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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 months

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 6, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 07, 2024

Today Vice President Kamala Harris named her choice for her vice presidential running mate: Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota. Walz grew up in rural Nebraska. He enlisted in the Army National Guard when he was 17 and served for 24 years, retiring in 2005 as a command sergeant major, making him the highest-ranking enlisted soldier ever to serve in Congress, according to the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

He went to college with the educational benefits afforded him by the Army, and graduated from Chadron (Nebraska) State College. From 1989 to 1990, he taught at a high school in China, then became a social studies teacher in Alliance, Nebraska, where he met fellow teacher Gwen Whipple, who became his wife. They moved to Minnesota, where they both continued teaching and had two children, Hope and Gus, through IVF.

Walz became the faculty advisor for the school’s gay-straight alliance organization at the same time that he coached the high-school football team from a 0–27 record to a state championship. The advisor “really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married," Walz said in 2018.

Walz ran for Congress in 2005 after some of his students were asked to leave a rally for George W. Bush because one of them had a sticker for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Walz won and served in Congress for twelve years, sitting on the House Agriculture Committee, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

Voters elected Walz to the Minnesota state house in 2018, and in his second term they gave him a slim majority in the state legislature. With that support, Walz signed into law protections for abortion rights, supported gender-affirming care, and legalized the recreational use of marijuana. He signed into law gun safety legislation and protections for voting rights, and pushed for action to combat climate change and to promote renewable energy.

Strong tax revenues and spending cuts gave the state a $17.6 billion surplus, and the Democrats under Walz used the money not to cut taxes, as Republicans wanted, but to invest in education, fund free breakfast and lunch for schoolchildren, make tuition free at the state’s public colleges for students whose families earned less than $80,000 a year, and invest in paid family and medical leave and health insurance coverage regardless of immigration status.

While MAGA Republicans are already trying to define Walz as “far left,” his votes in Congress put him pretty squarely in the middle. His work with Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan to expand technology production and infrastructure funding in the state was rewarded in 2023, when Minnesota knocked Texas out of the top five states for business. The CNBC rating looked at 86 indicators in 10 categories, including the workforce, infrastructure, health, and business friendliness.

Walz checks a number of boxes for the 2024 election, most notably that he hails from near the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania and comes across as a normal, nice guy. He favors unions, workers’ rights, and a $15 minimum wage. He is also the person who coined the phrase that took away the dangerous overtones of today’s MAGA Republicans by dubbing them “weird.” As a student of his said: “In politics he’s good at calling out B.S. without getting nasty or too down in the dirt…. It’s the kind of common sense he showed as a coach: practical and kinda goofy.”

Walz is also a symbol of an important resetting of the Democratic Party. He has been unapologetic about his popular programs. On Sunday, July 28, when CNN’s Jake Tapper listed some of Walz’s policies and asked if they made Walz vulnerable to Trump calling him a “big government liberal.” Walz joked that he was, indeed, a “monster.”

“Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own health care decisions, and we’re a top five business state, and we also rank in the top three of happiness…. The fact of the matter is,” where Democratic policies are implemented, “quality of life is higher, the economies are better…educational attainment is better. So yeah, my kids are going to eat here, and you’re going to have a chance to go to college, and you’re going to have an opportunity to live where we're working on reducing carbon emissions. Oh, and by the way, you’re going to have personal incomes that are higher, and you’re going to have health insurance. So if that’s where they want to label me, I’m more than happy to take the label.”

Right-wing reactionary politicians have claimed to represent ordinary Americans since the time of the passage of the Voting Rights Act—on August 6, 1965, exactly 59 years ago today—by insisting that a government that works for communities is a “socialist” plan to elevate undeserving women and racial, ethnic, and gender minorities at the expense of hardworking white men.

Historically, though, rural America has quite often been the heart of the country’s progressive politics, and the Midwest has had a central place in that progressivism. Walz reintegrates that history with today’s Democratic Party.

That reintegration has left the Republicans flatfooted. Trump and J.D. Vance expected to continue their posturing as champions of the common man, but on that front the credentials of a New York real estate developer who inherited millions of dollars and of a Yale-educated venture capitalist pale next to a Nebraska-born schoolteacher. Bryan Metzger, politics reporter at Business Insider, pointed out that J.D. Vance tried to hit Walz as a “San Francisco-style liberal,” but while Vance lived in San Francisco as a venture capitalist between 2013 and 2017, Walz went to San Francisco for the first time just last month.

Head writer and producer of A Closer Look at Late Night with Seth Meyers Sal Gentile summed up Walz’s progressive politics and community vibe when he wrote on social media: “Tim Walz will expand free school lunches, raise the minimum wage, make it easier to unionize, fix your [carburetor], replace the old wiring in your basement, spray that wasp’s nest under the deck, install a new spring for your garage door and put a new chain on your lawnmower.”

Vice President Harris had a very deep bench from which to choose a running mate, but her choice of Walz seems to have been widely popular. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who are usually on opposite sides of the party, both praised the choice, prompting Ocasio-Cortez to post: “Dems in disconcerting levels of array.”

Harris and Walz held their first rally together tonight in Philadelphia, where Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who had been a top contender for the vice presidential slot, fired up the crowd. “Each of us has a responsibility to get off the sidelines, to get in the game, and to do our part,” he said. “Are you ready to do your part? Are you ready to form a more perfect union? Are you ready to build an America where no matter what you look like, where you come from, who you love, or who you pray to, that this will be a place for you? And are you ready to look the next president of the United States in the eye and say, ‘Hello, Madam President?’ I am too, so let’s get to work!”

Pennsylvania is a crucial state, and Shapiro issued a statement offering his “enthusiastic support” to the ticket. He pledged to work to unite Pennsylvanians behind my friends Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and defeat Donald Trump.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #political #election 2024 #Tim Walz #joy #Democratic party #Minnesota #mind your own damn business #these guys are creepy and weird as hell #we're not going back

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toxicnotebook · 1 year

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Full list of work SAG-AFTRA members will not do during the strike:

●Principal on camera work, such as: ○ Acting ○ Singing ○ Dancing ○ Performing stunts ○ Piloting on-camera aircraft ○ Puppeteering ○ Performance capture or motion capture work;

● Principal off camera work, such as: ○ ADR/Looping ○ TV Trailers (promos) and Theatrical Trailers ○ Voice Acting ○ Singing ○ Narration, including audio descriptive services except as the services may be covered by another collective bargaining agreement referred in the Notice to Members Regarding Non-Struck Work ○ Stunt coordinating and related services

● Background work ● Stand-in work ● Photo and/or body doubles ● Fittings, wardrobe tests, and makeup tests ● Rehearsals and camera tests ● Scanning ● Interviews and auditions (including via self-tape)

● Promotion of/publicity services for work under the TV/Theatrical Contracts, such as: ○ Tours ○ Personal appearances ○ Interviews ○ Conventions ○ Fan expos ○ Festivals ○ For your consideration events ○ Panels ○ Premieres/screenings ○ Award shows ○ Junkets ○ Podcast appearances ○ Social media ○ Studio showcases

● Negotiating and/or entering into and/or consenting to: ○ An agreement to perform covered services in the future ○ Any new agreement related to merchandising connected to a covered project ○ The creation and use of digital replicas, including through the reuse of prior work

● Performing on a trailer for a struck production or other ancillary content connected to a struck production

This strike effectively stops the ENTIRE entertainment industry. No shows. No movies. No premieres. No award shows. No fun little interviews. No signings at con. Nothing. Even the tabloids are going to be affected by this.

I just CANNOT imagine how greedy and short-sighted the AMPTP must be to think a dual strike is something they can outlast when many of the major studios are already experiencing serious financial trouble. You really think you can ride this out when the 2023 box office is already weak? When the 2020-2022 box offices were even weaker? When streaming services are just not growing anymore?

Who the fuck is going to watch whatever trash you come up with when there are no real names attached and no meaningful way to promote it?

It's just baffling.

Another excellent article: “Orange Is the New Black” Signalled the Rot Inside the Streaming Economy from The New Yorker

#SAG-AFTRA

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dailyanarchistposts · 5 months

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If we stop, the world stops

Millions of women around the world participated in events for International Women’s Day (IWD) on March the 8th. The most militant action was in the growth of the ‘Women’s Strike’, with 5.3 million people on strike in Spain. In Britain, the interest in the tactics of the strike on IWD is relatively new, yet still 7,000 women pledged to strike. In addition, links were made to grass roots unions such as the Cleaners and Allied Independent Workers Union (CAIUW) with support for their pickets for a Living Wage. Sex workers also co-ordinated their own actions for decriminalisation and trans women held an action over the problems of access to NHS services.

The organisers in Britain made it clear that the strike should focus on demands for working class women, including those who often face the most exploitation and discrimination, like migrants, sex workers, trans women. It is not just a strike about traditional work but also about ‘invisible labour’, such as care, domestic and emotional labour, and against male violence. The historical origins of the day make it clear that the purpose is not to have more women politicians or company directors (see box). Instead it is focused on the majority of women who are at the bottom of the pile, both in the workplace and in the home. According to one organiser of the Women’s Strike in Britain: “We are instead taking action – action against our exploitation under capitalism, where the domestic and emotional work we do for little or no pay is made invisible, while austerity measures force us into a more and more vulnerable position. This is feminism for the 99%”.

It was in Spain, however, that the strike was the most successful. This was partially because of the support it got from the mainstream unions. However, it is clear that they were forced into support as a result of the massive upsurge from the grass roots organisations. According to one source (thefreeonline.wordpress.com): “An important feature of this strike is that it has been promoted and organised from the bottom up, and not the other way around. That is to say, the initiative of the strike has been born first in the streets, in the neighbourhoods and districts and has developed in open assemblies. It has not been a proposal of the unions, but of the feminist movement.” The mainstream unions only called for a 2 hour strike whereas unions such as the CGT and the anarchist CNT called for 24 hour stoppages.

Despite calls for the strike to be based on working class women, it is uncertain to what extent many women could actually participate, given that they are the ones in the most precarious position. In Spain, headlines were given to women in media and other professional jobs. In Britain, the strike was most successful in the universities, with 61 universities taking part. However, the link to CAIWU and sex workers showed that there certainly was support outside the universities.

If women are to truly win all the demands put forward on the day then we must go beyond demands for equality in the system and call for both the end of capitalism and patriarchy. So how is this going to happen? The strike in Spain may have been very successful in terms of numbers on the streets but what will it achieve in terms of winning demands? Politicians and even bosses may pay lip service to the aims of IWD but they are unlikely to do anything about it. In the end, using the success of March the 8th, women and men must continue to organise at the grass roots level and build up a movement that lasts much longer than a day. The linking up of a number of groups on the 8th provides a good basis on which to move forward.

Origins of International Women’s Day

March 8 is International Women’s Day. This date commemorates March 8, 1909, when 129 employees of a cotton textile factory in New York were killed when their own owner set fire to the factory while all of them were inside making a protest demanding labour rights. In addition, the colour of feminism is violet because, it is said, the smoke that came from that fire was violet, like the fabrics that were there that day. At an International Congress of Socialist Women in 1910, Clara Zetkin proposed this date as the International Women’s Day in honour of the cotton workers.

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sailtomarina · 1 year

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A Calendar for Firsts

Hermione lived with a finger on her calendar, small boxes filled to the edges and beyond with color-coded notations. Every imaginable event was included, her daily schedule, medical check-ups, and the birthdays and anniversaries of each one of her friends and family members. She’d even magicked her planner to respond to her demands—she had merely to tap and utter a restaurant’s name for every single reservation at said establishment to rise above the now-faded background for her inspection.

One would think that such an organized witch would foresee every minute of her carefully manicured life. That certainly would have been the case before Draco Malfoy.

He planned every stage of their first date, from buying out the evening of an exclusive restaurant she’d been trying to reserve for months to dancing their feet to exhaustion in Blaise Zabini’s music club. Hermione still used the coaster with its flame insignia from that night as a bookmark.

It was on his birthday when she agreed to be his girlfriend, several weeks after their first date and a fair amount of denial and self-reflection. In celebration, he filled her office to bursting with floral bouquets delivered on the half hour every hour. By the end of the day, Hermione found herself outside her overflowing door working from her assistant’s desk—Jess didn’t mind leaving early, or working from home for the next week so her boss could enjoy her unofficial garden just a little longer. Draco liked to say there was no better birthday gift than calling her his and he hers.

One year together marked the day he asked to officially court her, completely outdated in Hermione’s opinion but still utterly romantic. He asked her underneath the moonlight in the privacy of the manor gardens, the scent of honeysuckle heavy in the summer air. Draco draped a thin gold chain around her wrist, simple in ornamentation with three deep sapphires twinkling up at her. The bracelet had belonged to his great grandmother and matched the pocket watch he always carried on his person.

Somewhere along the way, her calendar had lost its function as a means to plan ahead. Draco was delightfully unpredictable, and she found herself retroactively marking the dates and events she never wanted to forget.

There was one date he allowed her the chance to set.

Their wedding vows came a single year later, with only their family and closest friends as witnesses. Pansy’s planning was impeccable, ensuring every minute slid from one to the other with nary a broken heel or misplaced ring. Together with Narcissa, she taught Hermione the wizarding traditions of mating her soul to her partner’s in the deepest of possible magics.

As she locked eyes with her love, both of them robed in quicksilver and barefoot on the moss, Hermione realized their union wasn’t so much a dissolution of their individual identities into one as it was a reforging into the best versions of themselves, an act that had repeated itself from the dawn of time and would continue to do so long after they had passed. They were not the first, nor would they be the last.

She circled the date of their wedding with the same flowers of the faerie ring in which they’d stood, charming the planner to emit the same aroma each year on their anniversary.

Hermione cataloged many more firsts with Draco over their long marriage, including work promotions and the birth of their children. In the interim of the Hogwarts years, firsts cycled around school dates and Yule Balls, Quidditch matches and N.E.W.T.s. As their youngest daughter exchanged vows with a man whose unruly hair refused to lie flat, just like his father’s, Hermione and Draco held hands in the same spot their parents had stood several years prior.

Their firsts didn’t stop with their marriage, or their children, or when husband and wife were alone once more in their home. Witches and wizards live a long time, after all. Who’s to say their best years weren’t still to come?

WC 675

Cross-posted on AO3

DHRMonth Prompt: Week 3 - Celebrations, September 15 - Firsts

Short and sweet for today’s theme. I’m not altogether satisfied with where I left it, but it’s time to move on to other works!

#dramione #dramionemonth #dramione month #dhr fanfiction #draco malfoy x hermione granger #draco malfoy #hermione granger #harry potter fanfiction

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lazenby · 1 year

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What does the myth of Medusa mean?

Medusa is not easy to talk about because she is not a single thing. Instead hers is a long, thin shape that worms its way through time. Once she was one thing, then this was repeatedly modulated by the various people to whom she has meant something.

The oldest form of the myth has her as one in a set of monstrous triplets, the product of incest between a titan and his sister. In this myth Medusa is virtually as old as the world itself and was born a monster to sea monster parents. Much, much later, in what they call the Archaic period of Greek history (800-480BCE) Medusa was promoted to having once been beautiful, but cursed by Athena for an unspecified insult. Eight years into the common era this strand was taken up in Rome by Ovid, just before his mysterious banishment to a town on the Black Sea.

Ovid makes the version of the myth that has become canonical. Medusa was a beautiful woman with fair hair who had taken a vow of celibacy. This sexual unavailability attracted the sea god Poseidon, who rapes Medusa in a temple to the goddess of wisdom. The virgin Athena, no stranger to violence, is so horrified at the sight of her home being defiled that she actually covers her eyes. The goddess then punishes Medusa for Poseidon's crime by making her hair a nest of snakes and her gaze capable of turning flesh into stone.

At this point an illegitimate son of Zeus called Perseus enters the story. By a complicated chain of events Perseus and his mother Danaë are sealed in a box and tossed into the sea by her father, Akrisius, the king of Argos. Zeus asks Poseidon to save his lover and son, which Poseidon does by making the ocean as glass and gently delivering the box to Seriphos, a hundred miles away. Here Perseus is adopted by the local king, Polydektes, as an opening gambit in the king's designs on Perseus' mother. Danaë spurns the king. Perseus, being the son of Zeus, is not thrilled by the prospect of her marriage to a mortal stepfather either.

Polydektes hatches a plan to kill Perseus and marry his mother without offending Olympus. The king announces a fake marriage to a noblewoman as an excuse to extract congratulatory gifts from everyone he knows. In his attempt to be clever, Polydektes demands the head of Medusa from Perseus. In response, Zeus recruits most of the Olympic pantheon to equip Perseus with magical armament, including Athena's own shield. Perseus uses these advantages to find and behead Medusa, approaching her by watching her reflection in the polished inner surface of the goddess' shield. Perseus then defends his mother's right to choose a spouse by turning Polydektes and his entire court into stone after they ask to see Medusa's head.

Back at the stump of Medusa's neck two "grandchildren" of Poseidon wriggle out of her body and into the world. The first is the famous winged horse Pegasus and the second is a human infant called Khrysaor, born holding a golden sword in his hand. Reflecting Medusa's original purity as well her curse, these offspring lead radically different lives. Pegasus gives long and devoted service to Olympus while Khrysaor's fate is to be the progenitor of most of the monsters that populate Greek mythology.

According to Hesiod's Theogony, Khrysaor sleeps with a sea nymph who then gives birth to a three-headed son named Geryon and a daughter called Echidna. That daughter is "half a nymph with glancing eyes and fair cheeks, and half again a huge snake, great and awful, with speckled skin, eating raw flesh beneath the secret parts of the holy earth." Echidna in turn has children by "the terrible, outrageous and lawless" serpent called Typhon.

This union first produces a hound named Orthus for her uncle Geryon. Orthus is soon joined by another brother, also a dog, the fifty-headed Kerberus who ends up guarding Hades. The third child of Echidna, Hydra, also has a huge surplus of heads. The fourth is Chimera and the fifth is actually the product of Echidna having sex with her first son, Orthus. That incest creates the Sphinx, who takes the suppression of the city of Thebes as his life's purpose, as well as the Nemean Lion, who does something similar on the peninsula that would become Sparta.

In thinking about the rape of Medusa by the sea god and her punishment for his transgression it would be easy to rattle off things like,

"Don't rule out spite. Poseidon made it extremely personal when he forced Medusa in Athena's home—and not just home, the place where Athena is fed. You can imagine for yourself the additional layers of disgust and violation you might feel to find your home not just broken into and robbed but used to stage a sexual assault."

Or that,

"Medusa's particular curse makes sense to me as a punishment, but only as a punishment of Poseidon. It takes her off that god's roster for good, then mocks him by ensuring that Medusa is forever untouchable—forever "his", and never another's. If there is a rapist's punishment in the myth, this is where it is."

And then to remark, grimly,

"You get all too clear an image of Mycenaean Greece through this keyhole."

But there's a good deal to think through before I could take seriously anything this concrete. After all, what wisdom is being expressed when Athena punishes a woman for having been raped? And what does the first version of the myth mean, where Medusa is a survivor from an era of monsters?

There are endless ways to play cat's cradle with the Greek myths until they have whatever shape you like. In one sense that sort of constrained mental fiddling is the purpose of any comprehensive mythological system—To provide a brake on revolutionary thought by denying this thought the one thing it must have to proceed: a vantage point from without to properly view the social contradictions that give it rise. You could argue that having such a vantage was what made Jesus a revolutionary compared to say the Maccabees, whose vantage on Judea was firmly rooted in an imagined past.

This brake gives the society that labors under it a special intellectual and cultural stability, a stability for which we have no real reference nowadays. I think you can see it very hard at work in that letter Ptolemy wrote for his patron Syrus, with which he opens his astronomy textbook, the Almagest. The one where Ptolemy implies that astronomy is a tool of moral self-cultivation even more than it is an attempt to depict reality from an independent point of view. Even the most advanced astronomical textbook ever written could not then be completely separated from the ends of piety, or for that matter the requirement to flatter your patron. (It goes without saying that "exegetic meaning" and the rest of the Straussian decoder ring project stems from a craving for the various stabilities [political, cultural, intellectual] granted a society with such a mythological system at its core.) That is to say, when you're interested in an individual myth I think it's helpful to imagine the conditions under which its first patterns were woven.

It is extremely important to remember that the Greek myths—and even the religious pantheon itself—are a Bayeux Tapestry. I mean that they were made for one set of people by another, who had established themselves hierarchically above the first. If the Greek myths are a shared cultural heritage covering everyone from Thrace to Crete, then the real heritage is the slightly more ancient domination that united them all in the first place.

What we call Greek mythology and its pantheon date to a thousand formative years. These are the years between the Indo-European conquest of the Aegean and the beginning of a Mycenaean world, that is, 3000-2000BCE. This was the millennium when at least three waves of invaders on horseback permanently disrupted the Neolithic farmers who had occupied the Aegean.

The entry of the Indo-Europeans—and their decision to stay—set in motion a series of events that culminated for our purposes with horse-riding, Indo-European-speaking invaders from the North (the Greeks) storming the Aegean peninsula. Their invasions set off a thousand years of tribal warfare, and the final wave of Dorians triggered a cultural dark age that lasted another twelve hundred years, until 800BCE. These invasions shifted the egalitarian indigenous social arrangement into something far more hierarchical, and eventually centralized.

Greek mythology and its pantheon are processed remains. They're all that's left of the indigenous Neolithic culture. The Greeks later called the people they overran the Pelasgoi. The name has no known origin and if it comes from anywhere it's probably like Basque or Etruscan—a relict of the Neolithic Europe that was all but erased by the horsemen and their language in the 2000's BCE.

The actual Pelasgoi were an egalitarian (and probably matrilineal) group of agriculturalists. They lived on the Aegean peninsula as the Indo-European invasion reverberated through their corner of late-Neolithic Europe. They'd probably been thereabouts for 10,000 years. The Greeks conquered and then settled among (or rather, "above") the locals. This dominion created a successor culture to that of both the local Neolithic and the invasive, Indo-European-derived Greeks.

As far as the Greek pantheon and its myths are concerned, this successor culture was Mycenaean (c. 2600-1177BCE). You can think of it as a Neolithic culture that has been digested to suit the requirements of pacifying and administering a particular group of conquered people. This much goes a long way to explaining why Agamemnon (c. 1700BCE) was still notable as a giant prick for Homer one thousand years later.

You could go even further if you wanted to, and see the martial fate of the Peloponnesus itself as a kind of runaway-refinement of the obsessive hierarchy, domination and paranoia depended on by every conquerer. At the very least you should think of Classical slavery, and Spartan slavery in particular as direct consequences of the Indo-European invasion.

Slavery is something like the culture of conquest itself and is not attested in the Aegean by low-status burials before the Greeks invaded. Further, you don't have to be a sociologist to see Sparta's secret police (the Krypteia) and their annual war on the enslaved Helots as a kind of domestic, institutionalized conquest. I realize there are 2,300 years separating the Indo-European invasion of Greece from the reforms of Lycurgus in Sparta; I'm only noting that there was a 10,000 year old, egalitarian Neolithic social fabric, that it was utterly destroyed by the men on horses and then replaced in waves by something far more violent. A process that terminated, in the case of Sparta, with something you could call ur-fascism without the slightest fear of anachronism.

There is a quality of succession (as opposed to "fusion") in Greek mythology. This comes from its absorption of a previous vision of the world. The easiest way to see how Greek mythology is the result of one thing consuming another is the genealogical rat's nest of its early denizens. There are primordial versions for almost all of the Olympian gods. There are even duplicates of these primordial gods: two sea gods, Pontus and Poseidon, two sky gods, Ouranos and Aether, and so on. There's also an extremely unclear line of succession connecting them all to the Olympic pantheon—the foundation of which, we are told, hinges on Zeus' rebellion against his father, Kronos, himself a usurper of his own father. This is all very strange for someone used to the forever-supremacy of a Judeo-Christian deity. To me, it reflects a requirement to absorb an indigenous culture for the purpose of administering "civilization" to its members.

Succession is also a feature of the history internal to Greek myth. Overt fertility imagery, something that certainly animates indigenous Neolithic agriculturalists, is banished to a world that was ancient even to the people telling the myths. Among other things, this is why Ouranos gets to spray cum left, right and center as he populates the primordial world but the origins of Theban aristocracy lie in Kadmus sowing dragon's teeth.

Medusa and her sisters take part in this successional process too. Each, we are told, is descended from the titans whom Zeus overthrew. As everyone knows, all three sisters have euphemisms instead of proper names: the Greek name Medusa means "the Protector", Euryale is "the Far Ranger" and Stheno is "the Robust." These are probably the epithets of pre-Greek female deities, reused as euphemisms once the women they named were demonized in the strict sense.

This is something that also happened to Pazuzu, the Babylonian demon who was the ultimate antagonist of "The Exorcist." Pazuzu was probably a god of fair weather out of the Neolithic world that was overrun by the earliest civilizations of Mesopotamia. The mythology of that area is complex and successional in a way that recalls what I've been saying about the Greeks. Tellingly, Pazuzu is the brother of Humbaba (another demonizee) whom the notable avatar of civilization, Gilgamesh disposed of in the wilds of Lebanon. The upshot is that nobody knows what Pazuzu's real name is because he was so thoroughly euphemized by his culture's successor as to have been rechristened. This is likely also the case for many of the things that get called monsters in Greek mythology.

It seems important to note that the collective term for Medusa and her sisters, "Gorgons," is an Indo-European word meaning "those with grim gazes." This is to say that if Medusa and her sisters do represent pre-Greek deities then it was certainly the Greeks who renamed them. The use of gorgons as protective architectural features right up into the Classical period also strongly reflects the original and benevolent forms taken by Medusa and her sisters. Forms bent to Greek purposes after subjugation to the new, Olympian order.

It's also important not to go overboard when it comes to Medusa's original form. Trying to recover the original nature of feminine deities is an extremely large and sticky trap for modern people. Ever since the beginning of the Modern era there has been an intense desire to see prior societies as somehow antidotes to the way our own has developed. The prospect of ancient matriarchies excites this desire. For example JJ Bachofen and his Der Mutterrecht (1861), or Otto Gross and his idea that the Freudian superego is identical with patriarchy.

Gross said explicitly what many women (and a few men) still feel: that my self-consciousness, the means by which I regulate my desires and impulses by measuring them against what is "expected of me," is where patriarchy lives and my awareness of "what is expected" is the means of patriarchy's transmission through time. Gross thought the organization of the human mind not only changed though history but that its present organization recorded this history in the same way as ocean sediments. Gross believed that the unconscious was the psychological correlate to life under matriarchy and the superego its comparatively recent lid—a lid that covers our collective memory of what it was like to live in a society modeled on the benevolent dominion of child by mother. Gross' determination to remove this lid in himself through a rigorous program of polyamory and cocaine was a mixed success. The close association of patriarchy with a zealously applied, regulatory self-consciousness (the type required when one has a specified place in a male-dominated, urban hierarchy) is much more difficult to dismiss.

I said before that Medusa was probably a pre-Greek deity before she was "demonized in the strict sense," but this is not quite right. Greece didn't have demons, only monsters. I find this fascinating. I would never refer to the Gorgons, and much less Scylla or Charybdis or Python, as "demons," no matter how much their appearance or behavior fit the term. Why is this? Is it just because of the rehabilitation performed on ancient Greek culture by everything from the Renaissance to the D'Aulaires? Or is it a real distinction?

In Greek myth monsters seem to be checks on progress or development because they impede notable figures from completing their stories (Oedipus, Herakles, Kadmus etc.) On the face of it this is very different from a demon's purpose, which is to reassert the Natural or Divine order for the benefit of anyone foolish enough to challenge it. Is it just that monsters are alive, i.e., mortal, in a way demons are not? Is a monster just a demon who can be killed? Even if that's true (and mortality is a trait that basically every single monster in Greek mythology shares) what does it mean that creatures who would be eternal menaces in any other culture are, in Greek mythology, seemingly there to be vanquished?

Unlike demons, each monster in Greek myth is a holdover from the primordial world. Nobody says that Mephistopheles or an Oni is an isolated renegade from some prior era. Even if both are extremely ancient they each have an obvious and divinely ratified dominion over their corner of the present world: You see it in their respective licenses to tempt Faust and eat Buddhist pilgrims. But it is exactly a questionable dominion over the world and a loss of divine ratification that unite all the monsters of Greek myth.

One way to understand this is to say that a monster is a demon who has had its spiritual existence scraped out. The result is not just mortality but exile to the same plane of reality that humans inhabit. Monsters can be killed—and their deaths serve as capstones to heroic acts of faith—in a way that even the fight against a demon will never yield. Demons have an intact spiritual existence, granted them by divine ratification. This gives them the ability, or rather, the right to escape attack via their non-physical form (as Pazuzu does at the end of "The Exorcist.") That "right of spiritual escape" is the substance of a demon's immortality, and its loss in the case of monsters is sometimes the only obvious difference between the two. This is best seen in the fact that Greek monsters cease to exist once killed, and their shades are never encountered in Hades. When a monster loses the right to escape via a spiritual existence they acquire their other major distinction from demons: unnaturalness.

A demon can certainly be terrifying, but the terror it causes is embedded in, indeed terrifies on behalf of the Natural order. This is to say that demons terrify, but that this terror is not personal. Humans, the variety of soul indigenous to this plane of reality, are terrorized as a class by demons, not as individuals. In fact one could argue a direct connection between this and, for example, the millions of ticketholders who made "The Exorcist" such a fabulous box office success.

On this understanding, demonic terror is felt not by individuals but by their bodies, the thing all humans have in common with each other. This terror is each body reminding its occupant of the order of things. That's the nature of the enforcement performed by a demon's fearsomeness. This is easier to see in the pre-scientific account of altitude sickness: the way you feel the higher you climb is a direct experience of your assigned place in the hierarchy of Nature. Altitude sickness is your very body speaking to you, saying, in the voice of Nature, "You aren't supposed to be here dummy; This is for the gods." Every hair raised by a demon retrenches a hierarchy to remind humans that they are not at its summit.

When a demon (or for that matter a god) "loses its license" and must become a monster, unnaturalness and a type of criminality is what follows. The terror created by the Theban dragon or the Sphinx was chaotic. It served no purpose except to constrain human destiny, by keeping Kadmus from founding Thebes or Oedipus from ruling it. What does it mean that Ancient Greece had a disordered spiritual landscape filled with monsters who live only to thwart the aims of destiny and Nature?

It's very tempting to think that this is because the rule for what was 'Natural' and what went against 'Nature' had been recently changed—namely by the Greeks, their gods and the new order. You could call Greek monsters "heretics under polytheism"—recently-mortal refugees from a divine war, shorn of immortality but with their actual coups-de-grace left as tests of faith for the most pious and violent humans. The heroes (in Greek the word means the same thing as Medusa, "protector.") Hence the ensouled champions of Olympus slaughter the soul-less and unnatural monsters. This slaughter concludes a monster's demotion from the spiritual realm and it then enters the least permanent plane of existence, that of corpses and human memory. This is the fate of all casualties in a war of mythological succession.

The hero in the story of Medusa is successional in several ways. Perseus has a mandate to kill monsters from the ancient world, and so recreate (in acceptable miniature) his own father's rebellion against the titans. This may only be a fancier way of saying that Perseus is a minor son of Zeus and is assigned a mopping up operation at the tail-end of his dad's throne war.

But there's also a successional quality in the way Perseus is made heroic. Perseus is heroic because he is the very tip of Olympus' will: he is sired by them, clothed by them, armed by them and disguised by them. The hero is a human, composited into semidivinity by the gifts of the pantheon. Any which way Perseus presents himself, whether visibly or not, he's a reflection of Olympus. And this is to say nothing of his shield, whose literal reflection of Perseus is presumably the only place Medusa ever sees her killer's eyes.

Perseus is not only protected by Athena's shield: his face appears inside it. Medusa's head is later put on the outside of the shield. This is a little parable about fucking with Athena: "There are two sides to this goddess, an inside where you are defended from apparently invincible enemies and an outside, where Athena becomes an invincible enemy herself." That may be the the full extent of the "wisdom" on display in the Medusa myth, which is really an Athena myth: the wise live long because they don't screw with Athena. (The fact that Perseus defeats the barbaric Medusa through his powers of reflection, and in the name of the goddess of wisdom, is a cerebral valence the story probably acquired later on, in Roman times.)

You can also think of Medusa's death in the light of succession. The stump of her neck yields two "grandchildren" of Poseidon, Pegasus and Khrysaor. One is a giant man born holding a golden sword and the other is a domesticated animal who conquers the air. Pegasus becomes a kind of mercenary in Olympus' war against the primordial past, as when Athena lends Pegasus out to Bellerophon so they can wax Chimera (who is in fact the grand-nephew of the flying horse Bellerophon uses to kill him.) Khrysaor's real legacy is of course as donor of the human phenotypes that add another layer of monstrousness and perversity to the creatures Herakles must dispatch during his labors. It is intriguing that the human component of Medusa's existence finds expression in Khrysaor, progenitor of a dozen mythological monsters, while everything noble in her body comes out as a beast of fabulous utility.

In a word, the Olympian order mandates divine violence against the remaining chaos-monsters. Further, these monsters are refined by that violence into something that benefits mankind. Seen from this angle, Medusa's death at Perseus' hands (or the dragon's at those of Kadmus) is something close to a sales pitch for a Greek world: "We're getting rid of those monsters. We're harnessing their primordial energy for the benefit of the city-founding horse-lords!"

When you look at it this way the early version of the myth shows Medusa as a bridge to the chaotic, primordial world. In fact it is precisely her status as a monster of the ancient world that provokes Polydektes into selecting Medusa as a challenge. Polydektes thinks he's being extremely clever by asking Perseus for Medusa's head. He imagines he's dooming an irritating rival by telling him to go tete a tete with the daughter of a titan. But his turns out to be exactly the kind of backward, even heretical thinking that doesn't understand how overmatched the primordial, barbaric world is when it squares off against Olympus. It's worth remembering that by the end of the myth Polydektes and his entire court become all too firm believers in what can be achieved with Olympus' backing.

Like almost all the great monsters of Greek mythology Medusa's existence symbolized an intolerable check on the progress of Hellenization. Olympus therefore facilitates her murder. The easy answer as to why Medusa was the sister chosen for death is that she was, for some reason, the only mortal one among the three. But this seems extremely post-hoc to me, like the rest of the Ovidian interpretation. To my mind Medusa was always a gorgon, because she was always a Neolithic deity; Ovid was the person who could translate her Bronze Age fate into more urban, even modern terms.

I think you can see what I'm getting at here: the Medusa story is a single battle in a much longer-running war between what Olympus represented and the indigenous world of chaos-monsters it aimed to replace. This had enormous consequences for the Western world.

That replacement occurred along an axis which had never before existed in Mycenaean society: The axis with "Barbarian" at one end and "Greek" at the other. Their whole mythology is a snapshot of this process of replacement. This probably dates, as I said, to the beginning of the Mycenaean world. And as the Mycenaean world became more centralized and urban you can see something of the mechanism that produced this "successional" mythology:

The foundation of cities is a major consequence of killing monsters in Greek myths. Perseus founds Mycenae after killing Medusa. Agamemnon only has a city to lord over because Atreus inherited it from the line of Perseus, to say nothing of the case of Thebes, its dragon or the Sphinx.

This new axis was a force majeure opposition between Greek things and Barbarian things. When laid over the imperative to found cities, this axis set up a kind of cultural siphon. Under this mechanism all the things emphasizing order and what we would call centralized government eventually became "Greek" (whatever their actual origin). On the other hand, the uncivilizable elements of human life were mythologically deported to a barbaric past, the one that preceded the conquest and domination of "Greek" religion by Olympus.

It's important to point out that this was a synthetic process. I mean that the things which facilitated hierarchical, settled civilization were drawn from both Greek and "Pelasgian" sources, while those that did not became associated with a primordial world whose successor was at hand. This is how barbaric Greek raiders of the 2nd millennium BCE went from unwashed nomads of Thrace to the first word in philosophy. In fact it is one of the ways cultures do what they call "schismogenesis," the sociological equivalent of speciation.

Of course, human beings are not perfectly suited to civilization, and this mechanism could only proceed (indeed, has only proceeded) so far. Perhaps reflecting this, the Barbarian-Greek axis had become the Irrational-Rational axis by the time philosophy first got written down. Nevertheless, right into the Classical period it's easy to see an uncivilizable residue lending its ineradicable tint to Greek life. Sophocles' Bacchae is more or less solely concerned with this tint, and is one of the biggest milestones on the road to a Western idea of "humanity." That is, "humanity" as something not only shot thru with irrational, Bacchic chaos, but "humanity" as this way by nature. It can be a very crooked path to get to a concept as obvious to us as the "Natural."

Or at least this is one of journeys I take myself on to imagine the birth of our concept of "irrationality." To recap this journey's stages,

A. Settled Neolithic agriculturalists are dominated by barbaric horse-riding invaders & their patriarchal deities.

↓↓↓

B. Settled Greeks and their contempt for anything that stands in the way of centralized, hierarchical power.

↓↓↓

C. The mental tendencies of life under civil order gathered into a concept of 'rationality.'

↓↓↓

D. And finally the conversion of civil order's antagonist from 'barbarism,' the thing outside the city walls, to 'irrationality,' the barbaric element latent within each human.

(I should say that seeing the intellectual dynamism of Classical Greece as rooted in, or even kicked off by, an invader's mentality toward their conquered subjects is a whole other can of worms.)

Perhaps the idea that Medusa is "mainly" a casualty of Olympus' war on the barbaric past is disappointing to you. I would also like Greek mythology to have a level of internal consistency such that you can turn the crank of thought and arrive at an internally consistent explanation (a "lesson.") But Greek mythology is the collision of at least two cultural systems—a collision that reflects an agricultural, matriarchal, and egalitarian way of life complexly overlaid by another, whose sources lie with nomadic, horse-riding raiders from the North.

Medusa's story seems to me one that straddles the interface between those two, often-incompatible systems of cultural understanding. Hers is a story about how the fight for mythological supremacy takes place along the fault line separating—depending on which era of the myth's development (ABCD) you find most eyecatching—subject from master, heresy from piety, barbarians from Greeks, chaos from order and, in its final form, irrationality from thinking as we "ought to."

Many of the Greek myths are an account of cultural conflict transposed to a mythological plane. The ahistorical "moment" from which most of these stories are told dates to some point after the outcome of this conflict, and the victory of Olympus became a foregone conclusion. But the arrangement of forces in this conflict continued (continues!) to reflect something long, long after the thing it originally reflected—the conquest of Neolithic farmers by horse raiders from Asia—had passed from view. The Greek concept of irrationality is still utterly essential to us and still contains within it the coiled historical elements outlined above.

I realize that arguments from history are often only another kind of argument from myth, and sometimes even easier to puppeteer. Even so I think we all have to live in hope that Al Hirschman is right when he says the most we can expect from History, and from the History of Ideas in particular, is not the retirement of issues but only a raising of the level of debate.

Having thought through all of this, and with the qualification that I don't think any of what follows is historically justified, I do have a few thoughts about the particular myth of Medusa. These are what you might call literary observations on her story as we get it from Ovid and the Romans. Their version of the myth shifts focus away from the, by that point long-settled question of mythological supremacy. The Roman myth of Medusa is far more social, more urbane and even what I would call humanistic. It's about a particular woman being raped in a particular place and how these facts and their consequences dominate the rest of her life—indeed, collude to end it.

Medusa's petrifying gaze is much more complicated than I thought as a kid. For example, Medusa does not have the equivalent of laser beams shooting out of her eyes. That is, getting turned into stone by Medusa is something that occurs essentially by the victim's choice. In order to become a stone of yourself you must: 1) look directly at Medusa while 2) she directly meets your elective gaze. I think we can deduce this much from the story of the polished shield. In other words her "petrifying gaze" is really an automatic and unstoppable consequence of choosing to look at Medusa and of then receiving her eye contact. There is something close to a supercultural (that is, "humanistic") understanding of us at work here: we are the animal that can't not look.

Formerly, the beautiful Medusa was subjected to many more gazes than she could personally meet. That's what it is to be a beautiful person among others. In a certain type of society, which, for Ovid, Greek mythology was taken to represent, a woman's role among others is to be the object of those gazes. From a public perspective a woman is someone who cannot return every gaze that falls on her, in fact modesty decrees she shouldn't even try.

What would it mean to use this state of affairs as the basis for a curse? First, the obvious ironic reversals and perversions. Medusa goes from a woman (whose status as a woman—and again this is Ovid's world—is predicated on her inability to return every gaze that finds her) to a monster who compulsively seeks out the gaze of anyone she comes across. There's also an obvious gender reversal, whereby the cursed Medusa becomes both the pursuer in and the victor of non-consensual encounters with men. But also a more subtle reversal, aimed at somebody's idea of feminine pride, whereby once-beautiful Medusa becomes famous, indeed pursued, for her ugliness.

This gender reversal shades into the punitive "blessings" built into Medusa's curse. First among these is of course the petrifying gaze that "protects" Medusa from ever being raped again. (The snakes presumably defend against kisses from the blind.) Eye contact often betrays a man's intention towards a woman. This is one of the reasons modesty discourages it. And so what was once the place and moment where a woman understood her vulnerability, and a man his power, becomes an instant of unpleasant surprise for Medusa's victim.

You could go further with this and say that the rocks of men Medusa leaves behind are in fact statues. And that each models the same man in a parody of arousal. A parody of the moment when a man, and you have to imagine a Roman man here, first sees a gorgeous woman: wide eyes, slack jaw, ah-wooogacus forming on his lips and so on. The fact that the visage of lust is identical to that of terror probably says more than you'd like to know about Roman sexuality.

There is also a quality of being damned-to-fame in Medusa's curse. This goes beyond her famous ugliness. Medusa leaves a trail of sterile human pillars behind her. It mocks the way she once made men hard—an overtone I don't think would have been lost on a Roman audience. Medusa is the nightmare of a certain idea of female modesty.

In that vein, I think there is also a message about the Roman conception of men and women latent in Medusa's hideousness. This, Ovid is saying, this is what would be needed to protect a woman from the way men are. Only by permanently immobilizing him and covering your face with snake venom for good measure could any woman have stopped a man from raping her. The fact that Medusa's curse is presumably an effective defense against future encounters with Poseidon is probably beside the point. What matters is that Medusa's terrible, bestial appearance shows how much women would have to change to end the phenomenon of rape. There's a dark and inverted humanism at work here, one that is very much still with us. One that sees rape as a supercultural phenomenon descending from a male's presumed helplessness when it comes to looking at certain things.

This is to say that Medusa, by being presented as a woman who is finally safe from rape, telegraphs the inevitability of men raping any woman who is less ugly than the ugliest woman who has ever existed. In the world this myth was meant to service the kind of woman who won't get raped is the kind who can't even be looked at in the first place, let alone approached.

Living out this inversion of holiness is also part of Medusa's curse. As is her soullessness, and the mocking, second virginity Athena forces on her. Medusa being made too ugly to rape probably had ironic overtones to a Roman audience, who would have seen Athena as having metaphorically abducted Medusa to keep as a temple virgin ("raped" as in Sabines.)

In the way of all literary analysis you can keep cats-cradelling away with this myth and its history, but I am unsure as to how helpful these somewhat facile reflections are to a person trying to think deeply about Medusa and her story.

Gorgons were often carved on temples, where their petrifying gazes drove home a very practical theological doctrine: behave in this place or become part of it. The myth of Medusa explodes this arrangement with a floridness typical of pre-Christian ideas about divinity. Medusa walks the earth as Athena's involuntary virgin and leaves statues behind her everywhere she goes. Each pillar that used to be a person is another monument raised to Athena, or at least to the wisdom of not testing her where she eats.

#txt

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fuck-customers · 10 months

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I wish there was a way I could convince my boss to get on board with the idea of a suggestion box, so that all of us employees could anonymously write suggestions for how to improve the store + things we'd like that might make us more productive, feel more appreciated, etc. But there's no way for me to bring it up without making it seem like the reason for the box is because she's such a fuckup as a manager. (Because that is the real reason lmao) She's also the type who would read a legitimate constructive criticism and scoff and wave it off as us asking for something extremely unreasonable or make up some bullshit about how xyz can't be done to improve the store because there's not enough hours, or crew, or money in the budget, whatever. I can actually picture her doing that.

The past few days I've been obsessed with this idea (mostly because I had a nightmare shift that would've easily been avoided had she done her job and managed correctly and assigned people to do the setup work beforehand) but I can't think of a way to get her on board. I've considered just making a box myself and putting it in the breakroom with some pens and paper scraps, but I predict it wouldn't even be a full day before she tosses it out.

So, just to get some off my chest, I'm going to put some of the suggestions I WOULD'VE written here.

•Either bring back the stocking crew that came in at 5:00 a.m. before the store opened or schedule extra people on delivery days to stay in the stockroom and unbox all products and sort them by department/aisle BEFORE putting product out on the sales floor.

(This one is a direct reference to the stocking shift I recently had that was a nightmare because none of the stock had been pre-sorted by department, which was done in the past by the stocking crew, so we had to open boxes and sort them on the sales floor while simultaneously stocking items, while the store was open and we were constantly interrupted by customers. This made stocking take at least double, if not triple the time it would've taken. That delivery was a week ago, and the boxes are STILL sitting on the sales floor, half-stocked)

•While stocking, have each employee price tag each individual item, as our stock does not arrive pre-tagged, so that customers are not confused about the prices, since upper management removed the store scanners.

•Assign the ASM or a lead to exclusively do the schedule so that the schedule is regularly posted the 3 weeks out, as required, not 3 days out.

•Assign a lead or promote a non-management employee to be a trainer to correctly train the new hires.

(As of right now, new hires are hired and then basically thrown on the floor and told to figure it out and fend for themselves, obviously leading to many mistakes that need to be unfucked by the rest of the crew, they'll ask other employees for help, but most of those employees were "trained" in the same method, so they'll show the new hires the wrong way, the blind leading the blind, essentially)

•Schedule more than 1 person per department, this way there is adequate coverage in the event of a rush, plus in downtime, one employee can assist customers while the other does go-backs/recovery and makes the department look neat and presentable.

(The store looks like a tornado hit it currently) (I also know this one is probably a union-busting thing, but honestly? Remember KM@rts and how messy they always looked? My store makes KM@rt look like a model store)

•Do some morale boosters. Every employee in the store looks like they're in prison. (We kinda are) We literally got an online review (that SHE HERSELF PRINTED OUT) that stated that we all looked miserable and looked like we needed a moral boost. We desperately do. The real solution would be better pay and hours, but we know you, the SM don't have that much control over that. You could do small things, though. The previous ASM would regularly bring in snacks for the breakroom for us, would regularly have potlucks on holidays that brought us all together, she would also make sure to regularly tell each of us that we were appreciated and would recognize our hard work. Even if it was bs, it still raised morale.

ANYWAY, thank you for letting me rant. ✨️🙌

P.S. I know obviously none of you know my boss, since I'm anonymous and didn't specify where I work (for obvious reasons) but do any of you think the suggestions box thing has even a slim chance of working? In my head, I wasn't going to tell her it was my idea or ask permission, I was just going to set up the box in the breakroom and throw in a few of my own suggestions and see if any of my coworkers add their own. Because I felt if I asked permission or told my boss my idea, she'd take offense that I was indirectly calling her a fuckup (she is) and undermining her authority or some bullshit like that. Or do you guys think if I just do it without telling anyone, she might be curious and at least look at a few suggestions? Or should I ask her to set one up? I really don't think that would go well, personally.

Posted by admin Rodney.

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spiderdreamer-blog · 10 months

Text

2023 at the Movies: A Year in Review

2023 has been an odd year for American cinema in particular, between overall tepid box office outside of a few big hits and the combination of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes affecting release dates as well as promotional tactics. (Just so we're clear, this is a Union Solidarity Blog) But it was a fascinating year artistically nonetheless, especially on the blockbuster end. What this list aims to achieve is sort of a capsule review of the theatrical releases I saw (not counting streaming-only films even if I ended up seeing theatrical releases ON streaming) and how I felt about them in capsule review form. And even then, there's still stuff I need to catch up on like Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Oppenheimer, Elemental, or Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Anyhoo, on with my list, in chronological release order:

John Wick: Chapter 4: Much like its titular hero, there are perhaps some signs that this franchise could benefit from taking a bit of a rest. Some of the worldbuilding is going from knowingly absurd to just plain absurd, and a couple early action beats, while fun (NUNCHUCKS), are a little familiar in terms of director Chad Stahelski's neon-as-fuck aesthetics. Ultimately, it's not too much to derail things, as Keanu Reeves proves a capable grounding lead like always, and the Parisian third act is giddy, comically overblown violence in the grand John Wick tradition that reaches an unexpected poignancy. The supporting cast might also be one of the best in the series; while Asia Kate Dillion's unflappable Adjudicator is missed from the last installment, we do receive Bill Skarsgard doing an OUTRAAGEOUS French accent as a smarmy villain you really want to see dead by the end of this, Donnie Yen as a clever, funny spin on the blind swordsman trope, Rina Sawayama is both badass and touching, Shamier Anderson stands out by dialing down, and my beloved Clancy Brown has some of the best implicit "are you fucking kidding me" reactions I've seen in a while.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie: I was honestly dreading this for a while. Illumination Entertainment is a perfectly cromulent animation studio who makes films that, with a couple exceptions, represent pretty much everything I dislike about American family filmmaking: loud, hyperactive, deficient of nutritional value, and did I mention loud? But the trailers started impressing me in terms of how well they adapted the candy-colored toybox Nintendo aesthetic to a wider theatrical scope. And if nothing else, casting Jack Black as Bowser would probably be pretty awesome (spoiler alert: he was). Thankfully, it manages to be an immensely entertaining, zippy adventure film that minimizes potential annoyances at nearly every turn. This is primarily thanks to a ready-to-play, enthusiastic voice cast (outside of Black, I particularly like Pratt and Day's brotherly dynamic and Anya Taylor-Joy doing a Disney Princess-esque comedy action spin on Peach), a smartly simple story structure, and leaving a lot of potential open for the future like Seth Rogen's lovable ready-for-spinoff-movies Donkey Kong. It may not rock the boat, but it was better than it had any business being, and that counts for a lot in my book.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: The Marvel Cinematic Universe and I are admittedly on a bit of a break. Not because they're doing anything WRONG per se, just that a lot of their shows and movies haven't enticed me as much in the past year. I did get out to see this, though, which is both the best all around MCU film since Endgame and very possibly the best film of its own trilogy. James Gunn pulls out all the stops emotionally for his Marvel swan song (godspeed to you over at the still-in-progress trashfire that is Warner Bros. Discovery, good sir), crafting a beautiful, resonant journey for all the characters. The ensemble cast fires on all cylinders, for one. While Bradley Cooper is the obvious vocal standout as Rocket takes center stage, it's assuredly the role of Chris Pratt's career (other non-Mario/Marvel directors, take note! You can in fact have this guy be funny, credibly tough, AND sympathetic instead of missing out on the other two), Zoe Saldana navigates a difficult emotional dance, Pom Klementieff finds real heart in Mantis, Dave Bautista is still one of our most interesting wrestlers-turned-actors in the choices he makes, Karen Gillan has slowly become of the MCU's MVPs as Nebula, Will Poulter is endearingly dunderheaded as a comedic take on Adam Warlock, and Chukwudi Iwuji proves a truly vile villain who exemplifies the maxim of "if you really want an audience to just HATE a motherfucker, have him torture cute animals". And of course Gunn's musical tastes remain impeccable, such as a Beastie Boys needle drop that prompts a truly bitchin' fight scene (oddly the second time this specific song happened this year in a Pratt-led vehicle). It's funny, it made me ugly cry at SEVERAL points, and I got to see a psychic cosmonaut dog beat people's asses with her mind. What more could I want?

Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse: Into the Spider-Verse was a revolution and a revelation for what the American animated film industry could accomplish artistically and technically. How could a sequel possibly live up to it? Across does, against all odds, proving to be the Empire Strikes Back to the original's Star Wars in terms of going darker/more complex on the emotions and to greater visual heights (albeit with the caveat that maybe next time, we can manage the production better and not crunch people so much). Co-directors Justin K. Thompson, Kemp Powers, and Joaquim Dos Santos (who I've stanned as one of our best animation action directors from Justice League Unlimited through Voltron Legendary Defender) craft a propulsive narrative that asks big questions about who and what Spider-Man is. And while those will have to wait to be fully answered in the third installment, what it sets up is no less compelling or thrilling. Shout-outs in particular go to Hailee Steinfeld, who has to anchor this film with Gwen as much as Shameik Moore's still-iconic Miles; Daniel Pemberton for an outstanding score; Oscar Isaac for giving rich complexity to Miguel O'Hara, who could have felt like a boorish bully in lesser hands; and Jason Schwartzman for not just proving he transitions REALLY well into voicework between this and projects like Klaus, but being by turns pathetically funny and terrifying in ways I've never heard him be as the Spot. Can't wait to see where that goes next time in particular.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: "Pleasant surprise" comes to mind. While I never hated Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as much as most, it was definitely a little underwhelming as a possibly final Indy adventure. (Not helping is that Steven Spielberg immediately turned around and made an infinitely better indy movie in the form of The Adventures of Tintin) So I was curious to see how going to the well for seemingly the real final adventure would work this time around. Thankfully, director James Mangold proves he has a good eye for creative action, even if nothing here quite reaches the heights of the original trilogy, and Harrison Ford does some of his best acting in ages as a weary, burnt-out Indy; one always got the sense that THIS was much closer to his heart than Han Solo. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a terrific foil to him, joyously amoral (or so she says), while Mads Mikkelsen finds a new spin on coldly cruel cinematic Nazis; he has a tense reintroduction scene that had me squirming in my seat. Add in a slam-bang ending and a touching epilogue, and I'm pretty happy with where things end up for our favorite archaeologist. A solid B+, which we could use more of nowadays.

Also they Poochie-d Shia LaBeouf, which is hilarious to me on several levels.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One: The Mission: Impossible franchise has undergone a curious metamorphosis from where it started as one of many oldies TV adaptations in 1996 to a purposefully old-school action franchise. Director Christopher McQuarrie has become a pro at these over the last three installments, and Dead Reckoning (now no longer a part one, as the back-in-production followup will be retitled) has lots to offer both large and small for action fans even outside of the continued spectacle of Tom Cruise Possibly Wants To Die On Camera. Obviously the big stunt sequences remain a draw, like a terrific car chase through Rome or the climactic journey onboard the Orient Express because trains are ALWAYS bitchin' locations in movies. But just as good are pleasures like a tense cat-and-mouse game in an airport where nobody's quite sure whose side Hayley Atwell's thief Grace is on, Henry Czerny coming back to the franchise after 27 years and looking as shiftily patriotic as ever, Pom Klementieff on this list for the second time looking really hot as she whoops ass, and Cary Elwes getting an unexpectedly choice exposition monologue. Plus the whole deal with the A.I. villain ended up being, uh, fairly relevant.

Barbie: A brilliant human comedy from an unexpected source. This could have gone wrong in so many different ways, I can easily imagine a version that's WAY more lugubrious and, crucially, much less funny. But director/co-writer Greta Gerwig has quickly become one of our best talents between this and the wildly-different-but-has-more-in-common-than-you'd-think Little Women (I also still need to see to heard-it's-excellent Lady Bird). With an infinitely clever script (I love in particular that the "real world" is just as ridiculous in its own way as Barbieland) and Sarah Greenwood's impeccable production design, Gerwig and her cast craft a feminist fable that remains light and funny even at its most strident and angry. Margot Robbie has never been better, hilarious and gut-punching by equal measure, America Ferrera ends up as the unexpected heart of the piece, and Ryan Gosling is absolutely hysterical as Ken while still making him intensely sympathetic. He and Robbie deserve Oscar noms in particular. No, I'm not kidding. Might expand this one to a full review at some point tbh.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem: I missed this in theaters and regret it immensely, given that this is a hilarious, cheerfully irreverent take on characters who've really managed a surprising amount of relevance in the modern age. Actually having teen actors voice the Turtles makes them feel so authentic, and they're matched well by an equally game cast like Ayo Edebiri's thoroughly modern April O'Neill, Jackie Chan as a more bumbling-but-heartfelt version of Splinter than usual, and Paul Rudd going full surfer bro as Mondo Gecko. And of course the scribbled-notebook underground comics vibe of the animation is a neat bit of full circle aesthetics if you know these guys' origins.

Wish: All of you are wrong and being dumb about this movie. It's not that I can't grok some of the criticisms as being legitimate, to be fair; for example, the songs, while very good on their own IMO, don't always hit the iconic level of a Frozen or Encanto. But the vitriol with which they've been expressed, and this odd narrative that Disney is in the toilet artistically and needs to nebulously "fix" things, is something I can't at all agree with. It's gorgeously rendered, for one; yes, I would potentially like to see a return to full 2D animated films for the studio at some point too. But if they're gonna experiment even marginally with CGI, I applaud co-directors Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn making it look this painterly as a starting point. And as with a lot of modern Disney, there's real richness and inner life to these characters. Ariana DeBose is a winning heroine as Asha, who feels distinct from other "princesses" by essentially being working class and unionizing the kingdom. And Chris Pine as Magnifico is a Disney Villain for the ages, blending real complexity in his relationships with scenery-chewing madness. (Also am I the only one who got major "studio executive/CEO" vibes off him?) If this is "mid" or "bland" Disney, I really question what some of y'all are seeing that I seemingly can't.

Also I liked the 100th anniversary references, sue me. The last one in particular gets points for quiet charm rather than grandstanding.

The Boy and the Heron: Hayao Miyazaki, anime's favorite grumpy old man, comes back out of retirement for like the fifth time. Seriously, remember when Princess Mononoke was supposed to be his last film 25+ years ago? I'll believe his "last film" is truly his last when he's in the cold, cold ground. Regardless of the continuing saga of Old Man Won't Retire Because He Seemingly Can't Be Alone With His Own Thoughts, this is a brilliant, haunting spectacle of animation that might be a new favorite for me. Some have called it confusing, whereas I go for "dreamlike", possibly his most to date. Nearly every frame is suffused with longing and melancholy (though this also has some of Miyazaki's best comedy in a while), and, oddly like Wish, this feels like a true career reflection, if a bit more fraught and questioning what legacy truly means. Joe Hisaishi contributes possibly his moodiest, most dissonant score, with little of the bombast or whimsical charm that typifies his music, but it works unfathomably well. Credit also to the dub, with Robert Pattinson as funny and menacing as you've heard, but Luca Pandoval is also excellent as our stoic lead Mahito, Florence Pugh manages to be both a total badass and a funny old woman (it makes sense in context, I promise), Christian Bale puts forth a fascinating two-step with his boisterous father, Gemma Chan and Karen Fukuhara nail some complex emotional turns, Willem Dafoe nearly steals the whole thing in under two minutes, Dave Bautista makes a real meal out of a part not much bigger than that, and Mark Hamill finds resonance as a tired old man.

#movies #analysis #criticism #disney animated canon #wish 2023 #tmnt mutant mayhem #john wick #atsv #mission impossible #the boy and the heron #barbie #the super mario bros movie #indiana jones #guardians of the galaxy volume 3

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cutiedwaekki · 6 months

Text

domectic dwaekki

—hold me i'm your bunny

Bang chan x changbin

summary : changbin's new life as a house-husband

contain : weight-gain , tight clothes , breaking furniture

A/n : started as a random idea , ended up as a short fic

Enjoy ♡

(≡・x・≡)

In a quiet neighborhood, in the heart of a bustling city, lived Chan and Changbin, who had just sealed their love with the sacred bonds of marriage.

Their union was an ode to modernity, acceptance and unconditional love. After years of innocent flirts in college, of making out sessions at the studio where they both worked that became their places of love, they now stood side by side, ready to face the challenges and savor the joys of married life.

Changbin , with his warm smile and kind heart, had decided to swap his stressful job for that of housekeeper. He had always dreamed of creating a welcoming home, where harmony and happiness would reign. So, on the first morning of their new life as husbands, Changbin proudly donned a pink apron adorned with a pretty pink heart, symbolizing his new mission: to take care of their home and his beloved.

Every day, while Chan went off to work, Changbin devoted himself to household chores. He sang happily as he polished the furniture, did the laundry or cooked delicious meals in their bright kitchen. For him, every act was marked by love and devotion to his husband. Over time, however, Chan began to notice a subtle change in Changbin.

As the months went by, something began to change in their routine. His husband, once athletic and slender, was gradually putting on weight. At first, it was only a few, almost imperceptible kilos. Chan didn't even notice, thinking it was simply due to the fact that spending more time at home meant Changbin ate more and spent less time at the gym. It was normal, after all, for a man who had spent his whole life focusing on his career to have the right to rest!

But as time went by, those tight-fitting shirts became a little tighter, and jeans seemed less flattering. He could see his cheeks getting fuller and fuller, until one day a second chin appeared. Instead of worrying, Chan felt a strange sense of satisfaction. He loved Changbin for his bubbly personality, his humor, his way to care about people. But if before he loved his body because it was another way of seeing each other at any time of day, now he had it at home, singing tunes while cooking in the same apron that was becoming tighter and tighter around his growing belly , he clearly appreciated this view

When he broached the subject with Changbin, the latter replied with a beaming smile: I guess I let myself go a bit, but you don't seem too bothered by it, do you? Chan smiled and gently stroked his cheek and assured him that his love for him was unchanged, no matter his size or shape. As the weeks passed, Chanbgin continued to flourish in his role as househusband. His passion for cooking was reflected in the sumptuous meals he lovingly prepared for Chan. Evenings were filled with laughter, deep conversation and tender embraces. The only difference was that, between two sweet moments, they both discovered the strange fantasies they had about the youngest's expansion.

More like, Chan was discovering that he loved his chubby husband even more.

He wanted to see him eat, enjoy his food, every dish he ate with pleasure as if it were the last of his life. But his favorite thing was when he wore tight clothes, he was so sexy!

Don't tell Changbin, but Chan liked to give him things on the pretext that it was on his way, like "the bakery was having a promotion on unsold goods" or "Jisung asked me to give you this", "Felix said this will suit you"because otherwise his husband, who was too humble, would refuse any kind of present. he still remembered that time when he had given him a letter , confessing his feelings and a box of chocolate accompanied by a rose. Changbin had cried that day and still kept the box of chocolate even though it was empty for years and not the most fancy at all , but for him , this box and this letter was the most beautiful gift that making all dear things superfluous alongside this proof of sincere love

But did he need to know that Chan was offering him clothes and taking them one or two sizes too small on purpose? You'd think Changbin would feel kissed or embarrassed, but he knew Chan, well... he thought his lover meant well but underestimated the weight his lover had put on.

What a fool, Chan analyzed his body in minute detail, he kissed every part of his body at night in their shared bed, he grabbed his belly and shook it, rubbed it, caressed it. He clearly loved this new Changbin.

However, as the weeks went by, Changbin's extra kilos became more and more visible, his belly grew more and more wrinkled against his clothes, his apron became very difficult to tie and it was hard to control his growing belly. He noticed that his walk was starting to change, the kilos were piling up so much that he began to waddle in order to walk properly.

Changbin's clothes became tighter and tighter, and even his kitchen apron began to struggle to contain his body. One day, one weekend among many, the two of them spent the day at home, doing nothing and enjoying each other's company. The two of them were sitting down to breakfast at the kitchen table.

—Jagi, can you fetch me the jam from the cupboard, please? Chan asked with a gentle smile.

Changbin couldn't resist, unaware that it was all a ruse so that Chan could admire his body soaking while he hopped about trying to grab the jar of strawberry jam that Chan had deliberately placed high up. He noticed that his belly was starting to hang over his clothes, but above all that when he had to pick something up, he'd land on the edge of the worktop. In short, such a divine vision sight for Chan.

But as he tried to get up, Changbin felt something strange. A muffled creak echoed through the room, followed by the sound of warping wood. Changbin realized to his horror that he was trapped. His apron was wedged between the back of the chair and his protruding belly. Panicking, Changbin tried to free himself, but to no avail. Chan rushed to his aid, alarmed by the unusual noises from his seat. Seeing the situation, A couldn't help but hold back a wry smile, he's fat as can be he thought.

Without wasting a second, Chan set about reassuring Changbin, expressing his unfailing love with multiple kisses despite the comical situation. Together, they finally managed to free Changbin from his chair. Sitting on the kitchen floor, totally oblivious to why he had to get up in the first place.

—Do you think I've put on weight?

—Binnie, I'd be lying if I said no.

—You're not very delicate with your words

—I'm just telling the truth, love

—Pff, I just want to know if... you like me like this, like I like our life, I like my body but I also like the way you look at me and I don't want that to change.

Chan grasped the importance of this moment, forgetting for a moment that his lover might be suffering from insecurity. He came to sit beside him and hugged him tightly.

—My love, I fell in love with you because of your personality, whether you're fat, skinny, muscular or whatever, you're the one I married and nothing will change that

—...even if I like gaining weight?

— I love you even more, I have more of you to love, more things to hold on to and ride-"

—Stop, you pervert, it's morning! Changbin chuckled, putting a hand in front of Chan to hide his blush.

In the end, the day was off to a good start, despite the incident that had only served to reunite the couple.

(≡・x・≡)

As he entered the room, the enticing aroma of Changbin's baking filled the air. With a smile, he made his way to the kitchen and found Changbin leaning against the counter, waiting for a tray of cookies to cool. Since embracing the role of a house husband, Changbin had put on some weight, his thighs becoming thicker, and developing a slight paunch, which his husband adored. They both welcomed the changes that married life had brought, cherishing the newfound softness.

His face lit up at the sight of his husband. Channie, you're home! he exclaimed, pulling him into a warm hug. Chan couldn't resist wrapping his arms around him, noticing how loose Changbin's apron ties had become. He reminisced about when Changbin first wore the apron, a gift symbolizing his commitment to their new lifestyle, where Changbin took on household chores while Chan worked. Despite Changbin's outward appearance of an alpha male, he was actually bubbly and eccentric, qualities that Chan cherished.

As they pulled away, Changbin placed his hands on Chan's waist, a touch Chan couldn't resist. Chan's hands found their way to Changbin's belly, eliciting a subtle sigh of pleasure. Changbin inquired about Chan's day at work, to which Chan expressed relief at being home in their cozy environment. Meanwhile, Changbin shared his busy day of cleaning and baking, his belly feeling a bit firmer from sampling his own creations.

Chan patted Changbin's belly with a knowing smirk, causing Changbin to blush. Despite his nerves, Changbin admitted to indulging in some taste testing while baking. Chan reassured him, expressing his love for having Changbin well-fed during his absence. He then instructed Changbin to remove his apron, revealing his strained button-up shirt and burgeoning belly.

Feeling embarrassed, Changbin questioned if he had let himself go. However, Chan disagreed, planting a passionate kiss on his lips while caressing his fat belly.

As they embraced, Chan whispered, "I think married life really suits you," affirming their love and contentment with their new lifestyle.

#weight gain #my fic #my fics #skz chubby #chubby skz #chubby changbin

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forthedancingandthethriving · 9 months

Text

The SMGs

SMG-1 & SMG-2

Statues: Retired

Former Avatar: Juliano

The first SMGs ever created, the Prototypes. Created by Admin Byte, it wasn't for the purpose of guarding universes and keeping the meme cycle going, but for the Admin's own gain to mess with universes.

This failed, however, as SMG-1&-2 were kindhearted Guardians to their Avatar, Juliano. However, after an attack on their world, their Avatar died, and they were promoted to Admins. They are now known as Domain and Forum, respectively.

SMG0 & Niles

Statuses: Deactivated

Former Avatar: Fred

In the video game Mage, there was originally only a single SMG for the universe as Admin Byte intentionally didn't tell Admin Lag that two SMGs were needed for balance. However, this wasn't for long, as the God Box created Niles, a false SMG to pair with SMG0.

However, this wasn't to last, as after an attempt to repair his imperfect code, Niles went insane due to the God Box and killed his Avatar, Fred. Following a forced fusion between him and SMG0, creating SMGØ, a being hellbent on finding another Avatar and remaking the fallen universe.

The duo were put to rest by the combined efforts of Avatar Mario, his Guardians, and Fierce Deity Melony.

SMG1 & SMG2

Statuses: Semi-retired/Active

Former Avatar: Spudnick

While they lived in peace with their Avatar for many years, this was eventually broken when SMGØ landed in their universe, intent on shaping Spudnick to be a new Avatar. However, this failed, causing Spudnick's death and the destruction of their universe.

They now reside in the SM64 universe, being mentors to SMG3 and SMG4, and generally doing what they can to help out.

SMG3 & SMG4

Statuses: Active

Avatar: Mario

Their activation has been dubbed the Worst To Ever Happen. Several things went wrong, including the inclusion of SMGØ and SMGs 1&2. There have been many incidents regarding their universe, but they've always come out on top for their Avatar and friends, so they're typically left to handle themselves. They're remarkably close with their Admins, Forum and Domain.

SMG5 (Penta Knight) & SMG6

Statuses: Active

Introduced here!

Avatar: Kirby

SMG6 is a wandering comedian, and Penta Knight is an admirable warrior.

SMG7 & SMG10

Statuses: Active

Introduced here!

Avatar: Tulip

There was an accident when Guardians were being assigned, and SMG8 accidentally went to SMG9. To rectify this (it was already too late to switch it back), SMG7 was partnered to SMG10.

SMG10 is actually the more calm one of the duo, with SMG7 displaying the more energetic qualities of an even-numbered SMG.

SMG8 & SMG9

Statuses: Active

Introduced here!

Avatar: Nimbus

They're a bit more overprotective of Nimbus, as their first memory after landing was Lumiere kidnapping Nimbus.

SMG11 & SM12 (belongs to @duckapus )

Statuses: Active

Introduced here!

Avatar: Tune

They're the first SMG duo thus far to have an SMG (SMG12) fall in love with someone who wasn't their SMG partner.

SMGXIII (13) & SMGXIV (14)

Statuses: Active

Avatar: Sora

Due to certain quirks of the Kingdom Hearts universe, his SMGs have turned out looking like recolors of Roxas and Xion instead of him.

SMG15 & SMG16

Statuses: Active

Avatar: Frenzy

Currently working to help Frenzy work through his issues and repair all the damage he's caused by being a part of the Union of Scorned Avatars.

SMG17 & SMG18

Statuses: Unknown

Avatar: Barry the Blook

Introduced here!

Their current statues are unknown due to the state their universe has been left in following Avatar Barry's departure.

SMG19 & SMG20

Statues: Actice

Avatar: Red the Angry Bird

Not much is known about them, but it's reasonable to assume they were glad to have their Avatar return home following the events of the Legacy Arc.

SMG21 (Kira Nadja) & SMG22

Statuses: Active

Avatar: Arle Nadja/Doppelganger Arle

SMG21/Kira Nadja is the second known SMG to not go by her assigned name (the other being Penta Knight). It's clear she prefers this one.

SMG23 & SMG24

Statuses: Active

Avatar: Laharl

It's pretty reasonable to assume that they do their best to help Laharl any understand the way he acts.

SMG25 & SMG26

Statuses: Unknown

Avatar: Lord Ramagog

Their current statuses are unknown due to Lord Ramagog's deserting of his universe.

SMG27 & SMG28

Statuses: Active

Avatar: Shantae

They probably tease her a fair bit about the time she sat on a freshly painted bench.

SMG29 & SMG30

Statuses: Active

Avatar: Ash Ketchum

Introduced here!

Their activation was rocky due to the interference of Avatar Barry, which was an attempt to stop the universe from coming online. However, it did end up happening, and SMG29 is actually trans.

SMG31 & SMG32

Statuses: Active

Avatar: Captain Olimar

SMG32 always somehow finds ways to incorporate the Pikmin into memes.

HMG1 ("Vee" Haltmann) & HMG2 ("Hex" Haltmann) (belongs to Duckapus)

Statuses: Active/Anamolies

Avatar: Elanore Haltmann

Introduced here!

They are False Guardians, as they were not made by the Guardian System, but instead Susie Haltmann. Originally intended to replace SMG3&4, they now live peacefully alongside them, even if some craziness is bound to happen.

SMG33 & SMG34 (belongs to Duckapus)

Statuses: Active

Avatars: Sally 13 and Cole

Introduced here!

Following Garyboy messing with the universe files, the two universes merged, and now the two SMGs work together. SMG33 is a recolor of Sally, and SMG34 is based on Cole.

SMG35 & SMG36

Statuses: Active

Avatar: Irene

Introduced here!

SMG35 was bold enough to sass a god for not being in the right realm when she first landed. SMG36 just about had a heart attack when she heard that.

#smg: smg-1 #smg: smg-2 #smg3 #smg4 #smg5 #smg6 #smg: smg7 #smg: smg10 #smg: smg8 #smg: smg9 #smgxiii #smgxiv #smg11 #smg12 #smg21 #smg22 #smg29 #smg30 #vee haltmann #hex haltmann #penta knight

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rockanroller · 1 year

Text

WGA / SAG-AFTRA Strikes Masterpost

[ !! this post will be edited if there are any updates to info or if i discover i made any errors in my research, so i don’t recommend reblogging it !! ]

✤ TL;DR:

viv has now said in an interview posted October 26th, 2023 that the delay was due to Hazbin Hotel not having a streaming platform, and making arrangements with Prime.

prior to that, viv said on July 13th, 2023, that she felt it was "safe to say" the actor's strike "effects both (helluva boss and hazbin hotel)" even though she could only speak for helluva. [ link to post detailing her tweets & replies that mentioned the strikes ]

what i think is the strikes weren't the main cause but they caused minor delays due to their effect on the industry, and the main cause was Hazbin Hotel not having a distribution partner.

the timeline of WGA strikes and Hazbin Hotel's delay coincidentally line up with each other

✤ basic info about a24 and the unions:

A24 handles producing (funding, organizing) and distributing (marketing, release strategizing, platform seeking) of their products.

Bento Box is the studio that handled animation for Hazbin Hotel.

WGA is the union for WRITERS in film, TV, radio, and online media.

SAG-AFTRA is the union for ACTORS and RADIO ARTISTS.

SAG-AFTRA allowed A24 to continue filming MOVIES with SAG-AFTRA actors around late July 2023 due to A24 not being affiliated with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) that SAG-AFTRA & WGA were/are striking against.

the only thing i've found about A24 and the WGA was a Redditor saying that in relation to SAG-AFTRA's decision to allow A24 to use their actors, WGA hadn't made a decision about A24.

The WGA contract does not cover writing for general advertising, however the development of branded television/entertainment shows/projects that are using WGA writers most likely would've been put on hold. Non-WGA writers would also hesitate to work during a strike for fear of ruining rep/scabbing/ruining their own chances to eventually join the union themselves. (pic below)

Regarding the above; "development" usually means earlier pre-production work, so this may not be applicable to HH at all.

✤ timeline of strike updates, hazbin releases, and vivziepop tweets:

A24 picked up Hazbin Hotel in August 2020.

The Hazbin Hotel Twitter posted that it would be coming in Summer 2023 on October 27th, 2022.

Hazbin Hotel's Twitter continued to make general promotional posts with images & GIFs of the characters throughout 2023 starting with... January 31st - "it's going to be one hell of a year!" February 28th - "lovers in hell"

Hazbin Hotel's wrap-party was posted about on socials in late March 2023. [ As far as I've found wrap-parties generally are held once everything is completed & ready for post-production, but can still take months or years to come out afterwards, although the industry tends to want things out the door fast these days. ]

Hazbin Hotel's Twitter continued to post promo tweets... April 1st - Angel Dust's "birthday" April 30th - "Charlie is excited! Are you?"

The WGA strike began in early May 2023

Viv says in a reply tweet that the WGA (writer's) strike wouldn't effect a Helluva Boss episode that had already been written. (this is true.)

Hazbin Hotel's Twitter continued to post promo tweets... May 31st - "What's Alastor so happy about? We'll see!" June 30th - "Someone had a great month! #happypride"

SAG-AFTRA votes in approval of a strike on July 13th, 2023.

Viv tweets on July 13th, 2023 in support of the SAG-AFTRA (actor's) strike and explains the strike "will effect show marketing and promo so things might take longer" but doesn't specify if she meant for Helluva Boss or Hazbin Hotel.

The same day, in reply to someone asking if the strike would effect both shows or just Hazbin Hotel, Viv says she can only speak for Helluva Boss, but that she thinks it's "safe to say it effects both."

The SAG-AFTRA strike officially starts at midnight on July 14th, 2023.

Hazbin Hotel's Twitter doesn't make any further promotional posts or announcements for months

There were many developments and meetings on the WGA strike during September 2023.

The AMPTP met with the WGA to officially restart negotiations on September 14th, 2023

The WGA resumed negotiations on September 20th, 2023, with Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix, and Universal Pictures.

The meeting on the 20th was followed by meetings on September 21st, September 22nd, and September 23rd, 2023.

VivziePop posted a tweet September 23rd, 2023, that an update would be “coming very soon”

On September 24th, 2023, the “writers and studios reached a tentative agreement”

On September 26th, 2023, the WGA leaders announced the strike would officially end.

The strike for WGA ended on September 27th, 2023 at 12:01am PDT.

The Hazbin Hotel trailer that announced its new release in January 2024 was released the very next day, September 28th, 2023.

Hazbin Hotel's Twitter resumes posting on September 28th, 2023 when they share the new trailer as well.

VivziePop posted that she had watched “through the whole season of hh” on October 4th, 2023.

On October 9th, 2023 the WGA successfully agreed to a new contract with AMPTP.

The Hazbin Hotel "Happy Day in Hell" preview was released on October 14th, 2023.

The SAG-AFTRA strike is still on-going as of October 13th, 2023.

✤ !! UPDATE !!

Viv has now said in an interview posted October 16th, 2023, that the delay was due to Hazbin Hotel not having a distribution partner (streaming platform), and once they made a deal with Prime they then had to make arrangements. (pic below)

✤ final thoughts

it would seem that they’ve been working the entire time/on and off since March 2023, and the delay was due to difficulty finding a streaming platform/making arrangements with Prime, like Vivzie claimed in this interview, and just happened to fall into a similar timeline with the WGA strike.

since she has said in reference to the actor’s strike she felt it was “safe to say it effects both (helluva boss AND hazbin hotel) then it’s possible that both caused a delay.

i.e. they were delayed while trying to find a platform, but there were ripples from the "drama" of the strikes throughout the industry that could've caused some other minor delays along the way while they were trying to find a platform, and/or as they were settling arrangements with Prime.

alright that's all the data and speculations i have, enjoy, and as always remember to take speculations with a grain of salt!

[ also feel free to send me any receipts you have regarding all this, you can always share your thoughts or feelings or theories in my ask box if you want to, but pls do not come to insist what is or isn’t true without including receipts/links pls and thank you! ]

#hazbin hotel critical #vivziepop critical #thoughts #speculation #research #wga strike #sag aftra strike

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behind-the-screen-of-bangtan · 7 months

Text

HOPE ON THE STREET VOL.1

Release date: 29 March 2024

Official page

Video teaser

Photo teaser

Announcement

Pre-order notice

Promotion schedule

HOPE ON THE STREET VOL. 1 on delivery

Preview Cut

Album Preview: PRELUDE, INTERLUDE

Highlight Medley

Dance videos: HIP-POP, POPPING, HOUSE

Official Youtube playlist

Official merch

The name is a reference to Hope On The Street, a series of videos where j-hope filmed himself dancing and talking about dance.

Here's the list:

Twitter (another one with Jaesang)

Youtube:

Hope on the street @150920

Hope on the street @151008 - 1

Hope on the street @151008 - 2

Vlive (now on Weverse):

160126 BTS Hope On The Street Live

160126 BTS Hope On The Street Live 2

160413 BTS Hope On The Street Live

The teasers for this project were released on j-hope's birthday, on February 18th. Concerning the picture, it's a photomontage notably using this stock picture taken in Itaewon and showing the Namsan tower. A plane has also been added as a nod to "Airplane" a song from j-hope's first mixtape Hope World.

Some text is also visible on the card box picture on the official page, a table of contents:

(Prologue) The beginning Chapter 1 Origin Chapter 2 Soul Chapter 3 Playground Chapter 4 Motivation Chapter 5 Art Just raw and real (Epilogue)

and a citation:

nobody came went up on stage just danced. moment was incredibly exhilarating and unforgettable. It was a great feeling to have all eyes and lights on me. And all reactions and cheers made my heart race. That moment led to where I am now

There are two versions of the album : Prelude and Interlude.

Tracklist

1. on the street (solo version)

Lyrics

See this post for the version featuring J. Cole

2. i wonder... (with Jung Kook of BTS)

Lyrics

3. lock / unlock (with benny blanco, Nile Rodgers)

Lyrics

4. i don't know (with HUH YUNJIN of LE SSERAFIM)

Lyrics

5. what if... (dance mix with JINBO the SuperFreak)

Lyrics

6. NEURON (with Gaeko, yoonmirae)

Lyrics

NEURON (with Gaeko, yoonmirae)

Official Motion Picture teaser

Official Motion Picture

Docuseries

Release date: 28 March 2024

Teaser Poster

Announcement

Teaser trailer

Main Poster

Main Trailer

Preview: #1, #2

Collage Poster

Behind-the-scenes pictures: Billboard, Hypebeast

The docuseries follows j-hope around the world as he meets various dancers and shares moves with them.

Army Film Club pointed out that the camera they chose allowed dynamic movement, adapted for filming dance sequences.

In the teaser trailer, we see these locations:

- Seoul:

Common ground (website) (0:15)

- Osaka - Paris:

Rue Marietta Alboni (0:42, 0:57)

Pont Alexandre III (0:44, 0:58)

Place de Varsovie (0:56)

45 Rue Claude Bernard (Main Trailer 0:37)

9 Rue de la Corderie (Main Trailer 0:37, 1:23)

Café Philippe (Main Trailer 1:01)

Pont de Bir Hakeim (Main Trailer 0:39, 1:22)

- New York:

Crossroad between Union square and E 17th St (0:47, 0:58)

200 W 48th St (0:58)

- Gwangju:

5.18 democracy square (1:00)

Promotion, interviews, and performances

A pop-up shop was opened in Seoul, at a location hinted by QR codes. The shop appeared in Naver maps with more details.

A mural was painted in Bushwick, in New York, to promote the album. It's the same neighborhood where Jimin filmed "Closer Than This" (src #1, src #2).

Official album release parties have also been organized in the United States.

#HOPE ON THE STREET VOL.1 #j-hope

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mariacallous · 3 months

Text

White smoke in Brussels.

The 27 leaders of the European Union have agreed on the bloc's political leadership for the next five years: Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission, António Costa as president of the European Council, and Kaja Kallas as the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

Leaders on Thursday also approved the Strategic Agenda, a document with broad brushstrokes of ambitions that is meant to guide the future work of the three appointees.

Von der Leyen and Kallas's nominations are not final and still require confirmation by the European Parliament. By contrast, Costa, a former prime minister of Portugal, is automatically elected by his former peers. He will take office on 1 December.

"I would plain and simply like to express my gratitude to the leaders who endorsed my nomination for a second mandate," von der Leyen said. "I am very honoured."

"It is with a strong sense of mission that I will take up the responsibility of being the next President of the European Council," Costa said, thanking his socialist family and the Portuguese government for their backing. "I will be fully committed to promoting unity between all 27 member states and focused on putting on track the Strategic Agenda."

"This is an enormous responsibility at this moment of geopolitical tensions," Kallas said in a statement, promising to work "with pleasure" with both von der Leyen and Costa. "I will be at the service of our common interests," she added. "Europe should be a place where people are free, safe and prosperous."

Party negotiators had preemptively sealed the three-pronged deal during a call on Tuesday and tabled their proposal on Thursday evening. After a debate among all heads of state and government, the accord received the formal blessing.

The talks between the centrist parties had angered those left on the sidelines, most notably Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who lashed out at the "surreal" way in which the top-jobs package was assembled. Meloni, who rules the bloc's third-largest economy, called for greater inclusion and deeper discussions.

"It seems to me that, so far, there's been an unwillingness to account for the message delivered by citizens at the ballot box," Meloni said on the eve of the summit.

Hungary's Viktor Orbán was more scathing, calling the deal "shameful."

Their public grievances contrasted with the apparent coolness of other dignitaries, such as Germany's Olaf Scholz and France's Emmanuel Macron, who were intent on wrapping up the process in a swift, uncomplicated manner.

"We are living in difficult times. We are faced with major challenges, not least Russia's terrible war of aggression against Ukraine. It is therefore important that Europe prepares itself now for the tasks that need to be tackled," Scholz said upon arrival.

Diplomats in Brussels were concerned that, due to the volatile geopolitical environment surrounding the bloc, the image of leaders haggling over well-paid positions for hours on end would seem out of touch.

These worries, coupled with a lack of credible alternatives, made the negotiations easier and helped positions coalesce around the three names.

"Democracy is not only about blocking, democracy is about who wants to work together, and those three groups are willing to work together to the benefit of all Europeans," said Belgium's Alexander De Croo, rebuking Meloni's criticism.

"What we need in the next five years is political stability and being able to act fast."

In the end, Meloni voted against Costa and Kallas, and abstained on von der Leyen, several diplomats told Euronews, a largely symbolic move to express her displeasure. For his part, Orbán voted against von der Leyen, abstained on Kallas and supported Costa.

Asked about Meloni's abstention, von der Leyen said it was "important to work well" with Italy "like with all other member states."

"This is a principle for me which I follow all the time," she noted.

The chosen ones

For those following European politics, the chosen ones are familiar faces.

The Commission presidency goes to the incumbent, Ursula von der Leyen, the Spitzenkandidat (lead candidate) of the centre-right European People's Party (EPP).

Since announcing her re-election bid in February, von der Leyen, the first woman to captain the executive, had been the indisputable frontrunner thanks to her high political profile, built up while weathering the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war.

During the campaign, she infuriated progressives when she made overtures to Meloni's hard right. But the EPP's comfortable victory in the June elections, with 188 MEPs, lessened Rome's importance in the equation and allowed her to change her tune. Von der Leyen has promised to build a strong centrist coalition to support her next term.

At a distant second came the Socialists & Democrats (S&D), with 136 seats. The family will see one of its most recognisable faces, former Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa, take the reins of the European Council, succeeding Charles Michel.

Although the Council presidency lacks legislative powers, the back-to-back succession of global crises that have hit the bloc in the last five years has increased the job's political relevance and media exposure, making it a coveted prize for the centre-left.

Costa's ascendancy, however, comes with a question mark: his stay in power was cut short in November 2023, when he resigned after several members of his cabinet were accused of corruption and influence peddling in the concession of lithium mining, green hydrogen and data centre projects. Costa has not been formally charged but his exact participation in the irregular deals has not yet been clarified. He denies any wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, the liberals of Renew Europe, who fell hard from 102 to 75 seats, have secured the position of High Representative for Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, a leading figure in the bloc's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Kallas was initially considered too outspoken and hawkish for the office, which is supposed to act as the common voice of the 27 member states vis-à-vis the international community. But concerns around her suitability gradually dwindled and her name, previously linked to the NATO secretary general job, was greenlighted.

Despite its prominence, the High Representative is inherently constrained by the principle of unanimity that rules the EU's foreign policy. If confirmed by the Parliament, Kallas will replace Josep Borrell, who has often been accused of going off-script.

With von der Leyen, Costa and Kallas picked for the top jobs, EU leaders ensure the distribution reflects the bloc's political and geographical diversity and maintains gender balance. Additionally, Costa, whose father was half French-Mozambican and half Indian, is set to become the first non-white person to occupy a top job in the bloc's history.

The selection can be seen as recognition of centrist parties, who held their ground in the elections and defied ominous predictions of a far-right surge. Von der Leyen is already negotiating with the Socialists and Liberals to design a common programme.

On Thursday evening, the incumbent left open the door to invite MEPs from other parties to form a "broad majority for a strong Europe."

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tayfabe75 · 9 months

Note

Love your theories, but one thing gives me pause right now. Would they really spend important holidays away from each other, kissing different partners for New Years Eve for example, just to prove some sort of point? We know they’re both romantics and I just can’t see them faking it for such important occasions.

Hi anon! First and foremost, nothing at all wrong with having pause. If everything seems normal to you and nothing feels a bit off or amiss, then there's absolutely no reason to engage with theories or even humor them. We all have our own sense of intuition. And regardless of what I say, or what Twitter says, you should trust your own instincts!

That said, my own instincts tell me that something is "off". Personally, I could not reconcile the breakup based on Taylor and Matty's words and actions. I could not reconcile Taylor Ssswift 🐍 bowing to a hate mob similar to the one that tried to take her down in 2016, or turning her love life into a spectator sport.

And wouldn't you know it? The more I dug in, the more history I found between the pair. The more their respective discographies started to sound like a dialogue, two halves of the same story. And then the coincidences! Everyone has a threshold of how many coincidences are too many before it becomes impossible that they are coincidental. For me, I think that number is just lower than for most. But as someone who loves mysteries, my brain is primed to see patterns in a way that maybe most don't (for better or for worse).

As a proud non-conformist, I wouldn't give the media or the internet the satisfaction of baselessly hating Matty Healy. I often say I learned about him out of spite! (Turns out the world cannot identify a man of outstanding moral character when it's staring them right in the face, and trust me, this is so much tangibly worse than the jokes he laughed at)

I became so fascinated by Matty's character that I started obsessively listening to all of his interviews. Turns out that he can't shut up about Brad Troemel, the guy who created the Taylor Swift Fan Union (and probably The 1975FU) and who has been working literally over Matty's shoulder throughout this year, and has suggested he might be working with Taylor, too.

Now, I bet you're scared to theorize because you're scared to be compared with a subculture of Taylor fans who have theorized about say, a hidden relationship or sexuality, perhaps? Here's what I'll say about that: for their theories to work, they had to completely ignore Matty's existence at his own fucking show on December 4, 2014, aka ground zero. I believe Taylor and Matty once benefitted from these theories - they were somehow so close yet so far off the mark that they were 'safe' being underground without raising suspicion. Why go underground? Well, Matty told us exactly why (and was crucified for it)! However, ignoring this subculture for so long turned it into a Frankenstein's monster. So, since they knew this monster was going to try to destroy Matty at all costs anyway, they had to come up with a plan. I think they did two main things to address it:

1) Orchestrated Matty's cancellation 2) Hired Brad Troemel to do it

So, how can I believe Taylor and Matty are still together despite spending holidays apart and kissing separate partners?

Kayfabe.

Now this is a wrestling term, so you're going to have to think a little outside the box to apply it to celebrity culture instead, all right? I'll start by quoting the man, himself, Brad Troemel:

"The term 'Kayfabe' was invented to describe all the different measures taken to ensure viewers' suspension of disbelief was upheld. Kayfabe includes everything from the matches' predetermined outcome, the scripted moves wrestlers use, their stage personas, their promotional interviews, the feuds between competitors, their ongoing love interests, the storylines that weave feuds together, the belts wrestlers win, the media coverage surrounding wrestling. All of it! Kayfabe is the entire massively collaborative theatrical universe created to maintain wrestling's believability. It's the never-ending commitment to the bit. One of the most important parts of Kayfabe, developed in the 1930s, was the idea that all wrestlers could be sorted into two camps. On one side, there'd be the good guys, known as babyfaces - who follow the rules, take their vitamins, and say their prayers. Then on the other side, there'd be the bad guys, known as heels - who play dirty tricks and would do anything to win. The job of the heel was to generate heat among the audience. This meant goading the crowd into belligerent anger by breaking the rules whenever possible, and cowardly hiding behind the rules whenever convenient. Once a wrestler's persona was established, it extended into every aspect of their life. Wrestlers were expected to maintain kayfabe both inside and outside the ring whenever a fan was present. This meant that if your wife at home was different from your in-ring lover, then you were expected to keep your marriage secret."

Then you have quotes from Taylor like this one:

"Having journalists write in-depth, oftentimes critical, pieces about who they perceive me to be made me feel like I was living in some weird simulation, but it also made me look inward to learn about who I actually am. Having the world treat my love life like a spectator sport in which I lose every single game was not a great way to date in my teens and twenties, but it taught me to protect my private life fiercely. Being publicly humiliated over and over again at a young age was excruciatingly painful but it forced me to devalue the ridiculous notion of minute-by-minute, ever-fluctuating social relevance and likability. Getting canceled on the internet and nearly losing my career gave me an excellent knowledge of all the types of wine."

Because everyone tends to speculate the worst in others, the narrative quickly turned into: "Taylor always wanted to be in the spotlight having people spectate her love life, it was her mean ex who kept her trapped indoors!" Okay well, now we know thanks to Jack that the "mean bad ex" was probably out of the picture by the time she made this speech. For a woman who proudly easter eggs her clothing, the fact she wore the NYU sweatshirt when she was seen with Matty was… a choice.

Now, let's think about Matty's quote about how he struggled to distinguish reality as a kid because his parents were both actors and celebrities:

"I'd be a child, and something would happen in my real life, and then I'd see that thing on a newspaper, and I'd think, That's not what happened, but that's my mum saying a version of what happened, and I know Mum's at home and she's O.K." He came to understand that a person's life was "a balance between what is real, what is said, what happens, what people believe, what people project, and what is true."

Pair this with not just his desire to make a name for himself and his band completely outside of the shadow of Taylor Swift, but the recent prediction that The 1975 will become the most important band of the decade (and just before hiatus!) At this point, I would say there's a pretty striking case for motive. The Reputation prologue is another great read for anyone who presumes they know a damned thing about Taylor Swift (oh, definitely including myself!):

"We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them they have chosen to show us."

That was me trying to keep it brief, but I'd say that's a good "101" of the basics, at least! 🤼‍♂️

#answered #theory: kayfabe

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