#this kind of needs an audience to Work so i figure its best to gauge interest before starting

[irusanw4]

Alright fuck it we ball. Inspired by @n00bcat1234 making an offhand comment

If you think it's a bad idea, I would like it if you could explain why in a comment or the tags.

If yes wins, I'll go ahead and let yall choose if I keep it on my main blog with its own tag or make a special blog for it!

@daily-chonny-jash and @cccc-daily could u guys please rb this so I get a decent sample size /nf /nf

[with-my-murder-flute]

Sometimes you just have a really intense week and can’t stop thinking about how much trauma Lan Sizhui experienced by the time he was 5 and how being the Very Best Boy isn’t always healthy and then you need to write Lan Wangji the child psychologist and his incredibly anxious foster-son, y’know?

---

Bunny is on time-out again.

"You have to behave,” A-Yuan says in the voice of the potato-head, packing accessories into its body and shoving it into the bed of a soft plastic truck. “You get in the car now.” The Barbie van is already full, with a dinosaur and a fingerpuppet and one of the new larger Lego figures, and all their carefully packed luggage. A-Yuan does that. Over and over again, for each of his toys, he methodically packs and unpacks luggage. It’s his most common form of play, but not the most enjoyable.

A-Yuan’s breathing is rapid and shallow, so much so that he takes little gasps when he talks to himself. Routinely, predictably, he’s calmer when he turns away from the dollhouse. He’s most collected when selecting items to put into luggage, deciding on pieces of felt and Barbie shoes, but even with the vehicles he can lose himself enjoying the movement and progress of the cars. But underneath it all, there’s a jerkiness to his movements and a certain disconnected quality in his speech and body language that tells Lan Wangji that he’s pretty distressed.

It’s a step forward that Bunny is out at all, Lan Wangji knows. A behaviour therapist at A-Yuan’s last preschool made it a point to extinguish comfort-seeking behaviour towards the toy, which was becoming both careworn and grubby. A-Yuan’s had it at least since he was fourteen months old; it was with him when he came into care. Maybe his birth mother gave it to him. A-Yuan has obediently derogated the toy; if it’s left lying out, he can usually be trusted to throw it into a corner to prove what a big, grown-up boy he is.

Lan Wangji has very carefully gauged his son’s limits of tolerance for some things. When the car ride begins, he waves slightly and says, “Have a nice trip,” which makes A-Yuan glance back at him nervously, but it’s just mild enough, just unemotional enough, just tolerable enough, that it doesn’t provoke too much emotion. A-Yuan can keep pushing his vehicles around, and feel safe enough to drive one into Lan Wangji’s foot. He doesn’t persevere at that point, though; the trip has culminated and he gets up and walks to where he can see down the hallway to the front door, then wanders over to the slide.

A hundred million years ago, Lan Wangji thought he’d be a genetics researcher, like his uncle. Then he thought he’d be a neuroscientist, like his undergraduate thesis advisor. Then he thought he’d be a psychologist like his brother, who focuses entirely on assessment and the development of psychometric tools. For a little bit in grad school, he thought he’d counsel adults, like Wei Wuxian, until a classmate told Wei Wuxian that Dialectical Behavioural Therapy was “objectively badass” and he developed a fixation Lan Wangji could not follow. In retrospect his career path is absolutely obvious, resonating clearly through every bone of him, but it took him a very long time to realize he ought to work with children. It’s a little shocking that he, who was so bad at being a child, feels so prepared to be a father.

He smiles when A-Yuan looks at him anxiously from the slide, the moment of uncertainty as he lets go and begins sliding down triggering the need for reassurance. Lan Wangji is always waiting for that glance, waiting to return it. At A-Yuan’s last placement he’d been assessed as having an avoidant/dismissing attachment style, and despite its uncharitable and parent-shaming nature Lan Wangji can’t help but agree with what his husband had muttered over that one: “Were the parents even trying?”

The most vital task, and the hardest, is being present in the moment with a child. Not worrying about the future, not concerned with the past, not preoccupied with an external standard. He’s surprisingly bad at performing objective assessments with children, because he can see how unfair they all are. His greatest facility is something he built for himself, brick by painstaking brick: the willingness to sit with discomfort, and have faith that the chaos will not remain chaos. All his years of meditation have cultivated a still eye to see the world from, and the faith that patience and compassion will see him through.

Still smiling, still watching A-Yuan, Lan Wangji moves closer to the dollhouse. He carefully stars arranging its contents, righting knocked-over furniture and returning blankets to little wooden beds. He takes out a shark figurine, a couple of doll clothes, then puts Bunny on the floor near his shin. When A-Yuan comes close, magnetically drawn away from the slide, Lan Wangji reaches behind himself for the tea set they were using earlier, arranging cups and plates in front of him as though they’re going to have another tea party. He leaves the placement of the cups ambiguous; it’s not like Bunny is specifically invited, but there is a suggestive proximity, the way the other cup is in proximity to the shark. A-Yuan takes the teapot, and Lan Wangji solemnly holds his cup out while A-Yuan pours. For the sake of the ritual he accepts milk and refuses sugar and mimes stirring his invisible ingredients before taking a sip.

When A-Yuan is done drinking, Lan Wangji turns to Bunny, lifting a cup, and asks, “Would you like some tea?” A-Yuan noticed the moment that Lan Wangji’s hand moves, but as he addresses the rabbit A-Yuan seems to lose interest, which is to say, he slightly dissociates; blink and you missed it, but his eyes go a little glassy, he looks away, and then he acts on the adrenaline and gets up and wanders away.

The current theory about Bunny is like the theory of gravity, which is to say, it’s definitely pretty certain but it never hurts to be humble when it comes to knowledge. It’s honestly a little more speculative and psychodynamic than Lan Wangji is truly comfortable with, and A-Yuan’s case manager, possibly a little defensive over the last preschool placement, absolutely refuses to consider the possibility. But it still feels as essential and true as which way is up that Bunny performs the vital task of holding all the parts of A-Yuan that he blames for making the adults he cares about disappear. Bunny holds both the neediness and the hope for comfort that were so painful, his son shut them down in order to survive. Bunny was how A-Yuan mediated that desire, the source of his comfort, until he was three and a half, and the behaviour therapist.

A-Yuan knew his foster parents didn’t like him being disorganized and distressed and clingy, that they’d rather he behaved more like a six-year-old than four. Which he could, sometimes, because he had a ferocious intelligence which put him cognitively ahead of his emotional development. But he, well... adapted a little too quickly, one might say. Learned his lesson a little too well. Now they’re trying to reignite the behaviours that were extinguished.

Lan Wangji takes a risk, while A-Yuan is pulling picture books off the lower shelf, and lifts Bunny to his shoulder like a colicky infant. He doesn’t do anything else, aside from stroking the rabbit’s fur. He leaves it in place, with a little guiding help from his hand, when A-Yuan brings a Franklin book over and climbs into his lap, demanding to be read to. With interest he notes, halfway through the story, that Lan Wangji holding and petting Bunny doesn’t distress A-Yuan; as the story arc gets as exciting as Franklin books ever do (which is not, to be clear, a criticism) A-Yuan turns in his arms long enough to distractedly reach up and pet Bunny too, before turning back and trying to grab the book for himself.

Wondering how far he can push this, he keeps Bunny in place on his shoulder when they leave the room to check the clock, and A-Yuan goes to the living-room window to watch the street for Wei Wuxian. He looks curiously when Lan Wangji leans down to dig the remote out between the couch cushions, but easily redirects when Lan Wangji turns on the TV and goes to prepare dinner. Having the show on limits his anxious glances out the window to three or four a minute only, instead of sustained attention followed by a meltdown if he had to wait more than five minutes.

Lan Wangji thinks it would be easier to keep Bunny in place, on his shoulder like a dishtowel, if he had weighted plastic beads in his extremities, or if he was velcroed. He’s wary of changing anything about such a strong comfort object, though, so he just learns to move and stand differently to keep the rabbit from constantly falling off.

A-Yuan greets Wei Wuxian with the kind of terrified delight that looks like general indifference if you don’t know better; he runs over, stands uncertainly within arm’s reach of Wei Wuxian’s legs, and then dodges away before Wei Wuxian can reach down to him. Lan Wangji helpfully muted the show when he heard the door open--it gives A-Yuan the space to sit with his back to the room and self-regulate while the adults say hello.

“New friend?” his husband asks finally, an eyebrow raised.

“Modelling it as appropriate,” Lan Wangji says. “I thought perhaps he could tolerate us demonstrating that it is not discouraged.”

“Nice rabbit, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says seamlessly, in a voice meant to be heard from the couch. “I like it. Makes me wish I had a rabbit.”

“They are very good friends,” Lan Wangji agrees. “This one is not mine, but he is keeping me company.”

“Nice,” Wei Wuxian agrees. “Maybe whoever you borrowed him from will let him hang out with me sometime.”

Their audience does not comment on this, but they didn’t need him to. Wei Wuxian sets the table while Lan Wangji cooks. A-Yuan’s palate is still pretty limited, so he’s used to making three separate elements of one meal, and can live with cutting up cooked hot dog into little coins so long as he doesn’t have to eat them himself. They just supplement their kid’s diet with a multivitamin.

A-Yuan looks askance enough, when dinner is ready, that Lan Wangji takes Bunny off his shoulder and asks, “Where should he sit while we eat?”

There is a fourth chair, albeit completely out of proportion, but he doesn’t dare try it. Instead A-Yuan thinks for a minute, and points to the kitchen counter behind the table. Lan Wangji props Bunny up against the wall, observing dinner if not participating, and after a second to think, A-Yuan accepts this as normal and climbs into his chair. He is meticulously well-behaved.

Lan Wangji aches for his son, and hopes one day he’ll feel confident enough in their love to break the rules around them.

They eat.

[shihalyfie]

Some things to know about the upcoming 02-related movie

As someone who seems to be known for being a 02 metablogger now (and 02 lover in general), and who’s been closely following Kizuna’s development and is generally fond of the movie itself, I figured I’d probably need to address the elephant in the room that is the announcement of the upcoming (unnamed, as of this writing) 02-related movie. This is also especially because I’ve personally been on the record saying that I absolutely did not want a Kizuna sequel. And, well, on top of that, to be a bit blunt about it, a lot of us, especially 02 fans, have a lot of reason to be skeptical of Toei right now given some of the things they’ve done with this series in the past, and 02-related things in particular (trust me, the wound is still extremely fresh), so it says a lot about what it took for me to get even remotely positive about this prospect.

Well, here’s the good news: while I of course still think there’s good reason to be apprehensive, and while I wouldn’t say everyone should be getting their expectations up for it to be guaranteed fantastic (which is something I would say about anything, regardless of whether it even has to do with Digimon or not), I don’t think there’s too much to be panicked about with this movie. Again, it took a lot for the staff to gain my trust in this respect, so it’s not something I say lightly. But if you’re a 02 fan and you’re extremely apprehensive, here are my reasons for feeling this way, and, hopefully, they might make you feel a little better too.

The reason this movie exists to begin with

One of the most striking things about this movie’s reveal was that they’ve literally only just started production on this movie. This was to the point that, at DigiFes, where this was revealed, even the voice actors stated outright that they knew absolutely nothing more than what the audience knew from the trailer. Katayama (Daisuke) only knew anything in the sense that they had him record those few lines for it. So even though it’s been a whole year and a half since Kizuna released to the public, it had only just been decided to make a new movie like this. All of the statements between Kizuna and now stating that there was nothing particularly in the works at the time were completely accurate. Of course, there are obvious hints that they were setting up for this possibility (many, many people noticed the suspiciously favorable position the 02 group was in during Kizuna, and the press releases were carefully worded so that having a movie about “Daisuke and his friends” would allow any statement about Kizuna being “the last adventure of Taichi and his friends” to still be technically truthful), but for all intents and purposes it seems like there had been no actual commitment to making this 02 movie until now, and that they’d at least wanted to gauge the surrounding climate and fanbase reactions for what people were looking for before they decided to go ahead with this.

The obvious reasons as to why this movie exist involve the fact that Daisuke and co. are pretty much the only “out” you can have to continue the Adventure universe without constantly defaulting to Taichi’s group yet again, because at the very least it’d be something that you can’t deny hasn’t exactly had the best representation in recent years. Of course they’re trying to capitalize on this! I’m not going to pretend they aren’t! But producer Kinoshita left a very interesting comment about a particular goal they have with this movie:

This time, the core behind the movie is everyone from 02! Daisuke’s group has their own different kind of charm from Taichi’s, and we want to express that precisely because we’re in the times we’re in right now.

That comment alone has a lot to unpack. (For a frame of reference, Kizuna released in Japan in February 2020; development had already long finished by the time the pandemic first hit, and it was unfortunately one of the first victims of the initial lockdowns because of how bad the timing was.) Acknowledging directly that there’s something different about Daisuke’s group and their dynamic, which makes them especially suited for what we need in “the current times”...hmm, what could that be?

The implied answer is one that many 02 lovers will know very intimately: the 02 group’s particular specialty is in uplifting others and giving each other emotional support. While Adventure had traces of these themes, 02 was the one that went really hard on the themes of dealing with grief and loss, the existential crisis of what to do with oneself in a world placing heavy pressures on you, and how to move on from hardships with the help of others. The fact that the 02 group specializes in this more than anything else is probably one of the most distinguishing factors between them and their seniors, so there’s a very heavy implication here that they understand what distinguishes 02 from Adventure, and what it uniquely would bring to the table in this kind of movie. So this isn’t just “we’re relying on the 02 kids because they’re part of the same universe”; there’s some degree of substantial understanding of what makes 02 as a series unique, and a desire to use this to its fullest extent.

Still don’t believe me? Well, how about this...

This staff really likes 02 a lot

Seki Hiromi, the original producer of Adventure and 02, was involved as a supervisor on Kizuna’s development. Seki was personally involved in the creation of these kids and 02 itself -- she’s the one who noticed the story of the nine-year-old boy skipping grades into Columbia University, the one that formed the basis of 02 itself and eventually came back for Kizuna -- and even personally vetted Kizuna’s script to make sure everyone was in character, gave her thoughts on what the kids would be like in 2010, and was (repeatedly) commented as seeming to love the kids like her own children. As of this writing, it hasn’t been confirmed whether she’s involved on the new movie, but even if she’s not, this means that the staff on Kizuna that is returning all listened closely to those discussions about what the characters are like, straight from the mouth of one of their own creators. The new character song releases had a brief mention in Lounsbery Arthur’s interview that there were apparently extensive discussions with the staff on what the characters should be like at this time, so while Seki’s involvement with that is unknown, at the very least, a lot of conscientious thought seems to be put in at all times into maintaining these characters’ integrity.

Of course, just having an original creator alone on it doesn’t necessarily do it by itself, so here’s another interesting thing: Taguchi Tomohisa, director of both Kizuna and this movie, is also very fond of 02.

I suspect we’ll be hearing more from him as this new movie goes further into development, but Taguchi himself implied that 02 was actually the one he happened to connect with in particular, and when you really think about it, given the circumstances surrounding Kizuna, it’s not actually surprising that a movie trying to be conscientiously aware of 02′s position in the narrative would have someone with a particular fondness for it on its staff. (Reason being: a lot of Adventure fans don’t care much for 02, but you’ll almost never meet a 02 fan who doesn’t also adore Adventure.) The really fun part about this, however, is that Taguchi has repeatedly stated that 02′s first movie, Hurricane Touchdown, is his favorite Digimon movie -- in a climate where everyone else was talking about Adventure. The expected answer for the majority of Adventure fans in terms of “favorite Digimon movie” is almost always Our War Game! by knockout, but no, for Taguchi, it’s Hurricane Touchdown, and not only has he said this, he won’t shut up about it. He’s been saying this since 2019. Even Seki noticed. A whole article got made about this. He brings it up whenever he has a chance to. To top it all off, when a Kizuna event asked everyone present about their favorite characters, and everyone gave Adventure-related answers, Taguchi’s response was instead Terriermon and Daisuke. And I mean, look at Kizuna itself -- its entire plot revolves around having to move on from unhealthy nostalgia, represented by kidnapping people and turning them younger and an antagonist swallowed by their own negative emotions, which, well, is literally the plot of Hurricane Touchdown. (Yeah, that Wallace cameo is very, very likely to be sheer self-indulgence.) And considering that Taguchi said his favorite human character was Daisuke, not Wallace, it means that he understands what Hurricane Touchdown brought out of Daisuke, what his interactions with Wallace meant for both characters, and how Daisuke’s best strengths lie in his ability to support and uplift others.

And, finally, we have Yamatoya, who was responsible for penning both Kizuna’s script (and, thus, being privy to Seki’s corrections) and the bonus drama CD that came with it, on the script, and he personally said that he enjoyed writing for the 02 group because he felt they were important to lightening up the mood of the heavy story Kizuna was becoming. In fact, every comment from this staff about what the 02 group brings to the table in particular has showed a good understanding of what their appeal is -- that they have to be “fun”, that they were “healing in a heavy story”, and Taguchi himself said that he got the impression that the 02 group had more straightforward paths to their epilogue careers (which is interesting, considering that I’ve also personally pointed out that the 02 group seemed to have careers with significantly lower bars than their seniors’ due to their difference in priorities). All of these things are observations you make when you know this group and the importance of the story they came from.

Extend it even further to the rest of the staff members and you’ll find there are a lot of 02 fans on there, including the animation staff, who made some very neat observations about 02 and its finale. Miyahara Takuya is a particularly amusing case, because he seems to love Imperialdramon so much that in the thanks booklet for the deluxe edition for the Blu-ray, he drew a picture of Daisuke and Ken with Imperialdramon Dragon Mode because he didn’t get to be in the movie. (As in, he actually said, point-blank in the caption, that he loves Imperialdramon and wanted to draw him because he wasn’t in the movie.)

Of course, even if you’re trying your best, things may not always work out, so I’m not saying having love for the characters will necessarily guarantee that the product turns out for the best. However, considering that historically a lot of our fears come from the idea of them milking the name value of the characters without really caring about their integrity or understanding what the series was about (especially since a lot of people in the fanbase itself don’t tend to read 02′s nuances very well), I think, at the very least, we don’t need to worry about the staff for this movie not being conscientious, nor the idea that they’re making this movie without understanding or caring about 02.

Furthermore, one thing I appreciate is that they’re actually leading the advertisement with a premise that is distinct from Kizuna’s. Of course, it covers a similar topic of “partnerships”, and it’s very possible it’ll cover the issue of the solution to Kizuna’s problem (especially since the answer was already hinted to have a heavy relationship with 02), but nevertheless, it’s an actual premise that’s not just “Kizuna’s story, but more of it”. It’s an understanding that something 02-related should be allowed to stand on its own rather than just tacking it onto an Adventure-related thing. Beyond that, while I think it’s generally expected that a side story like this should have an original character, I think it’s actually very good this time in particular that there’s a new element/character for the 02 group to interact with; again, as with Hurricane Touchdown and Daisuke, these kids often have the best brought out of them when they’re supporting others, and honestly, because the kids suffered so much in their own narrative, I’m not particularly fond of the idea of seeing them having to go through too much more trauma themselves (it’s a big reason I don’t like the idea of a 02 reboot). So while I’m sure a lot of 02 fans feel a bit antsy that the actual group itself wasn’t advertised first, I actually consider it a positive sign that they have an understanding of what context this group performs best in, and, moreover, well...the last time they unveiled something that was so focused on advertising the return of old characters that it forgot to actually be straightforward about the premise, I don’t think that ended well. So to speak.

In general, the track record is good

It’s easy to just smile and nod at the portrayal of the 02 quartet in Kizuna, because in general everything from them is in-character, but I just want to point out how significant it is that they were portrayed so conscientiously when it is really easy to mess them up. (As I like pointing out very often: even official has not historically been very careful with Daisuke’s character.) There are so many easy pitfalls you could have fallen into and pigeonholed the kids into, but Kizuna absolutely demonstrated the quartet at their best, showing off all the nuances of their character and bringing up all the parts that were most important, especially Daisuke’s best quality being “positivity and cheerfulness” and not all of the other things about him running in circles or having a crush on Hikari-chan. This even goes down to the casting; Katayama Fukujuurou sounds terrifyingly like Kiuchi Reiko in terms of all the little nuances and pitch shifts she had in her performance, and the cast themselves spoke of all the nuances present in their characters as they were studying for their roles. These are things that even fans of the series tend to miss, but the voice actors for the quartet nailed their roles so well that it’s very easy to tell that the direction understood exactly what they were looking for and needed, and casted accordingly. Even those who didn’t care for the movie much had a very hard time disputing the voice casting for the quartet (and this is saying a lot given how much voice actor changes are often a really sore point among Japanese fans).

But while the 02 group had a limited amount of screentime in Kizuna, the staff also had a lot of opportunities to prove themselves with the drama CD and the new character song CDs, and every single aspect of these reflects something that was represented in 02 itself -- again, things that often go over the heads of people who aren’t paying as close attention. The drama CD captures a lot of the essence of the dynamics between the group in only short lines, and all of the statements about the characters in the character song interviews are accurate (and remember: Arthur said directly that there were discussions with the staff about keeping them true to character). On top of that, not only do the lyrics in said songs directly mirror each character’s development from the time of the original Best Partner series, there are also a lot of things in said songs that demonstrate a nuanced understanding of each person’s character and what they got out of the events of 02. Someone with only a surface-level understanding of Ken or Iori’s character might think that Ken should only have a soft song, or that Iori shouldn’t want to do anything ridiculous, but the series goes ahead and gives Ken one of the most passionately emotional rock songs in the batch and Iori outright rap with Armadimon, which are both fitting decisions in light of Ken actually being one of the more emotionally assertive people in this group, and Iori only being stoic because he’s strict with himself and being willing to let loose in certain circumstances (especially after the events of 02).

As of this writing, I don’t know if the new movie is going to be featuring the entire group in a major role, and I’m not sure if I even want it to; as much as I do strongly feel like the group should always work together at all times, one minor personal complaint I had about Kizuna was that it tries to do too much in too little time, and I’m personally fine with this new movie being more Daisuke-centric or something if it means it can just get a nice story on the table (after all, if I wanted something that more evenly represents the entire 02 group, I’d just go back and rewatch a very nice anime series called Digimon Adventure 02). There’s also the very thorny question of what to do about Tokumitsu Yuka, since I don’t personally really like the idea of still dragging her out of retirement like this (but I also wouldn’t want them to awkwardly write around her just for this, and I’m wondering if Sonozaki voicing Tailmon in the reboot would let people accept her as a replacement without much fighting).

Nevertheless, I think Kizuna’s staff has proven more than well enough that they understand the essence of 02 and its characters, so, again, regardless of how it turns out, I at least expect that this can be made with some degree of conscientiousness, and at this point, that’s all I can ask for. I don’t think it’s fair to expect or want this movie to be the second coming of 02, because, again, if we wanted that, I think it’d be better for us to all go back and watch that lovely little 50-episode anime called Digimon Adventure 02. But in terms of being something that can add a little nice thing to the mix, I think, so far, this movie at least has positive signs of turning out that way -- and, remember, think about what I just said about initially being very against this idea; as a diehard 02 fan who has a lot of very picky feelings about how to best represent it, it took a lot for the staff to earn my trust in this sense.

[bookiemonsterph]

The Isle Of The Lost

Synopsis:

Twenty years ago, all the evil villains were banished from the kingdom of Auradon and made to live in virtual imprisonment on the Isle of the Lost. The island is surrounded by a magical force field that keeps the villains and their descendants safely locked up and away from the mainland. Life on the island is dark and dreary. It is a dirty, decrepit place that's been left to rot and forgotten by the world.

But hidden in the mysterious Forbidden Fortress is a dragon's eye: the key to true darkness and the villains' only hope of escape. Only the cleverest, evilest, nastiest little villain can find it...who will it be?

Maleficent, Mistress of the Dark: As the self-proclaimed ruler of the isle, Maleficent has no tolerance for anything less than pure evil. She has little time for her subjects, who have still not mastered life without magic. Her only concern is getting off the Isle of the Lost.

Mal: At sixteen, Maleficent's daughter is the most talented student at Dragon Hall, best known for her evil schemes. And when she hears about the dragon's eye, Mal thinks this could be her chance to prove herself as the cruelest of them all.

Evie: Having been castle-schooled for years, Evil Queen's daughter, Evie, doesn't know the ins and outs of Dragon Hall. But she's a quick study, especially after she falls for one too many of Mal's little tricks.

Jay: As the son of Jafar, Jay is a boy of many talents: stealing and lying to name a few. Jay and Mal have been frenemies forever and he's not about to miss out on the hunt for the dragon's eye.

Carlos: Cruella de Vil's son may not be bravest, but he's certainly clever. Carlos's inventions may be the missing piece in locating the dragon's eye and ending the banishment for good.

Mal soon learns from her mother that the dragon's eye is cursed and whoever retrieves it will be knocked into a deep sleep for a thousand years. But Mal has a plan to capture it. She'll just need a little help from her "friends." In their quest for the dragon's eye, these kids begin to realize that just because you come from an evil family tree, being good ain't so bad.

Title: The Isle of the Lost Series: Descendants Author: Melissa de la Cruz ISBN: 1484720970 (ISBN13: 9781484720974) Pages:  311  pages (Hardcover) Published: May 5th 2015 by Disney-Hyperion Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult, Middle Grade, Children, Adventure

My interest in this novel was thanks to initially seeing advertisements for the first made-for-television Disney movie, The Descendants, which, much like the book here, focuses on the offspring of four of the most notorious neer-do-wells in the Disney universe. (And, as a sidebar, the movie is honestly good, clean fun! I know I’m not in the target audience for it but I really did enjoy it, and the songs are super-catchy.)

Overall, I found The Isle of the Lost to be a speedy, entertaining read. Plot-wise, the novel focuses on and fleshes out the lives of four young antiheros: Mal, daughter of the evil fairy Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty; Evie, daughter of the vain Evil Queen from Snow White; Jay, son of the wizard Jafar from Aladdin; and Carlos, son of puppy-hatin’ Cruella De Vil from 101 Dalmatians. These four teens, their parents, and others like them (read: villains) have been eternally banished to the Isle of the Lost by edict of King Beast (from Beauty and the Beast) who rules the United States of Auradon. As far as the four leads are concerned, they aspire to be as bad as their parents, but they’ve not quite earned their proverbial stripes.

I really enjoyed the character dynamics here, which is what caused me to bump this up from three-stars to four-stars. Even though this is a fantasy story, the teens have to contend with making their parents proud (something that’s a part of growing up even in the real world). Mal struggles most of all as her mother rules the Isle; Evie hopes to maintain her mother’s high standards of outer beauty; Jay is determined to be the best thief on the Isle; and Carlos, who is an inventor at heart, struggles with his fur-loving mom and her demanding ways.

Even though these kids are the flesh and blood of notorious folks, I called them antiheroes for a reason. They’re not do-gooders by nature, so the titles of “hero” and “heroine” don’t fit. On the other hand, these kids aren’t full of cold-blooded, black-hearted evil either, so they don’t qualify as true villains. Instead, they’re antiheroes – figures who are neither consistently moral nor abjectly immoral and who make good, moral choices at times. The best instances of this arrive in the book’s latter half where the gang seeks out the Dragon’s Eye, a magical artifact that will cement Maleficent’s power. Even though from the start Mal acts like this is all about her, her attitude changes and she shows that she’s not entirely like her mom in a good way. As a whole, while there is some teenage drama here (something I cringe at if it happens too much), it’s not all-encompassing as the story focuses more on developing the lead characters as individuals, not having them constantly squabble or wallow in angst.

Overall, character-wise, this is a fun romp, and long-time fans of Disney will be pleased with the incorporation of many familiar faces, from the members of King Beast and Queen Belle’s court to the denizens on the Isle. The author clearly knows her Disney neer-do-wells and presents them in a light that, much like a Disney film, doesn’t negate the fact that they’re not heroes but doesn’t make them psychotic and bloodthirsty either.

As stated, the characters saved this from being a three-star read for me. Writing-wise, this novel is a simple, quick read for adults, but at times, it’s almost a little too simplistic though it manages not to insult an adult reader’s intelligence and, to be fair, this wasn’t penned with grownups in mind anyway. That being said, the best audience for this novel would be pre-teens and young teens (i.e. ages 10 to 15). Anyone younger probably won’t appreciate the character dynamics and/or Disney villain line-up (as they might be too young to be familiar with much of the canon), and anyone older than 16 might not be attracted to the novel’s delivery. However, I, an adult reader, liked it enough to keep it on my bookshelf and I’d definitely read any related books if this happens to become a series. It definitely has potential and I’d love to read more.

Content-wise, this is a very age-appropriate novel for its chief audience. There essentially is no profanity aside from some invented words and a PG-level word here or there, but the occurrence is so sporadic, if you blinked you’d miss them. There really is no violence other than some nasty (but overall harmless) pranks some of the villains pull. Lastly, there is no sexual content of any kind and the interactions Mal and Evie have with Jay and Carlos are chaste and appropriate for their characters’ ages. Overall, parents and guardians should have nothing to fear in handing this novel off to their Disney-loving pre-teen or teen (though I always encourage parents and guardians to read books first as everyone has a different spectrum for gauging appropriateness for various ages).

In the end, The Isle of the Lost is a fun, frothy read with colorful characters and plenty of potential for future adventures. While the writing itself can be a bit too breezy in terms of simplicity, it works as a vehicle to carry the plot and characters. For pre-teens and young teens, this is a treat; and adult readers can enjoy it, too, for its homage to some of Disney’s best of the worst.

[letterboxd]

Truffle Hunter.

As Pig snuffles its way up Letterboxd’s best of 2021 ranks, Mitchell Beaupre hunts down writer-director Michael Sarnoski for a chat about some of the finer creative points of his Nicolas Cage-starring meditation on cookery and grief.

In a time when audiences know too many specific plot details of films months before they’re even released, the idea of a surprise sensation feels like a fleeting memory. Yet that’s exactly how one could describe Pig, the debut feature from director Michael Sarnoski. With minimal pre-release buzz and no flashy festival premiere, Pig is a film whose status has been created through sheer quality alone.

This is a true word-of-mouth smash, hailed by critics as one of the best films of the year, as well as quickly earning itself a high placement on our Top 50 of 2021. Jacob Knight praises the film as “an existential rumination regarding how people find meaning in a mostly meaningless world”, while Muriel declares it “the most unexpectedly wholesome movie I’ve seen in forever”. Not bad for a first feature.

Written by Sarnoski, from a story he developed with co-producer Vanessa Block, Pig opens on Rob (Nicolas Cage), a loner isolated in the woods with his truffle pig. Rob makes his living selling truffles to the eager and ambitious Amir (Alex Wolff), but when two people break into Rob’s home and steal his animal companion, he must do whatever it takes to be reunited with his only friend.

A rough day deserves a decent vin rouge.

While that setup led many to give Sarnoski’s film the moniker “John Wick with a pig” when the trailer dropped, the story ends up charting a course away from genre thrills and towards something else entirely. Pig is an exploration of grief, loneliness and compassion, featuring one of the finest performances of Nicolas Cage’s illustrious career.

Raised in Milwaukee, Sarnoski and co-producer Block met in college before working together on the documentary short The Testimony, which focused on the largest rape tribunal in the history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That film made it onto the shortlist for the 2016 Oscars, putting the two of them on a path that would lead to their breakthrough opportunity with Pig.

Sarnoski spoke with us about the origins of Pig, the long-term impacts of loss in his own life, the joy of hand-cranked pasta and Bruce Springsteen.

Congratulations on the film! How has it felt seeing this outpouring of love coming for your first feature? Michael Sarnoski: It’s been amazing. Everyone who made this movie felt for themselves that it was special, and we all put a lot of care into it. We also knew that it was a risk, a strange film we figured would hit right for some people, but then plenty of others would think it was boring and weird. We’ve been very pleasantly surprised that it’s a small minority of people who feel that way.

What was the seed of the story that would eventually sprout to become Pig? I had this image in my head of an old man in the woods with his truffle pig. There was something sweet and tragic about that. Then I began asking questions about who this guy is and why he’s out there alone in the woods. What’s his backstory? It all evolved from there.

While the first act inhabits that “John Wick with a pig” space that people were perhaps expecting from the trailer, the story then takes a swerve and becomes a somber, thoughtful character study. Could you speak about navigating that unique arc with your storytelling? We never set out to try and subvert that John Wick sort of genre. We knew that we were playing with that lone-cowboy idea of a film and some of those tropes, but we never wanted to poke fun at that or switch people’s expectations in some sense by choosing Nic to star. We never wanted to “surprise” people by making a quiet Nic Cage movie. It was always just about these characters, what this story is, what we’re trying to explore. I think if we had tried to be subversive it would have come off as hokey.

Silence plays a key part in the film, as so much is being said in those spaces between the dialogue and action. How did you want to utilize the impact of saying more with silence? From early on, we always knew it was going to be a very silent film, and that followed all the way through the edit. Some of us wanted that opening to start out the way it’s done in the movie, where it’s totally silent and the music only comes in at the very end, while others were worried that people would get bored with it. The argument against that was that if they’re going to get bored with that, then they’re going to get bored with the rest of the movie. So, we might as well just lean into it, and let them know what it’s going to be.

From there we gauged how we wanted to approach the silence throughout. There’s some beautiful music in the film that Alexis Grapsas and Philip Klein did an incredible job with that allowed us to bring this beauty and splendor into the scenes. But there were also a lot of really quiet moments where we wanted the audience to be focused on the faces of the characters, and really be feeling the space and letting the sounds of the forest, or wherever we were, come across.

Nicolas Cage, his knife skills, and cinematographer Patrick Scola.

Along with the faces, you focus a lot on hands in the film. Whether it’s in scenes of violence or making food, there’s a real emphasis on what hands are capable of. Where did the inspiration for that come from? Nic was very into the idea of conveying artistry through your hands. He spent a lot of time with local chefs to try and get the vibe of how they moved and how they worked. He was always practicing knife skills in his room. I was constantly waiting for the AD to come up and tell me that we can’t use Nic today because he cut off a finger, but thankfully that never happened. Nic really sold that emphasis on the hands. Those shots could have felt empty if it wasn’t for him. I still am surprised watching some of the little hand choices he made.

I remember there was one shot where we didn’t get it on the day. So, we set it up with his stand-in, and just had him wearing his gloves. We all watched it, and it just wasn’t the same. Nic agreed, and so we reset the entire thing just to get that one shot with his hands in there instead. It was totally worth it. He’s an incredible actor, and it comes through every part of him.

Cage is an actor with an almost otherworldly mythos about him, which allows people to sometimes forget what a tremendous performer he’s always been. What was your experience in building a relationship with him, not just as an actor, but also as a human being? I only have positive things to say. That’s not just a gimmick. From the moment he read the script, he was interested, and he really responded to the character. He was committed to bringing the script to life, and was extremely respectful towards everyone on set. He had no reason to respect me. I’m a first-time director. He could have been a total diva. He could have been whatever he wanted to be, and we still would have paid him and been happy with his performance.

He was very kind, and maybe some of this came from the character, but he was also kind of somber and quiet in general on set. At the same time, he can also be very playful and sweet, even though he was trying to remain in the mood of the character. He set the tone, in a way, for the whole crew. A crew could easily look at a first time director and decide to just slack off and scrape by, because I wouldn’t have even known the difference. The fact that Nic treated me and the material with such respect really trickled down, and was so valuable to the film.

We shot the whole thing in twenty days, so if there had been any weak link with someone not doing their job or not being totally on top of it, we would have been screwed. I credit a lot of that to Nic, and him treating this with an incredible amount of professionalism. I think that’s where a big part of his long career comes from. He’s an incredible actor, but he also takes the art form seriously, treating it as both an artist and as this being his job, knowing that you have to do both in order to get what you need across.

Do you have a favorite Nicolas Cage performance? Other than Pig, of course. There are so many incredible ones. I really love Moonstruck. I saw that a couple of years ago, right before we officially cast him, when I was going through some of his ones that I hadn’t seen. Part of it I think is because I’m half-Italian, and I felt like it was showing me a side of my life that I never realized because my Italian family is on the east coast, and we moved out to Wisconsin when I was very young. I never got to be a part of that kind of thick Italian family, and seeing that on screen gave me a taste of what that would have been like. I loved him in that role. He was the perfect balance of sincere and sentimental, and also over the top when he needed to be.

Grub’s up.

Speaking of being Italian, Pig gets deep into the transformative power of food, and of the right meal. Has food always been an important part of your life? Definitely. I’ve never worked in restaurants. The closest thing was when I worked at a snack bar at a summer camp, which was very fun and also kind of a nightmare in its own way. I think most of the importance of food for me came from when my grandma lived with us. It was after my dad passed away, when I was a little kid, and she became this sort of old Italian cook in the house who was using food as this language of love and also as a sort of control. It had a lot wrapped up in it, this sense that we’re going to have family dinners to prove that everything is fine.

I think any Italian family is that way, but especially in that situation, having that presence come into the house when I was a kid, it made food quite charged for me. It was both a form of bonding and love, but also that control. That was very important to me. As I got older she taught me how to cook some things, and I became interested in that. I had a lot of friends who were great cooks and taught me how to do different things. I’m not an amazing cook, but I love cooking.

I love that act of making something that’s about to disappear. I think if you can be okay with that, and put a lot of time and care into that, it’s kind of a therapeutic thing to do. Accepting transience is a big part of cooking.

What’s your favorite dish to cook? I would say over the pandemic I really got into making lasagne. I had my grandma’s old hand-crank pasta maker, so I was enjoying making my own pasta and lasagne with that. I don’t know if I could pick one favorite dish, but that is definitely one that contributed quite a bit to putting on the Covid pounds.

Rob (Cage) and Amir (Alex Wolff) discuss their business relationship.

There’s a scene in the film where Rob and Amir go to a restaurant and Rob has a conversation with the chef there, who used to work for him, about the idea of losing our sense of identity when we give up on our dreams in order to fill this role that society expects of us. Is that something that you personally connected with? Yeah, people ask me a lot about what I think of the high-end cuisine world, and I have to say that I wasn’t trying to solely express that this world is garbage and phony. I was looking at it as another kind of art form. Any time you have an art form that combines someone’s personal passion with some sort of economy there are going to be conflicts to navigate. Whether you’re a painter, director, writer, whatever, those are going to be things you have to juggle. How true to yourself are you going to stay?

For myself, I’ve definitely found that when I try to focus on doing something that I care about, that’s kind of all I have control over and that’s what I should focus on. Pig was that for me. This isn’t the kind of script that you write where you’re expecting a big payday. It’s this weird movie that for some reason really means something to me.

The scene climaxes with Rob saying the line, “We don’t get a lot of things to really care about”. What about this movie exemplifies the things that you really care about in your life? It’s so many things, and even more things came from going through the process of actually making it and falling in love with Portland. It’s become even more than what it was initially intended to be. I mentioned earlier that my dad passed away when I was a kid, and the most personal aspect of the film for me was exploring that idea of what grief does to us long-term.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve been watching how my family members changed the way they interact with the world and built their perception of the world around some aspect of grief. It’s not those immediate effects of shock or sadness. It’s how those things ingrain into your worldview. I became much more conscious of how I was doing that in my own life. That was the deepest, most general thing that I was bringing to it, and that I was exploring personally through the film.

As far as specific things that I care about, I think I have all the classic things. I care about my family, and my friends. I care about the world, which is why this year has been so devastating. I don’t have one single pig. I think we all have a few different pigs in our lives.

Director Michael Sarnoski on the set of ‘Pig’.

Another scene that really stands out is the one in which Rob returns to his old home and sits with this young boy, having a conversation about a persimmon tree that used to be there. Talk to me about the significance of that moment for Rob. One of the things I love about that scene is that it seems so simple, kind of quiet and basic, but it’s getting into a lot of different things. I will say one thing about that scene. That was the first scene that we shot on the first day of filming. That kid was great, but filming with a child on your first day of your first feature was very much a moment of wondering what I had gotten myself into.

That scene does a few things. I won’t get into spoiler territory, but for starters he’s going back to his old house, so it’s his first attempt to really look at his past in the face, and to acknowledge that. I like that in that moment this is also one of the first times that we hear him speak romantically of food, because those things are very tethered to each other.

We get both the sense that there was a past, a personal path that he left behind, but intricately involved in that was how he interacted with food and his art. It’s the first time that we hear him acknowledge who he was in a way that’s okay. He tells the kid his name, and he’s acknowledging his identity that he’s been trying to hide from or ignore. Through doing that, it’s engaging with his passions and how that tethers everything together. I also thought it was cute explaining what persimmons were to a little kid.

I’ve got to ask you about the use of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘I’m On Fire’ in a very meaningful moment. What made that the perfect song choice for that scene? Obviously, who’s singing it is very meaningful. I liked that song, though, because it’s different from the sappy direction we could have gone with that moment. There’s something very passionate about ‘I’m On Fire’, of course, and it’s a pretty sexual song. It’s really charged, but it also has this kind of ethereal quality to it that’s seductive in a non-sexual way. It washes over you, and it feels very mystical. This sounds so “film talk”-y, but I liked that meeting of that transcendent, abstract feeling with that immediate sense of passion and love and obsession.

Finally, what’s the film that made you want to become a filmmaker? Probably Sam Raimi, his first Spider-Man movie. That was the first time I realized what directors do. I had a very strong association with Spider-Man growing up as a comic-book fan, and I was seeing how someone was filtering their own understanding of this character. Raimi coming from his horror background and being into the nitty gritty filmmaking with practical effects and everything, I got this understanding of how a director touches a film and shapes it.

Related content

Steve’s list of pigs in film

Melissa’s list of films featuring food, chefs, bakers, restaurants, cooking, hospitality, hotels, wineries, grocers

Rachel West discovers Nicolas Cage is her most-watched actor of all time

Letterboxd’s Official Top 50 of 2021—Jack Moulton’s list

Follow Mitchell on Letterboxd

‘Pig’ is currently in US cinemas via NEON, and available to buy/rent on digital.

[bangwoolofbangtan]

How BTS and Its ARMY Could Change the Music Industry

By Rebecca Davis

It was just a year ago that BTS’ Love Yourself: Speak Yourself tour was selling out stadiums all over the world. Each night of the 20-date trek, which grossed $116 million, a total of nearly a million ticket buyers around the planet witnessed a thumping opening liturgy at the top of the K-pop band’s set in the form of the song “Dionysus.”

As flames shot up from the stage, seven figures emerged in supplicant white amid Greek columns and a long altar. Rapper RM (full name: Kim Nam-joon) led the way, twirling the staff of the titular mythical deity, as group mates Jin (Kim Seok-jin), SUGA (Min Yoon-gi), j-hope (Jung Ho-seok), Jimin (Park Ji-min), V (Kim Tae-hyung) and Jung Kook (Jeon Jung-kook) flanked him in a display of choreographed precision. The crowd, reaching peak pandemonium in a night full of deafening screams, made willing maenads and satyrs, transported by the band’s presence. An anthem about rebirth and self-discovery through the ecstatic collective experience of music was received as intended — as if from the gods.

Idol worship is by no means a new concept in pop music — remember John Lennon’s provocative statement in 1966 that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus”? — but there’s something about BTS that turns fandom up to 11. The global brigade of BTS acolytes is collectively known by the acronym ARMY, short for Adorable Representative MC for Youth, a moniker chosen by Big Hit Entertainment, the company that launched the band. ARMY comprises the lion’s share of a Twitter audience that’s 29.2 million followers strong, more than triple that of any other K-pop group, and growing daily. BTS’ Instagram presence of 30.6 million followers (also rising rapidly), is trailed closely only by YG Entertainment’s Blackpink, at 29.3 million.

“It is because ARMY exists that we exist,” Jin says.

To understand the scope of BTS Inc.: An influential 2018 study by the Hyundai Research Institute estimated that the ripple effects from the boy band’s ecosystem contribute roughly $4.9 billion annually to South Korea’s GDP, on track to generate more value over 10 years than the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. The study gauged that in 2017, one in 13 visitors to the country came for BTS-related pilgrimages. That ratio may soon be growing. Spotify has reported a 300% spike in new listeners to the group since the Aug. 21 release of “Dynamite,” BTS’ first all-English single.

The BTS boom has also driven Big Hit to launch an IPO in October projected to raise some $811 million. (Each BTS member will be awarded shares worth approximately $8 million.) Of Big Hit’s revenue in 2019, 97.4% was generated by BTS, including $130 million worth of T-shirts, cosmetics, dolls and other merchandise.

The numbers are no accident. The South Korean government began investing strategically in the arts and the digital economy to help steer the country out of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. On the heels of “Parasite” sweeping the Oscars, the worldwide success of BTS may be another sign to the West that Seoul might be the center of a new force in creative production.

Big Hit, and the K-pop music bus­iness in general, have proved just how much a band, and a company, can prosper through a direct-to-consumer relationship, driven by digital platforms and dedicated apps with lots of behind-the-scenes content that keeps fans emotionally involved. It’s engagement on a scale that no Western artist has ever achieved, despite decades of radio promotion and the best retail strategy.

For the global music industry, the band’s success has meant a serious rethink of how a record company — in BTS’ case, Sony Music’s Columbia Records, which distributes the group’s music in the U.S. (though the band is not signed to the label) — builds and maintains a fan base. You could almost look at it as a collaborative arrangement: As music is being made in real time, decision-makers and strategists at Big Hit and Columbia are taking in and processing the comments and views of ARMY and pivoting accordingly.

“It creates a self-sustaining engine that, eventually, becomes hits perpetuating more hits,” says Neil Jacobson, a former president of Geffen Records who runs Hallwood, a talent agency for producers and songwriters. “A label wants that fan connection happening all the time so that they can consistently release and promote music. But in the past, there had always been intermediaries that labels had to talk to in order to manifest exposure. Now, there is a mechanism for an artist to speak directly to their fans. That didn’t exist before, and it has turbocharged the process.”

It’s all led to this “Dynamite” mo­ment: The single has sold nearly 700,000 adjusted song units since its release — good for a gold record certification by the RIAA. The song is quickly becoming the band’s biggest radio hit to date (without a featured artist, it’s worth noting), and represents a significant breakout beyond its core audience. After that, will Grammys follow?

“They check all the boxes,” says Jenna Andrews, the vocal producer on “Dynamite” who also serves as an executive at Sony’s Records label. “I’ve never seen anything like BTS in terms of singing and dancing. This is just an indication of what’s yet to come. They’re going to take over the world.”

Kathryn Lofton, Yale University professor of religious and American studies and author of the book “Consuming Religion,” says that the bond BTS has with its ARMY is different from the typical singer-fan connection because “BTS’ driving commitment is to their relationship to the fan group, to the manufacturing of their communal joy for you to participate in.” It’s why she views BTS as “a religious project; they are seeking to make a togetherness that you can’t stop wanting to be a part of.”

Lofton also makes a point of distinguishing ARMY from the groupies associated with Beatlemania. Sure, BTS fans know the hagiography and backstory of each member, but everything about the band’s output prioritizes the collective over the individual.

The band itself has certainly leaned into the comparison with the Fab Four. For instance, it re-created the iconic moment of the Beatles’ 1964 debut at the Ed Sullivan Theater last May on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” — in a black-and-white segment that showed the K-pop band performing as mop tops in tailored suits.

But while John, Paul, George and Ringo had spotlight moments of their own, both within and outside the band — songs they wrote individually, causes they took up personally — with BTS, it’s all for one all the time. Unlike many other groups, the members share single, collective Twitter and Instagram accounts, and release even solo material through their shared channel. Accomplishments are never spoken of as belonging to any one group member but rather as the work of the team (and, of course, ARMY). In their videos, they often begin in solo shots but end up together.

This all strays from the typical tropes of Western boy bands including New Edition and ’N Sync, which have all proffered “star” frontmen. The thinking for decades had been that a record company would be lucky to have one breakout solo career among the bunch.

But BTS’ selfless approach didn’t happen randomly: The group was envisioned as a collective to heal the alienation that ails us in the digital age. Its name — “BTS” stands for Beyond the Scene — is an invitation to fans to join them offstage via almost daily video content featuring moments in their intimate if immaculately curated private lives on YouTube, Twitter and Big Hit app Weverse.

In 2011, Big Hit’s revenues from its then-main acts, Lim Jeong-hee and boy band 2AM, were plummeting. As the shadow of bankruptcy loomed, Bang Si-hyuk, now chairman, and Lenzo Yoon, global CEO, felt the company needed a total revamp. They stopped all normal work for months and called on employees to perform market research instead, seeking a new vision and formula.

Bang describes the conclusion they reached in a recent Harvard Business School case study of the firm written by Anita Elberse and Lizzy Woodham: “You would think that with the development of digital technology, people can come together more easily, but we found that it is actually more likely that people will feel more isolated. And so we need to find a way to help them, inspire them and heal them.”

Reflecting on the choice to develop a group that satiated this need, Yoon says in the study: “I think back then in 2011, with the conclusions we drew, we found the wild ginseng, as we say in Korea.”

On “Dynamite,” Big Hit worked with Columbia to further cultivate that ginseng. Pitched by Jacobson to label chairman Ron Perry, who guided and essentially A&R’d the song, worked to radio by Columbia executive VP and head of promotion Peter Gray (who has broken hits for Dua Lipa, Kelly Clarkson and Kings of Leon), and all overseen and informed by the years of management savvy of Big Hit, it’s the kind of artist development that was a music business calling card and that has lost its place in the fast-paced world of digital releases.

Radio exposure is not considered as impactful in Korea as it is in the U.S., notes RM, and so BTS — “maybe naively” — didn’t hit the ground in the U.S. thinking, ‘What can boost our airplay?’” the last time around. Still, RM notes that the band has “100% trust” in Columbia, Big Hit and the greater BTS community. “ARMY and the label are all trying their best,” he says, recounting how in the band’s early days, fans would send bouquets to radio DJs to get their songs on the air.

“Our goal is to try to show ourselves, expose ourselves to ARMY as much as possible,” adds Jin. “There are a lot of platforms now.”

In some ways, BTS’ ARMY has grown into its own force and brought the group along for the ride. In the world of K-pop, the expectation is that entertainers stay far away from politics, but as the genre has grown more global, it has begun to reach a transnational cohort to whom matters of social justice are top of mind.

When Variety broke the news on June 6 that BTS and Big Hit had donated $1 million to Black Lives Matter, BTS fans quickly flocked to #Match­AMillion through a link sent out by the fan charity Twitter account @OneInAnARMY. They hit the financial target in just 25 hours.

Erika Overton, a 40-year-old Georgia resident and one of the co-founders of the account, says of the experience: “It was one of the craziest nights I’ve ever seen. I was on Twitter all night. We were refreshing the page every couple of minutes, going, ‘Oh, my God …’” Witnessing ARMY’s U.S. battalion bring the message of Black Lives Matter to fans in other parts of the world who were unfamiliar with the movement was a “big educational moment that was really, really beautiful to see,” says Overton, who is African American.

What Overton saw was facilitated by networks of fan translators who also turn Big Hit’s Korean content into dozens of languages. Other ARMY groups provide counseling or tutoring services, invent themed recipes or write informational threads on everything from the history of the music industry and how charts work to Jungian philosophy, which deeply informs the BTS albums.

Some fan accounts have even become registered nonprofits, with dozens of administrators spread around the world putting in nearly full-time work on top of their day jobs.

In addition to Black Lives Matter, BTS this year donated $1 million to Crew Nation, a Live Nation campaign to support live entertainment personnel impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. And it has continued its campaign with UNICEF to end child violence. But the band members are reticent to take on the role of global activists. “I don’t consider ourselves as political,” says Suga. “We aren’t trying to send out some grandiose message. We would never see ARMY as a conduit for our voice or our opinion. ARMY speaks their own initiatives, and we always respect their opinions, as we respect any other person’s.”

RM, on the other hand, keeps the door open for a kind of apolitical politics based more on actions than words: “We are not political figures, but as they say, everything is political eventually. Even a pebble can be political.”

The scale of its influence is not something that the group takes lightly. “Our [‘Dynamite’] video has seen 80 million, almost 90 million views in just a day. In a way, that’s very weighty — and almost frightening,” RM told Variety the day after its debut, explaining that the balancing act is often one of how to juggle the burdens of being both role models and artists.

Some Korean scholars feel that BTS’ statement in support of BLM shows how ARMY is actually out ahead of Big Hit, spontaneously enacting its own initiatives to which the company must then respond. “Big Hit thinks they can create a company-dominated [approach to] fandom, but fans are agents doing only what they want, not what they don’t want,” says ethnomusicologist Kim Jungwon of Yonsei University in Seoul. For Kim, the fluidity of ARMY’s unplanned, collective responses “is the possible answer to BTS’ success.”

Candace Epps-Robertson, an ARMY member and assistant professor of rhetoric at the University of North Carolina, says the affirmational content of the group’s lyrics and videos may sound simple, but lay the groundwork for millions of fans to learn to engage critically with each other and develop a transcultural sense of global citizenship. “The message of ‘you, yourself, are enough, and you should love who you are and start with that — I think people miss how radical that can actually be,” she says. “We can’t overlook the power of that as an invitation to people to be part of this community.”

The Grammys, where BTS is eligible for record of the year, among other categories (nomination ballots for the 2021 awards, slated to air Jan. 31, went out on Sept. 28), provide a chance for the group to gain industry recognition as a mainstream contender, not just a K-pop act.

Asked why the Grammys matter so much to them, Suga seems to bristle a bit at the question. “I grew up watching American award shows, so obviously we all know and I know the importance of the Grammys,” he says. “It’s a dream anyone working in music has.”

RM says having the goal of a Grammy, an industry-voted award, “motivates us to work harder. As Suga said, if you are in music, the Grammy Awards are something that you cannot help but to look toward and set as an eventual goal.”

BTS’ global influence will soon collide with national duty, and a Grammy Award or three could help maintain its momentum. The band members all have to participate in Korea’s mandatory military service by the age of 28 — and four of them are within two years of that threshold. “Big Hit really wants to target the Grammys before [the members] go into the army,” says an industry source privy to the company’s marketing plans, adding that, from Big Hit’s perspective, it would be best for business if the boys all perform their service at the same time.

The group renewed its contract with Big Hit in 2018, which commits the members to another seven years with the firm, but the army service issue could knock off two years within that time span. A company statement ahead of Big Hit’s IPO shows that Jin, the oldest group member (he’ll be 28 in December), must conscript by 2022 even if he gets an extension of the draft deadline. The statement discloses that plans to prerecord content to be released over the course of any army tenure are being discussed.

South Korea officially changed its rules in July to allow draftees access to once-banned cellphones on weeknights and weekends, meaning BTS could theoretically continue some interaction with fans. However, the taking of photos, video or audio recordings remains prohibited. (Historically, most Korean celebs have fallen silent during their service.)

Soldiering aside, with the push from Big Hit’s IPO, multiple TV appearances — including an ongoing weeklong takeover of “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” — the chart success of “Dynamite” and growing Grammy buzz, BTS is poised to make some serious noise this fall, which is saying a lot for a group known to shake the decibel scale with a wave or a wink. But perhaps the most significant measure of its ascent is underscored by the frequent speculation of the band’s place in a new moment for the music industry.

“What would it mean not just to include the sound of Korea in the annals of world music, but to actually propose that the South Korean sound is the next chapter?” posits Yale’s Lofton. “What if BTS are actually the next Beatles?”

©variety.com

[izzyfandoms]

Spooky Sanders’ Haunted House - 1 - Introduction

Here’s my new au idea, I’m probably just gonna write and post oneshots about this whenever I feel like it but this won’t be a regular chapter fic

Warnings: Sympathetic Deceit, Sympathetic Remus, ghosts, demons, angels, blood, possession, religious themes, major character death (because they’re ghosts)

General Taglist: @quillfics42 @ajdraws0430 @phantomofthesanderssides @creativity-killed-thekitten @phlying-squirrel @sly-is-my-name-loving-is-my-game

Masterpost

In the middle of the woods stood a mansion: a large, foreboding mansion with pale walls, cracked windows and creaking hallways. It somehow felt both lived-in and abandoned at once – cold, but warm; repulsive, but inviting. It was the very definition of an oxymoron.

There was a small crowd gathered at the entrance to the mansion, as there often was, though these people had actually paid to be there, unlike those who sometimes showed up out of nowhere, uninvited, who had to be scared away. The mansion’s inhabitants were good at scaring people away, but that also often led to people wanting to come back, so it wasn’t always helpful.

Leading up to the front door of the mansion was a short, but elaborate, set of stairs: five large white steps, covered in cracks and moss that never seemed to go away, no matter how much they’d tried to get rid of it. At the top of this staircase stood a teenager, who looked to be about seventeen at most, dressed head-to-toe in black, with accents of silver and yellow, and with vitiligo covering one side of his face.

The boy leant on a decorative cane as he looked over the dozen-or-so people in front of him – they’d checked their tickets with the not-actually-24-year-old man who stood by the front gates. He grinned as they shifted awkwardly under the weight of his stare.

This would be fun.

“Greetings, Ladies, Gentlemen and those of you who know better, and welcome… to the Sanders’ family mansion. Now, some like to speculate that my family’s home is haunted by the ghost of our father – the world-famous actor, Thomas Sanders – as his death was as mysterious as his past, but I disagree. I have it on good authority that my father’s soul is up in heaven, where it belongs. No, the things that haunt my home are far more unpredictable.” His smile widened, baring his teeth. “We’re just lucky they haven’t decided to kill us yet.”

He paused for another second or two to gauge his audience’s reactions, before turning suddenly and pushing the large wooden doors open. They creaked noisily, and an ominous gust of wind shot out from the inside, tracing icy fingers down everyone’s spines and dancing through their hair.

The boy then motioned with his cane for the group to follow him inside.

“Follow me.” He instructed. “Don’t wander off. Don’t go upstairs. Don’t touch anything you’re not supposed to. We have eyes everywhere; you won’t get away with anything… untoward.”

He glanced back at them for a moment, eyes shining. “And, most importantly, try not to die. We don’t need to add another ghost to the collection.”

Once they were all inside, the doors slammed shut and the lights went out, engulfing them in darkness. A childish giggle rang through the air as another new voice whispered from all around them:

“You’ll regret this.”

***

Virgil wandered down one of his mansion’s many corridors – he’d never get used to the ‘his’ part of that phrase, he  may be the oldest Sanders sibling at twenty-two years old (and the only adult in the house, as Remy and Emile didn’t count) and therefore the owner of the place, but, to him, it would always be their father’s.

He half-heartedly tapped at his phone, typing out a message to his friend, Toby, and scowling slightly when the Wi-fi stopped working, which was an unfortunately common occurrence in this place. He didn’t look up when he reached the end of the hallway, pulling a door open and stepping inside. It immediately slammed shut behind him, and only then did he glance away from his phone, one eyebrow raised.

His eyes widened slightly.

The bookshelves were empty, their contents swirling across the ceiling, in a constant state of chaotic movement, though they seemed undamaged, none of the covers missing or pages falling out. The closet in the corner was rattling violently and the TV showed only deafening static, dark blood leaking out the bottom of the screen. In the centre of it all sat Virgil’s twelve-year-old brother, Roman, curled up on the couch, knees to his chest, his back to his brother as he mumbled to himself.

All of a sudden, his head twisted around 180 degrees to face Virgil. His eyes were dead – pupils white – and his nose was bleeding. He opened his mouth to let out an ear-splitting screech, and that’s when Virgil finally snapped out of his daze, blinking a few times in surprise before he frowned disapprovingly.

“Remus, give Roman control of his body back. You had it during the tour, and he needs to do his homework. You can have it back later.”

Remus’s scream continued for another moment or two, before his jaw snapped shut and his head spun back into place. He shook it a few times before he turned back to Virgil, his eyes alive and normal again, though he was pouting.

“Aww, come on, Virge.” Roman whined. “Don’t be such a royal pain, we were having fun!”

Virgil rolled his eyes, reaching out and ruffling his younger brother’s hair. “Yeah, yeah. Just go do your homework, kid.” He then turned to the TV. “Patton, get out of there and clean up that blood, you’re going to break it.”

The static stopped, the screen going black, and, a few seconds later, a tiny nine-year-old boy climbed out of the television, dressed in a blood-stained grey cat onesie and large round glasses. They were cracked, but he never seemed to notice.

Patton beamed widely – too widely – when he landed on the ground, picking up the tiny toy cat that lay beside the TV. It was grey, white and missing an eye, with half of its fur matted with what used to be blood. He ran up to Virgil, wrapping his tiny arms around the man’s legs in a hug. The television re-absorbed all of the blood as he grinned up at his pseudo-older brother.

“Where’s Janus?” He asked, voice as glitchy as ever.

Virgil hummed in thought, patting the young boy’s head as best he could. “Uh, he should be back in his room? I don’t-”

Patton disappeared before he could finish, and the toy cat dropped to the ground. Virgil sighed, picking it up and putting it in his hoodie pocket, he could return it later. He then turned to the still-shaking wardrobe.

“Logan, I know you’re in there. I’m not sure how Remus dragged you into this mess, but I bet Remy had something to do with this, too.”

The books circling the ceiling suddenly paused mid-air, before slowly floating back towards the bookshelf and arranging themselves alphabetically, much neater than they’d been prior to this. The closet then stopped shaking and fifteen-year-old Logan stepped out. He looked about the same as usual, apart from the small blue horns on his head and the matching demonic tail that was curled around one of his legs.

Logan adjusted his glasses. “I apologise, Virgil, but Remy had nothing to do with this, actually, not that he tried to stop it, either. Emile was the one who advised I help out with their little… prank, of sorts. It was good practise for my powers. He also suggested I keep my horns and tail out more, he said it would help me become more in touch with my demonic heritage.”

Virgil sighed again. “Of course, he did.” He paused, before continuing. “Speak of the demon, do you know where he is? I haven’t seen him since the tour earlier, and I’m concerned he’s sacrificing a goat somewhere and making a mess of the place.”

Logan shrugged. “Hell, probably.” He flicked his wrist and floated a textbook into his arms. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Virgil, I have some reading I’d like to get back to. Remus interrupted my studies when he’d suggested this failure of a practical joke.” And, with that, he left, his tail and horns disappearing back into his body.

Virgil massaged the bridge of his nose. It could be difficult, sometimes, looking after his two human brothers, two ghosts (one of which had accidentally possessed and couldn’t unpossess his youngest brother) as well as the literal antichrist. He’d say it was worth it, and that they were his family and he loved them, but that didn’t make it any less stressful.

“’Sup, babe, you brooding again? You’ve got your brooding face on.”

Virgil looked up, immediately spotting his literal guardian angel floating above him, loudly slurping a Starbucks coffee. Heaven knows how he got his hands on it – the nearest Starbucks was hours away, and he’d seen Remy just a few minutes prior without the drink.

“Please stop calling me that.” Virgil said dryly, flopping onto the couch and burying his face into one of the cushions.

Remy snorted, wings twitching. “Gurl, we both know I don’t mean it like that. You’re cute and all, but angels can’t date their humans.”

Virgil rolled his eyes, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “Since when did you care about the rules? You weren’t supposed to reveal yourself or move in, either, but you still did.”

“Rules are made to be broken.” Remy said seriously, contradicting his earlier statement, but Virgil ignored that fact. “Besides, I’ve got my eye on that cute friend of yours, remember? He’s, like, still single, right?”

“Nate?” Virgil sat up. “Uh… yeah, I think so.”

“Nice, I’m gonna tap that.”

Virgil groaned. “Please don’t.”

Remy’s face turned serious. “There’s literally nothing you can do to stop me.” He floated down until he was laying on the coach, wings folded against his back, his bunny slippers in Virgil’s lap.

“I’m sure I could figure something out.” Virgil snorted. “Janus’s got tons of books on the occult, I’m sure he could find some kind of spell to stop an angel from being so horny all the damn time.”

“Excuse you!” Remy gasped loudly, lightly kicking Virgil. “I am angelic, thank you very much, I have nothing to do with the occult!”

Just as the latter was about to respond, they were interrupted by a loud bang from the other side of the house. It sounded like it was coming from Janus’s room, which was unsurprising, as most suspicious loud noises came from there.

Remy and Virgil exchanged a quick look before jumping up and rushing in that direction. The human out of concern and anxiety, and the angel mostly out of curiosity. They bumped into both Roman and Logan on the way, who followed them to Janus’s room.

It looked normal from the outside – the door had been painted black during Janus’s goth phase (which wasn’t quite over yet, to be honest) – but there was no way of guessing what was going on inside.

Virgil reached for the door handle, but it burst open before he could lay a hand on it. Six dark shapes shot past them – Remy only just about managing to catch the 22-year-old before he fell – and they each ran off in different directions, presumably scattering all around the house, screeching loudly as they went.

“Shit.” Janus swore, and everyone turned to look at him.

He was sitting in the centre of the room, beside a broken pentagram that still looked damp – it was newly painted – and one of his many, many books on the occult. There were black candles everywhere, though only about half of them were lit, and Patton was peeking out from behind the teenager, eyes wide and mouth in a small o-shape.

“Demons.” Remy said. “You summoned six demons. What, wasn’t Emile enough for you?”

Virgil blinked a few times in surprise, before his face settled into a disapproving expression. Janus half-smiled sheepishly.

“Uh… woops?”

“Again, Janus?” Virgil scolded. “This is the third time this week, seventh this month, you’re dealing with this on your own.” He then turned on his heel and stomped back to his room.

Remy followed quickly after, and both Roman and Logan returned to their own rooms as well, leaving Janus and Patton alone again. They exchanged a glance.

Patton blinked owlishly at him before disappearing too.

Janus sighed, picking himself up off the floor and dusting himself off. This would be a long evening.

[marcelofern41-blog]

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[breakmyreddieheart]

(Please Don’t) Say Anything - Ch5

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven

++ Accompanying Playlist ++

Summary: It’s the last days of high school and the Losers are soon to be leaving for university, moving to different parts of the country. Richie is trying to figure out how to tell Eddie how he feels about him, but only ends up making things worse and needs to figure out how to apologize. Bev has a cunning plan, and Richie Tozier gets extra…

Setting: Derry, ME - the summer of 1995

Pairings: Reddie (main), Stenborough (on the side) 

Words: 2300

A/N: Sorry this has taken so long to update! Life and stuff I guess, but this is another chapter that worked out longer than I expected, so the graduation ceremony is going to have to be bumped to its own chapter!

Hope you enjoy reading!

---

Eddie wakes in a haze, drenched in soft white sheets with sunlight glowing around him. A peaceful bliss enshrouds him as his vision clears to find two hazel brown eyes staring back into his own. Richie Tozier leans in to press a soft kiss to his lips, beaming as he does so.

“I love your face first thing in the morning, so sleepy and cute,” Richie mumbles into his mouth. Their legs are intertwined, Richie leaning gently on top of him as he traces a finger up Eddie’s forearm, pausing at the palm and interlocking their fingers.

He can’t remember ever having felt this happy, this peaceful. He wraps his arms around Richie, pulling him into a deep embrace with his face tucking perfectly between neck and collarbone as he takes in the moment.

“I love you Ri--” Eddie whispers as he pulls away, freezing in horror as he sees Richie’s face. Where before his skin had been flushed and freckled, it has now lost all colour, oozing puss and sagging as if melting from his face. Most of his teeth are broken or missing and his tongue lolls too far out of his mouth, dripping saliva onto Eddie’s face.

A white-hot fear creeps from his stomach up through his chest, tightening around his lungs and throat like a creeping vine. He goes to scream but finds no air to do so. Frozen in place, he watches in horror as Richie’s eyes open to reveal piercing yellow orbs, his mouth grimacing into a horrific smile revealing rows of sharp, dripping teeth.

He can’t move. He can’t breathe.

Cracking open Its jaw with a sickening crunch, not-quite-Richie’s head arches back into a screaming laugh - all too familiar to Eddie.

I can’t move. I CAN’T BREATHE.

“wE ALl fLOaT DowN hERe” the deformed Richie cackles as his jaw cracks open, revealing strange orange lights within. Terrible lights...

(the deadlights)

“NO!” Eddie cried, jolting back out of his bed onto the floor knocking his bedside table on the way, sending his lamp, drink, and inhaler crashing down with him.

He lay stunned for a second as he tried to make sense of this nightmare, heart racing and trying to catch his breath. Reaching instinctively for his inhaler, he pressed two firm pumps into his mouth and desperately tried to steady his breathing. As he felt his chest loosen he slumped back on the now-damp floor, tears streaming.

What was that??

His heart still pounding, he tried to shake Richie’s face from his mind as he got ready for what was already bound to be a stressful day.

“Eddie-bear! I hope you’re nearly ready darling,” his mother cawed from the other side of the bedroom door. “I want to leave extra early to make sure I get a good seat. It’s not every day I get to see you graduate, and goodness knows if I’ll be able to make it all the way to California for the next one!”

Sonia was never going to let that one go. While she had come to accept that Eddie was moving away, she still took every opportunity to vocalize her distaste for the idea.

“Sure ma, I won’t be a minute...” he replied carefully, trying to mask the panic still twitching inside of him.

But this was stupid. To get so worked up about seeing Richie again. It had been five weeks since their fight - five weeks of avoiding each other and faking more illnesses than even his mother could dream up. Bill and Stan had tried several attempts to get Eddie to talk about it, but he brushed them off with vague excuses each time. Now, this horrifying image of the not-quite-Richie settled at the back of its mind, perching uncomfortably over the memories of his friend like some foul, black bird holding on just-too-tight with Its rough, calloused talons.

Straightening up his tie, he took a moment to catch his breath as he studied his reflection in the closet mirror. The bags under his eyes were beginning to look like bruises, and his bottom lip was chapped and sore from nervously chewing on it. Truth be told, he looked a mess, but it was better not to keep his mother waiting. All he had to do was turn up, graduate and get home without bumping into Richie. Easy, right?

Right?

***

“I can’t do this, Bevvie...”

Richie was pacing again. Beverly studied him as she sat on the windowsill of his bedroom, carefully blowing cigarette smoke out into the morning air. His hair was a disheveled nest, and he rubbed at the patchy stubble on his cheeks as he paced the little floor-space his modest room had to offer. He clearly hadn’t showered in a few days, and she was fairly convinced that he hadn’t changed out of his PJ bottoms and that ratty old Pink Floyd t-shirt in a while either.

Of all the Losers, she felt like Richie was the only one she could truly read like a book. To the untrained eye, he was a carefree goofball - all jokes and bad impressions. No one could deny he was intelligent either, he excelled at school and finished top of his theatre class - although it was for that reason Beverly knew there was more to Richie Tozier than met the eye. He was a superb actor, and his best role was played out day-to-day for a whole-world audience. But Beverly wasn’t fooled, she could see past the façade to the boy underneath. Just a boy who was scared - so goddamn scared of the future that it was paralyzing. His mother, his education, his sexuality - all things he was so terrified to approach that he buried them so deep that even he himself might be fooled into thinking everything was A-OK.

But Beverly saw through it all, and this morning she could see the cracks in the façade reaching their breaking point.

“Richie, come here,” she said, not unkindly but with authority.

He continued to pace, waving a hand vaguely in Beverly’s direction as he muttered something to himself.

“Richard. Approach.” This time she was louder, and Richie’s gaze snapped to her in surprise.

“Sir, yes sir,” he said, lifting his waving hand to a mock salute. But there was something missing, Beverly sensed. Some conviction that’s absence left the delivery much heavier on the heart. Her boy was hurting bad.

As he approached she pulled him in close, turning to grasp his hips between her knees. She rested her hands on his cheeks and brought him in to kiss him on the forehead. It was a gentle, lingering kiss, and as she pulled away she felt the tension drain from his body as if she had released some invisible pressure gauge on his subconscious. Popping her cigarette in his mouth, she encouraged him to take a drag. He leaned over her to exhale out the window and moved into a silent embrace, resting his chin on her shoulder as she rubbed the small of his back.

This kind of wordless exchange was not uncommon between the two. All of the Losers shared an intimacy that was unusual to outsiders, but Richie and Bev had a special kind of bond that transcended verbal communication. Beverly knew how to calm him down, and right now he sure as shit needed that.

A couple of minutes passed in comfortable silence as Richie finished the rest of the cigarette, careful to blow the smoke out the window. His parents probably knew he smoked, but he was sure they would wig out if they caught him doing it inside the house. Best to be safe.

“Your mom seemed well this morning,” Beverly spoke after a while as Richie stood back upright.

“Yeah, she’s been better this week. Dad didn’t want her to come today, but she insisted she couldn’t miss it.” He stared absently out the window as he spoke as if accessing an area of emotion he could only address from a distance. “Dad says she shouldn’t be over-exerting herself, but I think he’s just ashamed. Ashamed of what people might think.”

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Richie,” she said, gently stroking his arm. “People are going to notice eventually, and when they do I can’t imagine they’ll be anything but supportive.”

“That’s just it,” he said, finally making eye contact. “He’s proud. Too proud for the sympathy. Ashamed of his sham of a family, ashamed of his queer, theatrical son. I’m sure he’d up and fucking leave us if he wouldn’t be so ashamed of himself.”

Beverly listened. She knew Wentworth Tozier could be distant, but she couldn’t reconcile the man she knew with the picture Richie painted of him. She couldn’t help but think he was painting from the palette of his own doubt and insecurity. But now wasn’t the best time to address that.

She squeezed his hand as she rose to her feet.

“C’mon sweet, let’s get you showered. You smell like you crawled out of Satan’s asshole, and I just got a noseful.’ Richie cracked a smirk at this and gently flicked her on the nose.

“Thanks, Bevvie, you’re a real charmer you know that?” They laughed together and Richie went to clean himself up. 

The sound of a car approaching caused Bev to pause before lighting her next cigarette. Looking out the window she saw Mike pulling up in his dad’s old pickup.

It was old. Old enough for the sound of the shuddery engine and squeaky brakes to be recognizable from a mile off - if the wind were blowing in the right direction. Will Hanlon had replaced it long ago with a more reliable model that didn’t take quite as much good luck and elbow grease to get started, but Mike had worked all last summer on fixing it up and it was as good as his now. It ran smoother now than it ever had in Mike’s lifetime, even if he did have to pause for a few silent prayers before turning the ignition.

Beverly gave him a coy wave before moving to gather her things. She rapped on the bathroom door a couple of times as she passed.

“Come on Trashmouth, our rides here!”

“I am very naked Beverly,” he called back, “I’m pretty sure they don’t let you graduate naked.”

“Only one way to find out!”

Richie chuckled to himself as he heard Beverly head downstairs to be fussed over some more by his mother. Maggie loved his friends, but he’d been hesitant to bring anyone home since she got so bad. She was in her element today, however, making cookies and squeezing fresh lemonade ready for Beverly when she arrived to get ready. 

Just like she used to do for me and Bill when we were kids... Richie pondered, wondering whether she knew him and his friends had grown up now.

He didn’t want to think about it. That would mean he would have to eventually talk about it, and it would be real, and everyone would see how terribly he’s dealing with it. How badly he’s fucked everything up.

It’s okay, we can salvage this, he thinks to himself as he checks his reflection in the mirror. A quick buzz with an electric razor deals with the stubble, but the eye bags aren’t going anywhere. Not great, but it’ll do. Not like Eddie is even going to look at you anyway...

He shook his head, trying to brush off the negative train of thought. 

Positivity, Tozier. Positivity. 

He hadn’t meant to snap at Eddie. He wanted to talk to him. To tell him everything, but every time he felt the words forming they tripped and fell into a stupid joke or sarcastic remark before his brain even registered what his mouth was doing. 

It’s not like Eddie wouldn’t be supportive - quite the opposite... but that’s the problem. If he started talking about it, then he might not stop. He might say everything on his mind, and his feelings for Eddie would break loose in the unfiltered barrage of his thoughts. And then what? Eddie would surely never speak to him again if he knew how he felt about him. Never let him sleep over again, or lay on his bed watching him study. Definitely not pick him up and tease him like he so loved to do. But he’d lose all that soon anyway. After the summer Eddie would be moving away to his new life. He had to say something soon. But how?

Absentmindedly pulling his clothes on, he muttered to himself, practicing ways to broach the subject.

“Eddie, I’m in love with you.” 

No. Too blunt.

“Are you tired? Cause you were running ‘round my head all night - and let’s face it, you’ve got pretty small legs.”

Jesus, no.

“Hey short-stuff, I’ve been in love with you since Grade 6. Please don’t break my heart and leave forever!”

I am so fucked.

Throwing a loose tie around his neck, he grabbed his graduation robes and made his way downstairs. Hopefully Mike would know how to tie this thing properly.

Hopefully Eddie would at least talk to him today.

Hopefully I won’t fuck this up again.

- End of Chapter 5 -

A/N: Will he fuck this up again? Find out next time when I get my act together and bash out another chapter!

Taglist: @richietoaster | @vimra | @wildcardtrip-blog | @starstruck-stargazing  | @noxatn  | @mysterious-fish  | @imnot-reddieforthis  | @fragilenights  | @justanothetfangirl | @tyrror | @angelgoddess13 | @i-believe-in | @cannibalistic-muffins  | @readyeds | @blushingreddie

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[exalted-rebel]

About this translation:

1.)     Free to use. Free to translate/retranslate. Free to copy/repost. Free to alter. Free to save. Free to print. Free to adapt to any medium. No need to notify me. No need to ask my permission. Only two stipulations: Please DO NOT sell it in any way, shape, or form. By doing so under the conditions of international copyright law, you risk dooming us all. And second: I like to be given credit for what portion of the work I have done. Please link back to this site.

2.)     This is a “transformative MTL.” I initially use machine translation (plus consultation with some friends who study Mandarin when I don’t understand a portion of the text), then I essentially regurgitate all the semantic knowledge I’ve acquired for each paragraph into English sentences concocted by my brain. I also utilize beta readers, who are credited for their labor alongside my translation consultants in my acknowledgements at the end of every chapter. This is in many ways a collaborative effort.

3.)     To put to rest any accusations of plagiarism: I DO read other translations of this series and openly use the ExiledRebels translation as a reference- Not for plagiarism, but rather, to avoid it. I consult the ExiledRebels translation regularly to try to make sure what I’m providing is substantially different from the past translator, K’s, attempt. However, sometimes my MTL or other translators have simply already struck upon the best English phrasing for a sentence, in which case I typically opt to keep it as is. No need to reinvent the wheel, in my opinion. I also consider other translators’ work a means of fact-checking my own interpretations of lines to seek an accurate consensus. I highly value the work of those who went before me and would like to give credit where credit is due.

4.)     My intent is to write a translation that reads as fun and effortlessly as any popular English language fantasy novel that one would consume at a Barnes n Noble coffee shop. To this end: I fundamentally do not care if MXTX has been “problematic” in some sense with her word choices or anything of the sort in the original work. I don’t sit down and argue with myself during the translation process about what MXTX really meant or intended with certain words because my first priority is not pinpoint accuracy, but rather creating something that will be enjoyable to my audience. I don’t intend to translate in a way that professes to be wholly accurate to MXTX’s vision. This would be impossible. I don’t know her mind. Translation is inherently a transformative act- and I choose to lean into this. Instead of mulling over MXTX’s intent, I will always choose the path that reads most favorably to me and my beta readers.

5.)     I am not an expert in Chinese culture. This is an obvious detriment with regards to my own comprehension of the original text and means I spend additional time not only translating chapters line by line but painstakingly researching the cultural context of certain phrases, references, and concepts. In some ways however, this can be a benefit to my goals as a translator rather than a detriment. I believe my own baseline ignorance can be beneficial in the sense that I can use myself as a good gauge of what an average Western audience member does or does not know and what doesn’t translate across culture- and I can therefore provide additional explanation in-text after research and consult to help fill in the gaps and make a more seamless reading experience. I aim to make something that is approachable to Western audiences by letting my audience learn with me rather than erasing culture to substitute a more easily understood Western equivalent in the place of foreign concepts.

6.)     I am a bisexual man. I filter the contents of the novel through my own experience as a queer man, and I write with an English-speaking LGBTQ+ (especially mlm) audience explicitly in mind. There’s an argument to be made that danmei as a genre exists for heterosexual women, but part of what draws me to MDZS is its international relevance to the queer community (because hey! This is breaking through a lot of societal barriers regarding censorship of mlm relationships! And the representation is overwhelmingly positive! The main couple actually gets married and raises a child; that’s great!) and because I genuinely, genuinely enjoy the source material as a queer person. When I was first exposed to MDZS, I saw Wei Wuxian as a morally ambiguous figure with glowing red eyes, billowing robes, a haunting flute, and a horde of zombies at his command- he was powerful and cool- …AND ALSO bisexual. In Western culture, a lot of “representation” written by cishet people unintentionally marginalizes us by casting us as either villains, sassy friends of the protagonists, or victims of tragedy- and a lot of popular queer media, in retaliation, attempts to humanize us by making us “strong” but nonthreatening and seeks to create stories that are as “unproblematic” as possible. In my opinion, both approaches have their problems and essentially deny us the full spectrum of our own humanity by imposing limitations on what roles we are allowed to play. Upon seeing Wei Wuxian, in my mind, I thought, “Yeah, this is the kind of representation I want! Just a straight-forwardly cool character, who also isn’t straight! A queer character who is fully allowed to have moral ambiguity, imperfections, sins, and depth.”

There’s also, as a queer reader, a certain wish fulfillment and schadenfreude in watching WWX on the loose. After his reincarnation, he’s in the body of an already openly queer man who is perceived by his peers to be a “lunatic.” WWX has no propriety or status to lose, and thus he gets to just do and say whatever he wants. For anyone who has had to be closeted out of necessity, this can make watching WWX troll homophobic characters with his open sexual proclivity and knowledge of what will offend their sensibilities really enjoyable. Some of the past translation work by ExiledRebels however does not exactly live up to this euphoric experience that I project onto the novel and can be interpreted as homophobic. As a translator, the devil’s in the details to construct a translation wherein rhetorical decisions allow queer readers to be in on the joke rather than the butt of the joke. And for the most part- I do feel uniquely positioned to make a stronger attempt at achieving this than my predecessors.

7.)     I’m invested in MDZS because I think the source material is genuinely strong. The main character is interesting and fun to watch. The main couple is extremely compelling and appeals to a lot of popular romantic tropes. The plot is startling and dramatic. The underlying themes of the novel itself with the duality of “light” and “dark” and how the concepts of “good” and “evil” are socially constructed are great. I’m struck by how much potential there is for this novel to be a sensation among Western audiences, and I feel one of the things preventing that has simply been the absence of an open-access, compelling, professional translation.

- Mod Achilles.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 7/23/21 - SNAKE EYES, OLD, VAL, JOE BELL, SETTLERS, JOLT, MANDIBLES, and More!

So I definitely underestimated Space Jam: A New Legacy last week and way overestimated Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, maybe because I liked the latter way more than the former and probably underestimated the nostalgia factor for Space Jam… oh, yeah, and the fact that it was also on HBO Max, which didn’t really matter since it grossed more than $30 million anyway. Meanwhile, Escape Room, a rare theatrical-only movie, failed to bring people into theaters to see it as it ended up making about half what I expected. Oh, well. It happens. Live and learn.

Hey, guess what? We don’t have any sequels this week! Okay, to be fair, we do have a spin-off/prequel sort of thing, so I guess that counts.

The latter is SNAKE EYES: G.I. JOE ORIGINS (Paramount Pictures/MGM/Skydance), the latest attempt by Hasbro Films to reboot its G.I. Joe franchise with Henry Golding from Crazy Rich Asians playing the popular anti-hero from the oh-so-popular Hasbro toys, comics and cartoons. As you can surmise from the subtitle, Snake Eyes, directed by Robert Schwentke (Red, R.I.P.D.), is an origin story for the most enigmatic member of the Joe team. Much of the rest of the cast are Asian actors or martial arts specialists like Iko Uwais from The Raid and its sequel. The movie does introduce Samara Weaving from Ready or Not as Scarlet, another popular G.I. Joe character, as well as her counterpart, the Baronness, so it’s definitely a G.I. Joe movie still.

It’s been quite some time since the previous Joe movie, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which was released in March 2013 where it opened with $40.5 million, which is less than the previous movie, 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which opened with $54.7 million. The two movies made $150.2 million and $122.5 million respectively, although “Retaliation” did slightly better overseas to gross $375.7 million to Rise of Cobra’s $302 million. Those aren’t huge numbers compared to Hasbro’s other big toy-related franchise, the “Transformers” movies by Michael Bay, which were doing almost $300 million in the U.S. alone. Retaliation may have been hurt by being delayed a number of times putting more time between the original movie and sequel, but it introduced a few great new ideas and characters played by Dwayne “Franchise Viagra” Johnson and Bruce “You Have My Direct Deposit Info, Right?” Willis.

There is an odd connection between “Retaliation” and Snake Eyes, because the former was directed by Jon Chu, who directed Golding in Crazy Rich Asians, the movie that broke him out. Chu had talked forever about doing another G.I. Joe movie but it seems like he’s moved on and has a lot on his plate now, so who knows if we’ll ever get another direct sequel? It’s hard to say if and how Snake Eyes might integrate with previous or future Joe movies.

Either way, the G.I. Joe franchise obviously has a number of dedicated fans who might want to see more of where Snake Eyes came from, and the trailers make it look like it’s in a similar vein as John Wick Chapter 3. Unfortunately, I won’t be seeing this until Tuesday night and reviews won’t hit until Thursday, so I’m going to have to gauge interest in this without knowing whether critics liked this any more than the previous movies. (Okay, reviews went live at 3 this morning, but I was already asleep, having already finished writing this column, as always.)

I can see Snake Eyes pushing for an opening somewhere in the mid-$20 millions, and maybe it will over-perform like last week’s Space Jam: A New Legacy or Mortal Kombat and bring in closer to $30 million, since one presumes that the Joe fanbase hasn’t gone anywhere and would go with this over Old.

Mini-Review: While I’m not really much of a G.I. Joe fan, I am a fan of martial arts, swordplay, and Japanese culture like Yakuza and samurai and such. Not really knowing that much about the title character of Snake Eyes, I was kind of interested in knowing more about him, especially the fact that they cast a real actor to play him for this movie in Henry Golding. (Sorry, not sorry, Ray Park.)

We meet him as a boy with no name, having gotten his nickname from the man who killed his father when he was a boy, urging his dad to roll dice in order to live. He rolls (what else?) snake eyes. Decades later, the boy is a man working for the Yakuza and a particularly nasty guy named Kenta (Takehiro Hira) who nearly kills Snake Eyes before he’s paired with Tommy (Andrew Koji), the prodigal son of the Arashikage clan who also happen to be Kenta’s sworn enemies. Having saved Tommy’s life, Snake Eyes is urged to stay at the family castle and train to join the clan as an assassin. His training involves a series of tests conducted by Blind Master (Peter Mensah) and Hard Master (Iko Uwais), but we soon learn that Snake Eyes is still loyal to Kenta and used his friendship with Tommy as a ruse to infiltrate the castle and steal their greatest weapon. Oh, yeah there’s also giant snakes, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Having seen Robert Schwentke’s The Captain, I know the director can make great movies, and Snake Eyes is probably one of his better American films, at least that I’ve seen. The reason this movie work at all is the casting for most of the may Asian roles are fantastic. I particularly enjoyed seeing Haruke Abe as Akiko, one of the truly kick-ass women in the movie, but the same can be said for Eri Ishida, who plays Tommy’s grandmother and the head of Tommy’s clan, and she too has some great action moments. The point is that Snake Eyes doesn’t suffer from the decision to cast talented Asian actors in the same way that Mortal Kombat did.

The movie’s biggest issues arrive when they try to fit G.I. Joe and Cobra into the mix (about an hour into the movie), because it definitely feels shoehorned into what is becoming a decent movie about honor and loyalty. I have never heard of Spanish actress Ursula Corbero, but she’s absolutely garbage as Baronness, vamping and trying to make the role more comicky apparently. By comparison, I’m generally a fan of Samara Weaving, but she isn’t much better as Scarlett. Since these are both popular G.I. Joe characters, I can’t imagine the fans will be too happy.

A lot of what happens at the end is telegraphed from a mile away, especially if you already figured out where the relationship between Snake Eyes and Tommy is going. (Maybe it isn’t a secret, but in case it isn’t obvious…)

Snake Eyes works fine as the G.I. Joe origin it’s meant to be, but I would have been perfectly fine without any G.I. Joe references at all, and if this was just a cool Asian action flick like The Villainess or some of Takashi Miike’s yakuza films.

Rating: 7/10

M. Night Shyamalan returns to theaters after a brief sojourn into TV with Apple TV+’s Servant (which is great) with his latest high-concept thriller, OLD (Universal Pictures), which involves a family who goes to visit a remote tropical beach where they learn that something on the beach is making them age extraordinarily fast. The movie stars Gael Garcia Bernal, Vicky Krieps from Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, Alex Wolff from Hereditary (and last week’s Pig), and Thomasin McKenzie from Jojo Rabbit. It’s a pretty great ensemble cast for sure, but how many of those actors have a proven track record to bring people into theaters? Not many, but will that matter?

Shyamalan has had an amazing career as a filmmaker in terms of box office with six movies that grossed over $100 million (and a seventh that came close), one movie (Signs) that grossed over $200 million, and then his early film, The Sixth Sense, which came close to $300 million domestically. (This is all domestic, if you didn’t figure it out.) Shyamalan’s movies have done very well overseas, often matching the amount the movies made in the States. Shyamalan’s last two movies, 2017’s Split and 2019’s Glass, took the director back to his earlier movie, 2000’s Unbreakable, starring Bruce Willis, and both those movies grossed more. (To be fair, ticket prices have increased a lot since 2000.) Glass opened with $40 million in January 2019, roughly the same as Split’s opening, and that’s a fairly standard opening for the filmmaker.

Old doesn’t have that connection to a popular past movie, nor does it really have the starpower of some of Shyamalan’s movies, so it’s definitely at a disadvantage and possibly more in line with his 2015 “comeback” thriller, The Visit, which grossed $65.2 million from an opening of $25.2 million.

Horror movies and thrillers don’t necessarily need to have big name stars but it doesn’t hurt -- look at Ethan Hawke’s forays into genre with Sinister and The Purge for Blumhouse -- and though any of the cast could appear on talk shows to promote the film, I’m not sure if any of them could be considered a draw at this point. (Maybe Alex Wolff, since he’s quite popular among young women for his horror movies and music career.)

Any way you look at it, Shyamalan has become a filmmaker whose name on a film helps drive people to see the movies in theaters, and that will be the case here, as well. You combine the Shyamalan name with an easy-to-sell concept like a beach that ages people (vs. the relaxation beaches normally provide)

My review for this one will be over at Below the Line later on Thursday, but I’m presuming that critics will be mixed on this one at best. If they go negative, which I could see happening, that might theoretically hurt the movie’s chances, although it should still be good for opening weekend.

Because of this, and because Old might lose some of its male audiences to the above Snake Eyes -- oddly, neither of these movies will be available on streaming day and date, mind you -- Shyamalan’s latest will probably end up in the mid-to-high-teens, although it might be able to make $20 million in a push.

1. Snake Eyes (Paramount/MGM/Skydance) - $24.1 million N/A

2. Old (Universal) - $17 million N/A

3. Space Jam: A New Legacy (Warner Bros.) - $15 million -51%

4. Black Widow (Marvel/Disney) - $13.5 million -48%

5. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (Sony) - $4.5 million -49%

6. F9 (Universal) - $4.4 million -43%

7. The Boss Baby: Family Business (Universal/DreamWorks Animation) - $2.6 million -45%

8. The Forever Purge (Universal) - $2.1 million -49%

8. A Quiet Place Part II (Paramount) - $1.6 million -25%

10. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (Focus) - $1 million -47%

There are a few more theatrical releases, but let’s start by getting into this week’s “Chosen One”, which is…

Leo Scott and Ting Poo’s doc VAL (Amazon) refers to actor Val Kilmer, who goes through his entire career in this fascinating portrait in which we see him in the present day dealing with the debilitating throat cancer that’s nearly taken his voice. Culled from almost four decades of archival footage, most of it shot by Kilmer himself, the film puts together an amazing story of Kilmer’s life as a working actor, but also captures his family life, his tough relationship with his father and how his marriage and career deteriorated over time.

It really surprised me how much I loved this movie, because honestly, I’ve never been a particularly big Kilmer fan, other than a few favorites like Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, and probably a few others. In fact, I finally saw Top Gun for the first time a few months ago, and I wasn’t even that big a fan, as I don’t think it aged well. But what’s great about Val, the movie, is that you get to see some of Kilmer’s own footage from on set and off for movies like Top Gun and even The Island of Doctor Moreau, which he admits was a complete disaster, a shame since it was the only chance to work with his idol, Marlon Brando (who barely shows up to set).

What’s particularly eerie is hearing a younger Val narrating the film, clearly recorded from before he was hit with the debilitating throat cancer, but the filmmakers did a great job editing all of Kilmer’s footage and words into a surprisingly cohesive (and still very linear) story.

Besides seeing the footage and how it meshed with Kilmer’s narration, I also greatly appreciated the score by Garth Stevenson, as well as the song choices, which includes some familiar tunes but always in a different way than what we’re used to. I’m really curious if Val picked some of the tunes himself, but whoever the music supervisor was on this film, really did an amazing job getting songs that meshed well with Stevenson’s music.

Val is a terrific portrait of an actor who probably never got the level of respect he deserved , but it’s also a film that will make you think of your own life and mortality.

Mark Wahlberg stars in and as JOE BELL (Roadside Attractions/Vertical) in this drama directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green, who helmed the excellent and underrated Monsters and Men. Green didn’t write this one, but it was written by Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry, the Oscar-winning writers of Brokeback Mountain. With that in mind, you’d expect something more interesting, but as I watched Joe Bell, I actually wasn’t aware that it was based on a real person/story.

The long and short of it is that Wahlberg’s Joe Bell is a father who has decided to walk across the country from Oregon to New York City to talk to anyone who will listen about bullying, and why it’s bad. Yup, that’s it. That’s the movie. To be fair, we do get to see Joe spending time with his gay son Jadin (Reed Miller), and those are generally the best parts of the film, but one thing that really didn’t work for me was the structure, especially the time spent (SPOILER!) pretending that Jadin was already dead before Joe went on his cross-country walk. It’s something that’s casually revealed when Joe stops in a gay bar for a drink and mentions it to a drag queen.

Otherwise, Joe Bell is a movie that leans so heavily on the screenplay and Wahlberg’s performance, which is better than others we’ve seen from him but isn’t that great. Overall, the film is just so dour, glum and frankly, quite dull, that there’s very little that can make it more interesting, especially since the narrative and structure makes the whole thing kind of obvious.

Maybe there’s a better version of this movie but when you get to what is quite a grim ending and then you realize that it’s a true story, you kind of wish that thing called “artistic license” was used more liberally to make a better movie. All Joe Bell does is state the obvious: that bullying is bad, especially towards people different and possibly more fragile than you.

Rating: 6/10

I'm not sure how wide Roadside plans on releasing Joe Bell, but I'd expect 400 to 500 theaters, but I'm not sure that's enough to get it into the Top 10.

Wyatt Rockefeller’s feature film directorial debut, SETTLERS (IFC Midnight) takes place on Mars, and at first, it deals with a couple (played by Johnny Lee Miller and Sofia Boutella) living on a remote base there with their young daughter Remmy (Brooklynn Prince), but it’s soon attacked by a stranger who wants them to leave. The movie premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last month and will get a release into select theaters on Friday as well as be released in various digital formats.

Settlers starts off as if it might be a home invasion movie with a sci-fi twist, but that aspect of it is fleeting, as it soon becomes a drama where the stranger Jerry (Ismael Cruz Cordova) moves in with Remmy and her mother, and then other stuff happens. Oh, yeah, there’s also an adorable robot named Steve.

Don’t get me wrong, because I genuinely liked Settlers, although I think I was expecting something more genre-y since it’s being released by IFC Midnight. Because of the setting, I was expecting something more science fiction or home invasion, and I guess comparing it to a Western would be fair due to the wilderness setting, but really, it’s a character drama about how three people need to coexist together, especially when one of them is a stranger in their midst. Seeing how Boutella’s character slowly warms up to Jerry while Remmy is still suspicious and even angry at her mother accepting the stranger.

In many ways, this is Prince’s movie, because she’s so good in this role that she almost supports the adult actors by leading. Prince is so compelling that she’s even able to keep you interested when Remmy is just wandering around, exploring various aspects of the environment around their home base. That is, at least until the last act when the film jumps forward a number of years and Nell Tiger Free (from Servant) takes over the role of Remmy (quite fluidly, in fact).

This creates a very different dynamic between Jerry and Remmy that might feel a bit pervy to some women (okay, most women). Cordova is also quite good in a role that’s tough to sell, because he isn’t the typical bad man.

Settlers is a quiet and subdued film with not a lot of action or dialogue for that matter, but it reminds me quite a bit of Moon, and it’s a similarly solid debut by Rockefeller, showing him to be a strong storyteller able to get strong performances out of his relatively small cast. (Oh, and hey, I should have an interview with Rockefeller next week over at Below the Line.)

Rating: 7/10

Kate Beckinsale stars in the action-thriller JOLT (Amazon), which hits Amazon Prime Video this Friday. It's directed by Tanya Wexler (Buffaloed), and in the movie, Beckinsale plays Lindy, a woman with a debilitating condition that gives her insane strength when she gets angry, and she gets angry a LOT. But no, this is not like the upcoming She-Hulk series, though it’s an incredible action movie for sure.

Beckingsale’s Lindy has something called “intermittent explosive disorder” which I’m not sure if that’s a real thing (probably not), but it gives her incredible strength when she gets mad, and it forces her to wear a vest that gives a huge electrical charge when she pushes a button. So yeah, the movie feels a lot like Crank if it had a woman lead instead of Jason Statham. Honestly, if that alone doesn’t sell you on Jolt, then this movie probably isn’t gonna be for you.

It actually starts out as a pseudo-rom-com as Lindy meets a nice guy, played by Jai Courtney, but after a few dates and some great sex, he’s killed, and Lindy is upset but even more furious than normal, swearing to find the man responsible for killing her kinda-boyfriend. So yeah, Jolt quickly turns into a revenge thriller, but it’s one with lots of Beckinsale kicking ass, some great car chases, and lots of funny doofuses getting their asses handed to them, both figuratively and literally.

Surprisingly, Wexler didn’t write this one -- the screenplay’s Scott Wascha -- but her reputation and previous films helped her put together a great cast around Beckinsale, including Stanley Tucci as her therapist who set her up with the shock vest, and Bobby Cannavale and Laverne Cox as the detectives investigating the death of Lindy’s beau, all three of them offering some great humorous dynamics to the mix.

That’s probably why Jolt is quite satisfying, not only in terms of being a female empowerment movie, but also not taking itself too seriously and always keeping the comedy on the darker side. For instance, there’s a scene where Lindy throws live babies at Cox to distract her, but what do you expect from a movie that enjoys giving its main character literal electroshock therapy?

So yeah, I definitely liked Jolt as an action-comedy. Maybe it was a bit too violent for my tastes, at times, but it definitely is everything I hoped to get out of Gunpowder Milkshake last week, and honestly, I had no idea Wexler had this kind of movie in her.

Rating: 7/10

Quirky French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux (Rubber) returns with MANDIBLES (Magnet), a comedy of sorts about a pair of dumbass friends -- Manu (Grégoire Ludig from Keep Your Eye Out) and David Marsais’ Jean-Gab, who steal a car for a job only to find a giant fly inside its trunk, so they decide to train it to rob banks for them.

Yup, it’s another weird one from Dupieux, and honestly, it took me a long time to really get into it, as these two doofuses get into all sorts of predicaments (and who have an amusing “secret” handshake). Where it really takes off is when they meet a group of vacationers, including the one and only Adèle Exarchopoulos as Agnes, a woman who mistakes one of the guys as a high-school lover. Things just get zanier from there as the guys try to sneak in their giant trained fly -- now named Dominique -- into the vacation home where they’re staying with a bunch of Agnes suspicious friends and her brother. (There’s also one woman who literally shouts everything due to a condition, and at first, it was more aggravating than funny, but like everything else in this, she gets funnier over time.)

In fact, after I got to the end of the movie, I ended up going back to rewatch the first half again to see if I missed anything, and surprise, surprise, the two guys and their antics had definitely grown on me by the end, making it easier to enjoy a second view. I certainly wouldn’t recommend any of Dupieux’s movies to just anyone, and that goes for Mandibles, but if you enjoyed the quirky humor of Rubber or last year’s Deerskin, then you might not hate this one, but it’s also not a movie I’d recommend you rush out to see in theaters.

Rating: 6.5/10

A few more words about a few other docs… (As usual, I didn’t get to watch nearly as much as I hoped to get to this week.)

I did get to watch Garret Price’s WOODSTOCK '99: PEACE, LOVE AND RAGE (HBO), which will hit the cable network on Friday. Honestly, I barely remember it, and I’m not even sure I watched it PPV or at all, because there weren’t really that many acts at this year’s festival that interested me. I mean, Limp Bizkit? Korn? Rage Against the Machine? I wasn’t really into any of those in the late ‘90s, and certainly not my sworn-enemy Jewel or Sheryl Crow or Alannis Morrissette, the festival’s token women who were slotted into separate days. Even so, Price is a pretty decent documentation of all the awfulness at that particular festival from portapotties mixing shit in with all the mud or the many cases of sexual harassment, assault and flat-out rape that took place on the campgrounds. I’m sure I heard most of it but seeing it put together like this in the film’s two-hour running time just makes it harder to watch without tearing up. A pretty solid doc that I’m not sure I could fully recommend, but hey, I’ve never been to one of these festivals and after watching this movie, I probably never will. (It is interesting how Price contrasts the disaster of Woodstock ‘99 with the hugely-successful Coachella, which started not long afterwards.)

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to Jamila Wignot’s doc AILEY (NEON) about choreographer Alvin Ailey, making this the second movie about dance or choreography in a row. It opens in New York this weekend, in L.A. theaters next Friday July 30 and then everywhere on August 6.

Then there’s ALL THE STREETS ARE SILENT (Greenwich), Jeremy Elkin’s doc that covers the crossroads between skateboard and hip-hop in downtown Manhattan during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. For whatever reason, I wasn’t able to get around to this, although it features Rosario Dawson, Bobbito Garcia, Stretch Armstrong, Moby (him again?!), Fab 5 Freddy, and a lot of other rappers I’ve never heard of.

Also hitting HBO Max on Thursday is THROUGH OUR EYES (HBO Max/Sesame Workshop docuseries), a series of four 30-minute films designed for adults to watch with their kids age 9 and up, dealing with things like homelessness, parental incarceration, military caregiving, and climate displacement. Sounds fun.

Hitting Netflix on Wednesday is TROLLHUNTERS: RISE OF THE TITANS (Netflix), a movie based on the popular series produced by Guillermo del Toro, which I’ve also never see, so I guess I don’t have a lot to say about this.

Lastly, premiering this week is the second season of Apple TV+’s Emmy-nominated TED LASSO which is probably gonna win a bunch of those Emmys going by previous awards shows. It’s a very popular show. I’m still on Season 1, myself.

Other films I didn’t get to… (sorry, respective publicists!)

HERE AFTER (Vertical)

FEAR AND LOATHING IN ASPEN (Shout Studios!)

Next week, it’s a doozy! Disney finally releases Jungle Cruise, starring Dwayen Johnson and Emily Blunt, while there are two smaller movies looking to make some money, Thomas McCarthy’s Stillwater (Focus Features), starring Matt Damon, and David Lowery’s The Green Knight (A24), starring Dev Patel. Should be an interesting one.

[thesymphonyoflife]

2018 Favorite Movies

It’s been a while since I’ve made one of these lists. This year was filled with great foreign films and documentaries, as (spoiler alert) you will see many of below. As always, I have not seen every movie of the year, but I think I have gotten better over the years at understanding what kinds of movies I would find interesting, and what directors I will always look out for, so in that regard, I think I have been as exhaustive as I can to make this list.

Honorable Mentions:

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: I’ll watch anything the Coen’s do, and if history suggests anything, I’ll probably like it. This is one of the most unique formats I’ve seen a Coen film (anthology), but I’m glad I got to see their take on this film format, because I do enjoy films like this (Paris, Je’Taime, and Wild Tales are two of my favorites). This film did a good job of keeping with the overall western theme they were going for, even if some of the stories were more engaging than others. The timings were a little uneven as well, as some stories were (and felt) longer than others, which kind of threw off the pacing and rhythm of the film. If I know the Coen’s though, they might not be done exploring the genre of the Old Western.

Green Book: One of the more “meh” best picture winners of the past several years, maybe since The Artist. Viggo Mortenson did a great job and the chemistry between him and Mahershala Ali felt authentic, but I wish there wasn’t so much cheese spread across the film. I wish I could have a caution sign that pops up in front of a director’s eyes before they shoot a scene, reading: “Does this scene require this much drama (cheese) to effectively move the plot or build upon the character(s) in an appropriate manner? If it is not a resounding YES, please RECONSIDER altering the scene to be more authentic!!” I’m rambling and may be piling on this movie for the shortcomings of a lot of Oscar “bait,” but I (and many others) see it every year and every instance of it gets more and more frustrating.

They Shall Not Grow Old: War documentaries are nothing new, but I was thoroughly impressed by this take on the documentary format by Peter Jackson. I highly recommend sticking around to the very end of the film (after the credits) to see a mini-documentary on how they made the film and their thinking behind the structure, layout, and overall design of the film. The amount of work they put into the project is even more apparent after seeing that, and it just underscores the grand scale a world war was. 

Minding The Gap: This documentary does a great job of utilizing time to its advantage. I’m not talking about run time or pace, but rather telling a fluid story about several people over a period of several years. It felt very natural and allowed you to take a journey with these people and understand their story even more. It’s a documentary that is easy to empathize with, not just for the struggles the characters deal with but more so the journey the film takes us through, and how we can relate to the themes of childhood, family, community, friends, dreams, escapes, our future, mortality, and many other heady themes. 

Cold War: There’s a lot to unravel when watching this movie, from the shot compositions, to the juxtaposition of the music, to the journey of the relationship between Wiktor and Zula. I love the way music is used as a storytelling device, and the beauty of the minimalist style of music plays perfectly with the beautiful cinematography (black and white never looked so colorful). A lot was done well, but the pacing and the ending kept it from being an even better film.

10. Burning

I admit I needed to be aided in terms of figuring out what all happened in this film exactly. But once I started delving into what other people had to say about the film, I think that’s exactly what was supposed to happen. I love how even as slow prodding of a film this is, it still manages to simultaneously leave time for you to think and not at the same time. For as many times as I felt like I was going to fall asleep, I still feel like the pacing of this film was done as best as it could have been. This is a film where ambiguity is the end goal, and that’s perfectly ok, especially with how the film is laid out and shot. 

9. Eighth Grade

The passage of time is never kind to us. Even with the most positive outlook on life, and a happy childhood or upbringing, there is just something about reflecting on a period of time in your life (i.e. nostalgia) that brings about an inherent sadness. Not because the memories may be sad or because you wish you could go back to that time in your life, but because there is this huge amount of pressure we give ourselves when assessing our impact through the lens of time. A time capsule is the perfect representation of this concept. I have done this many times now (it is ever so easy to do now in the age of the internet. Hey, even this blog is basically a time capsule!) and each time it makes me feel like I have not grown or accomplished as much as I (maybe unfairly) should have in that time period, however long that may have been. I think it is just incredibly difficult to gauge how much we will actually change or “accomplish” in a given amount of time, or at a specific age. There is this pressure that comes naturally with time that hits everyone, whether or not it is fair or not. It is that constant reminder of the competitiveness in the world, and the brutality of time that may be wasted, which is one of the scariest and worst feelings anyone can have.

Rambling aside, I thought this film did an excellent job of encapsulating this thought in the eyes of the main character. It felt odd being so disconnected but also connected at the same time with the tribulations of the main character, as the setting and environment was so different from my childhood, but the fundamental change we all go through during that time period was very much the same. It’s tough to capture a specific time frame in our lives (especially in our formative years), just because nothing is ever static during our lives, we are in constant dynamic shifts. But this film was brutally funny and sad at times, which, if anything, encapsulates so much of what life at that time (and all others too) is all about.

Oh and I thought the music was outstanding (content and timing).

8. Roma

Professional filmmaking. That is one thought I had after coming out of this movie. As much as the story felt heartfelt and authentic (because it was), the film really showcased a director (Alfonso Cuaron) who knows his style, how to compose shots, and how to invoke authentic emotions. I go back and forth debating whether I think going with black and white was truly needed, but one thing is for certain in that it helps give the film a “timeless” feel to it. One that I know he thought about when making it, in that I believe he did not want to simply capture a snippet in time, but rather focus on the story and characters at hand, one which generations to come would relate to in their own way. 

7. Shoplifters

This was another foreign film that had a timeless feel to it. It’s always nice to watch foreign films, for a multitude of reasons, but in particular to be immersed in another culture for a brief period of time. That is certainly the case in this film, as the production design and sets do an outstanding job of putting you right into this world and help establish the atmosphere which helps understand the characters motivations and story a little more. The film had a unique plot and great acting, and the pacing felt very natural and thought out. 

6. If Beale Street Could Talk

I love the way dialogue is shown in this film. The composition of the shots, the intensity of the delivery, everything is heightened when there is dialogue in this film. And it is imperative that this be the case, as this is what drives the fairly simplistic plot along. This is certainly a film that shows more than it says, but Barry Jenkins does that extremely well in this case as he does a good job of portraying the themes in subtle ways that give the audience just the right amount of room to interpret themselves. It is always a difficult balancing act, in dialogue heavy films, to spell things out too much or show too little leaving audiences lost. Another aspect this film does well is the music. The score is imperative in setting the mood in atmospheric, melancholic movies such as this one, and Nicholas Britell does a fantastic job creating a nuanced, rich, and evocative score, and implementing at opportune moments throughout the film. There are some directors that just “click” when watching their films. Barry Jenkins is starting to become one of them.

5. The Favourite

One of the best part of watching movies (or art in general) is when you see something truly unique that it changes your perspective on what you like or how it can be portrayed. For Yorgos Lanthimos, his films have changed my perspective on comedy and how I feel it can be portrayed. His films have the shell of a distinguished drama, but the core of a slapstick comedy. I never knew comedy could be so funny and portrayed so differently than how he does it, in particular here in The Favourite. The acting, writing, and plot all work seamlessly together to create genuinely hilarious moments all while advancing the story, developing strong characters, and establishing strong themes that lead to a wonderfully crafted ending, wrapping up the film in a beautiful way. I can’t say enough good things about this film, and am in awe at how someone can craft a style and execute it so brilliantly in such a short amount of time (just 3 films to date). He’s certainly made the list of “directors I will see films they release no matter what unless they make 3 bad movies in a row.”

4. Spider Man: Into The Spider Verse

I have admittedly been far behind on my superhero movies, but I got a recommendation to see this one and I am extremely glad I did. I hope, when we look back at this decade of films, this one is the example of how much animation has grown over the years. The colors, the creativity, and even the technicality of it are all showcased in this film, but what makes this film so great is that it does not rest on just this alone. The characters, even with the high amount of them, are all relatable in some way, contribute to the story in their own unique way, and help establish this film as one different than any other superhero movie. The film does an excellent job of crafting a story truly fit for anyone, and it is a great film to discuss with others because they will certainly have a different way to relate to the story/characters. So that is a not so subtle suggestion to not only watch this film but tell others about it and talk about it with them!

3. Isle Of Dogs

This list is just starting to sound like an expose on my favorite directors, but it is hard not to talk about the director for this film, because it is so inherently Wes Anderson-ian. I find it incredible that he can utilize his techniques and creativity in similar ways for such nuanced and unique stories. Characters are always at the root of his stories, and there are no shortage of good ones here. He has an uncanny ability to write and craft characters around the voice actors as well, as it is so seamless in the way the voice acting portrays the characters in this film. His writing style never ceases to garner guffaws throughout the film, and I am always impressed with the amounts of twists and turns the story takes. It is a craft he has certainly mastered and one that makes it easy to just sit back and enjoy everything that unfolds before your eyes. The film does a great job of being topical as well, with underlying satire that is tastefully done and never over the top. Wes Anderson’s movies are always so dense that it’s so easy to watch over and over again and find new things to fall in love with. It’s one of the reasons why he’s one of my favorite directors and also on the list that I mentioned above, although I’m starting to think it’s pretty unlikely he’ll make a movie I dislike.

2. Free Solo

After the initial shock you have when trying to comprehend the magnitude of the athletic feat Alex Honnold is trying to accomplish, you start to shift your attention to the filmmaking. And that is almost (ok, not really) as impressive. The shots need to do the scale justice, and I think they did an excellent job of not only crafting a well shot film but also immerse you in this world many of us cannot even comprehend. I think they also do a good job of outlining this as much of a character study than anything, because it really is imperative to showcase the reasoning behind his actions, just for us mere mortals to understand a little better. And it turns out, in my eyes, he is just a supremely motivated individual seeking perfection and solitude. And as a result it is easy to come out of the movie exhilarated, energized, and motivated to accomplish any goals you may have. It’s a mark only a true story could do. Even if everything he does is so hard to believe.

1. Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

“If you want to truly do a bio-pic justice, just make a documentary.” 

I made that statement after watching Bohemian Rhapsody, but the juxtaposition between that film and this one even more so justifies that statement. I won’t get into my thoughts on Bohemian Rhapsody, but I will just say that the documentary medium is really the only way to do Fred Rogers’ story justice, just so that you can show audiences, in this day and age, someone like that really did exist.

I will preface by saying I did not watch Mr. Rogers very often as a kid growing up. I knew when it was on, but I was more into Arthur and Wishbone on PBS. I also think the timing was everything, as there was a limited window to watch TV (cough I mean do homework) after school before my parents came home. And that’s ok, for his story does not need to be fully appreciated by watching him as a kid. Sure, I would love to go back to my childhood and sit down and watch him through the eyes of my inquisitive, imaginative young self, but I think no matter how or when you digest his story or listen to his words, you will wholeheartedly appreciate who he was and what he stood for. 

I really started to take a deeper dive on him in high school, when he had just passed away and there were news stories on him. I watched some youtube videos and gained an appreciation for what he did, but it was only when I was thrust into a situation where I had an impact on another kid did I feel like his story was more pertinent and important than ever. I mentored an elementary school kid through the national honor society for 2 years during high school, and as an introvert, that terrified me. What scared me more was that these kids were there for a specific reason, either hardship at home or just needing someone there in their lives. I did not know how to communicate to people older than me, let alone people younger than me. I didn’t know what to do. So I remembered what Mr. Rogers would do. He would talk to kids like his equals. And I did just that. I would play games, run around in the snow making snowmen, make arts and crafts (many of which his was better than mine), and just try to take his mind off of things. If I felt like it was appropriate, I would ask him how things were going. He wouldn’t always answer at first, which was fine, but once he got more and more comfortable with me around, he would open up a little bit at a time. And believe me, just that little bit was some of the most rewarding moments I have had in my life. It wasn’t a normal feeling of success or accomplishment either. It was a feeling of unparalleled joy by seeing someone else happy and growing as a human being. 

Joey, if you’re reading this, just know that I miss you, hope you are doing well, and I hope you continue to instill the values that Mr. Rogers had on others around you as well.

That was the power of Mr. Rogers. The power of being an inherently good, kind individual was a weapon we could use in times of struggle or hardship. Being a decent, respectful individual has gotten me more than any textbook or class ever did (not to say those aren’t important). It’s just that life is made up of all the relationships you have with people. The memories you have. The friendships. The laughter. The fights. The adventures. All made better by people at your side, and all made better (and easier) by living it with kindness in your heart. 

They say that a mark of success is to leave an impact on society. Well I would say that Mr. Rogers did that and much more, as he will hopefully force society to to teach the next generation to be better, which in turn will teach the generation after to be even better than the one before. It’s the best pyramid scheme ever invented.

Even as I grow older, I will always refer to him as Mr. Rogers. I will always look up to him, and I don’t know if I could ever duplicate what he did at that grand of a scale which his accomplishments were. But if I just impact a few people in my life, and live it with joy, imagination, kindness, and respect, I think even he would say that’s a job well done. 

The word neighborhood has always had a positive connotation in my life. Growing up, that meant friends, sports, sleepovers, endless summer nights, and no worries. Now, I associate that word with childhood, friends, kindness, respect, and joy. 

And Mr. Rogers.

Thanks, Mr. Rogers.

[fission-mailure]

Well, since I asked you over skype and you told me to send you an ask. Go on. Write the essay.

t h e  c o n t r a c t  i s  f o r g e d

It’s this combination of a very derisive superiority complex, glorification, and – idk, maybe fear?

Plucking examples from IBO’s fandom: For a lot of its run, a running talking point was ‘Japanese people just can’t handle this show, it’s too dark and real for them to cope with, unlike us Western fans.’ The ‘evidence’ for this seemed to be that one incident in the first series had drawn some complaints – but those complaints mostly revolved around its time slot (it was in a time slot usually reserved for children’s shows), and were specifically about a scene where the central character shoots an unarmed prisoner of war several times, which, tbh, I think would be a touchy subject anywhere.

It’s not limited to IBO, either – I’ve seen Digimon fans remarking that Japanese people can’t appreciate the show like Westerners can, and I’ve certainly seen it plenty from toku fans. Conversely, when there’s evidence of American influence (like Bandai America’s involvement in Kyuranger, or when a toku show recycles designs from an American counterpart), it’s very often lauded.

The thrust of this attitude – which is totally absurd, because it hinges on assuming that the show’s very own creators cannot understand their work the same way some weebs can – seems to be this insistence that while these shows are made in Japan, in Japanese, by Japanese people, they are secretly intended for consumption by Westerners alone (and, let’s be real about who usually has this attitude, by young American men between the ages of 18-30).

But we also simultaneously get the complete opposite attitude, usually from the exact same people: One thing that almost always springs up as a gauge of something’s quality is ‘well, Japanese audiences hate/love it.’ Oddly, this usually involves using, like Nico-Nico polls as a source, which aren’t reliable, but are an accessible source of data on this subject.

Similarly, when parts of a work are changed, the tack often becomes ‘nasty Western people altering the pure Japanese narrative.’ You got this with Bravely Second, when – at the behest of the Japanese audience, in fact – Square-Enix softened their horribly tonally dissonant moral choice sidequest schtick. You also got it when Nintendo altered Tokyo Mirage Session’s costumes to be less grotesquely over-sexual, with people going so far as to say that horrific over-sexualisation was ‘part of the Japanese media experience.’

So, like, you get this weird contradiction of attitudes, with people insisting one moment that Japanese people aren’t really the target audience, but the moment they need to legitimise a viewpoint, it immediately becomes a case of ‘Japanese people agree with me, whatever my viewpoint may be, and that means I’m right, since they understand this best.’

(Which is not even getting started on the ‘I want to move to Japan/I’d fit in so much better there/I would eat ramen every day,’ weeb attitude.)

And then kind of lurking behind it all, there’s almost this subtext of just outright terror. Like, for a lot of these fans, it is genuinely concerning that there’s this form of entertainment which they enjoy but which they have absolutely no control over – they can’t leverage their position as consumers to get what they want, because they’re a tertiary consumer base at best. So you’ll get people conjuring just the most bizarre fantasies out of thin air, either ones that reassure them (”Japanese producers all read English and read anime forums to figure out what to do next,” is one I’ve seen) or that feed their paranoia (”Japanese writers and producers want to sink their own work because they’re jealous and bitter,” is also one I’ve seen).

(Which is not even getting started on the heavy vein of sexual insecurity that runs through a lot of toku fanboys. Like, when toku fanboys sulk about how protagonists are ‘girly,’ or flip their shit about said female fans finding them attractive (which is a thing they flip their shit about basically weekly), the conversation always eventually comes around to ‘lol, Japanese men are so feminine and sexless and unattractive, not like us … n-not like us … not like … n-n-n-not l-l-like …’)

So, yeah, I think that covers, like, sixty percent of it all.

[pixelpoppers]

Cross-Phase Challenge

CrossCode's aggressive combination of genres also results in a particularly brutal challenge profile.

I previously wrote an article defining four "phases of challenge" - in short, preparation is getting ready to deal with challenges (research, practice, grinding), strategy is defining a framework for handling challenges (making plans, choosing loadouts), tactics is making choices in response to specific situations (game state awareness, choosing what to do in the moment), and action is communicating the choice back into the game (hitting the right buttons at the right time).

Different players have different tolerance and interest levels for the different phases, which has implications for a game's potential audience. Having high tactics challenge, for example, limits a game's audience to people who enjoy that kind of challenge. Having high tactics challenge and high strategy challenge limits the audience to people who enjoy both, which is a smaller group.

CrossCode has high challenge in all four phases. Here's the breakdown as I see it for the game's main loops of exploration, combat, and puzzles:

Exploration: Note the location of quest givers, not-yet-openable chests, not-yet-passable obstacles, and other features you may need to return to later.

Combat: Understand the wide range of build options in the skill tree. Gain levels to boost stats and get skill points. Learn the behavior and weaknesses of a variety of enemy types. Navigate the trading economy to figure out how and where to get good gear and items - and farm the required trade goods.

Puzzles: Understand the interactions between all your neutral and elemental abilities and the variety of world objects that make up puzzles.

Strategy:

Exploration: Determine possible paths through an area to reach chests and other locations that are accessible through parkour. Decide when it's time to return to previously-inaccessible chests or areas.

Combat: Pick a skill build that complements your play style and accommodates a plan to use your abilities against the combat challenges you're likely to encounter. Consider the many fiddly stat- and modifier-based trade-offs of the available gear options and decide what to optimize for. Recognize the behavior and weaknesses of enemies and adjust your approach accordingly. Be aware of enemy locations so you can chain battles and maximize your combat rank (which is necessary for getting the best trade goods). Decide when it's time to return to previously-too-difficult side battles.

Puzzles: Understand the through-line and implicit goal of each individual puzzle and make a plan using your abilities to accomplish that goal.

Tactics:

Exploration: Recognize which platforms are reachable through parkour and will bring you closer to the area you are trying to reach.

Combat: React to enemy positioning and behavior and use the right skills and the right attacks at the right time. Switch to the right elemental attacks at the right time, but keep an eye on your elemental overload gauge and switch to neutral attacks at the right time. Recognize enemy telegraphs and avoid their attacks so you don't fail the fight and can continue your fight chain to increase your combat rank.

Puzzles: Watch the current state of the components of each puzzle and apply the right ability at the right time to advance the state toward the goal.

Action:

Exploration: Position and aim yourself to successfully execute parkour jumps.

Combat: With split-second timing, precisely position yourself and aim your attacks to damage your enemies and avoid taking damage yourself.

Puzzles: With split-second timing, precisely position yourself and aim your abilities to execute the correct action to advance the puzzle state.

To be clear: it isn't just that there's challenge in every phase - it's that there's high challenge in every phase.

Exploration preparation is difficult because the maps are very low-detail, your ability to mark them is limited (you can, for example, stamp that an area contains a chest, but not whether it's a normal chest that you haven't found a way to reach, a chest that requires a key you don't have, or a chest that requires multiple keys you don't have), and the need to backtrack comes up frequently (through chests you can't open yet, barriers you can't pass yet, the need to find and return to spread-out quest-givers, and quests that you probably can't really handle at the time you can first take them). Combat preparation is difficult because enemy types have differing behavior and weaknesses that you can really only figure out through experimentation and the best gear comes from the labyrinthine trading economy (with a huge number of spread-out traders offering gear that often requires intermediate trade items that you may have to trade for elsewhere, making it hard to understand your actual options, and which sometimes require trade goods that only come from completing battles with a high combat rank, which makes farming more difficult). Puzzle preparation is difficult because there are so many factors from the wide number of tools at your disposal and the high number of puzzle elements with their own interactions.

Exploration strategy is difficult because parkour paths can be quite long, often extending through multiple screens, and there are no waypoint markers. Combat strategy is difficult due to the wide array of build and gear options with fiddly stat trade-offs which make far more difference to your combat effectiveness than your experience levels and the variety of enemy behavior and weaknesses that are vital to being able to deal and avoid damage efficiently enough to win. Puzzle strategy is difficult because puzzles can become quite long and require many different interactions to complete, to the point where it can be hard to even understand the goal of the puzzle you're working on.

Exploration tactics are difficult because the 2D pixel-art rendering can obscure where platforms are relative to each other, making possible jumps seem impossible and vice versa. Combat tactics are difficult because enemy behavior can be difficult to read (again, the 2D pixel-art rendering can make it unclear when an enemy is above your line of fire or in it), you often need to fight several enemies at once and keep track of all of their behavior, some enemies can only be damaged by elemental attacks (which charge an overload meter, so you need to keep an eye on that and switch to useless non-elemental attacks periodically to decrease it, lest you fully overload and lose the ability to do elemental attacks for longer). Puzzle tactics are difficult because they can have a high number of moving parts that require very different interactions, and again the 2D pixel-art rendering can obscure the position of the elements relative to each other.

Exploration action is difficult because many parkour jumps are just at the edge of possible and require precise positioning and aiming, and failing often means you have to find your way back to the start of the parkour path and retry the whole thing. Combat action is difficult because it's fast-paced and many enemies require speedy reactions with precise aiming to make use of their weaknesses and stand a chance of victory (often while you are also dodging their attacks), significant fights are often long and multi-stage and must be fully restarted if you fail - and for some reason, even the basic melee combo is hard to use efficiently, as it has a significant delay at the end unless you use your dash as an animation cancel. (You are told about this cancel very early in the game and are clearly intended to use it.) Puzzle action is difficult because it often requires performing a lengthy sequence of varied actions with precise timing, positioning, and aim with very short timing windows, and messing up any one of them can mean having to start the whole thing over.

Personally, I'm making use of Assist Mode to reduce some of the pressure. I've got the enemy damage slider down to its minimum 20%, meaning I can afford to pay much less attention to the trading economy and complex gear/build options and I have more latitude to learn and execute on exploiting enemy weaknesses. And I've got the puzzle speed slider down to its minimum 50%, giving me more time to execute the precise positioning and aiming I need to solve puzzles (though I still need to figure them out just the same). And that helps a lot but it doesn't put everything exactly where I want it.

There's a lot going on here that's hard in different ways, and all of these elements show up intermixed with each other in the game's main path. This creates a powerful selection effect on the game's audience. The number of people who enjoy all four phases of challenge and enjoy all these types of gameplay and are capable of the performance the game requires in all of them is small. But the people who can get over that barrier to entry are likely to love this game, to be proud of their skill at it and resistant to changing it. I'm thus not at all surprised that there are plenty of people in the game's Steam forum who complained about the addition of Assist Mode. But without that Assist Mode letting players optionally reduce some of the pressure of the game's brutal challenge profile, the number of people who could enjoy the game would be far smaller than it is. And it would definitely not include me.