#potentially the most devastating line he delivers

[agent-mcsweetheart]

I have so much love for the Tap Out Job actually

[feruslands]

"Daddy Feri", part 8

My sketch fanfic for @reconstructwriter and @la-sopa who inspired me to continue this long story, and for everyone who loves "Vader/Ferus" (later Anakin/Ferus)

Warnings: rape, cruelty, war crimes

Vader told the Jedi that he would smuggle him onto the Destroyer secretly, but did not tell him how. Back in the fortress on the Vjun, he drugged the prisoner with a synthetic drug that plunged the Jedi into a deep unconsciousness. He brought it packed in a standard body bag on a personal TIE and landed in the Destroyer's general hangar.

He himself established the strictest discipline and strict observance of regulations on the ship. Unfortunately, it was working against him now. He couldn't have personally dragged the Jedi's body unnoticed past all the surveillance systems. But he knew exactly and in detail how the tracking systems on his Destroyer were located, so he quickly came up with a way to trick this system.

The freezer of the Devastator morgue had long been overflowing with dead bodies, so Vader ordered his subordinates to pull all the corpses out of the freezer, spread them out on the floor of the hangar and begin the process of collecting biometric data for identification.

All the dead bodies of the rebels had to be passed through the identification procedure before being destroyed. This allowed the Imperial Security Bureauto create a database of intelligent beings who were close relatives or friends of the killed rebels. Previously, Darth Vader considered these processes a waste of time and resources, but later he was able to admit that the formed databases justified their existence. Thanks to this data, the Empire became able to calculate potential enemies in advance.

Vader silently watched as the sorting and identification of the bodies took place. As soon as a dead body was identified, it was taken to a general recycling facility. At the same time, humans and droids were busy sorting and distributing the supplies delivered.

Canisters and boxes of medicines were placed next to the place where Vader's TIE was located, forming a barrier wall. Thus, a blind spot space for surveillance systems has been formed here. Vader used the Force to pull a black bag out of the TIE and, dragging it across the floor, added its edge to the line of the dead lying on the floor. The moment Ferus's packed body lay down in one of several rows of corpses, Vader had a strange feeling. He is one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy, and at the same time he is now smuggling his bitch in a bag for sexual pleasure onto his own ship. This made him chuckle. He felt so exciting only in his youth, when he managed to fool his young and inexperienced master for some little thing. But his youth is long gone. Sadness and pain came to Vader suddenly. They quickly turned to anger at their former Master.

He hated Kenobi so much! Kenobi cut off his limbs and left him to burn alive! He turned him into a crippled cyborg!

Unexpectedly for himself, the Sith did something that he had not done once in the last nine years. Vader reached through the mental channel of his previous connection and turned to the former master.

"Look at what I've become now, Obi-Wan! I rule the galaxy. I control the Force and it serves me."

He knew that in response he would run into emptiness. He knew, but the bitterness of the emptiness at the end of the connection still covered him.

"In mockery of the Order and you, I made my slut of the most exemplary Padawan."

But the Force remained as serene and silent as ever. Wherever Kenobi was now, it was as if he didn't exist at all. Could the old man have died over the years? And why did this thought create not rage inside him, but a void devouring him from within?

"I hate you, Obi-Wan!" He shouted through the mental channel of his former connection. "You are a disgusting Master! You're nothing as a human being! You..." he shouted insults and accused him for a long time, but there was no response. The silence was crushing and splitting him apart. It was unbearable. And the Sith forced himself to immerse himself in his work. Several hundred more corpses had to be disposed of before all this unfrozen cargo started to stink badly.

"My Lord Vader, the compliance check is complete. All medicines have been received in exact quantities", one of the senior officers responsible for receiving the next batch of medicines that were delivered to the Destroyer every month specifically for the Sith reported to him.

Vader looked at him. He felt that the employee was afraid of him, as were many other subordinates. Behind him, the Sith with masterly dexterity tossed a black bag inside one of the medicine crates. The lid of the box slid down smoothly and soundlessly. That's it, it's done.

"Bring this to my quarters as usual." Vader ordered.

The Sith looked at the datapad screen, and he didn't like something very much.

"By order of the Emperor, new medical equipment should have already been delivered. Why is it not on the list? "

"I... I don't know anything about it, My Lord. We do not have any data on such a delivery…"  The officer was sweating.

"So find out it." Vader ordered. He felt a sharp irritation that the emperor had decided to delay the delivery of his new medical station. This was the thing he needed so badly right now. The Sith was well aware that this delay was just a continuation of the punishment.

Gradually, all the distributed cargo was sent to the necessary compartments and the last work was completed. Darth Vader did not want any unpleasant surprises, and therefore he did not let go of control of the situation until the carrier droids brought all the things to his chambers.

When he finally found himself alone in his apartment, surrounded by a pile of boxes of medicines and cans of bacta, he dumped the Jedi's body out of the bag, and injected him with a dose of stimulant that was supposed to make his body fully function and bring him back to consciousness. But as soon as he woke up, the Jedi could not control his body, he could not even stand on his feet.

"Weakling", Vader thought contemptuously. Such a dose of stimulant brought him back to working condition after much more severe injuries. He wasn't going to send the Jedi to the medical droids, otherwise he would have had to mess with erasing their memories. Without giving him time to recover, Vader roughly grabbed him by the collar and dragged him across the floor to the place where the secret cell was located. He removed the wall panel and opened a small hole located at the bottom of the wall, which was more suitable for the passage of a pet rather than a human.

"I'll visit you later, bitch," Vader promised with a nasty grin, shoving the Jedi into a cramped cell.

He pushed a bag with a needle and an intravenous feeding wire into the cell with his foot, and blocked the passage to cut off the prisoner from the outside world.

**

Once in the cell, Olin felt as if he had been walled up in the walls. The ceiling was so low that he couldn't even stand up to his full height. Ferus settled down on the floor. He couldn't let go of restless thoughts about Leia. He didn't want to think about the horror the little girl went through when she saw Vader packing him in a bag.

He was afraid for her. Anything could happen while Leia was there alone. Vader, of course, considered his fortress impregnable. But the Sith had an overblown ego about everything. And what if the fortress is attacked, precisely at the moment of the owner's absence? Ferus had no idea how long this shitty assignment of Vader's would take, and that ignorance tormented him.

The main thing is not to die here. But his condition left much to be desired.

Exhausted by anxious thoughts, the Jedi fell into a dream filled with a kaleidoscope of nightmares. He dreamed of the Bast Castle, which was washed away by acid rains. He realized with horror that the ruins of the fortress had buried his daughter under the slabs. Ferus rushed forward, but saw only a grinning cyborg in front of him. At some point, his dream changed, and instead of Vader, the Jedi saw his former home, Bellassa. He lived there a long time ago, before he came to Alderaan. His dream was full of gloomy anxiety, but he did not know why. The streets of his hometown looked calm, quiet, but completely deserted. Ferus felt that something terrible and irreparable had happened here. How could it be otherwise? After all, the Sith have always acted meanly and cruelly. Whatever crime Vader had committed, it was just his normal, day-to-day job while he served Palpatine. Suddenly, the Emperor appeared in front of Ferus, smiling insanely. This ugly wrinkled old man stretched out his arms to strike him with lightning bolts.

Olin was abruptly awakened by the sound of the passage opening into the cell. Vader certainly didn't care about the Jedi's moral anguish or his physical discomfort.

The Sith was ready to act harshly if the prisoner tried to resist. But the prisoner was in a state where he didn't quite understand where he was, what time of day it was, and wasn't everything happening a dream? Due to the prolonged lack of medical care, the Jedi's brain was working very slowly. He looked blank and sick.

Ferus saw that Vader was crawling into his cell like a predatory alligator into a cage for prey. It seemed that the vile ghost of the Dark Side was spreading far ahead of its master.

"I'm going to fuck you," Vader told him this fact. Ferus blinked uncomprehendingly. Vader enjoyed watching the stupid confusion flash across the Jedi's face. What was the fool waiting for? That he climbs into this kennel to read romantic poems aloud to him?

Vader's foot slipped and he landed on his stomach. He swore. Olin didn't know the expletive, but he recognized one of the dialects of the Hutt language. So Vader spent his youth in Hutt Space? Was that where Palpatine raised his apprentices in secret? And in the end, Vader turned out to be the most capable student and just killed all the competitors in some monstrously cruel test, but he himself suffered terrible injuries? It seemed like the truth. At least Vader had the manners and characteristic brutality of a savage bandit on the edge of the galaxy, and Hutt space had been a stronghold for all sorts of assorted scum for decades.

But Vader's Force was really incredibly huge. Ferus's potential for Force sensitivity was only negligible compared to the Sith.

He was distracted from such thoughts by Vader, who grabbed the prisoner by the ankle with a Force's tentacle and dragged him across the floor by Force, pulling him to himself.

Vader took off only the part of his armor that covered his groin area.

"You've missed me already, haven't you, slag?" Vader whispered in his ear as he swung his leg over the prisoner's body and leaned on top of him.

Vader stank abominably of a mixture of sweat, burnt electronics and metal, medicinal mixtures and rotting flesh. And the Jedi felts this blend of stench especially vividly in such a cramped, stuffy cell.

The Sith puffed over him with pleasure, like a lustful animal, while he pounded his dick into him.

After the rape, Vader carefully wiped jedi's blood and his own sperm from his dick with prisoner's pants. Now this nerd would have to dress in a soiled rag, or stay lying here with his bare ass, and for some reason Vader had no doubt that this buttfucked bitch would choose.

"Here you go," Vader grinned and threw a wad of soiled pants at the prisoner. "it's a great rag, especially for an arrogant son of a bitch like you."

Vader didn't say anything else to him. He crawled away on all fours, crawling through the entrance hole in the wall. The Sith grunted disgustingly and breathed loudly like a snoring Hutt while he restored his breathing, which had become more frequent during sex.

"Stinking brute", Ferus thought, looking at Vader's ass crawling on the floor. He wanted to kick Vader in the ass. Despite all the damage and the presence of heavy armor, the Sith deftly crawled out of the chamber and blocked the passage.

Ferus closed his eyes, trying to distract himself with different thoughts from the pain, discomfort and his own shame that Vader had once again raped him.

Counting the past time was difficult, the Jedi had no idea when it was night and day. Sometimes he couldn't tell if he fell asleep for hours or just fell into unconsciousness for a few minutes.

Strangely enough, Vader did not come back. Ferus immersed himself in the Force, but did not feel the Sith's presence nearby, and did not hear any sounds behind the wall. There was tension in the Force. The Jedi did not know what exactly the Sith was doing, but wherever Vader was now, he was undoubtedly doing evil. Something really terrible was happening. Something compared to which rapes were just child's play. And again he couldn't do anything. Neither to prevent Vader's actions, nor just to help himself. Nothing.

**

There was complete chaos on Bellassa and it required Vader's direct intervention.

When the Sith appeared on the surface of the planet, he felt a surge of strength and immediately set to work zealously. The Bellassians were unwilling to acknowledge the emperor's authority and serve him. The workers did not want to work in the Imperial factories and maintain the headquarters. Such a cohesiveness of beings disloyal to the emperor could become dangerous. They really believed that the Empire would leave their planet if they resisted hard enough.

Vader personally eliminated the dissenters. But it was ineffective. The rebels hid well and often made sorties, after which they deftly hid in shelters. Every Bellassian considered it his duty to help anyone who fought against the Empire.

For a moment, Vader found it tedious, but the Bellassians still acted smoothly and defiantly. There were constant armed clashes in the city with stormtroopers patrolling the streets.

Vader understood that as soon as his fleet left the planet, the rebels would immediately come out of their shelters and start interfering with the work of the imperial factories again. However, they didn't hesitate to harm right under his nose. It was necessary to somehow suppress their will and discourage them from fighting for a long time.

Mass arrest of the rebels could have solved the issue, but Vader had a slightly different solution. Fortunately, he had a large enough army to stage massive raids all over the city. But the rebels were not the target of the capture. Vader ordered all the children from the streets of the city to be taken hostage. Stormtroopers broke into residential buildings to forcibly take children and hold them at the central headquarters until the local rebels surrendered and the workers stopped rioting and went to work in factories.

After these demands were made, the situation changed dramatically in just a few days. Because of the captured children, the Bellassians plunged into terrible fear and lost their fortitude. The Empire demanded that impeccable order be established in the city, and the local rebel leaders stopped armed uprisings and bowed to the imperial authority. And the Bellassians, broken by intense expectation, finally laid down their arms. Local workers began to go out to work in factories. They were ready to obey the Emperor if their children were returned to them. The Sith was surprised that it was possible to turn the situation in favor of the Empire so quickly.

And feeling the moral defeat of the townspeople, Vader ordered the release of the little hostages. Not out of mercy, but simply because he saw no point in holding them any longer.

The children returned to their families and after that the Bellassians completely surrendered and submitted to the empire. The workers ended the riots and went to work in the Imperial Factories. Civilians began servicing the imperial headquarters. The Bellassians were happy that their children had returned home alive, but for this they had to bow before the Emperor.

The Empire gained an easy victory and Vader's fleet departed.

The Devastator was flying in hyperspace when Vader received a call from Palpatine.

"You pleasantly surprised me, Darth Vader," Sidious's wrinkled snout stretched into a wide smile. "Strategic calculation has never been your advantage before. But I have to admit that this time, your idea of the weakness of the Bellassians was absolutely correct. A simple order to capture the children led us to complete victory in just a few days. And I already expected that they would fight to the point of complete extermination, but you were able to subdue them so easily! They really believed that we would bring their children back alive. It was very pleasant to break the will of the population of an entire city, wasn't it, my friend? "

"Yes, my Master."

"Everything that followed was tough, but very effective. Let our enemies be in constant fear of us."

"I am glad to serve you, Master. "

Satisfied with his apprentice, Sidious cut the connection.

Vader remained standing on the Destroyer's command bridge. For a while, the Sith stared at the bright blue stripes of hyperspace. He requested a report on the Bellassa case, and after reviewing the data, he called a senior officer to him.

"It says here that each captured 'unit' was injected on the final day of captivity for 'delayed death.'" Vader pointed to the datapad.

"Yes, sir. All the children of the rebels will die."

"I didn't ask you about their fate. I'm interested in who gave the order to act this way behind my back?" He demanded.

"Emperor Palpatine has given the order, My Lord."

"You are dismissed."

Darth Vader understood everything. Sidious did not cancel his order, he only refined this order, brought it to perfection, teaching a lesson to both the rebellious planet and his apprentice.

And with this order, Palpatine destroyed most of the younger generation of the capital of Bellassa.

Vader remembered the Master's recent words. From abstract reasoning, it so masterfully materialized into reality.

"When commanding everything, you must know how to maintain your power. Sometimes it is better to punish slaves for disobedience one more time, even when the slaves' will has already been broken and they agree to obey. Deferred punishment for insubordination, like an unexpected blow, is a wonderful way to cultivate obedience in them."

Vader closed the report summary on his datapad. This means that the captured children returned home in the morning to their parents, who were waiting for them so much that for this they rejected their principles and obeyed the will of the emperor, but by evening the counting of sudden deaths of children will begin. And so it will be until every single one of them dies.

Vader wasn't worried about the fate of the Bellassian children. He was glad that the task was completed so quickly, and he was already moving towards the Vjun.

He thought of the Bellassian who was currently imprisoned in his apartment. Did he want to make Ferus experience the same thing that the parents of the Bellassian children would experience?

Probably not. Fortunately, Vader had plenty of other ways to hurt him. Still, Sidious had taught him something today. Mercy is a weakness.

[cursedalthoughts]

SHIPGIRL APPRECIATION DAY - Chkalov

Chkalov, a Priority Research aircraft carrier. The only PR from the Northern Parliament (at least so far), Chkalov is fairly unique. Her tactics involve deploying whole squadrons of aircraft to attack in unison, delivering devastating blows against single targets.

Created from the Project 71B blueprints, Chkalov is vaguely related to Volga - the other aircraft carrier of the Parliament, even if only teniously. I can not find information on what Volga is based of, but I assume she's inspired by this line of aircraft carrier projects the real-life Soviet Union developed.

Chkalov is not only unique because of her role as the only PR of the Parliament; she's also unique personality and design-wise. How many shipgirls have you seen who have normal, ordinary high heels in their rigging? You can probably name a bunch, but they're the exception to the rule. She's a scientist - if the large white lab coat wasn't an obvious giveaway already - and she specializes in data analysis. And she's good at it.

Her rigging is one of the last from the Northern Parliament to follow this hard edge scifi aesthetic, as practically all shipgirls post-Chkalov had had a more frostpunk aesthetic, while Chkalov herself has an "Ironblood but icy" vibe. The only thing that truly makes Chkalov's rigging unique from the rest is that it's a scorpion. Scorpions can't survive in northern latitudes, not for long; and the guy she's named after (Valeri Chkalov) wasn't a scorpion guy, he was an important test pilot for the Soviet Union (if my googling is correct lol)

Personality-wise, Chkalov is a bit... horny. Not Atago-style or Chapayev-style horny, however. She's less obvious, but potentially more than most other shipgirls that fall under this category. She likes her quid pro quos - you do a thing for me and I do a thing for you, and she doesn't care if what you ask in return is depraved. She'll do it. She enjoys that. This is simply because she sees that sort of intimacy as just one more form of spending time with you. Chkalov doesn't see sex as a tool to manipulate you, or a medium to an end other than to kill some time. To Chkalov, sex can be like two good friends deciding to go get some fast food late at night.

And no, while I do call her a whore (affectionate), I think her way of thinking is sound and logic. At least for a shipgirl.

Also she's bisexual. As 50/50 split as it can get.

PS: she has ADHD too.

--------------

My brainrot for Chkalov leans more on the lewd side, yes. that's what you get with her. i think she's an amazing character.

[unfoldingmoments]

Tragic Hero : a picture of passion and wisdom out of balance

Jephthah’s vow, found in Judges 11:29-40, is a well-known and tragic story in the Bible that raises questions about the consequences of hasty promises and the importance of understanding God’s will. Here’s a summary and explanation:

The Story:

Jephthah was a judge and warrior who led Israel against the Ammonites. Before going into battle, he made a vow to God, saying:

“If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering” (Judges 11:30-31).

Jephthah won the battle, but when he returned home, the first to come out to greet him was his only daughter. Upon seeing her, he was devastated, as his vow required him to sacrifice her. He explained the vow to his daughter, and she accepted her fate, asking only for two months to mourn her impending death. After this time, Jephthah fulfilled his vow.

Key Themes and Lessons:

1. Hasty Vows: Jephthah’s story highlights the dangers of making impulsive promises, especially when they involve significant consequences. Jephthah’s vow was made in a moment of desperation, without fully considering the potential outcomes.

2. Misunderstanding God’s Requirements: The Bible does not indicate that God demanded this vow or that He required such a sacrifice. Jephthah may have been influenced by surrounding cultures that practiced human sacrifice. The story serves as a reminder that we must carefully consider God’s nature and commands before making commitments, especially when they are not aligned with His teachings.

3. The Weight of Responsibility: Jephthah’s vow reflects the serious weight that promises carry. He believed he could not break his vow to God, even at great personal cost. This story underlines the importance of taking our words and commitments seriously.

4. Tragedy and Sorrow: This story is one of the most tragic in the Bible, emphasizing how human decisions can lead to devastating consequences. Even though Jephthah was a leader chosen to deliver Israel, his poor decision-making brought sorrow to his family.

5. The Value of Life: The Bible elsewhere condemns human sacrifice (e.g., Deuteronomy 12:31, Jeremiah 19:5), suggesting that Jephthah’s actions were out of alignment with God’s will. The story might serve as a cautionary tale against misguided zeal that disregards the sanctity of human life.

Interpretations:

Scholars and theologians have debated whether Jephthah literally sacrificed his daughter or if she was instead dedicated to a life of perpetual virginity and service to God (which was also a significant sacrifice for Jephthah and his family line). However, the text does seem to suggest that he fulfilled his vow with a literal burnt offering, which adds to the story’s tragic nature.

Conclusion:

Jephthah’s vow serves as a cautionary tale about the consequences of rash promises and the importance of aligning our decisions with God’s true nature and commands. It also illustrates that faithfulness to God requires wisdom and discernment, not merely zealous actions made in haste.

Jephthah’s tragic vow is a poignant story from the Book of Judges (Judges 11:29-40) that illustrates the severe consequences of making rash promises, especially when they involve others’ lives. Here’s a closer look at the story and its significance:

Background:

Jephthah was a judge and warrior chosen by God to lead Israel against the Ammonites. Before going into battle, he made a vow to God, promising that if God granted him victory, he would offer as a burnt sacrifice whatever first came out of the doors of his house upon his return.

The Vow:

Jephthah declared,

“If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering” (Judges 11:30-31).

He might have anticipated that an animal, as was customary, would emerge from his home. However, when he returned victorious, it was his only daughter who came out to greet him, dancing with joy. Jephthah was devastated, but he felt bound to fulfill his vow, as he had sworn it to God.

The Fulfillment of the Vow:

After realizing the implications of his promise, Jephthah told his daughter about the vow. She accepted her fate and requested two months to mourn her impending death, particularly because she would die unmarried and childless. After this period, Jephthah fulfilled his vow.

Key Themes and Lessons:

1. Consequences of Rash Promises: Jephthah’s story is a stark reminder of the dangers of making impulsive promises, especially without fully considering their potential outcomes. His vow, made in the heat of the moment, resulted in a tragic consequence that could have been avoided with foresight and caution.

2. Misunderstanding God’s Will: Nowhere in the story does it suggest that God demanded or approved of Jephthah’s vow. The Bible generally condemns human sacrifice (e.g., Deuteronomy 12:31), suggesting that Jephthah’s actions were not aligned with God’s commands. Jephthah may have been influenced by the practices of neighboring cultures, which sometimes involved human sacrifices. This shows the importance of understanding God’s true character and will before acting.

3. Tragedy of Unnecessary Zeal: Jephthah’s vow reflects misguided zeal. His desire to win the battle and prove his loyalty to God led him to make a reckless promise. While his faith and commitment were strong, his lack of wisdom and consideration led to unnecessary tragedy.

4. Moral Complexity and Humanity: The story doesn’t offer an easy resolution or explicit condemnation, which leaves readers to wrestle with the complexity of Jephthah’s choice. It raises questions about human responsibility, the weight of promises, and the need for discernment.

Interpretations and Debates:

Some scholars suggest that Jephthah’s daughter may not have been literally sacrificed but rather dedicated to a life of celibacy and service to God. However, the text leans heavily toward a literal interpretation, as it explicitly mentions a burnt offering. This ambiguity has led to various interpretations over the centuries, reflecting the story’s moral complexity.

Conclusion:

Jephthah’s tragic vow serves as a profound cautionary tale about the dangers of hasty decisions and the importance of aligning our actions with a true understanding of God’s will. It underscores the value of thoughtful, informed faith over blind, impulsive zeal and reminds readers to consider the broader consequences of their commitments.

[helainanne19]

Blog #6: The Lorax

Growing up, I remember my older sisters reading me Dr. Seuss's "The Lorax." At first glance, it seemed like another whimsical story filled with odd creatures and vibrant landscapes. However, as I grew older and revisited the tale, I began to realize the profound message it carries. "The Lorax" is not merely a children's book but a cautionary tale that warns about the consequences of environmental neglect and corporate greed. The story centers around the Once-ler, an entrepreneur who discovers the lush, Truffula Tree-filled land and sees an opportunity to profit. He begins to chop down the trees to produce and sell his invention, the Thneed, a versatile garment everyone seemingly needs. As his business booms, the environment around him starts to deteriorate. The Lorax, a small, orange creature who "speaks for the trees," warns the Once-ler about the damage he is causing, but his warnings are ignored.

As I reflect on "The Lorax," it becomes clear that it is a cautionary tale because it illustrates the devastating impact of unchecked industrialization and greed. The Once-ler's relentless pursuit of profit leads to the destruction of the Truffula Trees, the pollution of the air and water, and the displacement of various creatures who call the land their home. The Once-ler's actions serve as a metaphor for real-world environmental issues, reminding us of the importance of sustainable practices and the consequences of ignoring ecological balance. One of the most striking elements of the story is the Once-ler's transformation. Initially, he is depicted as a well-meaning entrepreneur excited about his new product's potential. However, as his business grows, he becomes increasingly consumed by greed, losing sight of the environmental destruction he is causing. This shift in character highlights how easily the lure of profit and success can overshadow one's good intentions. The Once-ler's regret is a powerful reminder that our actions have lasting consequences, and it is often too late to undo the damage once it has been done.

The Lorax himself embodies the voice of reason and conscience in the story. Despite being repeatedly ignored and dismissed, his persistent efforts to warn the Once-ler reflect the tireless work of environmental activists who strive to protect our planet. The Lorax's famous line, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not," resonates deeply. It emphasizes the idea that change starts with individual responsibility and collective action. It reminds us that we all have a role in preserving the environment for future generations. Watching "The Lorax" as an adult, I am struck by how relevant its message remains today. In an era where climate change, deforestation, and pollution are pressing global issues, the story's warning feels more urgent than ever. It encourages us to reflect on our choices and consider their environmental impact. It calls for a shift in mindset from short-term gains to long-term sustainability.

"The Lorax" is a cautionary tale because it vividly portrays the dire consequences of environmental neglect and unchecked greed. Through the Once-ler and the Lorax story, Dr. Seuss delivers a timeless message about the importance of environmental stewardship and the need for mindful, sustainable practices. It serves as a potent reminder that we must all take responsibility for the health of our planet because "unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

[newstfionline]

Sunday, March 26, 2023

Tornadoes kill 24 in 100-mile path through Mississippi, Alabama (Washington Post) Devastating tornadoes swept through parts of Mississippi and Alabama Friday night, killing at least 24 people, injuring dozens more and wreaking severe damage. Wind gusts of up to 80 mph and hail the size of golf balls battered the state as the large twisters moved more than 100 miles, an unusually long path. They left behind destruction, reducing buildings to piles of wreckage in hard-hit areas. After overnight rescues, residents and officials were taking stock of the devastation Saturday. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said that at least four people were missing and that the death toll was expected to rise.

From Rockets to Ball Bearings, Pentagon Struggles to Feed War Machine (NYT) The Navy admiral had a blunt message for the military contractors building precision-guided missiles for his warships, submarines and planes at a moment when the United States is dispatching arms to Ukraine and preparing for the possibility of conflict with China. “Look at me. I am not forgiving the fact you’re not delivering the ordnance we need. OK?” Adm. Daryl Caudle, who is in charge of delivering weapons to most of the Navy’s East Coast-based fleet, warned contractors during an industry gathering in January. “We’re talking about war-fighting, national security, and going against a competitor here and a potential adversary that is like nothing we’ve ever seen. And we can’t dillydally around with these deliveries.” His open frustration reflects a problem that has become worryingly apparent as the Pentagon dispatches its own stocks of weapons to help Ukraine hold off Russia and Washington warily watches for signs that China might provoke a new conflict by invading Taiwan: The United States lacks the capacity to produce the arms that the nation and its allies need at a time of heightened superpower tensions. Industry consolidation, depleted manufacturing lines and supply chain issues have combined to constrain the production of basic ammunition like artillery shells while also prompting concern about building adequate reserves of more sophisticated weapons including missiles, air defense systems and counter-artillery radar.

A federal judge spoke at Stanford Law School. Chaos ensued. (NYT) Stuart Kyle Duncan—a federal appeals court judge appointed by Donald Trump—visited Stanford Law School this month to give a talk. It didn’t go well. Students frequently interrupted him with heckling. One protester called for his daughters to be raped, Duncan said. When he asked Stanford administrators to calm the crowd, the associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion walked to the lectern and instead began her remarks by criticizing him. “For many people here, your work has caused harm,” she told him. After Duncan described his experience in a Wall Street Journal essay last week, the episode has received national attention and caused continuing turmoil at Stanford. The associate dean has been placed on leave. Stanford’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, and its law school dean, Jenny Martinez, have apologized to Duncan. Students responded to the apology with a protest during Martinez’s class on constitutional law. On Wednesday, Martinez wrote a 10-page public memo criticizing students’ behavior at the judge’s talk and announcing a mandatory half-day session on freedom of speech for all law students. The conflict is a microcosm of today’s political polarization. Duncan is a pugnacious conservative. His critics see him as a bully who denies basic rights to vulnerable people. His defenders call him a good conservative judge. But even many people who disagree with Duncan’s views have been bothered by the Stanford students’ behavior. Over the past few years, some American universities have seemed to back away from their historical support for free speech.

Negative words in news headlines generate more clicks (Nieman Lab) Why is all the news so negative? Maybe it’s because journalists are naturally drawn to aberrations—outliers from the norm—and those tend to be more bad than good. After all, a flight landing safely isn’t a story, but one crashing into the ocean sure is. Heck, maybe it’s because the world is just inherently a dark and depressing place—a theory the past decade or so seems ready to endorse. Or maybe it’s because it sells. News publishers, as rational economic actors, want to maximize the audience for everything they do, and there’s something about the negative lens on reality that draws eyeballs to copy. Those suspecting that last culprit find support in a new study just published in the journal Nature Human Behavio(u)r. The title says it all: “Negativity drives online news consumption.” The study found: Add a negative word to your headline—words like harm, heartbroken, ugly, troubling, angry—and get 2.3% more clicks, on average. And adding a positive word—like benefit, laughed, pretty, favorite, kind—does the opposite and keeps people from clicking.

'Mega strike' in Germany: Flights, trains and buses cancelled during mass walkout starting on Sunday (Euronews) There is likely to be widespread travel chaos across Germany early next week, after two of the country's biggest transport unions called a nationwide strike. It is set to be the biggest strikes the country has seen in 30 years. The mass strike follows a series of failed talks with employers in recent weeks.

Deutsche Bank shares drop amid global jitters over banks (AP) Shares in Deutsche Bank fell sharply Friday, dragging down other major European banks and leading German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to express confidence in the country’s largest lender after fears about the global financial system sent fresh shudders through the market. Deutsche Bank shares closed down 8.5% on the German stock exchange after falling as much as 14%. That followed a steep rise in the cost to insure bondholders against the bank defaulting on its debts, known as credit default swaps. Rising costs on insuring debt were also a prelude to Swiss lender Credit Suisse’s government-backed rescue by rival UBS. Like Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank is one of 30 globally significant financial institutions, with international rules requiring it to hold higher levels of capital reserves because its failure could cause widespread losses.

Thousands of civilians ‘at the limit of existence’ in Ukraine’s Bakhmut, Red Cross says (Reuters) Some 10,000 Ukrainian civilians, many elderly and with disabilities, are clinging on to existence in horrific circumstances in and around the besieged city of Bakhmut, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Friday. Russian forces have been trying for months to capture the city in Europe’s bloodiest infantry battle since World War Two. Several thousand are estimated to remain in the city itself, said the ICRC’s Umar Khan, who has been providing them with aid in recent days. “For the civilians that are stuck there, they are living in very dire conditions, spending almost the entire days in intense shelling in the [underground] shelters,” he told a Geneva press briefing by video link from Dnipro in Ukraine. “All you see is people pushed to the very limits of their existence and survival and resilience.”

Ukraine using Soviet-era choppers to pummel Russia from afar (AP) Skimming the treetops, three Soviet-era attack helicopters bank and swoop down on a field after an early-morning mission to the front lines in the fight against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Each day, they might fly three or four sorties, says the commander, whose two-crew Mi-24 helicopter, built about 40 years ago, is older than he is. “We are carrying out combat tasks to destroy enemy vehicles, enemy personnel, we are working with pitch-up attacks from a distance from where the enemy can’t get us with their air defense system,” said the commander. The conflict in Ukraine is largely an artillery war, with territory being fought for inch by inch under a barrage of shells and missiles. But Ukraine’s aviation capabilities play a significant role in the fight, the pilot said.

Little room for maneuver as U.S.-China ties slide further (Reuters) President Joe Biden said last month after a U.S. fighter jet shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon that he planned to speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping about the episode and clear the air between the rival superpowers. Five weeks later, the call still hasn’t happened. Instead, after two months of diplomatic sniping and Xi’s trip this week to Moscow where he and Russian President Vladimir Putin jointly denounced the United States, U.S.-China relations have slid to what some say is the worst since the countries normalized ties in the 1970s. Further complicating matters are stopovers in the United States next week and in early April by Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen. “This is not a good moment for American diplomacy,” said William Kirby, a professor of Chinese studies at Harvard University. “In past times, when the relationship encountered a major dip, as after the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 or the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995-96, the two countries made serious efforts to reestablish a stable foundation under their relations,” said Michael Swaine, a China expert at the Quincy Institute. “Now a deepening level of suspicion, vitriol, and finger-pointing dominate almost all exchanges, preventing substantive engagement.”

Saudi Arabia, Syria may restore ties as Mideast reshuffles (AP) Saudi Arabia is in talks with Syria to reopen its embassy in the war-torn nation for the first time in a decade, the latest diplomatic reshuffling in the region. The announcement on state TV comes after Chinese-mediated talks in Beijing saw Saudi Arabia and Iran agree to reopen embassies in each others’ nations after years of tensions. Syrian President Bashar Assad has maintained his grip on power in the Mediterranean nation rocked by the 2011 Arab Spring only with the help of Iran and Russia, which made a historic call earlier in the day to Oman. Arabic-language media had been reporting the possible detente in recent days ahead of the Saudi state TV announcement. The Wall Street Journal, quoting anonymous Saudi and Syrian officials, attributed the talks to reopen the countries’ embassies to Russian mediation.

Millions in African countries need power (AP) From Zimbabwe, where many must work at night because it’s the only time there is power, to Nigeria where collapses of the grid are frequent, the reliable supply of electricity remains elusive across Africa. The electricity shortages that plague many of Africa’s 54 countries are a serious drain on the continent’s economic growth, energy experts warn. In recent years South Africa’s power generation has become so inadequate that the continent’s most developed economy must cope with rolling power blackouts of eight to 10 hours per day. Africa’s sprawling cities have erratic supplies of electricity but large swaths of the continent’s rural areas have no power at all. In 2021, 43% of Africans—about 600 million people—lacked access to electricity with 590 million of them in sub‐Saharan Africa, according to the International Energy Agency.

Zimbabwe’s Latest Creative Currency: a Slice of Cheese (WSJ) Zimbabwe, the country that brought the world the one-hundred-trillion-dollar bill, has reached a new stage of monetary dysfunction. Because of a lack of small change, businesses have started printing their own “money”—scraps of paper, sometimes handwritten, that customers can use to pay for future purchases. Others are handing out change in-kind, making customers whole with juice boxes, pens or slices of cheese. The paper chits and other pecuniary workarounds are the latest products of two decades of extreme mismanagement of Zimbabwe’s currency.

Space Junk (Bloomberg) A new study out of NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy sought to figure out the most cost-effective way of dealing with the problem of space junk, which imperils the 7,200 working satellites in orbit. They’re also joined in orbit by 36,500 objects larger than 4 inches in size, 1 million objects between 0.4 and 4 inches in size, and 130 million pieces of debris smaller than that. Obviously, this is a problem, and there are lots of ideas to solve it, from space tug boats that clean space junk for costs of $6 billion to smaller hypothetical craft that could move small junk out of the way for $900,000 per kilogram of debris. But the reality is, the most cost-effective thing to do is just to keep moving satellites out of the way. The paper put the cost of doing that at $58 million a year for satellite operators, which is a lot of money, but also way less in the long run than the proposed alternatives would command. Indeed, the estimated cost of moving a $500 million satellite out of the way of some junk was $699, which is pretty reasonable.

[wonda-cat]

i love your character analysis posts, and how you always manage to understand motivations and overall personalities so well—and i’ve been wondering what your view-point on tubbo is?

Aw thanks, anon! That's really flattering.

Tubbo is such an incredible character, I cannot overstate it enough. Not only is he top-tier in regards to his subtlety with development and performance, but he's also one of the most misunderstood characters in the entire cast (on a similar level to c!Tommy, c!Quackity, and c!Wilbur.) People are oddly quick to reduce him down to a singular digestible role, one which fixes him into a permanent "other half to a duo" situation, rather than as an independent character.

First he's the 'innocent bee boy,' and when he breaks that mold he's 'Tommy's goofy side-kick' and when he breaks that he's 'unhinged nuke boy.' Then he's the 'resident chaos incarnate'��the list goes on and it'll probably go on forever. These character generalizations are all accurate to some extent but they aren't c!Tubbo in single servings.

The reality is all of these are c!Tubbo. He has a soft side, he has a chaotic side, he's a goofy best friend, and he can be unhinged; it's just that these parts of him become more pronounced as his development progresses. It's a subtle kind of character development, similar to c!Tommy's, where their shifts are so natural and gradual you won't notice them until you watch a clip of them from the very beginning of the story for comparison.

They manifest as small, telling things—a good example would be Tubbo's consistency at defaulting to an overly polite attitude around authority figures in order to ease tension. The way he responds to c!Schlatt during Manburg is like night and day to how he responded to c!Quackity during the Outpost discussion. While he is still polite, the way he carries himself is more confident.

He's not afraid to upset Quackity because he's learned since Doomsday that he cannot afford to play passively with people who potentially would otherwise want him dead or his home destroyed. No politeness can calm a man like c!Dream forever—if someone wants something bad enough, c!Tubbo would only be a temporary roadblock to be trampled over at a later date.

Another thing I'd like to mention is cc!Tubbo's method of acting because it's actually great and I'm so devastated cc!Tubbo thinks his acting isn't up to snuff. Genuinely, I believe he has some of the most naturally delivered lines, ever. Most often, it's better to have the words you speak sound genuine and real, rather than well-worded and poetic.

Even the tamest, most lukewarm dialogue can be made great with great delivery alone. He absolutely nails this during the Season Two finale as well as the scene with c!Wilbur at the L'Manburg crater. The sincerity with which he says how he's been hurt—he's incredible at sounding in tears or on the verge of tears.

This isn't even mentioning just how genius of a plot development it was to have c!Tubbo become L'Manburg's third president and be forced to exile his own best friend and watch his own country fall—someone who started off so innocent and hopeful, one who never thought himself worthy. Being a kid forced into a position of such stress and responsibility and trying to keep everything together desperately, only to watch it slip through his hands and come out the other side blaming himself.

Tubbo is hard to beat out in terms of pure tragedy. I hope c!Tubbo gets more chances to shine in the future. He deserves a climactic conclusion to his current arc.

[iconic-ponytail]

there's always money in the banana stand

riverdale promptathon week 3: yellow + business

Even as the sun sets, even as the breeze blows, the hell furnace of July in Riverdale burns on. It’s triply as sweltering inside the tiny booth running three freezers, offloading heat to sustain the frozen merchandise inside. “How can it be so hot in there when we are supposed to be selling frozen bananas?” JB complains, at least twice a week.

She’s twelve. Complaint is her new first language. She complains about being left in Riverdale while Gladys went back to Toledo. She complains about living in a trailer park that usually does not have warm water. She complains about their father being imprisoned for covering up a gruesome murder. But most of all, she complains about working in the banana stand.

Child labor laws aside, Jughead can’t blame her for that one. He hates the damn banana stand, but it’s their best shot.

Gladys’ monthly check covers rent and utilities for the trailer. Everything else is on him, now. The idiot eighteen year old who decided to petition the court to be his sister’s legal guardian. Well, and his idiot mom who signed off on it. So he needs money, and the Jones family has never been particularly flush with cash, just trampled over by FP’s failed “business opportunities.”

Enter: the banana stand.

It’s not the fastest revenue stream, Jughead finds. But it’s got potential.

Initially, Dilton doesn’t let him sell during the Twilight Drive-In’s concession stand hours. Before or after the movie, sure, but no overlap. “I’m not worried about competition, Jones. It’s just too humiliating for me to watch you sweat through that horrible yellow polo you call ‘branding.’”

But when customers asked him more than twice a night when the banana stand would be open, Dilton caved.

It’s not like being open during the screening hours is a whole lot more preferable. He only just transferred from Southside to Riverdale High last spring; now he’s the rising senior who hands out phallic symbols from inside a giant phallic symbol. Not exactly a boon to his popularity.

Still, recently the money is enough to pay the internet bill and keep JB fed for dinner when she can’t go to the summer breakfast and lunch program at the local park district. It’s still not enough for him to eat particularly well, and the smell of hot dogs and slurp of his classmates’ slushies makes the heat feel like a minor inconvenience.

He eyes the tip jar, willing himself to wait on rampaging the concession stand until the beginning of the film roar dies down. It’s a double feature tonight, which means maybe he can score enough cash to cover those damn college application fees his counselor will start hounding him about week one of school.

Then he sees her—Betty Cooper. She’s laughing, watching Archie Andrews try to catch popcorn in his mouth, tossed by his paramour, Veronica Lodge. She pauses to sip from her slushie straw, her lips—which he’s watched argue against homophobic and racist comments in their advanced lit class, or pressed to the cheek of her other best friend, Kevin Keller. Which he’s imagined, doing slightly less savory things, though the mere thought of said imagining has his heart pounding wildly.

(Jughead’s been eating way too many fucking bananas. Someone needs to check his potassium levels.)

His absolutely pathetic gaze, once available three times a day in their shared classes where Jughead has still not managed to exert any confidence whatsoever regarding speech, eye contact, or general acknowledgement of Betty Cooper’s existence other than whatever drooling may or may not be happening, all of which he finds he has no control over… is all interrupted by the absolute polar opposite of Betty Cooper. Hiram Lodge zooms up to the banana stand on his segway, angling to a stop just before taking out the stand’s foundation.

“Still getting a hang of that, Mayor Lodge?”

Hiram grimaces. “Just checking that you’ve renewed your business permit, Jones.”

They do this once a week. It’s still the same permit.

“You know,” Hiram starts as Jughead rustles for the paperwork to make him go the fuck away, “I could find you an arrangement with a better banana supplier. For a discount. If you’re interested.”

Jughead rolls his eyes. “I’m not interested in your GMO, black market bananas, Hiram.”

Hiram gives him a pointed look. Jughead rolls his eyes even harder. “Mayor Lodge.” He proffers the papers, Hiram waves them away. “I’ll take one chocolate peanut butter dip. With peanuts.”

Jughead kisses his teeth. “That will be $3.50.”

Hiram’s whole face goes serpentine. “Not between business partners, Jones. Put it on my tab.”

Jughead grits his teeth, handing the finished banana so aggressively he hopes that the chocolate splatters and stains Hiram’s $500 tie. It is only slightly worth it to watch Hiram struggle with navigating the segway one-handed, frozen banana in the other.

He muffles a chuckle before realizing he’s used the dead end of the chopped peanut topping, and exits the stand to update the order board hanging on the outside. It’s mostly an excuse to feel a ten degree drop in temperature, a sweet relief he might be able to extend by grabbing a hot dog before the intermission rush.

He’s crossing off peanuts from the topping list and spinning around when he hears a shriek and a sudden, cold slosh across his chest. The yellow polo drips with artificial blue slushie, but Jughead swallows his fucking hell when he sees that the shriek, gaping stare of horror, and stumble in question all belong to his very own blonde kryptonite.

“Oh my god. Oh my GOD, jesus, shit, I’m so sorry!”

Jughead is frozen while Betty grabs about half his napkin dispenser and starts pawing at his shirt in a vain attempt to right the giant sticky blue mess all over his chest.

Finally, Jughead swallows the golf ball in his throat and chokes out. “Honestly, it’s fine. That stand is a sauna. I needed that.”

Betty stops, both her blotting and her stream of apologizing (which includes a fair bit of cursing, and he is a little revolted with himself by how much this turns him on).

“It’s going to get very sticky, soon. Maybe I should buy a bottle of cold water?”

Jughead can’t help himself. “Oh, impromptu yellow t-shirt contest?”

Betty grins.

I did that.

“Do you have any employees who could bring you another shirt?”

Jughead shakes his head. “Just my sister. She’s playing video games at home. There’s no earthly way she’ll bring me a spare.”

Betty cocks her head. “I had a feeling you were more than the silent back row kind of guy.”

The fact that Betty Cooper has, at any point, considered what kind of guy he is triggers full-on nervous blathering. “I’m usually very tired at school. I have this little sister—but I’m kind of um, her guardian. So I’m doing this stupid banana stand thing because it’s like one of the three assets to our entire family name I guess? Anyway, it’s hard to engage with Haggly’s basic discussion questions at eight in the morning when you spent the whole night dreaming about wholesale banana margins.”

He’s essentially vomiting words, but Betty is still smiling.

“Anyway, I should crawl back into my fruit-shaped purgatory and let you go back to your friends.”

She’s biting her lip, hedging. “Honestly, they’re probably using the alone time to make out in the car, and I’d rather let them get all their sexual tension out so that I don’t have to feel it radiating off of them for the whole second half of the double feature.”

Jughead laughs and tamps down the impulse to offer her a frozen banana, because he cannot possibly say something like that without making it sound sexual.

“What are frozen banana profit margins like, anyway?” Betty asks, either genuinely interested or legitimately flirting with him. Jughead finds both potentials baffling.

Jughead hesitates, then ducks inside the stand, pulling out his spiral bound notebook. “I’m still kind of figuring it out. All my records are in here.”

Betty sidles up to the stand, taking up the whole window. They’re both leaning over the scribbled line items on college ruled paper; he can smell her shampoo. She takes the notebook, scanning thoroughly.

“Do you have a pencil?”

He hands her one and observes her going to work, writing out some algebraic formula and calculating quickly in her head. There is a calculator within his reach, but he thinks handing it to her might come off as an insult. (Jughead wouldn’t know; he assumes Betty is in an advanced math class. Jughead is not.)

After a few minutes of watching her devoted focus, thinking about her hands touching his pencil, thinking about her hands wrapped around his hand, or his—

“I don’t know how to tell this to you, Jug.”

The shortening of his name stops his heart for a jolt, and his response is embarrassingly delayed. “What is it?”

Betty winces but smiles through it, a combination she’s surely learned to use when delivering bad news. It’s well earned, it really does soften the blow.

“There’s no money in the banana stand. At least, not with these margins.”

Jughead finds himself less than devastated by this news, mostly because it makes a hell of a lot of sense. The messenger doesn’t hurt, either.

“But,” she interrupts. “I don’t know if you’ve nailed down your course load for senior year. But I’m taking AP Econ? This could be, um, a good project. Like, if you want to take the class. Or even if you don’t. Not that you’re like a project or… whatever. I’m just saying we could figure it out. Make lemonade out of… bananas.”

Betty Cooper is extremely cute when she stammers.

Jughead doesn’t know what to do, so he gives her an easy out. “I can’t like, hire you, if that wasn’t obvious by the whole… deficit spending or whatever the whole negative circled number at the bottom of the page really means.”

She flushes. “No, that would be highway robbery. I just thought there might be an… opportunity. For um, us. I mean, for you and I. I mean—” she clears her throat, as if it’s closing up. “An academic opportunity. Or, in your case, professional. Well, a betterment of your livelihood. Okay, um, shit, just… I should go!”

She turns away, her face the deepest scarlet he’s ever seen.

“Betty, wait.”

She pivots back, eyes down at the ground.

“How about I buy you a new slushie and you come back into the booth. Tell me everything I’m doing wrong for the rest of the night.”

Betty looks up, biting the corner of her smile. “Sounds like a deal.”

They shake on it.

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

please. i can’t do this alone.

Titans 3.01

thoughts! thoughts! thoughts! some red hot thoughts!

SPOILERS ahead.

1. one episode in, and this season already looks set to give me everything i want. its abandonment of plot and storytelling conventions as it goes from one point to the next at breakneck speed; its cheerful bastardisation of iconic storylines from the comics; the ‘as-you-know-bob’ clunky exposition on one end and extremely restrained, subtle explorations of complex character dynamics on the other; endless shots of neon bleeding into black and blue corridors, shadows and silhouettes; my delight in seeing it celebrate and deconstruct the dark nolan-y batman aesthetic at the same time; my bafflement that it’s so fucking goddamn obsessed with the batfam when it’s supposed to be about the TITANS; kory just... saving every overburdened, clunky scene that she’s in by her sparkling charisma. just... *chef’s kiss*. muah. my show is back, in all its glory.

MY SHOW IS BACK, Y’ALL!

1.5. i mean... this show is so artful and weird and not afraid to go absolutely bonkers in exploring its characters’ psyche, but can just about barely stage a passable comic book fight when every tom dick and harry and their new streaming services can deliver ones that are far more exciting. i love this show with every atom of my body.

(there’s something to be said about rooting for the underdog as well. a pleasure in finding something to love about what other people dismiss. but! enough navel gazing! i have fictional characters’ navels to look at! metaphorically! and maybe literally!)

2. i expected jason’s death to come about pretty early in the season as soon as i heard rumours that red hood was showing up, but for it to happen in the first five minutes of the first episode... that’s a record. 

(well. “happen.” still don’t know what exactly went down there.)

2.25. GOD. jason is such a tortured and tragic character in this show, used and passed around by people with alleged good intentions, never really fitting in anywhere. he’s veritably bleeding vulnerability and the need to belong, the need to be known, and yet the tragedy is that his death proves that nobody in his life knew anything about him at all; that they only saw the flimsy walls he put up to protect his soft core, and thought that that was all there was. that they say they loved him, but blame him for his own death. 

dick is flabbergasted that jason can read, though we know from last season, from what jason revealed to rose, that he has a love for plays and music. barbara is quick to dismiss his actions as ‘impulsive’. bruce has no idea that his supposed son was building his own little chemistry lab right under his nose, and beyond that, no idea that jason needed structure, stability and validation beyond being left alone in a huge house with a treasure trove of dangerous weapons. kory thought his decision to fight the joker was from not learning and growing when the guy tried to kill himself last season and nobody apart from dick even tried to talk to him about it! did you consider that he might still be suicidal? especially after the titans admitted to having “given up” on him because he was just “too hard”?

2.5. the one thing that’s been consistent across all three seasons (so far) of the show is the unreliable narrator trope. there’s a reason why the characters’ dismissals of jason’s actions as impulsive is so repetitive; why jason’s death is a mystery dick feels compelled to solve. it’s a flailing attempt to know his brother much too late--but with red hood, maybe he gets a second chance, just like he got one with the titans. this is what jason’s arc has been building up to. this is ‘death in the family’ but more fucked up in some ways. it didn’t linger on the death because the death wasn’t the point. the joker isn’t the point. everything that came before it is.

this way it will also make perfect sense that the red hood’s main enemy becomes the titans rather than batman.

2.75. goodness knows what’s going on with jason’s little chemistry project. at first i thought he was immunising himself to joker gas or something, but maybe it’s what passes for lazarus pit juice in this universe? 

anyway, it’s pretty impressive that jason learnt all of that from a college chemistry textbook. STOP BRINGING UP THAT HE READ SOMETHING, DICK--

2.8. i’m glad that dick doesn’t immediately sink into self-loathing and guilt and tries to investigate jason’s death while also acknowledging how he failed him. it’s like he actually learned something from the last two years! 

anyway. more about dick later. 

3. oh how i love titans!bruce. a lot of characters had a lot of Opinions on his reaction to jason’s death in this episode, but again, i ask you to consider that they’re unreliable narrators, and this universe’s bruce is a product of how it shaped him. bruce wayne has become a phantom to himself--an artifice borne out of vigorous discipline and crushing self-denial. 

bruce has been batman for a very long time, and without a robin for much longer. (dick must be... in his early thirties? so he was robin for about, say, 10-12 years according to the timeline of the show. that still makes bruce pretty old when he took on his first robin.) things have... calcified (possibly parts of his brain). the personal cost and the collateral from the mission he’s taken up for most of his life is too much to countenance; it has to be a war, and war requires sacrifice. 

on some level bruce knows that’s a lie. he’s so goddamned alone. what’s he going to do? sit down and cry? who’s going to listen to him now? oh, is he going to just stop being batman? who’s going to stop gotham from consuming herself then? he’ll just have to forge ahead, do better next time, maybe he’ll be firmer with them, or kinder with them, or notice more things, or train them harder, or spend more time--

3.25. don’t get me wrong: titans!bruce is an asshole and a half. his roster of potential robins was honestly bone-chilling. the fact that there’s a twisted root of compassion makes it more disturbing. 

3.5. alfred’s dead! it must’ve been pretty recent, because i could’ve sworn that dick tried to call alfred in the very first episode of season 1, or at least considered calling him... 

what a devastating double-blow for bruce then, losing his father-figure and his, uh.... son-figure so close together.

4. i don’t know about barbara yet. i mean, i like her, but she had so much clunky expository dialogue to deliver this episode, and for an episode that was named after her, she only showed up halfway through it. but i like the weight of history behind her interactions with both bruce and dick and her compassion to bruce before he cruelly crossed a line. i also like the implication that she and dick have been in touch recently, and that she didn’t immediately try to guilt-trip dick about some perceived abandonment. it’d be too repetitive.

4.5. there’s also a sense that she ran interference for dick a lot whenever there was something Too Big and Emotional for him to confront directly, and i like and appreciate that character beat.

5. dick, my man! it really does feel like a substantial length of time has passed between the end of s2 and the beginning of s3... kory’s got a new costume, they’ve become celebrities in SF, working missions together, and dick’s actually smiling! genuinely enjoying his work and having fun with it for possibly the first time in the entire series! it’s really a far cry from the fractured, dysfunctional mess that they were at the end of the last season.

i just hope this doesn’t mean that they’ve magically reached a resolution off-screen to all of their fucked-upness from last season, and that the repercussions--for gar in particular--are actually addressed on screen. 

5.25. i mentioned this briefly above, but it really is so refreshing that dick doesn’t wallow in guilt and self-loathing after jason’s death; he acknowledges his and the titans’ failure, is able to admit to barbara honestly that he’s not doing great, and is actively trying to reach out to bruce to make sure he’s ok, is trying to investigate what made jason seek out the joker on his own, and is probably the only person not immediately buying that it was jason’s recklessness that got him killed. i love that dick is finally beginning to trust his instincts or just employ them at all after years of guilt and paranoia and self-loathing. we love some positive character growth!

5.5. another thing i love? the bruce-dick interactions on this show. every scene they’re in together is so fraught with tension, both of them holding themselves back, their emotions on a whipcord-tight leash. dick wants to reach out to bruce, is even somewhat familiar with this brand of denial in the wake of grief, but wants barbara to make the first move because he genuinely does not know how to get bruce to open up. his instincts are right, and wonderful, and genuine, but his expression has been smothered by years of trauma, emotional and physical self-discipline, and what i suspect is poorly treated mental illness. 

it takes a lot for him to finally explode at bruce at the end of the episode--in a way he hasn’t done even when his only opinion of bruce was ‘fuck him’--and it’s all the more startling for how subdued he’s been through the episode, how much he’s been holding back his emotions for bruce’s sake. love it.

5.75. it sort of hurts my heart to see the flying graysons poster in jason’s room. there are a few implications:

a) jason settled into dick’s old room despite living in a giant mansion with dozens of other rooms he could’ve used

b) he didn’t take down dick’s poster--not when he moved in and was idolising him, not when he moved out of the titans and was sort of hating him. i wonder if the reminder of what dick was before robin--that he was forged out of unspeakable tragedy--gave jason the connection to dick that he so desperately wanted in real life

c) dick moved right back into the room and slept on the bed that was now jason’s. grief can be so quiet and piecemeal sometimes.

6. i spy the beginnings of actual arcs for both gar and kory! i just hope that with the move to gotham their stories don’t fall to the wayside...

6.5. i’ve known tim drake for less than ten minutes but if anything were to happen to him i’d kill everybody 

7. this review has gone on for too long and i am tiRED. however, before i leave: i miss some of the dedication-to-aesthetic that titans season 1 used to have. remember how the first few episodes didn’t really feel like a superhero show but something out of gothic horror? there was something gorgeous and raw about that, about open landscapes and the road and creepy buildings looming up at the end of it. moving to titans tower in s2 really ruined a lot of that for me, given its ripped-from-architectural-digest aesthetic, all smooth and clean and artificial. 

i hope that we really explore gotham’s hellscape in interesting and innovative ways instead of camping out in the batcave all the time and indulging in the show’s unending love for long corridors, neon backlights and silhouettes.

8.....

9.  wait, fuck, HOW CAN I FORGET ABOUT HOT PSYCHIATRIST GUY (TM)??? NONE of you prepared me for his return! NONE OF YOU! i gasped! i got up and did a happy dance! 

listen, titans writers, if you’ve had a peek at my titans s3 wishlist, please go ahead and give the other items on the list a go too, thankyouverymuch.

[veronicamarsconfessions]

Editor’s Note: TV moves on, but we haven’t. In our feature series It Still Stings, we relive emotional TV moments that we just can’t get over. You know the ones, where months, years, or even decades later, it still provokes a reaction? We’re here for you. We rant because we love. Or, once loved. And obviously, when discussing finales in particular, there will be spoilers:

There was a time when Veronica Mars’ legacy was that of a beloved cult show that was canceled too soon by network executives who didn’t understand it. With the arrival of a crowd-funded feature film in 2014, its legacy evolved as one of the first shows to see the benefits of a revival. Now, it simply brings thoughts of sadness, rage, and betrayal.

When Hulu first announced it was reviving the series for an eight-episode fourth season, the news was met with resounding joy from a vocal and passionate fanbase that had never given up hope it would return after the crowd-funded feature film reunited Kristen Bell’s Veronica, a pint-sized private eye with a sharp mind and even sharper wit, with her one true love, the reformed bad boy Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring). But the fire that had burned for more than a decade and twice-revived the show was suddenly extinguished in a single, heartbreaking, and wholly unnecessary moment when Logan was killed by a bomb left in Veronica’s car shortly after the couple exchanged wedding vows.

I can still remember the shock I felt when I reached the end of the screeners Hulu sent. The whole thing felt kind of surreal, like if I didn’t acknowledge what had happened out loud maybe it didn’t actually happen. But it did happen. And I’m still filled with a fiery rage and a deep sadness when I think about it now, nearly two years removed from the episode in question, because needlessly killing Logan was a betrayal of the worst kind. The character’s untimely demise felt engineered for nothing more than shock value, like it existed only to leave Veronica even more isolated and cynical. But the interviews that series creator Rob Thomas gave in the aftermath, in which he tried to defend the decision, revealed something much worse while only driving the knife he’d stuck in fans’ backs deeper.

“In order for us to keep doing these, I think it needs to become a detective show—a noir, mystery, detective show—and those elements of teenage soap need to be behind us,” Thomas told TV Guide of the decision to kill Logan, noting that he also hoped to take Veronica out of Neptune and on the road in potential future seasons. “I sort of viewed these eight episodes as a bridge to what Veronica Mars might be moving forward.”

Instead of being a bridge to the future, it was a bridge to a grave of Thomas’ own making. Not since How I Met Your Mother ignored literal years of character development to deliver a half-cooked series finale the creators had come up with several years prior has a show felt so out of touch with its characters, the story it was telling, and its fans. Thomas’ decision to kill Logan is the perfect example of a creator being unable to recognize their own biases to the detriment of their creation.

He wrongly believed that Veronica needed to be hardened by years of nonstop torment and trauma in order to prove she was a great detective whose story was worth continuing. In putting her through the emotional wringer (again) after spending the entire season attempting to dig into her flaws and determine the root of her problems, Thomas swiftly undermined his heroine and her trauma with one misguided act of devastating violence. The fact that Thomas then chose to also skip over Veronica’s grieving process entirely reveals how little he ultimately thought of Logan or Veronica’s relationship with him, which had pushed her to be better and work through her longtime trust issues.

It is common knowledge by now that Logan was not intended to be Veronica’s love interest when the show debuted, but the fans took to the character more than they took to Teddy Dunn’s Duncan “He Used to Be My Boyfriend” Kane, so the latter was jettisoned from the show after Season 2. And in the end, Logan turned out to be a much better partner and match for Veronica’s personality. So what’s truly unfortunate about Thomas killing Logan, and killing him so violently, is that his thought process during Season 4 has the potential to color everything that happened in the show up until the moment the bomb went off. There is also the issue that Thomas apparently believed that Veronica achieving some level of romantic happiness was a one-way ticket to the grave, as if shows like Friday Night Lights hadn’t already soundly debunked the myth that happy couples did not make great TV.

Obviously an emotional family drama does not play by the same rules as noir, but Veronica Mars had already proven that you don’t need to play firmly within the sandbox of the genre to excel creatively. So why should the more adult version of the show attempt to put itself back in the box to be confined to something more traditional or stereotypical? Furthermore, love and contentment are not character flaws or weaknesses. They are not an element of “teenage soap,” as Thomas put it. In fact, one could argue that by allowing herself to believe that she and Logan could have a happy future together regardless of everything she’d witnessed in her line of work, Veronica had shown more personal and emotional growth in the show’s fourth season than she had in the entire run of the series.

At the heart of the matter, though, is one simple, glaring truth: Logan’s death was a fundamental misreading of the entire Veronica Mars fandom and what they liked about the show. Storytelling should never be dictated by the fans and their desires—one of the loudest and most common complaints critics had about the movie was that it felt too much like Thomas was just giving the fans what they wanted rather than attempting to tell a good story—but when your fandom has dug their hands into the cold soil of the TV graveyard to raise your show from the dead, you should probably have a grasp on what exactly the fans like about it in the first place. After all, they’re the reason you still exist and will be one of the final arbiters of whether or not you get to continue to exist in the future. And the idea that fans would somehow be interested in watching a version of Veronica Mars in which Veronica was on the road, completely alone, and Logan was blown to bits is just a wild miscalculation.

This isn’t to suggest Veronica Mars could not ever survive without Logan. That would be to undercut the rest of the show and the woman Veronica has become since we first saw her cutting Wallace (Percy Daggs III) off the flagpole in the series’ pilot. But there is a difference in writing Logan out of the show’s ongoing story arc—his secretive Naval career offered the perfect out—and violently killing him in an attempt to shock viewers and show just how resilient your heroine is in the face of trauma. A survivor of rape who had to solve the murder of her best friend (Amanda Seyfried) while still in high school because the sheriff’s department was too inept to do it (or simply did not care to do it), Veronica had already been through more in her young life than anyone should ever have to live through.

Although Logan’s death led to her finally seeing a therapist, it seemed to be a one-time thing, so nothing has really changed. Veronica is still the same person she was before the show returned, except now she’s also a widow and Thomas has alienated an entire fanbase to the point that many fans, though likely not all, have no interest in revisiting her story. And they’re not likely to either, since Hulu chose not to move forward with another season.

So much for that bridge to the future.

[mochegato]

Hope on Board

Chapter 28 – You Can Never Go Home Again

Chapter 1     Chapter 27

“Okay Ms. Dupain-Cheng,” the doctor said pushing away from the hospital bed in the birthing center and pulling off her gloves.  “You are completely effaced.  We are definitely ready to go.”

Marinette looked up at Dick, an absolutely panicked expression on her face before looking over to the doctor.  “What?  What about an epidural?  We had a birthing plan.  It included an epidural.”

The doctor gave her a sympathetic look and shook her head slightly.  “I understand, but it appears the universe had other plans.  We are too far along for an epidural.  You’re going to be pushing before the anesthesiologist will even be able to get here.”

“Fuck you,” she scoffed.  Her eyes immediately widened at her words.  “I’m sorry that was… I’m sorry.  Doctor Graham, was it?” she clarified.  The doctor nodded.  Marinette smiled in response, which quickly turned into a grimace and scream as another contraction hit.  “Fuck you, Dr. Graham,” she growled.

“There isn’t any way to get the anesthesiologist up there faster?” Dick tried, desperate for any way to help Marinette feel less scared and less pain.

Dr. Graham chuckled at Marinette’s outburst.  “I get that a lot.  Unfortunately, no.  There’s nothing I can do.  The anesthesiologist is with another patient right now and won’t be able to get here for about twenty minutes or more.  I expect at least the first baby to already be born by then, maybe both,” she informed them earnestly.  “Sorry. It took too long to get you here.”

“Well sorry for getting kidnapped by some bird obsessed cult,” Marinette gritted out after another contraction passed.

Dr. Graham looked over to Dick who shrugged at her.  “The bats just saved her and we rushed right here.”  Dr. Graham shook her head.  Honestly, not the strangest thing she’d heard in Gotham. “We will need extra security because of it,” Dick added.

“We can have police in with the babies,” Dr. Graham assured him.

“Oh Hell no,” Marinette grunted.

“Police officers were the ones to deliver her to the cult,” Dick explained, running his hand up and down Marinette’s arm in a soothing motion.

Dr. Graham nodded, again, not too surprising.  “Do you have an alternative?” she asked as she gave orders to the nurses to get the room set up for the birth.

Dick shrugged distractedly, his focus on the pained expression Marinette was making and the way her body was curling in pain.  “We can work something out.  The bats seemed to know something about the cult.  They might be willing to help keep watch.”

“Yeah, maybe we can focus on the baby trying to come out right now, yeah?” Marinette growled between pants.

“Of course,” Doctor Graham said kindly.  “We’re already getting everything ready and I’ll let you know when to start pushing.”

Marinette nodded silently.  She looked over to Dick, her look of annoyance with the situation turning to a look of panic.  She was not ready for this.  She was not ready for the twins to be born.  She didn’t have everything settled.  She and Dick hadn’t talked.  She didn’t know where they stood.  They hadn’t talked about where they were going to stay.  She hadn’t even processed the kidnapping yet.

“It’ll be okay,” he cooed at her soothingly.  He took her hand in his, bringing it to his chest as he wiped her sweaty hair away from her face.  He looked lovingly in her eyes and gently rubbed his thumb along her cheek.  “You can do this.  You’re the strongest person I know.  You’re amazing.”  He kissed her temple.  “I’ll be right here to support you however I can.  Feel free to try to break my hand while you push.”

Marinette huffed out a short laugh.  “I might take you up on that.”  She breathed through another contraction, squeezing his hand and groaning loudly as it crested.

“Go ahead,” he assured her.  “I can take it.  I have the easy part.”  He gave her a soft smile, until she turned to face the doctor and grimaced while her focus was elsewhere.  She might actually break his hand at this rate.  “Just focus on the end.  When this is all over, we’re going to have two beautiful babies just as amazing as their mother.”  She looked back up at him, uncertainty clear, but fading.  “The universe can’t take you down.  The Court of Owls couldn’t take you down.  You can do this,” he whispered confidently.  She nodded at him, a look of determination settling in as she felt the start of the next contraction.

“Alright Ms. Dupain-Cheng.  It’s time to push,” Dr. Graham informed her with a smile.

<><><><><> 

“I’ve been thinking…” Dick started, looking over cautiously to Marinette.  She was sitting in a glider in the twins’ NICU room attempting to nurse Robert.  Robert was doing extremely well, but his sucking reflex was still developing, making latching on more difficult for him than it was for Lucy.  Lucy was resting comfortably on Dick’s bare chest, enjoying skin to skin contact under the simulated sun lamps.  Her black hair sticking up above the blanket wrapped around her and Dick.

Marinette gave him a tired smile.  “About?” she prompted.

“Living arrangements when Lucy and Robert are ready to go home.  Robert’s doing a lot better now.  I think he’ll be ready to go home in a few days.  Lucy will probably be ready sooner,” he answered, turning to be able to make eye contact with Marinette while they talked. It had been a few days since the twins had been born and they still hadn’t had a chance to really talk. Between the coordination of taking care of the twins and making sure there were eyes on them at all times and the exhaustion on Marinette’s system from delivering the babies and after the kidnapping, there hadn’t really been time.

“Dick, I…” she started looking away guiltily.

“I know you’re not ready to date let alone move back in together,” he assured her gently, “this isn’t about that,” he assured her gently.  “This is about their safety.  The Court of Owls isn’t eliminated.  They have multiple strongholds.  This was a hard hit, but they aren’t gone.”  He ran his hand through his hair and looked away nervously. “I don’t even think the apartment is safe.”

“The prophecy,” she nodded, tickling Robert’s cheek to try to get him to open his mouth wider.  “This isn’t over is it?”  

Dick shook his head.  “I don’t think so.  It’ll take a while for them to recover, but I think they’ll be back.”

She sighed sadly and tried to focus entirely on Robert so Dick wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes at the thought of them returning, the thought that they would never truly be safe until the Court was completely eliminated.  She ran her hand over his curly black hair.  Whereas Lucy had gotten her mother’s straight, thick black hair, Robert’s was closer to his father’s.  Little curls licked his face and curled away.  “So, what were you thinking?”

Marinette may have turned away from Dick, but he still knew her well enough to know she was terrified and trying to hide it.  He could see it in the way she hid her face.  He could see it in the way her shoulders curled around Robert.  He could see it in the way she held him just a little closer.  He moved so he was sitting next to her and could cup her face with his free hand.  

“We’ll keep them safe, Marinette.  We won’t let anything happen to them,” he assured her.  The fierce determinism in his voice made her want to believe him. They would do everything they could to protect their babies.  She leaned into his hand and nodded.  “So, what I was thinking was… we should make sure they are as safe as possible.” She gave him a confused look, unsure why he suddenly sounded so tentative.  “And the most secure place I can think of… is the manor.”

Marinette stared at him for a few seconds, mouth slightly agape in surprise. “You think we should move into the manor?” she whisper shouted.  “Dick, I don’t want to live in Bruce’s home for the rest of our lives.”

“I know, I know.  It’s not ideal,” Dick conceded.  Before the kidnapping, he certainly would never have expected to propose returning to the manor.  He had moved out for a reason and now, with Marinette and the twins, there were even more reasons not to.  But, there was one overwhelming, overpowering reason they should.  “But, it’s the safest place in Gotham, probably New Jersey, possibly in all of America.  He has a ton of security to ward off cults, rogues, magicians, assassins, and everything else he could think of.”

“And it’s so big!  What if the twins play hide and seek in a few years and we never find them?  That place is too big,” she exclaimed.

“Okay, good point,” he allowed.  It wasn’t and they both knew it.  There was no way they, Kismet, or Alfred wouldn’t be able to find them, but he wasn’t going to argue that point.  His focus was to get the twins under the best security they could manage, not get lost in the details.  Not to mention, he had actually gotten lost in the manor a few times when he first moved there, so he knew getting lost was a possibility.  It’s just that they wouldn’t stay that way.  “But what if we take Bruce up on allowing him to build us a secure home.  Our own home, with just as much security.”

“Dick!” she exclaimed loudly and immediately regretted it.  She startled Robert off his finally successful latch and woke Lucy up.  “Sorry,” she grimaced apologetically.

Dick chuckled at her and started bouncing Lucy to lull her back to sleep. “I know.  I don’t really like the idea of asking him either, but we need some place safe.  The Court of Owls is dangerous, extremely well connected, and apparently obsessed with our children.  We need top of the line security and I don’t think we could afford it otherwise.  I think it’s the only way to keep them safe.”

She stared at him silently for a few minutes.  Not really sure how to react.  He was right.  They would need security, more security than they could afford otherwise.  However, they did have built in security with the kwami, not that Dick knew about that yet.  But it also wasn’t entirely reliable.  The kwami couldn’t do much more than warn them if something was happening. They couldn’t act on it without potentially devastating consequences.

Dick spoke up after a few minutes, misinterpreting her hesitation.  “I… I can live somewhere else.  The most important thing is for you and the twins to be safe,” he offered.

“But they might come after you as well.  You’re a Grayson,” she protested.  If anything, he and the twins needed to stay under the security’s protection.

“I can stay at the manor,” he assured her.

Marinette concentrated on Robert while she thought it through, running her fingers over his curls.  She wasn’t ready to go back to the way they were.  She didn’t trust him completely yet.  Or rather, she trusted him, she just didn’t know if she trusted him with her heart.  But she did trust him to keep her and the twins safe.  She did trust him to protect them and to act respectfully.  She trusted him to want to do what was best for them.

“No… why don’t we… why don’t we stay in the manor until we figure out where we want to go?  Relationship wise.” she finally offered resolutely.  Dick nodded in understanding.  There was no reason to build a home for the two of them if they weren’t going to live together.  Marinette and the twins would need security whether she stayed with him or not, but if they decided they didn’t want to get back together she should have a home of her own, away from him.  “We can have our own rooms and the twins can stay in mine for the first few months, until the likelihood of SIDS is lower.”

“Bruce has a few very large rooms in the manor, would you… how would you feel about us both staying in the room with the twins, but in different beds?  That way I can help better and you don’t have to do all the work by yourself,” he offered cautiously.  He didn’t want to scare her off by pushing too hard or rushing her.

Marinette studied him uncertainly.  That seemed awfully intimate, but at the same time, it would allow her some rest.  He could change diapers and help get them back to sleep…  “We can try it…”

“But if you start to feel uncomfortable, I can move to another room, immediately,” he assured her.  

Marinette nodded in agreement.  “Okay”

Dick smiled again, a relieved, excited smile.  He knew there was a lot to do.  He knew he still had a long way to go, but they were making progress.  They weren’t as bad as he thought they had been. “I know I have a lot to make up for and a lot to prove.  I know I messed up and I want to fix it.”

“What do you think you messed up,” she asked curiously.  

“I think I was so afraid of losing you, I got obsessed with eliminating any threats that might hurt you.  I… I couldn’t lose you like I lost my parents,” he answered honestly.  “That’s not an excuse,” he insisted quickly.  “It’s not an excuse because I know it doesn’t excuse my behavior.  It’s just my reasoning.  I didn’t even realize it until Lucius pointed it out at the fashion show.  He also pointed out that you wouldn’t have let me go. You would have pulled me out of my obsession, and I knew that.  So that’s why I didn’t tell you.

“I think that’s what I need to fix.  We’re supposed to be a team.  We were supposed to be in a relationship, but I was cutting you out.  I saw that I was hurting you, but I convinced myself I was saving you from something worse.  I think I messed up by cutting you out of my life.  I’m going to change that.”

She nodded at him with tears in her eyes.  “Okay.  You know it wasn’t the secrets, right?  You were allowed to have secrets.  I didn’t begrudge you that.  Hell, I have secrets I haven’t told you yet.”  She looked down at Lucy when she started making whimpering noises.  “Trade me,” she motioned for Lucy and held Robert out for him to take.  He gently handed Lucy off to Marinette to nurse and took Robert, loosening his swaddle so they could do skin to skin time.  “I want us to get to the point we don’t have secrets from each other, but we both deserve the time to figure out when we’ve reached that point.”

After a few minutes bouncing Robert, Dick looked back to Marinette with an open, vulnerable expression.  “I spoke with Commissioner Gordon,” he started slowly.  “And I quit the Titans.  I’m going to become a police officer in Gotham.  I’ll be here from now on.  There might still be things I can’t tell you because it’s police business, but you’ll know why I can’t tell you now.  And I know that doesn’t make up for everything I’ve done, but it’s a start.”

“Dick! You didn’t have to give up something you love for me!  That’s ridiculous.  Whether we get back together or not, you shouldn’t give up things you love to make someone else happy,” she exclaimed desperately.  The last thing she wanted was for him to give up parts of himself, parts that mattered to him, parts he might be bitter about having given up later.

Dick shook his head emphatically.  “I didn’t do it for you.  Well, not just you.  I was miserable whenever I was away.  I hated missing you and the twins.  I… I didn’t want to miss out on their lives like I missed out on the pregnancy.  I don’t want them growing up without me.” He sat back down next to her again to look her in the eye again, close enough for her to feel his breath on her face. “I won’t lie.  I want to go back to the way we were, but without the leaving and the lies.”  

He brushed her bangs out of her face and gently rubbed his thumb along her cheek. “I love you and waking up to you in my arms is one of the best parts of my life in the last few… years really. Kissing you, touching you, seeing your smile.  All of the things I got to do with you were magical.  I’d love to get that back, but I know I have work to do to get there. And I’m willing to put in the effort.”

“Dick…” she rested her head in the crux of his neck, angling Lucy away while she did.  “It’s going to take a while.”

“I know.  And I know we might never get back there, but I want to try.”  He kissed the top of her head and rested his head on hers.

Marinette looked back up at him and nodded.  “Let’s focus on getting the twins healthy and learning how to be parents. Then we can see how things feel.”

Dick smiled gently.  “Okay.”

She shook her head and turned her head back to rest against his neck.  “I owe Adrien 100 euros.  I bet him I wouldn’t end up with a hero.”

“Technically I’m a vigilante.  And we’re not together,” Dick corrected with a smirk, “… yet.”

She stared at him for a few moments before nodding resolutely.  “You know what?  I’ll take it.”

Chapter 29

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[insanityclause]

Loki sees the return of the titular fan-favorite MCU character, and it's a reminder as to just how damn charming Tom Hiddleston can be. Hiddleston may be best known as Thor’s contemporaneous younger brother, but let's talk about how his full range as an actor was best displayed in the underappreciated 2016 miniseries, The Night Manager. The six-part John le Carre adaptation from writer David Farr and director Susanne Bier cast Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine, a veteran working as the late-night host of a luxury resort in Egypt who gets recruited into ab undercover operation by British Intelligence. The idea of Hiddleston playing an everyman felt like a novelty at the time, but over the series' six hours he delivered his most emotionally grounded and understated performance to date.

John le Carre adaptations are often complex, incorporating hyper-realistic political intrigue with frequent betrayals and double-crosses, and many of the best have entered their interconnected storylines through the perspective of a common man. Hiddleston excels at showing how overwhelmed Pine becomes with the dangerous world he falls into. Because of his job as a night manager, the character is expected to bring a certain charisma energy to all his interactions. Hiddleston brilliantly shows the cracks in that performative magnetism during his first encounter with the renowned arms dealer Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie), who stuns Pine by bringing his villainous gang to the Cairo hotel.

Pine is able to gain Roper’s trust, as his experience in the Iraq War prepared him for life or death scenarios. Pine’s expertise at de-escalating a dangerous situation is previewed within the second episode, in which he saves Roper’s young son Daniel (Noah Jupe) during a business dinner. His wartime history isn’t Pine’s only characteristic, but it’s an integral part of the role that he brings nuance to without overtly expository passages. In fact, it’s his first-hand experience seeing the devastation of chemical weapons in Iraq that gives Pine the motivation to first engage in the scheme to take down Roper. It's also what gives Hiddleston such a layered role. It’s interesting to see Pine incorporate his experience as a soldier within the crafted backstory he must present to Roper; he’s certainly no stranger to violence, but the persona he must adopt requires Pine to pretend to have a criminal background, something that’s far removed from his ordinary professionalism. If Loki’s performative quality leaned into theatricality, Hiddleston has to portray a much different type of deception here. Watching Pine’s illusion crack as Roper's suspicions grow provides the central tension of the series.

The Night Manager is also a more action-centric role than Hiddleston had done before; Loki often utilized minions and amusing shenanigans to avoid actual fights, but here Hiddleston shows an impressive physicality that is dynamic within the action sequences. It’s not a surprise thatThe Night Manager landed Hiddleston's name as a potential candidate to play James Bond, as his introductory scene within the hectic gunfire of the Egyptian Revolution bears a resemblance to Daniel Craig’s iconic crane fight in Casino Royale.

But It’s not just the relentless action that inspired Hiddelston’s proposed candidacy for 007. The Night Manager is also a sleek romance. Pine and Roper’s girlfriend Jed (Elizabeth Debicki) begin to fall for each other during his prolonged operation, and Pine must show his affection for her while making sure he doesn’t reveal any critical information that could endanger the mission. Hiddleston certainly proved that he can bring pathos to a tender romance in 2013's Only Lovers Left Alive, but here he’s able to blend intimacy within the web of le Carre’s interconnected narrative.

It’s also interesting to see Hiddleston play opposite Laurie, whose villainous turn as Roper is everything you would want from a spy series antagonist. Hiddleston is used to being the scene-stealer (Loki never fails to get the last word in), but he has to show some restraint here when Roper unleashes his brutality. Roper’s exhaustive cruelty is perhaps the only aspect of The Night Manager that risks breaking the line of believability, and in a subversion of his normal roles, Hiddleston is the one reigning things back in.

It's a wonderfully understated role that's only more fascinating next to the rest of Hiddleston's filmography. Although the MCU has certainly improved on its villains recently, Loki was really the only compelling antagonist of the first two phases. Not only was Loki the rare bad guy whose motivation and backstory were just as compelling as his archnemesis (and perhaps even more so), Hiddleston brought a signature personality to the role that was sorely lacking among the bland CGI manifestations. Ten years after the first Thor film, Loki has become one of the most fleshed-out characters in the entire franchise; when it was first indicated that supporting characters would begin receiving spinoffs, a Loki series was an automatic suggestion. Hiddleston has leveraged his Marvel celebrity well, choosing to spotlight more experimental genre films from maverick auteurs in his time between MCU installments, including Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, Ben Wheatley’s High Rise, and Joanna Hogg’s Exhibition.

That’s a pretty diverse selection of genres and filmmakers, but for the most part, Hiddleston's performances have leaned into eccentricity and villainous charisma. A few of Hiddleston's attempts at shedding his inherent idiosyncrasies in favor of more streamlined leading roles have landed with a thud. The 2015 Hank Williams biopic I Saw The Light was met with a tepid response and immediately forgotten within the awards season cycle, and he was unfortunately saddled with an unbelievably bland role in the Monsterverse installment Kong: Skull Island that was overshadowed by more entertaining co-stars like John C. Reilly and Samuel L. Jackson.

The Night Manager demonstrated Hiddleston is more than capable of a well-rounded lead performance, both understated and bold in equal measure. Anyone who caught the le Carre adaptation already knew Hiddleston has what it takes to lead a series; not all Marvel side-characters can carry six hours of storytelling, but Hiddleston has already proven himself up to the task once. It’s unlikely that Loki will be the last time Hiddleston appears in the Marvel franchise, but I hope it launches him into something in the same vein as The Night Manager. (Here's to hoping his upcoming role in the Apple TV+ drama The Essex Serpent has the same depth.) Hiddleston is clearly a great actor who brings unique qualities to his parts, but The Night Manager is the only one that allowed him to show all of them at the same time.

[twh-news]

[Most. Understated. Role. Pine???? Hey Collider, maybe we have watched a whole different show? This is clearly an opinion piece, so take it with a pinch of salt.]

Loki sees the return of the titular fan-favorite MCU character, and it's a reminder as to just how damn charming Tom Hiddleston can be. Hiddleston may be best known as Thor’s contemporaneous younger brother, but let's talk about how his full range as an actor was best displayed in the underappreciated 2016 miniseries, The Night Manager. The six-part John le Carre adaptation from writer David Farr and director Susanne Bier cast Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine, a veteran working as the late-night host of a luxury resort in Egypt who gets recruited into ab undercover operation by British Intelligence. The idea of Hiddleston playing an everyman felt like a novelty at the time, but over the series' six hours he delivered his most emotionally grounded and understated performance to date.

John le Carre adaptations are often complex, incorporating hyper-realistic political intrigue with frequent betrayals and double-crosses, and many of the best have entered their interconnected storylines through the perspective of a common man. Hiddleston excels at showing how overwhelmed Pine becomes with the dangerous world he falls into. Because of his job as a night manager, the character is expected to bring a certain charisma energy to all his interactions. Hiddleston brilliantly shows the cracks in that performative magnetism during his first encounter with the renowned arms dealer Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie), who stuns Pine by bringing his villainous gang to the Cairo hotel.

Pine is able to gain Roper’s trust, as his experience in the Iraq War prepared him for life or death scenarios. Pine’s expertise at de-escalating a dangerous situation is previewed within the second episode, in which he saves Roper’s young son Daniel (Noah Jupe) during a business dinner. His wartime history isn’t Pine’s only characteristic, but it’s an integral part of the role that he brings nuance to without overtly expository passages. In fact, it’s his first-hand experience seeing the devastation of chemical weapons in Iraq that gives Pine the motivation to first engage in the scheme to take down Roper. It's also what gives Hiddleston such a layered role. It’s interesting to see Pine incorporate his experience as a soldier within the crafted backstory he must present to Roper; he’s certainly no stranger to violence, but the persona he must adopt requires Pine to pretend to have a criminal background, something that’s far removed from his ordinary professionalism. If Loki’s performative quality leaned into theatricality, Hiddleston has to portray a much different type of deception here. Watching Pine’s illusion crack as Roper's suspicions grow provides the central tension of the series.

The Night Manager is also a more action-centric role than Hiddleston had done before; Loki often utilized minions and amusing shenanigans to avoid actual fights, but here Hiddleston shows an impressive physicality that is dynamic within the action sequences. It’s not a surprise thatThe Night Manager landed Hiddleston's name as a potential candidate to play James Bond, as his introductory scene within the hectic gunfire of the Egyptian Revolution bears a resemblance to Daniel Craig’s iconic crane fight in Casino Royale.

But It’s not just the relentless action that inspired Hiddelston’s proposed candidacy for 007. The Night Manager is also a sleek romance. Pine and Roper’s girlfriend Jed (Elizabeth Debicki) begin to fall for each other during his prolonged operation, and Pine must show his affection for her while making sure he doesn’t reveal any critical information that could endanger the mission. Hiddleston certainly proved that he can bring pathos to a tender romance in 2013's Only Lovers Left Alive, but here he’s able to blend intimacy within the web of le Carre’s interconnected narrative.

It’s also interesting to see Hiddleston play opposite Laurie, whose villainous turn as Roper is everything you would want from a spy series antagonist. Hiddleston is used to being the scene-stealer (Loki never fails to get the last word in), but he has to show some restraint here when Roper unleashes his brutality. Roper’s exhaustive cruelty is perhaps the only aspect of The Night Manager that risks breaking the line of believability, and in a subversion of his normal roles, Hiddleston is the one reigning things back in.

It's a wonderfully understated role that's only more fascinating next to the rest of Hiddleston's filmography. Although the MCU has certainly improved on its villains recently, Loki was really the only compelling antagonist of the first two phases. Not only was Loki the rare bad guy whose motivation and backstory were just as compelling as his archnemesis (and perhaps even more so), Hiddleston brought a signature personality to the role that was sorely lacking among the bland CGI manifestations. Ten years after the first Thor film, Loki has become one of the most fleshed-out characters in the entire franchise; when it was first indicated that supporting characters would begin receiving spinoffs, a Loki series was an automatic suggestion. Hiddleston has leveraged his Marvel celebrity well, choosing to spotlight more experimental genre films from maverick auteurs in his time between MCU installments, including Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, Ben Wheatley’s High Rise, and Joanna Hogg’s Exhibition.

That’s a pretty diverse selection of genres and filmmakers, but for the most part, Hiddleston's performances have leaned into eccentricity and villainous charisma. A few of Hiddleston's attempts at shedding his inherent idiosyncrasies in favor of more streamlined leading roles have landed with a thud. The 2015 Hank Williams biopic I Saw The Light was met with a tepid response and immediately forgotten within the awards season cycle, and he was unfortunately saddled with an unbelievably bland role in the Monsterverse installment Kong: Skull Island that was overshadowed by more entertaining co-stars like John C. Reilly and Samuel L. Jackson.

The Night Manager demonstrated Hiddleston is more than capable of a well-rounded lead performance, both understated and bold in equal measure. Anyone who caught the le Carre adaptation already knew Hiddleston has what it takes to lead a series; not all Marvel side-characters can carry six hours of storytelling, but Hiddleston has already proven himself up to the task once. It’s unlikely that Loki will be the last time Hiddleston appears in the Marvel franchise, but I hope it launches him into something in the same vein as The Night Manager. (Here's to hoping his upcoming role in the Apple TV+ drama The Essex Serpent has the same depth.) Hiddleston is clearly a great actor who brings unique qualities to his parts, but The Night Manager is the only one that allowed him to show all of them at the same time.

[oscopelabs]

It’s Arrested Development: How ‘High Fidelity’ Has Endured Beyond Its Cultural Sell-By Date by Vikram Murthi

It’s easy to forget now that at the beginning of 2020, before the pandemic had taken hold of our consciousness, for a brief moment, High Fidelity was back. Not only did Nick Hornby’s debut novel and Stephen Frears’ film adaptation celebrate major milestones this year — 25th and 20th anniversaries, respectively — but a TV adaptation premiered on Hulu in February. In light of all of these arbitrary signposts, multiple thinkpieces and remembrances litigated Hornby’s original text on familiar, predictable grounds. Is the novel/film’s protagonist Rob actually an asshole? (Sure.) Does Hornby uphold his character’s callous attitudes towards women? (Not really.) Hasn’t the story’s gatekeeping, anti-poptimist approach to artistic taste culturally run its course? (Probably.) Why do we need to revisit this story about this person right now? (Fair question!)

Despite reasonable objections on grounds of relevancy, enough good will for the core narrative—record store owner seeks out a series of exes to determine a pattern of behavior following a devastating breakup—apparently exists to help produce a gender-flipped streaming show featuring updated musical references and starring a decidedly not-middle-aged Zoë Kravitz. I only made it through six of ten episodes in its first (and only) season, but I was surprised by how closely the show hewed to High Fidelity’s film adaptation, to the point of re-staging numerous scenes down to character blocking and swiping large swaths of dialogue wholesale. (Similarly, the film adaptation hewed quite close to the novel, with most of the dialogue ripped straight from Hornby.) Admittedly, the series features a more diverse cast than the film, centering different experiences and broadly acknowledging some criticisms of the source material regarding its ostensibly exclusionary worldview. Nevertheless, it seemed like a self-defeating move for the show to line itself so definitively with a text that many consider hopelessly problematic, especially considering the potential to repurpose its premise as a springboard for more contemporary ideas.

High Fidelity’s endurance as both a piece of IP and a flashpoint for media discourse is mildly baffling for obvious reasons. For one thing, its cultural milieu is actually dated. Even correcting for vinyl’s recent financial resurgence, the idea of snooty record store clerks passing judgment on customer preferences has more or less gone the way of the dodo. With the Internet came the democratization of access, ensuring that the cultivation of personal taste is no longer laborious or expensive, or could even be considered particularly impressive (if it ever could have been). Secondly, as one might imagine, some of Hornby’s insights into heterosexual relationships and the differences between men and women, even presented through the flawed, self-deprecating interiority of High Fidelity’s main character, are indeed reductive. Frears’ film actually strips away the vast majority of Hornby’s weaker commentary, but the novel does include such cringeworthy bits like, “What’s the deal with foreplay?” that are best left alone.

Accounting for all of that, though, it’s remarkable how many misreadings of Hornby’s text have been accepted as conventional wisdom. It’s taken as a given by many that the novel and film earnestly preach the notion that what you like is more important than what you are like when, in fact, the narrative arc is constructed around reaching the opposite conclusion. (The last lines of the novel and film are, literally, “…I start to compile in my head a compilation tape for her, something that's full of stuff she's heard of, and full of stuff she'd play. Tonight, for the first time ever, I can sort of see how it's done.”) That’s relatively minor compared to the constant refrain that Rob’s narcissism goes uncriticized, even though the story’s thematic and emotional potency derives from what the audience perceives that Rob cannot. To put it bluntly, High Fidelity’s central irony revolves around a man who listens to music for a living being unable to hear the women in his life.

While Hornby’s prose immerses the reader in Rob’s interior monologue, providing ample room for the character to spout internal justifications of his behavior, the novel hardly obscures or conceals this conclusion. Moreover, the film makes it unavoidably explicit in numerous scenes. Rob (John Cusack) triumphantly pantomimes Rocky Balboa’s boxing routine soundtracked to Queen’s “We Are The Champions” after his ex-girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle) confirms she hasn’t yet slept with her new boyfriend Ray (Tim Robbins), but doesn’t hear the part where she says she prefers to sleep next to him. When Laura informs Rob that she did eventually sleep with Ray, Rob completely falls apart. In an earlier, more pointed scene, Rob goes out with his ex-girlfriend from high school (Joelle Carter) to ask why she chose to have sex with an obnoxious classmate instead of him. She venomously informs him that he actually broke up with her because she was too prudish, an abrupt, cruel bit of business we actually witness at the film’s beginning. It was in her moment of heartbroken vulnerability that she agreed to quickly sleep with someone else (“It wasn’t rape because I technically said, ‘Okay,’ but it wasn’t far off,” she sneers), which ultimately put her off sex until after college. Rob doesn’t hear this explanation or the damning portrait of his teenaged self. Instead, he’s delighted to learn that he wasn’t actually dumped.

These are evidently low character moments, one’s that are comedic in their depiction of blinkeredness but whose emotional takeaways are crystal clear, and one’s that have been written about before. My personal pick from the film, though, comes late when Rob attends Laura’s father’s funeral. He sits in the back and, in typical fashion, turns to the camera to deliver a list of songs to play at his funeral, concluding with his professed wish that “some beautiful, tearful woman would insist on ‘You’re The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me’ by Gladys Knight.” It’s a really galling, egotistical moment that still makes me wince despite having seen the movie umpteen times. Yet, it’s immediately followed by the casket being lowered to the ground as Laura’s sobs ring out in the church. In a movie defined by John Cusack’s vocal timbre, it’s one of the few times when he completely shuts up. From two-thirds down the center aisle, Frears’ camera pushes into Cusack’s face until tears in his eyes are visible, but what you really see is an appropriately guilt-ridden, ashamed expression.

However, none of this evidence carries any weight if your objection to High Fidelity is that Rob suffers no material consequences for his behavior. While Rob is frequently called out for his actions, he is never actively punished. He doesn’t, say, receive a restraining order for continually calling Laura after they’ve broken up or end up alone mending a permanent broken heart because of his past relationships. By the end, Rob and Laura get back together and Rob even starts an independent record label on the side. It’s a stretch to characterize Hornby’s High Fidelity as a redemption tale, but it is a sideways rehabilitation narrative with a happy ending that arises at least partly out of mutual exhaustion.

Those two elements—Rob’s asshole recovery and the exhausted happy ending—rarely seem to factor into High Fidelity discourse. Granted, there’s credence to the idea that, socially and culturally, people have less patience for the personality types depicted in High Fidelity, and thus are less inclined to extend them forgiveness, let alone anything resembling retribution. I suppose that’s a valid reaction, one against which I have no interest in arguing, but it’s somewhat ironic that High Fidelity has endured for reasons that have nothing to do with its conclusions regarding inflexible personal principles and the folly of escapism. Both the book and film are specifically about someone who slowly comes to terms with accepting reality rather than live in a world mediated by pop cultural fantasies whose unrealistic expectations have only caused personal suffering. It’s not unfair to characterize this as a fairly obvious epiphany, but considering we currently live in a world dominated by virtual echo chambers with an entertainment culture committed to validating arrested adolescence, it retroactively counts as “mature” and holds more weight than it otherwise should.

Near the end of High Fidelity, the book, after Rob and Laura have gotten back together in the aftermath of Laura’s father’s death, Hornby includes a chapter featuring five conversations between the couple unpacking the state of their relationship. During the third conversation, Rob and Laura fight about how she doesn’t care about music as strongly as he does, catalyzed by Rob’s objection to Laura liking both Solomon Burke and Art Garfunkel, which, in his mind, is a contradiction in terms. Laura finally admits that not only does she not really care about the difference between them, but that most people outside of his immediate circle of two don’t care about the difference, and that this mentality is indicative of a larger problem. It’s part of what keeps him stuck in his head and reluctant to commit to anything. “I’m just trying to wake you up,” she says. “I'm just trying to show you that you've lived half your life, but for all you've got to show for it you might as well be nineteen, and I'm not talking about money or property or furniture.”

I fell for High Fidelity (first the movie, then the book) as a younger man for the reasons I assume most sensitive-cum-oblivious, culturally preoccupied straight guys do: it accurately pinpoints a pattern of music consumption and organizationally anal-retentive behavior with which I’m intimately familiar. I spent the vast majority of my early years listening to and cataloguing albums, and when I arrived at college, I quickly fell in with a small group of like-minded music obsessives. We had very serious, very prolonged discussions filled with impossibly strong opinions about our favorite artists and records. Few new releases came and went without them being scrutinized by us, the unappreciated scholars of all that is righteous. List-making wasn’t in vogue, but there wasn’t a song that passed us by that we didn’t judge or size up. I was exposed to more music during this relatively short period of time than I likely will ever absorb again. Some of these times were the most engaging and fun of my life, and I still enjoy discussing and sharing music with close friends, but I’m not such a true believer to fully feel comfortable with this behavior. It’s not entirely healthy on its own and definitely alienating to others, and there comes a point when you hear yourself the way a stranger might, or maybe even catch a glimpse of someone’s eyes when you’re midst rant about some stupid album, and realize, “That’s all there is of me. There isn’t anything else.”

This is what Rob proclaims to Laura in the conversation when she tells him she was more interested in music during their courtship than she is now. It’s a patently self-pitying statement on his part that doesn’t go unchallenged by her in the moment or bear fruit in the rest of the novel. Yet, it’s this type of uncomfortably relatable sentiment that goes under-discussed. If High Fidelity will continue to have a life well after its cultural moment has passed, then it’s worth addressing what it offers on its own terms. Near the end of the book, Laura introduces Rob to another couple with whom he gets along quite well. When the evening comes to an end, she tells him to take a look at their record collection, and it’s predictably filled with artists he doesn’t care for, e.g. Billy Joel, Simply Red, Meat Loaf. “'Everybody's faith needs testing from time to time,” Laura tells him later when they’re alone. Amidst Rob’s self-loathing and sullen pettiness, Hornby argues that one should contribute in some way rather than only consume and that, at some point, it’s time to put away childish ideas in order to get the most out of life. It’s an entirely untrendy argument, one that goes against the nostalgic spirit of superhero films and reboot culture, but it doesn’t lack merit. Accepting that some values aren’t conducive to a full life, especially when it’s shared with someone else, doesn’t have to mean abandoning interests or becoming an entirely different person. It just means that letting go isn’t an admission of defeat.

It’s why I’ve always found the proposal scene in the film to be quite moving, albeit maybe not specifically romantic. It plays out similarly in both the book and the film, but the film has the added benefit of Cusack and Hjejle’s performances to amplify the vulnerability and shared understanding. Laura meets Rob for a drink in the afternoon where he sheepishly asks if she would like to get married. Laura bursts out laughing and says that he isn’t the safest bet considering he was making mixtapes for some reporter a few days prior. When asked what brought this on, Rob notes that he’s sick of thinking about love and settling down and marriage and wants to think about something else. (“I changed my mind. That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. I do. I will,” she sarcastically replies.) He goes on to say that he’s tired of fantasizing about other women because the fantasies have nothing to do with them and everything to do with himself and that it doesn’t exist never mind delivering on its promise. “I’m tired of it,” he says, “and I’m tired of everything else for that matter, but I don’t ever seem to get tired of you.”

This sort of anti-Jerry Maguire line would be callous if Laura didn’t basically say the same thing to him when they got back together. (“I’m too tired not to be with you.”) It’s possible to read this as an act of mutual settling, but I always thought Hornby’s point was personal growth and accepting one’s situation were intertwined. The key moment in High Fidelity, the film, comes when Laura finds Rob’s list of top five dream jobs. (In the book, Laura makes Rob compile the list.) At the bottom of the list, after such standard choices like music journalist and record producer, lies architect, a job that Rob isn’t entirely sure about anyway. (“I did put it at number five!” he insists.) Laura asks Rob the obvious question: wouldn’t you rather own your own record store than hypothetically be an architect, a job you’re not particularly enthused with anyway?

It’s Laura who convinces Rob that living the fifth-best version of your life can actually be pretty satisfying and doesn’t have to be treated like a cruel fate worse than death. Similarly, Rob and Laura both make the active decision to try to work things out instead of starting over with someone else. Laura’s apathy may have reunited them, and Rob’s apathy might have kept him from running, but it’s their shared history that keeps them together. More than the music and the romance, High Fidelity follows the necessary decisions and compromises one has to maneuver in order to grow instead of regress. “I've been letting the weather and my stomach muscles and a great chord change in a Pretenders single make up my mind for me, and I want to do it for myself,” Rob says near the end of Hornby’s novel. High Fidelity’s emotional potency lies in taking that sentiment seriously.

[letterboxd]

In Focus: Interstellar.

Inspired by Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar placing high across three notable Letterboxd metrics, Dominic Corry reflects on how the film successfully hung its messaging around the concept of love—and what pandemic responses worldwide could learn from its wholehearted embrace of empathetic science.

“Love isn’t something we invented. It’s observable, it’s powerful. It has to mean something.” —Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway)

This story contains spoilers for ‘Interstellar’ (2014).

Although it is insultingly reductionist to both filmmakers, there are many reasons Christopher Nolan is often described as a modern-day Stanley Kubrick. The one most people usually settle on is the notion that both men supposedly make exacting, ambitious films that lack emotion.

It is an incorrect assessment of either director, but it’s beyond amazing that anyone could still accuse Nolan of such a thing after he delivered what is unquestionably his masterwork, the emotional rollercoaster that is 2014’s Interstellar.

In the epic sci-fi adventure drama, Nolan managed to pull off something that many filmmakers have attempted and few have achieved. He told a story of boundless sci-fi scope, and had it be all about love in the end. It sounds cheesy to even write it down, but Nolan did it.

That Interstellar is such an overtly cutting-edge genre film that chooses to center itself so brazenly and unapologetically around love, is frankly awesome.

Love informs Interstellar both metaphorically and literally: the expansive scope of the film effectively represents love’s infinite potential, and love itself ends up being the tangible thread that allows far-flung astronaut Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) to communicate with his Earth-bound daughter Murph (played as an adult by Jessica Chastain) from the tesseract (a three-dimensional rendering of a five-dimensional space) after Cooper enters the black hole towards the end of the film.

Matthew McConaughey as Joseph ‘Coop’ Cooper, Mackenzie Foy as Murph, and Timothée Chalamet as Tom.

In transmitting (via morse code) what the robot TARS has observed from inside the black hole, Cooper provides Murph with the data to solve the gravity problem required to uplift Earth’s population from its depleted home planet. Humanity is saved. Love wins again. Hard sci-fi goes soft. Christopher Nolan’s genius is confirmed, and any notions of emotionlessness are emphatically washed away.

This earnest centering of love in Interstellar is key to the film’s universal appeal, and undoubtedly plays a large role in why it features so prominently in three significant Letterboxd lists determined by pronoun: Interstellar is the only film that appears in all three top tens of “most fans on Letterboxd” when considering members who use the pronoun he/him, she/her and xe/ze. (“Most fans” refers to Letterboxd members who have selected the film as one of the four favorites on their profile.)

To get a bit reductionist myself, sci-fi adventure—in cinema, at least—has traditionally been a masculine-leaning genre, but Interstellar’s placement across these three lists points to it having superseded that traditional leaning, hopefully for the better.

Yet the film reliably still provokes reactions like this delightful tweet:

few movies make me as mad as Interstellar. who the fuck makes 3/4 of an excellent hard sci-fi movie backed up by actual science and then abruptly turns it into soft sci-fi about how the power of love and time traveling bookshelves can save us in the final 1/4? damn you, Nolan

— the thicc husband & father (@lukeisamazing)

February 13, 2021

Although this tweet is somewhat indicative of how many men (and women, for that matter) respond to the film, I think it’s pretty clear the writer actually loves Interstellar wholeheartedly, final quarter and all, but perhaps feels inhibited from expressing that love by the expectations of a gendered society that is becoming increasingly outdated. The “damn you, Nolan” is possibly a concession of sorts—he’s damning how Nolan really made him feel the love at the end. It’s okay, @lukeisamazing, you don’t have to say it out loud.

Conversely, it can be put like this:

“The emotion of Interstellar is three-fold: Nolan’s script, co-written with his brother as with all his best stuff, masters not only notions of black holes, wormholes, quantum data and telemetry, but it also makes a case for love as the one thing—feeling, fact, movement, message—that can mean more and do more than anyone in our current time, on our existing planet, can comprehend.”

The writer of this stirring summation, our own Ella Kemp, is paraphrasing a critical section of the film, when Nolan goes full literal on the concept of love and has Cooper and Dr Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) debate its very nature, quoted in part at the top of this story. It comes when the pair are trying to decide which potentially humanity-saving planet to use their dwindling fuel reserves to travel to. Brand is advocating for the planet where a man she loves might be waiting for her, instead of the planet that has ostensibly better circumstances for life.

Brand: “Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that even if we can’t understand it.”

“Love has meaning, yes,” responds Cooper, heretofore the film’s most outwardly love-centric character, exhibiting a stoic longing for his dead wife, while also abandoning his ten-year-old daughter on Earth for a space adventure (albeit one designed to save humanity) than has now inadvertently taken decades. “Social utility. Social bonding. Child rearing.” Ouch.

McConaughey with Anne Hathaway as Dr. Amelia Brand.

Brand: “You love people who have died. Where’s the social utility in that? Maybe it means something more. Something we don’t yet understand. Some evidence, some artefact of a higher dimension that we can’t consciously perceive. I’m drawn across the universe to someone I haven’t seen in a decade who I know is probably dead. Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that even if we can’t understand it yet.” Amen.

Cooper remains unconvinced by Brand’s rationale, but this dispassionate display presages him going on to realize the true (literal) power of love (and his poor, science-only decision-making—thanks Matt Damon) when it provides him the aforementioned channel of communication with Murph in the tesseract. Nolan has a female character make the most eloquent vocal argument for love, but it’s the male character who has to learn it through experience.

So while Interstellar does initially conform to some prevailing cultural ideas about love and how it supposedly relates to gender, it ultimately advocates for a greater appreciation of the concept that moves beyond such binary notions. That is reflected in how important the film is to Letterboxd members who self-identify as he/him, she/her and xe/ze. We all love this movie. Emphasis on love.

Brand’s speech—not to mention the film as a whole—also can’t help but inform the current global situation. Interstellar argues for a greater devotion to both science and love, in harmony; such devotion might have mitigated the devastating effects of the coronavirus pandemic where both concepts were drastically undervalued by many of those in charge of the response.

Jessica Chastain and Casey Affleck as the grown-up Cooper siblings.

Despite the reactions cited above, responses to Interstellar aren’t always split down gender lines. We’re all allowed to feel whatever we like about it, and substantial variety comes across in the many, many reviews for the film.

Zaidius says Interstellar is so good that, “after watching [it], you will want to downgrade all of the ratings you have ever given on Letterboxd.”

On the other hand, Singlewhitefemalien takes issue with Dr. Brand’s aforementioned love-based decision-making in her two-star review: “She wants to fuckin’ go to Planet Whatever to chase after a dude she banged ten years ago because women are guided by their emotions and love is all you need.” A perhaps fair assessment of the role Nolan chose his sole female astronaut to play in the film?

Sam offers food for thought when he writes “First, you love Interstellar; then you understand Interstellar.”

Letterboxd stalwart Lucy boils it down effectively in one of her multiple five-star reviews of the film: “I needed a really good cry.” It’s hard to say whether Vince is agreeing or disagreeing with Lucy in his review: “Fuck you Matthew McConaughey for making me cry.” The catharsis this movie provides for dudes becomes clearer the deeper you venture into our Interstellar reviews (and I ventured deep): “How dare this fucking movie make me cry… twice,” writes John. Let it out, John.

Then there’s Rudi’s take: “I sobbed like an animal while watching this but I’m not exactly sure what animal it was like. Like a pig? Like a whale? I don’t know but I do know that I cried a whole fucking lot.”

Emotionless? With all this crying?

Christopher Nolan inspires more debate than any other filmmaker of the modern age (when we’re not getting unnecessarily riled up about something Marty has said, that is) and while Nolan has the passionate devotion of millions of viewers, I’d argue he still doesn’t quite get his due. Especially when it comes to Interstellar.

By so successfully using love as both a metaphorical vessel and a palpable plot point in a sci-fi adventure film, he built on notable antecedents like James Cameron’s The Abyss and Robert Zemeckis’ Contact, two (great) films with similar aspirations that didn’t stick the landing as well as Interstellar does. In Contact, McConaughey engages in a similar debate about love to the one quoted above, but notably takes the opposing side.

Steven Spielberg (who at one point was going to direct an earlier iteration of Interstellar) did a pretty good job of showing love as the most powerful force in the universe with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, but there hasn’t been a huge amount of room for such notions in the genre since then.

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Interstellar’s most obvious forebear, is often accused of being the director’s most brazenly emotionless film. And while that’s perhaps a bit more understandable than some of the brickbats hurled Nolan’s way, there’s more emotion in the character of Hal 9000 than in many major directors’ entire oeuvre. It’s also, in part due to Hal’s place in the examination of queer consciousness in the sci-fi realm, the film currently in the number one spot on the xe/ze list.

Two films that notably exist in Interstellar’s wake are Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, which expands upon Interstellar’s creative use of time-bending (and like Contact, features a female protagonist) and James Gray’s Ad Astra, which tackles the perils of traditional masculinity with more directness.

Interstellar doesn’t solve the sci-fi genre’s cumbersome relationship with masculinity and gender, but it makes significant strides in breaking down the existing paradigms, if only from all the GIFs of McConaughey crying it has spawned. Its appeal across the gender spectrum is an interesting and encouraging sign of the universality of its themes. And the power of love.

Fans out of touch with their feelings may complain about the role love plays in the film, but that says more about them than it does the film. Love wins. Also: TARS. How could anyone not love TARS?

TARS and Christopher Nolan.

Related content

Men/Boys Crying: a master list

“I Ugly-Cried Like Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar”: Amanda’s list

“I Liked Interstellar”: Sar’s list of what to watch afterwards

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Tuesday, October 5, 2021

‘Major’ Oil Spill Off California Coast Threatens Wetlands and Wildlife (NYT) A pipeline failure off the coast of Orange County, Calif., on Saturday caused at least 126,000 gallons of oil to spill into the Pacific Ocean, creating a 13-square-mile slick that continued to grow on Sunday, officials said. Dead fish and birds washed ashore in some places as cleanup crews raced to try to contain the spill, which created a slick that extended from Huntington Beach to Newport Beach. It was not immediately clear what caused the leak, which officials said occurred three miles off the coast of Newport Beach and involved a pipeline failure. Mayor Kim Carr of Huntington Beach said at a news conference on Sunday afternoon that the spill was “one of the most devastating situations our community has dealt with in decades.”

The Pandora Papers (Foreign Policy) The massive leak of secret financial data has revealed the offshore wealth of some of the world’s most powerful people. The data, dubbed the Pandora Papers by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists—the group that spearheaded the project—shows how far some world leaders, billionaires, and other oligarchs have gone to hide their wealth. Considering the vast wealth of America’s own oligarchs, it’s surprising on first blush to see no U.S. names mentioned. One simple explanation, put forward by the Washington Post, is that U.S. millionaires and billionaires have enough tools available within the U.S. tax code to shield most of their wealth already.

Spain’s foreign tourism soars but well below pre-pandemic level (Reuters) Foreign tourism to Spain rose rapidly in August as looser travel restrictions tempted back summer sunseekers though visitor numbers remained at around half their pre-pandemic levels, official statistics showed on Monday. The number of foreign tourists visiting in August more than doubled from a year ago to 5.19 million but was still barely above half the level seen in 2019, the National Statistics Institute said on Monday.

Farmers among 8 killed as India protest erupts in violence (CNN) At least eight people were killed when violence broke out in India’s Uttar Pradesh state on Sunday after a car linked to a federal minister ran over two farmers taking part in a protest against controversial farm laws. A farmers’ union spokesperson said Sunday the deaths happened after a convoy of vehicles associated with junior home affairs minister Ajay Mishra Teni “ran over several protesters.” Protests in Lakhimpur Kheri began on September 25 after Teni reportedly said “farmers should reform themselves or they will be reformed,” according to CNN affiliate CNN-News18.

India’s Christians living in fear as claims of ‘forced conversions’ swirl (Guardian) It was a stifling July afternoon when the crowd moved into the small district of Lakholi, in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, and gathered outside the house of Tamesh War Sahu. Sahu, a 55-year-old volunteer with the Home Guard who had begun following Christianity more than five years previously, had never before had issues with his neighbours. But now, more than 100 people had descended from surrounding villages and were shouting Hindu nationalist slogans outside his front door. Sahu’s son Moses, who had come out to investigate the noise, was beaten by the mob, who then charged inside. As the men entered the house, they shouted death threats at Sahu’s wife and began tearing posters bearing Bible quotes down from the walls. Bibles were seized from the shelves and brought outside where they were set alight, doused in water and the ashes thrown in the gutter. “We will teach you a lesson,” some people were heard to shout. “This is what you get for forcing people into Christianity.”      Sahu’s family was not the only one attacked that day. Four other local Christian households were also targeted by mobs, led by the Hindu nationalist vigilante group Bajrang Dal, known for their aggressive and hardline approach to “defending” Hinduism. Since the beginning of the year there have been similar attacks across Chhattisgarh, already the Indian state with the second highest number of incidents against Christians. In some villages, Christian churches have been vandalised, in others pastors have been beaten or abused. Congregations have been broken up by mobs and believers hospitalised with injuries. The police, too, stand accused—of making threats to Christians, hauling them into police stations and carrying out raids on Sunday prayer services. The attacks have coincided with renewed attention on a longstanding claim from rightwing Hindu groups: that a string of forced conversions are taking place in Chhattisgarh. Such claims have been made by senior figures in the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), which governs India.

Japan’s Parliament elects former diplomat Kishida as new PM (AP) Japan’s parliament on Monday elected Fumio Kishida, a former moderate turned hawk, as prime minister. He’ll face an economy battered by the pandemic, security threats from China and North Korea and leadership of a political party whose popularity is sagging ahead of a fast-approaching crucial national election. He replaces Yoshihide Suga, who resigned after only one year in office as his support plunged over his government’s handling of the pandemic and insistence on holding the Tokyo Olympics as the virus spread.

New Zealand admits it can no longer get rid of coronavirus (AP) New Zealand’s government acknowledged Monday what most other countries did long ago: It can no longer completely get rid of the coronavirus. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a cautious plan to ease lockdown restrictions in Auckland, despite an outbreak there that continues to simmer. Since early in the pandemic, New Zealand had pursued an unusual zero-tolerance approach to the virus through strict lockdowns and aggressive contact tracing. Under Ardern’s plan that starts Tuesday, Aucklanders will be able to meet outdoors with loved ones from one other household, early childhood centers will reopen and people will be able to go to the beach. The dates for a phased reopening of retail stores and later bars and restaurants have yet to be decided.

3,000 Yazidis Are Still Missing. Their Families Know Where Some of Them Are. (NYT) The voice messages sent by Abbas Hussein’s teenage son are heartbreaking in their matter-of-factness. The boy, a member of Iraq’s Yazidi minority who was kidnapped by Islamic State fighters seven years ago, asks about his mother and wonders why his father has not been in touch. In the messages sent last summer to his father, an unemployed laborer, the son says his captor will not let him send any more because his parents have not delivered payments as demanded. “Father, if you don’t have money, that’s OK. Just let me know,” says the teenager, who still has the voice of a child. “I will work and save money and give it to him to let me talk to you.”      Mr. Hussein has known for more than a year that his son and five other relatives are being held in Turkish-controlled northern Syria by a former ISIS fighter who joined the Syrian National Army—a Turkish-backed coalition of armed opposition groups that includes mercenaries and Syrian rebels. He’s one of roughly 3,000 Yazidis still missing after being captured by ISIS during its takeover of parts of Iraq and Syria. While most of the missing are presumed dead, hundreds more are thought to be alive and held captive in Syria or Turkey. In some cases, their families know where they are and have even been in contact with them or their captors. But financial support from governments and private donors, as well as interest from them in finding the missing Yazidis, has dried up.

Taliban-style security welcomed by some, feared by others (AP) It wasn’t 7 a.m. yet and already the line outside the police station’s gates was long, with men bringing their complaints and demands for justice to Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers. Something new they immediately found: The Taliban fighters who are now the policemen don’t demand bribes like police officers did under the U.S-backed government of the past 20 years. “Before, everyone was stealing our money,” said Hajj Ahmad Khan, who was among those in line at the Kabul District 8 police station on a recent day. “Everywhere in our villages and in government offices, everyone had their hands out,” he said.      Many Afghans fear the harsh ways of the Taliban, their hard-line ideology or their severe restrictions of women’s freedoms. But the movement does bring a reputation for not being corrupt, a stark contrast to the government it ousted, which was notoriously rife with bribery, embezzlement and graft. Even residents who shudder at the potential return of punishments—such as chopping off the hands of thieves—say some security has returned to Kabul since the Taliban swept in on Aug. 15. Under the previous government, gangs of thieves had driven most people off the streets by dark. Several roads between cities are again open and have even been given the green light for travel by some international aid organizations.

Deadly, historic Tropical Cyclone Shaheen departs Oman after devastating flooding (Washington Post) In the course of a single day, an exceptionally rare hurricane-strength storm unloaded up to four years’ worth of rain along Oman’s northern coast, causing deadly flooding. Named Tropical Cyclone Shaheen, the tempest slammed ashore late Sunday, about 50 miles to the west of Muscat, Oman’s capital city. The storm has since departed, but not before leaving 11 dead in Oman, mostly because of flash flooding and landslides. The storm was also blamed for two fatalities in Iran, where the bodies of two fishermen were found.