#that one’s especially bonkers like. have you SEEN how he interacts with his own sexuality in canon regarding women. what are you watching

[louisironson]

one thing you have to understand about succession is that none of these main characters would be comfortable with being gay/bi, certainly not openly so. you think the fucking fox news family would be okay with homosexual love and sex, even if they are hypocrites. wrong

[sneezemonster15]

I am new to Naruto fandom. Even newer to SNS fandom. I observed the shipping wars, and frankly, participated in it a couple of times. Just to see what it's all about. And I have come to one conclusion.

It's bonkers how far one will go to convince oneself about one's shipping whether it makes sense or not. At the end of the day, it becomes not really about the content itself, but one's comprehension and understanding of content. Which helps me understand why SS, NH, or NS stans exist. Their projection (which it certainly is) almost seems delusional and definitely inconsistent with the content itself.

When I first started watching Naruto, I wasn't aware of Naruto fandom. I am a cinephile and I am used to analysing content involuntarily while I am watching it. I wasn't expecting much from Naruto, I definitely underestimated it and wasn't expecting any emotional impact given it was shonen and I am very hard to please (yes, I am a film elitist). But as I kept watching it, I had to grudgingly change my opinion. By the time I reached Shippuden, I could tell that I was almost fevered with excitement and looking forward to more emotional impact.

I didn't watch it with any romantic lens, I was mostly interested in the fighting sequences initially. Hell, that's all I was expecting from a shonen show about ninjas. But at the end of vote 1, I was like, hmmm. What?? This was so emotionally wracking. Are they really just rivals, or friends? Now, I am a fully fledged cinephile and have watched a lot (a. Lot.) of LGBTQ films, given my interest in shows about emotional and sexual repression. And throughout my first watch of the first part, I kept picking up on the subtle sns moments without actively thinking about them. I was really into the story and wanted to see what will happen next. But at the end of vote 1, I had to stop and think, wait what, are they in love with each other? They are definitely not just friends. Or rivals. The language of their interaction in vote 1 is so fraught with underlying currents of repressed emotions that it just made the cinephile in me ask, what am I watching exactly? Like isn't it shonen (I am also relatively new to anime/manga) where gay relationships are a strict nono? Like why does it have all the tropes of repressed homosexuality in men, just like all the films I had seen. The way Naruto and Sasuke constantly gravitate to each other, their interactions at times feel like a borderline attempt at just staying close to each other, their violent, strong feelings and devotion for each other (land of waves arc) and then denial of those feelings (after the land of waves arc), their contant physical fights for no apparent reason, Sasuke goading Naruto for no apparent reason especially when Sasuke is not the type to talk without reason which had been made abundantly clear. Sometimes, it literally felt like he was flirting with Naruto (during the chuunin exams) while rejecting Sakura. Sasuke constantly appears to be caring and attentive towards Naruto while treating Sakura like trash. This was even acknowledged by Naruto who asks Sasuke to be nicer to Sakura. But Sasuke doesn't even think about it. He instead flirts (?) with Naruto. It made me think, why did the writer choose to do that? Why make it clear that in hierarchy, Sasuke keeps Naruto much higher than Sakura, so early in the show (when there hasn't been so much development either, we were mostly shown how they keep fighting and arguing with each other)? If they are supposed to just be comrades or friends, why pinpoint this? Why use this trope at all if it's about friendship, especially in a show that can't include a gay relationship.

And this kept happening consistently. The writer made the interaction between Sasuke and Naruto to be major turning points in the plot. Vote 1 fight made it clear to me that there was something more going on, but I didn't want to be presumptuous, so I kept it on the side and kept watching.

After watching Shippuden, I was convinced that none of it, was accidental. The writer painstakingly wrote a gay love story and was even obvious about it in a very clever way. Like he fucking got away with writing a gay love story in shonen. I know Naruto is basically a kids' show meant for entertainment purposes, but it touched so many important, dark and adult themes. I knew that it would be difficult for the writer to actually give a proper conclusion to these themes because they really aren't that black and white or even appropriate for children. So I wasn't surprised that he couldn't actually show peace being achieved after the war arc or slavery abolished in Hyuuga clan.

But one thing I was sure of. He wanted to show a gay love story, maybe out of a twisted sense of humor, I don't know. But that's what he did. He could not have made it clearer. He flagrantly used all the related tropes, visuals, sound, dialogues, hell the story. The fucking story...

He was so shrewd about it too. He made it so that people can take away whatever they wanted to take away from it as long as there was some plausible deniability about things that weren't made clear in the show itself. That fucking minx! But he knew that anyone who watches shit carefully, will be able to see what he actually did. He knew that at least some of us will be able to connect the dots. He went out of his way to make sure we connect the dots. There is no other way to explain why Sasuke repeatedly kept asking Naruto why he cared for him so much. There's no other way to explain why he concluded everything with the dialogue where Naruto explains that he hurts when Sasuke does. There's no other way to explain why that affected Sasuke to such an extent. Kishimoto went out of his way, like seriously, to tell the audience that they are Not just 'friends'. He basically used this friend thing with so much saturation and intent in such a twisted way that he made it into something else entirely. In that sense, the concept of 'friend' changed its meaning. Like you can try, but you can't change my mind about it.

Whether I approve it or not, but my takeaway from content depends mostly on the content itself. I do believe that more often than not, the simplest explanation is the right one. And this applies to the phenomenon of Naruto as well. Of course, as a viewer, I can't ignore that my suspension of belief relies on my own understanding of the external world and how I perceive visual language. But that is something that happens anyway, in tandem with consuming the content, while I was pretty much consistently objective about it.

I believe I have a pretty good understanding of how cinematic language works, and I know every creative or narrative choice has a reason and meaning behind it. Absolutely None of it is random. Cinematic language may not be universal in terms of styles, but all the styles definitely have a common ground. And any creator worth his salt knows it, he knows how his content will be perceived and what it is exactly that he wants to show or say. Do not delude yourself that it was accidental or on a whim.

I know for a fact that Kishomoto wanted to show a gay love story. I know for a fact that he wanted to show that Sasuke has feelings for Naruto and he knows it. He also wanted to show that Sasuke not only had feelings for Naruto but also knew that he couldn't show them openly. He wanted to show that Naruto has feelings for Sasuke as well but is confused and naive, like he is about so many other things. He wanted to show us that Sasuke is not into Sakura, that he doesn't even respect her. Any enthusiast of visual/cinematic language and narrative can tell all the above things without going into headcanon or deluded explanations (like SS, NH stans), with just on the basis of content they consumed.

At the end of the day, I don't ship SNS because it's in my head. I was forced to see and believe SNS by the creator. Not forced literally but forced to notice and acknowledge the emphasis and meaning of the twisted/manipulative ways of the creator.

Kishimoto, hats off to you, you sly bastard. You succeeded in trolling people endlessly, you had a lot of fun pitting people against each other, didn't you? Hahahahaha. Well, I call your bluff/or non bluff in this case since you obviously knew what you were doing.

[wingresistance]

T.R.O.S. initial thoughts - 

under the cut & subject to enhancements post a second viewing, of course

hello, hello, thank you for returning to my humble abode. i watched tros last night and slept on it before typing this out this morning so it’s been mulled over in my subconscious a bit, hopefully. the fact i’m able to sleep at all is a miracle. i remember the post tlj-debacle where i stayed up till 4am writing a 1500 word commentary on all of it. this is chill. 

the biggest takeaway from all of this is that it is very much a combination of what jj planned for the eighth movie and combined with the nine. it is a speedy run-through of ‘here’s what should’ve happened’ and ‘THIS IS MY VISION NOW’. pacing was definitely rushed and underdeveloped, esp points like rey palpatine or finn being force sensitive or even the trio interactions. while i understand there’s been a time-skip, tlj was just so bonkers and separated the trio to an extent that it’s definitely jarring to abruptly have them be thrown together in this one. still adored them though. i respect and actually like that they bicker, and while the execution was a bit odd, it does feel natural to their characters, especially with rey and poe’s personalities.

it was great, finally, to have that dynamic between those three, and i wished it could’ve been elaborated more. there are scenes that i’m not sure would’ve been necessary but also would not make sense if they were removed (again, because of the two-in-one scenario here).

i’ll leave the meta for other characters to other people or perhaps to another post. we’re going into poe centric territory here. 

pros

poe making strategic decisions and growing into himself as a leader. honestly let the man rest. but between ‘the rise of resistance’ and this, there’s more of a growth and him rising to the occasion, though the trajectory of how it happened or exactly what he has to grow from is not how i envisioned (read: poe was right in leading the mutiny in tlj). poe leading the flight team at the end battle is *chefs kiss* amazing. 

poe talking to leia after her death. i have been SAYING poe is leia’s parallel. him being her acting general and immediately co-delegating to finn? thank you.

poe utilizing his contacts and having street smart skills. im living my best life in terms of the verse i envisioned (we’ll talk about the backstory part in a bit). light speed skipping? we stan

poe flying the millennium falcon. yes. yes. yes. YES. 

cons

oh oscar, we’re really in it now.

the spice smuggling affairs of the past. ok, ok, which smart-aleck thought this was the best backstory to give the latino character? while i appreciate the more underbelly, gotta do what is necessary aka cassian andor vibe of that whole scene, i will say that the implication that poe has had that as a career some point in his life is bonkers. i’ve seen a couple theories thrown about on how that could’ve been an undercover resistance job, and i would’ve loved for that to be explained more than just left hanging and letting audiences assume what they wished. i have also in fact confirmed that they intended for him to have left his home at 16 and join this before leaving five years later and HONESTLY. i was, and am, mad about it, so I don’t know if i’ll do the undercover resistance concept or try something else. i will have to think further about this. WE DO NOT DISRESPECT KES DAMERON AND SHARA BEY IN THIS HOUSEHOLD. 

in any case, please read ‘before the awakening’ by greg rucka aka the master of poe storytelling. poe joined the new republic academy when he was young so disney just retconned themselves like they always do which NO SURPRISE.

his interactions with zorro bliss. while i liked her as a character and would love to know more about her, the forced straightness of it all. oof. i cringed so hard at the awkward flirting like god i can’t even comprehend. did i truly expect a finnpoe moment? no. but i would’ve preferred they left poe open-ended in terms of his sexuality than put this weird dynamic on him. i swear my face was stuck in a single expression for fifteen minutes after that. i can’t read it as that being a characteristically poe thing to do, and i just......nah. please don’t. was it even necessary? no, but disney took one look at finnpoe and went ‘gotta find my way out of this’. abusive and traumatizing relationship? yes. supportive lads with chemistry? nope. 

jj: oscar, please, please act straighter.

oscar: kiss my ass. also finn and poe are in a relationship

general. general. 

as a whole, while i did feel poe progressed, it really was like two steps backwards, one step forwards kinda thing, you can’t really scrutinize this movie too hard because it all falls to shambles once you do. it’s a lot of fluff, but i don’t feel like there was much weight to it. 

while i am not as mad at it as i was at the last one, i can’t really say much in terms of pros either. it’s not a well-executed nor written movie, but it was a ride from start to finish. i won’t be putting much stock by it for my own writing aside from elements here and there, but i’ve gone my own way since tlj and i’m not looking back. 

this is our canon now. we’re free.

[lauraxxtennant]

don juan in soho

Review & lots of spoilers below

Ok. So, you guys know by now that I was, let’s say, cautious about several aspects of this play prior to seeing it.

I was completely turned around on one of those things, though, and this was the inclusion of music/dance numbers and an actual. Duet. Between dt and adrian. This duet was the highlight of my night. I know!!! That’s bonkers!!! I thought I was going to find this the most embarrassing moment of my life, and yet!!!!!

Let me be clear, I love musicals. I love plays. I don’t usually find it beneficial to the material when a play tries to shoehorn in a musical number. I usually think it’s best for straight plays to leave the musicals down the road to their singing and dancing, and just act the damn thing. Added to this, the fact that david tennant is clearly desperate to be in a musical lmao made me think, ‘oh god, this is gonna be a disaster, he can’t sing, it’s gonna be embarrassing.’ HOWEVER. I fully admit that he sounded good tonight. Really really good. DJ & Stan basically get stoned and sing a (brief, TOO BRIEF) semi-romantic duet under the stars at the end of act one. It’s the best point in the play, and no one is more surprised by this than me.

There’s another brief musical number in the play by the cast (not including dt) where you see a couple of real life, floppy-haired teenage dt photos projected in the background (none that we haven’t seen before.) I also really liked the tiny snippets of music from the opera Don Giovanni, which gave me the shivers. I feel like this could’ve been used to greater effect actually; if the ~moment of revelation~ and the ending of the play were stronger, bringing in those strains of Mozart could’ve had a greater impact, really set a nice tone of doom about the place. But perhaps there were practical limitations on how much they could use of that music anyway; this play is, after all, not the opera Don Giovanni.

Before seeing the show, I was also dubious about what I’d heard re: the staging. It’s quite a sparse set, which I think is fine actually, and there’s an absolutely ridiculous moment where david tennant flies into the air on a rickshaw (yes, really) which clearly made him very happy so i can take that all in good fun lol. Therefore, the only gripe I have about the staging has to do with the whole statue-coming-alive thing (yeah...really.) More on that later, though.

The third thing I didn’t think I was gonna like but did, was the hospital scene. DJ receives a blowjob from Lottie (played by Dominique Moore, who is very funny in the scene preceding this where she actually gets to speak) whilst chatting up the bride (or, ‘the fox’ as DJ charmingly calls her...) whose wedding reception he has just ruined in his pursuit of her. The logistics of it are frankly ridiculous - nobody could get away with that in a hospital waiting room lmao, blanket covering the action or not. There’s a large bag sitting on the seat between him and the bride, hiding Lottie’s ministrations from her, but the rest of the people in the room can see what’s going on. So it’s bonkers. But it’s also hilarious. I’m incredibly impressed that david tennant managed to offer up such a variety of expressions over the course of several minutes, whilst also having a conversation with the bride. Several times you think, ok, he must be nearly done, this is the orgasm face...but nope, he keeps right on going, and he doesn’t even blush. Stellar receiving-blowjob acting right there. This is the funniest part of the play, imo.

As always, dt’s comic timing is great. But I think he mines more laughs through his delivery and physical comedy than the writing actually offers him. He deserves much better material. This play is a comedy but I get the impression it thinks it’s funnier than it is, or at least it thinks it’s more quick-witted and worldly than it is. Admittedly this comes down to personal taste as much as anything.  I did laugh aloud in places, but there were several times I heard someone a few rows back really, properly laughing at something I considered pretty tepid on the humour front tbh.

As I mentioned in my summary earlier, the staggering amount of alliteration in this play nearly made me lose my mind. Once you notice something like that - something repetitious in someone’s writing - it is so hard to tune it out. I know this sounds like a very nit-picky, minor thing, but it was honestly so irritating!! The line that’s been thrown about a lot in the promo stuff/reviews, ‘Satan in a suit from Savile Row,’ is truly just the start; that line is said by Stan, but DJ gets most of the excruciating stuff, including a dozen or so lines informing us that DJ cannot possibly be racist because he’d do it with, among other alliterative ladies, ‘a babe in a Burka.’

Talking of racism. There’s a terrible line about how DJ wants to fly to Alaska to have sex with a ‘furry little eskimo,’ which I didn’t find particularly pleasant or funny. 

The supporting cast is very non-white for a West End show, so kudos to the casting director for that, but it is unfortunate that DJ’s brother-in-law, who I have seen described in a review as a ‘black thug’ (!!!) is the maker of DJ’s demise.

There’s also a really tasteless scene where DJ is interacting with a homeless Muslim man. This is the scene I was referring to when I said something turned my stomach. He dangles his £6k watch in front of his face and tells him he can have it if he blasphemes Allah. I’m aware this is a direct parallel to a scene in Moliere’s Don Juan (wherein he offers a coin to a beggar on the proviso the beggar concedes to blaspheme; interestingly this scene was removed from performances at the time.) But the execution of this scene is just so tasteless and unpleasant. Oh, and also dt imitates the Muslim man’s accent at one point. Grim. 

Though DJ, in his monologue near the end of the play, riles against hypocrisy, he is so self-righteous in this scene that it’s almost unbearable; he goes on and on about how Allah hasn’t done anything for this homeless man, so why can’t he insult him (at first he wants him to call Allah a cunt, then he de-escalates to ‘twerp,’ neither of which the man does. Thankfully DJ throws him the watch anyway, ‘because of his integrity.’ But that this rich, vile, atheist man could shout in this other guy’s face about his religion...it’s horrible. Stan agrees, so at least our ~moral compass within the play (dubious) is on the audience’s side. But still, it’s very uncomfortable to watch. 

For me, this was the only shocking moment in the play. Though this play is billed as being filthy and shocking, there is nothing inherently shocking or controversial about a fictional portrayal of a womanising, amoral, cynical, privileged white male with an excessive sexual appetite, penchant for prostitutes, and evidently an addiction to drugs and/or drink. Those characters are, let’s face it, ten a penny in literature, on stage, and on screen. DJ’s liberal use of the word ‘cunt’ might shock some in the audience, granted, but I think this play thinks it’s more shocking that it is. The language in the play is clearly something dt relishes getting to perform, and I am not offended by swearing at all, and honestly quite like hearing him going for it (apart from that one time he calls a prostitute ‘fuckface,’ not that she seems to mind.) But it’s sort of a bit laughable, that lines like ‘I’m just a cunt with an eye for one,’ are trying so hard to provoke laughter and/or shock, when...it’s just not even that great a line? A lot of the ‘funny’ lines are phrased pretty awkwardly tbh.

Other absurd moments:

DJ declaring himself a radical feminist. (this is funny because aside from Marber’s use of that word in this one instance, the rest of the play seems to take place in a contemporary world where feminism never happened.)

The statue coming alive. I hated this lmao. I mean. It’s all hallucinatory/figurative I guess (i hope??) because it’s his own voice bellowing from the statue that DJ hears, foretelling his impending doom and indicating how much he despises/fears himself, but the surrealness of the statue moving about and pedalling him into the air on a rickshaw, it’s just...it’s embarrassing

‘I’m not a rapist, I don’t grab pussy!’ getting a huge laugh. a) the bar is truly low when you have to say at least the dude is not a rapist, b) i hate donald trump as much as anyone but this is one of those poorly-phrased lines i mentioned that aren’t actually very funny. It felt a bit shoehorned in tbh.

Elvira, DJ’s wife, is an oddly-conceived character. I understand that reflecting the convent-girl origins of this character in the modern day was gonna be tricky, but the modern-day equivalent Marber comes up with is not particularly believable. Rather than a nun he’s lured away from the convent to marry/take the virginity of, as in Moliere’s play, in this play Elvira is a charity worker who, after a two-year pursuit, DJ has finally persuaded to marry him. The reasons he wanted to marry her are the same as in the original: she’s a virgin, and won’t sleep with him before marriage. Once they’ve had their honeymoon, he’s off to bed Croatian supermodels, done with her now that he’s finally had sex with her. 

The suspension of disbelief comes in twofold: firstly, we have to accept that Stan and Elvira’s brother throwing around the words ‘she was an innocent’ and ‘she was pure’ (and the implication that she has now been corrupted) are likely phrases to be said these days. I mean, come off it. Secondly, Elvira’s speech - about DJ being terrible but at least he opened her up to physical pleasure! At least he showed her how magnificent all these filthy fantasies she didn’t know she had could be! She won’t be with him now she knows what he’s really like but she still loves him and always will! - all of that nonsense, it just didn’t ring true. Especially as we come into their relationship just as they are back from their honeymoon and he’s sleeping with someone else, so we don’t even get to see evidence of how he charmed her in the first place (she references that he was sweet and kind and acted so in love, but we never see these traits in DJ at all.) The actress playing Elvira, Danielle Vitalis, didn’t give a particularly strong performance imo, but I honestly don’t know how much of that was really her fault, given the ridiculous lines she had to say.

The final thing that rubbed me up the wrong way was the monologue near the end. The disdain for millennials from middle-aged male writers made a jump from online articles to stage with this one, or, if not targetted at that generation specifically this time, then at least at this digital day and age we currently live in. It elicited rapturous applause from the audience, and yeah, the ‘welcome to my vlog; today i bought a plum’ line was amusingly delivered, but I have no time for a character who is morally bankrupt claiming the moral high ground simply because he finds selfie/social media culture undignified and lacking in class. I might agree with him on his comments on the value of privacy, but this dude is shamelessly shagging his way through Soho (christ, I’ve caught Marber’s alliteration bug) and so I think his sermon on hypocrisy is a little tone deaf.

Are we expected to equate the unapologetic, relentless pursuit of ‘skirt, or occasionally, trouser’ with a life lived to the full, a life celebrating ‘free will and answering to nobody?’ It’d be one thing if DJ genuinely loved women, as in loved in the way dt’s Casanova loved women; a seducer and a bit of a cad, sure, but one who at least respected and admired rather than objectified women. But DJ generally seems to have contempt for them bubbling under the surface, and in any case, the only reason he is able to pursue this kind of life - one sexual dalliance to the next, a snort of cocaine here, a cigarette and a scotch there - is because his father is rich and can fund such an elite lifestyle. There’s also your typical middle-aged male writer cynicism about love dressed up as a philosophical, salient point about the unnaturalness of monogamy as opposed to the natural state of man being to ‘hunt his prey.’ Marber, mate - you ain’t saying anything new, here. Writers just like you wheel out this faux-philosophy about the human condition more times than I can count, and all it ever really tells me is that you wish you had the guilt-free option to have an affair yourself.

I say all this because it’s quite hard for me to decipher what Marber really wants us to take from this play. DJ is warned of his reckoning, promptly feigns contrition to ensure his father doesn’t cut him off, but feels no actual guilt or compulsion to change his ways. He then eventually gets his comeuppance, and Stan regularly tells us how despicable he is, but I still get the impression that, in spite of Stan’s warning, ‘please don’t be charmed, he’s not a loveable rogue,’ that’s exactly what’s expected of us. Indeed, Stan says at one point ‘just as we were starting to warm up to him!’ (I think after the homeless man scene.) But I…..was never charmed. Not even for a second. I don’t think anyone could be? Honestly? Because he clearly is despicable, he has no compassion, is selfish to the extreme, has received all the luxury and privilege being the heir to an earldom affords him, with none of the responsibility, has never worked a day in his life, and has only limited affection for even the one person closest to him (Stan, an employee he never pays and treats abominably.) As dt has postulated in interviews, DJ is a sociopath. And yet we are subjected to a lecture from him on the indignity of a world of selfies and vlogs and hypocrisy, as though those things, vainglorious though they can sometimes be, are more sinister and morally corrupt than his objectification and dismissal of every woman he comes across. It’s a bit hard to swallow, frankly.

DJ has great hair, tailored suits, tiny red pants, and the innumerable benefits afforded to him by virtue of being played by david tennant. But he’s never particularly charming. We never see anything of the kindness and gentleness that so charmed Elvira into marrying him. We never really see him seduce anyone, aside from Lottie (this seduction is essentially him groping her boobs in the guise of being a ‘specialist doctor,’ complimenting her assets and telling her she shouldn’t change herself in any way [she’d mentioned she wanted a boob job]) and the only other time we see him in a sexual situation is with four prostitutes, and he has evidently paid for their company. But we hear he has had sex with three different women a day for the last 25 years, and that he is ‘extremely fuckable.’ I mean, yes, to look at him, clearly sexy af. Yet I feel there was a twinkle in the eye missing for anyone to actually be compelled to go for it with him; for comparison, rather than returning to dt’s Casanova again, I’m now thinking about Tom Ellis in Lucifer, who does play a loveable rogue, and the contrast is pretty clear.

And I bring this up because I’m left here thinking: if there’s nothing really interesting about DJ, if he really is just one-dimensional, and selfish, a destructive man with delusions of self-importance, who’d ‘fuck a hole in the ozone layer’ if he could, then....why? Why are we interested in this man? Would we sit there and watch two hours of a female character doing the same thing? Would anyone even bother writing that, let alone consider producing it? I don’t think they would.

It’s an entertaining play because dt and adrian breathe humour into a script that is, occasionally, lifeless. They can’t save every line, but their chemistry is great and their relish for these parts is evident. The play isn’t as shocking or as funny or even as filthy as you’d expect, and I don’t think it taps into the moral quagmire it thinks it does; honestly, it’s pretty standard stuff. I still don’t know quite what Marber’s going for. Of course, there doesn’t necessarily need to be a ‘message’ or a twist or a social commentary to be figured out within a production. But I think if you’re adapting something that plays with the idea of a libertine repenting through fear of death/hell, and if you feel that won’t resonate in a contemporary setting, then the stakes ought to be raised in another way. The spectre of impending doom looming over him is pretty lacklustre, and, given that DJ would rather die as he lived than profess a simple apology to save himself, the ending isn’t very evocative at all - it’s actually a bit dull.

Best bits:

DJ & Stan’s duet

dt’s hair

stan’s endless exasperation at DJ’s antics

the hospital scene

the tight blue suit

dt looking so happy flying overhead in a rickshaw (despite the ridiculous statue driving it)

stan’s last few lines

i cannot stress this enough: dt looked super hot

Worst bits:

the homeless man scene

the patronising tirade against this vain new world

the elvira plot

the statue coming alive and foretelling his doom a la marley’s ghost in a christmas carol

the lacklustre ending

3/5 stars, could’ve been a lot better. with a different writer. and plot. 😂

[captainignatiuspigheart]

Another week, another near-sun tan. This week I’ve seen a friend in person (what the actual fuck?) and found a new direction for exercise. That sounds pretty good, right? It was extremely disconcerting to meet up with a person in real life – I’ve begun to feel a little like all my friends who have long assured me that they’ve met their best friends purely online – but three hours sitting in the local park in a government-approved triangle was lovely. I’ve been seeing others largely as things to be avoided as they blunder towards me, breathing heavily with no sense of physical distance. Apart from the postman and chin tilts to neighbours it’s the most human experience I’ve had of late. I also attended a properly fun Zoom birthday party too (thanks Mr Ben!), so clearly we’re getting used to these things.

Heading out in the direction of Dovecote Lane park eventually sent me that way on my bike too. I’ve found exercise really hard for the last couple of months. I’ve always relied on cycling to work (and the swim at the halfway point) for a few miles in each direction to keep me fit without feeling like I was doing exercise, and it’s been pretty good for keeping me fit and able to eat and drink what I like. Well fuck you very much lockdown, that’s been properly trashed. Cycling in an aimless circle round university park or Beeston has been quite cack, and while jogging on the spot clearly burns calories it’s too tedious. So I’ve started cycling out to Attenborough Nature Reserve. It’s not especially far, but I’ve rarely explored round there, so I’m enjoying heading off down a road with no clue where it goes. It’s not made me late for work… yet. Even when I didn’t sleep at all on Thursday night I got up and went for an explore before work. Must be good!

In between late night walks around Beeston, drinking too much and watching TV, we’ve continued our slow build of the LEGO Brick Bank. It’s quite lovely.

I’ve also finally returned to LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga on our Wii. I’m up to 30-something per cent and enjoying it enormously. I have discovered though that our TV really can’t handle proper dark contrast on a sunny day, so I’m dying a lot by falling off edges I can’t see. There have been a few levels where I’ve had to stand right in front of the TV (in sport mode), and just hoped I’d find the exit to a room. Still, I’ve got Indy and General Grievous to hop around and smash stuff, so I’m happy.

Oh yeah, and another bootleg Mando arrived this week – with shiny beskar armour! Baby Yoda will have his Mister Shiny Helmet. Nicely, he comes with a screwdriver accessory which I assume is supposed to be the tracking fob. There is something in me compelling me to acquire more of these guys… I’ve also just got the Armourer, but pics of her will have to wait till I’ve crafted a custom cloak. What is wrong with me…?

  Watching: Hollywood

OK, so this should have been in last week’s post, but I’d forgotten that we’d watched it. That’s no indication of how good it is, everything belongs to the neverwhen at the moment. Plus we caned through it in three nights. This is a very strange show, offering us an alternate Hollywood of the 1950s in which the reviled minorities of the day can actually get a foothold in the industry. The show nails the golden era vibe, from movie producer boardrooms to the grim/delightful gas station gigolos. Over the first couple of episodes the show draws together the flailing careers of half a dozen interesting and purposely diverse young Hollywood hopefuls and then sets them together in a movie, despite, or perhaps because of, their race, gender and sexuality – all things that would have killed their careers in real Hollywood. It’s a very pleasing show; the acting is great, from the keen Jack Castello moonlighting as an escort from the aforementioned gas station (it and its owner, Ernie West, are an absolute highlight), aspiring black actor Camille, Archie the black and gay screenwriter who finds himself in a relationship with Rock Hudson (also a delight, and terrible actor in a fantastic screentest montage), and the awesome double act of Hollywood execs Dick Samuels and Ellen Kincaid, plus the quite distressing sleazy and manipulative agent Henry, played with soiled glee by Jim Parsons. 

It’s really good fun, and a moving story – each success feels wonderful, and Hollywood getting behind this gang is immensely satisfying, as is the acceptance and coming out of various characters at all levels of the business. For me, it remained jarring however, for just how unreal the situation is compared to Hollywood of the ’50s – it never escaped its own unlikeliness. Most certainly worth a watch.

Doing: We Are What We Overcome – Live Specials

We’re continuing to livestream every other Monday on Facebook, this time on trying to be aware of our mental health states, as well as that of others. I feel like we’re getting better at this live babbling thing. It feels less awkward now. We’ll be streaming to Facebook next on Monday 1 June, and you can watch em all right here.

Reading: The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton

I’ve been through another couple of weeks of struggling to read properly, or at least as quickly as I enjoy. After discarding half a dozen books less than one chapter in, I finally prised open my book cupboard and pulled out the first pretty thing I could find. It was this! A pleasing and sharply written story of a boy traumatised into silence by an event in his childhood (which is only fully revealed toward the end, and works very nicely),  a lad who discovers he has two talents, drawing and lock picking…  We’re given two main story threads to skip between: his life as the lock artist led by a series of pagers offering jobs that he responds to, and how he got into all this trouble in the first place. They’re both peculiarly endearing, and that’s partly down to the charming internal monologue which carries through all of his interactions, since he does indeed remain mute throughout. He’s funny, and sweet, enough of an outsider through his selective mutism to have a cynical eye, and yet through his silence other people just trust him. Including proper big bad criminal types. It all ends rather badly, but we’re told that from the beginning. His lengthy infatuation and distance romance via comic book pages that he and his sort-of girlfriend exchange is genuinely delightful. This is fast-paced and fun, with a harsh shade of real darkness in both his past and future.

Reading: Transformers vol. 1: The World in Your Eyes

This was a hard read for me. I’m a huge fan of IDW’s previous Transformers continuity, which ran for an extraordinary thirteen years (a feat that I don’t think any other Western comic series, still less one based on a toy line, has achieved), taking us from the brutal finale of the Autobot-Decepticon war through to peace time, with wonderful characters, alternating humour with dark political wranglings. This new reboot has quite a lot to live up to… 

We’re taken millions of years back to Cybertron pre-war, introducing us to the sights through the eyes of newly forged Rubble, who’s being shown round by Bumblebee. Of course, it’s the worst possible time to show a new kid round, as the tensions between the establishment and Megatron’s “Ascenticons” are just now bleeding over into violence. It’s a lovely Cybertron, one we’ve only glimpsed before in flashbacks (or, memorably, time travel), and it’s a thriving world with vast architecture, travel and commerce. A successful world, which for what feels like the first time, has organic alien races living alongside the Transformers. It’s sad to think it’ll all be ripped apart soon…

It’s a very pretty comic, but is incredibly slow moving, even for the first chapter introducing a rebooted world. I suspect I’m finding it hard going from the well-established characters of the last continuity to seeing them all reshuffled and now filling different roles. It’s a cool era to set the story in though, and I think it’s got promise.

Building: LEGO Ninjago 70736 Attack of the Morro Dragon

I love Ninjago’s dragons and the insane aesthics the range has pursued down the years, giving us both traditionalish ninjas and dragons, but also Mad Max dieselpunk, enormous mechs, and more recently Tron-style arcade stuff. Bonkers. Oh, and also the stunning Ninjago City builds and the even wilder designs from The LEGO Ninjago Movie.

This set’s a little older, and like most of the Ninjago line I only pick them up when they’re quite severely discounted. Obviously it was the glow in the dark colours that appealed to me most of all, and those lovely wings. It’s a satisfying assembly, with a mini temple build, sky bikes (or something, I don’t really follow the stories), a couple of ninjas and three more of these evil ninjas with transparent legs and heads. Oh, and two ghosts. I’ve already put them somewhere but it’s the dragon I was interested in.

This is actually a smaller set than I thought it was, and comes together very quickly indeed. Despite being larger, and having more pieces than Master Wu’s dragon (a fantastic LEGO set), it’s a shorter build all round. The construction is like many of the others, a combination of big crunchy joints and the little Mixels ones for legs, wings and tail. I always enjoy the design of the dragon head itself, which gives the beastie a lot of character. The chin horn is oddly satisfying! All the glow in the dark pieces give the dragon its lovely roiling curves, but leave it sadly inflexible. It’s a dragon I’d love to coil around a building, but that’s gonna take a severe re-engineering of its body. It’s rather striking, and I imagine this one will remain constructed for quite a while, at least until I want to plunder its glowing parts.

And just because I liked it…

Watching: Never Have I Ever 

We watched this in a single night… I’m always thrilled to stumble across shows with under half-hour episode lengths at present. This is a pretty straightforward US highschool outsider tale, from the somewhat unusual perspective of an Indian-American family. That’s a pretty familiar trope in UK TV, and was very welcome in the even-more-familiar US high school setting. I’m not sure that there’s anything exceptional here, but it’s warmly told, with a number of fun and occasionally over the top performances, all solidly conforming to our expectations of a high school drama. I had some trouble figuring out how old the characters were supposed to be as it’s the usual casting combo of girls who must be in their twenties, but look about 14, and guys who are plainly in their mid-thirties. No wonder kids are so confused these days etc. As usual it’s the vibe between the BFFs that makes this fun to watch, particularly drama-queen Ramona Wong (wonderfully and worryingly odd in the lamentably cancelled Santa Clarita Diet). As filled with diversity and coming out stories as you could hope for, this is plenty of fun, if not especially memorable. Oh yeah, and it’s narrated by John McEnroe. Yes, the tennis player. 

Doing: MissImp’s Virtual Improv Drop-In – “Specific and True” with Terje Brevick

Continuing our mission to bring you improv from everywhere, this week’s episode features Norwegian improviser, Terje Brevick, with fun games and a good reminder of the value of details and honesty in improv.

Last Week – a really busy week! Featuring another mental health livestream, books: The Lock Artist & Transformers vol 1, TV: Hollywood & Never Have I Ever, LEGO: Morro dragon and MORE. Sleep now please. #books #tv #lego #stuff https://wp.me/pbprdx-8EZ Another week, another near-sun tan. This week I’ve seen a friend in person (what the actual fuck?) and found a new direction for exercise.