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inamindfarfaraway · 2 years ago

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The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals Pitch Meeting

[Should be experienced imagining the voice and acting of Ryan George, who is linked to above.]

Producer Guy: So, you have a musical for me?

Screenwriter Guy: Yes sir, I do. It’s called The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals because the main character, Paul Matthews, doesn’t like musicals.

PD: He doesn’t?

SG: No, he can’t stand them. Watching one is his own personal hell. And that isn’t a throwaway quirk, it comes up several times and is integral to the plot.

PD: Isn’t the protagonist typically meant to be relatable to the audience?

SG: Yeah.

PD: And won’t the audience be full of people who like musicals?

SG: Yeah.

PG: Bit of a weird choice, but okay then. So other than the musical thing, what’s Paul like?

SG: Oh, not much.

PG: What?

SG: Yeah, he’s the most average, boring, white middle-class American everyman you can imagine. No desires, ambitions or hobbies; he never expresses much passion for anything except things he doesn’t like. He has an office job at a company that’s so generic, I didn’t even think of what it does. He’s not particularly nice either. Like, when his best friend Bill asks him to help him reconnect with his teenage daughter Alice, he refuses to avoid his own discomfort despite having nothing else to do. And when his other friend Charlotte right next to him is clearly upset because she’s in a miserable marriage to a neglectful, cheating husband, he doesn’t bother to comfort her.

PG: Isn’t the protagonist typically meant to be likeable and interesting?

SG: Yeah, but we’re not gonna do that I decided. So another important character is Emma Perkins, this barista Paul has a crush on. She’s the only reason he keeps going to this crappy café.

PG: And what’s her deal? Is she kind and friendly to balance out Paul being so apathetic?

SG: No, she’s also rude, but she has better reasons for it. She hates her job and has really annoying, mean coworkers her boss favours over her, who just won’t shut up about how great musical theatre is. They all love it so much that there’s a new rule that if they get tipped, they have to perform a whole song and dance routine.

PG: But working for every tip negates the point of a tip!

SG: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I said, it's a crappy café.

PG: I gotta say, though, you’re presenting musical fans in quite a negative light there. They are the people whose money we want.

SG: (aside) You haven’t seen anything yet. Anyway, Emma and Paul bond over not liking things and people - it’s cute. But then at the end of the day, a meteor crashes down in a big storm and lands right in the town’s theatre, which is putting on a musical. And the meteor turns out to have evil alien life inside it!

PG: Oh my God. What happens to everyone in that theatre?

SG: Well, it’s offstage, but we find out later that the alien works by taking over your body like a virus and killing you to use you as a vessel for its hive mind. So that probably happens to most of the people. Bill and Alice get out okay, but a lot of people are dead now.

PG: This escalated very quickly!

SG: Yeah, this show does that. It’s a horror comedy; it’s like a sitcom where anyone could brutally die. But here’s the thing: the alien hive mind makes the Infected sing and dance like they’re in a musical, so all the fun, catchy songs are actually it controlling people’s corpses. That’s how everyone knows the lyrics and can move in time to music nobody’s playing. You only hear the music if you’re Infected. And it spreads really fast, so this mindless musical obsession could literally destroy humanity!

PG: That’s so dark and tonally dissonant. But I have concerns about the villain essentially being a living musical, in a musical. Won’t that kinda alienate the audience? As in ‘make them not like it’, not ‘make them aliens’.

SG: No, it’ll be fun. The first song after the intro is very entertaining. There’s this really funny part with a silly, crazy homeless guy.

PG: Ah, yes. Making fun of the homeless and mentally ill is tight!

SG: Not what I… (moving on) and, and, we can cleverly parody musical tropes. For example, Paul’s boss tries to get him to sing an “I Want” song because the Hive want him to be the protagonist of their ‘musical’, but he doesn’t want anything so he’s a terrible protagonist.

PG: Oh, that was on purpose! I thought you were just a bad writer.

SG: Yeah, no, I’m setting up an arc. So the Hive take over most of the town - which is on a island and the bridge gets pulled up, so there’s no way off - including Emma’s café. But she escapes with Paul and they meet his friends from work, plus this obnoxious asshole Charlotte’s cheating with called Ted, who's the worst. But then the Infected police show up, including Charlotte’s husband Sam. She begs him to snap him out of it ‘cause she still loves him, but he pulls a gun on her.

PG: Oh no.

SG: Fortunately, Ted knocks him out.

PG: Oh, good.

SG: But he hits him too hard and his brain falls out!

PG: Wait, even putting aside how unlikely it is that his flesh and skull were broken open wide enough that his whole brain could fall out, isn’t the brain… attached? That’s a very implausible injury.

SG: I’m gonna need you to get all the way off my back about that.

PG: Well, okay then.

SG: So Charlotte has a mental breakdown and Emma suggests they go to her biology professor, Henry Hidgens. He’s an eccentric doomsday survivalist who somehow predicted this exact incredibly specific apocalyptic situation and has a huge house with top-notch security. And he's a biologist, so he might be able to study the alien infection if they bring him Sam.

PG: It’ll be hard to get there safely with the town swarming with alien zombies, especially carrying a dead man.

SG: Actually, it’ll be super easy, barely an inconvenience.

PG: Oh, really?

SG: That part just happens offstage.

PG: So they get to shelter?

SG: They do, so they start to relax for a bit. Except Charlotte, she’s dying inside and stays with her tied-up dead husband. Bill and Ted have this funny argument where Bill threatens to kick Ted’s head, which, you know, is a stupid threat.

PG: It is?

SG: Yeah, because you’d have to kick really high and most people can’t do that.

PG: I thought you would just push the person to the ground with your arms and then kick their head. Most people can do that.

SG: True.

PG: And it would be highly effective. You could kill someone that way.

SG: (getting an idea) You could, couldn’t you? (writes that down)

PG: What are you writing?

SG: Nevermind. Emma and Paul have a nice heart-to-heart where she reveals her backstory. Turns out she had a sister, Jane, who lived a great life, dream job, true love, kid, everything, while Emma left home at eighteen and travelled around being aimless and irresponsible. But then last year Jane died and that’s why Emma came back and is studying, to try to do something with her life now that Jane can’t anymore.

PG: Aw, that’s sad.

SG: Even a zany horror sitcom has its serious moments. So she and Paul bond some more, until Charlotte and Sam burst in.

PG: Wait, what?

SG: The Hive made her think he’d come back to life and manipulated her into letting him go. Then he just killed her.

PG: Dick move.

SG: Massive dick move! So now Ted gets beaten up by the possessed corpse of the woman he loves, after the last things he said to her were mean because he’s the worst. Fortunately, Hidgens kills the zombies.

PG: Oh, good.

SG: But Alice calls Bill and she’s under attack at her school!

PG: Oh no.

SG: If Bill goes to save her alone he’ll almost definitely die. But Paul volunteers to go with him.

PG: So he won’t be nice to his friends in everyday life, but he will risk his life for them?

SG: Precisely, this is really bringing out his inner hero. But when they get there, Alice is already Infected. She sings a whole song about what a terrible father Bill is and he's so guilty that he failed her that he tries to kill himself with the gun they brought. Fortunately, Paul takes the gun off him.

PG: Oh, good.

SG: But he drops it on the ground, so Alice just shoots Bill herself.

PG: Oh my God! Why did he let go of the gun? That was a very poor decision!

SG: Extremely poor, yes. Alice nearly kills Paul too, but the army rescue him. Specifically this secret special unit that I made up called PEIP that deals with supernatural stuff like magic and aliens that most people don't know about. They're ordered to kill everyone to keep the weird stuff secret, but the leader, General John MacNamara, is a good person so he doesn't do that.

PG: So he lets Paul live?

SG: He does, and he sends a helicopter to take him and Emma off the island.

PG: Paul tells him about Emma?

SG: Uh-huh. He realizes that he's in love and finally does want something: to be with her.

PG: Cool, cool, cool.

SG: Meanwhile, Hidgens and Emma are studying the Infected. Emma theorizes that if the brain of the Hive is in the meteor, they could take out all of them by destroying it.

PG: Is that true?

SG: There's no reason it couldn't be! But Hidgens changes his mind about the Hive being evil, knocks Emma out and ties her and Ted up. Then he opens his house's gates because he wants the Hive to get in.

PG: Why does he think the Hive isn't evil?

SG: Well, he's thinking that since humans are so immoral and harmful we're killing the planet and each other constantly anyway, but the Hive will bring peace and harmony. And he loves musicals.

PG: Oh, he does?

SG: Yeah, he's even written his own awful one, and he plays a song he wrote and composed to lure the Infected inside. He's willing to die and doom humanity for his twisted, irrational love of musical theatre.

PG: Really slamming your audience again. Hey, why wasn't he at the musical the theatre just put on?

SG: I don't know.

PG: Fair enough.

SG: So Paul comes back, frees Emma and Ted and they escape, but General MacNamara kills Ted because the soldiers are Infected now!

PG: And this is all onstage?

SG: Yes.

PG: Then it's gonna be hard to get past a division of fit, armed zombie soldiers who can survive not even having brains in their heads.

SG: No, it isn't. Emma shoots MacNamara in the shoulder and that makes him just give up.

PG: What about all the other soldiers?

SG: Please ignore them.

PG: Okay.

SG: So Paul and Emma get to the helicopter and think they've made it, but the pilot is Emma's mean coworker from earlier and makes them crash.

PG: Why is she Emma's coworker and not just the army pilot, if the Hive got there first?

SG: Because.

PG: That works. Are they okay after the crash?

SG: Paul is, but Emma's too hurt to walk. Paul says they should find a boat -

PG: Wait. There are boats? Or does Paul just think there might be?

SG: I have more notes on this town and it has a boating society, so there are boats.

PG: Then why haven't the Infected got in the boats and gone to mainland? Shouldn't they have done that by now?

SG:

SG: ...You're right. I didn't think about the implications. Oh my God, I didn't think about it!

PG: Whoops!

SG: Whoopsie! So anyway, Emma tells him her theory and he goes to blow up the meteor with a grenade.

PG: But then he could die, and right when he actually cares about something. That is heroic. Do he and Emma have a touching maybe-last goodbye?

SG: Kinda. They try to kiss, but she coughs up blood in his face. The Hive knows Paul is coming and lets him in order to infect him. He does his best to resist its control, but it makes him sing and dance and have an existential crisis.

PG: Oh no.

SG: But at the last possible moment, he pulls the pin, blows up the meteor and saves the day!

PG: Wow, wow, wow. Wow.

SG: So we cut to two weeks later. Everyone else in the town is dead, but Emma was saved by the army reinforcements and she's getting out of hospital on the mainland and ready to start a new life.

PG: Well, at least she survived and the Hive is defeated. That's what Paul wanted. But it's still a shame he died.

SG: That's what Emma thinks... until he walks in!

PG: (excited) What?

SG: Yeah, he's okay and he gives her this soft smile and she's the happiest we've ever seen her and they hug.

PG: That's such a sweet ending. After everything they've been through, getting to be happy together feels earned, and I really have warmed up to them both.

SG: And then Paul starts singing.

[Beat. Producer Guy's relieved expression turns to confusion, shock, sorrow and horror as he processes that information and its implications. He stares at Screenwriter Guy, betrayed.]

PG: But that means he's... (SG nods, proud of himself) and Emma's theory was wrong, and... (SG nods again) the Hive is on the mainland now, so the entire world is... (SG nods again) oh, a very depressing ending!

SG: Set to a very cheerful song! The cast even stay in-character for the bows; the Infected bow while Emma screams and cries and begs the audience for help before being dragged away. So what do you think?

PG: That ending will haunt my dreams. But as creative as the premise is and as emotional as it gets later on, I don't know if this will be that big of a hit. The tone changes so fast and jarringly, the main characters aren't that likeable at first and it all just seems pretty niche. And it spends so much time mocking its own genre and audience. I can see it becoming a cult classic, but I don’t think you’ll be able to launch a series with it or anything.

#this is probably way too detailed because i don't know how to edit #i also genuinely didn't realize the boat plot hole until now #emma's 'you were right. i didn't think about the implications. oh my god i didn't think about it!'#tried to get ryan's distinctive dialogue style right #the guy who didn't like musicals #tgwdlm #hatchetfield #team starkid #starkid #pitch meeting #pitch meetings #ryan george #long post #very long post

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waitmyturtles · 1 year ago

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In your honest opinion, is it worth continuing to watch Step By Step? I've got to about episode 8 and am rewatching the first episodes again because I want (or perhaps wanted at this point) to write an analysis on the show's theme of "work/life - business/pleasure" which is something I've really enjoyed and which has been really well done up until where I am, despite any other flaws the show may have.

That being said, ep. 11 sounds like a complete mess and I don't know if I can be bothered to watch something that's dropped the ball just to watch for a single theme I love and even though I think the analysis could be interesting.

Should I go with my emotions and go and watch something that doesn't seem to be biting of more than it can chew or should I let my academic braincell see if it can hold itself until the end?

Feel free to ignore this I'm just trying to work things out and I know you do analysis so I thought it'd be worth an ask 😋

Ahhhhh. I feel like I’m not the right person to ask about this specifically for SBS.

Generally speaking, I am on Team Drop-It-If-You-Hate-It. I don’t believe in hate-watching. There’s TOO MUCH great stuff to watch or rewatch out there.

I don’t think I hate SBS, per se. I do believe yesterday’s episode 11 dropped a LOT of narrative balls. But it happens to be that MANY people whose taste I trust are still watching AND loving this show, so I want to put in every iota of effort to see what they’re seeing — but unfortunately, I haven’t caught it yet. (I am still relatively new to fandoms — this is my first time seeing the Tumblr world SO divided on a show.)

Here’s my understanding of how the show’s writing has gone down. Up until episode 10, the show’s script hewed closely to the original SBS novel. After episode 10, I understand Tee Bundit and the screenwriters went off-novel to include more themes of macro commentary on queer acceptance and workplace culture. If I were you, wanting to do an analysis on work-life balance, I really think the early episodes alone capture those conflicts VERY well, particularly with Jeng literally working two executive-level jobs to relieve his filial stress of being pressured to take over his dad’s company. This itself is GREAT material for a standalone analysis.

Now — if you wanted your analysis to include issues of queer acceptance in the workplace, then I would continue watching the later episodes, and @bengiyo and @respectthepetty have written FABULOUS meta on this for episode 11, which I think you will find very helpful (here and here and here and here — RTP Senpai in particular is hard in the paint for this show, for which I have mad respect).

So — it ultimately depends on what your priorities are. I’m a busy mom, so I haven’t been happy with the long episodes to nowhere, but I do wanna see what my friends are seeing and give this show my best shot. At least I’m learning more about what I myself prioritize from narrative structures, or a lack thereof! I am an EVER-optimist and will be watching the finale, and would like to recant ANYTHING I’m clearly wrong on with this show. I have no shame to edit and correct myself. I want to be proven wrong that this show’s not broken from a structural perspective—we are all valuing different things about this show.

#thanks for the ask!#good luck with your meta!#please tag me if you end up writing it i would love to read it #step by step #step by step meta

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blind-rats · 4 years ago

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The Rise & Fall of Joss Whedon; the Myth of the Hollywood Feminist Hero

By Kelly Faircloth

“I hate ‘feminist.’ Is this a good time to bring that up?” Joss Whedon asked. He paused knowingly, waiting for the laughs he knew would come at the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer making such a statement.

It was 2013, and Whedon was onstage at a fundraiser for Equality Now, a human rights organization dedicated to legal equality for women. Though Buffy had been off the air for more than a decade, its legacy still loomed large; Whedon was widely respected as a man with a predilection for making science fiction with strong women for protagonists. Whedon went on to outline why, precisely, he hated the term: “You can’t be born an ‘ist,’” he argued, therefore, “‘feminist’ includes the idea that believing men and women to be equal, believing all people to be people, is not a natural state, that we don’t emerge assuming that everybody in the human race is a human, that the idea of equality is just an idea that’s imposed on us.”

The speech was widely praised and helped cement his pop-cultural reputation as a feminist, in an era that was very keen on celebrity feminists. But it was also, in retrospect, perhaps the high water mark for Whedon’s ability to claim the title, and now, almost a decade later, that reputation is finally in tatters, prompting a reevaluation of not just Whedon’s work, but the narrative he sold about himself.

In July 2020, actor Ray Fisher accused Whedon of being “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable” on the Justice League set when Whedon took over for Zach Synder as director to finish the project. Charisma Carpenter then described her own experiences with Whedon in a long post to Twitter, hashtagged #IStandWithRayFisher.

On Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Carpenter played Cordelia, a popular character who morphed from snob to hero—one of those strong female characters that made Whedon’s feminist reputation—before being unceremoniously written off the show in a plot that saw her thrust into a coma after getting pregnant with a demon. For years, fans have suspected that her disappearance was related to her real-life pregnancy. In her statement, Carpenter appeared to confirm the rumors. “Joss Whedon abused his power on numerous occasions while working on the sets of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Angel,’” she wrote, describing Fisher’s firing as the last straw that inspired her to go public.

Buffy was a landmark of late 1990s popular culture, beloved by many a burgeoning feminist, grad student, gender studies professor, and television critic for the heroine at the heart of the show, the beautiful blonde girl who balanced monster-killing with high school homework alongside ancillary characters like the shy, geeky Willow. Buffy was very nearly one of a kind, an icon of her era who spawned a generation of leather-pants-wearing urban fantasy badasses and women action heroes.

Buffy was so beloved, in fact, that she earned Whedon a similarly privileged place in fans’ hearts and a broader reputation as a man who championed empowered women characters. In the desert of late ’90s and early 2000s popular culture, Whedon was heralded as that rarest of birds—the feminist Hollywood man. For many, he was an example of what more equitable storytelling might look like, a model for how to create compelling women protagonists who were also very, very fun to watch. But Carpenter’s accusations appear to have finally imploded that particular bit of branding, revealing a different reality behind the scenes and prompting a reevaluation of the entire arc of Whedon’s career: who he was and what he was selling all along.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered March 1997, midseason, on The WB, a two-year-old network targeting teens with shows like 7th Heaven. Its beginnings were not necessarily auspicious; it was a reboot of a not-particularly-blockbuster 1992 movie written by third-generation screenwriter Joss Whedon. (His grandfather wrote for The Donna Reed Show; his father wrote for Golden Girls.) The show followed the trials of a stereotypical teenage California girl who moved to a new town and a new school after her parents’ divorce—only, in a deliberate inversion of horror tropes, the entire town sat on top of the entrance to Hell and hence was overrun with demons. Buffy was a slayer, a young woman with the power and immense responsibility to fight them. After the movie turned out very differently than Whedon had originally envisioned, the show was a chance for a do-over, more of a Valley girl comedy than serious horror.

It was layered, it was campy, it was ironic and self-aware. It looked like it belonged on the WB rather than one of the bigger broadcast networks, unlike the slickly produced prestige TV that would follow a few years later. Buffy didn’t fixate on the gory glory of killing vampires—really, the monsters were metaphors for the entire experience of adolescence, in all its complicated misery. Almost immediately, a broad cross-section of viewers responded enthusiastically. Critics loved it, and it would be hugely influential on Whedon’s colleagues in television; many argue that it broke ground in terms of what you could do with a television show in terms of serialized storytelling, setting the stage for the modern TV era. Academics took it up, with the show attracting a tremendous amount of attention and discussion.

In 2002, the New York Times covered the first academic conference dedicated to the show. The organizer called Buffy “a tremendously rich text,” hence the flood of papers with titles like “Pain as Bright as Steel: The Monomyth and Light in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’” which only gathered speed as the years passed. And while it was never the highest-rated show on television, it attracted an ardent core of fans.

But what stood out the most was the show’s protagonist: a young woman who stereotypically would have been a monster movie victim, with the script flipped: instead of screaming and swooning, she staked the vampires. This was deliberate, the core conceit of the concept, as Whedon said in many, many interviews. The helpless horror movie girl killed in the dark alley instead walks out victorious. He told Time in 1997 that the concept was born from the thought, “I would love to see a movie in which a blond wanders into a dark alley, takes care of herself and deploys her powers.” In Whedon’s framing, it was particularly important that it was a woman who walked out of that alley. He told another publication in 2002 that “the very first mission statement of the show” was “the joy of female power: having it, using it, sharing it.”

In 2021, when seemingly every new streaming property with a woman as its central character makes some half-baked claim to feminism, it’s easy to forget just how much Buffy stood out among its against its contemporaries. Action movies—with exceptions like Alien’s Ripley and Terminator 2's Sarah Conner—were ruled by hulking tough guys with macho swagger. When women appeared on screen opposite vampires, their primary job was to expose long, lovely, vulnerable necks. Stories and characters that bucked these larger currents inspired intense devotion, from Angela Chase of My So-Called Life to Dana Scully of The X-Files.

The broader landscape, too, was dismal. It was the conflicted era of girl power, a concept that sprang up in the wake of the successes of the second-wave feminist movement and the backlash that followed. Young women were constantly exposed to you-can-do-it messaging that juxtaposed uneasily with the reality of the world around them. This was the era of shitty, sexist jokes about every woman who came into Bill Clinton’s orbit and the leering response to the arrival of Britney Spears; Rush Limbaugh was a fairly mainstream figure.

At one point, Buffy competed against Ally McBeal, a show that dedicated an entire episode to a dancing computer-generated baby following around its lawyer main character, her biological clock made zanily literal. Consider this line from a New York Times review of the Buffy’s 1997 premiere: “Given to hot pants and boots that should guarantee the close attention of Humbert Humberts all over America, Buffy is just your average teen-ager, poutily obsessed with clothes and boys.”

Against that background, Buffy was a landmark. Besides the simple fact of its woman protagonist, there were unique plots, like the coming-out story for her friend Willow. An ambivalent 1999 piece in Bitch magazine, even as it explored the show’s tank-top heavy marketing, ultimately concluded, “In the end, it’s precisely this contextual conflict that sets Buffy apart from the rest and makes her an appealing icon. Frustrating as her contradictions may be, annoying as her babe quotient may be, Buffy still offers up a prime-time heroine like no other.”

A 2016 Atlantic piece, adapted from a book excerpt, makes the case that Buffy is perhaps best understood as an icon of third-wave feminism: “In its examination of individual and collective empowerment, its ambiguous politics of racial representation and its willing embrace of contradiction, Buffy is a quintessentially third-wave cultural production.” The show was vested with all the era’s longing for something better than what was available, something different, a champion for a conflicted “post-feminist” era—even if she was an imperfect or somewhat incongruous vessel. It wasn’t just Sunnydale that needed a chosen Slayer, it was an entire generation of women. That fact became intricately intertwined with Whedon himself.

Seemingly every interview involved a discussion of his fondness for stories about strong women. “I’ve always found strong women interesting, because they are not overly represented in the cinema,” he told New York for a 1997 piece that notes he studied both film and “gender and feminist issues” at Wesleyan; “I seem to be the guy for strong action women,’’ he told the New York Times in 1997 with an aw-shucks sort of shrug. ‘’A lot of writers are just terrible when it comes to writing female characters. They forget that they are people.’’ He often cited the influence of his strong, “hardcore feminist” mother, and even suggested that his protagonists served feminist ends in and of themselves: “If I can make teenage boys comfortable with a girl who takes charge of a situation without their knowing that’s what’s happening, it’s better than sitting down and selling them on feminism,” he told Time in 1997.

When he was honored by the organization Equality Now in 2006 for his “outstanding contribution to equality in film and television,” Whedon made his speech an extended riff on the fact that people just kept asking him about it, concluding with the ultimate answer: “Because you’re still asking me that question.” He presented strong women as a simple no-brainer, and he was seemingly always happy to say so, at a time when the entertainment business still seemed ruled by unapologetic misogynists. The internet of the mid-2010s only intensified Whedon’s anointment as a prototypical Hollywood ally, with reporters asking him things like how men could best support the feminist movement.

Whedon’s response: “A guy who goes around saying ‘I’m a feminist’ usually has an agenda that is not feminist. A guy who behaves like one, who actually becomes involved in the movement, generally speaking, you can trust that. And it doesn’t just apply to the action that is activist. It applies to the way they treat the women they work with and they live with and they see on the street.” This remark takes on a great deal of irony in light of Carpenter’s statement.

In recent years, Whedon’s reputation as an ally began to wane. Partly, it was because of the work itself, which revealed more and more cracks as Buffy receded in the rearview mirror. Maybe it all started to sour with Dollhouse, a TV show that imagined Eliza Dushku as a young woman rented out to the rich and powerful, her mind wiped after every assignment, a concept that sat poorly with fans. (Though Whedon, while he was publicly unhappy with how the show had turned out after much push-and-pull with the corporate bosses at Fox, still argued the conceit was “the most pure feminist and empowering statement I’d ever made—somebody building themselves from nothing,” in a 2012 interview with Wired.)

After years of loud disappointment with the TV bosses at Fox on Firefly and Dollhouse, Whedon moved into big-budget Hollywood blockbusters. He helped birth the Marvel-dominated era of movies with his work as director of The Avengers. But his second Avengers movie, Age of Ultron, was heavily criticized for a moment in which Black Widow laid out her personal reproductive history for the Hulk, suggesting her sterilization somehow made her a “monster.” In June 2017, his un-filmed script for a Wonder Woman adaptation leaked, to widespread mockery. The script’s introduction of Diana was almost leering: “To say she is beautiful is almost to miss the point. She is elemental, as natural and wild as the luminous flora surrounding. Her dark hair waterfalls to her shoulders in soft arcs and curls. Her body is curvaceous, but taut as a drawn bow.”

But Whedon’s real fall from grace began in 2017, right before MeToo spurred a cultural reckoning. His ex-wife, Kai Cole, published a piece in The Wrap accusing him of cheating off and on throughout their relationship and calling him a hypocrite:

“Despite understanding, on some level, that what he was doing was wrong, he never conceded the hypocrisy of being out in the world preaching feminist ideals, while at the same time, taking away my right to make choices for my life and my body based on the truth. He deceived me for 15 years, so he could have everything he wanted. I believed, everyone believed, that he was one of the good guys, committed to fighting for women’s rights, committed to our marriage, and to the women he worked with. But I now see how he used his relationship with me as a shield, both during and after our marriage, so no one would question his relationships with other women or scrutinize his writing as anything other than feminist.”

But his reputation was just too strong; the accusation that he didn’t practice what he preached didn’t quite stick. A spokesperson for Whedon told the Wrap: “While this account includes inaccuracies and misrepresentations which can be harmful to their family, Joss is not commenting, out of concern for his children and out of respect for his ex-wife. Many minimized the essay on the basis that adultery doesn’t necessarily make you a bad feminist or erase a legacy. Whedon similarly seemed to shrug off Ray Fisher’s accusations of creating a toxic workplace; instead, Warner Media fired Fisher.

But Carpenter’s statement—which struck right at the heart of his Buffy-based legacy for progressivism—may finally change things. Even at the time, the plotline in which Charisma Carpenter was written off Angel—carrying a demon child that turned her into “Evil Cordelia,” ending the season in a coma, and quite simply never reappearing—was unpopular. Asked about what had happened in a 2009 panel at DragonCon, she said that “my relationship with Joss became strained,” continuing: “We all go through our stuff in general [behind the scenes], and I was going through my stuff, and then I became pregnant. And I guess in his mind, he had a different way of seeing the season go… in the fourth season.”

“I think Joss was, honestly, mad. I think he was mad at me and I say that in a loving way, which is—it’s a very complicated dynamic working for somebody for so many years, and expectations, and also being on a show for eight years, you gotta live your life. And sometimes living your life gets in the way of maybe the creator’s vision for the future. And that becomes conflict, and that was my experience.”

In her statement on Twitter, Carpenter alleged that after Whedon was informed of her pregnancy, he called her into a closed-door meeting and “asked me if I was ‘going to keep it,’ and manipulatively weaponized my womanhood and faith against me.” She added that “he proceeded to attack my character, mock my religious beliefs, accuse me of sabotaging the show, and then unceremoniously fired me following the season once I gave birth.” Carpenter said that he called her fat while she was four months pregnant and scheduled her to work at 1 a.m. while six months pregnant after her doctor had recommended shortening her hours, a move she describes as retaliatory. What Carpenter describes, in other words, is an absolutely textbook case of pregnancy discrimination in the workplace, the type of bullshit the feminist movement exists to fight—at the hands of the man who was for years lauded as a Hollywood feminist for his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

Many of Carpenter’s colleagues from Buffy and Angel spoke out in support, including Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar. “While I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don’t want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon,” she said in a statement. Just shy of a decade after that 2013 speech, many of the cast members on the show that put him on that stage are cutting ties.

Whedon garnered a reputation as pop culture’s ultimate feminist man because Buffy did stand out so much, an oasis in a wasteland. But in 2021, the idea of a lone man being responsible for creating women’s stories—one who told the New York Times, “I seem to be the guy for strong action women”—seems like a relic. It’s depressing to consider how many years Hollywood’s first instinct for “strong action women” wasn’t a woman, and to think about what other people could have done with those resources. When Wonder Woman finally reached the screen, to great acclaim, it was with a woman as director.

Besides, Whedon didn’t make Buffy all by himself—many, many women contributed, from the actresses to the writers to the stunt workers, and his reputation grew so large it eclipsed their part in the show’s creation. Even as he preached feminism, Whedon benefitted from one of the oldest, most sexist stereotypes: the man who’s a benevolent, creative genius. And Buffy, too, overshadowed all the other contributors who redefined who could be a hero on television and in speculative fiction, from individual actors like Gillian Anderson to the determined, creative women who wrote science fiction and fantasy over the last several decades to—perhaps most of all—the fans who craved different, better stories. Buffy helped change what you could put on TV, but it didn’t create the desire to see a character like her. It was that desire, as much as Whedon himself, that gave Buffy the Vampire Slayer her power.

#Joss Whedon #Buffy The Vampire Slayer #Ray Fisher #Charisma Carpenter #Feminist

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pleasereadmeok · 3 years ago

Photo

This ‘Wonderland’ Interview to promote A Single Man is a gem. Matthew Goode is a bit of a handful and swears his way through this interview with his mate Nic Hoult. It’s very funny. It’s often quoted (including his description of Colin Firth’s kissing technique!) but it’s difficult to find a clean scan of the whole interview. This scan (from Natalie/ Fairchilds on ohnotheydidnt) isn’t very clear to read so I did a transcript several years ago - here:-

Wonderland Interview

Based on the 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man marks the screenwriting and directing debut of fashion icon, Tom Ford. Having debuted earlier this year at the Venice Film Festival to a standing ovation, the film has continued to impress audiences during screening at the Toronto and London Film Festivals.

Joining lead actor, Colin Firth, on screen are fellow Brits Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult who discuss the film, Tom Ford and being British in LA.

ON A SINGLE MAN

Nicholas Hoult: The only time I saw Matthew was when we were getting our spray tans.

Matthew Goode: Which were more regular than we were expecting. I got on a plane with Colin [Firth] and then literally the moment we arrived, got in the car together, went to the hotel and suddenly – it’s like ten thirty at night – we have to go to Colin’s room where we’re having our spray tans . Colin Firth is in his pants, I’m in my pants and it stays that way for an hour whilst we wait for this stuff to set. He’s fucking great. I love Colin.

We [Nic’ and he] never had a scene together but we were there the whole time. I was only really fitting in around these guys. Nic had a damn sight more to do than I did.

NH: No I just did more.

MG: [Laughs] It was a really fun shoot. I mean, maybe I’m looking back with rose tinted spectacles, but …

NH: It was a good fun shoot. Everyone enjoyed it. I remember the night in Venice after seeing it in front of all those people and just lying in bed thinking ‘that’s something I’m proud of’.

MG: It’s seriously impressive. You watch it and you care and, it doesn’t happen to me a lot, but I watched it and thought ‘I’m in something that doesn’t stink!’. I’m proud of that.

NH: That’s a nice feeling when you’ve done something and you can say ‘yeah, proud of that’.

MG: Fucking hell – sorry to interrupt – but I was reading a magazine or a paper or something the other day and it said “A Single Man obviously being screened and whenever Nic Hoult was on screen there were gasps over his beauty” [laughs]. And I was thinking, fucking Hoult is going to LA and get so laid! [Laughs]. He is going to be turning bush away left right and centre!

NH: It’s all down to the fake tan again. That’s where the performance stems for me.

MG: That is a review!

NH: Nothing about the acting, right?

MG: They didn’t review the film. It just said “I saw it. I’m going to be reviewing it at some point, but let me tell you there were gasps over Nick Hoult’s beauty!”

ON TOM FORD

MG: Tom is immediately interesting. If it’s all about someone’s cannon of work then most of the time you wouldn’t work with a first ime director, but if the script is good and you have a chat with them and they know which end is up and which is down, then great.

NH: I didn’t know who Tom was when I met him.

MG: Nick “fashion forward” Hoult!

NH: I’d gone over to LA got off a plane and had dinner with him. And I asked him how he’d got into directing and why he was doing this!

MG: I love that. Isn’t that great? And that’s also like Tom. He’s not the sort of person who is like, ‘well fuck you!’.

NH: He explained very humbly what he had done and I thought OK. And then I looked him up after dinner and was ‘oh jesus! He’s actually accomplished quite a lot’ so probably quite a stupid question, but he was very honest and modest and made a great director.

MG: It’s so good. And so good for Colin. And Julianne [Moore] is bloody great in it as well. But the real star of it, it has to be said, is Tom. It silences immediately the people who were going ‘you self indulgent cunt.’ It’s like two massive fingers up to them as it is very, very accomplished.

NH: It’s very personal to him as well.

MG: Hugely personal as the main story sort of mirror images the relationship between him and Richard. There’s a similar age gap.

NH: He would always say my character is him when he was 18. He’s connected to every character and he knows them.

MG: And he wrote the screenplay and it’s starkly different from the book.

NH: Matthew’s read the book, so –

MG: That’s right! I have. It is different. I am always about the script, really. But one of the really nice things about being involved is that it is a love poem to Tom’s partner, Richard.

NH: Tom is very good in the sense that he is an actor’s director and knows what he wants you to do but is very giving to let you go off and explore things and try stuff out. And you don’t feel too much pressure of failure.

MG: That’s very true.

NH: ‘Cause the second you’re on set – especially when there’s only 20 days to shoot – to not feel the pressure, that’s a good atmosphere he created. Something his assistant was saying the other day was that he’s very good at holding his hands up and would admit when he wasn’t sure what he was doing and kept everyone on side and made it a really great team effort.

MG: I love it when someone’s like that. It’s so far away from self indulgent as well when someone’s shooting into the 19th hour of the day and the ship isn’t sinking, but there’s a leak and it’s far better to say we do have a leak and I’m trying to sort it out rather than leaning on one side and saying everything is fine. He is fucking great.

ON COLIN FIRTH

MG: Colin was great. I knew he was going to be good. The moment I read the script, I was like, ‘this is something you haven’t done in a long time’ – just something he could really get his teeth into. He’s such a subtle actor and it’s been a long time since I can remember him having something that central and serious.

NH: It was a great moment when we went to the Venice Film Festival and got the message Colin was winning the best actor award.

MG: I know. The previous evening we had sat there and we knew it had gone down well because there was a NINE minute standing ovation. And particularly when you’re not in the film as much as I am, then I feel like a fucking charlatan. I stood there and am looking down and smiling and embarrassed. Colin’s quite emotional and I tell you what – four minutes of a standing ovation gets a bit uncomfortable, but NINE? ‘OK, Colin… fucking move. Let’s go. Let’s leave.’ And he couldn’t tell us that he had won and so he was being shy about it.

NH: Yeah, he kept it very quiet.

MG: The moment we found out and we were on the boat we were like ‘What the fuck? You’ve won and you didn’t tell us!? And he was like ‘ I know, I didn’t wanna.’ He was humble.

NH: It was great. It was a bit of an odd first day like you had in the sense that I had to strip off in front of Colin on my first day. It sounds a bit seedy when I say ‘strip off in front of him’.

MG: It does!

NH: It’s part of the film, I swear! And it’s handled a lot more tastefully that that might seem, but yeah it was a bit of an odd first day.

MG: Everyone is going to say ‘oh it’s a gay movie’ which we then counteract with ‘no it’s not, it’s a film about love.’ But there is nudity and a bit of man kissing. Frankly Colin kisses like a nymphomaniac on death row, but it was a real pleasure!

NH: He’s got a lot of love!

ON JULIANNE MOORE

MG: She’s a fucking hero. She’s lovely. I didn’t have any scenes with her. I mean I’m only in flashback, so all my stuff was with Colin.

NH: All my stuff is with Colin as well. The first time I met Julianne was in Venice.

MG: Yeah, she was probably in the middle of juggling six projects or something, you know, she never stops working. She came in and shot two scenes, which were about 20 odd minutes of the film, and they did that in two evenings so she was in and out. I never got a chance to meet her until I was at some party in LA and she is just fantastic. And she’s married to a guy called Bart Freadlich who is a director in his own right.

NH: He’s a hero.

MG: He is actually fabulous! My girlfriend spent the whole evening calling him Bert instead of Bart and he was like ‘you know, actually I prefer Bert! Don’t worry about it’. He’s lovely. They could throw their weight around, but they are actually family people and live in New York – they’re kind of anti Hollywood.

ON THE LIFE OF AN ACTOR

MG: There are a lot of Brits and Aussies at the moment who are working. I don’t know what that means. But we never think of ourselves. When you get off the plane and you’re in America they ask ‘what’s the best thing about being a movie star?’ I am a jobbing actor, they have no idea! They make it sound like I get 500 scripts and am sitting there going through them all. If something comes up and they are stupid enough to give it to us or you love the script and audition but someone of a huge stature can come in and take it like Brad Pitt. Or Judi [Dench] – we’ve been up against each other a couple of times.

NH: I’ve never lost out to Judi yet.

MG: Only in a drinking contest! The vicious alcoholic that she is!

NH: Sam Worthington was telling me when he was in LA someone asked him why there were so many Aussies over there doing so well and his response was that it’s an awful long way to go to fail and not give it your best shot, basically.

MG: Oh. I was expecting some sort of knob gag in there, but yeah.

NH: It’s very true. I just got back from LA and every TV series has an English guy in the lead. Joseph Fiennes, Matthew Reece [RHYS]

MG: We’re good. We’re quite good…

N H: I can’t say it’s the training, because I don’t have any.

MG: You’re doing well! You make people gasp! You complete cunt. I hate that!

NH: You’re coming across very eloquent.

MG: That’s very nice of you. OK, who used to live with Ewan McGregor and Jude Law and he has a TV show? You’re right about that. Though it makes it sound like ‘Oh you’re English. Have a TV show’. I’m sure they all have about ten auditions.

NH: I had an interesting day recently when I was at a BBQ and Jimmy Page and Roger Daltrey were there.

MG: Wow!

NH: I sat there and was very quiet because I thought if I speak to them I’ll make a fool of myself so it’s best to keep out of the way and then they can’t have any bad thoughts although they probably didn’t know I was there. But I knew they were there so it was a good BBQ for me.

MG: I’d love to learn guitar. It’s one of those things I’d love to do. Though it’s not like I don’t have the time…

NH: [Laughs]

MG: I’d like to know all the chords.

NH: It’s difficult to get the fingering right… That’s what she said.

MG: And back to Dame Judi!

NH: [Laughs]

MG: It depends if you have a high action or a low action in terms of the strings. It hurts. You’ve got to build up the calluses. If you get a low action one that would be easier.

NH: Are we still talking about women?

MG: Yes! [Laughs] I remember Billy Crudup got the part in Almost Famous and he had lessons with Peter Frampton but had to have lessons on the side because Peter was like ‘you are fucking terrible’. But that’s one of the nice accidents of the job is you can get training in things. And random travel.

NH: I got to do archery.

MG: You did! That was The Weatherman!

NH: No, for Clash of the Titans. I didn’t use it once.

MG: Oh yes, it was the daughter in The Weatherman.

NH: Yeah man, keep up.

MG: Sorry mate. That’s how pretty you are. I confused you with the female lead.

NH: He’s seen all my work.

MG: I have! I’ve got to learn how to do it. You are a master. I did a Spanish film and it was all in Spanish [!] – I learnt it phonetically. Jesus, that’s my only skill. The major skill I picked up is I can pay my rent. The older you get the more you realize there are a lot of people who hate their jobs. I’m so glad I’m not – ha! Famous last words! – it does seem to be going OK for now. But bringing it back to what do you like about acting – to be honest, everything.

ON BRITISH TALENT

MG: I think there is an element that we’re just so happy to work. Certainly as for getting into film it was such an accident because I hadn’t worked in front of a camera. For a while it was like what is the secret code to working on screen? I have no idea what it is… but even ten films in I’m still sitting here renting and not owning a house. I think that keeps you grounded. As opposed to some American actors who are on a hundred thousand dollars doing some TV.

NH: You don’t get comfortable so you feel you’ve got to keep on striving.

MG: I think we’re overrated. [Laughs]. There is an element over there if you walk into a room of Americans that they’re suddenly like ‘oh fuck they’re British and we’re steeped in tradition.

NH: It’s odd that Tom got so many English actors for the film – we’re both playing American.

MG: And Julianne is playing English.

NH: it’s good he trusts in us to pull of the American accents.

MG: Yeah, I mean – idiot! In fairness you’ve done it before and I have done it a couple of times. But it is odd. If you think who he probably could have had –

NH: He probably could have done better than us!

MG: I’m sure he could have convinced someone with a much higher stature. I think it was just we were willing to work for free, effectively. And that’s also what makes Britain great. We want to work and we want to please the director and often at times, yes we might have strong thoughts on character and script, but we turn up and are like, this is your vision and you are the director and we know where we fit in. Certainly the Brits, I find, we want to be told what to do or how it’s going to work rather than, ‘I’m the fucking star!’ I tend to find we leave our ego at the door. We tend not to pussyfoot around. We all like a drink. We’re steeped in that tradition as well. There’s a certain forbidden thing in America if you drink you’re an alcoholic. No I’m not, and I generally wait until at least half past one.

NH: On weekends. Weekdays, 11.

MG: There is a reason pubs are opened at 11 and it’s because you are allowed to start drinking at that time. Otherwise, they wouldn’t do it! Christ, can you remember back to when – you might not remember, actually. I gasp at your beauty as I try to remember!

NH:[laughs] I’m never going to live this down!

MG:Do you remember when pubs shut on Sundays at, like, 1 for two or three hours? Maybe I’m showing my age now. That is fucking madness. There would be a riot now.

NH: So basically, we haven’t found a conclusion to what makes Britain great… You’re a big X Factor fan though, aren’t you?

MG: My girlfriend loves it. She’s got me into it. I mean it’s fucking hilarious. You literally sit there and you don’t know any of these people but the music comes up and they get selected and you can be in tears and so happy that these people have been selected for the live shows. I really like the over 25’s this year. They’re fucking great.

NH: Matthew Goode on The X Factor!

MG: ‘He’s very much into the over 25s and what is funny is they are all male’. But it is great. But then it’s such a machine. There is such a turn around. Sometimes the winner gets completely forgotten and they have no career and then, obviously, sometimes they go shooting up. But it is great telly! Saturday night, a couple of beers and The X Factor.

[Pics - My edit of Ben Rayner photos/scan by Natalie Fairchild.]

#matthew goode #nic hoult #a single man #a discovery of witches #adow #just in case ADOW fans are interested - it's a stretch I know.........

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leekimdramas · 3 years ago

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Our Beloved Summer (Review)

How can the drama be so nice but so uninteresting at the same time?

While they were at school Choi Ung and Yeon Seo were filming a documentary about the lives of the best and the worst student.

After ten years they get a suggestion to do a documentary again but this time it might be a little more difficult as they broke up a few years ago and don’t have a very good relationship.

(This review contains quite a lot of spoilers and mentioning what happened in the last episode)

The start of the drama was great, the filming bit reminded a little bit of Lovestruck in the City (Our Beloved Summer is better though in that aspect) and the phasing and characters had Hometown Cha Cha Cha vibes.

It was interesting to watch their relationship go from ‘enemies’ to lovers to strangers and how they will become lovers again after all they been through.

I also have to add that the cinematography is also amazing, loved every shot of it.

However, I was lost somewhere in the middle, as much as the main leads were interesting to watch I didn’t really care for them.

I know that the drama focuses on character depth and solving the main’s relationship but when something happens it is forgotten as soon as it made some kind of shocking impact.

For example, plagiarism, it was an interesting side story but as soon as the mains talked about it that was finished.

We never got to know what happened with the other artist, he was just brushed aside until a very last episode, AGAIN to push Ung to do things and all gone again.

Maybe it’s just me but I felt no chemistry between Ung and Yeon Soo when they were adults, and yes the writer did a good job in showing why they would still like each other but it still felt forced.

With all the bad, what made me stay for the rest of the drama? The secondary characters, Ung’s friend Ji Ung was sweet and I really liked his celebrity “friend” NJ but in the end I was left unsatisfied with their storylines.

They both became just the second leads that will always have one sided crush on the mains but other than that we don’t really see much of them.

And yes, they showed Ji Ung’s life, about his mother and I really appreciate it but the whole “she’s sick so you might forgive her now” thing was rushed and felt more like a filler.

They tried to add some depth to that but it was literally done in the very last episode which is a very bad timing.

If they have done it a bit earlier, the moment where we learnt that he hates her, they should have explained further and when maybe add the illness. Maybe then I would have felt a teeny tiny bit sorry.

But now we get him as a second lead most of the time and adding depth to him seems like a second thought and the screenwriter herself doesn’t care about it.

The same thing happens with Yeon Soo’s friend and Ung’s manager, it was always hinted that they might be together by the end and I wanted to see them together so badly.

However, all we got was “after two years” and only one line “I’m asking you on a date”. Those two deserve the world and they were given nothing.

Overall, the story was slow and everything is used to get the main leads together anything else is just the second or the third thought or at least that’s what it seems by watching.

The ending for the mains was great and cute but other characters were left with nothing which makes me mad because it’s supposed to be a drama about people, characters, their personalities.

So if you’re a not plot driven drama at least I would expect all the characters written nicely, sadly it’s not what I got.

6/10

#our beloved summer #kdrama #review

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coffeeandcalligraphy · 4 years ago

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Please tell us more about Seventh Virtue–we need more? Also what was your general thought process for writing this right now?

Hello!! Seventh Virtue is the fantastical version of the Fostered series (which I’ve been writing for many years as you probably already know)! I came up with the initial idea for this project back in the summer of 2019, but knew I’d probably never write it because at the time, I couldn’t see myself writing beyond literary fiction (and also: I know nothing about fantasy :)) in fact I think I’ve only ever read 3 fantasy books from the same series and that was years ago)!

This led to why I’m writing it right now, actually! Earlier this week, my sister and I binge watched Shadow and Bone and it reminded me of this project (which I’d called Fostered But It’s Magic haha). I couldn’t help but delve more and more into the project as the days progressed, and so I decided I’d try to draft it. I actually tried to draft this project once before as a screenplay because I thought it’d translate better to screen, but gave up FAST when I realized I am terrible at screenwriting! With this in mind, I knew I wanted to write this project, but I’m also impatient, and know I want to write more things this summer. TBH, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my vacation writing another Fostered book (I planned to write something outside of this universe but apparently it doesn’t want me to??) so yesterday at 1AM, I came up with a very... stupid idea to write 10k words in one day.

I made this decision strictly for anxiety exposure. I’m exporting the vlog where I chat about this experience so I won’t delve too much into it. TL;DR: I wrote 11k words yesterday, and finished the first chapter (almost done the second).

So what’s the book about?? Honestly, it’s pretty loose right now. This is the pitch I wrote way back in 2019, which is more or less accurate:

After being tormented by nightmares of his ex lover, which result in violent hot flashes and an inability to keep up a job, Harrison seeks a magical intervention. When the clairvoyant he hopes will cure his strange ailment turns out to be a con woman—and his old friend, Reeve—he is thrown back into the past and forced to rekindle relationships he thought he’d left behind.

The main thing that’s surprised me since drafting is how contemporary this world is?? Despite being literally fantasy, this setting is the most contemporary-aligned compared to the rest of the series. Fostered book 1-6 take place in a sort of dystopia (which gets softer and softer as the books continue), whereas Moth Work and Feeding Habits take place in older-contemporary times (2006)! This book on the other hand I could certainly see taking place in some sort of alternate 2019 (because we :) cannot include the pandemic years :)). It’s also magnificently funny?? I feel really blessed to have just decided to write this book. I know about 10% of what is going on at all times, but it’s so fun to draft!

Something I didn’t expect initially was how big a presence Foster would have in this book! I kind of :) forgot about Foster in Moth Work/Feeding Habits (so sorry he is still an icon), and while I knew he’d be Harrison’s roommate, I kind of assumed he’d be a side character?? But no, he said, I am reclaiming my “Main Cast” title and you can do nothing to stop me. For the majority of what I’ve written, Harrison and Foster are living in the past. This is because Foster can ~time travel, but is incredibly ethical and sustainable, so he refuses to actually change the past/do anything that would affect the present/future. After a hex goes wrong and results in Harrison’s mother getting into an accident and eventually disappearing, Harrison’s life is in literal shambles. Tormented by nightmares and hot flashes, he is NOT living his best life. To cope, Foster agrees to take them back to the past where he can relive the last 5 days before his mother’s accident, thinking they will only stay there for that one week. But when they’ve repeated the same week dozens of time, Foster ups the pressure on Harrison to give him the okay to head back to the present. And when these “hot flashes”/nightmares get even worse, Foster tells Harrison about a “healer” who cured his broken wrist (so he could plant his tomatoes lol), Harrison concedes and they finally head back to present day so he too can visit this woman, who is actually their old friend, Reeve.

This book is SO angsty and hilarious! I think my favourite thing about it is that I get to write Lonan and Harrison falling in love again lol, which I didn’t exactly get to experience in the conventional way (the first time around). By the time we meet Lonan (who is introduced in book 2), he and Harrison already have a pretty complex relationship. This relationship gets even more tangled in book 3, and book 5 is where we get to see the first glimpses of a romance. Somewhere in this timeline, between books 3-5, they ~fell in love, but I don’t know when! I think most of that occurred off the page, so even I don’t know. What’s so fun is now I get to glimpse into that a little bit more. Their relationship is my favourite thing and always has been, about this entire series, so I’m so stoked to finally get to dabble with it from the beginning. All I really know at the moment is that they meet because Lonan catches Harrison being a thief lol so, so much fun tension already to work with!

I’m not sure if I’ll finish this, mostly because the prospect of writing an 80k novel sort of terrifies me?? The project is almost 12k at the moment, and we really have only scratched the very surface, so we’ll see! I haven’t written genre fiction in so long and I’m adoring this! It’s also so much less strenuous than writing literary lols so perfect because I’m still a little wiped out after my semester ended!

Here’s an excerpt when Harrison meets up with Reeve for the first time:

The shop’s name is The Lark’s Lagoon. When he enters, a string of freshwater shells clatter, like bells would. She is not at the table like she was in the past, so he putters around the shop. Some of the things she sells are silly. Plastic mood rings that are clearly heat activated and more suited for a child but marketed to women in their thirties. Ping pong balls with the inscription enchanted aims. Snowglobes with a miniature witch figurine who says I’ll tell your fortune when you shake it.

“That’s a bestseller.” Her voice comes so suddenly that Harrison drops the globe. It shatters across the floor in a glittery bundle. “So you’re going to need to pay for that.”

Harrison describing Lonan lol:

Harrison hated him. He was cute, but Harrison hated him.

Harrison chilling in his timeloop where he can’t be seen:

It’s harder avoiding birds than he thinks. Every time one spots him, his body lurches, magnetized in the direction of the apartment. If it weren’t for the trees he latches onto along the way, he’d already be back at the brownstone listening to Foster lecture him on not being seen and not exploiting his magic. So he becomes more careful. Checks every direction—up down, left, right, diagonally, whatever—until he is certain no one can see him.

Some Stressed Foster dialogue lol I love him protect him at all costs:

“How many times have I told you that you cannot be seen in the timeloop? I woke up with a migraine five minutes ago and when I went to find you, realized you’d slipped out. Do you know how my brain feels when you stretch the timeloop like that? It feels like someone’s cracking it. My brain, a walnut. You, a nutcracker. Not to mention, you didn’t even leave a note. What if you were robbed? Or murdered? What if they dismembered you and I had no idea?

so that’s this project! don’t see any reason to stop writing it, so I’ll make an update on it soon! :) let me know if you have any more q’s!

#asks #writing #fostered #seventhvirtue

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amostimprobabledream · 5 years ago

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Why I hate Grace.

I was giving my thoughts on Peaky Blinders a few weeks ago and I danced around the subject of my dislike for this character but didn’t have time/room to get it all out. So here it is! Grace fans, you probably want to look away now. So to me, Grace is kind of symbolic of the bad writing on Peaky Blinders, which is especially egregious because usually the writing of the show is good. But right off the bat, her arrival creates a number of plotholes that don't resonate with Tommy's character. Just for a start, nobody seems to find it suspicious that an apparently attractive woman (seriously, people go on and on about how pretty Grace is and while it's not as though she's ugly at all, you can't help but wonder if the Peaky boys merely think so because she's the only woman of significance not related to them) is so determined to be a barmaid in The Garrison, where Tommy, upon seeing her, immediately asks her if she's a whore. Grace is understandably offended by the question, which again makes you wonder why she'd want to work somewhere where such a question isn't just an assumption, but the first thing Tommy asks - we know she's a spy, but the other characters don't.

Then, Tommy corners Grace and starts asking why she keeps being so nosy about the Blinders and their business. They go for a walk and Tommy asks Grace if she's a Catholic. She says she is, but when Tommy points out that no good Catholic girl would walk into a church without making the cross, he immediately exposes her as a liar and points out he also knows that she lied to him about what town she was from, because he asked around and nobody had ever heard of her. So what does he do? He...promotes her to being his secretary? What?

Okay, so you might argue that Tommy puts her in said position to keep an eye on her, or thinks she might be useful if she has the balls to lie to him, but she tells such an easy-to-unravel lie and her excuse is because she wants to "fit in". Again, he lets her off the hook but she covers up a lie with an even more obvious one - if Grace cared about fitting in, she'd make more of an effort to do so, but she keeps demanding Tommy let her sing in the pub and asks questions above her station to Arthur, which got reported back to Tommy. Sure, it's her job to spy on the Peaky boys, but she's so transparent about it that it's honestly ridiculous that Tommy would ever put her in a position that close to his personal affairs. Not to mention, Grace is so inexplicably haughty towards Tommy, telling him, "You disappoint me" when he kisses her. You'd think if she was good at her job, she'd learn to shut her mouth and keep her head down like a decent spy, but she always acts as if she's better than Tommy because, like Polly points out, she's a spoiled little rich girl at heart and she does think herself above the Shelby's.

Then Tommy completely inexplicably chooses to give Grace a fucking gun and tells her some men are going to come in and try to kill him and he's relying on her to bail him out. I know the cops were meant to come in at the stroke of six and they fuck up, but WHY would you ever place that level of trust in someone you already know is a liar? Sorry, but I just don't buy that Tommy was blinded by "love". I can buy that maybe he was curious about Grace, possibly even fancied her a bit, but definitely not so stupid that he thinks it's a good idea to put his fucking life in the hands of a woman he knows basically nothing about. She could have fallen out of the sky for all he knows. Tommy even continues to trust Grace after she kills an IRA guy right in front of him because she sobs, "I didn't know I had it in me like that", yet she disobeyed his instructions and whenever Arthur or John do that, Tommy gives them a bollocking. He lets Grace off, again, for seemingly no reason other than she played the damsel in distress role and he buys it. This doesn't make Tommy look like a smart man blinded by love, it just makes him look like an idiot around Grace.

Also, there seems to be an uncomfortable level in Tommy/Grace of Tommy getting a kick out of using Grace to piss Campbell off. It's pretty obvious Campbell has a creepy crush on her, and Tommy exploits that for all it's worth when he explicitly rings Campbell to inform him that he's going to bang Grace. (Incidentally, their sex scene made me go, "Oh, I guess they're gonna fuck now. Yup." It was like they did it because the screenwriter said so.) He's basically cucking Campbell and I think it's a big reason why even Grace fans admit that she's "not as good" in Season Two - Grace just doesn't work without Campbell around. At least in Season One you can argue that every shitty thing Grace does to Tommy/the Peaky Blinders is partly because of her job as a spy and Campbell is her boss. In Season Two, there are no excuses for the way Grace acts. She's a selfish, self-righteous hypocrite. She jumps at the chance to go to Birmingham on the offchance it was Tommy who called, then acts all offended when he assumes she came to sleep with him, to the point she actually smacks him in the face. What does Tommy do about this? Nothing. When Grace complains they could have run away to New York together, all Tommy says is, "I had things to do", instead of asking Grace why she thinks he'd abandon his family, business, friends and country all to chase after the woman who sold him out to his worst enemy. Grace honestly expected Tommy to put her first after everything she did to him. I won't act like Tommy is a saint in this - he did nearly pimp her out to Billy Kimber - but at least he acknowledges it was wrong of him to do and he never acts like he occupies any moral highground like Grace does. When Grace admits she sold Tommy out, she sobs she "did a terrible thing," yet never tries to actually help him out in a way that would put her at risk - she quit her position, sure, but Campbell's creepiness had gone so far as to propose marriage to her, Grace was still looking out for herself when she left, because it got her away from Campbell. She asked Campbell to spare him, knowing full well that Campbell has wanted Tommy dead since day one. She plays the damsel in distress again and she's pissed when Tommy doesn't fall for it a second time. Then when she talks about her husband, she tries to rub it in Tommy's face how he's “a good, kind man”, but then quickly backtracks on that to fuck Tommy anyway because her husband is impotent - and Grace just can't deal with not getting what she wants. Tommy's rich enough to afford to buy a house for Ada and Polly by this point, he's running Birmingham and seeking to expand into London, so Grace pulls the oldest trick in the book and gets pregnant - then Tommy has to do the responsible thing and marry her, because the baby is his and it's literally the only piece of leverage she has over May. (May even points out that she's been stringing Tommy along and all Grace can do is throw the fact that "Grace's Secret" is the horse's name at her. Again though, did Tommy call it that to piss off Campbell? This was before Grace returned to Small Heath but after Campbell had, so I think yes.)

Then in Season Three, again, Grace is pretty much a pointless character, because she has no purpose anymore outside of being "Tommy's wife". Campbell is dead and so the conflict of her character in Season One, as contrived as that was, is gone. People complain about Grace being stuffed into a fridge and whatnot, (and tbh, you could say that about Freddie, but Freddie also served his purpose in Season One after he buried the hatchet with Tommy), but honestly I think that it was all they could think to do with her because Charlotte Riley was unable to pick up her role as May for Season Three, so they had to work around it. It's the only explanation I can think of about why Grace is just such a blatantly awful person in the Second Season - I've heard people say before that Tommy leaving the field after his assassination was prevented would have been the perfect ending to the season, but that scene at the end where he returns to The Garrison and announces he's getting married seemed really hastily tacked-on - I feel like it was added because they were forced to rewrite the drafts for Season Three and put whatever plans for May they had on the shelf. Not to mention, Grace's actress Annabelle Wallis has apparently stated she hates May because she's "annoying" and "gets inbetween Tommy and Grace". No, Grace got in the way of Tommy and Grace - she's the one who chose to leave Birmingham after she got exposed as a Mole instead of taking the consequences! And also, how is May the annoying one? At least she doesn’t whisper all her lines. It's just so immature of the actress to bash on the character and encourage ship wars, especially considering Grace comes out the winner of the love triangle, so what's the bitterness about? (I've not heard what her opinion is on Lizzie, but I doubt it's as hostile, because it's made obvious in the show that Tommy doesn't love Lizzie the same and the poor girl is constantly competing with a dead woman for her husband's love.) Plus, in Season Three, the wedding is all about not upsetting Grace, Tommy's family have to play nice with Grace's family, and Polly is once again the only person who knocks Grace's smug ass down a peg by reminding her that the family haven't forgiven or forgotten Grace's crimes against them - the only reason they're putting up a pretence of tolerating her is for Tommy's sake. Not hers. Not everybody in the world wants to accommodate Grace. Killing Grace was honestly the highlight of the entire Season, because I couldn't stand watching her smirking over how she got everything she wanted when she didn't pay for any of it. (Polly is also the only one who comments on how Tommy has conveniently forgotten all the shit she pulled on him and Tommy acts like she was a totally innocent bystander when she got killed and it’s like, no, Tommy, baby. Grace knew what she was getting into when she married him and he knew that - it’s pretty much common knowledge that everybody who is even tangentially associated with the Peaky Blinders gets hurt eventually, just look at how Ada was nearly gangraped even though she hadn’t been involved with the family business for two years.)

Come Season Four and Five and there's already a problem here - there is still more to talk about with Grace, even though she’s dead and Tommy spends most of Season Three rampaging over her death. But he just inexplicably won't let go of her. And again, this doesn't come across as Tommy being so in love with Grace he can't fathom a world without her, it comes off like her actress has dirt on the director or something. He constantly hallucinates the bitch, we hear her singing all the time, it's kind of implied that Tommy prefers Charles over Ruby because Charles a boy and has a saintly dead mummy while Ruby is the daughter of a former whore (not that Tommy doesn't love Ruby, obviously, because he absolutely does), and what really annoys me about Tommy hallucinating Grace is that she's the only character he does this with. He doesn't dream about Greta, his first love, he doesn't dream of Danny or Freddie or his mother. He doesn't even fucking dream about John! Remember John, Tommy's little brother he knew his entire life? Apparently nobody else does! No, it's always all about Grace, who keeps helpfully telling Tommy to hurry up and kill himself so he can be with her again. This doesn’t seem like an out-of-character, guilt-induced vision - it mimicks her attitude in Season Two, that nothing else in his life can be as important as she is.

And that's why I hate Grace. (Please don’t send me rude or hateful messages over this post, it’s just my opinion and it’s pretty much irrelevant anyway since I doubt Stephen Knight is going to stop using Grace up as some kind of martyred dead saint anytime soon. I just wanted to get this rant out of my system.)

#Peaky Blinders #Grace Burgess #Tommy Shelby #May Carleton #Rant #Chester Campbell #Polly Shelby #Blogging

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lichfucker · 3 years ago

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hey ive been meaning to ask this for a long time but you work in movies, im guessing as a script supervisor? im in school finishing up a media studies degree but i want to go into tv or film production, maybe broadcast. could i ask if you have any advice for what to study or how to get started?

yeah, I'm a script supervisor!

uh this got like 3x longer than I thought it would lmao so I'm putting it under a cut

the tl;dr is: work on student films especially while you are still a student yourself; join facebook groups for productions/crew calls in your city; most people's entry into the industry is as a production assistant; befriend as many people as you can and make sure they all know what your specific ambitions are, so that when those opportunities come up you'll be the first person on their mind

I'll be honest, I studied screenwriting in college but I never took a single film production class and technically my degree is in "liberal arts." I definitely didn't go to Film School and real talk I barely feel like I can even say I was a film STUDENT lmao

so regarding "what to study," I think getting a degree in media studies will suit you just fine and is probably better than what I left college with!

(this is maybe a little disingenuous, because at the end of my senior year I did have the opportunity to do an intensive program where I went through seven weeks of preproduction and six weeks of production on a feature film. so I technically did leave college with some on-set experience and something to put on my resume)

I don't know what crew positions you're interested in (if you wanna talk more about script supervising let me know!!), but for like 99% of on-set positions, being a production assistant is a GREAT way to start out. the vast majority of people start out PAing and transition to other departments from there. every production is always looking for good, reliable PAs. sometimes it's a "you gotta have experience to get experience" kind of thing, but more often than not (ESPECIALLY in the low-budget indie world) producers will be willing to take a chance on a rookie because they could use all the help they can get, and because they pretty much all started out on the bottom as PAs, too. and if you're a PA who can drive (esp trucks but literally anything honestly) then you'll be even MORE valuable

now don't get me wrong, PAing sucks. I know a couple people who like it but I've always hated it. you're the first one on set and the last one to leave, you do a lot of odd jobs and gruntwork (so many folding tables. oh the number of tables I have unfolded). a couple times I was sent out to wait outside a dunkin donuts at 5 am so I could get the director an iced coffee as soon as they opened. you have absolutely no authority, BUT it's still your responsibility to make sure that everyone stays quiet during takes, the actors get out of wardrobe at the right time, etc. it's a lot! it's a lot and it's exhausting and it's THANKLESS work. but it's necessary work, which means there is always need for people who will do it

once you're there, befriend as many people as humanly possible. talk to all of them about your goals. if they like you, they'll remember you, and the likelihood they'll call you for the next gig increases exponentially

as for getting The First Job, though, there are film production facebook groups for every major city I can think of, and they are FULL of people posting jobs, as well as just networking and asking for advice and just chatting with other people in the industry

student films especially are a great way to get on-set experience and just add credits to your resume (trust me nobody will check them, they'll just want to see that you have any credits at all; my resume is full of five-minute shorts my friends produced that will never see the light of day). unfortunately 99.9% of the time they're unpaid, and I do NOT recommend working for free, but I understand that sometimes it's all you can do. (personally I only work for free for my friends, and only a select few of my friends, but it took a while before I felt confident enough to set that boundary for myself.)

now, while you're still in school, is a GREAT time to knock out some shorts and start building your credits. it's hard if you're studying remotely right now, but if you're on campus then ask around, ask your professors, find out who's filming their short for x class or y thesis and ask if they need people on set helping out (because I guarantee you they do. they probably have one person on camera, maybe one more helping w lights, and if they're lucky they found a single person on earth interested in doing sound. they'll be sourcing their own costumes and props, actors will be doing their own hair and makeup, etc. their crews will be BARE BONES and they will love you for saying "I'm here to help, use me however you need")

it's bullshit but this really is an industry built on knowing someone who knows someone who knows someone, so the best thing you can do is to just befriend as many people as you possibly can. befriend your professors. befriend your fellow film students! (they may have connections that you don't, and more importantly you'll all be newbies entering the industry at the same time and you'll need each other. trust me on this. these people will be a resource you tap into again and again, especially if you're in a department a little less common than production or camera. I get recommended for a lot of gigs because for most of my friends, I'm the ONLY script supervisor they know.) befriend the people in these facebook groups! don't be afraid to ask them "hey, would you be willing to let me shadow you for a day?" most people remember what it's like to be just starting out and struggling to get your foot in the door. most people are willing to help if they can. if you meet one asshole, you met one asshole. there are so many more who are kind and generous and eager to help. I promise

I hope this is helpful to you and not. overwhelming lmao. I'm sorry it's a lot sldfsdf if you have more specific questions please let me know! film work is grueling and intense and frequently utter horseshit but I feel so honored and privileged to be able to do it (on some level for me it very much is a function of privilege), and if it's where your passion lies then I hope you create every opportunity you can to go after it

#blackbirb #bluh bluh #again feel free to message me if you wanna talk more abt specifics!!

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mysticalcrusadeobject · 4 years ago

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An entirely objective rewiew of episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

Legend: red is bad (or rather: dumb shit I can't ignore), blue is objective good, black is neutral and orange is random shit I love (aka subjective good).

Okay, the exposition following the title crawl just makes me feel like I've somehow missed a movie, or two. All of this happened in the span of, what? A couple months? A year? We aren't told.

I was going to ask why Kylo Ren was even looking for Palpatine in the first place, but you know what? I don't really care. I won't complain about Ben in this movie.

Palpatine can see the future, right? That's the only way this makes sense. I mean, he's telling Kylo to "kill the girl" (and presumably become Emperor of the Galaxy?) but... why? Later, he'll want Rey to kill him and become Empress, but then he'll just want to kill her, too. Is Palpatine an idiot, or is he just insane?

"She's not who you think she is." Honey, she's not who the screenwriters thought she'd be.

I genuinely love the Finn/Poe/Chewy/Rey dinamic in this movie. They don't feel like friends yet (which they shouldn't), but there's still a camaraderie and genuine caring for one another there. It's great.

"How do we thank you?" - "Win the war."

Rey is a badass, as per usual. Also, I love how Kylo's just fucking with her here. That girl could cut him in half.

"Somehow Palpatine returned." The 'somehow' is a key word there.

Oh, good, Rose is a non-character now.

While I adore the actors' chemistry, Rey doesn't really need this big of a party to come with her. Chewy's the co-pilot, so his presence is justified, then Finn could come as well and use the blasters, Poe too, because him and Finn didn't get enough screentime in the last movie, but the droids? No. Have them stay with Leia. We don't need C-3PO explaining everything to us, thank you very much.

Oh, yeah. That reminds me.

C-3PO.

They're foreshadowing C-3PO and Leia's deaths so hard here.

The mother-daughter dinamic between Leia and Rey is good. That's all.

That mask was left in pieces. Is it even possible to fix at this point?

Oh, cool, the Knights of Ren exist. For about three minutes of screentime.

The humor in this movie works pretty well for me. Hux's assurance that Kylo looks, in fact, great, is gold.

The New Guy.

"Serving another master?" - "No." Um, yeah? Yeah, you are. What is your plan, Kylo Ren? Because, to me, it see that y- Oh, yeah, I've promised to leave him be. Shit.

A simple conversation would have made this movie so much shorter and so, so much better. "Oh, hey, Rey. Where you off to?" - "Yo, Ben. Oh, you know, looking for Palpatine so that I can kill him." - "Oh, cool. That was my plan, too. Wanna come with?" - "Sure." - "He's your grandfather, btw." - "Cool. Wanna rule the Galaxy?" - "Sure.

Rey's over here casually cutting ships into pieces.

Also, I love how people complain that Rey is OP in this scene, while Kylo just strolls away from a burning husk of a ship, unscathed.

"The inscription that was on the dagger is in your memory?" Yeah, that's how computers works, Poe.

Also, I love how no one cares about shat C-3PO thinks/wants. These characters and this script dislike him as much as I do.

The No-Thank-You droid is adorable.

"You were a spice runner?" - "Were you a Stormtrooper?"

Babu Frik. Baby Yoda ain't got nothing on this guy.

Daisy Ridley is sooo so good in this movie.

"Does she do that to us?"

"I pushed you in the desert-" Baby, you struggled in the desert.

The directing of this scene is so good!

"I'm the spy." (I love it 'cause it makes me laugh. Hux is such a petty little shit that he'll join the Resistance just to see Kylo lose. I appreciate that."

Rey being a Palpatine bothers me about as much as the CGI Carrie Fisher, which is to say: a little bit.

"People keep telling me they know me; I'm afraid no-one does" with Kylo Ren's leitmotif playing in the background. *chef's kiss*

That blade is the most plastic-looking thing I've ever seen. (The Wayfinder)

"Babu Frik! He's one of my oldest friends." Alright, 3PO, that was pretty funny.

I have literally nothing to say about the next fifteen minutes, or so. I feel bad for these actors. Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver have gorgeous chemistry, and though they're trying their damndest, you can kind of tell that they're weary of these movies by now.

Two words: Harrison fucking Ford.

This scene.

"I know what I have to do, but I don't know if I have the strength to do it."

Good job, honey. Now you have no weapon for the final battle. Takes after Anakin, this one.

Every ship is a Star Destroyer.

"A Jedi's weapon deserves more respect."

The reverse Kylo Ren leitmotif that's within Rey's theme playing while Rey is wondering why everyone trusts her despite her being a Palpatine is kind of cute.

As I watch the Resistance/First Order battle unfold, I can't help but wonder why they can't just- sign a peace treaty. How long has this war been going on for? Surely, they must've gotten bored of fighting.

Oh, but I do love the design of Palpatine's throne.

"I never wanted you dead. I wanted you here." I feel like you don't really know what you want, sir.

I love how confused Rey looks while Palpatine talks about how much she apparently hates him.

Ben's just been chillin' for the past 20-ish minutes. I like the redeemed theme they've made for him, though.

Why are the Knights of Ren here? They should be loyal to their Master, no? Also, Ben, honey, you have the Force. You've used it in the first movie to stop a blaster shot mid-air. Surely, levitating six people way up in the air, then letting them fall into the chasm below can't be much more difficult.

This battle. Also, I love how the Knights back the fuck up when Rey sends Ben the saber.

And now he wants to be the Emperor. WHAT DO YOU WANT?!

Ow. That's- that's a broken spine right there. Good thing our dude's indestructable.

I realize I'm quoting Sideways here, but seriously, why don't they play the Force Theme when Rey communicates with every Jedi ever?

The final scene between Ben and Rey (minus the kiss - y'all know how I feel about shoehorned romance). It's still so, so beautiful. This scene is more beautiful than this movie - nay, this franchise - deserves.

Oh, is the Stormtrooper lady Lando's daughter? That's... You know what, actually? I don't care.

The ending is so damned strange. She just returned to Jakku, disposes of Leia's and the Skywalker lightsabers (rude!), steals BB-8 and just- nothing.

I do like her new lightsaber, though. It suits her.

Yeah, there's one Skywalker missing next to Luke and Leia. I guess that Rey just didn't give a shit about him, huh? Oh, well.

This movie is odd to me. Many people hate it, some like it, but I'm in this in-betweeny stage. I like it more than The Last Jedi, but only because I don't observe these two movies as agregates, but more as collections of good and bad scenes (since they both feel scrapped together), and thus, RoS just has more elements which I like, though it's objectively the worst movie of this trilogy. Rey is the best she's ever been, Ben Solo is *chef's kiss*, Poe is awesome, Finn is... there (the underdevelopment of this character is still the worst thing they've done), but he does have some good moments, some of the side characters are pretty great (the long helmet lady and Babu Frik come to mind immediately), the music is always a highlight and... yeah.

As for the negatives, Palpatine is right up there. His plan is stupid. That's all I'm gonna say about that. Other than that and the demolition of Rose Tico, everything else are nitpicks for me. This movie could have been great only if they'd scrapped this story entirely and either:

a) made an entirely new movie and utilized some of the original concepts they had, or

b) made at least two new movies with the ideas presented here.

Overall, I've enjoyed this movie. It's one of those movies which I can watch after a long day of studying to relax my brain a bit, one that is supposed to be thought about as much as the scriptwriters have done - which is to say, a bit.

#sw #star wars episode ix #rise of skywalker

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oceanmonsters · 5 years ago

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the problem with Tall Girl

this turned into more than an essay than I was expecting so get comfy:

Look, I get it, I know I’m a short bitch so I don’t know what it’s like to be tall etc. etc. and I’m sure there are a lot of tall girls who do / have felt insecure about their height, and maybe there are even girls who’ve faced problems similar to those in the movie. But this movie... I had so many problems with it, from the plot to the cast to the writing.

First off, the premise: a movie about a tall girl who gets picked on and harassed for her height trying to find love. On the surface, doesn’t seem too bad. And I’m not gonna deny that the main characters life isn’t harder because she’s tall than it would’ve been if she was short. But here’s the thing: tall women aren’t insulted considered less attractive for being outside what’s considered normal (if it was about that, tall guys would face the same thing) - it’s specifically about not being considered feminine enough, or rather conforming to the standard that women are supposed to be smaller and more petite than men. Jodi, however is played by a blond, cis, white girl who conforms to typical female beauty standards in pretty much every way other than being taller than average. And I’m not saying that her height or any problems she may faces because of it are invalidated by those things, but in the movie it’s like all of the rest of those things are invalidated on account of her height. WOC (especially black women) are far far far more likely to face adversity for not looking “feminine” enough and for years have been insulted and degraded for looking “masculine” - being too hairy or too tall or too large or our features not fitting eurocentric female beauty standards. The same point stands for trans women and even more so for trans woc. So while I’m not saying the kind of situation in the movie could never ever happen in real life, the fact that they’re making a movie about overcoming adversity faced due to not conforming to female beauty standards and making a thin, cis, white girl out to be the one facing the most adversity with the woc in the story either bullying the protag for not conforming to those standards or being the best friend who defends and supports the protagonist is pretty tone deaf. This isn’t just a normal movie situation where I think that it would’ve been nice for it to be more diverse or have a main character of colour - the premise would make much so much more sense with, for example, a tall black girl or trans girl at the lead because they’re so much more likely to face the problems faced by the main character in this movie.

Those were all thoughts I had even before the movie even came out, just from watching the trailer and reading the description. I tried to go into the movie with an open mind, thinking it would maybe exceed my expectations and I was being too harsh based on two minute trailer. However, almost straight off the bat the movie really tested my good intentions. Less than 5 minutes into the movie, Jodi is narrating how hard her childhood. And I could sympathise with her - children can be cruel and it can be tough to stick out like that in such an obvious way. I don’t doubt her childhood was harder on account of her height. But any goodwill is immediately destroyed by Jodi asking the audience “You think your life is hard?” and challenging them to “beat” her struggle. Because yes, while I’ll admit being tall has probably made her life harder up until this point, she’s still a straight, cis, rich white girl! Her height doesn’t make it harder for her to get a job or make her more likely to lose her job or to be the victim of a hate crime or be murdered by the police. And yet she still thinks her life is harder than anyone else in the school - where her main problem is apparently being asked “How’s the weather up there?” constantly. Jodi’s friend Fareeda even completely goes off at some random guy for saying it to her. Is it annoying to be asked that, constantly? Yes, probably. But the movie treats it as if it’s literally a slur. The movie constantly goes on about the “adversity” Jodi faces, but other than being picked on by one other girl (who is an asshole to Jodi and only Jodi for seemingly no reason whatsoever other than that she’s a Mean Girl) the “How’s the weather up there?” comments are literally the only “adversity” she ever faces over the course of the movie. Apart from said mean girl, there’s no one else making mean comments or laughing at her behind her back - she’s largely ignored by her peers. By teen movie standards, she’s not even receiving the typical treatment faced by the unpopular and bullied protagonists - no one’s spreading rumours about her or trying to ruin her life or throwing slushies at her or really harassing her in any way. But the movie still tries to push the narrative of Jodi facing so much adversity. There’s a part in the movie where Jodi’s mom tells her she has to stand strong in the face of adversity, and starts talking about all the problems she faced in high school for being so beautiful and popular - for example that she once had 10 guys ask her to a dance. Jodi looks completely incredulous that her mom considers this adversity and emphatically responds “No, it doesn’t.” when she’s asked if it is. The screenwriter somehow fails to see the irony in the fact that Josie herself is shown interest in by three different guys over the course of the movie (yet still continues to lament throughout the movie that “tall girls don’t get happy endings” and that all people see is her height and not her or something along those lines). This scene is so lacking in self awareness about the movie it’s in that it’s almost a metaphor for me watching the movie - me as Jodi, watching the movie and thinking “She really thinks THIS is adversity?” Another thing the movie seems to fail to consider is that Jodi’s problems are very much limited to high school. Yes, some people are assholes to her and she feels insecure but that’s definitely not a unique experience in high school. And once she actually moves into adulthood and the real world, she’s not really gonna face the same issues. As I said earlier, her height is not going to make it harder for her to get a job or make her more likely to lose her job or to be the victim of a hate crime or be murdered by the police, whereas these are issues that POC and LGBT people may have to deal with for the rest of their lives. The only way that being tall is going to significantly affect the rest of her life is in dating & finding a romantic partner, but even within the movie her height clearly doesn’t hold her back that much because 3 GUYS pursue her over the course of the movie.

While I do think the premise was bland anyway, the movie could’ve been somewhat enjoyable if they stopped trying to convince us and shoving down our throats that Jodi’s life is harder than everyone else’s and actually made the issue to be Jodi’s own insecurities and shown her overcoming those, instead - and maybe they would’ve had more time to actually focus on developing the relationship between the eventual endgame couple.

I was really hoping at some point there would be a scene where Jodi is being self-pitying and Fareeda (or hell, even Kimmy) were to sit her down and say “Look, I know you have problems, I know some people have been assholes to you because you were an easy target to make fun of for being different but you’re still a rich abled conventionally attractive cis white girl. I’m not saying your life hasn’t been more difficult because of your height, but it doesn’t make your life more difficult than everyone else’s,” and then maybe made a point about the adversity they face as WOC. I was so expecting Fareeda to do something like this in the bathroom scene but all she does is try to be Jodi’s emotional support which Jodi is ungrateful for. Which brings us up to the last point of how badly the characters of colour are treated in this movie. Fareeda is literally a walking “angry black girl”+”sassy supportive black friend” stereotype. Her only purposes in the plot are to go off at people when Jodi’s being “harassed”, support and uplift Jodi constantly even though she’s completely ungrateful, and be her friends’ dumping ground for their emotional problems. We literally know nothing about her other than this. She only exists to support the white characters. Kimmy, once again, is a one dimensional stereotype. She’s basically a caricature of a movie Mean Girl, with absolutely no reason given to why she’s such an asshole to Jodi. She’s not shown being a dick to anyone else, she’s not shown to be the queen bee of the school trying to consolidate her power, she’s just a pretty girl who apparently only has two interests - hating Kimmy for literally no reason, and being crowned homecoming queen. Her only purpose in the plot is as a device to prevent Stig from being with Kimmy. In fact, that’s the only purpose of the remaining two characters of colour as well - as romantic obstructions to create drama in the central white love triangle. There’s literally a scene where each white character (Stig, Jodi, Jack) is kissing their respective love interest (who each happen to be POC) but are distracted by / looking at each other instead of their love interests. They have no character or development or anything beyond being eventually rejected love interests to the white people. The only thing we know about Liz is that she’s gluten free, but the only reason for that is for her to have something in common with Jack. The school they go to looks very diverse - a lot of the extras & background characters are POC which imo just makes the movie worse because they’re making Jodi out to be the poor girl who’s life is harder than everybody else’s while all the people making fun of her & making her life difficult are POC. Literally all the people in the movie who ask her how the weather is up there are black. Most of the girls laughing at her while Kimmy makes fun of her are WOC. It was like they wanted the movie to look diverse for woke points but didn’t actually bother to have any of the characters of colour be developed or have any complexity or actually be relevant to the plot other than to obstruct the white romances and help the white people realise what they really want. They literally only existed as plot devices, not as people. And yes, Stig’s only purpose was to have Jodi realise her worth and that Jack was the right person for her but his character has some kind of emotional depth and character arc. He’s given a motivation and reason behind his actions - he likes being the popular kid and he lets it get to his head. Nothing of the kind is afforded to Kimmy or Schnipper.

I think the worst thing about this movie is how inoffensive it seems on the surface. It’s racially diverse, it’s about a girl overcoming her insecurities and learning to lover herself, what could be the problem? Which is why I don’t necessarily blame people for missing how shitty it actually is beneath the surface. But what I definitely don’t appreciate is (white) people insisting that the people who are rightfully pointing out this movie’s flaws are just being mean or bitter or being “discriminative” for “hating on the movie just because the main character is white” when that’s just so far from the actual point. I think the moral of the story is that it’s not enough to just think critically about the media you’re consuming, sometimes people need to actually listen to marginalised people when we’re telling them that something is not okay and not just insists that we’re being mean for no reason and then maybe we can avoid more movies like this in the future.

#tall girl spoilers #tall girl #movie critique

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adistantstarblog · 5 years ago

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get in my business 1. 4. 8. (top 5 stories you wrote you're less proud of) 17. 26. 29. 100. thank u

Hey there! This was fun to get today :D. Let’s see what we got here.

1. The meaning behind my URL: adistantstarblog. I can start by saying, I just wanted it to be adistantstar, but that, of course, was already taken. I remember trying other variations too such as onedistantstar, thedistantstar, and so on. But in the end, adistantstarblog is what it became. The reason behind it being is that, years ago…I made this lifelong goal to watch every sci-fi show ever made (this led to an interesting theory on how every one of them I’ve watched so far is literally connected in some way, but we will get to that someday) Anyway, the first series I watched was ‘Babylon 5′ and there is an episode that talks about ‘a distant star’ and its a common saying really. But for some reason, it stuck. That is one reason. The other reason has to do with my original book I am writing, as ‘one distant star’ was once a tentative working title for it. 🌟🌟🌟

2. Last time I cried and why: A few weeks ago. There is some stuff I am going through with a friend.

8. Top 5 ( top 5 stories you wrote you’re less proud of): Well off the top of my head, I would have to say those are: a book I wrote and submitted to publishing when I was about 15 or so. I was so in love with it, and it is still in a box somewhere along with the rejection letter 😂. I am just glad someone out there knew what they were doing and sent it back.

Another would be a fic I started over on my Patreon called ‘Words of a Poet’ It had a supernatural feeling to it, but I messed it up with a sandwich.

Another one would be one of my earliest fics called ‘You Only had one Job, Clarke’ because it completely didn’t go how I hoped. I wanted it to be funny, where they go out and find the misspelled the word ‘fire’ because she couldn’t stop staring at Lexa. This happened, but it also got derailed by Clexa having sex in the middle, and it was one of my earlier Clexa sex scenes, so, it’s rather embarrassing now.

Another is called ‘Grenadine,’ also on my Patreon, also one of my earlier works there. I was working with two submitted prompts that tied in the monthly poll, and they really didn’t have a lot to do with each other. So, while the first part of the fic worked out –Clexa meet at a party at Lexa’s house (Clarke never met her before.) The second half where Clarke gets locked in a bathroom and the pair end up making out, came out a little raw in form. I may go back and edit this one someday.

The fifth? Let’s see. It was another story I wrote in high school, a fantasy novel. I was so proud of it I made a watercolor poster for it that was the size of a chalkboard and did a presentation about it in front of my honor’s English class. No one in school really liked me. I was ‘that’ kid, the nerd, the one that hid from everyone every chance I got. So, looking back as an adult on all of this that I was so proud of back then, it’s a bit embarrassing now too. But, there we go. Five stories I’m not so proud of. Lol. Thank you. That was a fun question! 😂

17. A fact about my life: I live in Arizona. Which is great because I hate the cold.

26: What’s one thing you regret? Opening my mouth and saying things that get taken the wrong way, just because my tone gets stupidly emotional. 🙊

29. One insecurity: My age.

100. Give us one thing about you that no one knows: I would love to be a screenwriter.

—There you go. Thanks for the ask and thanks for ‘getting in my business’ so, here is the link to the ask game ‘Get into my Business’ My ask box is open for more guys! Be safe out there and have a good day.

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lesbianrobin · 5 years ago

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Answer 15 Questions, then tag 15 people! I was tagged by @flanneled-dingus <3 <3 <3

1. Are you named after anyone?

Y’all aren’t gonna believe me but my dad saw a weather reporter on the news named “Emily Ann” one time and thought it was really pretty, so he told his mom “oh we’re thinking about the name Emily Ann” and she said “that’s a terrible name she’s gonna hate it” so then my dad was like okay her name is definitely gonna be Emily Ann and then I hated my name my entire life :)

2. When was the last time you cried?

Like two nights ago lmao

3. Do you have kids?

No but I do babysit and I would die for that kid... he’s asked me multiple times if Sharknados are a real thing and was flabbergasted when I told him I was alive when Fortnite came out

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot?

Not really? What usually happens is somebody will say something, I’ll immediately respond in earnest, and THEN I’ll think of something really funny and sarcastic that I could have said but the moment has passed

5. What’s the first thing you notice about people?

Always hair or clothes! Usually clothes unless they have really good hair. I’m constantly falling in love with random extravagantly dressed arts students around campus lmao

6. What’s your eye color?

Green :) In middle school I was convinced that meant I should wear purple eyeliner every day and honestly I was fucking right I looked sick

7. Scary movie or happy ending?

God, a happy ending. Always a happy ending. I can appreciate a scary movie (I’m literally in a film class all about gothic horror rn lmao) but I’ve always been such a sucker for a happy ending

8. Any special talent?

I’m pretty flexible! Back when I did dance I used to be able to do my right split with my leg up on a chair and still get my back leg flat against the floor and keep my torso up straight

9. What country were you born in?

America, born about 20 minutes from home and spent my whole life in the same area

10. What are your hobbies?

Writing, mostly! I like to say that I sew and knit and I’m learning guitar, but I do those things extremely sporadically whereas I usually write SOMETHING at least once a week

11. Do you have any pets?

My family had a sweet stupid yellow lab named Trixie and I was the one who took care of her, but she was very old and passed this summer.

12. What sports do you play/have you played?

lmaoooooooooooooooo

13. How tall are you?

5′5″ I’m rather thoroughly average

14. Favorite subject(s) in school?

Back in high school I always loved English! I like history too, but the only history class I ever really enjoyed was APUSH (AP US History). Now that I’m in college I just keep finding subjects I love, but they’re all kind of in the same realm (Communication, Film, Anthropology, and Sociology)

15. Dream job?

Recently I’ve been saying I’d love to write for television. I’m not sure if that would be The Best Job Ever for me, and if I’m honest, I’m always an actor in my wildest dreams, but I know that I want to contribute to art and entertainment in some way! I’ll be taking a lot of film/TV/digital production classes in the next couple of years, plus screenwriting and some others, so hopefully those will help me figure out what path I want to aim for.

I don’t really like tagging a bunch of people, but I’ll do a few!: @princeandreis, @lesbianiconsteveharrington, @swiftsmiles, and anybody else who wants to do it!!

#em talks #long post #tag game #don't do it if u don't want!!

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allthefilmsiveseenforfree · 5 years ago

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Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Is there anything more idealistic than a monster movie? The human race coming together in the face of a force bigger than themselves. In the face of a government that is actively ignoring every single iota of scientific fact surrounding climate change, human rights, and sustainability, a monster movie is the exact kind of wish fulfillment fantasy that feels like the perfect escapism in these dark times. And, as the title indicates, Godzilla is the King of the Monsters. Is he worthy of the title in this follow up to 2014′s Godzilla? Well…

I mean. Yeah. He’s fucking Godzilla.

So not that you really need a plot summary, because if you want to see a Godzilla movie does it even matter what happens in it? I think not. But anyway, the basic story here is that Godzilla hasn’t been seen in 5 years since the events of 2014′s film. Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga), working for the monster-studying organization Monarch, has invented a technology that can allow humans to talk to and somewhat control the giant monsters that have been chilling inside the earth this whole time, like Mothra and Godzilla and whatnot. But she and her daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) get kidnapped by a mysterious bad guy (Charles Dance, aka Tywin Lannister and you know if he shows up he’s gonna be a mysterious bad guy) and it’s up to Emma’s estranged husband Mark (Kyle Chandler, who is at peak Dad Capacity here) to get them back. Oh and also there’s the eensy, tiny complication of all the giant monsters waking up and just fucking. shit. up. all over the world.

Some thoughts:

It’s refreshing to know that secretive government monster-hunting organizations allow “take your daughter to work day,” because that’s a real good opportunity for women in STEM, you know?

There is a group of Very Good wolves who are just doing their best. Shout out to the wolves.

So I’m about 5 years late to this party, but I just started watching Silicon Valley on HBO and I am currently deep, deep in the depths of a very severe Thomas Middleditch Situation. SO apart from giant kaiju beating the shit out of each other, I was mainly showing up for him playing Sam Coleman, the Monarch director of technology, and he did not disappoint. He’s mainly used for comic relief, but he still gets to be smart and brave and there’s a really excellent beard happening and he’s wearing a lot of suits and sometimes running in the rain, and it’s all just really good. Good shit, good shit.

Kyle Chandler plays essentially the same character in everything he’s ever done, and Mark here is no exception. He is 1) The Most Dad and 2) he hates Titans. Whatever you’re imagining that looks like, that’s exactly what it looks like, and you know what? It works! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I could honestly go on and on about every member of the cast. This movie is big and this cast is bigger - diverse, interesting, amazing.

Special shout out to Millie Bobby Brown, who gets to be the young brave plucky scientist teen that in years past would have been played by a boy. While no role in the movie is really revolutionary, she’s giving it her all and she’s a world-class crier, so I was very proud of her.

Like most giant CGI action-fests, the color saturation is through the roof here. It can get to be a little eye-searing at certain moments, but the overall spectacle is exactly as it’s meant to be - spectacle.

I call bullshit on literally everything that happens in Antarctica though. Everyone’s hanging out with no hats on, their faces exposed - you would all have frostbite in minutes. This should honestly have become a sequel to Face/Off real damn quick.

During Vera Farmiga’s big speech, did she like…put together a montage? Did she have access to PowerPoint while she was kidnapped? Where did she find the time? She’s got the embedded videos and dissolving screenwipes and everything, that shit takes a minute to put together.

Lazy screenwriting note: whenever a character says “I couldn’t be more sane,” it pretty much always means they’re not. Maybe find another way to tell us this.

Another entry in the somewhat-related-to-climate-change pantheon where the villain isn’t wrong, but like…it’s still murder.

How the fuck is your plan to defeat Rodan - who literally has skin made of magma - to shoot him with fire? This monster organization is really pretty fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants and kind of terrible at their jobs. Oh you’re gonna leave your one of a kind world changing monster Doppler radar unattended? Of course, who could possibly forsee any consequences there. I mean, get your shit together.

One really cool sequence that I appreciated was the specific calling out of the difference between Eastern/Western conceptions of dragons and monsters and how that affects our larger cultural responses to Godzilla et al. For an increasingly globalistic film market, I thought this was an interesting conversation and I would love to see more content like this in future global blockbusters!

Can we talk about Godzilla and his character design? I just love him. I love crotchety old grumpy Godzilla. I love that his face looks like my pit bull’s face when he’s smiling. I love how sassy he is, all “I was taking a nap, minding my own damn business when y’all motherfuckers come wake me up, make me do your dirty work and clean up YOUR MESS.” Sassy Godzilla for president.

Did I Cry? A little bit during Ken Watanabe’s big showstopping scene.

The credits for this movie are some of my favorite I’ve seen all year. They do a good job of setting up next year’s Kong vs. Godzilla, and also list credits like “Godzilla - Himself” and “Mothra - Herself” which I fucking love. Plus there IS a post-credits scene, so make sure to stick around for that!

I enjoy big-budget action movies, especially monster movies. The action sequences here really are something to behold, and there are fewer things I love more than a cold theater on a hot day with a big, loud, fun spectacle unfolding before me. That’s exactly what you get here.

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

#119in2019 #godzilla king of the monsters #godzilla kotm #godzilla king of the monsters review #Vera Farmiga #kyle chandler #thomas middleditch #o'shea jackson jr.#charles dance #millie bobby brown #ken watanabe #movie reviews #film reviews

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tyrantisterror · 7 years ago

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FUCK IT LET’S GET ASININE

TT’s SUBJECTIVE RANKING OF THE MARVEL MOVIE VILLAINS (AND A FEW SPECIAL MENTIONS FOR THE TV VILLAINS TOO)

I maintain that ranking characters is stupid but sometimes I dare to be stupid so let’s do this. SPOILERS FOR EVERY MARVEL MOVIE YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED SEE YOU AFTER THE CUT FUCK I’VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT SUPERHEROES A LOT IN THE PAST TWO DAYS HUH

Ok, I guess I should give some criteria for this, so we’re going to be judging these guys both as villains and characters in general. As characters, they need to be interesting and compelling - i.e. you want to follow their journey, you want to hear their story, because that’s a characters job. If a character isn’t making a story compelling, they aren’t a great character. As specifically antagonistic characters, they need to provide an interesting counterpoint and conflict for the heroes - there has to be a substantive reason for why they are opposing the main characters. And as villains - and while villains are often antagonists, those two words AREN’T synonymous - they need to bring a level of menace to the table. We don’t just want to see the heroes/protagonists win - we also don’t want the villains to succeed in their goal, because their goal is, y’know, bad.

If a villain is successful in all of these things, then there’s another criteria to consider: did they reach their potential? There are some villains - actually A LOT of them - in the Marvel movies that are good on paper, but didn’t reach their fully potential, either because they lacked time or the writing just didn’t give them enough to do. A number of the guys on this list would be higher if they hadn’t been, essentially, wasted by the screenwriters.

There are also some antagonists in the Marvel movies who I don’t really think qualify for the villain label - they were obstacles the heroes had to overcome, sure, but they weren’t meant to be full on SUPERVILLAINS. There’s nothing wrong with that - hell, I honestly prefer stories to have multiple kinds of antagonists, because it makes the world more complex and interesting. I’ll give these successful non-villains some honorable mentions.

Let’s dive in then!

As it currently stands, Loki is the best Marvel villain. I know, I know, a lot of you hate Loki because teenage girls think Tom Hiddelston is cute, but has ANY villain in the Marvel movies gotten even close to as much development as he has? Loki was one of the strongest aspects of the first Thor movie, with a sinister cunning backed by motives we could understand but not condone. This guy has reasons for being the bad guy he started as - hell, the main one, his dad, is also the father of the hero he arches for, Thor. From the start there was complexity and intrigue built into him, and his devious mind presented a great problem for not only Thor but also the three other big names in the first Avengers lineup - because while Captain America, the Hulk, and Iron Man can all hit really hard, those powers aren’t really great at beating a scheme.

Loki also opened the door (literally) for a greater scale of threats and scope of story possibilities in the universe. Then, once his big starring villain moment in The Avengers came and went, he proceeded to take a slow but well done turn from villain to hero - one fraught with missteps and backsliding. He didn’t turn into a good guy easily. Again, he was arguably the best part of Thor: the Dark Wold, a movie that’s kind of a low point in the series (and yet one that’s still far from bad, because that’s how Marvel do). Admittedly, Loki wasn’t the high point of Thor: Ragnorok, though that’s only because Thor: Ragnorok was great in so many other ways, taking a series that was up till that point a more middling part of the greater Marvel Franchise and making it one of the best. Notably, Ragnorok finally allowed Loki to complete his turn to hero, all while keeping his personality traits that we’ve grown to love. No villain has been better served by the franchise, and likewise none has served it better.

The first Guardians of the Galaxy had so much work to do - not only did it have to introduce us to and get us to love the five weirdest fucking superheroes of the franchise so far, but it also had to introduce the entire Space Opera side of Marvel’s universe to us - infinity stones, celestials, various planets with various sapient species with a great and varied history. We had to learn about Groots and children of Thanos and the Kree and the Nova Corps and the Ravagers - we can forgive that movie for having a weak villain, especially given the fact that it had FIVE protagonists to develop meaningfully instead of one like every movie before it.

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, by contrast, has a lot less to do. Its heroes are introduced, as are a lot of great supporting characters, so in that regard it just had to follow through on what it had already built. That gave the writers significantly more time to work on the antagonist, and the result was Ego, the second best Marvel movie villain. Though his relationship with Quill is first and foremost, Ego also has meaningful thematic ties to the other heroes as well - he’s an abusive father of unfathomable power, much like Gamora and Nebula’s adoptive father Thanos, he’s an inherently lonely being that longs for a familial connection that may well be lost to him, like Drax, Rocket, and Groot, he’s a deeply flawed parent figure to Peter much like Yondu, and, well, he’s personally isolated and abused Mantis. Ego’s motives are understandable but reprehensible. We feel his pathos - no one wants to be alone, and most people can understand the desire to reconnect with one’s offspring - but we also know he can’t be allowed to succeed. The threat he brings is palpable, and his conflict changes all the heroes in a meaningful way.

Like most Marvel movie villains, Ego dies in his debut, but to the film’s credit, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 makes every second of his screentime count. We could have gotten more tales from Ego, but if this is his only one, then I feel we can say his potential was used well.

Like Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther had a lot of stuff on its narrative plate. While it had a slight headstart in introducing its titular hero thanks to Civil War, it still has to do a lot of work to make us understand who T’Challa is, while also introducing Okoye, M’Baku, Wakanda’s greatest export Shuri, Nakia, and oh yeah, the Afrofuturistic country of Wakanda. It also had to justify the existence of fakeout villain Ulysses Klaue and unnecessary white man Martin Freeman for, I imagine, the comfort of the white executives taking a “gamble” on a big budget movie with a predominately non-white cast, because somehow that was even more ludicrous in Hollywood’s eyes than a movie starring a talking racoon and an Ent.

where was I?

Oh, right, my point is that there was significantly less narrative space for Killmonger than the two villains above him, and that’s the SOLE reason he’s at number three here. Killmonger’s motives are just as complex as Loki’s, and he is as thematically relevant to the MANY heroes opposing him in this film as Ego is in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2. And he gets a lot of good development!

but... Killmonger dies at the end of Black Panther. He dies when there is so, SO much more story we could have gotten out of him. And while his story in the film is well told for the most part, some of it is abbreviated. This dude needs, nay, DESERVES more time. If they retcon his death and bring him back for a sequel, Killmonger may very well climb to the top of this list.

Thanos is the only villain on this list who is arguably the protagonist of a Marvel film - really, Avengers Infinity War is his movie more than anyone else’s. He does a lot of the same stuff as the three villains before him - his motives are understandable, the threat he poses is immense, he challenges the heroes, and at the same time has thematic connections to... well, some of them (look there’s significantly more heroes in Infinity War than there are in Thor, The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Black Panther, so cut him a little slack). But he’s a bit weaker at all those ways except for the “level” of threat he poses. The only heroes he’s really intimately tied to are Gamora and Nebula - for everyone else, his threat is more general than personal. Sure, he’s a lot more SUCCESSFUL at killing named characters than the previous three villains on this list, but if you think all of those deaths are gonna stick you’re a very gullible person. Ultimately, Thanos’ character had to sacrifice narrative complexity for the sake of establishing a higher scale of threat, and the result if a character that’s a bit weaker than Marvel’s best - but still pretty damn good. I mean, he was good enough to feel like a credible threat to a literal army of superheroes - that’s gotta count for something.

Funnily enough, the Vulture is kind of on the opposite side of things from Thanos. The threat he poses is significantly lower stakes than the villains that preceded and followed him - and, oddly enough, that’s in his favor. He felt new as a result. This wasn’t a guy who was starting wars or committing genocides - he’s just an asshole who sells illegal and highly dangerous weapons. His motives are understandable, too - dude wants to give his family a good life, and this just happened to be a solution to that problem (if not a moral one). He’s much closer to the kind of “villain” an average person would be affected by in real life.

At the same time, well, he’s not a world shaking villain. He does what he’s meant to do well, sure, but he wasn’t meant to be the next Loki - he’s a one shot filler villain for a movie that was really about introducing its hero to us. There are a LOT of villains who were meant for that niche, and of those villains, Vulture is the cream of the crop.

Though she was going to be higher, didn’t you?

My immense attraction to her aside, Hela is... kinda flat. Her motivations are kinda weak - she’s a warhawk who wants to start wars and was kicked out of Asgard for starting wars too much and now is back to start some more wars because... because war is cool, I guess. Cate Blanchett’s wonderfully campy performance elevates the material she’s been given a lot, don’t get me wrong, but objectively... Hela’s not very interesting. In terms of her relation to the hero, she’s basically Loki except with no development or intrigue - yeah, she’s technically Thor’s sister, but we don’t feel a familial bond between them, so their conflcit doesn’t really get any intrigue out of that. Hela isn’t really a character - she’s a conflict, as developed and emotionally complex as the tornadoes in Twister.

I hate to say it, because I love Thor: Ragnorok and just, like, the concept of a Goddess of Death played by Cate Blanchett, but Hela just isn’t very well developed. She’s a lot of wasted potential - wasted potential made very... entertaining by Cate Blanchett’s... entertaining performance, but if it weren’t for the skills of the actress playing her and, uh, some aesthetic preferences on my part, she’d be even lower on the list.

Hey, speaking of really good actors who played elf leaders Lord of the Rings, here’s Red Skull! And, like Hela, he’s kind of wasted. Movie Red Skull is basically the cartoonishly exaggerated caricature pop culture has made nazis into - “evil” in the Snidley Whiplash sense, but not evil in the have-you-actually-read-up-on-how-fucking-horrifying-the-holocaust-is sense. And, look, I understand that bringing in the actual horrors of the holocaust in a movie about a guy who’s basically wearing the American flag as a costume could very easily become uncomfortably misguided, but the defanging of the nazis - I’m sorry, HYDRA, the “more evil” nazis who somehow don’t do any of the actually ridiculously evil shit nazis did - that Red Skull represents isn’t a great solution to that problem.

Movie Red Skull is less complex than Cobra Commander. He is pure “I’m evil because... because!” villainy. He’s less deep than Hela, and unlike Hela’s actress, Hugo Weaving was kind of phoning it in. There’s some hammy fun in Red Skull, sure, but he could have had so much more impact than he did.

Ronan the Accuser’s motives are a bit better defined than Red Skull’s. His people have been in an on again, off again war with the rival civilization of Xandar, and yeah, that’s a tale as old as time - dude wants to destroy a country because they fought his country in the past and all that, happens all the time, fine and dandy. But... while we can understand that because it’s basically the bulk of human history, we never really feel it, y’know? Xandar and the Kree’s history is TOLD to us, not shown, and as a result we don’t really FEEL Ronan’s motivation.

So what does that leave us with? Well, a very shouty and hammy performance by his actor done from under some thick makeup. It’s fun and campy, but Ronan’s a filler starter villain - he’s weak so the heroes may have time to be strong. It’s fine - he does his job - but he’s not what he could have been.

Although I will say, the moment where his brain just short circuits when Peter Quill stops their fight to challenge him to a dance off? Hands down the most satisfying thing in the entire Marvel universe.

Aww yeah, here’s an interesting guy! Isn’t this not at all underwhelming after the colorful cast of characters above? Look, it’s... a dude! A white dude! Swell!

Zemo is, like, the less-good prototype for Killmonger. Dude got fucked over by American Imperialism and blames the superheroes for it, using a bunch of dastardly tricks and cunning schemes to create strife in their ranks! He does it well enough, and he’s got a good amount of pathos, and the actor playing him does the job very well, but... c’mon, do you really want to see more of this guy? Did you even remember his name? He’s just complex enough to get the job done, but just boring enough to let the movie focus on its REAL conflict, which is the titular super hero Civil War. Like the Vulture before him, he’s just as good as he needs to be - but since he didn’t need to be as good as the villains higher up, he didn’t reach those heights.

Also it should be noted that comic book Zemo looks OUTRAGEOUS and interesting and fun so it’s kind of a shame that, like, exactly 0% of that was translated into film. You could have called this character Greg Fucktruck or whatever instead and saved that character for a movie where, like, he could be interesting and cool, instead of a one off filler villain.

Robert Redford begins as a good guy in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and initially feels like a reasonable authority figure, only to be revealed as a secret bad guy in a surprising plot twist! It’s effective, but as villains go. he’s just, like, a guy. He’s a guy in a suit. Not a supervillain suit, just a... a normal suit. He wields a lot of power and has an evil plan and is played charismatically by a very good actor, but like Zemo, he’s not exactly memorable. I mean, fuck, I just listed him as Robert Redford because I couldn’t remember his character name and didn’t want to look it up.

Y’know how I said Zemo is the crappy prototype for Killmonger? Yeah, well, Whiplash is the shitty prototype for Zemo. Same motives but shittier, same personal connection to the hero but shittier, same critique of American Imperialism but much, much shittier. At least he loved his bird, though.

I couldn’t find a gif of his monster form, but the Abomination is... uh... he’s a guy... a mercenary? And he turns into a monster. That’s neat. Turning into a monster is the sole reason he’s this high on the list. And I couldn’t even find a gif of it.

Ullyses Klaue was a boring, one dimensional filler villain who was given some fun quirks by his actor, Andy Serkis, but ultimately failed to not be boring and was thankfully killed off halfway through the movie so the actually interesting villain of the movie could take center stage in a surprise twist that made said interesting villain all the more memorable. He died so a better plot may live, and a better character immediately filled his shoes. Rest in peace, you boring ass red herring of a villain.

“I’m selling the entire universe to a hell dimension because the hell dimension doesn’t have death because there is no time! That’s a complex motive, right? Right?” No, c...caecilian? Cesarian? Caeser Millan? No it’s not. I mean, an attempt was made, I guess? It’s technically a different motive than past villains? I guess? This guy is the “You Tried” sticker of Marvel’s movie villains.

Ultron tried to be so, SO much more than most of the characters on this list. In terms of authorial intent, he would rank higher - they were really, REALLY trying with him! They really were!

But, for me, Ultron fails in everything he tries to be. That’s why he’s this low on my list - not because he’s not complex, not because he’s a boring concept, but because there was so much potential and effort here and it was all WASTED, and that is so much more frustrating than the boring villains that preceded him on this list!

Like... comic book Ultron is a giggling, manic lunatic of a villain, full of energy and intensity that is so unlike most of Marvel’s rogues gallery, especially those that made it to the films. The default movie villain is “smug, disinterested bad guy who talks way too much and takes himself too seriously.” Comic book Ultron ISN’T that. Comic book Ultron is fun and passionate and coo-coo for coco puffs bonkers bananas! And yet he’s also got a lot of pathos - he’s a new life form whose creator didn’t know how to nurture properly, who grew too fast for his unwitting parent to deal with. There’s a tragedy to Ultron.

Also, he’s an awesome robot man with a scary as fuck unmoving robot mask that looks like some alien skull that is both screaming in fury and laughing in maniacal glee at the same time. Like, visually, comic book Ultron is really good.

And... and an effort was made to capture some of that, but it failed. They tried to capture Ultron’s loopy thought process, but in reality they just made his motivations and plan a fucking mess that’s impossible to parse. They tried to give him a good design, but ditched the iconic and creepy screaming skull mask in favor of... weird robo lips, and then stuck those on a Michael Bay transformer body. They took his manic personality and, well, chucked it out in favor of...

Well, a smug, disinterested bad guy who talks too much and takes himself too seriously.

Ultron should have been something we hadn’t seen before, or at least not recently - he should have been, well, Comic Book Ultron. Instead, they forced him into the mold of MOST Marvel villains, and forced his design into the mold of the most profitable robot designs at the then-current time: the Michael Bay transformers. The result was so disappointing. It’s heart breaking.

You know what they should have imitated, but didn’t? Darth Vader. Darth Vader is perhaps the most well known movie villain of all time, and certainly the most lucrative. You know what Darth Vader has? An immovable mask that is iconic and terrifying and brought to life by a passionate, inspired vocal performance from the actor playing him.

Ultron is most effective at the very end of the movie, when he’s speaking through his drone, which DOES have that immovable, scream/laughter face of his comic counterpart. It’s way more unsettling and interesting to watch, even if James Spader’s performance in that part still has that smug, bored disinterest to it. I know this sounds like a minor point but really, it’s one of the many big missed opportunities of this character, and it’s a damn shame.

Malekith is a shitty prototype for Ronan the Accuser, played by an actor of great talent who was given absolutely nothing to work with from the script and then had his performance hampered by thick makeup. Malekith sucks.

There are, like, fifty evil businessmen who want superhero technology to make money via evil in the Marvel movies. They all have different names and different actors and they’re all boring and they suck. They suck hard. They’re all the exact same character, and the fact that some of them are played by really good actors sucks doubly hard because those good actors could have played, like, someone INTERESTING instead. Fuckin’ Sam Rockwell? You waste Sam Rockwell’s talents on this bland stereotype of a character? You wasted the Fucking Dude on this? Christ.

Honorable Mentions pt. 1: the Not-Really-Villains

Jeff Goldblum’s performance as the Grandmaster is a gift that humanity must treasure till the end of its days and beyond. He is so delightfully weird and charming in every scene he’s in and I would watch a thousand movies with this character in him. So why isn’t he on the villains list? Well, because he’s... not really a villain. He’s an antagonist, sure, and on paper he sounds pretty villainous - tyrannical ruler of a planet who forces people into gladiator games and all that.

But in execution he’s more of... a goof. He’s basically Michael Scott from The Office - a weird fucking idiot who was given way too much power and weilds it irresponsibly. He causes problems that can ruin peoples’s lives, sure, but, like, he’s entirely unaware of what he’s doing. He’s not consciously evil - he’s just a silly bastard who doesn’t understand the consequences of his actions. He’d be harmless if you took him out of that power structure.

When we first meet him, he metls a guy with a stick. Most movies would play that for horror. In Thor: Ragnorok, it’s a comedy beat. Audiences lose their shit laughing at the dark comedy of that moment. The Grandmaster COULD have been played as a villain, but instead he was played as a buffoonish antagonist - and he’s BETTER for that. He’s more memorable for that.

Bucky is a great antagonist in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but he’s not a villain. He’s a victim - you can’t hold brainwashed, mind-controlled man accountable for his actions, as everything he’s done was carried out specifically because his own will was overridden. Bucky’s a damn good character, and if this was a ranking of ANTAGONISTS he’d be up in the top five, but you can’t call the dude a villain.

There are a lot of henchmen in the movies that were full on villains in the comics, like Skurge and Crossbones and so on. But, look - in the films, these guys are just henchmen. Some of them are very fun, very interesting henchmen - I chose Skurge to represent them for a reason - but they aren’t VILLAINS. They aren’t the focus. They’re a side dish, not the main course.

Holy shit I posted this only to remember Dormammu’s been in a movie ten minutes later while getting cereal. Movie Dormammu isn’t a villain or a henchman - he’s a cameo, much as Thanos was until very recently. He fills the same narrative role as a McGuffin - he’s the big bad weapon we have to stop the villain from using. He’ll probably get to be a character in later movies, but for now he’s little more than a prop. Fuck, I couldn’t even find a gif of his movie self - had to use his comic counterpart instead.

Honorable Mentions Pt. 2: Sirs And Madamns Not-Appearing-In-These-Films

So the Marvel movies technically share the same universe as various T.V. shows, though at this point the likelihood of that ever being played for more than a few winking nods and veiled references is PRETTY LOW. Most of these series are designed to be binge watched on Netflix - i.e. consumed all at once, from the comfort of a couch, so the audience can enjoy a longer form story than an individual movie without having to wait several months between installments. That’s a very different writing task than writing a MOVIE villain - structurally, it’s significantly different, with a whole lot of different problems and possibilities. Judging the villains of the shows by the same criteria as we judge the villains of the movies isn’t fair - the villains of the shows have a LOT more time on their hands to prove who they are, and without long gaps. Loki, the villain with the most screentime in the movies, still had less time for his arc than, say, Kilgrave, and Loki’s arc was staggered in two and a half hour chunks with years in between them, while Kilgrave’s story could be consumed all at one upon release. That’s not a fair fight.

That said, I want to talk about some of the TV villains:

Kilgrave is the single most complex, terrifying, and overall effective villain the Marvel Cinematic Universe has produce, at least from all the content I’ve seen. None of the other villains (that I’ve seen) are explored as thoroughly, none of them are as personally tied to every facet of the hero they oppose, and none of them - not even world ending Thanos - are as starkly fucking terrifying the depths of their depravity and the strength they have to achieve it. Kilgrave is brilliantly written, and David Tenant outdoes himself in bringing him to monstrous life. He is the best villain the MCU has produced.

You know how a lot of the movies have somewhat bland villains by necessity, because giving them too much narrative weight would keep them from properly introducing the hero? Cottonmouth would have that problem had Luke Cage been introduced in a movie instead of a show. As it is, Cottonmouth still feels like a “starter” villain - he’s a normal sort of criminal, not a Supervillain - but at the same time, he’s a damn complex and interesting starter villain. He’s miles ahead of most of the movie villains, but it’s purely because he’s got a lot more time to develop.

Diamondback, by contrast, has a really interesting concept, but is kind of bland in execution. The show builds him up very well, but slowly drops the ball once he finally shows up in the final half of the season. Maybe a second season can make good on his concept, but as it is he was kind of mishandled.

I watched about three episodes of Dardevil. It was very good, but there was a scene where Daredevil tortured a criminal to get information out of him to stop crimes, and that is a dealbreaker for me. I don’t care if they “explored the ramifications” of it - as far as I’m concerned, when a character tortures someone for information, they are no longer sympathetic and I cannot call them a hero. I will not watch the rest of that show.

I’ve heard Wilson Fisk is VERY well handled and interesting from enough people to feel that’s almost certainly true. Shame I can’t see it.

Outside of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, I also watched two seasons of Agents of SHIELD as well as The Defenders. I can’t remember any of the villains from either. I mean, there definitely were some, but I can’t remember a single one. Unless we count Danny Rand - I certainly felt personally victimized every time he opened his shitty mouth to say some shitty dialogue and take some screentime from Jessica Jones and Luke Cage in The Defenders. Or the writers of Agents of SHIELD for killing Lucy Lawless off in the same episode they introduced her into the show, thus denying us an awesome character played by Lucy fucking Lawless. But other than that, I don’t know the TV villains that well.

#Marvel #Marvel Cinematic Universe

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