#more then one culture? spiders mind is blown

[feralfather]

Spider meating someone at the rda who indigenous and he gets curious about their tattoo and or hairstyle because it kinda look like the Na’vi and then when the person explain that it’s the culture from their people he’s blown away because he always thaught all the humans where the American stereotype or something.

He’d keep his distance at first, only staring from a distance. Head constantly tilting and filling with thoughts and questions every time he sees her, because she looks different from everyone else he’s seen on the SeaDragon.. and every time he sees her from the corner of his eye, it makes him homesick. Her tattoos and hair is just so Na’vi-like. Her hair decorated with beads and other jewelry, and her skin inked so foreignly familiar it was like looking at cursive writing for the first time when all you’ve ever known is printed writing. Everything about her looks so familiar, but he can’t understand.

It makes him long so desperately to see the people of the Omatikaya Clan again, even if they didn’t wish to see him.

Eventually, his curiosity would get the better of him, and he’d blunt out the first question that came to mind the next time he sees her. “Why do you look like that? Your hair and stuff.”

Definitely one of his more tasteless questions, but he never claimed to have a way with words.

The woman is shocked at first, both by the question and the fact that Spider was talking to her. But once she recovers, she’d indulge the boy. “The same reason you dress the way you do, it’s part of my culture.”

Spider is both intrigued and confused. “But I don’t see anyone else that looks like you.”

The woman finds him ignorance amusing. “What, you expect everyone from Earth to be from the same cut?”

“Yes.” Was Spider’s immediate response, which got a guffaw from her.

For the next hour or so, the woman, who he now knew as Amari, chatted with him and spoke of her beliefs and ideas. She talked about her tattoos and jewelry, her home, the different cultures and religions on Earth. There was just so much that Spider never knew. He clung to every word, and in return, he spoke of the Omatikaya and his home.

Until he was rounded up by Lyle, that is.

And if everyone noticed how Spider began seeking out Amari anytime they were on the SeaDragon, with a thirst for more knowledge and familiarity, it wasn’t like he was going to let anyone stop him anyways.

[ex-textura]

oh boy! Thank you @miradelletarot for the tag! This is going to be fun (once i decide who to do it with sdfasklfhjs)

I'm unsure who has done this one and who hasn't soooo.... if you see this, and want to, this is me tagging you!

BASICS

Full name: Ilztaufein (formerly of house Melarn, though he dropped that when he changed his name)

Gender: Male (He/Him)

Sexuality: Bi, but he's got some...hangups about women.

Background: Noble

Class: Divination Wizard

OTHER

Birthplace: Ched Nasad

Profession: Information broker for Bregan D'aerthe

Phobias: Not really a phobia, but he has a hate for spiders.

Guilty pleasures: Does it count if he's not guilty about anything ever? He loves gossip and is really bad for sticking his nose where it doesn't belong. He also loves really bad smutty fiction.

Hobbies: Reading, studying, gossiping.

MORALS

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Sins: ahahahahaha. All of them!? ▫ He's prideful (he knows he's gorgeous and he knows he's powerful, even if maybe he thinks he's hotter shit than he actually is) ▫ He's greedy (power, people, fame, money. Whatever it is, he wants it) ▫ He's not the most wrathful but WHEN HE GETS HIS HANDS ON MYSTRA ISTG (also he's a big bitch about it) ▫ He's envious of the gods, for hoarding all their power. He's envious of drow women and their power over the underdark. He's envious of Mystra for still having literally ANY of Gale's attention EVER. ▫ Lust. I mean. The fantasies of Gale alone would be damning but when he finally gets his hands on his powerful little human oh my god. He's not terribly gluttonous or slothful but that's mostly on account of all the vanity.

Virtues: All that said, he's not evil. He helps people who need it, he works for the greater good at the end of the day. He gives freely of his time and knowledge (even if okay sometimes he bitches a little about having to go out of his way he's working on it okay?). He works hard, he studies and practices and hones his skills daily, he's fastidiously clean, he's absolutely loyal to a fault and he loves fully.

THIS OR THAT

Introvert / Extrovert

Organized / Disorganized

Close-minded / Open-minded

Calm / Anxious / Restless

Disagreeable / Agreeable / In between

Cautious / Reckless / In between

Patient / Impatient / In between

Outspoken / Reserved / In between

Leader / Follower / Flexible

Empathetic / Unempathetic / In between

Optimist / Pessimist / Realist

Traditional / Modern / In between

Hard-working / Lazy

R E L A T I O N S H I P S

OTP: Ilztaufein/Gale (gotta come up with ship names)

Acceptable Ships: He's desperately loyal to Gale. He worships the ground he walks on. That said, he has slept with Astarion.

OT3: n/a

Brotp: Izzy and Astarion and two peas in a pod, even if Ilztaufein gives him so much shit for his red eyes and white hair ("Little faerie thinks he's a mighty drow how quaint~!").

Notp: Absolutely not Mystra, nor any followers of lolth.

BACKSTORY

Ilztaufein was born in Ched Nasad and spent the first half century of his life there before it fell to ruin. There he studied to be a wizard and took to divination magic like a fish to water. It was during his studies that he got a vision of the destruction of Ched Nasad, and so to save his own skin he quietly ran before he could be caught in the crossfire. He spent some time travelling the underdark, changing his name and hiding from settlements for fear of being found out and killed for his cowardice, until he came upon and was recruited into Bregan D'aerthe. Shortly after joining the mercenary group he ventured to the surface for the first time and was absolutely blown away by the different peoples and cultures he found there. He tentatively began to learn about Eilistraee, and though he never became a true devout follower it helped him come to terms with his animosity toward more lolth-leaning drow. He learned more surface languages, started enjoying their food and music, and eventually got himself a more permanent position gathering and trading information to and from the surface. That's when he was captured by the illithid; on the surface, haggling with a food vendor on the side of the road just outside Waterdeep.

At first, the abduction was a horrible inconvenience. He had work to do and no interest in making friends with a bunch of (scary powerful) women, a goody-two-shoes hero and some fop of a surface elf. At least there was the wizard, a kindred spirit who understood the importance of a strong mind and lively debate. And ambition.

[be-the-glenn-to-my-maggie]

Ok first id like to share some good news: finished all my tests for the semester, and i think i only failed like 2 or 3!! More good news, more fics that ill get around to writing!! Or ill just post my unfinished drafts. I mean there's a yandere Jake (platonic dad yandere) fic and a "spider w permanant brain damage from the scanner fic" and even more just absolutely collecting dust in my drafts

New idea that I'll def finish this time tho: Humans but there unrealistically better than they are. There's no RDA, no big mining operation, no deforestation or driving natives out or dying earth, just humans being natural born explorers who are mind blown at an entire different planet with life.

And that's wild! They thought they were alone, the universe looking back on itself, explorers of a vast and endless yet lonely expanse. Then boom! Life! Life on a different planet, life so different yet similar. A life that has their own culture and languages, that's so intertwined with nature, they're capable of forming a deep connection at a moments notice! That's amazing! (Forgive me for my amazement, watching Rio and i just love the movie)

Anyway, in this au with no evil corporation only interested in money heading this operation, humans are way nicer! And weirder.

I imagine the Na'vis early experiences w humans are like what some of us think that aliens are doing (crop circles, abducting cows, just standing around naked) (and i say naked because most photos of aliens have em in no clothes. Or they're wearing a full body grey suit). I imagine that at first they don't believe humans are real because they don't show themselves often, only spotted by like a handful. Like "i saw this small pink creature by the river today! It had hair and eyes and hands and feet, and walked on it's legs!" "What the Eywa are you talking abt"

I imagine the first human they meet is a weirdo who's exceptionally brave. They walk up to a Na'vi and just start speaking in the most nonsensical Na'vi ever, that they managed to learn from observing them. They just follow them atound all day, keeps saying Na'vi phrases until whoever they're following just walks to camp and presents them and they're like "hey what is this."

Or, alternatively

Humans try staying away from them cause they're like twice their size and capable of making weapons, except for one person. This one spends their time following around a specific Na'vi and annoying them. They hum little tunes, they're spotted once and disapear behind the trees, they're daring enough to get ahold of their tools and try to study them. Then they start trying to communicate with them, little phrases yadda yadda. All while the Na'vi is going back home like "no mom, i promise i didn't loose my knife, this small pink creature stole it!"

They're like so fed up with the human and everyone around them cause they're like "what are you talking abt" so they're trying to get evidence of their existance. Eventually they do get them and present them to the tribe like "see!! I told you they were real!!!" And they're like "huh. Ok. What is this thing."

Dont have any idea how im gonna further w this but ye! Humans are way nicer and not run by a greedy corporation au

VERY EXCITING! I'm very sure you didn't fail anything. I want bOTH of those collecting dust drafts please and thank you.

No Rio and Avatar have been going hand and fucking hand lately lol. This idea is so fucking funny dude. I'm CACKLING. I absolutely adore the idea of humans being perceived as the aliens in any context and just how weird that would be, and it's not touched upon ENOUGH in Avatar because we come into the world when they have known each other. Hit us with that Grace and Mo'at developing friendship dude. I've always loved that and wanted it explored more.

[imthepunchlord]

do you think you'll ever write a pokemon fanfic? somehow i think you would do a really good job if you were writing the lore for something like pokemon legends arceus plot

I've had some ideas for a pokemon fic.

I've thought about doing a novel/my own take on the games, do what the anime wasn't delivering for me, follow the protag through the region.

I thought of a what if elaborate shuffle up, rearrange characters, evil teams, legendaries, and starters and mix them up amongst the regions, like, Plasma being a knight theme, what if they was moved to Galar, where they still stand for the liberation of pokemon but in Galar where the sport became more important and explore a more grey area, where Plasma isn't entirely wrong but Rose wasn't THE big bad.

I've thought of possibly doing original regions to write out, take the chance to really focus on legendary/mythical pokemon that don't really get a chance to shine or explore other possible rivalries or dynamics, and exploring different types of starters.

Like, one region I thought of being full blown Halloween inspired, embrace the spooky and horror and the fun and the dark and brooding that comes with all the aesthetic. Possibly 13 gyms, may be easier to stick with 6 though, and while semi keeping to the 1 type, definitely would mix it up more to match with themes. First gym, town theme is pumpkins, so that gym leader mains with Pumpkaboo. 2nd or 3rd gym, Webbington, theme is spiders, so bug gym with double battle with all the spidermons. Another is vampire theme so they got bats. Another dealing with bones and graveyard aesthetic so bone related pokemon there. Possibly all ghost starters or ghost/dark/fighting, and for sure, Mimikyu would be the masccot for this region. If I did ever get this going, I'd have to get this released and updated throughout October.

I have also thought of exploring PMD, doing an original tale, though idk what story wise, but taking the chance to explore culture of sentient pokemon, having the chance to have more than one village and what relations could be like, and exploring common pokemon mythology and maybe their religions towards legendaries/mythicals. PMD worldbuilding wise could be so fascinating and I want more.

And for Legends, I had thought of a maybe thought where Dawn/Akari actually fell far into the wilderness and was instead found by the Pale Lord, Zoroark. But I haven't thought of too many other details for it.

So yeah I definitely have some ideas, I wouldn't mind doing some pokemon fanfics.

[goawaypestcontrol]

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[ddarker-dreams]

Hell Within Reach VI. Chrollo x F Reader

Rating: M (for now…) Word count: 2.6k. Misc Info: Your Nen | Survosia Note: i struggle a lot with balancing plot since this is my first full blown series in a while, so i apologize for how long this took 😭😭 i hope i’ll continue to improve in that area since i consider it one of my greater weaknesses. lots of things are established here for the future installments! things will get real wild . also, thank you to @syllything​ for helping me brainstorm and beta reading the chapter!! i appreciate it a lot  💖💖💖

[Hell Within Reach index]

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Synopsis: No longer able to return to your home country, which lays just beyond the borders of the known world, you found yourself stranded in an unknown land. After weeks of aimless wandering, an encounter with the Phantom Troupe’s leader gives you a new set of opportunities.

The Spider had recently lost a member and was in need of a new leg. Takes place four years prior to the main events of Hunter x Hunter.

The day consisted of tying up various loose ends upon Chrollo’s behest.

More extensive research was conducted into Karina’s background, members were dispatched to clean up the remaining bounty hunters, and Chrollo had begun to lay the groundwork for the future heist. His plan consisted of the necessary foundation to build the more intricate details off of. The visas that will need to be obtained, bribing airport security, matters that would be delegated to the legs of the Spider to carry out.

“The most pressing issue is what to do when we get there,” Chrollo explains. The great unknown factor of your home country presents the largest obstacle. “I believe you claimed to have a plan. [First], I trust you’ll point out any challenges her idea presents?”

“Of course.”

You know your role well. You’re here to operate as a real-time fact-checker for any cultural differences the other Spiders wouldn’t catch — and thus be ignorant to. It would be your responsibility if Karina managed to use this to her advantage. As such, you feel the tangible weight of the other member’s stares, the silent responsibility a burden only you could take on.

Crossing your legs, you patiently wait for Karina to give her pitch. If it’s absolute perfection they want, then that’s what they’ll get; high expectations are nothing new for you.

“There are a couple of things you’ll need to keep in mind to pull this off.”

Karina raises a finger, finally breaking the silence. “One. Getting into the country is the easy part, as Mr. Boss surmised. What won’t be so simple, however, is getting into the Avalor estate itself. That will be the biggest hurdle to overcome and the central focus of my idea.”

So far, you can’t see any contradictions in her words and raise no objections.

That doesn’t mean the other members will extend her the same grace.

“Didn’t you say security will be at its most lax in the next few weeks? Whatever happened to that?” Nobunaga points out, scratching his chin.

“While that’s true, it would be unwise to discount the worker bees still buzzing about. They have the advantage of knowing the terrain like the back of their hand, all the simulations they’ve run in case of intruders, and impeccable teamwork,” Karina replies.

Her azure eyes shift to you. “That’s not to say it’s impossible. Sweet [First] here can waltz back in whenever she so chooses, it is her home after all.”

“Looks like you’re going solo on this one,” Phinks deadpans. You don’t trust the smile on Karina’s face, it feels more like an omen than anything else. When she gets into these long, unnecessarily in-depth spiels that could’ve been summarized in just a few words, it’s for a reason. A build-up to the final, climactic point. This tells you, whatever she has in mind is going to need some convincing.

“How exciting,” you respond with nonexistent enthusiasm. Then, you challenge, “That’s what you’ve been working up to these past twenty-four hours?”

Karina tuts at your sarcasm. “O ye of little faith. I was just getting to the best part. Notice how I haven’t said getting out is a concern?”

“You talk too much,” Feitan clicks his tongue. “Get to point.”

“Hey, you weren’t stuck with her for eight hours like I was. I don’t want to hear any complaining,” Nobunaga shudders at the memory, his complexion blanching. Just what did she say to him during that time to leave such a lasting impression…?

Uvogin pats him on the back hard enough for Nobunaga to wince. “You were the one complainin’ about how boring prisoner watch duty was last time we were all together.”

“That’s because they couldn’t talk! I don’t want to hear it, you wouldn’t have lasted thirty minutes.”

“I’ve never been one to back down from a challenge. Let’s see about that,” Uvogin’s grin widens at the prospect.

“Please, continue where you left off.” Chrollo nods, preventing any verbal disagreements before they could distract from the main issue. He’s had his fair share of practice over the years, it would seem.

Karina clears her throat and refocuses the attention back onto the matter at hand.

“That’s because you’re not going to just steal from Lord Victor. You’re going to kill him.”

The Troupe has no immediate response or quips and neither do you. They switch from gauging your reaction to seeing if Karina was joking, which she gives no indication of being the case. She keeps her stare heavy and on no one else but you. You hear your heart hammering away as if it were in your ears, loud and uneasy. It isn’t like what she’s suggesting has never crossed your mind in the past. An intrusive thought, you labeled it, for how inconceivable the reality would be.

“Is your family not what matters most?”

He’d frequently ask you this very question. On the rare occasions you voiced your displeasure with his plans or called into question what he was asking you or your siblings to do, this was always how he responded. Your father did not even bother entertaining you with refuting your meticulously constructed points. Whether it was because he didn’t care or thought you were so incapable of understanding the greater picture that only he seemed to see, you don’t know. What you do know is that your vocal opposition grew less frequent as the years went by.

Shizuku raises her arm in the air.

“Yes, you in the turtleneck and glasses.”

“Um, I just wanted to make sure I’m remembering correctly here. Isn’t that [First]’s father?”

“That he is!”

“Oh. Huh, okay then.”

This would’ve been the end result at some point or another. That’s what you want to believe, at least. Those nights where he’d dismiss you from his office after you filled him in on a successful job, you’d sometimes stay planted and consider what the consequences would be. Could you successfully pull it off? Would he strike you down before you got close enough? Every time, with adrenaline pumping through your veins and your mind roaring, you’d reluctantly turn on your heel and leave. The stain on your pride was bleeding and immense.

He had made a point of turning his back to you in those moments. Everything the man did was intentional — that you know for certain. He was inviting you. Taunting you. A wordless expression of “Just try it” to see if you would take the bait he laid out. By his own admission, if his family was capable enough to strike him down where he stood, then that meant he could no longer claim to be the rightful leader. Only those who are strong can make that assertion.

So the question remains.

Are you finally strong enough?

“Now slow down just a second. That’s a Troupe member's own flesh and blood.” Nobunaga is the first to voice his opposition. This is uncharted territory, after all, a situation like this had never arisen. The people you dealt with had no personal connections to anyone in the Spider, a fact that made jobs cleaner and simpler to execute. Potential conflicts of interest were to be avoided, an unspoken rule.

“Not to mention how much-unwanted attention that would attract,” Franklin adds.

The match has been lit. Until you voice your support of the outlandish idea, you can’t imagine anyone else offering theirs as a form of strained courtesy. Everything will hinge on how you respond.

Machi crosses her arms over her chest. “We listened. Doesn’t mean we have to go through with it.”

“Ah, but then what do we do with her?” Shizuku inquires.

“Need you ask?” Feitan’s question is met with an understanding hum from Shizuku.

Chrollo, who has been closely scrutinizing your every movement, is a second away from de-escalating the situation but you beat him to it.

“I’d like to hear her out,” you goad Karina on. She blinks, as if your decisive reaction was unexpected, before quickly catching herself. “Explain the potential merits.”

“R-right. Once Lord Victor is taken care of and the basement looted, the problem of escape is the final hurdle to overcome. Hold over the house and its servants fall to whoever is next in line once the discovery of his death is made, including subsequent decisions.”

Phinks nods. “Alright, alright, I think I’m starting to get it. Are you an only child, [First]?”

You shake your head.

“Well, fuck. So much for that.”

“Lady Estella is far more agreeable than the soon-to-be late Victor. I’m sure you’ll be able to broker some sort of compromise with her. And, if worst comes to worst, [First] always bested her elder sister during sparring.” The message in between the lines doesn’t sit well with you. If Karina is trying to imply you should take her down for this job as well, that’s where you’ll draw the line. Estella might be overbearing at times but not to the degree you’d feel justified killing her.

“Unnecessary,” you wave her idea off. “It won’t come to that.”

“If you say so. It’s just best to consider these things in advance. Which leads me to my final point… what number was I at again? Ah, who cares. This is where things get fun.”

You wonder for a moment who would’ve broken first and permanently silenced Karina had it not been for her vital role in this upcoming heist. From how Feitan’s eyebrows are furrowing more and more by the second, you place your bets on him. It’s a miracle he’s managed to keep his bloodlust in check. The only member Karina’s appeared to have won over so far is Uvogin, who looks to be having the time of his life right now.

Karina claps her hands together.

“Alright! Who wants to marry [First]?”

Phinks chokes on his beer and starts coughing violently, Chrollo’s eyes widen in a way you’ve never seen before, Shizuku tilts her head, Shalnark stops typing away on his phone and freezes, Franklin drops the drinks he just entered the room with.

“Going once, going twice—”

“Wait, what?” You force out in disbelief. It’s like all the air has been forced from your lungs in a forceful punch.

“Hm? Didn’t you hear me? I asked who wants to marry you,” Karina clarifies, as if the proposition was the most casual thing ever. Did she fall on her head and get a concussion? You’ve never been able to fully grasp the things that go on in her cursed mind, yet this is on an entirely different level.

“My revised plan is very simple. What better excuse for [First] to have a plus one than for it to be her fiance? Matters of marriage are of great importance to families like the Avalors, they obsess over it. You’ll be granted a free ticket into the estate, a one-on-one audience with Lord Victor, and a viable excuse to scuttle about the halls.”

You take a deep, uneasy breath. “I... don’t see how this is necessary.”

Karina runs a hand through her hair, shoulders slumping. “There will be no getting all, or even most of the Troupe members anywhere near that prison-like estate. It’s impossible. Alarm bells will be ringing before you can blink. Sending [First] in there by herself is too risky. The strongest or most capable member should accompany her, everyone else can be a safe distance away on standby.”

A week ago, when you were breaking into your new apartment and watering your plants, you never would have imagined this for yourself. You don’t know whether to feel mortified or irritated. What makes matters worse is that she has a point, something you do not intend to admit. The other Troupe members don’t understand how you two do just how vital marriage is for influential families back home. Karina might inject theatrics into her persona to lighten up those around her, yet this is different. She means every word she says.

“Strongest member, huh? Everyone’s idea of that is different,” Uvogin says, stretching his arms over his head. “Alright, I knew the day would come where we had an arm wrestling rematch.”

“That’s you’re taking away from this?” Phinks gapes, incredulous.

“Blinky can always dispose of the body,” Shizuku points out. “That would buy time after the meeting for [First] and whoever to steal the merchandise.”

Pakunoda offers her input. “The layouts in Karina and [First]’s memories combined would make it easier to navigate as well, they won’t be going in blind. It’s a good place to start.”

Franklin shakes his head. “There’s too much dependence on external factors.”

“I agree,” Nobunaga nods his head. “We just don’t know enough to take such a big risk.”

“A risk is necessary here. The window to pull this off is limited,” Machi decides to place her trust in Pakunoda, who has searched both yours and Karina’s memories. If Pakunoda was on board with the idea, with all the knowledge she held, then Machi would be too.

Phinks turns his attention to Chrollo, who is sitting with his head resting on his hands, an indication that he’s in deep thought. “Boss, what do you think? Is any of this plausible to you?”

“It’s not a matter of choosing the strongest member,” Chrollo’s eyes land on you, unreadable and vast. “[First]. I’m assuming that there would be strict expectations on behavior and conduct for anyone accompanying you to follow.”

“You’d be assuming correctly.”

“And, if these expectations aren’t met, suspicion would grow.”

“It would,” you pause to think, mulling over how to best make this idea viable. “I could give a basic explanation on how to dress, behave, and speak, but the rest would be contingent upon whoever comes with me.”

In other words, you both would be carrying the burden of the job almost entirely by yourselves. There would be limited assistance from the other Spider’s once you got inside your estate.

“... I see.”

A long moment passes before he speaks up again, breaking the room’s silence. “I will go with you.”

There’s no amount of self-control powerful enough in the world to prevent your eyes from widening. You regain yourself, fully cognizant that Chrollo is gauging your every reaction, returning to a neutral visage seconds later. Somewhere within the confines of your subconscious, you felt like he would be the ideal pick. His charisma and ability to read others would be essential to carrying this out. The experience he’s had infiltrating high society families will be useful here too, it wouldn’t be the first time he pretended to be a person he isn’t.

This wouldn’t just be a test of your capabilities. It would be a test for Chrollo as well. One where both your lives would be placed on the line, for better or for worse.

“Congratulations on the engagement, you two. You’ll be in for one hell of a ride,” Karina winks.

“And that settles that,” Shalnark looks up from his laptop. “I found a trustworthy source to forge our passports and visas.”

“How soon can you get them?” Chrollo inquires.

Shalnark’s eyes scan over his screen. “Hm, two days look to be about the average according to the hunter website’s description. Kortopi’s ability should help speed the process up.”

“Make it one instead. The sooner we get in the country the better,” he stands from his spot near the altar. “Feitan, Phinks, Franklin. You’ll be in charge of securing our passage. Uvogin, Nobunaga. Continue with the extermination of the remaining bounty hunters. Paku, Machi, Shizuku. Stay here and watch over Karina; kill her if she proves more trouble than she’s worth. Bonolenov, Kortopi, head out with Shal to assist with obtaining the necessary identification papers.”

Finally, he turns his attention to you, your facial expression not betraying your disjointed thoughts.

“And [First]... let us discuss this arrangement further. In private.” 

[killjoyhistoryarchive]

Mike Milligram: The Lost Killjoy

Edit: On July 21st 2020, a Mike Milligram comic by Gerard Way and Shaun Simon was officially announced. However, I’ll leave this post as it is for future reference.

—

In 2009, while My Chemical Romance fans were eagerly awaiting news on their upcoming album, Gerard Way had another surprise in store: the announcement of a new comic series called “Killjoys.”

Co-written by Shaun Simon and illustrated by Becky Cloonan, Gerard told CBR that the series would ���deal with much more mature and controversial themes, such as hate crimes and homophobia, the homogenization of American culture and American life.” Unlike “The Umbrella Academy,” which was set in a fantasy world, “Killjoys” was set in modern-day America.

But what nobody realized was that even after an album, two music videos, and a six-issue comic series, Gerard’s original conception would never see the light of day.

In 2008, Gerard Way and Shaun Simon developed the Killjoys universe in a frenzy of inspiration. Gerard’s original sketch features Mike Milligram on the left–named after Gerard’s brother Mikey Way–with a host of other characters that accompanied Mike on his journey. The comic was announced a year later at San Diego Comic Con, with a release planned in 2010.

With My Chemical Romance wrapping up their fourth album, Gerard and Shaun were ready to start writing. Becky Cloonan drew concept art for Mike Milligram, as well as promotional artwork that they planned to use at the Comic Con announcement. However, the Mike Milligram art was scrapped and replaced with a simple image of the Killjoy spider–a move that could later be seen as prophetic.

In 2009, “Killjoys” was an entirely different concept. There was no Party Poison, no Dr. Death Defying, no Battery City, no girl with special powers. The original comic involved a surreal road trip through America that reunited offbeat characters and confronted harsh realities along the way. In 2013, Shaun Simon offered this description in the introduction to the special hardcover edition of the comics:

The old version of the story focused on Mike Milligram, a late-twenty-something living in a desert trailer park and working a crappy job at a supermarket. Mike’s teenage years were a blur. He couldn’t tell if the things he remembered had actually happened or not. Part of him believed he was part of a gang called the Killjoys who fought fictional things in the real world. The other part of him believed it was all just a dream. Music was the only thing that kept Mike going, so when the music was erased from his Ramones tape, it sent him over the edge. He went out and got his old teenage gang, who were now living normal lives, back together because, yes, it was all real. Other members of his gang included Ani-Max, now a high school history teacher; Code Blue, a rabble-rouser who was a working girl in Vegas; Monster, a new young member they met on the road; and Kyle 100%, who was a B-list actor now. They all had strange powers based on objects. Halloween masks and costume accessories, puffy jackets, toy ray guns. It was a story about a group of old friends getting together and discovering what America really was. Reaching deep inside its pretty facade and pulling out the ugly guts. (It was semiautobiographical. I toured with Gerard and his band for a couple of years before realizing I needed to find my own path.) The gang would have found out that another former gang had now become the largest health care corporation in the country and were hell bent on making the world a safe and clean place by removing all that was dirty, like the Ramones. It would have been a great story, and I’m sure parts will end up in Gerard’s and my’s future work.

Of course, we all know what happened after that announcement. After Gerard took a fateful week-long trip to the desert, MCR decided to scrap “Conventional Weapons” and fueled their energy into writing “Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys.” But even as Gerard delved into this new post-apocalyptic version of the Killjoy universe, the comics remained the same. As late as 2011, Gerard claimed in an interview with Artrocker that the comics hadn’t changed at all:

No, none of the characters, even our characters, are in it. It is a completely separate thing, even almost a separate setting. It shares all the ideals behind the record and the theories and the commentary but it is nothing like the videos you have seen. I think the car is probably the only thing that’s the same!

But as the band took on more responsibilities–filming music videos, promoting the album, going on tour–the comics kept getting pushed back. First the release planned for 2010; then it was pushed back to 2011. And while the era had kicked off without a hitch, MCR eventually hit one of the first of many roadblocks: they didn’t have enough money to film the third video. So as Shaun Simon told CBR, the original story featuring Mike Milligram was scrapped, and replaced with the story of the girl and the Ultra Vs:

[A]fter the record, Gerard had built this whole world around the Killjoys. When it came time for the comic, Gerard called me up and said, “We ran out of money. We wanted to make the third video, but we don’t have the money. So do you want to make the idea for that video into a comic?” We started talking about ideas, and we had so many that it turned into this whole series.

In an interview with Paste (2013), Gerard went into more detail about the process:

The deal is that I had written three videos (“Na Na Na,” “Sing,” and “The Only Hope For Me Is You”), and the third video had never gotten made. By the time we had completed the second video, we just ran out of budget money. At the time, somebody was managing us and not keeping an eye on this stuff. Long story short, there was no budget. So I wrote a video, and of course it ends up being the most expensive one, as the last part would usually be. But we couldn’t make it! Killjoys started its life as a very different comic. It was heavily-rooted in nineties Vertigo post-modernism. There’s a lot of very cool, abstract ideas in it; I wouldn’t even call it a superhero book. That (comic) was a visual and thematic inspiration on what would become the album Danger Days. It was pretty loose, though. This was going to be my interpretation of the story, so there’s way more science fiction involved. And what I need to say to the world needed to be a little more direct, so I boiled it down to something that’s still very smart and challenging, but I thought was definitely easier to understand through song or visual. Then (Killjoys artist) Becky Cloonan drew a 7-inch for “The Only Hope For Me Is You,” which was going to be the last video single. I realized I was out of budget, so I said ‘just make this the girl from the first and second video at 15. And have her shave her head or chop her hair off like in The Legend of Billie Jean, because that’s how the video was supposed to start.’ So (Cloonan) sends this drawing over and I’m on tour with Blink 182 in a hotel on an off day. I get this drawing and I’m so immediately blown away by it. I call Shaun, my co-writer and co-creator, and I say ‘open your email, I’m going to send you something.’ I ask him ‘how does this image make you feel?’ We talked for two hours. By the end of the conversation we both realized that that image was the comic, and the third video was basically the comic. So we figured how we were going to make this interesting and exciting for six issues and complete the story. And that was the final direction. It was pretty obvious to us.

In a way, Mike Milligram’s spirit lived on, as fans noticed the similarities between Mike Milligram and Party Poison. But it’s inaccurate to say that Mike Milligram became Party Poison, though “Party Poison’s real name is Mike Milligram” became a persistent rumor in the fandom. Mike’s story was not Poison’s; he wasn’t a post-apocalyptic rebel, but a teenager searching for his identity in modern America.

Will Mike Milligram’s story ever be told? At this point, it’s not likely. But his tale offers a glimpse into the creative minds of Gerard Way and Shaun Simon, and makes us ponder the fact that with a few changes–the comics being released earlier, for instance, or MCR having the money to fund the third video–the comics could have been entirely different.

[abysscontemporary]

The Dais Of Our Knives

Years ago At Sotheby’s

I ran into a journalist I knew from the art scene.

They told me they’d been away For six months Traveling.

We continued chatting.

As if they’d never been away.

In March 2020, I stopped by Team Gallery to see its Petra Cortright and Will Sheldon solo exhibitions. The adventure was extraordinary.

Cortright is typically known for her paintings, which initially look handmade but then reveal themselves to have been composed electronically and fabricated on a substrate. The synergy between the two is often pleasantly confounding, and the dichotomy between the tactility and the hands-off technique is perplexingly rewarding.

At Team, Cortright fabricated each layer of a digital composition that she had printed on a one-fold tabloid.  The layers were suspended from a procession of dowels, installed just below the ceiling. In doing so, she physicalized the display of layers that one might see on the computer screen of a 2D designer if such a designer were to isolate each layer on, respectively, a sequence of dedicated pages.

(Think of how Damian Ortega’s mobile of the principal components of an automobile was presented at the 2003 Venice Biennale.  Here, however, Cortright presents large-scale facsimiles of every single component of her two-dimensional work.)

Some layers were pure abstractions, and other depicted landscapes.  The irregularity of the shapes brought them into such sharp relief that they were rendered into still life objects.  Again, in an inventive way, Cortright found a way to bewilder and delight a gallery audience.

Will Sheldon’s paintings depicted scenes of either fantasies or highly embellished realities. The artist’s gift for conflating the two prompted me to alternately take in the entire exhibition all at once and lean forward to investigate and marvel at each work’s details.

It would be simple to categorize Sheldon’s paintings as being purely Gothic because so much about them is about observations of the present and visualizations of life in the future.  In the same way that one might recount about how during the course of a day they’d had a certain dream, promenaded through several neighborhoods within a town or a city, and contemplated a spectacular and speculative environment, Sheldon brings such narrative-like non-narratives to each of his canvases.  Some of the spider webs, if looked upon closely, are sparkling.  The scenes of the city (that arise behind the threshold of the dark forest that the viewer seems to be immersed within) exist in states of innocence – the kinds that one is unlikely to be cynical about.

As a painter, Sheldon has a remarkable touch.  His craft skills can be admired, and what they deliver are sublime, modern-day, transgressive, pictorial enchantments.

Also in March 2020, I visited Foxy Production to see its solo exhibition of paintings by Srijon Chowdhury.  Uncannily, many of this artist’s works feature an extraordinary surprise - a supernatural glow that emanates from the canvas as if it were both natural and fantastic (i.e., a specimen of fantasy).  Chowdhury’s works appear to be simply about flowers, figures in nature, and intimate family scenes.  However, through his subjects, his works are pulsating vessels – vehicles for vital forces.  In this, he shares one of two things in common with Mark Rothko; the other is that Chowdhury is based in Portland, Oregon, the city where Rothko lived after emigrating from Russia.

Chowdhury’s grand tableau, “Pale Rider,” is a commanding work that was presented on the feature wall of the gallery.  Measuring 7 feet high by 16 feet across, this painting has the power of a major work of medieval stained glass.  “Pale Rider” depicts a nude equestrienne, riding a galloping horse through a free-form landscape of colorful flowers behind the plane of a fence of green ironwork, formed by words and geometric, abstract shapes.  Here, the lady’s the one with the long mane.  As a guiding force upon this equine creation-in-motion, she is riding in a streamlined, recumbent manner and holding a scythe in her left hand, beyond the plane of the horse.  “Pale Rider” is other-worldly.  The artist’s attention to detail makes it worthwhile to look at the painting up-close. Threads flow through and around the fence, and the lushness of the greenery in the background conjures up the most exalted of spring and summer days.

In August 2020, I returned to Foxy Production to see “Sex and love with a psychologist,” its solo exhibition of paintings by Sojourner Truth Parsons.  It was like a blast from the early 1980’s, as seen through a lens of present-day thinking.  Modern and graphic – as in what it is that a graphic artist produces – Parsons’ paintings depict portraits in high relief of studio interiors, and stylized cityscapes.  They evoke the downtown Manhattan scene that had been brought to life by “The SoHo Weekly News” and the pre-Conde Nast “Details” Magazine.  They don’t directly reference the decade, but the feeling is there. What makes them so engaging is how Parsons appears to have assumed that what was once transgressive in that half-decade is now conceptually and practically settled culture.  The result is a very present symphony of beautiful technique and lively but simple colors:  powder pink, black, and sky or powder blue.

Parsons’ approach to depicting studies and finished works, as installed on the walls of art studios, is fascinating.  The representations of strips of artist’s tape and the works they support upon the walls where they’re displayed are endearing.  The shapes are subtly but distinctively choreographed, and the process of decoding what these forms are about is very rewarding.  The presence of the unseen individuals who live, work, and/or play in these environments is palpable.  A viewer is never alone while engaging with Parsons’ work.  Parsons’ works are rich in spirit and modernistically atmospheric.

In November 2020, I visited Hesse Flatow to see “Sincerely,” Aglaé Bassens’ solo exhibition of paintings.  As a follow-up to her 2018 solo exhibition, “You Can See Better From Here,” at Crush Curatorial, it was a pleasure to see this artist move upwards and laterally, as her vision and technique has ascended, and her range of exploration of subject matter and technique has expanded in unexpected and intriguing dimensions.

What Bassens captures are moments:  a burning cigarette butt, on a black surface in an ostensibly nocturnal interior; a car passenger’s view of an iced-over windshield and a dashboard on a winter day; a chaise longue and a matching chair (designed for poolside lounging), stretched out on grassy meadow, bordered by a forest, on an overcast summer afternoon.  Each of her works is clearly a representation, and each is unmistakenly a painting.

Without knowing the title of the burning cigarette painting, one could marvel at its details for at least an hour.  The wrinkled cigarette paper, the slightly crushed filter, the white-hot butt end, and the casually rising smoke are spectacles in themselves.  The black surface upon which the cigarette rests is implicitly a table – a plinth upon which this common object is, for an instance, ennobled; it could never be anything as profane as a floor.

To see the car interior painting and the chaises longues tableau is to sense the seasons the subjects inhabit and to witness how with an economy of expression and the power of suggestion Bassens’ paint strokes bring these scenes to life and invigorate a viewer’s awareness of her actions and the works’ properties.

The body of work exhibited here hangs upon an invisible thread.  Bassens’ paintings are portraits of the intangible.  To encounter her interpretation of a collapsed, wind-blown beach umbrella and her partial view of a pair of blue garden chairs, outside on a rainy night is to experience the creation and manipulation of her subjects by humankind and the forces of nature that bring them to entropy.  To witness Bassens’ mastery of her medium is to recognize the difference that paintings make as meaningful presences themselves.

In February 2021, I made a special trip to Marinaro Gallery to see “A Shift In the House,” a solo exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Lindsay Burke.  In 2017, Burke’s dynamic paintings were stand-outs at Hunter College’s second-year, MFA group exhibition, and the provocative, semi-figurative, semi-abstract paintings she’d produced for her 2018 debut at Marinaro were subversively seductive and sophisticated.  Burke’s most recent exhibition marked a turning point for the artist and, for art audiences, it represented a major highlight of the season.

Burke’s paintings revolved around the sleight of mind, eye, and hand in the conception, production, and reception of visual and physical creations.  Homes, details of fixtures and studio implements, and landscapes are depicted amidst levels of abstractions that alternately draw the viewer towards the recognition of overall patterns and minute and discrete details.

Close examinations reveal brush strokes that resemble the kind that are made as test markings – what an artist daubs on an errant surface before making a commitment onto an actual work-in-progress.  However, the marks that Burke makes are decisive.  They are closely rendered, and they are what altogether becomes each overall work, a marvel that is astonishingly self-referential.  They can remind a viewer of many things, but they are unique and exceptional unto themselves.

To compare Burke’s paintings to those of the modern pointillists would be reasonable but off-target.  More aptly, one might compare the paintings from “A Shift In the House” to those of Jasper Johns; taken individually and altogether, they can enchant and impress in their entirety, and from up-close, they can truly engage the eye and the mind.

In February 2021, I visited Microscope Gallery and saw “Transmutations,” a remarkable exhibition of works of sculpture by Yasue Maetake.  In its expansive location in Bushwick, Microscope succeeded in creating a grand tour of phenomena of great intrigue – highly unified works, composed of materials that existed on the surface of the mind (i.e., the recognizable) and those that existed in the deepest and most faraway galaxies of the imagination – the poetic and the unknowable.

They conjured up memories of photographs of expressionistic figurative works, produced in the mid- to late-1950’s – manifestations – as the writer of a Museum of Modern Art catalogue noted – of post-war anguish.  Maetake’s works, though, are elegant and poised.  Individually and collectively, they are almost baroque.  More certainly, they are dynamic.

Upon learning that portions of many of the works are composed of camel’s bones, I thought of Nancy Graves’ large representations of camels in motion, and the contemporary character of Maetake’s oeuvre clicked, establishing itself into place with the great shift that occurred in art in 1970 and propelled wave after wave of innovative concepts and practices in each intervening decade.  This body of work resides in the classical – owing to its profoundly pre-visualized and masterfully realized orderly character – and within the exuberantly enchanted space of the kinds of sculpture that could be made only today.

The harmony and the dissonance of each of Maetake’s works exist like movements in a symphony.  Their constituent elements are too fine to be called “components,” and they often draw in the viewer without ever really calling attention to themselves.  Her works are unique and exceptional, and they appear to be exotic, yet relatable and familiar.  To encounter Maetake’s work in this half-kunst-kabinett and half-lair was an extraordinary and memorable experience.

In March 2021, I visited Kravets/Wehby Gallery to see Allison Zuckerman’s solo exhibition, “Gone Wild.” Consisting of wall-mounted tableaux and free-standing works of sculpture, a high-spirited galaxy of new and captivating creations was on view in the same space where Zuckerman had made her sensational debut only four years beforehand.  In this new chapter of her ever-advancing journey, Zuckerman has pivoted from a variety of points and moved towards a greater sense of attention towards form and material.

The subject matter is still certainly there.  Her super-metamorphosed, female figures of the fine arts reign on each planet of a painting, and they appear to be syntactically oriented further out on the ends of the branches of the greater dimensions where she’s been venturing.  One of the most interesting exploratory movements observed here was the way Zuckerman intertwined “actual” painting with “virtual” painting in creating impressions that exceed each individually, and, in doing so, she enters the realm of orchestrating spectacle.  Stated in a more oblique way, Zuckerman is sparking the imagination, as directors do in cinema and expanded, live theater.

Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Pierre Melville, for example, were adept at integrating visual sleights of hand into their films.  Although they deliberately showed the seams of montages in certain key scenes in their movies, they inexplicably created impressions that were undeniably effective even though they were more plausible than they should have been.  In Hitchcock’s “Marnie,” the scene in which Marnie appears to be in danger while riding atop her frightened, runaway horse, the tension is oddly palpable; the mechanics of the editing of the images are unexpectedly visible, but Hitchcock succeeds in generating the suspense that’s necessary for heightening the viewer’s engagement in the story and carrying the viewer forward through the journey of the balance of the film.  In Melville’s “Le Samouraï,” a nightclub owner is confronted in his office by hitman Jef Costello and is then seen pulling out his handgun first; however, in the successive montage, it is Costello who gets off the fatal shot that kills his intended target.  The sequence is startling, and it jars the logic of the viewer; nevertheless, the viewer comes to not only accept the results but embrace them, as Melville chose to confound the viewer by not making the sights and sounds of the showdown conspicuous or obvious.  The shock of Costello’s success and the miracle of his survival sharply impress the audience despite the visual and auditory discrepancies to which they have been presented with great suddenness.

In Cyril Teste’s stage adaptation of John Cassavetes’s film, “Opening Night,” presented at the French Institute / Alliance Française’s Florence Gould Hall in 2019, live acting is happening at the same time on the stage as video projections, many of which are sourced by the livestreaming video camera that is operated by a cameraperson who can be plainly seen by the audience but not acknowledged at all by the play’s characters.  The left wing of the theater-within-the-theater of the play-within-the play is only partially visible to the audience, but the scenes there are entirely seen and heard through the technology that’s at-hand. Likewise, scenes taking place entirely behind the stage set are interpretively presented for the audience; the action and dialogue there are heard, as they may be customarily received in certain film scenes, such as those that are spasmodically illuminated by flashlights in pitch black conditions (e.g., “Le Beau Serge,” “The Blair Witch Project”).  Alternately, scenes are also taking place at the center of the stage; they depict the actors playing characters in the play-within-the play and themselves, living out the challenges of their own lives as real people. The shifts from one mode to the next allow for the audience to interpret what’s happening and where.  Despite it all, the performances of the actors – notably Isabelle Adjani, as Myrtle Gordon, and Frédéric Pierrot, as Maurice – brilliantly carry the audience through the play’s emotional roller coaster ride with both traditional, live stagecraft (e.g., classical vocal delivery, effective physical presence) and the enhancements that Teste’s filmic interventions convey.

In reconciling the many techniques that Zuckerman brings to a viewer, the evidence of the means and materials in the production of her works may be readily gathered and assessed, but, inexplicably, they deliver a variety of unexpected and often wondrous sensations.  Each work delivers at one point or another in the viewing process a big payoff or a fireworks-show sequence of bursts of discoveries and unforeseen emotional responses.

This goes beyond the kind of examination that one might have while viewing the paintings of Giorgio Morandi or Diego Velázquez or the photographs of August Sander, as up-close and far-off perspectives of their works concern materials that are uniform throughout.  The experience of regarding what was presented at “Gone Wild” was about transcending the employment of both paints and digital substrates and arriving at the harmonies that have been enchantingly realized by the artist’s generation of a succession of spectacles in at a time and place where one may be anticipating something reasonable.

In late July 2021, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see “Alice Neel:  People Come First.”  After viewing all of the works in the show, I circled back to its “beginning,” and, from the center of each gallery space, I saw patterns of the abstract backgrounds of Neel’s portrait works, more or less lining the room.  It was something that one can only sense spatially within an actual exhibition space.

I’ve often spoken about how a painting exhibition is more than a collection of images, rendered on canvas, framed or unframed.  It’s the deployment of the works within a physical space that an exhibitor is presenting to an audience – and, by “presenting,” I mean gifting, treating, and delivering something special.

I’d been away from the Met for two years.

In seeing this Neel retrospective, it was as if I’d never been away at all.

Team Gallery “Petra Cortwrigth:  borderline auroroa borealist” 5 March - 2 May 2020 “Will Sheldon:  Trouble After Dark” 5 March - 6 June 2021

Foxy Production “Srijon Chowdhury” 5 March - 31 May 2020 “Sojourner Truth Parsons:  Sex and Love With a Psychologist” 9 July - 22 August 2020

Hesse Flatow “Aglaé Bassens:  Sincerely,” 22 October - 21 November 2020

Marinaro Gallery “Lindsay Burke:  A Shift In the House” 28 January - 28 February 2021

Microscope Gallery “Yasue Maetake:  Transmutations” 29 January - 19 March 2021

Kravets | Wehby Gallery “Allison Zuckerman:  Gone Wild” 27 February - 2 April 2021

The Metropolitan Museum of Art “Alice Neel:  People Come First” 22 March - 1 August 2021

Barry N. Neuman

New York August 2021

[imanativeofswlondondahling]

Becoming A Stark (18)- Peter Parker X Stark!femReader

Word Count: 2434

Warning: Swearing

Author Note: Yes, yes I missed Wednesday’s update. To be honest- it completely slipped my mind with classes. I’m going to have to set an alarm to remind me or something lol. Anyway, let me know what you think of probably my favorite chapter of this story and if you want to be added to the tag list.

Chapter One || Previous Chapter || Master List

“Kid, we have to talk. What have you been thinking?” Tony is pacing around the lab as Peter sits on the stool. He should be working on his physics homework, but Tony needs to talk to him. He’s been fighting on and off with you, he had to rescue Peter from a lake and now the DC stuff. “You could have blown Spidey’s cover so many times in the past weeks plus the alien tech stuff on top of that? You’re supposed to be neighborhood Spider-Man, not running off to DC Spider-Man. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that people needed help and I was there.” Peter says, swinging his leg, not looking Tony in the eye.

“Not good enough.” That makes Peter’s head pop up. “I looked up your suit info. Don’t lie to me. Your suit doesn’t even show being in DC after say nine thirty six pm on Friday night which is weird seeing as you were videotaped at the Washington monument on Saturday. So either there’s something off with the suit, or you messed with it?”

“There was, um, some faulty wiring?” 

“Nice try. Plus Y/N got pissed at me that I introduced you to Spider-Man first since you were trying to use him as a party trick. And then I had to rescue you from a lake. So either you need to explain what’s going on, or Spider-Man goes back to being a kid in a onesie.”

“Wait you’d take the suit away?”

“I’m trying to figure out where you’re at. None of this seems like the kid that told me he wants to help the little guy.”

“I’m trying to help the little guy, but there is also more I could be doing and you’re not listening. You’re too focused on everything except what I’m telling you. I’m trying to keep the little guy safe from this guy with the wings and you won’t listen. You don’t even seem to care about what I’m actually doing unless it involves Y/N.”

“That’s because she’s my daughter.”

“Who I happen to like a lot and all you care about is keeping her to yourself. You want me to keep a million secrets from her and that’s fine. But you’re making me hurt her and I won’t do it anymore.” Peter snatches his homework off the table and shoves it into his backpack before walking out of the lab. Tony can only watch as the kid walks out of the lab. This conversation went nowhere near where he thought it would go.

And the next few days don’t go any better for Tony. He tries to do what he thinks will help the situation so that Peter doesn’t have to worry about it, but when he has to rescue the entire Staten Island Ferry from being split down the middle, he’s pissed off. So yeah, he takes the kid’s suit. Because he’s worried. And nothing seems to be going through that kid’s thick skull.

Your dad was in a mood when you got home from Betty’s house that afternoon. “Let me guess you weren’t even at Betty’s house studying?”’

“I’ve been at Betty’s since school let out. Happy literally picked me up from there. What’s your problem?” You drop your backpack on the floor.

“My problem is you kids running around like you can do anything in the world and thinking that us adults won’t help you if you just reach out. Instead you have to skirt the rules and make up things. Then we have to come in to save the day all the time.”

“Clearly I have no idea what you’re talking about. But if you’re in a shit mood, quit taking it out on me. Because I was having a relatively good day until now.”

“I was having a relatively good day until your boyfriend messed it up.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend so I have less than zero idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well Parker made his intentions about having feelings for you clear when he stormed out of the lab the other day clear so I thought he would have made a move by now. Then he goes and makes a huge mess that I have to take care of.”

“What are you talking about? There is nothing going on between Peter and I. Honestly if he was having a relationship with any Stark, I would guess it would be you since he spends way more time with you than he does me. But if he did something that you had to fix, that’s on him, not me. So quit taking it out on me.” You grab your backpack and storm up the stairs to your room. Twitter is full of stories about Spider-Man and Iron Man saving the Staten Island Ferry. He goes and makes a huge mess that I have to take care of. Holy Shit. Peter doesn’t know Spider-Man; Peter is Spider-Man. 

Grabbing a pair of sunglasses, your wallet, your phone, and your purse, you make your way downstairs. Your dad is still pacing around the living room, mumbling to himself. He doesn’t even look up as the front door beeps, which says something about how far in his head he is. The brownstone is better than the tower at one thing- the paparazzi haven’t swarmed it yet. So you’re actually able to get out of the building without being swarmed like when you leave school. You should call Happy. He at least knows how to get you where you want to go. But you don’t want him to say no or worse tell your dad. So you’ll figure this out. 

“FRIDAY, can you pull up directions to Peter Parker’s apartment?” 

“Certainly Y/N.”

“FRI, can you not tell my dad where I’m going?”

“He has the ability to override your settings, but unless he does, I will keep your trip a secret.”

“Thanks FRIDAY.” You look at the map on your screen and start walking towards the subway station. It’s been months since you rode the train, but it feels like coming home. You used to ride the E train all the time to go to Betty’s house and school, so this feels like going home. According to the map, Peter lives only four blocks from Nana and Pops’ anyway. It’s going to take some time to get there from where you live now, so right now you plug your headphones in and let your I Hate My Life playlist start playing. Song to Sing When I’m Lonely by John Frusciante plays and you let your head bob back and forth as the train clicks and clacks over the tracks. 

You look at the number on your screen one last time before knocking on the door in front of you. “I’m coming.” A voice from the other side calls. A female voice. Not Peter’s voice. “Hi?”

“Hi, is Peter here?”

“Uh, he is. I think he’s in the shower. Who are you?”

“I’m a friend of his. I’m Y/N Stark.” You realize it might be safer to use your old last name, but you’ve gotten so used to saying Stark now, that it’s too late.

“Oh. Peter told me.”

“Told you…?”

“About how he lost the internship. He never mentioned that his friend Y/N was related to your dad though.” Peter lost his internship? That’s news to you.

“My dad is trying to keep it kind of low key.” Not that he did a good job at that.

“Come on in.” The woman motions for you to follow her into the apartment. “I’m May, Peter’s aunt.” You follow her through the kitchen into the living room. “I’d offer you a snack, but I’m not much of a cook.”

“I’m good. My dad is kind of strict about what I’m allowed to eat anyway. No GMOs, all organic, no high fructose corn syrup, all those crazy rules. It’s kind of annoying to be honest.” May looks at the teenager sitting in front of her in a printed graphic tee that reads ‘I like coffee and maybe three people’, a pair of denim shorts and a pair of galaxy high tops. Much more summery than the fall weather that was starting to roll in but a cute outfit nonetheless. Before May can say anything in response, the bathroom door opens and Peter walks out in nothing but a towel. 

“I might have used all the hot water, May. Sorry.”

“That’s ok. Your friend stopped by.” Peter looks up to see you, but you can’t help but look at the abs he has somehow managed to hide the entire time you both have been friends. 

“Y/N? What-what-what are you doing here?” His hand falls to grasp the towel that's wrapped around his waist.

“Maybe you should put some clothes on before you try to have a full on conversation?” May suggests.

“Clothes. Right.”

“Boys.” May rolls her eyes. “So you go to MSST?” You nod. “Are you as into all the sciences as Peter is?” You shake your head.

“It’s probably the biggest disappointment about being Tony Stark’s kid is that I hate science.” You can’t help but scrunch your nose as you say this.

“Well thank god, because I can’t follow half of what Peter talks about.” May says with a smile. 

“That’s how I feel when him and my dad come up from the lab. I never have a clue what they’re talking about. But books, most movies, pop culture, I’m good with that.” 

“Well I’m pretty good at following those as well.” May smiles as she talks with you about some of your favorite books, movies you’ve seen recently, and even some news until Peter comes out and steals you. You follow him into a room that has a bunk bed and a ton of tech. It all screams Peter. You don’t know what to say to him, but luckily, Peter starts the conversation.

“I thought your dad would have told you we can’t be friends anymore.” Peter says crossing his arms and kicking some of the legos that Ned had left here across his floor.

“Why ‘cause you lost your internship? When did that happen by the way?”

“Today.” Peter looks at the floor.

“Right when you and him had to save the Staten Ferry right?” Peter’s eyes jump up to look at you.

“What?”

“I feel like an idiot for it taking so long to connect, but you’re Spider-Man. Which makes total sense. I never should have sent the video to my dad in the first place.”

“Wait, your dad found the video because of you?”

“You think my dad knows how to find Youtube videos?” You can’t help but laugh. “He’s good at science and stuff, but Youtube is not his forte. So why didn’t you just tell me? I know like half a dozen if not more other superheroes. Knowing one more, wouldn’t have been that big of a deal.”

“Your dad made me promise not to tell you.”

“Well he seems to have no problem telling me that you have feelings for me, so why is telling me about your alter ego a big deal?” Peter’s face falls, turning red at the same time.

“He what?” You step across the room, reaching out for Peter, but dropping your hand at the last second.

“It’s not a bad thing. It honestly makes me feel so much better about the fact that I may or may not have been feeling quite similarly about you. But I didn’t want to be that girl that had feelings for the guy a year older than her.” You shrug and your hand tugging your hair forward, trying to find something to fidget with. But Peter’s hand comes up to push your hair away from your face.

“So you’re saying that if I told you I like you…” His hand rests on your cheek.

“Then I would say I like you too.”

“God, Y/N, you’re making this awful day a million times better.” And before you know it, Peter’s leaning in to place his lips on yours. Peter’s kissing you- you should be kissing him back. He takes your lack of movement as resistance and starts to lean away from you, but you wrap your arms around his neck and pull him back. You could keep kissing him until you needed air, if your phone wasn’t going off in your back pocket.

“Hold that thought.” You whisper into his lips as you pull out your phone, seeing your dad’s picture. You take a deep breath before picking up the phone. “Yes.”

“Y/N Y/M/N Stark, where the hell are you?” Tony’s voice is harsher than you’ve ever heard it.

“I didn’t even know you knew my middle name.”

“Y/N I’m in no mood for games. Where the hell are you? You didn’t ask me to go anywhere and you didn’t ask Happy to drive you. FRIDAY says you requested I don’t ask where you went so I’m giving you a chance to tell me before I just override the system. Where are you?”

“I had to run an errand.”

“And that is at what location?”

“I had to run to Peter’s.”

“Why?”

“Does it really matter? You apparently fired him, so he’s no longer your intern. He’s just my friend.”

“It matters because you are fourteen and you left the house without telling anyone which you promised you wouldn’t do. Security risk remember? I’m sending Happy to pick you up. So finish your conversation by the time he gets there.”

“Fine.”

“And know you’re grounded.”

“How is that any different than how you already make me live? I’m literally allowed to go to school and come straight home?”

“You went to a party did you not?” And you have to bite your tongue to not spoil where you actually went.

“Ugh whatever.” And you hang up the phone.

“You snuck out to come see me?” Peter asks and you look up at him in confusion. Was your phone that loud? “Spidey Senses. I can hear way more than I’m supposed to.”

“Ah. Yeah, kind of snuck out. It’s not like it was really a secret. My dad could have easily hacked my phone if he wanted to.” You run a hand through your hair before looking up at Peter. “I don’t really want to talk about my dad.”

“Ok.”

“There’s a better way we can waste the ten minutes until Happy gets here.” You smile at him, and Peter’s hands wrap around your waist.

Becoming A Stark Tag list: @persephonehemingway​  @iamaunicorn4704​   @furiouspockettoad​  @daughter-of-stark​  @eternalharry​  @huntective-kyeo​ @riiis-stuff​ @sunnyoongles @cosmicqueenieb​ @sovereignparker​ @bbarnestan​ @teenwishes08​ @iamthescarlettwitch​ @skyfallstilinski @cutie1365​ @a-mnd​

Permanent tag list: @wormonastringonastick​

[its-negans-lucille]

Self-Fulfilling Destruction

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Ships: Mysterio x Reader, Reader x  Quentin Beck Words: 1,323 Warnings: Mild Spider-Man: Far From Home spoilers, manipulation, mentions of erection Category: Angst if you squint Summary: “No one on this Earth would put themselves in this much danger for people they’d never met.” You replied, directing your gaze into Quentin’s eyes like a moth drawn to a flame: destined for self destruction in the most self-fulfilling way.  “Yeah, well,” Quentin raised his free hand to your face, pushing a loose strand of hair, that had escaped it’s tight bun, behind your ear. “Some of you aren’t just people.” 

It was all going to plan. Fury suspected nothing and, in all honesty, seemed relieved that the one primary avenger wasn’t just a pubescent teenage boy. And as for that child, Peter Parker, who was barely out of his acne stage, looked more than happy to find another father figure as all his previous ones had unfortunately perished. 

Quentin would have almost felt bad about the manipulation, if he had cared that much.

“Mr Beck, this is Agent [Y/LN] and she’ll be showing you to your temporary accommodation,” Fury voiced with ever present authority in his tone. Quentin was about to wave him off until he saw you with your hand outstretched.

“Mr Beck, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” You declared with a slight upturn to your lips that didn’t evade Quentins notice. “I’m a big fan of your work, sir.”

“Oh really?” Quentin replied with a quirk to his eyebrow. He surveyed your form briefly, almost as if appraising an object for auction. 

“Agent [Y/LN] has been tracking the Elemental attacks since they first started. She’s the one who brought you to our attention.” Fury fixed you with an almost parental gaze of pride. You gave a modest smile.

“Your work would’ve caught up by the Shield radars eventually.” You shrugged. 

“I should be thanking you,” Quentin replied, a crooked grin gracing his lips. “Without you I may not’ve been able to team up with shield.” He inched almost imperceptibly closer to you. “You may have just helped save your planet.”

“Oh, Mr Beck I don’t-” You began, a light blush rising to your cheeks. 

“Please, call me Quentin.” Beck leaned on the table as he watched you look back to Fury for directions. 

Quentin wanted to reach out, take you by the chin so your gaze would meet his pale sapphire one. You should be looking at him not Fury. Not the old man who had stayed alive thus far due to sheer luck. No matter, he would be dead within the week and Quentin would be right there next to you, a shoulder to cry on after the final Elemental attack took a deadly turn. Yes, he would bide his time and soon you would be his: in mind, body and soul.

“Mr Beck?” A distant voice murmured from the corner of his mind. “Mr Beck? Quentin?” The sound of his name on your lips, the way your tongue caressed the syllables was enough to send the blood running to his cock. 

“Sorry, just got distracted for a second,” Quentin smiled, hoping the lust in his eyes had diminished. 

“It’s fine!” You rubbed the back of your neck nervously, you were obviously not the sociopathic super-soldier that S.H.I.E.L.D usually favoured. “If you’d follow me I can take you to your quarters.”

“My pleasure,” Beck replied, his voice soft as honey-suckle.

You took Beck through a door off the main operations room and into what seemed like an old, drained sewer. Despite the more than unsavoury thought of what may have ran through these tunnels when they were in use, Beck kept his eyes on you. The way your hips swayed and how the intermediate lighting bounced off your skin. God, how he wanted to throw you against the wall and fuck you until you forgot your own name. How he would claim you, make sure that everyone knew you were his. His. Quentin Beck’s. 

Mysterio’s.

“So, how’re you enjoying our Earth so far?” You smiled, your voice light as you turned back to look at Beck. “Is it much different to yours?”

“Well,” Beck smiled, “I haven’t had that much time to enjoy all the cultural aspects of this place so far.” There was a glimmer of humour in his pale azure eyes and something else he hoped you wouldn’t recognise. “You know, fighting Elementals and all.” He shrugged easily as you rubbed your temples.

“Oh God, yeah- Jesus it’s been a long day.” You chuckled. “Sorry, forgot you hadn’t had the free time to experience Beyoncé yet.”

“Beyoncé?” His brows knitted together, hoping it was a convincing reaction to hearing the legendary singers name. “What’s that?”

“She’s only the best musician of all time!” You exclaimed, your eyes crinkling at the corners. 

“You’ll have to show me her,” Quentin replied as they moved around a corner. “You know, when all this is over.” He winked and that ever so pleasant blush rose to your cheeks again.

You stopped in front of an iron door with cold, fluorescent lights flickering above you. The sudden halt brought Quentin standing just in front of you, so close that you had to tilt your face upwards to look him in his mysterious eyes. So close that he could feel the heat radiating off your body. 

It pleased him that you refused to take a step back.

“So you think we’re gonna win?” You asked after your initial embarrassment had subsided.

“After what happened on my Earth…” Quentin made sure to, seemingly subconsciously, twist the ring on his finger. Your eyes darted toward the movement. “We need to win. I won’t have any more families destroyed.”

“I’m so sorry.” You reached out your hand and took his. 

Your fingers intertwined with Quentin’s, the pad of your thumb danced across the sensitive skin of the palm tantalisingly. Your hand was far smaller than his and slightly clammy to the touch. Obviously you were nervous about finally seeing the man you’d researched tirelessly in the flesh. Quentin could hardly blame you as he plastered an appreciative smile on his face.

“Thank you.” He squeezed your hand, hoping you would take this as a sign of gratitude and not just him attempting to continue contact with you. “I just… I miss them.” Lies, lies, lies. Like  spider spinning its web.

“I can only imagine.” Your brows knitted together in concern as you traced patterns on the back of his hand. “You’re so strong, for doing this. For helping us.”

“No… it was the right thing to do. Anyone would do it if they knew what I knew.” 

God, he could barely keep the smile from his face as you ate up his lies readily. Obviously, S.H.I.E.L.D agents didn’t have much time for a love life as you continued the prolonged contact with the predator.

“No, you’re wrong. At least, no one on this Earth would put themselves in this much danger for people they’d never met.” You replied, directing your gaze into Quentin’s eyes like a moth drawn to a flame: destined for self destruction in the most self-fulfilling way. 

“Yeah, well,” Quentin raised his free hand to your face, pushing a loose strand of hair, that had escaped it’s tight bun, behind your ear. “Some of you aren’t just people.” 

Quentin watched as you visibly shivered, a delicious reaction and the one he was looking for. Your eyes were wide at his words, your pupils blown to the edge of the iris. He could almost taste the desire on your breath as you exhaled. It was like a gateway drug and somehow he knew he would come back for more.

“Uh,” You finally stepped back, withdrawing your hand from his with only a touch of resistance on Quentin’s end. “Anyway- this is your room.” You gestured widely at the door adjacent to you both, now suddenly refusing to meet Mysterio’s gaze. 

It agitated him.

“I’ll be looking forward to continuing our conversation, Agent [Y/LN].” Quentin smiled as you moved back down the corridor. 

“Thank you, Quentin.” You replied, still refusing to meet his gaze as you scurried off.

Quentin watched you go, waiting until you had turned a corner before entering his small, dark room. Though the accommodations were less than ideal he would not be thinking of that in a few short minutes. 

No, he would simply be thinking of you.

***

Thank you for reading!! I hope you enjoyed! 

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[duskywraith]

Unleashing the Beast

This is a written up tale of a friend’s recent DnD Experience. (Campaign Note: Due to a large amount of players, their party has split up to split the players amongst separate sessions – Currently a “stealth” group and a “non-stealth” group.)

Friend: ...yeah also last week was insane.

 Me: Oh yeah?

 F: Yeah, so, we have to get to the Drow city.

Our team is team stealth we've been split in two groups, and our only healers, technically, are me and a Drow cleric. We’re about half-way through our journey and we come across a 300ft cave with a lake inside… and an aboleth swimming inside it. It begins to talk to us telepathically and tells us we either capture the leader of the gnomes down the path to the right or we sacrifice one of us for freedom to pass, so, after much deliberation…

 M: You...considered the sacrifice? 😂😂

 F: …We choose to get the gnome's leader much to the disgruntlement of the gnome and past gnome in the party, we turn around to leave and get confronted by 14 intellect devourers. So, we kill them, but our cleric got beaten and we had to put the helm of intellect on her because she got  d  u  m  b. We take a rest, and off we go. We're ready, we're sorta preparing a plan, the Cleric casts pass without trace on the group and we begin our way into the deep gnome mining village.

 M: Sounds pretty solid so far

I can’t imagine anything going wrong here

 F: Our stealth isn’t the best in general you know with a hulking barbarian in the party, so the pass without trace defo helped. We make it through without quarrel and we hear:

“Mithril! Go take it to Krazak??”(not sure about the name can’t remember).

So, we follow the gnome into a large cavern and we are confronted by a large pile of gold and ores and shiny things huuuge in the cavern of this mountain, and upon it, a fucking black dragon!

 M: Oooooh no 😂 doesnt bode well

F: Realising that this is the leader we supposedly need to capture we're like:

“o   f   u   c”

You know how I mentioned stealth?

 M: For sure, for sure

 F: Yeah, we we're all perfectly hidden and fine… apart from the fucking gnome, who walks straight in and the dragon is like: “huh… a gnome from above ground, whomst this?”

The gnome’s like: “o god o fuck”

So, this big fat fucking dragon gets right up in the face of the gnome and is like: “What are you doing here?!”

Gnome: “We're just trying to pass through, we got lost”

Deception check…

Failed.

Dragon: “Don’t humour me, I’m not stupid. Tell me why you’re here or I’ll straight up eat you!”

So, the gnome tells the dragon about the aboleth in the pond and how it wanted the leader of the gnomes.

Wisdom check

Result: 4 of us are now scared simply because of the aura of his dragon

and he’s like “Ah there’s more…”

 M: 😂😂 Go oooon

 F: The dragon then tells us: “Well see, I was brought here as a young dragon with my mother, to be protected, but the entrance was collapsed in… As I grew, I simply couldn’t get back out.”

Gnome suddenly says: “We can get you out of here!”

We're all like “Oh no”

Dragon is instantly interested, he hasn’t seen the sky in hundreds of years.

Dragon essentially says: “If you can get me out of here I won’t eat you”

It turns out the cleric can cast polymorph, so she says: “I can polymorph you into something smaller but we ask one thing of you…you kill the aboleth for us.”

The dragon really wants out of here so he’s like: “fine I’ll do it”

So she polymorphs him into a spider, puts him on his shoulder and the gnome the we followed guides us out.

We head back to the aboleths chamber, and we tell it: “We have brought you the leader of the gnomes”. The Cleric lets the spider walk forward enough and ends the polymorph.

Boom. Fat black dragon.

The aboleth is suddenly like trying to mind control this dragon (which it is way too smart for).

The dragon just laughs. It picks the aboleth up by the tail and essentially whacks it against every conceivable surface in the cavern before tossing it aside.

 M: Power moves in this house 😂😂

 F: the aboleth flops dead, obv

 M: obvs

 F: The dragon is like: “Take me above ground, NOW!”

We're like: “oh god oh fuck how we doing this?”

The gnome can teleport… but the child sorcerer decides to tell the dragon that the quickest way above ground is through the territory of the mind flayers… which is the way we are going… to a Drow city......

u n d e r g r o u n d .

The dragon believes her and starts stomping through the mind flayer territory killing them left right and centre. We just stop and realise what she’s done and we're thinking: “We need to stop that dragon because we are going in the same fucking direction… to not over ground”

 M: Why tf would they even try fuck the dragon around? 😂😂

 F: The gnome explains that if we can convince the dragon to come back, we can teleport it above ground if we have an item and a description of a place it has been, so she instantly runs after the dragon to convince it, leaving us 1 irl minute to decide what and where it’s going. One party member suggests my bow because we got it from a volcano in a timey wimey temple but I’m like “no thats fucking stupid the teleporter goes with the dragon” so I say “my boot was on the ship right?, the ship I met the group on?”

DM says yes

Meanwhile, while all this was happening, one of the mind flayers had come over and asked us why we had released a dragon in their territory. We explain, so they ask if we can get rid of it, offering safe passage through their territory in return (More incentive to do what we were already doing)

 M: 😂 Oddly civil of them

 F: So, she starts walking back with this dragon and I had over my boot the dragon says the girl is coming too. At this point the gnome, the sorcerer and the dragon are planning to go to the ship that I forgot got blown up and ripped apart. They take the boot and then *poof*.

 M: oh god 😂

 F: The DM starts to describe the trio poofing to the dock of Ashelok (which is the city that is still rebuilding from the red dragon we defeated there and the literal meteors that the green man bombed it with because he wanted these shards we we're collecting off us).

It was at this point that I realised…

I’ve just helped re-enslave an entire city to a black dragon. A city that we helped liberate from it’s previous Red Dragon ruler… that *we* saved them from.

Big heckin’ mistake

 M: Maybe.....maybe he was a nicer dragon 😂😂

 F: Well…

The black dragon instantly demands the towns wealth be transferred to him and announces himself leader of the town. The gnome and the sorcerer with him get put up in the best rooms in the tavern per the dragon's request.

The mind flayer that greeted us offers us some tea, which obviously I try and so does the barbarian. It's delicious! That is until I later find out its brain juice and I stop drinking it.

 M: 😂😂😂 Fucking hell, what a night

  F: The mind flayer shows us their city and their big brain, we learn a  little about their culture and how they’re actually quite civilised. They put us up for the night in a minimalist inn where we use a strange tube we acquired earlier to send notes and small things to the other group. I write the following note to them (Irl so the DM can hand them it):

‘We fucked up. I’m sorry, we may have caused a problem that we may have to fix later!

                                                                                             – love, team stealth '

 M: Lovely message, very foreboding.

I'm....very surprised the Mind Flayer didn’t kill you given that you were the cause of the whole dragon issue 😂

 F: only because we stopped more of them from being killed

 M: You still got a tonne killed in the first place though 😂😂

 F: As the morn comes and they’re able to teleport back to us again, the Mind Flayers give us a timer to leave before our truce ends. We say “Fair enough, we shall leave, thank you for having us, goodbye”

Then we end the session back at the meeting place and to the other two teleporting back with my boot.

Worst thing is we can’t tell the other group… they’re gonna receive the note when their part of the campaign commences

 M: 😂😂 When you meet back up, they'll have about 80 theories as to what you've done

 F: Yepp XD

 M: Damn… All that just because a grumpy fish wouldn’t let you pass

 F:  A big grumpy fish with telepathic powers

 M: This is the kinda shit you gotta put on tumblr, so I can later pin it to my DnD Pinterest boards *(Then I did it anyway because I’m impatient lul)*

 F: ikr XD

[doomonfilm]

Ranking : Top Films of 2018

Here we are... that moment that every critic simultaneously loves and dreads : the Year-End Top 10 List.  At worst, we are forced to scrape the creative dredges and cobble together something that resembles a best of list that will bring glory and honor to the year.  At best (like this year), we are forced to leave personal favorites in the dust and judge the larger quantity of offerings on a much tougher scale in order to truly represent the top quality work of the year.

As I’ve said in many pieces this year, 2018 was a joy in terms of being a film-lover.  This list was not an easy undertaking, and it more so resembles a snapshot of how I’ve felt over a judging period than it does a concrete group of selections in a fixed order.  Take this list as more of a jumping off point for discovery than you do the gospel of DOOMonFILM. 

Note : I am not sure when I will get a chance to see Vice or The Favourite, which I am sure will skew my results once I do see them... I will address those films in their respective reviews, however.  Forgive me in advance.

Honorable Mentions

Damsel Even if the Zellner Brothers weren’t representing Austin beautifully with this gem of a film, it’d still be on my radar simply for the fact that it is a unique twist on a genre that most figured had seen every presentation imaginable.  Add to that a strong female lead character, and you’ve got a winner on your hands.

The Endless A science-fiction modern day classic, and apparently part of a possibly bigger line of stories (with some of the best integration of aspects from another film I’ve ever seen).  This film is chilling in its approach to the concept of cults, as well as its use of the concept of ‘the danger that lurks just off-screen’.

Isle of Dogs Had this year not been full of stellar animated films, this one probably would have made the main list.  More groundbreaking animated films, combined with personal feelings about the films of Wes Anderson, however, regulated this one to Honorable Mention status.

Mid90s I was all set for Eighth Grade to be my bit of nostalgia, or my reflection on what it’s like to be a kid again, and for what it’s worth, it was a great film.  The thing is, Mid90s directly spoke to me in a way that Eighth Grade unfortunately could not, simply because Mid90s was like looking in a time-traveling mirror. 

Thoroughbreds I really wanted this to be on my top 10, but ultimately, it was too ‘quiet’ of a film to make it in a year full of big noise.  Thoroughbreds will certainly be a future favorite for public screenings and friend viewings, but a couple of films this year hit the same notes on a higher frequency.

Black Panther The cultural impact of this film is one that cannot be ignored.  It took February, a month that is generally a box office bust, and it put up unparalleled numbers that not only lasted throughout the year, but were topped from within rather than by another Hollywood studio.  The respect given to the characters and their African heritage did not go unnoticed, either, as several think-pieces and a number of curriculum were spawned from those researching elements of the production design.  The narrative is strong, and it righted the Marvel villain boat prior to the big MCU bombshell that was lying in wait. 

The Favourite I really wanted this to make the top 10 of the year... I thought long and hard about what film I should remove or replace.  What I came to realize, however, is that despite The Favourite being a world-class comedy and production, it simply falls short in the realm of the spectacular : it does not contain visual innovations, it is not a reflection of the times, and it didn’t completely break my brain.  That being said, on any given day, I’d happily name this one of the top 10 films of 2018... it’s essentially like having 11 cakes on the table and having to pick the 10 best.

Avengers : Infinity War This movie was the true film event of the year.  Marvel has been building up to this singular event for nearly two decades, and in my opinion, the payoff more than succeeded.  Thanos tiptoed the line between anti-hero and villain with purpose perfectly, and the rapport between characters worked both in terms of advancing narratives and being mined for humor.  I am definitely looking forward to Avengers : Endgame this April, and I know the masses are right there with me.

10. BlacKkKlansman

Not that I ever doubted Spike Lee had it, but after a few abstract offerings and documentaries, one wonders if their style can translate into an ever-expanding world of film language.  Luckily for Lee, it seems the world has grown into his cinematic vision, with an older true story serving as the perfect backbone for many of Lee’s trademark tricks to be implemented for maximum effect.  The ending will put you in tears if you have anything closely resembling a soul.

9. Blindspotting

This film really deserved a bigger run than it got, as it hit race relations of today on the nose without coming off as preachy or heavy-handed.  Daveed Diggs proved that his charisma translated on both stage and screen, and his integration of hip-hop into both realms will hopefully have positive long-lasting effects.  The chemistry between all members of this cast is kinetic, the story is told with perfect pacing, and the movie rides visual highs that match the narrative ones.  I would love to see this movie receive some high-degree nominations.

8. Annihilation

I came into 2018 with high expectations for this film, as I’d spent the previous 16 months or so completing the Southern Reach trilogy in its book form.  Then I started hearing things about the production and the release that gave me a bad feeling : a Netflix distribution deal that seemed to all but kill a true theatrical run, trepidation from the studio in regards to the director’s vision, and other whispers that attempt to sink a film.  Then I saw this movie, and was taken away to a completely different world.  We may not be getting a faithful, trilogy-length adaptation of the series anymore based on what happens in Annihilation, but if these are the moments I’m left with, I’d consider myself happy in the long run. 

7. First Reformed

It took me longer than I intended to get around to this one, but knowing that Paul Schrader wrote and directed it made it a must-see.  The film was drawing comparisons to Taxi Driver (not a surprise, based on the aforementioned Schrader involvement), and surprisingly, it more than lived up to that hype.  The tension is equal, but updated to reflect the times in a way that could impact any of us.

6. Suspiria   

This movie will make it extremely hard for me to blanket-debate against remakes simply because it does all of the right things in regards to updating a classic.  The film does not rely on existence as a new millenium version of an old film... rather, it boldly takes concepts only touched upon in the original and fully embraces them, presenting a true psychological horror gem in a year full of them.  The film also looks amazing on top of everything, which was a high bar to meet considering the original movie is basically driven by its visual style.  A 2018 must-see, film buff or not.

5. Spiderman : Into the Spider-Verse

Easily the most fun I’ve had in a theater all year.  I was blown away by the animation, and can’t wait to see further installments of the Spider-verse specifically to see how that enhances over the years.  There was such a high volume of homage and Easter Egg placement in this film that it warrants repeat viewings, and it was one of a handful of films that I wanted to instantly own as I was walking out of the theater.

4. Mandy

Like Spider-Man : Into the Spider-verse, I wanted to own this movie the second I walked out of the theater as well.  The trailers intrigued me, a recommendation of Beyond the Black Rainbow fully sold me, and the final product did not disappoint.  This film certainly is not for everyone, and funny enough, the two biggest aspects that would place it on that ‘not for everyone’ list sit in opposition of one another : the film is a bit indulgent on the style at the sake of what would be considered normal pacing, and it has some extremely violent moments.  That being said, Mandy is easily one of, if not THE, most beautiful films of the year.

3. Roma

This seems like the closest thing to a Fellini film that us modern day film lovers will ever get.  The story itself is intriguing, as it juxtaposes class issues, political issues and the barrier of trying to raise a family in a crazy world all in an intriguing tapestry.  The cinematography is calculated, observational, and the choice to film the movie in black and white adds an instant timeless quality to it.  Director Alfonso Cuaron even manages to get in a little cinematic and visual humor, albeit mostly subtly, but it definitely pays off if you’re in tune to what he’s doing.  Easily one of the best pictures of the year, worldwide, and a party that I was certainly late to.

2. You Were Never Really Here

If Mandy is a bit too over the top for your tastes, then You Were Never Really Here may be the jarring experience you need in 2018.  This film is almost as visually stunning, but the narrative is far more calculating, deceptive and intriguing, both on the surface and as you dig deeper.  The hectic camera setups, editing and score put you in such a disjointed state of mind that Joaquin Phoenix becomes the only thing you can hang on to, and your involvement in his journey is completely immersive.  In a year of performances that focus on the anti-hero, this film found a way to scrape to the top of the pile.

1. Hereditary

Something strange is happening here... who would have thought that a horror film would be my favorite film of the year?  Hereditary is no run of the mill horror film, however... it treats its audience as intelligent, and there is so much texture in the film that it’s impossible to see it all without multiple viewings.  The close of the first third of the film is horribly unsettling, but it propels the narrative forward so abruptly and intensely that you’re locked in from there out.  A genius film, and an instant classic.

(Editor’s notes)

- Original post date : 12/27/18 - Revision date : 1/8/19 (Roma added to position 3, Black Panther moved to Honorable Mentions) - Revision date : 1/10/19 (The Favourite added to Honorable Mentions) - Revision date : 1/22/19 (Suspiria added to position 6,Avengers : Infinity War moved to Honorable Mentions)

[douxreviews]

Aquaman Review

By CoramDeo

"What could be greater than a king?" "A hero."

SPOILER WARNING: There will be a brief non-spoiler review to start with, then I'll discuss the film in depth for those who've seen it.

Also, SARCASM WARNING: For whatever reason, I was in an extremely sarcastic mood when I wrote this review. As a result, I use sarcasm here. A lot.

By nature I love brevity: Absolutely gorgeous in every shot and action-packed, Aquaman is full to the brim with moments that will make die-hard comic book geeks and casual fans alike say things like, "Aw, YEAH!" and "That was awesome!" While there are a few themes, they don't do too much. All in all, it doesn't have a lot of depth, which is surprising for a movie set primarily on the ocean floor.

In Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Zack Snyder stuck Jason Momoa in an aquarium tank and filmed him for ten seconds. In Justice League, he used green screen to depict underwater action that sound exactly like it really would to human ears - dampened and unintelligible. For Aquaman, James Wan has been handed the task of trying desperately to make Aquaman look cool. Perhaps a more traditionally-minded director, Wan wisely decides that the decades-old tradition of great filmmakers deciding that scientific accuracy is for losers (and Nolans?) and not really caring what human ears would actually hear is probably not a thing to abandon at this time.

The result is what Neil DeGrasse Tyson might call 'disregarding science' and what I might call 'making an entertaining film.' The underwater action is engaging and epic, and every single frame of this film looks like a freaking Van Gogh as far as color goes. Where Snyder's DC offerings employed the vast range of color one might find in, say, a zebra, or a weekday newspaper, Wan uses revolutionary new techniques like 'orange,' 'bright blue,' and 'not actively desaturating your entire film.' He's got a keen sense of colorful beauty and contrast, and the movie is stunning.

Don't expect a particularly interesting plot; the quest and the story as a whole were fairly by-the-numbers. Neither should you anticipate any clever dialogue; the characters stumble their way through unnatural lines and gobs of exposition in a good half of the film's key exchanges. What you should expect to see, but not be blown away by, is some themes. I'll get into exactly what those themes are in the spoiler section below, because they are somewhat spoilery. And you definitely won't guess the entire plot by the end of the first act.

Though Aquaman isn't too deep, it's a heck of a lot of fun to watch and quite an enjoyable experience. I really do recommend that you go see this movie, if you enjoy fun action and pretty pictures. Also if you are a person who likes to mock the character of Aquaman, because I'm 90% sure that's the target audience.

3 out of 6 pretty pictures.

Friendly neighborhood Aquaman:

This film is not too family-friendly. There is a fair amount of swearing and foul language. If you want a fun movie you can take your kids to, go see Spider-Verse.

SPOILER ALERT: The review will discuss spoilers from here on out.

I mentioned that this film has some themes to it, which aren't exactly clear or well-realized. The first and most obvious of these is the uniting of two worlds which are completely alien to one another. This is the theme that is central to the first and last scenes of the film. In the former, a man from our world meets a woman from theirs as Aquaman narrates about ships meeting each other without any discernible force to propel them. The clash of cultures is evident in the opening sequence more than in any of the rest of the film. In the film's closing moments, too, we see these two representatives of completely different worlds coming together at long last, after what we know has been many years of waiting and longing.

The issue is that this particular theme doesn't really come across very well in the rest of the film. There are loads of situations and dynamics that on paper carry the theme, but in the context of the movie and the way it felt, it doesn't come through almost at all. Aquaman and Mera, themselves a pair from two worlds, are chased by both surface dwellers (Manta) and Atlanteans. They fight both on land and in the sea. And Mera clashes with the humans' culture almost as much as Arthur does with the Atlanteans'. Yet because the quest itself is entirely Atlantean in nature, and because the classically sci-fi world of Atlantis isn't too far off from other sci-fi worlds, which do center around humans, we don't really feel the blending of two worlds. Had the Atlanteans felt more alien, and the plot involved the human world more significantly, this theme would have been much more strong a presence.

The other theme I feel warrants particular scrutiny is that of a great unifier - or a hero - de-escalating conflict instead of escalating it. Interestingly enough, this unifier/hero is not Aquaman. The film's central character always escalates the conflict, at every turn of the plot. It is instead Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) who truly exemplifies this. If you think about it, every effect the character has on the film is to bring peace and unity, not chaos and conflict. She leaves Tom and Arthur in order to protect them. She tries to teach Orm and Mera, and Arthur when he finally meets her, to be better. And in the end, she arrives to end the conflict, saving the life of the film's antagonist. At key points, Atlanna brings people together and gets them to be more peaceful.

The issue with this theme is also that it's not overt enough. For this to be real and feel like it matters, Aquaman would've had to oppose it more directly at the start, and be convinced more significantly to act otherwise by the end. Instead, Arthur fights his way out of every situation right up until the end, and doesn't really show enough signs of having grown. The only thing he does even remotely displaying a change is his refusal to kill Orm, which is a more merciful act than his abandonment of Manta's father early on. Yet this is not particularly great, nor does it have much of an impact as his chance to kill Orm immediately disappears after his initial reluctance. Even with Mera and Atlanna encouraging him to learn throughout the film, he never really does in any way that matters.

A few other themes were present, but weren't really intended to make much of a difference. These include the bits about ocean pollution, which were not as heavy-handed as one might have expected and subsequently been annoyed by, and the bits that deal with duty to one's people. Both themes were present but not overpowering, and were quite tasteful in their execution.

Real quick, let's talk about the final battle. As I said before, I kind of feel like the target audience of this film is people who mock the character of Aquaman. The reason it feels that way is that all the things that Aquaman gets mocked for - talking to fish, riding seahorses, throwing water while underwater, etc. - appear in the third act as epic moments. It feels like the filmmakers just made a list of all the things Aquaman gets mocked for and then intentionally set out to make his scoffers cheer for those very things. Which is kind of fun.

Acting is acting like you're not acting:

The performances in this movie were neither outstanding nor terrible. They all pretty much hovered in the middle of the spectrum. At the high end were Nicole Kidman's Atlanna, Amber Heard's Mera, and Temuera Morrison's Tom Curry. At the lower end were Patrick Wilson's Orm, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II's Manta, and Dolph Lundgren's King Nereus. So, you know, all the bad-guys. Jason Momoa (Arthur/Aquaman) and Willem Dafoe (Vulko) hung out near the middle of the pack. One thing was reinforced in my mind by this film - no matter what character he plays and no matter how much of a good-guy that character is, there is nothing more terrifying than Willem Dafoe smiling.

Pensees:

-So, can we talk about how much Michael Beach (Manta's Dad) looks and sounds like Steve Harvey in certain shots? I'm just saying, I had a really hard time taking him seriously when I could so easily picture him hosting Family Feud.

-I was totally not expecting the Karathen to speak. That took me by surprise. Also, that was Julie freaking Andrews!

-Randall Park plays Dr. Stephen Shin after playing a character in Ant-Man and the Wasp. Interesting franchise leap, and for that role, too?

-There are a total of six actors listed as playing Arthur in this movie, not including Jason Momoa and his stunt doubles.

-Interesting choice, going with the 'quest based on a specific series of nonsensical instructions' plot that you most often see on animated children's shows.

-I wish they'd left Manta out of this film and saved him for a sequel. His character didn't have enough of a good role in this one to justify his inclusion.

-The final battle is probably the first cinematic battle between sharks, crabs, and... Attack seahorses? Attack seahorses. Alrighty then.

-Apparently, James Wan was offered the choice of directing this or the practically non-existent Flashpoint. He made the right decision, apparently, since Flashpoint seems cursed to lose all its directors.

-Despite anti-Snyder measures such as color and a non-confusing storyline, the Snyder slo-mo still remains. Which is perfectly fine; that was never my problem with Snyder.

Quotes:

Guy in the bar: "You that fish-boy from the TV?" Arthur: "It's fish-man."

Arthur: "We've got a bogey on our tail!" Mera: "What does that even mean?" Arthur: "Bad-guys behind us!" Mera: "Why didn't you just say that?" Arthur: "Bad-guys behind us!"

Arthur: "Redheads. You gotta love 'em." *jumps out of the plane*

*Mera pulls water from Arthur's skin and uses it to activate the device* Arthur: "Show-off. I could've just peed on it."

Mera: "You based our exit strategy on a children's book?" Arthur: "I didn't read the book. I just saw the movie."

Arthur: "I'm no leader. I came because I have no choice. I came to save my home, and the people I love."

3 out of 6 Attack seahorses.

CoramDeo likes to review movies and television. He thinks he's getting good, but he can handle criticism.

[azurexalacrity]

RULES

DISCLAIMER:

> I do not own this character nor am I affiliated with the company/franchise this character comes from. This character belongs to SEGA and all properties of the canon lore also belongs to them.

> Some of my icons come from Olrassonicicons , Planetwiisp , and Holoska while the majority of them are created by me, along with graphics added to them. Please do not steal these icons, as I take my time out of the day to make dozens of them.

> However, anything of the matter of alternate realities/universes that I have created, headcanons I’ve made, and plots that I have brainstormed all belong to me; the creator of those things. I do not condone any of those to be stolen nor reblogged. The only person who reblogs them is me personally and probably a mutual of mine that’s in regards to our ship or interaction with our characters. Thank you.

ABOUT ME:

> Hello! This is the mun. I am known as Zaynah; female and uses she/her pronouns. However, you are free to refer to me as they/them if you don’t know me personally.

> My age is currently 21 years old. This isn’t a big deal or anything, but this is just me stating out that this is my actual age.

> I am introverted, shy, and reserved. It’s not to say I’m afraid of approaching new people or people I know/care about, but it’s just I’m not the kind of person to jump at the gun when it comes to things. My communication may come small at first, but if we get along really well and known each other for a while, I turn out to be very outspoken, excitable, and ready to talk to.

> I know that this is mentioned in my mun section of my blog, but my sexuality is all platonic (aroace in fact). My feelings towards something is just entirely that: Platonic. I don’t feel any romantic or sexual attraction towards people. When I say “I love you” it’s more familial in that regard.

> Here’s the biggest kicker in regards to me: I have terrible, terrible anxiety. I know that a lot of people have anxiety, but I need to point this out anyway because it’s important. The smallest of things can render me into a full blown panic and honestly, most of it isn’t personal and I don’t wish others to take it personally. I get triggered really easily when it comes to the triggers I have and it makes me prone to anxiety/panic attacks incredibly easily. I do have a list to blacklist these triggers, but I want you guys to be aware of this because this is something I cannot control.

> I don’t like speaking personally about this, but there’s a piece of it that needs to be addressed when it comes to threads: I am born with a condition that makes my emotions go haywire on me and causes me to overstimulate very easily. I usually have to tend at things at my own pace or I immediately freak out and have mental breakdowns. I cannot be rushed. I do apologize if responding to threads is a slow progress when it comes to me, but this is how I can make this hobby fun rather than mentally taxing. Again, don’t take this personally.

ABOUT THE BLOG:

> I am a multi-verse and multi-ship kind of blog. Interactions and ships are their own separate reality unless discussed with the muns in question. I don’t mind any ships that are love triangles or unrequited, but again, they are usually their own universe unless it’s discussed.

> It’s primarily SFW, but I won’t hesitate to darker themes as long as there isn’t grotesque details of gore of any kind. I will accept subtle details of it to an extent, however. This also means I don’t do any smut. With that in mind, I don’t mind at all that you guys do NSFW on your blog, as long as it’s tagged.

> My blog is independent yet selective. I would say private as I interact with mostly mutuals, but most of the time, I’m very lenient to just following a blog whether it’s from interest or if they’re willing to interact.

> Reblog Karma: Listen, I don’t mind if you reblog a meme from me. I get that for the meme, not every meme is going to apply to your muse. That’s understandable. The thing is; I don’t want it to be excessive. I’ll really appreciate memes being sent to me. If you spam reblog memes from me without sending anything in, that bothers me. I don’t like to used as a meme archive. Please don’t use roleplay blogs as meme archives. It’s disrespectful.

> I am lover of crossovers and AUs, so I am fine with all that in my book.

> I also welcome in OCs, whether they’re fandomless or not.

DRAMA:

> This is probably the longest section of the batch but this is severely important to me: If there’s any user out there who is being toxic/manipulative/etc. To a close friend of mine and stirring up drama for whatever reason, I won’t hesitate to block them and even report them if it gets far worse. I like to get healthy relationships with others and I know that not everyone I meet is gonna be a ray of sunshine, but this is something to keep in mind. Drama isn’t good for my health and it’s not good for anyone’s health. It’s something I don’t tolerate and it can spike up my anxiety very badly.

> That said: I don’t get involved into drama unless it’s something in the matter of my friends. I won’t get involved if I’m told not to get involved. If it doesn’t concern me and if the mun doesn’t want me to get involved, then I’ll respect their wishes. I will defend a friend though if necessary.

> Furthermore, do not follow nor interact with me if you’re the type of person that loves to stir drama. It’s fine if you’re calling out someone who’s dangerous to the roleplay community, but if it’s just out of spite and not warning people? Then you’re blocked.

I do not point fingers, but I also don’t like to stand around when people are being harmed by one toxic individual. I know people out there are anti-drama and that’s okay if you want to focus on your mental health; that’s perfectly fine. But if you’re someone who sees drama as one big hullabaloo then, I’m sorry, but there are people out there who cause harm to others and sometimes, they need to be called out.

> However, there are people who are harmful to others in a way that needs to be called out upon. And by that, I mean, please don’t follow nor interact with me if you associate with or follow user Grusel-high. She has been proven to show ableist, homophobic, and transphobic behaviors in such a disgusting way that feels unreal. Here is the callout post here that explains what she has done and is backed up by good evidence. If you see her around, stay safe folks.

> There is also another person (who interacts with the person above still) known as ..astra-hero../.battle.fcrgcd. who’s been causing great anxiety to one of my dearest, closest friends, and I can’t help but get anxiety at the sight of this person’s urls. There is a post here that explains mostly of what he did and why it bothers so many of my friends here. So, please, don’t interact with me if you support this user or any of his supporters; thank you.

> And finally, don’t follow me if you interact with With.out-Worr.ies. They were banned off of Tumblr for a reason. He is disgusting and doesn’t respect people’s boundaries. Here are posts here and here explaining what he’s done. 

THE BARE BASICS:

> No god-modding or info-modding involved. God-modding is a form of controlling another person’s muse in a certain shape or form that makes it hard for that person to control their own muse. Info-modding is when someone’s muse knows about another’s muse, but they aren’t supposed to. For example, Spid.er Man shouldn’t know about Bat.man’s secret or of what happened to his parents unless pre-established by the muns in question. I hope this explains it well enough.

> That said in regards to muses in general, mun doesn’t equal muse. I do not condone the terrible actions my muse can do, and the muse will not be glorified or romanticized for that manner. If there’s anything I’ve written that is uncomfortable to you, please don’t keep me in the dark and let me know.

> Personal blogs: I don’t mind your presence here. I don’t mind it at all. However: Please don’t reblog my threads or spam my likes. I don’t want roleplayers spamming my likes either. It’s not only a hassle, but it clogs up my activity and makes it hard to see any notifications for, well, anything really.

> Guilt-tripping? Is a severe no-no from me. I’ve been a victim of guilt-tripping, and I know people out there who are also victims of that. Guilt-tripping is something I don’t condone and I do not tolerate. Using the victim card? Also a no-no. If you’ve done something wrong, you shouldn’t twist the words to make it seem like you’re the victim. You must take responsibility for your actions.

> All I really ask from followers is to please respect me. I know it shouldn’t be a thing labeled on here, but to me, it’s important that people are respectful to me and those I befriend.

> Even though I don’t do smut, here’s something on the matter of smutting; don’t lie about your age to me. I don’t care if you’re a minor, it’s not right to do. Doing underaged smut is illegal and can get people in jail. So, please, don’t follow me if you’re someone who does that or someone who follows someone who does that.

> We must plot or have chemistry first with our characters before our ship can sail.

> I like to be asked if an ask can be turned into a thread. Most of the time I say yes, so don’t be shy!

> Roleplayers do not have to have icons in their posts, but it’s more preferred in my case.

> Please cut your posts; I beg of you.

> No politics unless it’s something major.

> This should be obvious but: Don’t harass anybody because of their race/sexuality/culture/ etc. We are just people who just want to play our favorite characters. Let’s leave it at that.

TRIGGERS (that need to be tagged):

> Gore

> Incest

> Pedophilia

> Anything that has to do with needles

> Jumpscares

> Child porn

> Spiders

> Epilepsy

> Bright lights/neon colors

ABOUT SONIC:

> This Sonic is Modern Sonic/3D era of Sonic and follows the lore of him throughout Sonic Adventure 1 all the way to Sonic Forces and so on. Sonic Boom, and Sonic Mania/Classic Sonic are all different alternatives universe according to my blog.

> My AUs are most likely lore-heavy with the backstories but with plotting, threads can be worked out.

> While this blog sticks to the canon of the games, there are some hints of canon-divergence due to my headcanons.

> Every now and then I will post drabbles that explain the world of Sonics AUs or where I’m going with Sonic in his canon verse. That includes IC (in-character) updates.

> You have reached the end of my rules! Usually I don’t have any keyword to this, but please, either let me know via IM or inbox. Although, if you like to send a keyword for it to be much easier, put in “Never gonna fear the fall.” I’m sorry if this is incredibly long but it needed to be done. Thanks to those who have read this! <3

[how2to18]

DURING THE POSTWAR PERIOD, the genres of the fantastic — especially science fiction — have been deeply intertwined with the genres of popular music, especially rock ’n’ roll. Both appeal to youthful audiences, and both make the familiar strange, seeking escape in enchantment and metamorphosis. As Steppenwolf sang in 1968: “Fantasy will set you free […] to the stars away from here.” Two recent books — one a nonfiction survey of 1970s pop music, the other a horror novel about heavy metal — explore this heady intermingling of rock and the fantastic.

As Jason Heller details in his new book Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded, the magic carpet rides of the youth counterculture encompassed both the amorphous yearnings of acid rock and the hard-edged visions of science fiction. In Heller’s account, virtually all the major rock icons — from Jimi Hendrix to David Crosby, from Pete Townshend to Ian Curtis — were avid SF fans; not only was their music strongly influenced by Heinlein, Clarke, Ballard, and other authors, but it also amounted to a significant body of popular SF in its own right. As Heller shows, many rock stars were aspiring SF writers, while established authors in the field sometimes wrote lyrics for popular bands, and a few became rockers themselves. British fantasist Michael Moorcock, for example, fronted an outfit called The Deep Fix while also penning songs for — and performing with — the space-rock group Hawkwind (once memorably described, by Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmister, as “Star Trek with long hair and drugs”).

Heller’s book focuses on the “explosion” of SF music during the 1970s, with chapters chronicling, year by year, the exhilarating debut of fresh music subcultures — prog rock, glam rock, Krautrock, disco — and their saturation with themes of space/time travel, alien visitation, and futuristic (d)evolution. He writes, “’70s pop culture forged a special interface with the future.” Many of its key songs and albums “didn’t just contain sci-fi lyrics,” but they were “reflection[s] of sci-fi” themselves, “full of futuristic tones and the innovative manipulation of studio gadgetry” — such as the vocoder, with its robotic simulacrum of the human voice. Heller’s discussion moves from the hallucinatory utopianism of the late 1960s to the “cool, plastic futurism” of the early 1980s with intelligence and panache.

The dominant figure in Heller’s study is, unsurprisingly, David Bowie, the delirious career of whose space-age antihero, Major Tom, bookended the decade — from “Space Oddity” in 1969 to “Ashes to Ashes” in 1980. Bowie’s 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was a full-blown SF extravaganza, its freaky starman representing “some new hybrid of thespian rocker and sci-fi myth,” but it had a lot of company during the decade. Heller insightfully analyzes a wide range of SF “concept albums,” from Jefferson Starship’s Blows Against the Empire (1970), the first rock record to be nominated for a Hugo Award, to Parliament’s Mothership Connection (1975), which “reprogramm[ed] funk in order to launch it into tomorrow,” to Gary Numan and Tubeway Army’s Replicas (1979), an album “steeped in the technological estrangement and psychological dystopianism of Dick and Ballard.”

Heller’s coverage of these peaks of achievement is interspersed with amusing asides on more minor, “novelty” phenomena, such as “the robot dance craze of the late ’60s and early ’70s,” and compelling analyses of obscure artists, such as French synthesizer wizard Richard Pinhas, who released (with his band Heldon) abrasive critiques of industrial society — for example, Electronique Guerilla (1974) — while pursuing a dissertation on science fiction under the direction of Gilles Deleuze at the Sorbonne. He also writes astutely about the impact of major SF films on the development of 1970s pop music: Monardo’s Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk (1977), for example, turned the cantina scene from Star Wars into a synth-pop dance-floor hit. At the same time, Heller is shrewdly alert to the historical importance of grassroots venues such as London’s UFO Club, which incubated the early dimensional fantasies of Pink Floyd and the off-the-wall protopunk effusions of the Deviants (whose frontman, Mick Farren, had a long career as an SF novelist and, in 1978, released an album with my favorite title ever: Vampires Stole My Lunch Money). Finally, Heller reconstructs some fascinating, but sadly abortive, collaborations — Theodore Sturgeon working to adapt Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Wooden Ships” as a screenplay, Paul McCartney hiring Star Trek’s Gene Roddenberry to craft a story about Wings. In some alternative universe, these weird projects came to fruition.

Heller’s erudition is astonishing, but it can also be overwhelming, drowning the reader in a welter of minutiae about one-hit wonders and the career peregrinations of minor talents. In his acknowledgments, Heller thanks his editor for helping him convert “an encyclopedia” into “a story,” but judging from the format of the finished product, this transformation was not fully complete: penetrating analyses frequently peter out into rote listings of albums and bands. There is a capping discography, but it is not comprehensive and is, strangely, organized by song title rather than by artist. The index is similarly unhelpful, containing only the proper names of individuals; one has to know, for instance, who Edgar Froese or Ralf Hütter are in order to locate the relevant passages on Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, respectively.

That said, there is no gainsaying the magisterial authority displayed in assertions such as: “The first fully formed sci-fi funk song was ‘Escape from Planet Earth’ by a vocal quartet from Camden, New Jersey, called the Continental Four.” And who else has even heard of — much less listened to — oddments like 1977’s Machines, “the sole album by the mysterious electronic group known as Lem,” who “likely took their name from sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem of Solaris fame”? Anyone interested in either popular music or science fiction of the 1970s will find countless nuggets of sheer delight in Strange Stars, and avid fans, after perusing the volume, will probably go bankrupt hunting down rare vinyl on eBay.

While Heller’s main focus is the confluence of rock ’n’ roll and science fiction, he occasionally addresses the influence of popular fantasy on major music artists of the decade. Marc Bolan, of T. Rex fame, was, we learn, a huge fan of Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, while prog-rock stalwarts Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer managed “to combine science fiction and fantasy, fusing them into a metaphysical, post-hippie meditation on the nature of reality.” What’s missing from the book, however, is any serious discussion of the strain of occult and dark fantasy that ran through 1960s and ’70s rock, the shadows cast by Aleister Crowley and H. P. Lovecraft over Jimmy Page, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, and (yes) Bowie himself. After all, Jim Morrison’s muse was a Celtic high priestess named Patricia Kennealy who went on, following the death of her Lizard King, to a career as a popular fantasy author. Readers interested in this general topic should consult the idiosyncratic survey written by Gary Lachman, a member of Blondie, entitled Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius (2001).

Heller does comment, in passing, on an incipient musical form that would, during the 1980s, emerge as the dark-fantasy genre par excellence: heavy metal. Though metal was, as Heller states, “just beginning to awaken” in the 1970s, his book includes sharp analyses of major prototypes such as Black Sabbath’s Paranoid (1970), Blue Öyster Cult’s Tyranny and Mutation (1973), and the early efforts of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. This was the technocratic lineage of heavy metal, the segment of the genre most closely aligned with science fiction, especially in its dystopian modes, and which would come to fruition, during the 1980s, in classic concept albums like Voivod’s Killing Technology (1987) and Queensrÿche’s Operation: Mindcrime (1988).

But the 1980s also saw the emergence of more fantasy-oriented strains, such as black, doom, and death metal, whose rise to dominance coincided with the sudden explosion in popularity of a fantastic genre that had, until that time, largely skulked in the shadow of SF and high fantasy: supernatural horror. Unsurprisingly, the decade saw a convergence of metal music and horror fiction that was akin to the 1970s fusion of rock and SF anatomized in Strange Stars. Here, as elsewhere, Black Sabbath was a pioneer, their self-titled 1970 debut offering a potent brew of pop paganism culled equally from low-budget Hammer films and the occult thrillers of Dennis Wheatley. By the mid-1980s, there were hundreds of bands — from Sweden’s Bathory to England’s Fields of the Nephilim to the pride of Tampa, Florida, Morbid Angel — who were offering similar fare. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos inspired songs by Metallica, Mercyful Fate, and countless other groups — including Necronomicon, a German thrash-metal outfit whose name references a fictional grimoire featured in several of the author’s stories.

By the same token, heavy metal music deeply influenced the burgeoning field of horror fiction. Several major 1980s texts treated this theme overtly: the doom-metal outfit in George R. R. Martin’s The Armageddon Rag (1983) is a twisted emanation of the worst impulses of the 1960s counterculture; the protagonist of Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat (1985) is a Gothic rocker whose performances articulate a pop mythology of glamorous undeath; and the mega-cult band in John Skipp and Craig Spector’s splatterpunk classic The Scream (1988) are literal hell-raisers, a Satanic incarnation of the most paranoid fantasies of Christian anti-rock zealots. The heady conjoining of hard rock with supernaturalism percolated down from these best sellers to the more ephemeral tomes that packed the drugstore racks during the decade, an outpouring of gory fodder affectionately surveyed in Grady Hendrix’s award-winning study Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction (2017). Hendrix, himself a horror author of some note, has now published We Sold Our Souls (2018), the quintessential horror-metal novel for our times.

Hendrix has stated that, prior to embarking on this project, he was not “a natural metal fan”:

I was scared of serious metal when I was growing up. Slayer and Metallica intimidated me, and I was too unsophisticated to appreciate the fun of hair metal bands like Mötley Crüe and Twisted Sister, so I basically sucked. […] But I got really deep into metal while writing We Sold Our Souls and kind of fell in love.

The author’s immersion in — and fondness for — the genre is evident on every page of his new novel. Chapters are titled using the names of classic metal albums: “Countdown to Extinction” (Megadeth, 1992), “From Enslavement to Obliteration” (Napalm Death, 1988), “Twilight of the Gods” (Bathory, 1991), and so on. The effect is to summon a hallowed musical canon while at the same time evoking the story’s themes and imparting an emotional urgency to its events. These events also nostalgically echo 1980s rock-horror novels: like The Armageddon Rag, Hendrix’s plot chronicles the reunion of a cult outfit whose breakup decades before was enigmatically fraught; like The Scream, it features a demonic metal band that converts its worshipful fans into feral zombies; like The Vampire Lestat, it culminates in a phantasmagoric stadium concert that erupts into a brutal orgy of violence. Yet despite these pervasive allusions, the novel does not come across as mere pastiche: it has an energy and authenticity that make it feel quite original.

A large part of that originality lies in its protagonist. As the cock-rock genre par excellence, its blistering riffs and screeching solos steeped in adolescent testosterone, heavy metal has had very few notable female performers. But one of them, at least in Hendrix’s fictive history, was Kris Pulaski, lead guitarist of Dürt Würk, a legendary quintet from rural Pennsylvania that abruptly dissolved, under mysterious circumstances, in the late 1990s, just as they were poised for national fame. Kris was a scrappy bundle of nerves and talent, a kick-ass songwriter and a take-no-prisoners performer:

She had been punched in the mouth by a straight-edge vegan, had the toes of her Doc Martens kissed by too many boys to count, and been knocked unconscious after catching a boot beneath the chin from a stage diver who’d managed to do a flip into the crowd off the stage at Wally’s. She’d made the mezzanine bounce like a trampoline at Rumblestiltskins, the kids pogoing so hard flakes of paint rained down like hail.

But that was eons ago. As the story opens, she is staffing the night desk at a Best Western, burned out at 47, living in a broken-down house with her ailing mother and trying to ignore “the background hum of self-loathing that formed the backbeat of her life.” She hasn’t seen her bandmates in decades, since she drunkenly crashed their tour van and almost killed them all, and hasn’t picked up a guitar in almost as long, constrained by the terms of a draconian contract she signed with Dürt Würk’s former lead singer, Terry Hunt, who now controls the band’s backlist. While Kris has lapsed into brooding obscurity, Hunt has gone on to global success, headlining a “nu metal” outfit called Koffin (think Korn or Limp Bizkit) whose mainstream sound Kris despises: “It was all about branding, fan outreach, accessibility, spray-on attitude, moving crowds of white kids smoothly from the pit to your merch booth.” It was the exact opposite of genuine metal, which “tore the happy face off the world. It told the truth.”

To inject a hint of authenticity into Koffin’s rampant commodification, Hunt occasionally covers old Dürt Würk hits. But he avoids like the plague any songs from the band’s long-lost third album, Troglodyte, with their elaborate mythology of surveillance and domination:

[T]here is a hole in the center of the world, and inside that hole is Black Iron Mountain, an underground empire of caverns and lava seas, ruled over by the Blind King who sees everything with the help of his Hundred Handed Eye. At the root of the mountain is the Wheel. Troglodyte was chained to the Wheel along with millions of others, which they turned pointlessly in a circle, watched eternally by the Hundred Handed Eye.

Inspired by the arrival of a butterfly that proves the existence of a world beyond his bleak dungeon, Troglodyte ultimately revolts against Black Iron Mountain, overthrowing the Blind King and leading his fellow slaves into the light.

One might assume that Hunt avoids this album because the scenario it constructs can too readily be perceived as an allegory of liberation from the consumerist shackles of Koffin’s nu-metal pablum. That might be part of the reason, but Hunt’s main motivation is even more insidious: he fears Troglodyte because its eldritch tale is literally true — Koffin is a front for a shadowy supernatural agency that feeds on human souls, and Dürt Würk’s third album holds the key to unmasking and fighting it. This strange reality gradually dawns on Kris, and when Koffin announces plans for a massive series of concerts culminating in a “Hellstock” festival in the Nevada desert, she decides to combat its infernal designs with the only weapon she has: her music. Because “a song isn’t a commercial for an album. It isn’t a tool to build name awareness or reinforce your brand. A song is a bullet that can shatter your chains.”

This bizarre plot, like the concept albums by Mastodon or Iron Maiden it evokes, runs the risk of collapsing into grandiloquent absurdity if not carried off with true conviction. And this is Hendrix’s key achievement in the novel: he never condescends, never winks at the audience or tucks his tongue in cheek. Like the best heavy metal, We Sold Our Souls is scabrous and harrowing, its pop mythology fleshed out with vividly gruesome set pieces, as when Kris surprises the Blind King’s minions at their ghastly repast:

Its fingernails were black and it bent over Scottie, slobbering up the black foam that came boiling out of his mouth. Kris […] saw that the same thing was crouched over Bill, a starved mummy, maggot-white, its skin hanging in loose folds. A skin tag between its legs jutted from a gray pubic bush, bouncing obscenely like an engorged tick. […] Its gaze was old and cold and hungry and its chin dripped black foam like a beard. It sniffed the air and hissed, its bright yellow tongue vibrating, its gums a vivid red.

The irruption of these grisly horrors into an otherwise mundane milieu of strip malls and franchise restaurants and cookie-cutter apartments is handled brilliantly, on a par with the best of classic splatterpunk by the likes of Joe R. Lansdale or David J. Schow.

Hendrix also, like Stephen King, has a shrewd feel for true-to-life relationships, which adds a grounding of humanity to his cabalistic flights. Kris’s attempts to reconnect with her alienated bandmates — such as erstwhile drummer JD, a wannabe Viking berserker who has refashioned his mother’s basement into a “Metalhead Valhalla” — are poignantly handled, and the hesitant bond she develops with a young Koffin fan named Melanie has the convincing ring of post-feminist, intergenerational sisterhood. Throughout the novel, Hendrix tackles gender issues with an intrepid slyness, from Kris’s brawling tomboy efforts to fit into a male-dominated world to Melanie’s frustration with her lazy, lying, patronizing boyfriend, with whom she breaks up in hilarious fashion:

She screamed. She broke his housemate’s bong. She Frisbee-d the Shockwave [game] disc so hard it left a divot in the kitchen wall. She raged out of the house as his housemates came back from brunch.

“Dude,” they said to Greg as he jogged by them, “she is so on the rag.”

“Are we breaking up?” Greg asked, clueless, through her car window.

It took all her self-control not to back over him as she drove off.

Such scenes of believable banality compellingly anchor the novel’s febrile horrors, as do the passages of talk-radio blather interspersed between the chapters, which remind us that conspiratorial lunacy is always only a click of the AM dial away.

While obviously a bit of a throwback, We Sold Our Souls shows that the 1980s milieu of heavy metal and occult horror — of bootleg cassettes and battered paperbacks — continues to have resonance in our age of iPods and cell-phone apps. It also makes clear that the dreamy confluence of rock and the fantastic so ably anatomized in Heller’s Strange Stars is still going strong.

¤

Rob Latham is a LARB senior editor. His most recent book is Science Fiction Criticism: An Anthology of Essential Writings, published by Bloomsbury Press in 2017.

The post Magic Carpet Rides: Rock Music and the Fantastic appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[davidmann95]

why os batman great?

I tend to focus on the guy in the red cape at the expense of my second-favorite character, but let’s make something very, very clear: in terms of the sheer scale on which he and his iconography have imprinted onto the popular consciousness, the ratio of output to quality across all mediums for a character that’s experienced the kind of proliferation he has, and his ability to not only endure but remain at the forefront of the genre he practically co-founded across decades, Batman is easily the greatest superhero of all time.

Explaining why that’s the case is tricky to truly, substantively get right, because there’s a difference between what makes him great as a character, and what’s made him the most popular character in the world. Not to remotely denigrate the attention span/intellect of the average moviegoer or suggest they don't 'get it', but I have to imagine most people don’t love Batman because they've extensively thought about his complex motives and the fascinating symbolism that rules his world, but because he drives the world’s dopest car over to his job of suplexing crime into the pavement, which is valid because that rules. So we’ll start at the immediate mass-appeal stuff and work our way down, and the big one is something we’ve already touched on:

Batman’s cool as hell

There are certainly contrarian souls who would argue that Batman is not, in fact, relentlessly awesome. Think about him for a couple seconds, they might note, and he’s a silly manchild living in his parents’ underground basement who can only emotionally engage as an equal with literal children; they might drive the point home that his particular brand of macho hyper-capitalist performative Hard Man edginess is both shallow and ultimately passe. And if you’re engaging in a character-centered examination of his archetype as in The Lego Batman Movie or Morrison’s work with the character, those are fine points. But in terms of whether or not he’s surface-level cool? Pull your head out of your ass, peel open your eyes, and engage with the larger culture for a second: Batman is as close to objectively rad as it is possible for a concept to be.

Batman wears black body armor and drives awesome cars and sounds like Kevin Conroy. Batman lives in a mansion that also has a cave in it, and wears the slickest suits when he’s not being Batman, because Batman can buy anything. Batman is ripped and sexy.* Batman knows every martial art and parkour and can blend into the shadows, and he has a belt of James Bond gadgets. Batman is a genius who’s always ten steps ahead and can escape any trap. Batman has a pitch-black sense of humor. Batman is vicious even as he’s utterly cool in the face of danger. Batman fights horror movie villains of the supernatural, monstrous, fetishistically disturbing, and plain ‘ol slasher varieties, and wins (when he’s not busy dancing across the rooftops in pursuit of a leather-clad Anne Hathaway/Michelle Pfeiffer/Julie Newmar). Batman’s climbed his way back from chemically-induced psychosis, a shattered spine, and the gates of death, all by wit and sheer brutal force of will. Batman has a city that’s New York and Chicago and Vegas and Hell rolled into one, and when he’s needed it literally blasts his logo onto the sky in public acknowledgement of his supreme coolness, but he also travels the world to other cool-looking exotic locales so he can be cool there too. Batman has theme songs by Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer. And crucially, in spite of all of this, Batman is tormented. You can argue the validity of those conventions on an intellectual level, but what it amounts to is that Batman is a kickass figure of the night who’s the best at everything and has the best of everything, snarling all the while even as he keeps an air of amused detachment about the whole affair, and those are archetypes that humanity’s long since given the thumbs up as constituting capital-c Cool. We like people who can kick ass, the outlaws, the capable and the mysterious, so long as they’re in good stories that let us buy it. And more than anyone in pop culture aside from maybe Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine - and that dude’s done, while the Dark Knight forever remains - he’s That, the superhero.

* Yes, his depiction is more typically centered around a straight dude perspective of male physical perfection than anything actually particularly sensual or alluring, but the intent’s clearly there, and when you’ve been played by Clooney and Affleck I figure you get to claim ‘sexy’ as a fair semi-universal descriptor.

Batman is spooky

Of course, if cool was all there was to Batman’s general persona, he wouldn’t be cool at all, he’d be Poochie in a Dracula cape (which given it will presumably last until the heat death of the universe is a premise The Simpsons will inevitably have to get around to at some point, so remember you saw it here first). But what backs it up and lets people take it seriously is that he’s spooky. Not necessarily frightening - though he can most definitely be that too - but there’s an ethereal, shadowy aspect to his world that goes beyond the fright mask. It can take many forms for many situations and versions of him and his setting: lurking on a gargoyle over an alleyway, waiting for some poor unsuspecting punk to try and stick up an innocent family only to drag him ten stories up and leave him sobbing for his mother; karate-chopping his way through deathtraps and colorful henchmen, which for all its unabashed fun still carries the air of Halloween pageantry and neuroses let loose; haunting the grimiest parts of an urban hellhole, waiting to burst through the window of a roach-infested apartment or a musty disused warehouse to break bones and spill blood; appearing from nowhere, grappling with mind-bending chemical trips and fighting to stay one step ahead of killers in the shadows, dueling mad rich perverted cultists and literal demons of the underworld, overlooking a shadow city forever in flux to reflect the horrors of the moment. Even at his most innocent, there’s something irreducibly seedy and violent and enigmatic about Batman, and that not only provides immediate distinction and character to him and his surroundings - one that distinguishes both from their contemporaries - but legitimizes the entire enterprise as something that can be taken seriously.

Batman is playful

At the same time, Batman’s fun - even at his most serious he uses Batman-shaped boomerangs, and drives a cool car even though gliding and swinging lets him better avoid traffic. He needs to be fun for the kind of ubiquitous pop appeal he has, and it’s built in on every level of the brand no matter how far away you try and veer from it, letting a character rooted in loss and declarations of bloody revenge work just as well for four-year-olds as forty-somethings. The cave, the costumes, the sidekicks and signal and colorful rogues and utility belt and trophies, they give his world a size and dimension that lets him dip his toe in nearly any genre, with his inherent seriousness backing him up to let you buy him in any of those narrative territories. At the end of the day, the people shaping Batman at least subconsciously know it’s all a game, and in letting him have that kind of fun he’s granted versatility and the ability to invigorate as well as stun audiences.

Batman is emotionally, symbolically raw

And sitting at the heart of it all, giving him the gas in the engine that propels all of the above forward, is that he comes from the most viscerally, broadly relatable place of any superhero. The only one who approaches him is Spider-Man, and even there the meaning of his tragedy is somewhat displaced - there’s loss and guilt, yes, but that’s merely the catalyst for a message of responsibility. Here, that Bruce Wayne loses a concept everyone is on some level familiar with, of the happiness and comfort and stability that family is supposed to provide, is itself the point. He grabs the emotional lever right at the animal hindbrain and pulls until it snaps off: everything has gone wrong, and someone must pay for making things this way. Then for good measure he actually does make them pay while adhering to a righteous moral code that defies all he fights against, elevating himself from spooky fun action hero into myth. He’s surrounded by a city where abstract horrors consolidate down into entirely literal figures - for instance, in Gotham the fear that we can be outfoxed, overwhelmed, and systematically taken apart in service of evil stroking its own ego because we just aren’t good enough to survive is a dick in a neon green hat who likes crossword puzzles (as opposed to Superman’s world of much more personal and basic human concerns blown up to cosmic scale) - and he in turn becomes a myth of us persevering through the worst to fight back.

Batman is genuinely a good character

I place this last because this is really the nuts-and-bolts level. It’s essential, none of the above would work for 79 years and counting without it, but it’s not something many but the hardcore (which includes the comic readers by default at this point) consciously think about. But on the ground floor beneath everything else, Batman’s not just an effective piece of branding, atmosphere, and emotional manipulation, but a good character. In his motivations, with the anger that compels him often making many miss that underneath, he far more powerfully wants to ensure that no one else goes through what he did. The childishness of his methods and mindset regarding ‘the mission’ meeting the maturity of his dedication and brilliance, and the humor that can come from that disconnect (especially when his alternating disgust and amusement with his daytime masquerade as a normal person gets involved). The tentative, essential friendships he’s built with the likes of Gordon and Superman. The fatherly connection with Alfred, and the see-saw of the latter’s feelings of guilt, responsibility, and pride in his charge. The spark of his rivalries at their best. The detective work that can be as thrilling as a good punch-out when pulled off right. The forever changing complexity of the Family, a web of Robins and Batgirls and assorted hangers-on with him at the center, their existence and growth a chart of his own emotional progress and regression. His jet-black wit and self-awareness, his ability to empathize with fellow victims, his difficulties in trusting and openly loving those around him when his world is built on the knowledge of how easily those can be stripped away and how badly it hurts. The paranoia, the compassion, the drive and endurance. Beneath all the trappings, Bruce Wayne is just plain and simple a really, really good, interesting, multi-faceted character, fine-tuned under decades of creators and by his existence facilitating the creation and development of countless *other* good characters. And that’s really all it takes underneath it all to prop up a symbol that’s built empires, redefined cultures, and changed lives: the idea of a good man who refused to give up in the face of a cruel world when it forever scarred him, and made himself something greater to fight back and help others not have to go through it alone. That’s why Batman’s great.