeBob SquarePants. Nickelodeon promised that if kids could triumph over each SpongeBob-themed puzzle they posted each month, they would earn the password to a “digital prize online”. Since I couldn’t find anything more regarding this contest and scans of 2009 Nickelodeon Magazine issues are scarce, I asked viewers for anything they knew about it, particularly that digital prize.

And… apparently there was no prize! Yes, allegedly from a fan, Nickelodeon eventually stopped bringing up the prize in their issues, and presumably then the only reward for kids’ expertise over the SpongeBob puzzles would be a fleeting sense of accomplishment. Thanks a lot, Nickelodeon! I’m not sure what was a more disappointing celebration for SpongeBob’s 10th anniversary: this, or "Truth or Square".

Alrighty, are we good? Good. It’s super-hero time!

You can read the magazine here, if you’d like. I always recommend it!

So, The Fairly OddParents, huh? Not much to say about it, really. Anyone reading this certainly already knows what it is! It’s an iconic show, being one of Nickelodeon’s longest running series ever, among the likes of SpongeBob SquarePants and Rugrats. That’s a tremendous accomplishment, and it’s definitely earned its place in the hearts of many fans. Even if its name has been sullied a bit by its infamously lackluster later seasons, Drake Bell-starring movies, and ridiculously bad live action reboot.

But forget about all that! This is 2004, baby! The show was on its fourth season and still pumping out veritable hits. Alongside the aforementioned “The Big Superhero Wish!” half hour special, we received “The Jimmy-Timmy Power Hour” in 2004, too! That might give you a better frame of reference for the kind of “average kid that no one understands” content we can expect from this issue.

…Oh, right, the issue! Let’s get back on track. As you can see the offerings are a bit slimmer than your usual Nickelodeon Magazine. That’s understandable, and besides, what these books lack in celebrity interviews they make up for in extra-large comics! Since these books made their money largely through in-store purchases, they’re able to forgo most of the ad space and give us more of the good stuff.

One thing I really like about these Presents issues is that they always start with an admittedly wordy but well-meaning intro to the issue and its content. For example, the Summer 2003 issue of Nick Mag Presents (also based on The Fairly OddParents) contains a spiel from Mr. Crocker featuring his usual comedic ramblings on the existence of fairies.

Taking a look here, this issue’s intro features … uh, sorry, who is this? Some sort of comic book nerd I don’t remember ever being in the show? Well, whoever he is, he’s got a point! Here I am, nearly 20 years later, pointing to these magazines as the pinnacle of magazine entertainment. Cheers to you, comic book nerd!

Hey, this is really cool! All this behind-the-scenes info and concept art is a welcome surprise. Not sure what it has to do with superheroes per se, but you won’t hear me complaining. I know Butch Hartman is a bit of a polarizing figure these days, but it doesn’t make me any less satisfied to finally hear why the main characters wore those stretchy shoe-pants combo clothes.

This is a fun activity, and I could definitely see it getting the creative juices flowing for any kid looking to play superheroes and supervillains during recess. It also doubles as a (debatably) subtle way to introduce readers to the main villains of “The Big Superhero Wish!” and hype them up for the special’s premiere. Hey, I guess that kind of self-promotion is what we’re here for, right? You saw the cover!

I really think a lot of the people at the Nick Magazine office had a soft spot for the golden age of comics, what with articles like these and how The Comic Book section in their regular editions often contained references to the same era. If I’m right, then it’s cool to see people revitalizing parts of their childhood for a new generation. That’s some proper upcycling!

Now, recurring readers may remember that in the last NMH post, I briefly mentioned another issue of Nick Mag Presents themed around Avatar: The Last Airbender. I brought up that apparently the team behind it was full of avid Avatar fans who were passionate about the series. I bring this up because what’s especially cool is that in a similar vein, the writer behind this article on superhero sidekicks, Frank Pittarese, is a former editor for both DC and Marvel Comics! It's always nice to see when Nickelodeon was able to put the right people in the right place when it came to their magazine content.

Ah, alright, alright, this is what you’re really here for, isn’t it? Comics were understandably the main selling point of these books, to the point that Nickelodeon even ran a couple of “All-Comic Special�� versions of Nick Mag Presents that were completely made up of that sort of wonderful paneled content. I’m not really one for covering comics beat-by-beat on this blog. I think if they’re really worth reading, you’re better off reading them yourself! It’s not like they’re long, and I’m certain it’d be more entertaining than any summary I could throw at you. But hey, I’ll try my best! It’s not like I could just skip over more than half the book, could I?

Fun fact: There’s a coloring error on page 10. See if you can spot it!

This first one, understandably based on The Fairly OddParents, is a pretty straightforward affair. It’s still longer than anything you’d get in your usual Nickelodeon Magazine, though! Not to mention it’s also pretty authentic to the show’s heyday, which isn’t too surprising given that the team behind the comic has its fair share of The Fairly OddParents crewmembers in it. The writer, Jack Thomas, has 55 writing credits on the show to his name! That’s nearly as many episodes of the show as there are in the first four seasons combined.

I’ve gotta be honest here when it comes to my critique of a nearly 20-year old comic based on an episode of a children’s television show, though: the story doesn’t make much sense! At least, in the context of “The Big Superhero Wish!” anyway.

The episode has Timmy making a few ill-conceived wishes that end up creating a league of supervillains out of his greatest enemies, led by Nega-Chin, the arch enemy of his favorite comic book hero, the Crimson Chin. It’s a good episode with some pretty funny bits, but more importantly, it has an ending that wraps up everything and returns all of Timmy’s enemies back to their regular selves. In other words, it sounds like it’d be hard to make a promotional comic based on it! The story doesn't really have any downtime to insert a plot line that could’ve happened but the audience just didn’t see. And it’s not like they could have simply retold the episode, this whole book is for the sake of getting you to tune in! So, with all that in mind, I guess I can’t be too harsh on the odd premise, which now apparently has all the supervillains as sentient beings in a comic book? Did Timmy’s wishes mess with the fabric of reality so badly that it resulted in turning his teacher, babysitter, and school bully into canonical characters of The Crimson Chin storyline?

Anyway, hopefully you’ve been reading along! Basically the league of villains are trying to hunt down the Crimson Chin by going into different issues of his comic from throughout history. Each Chin represents a different era and are differently designed to pander to whatever was popular in the market at the time similar to the constant re-envisionings superheroes have had throughout the years, particularly Batman (I think, at least. I’m not really a comics guy).

These Crimson Chin from different eras actually first appeared in an episode of The Fairly OddParents, “The Crimson Chin Meets Mighty Mom and Dyno Dad”. I guess the comic crew really had to use everything they could to get an 8-page comic out of this.

One or two inconsequential gripes aside, I still think this comic is a solid start to the book! It’s got the humor down (I found the line about a lawsuit on page 14 here particularly funny), and the satisfying colorful art that made the show so recognizable. Nice work!

Not really a fan of this section. There’s giving kids drawing tips and then there’s just telling them arbitrary rules on what they can and can’t draw. I get that Hartman’s trying to hearken back to the comic heroes he read as a kid that all had the same chiseled body type (clearly he has fun drawing them) but the way this is all framed is a bit too opinionated for me.

I just noticed this now as I’m uploading the image: Check out the cool designs they gave to all the panel borders! That’s a neat detail.

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius is one of my all-time Nickelodeon favorites, so you could imagine I was pretty happy to see a comic based on the show make an appearance here! It has a fun concept and does stuff the show most likely couldn’t have, like shifting the artstyle to make it look like an old comic book when Sheen transports himself into one.

My only criticism is that the art just looks the slightest bit… off. Alright, more specifically: Sheen looks off. Jimmy looks fine enough, but Sheen just looks weird! For some reason this show didn't seem to have any standardized 2D designs for its characters, which led to every Jimmy Neutron comic in Nick Magazine looking vastly different. And it looks like Sheen drew the short end of the stick here. Don't see what I mean? Here's a collage of my favorite Sheen faces from this comic:

Ultra Lord. Not even once.

Hey, look at the bottom corners! You can see the comic pages actually overlapping the magazine’s page numbers and casting a shadow, as if the comic book is open and lying on your magazine! Lots of cool details in this one.

I'd recommend fans just read this one themselves. It's ten pages long, pretty funny, and does a lot of cool stuff with the idea that Sheen knows he's in a comic, like grabbing onto his own speech bubbles and jumping between the different panels.

Also, this could just be a "me" thing, but am I the only one who thought Ultra Lord was supposed to be a parody of Japanese kids' shows like Ultraman and Power Rangers? If they were trying to go for a "Space Age"-look for his design then they went a little too far with the intricate outfit and bright color, cause it really just gives me Super Sentai vibes more than anything. I bring this up because here Ultra Lord is portrayed as a '60s American comic book superhero, which I find odd. Again, maybe it’s just me.

Next up, it’s a comic based on the Rugrats sequel series, All Grown Up. I never really watched the show as a kid, I always wish they’d just put on Rugrats instead. Regardless, this comic’s alright, it’s about Tommy’s brother Dil becoming popular for doing dares, which leads to him realizing that fame isn’t worth risking your wellbeing over. A fine enough premise for a fine enough comic. One question does come to mind, though: What does this have to do with superheroes? Or comics, for that matter. I guess Dil does wear a cape and starts going by the nickname “Dil-Devil”, but that's like calling Evel Knievel a superhero.

But yeah, if All Grown Up is your thing, you can check out the comic if it sounds like it’s worth your while.

This ad here shows how Nick Mag Presents fit into the Nickelodeon Magazine subscription system. Essentially, they acted as bonuses to entice potential subscribers (without mentioning that these issues reused a lot of content originally from Nickelodeon Magazine, of course). I don’t think you could specifically get a Nick Mag Presents subscription, so getting them as bonuses for your subscription or buying them at the store were your only ways of procuring them.

I really wish more of these had scans, particularly the “official movie magazines” for The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. Not to get preachy, but if you think you’ve got any issues of Nick Mag Presents or Nickelodeon Magazine not already available (there’s a spreadsheet to check, courtesy of @NickMagProject on Twitter), I implore you to scan and upload them. Come to think of it, I guess that goes for any old magazine you have really, if it’s convenient for you. You might just be saving a copy of somebody’s cherished childhood memory.

Back to The FairlyOddParents, with another tale all about comic books and superheroes. Go figure. Similar to the Jimmy Neutron comic from earlier, this one has Timmy going into the world of one of his new comic books to find out how the story ends. I like the art here, with the lineart done by C.H. Greenblatt (creator of Chowder and Harvey Beaks). It’s very similar to the show, but still stylized, looking a little more sharp and exaggerated than usual.

Oh hey! There’s that comic book nerd from earlier! Guess that explains that.

And when Timmy enters the comic world, the style switches over to art done by Sergio Aragones, a longtime artist for MAD Magazine. I only went through about two or three issues of MAD from my local library as a kid, and I still recognized this guy’s art when I saw it here. I think that definitely speaks to how distinct his style is and how often his work appeared in those issues.

Alright, back to business! The comic itself is fine, there’s a few good jokes. Greenblatt and Aragones’s art really picks up the slack while the entertainment value wanes a bit. Eh, maybe I’m just experiencing comic fatigue. Oh well, you read it and be the judge.

Now this is properly historic! I didn’t imagine there’d be an ad for a whole new channel in here, and it’s pretty funny, too.

Nicktoons had only been around for nine months or so when this ad was printed, which is pretty interesting to see as someone who can hardly remember a time without the channel’s existence. Anyone fortunate enough to have both channels was treated to two times the Nickelodeon, meaning there was usually always something good to watch.

It’s funny though how in hindsight this is more like Nickelodeon advertising their new funeral parlor, considering how often they used Nicktoons as a dumping ground for their lesser-performing shows to make room for more SpongeBob SquarePants. It’s happened to My Life as a Teenage Robot, El Tigre, Catscratch, and even more recent shows like Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to name a few.

It’d be cool if Nickelodeon used Nicktoons more like how Cartoon Network used their spinoff channel Boomerang: As a way to rerun their older shows for new generations to see. I always wished as a kid I could’ve watched some of Nick’s older stuff like Rocko’s Modern Life or Hey Arnold!. I always heard they were great, but unless I was willing to go out on a limb and buy a VHS of a show I had never seen, I was out of luck. Oh well.

Yeesh, this got bitter fast, didn't it? It's friggin' Invader Zim wearing a clown wig. I must still not be over what happened to Making Fiends…

The last few comics coming up are of the smaller, 2-page spread variety. So if any of them are originally from Nickelodeon Magazine, I’d bet on these last three. It’s a cute story, and I kinda love these little day-in-the life moments these comics tend to depict. The art of SpongeBob and Patrick here was done by longtime cartoon artist Shern Cohen (who actually did the cover art of the last Nickelodeon Magazine issue I checked out, #150!). The art for Mermaid Man’s comic was done by Ramona Fradon, a comic artist most well known for her art on Aquaman! Go figure, right? That is so cool.

So, what is ChalkZone considered nowadays? Cult classic or just a regular classic? Yeah, we probably won’t be seeing a reboot anytime soon but I’m pretty sure it was decently popular. I definitely remember watching it, but I’m hard-pressed to remember much about it outside of its surprisingly epic theme song. It’s definitely one of, if not the most relevant chalk-centric production in recent history.

Last comic of the evening, everyone! Good thing too, I think my eyes are starting to turn square from all the panels. Fittingly enough we’re rounding things off with another Fairly OddParents adventure, albeit one that’s very clearly not a superhero-related affair. But hey, who’s counting?

I still really like the dynamic Cosmo and Wanda used to have back in these earlier parts of the series’s history. Cosmo has always been the more carefree of the two, but Wanda wasn’t above a bit of goofing off and playing with her magic powers either. Seeing them have fun together as a pair made their relationship really cute and believable.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this comic was originally an episode concept they couldn’t flesh out to a full 11 minutes. Not the worst idea for getting the most you can out of your work!

And that just about wraps up this issue of Nick Mag Presents! I may have kind of sort of skipped over a crossword puzzle after that last comic but… if you’re really so inclined, be my guest.

Anyway, I’d like to thank one of my readers for suggesting that I check out Nick Mag Presents. It means a lot to me, and I hope I delivered! If anyone reading wants to recommend an issue of Nickelodeon Magazine, Nick Mag Presents, or even a completely unrelated magazine for me to cover on NMH Side Issues, be my guest! I am currently limited to what magazines are available online via The Internet Archive or otherwise, but if I can do it, I’ll check it out if I’ve got something to say on it.

But for now, I’d say it’s back to the ‘ole grind. With great magazines comes great responsibility after all, and these magazines don’t highlight themselves!

Have a good day, and as always, keep on reading!

#nmh post #2000s #2004 #nickelodeon #magazine #fairly oddparents

26 notes · View notes

nerdby · 4 months ago

Text

First of all, a lot of the songs written about sex were not so much about sex as they were about important political themes. Like the song "Blurred Lines" was really about whether or not it was rape if a woman changed her mind during sex. "No Diggity" by Black Street was written during the AIDs pandemic and was meant to encourage people to practice safe sex hence the line, "You better bag it up." The song "What's Love Got To Do With It?" was about rape culture, misogyny, and fighting the stigma of slut shaming. In the early 2000s songs about sex were made in rebellion to the evangelist purity culture which was prevalent having peaked in the 1990s with shows like 7th Heaven encouraging sexual abstinence.

Today, we are seeing an uptick in songs about sex and queer sex for the same reasons. To celebrate female sexuality, inclusion and diversity, and because purity culture has started to make a comeback as is evident in the censorship of TV shows/series like SpongeBob and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- compare Rise Of TMNT to the 2003 TMNT series or to the original 1990 movie or the 1980s comic books, and you'll see what I mean real fast. Those shows don't exist for children or for nostalgic adults -- that's the just the excuse they use to justify the censorship.

The renewal of purity culture is seen via book bans and the censorship of PG-13 horror movies. The found footage horror film The Fourth Kind (2009) was a PG-13 horror movie. Go compare that to Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark or Five Nights At Freddy's which are also PG-13 horror movies. Songs about sex are an act of rebellion. Just like the 1970s horror movies which relied heavily on excessive gore and shock value were an act of rebellion against rightwing politics and The Hays Code which was used in the US to illegally censor TV and film during the 1930s-1960s.

Whether or not you realize it, ALL media is political. To say otherwise is anti-intellectual ideology meant to silence artists and minorities.

Source | Day 58

#music #tv and film #tv and movies #tv and streaming #movies #media censorship #horror movies #horror nerd #horror genre #teenage mutant ninja turtles #comic book movies

14K notes · View notes

motownfiction · 2 years ago

Text

when in rome

Emma has pretty strong feelings about all her parents’ friends. She’s so close to Sadie that when people ask who her best friend is, she doesn’t hesitate to give her name. She has a pretty big resentment for Charlie (while also being thankful for him). She loves Carrie and wishes things could be different for her … for all of them. And when Sam was here, she loved him dearly … really believed that one day, he would jump up and grab the moon. Better than George Bailey. But of all Mom and Daddy’s friends, maybe the funniest is Steph.

For many years, Emma didn’t really know who Steph Armstrong was. She heard her name kind of a lot when her parents told stories about growing up in Catholic school, and she saw a few pictures around the house and around the Doyles’ place. But it wasn’t until around the time Veronica was born that Steph started to come around in their lives more often … often enough so that she really became Mom and Daddy’s friend again. In the process, she became Emma’s friend, too.

She thinks maybe she won’t ever quite forgive Mom and Daddy for letting Steph slip through the cracks for so long. Steph is amazing. She’s one of the hardest-working people Emma has ever even heard of, much less known personally, and her fashion sense is unparalleled. Steph is a painter by trade, but she’s in love with art no matter how it comes to her. Whenever they visit her on a trip to Detroit, Steph insists on watching at least one movie in her den with Emma. Tonight, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

It’s January 3, their last night before they have to head back to New York. Yesterday was sad (the seventh anniversary of Sam’s funeral), but today is all about celebrating the time they have together. Tonight, that means watching a movie with Steph. And tonight, Steph wants to watch Napoleon Dynamite.

“I love hearing Emma’s opinions,” she says as she pops a bunch of popcorn in the microwave. “She’s like a little Roger Ebert, but without the glasses.”

“Glasses are on the way,” Daddy adds. “We took her to the eye doctor after she couldn’t read the notes her English teacher put up on the overhead projector.”

“I can’t believe we pay all that money for a school that still uses overhead projectors,” Mom says. “Is it not 2010?”

“It’s been 2010 for like three days,” Emma says. “Everyone knows 2009 was a different ball game.”

“Well, glasses or not, your baby girl watches movies better than any grown-up I’ve ever known,” Steph says. “You’ve seen this one, haven’t you, Emma?”

“Of course I have,” Emma says. “Mom and I must have seen it in the theater like five times before I started fourth grade. I think we’re the ones who made it a trend.”

Steph smiles at Mom.

“Dr. Callaghan!” she says. “I didn’t know you liked movies about nerds.”

“I’m a professional nerd, Steph,” Mom says. “Of course I do.”

“Well, then,” Steph says as she hits PLAY on the DVD remote. “Even better.”

The movie is, as always, a good time. Emma remembers Christmas in fourth grade, when Mom and Daddy got her that green shirt that said, “Napoleon, don’t be jealous that I’ve been chatting online with babes all day.” She remembers how Daddy almost cried thinking about how much Sam would have loved watching the movie. She looks over at him now to see if he’s still feeling that way. Thank God he’s smiling.

At the end of the movie, Napoleon and Deb are playing tetherball, and Steph is weepy in her La-Z-Boy. Katie, at the other end of the den, tells her to toughen up. But Steph doesn’t listen. She moves her head in time with the last song in the soundtrack – “The Promise” by When in Rome.

“Oh, I love this one,” Steph says. “I’m sweepin’ up, I’m sweepin’ up the right words to say.”

Everyone in the room holds back a laugh, even Emma. Steph looks around with a furrowed brow.

“What?” she asks. “What did I get wrong this time?”

“Oh, honey,” Katie says. “It’s just … of all the songs to get wrong, you really did have to pick the one that talks about knowing the right words to say.”

“Well, what are the right words? That way, I can go ahead and say them.”

Katie looks over at Emma.

“Emma?” she says. “If you know the words, why don’t you take this one?”

“Me?” Emma asks. “Why should it be me?”

“Because you don’t have to live with her.”

Emma sighs. She looks at Steph and braces for impact, whatever that impact may be.

“Steph,” she says. “The words are ‘I’m sorry, but I’m just thinking of the right words to say.’”

Steph turns a little pink and doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then she throws her head back and laughs – really, truly laughs. Emma breathes a long sigh. And to think, she wasn’t sure what was about to happen there.

“Well!” Steph says. “At least now I know what I’ll quote when I fuck up another song.”

She makes herself laugh a little more, and Emma laughs, too. She doesn’t know anybody else like Steph … nobody else with such a great sense of humor about themselves, nobody else who respects themselves while also refusing to take life too seriously. She must know something the rest of everybody in the world can’t find.

But dammit, Emma thinks, she’s going to learn it, too.

#drabble #writeblr #food #ch: emma o'connor #ch: steph armstrong #ch: will o'connor #ch: lucy callaghan #ch: katie sheehan #year: 2010 #asks #kalonkakons #thank you!

1 note · View note

nasa · 4 years ago

Photo

NASA Spotlight: Astronaut Mike Hopkins

Michael S. Hopkins was selected by NASA as an astronaut in 2009. The Missouri native is currently the Crew-1 mission commander for NASA’s next SpaceX launch to the International Space Station on Nov. 14, 2020. Hopkin’s Crew-1 mission will mark the first-ever crew rotation flight of a U.S. commercial spacecraft with astronauts on board, and it secures the U.S.’s ability to launch humans into space from American soil once again. Previously, Hopkins was member of the Expedition 37/38 crew and has logged 166 days in space. During his stay aboard the station, he conducted two spacewalks totaling 12 hours and 58 minutes to change out a degraded pump module. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Illinois and a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering.

He took some time from being a NASA astronaut to answer questions about his life and career! Enjoy:

What do you hope people think about when you launch?

I hope people are thinking about the fact that we’re starting a new era in human spaceflight. We’re re-opening human launch capability to U.S. soil again, but it’s not just that. We’re opening low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station with commercial companies. It’s a lot different than what we’ve done in the past. I hope people realize this isn’t just another launch – this is something a lot bigger. Hopefully it’s setting the stage, one of those first steps to getting us to the Moon and on to Mars.

You served in the U.S. Air Force as a flight test engineer. What does that entail?

First off, just like being an astronaut, it involves a lot of training when you first get started. I went to the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School and spent a year in training and just learning how to be a flight test engineer. It was one of the most challenging years I’ve ever had, but also one of the more rewarding years. What it means afterwards is, you are basically testing new vehicles or new systems that are going on aircraft. You are testing them before they get handed over to the operational fleet and squadrons. You want to make sure that these capabilities are safe, and that they meet requirements. As a flight test engineer, I would help design the test. I would then get the opportunity to go and fly and execute the test and collect the data, then do the analysis, then write the final reports and give those conclusions on whether this particular vehicle or system was ready to go.

What is one piece of life advice you wish somebody had told you when you were younger?

A common theme for me is to just have patience. Enjoy the ride along the way. I think I tend to be pretty high intensity on things and looking back, I think things happen when they’re supposed to happen, and sometimes that doesn’t necessarily agree with when you think it should happen. So for me, someone saying, “Just be patient Mike, it’s all going to happen when it’s supposed to,” would be really good advice.

Is there a particular science experiment you enjoyed working on the most while aboard the space station?

There’s a lot of experiments I had the opportunity to participate in, but the ones in particular I liked were ones where I got to interact directly with the folks that designed the experiment. One thing I enjoyed was a fluid experiment called Capillary Flow Experiment, or CFE. I got to work directly with the principal investigators on the ground as I executed that experiment. What made it nice was getting to hear their excitement as you were letting them know what was happening in real time and getting to hear their voices as they got excited about the results. It’s just a lot of fun.

Space is a risky business. Why do it?

I think most of us when we think about whatever it is we do, we don’t think of it in those terms. Space is risky, yes, but there’s a lot of other risky jobs out there. Whether it’s in the military, farming, jobs that involve heavy machinery or dangerous equipment… there’s all kinds of jobs that entail risk. Why do it? You do it because it appeals to you. You do it because it’s what gets you excited. It just feels right. We all have to go through a point in our lives where we figure out what we want to do and what we want to be. Sometimes we have to make decisions based on factors that maybe wouldn’t lead you down that choice if you had everything that you wanted, but in this particular case for me, it’s exactly where I want to be. From a risk standpoint, I don’t think of it in those terms.

Can you describe your crew mate Soichi Noguchi in one sentence?

There are many facets to Soichi Noguchi. I’m thinking about the movie Shrek. He has many layers! He’s very talented. He’s very well-thought. He’s very funny. He’s very caring. He’s very sensitive to other people’s needs and desires. He’s a dedicated family man. I could go on and on and on… so maybe like an onion – full of layers!

Star Trek or Star Wars?

I love them both. But can I say Firefly? There’s a TV series out there called Firefly. It lasted one season – kind of a space cowboy-type show. They did have a movie, Serenity, that was made as well. But anyway, I love both Star Wars and Star Trek. We’ve really enjoyed The Mandalorian. I mean who doesn’t love Baby Yoda right? It’s all fun.

How many times did you apply to be an astronaut? Did you learn anything on your last attempt?

I tried four times over the course of 13 years. My first three attempts, I didn’t even have references checked or interviews or anything. Remember what we talked about earlier, about patience? For my fourth attempt, the fact is, it happened when it was supposed to happen. I didn’t realize it at the time. I would have loved to have been picked on my first attempt like anybody would think, but at the same time, because I didn’t get picked right away, my family had some amazing experiences throughout my Air Force career. That includes living in Canada, living overseas in Italy, and having an opportunity to work at the Pentagon. All of those helped shape me and grow my experience in ways that I think helped me be a better astronaut.

Can you share your favorite photo or video that you took in space?

One of my favorite pictures was a picture inside the station at night when all of the lights were out. You can see the glow of all of the little LEDs and computers and things that stay on even when you turn off the overhead lights. You see this glow on station. It’s really one of my favorite times because the picture doesn’t capture it all. I wish you could hear it as well. I like to think of the station in some sense as being alive. It’s at that time of night when everybody else is in their crew quarters in bed and the lights are out that you feel it. You feel the rhythm, you feel the heartbeat of the station, you see it in the glow of those lights – that heartbeat is what’s keeping you alive while you’re up there. That picture goes a small way of trying to capture that, but I think it’s a special time from up there.

What personal items did you decide to pack for launch and why?

My wedding bands. I’m also taking up pilot wings for my son. He wants to be a pilot so if he succeeds with that, I’ll be able to give him his pilot wings. Last time, I took one of the Purple Hearts of a very close friend. He was a Marine in World War II who earned it after his service in the Pacific.

youtube

Thank you for your time, Mike, and good luck on your historic mission! Get to know a bit more about Mike and his Crew-1 crew mates Victor Glover, Soichi Noguchi, and Shannon Walker in the video above.

Watch LIVE launch coverage beginning at 3:30 p.m. EST on Nov. 14 HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

#launchamerica #nasa #spacex #crew1 #astronaut #rocket launch #space #science #STEM #Air Force #us military #hope #resilience #Spotlight

8K notes · View notes

fictitiousbeing · 3 years ago

Text

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

It's been awhile, but I guess there's no time like the present to present the fourth round. I now give you a list of honourable mentions. These 10 men, and so many more, were worthy of my previous lists and are now being recognized as such. Anywho, let's get on with it.

***The following 10 men, or rather characters, were selected simply because they were the first to pop into my head, and are presented in no particular order.

Part One Part Two Part Three

Masterlist

1. Achilles (Brad Pitt) in Troy (2004).

Achilles, at least in the movie, was pretty when he was all cleaned up, but smokin' hot all bloody and dirty. wink wink.

Do I have a problem? Probably.

2. Lucian (Michael Sheen) in the Underworld franchise (2003 & 2009).

Lucian didn't defile Sonja, he loved her. But he could defile me any time.

3. Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) in the series Bones (2005-2017).

Booth is the kind of ride you buy a ticket for. wink wink.

4. Harry (Opie) Winston (Ryan Hurst) in the series Son's of Anarchy (2008-2012).

Opie looks like he would be a great cuddler and would make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

5. Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) in Wanted (2009).

Wesley is the man and he knows it.

6. Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger) in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999).

Patrick may or may not have a liver, but he does have all of our hearts.

7. Hal (Timothée Chalamet) in The King (2019).

I couldn't care less about Henry V, but Timothée on the other hand is a kind of soft featured pretty that gives you butterflies. And I love it.

8. Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) in the series Supernatural (2005-2020).

Dean. Needs. A. Hug. I. Have. Lots. Of. Hugs. To. Give. And. I. Can. Bake. A. Damn. Good. Pie.

9. Dallas Winston (Matt Dillon) in the Outsiders (1983).

Dally always got what he wanted... I just wish he wanted me.

10. Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze) in Dirty Dancing (1987).

Johnny's ass looked great in those pants. It makes me pant. I am in no way sorry, AT ALL, for using this particular gif. ✌🏾

I am pretty sure this is in fact my last installment of my beloved lists... At least for now. If you liked this sort of thing I would really appreciate you checking out my previous three lists (links above).

Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk. Oh and of course take care and be safe out there.

130 notes · View notes

pocketfulofrecs · 3 years ago

Text

Our first Author Spotlight is finally here! And the first author in the spotlight is justdoityoufucker!

They have published 31k+ words on mdzs fic on ao3 - 7 works and 1 series. You can find them on @whiteflowercrimsonparasol on tumblr and @justdoityoufucker on twitter.

Their fics:

i’ll keep on walking (our post) - [teen | 2.6k | wen qing time travels and changes things]

violent delights - [teen | 4.3k | no golden core transfer]

i had to abandon myself (you took all of me) - [mature | 10k | wip | everything changes after the staged fight]

the world wags on (our post) - [teen | 3.4k | wei changze is alive]

in payment, a hand (series) - [teen | 10k | yzy cuts off wwx’s hand]:

and there was a new voice (which you slowly recognized as your own)

moved through my heart (like the thinnest of blades)

such music (you stood stock still)

Dee’s favourite: Honestly, violent delights is just so sweet? I love all of their works, but violent delights has a special place in my heart. The sheer hilarity of WWX’s Golden Core just refusing to reside in JC’s body made me cackle. Also, it ended so sweetly. I really love it!

Ju’s favourite: This was hard, but I’m between “i’ll keep walking” because I love time travel and Wen Qing, and she is so badass on this one, and fixes everything, and in the end she has her family safe, including her new brother Wei Wuxian. And “in payment, a hand”, that is a very interesting series, and Wei Wuxian gets a family that he deserves, and the Jiangs also get what they deserve. It’s sad in the beginning, but it gets so soft at the end, and we can see wangxian intimacy, and how they love each other. It’s just really lovely, okay?

The interview:

Q. When did you start writing fics? Did you have fandoms before this one?

A. I started around 2009. My first fanfiction attempts were for the 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist anime and movie and pretty quickly petered off, but I really got into fanfiction when I reread and finished watching Naruto around 2016. It’s still the fandom I’ve produced the most published (and unpublished) fanfiction for, but I’ve also written some works in the Voltron: Legendary Defender and Bleach fandoms.

Q. What made you start writing for MDZS?

A. I actually wasn’t planning on writing for MDZS! I wanted to write SVSSS fanfiction when I first got into danmei and c-novels! But I found some really thoughtful meta posts on characterization in MDZS and the MDZS fandom, as well as some fics that I felt were really good and showed really good characterization, which made me lose most of my self-control. And then I found some prompts that were going around, and I lost the rest of my self control and now, well, here we are.

Q. What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

A. For MDZS, it’s a work-in-progress, but i had to abandon myself (you took all of me). It’s allowing me to explore philosophy for the first time in a few years, and it’s given me a reason to really research what the setting of MDZS might have been like and how cultivation (in the context of xianxia novels) works and could work.

Q. What’s your favourite type of fics to read?

A. I love love love fluff fics in general! I also have been really enjoying canon-divergence fics for MDZS, there’s some writers in this fandom who do those “what if?” kind of scenarios really well. Honorary mention, also, to fics where Wei Wuxian is raised in another sect

Q. What’s your favourite comment? Or type of comment?

A. Any comment!! Honestly, the entire idea that people like my writing enough to tell me will always boggle my mind, especially if it allows for me (as the author) to engage with my readers.

Q. What motivates you to write?

A. Most of the time, just the simple need to get an idea down and tell a story. I’ve been writing fiction since I was in fourth grade and fanfiction has been a really good outlet for me in that regard. Occasionally I’ll dive back into original fiction, but fanfiction in particular already has a basis for characterization which makes it easier, for me, to write.

Q. Who’s your favorite author?

A. I honestly can’t choose a favorite fan author because there are soooooo many who are incredibly talented, but in terms of professional authors I love MXTX (of course) and Tamora Pierce! If you like historical fantasy, I highly recommend her Tortall and Emelan books.

Q. What is your favorite trope to read and/or write?

A. I loooooove soulmate AUs (as evidenced by how many of them I’ve written for other fandoms)! I also really love, in the MDZS fandom, to read and write time travel AUs. They allow for really cool exploration of what could happen and how one person’s actions could change the whole course of the story.

Q. Do you have any advice for new authors?

A. You don’t need to finish everything you start. I have folders just full of WIPs that I’m probably never going to finish, but all of those words and all of that plotting and planning still contributed to where I am today! Also, I highly recommend keeping those unfinished works because one day you might use them! I’ve reused ideas, dialogue, and even actual passages from my WIP when writing something new.

Q. What do you think is the most important element in writing? Plot, characterization, relationship?

A. Of course, all elements are important, but characterization! Characters usually drive every other aspect of the plot, the setting, and are usually make-or-break for me as a reader.

Check out their stories on ao3 and remember...

Comments and kudos feed the author’s soul.

#mdzs #author spotlight #justdoityoufucker

72 notes · View notes

gypsywillow · 3 years ago

Text

We love a good monster movie, especially ones that are unpredictable and terrifying. Monsters can be giant or small, alien or natural, they can surround you or come from within. Below are our favorite monster movies.

Alien Invaders

The Blob (1958)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Alien (1979)

The Thing (1982)

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

Signs (2002)

War of the Worlds (2005)

Slither (2006)

The Fourth Kind (2009)

Dark Skies (2013)

Extraterrestrial (2014)

A Quiet Place (2018)

Nature’s Finest

The Birds (1963)

Jaws (1975)

Piranha (1978)

Cujo (1983)

Twister (1996)

Anaconda (1997)

Open Water (2003)

The Happening (2008)

The Ruins (2008)

Frozen (2010)

Crawl (2019)

Not So Gentle Giants

Them! (1954)

Godzilla (1954)

Jurassic Park (1993)

King Kong (2005)

The Host (2006)

Cloverfield (2008)

Pacific Rim (2013)

Colossal (2016)

Rampage (2018)

And the Itty Bitty Terrors

Gremlins (1984)

Ghoulies (1985)

Critters (1986)

Arachnophobia (1990)

The Reaping (2007)

Water Creatures

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Loch Ness Horror (1981)

Leviathan (1989)

The Host (2016)

The Shape of Water (2017)

Sweetheart (2019)

Sea Fever (2019)

Underwater (2020)

Cryptids

Wendigo (2001)

Mothman Prophecies (2001)

Leeds Point (2008)

The Barrens (2012)

Indigenous (2014)

The Mothman of Point Pleasant (2017)

Shortcut (2020)

Ancient Beings

Jeepers Creepers (2001)

Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Sinister (2012)

Ritual (2017)

It (2017)

It: Chapter II (2019)

Bye Bye Man (2017)

Urban Legends

Candyman (1992)

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Bye Bye Man (2017)

Slenderman (2018)

Mercy Black (2019)

Mythical

Leprechaun (1993)

Leprechaun in the Hood (2000)

Dagon (2001)

Darkness Falls (2003)

The Hallow (2005)

Boogeyman (2005)

Pans Labyrinth (2006)

The Mist (2007)

Under the Shadow (2015)

Krampus (2015)

The Mimic (2017)

Mutants

The Society (1989)

Wrong Turn (2003)

The Descent (2005)

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (201)

Chernobyl Diaries (2012)

The Montauk Chronicles (2015)

The Lodgers (2017)

Stay Out of the Fucking Attic (2021)

The Monster I've Become

The Fly (1986)

Under the Skin (2013)

Spring (2014)

They Look Like People (2015)

Split (2016)

Us (2019)

Invisible Monsters

Pontypool (2008)

Altitude (2010)

Resolution (2012)

Bird Box (2018)

The Invisible Man (2020)

#horror #creature feature #horror film #horror films #horror movies #horror movie #we watch scary movies

86 notes · View notes

tibby · 4 years ago

Note

i've always wondered, why do you like dan x blair so much? i've only seen a few episodes of gossip girl but everyone i've seen that likes the show seems to really dislike dan and blair as a couple. why about their dynamic appeals to you?

i feel like most people that hate dan and blair are either obsessed with romanticising chuck and blair despite how much he abused her, or they think the last minute retcon of dan being gg makes sense, as if it doesn’t disregard the entire show. but imo, dan/blair has always been the best relationship on the show, and i’ve been rooting for them since late 2009.

dan and blair were everything the other had ever wanted in a relationship, the answer to all the problems they encountered with everyone else. dan was the pure and simple love blair had always wanted, he saw her for who she truly was and loved her anyway (people who claim dan didn't love blair's scheming side are wild, he schemed with her MULTIPLE times, he just knew she was better than playing games and hurting others), believed in her when she didn't believe in herself, matched her intellectually, and saw her as an equal. and blair was dan's soulmate. to borrow from the vows dan wrote for louis about blair himself: "you, blair waldorf. you have taught me how to live, how to enjoy everything the world has to offer. you have brought out this side of me i never thought existed. before you, i did not truly know how to live. i was expected to be a certain kind of person. but the truth is, that person was someone i didn’t actually like that much…" dan and blair LIKED who they were when they were together, and neither of them had truly liked themselves in a long time before that. they brought out the best in each other, and they could be their real selves together. no needs for lies or facades, because they saw who the other really was, and loved them because of that.

they also had the most believable and natural relationship progression on that show. dan and blair went from enemies to friends to lovers and it never felt forced or rushed, it took years of spending time with each other for their relationship to develop naturally. and they ENJOYED spending that time together in the lead up!!! even before they were friends, half of their interactions had them smirking and laughing at each other and trading witty barbs and they looked like they had fun together, even when they refused to admit it. it’s about blair asking dan for seduction tips and quipping “look who finally got a little interesting.” i’m sure it’s a fluke, dan tells her, because they have no idea what the future has in store for them.

and god!!! dan has always been there for blair, since one of the first times they met. the first proper conversation they have is in the fourth episode. they've spoken maybe three times by this point, and it's either been about serena sleeping with nate or blair insulting him and yet!!! he tells her about his mom in an attempt to help blair with her own. they barely know each other and yet he sees a side to her and understands parts of her that some people never do. and he keeps giving her advice over the years!!! i think it's incredible that so much of what he tells her parallels the development of their relationship later on ("keeping your pride and getting nothing, or taking a risk and maybe, maybe, having everything" / "what if these signs are here for a reason? and ignoring them just makes me a coward?")

speaking of parallels with dair, the fact that they had them directly parallel when harry met sally and the writer/socialite relationship from breakfast at tiffany's (blair’s favourite movie.) the writers knew what they were doing and it's one of the reasons i think they were going for a dair endgame at some point.

they just wanted each other to be happy!! so many other characters on this show refused to accept others being happy with anyone other than them (namely chuck), but i think dair were the only two who wanted it for each other aside of like, nate, maybe? sure, blair's originally opposed to dan/serena, but by season four, dan's happiness is her priority ("i just want you to be happy" / "if you're that guy with serena, how could she not love you?") and dan has always wanted that for blair ("i do think you deserve to be with someone who makes you happy" and helping her with chuck and/or louis, depending what she thinks will make her happier.) so many gg relationships are so toxic, but dan & blair were probably the most genuine friendship on the show, especially in this sense. even when they were mad and hurt each other, they never let that resentment build like they were prone to doing with the others.

and that's the thing! they wanted each other to be happy and they MADE each other happy. dan was so good for blair back before they were just friends that people thought she joined a cult. blair made it clear multiple times that everything was chuck was exhausting and miserable for her, and spending time with dan made her light and happy again - and she returned the favour.

he wrote a book about her!!! he wrote a book about her and everyone that read it could see that dan loved her from it. three years earlier blair didn't even KNOW that dan was a writer and then she became the star of dan's book. and he wrote another man’s vows for her, gave her fiance a speech that made blair felt like he peered into her soul. every other boy wanted to give blair the world, but dan was the only one who ever gave her what she really needed: his heart.

#my number one darlingssss #dair #ask #anonymous #meta

297 notes · View notes

theageoftheunderstatement · 4 years ago

Text

NME: How Alex Turner’s ‘Submarine’ EP paved the way for ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’

By Fred Garratt-Stanley, 14th March 2021

A decade after its release, Alex Turner’s ‘Submarine’ EP has lost none of its otherworldly power. The Arctic Monkeys frontman’s short, mellow collection of acoustic tunes – released 10 years ago today – perfectly complemented director Richard Ayoade’s classic come-of-age movie Submarine, which follows British teenager Oliver Tate’s (Craig Roberts) embattled attempts to save his parents’ marriage and lose his virginity before his 16th birthday.

The Sheffield songwriter has assumed various guises during his illustrious career, and the six-track EP perhaps represents his most thoughtful of all. You know the story by now: the first two Monkeys albums saw Turner cast himself as the loveable Yorkshire oik, before he and the band decamped to the desert with Josh Homme for 2009’s psych-rock stomper ‘Humbug’. By summer 2011, he’d transformed himself into a New York-based, leather-jacketed singer-songwriter who breathed the same air as Lou Reed for fourth album ‘Suck It And See’. The record arrived just a few months after the Submarine soundtrack and even featured a souped-up, electronic version of one of its tracks, ‘Piledriver Waltz’.

With ‘Submarine’, Turner subtly bridged the gap between his newfound pining sentimentality and the no-nonsense everyman persona of those first two albums. His disdain for pretension is evident when, on the swooning ‘Stuck On A Puzzle’, he croons, “I’m not the kind of fool who’s gonna sit and sing to you / About stars, girl”. Yet with the following line, “But last night I looked up into the dark half of the blue / And they’d gone backwards”, he immediately blurs the lines. You can imagine that lyric appearing on 2018’s astral ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’, the album that reinvented the Monkeys as starry eyed art-rockers – and which outraged many fans of the more prosaic early work – can’t you?

Turner’s timeless soundtrack captures all the conflicted feelings of adolescent love and loss integral to Ayoade’s directorial debut. Dealing with heartbreak (the aching ‘Hiding Tonight’) and clumsy attempts at seduction (the aforementioned ‘Stuck On a Puzzle’), the songs evoke strange feelings of nostalgia for our own awkward teenage years – albeit reimagined through the aesthetically beautiful prism of Submarine. The Arctic Monkeys frontman is an adept craftsman of alternative worlds, and this EP proves no exception.

The record is immersive, dreamlike. On 54-second opener ‘Stuck On A Puzzle – intro’, he establishes the pensive tone with descending piano notes, the aural equivalent of pebbles splashing against the tide. Harnessing the spirit of Tate’s confused, anguished teenage state, ‘Hiding Tonight’ captures the introspective anxieties inherent to adolescent infatuation. Lines such as “Tomorrow I’ll be faster, I’ll catch what I’ve been chasing after and have time to play / But I’m quite alright hiding today”underline the tensions and apprehensions of youth. The track utilises the surrealist imagery of ‘Humbug’ songs ‘Crying Lightning’ and ‘Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair’, with Turner offering elaborate lyrical meanderings: “You can leave off my lid and I won’t even lose my fizz / I’ll be the polka dots-type / I’ll probably swim through a few lagoons”.

Alex Turner’s trademark ability to fuse existential and philosophical concepts with mundane urban realities arguably peaked on the ‘Submarine’ EP. Take this perfect example from arpeggiated ditty ‘It’s Hard To Get Around The Wind’: “It’s like you’re tryna get to Heaven in a hurry / And the queue was shorter than you thought it would be / And the doorman says, ‘You need to get a wristband’”. In just four lines, Turner somehow encapsulated the universal obstacles presented by love, life and, erm, nightclubbing.

And it’s a sign of ‘Piledriver Waltz’’s brilliance that he couldn’t help adding a different version of it to ‘Suck it and See’. Crammed with elaborate lines such as, “You look like you’ve been for breakfast at the Heartbreak Hotel / And sat in the back booth by the pamphlets and the literature on how to lose”, the track is heartfelt and painful, yet savagely comic. Again, Turner’s marriage of the majestic and mundane is totally encapsulated by one couplet: “If you’re gonna try and walk on water / Make sure you wear your comfortable shoes”.

At the end of last year, Craig Roberts told NME that the success of Submarine the film “felt like a moment”, and one that meant that “all of a sudden I was able to go into rooms that I’d never been able to get into before”. Alex Turner had long since passed through that looking glass, of course, but the ‘Submarine’ EP helped him to do so artistically too. After the release of these beautiful songs, with which he married his burgeoning lyrical ambition to his early observational writing, he was able to travel to the moon and back.

What was to follow – Arctic Monkeys’ 2013 US-conquering rock opus ‘AM’ and the divisive ‘Tranquility Base…’ – would be even more sublime.

#article #nme #alex turner #happy 10th birthday to submarine ep

77 notes · View notes

aliveandfullofjoy · 4 years ago

Note

So I was reading about the first Oscars ceremony, and it had a division between Outstanding Picture and Best Unique & Artistic Film, where Unique & Artistic was apparently meant to be an equal to Outstanding Picture but dedicated more for prestige artistic works. The next year, the two categories became one from then on, and Outstanding Picture was the only top prize. (If any of that is wrong, blame wikipedia.)

If the split had remained, and there was a more commercial-y movie top prize and a prestige art top prize, what are some notable movies that suddenly pick up wins?

okay wait........ this is a brilliant question and i am ashamed to say i’ve never really given it much thought until now.

idk if you’ve seen wings and sunrise but they’re both pretty great and they do represent wildly different kinds of filmmaking. while it’s safe to say Wings is the more commercial film, it has great craftsmanship behind it and it very clearly created the template for accessible, capital-i Important, and well-made best picture winners to come.

and, full transparency, sunrise is one of my, like, top 15 favorite movies, so i’m hella biased, but that movie is a gorgeous and strange and thrilling piece of work. the title “unique and artistic film” is impossibly vague, but watching sunrise makes it very, very clear that it fits that bill for that category. and while we’ll, of course, never know what might have happened if that category had continued, it’s tempting to think that all the winners in unique and artistic film would be of sunrise’s calibre, but knowing the oscars... that’s clearly a fantasy, lol. while sunrise is a wildly inventive and artistic film, it’s important to remember that it was fully on the academy’s radar -- janet gaynor won best actress in part for her performance in the film, and it also won best cinematography. so while it’s tempting to think the academy would always recognize a truly unique and artistic achievement every year, in all likelihood, they probably wouldn’t stray too far from the movies that were already on their radar.

so for this thought experiment!!

it’s probably safe to assume every best picture winner has to go in one of the two categories. there are only a handful of winners that stick out as maybe missing out on the big win in this new system, but only a handful.

so uh. this is way more than you asked but i got hooked. here’s what i think might have happened if the two best picture categories had stuck around. as i was working through the years, it became clear to me that, unfortunately, in a lot of years, the unique and artistic film would likely end up going to the more overtly “prestigious” films, such as the song of bernadette or the life of emile zola, while their far better and more commercially viable rivals (casablanca for bernadette, the awful truth for zola) would win outstanding picture. the actual best picture winners have an asterisk next to them. what’s also interesting to consider is the importance of the best director category: most of the time, a split in picture and director will tell you what’s clearly the runner-up. those years, usually, give you a good sense of how the two awards would shake out.

Outstanding Picture / Unique and Artistic Film

1929: The Broadway Melody*; The Divine Lady

1930: The Big House; All Quiet on the Western Front*

1931: Cimarron*; Morocco

1932: Grand Hotel*; Bad Girl

1933: Little Women; Cavalcade*

1934: It Happened One Night*; One Night of Love

1935: The Informer; A Midsummer Night’s Dream (** this is one of the few years i think the actual BP winner, Mutiny on the Bounty, would miss out; The Informer was clearly the runner-up for BP with wins in director, actor, and screenplay, while Midsummer was seen as THE artistic triumph of the year, and with its historic write-in cinematography win, there was clearly a lot of passion for it)

1936: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town; The Great Ziegfeld*

1937: The Awful Truth; The Life of Emile Zola*

1938: You Can’t Take It With You*; Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Grand Illusion (** this one’s tough... Grand Illusion made history as the first non-english movie nominated for BP, and it clearly had a lot of support, but Snow White was such a monumental moment in Hollywood, and the academy clearly acknowledged that with its honorary award)

1939: Gone with the Wind*; The Wizard of Oz (** this is one of the first years with a clear runaway favorite for best picture, which makes guessing the way the other award would go very difficult! i’m leaning towards Oz purely because of its technical achievements, but i’m not confident about that choice at all.)

1940: Rebecca*; The Grapes of Wrath

1941: How Green Was My Valley*; Citizen Kane

1942: Yankee Doodle Dandy; Mrs. Miniver*

1943: Casablanca*; The Song of Bernadette

1944: Going My Way*; Wilson

1945: The Bells of St. Mary’s; The Lost Weekend*

1946: The Best Years of Our Lives*; Henry V

1947: Gentleman’s Agreement*; A Double Life

1948: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; Hamlet*

1949: All the King’s Men*; The Heiress

1950: All About Eve*; Sunset Boulevard

1951: A Place in the Sun; An American in Paris*

1952: The Greatest Show on Earth*; The Quiet Man

1953: Roman Holiday; From Here to Eternity*

1954: The Country Girl; On the Waterfront*

1955: Marty*; Picnic

1956: Around the World in 80 Days*; Giant

1957: Peyton Place; The Bridge on the River Kwai

1958: The Defiant Ones; Gigi*

1959: The Diary of Anne Frank; Ben-Hur*

1960: Elmer Gantry; The Apartment*

1961: West Side Story*; Judgment at Nuremberg

1962: To Kill a Mockingbird; Lawrence of Arabia*

1963: Tom Jones*; 8½

1964: Mary Poppins; My Fair Lady*

1965: The Sound of Music*; Doctor Zhivago

1966: A Man for All Seasons*; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

1967: In the Heat of the Night*; The Graduate

1968: Oliver!*; 2001: A Space Odyssey

1969: Midnight Cowboy; Z

1970: Airport; Patton*

1971: The French Connection*; The Last Picture Show

1972: The Godfather; Cabaret

1973: The Sting*; The Exorcist

1974: Chinatown; The Godfather, Part II

1975: Jaws; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest*

1976: Rocky*; Network

1977: Star Wars; Annie Hall*

1978: Coming Home; The Deer Hunter*

1979: Kramer vs. Kramer*; All That Jazz

1980: Ordinary People*; Raging Bull

1981: Chariots of Fire*; Reds

1982: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial; Gandhi*

1983: Terms of Endearment*; Fanny and Alexander

1984: Amadeus*; The Killing Fields

1985: Out of Africa*; Ran

1986: Platoon*; Blue Velvet

1987: Moonstruck; The Last Emperor*

1988: Rain Man*; Who Framed Roger Rabbit

1989: Driving Miss Daisy*; Born on the Fourth of July

1990: Ghost; Dances with Wolves*

1991: The Silence of the Lambs*; JFK

1992: Unforgiven*; Howards End

1993: Schindler’s List*; The Piano

1994: Forrest Gump*; Three Colors: Red

1995: Braveheart*; Toy Story

1996: Jerry Maguire; The English Patient*

1997: Titanic*; L.A. Confidential

1998: Shakespeare in Love*; Saving Private Ryan

1999: The Cider House Rules; American Beauty*

2000: Traffic; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (** this is another year where i think the actual BP winner, Gladiator, might have missed out. it was a tight three-way race going into oscar night, and if there were two BP awards, i think this consensus might have settled, leaving Gladiator to go home with just actor and some tech awards.)

2001: A Beautiful Mind*; Mulholland Drive

2002: Chicago*; The Pianist

2003: Mystic River; The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King*

2004: Million Dollar Baby*; The Aviator

2005: Crash*; Brokeback Mountain

2006: The Departed*; Babel

2007: No Country for Old Men*; The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

2008: The Dark Knight; Slumdog Millionaire*

2009: The Hurt Locker*; Avatar

2010: The King’s Speech*; The Social Network

2011: The Artist*; The Tree of Life

2012: Argo*; Life of Pi

2013: 12 Years a Slave*; Gravity

2014: Birdman*; Boyhood

2015: Spotlight*; The Revenant

2016: La La Land; Moonlight*

2017: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; The Shape of Water*

2018: Black Panther; Roma (** again, i think Green Book gets bumped out in this scenario, i think Black Panther is precisely the kind of movie that benefits from an award that’s seemingly more ~populist~ while Roma easily snags the unique & artistic prize)

2019: 1917; Parasite*

2020: The Father; Nomadland*

but of course i have no idea at all, and most of these are just my gut reactions lol. what a fun question!

23 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 3 years ago

Text

Safe House and Watching Ryan Reynolds Before He Was Deadpool

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

There’s a scene midway through Safe House, the 2012 thriller which stars Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds, that hits entirely differently in 2021. As with any number of films starring these leading men, the stars are cultivating an oil and water relationship in the sequence, one built on mutual distrust and loathing as they drive across a countryside. But in the case of Reynolds, it plays differently than how modern audiences likely expect. When Washington begins trying to get under the younger guy’s skin—poking at his insecurities like he’s Ethan Hawke in Training Day or pretty much the entire cast of Man on Fire—Reynolds is visibly shaken. He then folds like a cheap suit.

“Go ahead, you’re not going to get in my head,” Reynolds’ Matt Weston protests as he seemingly holds power over Washington’s Frost character. “I’m already in your head,” Washington smiles back. “I’m going to isolate you, Matt.” And by watching both actors, you believe him.

The sequence is boilerplate thriller dialogue, a generic sequence in a generic movie (at least in the 2000s and early ‘10s). But to see Reynolds play it so straight and so differently from what his star persona would later become is slightly jarring. For the first time in ages, it feels like you’re watching the actor play a character who isn’t Deadpool.

This thought occurred to me while revisiting Safe House this week, particularly in lieu of the film trending so high on Netflix. While the picture was a modest success in 2012, earning $208 million worldwide off an $85 million budget, it’s easy to assume many audiences are discovering the film for the first time due to the globe’s most popular streaming service. And they’re seeing Reynolds in a way unlike any part he’s played in the last five years.

That’s by design, of course. After being unfairly tarred by the cruelest parts of the entertainment press as “box office poison,” the actor who spent close to a decade fighting to get Deadpool made has embraced the Merc with a Mouth persona audiences love. It’s why his version of Pikachu in Detective Pikachu feels both earnest, yet glibly aware of his cuteness; it’s how Reynolds’ Michael Bryce can be as acerbic in his wiseacre sensibility in the Hitman’s Bodyguard films as Wade Wilson; and it’s why his steady post-pandemic hit, Free Guy (which has grossed $302 million as of press time despite the Delta variant), can have Reynolds be both completely earnest and self-aware since he is literally the only character in his world who knows he’s a video game NPC.

While Reynolds only fully breaks the fourth wall when he actually is in his red and black undies, all of these roles are in the same wheelhouse as Wade, as is the actor’s social media image, which has even created a joking alter-ego named “Brother Gordon,” Ryan’s alleged twin brother who sells Aviation Gin, a liquor the actor maintains an ownership interest in.

Which is why Safe House is suddenly so fresh now. Bittersweet, even. On its own, it’s a fairly standard (some might even say substandard) thriller wherein frantic editing and shaky handheld camerawork attempts to evoke a sense of real-world tension and espionage. Washington’s played characters like Tobin Frost before, and in better films, but Reynolds hasn’t played a straight man, or a character with a dawning sense of despair, in a long, long time. What’s more, he’s actually quite good in scenes where his Weston character—a low-level CIA employee that winds up having to both capture and team-up with Frost—is driven to cynical horror at his boss’ realpolitik manipulation, or where he must tell the woman he loves that he’s been lying to her for months and now must ghost her.

This is diametrically opposed to his character in The Hitman’s Bodyguard who has a similar frenemy camaraderie with Samuel L. Jackson on multiple road trips, and yet that guy remains perpetually nonplussed about the constant stream of shootouts and chases he’s in. He even has time to crack wise with Jackson about their rivaling badassery.

The first Hitman’s Bodyguard is a better film than Safe House, but that earlier movie is a reminder that Reynolds is more than just one persona. It’s easy to imagine Safe House is not one of the actor’s favorite films. It’s from that awkward period in his career directly after the notorious box office flop Green Lantern in 2011. Indeed, much of the recurring meta-textual humor in both Deadpool movies is Reynolds having a laugh at Green Lantern’s expense, mocking what it did to his career… including by making it that much harder for Reynolds to get Deadpool off the ground.

Ironically, Reynolds had kind of played Wade Wilson before Green Lantern or Safe House, but in such a bastardized form during X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) that 20th Century Fox became skeptical toward the idea there was a large audience out there for Reynolds to have his spinoff. Meanwhile, for every forgettable success like Safe House he was in, Reynolds was only getting mainstream roles in other troubled productions like R.I.P.D. (2013) and The Change-Up (2011).

The irony is, however, that Reynolds was also doing some of his best and most diverse work during this period. Likely a contributing reason to him getting to play Hal Jordan was the box office success he had opposite Sandra Bullock in 2009 with The Proposal. But while that romantic comedy saw Reynolds dabble in the sarcastic wit which marks his earliest breakout success in the sitcom Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place (1998-2001) and his current run of hits since Deadpool, his character in The Proposal is not a smartass. He’s a put-upon employee who is driven by completely earnest and embittered estrangement from his father.

Meanwhile, outside of his would-be blockbuster fare which came after that hit, Reynolds was doing genuinely impressive dramatic work on the indie circuit. His one-man turn in Buried (2010), in which he plays a military contractor who realizes he’s been buried alive in Iraq and has only only a cellphone and 90 minutes before his oxygen runs out, is claustrophobic and viscerally terrifying stuff. Conversely, his depiction of a mentally ill man who begins hearing conflicting advice from “the voices” of his dog and cat in Marjane Satrapi’s The Voices (2014) is arguably the best work Reynolds has done in his whole career. In that dark comedy, he plays both sad sack Jerry with sincere pathos while also truly disguising his speech patterns by inhabiting the sinister voice as his cat Mr. Whiskers and his sagacious dog, Bosco.

Neither of those films were box office hits, obviously, and none of them earned Reynolds the kind of universal love that Deadpool did. As bleakly amusing as Mr. Whiskers is, that’s not a character who can sell bottles of gin. But being reminded of that more diverse talent now, even while watching something as pedestrian as Safe House, is somewhat nice. He’s gone on to much better mainstream entertainment since 2012, but Reynolds is still more than Wade Wilson. That’s worth remembering.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The post Safe House and Watching Ryan Reynolds Before He Was Deadpool appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3EFfEJI

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

3 notes · View notes