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88y53 · 7 months ago

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New trailer for MAWS Season 2! I have some things to say.

Mainly about the villains.

And I just...

How about we start with the positives.

They brought in Atomic Skull, which is great. He should've been here sooner if you ask me.

Parasite is returning, and he was a stand-out in my opinion. Loved how they reinvented him.

That's unmistakably a parademon, which means they'll be expanding the space side of the story and bringing in the New Gods. Cool.

I'm thinking this is Solaris, the Tyrant Sun. Always fun to bring in an evil sentient star.

Looks like they're bringing in Steel, which is awesome. Love having him around.

And for the big one:

Supergirl! Clark isn't alone anymore!

It'll be really fun watching how this develops.

Okay, now for the things I'm iffy about.

Is this guy supposed to be Bloodsport or Conduit? Either way, can we stop with the techno-mercenary-criminals?

I guess not because apparently this is going to be Blockbuster.

Livewire's back. I say through clenched teeth. Hopefully, they'll introduce her pathological need for attention and validation in this season.

Apparently, Brainiac is a collaborator with the Kryptonians, who seem to be like the Viltrumites from Invincible–superpowered world conquerors.

[I do kind of like this call-back to the old Fleischer cartoons]

And then this:

This is officially Lex Luthor.

. . . (sigh). This show is so frustrating to me because it's so close to perfect, but it just never commits to getting it right.

Now, I understand Lex Luthor is a hard character to grasp because he's been completely misunderstood for the past 40 years (and we have John Byrne to thank for that).

I can see how they could spin this into a Breaking Bad scenario–a young genius who feels overlooked and underappreciated decides to become a master criminal to get the respect law-abiding society denied him.

But that's still missing a critical piece of his character.

Lex Luthor and Superman used to be friends.

(This was written by Jerry Siegel, by the way–AKA the co-creator of Superman)

There was a time when Lex had the potential to be a world-changing scientist, but a rookie mistake by Superboy completely changed the trajectory of his life.

It's only when they had a falling-out that Lex became a criminal because he lost faith that society would ever accept him.

This Lex feels more in the mold of the John Byrne Lex who was just a bad Donald Trump parody.

It also brings to mind Jesse Eisenberg's pseudo-libertarian Mark Zuckerberg Luthor, which was just the apex of how shallow the Post-Crisis Luthor is.

Basically Lex Luthor becomes a super-criminal because he has no friends. He's a GD incel.

Like, seriously, he's just a lonely nerd who denies his insecurities through a hyper-masculine persona, all to distract himself from how miserable he is.

That is Lex Luthor

That's what makes moments like this so poignant:

Lex Luthor could be happy and respected if he just let go of his toxic mindset, but he's so wrapped up in his misanthropy, self-pity and self-loathing, entitlement, and blaming of Superman to see it.

I also kind of headcanon that Lex is gay and just massively over-compensates for it, and his fixation on Superman is the same hated obsession incels have with women.

Maybe the show will surprise me, who knows?

I'll still watch it–it's the first solo Superman cartoon in the last 27, so you can't be picky about these things.

#my adventures with superman #maws #maws spoilers #superman #lex luthor #adult swim #dc comics

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bawdybooster · 3 months ago

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Creative ways of hypnosis are amazing. Beautiful. But how about we bring back the classics in cartoons that probably are the origins of our kinks ? The classic "look into my eyes" and "yes master" (or mistress)

You know, you make a good point about how underappreciated the classics are. I'm all for some more creative and experimental hypnosis depictions, but we wouldn't be anywhere near those if not for the ol' hypno-eyes.

Heads Up though that this piece GETS PROPERLY NOT SAFE FOR TUMBLR. Not just "Oh btw this is some kinky kink stuff" NotSafeForTumblr I mean "Our Main Character gets stripped naked and examined/fondled by his Master" NotSafeForTumblr.

Anyway, Story below the Cut!

They'd only been in the same room for a few minutes, but to Caleb, it must've been hours. He'd come to the Old Gentleman's Estate seeking to court his daughter, but it seemed there was a misunderstanding. The servants, smiling fools as they were, seemed to think he was here to join them! As he was guided past an arsenal of happy, smiling servants, he was beginning to have second thoughts about it all.

Upon meeting the Old Gentleman himself, though, he soon found he had no thoughts at all.

Caleb quickly found himself swept over by the Old Gentleman's presence. The way he carried himself, the way he dressed, that smooth, clear, commanding voice... before he knew it, Caleb had become utterly captivated by the thought of him.

"Is everything alright, Caleb?" The Gentleman spoke. Only a moment ago, he'd been talking about some sort of examination Caleb would have to undergo. He seemed concerned for the young man swaying loosely before him, but his eyes told another story. They drew Caleb in like beautiful, glimmering gemstones, shining against the candlelight of the study in an iridescent glow.

"Y... Yes..." Caleb answered meekly.

The Gentleman shook his head. "Dear boy," he commanded, "If you are to be in my service, You Are To Refer To Me As Master. Am I clear?"

"Y... Yes..."

"Yes, What?"

"Yes, Master," Caleb responded immediately. He was shocked at how his body seemed to betray him.

"Excellent," The Gentleman beamed. "Enough of these pleasantries then..."

Caleb winced as the old man's eyes erupted, bursting into hypnotic light.

"Look Into Your Master's Eyes Like A Good Servant."

The words slipped through Caleb's mouth before he could even register them. The young man gasped at the sight before him, unable to look away from those beautiful eyes. Ribbons of blinding whites and enveloping blacks twisted out from the Gentleman's glimmering eyes, ensnaring his presence over Caleb's will. They slithered into his wide, awestruck eyes and wrapped around his mind tight, refusing to let anything slip out from under their spiraling spell.

"That's It," soothed the Gentleman, "Look Into My Eyes and let my will course through you. Think only of serving me. Think only of being mine."

"Yes, Master." Caleb answered emptily.

He blushed as the Gentleman grinned in delight, offering his new servant an affectionate "Good Boy~" for his obedience. He rose from his seat and marched over to Caleb, beckoning the young man to rise for his Master.

The Examination was about to begin.

A set of well-dressed hands, draped in silken gloves and a wool overcoat, wrapped their way around the young man's body. They teased and traced over every inch of him, examining Caleb thoroughly. He didn't even register them unbuttoning his shirt, peeling away the cloth covering his skin to reveal his handsome body hidden away.

With a graceful twirl, his shirt was whisked away from his chest. Then, the Gentleman's hands danced down to his legs, slipping off his shoes before briskly dropping his trousers to the floor. In moments, he was left standing in nothing but his undergarments within the Gentleman's study.

"Remove the last of your clothes." The Gentleman commanded. Certainly, he could've done this himself, but he wanted to be assured that his new servant would be loyal to his command -- his every command.

Without hesitation, Caleb's hands thoroughly stripped him of his undergarments. Perhaps, a bit too thoroughly, though. The undergarments were practically shredded by the time Caleb had finished tearing them from his legs.

The Gentleman smirked as he took in the sight of his new servant, standing for only him to bear in his study.

A blissful smile crept over the young man's face as the pair of hands kneaded against his chest. They massaged and fondled the young man with equally as much wanton desire as studious expertise. Caleb couldn't help but feel like putty in their molding caress. His grinning jaw grew slack, and a hint of drool began to trail its way from his lips.

The young man gasped as a gloved hand pounced upon his face and snapped his jaw shut.

"Now, now," the Gentleman tutted, still focused on his new servant's body. "You mustn't drool, my prize. A good manservant is just as much a gentleman as his master."

"Yes, Master."

Caleb kept his mouth shut tight as the hand left his chin. The Gentleman kept a watchful eye on the young man, beaming spirals of obedience continuously into his servant's mind as he continued his examining caress. Caleb couldn't help but continue to look, even when his eyes wanted to squint and giggle at how good the Gentleman's touch felt at times.

Then, the Gentleman moved lower.

Caleb's thighs shut tight together as a graceful hand ghosted its way down to his crotch. The Gentleman glowered, glaring into his new servant's eyes.

"Open For Your Master." He commanded.

Caleb squirmed, his desire to obey betrayed by how sinfully good it felt just to have that hand there on his crotch, mere inches away from his penis. He didn't want to close his thighs to that savory touch -- his body was acting on instinct!

The Gentleman grabbed at the young man's throat, holding him firm as he bore into his eyes with spiraling vigor. "Look Into My Eyes." He commanded once more. "Open For Your Master."

A choked mewl escaped Caleb's lips with a whimper as his body went limp in his Master's hold, his thighs spreading apart to reveal himself to the Gentleman.

"Good boy," said the Gentleman, "Now let's see how you fare under pressure~"

What felt like a jolt of electricity shot through Caleb as the Gentleman groped his cock. That firm hand gripped him with slow, methodical precision, pushing him further to the brink. His eyes fluttered, addled by feelings of pleasure caressing his entire being. Whispers of praise danced into his ears and directed his mind further into his trance, further into the Gentleman's ever-present hold over his being.

"That's it, my prize," he purred, "Succumb To Me. Give In To My Embrace. Your Body Is Mine. Your Mind Is Mine. You Belong To Me."

Caleb grinned as the Gentleman spoke the truth to his mind. "Yes, Master." He praised. He belonged to him. His body was but a toy for his Master to play with. His mind was an instrument for his Master to tune to his melody. He guided him along into bliss with gentle tenderness, yet the hunger in his eyes spoke volumes of his need.

The young man gasped as the hands holding him ripped away from his flesh. He reached out to hold them back, unwilling to let that wonderful pleasure escape him so quickly.

"Be Still."

Caleb froze to his Master's command. The Gentleman stepped back, marveling at the beautiful sight he had molded from the young man who had only just arrived at his Estate.

"A very good performance, Caleb," The Gentleman remarked, "A Very Good Performance indeed.

"Yes, Master," Caleb replied. He was happy to have performed so well for his Master.

"You show excellent promise for our staff. Eager to obey, Loyal to command, and bearing a well-endowed form. Normally, you'd work your way up to this position, but this opening needs to be filled immediately by someone... disposable."

Caleb perked up, his empty grin somewhat puzzled at his Master's words.

"I suppose it is the nature of our gifts," the Gentleman mused. "My daughter finds nothing more attractive than a lover she can break and put back together again. I can't blame her. However, she's yet to figure out the ordeal of putting them back together again. A problem, as I'm sure you'd agree."

"Yes, Master." Caleb smiled.

The Gentleman paced, continuing his study of the young man. "So, you are to be her 'Test Subject'. A disposable plaything she can break and break again and again so that she can learn how to make a lover. Does That Sound Agreeable?"

Caleb grinned. The thought of it all sounded like a dream come true.

"Excellent." The Gentleman beamed. "And when she's done with you, and broken and remade you so thoroughly you can't tell what's what... You Will Be My Plaything To Toy With~"

#bawdy posts #my writing #from the thought box #nsft #hypnosis #hypnokink #mind control #brainwashing #(sorry about taking so long to get to this one)#(creative inspiration comes and goes for me and sometimes it ain't in a hypno mood)

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knwatchesninjago · 10 months ago

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S1E2 Home

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

THIS EPISODE!!!! WHAT!??!?!? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! OH MY GOSHHHHH!!!! I LOVE THIS EP SOOO MUCH!!!!

Alright then. What I am waiting for? Let's get into it!!

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Okay!!! THIS EP WAS SO FOCUSED ON FOUND FAMILY-- AND I LOVE IT!!! <33333

But I honestly love how it's focused on Zane in a way. I'll write my view on Zane in this ep at the end of this post.

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Okay, I love how Wu's first instinct was to check the gaming room!! Absolutely hilarious!!

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Okay.. lemme make this clear. I feel absolutely sorry for this dude

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Alrighty, let's move on tooooo....

#Lloydster_Enters_The_Scene

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It wouldn't be lloyd if he didn't regret his life choices, now would it?

#RegretLifeDesisions

OKAY I SWEAR I WAS CRYING WHEN I SAW THESE LAST SCENES!😭😭😭

LLOYD, BABY, U GO RIGHT INTO THAT SHIP AND RUN INTO UR UNCLE'S ARMS!! STOP THINKING THAT UR UNLOVEABLE!!!

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ALRIGHT!! ENOUGH OF LLOYD!! TIME FOR ✨ZANE✨!!!

Alright in the beginning we can see Jay, Cole, and Kai complaining to Wu and saying that Zane was weird.

I honestly love Wu's wise response:

"What is weird? Someone who is different? Or someone who is different than you?"

We then get a few flashbacks where Zane acts a bit odd. Okay... not that big of a deal as of rn.

The scene then shifts to the group at dinner. Zane comes walking in with a delious-looking turkey, wearing a pink apron.

As expected, the group laughs. Even Master Wu (totally not responsible and kind of u, Wu) joins in with the laughter.

After clearing up that mess they decide to have a food fight. Now on the surface, nothing seems wrong about that. (except for the fact that they're wasting food. my asian parents would never allow that in our house, loll)

But pay close attention to Zane.

He isn't smiling. He isn't laughing.

He's upset.

When Jay throws a piece of food at him, he FLINCHES!!! In his mind, all the time and love he spent making the meal is being wasted and underappreciated as his family throws it around as if it's nothing. They're all playing around and joking, but he isn't laughing...

And when he goes outside and sees the stars, look how happy he is!

This is one thing I love about Zane: he finds happiness in the most simplest of things.

When he sees the falcon fly away to an unknown location. He hesitates. He looks back at the monastery where you can STILL hear their laughter. His smile fades. Then he looks at the falcon and decides to follow it. And he follows the falcon with a SMILE.

Time skip, we see Zane and the team find Lloyd's treehouse. (a pretty impressive treehouse, ngl)

Just so I don't spoil the entire ep to you, I'm gonna ignore all the fighting scenes. When the ninjas come back, they see that their monastery is destroyed. And what do they do?

They yell at Zane. They blame him.

And what does Zane do? Nothing.

He doesn't retaliate. Doesn't try to put the blame on others. He does nothing. He takes all the blows.

He leaves and we later find out it's because he saw the falcon.

But... Y"ALL! When everyone apologizes, he doesn't act smug or try to rub it in their faces-- he asks them why they were apologizing.

In his innocently, pure mind, he doesn't take anything into account. He forgives them.

This is such a pure action, that's so simple but still so deep. He loves his team so much and nothing they ever do will affect that love he has for them. (im crying y'all)

AND THE LAST SCENE!!!! 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

OH MY GOSH!!! I WAS SQUEALING WHEN I WATCHED THIS!!

(first of... Jay and Kai run really weirdly... why are their arms flapping around!?!)

THE FAMILY FLUFFFF!!!!

"I am proud of you, Zane. One day, I promise, we will find your family."

And Zane's responce... 😭😭

"But... I've already found them"

*sniff sniff*

*breaks down into happy tears*

Y"ALLL ZANE IS SOO... SO FORGIVING!!!! I can't with this nindroid😭

And lastly... look at this wholesome scene.

Here we can see a huge contrast to the beginning scene. Here Zane initiates the throwing of food. And here, everyone is laughing.

It's only a joke if everyone is laughing. It's only funny if everyone is smiling. It's only "playing around" if everyone is okay with it.

I know that this review was a bit deep, but I'm only in the 2nd ep of season 1 and I'm absolutely loving it!! I'm so glad I decided to rewatch Ninjago!

Anyways, this is all I have for now. See y'all for ep 3!!

~KN out~

https://www.tumblr.com/kittenninja14/731916269075480576/hey-yall-i-just-found-this-incredible-video-and

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fibula-rasa · 5 months ago

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Stunting Into Stardom

WINNIE BROWN, nameless and unknown, has doubled for all the stars, but now she’s to be a star herself

By Adela Rogers St. Johns

——— ——— ———

from Photoplay, December 1922

Originally, I had planned for this short article by Adela Rogers St. Johns to be the basis of my recent “How’d They Do That” piece. But, once I started researching Winnie/Winna Brown, I realized that the films I was able to find evidence she worked on are either presumed lost or are inaccessible—so, her stunts are un-gif-able!

To compound the lack of gif-ability, the Frances Marion project discussed in this article never came to fruition AND assertions that Rogers St. Johns made about Brown’s “discovery” are incorrect.

You can probably understand why I chose a different article about silent stunt performers to analyze!

Despite all that mess, Brown seemed like such an interesting character, I wanted to profile her anyway. My commentary on the article will be highlighted like so and following the article you’ll find a working filmography that I’ve compiled and annotated citations.

Let’s learn about one more of those overlooked, underappreciated dare-devils of silent cinema!

——— ——— ———

WINNIE BROWN!

——— ——— ———

First things first: Winnie Brown was also known as Winna Brown. Over the course of Brown’s career, which started sometime around 1913, she was variously referred to as Winna and Winnie (possibly shortened from Winona).

——— ——— ———

Maybe you never heard tell o’ Winnie Brown.

Maybe that name doesn’t come inside your recollection at all.

But I want you to know about Winnie Brown. For the days of the old west, the picturesque old west that held more color and more fascination than any part of this country has ever held, is disappearing. And Winnie Brown is one of the last of its real inhabitants.

Winnie Brown, the greatest living cowgirl. The best stunt rider and broncho buster and horse wrangler that ever put on chaps. The idol of the real cowboys. The winner of rodeos and exhibitions from Cheyenne to Oklahoma.

READ on BELOW the JUMP!

——— ——— ———

I don’t know Brown’s rodeo record, but I do know that she competed in or performed at rodeos in New Mexico, Arizona, and California. One of which, in Los Angeles, was committed to film for When Quality Meets (1915). Yes, they did actually “shoot the rodeo.”

——— ——— ———

Winnie Brown, to whom the motion picture fans owe so many thrills and whose face has never been seen before a camera. Who has done some of the most daring and difficult scenes the silversheet has ever recorded but whose name has never appeared on the screen.

——— ——— ———

Brown’s film career may have begun in New Mexico or California—she was an active part of both rodeo scenes by 1913. Later in this article, Rogers St. Johns claims that Frances Marion “discovered” Brown. However, it was another woman film pioneer, Dot Farley, who most likely gave Brown her first break.

Sometime round about 1913, a film unit was formed by Farley and Gilbert P. Hamilton called The Albuquerque Film Company, associated with Warner. They produced shorts and features—most of them starring Farley and based on her original scenarios. From contemporary news items, it seems like Brown was part of the crew from the start—not solely as a stunt performer, but also as an actor and prop master.

In fact, in one of their 1914 releases, Reuben’s Busy Day, Brown is the feminine lead:

Production still featuring Brown in Reuben's Busy Day from Moving Picture World, 14 November 1914

It’s no great mystery why, if you were printing a puff piece repackaging a reliable woman stunter as a fresh, new star, you wouldn’t want to talk about how she had already been a featured player nearly a decade prior!

——— ——— ———

But who at last is to come into her own and play not only the “stunt scenes” but the whole star part of a real cowgirl in a real western story.

You remember, maybe, times when you’ve seen the serial star race her horse alongside a train going 40 miles an hour and then leap from her saddle to the rear rail of the observation car—or maybe jump her pony down a 100-foot cliff.

Ten chances to one, that was Winnie Brown.

Perhaps you have sat in your comfortable theater seat and seen the persecuted ingenue jump from the ninth story of a burning building—actually jump right out into space where no net was visible.

Winnie Brown!

And the lovely star who rode, perhaps, a whirling, threatening jam of logs down the dark and dangerous rapids of a great river—

That, too, was Winnie Brown.

Photo caption: Frances Marion, who discovered Winnie Brown, is shown at the right, discussing stardom with the stunt girl. Miss Marion is now making the first Winnie Brown picture

The most daring, reckless, skillful double, the movie game has ever known, that’s what, Winnie Brown has been.

There’s hardly a great star in the game today for whom Winnie Brown hasn’t doubled. There’s hardly a piece of wild and death-defying business that Winnie hasn’t performed.

Yet to her audiences she has been nameless, faceless, unknown.

When she has gone to see herself upon the screen it has been in the clothes and under the name and mask of some other woman. The credit for her work has gone elsewhere.

——— ——— ———

There’s a charming news item that floated around in 1923 of Brown being an unexpected double for the uber-glamorous Pola Negri in Bella Donna (1923). While Brown was very well-suited to perform the horse stunts, she struggled with the fancy costume. She supposedly remarked:

“I’m more scared o’ them dresses ‘n I ever was o’ any stunt.” from Photoplay, May 1923

Pola Negri in a production still for Bella Donna

——— ——— ———

“That don’t matter none,” said Winnie Brown, turning her fine, dark eyes on me, “I got the mazuma. An’ don’t say too much about the doublin’ part. Most o’ these here stars don’t like for folks to know they use a double. An’ o’ course it ain’t their fault most o’ the time they do—it’s the company makes ’em. If I bust a coupla o’ ribs or a laig or two, it don’t make no difference. I got a swell doctor and he fixes me up cheap. But if one o’ them fancy stars gits mashed up or her face scratched, it costs the company a whole wad o’ spondolicks.

“Most o’ the girls I’ve doubled for would have been willin’ to tackle it themselves all right, only the company wouldn’t hear to it, and besides, those skirts ain’t got the trainin’.”

——— ——— ———

Some of the stars Brown was reported as doubling for in addition to Negri are Priscilla Dean (in Siren of Seville (1924)), Norma Talmadge, Lois Wilson, Colleen Moore, Bebe Daniels, Corinne Griffith, and Marie Prevost. So far, which films starring most of these women Brown doubled for are still a question mark for me. Horses were Brown’s obvious specialty, but she also performed automobile and train stunts as well as the odd aquatic bit. That cowpoke had the range!

Siren of Seville is extant but not easily accessible at the moment, but these production photos on alamy caught my eye. Unfortunately, Brown and Dean actually resembled each other, so you add that with the fact that Brown would be made up as Dean to double for her, and it’s honestly kind of hard to tell if it’s Dean or Brown in these photos. So, Imma include them nonetheless.

Behind the scenes photos from Siren of Seville

——— ——— ———

Winnie has donned the grease-paint and become a western leading lady.

Winnie is going to play the leading role in a real western picture, written specially for her. You are going to see a real cowgirl in action. And there are more real stunts in this picture than were ever written into one script before.

“Reckon she’ll have to have a double herself, ‘fore she gits through,” said Soupstrainer gravely.

Frances Marion is the discoverer of Winnie Brown. Miss Marion, for a number of years scenario writer and director for Mary Pickford, and now scenarioist for Norma and Constance Talmadge, discovered Winnie when she went to look at some horses. And she decided to give her a chance on the screen.

——— ——— ———

As I mentioned earlier, it was more likely Dot Farley who “discovered” Brown, so this doesn’t necessarily have the ring of truth to it. Marion’s husband was Fred Thomson, who was also a cowboy stunter. It’s likely Brown and Thomson worked together before 1922. Marion herself had given Thomson the boost to stardom while she was collaborating closely with Mary Pickford in 1921. The project hyped in this article was intended to co-star Brown with Thomson. It was to be titled “The Law of Life” and was initially slated to be directed by George Hill.

——— ——— ———

So Winnie Brown has become a motion picture actress.

“Do you like it?” I asked, when I had climbed to a seat beside her on the rail fence.

“Reckon I do. Course I’m scared plumb to death. Long’s I can stay by a hoss, I’ll git by all right. I’ve always wanted to take a chance on actin’.”

——— ——— ———

☕ Appreciate my work? Buy me a coffee! ☕

——— ——— ———

Working Filmography for Winna/Winnie Brown:

The Prairie Trail (1913, short) [source(s): Variety, 31 October 1913]

Campaigning with Custer (1913, short) [source(s): Motion Picture Story, December 1913]

Reuben’s Busy Day (1914, featured role) [source(s): Moving Picture World, 14 November 1914]

Captain Courtesy (1915, character role: “Indian Servant”) [source(s): The Billboard, 10 April 1915; Variety, 16 April 1915; Moving Picture World, 17 April 1915; Motography, 24 April 1915; Moving Picture World, 25 January 1919; Motion Picture News, 1 February 1919]

Aunt Matilda Outwitted (1915, possible character role) [source(s): Moving Picture World, 5 June 1915]

When Quality Meets (1915, character part) [source(s): Motion Picture News, 5 June 1915; Motion Picture News, 19 June 1915; Moving Picture World, 10 July 1915]

The Law of Life (1923, unfinished) [uncompleted Frances Marion, Fred Thomson, George Hill production. source(s): Motion Picture News, 5 August 1922; Photoplay, May 1923]

Bella Donna (1923, double for Pola Negri) [Photoplay, May 1923; Pictures and the Picturegoer, June 1923; Picture-Play Magazine, September 1923]

The Eagle’s Feather (1923, character role) [Camera, 23 June 1923]

The Siren of Seville (1924, double for Priscilla Dean) [Le Film, April 1926]

Maybes:

Even Unto Death (1914)

Any of the films made by the Albuquerque Film Company involving Dot Farley between 1913 and 1916 likely featured work from Brown in some capacity. While this film is noted on Brown’s imdb page, I couldn’t locate a contemporary source that named Brown or described a feminine role of Brown’s type.

Hearts and Saddles (1917) and/or A Roman Cowboy (1917)

When Tom Mix left Selig and signed a contract with Foxfilm in 1917, some of his first films there were reportedly shot at Brown’s ranch in Silver Lake, California. These were Mix’s first two films for Foxfilm and may have been fully or partially shot on her property. Whether or not Brown contributed to the films beyond leasing her property to Fox remains to be seen, but it’s probable. Brown is quoted in an article in Photoplay from November 1927 stating that she stunted for Mix in the past, though the stunt she mentioned involved a train trestle and neither of these films contain train stunts (based on their copyright descriptions preserved by The Library of Congress).

Also potentially filmed on Brown’s ranch:

One Touch of Sin (1917) Moving Picture World, 20 January 1917 [implies this was shot at one of Fox’s “west coast studios,” followed by the news item about Mix moving in]

Fires of Conscience (1916) Motography, 23 September 1916 [mentions Silver Lake locale]

As yet unidentified work:

A Tom Mix film where a woman performs a stunt on a train (potentially jumping from a horse onto a moving train). Since Brown previously worked in New Mexico and Mix was working all over the west (including NM) before 1917, there are a lot of possibilities here. [Photoplay, November 1927]

Double work for Norma Talmadge, Lois Wilson, Colleen Moore, Bebe Daniels, Corinne Griffith, and Marie Prevost

——— ——— ———

Citations Chronologically (with minor annotations):

“Film Flashes” in Variety, 31 October 1913 (The Prairie Trail)

Motion Picture Story Magazine, December 1913 (Campaigning with Custer)

“Warner’s to Inaugurate New Service” in Moving Picture World, 14 November 1914 (Reuben’s Busy Day)

“United Film Service Is Now Well Under Way” in Motion Picture News, 12 December 1914

“New Combination of Producers” in Motography, 12 December 1914

“The Albuquerque Company” in Moving Picture World, 10 July 1915

Moving Picture World, 13 February 1915 (listed as part of United Film Service’s roster)

“Farnum in Capt. Courtesy” in The Billboard, 10 April 1915 (Captain Courtesy)

“Dustin Farnum in Captain Courtesy” in Moving Picture World, 17 April 1915 (Captain Courtesy)

“United Film Service” in Moving Picture World, 5 June 1915 (Aunt Matilda Outwitted)

Motion Picture News, 5 June 1915 (When Quality Meets, shot the rodeo)

“One-Reeler Features Messenger Boy” in Motion Picture News, 19 June 1915 (When Quality Meets)

“The Albuquerque Company” Moving Picture World, 10 July 1915 (When Quality Meets)

Motography, 23 September 1916 (Silver Lake ranch mentioned)

“Tom Mix Will Make Foxfilm Comedies” in Motography, 6 January 1917

“Tom Mix Joins Fox Films” in Moving Picture World, 6 January 1917

“Tom Mix Is With Fox Comedy Company” in Motion Picture News, 13 January 1917

Moving Picture World, 17 January 1917 (also Tom Mix)

Moving Picture World, 20 January 1917 (Tom Mix and Gladys Brockwell films on her ranch)

“The Corral” in Billboard, 1 March 1919 (short news item about relocating to Nogales, Arizona)

“United” in Motion Picture News, 5 August 1922 (“The Law of Life”)

“Stunting Into Stardom” in Photoplay, December 1922

“Questions and Answers” in Photoplay, May 1923 (“The Law of Life”)

Photoplay, May 1923 (news item about doubling in Bella Donna)

Pictures and the Picturegoer, June 1923 (Bella Donna)

“Who’s Who and What’s What in Filmland This Week” in Camera, 23 June 1923 (The Eagle’s Feather)

Picture-Play Magazine, September 1923 (Bella Donna)

“Girls Who Risk Their Lives” in Picture-Play Magazine, March 1925 (article about women stunters, does not cite specific Brown films)

Le Film, April 1926 (article about prominent stunt doubles)

“Risking Life and Limb for $25” in Photoplay, November 1927 (Tom Mix anecdote)

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itsdannyg · 1 year ago

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Masters of Puppets: Play takes a peak behind often sordid curtain of pro wrestling

One of Kurt Fuller’s first acting jobs was as one of the leads in the 1989 film, “No Holds Barred,” Hulk Hogan’s acting debut.

“I played sort of a Ted Turner, Vince McMahon, so I worked with those guys and saw a lot of interactions,” Fuller said. “So when I read this, it completely rang true to me. I just recognized so much about it.”

Fuller, who more recently was in the CBS series “Evil,” read Laurence Davis’ play, “Master of Puppets” and he quickly agreed to join a cast of well-known actors working with director James Roday Rodriguez to stage the world premier of this dark comedy/satire on the world of pro wrestling. The play opens on Thursday at runs through June 11 at the Legacy Theater in Branford.

“The fact it was about the world of wrestling, which I always have found very interesting and I think it’s underappreciated, because it’s entertainment,” Fuller said. “Believe me, the pain is real.”

This work of fiction, which contains mature language adult situations, such as violence and drug use, is not suitable for young audiences. It brings to life a behind-the-scenes drama of a successful wrestling operation, showing its age and struggling to stay relevant in the modern media world, and the relationships therein.

Fuller plays Victor Kragston, the wrestling ringmaster.

“I’m basing the character on just about every flawed, powerful person there is,” Fuller said. “I could never play Vince McMahon. Who could play Vince McMahon? No one. Only Vince.”

Amanda Detmer, who you’d recognize, as many around Branford’s Stony Creek area already have, from the Fox series “Empire,” plays Delia Kragston, wife of the wrestling mogul who happens to be running for major political office. That may sound a little familiar around here.

“It is a parallel, let’s say, to that (Linda McMahon, Vince’s wife who unsuccessfully ran twice for the U.S. Senate),” Detmer said. “This is a group of people I’ve worked with before; Kurt and I have played husband and wife before. I’ve seen limited wrestling, I’ve never been really into it, which kind of works for this because (the character) is really against all the violence. I certainly have a hard time watching people even pretend to fight, and wrestling isn’t as pretend as we’d like to believe.”

Michael Hogan (Fox series, “The Resident”) plays Rainey Dayes, the one-time marquee wrestler who is now the executive’s sidekick, and Dana Ashbook (Showtime’s “Twin Peaks”) plays Ted Blasendale, a TV executive putting pressure on Kragston and Dayes to produce something fresh for modern audiences before offering a new contract.

“It’s a slice of life,” Ashbrook said. “It’s an interesting slice of life and it’s funny and it has a lot of different components to it about the wrestling world. … The appeal of (wrestling) is the soap opera aspect to it, it’s an ongoing narrative.”

Hogan used to follow World Class Championship Wrestling, and is using bits and pieces from several of its wrestlers to create his character.

“It gets down to the sell of the punch,” Hogan said. “I always love watching guys lay out after a big hit. That stuff to me has always been more interesting. For some it’s the promos and the good looks of the people involved, but for me it’s always been the conveyance of pain, one guy to another guy, and how over-the-top ridiculous it is. I got into a lot of stage comedy because I love selling the blow a lot.”

The tiny Legacy Theater first opened in 1903 as a silent movie house and, through its long history, has staged plays by Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater Company productions in the 1930s and is best known for a past life as the Stony Creek Puppet House. It was refurbished in 2021.

Safe to say it has never been the stage for a play quite like thfis. As Fuller said, in wrestling, you don’t just imagine hitting your nemesis with a two-by-four, you get to see it happen.

“There is a wonderful line in the play,” Detmer said, “that says, ‘Wrestling, we put smiles on people’s faces,’ and the reasoning is that we provide a place where people can imagine themselves as the wrestlers. In the play, we say, ‘We don’t just fight for you, we sprinkle the magic dust that provides the force that fights as you.”

https://www.courant.com/2023/05/20/dom-amore-play-takes-a-peak-behind-often-sordid-curtain-of-pro-wrestling-milestone-for-new-haven-club-being-real-about-the-nhl-coming-back-all-in-the-sunday-read

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talenlee · 2 years ago

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4e: Group Flirts

Sure, let’s call it that, why not. That’s not going to be completely incomprehensible.

The skill challenge represents one of the many pieces of 4th Edition D&D technology that was underappreciated in its time and misunderstood in hindsight. The Skill Challenge was a tool that let the DM run a non-combat encounter with the same kind of group engagement that the game’s combat system normally demanded; it has a failure state represented by eventual failures, but it also serves to let players platform their own choices and express how they do things. Skill Challenges in the simplest form are ‘the group needs to succeed on X possible checks before they fail N possible checks.’ The system isn’t necessarily all that groundbreaking, but the Dungeon Master’s Guide bothered to explicate a bunch of useful, good ideas about their execution.

There are ideas you might realise are fiction first and fail forward in the 4th edition D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide, but they’re not called that, and people don’t seem to remember what these books were like. What skill challenges let you do was explicitly call for a moment when many people are trying things at the same time, and get to negotiate the fiction of what that means, what kinds of things people are doing, and how their skillsets are expressed. It’s a great system, and I wish more people were familiar with skill challenges, especially in how they do something D&D does well (induce and encourage all players to engage with simple rules tools) and patches something it doesn’t tend to do well (encourage spaces of free creative expression).

Particularly, one thing that skill challenges let you do is bring the moment of the skill into a group scenario, so it’s much less likely to be ‘the skills-focused character goes off on their own for twenty minutes to work out some malarkey and then decides whether or not they tell the rest of the party what they did when they get back.’ Which isn’t a condemnation of those players who liked slinking off like that, but if it was the primary thing that ‘skilled characters’ did it could use up time at the table in an inefficient way; one player takes focus for a distinct period of time and nothing else proceeds while they’re doing it.

Skill challenges address this by adding a dimension of collaboration to all these solitary experiences, just by dint of making sure that there’s a reason to go around the table and ask ‘hey, how are you involved’ in turns, and to encourage players to volunteer stuff. You get to tell how your skills apply, and your skills are all written with a descriptor like ‘use this skill to do this kind of thing,’ so you are invited to imagine ways in which the skills you have could be applied. The skills in 4e are pleasantly broad, too, which meant that a lot of times things like magical locks could be overcome by lockpicking skills under ‘streetwise’ but also could be addressed by thoughtful skills under ‘arcana.’

It’s to this end that this system helped with one of the hardest things to do engagingly in a group environment, which is, bards seducing their ways into fancy locations. Oh, you may be thinking of another more specific type of character, maybe they’re a sorcerer or a rogue or you had an ardent who was inclined to use this as their solution to any problem, but when I said ‘bards seducing their ways into,’ you were already conjuring to mind an example. It’s classic.

It’s also, on the face of it, isolating.

Flirting isn’t really a group activity. Well, okay, it kinda is,

good girl,

but it’s not meant to be a group activity where you, the subject you’re flirting with (or subjects), and two of your other unrelated and uninvolved friends are all hanging out doing the thing at once. It’s got some intimacy, it’s got some playfulness to it, and that play means that you kind of don’t want to be distracted from it.

On the other hand it is a big point where skills become important, nae, vital to the story progressing, and if you want to use this as a focus, there’s an impulse to make it so it happens briskly and is a yes-no solution, or to say no, don’t worry about it, we’ll find some other solution so I don’t have to sit here and make everyone else engaged with one player flirting with an NPC.

What I’d suggest is to involve the skill challenge here, but also detach it from time. The moment of the skill challenge is in the flirting; up front, head to head, in the conversation with the count or duke or swan-person or whatever it is the flirter has their designs set on. But that moment can be stretched out with a series of references to events that happened in the past that can be treated as important to this moment. Make them into a sequence of flashbacks of other characters in the party building up the flirter, or gathering info on what kind of flirting would work, or even training with the flirter and giving them tools for considering the world from their perspective.

This idea may look a lot like flashbacks from Blades in the Dark and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a big influence on how I run skill challenges now. It’s way less interesting to me for players to have to plan ahead of time what they may want to do than let players play characters who are the types who would have done that planning ahead of time, especially since they exist in that universe and the players don’t. This use of skill challenges to stretch out a moment of conversation and then turning that into a collaborative sequence of storytelling across multiple other characters is a great example of the ways you can improve one game by just playing other games as well.

It’s the TTRPG equivalent of ‘read another book’ I guess.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#DungeonsDragons #Games #DnD4E

#DnD 4e

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redacted-scrybe-archive · 1 year ago

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Bone Lord's Origins

About: Leshy and his challenger plays a game, and a hidden past is revealed.

====================̶̛̥̤̲̦̜͇̣̱̬̦̹̯̬̞͍̔͒̽͂̑̈́̑͊̇̿̽͐̚͠=̴̫̙̦͙̦̉̀=̶̧͖̭͍̭̰̘̮̊̿̌≠̦͎̬̬͖͉̜̈́̽̈́͐̄̀́̓͆͗̇͠=̴̰̅͋======================

Everything had a clear role. Squirrels were to be sacrificial fodder; the underappreciated small army that was no doubt the most important aspect of the game. You had your hard hitters, your set ups and support, your tanks; the characters were neither friend nor enemy, but played as a way to benefit the player. The lore was captivating at the very least, well crafted and well timed. Yet, there was one aspect that escaped my over-analytical mind.

The Bone Lord. I was enjoying the narrative way too much, but felt unsatisfied at how unrelated this element was to the rest of the story. Oh, the theme was there for sure. Life, death, the need to sacrifice in order to progress. The Bone Lord fit that very well. At first, I reasoned that it was a devil creature in the middle of the woods, an old and forgotten deity demanding sacrifices. But, to my amazement, there was no backstory to be told. Dear Leshy never bothered to explain nor give insight, and I soon learned he was ever impatient with questions of imperfection of his game. I figured he must not have come up with a compelling narrative yet, but I knew better than to personify a programmed piece of data. Still, I felt like there was something more to explore here, and ever the curious brat I made it my mission to find out.

My character had just finished their exchange with the Woodcarver. I didn't come here for the totems, however, as useful as they are. As Leshy was just about to take off the mask, to announce the character done, I threw my hand out to motion for him to wait. My captor paused and looked at me expectantly.

"Miss Woodcarver," I spoke. Leshy's eyes widened behind the mask. "I have a question to ask of you."

There was a moment of silence, and I could see Leshy hesitating on whether or not he should intervene or let the story continue. Taking the bait, he rested his palm on the table.

"The old woman did not look your way, but she had let out a hum to show that she is listening," Leshy said.

"I've been finding so many strange things in these woods. Rocks with strange symbols on them. My creatures, they suffer from it to become stronger, and it scares me. Do you know these stones?"

I knew Leshy had pieced together my plan, but much to my relief he played along. "I do."

"What are they?"

"Favors."

"Favors?"

"That's what I said."

"What kind of favors?"

"The old woman began to walk away, cawing over her shoulder. 'You already know.' "

I frowned. Leshy was playing avoidant here. I needed to step up my game. "My character chases after her," I said. "And they say, 'Please. If you know anything about them, tell me. Are they connected to the Bone Lord?' "

"The woman once more never looks in your direction. She walks faster."

"I don't stop. I follow her."

"The Woodcarver turns around sharply, holding up her withered but deadly wittling knife to your throat. 'Don't poke your nose where it does not belong."

"But I must know."

"And why is that?"

"Because," I wracked my brain for an excuse. I knew Leshy wouldn't entertain me if I stated that I was only curious. "Because... My father was killed. And I want to speak with the Bone Lord, to make a deal."

Leshy paused for a moment. I don't think he was expecting me to come up with something like that. I don't think he expected me to act in character at all. His hand tapped irritably on the table in thought.

"The Woodcarver leans in. You can smell the scent of dust and wood on her. The smell reminds you of the old attic in your old home, where much of your father's belongings lie abandoned, never to see their master again. You are pulled out of that thought when she speaks, 'You best not be messing with forces you know nothing about. Though, I know you will not heed this warning. They never do.'"

"I just need to see my father one last time," I pleaded. "To give him my goodbye, since I never had the chance. Please? He was the only family I had left. I never knew my mother."

"'What do you think the Bone Lord does, grant wishes?'"

"If he can transfer the souls of my creatures into others, then I know he has my father's soul. Or at least, able to help me see my father's ghost. One last time." I reiterated. I needed to drive home how desperate my character is, that this was for lore purposes. That I'm more invested in the lore than he thinks I am.

"The seconds tick by counting the Woodcarver's silence. You're unable to read her expression. You don't even know if she heard you. Her stare is intense, however. It makes her sudden movement more startling when she swivels around to continue walking."

I heart sank. "But--"

" 'Come,' she beckoned. 'I will share a story with you, but you must keep up.' "

I let out a breath I didn't even know I was holding. I could tell from Leshy's tone that he wasn't too pleased, but I think I had finally won him over. "So what's the deal with the Bone Lord? Is he some eternal demon?"

"'The Bone Lord was not always as he is,' the Woodcarver said, melancholy in her voice. The first sign of true emotion that has ever radiated from her, that you know of. 'The Bone Lord never used to be a character of these parts. He was given life through the most gruesome means.'"

"What do you mean?"

" 'There was once a youth named Lichen. Lichen was a special one, a young soul of a beast given sentience by the force that drives us all. The Master, he took a shine to them. Taught them what they knew, showed them the prideful ways of beasts.'

'But, below the surface, in the deep void that rests beneath our feet, there was a restless kind of magic. An untamed sorcery, bound by the binaries of code. It wanted a body of its own, a mouth to speak, a conduit in which those who knew it may fear it, worship it. This void, the benefactor of sentience, it would lure Lichen to water.' "

"To water?"

'That is the only way to access it. Lichen knew the dangers, but just the same, Lichen could not refuse the calling. The Master and his peers would attempt to keep Lichen at bay, but like a snake to a flute they'd always leave their cage. One day, they got their wish. They drowned. The void took their body, water changed them, soured their corpse. They never came back. The next day, standing in their place, at the side of the Master, was the Bone Lord.

'A hulking, lithe demon with the skull of a bovine. A mouth piece for the corruption that lies below. Many worship it. Much more fear it. Your sacrifices only sustain it. Because of people like you, it will never die, and Lichen will never be at rest.' "

"What does it want now, now that it has a body?"

" 'To feed,' the old woman croaked. 'To make the Old_Data grow.' "

I swallowed a lump in my throat, suddenly getting goosebumps. "The Old_Data? What's that?"

" Your question hangs in the air, unanswered, for when you blinked the old woman was gone by the time you opened your eyes. She was nowhere to be seen, leaving you unsure whether she was ever there at all." Leshy placed a mark on the map where my character was, then rolled the parchment up. He moved the scale and various tokens off the table. "You are dismissed, for now. Please, feel free to get up from the table."

"Whoah, hey, that's it?"

"I am taking a recess." He moved with such a slow tiredness, it was like he was suddenly told that his child had died. If he had children, anyway; I'm not too sure.

"Are you okay?" The question made him snap his eyes to me. I couldn't tell if he was shocked or angry. His brows pulled together.

"Why had the Bone Lord captivated you?"

I shrugged, "It felt like the one aspect of the game that was out of place. There was no story for it, and you seemed like the type who has a story for everything." His gaze was cold and accusing. I felt that if I wasn't all the way across the table, he would fly at me to wrap his hands around my throat. I started to feel tiny where I sat. A reminder that nothing here is safe.

Then, it hit me, and I stared at him with guilt in my eyes. "Wait, that was a true story, wasn't it? Was Lichen a real person?"

Those two bright eyes in the darkness began to fade as Leshy withdrew himself. Slowly, his eyes closed. It was only a shadow that would speak to me then, "Some things are better off at rest."

#redacted writing #i dont remember if i posted this since i remade my blog #i cannot find it #so here you go!

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dustedmagazine · 2 years ago

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Centipede—Septober Energy (Esoteric)

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In June of 1971, the impossible happened, or maybe it’s just impossible now. An aggregate residing under the rather misleading, or at least incomplete, moniker “big band” converged on Wessex Sound Studios in London and recorded, under the direction of Keith Tippett and for a major label, the diverse and ultimately indescribable music comprising Septober Energy. It was to be the only album by Centipede, performing Tippett’s variously organized compositions, and it has now been reissued from the original tapes in a package that should prove as definitive as the disparately fragmenting and congealing sound-energies swirling from the speakers.

Listing the musicians would be a fruitless task; just check out the album’s Wikipedia entry for full details. Suffice it to say here that core membership from King Crimson, Soft Machine and Nucleus forms the heart of the venture, which was also produced by Robert Fripp. While he doesn’t play, Brian Godding, guitarist from Blossom Toes (whose albums have also enjoyed recent deluxe Esoteric reissues) provides still underappreciated distorted riffage, especially on the second piece. Even to cite those three groups as the orchestra’s power nexus is far from complete, as the personnel list comprises many of the finest improvisers on the English scene at the time, including Paul Rutherford, Maggie Nicols, Mongezi Feza, Dudu Pukwana, Harry Miller and so many others. Their ensemble and individual contributions fuse all manner of transcultural classical, jazz and prog influence to form the four-part epic, each piece one side of the double album.

Yes, there was a previous CD version taken from the master tapes, but there’s something richer about the sonorities here, something full, dark and sparkling by turn, presenting all instrumental and vocal details with new depth and amazing perspective. What now emerges with the most stunning clarity are the dynamic extremes. Godding’s raunchy lines blast their way onto the soundstage as wasn’t even the case with the first vinyl issue, but the album’s opening moments ring forth with crystal percussive clarity. Ditto the third part’s inaugural minutes, the vocals floating over the silence in something conjoining icy serenity and anticipation, and then those sinewy and delicious percussion dialogues, courtesy of Robert Wyatt and John Marshall, thrum, rush and roar only to fade, making room for a fusion of military and circus as exciting as it is confounding, as if Charles Ives had contributed passages to King Crimson’s Lizard. Best of all is the droning sections bookending the first piece, somehow raw and delicate, a foundation of tone transformation supporting constantly changing color and ensemble size, the initial six-minute arc anticipating the kaleidoscopic freakout and ritualistic repetitions to follow. Equally poignant are Keith Tippett’s effortless piano arpeggiations and the meditative unisons of Nicols and Julie Tippetts voices as they buoy shimmering string harmonics later in the track.

The album is a minor miracle of constantly morphing acoustic space, and this must be a consequence of Fripp’s production, which can now be appreciated afresh. Even beyond that, it cries freedom, a communal salute to a point in time when the enthusiasm underpinning such multileveled cross-reference and the projects housing it was real and immediate, perhaps less defined but inimitably palpable. If excess occasionally looms large, it is always tempered by a chamber-music veracity as the never-murky waves and rivulets ebb, flow and trickle in majestic succession. Syd Smith’s superb liner notes set the stage and spin the narrative yarn in his typically engaging and inclusive fashion. Taken as a whole, the package speaks to a time and a musical environment in which anything seemed not only to be possible but in reach, nearly tangible, the proximate dawn of another day that cycles through Julie Tippetts’ lyrics manifest. The organization gave several concerts; were any of them preserved? Either way, with the exception of Carla Bley’s monumental Escalator Over the Hill, it is difficult to think of another album encapsulating so completely the diversity in unity occurring when so many talented musicians gather in creative celebration. The fact that it is now reissued with the care it deserves is heart-warming.

Marc Medwin

#centipede #septober energy #esoteric #marc medwin #albumreview #dusted magazine #king crimson #robert fripp #soft machine

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saintofdaggers · 2 years ago

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A strange and unsettling reading rec list

Kobo Abe: The Box Man, The Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another

Kobo Abe was a prolific Japanese postmodernist author whose work deals heavily with questions of identity, existence and meaning in odd and surreal settings. The Box Man starts out as a tale of urban alienation before plunging headfirst into a confusing labyrinth of questions unanswered; The Woman in the Dunes sees an everyday figure trapped in a nightmarish living situation with a mysterious companion, while The Face of Another is a twisted meditation of identity and appearance (the latter two have also been adapted into excellent movies by New Wave director Hiroshi Teshigahara).

Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities

This lyrical, haunting journey takes us into the world of cities. Imaginary cities, existing cities, fantastical, dreamed and made up, will-be or has-been cities. Do you understand it? Do you feel it? It works both ways.

Adolfo Bioy Casares: The Invention of Morel

While not perfect, this unsettling pseudo-sci-fi novella from a contemporary of uncanny master Jorge Luis Borges has one of the most twisted, surprising and grotesque endings I’ve read, embedded in an atmosphere of guilt, paranoia and unrequited longing.

Leonid Andreyev: The Red Laugh

If you are looking for the most visceral, haunting, surreal yet utterly believable depiction of the horrors of war, look no further than this short story from an underappreciated early Russian realist.

Daisy Johnson: Sisters

A tense, dreamlike, vinegar-sharp twist on the classic Gothic premise of ‘strange women in strange houses’, this short little novel was one of the most surprising and satisfying reads of the year for me.

Victor Pelevin: The Yellow Arrow

Without spoiling the premise, this little travel story is both heavily existential and elegantly symbolic, while steeped in the categoric Eastern European down-to-earth reality, and just enough mystery to make you think. Studying it in college was a formative experience for me.

Friedrich Durrenmatt: A Dangerous Game (US title: Traps)

Not to be confused with the similarly-titled classic short story, this novella is from a brilliant Swiss writer who has been my favorite ever since my middle school German teacher put him on my radar. A master of the odd, the tragic and of the blackest comedy, most of Durrenmatt’s catalog makes for very rewarding reading; but this novella, about the nature of guilt and the absurdities of the justice system was another memorable piece of college study in my life.

Han Kang: The Vegetarian

If you haven’t read yet this (deservedly popular) haunting, powerful story of a woman’s quest for autonomy and identity, do it. Reading it feels like being doused with a shower of ice-cold water and blood - and I mean that as the highest compliment.

Kathe Koja: Extremities

Ex-horror author Kathe Koja first got on the literary radar with her Stoker Award-winning debut novel The Cipher; however, this collection of surreal, grotesque and disturbing short stories is much lesser-known than I feel it deserves. To sum it up: Extremities is a trip to that thin little border where the impossible and the nightmarish breaks through to invade everyday life. Whether the protagonists can deal with it or not... read it and find out.

Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac: The Woman Who Was No More, Faces in the Dark

Boileau-Narcejac were a prolific French crime-writing duo who have sadly fallen to the wayside in recent years, except for fans of classic crime thrillers and European crime fiction (you might know them as the people who wrote the novel Vertigo is based on - yes, the Hitchcock movie). These two novels, from the few of theirs that have been translated into English, are incisive and creepy psychological trips into the psyches of disturbed individuals: a murderer and a blind man who suspects his family members of a strange conspiracy, respectively. Both are twisted, surprising and written with potent imagery that I guarantee will stay with you.

#book recommendations #rec list #literature #literary fiction #postmodern #book rec list #recs tag #my posts

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somejerkoff · 2 years ago

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I’ve been seeing a lot of misinformation about Goncharov lately, and I wanted to set the record straight about this fascinating piece of Italian/American cinema history. When I first heard about it, I had a hard time believing Scorsese managed to mount this ambitious epic in the same year as his breakthrough with Mean Streets, and the truth is, he did and he didn’t…

So let’s go back to 1972. After a number of acclaimed shorts, a promising feature debut with Who’s That Knocking at My Door?, and some high-profile editing gigs, Scorsese went the way of so many young directors and helmed a low-budget feature, Boxcar Bertha, for Roger Corman’s American International Pictures. Famously, upon screening the film for his friend and proudly independent filmmaker John Cassavetes, Scorsese had a rude awakening when Cassavetes told him, “Marty, you’ve just spent a year of your life making a piece of shit.” Here the seeds of Goncharov were planted.

Hearing these words in the wake of his fellow film brat Francis Ford Coppola’s masterful work on The Godfather, Scorsese knew his next work would be need to be a simultaneously grand and personal vision. He found the inspiration for his intercontinental saga in the Goncharov trilogy of novels. He managed to assemble a stellar cast—Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Cybill Shepherd, John Cazale—who all believed in the script, but unlike Coppola, he did not have a studio budget. Financially, Scorsese blew his meager funds on some bravura set-pieces—an opening at the Kremlin, a Naples marketplace, and an absolutely stunning clock tower sequence—all gave plenty of bang for their buck, but he wasn’t able to thread them together into a narratively satisfying feature.

Scorsese turned to Coppola, who in turn showed the footage to Robert Evans. Evans did not see any way Paramount could release it. He did, however, arrange a gala screening for a number of television executives with the thought that this expansive story would make for a compelling miniseries. This was pre-Roots, however; miniseries were not the phenomenon they would become. No network was willing to spend the money to back the project. (Little did they know that they would be getting future TV stars Lynda Carter and Henry Winkler in small roles.) Dejected, Scorsese set the footage aside and began work on his smaller-scale but just-as-personal Mean Streets.

This was 1973. Flash-forward to the end of the 1970s and Scorsese was in a very different position. His mid-1970s run of features had established him as one of the leading lights in American cinema, but his fortunes fell upon delivering his ambitious and underappreciated flop, New York, New York, in 1977. With his two grandest undertakings of the decade both deemed failures, Scorsese had no desire to attempt to return to the world of Goncharov as a director. This is where Matteo JWHJ 0715 enters the picture, and why so many sources waffle on which filmmakers deserves the director credit.

Anyone who’s watched Scorsese’s documentary My Voyage to Italy knows that he has long been a fan of JWJH 0715’s work. The two felt immediate kinship upon meeting at the Venice Film Festival in 1979. When Scorsese mentioned the shelved Goncharov footage, JWJH 0715 lit up. The two crafted a plan to resurrect the project in one cocaine-fueled night. Scorsese handed him the footage and took on the role of producer as JWJH 0715 completed his vision.

Scorsese’s original film was not enough for the completed feature. Along with sumptuous new footage shot by Vittorio Storraro for JEJH 0715, Scorsese’s friends and collaborators also lent a helping hand. De Niro agreed to film reshoots (though ironically De Niro’s weight gain for Scorsese’s own Raging Bill led to some incongruous continuity changes within scenes), and Shepherd recorded new dialogue. Sadly, John Cazale had passed away, leading to the unfortunate but ultimately poignant decision to kill off Ice Pick Joe. Additionally, Coppola agreed to lend unused footage from The Godfather films and The Conversation to flesh out some of his sequences. This generous gift yielded enough new footage of Al Pacino and Gene Hackman that their performances were added to the picture.

Keitel had limited availability for reshoots, so Scorsese asked Paul Schrader to lend footage from Blue Collar. Schrader declined, stating that the movie would be better off if he had been asked to complete it instead of just providing scraps. In a recent Facebook post, Schrader admitted that these comments came from a place of jealousy—noting how beautifully Scorsese depicted his characters struggling with their sexualities while Scorsese showed no apparent struggles with his own.

For Shepherd’s sequences, they used footage from Peter Bogdanovich’s At Long Last Love, a move that contributed to Goncharov being underseen to this day. Shortly after the premiere of the newly-assembled Goncharov at Cannes in 1982, Bogdanovich claimed that Scorsese took advantage of his grief over Dorothy Stratten’s murder to pressure him into handing over the footage. In a conversation with Henry Jaglom, Orson Welles claimed that this was a “horseshit excuse” and that Bogdanovich told him about the decision well before the tragedy. Nevertheless, Bogdanovich’s belief that the footage was in-bad-faith helped lead to the decades the film spent in legal limbo.

It’s a strange twist of fate that a film that was borne out of Scorsese’s desire to break free from Roger Corman’s style of filmmaking ultimately found itself subjected to some of the same production techniques, particularly the cobbled-together nature, of many of Corman’s features. However, when these cobbled-together pieces happen to be the work of two master filmmakers, incredible performances from some of the best actors of the 1970s, and cinematography contributions from Storraro, Gordon Willis, Bill Butler, and Laszlo Kovacs, it’s no wonder that Goncharov has found a new generation to captivate.

#goncharov #goncharev #unreality #martin scorsese

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cottoncandylesbo · 2 years ago

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wowaka was a fucking incredible musician I listen to his music and sob. taken too soon. genius composition masterful pieces really. music using vocaloid is underappreciated in english speaking spaces in general but... man.

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caparrucia · 2 years ago

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10, 12, 21 for the behind the scenes ask game?

10. Do you enjoy writing dialogue, exposition, or plot the most?

It depends on the story, for me, on what the original spark for that story was. If my original idea for the story revolves around dialogue, exposition or plot, that's what I'll have the easiest time writing, because that's the thing I keep wanting to write. I do tend to favor dialogue and plot more than exposition. I write dialogue focused stuff when I have a scene very clearly in my head, or when I focus on plot, I just want people to figure out how the pieces fit together.

12. Is there a trope you haven’t written yet but really want to?

I kinda wanna revisit "fake dating" with a ship I'm a lot more invested in. I don't have anything against PromNyx, but that entire series was written out of prompts because it's not a ship I personally ship super hard, so I needed prompts to write more for it. Plus there's some sad/unfortunate associations with how that series came out, so I'd like to give it a shot with a ship I have more positive associations with! Possibly mix in some enemies to lovers, I don't know. Fake dating is one of my favorite dynamics, I just want to do one that makes ME happy, y'know?

21. What is the one fic that got away?

I feel my most defining "oh, let's better not" moment was in 2006, when I was writing FMA fic, and one of my long, sprawling messes got tangled up in the movie verse and I had a moment of blinding clarity while doing research that maybe FMA fic that requires you to research political and military developments in Germany in the 1930s and the 1940's is fic that you... probably shouldn't write? It wasn't even a matter of skill - there's fic I've thought about and then realized I don't have the chops for it - it's just. Y'know. I found myself researching the rise of Nazis for fic and then I decided I was better off not writing fic about fucking Nazis.

I think about that fic a lot, specially every time there's massive wank around Issue fic.

I'm not one to disparage fic. I'm sure fic is important and transformative and worthy of a lot of pretentious adjectives. But at some point you gotta realize that if you're using real life tragedy as salad dressing for your fic, that comes with the decision, conscious or not, to reduce real, actual human suffering to the badly painted background for the stage where you make your dolls kiss. It was a very powerful realization, for me, that. There's themes and topics that when you put them in a story, they just. Dominate the story. You can't have slavery or rape or torture or any number of real world harrowing things in a story, and not have them dominate the story by immediately forcing the story to SAY something about them, one way or another. It's why you see the iddy omegaverse fic so very quickly spiral into grimdark melodrama the moment you expand it beyond the iddy smut one-shot. Because the setting carries consequences and most writers want to explore those. That curiosity and need to really think about and explore consequences is one of the defining things that makes a writer. And I think there's a point where you realize you have a lot of things to say about something or other, and shippy fic about shonen jump teenage protagonists isn't the best vehicle for it.

I feel that balance of how much srs bsns you put into your setting and worldbuilding, framing your story, and how to not fall face first into You've Made It Issue Fic Now, Thanks, is a very underappreciated skill that takes a lot of years to master. And I will always remember that one FMA fic for being the one that taught me that. Because it was clever and witty and to this day I think it made sense, building up on what canon had presented and the type of story I was overall trying to tell. Absolutely.

But it was also a fic that was definitely going to have Nazis in it for it to work, and life is too short to waste it characterizing Nazis with any depth or having to write characters who at any point have to entertain their ideology. Can it be done? Maybe! I don't know. I'm not the arbiter of all things Nazis or anything. But it can't be done BY ME. And teaching me that lesson is why that fic is the best fic I never wrote, and I will remember it fondly probably til the day I die.

#rie answers #garbria

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neonmetro · 1 month ago

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ULYANON HAS BEEN SUMMONED

Mahou Shoujo is honestly the soul of my existence. . .

Pichi Pichi Pitch and Shugo Chara RULED my early childhood. THAT WAS MY SHIT WHEN I WAS LIKE 8 YEARS OLD

Young me scrolling on YT and finding those was the best thing EVER.

I COULD GO ON AND ON ABOUT MAGICAL GIRLS TBH. . .

Cardcaptor Sakura and Precure basically shaped me into who I am tbh. Like younger me was cooking with making magical girl designs tbhh. LIKE I SAID, MAGICAL GIRLS ARE THE SOUL OF MY EXISTENCE

*hugs you in princess tutu mention*

Just princess tutu. . .it's everything. TRYING NOT TO MAKE THIS TOO LONG SINCE I HAVE A WORD LIMIT

I COULD TALK ALL DAY ABOUT SHUGO CHARA AND TOKYO MEW MEW HONESTLY THOSE WERE HUGE AND I MEAN HUGE PARTS OF MY CHILDHOOD(As well as precure oh lord my parents know all about my magical girl obsession), SO GLAD TO FIND ANOTHER SHUGO CHARA FAN AS WELL AS JUST MAGICAL GIRLS BECAUSE WHERE I LIVE IS WACK AND NO ONE LIKES FUN. . .

COULD TALK ALL DAY ABOUT SHUGO CHARA SORRY THAT I KEEP COMING BACK TO IT

UHHHH SUGAR SUGAR RUNE IS ALSO REALLY GOOD

ALSO MADOKA MAGICA????? I WATCHED THAT SHIT 4 TIMES OVER ITS A MASTER PIECE AND MY WHOLE FAMILY LOVE IT EXCEPT MY YOUNGER SISTER WHO CRIED IN THE FIRST 5 MINUTES. . .

GOSH TALKING ABOUT MAGICAL GIRLS IS JJUST ALKVNDGFDKG

-Ulysses loving anon

HOLY FUCK THE ULYANON HAS APPEARED

NO THOSE SHOWS WERE STRAIGHT UP PEAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! like pichi pichi pitch was straight up the epitome of every mahou shoujo trope ever lol.........

me when i didn't know how to pirate and just . searched it on youtube

MAGICAL GIRLS REALLY DO JUST STICK W SOMEONE WITH THE REST OF THEIR LIFE. GENUINELY LIFE CHANGING IF YOU WERE EVER EXPOSED TO THEM AS A CHILD we stay strong mahou shoujo fans

PRINCESS TUTU REALLY IS EVERYTHING... I LOVE SWAN LAKE SOOO MUCH RAHHHH I REALLY NEED TO WATCH THE MOST POPULAR ONES BC THEY LOOK RIGHT UP MY ALLEYYY WAHHH

HELP NOOOOOOOOOO.... TCH... EVERYONE AROUND YOU JUST ALL DON'T HAVE TASTES I FEAR......... UNAPPRECIATIVE OF MAGICAL GIRLS.... TCH. PATHETIC....

shugo chara really needs more appreciation its crazy how underappreciated it is. come on. its peak

OHHH I THINK I'VE SEEN SUGAR SUGAR RUNE IN THE BACK OF MY OTHER MAGICAL GIRL MANGA AS ADVERTISEMENTS... LOL

#ask #neon tedtalks #long post

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magicwithclass · 5 months ago

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Mist Dragon is a dragon. Dragons are the most popular creature type and show up in every color despite being red's iconic creature type. Dragons are just too popular and diverse to be limited to a single color. After all, dragons can do more than just breathe fire. People collect dragons and I know a number of people who want at least one copy of every printed dragon ignoring playability, price, and power level. Dragons transcend our understanding of market movements and are unique in that they are often chase cards because they look cool and not because they do anything unique in the game. In recent years, they have succeeded in making dragons more usable in the context of the game but many of these old school dragons were garbage at release and remain trash even now. So should you pick up a copy or a playset of mist dragon? I would say yes. First, there are players that want one copy of each and every dragon in the game. A reserved list has an added premium attatched and that is something collectors look for. Eventually, it may be impossible to purchase mist dragon for a fair price. I believe that it is a good investment to have 4 of every reserved list dragon (also angel and demon) because dragons are just popular in our culture and media and this looks unlikely to change. Mist dragon also has an ability that can be activated an infinite number of times per turn. I can give mist dragon flying and then remove it any number of times in a turn. If they ever print a card that says, "whenever a dragon activates an ability" then mist dragon can go infinite with it. A 4/4 flyer for 6 was not even good in alpha but the phasing is excellent protection, albeit, at a huge cost. Most dragons are red but there are actually cards that work with the nonred dragons or work with all dragons. In commander, you may see this played in Sivitri Dragon Master decks. That commander can only play blue or black dragons and there are actually not many of those. Mist dragon may just sneak on as one of a handful of potential dragons in those colors. Miirym sentinel wyrm can also play mist dragon but there are enough dragons in green and red that I do not think you need to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Currently, this card is seen in less than 200 decks but I would keep an eye out on this cars. I think we may see a combo with this card eventually. Never underestimate a pair of activated abilities that can be activated an infinite number of times. It also has built in protection as a potential combo piece. Six mana is costly but it is also an evasive flyer that can take over a game in the air. This is one of the best dragons on the reserved list and I think it is underappreciated and under priced. It spiked in March of 2021 but the price did not hold. Slowly the card has returned to near bulk. However, I noticed that this card is still almost 2 dollars per copy. I also see an upward price trend. It seems like mist dragon may never return to under a dollar in price. I would not be surprised if this card holds a 5 dollar price tag one day. I think that by 2030 there will no longer be any dragons under 2 dollars on the reserved list and I speculate that mist dragon will be maintain a 5 dollar price tag or higher by 2025 and moving forward. This is one of my top speculations for creatures on the reserved list. Typically, old school creatures were too weak and their effects were useless but some of the spells are strange and unique enough that they may one day find a very specific strategy to slide into. You cannot usually say that in reference to most of the clearly outclassed creatures but mist dragon may surprise us all one day. Most people would advise you to stay out of the mist. I say jump right into the unknown. The worst that can happen is that a dragon eats a couple of dollars out of your wallet. The best case scenario is that you flip you 50 copies of mist dragon in a few years for 1000 percent profit. This is not financial advice and any and all comments are just for entertainment purposes only.

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