#she's spent most of her life being used and abused by her caretakers whose love was so desperate for

[wavebiders]

Thinking about how most of the time when you have the option to stay quiet during a companion quest you get approval for letting them handle it and sometimes even get disaproval for talking over them

And then with Shadowheart's quest speaking up with Viconia not only gives a +5(while *keep silent* gives nothing) but also if you don't do that she will look genuinely scared when Viconia asks you to hand her over

[platypuskenny]

Can I get more f that Kenny’s physiology with his alter egos? I’m rlly interested in that

(assuming this means psychology, as a follow up to this post)

i’ve put it off cuz i’ve been busy with other stuff but i‘m really glad i got this ask cuz i love kenny and I love thinking about them in the context of their two alter egos!

CW: discussion of child abuse and neglect, including inexplicit discussion of child sexuality. also a lot of discussion of The Whole Kenny Death Thing. also spoilers for the stick of truth if you haven’t played it!

kenny’s been treated a lot more seriously in recent seasons, with a shift in character to be a lot more mature as well, and it’s a development that makes a lot of sense in the context of “the characters have undergone A Lot and it’s really shaped their personalities because they’re at a stage when their brain is still very soft and malleable and susceptible to trauma.”

the addition of karen in “the poor kid” seems to have shaken up the depiction of the mccormicks a lot. in earlier seasons, kenny was more passive about his home situation, or at least went out of his way to ignore them, (like in “best friends forever” when he plays on his PSP and leaves the house while his parents fight). there are early scenes where he does have some responsibility to his family (i.e. trying to win a can of food for them in “starvin marvin”) but usually he’s just depicted as a kid trying to live through a tough situation. though his “willing to do anything for money even if it’s deeply upsetting, depraved, or outright deadly” character trait from “fat camp” kind of tracks with this understanding that he prioritizes financial security over his personal well-being. 

however, ever since karen was added to the show, kenny’s been depicted as a much more responsible and often even tragic figure. his parents are too caught up in their own shit to address their children’s emotional needs, and kevin sadly gets caught up in their violence as well in “the poor kid” (he’s also vaguely implied to be developmentally disabled in the few scenes he speaks up but that’s mostly speculation). because of this, kenny ends up being karen’s main caretaker - holding her close when she’s distressed at losing her parents, buying her a doll, etc. 

kenny’s situation is a textbook example of parentification. he ends up taking care of karen, at least emotionally, because his parents and brother are unable to do so. he also becomes the breadwinner in “the city part of town” as soon as he gets the chance. this is a really unhealthy scenario that a lot of children in poverty, especially older siblings, see themselves in. it can result in the child not knowing their true place in a family that takes them for granted, and thus not considering their own needs and/or feeling shame if they need help because they’re so used to putting everybody before them. i think this tracks with kenny being “the quiet one” and rarely asking for anything. 

that’s not even getting into the constant death and the fact he spent so much of his life not even understanding why he was doomed to constantly die in horrible painful ways, and for nobody else to remember that he even died to begin with. (kind of symbolic of the neglected child, huh?) 

this brings us to mysterion and princess kenny. in both the superhero game and the fantasy game, you’ll notice kenny is the one who tends to get the most involved, with the only exception being possibly cartman, who could be the topic of a whole other essay on identity issues. mysterion is the one superhero with a real power who exists outside of their superhero game (besides the kewn, whose superhero persona is entirely self-motivated anyway), and princess kenny gets so defensive of her identity that she betrays her friends in both the trilogy and the game. kenny also talks about lady mccormick in the third person in the first black friday episode, and i don’t know if any other characters speak about their personas in that way. so kenny intentionally places more distance between his personas and himself than the other kids do with their personas. 

therefore, i see mysterion and princess kenny as how kenny copes with his deeply repressed psychological issues. it’s a way to compartmentalize his feelings towards his constant suffering and the burden his family inadvertently placed on him by developing these two identities. one embraces his role as caretaker to the degree of becoming a superhero, and the other rejects it in favor of being entirely doted upon. (some people have read the prominence of roles as signs of a dissociative disorder, and i can see that with this context, but i don’t know if it’s really a perfect fit for any specific disorder, especially when there’s little information on kenny’s consciousness when it comes to these personas.)

mysterion is more obviously a tool for kenny to express his discontent with his town. in his first appearance, he states, “i could no longer sit by and watch as my city became a cesspool of crime,” which tracks with his earlier characterization as reluctantly accepting his family’s poverty despite constantly suffering. (plus i’m pretty sure several of kenny’s deaths were the result of crimes.) he refuses to be unmasked because he “would stop being a symbol,” and only does so in order to quell the unrest that his mystery has provoked. that "symbol" wording suggests that mysterion is an extreme version of kenny's self-sacrificing lifestyle to the point where he defines himself as a symbol of justice and hope, not a person. kenny himself is also pretty quiet and secretive, but more because nobody cares about him and he’s kind of afraid of getting killed any second. mysterion’s secret persona is something bold, powerful, and masculine. he is physically adept in a way we don’t see kenny behave, and much more reasonable and cautious about what’s best for him and humanity. (a good visual of this to contrast with kenny is the “mysterion re-rising” animation in the fractured but whole, where he consciously rejects the chance to go to the heaven full of naked women that kenny loves because he has to return to battle.)

mysterion is also a way for kenny to reclaim his "curse” and use it for good. as mysterion, he uses death (albeit reluctantly) to get out of tough situations and save his friends. in video games like fractured but whole and phone destroyer, mysterion’s ability to exist as a ghost and revive himself is a gameplay mechanic. this self-sacrificial personality trait has shown up in earlier seasons, and he kills himself for the good of the community/world/etc in “cartman’s mom is still a dirty slut,” the movie, and “jewbilee.” but he’s not nearly as interested in world issues unless he’s under pressure to care. (for example: he does join the workers’ strike in “bike parade,” but he’s not very passionate about it and doesn’t even care about the issue until his dad takes him to a union meeting.) kenny’s good with solving short-term issues while mysterion worries about the deeper, long-term problems with the town. 

this brings us to mysterion and the mccormicks. when we see mysterion’s interactions with karen, we see how mysterion represents kenny’s responsibilities towards her. mysterion is able to offer karen elaborate, heartfelt emotional support, and guarantee that he’ll always be there for her. he also beats up a girl who bullies her and threatens anybody else who thinks about hurting her - more on that aggressive instinct down below. while mysterion’s identity is known to his friends and the rest of the town, it’s not known to karen, who sees him as a guardian angel. presumably, this is so mysterion can remain a symbol of hope to her, just like he is to the town, and so karen feels like there’s people in the world who care about her besides her brother. however, this does backfire in the fractured but whole DLC where she laments how her brother doesn’t seem to spend time with her, which embarrasses mysterion as he promises to tell him to be there for her more often. this implies that kenny gets so wrapped up in being mysterion that he forgets that he has a duty to karen as kenny as well, further indicating that mysterion is a way to cope with the tragic responsibility of caring for a sibling not much younger than he is.

during the superhero trilogy, kenny also uses mysterion to question his parents about their cult meetings, something that shook him so badly when he learned about it that he broke character. mysterion also told his parents to be nicer to the kids, not beat each other up, pay their kids allowances, and not smoke. it seems that mysterion is able to approach kenny’s parents about serious issues while kenny himself mostly stays out of their business - possibly out of fear? (kenny’s more confrontational in later seasons, though - flipping off his dad in “bike parade,” for example.)

on a similar note, mysterion is way more openly angry and violent than kenny is, especially when it comes to the death curse, which he openly complains about in a way kenny himself never did. compare kenny complaining about stan ignoring his deaths in “cherokee hair tampons,” which only gets further ignored, and mysterion complaining about it in graphic detail in “coon vs coon and friends,” even killing himself in front of his friends, and understandably scaring the shit out of them. mysterion also gets really protective of karen, violently so, as seen with the girl he beats up in “the poor kid” and his distrust when the vampires befriend her in the “from dusk til casa bonita” DLC. such a mysterion is way more passionate and loud about justice and direct action while kenny is more resigned, and most of his good deeds are unknown to the public. if kenny has embraced this caretaker role, it makes sense that he vents his repressed anger through mysterion, especially if you take it in the context of dissociation - kenny can’t handle dwelling on his shitty life all the time, so mysterion holds that anger and finds a way to cope with it by trying to fix everything around them, including kenny’s home life. 

princess kenny is very opposite mysterion in many ways. most obviously, she’s a girl. kenny’s relationship with gender is something i think about a lot in light of PK. “tweek vs craig” depicted him as the only boy in home ec, and he was thrilled because it was the safe alternative to the deadly shop class. i think that, regardless of your headcanon for kenny’s gender (i personally see them as feminine nonbinary - i’m mostly using “he” pronouns in this essay strictly for recognition’s sake and because i’m mostly talking about the show’s depiction of kenny), he sees femininity as safe and comforting, but nevertheless very powerful. (remember that his mother, while not super feminine, is a very outspoken and aggressive woman who calls stuart out on his shit constantly.) and what’s a better combination of femininity and power than a magical girl? 

also one thing i want to note real quick is that karen still refers to kenny as her sister in the stick of truth despite not being super involved in their game which i personally choose to read as Trans Rights Subtext

this is how we get lady mccormick / princess kenny, who is largely a passive character during the black friday trilogy, sitting upon her throne and cutely commenting on the surroundings while stan translates for her. then when sony takes her in, she becomes the star of her own show, a magical japanese princess who doesn’t take shit from cartman or his army and gets whatever she wants because she’s a cute little girl and now she gets to be protected and doted upon! also she speaks japanese and is not muffled in the slightest despite wearing her parka....symbolism? and really interestingly is that when she supposedly dies, she brushes herself off and immediately revives, declaring that she’s okay. in kenny’s feminine fantasy, she doesn’t suffer when she dies, and revives without any mess at all. princess kenny is always gonna be okay!

PK is also very flirty and overly sexual. it’s no secret that kenny is very interested in and knowledgeable of sex. he also absolutely worships women’s bodies, as seen with his views of heaven and that whole plot of “major boobage.” i don’t even read this as lust, because he’s ten, but sheer fascination with sex. maybe it plays into that whole “growing up too fast” concept where he tries to indulge in the “fun” parts of adulthood to make up for the exhaustion of caregiving, but this has been a thing since before kenny was depicted as a real caregiver so IDK. 

anyway, i think PK is also a way for kenny to experiment with flirting and sex, particularly with other boys. she uses her coyness and, in the games, her bare chest to entice boys. her cuteness also attracts grown men in “titties and dragons” which goes largely unremarked upon, which is a bit uncomfortable but still works with the idea that she’s the most “lovable” form of kenny. she also apparently thinks the new kid is “cute.” iit’s really funny to me how kenny is depicted as interested in strictly girls while princess kenny only focuses on boys, which could support the idea that PK is a separate entity from kenny, or that kenny just needs to figure himself out. either way, i imagine kenny finds some thrill in getting men to pay attention to them when their male friends often treat her as superfluous, and even then it often involves objectifying herself (this also tracks with their behavior in “fat camp”). it’s kind of sad if you think about it.

in the climax of the stick of truth, princess kenny has her own in-depth backstory, where she was an orc/elf rejected by both the elves and humans. i think this reflects kenny’s feeling of being “othered” as non-human (since this game chronologically comes after the superhero trilogy) and just generally not feeling welcome among their friends unless they need her. there may also be some parallels between her friends denying her the right to be a princess and kenny’s friends refusing to believe in his immortality. when she rebels against her friends choosing the stick over friendship, it’s another way for kenny to cope with their mixed-to-negative feelings about their friends. so while PK is a figure to be doted on, she’s still probably more gutsy than the kenny we usually know. 

however, PK is not entirely selfish or apathetic about the world around her. in the opening of “a song of ass and fire,” her inner monologue explains her choice to deflect to the PS4 side as the side she believes “is best for all.” she also laments that everybody, including her parents, will be fighting on black friday. it seems that PK dreads the mere idea of war, which contradicts mysterion’s tendency to use violence as a means to protect others. PK still uses her adorableness to help her team, and only asks that they accept her, which really isn’t much. it’s just when she, you know, becomes a nazi zombie and puts the world in danger because she’s so pissed about not being accepted for who she is. 

in my original post, i used the freudian personality theory to explain these three personas, which i regret because i fucking hate freud and he’s heavily responsible for modern consumerism and planned obsolescence. but the basic concepts of the id, ego, and superego do kind of illustrate what i’m getting at with these guys. i assigned princess kenny as the id, because she’s more about self-gratification and getting what she thinks she deserves as well as a tendency towards sexual gratification, and mysterion as the superego (hehe get it super) because of his strong inclination towards morality. however, this isn’t that black-and-white, as princess kenny has some moral considerations and mysterion has violent impulses (the “aggressive instinct”) that are more easily attributed to the id. nevertheless, it seems that kenny is still the balance between these exaggerated personas, and when he expresses attitudes similar to theirs, they are far more downplayed due to the necessities of his situation as a caretaker and an underappreciated friend. kind of makes you wonder if/how the attitudes of mysterion and princess kenny will manifest in him when he’s older.

[terapsina]

Hi :) I just saw a post about this new Netflix show „Warrior Nun“ on my dash and got curious. Could you tell me what it’s about, please? (and if you’re done, did you like it?)

Sure, and believe me it’s a FUN RIDE. I’ve just finished all 10 episodes and believe you me I was thoroughly entertained.

It’s a story about the Order of the Cruciform Sword, which is a holy order of warrior nuns whose sacred mission is to fight demons. And their holy ‘weapon’ is a halo that gets embedded in the back of the sister who then becomes the Warrior Nun (capital letters and all). 

It actually kinda reminds me of the Slayer mythos a bit. Except that for the most part the nuns actually get to consent.

EXCEPT then of course stuff hits the fan and instead of being placed in the next nun as they were supposed to they get interrupted and place it inside Ava Silva. A 19 year old recently deceased orphan. This was NOT supposed to happen.

Her being brought back from the dead because of it has ALSO never before happened. And so cue the entrance of Ava, the girl who did not choose this, does not want it, does not understand it and would really rather enjoy the life she suddenly has.

And I know this can be a really annoying trope, I get it. The inexperienced Chosen One who fucks everything up, keeps running away and discarding her duty (that she didn’t choose) when there’s a whole bunch of women who would probably have done a better job? This trope can be a real drag BUT here it’s saved by a few facts: 1) She’s not yet another dude; 2) Until she died and woke up with superpowers she’d spent the majority of her life almost entirely paralyzed from the neck down and getting emotionally and mentally abused by her ‘caretaker’ at the orphanage so who can really blame the girl for wanting to live a little?; and 3) She’s utterly charming and funny (in a ‘makes endless puns and then laughs at them herself’ sort of way).

Plus at the end of the day, when the cards are on the table and all the shit hits the fan she always comes through.

And then there’s the Sister Nuns.

Lets start with Shotgun Mary. 

I don’t want to tell her story because I feel like that would take away from the way she tells it herself. Just know she’s a complete badass but one who we also get to really know beyond just the way she can beat people up and use shotguns (though the scenes where she beats people up and uses shotguns are REALLY COOL). Also she and the previous halo bearer were totally girlfriends (like... they don’t really come out and SAY it but the subtext is so heavy it might as well be text, and yes, I guess it’s got that annoying dead girlfriend trope and if she was the only representation we got I’d call foul but it’s not).

Then there’s Sister Beatrice. 

Spoilers. She’s a lesbian. I just wanted to put that out there. I’ll let the rest be said by her in the show itself but I wanted to make that clear. She’s absolutely a 100% queer. Canonically. Also YET ANOTHER badass, actually near the beginning of the season she gets my absolute favorite fight scene, you know that trope where someone takes down a whole roomful of dudes? YEAAAAAAAAAH GIRL!!!

After that we’ve got Sister Lilith. 

(the one on the right)

She’s the nun that was SUPPOSED to take on the halo next and she might have some issues about it BUT if you’re expecting to end up hating her you’ve got another thing coming. She starts out cold but believe me you’ll end up wanting to wrap her in warm blankets and keep her safe from the world forever. I’m almost getting tired of saying it but... ALSO a complete badassssssss. Let’s just say if Mary is shoot them in the face!badass, and Beatrice is martial arts!badass, then Lilith is TERMINATOR!badass.

And finally there’s Sister Camila.

She’s the baby. The newbie. Well if Ava wasn’t there then Camila would be the newbie anyway. She’s awkward as hell but the SWEETEST person there. We all love and adore her. But give her a submachine gun and grin at the chaos.

Those five are who I’d say are the core of the show (or at least will be, it takes a while to get there but the road is fun and once we get there it was SO worth the wait).

Now you might be tricked into thinking it’s just a show about the demon of the week but actually it’s a very serialized show with an overarching plot that ends up dealing with a lot more (including institutionalized patriarchy that might have been taking advantage of these girls for centuries, and the morality of using a line of Warrior Nuns that keep dying in their fight against darkness).

And it’s just a very fun show that kept me entertained all the way through. And just to cover my bases, here’s the trailer:

[thenexusofsouls]

Flock- what is your muse's family like? How do they get along with them? (Tony)

Eagle- is your muse courageous or cowardly? What might cause them to act in the opposite manner, if anything? (Ethan)

Sparrow- what artistic or creative hobbies does your muse have? What is their favorite or most treasured creation? (Natasha)

Cardinal- how does your muse recover from strong emotions? How do they recouperate? (Michael)

{i am the caretaker of souls} This got long, haha, so I’ll put it under a cut.

Flock- what is your muse's family like? How do they get along with them? (Tony)

So... Tony’s relationships with various members of his family are complicated and not always positive, but the following five people mean the most to him, and with each of them, he’s tried to do the right thing at least at some point in his life. With some it worked better than others, for varying reasons, but I’ll focus on these and describe his relationship with them a little:

Father, Howard Stark: Oh boy. Where do I begin. There was so much wrong with Tony’s relationship with his dad. Both of them were incredibly intelligent and very arrogant, and that caused a huge ego clash between them, but for different reasons. Howard never felt that Tony lived up to his expectations as a son, although half the time he didn’t really give him half a chance or bother to notice when Tony did do something productive, constructive, good, noteworthy, etc. Tony wanted his father’s love, attention, and approval, but often went about it the wrong away, trying to stand out with bad behavior rather than positive achievements. Whenever they met in the middle and could have had a chance at bonding, the two of them were so defensive or closed off that they just couldn’t open up to each other. This never really got resolved, and then Howard was killed, so Tony was left with not only a huge hole in his heart from the love he felt he never really got from Howard, but also an emotional wound that would never have any closure.

Mother, Maria Stark: Tony loved his mother to bits, although when he was younger he often pretended like she worried to much and sometimes smothered him. From Maria, Tony got the love he felt he never got from his dad, but it was almost too easy. She just gave it unconditionally, and in some ways that offset what he wasn’t getting from his dad so much more because of the dramatic contrast in how his parents treated him. She was the softer, forgiving, understanding, encouraging parents in contrast to Howard’s aloof, distant, businesslike fathering. She was the one person in his life that he felt safe going to in any kind of vulnerable way, and losing her left Tony feeling very alone and isolated in a way he couldn’t express to other people... so he bottled it all up.

Girlfriend/Wife, Pepper Potts: Ugh. This relationship, in my opinion, was terrible and toxic. He was distant, defensive, and he abused alcohol to an extreme. Also he put her in danger either by accident or inadvertently with things he said or did. His communication was never the greatest and his coping mechanisms were unhealthy at best. She shamed Tony for his trauma responses as if they were personality flaws he should be ashamed of (scattered memory, nightmares, panic attacks, etc.), used walking out on him as a threat and emotional weapon against him whenever she just didn’t feel like dealing with him, and often was not there for him when he needed her. But... Tony genuinely loved her and something must have been good enough for both of them for them to want to make it work, and somehow, eventually, it did. I think once Tony knew he wasn’t going to lose her (the threat of her always just wanting to leave really kept him on edge in a way that was damaging to his mental health), he calmed down and some of his behaviors and coping mechanisms actually got better, which then in turn made Pepper want to stay with him and work it out, so those two things fed off each other in a positive way. Her actually marrying him brought about an emotional stability Tony never had before, both within himself and in a relationship. He settled down considerably after that and was much more stable mentally once he had her full support. He loves her with all his heart and there isn’t much he wouldn’t do for her.

Older Daughter, Carter Stark: This is going to sound terrible, haha, so I’ll preface it by saying that Tony loves Carter immensely. She’s his daughter and all he wants to do is keep her safe and make sure she has the best life she can. But... in many ways, she’s also a symbol of some of the worst times in his life, some of the worst things about himself, and some of the worst things he’s ever done. He slept around, he let people down, he got people killed, he wasn’t there for the ones he loved, etc. She reminds him of a lot of things about himself that he wishes weren’t true or didn’t happen. Her existence has also made him wonder on many occasions whether he might have other children whose mothers never knew he was the father or chose not to even inform him. He loves her, as I said, but there’s also just this aching pain and guilt he feels with her that he didn’t do enough for her, didn’t protect her well, or even that her life might have been better had she not known him. Some of that is his own anxiety telling him things that aren’t true, but some of it is due to events that happened that he knows have affected Carter’s mental health that Tony feels responsible for, either through his own actions or by the company he kept at the time. So Carter reminds Tony of the worst, lowest, and most broken aspects of himself, and I think that will always cause him to believe that he was a terrible father to her. He’s spent many hours wishing that he had done more for her in some way and had been able to be a better father than Howard was to him.

Younger Daughter, Morgan Stark: If Carter is a symbol of how bad a father he could be and some of Tony’s worst qualities, the Morgan is a symbol of the best he could be. Morgan in many ways is Tony’s redemption. Other people outside looking in might say his actions during Endgame were redeeming, or that he had moments before that throughout the franchise that helped redeem parts of him along the way, but in Tony’s mind, Morgan is his redemption. She’s what happens when he does things right. Carter helped contribute to this because he didn’t want to make the same mistakes he made with her, and he sought to correct as many as he could. His own father also contributed because Tony had a big example of the kind of father he never wanted to be, and he tried to avoid that at all costs. Stepping back from the Avengers and focusing on his marriage and being a father to his daughters was far better for his mental health, even with the guilt and sadness of everyone’s failure in Infinity War. So the years during which he raised Morgan were Tony’s most stable and healthy as far as his own mental state. If he was ever concerned about the legacy he would leave - and he was - he knew he was leaving something pure and positive behind after his death, whenever it might be, with Morgan.

Eagle- is your muse courageous or cowardly? What might cause them to act in the opposite manner, if anything? (Ethan)

Ethan is actually pretty damn brave, considering he’s lived a number of years in fear. Before he entered into this nomadic lifestyle in an attempt to keep other people at a distance, he was protective of his friends and girlfriends. As he and his more recent girlfriend Kelly dealt with the creature infesting their house, there were many times when he was woken up in the middle of the night by her or suddenly startled by her screaming and had to get up and see what the problem was. He would always go on the offensive, investigating with something held as a weapon, letting Kelly hide behind him. He was scared, but he wasn’t about to let her get hurt. The problem was, there wasn’t really anything he could do about it in the end.

When Ethan is by himself, it’s a different story. He’s willing to be that shield or put himself in danger to protect someone he cares about, but if it’s just him alone, he’s not stupid. He’s not looking to throw his life away for nothing. So when he’s alone, he’s a lot more attention to his self-preservation instincts.

Sparrow- what artistic or creative hobbies does your muse have? What is their favorite or most treasured creation? (Natasha)

Dancing. Specifically ballet dancing. Allow me to explain. You might think that she’d never want to touch pointe shoes again with how ballet was used against her in the Red Room. It was used as a conditioning tool, both for its strenuous and physical demands and difficult skillset necessary to master it, but also for other typical brainwashing techniques it provides, such as the use of repetition, association through music, and creating a sense of isolation through competition with others around you. However, something weird happened after Natasha defected to SHIELD. She started to dance for herself. She only did it when alone, sometimes with music but often times without any. Somehow, she took this thing that had been used against her and made it her own. It became a source of comfort, almost like the dancing itself had been a wounded friend, and somehow by only doing it privately and emotionally, she was helping it to be something more positive every bit as much as it was helping her heal.

While dancing, Natasha lets her mind wander. She allows herself to feel things she doesn’t express to others. At several points in her life when things hurt her emotionally, she took time out to dance. Such as when Wanda dredged up memories of the Red Room in her mind, when Bruce left her, and often during the years between Infinity War and Endgame. As far as hat her most treasured creation is... I suppose it isn’t something solid she can hold in her hands, but every time she dances, she feels like she’s created something good. And I would definitely say it’s treasured because it’s cathartic for her and helps her to feel whole and less anxious, and there's incredible value in that for her.

Cardinal- how does your muse recover from strong emotions? How do they recouperate? (Michael)

Since the word “recover” is being used, I’m assuming the strong emotions in question are negative ones? Anger, sadness, frustration, fear, those sorts of things? Typically, he needs to take a step back and be quiet and/or alone for a time to reset himself. Michael does have a temper, and he does feel emotions like sadness and grief very strongly, so sometimes he needs to step back and make sure that he doesn’t make any rash decisions based off of emotion. Quiet prayer usually helps, but if not that then just sitting quietly alone for a time, preferably out in nature somewhere, usually serves to reset his internal composure and steady his mind. Michael doesn’t like to act impulsively or in anger, so if he feels himself about to do that, he usually steps away. The one exception is when someone he cares about is in danger, then he might act on his protective instincts. Regret follows, but again, he finds prayer to be comforting to him in those types of moments.

[ywhiterain]

Jack in the Box/Moriah

I’ve been sitting in the season fourteen finale. As always, my interpretation of SPN views the big plot points as a metaphor for intense/toxic/abusive family dynamics.  Reading the finale as God coming around and fucking up things for the lulz.... okay, yeah. I get that. But the bigger point is about the unification of the two big SPN families - Winchesters+God and the Archangels.

Cut because this is TL:DR even for me lol.

In a happier story, Jack would have been the starting point to unify these two families. And, to a certain extent, he did. Jack tied Castiel more deeply to the Sam/Mary/Dean family unit. The best of times were the five of them together. Gabriel didn’t get to bond with Jack much, but he chose to side with the Winchester and rejected Lucifer’s pity party.

And, make no mistake, Lucifer’s, er, ‘redemption arc’ was never really about him becoming a better person. It was nice for the world that he wasn’t actively trying to end it, but he spent all of his time whining about how God just scapegoated him. Yeah, he did. But Lucifer made a lot of choices that hurt a lot of people. He ended up being the beginning of Jack’s eventual downfall.

In the start, Jack was bright and brimming with life. Like any baby, he was brimming with potential. Anything was possible. Literally, in his case. But no baby comes into the world without baggage. Jack’s father was a problem, but the real start of his tragedy was that his first day alive ended with his father’s funeral.

This brings us to Sam. His feelings for Jack have always been multifaceted and complicated. He wanted to use Jack to save his mom, he saw himself in Jack and wanted to help him grow up to be a good person, and the shadow of Lucifer always lingered between them. But, here’s the thing, when Jack was dying, Sam stayed by his side the entire time. Dean walked away, Cas followed.

Sam took his first death the hardest. The thing that brought him to his knees was the fact his stupid ax broke so he couldn’t put together a proper wake for him. Sam’s the one who figured out how to save Jack. His mourning of Mary is tied with Jack, not only because Jack accidently killed her, but because the relationship he was building with Mary was, in part, ABOUT Jack. 

Sam wanted a unique relationship with his mother. He wanted to know her as a person and have what he’d been missing his entire life. The one he got to build, however briefly, was tied to Jack. She was proud of the man, the father, that Sam had become. To Jack. Who mimics Castiel in instinct and Dean though effort, but whose destiny and heart are as similar to Sam’s.

The only thing that Jack wanted was to be a good person. To use his powers to to help people.. To prove to everyone (and himself) that the source of his power wasn’t a defining aspect of who he was. It’s not to different than season two Sam keeping a list of everyone he was able to save as proof that maybe he wasn’t destined to be evil.

Jack, when killing Michael, declares himself a Winchester. In saving the world (worlds, really, because Michael would tear though every universe until Chuck finally showed his face), in saving his family, Jack doomed his soul.

Later, Jack wanted Mary to go away. He was just a kid yelling a caretaker to leave him alone. Typical, normal behavior any child sometimes experiences. But the curse of Jack’s powers is that are taken to literal extremes. He kills Mary. He forces a world without lying to come into being.

The emotional crux of the finale was Dean, who wanted to kill Jack; Cas who wanted to save him, and Sam who was torn. Cas and Dean have no doubts about what the right thing, they don’t waver on what they want emotionally. Sam is angry at Jack, but he thinks Jack deserves to be saved.

Dean tells Sam to prey to Jack. To be as sincere as possible. All Puppy Dog Eyes, All The Time. And here’s how the scene is framed: two adults tricking a child who trusts them to be locked up in a box for eternity. Whatever Jack’s crimes, the camera is asking us to sympathize with Jack’s pain. Sam is pained the entire time and when Jack looks to him for reassurance - Sam giving him the okay is one of his worst moments.

Jack in his box declares he doesn’t like it. Like a child with a limited vocabulary. He screams for Sam and Dean, but has to break himself out.  

Chuck comes back, all but eating popcorn.

Dean plans to kill Jack. The bright side: the magical gun that he’d use would kill him, too. So he’d leave Sam alone, with his brother and his kid both dead. Dean does the ugly dirty deeds, but forces Sam to live with the fallout. Like the end of season two.

To Dean’s credit, when Jack falls to his knees and agrees to die (mirroring Sam when Dean traded his life in a ploy with Death), he wavers. He realized Mary wouldn’t want Dean to kill Jack. Her revival at Jack’s expense might have actually been unforgivable. Mary’s last actions alive was reaching out to a troubled Jack, a boy she loved. Her death was an accident and blame and punishment won’t fix what happened, much less address the underlining reasons why it happened, Jack lost his soul saving the people (he took down Michael, who spent most of the season terrorizing Dean specifically). 

The fractured remains of our main family might have survived. But then Chuck kills Jack

Toxic and abusive family dynamics killed a child. Every adults around Jack played their part in his downfall and death. It feels like the most fitting end for his character. A baby can sometimes bring a families together, but they can’t fix what’s broken. They, more often than not, become victimized by the broken family dynamic.

But that’s not the only way to look at Jack’s story. He did get to live. He loved and was loved. He spent his brief life trying to make the world a better place. He saved the world. And he’s going to come back.

Children born in broken families aren’t a cautionary tale. They are people, filled with potential. A kid can’t fix a family, that kid can make the world better. Families that are broken, twisted, toxic, abusive - they still produce people whose stories and are as varied as any other type of person.

In this case, a better god.

[foxofthedesert]

A brief RedQueen take on Hades/Persephone

For @loudestdork in response to this incredible post.  It’s your fault I’m still up at 6 am.  

Also, I haven’t even proofread this, so please blame any errors or general crappiness in quality on either mental fatigue or sleepless mania.  :)  

Slowly Regina rises from her chilly onyx throne.  The flickering embers stirring back to life within her breast had compelled her to rise, and as they burst once more into flame, the line of silver candelabras begin to glow with an intensity that hurts her eyes. Darkness recedes as light suffuses the chamber, bathing her in warmth that steals her breath away.

Equal measures of excitement and dread war within soul, for within the hour she will leave this place for the surface.  

Eyes slipping shut, she conjures up an image to quell her fears – it is one she often draws upon whenever the tenacious, insidious claws of despair dig into her psyche during the interminable, desolate months of spring and summer.  Rich chestnut hair cascades in waves and curls over shapely shoulders and down a finely arched back.  Pale skin lacking scar or blemish, smooth to the touch like the silk produced by Minerva's loom and sweet as honey to the taste, bared to her greedy hands and eyes.  Sea green irises merry with youth and vitality and unbridled curiosity that will burn a brilliant amber when angered or aroused and fade into sickly blue while in the throes of anguish.  A frame to rival Diana; a visage more comely than Venus; and a smile and laugh even brighter than those of Apollo and Laetitia that alone is capable of banishing the perpetual gloom that drapes the realm of the dead in a curtain of despair; all belonging to the only person in all of existence that truly matters to Regina anymore.  

Soon, so very soon, a voice more beautiful than any of the nine Muses will caress her longing ears.  She recalls in vivid detail how it sounded upon the first such reunion.

“Oh!  How dreary you have allowed our home to become in my absence,” Ruby (for that is the chosen name of Regina’s beloved) had trilled, an effective chastisement delivered in tones so affectionate and gentle that even the Goddess of the Dead cannot summon a word to speak in her own defense.  “I shall spend a week at the very least removing cobwebs and dust, no to mention relocating all of the industrious little creatures that have taken up residence in the shadows. Really, love, why must you continually refuse to utilize the resources at your disposal?  Sydney is a splendid caretaker, if not an incorrigible gossip, and Maleficent a wise and capable counselor.  How many times must I come back home to an unfit abode before you take my suggestions to heart?  Honestly, your continued stubbornness on this issue is most disappointing!”

“Bah!  Due caution would appear as stubbornness to your disgustingly naive notion that redemption is possible for those whose misdeeds are as numerous and grievous as mine,” Regina had replied, nose curling in rebellious distaste at any suggestion she be so lazy – or efficient depending upon perspectives not her own clearly superior one – delegate the tasks laid upon her by laws more ancient than her fellow deities or the beastly titans who birthed them.  

Oh how Ruby had bristled at that well-aimed dart. “Your sarcasm is not appreciated.  Nor is your conclusion.  I do not believe it is naive to hope for those who have made mistakes so long as they are capable of remorse.  I would not be here otherwise.”

“Perhaps that is your great error.  You have blinded yourself with optimism to the truth that I am indeed beyond hope and have doomed yourself to an eternity of sorrow by consequence.”

Regina knows how best to hurt with her words.  The skill is, according to her peers, the one most responsible for her being an outcast.  Her sister had offered an olive branch after their cataclysmic war, but she had refused it in a caustic speech that is recited in worshipful devotion by her Terran acolytes to this day.  

Words are a weapon to be used with precision, their mother had taught them as youths just blooming into their cosmic powers, for they are every bit as devastating as fire or lightning.

When she was banished from Olympos and cast into Dīs upon a searing bolt a lightning, Regina was robbed of her fire.  But they could not take her words, and she has used them ever since in both condemnation and reward to pass judgment upon those who arrive upon her shores.  That Ruby is too commonly a target for her verbal pila is a stain upon her conscience that irritates her far more than it should considering who she is and what she has done.  

Life would be much simpler the six months per annum they are together if she could learn to hold her barbed tongue in check, but Regina has never been one for simple.  And so they are often at odds over the banal.  They will quarrel over contentious adjudications. They will spend hours in mutually stubborn silence while offended or emotionally injured. They will disagree on meals, spar over Olympian philosophy and art and politics, and speak to one another in outbursts of raw angry passion wielding razor sharp phrases which leave wounds so deep as to be nearly visible.  

But there is also love between them.  Immeasurable love.  Love that time and distance cannot erase when they are forced apart for half the year.  Love that is blind to faults and annoyances, that weathers storms of rage and frustration and misunderstanding, and that forgives trespasses and inspires self-improvement however glacially incremental.  A love that twines their immortal essences together so tightly that they share a dreamscape while sleeping, and that they have no use for repose is of no consequence when the aching of loneliness or separation becomes unbearable. 

It is that boundless, magical, incomprehensible love which revived Regina’s moribund heart and made her start to care again.  For that reason she is grateful beyond description on most days and on her worst regretful she ever laid eyes upon the gorgeous creature who single-handedly turned her entire world upside down.

“If I am blind to love you, then may I never see again,” Ruby had said, those enchanting eyes glimmering so brightly in the faint light that the individual strands of her irises were visible. “And if this is to be my doom as you say, then I accept it with open arms, for it shall be one of bountiful joy. The only sorrow for me will come when we are again forced to part.  I spent the past six months yearning for you just as I shall the next six when our bell proclaims the arrival of spring.”

“Well, if not blind then you are certainly foolish,” Regina said, throat choked with so much feeling that she felt as though she might suffocate.

Ruby had merely smiled in that way only she could, playful and loving and sincere all at once.  “I am guilty as charged of being a fool, my Queen.  Your fool.”

Unable to help herself, Regina felt her lips curl up at the edges.  “Well, we cannot all be perfect.  Not even the celebrated daughter of Ceres Eugenia, it appears.” So as to change the reverse of their conversation back toward less emotionally distressful directions, she had cleared her throat and then returned to the original topic. “As for your so-called suggestion: it is, quite frankly, absurd. One of the two miserable wretches you mentioned earlier is a driveling sycophant while the other is a maudlin dragoness whose fits of fire-breathing mania lead me question my decision to retain her.  No doubt they both would abuse such positions to undermine my authority.  Prudence would dictate that I should cast them both into Tartarus and be done with their annoyances!”  

Ruby’s gasp of affront was so dramatic that it echoed through the cavernous chamber and caused the nearest candle flames to flicker.  

“Morta Plutonia Regina!  One of these days I will finally teach you how to be nice to those in your charge, especially those who would call you their friend.”

Regina winced as she always does at her given name and returned the favor in kind with as much snark as she possibly could.

“I need no friends, Proserpina Libera,” she said.  “I have the dead to keep me company.”

The story of their first meeting, and incidentally how Proserpina Libera became Ruby, then begins to play through Regina’s mind.  Before long, she becomes so lost in the memory that time ceases to have any meaning whatsoever.

Her musings last until a ghostly bell rings in the distance.  She emerges from wistful recollection to mournful chiming accompanied by plaintive voices singing an announcement that summer has ended and autumn has begun.  

Once, there was no bell to quarterly drone and chant in languid harmony with the turning of seasons.  Once, she was painfully alone amongst a swelling sea of souls thrust cruelly into her charge.  Once, she was content to nurse her hatred of her elder sibling and ruler of Olympos whose envious betrayal resulted in Regina’s current circumstance, and she had bent that hatred and bitterness toward piling ever-more layers of jagged ice upon the impenetrable fortress that was her irreparably damaged heart.  Once, there had been no evidence of life at all in this place that she called home save the frost of her breath and tortured moaning of the damned that plagued her every waking hour. Once, she had believed herself incapable of love and took great comfort in that belief.

But that was before her beloved rosa rubra strolled through the forest she was traversing in secret, and left upon every inch of earth those bare feet trod over a carpet of lush red roses.

The surface back then felt much further away, too far for Regina’s overtaxed attention to be concerned with happenings above yet too near to ever escape hope of being freed from her endless confinement.  The only reason she kept up with current events was to better evaluate the lives of those she was constrained by unbreakable law to judge.  One day she learned of a scandal detailing how her sister had become impregnated by a mortal man through spurious means and birthed a daughter who was a gifted huntress that won the heart of a princess. Knowing that her unforgivably wicked sibling Zelena would be unable to resist interfering, she arranged a brief excursion to terra firma. It had taken countless hours of planning and work, but she had managed to slip through an isolated section of the great Gates of Dīs while Cerberus was distracted (the brutish if not mildly adorable mongrel had still been hopelessly under the thrall of her sister, an enchantment that Ruby was blessedly able to break) and emerge in the land of the living for the first time in millennia.

At first Regina had been unable to do much more than marvel at the scenery.  For thousands of years she had been trapped in a world of darkness that smelled and sounded and felt like death.  But the world above was teeming with life, even the air smelled as though it were animate, and the overload of so much sensory input had nearly paralyzed her. Once she recovered, she began picking her way through the forest by foot as using her powers to travel would have alerted the Olympians that she was no longer present at her station.

About halfway through the journey, she was stopped cold by the sound of singing. That angelic verse was carried upon the wings of a gentle breeze straight through the mountainous walls of ice surrounding her heart. In moments so swift she was helpless to react, she physically felt her defenses shatter and her resolve to remain aloof from all emotion crumble.  A single verse of that song had accomplished what the assembled armies of Olympos could not upon the bloody plains of Thessaly, a verse that she would eventually decree be recited each year by siren spirits upon the autumnal equinox.  She was so mesmerized by the soft melodic quality of the singer’s voice that she would not know the rest of the song until Ruby performed it much later.

Recklessly, like a starving lion desperately trailing its only hope for survival, Regina followed the song to the edge of a tiny clearing.  And then Regina saw her.  In the midst, haloed by Apollo’s rays, she danced and sang as birds joined in with the melody and branches swayed hypnotically to the rhythm.  Clad in a flowing crimson-trimmed dress, draped by a lavish red cloak, crowned by a wreath of fresh flowers with roses crawling up her bare arms; her expression open in untold wonderment, cheeks ruddy with the exhilaration of living; she was – and still is – the very epitome of beauty, and grace, and charm, and hope, and joy.  Save for the wedding night, no sight before or since has ever rivaled that first glimpse of embodied perfection.

A deafening rumble shakes the cavernous hall as the earth above lazily yawns as if arising from a seasonal slumber, snatching Regina’s focus away from that first fateful meeting.  From above, rubble rains down as mote and stone, and the prevailing sunlight filtering through the haze casts a diluted shadow across the hall.

She turns her eyes up, squinting to mitigate the intense pain of photo-sensitivity, and watches impassively as the detritus begins to mold itself into a great spiral staircase.  One by one the steps arrange themselves, each uniform in shape and perfectly spaced out as she had commanded centuries ago via laborious incantation, until they have spanned from polished obsidian floors to vaulted granite ceiling.  

With measured steps she ascends the newly formed stairway, her raven-down cloak billowing behind her.  She holds her head high, proud and regale, as she ascends.  Eager anticipation has caused her heart to thunder and her limbs to buzz with energy, but she is still a Queen.  Always a Queen.

The afternoon sun hangs low on the horizon, her cousin having turned his attentions elsewhere in the world, and the air is crisp and clean.  Death has yet to arrive in earnest, the foliage of the forest remains mostly verdant, but Regina can feel it approaching from every angle, a stooping, skulking specter whose insatiable hunger is gnawing to the point of agony.  For a split second she falters, inundated by the cloying scent of nascent decay which beckons her to turn heel and descend into the realm where such monsters as herself belong.

And then she hears it, the introductory lines of a new song written solely for her:

My love, my love, to thee I call;

My love, the fairest of them all

With raven’s hair and silken skin.

I come at last to thee again!

As if an insect brushed away from one’s collar, death recedes into the back of her consciousness so that life can inhabit the space it has abandoned.  Life that reverently whispers her name into the crook of her neck and the flesh of her shoulder, that holds her hand and brushes away the tears that began to fall again after infusing her with vitality she had never before experienced, and that loves her beyond any logical explanation and refuses to ever give up on her. Life that has a name, Ruby, and is currently waiting for her in meadow they both hold so dear.

Squaring her shoulders, Regina strides forward with renewed strength.  She has a reunion to attend that she has been awaiting for six very long months.  Until Ruby points it out, she will not even realize she is smiling.  

[aion-rsa]

Dennis ‘Des’ Nilsen is Far From David Tennant’s First Psychopath Role

https://ift.tt/2RNJXa5

David Tennant’s transformation into serial killer Dennis Nilsen for ITV’s Des was unsettlingly convincing. It wasn’t just the physical resemblance, though under that hairstyle and behind those 1980s glasses frames, the similarity was remarkable. It was also the posture, the unwavering eye contact, and the voice; mumbling and unconcerned, listing the terrible details of Nilsen’s crimes as if reciting a recipe instead of multiple brutal murders. 

As Nilsen, Tennant pulled off what every actor hopes to in a real-life role – a disappearing trick. He slid clean inside the role, leaving no trace of The Doctor, or Simon from There She Goes, or the demon Crowley, or Alec Hardy, or his funny, self-deprecating public persona. For those three hours on screen, he was nothing but Nilsen.   

The role is one in a long line of on-screen psychopaths for Tennant. He might be best loved around these parts as excitable, convivial romantic hero the Tenth Doctor (who, as noted below, also had his villainous moments), but David Tennant has been playing bad guys for decades, starting with a 1995 episode of ITV police procedural The Bill…

Steven Clemens in The Bill, ‘Deadline’ (1995)

In his early 20s, David Tennant went through a rite of passage for the UK acting profession: he landed a part in The Bill.  And not just any old part on The Bill, this one was a peach. Tennant wasn’t cast as some kid DC Carver caught snatching a granny’s handbag – he played psychopathic kidnapper and murderer Steven Clemens.

When 15-year-old schoolgirl Lucy Dean (an early role for Honeysuckle Weeks) was abducted after receiving threatening phone calls, the caretaker from her school was brought in for questioning. What followed was a high-stakes game of Blink between Tennant’s character and Sun Hill Station’s finest. Clemens toyed with the police, first denying responsibility and then refusing to tell them where he’d stashed Lucy. It’s a big performance, as suits the soap-like context, but even then Tennant made a good villain, revelling in his evildoing. Clemens came a cropper eventually when Lucy was found alive and the investigation linked him to the kidnap and murder of another schoolgirl. Watch the whole episode here. 

Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)

Skipping forward a decade, Tennant’s most mainstream cinematic baddie to date is Death Eater Barty Crouch Jr. in the fourth Harry Potter film. Crouch Jr. was the Voldemort supporter who engineered Harry’s entry into the Triwizard Tournament, and turned the winning trophy into a portkey that delivered Potter straight into Voldemort’s waiting arms (well, Voldemort was sort of soup at that point, but bit of magic and voila – arms!).

Crouch Jr. did all this while magically disguised as Brendan Gleeson’s character Mad-Eye Moody, so Tennant’s actual screen time in the film is pretty limited. In his few short appearances though – in a flashback to his Ministry of Magic trial and after his disguise is rumbled – Tennant makes a real impression as the unhinged, tongue-flicking baddie.

The Time Lord Victorious in Doctor Who ‘Waters of Mars’ (2009)

The majority of the time, the Tenth Doctor was a sweetie – big grin, lots of enthusiasm, two hearts full of frivolity and love. Every so often though, Ten’s genocidal, survivor-guilt past rose to the surface. Never cruel, never cowardly, no, but sometimes a bit… murdery and drunk on power. 

One such occasion was his brutal extermination of the Racnoss children in Christmas special ‘The Runaway Bride’, and another was his Time Lord Victorious trip at the end of ‘Waters of Mars’. In the special, Ten changes the events of a fixed point in time to save the lives of Captain Adelaide Brooke (Lindsay Duncan) and her surviving crew, bringing them back to Earth in the TARDIS instead of leaving them to die. Realising the serious ramifications of his timeline meddling, Brooke confronts the Doctor about his arrogance, and puts the mistake right. It doesn’t take Ten long to come back to his senses, drop the god act, and realise he’s gone too far, and it’s David Tennant’s ability to convincingly play both the power-crazed god and the devastated man that makes him one of the best in the business. 

Kilgrave in Jessica Jones (2015)

David Tennant played a bonafide demon from actual hell in Good Omens, the TV adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s 1990 novel, but Crowley still had nothing on his Jessica Jones character.

The first series of Marvel’s Jessica Jones on Netflix won acclaim for its depiction of a coercive, abusive relationship through a comic book fantasy lens. David Tennant was Kilgrave, a villain with the power of mind control following experiments conducted during his childhood. Instead of using his power for good (convincing people to pick up litter, be kind to animals, etc.), Kilgrave exerted his will on the world at large, bending those around him to his sick desires. When he stumbled upon super-powered private investigator Jones, he didn’t stop at using her super-strength for his own ends. Kilgrave also used his powers to keep Jones hostage and manipulate her into coerced sex. Jones’ battle to escape Kilgrave was powerfully acted by Krysten Ritter and David Tennant, who had the range to show Kilgrave’s ‘charm’ as well as his chilling megalomania. 

Read more

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Cale Erendreich in Bad Samaritan (2018)

Director Dean Devlin followed up weather-disaster flick Geostorm with Bad Samaritan, a dark psychological thriller about a small-time crook who gets into the bad books of a wealthy sicko when he stumbles upon his dark secrets while burgling his house. Misfits’ Robert Sheehan plays the burglar, and David Tennant plays the loaded psycho whose obsession with technology earned him the nickname ‘Evil Bruce Wayne’. Cale Erendreich is a Patrick Bateman-like moneybags psycho with a sick taste in torture. Overall, the film itself isn’t a huge amount of cop, but boy, does Tennant commit.

Dr Edgar Fallon in Criminal ‘Edgar’ (2019)

Netflix’s multi-lingual European series Criminal takes the best bit of Line of Duty – the police interview scenes – and strips away everything else. Every episode has a new case, a new interviewee, a new lead actor, and a team of cops trying to break them within a limited time frame. 

Kicking it all off with the first UK episode of series one (a second run is available to stream now) was David Tennant as Dr Edgar Fallon. You’ll have to watch the 42-minute episode to know whether or not Fallon is guilty of the crime about which he’s being interviewed (the rape and murder of his 14-year-old step-daughter), but Tennant is chilling and magnetic enough as the well-spoken English doctor to keep you guessing.

Dr Tom Kendrick in Deadwater Fell (2020)

When a tragedy occurs in a Scottish village, suspicion falls on those closest to the victims. David Tennant plays local GP Tom in Channel 4 drama Deadwater Fell, a four-part series available to stream on All 4, about how a small community responds to a terrible event. Is Tom really the perfect family man he appears to be, or is there something else under the surface? Without giving anything away in terms of plot, Tennant moves fluently between the roles of victim and villain in the audience’s mind as this empathetic, clever miniseries twists and turns. 

Dennis Nilsen in Des (2020)

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This starring role is the culmination of years spent clocking up experience on how to unsettle on screen. As real-life Scottish serial killer Dennis Nilsen, David Tennant is chillingly perfect. It’s both an on-point impersonation and a disquieting performance that conjures up this peculiarly banal killer. Tennant is ably aided by co-stars Daniel Mays and Jason Watkins as, respectively, Nilsen’s arresting officer DCI Peter Jay and biographer Brian Masters. It’s a triangle of excellent actors at their best, making for a compelling three-parter. 

The post Dennis ‘Des’ Nilsen is Far From David Tennant’s First Psychopath Role appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[zugzwanggin-blog]

Amo, Amas, Amat

OR: WHY MARY ISN’T THE DEVIL YOU GUYS COME ON, MOFTISS WRITES BETTER CHARACTERS THAN THAT, AND JOHN ISN’T A PERFECT HUMAN BEING HE NEEDS TIME TO GRIEVE, THE JOHNLOCK IS CANON AND IT’S COMING

Everyone is so determined to turn Mary into this conniving, evil, backstabbing criminal mastermind whose sole purpose in life is to make John miserable and come as a wedge between him and Sherlock. But she’s...not.

She’s a good fucking character. She was a freelance assassin, a mercenary, part of a team. She’s not Sebastian Moran. There’s still a chance she is somehow connected to Moriarty, but honestly? That isn’t his style. Moriarty was a genuine sociopath--he was so far gone, in fact, that interacting with him was what made Sherlock realize he wasn’t sociopathic after all. Moriarty doesn’t understand the nuances of love and self-sacrifice and sentiment. He sees them, he makes use of them, but he isn’t--wasn’t--the type to manipulate them in such clever and intricate and prescient ways. He arranged terrorist attacks and murders and assassinations, he dealt drugs and arms, he strapped semtex to the only person Sherlock cared about just to bully and frighten him and to empower himself. I’m not saying that arranging three assassins and then shooting himself on a rooftop was his coup d'etat, obviously he’s still got his fingers in a few pies, but Mary wasn’t one of them.

Mary was an assassin whose professional life went to shit. She started over. She met John. John’s a good bloke. John’s a fantastic bloke. John is steady, and clever, and understanding, and loyal, and sardonic. John has been hurt deeply. John does not hurt in retaliation. John absorbs. John cares and comforts. John patches you up, and he doesn’t judge you in the process. John is exactly who she needed. She fell in love with John. And John fell in love with her.

No, I don’t think it’s the same as the way he loves Sherlock. He and Sherlock have been through too much, have bonded too irreparably, have insinuated themselves together too irrevocably for a woman to come between them. (And honestly guys? Using a woman just to come between the two main male characters is such an overused trope, and I really think Moffat and Gatiss are more clever and self-aware than that.) They loved one another. Even Sherlock could see it, could respect it. For the longest time I thought he was just blindly keeping Mary safe in order to protect John and John’s happiness by proxy, but TST showed us otherwise. Sherlock cared for her as well. He called her a friend, he showed baby pictures to his brother, he made that vow and he really, really meant it.

When John found out about AGRA he meant it when he said he was determined to move on. And he tried. He did. But he has trust issues, remember? John has trust issues. These have been built up slowly, added to bit by bit, over a lifetime. I personally believe his mother was his rock, and she is canonically dead. He has trust issues with his sister, who he deems unreliable. I’m sure he has trust issues with his father, who he has never once mentioned. He has trust issues with the military, who kicked him out and now ridicules him for his life choices. He has trust issues with his own body, which betrayed him and his chosen profession--a surgeon who can’t even operate? How pathetic. He has trust issues with Sherlock, who killed himself in front of John and then reappeared. He has trust issues with his wife, who pretended to be a woman she wasn’t, and lied to his face, repeatedly. John has some fucking trust issues, okay? And they’re not minor. He has gone out of his way to be everyone’s rock, they even went out of their way to point it out in TST. But you know what? Rocks are strong, but they’re not shatter-proof. Rocks can still fucking break.

He tried to make it work with Mary, genuinely, but the trust was gone. They co-parented, they cooperated, they co-sleuthed and cohabited and co-everything the way couples do, and it was genuine. They both cared. They both put forth the effort. Neither was pretending. But the trust was gone, for John. Because John has trust issues.

Yes, he looked. A pretty young bird on the bus noticed him, and he looked. And he chatted. And he probably had coffee. Did he sleep with her? Maybe. I really don’t think so, but it’s possible. I think he’d have been a little more hesitant to bring it up if he had. But he thought about it. He was tempted. And John is loyal. The temptation was bad enough for him to want to come clean. I thought it was odd at first, but the more I look back at it the more I understand his point of view. He doesn’t feel completely comfortable in his relationship with Mary anymore. He doesn’t feel completely devoted to her like he might have done if she hadn’t turned out to be, you know, a killer--but also a liar, first of all. And that said, I feel there’s a lot to be said for the fact that there’s a lot of shit between Sherlock and John, but the one thing that isn’t there is lying. Not big things--little things like whether or not Sherlock really is responsible for swapping the milk out with horse semen is on another scale entirely, and John actually appreciates those sorts of deer-in-the-headlights obvious fibs.

When Sherlock finds the second USB, he goes straight to John. Before he confronts Mary, before he does anything else, he takes it to John. And you know what? John was suspicious enough to say “Hey Sherlock, maybe we’d better bug the device in case my wife who I love and trust so much makes off with it and tries to run from us, ‘cause that’s what loving, trusting couples do, that.” And the same thing happened in HLV when Sherlock revealed Mary to John. Sherlock has, I believe, actually learned his lesson when it comes to trusting John--he has not once kept John purposely in the dark just to save him from something, not once since TRF, not once since he returned and learned how badly he’d hurt John by lying to him, even if it was just to keep him safe. And now he’s learned another lesson about humility, much as it pains him--but the most painful lessons are the stickiest, aren’t they? John and Sherlock are tighter than ever. Sherlock has made that final leap off the edge, and now goes to John for everything. It’s John’s turn to do the same.

Does he blame Sherlock for Mary’s death? Of course he does. Sherlock made a vow, and he needs to blame someone. He also blames himself. He blames everyone. Life isn’t fucking fair, and it’s been especially unfair to John. Everything he’s tried to build for himself has been broken. Do you understand that? Review it, and really, really let it sink in for a moment:

He tried to be a doctor, he tried to save people, he went to war for it. He joined the Army. He was deployed to Afghanistan for three years. Then he got shot. In his dominant arm. No more military, they tossed him out like a useless sack of spoiled potatoes, as all militaries are wont to do once you’ve outlived your usefulness to them. No more surgery, his left hand sustained so much nerve and tissue and bone damage that he can no longer operate safely. All of those years of training and sacrifice, gone. Unappreciated. And now he’s left fucking useless and unwanted. He was even contemplating suicide before he met Sherlock. Our Mr. Strong Rock Who Can Weather Any Storm was ready to end it because he felt so useless and pathetic and lonely and all of those other horrible emotions that make up depression. He made a good go of it in life, and look where it got him. Abso fucking lutely nowhere. And no one cared.

Speculation, but I suspect he tried to save his sister. I suspect he spent much of his younger years trying to be there for her, to give her alternatives to the alcohol, to be there as he rock and her trustee and her caretaker, and he failed. And now, as adults, their relationship is so fractured that his own sister was a no-call no-show for John’s wedding. He tried to be there for his family, and they have proven themselves to be unreliable to him. Not even touching on his father just because John has never mentioned him, but it seems perfectly reasonable to me that he was likely an alcoholic (as in Doyle’s canon) and perhaps even a little bit abusive--John brawls like he grew up brawling, that isn’t something you learn in the Army, trust me I’m an Army veteran myself. So yeah, that didn’t exactly work out for him either, did it?

He attached himself to Sherlock. He moved into a flat with Sherlock, went out on cases with him, to crime scenes, chased murderers through the London streets, killed a man to save his life. Sherlock was his life. They were partners. Then Sherlock killed himself in front of John on a lark, and reappeared two years later as if it was all just a big joke. As if he hadn’t shattered everything John had just started to believe in again. That trust isn’t back yet. In fact, I would dare to suggest he threw himself so hard at Mary immediately after Sherlock returned in an effort to keep himself from becoming glued back to his side again. Once burned, twice shy. This will change eventually, because Sherlock has realized his error and is actually putting forth an effort to be there for John. That was the entirety of season 3. Season 4 will very likely be John coming to terms with his own shortcomings, and opening himself up to be there for Sherlock, despite the risks inherent in that trust. John has trust issues. John’s character arc will be learned how to let Sherlock in despite them.

He made a family with Mary. Who turned out not to be the woman he fell in love with, the woman he spent the last two years with. She was a stranger. All right. He accepted that and struggled to move on. And now Mary is dead. Everything John touches falls apart. I would not be surprised if he turns to drink. I hope not, because he has his daughter to look after and his sense of responsibility has always been just a hair stronger than his temptations, but I would not be surprised. I think this episode explains pretty well for itself how everything fell apart in their relationship. They were not a solid foundation. They crumbled. Mary sacrificed herself for John. She was not an idiot. She knew this was inevitable. John would get over her own death, eventually, with help. But she saw John after Sherlock’s, and she knew he wouldn’t survive that again--not after he’d just started to trust in Sherlock again.

So, John blames himself. For all of it. What’s the one common denominator in all of those events? John isn’t stupid. He’s a natural caretaker, and everyone he’s cared for has broken him. It’s his turn to be cared for. He cared for his sister, he cared for the soldiers in the RAMC, he cared for Sherlock, he cared for Mary. No one has stopped to care for him. He hasn’t let them. He doesn’t let them in. He needs to learn how to do this.

Mary died in his arms, and John still didn’t cry. Those sounds he made were horrific. He was trying so desperately hard not to cry. And now he’s flinging blame around, because that’s what hurting people do, especially, especially, especially especially especially especially especially when they blame themselves.

I keep seeing around on tumblr that Mary orchestrated this whole thing, that Moriarty is behind it after all, that John and Sherlock can’t repair their friendship over this, etc etc. No. Just, no. John needs time to grieve. And he needs someone to be there for him. And Sherlock will be there for him. He realized throughout season 3 that he wanted to be there for him. And now he’s trying so, so hard to be, in his own eccentric not really reliable but still genuine Sherlock way.

The Johnlock is canon. This is the conclusion to their arc. Sherlock has come around, and now it’s John’s turn. So much fanfic is about how broken Sherlock is, why he cut himself off from his emotions, what traumas he suffered to turn him into a “sociopathic” drug addict. So few are about why John is so drawn to him, why John needs violence and adrenaline to function, why John is so broken, why John can’t express himself or grieve or feel when his wife dies right there in his own fucking arms. That’s what this is about. I hope. Because if it isn’t I might die.

Also EEEEEEEEEEEE SHERRINFORD!!!!

/rant

[irkajavasdream]

If Being in Love Means Being in Pain, Therapist Robin Norwood Says You Are a Woman Who Loves Too Much

LEE POWELL

December 09, 1985 12:00 PM

“It was mostly from the wives and girlfriends of addictive men that I began to understand the nature of the disease,” says Robin Norwood, 40, author of the best-selling Women Who Love Too Much, subtitled When You Keep Wishing and Hoping He’ll Change (Tarcher/ St. Martin’s Press, $14.95). In the book Norwood examines why women become involved in destructive relationships with men, and what can be done about the fatal attraction. A California licensed family and marriage therapist with a master’s degree in human development from Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena, Norwood is married to her third husband, Robert Calvert, 45, a deputy district attorney for Santa Barbara. Norwood, the mother of a son, Lane, 21, and a daughter, Piper, 17, discussed her work with reporter Lee Powell.

Who is the woman who “loves too much”?

She is a woman who gets into relationships with men who have problems, knowing full well they do have problems. She’s obsessed with another person, whether it’s a partner of many years or a series of partners. If she’s not with a man, then she’s obsessed with finding one. She’s a woman who measures the degree of her “love” by the depth of her torment.

Why is loving too much destructive?

It’s like any other addiction. Everything deteriorates: her work, her health, her relationships. She can die from stress-related physical disorders or from being so preoccupied with someone else she doesn’t take care of herself. Some of these women actually become suicidal.

What drew you to this subject?

I grew up in a single-parent home. My parents separated during World War II, and I met my father only once, when he took me out to dinner after my fifth-grade graduation. Then at Burbank High School I heard a psychologist describe working with families, helping them to talk about their problems. Without plugging into how much I wanted that to happen in my own family, I knew that’s what I wanted to do.

Are there men who love too much?

There are some. Men aren’t set up biologically to be childbearers, nor are they culturally programmed to be caretakers. So men are more apt to turn to something outside themselves, like work or sports. But men who do stay with, say, alcoholic women are themselves often from alcoholic homes. Women are more loyal, perhaps neurotically so. Look at the statistics: One out of 10 men stays with an alcoholic wife; nine out of 10 women stay with an alcoholic partner.

What do these women have in common that contributes to their problem?

They usually come from poorly functioning families where they learned very early to take responsibility for others, to monitor the emotional climate and to try to keep it stable. Many come from families where there is alcoholism, drug addiction or compulsive gambling. If there’s a struggle going on between the adult partners in the family or between a parent and the world—to make a living, for example—then the children can feel abandoned emotionally.

What is the result?

A child in a troubled family feels she must solve her parents’ problems in order to earn their love. But she can’t, and they are too obsessed with their pain to love and nurture her.

What other factors are involved?

Just being the oldest in a troubled family can force a child into an overly responsible role. When a parent is ill it may create a situation over which the child is powerless but with which she tries to cope.

How serious can these problems be?

The most devastating, for example, is incest, and a daughter who is forced to take over her mother’s role is betrayed both physically and emotionally. It’s a grim legacy because the victim is likely, in adulthood, to choose a partner who will violate her daughter. We tend to repeat patterns we grew up with.

Aren’t most females in our society raised to be caretakers?

From childhood on we’re surrounded by messages that tell us, in books, articles and on TV, that we have the power to fix and control others if we use it correctly, which is a total fiction. For example, we’re supposed to make our partners healthier, better lovers, more successful. When a woman has grown up in an impaired or abnormal family, the problem of wanting to change someone else becomes exaggerated, sometimes to the point of pathology.

You refer to these women as addicts and call their problem a “disease.” Aren’t those pretty strong words?

Not if you see how sick these women become and still are unable to let go. If their partners leave them, they suffer withdrawal symptoms that are very powerful and physical. They can often become sleepless, restless, they can have chills, even nausea. Just as a compulsive eater goes all over town looking for the chocolate cake or a drug addict stays up all night looking for a connection, the woman who’s addicted to relationships drives around trying to find her partner. It’s humiliating, out-of-control behavior. There’s no difference that I’ve been able to find between an addict coming off heroin and a woman coming off an obsessive relationship.

How many of the women you see are attracted to men who are dependent on alcohol or drugs?

When I worked at a clinic that wasn’t specifically oriented toward drug and alcohol abuse, I observed that about 80 percent of the men and women seeking professional advice in my office were either chemically dependent on drugs or alcohol, or were the mothers, sisters, wives and daughters of abusers. And remember, for every alcoholic there are four other people whose lives are affected. A therapist I worked with once told me, “You can’t find an alcoholic who doesn’t have a girlfriend. You know why? Because alcoholics are so exciting.”

Why are alcoholics intriguing?

When an alcoholic asks you out, you never know if he’ll show up. He might show up two days late, with roses, and say, “Let’s fly to San Francisco for dinner.” And when he does show up, we think we are so wonderful that he did it for us. We pit ourselves against the behavior pattern and we want to win.

Isn’t love supposed to be exciting?

That’s the rough part. Since the age of chivalry we’ve been romanticizing suffering. “This is the real thing,” we say when it hurts. Television portrays seductive relationships as though they were reality, when they lack all the ingredients for stability or real intimacy. There’s no trust, no security, just all this drama.

Could this be a result of the changing role for women today?

No. We used to believe women stayed in terrible relationships because of economics. But today women with wonderfully paying jobs stay in or repeat unhealthy relationships. This situation is a product of the families we’ve grown up in, the problems we learned to cope with—or couldn’t cope with—in childhood.

How does a woman recover?

First she should seek help. Usually a woman wants to help him, her partner. But it’s important to focus on yourself and to help yourself. See someone who understands addiction. For example, I think Al-Anon, which treats the partners of alcoholics, is the treatment of choice because the best help comes from people who have been through it all themselves and are recovering. There is also Nar-Anon for the partners of narcotics abusers and shelter services for battered wives. Whatever the problem, there is usually a support group. I trust that more than professional help.

How does a woman make recovery her first priority when she has children, perhaps a job and a sick partner?

I believe that if you put your own recovery first, everything else takes care of itself. Spend as much time and energy changing yourself, which is possible, as you’ve spent trying to change your partner, which is impossible.

Does recovery mean that you have to be loveless and alone?

No, but you have to get your focus on yourself, face your own destructive patterns. It’s a rough world, and most of us would like to hold hands with somebody. But when you cling to one person as the source of all good things in life, this dependency is going to fill you with fear. You can get some of the things that make you feel good from yourself, your friends or your co-workers. Someone once told me, “We can have everything we want and need, but we can’t say where it’s going to come from.”

[terapsina]

@pegxcarter​​ (reposting because it didn’t show up in the tags (edit, well actually it turns out it showed up in SOME tags and not other, and this also showed up in some tags but not others, and so I’m just gonna keep both posts, you can reblog whichever one you want i guess, I hate this site so much)

Sure, and believe me it’s a FUN RIDE. I’ve just finished all 10 episodes and believe you me I was thoroughly entertained.

It’s a story about the Order of the Cruciform Sword, which is a holy order of warrior nuns whose sacred mission is to fight demons. And their holy ‘weapon’ is a halo that gets embedded in the back of the sister who then becomes the Warrior Nun (capital letters and all).

It actually kinda reminds me of the Slayer mythos a bit. Except that for the most part the nuns actually get to consent.

EXCEPT then of course stuff hits the fan and instead of being placed in the next nun as they were supposed to they get interrupted and place it inside Ava Silva. A 19 year old recently deceased orphan. This was NOT supposed to happen.

Her being brought back from the dead because of it has ALSO never before happened. And so cue the entrance of Ava, the girl who did not choose this, does not want it, does not understand it and would really rather enjoy the life she suddenly has.

And I know this can be a really annoying trope, I get it. The inexperienced Chosen One who fucks everything up, keeps running away and discarding her duty (that she didn’t choose) when there’s a whole bunch of women who would probably have done a better job? This trope can be a real drag BUT here it’s saved by a few facts: 1)She’s not yet another dude; 2) Until she died and woke up with superpowers she’d spent the majority of her life almost entirely paralyzed from the neck down and getting emotionally and mentally abused by her ‘caretaker’ at the orphanage so who can really blame the girl for wanting to live a little?; and 3) She’s utterly charming and funny (in a ‘makes endless puns and then laughs at them herself’ sort of way).

Plus at the end of the day, when the cards are on the table and all the shit hits the fan she always comes through.

And then there’s the Sister Nuns.

Lets start with Shotgun Mary.

I don’t want to tell her story because I feel like that would take away from the way she tells it herself. Just know she’s a complete badass but one who we also get to really know beyond just the way she can beat people up and use shotguns (though the scenes where she beats people up and uses shotguns are REALLY COOL). Also she and the previous halo bearer were totally girlfriends (like... they don’t really come out and SAY it but the subtext is so heavy it might as well be text, and yes, I guess it’s got that annoying dead girlfriend trope and if she was the only representation we got I’d call foul but it’s not).

Then there’s Sister Beatrice.

Spoilers. She’s a lesbian. I just wanted to put that out there. I’ll let the rest be said by her in the show itself but I wanted to make that clear. She’s absolutely a 100% queer. Canonically. Also YET ANOTHER badass, actually near the beginning of the season she gets my absolute favorite fight scene, you know that trope where someone takes down a whole roomful of dudes? YEAAAAAAAAAH GIRL!!!

After that we’ve got Sister Lilith.

(the one on the right)

She’s the nun that was SUPPOSED to take on the halo next and she might have some issues about it BUT if you’re expecting to end up hating her you’ve got another thing coming. She starts out cold but believe me you’ll end up wanting to wrap her in warm blankets and keep her safe from the world forever. I’m almost getting tired of saying it but... ALSO a complete badassssssss. Let’s just say if Mary is shoot them in the face!badass, and Beatrice is martial arts!badass, then Lilith is TERMINATOR!badass.

And finally there’s Sister Camila.

She’s the baby. The newbie. Well if Ava wasn’t there then Camila would be the newbie anyway. She’s awkward as hell but the SWEETEST person there. We all love and adore her. But give her a submachine gun and grin at the chaos.

Those five are who I’d say are the core of the show (or at least will be, it takes a while to get there but the road is fun and once we get there it was SO worth the wait).

Now you might be tricked into thinking it’s just a show about the demon of the week but actually it’s a very serialized show with an overarching plot that ends up dealing with a lot more (including institutional patriarchy that might have been taking advantage of these girls for centuries, and the morality of using a line of Warrior Nuns that keep dying in their fight against darkness).

And it’s just a very fun show that kept me entertained all the way through. And just to cover my bases, here’s the trailer:

[viralhottopics]

Sir John Hurt obituary

British actor became an overnight sensation after playing Quentin Crisp in the 1975 television film The Naked Civil Servant

Few British actors of recent years have been held in as much affection as Sir John Hurt, who has died aged 77. That affection is not just because of his unruly lifestyle he was a hell-raising chum of Oliver Reed, Peter OToole and Richard Harris, and was married four times or even his string of performances as damaged, frail or vulnerable characters, though that was certainly a factor. There was something about his innocence, open-heartedness and his beautiful speaking voice that made him instantly attractive.

As he aged, his face developed more creases and folds than the old map of the Indies, inviting comparisons with the famous lived-in faces of WH Auden and Samuel Beckett, in whose reminiscent Krapps Last Tape he gave a definitive solo performance towards the end of his career. One critic said he could pack a whole emotional universe into the twitch of an eyebrow, a sardonic slackening of the mouth. Hurt himself said: What I am now, the man, the actor, is a blend of all that has happened.

For theatregoers of my generation, his pulverising, hysterically funny performance as Malcolm Scrawdyke, leader of the Party of Dynamic Erection at a Yorkshire art college, in David Halliwells Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs, was a totemic performance of the mid-1960s; another was David Warners Hamlet, and both actors appeared in the 1974 film version of Little Malcolm. The play lasted only two weeks at the Garrick Theatre (I saw the final Saturday matine), but Hurts performance was already a minor cult, and one collected by the Beatles and Laurence Olivier.

He became an overnight sensation with the public at large as Quentin Crisp the self-confessed stately homo of England in the 1975 television film The Naked Civil Servant, directed by Jack Gold, playing the outrageous, original and defiant aesthete whom Hurt had first encountered as a nude model in his painting classes at St Martins School of Art, before he trained as an actor.

Crisp called Hurt my representative here on Earth, ironically claiming a divinity at odds with his low-life louche-ness and poverty. But Hurt, a radiant vision of ginger quiffs and curls, with a voice kippered in gin and as studiously inflected as a deadpan mix of Nol Coward, Coral Browne and Julian Clary, in a way propelled Crisp to the stars, and certainly to his transatlantic fame, a journey summarised when Hurt recapped Crisps life in An Englishman in New York (2009), 10 years after his death.

Hurt said some people had advised him that playing Crisp would end his career. Instead, it made everything possible. Within five years he had appeared in four of the most extraordinary films of the late 1970s: Ridley Scotts Alien (1979), the brilliantly acted sci-fi horror movie in which Hurt from whose stomach the creature exploded was the first victim; Alan Parkers Midnight Express, for which he won his first Bafta award as a drug-addicted convict in a Turkish torture prison; Michael Ciminos controversial western Heavens Gate (1980), now a cult classic in its fully restored format; and David Lynchs The Elephant Man (1980), with Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft.

In the latter, as John Merrick, the deformed circus attraction who becomes a celebrity in Victorian society and medicine, Hurt won a second Bafta award and Lynchs opinion that he was the greatest actor in the world. He infused a hideous outer appearance there were 27 moving pieces in his face mask; he spent nine hours a day in make-up with a deeply moving, humane quality. He followed up with a small role Jesus in Mel Brookss History of the World: Part 1 (1981), the movie where the waiter at the Last Supper says, Are you all together, or is it separate cheques?

Hurt was an actor freed of all convention in his choice of roles, and he lived his life accordingly. Born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, he was the youngest of three children of a Church of England vicar and mathematician, the Reverend Arnould Herbert Hurt, and his wife, Phyllis (ne Massey), an engineer with an enthusiasm for amateur dramatics.

After a miserable schooling at St Michaels in Sevenoaks, Kent (where he said he was sexually abused), and the Lincoln grammar school (where he played Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest), he rebelled as an art student, first at the Grimsby art school where, in 1959, he won a scholarship to St Martins, before training at Rada for two years in 1960.

He made a stage debut that same year with the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Arts, playing a semi-psychotic teenage thug in Fred Watsons Infanticide in the House of Fred Ginger and then joined the cast of Arnold Weskers national service play, Chips With Everything, at the Vaudeville. Still at the Arts, he was Len in Harold Pinters The Dwarfs (1963) before playing the title role in John Wilsons Hamp (1964) at the Edinburgh Festival, where critic Caryl Brahms noted his unusual ability and blessed quality of simplicity.

This was a more relaxed, free-spirited time in the theatre. Hurt recalled rehearsing with Pinter when silver salvers stacked with gins and tonics, ice and lemon, would arrive at 11.30 each morning as part of the stage management routine. On receiving a rude notice from the distinguished Daily Mail critic Peter Lewis, he wrote, Dear Mr Lewis, Whooooops! Yours sincerely, John Hurt and received the reply, Dear Mr Hurt, thank you for short but tedious letter. Yours sincerely, Peter Lewis.

After Little Malcolm, he played leading roles with the RSC at the Aldwych notably in David Mercers Belchers Luck (1966) and as the madcap dadaist Tristan Tzara in Tom Stoppards Travesties (1974) as well as Octavius in Shaws Man and Superman in Dublin in 1969 and an important 1972 revival of Pinters The Caretaker at the Mermaid. But his stage work over the next 10 years was virtually non-existent as he followed The Naked Civil Servant with another pyrotechnical television performance as Caligula in I, Claudius; Raskolnikov in Dostoevskys Crime and Punishment and the Fool to Oliviers King Lear in Michael Elliotts 1983 television film.

His first big movie had been Fred Zinnemanns A Man for All Seasons (1966) with Paul Scofield (Hurt played Richard Rich) but his first big screen performance was an unforgettable Timothy Evans, the innocent framed victim in Richard Fleischers 10 Rillington Place (1970), with Richard Attenborough as the sinister landlord and killer John Christie. He claimed to have made 150 movies and persisted in playing those he called the unloved people like us, the inside-out people, who live their lives as an experiment, not as a formula. Even his Ben Gunn-like professor in Steven Spielbergs Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) fitted into this category, though not as resoundingly, perhaps, as his quivering Winston Smith in Michael Radfords terrific Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984); or as a prissy weakling, Stephen Ward, in Michael Caton-Joness Scandal (1989) about the Profumo affair; or again as the lonely writer Giles DeAth in Richard Kwietniowskis Love and Death on Long Island.

His later, sporadic theatre performances included a wonderful Trigorin in Chekhovs The Seagull at the Lyric, Hammersmith, in 1985 (with Natasha Richardson as Nina); Turgenevs incandescent idler Rakitin in a 1994 West End production by Bill Bryden of A Month in the Country, playing a superb duet with Helen Mirrens Natalya Petrovna; and another memorable match with Penelope Wilton in Brian Friels exquisite 70-minute doodle Afterplay (2002), in which two lonely Chekhov characters Andrei from Three Sisters, Sonya from Uncle Vanya find mutual consolation in a Moscow caf in the 1920s. The play originated, like his Krapp, at the Gate Theatre in Dublin.

His last screen work included, in the Harry Potter franchise, the first, Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone (2001), and last two, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts One and Two (2010, 2011), as the kindly wand-maker Mr Ollivander; Roland Joffs 1960s remake of Brighton Rock (2010); and the 50th anniversary television edition of Dr Who (2013), playing a forgotten incarnation of the title character.

Because of his distinctive, virtuosic vocal attributes was that what a brandy-injected fruitcake sounds like, or peanut butter spread thickly with a serrated knife? he was always in demand for voiceover gigs in animated movies: the heroic rabbit leader, Hazel, in Watership Down (1978), Aragorn/Strider in Lord of the Rings (1978) and the Narrator in Lars von Triers Dogville (2004). In 2015 he took the Peter OToole stage role in Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell for BBC Radio 4. He had foresworn alcohol for a few years not for health reasons, he said, but because he was bored with it.

Hurts sister was a teacher in Australia, his brother a convert to Roman Catholicism and a monk and writer. After his first short marriage to the actor Annette Robinson (1960, divorced 1962) he lived for 15 years in London with the French model Marie-Lise Volpeliere Pierrot. She was killed in a riding accident in 1983. In 1984 he married, secondly, a Texan, Donna Peacock (divorced in 1990), living with her for a time in Nairobi until the relationship came under strain from his drinking and her dalliance with a gardener. With his third wife, Jo Dalton (married in 1990, divorced 1995), he had two sons, Nicolas and Alexander (Sasha), who survive him, as does his fourth wife, the actor and producer Anwen Rees-Myers, whom he married in 2005 and with whom he lived in Cromer, Norfolk. Hurt was made CBE in 2004, given a Bafta lifetime achievement award in 2012 and knighted in the New Years honours list of 2015.

John Vincent Hurt, actor, born 22 January 1940, died 27 January 2017

Read more: http://ift.tt/2kDFeJt

from Sir John Hurt obituary

[viralhottopics]

John Hurt obituary

British actor became an overnight sensation after playing Quentin Crisp in the 1975 television film The Naked Civil Servant

Few British actors of recent years have been held in as much affection as John Hurt, who has died aged 77. That affection is not just because of his unruly lifestyle he was a hell-raising chum of Oliver Reed, Peter OToole and Richard Harris, and was married four times or even his string of performances as damaged, frail or vulnerable characters, though that was certainly a factor. There was something about his innocence, open-heartedness and his beautiful speaking voice that made him instantly attractive.

As he aged, his face developed more creases and folds than the old map of the Indies, inviting comparisons with the famous lived-in faces of WH Auden and Samuel Beckett, in whose reminiscent Krapps Last Tape he gave a definitive solo performance towards the end of his career. One critic said he could pack a whole emotional universe into the twitch of an eyebrow, a sardonic slackening of the mouth. Hurt himself said: What I am now, the man, the actor, is a blend of all that has happened.

For theatregoers of my generation, his pulverising, hysterically funny performance as Malcolm Scrawdyke, leader of the Party of Dynamic Erection at a Yorkshire art college, in David Halliwells Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs, was a totemic performance of the mid-1960s; another was David Warners Hamlet, and both actors appeared in the 1974 film version of Little Malcolm. The play lasted only two weeks at the Garrick Theatre (I saw the final Saturday matine), but Hurts performance was already a minor cult, and one collected by the Beatles and Laurence Olivier.

He became an overnight sensation with the public at large as Quentin Crisp the self-confessed stately homo of England in the 1975 television film The Naked Civil Servant, directed by Jack Gold, playing the outrageous, original and defiant aesthete whom Hurt had first encountered as a nude model in his painting classes at St Martins School of Art, before he trained as an actor.

Crisp called Hurt my representative here on Earth, ironically claiming a divinity at odds with his low-life louche-ness and poverty. But Hurt, a radiant vision of ginger quiffs and curls, with a voice kippered in gin and as studiously inflected as a deadpan mix of Nol Coward, Coral Browne and Julian Clary, in a way propelled Crisp to the stars, and certainly to his transatlantic fame, a journey summarised when Hurt recapped Crisps life in An Englishman in New York (2009), 10 years after his death.

Hurt said some people had advised him that playing Crisp would end his career. Instead, it made everything possible. Within five years he had appeared in four of the most extraordinary films of the late 1970s: Ridley Scotts Alien (1979), the brilliantly acted sci-fi horror movie in which Hurt from whose stomach the creature exploded was the first victim; Alan Parkers Midnight Express, for which he won his first Bafta award as a drug-addicted convict in a Turkish torture prison; Michael Ciminos controversial western Heavens Gate (1980), now a cult classic in its fully restored format; and David Lynchs The Elephant Man (1980), with Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft.

In the latter, as John Merrick, the deformed circus attraction who becomes a celebrity in Victorian society and medicine, Hurt won a second Bafta award and Lynchs opinion that he was the greatest actor in the world. He infused a hideous outer appearance there were 27 moving pieces in his face mask; he spent nine hours a day in make-up with a deeply moving, humane quality. He followed up with a small role Jesus in Mel Brookss History of the World: Part 1 (1981), the movie where the waiter at the Last Supper says, Are you all together, or is it separate cheques?

Hurt was an actor freed of all convention in his choice of roles, and he lived his life accordingly. Born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, he was the youngest of three children of a Church of England vicar and mathematician, the Reverend Arnould Herbert Hurt, and his wife, Phyllis (ne Massey), an engineer with an enthusiasm for amateur dramatics.

After a miserable schooling at St Michaels in Sevenoaks, Kent (where he said he was sexually abused), and the Lincoln grammar school (where he played Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest), he rebelled as an art student, first at the Grimsby art school where, in 1959, he won a scholarship to St Martins, before training at Rada for two years in 1960.

He made a stage debut that same year with the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Arts, playing a semi-psychotic teenage thug in Fred Watsons Infanticide in the House of Fred Ginger and then joined the cast of Arnold Weskers national service play, Chips With Everything, at the Vaudeville. Still at the Arts, he was Len in Harold Pinters The Dwarfs (1963) before playing the title role in John Wilsons Hamp (1964) at the Edinburgh Festival, where critic Caryl Brahms noted his unusual ability and blessed quality of simplicity.

This was a more relaxed, free-spirited time in the theatre. Hurt recalled rehearsing with Pinter when silver salvers stacked with gins and tonics, ice and lemon, would arrive at 11.30 each morning as part of the stage management routine. On receiving a rude notice from the distinguished Daily Mail critic Peter Lewis, he wrote, Dear Mr Lewis, Whooooops! Yours sincerely, John Hurt and received the reply, Dear Mr Hurt, thank you for short but tedious letter. Yours sincerely, Peter Lewis.

After Little Malcolm, he played leading roles with the RSC at the Aldwych notably in David Mercers Belchers Luck (1966) and as the madcap dadaist Tristan Tzara in Tom Stoppards Travesties (1974) as well as Octavius in Shaws Man and Superman in Dublin in 1969 and an important 1972 revival of Pinters The Caretaker at the Mermaid. But his stage work over the next 10 years was virtually non-existent as he followed The Naked Civil Servant with another pyrotechnical television performance as Caligula in I, Claudius; Raskolnikov in Dostoevskys Crime and Punishment and the Fool to Oliviers King Lear in Michael Elliotts 1983 television film.

His first big movie had been Fred Zinnemanns A Man for All Seasons (1966) with Paul Scofield (Hurt played Richard Rich) but his first big screen performance was an unforgettable Timothy Evans, the innocent framed victim in Richard Fleischers 10 Rillington Place (1970), with Richard Attenborough as the sinister landlord and killer John Christie. He claimed to have made 150 movies and persisted in playing those he called the unloved people like us, the inside-out people, who live their lives as an experiment, not as a formula. Even his Ben Gunn-like professor in Steven Spielbergs Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) fitted into this category, though not as resoundingly, perhaps, as his quivering Winston Smith in Michael Radfords terrific Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984); or as a prissy weakling, Stephen Ward, in Michael Caton-Joness Scandal (1989) about the Profumo affair; or again as the lonely writer Giles DeAth in Richard Kwietniowskis Love and Death on Long Island.

His later, sporadic theatre performances included a wonderful Trigorin in Chekhovs The Seagull at the Lyric, Hammersmith, in 1985 (with Natasha Richardson as Nina); Turgenevs incandescent idler Rakitin in a 1994 West End production by Bill Bryden of A Month in the Country, playing a superb duet with Helen Mirrens Natalya Petrovna; and another memorable match with Penelope Wilton in Brian Friels exquisite 70-minute doodle Afterplay (2002), in which two lonely Chekhov characters Andrei from Three Sisters, Sonya from Uncle Vanya find mutual consolation in a Moscow caf in the 1920s. The play originated, like his Krapp, at the Gate Theatre in Dublin.

His last screen work included, in the Harry Potter franchise, the first, Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone (2001), and last two, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts One and Two (2010, 2011), as the kindly wand-maker Mr Ollivander; Roland Joffs 1960s remake of Brighton Rock (2010); and the 50th anniversary television edition of Dr Who (2013), playing a forgotten incarnation of the title character.

Because of his distinctive, virtuosic vocal attributes was that what a brandy-injected fruitcake sounds like, or peanut butter spread thickly with a serrated knife? he was always in demand for voiceover gigs in animated movies: the heroic rabbit leader, Hazel, in Watership Down (1978), Aragorn/Strider in Lord of the Rings (1978) and the Narrator in Lars von Triers Dogville (2004). In 2015 he took the Peter OToole stage role in Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell for BBC Radio 4. He had foresworn alcohol for a few years not for health reasons, he said, but because he was bored with it.

Hurts sister was a teacher in Australia, his brother a convert to Roman Catholicism and a monk and writer. After his first short marriage to the actor Annette Robinson (1960, divorced 1962) he lived for 15 years in County Wicklow with the French model Marie-Lise Volpeliere Pierrot. She was killed in a riding accident in 1983. In 1984 he married, secondly, a Texan, Donna Peacock (divorced in 1990), living with her for a time in Nairobi until the relationship came under strain from his drinking and her dalliance with a gardener. With his third wife, Jo Dalton (married in 1990, divorced 1995), he had two sons, Nicolas and Alexander (Sasha), who survive him, as does his fourth wife, the actor and producer Anwen Rees-Myers, whom he married in 2005 and with whom he lived in Cromer, Norfolk. Hurt was made CBE in 2004, given a Bafta lifetime achievement award in 2012 and knighted in the New Years honours list of 2015.

John Vincent Hurt, actor, born 22 January 1940, died 27 January 2017

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