#tortured pop culture metaphors

[nokingsonlyfooles]

"I've identified the murderer, Miss Holt!"

I've been getting back into Remington Steele from the Internet Archive, and I'm giving it a namecheck - because it's fun and you can watch it for free! - but also because Steele's only right about the murderer... Maybe 50% of the time. Last episode I watched, he was convinced it was a ghost.

He's not a real detective, you see. He's a conman. Laura Holt keeps him around because he makes her detective agency look plausible, and he's cute. Eventually, he learns enough to get a bit better at it.

Well, nor am I a real web designer, and I've identified a problem I've been fighting most of the week. I won't keep you in suspense, it's Jetpack. Jetpack is WordPress's in-house website management software. If you build a free site with them, it's the only plugin you get! So, of course, it's horrible. This is like saying "the butler did it."

*sigh* I knew it wasn't playing well with the comment plugin I was using, but that plugin stopped releasing compatible updates and I had to get rid of it. (Thus, I have an Ask Blog now.) Jetpack periodically pops up an ad, if you've uninstalled it, and asks you to reinstall it. You need it! It's lite! It's better now! And a couple weeks back, I bit. It didn't hurt anything at the time, so I left it alone. But then, the updates. The updates with the "global colours" that made everything screwy. I remapped the colours as well as the theme would let me (I still have a few I can't get at, and some remain unmapped, because if I map them, they get flagged "invalid value.") but that wasn't the end of the errors.

I spent about two hours yesterday trying to figure a workaround for buttons, which were no longer customizable. They were using the defaults, even if they were illegible or hideous. They'd display fine in the editor and refuse to work on the front end. I thought something about WP was causing my themes to turn into default despots, because I'd tried switching themes and some problems persisted. I thought I'd have to roll with it until another update.

Nope!

I re-did my New Readers page, to account for the new Ask Blog, and I read myself warning everyone I can't code for shit. "Jetpack and I are not friends. Tech support and I are." And, much like poor Mr. Steele, I got a clue. I disabled Jetpack and made a custom button. Now they display on the front end just fine!

I have no idea if that was causing every problem. I mean, it certainly didn't screw up the colours all by itself. I can probably put some things back that I had to disable, and of course I can make buttons again. But I've wasted a lot of time bashing my head on the site and I want to finish the illustrations. I'll get back to it over the next few weeks, and I'll try to keep my tinkering to the small hours (PDT). It's a bit of a mess, but you should be able to find and read the next instalment on next Tuesday.

...Unless I'm wrong about the ghost, Miss Holt, but I don't think I am. Just like The Uninvited! 1944! Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey!

[topperscumslut]

it’s funny to me that half of the songs on my album (and honestly some of the best ones) focus on parallels and comparing the people from my life that the songs are about to pop culture figures, either celebrities, fictional characters, or historical figures

so here’s basically the cheat code to half of my album, what the songs mean, who and what they’re about, and what i reference in the lyrics

No One Like You is still prolly the most insane song I’ve ever written, it’s about hooking up with my ex from high school and EVERYTHING, down to the title, is a reference to him playing Gaston in high school theatre

Sycophant is about me cutting off my ex best friend, and was written around the release of the TBOSAS, wherein nearly the entire song is a metaphor that also fits the roles of Sejanus Plinth and Coriolanus Snow as well as me and her, respectively

Crowned Hearts was largely inspired by a real family that survived the Titanic that I’d learned about after having recently visited the Titanic museum and getting randomly assigned the boarding pass of the wife/mother, only to find out she shared my birthday and died in my hometown in the same hospital i was born in, that she’d been a member of the local theatre AND the country club I’d gone to with my high school ex, and had a very similar personality and interests to me. Crowned Hearts is about my at the time recent ex who helped me find her (and her son’s) grave, after we broke up i then proceeded to WRITE this song in 45 minutes flat AT her grave, wherein her and her first husband who she survived the Titanic with represented us, with the new guy i was starting to fall for that i worked with representing her second husband, who she also worked with

and finally, Torture Me is about a night i spent with my situationship/friend/fwb/failed talking stage (the aforementioned coworker), and verse 2 is almost entirely about how we happened to only watch Matthew Lillard movies together AND how he looked like Matthew Lillard when he was younger, making Matthew a sort of inside joke of ours (not in a making fun of him way, just constantly joking about how funny it was how relevant he was to our friendship) and a HUGE motif of this guy ANY TIME, no matter how subtly, i mention Matthew Lillard in a song

(also my latest song, Best for Last, which isn’t part of my debut album cuz it’s doesn’t fit in the Heart of a Siren, Soul of a Bard vibe and/or timeline, is ENTIRELY based on the Matthew Lillard motif and is actually ABOUT me meeting Matthew and titled after something he said to me personally, and about growing apart from this former situationship. definitely a deep cut, im really excited about this one.)

[setokaibapetty]

Fic Friday 5 + 1 Roundup: Kidnapping

Way back in May of 1932, there was an incident you may have heard of - the Lindbergh baby. It's still May for a little bit so I thought to round up some stories that include kidnapping (with happier endings).

I Left the Cameras Running (AO3) - "Todoroki Touya did not intend to become famous. Or an actor. Or a famous actor. But sometimes the stars align just right for you to give a huge metaphorical middle finger to your evil dad in a very public way while laughing your ass off and rolling around in a literal pile of money because you took your first paycheck to the bank and had them give it back to you in the smallest notes possible just to make your childish roll-around-in-a-pile-of-spite-money dreams come true."

Lines Crossed (AO3) - "Training Camp AU. When the League of Villains starts working on converting Bakugou the night he arrives rather than two days later, Dabi has a crisis of conscience. (An unexpected buddy fic between a reluctant vigilante!Dabi and a twice-kidnapped!Bakugou)"

so you have a bad day (AO3) - "Shang Qinghua is not stupid. It does not take a genius to know what it means when you ask a servant where your lord has left to and they readily supply the name of an exclusive brothel in between the two realms. Especially when it's after your utterly disastrous first time together. So he goes away for a bit to clear his head. And promptly gets kidnapped."

The Second Son (AO3) - "With Brucie Wayne on a solo backpacking trip to 'find himself' in the Himalayas (and Batman off-world and out of communication) an unknown rogue has decided to take the opportunity to kidnap all the Wayne children at once."

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Time Travelers (AO3) - "Mace's morning starts with far too much paperwork. Being kidnapped at blaster-point is honestly an improvement."

Bonus: We All Wanna Party When the Funeral Ends (AO3) - "OC!Arla saves herself from Kyr'tsad with a bunch of other kids, incite a minor revolution and start a criminal group ft angst, co dependency, alexa play despacito, canon typical violence, hallucinations of your presumed dead brother, torture, manipulation, found family, slight world builing, sad bitch, bad bitch spotify playlist, pop culture references, and My Chemical Romance."

[tothedarkdarkseas]

Since you like Will Wood, how about "Vampire Culture" as a working-class or suburban vampire Stu song since it uses vampires as a class metaphor? Some lines are Murdoc, but I think that makes it stronger because Murdoc would be participating in the "vampire culture" by serving as Stu's Renfield. (I'm no Will Wood expert; I just stumbled upon this song.)

I continuously wanted to return to this but kept getting sidetracked; and as of this evening, Will Wood's announced that after his upcoming album he'll be going in an indefinite hiatus. I really do seem to have the death-touch for everything I like. (Ask me how many of my favorite podcasts are defunct or have had at least one host leave!) So I'd better answer it now, and grieve later!

This song has so many alt titles that I genuinely blanked out on which one you were referring to at first, haha. I notice now that I default to thinking of it as Greetings From Mary Bell Township. I do quite enjoy it though! As with all Will Wood songs, at least on The Normal Album, it's difficult to ascribe a hyperspecific character meaning to the entire track as they are so lyrically dense, cover so much ground, break from the schema for quips and have their own hyperspecific visions-- that said, there are definitely verses of this that I can absolutely see a warped reflection of Stu (and Murdoc) in! Personal picks would be:

Home is where the heart is You ain’t homeless, but you’re heartless It’s the safest on the market But you still gotta watch where you park it So give me your half-life crisis I can tell that you know where paradise is Where parasites don’t care what your blood type is Only pheromones and serotonin decide

It’s only culture, it’s only culture It’s only ah, ah, ah- Culture’s not your friend Hey, fuck your culture, I ain’t got no culture It’s only culture, and it's more afraid of you than you are of it Go on, drink that

Vampirism as a class metaphor is the kind of thing early Gorillaz could've taken a swing at, really; there's definitely a parallel to the "zombies and celebrity/pop culture" theming they ultimately went with, and both would be beyond welcome to explore in the future. (With the current mapping it's not necessarily on the course, I recognize, but... imagine a Gorillaz comic with original Hewlett vampire designs and iconic underclass British backdrops. What a treat!) Special mention on the Murdocian side of things goes to the bit about "culture" being a hungry fire and "culture" teaching one to torture housecats, which harkens to the uglier, perhaps self-fabricated writing for Murdoc's misspent youth.

Thanks for mentioning it! I do love this song, and it can be a fun challenge to apply the fandom lens onto less intuitive and yielding sorts of songs.

[w-k-smith]

Especially since the first episode of Loki dropped, I’ve been thinking a lot about how prevalent the “Bureaucracy Gothic” vibe has been in pop culture recently.

In Loki, this complicated hierarchy with outdated office furniture and a business casual dress code and cranky supervisors and annoying training materials....has a death grip on reality, and eerily, seems to derive authority only from itself.

In Umbrella Academy....well, ditto, practically.

In Good Omens, angels and demons have been operating on rules and tallies and sometimes the honor system for so long that many of them seem to not think about God very much at all. Like bored employees whose manager is out-of-sight, out-of-mind, and who act like dicks to customers because they think there won’t be consequences.

In The Good Place, corporate machinery grinds on without any thought to whether the system is working or whether any of it is fair. And in this case that apathy leads to most people getting tortured for eternity.

So, like, why is this stuff all over the place?

Is it because Western culture has become so wrapped up in this kind of capitalism that we have to picture Cosmic Authority as working the same way? Especially when artists are deliberately disconnecting the story from explicit religious beliefs (though, yeah, a lot of examples are in a Vague White American Christianity color scheme). Do we spend so much time using this system to judge and value each other that we think that’s how we are ultimately valued and judged?

Or

Is it the opposite? Are the artists in question so nihilistic and filled with dismay for society that, to them, the only way this being part of some kind of “plan” would make sense is if God/”God” is an out-of-touch Chairperson of the Board who has delegated morality to burned-out middle managers?

Or

Is it just for the absurdity of cramming profound spiritual questions into mundane packages? Kind of along the same lines that it’s funny to see a big dog try to sit on a small pillow.

Because, in my experience, when secular art is directly depicting God/gods/the afterlife/the divine/etc. it’s usually actually about something very human. Like class warfare. Or abandonment issues. And when secular art actually wants to talk about Blah Blah Bible Jesus Magic, it tends to drape a metaphor over the stage. Like aliens. Who decided aliens were going to be a stand in for God. I’m not saying I don’t get it but when did it happen.

What makes Bureaucracy Gothic harder to figure out is, it’s kind of doing both of those things at the same time.

In the meantime, am I going to re-read The Screwtape Letters again? Yeah, that’s a strong maybe.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Top 10 favorite movies?

1. A.I. Artificial Intelligence, because it was the movie that convinced me that I should read Ray Kurzweil's autobiography -- and because I am a sucker for any story that is basically "everybody in a space mission dies, except the scientists, because they had a good faith discussion and worked together and did the right stuff"

2. 2001: A Space Odyssey because of its visual and sound effects, and the eerie sense of being "lost in time" that I have never been able to recapture since I saw it

3. The Man Who Knew Infinity because of the similar sense of "loss of control/loss of personal identity" it evokes

4. Apollo 13 for its ability to evoke a sense of overwhelming danger

5. Alien, because it was the movie that first suggested to me that the idea of a movie from the point of view of an extraterrestrial species encountering humans could be more than "cool aliens with laser guns"

6. A Clockwork Orange, and not just because it was the original movie about a superintelligent computer making a criminal's life hell; the visual and sound effects were just great, and the "befriending, befriending, and then gradually destroying your character by breaking down his self-image with increasingly outlandish violence and torture" setup was a great one, and not one I've seen since (yes, I know it's a "genre"). (Note: I am aware this is not a really original answer for me. I am not saying "these are the only good movies." It is just that Clockwork Orange, Alien, and 2001, the three big examples of this sort of thing in my mind, are just so... striking? They're not just "interesting," though they are; they're striking in a way that's so memorable I still get the sense of the feeling they evoke sometimes without even realizing it.)

7. Bridget Jones' Diary, and especially the last ten minutes of the movie -- in this way I kind of do count it as an "adult" movie? The way it portrays young love as a "transitional" state -- which is not actually a good or healthy state, or one anyone really wants to spend much time in. As with many movies and TV shows these days, a lot of the film revolves around a "transitional state" or period that seems to be really important to people -- but where we spend far too long on it, and also the way it is used as a metaphor for other, bigger life concerns is just not satisfying or satisfyingly complicated. (See also: a lot of pop culture these days. There's something off about making "transitioning to adulthood" your major social problem, but also your major thematic focus, for the sake of making the characters in the plot feel more "real." This happens to a large extent in Bridget Jones.)

8. Good Will Hunting, because it's the opposite of the previous point -- it portrays an experience so good that it becomes our only access to anything else like it. (In this way, it's something of an anti-Alien.) It's not about the "transitional state of adolescence," it's about the actual, deep connection to reality we feel as adults. And the way the whole movie revolves around Will Hunting's experience of that, which comes across at the end as "oh shit, I realize that all along I was only using my skills to impress a bunch of nerds who were never going to notice me anyway." (It's not a story about having any "life skills" that are needed for life outside the nerdy subculture -- it's a story about realizing those life skills.)

9. American Pie because it's a ridiculous movie and I liked it as a child

[romancemoving]

AND THE REVIEWS ARE IN FOR ROMANCEMOON! COMING SELECTIVELY TO A THEATER NEAR YOU.

       ❝ at its best / worst, the hallucinatory idiocy of this blog inspires open-mouthed horror at what happens when an ill-conceived premise leads to even more jaw-droppingly misguided execution. contrived and bloated with old pop culture references, i had to set my computer on fire and divorce my wife due to my frothing hatred of the writer and the blog they’ve crafted. my family is ruined. thanks for nothing! ❞ — michael mcmichaelson, the new yorker.

      ❝ in the end, though the metaphor of an emotional torture chamber of the self as a sparkly, glowing ode to 90s anime and other decades is an interesting one to explore, that is not the analysis at the heart of this blog. i told the blog owner this. she proceeded to call me a twatfaced shit-for-brains, called my mother a clown car coochie havin’ bozo, and then blocked me. what an asshole, i can’t believe it. ❞ — lisa clancy, the chicago tribune.

       ❝ idk i liked it. reminded me of a wong kar wai film but with a laugh track hahaha. i just really like pretty colors and old japanese pop music. anyway r any of you ladies lookin to send me some feet pics? are any of you selling nfts of your feet pics? pls respond. can i ask that in this post?❞ — sexydickman666, reddit, r/movies. he was banned shortly after.

[sailorvinus]

AND THE REVIEWS ARE IN FOR SAILORVINUS!

        ❝ at its best / worst, the hallucinatory idiocy of this blog inspires open-mouthed horror at what happens when an ill-conceived premise leads to even more jaw-droppingly misguided execution. contrived and bloated with old pop culture references, i had to set my computer on fire and divorce my wife due to my frothing hatred of the writer and the blog they've crafted. my family is ruined. thanks for nothing! ❞ — michael mcmichaelson, the new yorker.

        ❝ in the end, though the metaphor of an emotional torture chamber of the self as a sparkly, glowing ode to 90s anime and other decades is an interesting one to explore, that is not the analysis at the heart of this blog. i told the blog owner this. she proceeded to call me a twatfaced shit-for-brains, called my mother a birdbrained bozo, and then blocked me. what an asshole, i can’t believe it. ❞ — lisa clancy, the chicago tribune.

        ❝ idk i liked it. reminded me of a wong kar wai film but with a laugh track hahaha. i just really like pretty colors and old japanese pop music. anyway r any of you ladies lookin to send me some feet pics? can i ask that in this post?❞ — sexydickman666, reddit, r/movies. he was banned shortly after.

[mmikmmik2]

(W spoilers)

The Gaia Memories of the main Sonozaki family members work really well. The memories as we're initially introduced to them are a great fit as a metaphor for their toxic family dynamics, and as we learn more backstory they become more fitting as part of Terror's preparations for the Gaia Impact.

I like the imagery of Taboo as ambiguously both punished and punishing. Her design evokes to me a lot of different ideas - someone being tortured or burned for witchcraft, a real witch on the attack, a magical effigy that functions as both a dangerous weapon and the thing that is being abused... Meanwhile, Clay Doll's only ability seems to be taking a lot of punishment and putting herself back together afterwards. It reflects the dynamic Wakana reminisces about when she "meets" Philip, where Saeko would both receive abuse from Terror and dish it out to Wakana, and Wakana didn't really have an outlet. Also, Saeko kind of looks like a rag doll to Wakana's clay doll, because both of them feel so powerless.

Terror is... very on the nose, in a good way. A tyrannical, manipulative, and dangerous father, so of course he's Terror. He's literally and figuratively inflicting terrible memories onto people that consume them with obsession and trauma, so of course he's Terror. He's the source of the poison slowly eating away at the Sonozaki family, the destroyer of Philip's childhood, so of course he's Terror.

Terror's design evokes the pop culture understanding of human sacrifices that took place in some Mesoamerican cultures. It's the idea of authority figures using human suffering to achieve some kind of connection to/message to/relationship with the divine, which again suits his character on a very literal level. It also brings me to the next theme uniting Terror's key Memories: ancient cultural connections to supernatural forces and/or the Earth itself.

Clay Doll isn't any old clay doll - she's a dogū, a kind of clay figure created by the inhabitants of ancient Japan. From a quick read of some of the sources online that seemed halfway credible, archaeologists don't know a lot for sure about dogū, but they're likely connected to agriculture and ritual, and their name in Japanese literally means "earthen figure". Clay Doll is a powerful and iconic connection to the very beginnings of Japan and to the land under her feet.

One theory about dogū is that they were used as effigies. A lot of different cultures have used dolls and figurines in sympathetic magic ("poppets"). So, given that Taboo looks a bit like a doll (with the stitches, and the way her fire hair also kind of looks like straw or the ends of corn husks), that's another way Taboo and Clay Doll are counterparts. But in this case, Clay Doll wins, because that connection to the Earth is so powerful in W lore and in Terror's eyes. Taboo doesn't really have anything like that.

That explains why "Nazca" - the Nazca lines are another example of an ancient culture connecting to the literal physical Earth, possibly for ritual or religious reasons. That's why Nazca was such a key Memory to understand/upgrade that Terror entrusted it to his poor gullible son-in-law, and that's why claiming Nazca over Taboo was a late-season upgrade for Saeko.

Obviously Terror never picked out a Memory for Philip because that's not how his plan worked, but if he had... I think "Pillar" could be a good fit. From the Wikipedia page for hitobashira ("human pillar"):

Hitobashira was practised formerly in Japan as a form of human sacrifice. A person was buried alive under or near large-scale buildings like dams, bridges and castles, as a prayer to the gods. It was believed this would protect the building from being destroyed by natural disasters such as floods or by enemy attacks.

[knightotoc]

I really liked this book! It's indulgently weird and nasty, and the melodrama and absurdity also made me laugh. It reminded me of the New Testament, Majora's Mask, and, uh, Tarzan.

I've seen a lot of Jesus metaphors in pop culture, and Remina is as boldly on-the-nose as things like Narnia and Man of Steel. But while Narnia is straight apologia and MoS is clumsily stealing a Jewish metaphor, Remina serves Christ for the freaks. It goes hard on the torture (I had a hard time with that part, tbh), as well as the daddy issues, the followers-turned-traitors, and the cosmic anomalies that also marked the end of Jesus' earthly life (loved that shit). Remina takes the Gospels the same way Tommy does, but backwards and in heels.

The Biblical reference that impressed me the most was Simon of Cyrene: a random guy who gets pulled into the brutality for no reason at all. He's an entire Station of the Cross, but I can't think of any other Christ metaphor that even includes him. This book loves that guy.

The Majora's Mask similarity is also obvious: a celestial object with a creepy face hurtles toward the planet. Remina leans more scifi, in a way which allows for clever thought experiments (if something is moving at light speed, then you wouldn't see it coming until it's too late), but still requires much suspension of disbelief (how did they survive that?!). Both stories depend on ambiguity and subtext, and both care more about resolving their themes than their mysteries. The moon is a lonely child; the hellstar is an obsessed fan.

Neither Junji Ito nor Legend of Zelda pull their punches: the cosmic horror DOES destroy the planet; the peoples' fears ARE perfectly justified; and some of them ARE really shitty about it. Ito's apocalypse just has a lot more writhing bodies.

And the Tarzan thing is that most of the action consists of badass dudes hurtling through wild environments and impossibly swinging through the sky, all with a babe slung over their shoulder. I do wish poor Remina had a bit more guts herself, but at least all her real friends are secretly martial artists.

[letterboxd]

Life Detained.

The Mauritanian director Kevin Macdonald talks with Jack Moulton about researching Guantanamo Bay’s top secrets, Tahar Rahim’s method-acting techniques, the ingenuity of humanity during the pandemic, and his favorite Scottish films.

“You’ve got to understand that for a Muslim man like Tahar, this role has a much greater significance than it does for you or me.” —Kevin Macdonald

It’s not uncommon for a director to release two films in one year, but Academy-Award winning—for his 1999 documentary One Day in September—director Kevin Macdonald is guilty of this achievement multiple times. Ten years ago, he released his first crowd-sourced documentary Life in a Day and the period epic The Eagle within months of each other. A decade on, he’s done it again.

The Scottish director (and grandson of legendary filmmaker Emeric Pressburger) released both his Life in a Day follow-up and the legal drama The Mauritanian this month. The latter tells the story of Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi (sometimes written as Salahi), who was held and tortured in the notorious US detention center for fourteen years without a charge. The film, adapted from Slahi’s 2015 memoir Guantánamo Diary, features Jodie Foster and Shailene Woodley as his defense attorneys Nancy Hollander and Teri Duncan, with Benedict Cumberbatch, who also signed on as the film’s producer, playing prosecutor Lt. Stuart Couch.

Benedict Cumberbatch as prosecutor Lt. Stuart Couch in ‘The Mauritanian’.

The Mauritanian also introduces French star Tahar Rahim to a global audience, in the role of Slahi. “The ensemble is excellent across the board,” writes Zach Gilbert, “while Tahar Rahim is best in show overall, bringing honorable heart and humanity to his role [of] the titular mistreated prisoner.”

Much of the story is filmed as an office-based legal thriller involving thick files, intense conversations, and Jodie Foster’s very bright lipstick. Macdonald expertly employs aspect ratio to signify narrative shifts into scenes recreating Slahi’s vivid recollections of torture and his achingly brief conversations with unseen fellow detainees.

Qualifying for this year’s awards season due to extended deadlines, The Mauritanian has already earned Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress for Rahim and Foster respectively. Slahi remains unable to travel due to no-fly lists, but he was a valuable resource to the production, providing an accurate and rare depiction of a sympathetic Muslim character in an American film.

It was the eve of Life in a Day 2020’s Sundance Film Festival premiere when we Zoomed with Macdonald. Behind him, we spied a full set of the Italian posters for Michelangelo Antonioni’s classic Blow-Up. As it turns out, he’s not a fan of the film—only the posters—so we got him talking about his desert-island top ten after a few questions about his new film.

The attention to detail on Guantanamo Bay in The Mauritanian is impressive. There are procedures depicted that you rarely see on-screen. How did you conduct your research? Obviously Guantanamo Bay is a place which the American government spends a great deal of effort keeping secret. It was important to Mohamedou and me that we depicted the reality of the procedures as accurately as we possibly could. That research came primarily from Mohamedou who has an incredible memory. He drew sketches and made videos of himself lying down in spaces and showing how he could stretch half his arm out [in his cell]. There are a lot of photographs on the internet of Guantanamo Bay which are [fake] and others are from a later period because the place developed a lot over the years since it started in 2002 and Mohamedou was able to [identify] which photos were rooms, courtyards and medical centers he had been in.

Director Kevin Macdonald on set with Jodie Foster.

How did you approach creating an honest representation of the graphic torture scenes, without putting the audience through it as well? Whenever films about this period are [made] they’re always from the point of view of the Americans and this time we’re with Mohamedou. You can’t underestimate the fact that there have really been no mainstream American cinematic portrayals of Muslims at all, so in portraying a sympathetic Muslim character who’s also accused of terrorism, you’re pushing some hot buttons with people. It was important that those people who are uncomfortable with him understand why he confessed to what he confessed.

Everything you see in the film is what happened; the only difference is that they weren’t wearing masks of cats and Shrek-like creatures, they wore Star Wars masks of Yoda and Luke Skywalker in this very perverse fucked-up version of American pop culture. Obviously, we couldn’t get the rights to those. Actually, I don’t feel that it is graphic. There is more violence in your average Marvel movie. It’s psychologically disturbing because you’re experiencing this disorientating lighting, the [heavy-metal] music, and he’s being told his mother’s going to be raped and he’s flashing back to his childhood. To be empathizing with this character and then to see them to be so cruelly treated is so deeply disturbing.

How did you prepare Tahar Rahim for his convincing portrayal of such intense pain and suffering? Tahar went through a great deal of discomfort in order to achieve it. He felt that to give a performance that had any chance of being truthful, he needed to experience a little bit of what Mohamedou had suffered, so throughout the movie he would insist on wearing real shackles which made his leg bleed and give him blisters. I would plead with him to put on rubber ones and he would say “no, I have to do this so I’m not just play-acting”.

He starved himself for about three weeks leading up to a torture sequence—he had lost an awful amount of weight and he was really unsteady on his legs. I was very worried about it and I got him nutritionists and doctors but he was determined to stick with that. You’ve got to understand that for a Muslim man like Tahar, this role has a much greater significance than it does for you or me. He felt a great weight of responsibility to do this correctly, not just for Mohamedou, but he was speaking for the whole Muslim world in a way.

Jodie Foster and Shailene Woodley as defense attorneys in ‘The Mauritanian’.

What compels you to study this period in time? Mohamedou was released a couple of weeks before Trump came to power in 2016, so the story is still ongoing for him. He’s still being harassed by the American government and he’s not allowed to travel because he’s on these no-fly lists. I didn’t want to make a movie that was saying “George W. Bush is terrible”. We’ve been there, we’ve done that. This is looking back with a little bit of distance and saying “here’s the principles that we can learn from when you sidestep the rule of law”—what it takes to stand up like Lt. Stuart Couch did when everyone else around you is going along with something that’s really terrible.

You see that around Trump with the choices within the Republican Party to stand up and say they’re going to sacrifice their careers to do the right thing. It is a hard thing when there’s this mass hysteria in the air. The basic principles that the lawyer [characters] are representing is not about analyzing and replaying what happened after 9/11, they’re directly related in a bigger way to the world we all inhabit.

Did anything surprise you in how your subjects for Life in a Day 2020 addressed the pandemic? One of the most affecting characters in the film is an American who lost his home and business because of the pandemic, so he’s living in his car. He seems very depressed when you meet him for the first time, then later he’s telling us there’s something that’s giving him joy in his life. He brings out all these drones with these cameras on them and puts on this VR headset and loses himself by flying through the trees. I thought that was such a great metaphor for the way that human ingenuity has enabled us to survive and thrive during the pandemic.

I get the feeling of resilience from [the film]. This is a more thoughtful film than the original one. I see this as a movie of [us] being beware of our susceptibility to disease and ultimately to death and mortality, [and] how we’ve found these consolations as human beings. To me, it’s a really profound thing. It also speaks to the main theme of the film which is how we’re all so similar, same as The Mauritanian. It’s confronting you with all these people and saying we fundamentally all share the basic things that underpin our lives and the differences between us are much less important than the things we have in common.

Let’s go from Life in a Day to your life in film. What’s a Scottish film that you love but you feel is very overlooked or underrated? That’s really hard because there aren’t many Scottish films and there aren’t many good ones. Gregory’s Girl is the greatest Scottish film ever made—it’s the bible for life for me. That’s very well-known, so I would have to say Bill Forsyth’s previous film That Sinking Feeling, which was self-funded and made on 16mm black-and-white. It has some of the same actors and characters as Gregory’s Girl in it. Or my grandfather Emeric Pressberger’s film I Know Where I’m Going! which is a rare romantic comedy set in Scotland.

John Gordon Sinclair and Dee Hepburn in Bill Forsyth’s ‘Gregory’s Girl’ (1980).

Which film made you want to become a filmmaker? I think it was Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line, which is one of the top five documentaries ever made and in my top ten desert-island movies.

What else is in your desert-island top ten? Oh god, don’t! I knew you were going to ask me that. I’ll give a few. I would say there would have to be something by Preston Sturges—maybe The Lady Eve or The Palm Beach Story. There would have to be a film written by my grandfather, so probably The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, which is the best British film ever made. There would have to be Singin’ in the Rain, which is the most purely joyful film I’ve ever seen. There would probably be The Battle of Algiers, which I rewatched recently and was an inspiration on The Mauritanian. Citizen Kane I also rewatched in anticipation of watching Mank, of which I was very disappointed. I thought it completely missed the point and was kind of boring.

Which was the best film released in 2020 for you? I thought the Russian film Dear Comrades! was really stunning. It was made by a director [Andrei Konchalovsky] in his 80s who first worked with Andrei Tarkovsky back in the late 1950s. He co-scripted Ivan’s Childhood. I would love to make my masterpiece when I’m 86 too!

Related content

Films with Muslim characters

Movies that pass the Riz test

Scottish Cinema—a regularly updated list

Follow Jack on Letterboxd

‘The Mauritanian’ is in select US cinemas and virtual theaters now, and on SVOD from March 2. ‘Life in a Day 2020’ is available to stream free on YouTube, as is the original.

[nobody-wants-ice-cream]

Everything Wrong With The Umbrella Academy. Episode 2, Run Boy Run.

Link to the first episode!

Same disclaimer as last episode: This is all in good fun! I wanted to do a really nitpicky re-watch of the series and found some really cool and interesting things I didn’t notice before. This is meant to have a Cinema Sins-esque tone. However, I did take off a lot more sins than Cinema Sins would have because I do genuinely like the series and the people that made it possible. So all of the good things got one sin off and all the bad things got one sin added. This is a really long post, so grab some popcorn. If there’s anything that I missed, feel free to add it!

Run Boy Run 

Grace started the Herr Carlson record before the kids even arrived. How are they supposed to learn if they miss the first few seconds of it?  What is the point of the record if they’re not even around to hear all of it?+1

The kids all have their hands on the chairs except for Five, showing that he will do something out of the ordinary. -1

Diego is causing property damage to Reggie’s chairs and Reggie allows this. Be consistent, show! Is Reggie lenient or strict? You could make the argument that Reggie doesn’t care about the chair because he’s rich. In that case, sinning for capitalism.+1

Klaus is already into drugs at the age of 13. We can see him rolling a blunt, and doing it quite well, presumably. +1

Ben is straight up allowed to read at the table. So then what is the point of the record if the kids don’t have to pay attention to it? +1

The kids expressions when Five stabs the table. The ones that we see are pure gold. Especially Klaus’s. Well done Dante Albidone. -1

Diego’s side eye when Five starts arguing with Reggie. This is the perfect expression for “my sibling is about to get in trouble”, so props to Blake Talabis. -1

Vanya’s side eye is also good. TJ McGibbon did well. -1

We see Five jump faster than a bullet, but he’s significantly slower when jumping across the table. +1

Reggie is a dick to Five, who just wants to explore his powers. We know that it’s dangerous because we see Five getting stuck, but Five doesn’t think that that is really a possibility. Reggie only talks in confusing ice and acorn metaphors. +1

Five’s face when Reggie presents the ice and acorn metaphor. -1

Vanya and Allison both give Five a look in this scene. This is what makes Five hesitate. Two of his siblings tell him it’s a bad idea, but he does it anyway because he’s a stubborn bastard. +1

Grace’s face drops when Five starts running out the door. Allison and Vanya also look absolutely horrified. -1

“Run Boy Run” is a little on the nose. Especially once you remember that The Boy is Five’s hero name in the comics. +1

No one cares that a 13 year old popped into existence out of nowhere when Five starts traveling into the future. +1

Easter egg! There is an ice cream cart outside the academy. If you’ve read Dallas, you know why I think that’s significant. Also, it happens to be my icon. -1

Five’s look of complete disbelief and horror when he is faced with the apocalypse for the first time. -1

“Vanya! Ben!” This has created a lot of curiosity in the fandom. In the comics he left before they were named, but in the show it looks like he chose to keep Number Five. Why? +1

The apocalypse looks very believable. -1

Title screen umbrella! -1

The awesome scene with Ellen Page and Aidan Gallagher continues in the next episode. -1

Where would Five have heard that rumor about Twinkies having an endless shelf life? It’s not like he was very exposed to pop culture as a kid. +1

Vanya doesn’t keep her Violin in the case. She leaves it proped on a chair, which is basically begging gravity to come and fuck up your instrument. +1

Five plays the pronoun game and doesn’t tell Vanya about Dolores. +1

The last thing Five heard for 40 years was Reggie’s stupid metaphor. That’s a sin for the metaphor and a sin for Five’s pain and suffering. +2

Vanya gives someone with a thirteen-year-old’s liver a few shots worth of hard liquor in a tall glass. +1

“You think I didn’t try everything to get back to my family?” This quote is Five at his core. It shows his exact motivation. Aidan Gallagher really could have screwed up with this line because it’s so raw, but the delivery doesn’t suck. Well done. -1

Is that liquor real? Aidan Gallagher’s face suggests that it is and he only takes two sips of it. Also, Five takes a sip when it’s just a bit, pours more, then takes another sip, and doesn’t drink any more of it. Sin for showmakers possibly giving a kid real alcohol and sin for Five only taking a sip after pouring a lot out. +1

However, if the alcohol is fake, which I really hope it is, sin off for Aidan Gallagher’s acting. -1

Five expects Vanya to believe his crazy apocalypse story. I had a hard time believing it when we were shown flashbacks as the audience. It wasn’t until they brought in the Commission that I actually believed it. If Five had explained the Commission, just like he did to Luther, then Vanya would have had an easier time believing him. +1

Vanya calls Five crazy and then expects him to not be hurt and want to stay in her apartment. +1

Vanya takes the pills after an emotionally charged scene. Pills-foreshadowing. -1

Five’s hands are shaking when he’s looking at the eyeball. This shows both his uncertainty, with this being his only clue, and shows that he is unwilling to leave his sister again even after she called him insane. -1

Mary J. Bilge. -1

The Lunar Motor Lodge has rates by the week, day, and hour. The Commission is super sleazy for putting Hazel and Cha Cha in a place that also rents by the hour. +1

Hazel and Cha Cha are an underrated duo. The “It smells like cat piss” dialogue is honestly really funny. -1

Obvious villains are obvious. I know they’re meant to be obvious, but it doesn’t change the fact that a show with a lot of subtlety just kind of thrust Hazel and Cha Cha in there with no subtlety at all. +1

Hazel stores the briefcase away and throws a screw, foreshadowing that this will be an important detail later. -1

No one, including police, notices the blinking and beeping, neon green tracker. +1

Patch is sort of right. Five made a jump in the middle of two of the local hires, which caused them to shoot each other. -1

“The guy had an eclair and the kid had coffee”. Patch’s side eye says that she thinks Agnes is getting her story mixed up. If we didn’t see what happened, then the audience wouldn’t believe Agnes either. Great acting Ashley Madekwe. -1

Agnes doesn’t stay in the back room. She crawls out so her head can dramatically pop up over the counter after Five leaves. This is a stupid decision on Agnes’s part.+1

Agnes is seen handling American money. Somehow we as a fandom didn’t notice this. Klaus also uses American money to buy drugs later in this episode. Sinning the showmakers not specifying which state at the very least, but reluctantly because I know that’s a reference to the comics. +1

“What other detective”. Camera cuts to Diego exiting Griddys. -1

Diego is a vigilante. What he is doing impedes the law. In this instance, we want him to stop Patch’s investigation because we know that the answer leads back to Five, which would be bad for the plot. However, Patch’s annoyance suggests Diego has done this to her before. How many murderers have gone free because Diego intervenes in Patch’s cases? +1

Diego did not consent to being searched and having his personal belongings taken. +1

Ebay exists but there is no internet or smartphones. What? +1

Diego thinks that this looks like a botched robbery. No way in hell does this look like a robbery of a doughnut shop in any universe. A bank robbery, yeah sure, but not a doughnut shop. What kind of doughnut shop has the kind of money that requires multiple guys with very large weapons, Diego? +1

The way Patch is described to Five by Diego in a later episode does not match the personality she actually has. +1

A whole crowd of people had nothing better to do than to watch the cops investigate a murder scene in a densely populated city. +1

Is Luther hitting his head after he wakes up a character choice? He does it again with the model airplane. After the low ceilings on the moon for four years, you would think that he would learn to duck. +1

Emmy Raver-Lampman gives an amazing performance when talking to Luther about Claire. -1

Allison has multiple posters of herself in her room. I am sinning for her younger self’s narcissism. +1

However, this narcissism goes hand in hand with Allison as a character. Props to the set designers for making these posters and hanging them up. It adds detail to Allison’s room and really shows who she was as a character. -1

“When Claire was little I used to read her books about the moon. I’d tell her her Uncle was living up there” Allison doesn’t remember that Luther was on the moon and therefore shouldn’t know about her divorce in the first episode, but says this in the second episode. +1

Luther looks so genuinely happy at being Claire’s personal superhero. -1

The ghosts torturing Klaus. +1

That fucking animal print thing Klaus is wearing. +1

Robert Sheehan is very, very attractive. This makes up for the monstrosity Klaus is wearing. -1

“You know you talk in your sleep.” “Oh there’s no point. You’re out of drugs” I love Ben as a character so much. -1

“Shut your piehole, Ben. Said with love” smooch. I love this line. -1

“I’ve got a crazy idea. Why not try starting your day with… a glass of orange juice or some eggs”. Justin Min’s delivery of this line kills me every time. -1

Pogo is really vague about why the papers in Reggie’s box are important. If he said something about the papers detailing the Academy’s powers in explicit detail, Klaus would have tried harder to get them back. +1

We don’t see Klaus pull out the Red Journal in episode one. +1

“Liar” “Drop dead” “Low blow”. This is an iconic interaction for a reason. -1

Pogo knows that Klaus can talk to ghosts, but remains offended when Klaus tells a ghost to shut up. +1

“Really awful, terrible, depressing times” Reggie is a dick to his children. +7

Vanya sleeps with the door to her bedroom open, even though we saw her close it. So she must have gotten up to open the door and didn’t notice Five was gone. +1

Where did Five go all night? Did he sleep back in the Academy? It couldn’t have taken him this long to get to the MeriTech building, so what happened to him? He changed to a clean uniform, so presumably he went to the Academy, but why did the show vague this? Did he walk into a department store and buy/steal a clean shirt?+1

Only the plot relevant person notices Five. The front desk girl doesn’t question why he’s there. And that is her literal job. I would know, I run the front desk at a medical office. If you don’t greet the patients then you’re not doing your job, front desk girl.+1

“Must have just [click] popped out.” iconic.-1

Five decides that violence is the best course of action to get the information he needs, directly contradicting “I know how to do everything” +1

The 1938 fingerprints may be Five’s. However, police usually discard this kind of evidence because there is a very reasonable doubt. Not to mention that anyone could have touched the knife. It’s a public place. Forensic evidence is not as reliable as it is portrayed in the media. +1

Diego is an asshole to everyone, but especially to Patch. She’s right, Diego is obstructing justice. How many murderers have gone free because Diego interfered in an investigation? +1

Diego’s boiler room is way too big to be a boiler room. +1

Luther’s reflection in Diego’s mask shows that Luther wants to know what it would be like to be number two instead of number one. Luther can’t lead for shit and subconsciously wishes that he didn’t have to. -1

With an aerial shot of the Academy from the outside, we can see that Reggie never bothered to take the laundromat sign off the mansion or that Reggie sold ad space on the mansion exterior. +1

Reggie is a dick to animals. See: the animal skeletons and the taxidermy. +1

Part of the mansion is painted an ugly neon green for no reason. +1

“Sorry I left without saying goodbye”. The “both times” is unspoken. -1

Vanya apologises for calling him crazy and being dismissive, but still suggests he needs mental help. He does, but maybe suggest it later when he isn’t convinced you think he’s insane? +1

Five lies to Vanya about something stupid. If he said that he was having Klaus help him with the apocalypse, I don’t think she would have minded. +1

Why does Five have so many toys in his room? Including a baseball? +1

Klaus comes out of the wardrobe as loudly as possible. The mansion does not have sound proofing (see: I Think We’re Alone Now dance party). There is no way in hell Vanya didn’t hear him. +1

This is the last time Vanya and Five interact. +1

Five’s room is more childish than a thirteen-year-old’s room should be. It honestly looks like he was the favorite because his room has so many toys in it. Like Reggie wanted to win his favor or something. Sinning for the weird set design choice and for Reggie being an asshole. +1 

The fake circumstances in which Five was born in their cover story gives me immense joy. -1

In one camera angle, if you look carefully they cut two takes of “what a disturbing glimpse into that thing you call a brain”. In the one where we can’t see his face properly, Aidan Gallagher is openly smiling. Corpsing. +1

Robert Sheehan is funny. -1

Syd the tow truck guy doesn’t really look like Sean Sullivan (actor that plays adult Five) enough for Cha Cha, a trained assassin, to not see that he isn’t their mark. +1

Hazel eating a sandwich in this scene. Also the “Italian for dinner line”. -1

And Cha Cha sees the differences between Syd and Five later! +1

“Time travel’s a bitch” “Especially without a briefcase” There's other time travel methods than briefcase or being Five? Elaborate. +1

Patrick is a dick to Allison. We understand why later, but really Patrick, you’re going to be an asshole when her father just died? Don’t get me wrong, Reggie abused the hell out of her, but still! Patrick should have let Allison talk to Claire. +1

Vanya tries to comfort Allison even though she knows nothing about the situation other than that it happened. She’s never even met Patrick! +1

Allison is clearly trying to get away from this conversation with Vanya, but Vanya presses on. +1

“Well if I wanted advice, Vanya, no offence, it wouldn’t be from you”. This is why Vanya doesn’t take Allison’s advice about Leonard. Also, Allison is a dick to Vanya. +1

This scene with Allison and Vanya is interesting. Allison is projecting her pain and taking it out on Vanya, who really should have seen and heard what happened enough to leave her alone. Both of them are the bad guy here regardless of how you slice it. I am sinning the show for this moment because they really tried to villainize Allison for this scene, but she does have some well thought out points and is in an emotionally compromised state. Or in other words, the fight between Allison and Vanya is stupid. +1

Grant/Lance/whatever gave Klaus and Five valuable office time. Doctors do not have time for this sort of crap. Shouldn’t this guy have patients? +1

Aidan Gallagher looks to the actor playing Grant/Lance/whatever as if he’s waiting for him to say his line. I see this all the time with younger kids in theatre, but they can get away with it if their character has a reason to look at that character. That being said, Five would have no reason to do this.+1

The sound effect that plays when Klaus slaps Five is really out of place. +1

Seeing Robert Sheehan slap Aidan Gallagher. -1

Klaus pauses as if he’s listening to Ben before he picks up the snowglobe. -1

The snowglobe. Robert Sheehan pretending to be Klaus pretending to be Five’s crazy dad. Acting. -1

Five looks like a proud grandfather when Klaus gets Lance to show them the records. -1

Five doesn’t pay Klaus for that brilliant acting. Also, how was Five planning to give Klaus $20. He doesn’t have any money nor do we ever see him with money. Five is a cheapskate. +1

Klaus calls Five “old man”. I thought that was just a fandom thing lmao. -1

“You must be horny as hell”. Great Klaus line, but super weird that he’s saying it to someone that looks thirteen. +1

Klaus is wearing the shirt that goes with his nicest outfit underneath Reggie’s pinstripe suit. -1

“Goodbye Dolores”, a song from the soundtrack, starts playing when Five starts talking about Dolores. This is good placement of that song because we later learn that he left her in the apocalypse when he left to work for the Commission. -1

Five is a dick to Klaus. Klaus is really trying to connect with his long lost brother, but Five jumps away. +1

That taxi driver doesn’t freak out and cause a car accident when a random kid appears in his car. +1

Also, how did Five pay for that taxi? Did he jump out of the moving vehicle too? +1

Leonard is so obvious from the start. So charming that he’s slimy. +1

Vanya can’t see this and is actually attracted to him. This may go back to that conversation with Allison when she asks if Vanya has ever been in a relationship. For all we know, the answer is no. +1

Leonard took three years of German in prison. I don't think American jails are that nice. +1

Leonard picks up another person’s instrument without their consent. As a musician, this is very, very painful. +2

Diego is paranoid, but also observant as fuck. -1

But how did he get his weapons back from the police? Are knives open carry in whatever state this is in? There are some states where Diego’s harness would be legal so it’s possible. I’ll have to look into this. Sinning the show for being vauge as fuck. +1

Luther didn’t notice the boiler room door open. +1

Diego throws weapons on his siblings. +1

Reginald Hargreeves died March 21st. The funeral is on March 24th. This is way too soon. It should have been a week or two not two days between the date of death and the funeral. Especially considering Luther suspects Reggie was murdered. And if you say that Reggie, Pogo, or Grace bribed them, then I’m sinning for bribery.+1

Diego eats a raw egg. Salmonella headass. +2

David Castaneda eats a raw egg. Why did you make him do this? It adds nothing to the character other than making Diego look dumb as hell. +1

Vanya interrupts her student while he’s playing and doing well. Whenever my teacher does that I get a minor heart attack. +1

Leonard is already lying to Vanya. He manipulates her by saying his Dad was into music and that's why he’s taking violin lessons. +1

An actual place named “Bricktown” in a place called “The City.” Sigh. +1

It is four o’clock when Leonard takes his lesson, but then after the lesson we cut to night time. What happened in those couple hours, show? Are you really saying that these characters did nothing interesting for all that time? +1

Emmy Raver-Lampman clearly isn’t smoking. Which is fine because she’s a Broadway actress and needs her voice/lungs for that part of her career. It’s weird because it shows that Allison isn't smoking. +1

Pogo scolds Allison for her language. Allison is an adult, Pogo. +1

Klaus made a drink at a young age and Reggie didn’t stop him. Or talk to him. He recorded Klaus drinking, but didn’t care. +1

The showmakers show us Allison’s face for dramatic tension instead of showing us the tape. This was a good choice and I feel it helped the narative.-1

They show a sign “Gimbel Brothers Seniors Tuesdays 10% Off.” after Five walks by. -1

The most awkward and dopey smile in existence when Five finds Dolores. -1

They play “Goodbye Dolores” after he finds her. That could have worked if they transposed it to the major key. Hello Dolores. +1

“Goodbye Dolores” transitioning into “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen. -1

This action sequence is great. -1

Hazel’s wrist splint. -1

Five cuts Cha Cha with a trowel. -1

The dual screen thing is cool. -1

Five literally jumps over a stand and somehow doesn’t get shot. Hazel and Cha Cha have Stormtrooper aim. +1

How did Hazel and Cha Cha leave? You would think the police would notice someone leaving through the back. +1

Similarly, how did Five and Dolores get out of this? Did he wait until he could jump and teleport outside the store? Can he teleport that far? +1

How did Diego get another police scanner so quickly? Unless that’s the scanner Patch confiscated? +1

“I gotta show you something” +1

Once again, Five should be a lot sweatier. What are these magic, sweat absorbing things you can buy in a department store and where can I buy them? +1

Five sees an eyeball and immediately picks it up for no reason. He doesn’t even know that’s Luther’s body yet. He just picked up an eye for no reason. +1

Five as a thirteen-year-old boy saw his siblings' dead bodies. Sinning for trauma. +1

Aidan Gallagher portrays this trauma well. -1

Overall Review: 

I love this episode and had a hard time finding things wrong with it. I genuinely like this episode and I think that it could have stood alone as the pilot. 

Some acting things I noticed, David Castaneda, John Magaro (Leonard), and Ashley Madekwe were the standouts this episode. All three brought something interesting to the table this episode and I look forward to re-watching their scenes. I wish Madekwe and Magaro all the best as I know that they probably won’t be returning for season two. 

The plot thickens! Hazel and Cha Cha were introduced in a very obvious way compared to the subtle way they introduced Leonard. There is a reason I adore this episode, and it’s not just for Klaus slapping Five (though that is part of it). 

Total: 52

Sentence: We saw Diego eat a raw egg. That’s punishment enough for this episode. 

[ineffable-dads]

Obviously this wouldn't happen but what if Isabelle dated an angel or demon

Okay, I really cannot emphasis how much this would not happen.  At least with my interpretation of the Good Omens universe (and how much I love Peter). HOWEVER, this is a fun thought experiment, so let’s do it.

(This also turned out way longer than I meant it to so, have fun)

If Isabelle Dated a Demon…

The demon in question would first be there to corrupt her soul, pure and simple

Beelzebub knows they can’t get to Isabelle directly, so they play the long game of waiting until she dies and claiming her

The demon has to disguise themselves to blend in with humans, which is a bit of a trick since Crowley has been the only one consistently Earth side in over 3,000 years

The demon would also have to make sure they never came in direct contact with Aziraphale or Crowley because if they did, Aziraphale has a store of water pistols filled with Holy Water just waiting to be used

So sneaky manipulation from the side lines it is then

They take the form of a human male, since from their research Isabelle seems to have a preference for those

His plan is to watch her, figure out her movements, and put doubt and fear into her mind

It will take years, chipping away at her soul piece by piece.  That’s the price of real quality craftsmanship, but he’s been looking for a chance to prove himself and now is his opportunity

The problem is, having two supernatural entities as parents makes you rather attune to things that aren’t suppose to be there and Isabelle spots him immediately, demanding why he’s following her

He lies, obviously, demons lie after all, and says something he thinks human males usually say, he thought she was cute and wanted to ask her out

To his complete and utter surprise, she says sure

He’s in too deep now, and they meet for lunch the next day

He’s extremely awkward and literally has no idea what he’s doing; this was not part of a the plan at all, what do humans even do on dates?, what are dates? what is even happening?

Isabelle picks up on this internal screaming quickly, and takes pity on him asking him simple questions about himself

He starts telling he the truth, not the whole truth, just bits and pieces: he’s away from home for the first time for a job, he doesn’t have any friends in the city, and no he hasn’t been on a date before

She tells him she’s living with her Dads again after being away from home, she’s not sure what she wants to do with her life now, and she too doesn’t have many friends

He notices when he talks to her, he starts making a strange noise with his mouth, he’s seen Hastur do it after a good torturing, laughter if he remembers right, but it’s different from that kind of laughter; it makes his insides feel bubbly, he wonders if it’s this new food he’s consuming

He finds himself asking to see her again, and she says yes

They meet quite often after that

The demon tells himself he’s just getting closer to her to make the corruption easier, it’s what he tells his superiors when he makes his reports, but somehow corrupting her always slips his mind whenever they meet

He likes her morbid sense of humor, she likes how he doesn’t think she’s weird

They bond over not really knowing where they stand in the world; him from not being sure if he meets the expectations of what he’s been told to be his entire existence, her from always feeling like an outsider half in the supernatural, half out

Both of them layer these feelings in metaphor, but they are each still seen and recognized

Of course, everything comes to a head when she invites him to meet her Dads

It can’t be avoided, it was inevitable really, he’s got a plan

Before the meeting, he walks into A. Z. Fell and Co.

Aziraphale and Crowley know what he is in an instant

The prepare themselves for a fight, but are taken aback when the demon literally falls to his knees and pleads for them to let him speak

He tells them both everything, his mission, meeting Isabelle, and new feeling in his chest he can’t put a name to

Aziraphale feels it, knowing exactly what it is before Crowley puts it into words; “You’re falling in love.”

The demon asks for permission to be with Isabelle to which they both respond, it’s not up to them, he has to tell Isabelle the entire truth and then let her decide

He does as he told, finds her, and tells her everything

Once he’s done, she becomes very quiet

He can feel it, the anger, betrayal, the fear, and the doubt; all the things he was meant to corrupt her with, he feels sick

She asks him to leave, she needs time to think

He does and he lets her

He doesn’t bother checking into the head office, he can’t risk going in there now, he’s not that good of a liar

Somebody will come for him, he might have a chance if Aziraphale and Crowley put him under their protection, but he can’t ask that of them, not if he broke their daughter’s heart

He lives on edge for over a month; he wonders if this is what humans feel like all the time, in constant fear and knowledge of their imminent deaths

Finally, he gets a phone call

He meets Isabelle in the park; she tells him her Dads told her what he did, she tells him they don’t trust him, not completely, but they do trust that he loves her

She tells him she’ll give him a chance

The demon agrees; it will be a long road, and it can never be the same as it was, but it’s still a chance and they’re both willing to take it, together

If Isabelle Dated an Angel

Slight difference circumstances for meeting Angel boy

He’s heard about Aziraphale; the angel who walked into Hellfire and walked back out again, the angel who question the Great Plan, the angel who fraternize with a demon for over 3000 years and never got caught, at least until almost the end

He’s curious about this Angel and the Demon he associates with

He wonders what’s so special about the Earth, that the Angel of the Eastern Gate would defy the Great Plan to protect

So, ever so curious, he takes the back exit down to Earth to take a little look ‘round

His first stop is to Aziraphale’s bookshop, obviously

He’s got to know what’s so special about books that Aziraphale would make it his cover for so long

When he walks in, he’s surprise to see a young woman standing behind the desk

She’s human, as far as he can tell, probably one of those assistants he hears other humans fire to help run things

He asks if she has recommendations for books, to which she promptly replies, no

He’s rather taken aback, and so decides to take a look around himself

He notices her following him around the shop, making a point to say “that’s not for sale” every time his hand starts to go for a book

He starts to wonder if this really was such a great cover after all, when the Angel himself appears along with the famous Demon associate

Both Aziraphale and Crowley go stiff and immediately place their bodies between him and the young woman

Aziraphale asks, very calmly, what he happens to be doing in his shop

The angel blinks, and it takes him a minute to realize why Aziraphale is so on edge

“Oh, I’m just here for the books,” he promises.  “I understand they help a great deal in understand human culture.”

He tells them about his interest in humans, and the Earth, and about them in particular

Both Aziraphale and Crowley seem unsure, but the young woman speaks up for him

She hands him a small pile of books ranging from history to poetry, and tells him they’re a good place to start if he wants to learn properly

She also introduces herself as Isabelle, and she looks forwards to meeting him again

They do meet again, and again, and quite a bit after

Once he finishes a books, he comes back to the shop to find Isabelle with a new pile of essential reads

They discuss what he’s learned, he asks questions about humans and she does her best to answer them

He can’t stay all the time though

He does have to pop back up to heaven, and do his daily round until he can sneak out the back again

He starts sneaking back even when he hasn’t finished a book

He finds he likes talking with Isabelle, not just about human beings, but about everything

He tells her about Heaven, the rules, and why he finds it so odd they’re pretending like the failure to end of the world didn’t happen

He often wonders if that means there is something wrong with him, that’s maybe he is thinking about it too much and he should just let it go

Isabelle doesn’t think so though, she says she likes that he’s curious, she says she likes that he’s not one of those “stuck up pricks”, and she likes how he’s brave enough to rebel in his own small way

He hadn’t thought about it like that before, and he does feel a little braver after that

He starts to notice things he likes about her too; he likes how smart she is, he likes how she never tells him his questions are dumb or obvious, he likes the sound of her laugh, especially if he’s the one to cause it

Azirphale and Crowley quickly catch on to what’s happening to the poor angel, even if neither he nor Isabelle can see it themselves

There could be a happy ending to this; Aziraphale and Crowley are proof of that, but it will hurt

Heaven will figure out what’s happening sooner or later and then the angel will have a choice to make: stay in heaven, or fall to Earth

But as the angel and demon look upon the angel and human, they both understand; they decion has already been made

[lilnasxvevo]

I wanna talk about what I learned today!

So the thing about...antiviral medication is that it is not as easy and well-understood as antibiotics, where if you come to a doctor with what they reasonably suspect is a bacterial infection and you’re really sick they’ll be like “take this specific antibiotic here is your Rx now get the fuck out.” 

Antivirals are really really hard to develop and there are not a lot of breakthroughs, and it is not scientists’ fault or anything, it’s just a really complex thing. Antibiotics work by either killing bacteria, just walkin’ up and stabbing them or whatever, or by stopping the bacteria from reproducing. Antivirals are hard because they aren’t allowed to just walk up to viruses and stab them, because viruses work differently from bacteria in the body and it is very hard to find a way to attack viruses that also doesn’t hurt the cells of the body the virus is in. (Have you seen the Jimmy Neutron episode where--you know what nvm.) 

My current understanding (I just started learning about this today so please take this entire post with a LARGE GRAIN OF SALT) is that it is also harder to do research on viruses than bacteria because you can absolutely grow bacteria in a petri dish but viruses don’t really do the virus thing unless they’re on a living host.

So what research into developing an antiviral drug or other treatment for a specific virus means is that scientists have to Do Science and this means things like “just throwing everything we can think of at this virus and seeing if it destroys it” (and this takes a very long time) or the kind of thing Folding@home is doing where it runs a bunch of simulations on different parts and functions of the virus and tries to find weak spots. If you want a tortured pop culture metaphor, it is like if in Star Wars they knew the Death Star had a weakness but they didn’t know where it was so they just have to keep poking it with a stick in different places until they’re like “A-HA!” 

The website of  Folding@home has a lot more information about that kind of thing and also some more pop culture references--namely, there is a really weird spike on the novel coronavirus’ structure that scientists have nicknamed “the Demogorgon” because it undergoes a “dramatic opening motion” in order to latch on to another cell, and some nerds at Washington University St. Louis were like “I think that looks like that one thing from Stranger Things.”

So what Folding@home does is they poke things with a stick through simulations. They have been doing this for a while so they have some pretty good ideas where to look, but the looking takes a very long time. 

(It takes less time if everyone downloads Folding@home to their computers and lets it use your computer’s idle processing power when it’s plugged in and charging to be part of a network of computers that each runs one smaller simulation and that together basically form one supercomputer. Understanding the virus more completely and more quickly can only ever be a good thing, so seriously--download it!)

[krahka]

The KleskizhAUs and their Poetic Styles

Under read more because lomg

SWTOR Kleskizhae

Ridiculous Sith Juggernaut. Excessively proud of his Sith ancestry but also ridiculously light side and somehow doesn’t see this as a problem. Loves lightsabers, loves the Empire but is a little less clear on whether he likes the Empire as an institution or the Empire as the people, and hint, it’s the people, he’ll pick the people if he had to.

Poetry: ALL CAPS HAIKUS FREE VERSE ASTRONOMY METAPHORS EXTREMELY VIOLENT REFERENCES TO ANCIENT SITH HISTORY BEAUTIFUL WORDS BEATEN STRAIGHT OUT OF HIS HEART OF DARK PASSION

DS!SWTOR Kleskizhae

Ridiculous and awful Sith Juggernaut. Believes himself morally and genetically superior to all others. Delights in toying with his inferiors, especially in breaking their hearts with his charm and facade of kindness. 

Poetry: Flowery and romantic and flattering. More or less copies of ancient Sith poems, but with the words changed a bit. They’re mostly for showing off how cultured he is and how much he loves you babe, so he doesn’t put in much effort. 

ESO Kleskizhae

Altmer Battlemage. A scion of the Direnni but not on great terms with his family due to his allegiance to the Aldmeri Dominion and his marrying a Bosmer because of Spinner shenanigans. Ambassador of the Queen and definitely not one of her Eyes nosir. Got pressganged into the Buoyant Armigers after impressing Vivec by exemplifying all of hir favorite virtues and vices just by accident.

Poetry: Sonnets. Ballads. Sexually explicit but it’s so purple that you can hardly tell just how sexually explicit it really is. Mostly about his own adventures and the people he knows. Melodramatic as fuck. The stuff he wrote when Vivec specifically was taking an interest in him is his best work, since he starts getting more experimental and tones down the silliness without losing that red hot emotional core that really elevates the verse to something that so many people try and fail to replicate in the future that it’s become its own genre. 

DS!ESO Kleskizhae

Altmer Battlemage what dabbles in necromancy. Believes himself the rightful king of all of High Rock with the Bretons as his rebellious subjects. Allied with Mannimarco because he promised him that when Planemeld happened, he could have his ancestral holdings all to himself, with all the people there living only to glorify him. The kinda guy you end up killing in the Daggerfall Covenant quests or in a Balfiera focused dungeon DLC. 

Poetry: Pretty similar to light side ESO!Kleskizhae, but if he thinks you didn’t appreciate his work he’ll torture you until you do. Try and critique it and he’ll just plain murder you and raise your corpse to grovel for his forgiveness and admit that you were wrong. Also his poetry is his annoying boss mechanic somehow. Didn’t read the books in his dungeon? Too bad because that’s how you defeat him. 

GW2 Klejskizae

Norn Herald. Skald, champion of Wolf, Lightbringer of the Order of Whispers. A Delight unto all people of Tyria! Your new best friend who is not using your friendship with him to learn your secrets! Come and listen to him channel the spirits and the Legends next Dragon Bash!

Poetry: Actually more into prose. Veddas. Stories about heroes, exaggerated for effect. Tales that he keeps in his mind that he tells differently each time he’s asked to tell it, depending on what he thinks his audience needs to hear. The poetry tends to be more personal, often taking the form of prayers to the Spirits that are between him and them. Also will write songs, also about heroes, with calls to action for the Pact. 

TES!Specifically Klejskizae

Nord Skaald. Traveling yeller. Delighter of audiences all throughout Tamriel. Follower of the Old Ways. Probably also in the Blades. 

Poetry: SCREAMING TAVERN SONGS. Great heroes, sometimes gets kicked out of taverns in Skyrim because he’s performing songs about non-Nord heroes but how can you not be excited by EVERYONE

SWTOR!Specifically Klejskizae

Mandalorian what will scream battle poems in your ear as he faces you in glorious hand to hand combat. Has some very weird ideas of what being Mandalorian is, but they’re closer to reality than his Sith version’s ideas of being Sith. 

Poetry: You thought Sith Kleskizhae’s poetry was gory and violent? You haven’t heard Mando Klejskizae. They are ridiculous. Everything ends with lovers embracing for the last time as they die in battle and their death is described in excruciating detail.

FFXIV Kleskizhae

Ishgardian adventurer. Dragoony Bard. Got kicked out for being way too scandalous for the theocracy and for talking too much about how he thought that maybe we should just smooch the Dragons? 

Poetry: The poetry isn’t why he’s not liked back in Ishgard, though that poetry was a means to transmit his unpopular and scandalous ideas and activities. The poetry specifically is why he’s distrusted in Gridania after he met an elemental and challenged it to a rap battle and it went very poorly. (Kleskizhae won and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise or that that’s not the point and there is no winning because he definitely won)

West Coast Fallout Klaus K. Zheng

Paladin of the Brotherhood of Steel. Sort of into the whole BoS thing of keeping dangerous tech out of people’s hands but also he’s into protecting people in any way he can, since they must protect those who will inherit the past, yes? That is what we’re doing, right? Right?

Poetry: He found a book of poems about Arthurian legends and they changed his life, as did Grognak the Barbarian which he’s sure is in the same canon. He’s also read a bunch of Shakespeare and only sort of understands it. So yeah, sonnets that are Shakespeare ripoffs. Casting modern topics into medieval terms. Sometimes it’ll get weird and his BoS worldview will come in and make them anachronistic but it’s unintentional because he just wants to write like the knights of yore. 

East Coast Fallout Klaus K. Zheng

Enclave soldier, later deserter once he sees that oh shit killing everyone wasn’t supposed to be what they were going to do! He wasn’t listening to the quiet part! Ends up aiding synths because it pisses off the BoS and also saves lives. Still believes in America but it’s one that maybe never existed. 

Poetry: The Enclave did preserve a lot of good American literature in their databanks, though they’re kinda sketchy about distributing it to their soldiers since even before 2077 they realized that a lot of the American canon contains like, anti-war, anti-corporate ideas and they couldn’t have that in their new society. He read Leaves of Grass once and it blew his mind. He might just surrender to the Brotherhood if they let him have access to their books, because he needs those. But also he might not because they would probably kill him and he’s also spending his post-Raven Rock time helping synths out of the Institute and that’s something they’d kill him for. And probably also kill a lot of other people if they realized that the Railroad had ex-Enclave in there. And the Institute doesn’t care for the humanities, which is why they had to create machines to teach them how to be human and then proceed to do such terrible things to the humans they’ve created; because they are less machine than they are and they resent them for it. 

Modern Vlogger Klaus K. Zheng

Relationship advice vlogger, specifically as a counter-voice to all those shitty misogynist PUAs that are targeting lonely straight men. Also here for the lonely women and the lonely queers since he’s a queer man himself. 

Poetry: He’s got a Master’s in Poetry and he feels it was time well spent, even if he didn’t care as much for academia as he did for the writing and the reading. One of the rewards for donating to his Patreon at a higher tier is a short poem written just for you about whatever subject you wish. (Assuming that it’s not extremely objectionable. He’ll gladly write poems about all sorts of sex acts, but he won’t write one about the virtues of white power.)

HZD Kleskizhae

Carja Warrior. Participated in the Red Raids because that was what the will of the Sun was but he couldn’t take the violence and the genocide and ended up joining with Sun-Prince Avad to overthrow the murderous king literally as soon as he could. Has been on a tour of goodwill ever since. 

Poetry: Overuses the words “glinting”, “scintillating”, “resplendent”, “radiant”, “brilliant” and other words that mean A LOT OF LIGHT because he’s really into writing ridiculous songs about the Sun. A lot more personal and emotional than a lot of Carja poetry, since it’s more about love than about praising the Sun or the King. It’s a new dawn, and what the world needs is love’s shining rays to heal her wounds. With the help of some Oseram who wanted to promote the newly invented phonograph, manages to become the first real pop star after the apocalypse.

DA Kleskizhae

Tevinter Battlemage. Was sent off to the front lines against the Qunari to keep from embarrassing his family and his master. Accidentally ended up embarrassing them anyway. 

Poetry: So he’s really into bringing up the Old Gods in his poems. He doesn’t worship them, he’s a good Andrastian, but you know how in the Renaissance everyone was a huge Greeceaboo? Yeah, it’s like that. 

WtA Klaus K. Zheng

Fianna Galliard. He’s a werewolf poet who sings ballads of his pack’s glorious battles and lifts their spirits in the name of Gaia and Stag!

Poetry: He’s got a soft spot for dirty limericks. All of the Kleskizhaes will make improv poems upon request when they’re drunk enough but Fianna!Klaus is the master of the drunken on-the-spot poem. Like they get way better when he’s drunk and they’re improvised, as opposed to the usual thing where they’re charmingly bad.

VtM Klaus K. Zheng

Toreador. Got the vampire bug some time in the Victorian era, I dunno if he was actually British or what.

Poetry: Lord Byron himself once called his poems “a bit maudlin.” His sire was certainly fond of his work, but if he had more time in his peak living creative years he would have probably been a better known figure in the Romantic movement. As it is he’s fairly irrelevant and forgotten by all but a few intense scholars of the period, and even they consider him a minor figure. 

Shadowrun Klaus K. Zheng

Elven Street Samurai. Just wants to make the world a better place through the power of love and also katanas. Probably unfortunately involved with Aztechnology which is gonna end badly for him probably. 

Poetry: Machines and corporations have not yet conquered the metahuman soul, and that is why he writes. Has been banned from a couple of Runner BBSs for constantly posting about his latest runs in the form of epic poem, and that’s not what these boards are for, @GLORIOUSSAMURAI, please turn off your caps lock

Star Trek Kleskizhae

Romulan Tactical Officer. Fought in the Dominion War, joined the Romulan Republic after Romulus asplode, because they wouldn’t let him quietly desert and because he believes in the true Romulan spirit that can never be repressed!

Poetry: He’s trying to revive ancient pre-Awakening Vulcan poetic traditions whilst failing to recognize that lots of it doesn’t work in the modern Romulan language. He’s always been super into poetry but after the destruction of Romulus, he becomes obsessed with writing the perfect series of poems to describe it for the future, so that people will remember what it’s like long after everyone who remembers it is dead. He hasn’t been successful yet and it’s upsetting him but he can’t just not do it. He owes it to the dead. 

Bionicle Kleskizhae

He's a proud Skakdi warlord of Fire who is trying his best to unite his proud and noble people against the wicked deprivations of the Makuta and might also be in the Order of Mata Nui because sometimes Kleskizhae is a spy? But always he is very loud. 

Poetry: Extremely long and elaborate war chants with 40 verses that he’s trying to get his guys to chant into battle but no one else but him can remember it all and he keeps adding more verses. But also he’s written love poetry that’s gone all the way around Greg and made romance canon again! He’s done it! With the chiseling of the tablets he’s made love real!

[heavilycyborgego]

“The flesh is the concentration of “ethnicity” that contemporary critical discourses neither acknowledge nor discourse away. It is this “flesh and blood” entity, in the vestibule (or “pre-view”) of a colonized North America, that is essentially ejected from “The Female Body in Western Culture” [see Suleiman, ed.], but it makes good theory, or commemorative “herstory” to want to “forget” or to have failed to realize, that the African female subject, under these historic conditions, is not only the target of rape - in one sense, an interiorized violation of body and mind - but also the topic of specifically externalized acts of torture and prostration that we imagine as the peculiar province of male brutality and torture inflicted by other males. A female body strung from a tree limb, or bleeding from the breast on any given day of field work because the “overseer,” standing the length of a whip, has popped her flesh open, adds a lexical and living dimension to the narratives of women in culture and society [Davis 9]. This materialized scene of unprotected female flesh - of female flash “ungendered” - offers a praxis and a theory, a text for living and for dying, and a method for reading both through their diverse mediations.

Among the myriad uses to which the enslaved community was put, Goodell identifies its value for medical research: “Assortments of diseased, damaged and disabled Negroes, deemed incurable and otherwise worthless are brought up it seems...by medical institutions, to be experimented and operated upon, for purposes of ‘medical education’ and the interest of medical science” [86-87; Goodell’s emphasis]. From the Charleston Mercury for October 12, 1838, Goodell notes this advertisement:

‘To planters and other. - Wanted, fifty Negroes, any person, having sick Negroes, considered incurable by their respective physicians, and wishing to dispose of them, Dr. S will pay cash for Negroes affected with scrofula, or king’s evil, confirmed hypochondriasm, apoplexy, diseases of the liver, kidneys, spleen, stomach and intestines, bladder and its appendages, diarrhea, dysentery, etc. The highest case price will be paid, on application as above.’ at No. 110 Church Street, Charleston. [87; Goodell’s emphasis]

This profitable “atomizing” fo the captive body provides another angle on the divided flesh: we lose any hint or suggestion of a dimension of ethics, of relatedness between human personality and its anatomical features, between one human personality and another, between human personality and cultural institutions. To that extent, the procedures adopted for the captive flesh demarcate a total objectification, as the entire captive community becomes a living laboratory.

The captive body, then, brings into focus a gathering of social realities as well as a metaphor for value so thoroughly interwoven in their literal and figurative emphases that distinctions between them are virtually useless. Even though the captive flesh/body has been ‘liberate’” and no one need pretend that even the quotation marks do not matter, dominant symbolic activity, the ruling episteme that releases the dynamics of naming and valuation, remains grounded in the originating metaphors of captivity and mutilation so that it is as if neither time nor history, nor historiography and its topics, shows movement, as the human subject is ‘murdered’ over and over again by the passions of a bloodless and anonymous archaism, showing itself in endless disguise. Faulkner’s young Chick Mallison in The Mansion calls “it” by other names - ‘the ancient subterrene atavistic fear...’ [227]. And I would call it the Great Long National Shame. But people do not talk like that anymore - it is “embarrassing.” just as the retrieval of mutilated female bodies will likely be “backward” for some people. Neither the shameface of the embarrassed, nor the not-looking-back of the self-assured is of much interest to us, and will not help at all if rigor is our dream. We might concede, at the very least, that sticks and bricks might break our bones, but words will most certainly kill us.”

-Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book, Hortense J. Spillers