#to the point where you are avoiding cultural touchstones

[wheretheactionis]

Sometimes I get thrown a little bit because I'm used to joking about how theatre kids are the worst or whatever but normally it's self-deprecation but sometimes I'll stumble on a grown adult in the wilds of social media who wasn't a theatre kid but still somehow despises them or at least thinks it's funny to act like they despise them and I'm like, whoa, let's chill out actually

[ginger-snaps014]

Just been thinking about all the Snow White/Rachel Zegler controversy, and I can’t help getting annoyed at all the pop feminism takes that seem to disregard the value and cultural impact of older female representation

1. Cultural Impact Remaining

This film came out in 1937. Nearly a century ago. Roosevelt was president. The new deal was being negotiated. Amelia Earhart disappeared. The Hindenburg went down. Ernest Hemingway was around. The Golden Gate Bridge opened. The Spanish Civil war was happening. Picasso was still alive and painting. The Great Depression is ongoing. Would War II just started in Europe with the Nazis invading Poland 3 months prior to Snow White’s release date. All these thing feel historical. Old. No longer directly related to our everyday lives. They are just history. Yet- Snow White is their contemporary. And it was so well done that it remains a current cultural touchstone in America and the majority of the western world (if not the entire world). Everyone can recognize Snow even if they never saw the movie. More kids recognize Snow White than the president.

2. Film Impact

Have you ever enjoyed a single animated film in your life. Thank Snow White. She is the first animated film in history. Snow was called Disney’s Folly while in production because no one thought a feature length animated movie could succeed. It was considered impossible. Disney and his team figured out how to create scenes that could be zoomed in on by separating different layers on individual glass plates that could be focused on or blurred by a downward pointed camera. This also made it possible to avoid redrawing a background for every image. They had to create new filming equipment for this to even occur. The film was a masterpiece in innovation. And that was just looking at the technical side.

3. Artistic Value

While the art cannot be separated from the technical aspects, it deserves its own bullet point. The character design was so well done that Snow is still singular and recognizable today. We can even see when just her silhouette is used for inspiration.

The art is so beautiful it still looks good today. Unlike other films which feel like they belong in a different era due to degrading. This 1930s classic still feels as it could have been during my childhood with the Disney renaissance movies. It hasn’t aged poorly like a lot of CGI films have. It’s art. Age means nothing.

Disney and his team created new artistic techniques. Analyzing how movement of clothing did not stop swaying when the character stopped. Creating the ball emotion practice where an artist had to give a ball a full span of emotions with no facial features. They changed the style of animation to be more realistic (at the time, the look was more similar to Betty boop).

Just watch the scene when the Dwarfs hold the candle while walking up the cottage stairs looking for the person who broke into their home. The way the shadows flicker and cling to every surface. As if alive. As if real. It is one of the most gorgeous pieces of 2d animation I have ever seen. And it was the first.

4. Bad Pop-Feminism Takes

Pop feminism became popular in the early 00’s and focused on bringing down cultural touchstones that failed to bring girlboss energy. While some of this analysis was helpful, most was rooted in snap judgement and internalized misogyny. Snow White is the story of a young heroine who is about to be considered a woman. She is a victim of physiological and emotional domestic abuse at the hands of her guardian. A guardian who is not only the most powerful person in th household, but the whole kingdom. A guardian who tries have the girl brutally killed. Snow is forced to leave the only home she knows, with no friends, food, water, shelter, etc. While on her own and lost, she finds a home. She finds a place that has a need to fill. And proves her value. Yes it’s a domestic role. But this character creates for herself a job, and earns shelter, food, water, and allies. Her value is so undeniable that Dwarfs take her in despite the most power person in the kingdom hunting her. A person so influential no one even has the ability to confront her so long as she is not in disguise (and likely do not have the bravery either). Yes Snow is beautiful, but that alone did not get her safety. She never lets what she suffered stop her from living with kindness. When this victim of abuse is targeted again, her allies come to her aid. So what if a domestic abuse victim needed outside help to win? Why is it wrong to ask for help? Shouldn’t we want people to be able to ask and receive help when needed - without being thought of as less? Also, why is domestic labor less valuable than swordplay? It’s a necessity in life. So long as media portrays multiple types of femininity (domestic and not), why should one be worth less other? Because it is not historically male? What crap. Domestic labor has value. And that value should be made clear when both men and women perform it. The non-consensual kiss is a valid criticism. The rest seems like an excuse to hate recognizable aspects of femininity.

5. Personal

I will admit I am biased. This was the film I watched every time I visited my grandmother. It holds a special place in my heart. But I doubt I am the only one who has an emotional tie to the film. And love is always important

6. Timeless Tale

This story ahas been retold and updated many, many times. That would not happen if it had no value. To disregard Snow as a whole because you don’t connect to the 1930s version seems foolish and small minded. After all that is a mere retelling itself.

[paragonrobits]

ATLA fandom presents a point on how people feel compelled to be smartasses or constantly make snarky remarks even when its incredibly inappropriate, as you will note that a huge chunk of all ATLA fanbase jokes inevitably involve genuinely racist remarks at cultural hair styles (many of which have been actively repressed in real life), mocking the appearance of characters in ways that winds up being super racist (mocking Zuko’s s1 ponytail and ignoring comments to the effect of that being a Thai hairstyle), invoking outright racism-based tropes for shipping reasons whether out of ignorance or not caring, and hyperfixating on the Fire Nation with very obvious idolization of the luxury, political power and perceived glamour of the nation without acknowledging that it is a colonial empire that has this wealth from a century of conquest and subjugation

really when you get down to it there’s a lot of really just plain awful things said in the fandom, often by Big Name Fans, that spread like wildfire and when people point how how blatantly racist these are, the person who said it either doubles down or tries to backpedal when it would have been far easier to either do the research or just... not be a snarky smartass. That is an option, you know. You’re not obligated to constantly make obnoxious jokes about everyone and everything.

Much of this, I think, comes from the people making these jokes genuinely not understanding WHY it’s offensive. It doesn’t excuse that these things happen, nor how they mostly double down on it or refuse to listen to people who actually know the subject matter. But in brief if flows from two broad sources:

1st, people who watch ATLA and have a tendency to not engage with the world on its own terms. Neither internalizing the way the setting presents itself or trying to get any understanding of the real world cultures that inform the civilizations of the setting or the religious views that underpin the show’s themes, they instead view EVERYTHING strictly through a modernized lens. At its most harmless, this is where you get the ‘Zuko is a theater kid/Mai is a goth’ jokes. Harmless enough, though people often tend to take it too seriously.

It gets worse, though, when people EXCLUSIVELY look at the show and its characters through the lens of what’s familiar to them, and often that means an extremely westernized view. This is where you get people who don’t seem interesting in engaging with fiction on anything other than everything as high school dynamics or coffee shop slow burn romances, and refuse to understand how the outlooks of the characters can and should differ from their own; its where you get a lot of people treating Azula like an misunderstood popular girl, when the particulars of Dynastic power, politics and Ozai as a role model become apparent.

2nd, the aforementioned obsessions with constantly making snarky remarks and be clever smartasses about everything. This is an attitude that mixes badly with this setting, because the people who do this are CONSTANTLY making fun of cultural touchstones, clothing fashions and appearance traits, and it winds up being deeply racist or mocking people for not looking like Westernized fashion models.

This is the sort of thing where popular bloggers crack jokes about various Southern Water Tribe members being homophobic and try to make that a running gag without ever looking into the ways circumpolar indigenous people actually viewed gay orientations, and when backlash happens, they either double down on it and refuse to take it seriously, or backpedal too hard and pretend they hadn’t said something horrible that could have been avoided by treating things with a modicum of respect, and not constantly acting like this is a high school AU with different architecture.

[zedecksiew]

Sentimental thoughts about the OSR

OSR -- Old School Renaissance? Revival? A style of making and playing games, where the focus is on the experience of shared imagined space, not narrative plots or arcs.

A style fostered by a community.

That community was ugly. Many alt-right-leaning white dudes. It sheltered abusers, like Zak S -- a person who, to my shame, I'd been a fan of.

That community was good. Many key figures were queer / trans. More so (to my impression) than any other RPG community (even other indie groups). Non-white folks, like me.

The popular TTRPG eye remembers the OSR for its ugliness, not its inclusivity. Probably because the assholes were loud. And because the non-white / cis / het-ness of folks was rarely advertised as a community selling-point: "Look at how diverse we are!"

The latter aspect made me feel welcomed. My work -- entirely informed by my SEA context, as it's always been -- got attention based on its merit, not its topicality.

+

The OSR as I joined it was based on blogs, and on G+. When G+ was shut down, the community had a diaspora.

You hear about BOSR (British OSR), or NOSR / NuSR. You used to hear about SWORDDREAM? I think FKR (the Free Kriegsspiel Revival) is an offshoot of the old community? There are a million Discord channels. Questing Beast, on Youtube.

The blogs are still going strong.

I can't keep track of all the places folks have ended up. I do feel bad about that -- that I'm less community-oriented, that I work more in isolation, now. I squat Twitter mostly. Twitter is not a good place for a creative community.

But it is what it is.

+

An article Ewan Wilson was writing about the OSR got spiked at Polygon. I was one of the folks he emailed questions to.

Ewan's questions prompted this bout of sentimentality, I guess?

Here are bits from email I wrote him, in reply:

+

The OSR scene began on blogs? That's certainly how I discovered it. I can actually remember the specific post that hooked me:

Patrick Stuart / False Machine, reading James C Scott's "The Art Of Not Being Governed" -- a history of the Zomia region of mainland Southeast Asia, a place of fluid cultures and peoples that have traditionally resisted the settled states surrounding it -- riffing on the historical information in Scott's book, spinning them into RPG campaign ideas.

+

A facet of the OSR scene is its willingness to use popular rulesets as a shared language.

Dungeons & Dragons (tm) not as a WOTC corporate property, but D&D as a community vernacular. (And D&D is just one example.)

Folks like Emmy Allen and Luka Rejec have talked about this quite eloquently, I think?

I think the OSR prioritises making stuff for games rather than crafting the bestest, most elegantly-designed game possible. If you are stuck arguing about which language works best for poetry, you'll never get to the point where you actually start making and sharing verse.

+

I associate the OSR style with possibility, too. I'm not sure why.

Mainstream WOTC D&D is trapped in a self-referential loop, recycling its own Forgotten Realms-adjacent tropes. Then you have the vast forest of licensed RPGs: "Alien: The RPG", "Avatar: The RPG"; "[Insert Popular Nerd IP Here]: The RPG".

Many indie-RPG communities prize genre-emulation -- here's a game where you can mimic the narrative shape of a slasher film; an urban-fantasy novel; Legend of Zelda.

Not that there is anything wrong with this. But if emulation is where you start and end you doom RPGs to a secondary role -- forever in the shadow of other arts.

For sure the OSR has its pop-culture and games-media touchstones; the scene loves to riff on metal album covers and Dark Souls a lot.

But I'd argue that -- relative to other RPG subcommunities, in my experience -- OSR creators are willing to push further down the rabbit-holes of their particular obsessions more often.

So, yes: Dark Souls and metal music. But also references weirder, personal, and as-yet-untapped: Zomia, punk zines, walks in backyard forests, Birkenhead folklore, the Permian Period, Moebius, East Malaysian myth --

Composted together to the point they become game things utterly unlike anything else, and the stories / experiences you can have in those game things you can have nowhere else.

+

The blogs are still going strong.

Today I was reading this series of posts, a theory-based critique at D&D, the OSR, and games design in general:

"the goal of what we call "old-school play" is not to create a story but to traverse a fantastic space guided by desire, such that any story which emerges is incidental and retrospective (much like stories that emerge from 'real life'). edwards prescribes that the goal of play is to create a story, elevates this prescription into a truth about play as such, and then claims that players who do not play with this aim actually fail to meet this aim because they are mentally damaged. perhaps this can be remedied by playing the correct game, or maybe not, but regardless the implication is that by playing the correct game, one can avoid brain damage.

my take is to not let salespeople convince you that you must buy their products to be politically or mentally correct, and on the flip side do not entitle yourself to the enjoyment of other people."

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4. All four are worth reading.

Today I was also reading the very first OSR blogpost I ever read, about Zomia. It is still as good as it was, six years ago:

"The Lisu, aside from insisting that they kill assertive chiefs, have a radically abbreviated oral history. "Lisu forgetting, Jonsson claims, "is as active as Lua and Mien remembrance." he implies that the Lisu chose to have virtually no history and that the effect of this choice was to "leave no space for the active role of supra-household structures, such as villages or village clusters in ritual life, social organizations, or the mobilisation of peoples attention, labour or resources."

18 Radically forgetting tribes. How far can you push that? Ancestor free tribes, then further away, one-year tribes, then in the reaches of the deeps, the one-day, impossible even to understand as they remember only for one day.

Patrick's blog turned 10 this week.

The blogs are still going strong.

[cappymightwrite]

ASOIAF & Norse Mythology

PART 2: The ‘Long Night’ and the Fimbulvetr

In PART 1 of this meta, from looking at just a few fan question answers, it seems rather clear to me that GRRM has more than just a passing interest in Norse mythology. One of the most fascinating and haunting myths in the Norse canon is the lead up to and resulting fallout of Ragnarök. In the show, the ‘Long Night’ appears to be just that, one night, and not even an awfully long one. In the books, however, it seems likely this will play out very differently. As a Norse nerd, the similarities to Ragnarök are just too obvious not to sit up and take notice, in particular, the similarities between the ‘Long Night’ and what is called the Fimbelvetr — which in my Old Icelandic dictionary translates to ‘the great and awful winter.’

Before I really get things rolling, lets take a moment to go over which Old Norse-Icelandic sources are traditionally used by medievalists to reconstruct the pagan conception of Ragnarök:

The Eddic poems Völuspá ‘The prophecy of the seeress’ (st. 40–51) and Vafþrúðnismál ‘The lay of Vafþrúðnir’ (st. 44–53) — these two poems provide us with quite a lot of information, with some sections being more comprehensive than others. Additionally, other Eddic poems, such as Lokasenna, Hyndluljóð, Grímnismál, and a few others hint at motifs, stemming from the ideas of Ragnarök.

In the Gylfaginning section of the Prose Edda (ch. 51–53), Snorri quotes many of the relevant stanzas from Völuspá in support of his own writing, though he also adds information that is unknown to us from other sources.

There are also a few skaldic* poems which give us minor hints regarding the incidents that will take places during Ragnarök.

NB: Eddic poetry is the term given to the poems primarily contained within the Icelandic Codex Regius manuscript, known as the Poetic Edda (written c. 1270, but arguably containing remnants of an older oral tradition). These poems are of unknown authorship. As for Skaldic poetry, these poems were written by known Icelandic skalds (ONI: skáld, ‘poet’), often in the courts of foreign kings, typically Norwegian, praising their patrons in exchange for royal favour; they span approx. c. 800–1300, so in some cases predate the recording (though not necessarily the composition or oral origins) of the Eddic poems.

According to Jens Peter Schødt, the Gylfaginning and Völuspá ‘are certainly the most extensive’ written sources we have on the Norse myths, as they ‘have played the most crucial role in the history of research.’ It is quite possible that GRRM has read much of the available textual sources on Ragnarök to help inspire his own work. That being said, if I had to bet on one being the touchstone source for him, it would be the Gylfaginning, since not only does it include detailed prose accounts of the events leading up to, during, and following Ragnarök, it also includes relevant Eddic poetry (notably Völuspá) in order to authenticate those descriptions. It really is a one of kind, unique source.

So, how about we begin with chapter 51 of Gylfaginning, where it is asked outright by Gangleri (aka King Gylfi) ‘what is to be said about Ragnarök?’ to which High answers:

There are many important things to be said about it. First will come the winter called Fimbulvetr [Extreme Winter]. Snow will drive in from all directions; the cold will be severe and the winds will be fierce. The sun will be of no use. Three of these winters will come, one after the other, with no summer in between. But before that there will have been another three winters with great battles taking place throughout the world. Brothers will kill brothers for the sake of greed, and neither father nor son will be spared in the killings and the collapse of kinship.* So it is said in The Sibyl’s Prophecy:

Brothers will fight,

bringing death to each other.

Sons of sisters

will split their kin bonds.

Hard times for men,

rampant depravity

age of axes, age of swords

shields split,

wind age, wolf age,

until the world falls into ruin.

The above translation is by Jesse Byock from the Penguin Classics Prose Edda — the translations in square brackets are his and included in the text, and he also uses a translated title for the Eddic poems, in this case, ‘The Sibyl’s Prophecy’ in place of Old Norse-Icelandic: Völuspá.

Several things are striking about this passage, chief among them, the fact that the precursor to Ragnarök is the Fimbulvetr, ‘the great and awful winter’ or ‘Extreme Winter.’ But before that, ‘another three winters’ in which much social upheaval will take place, circumstances that feel quite at home in ASOIAF. I would be hesitant to argue that GRRM is using the above description as an exact blueprint, but that being said, some of the circumstances described do feel very familiar to readers of his series:

‘Brothers will kill brothers for the sake of greed’ / ‘Brothers will fight’

This is perhaps suggestive of the Baratheon brothers, Stannis and Renly. Although, I’d say that the motivations/cause of the latter’s death is a little more nuanced than just ‘greed.’ But this is worth noting: the Norse source might offer us the seed of an idea, but it is GRRM who then “waters” it, effectively imbuing these dynamics with a deeper meaning and complexity.

Also, if we think of ‘brothers’ in a less literal sense, this could also apply to the ‘killing’ of Jon Snow by the black brothers of the Night’s Watch.

‘Neither father nor son will be spared in the killings’

Ned and Robb Stark fit into this category quite well, as both their deaths are gut-wrenching moments in the series. But also, more generally, this highlights that anyone, even beloved family, even heroes, can fall.

‘The collapse of kinship’ / ‘Rampant depravity’

In his footnotes, Byock observes the word sifjaslit to mean ‘the breaking of kinship bonds, but there is also the connotation of incest.’ In my ONI dictionary, sifja-slit translates to ‘adultery,’ since it is a compound of the nouns sifjar ‘affinity, connection by marriage’ and slit ‘rupture, breach’ — the latter most likely derives from the verb slitna, meaning ‘to break’ or ‘snap.’

The breaking of marriage bonds is present in ASOIAF, as in the case of Robert and Cersei’s respective adulteries. But we could also view Robb Stark’s marriage to Jeyne Westerling as a breaking of a betrothal bond as well.

Overall, I would say that there is room for both interpretations, and as we know, GRRM is pretty found of incest, prime cases currently present in canon being Jaime and Cersei Lannister, as well as the Targaryens.

‘Wolf-age’

Wolves feature a lot in Norse mythology, so it is interesting that the Starks, who are really the heart of ASOIAF, are so heavily associated with them.

Furthermore, the provisional title for the last book in the series, A Dream of Spring, was A Time for Wolves. The phrasing of this is just another way of saying ‘Wolf-age’, as found in Völuspá. But to potentially understand GRRM’s change in titles, it should be remembered that wolves in Norse mythology are often associated with war and violence — see, for instance, the kennings ‘wolf-wine’, ‘the river of Fenrir’, ‘the warm ale of the wolf’, which all mean blood. As someone familiar with Old Norse poetry, A Time for Wolves suggests to me a period of violence, whereas A Dream of Spring offers more hope and the potential for rejuvenation, perhaps paralleling the events that follow Ragnarök, as described in the Prose Edda and Völuspá (which I might get into further down the line).

‘Until the world falls into ruin’

It is strongly predicted, and alluded in the text itself, that the Wall will at some point fall, an event that will act as a precursor to the second ‘Long Night.’ The Wall is also considered by some people to be the end of the known world, so its destruction is strongly linked with the collapse of the social structure of Westeros as a whole.

As we can see, certain parallels can be made, though it is also worth noting that there are instances where they can’t be. For example, ‘sons of sisters will split their kin bonds’— I can’t really think of a relationship to compare this to in ASOIAF, unless it hasn’t happened in the text yet, and then who would it be? Robert ‘Sweetrobin’ Arryn and…Bran Stark? There are obvious similarities and ways in which we can link these descriptions to GRRM’s text, but we should be cautious to avoid shoehorning.

Indeed, it is fun to make these comparisons, but I think the main take away from this chapter of the Gylfaginning is that during the time closely preceding the Fimbulvetr, there will be ‘hard times for men’ with much social upheaval, including bloodshed, betrayals, and incest. In my opinion, the ‘Long Night’ has been heavily inspired by the Norse Fimbulvetr, and this is reflected in the way ASOIAF characters describe the ‘Long Night’, closely paralleling its Norse source.

To summarise from the above quotation, during the Fimbulvetr:

‘Snow will drive in from all directions; the cold will be severe and the winds will be fierce.’ (Gylf)

‘The sun will be of no use.’ (Gylf)

‘Three of these winters will come, one after the other, with no summer in between.’ (Gylf)

In ASOIAF, the earliest mention of the ‘Long Night’ is in AGOT, Bran I, in which Bran recalls the ‘the hearth tales of Old Nan’ detailing the apparent savagery and cultural difference between the northerners and the wildings, noting that ‘their women lay with the Others in the Long Night to sire terrible half-human children’. This evokes the above quotation from Völuspá, the reference to ‘rampant depravity’ in particular. But it is later, in Tyrion III, that we get the first real parallel between the Long Night and the Fimbulvetr:

Lord Mormont moved to the window and stared out into the night. “These are old bones, Lannister, but they have never felt a chill like this. Tell the king what I say, I pray you. Winter is coming, and when the Long Night falls, only the Night’s Watch will stand between the realm and the darkness that sweeps from the north. The gods help us all if we are not ready.

From the description in Gylfaginning, we know that the Fimbulvetr is preceded by three winters, ‘one after the other, with no summer in between’. Without taking it too literally, this description at the very least suggests that a move towards cold weather will herald the coming of the ‘Extreme Winter’, as this is foreshadowed as early as AGOT in this Tyrion chapter when Jeor Mormont states that he has ‘never felt a chill like this […] Winter is coming’. Directly following this statement is the foreknowledge that the Long Night is indeed on its way.

The reference to a ‘darkness that sweeps from the north’ is noteworthy too, as although most often associated with freezing weather, the Fimbulvetr is also crucially connected with the disappearing of the sun (‘the sun will be of no use’, Gylf). Indeed, the very name the Long Night suggests much the same phenomenon, as explained to Bran by Old Nan later in AGOT, in Bran IV:

Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods.

[…]

Thousands and thousands of years ago, a winter fell that was cold and hard and endless beyond all memory of man. There came a night that lasted a generation, and kings shivered and died in their castles even as the swineherds in their hovels. Women smothered their children rather than see them starve, and cried, and felt their tears freeze on their cheeks.

I mean…this might as well be a description for the Fimbulvetr, it is THAT similar! Indeed, as we know, in the world of ASOIAF the seasons work a bit differently, as alluded to by Old Nan when she refers to ‘a night [i.e. a winter] that lasted a generation’. Similarly, the Fimbulvetr is unusual in that it is preceded by ‘three winters’, which suggests an extended winter lasting up four years, culminating in the ‘Extreme Winter’, aka the Fimbulvetr. It seems likely that the timespan of ‘a generation’ has been exaggerated for the sake of myth making. That being said, we would expect the Long Night to still be noteworthy in its duration. So, perhaps it is possible that, were GRRM to emulate the Norse source, his Long Night could potentially last for a similar amount of time (four years). Either way, I think we all expect it to last longer than it did in the show!

In conclusion, the way in which the Fimbulvetr is described in the Norse sources bears a striking resemblance to the descriptions of the Long Night in ASOIAF. Futhermore, and most interestingly to me, it seems entirely possible that, like the Fimbulvetr, and like the first Long Night that went before it, the next Long Night will include the disappearing of the sun...an important feature that I will discuss further next time! So stay tuned!

References/Bibliography (excluding ASOIAF):

Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda, trans. and intr. by Jesse Byock, (London: Penguin Classics, 2005)

Jens Peter Schødt, ‘The Ragnarök Myth in Scandinavia’, in Finding, Inheriting and Borrowing?: The Construction and Transfer of Knowledge in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 2019, Vol.39, p.365-384

END OF PART 2��

I haven’t quite decided if I will include my stuff about the sun disappearing in Ragnarök and the ‘Red Comet’, or if I’ll give it its own separate part...we’ll see! I would also like to talk a bit about the significance of storytelling as a way of recording history in ASOIAF... Basically, I have a lot of thoughts on things!

[rappaccini]

tua s1 rewatch

1x07 | og rewatch

0:00

'one is the loneliest number' really should've been a luther song. but it works here nonetheless

+"doctor terminal" is name-dropped here as one of the villains baby harold is play-fighting. he was also the man behind the terminauts, the robots who attack the academy in the comic-equivalent of the hazel/cha cha fight.

here he is.

also i... think it's hilarious and disheartening how the show accurately predicted that the greatest antagonist to the umbrella academy would be toxic, entitled fans who get angry that the hargs are imperfect, try to groom their faves into one-dimensionally perfect, pure love interests while pitting them against the others (and that vanya being flattened into a perfect girlfriend would be her downfall) and completely miss the point. they were smart enough to predict their own fandom.

and it's baffling how in season 2 they... let those fans walk all over them. wack.

also i hate how the show tries to make leonard evil by showing us that he is a lonely, bullied, abused child who's so unsafe that he has to kill his dad. rather than just making him an entitled fanboy, they made him a Bad Victim. more foreshadowing for what they'd ultimately do to vanya: Bad Victims are apparently so much worse than the people who hurt them.

anyway. god how much would it sting if we had no clue harold was shady until this moment?

so much of the harold plot is so smart, and so much is underbaked.

i feel like making the conductor-type a toxic fanboy is brilliant- it also hammers in that celebrity and how literally even their villains prefer vanya's family to her. i think that needs to stay. i think that needs some work to get rid of the dents in the plate, but it's very, very solid as an idea.

the family car even has the same plates. tua is stuffed to the brim with greek myths: icarus, hermes, cronus the child-eater, the labyrinth and the monster at its heart being hotel oblivion, the pseudo-incest, five as odysseus... it's got scope.

so it looks like the kids' hero names are show canon too. i get why the show avoided talking about them: 'kraken' makes no sense as diego's name because he can't hold his breath like his comics counterpart. and asking people to remember 'luther is both one and spaceboy' might be a lot. it's simpler to just keep it to the numbers and names.

their numbers matter a lot more than their hero names anyway.

constant: the conductor-type gets the journal

variable: in the comics, he kills for it, in the show he fishes it out of the garbage. i like how the evolution ties klaus into the tragedy! and how thematically, this all happens because the siblings disregard vanya, the way klaus throws something valuable (that also happens to contain some serious symbology with his trauma) in the trash bc he'd rather numb himself to his issues than face them.

9:35

"the sonny to your cher"

man. why did they not set this show in the 80s, where sonny and cher would've been a much more current cultural touchstone (and where the sonny and cher comedy hour, as an early 70s tv hit, would've been a show that vanya and leonard would've been aware of and have likely watched as teens/20somethings). i swear the writers keep using old references and tech, which makes the 2010s setting so baffling. you clearly want to make this a period piece. so just make it a period piece.

13:26

diego hunting the conductor-type is a comics constant. five and allison joining him is a show addition.

(also why on earth doesn't the academy discover helen's corpse. it's a much easier sell of absolute danger than 'he killed his father, vanya!')

and i love that five gets knocked on his ass with a wound. it's transparently just a way to get him out of commission yet again, but i think it works well.

29:00

okay in hindsight the luther/klaus plot is pure filler. it's just to give them something to do. it's fun, but it's just for that.

i do like how klaus's addiction has steadily been used to foreshadow vanya's power suppression, and that his arc is to do with resolving to try and beat it though.

35:47

more of that Good Phantom Shit: the conductor-type taking the ingenue to a secluded home on a lake to hone her craft.

40:54

klaus meeting god is a constant. and so is being rejected by said god, mentioning he's an agnostic, and not getting a clear answer as to who he was made by.

god's a cowboy and he meets him because of being tortured to death by hazel and cha-cha in the dallas arc in the comic.

god's a girl, and he meets her because... of being killed by a furry in the show.

tbh i prefer the comic. a little less superfluous. idk why exactly it changed- maybe to avoid the complication of bringing a horse on set. but the setting's different because there aren't exactly any deserts in toronto.

and klaus having a near-death experience and hallucinating his father? straight from the comics, but it's hotel oblivion.

it was an interesting addition here, but i'm not so sure it has as strong an effect as it would if it were during his overdose. regardless, i'm sure it's here because we need reginald to resolve the mystery of his death by telling us he killed himself.

54:30

i love the ending. and i love the contrast of the days that were and weren't: where everything goes perfect and everything goes wrong (even if i think episode 6 ultimately shouldn't have been here). i love the break into act three.

despite all my little misgivings about filler, i do really think it works here. for what this season is, being a little too big for its own good, i think the filler plots work to build character, theme and get us to the plot, even if it's slower than we need.

i just wish that the show had streamlined the leonard plot more. they had something really special and fucked it up. maybe next time, someone'll get it right.

101 | 102 | 103 | 104 | 105 | 106 | x | 108 | 109 | 110 | overall

[buzzdixonwriter]

TROTS AND BONNIE Review

Trigger Warning: This will review a work that often addresses human sexuality, emotional / physical / sexual abuse, and adolescents’ views on same.  Be advised.

. . . 

When I was growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, two old comic strips that remained popular were J. R. Williams’ Out Our Way and Gene Ahern’s Our Boarding House, both started in the 1920s and, from their daily panels and Sunday pages, never moving out of that decade.  My favorite cartoons on local kid shows were Fleischer Brothers Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons, many of which took place in urban / suburban settings heavily reflective of 1920s and 1930s America.

So when I first encountered Shary Flenniken’s Trots And Bonnie I instantly recognized the flavor and style of the strips.

The content, on the other hand, came straight out of her underground comix pedigree, with the refreshing point of view of the female gaze instead of the admittedly too often misogynistic male cartoonists of the milieu.

Flenniken is one of the best artists and writers to come from the underground era, displaying a confident early mastery of the form (don’t listen to her protestations she really wasn’t good at the start of her career; she clearly ranked among the finest of the underground comix artists).

But the sweet and innocent look of Trots And Bonnie belies the frank and frequently shocking honesty of Flenniken’s work.  

As cartoonist Emily Flake notes in her introduction, “that’s the terrible power of children, the monstrous innocence that makes them capable of anything, a state of being we fatuously describe as ‘pure.’”

Innocence is not synonymous with purity in the world of Trots And Bonnie because the cast lack the moral and cultural filters we acquire as adults.  They are reporting on reality as they see it, and as with all children (and the elderly, and drunks) there’s nothing to stop them from commenting on the foibles of hypocrisy of humanity, nor is there a single iota of shame to hold back their expression.

And when you add the impact of puberty to that mix, holy &#@%, you have no room left for pretense or propriety.

Hold on to your hats, folks, ‘cuz it’s gonna be one helluva ride.

One helluva ride…and a hilarious one, too.

If modern audiences can get past the admittedly often shocking visuals and situations, they’ll find some of the most brilliant coming-of-age comedy ever penned.

The truth is always an absolute defense, and Trots And Bonnie dishes it out lavishly.  Brava to Shary Flenniken for having the courage (or honesty, of lack of filter; take your pick) to pen it, to the original underground comix and National Lampoon to publish it, and to new York Review Comics to bring almost all of it back (Flenniken herself opted to withhold a few strips that she feels might be construed now as hurtful or insulting).

Flenniken is the daughter of a military family, growing up in a variety of climes and places before her father retired in the Seattle area.

She reached adolescence and young adulthood during the hippie era, and the earliest strips cast a fond eye back on that time.

An original member of the infamous Air Pirates crew, she and fellow underground comix artists gained immediate recognition skewering Disney icons.  Air Pirates Funnies and Paul Kassner’s The Realist generated no small amount of tsuris for the House of Mouse in the late 1960s / early 1970s but The Realist, true to its name, possessed to good sense to adhere to the unofficial so-called “one-time fair use parody” rule while the Air Pirates pressed their luck with Air Pirates Funnies #2, resulting in the Disney legal department descending on them like an anvil dropped from orbit.

Crawling away from the wreckage, Flenniken kept contributing to a number of underground venues, creating the first Trots and Bonnie strip for the 1971 underground comix Merton Of The Movement. 

Trots and Bonnie (soon joined by Pepsi, a beguilingly sweet looking elfin-like child with the heart of Germaine Greer, the reproductive organs of Karen Finley, and the mouth of an interstate trucker) popped up in several single page strips and short stories until NatLamp recruited Flenniken in 1972 to be a regular contributor and (briefly) an editor.

NatLamp proved to be the perfect venue for Flenniken and her characters because the magazine possessed the economic mojo and suicidal “Who gives a &#@%?” attitude to publish Trots And Bonnie while at the same time providing a perfect audience of proto-incels who desperately needed some consciousness raising, especially if said consciousness raising arrived in the form of a kick in the groin.

Trots And Bonnie’s tenure at NatLamp lasted slightly more than two decades, but a big hunk of that era saw the Reagan culture wars raging, not to mention much of the country becoming obsessed with a literal modern day witch hunt in the infamous Satanic panic (an apt subject for Flenniken’s characters, but one she wisely avoided, thus following the old military adage, “Never draw fire on your own position.”).

The already edgy material in both NatLamp in general and Trots And Bonnie in particular threatened to be perceived as too edgy by law enforcement, legislators, and judicial authorities who seemed either unwilling or incapable of distinguishing between photographs and video of actual sexual assaults and rapes committed against real children as opposed to crudely drawn Xerox copied mini-comics made by outsider artists with audiences that might possibly number in the dozens.

Flenniken’s willingness to honestly recall the turbulent emotions of early adolescence resulted in stories and strips where prepubescent kids engage in activities and discussions that would be acutely problematic if done today.  Again, the utter lack of self-consciousness in Flenniken’s characters swerves her work away from the low grade smut ground out by many of her male contemporaries and flung open a window on how adolescent females perceived the world around them.

The stories are wildly transgressive, and like all transgressive art can only be understood in the context of their time and mores.  Flenniken’s art carries a sweetness that leavens out the most horrendous situations (she gets astonishing comedic mileage off a story about a woman raped by a police officer, never once blaming or exploiting the victim but lambasting the culture and mindset that makes such a crime possible).

The fact these stories are told from a vibrant feminist / sex positive point of view makes them relevant to this day, and Flenniken’s ability to draw both truth and humor from dysfunctional families, emotional abuse, and drug use keeps them from being one-note exercises.

Most importantly, Flenniken comes across as strongly pro-child, even while honestly depicting her own characters’ failings and misconceptions.

She always brings a genuine emotional connection with her characters as adolescents, neither glorifying nor patronizing them.

One of the most notorious Trots And Bonnie strips finds Bonnie looking at herself in a mirror, fantasizing she’s famous actresses of the past.*  

At the hands and brush of Norman Rockwell, this theme tries for poignant but lands in schmaltz, looking down on an anxious child studying her reflection in a mirror; in far too many bad novels by sub-par male writers, it’s borderline (and often not-so-borderline) pornography.

At the touch of Flenniken’s deft pen, it’s honest and sweet and shockingly frank but it never depicts Bonnie as a figment of the male imagination but as a character and personality all her own.

Flenniken has not done any new Trots And Bonnie strips since the last ones published in NatLamp in 1993.

To be honest, I think that’s a good thing.

The characters are of their particular time and cultural gestalt, it may not be possible to recapture that lightning in a new bottle, and rather than diminish the old, perhaps it best remains a perfect artefact of its era.

Mark Twain tried repeatedly but could never transport Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn out of antebellum Hannibal, and to use an example more contemporary to Flenniken’s work, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers resolutely thwart all efforts to move them out of San Francisco during the Summer of Love.

You can’t go home again, as Thomas Wolfe famously observed, but that only applies if you’ve successfully left home.  At a certain point, if you haven’t moved beyond your old confines, you never will.

Flenniken’s honest frankness could have turned into a big crosshair on her back during the cultural wars, but to paraphrase John Lennon, life happened while she was making comix.

She married twice, divorced once, widowed the second time.  While she never completely withdrew from professional illustration, she no longer sought out the high profile gigs.

Trots And Bonnie from New York Review Comics is the first extensive English language compilation of her strips and stories, a very handsomely produced volume designed by Norman Hathaway.

The strips are meticulously presented, making it possible to enjoy Flenniken’s fine line work and exquisite character depictions in greater detail than every before.  It’s a genuine delight, sure to thrill old time fans of the original strip and quite likely to win a new generation of admirers.

But brace yourselves, noobs, this ain’t your grandma’s Betty Boop…

© Buzz Dixon

 *  It should be noted that for all its apparent revolutionary newness, the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, the crucible that forged Flenniken’s point of view, also enthusiastically embraced the past.  W. C. Fields and the Marx Brothers became cultural icons to a new generation, Betty Boop regained her old popularity, old movies were rediscovered and reimagined, African-American spirituals and blues sprang from new voices, obscure books and novels from earlier decades and centuries became the new cultural touchstones.

I’ve posted elsewhere on how the boomer generation enjoyed a unique conflation of new technology and old media to produce a brand new synthesis; there has been nothing like it since even with astonishing advances in technology.  When old media is rediscovered and reinterpreted in this era, it too often tends to be in the form of irony, which mocks that which it cannot understand.

Give those old hippies their due -- they got the &#@%ing point!

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

The Pretty Reckless’ Taylor Momsen Lives for ‘Death by Rock and Roll’

“The 27 Club” is a depressing cultural phenomenon — it’s the age musical luminaries Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Mia Zapata of the Gits, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix died.

The Pretty Reckless singer Taylor Momsen is now is 27 but was 25 when she wrote a reckoning in the semi-autobiographical “25.” The song appears on Death By Rock and Roll, the band’s fourth record. The LP is a stunner; a dozen stellar songs that are at once reverential, referential and intensely personal.

In the past four years, Momsen lost two hugely important people in her life. In 2017, Chris Cornell died by suicide, and not long after, her musical mentor and best friend Kato Khandwala died in a motorcycle crash. Understandably, Momsen was devastated. Thanks in no small part to the catharsis of music, the age of 27 seems to be a renewal, as she exorcises her pain in Death By Rock and Roll. The Pretty Reckless’ best album to date, the passion and pain are palpable in both music and lyrics. The plaintive “Got So High” could be an alt-rock chart-topper, in wonderful contrast to the raw rallying cry and aggressive gutter-rock feel of the title track. She moves easily from the quirky cinematic moment of “Broomsticks” into the fiery, feminist coven-call that is “Witches Burn.”

Speaking from her pandemic hideout in Maine, Momsen isn’t on the other side of the grieving process.

“I’d be a liar to say that I’m, you know, over things,” she tells SPIN. “I’m still in the process of healing, but the making of this record really was just a huge step forward. I was in a very, very dark space there for a while, and if it wasn’t for the making of this record, I don’t know if I would be here right now.”

She wallowed, but ultimately her instinct for self-preservation kicked in. As did a worldwide pandemic. Masking up is nothing new for Momsen, who calls herself “a super hypochondriac” who hasn’t left her house since March.

“Even before COVID, I was strict. It probably stems from being a singer and not wanting to get sick on tour, because you never fully recover. So [I always flew wearing] masks,” Momsen says.

Though she’s healthy, and it’s probably not an exaggeration to say that, emotionally, Momsen was saved by rock and roll. “I keep just sticking to the word rebirth,” she says. “I know it sounds cliché, but it really does feel like that for the band.”

While the songs are truthful, sometimes sad, always powerful, they’re never a pity party. “I keep trying to want to put a positive spin on it because I don’t want it to be this representation of this very morbid thing,” Momsen says. The concept behind Death By Rock & Roll is a positive rallying crying, something a band might shout together before going on stage. “It’s an ethic that we live our life by; go out your own way, rock and roll till I die,” she continues. “Don’t let anyone tell me differently.”

The phrase “death by rock and roll” was coined as the band’s de facto motto by Khandwala, which made it an appropriate choice for the album title. The band’s friend, producer and touchstone, Khandwala died in 2018 at the age of 47. He was with The Pretty Reckless from 2010’s Light Me Up to 2014’s Going To Hell and 2016’s Who You Selling For.

Khandwala’s memory bookends the album: A recording of his actual footsteps on a wooden floor begins the record, and the final song is the poignant tribute “Harley Darling,” a stellar ballad that could be a hit on Americana/country radio. If the only way around something is through it, Momsen dove in headfirst, putting all her angst, love, sadness and power into the songs.

“The record delves into a lot of darkness and a lot of sadness. There was no way around that as a writer. And as a person. It just became so a part of who I was that I couldn’t avoid it. But I think by writing it and getting it out, that was a huge part of the healing process.”

Wanting to use music to process and express her emotions, she called Khandwala, who had produced every The Pretty Reckless album, to talk about recording.

But then came the call that Khandwala had died.

“That was the nail in the coffin for me. I threw my hands up in the air and kind of went ‘Yeah, I give up.’ I went down a very dark rabbit hole of depression and substance abuse and everything that comes with that.” she confesses. Momsen was so down that she couldn’t even listen to music. Eventually, listening to her favorite artists helped her. “I started with the Beatles, listening to every detail, the whole Anthology, and just going through what made me fall in love with music when I was young.”

The band – drummer Jamie Perkins, guitarist Ben Phillips and bassist Mark Damon – met Momsen through Khandwala and were all equally devastated, processing losses in their own ways. They were on tour with Soundgarden in 2017, which was a thrill but ended in tragedy when Cornell died.

“As an artist [being asked to open the tour] was the highest compliment that you could possibly get,” she says. “If you know anything about me, I mean Soundgarden is just the epitome [when it comes to rock bands]. I was there that last night in Detroit,” she remembers. “I talked to him at night I gave him a hug and said goodbye. When I wake up to that news the next morning … It just went from the most elating experience to the one of the most devastating. And Kato was at all those shows.”

Cornell’s death shook Momsen and the band profoundly. She says it “took me down to a place where I wasn’t useful in the middle of a record cycle.” The Pretty Reckless were supposed to be on the road for another year, but Momsen wasn’t up to performing as she dealt with her grief. “I couldn’t grieve and continue to get on stage every night and pretend, put on this big rock show like everything was okay. I left the tour,” she says.

With time, she was able to listen to Soundgarden’s music, and eventually, she picked up a guitar. Death by Rock & Roll was a record that was easy in the worst way possible.

“I didn’t have to try to write it. It was more just a necessity that I didn’t even know I needed. It just kind of poured out of me,” Momsen says of the writing process. “There were a lot of tears during the recording. We put everything we had into this album, physically, emotionally. There are good days, bad days, obviously. I think the full spectrum of emotions was spanned on making this, from anger to tears of happiness to tears of sadness.” Some days were too difficult for Momsen even to attempt vocals, too heartbroken from the past few years.

That said, Momsen, in conversation, along with the record itself, aren’t outwardly mournful. Her voice has laughter and life. “I’m ecstatic for people to hear the album and to share it because I’m really proud of it. I know it sounds cliche, but it really does feel like the first album, like we had to start from scratch again, and we didn’t know how that was going to go.”

Still, there are songs where Momsen chooses not to divulge the true inspiration to inquisitive journalists. “I think it’s unfair to the listener to detail song lyrics in a personal manner. It takes away what it means to [the listener].” She offers up an example to clarify: “I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan. (She references “The Great Gig in the Sky” in the song “Rock and Roll Heaven.”) I’ve watched every documentary ever made about Pink Floyd. In one, Roger Waters is talking about ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond,’ going into depth about what the song was about to him, about Syd Barrett.”

Momsen was shocked to learn the song’s true story. “It was so not how I had taken that song my entire life! I’m glad that I know the story now. But if I had known before I listened to it, I think that it would have changed my perspective of the song. It wouldn’t have had the same impact that it had on me and my personal life. That’s why I don’t like to do that.”

Death by Rock and Roll reaffirms The Pretty Reckless’ love of rock and roll, along with the people who made them who they are, musically and as individuals. “I think because we went through so much trauma, and so much loss, that this record, in one way, feels so much like a gift. We’re given the gift of rebirth; I mean, how many artists can say that? As artists, you struggle to find inspiration always. In this case, inspiration was just thrust upon me.”

With a record that marks such a powerful turning point for The Pretty Reckless, talking about Khandwala and Cornell will be inevitable and ongoing. “This record starts and ends with my love letter to Kato. So there’s no getting around talking about that,” Momsen concedes. “But it’s so much more than that. I think it’s reflecting on the cycle of life. You come into this world with nothing but your soul, and you leave it with nothing but your soul.”

[delimeful]

WIBAR Intermission: Making Adjustments (2)

WIBAR INT chapter 1 

if you’re new to this AU, you can find the first story here and the ao3 story here! 

warnings: tension, fear, panic attack, mention of blood, and nightmares

-

Once he heard the sounds of the others waking, Virgil managed to work up the courage to head out to the common area, mostly to reassure his stupid brain that Patton really was safe.

Predictably, trouble immediately found him in the form of one very large, very pissed-off alien. 

Fortunately, he was too tired from staying up panicking all night to flinch at Roman’s approach. He raised an eyebrow in question, watching him for any sign of attack. “What’s wrong?” 

“What’s wrong?!” Roman echoed angrily, his huge clawed hands twitching. “What’s wrong is that you apparently decided to gallivant around our ship without supervision for the whole night!” 

Virgil tensed, his heart rate picking up. Did that mean that Roman really had seen him last night, and just acted otherwise? 

Before he could ask, there was an excited trill from the hall. 

“Virgil!” A flurry of bright blue feathers darted into the room, launching itself directly at his chest. 

He caught the Ampen with a wheeze, ignoring the little black spots in the corners of his vision. Relief filled him at the sight of his friend unharmed, and his shoulders lost some of their stiffness. “Hey, Pat.” 

Roman was twitching harder now, his eyes narrowed in a piercing red glare, but Patton didn’t seem to notice. “Where’d you go last night? I went to check on you before bed and you weren’t in your room!” 

Virgil felt a strange happy tug in his chest at the knowledge that Patton hadn’t forgotten about him, and his lips twitched up for a second before he processed the rest of his query. “Huh? Yes I was.” 

“No, you weren’t,” Roman growled. 

Patton leaned in conspiratorially. “He’s just grumpy because he was up patrolling all night even though I told him over and over that you weren’t going to do anything.” 

Virgil shrugged, careful not to upset Patton’s balance. “Well, that’s a shame, because I was in my room. I just wasn’t sleeping in the bed.” 

Roman said something in another language, but Virgil could recognize being called on his bullshit by the tone alone. He rolled his eyes, and turned to head into the hallway. 

“Fine, I’ll prove it.” 

They ran into Logan on the way to the bedroom, and he tucked his extra set of arms behind his back and followed them curiously, confirming that he had also believed Virgil had abandoned the room for the night. 

He had a lot to say when Virgil showed them the cabinet he’d spent the night curled up in, and then upon further prompting, gave a demonstration of how he “managed to fit” in it. 

Roman was speechless for a record-breaking minute and a half, until he noticed the lack of a cabinet door. 

Virgil pulled the mangled door out from beneath the egg-bed-hammock thing sheepishly. “It was an accident.” 

“You kicked through solid Plylon?” Logan asked, eyes bright with interest.

“You kicked through solid Plylon?” Roman asked, in a much more displeased tone of voice. 

“Kiddo, is there something wrong with the bed?” Patton asked, completely unfazed by the destroyed furnishing. Virgil gingerly set the Plylon(?) board down. 

“No, I just… slept easier in the small space,” he answered, having no idea what the word for cabinet was in Common. 

“Do you require a different room? I’m certain we can arrange a smaller or more contained bed,” Logan offered, something in his voice setting Virgil on edge.

“No, really, this works fine,” he insisted, and then resigned himself to lying. “It’s just like beds at home.” 

It wasn’t like he’d be not-sleeping here much longer anyhow. There was no point in making them waste their time on stuff for him. 

“Okay, if you’re sure…,” Patton said. Virgil nodded, and let the tiny alien drag him back to the commons. The last glimpse he got of the others were the two of them engaged in quiet conversation, Logan holding the shredded cabinet door out appraisingly. 

He shuddered, and didn’t look back again.

“You want anything?” Patton asked, a common phrase from back when they were forced to barter and gather for their food. Virgil forced himself not to automatically answer in the negative. There wasn’t a scarcity of food here, he didn’t have to skimp out so Patton would get a full meal. He was lucky the Ampen hadn’t realized that Virgil had been misleading him about how much humans needed to eat.

“Uh, sure. I’ll eat whatever.” One learned not to be picky when living as a hunted fugitive in space. Plus, apparently most “deathworlders” could eat things that would be considered poisonous to other aliens. He supposed his former caffeine addiction would seem outrageous to these guys. 

By the time Patton returned with bowls and silverware, Logan and Roman had returned to the commons, claiming their own spots on the couch built into the floor. Virgil made a note of where they were sitting for future reference of seats to avoid, studiously ignoring the two aliens’ gazes. 

Outright questions were more difficult to ignore. 

“Virgil, was it?” Logan started, stressing the second vowel for too long. Names didn’t translate too well in Common, so Virgil nodded vaguely, not bothering to correct him. “How often do you eat?” 

Oh great, the one question he didn’t want to answer in front of Patton. Virgil stared at him blankly for a moment, and then shoved an oversized piece of fruit into his mouth to stall for time. He immediately regretted the action as he began to gag on the overwhelmingly sweet flavor. 

Strangely enough, Logan immediately recoiled, and tucked all four of his arms behind himself. “My apologies,” he offered in a much more reserved tone, eyes averted. 

Virgil’s mouth was too occupied with the miscellaneous space fruit he was half-choking on to ask what the hell Logan thought he’d done wrong, so he held up a finger in a gesture of ‘just a second, let me finish inhaling this fruit’. 

There was a loud cracking noise a few feet away, and Virgil turned in time to watch Roman shake the splintered remains of his eating utensils from his claws. 

“I’m going to bed,” he announced with the dark anger of a wronged anime protagonist, and promptly stomped out of the room. Patton chirped a sound that was the Ampen equivalent of clicking his tongue. Virgil continued to choke on the damn fruit for another few moments. 

“What… was that all about?” he managed as his airway finally cleared up. “What’d I do?” 

Logan finally looked up at him again, a strange curiosity in his gaze. “You don’t know?” 

“Virgil was smuggled fresh off the planet, Lo,” Patton chimed in helpfully. “He hasn’t gotten any sensitivity training. You wouldn’t believe how many times I thought he was going to take a bite out of me just from how he was staring!” 

Virgil planted his face in his hands to hide his mortified flush. He spent a lot of time dissociating in that cell- he hadn’t realized he’d been staring at the time!  

“So, the threat displays are… unintentional, then?” Logan asked, and Patton gave an affirmative whistle. 

“What are... threat displays?” Virgil asked, clumsily sounding out the unfamiliar Common. Logan visibly perked up.

“The baring of teeth and extended jaw are signs of aggression in many cultures,” he explained, lifting his arms to gesture. “Beyond the fact that he truly does need sleep after staying up for so long, I believe Roman left because pointing with one digit is a gesture of disrespect in Crav’n sign. They have a language formed solely by hand signals and body gesturing, due to the prevalence of early-onset deafness in some adults.” 

“I- hold on.” Virgil turned to Patton. “Baby words for the idiot, please,” he requested, using the English word for idiot.

“I hope you’re not speaking bad about yourself, Virgil!” Patton knew him too well. The Ampen frowned suspiciously at him for a moment longer before repeating what Logan had said in simpler words, with some added English and gesturing for what certain Common phrases meant. Logan watched the byplay with wide, intrigued eyes. 

Virgil nodded, wishing he had a manual for alien body language. And a Common-to-English dictionary, while he was at it. And maybe a free spaceship ride home.

“I know about sign language,” he finally offered, fingerspelling his name in example. “Humans have… uh. Hearing-gone?” How had he already forgotten the word, Logan had just said it.

“Deafness?” Logan offered tentatively, and Virgil offered a quirk of his lips in thanks. 

“We have deafness also, there are many causes,” Virgil didn’t have the vocabulary to describe the human tradition of gathering together to have performers blast loud music directly at them at close range without sounding like a dumbass, so he left it at that. Who knew if aliens even got tinnitus. 

“Interesting,” Logan said, tracing patterns in the air with his lower hands. “I would have presumed- ah, guessed that weaker individuals wouldn’t have persisted- or, lived long enough to form a cultural touchstone like a sign language on a world like yours.”

Logan’s effort to dumb down his vocabulary helped, and Virgil raised an eyebrow once he figured out the implied question. “What, you think we just leave deaf people to get hurt alone?” 

He’d meant the question sarcastically, but Logan’s distinct silence was answer enough. He set his fork down despite not having eaten more than a bite of his food. “Oh.” 

Logan looked from Virgil to Patton and back, belatedly sensing his misstep. “I didn’t mean offense. I’ve simply been led to believe that human social constructs weren’t so… community-based.” 

“It’s fine,” Virgil said, careful not to come off snappish. He’d forgotten his situation, his position as a human for a moment. “Don’t worry about it.”

He pushed back from his chair, and Patton tilted his head, birdlike in his concern. “I’m just still a little tired. I’m going to rest some more.” 

“Do you want me to come with?” Patton asked, antennae leaning towards him. Virgil shook his head. He didn’t want to imagine what kind of scene would occur if Roman woke up and found them. He was supposed to be avoiding putting tension on Patton’s relationships, not increasing it. 

“No, you finish eating. I’ll probably be out later.” He didn’t meet Patton’s eyes as he turned away. Lying again. At least he knew that was what they really expected of him, being human and all.

“Is this amount of sleep normal for a human?” Virgil heard Logan ask in a not-quiet-enough tone as he left. He was out of range before he could hear Patton’s answer. 

He spent the rest of the light cycle sitting in the corner of his room behind the bed, not answering whenever Patton knocked gently on the sliding door. He couldn’t hang out, he was too busy staring blankly at the wall with only the barest perception of time passing. By the time he snapped out of his dissociative fugue, the hall lights had been dimmed and the ship was quiet once more.

Taking a spare moment to stretch away his body’s stiffness, he crawled back into the cupboard space. Sleep attempt two: electric boogaloo. He could feel exhaustion weighing on him, making his eyelids droop heavily with every blink. Surely he was tired enough to just get a dreamless coma-nap? Please? 

Barely an hour later, he jerked up and slammed his head into the roof of the compartment, breathing so stifled that he had to crawl out of the confining space before the band around his lungs loosened slightly. 

He could barely even remember what the nightmare had been about. The only things that lingered after he woke were snapshot sensations- flesh under his teeth, the feeling of being chased, Patton’s rust-orange blood too much they’ll find him run run run- and a sense of terrified dread settling deep into his bones. Probably for the best that he didn’t remember the specifics. He shuddered, pulling himself to his feet. 

As long as he avoided the part of the ship where the others slept, it wouldn’t hurt to walk around the ship a little, ease his nerves. He hoped. It wasn’t like he was going to touch anything important, just… maybe try to figure out how the kitchen worked around here. 

He was struck with a feeling of deja vu as he crept through the corridors, and snorted at realizing that he was sneaking around to get a snack like he’d done back when he was ten. Everything always seemed louder in the quiet of the night when everyone else was asleep, though it was offset slightly by the way the walls hummed. Side effect of being in a spaceship, he supposed. 

When he reached the kitchen, he realized that he wasn’t the only one who’d thought to rummage around for a snack. Logan was there, humming one of Patton’s melodies softly as he leaned over whatever he was fixing himself. His arms were more extended than Virgil had seen since their first encounter, three of them busy with making food while the fourth one traced squiggles into the air. He tilted his head curiously, and then rapped his knuckles against the wall quietly to announce his presence.

All of Logan’s hands spasmed in surprise, but his turn to face Virgil was slow and measured, not fearful. The moment he recognized him, his extra arms were tucked away behind him, and he stared at Virgil with those translucent eyes. 

“Are you nocturnal?” he asked, and Virgil blinked. It was better than being interrogated on what he was doing out of his room, he supposed. 

“Nah, just got up because I was hungry,” he answered. He couldn’t really be nocturnal if he wasn’t sleeping during the day. He wasn’t sleeping at night, either, but that was beside the point. “What are you eating?” 

Logan glanced behind himself. “Are you asking simply out of curiosity? A desire to know?”

“Uh, yeah. Just wondering.” At his response, Logan relaxed slightly and shifted aside. 

“I am eating a staple food made from ground meal and water, with a preserve- a sort of sweet topping made from fruits of my home planet.” 

It looked kind of like jam on untoasted bread, though the textures appeared slightly different. “Huh. Nice,” Virgil offered him a thumbs up, and then, at Logan’s intrigued gaze, remembered that he’d only ever explained that gesture to Patton. “It’s a hand-sign meaning ‘good’ or approval.” 

“I see!” Logan mimicked the gesture curiously with both hands, and Virgil noticed how his fingers, while similar to a human’s, tapered to a distinctly thinner point at the end. Probably pretty useful for finer, more detailed craftwork or repairs.   

“Would you like to try some?” Logan’s voice cut smoothly into his thoughts.

“What?” Virgil looked up to see the alien holding up a piece of bread. Was this out of fear, like when Patton had always let Virgil eat first back in the cell? “Oh, uh, I don’t want to take your food.” 

“I’m offering it. Sharing food is a show of community and trust in many cultures.” Logan recited the fact neutrally, but something about the way his hands tensed and untensed behind his back made Virgil think he was taking this conversation seriously regardless. 

He reached forward to take the bread, careful not to get the jam all over his hands. “Thank you.”  

Logan inclined his head slightly, long ears twitching. Virgil did his best to ignore the way he was openly staring as he bit into the bread. The crust was much softer than he’d expected, but the taste of the bread was distinctly less sweet than most white breads, almost savory. The jam on top did more than enough to provide the sugar, though, and Virgil hummed in appreciation. At least if he was going to have an allergic reaction and die from space food, it would be tasty space food. 

“Is that a sign of enjoyment?” Logan asked, clearly invested in Virgil’s opinion for whatever reason, and he nodded.  

“Yeah, it tastes really good.” His gaze trailed down to where Logan’s lower arms were drawing patterns in the air again. “Hey, why do you do that?” The arms were immediately stowed away again. “And that. Am I not supposed to look at them?” 

Logan slowly drew his arms back out, ears tilted up curiously. “No, it is okay for you to view them. I was simply trying not to startle or otherwise upset you... When the three of us first began to travel together, I had to learn how to mind my arms to avoid causing Roman undue stress.”

“Roman got nervous because of your arms?” Virgil raised an eyebrow. The huge alien didn’t seem the type to be twitchy around friends. 

“For a Crav’on, spreading one’s arms is an imminent sign of an attack. Roman hadn’t been around any Ulgorii before, so it took him a while to adjust and be able to view my gesturing without believing that I was upset or about to lunge at him,” he explained. “Do humans not feel threatened by such motions?” 

“Uh… maybe if I didn’t realize you were there at first? As long as you don’t, like, hit me, I don’t really mind if you do your little,” he wiggled his fingers in an imitation of Logan’s gestures, “thing with all your hands.” 

“I would not hit you,” Logan hurried to reassure him. “My mind-weaving is very contained even when it looks… haphazard, or messy.” 

“Mind-weaving?” Virgil asked, and then watched as Logan brought his hands forward to show him the air-patterns he was tracing. “Oh, is that what that is?” 

“Yes. It’s a method of physical memory integration for my people, to keep a record of important thoughts or data.” Logan twisted his wrist slightly. “It makes it significantly easier to recall information, as well.”

“Huh,” Virgil said, reminded of notetaking. “Why are you always doing it around me? I’m not that interesting.” 

Logan’s ears angled downwards in disagreement. “To the contrary, I’ve nearly cramped my hands recording all the information I can about you! It’s been quite the trial to keep track of all of your mannerisms and what they imply about life on your planet.”  

A trickle of unease dripped down Virgil’s spine, making goosebumps rise on his skin. “Uh, why are you doing it then?” 

The alien looked as though Virgil had asked why the sky was blue. “I have to make sure I don’t forget anything, of course. There’s never been scientific records of a human from direct contact and engagement like my conversations with you. There’s so much to learn, so many misconceptions to dispel and correct! I’d be a particularly poor scientist if I didn’t keep records of it all for the future.”

Scientist. Virgil dropped the remnants of his bread, stumbling back as adrenaline surged through him. He clutched as his heart, furious at his own physiology for making it all the easier for Logan to take more from him. Patton had said he trusted him but did Patton know? Was Patton in on it? Had all this- befriending him, speaking with him, bringing him into their home- been some insane ploy from the beginning? For what? A willing lab rat? 

Movement in the corner of his eye made his head snap up, and he bared his teeth ferally at the sight of Logan trying to reach towards him, to take. “No! Don’t- Get away from me!” 

The alien jerked away like he’d touched a hot stove, eyes big and afraid because Virgil was human and humans were monsters and they were going to get rid of him-

“Lo?” Roman’s low voice overlapped with Logan’s terrified nonsense words, Virgil’s own shallow breaths, and the sight of the Crav’on in the room was enough to snap him out of his frozen state and into flight. He shoved a chair to skid across the floor in Roman’s direction and bolted, halfway to his room before realizing that that was the first place they’d look. 

He cursed. He’d leave, get off this stupid ship and save them the trouble of booting him, but all there was outside was the cold vacuum of space, and he didn’t know how to work the stupid doors anyways. There were calls of his name from the side of the ship he’d left behind.  

Virgil found the tallest appliance he could and scaled to the top of it easily, shoving himself into the furthest shadowy corner and pretending that he was back on that ship, alone in that tiny, dark cell. At least there he knew who was going to hurt him, and when.

[markwhitwell]

Does “Hathayoga” Really Mean Force? An Interview With Yoga Master Mark Whitwell

Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga

Mark Whitwell is a world-renowned yoga teacher of the old school, who for decades has been sharing the tools of body movement and breath and bearing witness to the madness of the yoga industrial complex with compassion. Sometimes seeming to have stepped directly out of a fourteenth-century Tantric temple, Mark teaches in the traditional way of transmission between teacher and student through non-hierarchical and sincere mutual friendship and affection.

We wanted to interview Mark as someone who does not just hold knowledge of Yoga but embodies it (as you will see if you spend some time with him) about whether “hathayoga” really means “the yoga of force,” as claimed in numerous books and articles. In a world where one study found Yoga to be more dangerous than all other sports COMBINED, and where yoga-related injuries are increasing rapidly, do we really want or need a practice whose very name indicates “force?”

Interview by: The Dirt Magazine, an independent online magazine featuring new writing on spirituality, embodiment, relationships and psychology.

The Dirt: Mark, let’s start with the big question: does haṭhayoga really mean yoga of force?

Mark Whitwell: Well, some have translated and interpreted it that way, and some certainly practice it that way, so maybe we have to say that to them, it does. But I would argue that no, it does not mean that, because if what you are doing is forceful, than it is not yoga.

I have to tell you, I am not an academic. I am not a scholar reading Sanskrit who can look back through the texts and tell you the meanings. But I am very interested in the findings of those who are doing that work, and how it aligns with what for all of us should be the main touchstone of truth, which is our own embodied experience. Not our opinions and impressions, because as we know they can be severely warped, but something deeper.

The Dirt: So could you give us a quick overview of that research, maybe some leads if people want to dig deeper?

Mark Whitwell: Well for the academics reading this, a good place to start is Jason Birch’s article, The Meaning of

Haṭha in Early Haṭhayoga, (Editor’s note: this is available on academia here.) I found this very interesting to hear about what is said in the Tantric and haṭhayoga texts of over a thousand years ago, in some cases.

For starters, it is very interesting to me that Jason Birch finds that all the early references seem to refer to something earlier and lost. So the truth is we don’t know the earliest roots and uses of the word. I believe it may go way way back to the time of the Vedas, but there is no textual evidence for that yet. But I also feel we should be careful not to impose the western academic paradigm of needing textual proof onto what is essentially an Indigenous knowledge system with its own systems of — not belief, that’s dismissive, something deeper — own ontologies, own ways of understanding reality, that should not be seen as less true than the ‘rational’ academic paradigm. Otherwise we’re just continuing the legacy of colonial cruelty, assuming the western paradigm is superior.

The Dirt: That’s very interesting. Could you give us an example of that?

Mark Whitwell: Sure, take for example Krishnamacharya’s text, the Yoga Rahasya. Krishnamacharya described how this was transmitted to him from his ancestor Nathamuni. This kind of thing is absolutely normal and completely dignified, serious and sincere within the Vedic traditions, the Tibetan traditions, the Yoga traditions… all across that ancient world there is a deep tradition of transmission of teachings beyond time and space. This is dismissed or seen as a quaint anthropological phenomenon by modern academic scholars, starting from the first European Indologists, who want to find out the ‘real’ story according to the known laws of western physics etc. “who actually wrote the piece�� — that world actually reveal a lot, the assumption of the superiority or priority of their lens on reality. I recommend reading Charles Eisenstein’s essay, ‘The Feast of Whiteness’ for a really good explanation of the problem of imposing a western framework of “but what really happened” onto another culture’s ways of knowing, and suggestions for other ways of engaging.

The Dirt: I think we could have a whole other conversation about that subject alone. But let’s come back to the findings about what ancient texts say about haṭhayoga. Some people who don’t like the implications of ‘force’ use a translation of haṭha as meaning “sun and moon.” Is there a history of that, or is it a modern new age invention?

Mark Whitwell: Oh, there is absolutely a deep profund history of that. Ha and Tha, sun and moon, the union of opposites within and without. Strength receieving, male and female in perfect prior union. This is the essence of the Tantras, and as we now know, haṭhayoga comes to us from the tantric period, approximately 400–1500 CE.

Going back to Jason Birch’s research, he notes that modern books and practitioners have been drawn to the “sun and moon” definition to avoid the distastefulness of “force”. I mean people are using force, but they still don’t want it branded as that. He finds clear definitions of Yoga as the union of sun and moon in early Haṭha texts such as the Amṛtasiddhi (11th/12th century), and of the syllables ha and ṭha being used to indicate sun and moon, and inhale and exhale in earlier medieval Tantric texts. So this definition is valid, but it’s not widespread in the older texts to my understanding. We have the word haṭha in use before that definition is first found.

The Dirt: So what did it mean in those earlier contexts?

Mark Whitwell: Well I think we have to consider what is meant by force. Because there is very much a force we encounter in our yoga, which is the force of life. You know, one aspect of Christopher Tompkins’ excellent work has been pointing out that there are zero references in the tantric literature to a person raising their kundalini, in the sense of a coiled force at the base of the spine. There are references to a coiled force that may act upo0n you, descending down and then rising up your spine, but we don’t awaken kundalini, we are awakened by it. That sense of I the doer is dissolved. If anyone says to you “I awakened my kundalini” or “I had a kundalini awakening” something has gone very wrong, their identity structure has co-opted an experience of some kind and taken it on as an identity possession. Anyway, force is like this. It is something that acts upon us, something we join up with, something we are, not something “you” as a limited and separate self identity enact upon, to use Mary Oliver’s immortal phrase, that poor soft animal of your body. Your yoga is your participation in this force, this power, that you are. Not a manipulation of it, not trying to get to it. Abiding in it. This is how the ancient texts of our tradition speak about yoga, that energy may move forcefully, but not as an act of forceful volition.

Jason Birch has tracked it all down and finds the early Haṭha texts using the word “haṭhat” or forcibly, but only toward a movement of energy, not toward the body or into any movement or action. It has a sense of taking the normal downward movement in embodied life and turning it around, not violently. The implication is “that Haṭhayogic techniques have a forceful effect, rather than requiring forceful effort.” (Birch 2011). Force in the modern sense of pushing these poor old bodies into something that makes them sweat, shake, collapse, strain and sprain is absolutely not there. These are serious devotional practices we are talking about, from the Tantric cultures, one of the lost wonders of the world with their incredible insight that matter was not a degraded shackle pulling down our ethereal souls, but rather just on the spectrum of vibration of the whole cosmos. It’s a similar perspective to the understanding of modern physics that matter is just energy, not solid at all. This was radical, that the body could be a site of liberation, of deity abiding, not just a hindrance to be managed and bullied. The Christian legacy of anti-materiality is deep in the western psychology and has very much shaped the western approach to yoga. We are not that far on from self-flagellation and hair shirts.

The Dirt: So how could we summarise your interpretation of the word haṭha.

Mark Whitwell: I was always taught that asana and pranayama must be done carefully and within our breath capabilities, measured by the number of breaths and the ration of breaths. So I affirm the academic findings that haṭha can either mean the union of sun and moon — that’s accurate, and poetic and beautiful — or it can mean the great force of life, the energy of life that is moving through us, as us, and which our yoga enables us to feel and participate in. To be devoted to. A great force is moving the planets and oceans, the sun and moon, growing your hair. What is that force? What is the force that grows a seed? That force, that power. We don’t enact that, we recognise and abide in it.

As far as I know, looking at the translation work of Birch and Christopher Tompkins and others, “the word haṭha is never used in Haṭha texts to refer to violent means or forceful effort.” (Birch 2011). That matches my experience with Krishnamacharya and Desikachar, and their students such as Srivatsa Ramaswami. All emphasise that the key qualities to master asana were comfort, ease, and stability. Never force.

The Dirt: Could the association of yoga with the word force be to do with the association with tapasya, with ascetics?

Mark Whitwell: Yes, there has been great confusion in the last 500 years between ascetics and yogis. You might like to refer to the excellent article by Domagoj Orlić, “Why Yoga is Neither Physical Gymnastics.” Yoga became associated with obscene acts of self-torture, holding one’s arm in the air for years and years, a metal grate around one’s neck, and such extremes. Yet these extreme practices are not there in the Tantras, the Shastras, the Haṭha texts. They are not yoga. Mortification of the flesh is the opposite to realising the intrinsic union of the source and the seen. It was the early Europeans coming to India and trying to understand what they saw that really popularised an idea of yoga as force, as self-violence. Perhaps reflecting the internalised violence of their own culture. A kind of projection that the Yoga sutras warns us about. And getting confused with the fakirs and ascetics, and seeing it all as a suspicious kind of witchcraft. India internalised all of that British projection and judgement. By the time Krishnamacharya was teaching, yoga was not seen as a high or holy calling. This was a man with the equivalent of 6 or seven PhDs, yet he was teaching yoga, as a very serious undertaking, in a time when it was not taken seriously at all. He would do some kinds of “feats” at the Maharaj’s request, such as stopping his heart for doctors, that kind of thing. But he refused to teach this to his son when he begged him. He said it was just to get attention for yoga, to get the ball rolling so to speak.

The Dirt: So there was also a confusion between ascetiscism and yoga within India as well?

Mark Whitwell: Yes. It’s something Desikachar would often clarify. Krishnamacharya really stood apart from any of the traditions based on anti-body philosophies, dualistic transcendent schools that saw the body as a bag of rotting flesh, a meatsack, that needed to be bullied and purified and ideally gotten rid of altogether. That kind of school has denigrated asana and pranayama the way they denigrate the body itself. Krishnamacharya’s lineage came from the 10th century Ramanujacharya, who had declared that yoga was the means that the two became one, and that householders and ordinary people could practice this. He wasn’t from a monastic, man alone type tradition. Even his guru in the Himalayas, Ramamohan Brahmachari, lived there with his wife and children, in his accounts.

So Krishnamacharya really represented the coming together of these great traditions of Vedanta and Tantra, which belong together. They are branches from the same great tree and are now back together.

The Dirt: And finally, could you tell us what you have observed in terms of the impact of this misunderstanding on people’s yoga, and how to correct that.

Mark Whitwell. Thank you. Thanks for caring about all the people out there, sweating away and struggling and getting injured. I think the idea that the body, that the earth, that the feminine is less, something to be conquered and controlled, has done great harm. It is the basis of centuries of patriarchal culture. And that cultural split, between some sense of essence within, and a dead materiality without, has enabled humanity to use and abuse its Mother, the body of Nature, and our own bodies are part of that body. So the conditioning towards a forcefulness towards embodiment runs very deep. This is the same psychology in the earlier Indologists translating haṭha as simple “yoga of force” and in the bullies who rose to prominence in the yoga world. And then the same psychology in the western students, who had been conditioned to control themselves, restrain the body, who were beaten at school, who thought a good teacher hit you with a stick to help you get it right… who were hit by their parents… this is the western mind, the modern mind, the cultural framework criticised as “whiteness,” but I don’t think that is accurate enough, as it is not intrinsically tied to skin colour. Basically it is deeply in us to bully and force the body, and yoga is our way out of that, into reverence and ease, and yet it has been popularized as mere duplication of the same old hegemonic patterns of abuse.

Your body is tired. It’s been forced into so many things it didn’t want to do. Deprived of sleep, filled with comfort food, too much or too little, plucked and poisoned, whipped along in jobs it hated, squashed into uniforms and cubicles. Yoga is the freeing of our bodies from all of this, the freedom to be that soft animal, that embodiment of love, that piece of wild mother nature. Our yoga is careful, precise, different for each unique embodiment. Please, don’t throw yourself around in the circus gymnastics they’re calling yoga. It’s just simply not. It’s all made up. There is no precedent for this kind of insane forcefulness, this self-violence. Step out of it all and be free, live your life in the garden.

About:

Mark Whitwell was born in 1949 in Auckland, Aotearoa/ New Zealand. In 1973, he traveled to India and began a life-long study of yoga with Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888-1989) and his son, T.K.V. Desikachar (1938–2016). Mark Whitwell’s simple mission is to give people the principles of practice that came through Tirumalai Krishnamacharya to make their Yoga authentic, powerful, and effective. Mark Whitwell is the founder of the Heart of Yoga foundation and the Heart of Yoga Peace Project, an organization dedicated to developing yoga communities in conflict zones around the world. Mark Whitwell lives between New Zealand and Fiji.

[malachi-walker]

What character(s) from other fandoms that you're a part of remind you the most of Catra? Personally, I don't think I've seen too many, aside from maybe Vegeta from DBZ and maybe Jason Todd from DC comics but that's about it for me

Ok, anon, thanks for your patience. Let's go.

Firstly, I have two ladies that do give me a similar vibe to Catra (though they aren't 100% matches as you'll see.) And I want you to take particular note of that: it's very telling that the characters you mentioned are both dudes. This is something I have been thinking about for literally decades because it is a deeply entrenched stereotype in our culture: male abuse victims are angry, frustrated loners who lash out until they find that one (girl) person that gets through their facade, female abuse victims are portrayed as either anxious messes (more common in recent years) or as just... These smiling caricatures who continue to pretend to be happy because that's what our societies expect women to be. And this is something I took note of at a very early age, because as someone growing up with an abusive birth father I looked to the MALE characters as a guide book on how to act, because getting angry and lashing out was what made sense to me at the time and I resented the hell out of that unspoken implication that I was supposed to just suck it up and plaster on a smile when I wanted to rage against the injustice of what I was dealing with. In hindsight it wasn't great behavior, but it was what I needed to keep myself sane at the time. I'm not even exaggerating when I say I have waited my whole life for a character like Catra: someone who is reflective of my experiences as an ex-abuse victim, someone who is angry and wrathful and still allowed to be sympathetic. Now on to our two ladies.

First up: Vriska Serket from Homestuck. (I know, Homestuck is a huge fandom with a lot of assholes, but I do still enjoy the original comic. I just don't interact with the fandom.) Vriska and Catra both have similar vibes in the way they project their outward personas of being the badass bitch who takes no shit and is on top of things, but we all know that's a lie. And they both come from abusive backgrounds: Vriska was forced to become a killer at a very young age because her parental guardian (a literal giant spider) would eat her if Vriska didn't feed her other kids. Doesn't excuse her jerkass tendencies or her terrible actions, but that was how she started out. And Catra's deal with SW needs no explanation.

They both have developed very similar gadfly tendencies in order to maintain a sense of control around other people (though Vriska is a lot more mean spirited about it) and both have moments when the facade cracks and they show actual sincerity and frustration at themselves and other people. The main difference between them is that Vriska's actions are driven by a sense of grandiose self-importance that she has cultivated and fed into as a way to avoid looking at her own actions (because she's the best, so everything she does is awesome, right?) whereas Catra's primary driving motivation is pain: either making sure she doesn't have to hurt anymore or hurting those who hurt her. Plus Catra grapples with her sense of guilt a lot throughout Spop and maintains those sympathetic undertones while Vriska's moments of clarity are so rare that you basically have to keep a chart to locate them. But you could totally picture them both teaming up to make fun of their respective frenemies, assuming they didn't kill each other first for reminding themselves of their deep underlying self-loathing.

Second candidate: Anthy Himemiya from Revolutionary Girl Utena. And boy howdy, if anyone is interested in this show and wants to avoid spoilers, skip to the end now, because we're going on a deep and dark journey here.

At first glance, she and Catra don't have much in common. In fact, she seems to fit the stereotype I described above: the placid smiling doll who takes the abuse and keeps going. Key word: seems to. Anyone who actually watches the show knows exactly where I'm going here.

We're introduced to Anthy as the "Rose Bride": the prize in a series of sword fights between students at a very strange school, with the ultimate promise being that whoever owns the Rose Bride at the end of the duels will gain some nebulous ultimate power. And yeah, I said "own" for a reason: whoever possesses the Rose Bride effectively owns her and some of the most uncomfortable scenes in the show reinforce the fact that Anthy tailors her thoughts and actions to whoever currently controls her. And as you can expect, this leads to BUCKETS of abuse. Literally everyone in this show is culpable in some manner for this, no matter how well intentioned.

But remember that "seems to?" Because that's only one side of Anthy; the outward persona if you will. On the other side of the coin you have Anthy the Witch, and that's where the parallels with Catra come into play and why Anthy was my go-to abuse representation before Spop rocked my world. Because the big twist we find out at the end of the series is that Anthy and her older brother Akio (formerly Dios) are the former literal personifications of the fairytale damsel in distress princess and the noble prince on a white horse, respectively.

But the balance was upset: having to constantly go around saving people was literally killing Dios, because one of the major points of RGU is that you can assist people in saving themselves but doing it yourself strips them of agency and traps them in a cycle of needing to be saved again and again. The more people the noble prince saved, the more people needed saving. When it became clear that he couldn't keep going, Anthy took a stand and prevented the people coming for Dios (angry that he wasn't saving them anymore) from getting to him, and thus incurred the wrath of everyone and got skewered alive by an angry mob in the process. This isn't hyperbole: the role of the Rose Bride is to instinctively bring out the disdain and hatred of everyone on the planet. It's a punishment for stepping out of line, for not being the placid princess who needs to be rescued anymore.

Because we're operating on fairy tale logic, no longer being a princess means that Anthy became a witch, and no longer being the prince made Dios into satanic archetype Akio. So behind the scenes of the entire show, Anthy is the witch assisting her brother in orchestrating the duels, and their ultimate goal is to find someone pure of heart enough to embody those princely virtues Dios once possessed and to steal that power so Akio can return to being who he once was. All of the psychological torments and head games are designed to weed out the potential candidates to find that special someone... Except it's an impossible goal because no human being can live up to that standard. And with each atrocity they commit it becomes even more impossible to return to being that person.

Ok, tangent done, here's where it gets interesting: Anthy is a character with two sides to her, the suffering Rose Bride fated to endure the hatred of the entire world and the Wicked Witch who manipulates and orchestrates the torment of those around her. But here's the deal: she's a victim too. She's a victim of a system that won't let her be anything other than these two binaries; she's a victim of her brother who has all the power over her and has trapped her in a codependent incestuous relationship, and I don't care how awful the things she's done are: nobody deserves to go through the shit she does. So with all of that in mind, the actions that she goes through as the witch make perfect sense. Why shouldn't she torment these people who do nothing but abuse her and deny her of agency? Even the best hearted of the duellists (aka the ones who don't hit her or abuse her sexually) nonetheless fall into the trap of projecting their own biases and expectations onto her, biases that her role dictates she carry out. Her actions as the witch aren't right, but nothing about this situation is. That's the entire point.

And that's where she ties into being like Catra. Catra does some truly fucked up things, but it doesn't cancel out the fact that she's an abuse victim that has been literally tortured for most of her life for no good reason and has received zero acknowledgement of that abuse in universe. And much like Anthy, she can't begin to heal until the situation is acknowledged, because that's literally step one of breaking the cycle: confirming that this is not okay and that no one deserves the shit she's been through. Just knowing that herself isn't enough: it's acknowledgement from others that enables that process to begin, because no one can recover from abuse in a vacuum. You need outside people to be touchstones, because so much of recovering from abuse is confronting the way it warps your perception and thought processes. You need at the minimum one normal perspective to give you that, preferably more, but one minimum.

Hurting the people who care about her is definitely not okay and I'm not excusing her actions in that category, but it doesn't change the fact that she is justified in wanting to rage and lash out, because she is still trapped in that cycle. She can't heal or let go because the process hasn't even been started. She's not off the hook for the things she's done, but neither should she be automatically condemned without taking those factors into account (which is the entire reason why the distinction between an excuse and a justification exists.)

And if I can be a little pithy... The other similarity between Catra and Anthy is I can guarantee that in twenty years people will STILL be arguing over whether or not Catra "deserved" to be freed from her abusive situation.

Good God this turned into an essay. Hope this makes up for how long it took, anon. And anyone else who makes it this far, treat yourself. You earned it.

[chiseler]

Utopia and Apocalypse: Pynchon’s Populist/Fatalist Cinema

The rhythmic clapping resonates inside these walls, which are hard and glossy as coal: Come-on! Start-the-show! Come-on! Start-the-show! The screen is a dim page spread before us, white and silent. The film has broken, or a projector bulb has burned out. It was difficult even for us, old fans who’ve always been at the movies (haven’t we?) to tell which before the darkness swept in.

--from the last page of Gravity’s Rainbow

To begin with a personal anecdote: Writing my first book (to be published) in the late 1970s, an experimental autobiography titled Moving Places: A Life at the Movies (Harper & Row, 1980), published in French as Mouvements: Une vie au cinéma (P.O.L, 2003), I wanted to include four texts by other authors—two short stories (“In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” by Delmore Schwartz, “The Secret Integration” by Thomas Pynchon) and two essays (“The Carole Lombard in Macy’s Window” by Charles Eckert, “My Life With Kong” by Elliott Stein)—but was prevented from doing so by my editor, who argued that because the book was mine, texts by other authors didn’t belong there. My motives were both pluralistic and populist: a desire both to respect fiction and non-fiction as equal creative partners and to insist that the book was about more than just myself and my own life. Because my book was largely about the creative roles played by the fictions of cinema on the non-fictions of personal lives, the anti-elitist nature of cinema played a crucial part in these transactions.`

In the case of Pynchon’s 1964 story—which twenty years later, in his collection Slow Learner, he would admit was the only early story of his that he still liked—the cinematic relevance to Moving Places could be found in a single fleeting but resonant detail: the momentary bonding of a little white boy named Tim Santora with a black, homeless, alcoholic jazz musician named Carl McAfee in a hotel room when they discover that they’ve both seen Blood Alley (1955), an anticommunist action-adventure with John Wayne and Lauren Bacall, directed by William Wellman. Pynchon mentions only the film’s title, but the complex synergy of this passing moment of mutual recognition between two of its dissimilar viewers represented for me an epiphany, in part because of the irony of such casual camaraderie occurring in relation to a routine example of Manichean Cold War mythology. Moreover, as a right-wing cinematic touchstone, Blood Alley is dialectically complemented in the same story by Tim and his friends categorizing their rebellious schoolboy pranks as Operation Spartacus, inspired by the left-wing Spartacus (1960) of Kirk Douglas, Dalton Trumbo, and Stanley Kubrick.

For better and for worse, all of Pynchon’s fiction partakes of this populism by customarily defining cinema as the cultural air that everyone breathes, or at least the river in which everyone swims and bathes. This is equally apparent in the only Pynchon novel that qualifies as hackwork, Inherent Vice (2009), and the fact that Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of it is also his worst film to date—a hippie remake of Chinatown in the same way that the novel is a hippie remake of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald—seems logical insofar as it seems to have been written with an eye towards selling the screen rights. As Geoffrey O’Brien observed (while defending this indefensible book and film) in the New York Review of Books (January 3, 2015), “Perhaps the novel really was crying out for such a cinematic transformation, for in its pages people watch movies, remember them, compare events in the ‘real world’ to their plots, re-experience their soundtracks as auditory hallucinations, even work their technical components (the lighting style of cinematographer James Wong Howe, for instance) into aspects of complex conspiratorial schemes.” (Despite a few glancing virtues, such as  Josh Brolin’s Nixonesque performance as "Bigfoot" Bjornsen, Anderson’s film seems just as cynical as its source and infused with the same sort of misplaced would-be nostalgia for the counterculture of the late 60s and early 70s, pitched to a generation that didn’t experience it, as Bertolucci’s Innocents: The Dreamers.)

From The Crying of Lot 49’s evocation of an orgasm in cinematic terms (“She awoke at last to find herself getting laid; she’d come in on a sexual crescendo in progress, like a cut to a scene where the camera’s already moving”) to the magical-surreal guest star appearance of Mickey Rooney in wartime Europe in Gravity’s Rainbow, cinema is invariably a form of lingua franca in Pynchon’s fiction, an expedient form of shorthand, calling up common experiences that seem light years away from the sectarianism of the politique des auteurs. This explains why his novels set in mid-20th century, such as the two just cited, when cinema was still a common currency cutting across classes, age groups, and diverse levels of education, tend to have the greatest number of movie references. In Gravity’s Rainbow—set mostly in war-torn Europe, with a few flashbacks to the east coast U.S. and flash-forwards to the contemporary west coast—this even includes such anachronistic pop ephemera as the 1949 serial King of the Rocket Men and the 1955 Western The Return of Jack Slade (which a character named Waxwing Blodgett is said to have seen at U.S. Army bases during World War 2 no less than twenty-seven times), along with various comic books.

Significantly, “The Secret Integration”, a title evoking both conspiracy and countercultural utopia, is set in the same cozy suburban neighborhood in the Berkshires from which Tyrone Slothrop, the wartime hero or antihero of Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), aka “Rocketman,” springs, with his kid brother and father among the story’s characters. It’s also the same region where Pynchon himself grew up. And Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon’s magnum opus and richest work, is by all measures the most film-drenched of his novels in its design as well as its details—so much so that even its blocks of text are separated typographically by what resemble sprocket holes. Unlike, say, Vineland (1990), where cinema figures mostly in terms of imaginary TV reruns (e.g., Woody Allen in Young Kissinger) and diverse cultural appropriations (e.g., a Noir Center shopping mall), or the post-cinematic adventures in cyberspace found in the noirish (and far superior) east-coast companion volume to Inherent Vice, Bleeding Edge (2013), cinema in Gravity’s Rainbow is basically a theatrical event with a social impact, where Fritz Lang’s invention of the rocket countdown as a suspense device (in the 1929 Frau im mond) and the separate “frames” of a rocket’s trajectory are equally relevant and operative factors. There are also passing references to Lang’s Der müde Tod, Die Nibelungen, Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, and Metropolis—not to mention De Mille’s Cleopatra, Dumbo, Freaks, Son of Frankenstein, White Zombie, at least two Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals, Pabst, and Lubitsch—and the epigraphs introducing the novel’s second and third sections (“You will have the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood — Merian C. Cooper to Fay Wray” and “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more…. –Dorothy, arriving in Oz”) are equally steeped in familiar movie mythology.

These are all populist allusions, yet the bane of populism as a rightwing curse is another near-constant in Pynchon’s work. The same ambivalence can be felt in the novel’s last two words, “Now everybody—“, at once frightening and comforting in its immediacy and universality. With the possible exception of Mason & Dixon (1997), every Pynchon novel over the past three decades—Vineland, Against the Day (2006), Inherent Vice, and Bleeding Edge—has an attractive, prominent, and sympathetic female character betraying or at least acting against her leftist roots and/or principles by being first drawn erotically towards and then being seduced by a fascistic male. In Bleeding Edge, this even happens to the novel’s earthy protagonist, the middle-aged detective Maxine Tarnow. Given the teasing amount of autobiographical concealment and revelation Pynchon carries on with his public while rigorously avoiding the press, it is tempting to see this recurring theme as a personal obsession grounded in some private psychic wound, and one that points to sadder-but-wiser challenges brought by Pynchon to his own populism, eventually reflecting a certain cynicism about human behavior. It also calls to mind some of the reflections of Luc Moullet (in “Sainte Janet,” Cahiers du cinéma no. 86, août 1958) aroused by Howard Hughes’ and Josef von Sternberg’s Jet Pilot and (more incidentally) by Ayn Rand’s and King Vidor’s The Fountainhead whereby “erotic verve” is tied to a contempt for collectivity—implicitly suggesting that rightwing art may be sexier than leftwing art, especially if the sexual delirium in question has some of the adolescent energy found in, for example, Hughes, Sternberg, Rand, Vidor, Kubrick, Tashlin, Jerry Lewis, and, yes, Pynchon.

One of the most impressive things about Pynchon’s fiction is the way in which it often represents the narrative shapes of individual novels in explicit visual terms. V, his first novel, has two heroes and narrative lines that converge at the bottom point of a V; Gravity’s Rainbow, his second—a V2 in more ways than one—unfolds across an epic skyscape like a rocket’s (linear) ascent and its (scattered) descent; Vineland offers a narrative tangle of lives to rhyme with its crisscrossing vines, and the curving ampersand in the middle of Mason & Dixon suggests another form of digressive tangle between its two male leads; Against the Day, which opens with a balloon flight, seems to follow the curving shape and rotation of the planet.

This compulsive patterning suggests that the sprocket-hole design in Gravity’s Rainbow’s section breaks is more than just a decorative detail. The recurrence of sprockets and film frames carries metaphorical resonance in the novel’s action, so that Franz Pökler, a German rocket engineer allowed by his superiors to see his long-lost daughter (whom he calls his “movie child” because she was conceived the night he and her mother saw a porn film) only once a year, at a children’s village called Zwölfkinder, and can’t even be sure if it’s the same girl each time:

So it has gone for the six years since. A daughter a year, each one about a year older, each time taking up nearly from scratch. The only continuity has been her name, and Zwölfkinder, and Pökler’s love—love something like the persistence of vision, for They have used it to create for him the moving image of a daughter, flashing him only these summertime frames of her, leaving it to him to build the illusion of a single child—what would the time scale matter, a 24th of a second or a year (no more, the engineer thought, than in a wind tunnel, or an oscillograph whose turning drum you can speed or slow at will…)?

***

Cinema, in short, is both delightful and sinister—a utopian dream and an apocalyptic nightmare, a stark juxtaposition reflected in the abrupt shift in the earlier Pynchon passage quoted at the beginning of this essay from present tense to past tense, and from third person to first person. Much the same could be said about the various displacements experienced while moving from the positive to the negative consequences of  populism.

Pynchon’s allegiance to the irreverent vulgarity of kazoos sounding like farts and concomitant Spike Jones parodies seems wholly in keeping with his disdain for David Raksin and Johnny Mercer’s popular song “Laura” and what he perceives as the snobbish elitism  of the Preminger film it derives from, as expressed in his passionate liner notes to the CD compilation “Spiked!: The Music of Spike Jones” a half-century later:

The song had been featured in the 1945 movie of the same name, supposed to evoke the hotsy-totsy social life where all these sophisticated New York City folks had time for faces in the misty light and so forth, not to mention expensive outfits, fancy interiors,witty repartee—a world of pseudos as inviting to…class hostility as fish in a barrel, including a presumed audience fatally unhip enough to still believe in the old prewar fantasies, though surely it was already too late for that, Tin Pan Alley wisdom about life had not stood a chance under the realities of global war, too many people by then knew better.

Consequently, neither art cinema nor auteur cinema figures much in Pynchon’s otherwise hefty lexicon of film culture, aside from a jokey mention of a Bengt Ekerot/Maria Casares Film Festival (actors playing Death in The Seventh Seal and Orphée) held in Los Angeles—and significantly, even the “underground”, 16-millimeter radical political filmmaking in northern California charted in Vineland becomes emblematic of the perceived failure of the 60s counterculture as a whole. This also helps to account for why the paranoia and solipsism found in Jacques Rivette’s Paris nous appartient and Out 1, perhaps the closest equivalents to Pynchon’s own notions of mass conspiracy juxtaposed with solitary despair, are never mentioned in his writing, and the films that are referenced belong almost exclusively to the commercial mainstream, unlike the examples of painting, music, and literature, such as the surrealist painting of Remedios Varo described in detail at the beginning of The Crying of Lot 49,  the importance of Ornette Coleman in V and Anton Webern in Gravity’s Rainbow, or the visible impact of both Jorge Luis Borges and William S. Burroughs on the latter novel. (1) And much of the novel’s supply of movie folklore—e.g., the fatal ambushing of John Dillinger while leaving Chicago’s Biograph theater--is mainstream as well.

Nevertheless, one can find a fairly precise philosophical and metaphysical description of these aforementioned Rivette films in Gravity’s Rainbow: “If there is something comforting -- religious, if you want — about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.” And the white, empty movie screen that appears apocalyptically on the novel’s final page—as white and as blank as the fusion of all the colors in a rainbow—also appears in Rivette’s first feature when a 16-millimeter print of Lang’s Metropolis breaks during the projection of the Tower of Babel sequence.

Is such a physically and metaphysically similar affective climax of a halted film projection foretelling an apocalypse a mere coincidence? It’s impossible to know whether Pynchon might have seen Paris nous appartient during its brief New York run in the early 60s. But even if he hadn’t (or still hasn’t), a bitter sense of betrayed utopian possibilities in that film, in Out 1, and in most of his fiction is hard to overlook. Old fans who’ve always been at the movies (haven’t we?) don’t like to be woken from their dreams.

by Jonathan Rosenbaum

Footnote

For this reason, among others, I’m skeptical about accepting the hypothesis of the otherwise reliable Pynchon critic Richard Poirier that Gravity’s Rainbow’s enigmatic references to “the Kenosha Kid” might allude to Orson Welles, who was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Steven C. Weisenburger, in A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion (Athens/London: The University of Georgia Press, 2006), reports more plausibly that “the Kenosha Kid” was a pulp magazine character created by Forbes Parkhill in Western stories published from the 1920s through the 1940s. Once again, Pynchon’s populism trumps—i.e. exceeds—his cinephilia.

[hazzabeeforlou]

11 questions

Yes I did this a bit ago but @helloamhere (thank you, ily, have fun bussing around Europe, did that once, had to follow apple maps to know where to get off ‘cause I speak ZERO German...) tagged me and I’m an anxious mess waiting for medical news today so WHY NOT! 

Rules: answer 11 questions then pose 11 of your own. 

1. What do you think fanfic does better than published fiction (if anything?) 

Okay obvious answer and not very high brow, but SMUT. You will not see me perusing the gay aisles of Barnes and Noble romance novels :) For various reasons :) 

2. What do you think it does worse

I think (maybe it’s just this fandom) overall it’s quite a bit more sanitary than novels, both in morality and subject matter. I hate to think what the purity police would say about some of the books I’ve read... especially the old ones? But then I usually come here looking for fluff and happiness too so perhaps that’s just the major draw of fanfic, idk. 

3. What’s something another fandom has or does that you wish your fandom had or did?

To be honest I’m not well versed in other fandoms, but I’m going to go with I wish this fandom didn’t have constant infighting. Seriously in all my born days I have never seen a group of people claim such a similar goal and yet devour each other so viciously. Hence I usually avoid anything incredibly explosive or triggering here; I deal with and confront radical people (religious extremists, right wing extremists) in my everyday life and I cannot bring myself to turn my escapism into that same vortex of endless arguing, though I appreciate and support those who fight the fight. I often have very sharp opinions and fall to one side or the other of the fault line, but I draw a personal boundary at a point. 

4. Do you consider yourself a “fandom” type of person in general, or committed to only one, and if so, tell me more about what this means to you.

I have been a HUGE fandom person my entire life, though this is the first time I’ve ever been in a community for it. Star Wars and Narnia consumed most of my adolescence, along with Lord of the Rings. I briefly dabbled in Dr. Who and Merlin (as one does) but because I didn't read HP until nearly the end of college, I kindof missed out on that one. Basically anything geeky or fantasy driven I have always loved, and I can’t really explain how I ended up here? But this is the only fandom I’m active in socially. The power of HL I guess... 

5. I’m trying to get through writing a first draft right now and it’s a slog. How do you stay motivated for long projects, writing or otherwise? 

Ah. A call out question! Like any good Aries, I love starting new things! And then letting them to languish unfinished. I have, however, trained in classical music, and thus I’ve programmed myself to just keep doing the thing because pieces take months and months and months to perfect and if you can’t stick with a project, you go nowhere. I also operate on a reward system, as in writing is the reward for practicing, then when I’m sick of words I go back to music, and so the turn tables. I have learned to ignore (I’m great at ostrich-ing) the crushing self doubt of creativity and just bulldoze ahead and do the thing, which results in very messy first drafts and often bad habits in my musical technique and a tendency to overplay, which wastes energy, but rehearsals wait for no one. I also thrive on last minute deadlines! 

6. Tell me about what you read as a kid. Favorite book? Or if you weren’t into reading then, favorite TV show, etc? 

I HAVE SO MANY. Narnia was my first love. I also adored George MacDonald (At The Back of the North Wind is a fucking masterpiece). My mom hardly let me read Redwall (see: hints of magic) but when she caved I devoured all of those. Anne of Green Gables. American Girl stuff (lots of it, yes Josefina and Kaya were my faves). I read far too many Star Wars expanded universe novels (New Jedi Order  shaped me as a person, esp Traitor). I remember reading all the Eragon series, though these were dubiously approved... and I read various classics, as one is supposed to. In high school I printed out the entire Beowulf in Old English, got a CD of a dude reading it, and proceeded to memorize the first several lines. I can still recite Anglo Saxon but I have no clue what it means (see: I’m a good mimic). Everything non-Christian-magic-related I read during or after college, sigh. 

7. Have your tastes changed?

This sounds bad but not really. I rarely read non fiction, oops. Biographies are a slog for me. I dislike historical fiction and I don’t have a good reason for that. I do love a good mystery, but usually not in book form (audio or visual Agatha Christie is my mana). I do adore socio-policial books, though (The Better Angels of our Nature a good example) or books doing a deep dive into a historical topic. These days I enjoy a good satire more than much else, and since I started on Terry Pratchett in 2016 I haven’t looked back. 

8. I’ll steal your question above--tell me about a fic that changed you, or became a “touchstone” fic that you go back to!!

I didn’t read fics period when I entered the fandom, and stubbornly maintained that for a while, but the fic that changed my mind was (Take Me Home) Country Roads by @a-writerwrites (Awriterwrites). I read it during a drive through the very parts of the USA it’s set in, and I couldn’t put it down, spotty internet be damned. From there @horsegirlharry birthed me into the gay 1D world, though I can’t for the life of me remember which of hers I first read! (Does it matter? They’re all so beautiful...) 

9. Tell me about a WIP, if applicable. How’s it going?? It sounds great. 

I’m plodding along on The Garden, it’s going well, but urgency isn’t a priority. It’s going to be one of those things that I finish and then go in and make matter because right now my ideas are half formed and I know I’ll eventually know where I’m going but it’s a case of blind trust in instinct at this point! 

10. What’s your favorite place to read and sitting position?

Like a true gay I cannot sit normally in a chair, coupled with my pain issues means I’m usually draped over the back of something with a cushy lumbar support, massive pillow, or propped sideways lying down. I love reading outside, but have a tendency to attract bugs, also I’m very light sensitive so my eyes hate the sun, especially if I’m reading from a screen. 

11. Do you feel like fic reading and writing is social for you? E.g. do you share with friends (in or outside of fandom), or are you a lone wolf seeking out your fics in the dead of night??

I LOVE the social aspect of fic reading and writing within fandom! I have shared PITS with only two real life friends though; I am very tight lipped about the fact that I write fic. People are cruel and musicians are judgmental arseholes and if I prefer to spend my days dreaming up love stories for my OTP instead of pouring over scores, that’s my fucking business. 

Alright, 11 from me (I wanted to include artists too so!!): 

1. Are you a start small-work larger type creator, or map everything out then attend to detail?

2. What style of art/writing has most influenced your creative choices? (Genre, time period, muse)

3. How long have you been writing/arting? Is this something you knew you’d do your whole life?

4. What is your favorite thing about creating for your fandom? (reception, excitement, newness, etc.) 

5. Have you met any recent creative goals that you’re really proud of? 

6. What is your creative baby; what work do you want stamped on your proverbial gravestone as I MADE THIS (or have you made it yet?)

7. Do outside forces (politics, culture, hegemonies) play into your creations? Do you intentionally or subconsciously subvert norms or explore ideas?

8. Your creative mind is a garden. Describe what kind it would be and what it would contain (i.e. rock garden, palace garden, wildflowers, rose... etc.) 

9. Do you believe that creative art has power and if so, how do you hope yours impacts others? 

10. I’m double stealing this question: what’s a fic or fan art that changed your life or was a touchstone for you?

11. If you could pick any hero of yours to read/look at your creations, who would it be and why?

TOTALLY only if you want to, but @13ways-of-looking @twopoppies @alienfuckeronmain @prettytruthsandlies @pattern-pals @newleafover @disgruntledkittenface @lesbianiconharrystyles @lululawrence

[brishu]

Almost Everyone

My daughters were introduced to the music of the Backstreet Boys by camp counselors, so their only context for hearing some of their bigger hits (and they have an astonishing number of very big hits) was the enthusiasm of people about 10 years older than them. No anti-boyband snark, no snobbery that looks askance at performers who don’t play instruments. They began asking for specific songs to be added to their music players, and even requested “As Long As You Love Me” at my dearest friend’s daughter’s Bat Mitzvah party. To them, the Backstreet Boys were as much a part of the pop canon as Elvis, only still out there performing.

Their response to the BSB’s seemed to be purely musical. It’s possible that they got high on secondhand boyband fumes, since their counselors’ enthusiasm was surely fueled by the gangbusters marketing campaign designed to make millions of kids fall in love with AJ, Brian, Nick, Howie and Kevin, which is probably even harder to pull off than it sounds. But as much as I’d like to, I can’t discount the quality of the music either. And if I’m shocked that five cute boys who first performed together in 1993 just hung another Number 1 album on the Billboard charts (which apparently also still exist), maybe it’s my shock that should be shocking. I also envied the girls their ready embrace of songs they liked without subjecting them to the battery of artistic litmus tests their sonically dyspeptic father does. 

The psychotherapeutic industry seems built upon the distinction between gentle and brutal. If you make the same, relatively harmless mistake repeatedly, steps toward correction are fine, but ease up on the internal machete. If you are too prone to lying to maintain valuable relationships or hold down a job, stop treating your dishonesty like fine china, you goddamn schlemiel. OK, I’m not a psychological expert but one of the things I’ve been working on in therapy is retaining a consistent striving for improvement while loosening an attachment to self-flagellation. So, occasional desire to make my children happy aside, was it a well-earned moment of transcendence or a mere boot to my own aesthetics that led me to sneak off to the Barclays Center to buy a trio of Backstreet Boys tickets while the girls were in Hebrew school?

I didn’t tell them about the tickets for several months, but ultimately I worried that surprising them on the day of the concert would pressure them to evince unnatural levels of appreciation for their loving father’s amazing gesture, so about two weeks before the show, I gave them a heads up. 

Another chronic difficulty I have is ordering food from people whose first language is not English. I don’t think it makes me Steve King to cling to the generalization that they never take me seriously when I say I want it spicy. So on the day of the concert I ordered Thai food and asked them to make it “extra, extra, extra spicy please.” In retrospect that was at least one “extra” too many. But by the time we had dinner before the show, I forgot about lunch and slathered everything I ate with hot sauce, which I believe contributed to my need of a bathroom that undermined my plan to arrive at the Barclays Center by 7:30 so we could get through the security line before the show started at 8.

I had looked up the setlists from Chicago and Detroit and noted that they opened the show with a song called “Everyone”, which I thought was the one where they’re like “Everybaaaah-day! Rock your baaaah-day!”, which in my self-conferred Masters in Backstreetology seemed like the only appropriate opener so I really, really didn’t want the girls to miss it, which brought on a sustained castigation of why I prioritized capsaicin over keeping promises I’d silently (and inaccurately) made to my children. 

We got into the arena at about 8:12 and, hearing noise emanating from the stage, rushed up several flights of stairs to our seats. That’s when we learned that there was an opening act named Baylee Littrell (it wasn’t until the next morning that I learned he was Brian Littrell’s 16 year-old son). What we caught of his set assuaged whatever guilt I felt about what we missed, but I did appreciate that he played with actual bass, guitar and drums (plus keyboards, horns and back-up vocals that could not be seen onstage). We looked him up on Spotify to see how many plays his songs had gotten and determined that the one with more than 300,000 would be the closer. Do you know how many great bands would harm the elderly for 30,000 plays??? Fruit & Flowers only have two songs over 20k. Look ‘em up, they rule. Anyway, we were right. It was a song called Boxes and apparently the girl Baylee loves checks off all 22 of them. 

I have shadowy memories of watching the Backstreet Boys’ debut on Saturday Night Live with this perfectly synced dance involving chairs that they may or may not have stacked at one point during their number. At the time I was appalled by them, but proud of myself for being sophisticated enough to label their performance Fosse-esque. Harboring the incorrect assumptions that “Everyone” was the song I thought it was, and that their act had not evolved in the 20 years since I saw them on SNL, I tried to share in the excitement of the folks around me. Our neighbors were a very attractive young man and woman who kept apologizing when they passed us to get to the aisle. I tried not to eavesdrop but I did hear the young man extol his therapist to his friend (somehow it was clear they weren’t a couple). Just before the show started the young woman asked if I was the fan bringing my kids along or vice versa. I said it was mainly the kids but I was stoked too. She said that she and her friend had caught the band in Vegas and it was so amazing that they had to go again in Brooklyn and don’t mind her when she sang along to every lyric, even the new ones. Our conversation ended abruptly when the lights went down and she joined the collective “WHOO!” volleying stageward. 

As though in response, the stage started to open with almost unbearable slowness, suspense mounting as aperture expanded to maw, and I realized that I am unable to experience a reveal like that without hearkening back to one of the earliest and most vivid aural memories I have- the hinges creaking at the beginning of the Monster Mash. On angled video screens, band members appeared, one by one, in slow motion. The way they fingered their hat brim or rolled their shoulders made me laugh very hard. My neighbor to my left nodded approvingly, the kids to my right briefly emancipated themselves. Finally the tectonic shifting ended and there, on a platform so receded that I thought they should be called the Backstage Boys, were five guys who had been crushing it for 26 fucking years.

My neighbor said, “They can’t really dance anymore but they can still sing!”

“Everyone” is not the song I thought it was.

The first concert our kids ever attended was Los Lobos in Prospect Park. Our younger daughter was 10 months old and happy anywhere that had popsicles. Our older daughter was nearly 3 and for months she would ask to hear more Los Lobos. I don’t think she recognized anything from the concert, she just wanted to be reminded of the special experience of live, loud music and how happy it made the people around her (including her dad), and our living room stereo system was the best portal for that. Los Lobos’ most popular non-fucking-La Bamba-song is Cancion del Mariachi, coming in at 15,898,494 plays. Nothing else cracks a million. 

This was their first time seeing a bigtime pop act, and though they only knew about 5 of the 30 songs performed, they were rapt for the entire show. Except when the band talked to the audience, which they did in a sort of schematic where every member got his five-minute lovefest with the audience while the other guys changed outfits. They were all some variation on how much love they felt in the room (it was pretty palpable), how much gratitude they felt to the fans for the longevity of their career, and how pleased they were to be Number 1 yet again. Oh and that music was important too. I don’t mean to demean their commitment to music. All five of them can sing quite well, they harmonize together beautifully (even though I’m pretty sure vocal enhancements were employed without remorse) and you can’t sing the same song over and over again for more than 20 years without losing it unless the song is half-decent. But without getting too grumpy about it, I neither could nor wanted to suppress a flare of anger that so many serious musicians are poor while these cutie pies are all multi-millionaires. I don’t know what the ultimate size of the music market is, and it was hardly revelatory to note that these guys’ share was not in line with the quality of their musical production, but I felt like I had to take my own tiny stand, to stand up for musicians less slickly managed, artists less adept at navigating A&R social hierarchies, bands whose universality is not predicated on cultural touchstones manufactured by MTV. Obviously, nobody buys a concert ticket in the hope that they’ll get scolded at the show. Another thing people try to avoid at concerts is taking a dump. And so more acutely than ever, my self-righteousness was supplanted by regret for that extra extra.

I thought about asking my neighbors to watch the kids, and even to make the joke “And don’t let them vape!” but opted not to because I didn’t want to suggest that I had a problem with their vaping (such is my social density that I tuned out all of their apologia and was so grateful for their friendliness that I just wanted them to like me, never realizing that maybe, just maybe they might really want me to like them too). So I just told the kids to stay put and made my way to the can. And I daresay BSB fans are as nice in private as they are out in the arena. I base this conjecture on my bathroom experience where, unlike most concerts I attend, I was able to tend to my digestive needs without feeling like I had to contort myself to avoid somebody else’s excrement. It shouldn’t be surprising that more banal music begets more polite behavior, hell even Plato cautioned against exposing certain segments of society to more inflammatory musical scales. But maybe all that bougie antisepticism is just proof of how truly un-punk Mr. Stand-Taker really is.

Returned to the seats where the kids looked sleepy. I told them they shouldn’t feel any pressure to stay for the whole show, which looked like it was going to end after 11. They looked at me like I’d just told them I was donating their college fund to Trump 2020. 

One of them said, “Just because we’re not dancing and screaming doesn’t mean we aren’t having an amazing time, Dad.”

OK then.

So that song I got confused about is actually called “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back).” I pretended like I knew that the whole time and was pretty sure I got away with it. Then one of the girls said, “I thought you said they opened with this song.” And with no remorse whatsoever I said, “Yeah, that was in Florida.” Why I needed them to think I knew what I was talking about is almost a less interesting question than why I also lied about what states preceded New York on the DNA Worldwide Tour. 

There were more costume changes, more banter with adoring fans, more grinding reconfiguration of the stage, more neon mike stands shifting color in unison, something that probably seemed high tech in 1999, and more hits, at least four up-tempo numbers before they went into their big treacly ballad about which way they want it, which nobody can convince me isn’t about the supposed horrors of anal sex. Our neighbors checked and sure enough, both kids knew every word. A singalong ensued. Then I encouraged departure but the kids insisted on staying in case there was more. There was more. 

In fact, all five guys came out for what I guess was an encore wearing Nets jerseys. Knowing what a rabid Nets fan I am, both kids felt vindicated for insisting we stick around. And then they actually knew the second, and final song of the evening and were so exhilarated by the whole thing that they wanted to walk all the way home. But it was 11:15 and I’d been up since 4:30 and I was not above projecting my fatigue onto them so we took the subway one stop. We had gotten out quickly enough that the train was not packed with other BSBers or whatever their fans are called. And again, if we strip away the petty concern of my daughters’ happiness, was I glad we went to a Backstreet Boys Concert? Well, one kid said “That would have been awesome even if the band didn’t sing any songs. The lights were just so great!” So cool. I just spent the better part of a week’s pay on the magic of strobes that kept me up way past my bedtime. And two very happy daughters. And very pleasant interactions with attractive strangers. And a few moments of infectious beats and melodies. And the nicest shit I’ve ever taken at a concert. Would I do it again, even with smarter lunch ordering? Without hesitation.

By the way, this was written while listening to Face Stabber, the newest Thee Oh Sees album. It’s fucking awesome. They’re playing a club in a few weeks than can hold about 800 people.

[reconditarmonia]

Dear Rule 63 Author

(It’s finally happening! Thank you so much for signing up!)

I’m reconditarmonia here and on AO3 (and have been since LJ days, but my LJ is locked down and I only have a DW to see locked things). I have anon messaging off, but, er, I can answer any questions you might have about my requests in my mod capacity if you contact the exchange email ;)

Fullmetal Alchemist | History Boys | Pride and Prejudice | Robin Hood | Spinning Silver

General likes:

– Relationships that aren’t built on romance or attraction. They can be romantic or sexual as well, but my favorite ships are all ones where it would still be interesting or compelling if the romantic component never materialized.

– Loyalty kink! Trust, affectionate or loving use of titles, gestures of loyalty, replacing one's situational or ethical judgment with someone else's, risking oneself (physically or otherwise) for someone else, not doing so on their orders. Can be commander-subordinate or comrades-in-arms.

– Heists, or other stories where there’s a lot of planning and then we see how the plan goes.

– Femslash, complicated or intense relationships between women, and female-centric gen. Women doing “male” stuff (possibly while crossdressing).

– Stories whose emotional climax or resolution isn’t the sex scene, if there is one.

– Uniforms/costumes/clothing.

– Stories, history, and performance. What gets told and how, what doesn’t get told or written down, behavior in a society where everyone’s consuming media and aware of its tropes, how people create their personas and script their own lines.

General DNW: rape/dubcon, torture, other creative gore; unrequested AUs, including “same setting, different rules” AUs such as soulmates/soulbonds; PWP; food sex; embarrassment; focus on pregnancy; Christmas/Christian themes; focus on unrequested canon or non-canon ships.

A note: I'm generally fine with "/" ships where the fic doesn't contain a kiss, overt declaration of love, etc. I'll trust that you wrote it with shippy intent and don't expect you to force in something that wouldn't fit the story.

About Rule 63 Exchange specifically: I have no strong preference for character names, with a slight preference for sticking with their canon names; it's up to you whether you want to justify any resulting names that would be unusual for women or just gloss over it. As far as characters' personalities and gender expression are concerned, you can tell from my requests that part of what interests me in most of the characters I requested is the question of what they and/or their relationships would be like in a world where they grew up as women, but I tend to want to see them as similar to their canon selves, just female. I'm probably fine with unrequested characters also being swapped to female, but feel free to check if you're not sure; please don't swap any female characters to male.

For this exchange, I've requested only fanfiction and only Always a 63, and with the exception of FMA, have requested non-smut (for FMA both smut and non-smut are good).

—

Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist

Ship(s): F!Roy Mustang/Riza Hawkeye, F!Roy Mustang/F!Maes Hughes, F!Roy Mustang & Riza Hawkeye & F!Maes Hughes, F!Roy Mustang & F!Maes Hughes

I only recently started watching FMA:Brotherhood and I love it a lot. My fannish interests run towards military contexts, loyalty kink, idealistic/noble characters, and ambitious/pragmatic characters, so I'd love to read more about any of these combinations of people trusting one another to be the best person to do the job, or to know what to do, and risking a lot on that - whether that's on campaign in the war, when trying to get Roy up the chain of command, during the conflict with the homunculi... (I'm not yet up to the bit where Roy tells Riza he trusts her to shoot him in the back if he steps off the path, but it's been mentioned to me and it is my JAM.)

(My requests are fairly unspecific because as I write this I'm only about a quarter of the way through the anime. DO NOT worry about avoiding spoilers in the fic; I'm getting through the canon and can't wait to read whatever you want to write. Although I should specifically say, feel free to either have Hughes continue to be alive or stick to canon in this regard.)

Smut Likes: clothing, sexual tension, breasts, oral sex, grinding, informal d/s elements, intensity

Fandom-Specific DNW: please avoid canon-typical loss of body parts. If writing Roy/Maes in a period when Maes would canonically be married to Gracia, please don’t kill her off or get into either infidelity angst or poly negotiation; an AU where they never married or the assumption of an open relationship are both fine.

—

Fandom: History Boys

Ship(s): F!Stuart Dakin/F!Tom Irwin, F!Entire Class & F!Tom Irwin, F!Entire Class & F!Douglas Hector

I'm dying to know what the cultural touchstones would be if this plot were about lesbians instead of gay men. Auden, for instance, keeps coming up in the play - Hector loves him, Dakin and the other students bring him up to feel out Irwin - Housman, Bette Davis in Now Voyager...so what's acceptable and/or eccentric Culture for lesbians to cling to, or to signal (or flirt, or come-on) with? Who are the writers and the icons? During canon(/pre-, if applicable with Hector) or post-canon Oxbridge-slash-TV-historian life, it's all great. I, like most of the fandom, do like the idea that Dakin and Irwin do make it work at some point, post-canon.

Although I acknowledge that female versions of these characters feeling shut out of the historical and literary Canon is a valid place to go with the concept (I mean, that's Mrs. Lintott's speech), I'm more interested in following through on the way that the canon (little-c) characters relate historical or literary figures and events to their own lives - whether that's using more female figures, or finding things to seize on and relate to in the male figures of the Canon (in a fuck-you women-are-like-this-too way or a gay way rather than a Great-Men-are-universally-relatable way, I suppose).

—

Fandom: Pride and Prejudice

Ship(s): Elizabeth Bennet/F!Fitzwilliam Darcy, Jane Bennet/F!Charles Bingley

I would love to see how the basic narrative of P&P, or scenes from it, could play out, with period setting and some level of period attitudes, if either (or both) of the two main men are women looking for a "companion" or being pursued as a "companion," rather than as a husband. (Yes, I've been watching Gentleman Jack, but I've wanted this sort of thing for longer than that.)

To be clear, period attitudes can be "meh" rather than wall-to-wall homophobia; I'd just prefer to explore the implications of this change rather than supposing that same-sex marriage is accepted and everything about the plot is the same. If Jane, the eldest daughter to marry off, isn't interested in a heterosexual marriage? If Elizabeth turns down Collins without any expectation that a more suitable man could exist? (Having characters be bi rather than lesbian works too, I'm just throwing out some examples.) The significance of dancing, when in a formal dance context you'd encounter another woman in the dance but wouldn't be able to have her as a partner? Jane and Bingley being adorable, or Elizabeth and Darcy coming to revise their initial ill opinions of each other in this new context? Are the men a hot ticket for the women of Hertfordshire in the same way if they're women instead?

—

Fandom: Robin Hood (Traditional)

Ship(s): F!Robin Hood/F!Little John, F!Robin Hood & F!Merry Men, F!Robin Hood & Merry Men, F!Robin Hood & F!Little John, F!Robin Hood & Little John

Tell me about these people! A female outlaw commanding the loyalty of a mixed or male group -- or an all-female group of outlaws, how they live, what might have led them to choose that life. I'm also here for Robin Hood's relationship with her right-hand man/woman specifically, because I love loyalty kink -- people willing to go into danger for one another, the leader knowing how best to use her right hand's skills and strengths, what elements of formality might appear in, well, a very ad-hoc group. (And f!Little John would probably be hot.) If you're writing the Little John pairings, feel free to make the Merry Men either their canon versions or female versions.

I'd totally be into any of the f!characters crossdressing as men vis-à-vis the world at large, although if you go this route I'd rather have them not be in disguise to each other/to their own allies (so no Merry Men thinking they're being led by another man when it's crossdressing Robin, for instance - preferring masculine clothing/appearance even among friends is fine, though).

—

Fandom: Spinning Silver

Ship(s): F!Staryk Lord/Miryem Mandelstam

I love Miryem, and I'm so interested in the ways that making the Staryk Lord a woman would change Miryem's entry into the Staryk world and the romance that eventually develops between them. Maybe same-sex marriage is common among the Staryk, and that's one of the customs that are new and unfamiliar to Miryem in this new world. Would this be a Miryem who had never imagined being attracted to a woman before but comes to fall for the Staryk Lady, or one who simply couldn't have imagined being able to marry one and have that be a normal life? (For values of "normal" that include ice lands and gold magic!) How does the fact of the marriage being same-sex affect Miryem's initial understanding of it as a business arrangement, or for that matter, affect her understanding of the offer of queenship as a marriage at all? What makes them fall for each other?

Canon Miryem wonders what her role as queen is, thinking that she'd know about managing a household and having children and sewing if she were married to a human lord - is it the same if she has a fairy wife instead of a fairy husband, more so because there's not even the hope of a gendered complementarian aspect to fall back on, less so because the Staryk Lady is there as an example of what a female monarch in the Staryk lands does? Does Miryem try to be more like her, or to find her own accounting-powers-and-personal-bonds niche?

It's so important to canon Miryem to have a Jewish wedding with the Staryk Lord - what would that look like here? What happens when she comes back to the human world not only the queen of a magic country, but married to a woman (and in love with her, depending on when you set it)?

[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2018, Part V

We’re finally here. Thank you for reading. Or at least scrolling around to the movies that you care about. GREAT MOVIES

12. Minding the Gap (Bing Liu)- In part because it's produced by Steve James, Minding the Gap's easy short-hand is "Hoop Dreams for skateboarding." Because most of the film's pleasures come from following the subjects over the course of five or six years, that makes sense. What differs is that director Bing Liu is so young, which makes this a promising film if a less definitive one than James's feature debut. It’s trying to do so much, but it never feels calculated or constructed as it expands. Boldly, Liu seems to suggest that people don't really change that much, that what drives them or gnaws at them just manifests itself in different ways. The cycle of abuse ends up being a common element for the three skaters, and, as Liu admits on camera, domestic violence is the reason he made the film. (The treatment of it is raw, a blunt object when a more delicate instrument might work better.) He got the hard part right though: delicately getting us to care about people who sometimes don't care about themselves. 11. A Quiet Place (John Kransinski)- Strong early Shyamalan vibes from this lean chiller. Krasinski's directing debut, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, didn't do much for me, and I skipped his obligatory man-comes-back-to-hometown-because-his-mom's-dying follow-up. But the filmmaking really impressed me here just by understanding how to set the table of this kind of movie. A close-up on an important nail sticking out of a floorboard here, an effortless explanation of a rule there. The hang-up for a film this high-concept is that you get distracted by all of the unanswered questions. (How did he get a printer quiet enough to print out all of those radio call signals?) But this world is fleshed out enough, especially an eerie dinner sequence, to bypass that kind of stuff for me. More than anything, there's a sort of elasticity of shot selection that serves the suspense. A tender early scene in which the central couple is dancing while wearing headphones goes on for maybe twice as long as one might expect. So later, the cross-cuts and smash-cuts have even more weight because the camera was allowed to linger earlier. Here's maybe the biggest reason for the movie's success: The characters are all slightly smarter than the audience, whereas the temptation might have been to go the other way with it. 10. Black Panther (Ryan Coogler)- I don't know if I can add anything to the discourse on this meditative yet ambitious film. I do think one early scene points at what makes it special for the genre. When T'Challa is first named king, he has to be drained of the Black Panther powers to fight anyone who wishes to challenge the throne. A member of an outsider tribe challenges him and nearly beats him. It shows a) the world-building of this noble, fair culture, b) the existence of this fully developed clan that will be important later, c) just how human T'Challa is if his reign can come so perilously close to ending just as it has begun. Every scene like that has a logical purpose. Of course, once Killmonger, the best, most realistically motivated Marvel villain of all time, gets introduced, we return to that method of challenging the throne, and writers Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole aren't afraid to let the worst possible thing happen to T'Challa. What occurred forty-five minutes earlier makes this fight seem like a fait accompli. And it's in this sort of narrative detail that the film is able to work up to its thematic purpose. The first half is about, to quote T'Chaka, whether a good man can be a good king. But the second half is about the responsibility of goodness. Show me where Iron Man bit off that much. 9. Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski)- Although it takes place mostly in one location during one day, Support the Girls has a bigger world going on in its margins. We hear it on radios, or we see it in the people taking a pitstop in Double Whammies while they're on their way somewhere better. But the force that's really encroaching on the characters' insulated environment is Mancave, the national chain that threatens to put them out of business. "They have commercials and everything," one character complains, and we get snatches of those commercials that were presumably directed by Andrew Bujalski himself. It's ten seconds of content maybe, shot in a bigger, broader style than the modest approach of the rest of the film. But the key to understanding how far Bujalski has come is realizing that he is no longer making fun of the people in the commercial, even if they're jacked bros screaming for a boxing match. That portrayal is amplified, sure, but Bujalski is mature enough now to not ridicule those people. It's okay that they're just not the people he's interested in. He's supernaturally empathetic toward the rogue's gallery of people he is interested in, who spin the ordinary challenges of the working class into something extraordinary. The sunniest member of the team is played by Haley Lu Richardson, who deserves special recognition as the indefatigable Maci. I can't think of parts that are much different from her roles in this, Columbus, and Split, to the extent that people probably don't realize they're played by the same woman, but she rules in every single one. The sky is the limit for her. When a workplace is described as "a family," it's usually just a way for the boss to take advantage of workers when the "family" designation does nothing to help them: "I know I shouldn't ask you to work off the clock, but can you help me out as a FAMILY MEMBER?" Occasionally though, it does feel like a family when people work closely to one another for hours on end and depend upon one another for real life needs. This movie is about what happens when a work family is both control and support.

8. Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)- The trailer for Children of Men advertises itself as "from the director of The Prisoner of Azkaban and Y Tu Mama Tambien," and I remember an audience giggling at that strange CV. For one thing, at the time people didn't understand yet why someone would brag about contributing to a Harry Potter movie. But to pair that children's picture with either a Spanish title they hadn't heard of or a movie that they knew was sexually explicit? Who was this guy? Roma is who he is. I like some of his other films more--I would argue that his approach hurts the performances here--but it seems impossible for him to make anything this personal again. The baldly emotional highs that it reaches come not only from the direct simplicity of the story but also from the sophisticated perspective with which it's being downloaded directly from Cuaron's memory. (It's also, accidentally or purposefully, quite a political film at this moment in time. It insists, sometimes in the dialect of Mixtec, that these people around us silently washing dishes or picking up dog poo are, in fact, part of our family.) There's a moment when one brother throws something at another's head, barely missing, and they both stop in their tracks with fear about how tragically things could have ended up. My dad experienced a similar moment in his childhood, and he would tell the same story about Uncle Steve throwing a shoe at him any time we passed the wooden door with a dent in it at my grandma's house. What a tiny moment to live on for decades, in tangible and intangible ways. Cuaron claims that all of these moments shape us, and taking us to the moon was only a warm-up for resurrecting them for us. 7. Happy As Lazzaro (Alice Rohrbacher)- Alice Rohrwacher won the screenplay award at Cannes, probably because her script for Happy As Lazzaro is fundamentally unpredictable. Games of checkers are unpredictable though. That word doesn't quite cover the way the viewer is forced to guess at something as elemental as "What year is this taking place?" And none of the twists and turns of the storytelling--I refuse to spoil--would gel if Rohrwacher as a director wasn't teaching you how to watch the film the whole time with a rich, warm, light touch. Considering the purity of this vision as a fable, buoyed by realistic labor concerns on the other hand, it's a pity that people are calling Birdbox "crazy" when something like this is just a few clicks down on that service. 6. The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos)- When assessing The Favourite, the easy temptation is to say that because it isn't stuffy, because of its scabrous wit or its intimate filming techniques, that it "isn't your mother's chamber drama." It is invigorating, but in a lot of ways, the film isn't saying anything that the average Masterpiece Theater production doesn't. Instead it takes cultural touchstones about the emptiness of power and distorts them, much like the fish-eye lenses that Yorgos Lanthimos favors to photograph the palace. It says an easy thing in a hard way, with conviction to burn. Lanthimos seems freed by not having to write the screenplay, and every decision of his is rooted in making things more narrow. The barrel distortion of the fish-eye seems apt for this idea, but so do the secret passageways that Queen Anne gets wheeled through to avoid the lower rungs of the estate. Of course there's no outside world to intrude upon her majesty. But there's even an inner world to the inner world. (It's impossible to watch Olivia Colman's gonzo depiction of Anne's incurious indolence and not think of Trump.) I'm convinced that Emma Stone can do anything, and the final shot, an all-timer, only validates that suspicion. 5. Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (Gus Van Sant)- You have to check out every Gus Van Sant movie, even after a few missteps, because you never know: He might take the emotional climax that you didn't even know you wanted and score it to inter-diegetic "Still Rock 'N Roll to Me," thus grounding real poignance with even realer goofiness.I'll admit that the bar is low, but this is probably the most authentic, least treacly movie ever made about addiction recovery. Van Sant, who wrote, directed, and edited, tells the story with patient command. We take Joaquin Phoenix for granted at this point, but everybody on the poster is exceptional. And Udo Kier gets to say, "Pop, pop. It's always about penises." INSTANT CLASSICS

4. A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper)- In one scene Cooper's Jackson Maine wears a black leather jacket under a brown leather vest, and the movie itself risks that kind of hat-on-a-hat silliness and redundancy. But instead it comes off as the best kind of big swing, a comforting and warm serving of Old Hollywood. Cooper's camera knows how to embrace silence and let the leads play off each other to craft raw, touching performances. Sometimes the close-ups are so intense and focused that, when he cuts back to a master, it's disorienting to be reminded that there are other people in that space, in the world at all.The movie's deficiencies come from "Wait, how much time has passed?" moments in the writing, problems that I always have had with Eric Roth projects. But it's easy to get swept up in a movie of moments that believes so much in itself.

3. Mission: Impossible- Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie)- The pattern of Mission: Impossible- Fallout is: infodump that explains the stakes and the strategy of what we're about to see, followed by an action sequence that is somehow even more thrilling than the one that came before it. Imagine a really interesting day of grade school classes, in which you learned, like, multiplication, followed by recess every other period. As for T.C., what more could you possibly want out of a human being?

2. Wildlife (Paul Dano)- When Jerry, Jake Gyllenhaal's groundskeeper of pathetic pride, figures out that his boss is about to fire him in front of his son, he smiles and, through clenched teeth, asks if this talk can happen tomorrow. Part of him actually believes that postponing the meeting will help; maybe the boss's temper will cool overnight. But this is a man who is bound by the same desperate spirit as his wife Jeanette, who muses, "Tomorrow something will happen that will make us feel different." When people are living day-to-day, clinging to their dignity--he refers to himself as a "small person" at one point--tomorrow really does offer a regenerative power. Those characters are the same-pole magnets that inform this coming-of-age tale, and the subtext of the film is "Can you believe Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal have a fourteen-year-old son?" It works for the 1960 setting because these are people who defined themselves before they knew who they were, and they'll now do anything to re-define themselves as brave/sexy/valuable. But it works for the actors too. Gyllenhaal in particular is tender and heartbreaking in a true supporting role, allowing himself to look his age, framing himself with the dad akimbo arms. But Mulligan's fake confidence is great too, especially in a scene in which she nearly begs her husband to let her work. Something tells me that I should credit a director for coaxing two career best performances from two great actors. Some people just have it, and Paul Dano does.

1. First Reformed (Paul Schrader)- In 1998 I dragged my father to see Paul Schrader's Affliction, a movie that was kind of about my father's father. When the end credits rolled on that bleak, wrenching film, my dad turned to me and said, "I feel like I have to take a shower." We walked around a nearby hotel and talked for an hour, not that he was able to articulate why he was so shaken. We discussed the difference between entertainment and art and what makes a piece of either successful. Even though he hated the experience, he couldn't deny that it was an experience. He kept on saying, "That's not why I go to the movies." And no matter what I, fifteen at the time, told him, he couldn't understand that's exactly why I go to the movies. First Reformed had the same mesmerizing effect as the best of Schrader's work: When I exited the building, I stumbled into the sunlight because I had been trapped in someone else's mind for almost two hours.

Part of that effect comes from the narrative device of Reverend Toller's journal, which plants us in his headspace from the beginning. Part of it comes from the intimate scale of the film, which features only a handful of locations. But if what I'm explaining seems small, then I'm doing a bad job. The canvas expands. Schrader insists that our care for the environment is our most immediate responsibility; this film historian has no problem with planting the film at 2017 in dialogue. And that emphasis is matched only by his disdain for how big business encroaches on personal aspects of our lives. There's even a scene that tries to account for a recent rise in extremism among young people. As if to prove that he isn't being pedantic, he has one character communicate one of those ideas, letting you assume that role is his mouthpiece, then he has another character reply with something just as convincing. First Reformed weaves in those elements, but it's ultimately a character piece that humanizes the type of person we think we know but for which we have no frame of reference. In Ethan Hawke's piercing performance, we see a Reform minister who punishes himself actively and passively for what he thinks are sins. He uses faith as an armor and as an excuse, being so of the mind and--as another character puts it--"in the garden" that he denies himself medical care. No matter what anyone else tells him, he is convinced of one of the tenets that Schrader could never shake from his Calvinist upbringing: There's nothing you can do to save yourself.