#simultaneously the best and worst thing that has ever happened to Oscar

[22degreehalo]

what I am getting from The Office episode season 8 episode 8 Gettysburg is that Andy would have fucking LOVED Hamilton.

[itsclydebitches]

Why do you think people aren't able to grasp the more nuance and difference of Ironwood vs a actual villain like Salem? Is the concept that sometimes you can't save everyone and have to make the tough calls hard to understand? I'm all for IW saving everyone and stoping Salem, but the show has yet to provide anyway that's possible. What's he supposed to do? I want to know what people want IW to do that will save Mantle, Atlas, and stop Salem.

I think a lot of it stems from unintentionally and/or willfully misunderstanding what the situation actually is. I list both because sometimes the misunderstanding stems from “I completely forgot they established this eight episodes ago,” sometimes it’s “I spend a lot of time in the fandom and when theories started being presented as facts I didn’t notice the change,” or “I’ve hated this character for so long that anything said even remotely in their favor is going to fall on deaf ears,” etc. There are a lot of ways it can come about, but the takeaway is I don’t think the concept that you can’t always save everyone is hard to understand, so there’s something interfering with the ability to see the situation that way. Those who supposedly don’t understand it are viewing it as Situation B whereas we’re seeing Situation A. We’re asking why they don’t like the taste of apples when they think they’re eating an orange. 

Some concrete examples that I’ve seen in regards to Ironwood: 

“But Ruby can just use her silver eyes. Ironwood is ignoring an obvious weapon here. He’s not even willing to try to fight and that’s bad.” This is applying our knowledge - an audience’s meta, genre savvy knowledge - to the situation, thereby changing it, but it’s not knowledge Ironwood shares. That situation doesn’t exist in the canon. No one has established for him that silver eyes are a potential weapon against Salem. Ruby hasn’t even realized that yet. Why would he risk everything on a theory no one has ever brought up? How much does Ironwood even know about SEWs? It’s a slightly more complicated version of yelling at the protagonist for not arresting the serial killer. The audience has forgotten that we know who the killer is because we have additional knowledge that the character lacks. 

“Ironwood’s plan is stupid. The grimm are just going to fly up to Atlas and then they’ll be trapped. How are they going to feed themselves for months on end? He’s resigning the people of Atlas to a slow, agonizing death.” This is simultaneously ignoring the actual situation and making it sound far worse than it is by assuming a whole bunch of lore that we don’t know anything about, one way or the other. The situation is not, “What’s the best plan Ironwood can come up with and is this one it?” it’s “What’s any plan he can come up with? Because that plan is better than death.” None of our characters claimed flying away was perfect or without problems, just that it had a possibility of ending better than staying to face Salem will. We then have those assumptions tacked on. Do we know how high grimm can fly? No. Do we know how long Atlas can sustain itself? No. Did Ironwood ever say he planned to stay up there for months on end? No. Yet fans are inclined to state the worst potential outcome as facts: grimm can fly that high and Atlas will starve and Ironwood does plan to hide in the clouds forever... even though there’s nothing to support any of that. 

Finally, we got another perfect example in my last reblog: “And Ironwood would leave them to die because of a pissing match he had with Ozpin.” First, framing them disagreeing and then Ironwood listening to Ozpin over the course of many years as a “pissing match” is highly inaccurate. (Insert here: likewise misinterpreting his “I’d have you shot” comment as legitimate setup for him shooting people now). Second, the conflict of whether to leave Mantle behind or stay to fight a doomed battle has nothing to do with Ozpin. He’s still hanging out inside Oscar. He is not a part of this decision process, nor is Ironwood acting like he is. There is nothing in our final episode to suggest that any of Ironwood’s choices stem from a “pissing match” with his former boss... but that sentence sounds really damning, doesn’t it? It’s reeeeallly easy to state something with confidence and allow readers to fill in the blanks: “Well I remember them disagreeing in the past... and this one post said that maybe Ironwood thought he was shooting Ozpin instead of Oscar... so yeah! He’s a villain because he cares more about his fight with Ozpin than his kingdom!” And then they spread that belief further. Yet where is the evidence for this? Not in the scenes where Ironwood and Ozpin resolved their conflicts. Not in Ironwood kindly greeting Oscar when he thought he was Ozpin. Not in the vault scene where Ironwood basically went, “Are you still Oscar?” and Oscar went “Yup” and that was the end of that. When you’ve got fans who watched the episode once (nothing wrong with that, it’s just then easy to misremember things), a fandom that states headcanons as facts, and other fans who are inclined to make confident but unsubstantiated statements, it’s incredibly easy to tell everyone that 2 + 2 = 10. You pick a canon event, present it as something it wasn’t, pick a headcanon, slam them together, and people come to a wildly different conclusion from what you’d get if you’re dealing strictly with the canon. 

So I think anyone is able to grasp the nuance of this situation, it just requires dealing with this situation. Which is why I demand evidence! From both others and myself so that we can see what the situation actually is. Any and every statement made has to be able to be backed up by dialogue, visuals, action, or narration in the canon, or we need to acknowledge when statements have dialogue, visuals, actions, or narration that contradicts them in the canon. Doesn’t mean there isn’t wiggle room - there’s still very much interpretation of these things, as well as contradictions within the canon - but demanding evidence helps keep everyone on the same page. If someone can’t point to when Ironwood learned that silver eyes could potentially defeat Salem, or if they can’t present the dialogue where he says he intends to never land Atlas, or if they can’t show you where they formed the opinion that Ironwood was talking to Ozpin, or if they’re ignoring the five scenes you can pull up that undermine their position... it’s not persuasive. And if it’s not persuasive it’s unlikely to be the real situation. And if it’s not the real situation, then the fan is never going to grapple with the actual question at hand: Is it worth risking everyone you’ve already gotten to safety to fight someone who you currently have no way to beat? 

Evidence is everything. Not to make this a soap box post, but this is how misinformation about ~important~ subjects is spread as well, not just our fun webseries. Has this person misrepresented this situation? Have they left out crucial information? If I ask them to trace their logic will they do so? Does it make sense? Can they point to the moment when they said this thing happened? Can they back up their claims with sources? Do I trust those sources? Honestly, fandom is a great place to practice skills that are going to help you throughout your life and this is one of the reasons why the anger at me making fandom “unnecessarily political” is hilarious. Not only is media inherently political, not only are massive online communities inherently political, but the behavior  we exhibit in fandom is wrapped up in politics as well. Statements like “Ironwood abandoned a city because he was pissed at Ozpin” are just a safe, fictionalized version of “Vaccines will give your kids autism.” They’re both unsubstantiated claims that sound very damning. So you ask, “How did you reach that conclusion? Because if I demand evidence for that I don’t think I’m going to be persuaded...” 

When you’ve got a pocket of fandom that demands and listens to evidence, then you’ve likewise got a pocket working with the same situation. Then you can grapples with the aspects that stem from personal preference and subjectivity: I still stand by Ruby’s inability to leave people behind, Ironwood’s pragmatism resonates with me, I’d call him a hero, I’d call him an anti-hero, now we have to grapple with him shooting people and whether that clearly villainous act is built into his character arc well or if it’s an OOC call of the authors  ... all interpretations that differ, but are cut from the same cloth. 

[banjodanger]

X-Men Origins: Wolverine(2009)

I’ve got a lot to talk about, so I’m going to jump right in with a very unpopular opinion. This may SHOCK and OFFEND certain readers, but I’m not one to shy away from speaking my mind. More sensitive readers should beware, however, because I’m not going to shy away from rattling cages and saying what NEEDS to be said!

So, ready yourselves, because...

Origins is not the worst X-Men movie.

There. I said it. PBBBBBBTTTT!

I’m not arguing that this was a good movie, hell, there’s a good argument that this isn’t even a competently made movie. But this movie is also responsible for some of the absolute best movies to come from Fox’s X-Men. First Class and Days of Future Past are two of the absolute best movies of this series, and it’s doubtful the other two Wolverine solo movies would have aimed as high as they did if this movie hadn’t been so widely mocked. If you go back to watch this movie, try to keep in mind eight years later this series would get nominated for a screenwriting Oscar. Whatever your opinion of awards, that’s a hell of a turnaround, considering the story this movie tells is like three separate stories stapled together. Finally, however much this movie misunderstands Deadpool, it was right on in casting Ryan Reynolds and eventually gave us better Deadpool movies than we could have hoped for. It shouldn’t go unnoticed that both of those movies use Origins as a solid foundation for jokes. I’m not going to talk too much about Deadpool in this movie, because I plan to cover it in more detail when I get to the first movie.

But I’m not discussing those movies, I’m discussing Origins, and Origins is not very good. The CGI looks cheap and outdated, not just by the standards of the time it was released but by the standards of five years previous. And the movie makes said terrible CGI hard to ignore because, to quote the philosopher Michelle Branch, it is EVERYWHERE. Most people are quick to bring up Wolverine’s claws effects, and they should because they somehow look worse than any of the three previous movies and it’s the most easily noticeable. I’m not expecting them to have Hugh Jackman actually fighting and jumping around on top of a nuclear vent but it looks like they’re doing it in front of computer wallpaper. That hill outside the Hudson’s farmhouse literally looks like the default Windows XP desktop. I’m surprised Agent Zero isn’t hiding behind the recycle bin. This isn’t to say I don’t expect lots of CGI in my comic book movies,but I expect better when someone is dropping over one hundred million for a guy with metal claws to fight a mute with impossibly long sword fists.

I could ignore all the bargain basement effects if there was a good story, but there isn’t one. There’s about two or three stories and they’re all bad. Gavin Hood wanted to make a throwback sevnties-style revenge movie, completely self-contained and R-rated(Hey, does that sound familiar?), but the producers wanted extra characters they could spin off into their own films. And as much as I want to excoriate them for that, I can only get but so mad. This was a big franchise that was approaching ten years since its first film. They were looking towards the future and that’s what their job was. The problem is that failure to find a common ground comes through on the screen. Some of the strongest scenes are between Logan and Victor, to the detriment that most of the other characters who come off as unnecessary cameos. That boxing scene between Logan and Fred Dukes could be a thirty second phone call without really losing anything.

It’s disappointing, too, because a lot of the performances in this movie aren’t bad. Believe me, I wanted to hate Will.I.Am. I was going to drag him and talk about all the terrible music he made but...he’s not bad in this movie. I’m not going to say he missed his calling by not becoming an actor full-time, but I enjoyed his performance and wish the movie had used him a little bit more.

My humps is still one of the worst goddamned songs ever.

Gambit was great in this movie too. Taylor Kitsch had this bizarre run of putting in good performances in hated movies. After this, he did John Carter then the second season of True Detective. That’s a shocking run of bad luck, and too bad to, because he’s good in all three. We missed out not getting at least one more movie with his take on Gambit, because he gets maybe fifteen minutes of screentime but he manages to be memorable, charismatic and charming.

Helicoptering with a bo staff still isn’t part of his goddamn power set though.

And I’m not going to forget Liev Schrieber, who makes an absolutely compelling villain. The only problem with his character at all is that he puts such a great performance that it stretches belief to imagine this is the guy that becomes a silent henchman in the first movie. There’s simply nothing in his performance to suggest they’re the same person. It would be like if the twist of Phantom Menace was that Darth Vader was originally Jar Jar Binks, or if they hired Nora Ephron to write a Hellraiser prequel. 

Even the Scott Summers we get in this movie is pretty good despite looking like a guy that steals copper wiring out of abandoned gas stations. Although I really question why Gambit watches them run off and I guess just assumes they’re being abducted by a good guy.

That leads me into the whole problem with prequels. Things happen in this movie and characters seem to live simply because earlier movies dictate that we have to see them again. It simply does not make sense for Kayla to leave Stryker alive. She has every reason to kill him, but she doesn’t, because he needs to be the villain in X2. Gambit doesn’t chase after the kids because they didn’t want to have him interact with Professor X. Sabretooth survives because he has to fight Wolverine on top of the Staute of Liberty while making no reference to their apparent relationship as siblings, or any words of any kind. This movie is awkwardly shoehorning itself into the lore established by the previous movies and it results in characters saying and doing things that go against what this movie seems to lead up to. The ending of most of those seventies revenge flicks was a bloody murder. Here, Stryker hurts his feet a little. It’s just not the same thing.

Ok, are you ready for the problematic parts?

Let’s start with Native American representation, because it ends up being a pretty big part of this movie. Lynn Collins’ Wikipedia says she claims Cherokee ancestry, so I’ll give the movie credit on that, but as near as I’ve been able to suss out, the myth she tells does not exist outside of this movie. First off, Wolverines do not howl. At all. They’re not wolves, they’re related to weasels. They’re small, vicious bastards. That information was readily available in 2009, by the way. Furthermore, the information I can find says that the moon in Native American mythology is predominantly gendered as male. Now, that’s not a blanket statement. This was the research I was able to conduct, and mythology, as with a lot of oral traditions, are a pretty mutable thing. Given that I was unable to find any mention of this myth that didn’t quote it from the movie, I feel pretty comfortable calling this myth nonsense.

Hey, what’s your tolerance for fatphobia? Because that’s going to impact how you feel about Blob’s character. Look, from his very first appearance he’s been a fat joke. That’s it. He’s a rude fat guy whose mutant power is being fat, hell, part of his power set is described as a “personal gravity field.” So while I can’t blame the movie entirely for this character being problematic, you’ve got to ask why they chose this character as the one that had to stay true to the comic book. He was in poor taste when he was created, when this movie was made, and now. And I absolutely can blame the movie for making him a fat joke.

At least they didn’t go the Ultimate comics route and straight up show him eating another character. Small blessings.

On a more final note, there’s that very strange character choice in the beginning credits. I know that they want to illustrate early that Wolverine doesn’t view violence the same way Sabretooth does, but why would they choose nazis as the villain in that moment? Even if they weren’t the most enjoyably killable villains in history, the last three movies have made the atrocities of the Holocaust a huge emotional linchpin of a major character. So it comes off as a genuine shock that this movie would use, in its introduction, a moment of sympathy for these very same villains. So you needed to show Wolverine with sympathy? Have a bar fight in France after liberating the country. Have them fight in the Korean war. Maybe Wolverine mourns a kid shot on the front lines. There’s a hundred choices that don’t involve Wolverine getting sad over a bunch of nazis.

So, why don’t I think this is the worst X-Men movie? I’m clearly not calling it a forgotten classic, and I’m not recommending you watch it unless you’re a weird completionist blogging about your arrested development on Tumblr. Sure, there’s some forgotten performances in here that deserve some consideration, but the movie is mostly a mess, a result of too many cooks with diverging visions. There’s a good revenge flick here, but it gets buried and muddled by a desire and knowledge that this movie has to simultaneously explain the past that led to the first movie and set up future installments. It tries to do too much and ends up not doing much of anything. I followed up on some of the people involved in this movie. Obviously Ryan Reynolds had the last laugh, but it still took seven years and a leaked teaser. Hugh Jackman learned from the mistakes in this movie and the rest of the Wolverine movies are pretty great. Gavin Hood, who got this job after being nominated for a foreign language Oscar, directed another big-budget flop with Ender’s Game. However, earlier in 2020 he apparently bought a four million dollar house so I don’t feel bad for him. Also, the flop of Ender’s Game could possibly involve Orson Scott Card being a vocal and unapologetic homophobe. Seriously, what is it with beloved fantasy authors and hate towards LGBT groups? You can conceive of wild, uncharted space and magical realms but the idea that two guys love each other is too far out?

Next in the series, from failure comes success, as we meet Xavier and Erik as frenemies and launch a million slash fictions.

[doing-all-write]

the art of flirting on a hover board pt. 2

Ivy runs a successful arts non-profit and Joe tags along when Rami and Lucy go to visit her. But what happens when a simple bet made over a hover board competition gets out of hand?

Pairing: Joe Mazzello x Ivy (OC)

Rating: Rated S for Stupidity (we love friends who share one (1) collective brain cell. 

Warnings: None!

Here’s part two! I hope you all love it!

Part 1

Any comments, notes, love, hate WHATEVER you got for this, let me know!

Reblogs and feedback are much appreciated bc I crave validation!!!!!

"So then, I'm up there, I'm telling them my story, pleading with them to realize that the arts matter and that's when I see Charlotte off to the side frantically trying to tell me my dress had come open and my whole bra was out." 

Rami bursted out laughing, Lucy let out a gasp and Joe clapped his hands in mirth as Ivy shook her head at her own bad luck, "I swear, it was the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me." 

Ivy's fingers worked to secure the rope they had found around the axle of the skateboard. Joe couldn't stop thinking about her hands and what they would look like doing other activities.

Like, holding his hand.

Or wrapped around his dick. 

Either one was fine. He wasn't a picky man. 

"So what did you do? I mean, how do you even recover from that?" Lucy wondered aloud, as Joe shook himself from his thoughts and went to take a drink from the beer Ivy had distributed to them all. 

Ivy shrugged as she sat back on her heels and brought her own beer bottle to her lips, "Well, we got the most donations we've ever received so at this point I'm considering just doing a strip routine to get more money." Joe started choking on the drink he had just swallowed as the image of Ivy stripping crowded into his mind to take up permanent residence. 

Rami whacked him on the back. 

Ivy's eyes flicked up to meet Joe's as her eyebrow quirked up in a silent ask of You good? Joe nodded and flapped his hand around in the universal gesture of, Keep going, don't mind me dying.

"I mean, everyone still teases me about it but I make jokes about it more than anyone else. You just laugh at yourself. Make a few memes, bing, bang, boom. It was over and I still got those old geezer's money so I'm not super upset. And besides, what's a few memes in the grand scheme of things?" She inquired as she stood up, wiping her hands off on the backs of her shorts as she looked right up into Joe's eyes and smiled. 

"You okay?"

"I'm fine and besides, I couldn't have died without seeing some of those memes that you just talked about. I mean, you can't leave us hanging in suspense like that." Joe retorted as he crossed his arms over his chest. 

Ivy's eyes flicked down to his biceps even as her brain kept repeating over and over "don't look at his arms, don't look at his arms" and mentally cursed herself for being so weak. She felt her cheeks heating up as she realized Joe had DEFINITELY tracked her eye movements.  He quirked an eyebrow at her as she tried to salvage whatever of her pride remained, 

"I'm pretty sure Gracie has one of them framed and hung up in her office, I'll show you." Okay, not a great save of the ole pride but memes are better than blatant thirst she thought as she smiled at him and watched a matching smile grow across Joe's face.

The moment between them stretched on as Lucy's gaze bounced between the two and tried to subtly let Rami know that he should keep his mouth shut so he didn't ruin the moment. 

Rami, however, missed these cues and kept looking back and forth between the two, feeling very much like something had just happened that he was not meant to be a part of. His mouth opened when he felt Lucy, who realized subtlety is overrated, stomp on his foot. 

"OW."

Joe and Ivy's gaze was ripped apart as they both glanced at Rami who was glaring at Lucy who had widened her eyes to max capacity and was suddenly very invested in the molding around the ceiling.

"Sorry, I, uh, bit my tongue." Rami offered weakly as Ivy cocked an eyebrow in disbelief. 

"So. Anyway. Yeah. That's about as exciting as my life has been the past few months. Some performances, writing songs, running the business, the usual." Ivy said nonchalantly as if running a successful non-profit was just another boring life event, like visiting the DMV. 

Ivy suddenly whipped around to Rami as she dramatically pronounced, "But what about YOU Mister 'I'm an Oscar winning actor' like what the FUCK?" as her eyes bugged out and her fist collided against Rami's shoulder. 

Rami rubbed the sore spot as Joe barked out a laugh. Rami narrowed his eyes at Joe as he held up his hands defensively, "Sorry man, it was really funny." His eyes slid over to Ivy's where she met them with a smile.

Fuck, he would never get tired of that smile. 

"So, are we testing this thing or what? Because I believe she's ready for her maiden voyage." Ivy declared as she tugged on the length of jump rope one more time to test its tautness. 

"Yeah, my life is FINE, thank you for asking. And so is my SHOULDER." Rami announced to no one in particular.

"Oh I'm sure you're fine but if you're so hurt maybe you shouldn't ride this-" 

Rami pointed a finger at Lucy, "Don't you keep me from doing this. I've waited so long to get here. Do NOT take this away from me." 

Lucy held up her hands in surrender as Joe and Ivy snickered. 

"SO." Rami rubbed his hands together as absolute glee washed over his face, "Lucy and I try it first? Then you and Joe?"

Ivy looked at Joe who looked back at Ivy, "Hell yeah. The dream team here is going to CRUSH it." Joe held up his hand for a high five and Ivy smiled as she slapped her palm against Joe's.

She wrapped her fingers around his hand and held on as she turned to Rami, 'This originally wasn't a competition but we're going to kick your ass." 

"Oh it's so on. Let's make this interesting."

"Name your terms Malek." Ivy said.

Joe was doing his best not to move so Ivy wouldn't let go of his hand and Lucy was practically quivering with suppressed excitement. 

Ivy was very aware that she was still holding onto Joe's hand but really didn't want to let go as she realized how long it had been since she had held hands with someone who actually gave her butterflies and not grabbing onto Gracie or Ava's hand when she saw a particularly stunning picture of Harry Styles.

Rami was lost in thought as he tried to think what would be the worst thing he could do to Ivy if she lost this arbitrary competition. 

"Hmm. Okay. Got it. If whoever's on the hover board can stay on longer than either Lucy or I can, then you get to post whatever picture you want on my Instagram with whatever caption you want."

Ivy's eyes lit up like a Broadway marquee at the idea of using Rami's rarely used Instagram to post one of the many embarrassing throwback photos she had of him. 

"Alright Malek, but if we lose, which we won't," she squeezed Joe's hand again to emphasize her point and Joe prayed his hands weren't too sweaty, "what do you get out of this?"

"I get to schedule a date for you with whatever guy I choose."

Joe had never seen a human lose all color in their visage so quickly as he did when Ivy heard Rami's terms. 

"No."

"Yes."

"Rami, no! That's my personal life! You can't go messing around in other people's lives!"

"Oh, so giving you access to my Instagram account is what exactly?"

Ivy made some various noises that almost sounded like words and finally sighed, "Fine. I agree to the terms." She let go of Joe's hand as she wheeled around to face him, "We have to fucking win."

"Well, we better. I have some absolutely delicious behind the scene photos of him that need to see the light of day."

~~~

"Ready?"

Ivy whacked the side of her helmet and shot Joe a thumbs up as she prepared to lift her other foot onto the hover board. 

Rami and Lucy stood off to the side, red-faced and sweaty after having raced down the path they had decided on and back. 

They had walked to a park that was close to the organization. Rami and Ivy had argued over a path for five minutes, and would have gone on all day but Lucy stepped in to say if she wanted to listen to an old married couple arguing she could just listen to Joe and Ben talk. Once the path had been declared, Rami and Lucy had gone first.

Rami's screams, as Lucy took off like a shot once she got her balance on the bike, had caused every dog in a three mile radius to start barking. They had made it halfway when Rami got overexcited and his cheering caused him to fall over.

Which then caused both Ivy and Joe to sing simultaneously, "Another one bites the dust" which then caused Lucy to run the bike into a tree because she was laughing so hard. 

Needless to say, Ivy and Joe were both feeling confident about their abilities. 

Joe gave Ivy a grave salute, "If this is our last time serving together, I just want to say, it's been an honor."

Ivy gave a stoic nod back, "Likewise, sir."

Joe faced forward and took a deep breath as Rami and Lucy counted down, 

"FIVE"

Ivy wiped her hands on her shorts.

"FOUR"

Joe cracked his neck.

"THREE"

Ivy sent up a call to the universe to not let her fail.

"TWO"

Joe sent out a silent prayer that he wouldn't be the reason Ivy broke a bone.

"ONE" 

Joe's legs tensed and Ivy stepped up onto the hover board.

"GO"

Joe took off like a shot and Ivy's arm that wasn't holding onto the rope pinwheeled as she desperately tried to keep her balance. She was all of a sudden overwhelmed by a memory of trying to surf and falling more times than she could count. 

Not the best time to be thinking of that she thought as she used her core in ways she never would have thought to use it. 

Joe kept his focus on the path in front of him. He didn't dare look back for fear he would lose focus and cause Ivy to fall off. 

Ivy was starting to feel more stable when all of a sudden she felt much lighter, the sky seemed much closer and her feet were no longer attached to the hover board by gravity.

She landed with a "FUCK" and a thud that had Rami and Lucy freezing for just a second before racing over to her. 

Joe heard Ivy swear and realized the bike seemed much lighter. He risked a glance behind and saw a heap on the ground and an empty hover board. He was off the bike before it even stopped the whole way.

"No, no, no, no, fuck! Ivy, are you okay?" Joe cried as he reached Ivy as Rami helped her up into a seated position and Lucy was feeling her arms for broken bones. 

Ivy groggily looked up at Joe, "'m okay. Must have hit a hole. Not your fault."

Joe reached up and gently unclipped the helmet from her head, "Well, at least you were wearing your helmet. Safety is key when doing stupid stuff."

"Safety and stupidity notoriously go hand in hand" Ivy offered him a weak smile as Joe smiled warmly down at her. 

"Well, I don't think you have any broken bones in your arms." Lucy reported.

"Do you think you can stand?" Rami asked as he looked at Ivy with concern.

Ivy nodded and took the arm Rami offered her to pull herself up. She gingerly put weight on one leg, then the other and when neither buckled or felt like anything was severely wrong, gave a soft thumbs up.

Joe let out a giant breath, "Thank god."

"I'm so glad you're okay." Rami said as he wrapped an arm around Ivy's shoulders and pulled her into his side.

"Thanks Rami, me too." Ivy murmured as she laid her head on his shoulder.

"And since you're okay, I don't feel guilty for doing this." Rami said as he took a deep breath in, pointed at Ivy and Joe and yelled, "WE WON. IN YOUR FACE." Rami grabbed Lucy and spun her around as she laughed.

Joe rolled his eyes and Ivy groaned, "Sorry I bit it super hard and let down the team." She bit her lip and kept her eyes glued to the ground.

"Hey, no. Ivy. It's no big deal. I'm just glad you're alright." Joe said. He leaned forward and back as he contemplated whether he should hug her or not. Ivy made the decision for him as she wrapped her arms around his neck. 

'Thank you" she whispered as Joe hesitantly wrapped his arms around her waist and tried not to breathe in her perfume too deeply. He wanted to remember every detail of this moment. 

How her body felt pressed against his.

How her arms felt around his neck.

How she smelled. How warm she was. 

How he never wanted to let her go. 

"IVY. You better get ready for your date!" Joe and Ivy's eyes snapped open as they remembered what the consequence of losing was. 

A soft chorus of "fuck", as if from a profane angelic chorus, was heard from their embrace as Lucy and Rami continued celebrating.

[reallylonglies]

Taylor Swift - Demon Hunter : Part 4

Blake was exhausted. She had work. She had kids to chase around. She had a husband. She didn’t have time to pass messages between a demon and a lightning rod like they were in a really messed up fifth grade class. 

She stomped down the stairs to Taylor’s gym. It was quiet there when Taylor was touring and she needed some time to get a little work done. She found a semi-comfortable seat and began to leaf through a script she’d been sent. It was quiet and cool in the gym, and the script was actually good enough that she found herself engrossed. An hour passed before she realised she wasn’t alone. 

There was a faint hum in the air and a warm, spiced scent. She slipped the script into her bag, took off her earrings and readied herself for a fight. Only two people had the combination code for the door, but all that meant was that whatever was in here definitely wasn’t a person. Tucking her hair into a neat ponytail, she called into the darkness.

“You can come out now, she’s not here. Just little old me,” her voice echoed, the comfortable cool of the gym had become spine-tingling chill. She felt the air moving around her. 

“A breeze in a basement,” she muttered to herself, “Happy Tuesday to me.” 

Suddenly, it was in front of her. She sensed it before she saw it. Every inch of her body told her to run and never look back. From experience, she knew that this was the most important time to stay completely still and focussed. The discomfort she was feeling began to take shape in front of her. Despite her thudding heart, she found herself rolling her eyes at the over-dramatic process of manifestation. She really didn’t have time for this shit, even if it was scaring the living daylights out of her. She needed those living daylights to get through the rest of her busy life. 

After a minute or so of overdramatic swirling, the spirit manifested in front of her. She’d never seen anything like it. Except she had, she’d seen something exactly like it, but she’d never seen that thing manifest in front of her. Taylor usually just entered the room through a door, not as a swirling cloud of vapour.

“If you’re trying to convince me you’re my friend, you’ve already made several mistakes,” she said, sounding nonchalant is second nature when you’ve spent as many years in teen dramas as Blake had. 

“I’m not trying to trick you,” it said, it’s voice was not right either. Taylor had a human voice, this was a low growl with a rasping quality that made Blake want to dive for a packet of vocal zones. 

“What do you want?” Blake asked, slowly moving her hand up her back, between her shoulder blades. She grasped the handle of the small dagger she kept there, and silently thanked Gal Gadot for inspiring this little trick. 

With unseeing eyes, the spirit tilted its head at her. The eyes roamed up and down Blake’s whole body as if they had never been set on a human being before. 

“She took my friend, put her in a song,” the figure circled Blake, Blake concealed the dagger behind her wrist. 

“What are you doing?” she asked it as it passed behind her, when it stood in front of her, she took a sharp breath. 

“Learning,” the word escaped from Blake’s lips in Blake’s voice. Staring in horror at the uncanny figure before her, the real Blake stifled a scream. She slashed with the dagger at the demon, who dodged, then looked down at her own right hand. It revealed its identical dagger. The stifled scream became a roar of frustration. Blake threw herself into battle for the first time in over a decade. 

*****

I don’t attend awards ceremonies as a rule. There’s enough awful people there, I don’t need to add any more malice to the mix. I once had to find one of my old apprentices at the Oscars, the stench in that room… it was like garbage, emotional garbage. Everyone in there has so much hanging on a little golden statue. And people mock me for my crucifix intolerance. 

I sensed almost instantly that something bad had happened to Blake. I don’t know what gave it away. Was it something she said? Something she did? The fact that she had obviously been replaced by a powerful fallen angel out for vengeance? 

One of those things definitely set my alarm bells ringing when I went to her with a message for Taylor. Fallen angels are honestly the worst because if you bump into one unprepared they can do a lot of damage. They can stop you manifesting, give you a headache or in this case they can force you to possess the husband of a good friend against your will. 

She gestured to him, cowering gently in a corner. 

“Get in,” she said, she’d really nailed the voice. 

I have to tell you inhabiting a human host is gross enough but this guy had only recently been exorcised and whatever slovenly spirit he’d been possessed by did not clean up after itself. Anxieties everywhere. Nightmares left unfinished. The guy even left an existential crisis just lying around for me to trip up on. What a hack.  

We so rarely talk about what it feels like to possess someone, allow me to describe it. It’s a little like tapping into a phone line except the phone line is the person’s physical presence in the mortal dimension. Unfortunately, the host is still using the phone line so you get a live feed of all their thoughts, and this guy was a big thinker. A lot going on in his mind. Gave me a migraine almost instantly. 

Walking the red carpet, I saw Taylor at a distance. Unfortunately there was no way for me to signal to her in front of that many photographers. I didn’t want to risk the exposure of the entire demon realm over something so small as a potential apocalypse. Also, any time that a person is working hard to perform the act of “being myself” it is actually surprisingly difficult for an incumbent Demon to take over. They’re too conscious of everything, all their boundaries are up. It’s sticky and gross and I hate it. 

Fallen angels love, love having their pictures taken. Ever seen those old-timey exorcism pictures? All that ectoplasm shit? Fallen angels, they love to showboat. As soon as they get in front of a camera they have to show off. If you look at any pictures of Blake from this awards ceremony, you might be able to see the image warping a little at the edges, or get a chill when you look at her eyes. 

So anyway, the red carpet probably was simultaneously the best and worst place to attract Taylor’s attention. Demon Blake was distracted having her picture taken. Great. Stupid human host Ryan was on his best “being myself” behaviour. Not great. 

As luck would have it, my host needed the bathroom. Admittedly, I had spent the entire afternoon making him thirsty in the hope that this would give me the out I needed. Slipping through the crowd, he passed Taylor and I pushed myself to the top of his psyche so that she couldn’t fail to hear my tune blaring out over the shouts of journalists and photographers. 

Her eye met Ryan’s and she filled with fiery rage. I fist bumped, there was no way she could ignore this. 

She stormed into the bathroom while my host was washing his hands. Another insignificant human squealed at her, she swore at him and he left in a panic. It wasn’t classy. I loved it. 

“You,” she fixed me with her hardest stare, “get out.” 

“You’re blocking the door. I’m also really not sure you’re meant to be in here. This is the men’s room and you’re not a men,” Ryan’s babbling continued until he looked in the mirror above the sink and saw my face beaming back at him, “Oh God, not again, how does this keep happening to me? Do I have a possess me sign on my back?” 

He was still chattering as I drifted gently away from his feeble human body and manifested next to him.

“Wait why is he wearing a tux, do demons wear tuxes?” he asked. 

“No,” I said, “It’s a special occasion I wanted to look nice. Do you always wear a tux, dumbass?” 

“No,” he asked, “Why do you look like John Mulaney?”

“It’s a passing resemblance, why do you look like Picasso’s biggest mistake?” 

Taylor interrupted our vocal sparring by aggressively grabbing me by my bowtie. I had manifested too solidly for that not to hurt. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked, twisting the bowtie tighter. 

I made some garbled gasping sounds, she relented and loosened her grip. 

“Blake… fallen angel… very bad… big event… tonnes of demons…” partly I was getting my breath back, partly I preferred talking in bullet points. 

“How many?” she asked, taking a series of silver rings out of her garter and slipping them onto her fingers. 

“Sevent…” I deliberately mumbled the second half of the word. 

“Seventeen? That’s not so many,” she shrugged, I made a guilty face “Oh, seventy, that’s many, a lot of many. Is there anyone we can call?” 

Zendaya was out on a film shoot somewhere. Aniston was retired. Dunst had a lifetime ban because of the Bettany fiasco. I racked my brains. 

The door opened. Two figures in black suits appeared. 

“Miss Swift, pleased to meet you, we’ve heard a lot about you,” the one that spoke had a gentle accent and dreamy eyes, the other one was Keanu Reeves. 

“It seems you have a bit of a situation on your hands,” Reeves answered, “How can we be of service?” 

Taylor looked taken aback. I looked taken aback. Ryan looked deeply confused. 

“What the hell is going on? Why is Neo here with this tennis player? Are we giving Golden Globes to tennis players now?” these were all logical questions. 

“This must be confusing for you,” with perfectly applied pressure from his palm, Reeves gently put Ryan to sleep. The other guy caught the body and slid it under the sink, where they kept the hand towels and soap refills. Watching these two work together, stirred a memory in me, something from an impossibly long time ago. 

“Holy shit,” I said, “You’re Reeves and Federer.”

“Who else would we be?” Federer asked as he arranged some hand towels under Ryan’s head to make him more comfortable. 

“Wait, the Reeves and Federer?” Taylor chimed in, “I thought they were from like, the 18th century.”

“We are,” they answered in unison. 

Reeves and Federer: immortal vampires. I couldn’t believe they were still around, which in hindsight felt particularly foolish. They were immortal vampires, of course they were still around. 

“Alright,” Taylor and I didn’t have time to fangirl the way I wanted to over these two absolute heroes of the dark world, “I have a plan for this but it’s going to take a lot of work. What weapons are we working with?” 

Reeves and Federer opened their jackets. I gasped audibly. 

“What do you need?”

******

Blake woke in the gym, her hands were tied to a leg press machine. She rolled her eyes, and without even flinching, dislocated her thumb to break out of her bonds. She sighed, popped her thumb back in and straightened her dress. 

“Fallen angels,” she muttered, collecting her handbag, “Amateurs.” 

*****

Demon Blake waited for the ceremony to begin before starting her big show. The sound system began to crackle and pop like a nervous bowl of rice krispies. The host apologised for technical difficulties. The technical team shook their heads in confusion. 

The lights went out. A room full of expensive people gasped expensively in shock. 

“Silence,” a voice throbbed from the center of the room. Blake had risen to her feat and was glowing blue in the darkness, “Stand.” 

A bunch of bozos in suits stood up. Taylor sighed, we were concealed behind a thick velvet curtain. 

“There are so many,” she whispered, “Reeves and Federer had better remember the plan. Are you ready for it?” 

“I was hewn ready,” I replied. It was a lie, if I was physically capable of wetting myself I would have done. 

“Ew, that’s gross,” she answered as we watched Demon Blake rise into the centre of the room. I get telepathic when I get nervous. 

There was a shuffling sound behind us, Taylor turned, instantly ready for a fight. Blake, the real one, not the floating ball of demonic rage, appeared from the shadows. 

“Hey,” she smiled, “What did I miss?” 

“Oh, nothing, just that your demon twin is trying to take over the world,” Taylor answered as Blake rummaged in her handbag and changed her heels for comfortable pumps. 

“So, just another Tuesday then,” she answered, “Where do you want me?” 

“The tech desk, I need you to raise the curtain when Reeves and Federer give the signal,” Taylor kept her eyes pinned on demon Blake, who was now floating through the audience monologuing about mortals heeding her will or something. Typical fallen angel garbage, these guys are 80% propaganda.

“Wait,” Blake paused on her way to the tech desk which was hidden at the back of the room, “The Reeves and Federer? I thought they were a myth.” 

“Yeah, me too. Now it makes sense that John Wick looks so fighting fit at fifty,” Taylor gestured that Blake should hurry, the possessed hordes were beginning to bar the doors. 

Just as the tension in the room mounted to a peak, there was a loud shout from a balcony above the stage. 

“Hey, crazy demon!” the words were less than poetry, but they sounded so good in a swiss accent, “Possess this!”

He threw what looked like, but certainly wasn’t a tennis ball into the air, jumped and served. The point blank blow knocked demon Blake out of the air, she crashed dramatically into a table surrounded by influential aged filmmakers.

It occurred to me suddenly that I had no idea where he’d been hiding that tennis racket.

Taylor was still biding her time, she made her way towards the center of the stage, behind the curtain. 

Reeves had made his way to the middle of the room, gently bringing protective posessees to their knees on the way. It was good that he was used to hurting people without actually hurting people, that was working in our favour. 

Demon Blake saw him coming and aimed a bolt of lightning squarely at his chest. He dodged it, letting Quentin Tarantino take the hit. Boy howdy he was going to have a headache when he woke up. 

Federer had climbed athletically down from the balcony and was approaching Demon Blake from behind, apologising courteously as he elbowed his way through the crowd. 

Reeves cricked his neck as Demon Blake moved towards him, real fire blazing in her eyes. 

I’ve rarely engaged in hand to hand combat with a fallen angel. In fact, I would go so far as to say I have never in fact engaged in hand to hand combat with a fallen angel. It’s risky, and hard, plus in high stress situations I have a habit of turning into a cloud of greasy smoke so it’s difficult to keep up with the “hand to hand” thing. With that for context, let me tell you that I was impressed with how long Reeves held out. 

First she came for him with a left hook. 

He caught her fist in his and forced her backwards. 

She burst into flames and he was almost incinerated. 

Stumbling backwards, he pulled a chair out from under a possessed Jude Law and shattered it. 

He struck out with a chair leg and clocked her across the face. 

At this point she lost control and contorted briefly into her true shape, horns, wings and all. 

Taylor motioned to me to move to the orchestra pit. My part of the plan was, though I say myself, a big challenge. I was being very brave. Landing in the pit I centred myself and extended a telepathic field across all of the musicians. 

Just as I got the last flautist under control, I heard Reeves and Federer give the signal. It was meant to be “now” but it came as a slightly garbled scream somewhere in the vicinity of now. 

Luckily Blake got the message and the curtain on the stage rose. I connected myself with Taylor, a conduit for her to control the orchestra. She let out a single, incredible note. Demon Blake turned, dropping both Reeves and Federer to the floor. 

“You,” the Demon floated towards Taylor at an alarming pace. 

Taylor replied with a low hum, the orchestra started up, perfectly in tune under her control. 

“You hid my friend in that stupid song,” the demon had dropped its Blake disguise in its fury. Fallen angels, not pretty. Would not recommend this as a Halloween costume. 

Taylor started the song, the orchestra was building with her. I’d never heard this one before, it was incredible. 

The angel was uncomfortable, its tune was hiding under the verses, woven tightly into the chorus, but it fought back. Blue lightning flew out of its hands towards Taylor. She dodged, rolled and didn’t miss a line of her song. 

The Angel looked upwards as it began to weaken under the intensity of the music. Taylor nodded at me, as we had planned, I extended the telepathic field to include everyone in the room. Hundreds of voices raised in unison and the fallen angel writhed and glowed with pale fire. 

Reeves and Federer gazed up at the demon, Blake’s eyes were fixed on Taylor as she fought her greatest battle. In an explosion of fire and fury the fallen angel dissolved. The song came to an end, Taylor fell to her knees on the stage. Silence fell across the room, followed by a low whooshing sound as if a gale was blowing through the building. Seventy demons evacuated their influential hosts, eager to escape the wrath of the most powerful lightning rod they had ever seen. 

More silence, then Reeves clapping, Federer joining him, Blake whooping - the whole room erupted with applause. 

She stood, shakily. Smiled the same smile she had on her face the first time she vanquished a level five fire demon, and bowed.

As the applause died down, and I began gently wiping the memories of everyone in attendance. Taylor had a sudden flash of memory, she turned to Federer, who was folding napkins and straightening cutlery. 

“Did you leave Ryan locked in an under-sink cupboard?” 

“Oh, shit, yes,” he looked at Blake with panic in his eye. She was tucking into a tray of canapes. 

“Leave him there, it’ll be good for him,” she said, through a mouthful of salmon puffs, “I’ll get him out in an hour.” 

[likeanemployee]

In Regard to Ozpin: theories thoughts and BS

I’ve been thinking about Ozpin’s role in volume 6 again and quite frankly it’s probably the only true issue I have with this volume. For 3 volumes now we’ve been playing the maybe Ozpin isn’t really the good guy game and while I know some people have bought into that the first and only time his action weren’t at the very least understandable (and I’d go so far as to say completely justifiable) was when he up and disappeared this season. 

If I’m honest I don’t think the decision to do that was based at all on character personality but on plot they wanted/needed Ozpin to not be around constantly providing answers. For example the apathy arc. You could probably do something like they did with Maria, with Ozpin if he were around where he forgot/didn’t immediately recognize the signs of the apathy and then they started to effect him too but I for one would have found it less believable. Maria has excuses like old age and that she’s been out of the game by comparison Ozpin should have plenty of knowledge, experience, and lets be honest paranoia to recognize something like that had he been present. A second example is the airship arc while I would be willing to believe Cordovin would have denied them regardless of any sort of input from Ozpin I also feel like he should really have some code words and pre-established plans in case of something like this or at the very least have some kind of contacts he could enlist for aid. If nothing else his presence would have radically altered the “We’re going to do it our way” aspect of the conflict. 

Honestly I don’t have a problem with that in of itself sometimes decision are made to enable the telling of a story. It happens and as long as the decision are reasonably believable (and lets be honest there are no hard and fast rules about what is and isn’t possible when it comes to soul sharing) its perfectly fine. My problem is the heavily implied reason why he’s disappeared is that he’s chosen to. 

This is a huge problem to me. The entire redeeming aspect of Ozpin, the reason I’m willing to excuse everything he’s done and said (or not said) is he’s still trying. After everything he’s faced and lost and after being betrayed (multiple times apparently) not to mention I’m sure he’s seen plenty of examples of humans being shitty (because we are like way too often) he’s still trying to stop Salem. Still fighting the woman he loved to keep other people alive. He’s willing to continue to face all of that and not give up even when he has been told stopping her is impossible that there is no end game that he’s going to have to go on like this for all eternity. He’s willing to face that challenge that utter impossibility but he runs from the anger and questions of a drunk and a gaggle of children. The only way that makes sense is if he doesn’t believe in his own course of action. If despite the appearance of calm, control and confidence he has put on at almost every turn he’s not sure the lives he’s spent were worth it or that the secrecy was the right way to handle things or that any of what he’s doing is right. It implies an almost ‘making it up as you go’ approach. Where the seemingly well prepared Ozpin who always has another plan always knows what the next step needs to be was really just desperately trying to stay one step ahead of Salem the whole time. That he doesn’t have long term goals or plans just an endless scramble to stop Salem and that calls into question every other decision. See if the secret organization, the lies, the misinformation, the smug assurance that his way is right comes from a long term goal/plan and the calm assessment of a shear quantity of experience no one else could even comprehend then he’s justified. Even if some of those decisions end up being wrong (no one no matter how long they live is perfect) he is still the most qualified person to make such decisions and they had to be made. So if he is making those decisions with anything remotely like the purpose and confidence he shows he’s still the good guy but if he’s in so much doubt he would refuses to face someone challenging those decisions that confidence suddenly becomes unacceptable and damnable arrogance. Suddenly all those decisions made by experience and forethought are made by arrogance and paranoia  and Ozpin goes from flawed hero to at best misguided and at worst power hungry villain.

While I’ve done this rant before and so won’t get into it to much I want to mention it because to me the fact Ozpin doesn’t defend himself better and put Salem’s immortality into perspective is the greatest indication he’s much less competent then he appears. I’m just honestly still a little upset that even without Ozpin someone didn’t sit the rest of the group down and go Salem’s immortality doesn’t matter. It changed absolutely nothing about their current situation or goals. Clearly based on the fact they are all alive Ozpin has successfully stopped her from destroying the world for generations. She may not be kill-able she is stoppable or at least preventable and prevention is all huntsmen-ing is prevent the grim from killing and causing destruction. Not stopping the grim not ending the threat of the grim permanently that was no where on the horizon. It wasn’t something any one of them thought they might do. Salem is exactly the same the jobs, the ones they volunteered for, haven’t really changed. and I’m sorry but that should be blindingly obvious if Ozpin can’t make that argument, if he doesn’t whole heartily believe and can’t easily convince the rest of RWBY+ of it he’s not competent enough to hold the positions he has. I can accept shock, outrage and discourage from everything Jinn said there was a lot there and an emotional response is at least understandable probably even expect-able so I can understand why it wouldn’t occur to someone other then Ozpin in the initial moments after Jinn’s reveal but as I said I’m still fairly disappointed we never at any time got any of the characters addressing this it just feels so obvious to me someone should have realized even without Ozpin to put it into perspective and if RWBY+ should have had time to figure this all out Ozpin really should have and the fact that he doesn’t address it at all and instead seems to flee is to me the single greatest indictment of his character by a huge margin.

Now lets discuss some other possible explanations for Ozpin's disappearance. Which might invalidate my complaints. First there’s Oscar. I’d be willing to accept (again there are no set rules for how Ozpin’s reincarnation works) that this whole thing is actually a result of Oscar rejecting Ozpin and making it difficult or even impossible for Ozpin to manifest himself. Oscar has made it clear (and it's perfectly understandable) that he has some misgivings about this whole melding thing. Oscar is also shown to reach out to Ozpin on occasion without success and then Ozpin shows up without prompting at the airship crash which would seem to disprove the theory Ozcar could be suppressing Ozpin but I think there’s a plausible argument saying something like because of soul/magic bs and Ozcar’s subconscious fear/concern he was suppressing Ozpin even in the instances he was reaching out toward Oz and that in the airship he was so consumed by the panic of the moment Ozpin was able reassert himself. While I don't find that as likely as the he's hiding explanation it does solve pretty much all of the problems I have with his disappearance.

A second possible explanation which would at least partially satisfy the issues I have would be that Ozpin had willfully isolated himself but not because he's running from the characters but because he's "seen this before" and recognizes it’ll be best for them and especially Oscar to come to the appropriate conclusions on their own. I’m not sure I believe that it could possibly be best to leave RWBY+ without advice with the fate of the world at stake but it would make a hell of a “I have trust in humanity” moment and going back again to the we don’t know how this soul melding thing really works I’d buy a it was vitally important for Oscar’s soul to synergize with Ozpin’s and for that to happen he need to develop some opinions and characteristic similar to Ozpin’s and that it was best if he developed them without Ozpin’s influence. Actual that aspect might provide the opportunity to justify the melding process a little making a claim that the mere fact Ozpin’s soul attached to Ozcar’s indicates his nature is similar and therefore he was always going to grow up to be like Ozpin to at least some extent but over the years Ozpin has found that allowing the new soul to grow to that similar state without interference simultaneously allows for a smoother melding and the new soul to maintain a better sense of self. Throw in Ozpin decided it was more important to preserve that sense of identity for the previous soul then him being present to help protect the relics and you make the soul melding thing much less morally grey. I don’t know that’s all some pretty strong bs but I think it’s at least mostly believable bs I’m still struggling a little with how letting RWBY+ figure things out for them selves could be for the best and none of it explains why Ozpin disappears when he does but it’s maybe something.

A third explanation which I don’t think completely excuses his disappearance but at least probably brings Ozpin back into the world of flawed hero and not villain is emotional trauma. Ozma has been through some shit and there’s probably never been anyone he could truly fully confide in. Even setting aside his obvious concerns about revealing too much who could ever really understand everything he’s been through. Not to mention his concerns about the present and future this is a man who feels the future of literally the entire world rests in his hands and that feeling is fairly accurate. Plus you know all those fun immortality probably isn’t as great as it sounds concerns that always pop up when you discuss such things and then there’s that moral grey area that is that whole soul melding thing again which he doesn’t seem to have any control over I’ll note. Considering it all it’s somewhat impressive Ozpin is even sane at this point so him having a little mental break down and going into hiding after reliving some of his worst memories, having the only people he thought he could rely on suddenly turning on him oh yeah and having been betrayed by Lionheart someone he seems to have had a history with and trusted implicitly only days before seems fairly reasonable to me. It does bring into question some of that invincible confidence and all the related problems mentioned above which is why I don’t think it completely excuses the disappearance but I think it could be written such that he still comes out with the good guy tag intact. The bigger problem is the calm almost amused way he presents himself during the airship crash and then disappears again. I, at least, can’t find a way to explain that in the context of this theory.  

Those are my theories at this point. I’m curious to see how it turns out and would love to hear other people’s theories as well as reasonably phrased questions comments or complaints about mine. Honestly I just really hope this doesn’t turn out to be like the entire season plus of build up to Raven dramatically revealing she can turn into a bird and it’s all devious Oz’s fault you can’t trust him and then Qrow almost immediately brushes it away with oh yeah we agreed to that it was a cool and useful trick btw magic exists which if I’m being fair Yang probably didn’t already know but the audience did due to the maidens so yeah not really much of a reveal.

[fuckyeahoscarisaac]

On Compulsive Home-Movie-Making During Loss, Birth and Hamlet Bobbi Jene director Elvira Lind on the documentary she shot but may never show about a tumultuous year in her and husband Oscar Isaac’s life.

By Elvira Lind | September 20, 2017

It’s Sunday and one of those uncomfortable hot and humid days in New York that feels like walking around inside a dog’s mouth. Luckily I have spent the day mostly in the darkness of the Public Theater filming the early preparations for a Hamlet production my boyfriend Oscar and his buddy from Juilliard, Sam Gold, are putting together for the following summer.

Oscar works in movies mostly; he has been in many. In the five years we have been together, I have seen him die countless times. I have visited set and watched him get stabbed to death over and over the entire day. He has also been killed by a rocket explosion, by various kinds of knife wounds, by poison (twice), by self-inflicted gunshot to head (twice), drowning (almost), in his spaceship (again almost), from a strange and very fatal disease, from melting via telekinesis, and perhaps some more that I have now forgotten. He has had more haircuts and body shapes than anyone I have known. After years of having people scream “Action!” at him and going on endless press tours in soulless corporate hotel rooms, it’s great to see his excitement grow at the thought of getting back onstage in our adopted home town. This theater workshop week is the happiest I have seen him.

I have just spent three months in an edit room finishing a documentary and am desperate to be shooting something again. Filming from a new perspective helps clear my head. The actors and musician from the Hamlet workshop generously allow me inside with my camera to capture some of their work with my camera. Oscar and Sam want to keep some documentation of their Hamlet process for archival purposes (also known as future nostalgia). I film them playfully chew their way through Shakespeare’s tragedy in an explosion of creative energy. I am captivated by it.

During that week, I don’t think much of my sudden disgust with the smell of palo santo wood that Oscar insists on burning during the workshop. However, a handful of positive pregnancy tests that Sunday afternoon reveal why I have developed a sensitivity to this odor. The news is joyous to me since Oscar and I have agreed that having a baby would be a wonderful thing. However, in that moment of realization, it is also scary. I know that it will challenge my work as a documentary filmmaker in which I am used to traveling alone for long periods of time, always being ready to get up and go wherever the story I am working on dictates. This could become testing. However, in my thirties my primal instincts have slowly silenced that part of my brain that wanted to continue life as a lone wolf on the prowl for new stories to film. I will find a way to continue doing both, I assure myself. It has been done before.

It catches me off guard when Oscar arrives home earlier than I had expected that Sunday. He suddenly stands in the door of our apartment, and he looks so sad. Not like the guy I had said goodbye to at the theater that morning. He has received a call. His mom is ill, they didn’t know what it is yet, but it seems to be serious. He is frightened.

I have never seen anyone love their mom as much as Oscar loves his, an incredible lady, a fighter, a tough cookie. She balances soft and gentle with a great temper and sharp humor.

After a couple of hours of us both pacing up and down the apartment not knowing what to do, and me not knowing how to now share the news about my pregnancy, I eventually manage to whisper it to him. Like a shy child on her first day of school.

We sit on the terrace, in the last moments of the day’s sun, holding the best and the worst news at the same time.

For the next year, only three things happen in our life. Hamlet, Oscar’s mom’s fight against an aggressive cancer, and the baby who had decided to join us in the midst of this turmoil.

Sometimes life is a crazy, crazy ride, with birth and death plowing your timeline at the same speed. Like being hit by a hurricane, pants down. We hadn’t braced ourselves for the impact.

At first, we are completely numbed by what is happening. We take everything day by day, some days hour by hour, as things with Oscar’s mom get more serious. And then, at some point, I grab my camera and start shooting randomly. I convince myself that I am shooting footage to cover Oscar and Sam’s work on the Hamlet production. And yes, I am filming Sam and him figuring out how to tackle this beast of a play and Oscar becoming Hamlet. But rehearsing the role of a man deeply mourning his father’s death is very close to home suddenly. Simultaneously, I film trips to the hospital’s intensive care unit in Miami, lying upside down on the passenger seat, contorting my seven-months-pregnant bod, to get a good shot of Oscar rehearsing his Hamlet lines while he drives. Hamlet starts to become a small island that Oscar has been washed up on in the middle of this unbearable loss. I film when we can’t sleep, I film when more and more of Oscar’s family arrive with suitcases until we all live in the same house together. Day after day, they go through moments of such sorrow. They talk in Spanish and I struggle to understand the words but I understand the incredible intimacy they share, something we don’t share on that level in Scandinavia.

I film the dogs tanning in the sun, someone baking a cake for a birthday, Guatemalan meals being cooked loudly. Oscar on calls with his agent and the theater, trying to get Werner Herzog’s incredible Dutch cellist to be in the play. I film when Oscar sings to his mom after she loses consciousness, as the family watches the sunrise together the morning she passes away. The sky is bathed in colors. I keep filming when we have to return to our life in New York and I am a month away from birth. We make fun of my swollen body. I film when we plan a shotgun wedding with a handful of people on some friends’ roof on the only summer day in February. When I am 10 days overdue and my film premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival, it receives a bunch of awards and I have to record my acceptance speeches from the delivery room.

Our son arrives and again life is turned upside down. I keep filming when Hamlet comes to life in our home, comes to life on the stage and when Oscar practices having his life end with poison – for a third time in his career. I film as Oscar has to find a way through a play, for four hours every night, that is about the devastation of losing a parent.

I film our son growing bigger and bigger and the proud look in my husband’s eyes when he looks back at me through the lens. I film our lightest moments and our darkest moments. They are rubbing against each other, but the lightest begin to take over. I film incoherently and with no real aim in mind. I just record us, I record to get some distance and filter reality through my various camera lenses. My camera is always just sitting there ready to shoot. In the end, I don’t even ask before I shoot, I film people who are visiting us, the guy who works at the garage, Oscar when he is sleeping. Sometimes I don’t film anything for days and other times I film non-stop, even with my free arm while I am breastfeeding my baby with the other.

I wonder if people who work as accountants just work on numbers frantically in similar heated life moments.

Perhaps I film to digest my own reality. Seeing my life through my camera bit by bit somehow helps me.

I organize this footage in folders, I back it up on a second drive, I treat it like I do my other films. But I know that even though this may be the strongest, most honest and unfiltered footage I have ever captured, it will most likely never get seen by anyone.

I wonder how many stories sit out there, on a shelf for a lifetime, because it is just too close to the life of the one who filmed or wrote or composed it. Many, I imagine.

I ask so much of the people I film for my documentary films. I film my subjects in their most intimate moments. I barge into their lives and capture them while they are in the middle of making difficult life decisions, breaking up or about to make love. And yet, when I point the camera in my own life’s direction, I am cowardly and can’t imagine sharing it with anyone.

But, I guess, time will have to tell. The readiness is all.

Elvira Lind

Born in 1981 in Copenhagen, Elvira Lind graduated from City Varsity School of Media and Creative Arts in Cape Town in 2006, majoring in documentary film. She has worked within that field since directing and shooting documentaries of various lengths for TV, cinema, and web on 4 different continents. Elvira now lives and works out of New York, where she also writes on various fiction projects. Elvira’s first feature documentary, Songs for Alexis, competed at IDFA in 2014 and screened at a long list of international festivals; she received CPH:DOX new talent award in 2015; and her first international documentary TV series, Twiz and Tuck, launched on Viceland this year. Elvira’s second feature documentary, Bobbi Jene, premiered at Tribeca 2017 and is being released theatrically by Oscilloscope from September 22.

[wheredidhiseyebrowsgo]

Hey!!! 😇 I have read like all fics on your coming out tag page, when you have time can you update them? Today It's my one year anniversary of coming out!!! ☺️☺️☺️ -B

Happy Belated Anniversary! Sorry it’s a little late but we’re so happy we could celebrate with you! Here’s the tag for everyone else. - Anastasia

Taking Bets by S_Horne

(1/1 I 406 I General I Sterek)

“Dad, Mel” Stiles started. “I'm gay.”

With a sudden boost of confidence, Stiles reached a hand out to take a hold of one of Derek's.

“And this is my Derek” he continued, turning his face to meet the other’s gaze.

/

Stiles has a confession for his parents, and they have one for him!

Dream a Little Dream of Me by 42hrb

(1/1 I 830 I Teen I Stanny)

Coach pairs Stiles and Danny in a hotel for a lacrosse trip, it turns out they have some stuff to talk about.

About Damn Time by fancyachatup

(1/1 I 903 I General I Sterek)

It's essentially Teen Wolf, except that there are such things as soulmates.

Deal? by fancyachatup

(1/1 I 921 I General I Sterek)

Only Peter is evil and it's for like 1 sentence. +Basically Sheriff answers a domestic violence call and Stiles hits on Derek while simultaneously coming out.

The Person He Loved In So Many Different Ways by QueenofCrazy

(1/1 I 1,136 I Not Rated I Sciles)

“Bro.” He whispered, hands gripping his knees and fingers tapping. “Bro you uh, you left your porn up on your laptop that I borrowed for my presentation.” Scott felt his face heat up. He knew what porn Stiles was talking about, how could he be so stupid not to check it before giving it to Stiles.

Sourwolves Do it Better by siao

(1/? I 1,406 I Explicit I Sterek)

In another time, in another place, but not exactly as the story still occurs in the much beloved town of Beacon Hills, Stiles Stilinski is a quirky (kind way of saying a walking disaster) teenager just trying to figure out his life in the wake of his parents uncommunicated separation, and being the perpetual third-wheel to his power couple friends Lydia and Jackson that makes him question if their friends because they happened to have playdates in the e-old age or because their parents gave them no choice but to be friends.

And yeah, maybe having sex with a complete stranger in the supply closet at school wasn't his brightest idea - sue him, but how was he supposed to know that his one time fling that he wanks since forth was his English teacher?

Throw in teenage werewolves, alphas, hunters and some kind of demon tree that may or may not be trying to seduce him into being evil and what you got is a whirlwind romance that's not quite legal but profound all the same.

Two Hearts in One Home by TheMipstaz

(1/1 I 1,851 I Explicit I Malia/Kira)

In which Kira bakes 11 pies.

Silver and Cold by inatshej

(1/1 I 2,044 I Mature I Steter)

Stiles admits to himself finally that it is cold, quiet and lonely. It didn't change when he met Peter, but at least he could forget about it. Somehow the thing with Peter ends up hurting him even more.

And The Oscar Goes To by 42hrb

(1/1 I 2,241 I Teen I Sterek)

Being publicly in the closet means Stiles can't go to the Academy Awards with who he really wants, but it's not like he's going to win so he doesn't have to worry about slipping up and thanking Derek in his speech... right?

Outed by smokesforsterek

(1/1 I 2,419 I General I Sterek)

Nancy O’Dell was standing on her chic set but in the background on one of the set pieces was a obviously zoomed in and blurry picture of Derek and Stiles kissing on the beach.Fuck.

or the one where Derek and Stiles are famous and secretly dating, and are caught. So naturally the only thing to do is pretend they're making a movie.

Heavy Is The Head by tragicama

(1/? I 2,574 I Explicit I Sterek)

Heir Prince of France, Derek Hale is tired of his royal life.

When he meets a palace servant named Stiles, everything changes.

Or, the one where Derek falls in love with his own Prince Charming.

Awake by reillyblack

(1/1 I 3,441 I Mature I Sterek)

Stiles was too goddamn old for a sexual awakening.

Never Been Subtle by totallyrandom

(2/2 I 3,886 I Teen I Sterek)

Stiles has something important to tell Scott, but Scott’s not making it easy.

Green Beer and the Howling Wolf by TVTime

(1/1 I 4,152 I Teen I Stisaac)

Stiles, Isaac, and Scott go out drinking for St. Patrick’s Day and Stiles discovers that his hopeless crush on Isaac may not be as hopeless as he thought.

Stiles-centric/Stiles POV, dialogue-heavy college AU story with no powers. Primarily humor with some fluff and Stisaac romance. Alternate character histories. Isaac is Scott's adopted brother.****Stiles held his arms out and turned around in a circle. “I look okay right?”

Scott’s face lit with understanding. “Ah, someone wants to get lucky on St. Paddy’s Day.”

Stiles didn’t deny it, just changed the subject – well, technically he didn’t change the subject, but Scott would think it was a change of subject. “So when’s Isaac getting here?”

Trust by live_laugh_murder

(1/1 I 4,436 I Teen I Steo)

Stiles always knew Theo Raeken couldn't be trusted. But he seems to forget that when the werewolf gets under his skin.

Out in the Open by inmydreams

(1/1 I 5,188 I Teen I Sterek)

Derek Hale, successful actor and Oscar winner, is ready to come out and where better to do it than on his boyfriend's chat show?

Indecent Proposal by lavieboheme0919

(1/1 I 5,432 I Explicit I Stetoper)

Peter and Chris have been married since they were in their twenties. Stiles is introduced to the mix after Peter meets him in the showers at the on-campus gym. All of them love the relationship they're in. Unfortunately none of them know how to explain said relationship to Stiles' dad.

This is the first of a series I'll be working on as I work on my other story, "Gods and Monsters." This one will be heavily focused on sex. If I missed any tags, please let me know. As always, comments welcome and encouraged!

Aparecium by GameCake

(1/1 I 5,446 I Teen I Sterek)

“Hey, Derek, look! Aquamenti!” Stiles yelled laughing.

His laugh though was short-lived as his hand tickled the same time as water shot out of the tip of his fake wand?

What?

“Whatever you did, wherever you found it, put it back!” Derek ordered flashing his alpha crimson eyes.

“Do you really think it is a good idea to leave it here unattended? What if a kid takes it? What if someone said ‘Avada Kedavra’” Stiles defended as he flayed his arms around.

That proved to be another bad choice. His hand buzzed again and lightning escaped the wand and stuck an innocent tree. Which immediately cracked and started decaying to the point that it looked sick and… well… dead.

There were a few bits of silence after that until Derek spoke up. “That’s it! Put it back now.”

*

Or the one where Stiles finds a wand that responds to Harry Potter spells, is apparently a mage and gets a boyfriend out of it.

Don't hate me for who I am by AnnSnape

(2/6 I 5,649 I Mature I Sterek)

It was Christmas when Stiles pack rejected him for being different and Stiles, who turned for the first time, had to run away from his own pack to survive.

Closeted by stilinski_wolf

(2/2 I 7,483 I Teen I Sterek)

Derek is part of a very rich, very conservative - and very homophobic - family, and so he has to hide who he truly is from them.

And then, Derek takes a liking to the new bartender working at the gay bar he frequents, and contemplates coming out to his family.

But his choice is taken out of his hands when his sister Cora follows him one night to the gay bar, changing Derek's life irrevocably.

wolf in the headlights by thedeathlyalpha

(1/1 I 7,581 I Teen I Scisaac)

When Scott finds out that Derek has added a member to the pack, he can't believe it.

When he discovers who it is, even worse.

As Scott becomes closer to Isaac, feelings develop and the lines blur, making everything just seem so confused.

Getting To Know Me Getting To Know You by alternativename

(3/? I 9,477 I Mature I Steter)

In an Omega verse where Stiles has never really felt comfortable in his own skin, he seeks out the company of other Omegas to help him make sense of the world they live in.

Meeting Peter Hale however was totally unplanned, and so was everything that happened from the moment they met.

And...Action! by defenselesswriter

(5/? I 9,632 I Explicit I Sterek)

"Not looking for casual hookups. Sorry, bro. Most codependent independent person you will ever meet. Part-time actor, full-time asshole who coincidentally preaches positivity. Worst bowler in the world after my best friend. Looking for a guy whose first thought isn’t ‘Can I put my dick in one of his orifices?’ Also super hella bi and might be down for a threesome.”

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes by huffleluff

(1/1 I 21,866 I Teen I Allydia)

If you had asked Allison Argent if she was straight two months ago, she would have said yes. Now, she isn't so sure.

On her eighteen birthday, she receives the name of her soul mate via a mark on her wrist: seventeen year old Lydia Martin. Her sense of identity suddenly gone, Allison must deal with her feelings for her best friend, her preacher father's homophobia, and learning to love herself for who she truly is--preferably before Lydia's eighteenth birthday in just one year's time.

There's Nothing That I Wouldn't Do (I Found My Way Back To You) by SuperMARVELous

(5/5 I 51,051 I Mature I Sterek)

Four times Derek and Stiles pass each other by and the one time they find their way back to each other.

The Payoff Pitch by Leslie_Knope

(12/12 I 83,974 I Explicit I Sterek)

Derek is on the cusp of his second season with the LA Dodgers, and as the reigning runner-up Rookie of the Year, the pressure’s on him to become the team’s star pitcher and lead them to the playoffs for the first time in five years. He’s trying to deal with the burden of expectations and really has zero desire to spend any extra time or energy on anything that isn’t baseball.

But then he meets Stiles.

Building a Better Chimera: Part Two by Uthizaar

(21/21 I 200,638 I Explicit I Steo I MCD)

Theo returns to Beacon Hills with the task of guiding and protecting Stiles as he becomes one of the most powerful chimeras alive...Well that was the Dread Doctor's plan. Theo has a different idea, and Stiles fits nicely into it, not merely as a fellow chimera, but as something more. Of course, Stiles not being aware of his abilities is but one small obstacle... 

[ramajmedia]

Harry Potter: 10 Hysterical Ron Weasley Logic Memes | ScreenRant

Harry Potter is simply one of those phenomenons that will follow us forever. The books and movies had such a big impact on so many different generations, it's impossible to ever forget. And why would we want to, really? These are the kind of films and stories that allow us to escape reality, even if just for a little bit, while simultaneously reminding us of the power of love, friendship, and unity. Plus, there are so many good characters that we can both admire and relate to.

Related: Harry Potter: 10 Creepy Things You Didn't Know About The Department Of Mysteries

Not to mention, of course, that anything Harry Potter related is the perfect vehicle for great meme content. No other character is as hilarious and pure in its essence quite like Ron Weasley. This, of course, makes him the perfect target for fans everywhere to come up with some serious quality material. So let's take a look at ten hysterical Ron Weasley memes!

10 The Friendzone

The friend zone is one of those jokes that quickly spread like wildfire. Text messages, screenshots of all shapes and sizes, everything became an excuse to make memes about the dreaded friendzone. After all, humor is always a good way to deal with rejection. That person is not interested, make a meme about it and move on.

Of course, there is something extra special about romances that begin as friendships. Ron and Hermione were a delight to observe during the course of both the movies and books. Even though Ron was never exactly in the friendzone as we know it, he still provides a glimmer of hope for those of us crushing on our best friend.

9 Identity Crisis?

No, this is Ed Sheeran. Okay, all jokes aside, this is a pretty funny one. Way back in the day, this meme swept the Internet with such force it nearly created some sort of cosmic force of its own. Overall in life, looking like a famous person or character can take you quite far. You can even ponder a career as an impersonator!

This poor dude looks like he is about to burst into a thousand pieces. Is he having an identity crisis because he looks both like Harry and Ron? Or is he just studying for his finals and contemplating throwing everything into a fire pit? We'll never know, but we sure appreciate the meme.

8 Harry Wins

Human beings can really be petty sometimes. Like, extremely so. And even though we all appreciate this, particularly people who hold on to the pettiest grudges in order to succeed in life, we're not sure whether or not we can get behind the notion that Harry only married Ginny Weasley and built a life with her because Ron got the OG girl, Hermione.

Related: Harry Potter: The Most Underrated Character From Every Movie

We're 99.9% sure that he didn't. However, who's to say we know exactly what goes through Harry Potter's mind? He was the Chosen One who could've had anyone he wanted...and he picked his best friend's little sister. Isn't there a code somewhere that deems this as pretty uncool?

7 Pun Intended

Please don't roll your eyes just yet, and let yourself rejoice in all the beauty of this meme. We're very well aware that puns might not be your thing, but let us make our case. First, everybody knows Quidditch is like, the best sport in the world. Ice skating doesn't even hold a candle to it!

Secondly, Ron Weasley is just lovable at all times and anyone who has his personality is definitely a keeper. Finally, there are about ten different moods going on in this picture! So please, appreciate this awesome pun and then feel free to move on with your life.

6 The World Sees You

Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire will forever remain one of the best movies out of the entire saga. Mostly because it was the motion picture that launched a thousand memes about Dumbledore being a little too intense when Harry is chosen as the second Hogwarts champion. Also, because it introduced us to Robert Pattinson before he was lost to vampire land.

Related: Harry Potter: 10 Characters Who Were Forgotten As The Movies Went On

But let us not forget this was the movie where pretty much everyone was either entering or already very much into their teenage years. Hormones wore flying everywhere, so that means this is the very first time the romance between Ron and Hermione starts to blossom.

5 We Feel You, Ron

Ron is the kind of character who is impossible to not love. He was complex and sensitive, but also hilarious and kind-hearted. In many ways, Ron was the real MVP of the entire Harry Potter series. Of course, Neville Longbottom is probably considered that one character meant to serve as comic relief.

However, Ron was hands down the funniest character. His facial expressions alone should've earned Rupert Grint an Oscar. Especially because they tend to mimic our everyday expressions when some very random nonsense is happening. Weasley is just a major mood, and that's that.

4 Spiders Are Scary, Okay?

Oh yeah, you bet we're going to present you with yet another excellent example of this particular iconic Ron Weasly meme. One of our favorite meme arts is when people take the liberty of captioning existing scenes in a much more relatable and hilarious manner.

Related: Harry Potter: 5 Most Powerful Ravenclaw Wizards (& 5 Worst)

In this case, can we really blame Ron for his fear of spiders? Particularly in a world where magic exists and everything indicates that spiders bigger than giants might be very much real? The answer is no. But we do love to imagine that if a spider were to encounter Ron, it would be just as scared as he was. Because Weasley is what? A badass.

3 Relatable

Have we praised Ron Weasley enough for being one of the most relatable characters to ever appear on the screen? Take away the magic wand and all the magic components, you are left with a funny, lighthearted guy who just loves his friends, enjoys to eat and wants to be successful.

Also, one who is a tad bit clumsy. That one time Ron was braver than all of the Harry Potter characters combined and took his dad's car without permission to save his friend was epic. It also resulted in a very obvious car crash and a facial expression that all of us would rock if our parents caught us red-handed. Again, relatable.

2 J.K. Rowling Needs To Chill

There are probably more memes on the Internet about J.K. Rowling than all of her characters combined. We are truly thankful to Rowling for her immeasurable talent, fierceness, and resilience that made it possible for the world of Harry Potter to become a reality. We can even forgive her for continuously adding details to the story that don't really make much sense.

What we can't do, however, is forgive her for suggesting Ron's character was anything less than perfect and that his storyline was anything below what he deserved. Back off from Weasley, Mrs. Rowling, because the fans will not stand for it! Plus, Harry is just fine with Ginny. They had cute babies!

1 Dementors? That's Cute.

We simply couldn't let this list be published without making at least one ginger joke. Because they are hilarious, and Ron Weasley and his entire family came to prove that being a ginger is not a weakness. It can actually get you pretty far in life! If you're lucky enough, you get yo marry the woman of your dreams and gain 20 lbs around the stomach area.

The Dementors were easily one of the scariest parts of the whole series. They looked ghastly and fed off happy memories - which means Ron would be completely immune since everyone knows gingers are miserable. Right? Right?! Just kidding - enjoy the meme, though!

NEXT: 5 Reasons Why Hermione Would Have Made a Better Protagonist Than Harry (And 5 Why Neville Would Have)

source https://screenrant.com/harry-potter-hysterical-ron-weasley-logic-memes/

[richmegavideo]

How The Matrix universalized a trans experience — and helped me accept my own

The film, now 20 years old, is probably the most famous art ever made by trans people. But its cultural legacy doesn’t end there.

Some online trans communities have a word for trans people who haven’t realized they’re trans just yet: egg.

When you’re an egg, you’re safely closed off by your shell, unable to see the wider world. It’s kind of like being in a sensory deprivation tank. Everything is muffled, and the world is hazy and translucent through the walls. There is always some barrier between you and reality. Being inside the egg is comfortable. And leaving the egg is a lot of work, a lot of painful, grinding work that many people would rather avoid.

Eggs hatch, though, and the hatching process is messy and complicated. It leaves behind something new and beautiful, but getting there can take days or years. (It took me 15 years after thinking, “Wait, am I...” to realize, “I am.”) And what will crack the shell isn’t always predictable.

But if you look back on your life pre-hatching, you’ll find a host of clues that read not as questions but as evidence. Which is a long, roundabout way of me saying that when I was 18, I was obsessed with The Matrix. The movie celebrates its 20th anniversary on March 31, 2019, a date that is also, coincidentally, the 10th trans day of visibility.

The Matrix was directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski, two trans women who at the time of the film’s release had not yet come out publicly as trans (and perhaps had not even come out to themselves as trans). It is by far the most influential work of pop culture ever created by a trans person, and it is maybe the eggiest movie ever made.

But everything about it that replicates what the trans experience is like prior to coming out — and, thus, made it so appealing to trans viewers — simultaneously tapped into some other zeitgeist entirely, and became a weapon of some of the worst people on the internet.

The Matrix perfectly captures the experience of being a closeted trans person

Sygma via Getty Images

Neo and Agent Smith face off in the film’s climactic battle.

Lana Wachowski came out as trans in 2010 (though rumors regarding her gender identity had swirled around her going as far back as the release of The Matrix Reloaded in 2003 — and only click on that link if you want to be reminded how awful the 2000s media could be about trans people). Lilly Wachowski came out in 2016.

In the wake of both women coming out, it became at least somewhat popular for critics to read their films through the lens of their transness. Their wildly ambitious stories about the mind transcending the limitations of the body, the need for individual self-determination, and a kind of vision of the future as a polyamorous leftist love fest make a lot of sense as coded stories about the trans experience.

Lilly Wachowski spoke about this newfound attention while accepting a GLAAD Award with her sister in 2016: “There’s a critical eye being cast back on Lana and I’s work through the lens of our transness. This is a cool thing because it’s an excellent reminder that art is never static. And while the ideas of identity and transformation are critical components in our work, the bedrock that all ideas rest upon is love.”

The Matrix is at the center of multiple arguments about how the sisters’ transness informs their work. One reason for its centrality to those arguments is that it was a massive, global success: It made $463.5 million at the worldwide box office, earned extensive critical acclaim, and won four Oscars.

That gave the Wachowskis the freedom to do whatever they wanted in Hollywood, a freedom they would use toward more audience-alienating ends over the next 20 years. (I love all of their movies, but the mass audience that embraced The Matrix simply didn’t turn out for 2012’s Cloud Atlas or 2015’s Jupiter Ascending.) But almost everyone has a passing familiarity with The Matrix, and its cultural permeation makes it the best window through which to examine how the sisters’ work captures the trans experience.

Another reason for The Matrix’s centrality to the idea that trans identity is core to understanding the Wachowskis’ body of work stems from how perfectly (and perhaps accidentally) it captures something essential about being trans. There are reams of academic literature written on the idea of The Matrix as a trans allegory (most of them published after at least Lana came out), but on its most basic level, the movie follows characters who break free of their real life via the internet, creating online identities that feel more real than their physical ones.

The movie’s coolest trick is the way it inverts what you’d expect from a movie released in 1999, by making the internet the poisonous capitalist space that keeps people emotionally numb. Meanwhile, the post-apocalyptic reality in which a war between man and machine reduced the landscape to a desert is where people can finally be their true selves. (The internet becoming a poisonous capitalist faux-utopia is perhaps The Matrix’s most accidentally accurate prediction.)

Warner Bros.

Neo stops the bullets coming for him.

The plot of The Matrix mirrors the online gender experimentation of the early digital era, when some unsuspecting egg might log in to a chat room as a woman and discover how much better it feels to embody that version of themselves. Inhabit that experimental space long enough, and you might eventually find yourself breaking through the shell containing the hermetically sealed world you thought you lived in to some other reality entirely. That reality might reduce everything else in your life to rubble, but getting to experience it is worth the fallout.

The sense of using the internet to find a true identity permeates every scene of The Matrix. In the movie’s first exchange between hero Neo (Keanu Reeves) and badass hacker girl Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), he says he assumed she was a guy, and she replies, blithely, “Most guys do.” The characters reject the names they were born with — in Neo’s case, Thomas Anderson — in favor of their chosen names. Their wardrobe grows increasingly androgynous and leather-bound. The entire movie is about transcending the limitations of the physical form to explore what the mind is capable of. Bodies are, at best, a suggestion. Your brain is what really matters.

The Wachowskis actually wanted to make The Matrix’s trans metaphor explicit, via the character of Switch (one of several crew members on board Morpheus’s ship, the Nebuchadnezzar). Switch was written to present as male in reality, while presenting as female in the Matrix — a fun way to play around with the idea of online identities, and a subtle wink toward the idea that gender is a construct that can be blown apart, like so many lines of green code. (This concept would have also pushed back, ever so slightly, against the idea that reality is more “real” than the Matrix, since the Matrix was the one place Switch could present as female.)

Warner Brothers nixed the idea of Switch crossing the gender divide, feeling mainstream audiences wouldn’t understand. (She appears in the film but is played by a woman in both realities.) But I would have understood, even if I wouldn’t have known why. (1999 was still a few years before I’d have my, “Wait... am I...?” moment.) I was logging into chat rooms to present as a woman, and I was doing so with more and more frequency in ways I didn’t dare interrogate. The Matrix celebrated the idea that there were two worlds, separate but linked, and that what happened in the one influenced the other.

In the guise of a big-budget action movie (albeit one with a very different set of influences than the other action films of the ‘90s), this duality suggested a future where the rigid lines of the self would start to break down. In 1999 and in the years to come, the internet would cause trans people’s eggs to start cracking all over the place, in a way that just wasn’t possible before its existence. The Matrix translated the resulting era of self-discovery into a vision of gun battles and the Chosen One narrative.

But trans people weren’t the only ones it resonated with.

How a movie directed by two trans women became central to men’s rights activists

Warner Bros.

Morpheus offers Neo a choice.

1999 was a terrific year for the movies. It was also a great year for movies about white men realizing they’ve been lied to and that society is trying to rob them of something fundamentally true about themselves — from American Beauty (which would win Best Picture) to Fight Club to, arguably, Being John Malkovich. And superficially, at least, that category would include The Matrix.

I like all of these movies, and they’re all at least somewhat suspicious of their heroes’ quests to disrupt the system in the name of being manly men. But audiences didn’t always grasp that maybe it wasn’t appropriate to openly lust after your teenage daughter’s best friend, as the hero of American Beauty does, or blow up the buildings that form the underpinnings of global capitalism, as the hero of Fight Club does.

Because these characters were played by men like Kevin Spacey (a very different figure in 1999!) and Edward Norton, movie star charisma carried viewers of their films a long way toward accepting behaviors that the filmmakers intended to be morally complicated, at the very least. This disconnect between intention and reception is not the filmmakers’ fault, but it did tap into something roiling in the American undertow at the time: the idea that white men needed to somehow reclaim a primacy they had apparently lost.

Again, The Matrix, at least superficially, plays into this narrative. Keanu Reeves isn’t white — he’s multi-racial, with European, Chinese, and Polynesian ancestors — but The Matrix codes Neo as a white guy corporate worker drone before he breaks free of his old life and becomes The One. And the mere mention of “The One,” the person who will help human beings fight back against their machine overlords, should reveal The Matrix as a Chosen One narrative — a storytelling trope that isn’t always centered on a white man, but that American pop culture has very frequently centered on a white man.

That brings us to one of the movie’s weirdest cultural legacies: the idea of the Red Pill. In the film, Neo is memorably offered a choice between a red and a blue pill. Taking the red pill will awaken Neo to the truth of his existence, as a piece of hardware in the dark post-apocalyptic landscape where he is used by machines as a literal battery. Taking the blue pill will let him return to the Matrix unhindered. (Neo takes the red pill, because that’s how stories work.)

In our reality, the idea of taking the red pill has since come to bolster some of the worst people on the internet. In 2019, to be “redpilled” is to suddenly realize all of the ways that social justice issues, particularly those related to feminism, can cause a person (usually a young man, though women have also used the term) to not be their truest self.

The obvious irony here is that the red and blue pills were dreamt up by two trans women, in the middle of a story that is now widely read as an allegory about how immensely powerful it can be to discover one’s true self by getting online. But in the early 2000s, when I was logging into chat rooms under a woman’s name, there were plenty of men around my age logging in to other chat rooms, where they were being radicalized to believe that women (and people of color and LGBTQ people and... and...) were keeping them from some larger, truer reality.

The Matrix doesn’t exactly discourage this reading. The film’s two sequels — which subvert and blow up the Chosen One myth in favor of telling a story about how salvation will come not from domination but from synthesis, from people (and machines) coming together — both push back against the idea of the redpill, as does the rest of the Wachowskis’ ouvre. And if we’re keeping with the trans allegory idea, the later Matrix films replicate the way that many trans people ultimately become even more aware of the intersectionality of their own privilege, or lack of it. (For example, I have never been more aware of my own whiteness and relative financial comfort since coming out.)

Still, it’s not as though the idea that spawned redpilling isn’t present. That’s not The Matrix’s fault; the Wachowskis couldn’t possibly have foreseen how their work would be interpreted. But the idea that both trans people and MRAs would see themselves in The Matrix speaks in a perverse way to how the Wachowskis translated what feels to me like a very specific trans experience into something much more universal.

In 1999, we were all getting online. Some of us were finding ourselves. Others were just finding excuses.

Emily Sandalwood is a trans woman living in Los Angeles. You can subscribe to her newsletter.

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[welcometoaether]

January 2021 issue: editor’s note

THE REBIRTH OF A FUTURE

A Brief Introduction 

By Krisha Sandhu

I, like many others, remember the feeling of excitement that washed over me when the clock struck 12:00 on the 1st of January 2020. It had always felt like this year was going to be different, I was meant to graduate high school, begin the next stage of my life at Uni, become an adult. But all those things, never really happened. I remember sitting down in school, talking to friends, when all our phones began simultaneously ringing - we’d all received an email. We were all being sent home. A viral pandemic had reached Malaysia and it was contagious. I remember thinking that it was similar to the 2013 Ebola outbreak and that we’d be back to school in no time. I was very wrong.

Recent day-to-day events have left us all feeling a sense of anxiety; it seems as if we are mere spectators looking on at the downfall of society. The Coronavirus, Australian bushfires, 2020 Stock Market crash and many more have made 2020 feel like the worst year ever. But it shouldn’t be.

We fail to recognise how great this year has actually been, for humanity as a whole. People around the world rose up to protest police violence and racial injustice, Bong Joon made history as the first-ever Korean to win an Oscar for Best Director, Polio was officially eradicated in Africa. There were so many more triumphs, that we as a human race achieved last year, but why have we failed to recognise and celebrate these things?

A huge reason I wanted to create The Aether, was because I wanted a space online where people could come together and debate and discuss topics that matter to us. It’s a place where everyone belongs, regardless of race, religion or gender. I wanted you, the reader, to be a part of a collective conscious, to face reality together. The Aether is a space created by everyone, for everyone. It’s where each of us can finally be the person we’ve always wanted to be, and do it freely without judgement. It’s going to be difficult, to come face to face with some of the harsh realities of the world that we live in today, but it’s going to be liberating. The Aether, however, is not all about the dark side of this society. We aim to recognise the things we’ve achieved as well. To celebrate those who have done better, who have changed society in their own way, regardless of the extent of their impact. The thing about good news, that I’ve come to realise, is its not a profitable business, but it should be. In a world where we are more connected than we have ever been, it’s so important to engage and ensure that we are creating sustainable relationships with one another that don’t leave us always feeling anxious or depressed. Albeit bad news is needed sometimes to ground us and make us realise the importance of doing good. But the good news is just as important.

But alas, with a new year comes rebirth. Thank yourself for how far you’ve come, 2020 was not easy. Embrace change, be kinder, heal as necessary. There is so much more life to be lived. I’ve always found beauty in the human ability to hope, even when times may seem their darkest. So let us use this new year to educate ourselves, to become more empathetic and to create a better and safer world. And on that note, Welcome to the Aether.

January issue of The Aether: https://aether-7db978.webflow.io/archives

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

Why watching 'The Bachelor' via Twitter is better than the real thing

Confession: I've never seen a single episode of The Bachelor.

I've come to this life decision for a few reasons:

I'm generally bad at keeping up with TV, which is time consuming. I prefer to spend the minutes I have doing things like catching horses in The Legend of Zelda and giving them dumb names. (To each their own, ya know.)

I think the greatest reality TV show of all time is VH1's Charm School (a televised manners school for the contestants of VH1's own slate of dating shows, featuring commandments like "thou shall show some class," and — I kid you not — Mo'Nique, Sharon Osborne, and Ricky Lake as its headmistresses).

However, even though I've never seen an episode of The Bachelor, I DO follow all the highs and lows of the iconic televised love competition. Because every Monday I gaze into the shining void of my phone, my eyeballs transfixed by the addicting madness of Bachelor Twitter. 

This is how you knock on a bathroom door when someone is throwing up or has diarrhea, not when you just broke off your engagement #thebachelor pic.twitter.com/gWMoujfWfL

— Michelle Collins (@michcoll) March 6, 2018

For the uninitiated, The Bachelor isn't just a reality TV dating show. It's THE reality TV dating show. It premiered in 2002, and each season tasks a single man — a bachelor, you might say — with dating a group of women to find his soulmate. Through a series of group dates, solo dates, travel adventures, and family visits, the bachelor figures out which contestants he likes and which he doesn't, eliminating them one by one in an elaborate rose ceremony until he has found *Borat voice* MAH WIFE.

The show is currently 22 seasons in (and counting), and since The Bachelor's early aughts debut, ABC has added several spinoffs to its lineup, including The Bachelorette, The Bachelor Pad, and Bachelor in Paradise. 

No matter what time of year, there's always some form of The Bachelor on TV. And I'm here to tell you, dear reader, to skip it. Skip it all! 

The best way to watch The Bachelor is to bypass the ABC broadcast and only follow along on Twitter instead.

Will you accept this hashtag rose?

A friend once explained the allure of Bachelor viewing parties to me. According to her, nobody is really THAT interested in what's happening on screen during any given episode. Each season tends to follow a script, just with a different set of people. 

Instead, the reason to host a Bachelor viewing party is because it's fun to gather your friends, drink wine together, and judge people who have turned the messy human work of falling in love into a spectator sport.

What better place to do that than on Twitter?

Twitter is designed so that users can share their thoughts as quickly as possible, in their most expressive way, with only a few characters. What that means in actuality is that the platform is prone to exaggeration, shade, and of course, my favorite form of nourishment, drama™. 

Pair that with the parody-prone conceit of a reality TV dating competition, and you get the most ideal Bachelor viewing situation.

Take Monday's night's season 22 finale, for example.

On my feed, while the internet discussed former Trump advisor Sam Nunberg's bizarre interviews and Frances McDormand's stolen Oscar statuette, I began to notice increasingly alarming tweets about what I could only assume was a series of war crimes being committed on national television.

"'Can we talk just a little bit?' No you fucking sociopath," one person wrote. "Make it stop," another person pleaded.

The Bachelor was on.

Shame on your Chris Harrison, producers and Arie for even airing this. Anything for ratings right?! #disgusted #thebachelor #BachelorFinale #BachelorNation pic.twitter.com/hLY2zQfIf0

— Stephanie Lucia 🌿 (@stephani3MS) March 6, 2018

People were livid!

#TheBachelor was absolutely disgusting tonight. Shame on you Chris Harrison and your whole franchise for what you put Becca through for the sake of ratings. Shame on you @ariejr you are THE WORST. Good luck with that loser, Lauren.

— Kate (@Katieb38) March 6, 2018

I don’t wanna look like this fucker anymore. #TheBachelor

— Zach Braff (@zachbraff) March 6, 2018

would definitely not recommend watching The Bachelor tonight if you are a real human with even bare minimum empathic tendencies.

— cristina arreola (@C_Arreola) March 6, 2018

What could this season's Bachelor Arie have done!? Did he decide to crown a winner through a real-life, impromptu Hunger Games? What in the world could have elicited this reaction?

Curious, I checked with my friend, colleague, and Bachelor devotee in the morning.

The big twist was that Arie had broken up with the person he had proposed to so that he could go back to dating another person he was simultaneously dating when he was forced to choose one to propose to due to the framework of the show!

Upon hearing the scandal, I couldn't help but feel the bitter pangs of disappointment. I'm not an Arie apologist, I have no stake in this race, and from what I understand, Arie is exceptionally boring. But something about the big twist feels so pedestrian.

Is Arie's decision a spectacularly shitty thing to do to another human being? YES. Is it completely icky to air someone's grief at being heartbroken on TV? YES. Is this type of situation baked into the framework of the show, which is a literal game show in which the main thing that's going to happen is emotional trauma? YES.

At the end of the day, what aired on TV was just a shitty man being shitty. Having your heart broken is an awful, unforgettable thing, but viewers have been watching people get their hearts broken for sport through The Bachelor for almost two decades at this point. If anything, the biggest crime the show committed was breaking the established rules of how it's supposed to go. That definitely pales in comparison to what you assume when all you see coming across your Twitter feed is:

leaveLeaveLEAVE...LEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAVVVVEEEEEEEEE!!! #LEAVE LeaVe lEAvE LEAVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE #WhenISayLeaveIMeanLEAVERIGHTNOW #BYE #TheBachelor #SayonARI #GetOutMeansGetOut

— Melissa Ponzio (@MelissaPonzio1) March 6, 2018

And that's the beauty of skipping The Bachelor broadcast and just watching the show via tweets.

Thanks to the the collusion of two social mores — a television culture that encourages us to share our thoughts online the moment something happens combined with an internet culture that disdains spoilers — when you "watch" The Bachelor only through Twitter, you transform the show from an ordinary dating show into a television bonanza where literally anything is possible.

Let's call it Schrödinger's Rose Ceremony. By not watching The Bachelor, I can't prove that Arie hasn't committed some horrible atrocity when a tweet calling him trash rolls around my Twitter feed. But I can't NOT prove it, either.

Omg whoa can’t believe I just ran into Arie on my way home!!!!! #TheBachelor #TheBachelorFinale pic.twitter.com/blwd3GECMv

— Hannah F Caldwell (@MsHannahFrazier) March 6, 2018

And that's just fun.

When watching the actual show, you have to deal with the nuance of knowing that Arie has ALSO been put in a tricky spot by the whole conceit of having to choose a life partner in just a few short weeks via a series of group dates. But when you're on Twitter, where the primary language is hyperbole, you can just yell. It's cathartic to do, and let me tell you, it's cathartic to watch.

Bachelor Nation roll call

The other thing that makes watching The Bachelor great on Twitter is that the show, from the very start, IS manipulative. And Bachelor Nation, as the community of fans calls itself, knows that. So when something happens on the show, Twitter savvy viewers bust out their fan theories, their best memes, and a healthy dose of cynicism. 

For instance, soon after the big reveal that Arie was breaking up with Becca, a theory started that Becca was in on it.

Ok Becca is clearly in on it. This is just sad manufactured drama to try and make up for the most boring season ever. #thebachelor

— Calvin (@calvinstowell) March 6, 2018

Other people disagreed.

Anyone saying Becca is “in on it” is 100% wrong. No one would allow themselves to be humiliated on TV like this. #TheBachelor #TheBachelorFinale

— Michael Empric (@michaelempric) March 6, 2018

Even Becca herself got in on the speculation.

Deep down, I knew. pic.twitter.com/mJDMqeKzzL

— Rebecca Kufrin (@thebkoof) March 6, 2018

With The Bachelor, the real drama is what happens online, where the Twitter commentary is often funnier than the earnestness we're treated to onscreen.

Once you start watching with friends or tweeting your experience, that's when the real games begin. Twitter's where everyone dissects the drama of every character, date, elimination, etc. And you don't have to watch the show to appreciate that. 

Even the show knows! Which is why it hosts a Bachelor fantasy league.

At this point in our reality TV cycle, the best part about The Bachelor is the community. And Twitter's where it's at.

And it's not just during the finale. Thanks to following Bachelor online, I know that one contestant was declared a missing person, that we don't deserve the first black Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay, and that Peter is my new husband.

I've never seen an episode of The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, but someone just showed me a photo of Peter, and like, yep, yes, I get it pic.twitter.com/rC8CpCtj50

— MJ Franklin (@heyitsfranklin2) August 8, 2017

These are all details that become tedious when you have to experience them alongside the minutiae of each episode. Take them in isolation, and the only thing stopping you from crafting the television drama of your dreams is the limits of your imagination.

They say ignorance is bliss. But with The Bachelor, ignorance is the optimal viewing experience. Don't watch the show. Follow it on Twitter.

WATCH: These are some of the weirdest dating apps of 2017

[bestmovies0]

20 Oscar-Nominated Movies You Can Stream Right Now

From baby motorists to libidinous mermen, 2017 was a very good–and somewhat strange–year at the movies. And yet not even the pulse-pounding excitement of watching Daniel Day-Lewis consume yet another mushroom omelette could match the collective jaw-dropping that came in the final moments of last year’s Oscars ceremony, when the makers of La La Land handed their Best Video statuette over to the makers of Moonlight–the award’s actual winner–in what will likely go down as the weirdest instants and worst mix-ups in Academy Awards history. Could it happen again during this Sunday’s ceremony? Doubtful, but never say never.

Even still( or in cases where) you shouldn’t miss out on any of this year’s nominated films. For those of you planning to invest this week( and weekend) engaged in a non-stop Oscar marathon, here are 20 of this year’s nominated movies you can stream right now.

The Shape of Water

If you thought the merman sex was the most compelling thing about Guillermo del Toro’s fantastical fairy tale, you weren’t attaches great importance. The Shape of Water is much more brilliant than all the talk about its aquatic lovemaking let on. With its mingle of real-life and fantasy, it’s likewise pure del Toro. Sally Hawkins suns as Elisa Esposito, a mute cleaning woman at a top-secret government research center who one day stumbles upon an amphibious creature, falls in love, and smuggles him into her bathtub where their affair goes to the next degree.( It’s much more heartfelt and passionate than it sounds .) The film, which is nominated for 13 Oscars, might be most notable for its cast–most of whom, including Hawkins, Richard Jenkins( as Elisa’s BFF and neighbor ), and Octavia Spencer( as her coworker ), earned nominations for the performance of their duties.( Though Michael Shannon, amazingly, did not .) Folks “was talkin about a” Shape because of its more prurient aspects, but strip those away and it’s a narrative about adoration and otherness with a wonderfully humanist, if not entirely human, soul.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Though writer-director Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was met with a joyful standing ovation following its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September, it had now been gained as much backlash as it has accolades( largely because Sam Rockwell’s racist cop character is redeemed in the end ). Still, there’s no denying that it’s a film full of powerful performances–Rockwell, Frances McDormand, and Woody Harrelson are all vying for gold–and a story worth instruct: a young lady is raped and murdered in small-town Missouri. When it seems as if the local police have given up on ever observing the perpetrator, the young girl’s mom takes justice into her own hands, largely by shaming the local authorities. Though it would be easy to paint this kind of tale in broad-spectrum brush strokes–an angry woman gets even–playwright-turned-filmmaker Martin McDonagh doesn’t go for easy.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Lady Bird

Like most teens, Christine “Lady Bird” MacPherson( Saoirse Ronan) doesn’t ever feel like she quite fits in with her fellow classmates. Hankering for something more than what she has, the movie follows Lady Bird through her senior time of high school, where even the smallest aggravations( like, say, one’s mother) feeling immense. While with hour and distance, it’s easy to see that the interesting thing don’t matter so much, it doesn’t feel that style when they’re pas, which is part of what stimulates Lady Bird so unique. Writer-director Greta Gerwig, who is now one of a small handful of women to be nominated for Best Director, manages to capture the reality of the transition into adulthood with all the pain and humor that comes with it.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Call Me by Your Name

Though set in 1983, there’s something totally modern about Call Me By Your Name, director Luca Guadagnino’s dreamy modification of Andre Aciman’s acclaimed coming-of-age novel. A precocious teen( Timothee Chalamet) observes himself both embracing and fight with the universal awkwardness that comes with giving oneself over to a first love, which is stimulated even more difficult by the fact that it’s with a 24 -year-old grad student( Armie Hammer) who is living with his family and interning for his father. The film’s dreamy sensuality will stick with you long after the end credits roll, and you’ll never look at a pitted peach the same route again.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Darkest Hour

Though director Joe Wright may be best knows we attaining lush interval dramas starring Keira Knightley, his unwavering attention to detail and the past induce him a perfect fit to recount Winston Churchill’s earliest days as Prime Minister, and the history-altering decisions he was faced with inducing when it came to dealing with Adolf Hitler. As far as biopics or historical movies go, Darkest Hour is rather straightforward–which isn’t a knock on the movie. Yet where it truly stands out is in the acting. Though Gary Oldman is far from the only actor to ever play Winston Churchill( he’s not even the only person to play Churchill in the past time ), the quirky gravitas that has celebrated the actor’s job seems perfectly suited to the part.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Get Out

Having reached the “meet the parents” stage in its relations, Chris Washington( Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend Rose Armitage( Allison Williams) head off to an upper-class suburbium to expend the weekend with her folks( Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener ). But from the get-go, Chris senses that something’s not OK with the situation. He’s right. With Get Out, Jordan Peele managed to simultaneously redefine the modern horror movie, while making a statement on race in America–and the timing could not have been better.

Where to stream it: Amazon, HBO Go, iTunes

Dunkirk

Watching Dunkirk on your iPhone isn’t truly the behavior that Christopher Nolan envisaged audiences experiencing his IMAX-ready World War II thriller, which details the hectic evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk, France as Nazi armies began closing in all around them. So if you can at least watch this one on your TV, that’s preferrable. Like with his previous cinemas, Nolan once again demonstrates himself adept at blending action and nuance. But in the case of Dunkirk, it’s composer Hans Zimmer who is tasked with ratcheting up the nervousnes as the destiny of the film’s seemingly fated soldiers hangs in the balance.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Blade Runner 2049

While it may not have built the financial impact that Warner Bros. was hoping for, much like Mad Max: Fury Road before it, Blade Runner 2049 is only one of the few sequel/ reboot hybrids that isn’t simply cashing in on a cult following for instant brand-name acceptance. Whether you connect with Denis Villeneuve stark, dystopian vision of the future or not, there’s no denying he’s a natural born filmmaker( assure: Hostages, Enemy, Sicario, Arrival ). While it’s technically a sequel, it seems more like a spiritual comrade part. Ryan Gosling is perfectly cast as Agent K, a young blade runner urgently trying to track down Rick Deckard, Harrison Ford’s blade runner from the Ridley Scott original, who has been missing for 30 years. When they do satisfy, watching the two performers try to out-dry each other more than makes up for the two-hour-and-4 5-minute operating time–as does the brilliant camerawork of frequent Coen friends collaborator Roger Deakins who, with 14 Oscar nominations and zero wins, has become the Susan Lucci of cinematography.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

The Florida Project

While growing up mere minutes from Walt Disney World may sound like the dream of every child, for Moonee( Brooklynn Prince )– a profanity-spewing six-year-old who lives in a motel with her mommy( Bria Vinaite )– and her motley group of friends, the Sunshine State is still far from The Happiest Place on Earth. The Florida Project details a summer in the living standards of these children, who are often forced to grow up before their day. In a different time, Sean Baker’s The Florida Project might have been the Oscars’ favorite little indie movie that could, with its brutally honest depiction of life in Donald Trump’s America. For now, we’ll have to be satisfied with Willem Dafoe’s well-earned Best Supporting Actor nomination for playing Bobby, the motel manager who understands Moonee’s plight and does his best to look the other way.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Abacus: Small-scale Enough to Jail

Hoop Dreams director Steve James has dedicated much of his job to shining a light on the underdogs, and his newest documentary is no exception. While, in the wake of the 2008 fiscal meltdown, many of Wall Street’s biggest players were deemed “too big to fail” despite their many intentional misdeeds, person needed to be made an example of. And that someone was Abacus Federal Savings, a family-owned and operated community bank that was indicted for mortgage hoax by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. This engrossing documentary shows the truth of the matter( the bank’s 0.5 percent mortgage default rate was a tenth of the national median) and the personal toll that it takes for David to go up against Goliath.

Where to stream it: Amazon Prime, iTunes

The Big Sick

There’s something to be said about writing what you know, as husband-and-wife writing team Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon proved that with The Big Sick, a semi-autobiographical accounting of the evolution of their relationship. What started as a possible one-night-stand developing into a relationship, then a breakup, then a near-death experience that brought them back together, in part thanks to Emily’s( Zoe Kazan) parents, Beth and Terry( Holly Hunter and Ray Romano ). Just when you thought every romantic-comedy trope had been discovered and done to death( no pun aimed ), The Big Sick manages to avoid them all, yet still have some “aww…” moments.

Where to stream it: Amazon Prime, iTunes

Baby Driver

Somewhere between Drive and La La Land is Baby Driver, Edgar Wright’s car chase-filled heist flick that introduced The Fault in Our Stars star Ansel Elgort to the non-Y-Aloving world. Elgort holds his own and then some against much more seasoned performers, including Jon Hamm( getting as far away from Don Draper as he can) and Jamie Foxx( who channels a bit of his character from Horrible Boss, and then some ). Kevin Spacey also stars, which could explain why the movie didn’t get as much Oscar attention as some predicted.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Beauty and the Beast

When word came down that Disney was killing a live-action version of its beloved Beauty and the Beast, there were essentially two reactions: Yay! and Why? While, in the end, it may have all seemed a bit unnecessary to those who remain devoted to the animated version, there’s no denying the appeal of Emma Watson as Belle, a kind of anti-princess Disney princess. Even if you had no affinity for the original, or desire to watch its live-action offspring, witnessing what the actors–in particular, Dan Stevens as The Beast–had to endure in order to bring it to the screen at the least deserves a few minutes of your attention.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes, Netflix

Icarus

If there was an Oscar for Best Accidental Documentary, Bryan Fogel would be the only challenger. In his effort to make a little cinema about the growing issue of performance-enhancing medications in the sports world, Fogel ended up get in touch with Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the former director of Russia’s national anti-doping laboratory–and together, they slowly realized that their “research” has left them with clear proof that Russia had spent decades conspiring to game the Olympics. While its focus is on doping, the overarching themes speak loudly and clearly to the current state of disenchantment and propagandizing people are reading more and more about every day.

Where to stream it: Netflix

Last Men in Aleppo

At the 2017 Academy Awards, The White Helmets–a 41 -minute documentary about the brave men and women who volunteer as first responders in search and rescue efforts in portions of rebel-controlled Syria and Turkey–won Orlando von Einsiedel and Joanna Natasegara an Oscar for Best Short Documentary. This year, Feras Fayyad and Steen Johannessen’s feature documentary, Last Human in Aleppo, will once again shine a spotlight on the heroic organization, with boots-on-the-ground footage that was shot over two years, and immerses the spectator in what daily life is like for those living in the midst of the Syrian Civil War.

Where to stream it: Netflix, Amazon Video, iTunes

Logan

James Mangold has entered the realm of superhero filmmakers, by sheer morality of represent one of the few who has managed to not only craft a deep nuanced character drama that violates the shackles often associated with the genre–but by being recognized by the Academy( alongside co-writers Scott Frank and Michael Green) for doing just that. It’s a well-deserved tribute for Hugh Jackman’s last outing as a retractable-clawed mutant.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, HBO Go, iTunes

Loving Vincent

CGI is all well and good, but there’s something to be said for pushing the boundaries of centuries-old techniques, which is exactly what Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman have done with Loving Vincent. The movie pays the ultimate tribute to its protagonist, Vincent van Gogh, by recruiting a squad of 125 artist to tell the story of the lord painter’s life … with oil painting. 65,000 frames worth of them.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Mudbound

Netflix continues to show it can play with the the major studios with Dee Rees’ epic, post-WWII drama where class and race collide in rural areas in Mississippi. Accommodated by Rees and Virgil Williams from Hillary Jordan’s book of the same name, the movie depicts the unlikely friendship that develops between two soldiers–one white( Garrett Hedlund ), one black( Jason Mitchell )– as they resume their lives in the Jim Crow South, and are forced to deal with the PTSD that haunts them, and the racism that surrounds them. The film’s Oscar-nominated cinematographer, Rachel Morrison, had now been lent her eye to the year’s biggest movie in so far: Black Panther.

Where to stream it: Netflix

On Body and Soul

Director Ildiko Enyedi won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival for this intense, albeit sometimes bizarre, Hungarian movie in which two shy coworkers at a slaughterhouse in Budapest forge a relationship in their daydreams( they keep having the same ones) and attempt to translate that to the waking world. Rating another win for Netflix.

Where to stream it: Netflix

The Disaster Artist

After spending more than a decade as a Hollywood punchline, Tommy Wiseau–the eccentric novelist/ administrator behind the so-bad-it’s-kind-of-amazing cult film The Room–finally got his critical due when James Franco decided to turn the construction of that movie into a movie all of its own, which is equal components funny, bizarre, and curiously moving. Eat your nerve out, Ed Wood.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Oscars Overdrive

How Mudbound’s Rachel Morrison, the first woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for cinematography, took the world by cyclone with the stunning Black Panther

Dive deep behind the scenes of Blade Runner 2049, as told in our October 2016 cover story

Can a fish-man be emotionally appealing? The Shape of Water dares to find out

Catch up on reviews of Get Out, Logan, and Mudbound

from https://bestmovies.fun/2018/03/01/20-oscar-nominated-movies-you-can-stream-right-now/