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dearabby1990 · 9 months ago

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Chapter 5: Popcorn candy & Kisses

Walking up to the ticket booth you both decided on seeing the last showing of Monster Squad holding you’re hand in his walking to the concessions he playfully bumps his shoulder into yours giving you the most heart warming smile. “Okay beautiful what should we get besides the obvious popcorn I need to know what my girl’s favorite movie candy is” your cheeks flush as you blush at his statement his girl huh you loved the sound of that & how it made you feel like you’d just float away if it wasn’t for him holding your hand keeping you grounded. “Well depending on the mood I either get sno caps or goobers but we can get whatever you want as long as it isn’t licorice people who eat that crap are mentally unstable” you full heartedly laugh he places a kiss to your forehead “I knew I liked you tell ya what we’ll get both & share everything you nob in agreement & head off to find seats. It’s not very packed for a weekend night but you’re not complaining gives you both a chance to take your pick of the theater. Decided on a spot just in the center where the screen looked At perfect eye level the previews are over & the movie starts. Eddie glances over at you with the most incredible smile & he shoots you a wink that would’ve made you knees buckle if you weren’t sitting. Putting his arm across the back of your seat so you decide to lean into him putting your head against his shoulder sharing your snacks enjoying the movie & each other. You take a chance & take one of his hands placing a kiss to the back of his hand before resting it onto your lap caressing his hand with your thumb in small circles while you watch the movie. At the ending credits Eddie stands up stretching out all his muscles and you can’t help but stare he’s like something out of those Greek mythology books you read in high school. He offers you his hand and you both head out of the auditorium towards the doors laughing about the film. “Who would’ve known wolf man had nards” Eddie almost falls forward laughing “shit I don’t know if I would’ve even thought of that I probably would’ve shit my pants and ran” you both laugh as Eddie helps you into the van closing your door for you. He gets in and sits there for a moment & then turns to you. “Hey do you wanna come take a ride with me somewhere I wanna show you something… I mean if you want to you don’t have to.. you know what never…” you cut him off before he can finish “Eddie relax I’d love to take a ride with you” you lean forward making eye contact with him giving him a reassuring smile he does it in return starting the van and heading to the next destination while Ozzy Bark at the moon play’s through the stereo. You’ve been driving awhile & wherever you’re heading there sure are a lot of trees in this part of town. Enjoy the breeze against your face you put your arm across the open window and place your chin on your forearm and take in all natures beauty the smell of honeysuckle in the air & the sound of gravel & cicadas. Eddie takes your hand in his as he continues to drive taking in how breathtaking you look just enjoying the ride and nature as he thinks to himself how lucky his is to be with you right now. If only you knew how he truly felt about you the whole truth he didn’t want to rush things and scare you off so for now he holds that conversation for another time right now he’s just enjoying being in your presence & he’ll take any version of you he can get & love it just as much as he loves you. Yeah that’s right Edward Theodore Munson is in love with you he just doesn’t know how he’s gonna tell you or when but for now he’s going to have fun and enjoy every second with you & really make it count.

#eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #joseph quinn

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la-galaxie-langblr · 5 days ago

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2025 Goals by Quarter: Quarter 1

13th-24th January: exam period

30th January: deadline to submit ELA application

Academic 🎓

Study French outside of classwork on 90% of the days (so 81 days!) - ideally this would either be listening comprehension or active production but I'll not be too harsh on myself, the habit is what matters

Achieve a 1st (70%) in both of my linguistics modules and at least 65% in both my translation and oral exams - grades aren't everything etc etc but I know full well I'm capable of this, so may as well make it a goal to work towards!! My exam period is 13th-24th January and my exams are quite well spaced out, so there's plenty of time to prepare, and my good coursework marks in linguistics should give me a nice helping hand too

Complete at least 6 volunteering hours - this falls under academic because my university has this extracurricular award for undergraduate students that you earn through completing a combination of self-guided online learning modules, student leadership roles and volunteering, so I need to start sourcing some volunteering hours this semester! I did a decent amount last year and it was a great way to meet new people both at uni and in the community :)

Wellbeing/hobbies/social 🌻

Stay up to date with daily devotionals

Read at least 3 books

Improve my current swimming best of 1200m in an hour with breaks (so either increase distance, reduce time or reduce breaks)

Create and maintain routines - Daily morning, daily evening, weekly exercise, weekly homework and weekly reset routines, I also want to create high and low energy versions of each routine so I can stay consistent even on difficult days. Ideally I'd like to follow my routines at least 4 times a week.

Attend a 'special' event at least twice a month - I'm counting 'special' as outside of my usual routine, so choir rehearsals, lingsoc events etc don't count as I would have been going to them anyways, but one-off socials in uni and for societies I don't regularly attend and events in the city do count

Leave the house at least 6 days a week - I have 2 days off a week not including the weekend in second semester, so I need to make an active effort to not stay at home all the time, I have so much within walking distance of my house at uni and I need to take advantage of it!!

Side quests/bucket list/things to look forward to 🍄

[redacted] January: Dan and Phil tour show!!

February: See friends!!

Early March: watching a musical!!

Learn how to eat with chopsticks - it's embarrassing being one of the only people in my uni friend group who can't use them, especially since we tend to go out to Asian restaurants to eat, and I hate being that white person asking for a fork 🤡 so time to change that

Learn to read at least 2 non-Latin scripts - I used to be able to read cyrillic and hirigana, while my skills are a bit rusty I can still remember quite a lot, so I either want to brush up on one or both of those or teach myself to read a new script, maybe Hebrew or Greek :)

Attend a mushroom foraging event - I've been wanting to go to one since I started uni!!

Attend a classical music concert - there's a concert venue in my uni city that offers incredibly cheap student tickets for classical concerts, even if you're in the front row of stalls!! So I'm absolutely going to pick a concert and go to one, while I don't play in an orchestra anymore I miss the atmosphere

Bring on 2025 :) a lot of big changes are coming but I'm going to look them in the eyes and laugh because no matter what happens I will stay whimsical and joyful!!

#galaxiegoals #goalsetting #2025 goals

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vyragosa · 1 year ago

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Is higgs a paramedic now???z

IT'S MY FAVORITE ALLEGATION

Automated Public Assistance Company

need to pull up the whole damn thread cause you know it would take me half an hour to explain it from scratches...i will do it anyways

=> RED is the only image color absent from the main cast of death stranding at the exception of deadman and the MEDICAL staff at the beginning of the game related to threating bridget's cancer, visibly attempts at slowing aging as well (unclear if medical progress in that regard given her nature as the extinction entity's body)

=> fact remains the access to "combining body parts in what seems like an incredibly unethical experiment to create deadman which was never adressed"

=> now that was a stab in the dark, but it aimed too true to be a mere coincidence, we have an adult BB and fragile's skin is healed, which includes body doubles, regenerating cells, which means that the technology of course advanced that much, but, it could mean the supernatural element of death stranding that is, grabbing someone from the seam back to life as well, as a detector device, this higgs is supposed to be stuck on the beach then how..?

=> we already know that "singing" is the mediator, the binding between cliff and sam, BB's theme is incredibly potent and don't have a single clue about whether or not "songs" might actually be, a key to understanding the interactions between BTs..between the past and the present...how cliff and sam could talk....much to think about is it not?

=> now if you look at the background and the strange star with six branches on the bots behind higgs-amelie? it evocates significantly the american STAR OF LIFE of emergency medical care!!!!!! and want to know what's even stranger ??? it was originally designed by...the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration!!!!!!! we are playing a game of deliveries are we not?!!! strange things in the strangest of lands...

enters the greek god of medecine Asclepius

=> kojima as the biggest fan of snakes representations in any culture worldwide, he pulls up quite a bit of different snakes and it would really be dismissive to not assume that well, the man who made a game that explains obviously greek names and chirality as just one of them, well, a god represented by a snake around a rod, that one he must surely enjoy.

=> the odradek is a "snake-like", circling around a "stick"

=> tell me who is the stick and who is the rope in death stranding? that's right, for some reason, this higgs is surely a stick yes!

i will spare you from the full explanation about the mythos of my dear asclepius but lo and behold as it involves the death of a mother, immortality, returning from death from the clutch of hades, defying gods, being half mortal and half a god and

dying struck by lighting as punishment, it's getting so long but let me get this straight, asclepius is either a man who beat up snakes, who saves snakes, who was told secrets, who was whispered to and lo and behold?

isn't the ear the only flesh part we see of this higgs?

“It is said that in return for some kindness rendered by Asclepius, a snake licked Asclepius's ears clean and taught him secret knowledge. Asclepius bore a rod wreathed with a snake, which became associated with healing. Another version states that when Asclepius was commanded to restore the life of Glaucus, he was confined in a secret prison. While pondering on what he should do, a snake crept near his staff. Lost in his thoughts, Asclepius unknowingly killed it by hitting it again and again with his staff. Later, another snake came there with an herb in its mouth, and placed it on the head of a dead snake, which soon came back to life. Seeing this, Asclepius used the same herb, which brought Glaucus back. A species of non-venomous pan-Mediterranean serpent, the Aesculapian snake (Zamenis longissimus) is named for the god."

APAC, automated

#anonymous

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sanstropfremir · 2 years ago

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Hello! ✨🎥 anon back from the dead. I saw that someone asked you about recs on books a couple of days ago and I wanted to ask about it. Which plays would you recommend (as you said on the notes)? And what would you recommend to expand on technical knowledge about dance? If you were to cover these things on that pending ask that you talked about, then I'll wait for that. Thanks!

HI HELLO how are you!!!! let me do the plays right now since i can spit them off the top of my head pretty quickly. however on the other hand i do not have any good recs on expanding technical knowledge of dance bc literally everything i learned was orally. it also depends on what type of dance? if you're looking for ballet i'd recommend looking at the ballet russe obvs but also balanchine! i got nothing for any other type of dance though.

so some plays that were very influential to me (a lot of these are not perfect and i fully acknowledge that):

the tempest - shakespeare

macbeth - shakespeare

twelfth night - shakespeare

cat on a hot tin roof - tennessee williams

any of anne carson's translations of the greek classics

oedipus rex (actually for real it's a fucking incredible play)

rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead - tom stoppard

arcadia - tom stoppard

eurydice - sarah ruhl

dead man's cell phone - sarah ruhl

blood and ice - liz lochhead

if you can find any eng trans of wayang kulit or wayang wong scripts, but this may be difficult since the only way i read them was bc i took a class with like the one guy in the west coast of canada who's dedicated his entire life to indonesian theatre and translated a bunch of them himself and i think only had them published in a $100 textbook. they are however usually stories from the mahabharata or the ramayana, which are easier to find translations of

i read a bunch of translations of noh when i was like 13 and i cannot for the life of me remember the names of any of them but noh and kabuki are really good for looking at storytelling structures

hamlet - shakespeare

this is a pretty short list bc i've read a LOT of plays in my life, but these are ones that have had a profound impact on my artistic career in some way.

#i'm inevitably going to miss a bunch but i can always add more to the other list if i remember #for people that want to learn about storytelling and theatre history my best recommendation is to read the classics. like all of them.#the greek plays we do have full versions of are incredible and there is a reason shakespeare's plays have outlived his contemporaries #and if you find reading them difficult there are filmed versions out there!#media recs #text #answers #✨🎥 anon

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kingstylesdaily · 4 years ago

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Harry Styles’ “Adore You” Is Everything a Music Video Should Be (Including Underappreciated by The VMAs)

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KSD NOTE: there is a mention of suicide in regards to the beginning of Adore You.

On November 18, 2019, a website promoting a mysterious place called Eroda (“No Land Quite Like It”) arrived on the internet. Two days later, the official Twitter account for this fictional frown-shaped island began teasing local seaside attractions. You may have missed it, depending on which corners of the internet you choose to lurk, but not if you were a Harry Styles fan, a group that went into pure overdrive trying to figure out what it all meant.

I, for one, missed it at the time. I was unaware this account was cryptically quote tweeting fans as they tried to piece together what was happening, what it meant, and what it could be connected to (Greek Mythology and Lost were a couple of theories posed in comments, Twitter threads, and Reddit). Meanwhile, the Columbia Records marketing department had been hard at work for months, devising this specific and highly-detailed campaign around the music video for Styles’ second single, “Adore You” from his second solo album, Fine Line, ever since he shot the video in Scotland in August 2019 (Eroda = Adore backwards — clever!).

But it was all leading up to the morning of Friday, December 6 when the video was released, one week before the full-length album arrived. Up until that point, I had never seen an entire Harry Styles music video, but what happened next was inevitable. Somehow, as a self-proclaimed boy band scholar, I had never paid much attention to One Direction. I kept a distant eye on Styles since they disbanded, intrigued by the decisions he was making in his solo career. But I hadn’t yet realized I’d been in the ring all throughout the fall of 2019, fighting to resist the inevitable fascination that awaited. First came the jab of Rob Sheffield’s Rolling Stone profile, followed by the cross of “Lights Up”, a song that cracked my Top 20 most listened to songs of the year despite being released just two months before Spotify so thoughtfully compiled that personalized playlist. Then there was the hook of his SNL hosting stint in November (and bless you Bowen Yang for that Sara Lee sketch), which then leads us to the “Adore You” video, the uppercut and ultimate TKO. I surrendered in what felt like a near instant. I was now a Harry Styles fan. (If we’re following this analogy, I sat up to spit out some blood after seeing that cover of “Juice” before my head quickly hit the mat again with a loud thud).

Maybe it’s not quite remarkable that I took time out of a Friday morning to watch a music video, but that I sat at my desk, in an office, with other people around (back when we did those kinds of things) and proceeded to wipe away a few tiny tears from under my eyes by the end of it, was an experience I had not been through… maybe ever? In a world of lyric videos and TikToks, actual, thoughtful, impactful music videos with a full (and sweet!) story are about as rare as a glowing and growing fish these days.

Ultimately, “Adore You” does everything a music video should do. In nearly eight minutes, this video uses excellent visual effects in a cool and interesting way, tells a compelling and heartfelt story, is anchored by an irresistible leading man and an adorable sidekick, is backed up by the catchiest song you could ever dream of, and culminates with a touching and hopeful ending. It’s a treat for the eyes and the ears and the soul. It’s innovative and the kind of thing that begs you to watch it more than once to catch all the details (and yes, I do tear up every time).

So one would think that an award show with the specific purpose of celebrating this type of creativity would be extra sure to nominate such a charming and effective clip, but alas, “Adore You” was overlooked in the MTV Video Music Awards main categories this year. Of course, some could argue that that fact only adds to the video’s credibility but I’ll do my best to not be that petty as I’m still rooting for it to win in the three technical categories where it picked up nominations: Best Visual Effects by Mathematic, Best Art Direction by Laura Ellis Cricks, and Best Direction by Dave Meyers, who remains one of the most inventive and influential directors of all time and whose videos with artists such as Missy Elliot, Pink, and Kendrick Lamar have been racking up nominations for nearly 20 years now. He also saw four other videos he directed get recognized this year: Normani’s “Motivation” (Best Chorography), Travis Scott’s “Highest in the Room” (Best Hop Hop and Best Visual Effects), Anderson .Paak’s “Lockdown” (Video For Good), and Camila Cabello feat. DaBaby’s “My Oh My” (Best Cinematography).

But I reached out to Meyers to specifically ask about the intricate details of “Adore You” and how it all came to be; how he captured such a vibe with the overcast and dreary weather, mixed so wonderfully with the charming oddities of the people that make up this world of Eroda. In addition to directing the video, he also co-wrote the story with Chris Shafer and said, “It’s the first idea that popped to mind after the first listen to the song, and the first idea I pitched to Harry. It was a story that underscored my understanding of what Harry stood for and felt it was necessary to tell it as a narrative to convey his optimism.”

The extended version of the video starts with a two-and-a-half-minute introduction to the world of Eroda, narrated by Rosalia. This includes the “peculiar” people and their professions on the island, meeting The Boy (Styles) and his glowing smile that most people try to avoid, and the quirky superstitions these people continue to live by. “It all served a purpose,” Meyers said of the details. “The superstitions were a set up for how society generally reacts to different things. They fear change or oddity, even if it’s what’s best for them.”

Meyers, however, did not share in that fear, as much of this video provided for interesting and new opportunities he had yet to experience throughout his decades-long career, which he listed off: ”Compelling narrative, CG character, remote location, Scottish crew (nothing phased them),” also noting that all of the other characters in the video were locals as well. So perhaps they were less fazed by the atmosphere across the four-day shoot in Scotland, but as Meyers recalled, the “weather was nuts. It rained every 20 minutes, then the sun, then cloud over.”

However, it’s likely that Mother Nature is also a Styles fan, as Meyers recalled, “I seem to remember going up on the hill for Harry’s picnic with the fish and being worried that it was so gloomy. By the time we came to shoot, the sun came out. And then the sun went away as soon as the scene was over. Similarly, we had the worst storm when Harry was contemplating suicide at the start. Pouring rain, drenching him. So I guess in that sense it was fun watching how Scotland provided a backdrop for the emotions we were after.”

And hey, at least they had the weather on their side to add to the mood while shooting the video, as one of their main characters, well, didn’t exist. “It was very odd shooting with no fish,” Meyers admitted. “But was quite rewarding later seeing it dropped in and making empathic sense to the story we were after.”

Of course, the main character they did have on hand is an awfully useful and appealing one at that. Fans became enamored with the moment Styles uses the back of his hand to check the temperature of a coffee pot before dumping the fish inside the water so it could stay alive. I asked Meyers about this particular moment and he said, “The problem we had was apparent when Harry ran in and threw the fish in the pot. We all sorta felt — well, what if it was hot? So I believe Harry improvised that as a solution and we felt it was perfect for the character’s sensitivity and consideration for this poor fish.” And that’s not the only nice thing he does for his fish friend — he also serves him a tiny taco! “The taco was a whimsical way to express friendship between Harry and the fish,” Meyers offered. It looked pretty tasty, too.

The entire video serves as a showcase for what Styles does best and what makes him such a unique artist: his music, his acting, and his charisma, which Meyers knew would offer him a lot to work with. “Harry is a leading man. I felt that from my first meeting and wanted to play with his wonderful range of emotions. So finding a story with a real character arc was part of my focus in building this world.” Meyers described working on “Adore You” as an “all-around memorable shoot: awesome location, lovely Harry, compelling story, great effects, and… it worked.”

It did. And it was a risk: a video this complex and detailed (and one has to assume, costly), attached to a marketing campaign that proved to be even more involved, still came with no guarantee that the fans wouldn’t shrug it off. But as Manos Xanthogeorgis, SVP of Digital Marketing & Media at Columbia Records told Billboard last year, “When you have a video and a piece of art at such a level, it’s an incredible challenge for the rest of the team to build a campaign at that same level of artistry and creativity.” Oh, and that was only step one, as the marketing team engaged in “real-time marketing” with fans online, ensuring they would continue to remain engaged by dropping clues and clips in the lead-up to the video premiere and subsequently the album. “This whole campaign was around mystery and sometimes mystery is more powerful than knowledge,” Xanthogeorgis said. The Twitter handle has remained active throughout 2020, used as a continual marketing tool for Styles’ next videos including the Meyers-directed “Falling” and this summer’s hit, “Watermelon Sugar.”

With that kind of fan engagement, “Adore You” seemed like a no-brainer for the fan-voted categories of the VMAs this year, as they surely would’ve turned out to vote just as feverishly for this video as they did when searching for clues (about a made-up island, at that!). But hey, maybe MTV was just not interested in massive fan engagement this year — after all, it’s not like everything Styles does, including growing freakin’ facial hair, has the internet in a tizzy for weeks. Ultimately, as the impact of music videos (and certainly the ceremony celebrating them) continues to lose relevance, the disregard of this specific project simply feels like a missed opportunity to acknowledge a rare achievement in the art form.

While Meyers was sure to describe his inclusion in the VMA nominations this year as “lovely and flattering” (and he better have a moonperson in his possession this time next week, MTV!) it’s still puzzling why “Adore You” wouldn’t be included in the big categories, considering Styles is squarely within their demo, at the very least. That “Adore You” is also a technical and storytelling masterpiece, as well as a full moment that was used as inspiration both for the experience online and in-person at the Fine Line Spotify listening party last December, that also comes packed with one of the most enthusiastic groups of fans around, well, that should have had the entire network drooling.

Of course, some of this can simply be chalked up to a perfect storm. As far as his singles go, “Lights Up” was a nice appetizer, but “Adore You” remains the delicious entree (you already know what’s for dessert). “Adore You” is a perfect pop record if I’ve ever heard one (and I have) and deserved a special video. A Chris Isaak “Wicked Game” sexy vibe wasn’t going to work here. The song tells the story of such passionate, pure, and heartachingly naive and innocent love that it almost had to be directed toward a non-human being. Instead, Styles chose to inject those same carefree, sweaty, sticky, delicious, whimsical beach vibes into the “Watermelon Sugar” clip, which was the right choice, and not just for the summertime season (MTV has since added the Song of Summer category to the VMAs and included “Watermelon Sugar”).

But it’s “Adore You” that has melodies that bring a smile to the faces of babies, get your toes tapping even when you hear it in the dentist’s chair, and likely has my neighbors rolling their eyes when I sing along to it in the shower. The song is so simple it’s deep, a theme reflected in the video, as is the central reminder to help and care for others, a thoroughly 2020 message.

However, not all is lost. Both “Adore You” and “Watermelon Sugar” continue to rack up major spins at radio with the latter hitting number one on the Billboard charts earlier this month. Grammy voting kicks off at the end of September and Academy members should take note. Not only is Fine Line more than worthy of being acknowledged, but having Styles on hand to potentially collect trophies and perform is in your best interest when it comes to viewers and online chatter. Do not wait to take him seriously. This is the album, this is the time. Prove that you aren’t a bunch of stodgy old white men who think he’s just for teen (and um, thirty-something) girls, but that you understand the music he enjoys, is inspired by, and subsequently makes, is the same rock music you appreciate as well. An artist like Styles can be both of those things at the same time, and really, the best of both worlds. Give the album a listen, and then one more to let it all sink in. If you have not yet succumbed to the force that is Harry Styles fandom, I truly can’t recommend it enough — and please know that it will get you eventually.

Source: Decider.com

#kingstylesdaily #Harry Styles #hs: news #hs: adore you #August 2020 #Decider

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hlupdate · 4 years ago

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I, for one, missed it at the time. I was unaware this account was cryptically quote tweeting fans as they tried to piece together what was happening, what it meant, and what it could be connected to (Greek Mythology and Lostwere a couple of theories posed in comments, Twitter threads, and Reddit). Meanwhile, the Columbia Records marketing department had been hard at work for months, devising this specific and highly-detailed campaign around the music video for Styles’ second single, “Adore You” from his second solo album, Fine Line, ever since he shot the video in Scotland in August 2019 (Eroda = Adore backwards — clever!).

But it was all leading up to the morning of Friday, December 6 when the video was released, one week before the full-length album arrived. Up until that point, I had never seen an entire Harry Styles music video, but what happened next was inevitable. Somehow, as a self-proclaimed boy band scholar, I had never paid much attention to One Direction. I kept a distant eye on Styles since they disbanded, intrigued by the decisions he was making in his solo career. But I hadn’t yet realized I’d been in the ring all throughout the fall of 2019, fighting to resist the inevitable fascination that awaited. First came the jab of Rob Sheffield’s Rolling Stoneprofile, followed by the cross of “Lights Up”, a song that cracked my Top 20 most listened to songs of the year despite being released just two months before Spotify so thoughtfully compiled that personalized playlist. Then there was the hook of his SNL hosting stint in November (and bless you Bowen Yang for that Sara Lee sketch), which then leads us to the “Adore You” video, the uppercut and ultimate TKO. I surrendered in what felt like a near instant. I was now a Harry Styles fan. (If we’re following this analogy, I sat up to spit out some blood after seeing that cover of “Juice” before my head quickly hit the mat again with a loud thud).

Meyers, however, did not share in that fear, as much of this video provided for interesting and new opportunities he had yet to experience throughout his decades-long career, which he listed off: ”Compelling narrative, CG character, remote location, Scottish crew (nothing fazed them),” also noting that all of the other characters in the video were locals as well. So perhaps they were less fazed by the atmosphere across the four-day shoot in Scotland, but as Meyers recalled, the “weather was nuts. It rained every 20 minutes, then the sun, then cloud over.”

#harry styles #articles #270820 #tw suicide mention

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stylesnews · 4 years ago

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Meyers, however, did not share in that fear, as much of this video provided for interesting and new opportunities he had yet to experience throughout his decades-long career, which he listed off: ”Compelling narrative, CG character, remote location, Scottish crew (nothing fazed them),” also noting that all of the other characters in the video were locals as well. So perhaps they were less fazed by the atmosphere across the four-day shoot in Scotland, but as Meyers recalled, the “weather was nuts. It rained every 20 minutes, then the sun, then cloud over.”

#harry styles #aug20 #adore you #decider #suicide tw

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theliterateape · 4 years ago

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I Like to Watch | Zack Snyder’s Justice League

by Don Hall

Mythology is fun.

As a kid I loved reading Edith Hamilton’s book on the Greek gods and the myths. Hercules, Perseus, Apollo, and Hera—this fell completely in line with my love for superhero comics. The strangely petty human traits of envy, greed, and lust combined with the power to level cities make for some great storytelling.

Zeus was basically Harvey Weinstein in the retroactive revision we’re mired in today. If Harvey could’ve changed into a golden animal and boned unsuspecting ladies looking for careers in Hollywood I’m pretty certain he would. The gods and demi-gods of the Greeks dealt with daddy issues, mommy issues, bad relationships, and fighting. Lots of fighting. Sometimes for the good of humanity but more often for the glory of winning.

Zach Snyder is in the business of tackling myths and reframing them with a style all his own. His career has become its own myth.

From Dawn of the Dead (not so much a reboot of Romero's zombie mythology but a philosophical reimagining of the genre that arguably jumpstarted The Hollywood fascination with it), 300 (a borderline homoerotic take on the myth of the Greek underdog), and Watchmen (a ridiculously ambitious attempt to put one of the most iconic takedowns on the potential fascism of the superhero legend machine ever written) to his nearly single-handed hack at answering the Marvel juggernaut with Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, Snyder is in the artistic business of subverting and re-envisioning the mythologies we embrace without even seeing them as such.

Snyder's style is operatic. It is on a grand scale even in the most mundane moments. The guy loves slow motion like Scorcese loves mobsters and Italian food. When you're tackling big themes with larger than life stories, the epic nature of his vision makes sense and has alienated a good number of audience members. With such excess, there are bound to be missteps but I'd argue that his massive take on these characters he molds from common understanding and popular nomenclature elevates them to god-like stature.

Fans of Moore's Watchmen have much to complain about Snyder's adaptation. The titular graphic novel is almost impossible to put in any other form than the one Moore intended and yet, Snyder jumped in feet-first and created a living, breathing representation of most, if not all, of the source material's intent. Whether you dig on it or not, it's hard to avoid acknowledging that the first five minutes of Watchmen is a mini-masterpiece of style, storytelling, and epic tragedy wrapped up in a music video.

Despite a host of critical backlash for his one fully original take, Sucker Punch is an amazing thing to see. More a commentary on video game enthusiasm with its lust for hot animated chicks and over-the-top violence that a celebration of cleavage and guns, the film is crazily entertaining. For those who hated the ending, he told you in the title what his plan was all along.

The first movie I saw in the theaters that tried to take a superhero mythology and treat it seriously (for the most part) was Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie. Never as big a fan of the DC characters as I have been of Marvel, it was still extraordinary to see a character I had only really known in pages to be so fully realized. Then came Burton's Batman movies. The superhero film was still an anomaly but steam was gaining. Things changed with Bryan Singer's X-Men in 2000, then Raimi's Spiderman, and those of us who grew up with our pulpy versions of Athena, Hermes, and Hades were rewarded with Nolan's Batman Begins. A far cry from the tongue-in-cheek camp of the 1966 TV Batman, Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne was a serious character and his tale over three films is a tragic commentary filled with the kind of death and betrayal and triumph befitting the grand narrative he deserved.

I loved Singer's Superman Returns in 2006 because it was such a love letter to the 1978 film (down to the opening credits) but by then, the MCU was taking over the world.

Snyder's first of what turns out to be an epic storyline involving perhaps seven or eight movies was Man of Steel. It was fun and, while I had my issues with the broodiness of Kal El, the odd take on Jonathan Kent, and a redheaded Lois Lane, I had no issue with Superman snapping Zod's neck. Darker and more tragic than any other version of the Kryptonian, it was still super entertaining.

Then came Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. By 2016, Marvel had codified their formula of serious characters wrestling with serious issues of power and responsibility peppered with lots of good humor and bright colors. Snyder's desaturated pallete and angst-filled demi-gods was not the obvious road to financial competition.

I'll confess, I hated it. BvS felt half-rendered. Lex Luthor was kind of superficial and played as a kind of Joker. The whole Bruce Wayne wants to kill Superman thing felt undeveloped and the "Martha" moment was just stupid.

When Joss Whedon's version of Snyder's Justice League came out in 2017, I was primed for it to be a turd and I wasn't surprised. So much of it didn't work on any level. I dismissed it as DC trying and failing miserably and was comforted by the coming of Thanos.

Following Thanos and the time heist was COVID. Suddenly, we were internationally sidelined and the movie theater industry caved in. Streaming services started popping up like knock-off smartphones and Hollywood was reeling, doing anything and everything to find a way back. Since Whedon's disastrous helming of Snyder's third act, fans online had been demanding to #ReleasetheSnyderCut but no one was ever really taking them seriously until all movie production was shut down for a year.

The stage was set to remedy a mistake (or at least make some bucks on a do-over of a huge box office failure). Snyder had left the production in part because of the suicide of his daughter and in part due to the constant artistic fights over executives looking for the quippy fun of the MCU but he still had all the original footage. Add to that the broiling accusations that Joss Whedon was "abusive" during the reshoots, the path seemed destined. For an additional $70 million and complete control, Snyder delivered a four hour mega-movie streamed on HBOMax.

Of course, I was going to watch the thing as soon as I could.

The Whedon version opens with an homage to the now dead Superman (including the much maligned digitally erased mustache on Henry Cavill). The SynderCut opens with the death of Superman and the agony of his death scream as it travels across the planet. It's a simple change but exemplifies the very different visions of how this thing is gonna play out.

Snyder doesn't want us to be OK with the power of these beings unleashed. He wants us to feel the damage and pain of death. He wants the results of violence to be as real as he can. When Marvel's Steve Rogers kicks a thug across the room and the thug hits a wall, he crumples and it is effectively over. When Batman does the same thing, we see the broken bones (often in slow motion) and the blood smear on the wall as the thug slides to the ground.

The longer SnyderCut is bloated in some places (like the extended Celtic choir singing Aquaman off to sea or the extended narrations by Wonder Woman which sound slightly like someone trying to explain the plot to Siri). On the other hand, the scene with Barry Allen saving Iris West is both endearing and extraordinary, giving insight to the power of the Flash as well as some essential character-building in contrast to Whedon's comic foil version.

One thing I noticed in this variant is that Zach wants the audience to experience the sequence of every moment as the characters do. An example comes when Diana Prince goes to the crypt to see the very plot she belabors over later. The sequence is simple. She gets a torch and goes down. Most directors which jump cut to the torch. Snyder gives us five beats as she grabs the timber, wraps cloth around the end, soaks it with kerosene, pulls out a box of matches, and lights the torch. Then she goes down the dark passageway.

The gigantic, lush diversity of Snyder’s vision of the DC superhero universe—from the long shots of the sea life in the world of Atlantis to the ancient structures and equipment of Themyscira— is almost painterly. Snyder isn't taking our time; he's taking his time. We are rewarded our patience with a far better backstory for the villain, a beautifully rendered historic battle thwarting Darkseid's initial invasion (including a fucking Green Lantern), and answers to a score of questions set up in both previous films.

Whedon's Bruce Wayne was more Ben Affleck; Snyder's is full-on Frank Miller Batman, the smartest, most brutal fucker in the room. Cyborg, instead of Whedon's sidelined non-character, is now a Frankenstein's monster, grappling with the trade-off between acceptance and enormous power. Wonder Woman is now more in line with the Patty Jenkins version and instead of being told about the loss of Superman, we are forced to live with the anguish of both his mother and Lois Lane in quiet moments of incredible grief.

To be fair to Whedon (something few are willing to do as he is now being castigated not for racism or sexism but for being mean to people) having him come in to throw in some levity and Marvel-esque color to Snyder's Wagnerian pomposity is like hiring Huey Lewis to lighten up Pink Floyd's The Wall or getting Douglas Adams to rewrite Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

I loved Snyder's self-indulgent, mythologic DC universe.

So much so that I then re-watched Man of Steel and then watched the director's version of BvS (which Snyder added approximately 32 minutes). The second film is far better at three hours and Eisenberg's Lex Luthor now makes sense. Then I watched Zach Snyder's Justice League a second time.

After nineteen hours of Snyder's re-imagining of these DC heroes and villains, I saw details that, upon first viewing, are ignored or dismissed, but after seeing them in order and complete, are suddenly consistent and relevant. Like Nolan or Fincher, Snyder defies anyone to eliminate even one piece of his narrative no matter how long. With all the pieces, this is an epic story and the pieces left at the extended epilogue play into a grander narrative we will never see.

Or maybe we will. Who knows these days?

#I Like to Watch #Zach Snyder's Justice League

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mattelektras · 4 years ago

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Im not the anon that asked but I would love to hear the serious answer on why you love elektra because I love her too 💗 and I feel like not enough people love her lol

hard to do this without getting into My Issues as a person because thats a huge part of why i just. vibe with her so hard. but GENERAL things

i joke a lot about how i like women who are mean but i REALLY DO LIKE WHEN WOMEN ARE MEAN!!!!!! women who’ve had shitty things happen to them and it hasnt made them kinder or nicer or whatever. not women who dont not take shit because theyre strong n independent or whatever trope we’re on this week but women who dont take shit because they know they dont have to and they dont have to be nice about not taking shit. women should be mean n not worry about being gentle and letting people down gently when they have no reason to listen to them in the first place

negative character development baby!!!!!!!! she started out as a nice wholesome college girl who wanted to fight her cause and help the world, but then these shit things just KEEP happening to her no matter what she does, whether she kills people or she doesnt, it never seems to get better for her and i just love how that SHOWS. she comes off as cold, she’s a little bitter, she doesnt trust people, she doesnt commit to friendships or relationships easily, she doesnt trust anyone, the list goes on. it just very realistic to me how shes allowed to be all of those things that are usually afforded to grizzled male characters like batman and the punisher and any other dude with stubble and a dead girlfriend

all that being said, she has a lot of her fundamental beliefs like she DOES, despite herself, believe people can be good inherently, she just doesnt believe it’s her. she’s a staunch defender of women and kids who've been in shitty situations because she wouldnt want what shes had for anyone else

she canonically has depression and has taken medication for it for a long time, even before her father died in some comics, and she’s believably (to me at least. which might say something about me but. next) someone who grew up w depression and thats just how she is. she doesnt emote much, even negatively. and imo, a lot of depictions of depression are based in like... heightened sadness?? idk how else to phrase it, and whilst that can be the case, its not the only way depression shows itself and i just.... relate to her version of it so much

the fact that she was created by one of the most misogynistic comic creators in the history of the medium who wanted an outlet for his hard on for japanese culture who’d die after her first outing, and shes evolved into such a complex, difficult, unique female character who exists so strongly outside of the man she was written to support

her potential!!!!! she has a best friend within the xmen but shes never interacted with the team as a whole, she has a complicated relationship with black widow who she has so much in common with and would have SUCH a good rapport with, and theres so much to be explored with them in regards to organisations moulding them to be something. she’s died twice and come back not quite the same. can she even die???? what has hand magic done to her??? shes immune to their control, what else has it changed about her??? someone with a brain and taste write a comic about it

while she is completely human, she’s got such total control over her own mind and body that she can slow her heartbeat so no one knows when shes lying, she can hold her breath whilst fighting the purple man so he never gets control of her, she can, to a certain unknown extent “””throw””” her mind at other people’s to immobilise them. there’s a lot that needs to be filled in there but shes potentially very powerful even outside of her physical abilities

one of, if not my absolute favourite thing about her is that you do NOT get to fuck her over twice. bullseye killed her once with her own weapons, she’s a) beat him every time since to the point where he’s openly admitted she was always better than him and b) had her weapons modified to electrocute anyone who touches them that isnt her. she doesnt let herself be hurt twice in the same way. shes just so protective of herself which comes off as being manipulative or cold or that she only really cares for her own wellbeing, which isnt true but she does what she’s gotta do

which is how we get into the whole murdering for money thing like. she doesnt enjoy killing, she doesnt care for the money, she does it because the things thatve happened to her have made her the sort of person who CAN kill and she sees that as being what shes good for. so if thats what she is, she’ll do it well and use her own murderous skills to do good in the only way she thinks shes capable of

ALL THAT BEING SAID. shes not infallible, in secret invasion when she encounters bullseye, she physically shakes like, shes TERRIFIED, but she gets her shit together in a second and shuts that off so she can do what she has to do

and speaking of secret invasion, she was the catalyst for this whole universe altering event and no one ever gave a shit about her except for logan!!!! she lost months of her life and her bodily autonomy and she never once asked for help or got any support and she just got the fuck on with it!!!! jessica got a whole comic about her trauma with the ending being that people DO love and care for her but elektra never got that. she’s just incredibly strong and even if she wasnt, no one would ever know because she deals with it alone

shes just so fucking GOOD at what she does and she rarely gets recognised for that like

wolverine has said she’s more dangerous than him

she took down an entire helicarrier full of shield agents

she took down 3 super skrulls, two of them disguised as the two people she loves most (logan and matt) and again, just!!!! got!!! on with!!!! it!!!!!

got kicked out of the chaste for being too angry or whatever when in fact, stick just didnt like the fact that she was better than the rest of his secret ninja group

matt knows she’s better than him, and that if an enemy can take her out, then he doesnt stand a chance

and finally, just the pretene and mythology to her is really... something. being based on a greek play in name and vague backstory in regards to her father but it being so much more deep and woven in than that, to the point where, if you read electra by sophocles, which i have many times for this specific reason, you would think she came first. and frank miller is NOT that smart to have done it all by himself. she is herself such a refined, classic concept with modern ties but also this ancient ass mythology that makes her so much more than just something marvel did like they do not have the range

idk. she means a lot to me in a way thats kind of embarrassing to admit in regards to a drawing in some comics, most of which i dont even LIKE. you will not catch me being this emotional for any other bitch. i love her so much and whether im projecting or not, no character will ever be Mine (copyright pending) in quite the same way

#anyway. you get to know this and my first name. nothing else i am a VAULT #anonymous #q & a

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thewatsonbeekeepers · 4 years ago

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Chapter 5 – Hey, Soul Sister: Who is Eurus?

Do you get it? She’s his sister? But metaphorically, she’s a part of his soul? I was very impressed with myself for this title. Anyway…

This chapter of the meta is going to deal with the various times we meet Eurus before TFP and what this might mean, which will help us to understand who she is once we have stripped off the disguises.

Before series 4, we had real!characters and MP!characters set up as distinct entities, particularly in TSoT, which distinguishes between MP!Mycroft (the deducing brain) and real!Mycroft, as well as MP!Irene representing desire and real!Irene, who doesn’t come near the episode. The MP section in TSoT, for a lot of people in the fandom, broke down Sherlock’s psyche into MP!John vs. MP!Mycroft – and John is clearly winning.

However, I want to suggest that Sherlock’s psyche isn’t nearly so straightforward as a tug of war between the brain and the heart. Whilst MP!Mycroft undoubtedly represents the oppressively reasonable part of Sherlock’s psyche, that’s not the only thing repressing him – it can’t be. If it were simply a rejection of ‘sentiment’, this wouldn’t be the powerful queer love story we know it to be – there is a lot more internalised homophobia being dealt with than just love being illogical. That’s where Eurus comes in.

Eurus and Mycroft are parallel oppressive forces in Sherlock’s brain, but they’re oppressive in different ways. Having family members and childhood trauma be the psyche’s symbols for repression is particularly poignant in a queer love story, for obvious reasons. However, I want to take you through my reasoning behind Eurus being the most secret and troubled part of Sherlock’s soul.

The first clue is that her prison is called Sherrinford. We all assumed that the third Holmes sibling was going to be Sherrinford back before s4, and it seemed that way in the beginning, with Mycroft mentioning speaking to Sherrinford several times, construing it as a person rather than a place. This is no coincidence – for those who aren’t familiar with the history of the stories, Conan Doyle’s original name for his protagonist was Sherrinford Holmes, which he later changed to Sherlock. That Eurus is trapped inside Sherrinford is a clear suggestion that Eurus is something that’s trapped inside Sherlock – a dangerous MP entity. More important than that, Sherrinford is the version of Holmes that never made it into the books. Plenty of people have worked on queering the Holmes canon and working out what ACD might have been implying and leaving out and arguably none more so in an adaptation that Mofftiss. Let’s think about the implications of this. A kind of second self, not shown to the public, buried inside your mind and forgotten since childhood, which is bursting out into a moment of acute psychological distress. Gee, I don’t know what that could be about. The Sherlock that Sherlock thinks he is has thus far been dominated by MP!Mycroft, but this series is about uniting canon!Holmes with the non-canon, queer Sherrinford who has always existed, judging by the name, and who is currently dominated by the destructive MP!Eurus. The other important point to note here is that Sherrinford is an island in the middle of the sea – that’s not a coincidence, given how much water imagery abounds in this series. I spoke briefly in Chapter 2 X about how water represents Sherlock sinking deeper and deeper into his own subconsciousness – this is the deepest he can go. In Greek mythology, Eurus was the name of the wind most associated with causing storms at sea X – this isn’t a coincidence either. She’s very deliberately tied in with water.

(In real life terms, of course, all this means that a real!Eurus probably does or did exist in some form, although I can’t begin to hazard a guess about this. However, I’m trying to refer to her as MP!Eurus when she’s in her normal form in the MP, in case we get a series 5 with Sian Brooke as real!Eurus, and also to distinguish her from therapist!Eurus etc.)

This is my reasoning as to why MP!Eurus represents Sherlock’s innermost trauma. She is not merely the fact that he loves John – he deduced this in TSoT without her appearance. She is the trauma that he needs to come to terms with. A running theme through our analysis of Eurus will be that her gender is particularly important; her representation of Sherlock’s repression cannot be but as a woman, because for most of s4 he is only able to process his identity through the most heterosexual of lenses. We see this hinted at quite early on in TST, when Sherlock takes on a case called ‘The Duplicate Man’, warning John that it is never twins. The word ‘duplicate’ here, removing twins, leaves us with the only real possibility that it is in fact the same person. Eurus’s gender makes that more difficult to see; she needs to be female, but it’s much more difficult to elide the two characters without employing a Cumberbatch doppelganger. However, this hint that Eurus is not only male but an actual ‘duplicate’ of her brother should give us pause for thought. With this in mind, I want to use the rest of this chapter to analyse her three forms before TFP.

1.) Faith!Eurus

I’m certainly not the first to point out that Faith!Eurus is a mirror for John, nor will I be the last – people jumped on it pretty much as soon as TLD aired. There are a few good reasons for this. Firstly, she walks with a cane, a throwback to ASiP – in case we’d forgotten, however, Sherlock has a flashback to John walking with a cane to make the link explicit. We are supposed to link these two characters, the authors are saying pretty clearly. Faith!Eurus is also suicidal, which John was at the start of ASiP, as made clear by the fact he carried a gun – and Faith!Eurus does the same. Sherlock also takes her out for food (for more on the food/sex metaphor, see here X) which he doesn’t with anyone bar John, and we certainly never see him talk so easily with someone who isn’t John. An eagle-eyed tumblr post that I can’t find now also broke my heart in pointing out that Faith!Eurus’s unseen self-harm matches long-sleeved John Watson a little too well.

This isn’t just the show trying to remind us of what John was like in ASiP, however. MP!Eurus is the trauma prodding Sherlock’s sexuality – it’s going to be hell to get through it, but he absolutely needs to do it. This is Sherlock’s trauma, not reminding him that John was suicidal, but forcing him to acknowledge it in the first place, something which Sherlock has buried. We know this because of the way the image of John forces its way into Sherlock’s mind – it’s much like the way Moriarty breaks into TAB. His brain is making a connection that he’s not quite capable of making and it’s knocking him. His deduction that Faith!Eurus is suicidal is accompanied by that image of John, and he then re-enacts the food ritual he completed with John the evening John left his cane behind, before throwing Faith!Eurus’s gun into the Thames – proving that it was Sherlock himself who stopped John from taking his own life.

This is trauma, however, and Sherlock can’t process it in full – hence why the image of John that breaks in is shaky, and Sherlock tries to push it out of his head. It’s also why Faith!Eurus, who in Sherlock’s subconscious could take any form, specifically takes the form of a woman. His gay trauma means that he first has to process John’s suicidal ideation in a heterosexual dynamic, before fully grasping and applying it to his relationship with John. (Chapter 9 X explains how that plays out over the rest of TLD in full detail.)

2.) E!Eurus

Taking a jump back to surface level plot here, the first thing that grabbed me about E!Eurus was just how minor John’s flirtation with her was. In the terms of a television show which really rides on very high drama (multiple faked deaths and insane cliffhangers for a start), the emotional peak of John’s emotional arc with Mary being that he texted another woman – not went out for lunch, not kissed, not slept with – is bizarre, particularly when we know next to nothing about E!Eurus at this point. It’s incredibly anti-climactic as a means of John falling short of Mary’s view of him. Maybe we can accept it as in line with John Moral-Principles Watson, but it’s difficult to accept as in keeping with the nature of a show whose intent is nearly always to shock.

With this in mind, let’s delve back into the MP to see how that might give this moment greater emotional significance. Chapter 10 X is on the hug scene, and that will deal with John’s revelation of his infidelity in greater detail. For the moment, the most important thing to remember is that John Watson is not real!John – he is heart!John. In other words, we are seeing a similarly heterosexualised re-enactment of Sherlock’s relationship with John.

I will talk a lot in Chapter 10 X about how MP!Mary is linked to Sherlock’s compulsory heterosexuality; at the end of TST, Sherlock substitutes Mary’s body for his because he cannot conceive of John’s queer grief without breaking himself. This is interesting because the E of Eurus actually stands for Elizabeth in this scene (certainly in the credits, and possibly elsewhere, although I can’t remember Sian Brooke actually saying it). Elizabeth is Elizabeth is Mary’s middle name in BBC Sherlock, which looks like another of those shared name links our creators love so well. If so, this begins to justify how Sherlock’s heart is conceiving of its emotions. We will see in TLD that heart!John’s relationship with fem!John in the form of Eurus is aligned with Sherlock’s sexual desire in the form of MP!Irene. Both are hidden and exist only in texts – i.e., they cannot be spoken yet. But they will be.

3.) Therapist!Eurus

This one is perhaps the most straightforward on a symbolism level, but also possibly the most significant moment in the series. Therapist!Eurus, plain and simple, is Sherlock’s trauma prodding at John, interrogating him like a therapist would, trying to work him out – and largely failing, right? She can get basically nothing about how he feels about Sherlock out of him. But this is part of MP!Eurus’s ongoing project to get Sherlock to wake up – the Gay Trauma is interrogating John, trying to suss him, and failing.

Except, in the final scene of TLD, without the help of Therapist!Eurus, Sherlock has finally sussed John – it has taken until Culverton’s confession to recognise that John is suicidal without Sherlock (Chapter 9 X). The sigh of relief that is the hug scene (Chapter 10 X) is a kind of acknowledgement of that relief that he’s finally worked out what he’s been trying to cover up with drugs – so much so, that he misses the obvious, which is that John is suicidal again. When John leaves his cane with Sherlock in the hospital, it is a reminder of the first time he is suicidal, and Sherlock doesn’t make the immediate leap in his comatose haze that this is what his psyche has been trying to tell him. Hence you have this moment of immense relief and fade out at the end of the hug scene which suggests the end of the episode, and could feasibly end Sherlock’s life, except we’re started awake with a much more abrupt and troubling ending scene – Therapist!Eurus shooting John. Because, of course, if Sherlock is gone again, John must be suicidal again, and it has taken a few scenes of cognitive dissonance for this to clock. Indeed, it’s not Sherlock himself who clocks – Gay Trauma in the form of Eurus!Therapist returns and shoots John for us. This shooting isn’t, of course, permanent (in one of the worst cliffhanger resolutions in TV history), but that’s because it’s not real – it hasn’t happened yet. It is Sherlock, through MP!Eurus, finally recognising the problem – John.

This is particularly poignant in light of the opening and closing shots of TLD. Although there’s the fucky not-blood red that fills the screen at the end of TLD, apart from that the shots of Norbury shooting Mary and Therapist!Eurus shooting John are one and the same shot. It’s also a stylish shot (what I call split screen, but given that I never went to film school I think that’s just my name for it) and it’s repeated enough times over TLD that it’s pretty clear the creatives want it to be memorable. By the time John gets shot, then, we shouldn’t be caught up in the drama of it – we should be thinking, as so many did, “something’s fucky.”

And it is – but it’s brilliantly fucky! Head over to Chapter 7 X if you want to read about Norbury shooting Mary, but TLDR it’s a metaphor for Mary shooting Sherlock as understood from Sherlock’s warped and depressed perspective – and he’s finally realised what it means! The version in which Mary shooting Sherlock means John losing Mary (the Norbury version) is one in which John is sad, goes to therapy, and the world moves on. Now, however, that Sherlock has recognised that John was suicidal, he can also recognise that Mary shooting Sherlock will make John suicidal again – hence why it’s the same shot. Mary shooting Sherlock is the same as John dying – and the latter is much more important in Sherlock’s mind.

[It’s worth noting that the identical shots we see in TST and TLD don’t match the shot in HLV, although admittedly that one’s not in the MP – it does strike me, however, that the sounds are reversed – HLV sounds like a dart, whereas the MP shots sound like bullets. If anyone has any thoughts on that, do let me know – it has me flummoxed for the moment. If you want meta explaining why the shot from TST is the same as HLV, Chapter 7 is here X, and I’m certainly not the first to hypothesise this. For me, the TLD shot being the same is therefore a logical extension.]

#tjlc #chapter five: hey soul sister - who is eurus?#eurus holmes #meta #my meta #mine #bbc sherlock #johnlock #tjlc is real #bbc johnlock #e #mary #queer theory

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haknew · 4 years ago

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anon asked: I HAVE SONG RECS :DDD I tried not to do songs that you would have obviously heard before but a lot of the songs here are still popular but I couldn’t help but add them 😭

AHHHH thank you so so so so much for all the recommendations anon ! your taste is absolutely impeccable !!! i think i vibed with a lot of these maybe we are a bit similar ^~^ and no worries about your picks ! i totally support you and your incredible music taste no need to defend yourself :p ! popular songs can still be good ones ! thank you again and i tried ... to ... get through them all i’m so sorry JHGFDJHGDK you’ll see i get through like ... half and then ran out of energy T^T i’ll probably get back to this list some other time when i have free time and update with thoughts ! thank you for sending so many in ! i found so many new songs to add to my playlist heh thank you lovely !

Pop

cherry by rina sawayama - super cute ! i love these kinds of pop songs it’s right up my alley :o !

xs by rina sawayama - her voice is so well suited for this style ! i watched the mv and djkfhskgrjf HHH idk she gives me mitski vibes even tho their music is pretty different, you have peaked my interest i’ll definitely look into more of her stuff :o !

comme de garçons by rina sawayama - the bass line T^T !!! the talk-y (?) parts are so good i got chills, it’s like a rave song low key haha :p ! it’s so good !

Any song by Rina Sawayama 😭 - yes yes i’ll try to look more into her stuff !

Kpop

123 by nct dream - i’m only an honorary guest of ncity but one of my irls ults them ! and dream’s music has always been a bit more my speed :o ! this has more nostalgic kpop vibes to it ! i said this before but i really am more a pop person at heart and this is so good ^~^

Up to you by pretty much and nct dream (HAECHANS PART HHHHH) - oooh are you a haechan stan 0v0 i like jaemin tho i admit my knowledge of dream is limited (my fren ults renjun heh) also yes yes consent is very important kids u.u dskjghkdfj YOU’RE RIGHT THO haechan is a singer he SINGS, i love the vocal harmonies !

Oasis by crush ft zico - those electric keyboard synths (?) amazing ! this song bops u.u

Moon by everglow - !!! i actually have heard this a lot before ^~^ i got so excited when i saw this bc it’s so good ! it’s definitely one of my fav everglow songs too i think i overplayed it a lot when it first came out *v*

Woowoo by dia - i love the ocean wave sounds ! that’s so cool i love how summery it is ! it kind of reminds me of loona too ! ggs are just >>> i love the fun and brighter pop songs so much 🥺

Secret garden by Oh My Girl - i’ve heard a few songs by omg ! and i really like a handful of them, secret garden kinda gives me early gfriend songs vibes too ! it’s so pretty ! i really love when songs utilize strings in their instrumentals too ! it’s a bit slower paced too which is really nice ^~^

Page by got7 - YEEEES okie actually maybe unpopular opinion but spinning top is one of my fav got7 albums ! i used to listen to the whole mini on repeat ! i actually used to ult got7 too for a few months heh ^^ BUT YEEES i love page ! got7 always have bangers love them so much

Nekkoya by produce 48 - AHHHHH ANOTHER SONG I LOVE !!! i’m actually a wizone haha :p so i’ve seen produce 48 ! tho admittedly it probably contributes to my burning h*tred for mn*t and any survival shows ;;;; but i loved the title song so much ! i used to unironically play it on repeat djghskfj

Puzzle moon by gwsn - AHHHH YOUR TASTE !!! i also followed gwsn from debut and puzzle moon is so so so cute ! it’s such a bop too ! they have such fun and catchy songs !

Goblin by sulli - ahhh the xylophone chimes ! they make the song sound a bit haunting before the piano comes in ;;;; it really reflects the mv story so well i think ;;; and sulli’s voice is so beautiful ;;;; it’s got that characteristic background vocal harmonies that sm artists usually do and it’s just really beautiful !

What are you up to by kang daniel - today on can you tell jess is unfortunately a bg stan daniel’s songs have been so good :,)) i stopped following all the wanna ones closely after a while but ! he always surprises me ! his songs are such vibes u.u

Best day ever by yeri and nct dream - the TRUMPETS YEEES it’s so upbeat and fun !!! the cheering is so cute i love it !

Hair in the air by yeri and nct dream - JAEMINNNNN !!!! I LOVE YERI SO MUCH PLEASE ! i love the vocal harmonies between her and the boys 🥺 it’s so cute T^T ! renjun’s a singer HE SINGS

119 by nct dream - ah yes this is ncity brand u.u LOL they always have really filled chorus instrumentals and use a lot of vocals to fill up the space which i think is really cool and something i think immediately screams sm artist :0 ! i think renjun’s voice really sells this for me tho HIS VOICE IS AMAZING him and haechan yeees it’s a banger tho :,)

Save me save you by wjsn - i love wjsn’s music so much ! it sounds so magic and ethereal and totally bops ! their voices are so beautiful too and work together so well and i think this song’s style really suits all the members’ voices so well too !

Loonatic by loona - YEEEEES loona are my ult gg ! and oec is probably my fav unit in terms of music ! i have spent many a day playing their whole discography ! haha :3

Up by izone - MY GIRLS ! yes yes up is so cute ! i love it so much ! the choreo is so cute too ! i love izone please ;;;;

N/s by stray kids - oh boy okie ;;;; i’m like not a good judge of a lot of hip hop / more rap heavy songs ;;;; bc i was classically trained as a singer in choir ;-; so i’m sorry i do not have much to say about this one ;;;; it slaps tho ! i probably wouldn’t listen to it normally if you hadn’t recommended it tho so ! good to listen to smth outside of my normal preferences

Sunshine by straykids - OH very very different from the last skz song KJHGKFJHKD yea this is probably more my speed i’m so sorry LOL T-T it’s so good tho :o ! i don’t listen to a lot of skz bc i figured i wouldn’t be able to vibe with them but this one is so good i really like it ! skz and ateez man i’ve been trying to stan for ages but music is a big part of why i stan /stan/ certain groups more seriously and it’s also why i’m only honorary nctzen lol clearly i have been enlightened (literally *looks at my past ult groups* yeaaaa)

Blueprint by stray kids - YEEES IT’S SO UPBEAT ! i love upbeat and brighter songs (i am consistent like this T-T) it’s got summery tropical vibes to it too ! it’s so cute !

Question by stray kids - another banger yeeeees ! i vibe with the lyrics too u.u love that

Any mixtape by stray kids (but I really love 1 and 4) - oooh i still have a lot to get through so i’ll save these for my own time haha ^^

I’m your girl by khan

Revolution by Alexa

Secret by wjsn

I wanna be by key and soyeon

Handle it by twice

Teenager by got7

Take by jus2 (CANNOT RECOMMEND THIS ENOUGH)

Bump bump by woodz

Stylish by loona - this is one of my fav loona b sides yeeees !!!! love them so much !

Outta my head by somi

Jpop

showersnow by orbit

show off by orbit

crazy love by orbit

any orbit song ngl 😭

poison girl by nanaka suwa

lost umbrella (I like the tsukishima kei version cause it sounds like lee know :DDD)

Notice by moe shop

Kawaki wo ameku (domestic girlfriend opening)

The day by porno graffiti (my hero academia opening 1)

Odd future by uverworld (my hero academia opening 4)

Again by yui (full metal alchemist brotherhood opening 1)

More English music

Luxury by azalea banks (Ive heard she’s said some terrible things tho 😭 WHY DOES IT SLAP)

Hurricane by Bridget Mendler (I miss this song and ready or not too 😭)

Little dark age by mgmt

I got a couple one direction recs bear with me here 💀

Happily, Magic, AM, 18, Tell Me a Lie, Through The Dark, Wolves, Night Changes, Better Than Words

Hip-hop/rnb

Leaked by lil tjay

Pretty little fears by 6lack and j cole

Water by joe gifted

The London by young thug

Bands by shoreline mafia

Swervin by a boogie wit a hoodie

Father stretch my hands pt 1 by Kanye west

More English music (indila is French)

Northern lights by kennie

I am not a robot by marina

Tourner dans le vide by indila

Parle a ta tete by indila

Greek tragedy by the wombats

Viva la vida by Coldplay (SHHHHH DONT ROAST ME)

La da dee by Cody Simpson (SHH IT MAKES ME HAPPY 😭)

Move your body by loving caliber and anders lystell (this ones good to make u feel like an early 2010’s movie protagonist :D)

Mariposa by Peach tree rascals

Sunflower by post Malone and swae lee (like many songs on here it’s popular but I still wanna put it here cause they make me happy 😭)

I got really carried away sorry I hope you haven’t heard too many of these 😭😭 OKAY BYEEE ❤️

#anon #jess.replies #not tbz #jess.text #ask games #shared songs hour #oh god i am so so sorry anon i swear i'll get to all the others on my own time T-T #i just underestimated all the asks i was going to get with recs and i can feel my energy fading #''faded in my last song~~~'''#i know i said i'd get around to all of them but it's nearing two am djgdkjfhg I'M SO SORRY #i'll come back to this list and update it with thoughts if i have time :o !#so what have we learned today kids ... jess does not have taste whatsoever #also also that ggs >>>>>>#i'm sorry to all my stay friends <///3 truly i have no taste u.u

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keyofjetwolf · 4 years ago

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My name is Xena.

Fuck me but this whole scene is so fucking incredible. The speech, the setting, the acting, the reactions. It seems counter-intuitive to use the word “understated” when talking about Xena, which is generally an extravaganza that has never once in its life considered not going as absolutely balls-out hard as it possibly can. But it’s that business as usual default that helps make it that much more powerful when it does choose to pull its punches. There’s nothing funny about any of this, the show doesn’t try to give it a drop of comedy or levity. It lets the horror stand with the truth of it, it lets the shame and the judgement intermingle, and at the end, it leaves you feeling unremarkable and empty. No one learned anything, no one received closure, no one feels healed, and yet still, life continues.

Oh yeah, that “read more” means I’m not done, BOY AM I NOT DONE SORRY EVERYONE. Let’s start with the speech itself, which is delivered in this incredible monologue by Xena. It’s given in this factual tone, not particularly remarkable or hyperbolic. There’s little embellishment; we can argue it strays only slightly toward the end when speaking specifically of Callisto, but even there, I feel it’s not untruthful. For all that, it’s a monologue given sincerely and painfully, and however much Xena may be attempting to distance herself, it’s impossible. Once again acting as her mirror, we have Callisto, attempting to pull everything she possibly can from it, but unable.

I jump ahead of myself, though.

My name is Xena. Some call me The Warrior Princess. Some call me murderer. Many years ago, there was a village called Cirra. It was a village just like yours: small, prosperous, full of life. Until the day that my army came. Until the day that *I* came. Destroyed it. Under my orders, my men sacked the village, burned the houses, and killed every living thing. Everything was destroyed. Including the soul of one young, innocent girl, who will never be able to reclaim her childhood, and will never know what the Fates had planned for her if not for me.

Again, there’s nothing here that’s untrue. That’s the most damning part of all of it. Callisto holds all the cards right now. Xena needs her help, and while she’s offering Callisto a carrot, Callisto doesn’t NEED it. This, then, is Callisto’s price: go to the nearest village, and tell them. What you did to my village and my family. What you did TO ME. Callisto doesn’t make Xena say she cackled as the houses burned, or bathed in the blood of her mother and sister. She doesn’t infuse it with anything moustache-twirly or overtly sadistic and unforgivable. It’s the truth, it’s precisely no more than the truth, AND XENA KNOWS IT.

Callisto doesn’t allow Xena anywhere to hide. She can’t pretend it’s exaggeration or inflated for sympathy or humiliation. She has to stand there and confess her crimes, no more and no less. She has to say, and so also has to know, that perhaps the greatest responsibility she bears is not for the things Callisto has done, but for all the things she will never get to do.

All of this delivered on a small, unimpressive platform in a small, unimpressive town. Behind Xena, dyed clothes whip in the wind, and it’s such a simple but evocative backdrop. Never still, always shifting and changing, the colours shifting from dramatic reds and oranges to serene whites and pinks, to regal purples and golds. The possibilities, all snapping around her, never settled and never still. (I don’t know that they changed the placement of the clothes for different takes, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.)

Gabrielle stands in the crowd.

She finds it hard, almost impossible at times to directly watch Xena. Her earlier rage has faded, now she’s nothing but compassion for Xena having to go through this. Does Gabrielle feel the truth in it all, I wonder? I think so. She knows that these are all things Xena has done; as I said, this is nothing but factual. Gabrielle’s heart is with this Xena though, the Xena she knows, the one Gabrielle sees as continually paying for someone else’s crimes. What’s particularly interesting about Gabrielle in this scene, though, is how she steals a glance at Callisto when it’s all over.

There’s none of the hatred of earlier, and you’d think this would be a perfectly opportune moment to get some in. While I wouldn’t quite put it either compassion or pity, I do think in a particular way, Gabrielle feels sorry for Callisto, and that’s perhaps not as surprising as it sounds.

CALLISTO GOES ON A FUCKING JOURNEY HERE. She begins as gleeful as you’d expect.

Whatever the ancient Greek version of popcorn, I feel strongly that Callisto should have some. Just give this girl an overstuffed arm chair and let her snuggle in precisely as much as she wants. Every day since Xena came to Cirra, Callisto has wanted this. Xena shamed and humiliated, Xena humbled and punished. This is a woman about to get everything she ever wanted handed to her on a platter, and she is READY.

Only, as the monologue progresses, things begin to change. She hears Xena’s confession, hears her take responsibility for what she did to Callisto, and feels...

Nothing.

As Callisto processes all of this, she moves in this incredible, jerky manner, like her insides are made of broken glass, the pieces grinding together with every movement. Whatever relief she was planning to feel, or satisfaction she was expecting, there’s nothing at all. Is Callisto just that broken, to where she wouldn’t know how to let go, even if she wanted to? Or was this the lie in all the truth, and this always WAS her fate, Xena or no?

Meanwhile -- and while I don’t know this is the rawest thing, it would definitely rank up there -- we have the villagers, who stand to listen to this without comment, and then move on about their lives without comment. This huge -- HUGE -- moment playing out before their eyes, and yet it means nothing to them. Do they know of the old Xena? Do they know of the new Xena? Do they give even a tiny shit about either, so long as they can stay out of it? To them, this is ancient and irrelevant history, and they just. don’t. care.

This whole scene is just phenomenal, start to finish, and so well played in every possible way. Callisto was right: they absolutely DID have time for this, and thank you.

#jet wolf watches xena #xena ep 2x14 #not to mention how this moves the ball for callisto #bitch has got to escalate AND ESCALATE SHE DOES #her expression in that last cap #versus the one we'll see later when xena finds solan's body?#FUCK ME UP THIS FUCKING SHOW YOU GUYS HRRRRNGHGHHNR

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hypmic-translation · 4 years ago

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Don’t Pass The Mic

ALL: Don’t-don’t-don’t pass the mic! (Gi-gi-gi-gimme the mic!)

Say what?

RAMUDA: Yo, say, say, say what? Diggity-do-do-don’t pass the mic Sorry to keep ya waiting out here long, ladies With complete control over candy and whip (1) I’ll sneak into your earphones with just a touch Fling Posse bespoke new coordinates Constantly cutting edge is Ramuda’s flow An all-you-can-eat naughty buffet My drops are Shibuya’s guidance

GENTARO: Mm, chrysanthemums blooming in one’s bedside dreams (2) As if within Dogra Magra, the world appears to be infinite (3) Like being dragged into an antlion pit (4) It’s so incredibly natural for the heart to invite abnormality Fragile, you’re so easily teasable The dreams I paint upon the town are all ghost stories, a sweet honey (5) It’s a secret (shh!), but that’s really just a lie

DICE: Three-seven, what the hell? From heaven Endlessly winnin’ pools of cash to jump into, wahoo! (6) I ain’t like the rest, I hate takin’ things slow (7) By the end of the night, all your cash’ll be mine Boom-shakalaka-boom-shakalaka-boom Full stack, raising bets on my luck Only half-serious, Dead or Alive Dice are what I’ll stake my life on, y’knyow? (8)

ALL: Don’t-don’t-don’t pass the mic!

CHORUS: Wack MCs, get rid of them all Thrust out these daggers (say what?) Understand intuition, an instant conclusion Connect dots with my words East side, west side, lock, stock, barrel Scatter crowds, rule the stage Division Battle life, etched into our minds I won’t just pass my mic to you!

Oath be made! There’s no escape! Unbeatable thugs who can’t be shaken Now our words become machine guns Or a compass guiding us into the future, uh Three become one It’s showtime Carve it into history, our style Roaming life and death, genetic power Just put your trust into your instincts, say what?

ALL: What, say what? (x3) (RAMUDA: Don’t pass the mic!) (GENTARO: Don’t pass the mic.) (DICE: Don’t pass the mic!) Welcome to the division!

JAKURAI: Impropriety writhes and coils about all of these howling fools Blood and tears flowing throughout this city, caused by rampant verbal abuse Even the hope we tell ourselves to believe in has curled up and died in our throats Why does mankind rush towards death like the falling of cherry blossoms? (9) Helpless… A pomegranate trampled on a silent night (10) In this wasteland we build Matenrou’s paradise The words I breathe out are clear and serene Prepare to expose one’s self to a shower of taunts

HIFUMI: Hi, hi, hi! Can you hear the call? Bow, bow, bow! The excitement’s not enough If the princess can drink there’s no reason why the prince shouldn’t too! Champagne! (Bang!) Hugging kittens from behind will surely make them scream Eternally calling out for this yellow rose Tacky, ugly men are to be kicked out Gigolos and graceful women only in this jet bath

DOPPO: Aah, I really don’t want to do this anymore Getting caught in the automatic turnstile again (11) “Crap!” Power harassment, moral harassment, a painfully repetitive loop Being beaten to produce results is hip All those walking the city seem like hard workers But I’m a corporate drone, always gritting my teeth through loneliness I can’t do this much longer, my SNS is erased Let me run away and disappear into a parallel world!

ALL: Don’t-don’t-don’t pass the mic!

ALL: What, say what? (x3) (JAKURAI: Don’t pass the mic.) (HIFUMI: Don’t pass the mic!) (DOPPO: Don’t pass the mic!) Welcome to the division!

JINPACHI: It’s Edo Asakusa, you ready to begin? (12) Infernos and fights, I’m good at starting both Master, leader, I’m Demon’s Fire (13) Onigawara Bomber’s Jinpachi (14) The hell’d you say! Shutting down geisha and ladles (15) Oi, dumbass! Sharp words cutting through thick bastards Trendy, stylish demons and lanterns Wash your face with miso soup, then never come here again! (16)

MASAMUNE: The perfect kind of saké is saké that’s cool The original drunkard has arrived (17) Recklessly drinking, this red-faced Bacchus (18) The drunker I get, the smoother my flow It’s scale is simply too big for you foolish amateurs You have good reason to fear, drawing back like an oaf I’ll be the one to sew your mouth shut Then celebrate victory with some high-grade booze

DOSHIRO: Carp streamers are flown in May (19) Yet somehow you don’t even know the flavour of soba (20) Expect a war if you damage Sensō-ji, ‘kay (21) The unrivalled NiHachi stands guard in Shitamachi (22) I, an efficient yet obstinate person Brazen with the force of blooming fireworks With confidence in my skill and pride in my work It is my duty to knock people like you horizontal

ALL: Don’t-don’t-don’t pass the mic!

RAMUDA: Big trouble is the price of life JAKURAI: It is inevitable that those who prosper will fall JINPACHI: The rebellion arrives, eliminating false things ALL: A revolution of words, don’t pass the mic!

The end is near The greatest conflict Roaring into my Hypnosis Mic Straight hit to your soul, self-customised These words that’ll burn up your synapses Three become one It’s showtime Carve it into history, our style Roaming life and death, genetic power Just put your trust into your instincts, say what?

ALL: What, say what? (Don’t pass the mic!) (x3) Welcome to the division! It’s kill or be killed, oi!

NOTES

“Candy and whip”, AKA carrot and stick. Basically, offering rewards to someone as an incentive to do good and punishing them if they don’t.

“Bedside dreams”, or the space where your dreams reside. The chrysanthemum is the imperial flower of Japan, but in hanakotoba white chrysanthemums usually mean truth/grief, and are incredibly common at funerals. Tldr, you aren’t dreaming, you’re dead.

Dogra Magra is a surrealist, psychological thriller book written by famous Japanese author Yumeno Kyūsaku (actually a pen name), in which a man wakes up in a hospital with amnesia. He might be a murderer, but he also might not be, and everyone else in the book might not be who they say they are or even as dead as they’re supposed to be. It is, mostly, a book about psychoanalysis.

The antlion is a type of insect that, surprise surprise, eats ants. The larvae, which is the more popularly known form of the antlion, achieves this by digging pits that ants fall into. Another name for the larvae of antlions is doodlebug, but that seemed out of character for Gentaro to say… you can pretend he does if you want to, though.

The literal translation of “ghost stories” would be “demon play” (鬼物), which is the fifth and last stage of an Edo-era Noh play.

Dice uses onomatopoeia here to signify the act of jumping into a pool, like he’s doing a cannonball.

More onomatopoeia here, read as chimachima, which signifies someone doing a task in a less effective, much slower way when it could be done far more efficiently.

Dice finishes this line with a very obvious “nya” sound, but he also phrases it as a question? So I merged the two and made a pun instead.

It’s traditional in Japan for people to get together during spring for “flower viewing parties” in which they appreciate the transient beauty of cherry blossoms, because of how quickly the flowers bloom and then fall away. That phenomenon is what Jakurai is referencing here.

I’ll be honest I have no idea what this means. The pomegranate is a symbol of fertility and femininity in Japan, however, so maybe it represents Chuuoku?

Automatic turnstiles/ticket gates, like the kind you’d find in railway stations.

Asakusa was a popular entertainment district during the Edo period, but has since been surpassed by Shinjuku and other districts/wards thanks to the damage dealt by bomb raids during WW2.

Jinpachi’s MC name. Just so I don’t have to do this every time, all of Asakusa say their MC names in English.

An ‘onigawara’ is actually the name for a type of roof ornament in Japanese architecture, which is a statue/tile depicting the face of an oni (demon), intended to ward away evil (and bad weather). They’re commonly found on Buddhist temples. The “bomber” part of the division name probably has to do with the aforementioned WW2 thing.

This guy has the thickest Edo accent. His “the hell” is an shortened version of an old retort/catchphrase of Tokyo citizens (“what the hell are you saying/talking about?”). “Geisha” and “ladle” are both references to cultural aspects of Asakusa, as it is currently Tokyo’s oldest geisha district, and in the Buddhist Sensō-ji temple located there (the oldest in Japan) you purify yourself with ladles of water.

The expression “never come again” stems from the more literal phrase of “come the day before yesterday” - essentially, a day that won’t ever exist again.

A reference to an old song from the 1960s by the Folk Crusaders. It tells the story of a man who dies in a traffic accident while drunk driving and goes to heaven, but gets kicked out and comes back to life for spending too much time drinking with beautiful women.

Bacchus, the Greek/Roman god of fruit, vegetables, ecstasy and wine. Also known as Dionysus.

A reference to Tango no Sekku/Children’s Day on May 5th in Japan, in which carp streamers are flown to celebrate. This is the last day of Golden Week.

Ni-hachi (Doshiro’s MC name) is a kind of soba. He’s essentially saying “it’s so late in the song, but you haven’t had a taste of me yet”.

“Sensō-ji”, or Asakusa Temple. It is the oldest temple in Tokyo.

Shitamachi is the name for the geographically lower half and (once) lower-class of Tokyo, which is considered more traditional than its Yamanote counterpart.

#Rule The Stage #Track 2 #Hypmic Translations

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themusicview · 4 years ago

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We woke up one morning and fell a little further down - a Godspeed You! Black Emperor retrospective - Pt. 1: Introductions and F#A#∞

*”In his book Poetics, Aristotle identifed five defining characteristics of Greek tragedy: imitating an action; arousing pity and fear; displaying the human image as such; ending in wonder; and being inherently beautiful - all characteristics that fit Godspeed You! Black Emperor's music. And like all good tragedies, GY!BE lament how both beautiful and pitiable the human condition is, played out in the spectacle of the modern world. Combining post-rock's tension-and-release with a classical ear for grandeur and structure, GY!BE offers catharsis in a world that can't get no satisfaction.” Eher1 - RateYourMusic*

If there’s one thing that you can say about the Canadian post rock group Godspeed You! Black Emperor, it’s that they are fascinated by death. Throughout their 26 year history as a group, death has been the one constant in their work, from the death of the world to the death of governments to the death of civility itself. Which, considering the year we’ve just had and the reality we continue to inhabit, is an incredibly relevant thing to be about.

One of the founding bands of the second wave of post rock, they seemingly had more in common with their first wave contemporaries, bands like Swans, Slint, and Bark Psychosis. The members of the band constantly rotated in and out for most of their history, making them more like a musical collective than a formal band. Besides leader and guitarist Efrim Menuck, every member has had stints away from the band over the course of its history. As a result of this rotating cast of characters, the band’s sound can vary wildly from release to release.

The GY!BE story is, ultimately, about the development of a style. From the high concept beginnings to the most recent of meditative conclusions, the GY!BE style is undeniably well known and respected by all who hear it.

For those who want a primer on this legendary band, I hope I can provide a bit of clarity to one of the most fascinatingly opaque bands of the past twenty years.

Buckle up, this is a long one.

Author’s Note: Godspeed You! Black Emperor has a long history of making changes between formats of their albums. I will be treating these as separate projects and will delineate between the two in my reviews.

#F#A#∞ (vinyl)

For all intents and purposes, F#A#∞ is Godspeed’s debut record. However, much like the other aspects of the band, this is a functional half truth. There is one other album, the self released _All Lights Fucked On The Hairy Amp Drooling_, but it was an extremely limited release of 33 copies, none of which have surfaced in the intervening years. It is known that Constellation records has a copy, but as one fan found out, their official stance on the matter is, “You’ll never hear that tape.”

The band founded a studio, the mighty Hotel2Tango, and got to work. The ultimate result of the sessions was two tracks, over twenty minutes each, which would be constellation’s third release as a label.

This album is the soundtrack for the apocalypse. What kind? I don’t know but it makes The Road look like a Care Bears movie. f#a# isn’t the typical apocalypse where there is hope for humanity or memories of what came before like Fallout; this is the oppressive crushing sadness of being completely drained of hope.

Samples of street preachers lead into the stings of the damned, ghost trains wail in the distance, women in robes ask you where are you going, echoing into nothingness. And behind it all, the drones, they are constant. Mike Moya and Efrim Menuck are both incredibly well versed in the use of screwdriver guitar, and it shows on this album. The guitar lines sound as though they are falling apart under their own weight. It is an album full of ghosts, some benevolent some baneful, and you have to get through them if you want to survive.

The first track, “…nervous, sad, poor…” according to the etching into the record’s surface, begins with a drone and a reading from an unfinished screenplay that Efrim Menuck wrote. It is the perfect tone setter for the world this album creates. A train whistle dumps us into the second half of this track. A slow suspended drone is heard, complimented with the falling sliding sounds of screwdriver guitar, which eventually develops into a western melody. This transitions abruptly into another drone, this one sounding as though it is constructed out of wet fiberboard, drowning in reverb. A glockenspiel and happy plucked bass caps off the most obviously post rock section of the track. A brief, almost drunkenly played, folk rock interlude takes us to the end of side one.

Bagpipes and a street preacher introduce us into the second track, “…bleak, uncertain, beautiful…”. The most notable piece of this track, identified by the band as “The Sad Mafioso,” was featured in the film 28 days later. It is easy to see why. This track builds slowly to a climax, a dreary melody plucked on guitar and played on strings. It is the kind of thing that can truly only be felt, as all of the best post rock is. The second section is another build which leads to the repeated sample of “Where are you going?” A sample from Godspell, a cry for openness. The final section is a drone that almost seems to crumble against your ears. The album ends, interestingly enough, in a locked groove. Repeating one section of drone over and over into infinity. A moment, frozen in time. I can’t help but find something poetic in this locked groove ending. You put this world into motion, and you ultimately decide when to destroy it.

In this album, GY!BE put forward their ultimate thesis statement for the human race. We are ultimately going to destroy ourselves, but there’s something beautiful in the destruction.

#F#A#∞(CD)

Interestingly enough, in their early years Godspeed released on two different labels, with Constellation handling the vinyl releases and Kranky handling the CD releases. This was to allow them to make headway in the United States in their early years. Due to this, sometimes there are differences between the albums that cause a significant deviation in how the album is perceived and structured.

In comparison to the Vinyl version, the CD version is longer by an order of magnitude, almost doubling the former’s run time. There are three new movements here. A coda on the second track called Black Helicopters, a piercing little bit of noise that seems to spit acid into your ears and fill it with flies and static, Divorce & Fever, an introduction to the third track on the album, with a sample of an interview, and a beautiful little string drone, and Dead Metheny, another large building track that foreshadows what the band would do on Slow Riot. Personally, I prefer the tightness of the vinyl version to the comparative heft of the CD, but both albums are definitely worth a listen. Both releases include different tracks and orderings, but both ultimately achieve the same atmosphere

#godspeed you! black emperor #review #themusicview #post rock #indie rock #fsharpasharp

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laffiteslanding · 5 years ago

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Today in Movies that Need Theme Park Adaptations: Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

There are certain movies that just scream out for theme park adaptations. Jurassic Park. Jaws. Avatar, apparently. To this esteemed company, I humbly submit Little Shop of Horrors.

Revisiting this movie, I honestly can’t believe that no one has ever attempted to adapt it to theme parks, even if only as a stage show. Even at a glance, it has a lot going for it:

A killer Menken/Ashman score (that directly preceded their work on The Little Mermaid no less!)

A theatrical design/aesthetic that could be adapted to theme parks super easily

A memorable location in the form of the shop, which actually attracts tourists in the film, giving guests a convenient reason to be there

Great creature design and puppetry effects that could be incredibly realized through animatronics

Merchandising potential. Especially with the original ending factored in

Also in the original (cut) ending, some fantastical potential dark ride environments

Posters that write themselves: “See Audrey II!”

Finally, a delightfully twisted sense of humor

I can imagine nothing happened with the property because it was released

A) by Warner Bros.

B) in the 80s, when Disney alternatives weren’t super into the theme park game and Universal wasn’t licensing other studio’s IP

C) regional parks weren’t big on licensing properties either - and still aren’t, mostly, with the exception of cartoons and superheroes.

Furthermore, the film was a only a modest box office success at the time, though it has since grown into a cult classic that has spawned countless high school and professional theater productions. Little Shop is more well-known (and relevant!) now than it’s ever been, which makes 2020 the perfect time to adapt it!

So, How Would It Work?

Glad you asked! Little Shop could go in a few different directions, but in this case the most obvious answer seems to be the best one: we’ll make it into a shop! Not just any shop, mind you. No, this is going to be a full-on experience, like shopping in Diagon Alley but even more immersive. Here’s a quick rundown:

Leading up to the shop/in the area are posters that have a handcrafted quality to them and display sayings like “See Audrey II!”, or “Mr. Mushnik’s This Way!” There can also be graffiti on the walls cheekily referencing “Big Green Mother From Outer Space,” or bemoaning a terrible dentist appointment. There are also a number of missing persons flyers, and a few small vines may be creeping out of the shop entrance.

Once we get to the entrance, it’ll be an approximation of the small store front windows, though with a few changes for practicality. We’ll expand the space a bit beyond the tiny confines shown in the film to allow for better guest flow - perhaps Mr. Mushnik expanded a bit after his recent windfall. Not too much bigger, though. It is a “Little Shop” after all.

After heading through the facade, guests will be greeting with a room equally reminiscent of Ollivander’s and Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room. The room is quaint, but not quite claustrophic. The ceiling may be raised to add some necessary breathing (and show) room. Houseplants and flowers line the walls, as does a host of purchasable goods - more on that later. Apart from the increased stock, the shop appears to be relatively normal, albeit with the tiny exception of a massive AUDREY II animatronic/puppet situated along the far wall.

The trick here is that this is two attractions in one - a shop and a show, kind of like Sonny Eclipse but way more involved. Even better - there’s no real barriers between the two. Ideally, there’s no fencing or barriers in the middle of the shop, though Audrey II has one or two handlers that keep everyone at bay. It seems Mr. Mushnik has taken on some extra staff to help with his booming business.

Audrey II, unsurprisingly, is the star of the show. There’s a considerable amount of movement in the animatronic, and though it slows down occasionally, it never stops completely. Most of the time, Audrey II will function as a sort of puppet, making snide, guest-specific commentary that is improvised by a hidden controller, similar to Turtle Talk or Islands of Adventure’s Magic Fountain. Movements will be synchronized so that it seems it’s actually making such comments in real time. Every 15 minutes (or three times an hour), however, Audrey II gets hungry. Like, really hungry...

So hungry, in fact, that it will burst into song! As the gigantic plant begins to sing one of a few songs from the film (”Feed Me” or “Mean Green Mother From Outer Space” are prime picks, and can alternate), the room around us comes to life. Vines begin to snake down from above and clusters of singing buds emerge from hidden cracks in the walls and ceiling. There may even be a sort of rumble effect to accompany these changes as the vines make the building supports groan in protest.

As the song reaches it’s climax, an unlucky “shopper” (read: cast member) ventures too close to the plant by mistake. Despite their screams, Audrey II swoops down and gobbles them up, closing its mouth around them but leaving their legs flailing for all to see before they, too, finally disappear. In reality, this effect could be accomplished in a number of ways - a more conservative approach would be that the lights go down for a moment as the song ends and suddenly we see (animatronic) legs flailing in Audrey’s mouth. The “shopper” is never actually eaten. Alternately, the mouth is fitted to actually fit a cast member inside, much like it is in stage productions. The “eaten” cast member can then slide out the back of the puppet through to a room on the other side of the wall. The latter would be preferable, as it could be quite an effect.

Afterwards, the shop suddenly returns to normal. All is as it was, and the shop’s staff encourage you to shop to your heart’s content. If anyone has any concerns, the staff cheerfully inform them not to worry - there’s no danger now that Audrey II has been fed! Besides, Mr. Mushnik has informed them they have to meet their quota.

While that concludes the “show” portion of the attraction, there’s still the “shop” aspect to explore. There is some merchandise available in the store, though it also spills out into the street outside to provide more space for the show. Make no mistake - this little shop isn’t going to be a t-shirt/bag/ears extravaganza. The merchandise here is intended to be an extension of the show in a way that is, I think, somewhat unique to Little Shop. That is to say, all of the merchandise available at the shop revolves around Audrey II and its cuttings. Animatronic toys, Audrey bud bouquets, and even seed packets are available. If there’s one rule in play here, it’s that the items available for purchase must be some form of the plant (Note that this playfully mirrors the alternate ending of the 1986 film).

The reason of this is simple, and its the same reason the two parts of this attraction are intended to coexist in the same space: theme. Both the film and the play focus on the morality of desire, and the film goes a bit further, touching on the dangers of consumerism. The act of purchasing something from the shop, especially after seeing a full grown version of the thing you’re purchasing eat a man alive, becomes an inherently thematic and even moralistic act. It may make the purchaser feel uncomfortable, yes, but there’s a thrill to the act now, as if you’re doing something dangerous. Even those who purchase nothing will likely feel some sort of reaction, perhaps even a positive one. Either way, the shop’s merchandise now serves as part of the experience, rather than being a separate (albeit adjacent) one, and now serves to enhance the immersion further. That’s why the whole thing is the attraction, rather than just the show element. It’s a cohesive thematic experience, but only if all of the elements work together.

Details, Details

A few more tidbits to really flesh out the experience:

Various animatronic buds are scattered throughout the store’s merchandise shelves to add to the ambiance (and provide great stereo sound quality!)

If Audrey II ever needs to go into B-mode/goes down, a secondary show can involve the staff bringing a dentist in examine to examine the plant’s teeth. Hilarity ensues.

Instrumental versions of the musical soundtrack play over the radio in the background when Audrey is not singing. Radio announcers are soundalikes for the “Greek chorus” girls, and there’s at least one advertisement for an eye doctor that will help you “suddenly see more.”

And that about wraps it up! Got a different idea for an adaptation? Would you have done something differently? Let me know!

#little shop of horrors #armchair imagineering #disney #universal #theme parks #adaptation #musical #shopping #shows #attractions

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smalltowndetective · 4 years ago

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1, 17 and 22 for any detective of your choice for the detailed oc ask (no rush to answer, take your time, especially if you're busy 💕)

Hello! Thank you so much for asking, you’re the best! Sorry this is late!

So, since I am a massive name nerd, I’m going to answer 1 for each of my detectives, and then I’ll answer one detective for the other two!

1. What’s their full name? Why was that chosen? Does it mean anything?

Thea Annaliese Holland (romances Felix): Now, something that is probably good to mention that I spend way too long on my detectives before even playing the game haha. I spent forever on trying to figure out names for them that fit their character, and Thea is no exception. I spent a while with her first name actually being Theadora and Thea being her nickname (I might bring this back for a reincarnation AU later) But Thea by it self fit her better? It has that lighter feel to it, less regal-sounding, and it suits her much better. Thea is the Anglicized version of Theia, the Greek goddess of light, so I really liked that as well. Middle name took me forever to figure out, since Thea is not an easy name to figure a middle name for, but I came across Annaliese, and it really fit her. Meaning “grace” and the softness of it is just really pretty to me. And for poor Thea, I did so much planning for her character before playing her route for the first time, wrote so many notes on her about everything under the sun, to just forget that I needed to give her a surname haha! So, with no idea what exactly to do, I used a random name generator, and wouldn’t you know it, the first one that I got back was Holland, which I really liked how Thea Holland sounded, so I went with it.

And while I suppose that’s why I choose it, but I suppose I can tell a little bit about why Rebecca and Rook choose it as well. Kind of along the same vein as me, I have Rebecca wanting to use the full form of the name, while Rook wanting to shorten it, thinking the full name sounded slightly too regal for his tastes. Obviously, Thea won out in the end, and that is now her full name. :)

Natasha Kate Trexler (romances Adam): Now, for Natasha I just really just really liked Natasha as a first name, something about it just sounding right (Natasha means “born on Christmas Day” actually, but she was born in late spring haha!) It’s slightly harsher then Natalia, my first thought for what to name her, and it fit her much better with her as a name. And, back when I played the game originally, I had her nickname be Nat, but I do know how confusing that Adam and Nat looks to everyone else, so I’ve decided to avoid using it in the future haha! (Natasha isn’t the type to really use nicknames anyway, but I do personally think that once we actually get to deep relationship Adam, he would be the only person who calls her so) For her middle name, I forgot there was technically a Kate already in the story, (Garret Hayes’s mother) but since it was a middle name that won’t be mentioned ever, I decided to stick with it. Kate means “pure” and I really liked it instead of using a longer form like Katherine. And for her surname, Trexler is a surname from German origin, and it means “turner” believed to be referring to a wheelwright (Rook in Natasha’s route is from German descent)

And for how Rook and Rebecca choose the name, with Rebecca in this route being from Russian descent, that is how Natasha was originally decided on in the first place, with Kate a compromise between the two of them for something slightly softer. :)

Pearl Evelyn Reid (romances Nate): Since Pearl was my first detective (that’s a bit of a surprise I’m sure haha) I didn’t actually think of her name much before the game, since well, I had never played any interactive fiction at all before and it wasn’t something that I realized that I would want to do. But I do really like the name anyway. Pearl is obviously just a gem name for the well, actual Pearl, and it is kind of an old-timey name, which kind of suits her really well. Pearl is very tech focused skill wise, but she also has a vintage decorated apartment, so the different in those two has always been something that I have liked about her. Her middle name, Evelyn (which I choose for) means “desired, wished for” and also “water” which they both kind of fit. Pearl loves the ocean (I’ve always put Wayhaven as a seaside town) and it’s something that she has always been very special to her. (Nate’s hesitance to it makes her pause, but she hasn’t asked him much about it yet) (And I like the desired, wished for meaning as well, because I do think that the three of them were a very happy family before Rook’s death) And with her surname, Reid apparently means Red (I wasn’t looking at meanings at the time, so not making her a red head was a bit of a oversight on my part haha!) I also really like how “Rebecca Reid” sounds as well!

And for Rook and Rebecca, Pearl always remind me of the novel Scarlet Letter, which the main character names her daughter Pearl, her mother’s “only treasure”, and this kind of relates into everything after Rook’s death. It’s slightly old-timely, but it was something that both of them liked a lot ( I do think of all the names, they probably were able to agree on this one the quickest haha!) :)

Mariana “Mari” Rebecca Gonzales (romances Mason): It took me forever to play Mason’s route for the first time, since I was really having a hard time finding a detective that I really liked that would work very well. In the end, I went with a very different detective then the others, and after a while, I really do like her. There are several meanings for Mariana, from “bitter” to “beloved” which again, kind of both fit her. Mariana never wanted to be a detective, and is very bitter about it and her mother’s absences, but even with that, she is beloved by the people in her life anyway. Mari is what she goes by when she can, the nickname more comfortable for her, hating the almost stiff formality of her full name. And of course, for angst reasons only, I used my detective with the absolute worse relationship with Rebecca her name as a middle. (Was going to do so for all my detectives, but I really like it just being her haha) Mari does avoid talking about her middle name for this reason, and is less then thrilled about it for that reason. Now, for the surname, Rook in Mari’s route is Spanish, so well it made sense to give her one with that heritage. It is a different spelling of Gonzalez, meaning “war” or “battle” and for my combat focused detective who wanted to join the military, it really fit.

And for Rook and Rebecca, it was important to them that Mariana had a name that tied her to her heritage, and Rebecca was the initial one who brought up Mariana as a name. Rook’s idea right back, (in only Mari’s route) was to give her Rebecca’s name as a middle name, another connection to her mother. It took her a bit, but she did agree, and that is now her name (regardless of Mari feels about it haha!)

(Going to put the rest of the answers under the cut!)

17. Do they like to take photos? What do they like to take photos of? Selfies? What do they do with their photos?

Detective: Thea Holland (Felix)

I saw this question, and I couldn’t help not answer it for Thea, as much as I have talked about this recently haha! One of Thea’s hobbies is photography, and it something that she has done a lot of in the past few years leading up to Book 1. She loves to take pictures of just about anything in front of her, capturing that moment forever, but in Wayhaven, there are not many weddings, but she was been hired to do wedding photography a few times, which she always loves doing. Being able to give them memories of what (hopefully is!) one of the happiest days of their life is really special to her. (And Thea is also a huge hopeless romantic, so there is that to!) She has also done portrait pictures for the people of Wayhaven as well, and Thea is the closest you can get to a real photographer without having to go to the big city. She is not the biggest fan of selfies by herself, but with Felix? She’ll gladly do so. :) A lot of pictures that she takes do end up with the clients, but in her office, she does have framed pictures of the flowers around Wayhaven on the wall. And now as her and Felix are officially dating, perhaps there will be pictures of the two of them together in her office as well. :)

22. What are their favorite insults to use? What do they insult people for? Or do they prefer to bitch behind someone’s back?

Detective: Natasha Trexler (Adam)

Natasha is probably not the best detective I have to answer this for, but I was reminded of something, and I don’t think I can avoid not mentioning this haha. She is incredibly stoic, and most insults she keeps in her head, a slight glare the only sign of what she is really is feeling. If you do annoy her enough, you might get a very flat insult, the harshness not hold back at all, no humor, just pure insult. And while there have been plenty of times where Adam has absolutely frustrated her, but she normally won’t say anything. But that time that he broke her plant, and then tried to say her office was cluttered? Natasha hates clutter with a passion, it not allowing her to focus, and her office is always immaculate, the only reason the plant in there was in the first place was because it was a gift from Tina. She would have not have put it in there otherwise. So, to hear Adam say that? If Nate wasn’t there, there would have been some few choice words that she thrown back into his face. And to the last question, Natasha hates gossip, so she does not talk behind anyone's back at all. If she doesn’t like you, you’ll know.

#specific oc questions #detective thea holland #detective pearl reid #detective mariana gonzales #detective natasha trexler #thank you again #you're amazing!

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