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castiel-left-his-mark-on-me · 3 years ago

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Hi, Ary, very inactive ex-mutual(i think???) here. Good to see you thriving! ♥ It's been a while since I've dipped my head into cockles stuff. Could I perchance maybe ask uuuuum tf is going on??? lol I see Mish apparently confirmed he used to stay over at Jensen's in Van, and heard newbs were apparently freaking out about it and getting a bit messy, which I get that, business as usual. But I'm also seeing shit about spin-offs? And Jared getting in a twitter fight with Jensen, causing/resulting in stans to going feral and sending hate?? I know you're not as big a fan of Jar, but that's part of why I figured I'd ask you, you usually have a really level head about this kinda stuff. If you don't wanna answer publically, or at all, that's totally chill!

Hey, Rhi! We're still mutuals! Of course we're still mutuals! When I saw the notification of your ask, I was like "Hey! I haven't seen you in a while!" and my husband was like "???" and I said "Tumblr" and he said "Oh."

It was a wild time haha.

In any case, welcome back to the dumpster fire! We are obviously still a mess. So to catch you up, I guess I will start by summarizing both before and after the finale (not sure where you left off so this might be redundant for you) ... basically, it became obvious as the end of the show neared that Jensen was not on board with the plan for the finale; although Jared never stopped singing its praises.

We got confirmation of this during a zoom interview where Jensen said that he actually went into the writers room as well as called Kripke to basically voice how he didn't agree with the direction the final season was going, but he was shot down on all fronts. In another interview, he was asked "What would you tell your younger self going into this career?" And Jensen responded with: "I would tell myself to just keep your head down and do the work" meaning, "Don't try to change things because you can't." I also think that this whole situation is what he wrote "Let Me Be" about for his first Radio Company album, but that is just my own speculation. All of his reluctance, even though he always followed it up with "But I eventually saw the value in the script" or "I came around in the end" (which never sounded sincere, and I don't think he was really trying to sound sincere) made us all very nervous about what was to come for 15x20; and of course, when the last two episodes aired, we saw just how badly they fucked it up.

After the awful finale, the entire fandom became aware of the CW's heavy handed role in the thing, basically squeezing all the life out of SPN to shape it into a ramp from which Walker could launch itself. They not only erased all the love and joy and representation that Cas's love confession gave us, they also tore apart the things that made sense about the bond between Sam and Dean, making it really just about Sam-- and therefore Jared, which of course, Jared seemed to be fine with ... even though no one else was. Misha barely said anything during the finale, and a few of the other actors talked about the show ending in various posts, but Jared tweeted up a storm ... and Jensen? Jensen just sat in sexy-silent resentment of the whole thing. He didn't tweet, he didn't post, he didn't say a word once he no longer had to, and I think that's because he was already going full-steam-ahead on his plans for redemption.

Which brings us to Chaos Machine-- Jensen and Danneel's new production company that is being run by a queer creative director and has a mantra of inclusivity and representation woven throughout it's fabric; and apparently, the first story that Jensen wanted to tell through this new platform is the origin story of Sam and Dean's parents; so last week (?) he announced the upcoming production of "The Winchesters" -- the untold love story of John and Mary. Obviously, John is not the most likable character from the show, so the idea was met with a lot of resentment when it was first announced, but Jensen has gone on to say that he is excited to take on the task of telling the "true" story behind these characters-- the one that makes sense with the pre-established canon and doesn't reject it. So, given that, the idea is being mulled over with a bit more optimism from the fandom.

Who isn't being optimistic though?

Jared Padalecki.

When Jensen made this announcement on Twitter, many of his friends and coworkers congratulated him, but not Jared. Jared responded with a passive aggressive: "I'm happy for you, man, but I wish I didn't hear about it through Twitter." This of course, sent all the die-hard Jared fans into a tizzy and they immediately began asking him if he was serious (hoping it was just a joke-- we all hoped it was because there would be fallout no matter what one's opinion on Jared is). Instead of leaving it there though or just deleting that tweet, Jared went on to tweet some more, saying that he was being serious that he didn't know about the plans for the prequel, and that he was "gutted" that Sam apparenlty wouldn't be included (mind you, this a prequel to SPN... meaning BEFORE Sam and Dean were even born, so how could Sam be included? But Dean is apparently narrating this story so maybe Jared thought Sam should be helping to narrate it? I don't know). But Jared being Jared couldn't just leave that there, he then went on to tweet at Robbie Thompson who was announced as a writer for "The Winchesters" so then Jared went off on him too, calling him "Brutus" and a "coward" acting like Robbie betrayed him (speculation is-- Robbie refused to write for Walker, so Jared is pissed that he essentially chose Jensen over him). He did fairly quickly, remove that tweet attacking Robbie, but of course the damage was done at that point. And it truly only took his first tweet calling out Jensen for some people to be like "Jared-- that sucks if you didn't know but why are you saying any of this publicly?"

As you might know, Jared has had issues in the past with posting hurtful things on social media, and has even used it as a tool for attack before-- calling out customer service agents and public workers that he felt have wronged him, which is bad enough ... but for him to then do the same thing to his best friend of well over a decade? Many people who had once liked him or at least gave him the benefit of the doubt (I used to ...) stopped after this latest twitter tantrum.

However, some people have suspected for some time that J2 had a falling out either shortly before the finale or just after. Their public/social media interactions have seemed awkward, stilted or even non-existent in moments that they normally wouldn't be. In the past year, when Walker premiered, Jensen didn't say much about his friend's new venture other than a "Congrats. buddy" here and there. Later, we learned that Jensen refused to work on the show ... Jared said he make him do it, drag Jensen to the set "kicking and screaming" which made many fans quirk up an eyebrow because, why would Jensen put up a fight unless the two weren't as close as they used to be? And then Jensen moved his family to Colorado (either permanently or for an extended period at least) which is notable considering how he moved to Texas seemingly to be closer to Jared, even buying a house that was near his. All this was just speculation though; but it wasn't until Jared's tweet complaining about not knowing about the prequel that the theories behind them falling out, became less theory and more fact.

The day after his twitter tantrum, Jared tweeted again-- not retracting his statements or apologizing, but instead saying that he and Jensen "talked" and were "all good". Jensen then tweeted too, parroting this statement to some degree, which only made the whole thing even more sour in the mouths of the fans. The fact that Jared didn't apologize for his outburst and throwing his friend under the bus, and also the fact that Jensen-- Mr. Sexy Silence, Mr. Never Tweets, Mr. Tech-Ignorant-and-Proud, actually had to POST SOMETHING saying that he and Jared made up, it just screamed OPTICS. It was obviously the work of agents and PR firms and lots of people going "Look, if you two keep beefing, that will mean the death of both of your projects. Even more people will stop watching Walker, and this SPN prequel will never get picked up due to the scandal." So, the two "made nice" publicly to quell the chaos, but in my opinion, it's all too little too late. Jared started a storm that he can't contain now with a little tweet, and it seems like he knows that too because before he talked about him and Jensen making up, he asked that people "not send threats". He could have just as easily said that he shouldn't have made this a public issue and that he's sorry, but instead, he continued to play the victim and stoke the flames by alerting us all to the damage he's done.

Now, like I said before-- I used to give him the benefit of the doubt. I don't think he's an awful human or that he deserves to be attacked or anything, but he is an adult man with very poor judgment and an obvious selfish-streak a mile wide. He should know better, and he should have more respect for his so-called "friends" and "brothers" than to make them targets to public ridicule. I have a hard time believing that Jensen still sees Jared the way he used to, and I wouldn't blame him a bit for wanting to pull away-- especially when he's moving on to so many new and exciting things. Jared certainly deserves happiness just as much as anyone else, but he went on twitter and basically asked for a scandal, and he got one.

The question is now-- was there a motive behind it? Was just looking for a reason to bring his and Jensen's falling out to light-- while making himself looking like the victim in the process? Or did he genuinely not know about the prequel and just decided to go about "not knowing" in the most toxic and hurtful way he could manage?

In any case, that is the drama ... that is the J2 insanity in a rather lengthy nutshell ... that is the tea ... and I hope it all makes sense.

But the good news out of all of this is, Cockles is thriving-- they are happy and in love and Jensen calls Misha "Babe" and Misha misses waking up to see Jensen in the morning, and they are just as cute and wonderful as can be.

So, I will end that there. I am so glad to see you back, and I hope I answered all your questions in a way that made sense ... I tried anyway!

💖💖💖

#omg #I don't even know if this makes sense #this took way too long to write #j2 #cockles #long post #spn family #so glad you see you back again my dear #welcome to hell #it's hotter now

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itsclydebitches · 4 years ago

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Risk”

Welcome back, everyone! I have a lot of mixed, complicated feelings about today's episode and I'm already sure this recap will miss a great deal that should be said. There's a lot to digest, we need some time to do that, so until things have settled I think that the one, entirely confident claim I can make here is that our writers weren't BSing the fandom on twitter. The last few days have seen a number of big claims made regarding "Risk" —

— and whatever else we might have to say about the episode, it certainly delivered in terms of shocking content. From confessions to reveals to a new plan in place, there's a lot to unpack.

So let's get started.

Our first shot is a problem.

I don't want it to be! But I've got to work with what I've got. We open on Salem's flying monkeys — or gorillas, if we're being technical — and my immediate thought is where in the world they came from. I mean, obviously I know where. We ended Volume 6 with the post-credit scene of Salem adding wings to an army of Beringels, Hazel commenting that she'll lead the invasion herself. When Salem arrived at the end of Volume 7 and we picked up where we'd left off in Volume 8, the fandom was obviously expecting an attack led primarily by flying, transformed grimm. That didn't happen. For ten episodes the plot forgot that the Beringels existed, focusing instead of the Hound, the grimm soup, then the Whale, then the ground grimm the Whale was producing. Months back I encountered a number of posts asking, "What happened to the resource we know Salem brought to this fight?" and those questions are partly what inspired the "Introducing new grimm that are then quickly abandoned" spot on the bingo board. Now, suddenly, the Beringels have re-appeared and that is a good thing. Though it's too little, too late, as is so often the case with RWBY. Getting something you expect has a sour taste when it arrives months past when it was needed, especially when that something only exists for a second on screen.

This is doubly true given that we saw Oscar eliminate the grimm last episode.

At least, I thought he had? Pretty much everyone I've spoken to thought he had. This last week's discussions have centered around RWBY nerfing the stakes, taking out a whole army of grimm in one, magical blast. That's far from great. Yet now we see that we were apparently wrong. Atlas remains overrun with grimm, this problem remains a problem... so, yay? But we're once left with a tradeoff. RWBY has no longer eliminated the stakes with a deus ex machina as we had originally thought, but in its place we're left with a badly executed scene last episode and an assumed problem that is "fixed" with an enemy we should have been dealing with since the start of the volume. The road to the Beringels has been messy indeed and all they've done so far is fly across the screen.

Which reminds me: if this army of grimm still exists — and absolutely existed prior to Oscar's blast — how come not a single one is attacking the Schnee manor? This opening is in Atlas, the skies are overrun, we've seen a few grimm show up to help out the Hound, yet miraculously nothing bothers the group while they freak out at the dining table, or freak out as Penny tries to leave. That's a whole lot of grimm and a whole lot of negativity... yet somehow these two things never meet in a way that would inconvenience our characters. While from a writing standpoint I can understand not wanting to interrupt all these conversations and feel good moments, the show can't simply ignore the rules of its world whenever it's convenient. If anything, given that Atlas' population is currently hidden beneath the city, Schnee manor should be even more of a hot-spot than it normally would be. There is one (1) group of people out in the open for them to target.

Yeah, we're a single shot into this episode. It's a doozy.

Moving right along, those Atlas citizens (and, let's not forget, a large number of Mantle evacuees too) are still huddled in the tunnels, listening to Ironwood's insane broadcast. They're obviously terrified, as are those down in Mantle who are staring execution in the face. Fiona bursts into tears.

It makes me wonder why we didn't get the airship subplot now. As I've mentioned extensively in the past, that decision didn't make much sense and I think the writers knew it didn't make much sense because they chose not to reveal what Ruby and co. planned to do with the citizens once they were on board. The point was never to come up with a feasible plan, something the audience would put to the test, but rather to just make it seem like the group was doing something Smart and Heroic before Ironwood inevitably derailed it. Don't look too closely at the man behind the curtain. Normally, I'd comment that yes, it's damn hard to come up with a brilliant plan to save others in a situation like this — our characters can only be as smart as our authors! — yet that sympathy dissipates when we hit this episode and are given a scenario where airships would have been great. Ironwood has threatened to nuke Mantle. Suddenly, it is imperative that the civilians leave the safety of the crater as soon as possible (whereas before it was not). So Whitley remembers that they have access to these ships and the group hatches a plan to sneak them down while Ironwood is distracted, get everyone up into Atlas so he can't use Mantle as a bargaining chip anymore. Then they're spotted, the plan revealed, and Ironwood shoots their ships down, leaving them devastated that their attempt to help the citizens has literally gone up in flames. We're still left with the problem of why Ironwood wouldn't just allow a continued evacuation now that Salem is briefly out of the mix and the Schnees have provided extra resources — the writing really took a sledgehammer to his characterization — but the group trying to get people to Atlas to avoid death by bomb at least makes more sense than them trying to move the citizens to an undisclosed location, for unestablished reasons, when they were already relatively safe. The bomb is what makes those airships a necessity.

It really makes me wonder how much editing goes on and how much time the writers have before they finalize scripts.

Regardless, we cut from terrified people to Ironwood himself, accompanied by Winter. The animation has some nice parallels going on here, what with the same black, white, and blue color scheme, hands behind their backs, the need for robotic accommodations, and steps perfectly in synch. As we're about to see though, Winter is very good at looking the part of a loyal soldier while actually bending the rules.

However, are we really going to ignore that she betrayed Ironwood last episode? Betrayal from his perspective, that is. Winter was given a direct order, disobeyed that order, pissed off Harriet in the process, and wasn't able to give a good explanation for her actions — she was too busy being creeped out by Ironwood's reaction. For all intents and purposes she should be considered disloyal right now. Or at least under suspicion, yet Ironwood acts as if everything is fine. We've skipped over any meaningful fallout between them, or a reason why Ironwood would dismiss her betrayal. This ties into something I'll bring up later in the episode: namely, that RWBY introduces too much too quickly and doesn't have time to satisfyingly tackle — or tackle at all — the plot points they've introduced, simply because there's always a new one to focus on. We dropped the "Winter went against Ironwood at great personal risk" plotline to make room for the new "Ironwood has randomly threatened Mantle" plotline, which likewise doesn't do Ironwood's characterization any favors. I don't just mean the obvious "Omg he's willing to murder a whole city now" issue. Ironwood used to be smart, yet his unfounded trust in others makes him look foolish now: first trusting Watts, now Winter. Alongside that, the story and fandom have both pushed the idea that Ironwood is paranoid, yet that "paranoia" has only ever been attached to justified threats. If he were actually paranoid then Winter's actions would have caused him to mistrust all of the Ace Ops now, labeling everyone near him a disloyal enemy, despite evidence to the contrary (especially when it comes to Harriet). Yet across two volumes Ironwood has continually been "paranoid" only in regards to things like Cinder and Salem — proven threats — while simultaneously trusting known villains and ignoring when his subordinates straight up say, "She let our enemies go free." There’s little rhyme or reason to any of his decisions here.

Still! A nice, meaningful shot lol.

As Ironwood and Winter get closer we see the Ace Ops discussing the threat. "Of course he's not going to do it," to which Marrow pushes back with, "So what? He's bluffing with a whole city?" This is a really, really important moment that I don't think the writers realize is important. See, everyone is shocked when Ironwood reveals that he intends to go through with the threat. The Ace Ops, Winter, Robyn, our heroes... everyone grapples with the idea that this is actually happening. Everyone has some moment of, "It's just a bluff, yeah?" and I don't think that's just denial. The characters' shock tells us that Ironwood normally wouldn't be a man who'd do something like this. Ever. That shock has to stem from something, such as an ingrained understanding that Ironwood is a protector, not a murderer. Note the difference between the fandom and the characters' reactions. Whereas a good chunk of the fandom went, "Of course Ironwood means it. We all saw this coming! Remember how he..." and then proceed to list various things — persuasive or otherwise — that prove he was always a bad guy in the making. Yet no one in the RWBY world is inclined to use those moments as evidence. Winter doesn't go, "He's not bluffing. I saw him shoot the councilman just for speaking up" and the Ace Ops don't go, "Oh, he'll do it. This is the man who destroyed his arm to take down Watts. He'll stop at nothing." After everything they've seen — the same things we've seen — there's still some instinctual, nebulous knowledge that goes, "No. Ironwood wouldn't. He's one of the good guys." We can certainly talk about real life people getting swept up in horrible institutions, unwilling to admit how bad things actually are until they hit a specific line they can't cross... but I think this is less a comment on some sort of bystander effect (RWBY isn't that deliberately nuanced lol) and more an unintentional acknowledgement that until the very sudden and entirely unexpected shooting of Oscar, Ironwood actually wouldn't have done this. The Ace Ops are reacting to a man who absolutely existed until the writing erased him and they believe the core of that man still exists. To my mind, he should, but because our show can't actually have Salem as the main villain right now, she's conveniently blown up and Ironwood takes her place.

So we've got some loaded implications there, as well as Vine's comment that he hopes "the kids" see sense now. I am begging RWBY to pick a lane already. Are they kids, or are they adults? Because that answer makes a big difference and we can't continue to have it both ways.

Ironwood and Winter arrive were Ironwood orders that she prep drones with the "payload." That's the moment Winter and the others realize he's serious. Cue that shock all around. The revelation is the last straw for Marrow, prompting him to start yelling some excellent points about how Ironwood is doing Salem's job for her. See, this accusation works. Telling a guy threatening to blow up a city that he's as bad as their villain is accurate. Having Oscar tell that same guy that he's as bad as their villain because he wants to save a city full of people... is ridiculous. Totally different setup here and RWBY got it right this time. The only line that didn't work for me was Marrow asking the Ace Ops if they believe in anything. Uh... yeah. They believe in saving Atlas + all the Mantle evacuees they got. That's pretty well established. I swear, most RWBY speeches are padded with generic, heroic-sounding lines that don't actually mean anything, or are outright falsehoods we’re meant to ignore.

We'll see more of that with renora.

Marrow attempts to leave and his eyes go wide as he hears the click of Ironwood's gun. Remember I said that Winter is good at playing the obedient soldier? It's after Ironwood aims that she tackles Marrow.

On the surface it looks only like she violently disarmed him, but in reality she got him out of the bullet's path and kept Ironwood from firing at all. She saved his life, choosing to play up how she'll “take this traitor to the brig” where he belongs, rather than watching him die. A really nice moment in terms of strategy and one of the few lately where I've actually felt like I'm watching smart characters.

However, I cannot deny the uncomfortable implications in this scene. Smart or not, necessary or not, it hasn't escaped anyone's notice that one of our darkest characters was a) nearly killed by a white man and b) beat up by a white woman. To say nothing of Marrow's status as a faunus. I was cringing during his line about loyalty: “I used to wear this rank with pride. Now I see it for what it really is: a collar."

Honestly, I don't have the qualifications to unpack all that, so let's just acknowledge that the scene, while good in some respects, was massively insulting in others. I’ll let others in the fandom defend or damn it as they see fit.

We get a shot of how shocked the Ace Ops are that they nearly watched their team member get executed for speaking up against a bomb threat. It once again highlight's RWBY's strange depiction of violence and when it's deemed appropriate. Harriet has threatened people a couple of times now — here telling Marrow she'll shut him up herself — yet her reaction tells us that she never would have killed him as Ironwood nearly did. Threats, then, mean little... unless Ironwood is making an exaggerated comment about shooting Qrow. Then it's evidence of evil intent that's bound to come to the surface eventually. So does that mean Harriet will be trying to bomb cities herself someday? If so, it once again leaves our heroes in an awkward position, considering that Ruby started the fight Harriet wouldn't, Weiss stuck her weapon in Whitley's face, etc. If it says something awful that Winter would punch a minority — even to save his life — what does it say about Qrow that he would punch a child in anger? Outside of the easy to label actions like Ironwood's bomb threat and shootings, there exists this gray space that asks, “When are you justified to use violence? When is a threat forgivable?” The problem is, the show keeps coming up with contradictory answers. I bring this up not because Winter's punch or Harriet's threat are the most significant examples of this that we've seen, but because the themes of forgiveness and violence take center stage at the episode's end... and RWBY completely drops the ball. Keep these complications in mind.

Before that though, the group is crowded into the dining room and no matter what else "Risk" might give us, I'm reminded that I really like the design of the Schnee manor. I'm glad the episode found an excuse to show us this room again.

My initial thought upon entering the scene was, "Are we going to talk about Penny's hack? The silver-eyed grimm? Ozpin's return?" and to RWBY's credit it touches on all of these, though I stand by my point about plotlines coming too quickly. Any one of these should have been given the space to grow, not fighting for space against the potential destruction of Mantle. If you don't acknowledge these things in "Risk" you've lost your chance (much like how "Oscar is kidnapped" replaced "Oscar has to deal with Ozpin's return," resulting in a scene where Oscar was just... randomly okay with Ozpin again. We lost the chance to deal with the first conflict introduced because we barreled into the second), yet if you do spend episode time on these issues, it feels like the characters aren't dealing with the immediate threat. Questions of silver eyes, what to do about Penny, and Ozpin's return needed to be given their due before there was an hour time limit resulting in thousands of deaths. Now, you have to wonder why Yang and Ruby are talking about their mother when a city's safety is ticking away. Where were these questions and reassurances years ago?

I think this is why this episode — maybe even this whole volume — simultaneously feels too full and too boring. We're being introduced to lots of Big Things, but then putting them off to focus on other, smaller stuff, and by the time we circle back around it's no longer the right time. We're constantly focusing on the least interesting, least important thing in the room. Why is the group sitting around with their tea when we could have moved the Hound plotline up and started this groundwork earlier? Which means we're doing that work now instead of worrying about Mantle or Penny. All of which is connected to Salem herself being here, yet Ironwood is our villain instead... We're just introducing new idea after new idea, dropping each to focus on something else when the viewer is already emotionally invested in the last conflict. It makes the show feel overly packed with problems we don't have time for while simultaneously having too much time in which the characters do nothing of importance. We're never dealing with these issues at the right time. Talking about a silver-eyed grimm while Salem is here feels like Too Much and having the girls unpack that now, with Mantle’s life on the line, feels like Too Little. Stop sitting around while you've got less than an hour to save half a kingdom! We needed this conversation in a different episode, one not already driven by a problem that’s objectively more important.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We're in the dining room and the group is listing all the stuff that has gone wrong lately. Blake mentions that Qrow and Robyn are still in custody, because we definitely want Blake remembering that Qrow exists, not one of his nieces. Ruby, meanwhile, is having a meltdown. "So then it's impossible!" she yells, head in her hands.

Emerald sneaks in an insult: “See? If Ms. Hero here with all the answers doesn’t have one..." and the others, of course, jump to Ruby's aid. But Emerald is right! It's entirely Ruby's fault that Atlas didn't get the chance to escape with those they had. Her actions and lack of a plan led to where they are now. I'm not saying she's responsible for Ironwood's insane decisions — that's like saying he's responsible for Qrow's in relation to Clover — but Ruby indeed played the part of the hero who had all the answers... without actually having any answers. Now that things are worse than how they started, her only answer is to say it's all "impossible" and throw up her hands. Ruby is an absolutely terrible leader right now and someone should indeed be calling her out on that, it's just too bad it's Emerald, someone technically still presented as an untrustworthy figure for the next couple of minutes. (More on that later.) Any and every criticism of Ruby is dismissed out of hand. Don't believe Ironwood because he's crazy now. The Ace Ops? His boot lickers. Yang has things to say, but once Ren agrees with her she does a 180. Now Ren is heading towards an extra special apology for daring to doubt Ruby. May calls her out, only to also change her opinion the next episode. Now here's one more person, but she's a bad guy. The show has never once encouraged us to treat these criticisms seriously — never allowed them to stick, let alone lead to change — and at this point I'm done with everyone falling over themselves to absolve and praise Ruby. By making Emerald the criticizer and having Ruby throw herself a pity party, the writing ensures that the conversation goes from, "Yeah. You messed up big time and now have a responsibility to fix things" to "Aww, don't be so hard on yourself! We won't let mean Emerald insult you anymore."

Ruby makes herself the victim here. She gets so upset and acts so defeated that all anyone can do is reassure her. The focus turns towards her, a focus centered around hiding against the table, or cowering on a staircase, so that it feels cruel to call her out on her deadly mistakes when she's so clearly upset. But they still should have, especially since cowering and tears have never protected anyone else from the group's criticism. Ozpin is proof of that.

What I'm getting at is that Ruby runs away. She's faced with the consequences of her actions, is informed she needs to help come up with a solution, and instead of braving that decides it's "impossible" and literally runs from the room. While they're on a time limit. Keep this moment in mind for just a bit longer. These choices become doubly important later.

So Ruby can't handle the responsibility she violently ripped from others and the group goes out of their way to comfort her in this. Especially since the writing again decides to conflate Emerald and Ozpin through a comment of Oscar's, demonstrating that it still has no decent sense of what "responsibility" or "villainous acts" means. These scenes are three years in the making and every step getting here was dogged with problems, so the fact that the end result is a mess isn't exactly surprising.

We (thankfully) leave Ruby for a bit and instead turn to Jaune. He's amplifying Nora's aura, but admits that he can't get the scars to go away. That makes sense. After all, they're scars. His semblance helps people heal, but at this point Nora has already healed. Those scars are the result of that.

She says it was “Just another ditzy move from Nora” and I'm glad we're acknowledging that, even if it is all framed through the lens of Nora being incorrect in that assumption. Once again, the writing continually makes statements about characters, but fails to have their actions reflect that. Nora wanted to do more than just hit things with her hammer without thinking them through... and we showed that by having her hit a door with her hammer without thinking it through. Was it heroic? Absolutely. Did it lead to any growth? No. I'd much rather someone acknowledge that yeah, she did the same thing she always does, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Nora's impulsivity is a part of her and, given the talk of teammates here, she could have gotten reassurance that she'll always have people around to help her temper those impulses. Instead, we're (again) told that she shouldn't do A anymore, watch her do A anyway, the writing presents it like it’s B, Nora admits that she did A, and everyone rushes to assure her it was actually B. Just let these characters make mistakes for once, especially mistakes made in an effort to help someone. This should be the easiest and kindest way to criticize the group and RWBY can’t even manage that.

Which brings us to Ren. Ren, I am so sorry. You deserved better than this. Nora rips into him, saying, “We were supposed to be a team, but that didn’t matter to you! You shove people out so you don’t have to feel things that are hard!" and again we have RWBY making grand statements that are meaningless. Did Ren keep things bottled up in Volume 7? Yes... and no one tried to help him with that. Instead, Nora decided to bypass his problems completely and try to kiss it better. When that (shockingly) didn't work, Ren was finally forced to open up at Yang's insistence and was abandoned for his perspective. That's what that was, literally and metaphorically: they walked away from him and made it clear that so long as he believes these things, he's not welcome. What were those things? We've made mistakes, Ruby made mistakes, we're not ready for this stuff. That's it! "We were supposed to be a team" makes it sound like Ren betrayed them in the worst possible way, when in reality all he did was acknowledge that they're imperfect and that things are a mess right now. But of course, that is the ultimate betrayal for this group: acknowledgement that they’re not perfect. Everyone can call themselves out to generate sympathy — Nora does it, Ruby does it — but as soon as someone else agrees and implies that they should make changes, they’re dismissed.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the refusal to question Ruby makes me incredibly uncomfortable. Is this as bad as Ironwood shooting someone who questions him? Of course not, but that doesn't make it good. The group has made it clear from Ozpin to Ren that if you put a toe out of line, that's it. You're gone. You are not a part of the group until you are willing to back the group 100%, no matter what horrible things they might be up to. That Nora yells at Ren for questioning and Ren learns to keep his mouth shut, apologizing to both her and Jaune for speaking his mind is... well, it's horrible. That's not friendship. I know the fandom doesn't want to hear that given how much we otherwise love these relationships, but it's not. If you can't question and voice concerns without about serious topics like this without the threat of abandonment — literal or otherwise — then that's not a friend group you should be sticking with. Ren’s "biggest failing as a teammate and a partner" is that he didn't agree with the others and didn’t immediately change his mind when they demanded it. There are awful implications attached to that, especially since Ren’s perspective was a good one. He’s not out here slinging horrific views like, I don’t know, homophobia at the bee’s non-relationship. He just went “We made mistakes” and the group responded “Absolutely not. Absurd. Fuck you.” They didn’t even consider that position, which speaks to both a lack of respect for Ren and a level of arrogance that keeps getting them into trouble. But these issues are easily overlooked given everything else that surrounds them. Outside of Ren's apology, I quite liked the renora moment. We got a detail about Nora's backstory! She called Ren pretty! We got an "I love you"! He booped her nose!! It's all very cute and wholesome... and soured by the knowledge of what Ren had to do to get here.

Outside of these generalized responses, there are three other points I wanted to make about this scene:

Yes, more obligatory humor to ruin an otherwise serious moment. Jaune could have just smiled softly and slipped out. Or have him leave before the conversation started (because Ren shouldn't have been apologizing to him in the first place...) Instead, we got multiple seconds of him being awkward, including a bunch of funny sound effects.

I'm legitimately happy we got that "I love you" — outside of the problems since arriving in Atlas, I've always enjoyed the ship — but coming on the heels of last week's episode, it makes the bee's forehead touch look even worse. Renora has been confirmed multiple times at this point, but we still can't get something overt for our one, queer ship.

On the one hand, I really like that Nora set a boundary here — a surprisingly mature conversation for RWBY — but I'm confused as to what exactly the boundary is. She says she needs to figure out who she is without Ren, but what does that translate to on a practical, day-to-day basis? Normally, when a couple needs to figure out who they are they separate, but renora can't do that. They're still on the same team, stuck in the same war, presumably off to do the same things they've always done together. It sounds great on paper to say that Nora is going to discover who she is without Ren, but unless they separate again I don't see how that can happen. More likely, we'll get a volume or two of them looking and acting exactly as they always have, but when it comes time for relationship drama again, Nora will insist she's a different person who is now ready to be with him. That she's changed. But change requires, you know, making a change, so is renora actually going to look any different moving forward?

While these two confess their love but also decide to be separate (is that what happened?), Qrow and Robyn have knocked out some guards and retrieved their weapons. Robyn watches four security feeds, whispering, "He's... really gonna do it." See? Even Robyn, someone who never liked Ironwood and considered him dangerous from the start, is in shock that he would go this far. Qrow doesn't want to talk moral downfalls though, he's all action: "Not if we stop him first."

You know, at least Qrow is doing something. What he's doing is stupid, particularly given his motivations, but with the volume we've had I give him props for coming up with a plan and sticking to it. That's more than many of the others have done.

Yet then, suddenly, Robyn doesn't want to kill Ironwood. ...Since when? Robyn has been the most trigger happy of the lot while Qrow initially wanted to talk. Now they've switched places for no reason I can see, with Qrow all murder happy and Robyn cautioning restraint. Which admittedly isn't uncommon. Remember how Nora was all about protecting Mantle and then randomly decided to help with Amity instead? Remember how Yang was critical of Ruby and then decided to defend her to Ren? Remember how Hazel was pro-Salem until he saw a blue naked lady and decided to defect? At this point, characters just do things at random.

Robyn says that Qrow isn't trying to kill Ironwood because that's the right thing to do, only because he wants revenge. A true enough assessment. But then she follows it up by claiming that Qrow is a better huntsmen than Clover because he does the right thing. Without rehashing all my arguments regarding how Clover was not the devil incarnate for refusing to let two potential criminals walk free — especially after they attacked him — we're really playing the dead guy card now? Clover was murdered. Robyn and Qrow were participants in that murder. Now Robyn is making sweeping claims about who is the better person when Clover quite obviously isn't here to defend himself? That's all kinds of messed up.

Before they can bash the dead guy anymore though the elevator arrives. We see Qrow and Robyn's shocked expressions at whoever is behind the doors, presumably Winter and Marrow. It seems likely that Winter didn't really intend to take him to the brig. They're defecting and have now found two more allies to help them. Robyn wants a plan other than run upstairs and stab Ironwood? Winter will likely provide one.

We return to Ruby who, as established, is wallowing in the most dramatic position on the staircase. Obviously things are legitimately horrible right now and if Ruby had been given a storyline different from what we've seen since Volume 6, I'd feel sorry for her. As it stands, it's just frustrating to watch her look like the maiden of a Victorian novel while Mantle's time ticks away.

The conversation between her and Yang is great though. At least, it is for the first few sentences. I love that the show remembered they're sisters and have them talking again. I love that Yang tries to cheer Ruby up by saying she outshines her big sis in regards to the Hound. I love that she nevertheless acknowledges that the Schnees were a part of that defeat, giving them their due rather than putting all the praise on Ruby. We establish that Yang has learned what the Hound really was. This conversation is going strong...

...but then.

"That's what happened to mom."

Really? Really? In eight episodes we went from, "Lol just because the Hound spoke doesn't mean Summer was secretly made into a grimm. That’s a crazy theory" to "Summer was absolutely turned into a grimm. That's canon now!" Except because it was made canon by Ruby just announcing it one day, we can expect for an even bigger "twist" in the future: Summer is still alive. Why wouldn't she be? The Hound was untouchable outside of silver eyes, so we have little reason to think anyone has defeated her in the last 14 odd years.

I'll admit the timeline works out better than expected (I think) with Salem killing SEWs during Maria's time before switching to experimentation, but there's no emotional weight to this. I just don't care and frankly I don't think the fandom cares either. Oh, there's plenty of excitement over the reveal, but that's all for the version of Summer Rose people have built up in their minds for the last eight years, not anything that exists in the show. If you strip away all the headcanons and fics, Summer isn't interesting because she barely exists. We know nothing about her as a person and therefore we have no reason to care that she's likely another Hound. Worse — because maybe this could be smoothed over if we just care since Ruby cares — everything else surrounding this reveal was badly done. Summer, as said, has been a non-character for this whole series. Yang only just remembered two episodes ago that Summer is her mom too. The only evidence of experimentation we've seen is on other grimm, not people. There was more mystery surrounding why Tyrian was interested in Jaune, not why he'd kidnap Ruby (Big Bads always want to kidnap heroes). We have no idea who this silver eyed faunus was. We have no idea why Salem would randomly start experimenting when she doesn't need additional weapons. We don't know why she would keep these weapons to the sidelines when she’s apparently had them for over a decade. I don't even buy that Ruby, someone who we never see thinking about or questioning any of this, suddenly put all these pieces together to hit on the revelation.

None of this adds up because it wasn't planned. Summer was dead, added to the series purely because having a dead mom is interesting, and she was treated as dead for seven years. Not just by the characters, by the show. Then, suddenly, the narrative raced to remind everyone that she's supposedly a Very Important Character so we could get this twist. It’s awful. Not because the idea itself is horrible, but because it was shoved into a story that wasn't prepared for it and certainly doesn't need it. The group has Salem herself attacking the kingdom, Ironwood threatening destruction, three Relics still to discover, not to mention all the other personal conflicts going on — Emerald walking around the mansion, Ozpin is back, Penny is being controlled, Oscar has finite magic now, Nora is still recovering — but we're going to introduce another subplot to deal with? RWBY acts like it's terrified that if it doesn't add something new and flashy every third episode, its viewers will jump ship. Despite its hiccups, there's a reason why the arcs of Volume 4 worked well overall: characters were given the time to explore specific problems, like Yang's PTSD and the destruction of Ren's village. Now, in episode 11 of 14, RWBY reveals that two of the characters' mom was turned into a literal monster, but there's only time for a tiny bit of comfort because Penny is escaping and they have less than an hour now to save Mantle. There is way too much going on and we're not devoting enough time to any of it.

Hell, even the conversation can't afford to stay on the Summer reveal for more than a few sentences. Ruby segues back to her self-chastisement, saying that she wasted time on Amity. She did, but not because people didn't come. She never should have made that terrifying, nonsensical announcement to begin with. But just like Ruby never thought through the pros and cons of telling the world about Salem, she apparently never thought about the logistics of getting help. She's written the world off now — so you just know help will appear in the finale — yet she never considered how long all this would take. Our timeline is (supposedly) two days, so how long would it take a kingdom to digest the information she gave them, decide on a course of action, get people and resources together, then fly all the way to Atlas? After Ruby used most of the first day just to send the message? As I and others have pointed out, the answer is “way longer than the group has.” It shouldn't be possible, yet neither Ruby nor Yang realizes basic facts like, "What's the flight time between Vacuo and Atlas?" Like Qrow blaming his semblance rather than his decision to team up with Tyrian, Ruby blames the world for abandoning them rather than her terribly thought out plan. Both have reached the right emotion — regret — but not for the right reasons.

Also, Ruby says that Amity fell. Are Pietro and Maria okay??

Yang talks about blind optimism vs. no optimism at all, something I could really get behind if the group hadn't been governed by blind optimism this whole time. Also if what the rest of what Yang said made sense. She fires back with, “And in case you didn’t notice, my plan for Mantle didn’t work either." Uh... what plan? As far as I recall there was no plan. They just went down to do any tasks that needed doing: supply runs and grimm killings. What plan is Yang talking about?

This conversation is a disaster. We circle back around to Summer with Yang saying she also took a risk (the title is very obvious this episode) but "she's still my hero." Is she? Because the only thing you've ever said about Summer is that she baked great cookies. Regardless, Yang lays her head on Ruby's shoulder and they cry some more.

Then Jaune hurries down the steps because Penny has woken up and broken through a window.

Again: how were they planning to deal with this? Did anyone discuss it? Because it looks like Klein said, "Hey, that friend of yours powered up and could have hurt us," Nora said, "Hey, Penny was fighting some sort of control," and Whitely said, "Yeah, she wanted to open the vault and then self destruct" and everyone just left her alone in some room, deciding they'd worry about that later. If Penny had just snuck out a little more quietly the group would have been screwed.

What I do like though is the teamwork to keep Penny from flying off. It feels like we get so little teamwork nowadays, which makes everyone piling on others' range weapons, or Jaune boosting Weiss' glyphs, really enjoyable. Even Emerald gets in on the action because apparently they gave her her weapons back!

We're going to talk about this nonsense in a second.

For now, Ruby implores Penny to fight it, which is exactly what I said we'd get. Penny insists Ruby kill her though, saying that if she does she'll ensure that the power passes to her. I find this to be a weird priority. Does the group really care about who gets the Maiden powers right now? The threat here is that Penny will successfully open the vault — which shouldn't even be that much of a worry. Just let Ironwood leave instead of trying to destroy Mantle! Keeping him here has made things worse! — and that Penny will self-destruct. That feels like the biggest worry: that Penny will die. So they're going to prevent her death by... killing her themselves? Priorities and motivations really feel shaky this week.

Luckily, Ruby remembers that Penny is A Real Person and tells Jaune to amplify her aura. The fact that she has a soul keeps the virus from overtaking her. Hurray!

That's like saying my sense of self will beat off rabies. Just believe that you're your own person and nothing can touch you. They go so far as to say, “That’s who you are. Our friend, not a machine” and that feels like such an erasure to me. Penny is a machine. She is! And that was great back when this was accepted as a good thing, not something to ignore. Remember this?

You think just because you've got nuts and bolts instead of squishy guts makes you any less real than me?

Here, Ruby acknowledges Penny's difference and reaffirms that she still has worth. Now, the group denies Penny's difference in order to prove that she has worth. She has worth because she's supposedly not a machine and supposedly can't be controlled like one... even though she is a machine and is being controlled. It's only Jaune's semblance that keeps her from going under again. The concept of Penny's personhood is now connected to her ability to resist a machine-based virus and she has failed to do that. This doesn't confirm Penny's humanity, it tells Penny (and us) that humanity is distinct from the machine parts of her, rather than a concept that includes it, and the moment she is too influenced by that machinery she ceases to be a person. The group isn't accepting her here, they're encouraging Penny to ignore and deny the parts that make her Penny.

If you want an example of how to do an arc like this far, far better, go watch The Next Generation with Data. He's what Penny could have been.

Regardless, the virus has been held at bay, at least so long as Jaune has aura. Which seems to be endless given that he was exhausting himself in the whale, but is now boosting Nora, Weiss, and Penny without any difficulty.

At least that's a minor concern in the grand scheme of things. What we're about to get? Not so much. Honestly, I'm 7k into this recap and I just don't have the energy that these two scenes deserve. Which scenes? The one where Emerald is welcomed into the fold with laughter and Ozpin has to grovel for forgiveness.

Emerald first. Last week I said:

“However this fight ends, we could really use someone like you, [Emerald.]” That’s it then. Discussion over. We knew as soon as it started that blindly trusting her was being presented as the “right” thing to do and now here we are, deciding that conclusively, despite Jaune and Yang’s complaints. By the time the group reaches the mansion, Oscar is defending Emerald from Ruby. We’re supposed to just accept that she’s a part of the group now, only minimal pushback allowed.

and I was right. Over the course of the last week I spoke with a number of friends, many of them working under the belief that this was just the start of an arc for Emerald. Obviously the show wouldn't instantly have the group trust her after all this. They'll need to warm up to her first. She'll need to prove herself. Well, I was far more pessimistic, arguing instead that I thought this was it. She was already being presented as a perfectly trustworthy figure. I'd briefly thought I'd been mistaken when the group turned on Emerald for her comment to Ruby, but then suddenly she's been given her weapons back. It's not even a matter of "You should be able to defend yourself, but you're still not trustworthy" (which would still have problems, but). No, she makes a comment about "switching sides" and that's it, trust achieved. That's all it took — nothing at all.

Now, some shows do function on a second chance policy. We can name hundred of stories where heroes instantly forgive antagonists and there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is that RWBY is very much not that show. In the exact same scene Ozpin apologizes to the group and begs that they try to trust him again:

“I’ve failed all of you. I should have trusted you with the truth and I should never have run the day you discovered it."

This is complete and utter bullshit. Sorry, I'm not mincing words for this one. Two years we waiting for the group to come around, hoping that there would be apologies on both sides, but there wasn't. The group doesn't physically or verbally hurt Ozpin anymore — they do accept his request — but it's done with expressions that say this is what they are owed. You’d better apologize.

I could rehash all the arguments I've already made about how atrociously they treated him, how Ozpin had no reason to trust a bunch of teenagers, how important it was that both sides admit their mistakes, but if you're reading this recap you're likely already familiar with all that. Rather, what I want to emphasize here is that our opinions on Ozpin don't even matter here. Even those who take his apology at face value — fully believing he did fail them, he should have told them everything from the start, and that him leaving was "running away" rather than being driven off — even if we accept for just a moment that Ozpin is as guilty as the show says and heinous as the fandom claims... surely he's not as bad as Emerald? In roughly chronological order she has:

Tried to ally herself with Adam along with Cinder and Mercury

Helped to attack Amber, resulting in injuries that would have killed her if Cinder hadn't gotten to her first

Helped kill Tukson

Pretended to be a transfer student and Ruby's friend for the rest of the semester (that’s a lie that would breed mistrust)

Tricked the world into thinking that Yang had attacked Mercury unprovoked

Uses her semblance on Pyrrha, causing her to unintentionally kill Penny

All of this was in service of the Fall of Beacon, an event that destroyed a school, killed an unknown number of students, killed Pyrrha, and lost Yang her arm

Participated in the attack on Haven which, beyond the intent to further Salem's goals, nearly got Weiss killed

Came to Atlas to assist in the next attack

Went after Penny, Pietro, and Maria — two of whom might still be in trouble depending on if Amity literally fell out of the sky

Listened to Oscar being tortured, hemming and hawing for a while before realizing that, if the whole world is in danger, she's in danger too

Finally jumped ship

Emerald is one of the bad guys. All the sad looks over the years doesn't change that. Yet somehow an antagonist we've had since Volume 1 is considered more trustworthy than Ozpin, a man who hasn't intentionally helped kill their friends and who has been helping and apologizing for months now.

Yang "Aww"s when Emerald speaks. Just sit with that for a second. The woman who went through all of that horror because of Emerald, who just last episode was correctly saying they can't expect her to forget all that, is going "Aww" after... Emerald helped hold Penny for two seconds? This is ridiculous. These are the faces of the group when talking about Emerald's trust

whereas these are their expressions when talking about Ozpin's

It’s not a matter of who deserves trust or not, here it’s purely a matter of comparison. Emerald should not be more quickly forgiven than Ozpin.

Now toss in the story Ozpin tells. Unsurprisingly, it's another fairy tale — we've gotten a little heavy-handed lately — about a young girl who flees the consequences of a choice and, having never learned from her initial failure, spreads even more trouble. That's Ruby. That is Ruby to a T in this episode and the last three volumes. She is literally a young girl who has caused staggering consequences, literally ran away from the conversation about those consequences, and is now poised to continue making those mistakes because everyone keeps reinforcing her flaws. That's Ruby, yet somehow the show thinks it's Ozpin. He positions himself as the young girl here, as if he didn't face his consequences generations ago when he left the cabin, didn't learn from his mistakes by keeping Salem's secret, and hadn't been driven away by the very people he's asking for a second chance. This scene has everything backwards and while normally I'd grab hold of the possibility that maybe things will right themselves later on... we're done. This is the ending of that arc. After two years of saying, "Maybe, maybe, maybe," Ozpin has been taken back into the fold after begging his way back in. There's no more time to correct things. RWBY missed its chance. Weiss says that "Trust is a risk" and that's how Ozpin is forgiven. They have taken the risk of trusting him again after months of reflection, life-saving actions, and apologies. Emerald is granted the risk of trust in under an hour. I’ve heard so many people say they’re dropping RWBY this volume and scenes like this are precisely why.

Ugh. Heavy stuff, folks! I feel like I need to lighten the mood. Here, let's take a moment to acknowledge that the Schnees and Klein only marginally know what's happening.

Someone help them.

That is, to all intents and purposes, the end of our episode. Ruby has some sort of epiphany about actually handing Penny over — "That's actually a risk we haven't considered" — and Ironwood will no doubt fall for whatever plan they've concocted because he's stupid now. He receives a call from Ruby saying they agree to his terms, Watts is attempting to get communication of his own up and running, and Neo arrives to do... whatever she intends to do. Idk, I have assumed she wanted Ruby, but Cinder obviously doesn't have her yet for a trade off. Regardless, Neo is ready for a fight while Cinder just smiles. Team up 2.0?

As for bingo, I'm using my free space for "Worst redemption arc I've ever seen," with an honorary nod to Hazel too, and Ozpin's square gets blacked out in exes because that was just #bad.

This bingo board is a mess. Appropriate lol

Three more weeks, everyone. Hang in there! ��

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #rwby risk #mymetas #rwby recaps

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it-was-all-a-beautiful-dream · 4 years ago

Text

Silva Lining (Saul Silva x Reader) Chapter 15

Warnings: none?

Word Count: 1.2k

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You ended up going to the last person you thought you would. You nervously paced outside her door wondering if you should actually knock or walk away. You were still getting used to the idea that she was your mother. Your real, in the flesh, long lost birth mother. It felt so natural though now to be going to her with your worries and problems.

It was as if she could sense you outside the door. Actually she probably could, after all she was one of the most powerful fairies you knew. At this moment she was probably reading your mind and being consumed with the never ending thoughts swirling around your head.

The door opened with a heavy sigh and there she was. You were thrown slightly. You’d never seen her this way before. Normally extremely polished, Farah Dowling was stood in front of you, hair in a messy bun, reading glasses, plaid pyjamas and a large glass of wine in one hand. The epitome of comfort, and you half smiled because in that moment you saw a glimpse of yourself in her.

She smiled and opened the door wider. “I was wondering if you were ever going to knock.”

You’d been with your mother a lot longer than expected. You told her about your fight with Saul and were slightly shocked when she sided with him and not you. Only slightly shocked though because what Saul said was all true.

You spoke more in depth about your childhood, what it was like growing up in the system. There were tears, laughter and a lot of wine and before you knew it you were hugging and she was stroking your hair lulling you to sleep, trying to ease your worry about the fight you’d had with Saul hours before reassuring you that he just needed to cool off.

You remembered falling asleep on your mums sofa but when you woke in the morning you were curled up in a ball against a very naked Saul Silva. Memories of the night came flooding back, the deep convo with your mum, being carried from her suite to yours. Apologising to Saul, who had, had two drinks and rushed home not being able to bare leaving things the way they were between you. Then there was the kissing, the touching, the sweet talk. Then there was the hot passionate make up sex. You didn’t like arguing with Saul but you remembered thinking if this is how the making up went you seemed to mind it a little less.

Waking up next to the man you love after having the fight and the conversation with Farah seemed to do something to your soul. It was like a weight had been lifted, like a wave of calm and serenity had passed over you. Like you were waking up new, with a fresh start and positive outlook on the events in your life rather than being so damn right pessimistic.

Today was going to be a great day. That’s what you had told yourself. Then Bloom fucked things up.

It was too early in the morning still to be dealing with this crap. You’d been hanging out with Aisha and Terra when you found out about Bloom getting help from Dane to finally break Beatrix out of the weird magical jail she was being kept in. Long story short, Bloom was acting like a complete nut case, in your opinion, a bit over the top as per. She almost went full psycho, her eyes lighting up like a bonfire. It took seconds for your body to take over, eye colour vanishing, being consumed by your magical black orbs. That knocked her down a peg or two and she handed this weird break out device thing to Aisha.

Next step was Stella’s actually not so bad plan. You couldn’t fight the fact that Bloom did deserve answers about who she was and where she came from. You knew how it had felt and you knew what it felt like now to finally know the truth. As much as the hot headed fairy got under your skin sometimes, you couldn’t ignore the fact that you were a lot alike and you needed to help in whatever way you could.

You were on board with the breaking Beatrix out plan, pushing her through your mothers spell and getting to whatever or whoever was on the other side of that hidden passage. But when the time came it turned out you had a more important role to play.

It irked you that you had to find out about what was going on from Riven, but at least you now knew.

You’d bumped into Riven and Sky in a somewhat hushed but serious conversation. Sky had beckoned you over, asking what was going on with Bloom. Apparently to activate the breaky outty

device she had knocked him out and he was well… pissed. Next thing you knew they were telling you about the patrol they were going on.

Apparently Saul had been tracking the movements of a whole heard of Burned Ones. That kept on getting closer and closer to the school. You knew it had something to do with your father and it pissed you off. Why was he doing it? What was he instructing the Burned Ones for? Who had he made a deal with?

Sky and Riven had left and you’d followed them far back enough that when the time was right you’d teleport in next to everyone when they least expected it.

Maybe it wasn’t a great plan because you teleported next to a war ready Saul who swung his sword up to your neck and almost took your head off. If it wasn’t for his fast reflexes well, he would of had a biggggg mess to clean up.

“Y/N what the hell are you doing here?” It wasn’t Saul who shouted first, you hadn’t noticed your mum standing on the other side. Saul was still trying to regain his breath from his near heart attack.

“One, I thought I could be of use when it came to the Burned Ones, they can’t hurt me. Two..” You were interrupted before you could finish your sentence. Aisha came trudging along to the front line, you watched as Saul rolled his eyes.

“Go back to school, nows not the time to be trying to gain extra credit.” Aisha glared slightly at his words.

“As i’m sure Y/N was going to say, two, we have a big problem which I thought you should know about.” You looked at Aisha shocked. That wasn’t what you were going to say at all, you weren’t planning on ratting your friends out but apparently she had no issue with doing just that.

Aisha filled Saul and your mum in on what Bloom had been planning to do with Beatrix. You were otherwise distracted by the noises only you seemed to hear and quite frankly, pissed off.

“Y/N, it’s time, it’s happening. It was never Bloom she wanted, it was always you.” You stumbled closer to the barrier, Sky shouted your name alerting the others. Farah came to your side.

“It’s Rosalind isn’t it, she never wanted Bloom, she’s been after me this whole time.”

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CHAPTER 16 ----- CLICK HERE

Heyoooo, hope you liked this chapter, I personally can't wait to get passed the events of the end of the series, then I can start really creating my own original content and not follow a script! I do have an idea so hopefully all goes as planned for the future <3

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poutyhannie · 4 years ago

Photo

word count: +4k

warnings: fluff, angst, smut, college!fem reader, college!felix, romantic fantasy

** **

You gaze down at the materializing letters stretching across your palm till your elbow. It was a mixture of Korean and English. The Korean characters were few and far in between but were delicate and even while the English letters were long, messy, and leaned to the right.

I’ll need to turn in Prof Behl’s assignment when I go to class and then explain why I can’t go to the museum research trip.

Did I use all my meal swipes? Chris said he wanted to workout at 3…

These notes would often appear on your right arm, sometimes remaining like a tattoo for weeks or fading before you could even read it fully. These were the thoughts of a person whose soul matched your own. He was a college student who is majoring in English with focus on things like creative writing and poetry and you’ve gathered that ‘Chris’ was his roommate.

For as flowery his major was, the boy’s thoughts were surprisingly plain and boring. However, you were thankful for it. Your friend often had dark circles under her eyes. Her connection with her soul partner was being awake at the same time and you were sure her soul’s partner lived on the other side of the world with the opposite time zone. To be honest, you gleaned almost nothing from the notes. The boy probably didn’t know that his thoughts were being recorded on your arm, which you always kept covered with a sleeve. Neither did you know what connection he had with you. Did he feel the emotions you did? Were his dreams your memories? You’ve laid to waste these meaningless thoughts to focus on your life more, not his. There was little reason to go searching him out; if you truly were tied together by souls, fate could do the heavy lifting for you two.

Leaning back at your desk, you shake out your cramping hands. The graphic design project requires that you draw out the story board by hand rather than digitally and you never wished more to curse for it. The reason was, according to your Professor, head of the project you and your classmates are fighting to be a part of use physical copies in the preliminary section. Because you had started in traditional art, relatively it was easy to get back in the swing of things. Didn’t mean that your hand didn’t hurt like a bitch, though. You had everything riding you getting to participate in this project, you’d planned everything out with your counselor and had little attractive options if you didn’t get it, so you return to your drawing.

Your roommate swings open the door, causing you to jump and tug your sleeve on quickly. She throws her bag on her bed with no regards to the loud thump it emits. Her blonde hair rests on your paper when she leans over to look at your drawing. As always, she gushes at your talents and as always, you remind her that her microbiology major is much more impressive.

The night is a lot hotter than comfortable, especially with the tight sleeve you always relegate yourself to, even while sleeping. Ever since you caught your dad reading the thoughts on your arm when you slept, you sometimes go so far as to sleep on your stomach, with your right arm tucked under you. It was uncomfortable reading his thoughts, much less having someone else read them. Yeah, they weren’t always too juicy or detailed, but it still felt wrong to share something like this with anyone else.

“Even family?” You remember your dad asking to your rage.

“Even family.” You hissed.

With a groan, you rise out of bed, your roommate looking up from her five inch thick textbook, illuminated by a soft, yellow dest lamp. Her watery eyes gaze up at you from behind her round glasses. “I’m going out. Can’t sleep.” You tell her.

The night breeze whispers through your hair as you sit on an empty bench in an empty courtyard near your dorms. It’s in time like these that you feel peace. When not a soul is around you and you can finally just sit with yourself. Slowly, you unwind the sleeve and are met with chaotic swirl of words. This happens when he dreams.

Worth, friends, others, internships, classes, empty, running, nothing, darkness.

Your heart pangs. He’s having nightmares again. Instinctively, you begin to wrap your arm up again, not wishing to invade him at his weakest point.

Though you don a mask of indifference towards the scrawl on your arm and effectively the boy around others, you can’t help but hurt for him. He seems swamped with so much to do and feels helpless. When you look down, the chilling sentence on your arm burns in your mind and heart.

I don’t think there’s anyone for me. All I see is black. Am I alone?

Two weeks later, they stay. No matter how many times you unwrap and rewrap your arm, those three sentences never leave. Others come and go, but from that night until now, they stay. And the guilt of not pursuing this boy is eating you alive.

You always assumed he had a connection that allowed him to know of your existence. When you realize that he doesn’t, your passivity almost seems like a sin. How lonely it must be to be alone in a world where everyone has someone. Since then, you’ve been paying close attention to the scrawl on your arm, careful to gather as much info on him as you can decipher. Right now though, in class, you can’t.

Your Professor is announcing the chosen students of the project and you can’t really think about him now.

“And the last student is Y/n.”

You heave out a sign of relief, making a note to thank you Professor. You’re sure she had a few good words to put in for you. “The students I just called will be working with other student in screenwriting. You guys need to pick five scripts you want to animate and the screenwriting students will choose their preferred artist.”

Walking into the classroom with another female peer by your side, you absentmindedly fidget with your sleeve. She walks boldly up to a male student, who’s dark blonde falls onto his freckled cheeks, sticking her hand out. “I’m Madeline,” you hear her say. His eyes snap up towards yours but he immediately looks back to Madeline as they exchange pleasantries.

Madeline is paired up with the freckled boy and you with a quiet, thoughtful boy named Seungmin. He tells you that he is friends with Felix, the freckled boy, so you combine tables and group up. Because this is a project done in your own time, you all choose to work together to bounce ideas off with each other though with how bubbly Madeline is, you wonder how much you guys will get done.

When the topic of soul partners comes up, you and Felix shift uncomfortably. Seungmin gets visions through the eyes of his partner and has seen her face, he tells you guys casually.

How wonderful it must be to know who your soul is tied to, you think bitterly, a twinge of jealousy coursing through you.

Madeline’s green eyes shine as she starts, “I don’t know who they are, but I see colors that has to be tied to them.” She’s a romantic, giddy with excitement at the prospect. It’s so easy to live with just seeing colors; it’s pretty and inconsequential, much a contrast to the invasive cryptics on your arm.

When all your eyes turn to Felix, he purses his lips softly, only able to look down at the table. “I actually don’t know what my connection is. Maybe its unconsciousness because I can never fall asleep at nights,” he jokes, attempting to push the attention off of that topic.

A glossy nail taps Madeline’s pink lips as her dark lashes flutter, “I don’t think so. Insomnia isn’t usually paired with unconsciousness connection.”

Feigning disinterest, Felix shrugs, focusing back to the sketches, “Maybe it has something to do with my color blindness, I’m not sure. Doesn’t really matter,” he mutters, his voice deep and throaty. Madeline gasps, lightly slapping Felix’s arm. He raises an eyebrow at her.

“Of course that has to be it!” She exclaims, “It’ll be a subcategory color connection, just like me! Maybe you’ll see colors when you see your partner or when some other unveiling instance occurs.”

She goes into depth about connections, her shoulders bouncing in excitement. Thankfully, this distracts them from asking you about your connection. As her movements and words quicken, the stale bitterness in your mouth consumes you. It’s immature, your distaste for anything about these connections. Just because you have a subjectively unfortunate connection definitely doesn’t mean you should shit on Madeline’s obvious interest in the subject. In fact, Felix and Seungmin seem to enjoy talking with her about it as she has extended knowledge about connections.

However, while Seungmin’s tone that he asks his with questions are amused, his interest piqued, Felix is leaned forward in his chair, his eyes barely concealing desperation. Your heart pangs for him; he’s probably so lost.

Seungmin and Madeline walk in front of you and Felix on the sidewalk, returning to the dorms. They’re in deep conversation about Seungmin’s connection and with Madeline’s knowledge and Seungmin’s intellect, they quickly and thankfully exclude you and Felix.

“I don’t wanna talk about connections,” you declare to him. A small smile spreads across Felix’s face and he nods knowingly. “What made you want to get into animation?” He asks, a pleasant and refreshing topic.

“I haven’t always been the best at art,” you admit with a shrug. “No way!” Felix exclaims, his eyebrows raised, “Your work is so cool, though.”

You laugh at the compliment, “Yeah, well it took me a while to get here and I didn’t want to throw away that work, so here I am. What about you? Why did you want to get into script writing?”

Felix’s eyes soften and he stares off past the line of buildings, into the horizon. “I feel like I can see different things with words. Does that make sense?” He pauses, gathering his thoughts, “They open up worlds and ideas that I can’t experience and it makes me feel closer to normal. It makes me feel alive.”

“Like, you can imagine how colors feel or look through words?”

He nods, looking back at you with a playful look, “That’s another reason why I like your work so much. The values are clear and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything by not seeing color.”

The genuine, heartfelt comment makes your heart warm and a smile spread across your face, “Yeah, I focus a lot on just greyscale because composition is the most important aspect to my art. Stuff like color theory, while important, it basically inconsequential if you can’t even tell what’s going on in the picture.”

Felix’s voice quiets as he shoots a look up at Madeline’s back, “Yeah, I didn’t want to choose Madeline’s for that reason, but she really thought that the color use in my script would work in perfect tandem with her style and I really couldn’t tell whether she’s right or not,” he shrugs, his lips pulling into a line.

“Oh, totally,” you say quickly, not wishing to have Felix question his choice, “It makes total sense and in some instances color can tell more of a story than composition and values can. It was wise to team with her.” Maybe your intentions of reassuring Felix was too obvious because his eyes crinkle deeply when he gives you a big, knowing smile.

A week into your work and the very basic shapes for the animation is finished. Working with Seungmin is wonderful as he has a clear direction and even pictures he’s taken to show you what he envisions. Concentration pinches Felix’s eyebrows together and he and Madeline converse as you watch them from the other end of the table.

An hour or two pass and you stand up to stretch, announcing that you’re gonna take a bathroom break to which they agree is a wonderful idea. Coming out of the bathroom, you wrap up your sleeve, peeking to see what the ink says this time. The three words that you’re familiar with; that have been etched into your sink for weeks don’t make your heart stop, but the ones under it.

Am I alone? She needs to add more clear composition so I can actually tell what’s going on.

Your eyes snap up to the blond haired boy. That’s exactly what Felix told you a day ago. Its him?

To your confusion, he now stares, awestruck at Madeline. There’s a sinking in your stomach but you can’t tell why. Gasping, his eyes widen as he takes her hands. “Madeline…I think,” he stumbles over his words, clearly flabbergasted. “I-I’m seeing color now, I think.”

She squeals, squeezing his hands tightly, “When? Just now? What happened?” His dark eyes look dazes and he steps back. His eyes wander from the ground her hers and he whispers, “When I saw you.” Turning your back on them, you leave quickly, not wishing to intrude on Felix’s revelation.

You resume your seat next to Seungmin, heaving a sigh. “What’s wrong?” His lips form a slight pout and his head tilts to the side. You shake your head, waving a hand, “Felix and Madeline are soul partners. He just found out.” From your peripheral, you see Seungmin smile widely. You laugh to yourself, an embarrassed blush rising on your cheeks at your previous hasty conclusion. You really are desperate for the person who matches your soul.

“That’s great,” he taps your arm with his hand, hidden by his sweater’s sleeve, “Why do you look so bummed, though?”

You purse your lips, “It just sucks to be a late bloomer. I don’t know who my partner is,” you tell him as the bitterness fills your mouth again. Seungmin nods firmly, his fingers tapping your arm again, “At least you know that you have one, though. Felix didn’t even know whether he was alone or not.”

“Yeah,” you shrug, trying to ignore the gnawing guilt of your selfishness, “it just sucks.”

“Of course but just give it time,” Seungmin advises, patting your shoulder softly.

You and Seungmin gaze blankly at Felix and Madeline as they both gush over each other. You can’t help but feel a pang of jealousy in your chest when Felix gingerly strokes her cheek.

Clapping, Seungmin returns to the story board, pointing at a slide, “I like the idea with this one, but if you’ll look here,” he pulls out a picture he took of a deep, dark green forest that just seems to dissolve into black, “I want the composition to be more dangerous. Like, the characters are being drawn into darkness and they won’t have any way to escape.” Nodding quickly, you add rough shading and lines to your preexisting work to cater to Seungmin’s request.

“Perfect,” he beams his toothy smile at you.

By the time the project is all but done, Felix and Madeline are attached at the hip or the hand or the face. You try not to watch them, jealousy foaming in your throat. Felix’s eyelashes flutter against his freckles and his lips are glossy as Madeline gently strokes his cheek, smiling softly. Such a romantic—it would make sense that her seeing colors would be paired with his past complete colorblindness. He gushes over her work and her use of color, his voice giddy with excitement at finally seeing color, finally being normal.

While your initial bitterness at their fortune has washed away into passivity, you can’t bring yourself to look at your arm like you used to. In a way, you’re foolishly upset at you partner for not giving you anymore clues that would lead you to him. It’s foolish because he doesn’t know you can read what’s on his mind.

You pick up your artist’s hand brace from your dorm bed and begin unwrapping your arm to put it on, barely sparing the black scrawl a glance.

Its not all black anymore. I can see it. I can see her.

Dread clenches your gut as your eyes travel down to the next single word.

Madeline.

There’s a buzzing white in your head as you fumble to get your shoes on, tripping out into the hallway, breaking into a sprint towards Madeline’s dorm, on the other side of the campus. Whirling confusing overcomes your mimd and you feel like you’re suffocating, the only goal is to find an answer. You don’t know when hints of this conclusion plagued your mind. Maybe it was that day, months ago at the bathroom. Maybe it was a deeper jealousy at seeing Felix kissing Madeline. It didn’t matter anymore, you frantically knocked at her door, out of breath and gasping.

Her green eyes are wide and her pink lips are swollen, she’s almost as out of breath as you are. She makes no move to hide Felix, who’s pulling on a shirt behind her shoulder. Nervousness pangs in your throat but you shove past her and shed your arm to Felix.

“Wh-what’s this, Y/n?” He asks, eyes bouncing off your arm to your face, uncomfortable with looking at something you’ve explained to him is so precious and private to you.

“Read it,” you beg, eyes flicking from his face to Madeline’s. She furrows her shapely eyebrows, gingerly taking your cold arm into her soft hands. At Madeline’s brazenness, Felix finds it in himself to look down at your arm.

Her grip is firm but you could rip away from it at any moment.

Madeline’s eyes are wild and horror fills them as she looks up at Felix. You try desperately to explain, “I-I don’t know what this means either, but that day that you first saw color, Felix, there were your exact words to me about your project on my arm.”

He laughs to deflect how uncomfortable he feels, it comes out too harsh and grates against your neck, raising heat into your face. “Y/n I know you really wanna find your partner, but this is crazy. Don’t try to suggest stuff like this. Madeline and I are partners, everything has been perfect since that day for us.”

He looks over to Madeline for reassurance, but she doesn’t meet his eyes. A soft, vulnerable look plagues her eyes as she looks up at you. Felix stutters, confused why she wouldn’t immediately agree with him. “Lix,” she inhales deeply, “for my connection, you know how I see colors? Those are actually s-supposed to go away when I meet my partner.” You realize the vulnerable look in her eyes was actually guilt.

“What?” His voice is a breath, like he’s been struck in the chest and is left gasping for air. “I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to meet them because I don’t want to loose my color—it’d be like dying for me and I’m really happy with you. Aren’t you happy with me too?” Felix’s lips hang open and his face is frowning in confusion, “So you’ve been using me when you knew I wasn’t yours?” Madeline’s eyes fill with guilty tears and she nods. As much as you can understand why she did what she did, anger and bitterness towards her, towards loosing so much time with Felix consumes you.

“Then you never deserved him,” you hiss, possessively retracting your arm into your body, hiding the words against your bosom.

You and Felix sit wordless on a bench in a park in a part of town you were unfamiliar with.

“So it was you this entire time?”

“I’m so sorry, Felix,” your voice cracks and you bite your lip to prevent it from trembling, “I really didn’t know for sure and I doubted what I knew because you just seemed so happy with her.”

He scoffs loudly, running a hand through his silver hair, “Yeah and look what that amounted to.”

Quietly, you respond, “It amounted to us realizing. That means something.”

Felix exhales slowly, turning to face you, his eyes tired and sad, “Yeah, at least we realized now—” he stops abruptly, pausing to collect himself, “God, I was so stupid, just because I started seeing color one random day because she was in front of me?” He scoffs again, slouching into the bench.

“It made sense though, you were both eager to get your partners and—”

“But to leave you alone?” His voice is raw and soft, “I left you alone when you were right there.” Slowly, as if he were a hologram or mirage you couldn’t quite reach, you extend your hand to rest your hand on his warm cheek, almost shocked that he’s there. Unintentionally, he leans into your hand, closing his eyes gently. “We can begin now. Rather a late start than never. We have the rest of our lives to get it right.”

Felix buries his face into the crook of your shoulder, pressing firm, confident kisses and hot, stinging hickies into your neck. You run your hands up the bare expanse of his back and up to his hair. Flush spreads across your cheeks as he lifts himself up to gaze down at your bare chest but you don’t cover yourself up. You have nothing to hide. “Have you ever done this before?” You whisper to him. He shakes his head softly, leaning down to trail kisses from the base of your neck through the valley between your breasts. Lower, his kisses get wetter as he gets closer to your aching hotness. As if you’re made of paper, Felix gingerly spreads your legs. The cold air hitting your core causes you to flinch, but Felix’s warm palm presses slowly against you, calming the sensation into pleasure.

“May I?”

You whine out a ‘yes’, groaning when his sinks a finger into your core. It sucks his finger in and Felix barely contains a moan at the sensation, imagining how you’d feel around him. Slowly, he begins to pump his single finger into you before adding another and scissoring deep. Curling his fingers, he brushes your sweet spot, causing you to gasp and arch your back.

Smiling to himself, he continues to work at that spot until you’re gasping and moaning incessantly. He pulls out and you whine immediately but he positions himself above you, gazing down at you with adoration even while his impossibly hard dick pokes against you. “Hurry, Lixie, please do it,” you whine and he hushes you with a kiss, slowly sliding in and caressing his tongue against yours when you gasp. Your face is scrunched up at the unfamiliar stretch but Felix can’t help but smile down at you, endeared. His eyes are dark at the sensation of him dragging against your walls. When you begin to relax around him, you start whining again and he giggles, slowly beginning to thrust up into you. There’s nothing desperate or wanton about his movements against you. He’s being gentle, letting you feel him as his drags along your walls though it takes all his self control to not increase the pace. It’s deep and rhythmic, his hips against yours. He fills you up and groans as you seem to suck him up, your juices mixing with his precum.

“Baby, you’re so warm and so—mhg—tight,” he gasps against you, “Can I go faster?”

“Yeah,” you’re breathless and rake your fingers across his back when he starts to do just that. He positions his hip in a way that has himself dragging across your sweet spot and you screaming with every thrust. He reaches down to rub your clit, stars and lights sparking across your vision as a burning coil begins wind in your gut. The groans and moans he lets out when you unintentionally clench around him paired with the way his movements quicken as he becomes desperate push you closer. “Y/n, I’m g-gonna cum,” he whispers, his eyelashes fluttering against your skin. “Me too, Lixie,” you gasp, running your hands over his body.

“I love you.” Your high crashes over you, white pleasure electrifying you through your body as you feel Felix shoot into you. The burning pleasure overcomes your senses as he collapses next to you, his hair sticking to his forehead as he pants into your neck, smiling deeply in pure bliss. Euphoric, you tug him closer, pressing a kiss to the freckle on the tip of his nose, onto both his cheeks, and finally onto his warm, glossy lips.

“I love you too, Lixie.” He is yours and you are his. That’s how it was predestined and you both have fulfilled destiny.

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midnightrooftops · 4 years ago

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WW84 Deep Dive

I’m actually surprised how messy the WW84 story is considering how solid the first movie’s writing was. I think the script went through a lot of editing and then the film went through a lot of editing because the film was LONG and tried to pack A LOT in. Spoilers below.

*SPOILERS*

IMO, it focused TOO MUCH on Max. I think they got too excited to have Pedro and wrote too much for him and Patty liked Pedro’s performance too much. They should’ve cut half his scenes. I don’t need to watch the bad guy figuring out how to get more people, I just need him to show me how he’s doing his wish thing and then eventually get to the president. They gave us an excessive amount of “what’s your wish” scenes with random people we don’t care about. We would’ve still been sympathetic about him bc of the scene at the end when he sees HIS truth with his father and his son. The scene with them finding out what the stone is with the random Mayan in the warehouse was WEIRD. First, why was the book in ancient Mayan? Like, the book was from his great grandfather and looks relatively modern and I can understand wanting to preserve the language but it seems very strange to print an entire book for the purpose of preserving their history in a modern way but not a modern language. Anyway. That’s a huge nit pick but that entire scene seemed OFF bc Barbara is suddenly one board with 1. The stone being real and magical and 2. Diana being magical. And how the fuck did Barbara get a flyer to a random guy that had all this info? (ALSO? More emphasis on needing to KILL Max. “He is the stone” “then you need to stop him, Diana.” “I can’t just kill the man.” “I don’t like it either but I don’t think he’d renounce his wish. And if he doesn’t, how else are you going to stop this? You’re the only one who’s be able to stop him.” Barbara says “you mean KILL him?” Diana, reluctantly as she comes to realize Steve is right, says “Yes. I may need to kill him.” Like. THEN Barbara can throw Diana’s own “be better” lecturing in her face “you’d rather kill a guy than renounce your lover boy” and really turn on admiring Diana, seeing a hypocrisy that Diana is struggling with.) I wouldn’t be surprised if the Lying God was supposed to be a character in one of the original drafts of this movie. The stone traveled around randomly after as documented by the Mayans, they locked it/hid it away. Obviously a god was carrying it from location to location. I was expecting him to be the REASON Max Lord knew about the stone (that’s never explained, except for the loose idea that MAYBE he heard the legend in his youth from his culture). Like, imagine if we get a throw-away line from Max telling his son about how a man told him about the power of a wish, sending Max to chase the stone down.

ALSO, it sets up the idea of other gods outside of the Olympians. We already have that rumor that Chief was technically a native god, or at least based on one. Why not have the same thing happen here. Maybe Barbara meets him, telling her how easily someone can use their wish to take YOURS away or something, making her even MORE protective of what she now has. Like just have the dude in the background of the scenes. Diana never has to fight them, they’re just there to see what’s up. The fighting with Cheetah needed to be better choreographed. I wanted another scene like the white house scene but with Diana in full power and maybe Cheetah finally getting a little bit spooked/not so confident? Like oh shit, maybe she IS more powerful bc Diana chose truth instead of her wish. BUT. I loved it. I loved watching it. I had fun watching it. It felt like a real superhero movie to me. The characters were on point and I love the message. These WW movies actually really make me love Diana. She reminds me a lot of Sailor Moon and the purity of being a hero. I thought “oh shit, she’s going to have to break his neck on camera” and I really glad they didn’t go that route (I think that scene went on a little long too). And I’m GLAD Diana made the hard choice. After Steve Rogers turned his back on the world and chose himself in Endgame, Diana, crying about “this is the only thing I ever wanted” and giving it up anyway because it’s RIGHT. THING. TO DO. Is so fucking refreshing. I was so happy to watch an actual superhero movie.

#ww84 #wonder woman 1984 #spoilers #ww84 spoilers #wonder woman 1984 spoilers #ww spoilers #wonder woman spoilers #dian prince spoilers

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mst3kproject · 4 years ago

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The Atomic Submarine

I’ve had this one sitting around for a while. It’s a pretty dull 1950’s White Men vs the Saucer People movie, which attempts to differentiate itself from the crowd by taking place underwater instead of in outer space. It features Brett Halsey from The Girl in Lover’s Lane and a few moments of Jean Moorhead from The Violent Years, and has parts for Jack Mulhall and Paul Dubov from The She-Creature.

It is… the future. The US and the USSR are friends now, and passenger submarines regularly run between the two under the polar ice! But all is not well – the USS Sturgeon, largest of this arctic fleet, suffers a reactor meltdown somewhere just shy of the North Pole, resulting in the loss of all hands. The Pentagon convenes some guys in suits, and decides to send another submarine, the Tiger Shark, to figure out what happened. When the Tiger Shark encounters a mysterious electrical phenomenon, their scientists conclude that the only possible answer is creatures from outer space!

I seem to be making a tradition out of starting with the shitty science, so here’s a good one: the Flying Saucer’s source of power is stated to be magnetic – that’s why it has to return to the North Pole every time it sinks a ship, to recharge. Except… that’s not how the magnetic field works. In the late fifties and early sixties, the north magnetic pole was somewhere near the southern end of Bathurst Island in Nunavut (as of 2020, it’s on its way into Siberia and is actually closer to geographic north than it’s been in centuries). Sailors would definitely know that, making this plot point kind of hilarious to anybody actually in the navy.

I mentioned Moorhead… she and Joi Lansing (who was once in a movie called Queen of Outer Space) are the only women in the entire movie. They occur in the same scene, which seems to serve only to remind us that women exist, and have no effect on the plot whatsoever. Once we’ve entered the submarine where most of the film is set, the cast is entirely similar-looking guys in uniforms, and there are no romantic reunions at the end. The Atomic Submarine couldn’t even give us the requisite 50’s movie Cute Girl Scientist. I guess they were going for realism in their story about trans-arctic Soviet passenger subs and one-eyed semi-aquatic aliens.

On to the actual movie. The first ‘character’ we hear from is the deep-voiced 50’s narrator, who sounds exactly like the guy rhapsodizing about radar at the beginning of The Deadly Mantis, but I looked him up and Patrick Michaels has never narrated any other movie. I guess there’s just a category of men that have 50’s Movie Narrator Voice. His job is to sound portentous as he talks about things that are either irrelevant or else stuff the movie could have showed us but chose to tell instead. He falls silent for long stretches of movie and then pops up again, interrupting the flow of the story every time.

The special effects in The Atomic Submarine are okay – they’re nothing ground-breaking, but considerable effort seems to have gone into them. The saucer and the submarines are obviously small models but they’re nice and the underwater photography is quite atmospheric. I especially like the little submersible the Tiger Shark carries, the Lungfish, which was clearly designed based on ideas for such machines that were in the works at the time. There’s a shot of the saucer breaking through the ice cap and rising into the air which looks really good until the saucer itself actually emerges, wobbling on top of a rod. The one-eyed alien inside the saucer is nice and gooey and parts of it look like they’re made out of living sea creatures.

Like many movies on MST3K, The Atomic Submarine has some germs of good ideas in it, and like the rest of them, fails to do anything much with it. The flying saucer – maybe we should call it a swimming saucer – is described as a living organism, possibly the same organism as its pilot. The aliens themselves are biological engineers who will use humans as a template for altering themselves to live on Earth. That’s pretty cool, but is ultimately not important to the plot. Besides the pilot, who seems to have been assembled by a variety of marine organisms, the inside of the saucer doesn’t look particularly organic. If nothing else they had an opportunity for some really neat visuals here, but let it slip through their fingers.

The alien intelligence remains unseen and inscrutable for much of the movie. This theoretically builds suspense but there’s honestly not a lot of suspense here. A plot summary makes The Atomic Submarine sound like an exciting adventure, but the impression one gets from actually watching the film is that it’s kind of a day at the office. In a way, that’s fairly realistic – the crew of the Tiger Shark aren’t a ragtag group of misfits, they’re professionals doing their jobs which just so happen on this particular day to include saving the world. Unfortunately, this doesn’t make for a very exciting movie. An awful lot of scenes are just suspenseful music over footage of men in uniforms frowning at things. Rather than feeling any excitement, the audience just wants to get to the damn aliens already.

The movie’s only about half over by the time we do enter the swimming saucer to meet the one-eyed, tentacled beast within, but it feels like we’ve been here for hours. Once the boarding party enters the craft, some things do happen but they’re still not exciting. Three of the four men die, one by being cut in half by a sliding door and two getting melted by intense radiation – these deaths are surprisingly explicit and gruesome for a 50’s movie, but they’re drawn out far too long and don’t serve a plot purpose. If the alien killed the men to stop them cutting the Tiger Shark free of where it rammed the vessel’s hull, that would be one thing, but it appears to do it just because.

The main characters all sort of look the same, as lumpy-faced white guys in old movies tend to do. The only one who really stands out from the crowd is Dr. Nielson, the son of the scientist who invented the Lungfish and an avowed pacifist who’s only on this mission because he knows his father wanted to see the sub used. He has a running beef with an old friend of his father’s who thinks he’s a coward, all talk and no action. This is supposed to be the movie’s main arc and yet it fails to go anywhere on just about every level.

Neilson spends much of the movie insisting that he isn’t a coward, which one would assume is a lead-up to him doing something heroic. It’s not. He’s just here to drive the Lungfish and that’s literally the only thing he does – he takes the boarding party to the saucer, and then sits there and waits for the sole survivor to return. There’s a bit where the captain of the Tiger Shark decides to ram the saucer with the sub in order to get through its defenses, and Neilson speaks up, pointing out that this is a suicide mission. Nothing ever comes of this, and it might be evidence of his ‘cowardice’ but I’m not sure… the movie is not nearly as interested in his character as it ought to be. At the end he seems to have decided that war is cool after all… or maybe the guy he was arguing about has agreed that we need to set aside war with other humans in order to focus on war with aliens. It’s very unclear.

If there’s a regular passenger service between Alaska and Siberia, doesn’t that suggest that in this future we’ve already set aside war with other humans? I’m not sure this movie thought very hard about its worldbuilding.

In fact, watching the ending I don’t even know if the guy Neilson talks to at the end was the same man he was arguing with earlier, because, as I mentioned, the actors all look similar. Until that final conversation I thought the other dude had died aboard the saucer and honestly I’m still not convinced he didn’t. What mainly makes me doubt the idea is that it would mean there’s no closure to the feud at all, which would be the height of poor writing. I’ve seen movies where I would buy that they were just that careless, but other aspects of The Atomic Submarine are competent enough that I want to give them the benefit of the doubt.

So what does this movie want us to think about war and the military? It certainly suggests that they’re necessary, since after all we have aliens to defend ourselves from. One of the scientists on board is British and another has what I think is supposed to be a Russian accent, so perhaps its extolling the virtues of international cooperation. This would fit with Neilson’s statements about how we need to leave war behind, but if that’s the movie’s point it hobbles itself by never talking about it in that light.

This is all made that much more annoying because, as I said, the effects are decent, the cinematography is pretty good, and while none of the actors are stellar they all do their best. There’s no real reason why The Atomic Submarine had to be so dull and messy, unless they were just saddled with a half-assed script. Even then, they made a pretty good effort to get some gold out of the dross. You might find The Atomic Submarine worth watching even if only to think about what might have been.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the atomic submarine #50s

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meetevieinthehallway · 5 years ago

Text

stop thinking so much.

in which harry teaches english and some poetry is hard to pick apart.

quotes in quotations and italics: William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

he’s studied for this.

god knows this is what he is destined to know— how to take the meek twenty-six letters of the english alphabet and craft them into phrases and words that will convey and pull out human emotion.

although difficult, he spent years of education learning how to decipher literature, how to create reactions from it, how to respond to it.

and now he’s gobsmacked.

they never taught him this—

how to react to this type of poetry—

one with a beating heart and piercing eyes and the most beautiful fucking smile he has ever seen.

harry has never been good with girls.

he was always an awkward, shyer guy: one with a few close friends and a happy family; but who would much rather sit under his backyard oak tree and write than go to a party he wouldn’t even remember the next day. he preferred quiet and isolation and by no means was he a sad, lonely kid with no friends— just wasn’t very social and liked a few people here and there but never took initiative.

he still doesn’t truly know how to talk to people that he likes.

he gets very nervous and tentative— there’s a crippling anxiety in the back of his head that they already don’t like him when he’s barely said hello. he lacks arrogance, but he believes he’s... decent looking? right? (and he knows he would treat any person he loves like a royal.)

that’s why he chose books and that’s why he chose poems.

for the personal interpretations— because he can read a love story and place himself in the roles and live out a dream that can be tucked away later and be kept secretive.

but he finally decided to show himself and he went to school for this—to teach kids how to let words move them—but somehow between the sonnets and voltas and haikus his professors never taught him what to do when he couldn’t decipher a piece— what to do if pieces left you speechless.

because there’s the word pink painted on her lips and there’s songs written in the webbing of her irises and he wants to drown in the melodies that consume her features.

but he fears saying something wrong.

those meek twenty-six letters seem intimidating now; he can’t even conjure up an idea for a simple conversation when he sees her smile and hears her laugh and hears her talk and he thinks his mind has regressed back to when he was an awkward, stuttering mess of a teenager.

the pair has had good conversations in the months she’s been in the faculty and in the room across from harry’s, but after they happen he is left with a doubtful mind and a stomach of chaos that drags him down the rest of the day. it’s swirls and spirals of insecurities and messy script as he scrawls in his journal just to put his thoughts somewhere— a place where they’re safe in a book and where he can reread the conversation and try to correct any flaws for the next time he speaks to her.

it’s more studying and more deciphering and more interpreting like how he’s learned but this time it’s his own mind and they never taught him this.

the first time he met her— oh god no. he still cringes thinking about it, and that was months ago but it’s stuck with him as if the moment is glued to his forehead for all to see and humiliate him with.

he was so terribly stunned by her beauty and by her radiance when she popped her head in his doorway as he was hanging up trim around his bulletin board.

hi!

he turned his head and he seemed to be reacting to a glowing sun as he drank her in.

i’m the new math teacher...

his lips parted and he only stared at her as her voice carried on and started to muffle itself in his ears. he’s staring at her like a fucking lunatic— not listening and only looking and he realizes later that he probably seemed so disrespectful.

she had finished her introduction with a cute smile but a blush rose to her cheeks when he stayed standing there in complete shock.

sorry did i.. startle you? i’m sorry—

no! no no i just—

somehow the shake in her voice threw him off and he stumbled to get down the ladder, tripping and hitting his forehead on the third step.

ow, shit.

oh no! are you okay?

he can’t think about it, and he doesn’t want to.

basically, to sum it up, it was a mess of his flailing limbs and a stuttering voice and a shaky, sweaty hand in a too-long handshake and long story short he made a fucking fool of himself.

harry is embarrassed.

yeah he can’t talk to people he likes or finds attractive but at the end of the day he’s so in touch with his emotions that they embody him— and then he believes someone will outwardly observe them.

he can’t conjure up another word to express how difficult this all is.

maybe the word is “hopeless”.

“thinking of your crush?”

he jumps.

his hand slams to his desk because it feels like he’s leaning forward— the thump of his palm aiding in his jump out of his own mind.

he’s snapped out of his daydream—more like a nightmare as he relives their first ever encounter—and his head shoots up at the sound of a voice in the doorway of his classroom.

he frowns when he sees blue eyes and a playful smirk and registers the tone of voice.

harry looks down and shakes his head, eyes searching for his pen and moving to grasp it between his fingers.

“what do you need, niall?” he grumbles it as he blushes and continues to grade endless pages of essays and words that all begin to blur together.

“wow, not even denying it this time, mate?”

harry frowns and closes his eyes before his fingers come up to scrub at his eyelids. “stop it. i don’t have time for this.”

niall smirks and pads into his classroom, pulling up a chair nearby and dragging it in front of harry’s desk.

“c’mon, mate.” he turns his chair backwards and straddles it, his elbows falling to the back of the chair. he’s staring at his colleauge with narrowed eyes as his chin falls atop of his elbows and harry looks up at him with unimpressed eyes, half rolling them before they settle on him. “haven’t seen you get laid in a while. and i know you fancy the pretty bird across the hallway—”

“don’t call her bird.”

niall smirks.

harry blushes.

“i know you fancy someone,” he corrects himself in a sing-songy way and harry rolls his eyes in full, placing his pen down. “and she is a proper cutie— you should ask her out! hasn’t it been like— months?”

“something like that.” he sighs.

“so ask her!”

he only shakes his head, and niall frowns.

“no?”

“no.”

he huffs. “why not?”

“dunno just—” he shrugs and looks away, his pen in his hand forgotten, “isn’t that like… weird?”

niall furrows his eyebrows and shakes his head shortly, “why would that be weird?”

“dunno. feels like…— juvenile.”

juvenile.

adjective.

of, for, or relating to young people.

and that’s the thing.

if he’s going to ask her out he needs to do it like an adult— a functioning one. but how can he function when she smiles at him like that when he holds the door open for her every morning because they walk in at the same time and— what— it’s not like he intentionally arrives ten minutes early and pretends he just arrived right when she pulls in just so he could see that fucking smile—

juvenile.

it’s exactly how he acts when it comes to her— like a prepubescent teen who gets blushy and flustered at the simplest thing she does.

“...asking somebody out is juvenile?” niall raises his eyebrows.

harry shakes himself from his daze, “not..—” he looks up and shakes his head, “i don’t know, i guess i just... don’t want to be rejected.”

“so you mean you’re juvenile?”

harry’s face turns red and he looks up at his friend with a glaring gaze, “hey.”

“c’mon mate,” niall laughs at his flustered appearance, “you two talk all the time! she definitely fancies you—”

“dunno just—...” he shrugs and looks away. “don’t think she likes me like that.” he rubs his eye again. “said it yourself: she’s cute and pretty and funny and i’m all—...not..that.”

niall huffs. “she likes you, h.”

“dunno.”

“c’mon! she’s always trying t’talk to you! you’re just... shy and... nervous—”

“hi!”

niall halts and harry’s eyes widen and niall twists and harry looks up and across the room.

“i’m going on a coffee run, do you... do either of you want anything?”

harry freezes.

because the beautiful woman that’s been plaguing his thought process is peaking her cute little face between the trim of his doorway with a soft smile and gently asking if he wants coffee, and it seems—and he prays—that she only originally planned on asking him and that—

“i’m set, love. had a cup about an hour ago.”

niall speaks.

harry forgets how.

and then niall—niall this fucking bastard of a friend—turns his body back to harry and gives him a suggestive smirk.

harry’s eyes meet his and he silently sends him a don’t you fucking dare with his pupils.

but no, niall is a little shit who truly only wants good for his two colleagues, so he says clearly—

“you want anything, harry? know you mentioned wanting a tea or summat.”

and he smirks.

harry’s soul dies a bit.

“oh!” she says it from the doorway and harry’s eyes flicker towards her, “i can grab you a tea—”

“actually,” niall interjects, “harry— thought you said you were running out to get it in a few minutes or so...”

another smirk.

another sinking feeling.

“oh! are you still going to go? i was going to get it for whoever wants it but if you planned to then—...”

another taste at that melodious voice from the doorway.

harry swallows, “it’s up to you.” he murmurs, “i can run out for everyone if you’re busy or—”

“or you guys should go together!”

harry really fucking hates niall.

all harry sees when he looks up is her own blinking eyes, staring and wide and he can’t tell if they look more terrified or more of a fuck-to-the-no kind of gaze.

he hates both options.

“o-oh.” she murmurs, and a blush spreads across her nose and a smile plants itself on her lips, “um, we can do that!... if that’s... if you wanna, harry.”

every time she says his name he forgets it for a moment.

she’s grinning at him but despite her bubbliness she looks a bit hesitant, and harry can see niall’s head turn out of the corner of his eye and green eyes meet blue ones that are twinkling—

niall is staring at him now with a questioning, stern gaze and a go for it, dammit, kind of look and harry’s blood is thrumming and his head is spinning and—

“we can... yeah, go together.”

—

harry’s mom used to tell him he was wasting away a part of himself and his life.

she didn’t say it in a mean way—more of an attemped constructive one—because she would run her fingers through the top of his curls as she said it, with a delicate smile on her cheeks.

my love, your nose is always buried in a book.

and he would smile gently, as a young teen, and shake his head. is that so bad?

and she’d only sigh sadly with that same smile and shake her head, murmuring i suppose not.

that’s the first time harry felt that he was different.

and as a twelve year old, you don’t think that you want to be different.

because anne was right— he’d much rather spend his days in between lines of writing than strain his eyes watching idiotic cartoons like his classmates were. (he used to say that he’d rather picture and process characters his own way instead of seeing visuals already established for him and his sister would make fun of him for it and that’s when he felt that he was different). he realized that he couldn’t always connect with kids his age—he was always a level of maturity ahead than the rest, it seemed—and that he’d much rather wrap himself in some sort of fantasy with dragons and fairies and wizards and even just ordinary people than play video games or go drinking.

somehow, sometimes, the people in books were better than real ones.

he learned that along the way as well.

because the girlfriends he had didn’t understand him in the way he hoped; some were judgmental who just couldn’t fathom wanting to sit in and read by the windowsill instead of going partying at frat houses.

he wasn’t antisocial! he just wanted at least a couple hours a week to absorb himself into his books and he didn’t always want to just go partying like his girlfriends did.

harry was distraught when his third girlfriend broke up with him for the same reason they all had.

when she explained that her friends were mocking her for dating a ‘straight up nerd’ who was boring and ‘couldn’t hang’ and she said it all while looking away from him because she was embarrassed in explaining why he was embarrassing.

irony.

that night he read romeo and juliet for the seventeenth time in his life, crying onto his pages that he had fingered through so many times— his teardrops bleeding the inked words into each other as he flipped through quickly because her words had somehow carved so deep into his chest that he couldn’t focus or breathe and all of the words and plot had blended together—

“Here's to my love! O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.”

somehow harry was searching for answers in a crafted tragedy where he knew there’d be no solution.

because he didn’t reside in a fantasy world that he had made himself believe he was a part of— this was real life, reality, and for so long it’s almost like he forgot that.

“Oh, happy dagger, this is thy sheath. There rust, and let me die.”

he genuinely didn't admire his love for reading anymore.

but it was all he knew.

from that point in his life, at the age of nineteen, he decided to focus on school and books and poems instead of girls.

“Don't waste your love on somebody, who doesn't value it.”

it was easier this way.

someone out there is right for you, harry, i promise.

but his mother had said those words with the same sad smile she wore on that day that she told him he couldn’t lift his head from a book’s spine, and he only wiped at his cheek and nodded with his eyes casted down and his hands folded in his lap.

and as much as he felt that his mom was right—that books were wasting his life and his time—he let himself get lost in them.

it’s all he knew.

there was a period of time where harry wouldn’t really sleep or rest—he would study and annotate and enjoy and laugh and cry at words all night—and he had permanent indentations in his fingers where he would hold a book up to his view as he was doing anything, really.

harry let himself get twisted in romance and life and loss and he meandered through shakespeare and poe and bishop and auden and plath for long stretches of time before he’d fall asleep with words painted under his lips as he dreamed.

he finished romeo and juliet for the twenty-fifth time the night before the beautiful math teacher popped her head in the door, and when he slammed his head on the rung of the ladder it felt all too nostalgic to the feeling of his forehead hitting the pages as he crashed on the top of his desk.

and suddenly it felt like every line of poetry and every beat of iambic pentameter and every voltra in all the italian sonnets was irrelevant, unnecessary, and now he believes his mother was right after all these years—

that he’s wasted his time away.

he doesn't have to read and write and draft and interpret her, this type of poetry— how the webbings of her eyes are soft and how the upturn of her lips creates a stampede of his blood through his veins. because it’s already there for him to admire: this beautiful face and soul and aura and he doesn’t need to delve deep into knowing her to comprehend how utterly beautiful she is.

he’s wasted his time away seeking the words of others and not looking for it right in front of him. this— she is the first time in his life he is unable to say something calculated, something purely crafted, because he doesn't think that he has ever encountered anybody like her.

harry hopes he isn’t wasting his own time anymore— or hers. he doesn’t want to drag out something already dead—or something not even alive to begin with—and he doesn’t want his feelings to overdevelop themselves.

the last thing he wants is to scare her, trouble her.

because yes— she’s been so impossibly sweet to him, but that doesn’t mean that she admires him in the same way.

and now they’re walking side-by-side and harry can smell her perfume as it floats his way to his nose and he feels like an absolute creep for falling in love with it immediately but—

she’s looking around at all the autumn leaves and murmuring how pretty they are and she’s smiling at all the dogs they pass on the sidewalk.

oh, god.

he thinks his heart is going to explode— it’s pulsing and throbbing and he has to look away before he blurts out about how unbelievably cute she is.

the air is brisk— it’s cool and the breeze is slapping his cheeks and it’s helping him take his focus off of her and the way she’s grinning at the sunshine. this is the first time that they’ve ever spent any time together outside school grounds; he feels like an idiot that it’s making his heart giddy because it’s only to the coffee place down the block.

just say something, anything, h, c’mon.

“so... math, huh?”

... yikes.

idiot. idiot. idiot.

one of the first real chances he gets with the girl he fancies and he acts like a complete idiot.

who the fuck says that to start a conversation?!

that’s what he decides to say to her after he chokes on the gentle breeze that is blowing her hair back and away from her face, the sun hitting her skin and illuminating her smile.

he’s had training in words and syntax and poems and novels and somehow he can’t even fucking talk to her like a normal guy— and the minute the words leave his lips he’s already cringing at the awkwardness they hold.

but she doesn’t hear him fully— and it makes the pause after his question that much worse because she looks at him with a puzzled expression.

“sorry?”

and he swallows and somehow with this sudden second chance for rephrasing or asking a different question he asks the same fucking one.

“you chose math to teach.”

no shit she did, harry. she teaches algebra to sophomores.

“yeah!”

but she grins that amazing smile and his heart stutters and he has to clear his throat when she...—

when she adorably is stepping on the leaves that have fallen and giggling when they crunch under her feet and harry has a hard time swallowing because his brain can’t decide if she’s real as he gazes down on her.

she is like how authors describe their novels’ love interest.

a hop in her step and a smile on her face and the cutest, sweetest disposition; but there’s still that unattainable element that harry can’t decipher.

but it’s there.

maybe it’s the mentality of a novel’s insecure protagonist— that she’s too pretty or well-liked or too different in relation to him and he seriously can’t decipher it but he can feel the strain on his heart because he knows that it’s still drawing him in.

“why math?”

and that’s all his years of studying and degrees have brought him to.

and she blushes and giggles again and he’s shocked, and he can’t comprehend how she is so easily sweet and smiley to him: harry, this fucking disaster ever since she stepped through the door of the high school.

“i think it’s fun!” she’s giggling when she says it and his heart throbs a bit in his chest.

“hm,” he nods and looks at his shoes as they continue walking.

“ah,” she grins, “that’s the face of a man who loathes math.”

he actually lets out a small chuckle, a sheepish smile forming on his face. “sorry,” he winces, looking back to her, “not my strongest suit.”

“it’s okay,” she looks at him with a smirk, “i hated english growing up so,” she leans over and nudges him with her shoulder, “guess we’re even.”

a part of him breathes.

because she’s making jokes and making it casual and it’s lessening the intensity of the situation.

a part of him tenses and he feels the pressure of his blood rise.

because her loathing english is her loathing harry’s passion— the one thing that makes the lonely days not so lonely.

but she’s already so different than the others.

maybe she wouldn’t be like the others and wonder why the specific part of him is there, why it is relevant, why it is important to him. maybe if she hates english he can hope and pray she tolerates it, appreciates it, to some degree.

she seems different. please—please—let her be different.

“but do you know what’s interesting about them two?”

his eyebrows bunch in the middle and his eyes meet hers once again. “what?” he quirks a small smile in amusement.

“they both involve lots of calculation.”

he pauses, tilting his head and she meets his eyes and her heart stutters at how they glitter in this light.

“calculation?”

“calculation.”

“how so?”

“well—” their walks slow as they reach the cafe’s door and harry takes the handle, “thank you,” her cheeks bloom roses and harry grins sheepishly as he watches her step inside.

she turns and waits for him to step in himself, their eyes meeting and harry smiles gently when he notices the grin she’s giving him.

“you were saying?”

her eyes round in realization and they unfocus from the daze she acquired as she was looking at him. she shakes her head, “sorry,” she swallows. “well— if you think about it, it’s obvious that math has deciphering and solving, but so does literature!” she says it excitedly.

harry pauses to think about it.

he doesn’t remember the last time that someone who didn’t teach english spoke so excitedly about it.

“hm.” they step forward in line, “i’ve always kind of thought that— that math was more... ‘black and white’, right and wrong, and english and reading was more... colorful and... broad.”

“well english is a bit more interpretive than math, but not everything in reading and writing can—or should—be interpreted.”

he frowns, “i don’t know if i agree with you there.”

she grins at him, “no?”

he shakes his head. “reading is all about interpretation— that’s how other things are written: someone gets inspired from an understanding of one piece and—”

��so you believe it’s essential?”

she cuts him off. he’s taken aback.

there’s a unknown fire in her eyes and stretched out in her cheeks as her lips pull up; he doesn’t know if he should be trying to extinguish it or keep it live and powerful in front of him.

“i believe so.”

his posture straightens as he matches her smirk because fighting fire with fire only creates more intensity.

he’s not extinguishing her—this. not a chance.

“so you think i’m wrong?” she’s grinning impishly.

he falters. harry’s smirk weakens and he looks away for a split second to gather a response, “i—... no i just... don’t think i agree, that doesn’t mean—”

“you know why you don’t agree with me?”

he splutters, again, worse this time, his shoulders now being the ones to hesitate, “um...—”

“it’s because you—people who love reading and writing and poems and stories—are too busy interpreting to realize that not everything needs to be calculated. that’s kind of the funny thing about it.”

“i— what?...” he doesn’t know what he’s asking, “h-how do you mean?”

her eyes have left him but the smirk has remained; her body has turned more forward as she’s reading over the cafe’s menu list, feigning a lack of interest as she responds. “it’s not so... “to be or not to be”. it’s not if something can or cannot be interpreted,” she looks back to him with a knowing gaze. “it’s the question of if a piece must be deciphered and processed and thought out to understand it; is it necessary to do so for the piece to move you?”

he’s gobsmacked.

she’s radiating such intelligence and wisdom and he doesn’t know what to make of it— he doesn’t know how to respond and he’s staring at her in a wondrous way because she’s so different and interesting and to anyone else this conversation would seem so bizarre and confusing but—

“you can pick apart sonnets and equations in an equal fashion—to define them further and try to pick and prod at why this happens and what causes that— but... is there ever appreciation for just.. what it is?”

harry bites his lip and shrugs, “i mean— yeah, of course. but when you interpret something you’re making it your own and—”

“—i believe that some things are just the way they are and—...” she cuts him off with an impatient tone to her voice and a blush to her cheeks and she meets his eyes, “sometimes i think you should feel and stop thinking so much.”

it’s more than what she’s disguising it as.

he can tell— she falls quiet, then he falls quiet, eyes widened slightly and she bites her lip nervously. and harry feels her fingers brush his and he looks down on both of their hands sharply, like she has sent flames to lick at his skin.

their hands hang next to one another, cold and lonely like orbiting planets that will never attain in touching one another but there’s stardust between their fingers and—

his fingers twitch involuntarily—but was it really?—and his hand takes hers and then they are holding each other in such a simple way and his heart is trembling in his chest.

he hears her sigh but it’s not one of relief and his mind is going going going it’s whirring too fast and chasing after comprehension and it’s too overwhelming to process in real time real minute real moment— he’s thinking in metaphors and paradoxes and dualities and—

harry meets her eyes slowly.

“what did you say?”

she smiles shyly, tilting her head. “stop thinking so much.” she whispers it. there’s an unsure look to her eyes: questioning if this—all of this—is okay. “take chances.”

he smiles small.

then she cracks a larger smile but it’s still sheepish as both her hands move to grasp his one, “you may be surprised at how something so juvenile—”

she squeezes his hand and giggles and his eyes widen.

“—could be so great.”

he sighs in relief and his brain slows its spinning and he squeezes her fingers once in return, nodding as his smile grows.

she grins fully, a million stars in her eyes.

“you’re right.”

“Go wisely and slowly. Those who rush stumble and fall.”

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ohscorbus · 5 years ago

Text

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Saturday 7th December, 2019

I know, I know, it’s been so long! Apologises, I haven’t been seeing the show as often lately (blame boring adult obligations and the ever increasing rail fare). But I struck gold with this cast board and so this show just demanded a recap. For those of you unaware, it was a special one. We had both a cover Albus and a cover Scorpius! Which, and correct me if I’m wrong, hasn’t happened before? Not here in London at least. Anyway, I’ve seen Ryan’s Albus once or twice before with the previous cast and Luke’s Scorpius just the once a few months back (and yet I already consider him one of my all-time favourites). So basically, this was a dream and I was ready.

ACT ONE, SCENE FOUR: TRANSITION SCENE

Scorpius lingered on the far side of the stage and watched the beginning of the wand dance in awe and it was precious and so very Scorpius. This boy enjoys magic and this tiny moment really got that across. His eyes followed the spark as it shot upwards and then he looked back down at the students, at Albus, and never once stopped smiling. Even as he turned and walked off stage with a bounce in his step.

You know how Jon is a tad bit bitter about Scorpius not being in the wand dance? (Bless him.) Well Luke’s Scorpius just seems happy for them. Instead of imagining Scorpius walking off sulking, I imagine this Scorpius sneakily practising a little bit of magic on his own in the corridor on the way to his next class.

ACT ONE, SCENE SEVEN: BLANKET SCENE

Immediately after Harry said The Thing, he reached out to Albus and while I’ve seen this before, this time he actually made contact. It was almost bizarre to see but thinking about it now, it’s actually even more heartbreaking as it means Albus was probably feeling too much to process. Stepping out of his dad’s reach just doesn’t register quick enough and so he froze, lost in his head. But even though Harry was physically holding his arms, he actually wasn’t reaching him at all. Ouch.

ACT ONE, SCENE TEN: HOGWARTS EXPRESS

I absolutely adore the way Luke’s Scorpius explains the Triwizard Tournament to Albus. He puts on a voice and gestures like he’s telling a grand story to an audience. No wonder Albus calls him a geek. It’s so extra. I love it. Hands down the best version of these lines I’ve ever seen.

Luke’s facial expressions are A+. While Albus was talking to Scorpius, he absentmindedly smacked Scorpius on the chest a couple of times with the back of his hand and Scorpius looked down at Albus’s hand and then gave Albus such a look. Albus wasn’t even looking in his direction and I think that’s what I liked most about it. That Scorpius just pulls these very easily readable expressions right to his face and yet Albus is totally unaware.

This only got better when Albus decided that grabbing Scorpius by the lapels of his robes and getting closer would really drive his point home. Scorpius? Has no idea what to do. Albus? Has no intention of acknowledging personal space. I like this Albus. The hugs in the script tell us Albus is quite tactile. He clearly does not hesitate to get close to those who he loves and trusts. But it’s in these little non-scripted, casual touches that really enforces that. It makes sense that his best (and only) friend of four years would be someone he also loves and trusts. I still don’t believe they’ve never hugged before but even if that’s true, there’s no way this boy has avoided all physical contact. That’s just impossible.

ACT TWO, SCENE SIXTEEN: LIBRARY SCENE

I’ve been watching this show for yeeears and let me tell you, no one does the library scene like Luke. There’s no way I could possibly explain it in words and do it justice. This boy just gets the anger and frustration and lets it all out. This is Scorpius not holding back, not having to repress his emotions or come second to anyone else’s problems. This is about a boy who’s hurting and finally screaming back at the world like it deserves. This scene is pure, raw emotion and it’s captivating. The kind that makes you subconsciously hold your breath and break out in goosebumps. I cannot express this enough; Luke is incredible.

What I also really loved about Luke and Ryan’s version of this scene is, again, their physical contact. This was as close to ‘wrestling’ as I’ve ever seen an Albus and Scorpius get when they’re fighting over the Time-Turner. It wasn’t delicate, it was rough. Like they were fighting for more than just the object. Which really, there are. It’s Albus’s heart versus Scorpius’s mind. These two are such a team that it makes this moment even more painful. But it also makes them real. Best friends clash and fight and these two are no different to you or I.

There was a point when Albus poked Scorpius really hard in the chest to get his point across and you could see Scorpius’s anger levels rise to a whole new level. That was the breaking point I think. Before that he could have come back and regained control but Albus pushes him (quite literally) into this new territory. It was only seconds later before Scorpius started talking back and poked Albus equally as hard in the chest in return. Albus barely had time to register this unusual action before Scorpius stepped even closer and pushed him back with both hands in sheer frustration. It was so un-Scorpius like that I LOVE IT. I think it says so much about Scorpius. He’s the sweetest, kind-hearted boy you’ll ever meet. But everyone has a breaking point. Albus is so careless with his touches and this Scorpius just doesn’t know what to do with them. But here it’s like he’s throwing it all back in his face. It’s an anger fuelled instinctive rejection that’s suppose to hurt, and it’s fascinating to see Scorpius give as good as he gets. He’s been rejected by society, by his fellow students, and now Albus wants to do this without him too? Well not if he pushes him away first. That self-preservation (especially when hurt) is so very Malfoy and it’s always fascinating to see this sunshine boy be more ‘Draco’ than ‘Astoria’.

All too soon he’d calmed down and the Scorpius everyone else sees came back. But for a few minutes, we got to see the messy Scorpius inside and that’s what I need from actors when they play Scorpius Malfoy here. His pain, his heritage, his Scorpion King ‘potential’. All unleashed. Luke is simply phenomenal at it.

This whole interaction then tied in with the ending when Albus stepped forward and put his hand out and said, “Friends?”, and Scorpius flinched backward. Scorpius isn’t a fighter. There’s nothing more he wants than a friend and a split second later, once he’s registered what Albus has asked him, he leaned in and accepted wholeheartedly. This Scorpius is very open with his physical awkwardness and I love the way Albus refuses to tiptoe around it. He goes in for that hug and even though he can probably sense (and knows from experience) that Scorpius doesn’t know what to do, he decided to prolong the hug anyway. It’s interesting because it tells you he knows when and how to push him and does so. It contrasts wonderfully against the moment we’ve just seen. An example of where this went wrong followed by an example of it going beautifully right. Albus is such a loving and caring boy and he’s always expressed this in his actions and this is a gorgeous example of that. He knows Scorpius.

Anyway. I got distracted. Albus prolonged the hug by resting his head on Scorpius’s shoulder and while Scorpius’s whole being may have appeared to be saying he’s confused and uncomfortable, I don’t believe he hated any moment of it. It was like going back to being them. Albus and Scorpius. And if that didn’t do it, the way Albus’s hand lingered on Scorpius’s side as he pulled out of the hug and Scorpius’s face as he looked down at the offending hand and then back up at Albus, was definitely them going back to ‘normal’.

ACT TWO, SCENE NINETEEN: GIRLS’ BATHROOM

Oh gosh, the gillyweed! Now I’m sure this wasn’t a choice he’s made for his Scorpius and it happened purely because Albus was given too much gillyweed and took too little for himself, but Luke ended up with A LOT. Bless him. It was hanging out of his mouth, falling everywhere. How this boy did he lines amazes me. He ended up going down the sink with his head thrown back, mouth wide open, gillyweed everywhere. It was rather funny. Our ridiculous Scorpius was definitely back.

ACT THREE, SCENE ONE: UMBRIDGE’S OFFICE

The complete lack of expression on Scorpius’s face in front of Umbridge is exactly what I want here. This boy is a Malfoy. That mask is hereditary. He can stand there and give nothing away. He’s grown up watching his dad do just this. (And I love that clearly some of those things Draco has consciously and subconsciously instilled in him has stuck.) But he isn’t the Scorpion King. So when she mentioned he was athletic, Scorpius forgets himself and that mask slipped because he just has to question that. Clearly he’s never heard of the phrase ‘curiosity killed the cat’.

ACT THREE, SCENE NINE: FORBIDDEN FOREST

Luke gives us a full body reaction that’s pure horror when Ron and Hermione lost their souls. He had his hands over his mouth and he was slightly hunched over. He was so visibly shaken and sickened that it makes sense that the lone dementor found him so quickly.

ACT THREE, SCENE FOURTEEN: SLYTHERIN DORM

Oh Luke. Bless you for always climbing onto Albus’s bed and chilling. I will forever fight for this because I can’t imagine best friends who live together not hanging out in each other’s spaces! That’s just what happens when people are comfortable with each other, and in this case, when said friend just doesn’t want to get up. Seriously, this Albus did not want to sit up. He was quite happy lying there wiping the sleep out of his eyes as he listened to Scorpius ramble on. He did eventually sit up and Scorpius went on over and sat on the end of his bed beside him. He crossed his legs and tucked his feet under him and made himself quite at home. He even leaned over and nudged Albus a few times with his elbow to emphasis whatever point he was making. Again, it was a really nice continuation of Scorpius’s boundaries. He’s getting physically more comfortable and actually initiating contact himself and getting into Albus’s personal space for once.

ACT THREE, SCENE NINETEEN: QUIDDITCH PITCH

Ryan does this scene so brilliantly. The way he just curls up and sobs. So good. He makes this scene entirely his own just the way Luke does with the library scene.

My favourite aspect of this scene for me was their opposite reactions to Craig’s death. (Sorry Craig.) The second Albus heard the start of Delphi’s curse, he turned and never once looked back. He refused to look at Craig. His whole body was turned away, down, tucked in, and shaking with sobs. Whereas Scorpius was turned fully towards Craig. He watched the whole thing and barely blinked. He faced it head on in stillness. Two complete opposites. It says so much about these two boys and how they deal with things.

ACT THREE, SCENE THREE: DRACO’S OFFICE

Draco went to put his hand on Scorpius’s heart, hesitated and hovered, then pointed* a finger at his heart instead. This isn’t new for this Draco, but it’s interesting considering this Scorpius’s reactions to touch. It’s almost like he knew he’d already crossed a line with grabbing him across the desk and, even though this touch is completely different, he knew better than to try it again. I wonder how much a flinch from Scorpius would have hurt Draco at this point?

(*Because of the angle I was sat, I can’t be 100% sure he didn’t actually make contact. But if he did, then I also think that’s a great link back to Albus’s finger poking him in the chest. The two most important people in his life. Two very highly emotional and eye opening conversations. And a lot has happened since then. So either way, there’s a connection there all the way through that’s personal to Scorpius and I love that.)

ACT FOUR, SCENE FOUR: HARRY’S OFFICE

This scene hit me really hard today. I cannot even put it into words. James made some subtle changes in the way he delivered some of the lines and it was simply beautiful. I really felt his pain and love for Astoria and my heart ached for this man and his happiness that’s once again slipping through his hands. Have you read what he wrote about this scene? You can see it’s true, and it made seeing him get his son back later on even more delightful.

ACT FOUR, SCENE FIVE: GODRIC’S HOLLOW

You know how Albus is sat down by the door when this scene starts? Well today he remained seated for far longer than usual. (I was definitely sensing a theme with Ryan’s Albus by this point.) Scorpius’s response? He just went over and crouched down next to him. Again, it was lovely to see Scorpius make that decision to put himself in Albus’s space.

ACT FOUR, SCENE EIGHT: GODRIC’S HOLLOW

Story time: Samuel’s Scorpius would always figure out that St Jerome’s Church was the ideal location way before Hermione finished talking and would cheekily point it out. It was really sweet and so very Scorpius. While Hermione was listing off the points today, Luke’s Scorpius leaned in and whispered something to his dad. Now presumably it was simply ‘St Jermone’s Church’ because this boy has already worked it out, but whatever it was, Draco looked at him with the ultimate smug Malfoy/proud dad face. It was glorious and also a really beautiful moment. We get so little positive father-son moments between these two that this just brought a tear to my eye. For just a moment there wasn’t anyone else around, there was no danger. It was just father and son reunited in every sense. It made my heart soar. It’s always been this small family against the world and here they are again. They make a good team and I think they’re both finally at a point where they realise that. It’s wonderful.

ACT FOUR, SCENE FOURTEEN: HOGWARTS

The last hug was really lovely because you could see the moment Scorpius decides to do it. (Luke’s ability to switch from mask to transparency is one of my favourite things because that mix is how I’ve always imagined Scorpius being.) He had already put quite a bit of distance between them so his slow walk was longer than usual and it meant you felt his purpose as he went towards Albus and leaned down into the hug. Albus was once again sat down and remained so for the duration of the hug. It was like they had gone full circle. We started with Scorpius standing up on the train and Albus quickly pulling him into a one-sided hug. To now, with Scorpius not waiting for Albus to stand (because clearly he knew from experience he wouldn’t) and calmly going in for the hug first and Albus happily accepting it.

Ryan’s choice to have Albus so unusually relaxed is interesting in its own right though. It’s not laziness on Albus’s part, but I think a reflection on how comfortable he is around Scorpius. He can be ‘just Albus’ around him. So he can stay a little longer in bed or sit on the floor with his guard down because he’s with Scorpius. And isn’t that wonderful?

ACT FOUR, SCENE FIFTEEN: GRAVEYARD

I can’t not mention the fact Ryan did a pigeon noise at Harry. Because he did. It was something else.

EXTRAS

Fun fact: Ryan is taller than Luke so this was a tall!Albus and small!Scorpius combo and I’ll admit it was weird at first but I soon loved every second of it.

Talking appearances, Ryan’s Albus had his hair up off his face in part one and I swear he doesn’t usually? I mean, every Albus has their hair down. It’s kind of his thing. They literally make them get their hair cut for this. So I was confused. Especially since it was down for part two.

Because Ryan was cover Albus with the last cast too it meant he still has the old hoodie and let me tell you, I had tears welling up in my eyes when I first saw it on Albus again.

To summarise, Luke and Ryan? Double wizzo! Their Albus and Scorpius were a wonderfully compatible combination that highlighted each other’s characters quirks and sparks and darkness brilliantly. It was surprising to hear they hadn’t really rehearsed it all together because they were very much in sync and their interpretations matched together almost perfectly. They were the same but opposites and while that makes absolutely no sense, I promise you it’s real and it works spectacularly.

…I was going to finish there but actually, can I say just one more time how much I love Luke’s Scorpius? Seriously, I want a solid year of this boy on as the main Scorpius. He’s awkward and messy and bright and still very much a Malfoy. It’s such a strange and complicated mix to get right and this boy nails it. I cannot praise him enough and trust me, I really do try at stage door!

#harry potter and the cursed child #it's technically a recap but it's mostly an excuse to gush about luke sumner #TCCleanne #text post #mypost #long post

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oscar-isaacs-number-one-bitch · 6 years ago

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“Aquaman” Movie Review

Aquaman is DC’s sixth and latest entry into their cinematic universe, and the first since the severely underwhelming box office results of Justice League made us all question whether or not this attempt at replicating Marvel Studios’ success was ever actually going to succeed post-Wonder Woman. This film finds Insidious and Conjuring director James Wan helming the story of Arthur Curry, the son of a lighthouse keeper from Amnesty Bay and the Queen of the underwater kingdom of Atlantis. After the events of Justice League, as well as a submarine rescue in which he encounters the man who will become Black Manta, Arthur returns home to his father. It isn’t long, however, before Princess Mera finds him, and warns him of a coming threat: Arthur’s brother, King Orm, means to declare war on the surface world, and everyone in it. If he is to be stopped, Arthur must put off the grudge he has against his people (whom he has denied because they supposedly killed his mother), and become the hero he is meant to be.

If there were a single word to describe what I felt sitting in the theater watching Aquaman for the first time, I wouldn’t know what it would be. I’ll say ahead of time that Wonder Woman is absolutely still DC’s strongest film to date, but the sheer level of commitment this movie has to its mid-2000’s levels of cheese and pulp give it an affecting charm not too many superhero films find themselves openly sporting in the modern day. Many superhero films, especially when it comes to those put out by either Marvel Studios or Warner Bros, have a particular dispensation towards either hard-hitting emotional drama or outright action comedy, so to see something so bizarre as Aquaman’s singular commitment to its premise that sounds like something a 10-year-old playing with action figures would have written significant portions of is really something quite special to witness.

This is all thanks to the visionary direction of James Wan, a man so adept at building worlds and creating wholly unique atmospheres for actors to play in that he might as well have actually gone underwater to the kingdom of Atlantis just to get some primary location photography. Seriously, the underwater worlds in this thing are genuine stunners with easily the best bioluminescent environments and effects on screen since James Cameron’s Avatar (not that anyone’s really tried all that hard since anyhow). Traveling through the kingdoms of Atlantis, the Brine, etc, is wonderous and somewhat frustrating, but only because you’re taken through it so quickly you never stay long enough to drink in every bit of visual beauty this movie has to offer. But if you thought the visuals and central premise of an Atlantian superhero having to find a trident and fight a war against his brother underwater for the safety of the world is the most absurd thing in Aquaman, you are not prepared for the hurricane that’s about to hit.

About one third of the way through the second act, there are a number of montages that occur all within about ten minutes of each other and feature the only three songs in the entire movie whilst the rest of its runtime is filled with a mostly workable but never-quite-finds-its-footing score from Harry Gregson-Williams. These montages begin with a sort of half-committed Baywatch tribute that features a cover of Africa by Toto (sung by musical artist Rhea), which is mixed in with a rap by Mr. Worldwide himself (Pitbull). Not even half an hour later, the film sports another fantasy tribute by setting a Tangled-esque scene between Arthur and Mera in a shoreside town near the same beach. It really is quite something to witness this movie simply take a break from itself in the middle of the second act just to play three music video montages in a row and then get right back to the action that brought the characters there.

Speaking of action, this is some of the most unique and kinetic the DC Extended Universe has ever had. Given the premise that most of the fighting in Aquaman is based around one-on-one trident warfare and hand-to-hand combat, what of the action isn’t grandiose superpower grandstanding has to be very up close and personal bow staff style fight choreography, and the way it plays out is a beautiful thing to see. It’s wonderfully edited during the up close and personal stuff, and some of the tracking shots during the larger battles between civilizations are truly some of the best in DC’s pantheon. I suppose if there were any negatives to the action sequences, it would likely be that most of them start the same way, with the characters getting quiet and then an explosion rocking them back to preparedness, which wouldn’t be a problem except that it occurs four or five times throughout the film, thus costing each subsequent surprise attack its effectiveness by making it too much of a habit.

But enough about the action and visually stimulating underwater worlds; how are the characters? A film can have all the spectacle in the world, but without proper character, it’s going to flounder. The characters in Aquaman? They’re…fine. Truth be told, anyone who wasn’t already on board with Jason Momoa’s bro culture rendition of the title character isn’t necessarily going to be won over by his mostly stilted but badass-in-action-scenes performance here, but they do tone down a lot of his more annoying quirks he was introduced with in Justice League, and that should count for something. Momoa is a physically dominant force as Arthur Curry, but whether it was some of the line he was given or because maybe he’s just not been with the right directors yet, his performance here really only reaches dynamic screen presence levels; there’s not a lot of room for nuance in his acting, and while that may be for the best given the kind of performer he is, it does hurt the film a bit overall.

Showing up again as well for round two is Amber Heard as Princess Mera, who more than fits the part as the woman trying to get the reluctant hero to do the hero’s arc because it’s important for him to know he can do it on his own (and she easily has the best costume design in the entire thing), but part of her arc has to do with her relationship to Arthur, and it gets a little confusing because this had supposedly already been covered in Justice League. She does really well for what she’s given to work with, but unfortunately Momoa just doesn’t give off a lot. Also here is veteran Wan-man Patrick Wilson, turning yet another leaf in the journey of acting circles around everyone even with a somewhat messy script to work with. As King Orm, he’s act once fiercely commanding and brilliantly emotive, but he never takes his performance so far as to overshadow Arthur’s main narrative. Willem Dafoe is in…something, but it’s not Aquaman. Seeing him show up as Valko is a real treat to watch, but largely because he’s such an interesting performer, it’s almost like he’s brought back his Norman Osbourne character to teach Jason Momoa how to swim. I’m sure the character probably matters more in the comics, but here, he just feels unnecessary, despite the joy just seeing Willem Dafoe on screen brings.

The unsung hero of this movie, though, at least in terms of performance, is unquestionably Nicole Kidman, who runs the emotional gambit from motherly chiding/affection to kick-ass warrior queen to awestruck-but-terrified literal fish-out-of-water in just her first fifteen minutes of screen time so smoothly and so expertly you’d think she might actually pull an Oscar nomination out of this. She really is having a great year performance-wise between this, Big Little Lies, Boy Erased, and the upcoming Destroyer, and it’s really been quite something to see her come back mid-50’s and show up everyone on any screen she shares by her sheer level of talents and commitment to character. In fact, her part in this movie might not just be the most compelling of the character turns, but also of the plot threads – it actually moved me, and cut right to the heart.

Some negatives about the film (besides what I’ve mentioned already) would include fairly subpar editing and lack of narrative focus; it’s not exactly bad most of the time right up until the second act where the music video montages come in and feel incredibly out of place in this already two and a half hour long movie (that you absolutely do feel the length of during the transition to act three), but it is somewhat off-putting, especially when certain scenes seem to either just start right in the middle of what was probably a longer take, or they’re just strangely placed as if they’re out of order and the editor just forgot about it. It kind of seems like part of the time, it doesn’t know what it wants to be about, and this is particularly felt during the scenes with Black Manta, who (while cool) doesn’t seem like he really was necessary to include this time around. The sound design also sometimes makes things difficult to hear since a lot of it takes place underwater, and while I certainly understand the need to communicate that, it might have been better left to the visuals to communicate, as the effects sometimes blurs certain lines and entire character monologues get lost. In addition, some of the visual effects (while there are a lot that are incredible to see) are actually pretty subpar, particularly wherein green screen is used to give location background to actors that are clearly acting against nothing during a beach training scene where most of the close up shots are straight on rather than from the side or done with two people in frame.

Still, despite its somewhat obvious flaws, Aquaman is the sort of rock and roll good-time superhero movie 10-year-old me would have eaten up. It’s cheesier than a white man’s casserole and pulpier than Tarantino’s back catalogue, but its sheer commitment to the dumb fun of it all really makes it a charming wave to ride. The visuals and costume design are all (mostly) immaculate, and the overlong runtime, while noticeable, doesn’t overshadow the film’s fair share of crowd-cheer moments so cool you wanna jump out of your seat. It may be quite bizarre even for DC, but their innate faith in James Wan’s filmmaking prowess and risk-taking shows they’re taking a few steps (or swims) in the right direction.

I’m giving “Aquaman” a 7.8/10

#Aquaman #Movie Review #The Friendly Film Fan #Jason Momoa #Amber Heard #Willem Dafoe #Patrick Wilson #Dolph Lundgren #DC #DC Comic #Warner Bros #Warner Brothers #Film #Movie #Review #DCEU #DC Extended Universe

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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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Archer Season 12: Casey Willis On Sterling And Cyril’s Emotional Breakthrough

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This article contains spoilers for Archer season 12 episode 5.

Archer has a fascinating relationship with change. Major elements like the show’s genre have transformed, but a constant through the years are the characters and their relationships with one another. The series has made it clear that these character dynamics are quite toxic in many ways, some of which have left the characters looking for ways to grow. The most recent seasons have prioritized the cause and effect nature of Archer waking up from his coma and returning to work, which has left everyone feeling very raw and vulnerable, including Sterling Archer himself.

Archer’s latest episode, “Shots,” dresses itself up as a playful night of liquor and laughs, but it becomes a deep look into Archer’s poisonous effect on his friends, specifically Cyril. Archer EP Casey Willis and producer Pierre Cerrato deconstruct the emotional entry and its significance in the season, putting together the glorious “Pampage” sequence, and if those were really the origins of “Sploosh.”

Archer Season 12 Episode 5 – “Shots”

Written by Matt Roller “Sex, drugs, and monster trucks! Archer and the gang celebrate another barely successful mission.”

DEN OF GEEK: With this being the half-way point of the season, were there any sort of goals or expectations in check for this point in the season, or was it not thought about in such a precise way?

PIERRE CERRATO: We are definitely thinking about how we are telling the story across the entire season. It may feel like a standalone episode, but I can’t really slot this episode anywhere else in our season. We needed to feel that the gang had been on a few missions and could use a break. We also needed to expand on Lana and Robert’s relationship a bit. And we really needed to Weekend at Bernie’s two different characters. That was a must.

There’s a bit of a bottle episode mentality with this installment when it begins and a lot of the entry is contained to the bar. What was the agenda in scaling things down here and was it ever smaller in nature?

PIERRE CERRATO: For the first half of the episode it may feel like there isn’t a ton going on narratively and we are just hanging out at a bar, but there are some nuggets in there that will come into play later in the season. While those early scenes may feel small in scale, hanging out in a populated bar comes with its own difficulties. We have to design and layout every individual character that is present at the bar and make sure they are engaged in just enough activity to feel natural, but not enough to take your attention away from our main action. Once we enter the rave, the scale of the episode gets pretty big.

There’s a self-aware nature to this episode as the characters reflect on the rut that they’ve found themselves in and the predictable nature of their dynamics. Why did this feel like the right time to ask these questions?

CASEY WILLIS: This episode was always planned to fall in the middle of the season. It was a great time for the characters to reflect and take stock of their situations. We also planted a lot of seeds for stories that will pay off in the second half of the season. And it was great to have Sandra, with her outside perspective, act as a cheerleader for the team at the start of the episode. However, by the end of the episode she realizes the team is a mess.

The brewing personal drama and stress with Lana and Robert continus to carry over and be present. Talk on that a little and why having that as a throughline through the season rather than them being entirely broken up or on healthy ground?

CASEY WILLIS: We wanted Lana and Robert’s relationship to get more complex and a bit messy this season. Is it because Archer is back in the picture, or is Archer just shining a spotlight on some behaviors Lana ignored in the past? This is a season long storyline and we are very excited for everyone to see how Lana and Robert handle these hiccups.

Lana seems to regress in some ways in this episode while she searches for clarity. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

CASEY WILLIS: We wanted Lana’s story to contrast Archer’s in this episode. We also wanted her and Sandra’s story to connect to the previous episode and just show Lana having some fun. So many times Lana has to play the “wet blanket” role in an episode and it’s nice to see her cut loose. In fact, it’s Pam of all people who tries and fails to stop Lana from partying with the Prince! When Pam is the voice of reason, your party is off the rails.

The most moving material from this episode is Archer’s resolve to “fix” Cyril. This is a major aspect of the previous season, but why did it feel important to readdress it here and go so far as to resolve the problem?

CASEY WILLIS: Last season we saw the decline of Cyril and while Pam tried to rebuild him, Archer and Cyril’s relationship was much more contentious. Archer and Cyril had some great moments though, especially in last season’s Aleister episode. We wanted to show Archer’s growth and him realizing that he does care for Cyril in his own twisted way. Also, we wanted to show Archer having fun in situations we normally don’t see him in, while also showing a glimpse into Cyril’s free time.

Where is Archer’s head at during the end of this, does he actually feel remorse, and will he be closer with Cyril moving forward at all?

CASEY WILLIS: I think he grew a bit, but he isn’t emotionally mature enough to share that with Cyril. We purposefully had Archer undercut all the progress he made when Pam called him. Then we further rubbed salt into the wound when Archer used Cyril as a step-stool. It’s just Archer’s way of showing affection.

The neon visuals during the “Pampage” dance party look gorgeous and are a serious highlight. Was it difficult to construct that scene?

PIERRE CERRATO: Our team went above and beyond to answer the call of the “Pampage.” It was a very complicated sequence. The script outlined four different areas in the warehouse that Pam takes the gang to. We needed to figure out what it would look like if there was a rave, a bare knuckle fight and a punk band playing while a monster truck is crushing cars in the back. Everyone did a fantastic job with that specific scene, and it took us a long time to get through it. If you take a closer look at the whole episode, you’ll realize just how many beautiful set pieces there are throughout. For example, the game store, the planetarium, Ding Dong’s strip club (the logo is my personal favorite), etc. Our artists, designers and animators are pretty incredible across the board.

CASEY WILLIS: Just a quick side note. We never really promote Archer merch because we are so focused on producing the show, however, when creating the “Pampage” shirts that Pam and the gang wore in this episode, we thought it would be great if FX would sell them. For anyone interested, they’re available soon via https://shop.fxnetworks.com/collections/archer.

This episode also seems to provide the origins of “Sploosh.” Did it feel time to provide some context there?

CASEY WILLIS: Is it the origin or did Lana just think it might be the origin? I am of the opinion that “Sploosh” has an organic origin from deep in Pam’s past. Sploosh, the bouncer, was probably bestowed that nickname by Pam, but I doubt he is the origin of the word.

It’s not just specific to this episode, but there’s some really nice staccato jazzy music that’s present throughout the season. How did this season’s sound come about?

PIERRE CERRATO: We can thank our amazing composer, JG Thirwell. He has been working with us since season seven and prior to that, we used needle drop for all our music. It worked well, but you can’t beat having an original score and developing a musical language with someone as talented as JG.

We had a phone call at the beginning of season 12 to go over our plans and share some musical ideas. We knew that Fabian was going to be a season-long villain, so we made sure to give him his own themes. We usually temp the music in our edit and when JG gets it, he’ll put his spin on it. If we use something that he has composed for another episode, he’ll tweak it to match the new timing, add extra instrumentation or anything else he feels would work for the scene. We don’t really go back and forth too much. We’ll generally do a round of notes and we’re good.

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Our writers’ room walkthrough for Archer’s 12th season will conclude with this season’s eighth and final episode.

Our breakdown of Archer’s 12th season premiere and previous writers’ room walkthroughs on earlier seasons are also available.

The post Archer Season 12: Casey Willis On Sterling And Cyril’s Emotional Breakthrough appeared first on Den of Geek.

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robynthomsonnapierfilm · 4 years ago

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Film Adaption - workbook part 2

'Everything Julie Likes'

1. Finding Our Feet (meeting with Charlie/shot list/storyboard)

After getting sorted into our groups and officialising our group members' roles (Myself as director, Charlie as writer/cinematographer, Alyssa as sound recorder/sound editor, Alexander as sound editor/sound recorder, Laura as producer/production design) for Film Adaption (I chose Charlie's film, 'Everything Julie Likes'), Charlie and I had a couple of one on one meetings and chats about the direction we wanted 'Everything Julie Likes' to take. We spent time discussing Charlie's shot ideas - to which I gave my feedback - and plans of a shotlist, characters, and the general tone Charlie had in mind when first writing the script, so that I could accurately portray what she visualised her script as the film's director. One of the main things we wanted to get across in the film is the focus on Julie. Since it's made clear through the dialogue that Dave isn't overly present in her life, we wanted this to come across through the visuals of the film too. This would be done through close ups on Julie, and then whenever Dave is on screen he is only ever seen from behind, close ups on parts of him that don't show his face clearly, etc.

Here is the shot list I roughly jotted down during our first ever meeting together, and then the official shot list that was produced after these discussions:

2. finding Our Film (casting call/location scout)

Once we had a good idea of the skeleton of the film, we all got to work on finding our actors and location. Charlie and I had spoken a bit about how we pictured the characters - Julie and Dave - and so I passed that information onto Laura, who then made a casting call for our group to make public on social media and various casting groups on Facebook. This process was rather tedious as it took a while for people to get back to us, and then when they did.... very very veryyy slow replies... typical. We took to asking around the Napier acting students (including Alexander's own brother!), but that too deemed unsuccessful. in the end, we cast two of our course mates - Jagoda and Luke - as our Julie and Dave, but we had absolutely no complaints as their performances turned out really great.

Next on our list was finding a location. At this point, the top things on our checklist of what we were looking for in a location was a window with bright natural light, and a bed. Unfortunately due to COVID-19 we were unable to scout around for the perfect flat, but my bedroom in my flat luckily fit the description well enough. I sent various videos and pictures to our film's group chat so everyone could get an idea of the space. We all agreed it would work well, and so there we had it - our location was found.

3. the news of filming in uni/script changes

Unfortunately, right as we were sorting things out for our film, the class received an email bearing the news that - due to COVID-19 rules - we were no longer allowed to film in whatever location we wanted. Instead, we were now limited to one of two Merchiston campus classrooms available for filming. This meant we had to act quickly to change the script, shot list, story board, etc. to accompany these sudden changes in our plans.

Our original plan to shoot in a bedroom with both of the actors in bed was obviously no longer appropriate for the COVID-19 guidelines, and so we worked around how this could work in a classroom. We decided to have it set at a table instead, with far more focus on Julie than in the original script. Charlie got to work with editing the script, and we all got to work on planning how we could dress an Napier classroom to look like a realistic room in a family home.

We were also no faced with the task of creating natural light, as we no longer had my bedroom window to work with and this lighting was what we'd wanted from the start. We were sent some video tutorials on how to create cucoloris from our lecturers, and this (along with the use of sheers to dim harsh light) would be our best bet for mimicking the look of natural light shining through a window.

4. set dressing/Pinterest board

During the group meetings we had to prepare for this change, we had discussions of what we wanted our set to look like. This involved talk of colour palettes, who was able to provide what furniture, and thoughts of what Julie and Dave were like as people and the type of home they may live in.

We made it clear from the start that we wanted the flat to look lived in and slightly messy, as Julie is struggling quite a bit when we meet her in Charlie's script. This meant we sourced empty bottles, food containers, and various nick-nacks to complete this look, and by bringing our own stuff from home it would look as realistic as possible. To help give us ideas for making the room look realistic (and since none of us have ever built a room from the ground up before), I made a Pinterest board of various images to give us inspiration:

However, we decided some of the images looked too 'aesthetically pleasing' and not naturally messy enough, so we only picked up on small details i.e. the string of hanging pictures, layered books.

We also spoke about our desired colour palette for the film, and came to the conclusion that a muted tone would be best. We didn't want anything that would take too much attention away from the actors, as this film is very performance based. More so, we had to think about the characters Julie and Dave, and how they would realistically decorate their home. Since Julie's story is based around the fact there isn't much colour in her life anymore, any bright or statement decor just didn't feel right for her. Therefore, we settled on a muted coral type colour for the wallpaper, and a subtler approach to decoration.

5. shopping trip/making cookies to stand in for our new lack of window

To prepare for our shoot, Alyssa, Laura and I spent a day going to B&Q and various other shops to gather everything we needed to dress out film's set. This day turned out to be super fun!

Before heading off, Laura had made a list of everything we needed to buy ahead of time so that we wouldn't forget anything (including some items we may have already had at home):

In the end, it turned out so successfully and within the day we had pretty much everything we needed. While in B&Q, I would take pictures of all the wallpapers I thought were best, and would send them back to the group chat to get a second opinion from the rest of the group before making a final decision. Of course... the one wallpaper that was completely sold out was the most perfect out of the whole batch, but luckily we found it in the B&Q on the other side of Edinburgh - there's always something...

One of the other main things on our list was cardboard to make cucoloris/'cookies' for our window lighting, which a friendly Tesco employee gave away to us for free.

That night I got to work making them. Once I got the hang of it, they were easy enough to complete, and so I made 3 different variations of a window shape for us to try out on the prep day to see which one looked most realistically like a window.

6. prep day

The majority of our prep day was spent setting up the room. This involved sticking up the many sheets of wallpaper and decorating the table. The main struggle with the wallpaper was getting it to lie flat against the wall, as there was a rim of sockets that stuck out and ran around the entire room, making the paper slightly lumpy. We tried our best to get it to stick in a way that didn't look so obviously makeshift on camera and - although it may not have looked 100% perfect - I think Laura and Alexander did a good job of sticking it to the wall despite the confinements the room gave us.

Setting up the table consisted of continually replacing and shifting various objects until we reached that perfect 'natural', 'lived in' look for Julie's home.

Here is a before and after of the room (photo credit to Charlie!):

During this set dressing, Charlie did her job as the cinematographer and set up the camera and lighting, ready for the next day of filming.

She spent some time playing around with the lighting to see what worked best, and through a mix of gels and sheers - we had our perfect morning sun glow through the cucoloris. Switch out gels, and there was our night time lighting.

7. shoot day

Throughout shoot day, we did end up running slightly behind. However I think our rigorous planning, Laura's tight schedule, and our great team meant we managed to get back on top of things. Once we got into the swing of it, we were getting through shots at a comfortable speed, and once I's gotten into the grove of directing the actors, Jagoda and Luke did an excellent job of staying consistent with their performances throughout the day.

Our most ambitious shot of the day was the dolly shot, which we had left to the very end to give us all the time we needed at the end of the day for rehearsals and multiple takes. This dolly shot was to go along with a short monologue heard on a radio we see in shot, and so in order to make the editing easier for Alexander, I would call out the lines the way I wanted them to be read in post-production, as Charlie worked the camera. This did take us a few shots as we wanted to experiment with the speed at which we pushed the camera in - along with trying out how it looked with a focus pull. Kieran recommended we do an ambitious shot like this earlier in the shoot day incase we are pushed for time at the end of the day, so I will definitely bare this in mind for future shoots incase we fail to get back on schedule like we were able to on this shoot.

Overall, the shoot went really successfully! We covered everything we needed in good time, but worked well enough that we were capable of experimenting and making subtle changes throughout the day when need be.

8. edit/sound edit/colour grade

From this point, the film was then handed over to Alexander to edit the footage. He would send each draft to our group's google drive, which we would each watch and then have a Zoom meeting to give feedback. He did a good job of taking in any notes I had and soon enough we had picture lock.

Them, it was Alyssa's turn to edit sound. Before she began, her and I had a chat about some things I wanted - for example, during the montage of Julie scratching the cards I really wanted the sound to build, layering more scratching sounds to create a truly overwhelming feeling. After her first draft of the sound edit, she showed it to me and we called to talk about any feedback I had. Much like Alexander, she was really efficient with taking on feedback and made an excellent job of the sound.

After both picture and sound were locked, Charlie took on the task of colour grading.

9. my experience

Going into this project as a first time director, I was extremely nervous. I was scared I'd let down Charlie's script or that I wouldn't communicate to the actor's well enough or just that I may not do the project justice in general. I do still have a lot to learn and while my first time won't be perfect, I am still happy with how 'Everything Julie Likes' turned out. Everyone in this group was extremely hard working, creative, and worked super well as a team - I'm proud of what we managed to achieve despite all the last minute changes we had to face :)

10. the crit

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trashartandmovies · 4 years ago

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Berlinale Film Festival 2021, Industry Event, Day 2

One of the great treats of going to a film festival is getting the chance to wake up and see some transgressive mindfuckery first thing in the morning. This can be either thrilling, like seeing ANTICHRIST at 10:00 AM in Toronto and then being excited to see if the rest of the day’s movies can top that; or it can knock you out for the rest of the day, like seeing IRRADIATED at last year’s Berlinale and needing to process my contempt and hope for humanity.

Of course, part of the thrill of these experiences has been sitting with an audience and going through the mindfuckery as a collective, feeling the energy, seeing people walk out, getting through it together. When things are moved online, and the timing and schedule of your streaming film festival is more or less up to you, many pleasures are lost. But I have to say, there was a thrill in getting up at sunrise to put on some headphones and sit with THE SCARY OF SIXTY-FIRST, an effectively wild and perverse shriek of a movie from first-time director Dasha Nekrasova, and part of this year’s Encounters section.

Shot in New York City, on beautiful 16mm film, THE SCARY is a steep plummet down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, triggered by the death of Jeffrey Epstein and two roommates moving into a new apartment on 61st Street that may be linked to the man and the sex trafficking ring he was involved with. These details are merely the place setting for an aggressive and sometimes messy assault on good taste and mainstream cinematic conventions. The two roommates descend into different kinds of madness — Addie seems to be possessed by some sort of evil within the apartment, while Noelle is quickly consumed by the conspiracy theories circling Epstein, the royal family, pizzagate, etc. Wedged between the two is Nekrasova herself, playing an amateur sleuth who indoctrinates Noelle with lurid websites, pharmaceutical speed, and sex. From there, the rabbit hole just keeps getting wider and weirder, Addie becomes obsessed with Prince Andrew and creepy tarot cards keep popping up. There will be blood.

I found it all pretty damn intoxicating, but I can understand that others will be put off by its shrillness and lack of subtlety. While the movie is dedicated to Stanley Kubrick, and it gets some inspiration from EYES WIDE SHUT, it’s more along the lines of John Waters crossed with John Carpenter. If you hated FEMALE TROUBLE, you may want to stay away from THE SCARY OF SIXTY-FIRST. Otherwise, this movie sits comfortably next to the kind of outre indie horror movies that got passed from VCR to VCR in the late 80s and early 90s. But what really makes THE SCARY kick, is how directly it speaks to the age of QAnon, the equal parts seduction and repulsion of violence, and the horror that comes from being trapped in a system you have no control over. My only complaint is that the film leans a little too heavily on old horror tropes right at the end, but this couldn’t take away the thrills it provided up to that point. I’m already looking forward to how Nekrasova might follow-up this one.

This year’s Golden Bear for best film went, deservedly, to Radu Jude’s BAD LUCK BANGING, OR LOONEY PORN. Another extremely transgressive film, this one takes a flamethrower to contemporary values in Romania and any other place where racism, sexism and authoritarian fetishism have taken root — meaning, it’s both very specific to Romania and quite universal.

The movie begins with a very graphic and absurdly funny home porno, being shot on a phone. Soon enough, we find out the woman in the video is Emi, a respected history teacher at a private school in Bucharest. The first act of the movie is Emi walking through Bucharest. The city is littered with signs of capitalism run amok, juxtaposed against fervent religiosity. Gambling and wholesomeness. Tastelessness and righteousness. The camera makes these connections with some choice camera panning maneuvers. These movements bring to mind Robert Altman’s style of movement — casual yet smart and impactful.

As Emi makes her way to her destination, the film’s regard for realism begins to deteriorate. Bit by bit, drivers begin showing less regard for the safety of pedestrians. Everyone is foul-mouthed and inconsiderate of others, even while wearing pandemic masks. If you can’t afford a car, who cares about you? It’s not that far from reality, but the pointed exaggerations start piling up and lead us into the mid-section of the film, where we’re treated to an A-Z montage of our most pressing issues and what’s wrong with the world. It both serves as a rundown of the topics that are going to present themselves in the final act of the movie, as well as more visual evidence of our corrupted values and moral decay. It’s a bitter and bleak hoot.

It’s all leading to a confrontation between Emi and her school’s parent-teacher board. It’s one of the most absurd, insulting and cuttingly insightful trials put on film. What are a teacher’s responsibilities outside the classroom? What if the teacher in this situation were a man? What if the teacher is also including lessons about Romanian history that today’s citizens would rather not deal with? All of this and much more is on the table for riotous discussion. More than once, someone cackles the Woody Woodpecker laugh when the debate really goes off the rails. While the visual language in the final act settles into a more conventional groove, the sound editing is something of a tour de force. It’s punchy, freewheeling, obscenely hilarious and brings the movie to an unbelievable final moment.

BAD LUCK is a hard act to follow. If I’d known how ambitious it was, I would have saved it for day’s final screening. But for better or worse, the next film was a very quiet, understated Competition title — this one from Hungary (which was well-represented this year), entitled NATURAL LIGHT. Written and directed by Nagy Dénes, this is a gorgeously shot war-is-hell movie that follows a weathered unit of Hungarian soldiers as they try to round up Russian partisans during WWII. Yes, the title of the movie perfectly describes the golden, autumnal hue of the movie, as it is primarily set in barren forests, small, sooty villages and fields with plenty of mud.

The film is based on a massive book by novelist Pál Závada, but Dénes made the interesting decision to just focus his movie on a few days in the life of István Semetka, who is forced to step up and take charge of his unit early on in the film. Aside from capturing the unrelenting force of their natural surroundings, cinematographer Tamás Dobos also does an amazing job of capturing people’s faces — not unlike the films of fellow countryman, Bela Tarr. Ferenc Szabó, who plays the beleaguered Semetka, has two of the most soulful eyes I’ve seen on screen lately. This is of critical importance since the film has very little dialog until a couple of well-written monologues at the end. Semetka’s eyes say it all.

As mournfully beautiful as it is, NATURAL LIGHT isn’t an easy movie to sit through. It’s quiet and heartbreaking. But this level of sorrow and atrocities is also very familiar to cinema. In a way, it’s unfair because this story, in its way, is unique. But the message of how indifferent war is to soldiers with good intentions, has been told before. Few movies, however, have told it in such a wordless and poetic way.

Throughout the history of film, there’s always been a struggle to turn good theater into cinematic art. When talkies began and TV took off, we turned to the wealth of good theater scripts that already existed as readymade source material that could meet the demand for content. Sometimes it works, and the scripts can be well-adapted into the cinematic language. Other times, it’s like we’re just looking at a filmed documentation of a theater piece, which relies heavily on the strength of the words and performance, and not on any tools of the filmic trade. Denis Côté’s new film does a neat job of adding a new wrinkle to this long tradition of finding ways to turn monologues and long chunks of dialog between two people into an engaging work of film.

Côté has always had a strong experimental streak to his work, and even though he wrote this script and titled it “Social Hygiene” in 2015, it would seem that the current pandemic gave him the final push to turn the unusual idea of long, socially distant conversations in a field into a movie. Aside from a few shots that follow a young woman as she walks through nature, says hi to some livestock and offers an intermission dance sequence, SOCIAL HYGIENE is a series of static shots, framing different sections of rolling Canadian countryside, and containing a couple of people talking to each other across a certain distance. The framing, the sounds, the tone and rhythms of the conversation, are all very stylized. And in its way, perfectly cinematic. Côté pays attention to the ambient noises during these scenes. Birds turn into a cackling audience, construction noises go quiet and resume at just the right moments — it’s all very well-orchestrated.

The story and conversations of SOCIAL HYGIENE have nothing to do with the pandemic. It’s the fairly universal story of a charismatic, smooth-talking guy of unmet potential, who is consistently disappointing the women in his life. This man is Antonin, and we first meet him as he bickers with his sister. While Antonin is married, he’s currently living in a friend’s car, getting by through small-time theft and avoiding plans that might improve his lot in life, like working on that screenplay he’s been kicking around. Both his wife and his mistress try to prod him in the right direction, but he’s such a charmer that he enjoys spinning his destitution as the life of a lovable rogue, who’s morals and values can’t be met by traditional means.

More than any other film seen, so far, from this year’s Berlinale lineup, SOCIAL HYGIENE had me laughing-out-loud the most. And I’m very willing to admit that this is likely due to how much I related to Antonin’s faulty reasoning. But it’s also due to the fact that the script is supremely sharp and its deadpan delivery brought to mind Hal Hartley’s films. Like Hartley, Côté is anti-realist in his staging and delivery, meticulous in his timing, and yet uses humor to get at some very fundamental human dilemmas. I love Hartley and miss his sensibility dearly. So, yes, I loved every minute of SOCIAL HYGIENE.

Even with a press pass, it can be a challenge to sit for every Competition screening. There are simply too many other films that call for your attention. But in this streaming scenario, I was committed to seeing every last one. I felt like I didn’t have any good excuse not to when you can make your own daily schedule. So, Xavier Beauvois’s ALBATROS (or DRIFT AWAY, as it may end up being called in your neck of the woods) got a late Tuesday night home screening. It didn’t go down well.

The only one of Beauvois’s previous films that I’m familiar with is 2005’s THE YOUNG LIEUTENANT, which follows a homicide detective in La Havre. ALBATROS follows a police chief in the much more idyllic region of Normandy. Jérémie Renier plays the cop, Laurent, and just as the movie starts, he’s just proposed to his girlfriend of ten years, with whom he already has a young daughter. In the next scene he’s cleaning up after a suicide on the beach, and then there’s news of child abuse by local resident, and his friend is at the end of his rope dealing with farming regulations. Things are piling up quickly, and the chipper Laurent is soon getting edgy and taking his work home with him.

The beginning of the movie isn’t bad. It’s clearly building to something and it can hold your interest while it does that. But when that shoe drops, the film goes off the rails and descends into a completely ridiculous and phony final act. It doesn’t help matters that Beauvois never really finds an interesting visual language with which to tell this story. From the get-go, his camera is just there, shooting scenes and conversations in a way that makes everything seem slightly off and unnatural. It feels like things are being staged, much as the wedding photo on the beach that gets interrupted by a death at the very beginning. Unfortunately it never shakes this feeling, and two hours later, you can’t believe that you’re watching an ending so clichéd that Hollywood would probably think twice before giving it a greenlight. It’s the kind of denouement that is so cheesy and unearned that instead of choking back tears, you feel completely cheated.

Aside from ALBATROS, Day Two was a rich abundance. The punk stylings of THE SCARY OF SIXTY-FIRST, the anarchic Molotov cocktail of BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONEY PORN, the austere meditation of NATURAL LIGHT, the playful theatrics of SOCIAL HYGIENE — these all had something special to offer. Tomorrow, we’ll visit China, France, Georgia and, once again, Hungary, for two more films with big rewards and two that struggled to transcend their formal trappings.

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lynchgirl90 · 7 years ago

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KYLE MACLACHLAN FLIRTS WITH THE DARKNESS #TwinPeaks

David Lynch's most reliable guide reveals that Twin Peaks will never end, because everything is Twin Peaks.

TYLER COATES

SEP 3, 2017

I am standing outside the Soho House in Manhattan when I get a text from an unknown number. "Hey Tyler. Kyle here. I'm on the sixth floor at the end of the room. (Walk towards the light! 😆) See you soon."

KYLE MACLACHLAN JUST TEXTED ME.

I stand in place for a moment. I take a breath.

Kyle MacLachlan just texted me a joke and he used an emoji.

My reply, which takes entirely too much time to compose, is simply to tell him I'll see him upstairs soon. He writes back: "Cool 👍" And I immediately picture FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, the character he played on Twin Peaks (and is playing—sort of—on Twin Peaks: The Return) giving an ecstatic thumbs-up on the original iteration of the series.

I'm aware that I'm slightly nervous as I walk through the sixth floor restaurant. Meeting a famous person is nerve-racking! And MacLachlan is a big deal in my brain, maybe because I've been consumed all summer with Twin Peaks: The Return, David Lynch's revival of his cult classic TV series on which MacLachlan starred in its two-season run from 1990 to 1991. Maybe it's because MacLachlan is, let's face it, a very handsome man. He's also less foreboding in person than on television. His hair is a little messy rather than perfectly combed in place and shellacked with pomade; the collar on his navy polo shirt slightly popped in a breezily unkempt manner, as if he's on a late-summer vacation. (He lives not far from here in Manhattan.)

And maybe my nervousness is why I immediately bring up Blue Velvet, his second movie ever, and his second collaboration with David Lynch. I mention that I saw the movie when I was 13 or 14, somehow convincing my dad to let me rent it. (My mother's theory: "He probably thought it was about Elizabeth Taylor and a horse.") That's when MacLachlan gives a slightly embarrassed laugh, and he says, "I bet that was...frightening?" There's an iconic scene in which he's completely nude and Isabella Rosselini, clutching a butcher knife, goes down on him after their characters first meet. So yes, I was possibly frightened. But I knew then—as I know now, having seen much of David Lynch's work, with and without MacLachlan—that it was something interesting, peculiar, scary, and absurd, and everyone involved was willing to take a major risk to fulfill this one guy's crazy artistic notions.

I settle in my seat, and I remember that I'm here to talk about David Lynch—and Twin Peaks—with the man who has been the face of those notions for many years. Lynch is big on avatars and doppelgangers, the nature of good and evil, and fucking around with our ideas of the American Dream and the horrors that exist just below the surface, hidden thanks to our willful ignorance. And he's put all of this into the world by telling a large, expansive story with MacLachlan's face—still handsome after all these years—at the forefront.

What's the allure of Kyle MacLachlan, anyway? There is the obvious handsomeness, an all-American look that the actor attributes to one feature in particular. "It's the chin," he says with a laugh. "It's hard to get away from that." But there's something about his personality, too, that offsets—and maybe works in tandem—with his looks. He has a kind sensibility, an inherent goofiness that makes one naturally comfortable around him. He seems to have heard this before, from people who have tried to describe him without being able to put their finger on it exactly. Back to his face, just for a second: MacLachlan tells me that it's got an edge to it, so he hears, that has served as a trademark of sorts. "There's something off—that's the thing," he says. "People would always tell me, 'Something about your face is a little bit off.'" (Writer Rich Cohen once described him, in an early '90s profile in Rolling Stone, as "the boy next door, if that boy spent lots of time alone in the basement.") Does he sweat the comments he's received about the indiscernible weirdness of his persona, his face? Not really. "Listen, if it gets me work, that's fine," he says.

Lynch gave MacLachlan his first big break: the starring role in Dune, the anticipated adaptation of Frank Herbert's celebrated sci-fi novel. Most young actors dream of landing such a role, playing the hero in a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster helmed by a buzzy director (Lynch's previous film, The Elephant Man, earned eight Oscar nominations). But Dune was a disaster—both on the production side and once it was released, flopping with critics and audiences alike. It was a hard first lesson for MacLachlan: Expectations could work against you, and it was important to be a practical actor, not to dwell on the losses, and to always keep an eye out for the next thing.

The next thing happened to come not long after, when Lynch came back to him with the script for Blue Velvet and offered him the role of the lead, Jeffrey Beaumont. Blue Velvet was the second big break—the real one, the one that propelled MacLachlan's career forward, and what solidified his connection to his director and friend.

"David is not Hollywood," MacLachlan explains. "My sense of it was that people didn't know what to do with me." He'd done the post-Dune audition rounds, and he wasn't finding other jobs landing in his lap. "Somebody does a movie that makes a zillion dollars, he plays the young hero, and producers can plug him into a million other things," he says. "The smart ones obviously build a construct. Not everyone has that ability."

Blue Velvet introduced a regular theme that Lynch has examined throughout his work since, which MacLachlan describes as "flirting with that dark soul, getting closer and closer to it until you're faced with the ultimate evil." Despite the film's brutality, it has a somewhat happy ending—suggesting that triumph over evil is possible. "Jeffrey barely escapes," MacLachlan says, "but he's changed forever."

With Jeffrey Beaumont, MacLachlan displayed full-on naïveté, playing a young man who realizes that the world in which he finds comfort is hiding sinister forces. His next major role, another created by David Lynch, would be a character who would find himself up against similarly dark factions—although this time of a supernatural quality.

MacLachlan admits that Twin Peaks was a bit of a fluke. The idea of David Lynch working in the realm of network television was absurd in itself. Blue Velvet, while earning Lynch his second Oscar nomination for Best Director, was met with a polarizing critical response. (Roger Ebert's review in particular was a scorcher, and he branded Lynch a misogynist for the way he "degraded" Rossellini on film.) His follow-up, Wild at Heart, which premiered at Cannes a month after Twin Peaks debuted on ABC, was met with equal parts enthusiasm and derision. (It won the Palme d'Or that year, even though the film was met with boos by the notoriously vocal film festival audience.)

Pairing up with writer Mark Frost, who had spent three years as a writer on NBC's police drama Hill Street Blues, Lynch broadened his idea of Americana—specifically, the darkness that lies beneath the surface of a quaint and seemingly wholesome small logging town in Washington—into a series. MacLachlan, bolstered by the critical success of Blue Velvet yet still reticent of how Lynch's next idea would play, didn't have high hopes. "It was completely unexpected that it would be anything more than a Movie of the Week," he tells me. "That's why a lot of us were on board: to watch David Lynch do this—and the anarchy that would reign down. Yeah, okay. Why not?"

But ABC executives loved the two-hour pilot, which introduced the murder of the beautiful homecoming queen Laura Palmer, the FBI agent who was summoned to solve her murder, and the various cast of characters who may very well have had something to do with the crime. "Suddenly we were doing it," MacLachlan says. "They called our bluff and bought the show."

Twin Peaks was a bonafide phenomenon, and its first season—consisting of the pilot and seven subsequent episodes—was a massive hit over the course of its eight-week run in the spring of 1990. Not only did it reunite MacLachlan with the director who introduced him to movie audiences, but it assembled a large ensemble cast of familiar and fresh faces.

The show was a mixture of television neo-noir and classic nighttime soap, but with a certain quirkiness that grabbed the attention of television audiences. There was a central murder mystery plot, yes, but there was also romantic intrigue, whispered secrets, a woman who communicated with a log. It often depicted its protagonist dreaming of a mysterious room, decorated with red drapes and a black-and-white chevron-patterned floor and populated by the kind of grotesque characters straight out of a Flannery O'Connor short story. It blended Lynch's dry humor and his absurdist non-sequiturs with the themes he began exploring in Blue Velvet—but with an entirely new style that filmmakers would spend years trying to replicate.

Laura Palmer's murder was solved in the early part of the second season—she had been raped and killed by her father, Leland, while he was under the influence of a demonic presence known as BOB—and the show began to shift into an unwieldy procedural drama. MacLachlan is honest about the missteps of the show's middling second season.

"I thought the first seven episodes [in Season One] were brilliant," he admits. "We had gone on a crazy tangent [in Season Two], and they were trying to pull it back. But it had already drifted too far off."

The series ended with a massive cliffhanger in a final episode directed by Lynch. Cooper, who had a new love interest in Heather Graham's Annie Blackburn, attempts to save her from an ex-FBI agent who has committed his life to terrorizing Cooper's. The pursuit finds him entering the mysterious red room of his dream through a portal in the woods; caught in what is known as the Black Lodge, he comes face to face with his mortal enemy as well as the evil that is holding the town hostage: BOB himself. BOB overtakes Cooper, creating a doppelganger of our hero and entering our world in disguise—leaving Cooper trapped in this impeccably decorated limbo.

Once again: disappointment. As with Dune, MacLachlan took it in stride. After all, Twin Peaks had earned him two Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe. He had had a steady job and got to work again with Lynch to craft a great role—arguably, in hindsight, the most vital of his career. "There was certainly a disappointment when it was cancelled," he tells me. "But I said to myself, 'Well, that's done. Time to find the next thing.'"

Two things propel actors: Getting work that pays enough to stay afloat between jobs, and finding work that's compelling and challenging—roles that don't leave you typecast and stuck playing the same character over and over again.

Of course, MacLachlan did play Dale Cooper again in Lynch's big-screen prequel to the series, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which was released a year after the show's cancellation. MacLachlan initially passed on playing Cooper again so soon after the show ended, although he eventually joined the production. But his role was small, and the absence of many other Twin Peaks regulars (and its bleak, darker tone) was off-putting for fans. The film was not a commercial success, and the critical response was mixed.

MacLachlan—who tells me that he had to find "a construct" for himself, a certain kind of figure he could play with slight variation—took a few odd roles in the '90s. There are a couple of forgettable indie movies on his résumé, plus Oliver Stone's The Doors, in which he played keyboardist Ray Manzarek. In what would be one of the biggest box-office successes of his career (that is until he leant his voice for a small role in the Pixar film Inside Out), he played Cliff Vandercave in The Flintstones, an insanely successful movie (it earned over $300 million worldwide) that feels like a lost '90s relic. (Do you remember anything about The Flintstones, other than it happened? I saw it twice, and I mostly just remember MacLachlan's biceps.) Yet he still proved he could play a different type: the sexy antagonist—even if that chance involved wearing a sleeveless double-breasted suit and playing the foil to John Goodman's Fred Flintstone.

But that led to his next role in what would be another infamous moment in modern film history: Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls, one of the most notorious movies of all time and the first big-budget NC-17-rated film to get a wide release. MacLachlan has been vocal about how he feels about the film. (He told Esquireearlier this year, "What did I learn from Showgirls? I learned what not to do!") Naturally, he chuckles when I even bring it up. (It's an inevitable topic of conversation. You can't not mention Showgirls in the presence of Kyle MacLachlan.) And he's honest with me about why he took the role. "It was a deliberate attempt to change things up a bit," he says. "All actors do that to varying degrees of success and failure. And, to be honest, I was a big fan of Paul Verhoeven, so I thought, 'Well, this could be fun.' I just happened to pick the wrong one." (Every gay man I know would suggest otherwise, but hey: Everybody's a critic.)

Once again, MacLachlan's career took another oddball turn. But these moments were still high-profile; he was still on the radar. And his early work with David Lynch continued to cast a welcome shadow over him as an actor, particularly as those who appreciated and found influence in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks began to rise in the Hollywood ranks themselves. At least that's MacLachlan's theory for his three major television roles of the last two decades: Trey MacDougal, the impotent Upper East Side mama's boy who served as a frustrating love interest to Charlotte on Sex and the City; Orson Hodge, a devious dentist on Desperate Housewives; and the Mayor of Portland on Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein's hipster satire Portlandia, who could very well be Dale Cooper if he had gone into local politics instead of the Black Lodge.

"These things came to me because of my work with David," MacLachlan says. "Not because they were looking at the roles and saying, 'Oh, he'd be perfect for that.' The creators were people who had in some way been inspired by David, or affected somehow."

Two decades after Twin Peaks, as the show's cult following only grew larger and larger and its influence became more overt as dark, quirky mystery shows about the dangers hidden out of sight in small-town America became more and more popular, MacLachlan couldn't shake the series from his head. He and Lynch remained good friends, and Twin Peaks was often a topic of conversation when they saw each other. "Over the years, we'd get together and sit, chat, have coffee, catch up," MacLachlan tells me. "Occasionally I would bring up the idea of Twin Peaks. I recognized for me, selfishly, it was a great character, a great period of time. I was hungry to revisit that and to have the experience of working with David again."

"OCCASIONALLY I WOULD BRING UP THE IDEA OF TWIN PEAKS. I WAS HUNGRY TO REVISIT THAT AND TO HAVE THE EXPERIENCE OF WORKING WITH DAVID AGAIN."

Years later, Lynch called MacLachlan on the phone, and his tone was markedly more assertive than normal. "I need to talk to you," Lynch said to him, "but I can't do it over the phone." The two met in New York, and Lynch delivered the news: He and Mark Frost had figured a way back into the world of Twin Peaks. Was MacLachlan interested in joining them? "We've talked about this, David," MacLachlan recalls saying. "But if you need to hear it from me: Yes, I'm in." Nothing was settled yet. Scripts hadn't been written. A precarious deal with Showtime was in the works, and there were stops and starts, which naturally worried MacLachlan. But eventually everything fell into place, Lynch and Frost and MacLachlan signed their deals, members of the cast were coming back, along with some new familiar faces. The network handed the keys over to Lynch to direct a whopping 18 episodes. It was official: Twin Peaks was returning to TV.

Let's rock.

Where the hell do I begin with Twin Peaks: The Return? For one thing, as I write this, I still haven't finished it; Showtime is keeping a close guard on the final two episodes that make up its grand finale, and the network didn't provide journalists screeners throughout the season. Perhaps that's part of why it's been so fun to watch: Not only is every episode completely unexpected, with most of the theories surrounding its complex and meandering plot as indecipherable as the show itself, but no one is getting an early look at this show. We all have to wait to see what David Lynch has in store for us precisely when he's ready to give it away.

I'm chatting with MacLachlan on the Monday afternoon following the 16th episode of the series—the one in which Agent Cooper finally comes out of the catatonic state in which he's been trapped for a very long time (15-plus hours for us, but much longer for him). Before that, he was trapped in the body of Dougie Jones, a Cooper doppelganger who lives in Las Vegas, sells insurance, and presumably has a gambling problem; most of his biography before the events of the season begins is provided by his wife, Janey-E, through one of her regular screaming sessions leveled at her dim man-child of a husband. (Naomi Watts, playing Janey-E, is a master at the David Lynch monologue.) How he got into Dougie Jones is still sort of a complicated mystery. Some people have their ideas of how it works, but for me, well… I've simply watched the show and kept myself from asking too many questions for the sake of my own sanity. I've simply enjoyed the long, twisted ride.

MacLachlan hasn't seen the final two episodes, either, although he knows what happens. From the beginning, he was in possession of what he calls The Bible. "After a little bit of cajoling, they let me have the script," he admits to me, "as long as I absolutely swore never to show anyone." (He keeps that promise with me, despite any effort I make to milk a secret or two out of him. "We all felt an obligation, really," he says. "We wanted to protect this thing so that people could experience it in the proper sequence.")

The world of the new Twin Peaks is massive. It expands beyond the borders of the small Washington town, with scenes taking place in Manhattan, Las Vegas, South Dakota, New Mexico in 1945, and in the Black Lodge. And while it brings with it a return of many of the beloved characters from the original series (with a few noted exceptions), it also introduces a wide variety of new characters in those far-flung locations. It is perhaps the most impressive cast of actors on television in recent history, and that doesn't include the musical guest that shows up every week at the Bang Bang Bar. (Whoever is booking for the Roadhouse is doing one hell of a job.)

"WE ALL FELT AN OBLIGATION, REALLY. WE WANTED TO PROTECT THIS THING SO THAT PEOPLE COULD EXPERIENCE IT IN THE PROPER SEQUENCE."

MacLachlan asked for the complete script almost out of a necessity to understand where his role fit within the larger story. Well, I should say "roles," because at this point he's playing three: there's Special Agent Dale Cooper, trapped in the Black Lodge for 25 years and then released into the world once again; Dougie Jones, the aforementioned dummy who's learning about the world almost like a child (or maybe he's actually Cooper, trying to remember who he actually is); and then there's Mr. C, the Cooper doppelganger who left the Black Lodge behind in 1991 at the end of the original series.

As much as the rest of us wondered how the residents of Twin Peaks would look and act after a 25-year hiatus, MacLachlan himself wondered how to get back into the role of Agent Cooper. But first he had to tackle the two opposite poles of Dougie and Mr. C. For Dougie, he looked to Peter Sellers for inspiration, also remembering Jeff Bridges's performance in Starman; for Mr. C, he thought of Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men. Dougie, he admits, was the easier role to take on, while Mr. C was much tougher.

"It's hard for me to play that," he admits. "I can do it, of course, but I don't know if I really want to."

I bring up the moment when Mr. C murders his son, Richard Horne, steering him on top of a rock formation and watching as he is electrocuted. Mr. C shows no sign of empathy—that's in his nature, of course. But it was hard for MacLachlan to pull off. "Of all the things David had me do, that was the worst. But it's true to the character. As an actor, I want to show some humanity. It's so hard to be absolute." I can tell, through the calm and measured quality of the good-natured man who sits before me, that diving into the depths of his own potential dark side was no easy mission. He had to find that humanity within his director, who he says went along with him on both Dougie and Mr. C's journey. "David almost embodies the qualities of the characters," he says. "I can see it in his face. With Dougie, there's a certain energy. When I'm Mr. C, it's dark and he's in another place. It gave me the confidence to carry the character to its fulfillment."

He tells me another difficult task was to act as Mr. C with David Lynch as his character, FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole. "I didn't like it at all," he says, definitively, and with a look of deep concern. It suggests that MacLachlan felt uneasy breaking out of the kind of figure that Lynch has pushed him to play so many times: the innocent who flirts with danger but ultimately controls it. Dougie, in a way, was his own release from that darkness: all joy and absurdity. When I ask him about his favorite scenes, MacLachlan immediately sports a big Dougie Jones smile. His sex scene with Naomi Watts comes to mind, and he imitates the look of perplexed ecstasy on Dougie's face as he sleeps with his wife. He flails his arms about a bit, not noticing that he's drawing some attention from some of the people sitting near us in the restaurant. But I suppose when you've taken the leaps that he has—flirting with the darkness that David Lynch has created, or even doing something so bold as acting in a sex scene in front of a film crew—you lose some of your inhibitions fairly easily. I'm much less nervous around MacLachlan by now, and much more impressed with the confidence he exudes, something he's learned from the fearlessness that his job requires.

MacLachlan knows Twin Peaks: The Return isn't for everybody. He knew this as soon as he saw the script, realizing that fans of the original show might not embrace the revival with as much enthusiasm. I suggest that there are two different kinds of people: Twin Peaksfans and David Lynch fans. "Twin Peaks: The Return is for the David Lynch fans," I say, and MacLachlan nods.

"It was going to be the Lynch fans who would have the most fun," MacLachlan says. "That was obvious to me as we were traveling on that journey. It was going to be darker, visceral, and have the same kind of surreal elements that David loves to mix in with the ingredients. Who's to say how the Twin Peaks fan base and the David Lynch fan base would find common ground? David Lynch fans were in for it the entire way, and the Twin Peaks fans who made the leap might find something special, too."

As one of David Lynch's regular players, MacLachlan has learned not to parse the material for meaning—just as he's learned not to demand too much explanation from his director. This, he admits, he learned the hard way. "On Dune, I was rabid. I drove David to madness," he says. "And finally he closed the door on me." He offers no detailed analysis of what has transpired over the show's 16 episodes so far, and I get the sense that my intuition—to focus less on the meaning and more on the form—is the best way to experience it.

Instead, he accepts that there's a purpose to everything he's done, simply because Lynch has created it. He offers an explanation for the director's working relationship with Mark Frost, who is certainly more grounded in his craft. "Mark is the kind of writer who says there needs to be reason and process," he explains. Lynch, on the other hand, pays closer attention to theme and ideas—particularly where evil comes from, how it corrupts innocent men and women as it spreads like a virus, and where to put it in order to keep it contained. "I don't think David feels compelled to resolve everything by any means, maybe because of the idea that it's ongoing and we'll pick it back up if we have to," he says, pointing to the differences in the way Lynch and Frost attack the material. "Maybe that's why they get together once every 25 years," he laughs.

At the end of the day, the return of Twin Peaks is almost enough of a treat for MacLachlan as much as, I'd suggest, the people who are tuning in each week. "It's like a weird high school reunion," he says, and I think that the people who either watched it when it first aired or throughout the years on DVD or streaming on Netflix might say the same thing.

"I DON'T THINK DAVID FEELS COMPELLED TO RESOLVE EVERYTHING BY ANY MEANS, MAYBE BECAUSE OF THE IDEA THAT IT'S ONGOING AND WE'LL PICK IT BACK UP IF WE HAVE TO."

Working with Lynch again has been a delight, MacLachlan says, as has acting for the first time with fellow Lynch muse Naomi Watts. And, naturally, he speaks with visible exuberance about seeing Laura Dern on set again 30 years after they starred in Blue Velvet together. Dern plays Diane, the previously unseen assistant to Agent Cooper who would receive his daily briefings in the original series; she steals every scene with a sharp, bitter tongue and a platinum blonde bob wig. "Laura and I have traveled this road together a long time," MacLachlan says. "We love David very much, and we get a real kick out of each other."

But seeing Dern interact with Lynch, who directed her in Wild at Heart and Inland Empire, showed MacLachlan a different side to his friend and director. "They tease each other a lot—David and I don't really tease each other!" he laughs. "I mean, we get along, we have fun, we have a laugh. But I never felt thatcomfortable, you know? I wondered, how does she do that?" MacLachlan says that he and Dern aren't unlike siblings, realizing that their individual relationships to their father is surprisingly different.

Ultimately, MacLachlan is grateful for the opportunity to play this character again, and he's grateful for the fans for keeping the spirit of Twin Peaks alive. ("I think the fans played a big part of this," he says of the revival.) He feels like he's a part of something bigger, a piece of moving art that is ripe for interpretation and inspiration as much as it is entertaining. And, as always, he guides me to understanding how it falls within David Lynch's worldview, as well: "David tells me, 'Everything is Twin Peaks. It's all Twin Peaks,'" he says. "These stories continue—that's the whole thing. Everybody kept living and going on and doing their thing. It never stopped. Now we're picking it up again, 25 years later. Who knows if we'll pick them up again down the road, I don't know."

Before I'm even able to ask the final question—either because he knows it's coming, or simply because his answer is so obvious for him—he gives a sly smile when he responds.

"Would you do it again, down the road?"

"Oh, yes. In a minute."

Link (KM)

#Twin Peaks #Kyle MacLachlan #Esquire #David Lynch #Agent Cooper #season 3 #The Return

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