#subject: actors

[rayandco]

John Gielgud as Oberon by Cecil Beaton. January 1945. Accession Nos. S.1587-2015, S.1585-2015, and S.1586-2015

[stellaluna33]

The Jess episodes in Season 6 are SO gratifying (for those of us who, like Rory, would say, "I KNEW you could do something like this! I KNEW it, I knew it!") but at the same time SO FRUSTRATING, because everything about the way they were written suggests that they were making deliberate comparisons between Jess and Logan- comparisons in which Logan doesn't come off particularly well. Like they went to great pains to imply that: Jess knew Rory better than Logan (the birthday subplot), was better FOR her, was more mature, loyal, freaking noble, etc. etc... And then they just... never went anywhere with it! Logan jumps off a cliff and Rory feels guilty, and... The whole plotline gets dropped and they never talk about it again! It really freaking seemed like they were making a point, but WHAT WAS THE FREAKING POINT??? *flips a table!*

[clairedaring]

SPARE ME YOUR MERCY การุณยฆาต — 2024, dir. Wo Worawit Khuttiyayothin

[ofswordsandpens]

I really dont want to get into the Nosferatu discourse because that is a whole can of worms in and of itself, but I do think its perplexing if you watch an interview wherein Lily-Rose Depp:

discusses her understanding of Ellen

discusses how she views the dynamics between Ellen & Orlok and Ellen & Thomas

and how those very viewpoints were developed directly from discussions she had with the director/writer

...and then claim that she has a poor understanding of the very character she portrayed.

[aliusfrater]

almost all s8 opinions regarding sam make me want to tear my hair out but what do you make of the takes that we can't really blame sam for s8, mainly not looking for dean/quitting hunting because it was "out of character"?

not just the you know who shippers who say this either btw I've seen so-called sam stans say the same

the evidence to this claim always seems to be that jared supposedly didn't like it either (which may very well be true idk the source) but I have to wonder if jared only said that or something similar because fan reactions to s8 sam began affecting him too

quite simply, i just don't agree with or enjoy interpretations that genuinely and earnestly refer to it as sam 'not looking for dean' in any context that's intended to be from sam's point of view because that's very much what dean considers it to be because he knows that he wasn't dead in the soul-had-left-his-body sense and he considers sam's adherence to his own perceived death as abandonment which is the major culprit of his own, sam's as well as the narrative's perpetuation of the idea that sam 'didn't look for him'. like this exact idea from sam's own pov is touched on in the first episode of season eight when sam is at his most confident in his independence away from his and dean's relationship:

then based on bobby's reaction to sam's own recount of dean's death to bobby in 8.19, it does seem evident to me that sam neglects to retell his own pov and he tells bobby that dean was in the same purgatory they were currently in, which is why bobby reacts with disbelief (because if you knew where he was, why didn't you attempt to save him?) and why sam's response is to bring up the previous 'agreement' he and dean had about death.

i have my own qualms about bobby's disillusionment re: the agreement as a 'non-agreement' and that he 'taught [sam] that' based on the actual events of 6.01 and the fact that bobby does indeed leave dean out of hunting at sam's will and the only plausible point at which it could have become a non-agreement is during the 6.11 and 6.12 conflict that is regaining sam's soul (without sam's consent, twice fold, but i consider soulless!sam to be more of a direct victim of being resouled than i do sam because of his active agency against it. sam's agency was preceded in his dying wishes and are therefore passive). bobby's reaction does, however, add to the already narratively skewed perspective of sam's decision where there is already that prioritisation of dean's 'didn't look for me' on account of the fact that bobby's own role as patriarch does narratively match dean's, along with bobby's position as a character who is narratively third to sam and dean's relationship (which then then bleeds into both sam's and the fandom's own interpretation of it, i think; sam also begins to doubt his decisions more which is also related to how the trials turn into his own suicidal ideation).

the conflict regarding which brother takes on the trials is very much foundational within sam's own view of a light at the end of the tunnel and his desire to leave the life and dean, at multiple points, within conversation about why he should be the one to do the trials, reiterates sam's own desire for normalcy away from hunting, within what dean himself desires for sam's life, which bring us back to the root of the issue that is dean's fear of abandonment (8.03, 8.14).

sam's own desire or attempt to leave the life seems to be fundamentally Wrong or is at least disproved of until dean approves of it/whenever it's part of dean's ideal for sam. 8.01, "so… free will, that's only for you?" the greatest sin is to disobey your patriarch; i think the culprit here re: sam's own person, just like it was with season four and the beginnings of soulless!sam, seems to be sam's rejection of the dynamics of his and dean's codependency in favour of his own attempt at independence. there's also the idea that dean would rather complete the trials that have a possibility of death than have sam go through the trials, die, then 'leave' dean to face the idea of living a life without sam—and he attempts to make this decision by on his own, without sam's input.

generally, i don't believe sam needs any excuse(s) to live a life outside of dean but the narrative's own facilitation of sam back into the non-role (the struggle to fit into the role) of his and dean's relationship, the dichotomy of monstrosity, the cycle of abuse, the patriarchal structure etc. etc. after his attempts at independence are endlessly interesting to me and although this isn't yelled at you through explicit exploration, i do consider aspects of sam's history with mental health to be relevant within several aspects of season eight, but mostly being related to sam's decision to leave hunting specifically within the context of the year between seasons seven and eight (especially after all that is seasons three to seven) as it's explored in 8.08. ultimately though, i think the major aspects of sam's decision to leave revolve around 1) grief and sam's avoidance of his grief, which is pretty well represented by his initial reluctance to name riot and explored through sam and amelia as mirroring characters (how blatant it is pisses me off a little),

and 2) the very basic building block regarding sam as a character that is his desire to leave the life. quite generally, i think the fact that through dean's own conflation of family and hunting (on account of john's own pov that through choosing college over hunting, sam had also chosen college over family) as well as dean's own pov prioritised through his and sam's relationship along with the previously mentioned structures, the idea that sam, too, is therefore unable to leave the life or subvert any of these structures without it being perceived as leaving dean or forsaking family is pretty neglected within a lot of interpretations of sam as a character. i think dean very much keeps sam tethered to the life either through sam's own ability to choose dean and their conflated lifestyle over something/someone else (later season one, season two, three, later nine to fifteen) (there's also the guilt tripping) or as a result of being preoccupied in a way that inhibits his idea of normalcy (his monstrosity in seasons four and five), but on account of the dynamics and his and dean's relationship, sam is unable to reject their codependency which perpetuates hunting and SamAndDean as existing synonymously. i mean, even when sam was hunting without dean as soulless!sam, on account of the agency and autonomy sam was able to achieve due to the differences between s!sam and sam's priorities due to the difference between then (the soul lol), s!sam's rejection of his and dean's relationship did become evidence for his monstrosity. which is, of course, punishable by (possible) death should dean decide that the dichotomy will not stretch to accommodate said monstrosity.

season eight, to me, is when these characters first start feeling a bit like cardboard, especially due to how wittled down to its core sam and dean's dynamic is represented. this is the most boring and basic version of How They Work at this point in the show and even then people explain their simple and cardboard-ish behaviours away with explanations like saying they're 'ooc'. sam's state of mind is pretty straight forward if you know where to look; sam taking his entire family's death as his sign that he's able to leave the life is not out of character to me at all. kill the supernatural appointed patriarch in your head.

[dark-nimbus]

So I am a dumbass and didn’t realize that Spinner’s quirk is specifically gecko I thought it was a bigger reptile okay 😭😭

And after my friend and I talked about it I made the offhand remark that Spinner could be a jumbo-sized Geico gecko and they can’t unsee it

Because like

Look at it

So naturally I had to make a headcanon

Actor AU Spinner where between filming for MHA he does commercials for Geico

His biggest adversary is Shota from State Farm, otherwise known as Khaki Man (yes everyone on set teases him for it but hey man needs the muns)

[briebysabs]

I’ve seen some grumbling that the ORV anime would further censor the gayness surrounding joongdok. And while I get that with it following the webtoon which is already toned down, I trust a Japanese animated studio to lure in the masses with yaoi.

Whether it’s official art, interviews, the voice acting, the songs. Like don’t worry guys, the OPs and EDs are gonna be gay as hell. Especially the further we go in the story and it becomes more introspective/personal than action-focused.

While lgbt marriage is still illegal in Japan and censoring in its media obviously still occurs, many hurdles remain for creators to represent what they truly want or to simply leave in subtext. But compared to SK and especially China, I feel like Japan is less strict with this sort of thing. Plus they also know and will hone on the fact that orv is a project meant for a global audience.

[isfjmel-phleg]

Part of why I prefer to read the scripts of Triumph rather than the comic whenever I do a reread is that the mental images that the text paints tend to be more effective for me than the actual art. I don't think the artist quite understood the assignment.

For instance, in the script for #4, the confrontation between Will and the son of the supervillain that Will's father was a henchman for is described like this:

LONG SHOT: FULL FIGURES: TRIUMPH AND STAN WALKING TOWARDS US, THE MOTEL SOME DISTANCE IN THE B/G. TRIUMPH's HANDS STUFFED IN HIS JACKET'S POCKETS, HEAD BOWED, WIND CATCHING HIS HAIR. STAN'S HEAD BOWED A BIT, TOO, STAN'S HEAD TURNED A BIT TO LOOK AT TRIUMPH. STAN'S HANDS IN HIS PANTS POCKETS, THE WIND BLOWING HIS TIE AND HAIR. THIS SHOULD LOOK LIKE A SCENE OUT OF BEVERLY HILLS 90210 OR A LEVI'S COTTON DOCKERS AD; SENSITIVE YOUNG MEN SHARING THEIR FEELINGS. IT'S HARD TO IMAGINE THESE MEN ARE ARCH ENEMIES. [...] C/U: STAN. 3/4 ANGLE: EYES NARROW. HE'S A VERY BITTER YOUNG MAN. [...] MED C/U: TRIUMPH, GLARING AT OFF-PANEL STAN.

That's pretty specific, right? Priest establishes not just the facts of the scene but also the atmosphere and impression he's going for. The characters' body language and expressions need to be subtle yet eloquent, since a) neither of them are vocalizing the extent of what they're feeling in this restrained but tense moment and b) we're not in on anyone's thoughts.

Here's how the scene looks in the comic.

Not quite the same, is it? On paper, everything from the descriptions is there, but...I don't know, the atmosphere described isn't? In the long shot, the figures are overpowered by all the room given to the relatively unimportant background. Their expressions are too far away to distinctly make out. There's no interaction between them; Stan's looking at the ground, not at Will as described. In fact, they seem to be pointedly ignoring each other, perhaps even hostile, which doesn't really convey that "it's hard to imagine these men are arch enemies."

So when this is followed by two close-ups in which the guys are distinctly Very Angry with each other, the emotion of the scene has escalated startlingly quickly, replacing the unlying tension with outright menace very early in a conversation that is supposed to build slowly (per the script, Will doesn't exhibit much emotion until a whole two pages later when Stan finally threatens his father).

And this is pretty indicative of the disconnect between the art and what the script describes that is present throughout the miniseries. Technically checking off the boxes but missing the intended emphasis and mood. The script itself isn't flawless (its intended impact would have better landed with a couple more issues to spread out in and with more access to Will's thoughts throughout), but it does provide a stronger sense of the author's vision than the art could.

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

I'm going to be honest here it is a little bit hard to really buy the arguments of individuals who seem to think that transmisogyny is like. A tumblr fad. You do realize the term is quite old? Like it's 17 years old. It actually has a strong base in feminism and, you know, works within an intersectional framework. Transmisogyny as the exploration of the intersection of transphobia and misogyny is important!

You can't alter the term though and have it retain its intersectional meaning. Cismisogyny is inherently extremely silly. It sounds like something a TERF would make up. There is no systematic oppression of cis people. You also can't change misogyny in the same way because...well men aren't oppressed for being men. You would have to redefine the entire word into meaning something it doesn't, which is a problem when the term itself comes as a reaction to discussions of transmisogyny.

I say "reaction" neutrally here. I think we make assumptions sometimes about terms and assume their strongest meanings. Seeing "transmisogyny" and understanding that your own experiences differ in a unique way is an important part of discussions. This is almost certainly how the concept of biphobia and transmisogyny were born.

The lack of mirroring in any other conversation is also a bit of a red flag to me. When we talk about homophobia, we don't tend to mention homomisogyny, but that is primarily what lesbophobia is (although I would also argue it covers bisexual women too). Lesbians and bisexual women experience both homophobia, for being interested in the same sex/gender and misogyny, from being women. Gay men, then, don't get to claim that homoandrophobia exists. While there are specific experiences unique to gay men, they are not being discriminated against due to being men. Rather, it is from the framework in which men are judged for not meeting the idealized masculine framework: the white supremacist, sexist framework.

And yet. This isn't necessarily a disqualifier from male privilege. History has born this one out for the queer community, and it has taken multiple decades of trying to make things right in order to change it. Let's look at a really quick and easy example to prove this point.

Take a look at the list of queer Congressmen and women and see how many of them are men. It's a bit overwhelming! Now keep in mind this doesn't necessarily mean any of them are bad people, and I imagine a lot of them aren't. You do not need to be a bad person to benefit from male privilege.

Now you can point out that there are far, far fewer queer members of Congress than there are straight ones, and I entirely agree. We're still dealing with institutions, and people, that are homophobic. But the pattern is still there.

(And, also, an overwhelming number of these people are white. This is kind of obvious and I haven't really seen queer people who actually care about social justice ever state this was a phenomenon that didn't happen.)

It takes real effort to prevent this, btw. A lot of people are subconsciously sexist and misogynist even if they would insist otherwise. It's taken decades of advocacy to have more queer women in higher level positions in organizations and media. This is why saying there is androphobia in the queer community is deeply silly. There's no proof! Everything points rather directly to the opposite being true. There's a very strong bias towards, rather than against, masculinity.

Now, moving back to transmisogyny for a moment, it is worth noting here that transmisogyny does have to have people it doesn't cover. Misogynoir, for example, doesn't really cover white people. Why would it? Likewise, while men can experience misogyny, it is usually very silly to say they are the targets of misogyny. Misogyny is many cases for men is more of a deterrent than a form of oppression. It's to keep men in the fold, to keep men and women as distinct, separate categories.

If the targets for transmisogyny are all trans people...this creates some issues. What then separates it from transphobia? This isn't even particularly radical. But where I think the problem lies (outside of clumsy wording of TMA and TME) is in this.

The world is not split up between oppressed people, and oppressors, on an individual level.

What do I mean by that? Oppression isn't a passive thing. It's a result of systematic incentives and forces. In a very simple way of looking at it, oppression is the harmful implementation of power against those who do not have it. Ultimately, no one is immune to this. You can get power, and willingly use it to hurt others and keep them down. But you can also do this unwittingly. But this also means that not everyone is an oppressor. Not everyone has this power to wield over others. I want to look at this article briefly (Fair Warning: I cannot get 12ft to actually work here so I am not sure how exactly to bypass the pay wall, my apologies.)

This article isn't necessarily super substantial (it is meant to be a very cursory look after all) so the example given here is very basic. But I want to point out the obvious here. In the example, this is not a trans man in the oppressor role. Rather, it is to highlight how transphobia can and often is experienced differently, and let's be entirely honest with ourselves here, often much more intensely for trans women.

I've seen people claim this isn't actually true, which is kind of fucking wild because being someone who is around and doesn't have the memory of a goldfish, I remember when the bathroom panic started. It started, pretty much in its entirety, as a response against the idea of trans women being in women's bathroom. This was so strongly the point of the reactionary drivel that a lot of trans men rightly pointed out that the argument being as one-sided as it was actually meant there would be more masculine people in the women's bathrooms.

It was so overwhelmingly only about trans women that trans men pointed out the implications were very funny in a very stupid way. This wasn't that long ago!

Ultimately, and I want to point out this was pretty much what Serrano was talking about in that article that got spread around, not being the target of transmisogyny doesn't in turn make you an oppressor. Oppressors need power, and that power is not always given to trans men, which brings up a final question.

Can trans men benefit from male privilege?

Uh.

Yeah.

Obviously. To insist otherwise would be to insist they aren't men.

Privilege, when wielded, can in fact be a form of power. It's very easy to do this unwittingly.

Let's talk a trans man and a trans woman for a moment, and put their lives next to each other. Let's assume all factors are equal here: they're both white, they're both from middle class families, they're both straight, neither of them are disabled. Both of them also pass (I'm not going to go into the concept of "passing privilege" here, which is a silly term for a different concept entirely), so while moving through their lives, they exist as both a man and a woman.

All things are equal here. Who, ultimately, do you think has the better access to jobs? Who gets paid more? Whose opinion gets treated more seriously? The man. Obviously.

Now, of course, the real world is WAY more complicated by this. That's the point of intersectionality, the way in which different axises of oppression and privilege interact with each other. The fact that a wealthy woman might have more privilege than a homeless man does not make misogyny fake or unreal. Intersectionality does not contradict the core premise of the oppression.

Now, for the sake of fairness, let's reintroduce transphobia back into the picture. This makes the waters murky, but there are trends to look at. The issue here is, obviously, that a trans man's access to male privilege is extremely conditional, I would say more conditional than basically any other group of oppressed man, and even when those conditions are met, like other groups of oppressed men, they often benefit from male privilege less than cis men. This is because the ideal man is not a trans person, it's a cis person. Much as it is not a black person, it's a white person.

Trans women do not get this. At all. This is a really important point to make. Transphobes do not see trans women as misguided men. Once you make the choice of becoming a trans woman, it's very rare to get brought back into the group. Detransitioning does not solve the issue. Transphobes view trans women, even while they are calling us men, as inferior to men. We are less then men. The act itself is so transgressive that there is no penance. The solution is to get rid of us. This is why so many TERFs are blatantly genocidal. This is why teaming up with men to kill us doesn't bother them.

Now, this isn't to say that trans men are given much of a chance at penance. Violence is also a tool used against trans men, as it is still against gay men. For many people, although thankfully a lot less than there used to be, sleeping with a man is also an act so transgressive the only solution was violence. The point is to show that trans women are in a double bind. Becoming women disqualifies us from male privilege, makes us acutely vulnerable to misogyny, and we are almost never able to escape that.

This is all ultimately why transandrophobia bothers me as much as it does. As a term, it stands in blatant disregard of a lot of feminist thought, including intersectional feminist thought, and here's the thing.

I, like Serrano, believe that trans men do experience transphobia in a way that is different to trans women, and not necessarily in a strictly easier way. There is a need for language here. But the idea that trans women cannot ultimately criticize the choices made here is a bad faith argument. It's very bad faith. There are trans women who ultimately wash away this need in its entirety, and I strongly disagree with them, but to act as if good faith criticisms of the feminist framework of your choice is an attack is bad as well.

Transemasculation is one of the options I've seen that I actually quite like. I think it gets down to the core root of the issue very well. There can be others, obviously.

What I worry about is that the rhetoric I've seen is...really quite bad a lot of the time. I have my own criticisms of TMA and TME, but they come down to the terminology used. I don't have criticisms of the structure. For transmisogyny to exist, there must also exist those who are and are not the targets of it, just like anything else. I've seen a lot of criticisms of the structure, which has its own implication: that transmisogyny doesn't really exist.

If you believe that, but then also talk about transandrophobia, then I don't have nice words to say about you. You can stand, ultimately, in direct opposite to history and to like the majority of established feminist thought if you want, but I don't know if I want to be around you.

History never repeats, but it often does rhyme, and my prediction here is that ultimately, trans men, if nothing is done, will ultimately end up favored and privileged. The thing is that a lot of work has been done to prevent that. Serrano did not destroy the trans movement by coining transmisogyny; again she did that back in 2007. It is ultimately the responsibility of us all to make sure not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Trans men need to work to make spaces inclusive of trans women. White trans people need to work to make spaces inclusive for black trans people.

(BTW: White trans men who are making a big row about white trans women. I see you. You ain't slick.)

This can be hard work, sometimes, but we have literal decades of work to fall back on. Wealthy trans men helped to push for greater access to transition healthcare for everyone.

None of us are immune when given access to privilege and power from becoming an oppressor, but likewise, nothing disqualifies us from choosing to instead do the right thing.

[guinevereslancelot]

obviously he hasn't been cast because they're not yet making a biopic of luigi mangione but when they do they're going to cast timothy chalamet. in an inexplicable way this has already happened. it's the wrong casting choice of course but it's too late, it's already done. the die is cast. coming to theaters in 2028 give or take a few years

[rayandco]

Coral Browne by Cecil Beaton. Date unknown. Accession No. S.1553-2015

[sysig]

The brainworms are winning, clearly (Patreon)

[void-of-unparalled-chaos]

A song came up on my shuffle that reminded me of Subject 16 and now I'm thinking about Clay Kaczmarek again.

I have played a LOT of Assassin's Creed and to this day, Clay is one of my all time favorite characters. I actually might like him even more than Desmond (don't kill me please). Everything about him is just so utterly tragic and I don't think the AC fandom (however tiny it is) appreciates him enough.

Like just think about this for a second and put yourself into his situation:

(TW for self harm and suicide. Honestly Clay should just be a TW in general)

Now for the sake of time, let's just breeze past the whole desperately searching for parental approval from someone who won't give it to you to the point that you give up on your dreams. Clay's childhood is lesser known since all of that is in The Lost Archive DLC, but regardless it's still pretty depressing.

So you're in college for something you don't want to do to appease a man that just makes you feel horrible. Then out of nowhere this guy comes up to you and says you can do something greater with your life, serve a good cause with bigger purpose. You join the Assassin Brotherhood and things are going good, great even! For once you're finally happy with your life.

But now you have to do the biggest, most important mission you've ever been sent on. You have to infiltrate the enemy in deep cover for an extended period of time. It will be fine. You've done infiltration missions before. There's already a mole planted. She will get you out. It will be fine. Lucy will get you out.

You allow yourself to be captured. Your kidnappers strap you into a machine that forces you to relive your ancestors memories for hours at a time. There will be long term effects. Your captors don't care. You aren't a person to them, just a number. Just 16. They put you back into the machine.

One day after being removed from the machine something feels off. Like you're not where you're supposed to be. You're supposed to be taller aren't you? Or are you supposed to be shorter? The buildings outside the window look wrong. It doesn't matter. You're out of the machine. You can finally be you instead of someone else, if not for just a little while.

But it gets worse.

Even outside of the machine you still aren't you. You experience memories that aren't yours even when you aren't strapped in. You can't remember the year. You catch yourself thinking its 1480 instead of 2012. You swear a horse almost ran you over but you're in a skyscraper forty stories up.

You're scared.

But it's okay. You have what you came for. Lucy will get you out.

Except she won't. She defected to the enemy side. No one knows to come for you. You're trapped, doomed to be forced into a machine that destroys your mind. You're alone with dead people who feel like they're you. But there is someone... something? A being calling herself Juno.

She might not be real.

She says the end of the world is coming.

She says you are going to die.

You believe her, when you're lucid enough to listen.

You are trapped. If not in the memories of someone else then in this infernal room. There's no point in fighting any more. You won't escape. You can't warn the brotherhood. But you could give whoever comes next a fighting chance. Lucy won't help Subject 17, but you can make sure they aren't alone like you. You can do it. You can stave off the bleeding effect and cling to your remaining sanity long enough to do this one thing. Juno says the world depends on it.

You code an AI of yourself into the machine, split it into encrypted glyphs for 17 to find. You aren't sure how coherent your messages are. Especially not the last ones. You barely remember your own name. It will be okay, though. All 17 has to do is unite the glyphs. You won't be here to help 17, exactly, but your digital memory will. Now you just need to make sure they know to look for them.

There isn't a quick way to do it. They want to keep you alive, even if they don't care about your wellbeing beyond that. You managed to steal a pen. The pen will have to do. Cutting your wrists with the ballpoint hurts, but it's a necessary sacrifice. You'll write your message on the walls and floors. Even after they clean it up 17 will be able to see it. 17 will have the eyes.

"She sees me... raise the knife..."

[smuggsy]

i just watched all of us strangers and um, that shit hits hard

[robespapier]

How was your Halloween 🎃, I went to Ferney-Voltaire for a murder party and Rousseau got poisoned then stabbed

[greatmuldini]

The original “substrate” - the bottom layer - provides the plane and the body of Rex Reason, which must be joined up with the head of Nelson Brenner as he would have looked “15 years ago” (i.e. in 1960). The picture chosen to represent the facial features of the younger Brenner (though not his hair) is a 1965 portrait of the actor Patrick McGoohan, as he appeared in an episode of Danger Man (Loyalty Always Pays). Aside from the incorrect age gap, the new head is too large for its adopted body and sits uncomfortably on Rex Reason’s shoulders at an anatomically impossible angle (with barely a neck to speak of).

The contortions do not end there, however, as the youthful image of Nelson Brenner must clearly display his receding hairline – the third layer to be added to the composition. For the “enlarged” close-up that Columbo presents as “evidence” in the final “gotcha” scene, the hairline was completely redrawn with a new left-sided parting, and the entire image inexplicably rasterized. No changes were made to the face itself, its size or its angle in relation to the rest of the body.

For the fifth and final transformation, Columbo’s “photo guys” went to work on the close-up and added features from the description that their witness gave them of the mysterious “operative” (code)named Steinmetz – and young Nelson Brenner, already follicly challenged, becomes an elderly gentleman, bearded and bespectacled, who is peering at the onlooker from underneath a set of bushy white eyebrows topped by the shiny expanse of his formidable forehead. (3/4)