#to recast pony heads that is

[thepurpleglass]

Yeah I’ll take it.

People claim Shadow High “failed” and…they were so fun. Was it that the last set had the same skin tones as the ones released right before them? Was it that there was no narrative reason for them to be fun colors?

I’m disappointed they don’t seem to be making more.

free idea for MGA: LOL OMGs in fantasy skin tones

you could even do shaker legs on those and it would make more sense than replacing articulated legs on otherwise human skin tone dolls

c'mon, it'll be fun!

[my-little-hyperfixation]

I have been lazy with my g5 stuff sorry I'm still thinking abt them

anyways. pictured above is the Good Friends G5 blind box hitch next to one of the Sunny 3 inch figs (don't remember which one) the CN poseables are about the same height as the 3 inch line. The molds are the same, albeit slightly smaller and shorter. The articulation is the same, with what I would argue is a better ball joint.

Edit; these look to be recasts from G5 figures. Weird to me that Dinosaw wasn't able to use the same molds or get copies made in time for this release to match the Hasbro size perfectly. Alternatively there may be some sort of benefit through law or policy that encourages them to make their own molds or prevents them from doing using Hasbro's. Ultimately weird because I feel this line's figure design supersedes Hasbro's figures, and they don't look to be all that different.

The head molds are all entirely original, and have pretty great face ups. It's all printed from what I can tell. I personally feel the Dinosaw line has a far more extremely appealing toy design, the only real notable difference being the faces. Hitch is even on the weaker side of the line, for me as a Hitch fan, he still is much cuter than the Sunny I compared him to personally.

The plastic is notably cheaper to me, it feels much harder in comparison to the Hasbro plastic. That's me splitting hairs- G5 as a whole is fairly inexpensive feeling. I only brought it up because...well I just really like when my Ponies feel good to hold. The Good Friends Blind Box ponies, feel just okay :)

Each doll comes with a card. I have not actually opened them all yet I'm too indecisive and anxious haha. It's been almost a month. Oops.

my rating is 9/10 for fans, 7/10 in general. A must have if you are unsatisfied with the current G5 figs. I'm interested in buying houses made for G5 in China, they all look so great! It looks to be the same scale shown here. I am very pleased, but I also acknowledge that in a general sense these toys will not appeal to everyone. It's very anti-pony to me, but these still have room to be enjoyed for a non-pony fan.

I imported my dolls from SuperBuy, if you where wondering

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Hello, this is the Oldie Chinese Diaspora™️ Anon here. Someone asked about these dolls that they found in their local import shop and wants to know more about them. Well, here we go. Let me take you out on a journey of meandering rabbit holes.

First things first, it should come as no surprise that these dolls were manufactured in China. However, it -is- difficult to find a specific manufacturer for them. A big part of this is due to the fact that they are classified as toys, and produced in massive quantities without much in terms of copyright enforcements. There are a few things we know: They are not BJDs. They have mechanical joints much like Barbies. They have inset plastic eyes and rooted hair. They can be customized the same way a playline doll can be customized – needs a bit of work, but it can be done. (For example, here:

The face sculpt of the smaller, “Leisure Girl” doll is based off of Lina Chouchou BJDs (closed mouth version: Baby Piyo

https://linachouchou.net/product/baby-piyo/242/?cate_no=27&display_group=1

and open-mouthed version: Mingky https://linachouchou.net/product/mingky/240/?cate_no=27&display_group=1

There is a trend of using a head sculpt from another source and casting them into a vinyl mould to produce toys. It saves on R&D costs since there’s already a head that people find attractive/cute out there. Considering that it often takes years to sculpt a head from scratch, “repurposing” someone else’s head becomes a lucrative option. These heads can be “recycled” and further “repurposed” into different things. And one Chinese netizen has chronicled the descent of Baby Piyo from the legit version, to a recasted bjd, then all the way down to a cheap (creepy?) decorative keychain: https://www.zhihu.com/question/314739696/answer/940578818

Incidentally, Napi Doll’s Carol was among the first and probably the most “recasted” vinyl head in China. They are invariably made of vinyl and were sold as “toy heads” or “practice heads”. According to another Chinese netizen, they are so ubiquitous that they were sold in toy stores outside of schools.

- Sleeping Carol, eyes opened by recasters, as explained in the graphic.

- sleeping Carol

- faceup “tutorial”

The second, larger doll is most likely DBS’s Dream Angel doll (

https://world.taobao.com/item/654623976663.htm

It’s tough to be 100% sure if this is a perfect match from these photos, unfortunately. They are most likely the 1/6 dolls used by the same artist as above for her customization efforts

) According to the Taobao sites that sell them, these were “extras” made to the specifications from an foreign company (meaning a company like Mattel contracted the factory to make 10,000 MH dolls, but the factory made 15,000 instead. And they are trying to sell off the extra.) Despite this description, I find it hard to believe. There are multiple companies that claim to be the manufacturer for these, almost exact, dolls, after all. The story simply doesn’t hold. However, if they really are DBS’s dolls (like these ones here:

Then they are copied from @ngell $tudio’s LiuRuShi. There was a prior post here about this specific “recast” earlier in the blog, I think.

That takes care of the head. The more “legit” version of the 1/8 body most likely came from the company Ding Xiao Ma (AKA “Ding Pony”

https://xp.toysol.com/company/product.aspx?ID=4260&UID=481

based in Shantou, Guangdong, China). They are advertised as “completely designed and made in China” and features a one-part body with articulation in the arms and legs. (13 joints in total, best seen here:

Unfortunately, due to their low price point, many unscrupulous on-line stores and drop-shippers would buy them for resale. And since they are considered “legit”, their prices can be highly inflated (

https://www.amazon.ca/Anime-Vinyl-Desktop-Decoration-Boxed/dp/B082WTP98Q

The less-than-reputable version of the 1/8 body is created by companies like DBS, the grey-area recasters. (

DBS has a two-part body with a swivel joint in the hips whereas Ding doesn’t. The original “swivel hip” doll body came from YeLoLi (which is legit:

https://true-bjd-confessions.tumblr.com/post/678905335364370432/not-a-recast-today-i-learned-the-night-lolita

but has been shrunken down to the 1/8th size. Incidentally, the YMY doll body also appears suspiciously like a shrunken-down YeLoLi body as well. There have been voices in the anti-recast BJD circles in China to recommend OB11 or Nendoroid bodies instead of YMY for that reason.

The larger dolls are 1/6th sized, and they are an interesting story, too. Supposedly, the DBS 1/6th is original (and therefore “legit”

And the company is now advertising them as being compatible with BJD heads if you use their “proprietary” neck adaptors. The body has 28 joints and is a swivel hip that was originally from YeLoLi. But this one has a modified crotch area that was taken from Xinyi (also a legit vinyl doll company

The DBS body might be seen as the illicit love child between these two companies. However, there are still hybrid 1/6th dolls that uses a “recasted” YeLoLi body along with another “repurposed” head, like these listings:

https://world.taobao.com/item/662180419082.htm

For those of you who made it this far with me: Thank you! Definitely pat yourself on the back for making it through such an arduous journey. While your mileage may vary, I hope this is something helpful.

Long story short: these dolls were cheaply made and they could probably trace their ancestry back to a more legitimate source. After several different rounds of recasting, sometimes into a different material, the features muddy and their price points drop. And they end up wrapped in plastic bags and being stuffed by the dozen in baskets.

Note 1: This is not to say there are no legit vinyl BJDs or MJDs. I hope that I have shown you that there are still legit sources and we should do our best to support them in the face of massive “repurposing”. These companies are really fighting an uphill battle.

Note 2: Shopping sites usually have a tracking serial when you try to copy and paste their listed content. This is how these websites track your geolocation and if you have shown repeated interest for targeted marketing. I have removed all tracking codes in the html in this post, even for folks who uses a VPN, this should still work. (Fingers crossed!)

~Anonymous

[ask-healthy-light]

As glowing fragments of the shattered barrier fell all around Luna and Amethyst, and the sound of the terrified screams of the city's inhabitants filled the air, the dark cloud, which had been held back for a while by the valliant barrier, began to roll over the fields, through the streets of the Empire, before the Crystal Princess rose to her hooves once again, and recast the warding spell.

Since all the Empire's inhabitants had gathered near the Palace, the spell she cast covered an area smaller than before, but it allowed her to protect everypony, using but a fraction of her energy, and the dark cloud abruptly halted before it reached the centre of town; then, as the dark cloud turned opaque, showing the sky, which had turned a vile red, in the distance, the King appeared.

Every present pony, including Amethyst, save for the Crystal Princess and Luna, who stood defiantly to oppose their foe, turned away and hid their faces, as the King of Shadows slowly walked to the Centre of town; while he walked, bearing a cloak of shadow, all around him, great and dark crystals broke through the ground, obliterating the roads and annihilating many buildings he walked past.

While he walked through the streets, approaching the crowd that had gathered underneath the Palace, Luna looked around, and noticed that the Library, located on the other side of town, remained safe, which was something she had wondered about for a great length of time; but she was interrupted by the voices of both Amethysts, pleading to the Princesses, to anyone that was listening, for help.

She turned back to Amethyst, with whom she had entered the dream, and gently embraced her with her wings to comfort her, and restated her promise that she would not suffer from this memory for much longer, but for now, though it was nigh impossible for her to relive, she had to stay strong, she had to remember, and she had to truly feel what she went through, for only then, Luna could help.

Though Amethyst was wary of her promise, she wiped away her tears and nodded, after which both she and Luna turned to face the Lord of Shadows, who now, ever approaching closer, appeared even more terrible than before, striking great fear into the hearts of all that dared to look upon him; then, he focused his gaze on the Ponies closest to the barrier, who had nowhere else to run, nor look.

For a brief moment, not a sound was made, before a deafening rumble broke the silence, and when a great row of crystals shot past the King, striking the barrier with a mighty blow, an ear-splitting sound echoed throughout the city, yet the barrier held strong, and failed not, until another row of dark crystals, faster and grander than before, struck once again and shattered part of the barrier.

Before the Crystal Princess had time to repair the barrier, the dark cloud, now strengthened by the Shadows of the King, rolled over part of the crowd, dragged them outside of the barrier, and placed them in front of the King, with their hooves bound; a vile smirk grew unto his face, as from the shadows, a piece of armour, a dark helmet formed, which he put on the head of one of the prisoners.

Immediately, their hooves were unbound, and they rose, standing perfectly still, while the eyes of the helmet they wore glowed a vile colour, yet the wearer ran not, instead turning to face the rest of the crowd behind the barrier, which had only just been reformed; soon after, many of the other captured Crystal Ponies were forced to wear identical helmets, and they, too, opposed the crowd.

With every subsequent attack, many of which were aided by the helmeted Crystal Ponies, the barrier broke, more Ponies were taken, and though it was quickly repaired, the Crystal Princess had to use a great amount of energy trying to keep the rest of the townsfolk safe, though some, whose family and friends were taken, cared not anymore, and moved closer to the barrier every time it broke.

Many cycles later, when the crowd had shrunk and the King's army had grown, he bellowed out:

"Join me and thrive, surrender and live, or oppose me and perish. The choice is yours."

(Thanks for reading! And if you enjoyed, please reblog! Thanks in advance!)

Send an ask or request! | Start at the beginning! | Next part!

[vampiremeerkat]

Why do you think Disney recasted Andy Dick as Nuka for The Lion Guard, despite the numerous controversies behind that disgusting bastard?

Also, would it be fair to separate the VA from the character in this specific scenario?

I don't know what this is about. I've only ever watched 2D Disney movies in my own language, so I don't care much for the English voice cast. And The Lion Guard felt like My Little Pony with lions; Flash animation for small audiences. It was also hard to stick around because of the chronologically wrong inclusion of the Outlanders, insertion of magic with the whole Skyrim dragon shouting guardian plot line, and the never-mentioned-before existence of Kion himself. It was annoying me a bit. I don't like this man with his head mane, cutie mark tattoo, and ten million scars over his eye. He gives me "ORIGNAL CHARARTER DO NUT STEEL!!!"-vibes. The series should've been about young Kovu and Kiara, or their children. ..Kiara's also a snooty stick-in-the-mud from the scenes I've seen. Completely unrecognizable. But enough rambling. I can answer the general question if we could or should separate the real person from the fictional series or character. We could, but the should lies in the severity of the controversy. Everyone has their own tolerance level and we'll never reach one global agreement on the matter, but will say this level has become alarmingly low over the years. Though, really, thin-skinnedness has always been a thing, the far past had to deal with pearl-clutchers every time a new idea arose, so it's more likely the issue lies in the creators, who now take any offence uttered by approved and important groups very seriously. People are willing to destroy an entire franchise whenever someone as insignificant as a background character does something politically incorrect. To let everyone and everything else suffer is unfair, especially when it concerns a project that's already out. And has been, for many, many years. We can't burn down every building or invention whose existence we have rapists, murderers, sexists, etc. to thank for, because you'd be surprised; we'd end up back in the damn Prehistoric Age. Even further than that, in fact, because let's not pretend our cave-dwelling ancestors were respectful, well-behaved individuals. But yes, sometimes organizations choose to stick with familiarity over controversy, especially when it involves one that hasn't been solved inside a courtroom. Accusations with no police report leave room for people to say "then it probably didn't happen". Are there more people who will be happy to hear Nuka's real voice than people who even know there's a controversy to begin with? Perhaps that's the question Disney asked themselves. I personally wouldn't have gone through the trouble for this series I refuse to consider canon.

[eggtoasties]

dazed bees to honey

Pairing: Shisui Uchiha/Sakura Haruno

Rating: T

Word Count: 6.3k

Better on AO3

Chapter 2

______________________________________

Getting Sakura’s attention had been…difficult at best. Trying to work around his erratic schedule was near impossible given Sakura’s equally hectic schedule and Shisui wasn’t sure how to approach the Hokage and demand that she rearrange his missions to better accommodate his dating schemes.

But, he had never met anyone more alluring—the sway of Sakura’s hips, the creaminess of her skin, the way her eyes lit up when he brought little trinkets he acquired from far away missions. She makes the blood rush to his cheeks when she makes fun of him and he had never known that getting his bones crushed would make him feel like he was the luckiest man on Earth.

She was the sun—bringing him light and warmth like he had never before experienced, and he was the moon orbiting around her. He needed to be closer; he wanted to be consumed by her. She could crack his chest open in two and carve her name in the ribs protecting his heart and it still wouldn’t be close enough.

He just didn’t know how to tell her.

___

Shisui had been idly sharpening kunai at his dining room table waiting for his bread to proof, when he received a summons. Tapping at the balcony door, a small crow was impatiently waiting for Shisui to retrieve the message tied at its foot. Wondering why Itachi sent a crow instead of making the short trip to his apartment, Shisui set his weapon down and ambled towards the sliding glass door, making sure to grab seeds for the summons.

Letting out a squawk, the crow started pecking at his door faster. Alarmed that Itachi was possibly in danger, Shisui shunshined to the balcony and grabbed the crow to get to the message. Puffing its feathers and pecking at Shisui’s hands, the summons squawked indignantly and Shisui offhandedly wondered when Itachi had kept such poorly behaved crows.

Gently releasing it into the air and unfurling the message, Shisui read:

Came back from the mission a few days ago. At training ground 7 if you’d like to join. -S. Haruno

His heart pounded. Sakura was back in the village and she contacted him promptly afterwards to ask to spar? Dough be damned he was sprinting to training ground 7, he thought giddily. He looked down at himself—green fuzzy socks, loose gray sweats, and an old t-shirt—he had to get ready! His cheeks warmed. Wait, he mentally stammered. How did she know where he lived? How did she know where to send the summons to? Did she snoop around his medical files to find his address because for some reason, that made his throat dry.

Running to his bedroom while haphazardly throwing his clothes off, he suddenly stilled again. She had sent him a crow? She had a crow summons? There were a few crow summoners in the village, Shisui reasoned. She could have gotten a contract from Aoba or someone else. But, the thought of Itachi presenting the summoning contract that he had bestowed as a sign of trust and friendship made Shisui frown. As the elder, and the first contract holder, he should have been the one to give her the contract to sign. Or, Itachi should have gone to him and inform Shisui of his intentions.

Nodding to himself, Shisui made a note to stop by Itachi’s house later and question him.

___

Arriving at the edge of training ground 7 in record time, Shisui paused as he saw Sakura and Itachi in their uniforms warming up together. Sakura was in standard uniform sans the flak jacket and Itachi was in his ANBU uniform as always. Shisui fidgeted uncomfortably. He had worn what Itachi rudely called “the douchebag” shirt—a loose black sleeveless top where the arm holes were cut down to the bottom of his ribs. The tank top, Itachi always lectured, could hardly be defined as a shirt since it was so open. Itachi had questioned the practicality of a training top that would leave one so vulnerable to weapons and Shisui at the time, had retorted that he would understand when he was older.

Beginning to wonder if he should discreetly go back home to change, Sakura and Itachi called Shisui over.

“Oh, you came!” Sakura shouted excitedly as she beckoned him towards the middle of the training field.

As he walked slowly towards the pair, Itachi assessed Shisui.

“I see you got my summons,” he said, raising his eyebrow when he took in Shisui’s clothes. “Nice pants.”

Shisui flushed. He had chosen his tightest black training pants. Pants that he knew made his ass look good, thank you very much, but at the moment he was wondering if Sakura would think he was trying too hard. Or worse, he mentally shuddered, a douchebag.

“I was excited when Itachi told me you were in the village. I wanted to work on my response times with you,” Sakura started, interrupting Shisui’s mental torture. His heart fluttered at the thought of her wanting to spar with him and he let out a little breath of relief realizing that the crow was indeed Itachi’s. He crossed his arms in a poor attempt to cover the long slits in his shirt.

“I can dodge pretty much anything,” Sakura continued, beginning to sway on the balls of her feet, pink pony tail swinging with the motion. “But I wanna see how I’ll do against an opponent I can’t hit—or at least that’s what Itachi says,” she said, smiling at him prettily.

The early morning sun illuminated her face and made her green eyes impossibly bright. The faint ring of gold around her pupils winked at him and he swore he could feel his pulse reverberate in his skull. He realized she was waiting for a response. He licked his lips, mouth suddenly dry, and all he could muster out was a weak, “Sounds good.”

Sakura nodded happily and walked a few paces away from him, wringing out her arms. Suddenly pulling out kunai from her holster and twirling them around her forefingers, she faced him.

“Taijutsu only. Ready whenever you are, Shisui-san.”

___

She was fast, Shisui noted. He had expected as much given the way she took him by surprise in her office, cutting his shunshin off. He also factored in the fact that she regularly trained with Itachi, Sasuke, and Kakashi who were notoriously quick on their feet. But, not as fast as him.

Flickering in and out of her reach, he studied her movements with his sharingan. He knew that Itachi was on the sidelines, similarly monitoring her, but Shisui wanted to brand the image of her looking at him like he was prey for the rest of his life. Sakura was an incredibly flexible fighter, he noted. Depending on the type of attack, weapon, and opening he left, she would quickly and seamlessly recalibrate.

There were times her movements reflected Tsunade-sama’s—sharp and fast and meant to obliterate. Other times, Shisui realized, she would adopt Might Guy’s Strong Fist technique, Asuma’s melee style, or most surprisingly, the graceful but precise movements of the Gentle Fist technique.

Bracing a chakra enforced forearm against a kick to his head he asked, “Who taught you the Gentle Fist?”

Grunting and trying to strike his open stomach she responded, “My graduating class has two Hyuugas.” He side stepped away from her punch and flickered behind her. Ducking when she swung a kunai to his head and dodging the knee about to pummel his face, he shunshined a little farther away.

“Hyuuga don’t hide their techniques because no one can use it without the Byakugan, but someone would have had to teach you those movements,” he said breathing heavily.

“Kakashi copies them to piss people off and I was—am close to them,” Sakura said catching her breath. He watched as she pressed the back of her hand to her sweaty forehead and picked the hem of her shirt up to wipe at the rest of her face. Her toned stomach glistened with sweat. Little rivulets of perspiration rolled down her abs and Shisui cursed, damn.

“Was it the little Hyuuga genius? Neji-kun?” Shisui asked, remembering Sasuke’s clear distaste for the boy.

Itachi chose then to materialize in Shisui’s line of vision, cutting his view of Sakura. Pouting, Shisui flash stepped in front of Sakura, startling her while Itachi began his commentary on what and how Sakura could improve as well as ideas for them to try out.

The rest of their morning session consisted of Itachi valiantly trying to train while Shisui cast low level genjutsus of himself telling Itachi to leave. Itachi dispelled the genjutsus, but Shisui relentlessly recast them, sometimes conjuring up little dancing animals or mini Sasukes berating him to leave. Tiring of Shisui’s antics, Itachi dejectedly sat on the ground and began his stretches, saying that they should call it a day.

“Are you alright? You seemed distracted today—I definitely hit you more than usual,” Sakura said kneeling in front of him, raising a glowing green hand to his chest.

“Thank you—I’m fine,” Itachi responded tiredly. “It’s just that Shisui,” he said harshly, glaring at him over Sakura’s shoulder, kept telling me to leave.”

Alarm bells started ringing in Shisui’s head and he looked incredulously at his cousin. His cousin who sold him out. His decidedly, least favorite cousin. He glared back at Itachi. Shisui flashed his dimples which made Itachi narrow his eyes further.

“Sorry, cousin,” Shisui started. “I’m just absolutely starving and wanted to eat—you know how I am when I want something,” he said, throwing his arms behind his head and wiggling his eyebrows at his cousin.

“Annoying? Irritating? Childish?” Itachi grumbled, causing Sakura to giggle. “Sakura,” Itachi started. “Would you want to go to that new bakery in the North District? I’ve only heard incredible things about their rhubarb ice cream,” Itachi said excitedly, ignoring the way Shisui was pouting and lightly kicking at the ground.

Sakura finished healing Itachi and slowly rose, dusting the dirt from her knees and wiping her hands against her thighs. “Ooh, that sounds really nice, but I should probably get real food before I start on desserts,” Sakura laughed.

Not to be outdone, Shisui stepped beside Sakura. “I agree, let’s get lunch Sakura-sensei,” he chirped while resting his hand against Itachi’s head, who was still sitting down. Scowling, Itachi yanked on Shisui’s arm, making his older cousin stumble, and jabbed the back of his knee. Pleased that Shisui was now sprawled in the dirt, Itachi rose and said, “Well, I’m also going to get sesame cookies,” he sniffed. “Good luck with this,” Itachi said to Sakura, poking an incensed Shisui with his sandal. “And thank you for the coconut oil.”

With that, Itachi gracefully straightened himself out and walked towards the edge of the clearing, waving back at Sakura.

___

Shisui and Sakura made their way towards the main hub of Konoha. Excited to be alone with her, Shisui asked her questions about her last mission and her work at the hospital. He listened intently as she recalled the mission details, chuckling when she complained about the humidity in Waterfall, telling her he completely understood while pointing to his curly hair. She talked animatedly about her research project at the hospital. Although he didn’t understand about seventy five percent of what she was explaining, he nodded dutifully, lips quirking as he watched her excited hand movements as she discussed…molecular interventions through pathogenic mechanisms of neurocristopathies—he thinks.

Humming at the right times and throwing in a “oh, really—what does that mean?” every so often, he basked in her voice. Her voice, Shisui decided, was his favorite sound in the entire universe. Wanting to sit down together, he interrupted her briefly to point at the first restaurant he saw.

“How’s ramen sound, Sakura-sensei?” he asked.

“And that’s why normal and pathological neural crest cells—” Sakura, paused. “Oh, Ichiraku’s is fine. Did you know this is Team 7’s spot?” she asked, heading towards the shop. “We used to eat at Ichiraku’s a few times a week,” she scrunched her nose in distaste, “when we were genin,” she finished.

“Itachi says Sasu-chan always complains about Naruto-kun’s ramen eating habits but I didn’t realize this was your guys’ place of choice,” Shisui chuckled. “Does he know that the stand two streets over also does a killer ramen? A gal needs variety if I recall correctly,” he threw in cheekily. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he continued. “There’s also this other place that has great ambience and incredible food—you should come some time?” he voice rising in speed and pitch at the end of the sentence.

Her step faltering, Sakura looked up at Shisui. “Huh?” she questioned at his word choice, “What is it?”

“My place,” he responded quickly, smiling sunnily at her and ignoring the rush of blood to his face.

Shisui’s heart thundered at the way her mouth opened in surprise and he felt his bones reverberate when the tips of her ears turned pink. While she scrunched her nose at the cheesy line, she couldn’t help the way her lips quirked up.

“Well—”

“SAKURA-CHAN!” Naruto screamed, running towards her from down the street, waving both hands excitedly. Behind Naruto, walking at a leisurely pace, was Itachi and Sasuke. Sending Shisui an apologetic smile, Sakura faced Naruto as he spun her around in a hug.

Exasperated, Shisui watched Itachi amble towards him and sent him a mental middle finger. Looking pleased with himself, Itachi didn’t even try to hide his smirk behind his massive ice cream cone.

“Me and teme ran into Itachi-nii and he said you and Shisui-nii were around here somewhere,” Naruto exclaimed. Turning to acknowledge Shisui he said, “Oh, dude nice pants, your ass looks great in them—let’s all get Ichiraku!” he shouted, grabbing Sakura’s wrist and running towards a waving Teuchi.

Shisui stood alone in the middle of the street with his mouth slightly open. Itachi joined his side while Sasuke trailed after his two teammates, not before assessing Shisui’s shirt and pants and throwing him a grimace.

“Tch,” Sasuke said dismissively.

“You love this don’t you, Itachi.”

“Ah,” he responded. Itachi angled his ice cream towards Shisui and raised a brow.

“No.”

Itachi pouted.

___

Bounding ahead to Ichiraku’s, Naruto pulled the chair against the wall with a flourish, exaggerating a bow and extending his hand towards Sakura. Easily following the mimicry of their genin days, she giggled and pretended to ignore him. Sakura took the seat at the middle of the bar which Sasuke quietly pulled out for her.

Pouting, Naruto complained, “Aw, c’mon Sakura-chan, you don’t actually want to sit next to teme, do you? He asked, easing in the seat to her left.

“It’s so she can mediate when you eventually say something stupid to piss me off,” Sasuke said, distributing the menus.

Sakura punched him in the arm in response and turned to chat about the menu with Naruto. When Shisui and Itachi settled into the wooden seats next to Sasuke, Sakura asked,

“How long are you two in the village for?” leaning towards Shisui and Itachi.

“We’ll both be local for about a week.” Itachi offered, now nibbling delicately at his cone.

“They’ve both been easing back on their ANBU duties and are doing more stuff for the clan,” Sasuke supplied, absentmindedly picking at a paint chip on the counter.

Whooping in response Naruto added, “Hell, yeah!” he threw a fist into the air. “Now you guys can train with us more! And Itachi-nii,” he started, leaning back in his chair to look at Itachi, “if you could bring more of those rice balls you made last time, they were incredible, dattebayo!”

Smiling, Itachi leaned back to discuss snacks with Naruto.

“And what about you, Sakura-sensei,” Shisui asked, completely pushing Sasuke out of the way.

Grumbling, Sasuke pushed back at Shisui, which the elder responded by trapping a hissing Sasuke in a headlock.

Rubbing Sasuke’s head placatingly, Sakura said, “I should be staying in the village for the next week too—there’s a lot of hospital stuff I’ve got to do.” Nodding to Teuchi as he placed her order in front of her, she added, “I’m glad you’ll be in the village this week, we should train together again—if you want,” she fiddled with her wooden chopsticks. “It was great to spar with you and watch you, I learned a lot.”

Jealous that he wasn’t invited to the spar, Sasuke wrenched himself from Shisui’s grasp and aggressively ripped his chopsticks apart. Noting his little brother’s behavior, Itachi chuckled and said, “I just told Naruto I’d stop by your training this week, otouto.”

“Tch,” Sasuke responded. But, the way his shoulders relaxed and he smiled gently into his bowl made it clear he was pleased.

“Sakura-chan,” Naruto started. “I feel like I never see you anymore!” he said between bites of ramen. “Let’s do a Team 7 get together—you, me, teme, Kaka-sensei, Yamato Taichou, and Sai too!” he slurped noisily.

“Yeah you’re right,” Sakura sighed, rubbing the back of her neck. “With all my projects, the hospital, and,” she waved her hands distractedly, “we haven’t hung out in a while.” Frowning lightly she said, “We could do it at my place, but I don’t know if I could fit everyone…” she trailed off.

Sensing the opportunity, Shisui swooped in. “You should invite your friends over, Sasu-chan,” he mockingly admonished.

Ignoring Shisui’s baiting and staring down at his bowl, Sasuke grumbled.

“Absolutely no-“

“Your friends are coming over?” Itachi asked excitedly.

“No-“

“Yes!” chorused Naruto, Sakura, and Shisui.

“They’re,” Sasuke started, pointing his chopsticks at Naruto, “going to make a mess.”

Ignoring Sasuke’s continued rumblings, Itachi started to list off different food and dessert ideas to Naruto who grew more and more excited by his suggestions if his hand waving was anything to go by. Glancing sharply to his right at an extremely pleased Shisui, Sasuke scowled.

“I know you just took advantage of nii-san’s househusband fantasies,” Sasuke whispered sharply. In the background, Itachi was dreamily listing the various courses he thought would best suit Team 7’s tastes while Naruto and Sakura egged him on with ideas of their own.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Shisui responded smugly, leisurely slurping his noodles.

Irritated, Sasuke leaned across Shisui to talk some sense into his brother, but Itachi was staring serenely into space, using his full genius brain to plan out dinner. Huffing, Sasuke hunched in his seat and poked dejectedly at his noodles, missing the way Sakura peered past him.

___

Dinner at the Uchiha household was scheduled that Friday—a few days after lunch at Ichiraku’s. Shisui, conscious to not make another questionable fashion choice, opted for black training pants and a traditional Uchiha top—short sleeved and high collared with the Uchiha fan embroidered on the back.

Arriving at the head family’s home, he was greeted by a tired looking Fugaku who wearily told Shisui that everyone was in the kitchen. Laughing to himself, Shisui figured that Itachi and Mikoto had ran Fugaku to the ground with dinner preparations. Trailing after his uncle towards the kitchen, he saw Sasuke tending to a flower bouquet.

“Why are you here?” Sasuke asked, incensed.

He ignored the venom in his younger cousin’s eyes since he didn’t look very intimidating with carnations in hand. Shisui presented a tin-foil covered pan.

“He made shokupan,” Itachi said breezily.

“They should be here any minute! Sasuke, Fugaku, go set the table and get the plum wine out of the fridge,” Mikoto ordered, putting last minute touches on the pastries she and Itachi were decorating.

In a few minutes, there was knocking at the front door and Itachi went out to greet Sakura and Naruto.

“Come on in,” Itachi said happily. Leading them inside he said, “I ran to the store earlier today and got everyone slippers,” pointing to the neat row along the wall.

“Wow, Itachi-nii. You really got this mom thing down,” Naruto noted, nodding to himself.

“You think?” Itachi smiled serenely and Sakura giggled at his pastel yellow apron with white trimming.

“No one else could make it today,” Sakura said frowning. Handing a wrapped plant to Itachi she said, “Yamato Taichou and Sai are out on a mission, Kakashi said he was…busy…” she trailed off.

Humming to himself while inspecting the healthy green leaves of the plant and the tasteful wrapping, Itachi said, “Sakura, you really didn’t have to.” But the pleased look on his face said otherwise.

“Hey! I helped too!” Naruto interrupted loudly.

___

Settling himself at the low dining room table, Fugaku sat at the head of the table. To his right was Sakura, Naruto, and Sasuke. To his left sat Mikoto, Itachi, and Shisui.

“Wow, everything looks incredible,” Sakura gushed at the spread.

Naruto nodded enthusiastically, eyes gleaming. “Mikoto oba-chan, Itachi-nii, you guys really out did yourselves!”

“I helped too, dobe,” Sasuke grumbled.

“I made the shokupan!” Shisui chirruped.

It was a little too much food for the seven of them, Shisui noted. He looked down to the heaping bowl of white rice in front of him with a hearty serving of stew to its right—steam still emanating from both. Each person also had an individual portion of teriyaki salmon, its sweet glaze reflecting the dining room light above them. Sat on the middle of the traditional table, Itachi and Mikoto also prepared stir fried vegetables, soba salad, fried tonkatsu, mapo tofu, and tempura on large serving plates. The dishes took every space of the dining room table, some of it teetering dangerously close to an edge—the table overflowed with intermingling spices and glistening sauces.

Shisui blanched knowing that dessert was bound to be a similarly overwhelming experience.

Saying a brief thanks to his guests, Fugaku uttered a brief, “Itadakimasu,” and began eating.

___

Between the passing of dishes, clinking of chopsticks, and hums of pleasure, easy chatter filled the room.

“Thank you for the coconut oil dear, it works so well,” Mikoto smiled at Sakura over her glass of wine.

Dabbing her lips delicately after devouring several slices of tofu, Sakura shook her head.

“It was no problem—thank you,” she said, looking at Mikoto and Itachi, “for the dumplings. I ate them all in one sitting they were incredible,” she gushed.

Sasuke grumbled beside her, saying he had helped too and that it shouldn’t be physically possible to consume that many dumplings at once, but his mother cut him off.

“I heard we have Hyuuga Neji-kun to thank for the hair tips?” Mikoto teased.

At the mention of Neji, Shisui slowed his chewing and conceded defeat to Naruto, who was not-so-subtly trying to eat all of the tempura as quickly as possible. Shisui looked discreetly at Sakura to see how she would respond.

Sakura was caught by surprise at the comment and her spoon hovered in midair for a millisecond. Processing the joke, her shoulders shook lightly as she giggled and playfully rolled her eyes.

Naruto, with a mouthful of food said, “Neji does have nice hair, ‘ttebayo.”

Choking a little when Sasuke elbowed him in the stomach he stuttered, “A-ah, not as nice as yours, Sakura-chan!” The table laughed at the duo in response.

“Itachi-nii, you should quit ANBU and become a cook, this is the best food I’ve had in forever,” Naruto said dreamily.

Fugaku frowned deeply into his wine. “Yes, Itachi, when will you quit ANBU and fully take on your duties as clan head?”

Fugaku’s shoulder length brown hair had streaks of gray in it, which Mikoto lovingly said made him look refined although she had hardly aged in the past five years. His face showed years of exhaustion and responsibilities with his heavy brow and fine lines at the side of his mouth. His hands were still rough and battle worn despite it being years since his active duty days. Despite it all, his eyes were still keen, sharp as flint, and just as dark.

The rest of the table stilled with Fugaku’s displeasure—the Uchihas either frowning at Fugaku or throwing Itachi an apologetic glance. Sakura and Naruto ate impossibly quicker.

“Well Father,” Itachi started breezily, taking a languid sip of his glass. “You still have life in you yet.”

Preparing for an even more disgruntled Fugaku, Naruto and Sakura nervously chattered about the incredible food, piling each other’s plates even higher, and Shisui off handedly wondered if Sasuke had ever mentioned that Sakura’s appetite matched Naruto’s.

Surprising his guests, Fugaku wearily sighed into his rice bowl. “Son, please put me out of my misery so I can spend time with my wife.”

Over Mikoto’s pleased giggles and Sasuke’s embarrassed choke, Sakura and Naruto stopped their babbling to stare openly at Fugaku. Realizing that their surprise was obvious, they busied themselves again with food, ignoring Sasuke’s second-hand disgust.

“And Shisui,” Fugaku said sharply, cutting off whatever sly retort he had prepared on the tip of his tongue, “when will you fully accept the mantle as the police force commander?” he questioned.

Ignoring Shisui’s attempt at a response, Fugaku braced his hands on the floor behind his back and looked up at the ceiling. “Why Itachi and Sasuke don’t want to take over the police force is beyond me,” he muttered to himself as Mikoto gently consoled him.

Laughing at his uncle’s tiredness Shisui joked, “Well oji-san, given that Itachi’s biggest dream is being a full-time househusband—” Naruto looked incredibly interested at this prospect. “—and mine is living on oba-san’s food for the rest of my life,” Sasuke rolled his eyes at this. “Maybe we’ll make you suffer a little longer.”

Shisui raised his glass to Itachi, who clinked his glass in return, happily sipping the plum wine at the expense of an entirely spent Fugaku who mumbled to himself about shattered retirement dreams.

___

After dinner, Naruto and Sakura helped clear out the dishes despite Mikoto and Itachi’s protests. While Sasuke and Fugaku were relegated to cleaning the dishes, Shisui prepared the tea while Mikoto and Itachi set the table with dessert.

Surprisingly, dessert wasn’t as overwhelming as Shisui thought it would be. There was sakuramochi at the center of the table, elegantly plated in a neat line on a porcelain plate, the pickled blossom leaf folded meticulously over each cake. Itachi’s eyes crinkled towards Sakura while setting it down. Mikoto placed the higashi towards the end of the table, near Sasuke’s seat. The biscuit-like sweet, Shisui noticed amusedly, had uzumaki swirls pressed onto each biscuit. Shisui’s shokupan was also set down alongside a small pot of honey and jam. The last dessert was Fugaku’s favorite: butter cookies. Each cookie was a perfect circle and slightly browned at the edges. But to Shisui’s increased amusement, a black, three-tomoe sharingan was stenciled in icing on each cookie.

Settling back at the table, Sasuke looked at each dessert in growing exasperation before taking in the sharingan butter cookies. He glanced at Itachi in thinly veiled disbelief, but Itachi was intently staring at his guests’ reactions.

Sakura and Naruto had expressions of awe on their face. Naruto, with one hand on his protruding stomach looked a little nauseous when he said, “Wow…you really went all out on this team dinner…it looks so good dattebayo,” he finished weakly.

Sakura, trying to make up for her teammate’s lack of gusto quickly chirped, “I’m SO impressed with your icing skills,” she gushed, “I tried once and it was a complete failure,” she pouted, running a hand through her ponytail. “I’m so full from that incredible dinner but we’ll,” she quickly darted her eyes to Naruto, “make sure and try everything,” she finished, silencing Naruto’s protests.

As Itachi went prattled on the fine details of piping, not icing, because they’re obviously very different, Shisui idly wondered if Sasuke never hosted team dinners because of Itachi.

___

As everyone forced themselves to eat as much dessert as possible for Itachi’s sake, at the head of the table, Mikoto was cajoling her husband in hushed tones and nudging him with her shoulder.

“Sakura dear,” Mikoto started, which silenced the rest of the table. Mikoto turned her head to her husband. He responded by straightening his back and clearing his throat a few times.

“Sakura,” he started stiffly, not quite looking her in the eye. “Thank you,” Fugaku said, “for your work with the clan medics.

Shisui looked at his uncle, then Sakura in surprise—he hadn’t known just how close she was to the Uchiha clan. Looking around the table, no one else seemed to be surprised with her work, more so surprised at Fugaku’s thanks.

Sakura smiled kindly at Fugaku and Mikoto. “You’re welcome, the sharingans a tricky kekkai genkai and the blockages in the delicate blood vessels are definitely hard to work with, but working with Sasuke and Kakashi gave me a leg up. I’m just happy you allowed me to treat your clan members and train your clan medics.”

“With your instruction, Sakura-chan,” Mikoto began, “nearly every clan member has noted a mental and physical improvement. The Uchiha owe you a life debt.” Fugaku, Itachi, and Sasuke nodded in agreement.

Blushing at the compliment, Sakura shook her head. “Thank you, but you all don’t owe me anything. The payment, as agreed, was fully enough.”

Shisui paused. He hadn’t realized that Sakura had found a way to ease the pain the sharingan brought. Having awoken his mangekyo at an extremely young age, he was used to the near perpetual eyestrain and frequent migraines that came with overuse. He had given up on his clan medics’ treatment for his eyes since they’d been ineffective over the years. Incredibly interested at the prospect of relieving his pain he quickly turned to Sakura.

She was still talking to Fugaku and Mikoto, trying to convince them that they didn’t have to commit to any favors for her, and all of his thoughts stilled. She was talking with her hands, trying to explain that she was just glad to be of service to her teammate’s family, and by extension, the village. That no one should be in chronic pain if there was anything she could do about it. Her cheeks were flushed with the wine, and he was taken by the fullness of her lips. Wet with the plum wine, they glistened in the soft overhead light. Every so often, he could see a glint of her pink tongue as she laughed, or caught the corner of her lip.

Noticing that Itachi was staring at him with amusement, Shisui mentally shook himself out of his stupor.

“Ne, Sakura-sensei, I hadn’t realized you figured out the sharingan. Any chance I could schedule a doctor’s appointment with you?” He smiled cheekily at her, ignoring the way Sasuke and Naruto threw daggers at him.

“See, Sakura-chan,” Mikoto said, “you take such good care of our boys—no matter what you say, we’ll always be in you debt.”

“Mikoto-san—” Sakura looked down at her shirt—a standard issue jounin top—which now had a dark wine stain blooming at her stomach.

Naruto looked sheepishly at her, grabbing his napkin. “Sorry…at least it wasn’t your kimono this time?” Naruto said as he dabbed.

“Aw man,” Sakura complained, “this is one of my last good ones too.” While it was customary for shinobi to keep one or two sets of pristine uniforms for show—if they were on guard duty for a prestigious client, or to maintain appearances for foreign dignitaries—the reality was that most shinobi were running around in repeatedly stained, slightly tattered, hole riddled uniforms until they were unwearable.

Getting up to rinse her shirt in the sink, Mikoto stopped her. “Let me get you something to change into,” she said, rising from her seat. At the same time, Sasuke stood up, saying he’d get something of his, and missed the way Shisui had grabbed the back of his own shirt collar and started to undress. Itachi yanked the hem of Shisui’s shirt down and Fugaku stared at Shisui like he was stupid.

“No, no, sit back down Sasuke,” Mikoto said quickly, “look how pretty Sakura’s hair is today,” gesturing at her pink locks, “I’ll have to get her something of mine.” Mikoto placed a hand at Sakura’s upper back and ushered her along.

Sitting back down, Sasuke stared after his mom and teammate in silent confusion over the correlation of Sakura’s everyday pony tail and clothes.

After a few minutes, Mikoto and Sakura shuffled back into the main dining area. Mikoto walked slightly behind Sakura, staring intently at her sons’ and nephew’s faces. Catching the glint in her eye, Fugaku sighed.

Sakura changed into a loose black sweater with an Uchiha fan stitched on the breast. The sweater itself had a similar cut to the jounin top, and was slightly loose on Sakura’s frame. Seeing his teammate, Sasuke furrowed his brow. He had several shirts exactly like that. Sakura also probably had several shirts like that—it wasn’t particularly nice even—why did it have to be his mother’s, he wondered. What does it have to do with her hair—did ponytails have some significance he hadn’t known about? Deep in thought, he continued to scrutinize while Itachi happily munched on butter cookies. Glancing nonchalantly at Sakura he offered a “Hm,” and went back to cajoling Naruto into eating more.

Shisui was gone. The thought of Sakura wearing his clothes with the Uchiha fan would be forever branded in memory. He imagined quiet mornings with her as he made her coffee as she got ready in the mornings. He imagined how she’d look wearing one of his t-shirts—the oversized fit exposing the cream of her shoulder and him kissing the open space.

He watched her as she spoke. The slender curve of her neck, the peach fuzz on her cheeks, and the irresistible plumpness of her lips mesmerized him. Shisui felt the rush of chakra to his eyes, activating his sharingan, and quickly turned his head.

“Thank you for the meal,” Sakura said, rising from her seat, bowing to Mikoto and Itachi.

“Yeah, dinner was great thank you so much!” Naruto chimed in. “Ne, ne, Sakura-chan,” leaning towards her with a glint in his eyes, “why don’t you stay and sleepover! It’ll be like our genin days!” Naruto cheered.

Lightly grimacing, Sakura responded, “I have a shift at the hospital at six in the morning—maybe next time,” she apologized, although she didn’t look sorry at all.

“It must be exhausting having multiple full time jobs,” Itachi said sagely, still munching on butter cookies.

“Yes.” Fugaku deadpanned. “I wonder.”

Completely ignoring his father, Sasuke got up and heaved Naruto with him as well. Nodding to his mother, he jutted his chin to Sakura then jerked his head at the door.

“God, teme—use your words!” Naruto yelled, swatting the back of Sasuke’s head. Ducking before Naruto could hit him, Sasuke jabbed the side of Naruto’s stomach, grinning when he doubled over and wheezed. “W-we’re gonna walk S-Sakura-chan home,” he managed to get out, glaring at Sasuke from his hunched over position.

Seeing his chance, Shisui shot up from his seat and clapped a heavy hand onto Naruto’s back, forcing the blonde to stay hunched over. Cheerfully he said, “I’ll do it! My apartment’s on the way anyways and you’re staying here!” Squeezing Sasuke’s shoulder forcefully, Shisui grinned at his younger cousin trying not to flinch in his vice grip.

Raising a brow, Sakura looked at Shisui unimpressed, although the corner of her lip was curling. Itachi mirrored Sakura, except he was actually unimpressed. Fugaku massaged his nose bridge and his wife hid her smile behind her hand.

“Sasuke, Naruto, come help with the dishes,” Mikoto said.

Sakura gave once last bow to Sasuke’s parents and waved at her friends before heading out.

___

Sakura’s apartment was not on the way to Shisui’s. In fact, it was on the opposite side of the village.

But, there was no way he’d miss the opportunity to talk to her one-on-one without the intrusion of pesky teammates or baby cousins. They walked leisurely side by side, shoulders occasionally bumping, as he basked in her undivided attention. The walk to her apartment was made in quiet tones, careful not to break the stillness that surrounded them.

Crickets chirping in the background and the moon softly illuminating their way, Shisui, for the first time with Sakura, felt at ease. He wondered if maybe they were meant for this—quiet conversations under the moonlight, with her wearing the Uchiha crest.

[belonareyna]

THE OUTSIDERS RECAST

I just have one good explanation to Darry Curtis, because I wanted to focus on the age of the character, because I have seen a lot of recast-dreamcast, where the chosen one is 35-45… and the character is only 20 so…

Described as: “tall, lean, cocky, and smart.” He likes to comb his hair in thick complicated swirls. - The Outsiders Wiki

I think this one was the easier one to choose, I just watched some photos and they completely give me the vive for Steve

Described as: “[having] an elfish face with high cheekbones, a pointed chin, small, sharp animal teeth, and ears like a lynx. Dally didn’t like haircuts nor hair oil, so his almost white-blonde hair fell over his forehead in wisps. He had blazing blue eyes which Ponyboy describes as ‘cold with all the hatred in the world.’”- The Outsiders Wiki

I know this actor for playing Chic in Riverdale, and the role of Dallas was made for this man, he can transmit to the audience that fear sensation that he produces, that Ponyboy describes. He had blonde hair, light eyes, that even that they are not blue, give me this petrifying sensation.

Described as: “around six feet tall, stocky in build, and was very proud of his long, rust-colored sideburns. He has grey eyes and was always wearing a wide grin. In “The Outsiders” novel, Two-Bit’s hair is described as ‘rust colored.'” -The Outsiders Wiki

I really look for a red headed, and I founded some cool actors, but I just watched this image from the actor with actual sideburns and I just said: he’s the one

Described as: “smaller than the rest, with a slight build. He had big black eyes in a dark tanned face; his hair was jet-black and heavily greased and combed to the side, but it was so long that it fell in shaggy bangs across his forehead.” - The Outsiders Wiki

I felt he could really play Johnny really well, he can give this nervous look and this terrified face to the camera, but he can also can show the strength that Johnny is provided with, his leadership, his cold head in the difficult times…

Described as: “‘movie star handsome,’ and has silky, dark gold hair (real tuff) that he combs back with dark brown (recklessly, dancing) eyes and a goofy grin that you can’t help but love (which is noted by Ponyboy after getting jumped by the Socs).” - The Outsiders Wiki

Oh men, I really really thought about Peyton Meyer, but in the very last second, I remembered Froy Gutierrez and I couldn’t help myself, because he is so gorgeous, and once I visualized him, I could not see anyone else in the role.

Described as: “[having] light-brown hair and greenish-gray eyes. He has a good build for his size and is a fast runner. At the beginning of the novel, Ponyboy’s hair is long and squared in the back, but after his haircut in Windrixville, his hair is short and bleached blond.”- The Outsiders Wiki

I just knew this actor for playing a role in Anne with an E, and I feel that he actually could make an incredible acting as Ponyboy Curtis, the character he played in Anne with an E, Cole, is an artist, like Pony, he also likes the loneliness, he has being bullied, he is shy…

Also, the actor has light brown a little read head hair, green eyes…

I think he’s perfect for the role

Described as: “a large man, of 6’ 2" and he is broad shouldered. His hair is said to be like his father’s- dark brown that sticks out in the front of his head with a cowlick in the back. His eyes “are like two pieces of pale blue-green ice.” He is said to look exactly like his father, but with different eyes. Also, he looks older than his actual age, which is twenty. Ponyboy says he would be better looking if his eyes weren’t so cold.” - The Outsiders Wiki

I think that Colton Haynes is one of the best options to play Darry, I have only followed his career through Teen Wolf, and even if in their firsts seasons he played a spoiled egocentric brat, in the cameo he made in the last season, we can notice his evolve, his “growing up”, and this without having followed a path in Teen Wolf, I mean that he left the series and then he come back as a mature person without the actor to actually feeling that through the character because, well, the character left the show. Showing us that he can make both, the pride brother, and the responsible one, the caring one, the mature one.

I also thought about Matthew Daddario, but I thought he was too old (38), and I realized that I wanted a younger actor, because in the book, Darrel is just 20 years old, he is really young to be anyone’s father and still, he takes care of his family with two jobs, paying the bills… But I think is really important to show that he is really young, that he is learning how to deal with the fact that he is in charge of his two little brothers, to show how unfair it is, I want the audience to empathized with him, because I really did that in the book, and giving him a young actor around the age of the character… Well, I think is a wise option.

[incorrectstarcoquotes]

Incorrect Recaps - S3

Round 3, @seddm​. I see you seeing me. Let’s get it on!

Return to Mewni - Moon’s big plan is to hide away from Toffee. I’m starting to think she’s not that great.

Moon the Undaunted - A flashback episode is the best way to show that you shouldn’t ship MoonToffee.

Book Be Gone - Ludo deals with some very familiar self-worth issues.

Marco and the King - Marco gets some bonding time with his future father-in-law.

Puddle Defender - You would think that this is the episode where Moon rethinks her view on monsters, but you’d be wrong.

King Ludo - Ludo becomes the second worst king Mewni ever had (yeah, he’s right); Marco gets caught in the unresolved sexual tension between Fool Duke and the front man from Fall Out Boy.

Toffee - Star becomes a super saiyan to defeat Toffee. Or is it Super Sonic? I’m starting to think the golden powered up form is overused.

Scent of a Hoodie - Star’s love for Marco gets a little “creepy.”

Rest in Pudding - Star is haunted Glossaryck. I hope this isn’t some kind of recasting foreshadowing.

Club Snubbed - It’s been years and this episode still makes me throw my phone at the TV.

Stranger Danger - Star meets the ensemble dark horse of the show. See what I did there?

Demoncism - I kept telling people that this was my favorite TV show of all time. I guess the svtfoe crew wanted me to stop liking it. 

Sophomore Slump - Marco screws up after years of chasing fantastic-body Jackie. 

Lint Catcher - Star and Marco reinvigorate their love with the very thing that brought them together: fighting monsters.

Trial by Squire - Star and Marco pretend they’re not in love with each other in a Best Buy on Black Friday.

Princess Turdina - There’s very few things I can say about this episode that won’t get me hate from tumblr.

Starfari - Star starts the monster equality storyline by hanging out with an idiot.

Sweet Dreams - Are made of this, says Star. Who am I to disagree? asks Eclipsa. I disagree, says Marco.

Lava Lake Beach - Hey, we broke Star’s heart. Now we break Marco’s. All’s fair in love and war.

Death Peck - So anyone can become royalty in Mewni? Get it? Because he has a deep rich voice.

Ponymonium - No. Just no.

Night Life - Marco ends Marcapoo after he realizes his love for Star for like the fifth time.  

Deep Dive - Marco unfortunately starts a fan theory that was explained away like three times but it’s what I expect from you guys.

Monster Bash - Tom proves how useless he is in the majority of Star’s life and Mina changes everything.

Stump Day - a Christmas special is the best way to prove that Marco is the superior boyfriend.

Holiday Spellcial - Nope. I’m not doing this.

The Bogbeast of Boggabah - Rhys Darby is the best way to teach Star a lesson.

Total Eclipsa the Moon - I kept calling this episode “Total Eclipsa the Heart.”

Butterfly Trap - The twist of the show is that all the hype of Eclipsa is bullshit and the MHC is just really racist.

Ludo, Where Art Thou - Dennis! Are you up there playing with my buttball? So help me god, you’re getting seven across the ass. Dennis, I’m sorry I yelled at you. What we’re gonna do is I’m gonna learn ya how to play buttball seeings how you’re in my basement. 

Is Another Mystery - Tom proves how useless he is on magical adventures, which is the biggest part of Star’s life, and he’s constantly comparing himself to Marco. Wait, are we sure Tom’s in love with Star?

Marco Jr. - Star proves she knows Marco more than anyone else and Adam McArthur laughs at me on twitter.

Skooled! - Because poor literacy proves that school makes everything less fun even rebellion. Also, Meteora’s backstory.

Booth Buddies - TomStar dies with a stab in the back and it feels so fucking good, bay-bee!

Bam Ui Pati! - A funny Pony Head episode? Like, for reals? For reals? Cool.

Tough Love - Let’s play a game of “Who fucked up more?” 

Divide - This is the closest we’ll get to seeing Star and Marco having sex on screen.

Conquer - The first time Star pissed off everyone in a season finale, but not the last.

[papermoonloveslucy]

THE PORTRAIT ARTIST

August 6, 1948

"The Portrait Artist” aka “The Portrait Painter” aka “The Portrait” is episode #3 of the radio program MY FAVORITE HUSBAND broadcast on August 6, 1948 on the CBS Radio Network.

Synopsis ~ Liz is having her portrait painted by a handsome but gruff artist. George gets jealous and fakes illness, and he is attended to by a sexy young nurse - causing the green-eyed monster to rear between both Cugats! 

MAIN CAST

Lucille Ball (Liz Cugat) was born on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York. She began her screen career in 1933 and was known in Hollywood as ‘Queen of the B’s’ due to her many appearances in ‘B’ movies. With Richard Denning, she starred in a radio program titled “My Favorite Husband” which eventually led to the creation of “I Love Lucy,” a television situation comedy in which she co-starred with her real-life husband, Latin bandleader Desi Arnaz. The program was phenomenally successful, allowing the couple to purchase what was once RKO Studios, re-naming it Desilu. When the show ended in 1960 (in an hour-long format known as “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”) so did Lucy and Desi’s marriage. In 1962, hoping to keep Desilu financially solvent, Lucy returned to the sitcom format with “The Lucy Show,” which lasted six seasons. She followed that with a similar sitcom “Here’s Lucy” co-starring with her real-life children, Lucie and Desi Jr., as well as Gale Gordon, who had joined the cast of “The Lucy Show” during season two. Before her death in 1989, Lucy made one more attempt at a sitcom with “Life With Lucy,” also with Gordon.

Richard Denning (George Cugat) was born as Louis Albert Heindrich Denninger Jr., in Poughkeepsie, New York. When he was 18 months old, his family moved to Los Angeles. Plans called for him to take over his father's garment manufacturing business, but he developed an interest in acting. Denning enlisted in the US Navy during World War II. He is best known for his  roles in various science fiction and horror films of the 1950s. Although he teamed with Lucille Ball on radio in “My Favorite Husband,” the two never acted together on screen. While “I Love Lucy” was on the air, he was seen on another CBS TV series, “Mr. & Mrs. North.” From 1968 to 1980 he played the Governor on “Hawaii 5-0″, his final role. He died in 1998 at age 84.

Ruth Perrott (Katie, the Maid) was also later seen on “I Love Lucy.” She first played Mrs. Pomerantz, a member of the surprise investigating committee for the Society Matrons League in “Pioneer Women” (ILL S1;E25), was one of the member of the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League in “Lucy and Ethel Buy the Same Dress” (ILL S3;E3), and also played a nurse when “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” (ILL S2;E16). She died in 1996 at the age of 96.

GUEST CAST 

John Hiestand (Cory Cartwright) served as the announcer for the radio show “Let George Do It” from 1946 to 1950. In 1955 he did an episode of “Our Miss Brooks” opposite Gale Gordon in which he once again had the surname Cartwright. 

The role of Cory Cartwright was originated by Hal March but Hiestand very quickly replaced him. March did, however, stay with the show and appears from time time as various characters. 

Jeff Chandler (Damon Welch) was known for his prematurely gray hair and striking good looks as a young man. On radio, he was on “Our Miss Brooks” as Mr. Boynton with Eve Arden. When the series moved to television in 1952, Chandler was replaced by Robert Rockwell. Chandler died at age 42 from blood poisoning after an operation.

William Johnstone (Doctor) is best known for his voice work as the title character on “The Shadow” from 1938 to 1943, replacing Lucille Ball’s friend Orson Welles. He played John Jacob Astor in the 1953 film Titanic.

Mary Shipp (Nurse Mary Ann McCarthy) was a radio and TV actress and the second wife of CBS Executive Harry Ackerman.  Shipp played a recurring character on CBS’s “My Friend Irma” (1954-55) which featured Gale Gordon’s mother Gloria and Hal March, who was the first actor to play Cory Cartwright. 

“My Favorite Husband” was based on the novels Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, the Record of a Happy Marriage (1940) and Outside Eden (1945) by Isabel Scott Rorick, which had previously been adapted into the film Are Husbands Necessary? (1942). “My Favorite Husband” was first broadcast as a one-time special on July 5, 1948. Lucille Ball and Lee Bowman played the characters of Liz and George Cugat, and a positive response to this broadcast convinced CBS to launch “My Favorite Husband” as a series on July 23, 1948. Bowman was not available Richard Denning was cast as George. On January 7, 1949, confusion with bandleader Xavier Cugat prompted a name change to Cooper. On this same episode Jell-O became its sponsor. A total of 124 episodes of the program aired from July 23, 1948 through March 31, 1951. After about ten episodes had been written, writers Fox and Davenport departed and three new writers took over – Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Pugh, and head writer/producer Jess Oppenheimer. In March 1949 Gale Gordon took over the existing role of George’s boss, Rudolph Atterbury, and Bea Benaderet was added as his wife, Iris. CBS brought “My Favorite Husband” to television in 1953, starring Joan Caulfield and Barry Nelson as Liz and George Cooper.  The television version ran two-and-a-half seasons, from September 1953 through December 1955, running concurrently with “I Love Lucy.” It was produced live at CBS Television City for most of its run, until switching to film for a truncated third season filmed (ironically) at Desilu and recasting Liz Cooper with Vanessa Brown.

This episode aired on Lucille Ball’s 37th birthday, August 6, 1948. 

At this point in the series, George and Liz are still named Cugat. Their surname will be changed to Cooper in 1949 to avoid confusion with a famous Latin bandleader. No, not Desi Arnaz - Xavier Cugat!  Also, the show had yet to introduce Iris and Rudolph Atterbury, the secondary characters, similar to Fred and Ethel on “I Love Lucy.”  The character of Cory Cartwright, a handsome bachelor friend of the couple, will shortly be phased out. He was initially played by Hal March, but here played by John Hiestand. 

Marital jealousy and painting were also the subjects of “My Favorite Husband” the CBS television show on November 29, 1955. 

THE EPISODE

Announcer Bob LeMond sets up the premise of the series:

Ten years ago the town’s most eligible bachelor, George Cugat, married socially prominent Elizabeth Elliott.  The lavish wedding kept the society columns all over the country in copy for weeks. The New Yorker said:

“The bride and groom were dressed with the nth degree of smartness. The best man was a polo pony.” 

The Hearst Papers said:

“The bride and groom were dressed handsomely and attracted comments from guest Douglas MacArthur.”

And The Reader’s Digest said:

“The bride and groom were dressed.”

The joke lies in the brevity of the Digest’s comments. The Reader’s Digest was known for their publication of abridged novels, short stories, and articles that could be read in one sitting. Ricky was seen reading the Digest in “Lucy Writes a Novel” in 1954. That same year, a biography of Ball by Eleanor Harris was included in the Digest - condensed, naturally. Ball appeared on the covers in 1990 and 2003. 

Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) was a five-star general and Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s. He played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II. At the time of broadcast, he was running for President of the United States, but was defeated in the primaries by Dewey, who was narrowly defeated in the election by Harry S. Truman. In “Lucy and the Submarine” (1966) Mr. Mooney(Gale Gordon) tells Lucy he’s going on a two-week training, but warns her (in his best deep-voiced, measure tones) that “I shall return!”  These were the immortal words spoken by MacArthur when he escaped the Philippines after being surrounded by the Japanese in March 1942.  

It is morning at the Cugat home and while George is having breakfast, Katie the maid is trying to help Liz fit into a tight-fitting and slinky evening gown in preparation for having her portrait painted. Katie suggests wearing a different dress for the portrait, but Liz is worried that they might move to Boston one day, and she doesn’t want her portrait banned!  

"Banned in Boston" was a phrase employed from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century, to describe a literary work, song, motion picture, or play which had been prohibited from distribution or exhibition in Boston, Massachusetts. During this period, Boston officials had wide authority to ban works featuring "objectionable" content, and often banned works with sexual content or foul language. In 1944, just a few years before this broadcast, Boston banned the book Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor, which was referred to on “I Love Lucy” as Forever Ember. 

Liz goes down to breakfast in her slinky evening gown and tells George that she is having her portrait painted by noted artist Damon Welch. 

LIZ: “They say he’s very big and strong and muscular like, uh...who’s that rugged tall actor in the movies? The one with the big arms and broad shoulders?” GEORGE: “Marjorie Main.” LIZ: “No, Victor Mature.”

Marjorie Main (1890-1975) was a character actress who just a few months before this broadcast earned an Oscar nomination for The Egg and I. In 1954 she was a supporting player in Lucy and Desi’s The Long, Long Trailer (1953).

Victor Mature (1913-99) was a stage, film, and television actor who starred in several movies during the 1950s, and was known for his dark hair and smile. Mature and Lucille Ball acted together in Seven Days Leave (1942) and Easy Living (1949). 

Bachelor Cory Cartwright (John Hiestand) visits the Cugats with exciting news about his date last night: 

CORY: “She had a smile like Lana Turner, a voice like Dinah Shore, she kissed like Paulette Goddard.” LIZ: “Do you date her or buy tickets to her?”

Lana Turner (1921-55) achieved fame as both a pin-up model and a film actress. In the mid-1940s, she was one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood and one of MGM) biggest stars. In 1943, she did a cameo in Lucille Ball’s Du Barry Was a Lady. Turner was mentioned in three episodes of “I Love Lucy.” 

Dinah Shore (1916-94) was a singer, actress and television personality, as well as a top-charting female vocalist of the 1940s. She achieved even greater success on television, mainly as hostess of a series of variety and talk programs, although she guest starred on “Here’s Lucy” in 1971. Ball made numerous appearances on Shore’s talk shows as well. 

Paulette Goddard (1910-90) was major star of Paramount Pictures in the 1940s. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in So Proudly We Hail! (1943). She did three films with Lucille Ball between 1933 and 1934: Roman Scandals, The Bowery, and The Kid. 

George comes home from work and asks Liz about progress on the portrait. Liz was impressed by Welch’s world experience. George feels inadequate. He makes her tell him how much she loves him.

LIZ: “Hold me tighter. Make believe I’m a tube of toothpaste and pop my cap off!”

Dejected that Liz wants him to take up painting like Damon Welch, George goes to bed without his supper. 

The second act begins with George deciding to stay home, pretending to be sick in order to keep an eye on Liz and Welch. Katie admits Damon for their sitting. Welch doesn’t believe George is sick.

DAMON: “You should get out-of-doors; do some exercises. Run the mile, do some chin-ups, push-ups, chop some wood, mow the lawn, pull some weights...” LIZ: “Tote that barge, lift that bale!”  

Liz chimes in with lyrics from the song “Old Man River” by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern, written for the 1927 musical Show Boat. A revival of the musical ran on Broadway in 1946. There was a radio adaptation in 1944. In “Never Do Business With Friends” (1953), Lucy Ricardo analogizes her housework without an electric washing machine to that of the slaves who sing “Old Man River”:

LUCY: “Carrying this heavy basket - up and down, up and down. My muscles straining, body all aching and racked with pain. Fold those shirts, lift those sheets.” RICKY: “Now, look, Old Man River, will you dry up?”

The doctor arrives and examines George, finding nothing whatever the matter with him. His diagnosis is extreme jealousy-itis. He summons his new nurse, Mary Ann McCarthy (Mary Shipp), whose beauty stops George in his tracks. 

Downstairs, Liz is still being painted by Damon, but not nearly fast enough for her liking. She complains that he still hasn’t painted her hair!  She doesn’t like seeing herself bald!

LIZ: “I look like my mother was frightened by Guy Kibbee!” MONTY: “I’ll paint in your hair when I see fit, and not a second sooner. Until that time you’ll remain an egg-head and like it!”

Guy Kibbee (1882-1956) was a stage and film actor. In the 1935 film Mary Jane's Pa, Kibbee prepares a breakfast dish which consists of a hole cut out of the center of a slice of bread, and an egg cracked into it, all of which is fried in a skillet. It became known as Guy Kibbee Eggs but is also known as eggs in a basket. Liz is no doubt comparing her bald head on the canvas with the eggs. I didn’t hurt the comparison that Kibbee was also bald!  Kibbee appeared with Lucille Ball in Don’t Tell The Wife (1937) and Joy of Living (1938). 

George hears Damon and Liz laughing and comes downstairs to confront them but Damon sends him back upstairs. Liz wonders if George is jealous just as George is heard laughing upstairs with Nurse McCarthy. Liz goes upstairs to confront her husband! George says he’s had a relapse! 

GEORGE: “I accidentally plugged my electric heating pad into the radio and H.V. Kaltenborn got into bed with me!”

Hans von Kaltenborn (1878-1965) was a radio commentator who was heard regularly on the radio for over 30 years, beginning in 1928. He was known for his highly precise diction, his ability to ad-lib, and his knowledge of world affairs. In 1948, Kaltenborn played himself in The Babe Ruth Story which co-starred William Frawley (Fred Mertz). 

George, still suspicious of Liz and Damon, goes downstairs to discover that Liz has dismissed the painter so George wouldn’t be sick and Miss McCarthy would go. 

After a message from the announcer about participation in community projects (a post-war endeavor), George and Liz engage in some bedtime repartee before they kiss and say goodnight. End of episode! 

[tvguidancecounselor]

TV Guidance Counselor Episode 365: Denver Pop Culture Con 2019 Day 1 w/Tara Strong, Christopher Lloyd and Tom Wilson

BONUS EPISODE TIME! It's Day 1 of Denver Pop Culture Con 2019.

First up Ken talks with voice acting dynamo and all around amazing human being Tara Strong.

Ken and Tara discuss relating to Ponies, Teen Titans, Fairly Odd Parents, collaborative jobs, your kids watching your stuff, the voices that are the most difficult on your voice, Melody from The Little Mermaid 2, aside from your personal favorite what your personal favorite is, Batgirl, Harley Quinn, Powerpuff Girls, breaking hearts over the phone, Mark Hamill, Kevin Conroy, Ben 10, Raven, Rick & Morty, the emotion of getting your wings, Drawn Together, making out with Cree Summer, Rugrats, and the sadness of when things end.

Next up it is a Back to the Future panel with Christopher Lloyd and Tom Wilson.

Ken, Tom and Christopher discuss Back to the Future, Taxi, being an icon on The Facts of Life, being iconic, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, dealing with the massive success of Back to the Future, Things to do in Denver When You're Dead, playing an unlikable character, improv and comedy, The Civil War, Andersonville, Jack Nicholson, not meetin gyour heroes, performing at Jimmy Stewart's 80th Birthday, being on a "very special" Facts of Life, having Doc Brown's cowboy shirt from Back to the Future Part 3, reshooting scenes, string theory, being in Batman series, what their characters would be doing today, free snacks, Angels in the Outfield vs. Anastasia, Live Aid, getting cast as a bully, getting back into Rev. Jim's head, reshooting your own death scene in Back to the Future, recasting Marty McFly, chemistry, and how Ken isn't funny.

[laughingpinecone]

Clean place, reasonably priced. Good for a drink. 

408w, Diane Evans, Albert Rosenfield, reunion fic, gen, ethereal whooshing. Chocobox treat for @dye-ann ♥

           Albert made his way across the motel’s crowded lobby. Black suits with slicked-back black hair filled the small concrete room, talking to themselves, getting in his way like trees do in a dream, dark mazes of twisting pathways . Unlike his dreams, eventually, he made it through. On the other end of the room, Diane was sitting on a small concrete stool at a small concrete bar, pouring herself a drink and leaving a few coins to no-one in particular.

 “There you are. I was starting to think I'd need to retrace my trail of breadcrumbs past that Schwarzwald.”

 “Oh, Albert. Of course I'm here. You know where I drink.”

 She grabbed a clean glass from behind the counter and put it next to hers, motioning for him to join her. Her vintage dress - late Fifties, fitting for the ambient - shone under the electric light. He leaned on the counter, tired after the long journey, wishing he could sit down beside her and talk about the things they used to talk about - James Bond recasts, the virtues of imposed minimalism, soba recipes, outdated takes on color theory. And more, but he forgot.

 “Do you have a room here?” he asked instead, feeling every mile of the road behind him in his knees. “How quickly can you pack up and check out?”

 “What?”

 “I found you. We can leave.”

 She shook her head. “I'm over this, Albert. Don't even try with the raised eyebrow, you one-trick pony, there's no making a fool of me if I'm right. I'm not going anywhere. If other people want me, they can come find me. If other places want me, they can find me too.”

 “And how's that working out for you?”

 Diane shrugged. She raised her glass. “You're here.”

 “I'm here,” Albert agreed.

 He sat on the small concrete stool next to her, letting the weight of the journey drop off his shoulders. They shared a sad smile, and one of Albert’s cigarettes, and a glass of whiskey, and they talked and talked of all the things they used to talk about and some they’d forgotten. They talked of friendship.

 Outside the window, purple clouds gathered over the purple ocean as long waves mounted on the horizon, coming to shore to erase all traces of Albert’s passage and leave only the gray silhouette of a concrete motel facing the shore, forever. In the distance, beyond the waves, a castle rose on the ocean.

[genderassignment]

Borderland Creatures: Lise Haller Baggesen & Iris Bernblum at Goldfinch

Installation view of I am the horse, Goldfinch, Chicago. Photo credit: Daniel Hojnacki. Left: Iris Bernblum. Pretty baby 3, 2018, spray paint on photo. Right: Iris Bernblum. Pour, 2018, paint on wall, dimensions variable.

Gender Assignment Guest Blogger, Matt Morris

This is a story of biopower and biosociality…those bitches insisted on the history of companion species, a very mundane and ongoing sort of tale, one full of misunderstandings, achievements, crimes, and renewable hopes. (1)

To begin, rest assured that in my epigraph above, Donna Haraway writes ‘bitches’ in reference to dogs designed to service breeding and the interests of humans. However, it occurs to me how language demonstrates its potential to transmigrate across species (a system that is itself, language), and marks out a contentious zone in which femininity is denigrated, and the fact of our animal-ness is charged with a capacity for social abuse and enforced disparities across gender and race. Language is appropriated, and then reappropriated in common parlance, how one might clap back, confirming, ‘Yes, I’m that bitch.’ One wonders, and the wondering is overwhelming, at the intricacies of how language and organism and the institution of gender have been made to conspire in obfuscating life’s interdependencies. Haraway goes on to remind readers that to consider companion species is not only to account for pets, but also the plant- and animal-based foods we consume, cellular genetic modifications, products with less obvious origins among the living (horses, glue, etc.), and techno-hybrid aspects of contemporary life. The challenge to grasp either the particulars or scope of this paradigm is certainly an (intentional) effect of power. That artists Lise Haller Baggesen and Iris Bernblum succeed at finding starting points to contemplate these entanglements by revisiting the much-maligned genre of ‘horse art’ mostly relegated to the sphere of female adolescence is both novel and moving. In the years I’ve known both artists’ practices, I’ve come to trust that neither are squeamish around topics that are often avoided as much because of how easily they are dismissed as for how problematic they prove to be in their deconstruction. Motherhood, passé disco, unicorns, bucolic landscapes: both artists brave themes that even many other feminists avoid. Their exhibition I Am the Horse now on view at Goldfinch in Garfield Park proves to be écriture feminine (2) équestre par excellence.

If we reside in an oft-unacknowledged natureculture system, Baggesen and Bernblum’s art manifests naturecultureculture, at turns instinctively poetic, strategically conceptual, activist, collaborative, whimsical, and stark. Through paintings (on canvas, on photographs), photographic documentation of playful activations of sculptures (objects that are themselves also on view elsewhere in the space), projected video, drawing, and two audio soundtracks, both artists weave Borromean knots through Lacan’s imaginary and real.

(Why would I invoke such an old model of describing experience and consciousness as Lacan, when Baudrillard’s postulations decades ago of a madness of simulations detached from the real seem to be reaching new climaxes of surreal if not unbearable proportions in our present day? I’ll admit, I’m desperate to find means of surviving even thriving, and it’s in my personal bias that I find Lacan useful. It’s certainly a mere mirage of organization, but as with the ‘horse art’ I’m pondering here, it offers me some manageability with which to encounter immense entanglements with which I am otherwise inundated. I am struggling with being in the world, sometimes struggling to even face exhibition openings like this one about which I write. I’m searching for how to be—ethically, aesthetically, politically.)  

Lise Haller Baggesen. Refusenik on the beach, 2018, Photographic transparency, lightbox. Image courtesy of the artist

It’s in this present state that I feel such affinity for Baggesen’s Refuseniks, a series of costumes that propose hybridity for their wearers (across individuals, across species), by combining structural aspects of jockey shirts and horse blankets, often with multiplied arm holes and equine-shaped hoods. Refusenik (double wearable), 2017, is a melancholic confection draped in the gallery space, possessing all the pluralism of Rei Kawakubo and the lightly floral palette of Dirk Van Saene. In the accompanying photographs, we see these garments not only worn by people and horses alike, but also behaving architectonically, pitched into tents redolent of the Snoezelen-room-inspired immersive installations of Baggesen’s earlier work.

Make. Believe. Dress. Up. Pause to consider these words and phrases while observing Baggesen’s photographs of Refuseniks in the wild. The lightbox Refusenik on the Beach, 2018, shows a figure swimming offshore like an island-bound pony or a mermaid. These scenarios are acted out as conscious performative disengagements from dominant narratives that taxonomize and restrict across gender, age, and species. These works are efforts in conscious play, what psychoanalyst Ernst Kris termed ‘regression in the service of the ego,’ following on the pronouncement of becoming that names the exhibition. I am the horse.

Installation view of I am the horse, Goldfinch, Chicago. Photo credit: Daniel Hojnacki

What’s regrettable and even misguided within the literature that expounds on the bonds between women and horses—and by this, I’m speaking of a body of discourse inclusive not only of psychoanalysis and other modern modes of theory production, but also more expansive treatments of mythology and lore—is that these relationships are nearly always supposed as a substitution for women oriented toward men. The method of using a virgin to attract a unicorn so it may be caught and its horn severed and used for its healing properties is all misdirection: it seems clear to me that this narrative mostly prepares young women to be penetrated by virile conquests. The unfounded rumors of Catherine the Great’s lust for equine copulation follows on her wresting control of the Russian empire from her mentally ill husband. In her case, her strength of will that surpassed the men with whom she was attached and surrounded had to be distorted into bestial proportions in order to maintain a culture organized around male domination. A nebula of dildonic hobby horses, penis envy, the introduction of women riding side-saddle as early as the 14th century as a means of protecting their virginity if not also their decency—horses gallop through all sorts of conceptualizations that would portray women’s sexuality as vulnerable and in need of protection, and also a site of lack, a cavity designed to be filled. It would seem that across the literature that characterizes women’s relationships to horses, men can’t help but recast these attachments as metaphoric pussy grabbing of a most intimate order, territorializing the horse’s body as a prosthetic extension of their own desire and dread and anger (read: misogyny) to control women and their object choices, erotic or otherwise. This is a consuming violence further materialized by the litany of ways that the unchecked, unexamined, privileged marker of ‘men’ is scripted with an entitlement to possess whatever the holder of that sign wishes to possess, to possess and then destroy, and the absolute conviction held within that position that any alternative narratives produced within the culture is metaphoric to them.

It is against this violence and the symbolic order that reifies it that Bernblum and Baggesen act. Upon entering the exhibition, Baggesen’s audio piece, Stallion, 2018, is played on white headphones beneath one of several lightbox photographs in the exhibition that show her piecework Refusenik garments used in tropical landscapes. The sound piece is a sort of audio guide, as if a didactic for a museum collection—a format for working that recurs across Baggesen’s oeuvre and shows how her research operates across writing and studio production. The audio speaks to The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries in Paris’ Musée de Cluny, noting possible symbols for virginity, chastity, and maternity within the textiles’ imagery, with frequent departures into lullaby-like singing and theoretical proposals such as: “’Our selves’ are not located within ‘ourselves’…but are a function of it and vice versa, and personhood is acquired, along with ‘soul,’ gradually and suddenly….” From the start, the logic of this exhibition proceeds counter to any linear theory of development in which a monolithic subject is constituted.

Iris Bernblum. Pretty baby 2, 2018, spray paint on photo. Image courtesy of the artist and Aspect/Ratio Gallery, Chicago

Also from the start, the titular horse in both artists’ projects is haunted by a spectral unicorn. In Bernblum’s Pretty baby 3, 2018, a mottled horse is photographed in black and white. Where a unicorn’s horn might emerge from its head, the artist has sprayed the print with a hazy, glowing pink paint. Is this the body from which her ten-foot-tall unicorn horn-cum-lightning rod Struck, 2016, was removed? While the image conjures fantasies both telepathic and amputating, the action of it as an object—the spray of paint that Bernblum repeats across numerous works—belongs to a nouveau réaliste mode of painting that recalls Niki de Saint Phalle’s Shooting Pictures of the 1960s. The pigment dispersions and drips in Bernblum’s paintings—on photographs, paper, and for Pour, 2018, down the gallery wall itself—are jouissance gestures held at an ambiguous point of rupture, appearing to spill forth, but understood as applied onto the bodies (of horses, of gallery-institution) depicted. This, I have come to feel, is the zone in which Bernblum and her audiences are held—threshold spaces, subtle but provocatively suspenseful, with all the erotic, energetic potential of bodies together pressing into the moment of her artwork. She commands an art herstory that swells from Benglis’ ejaculated spills and Judy Chicago’s spray-painted ‘flesh gates,’ ‘cunts,’ and ‘Great Ladies’ works. Here is one of the linkages between artistic praxis and the horse bodies that roam through the exhibition: these painterly forerunners pushed past pictorial illusionism into the expressive potential of material itself, understood simultaneously through being looked upon (imaginary) and acted with (real). So too, it would seem, do horses. History of science scholar Laurel Braitman notes in her research of how animals are thought about within human culture, "Horses and…unicorns—these are all borderland creatures; gateway animals to other worlds," she says. "They help us imagine wonderful other ways of being in the world,” of harnessing one’s own power and potential for transformation. (3)

Lise Haller Baggesen. Grown up Refusenik, Copenhagen, October 2017, 2017. Photographic transparency, lightbox. Image courtesy of the artist

The efforts of these two artists sensitize their audiences to the means by which such transformative tools are restricted from use by their situation into early periods of development that are made difficult to access, through stigmas of some sort of arrested adolescence and the assigned roles and responsibilities of adulthood. The assembled artworks, the excursions they document, and the desires they manifest act against capitalist time, the work shift of the laborer, the demands on the time of mothers and working mothers, the imposition of a before and after of sexual awakening. Baggesen’s Grown-up Refusenik, Copenhagen, October 2017, 2017, shows an upright figure standing beside a clear-eyed horse named Nellie. One sees a graying beard along the jawline of the figure, whose head is otherwise masked by a pink horse hood. If not for this fanciful headpiece, this image might recall the other tradition in horse art, the status-symbol equestrian portrait that came to prominence in the 16th–18th centuries of European painting. As it is, one is left to quietly rethink the conceptual divisions upon which our political, economic, and ideological systems depend. What if the hierarchies of speciesism are toppled, and with them, the metaphors that would organize all women’s attachments as preludes or parallels to their being dominated by men? What it the right-wing accelerationism’s tenuous reliance on regulated, linear time might be disrupted in order to gain access to modes of play and being that have been restricted to childhood? What if we breathe, as Bernblum’s two-channel video work breathes, or we make space to catch our breath amidst what feels like a world on fire? What if we explore unbridled, libidinal release that transgresses borderlands? Because, interestingly, Baggesen and Bernblum work into and from facets of écriture féminine that are not essentialist in defining a category of womanhood, but even, as Wittig proposes would “destroy the sexes as a sociological reality if we want to start to exist.” Optimistically, she invites forms of becoming beyond a binary: “To refuse to be a woman, however, does not mean that one has to become a man.” What if, in refusal, we become unicorns?

End Note: I’ve decided that for my series of contributions to Gender Assignment, I want to attach to each essay a selected perfume that I’ve worn through most or all of the drafting of these texts. This can be traced back to my use of perfume in my own art practice, as well as conversations around sensitivity and wellness related to scent that I’ve shared with my host and editor here, Mel Potter, as well as the artists and subjects of this and other forthcoming texts. For this first essay, I have written within a cloud of Mon Musc a Moi, released in 2015 by A Lab on Fire, designed by Dominique Ropion. This scent opens with quick bursts of bergamot and peach blossom before wrapping a sugary heliotrope-vanilla in wet-fur musks. The perfume house recently renamed the scent Messy SexyTM Just Rolled Out of Bed, and it strikes me that the former name possesses an introspection and reticence that is perhaps in keeping with this exhibition, while its updated moniker casts the scent into a narrative tinged with male-gazey sexual-objecthood that may be more salable, but belies some of the poetry of the scent.

Matt Morris is an artist, writer, and sometimes curator based in Chicago. He analyzes forms of attachment and intimacy through painting, perfume, photography, and institutional critique. He has presented artwork at Adds Donna, The Bike Room, Gallery 400, The Franklin, peregrineprogram, Queer Thoughts, Sector 2337, and Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago, IL; The Mary + Leigh Block Museum of Art in Evanston, IL; The Elmhurst Art Museum in Elmhurst, IL; Fjord and Vox Populi in Philadelphia, PA; The Contemporary Arts Center, U·turn Art Space, Aisle, and semantics in Cincinnati, OH; Clough-Hanson Gallery and Beige in Memphis, TN; Permanent.Collection in Austin, TX; Cherry + Lucic in Portland, OR; The Poor Farm in Manawa, WI; with additional projects in Reims, France; Greencastle, IN; Lincoln, NE; and Baton Rouge, LA. Morris is a transplant from southern Louisiana who holds a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and earned an MFA in Art Theory + Practice from Northwestern University, as well as a Certificate in Gender + Sexuality Studies. In Summer 2017 he earned a Certification in Fairyology from Doreen Virtue, PhD. He is a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a contributor to Artforum.com, ARTnews, Art Papers, Flash Art, Pelican Bomb, and Sculpture; and his writing appears in numerous exhibition catalogues and artist monographs.

1. Haraway, Donna. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2007. Print, p. 5.

2. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Écriture_féminine>

3.  Quoted in Davia Nelson and Niiki Silva’s “Why Do Girls Love Horses, Unicorns and Dolphins?” All Things Considered. National Public Radio, February 9, 2011. <https://www.npr.org/2011/02/09/133600424/why-do-girls-love-horses-unicorns-and-dolphins> 

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Brad Pitt and the Beauty Trap

The meaning of Brad Pitt — as actor, star and supreme visual fetish — can be traced to the moment in the 1991 film “Thelma & Louise” when the camera pans up from his bare chest to his face like a caress. William Bradley Pitt was born 1963, but Brad Pitt sprung forth in that 13-second ode to eroticized male beauty, initiating a closely watched career and life, dozens of movies, and libraries of delirious exaltations, drooling gossip and porny magazine layouts.

The delirium has resumed with Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” in which Pitt plays the Pitt-perfect role of Cliff Booth, a seasoned stunt man and coolest of cats. Everything about Cliff looks so good, so effortlessly smooth, whether he’s behind the wheel of a Coupe de Ville or strolling across a dusty wasteland. The novelist Walter Kirn once wrote that Robert Redford “stands for the [movie] industry itself, somehow, in all its California dreaminess.” In “Once Upon a Time,” Tarantino recasts that idea-ideal with Cliff, exploiting Pitt’s looks and charm to create another sun-kissed, golden and very white California dream.

So of course Tarantino being Tarantino has Cliff-Pitt doff his shirt, in a scene that both nods to the actor’s foundational “Thelma & Louise” display and offers another effusive paean to masculine beauty. It’s a hot day; Cliff is scarcely working. So he grabs his tools and a beer and scrambles on a roof to fix an antenna, wearing pretty much what Pitt first wears in “Thelma & Louise.” Then Cliff strips off his Hawaiian shirt and the Champion tee underneath it and once again, Brad Pitt stands bare-chested, soaring above both Hollywood and our gaze, the already porous line between actor and character blurring delectably further.

On Feb. 9, Oscar night, our gaze will again fix on Pitt, who has been nominated for best supporting actor for his role in “Once Upon a Time.” It’s nice that his peers bothered because they’ve been reluctant to honor him in the past. Despite his years of service and critically praised roles, Pitt has won just one Oscar: a best picture statuette for helping produce “12 Years a Slave.” As an actor, he has been nominated three previous times: once for supporting (“12 Monkeys”) and twice for lead (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Moneyball”). As a reminder, Rami Malek, Eddie Redmayne and Roberto Benigni have all won best actor.

The academy hasn’t been alone in undervaluing Pitt. Beauty can be a trap as much as a benediction, including for men. Some of his earlier choices didn’t help, like “Legends of the Fall,” a risible dud that turns him into a golden sex pony. And neither did hyperventilating journalists: “A body like a Bruce Weber pinup,” one cooed in 1991. Four years later, panting tongue presumably in cheek, People wrote that “you wanted to ride bareback down the slopes of his hair.” Pitt himself fed the slavering by posing for outlets that eagerly indulged their soft-core reveries, like his 1994 Rolling Stone cover for “Interview With the Vampire,” where he stares at the camera like a Fabio-ed Kurt Cobain.

Critics could be unkind (guilty), but as the bad movies gave way to good, the notices improved. Soon, it became a favorite cliché to write that he was a character actor trapped in the body of a star (guilty again). Some of this, I think, stems from a suspicion of beauty, that it can’t be trusted, is “merely” superficial and silly, which makes the beautiful one also superficial and maybe even worthy of contempt that can lurk under obsession. There’s nothing new about how we punish beauty. The history of movies is filled with the victims of this malignant love-to-love and love-to-hate dynamic, not all of them women.

Once established, though, the star persona can become a received idea, not just a mask, and tough to dislodge. Pitt’s early success was often framed as a fairy tale about a Missouri kid who “for no apparent reason,” as one writer put it, came to Hollywood and fast became the next big thing. (Cue the James Dean comparisons, of which there were many.) Pitt studied acting in Los Angeles, including with the well-regarded Roy London, but the labor of performing isn’t sexy. It also doesn’t fit with the canard that stars can’t act. But there’s more to acting than the Method, telegraphed anguish and dropping (or adding) pounds, and while Pitt can go big — he’s played Achilles and a serial killer — he has a gift for understatement.

Pitt should have been nominated this year for best actor for his delicate, deep work in James Gray’s “Ad Astra,” a meditation on the unbearable weight of masculinity set largely in outer space. The film was praised as was Pitt’s turn, but neither found awards momentum. The performance was too good and certainly too subtle and interiorized for the academy. It has a historic weakness for showboating — the more suffering the better — which is why Joaquin Phoenix (often otherwise worthy) and his jutting rib cage in “Joker” seem like a lock. But Pitt has time. It took seven nominations for Paul Newman to win best actor; Redford has been nominated only once for acting (he lost).

Like Newman and Redford, Pitt has always seemed born to the screen, a natural. He has a palpable physical ease about him that seems inseparable from his looks, that silkiness that seems, at least in part, to come from waking up every day and going through life as a beautiful person. This isn’t to say that good-looking people don’t have the same issues, the neuroses and awkwardness that plague us mortals. But Pitt has always moved with the absolute surety you see in some beautiful people (and dancers), the casualness of movement that expresses more than mere confidence, but a sublime lack of self-consciousness and self-doubt about taking up space, something not everyone shares. This isn’t swagger; this is flow.

How actors walk, strut, slink and just stand signifies, though perhaps not as much as it once did, before filmmakers started focusing more on talking heads, which scale down better on the small screen. Sean Connery’s predatory prowl helped define James Bond. Sidney Poitier’s perfect posture, how he held his head and moved alongside white actors, announced a profound shift in the cinematic representation of race. Pitt spends a lot of time behind the wheel in “Once Upon a Time,” but he’s a great walker (even while wearing Cliff’s moccasins) and when Cliff realizes that it’s time to leave the dangerous Spahn ranch, the actor’s ramrod carriage, purposeful stride and tensed swing of his arms convey a man prepared for battle.

Over his three-decade career, Pitt has played a range of roles: soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, vampire, thief. Among the most indelible is the phantasmagoric street fighter Tyler Durden — another great mover, with another of Pitt’s career-defining torsos — from David Fincher’s “Fight Club” (1999). The film turns on warring halves, a presumptive beta (Edward Norton) and his alpha twin (Pitt), who confront consumerism, postmodern anomie and that cult known as masculinity. Whether its critique lands has been much debated (that’s a no), but what remains beyond doubt is how Pitt, with his bloodied face and sculpted physique, became an emblem of contemporary masculinity and its contradictions.

In the years since “Fight Club,” the film has been embraced without irony and apparently without humor by men’s rights partisans. I wonder if they think Tyler is hot, and what exactly they see when they look at his body. Movies have always banked on the audience’s love of male violence. Throughout their history, they have exploited male beauty, tapping the passion it inspires. “Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant,” said, well, Cary Grant.

But the beautiful man can make us nervous, partly because he complicates gender norms. George Clooney is more than a pretty face, more than one writer has insisted. Yes, but he is also pretty. Some of this anxiety reeks of gay panic and misogyny.

Pitt has alternately rejected and embraced the dreamboat role, though he seems consistently game when asked to play that part in photo spreads; maybe because he knows it so well, he is also adept at sending it up. Part of what works in “Fight Club” is the aggressively performative quality that he brings to Tyler Durden, who from his strut to his red leather jacket and blood-colored sunglasses conveys both a swaggering masculine ideal and its absurd lad-magazine excesses. He’s a dreamboat for guys. Because while Tyler has a female lover-antagonist (Helena Bonham Carter), his main relationships are with other men, including his doppelgänger and the dudes who flock to the fight club, hysterical and shouting.

“Fight Club” demonstrated Pitt’s talents as a wingman, an ability to smoothly fall in step with a male co-star or trail in the other man’s shadow, which he does in “Once Upon a Time” as well as the three “Ocean’s” movies, playing Rosalind Russell to Clooney’s Cary Grant. Unlike some of his male peers, Pitt has always seemed equally comfortable sharing the screen with leading women, including former life partners, Juliette Lewis (in “Kalifornia”) and Angelina Jolie (“By the Sea”); he is also one of the few contemporary male stars whose persona has been, at least in part, constituted by the famous women in his life.

In an American cinema that has been dominated for decades by male characters who roam in packs or walk mean streets alone, it seems worth underscoring just how female-friendly Pitt reads onscreen and off. This goes back to his breakout role in “Thelma & Louise,” in which he plays a very intentional object of female desire called J.D. It was Geena Davis, who plays Thelma, who advocated that he be cast (over Clooney, among others), though the director, Ridley Scott, soon understood what Pitt was bringing to his brief yet pivotal role: For Thelma and J.D.’s sex scene, Scott, a visual perfectionist with an enduring love of glistening wet surfaces, sprayed Evian water on Pitt’s chest to give it sheen.

Pitt’s big scene takes place on a quiet night midway through the film. Coming in from the rain, J.D. knocks on Thelma’s motel door, brags about robbing stores and pleasures her in bed. (Later, he steals her and Louise’s bankroll.) The next morning, a still-disheveled Thelma tells Louise about her night with J.D., “I finally understand what all the fuss is about” — her face lit with a wild smile — “it’s just like a whole ’nother ballgame!” One of the things that the film’s detractors never grasped is that “Thelma & Louise” isn’t about female deviance or women ostensibly acting like men, but female pleasure and the liberation of body and soul. J.D. rips off Thelma and pushes her toward criminality. He also helps free her.

Soon before they have sex, J.D. (bare-chested, as he should be) takes out the portable hair dryer that he’s tucked into his waistband and waves it around like a gun, giving outlaw pointers to Thelma. The mixture of messages — the feminized dryer, the phallic gun — creates a seemingly dissonant pileup of signification that mixes male and female, desire and danger, laughter and heartache. This dissonance is crucial to the film and to the persona Pitt would develop, partly because it tempers beauty, making it approachable, funny, human. “That scene, right there,” Scott said later, “is the beginning of Brad Pitt! Bingo!” Scott was wrong; Pitt’s entire performance was the beginning — and the camera’s love, the jackpot.

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Walmart Black Friday 2018 deals start tonight: $250 iPad, $100 Google Home Hub, $60 Instant Pot and more

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Walmart Black Friday 2018 deals start tonight: $250 iPad, $100 Google Home Hub, $60 Instant Pot and more

Walmart

For serious Black Friday deals hounds, tonight’s the night.

Walmart’s Black Friday sale prices will go live online tonight, Wednesday, Nov. 21 at 10 p.m. Eastern Time (7 p.m. PT). That means you won’t need to visit the store to take advantage of its discounts. And you won’t need to wait till Black Friday proper, or even Thanksgiving. 

If you’re more of a Black Friday traditionalist and enjoy going to the store, sales in the physical stores kick off at 6 p.m. local time on Thanksgiving. 

With that in mind we broke down this post into three sections:

Deals available now (online and in-store). This includes mostly game consoles and bundles that have been on sale for awhile, including at other stores.

Deals starting tonight online (Wednesday, Nov. 21, 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT) This includes most of Walmart’s best deals, including deals available elsewhere, like the $250 iPad and $100 40-inch TV. Note that Walmart’s ad is unclear whether all of the deals in this section will actually be available online, and we expect them to sell out fast tonight anyway.

Black Friday deals available in-store only (starting Thanksgiving, Thursday Nov. 22, 6 p.m. local time). This section consists of the phone deals, which Walmart says you’ll need to visit the store to activate.

Scroll down to see a few of our favorite Walmart Black Friday deals, starting off with the ones available now — and check out more deals in the slideshow below. 

A few notes to keep in mind:

We linked to the current listing at Walmart’s website when one was available, but those sale prices won’t be available until the sale begins tonight.

CNET may get a share of revenue from the sale of the products featured on this page.

Walmart Black Friday sale prices available now

Xbox One S Minecraft bundle for $199 (save $100)

Tania Gonzalez/CNET

This bundle pulls together a 1TB Xbox One S with Minecraft, the megapopular building game that’s suitable for all ages. 

See at Walmart

Read the CNET review

Xbox One X for $399 (save $100)

Josh Miller

Want the more powerful Xbox One X? It’s available for $100 off, too. This console delivers a full 4K gaming experience, and it plays 4K Blu-rays, too (the similarly priced PS4 Pro can’t do that).

See at Walmart

Read the CNET review

Note that you can also get the Xbox One S or One X with some other, newer games by paying just $30 more. That’s still a net savings, because you’d likely be paying $60 for these games if purchased separately.

Xbox One S bundles for $229 at Walmart:

See the Forza Horizon 4 bundle See NBA 2K19 bundle See Battlefield V bundle

Xbox One X bundles for $429 at Walmart: 

See the PUBG bundle See Fallout 76 bundle See the NBA 2K19 bundle

PlayStation 4 Slim (1TB) + Spider-Man bundle: $200 (save $100)

Aloysius Low/CNET

If you haven’t bought a next-generation console yet, here’s one of the best prices yet to convince you to pony up. This is the 1TB PS4 Slim version with the excellent Spider-Man, all for $200. 

(Update: As of 8:45 a.m. on Wednesday Nov. 21 it’s sold out, but was in and out of stock all day yesterday so it might reappear soon. If it’s out when you read this, try Gamestop, Target, or Best Buy. It may also be available for pickup at local stores of those retailers.)

See at Walmart

Read the Sony SplayStation 4 Slim review

PlayStation VR + 2 Move controllers + Creed, Superhot bundle: $249 (save $100)

Target

If you already have a PS4, this bundle kickstarts your virtual reality experience. It includes the PlayStation VR helmet, 2 Move controllers and 2 compatible games: Creed: Rise to Glory and Superhot VR. It’s widely available at most other major retailers, too.

See at Walmart

Read the PlayStation VR review

Walmart Black Friday deals available starting tonight online (Wed., Nov. 21 at 10p.m. ET / 7p.m. PT)

2018 iPad, $250 (save $80)

Sarah Tew/CNET

This deal will be widely available during Black Friday week, but Walmart will have the 2018 iPad on sale first — a great price for a great gift.

$250.00 at Walmart

iPad review

Google Home Hub, $99 (save $50)

Brian Bennett/CNET

That’s a whole 33 percent off the extremely handy Google Home Hub, which was just released. And it’s got no camera, so it’s a more comfortable bedroom and kitchen companion that other smart displays.

$99.00 at Walmart

Google Home Hub review

Nintendo Switch bundle with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, $300 (save $70)

Mark Licea/CNET

The hottest game console on the planet, the Nintendo Switch is normally $299 by itself. This bundle includes the system’s best party game, a $70 value.

Note that this deal is available now at Best Buy and elsewhere.

Read the Nintendo Switch review

That price is not a misprint

65-inch 4K smart Roku TV: $398

Sarah Tew/CNET

This is an insane price on a big TV with Roku, the best smart TV system CNET has ever tested. Walmart’s ad says the TV is either the TCL 65S4 or the Sharp LC‑65Q7300U. We haven’t reviewed either model directly, but TCL tells us it has “similar form and function” to the S405 we reviewed in 2017 (pictured), which costs roughly $350 more at 65 inches.

See at Walmart

Read CNET’s S405 review

Cheapest. 40-inch TV. Ever.

40-inch Hisense 1080p TV: $99

Walmart

Neither have we reviewed this Hisense (model 40EU3000), but we’re guessing its image quality is on the bottom end of “acceptable,” at best. But this is the lowest price we’ve ever seen for a 40-inch TV. Just last year we were excited about 32-inch TVs for $99. Insanity.

Google Home Mini for $25 (half price)

Chris Monroe/CNET

Amazon doesn’t sell Google Assistant products because they directly compete with its Alexa-powered Echo speakers. And while this great half-price deal on the Google Home Mini is widely available almost everywhere else, it’ll be available earliest online at Walmart.

See at Walmart

Read the CNET review

Roku Ultra for $48 (half price)

Sarah Tew/CNET

The highest-end Roku improves on our favorite 4K streamer, the Streaming Stick Plus, with a headphone jack on the remote, a remote finder and, new for 2018, JBL headphones, a $30 value. This price is also available at Target and elsewhere, but Walmart throws in a $35 credit for Sling TV, a $5 Vudu credit and one free month of Showtime, an $11 value, to get you to buy it there. (Disclosure: Showtime is a division of CBS, parent company of CNET.)

See at Walmart

Read the CNET review

Retro Arcade Machine (Pac-Man or Galaga), $249 (save $50)

Sarah Tew/CNET

Who wouldn’t want an arcade machine in their house?

It’s only $50 off, but $249 isn’t too bad for Galaga! And Walmart had the exclusive on this Pac-Man machine, for some reason.

$249.00 at Walmart

Arcade1up preview

Deals available in-store only starting on Thanksgiving, Nov. 22 at 6 p.m. ET

iPhone X, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus: $400 gift card

Sarah Tew/CNET

From the cheapest TV to the most expensive iPhones…of last year. You’ll pay full price for the iPhone X, iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus, but a $400 gift card (that’s four Insignia 40-inch TVs!) is hard to pass up if you’re a frequent Walmart shopper. You’ll need to activate through AT&T, Sprint or Verizon. 

This deal is in-store only: Nov. 22 at 6 p.m. through Nov. 23. Schedule an activation appointment at 6 p.m. Activations begin at 8 p.m.

Read CNET’s iPhone X review

iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR: $300 gift card

Josh Miller/CNET

Wait, you want a new iPhone? That’ll cost you even more, and net a lower-value gift card. But if you get the cheaper XR ($750) it’s a solid deal and might be worth heading to Walmart to make it happen.

This deal is in-store only: Nov. 22 at 6 p.m. through Nov. 23. Schedule an activation appointment at 6 p.m. Activations begin at 8 p.m.

Read the iPhone XR review

Samsung Galaxy S9, Note 9, S9 Plus, S8, S8 Plus: $300 gift card

Josh Miller/CNET

Similar deal where you have to pay full price in-store, but with a cheaper phone. The S9 from 2018 starts at $650, while the S8 models from 2017 are even cheaper. If you’re not wedded to the iPhone, these Samsungs are pretty sweet bargains with the gift card.

This deal is in-store only: Nov. 22 at 6 p.m. through Nov. 23. Schedule an activation appointment at 6 p.m. Activations begin at 8 p.m.

Read the Galaxy S9 review

Now playing: Watch this: Tricks to score extra savings on Black Friday and Cyber…

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Black Friday 2018 deals in each category

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Black Friday 2018: CNET’s complete coverage

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Walmart Black Friday 2018 deals start tonight: $250 iPad, $100 Google Home Hub, $60 Instant Pot and more

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Black Friday 2018 Amazon deals now available: Roku, Fire TV, $199 Alexa sound bar, Recast DVR, Fire tablets, Blink cameras and more

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Brad Pitt and the Beauty Trap

The meaning of Brad Pitt — as actor, star and supreme visual fetish — can be traced to the moment in the 1991 film “Thelma & Louise” when the camera pans up from his bare chest to his face like a caress. William Bradley Pitt was born 1963, but Brad Pitt sprung forth in that 13-second ode to eroticized male beauty, initiating a closely watched career and life, dozens of movies, and libraries of delirious exaltations, drooling gossip and porny magazine layouts.

The delirium has resumed with Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” in which Pitt plays the Pitt-perfect role of Cliff Booth, a seasoned stunt man and coolest of cats. Everything about Cliff looks so good, so effortlessly smooth, whether he’s behind the wheel of a Coupe de Ville or strolling across a dusty wasteland. The novelist Walter Kirn once wrote that Robert Redford “stands for the [movie] industry itself, somehow, in all its California dreaminess.” In “Once Upon a Time,” Tarantino recasts that idea-ideal with Cliff, exploiting Pitt’s looks and charm to create another sun-kissed, golden and very white California dream.

So of course Tarantino being Tarantino has Cliff-Pitt doff his shirt, in a scene that both nods to the actor’s foundational “Thelma & Louise” display and offers another effusive paean to masculine beauty. It’s a hot day; Cliff is scarcely working. So he grabs his tools and a beer and scrambles on a roof to fix an antenna, wearing pretty much what Pitt first wears in “Thelma & Louise.” Then Cliff strips off his Hawaiian shirt and the Champion tee underneath it and once again, Brad Pitt stands bare-chested, soaring above both Hollywood and our gaze, the already porous line between actor and character blurring delectably further.

On Feb. 9, Oscar night, our gaze will again fix on Pitt, who has been nominated for best supporting actor for his role in “Once Upon a Time.” It’s nice that his peers bothered because they’ve been reluctant to honor him in the past. Despite his years of service and critically praised roles, Pitt has won just one Oscar: a best picture statuette for helping produce “12 Years a Slave.” As an actor, he has been nominated three previous times: once for supporting (“12 Monkeys”) and twice for lead (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Moneyball”). As a reminder, Rami Malek, Eddie Redmayne and Roberto Benigni have all won best actor.

The academy hasn’t been alone in undervaluing Pitt. Beauty can be a trap as much as a benediction, including for men. Some of his earlier choices didn’t help, like “Legends of the Fall,” a risible dud that turns him into a golden sex pony. And neither did hyperventilating journalists: “A body like a Bruce Weber pinup,” one cooed in 1991. Four years later, panting tongue presumably in cheek, People wrote that “you wanted to ride bareback down the slopes of his hair.” Pitt himself fed the slavering by posing for outlets that eagerly indulged their soft-core reveries, like his 1994 Rolling Stone cover for “Interview With the Vampire,” where he stares at the camera like a Fabio-ed Kurt Cobain.

Critics could be unkind (guilty), but as the bad movies gave way to good, the notices improved. Soon, it became a favorite cliché to write that he was a character actor trapped in the body of a star (guilty again). Some of this, I think, stems from a suspicion of beauty, that it can’t be trusted, is “merely” superficial and silly, which makes the beautiful one also superficial and maybe even worthy of contempt that can lurk under obsession. There’s nothing new about how we punish beauty. The history of movies is filled with the victims of this malignant love-to-love and love-to-hate dynamic, not all of them women.

Once established, though, the star persona can become a received idea, not just a mask, and tough to dislodge. Pitt’s early success was often framed as a fairy tale about a Missouri kid who “for no apparent reason,” as one writer put it, came to Hollywood and fast became the next big thing. (Cue the James Dean comparisons, of which there were many.) Pitt studied acting in Los Angeles, including with the well-regarded Roy London, but the labor of performing isn’t sexy. It also doesn’t fit with the canard that stars can’t act. But there’s more to acting than the Method, telegraphed anguish and dropping (or adding) pounds, and while Pitt can go big — he’s played Achilles and a serial killer — he has a gift for understatement.

Pitt should have been nominated this year for best actor for his delicate, deep work in James Gray’s “Ad Astra,” a meditation on the unbearable weight of masculinity set largely in outer space. The film was praised as was Pitt’s turn, but neither found awards momentum. The performance was too good and certainly too subtle and interiorized for the academy. It has a historic weakness for showboating — the more suffering the better — which is why Joaquin Phoenix (often otherwise worthy) and his jutting rib cage in “Joker” seem like a lock. But Pitt has time. It took seven nominations for Paul Newman to win best actor; Redford has been nominated only once for acting (he lost).

Like Newman and Redford, Pitt has always seemed born to the screen, a natural. He has a palpable physical ease about him that seems inseparable from his looks, that silkiness that seems, at least in part, to come from waking up every day and going through life as a beautiful person. This isn’t to say that good-looking people don’t have the same issues, the neuroses and awkwardness that plague us mortals. But Pitt has always moved with the absolute surety you see in some beautiful people (and dancers), the casualness of movement that expresses more than mere confidence, but a sublime lack of self-consciousness and self-doubt about taking up space, something not everyone shares. This isn’t swagger; this is flow.

How actors walk, strut, slink and just stand signifies, though perhaps not as much as it once did, before filmmakers started focusing more on talking heads, which scale down better on the small screen. Sean Connery’s predatory prowl helped define James Bond. Sidney Poitier’s perfect posture, how he held his head and moved alongside white actors, announced a profound shift in the cinematic representation of race. Pitt spends a lot of time behind the wheel in “Once Upon a Time,” but he’s a great walker (even while wearing Cliff’s moccasins) and when Cliff realizes that it’s time to leave the dangerous Spahn ranch, the actor’s ramrod carriage, purposeful stride and tensed swing of his arms convey a man prepared for battle.

Over his three-decade career, Pitt has played a range of roles: soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, vampire, thief. Among the most indelible is the phantasmagoric street fighter Tyler Durden — another great mover, with another of Pitt’s career-defining torsos — from David Fincher’s “Fight Club” (1999). The film turns on warring halves, a presumptive beta (Edward Norton) and his alpha twin (Pitt), who confront consumerism, postmodern anomie and that cult known as masculinity. Whether its critique lands has been much debated (that’s a no), but what remains beyond doubt is how Pitt, with his bloodied face and sculpted physique, became an emblem of contemporary masculinity and its contradictions.

In the years since “Fight Club,” the film has been embraced without irony and apparently without humor by men’s rights partisans. I wonder if they think Tyler is hot, and what exactly they see when they look at his body. Movies have always banked on the audience’s love of male violence. Throughout their history, they have exploited male beauty, tapping the passion it inspires. “Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant,” said, well, Cary Grant.

But the beautiful man can make us nervous, partly because he complicates gender norms. George Clooney is more than a pretty face, more than one writer has insisted. Yes, but he is also pretty. Some of this anxiety reeks of gay panic and misogyny.

Pitt has alternately rejected and embraced the dreamboat role, though he seems consistently game when asked to play that part in photo spreads; maybe because he knows it so well, he is also adept at sending it up. Part of what works in “Fight Club” is the aggressively performative quality that he brings to Tyler Durden, who from his strut to his red leather jacket and blood-colored sunglasses conveys both a swaggering masculine ideal and its absurd lad-magazine excesses. He’s a dreamboat for guys. Because while Tyler has a female lover-antagonist (Helena Bonham Carter), his main relationships are with other men, including his doppelgänger and the dudes who flock to the fight club, hysterical and shouting.

“Fight Club” demonstrated Pitt’s talents as a wingman, an ability to smoothly fall in step with a male co-star or trail in the other man’s shadow, which he does in “Once Upon a Time” as well as the three “Ocean’s” movies, playing Rosalind Russell to Clooney’s Cary Grant. Unlike some of his male peers, Pitt has always seemed equally comfortable sharing the screen with leading women, including former life partners, Juliette Lewis (in “Kalifornia”) and Angelina Jolie (“By the Sea”); he is also one of the few contemporary male stars whose persona has been, at least in part, constituted by the famous women in his life.

In an American cinema that has been dominated for decades by male characters who roam in packs or walk mean streets alone, it seems worth underscoring just how female-friendly Pitt reads onscreen and off. This goes back to his breakout role in “Thelma & Louise,” in which he plays a very intentional object of female desire called J.D. It was Geena Davis, who plays Thelma, who advocated that he be cast (over Clooney, among others), though the director, Ridley Scott, soon understood what Pitt was bringing to his brief yet pivotal role: For Thelma and J.D.’s sex scene, Scott, a visual perfectionist with an enduring love of glistening wet surfaces, sprayed Evian water on Pitt’s chest to give it sheen.

Pitt’s big scene takes place on a quiet night midway through the film. Coming in from the rain, J.D. knocks on Thelma’s motel door, brags about robbing stores and pleasures her in bed. (Later, he steals her and Louise’s bankroll.) The next morning, a still-disheveled Thelma tells Louise about her night with J.D., “I finally understand what all the fuss is about” — her face lit with a wild smile — “it’s just like a whole ’nother ballgame!” One of the things that the film’s detractors never grasped is that “Thelma & Louise” isn’t about female deviance or women ostensibly acting like men, but female pleasure and the liberation of body and soul. J.D. rips off Thelma and pushes her toward criminality. He also helps free her.

Soon before they have sex, J.D. (bare-chested, as he should be) takes out the portable hair dryer that he’s tucked into his waistband and waves it around like a gun, giving outlaw pointers to Thelma. The mixture of messages — the feminized dryer, the phallic gun — creates a seemingly dissonant pileup of signification that mixes male and female, desire and danger, laughter and heartache. This dissonance is crucial to the film and to the persona Pitt would develop, partly because it tempers beauty, making it approachable, funny, human. “That scene, right there,” Scott said later, “is the beginning of Brad Pitt! Bingo!” Scott was wrong; Pitt’s entire performance was the beginning — and the camera’s love, the jackpot.

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TV Guidance Counselor Episode 365: Denver Pop Culture Con 2019 Day 1

BONUS EPISODE TIME! It's Day 1 of Denver Pop Culture Con 2019.

First up Ken talks with voice acting dynamo and all around amazing human being Tara Strong.

Ken and Tara discuss relating to Ponies, Teen Titans, Fairly Odd Parents, collaborative jobs, your kids watching your stuff, the voices that are the most difficult on your voice, Melody from The Little Mermaid 2, aside from your personal favorite what your personal favorite is, Batgirl, Harley Quinn, Powerpuff Girls, breaking hearts over the phone, Mark Hamill, Kevin Conroy, Ben 10, Raven, Rick & Morty, the emotion of getting your wings, Drawn Together, making out with Cree Summer, Rugrats, and the sadness of when things end.

Next up it is a Back to the Future panel with Christopher Lloyd and Tom Wilson.

Ken, Tom and Christopher discuss Back to the Future, Taxi, being an icon on The Facts of Life, being iconic, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, dealing with the massive success of Back to the Future, Things to do in Denver When You're Dead, playing an unlikable character, improv and comedy, The Civil War, Andersonville, Jack Nicholson, not meetin gyour heroes, performing at Jimmy Stewart's 80th Birthday, being on a "very special" Facts of Life, having Doc Brown's cowboy shirt from Back to the Future Part 3, reshooting scenes, string theory, being in Batman series, what their characters would be doing today, free snacks, Angels in the Outfield vs. Anastasia, Live Aid, getting cast as a bully, getting back into Rev. Jim's head, reshooting your own death scene in Back to the Future, recasting Marty McFly, chemistry, and how Ken isn't funny.

Check out this episode!