#top ten 'comedy' movies that make me SAD

[taniushka12]

drawing depressed middle aged men and crying, btw, if u even care

[nzia-writes]

The Marvels 2023 dir. Nia DaCosta

My Honest Thoughts:

I’m actually kinda sad that this movie is performing so poorly at Box Office, and I’m all the more sad that it lacks the excellence that I’ve imagined for the last two years in the narrative sense.

The cast is strong, the visuals are strong, the action is strong, the direction is strong, but it all came crashing down because Marvel has been doing a horrible job at choosing its writers for movies. It is also fair to mention that the studios have refused to pay the actors fairly, thus causing another fatal blow at the box office!

—monthly delays

—no promotion from actors and poor promotion from marvel

—toxic incels and misogyny

—some of the audience’s disinterest in the characters

—The current MCU’s bad handling at storytelling

There was just so many forces against this movie and it was evident that this would be the outcome. Had the storytelling took a new approach at these characters and gave a more interesting villain — or even a villain with a more developed story— and gave us at least ten or fifteen more minutes with these characters for a more fleshed out story, the outcome could have differed.

Not even lying, this movie has some of the BEST action scenes in the mcu, some FRESH and creative stylistic choices in directing, some killer ass comedy, and some jaw-dropping visuals! It has given Carol an even better character arc and has brought some clarity and direction to the multiverse saga that has otherwise been handled poorly in phase 4 and 5. Nia DaCosta is a certified nerd and she did exceptionally well with building up the cosmic corner of the mcu!

Let me just say that Academy Award Winner, Brie Larson, shined so bright in her sequel! She channeled so many new emotions and character dynamics that make up Carol Danvers! She was able to find a nice balance between Carol’s stoicism and emotional vulnerability which so many people have criticized before! She also went about Carol’s regret beautifully with raw and heartfelt interactions that push said character to correct her mistakes as a hero and as a human.

And let us not forget about the outstanding performances from Teyonah Parris and Iman Vellani as Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan. The charisma of Monica Rambeau and the creative handling of her powerset is one that I will hold close to my heart. And the STAR that is Kamala khan and her family is one element that stole my heart early on in the film!

This movie deserves its flowers and it’s unfortunate that the writing had to weigh it down so much. I’m fucking OVERJOYED and grateful that I was able to experience this movie in the theaters—and to have theorized for a good six months on end!

It is going down as one of my top 5 mcu movies, not because it was perfect, but because of my attachment to the cast and the characters. They knocked my positive reception up 30 notches because of the hard work and the un-fucking-deniable chemistry! I know everyone may not agree with my sentiments, but I don’t care because this is deeper than box office success and audience reactions. Yes, It is unfortunate that my happiness wasn’t shared much, but what can I do now other than enjoying it as the phenomenon it is? 🤷🏾‍♀️

[randomthefox]

I really only liked three or four things in the movie, and you have to, like, ignore all the stupid shit that was happening around those things for it to even be possible to enjoy them.

I liked Maria. I thought the actress was very good. I liked all the scenes with Maria they were cute. I liked Maria having skates. I liked Maria being into the stars, I thought that was a very creative way to twist her characterization from the games where she was looking down at Earth from space and speculating in what life is like on Earth, in the movie she's on Earth looking up at the stars speculating about which one Shadow came from. I liked that, it felt authentic to the games. Maria said all the things Maria from the games would say. She felt correct in a way that literally nothing else in this movie is.

And yet they completely removed Maria's terminal illness from the story. Nothing is ever stated or shown that even so much as vaguely alludes to her having a neurodegenerative disease, or any disease of any kind. Which, in the games, was her entire reason for being with Gerald in his top secret research facility. So in the movie, Maria is just in this secret government lab for literally no reason and no explanation is ever provided. Removing the illness completely nullifies her entire characterization as being a wellspring of hope and positivity despite being condemned to a short life, her thematic purpose in the narrative, her reason for existing where and how she does in the story whatsoever, and the impact she has on Shadow's character.

She doesn't even get any final words before she dies. She is a girl stuffed in a refrigerator in this movie in a way she never was in the video games. In the games her final words begging Shadow to bring hope to humanity and give all the people on that planet a chance to be happy has a permanent impact on his character and the story of the franchise as a whole from that moment on. She was cursed to die young and never have a true and proper life on earth, and yet she begs for the people on that planet to be given a chance to be happy. To be granted that which she could never have. Her life was stolen from her by the corruption of mankind, and yet her final wish is to bring hope to humanity. Her strength of will shines brighter than any star in the sky. Hokey and forced as it is, the line in the movie of "the light shines even when the star is gone" is true of Game Maria.

But in the movie she has no final words. Her desires and actions do not linger in Shadows heart and drive him to act in such a way to fulfill her wish. She literally just dies for no other narrative purpose than to make Shadow sad and provide him with motivation to do bad guy stuff until the end of the movie.

Maria was practically the only thing I liked in the movie no astrix. And yet the movie still ruined Maria. I have to ignore everything else around Maria insofar as what this movie does with her for it to even be possible for me to enjoy the cute flashback scenes between Maria and Shadow.

Aside from that - I liked the Super Sonic vs Super Shadow fight. That's something we've never seen in the games and it's pretty fucking cool. I liked the way the fight was handled with them knocking each other across the entire planet. It made my inner Dragon Ball Z fan very happy. But the movie ruins that fight too by cutting away from it for the sake of bad unfunny Jim Carrey "comedy", and also interrupts the fight for the sake of Sonic and Shadow exchanging incredibly badly written and atrociously performed dialog at each other. But conceptually the fight was cool, and for the maybe thirty seconds the fight actually is allowed to take place I enjoyed that.

I liked when Tom and Maddie agree to help Sonic and co. after somehow getting into like twenty different hobbies within the maybe ten hours at most that Sonic and co. have been gone. The comedic timing on them going "thank god, yes we're so in" was pretty funny and it made me exhale sharply from my nose. They immediately ruin this by explaining the joke though. They went through the trouble of having this overly obvious set up where they're like "yay we're enjoying our new hobbies now that the kids are gone =3 " for like a whole minute of screentime. Then Sonic jumps in and is like "GUYS WE NEED YOUR HELP!" and after a few seconds of silence they immediately go "thank god, we're so in." And it's funny, and the audience understands why it's funny, and that should have been where it ended. But the movie is garbage and thinks the audience is stupid, so they LITERALLY EXPLAIN THE JOKE by having Tails go "really? Just like that?" and having Tom and Maddie go "yeah, we were so bored." The movie literally cannot even have a single funny joke that it doesn't fuck up.

And I liked Gerald gaslighting Shadow. I thought there was a decent maybe 1% of this movie where Gerald actually acted like Evil Gerald. The scene where Shadow is questioning if they're doing the right thing (idiotic and nonsensical for his character to be doing that btw) by asking "is this what Maria would have wanted?" and Gerald responds by saying "it doesn't matter what Maria would have wanted, because they killed her." I thought that was good Evil Gerald. And when Jimbotnik tries to talk Gerald out of his plans to destroy the world by beseeching him on the merits of them being a family together (idiotic and aggravating for Eggman to be written this way btw) I liked how Gerald responded to that with "you're no Maria. When she was taken from me I lost my family. Now I want to burn it all down." That felt authentic to what grief and madness had reduced Gerald to in the game. A genocidal monster.

Those literal two sentences that I thought felt true to Gerald in the game are of course overshadowed by literally every single other scene in the movie where Gerald is just Jim Carrey acting like a jackass and absolutely none of it being funny. And those two sentences I liked are also undermined by the character Gerald is talking to in that scene being written badly.

So yeah I literally only liked four things in this movie and all of those things weren't even good either, so yeah. This movie has no redeeming qualities. It is the worst film in the trilogy. Sonic 1 did not improve upon the experience of staring at a blank wall for the same amount of time. Sonic 2 was cringe and annoying and fucked everything up but at least it passingly resembled the games from time to time. Sonic 3 is actively offensive and painful to sit through and treats the video game source material the same way a vulture treats a decaying corpse. As something to pick the decent bits of liver from and then leave the rest to rot. It is a repugnant, agonizing film. In a just world it would be reviled for the blight on humanity that it is, but unfortunately we live in a world where Micheal Bay Transformers movies made almost a billion dollars each at the box office. So instead of the correct and appropriate reaction to this film, people are claiming to have enjoyed it instead. C'est la vie

[dramalets]

2024 Watch List pt1

Here we go again!

To sir, with love - This is a lakorn so it's appropriately dramatic. The mothers are absolutely foul and do an awful lot of scheming and yelling. Jam/Film are intensely watchable and make wet fish kisses look terribly romantic. Tongtong Kitsakorn as Yang was a revelation. I'm sad he's pm just a lakorn actor/pop star because he is so watchable. I loved that, though they were evil and insane, the mothers all felt fleshed out and realised. You understood why they were yikes. 3½/5 (2/1/23)

A Boss & a Babe - I quit this at episode 2 and then decided to go back to it. I don’t regret doing so. This isn’t top tier but it’s also not shit tier. Cher, the very dictionary definition of toxic positivity, and Gun, an autism coded cat man, enter into an extremely quick romance (like seriously, it’s taken hard worn lesbians longer to say I love you) the catch being they’re intern and company boss. Honestly in another drama that would have been the the huge hiccup of the series, keeping them apart, but it’s consistently shown to be more of an issue for others that it is for them. This is very low conflict, mostly romcom fluff with two weirdly intense, barely explored side stories for support characters. I didn’t loath Force in this and would actually like him to be given more roles where he’s just a soft simp and not a boring sarcastic one. Book does some good comedy work here. 3/5 (4/1/23)

The day I loved you - I know this won’t work for everyone. It’s a bittersweet ten episode love story between a boy with ASL and the ‘rebel’ exchange student at his school. Pinoy BL, for me, either really hits or really misses and this hit. It does use a questionable model of disability, namely the inspiration model, but I cant nit pick too much when this is only ten 15/20 minute episodes. I enjoyed it a lot, you may also if you’re okay with a bittersweet ending vs an out and out happy one. 3½/5 (12/1/24)

VIP Only - Well this was adorable. Slow as molasses and just as sweet. This probably won’t be for everyone, very slow and not much happens other than character growth and a love story, but it worked for me. The edit is horrendous in places and I do wish Taiwan did longer episodes, but those are my only gripes. 3½/5 (19/1/24)

I cannot reach you - I don’t really watch Jbl. There are just styles and tropes that I don’t enjoy watching that Japan uses a lot of. It’s a taste thing more than it is anything else. So keep that in mind. This is full of a lot of the things I don’t like; over action, randomly running everywhere, sudden non-con. But it’s also endearingly sweet and very well acted, so I did find myself enjoying it. I don’t think this’ll awaken a desire to watch lots of Jbl but it has made me consider some others. 3/5 (20/1/24)

Last Twilight - I had a lot of fun with this. The dialogue and acting were all top notch and, as ever with Aof productions, it was stunning to look at. It weaves the story of two broken people healing one another very well with Jimmy & Sea doing beautiful work as Mhok & Day. I think this came a little unstuck at points in the end. I liked most of the romance movie style ending but I remain a little unsure about Day’s ending. Still, this is a show that I enjoyed every week and will have no issues rewatching. 4/5 (26/1/24)

Old Fashion Cupcake - I’m working on trying out more JBL to get a feel for what I do and don’t like. This? This I like. We don’t have enough stories about older people anyway and this does it well. Togawa’s slow courting of Nozue through shared experiences and casual intimacy is delicious to watch. 4/5 (4/2/24)

Pit Babe - I love when I show wholly knows what it is and doesn’t try and be anything but that. This knew it was a big ol’ fanfic and leaned wholeheartedly into that. Whether it was the breeding program subplot or the consistently dumb toothpaste and sausage ppl it handled them both with equal aplomb. It’s also worth noting that was largely really well acted too! Pavel, Nut & Sailub particularly impressed me but there was nobody bad. 4/5 (9/2/24)

Our Dining Table - My journey into JBL continues and this was the best one yet. Soft pining between two sad boy leads with a gorgeous found family story woven in. The treacle slow courting between these two won’t be for everyone but it was wholly for me. 5/5 (17/2/24)

Cooking Crush - The edit on this was criminally bad at points, sometimes I truly felt I’d skipped a part and I hadn’t at all, but it still served up a good little story. If you’re visiting this for the romance it’s not really that, the story is in the friends and their lives more than it is in Ten & Prem’s romance. I loved the comedy in this, it hit those notes well and was never over the top. (Lots of puns that I expect are super good if you speak Thai.) Nobody is bad in this, everyone delivers, but OffGun are as watchable as they always are and the few kisses they do have are perfect. 3/5 (18/2/24)

The Novelist - When I say I don’t love JBL it’s usually because the tropes are just too tropey for my tastes. Apparently I’m a lying liar who lies because this is extremely Japanese and I loved every moody second of it. Kijima is a sad, lonely, messed up man who doesn’t think he’s deserving of anything good and it’s wildly compelling to watch. 4/5 (18/2/24)

Mood Indigo - Fucked up 4 Fucked up. Two broken, sad, lonely men mess up repeatedly, and erotically, that’s it that’s the show and I ate it up with a spoon. Deeply flawed assholes being toxic together, when it’s well written and well acted, is so disgustingly watchable to me and this certainly was. 5/5 (18/2/24)

The Novelist: Playback - Continues where The Novelist ends. I watched the clean version of this, it was what was available to me, and was still deeply entertained. So if you think people watch this series for the heat then you’re incorrect. This is another instalment of Kijima Rio being a horribly broken fuck up of a man. I loved it. 4/5 (21/2/24)

Tokyo in April is… - I love a good destined to be together trope when it’s done well and this is done beautifully. Kazuma and Ren fall in love as teenagers and are separated before finding one another again as adults. The pacing on this is a little rough, I get what they were doing with the sub-plot but it felt mildly unneeded and time would have been better given to exploring our leads generally or even Ren’s painful family issues. This is still a lovely drama that I wholly recommend. 4/5 (21/2/24)

[9haharharley1]

Having a dilemma because I would love to know 001 for Blackice but also 002 for Jack and Pitch individually 💦

Where do I even begin with this!!! Hold on to your hats!

001 | Blackice

When I started shipping it if I did:

Story time! So, back when I originally watched the movie in 2015 or 2016, I didn't think much of it. I thought it was cute, but I was battling heavy depression and dissociation, and so I didn't really think anything of it past that. Themes and characters meant nothing to me. Even the voices didn't stick, which is weird because I've been in love with Jude Law since I was wee. Fast forward to September 2022, I'm reading Apprentice89's entire pompep catalog, and, desperate for anything similar they might have written, I stumbled upon their only Blackice fic. Even though I remembered nothing from the movie, the summary was just interesting enough, and I love their writing so much that I had to read it. I read it, fell in love, had to go watch the movie again, and promptly watched it about ten more times that same day, and I've been obsessed ever since!

My thoughts:

They make me insane. I've always been a sucker for dark/light ship dynamics, Yami/Yugi (puzzleshipping) was my very first ship when I figured out what shipping was, so you can only imagine how I lost my mind when I found out Jack used to be a creature of light in the books! Black/White, Light/Dark, Black/Blue, two sides of the same coin, beings who complete each other if only they would let it happen! This stuff makes me feral. I was never gonna be normal about them when I finally figured it out, and I hate that I'm late to the party, but better late than never!

What makes me happy about them:

Where do I even begin with anything on this list?! They're just... ugh! They're perfect! They're comedy and tragedy and hope and despair and love all wrapped up in a messy box of internalized pain topped with a neat little bow of healing magic! They understand each other in a way that no one ever will! They have felt and experienced love and loss, have faced a lifetime, and then some of loneliness and heartache, only to have finally found each other when it all became too much, this other being who understands, who feels some semblance of the same bitter ache the other feels! Here is someone they can talk to; they can touch, they can exist together, and maybe, finally, be able to begin to heal together.

What makes me sad about them:

They're lonely. They are both so lonely, even Jack with his newfound place with the Guardians and among his believers- he will never be completely unalone among them. The Guardians will never understand the kind of ache and bitter loneliness he and Pitch have felt, Jack will never be able to explain that kind of torment to them. And now he has to worry about spreading belief in him when it seems only a handful of kids from the movie even know he exists. And Pitch has been alone for even longer. He's had nothing but shadows and the whispers of failures long past for centuries before Jack is even born. He'll forever be haunted by the things he's done, the lives he's ruined, and know that belief in him will only continue to fade with time. But when they're together, they're not alone. They understand each other in a way that the Guardians will never be able to. They can help one another, they can connect and heal, and maybe even tie themselves together enough that they can spread a shared belief in each other.

( I have no idea if any of this is even making sense, I've gone incoherent)

things done in fanfic that annoys me:

Pitch always seems to be too nice. He's too nice and too thoughtful, and Jack is sometimes too timid or even just too angry and aggressive. Jack being a little too confident can also be grating. I also don't like it when they're over-sharing their thoughts and feelings, and every little action needs to be picked apart and talked about, oh hey, here's what a healthy romantic relationship between these two should look like! It gets annoying to me.

things I look for in fanfic:

I read fics based on interesting enough summaries and worry about the tags later. I love it when there's a bit of conflict and drama, I love it when Pitch is possessive and needy of Jack's affection, I love when Jack doesn't realize how desperate he is for Pitch's attention and doesn't know how to reconcile his love when faced with the Guardians when they find out! I love when Pitch is not necessarily redeemed, but certainly not Good, and only willing to heel for Jack.

Who I'd be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other:

I love a good platonic relationship with Sandy for both of them. A begrudging friendship between Pitch and North makes me laugh. Gilly, you made that wonderful little doodle of them sharing a drink that just melts my heart! Jack and Katherine in the books also have a cute friendship, and that can stay platonic for me as well. I do like a little bit of JackRabbit, but I also prefer it as a cliche trope to make Pitch jealous cuz I crave a possessive Pitch. Basically, no, I don't ship them with anyone else.

My happily ever after for them:

Their happily ever after includes continuing to learn and grow together. Since they're immortal to some extent, they get to spend their days learning about each other, falling in love over and over again at some new quirk they never notice the other has, they get to heal as time goes on, they get to bicker and argue and kiss and makeup over and over while falling more and more in love until the heat death of the universe. Basically, they get to live their best married life forever.

who is the big spoon/little spoon:

Pitch is the big spoon usually. He tends to run hot, and Jack is just the perfect little ice pack to keep him cool in the dark of his caverns. Jack tends to sleep curled up - he's used to sleeping on tree branches or awnings, small tight places high up enough he won't be bothered, but also has had to learn to make himself small for so he won't fall. Pitch loves it, and since my Pitch doesn't sleep, he tends to use this time to me be creepy; touching and groping at Jack until his lover is squirming uncomfortably in his sleep.

what is their favorite non-sexual activity:

Honestly, they just like spending time together. They've both been alone for so long that idle conversation is enough for them as long as they're together, be it down in Pitch's cave or up in the world as Jack spreads winter. They're constantly touching - feet in laps, holding hands, hands brushing skin. They play games, they spar, and Jack often drags Pitch to the movies or a play or even the occasional concert. As long as they're together, they're happy.

002 | Jack

How I feel about this character:

I'm normal about him. I swear. Completely normal. No, his centuries of loneliness and isolation doesn't make my heart weep. What do you mean I'm crying over the resentment he so clearly harbors over the ignorance from his creator and the Guardians alike? No, I'm not sobbing over how he can relate to no one except the one person he's not supposed to feel kinship with! How dare you insinuate I'm tearing my hair out over his choosing to be kind in a world that has shunned him and being a good and decent person despite his pain and isolation when he would perhaps be justified if he had taken the devil's hand and unleashed a a second ice age upon the world!

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Pitch. Obviously. Also Kozmotis. Obviously.

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

He and Sandy can be bros. As a treat. And I guess Katherine is a cute platonic friendship. I forget Twiner exists because I go off the movie mostly, so him to, I guess.

My unpopular opinion about this character:

Oh boy. So this kind of goes with what I said under the ship bit above, but I don't like it when he's too timid. Jack is not a timid person. He's insecure. Insecurity does not necessarily mean he's scared, but he's been alone for 300 years. He's interacted with very few people as far as we know (unless you go by the books, which I don't usually, but even then). He talks to himself, he talks to the Moon, he talks to Sandy , who doesn't talk back, and he's talked to Bunny, which has been historically antagonistic. His social skills come from studying the people around them, gauging what is right and wrong thru observation alone, but he's not entirely confident in himself. Which brings me to: I can't stand when he's overconfident. Once again, he's insecure. He's unsure of himself, of his place in the world, of his role with the Guardians. He's known no true loving friendship in 300 years, and suddenly regaining his memories is not gonna fix that kind of trauma. Can you imagine the mental break he'll suffer when he realizes his sister had to watch him die, knowing there was nothing she could do to help? That she had to go on with her life, thinking it was her fault her big brother drowned? I don't like when he's super happy-go-lucky, either, but also when he's this weird avenging spirit of hurting children, too? I've seen that, and it bothered me.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

What blackice fan doesn't wish for him to have reached out to Pitch at the end of the movie? I would have loved for him to be the one to chase after Pitch at the end, to have reached out his hand to the Boogieman the same way Pitch had in Antarctica, to offer him a place among friends. Maybe not as a Guardian because I firmly believe Pitch would hate that, but as equals and friends.

my OTP:

Blackice, of course

my cross over ship:

None that I take seriously, but I did use to really enjoy Hijack, and I still find it cute on occasion

a headcanon fact:

I know it's unpopular HC, but my own HC for Jack is that he's a virgin. As a human, he fooled around with a local friend, discovering together what these weird teenage hormones are all about, but they never got that far past frotting in the woods after dark. When he became a spirit, his internal and external temperatures were too cold for anyone short of winter fae to handle past embracing for a brief period of time, and Jack learned early on not to entirely trust the fae court, so he steered clear of them foe the most part. He figured if he didn't have the urges too much as a spirit anyway, then it wasn't a big deal. His body didn't miss it, why should he? Then Pitch came along, and suddenly, his sex drive is working overtime.

002 | Pitch

How I feel about this character:

I am SO normal about him. Please ignore my twitching eye. Tall, goth, creepy, handsome men with spooky shadow powers haven't all been my weakness since I was wee lass, stop looking at me like that. I'm not thinking at all about the broken legacy this man left behind, about how he was once a great hero, renowned and loved by all, how he loved his daughter above all things, only to lose her and what little he had in an endless war and become a shell of that great hero, how he lost himself to despair, became corrupted by the very shadows he vowed to destroy, proceeded to lay waste to his people, destroyed entire Constellations, and became the monster in the dark children fear. I'm not thinking at all about how this man became nothing more than a shadow himself, forced to prey on the fears of children who no longer believe in him in an ever changing world. I'm not frothing at the mouth that this same man found the only other person in existence who has felt even an inkling of his same loneliness, had pinned all his hopes for companionship on that being, only to be turned away, forced back into his dark and lonely hole, into the dark and away from a light he can never touch. What do you mean I'm clawing at the walls? I have no idea what you're talking about.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Jack Frost, and a bit of Nightlight thrown in for some flavor.

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

Sandy, of course. The idea that Pitch is the only one who can community clearly and fluently with Sandy makes me laugh every time and is one of my favorite HCs to come out of this fandom.

My unpopular opinion about this character:

Once again, it all comes back to characterization. Authors tend to make him too nice or too thoughtful. He's too neutral or too tame. I like my bad guys to be Bad Guys. Don't neuter him just so you can have a fluffy redemption thru sex. This man has had nothing to claim as his own for millenia. He's gonna be possessive and all kinds of red flags about it.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

I wish we got to see more of Pitch's power in the movie. I would have loved to see the spooky, shadowy shapeshifter from the concept art. I would have loved to see him be an actual nightmarish threat, with shadows and fearlings, sailing the skies on his Nightmare Galleon. I wish we could have gotten a hint of the terrifying Nightmare King we glimpse in the books and the fear his very presence strikes in those around him. It would have been an entirely different movie.

my OTP:

Blackice, duh

my cross over ship:

None

a headcanon fact:

Pitch spied on Jack over the course of the boy's 300 years. He sensed his fear when he died. He wanted to be there when he rose out of the lake, but the Moon's light prevented him from reaching out to Jack. Instead, he settled for being a stalker creep, feeding on Jack's fears when both of them were in Burgess. He never met Jack personally, but he watched him. He thought it a kindness to leave Jack out of the fight with the Guardians, but since Jack was playing favorites, Pitch decided he was fair game to try swaying to his side, especially since they had so much in common.

[abuddyforeveryseason]

This is the Buddy for March 10th. There's a lot of smoke there. At first I was toying with making the image even taller, like ten times the size, so that most of it was covered in smoke, but decided to go with this one. A real coin toss, really.

On an unrelated point, I heard about Akira Toriyama's death yesterday. Pretty sad, considering he was still comparatively young (68) and active. I was a huge Chrono Trigger fan when I was young, and I've played that game through the end several times. Best RPG of its generation.

I also liked Dragon Ball, although not as much, and that love kind of diminshed with age. Still, I've got a lot of nostalgia for the Z era sagas, with Freeza and Cell. And I read the manga, the early years with kid Goku were pretty interesting, too.

Unfortunately, after the Boo saga the franchise kind of went off-rails. Wasn't into the anime-only GT series, not to mention the games or the disastrous movie. The Super series wasn't as bad, but still doesn't compare to the original.

Still, I have real fond memories of the story. It's an interesting and unique story - or at least it would be if it wasn't so incredibly popular it became ingrained into everyone's mind and imitated to such an extent. I'm reading Osamu Tezuka's Boku no Son Goku, which was also inspired by Journey to the West, and this time I can say Tezuka's work wasn't the superior adaptation. Of course, you have to consider the context...

It's hard to explain a lot about Dragon Ball, especially to people who aren't fans. It started out as a comedic parody of a XVIth century novel, but then it turned into a martial arts story, and then it became serious? And the main character grew up, dozens of minor characters piled up in the background... and all of that before the twist that started the story I'm familiar with - Goku's an alien?

Toriyama's art made the story a lot more pleasant, too. The design of vehicles, aliens, monsters and robots was top notch, and what made me enjoy the story much more than the fight scenes and associated cliches. Another interesting thing was Toriyama's use of twists which led the stories into a different direction when compared to other shonen manga, which often adhered religiously to the build-up to stronger enemies in sucession.

But that's also where the story issues lie. The first is the bloated cast of characters being humiliated so Goku could steal the spotlight. The biggest victim there is Yamcha, but, really, everyone who was beaten by Goku then turned good was kind of cannon fodder. That started as a twist, too - so this evil guy Goku had so much trouble with got beaten so easily by the new villain? Damn. And since new villains kept being introduced, each one being so much stronger than the last, it was hard to make sense of how strong the characters were (and any realism was already out the window thanks to all the plot devices keeping the characters alive and strong enough to fight).

It's funny by the end of the story - or even, by the end of the kid Goku era already - the dragon balls were also relegated to the background. I don't like a lot of the cliches of the series, the plot devices used to make characters stronger with no interesting consequences, the convoluted use of elements of past stories, annoying character behaviors... but, still, you have to respect a guy who managed to start out with such a weird little comedy with its goofy looking vehicles and talking dinosaurs, and turn it into a behemoth so popular, people can have such strong feelings about it.

RIP, Akira Toriyama.

[phoenixkaptain]

Do you mind if I ask your top 10 favorite characters (can be male or female) from all of the media that you loved (can be anime/manga, books, movies or tv series)? And why do you love them? Sorry if you've answered this question before.....Thanks...

I think I have answered this question before, but I don’t mind because I like talking about ny favourite characters!

(And my favourite characters change hourly, so-)

I can’t rank them, I love them all equally, but my current favourites:

1. Luo Binghe from Scum Villain Self-Saving System. I can’t help it. Fanon likes to paint him as comical, at times, but I love how competent he is! He just… would like to be a housewife. Preferably his Shizun’s housewife… and, he is, as Shen Qingqiu says himself, the type of person to smile to your fave while sliding a knife in your back and I love that for him

2. Quan Yizhen from Heaven Official’s Blessing. He throws a bed at Pei Ming. He’s obsessed with his shixiong and beats up his own followers for badmouthing him. He’s smart enough to realize that everyone thinks he’s stupid, therefore he can use obvious tricks because nobody thinks he can fool them. There’s a scene where Xie Lian and Quan Yizhen both praise something for being beautiful (I think it was the Brocade Immortal’s fighting) and even Ling Wen is like “You know I’m trying to kill you right?” He’s great :)

3. Tim Drake from DC Comics. The third Robin, the one most similar to Batman, the world second greatest detective. Can sneak up on Superman and managed to stalk Batman. Was going through a lot and tried to clone his best friend. The quintessential perfectionist. I headcanon that he plans his dates out on corkboards and no one will convince me otherwise. Also, his relationship with Ra’s Al Ghul in his Red Robin run was comedy gold.

4. Artemis Fowl from the books of the same name (I’ve never seen the movie and like to pretend it doesn’t exist). Fakes his own death multiple times and steals gold from fairies and is altogether a criminal mastermind. There’s a scene in the first book where Holly Short (the other main character) tells him to stay put and she’ll bring him back a lollipop (mocking him). She leaves and he mutters “But I don’t like lollipops.” Also gets made fun of for having a girly name, which I can relate to since I was made fun of for having a masculine name.

5. Shen Qiao from Thousand Autumns. God, he’s just the best. He is absolutely infuriating. He has the patience of ten thousand men. Began the book waiting for him to snap, then realized that I didn’t want him to lose his temper because that would make Shen Qiao sad and Shen Qiao deserves all the happiness in the world. His martial brother pushed him off of a fucking mountain. Yan Wushi names a deer after him. Have you ever seen baby Shen Qiao? Qiao-er?? The cutest little fella, the sweetest bean, has never done anything wrong in his life.

6. Marth from the Fire Emblem series. There’s a scene in the remake of the first game where, after you recruit one of the characters during a fight, Marth can talk to him. The character is like “I understand if you don’t trust me.” Marth: “Why wouldn’t I trust you?” “I literally tried to kill you fifteen minutes ago.” Marth: “The past is in the past.” Marth is just the most polite boy. He was the first male character to be included in the FEH Bridal Event and he is… so cute…

7. Mara Jade from Star Wars. Specifically Mara Jade in the Thrawn trilogy. She is loyal to Karrde because he was nice to her. She wants to kill Luke so bad, but she can’t because if she doesn’t find out why he’s so weird before she kills him, she’ll never be at peace. Darth Vader’s coworker. “Who’s this “son of Vader” you keep mentioning?” -Mara Jade, while sitting next to the son of Vader they keep mentioning. Mirrors Anakin and I just love that for her (especially since he went good -> evil and she went evil -> good, they mirror each other babeyyy) She’s like “Are you sure you don’t want me to murder this creepy old guy?” The straightman in her and Luke’s relationship and it is so funny that the literal ex-Dark Jedi is the normal one.

8. Hiwatashi Nazuna from BNA. She is in love with Michiru. Anyone else: “Your agent is weird.” Nazuna: “Shut up you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Michiru: “Your agent is weird.” Nazuna: “You make a great point and I’m going to start distancing myself from him right away.” The trickiest trickster to ever trick trickers. She is willing to kill for Michiru and it’s honestly very relatable.

9. Kudou Shinichi from Detective Conan. The dumbest man alive. Also the most dramatic man alive. Obsessed with Sherlock Holmes and infodumps about him constantly. Is terrible at pretending to be a child, literally nobody is convinced, but Conan is so cute, how can they say no to him? Has the strongest moral compass of any character (aside from maybe Shen Qiao) and the world is lucky his moral compass is so strong, because if he decided to be evil, no one would be able to stop him. My favourite moments are the ones where innocent little Conan-kun smiles and says horribly dark things that even make the murderer scared. Absolutely terrifying, at seventeen and seven, good for him.

10. Tianlang-jun from Scum Villain Self-Saving System. I know it’s another character from Scum Villain, but hear me out. He is absolutely insane. He decides to destroy the world because everyone thought he wanted to. He barters with Su Xiyan over how attractive his face is. He asks Zhuzhi-lang if he thinks he’s ugly. He is a pure-hearted innocent maiden and also the most powerful character in the book. He only loses to Binghe because he was stuck under a mountain for over a decade, and his body is rejecting his demonic qi and falling apart. He makes a coffin look like a throne and is intimidating as fuck, then asks Shen Qingqiu to help him up and his arm pops off. And he just says “Dang. It happened again, Zhuzhi-lang.” My favourite red herring of all time, I just want to pat-pat his head.

These are the current ones. Shout-out to Yan Wushi from Thousand Autumns, who spends the entire novel fucking with Shen Qiao then has the terrible realization that he fell in love with Shen Qiao. Also, he made a very convincing woman. Also also, as I was looking through my notes on Thousand Autumns, I was reminded that he has the truly remarkable ability to ruin Shen Qiao’s reputation without even being present. Amazing! Second shout out to Bai Rong, also from Thousand Autumns, who gets a crush on Shen Qiao and offers to become his sugar daddy. A lot of characters try to seduce Shen Qiao, but Bai Rong was my favourite because she was just so… cute about it.

I like a lot of characters… Thank you for your ask :)

[unravelingthepages]

Better Than the Movies- My thoughts

Hi! After the sheer amount of reels and posts recommending this book, I just had to pick it up.

Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter is a young adult romance that follows protagonists Liz and Wes, and is written from Liz’s perspective. This read lives up to all its hype, and more. I loved it and definitely recommend it to you! It’s perfect for 13 year olds and above.

The Plot

Liz Buxbaum has always known that Wes Bennett was not boyfriend material. You would think that her next-door neighbor would be a prince candidate for her romantic comedy fantasies, but Wes has only proven himself to be a pain in the butt, ever since they were little. Wes was the kid who put a frog in her Barbie Dreamhouse, the monster who hid a lawn gnome’s severed head in her little homemade neighborhood book exchange. Flash forward ten years from the Great Gnome Decapitation. It’s Liz’s senior year, a time meant to be rife with milestones perfect for any big screen, and she needs Wes’s help. See, Liz’s forever crush, Michael, has just moved back to town, and—horribly, annoyingly—he’s hitting it off with Wes. Meaning that if Liz wants Michael to finally notice her, and hopefully be her prom date, she needs Wes. He’s her in. But as Liz and Wes scheme to get Liz her magical prom moment, she’s shocked to discover that she actually likes being around Wes. And as they continue to grow closer, she must reexamine everything she thought she knew about love—and rethink her own perception of what Happily Ever After should really look like.

Why you should read Better Than the Movies

Liz is frankly very lovable. She starts off as a character I didn’t like much, but as the story went on I found her more and more relatable and loved her character. Her character development was amazing and realistic. She’s a teenager after all- messy emotions, flaws and all. Its what makes her so relatable.

I loved that this book addressed the grief of losing a parent, finding it hard to accept a stepparent even they’re really great, and more. It made me tear up on more than one occasion, especially the dance at the end. And the fact that every chapter starts with a romcom quote? Cherry on the top.

I loved the author’s writing style. There’s pettiness and heartbreaking honesty and acceptance and of course, romance. Wholesome moments and sad ones. I actually teared up at one point.

Liz and Wes. They’re it. Their friendship was everything and I loved the enemies-to-grudging allies-to-friends-to-lovers thing they had. And the cute playlists?? The banter and jokes?? The rom-com references?? I finished the book in one read.

I also really loved how the “jocks” and “cool kids” mixed with Liz. It wasn’t the stereotypical ‘you don’t fit in’ therefore cue the bullying, but rather there were genuinely nice people. There were jokes, and fun, and awkwardness, but the last one was bound to be there lol.

This book is everything. A definite 5 stars.

If you’re planning on purchasing this read, please consider using the following amazon affiliate link to purchase it. It would be at no extra cost to you and would really help me out, thank you!

purchase this read: https://amzn.to/42p0Yu3

[aibari]

fic poetics: open up your door

for the bind of open up your door, I ended up making a little reference list with things I didn’t have the time or space to write into the author’s notes. I love liner notes! since the bind is only a physical copy, I wanted to put these up online somewhere.

references (alphabetical)

adrian. I think I gave Adrian the teenager the name because it starts with an A and I tend to start at the top of the alphabet and then not get farther when naming characters. I only remembered Adrian Mellon afterwards.

Teen Adrian is a trans guy – this was originally going to be more present in the story itself, but in the end I didn’t have enough words to really do it justice, so it’s just kind of a background thing about Adrian. I’m not sure if Richie realizes or not, beyond clocking him as lgbt in some way. In the future, they definitely have some sort of Conversation about it (and being queer in Derry). And then uhhh probably Richie and Eddie semi-adopt him, and any other queer kid in Derry they can find.

Anyway, I forgot about Adrian Mellon, and then suddenly I had a character who was not just a trans kid in Derry, a small town that has soaked in hate and small-mindedness since before its inception (up until ten years ago!), but also a kid who picked out his own name and he chose a name he shares with Adrian Mellon, a gay man who was killed a decade ago in the town where teen Adrian lives. And uh! That’s a lot! That is very very much of a something!

Initially, I thought about changing it.

But Derry (like a lot of places) is a town where, even ten years down the line, things aren’t always easy for queer kids. And somehow accidentally giving this kid the name Adrian became instrumental to his characterization for me – he’s taking this and making it his own, and fuck anyone who has a problem with it. (And if it’s sometimes harder to keep up that front than other times, well. He’s got some people to lean on. With Richie and Eddie, maybe soon he’ll have more.)

 brave as a noun. This is a title of an AJJ song – and like much of their work, the lyrics are violent and visceral. Their work generally circles around themes of mental illness, poverty, politics, and THE BODY OF IT ALL. Something about Brave as a Noun (like their later Body Terror Song) just reads very Eddie Kaspbrak to me:

I could go off the deep end I could kill all my best friends I could follow those stylish trends And God knows I could make amends But I've got an angry heart Filled with cancers and poppy tarts If this is how you folks make art it's fucking depressing And it's sad to know that we are not alone And it's sad to know that there's no honest way out I'm afraid to leave the house I'm as timid as a mouse I'm afraid if I go out I'll outwear my welcome I'm not a courageous man I don't have any big lasting plans I'm too cowardly to take a stand I want to keep my nose clean And it's sad to know that we're not alone in this And it's sad to know that there's no honest way out In this life we lead We could conquer everything If we could just get the brave to get out of bed in the morning

But also, that title is just too good to pass up.

 beaker’s dozen. This fake movie title was one of several suggested to me by @stravaganza on the Losers Club Bang server. Is it an Ocean’s Eleven rehash where all the players are anthropomorphized elements of the periodic table? Is it a comedy about a scientist who accidentally clones themself? You decide!

Other title suggestions include: Mind the Gap, Deer Me!, The Way There, Beeswax, and Baker’s Dozen.

 cups. This section title comes from a couple of different associations – Eddie is literally leaving cups around the place, but there’s also the Cups song (“you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone”). I was thinking a lot about the thing where you pour one out for the dead, too, but what actually happens here is a bit of an inversion of that – the dead pouring one in(to your cup). Anyway - what’s love if it isn’t making cups of something warm for someone you care about?

 derry air. So Londonderry Air is a really famous Irish piece of music that (among other things) has given the melody to songs like Danny Boy.

That’s not air as in oxygen, by the way – it’s air as in “songlike vocal or instrumental composition”. Also spelled ayre, or aria if you’re speaking Italian. (An aria in English is typically a vocal composition of the kind you’re most likely to find in an opera – La donna è mobile is a kind of clichéd example.)

Anyway, (London)derry Air and Danny Boy! I thought sneaking in the reference would be funny for wordplay reasons, and Danny Boy is overwrought and overdone to the point where it is a little bit hard for me to take it seriously. As it turns out, though, the lyrics work well with this idea of the interlinking of death and place:

Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling From glen to glen, and down the mountain side. The summer's gone, and all the roses falling, It's you, it's you must go and I must bide.

But come ye back when summer's in the meadow, Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow, It's I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow, Oh, Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so!

But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying, If I am dead, as dead I well may be, You'll come and find the place where I am lying, And kneel and say an Ave there for me. And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me, And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be, For you will bend and tell me that you love me, And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me!

 don’t you (forget about me). So I wrote two reverse bangs this year and both of them have the title of this song in them! It was released by Simple Minds in 1985 and plays over the iconic ending of The Breakfast Club, which was released the same year. I’m not personally huge on The Breakfast Club, but I DO think it makes a good combo with IT – these are 1980s misfits who come together and become friends despite the odds (of their social roles in TBC, and of Derry and Pennywise in IT). IT was published in 1986, so they’re originally products of the same time, too.

 ghost. Depending on the story, a ghost can be a lot of different things. Grief given physical form, a memory walking; unfinished business; wrath and vengeance animating a walking curse; rot; love; love (rotting); a person held together by connections to their loved ones; time out of joint and in the wrong place.

Eddie’s path back to being is love and care and connection, obviously, but the occasional vagueness of being is also very much an accidental long covid/fatigue illness metaphor. I had long covid fatigue for what felt like forever in the spring of 2022, and it’s just a really ghostly existence – like you are periodically slipping in and out of time and space. I kept feeling like I didn’t all the way exist, and I (kind of unintentionally) put a lot of that into Eddie when I wrote this. Ultimately, I think it works.

 good bones. “Good Bones” is a poem by Maggie Smith that has done a couple of rounds on tumblr at this point:

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

From Waxwing, 2016

 forget-me-not. Its scientific name, myosotis, comes from the Ancient Greek word for “mouse’s ear”. (This is the second time I have come across a scientific term that means “mouse” used for something that is definitely, absolutely not a mouse – the first is muscle, which comes from the Latin musculus, and means “little mouse”. Wild!) It’s a family! There are so many different types of forget-me-nots! For the sake of this story, though, it’s the emotional (and straightforward) theme of holding on to a loved one and not forgetting them that tied in too neatly with the idea of Richie being haunted by ghost Eddie for me not to make a big deal out of it. The vase of flowers in the picture really ended up unlocking the entire story for me a lot more than I had expected!

if you see something, say nothing (and drink to forget). A classic Welcome to Nightvale quote that is also, I think, a very in character sentiment for Richie.

inspirations, fanfic. This fic takes some inspiration from a Losers Club Big Bang fic from 2021, Nothing Dies in Derry (art by Cordlesshamilton, words by glorious_spoon), and the (as of now still unfinished) SMAU One Ring to Bind Us (@richiesring) – both stories about ghost Eddie (and Stan) trying to communicate with Richie (and Patty) through whatever means will work for them.

modern odyssey, the. Being gone for a very long time and coming back to the person you love (though Richie has less suitors in this one).

not exactly casper. He’s a bit too rude to be Casper, I think.

r+e. I just really wanted to get this in here somehow.

real/not real. So in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, this is a thing Katniss and Peeta do after Peeta’s (spoiler??) been thoroughly and relentlessly brainwashed, and struggles to keep hold of what’s real and what isn’t in the aftermath. This section title is a reference to that. For this fic, I guess what I want to pull in here is that there is something about a ghost that is also very malleable and ephemeral – a ghost is real and not real, in a sense, at the same time. Eddie’s occupying both positions at the same time, sometimes more on one side than the other.

section titles; capitalisation. I just love the idea of someone else’s point of view slowly breaking through, even if it doesn’t translate to the main parts of the text. The section titles in capital letters reflect Richie’s state of mind – often through referencing other things – and the ones that aren’t reflect Eddie’s. Well, mostly. I don’t think I’m a hundred percent consistent, but it’s fun to play around with.

there was a hole here. it’s gone now. A reference to a line that shows up in Silent Hill 2. The way it’s written out there is a bit more unsettling: “There was a HOLE here. It’s gone now.”

[kawaiifoxreviews]

A Review is a Powerful Thing, it Can Change Every Thing:

What in the world?

That's right. This fox reviews just about anything. Books are no exception here at KawaiiFoxReviews.

Hello friends, and welcome back. Today we're looking at a book called Voice by Zachariah Roth. These are my thoughts on the subject and why I think it's worth a read. Without spoiling too much, let's voice our discovery.

The Story: Voice is about this character who is strangely isn't named right away. Their gender isn't even specified until way later in the book. Although these things are still confirmed, I felt it was necessary to refrain myself from revealing that information as I am not sure if that is a potential spoiler or not. For now, we'll just call the main character MC. And since this story is about our mystery MC, it was fitting for the author to make this a first-person type of book.

Anyway, the story is this, the MC struggles to find themselves. Typical slice-of-life drama set in a college called Rose Academy. Is this bad? Not at all. I enjoyed the pacing, myself, but it may not jive well for some. However, for me, it became more and more interesting as it progressed.

With the slice-of-life attitude, the story actually meshed with a murder-mystery vibe as well...and comedy...and well...just a little bit of everything.

This fox likes this in a book/movie. For me, it gets boring when the main focus is strictly drama or continuous try-hard jokes or an all-romance diet. I must congratulate the author for trying and placing me on a roller-coaster of emotions.

Oh? In all this talking about this book as a book, I have yet to summarize a story for you guys. Well, my bad. Here it goes:

So, the MC has grown up with their whole entire life with no friends and no family. On top of that, nobody likes/loves this MC. A sadness I myself can relate to in the past. Being alone isn't fun, but, I have learned that it doesn't have to be that way and I'm doing better now because of that fact.

Sorry, my foxy friends, but I'm not trying to make this about me. My point behind this is that a relatable character is nice to have in a story, and it is a reminder that there are people in the world who suffer from this problem. As a fox-friendly reminder: YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

Anyway, with the MC facing this problem, they are met with this girl, whom they have named Voice. Okay, to be technical, Voice is actually a software in the shape of a human girl. Enter Sci-Fi genre. Told you this book had a little bit of everything.

So, what does this mean for our MC? Well, the two become friends. However, the catch is she is linked to all these murders that are currently happening in the story.

I enjoyed this concept, as it pertains to the technology of today, if not, for the future. With the rise of A.I., our safety may be more likely to be compromised. Think Skynet from the Terminator series. Of course, with the little miss Voice, she seems harmless. But, with a small group of students who seemed hell-bent on destroying her very existence, as well as the other forms of the relevant software...it isn't quite clear right away who to trust.

Before you jump to conclusions, consider this:

Is it Voice that needs to be trusted? I mean she must be, since she has befriended the MC. Well that's one way of looking at it. However, how do you know someone didn't just program a software to be so friendly?

What about those students? They seem to know a lot about all this. Also true. But, that doesn't exactly excuse them from being antagonist. All that knowledge could patiently lead to destruction or even self-destruction.

Either way, if you're into murder mystery, this book has you covered. I for one enjoyed it and implore you to read it when you get the chance. It's 324 pages long and 20 chapters. Roughly ten pages per chapter. A nice decent-sized book. You can find it on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I'll link you below.

If I had to compare this book to other existing franchises or genres, it seems heavily inspired by things like anime and Resident Evil. Basically, any show or game where people take down an organization. (Maybe that's why I enjoyed Voice as much as I did.)

Now, is this book perfect? No. Sometimes, although rare, I found myself finding little errors here and there. Not sure if they are written wrong or my brain is just having a hard time making sense of it. One point, I had to distinguish two different female characters from each other several times. However, I was able to figure it out as I progressed through the story. Again, that may be my brain not understanding.

But regardless, I understood the plot throughout. I had a few moments where I laughed, I was sad, I've even had a moment where I was like, "Wait, what the hell did I just read?" I like it weird, guys, not going to lie. I think it's safe to say, this book delivered.

With how this book ended, it wouldn't surprise me if it gets a sequel. Now, I'm not exactly basing this off the ending of the current book, but what had me was the build up to the end. There was a lot left unanswered and it's got me so super hyped up! Perhaps, we can share the hype once you pick up a copy for yourself. Wouldn't you agree?

One more thing, for discloser, keep in mind these are college students. Expect profanity. Pretty much all the characters use it, except for Voice. And then there's Neru (Nuh-rue). Oh boy, if you can tolerate Neru, then you should be fine. If I had to describe her in a foxy sense...there's just one way I can think of to say it...she's a female pervert. Let your imagination roll with that. ;)

I say these things because I don't have have a problem with them, personally, but I understand that some people might not take too kindly to such things. But this fox wanted to give you a heads up. I guess the profanity was placed considerably. Not once did I find myself overwhelmed with "F this" and "F that". That's always a blessing here at KawaiiFoxReviews.

Final Verdict: This was a beautiful find, fox friends. The story was very intriguing. The characters were unique and full of diversity. The emotional roller coaster-ride was acceptable and kept a firm grasp of my attention. In my opinion, to pass this book up and not allow yourself the pleasure of reading it, you would truly be missing out!

Thank you so much for sticking around till the end, friends. I hope this review finds you well. Before I go, I just want to thank the author, Zachariah Roth, for making such a fun read. I would also like to thank Barnes & Noble and Amazon for the distribution part. Hope to see you all in the next review. Until next time, stay safe. And stay foxy. ;)

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/voice-zachariah-roth/1136771558?ean=9781646280445

[healingagoddess]

In a world of our own

Request: Self care date night with ajak? - anon

Warnings: English is not my first language. Slightly NSFW.

Pairing: Ajak/F!Reader

Note: I'm sorry it took me so long to write this. I wasn’t feeling well. 

_ ✽ _

There is always work to do at Ajak’s homestead. There is always something to do – and she is a morning person. You like to help; so you always rise when she does. You love watching the sunrise with her as you both do your morning activities mounted on your horses. There is something breathtaking about the earth as it wakes up – having Ajak with you makes it even better. But today the sun won’t shine, instead a foggy and misty morning greets you as you both leave the stable. And there is a loud silence where you know you won’t be able to hear her even if you can.

“It’s cold this morning.” She murmurs from her horse.

“Just to think everything we have to do today.” You comment not complaining.

“Well, then… let’s… not do that.” She says never once losing her focus on the road.

You consider for a moment, it is almost the end of fall and there’s still some things you’d like to check before winter comes. Although, both of you prepare with anticipation and have everything organized, you still feel an obligation to do your duties.

“Um… I am not… sure.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just stay in bed for the rest of the day, and I’ll make sure everything is okay. It’ll rain later today anyways; I set everything for the farm in anticipation.” She is so tempting, and she does ease your worries. So, both of you put back on your pajamas and go back to bed once you arrive after putting the horses away.

It feels amazing to stay in bed; you don’t do it often. You sink completely into her putting your head on your pillow right on top of her head. You close your eyes for ten minutes and when you open them again it’s almost night time. You sigh in satisfaction still nestled in the warmth of the body glued to your side. Ajak proceeds to squeeze you between her arms for a few seconds. You get an urge to squeeze her back and shower her with kisses, but she has a strong hold on you.

“I’ll treat you today.” She states, you can hear the smile in her voice.

“Oh?” You ask, tapping her arms to let you go.

She lets go and accommodates on her side as she finally opens her eyes to look at you. You take this as an opportunity to attack her with your embrace, you immediately glue yourself to her side burying your face in between her chest. She chuckles and holds you close.

“I will treat you tonight. Stay in bed and I’ll make dinner.” She murmurs softly with her lips pressed against the top of your head, followed by several kisses.

You try to dig deeper between her chest, but unable, you nip it slightly.

“Okay, but can I help you?”

“But if you help me then I won’t treat you. Just relax in bed, it is cold out there”

“But I want to be with you.”

It is notorious that wherever Ajak goes; you follow. But this night she insists you stay in bed, and it takes a while for you to let go. You find it boring to be in bed without her, so you turn on the tv. You go through the menu and settle for a romantic comedy in a Christmas movie; however, it is so boring. You get out of bed and go find Ajak, you know she won’t like it, so you just peek through the entrance frame until she lets you stay. You make sad puppy sounds to let her know of your presence.

“Y/N.” She sighs before putting her hands on her hips.

You keep staring at her with big doe eyes, and she gives in.

You sit at the table as she makes dinner, and she looks so cute in her pajamas. She is so tiny but so powerful; you are obsessed. She finishes dinner which consists of pasta and garlic bread she made herself. You are practically dancing in your seat as you eat – food gives serotonin. She just stares at you behind her cup of coffee, her expression is always unreadable, but you know she is not judging.

After dinner you thank her by sitting on her lap – kissing her lips, neck, and cheek – whispering sweet nothings to her. And she sits there glowing with a smile on her face. There is nothing better than to be filled in her aura; it’s like she radiates cosmic energy.

You proceed to sit there as the rain begins to fall, and you are both comfortable just being in each other arms. The way she grabs your hips and plants neck kisses, returning your sweet nothings. She is gentle, but she leads every touch and holds so much power over you. You wonder what she is like around her… eternal friends. Sometime during the night you decide to move to the couch to watch tv – where you both lay down as she throws a blanket over your bodies. You, being the big spoon, and her, being the little spoon. You like being the big spoon because you get to kiss her more, and you can be touchy.

You opt to watch any romantic movie on TV, so you end up watching some romantic Christmas movie. But you barely watched any of it because you got distracted; one, when Ajak went to make some hot cocoa; two, when you were kissing her back, shoulders, and neck; three, when you got horny after that and she had to take you there. So, you only got to watch the ending which made you emotional. Now, she has to literally drag you to the bathroom.

“Would you still love me even if I lose the Christmas spirit?” You ask once both of you are settled in the bathtub.

She is behind you playing with your hair, and replies just to reassure you. “Yes.”

“Would you still love me even if I ruin Christmas?”

“Yes.”

“But, would you still love me if I knock down the Christmas tree?

Sigh. “Yes.”

“But even if I turn into the Grinch?”

Concerned “… yes.”

You finally relax and allow yourself to rest on her front. You turn your head slightly to rest it on her cheek bringing a hand up to caress her face as you stare at nothing. You just enjoy her company, and don’t freak out when the lights go out. The candles she had in case that happened make it seem romantic, but its pale light won’t light up the room. You smile to yourself, and you take this opportunity to rely on your other senses and lean back your head on her shoulder. You take a deep breath, and suddenly; you hear her breathing and the thunder of her heart; you hear her moving in the water, and tapping the bathtub. You can feel her too, how she slips and presses against your body. You turn your head to the crook of her neck; the smell of roses invades your nose. You give her wet and hot kisses. And she hums as she closes her eyes and throws her head back giving you more access. So, you return the favor from before and take her right there.

By bed time you are awfully satisfied by the amazing day you had with Ajak; it felt like a date. And all throughout the night she continued to massage your back, your shoulders, and your legs before falling asleep. You sure love spending time with Ajak like this, having her all for yourself and just relaxing in each other’s company. You swear to have more date nights like this.

[ariel-seagull-wings]

TOP 12 BEASTS (FROM BEAUTY AND THE BEAST)

@sunlit-music​ @princesssarisa​ @superkingofpriderock​ @mademoiselle-princesse​ @draculashaxanbride​ @amalthea9​ @theancientvaleofsoulmaking​ @astrangechoiceoffavourites​

The sequel came! A ranking dedicated to my favorite fairy tale prince, to who’s anger, antissocial behaviour, shyness, awkwardness and desire for love and understanding i always related to as a child.

12º The version from Britannica’s Tales Around The World (1990)

In this direct-to-video animated educational series presented by Pat Morita, the gargoyle inspired Beast appears wild, specially because is one of the few versions that doesn’t wear clothes, but overall is the most sad and fragile encarnation, and that frailness is conveyed trough his raspy voice. I just want to comfort this ugly cute puppy so much...

11º Vincent Cassel as the Beast in Christophe Ganz’s La Belle et La Bête (2014)

Once there was a Prince who was happily married to a beautifull woman. One day, she promissed to give him a son to be the heir of his lands, as long as he stoped obsessing in hunting a Golden Deer. He promissed, but his pride, stuborness and vanity was stronger, and he didn’t kept that promisse, ending up killing his beloved wife, who was a forest nymph that tooked the form of the Golden Girl. As punishment, he must live as a Beast to atone for his wifes’s death, and find someone that will help live a cleaned life, happy and free of any guilty.

10º Xavier Rouillon as Azor in Zémire et Azor (2014)

He kind of tries to act wild as a façade, but really, he is still a fragile hearted, sensitive Prince, who just a loving hand to comfort him.

09º George C. Scott as the Beast in Beauty and the Beast (1976)

A performance that was nominated for the Emmy Award of Outstanding Leading Actor in a Special Program - Drama or Comedy, and rightfully so. This is the most explosive encarnation of the character put in front of a camera: Scott’s Beasts has moments of talking calmly, specially when he offers to tell the tragic story of the death of a unicorn to Trish Van Devere’s (his real life wife) Beauty. But most of the time he is awkward and bursts into anger, to later mourn in deep remorse. In real life, George C. Scott fought for most of his life with his alcoholism and his explosive temper that kept people away in fear of him, and i cannot help but see this struggle reflected in his portrayal of the Beast, wich makes me more touched by it.

08º Mikhail Fyodorovich Astangov/Tim Curry in Soyuzmultifilm’s Alenkiy Tsvetochek (1952)

The cutest, most adorkable Beast ever. His sad voice and his big puppy eyes are simply sweet.

07º Aleksandr Abdulov as the Forest Spirit in Irina Povolotskaya’s Alenkiy Tsvetochek (1977)

A Forest Spirit who camouflages his body to take the form of surroundings, be they rocks, leafs or wood, with only his eyes remaning human. At first, his presence feels unsetling, but slowly he becomes a presence that makes us feel confortable and safe.

06º Mark Damon as Duke Eduardo in Edward L. Cahn’s Beauty and the Beast (1962)

Cursed as a child to become a Beast every night in the moment he started to rule his Dukedom/Principality, Don Eduardo searches to reconcile his duties as a ruler with his search to be fully human, all the while his uncle Bruno plots to take the dukedom from him. Interestingly only his appearance become animal like, but his mind keeps being human, what is a very refreshing aproache to the character.

05º Jean Marais as the Beast in Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et La Bête (1946)

The most iconic and influential encarnation. To quote Megan Kearney, Marais’s mysteryous Beast is more of a “cipher for the unconscious than a fully fleshed out character, but that makes sense in the dreamy, surrealist world of this film”. Troughtout the movie he acts like a very controlled aristocrat, but later we see how he tries to repress his beastly instincts, and how broken, tortured and vulnerable he is inside. 

04º Gregory Hines as Koro in Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales For Every Child (1995)

One of the first encarnations that is not brooding, but instead, while acting stressed at the begginging of the cartoon, is overall a funny awkward dorky, who sings an excited song talking about his desire for Beauty to love him for who he is. I want his plushy.

03º Argus from Megan Kearney’s Beauty and The Beast Webcomic (2012-17)

The outcast bastard son of a nobleman, who learned to use magic in the hopes of becoming powerfull, but in reality created a lonely prison for himself. His only comforts are the studies of botanics and herbology, and Beauty’s friendship. Argus’s arc involves letting go of pride, and learning to open his feelings, and accept the helping hand of others.

02º Raymond Benson as The Beast/Prince Adam in Disney’s Beauty and The Beast (1991)

A hibrid of buffalo, boar, wolf, lion and gorilla with bright human eyes, who hopes to have his humanity seen by others, but must give the first step and see that humanity in himself, because after ten years of being cursed by a sorceress whose old appearance he judged and to who he refused shelter, he sees himself as only a monster. Disney’s Beast is one of the first characters i remember at first fearing as a villain, to later cheer for as my heroe.

And now, the moment everyone is waiting for. My Number One Beast portrayal is...

01º Vlastimil Harapes as The Beast in Panna a Netvor (1978)

With a design that is a mix between vulture and bird of prey, this Beast lives isolated in the middle of old ruins of a once rich palace. He is fusing himself to those ruins, alone for so long that now his mind talks to him, pushing him to become more and more wild, he even hunts humans and animals to drink their blood to survive, making him grow repulsed of himself. When the beautifull and sweet Julie comes to live in his palace, Harapes’s Beast feels divided between loving her, or killing her to drink her blood like he did with many other people before. He has been in the Beast form for so long, that he feels powerfull and safe in it, so he is afrayed that someone will come close to break his enchantment. That version of the story notoriouslly has no external character to be a villain: the antagonistic force is the Beast’s own mind. Villain and hero, scary and simpathetic, powerfull and vulnerable: Harapes’s Beast is all of those things. And that is why he is my Number One portrayal of The Beast.

HONORABLE MENTION: Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics (1989)

[cha-melodius]

2021 Fic Year in Review

This is based partly off a year-in-review post I did last year and another one that floated across my dash recently. Feel free you grab it if you want to do your own review!

AO3 Username: chamel  My Page: Link Fandoms: The Man from UNCLE (movie), Loki/MCU, The Mandalorian Total Number Of Completed Works/Word Count This Year: 16 works, 247k words Of All Time: 51 works, 653k words

Most Popular One Shot (by kudos): (Does the first work in a series count as a one-shot? What if you intended it to be a one-shot and then accidentally wrote a series around it? I counted it like that last year, but idk, lol.) This Year & All Time: What Makes A Good Man (Loki, Loki/Mobius, T, 8.5k words)

Most Popular Completed Multi-Chapter (by kudos): This Year: Another First Kiss (TMFU, Illya/Napoleon, M, 11k words) Of All Time: Do You Promise Not to Tell? (The Mandalorian, Cara/Din, E, 87.7k words)

More reflections and such below the cut!

Looking Back, Did You Write More Fic Than You Thought You Would This Year, Less, Or About What You’d Expected? Hmmm, I don’t know that I had expectations going into the year, really. I guess less, though, because I wrote less than I did in 2020 even though it FELT like I wrote a lot.

What’s Your Own Favorite Story Of The Year? Said it before, I’ll say it again (and again): Love is a Losing Game. I feel like it has the best narrative arc and is the most fully realized work of fiction I’ve ever done. I just love it so so much.

Do You Have Any Writing Goals For The New Year? Write more? 😅 Idk actually, maybe try to produce more one-shots and fics under 15k words. I do enjoy writing the long fics but sometimes I feel overwhelmed by them.

Did You Take Any Writing Risks This Year? I guess jumping into a new fandom counts. It’s always a bit nerve wracking to hit post in a new fandom, especially one in which there is a lot of content being produced (at the time, at least). But I’ve been overwhelmed by the positive response to my stories!

Story Of Mine Most Under-Appreciated By The Universe, In My Opinion Probably Enough of a Natural Disaster for Me. I don’t know why that had a lackluster performance. Also I have been surprised that You, or Your Memory hasn’t found a lot of traction.

Most Fun Story To Write The Makings of a Perfect Christmastime (writing a screwball comedy is too much fun), followed closely by Here It Goes Again (because I love time loops)

Biggest Disappointment Honestly, it’s been a bit sad that the Lokius fandom started SO strong and faded SO fast. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the people who are still active are AMAZING, and I am so so grateful for the response to the Good Man series and how engaged everyone is, but for a fandom who was in tumblr’s top ten, the hits and kudos numbers have definitely fallen off dramatically from where we started.

Biggest Surprise That said, the response to What Makes A Good Man when I published it was overwhelming in the best way, and the sheer number of people who are still into my crazy AU was unexpected by amazing. Thank you to all of you who are still reading along and letting me know your theories and yelling at me for angsty chapters. You make it all worth it!

Coming Soon/Planned

Sequel to You Must Be A Christmas Tree (Napollya)

Probation AU for my MTH winners (Lokius)

Chess Olympiad sequel to Love is a Losing Game (Napollya)

GBBO AU (Lokius)

Art thief-restorer/gallery owner AU (Napollya)

ISS AU (Napollya)

Westworld AU (Lokius)

Void time loop (Lokius

5+1 of Illya getting hot and bothered over Napoleon

Post-UNCLE reunion fic (Napollya)

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #526

Top Ten Bruce Willis Movies

I’ve done a bit of a re-jig, as is my wont, because of this week’s very sad news that the legendary Bruce Willis is retiring from acting following a diagnosis of aphasia. Rumours have swirled for a while now that Willis wasn’t really well, fuelled by the disappointing career decisions he seemed to have made over the last few years (and exacerbated by people such as the Razzies crowd cruelly sticking the knife in). As such, to celebrate a terrific talent and one of my favourite movie stars, I’m bringing forward a list I’d had prepared for a while: my favourite Bruce Willis movies.

(As an aside, I’m not really sure why, in the decade I’ve been doing these lists, it didn’t occur to me to do more “favourite films by so-and-so” type lists; expect more of these over the next year or two)

Anyway, where to start? Willis burst through in the late eighties, of course, and in a way served as a riposte to the testosterone-soaked excesses of that decade’s action movies. Right from the off he was an “ordinary guy”, an everyman movie star; not the musclebound behemoths or kung-fu wizards the last ten years had established as supreme. He outsmarted the bad guys as well as out-punched them, and he did it all with a self-deprecating wit and charisma that, quite frankly, was in short supply elsewhere (despite Arnold in particular being very funny, you have to admit). In a way, you could argue that the Die Hard template of hilarious banter interjected with thrilling action paved the way for the style and tone of the MCU, and the quip-heavy movies that follow in its wake. Basically, the guy was a star from the get-go.

Another thing he had in his favour is that he could really act; like, properly act, Academy Award-nomination act. He could do serious dramatic turns, outright comedies, and – of course – action movies. He trousered a very impressive payday for voicing a baby in the surprisingly successful Look Who’s Talking movies (making Pulp Fiction something of a Talking reunion with co-star John Travolta). This meant that Willis would frequently crop up in interesting films, quirky things, things that I guess he just fancied doing because he liked the material or the director; North, for instance, or even The Sixth Sense, which is a bit of a left-field choice on paper. And he did some frankly hilariouscameos: The Player, Ocean’s Twelve (a Player reunion!), and Loaded Weapon 1 (making Pulp Fiction a Loaded Weapon 1 reunion?! Okay, I’m stretching it now).

Anyway, Bruce Willis, for all his faults (and it sounds as if he may have not always been the easiest guy to work with, even thirty years ago), is a good actor and a fantastic movie star. And what we have here is simply my favourite of his movies. I’m not just looking for best performance, but how good Willis is in them factors heavily into the ranking. I feel I’ve got a good overview of his career, having seen most of his really big or important films; although there are a couple of slightly quirkier things I wish I’d seen, like Last Man Standing or 16 Blocks. And I know The Siege was very good, but it’s ages since I saw it. And then there’s The Hawk.

I really wanted to see Hudson Hawk. Everything about it appealed to me. But our local video shop had one copy, and every time we rented it – and I made my dad rent it about three times – it just would not work in our VCR. I don’t know why; the bloke in the shop said it was fine. So the mystery of the film grew, especially when I read about it in Empire; this magnificent flop, this story of a singing thief and some sort of Da Vinci gubbins. The movie was a behemoth, a giant that ran away from everybody; I even read about Richard E. Grant and Sandra Bernhard’s bemused on-set anecdotes. And then when I finally saw it, it was… meh? I honestly just remember it being okay. That, all the way through, it was a totally perfunctory action movie, but then the last act was all over the place. Two stars? However, I do know it has a cult following, and it sounds like something that I would – should – find hilarious. So I really must seek it out and watch it again. But that’s why it’s not here. I basically don’t remember.

But the rest of these I do, and they’re all great. So cheers, Bruce. Hope you get to go out to the coast now, and have a few laughs.

Die Hard(1988): yes, I know, it’s obvious, but it’s also perfection. Such a terrific script, no moment wasted; the motivations and machinations of everything make perfect sense, there’s a rhythm to the whole thing, a symphonic escalation of humour and threat and chaos. It’s funny as hell, it’s got a great cast, and there at the centre is the thing that makes it all work: Willis, a sardonic smartass, a one-man wisecracking army, sneaking and shooting his way around, outthinking the enemy, the film a terse and tense battle of wits between his John McLane and Alan Rickman’s immortal Hans Gruber. Christ on a bike it’s incredible. Best Christmas film of all time, too.

Pulp Fiction(1994): speaking of good scripts, here’s Willis really stretching himself, getting under the skin of a much more serious character. Butch is single-minded, determined, a man on a mission; but as well as being a tough old geezer he’s also tender, as his scenes with girlfriend Fabienne attest. Again there’s a ramping up of tension, his segment swerving left and right, until it climaxes (er, poor choice of words) in that unforgettable moment in the back room of a pawn shop. And, of course, “Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead.”

The Sixth Sense(1999): again we see another shade of Willis, using that tough exterior here as armour, protecting a soft and very damaged core as he plays a man unmoored with guilt and grief, desperate to help this one little boy in a last-ditch attempt at atonement. Much is made of the film’s twist and its ingenuous construction, but at its core is a very sweet relationship between Willis’ psychiatrist and Haley Joel Osment’s haunted kid.

12 Monkeys(1996): the first of two sublime and trippy time travel capers on this list, Willis is again a character unshackled, his trips through time giving him an off-kilter vibe, but still he manages to be the rock at the centre of a decidedly complex narrative. His performance not only gives the film a relatable throughline as we’re shifted back and forth in time and space, but also a sweet and tender human heart.

Looper (2012): another loopy (ho-ho) time travel yarn, this one has Willis essentially playing the grizzled mentor, the crim out for one last score, in a buddy movie with his younger self, played here with effervescent vigour (and not-entirely-convincing prosthetics) by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. There’s a lot going on, temporally, but at its core it’s a rollicking action film with a great double act at its centre.

The Last Boy Scout(1991): speaking of great double acts, Willis here teams up with Damon Wayans in one of those films that’s kinda underrated and underseen compared to some of his other actioners. This one crackles with the electricity of Shane Black’s knowing, arch script, a grungy nineties update of common noir tropes, Willis the dishevelled private dick teaming up with a fiery youngster to solve a case. Willis is just terrific delivering pithy put-downs and sweary, hard-bitten dialogue, as well as dispensing swift, brutal violence against the bad guys. Always wished they’d made a sequel.

Unbreakable (2000): a sly and subversive unpeeling of superhero tropes, it’s a shame this movie had to get made before mainstream audiences really understood the rhythms of the genre this was homaging. Willis is again a softer, introverted character, as in his other film with M. Night Shyamalan; here he’s a man struggling to reconcile his apparent superpower with his ordinary life. The suspense builds, we constantly question what we’re seeing, and in Samuel L. Jackson’s Mr. Glass (hey, it’s a Loaded Weapon 1/Pulp Fiction/Die Hard with a Vengeance reunion!), Willis is given a great foil, a loquacious scenery-chewer to go up against his soft-spoken reluctant hero.

The Fifth Element(1997): in a lot of ways, Willis’ Korben Dallas is a kind of generic action hero here; playing very much to type, he’s a sarcastic loudmouth who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, but who can kick serious ass when called upon. But in among the insane visuals and truly bonkers trappings of this sci-fi world, such common ground is necessary, and Willis is a humanising core. He’s also very sweet, giving us a softly played out love story with Milla Jovovich’s Leeloo.

Death Becomes Her(1991): Bruce Willis is a very funny man; he can do comedy really, really well. And once again he is here playing against type, cast as a put-open and homely husband less than five years after he broke through with Die Hard. Most of his time in the film is spent recoiling at the antics of his co-stars, boggling at the special effects that blow holes through Goldie Hawn and twist the head off Meryl Streep. But he’s adept at the physical comedy, too, generating a lot of laughs, and his sympathetic sadsack gives the film someone to root for amidst the excess.

Armageddon (1998): really this is a Michael Bay joint, his trademark extravagance very much on display, the comparatively muted tone of The Rock jettisoned for a film in which we’re introduced to Willis chasing Ben Affleck round an oil rig with a shotgun. It’s that kind of film, and Willis’ Harry Stamper is that kind of hero. I mean, essentially, he’s a dick, and much about the film is excessive, loud, and aggressive. But it remains, at it’s centre, just supremely fun, and it's tongue is just enough in its cheek for it to still work. We get bollock-brained arsehole Affleck, playing a kind of proto-Willis, all mouth but not yet quite got the trousers; we get Steve Buscemi going bonkers in space; we get Jason Isaacs waxing lyrical about ketchup bottles; we get an awful lot of over-earnest angst and people looking longingly at peach-hued horizons. And we do get, to be fair, some serious action, propulsive visuals, and Willis just being flat-out excellent in the overwrought finale. Yes, it’s hokum, but it’s fantastichokum.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, I decided not to include sequels, which is why Die Hard with a Vengeance isn’t on here. Is it better than Armageddon? Unquestionably, but there are fewer dodgy Tony Blair impersonators, so take your pick.

[chiseler]

Larger Than Life

In 1927, Albert Bertanzetti and his three-year-old son, William, were taking a stroll when they stopped to join a small crowd watching a film being shot on the streets of Los Angeles. During a break in the shoot, Albert suggested his son go show the director, Jules White, his little trick. So William toddled over to White and tugged on his pant leg. When he had White’s attention, William flipped over, went into a headstand and began spinning in circles. White was so taken with the trick he gave the young Bertanzetti a small uncredited role in the two-reel short, Wedded Blisters. Afterward, William earned a regular role in the popular Mickey McGuire series of shorts, where he played Mickey Rooney’s younger brother Billy. Taking prevailing anti-Italian sentiments into consideration, in the credits he was cited as “Billy Barty.”

Barty had been born in Millsboro, Pennsylvania in 1924, but when it was determined he had hay fever, Albert decided to move the family West, to the dry, clean air of Hollywood. Depending on how you look at it, hay fever was the least of Barty’s problems. Or maybe not, given how things worked out.

Apart from hay fever, Barty had also been born with cartilage–hair hypoplasia, a form of dwarfism. Being extremely small for his age at three (as an adult he stood three-foot-nine), when it came to early film roles he was almost exclusively relegated to playing diaper clad infants. It was a director’s dream—having an infant on set who could not only take direction, but could walk, run, talk and do tricks as well. As a result, along with the Mickey McGuire shorts, he played infants in everything from the all-star live action adaptation of Alice in Wonderland (1933) to Golddiggers of 1933 (1933) to Bride of Frankenstein (1935). In fact Barty, tiny as he was, would play diaper-clad infants until he hit puberty.

Over a career that would span seven decades, along with infants, Barty would play his share of elves, leprechauns, imps, Hobbits, trolls, assorted other fairy tale and fantasy characters, clowns, court jesters, pygmies, sideshow performers and mad scientist assistants. Ironically, for having appeared in over two hundred films and television shows, Barty did not appear in the three touchstones of American Dwarf-centric cinema: Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932), Sam Newfield’s The Terror of Tiny Town (1938), or Mervin LeRoy’s The Wizard of Oz (1939). No, although he would appear in the behind-the-scenes comedy Under the Rainbow (1981), contrary to the general assumption, Billy Barty was never an original Munchkin. There are reasons for this.

In 1932 when Browning was working on Freaks, Barty was only eight, he was not a professional carnival freak, and he was too busy with the Mickey McGuire shorts. And after the shorts’ seven-year run ended in 1934—two years before casting began on Tiny Town or The Wizard of Oz—Albert Bertanzetti, recognizing talent in all of his children, pulled Billy out of the movies and sent the whole family on the vaudeville circuit.

Now, 1935 was hardly the most opportune time to try and break into vaudeville. As an entertainment form it had been on life support for a decade already, with theaters either closing down or becoming movie palaces with performances, almost as a sad afterthought, taking place after that evening’s double feature had ended. Those performers who could were trying to break into pictures, and those who couldn’t were vanishing without a trace. Now here was Barty, who’d been working regularly in films for nearly ten years, trying to break into vaudeville. Nevertheless, Billy and Sisters, as they were touted, marched on, with a musical act featuring Barty’s sister Evelyn on piano and accordion, his other sister Dede playing violin, and Barty himself on drums. They all sang and danced a little, and the adolescent Barty told jokes and did impressions. In his later years he remembered the time fondly, mostly because it gave him a chance at that early age to see much of North America.

In 1942 Barty enrolled in college in Los Angeles and majored in journalism, hoping to become a sportswriter. While there, he joined the football and basketball teams, where he was both a novelty and a ringer. He also played second base on a semi-professional baseball team for a spell, where by his own account he was walked forty-five times.

Instead of pursuing work as a sports columnist after graduation, he returned to show business. Later he was quoted as saying, “You don’t see any little people doing newscasts, you don’t see any doing sports writing, you don’t see any sports announcing, you don’t see any coaches, but there are little people who are capable of doing these things, who have proven themselves.” You get the sense there was a little personal bitterness there, hinting he may have been forced back to Hollywood because that was the only place he could find work.

By 1947, now an adult with a gravelly but high-pitched voice, Barty sported a boxer’s face on a disproportionately large head. In many ways he resembled a diminutive William Demarest, and in many roles would adopt Demarest’s gruff but lovable demeanor. Shedding the diaper at last, he nevertheless picked up where he left off, playing assorted pygmies and leprechauns and elves, usually for cheap laughs.

In the early Fifties he became a regular member of Spike Jones musical comedy ensemble, The City Slickers, and was a big hit on Jones TV shows, where he became especially known for his slapstick, spot-on Liberace impression, and his ability to roll off his piano bench into a head spin, a trick which continued to serve him well.

Growing up, Barty said, he had no idea he was different, that his parents never told him there were things he couldn’t do because he was too short. By the time he was thirty, however, he’d come to learn the rest of the world was not quite as accepting as his parents. In 1957, Barty put out a call for little people from around the country to join him for a get together in Reno. Only twenty people showed up to that first convention, but it became the foundation for Little People of America, a support and advocacy group pushing for equitable treatment and civil rights for dwarfs, midgets and other people of unusually small stature. His aim was to ensure little people across the country would be treated fairly, would be able to get jobs, and would be granted the same accessibility rights afforded the normally-sized. It always struck me as a little odd that, for all his tireless efforts lobbying to normalize perceptions and treatment of little people throughout American culture, Barty, without much apparent gumption, would continue to take roles some might call demeaning, or at the very least helped cement those stereotypes he was fighting so hard to break. Perhaps to him it was simply paying work, it was showbiz, and he knew full well what his role was within that world. But the apparent ironic contrast between his activism and his work would lead to a public tiff in the Seventies with fellow small actor Hervé Villechaize of Fantasy Island. Barty, who’d appeared on the show, felt Villechaize was undercutting all his work when he said bluntly that people like him and Barty “were midgets, not actors.”

After the second annual Little People of America convention, Barty began courting Shirley Bolingbroke, a little person who had attended the meeting. When he proposed, however, she declined, telling him she was a devout Mormon, and so would never consider marrying anyone outside the faith. In 1962 Barty relented and converted to the church of Latter-day Saints, and the two were married. Although Mormon insiders and publicists have made a big deal of Barty’s enthusiastic True Believer status within LDS, it would be many years before he agreed to get baptized and receive full member status, and then only to participate in his son’s baptism.

Around the time of the marriage, as Barty was making regular TV appearances on various comedy and variety shows (including a recurring role on Peter Gunn), he also began hosting a weekday afternoon local kid’s show in Los Angeles which was called either Billy Barty’s Big Top or Billy Barty’s Big Show, depending on who’s doing the remembering. That stint may well have brought him to the attention of the sinister Sid and Marty Krofft, who in the late Sixties conscripted Barty to become a regular on several Krofft shows including H.R. Pufnstuf, The Bugaloos, and later Sigmund The Sea Monster, where he played the titular sea monster opposite Rip Taylor and aging child star Johnny Whittaker.

For all the low-brow antics and his uncredited roles in Elvis movies, it must be said Barty was always a compelling and charismatic screen presence, a, yes, larger than life character. In those few rare instances when he played roles that made no references at all to his height—like Abe Kusich, the shady drunken cockfighter in Day of the Locust or Ludwig, Rod Steiger’s sidekick in W.C. Fields and Me, he proved himself an electric onscreen presence who could dominate any scene.

(Just a quick aside, in 1980 Ralph Bakshi rotoscoped Barty to portray both Bilbo and Samwise Baggins in his animated version of Lord of the Rings. I wasn’t aware of that at the time, but thinking back on it now, the way both characters moved, it seems so obvious I was watching another Billy Barty performance.)

In 1975, around the same time he opened a Southern California roller rink he called “Billy Barty’s Roller Fantasy, Barty established The Billy Barty Foundation. As an adjunct to Little People of America, the Foundation aimed to provide practical assistance—money, adaptive equipment, etc.—to little people in need, particularly children. And after campaigning for George H.W. Bush during the 1988 presidential campaign, he sat on a panel of advisors working to hammer out the details of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which President Bush signed into law in 1990.

At the same time he was sitting on that panel, Barty was also producing, directing and starring in Short Ribs, a syndicated sketch comedy series featuring an all-dwarf cast including Patty Maloney, Jimmy Briscoe and Joe Gieb. The show, which was modeled after SCTV and SNL, only aired in the Los Angeles area and ran thirteen weeks. After the show went off the air, Barty was slapped with two lawsuits, one from the show’s co-producer William Winckler and one from the show’s co-writer Warren Taylor, both of whom claimed Barty owed them money. The suits ended up, inevitably, in small claims court. Barty lost both suits, and even though few people had ever heard of, let alone seen the show, news of Barty in small claims court was too much for reporters to resist, and the case received smirking national attention.

After the suits were settled, Barty continued to work, but a bit more sporadically. He had one-off roles on Frasier, Jack’s Place, and a few low-budget quickies, and seemed to be edging more into voice roles, providing characterizations for a Batman cartoon and The Rescuers Down Under, to name a couple. But he was still working until the end, when he ended up in the hospital with cardiopulmonary issues in late 2000. He died on December 23rd of that year at age 73.

In the late Eighties he told an interviewer, “I’ve never looked at acting as ‘Ahhh!’ and ‘Gee!’ I started in vaudeville when I was five and for me it was just walking on a stage and I’m gonna perform. Later on I was impressed by many things, like when I worked with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in Tough Guys. That was an ‘Ahhh!’ for me. When I look back, even today, I guess I can go ‘Ahhh!’ because I worked with Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell in Gold Diggers of 1933 when I was nine. Then they were just grown-ups on the stage. As I look back, I’m more awed now than I was when I was actually doing it.”

Those who knew and worked with Barty always recall what a joy it was, how kind and enthusiastic and funny he was, a real spark who could enliven even the most questionable production. I would never deny that. I’ve always loved and admired Barty, and have sat through countless godawful films and TV shows simply because he had a role, no matter how small.

That said, I do have to wonder if at the end, after all his decades of work fighting for the dignity of little people everywhere, he felt like a bit of a hypocrite for spending those same years and more cementing the stereotype in the American consciousness. I also wonder if he died still wishing he’d become a sportswriter for a Des Moines daily instead.

by Jim Knipfel

[pizzacentral]

2021 ANNUAL FAVORITES

Hello, and Happy New Year! Welcome to my favorite thing to do every year, my Annual Favorites List. Looking back, I was surprised at how full of a year 2021 was for new media. As much as it may have felt like a blur or a carry-over from 2020, there was so much that 2021 offered that set it distinctly apart as its own year. Let’s get into it!

As always, any media that was widely released in the calendar year 2021 (that I personally consumed within the calendar year 2021) was eligible. This was ranked on January 7th, 2022, and unchanged since then (no matter what I end up thinking about it in the future.) I gave myself an extra week this year because everything is arbitrary!

Favorite Films

I watched 72 new movies this year that were released in 2021, up from 44 in 2020. I did get to catch pretty much everything I was seriously excited for - the things still on my Watch List, aside from The Beatles: Get Back, are all films I was more mildly interested in. That’s never happened before.

It was difficult to cull my top fifteen favorites down to ten. This year had a lot to offer, from genre blockbusters and indie dramas to lush comedies and a shocking amount of musicals. For more of my thoughts on movies, and to hear in-depth reviews of these ten, listen to my podcast Cinema Bums!

10. A Quiet Place Part II 9. tick, tick... BOOM! 8. Licorice Pizza 7. Judas and the Black Messiah 6. The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun 5. The Harder They Fall 4. In the Heights 3. Drive My Car 2. West Side Story 1. The Green Knight

In 2022, I’m particularly looking forward to The Batman, Bullet Train, Nope, Don't Worry Darling, Mission: Impossible 7, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part One.)

Favorite Records

Music was the hardest to whittle down to a short list this year. Recording seems to be the artistic industry least affected by the pandemic (obviously live music is largely off the table,) so it makes sense that music delivered so much more than films, video games, or anything that needs shipping or a computer chip.

Some of the absolute best records I heard all year (Tyler, The Creator; Wet; Arooj Aftab) didn’t make the list simply because I felt I hadn’t taken the proper time to get to know them as fully as I’d like to yet. Other records, like Halsey, Kacey Musgraves, and both K.Flay’s, I adored half of and the other songs didn’t connect with me very much.

It’s not lost on me that two of my favorite records of the year are EPs instead of LPs (and two more were in my top fifteen.) I know that I valued brevity this year, especially spending less time in the car or on my own. Records that were able to deliver a lot in little time really worked for me. Here are my favorites:

10. HEIGHTS - WALK THE MOON 9. Juno - Remi Wolf 8. Different Kinds of Light - Jade Bird 7. In the Meantime - Alessia Cara 6. Blame Game - Beach Bunny 5. Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night - Bleachers 4. Counterparts - Mallory Merk 3. Happier Than Ever - Billie Eilish 2. SOUR - Olivia Rodrigo 1. The House is Burning - Isaiah Rashad

Favorite Songs

As always, any song featured on one of my Favorite Records was not eligible to be one of my Favorite Songs.

10. "Silk Chiffon" - MUNA with Phoebe Bridgers 9. "Please" - Jessie Ware 8. "honey" - Halsey 7. "Altar" - Kehlani 6. "Good Ones" - Charli XCX 5. "Last Day On Earth" - beabadoobee 4. "23" - Sam Hunt 3. "Get into It (Yuh)" - Doja Cat 2. "Little Things" - Big Thief 1. "Rainforest" - Noname

Favorite Video Games

I played much less Nintendo Switch this year than I did in 2020 (and much less than I wanted to.) A lot of what I did play were local multi-player games, which I love but don’t tend to rank here. The two games I played the most were Hades and FUSER, both excellent 2020 releases that I just caught up on this year. Of the five 2021 video games where I did roll credits (I loved the first half of Metroid Dread but it was too difficult for me to beat - yet,) here are my favorites: 

3. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury 2. Overboard! 1. Cruis'n Blast

Assorted Favorites

Apple and Onion (Season 2) (TV Show, on HBO Max)

Sex Education (Season 3) (TV Show, on Netflix)

The Exodus (Podcast)

The Review (Podcast)

The House of Gucci Trailer

The Kirby and the Forgotten Land Trailer

Normani and Cardi B's "Wild Side" Music Video

Chloë's "Have Mercy" Music Video (and VMA and Fallon Performances)

Demi Adejuyigbe's "9/21/21" Video

That’s all I got! I hope everyone had a great Holiday Season, and gets to watch, listen to, and play some great new stuff in 2022. Please listen to Cinema Bums! See you next year!