#this is basically a trainwreck

[aesthetic-gem]

also one of my favorite things that happened before the eclipseduo “interrogation” btw was when bbh first initially brought up the idea of interrogating forever, cellbit got worried and started typing up a whisper to forever. it seems like he was in the middle of asking him like “what happened with badboyhalo? what did you do with him?” type of question. and before he could even finish typing, bbh started talking about restaurants and flowers and candles and cellbit just slowly deleted the whisper as he realized what was going on and how funny he was about make this by enabling bbh

[moonlightseve]

How do I explain that I’m writing two fics right now, one a dramatic study of the year of Viktor Nikiforov’s life leading up to and including the events of YOI through the lens of a modernist poem, and the other where Yuuri works at McDonald’s and Viktor pines after him while wearing poodle slippers

[dolotonglo]

(screaming and jumping and hollering and an) GUYS. GUYTYS ITS LITERALLY HIS BIRTHDAY DO YOU EVEN CARE. DO YOU CARE. ITS HIS BIRTHDAY !!!11!+!!!2! SAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO HIM NOW ‼️‼️

[pb-dot]

Film Friday: The Snowman

There's just no sugarcoating it, this month has been rough for your dear old friend Peebs. It's mostly my ongoing struggles with mental health and mental healthcare bureaucracy, as well as my specific neurodivergence apparently being atypical. This is all to say that I'm grumpy af, and as such I will see Sucktember 2024 off with writing about two movies that I think are bad. First up is the 2017 cinematic disaster The Snowman.

Now, the Snowman is infamous for being a poorly made film, in part because that by the look of it they didn't get around to filming all of it. Dan Olson has a very good breakdown of that side of it, and as such I won't try to come up with much new to say about that. Yes, entire plot points are obviously created from B-roll and sloppy voiceover, the dubbing of Val Kilmer is strange and unpleasant to the mind, hell, that entire subplot could be cut down to not feature Kilmer at all if they had actually full-assed it, the ending is a fucking enigma, etc etc. What I will be focusing on, however, are just how weird of an adaptation it is. Like even if they got around to filming all of it and assemble it more completely, there would be parts of this movie that is just puzzling, and I want to get into that soft sweet meat a little today.

Ok, I lied. There's one exception. There is one nonsensical editing decision with this movie that I need to talk about and nobody's talking about it. The movie opens with a flashback to the backstory of the murderer, which isn't outrageous as these things go, it's a thing, especially in Scandinavian Crime Fiction. What really gets to me is that after this flashback, we cut to our hero, Harry Hole (pronounced with a long o, get your minds out of the gutter) waking up hungover in a park. Our hero Has Problems, that's not unusual either. However, I would argue, what the movie has told us with this sequence of events is that the Murder Flashback was about Harry, and might even have been a dream/nightmare.

Like this is Film Studies 101 stuff, the Kuleshov effect. The juxtaposition of two cuts convey narrative. If this was how the book started it'd be fine, The Snowman is smack dab in the middle of the Harry Hole series, perhaps the readers, or the narration, is mindful that they're depicting two different characters here. The camera, the all-seeing idiot of the screen, can't imply this kind of thing, and so characters need to show their thoughts and feelings through action. That is not what is happening here. In fairness, though, if the movie had the coverage to actually convey that Mr. Hole has been On The Drink Again, and how this contrasts with his character, that would be fine.

Anyway, let's get back to the weirdness. The first one is probably the biggest one. Why is this movie set in Norway? Like genuinely, why take a British and US cast all the way across the pond to speak English in the streets of Oslo? Yeah, you need snow for the snowmen, so it's not like you can film this on a LA backlot (at least cheaply,) but there are places that have snow over in the US as well, and while the Norwegian State Subsidies of overseas film productions have been pretty juicy lately, surely Canada hasn't been bled dry yet?

Ok, I'm being a cynic about this, but frankly, it's not like the movie makes great use of the setting. There's basically no Norwegian cultural details that moors this thing a bit and makes it feel like there's a story. There's Swedish songs, chiefly Härligt, härligt men farligt, farligt by Björn Skiffs, as well as the Swedish version of the birthday song. Now, in fairness, there is overlap between Swedish and Norwegian culture especially in the eastern part of country. Shame then, I suppose, that this song is sung in Bergen, the very westernmost edge of the country. The concert Hole and his son that isn't his son (but it is his son) goes to is incomprehensible nonsense, I assume by design, but it would've been a great excuse to drag in some local act for some cred. Mais non, I suppose, it's all set dressing for Fassbender to mope around in.

One thing I've noticed that is weird in this is that the movie ends up, mostly by accident, implying that basically all the locations in the movie are like... close to each other. The biggest sinner is the train ride between Oslo and Bergen, which takes between six and a half and seven and a half hours. It's not quite a full day's undertaking, but if you somehow went there and back again in a day, you're probably pretty tired and not, like our friend Harry, slunking around crime scenes like it's the only thing you know how to do.

Another thing that gets to me is how unwilling the city seems to be to show any convincingly scuffy sides of Oslo. Oslo is a reasonably clean city, and the local police's dilligence in herding the transient and narcotic-employing population city from the view of the tourists should be noted if not commended. That said, when Harry falls into a drunken slumber in a location that looks like one of the semi-fancy places downtown, it doesn't exactly sell the believability of it. Round those parts, you would not be left to potentially die from exposure. You'd be roused, and if you weren't willing to get the fuck out of dodge and freeze to death on someone else's property you bet your ASS some very firm-looking security guards would be happy to escort you off the premises. There are places in Oslo that look sufficiently scuffy to really sell the "guy's collapsed, uncertain if he's sleeping, drunk or high as a kite" kind of idea, but it seems nobody gave enough of a shit to find any of them.

Then there is how incongrous the setting seems in time. Beats By Dre product placement places us in the contemporary, but there is one thing that bothers me with it. Through the movie our heroes struggle with this clunky Web 1.0-looking piece of telecom tech that you keep expecting to be important in some way, at least as a weapon of blunt force trauma, but no dice. The villain of the piece thwarts it at one point to allow the requisite fridging of the movie's supporting actress raise the stakes without advancing the plot any. No, this strange piece of over-specialized impractical tech just kind of exists, as some commentary on the Norwegian Technocracy with all the relevance stripped away.

Part of this, I suspect, is Garbage In, Garbage Out. Yeah, making this feel like a story actually set IN Oslo and portraying distances and the general feel of travel in Norway would help a lot, but there is many things it would not fix. It would not fix said fridging where our Cop Lady gets Taken Off The Case For Being Too Close, and then goes on to try to seduce some juicy leads out of a suspect in the case. It's a total dud, as he is just a creep, and the real killer finds her and kills her with the creepy guy none the wiser and no actual progress made. What, this 90s crime thriller written by a man has some janky perspective on the lady characters? You don't say.

While it is not the graves of its sins, the ending of this movie is weird as fuck too. After standing up to his dark mirror The Snowman Killer and coming up one finger short for his troubles, the last shot in the movie is Harry... taking on another case? Sure, I mean yeah, but why stop there? Harry isn't planning on quitting, if anything he's a workaholic. It's not like he has gone through a journey of maybe wanting to work less and concentrate on the family that isn't a family (but it is a family) he has. Sure, he has expressed a desire to, but his failure to even try has been as lukewarm of a "distant parent" narrative could possibly be. So what is the ending supposed to make us feel? Good because The One Good Cop That Can Get Shit Done is still out there The Dark Knight-ing for us? Sad because this Disco Elysium protagonist in the making is still on the self-destructive cop beat? Excited because the Guy Who Investigates Grizzly Crimes Is Still Investigating Grizzly Crimes? Beats me, and by the look of it, it also escaped the film makers.

It should come as no surprise that re-watching The Snowman didn't exactly endear me to it. It's a sloppy, incomplete film that probably wouldn't be any good even if they had the chance to film it, although it would perhaps not scream out the choreography of the final twist so loud if there wasn't one character literally pointless apart from secretly being the killer all along. This, together with the awkward pacing, lacking introductions and altogether flat affect of the whole thing, makes it seem like an adaptation that took too much from the original work. While yes, a lot of adaptations could do with harking a bit closer to the source material, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

[ocean-again]

I feel like the point at which my youthful support of abortion in the abstract because solidified into an adult support for abortion as a concrete human right was after watching the lives of the women I know who had their abuser's children.

I supported their choices, I support their right to make the choices they made, but having a baby with a guy with an active heroin addiction who hits you was a bad idea.

thankfully, these men all eventually found themselves either divorced or dead, but not before taking a real good run at ruining my friend's lives. you can be like "oh that's so inspirational to suffer for your children" but lets be real here, they chose to bring these children in a situation where the children would experience the maximum amount of suffering possible.

like, ok, you didn't kill your baby, but that man nearly killed you both.

[gen-is-gone]

something something manage expectations something something small town library something something volunteers should not be entrusted with even half the shit they cover here when they by definition have no professional stake in the library and are not held to professional standards

*sigh*

[weedle-testaburger]

i felt like rewatching some su since it's on uk netflix again and peridot's messed up hair in the kindergarten kid is sending me

[voulezloux]

i’m tired of having to explain to my friends why i had to make a post basically begging for support while im unable to work because it only makes me more angry every time i do so. like i can’t get short term disability because that’s not a benefit that they offer and even if they did, i would have to pay for that myself in order to get it. i could’ve rolled over my old plan from the previous owner to the new owner and pay for it separately. but the one time i had used it, they put me under illness and not injury (which is what it was. because i injured my foot and couldn’t stand to do my job. i even put it as an injury and they said i lied and changed it) and the payout i got barely covered my bills. i didn’t see a point in continuing to pay for a service that would do that plus it took a full month after i went back to work to even get the payout. the only benefits they offer at 401(k) with them matching, PTO, and health insurance. that’s it. i’m using what’s left of my PTO this week to bulk up my paycheck so i can actually get some kind of money but after that i don’t know when i’ll have a paycheck next. i’m looking for work because i can’t afford not to work. there’s nothing in place to protect the worker at my job in the event of this happening. the only reason im not completely losing my mind is because im still able to get health insurance while im unable to work but that’s not because of them. that’s because of FMLA. if that wasn’t in place, who the fuck knows man

[birbgalaxy]

i lost my stride lol 💪

[bitchapalooza]

I am thinking about Laventon teaching Cyllene that its okay to take time to care for herself and her needs while simultaneously neglecting himself because fuck you the hypocrisy is real with this man

[not-cool-enough-to-scuba-dive]

in the much-anticipated sequel to last year's "conservative party technically has a majority but cannot manage to choose a leader" fiasco in the u.k., 2023 now brings you the exact same thing, this time in the u.s. with the added twist that the entire house of representatives is shut down and incapable of doing any other business until this mess is resolved

everyone get your lettuce ready, let's see how long it takes to get a speaker

[mylowmilo]

I’m going to be meeting someone with way less family-related trauma than me and I desperately want to seem Normal. How do I hide my seething rage towards my parents and brothers so I don’t appear completely unhinged? It feels like it’s just uncontrollably bubbling out of me sometimes.

[bayofwolves]

i had a vision

[vaugarde]

ohhhh thinking about the parallels between odin/maya and frost/marlow/valerie rn

[cartoonslovers]

Why do you like Sentinel?... He completely blamed Optimus for Elita’s death, even though he’s also at fault, for the Archa 7 idea... Optimus only left Elita behind, to save Sentinel... Sentinel treats Optimus like crap, about 95% of the time... If he truly cared about Optimus, he would’ve told Ultra Magnus the truth at any time... Even in his apology to Optimus, he doesn’t take responsibility for what happened! >=( (Sentinel needs to be called out, for being a terrible friend to OP!)

He's signally handle the funniest man in this show and watching him is like witnessing a train wreck in motion like It a complete horrible mess but I can't look away since I'm so fascinated to how it got to to this point. He wears a cape, he writes poetry and There just so many things wrong with him not just in tfa but in every transformers media he appear in. Before Sentinel prime I thought the autobots were stoic heroes that can never be arrogant , crocky or silly. Heck I didn't even know that Optimus even have rival. But Sentinel destroyed everything that I used to think about transformers since unlike popular characters as in Starscream or Bumblebee.. I actually didn't know what to expect from Sentinel at all since I didn't know who he was when I frist watch Tfa and he end up surprising me everytime. The primer prime argument would forever live rent free in my mind. I it quote all the time along with other Sentinel Prime lines

[coldbycrossfade]

i havent gotten there yet, ive only seen bits and pieces of this path but i can say i like ascended astarion but i know full well that he sucks

hes terrible and sucks

i like dudes that are terrible and suck but im not finna lie in front of miss jesus and my ancestors to justify him gaslight gatekeep girlbossing too close to the sun, dig?