#re: the whole none of this constant attack stuff is normal

[mutable-manifestation]

(Heads up: I don't know How To Police. If stuff is wrong, no it isn't.)

When Baxter called in an arrest on his off-hours, Jackson didn't think much of it.

When he said he was bring in "some loser in a clown costume" he assumed the guy had captured one of the Joker's minions.

When he finally rolled in sixteen minutes after the call-in, Jackson could barely believe his eyes as the Joker was shoved into the station like a common criminal by a plainclothes newbie.

"One Arkham escapee, ready for pickup," he says blandly, boredly.

"His...weapons - if you can call them that-" he rolls his eyes "-are still in my car. Didn't wanna give Chuckles here a chance to try slipping his cuffs. Again."

A vein stands out on the Joker's forehead as he grits his teeth, and Jackson leans back a bit before hesitantly calling pickup.

"I. Am. The Joker. The JOKER! You-!"

His tirade is interrupted by a positively gusty sigh, filled with unspoken boredom and exasperation.

"Laughy. Buddy. As far as I'm concerned you could be named 'completed warrant 65789529.' Save it for therapy."

Baxter pauses. Grimaces.

"Well, assuming your therapist isn't secretly a soul-sucking emotional parasite bent on using you deepest fears and insecurities to twist you into an ever darker state of mind for the sake of indulging her own twisted hunger."

Silence prevails, even the officers coming to take Joker off his hands pausing in the doorway at that.

"That was only the one therapist though, to be fair. And I'm pretty sure asylums have higher hiring requirements than high schools, so you should be fine.

Use that love of flowers to grow some actual flowers. Use that...fondness for vibrant colors to, like, make bouquets or something. Try being a florist. Like my not evil-therapist always says 'instead of berating yourself for your rage and aggression in the past, focus on what you can do for the future; transition your coping mechanisms so that your negative emotions can manifest themselves in more constructive ways.' That's why I took up knitting."

Evidently no one knew how to respond to that, as the silence continues until Baxter notices the officers in the doorway just then. He nods at his captive.

"A little help? I've got a family face-time scheduled in like 10 minutes."

The Joker - silent but visibly fuming - is carted away to holding, Baxter drops a bag of Jokers weapons, and laments when told he has to file them all himself.

Jackson watches as he writes "weird bad-smelling-mist-dispensing flower" on the Joker's gas boutonnière.

'Am I...high?' Jackson questions himself, half-hysterical as Dash continues on, labelling the lethal buzzer a 'prank-buzzer.'

At least the fake gun visibly is fake. The 'bomb?' - with a DAMN QUESTION MARK - on a small cylinder is less comforting.

Baxter finally leaves another 27 minutes later.

Testing the confiscated devices reveals normal Joker Gas in the flower and definitely lethal electricity levels from the buzzer.

Everyone thought the newbie was just a shit talker when he said the Gotham rogues aren't scary.

Jackson is loosing his mind.

Short DPXDC Prompts #599

Dash works at the GCPD. It’s been an interesting first few weeks. He can’t quite understand why everyone is so afraid of these rogues that the Bats and the Birds fight.

The other officers in the station just thought Dash’s comments on the matter was just the new guy talking shit. They ate their words when the newbie brought The fucking Joker into the station in handcuffs single-handedly.

[ruminativerabbi]

What I Saw on Mulberry Street

At first, I was slightly amused by the whole brouhaha that followed the announcement last week by the estate of Theodor Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, that it would stop republishing and selling six of the famous author’s books, including such classics as And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, On Beyond Zebra, and McElligot’s Pool.  I know all these books; they were classics of children’s literature so long ago that I remember reading them when I actually was a child and enjoying them immensely. We all did. Dr. Seuss was part of the children’s canon back then: read by all, touted endlessly by librarians and teachers, and considered controversial—as far as I recall—by none. Just the opposite, actually: if there was one children’s author from back then whose whimsy was deemed charming and fully acceptable, it would certainly have been Dr. Seuss.

But times have changed. And there is no question that illustrations in all the books in question feature caricatures of various minority groups, particularly Asians (depicted with slanty lines for eyes, pigtails, and conical coolie-style hats) and Black people (shown shirtless, shoeless, and wearing grass skirts). On the other hand, Dr. Seuss himself was a powerful enemy of fascism who published more than 400 wartime cartoons savaging Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese leadership. And some of his books were thinly veiled anti-fascist parables: it is widely understood, for example, that Yertle the Turtle (1958) was meant as a direct attack on fascism (apparently dictatorial Yertle originally sported a Hitler-style moustache) and that Horton Hears a Who (1954) was meant as a kind of encouraging parable about the American occupation of Japan. More to the point for Jewish readers is that The Sneetches (1961), a book that the estate will continue to publish, is a focused, double-barreled attack on racism and anti-Semitism and was understood that way from the time it was published. Nor was this imputed meaning—the author himself was widely quoted at the time as saying formally, that The Sneetches “was inspired by my opposition to anti-Semitism.”

So we are left with an interesting dilemma. Geisel, a life-long Lutheran who actually suffered a bit of anti-Semitic discrimination in college when he was mistaken by some bigoted classmates for a Jew, was a proud anti-fascist, a virulent opponent of racism and anti-Semitism, and a true American patriot. And he published some books that featured images which feel—at least by today’s standards—racist or at the very least inappropriate for books pitched at impressionable children. The managers of his estate solved their problem the easy way by deciding simply not to republish six of the man’s books, thus ending the controversy by eliminating the problem. An alternate approach, of course, would have been to re-edit the books, eliminate the offensive imagery, and bring out versions that feature the original text with illustrations tailored more precisely to suit modern sensitivity. And speaking specifically as a Jewish American, the fact that there aren’t any Stürmer-style caricatures of hook-nosed Jews holding huge bags of money in these books shouldn’t be a factor in our evaluation of the evidence: if anything, the thought of Black parents cringing when they come across racist caricatures of Africans should be more than resonant with Jewish parents able to imagine being in exactly the same position and feeling exactly the same level of hurt and outrage. And that brings me to the question that feels to me to be at the heart of the matter: should works deemed utterly non-offensive in their day be altered, either slightly or dramatically, to suit evolving standards with respect to race, religion, ethnicity, gender, etc.? It’s an interesting question, one that goes to the heart of the question of what literature actually is and what role it could or should play in society.

There are, of course, lots of examples of books that have been successfully revised to suit modern tastes. Agatha Christie’s book And Then There Were None was originally published in the U.K. as Ten Little Negroes (and the third word on the cover was specifically not “Negroes”). That was deemed offensive here, so the publisher just made up a different title. (The English publishers eventually did the same and brought the book out under the marginally less offensive title Ten Little Indians.) In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a favorite of my own children years ago, Roald Dahl originally depicted the Oompa-Loompas who worked in the factory as African pygmies and the depiction was basically of them as slaves and certainly not as dignified, salaried employees. A century earlier, Dickens himself was prevailed upon to tone down Fagan’s Jewishness in Oliver Twist, which he did by halfheartedly removing some of the references to Fagan’s ethnicity. Of course, when the author himself makes the revisions we are having an entirely different discussion: surely the actual authors of books should feel free make whatever changes they wish to their own work. The question is whether the world should “fix” published works to make them suit issues that were on no one’s radar, or hardly anyone’s radar, when the book was written and published.

Some readers will recall that one of my pandemic coping exercises last spring was embarking on a re-read of Mark Twain, a favorite author of my younger years. I was surprised how well many of his books stood the test of time, but I found myself most engaged of all by my re-read of Huckleberry Finn. Widely and entirely reasonably acclaimed as an American classic, the book is basically about the relationship of Huck and Jim, who is almost invariably referred to as Negro Jim. (Again, that’s not the word that appears in the book.) Of course, Mark Twain was writing about Missouri life in the 1830s and he himself was from Missouri and a child of that era. So he certainly knew how people spoke and I’m entirely sure that that word was in common use to reference Black people. Today, that word is anathema to all and is considered unusable in normal discourse, written or oral. But what about the book itself? Should it be “fixed” by having the dialogue altered specifically to reflect a dialect of English spoken in those days by no one at all? Or should the book itself be dropped from high school or even college reading lists as something too offensive to allow, let alone to require, young people to read? Huckleberry Finn is an interesting book for many different reasons, not least of all because Jim, a slave, is depicted sympathetically as a man of character, virtue, and strong moral values—a fact made all the more poignant by the fact that he is depicted as almost wholly uneducated. Indeed, Jim is a grown man with a wife and family, while Huck is a boy of thirteen or fourteen and the clear implication is that while the white world has failed utterly to make Huck into a decent adolescent, Black Jim, an uneducated slave, is quite able to bring him to the threshold of decency by showing him how to behave in an upright manner. So the book is hardly anti-Black. Just the opposite is far more true: in many ways, Jim, not Huck, is the hero of the book. And yet the constant use of that word is beyond jarring. Editions have been published for use in school that simply omit the word or change it. Is that a rational compromise? Or does that kind of bowdlerization deprive the book of its essential honesty, of its ability to depict a society as it truly was and not as moderns vaguely wish it had been? It’s not that easy to say.

When I was deeply involved in the research that led me to publish my translation of the Psalms, I became aware—slightly to my naïve amazement—of the existence of Christian editions of the Psalms from which all references to internecine strife, violent clashes between opposing groups in old Jerusalem, the corruption that led at least some poets to condemn the Temple priesthood, and the deep alienation from God with which at least some psalmists struggled—that the psalms depicting all of that challenging stuff had been nicely excised from the book so as to create a book of “nice” poems. (This parallels a Christian edition of the Old Testament I once saw from which the entire book of Leviticus had been omitted, presumably lest readers be offended by the notion that animal sacrifice and the safeguarding of ritual purity were essential elements of the covenant between God and Israel.) Those editions of the Psalms struck me as ridiculous and precisely because the resultant book was specifically nothing like the original work and gave a totally incorrect impression of the original work. But would one of the Dr. Seuss books under discussion really have been substantially altered by some of the drawings of black or Asian people replaced with more respectful images?

My feeling is that the Dr. Seuss affair is indicative of a larger issue in society. Obviously, changing a few drawings in a book is not such a big deal and is something that I’m sure happens without fanfare in the world of publishing all the time. But this specific issue seems to have struck such a chord with so many precisely because Dr. Seuss is deemed, not entirely incorrectly, as representative of a simpler world—by which term people generally mean one in which it wasn’t deemed necessary to care what smaller groups in society felt or thought. We’ve come a long way since then, and rightly so. The Seuss estate could certainly have felt justified in commissioning some new drawing to avoid going against modern feelings about ethnic or racial stereotyping. The books themselves would have been substantially the same. Once that line is crossed, however, and the book no longer is the same as it was—“fixing” the language in Huckleberry Finn, for example, or eliminating Shylock’s Jewishness from the play or Othello’s blackness—that is missing almost entirely the reason literature exists in the first place: to stir up emotion, to challenge readers’ preconceptions, and to educate—in the literal sense of the world: to draw the reader forward to a new level of understanding of the world of the author…and of the reader as well.

[autumnleavescoffeedreams]

... I Came (Part 2 of 2)

Fandom: My Hero Academia / Boku no Hero Academia

Characters: Katsuki Bakugou, Female!Quirkless!Reader, Izuku Midorya, Original Villain

Pairing: Katsuki Bakugou x Reader

Author’s Note: You asked for it: here's Bakugou's POV! And somehow it ended up longer than the original piece *grins sheepishly*. Also, please read the note at the end for an announcement, thank you!

Part One | Part Two (Also available on Ao3)

**Warning: This story contains swearing, mentions of torture, and kidnapping. Do not read if any of these make you uncomfortable.**

3 Weeks Before the Kidnapping

"Hey, Earth to Baku! Are you even listening? Katsuki!"

Bakugou's attention snapped back to you, your eyes meeting his with concern. "Sorry," he muttered half-heartedly as he stirred his coffee.

You leaned forward on the cafe table across from him. Lowering your voice, you asked, "Is it work again? Something's obviously bothering you. I wouldn't have pulled you away from work for lunch if I'd known you were this stressed out..."

"No, dammit," replied Bakugou with a huff. "Lunch was fine. It's this damn villain, calls himself 'Syphon'. He drains the life of others while taking it for himself. He's already killed dozens of people with that disgusting Quirk of his. I wanna beat the little bastard into a pulp myself but he's so damn sneaky, I can't catch him. He's never been caught on camera, he never leaves traces..." Bakugou leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, the usual scowl crossing over his features. "It's seriously pissing me off."

"Maybe you should talk to Midoriya about it," you suggested. "Isn't he good at analyzing Quirks and stuff? He might be able to help you see things from a different perspective."

The smallest explosion popped from Bakugou's clenched fist and his eyebrow twitched. She did not just suggest I work with Deku of all people, right? "What the hell! Don't you think I'm strong enough to catch a damn villain on my own? Do you think I'm a weakling that can't do my job? I'm a hero, dammit!"

You rolled your eyes, not affected by his ranting in the slightest. "Of course you're strong enough, but maybe it can help speed up the process if you work with other people... especially if they have talents that can give you an advantage."

"Tch, I don't need that stupid Deku... I don't need anyone. I'll take care of it myself."

1 Week Before the Kidnapping

"... And this is the database where we keep track of all the different Quirks that have been recorded as well as their users!" Izuku Midoriya explained enthusiastically as he gestured to a complex-looking computer. "It might be a good place to start. You can use this information in so many different ways, it's amazing! You want to go ahead and use it?"

"Whatever," Bakugou mumbled, already regretting taking your stupid advice. Why did he ever listen to you?

The hot-headed hero would much rather have been out blasting apart every nook and cranny of the city until he found that life-sucking bastard, but he'd been 'advised' to do actual research on him and go from there.

After hours of searching the database and finding nothing, Bakugou had a moment of genius. She never did tell me what her Quirk was, did she? Well since she was the one that told me to work with stupid Deku in the first place, I'd say looking up her Quirk would be calling it even.

And then he typed in your name, only to find underneath a recent photo of you the words he had least expected. The words that made his heart sink in confusion and disappointment.

{ QUIRK: NONE }

"What the..." muttered Bakugou, his eyes widening in shock. He re-typed your name, hoping he'd just made a spelling error.

The result was the same.

No... she would have told me... Bakugou thought to himself, feeling his chest constrict in an unfamiliar way. Was he feeling... hurt? No, surely not.

"You lied to me?" Bakugou cried out to your photo on the screen, your innocent smile seeming to mock him. His voiced cracked as he continued. "Why did you- I THOUGHT YOU WERE MY FRIEND!"

He barely registered the sound of footsteps behind him. "Kacchan? Is everything all right?"

In one swift motion, Bakugou let out a pained scream and slammed his fist on the computer console, causing the screen to go blank. He stood there for a few moments recomposing himself before he turned around and walked out the door, not even sparing Deku a glance.

 The Evening of the Kidnapping

The rain pelting his bedroom window was aggravating Bakugou's already existing headache as he tried to focus on the notes Deku gave him on Syphon. Together they had managed to figure out that the villain could only use his Quirk by making skin-to-skin contact. Even though he hated working with the nerd, he was satisfied with the amount of progress that had been made to catch the sicko.

Not that Bakugou would ever admit that to you.

With a huff, the blond's gaze wandered to the window. It was so dark outside he couldn't even see the droplets hitting the window pane. You would have already gotten off of work by now. Normally Bakugou accompanied you on those late-night walks home from the shop; however, he had no desire to speak to you despite the constant voicemails you left on his phone, apologizing profusely while trying to explain why you withheld the truth from him. The sense of betrayal the young hero felt was still a fresh wound...

... it just wasn't as painful as not having you around.

"Dammit," Bakugou mumbled, slamming the case file he had been trying to read on the desk. If he called you first to make up, it would be like saying that it was his fault and it sure as hell wasn't. But -

His conflicting thoughts were interrupted by the vibrating of his cell phone. Feeling hopeful yet anxious, Bakugou fished it out of his pocket expecting to see your name pop up on the screen again. However, it was only...

"DEKU!" Bakugou snarled into his cell phone. "DO YOU KNOW HOW LATE IT IS, YOU LITTLE SHIT? You better have a damned good reason-"

The voice on the other end of the phone let out a weary sigh. "Kacchan..."

"Spit it out, Deku, I don't have all night!"

“He got her, Kacchan. She was on her way home from work and..."

Midoriya hadn't needed to specify who is was referring to; his despondent tone told him all he needed to know.

"Syphon." Bakugou's blood ran cold. For a moment, he was totally devoid of all emotion. It was as if Todoroki had frozen him solid and there wasn't a damn thing he could do to thaw himself. He hated that. He hated how for the first time since All Might's final battle with All-for-One he felt completely and utterly powerless. He could've been there, watched over you from the shadows. But no, instead he stayed at home pouting like a whiny baby while you paid the price for his failure as a Pro Hero and as a friend.

"Kacchan." Midoriya's voice was low and firm. "I know what you're doing. You can't think about the past, what you could have done differently. It's not going to change what's already happened. It won't save her. You need to focus on what you're going to do now. The Kacchan I know would take immediate action so you have to pull yourself together!"

That's when the rage came. The familiar wave of heat racing through his veins greeting him like an old friend. Oh yes, this was much better than that terrible cold feeling. This he knew how to use. This would give him the power to crush that piece of trash villain and bring his girl back home.

"For once, you're actually right." Bakugou clenched his fist, explosions dancing wildly around his hand. He was getting fired up. "I'll meet you at headquarters. You better have a plan by the time I get there."

He was about to serve up a dish of deep-fried villain.

23 Hours After the Kidnapping

It turned out that Syphon had been so fixated on capturing you, he had no idea that the store next door had a video camera posted outside that caught the whole thing. In the footage, Syphon had tried to get you to come with him through intimidation. However, you fought him off to the best of your ability, forcing him to use his Quirk to subdue you. Deku noticed that the villain had removed his glove before his hand grabbed yours, weakening you almost instantly. With confidence, Deku stated that Syphon's Quirk was limited to the skin on his hands. He also managed, from thoroughly searching maps of the area, to pinpoint three possible locations Syphon was hiding out in.

Bakugou had already changed into his costume before before Deku had finished speaking.

When he arrived at the villain's hideout, Bakugou realized he had two options: he could either sneak in undetected, using the element of surprise to catch Syphon off guard, or he could just blast his way in through the wall and tackle the bastard head-on. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have thought twice about barging in there guns blazing; however, these weren't normal circumstances. You were in there. He didn't want to risk hurting you, especially if Syphon had already begun to "play" with you. The thought of your being caught in the crossfire was enough to make him hesitate...

... at least for three seconds.

"Screw it," Bakugou muttered to himself, "I want her back now."

So he took the direct approach, obliterating the brick wall in front of him and blasting through the opening he created. As he entered the building, his eyes found a weaselly-looking man leaning over what appeared to be a young woman...

"GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF HER, YOU BASTARD!" Bakugou shrieked with rage, emitting a large explosion at the villain. After Syphon dodged the attack, Bakugou quickly looked over at you to make sure you were still alive. And you were, but barely.

Your skin was frighteningly pale, causing the bruises on your body to seem more prominent. He guessed that you had received them when you were kidnapped, trying to fight him off; Bakugou's chest swelled with pride. Of course, that pride melted away and was immediately replaced by anger when he saw how much of a struggle it was for you to lift your head. He noticed the ropes and gag wrapped tightly around you were cutting off your circulation and that it had chaffed the skin so badly, it had started to bleed. Your eyes had a glassy look to them, like you were about to cry any second.

Bakugou's lips curled up in a sadistic smile. That's it, I'm gonna kill him.

Much to his chagrin, Bakugou decided not to murder Syphon. After he'd burnt the skin of the creep's hands, Bakugou knew he wouldn't be hurting anyone else for a while... if ever again. He ignored the villain's howls of pain, racing over towards you to free you from your bindings. It was only after he had taken you in his arms and felt your familiar warmth that he was able to let the tension leave his body. He also noticed that your body relaxed against his as well, though you were still trembling.

The two of you were finally able to confess those feelings you had been attempting to repress for a long time, and Bakugou lifted you into his arms. "You look like shit."

"Gee, thanks Katsuki..." you muttered sarcastically.

Bakugou huffed. "That bastard tortured you, right? You need to rest, idiot. I'm gonna take you to the hospital so better not die on me now."

"What about... us?" you asked, closing your eyes and leaning your head against Bakugou's chest.

"We'll talk about that after you rest."

"And what about Syphon?"

With one last brief glance at the crippled villain, Bakugou grinned evilly. "Don't worry, I'll come back to finish him later."

Author’s Note: I was originally going to write a third part for this, but I don't think it's necessary; this feels like a good place to end it, especially since I'm not a fan of stories that drag things out longer than they have to.

Thank you all for reading!

[mst3kproject]

Trained to Kill USA

Looking at my catalogue of Episodes that Never Were, I realize I have been rather biased in my choice of genres.  It’s not something I did intentionally, I just happen to like monster and mad science movies, and such films are often my favourite episodes of MST3K, so naturally they’re the first thing I go to.  But the show never limited itself by genre, and though I’ve managed to dig up a couple of Eurospy and 50’s Rebellious Teens movies, there are several things notably lacking.  I have not yet tackled a proper western, for example, nor a biker crime spree picture.  Time to pick up the slack.

I therefore present Trained to Kill USA, which I ran across quite by accident while searching for a copy of She-Gods of Shark Reef that didn’t make me want to claw my own eyes out (I never found one).  It’s got Sid Haig from Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II in it and Richard Slattery from San Francisco International, and it’s a nihilistic revenge movie as depressing as The Sidehackers and featuring an incongruously cheerful opening theme song that makes me think of Girl in Gold Boots for some reason. I’m not sure why, but Trained to Kill USA particularly reminds me of the latter movie, maybe just in its general late-60’s-early-70’s aesthetic and Ted-V-Mikels-like incompetence.

We begin with a couple of thugs under the leadership of a man called Prophet, robbing a liquor store and then fleeing from the sheriff, to the accompaniment of a terrible song and some egregious pan-n-scan. They stop at a farm where they assault the owner, elderly Mark, break his stuff, and try to rape his daughter Mary, but then flee when the man’s son Ollie arrives.  Mark wants Ollie to come with him and chase the two down, but Ollie refuses.  Later, however, the gang decides to steal Mark’s gun collection so that they can rob a bank in town, and during this heist Mark shoots Prophet’s buddy Parrish.  Believing Ollie to have been the killer, Prophet vows revenge.

That’s quite a truncated summary – a great deal actually happens in between the first and second attacks on the ranch, and almost all of it feels irrelevant.  Prophet and his men commit crimes, and Ollie sits around and drinks and has flashbacks. I know these scenes are supposed to be establishing character and so forth, but they just come across as filling time before the final showdown.  A family in a camper van get killed.  Ollie’s army buddies beat up Prophet’s men at a gas station.  Prophet fights with his girlfriend.  None of it’s presented in a way that makes the audience want to care.

Like a number of other movies I’ve reviewed, Trained to Kill USA is not this film’s original title.  It was released as The No Mercy Man.  Multiple titles are a common feature of terrible movies, but what’s interesting here is how the change re-focuses the audiences attention.  The No Mercy Man referred to Prophet – his friend Parrish uses that descriptor for him, and it suggests that this is his story we’re watching.  Trained to Kill USA, on the other hand, is obviously a description of Ollie, which leads us to expect rather more of him than the movie initially offers.

The film is actually equally about both men and their inability to fit into society.  Ollie is too damaged by his experiences in war to ever lead a normal life, while Prophet exists in a world where black men are automatically assumed to be criminals and there is simply no other role he can fill.  I think we’re supposed to see them as a pair of tragic figures driven inevitably to a confrontation that destroys them both.  It’s a little hard to say, because the movie is really bad at driven inevitably.  When it tries to set up fate and forces beyond these characters’ control, all it manages are a set of coincidences.  If there’s supposed to be a feeling that this all means anything, the movie misses it by miles.

Even more damaging to what I assume are the film’s ambitions (I’m really not at all sure what this movie is actually trying to do) is the fact that neither of these guys are characters we can root for. Prophet complains that his intellect could have taken him places were it not for his appearance: he is a tall, intimidating black man, and so people treat him as a thug.  Yet Prophet is the very stereotype of that thug, gleefully and gratuitously violent and a rapist of white women.  In both the RV theft and the bank robbery his original plan is to commit a crime in which ‘nobody gets hurt’, but in both incidents he drops this idea the moment something starts to go wrong.  The movie tries to bring some depth to him in his apparently sincere affection for his girlfriend Sally (the moment when he leads her in a circle around the fairground is the only thing in the movie that feels like real emotion), but he turns on her in the end, too, blaming her for the loss of his job.

Then there’s Ollie – he is a steaming mess of PTSD and we feel sorry for him, but we do not like him.  Actor Steve Sandor behaves like a robot and rather creepily looks like one, too. There’s something about his skin that makes him look like plastic.  If he is to be a tragic figure we should really have some idea of who he was before the war hollowed him out, but we see him only as the damaged hero, surrounded by people who are making his trauma worse.  His father is an old grouch living vicariously through his son, and his friends brag about his accomplishments in a way that triggers him repeatedly while they don’t seem to give a shit.  The movie seems to want us to root for him to give in to the violence in order to protect his family, but that is exactly what Ollie himself does not want and, indeed, is the worst possible thing that could happen to his already fragile mental health.  We do not want Ollie to be a hero.  We want him to get away from all this and into an environment where he can heal.

I honestly think the writers were trying to do something with this movie.  They believed they were going to make an important statement about war and racism and how both are damaging to the psyche.  They were trying to give us a tragedy about two gifted individuals who could have been so much more than what the world forced them to be. All they managed, however, was Trained to Kill USA, and the movie sucks.

The photography was bad to begin with and the pan-n-scan did it no favours at all – many shots look bizarrely off-centre, as is evident in the screencaps.  The characters are as flat as a creationist’s earth.  Fight scenes are awful: I don’t remember a single punch that I believed hit anything.  People go leaping over fences ahead of explosions that are obviously nowhere near them.  The ‘Vietnam’ flashbacks are shot in front of some trees in someone’s back yard.  The dialogue is terrible: characters say things like ‘Ollie, you’re the most decorated man in the state!’ and that’s supposed to be subtle exposition.  The Oblivious Camping Family have ‘victims!’ written all over them, to the point where they seem to belong in the opening scene of some slasher movie more than they do in this.  And at the time the film was made it didn’t matter that everything in it was outrageously, garishly seventies, but in the hindsight of a more fashion-conscious age, It just makes it that much harder to take any of this seriously.

The harder this movie tries to build tension, the worse it fails.  There’s a scene in which the criminals confront the Sheriff outside the bank, and while we should be on the edges of our seats, waiting for the bullets to start flying, all we’re seeing is a bunch of guys standing around awkwardly, exchanging terrible dialogue that aims for ‘badass’ and falls on its face.  The bank robbery itself is a free for all of guns and bombs.  It’s hard to tell who’s on which side because we’ve never met half these guys before, and both the criminals and Ollie’s army buddies seem to take such joy in violence that it’s hard to care about what they’re fighting for. The most memorable bit in the scene is the stunt guy who does a perfect flip as he falls from a roof.

At the end, the criminals attack Ollie’s family and he is forced to relive all the things he most wishes to forget as he finally takes them on.  This fight scene almost becomes effective in its brutality and crudeness.  There’s no choreography or sense of justice, just Ollie and Prophet beating the shit out of each other for reasons that have almost nothing to do with either of them.  When Ollie wins, it’s not in any way a victory.  Under constant pressure to give in to the violence, Ollie has lost, and it’s impossible to tell what the movie wants us to feel about this.  The ridiculously cheesy final song, with lyrics like no-one understands you ‘cause you can’t be understood, seems to agree with my gut instinct that this is a disaster, but didn’t we just spend the whole movie waiting for Ollie to kick some ass?  Haven’t we been told over and over that he is the only one up to the challenge Prophet presents?

As the credits roll, we’re left in a similar place to where we were at the end of The Sidehackers – nobody won.  Ollie will continued to be a shattered man held together by alcohol.  Prophet, who was supposed to look redeemable, is now beyond redemption because he’s dead.  What happened to the girlfriend Prophet blamed for getting him into all this trouble, we’ll never know.  How Ollie’s family feel about what he’s now done we’ll also never know, which is particularly annoying because their opinion of him was so important earlier.  Shouldn’t they come to understand why they’ve been treating him badly?  If you try to take their stories at face value, Ollie and Prophet both deserved far better than this shitty fucking movie.

[itsaliving-blog]

TOMMY LIVES AU INFO.

 WARNING:   THIS WILL CONTAIN SOME TRIGGERING INFORMATION INCLUDING  SLIGHT  BODY GORE,  MENTAL ILLNESS / PTSD / DEPRESSION,   AND SELF DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIORS.  SOME IMAGES WILL ALSO BE INCLUDED OF THE HARM DONE TO TOMMYS BODY.  PLEASE READ AT YOUR OWN  DISCRETION. 

-  IN HITMAN #60,    tommy dies when he is  shot to death by  government officials.   he takes several bullets to the body  after  first  getting his  hand  shot  by a sniper  ( the sniper was aiming for his head ).   this left,  quite literally,   two of his fingers on his right hand still  intact. 

-   after that,   his friend natt (pictured above)    is also shot,   but not killed.   tommy dies when  natt requests from afar that tommy kill him so that he doesnt have to suffer,    and tommy runs from his safe hiding place in order to comply with his request.     on his way to natt,   tommy takes ten bullets:    six to the chest & abdomen,    four to his legs.

-    however,   in the canon divergency of the tommy lives au,    superman comes to rescue  tommy   and brings him back to  the  fortress of solitude  as he’s on the brink of  dying.     natt is,   sadly,   already gone  when  superman  arrives.  over the next full year,   superman uses kryptonian  technology to  rehabilitate tommy’s  many  injuries.     the bullet wounds heal into  scars,  but leaves tommy still in  serious pain a lot of the time.    also,   tommy’s  hand could not be salvaged;   he often keeps it tucked away in his  jacket pocket so as to not frighten people.    after the incident,     tommy lives with  clark in metropolis for a long time until he feels he can stand on his two feet again. 

LASTING EFFECTS 

 - tommy walks with a crutch attached to his  forearm,   because his left leg sustained much more damage from the bullets than his right leg did.   he can’t walk for Super Long Distances  without beginning to hurt.    sometimes when the pain is  Way Too bad,  he uses a wheelchair,  but tries to do that as little as possible. 

- he also gets phantom pains in his right hand for his Lost Fingers  that he can’t do too much about. 

- the places on his chest + abdomen where he got shot are a little Tender most of the time,  so if he were to hug someone,   it would be very like ... Light and loose bc he doesnt want to press up too hard.   his body is pretty much in a constant state of  Bruising.    also,   tommy already had a bad shoulder before the incident,  and none of this helps. 

-  tommy takes  medication for  his frequent  pains,   his depression,    and for the panic attacks he has that is linked with  ptsd.      tommy has  ptsd  not only because of the incident and the panic that is associated with that incident,    but because of all of the other Horrible things he’s suffered through,  like all of his family and friends being killed Literally before his eyes. 

- tommy is also still an Alcoholic + smoker,   but it’s not as bad as it used to be before his whole life went down the drain.    he smokes A LOT  less   --   mainly because he doesn’t want to hurt clark’s feelings,   who always tells him that smoking is bad for him --     but drinks about the same,   to help with both the  bodily pain +  mental issues.   this is the main form of  self harm that tommy does to himself,   just .  drinks so that he doesn’t have to  feel much anymore?   and in his older age,    tommy is just a Tired Drunk (TM) .   like normally he’ll  just drink a bunch  and then Go To bed. 

- also he lives in metropolis for a Long Time  and it’s really good for him,   sunlight and vibe wise. it’s really good for him to be away from gotham,  too,  because literally all of his traumas occured in gotham.    the first time he  visits  the cauldron again after  living with clark  he has a panic attack  and has to  Sit down  and calm himself down.    but eventually he’s able to come back every once in a while to check up on people who are Actually Alive like  hacken and selina. 

-  he  grows out a Depression Beard (TM)   because he still Struggles to re-learn how to write and shave and  stuff  with his left  hand.   he’s mostly given up and is really embarrassed about how terrible his handwriting is.  

[theclacks]

Buffy Season 7 Thoughts

Current Emotional State:

So yeah. That is it. After starting in March 2017 (thanks to the 20th anniversary), I officially finished the series Jan 1st 2018.

And hooboy. Straight out the gate, I’d say it its now in my top three shows of all time (i.e. Doctor Who, Stargate, and BtVS). That’s right. It beat out ATLA. (Sorry ATLA but you never ripped my heart out like the others.)

IDK, a part of me is still kind of like “why did it take me this long to watch this show” and another part is glad, because I watched DW, SG1, and ATLA all around the same year or two of my life, and to get completely walloped by something a decade later... well it’s wonderful. Completely and truly wonderful.

BtVS & AtS Recap Master Post located here

So, starting with predictions that I made during my S6 recap...

On predictions that I made during my S6 recap:

- Spike comes back to Sunnydale and becomes tentative friendship bros with Buffy with continual underlying UST that’s never resolved again because of the attempted rape and also because none of my ships can ever be happy It was resolved. It was fucking resolved. I don’t care that they never kissed on screen and Spike didn’t believe Buffy when she said she loved him (still crying forever, Spike you idiot), there was a confession. And even before that, Buffy telling Spike that she believed in him, and that she wasn’t ready for him to leave, and sleeping beside him for those final nights. THAT WAS MORE THAN I’D EVER BEEN EXPECTING. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL (NO CHECK AND I’M HAPPY FOR IT)

- Dawn and Spike eventually work through his attempted rape and become bros again Yeah, their relationship went up in flames (NO CHECK)

- Dawn takes a level in badassery, will fight things Aside from the first episode or two when Buffy’s giving her training, Dawn pretty much got shafted when the potentials arrived (NO CHECK)

- Buffy’s perma-death/rebirth will be addressed re: slayer chain of dead slayers leading to new slayer (CHECK... SORT OF?)

- Anya stays a vengeance demon because fuck Xander (NO CHECK)

- Willow finds a happy place between using no magic whatsoever and trying to fry the earth (CHECK)

- Giles hangs out in Sunnydale again because Giles (CHECK)

- Anya stays in command of the magic shop because it’s her magic shop… even though Willow kind of destroyed it She stayed in command but the other characters stopped visiting, so... (CHECK?)

- Clem continues to have cameos because he’s Clem and he’s awesome (HELLA CHECK)

On Spuffy:

I’ve written enough about these two in my earlier posts. I might make a completely separate post where I talk gush about their development over the course of the series but yeah. In this post, all I’ll say is that I thought Seeing Red would be the official end to their relationship. I thought even with the soul, their connection would be like a giant white elephant that’d never be directly addressed again... and then I got S7, aka the giant, canon, hurt/comfort fic.

Also, I didn’t cry during Chosen, but “No, you don’t. But thanks for saying” kept playing through my head over and over and over again, gutting my heart into numbness, and then sometime during the next day, it morphed into “Quite right, too” and I was so confused, thinking where did that dialogue come from, and then I remembered:

And it’s ridiculously bizarre, since Doctor Who’s Doomsday has been a traumatic thing that’s been a scar on my heart for the last decade, so I naturally think of it as the older, original traumatic “I love you” DENIED scene, but then I look at when Chosen actually aired and Chosen came out first? So if anything Doctor Who cribbed off Buffy? (And both cribbed off Star Wars and “I know” but that one doesn’t count because there wasn’t actually a failure to communicate between Hans and Leia, just Hans being Hans.)

Oh, and then the day after I watched Chosen, as I was getting ready in the morning, I made the mistake of listening to Sarah Brown Eyes which is about a guy reminiscing about the first time he met the love of his life after she’s already died. And then the song ends with “come, let’s dance” and there’s a sad instrumental section and I STARTED BAWLING. STRAIGHT OUT BAWLING.

So, thanks BtVS for that. I haven’t done that for a fictional couple since 2008. I appreciated the jump start to my heart.

Okay, officially moving on.

On Andrew:

AKA the best reoccuring character. I loved his arc in this season, going from a comic puppet of the first evil to a still-comic, yet emotionally redemptive who can’t hide behind “i was just following other people/didn’t know better”. He was the best, and Storyteller was one of my favorite episodes

On Buffy’s relationship with Giles:

I really wish they’d had the time to wrap a bow on this, but I can understand why they didn’t. As it is, their relationship kind of ended in Lies My Parents Told Me with Buffy shutting the door on him and his tendency to decide what’s best for her. But I’m not sure they held to that? Or rather, in Chosen it was kind of back to situation normal re: Willow, Xander, Giles, and Buffy being in the final pow-wow together. Either way, I liked that Buffy stood up for herself, that Giles was finally acknowledged as fallible as opposed to the savior woosh he got at the end of S6.

On Anya, Willow, and Xander:

I feel like the three of them got kind of shafted this season? Xander didn’t really have an arc or purpose other than “fix Summers house when monsters break it”. Oh, and his convo with Dawn in Potential. I really did like the episode Potential... I just wish the whole “you still have purpose” extended past the boundaries of that episode? Which honestly is the subject of another post I’ll write, entitled Xander vs Sokka: Giving Purpose to the Powerless.

And then yeah, Willow intentionally stayed on the backburner for the majority of the season (her best moments were in AtS), and Anya... oh Anya. I understand why she was un-Vengeance Demon-fied, but I still wish she’d stayed a Vengance Demon. Mostly because as soon as she lost her powers, the show for the most part ignored her.

Which is a crime.

Actually...

On Anya specifically:

I’m gonna let some time pass before I do a “thoughts on BtVS as a whole”, but I want to say right now. Anya was my favorite surprise of the series. Every other character or major, major plot development, I’d been warned, or hinted, or inadvertently spoiled for.

Anya (aside from her name) was a complete unknown. When she appeared in S3 as Anyanka the Vengeance Demon, I thought... no, that can’t be “Anya the eventually reoccuring character.” And then she was. And was amazing. And continued to be amazing for the next four seasons.

I love Anya. She is everything I aspire to in life.

Now that I’ve talked about minute character stuff, let’s go to major S7 plot stuff:

On the Potentials:

Honestly, everything I’m gonna say is not groundbreaking thoughts re: fandom. I actually liked the potentials, but I didn’t like how there were so many of them, and how some of their actress were not that great. I didn’t like how Chao Ahn was the one who couldn’t speak English and was the butt of language jokes. They could’ve easily had a French or German-speaking potential.

On the First Evil and other villains:

The mark of a great villain (for me) is how much they reflect and/or personally tie in with the heroes. It’s why Angelus remains my number one fave BtVS villain (and why S2 is still my favorite season from a plot standpoint). It’s why I’m still super pissed that Maggie Walsh (unpowered, rigid, military-backed, older woman to Buffy’s powered, improvisational, rogue, younger self) was killed off in favor of Adam (generic evil dude)... even though I now understand it was because of behind the scenes actor stuff.

So yeah. I started off with high hopes re: the First Evil... and then got let down a bit when psychological enemy was pushed aside in favor of the Turok-han and then later Caleb. Though, honestly, I was more fine with the Turok-han than I was with Caleb. Caleb was... meh. (Sorry, Nathan Fillion.) If I had to guess, I’d say the writers couldn’t think of a good way to keep the First a constant threat without relying on minions that could physically attack the heroes. IDK.

On Spike’s soul:

Once again, this is a topic I’ve talked about before in my per episode recaps, but overall, I really like how they ended up handling it. It makes sense that he’d more easily adapt to it and wouldn’t do an abrupt personality shift like Angel because he voluntarily got his. I still hold to my S6 theory, that (if it hadn’t been for the First tormenting him) he could’ve returned to Sunnydale with no one (except Anya) being the wiser.

BUT! At the same time, it did make him a lot more mellow and self-reflective. Gave him self-doubt as well. And Get It Done and Lies My Parents Told Me were excellent episodes that showcased that.

On Sunnydale getting sucked into crater, Buffy being one of thousands of Slayers, and ending the show with a “well, what happens now”/“possibly anything” kind of feel:

I loved it. It was a great ending. And together with Spike coming back in AtS, and the comics, and whatever, it makes for a ending that fans can play around with however they want. It’s an amazing launching point for new stories, and honestly...

I’d take that open ending over a 19-years-later, “All was well”, ship-killing epilogue any day.

So... thanks, BtVS. It was one hell of a ride.

(PS: If you liked these thought posts and wanna see more inner workings of my mind, my current BtVS fanfic is over here.)