#to the point that they stripped their own daughter of the ability to experience childhood

[cherry-treelane]

everytime i watch shameless I get hit with a jolt of sickness and remember how frank and monica stole fionas life from her and she'll never get it back because it never existed because she was a sister first her whole life (from the age of 4) and everything else second and its always just so casual in the show and normal and rarely touched upon but it's not normal at all and it's tragic

[fivzen]

Fun New Current Fivzen Show/Story Timeline!

Heroictopia is a universe that up until the 1800's was pretty similar to our own, but then just got a RUSH in technological advancements, getting smartphones by 1850's. Soon, they discovered the ability to peer through other universes, and they became obsessed with Tech based heroes. Whether it was armor, or they were made in a lab, or they transformed, they Loved it. The planet began to base it's entire society on it. If you weren't a hero, you were just someone to be saved.

The world soon became governed by a council of Heroes from around the world, with a higher power a ove that being twelve specific heroes responsible for Visibly saving the entire planet at least once or more. Peace was basically There. So, they started sending heroes to other dimensions, basically as "If you have an Evil Infestation, we'll kill them for you."

But soon, the tops became worried their peace wouldn't last forever, so they began work on creating the Ultimate Hero. A person uncorruptable, a person to idolize, a person to worship.

So, they try growing it first, but when it goes rogue (focuses more on the fight instead of saving, in their eyes) they throw out their creation. But he remembers, and Absoluman grows with hatred, idolizing heroes who become villains.

They build the next one. When it lacks the emotions they seek, it is scrapped. Absoluman revives it, and Kamen Crusher learns their first new emotion: Rage.

Next, a scientist offers to be modified. For a while, she is the closest they get to Perfection. But she has a family, and they decide to forgo her for her soon to be born child.

But she doesn't birth one, she has twins. The two are quickly separated, and the father takes one away, forced to leave his wife and other child. (The government watches him, they will need the other child at some point.) [9:46 PM] So, the two raise their children separately, and one day, of free volition, they both decide to be girls. And things are okay... Somewhat.

But one day, a test is too much. The mother has enough, enough of these tests, enough of her being harmed, enough of her daughter being harmed, enough of this WORLD.

She escapes with her child in tow, HellRanger and daughter Heavy Rock leaving a blazing lab in their wake.

All that is left is the twin raised by the father, quickly taken away, and stripped of her childhood. She grows up. She's strong, fast, and has the emotions and morals the government wants. But she still needs field experience. So, they let her free, and tell her to Do something.

So, she does. She gets a modeling job, she helps around the city she lives in, and she exists. But soon, the past experiments re-emerge, and sow chaos in their wake. They tear out people's favorite heroes from their hearts and turn them into twisted, ugly versions of themselves. The remaining twin, Fivzen (Five/Fifth and Zenith meaning the Ultimate) is made to fight.

And she does. She destroys the monsters, but never the other experiments. Until one day, she is forced to. Against her will, she punches through Crusher's throat, killing them. She collapses and sobs, but Crusher never blames her. They comfort her in their last moments, before shutting down for good.

She is forced to kill again, when Absoluman is kicked through the heart, and he too comforts a broken child as she holds a dying man in her arms. [9:46 PM] Eventually, she is ordered to kill Heavy Rock, her sister... But she stops. She resists, using all the power she has in her heart, she cries, and screams in pain, and instead of killing Heavy Rock, she breaks her armor, and reaches out her hand. If she is to be a hero, she will be a redeemer.

Heavy Rock is spared, and becomes her ally, her friend, her family once more. She becomes SoundOut, a hero of music and second chances.

Another hero, from a world where she let all her villains die, emerges, attacking Fivzen and SoundOut. She calls herself WaveBat, and she is their rival.

Until one day, the child of one of her victims tries to kill her, but Fivzen saves her, by getting shot. From here on, Wavebat swears to atone for her sins, and fight alongside Fivzen.

And so, for a time, the fight is easy. It's only the mother left... Until she forces WaveBat's favorite hero to emerge as their shattered counterpart. And WaveBat's hero... Is Fivzen.

A twisted, bloodied version of the girl emerges, calling herself Zeroend (Zero being both the number and teasing nickname of a hero, end as the last major threat). If Fivzen is the Ultimate Hero, she is the Ultimate Villain.

She plays with the heroes for a while, before deciding to end the world. The three stop her, of course, but when she dies, there is still HellRanger. [9:46 PM] HellRanger says if she lives, there will never be peace. Heroictopia will forever be riddled with her undying hatred. So, she asks her daughter one last request: Kill her, and live life.

Fivzen is quiet, the other's refuse, but Fivzen accepts. But not because she was asked to, or was forced to. But because she's tired of this all. She doesn't care a out being the ultimate, she doesn't care about killing, she doesn't care. She just wants to help people, because that's all she wants. So, if killing HellRanger brings her peace, she will.

And she does.

As Fivzen and SoundOut hold their mother in their laps, she clicks a button, and releases all of the files related to the experiments of the Ultimate Heroes over the years. The world is forced to face their errors, and HellRanger dies happily.

The Government ends all experiments, and goes to relive Fivzen of duty... But she's gone. Left to be free, and be her own version of a hero in a world she feels happy in. And one day, she finds a group of heroes, and she helps them, and she finds love, and she grows up, and she Lives.

And one day SoundOut leaves too, with her father, whether to find Fivzen or their own home.

[killingeveperspectives]

Perspective: Killing Eve Season 3 Retcon – Can a show Retcon itself into a different genre?

Recently, I learned about the term ‘Retroactive Continuity’ and I am pretty proud of it because now it sounds like I know what I’m talking about. Retroactive Continuity, or retcon for the intimate like me, is the addition of new information that changes or reinterprets events/narratives previously established, therefore opening new possibilities for the future. It can correct inconsistencies, change world/character limitations, or allow for a dramatic plot twist. For example, a character previously established as an incurable psychopath goes on an emotional growth journey. Killing Eve got fundamentally retconned season 3 and it changes everything. And I need to talk about it. (Look, it’s been a while I wrote this and re-addressed some points here :) )

Villanelle is not a psychopath anymore, I guess

Villanelle was written explicitly as a primary psychopath meaning she was mainly born this way®. Which is different from a Secondary psychopath, whose emotional developmental arrest is caused by disturbingly severe neglect and abuse in early infancy. The impairments in their brains and psychological development prevents them from thinking and, most importantly, feeling like a regular person do. They have a different subjective experience. Psychopathy is incurable in adults, which sets limitations to character development.

Villanelle can’t empathize, perceives people as objects and is very utilitarian. She doesn’t know how to show people she likes them, and her idea of love is possession. Endearing as she is, this is the character the writers wrote. And this is the character portrayed to us in the show. Villanelle is unapologetically a psychopath. She is remorseless, amoral, derives pleasure from killing, all the better to get paid for it. She is basically a self-indulgent goddess. This is enunciated repeatedly in Season 1. Of course, we are not just told, we are shown. Her face glimmers in every kill with enjoyment and cruelty. She is able to conjure any emotion to manipulate – depicted more terrifyingly with Nadia. She emulates emotions from others to connect with people like depicted in the opening scene. My favorite chilling moment is when she gives the “what it is like to die” monologue to Frank, just to terrify him before killing him. Or this face:

Season 2 dives deeper into her psyche where she tells us how she feels, or better yet, doesn’t. We establish she feels this overbearing boredom and seeks to feel anything, so she collects things (or people, no difference) that make her feel something and these things she cherishes by possessing them. The poverty of emotion is reiterated. Again, we are shown, not only told, time and again. The writers are quite clearly asking us to just accept Villanelle for what she is: a psychopath. Like Jodie Comer said herself during that season: “I think some people are bad and that’s what they are, and I don’t think she should be redeemed.” It felt impossible to make it more established within the narrative and the world building. She is, like all adult psychopaths, incurable. These are the character’s limitations, in a purely storytelling sense.

Then, Season 3 happened. In season 3 Villanelle’s character’s development is irreconcilable with the previous seasons. Much of the character’s limitations were simply erased to give her room to “grow”, starting early with one of my favorite scenes of the entire season:

It was marvelously shot and so symbolic. This time around she is gifting Eve something intimate and safe: a teddy bear. Then we have Villanelle by herself and vulnerable, stripping the layers of her feelings towards Eve, the mask of anger cracking as she tries to convince herself she wanted Eve dead, to finally giving in to longing. Her own words are repeated back at her in a loop in a little booth. It was an admission. The booth, the privacy, the lighting, the acting: It was a confession. More than that: it was a love confession. As if falling in love was something she could now do? I don’t want to entertain the actual nature of her feeling, but this is a level of emotional complexity she is just prohibited of displaying by the character’s limitations. And yet, it happened. And I will argue, all the elements of this scene deliberately lead the audience to believe these were romantic feelings.

But this is foreshadowing, and the major shift in perspective happens in her bottle episode. In this episode we see Villanelle display genuine empathy and care for her brothers, not only by sparing them but by giving them more than enough money to go see Elton John. A bonna fide display of correctly conveyed affection and consideration. Which, again, is prohibited by the characters limitations. Then the episode builds the narrative that her “psychopathy” was the result of her abusive upbringing, especially in the confrontation with her mother, when we are clearly asked to side with Villanelle.

Here is where the show subtly retcons Villanelle’s character. It cleverly never denies she is a psychopath. It retcons her ability to emotionally grow, by shifting the emphasis to childhood trauma. Nevertheless, for Villanelle as a character, the emotional growth is still prohibited – despite of trauma. The sleight of hand is passable because audiences (actually, any empathic human being) find it incredibly hard to grasp that trauma cannot be overcome. That’s why it feels plausible she has a very complex, deeply transforming emotional response to killing her mother, despite still being a psychopath. Because that is a response that feels plausible to us, the audience, despite being inconsistent with what is plausible for the character’s the inner experience of reality.

This shift not only changes all the interpretation of her character that was previously established but also changes all future interactions. Here is where we see Villanelle getting conflicted about killing, not in a utilitarian sense of it being impractical or boring, but in an emotional struggle. She starts to worry about how others perceive her, and specially that she is perceived only as a “monster”, pointing to a development of a moral compass, deeper self-awareness, self-evaluation and ability to feel remorse. This is all not only incredibly far-fetched: it was prohibited. This is a clear break in continuity from the character of previous seasons. However, after S3E05 it feels plausible.

Villanelle is a carefully crafted monster

We are, then, asked to believe that Villanelle was made into a ruthless killer, which logically follow can be unmade. Hence, her past needs to be explored so it can also be somewhat resolved, symbolizing the undoing of her atrocious (but delightfull?) persona “Villanelle” (the distinction between Oksana and Villanelle was useless before and should still be. But now it feels like it makes sense). Initially, it was established that her mother died, and she had an abusive drunk father who abandoned her in an orphanage. While I believe there was potential in creating a convincing traumatic abusive background from the established narrative, it may have seemed too unsettling to have a man mistreat an infant, which might explain the writers choice for such through retcon. Transferring the source of the neglect to the mother, might heighten the stakes, since daughters are expected to develop a strong bond and mirror their mothers. Thus, adding depth to their face-off and making her murder more symbolic. Addicionally, a full house – with her mother, stepfather and brothers –would allow Villanelle to flesh out her relationship to family and explore the conflict more thoroughly before confrontation. Despite the symbolic tension, in the end we have no definitive answer to the nature x nurture question, nor to what happened in Villanelle’s infancy, except that the metaphorical darkness may have been passed on from her mother.

Villanelle’s joy in cruelty is the most alienating aspect of her character – also the most gripping – and thus, in order for her arc to be more digestible and relatable, it also needs explicit retconning, which is mostly explored through her relationship with killing. Therefore, her cruelty is also displaced to her abusive upbringing. Most specifically, displaced to another character: Dasha. She is the source of the cruelty transmitted into Villanelle through severe trauma during her teenagerhood, ingeniously avoiding the gravity of discussing infant abuse (Dasha brings a downpour of plot inconsistencies). This is unmistakably conveyed in this scene:

Villanelle was something soft and whole that got broken and reshaped into steel, into a stone cold killer, by external forces. Thus, Dasha is an estranged mother figure from the past who tortured Villanelle into a killer, mirroring the dynamic between Villanelle and her mother. Since there is no clear narrative surrounding her early infancy, and her mother needed to be killed to spark the transformation, Dasha becomes the surrogate through which the conflict of Villanelle’s transformation can be explored. The story doubles its efforts to get the audiences to not only believe Villanelle can change, but also that she deserves to change. And here is where we enter dangerous territory.

 Killing Eve is not a spy-drama anymore, it is a rescue romance

I stand with the writers, Killing Eve was not a romance. Not until Season 3. The topic of how audiences, especially queer fans, perceive the show as a romance is worth a whole essay on its own. However, in Season 3, audiences are treated with a romantic atmosphere (remember the teddy bear scene?). Everything is toned down; the pace is slower and the investigation is put to the side. The cat-and-cat game is replaced with this reinforced sense of destiny, of fate, where characters seamlessly come together, as if all their actions were just leading them up to that moment. Their approach carries no sense of danger, their obsession is replaced with anticipation. Characters stop thinking about each other neurotically, that scrumptious voyeurism is gone. Character’s don’t need to be reminded of each other. There is no need for it anymore, it has been written for them. They will meet each other, no need to pursue.

Gone is also Eve’s curiosity and intrigue about Villanelle, along most of her character’s motivations, with one simple retcon: Eve wants to rescue Villanelle.

To which Eve replies: I don’t think so. Meaning “I believe there is more to Villanelle than killing and I will cling to that” (Why, we don’t know. But that’s for another time)

Previously, despite the irresistible attraction Eve felt for Villanelle, the story never portrayed Eve as trying to redeem her. It was precisely the fact that they are polar opposites that brings them together, each trying to quench a deep hunger through the other, in all the wrong ways. Eve pursues in Villanelle much of her unfulfilled impulses and is challenged to embody them herself. Eve’s never been attracted to what Villanelle might have of redeemable, she was drawn to what Villanelle had of profanely feral. On the other hand, Villanelle longs for the safety and intimacy she sees in Eve but has no way of even comprehending what it means.

This honesty to the character’s true desires and realities is what has allowed the show to explore an enticingly destructive dynamic while avoiding romanticizing it, which would downgrade the show to a disservice. However, ultimately, there is a writer trying to sell a story. And in this case, they are setting up a redemption arc within a romance, despite character desires and realities not aligning with that. But in season 3, Villanelle’s psychopathy got retconned to make her crush on Eve without it being too problematic and Eve’s past season character development got simply blissfully ignored so her crush on Villanelle could flourish without it being too problematic, and in the end, their attraction got stripped away from all it’s complexity and danger so they could bring characters together without it being too problematic. These characters got rewritten to give us the tease of a romance we have seen iterated one million times elsewhere.

The premise of the show was to explore the dangerous temptation to bite the proverbial apple. Still, at some point the tension needs to be resolved, and the writers decided to shift it to a rescue romance. A very slippery slope. A slippery slope to romanticizing disturbingly destructive relationships, to perpetrating the cliché that “Love redeems all”, even psychopaths can change if they have someone who believes in them – not only dangerously dishonest but painfully dull.  As if somehow having your life and your sense of self ruined for a person is some sort of martyrdom to match the person’s redemption itself. What a beautiful pair they would make, cozy in heaven. But damned be the day Killing Eve becomes cozy. While writing the redemption of the serpent and the power of female love despite the obliteration of Eden; they forgot the most delicious part of the story was the apple.

[secret-keeper18]

I’m Gay - Eugene Lee Yanga

An analysis by a bisexual asian dancer

In honor of pride month, Eugene Lee Yang has gifted us this beautiful work of cinematic and choreographic art. First off, congratulations to Eugene for officially coming out in this video. It was beautiful, it was bold, and most amazingly, it was so incredibly brave. Secondly, if you haven’t seen the video yet, PLEASE DO!!! Thirdly, the video is also in collaboration with the Trevor Project, a free suicide hotline for LGBTQ+ youth, so please please PLEASE if you can go support it.

Scene 1 - Family

Starting with the beginning of the video, the camera pans back showing Eugene and four others. The women are looking one way, the men are looking the other, and Eugene stares dead in the center.

These people are representative of a family, and later go on to represent the impact of gender roles and familial influence on Eugene’s life. In addition, the men are both wearing suits and the women wearing dresses and high heels (though not shown in this picture), fitting the societal gender norms for dressing. Eugene, however, is not only wearing red, which stands out in great contrast to the plain black of the family, but is wearing a flowy dress/robe.

The mother is seen on the right, putting on lipstick and crossing her legs, representing the traditionally feminine actions and role. Eugene, the brother, and the sister, imitate this behavior, as children often do. Then, the father is shown, legs spread, drinking alcohol, yelling, pounding his fist violently. The children also initate his behavior, as children have little concept of feminine vs. masculine roles until taught that way by society.

During this time, when children are impressionable and learn by copying behaviors, the parents separate the children by gender. The mother takes the daughter, and teaches her. They do the movement together, while the father and the brother do different choreography in the background. The women’s movement is lighter, more indirect, while the men’s are far more masculine. The men’s movements are direct and more grounded, crossing their arms and taking strong steps, almost as if they were marching. However, Eugene clearly prefers to follow his mother and sister’s movements, immediately joining in.

When he attempts to put on lipstick as his mother had, the father knocks it out of his hand and slaps him on the head. Most heartbreakingly, the brother watches, observes the consequences that comes with acting like their mother and sister instead of their father, and follows him. This is representative of how something like this is such a common practice, enforcing gender roles in a family by simply pairing actions such as following the traditionally feminine roles with punishment and reprimand. Finally, Eugene follows with their movement, transitioning into the next scene.

Scene 2 - Church

The first thing we see are two lines of people, marching together. Marching in such a way usually denotes military, uniform. It is clear the message here: stay in line, don’t make waves, be just like everyone else. Eugene follows, but begins to add his own spin to the movement until he finally is doing something completely different from what everyone else is doing. Everyone else continues dancing together, even covering their eyes at some point and blindly following each other to the pews while Eugene keeps his eyes and arms open. However, someone comes to him and physically fixes his movements, changing and shaping him until he is doing the same thing as everyone else. His movement up until here is free and strong, whereas when it is fixed to follow everyone else, changes the quality of the movement to be bound and the energy and power that he initially was putting in to become dulled. Their willful closing of the eyes is meant to represent closemindedness, and the setting of the church is a clear message of his experience. Religion was a toxic subject for him, its closemindedness and hatred and bigotry hurt him as he fought to break out of the uniform.

This is when something happens. The people are all wearing neutral colors, until suddenly, the man standing at the podium begins gesturing angrily, clearly yelling and spewing hatred. The man, and the side of the pews that begin getting riled up and yelling back in agreement, all suddenly are wearing white. However, the side where Eugene is sitting is wearing all black, and they are in agreement with the people in white. In fact, Eugene turns his head to look at the others, and their heads are bowed, their eyes lowered.

Scene 3 - Relationships

This is a clear timeskip from the family and church scenes, from childhood and teenager/young adult years. He turns and sees a woman dancing. The music here turns from strong and quick to softer, with a piano melody rather than electronic to convey a romantic tone. Eugene stands up and begins dancing with her. Their movement is smooth and free, their partnering work equal and balanced.

There is a genuine appreciation on Eugene’s end for her, something that does not change even when he turns again to find a man dancing. He is dancing just as beautifully and gracefully, and Eugene steps in to perform similar partnering movements with the same anount of ease. The woman joins in, and does her own movements traveling while Eugene and the man do the same choreography, differing from her own. In fact, this time, Eugene is the one being lifted, rather than the other way around.

When they finish the sequence, Eugene takes a moment to embrace the woman, before turning back to the man, and the woman departs, clearly still on amicable terms. I think what is beautiful here is the truly genuine attraction he had toward her, and it is evident in their flawless partner work and appreciative expressions when they look at each other one final time before Eugene turns back to the man. A truly “Thank You, Next” sort of a feeling. The seamless transition into him twirling the man and the man lowering him down on top of him was beautiful and such a powerful sight for me, seeing the joy in their faces before the scene once again is swept away into the next phase of Eugene’s life.

Scene 4 - Drag

Eugene has done a good few videos on drag and how important it is to him, and he can speak about the subject with far more authority than myself, so I’m going to keep this scene relatively short.

One of the clearest differences in this scene is he sheer amount of color in this. From the purposeful placement rainbows, it is clear that color was an incredibly important aspect to include in this video. The contrast from the black and white from the first two scenes is so evident. This and scene 3 is clearly the beginning of the parts of his life that began to literally bring color into his life.

He begins interacting with people, smiling widely and truly enjoying spending time with these people as he joins the crowd of bright and colorfully-clad individuals. Not one of them looks the same or even dances the same to another, an important distinction to the movement characteristic to the church scene.

Then, the camera focuses on someone approaching the group. Most obvious about him is his attire- white shirt and blue jeans, the same outfit from the hateful group in the church scene. This is the most transparent part of the video, as the man raises his hand in a gun symbol and the people around Eugene begin to fall.

It is a symbol of how hatred takes lives through both murder and suicide.

Eugene reaches out desperately, but hands reach up and literally drag him down. Once again, the people in white pull and beat him down, transitioning into the next scene.

Scene 5 - Finale

What I find most interesting about this is the total change in costuming and color from the previous scene. In this scene, he is stripped of his clothing, accessories, and make up. Anything that did not fit society’s expectation of remotely masculine is gone, leaving only a pair of misfiting jeans. It is after the crowd of those in white leaves, when the family from the first scene reappear. This time, the parents are in white, while the siblings are in black. It hurts, knowing that the parents, the people expected to love you unconditionally, are amongst those who hurt you. The siblings, who are dressed in black, take Eugene’s hand and help him stand again, pulling the parents away from hurting him anymore.

However, after he is beaten down, he once again rises, this time clad in royal blue, sharp make up, and slick backed hair. He strides toward the camera, determinedly persevering despite those pushing and shoving around him, trying to knock him down. The crowd is a mox of people in white and people in black, all trying to either hurt or aid him. The contrast between the gently touchss of the people in black and the angry shoves from the people in white is evident. Eugene makes it past the crowd, remaining steelfaced despite the anger and fighting going on behind him. The music builds and builds, swelling as he stands with his head held high and sway from the crowd. The camera pans in closer to his face as people continue to argur behind him.

The music cuts out, and the only audio accompanying the sight of Eugene’s expression is that of the angry crowd’s arguing and yelling. The scene ends with a close up of Eugene’s face, a mix of emotions as he attempts to steel his expression against the pain, trying to remain stoic despite the clamor in his ears and the hatred undoubtedly being strewn about just behind him. The resignation to his obligation, to remain strong even when there are those trying to pull him down, is clear in his eyes as he tightens his jaw and stares directly into the camera, purposely ignoring the chaos in the background.

Conclusion

This is truly an amazing work of art, from the choreography, to the music, to the costuming, to the story being told. Eugene’s ability to tell this story, his story, in such a manner is simply a work of creative genius. There is just so much emotion portrayed in a single scene, representative through dance and acting that gets his point across in such a clear yet artistic manner. His conveying of his struggles and triumphs was breathtaking.

A few extra notes worth appreciating that I couldn’t quite manage to slip in.

1. The casting of actual asians in a dance role. Honestly brought tears to my eyes.

2. The athleticism it takes to pull off some of this choreo, specifically in the third scene. The partnering work was just gorgeous and the choreography so beautifully told the story with absolutely zero need for words.

3. Eugene has not really kept his sexuality a secret before, but recognizing the importance of “coming out” especially at this time of year and through such a creative medium is truly commendable. No matter how many times you come out, it’s scary, especially at such a large scale.

4. Eugene has always been known as the stoic one of the Try Guys, so for him to be putting himself and his art (as they are essentially one and he same) out there in such a vulnerable manner is amazing, and I don’t think a lot of us are as brave as this.

5. On a devastatingly personal note, this video meant so much to me. Growing up, there was no lgbtq+ representation in media, much less non-white, Asian lgbtq+ representation. The medium in which this is portrayed is so close to my heart, too, as I’d spent four years in a dance program where I would analyze dance shows and videos such as this one. It was terrifyingly easy to relate to, but one I so desperately hope many others find light in as well.

Please share the video and encourage others to donate to the Trevor Project! I wrote this in the few hours after the video came out so there are undoubtedly things I’ve missed, so please feel free to add your own interpretations or things you’ve noticed/what this video meant to you.

Thank you, Eugene, and Happy Pride Month���️🧡💛💚💙💜

[aion-rsa]

Dennis ‘Des’ Nilsen is Far From David Tennant’s First Psychopath Role

https://ift.tt/2RNJXa5

David Tennant’s transformation into serial killer Dennis Nilsen for ITV’s Des was unsettlingly convincing. It wasn’t just the physical resemblance, though under that hairstyle and behind those 1980s glasses frames, the similarity was remarkable. It was also the posture, the unwavering eye contact, and the voice; mumbling and unconcerned, listing the terrible details of Nilsen’s crimes as if reciting a recipe instead of multiple brutal murders. 

As Nilsen, Tennant pulled off what every actor hopes to in a real-life role – a disappearing trick. He slid clean inside the role, leaving no trace of The Doctor, or Simon from There She Goes, or the demon Crowley, or Alec Hardy, or his funny, self-deprecating public persona. For those three hours on screen, he was nothing but Nilsen.   

The role is one in a long line of on-screen psychopaths for Tennant. He might be best loved around these parts as excitable, convivial romantic hero the Tenth Doctor (who, as noted below, also had his villainous moments), but David Tennant has been playing bad guys for decades, starting with a 1995 episode of ITV police procedural The Bill…

Steven Clemens in The Bill, ‘Deadline’ (1995)

In his early 20s, David Tennant went through a rite of passage for the UK acting profession: he landed a part in The Bill.  And not just any old part on The Bill, this one was a peach. Tennant wasn’t cast as some kid DC Carver caught snatching a granny’s handbag – he played psychopathic kidnapper and murderer Steven Clemens.

When 15-year-old schoolgirl Lucy Dean (an early role for Honeysuckle Weeks) was abducted after receiving threatening phone calls, the caretaker from her school was brought in for questioning. What followed was a high-stakes game of Blink between Tennant’s character and Sun Hill Station’s finest. Clemens toyed with the police, first denying responsibility and then refusing to tell them where he’d stashed Lucy. It’s a big performance, as suits the soap-like context, but even then Tennant made a good villain, revelling in his evildoing. Clemens came a cropper eventually when Lucy was found alive and the investigation linked him to the kidnap and murder of another schoolgirl. Watch the whole episode here. 

Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)

Skipping forward a decade, Tennant’s most mainstream cinematic baddie to date is Death Eater Barty Crouch Jr. in the fourth Harry Potter film. Crouch Jr. was the Voldemort supporter who engineered Harry’s entry into the Triwizard Tournament, and turned the winning trophy into a portkey that delivered Potter straight into Voldemort’s waiting arms (well, Voldemort was sort of soup at that point, but bit of magic and voila – arms!).

Crouch Jr. did all this while magically disguised as Brendan Gleeson’s character Mad-Eye Moody, so Tennant’s actual screen time in the film is pretty limited. In his few short appearances though – in a flashback to his Ministry of Magic trial and after his disguise is rumbled – Tennant makes a real impression as the unhinged, tongue-flicking baddie.

The Time Lord Victorious in Doctor Who ‘Waters of Mars’ (2009)

The majority of the time, the Tenth Doctor was a sweetie – big grin, lots of enthusiasm, two hearts full of frivolity and love. Every so often though, Ten’s genocidal, survivor-guilt past rose to the surface. Never cruel, never cowardly, no, but sometimes a bit… murdery and drunk on power. 

One such occasion was his brutal extermination of the Racnoss children in Christmas special ‘The Runaway Bride’, and another was his Time Lord Victorious trip at the end of ‘Waters of Mars’. In the special, Ten changes the events of a fixed point in time to save the lives of Captain Adelaide Brooke (Lindsay Duncan) and her surviving crew, bringing them back to Earth in the TARDIS instead of leaving them to die. Realising the serious ramifications of his timeline meddling, Brooke confronts the Doctor about his arrogance, and puts the mistake right. It doesn’t take Ten long to come back to his senses, drop the god act, and realise he’s gone too far, and it’s David Tennant’s ability to convincingly play both the power-crazed god and the devastated man that makes him one of the best in the business. 

Kilgrave in Jessica Jones (2015)

David Tennant played a bonafide demon from actual hell in Good Omens, the TV adaptation of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s 1990 novel, but Crowley still had nothing on his Jessica Jones character.

The first series of Marvel’s Jessica Jones on Netflix won acclaim for its depiction of a coercive, abusive relationship through a comic book fantasy lens. David Tennant was Kilgrave, a villain with the power of mind control following experiments conducted during his childhood. Instead of using his power for good (convincing people to pick up litter, be kind to animals, etc.), Kilgrave exerted his will on the world at large, bending those around him to his sick desires. When he stumbled upon super-powered private investigator Jones, he didn’t stop at using her super-strength for his own ends. Kilgrave also used his powers to keep Jones hostage and manipulate her into coerced sex. Jones’ battle to escape Kilgrave was powerfully acted by Krysten Ritter and David Tennant, who had the range to show Kilgrave’s ‘charm’ as well as his chilling megalomania. 

Read more

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Staged: BBC Comedy Confirms Sheen & Tennant’s Double-Act Greatness

By Louisa Mellor

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Doctor Who: David Tennant reflects on his final line

By Kayti Burt

Cale Erendreich in Bad Samaritan (2018)

Director Dean Devlin followed up weather-disaster flick Geostorm with Bad Samaritan, a dark psychological thriller about a small-time crook who gets into the bad books of a wealthy sicko when he stumbles upon his dark secrets while burgling his house. Misfits’ Robert Sheehan plays the burglar, and David Tennant plays the loaded psycho whose obsession with technology earned him the nickname ‘Evil Bruce Wayne’. Cale Erendreich is a Patrick Bateman-like moneybags psycho with a sick taste in torture. Overall, the film itself isn’t a huge amount of cop, but boy, does Tennant commit.

Dr Edgar Fallon in Criminal ‘Edgar’ (2019)

Netflix’s multi-lingual European series Criminal takes the best bit of Line of Duty – the police interview scenes – and strips away everything else. Every episode has a new case, a new interviewee, a new lead actor, and a team of cops trying to break them within a limited time frame. 

Kicking it all off with the first UK episode of series one (a second run is available to stream now) was David Tennant as Dr Edgar Fallon. You’ll have to watch the 42-minute episode to know whether or not Fallon is guilty of the crime about which he’s being interviewed (the rape and murder of his 14-year-old step-daughter), but Tennant is chilling and magnetic enough as the well-spoken English doctor to keep you guessing.

Dr Tom Kendrick in Deadwater Fell (2020)

When a tragedy occurs in a Scottish village, suspicion falls on those closest to the victims. David Tennant plays local GP Tom in Channel 4 drama Deadwater Fell, a four-part series available to stream on All 4, about how a small community responds to a terrible event. Is Tom really the perfect family man he appears to be, or is there something else under the surface? Without giving anything away in terms of plot, Tennant moves fluently between the roles of victim and villain in the audience’s mind as this empathetic, clever miniseries twists and turns. 

Dennis Nilsen in Des (2020)

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

This starring role is the culmination of years spent clocking up experience on how to unsettle on screen. As real-life Scottish serial killer Dennis Nilsen, David Tennant is chillingly perfect. It’s both an on-point impersonation and a disquieting performance that conjures up this peculiarly banal killer. Tennant is ably aided by co-stars Daniel Mays and Jason Watkins as, respectively, Nilsen’s arresting officer DCI Peter Jay and biographer Brian Masters. It’s a triangle of excellent actors at their best, making for a compelling three-parter. 

The post Dennis ‘Des’ Nilsen is Far From David Tennant’s First Psychopath Role appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3iFjuHb

[gmfgravitymayfall]

For Dipper, I wanted to mix more of Vergil into the design, rather than just making him older and built like he can hold himself in a fight like I did with Mabel. I also tried to put a little bit of Ford into him. Especially with the coat. Thinking about it, I’ll probably experiment with graying his hair a bit. A little Mr. Fantastic strip on the sides, maybe?

I kinda wanted to flip a specific dichotomy between Dante and Vergil with Mabel and Dipper that I noticed, especially in DMC 5. Dante is really scruffy and unkempt, but when Vergil comes back he’s very well groomed and put together. Now Mabel is still very casual with the way she dresses, but I wanted to give the feeling that she takes care of herself and Dipper doesn’t. So he looks like he hasn’t shaved in a few days and he hasn’t slept even longer.

Also, Dipper with his hair slicked back (Much like Vergil) to show off his birthmark.

Mabel and Dipper are the offspring of the human witch Eva and the Demon Knight Sparda.

When Dipper was seven, Sparda’s former blood brother Bill Cypher attacked their home in an act of revenge after Sparda single-handedly fought off Cypher’s armies to protect humanity. Cypher managed to imprison Sparda in the underworld and murder Eva.

In order to protect them, Sparda decided to separate Dipper and Mabel so they can grow up without Cypher breathing down their necks. He has Eva’s uncles Stanley and Stanford take the kids and wipe their memories of their parents or what happened when Cypher attacked.

Ford takes Dipper and moves him to the small Oregon town of Gravity Falls. An supernatural hot spot where the veil between the human world and Limbo is especially weak.

Ford had taken to studying the supernatural and demonic, and even built a lab under his house to research and catalog his findings.

Dipper spent most of his childhood acting as Ford’s assistant. Though Ford never let him participate in research that would be to dangerous for him, at least until he was older.

While Ford rarely ever left his house, Dipper would occasionally go into town and eventually became friends with, and developed a crush on, Wendy. But only referring to himself by his real name, Mason. (And if I hadn’t gone on the Gravity Falls wiki to get references, I would never have known what Dipper’s real name is, and I would have just named him Alex)

In addition to doing research, Ford also gave Dipper access to his fairly large library of fiction books. He developed a taste for fantasy, pulp adventures, and poetry. Ford even gave Dipper his favorite book: a collection of William Blake poems. Something Dipper would keep well into his adult life.

Dipper had been suffering from nightmares of Limbo for most of his time with Ford. During an experiment to see if he is subconsciously accessing Limbo, he summons the Yamato for the first time.

Dipper and Ford immediately begin training to use the Yamato and Dipper’s other abilities. He even began slaying demons that have been possessing citizens of Gravity Falls.

Because Ford explained the dangers of letting the demons know of his existence, Dipper learns to eliminate the demons quickly, quietly, and very efficiently.

While the demons never learn that Dipper is Sparda’s son, they realize someone is killing them and suspect Ford because of the experiments and research he’s been doing for years. Dipper does kill all of the demons, but is unable to save Ford.

Ford, assuming something like this could happen eventually, left Dipper a video message that tells him the full details of Eva and Sparda’s death, the existence of Mabel, the threat of Bill Cypher, and the location of his childhood home, believing traveling there would fully restore is memory.

After getting his memories back, Dipper decided that he and Mabel are the only ones who could destroy Cypher. But they couldn’t do so on their own. 

Ford had multiple unclaimed patents that Dipper could sell to finance his war against the demons. By the time he managed to track Mabel down, Dipper had gained a small fortune both from Ford’s creations and his own.

Dipper established the Order, again, only referring to himself as Mason, to launch domestic and cyber terrorist acts against Cypher’s control over humanity.

After the Order is up and running, Dipper’s information network discovers Cypher has been operating out of Gravity Falls for a few weeks, and found out Wendy’s family had been targeted by Cypher because of her psychic abilities. Dipper helps get her out of the situation and brings her into the Order.

After he and Mabel defeated Cypher, Dipper admitted his ultimate plan was for the two of them to rule humanity in Cypher’s place, believing that humans were too weak to protect themselves. Mabel disagreed with this, and the two fought with Mabel winning.

Dipper’s wounds were so server he had to retreat using Yamato to cut open a gate way to recover. He found his way to Fortuna City, collapsing in an alleyway behind an apartment building.

He is found by a young nursing student, Camilla Noceda, and after Dipper refuses to be taken to the hospital, Camilla takes him up to her apartment to nurse him back to health.

While Dipper physically recovers in a day or two, he sticks around for about a week more, trying to figure out what to do next. At one point, Dipper and Camilla sleep together a single time. Dipper leaves while she’s asleep, unaware she’s pregnant.

Dipper spends several years furthering his studies of various demon lore, looking for a way to increase his power to achieve his goals.

He comes in contact with the maniacal scholar, Arkham. Dipper and Arkham agree to work together to open a hell portal using the two pieces of the Perfect amulet that he and his sister inherited from their parents.

Mabel and Arkham's daughter, Candy, come to stop their plans and Dipper and Mabel have a rematch. Dipper, having grown much stronger since their last duel, defeats Mabel and takes her half of the Perfect Amulet.

Dipper and Arkham double-cross each other, and with Mabel's help, Dipper defeats him. But the Pines Twins fight once more, this time with Mabel as the victor, and Dipper falls into the Hell Portal.

While in the Underworld, Dipper is confronted by the disembodied spirit of Cypher. With nothing else better to do, convinced he's now strong enough to do so alone, and wanted to take out his aggression on something, Dipper draws his sword and charges the Demon King.

Unfortunately, Cypher utterly wrecks Dipper's shit and spends many, many years torturing Dipper and warping his mind. Eventually transforming him into his personal dark knight, Nelo Angelo.

When Cypher tricks Mabel into coming to Mellet Island, Dipper, as Nelo Angelo, fight his sister multiple times. However seeing Mabel's half of the Perfect Amulet breaks through Cypher's reprogramming, and give her the opportunity to defeat him once again.

While Dipper was not directly involved with the Emperor's Coven incident, his influence could be felt in two specific ways.

First, the coven was using the Yamato to both give their witches the ability to transform into Nelo Angelo like monsters, and to open a portal to the underworld.

The other was his own daughter, Luz, whose right arm was transformed into the Devil Bringer when Dipper's demonic blood awakened within her. Luz also heard Dipper's voice in her head, desiring more power, when she first wields the Yamato herself.

Some years later, Dipper somehow escaped the Underworld after being freed from Cypher's control. But whatever he went through left him extremely weak.

Dipper finds where Luz lives and rips off her Devil Bringer arm in order to retrieve the Yamato. Dipper uses the Yamato to split himself in two, creating the human Wirt and the Demon Urizen.

After Mabel successes in defeating Urizen, Wirt merges with him and Dipper is restored to full strength.

Dipper and Mabel fight to a stalemate, but their duel is stopped by Luz. After Luz defeats Dipper, he agrees to help Mabel destroy the demonic Qliphoth tree so the Pine twins can continue their duel uninterrupted.

Dipper promises Luz that he will return, both to get to know her and for a rematch. And leaves her the book of William Blake poems Wirt would regularly read from.

[astudyinstandingstill]

* 02. regret is the only diagnosis, but there’s no cure.

Kova spent many days bathing in the aftermath of her mother’s death beneath the covers of the bed she shared with her sister. Most nights, she found herself unable to sleep, haunted by the ghost of everything Katherine used to be, the smell of her hair lingering betwixt the walls long after her departure. Her mother died a hero, and it humbled her. With Katherine’s death came the crushing realization that Kova was left with a legacy no average person could fulfill — and, to her, she was the most average of all. She wasn’t particularly strong, and  her powers were wild and uncontrollable, to the point where she could barely use them, and Kova wasn’t born with the fighting spirit that her mother was.

Sometimes, when she was alone, she’d muse over the idea of Vinnea being Katherine’s daughter instead. She was born with that fire, that spark, that Kova believed she would never possess. Perhaps Vinnea wasn’t born with it — maybe it was etched into her soul by the tragedy of her life. Regardless, it was something Vinnea had that Kova did not, and she found herself growing jealous of how much more like Katherine her sister was then her. The jealousy wasn’t malicious in nature — in fact, Kova admired her sister as much as she envied her, and it made her strive for perfection. She spent most of her days after waking practicing her abilities in Orion’s atelier, and with each passing day Kova saw improvement. For what she lacked in control, she made up for in momentum and stamina. Longevity came naturally to her.

When Kova would practice, her mind would often wander to the Cleansing. It was a dark spot in the kingdom’s history, one many prefer to gloss over. She tended to think about that particular point in their antiquity a lot, due to her sister’s involvement. It was incredible to her that a man as simple as Dionys, no greater a man than her father or Caito, could organize the ritualistic abolition of an entire group of people. Some speculate that he was threatened by the Nymphs’ power — that their ability to control every element gave them a leg up on the rest of society.

Kova witnessed that power firsthand with Vinnea almost every day. While she was particularly skilled at utilizing the wind, the fact that she could still harness the power of fire, water, and earth made her an immensely competent fighter. Kova would often come away from their sparring sessions with burns, or lashes from her quick, well-timed bursts of air, or bruises from where the rocks she’d kick up would graze Kova’s skin. When she was younger, Kova thought that fighting a legitimate fight with her sister would surely end in her death. She could always tell that Vinnea was holding back. A part of her was grateful, but only afterwards, when she’d be nursing herself back to health. During the fight, however, Kova would just find herself stewing in her on anger. She was angry that she had to learn how to fight in the first place, angry that she was no good at it, and, above all else, angry that not even her own sister thought she was good enough to really put the effort into besting her. Kova would give it her all each time, and each time she would lose. In the end, it didn’t matter how quick she was, or how long she could hold out — all that mattered was that Kova was not in control of her magick, and Vinnea was. Control seemed to be the only thing that mattered.

Kova became obsessed with this idea of control — gaining it, maintaining it. The only comfort she had in those days were what she had always known: routine. She walked the same paths every day and spoke to the same people in the hopes that she could find solace in the things that did not change. It was in the spring that even her small comfort of familiarity was stripped from her, prompted by Orion’s confession that she could no longer call the place that she once shared with her two loving parents “home”. Following that, her only coping mechanism was a harrowing apathy. Orion’s explanation funded only a surface understanding of what it all meant for her future.

Katherine had left when Kova was still young and forming memories, so her connections with her had been bathed in a childlike glow of innocence, one that she no longer possessed. She held steadfastly onto those memories, clinging to the way she could hardly recall the little things about Katherine. The fear of forgetting her mother didn’t set in until later that day, when Kova realized she could no longer remember how her voice sounded when she’d see her off for the day.

After the night of Orion’s confession, her sleep troubles only continued. Her sister and her slept together for the majority of our childhood, so she rarely had the experience of waking up alone. However, there’s a morning Kova remembered vividly, in which she awoke to an empty bed, the sun shining through the curtains and casting an ephemeral glow across the room. Kova rose slowly, her hair cascading around her face, a few strands falling into my eyes. She swiped at them, her fingers producing a clear, wet substance. Upon further inspection, she realized they were tears and hurriedly dug her fingers into the corners of her eyes to be rid of them rest of them. At that point, it had been a natural occurrence for Kova to cry in her sleep. At first, the tears were due to nightmares. She would awaken in a panic, the physical manifestation of her distress burrowing into every orifice it passed, causing her to choke on the taste of salt and her own horrified screams. Orion would hold her, then, much to Vinnea’s dismay, who would waddle into their father’s room for some peace and quiet. However, Vinnea would always be right back in bed with me come morning, no matter what time Kova woke up.

The morning she wasn’t, though, Kova found herself staring at the wall for a few moments, blinking the lingering exhaustion from her eyes slowly. It wasn’t until an obscenely long time had passed that she realized Vinnea was nowhere to be found. In a haze, she checked every cranny she could imagine her sister fitting her lanky body into with to no avail.

After she had combed every inch of the house, she moved her search outside. When Vinnea needed some alone time, Kova would often find her at the village’s edge, brushing up on her tracking skills or making mock traps. She figured this is where she’d find her now, but instead of going to her usual spots, something told Kova that she should focus her efforts elsewhere — somewhere more familiar to her. Before she knew it, the young girl’s feet were carrying her to the woods. To the only direct line to the Isles de Gaia, an unclaimed territory that used to house the Nymphs as a place of refuge. The same place Vinnea ended up when her parents sent her away.

Sure enough, that’s where she was, circumspectly inspecting a tree stump, as if determining whatever she was studying so hard would lead her to buried treasure. Kova stood behind her quietly with the knowledge that Vinnea knew she was there, but after a while the silence grew too large for Kova to manage, and she kicked the stump playfully. Though it wasn’t very hard, the kick managed to jostle it free from it’s position in the ground, if only for a second. “What are you doing?”

Vinnea peeked up at Kova, seemingly annoyed to be disturbed. “Checking out how old this tree was when it got chopped,” she muttered, keeping her eyes focused on the stump. “If the foundation is compromised, I won’t be able to lay any solid traps.”

“What compromises the foundation?” Kova asked, tilting her head.

“Stupid things.” A pause. “Like kicking it out of the ground.”

Kova stayed silent after that. It was obvious her presence was just a distraction, but she enjoyed watching Vinnea work — it was like peering into another life, and though it was filled with struggle and uncertainty, it wasn’t her own, and Kova appreciated the momentary relief she felt from witnessing how a person could survive a truly life-altering, horrible event. She spent the next few minutes thinking about what it must’ve been like to be five years old, unaware of where you came from or how you got to where you are, but still being forced to survive on your own. At least Kova had her father, and would always have him. Even when he was gone, the memory of Orion and his love would remain. All Vinnea had were flashes of a happy childhood, ones that she was reluctant to share with her sister. After all, those were the only things she could ever really call her own.

It wasn’t until a little while later that Vinnea finished her project, silently wiping her hands on her pants to rid herself of the shavings and dirt that accumulated. Still kneeling, she looked up at Kova, just to see her face. She could tell that Vinnea didn’t really want to talk, so she didn’t force it on her, but Kova still smiled, just to let her know that it was okay. To her surprise, however, Vinnea actually spoke. It was quiet, almost broken. “What do you think it’ll be like in Ciraesan?”

It was the first time they’d spoken of the move since Orion announced it a couple months before. It was only a few days away, and their stuff was packed almost completely into neat bags. The only thing that wasn’t packed was Vinnea’s stuff, which was far and few between. Kova shrugged, unsure of how to answer. She hadn’t really thought about it. “I don’t know.” Her reply was succinct and truthful. Kova had ideas. She thought Cireasan would be scary and unforgiving, but also filled with magic and wonder. She had come to terms with the fact that maybe, somehow, this change would be good. A blank slate might’ve been exactly what she needed — to go somewhere she wasn’t known as the girl who sat by the fountain. “As long as I have you and dad, I’ll be okay. I know that.”

“But what if you didn’t have me?” Vinnea asked, following a brief pause. Kova’s brow furrowed. Vinnea was prone to hypotheticals, mostly born of her own idled curiosity and morbid enjoyment of the worst-case-scenario, but this didn’t feel like that.

“What do you mean?”

“What if he doesn’t want me to come?”

A handful of things began to make sense. Notably so, the reason that Vinnea was so hesitant. The only person who was more unsure of their future than Kova was in that very moment was her sister, who didn’t even have the comfort of looking back on her past with the fondness that Kova could. At the end of the day, Kova knew where she came from. In the world that they lived in back then, where you came from was all that mattered. Your family’s legacy was something used to read you and what you were capable of like a map. Where you came from dictated where you were going. In the eyes of everyone besides Orion and Kova, Vinnea came from nothing and was going nowhere.

Kova sat down beside her sister, crossing her legs and resting her weight on her butt. Vinnea was having trouble meeting her sister’s gaze after brazenly revealing the chink in her rusted armor. Kova placed her had on the small of Vinnea’s back, applying just enough pressure to be comforting, but not to push her off balance and cause her to tumble from her knelt position. “You’re my sister. Of course he’d want you to come. Why wouldn’t he?”

Kova didn’t realize until later, when her soul burned so bright the experiences held within it burst into view all at once, that this did nothing to assuage her sister’s fears. Looking back, Kova felt she had all the time in the world to recognize that she wasn’t giving Vinnea what she needed. I always thought it interesting how Kova could understand more about her life in the single moment of her transcendence into godliness than she did in her whole life.

Vinnea shrugged. “I dunno. I’m not his real daughter. Maybe it’s just time for me to move on.” A pause. Kova didn’t know how to argue with her. In Vinnea’s mind, blood was thicker than water, and she feared the boat that would take them to Ciraesan would not be able to carry her added weight across the sea. Vinnea had always been awful at distinguishing between the weight of what she’d been through and her own, however, and she was much lighter than she thought. So light that, sometimes, when the stars would align just right, and the vibrations of the universe all synced up into a roaring symphony, Kova felt like she was walking on air when she was with her.

Kova scooted closer to her sister. “Don’t talk like that.” Vinnea wouldn’t lift her gaze, so the other stood and shifted so that she’d be in front of her. Though her sister was staring down at her feet, Kova leaned in closer to her face from above. “I can’t lose you, too. I’d never let them leave you behind. Not again.”

Vinnea chuckled, but it sounded more like a sigh. “I know. It’s just . . . if you left, it’d be just me.” There was a moment between them, when Vinnea finally cast her gaze to the trap she’d just constructed. “And this stupid stump.”

Kova let out a little laugh and extended her hands to help her sister up. “I don’t think dad’ll let us bring this thing along.” Her lips curved into a smile as Vinnea grabbed her hands and used her as an anchor to pull herself to her feet. “It looks like someone kicked it pretty hard.”

Vinnea dusted herself off and gestured with her head back to the house. “Yeah, it’s kinda ugly, anyway. Just like you.” She playfully punched her sister’s arm. “Let’s get back. Our stuff is still all over the room. Orion’s gonna have a fit.”

Kova quickened her step so they were side-by-side and threw her arm around Vinnea. “He’ll live,” she almost bellowed, the half smirk expanding across her face as the sound of Vinnea’s satisfied footfall echoing through the woods became etched into both their minds as the birthplace of their golden years.

Though there was a springtime chill in the air, the warmth in Kova’s heart provided enough refuge for the both of them.

[artificialqueens]

as the sun dies (trixie x violet) - chapter 1 - fannyatrollop

A/N: This is a mad piece of historical fiction. Poor Trixie is Marie Antoinette, doomed Queen of France. Violet is her sister-in-law. Katya has a role I made up out of whole cloth, achieved by reviving dead historical figures so they would be around at the time, and pretending an unhappy royal couple could have given birth to a daughter at the right time for her to exist. The story is about them doing their best to be princesses in the palace of Versailles, while time floats slowly on to the French Revolution. Vixie are the beating heart of this fic, but Trixya will also exist in some form.

I have spent a lot of my free time reading royal histories, and though I mess with things severely to bring you this fic, I still stress a little about accuracy. Because the Hanover dynasty of Britain is one of my favourites, I decided that Trixie would be a British princess. The king in charge of her life at the time had a moment of OOC behaviour to make this possible. Maria Theresa of Austria found steaming mad. At least in this universe, the real Marie Antoinette had a chance to end up somewhere nice.

Also really wanna mention that the actual irl Comtesse de Provence as a hot, stinking mess when she got to France. I expected Violet to somehow be born with elegance and the ability to quickly figure out how to be the most fashionable lady in court. Also, because princesses often underwent name changes when they married into foreign courts… I call her Violette.

Trixie’s wedding would have taken place on 16 May 1770. Violet would show up at some point in the next year, so I’ll give you all of their ages as of September 1771 for reference: Trixie, 19; Violet, 18; Katya, 24. I try to keep track of when a significant time jump happens in the narrative, and hope it’s not too confusing. I’ll blab about titles and such next chapter.

CHAPTER ONE: Royal Parcels

Princess Caroline Beatrice of Great Britain, aged eighteen, has barely recovered from seasickness when she enters her new home. She’s never liked admitting to weakness, so rather than explaining her nausea as a symptom of nerves, she prefers to think she’s still carrying the effects of that horrible voyage inside of her. If she has it her way, she will never again set foot on a ship, not even if her life depends on it.

She knows that when a princess leaves her home country, she’s unlikely to return unless she is an unfit wife. When she was informed of her upcoming nuptials, she had promised herself to succeed on that front come hell or high water. Her marriage will be a success, even if it kills her. If she ever does end up on a boat home, she will be a failure, and if it’s like that she might as well leap off and let the sea have her. She doubts she’d be sent to the stocks for returning home a spurned woman, but she doesn’t want that to be the outcome of her life. Something about her marriage feels like a grand, cosmic test, and it’s in her nature to want to do well.

Trixie has no mind for politics. She can ride a horse. She can grow her own flowers, and keep a small garden alive tolerably well. She is a gifted musician, which is something she takes immense pride in. From the day she was born, her entire world has been confined to the house she was raised in, and the occasional sojourn to another royal residence for holidays. She’s incredibly green, but even so she is aware that hers is an unusual match. Her marriage is meant to crown the end to a long war with France—wedding bells to ring in a deeper friendship between the two nations. She would have expected to be shipped off to one of the German states instead, somewhere nice and Protestant, where her bridegroom might turn out to be a close relative. Her sisters had been established through alliances where at least one of these things was true.

For Trixie, marriage has simply been one of the three possible outcomes for her future, the other two being a tragic, early death, or spinsterhood. It doesn't bother her to be marrying the Dauphin of France, and though it surprises her, there’s no point in questioning the situation. When a princess is told she is to be married, she seldom has room to object. She still feels rather queasy about the whole thing, but she’s tried very hard to quell that feeling with positive affirmations.  

One day, I will be the Queen of France. There are worse fates, and it was never my choice where I wound up in life.

This cheerful mantra led her through her seasickness, through her dressing and undressing only moments after stepping foot on dry land, through the awkwardness of meeting her husband for the first time, not to mention her meeting with the King, and the first meal she shared with her new family. It has been with her as she feels the weight of history settling on her shoulders, the responsibility of finding her place in a new court when she scarcely has previous experience at her native court, and her knowledge that she’s not quite ready.

Admittedly, Trixie is a touch too sensitive, though she has learned to conceal it. Perhaps her mind has perceived more hostility in the people she has encountered thus far than she should have. Much of her energy has been expended in the service of performing as best as she can, while her lingering seasickness and compulsion to worry conspires against her. What she does know is that judging from their brief encounter, the Dauphin was not at all charmed by her. He could hardly meet her eye, even as he kissed her hand.

He’ll have to put up with her, nonetheless.

She breathes deeply, through her nose for greater discretion, as soon as she can make out the looming splendor of Versailles. She remembers that she was born to leave home and never return, that her most beloved sister bore it well enough when it was her time, and that another young woman was plucked from her home no less than seven years ago, to be her brother’s queen. Princess Caroline Beatrice, affectionately known as Trixie, has ceased to be; the girl in the carriage, desperately denying her fears, is the Dauphine of France. She should start referring to herself as such in her mind, and cast aside her childhood nickname. She won’t, but she will tell herself she ought to.

There is plenty of light, and nothing particularly foreboding about Versailles by design. Still, she feels a deep chill as she passes through its doors for the first time.

She toys with the ring on her finger, a gift from her mother. She’s not meant to have it anymore, had to hide it behind her teeth as she was stripped and outfitted with the trappings of a French princess, but she’s trying to derive as much comfort as possible from her little keepsake. Inscribed on the inside of the ring are words she believes were intended as a charm, one which she hopes will work: Bring me happiness.

***

Caroline Beatrice was born on August 23, 1751, approximately five months after the death of her father.

Whatever his faults as a person, and he was definitely seen almost exclusively through that lens by his own royal parents, Frederick, Prince of Wales was a caring, attentive father. He brought a liveliness to his household that contrasted starkly with the confinement in which the princess was brought up. As unfortunate as it was that she never knew him, for they would have likely gotten along rather well, it’s a small mercy that she was not able to compare the relatively bleak world she grew to know with brighter times.

The most crucial result of her isolated childhood was that when it came time for her to marry, her experience of life at court was minimal. Versailles, with all its formalities, would prove overwhelming for a sheltered girl who saw more of her native land on her way out of it than she had in all her life. The princess’ eldest brother, known to history as George III, had misgivings about the French marriage. He thought his sister unprepared for the challenge, yet it proceeded with his approval. Had he placed more faith in his gut feeling, things may have turned out differently.

George, though, had made a very aggressive push to broker a peace for a war that was bringing victory after victory to his country, engaging in political maneuvers that he found distasteful to put an end to a conflict that he saw as little more than a bloody drain on his coffers. How would it look if he made a fuss about garnishing that peace with a marriage, when both nations had suitable candidates on hand? His sister was of age, it was not unreasonable to assume she ought to marry; though she could be settled better elsewhere, with talks of marriage already underway and a hard-won end to a wasteful conflict it did not seem wise to imply that there were better potential matches for her.

He could not, at the time, have foreseen what would come of this marriage. No one could.

As it was, Caroline Beatrice was born in good health on a late summer’s day. She was named in honour of her grandmother, and would be said to resemble her physically later in life. It is probable that her resemblance to Queen Caroline helped to convince Louis XV of her suitability as a marriage candidate for his grandson: in her day, Queen Caroline was said to have the finest bosom in Europe, and Louis XV was a bosom enthusiast. The young princess’ portrait, coupled with a careful choice of words from an interested party, would have been enough to sway him…

***

In her defense, Trixie can say that the Dauphin was no more eager to fulfill his duties as a husband on their wedding night than she was. Sure, she was too busy agonizing over her performance at the official wedding ceremony to be of any assistance, but it’s not entirely her fault that nothing happened.

Her wedding gown had been an opulent confection made with cloth of silver, and covered in diamonds. The panniers on the hips added a significant amount of horizontal width to her silhouette, enough that she imagined she could comfortably seat a child on each hip with plenty of room to spare. She had very little experience with moving about in this sort of gown, and she could not easily overcome the fact that she’d noticeably stumbled the second she entered the cathedral. She wishes there was a way to go back and prevent that display from being the first impression some members of her court would surely have of her.

Even if she’d moved like an angel floating on a cloud, it would not make up for the fact that the bodice had been made far too small. There was no helping this by the time it was discovered, and she had to make do with a dress that gave the world a cheeky peek at her undergarments in the back.

Trixie and her husband were a match made in heaven on the dance floor. Trixie was technically competent in the art of dance, but contending with a gown that somehow managed to swallow her whole even as it was unable to fasten onto her body fully, she gave off the appearance of a badly conducted marionette. The Dauphin fared no better, and the young couple provided the court with an unintentionally comic first dance. Their bumbling performance in their first dance as man and wife likely acted as foreshadowing to their handling of the marriage bed.

A Dauphine has only one way to fully cement her position, and that is by providing her husband with an heir. If she can produce two, all the better. By the morning after Trixie’s wedding, her ability to achieve this simple task is cast into doubt. Shortly after her marriage, her brother’s queen gives birth to his seventh child. She dutifully writes a letter to congratulate him, all the while telling herself that she has no reason to be angry about it. If she tells herself that she will soon receive a similar letter, perhaps the universe will listen and make it so.

Despite her hopes, the situation remains dire for so long that a marriage for the Dauphin’s younger brother, the Comte de Provence, becomes paramount. In accordance to a long tradition of intermarriage between the royal families of France and Savoy, a Savoyard princess is sent for to be the new Comtesse de Provence. And so, less than a year from the time of her own marriage, Trixie gains some competition in the form of a sister in law.

***

Every day, Trixie must suffer the ritual of getting dressed in front of the whole world. It’s one of many daily tasks the Dauphine of France must undertake with an audience. She doubts she’ll ever get used to it.

Without a soul to confide in at court, she writes the contents of her mind to one of her sisters. She vents to Louisa, settled in Denmark, about the nonsense she dealt with every day of her life, and how she would not be surprised if it was suddenly decreed that she was not permitted to take a shit without being gawked at. Why, it would become the highest of privileges to wipe her ass for her after!

“I am certain,” she writes. “That there is scarcely a lady in this palace that has not had the privilege of seeing me in my most natural state. I sincerely hope it pleases them.”

The handing over of the chemise is a jealously guarded privilege that belongs to the highest ranking lady at the Dauphine’s dressing ceremony. This lady is apparently not obligated to arrive in time so that she may be present from the start of the ceremony onwards. What sometimes happens, then, is that as the social makeup of the room changes, the ceremony must adapt. If a parade of ladies, each grander than the one before, choose to drag their feet on the way to Trixie’s rooms, even if she’s caught with her arms outstretched, mere seconds from receiving her chemise, she must let it be passed about until the correct lady is able to hand it to her. It’s utterly ridiculous.

Initially, she gives the Comtesse the benefit of the doubt. She’s freshly arrived, so perhaps she wouldn’t know when it was time to assemble for her dressing. It may have also been news to her that, with them being so closely related, she could easily outrank every lady present upon arrival. Trixie knows how difficult it is to adapt, so she is willing to forgive.

Until she gets a look at her face.

The Comtesse is beautiful, with small, delicate features. Her nose is pointed down a little, but that does little to detract from the pleasing whole of her face. She’s a dark kind of beauty, striking enough that Trixie almost gasps. As comely as she is, the way the Comtesse smirks and locks eyes with Trixie sends an unpleasant chill down her spine. She knows full well that Trixie is standing there, completely exposed, shivering in front of all the ladies present and God. Yet she removes her gloves at an agonizingly slow pace.

By the time she deigns to hand Trixie her chemise, the Comtesse has already soured her day. Later, Trixie’s blood boils when she hears about her going around claiming the gloves were just too tight for quick removal.

A likely story!

Because Trixie habitually prefers to resolve conflict by stewing in her bitter juices for time immemorial, she does nothing in retaliation. The worst part is that she had hoped they’d be friends.

***

Maria Viola Giuseppina of Savoy, rechristened Marie Violette upon becoming Comtesse de Provence, is quick and bright, with an unreasonable level of self-assurance. As a princess from a relatively minor house, shuffled off to marry the current spare to the French throne, there is no reason for her to act so grand. But, despite the fact that she hadn’t been raised to be this way, Violette makes her way through the world as if seas ought to part for her.

Her mother, the quintessence of Spanish piety, always disapproved. She was taught to expect that her future would be dictated to her, and she ought to submit with grace, but Violette is not submissive by nature. And she never cared to cultivate that trait. There’s always been a hunger in her, a hunger for more than what she has. She wants to be exalted among women. Hell, even men.

At the rate things are going, whatever her fate had originally prescribed for her, she just might become Queen of France.

Violette has no personal quarrel with the Dauphine. They’ve hardly spoken, after all. It didn’t take long, though, for her to realize that she’s so lacking, the King had to send for reinforcements. She may have wound up here in time, but in a way she owes her current position to the Dauphine, and if she is not able to prove herself competent she may even owe her a crown.

Nobody has to know that her husband, being so grotesquely obese that he can barely walk unaided, is no more helpful in bringing about this glorious destiny than the hapless Dauphin. Only the promise of future greatness bids her to attempt her wifely duties, and all in vain.

Though no more capable, her husband still sees fit to needle his brother with constant, inaccurate boasts about the amount of activity their marriage bed sees over the course of a single day. So, Violette thought it might be fun to lay a small prank of her own on the Dauphine. She has to admit the look of impotent rage on the other girl’s face as she used the court’s own etiquette to tease her made her smile.

An unexpected gift arrives in the wake of her little stunt, to put a damper on her fun. The King’s sister in law, a former grand duchess of Russia now known to the French court as Madame, has presented her with a gorgeously embroidered pair of gloves.

There’s a note accompanying them, written in neat cursive: “I hope you find these more comfortable.”

Though a widow, Madame has been permitted to maintain the rank she held while her husband lived. As she remains closer in proximity to the current king, she outranks Violette. It may be true that the Dauphine also outranks her, but she does not see any wisdom in snubbing Madame. She can’t refuse her gift, as much as it irritates her to receive it.

***

Trixie wakes up with dread at the thought of seeing her sister in law so early in the day again. In the aftershock of the small slight she suffered, she has written a plaintive letter to Louisa, and a more witty letter to another one of her sisters, Augusta, to help ease her growing loneliness. The isolation of being a known disappointment to her new family is a tough patch of darkness to escape, though, even with all the solace she can find in writing to her sisters. She sees no need to trouble George, because she can’t imagine him providing her with the kind of sympathy she craves.

When it’s time to attend her dressing, Trixie senses a change in the room. The cause of it is soon attributed to a relation she has yet to see at the ceremony making her first appearance.

Madame had been pointed out to her at her wedding as her husband’s favourite aunt, the King’s one and only sister in law, and the second lady at court after herself. Trixie’s arrival, she was told, had demoted Madame from being the first lady at court, a rank she had held after the Dauphin’s mother had passed away. Already mortified by her inability to excel instantly at being Dauphine, Trixie had almost been compelled to apologize to her for this. Even so, in all their brief meetings, Trixie has not encountered even the smallest hint of hostility from Madame.

When they have the time to converse, it will be Madame who apologizes to her about not having attended to her sooner. She had been occupied in supporting her youngest step daughter as she made the choice to take the veil, and had retreated to another married step-daughter’s country home for a brief spell before returning to receive the Comtesse. By then, Trixie feels like there is nothing this woman needs to do to beg her forgiveness.

The Comtesse drags her feet on her way to her rooms once again, but it doesn’t matter. As long as Madame is there, the Comtesse’s arrival will not disturb the ceremony.

Madame smiles tenderly, and Trixie thinks she catches her winking as she hands over her chemise. Trixie feels like she is in the presence of an angel.

[storytime-reviews]

Daring To Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening Book Review

Manal al-Sharif grew up in Mecca the second daughter of a taxi driver. In her adolescence, she was a religious radical, melting her brother’s boy band cassettes in the oven because music was haram: forbidden by Islamic law. By her twenties she was a computer security engineer, one of few women working in a desert compound that resembled suburban America. 

That’s when the Saudi kingdom’s contradictions became too much to bear: she was labeled a slut for chatting with male colleagues, her teenage brother chaperoned her on a business trip, and while she kept a car in her garage, she was forbidden from driving down city streets behind the wheel.

Daring to Drive is the fiercely intimate memoir of an accidental activist, a powerfully vivid story of a young Muslim woman who stood up to a kingdom of men—and won. 

Rating: ★★★★★

When I was younger, I lived very near Saudi Arabia, but the stories I heard then cannot compare to the horrors experienced by al-Sharif as she tells them in Daring To Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening. Her memoir is heartbreakingly real, revealing the extremism that ruled her childhood due to a variety of influences, but which was slowly stripped back due to her own experiences and the inherent contradictions in these laws and traditions. 

Though al-Sharif’s activism was sparked by a singular focus – the desire to drive herself in Saudi (which is against tradition, but not against any law) – this book is about so much more than that. Manal al-Sharif demonstrates how the circumstances of her life up until this point influenced these pivotal moments, including both the personal and professional tragedies she experienced. Her dedication to the cause is awe-inspiring, particularly the ways in which these experiences shaped her understanding of the world and her place within it. 

The very complex nature of her relationships with those closest to her are just as important in shaping who she became and her ability to weather all of the storms that came her way. What also surprised me was the unexpected kindness and support al-Sharif received from strangers throughout this ordeal, heavily contrasted against all of the pain. This book is raw and emotional precisely because it is so personal; al-Sharif is as open as you get. 

Daring To Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening is an eye-opening look at the plight of women in a regime well known for its human rights abuses. It is a story of both huge triumphs and losses, of the power of the female spirit, of solidarity and of a daring hope for the future. 

[outofthefog2021]

8 Signs You Might Have a Co-Dependent Parent

1. The Codependent Parent Has a Victim Mentality

We all face obstacles in life, but the codependent parent believes that the other people in their life, particularly their children, owe them penance for the wrongs committed against them. Often this manifests in guilt-tripping behavior intended to garner sympathy from the child for negative experiences the parent has been through, with the end goal of altering the child’s behavior in a way that will somehow set things right.

This is where the problems begin. Rather than dealing with the traumas and difficulties in their own life through healthy means such as self-reflection and therapy, the codependent parent latches onto a child and demands compensation.

Compensation can take many forms. Many times a codependent parent will live vicariously through a child. For example, a mother who got pregnant in her teen years may demand repayment of the burden she faced by putting expectations on her daughter to seize advantages in life that she missed out on. A codependent father may demand that his son excel in sports to make up for his own lack of athleticism in childhood. If the child shows signs of taking their own path in life, the parent will use guilt to manipulate them into compliance.

2. The Codependent Parent Is Never Wrong

In normal relationships, one party is right some of the time but never all of the time. In a codependent parent-child relationship, the parent is always right. Even when the child is an adult, the parent will refuse to approach an argument or even a simple discussion with openness to the possibility of being wrong. Instead, they will seek to impose their own view of the situation and “correct” the adult child, as opposed to engaging in a discussion where neither party is presumed right by default.

So rather than listening to the child's feelings and problems and learning about the child's personality and way of being in the world, every situation becomes a threat to parent's authority.

Even if it becomes apparent that the codependent parent is wrong, they will not apologize—or, if they do, it will come off as forced or insincere. The codependent parent requires absolute dominance over the child, and any admission of wrongdoing on their part would be a sign of weakness and an invitation to challenge their dominance in the relationship.

3. The Codependent Parent Is Overly Emotional

People sometimes end up crying, yelling, and giving others the silent treatment, but the codependent parent has refined these acts into an art form. When they feel that they are losing control of a situation or the upper hand in an argument, they will resort to crying, screaming, and other acts of intimidation to restore the balance in their favor. If called out on this manipulation tactic, the codependent parent will often accuse the child of being callous or insensitive, or feign ignorance altogether.

If the child cries or expresses hurt or anger, the codependent parent may get unusually angry and claim that the display, no matter how genuine, is insincere and being used to manipulate when, in reality, they are upset that their tactic is being turned around on them.

4. The Codependent Parent Never Listens

Many children of codependent parents complain that speaking with their parent is like “talking to a brick wall.” In fact, one doesn’t speak with a codependent parent as much as to them. No matter how valid the argument, the codependent parent will not be moved in their position. Instead, even when presented with irrefutable facts that would cause a normal person to reconsider and reevaluate their position, the codependent parent will either refute the facts or move onto a different argument without addressing the point being made.

5. The Codependent Parent Parrots Words and Phrases

Instead of listening to the child's feelings, a codependent parent will parrot, mirror, or mimic them. If the child claims that the parent is hurting their feelings, for example, the codependent parent will, perhaps seconds or even hours later, return with, “You’re hurting my feelings!” Whatever concern the child expresses, the codependent parent will find a way to turn it around and regurgitate it as their own, thus reversing the defensive and offensive roles in the conversation. If called out on this behavior, the codependent parent will ignore it, become angry, or act bewildered and confused.

The codependent parent will find a way to appropriate the child's feelings and present them as their own, thus reversing the defensive and offensive roles in the conversation.

6. The Codependent Parent Has Mood Swings

Drastic mood swings can happen over a couple of minutes or a couple of days, but the codependent parent has the ability to rapidly shift from one mood to another. This is especially true when their manipulation tactics have succeeded in garnering the child’s acquiescence. The codependent parent may be yelling and screaming one moment, but once they get their way, they may be exuberant. Conversely, they may sulk in an effort to rebuff any guilt as a result of their power play.

For example, a mother screaming at her son for not calling often enough may eventually get him to give in and promise to call more. Once she attains what she wants, in an effort to keep her victory and her role as the victim, she may say something like, “No, never mind. I don’t want you to call. You’ll just be doing it because you have to.” Then, the son will not only have to call more, but reassure her that this is what he truly wants to do of his own free will, thus absolving her from any responsibility and guilt.

The codependent parent will rapidly shift from one mood to another in order to avoid responsibility and guilt.

7. The Codependent Parent Must Maintain Control at All Costs

Control is the end goal of all codependent parents. Most codependent parents expect a level of devotion and love from their children that is unhealthy and unnatural, intended to make up for that which they lack in other relationships. Often the codependent parent wishes to garner from their child the love and/or attention they failed to receive from their own parents. This creates a dramatic role reversal of the parent-child relationship and turns it into a vampiric dynamic rather than a mutually beneficial one.

Whatever it is that the codependent parent seeks to gain by controlling the adult child, when it becomes clear that they won’t succeed, a meltdown will often ensue. If the parent controls with guilt by appearing frail and playing the victim card, they may become suddenly venomous and aggressive when the adult child refuses to give them what they want. Conversely, a codependent parent who controls through subtle manipulation and passive-aggression may suddenly become dominant and plainspoken.

It is important to remember that these dramatic shifts in the face of lost control are not a mood swing or an “episode.” Instead, the codependent parent is revealing their true nature as opposed to the façade they must maintain in order to keep things going their way. Once there is no hope of getting their way, this façade will become useless and be easily stripped away.

8. The Codependent Parent Manipulates – Subtly

The most effective form of manipulation is the kind that you can never be called out for directly. Examples include the silent treatment, passive aggressive comments, denial of wrongdoing and projection, among others. The codependent parent will leave the child in a state of confusion, wondering who really is “the bad guy.”

Often, the parents will be genuinely unaware of their own manipulation. Many codependent parents truly believe that they are doing what’s in their child’s best interest and execute some of the most unsettling control tactics and manipulative power plays with simultaneous mastery and obliviousness. In fact, when called out on their manipulation with specific examples, the codependent parent will often be genuinely and deeply hurt and bewildered.

In fact, the codependent parent does not usually manipulate because they want to; they manipulate because they have to. They simply don’t know any other way to communicate with the adult child who is beyond their direct control. Thus, they will manipulate with finances, emotion, guilt, and any other tool at their disposal to maintain the imbalance of the codependent relationship.

Examples of things codependent parents will use to subtly maintain power:

guilt trips,

the silent treatment,

passive-aggression,

withholding (of money, time, or affection),

denial of wrongdoing,

and projection, among others.

So You Have a Codependent Parent... What Should You Do?

This is not an exhaustive list, but it does cover the basic signs and symptoms of codependency to watch out for. In my experience with my own codependent parent, many of these are hard to recognize but, on closer inspection, they deviate significantly from the norms of a healthy parent-child relationship.

There is no single, quick, or easy way to deal with a codependent parent. It depends on the individuals as well as the severity of the codependency within the relationship. In some cases, the only thing the adult child can do is sever ties with the codependent parent completely. In others, carefully imposed boundaries, discussion, and family therapy can be used to maintain a healthy relationship for both parties.

[pirateshelly]

Something that occurred to me while rewatching black sails was how much woodes rogers backstory differentiates him from every other character, and makes it thematically very fitting that he would end up being the antagonist of the story.

Because over the course of the show we learn that every single protagonist has some defining experience that shapes their goals and actions throughout the series, and in the case of every single lead character (other than rogers), those experiences involve being in some way disempowered, knocked down, “put in their place” by the world/civilization.

Flint and Miranda lose Thomas and are forced to flee for their lives. And they are, at the time, able to do fuck all about it. They have no way of fighting back or getting any justice for what was done to them. At least no lawful “civilized” way. As a woman Miranda’s only influence was through Thomas. And as a lower class gay man, what measure of influence or social standing James had managed to to gain, spent his whole life working twice as hard for, was stripped away with just a few words. Civilization showed them both how easily they could go from respectable English citizens to a duplicitous backstabbing whore and a profane and loathsome monster.

Eleanor experiences her mothers murder during the raid on Nassau and immediately is abandoned by her father because he has no time for a daughter. She gets a lovely double lesson in a) how truly dangerous the world is for women and that b) as a woman she is easily set aside and dismissed.

Both Max and Madi were born slaves, their earliest childhood memories were literally of being someone else’s possession. And for Max add to that all of the shit that happens to her in season 1. She tries to do something to better her own life and gets knocked down in the most unimaginably horrible way for it.

There’s billy and his experience being press ganged because his parents fought for social change. There’s jacks experience with indentured servitude.

We don’t know silvers history, but we have, from the writers, the explanation that whatever happened to him it removed his ability to really be in control of his own narrative. Then of course he loses his leg, taking away the ability to be self reliant that defined the silver of seasons 1 and 2. He becomes the “one legged creature”, someone whose only chance at having a life with any respect or dignity is among a pirate crew.

Then we have rogers. He loses his brother in a battle. A battle in which he is in charge, with an opponent against whom he already had the upper hand. It’s not an attack against him personally, it’s a corned opponent retaliating. He still has all the power in the situation and immediately and brutally punishes everyone he deems responsible. Then he writes a book about it (leaving out the more grisly details) and becomes a celebrity, it opens all sorts of doors for him leading to him being handed the position of governor of Nassau. The sort of role someone like max had to fight the entire world every day of her life to achieve, and even then she could never be a visible leader in her own right. And it’s something woodes rogers is just… handed.

He really is the man to whom the world handed everything. And he never even seems to fucking realize it. When jack gives his amazing “you people…” speech rogers response is “you really think I’m that soft?”… like, no my dude, no one’s saying you’re soft, he’s saying you’re privileged. He tries again and again, with madi, with flint, to pull the whole “we’re not so different” schtick, and it never works. He understands loss and violence, but what he completely fails to understand is the experience every other character (to varying degrees) has had; being told by the world that, for reasons beyond their control or choice, they are less than. That should they try to challenge that, should they try to be seen and heard, try to have ambitions or freedom, civilization will respond swiftly and violently. He says that he’s doing exactly what Thomas hamilton tried to do but as flint points out, thomas was trying to bring about change whereas rogers only ever wanted to enforce the status quo.

Woops, that got much longer than intended… I just have a lot of unfavorable feelings about woodes rogers, okay!

[gigdiyf118-blog]

How to Explain Download GTA gtadownload.org to a Five-Year-Old

Grand Theft Auto V Game description

For me, Grand Theft Auto V ’s extraordinary scope is summed happy throughout a couple favourite moments. One is from the mid-game mission by which I hurried a smooth in another level, fought the crew, hijacked the thing, and parachuted dazed then observed that crash in the sea to escape death on the palm of earnings military fighter jets. Another time, whilst travel in in the off-road buggy, I got distracted in something that seemed like a path up one of the San Andreas mountains. Turns out it was a route, next I committed 15 minutes respect on the meeting, wherever I almost ran on the faction of hikers. “Typical!” one of them yelled in myself, like he nearly gets run over by a rogue ATV on top of a hill each time he goes on a hike.

I could go on like this for ages. GTA V has an loads of like moments, big and tiny, that make San Andreas – the municipality of Los Santos and its surrounding areas – feel like a living earth in which everything can take place. It both gives you tremendous autonomy to check out a astonishingly well-realised globe also requests a story that’s gripping, kicking, and darkly comic. It is a step familiar with narrative sophistication to the collections, and there’s no physical part of the gameplay that hasn’t been increased over Grand Theft Auto IV. It’s immediately noticeable the cover practice becomes other reliable and the auto-aim less touchy. The vehicles handle less like the tires are made from butter with fix better to the road, though their exaggerated handling still leaves plenty of area for spectacular wipeouts. With at long past, Rockstar has completely slain one of the most persistent demons, mission checkpointing, assuring that you never have to do a long, tedious take six when you repeatedly fail a vision ever again.

Grand Theft Auto V can be the intelligent, wickedly comic, and bitingly relevant commentary about contemporary, post-economic crisis America. Anything about it drips satire: it pulls into the Millennial generation, celebrities, the extreme right, the further abandon, the interior rank, the media... Nothing is sound by Rockstar’s sharp tongue, including modern video games. One prominent supporting character spends largely involving their moment here the room shouting sexual threats at public on the headset whilst playing a first-person shooter called Righteous Slaughter (“Rated PG – pretty much the same as the final game.”) It is not specifically subtle – he actually has the word “Entitled” tattooed on the throat, and also the in-game radio and Television outright piss-takes don’t go much to the imagination – but it is often very weird, and a bit provocative with it. Grand Theft Auto’s San Andreas is a fantasy, but the points that satirises – greed, corruption, hypocrisy, the insult of nation – become all very real. If GTA IV was there a targeted murder on the American dream, GTA V takes point at the contemporary American reality. The attention to depth that assumes doing the world feel successful and believable is also what makes the satire so biting.

GTA 5 ’s plot happily works at the boundaries of plausibility, sending anyone not permitted to be carried dirt bikes along the highest of trains, hijack military jets, and do absurd shootouts with reports of policemen, although its three principal individuals are what store this relatable perhaps at the most great. The well-written and proceeded relationship between them provides the biggest laughs and most affecting minutes, with the way which their links with a single another polished and my opinion of them changed over the story granted the story its energy. They think that people – albeit extraordinarily f***ed-up people.

Michael is a retired con person with his 40s, filling out throughout the inside because he drinks beside the pond within their Vinewood mansion with a layabout son, air-headed daughter, serially unfaithful wife, and very expensive therapist – most of which hate him. Franklin is a kid from downtown Los Santos who laments the gang-banger stereotype even as he’s reluctantly seduced by the scene of an better score. And then there’s Trevor, a hazardous career criminal that times in the desert selling drugs with killing rednecks; a psychopath whose bloodthirsty lunacy is fuelled by a mix of methamphetamine with a badly messed-up childhood.

The assignment flit concerning their own special articles and a overarching plotline which affects Get GTA Gratis gtadownload.org all three, and it’s a thanks to GTA V’s versatility and collective quality that each individual gets his share of standout vision. As their arcs developed I considered quite differently on each one of them by different periods – they’re not solely the models that they are.

This three-character structure reaches for exceptional walking and vast make in the storyline, but it also allows Rockstar to compartmentalise different aspects of Grand Theft Auto’s personality. In doing so, it sidesteps some of the troubling disconnect that took place when Niko Bellic abruptly changed between anti-violent philosophising and sociopathic killing sprees in GTA IV. Here, many of Michael’s missions circle about his relations along with his earlier, Franklin is usually on call for vehicular madness, and maximum murderous rampages are give to Trevor. Each has a particular ability suited to help his abilities – Franklin could to help slow down time while driving, for example – which presents them a unique touch. Narratively, it’s effective – even off-mission I found myself participating in quality, work like a mid-life-crisis gentleman with rage issues like Michael, a thrill-seeker as Franklin, along with a maniac as Trevor. The first thing I did when Franklin finally made the right dollars was buy him the awesome car, because I experience like that’s exactly what he’d want.

Trevor feels a like a bit of a get-out-of-jail-free cards for Rockstar, presenting the opening for all the preposterous tricks and brutal behaviour that normally could not fit into with GTA V’s narrative ambitions. I found the violent insanity a miniature overblown and boring at first. Because get-out clauses go, although, it’s pretty actual, and Trevor’s over-the-top missions are most of GTA V’s action-packed highlights. The a successful way of answering a setback that’s commonplace in open-world games: the anxiety between the story the authors are trying to direct, with the history you make yourself inside its approach and its world. GTA V accommodates both, masterfully, allowing not to challenge the other.

The concrete action of control between them too offers a window into their personal goes with patterns, weeding out their personalities in a way that feels organic and original. Accept a integrity then the camera zooms out over the San Andreas map, closing fund now by wherever they eventually be. Michael might be at home watching TV when you plunge here next to him, before speeding next to the motorway blasting ‘80s attacks, or using a cigarette in the golf club; Franklin can become moving away from a strip club, eating a case of snacks at home, or arguing with his ex-girlfriend; there’s an excellent chance that Trevor could be gone out half naked on the beach encircled by over bodies or, one memorable occasion, down in a stolen police helicopter.

It could be virtually everything, as there is a bewildering assortment of affairs to do from the different San Andreas – tennis, yoga, hiking, run on beach and also by land, flying planes, golfing, cycling, diving, hunting, and more. The objective remain a great intelligent leader to both San Andreas’ locations and activities, touring people across the road and increasing your taste for free exploration of it all. The way that we’re presented near San Andreas never feels artificial – the chart is finally open on the beginning, for example – which says to the sense that the a real place, somewhere you can get to know. If GTA IV’s Liberty City feels like a living city, San Andreas feels like a living world. I appreciate people walking the dogs together the beach in the country since I jet-skied past, arguing for the street beyond a movie theater with Los Santos, and camped – with covering and all – immediately at Support Chiliad, before pushing up next lasting a hike in the morning. It’s astounding.

The ambience changes dramatically counting at where you are, very. Trevor’s dusty trailer out during nowhere in Blaine County feels like a new planet from downtown Los Santos or Vespucci Beach. That wasn’t until once I hurried a flat from the urban and in the hill I lived cycling around a few hours or that the full scale of it became evident. That drives the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 further than they have any suited near, and it seems incredible. The biggest bounce with class as Grand Theft Auto IV is the person animation, but the world is also much more expansive, described, and populous. The price we buy of which lives occasional framerate dips and grain pop-in, i found became more prominent the longer I played, yet certainly not significantly taken away by my personal experience. For this kind of a huge and flexible world it is also remarkably bug-free – I experienced just three small difficulties in the 35 times I spent on our head playthrough, none which caused everyone to help break down a quest.

San Andreas’s extraordinary logic of site is heightened by the fact that much of it isn’t on the drawing. There’s so much going on that it’s simple learn things organically, rather than spend your life following a mission marker. I when grab a traveling jet from the airport for the hell of it, then parachuted on the top of the tallest form in Los Santos. (I then accidentally jumped off the highest then decrease near my own death, forgetting that I’d already worked with the parachute, however I generally leave to hurt off.) Out driving in the country, I stretched across a man to a mobile phone post with womens’ underwear. I tracked down criminals who randomly swipe bags on the road, and happened across gunbattles between police and other miscreants, occasions to add a sense that it world isn’t completely uneventful if I wasn’t here to help disrupt normalcy. I purchased an expensive mountain bicycle with cycled around in the hills, appreciating the look on. These little moments can be get on your cell phone camera – which, brilliantly, can also take selfies. I have many bites of Trevor make their unhinged description of an look dressed in their underpants over a pile.

The legend which GTA V tells through the quest takes full benefit of all this diversity beyond need and score (nevertheless the motivation and run is still very enjoyable). It’s cause a lot of good moments. It allowed us racing Michael’s lazy blob of a daughter across Vespucci Beach in one of many misguided efforts in father-son bonding, operating a winter scope to look for somebody from a helicopter before chasing them across the city on the ground, torching a meth lab, towing cars for Franklin’s crack-addict cousin to help stop him from shed his task, getting into a feature from the sea in the wetsuit and flippers, piloting a sea, posing as a structure worker, doing yoga, escaping on plane skis, failing many occasion to arrive a flat burdened with drugs at a hangar elsewhere in the sweet… this goes about with by. The days of a similar cycle of “transport here, learn that guy, throw this person” are after us. Also missions that might otherwise be formulaic are filled with novelty with excitement by the possibility to play them since several different perspectives – in a shootout, Trevor can occur exciting RPGs from a rooftop when Michael and Franklin line the enemy on the ground.

It is the heists – multi-stage, huge-scale affairs that function as the story’s climactic peaks – that will event Grand Theft Auto V on their many serious and completed. Usually there’s a choice between a more involved, stealthier option that will (hopefully) attract less temperature, along with a great all-out option that will be less tense although more explosively chaotic – and what crew to take along with you on the job. All of GTA V’s missions are replayable at any time, letting you relive favourite seconds before try off another line. They have optional objectives in the vein of Assassin’s Creed’s synchronisation challenges, but crucially, these are invisible the first time you participate in a mission, so they don’t distract people by fix things your way.

Sometimes your own way won’t are the means that this designers require you to do something, and while GTA 5 is usually great in bending near you when that happens, there were a couple of instances exactly where it wasn’t make for my private type of chaos. Overtake a car you’re not supposed to overtake and it will burn in limit of visitors as if in special. Despite the establishment of fresh stealth mechanics, enemies will miraculously go with people when the mission dictates that they must. Kill someone before you’re supposed to, and that’s sometimes Mission Failed. Most likely the scripting is adequate to be invisible, yet once it’s not, you really perceive it – if only because usually the so smooth.

As always, some of the wittiest record shows standing on the in-game radio which acts behind all of the exploration and chaos. “There’s nothing new profitable, more masculine, new American than a big pile of money,” blasts one of the in-game ads. “We learn periods are challenging, however they don’t have to be tough for you. Still received several liquidity in your home? Are you nuts?” The audio selection is also typically excellent, leading to most of those serendipitous times where you’re take down with the right music comes by. During a heist, when the radio isn’t blaring the background, a vibrant soundtrack seriously builds tension.

The satire is helped with integration of advanced life to the game world. Every character circles around the smartphone – it’s used to trade stocks, call up friends to meet way up and send emails. There’s a great Facebook spoof, Life Invader, on the in-game Interne, with the slogan “Where Your Individual Information Becomes A Marketplace Report (That You can Offer)”. You’ll hear ads for preposterous parodic TV shows that you can actually guard next to your own TELEVISION at home, optionally whilst having a toke. It might not be realistic, but it definitely feels authentic.

It is value mentioning that when that occurs to sex, drugs, with violence, GTA V pushes boundaries much further than ever before or. If the morality controls were concerned with Hot Chocolate, there’s a lot here that will provoke moral hysteria. It’s deliciously subversive, and tightly language in cheek... but one time or double, it drives the borders of style, too. There’s one particular world, a torture place in which you have no choice yet to actively participate, i learned so troubling that we got trouble playing this; yet couched with apparent criticism on the US government’s way out to pain post 9/11, it is a shocking moment that will attract justified controversy. This gives to mind Name of Job: Modern Warfare 2’s No Russian mission, except worse, and with no option to bypass over that. Some other stuff, like the ever-present prostitution and wide strip-club minigames, feels like it is there because this could be rather than because it say anything to say.

There is nothing in San Andreas, while, that doesn’t serve Rockstar’s intent with establishing a exaggerated projection of The usa that’s saturated with crime, violence and sleaze. There are no clear person with GTA V. Everyone you experience is a sociopath, narcissist, criminal, lunatic, sadist, cheat, liar, layabout, or several combination of those. A gentleman whom pays good income to eliminate Los Santos’ worst examples of corporate greed is participating in the stock market near the help whilst he does it. In a world like this, it’s not testing for you to ensure why violence is so usually the first option. All the pieces fit.

Verdict

GTA 5 is not only a preposterously enjoyable video game, but also the sharp and sharp-tongued satire of modern America. This represents a sophistication of the lot that GTA IV transported on the counter several years ago. The technically more accomplished in every conceivable way, although it is also tremendously serious with its just. No extra planet into video games comes near that now magnitude or opportunity, then there is sharp intelligence behind its wisdom of humour and surprise for mayhem. This identifies a compelling, unstable, and provocative story without ever allowing that be in the way of your personal self-directed adventures in San Andreas. It is one of the very best movie games ever get. Notice: That assessment exclusively defends the single-player part of GTA V , since it launched without any multiplayer mode.

[funkyfrogwhore]

Cersei is the mad queen and Daenerys is the rad queen

(Note: This essay is based on the show. Yes I have read the books, but I actually enjoy the show more, so this essay is show based, with only one point coming from the books)

Cersei Lannister is a brat. She grew up a lady of Casterly Rock, with servants at her beck and call, owning plenty of fine clothes and expensive jewelry, daughter to the richest and one of the most powerful men in all of Westeros. In adulthood, she married a king and continued to live a lavish and luxurious life. Daenerys Targaryen grew up with nothing but her abusive brother and her name, being forced to move all over Essos, not knowing luxury until she and her brother were taken in by Magister Illyrio in Pentos. She was married to a Dothraki Khal while still in her childhood, a slave in all but name to him at the beginning of their marriage. Cersei Lannister is a self serving and power hungry queen, unfit to rule the seven kingdoms, despite her decades of political experience, while Daenerys Stormborn of the house Targaryen is a sacrificial and confident queen, who has been an excellent ruler, despite the fact that she has only been a player in the game of thrones for a few years. Cersei’s wickedness and Daenerys’s goodness is evidently portrayed through Cersei’s similarities and Dany’s differences with the mad king, Cersei’s arrogance contrasted with Dany’s humbleness, and Cersei’s ignorance and disgust of different cultures compared to Dany’s embracing and open minded nature with different cultures.

Cersei Lannister has many similarities with the mad king, Aerys II Targaryen, Dany’s own father, who was overthrown by Cersei’s husband, Robert Baratheon. The first matter that Cersei and Aerys II have in common is the most obvious: Burn them all. Aerys II was famous for his last words, Burn them all!, an action that wasn’t carried out until Cersei Lannister came to power. Aerys used wildfire as a weapon against his own people, including his warden of the North, Lord Rickard Stark. Cersei Lannister used the mad king’s wildfire to burn down a historic and ancient landmark of King’s Landing, the Great Sept of Baelor, as well as her daughter in law, her uncle, her cousin, and hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent civilians while she watched from a distance, grinning as she sipped wine from a goblet. The second matter that Cersei has in common with Aerys II is incest. Both Cersei and Aerys II have had sexual relationships/marriages with their siblings, which both resulted in three children; two sons and one daughter each. Daenerys, however, broke the cycle of the Targaryen tradition of incest, by marrying Khal Drogo and not having sexual relations with her brother, Viserys III Targaryen. The third and final similarity between Cersei and Aerys II is their obsessions with members of the other’s family. This is canon in the books but is never acknowledged in the show, but Aerys II was unrequitedly infatuated with Cersei’s mother, lady Joanna Lannister, while Cersei was unrequitedly obsessed with Aerys II’s son, prince Rhaegar Targaryen. These one sided infatuations have displayed the lustful and greed driven natures of both of the mad rulers. This shows how their own selfish desires impacted their abilities to rule well, leading to Aerys II’s eventual downfall, and (hopefully) it will also lead to Cersei’s.

Cersei is ignorant and arrogant while Daenerys has remained a humble ruler who puts her people before herself. In S4E10, the charred remains of a three year old girl burnt by Drogon were presented to Dany by the dead girl’s father. By the end of that episode, Daenerys had two of her dragons locked away to protect her people. She looked on tearfully as she watched her soldiers block the entrance to her children’s new enclosure. Cersei’s eldest son, the false king Joffrey “Baratheon”, was a danger to his people. In S2E4, he had Sansa Stark publically beaten, stripped, humiliated, and almost killed before his uncle, Tyrion Lannister, stepped in and stopped him. In that same episode, he forces Ros to beat her fellow whore Daisy, and in S3E6, it’s revealed that he brutally murdered Ros with a crossbow. The list of Joffrey’s damage goes on, but the point I’m making here is that Cersei stood idly by watching him harm his people for his own pleasure, not doing a thing to punish him. The only time that she did discipline her son was in S2E1, when he insulted her, which she responded to by slapping him. This shows how she doesn’t care about others being harmed, in fact, she sometimes relishes in it, yet when she is wronged, she lashes out.

Cersei Lannister has shown disgust towards different cultures, specifically towards the Dornish, whom she views as dirty and vile. She also has distaste for her own people, specifically the ones who live in poverty. Much of her shame in her walk of atonement comes from the fact that she is being viewed as less than those people around her, as she sees them as the lowest of low. In comparison, Daenerys has shown love and compassion for her people and other cultures. She learned the language of the Dothraki, and even considers herself to be one of them. She respects and honors their beliefs, yet does not shy away from taking down those khals who challenged and insulted her, as they blocked the path for Dothraki success in Westeros. When she burned Khal Drogo’s body in S1E10, she allowed what remained of his khalasar to leave unharmed and free. This was easy for her, as she did not yet hold much power. However, in S3E4, she had a whole army of Unsullied soldiers at her disposal, yet she gave them the same offer that she gave those Dothraki slaves: She gave them the opportunity to leave unharmed, yet they all chose to stay and serve her. In S3E10, she gives the same offer to the freed Yunkish slaves, who embrace her and call her Mhysa, an Old Ghiscari word for Mother.

In this essay, I have stated my reasoning for why Cersei Lannister is the mad queen and Daenerys Stormborn of the house Targaryen is the rad queen. There are many more reasons for Cersei’s incompetence, such as her dishonesty to herself and others, her unjustified revenge, and her overly prideful attitude, yet I won’t go into that now. So now I leave you with this: Although Cersei has been proven to be evil, and Daenerys to be good and competent, the true test lies in who will deal with the threat of the wights and white walkers.

If you have read this far, I am 1)Surprised, 2) Impressed, and 3)Grateful that someone was interested enough to read through this entire essay.

[veronica-rich]

POTC5 thoughts, spoilers

GIANT MASSIVE MOVIE-RUINING SPOILERS AHEAD FOR DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES.

I've only seen the movie once, but I wanted to put a night of sleep between me and it before I tried to convey my thoughts on it. I see my job as a fan here to tell you generally what happens and my thoughts on it, as well as whether you should spend your time going to see it. All only opinions of course. (I'll refer to the movies in numerals - 1 for the first, 5 for this, and then of course the in-betweens. Mainly because I don't want to try to remember the abbreviations OST and DMTNT. See how annoying? LOL)

Here we go ...

Except for where the regulars have ended up and the state of the Black Pearl in movie 5, you really don't need to have seen 4 to understand this one. You don't strictly HAVE to have seen the first three movies, either - this movie can stand on its own as an entertaining single viewing. If you've never seen a POTC movie and you come in with this one, you will probably laugh at most of the jokes (if you have that kind of sense of humor) and like some of the characters.

Since I doubt anyone who hasn't seen at least the first movie is going to read through this, I'll assume you all are familiar with the original characters from 1-3 as I go forth.

THE SPOILERS The movie opens with young Henry Turner tying rocks to his foot to drown himself in the bay just off the land where he lives; he's anywhere from 11-14 years old. His father is Death's Ferryman of the ocean, you see, so the fastest way to raise Will Turner is to get himself killed or nearly killed. He lands on the deck of the Dutchman, it surfaces, and Will emerges to talk with his son. Henry tells him he may have found a way to break the curse that ties Will to the ship, but he needs to find Jack Sparrow to help. Will commands him to not go anywhere near Jack and to go back home and leave him to his fate. Will is barnacled in Davy Jones-lite fashion; just enough to see the sea is winning against his resolve not to succumb to the hopelessness of the job. Unlike Davy Jones, he is not bitter or angry, but resigned and almost tired. We also get a hint that he is not exactly in command of his crew anymore, by how quickly he ushers Henry away and sinks the Dutchman to put distance between them and the boy. (This may also explain why you don't see Will again until the end of the movie, despite all the water-based shenanigans and near-death experiences throughout ... like he's not really in charge of the Dutchman anymore.)

Nine years later, Henry, now anywhere from 20-23 ish, is a low-ranking sailor on a Navy ship. We find out he's searching for Jack and the Pearl. He sees the ship is headed for the cursed Devil's Triangle and tries to warn the captain, telling the man he's read all the lore of the sea and this place is Bad News. The captain not only scolds and mocks him, but strips him of his lowly rank as a traitor and jails him. Of course the ship goes in; of course the cursed Captain Salazar and his undead crew overrun the ship and kill everyone on board - save Henry, whom Salazar tells to relay a message to Jack when he finds him. (We'll find out later Salazar used to be a pirate-hunter and perished in a fire in the Devil's Triangle while chasing newly-captained Jack Sparrow, while Jack escaped. So, he's hunting Jack. Trouble is, he can't leave the Triangle unless something happens - which it will, later.)

Through a series of events, Henry ends up at the same Caribbean English outpost as Jack and a young woman roughly Henry's age, Caryna Smith (Smyth?). Caryna keeps landing in Navy custody and escaping it - she's a scientist, and female in the 18th century, which is enough to get her convicted as a witch. Caryna is an orphan who is amazingly well-educated for having no resources other than a mysterious diary left to her by her father, a man of science who was searching for the Trident of Poseiden - which can break any curse laid at sea. The island shenanigans are pretty entertaining; suffice to say they all end up stealing the same ship with Gibbs, Marty, and the rest of Jack's paltry, pissed-off (at Jack) crew. Also, Jack trades his magic compass away for a bottle of rum (more on this later) and, in willingly giving it up, breaks Salazar's imprisonment miles away, allowing him to sail out on the open waters in his ship-eating ship (you read that right).

More shenanigans happen, McGuffins are pursued (chiefly the Trident, which everybody wants for different reasons), innuendos are made, young romance is set up (of course), we run into Barbossa and his crew, which includes Murtogg and Mullroy (but no Pintel and Ragetti!), Salazar's in the mix, and we find out his crew can't set foot on land any more than the Dutchman's crew or captain (they vanish in a puff of black smoke if they get out of the water). Shenanigans, shenanigans, it turns out Caryna is totally NOT the daughter of Jack Sparrow as most of us suspected (mainly because making Jack and Will co-parents-in-law would have been too delicious) - but the reality is possibly more entertaining, since it turns out Barbossa is her father.

(I really did want the after-credits scene to be Will and Elizabeth finding out their daughter-in-law-probably-to-be is a Barbossa, then the camera pans back to a general shot of the island, a la "Home Alone 2" while in the far distance you can still hear the two of them screaming "NOOOOOOOOOO!" with birds flying off in every direction.)

So - they find the Trident, break the curse on Salazar's ship (and we'll find out later, on Will Turner, too, elsewhere in the ocean) turning them all back human, and the good guys manage to escape back to the Pearl while Salazar falls to his death. Well ... not actually. Caryna briefly finds out that Barbossa is her father, after which he sacrifices himself to drown with Salazar to ensure her ability to escape his clutches unharmed. Once they're all safe, Caryna decides to change her last name to Barbossa from Smith. Cut to the cliffs outside Henry's childhood home, where he and Caryna are engaging in their form of verbal foreplay and smooching, when the Dutchman shows up in the distance, uncursed and gleaming brown and beige sails. Will climbs the hill to hug his son, confused as to how he's come to be uncursed and human again ... but just as Henry's going to take old man to the pub for a grog and a tale, Elizabeth appears in the distance hiking her skirts. She and Will run to each other and embrace, then kiss, while Henry and Caryna look on from a distance ... and from an even further distance on the Pearl, Jack watches through his spyglass, revolted by the whole picture of domesticity porn. And then he and his crew sail off.

The after-credits scene is Will and Elizabeth sleeping in their seaside bedroom - they are both dressed in clean white linen sleep-gowns, and they've had baths, and all I could think was This is the cleanest I've ever seen these two. Something menacing is coming up the steps and creaking open their door and looming toward the bed, and we catch a glimpse of some barnacled sea creature reaching for them when Will jerks awake from his bad dream. He looks around, turns over, hugs Elizabeth, and goes back to sleep ... and the camera pans down to the floor to close on a puddle of water and corals snapped off in it.

WHAT I WAS 'MEH' ABOUT OR DISLIKED: For me, it's easier to start with what I don't care for about a movie, if I'm ambivalent. And I sure was about 5.

Plot holes - SO many. I won't list them all, but there is not adequate explanation for many things. Of course, 1-3 also had fantastical elements, but they were explained and largely made sense in-universe. People do things that don't always make sense; magical objects aren't always explained. There's a lot of suspending of disbelief you have to do for this one.

Characterization - The nuance of the first three movies is lacking in a lot of characters here. Everyone who's Navy is efficient, duty-driven, and arrogant or head-down-following-orders. There's no Norrington-type in this movie (BTW, Norrington is not mentioned - which I think will actually make a lot of his fans happy, especially after movies 2 and 3). Nobody in authority seems to be a benevolent person - they're not all Trump, but neither are there any Bernies. The pirates are kind of dumb, more than they need to be. Which brings us to ...

Jack Sparrow - Oh, man. I gotta limit myself on this one. I don't know if Depp had much input into Jack's characterization in this one, but if he did, it honestly looks like his IRL troubles were leaking in to the point of almost drowning the character. In movies 1-3 Jack is a buffoon only insofar as it serves his purpose to make people think he's not as smart as he really is, so he can sneak under the radar with his cleverness and charm a lot of people he needs to do things for him. Conversely, if you only saw this movie and not the earlier ones, you would think Jack is a fall-down dissolute drunk and whoremonger who isn't very bright and whose fortunes come almost entirely on luck and other people's allowances for him. There are only a handful of flashes of the old brilliance and character, and I really miss That Guy. Whereas young Will Turner was trying to second-guess what Jack was really up to in 1, young Henry Turner seems most of the time like he's Jack's guardian trying to keep him propped upright and marching forward like you would that uncle you always heard used to be ripping brilliant but now is "ehhhh."

The lack of callbacks - I wanted more callbacks in this movie. I wanted Henry to talk more about his mom and dad and stories he'd grown up hearing, and what his mom was doing, and some line from Barbossa or Gibbs about something they remembered of his parents, bad or good. There are a couple of little moments, but it's not enough. Which brings me to ...

The retconning - I won't wade too deep into this, except to say it's very clear these are different screenwriters than worked on the first three movies. I won't say Jack's entire backstory is retconned, but you have to be a somewhat skillful fanfic writer to take what they give us and work it in with what we've learned in movies 2 and 3, particularly. Also, I'm not wild about what they did to Will Turner's personality as captain of the Dutchman, but we can discuss that later - at least it *might* have a basis in logical explanation.

Green-screening - I shouldn't say this was "bad" so much as there were moments it was too obvious some actor was hanging from something or standing on something to look like they were hanging on something, and the camera was too close and it just looked a little fake-y. Still, I understand FX isn't an easy thing (and where were a lot of FX shots that were really good in this one, so maybe this isn't a "MEH" so much as "A FEW SHOTS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN EXECUTED BETTER").

Too little Will and Elizabeth - There should have been more of both in the movie. If you're going to pay your actors as much as they likely got (as much as I HOPE they were paid to be in it), use them. I'm just saying. I wanted some more of them.

THINGS I LIKED: Henry and Caryna - As separate characters, that is. I have nothing against their romance; they're cute, and their style of banter is something I could see them keeping up into old age. But I prefer a character to stand on their own, and they're all right. The actor who plays Henry is not quite the treasure young Tom "Spider-Man" Holland is turning out to be, but he's got talent and he does a pretty good job of getting across an amalgamation of the personalities of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann. My favorite thing about Henry is that he seems to be only an OK swordsman; he's not his father - but what he lacks there he makes up for in what seems to be a preternatural affinity for hand-to-hand combat. He hits, he kicks, he kneels to trip people over him, he even grabs a couple and bodyslams them like The Undertaker. (I am sincerely hoping Elizabeth taught him these moves.) And Caryna - she's not like Elizabeth. She doesn't fight or confront the same way, but she's direct and unafraid, and good at getting herself out of jail and other tight spots. Plus, she's book-smart and scientifically literate. I swear to Christ if their kid inherit both their traits, they're going to be either Sherlock Holmes or Lara Croft.

Will Turner - Shut up. Of course I like him. I'm not entirely wild what the writers did with him or the fact he's in this so little, but I enjoy the fact he's middle-aged and looks like it with facial lines and sadness in his eyes at the right time (and some humor), and it was nice to see him and Elizabeth happy again. Of course, I can still pair him just as easily with Jack in fanfic, which brings us to ...

Jack/Will potential - Yes, it's still there. If you're an industrious fanfic writer or reader, you can make it happen. They're both older and a little more defeated, and Will definitely wouldn't be putting up with any of Jack's bullshit at this point, but you can slash them. What I really liked is how Jack didn't really show any favoritism or fondness for Henry 94 percent of the time, but there were 3-4 instances he did something to save the kid, because why not. He does ask after Elizabeth at one point and if she said his name in her sleep (LOL), and Henry is "no ... no." (I saw someone online comment that this is patently untrue, since how else would Henry know about Jack in the first place, and that the more likely explanation is that Elizabeth probably shit-talked Jack through most of the kid's childhood, sprinkled with some fond allowances for the fact Jack wasn't always a selfish prick or one or both of Henry's parents would be dead, okay?) Granted, I think most of the slash at this point in their lives would be less about Jack and Will having sex everywhere and more about Will overlooking the fact Jack cheats at cards and drawing a sword on anyone who tries to shoot him for it at the pub. But, you know. You can have the nookie too. (And yeah, there's OT3 fic to be had too, probably in Elizabeth being the one every so often who pulls the gun on Jack and Will lets her. Or she bodyslams Jack.)

ANYWAY ... I won't say it's a bad movie and I won't say it's a really good movie. It's entertaining. Had this been the first POTC movie, I don't believe there would be any sequels. There are things I could've done better if they'd hired me to write it, easily; there are things a lot of us in the old fandom could've done better if they'd only hired US instead. But it has enough holes in it that if you like the fanfic thing, you can spend lots of time patching up missing scenes and what-not.

[the-thingswesay-blog]

31 Quotes from J. K. Rowling of the Harry Potter series:

On life:

"As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters."

On failure:

"I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution."

"Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged."

On taking chances:

"You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default."

On inspiration:

"I've no idea where ideas come from and I hope I never find out; it would spoil the excitement for me if it turned out I just have a funny little wrinkle on the surface of my brain which makes me think about invisible train platforms."

On learning to write:

"You have to resign yourself to wasting lots of trees before you write anything really good. That's just how it is. It's like learning an instrument. You've got to be prepared for hitting wrong notes occasionally, or quite a lot. That's just part of the learning process. And read a lot. Reading a lot really helps. Read anything you can get your hands on."

On fantasies:

"I don't think there's any harm at all in allowing a kid to fantasize. In fact, I think to stop people from fantasizing is a very destructive thing indeed."

On the power of imagination:

"Many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are."

"Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared. Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better."

On curiosity:

"Curiosity is not a sin…. But we should exercise caution with our curiosity."

On a good book:

"If it's a good book, anyone will read it. I'm totally unashamed about still reading things I loved in my childhood."

On morality:

"It is perfectly possible to live a very moral life without a belief in God, and I think it's perfectly possible to live a life peppered with ill-doing and believe in God."

On empathy:

"Those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy."

On destiny:

"I believe in free will. Of those that, like us, are in a privileged situation at least. For you, for me: people who are living in western society, people who are not repressed, who are free. We can choose. The things go largely like you want them to go. You control your own life. Your own will is extremely powerful."

On our choices:

"It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be."

"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

"If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."

On personal strength:

"The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned."

On discipline:

"You've got to work. It's about structure. It's about discipline. It's all these deadly things that your schoolteacher told you you needed... You need it."

On humility:

"Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes."

On going from rags to riches:

"I think the single biggest thing that money gave me—and obviously I came from a place where I was a single mother and it really was hand to mouth at one point. It was literally as poor as you can get in Britain without being homeless at one point. If you’ve ever been there you will never, ever take for granted that you don’t need to worry. Never."

On the pressure to be presentable:

"I would be a liar if I said I don’t care [about my appearance]; yes, I care. I found it very difficult, when I first became well known, to read criticism about how I look, how messy my hair was, and how generally unkempt I look. The nastiest thing ever written was written by a man, and I do remember that. I wasn’t looking for it either, it was just simply in the newspaper I was reading."

"You can choose, you can go one of two ways. You can be the person I probably admire more and say 'well I don’t care and I’ll continue not to bother to brush my hair.' Or you can be a weak-willed person like me and think 'oh I’d better get my act together. And maybe my mother was right and I do need to put my hair back and tidy myself up a bit.’ So I did tidy myself up a bit. But I do often resent the amount of time that it takes to pull yourself together to go on TV, I really do. If I sound bitter, then that accurately reflects how I feel about the subject."

On body positivity:

"Is 'fat' really the worst thing a human being can be? Is 'fat' worse than 'vindictive', 'jealous', 'shallow', 'vain', 'boring' or 'cruel'? Not to me."

"I've got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I'd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny—a thousand things, before 'thin.' And frankly, I'd rather they didn't give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do."

On motherhood:

"Years ago someone wrote (about me): ‘She characterizes Molly Weasley as a mother who is only at home looking after the children.’ I was deeply offended, because I until a year before that had also been such a mother who was at home all the time taking care of her child ... What has lesser status and is more difficult than raising a child? And what is more important?"

On personal responsibility:

"There is an expiration date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you."

On poverty:

"I cannot criticize my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticized only by fools."

On depression:

"I have never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. Never. What's to be ashamed of? I went through a really rough time and I am quite proud that I got out of that."

On self-worth:

"Whatever money you might have, self-worth really lies in finding out what you do best."

[my-artyavocado-me]

Leo Fitzmaurice, Between You and Me and Everything Else, Walker Art Gallery Liverpool, 29th September 2018- 17th March 2019

Not many exhibitions bring a bizarre moment of Deja-vu where something accustomed has been stripped of its expected interpretation and instead you are confronted with what is there; This act of ‘re-seeing’ is what interests Newport born artist Leo Fitzmaurice. After leaving college Fitzmaurice moved away from painting and instead focussed his time on intervening with objects, situations and materials to comment on easily ignored aspects of western contemporary life such as consumerism (Healey, 2013).

His practice is grounded in the development of roaming and observation and stealing existing objects, focusing on the omnipresent and disregarded. He then uses these objects to convey contextual information in our already environment. The majority of Fitzmaurice’s artistic practise is focused on stimulating our sense of the commonplace (Frieze.com, n.d).

“My work has recently been concerned with materials/structures that hold information and in particularly, in the public realm, the reworking of materials that exists within this realm…I was interested, in particular, in the way these objects’ only function is to hold up words…Once a material has been stripped of its original textual message it could surely function as something else.” Leo Fitzmaurice in conversation about his 2007 exhibition I’m Getting you out of my Mind (Art Gene, n.d)

Artist turned curator, Fitzmaurice’s current exhibition, Between You and Me and Everything Else at the Walker Art Gallery has had Fitzmaurice delve into the National Museums of Liverpool and Arts Council England’s collection to bring together over 30 portraits by artists including Richard Hamilton and Frank Auerbach (Jones, 2018) with the hope that it will lead visitors to view them in a different light and forcefully discuss something new about the age old issue of depicting three dimensional bodies and faces on a two dimension plane (Jaspan, 2018); The portraits included tend to provide an insight into the sitters’ rank, influence and traits.

The pieces in this exhibition range across artistic styles and time periods, more specifically William Caddick’s depiction of a young man and previously mentioned Richard Hamilton’s Portrait of High Gaitskell as a Famous Monster of Filmland (1964) which is an enlarged photo Hugh Gaitskell the 1960’s Labour Party’s leader painted in collage with the bogeyman, Phantom of the Opera Mask and elements of Jack the Ripper (Sherwin, 2016). This piece depicts when the politician refused to sanction a non-nuclear regulation, this with the mix of grotesque features is an invitation to confront these interpretations outside of an art historical boundary to find new stories within (Jaspan, 2018), and ‘re-see’ the work.

Milena Dragicevic’s Supplicant 101 (2008) seems to be the piece which is representing the exhibition; Seen on many flyers and posters, this painting is one of a few contemporary portraits in the exhibition (Artinliverpool, 2018). A vibrant painting of one of the artists friends in which the sitter is distorted by a beak, Dragicevic’s usually chooses to paint her female friends or acquaintances after. Starting with headshots, there is a performative element to her work as she is “aware of the power of the face in that it is both the viewer and viewed.” Perhaps this element is why Fitzmaurice decided to feature her work in his latest exhibition (Magazine, 2018).

Psamathe (1879-80) by Frederick Leighton is key piece in the exhibition, borrowed from the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight, the painting depicts a female nude where the subject appears to be looking out to the sea in front of her (Blog.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk, 2018); Modelling as one of Nereus’s daughters, this key painting was the catalyst for the starting point of Fitzmaurice’s exhibition. Room 9 in the gallery at first glance looks like any other, however upon closer inspection the placement of the other pieces appears to be “looking” in direction to where Psamathe sits; It was Fitzmaurice’s aim when curating the hang of the exhibition to expand upon the tone of curiosity (Liverpoolmuseums.org.uk, 2018).    

Speaking about his exhibition, Fitzmaurice explains:

“Almost always, in my work, I try to frame the everyday and the overlooked in a new light. So, rather than seeing myself as a maker, I consider myself a maker of things apparent – I would think an artwork successful if the work could give the feeling of encountering something familiar for the first time. With this piece I have thought about portraiture, and the portrayed, from first principles; for me, portraiture is the depiction of a face on a two-dimensional plane. This grouping of portraits is my way of saying something new about this age-old problem.” (Blog.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk, 2018)

Arts Council Collection Project Curator at the Walker Art Gallery, Beth Lewis states “Leo has a wonderful ability to see the potential in the so-called ‘everyday’. His practice encourages us to look twice and see things differently, often changing our perceptions through his very subtle interventions.” Seeing the potential in the everyday helped Fitzmaurice select the chosen portraits in the exhibition, by delving into the National Museum of Liverpool and the Arts Council Collection it has revealed elements about portraiture that you wouldn’t normally notice looking at them once (Blog.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk, 2018).

Unlike any other of Leo Fitzmaurice’s previous exhibitions, Between Me and You and Everything Else, has the typical salon hang that we see in more traditional heritage institutions; A traditional salon hang presents a collection of art, sometimes in a close comparison, to achieve a desire visual effect. Given the context of Fitzmaurice’s exhibition a salon hang works very well in what he is trying to achieve as a curator, creating juxtaposition between the chosen portrait and Psamathe; As well as offering a more intimate, personal viewing that typical white cube institutions don’t.

Fitzmaurice also brings up the questioning of gender roles, speaking to the gallery assistant, he explained that part of the exhibition is to confront the male gaze. Being placed in one smaller room in the gallery creates an intimate space with yourself and the pieces and the subtle pedagogy of gender roles, these kinds of exhibitions provide us with material to form our own discussions in the concept of the display and considered the viewers position thus becoming an environmental experience space that both incorporates and appropriates visitors.  The exhibition is powerful enough to persuade viewers to reflect on their own standing in a social construct.

The exhibition addresses the way the female nude is depicted in art history and brings light to the important issues that are still very current in todays society, Psamathe strengthens this as we can’t see the women’s face just her body, further objectifying her and further outlining that the male gaze denies women their identity.  

It is known that whenever we go to a museum or a gallery as a ‘viewer’ we are always confronted with the ‘don’t touch’ signs almost immediately after entering; from childhood we are taught straight away to keep our hands to ourselves, Between Me and You and Everything Else is an unusual proposition. The curator and gallery are determined to confront issues like the male gaze and encouraging social commentary to take with you in and outside of the gallery space, the idea is the change the relationship we have with art and the visual experience we have as on average visitors only linger in front of a piece for around 10 seconds whereas Fitzmaurice’s exhibition forcefully encourages an articulate environment (Azimi, 2015).

 Typically, the theme of voyeurism in an artistic interpretation is usually conveyed in the form of photography, for example, the 2010 exhibition at the Tate Modern Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera raises the unanswerable questions of taking covert photographs and the exploration of a complicated subject. It was the curator’s idea to allow visitors to contemplate over the peices that disrupt the discretion of others and understand how much control the camera holds over those it is targeting. The description of the connection between the photographer and their subject can often be referred to as the predator and the hunted and can often spin out of control (Dorment, 2010), in modern society we are used to associating the theme of voyeurism with contemporary photography  like street photographer Steven Quinn however Fitzmaurice brings it back through the decades with his exhibition and show cases that that it is a theme that has been explored many times in time periods you wouldn’t normally associate it with.

Fitzmaurice offers the thrill of a distinct experience with this exhibition, otherwise unattainable unless you were alone in Room 9 but also forces a self-reflective approach on the viewer, it directs the spectator’s attention whilst making the act of forcing attention to a specific direction explicit. Being directing to gaze upon Psamathe visitors cannot forget this act and their own voyeuristic position in immersing themselves into the exhibition (Henning, 2007).  

Between Me and You and Everything Else takes the viewer on a journey of following glances and creating relationships with the pieces, this exhibition contains a voyeuristic perspective that keeps the viewer yearning for images; this aspect of the exhibition registers with the audience and establishes a connection with the visitors and without even realising it, becoming part of the exhibition itself.