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archduchessofnowhere · 3 years ago

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Spoil me for what they are doing with Franz Josef's characterization in Sisi (2021), the people need to know!!

Ok since the people wants to know (?) here's a bit of a rant!

First of all I'll make the disclaimer that I'm by no means an expert on Franz Josef, all I know about him I learned it through books about Elisabeth + reading about his other relations (because tbh I find his family more interesting than him). So if there's some FJ expert out there than can give more insight on his personality feel free to add more/correct me!

The second disclaimer that I'll make it's that I don't speak German nor French (the Sisi episodes had French subtitles), but since Spanish, my native language, it's a bit similar gramatically I could grasp what was being said (emphasis in the "a bit" part, French it's the most hellish of all the romance languages). Still, this means that I missed a lot of the dialogues.

All that being said, let's talk about Franz Josef's characterization because it was... something. Spoilers for the first two episodes of Sisi (2021) below:

The first episode shows FJ executing Hungarian rebels, which is something that did happen (although I think he just signed the orders from his desk rather than ACTUALLY being at the place of the exectuions, correct me if I'm wrong). The show frames him as quite ruthless during these scenes, which he was. The repressions followed the 1848 revolutions were brutal and I'm glad that they didn't sugar coat it, but FJ does comes off as slightly sadistic in those scene, which he doesn't seem to have been. For him it was all about maintaining order and the status quo.

Now, the weird stuff comes later. He is, pardon my expression, a total dick. In the first scenes in which he interacts with his cousins he is quite pedantic and sometimes even kinda hostile? Like he is just looking for beef with Sisi, he even makes fun of one of her poems in a scene. Here the problem of not knowing French nor German comes in, because maybe I missed something of their first conversation that justifies him being Like That, but to me what Elisabeth said to him didn't seemed bad (she didn't insult him or anything). I don't know about other instances, but in Ischl in August 1853 the most impolite thing that the real FJ did was not paying much attention to Helene.

This FJ is also physically violent, another thing that the real Emperor wasn't (as far as I'm aware at least). There is a scene (the most wtf to me) in which he gets mad because of something about the Tsar and some war or something like that and he just. Randomly beats a soldier that was in the same room. It's SO RANDOM it was almost funny honestly, everybody was like "dude wtf that isn't going to help". This was the weirdest choice in my opinion, because I'm not sure how are they planning to handle this violent tendencies that they gave him, specially since there wans't any need to add that when his historical counterpart was a chill guy. We'll see how it plays out.

This series also has sex (not that it is the first series about Elisabeth to have it, look at the 2009 mini series) but since it's premiering on a streaming plataform it means that they can be a little more risqué with what they show. So of course they showed us FJ having an orgy! Kidding, they didn't, it's not that risqué (yet). But it is heavily implied, there is a scene in which Elisabeth is looking for him and she sees a naked woman coming out from his bedroom and for like a second you can peek him in bed with other women. And like the actual Franz Josef did have mistresses, before and after getting married. It's just that the man was absolutely discreet in his affairs, to the point that it's hard to actually link him with the women whom he allegedly slept with (we can't even say for sure if his life-long relantionship with actress Katharina Schratt was ever sexual because of this). So portraying him as a sort of fuckboy that just has naked women coming in and out of his bedroom with no regards of whether they're seen or not it's just not accurate.

And lastly, if there is a thing for which FJ it's popularly known other than singlehandedly starting WW1 it's his love and devotion for his wife. Which simply isn't here. All of their scenes up to the point in which he gives the bouquet of flowers to Elisabeth in the dance aka his informal marriage proposal are heavily charged with sexual tension, but nothing makes you think that they are in love. In fact, in the second episode, that covers the time of their engagement until their wedding, they barely interact. When the real Elisabeth arrived to Vienna to get married Franz Josef was so excited to see her that he just ran to her and kissed her in front of everyone. Here not only they don't show us that, his welcome it's actually kinda cold. This is definitely a deliberate choice from the writers, and while I don't really like the romantization of their relantionship, portraying FJ as physically attracted but uninterested on his bride doesn't sit right with me either.

This is all I can think off the top of my head, but basically they portrayed him as the opposite of the real Emperor Franz Josef. I said before in a post that I tend to find FJ quite boring as a character in movies/series about Elisabeth (Elisabeth das musical being the exception, but that's because all characters there are great), so I found this portrayal quite interesting for a change (this man is def not gonna bore us) but also worrisome. I'm all out for a protrayal of Franz Josef in which he isn't a cardboard Prince Charming, but going all the way to make him practically unecognizable from the historical figure ain't it either. Let's hope that they do a good job with him in the rest of the episodes because as of now his whole characterization it's the writers looking at the real Franz Josef and saying "I can make him worse".

#this characterization was also a bit shocking because Jannik was so sweet in his IG stories #he is like the opposite of the character he's playing lol (I know I know that's what acting is)#my guess it's that they'll have Sisi ´change him´ or something #anyway sorry for the rambling! I had Thoughts™#Sisi (2021)#franz josef i #asks

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claudia1829things · 4 years ago

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"FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD" (1967) Review

"FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD" (1998) Review To my knowledge, there have been five adaptations of Thomas Hardy's 1874 novel, "Far From the Madding Crowd". One of them is even a modern day adaptation. I have not seen this modern version of Hardy's novel. But I have seen at least three adaptations, including the 1967 version directed by John Schlesinger.

"FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD" - at least the 1967 version - has been highly regarded by critics, moviegoers and fans of Hardy's novel for nearly five decades. It is the adaptation that other ones have been measured against . . . much to their detriment. "FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD" was a different direction for Schlesinger. It would prove to be the first of five period productions directed by him. Schlesinger and screenwriter Frederic Raphael stuck as closely to Hardy's novel as they possibly could. The movie was not a hundred percent adaptation of Hardy's novel, but it was pretty close. Anyone familiar with Hardy's novel know the tale. It begins with a young 19th century Englishwoman named Bathsheba Everdene, living on a farm with her aunt, Mrs. Hurst. She meets Gabriel Oak, a former shepherd who has leased and stocked a sheep farm. Gabriel falls in love with Bathsheba and eventually proposes marriage. Although she likes Gabriel, Bathsheba values her independence too much and rejects his marriage proposal. Gabriel's fortunes take a worse for turn, when his inexperienced sheep dog drives his flock of sheep over a cliff, bankrupting him. Bathsheba, on the other hand, inherits her uncle's prosperous estate. Their paths crosses again, and she ends up hiring Gabriel as her new shepherd. Bathsheba has also become acquainted with her new neighbor, the wealthy farmer John Boldwood, who becomes romantically obsessed with her after she sends him a Valentine's Day card as a joke. He sets about wooing her in a persistent manner that she finds difficult to ignore. But just as Bathsheba is about to consider Mr. Boldwood as a potential husband, Sergeant Frank Troy enters her life and she becomes infatuated with him. Frank was set to marry one of Bathsheba's former servants, a young woman named Fanny Robin. Unfortunately, the latter showed up at the wrong church for the wedding and an angry and humiliated Frank called off the wedding. Bathsheba finds herself in the middle of a rather unpleasant love triangle between Boldwood and Frank, while Gabriel can only watch helplessly as the situation develops into tragedy. "FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD" is a beautiful movie to behold . . . visually. One can credit the movie's sweeping and colorful look to its iconic cinematographer Nicolas Roeg. Thanks to the latter, the English counties of Wiltshire and Dorset never looked lovelier. Not surprisingly, Roeg earned a BAFTA nomination for his work. The movie also benefited from Richard Macdonald's production designs, which did an excellent job in recreating rural England in the mid 19th century. This was especially apparent in those scenes that featured Gabriel's arrival at Shottwood, and his attempts to get hired as a bailiff or a shepherd at a hiring fair; the harvest meal at the Everdene farm; Bathsheba's meeting with Frank in Bath; the rural fair attended by Bathsheba and Mr. Boldwood; and the Christmas party held by Mr. Boldwood. I will not pretend that I found Richard Rodney Bennett's score particularly memorable. But I must admit that it blended well with the movie's plot and Schlesinger's direction. I also noticed that Bennett added traditional English folk songs in various scenes throughout the movie. I have seen at least two movie versions and one television adaptation of Hardy's novel. And it occurred to me that the main reason why I ended up enjoying all three adaptations so much is that I really liked Hardy's tale. I really do. More importantly, all three adaptations, including this 1967 movie, did an excellent job in capturing the novel's spirit. With a running time of 169 minutes, "FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD" took its time in conveying Hardy's story . . . with a few little shortcuts. And thanks to Schlesinger's direction and Raphael's screenplay, the movie not only recaptured both the idyllic nature of 19th century rural England, but also its harsh realities. More importantly, the movie brought alive to the screen, Hardy's complex characters and romances. Hollywood once made a movie about a woman torn between three men in 1941's "TOM, DICK, AND HARRY" with Ginger Rogers. But the complexity between the one woman and the three men was nothing in compare to this tale. Especially, when the leading lady is such a complex and ambiguous character like Bathsheba Everdene. Another aspect of "FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD" that I enjoyed were the interactions between the movie's leads and the supporting cast who portrayed Bathsheba's employees. Like her relationships with Gabriel, Frank and Mr. Boldwood; the leading lady's relationships with her employees - especially the women who worked inside her home - proved to be very interesting. There was a good deal of controversy when Julie Christie was announced as the actress to portray Bathsheba Everdene. Apparently, the media did not consider her capable of portraying the tumultuous mid-Victorian maiden . . . or any other period character. Well, she proved them wrong. Christie gave a very skillful and nuanced performance as the ambiguous Bathsheba, capturing the character's passion, vanity and at times, insecurity. Terence Stamp was another actor more associated with the Swinging Sixties scene in London, but unlike Christie, his casting did not generate any controversy. I might as well place my cards on the table. I think Stamp proved to be the best Frank Troy I have seen on screen, despite the first-rate performances of the other two actors I have seen in role. He really did an excellent job in re-creating Frank's charm, roguishness and unstable nature. Thanks to Stamp's performance, I can see why Schlesinger became so fascinated with the character. Despite Christie and Stamp's popularity with moviegoers, the two actors who walked away with nominations and an award were Peter Finch and Alan Bates. No matter how interesting all of the other characters were, I personally found the William Boldwood character to be the most fascinating one in Hardy's tale. And Peter Finch, who won the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor did a superb job in bringing the character to life. Finch beautifully re-captured the nuances of a character that I not only found sympathetic, but also a bit frightening at times. Alan Bates earned a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of the stalwart Gabriel Oak, which I believe he fully deserved. I think portraying such a minimalist character like Gabriel must be quite difficult for any actor. He is a character that required real skill and subtlety. Bates certainly did the job. The actor managed to convey the passion that Gabriel harbored for Bathsheba without any theatrical acting and at the same time, convey the character's introverted and sensible nature. The movie also benefited from some skillful and solid work from its supporting cast that included Golden Globe nominee Prunella Ransome, who portrayed the tragic Fanny Robin; Fiona Walker (from 1972's "EMMA"); Alison Leggatt; John Barrett; and iconic character actor, Freddie Jones. As much as I enjoyed "FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD", there were some aspects of the production that I found troublesome. Earlier, I had pointed out that Schlesinger had seemed so fascinated by the Frank Troy character. And while this contributed to Terence Stamp's presence in the movie, Schlesinger's handling of the character threatened to overshadow the entire movie. Quite frankly, he seemed a bit too obsessed with Frank for my tastes. This heavy emphasis on Frank - especially in two-thirds of the movie - also seemed to overshadow Bathsheba's relationship with Gabriel Oak. At one point, I found myself wondering what happened to the character. Worse, the chemistry between Julie Christie and Alan Bates had somewhat dissipated by the movie's last act to the point that it barely seemed to exist by the end of the movie. And Schlesinger allowed the "ghost" of Frank Troy to hover over Bathsheba and Gabriel's future relationship by ending the movie with a shot of a toy soldier inside the Everdeen-Oak household. No wonder Stamp was credited as the male lead in this film. There were other aspects of "FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD" that either troubled me or failed to impress me. I am at a loss on how Prunella Ransome earned a Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of Fanny Robin. Mind you, she gave a very good performance. But she was on the screen for such a small amount of time that there seemed to be no opportunity for the narrative to delve into her character. Ransome's Fanny came off as a plot device and a part of me cannot help but blame Hardy's original novel for this failure. Although I cannot deny that Nicholas Roeg's cinematography was visually beautiful to me; I also found myself annoyed by his and Schlesinger's overuse of far shots. It reminded me of how director William Wyler and cinematographer Franz F. Planer nearly went overboard in their use of far shots in the 1958 western, "THE BIG COUNTRY". I read somewhere that Alan Barrett had earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Costume Designs for this film. I do not mean to be cruel, but how in the hell did that happened? I have to be frank. I was not impressed with the costumes featured in this film. Although I managed to spot a few costumes that struck me as a well-done re-creation of fashion in the mid-to-late 1860s, most of the other costumes looked as if they had been rented from a warehouse in Hollywood or London. Not impressed at all. Aside from my complaints, I enjoyed "FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD" very much. A good deal of delight in the film originated with Thomas Hardy's original tale. But if I must be honest, a good deal of filmmakers have screwed up a potential adaptation with either bad writing, bad direction or both. Thankfully, I cannot say the same about "FAR FROM MADDING CROWD". Thanks to the first-rate artistry of the film's crew, a well-written screenplay by Frederic Raphael, a very talented cast led by Julie Christie; director John Schlesinger did an excellent in bringing Hardy's tale to the screen.

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quarantineroulette · 5 years ago

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Minor Disappointments’ 10 Least Disappointing Releases of 2019

I wasn’t going to compile a 2019 year-end list for a number of reasons (lack of time to listen to new music, general malaise, little time to write), but I’ve read so much bad end of year music writing that I feel like I must either stoke the embers or assist in extinguishing it. I don’t think I’m doing either here, but everyone likes list so here’s another.

I haven’t had time to really think about 2019 in songs but my favorite this year was, no kidding, a Tindersticks song featuring Robert Pattinson. Speaking of...

10) FKA twigs - Magdalene

I really wish I hadn’t remembered that Pattinson and twigs dated because it put a slight damper on my enjoyment of this album. Instead of appreciating it in all its genre-destroying glory, as I did on my first listen, subsequent spins led to me becoming sidetracked by tabloid speculation over what RPattz must have done to have wronged this very singular artist. So, whether this is your first listen or 50th, forget all that I just wrote and instead let twigs fill your empty mind with her sometimes delicate, sometimes Kate Bush-evoking, wholly epic songs.

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Favorite moment: It’s pretty commendable and bold to place the lead single as the closing track, especially if its something as monumentally gut-wrenching as “Cellophane.” Also, that video is the visual treasure everyone says it is, no fooling.

9) Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising

If you’ve ever heard Karen Carpenter’s Beatles covers you might have some idea as to what this record is like. But beyond Natalie Mering’s cozy vocals and timeless compositions is an undercurrent of ambient mystery that sets everything ever so slightly askew. At times, Laurel Canyon vibes are completely dispelled for more crepuscular textures, as in the album’s centerpiece, the Julee Cruise-esque “Movies.” Who knows where Mering will go next, but her path, whether from the California sun or glow of the silver screen, is certainly bright.

Favorite moment: “A Lot’s Gonna Change”, “Andromeda”, “Everyday” - as strong of a three song run as on any release this year.

8) Angel Olsen - All Mirrors

The cynic in me wanted to resist this album, but as soon as the cinematic strings kicked in on “Lark” I decided the enormous amount of critical hyperbole that was being thrown at it was mostly warranted. Stately, dramatic, occasionally synthy and largely devastating, All Mirrors taught me that sometimes you may find many of your favorite things in the unlikeliest of places. Please insure your heartstrings.

Favorite moment: “Spring” which, like a lot of great songs, sounds a little like a fairground ride breaking down.

7) Danny Brown - uknowhatimsayin¿

This might be the funnest album I’ve listened to all year. It can be hard to do positive but “Best Life” is as heartening as Nardwuar’s interview with Brown and fewer things are happier than that. With his fifth album, Brown has proven he can ably do every mood with aplomb. And if using cleaning references as euphemisms is your poison, then, hell, he can do that too.

Favorite moment: “Hoes on my dick ‘cos I look like Roy Orbison.” Need I say more?

6) Omni - Networker

One of the strongest post-to-the-nth-degree-punk bands from the latter 2010s, I still have Omni’s 2016 debut, Deluxe, on heavy rotation. Networker, the trio’s third record and first on Sub Pop, has no shortage of twists, turns, technical dexterity, quirk and compositional audacity. Looks like I’ll be overplaying this one too.

Favorite moment: I could listen to “Courtesy Call” over a hundred times and I still wouldn’t be able to guess what direction it’s going to go in.

5) Aldous Harding - Designer

Of all the artists on this list, I find Harding the most inspiring in both her songwriting and her performing style, which is arresting to say the least. The songs on Designer are paradoxically accessible and impenetrable, with seemingly breezy songs like “Weight of the Planets” leaving you with a feeling that’s a cross between a “wow!” and a “huh?”(perhaps a bit like this). Most impressive of all, Harding draws to mind such greats as Nick Drake, Syd Barrett and Nico while always sounding completely like herself. I honestly don’t know what layer of reality Harding is from, but we should all be thankful she’s residing in ours for the time being.

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Favorite moment: “The Barrel” had been in my YouTube queue for ages; after finally watched it I was left confused, mildly disturbed, amused and completely beguiled. This kookily hatted lady is just semi-dancing in a heavily-draped room for nearly five minutes and it’s the most fascinating video in years. If the video wasn’t entertaining enough, it also happens to have one of the funniest and sweetest comment threads on YouTube. Oh yeah, and the song is brilliant.

4) Deerhunter - Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?

Deerhunter have really only misstepped once for me and that was with 2015′s Fading Frontier. Seeing as this is the band’s first full length since then, I had quite a bit of trepidation going in. Of course, a lot can happen in four years and Why Hasn’t Everything... is a thankfully thrilling addition to the band’s canon. Whether it be Cate Le Bon’s production, Bradford’s growing ease as a performer and eccentric, Lockett’s unexpectedly Low-esque "Tarnung,” or all of the above, this may well be Deerhunter’s most consistent release since Halcyon Digest. I’m even slightly tempted to say it’s better than it, but the sacrilege is too great.

Favorite moment: “What Happens to People” -- totally unique to the Deerhunter canon and already a classic.

3) Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell!!

I never thought I could ever love an album with a Sublime cover on it, but here we are. In all fairness, the inclusion of “Doin’ Time” matters little when the originals on this treatise on Americana is so glorious. Between the torchiness and the LA-specific witchiness of songs like “Bartender”, there’s not much on here that I’m able to resist. There may still be haters but “The Greatest” drowns them out a little more with each play. Favorite Moment: “And we were so obsessed with writing the next best American record” - yeah, thank you for doing that. 2) Karen O & Danger Mouse - Lux Prima Truth be told, the first time I listened to this record I cried when it ended because I didn’t want to leave its world. There may have been more radical records by newer artists in 2019, but hearing Karen O doing what she does best, as well as trying many new things, was such a joy to me. I’m probably among only a handful of people who wanted to hear Karen do a straight up disco song in 2019, but we got it and it’s something to be treasured for years to come. To paraphrase Sparks + Franz Ferdinand, collaborations don’t (often) work, but thanks to O’s flawless vocals and Brian Burton’s sometimes Dave Fridmann-esque production, this one is an exception. Favorite Moment: I’m tempted to say the whole thing, but “Turn the Light” and “Redeemer” are maybe two of the biggest surprises on an album of many.

1) Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains

Purple Mountains is quite possibly a new touchstone in gallows humor. Given David Berman’s suicide less than a month after the record’s release, what should now be a grim and discomfiting listen is so mordant and wry that it somehow overpowers its bleakness. More striking than perhaps even the moments of humor is the album’s tenderness, so beautifully represented in songs like “Snow is Falling in Manhattan” and “I Loved Being My Mother’s Son.” Although it’s undeniably tragic that there will be no more words from Berman, the ones he’s left us with will fascinate and move us for decades to come.

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Favorite Moment: Unsurprisingly, Berman’s lyrical dexterity on this album is beyond measure. From the internal and slant rhymes in a line like “see the plod of the flawed individual looking for a nod from God” to the layers of meaning in “the light of my life is going out tonight”, the wordsmithery here is mesmerizing. If I had the time, I would gladly write an essay on how Berman used color to further emphasize a point. Thanks for the music, David, but thanks especially for the words.

#best of 2019

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keyofjetwolf · 6 years ago

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Elisabeth: Bellaria

In “Bellaria”, we have another Essen exclusive. It’s a dour number (show me anybody on earth who has had this stuck in their head), featuring Franz Joseph and his mother, Sophie, as they clash and finally have a falling out over Elisabeth.

IT ONLY TOOK YOU LIKE A DECADE GOOD JOB FRANNY JOJO

The more I think on it, the more I think excluding it from the Takarazuka version was a good idea. Not because it’s not important, but because it doesn’t really have a place in the story the Takarazuka is looking to tell. Franz Joseph develops a backbone, in a sort of crunchy bug exoskeleton way, and Sophie actually finds a sympathetic toehold.

There’s no place for either of those things in the Takarazuka. Elisabeth isn’t entrenched in a mutual bitter power struggle with Sophie, she’s a victim of low-key villainy in the Evil Stepmother vein. Franz Joseph isn’t grappling with his inherent weakness and isolation, he’s a cardboard figure playing as Death’s romantic rival. There’s nothing this song can bring to what the Takarazuka wants to be, and as it’s entirely character-driven, we don’t even need it for plot purposes. TO THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR WITH YOU

So let’s take a look at what it does for its respective characters in the Essen version. It falls just after The Last Chance/Malady, so when Elisabeth learns of Franz Joseph’s adultery and decides to make it an opportunity for her to do whatever the fuck she likes. Which, if you recall, is to wander around Europe for the next couple decades, as you do.

That decision hasn’t yet been made (or at least not revealed), so while I can’t imagine Franz Joseph doesn’t expect some consequence for his dick-sticking choices, I’m not sure he foresaw his personal life becoming twenty-something years of postcards. In a rare gesture toward him, I’ll say that I’m not sure he would do anything different here, even if he did know.

I do believe he means it, as much as I believe that the fact he had sex with someone else isn’t the full stop on the sentence. Elisabeth has done her level best to push him out of her life, even after he’d done what she asked, and after years of this with no end in sight, I can’t fault him for looking elsewhere. I don’t think fucking someone else was the right band-aid to grab from the troubled marriage fix-’em-up box, so I’m not shoving all this on Elisabeth either, just that there’s enough blame to go around.

So yeah, I’ll hand it to Franz Joseph for saying “I fucked up huge, and to try and make it right, I’ll give Elisabeth whatever she needs from me.” AND THEN DOING IT. He immediately puts this into practice, by telling his mother that he’s done with her copious amounts of bullshit.

GOING TO BET SOPHIE DIDN’T WAKE UP THIS MORNING THINKING SHE’D HEAR THIS

Sophie tries (and also doesn’t try) to defend herself, and now to pop her a little bit of credit too, SHE DID NOT MAKE YOU HAVE THE SEX FRANNY JOJO THAT WAS YOUR CALL FRIEND. She also makes the entirely valid point that her and Elisabeth’s hatemance has actually nothing to do with him.

IT’S NOT EGO WHEN IT’S TRUE

They have a back and forth, with Sophie saying she’s fighting against Elisabeth (”And me!” Franz Joseph says NOT INCORRECTLY) for the sake of the monarchy, and here’s where things with Sophie get extremely interesting.

Agree or disagree with Sophie and her methods, she’s been consistent in her motivations since literally Day One of their marriage: Elisabeth is Empress now, that is the role she willingly accepted.

REMEMBER WHEN THIS HAPPENED SEE IT WASN’T JUST A THROW AWAY IT’S A CENTRAL POINT ABOUT ELISABETH. Nobody forced her into this role, she embraced it with open arms, already knowing she longed for MORE freedom not less, and despite being directly and specifically told that this was was going to take a fuckton away from her. “To live with me will not often be easy for you,” Franz Joseph tells her well ahead of their marriage. “Under the yoke of duty, many dreams are lost.”

“We aren’t like the others, born to be happy.”

ELISABETH LISTEN

I FEEL YOU AREN’T LISTENING ELISABETH

BITCH THIS IS IMPORTANT SHUT THE FUCK UP FOR TWO SECONDS

Nobody tricked her, nobody lied to her, every card was on the table, and she sat down anyway, with a teflon arrogance that’s almost impressive. “Oh none of this will actually apply to me, it’ll be fine!”

Spoiler alert: IT WAS NOT FINE

Sophie’s demanded one thing of Elisabeth, and that was for her to take on the duties and responsibilities of the Empress she agreed to be. Obviously what that means is defined and policed by Sophie, and we can discuss the fairness or unfairness of that, but it’s a separate conversation. What Sophie was after from the start was Elisabeth holding up her end of the contract she willingly entered into.

And by god, that’s STILL what she’s about here at the end of her time in this story.

She even sings it to the same music from that first morning, an excellent and very intentional call-back. I wouldn’t ever try to claim that I think Sophie wasn’t petty and didn’t take some personal delight in making Elisabeth miserable whenever she could; as this scene is showing us, Sophie was human, and we humans fucking love to be petty. But I do believe that the empire, not herself, was at the core of every choice Sophie made and every action Sophie took.

Everything Elisabeth has done and will do is for Elisabeth.

Sophie’s a smart woman, though, and she knows she’s finally lost. Franz Joseph will no longer hear her, and whatever happens from this point forward is out of her hands and away from her influence. With her loss, however, comes a touch of the freedom Elisabeth has spent her life pursuing, and Sophie comes as close to regret as I think she would have ever.

It’s the only hint we get of the struggle Sophie herself has carried. It’s a suggestion that she, too, wanted something else out of life, that her actions have been intentionally crafted, not naturally born. Sophie has demanded so much of Franz Joseph, and Elisabeth, and their children, but no more than she’s ever demanded of herself.

I was surprised by how deeply I responded to Sophie in this moment. It’s so small, but so good, and I must give credit to Sophie’s actress as well, for the way the strength and defiance just bleeds out of her. Before our eyes, Sophie shrinks, going from an indomitable force to an exhausted, defeated old woman.

Before she leaves, Sophie has one final bit of advice for her son. “Those who forget their duties must perish. Only when it is too late will you understand that.”

“Understand me,” Franz Joseph replies, holding firm and finally refusing to capitulate to her.

Then this, which UGH, is just played SO SO WELL. Sophie doesn’t look at Franz Joseph when he says this. Instead, she bows her head, accepting her defeat, and you can see how it just GUTS Franz Joseph to see it. He reaches out for her, unable to stop himself, but she’s already turned away.

She hasn’t noticed and slowly begins to leave the room. She’s been using her cane the entire scene, but now it’s particularly noticeable as she leans her entire weight into it. (It’s a brilliant example of using a prop to build a character.) Franz Joseph takes the opportunity to gather himself. Near the door, Sophie turns to him for one last look, a silent appeal perhaps, or an opportunity for him to change his mind and undo some of what’s been done.

Instead, he’s standing at attention, and gives her one last formal bow.

AND I’M SCREAMING. Everything Sophie’s been demanding of Franz Joseph, everything she’s drilled into him (”Be strong. Be hard. Be cold.”) has finally come to full bear, and against her.

They say nothing. Sophie leaves, and Franz Joseph stands alone, dwarfed by the Hapsburg crest.

#jet wolf watches elisabeth #a novel by jet wolf #i feel i did awful on this one #particularly for how long it took me #I'M STRUGGLING TODAY MY APOLOGIES

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zoeykaytesmom · 6 years ago

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What Is Life?

Description: I am taking my OC from A03, and putting her and Rafael Barba in a different universe of how they meet. I’m new to posting on here so it might take me a little bit to figure this out lol. The title comes from a George Harrison song; it’ll make more sense the longer the story goes.

@xemopeachx @sweetsummertime99 @lyssa1385 @tropes-and-tales @esparza-army @jramirezblogs @thatesparzacrush

September 1989

“Ma why do we have to switch schools for our Freshman year?” Anthony Rossetti Jr, or Tony as he was called, practically whined while his mother, Stella fixed breakfast.

“Stop whining, Junior,” his twin sister, Elizabeth or Izzy, said as she came in the kitchen, holding her blue and white plaid tie. “Ma a little help?”

“You two are going to have to learn to tie these yourselves,” Stella laughed as she took the tie from her daughter.

Stella Rossetti had accepted a position as the guidance counselor at a Catholic school in the South Bronx, after spending many years teaching high school English at a public school in their Brooklyn neighborhood of Bensonhurst.

“And to answer your question, Junior, the schools in this neighborhood are getting worse. Plus, since I work there, your dad and I don’t have to pay tuition. Also, you two have basically went to school with the same people all your lives and it wouldn’t hurt you to make some new friends.”

“Isn’t that what college is for?” Tony asked with a mouth full of eggs.

“Could you be anymore disgusting?”

“Come on, sis, you like seafood.”

“Junior, stop being gross,” their father said as he came in for breakfast.

FDNY Lieutenant Anthony Rossetti Sr. had come in from his shift around 6 am. He wanted to see his kids off to their first day of their freshman year and to wish his wife of 17 years luck on her first day of her new position.

“Come on, kids. Hurry up and finish your breakfast. We don’t want to be late,” Stella told her twins.

“God, we’re gonna look like such nerd riding to school with our Mom,” Tony muttered. “Well, you more than me, sis.”

Izzy had braces and Tony had teased her non-stop since she got them in the summer.

“Leave your sister alone, Junior,” Anthony instructed his namesake as he loaded his plates with the scrambled eggs and bacon his wife had made.

*****

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Izzy said after she bumped into a guy, whose locker was next to hers, causing her books to fall into the floor.

“It’s okay,” he told her with a kind tone. “Hey, weren’t you in my 4th period AP Biology class?”

“Uh…yeah,” she sort of stammered as she looked into the guys green eyes. “Izzy…”

“Rossetti. I remember. You’re the daughter of our new guidance counselor.”

“That’s me,” she sort of chuckled as she took a book from his hand.

“I’m Rafael. Rafael Barba.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Rafael.”

“You, too,” he smiled as he helped her to her feet.

“Hey, Ra-ffi.”

“Hey, Eddie, Alex. This is Izzy Rossetti.”

“Hi,” she said as she sort of waved at them.

“Rossetti? Uh-oh. You’re the counselor’s daughter,” Eddie teased.

“Yeah, that’s me,” she repeated.

“Well, welcome to Monsignor Scanlan High School,” Alex said with smarmy smile that Izzy uncomfortable.

“So, what’s your next class?” Rafael asked her.

“Uh, lunch, actually.”

“Us too. You want to join us?”

“Maybe another time, Rafael. I need to find my brother.”

“I’m gonna hold you to it,” he smiled.

“It was nice to meet you guys,” she told Alex and Eddie before heading to the cafeteria.

“That girl is hot,” Eddie told Rafael.

“I don’t know about the braces,” Alex mentioned.

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Rafi. You don’t want that amount of metal near your dick if she’s giving you head.”

“Seriously, man?!”

“I’m just saying. I mean, yeah, she is hot but those braces are scary.”

“I think they’re cute,” Rafael added.

“Uh-oh. Our boy has a crush,” Eddie laughed.

“Come on. I’m hungry,” Rafael told them as they headed to the cafeteria.

********************

“Baby girl why are you eating lunch in my office?” Stella asked her daughter.

“I don’t fit in here, Ma.”

“It’s been a half a day. Have you met anyone?”

“Well…I met a guy,” Izzy said with a small smile.

“Really? Is he cute?”

“Unbelievably so, Mom. His name is Rafael Barba.”

“Barba…Barba? I wonder if he’s Lucia’s son?”

“Who?”

“You remember Lucia Barba. She taught with me at PS 128.”

“Sort of,” Izzy shrugged as she picked at the cheeseburger she had got from the cafeteria.

“What happened to my daughter that didn’t meet a stranger?”

“I don’t know.”

“She’s still there,” Stella chuckled as she took a bite of her own cheeseburger.

“Why are me and Tony on different schedules?”

“Because I thought it would be best. You two have been joined at the hip since before you were born. You need to make new friends, meet new people.”

“I guess.”

The first bell rang, signaling to the 11:30 lunchers that they had 10 minutes to get to their 6th period class.

“I gotta go, Ma. Thanks for letting me have lunch with you.”

“Of course, baby girl. I know this is different from public school but you’re gonna do great.”

“Thanks.”

Izzy headed to her AP American History class.

“Ah, yes, Miss Rossetti. There is an empty desk next to Mr. Barba. Rafael, raise your hand so Elizabeth can find her desk.”

“It’s Izzy,” she told her teacher as she made her way to the desk next to Rafael.

She opened her book to the page Mr. Cervantes had said and was doing her best to concentrate but her attention was mainly on Rafael. He had his hand up to answer any question that was asked.

“Miss Rossetti?”

“Huh?”

“What started World War I?”

“The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand from Austria,” she answered without missing a beat.

“Just making sure you were paying attention to something other than Mr. Barba.”

Some of the kids in the class giggled as she wanted to die in her seat.

***********

“Don’t let Cervantes get under your skin,” Rafael told her as they walked out of class.

“I was just amazed at your knowledge,” she lied.

“I like to read,” he shrugged as they walked down the hall. “Speaking of…did I see a copy of ‘Less Than Zero’ in your hand earlier?”

“You did. Bret Easton Ellis is one of my favorite authors.”

“I saw the movie…”

“Oh no. The movie and the book are so different. Julian, Robert Downey Jr’s character, doesn’t die in the book.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“Have you ever read anything by Kurt Vonnegut?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“You should. ‘Slaughterhouse Five’ is really good. I think you’d like it.”

“Well, I might have to check it out.”

“So, my friend Alex thinks you’re hot.”

“Yeah?” She asked, even though she didn’t want Alex to be one of the three to think she was hot.

“Yeah. You think you might be interested…”

“Not really. I mean, no offense but I have basketball try-outs next week and honestly, he doesn’t seem like my type.”

“I understand,” Rafael chuckled. “So, you’re an athlete, huh?”

“I’ve been playing basketball since I was 10. You?”

“The only thing I play is Chess…and Nintendo.”

“I could give you a run for your money.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’ve beat Super Mario Brothers 1 & 2 several times.”

He laughed at her joke.

“I could probably kick your ass at Chess, too, though.”

“Challenge accepted, Rossetti,” he told her with a smirk.

*********

“Hey, you’re Izzy, right?” A girl with brown hair asked as she opened the other locker next to Izzy’s.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Erin Harris. We have History together.”

“Right, yeah. You sit in the back.”

“So Mr. Cervantes will leave me alone. How do you like it here so far?”

“It’s been a week,” Izzy shrugged. “It’s not so bad, I guess. I’ve just been used to public school all my life.”

“I know the feeling. My parents made me transfer here to the junior high last year because I kept ‘getting in trouble’,” Erin laughed.

“I see.”

“I’m not that bad. Honestly. Just hung around with the wrong crowd. Dying my hair pink was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

“Wow.”

“So, uh, you like Rafael?”

Izzy was a little taken aback by Erin’s blunt question. “Wha-what do you mean?”

“I sit behind you and see the way you stare at him during class.”

“I mean…he’s cute,” she shrugged.

“Well, he’s in love with Yelina Ortiz so, don’t get your hopes up.”

“Who’s she?”

“Come on. She has the same lunch we do. I’ll show her to you.”

After Izzy and Erin sat down with their diet cokes and nachos they had gotten from the a la carte table, Erin pointed out Yelina to Izzy. She was tall, long dark hair, and very beautiful dark skin. Izzy gave up any hope of dating Rafael in that instance. She saw the way he practically fawned over her; Alex did, too, though.

“Are they dating?”

“No. That’s the thing. He follows her everywhere but she only dates older guys.”

“How do you know this?”

“It was like that last year in eighth grade even. It’s kinda sad cause he’s a very nice guy. Really sweet.”

Just then, across the lunch room, Rafael looked up to see Izzy looking at him. He sort of smiled, causing her to blush and look back to Erin.

“He’s coming over here.”

“No, he’s not.”

“If you’re gonna make the basketball team, shouldn’t you be eating better?” Rafael teased as he took a seat at their table. “Hey, Erin.”

“What’s up?”

“It doesn’t hurt to cheat once in a while,” Izzy giggled. “Hey! Don’t you have your own lunch?”

“I already ate it,” he smiled as he popped the cheese drenched chip in his mouth.

Izzy couldn’t help but laugh at the cheese that had dripped onto his chin.

“What?”

“You got…you…here,” she told him as she wiped his chin.

“Oops,” he laughed. Erin nudged Izzy and discreetly motioned toward Yelina, who was burning a hole through Izzy at that very moment.

“I think you’re…uh…friend is getting a little jealous.”

“She’ll be fine,” Rafael told her as he continued to sit with Erin and Izzy for the remainder of lunch before their history class.

The three of them walked down the hall after lunch to their class. Erin took the desk directly behind Izzy instead of her normal seat in the very back.

“You’re in my seat, Erin,” Bradley Walker told her.

“Now it’s mine. There’s a few other empty ones.”

“Ugh, whatever.”

********************

“You’re not going to the winter formal?”

“No, Ma,” Izzy answered as they worked on dinner one night in November.

“Why not. We could get you a beautiful dress, get your hair done…”

“No one’s asked me,” she shrugged.

“I thought Alex Munoz asked you. That’s what your brother said.”

“I can’t stand Alex, Ma. And he didn’t ask me. He told me I was gonna go with him more or less. I don’t need someone making decisions for me.”

“He was probably just playing around.”

“Still…there is nothing attractive about him whatsoever.”

“Well, you and Erin could always go with each other. Surely guys would ask you to dance.”

“Maybe.”

“Do you know this girl your brother is taking?”

“Heather? A little, not well though. She seems nice enough.”

“How’s my two favorite girls?” Anthony asked as he kissed his wife on the cheek.

“Good. How’d you sleep?”

“Decent enough. Uh, Izz, there’s someone in the living room to see you.”

“Me? Who?”

“That boy that hangs out with your brother.”

“That could be anybody, Pop.”

“I can’t keep all his friend’s straight. Just go see. I can finish helping your mother.”

“Okay.”

She opened the kitchen door and found Rafael, still in his school uniform.

“Hey, Raf,” she smiled. “My dad did tell you Tony was…”

“Yeah, I know. I came to see you, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You know the winter formal is in a few weeks?”

“I’m aware,” she laughed.

“Your brother said you didn’t have a date and I was wondering if you’d like to come with me?”

“Uh…uh…”

“It’s just a ‘yes’ or ‘no’,” he said with a smirk.

“I just thought maybe you’d go with Yelina.”

“Yelina?” He laughed. “Please. She wouldn’t go to the dance with a nerd like me.”

“You’re not a nerd,” she told him as she tilted her head. “And yes, I’d like to go with you.”

“Are you saying that out of pity or because you really want to go with me?”

“I’d really like to go with you.”

“Then it’s a date. I’ll see you school at tomorrow.”

“Rafael what brings you by?” Stella asked after she came out of the kitchen.

“I…uh…I just asked your daughter if she’d like to escort me to the winter formal.”

“Is that right? And what did you say, Elizabeth Machelle?”

“Well, of course, she said ‘yes’, Mrs. Rossetti.”

“Jeez, Rafael,” Izzy said as she rolled her eyes.

“Well, I am finishing up manicotti that my son asked for but he can’t keep himself at home so you’re more than welcome to stay for dinner.”

“I should probably get home.”

“Nonsense. I’ll call your mom.”

“Oh, okay. Sure, thanks.”

Stella called Lucia who said it was fine if Rafael stayed for dinner and Anthony said he would make sure he got home instead of taking the subway back to the Bronx.

********************

Izzy had found a simple, strapless black mid-length dress with sequins but not too flashy at all.

Rafael showed up in a black 3-piece suit with a red tie. Izzy was impressed to say the least. She had only seen him in his school uniform, other than the few times he had come over on the weekends in jeans and t-shirts.

“You look beautiful,” he smiled at his date when she came down stairs. Her blond hair was done in ringlets which had given her a headache as they were being done but a couple of Advil later, she was fine and ready to go.

“Thanks, Raf. You look…pretty good, too.”

“And we all know, I look great,” Tony laughed.

“Okay, Tony. Where’s your date?”

“We’re picking her up on the way, Dad. Thanks again for getting us the car.”

“Well, I thought it was better than you guys taking a cab or the subway.”

“Yeah, thanks, Mr. Rossetti.”

“Not a problem, Rafael. I want my daughter home by 11.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If there’s one hair on her head out of place…”

“Dad!!!”

“I’m just kidding, princess. You guys have fun.”

They let Stella take a few pictures before they left. They sat in the town car, Rafael’s legs bouncing as he nervously ran his hands on his knees.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine, Izz,” he smiled to which Tony just sort of laughed, earning a nudge in his ribs from his sister.

***************

They finally arrived at the “Winter Wonderland” formal dance. It was basically a prom for the Freshman and Sophomores.

“There you are!!” Erin exclaimed when she saw Izzy walk in with Rafael.

“I told you I’d be here,” Izzy laughed at her now best friend.

“You look amazing. Doesn’t she, Rafael?”

“Yes, Erin. I already told her she looked great.”

“Come on, let’s dance.”

“Erin…”

“It’s okay, cariño. Go have fun. I’ll get us something to drink,” Rafael told her. She didn’t know what “cariño” meant but it didn’t sound bad.

Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” blasted over the speakers as Izzy and Erin danced while they laughed and sang along.

She noticed Rafael sitting at a table with Eddie and Alex as he watched her.

Erin had actually went to the dance with Eddie so they went to sit with their dates.

Soon Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Enough” started playing.

“Dance with me, Raf?”

“I don’t really like to dance.”

“Come on. It’ll be fun,” Izzy told him.

“What the hell?” He shrugged as he took her hand and led her to the dance floor. She didn’t understand why he didn’t like to dance because the boy sure knew how to move. Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible” came on next so the two of them continued to dance.

“How about a break? Some food maybe?”

“Uh, sure, Raf,” Izzy agreed as she was working up an appetite after dancing.

After a few snacks and a couple more glasses of punch, Erin grabbed Izzy as The Romantics “Talking in Your Sleep” started playing.

“So, uh, what’s up with you and Rossetti?” Alex asked.

“We’re friends,” Rafael told them. “She didn’t have a date and neither did I so I asked her…”

“Rafi?”

“Uh…hey, Yelina.”

“Your date seems to be more into her best friend than you.”

“She’s just having fun,” he shrugged. “We’re just friends. It’s not like she has to be by my side the whole time.”

“Hey, Yelina, you want to dance?” Alex asked.

“No thanks, Alex. My date is getting us something to drink,” she said as she motioned to the Senior that she had been dating, Riley Watkins.

Izzy noticed Yelina and immediately grabbed Erin and headed back to the table. She promptly took her seat next to Rafael, pushing Yelina out of the way with her butt.

“Izzy. I wondered why you were leaving this poor guy all alone,” Yelina snarked.

“Hey, Raf, you want to join me for another dance?” She asked as Billy Idol’s “Hot in the City” started playing.

“You bet,” he smiled.

They continued to dance. They were even warned by one of the teachers that was chaperoning that they were a little too close. Izzy wanted to make a move on him so bad.

“You know, I really like the red and green rubber bands you have on your braces,” he told her as they danced to Journey’s “Open Arms”.

“Uh, thanks,” she said as she felt her face get hot. She was so glad it was dark enough that he couldn’t see her blush.

“Would it be okay if I…” he asked as he moved in closer to her, making her heart skip a beat.

“Can I cut in?” Yelina had the audacity to ask.

Izzy knew Rafael was in love with her and actually let her.

She went to the bathroom with Erin following close behind.

“What the hell was that?”

“What?”

“You let Yelina dance with him? Are you crazy?!”

“What was I gonna say?”

“How about, ‘fuck no! He’s here with me,’?”

“We’re just friends.”

“He was about to kiss you.”

“No, he wasn’t.”

“Are you that fucking oblivious?!”

“Erin…”

“Her date left. She’s here alone now. She’s trying to swoop in on your guy.”

“He’s not my guy.”

“I’m just trying to help you, here.”

“I’m fine, Erin. Really.”

Rafael had went looking for Izzy after sharing half a dance with Yelina and found her coming from the bathroom of their school’s gym.

“Hey, you want another dance?”

“Actually, I think I’d like to go home.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m getting tired. Erin has been wearing me out,” she lied.

“Oh. Okay. Do you want me to find Tony and Heather?”

“They still have an hour before curfew. I can catch a cab.”

“No, you can’t. You came with me and I’m going to make sure you get home safely.”

“I’ve got her,” Erin said with a glare.

“Erin I can get her home. It’s fine.”

“I’m going with you then.”

“Whatever.”

************

Erin told Eddie she was ready to leave so he decided he’d go, too, even though she told him he didn’t have to.

Tony told his twin that he had enough money to get a cab for him and Heather and for her to take the car their dad had gotten for them.

The ride to Bensonhurst was a quiet one. Once the driver pulled up to Izzy’s house, she and Erin got out but Rafael insisted on walking Izzy to the door.

“I had a good time tonight with you.”

“Yeah, me too,” she smiled.

Erin leaned against the porch wall with her arms crossed, her eyes shooting daggers into Rafael.

“Erin can you give us a minute?”

“Uh no,” Erin replied to Rafael.

“Here’s my key, Erin. Just go up to my room.”

“If you say so, Izz,” she scoffed as she took the key chain from her best friend and unlocked the door.

“So, I guess I’ll see you Monday?”

“Yeah, Rafael,” Izzy nodded.

“Thanks for coming with me tonight.”

“I had a good time.”

“I’m glad. Well, I guess I should be going.”

“Okay.”

He started to move closer to her but the kiss landed on her cheek instead of her lips like she had hoped.

They said one last good-bye before she went inside.

#rafael barba #fanfic

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letdreamsbememes · 6 years ago

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SHIT MY FRIENDS SAY PART 2 Some of the quotes from our shenanigans, carefully collected over the years. NSFW, cussing, and all that jazz. Feel free to change pronouns as you like!

“As soon as he started talking to me, I could feel my uterus shrivelling up.”

“We just got a bunch of 16-year-olds drunk.”

“I’m not gay or anything, but I would. I totally would.”

“Well, shit! That’s harder than the dick of a 14-year-old who just discovered Internet porn!”

“I don’t know who said that. Some politician. ... Franz Beckenbauer.”

“Stop eating that éclair so suggestively.”

“Do they speak German in Austria?”

“Reading the IPA aloud just sounds like a trip to IKEA.”

“But you can’t actually fall past the Earth, can you?”

“That’s the national anthem. What do you mean by ‘I don’t know that song’?”

“No cage can hold my titties.”

“I just got asked for my ID for buying beer. Beer is legal at 16. How young do I look!?”

“Sometimes I go to IKEA to buy candy there because it’s cheaper than in a supermarket. But then I feel guilty and buy like, a lightbulb as an alibi. I currently have 17 lightbulbs I have no use for.”

“Hi, can you play ‘Die Motherfucker Die’? It’s me and my boyfriend’s song.”

“No, that’s not an allegory, it’s a fact.”

“I really like how you employed several distinct figures of speech when you yelled at those thugs.”

“The problem with France is that there are so many French people.”

“We should make a Rammstein cover band.”

“Why does he look like the drummer of a Gothic Metal band?”

“How did it go? The instructor just got up in the middle of the test and left the room, that’s how it went.”

“You’re about as funny as breaking your leg on the first day of the summer holidays!”

“You know I’d really like to come, but right now, I can’t even be arsed to come up with an excuse, so no.”

#rp meme #rp memes #sentence starters #sentence prompt

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innuendostudios · 7 years ago

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Thoughts on... a few games

[discussion of A Case of Distrust, Gray Skies Dark Waters, and The Lion’s Song below the cut. there won’t be any major spoilers, but I will be at least alluding to some things that you might be better off not having heard allusions to if you want to play the games.]

Thoughts on A Case of Distrust

I heard rumblings about A Case of Distrust on Games Twitter, and, while the pitch sounded enticing, there wasn’t any demo and I didn’t want to buy a game I knew next to nothing about. I put hands on it for a few minutes at PAX East this weekend and immediately bought it from the developer. (I confess the discounted PAX price helped.)

The enticing pitch is as follows: You play PC Malone, the only female private detective in 1924 San Francisco. PC mostly gets adultery gigs - snoop jobs for suspicious wives - but snags her first proper case from a shady rum runner investigating some death threats he’s received. Things get dicier when her client shows up dead the following morning. The art and presentation are killer, the downtempo jazz soundtrack is choice, and I appreciate the way the game leans in to having a female protagonist in a classically male role.

This isn’t some alternate-history 1924, where women are treated with equal respect to men. PC quit the police force after the death of her biggest advocate, her uncle Lewis, knowing that none of the other policemen would let her work real cases. So she struck out as a private dick, and is constantly underestimated by the suspects she interrogates. (Though it wasn’t explicitly mentioned in my playthrough, it’s a safe bet she goes by PC instead of Phyllis so that potential clients won’t know she’s a woman until they meet her in person.) (Also PC is interactive fiction speak for Player Character.)

The whole of the interface is a fairly robust notetaking system, where you can interrogate any suspect about any statement made by any other suspect or any evidence you’ve seen. Getting new bits of information and using them to contradict a suspect’s story is the whole game. It has one thing to do and it does it well: letting you construct a theory of what happened in your head and test every piece before making an accusation. It’s something a lot of mystery games imply while actually doing the hard parts for you, and, while I wouldn’t say A Case of Distrust completely forsakes handholding, it knows what the fun bits are and lets you do them yourself.

What the game is missing is... a plot. A Case of Distrust has a complete first act: it has an inciting incident with the rum runner hiring PC, it sets up its themes about PC’s feelings of failure as she tries to live up to her uncle’s example, it introduces its central characters and hints at its world of seedy speakeasies and businesses that serve as criminal fronts, it has an unexpected (and very artfully directed) dream sequence, and the first act ends with the rum runner’s death.

It also has an ending.

Between them, there’s no real plot. There’s a mystery, for sure, and what hardboiled detective story would work without one? And it opens with an excellent nod to the scene in The Long Goodbye where Philip Marlowe fails to feed his cat. But it doesn’t have the scene where Sam Spade meets with Gutman and then passes out from a spiked drink, or where Jake Gittes sleeps with Evelyn and then tails her car through Los Angeles, or where Brendan Frye gets thrown in Tug’s trunk and driven to meet with The Pin. There’s no rising or falling action, no setups or payoffs, no setbacks or reversals. There’s just the mystery. Every suspect stays right where you left them - one guy sits in a chair waiting for his barber to get back for the entire game - and the only thing that happens between you and any of them is conversation. There’s not even much in the way of red herrings; you can have a bad theory, but there’s never anything that sends you down the wrong path to eventually turn up nothing.

Even the threads about PC trying to be a proper detective in a world that doesn’t take her seriously, though not exactly dropped, are unsatisfactorily resolved. (Frankly, the defiance of gender politics would go down easier if the female suspects weren’t the same old noir tropes, jealous gangster molls with no real agency.) The whole affair ends pretty abruptly, save for an obligatory sequel tease.

The game is worth playing, certainly - more mysteries should have that notetaking system - but I hope the next one recognizes that the mystery itself is the least important part of a noir. It’s what happens around the mystery that makes or breaks it.

Thoughts on Gray Skies, Dark Waters

Another mystery of sorts, though, in this one, the female detective is simply a daughter trying to find out why her mother vanished the year before. There aren’t any interrogations or recovered murder weapons, just a girl wandering her home town and asking her friends and family what they know.

It’s hard to discuss Gray Skies, Dark Waters without addressing its production values. I’ve played a number of microbudget indie games in my day, but even small-scope adventure games have a hard time looking polished without a decent amount of money. Gray Skies, Dark Waters is maybe the roughest-hewn game I’ve ever bought off of Steam. There’s no character animation to speak of: main character Lina has a walk cycle and that’s it. Everyone else has a talk animation and a standing/sitting-in-place idle animation. (This is another game where everyone stays in the same place waiting for you to come talk to them for the entire game; only one character shows up in a second place.) No one’s lips move when they talk. No one moves their hands when ostensibly handing inventory objects to each other. Voice actors are very clearly recorded using different mics, because the audio quality differs wildly from character to character, sometimes from line to line spoken by the same person.

I want to say this up front because I want to get it over with. I came up on TIGSource, I’m used to rough edges. None of this matters if the story is good.

I’m not sure the story is good.

It’s definitely not bad, though it’s hard to talk about without spoiling anything because the game is very short. Lina and her family have been living alone with her dad for the last year, ever since their mom disappeared. Much of the game’s appeal is in the details: Looking for clues means hearing Lina’s musings on her house, and, by extension, her life before and after her mother’s disappearance. Talking to her siblings is one part investigation and several parts painting a picture of different ways children deal with grief. And, frankly, the dialogue and characterizations are quite good. Some of Lina’s poetic commentary is overwrought, and the siblings can be a bit one-note, but foibles of a talented writer who hits the mark more often than she misses.

The game’s biggest setback is that there’s just not much mystery to the mystery. The explanation is not the kind of thing you’d assume from the outset, but you’re going to have it figured out by the midpoint. This makes the gameplay feel less like uncovering a narrative and more going through the motions. It can almost feel like a third-person walking sim, where you’re just moving through the narrative, not really directing yourself through it.

But I like walking sims, so that’s not really a complaint either.

On the whole, I think there’s a lot of value to playing a game like this. I’m not sure I’ve experienced an adventure game that was this comfortable with sadness. Plenty of games have broken my heart before, but not many are about the laborious process of mending one. If it has a failing, it’s that it’s insubstantial. This isn’t a portrait of grief or of family life, it’s a sketch. It has barely enough time or budget to glimpse the big picture before its over. But it’s a big picture worth glimpsing, I suppose, of a subject rarely addressed in games.

I’d call it a worthwhile experience. That’s not quite a recommendation, but it’s not not a recommendation, either.

Thoughts on The Lion’s Song

Of these three games, The Lion’s Song is the most ambitious. It’s a pastiche of pre-war Austria’s art and science culture, viewed through three vignettes and a coda. Each character is devoted to a particular passion and is trying to create their first real masterpiece: Wilma is trying to compose a symphony (the titular Lion’s Song), Franz is trying to break through a person block with his painting, and Em is trying to write a mathematical proof but has to disguise herself as a man to work with other mathematicians.

The gameplay is largely about how each character manages the personal issues that both impede and inform their work. The player helps Wilma tune out the parts of her environment that distract her and focus on things that give her inspiration; helps Franz pick and converse with his portrait subjects to try and locate their essence; and helps Em extrapolate a proof about objects in conflicting states from her own dual existence as both man and woman. This is all done very artfully, with a number of visualization tricks and some gorgeous sepia pixel art.

The writing is also quite lovely across the board.

The weakest link is the final chapter. I’m not the first to say so. Each episode has cameos of the characters from the other chapters, and the episodes are even more tightly related thematically. But I’m not the first to say that the ending, which aims to tie them all together narratively shoots for the moon and lands somewhere short of the stars. What it’s going for is a sobering reality check on what happened to the mini-Renaissance in Europe at the dawning of Modernist thought, and it’s very poignant on paper, but in practice it just comes out of nowhere, to the point where it feels like a cheat. In an episodic story where you rely on the ending to tell you what it was all about, not sticking the landing casts a shadow backwards on the whole series.

The other elephant in the room is the problem with telling stories about genius artists: You have to be a genius to pull it off.

The devs can’t really sell Wilma as a genius composer if we’re going to hear snatches of her symphony, or Franz as a genius painter if they’re going to show us his paintings, or Em as a mathematical prodigy if they’re going to show us her proof, if any of these things are not made by actual geniuses. The music is lovely, but it’s being sold as holding its own with Stravinsky; the art is pretty, but it’s sold as holding its own with early Duchamp; Em’s proof is either based on real math but simplified until it’s unrecognizable, or it’s gobbledygook that’s meant to sound sort of like math.

I never want to be the guy who asks “why is this a game,” but one might pull this off better in a non-audio/visual medium. (Then again, Marc Estrin tried to pull this thing where he’d make up “genius” symphonies and ballets that took pages and pages to describe in Insect Dreams, and that book was insufferable.)

As an analysis of how artists and scientists push through creative blocks, it’s a bit over-simple. But as a kaleidoscope of the artistic culture and the social and political pressures of Vienna at the turn of the century, it’s kind of wonderful. (Or, at least, 3/4 of it is.) The first episode is free and the whole endeavor is worth checking out.

#capsule review #Adventure Games #writings

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lightsandlostbells · 7 years ago

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Skam Austin episode 4 reaction

part of me is laughing at the number of people in the Facebook comments asking, “Is this on Netflix?”

Episode 4

Clip 1 - Sad couch crew

I felt Tyler and Shay were being friendly to Megan here, not snide, at least on a superficial level. Though I guess you can take their excitement about the concert as passive-aggressiveness.

Tyler mentioning the Illuminati - how very Isak. TBH I really hope Julie is making both Shay and Tyler gay, since they’re dividing up the Isak moments between the two. I’m fine if Tyler doesn’t get the big season-long arc and it goes to Shay instead, I’d love to see her get it. But it’s just going to leave such a bad taste if they’ve made Isak into a wlw with no equivalent to the gay male representation that already existed, when there are many supposedly straight female characters who could be have been made into wlw. Especially the Vilde equivalent, who you could easily give a story about discovering and accepting her sexuality, or the Chris character, who didn’t have her own season and really didn’t have any substantial character issues suggested on the level of Vilde’s home life, and would benefit from a meaty arc.

I love Shay, she’s definitely one of the highlights of the show, I’m just tired of all the fighting over whether it’s better for S3 to focus on a gay boy or a lesbian and seeing a lot of gross shit in the discussions that’s either minimizing the importance of an f/f storyline because homophobia is worse for men in Texas/lesbians don’t have it that bad/lesbians are already represented on TV because they’re accepted by straight men who find them sexy/someone doesn’t care about lesbians and will only accept Evak 2.0, or minimizing the importance of Evak/another m/m storyline because Skam and the other remakes already have gay ships so don’t get greedy/gay men are already accepted because look at all the m/m on Tumblr and AO3/people only want another Evak because they’re disgusting fetishizers. It’s fucked up how most of these talk relies on the assumption that there can be only one LGBT story on Skam at a time and not pushing back on why it goes without question that S1 and a hypothetical S2 about Grace/Daniel can both be about heterosexual relationships.

Not to be one of those obnoxious people referencing YA novels in response to real life situations, but it makes me think of Katniss at the climax of Catching Fire when her group of Tributes is fighting the Career Tributes and she fires at the force field instead. Remember who the real enemy is.

That’s a joke, don’t take that too seriously.

Anyway I’m tired.

Considering how shitty he’s been acting previously, Tyler not laughing at Marlon’s comments and just deliberately eating a potato chip is a step up for him.

Speaking of the chips, they disappear in between shots and I guess Tyler could be putting the bag on the floor between takes or something but it looks like a regular old continuity error.

Marlon is a mega dick and I dislike him but I kinda can’t believe that I agreed with him about the team’s social standings vs. their practice time. But it was Marlon who said it so it sounded like a dick move.

See, he’s been such a dick that it’s hard to feel sorry for him! But also he’s in the right to feel hurt about the concert.

I don't have much to say except he is the least convincing person to be talking about how he’s not upset and he doesn’t care. He’s so obviously pissed.

There’s just not a shred of chemistry between these two. I don’t get why they’re together, I don’t get what they like about each other, they barely seem to have much fun together. There isn’t much of a rapport.

Pointless personal anecdote #1: When this clip came out, I watched it on my phone at a graduation party, and I'm not kidding, in the few minutes while I was watching some middle-aged parents started talking about wanting to move to Texas when they retire, and they named cities and singled out Austin as a bad choice because “it’s been overtaken by liberals,” lmao. There was no way they could have realized I was watching a show set in Austin. The stars just aligned.

Clip 2 - Kelsey, no

Grace is really concerned about Kelsey sleeping with Daniel so soon, probably because what happened in her own past messed her up.

“Ever since I was a little girl watching the Super Bowl, I knew I was going to lose my virginity to a football player.” .... when I was a little girl watching the Super Bowl I only cared about seeing the commercials with the pretty horses.

“It was like he was going down on me, but in my mouth” … oh my God … someone SAVE this child.

Kelsey, you don’t even know what anyone going down on you in the “correct” place feels like, and this just makes you sound like inexperienced and Not Ready . And I’m glad Meg and Grace are suitably horrified.

Oh, they actually mentioned the issue of insurance, that’s good. But she looked a little uncomfortable with the topic of insurance, so if she has a similar financial situation to Vilde, insurance might be an issue? Or, as was hinted later via texts, she might have a super religious or conservative mom who would not take her to the doctor. She might be able to go to Planned Parenthood for birth control except I’m not sure if minors can get prescriptions for the pill without parental consent because well, Texas.

I checked out of curiosity and it looks like the only type of birth control you can get at PP without parental consent are condoms and lol, Grace already had that covered.

“You know you should use a condom, right?” “What if he doesn’t want to use a condom?” “Then you know you shouldn’t have sex with him.” YES. JESUS. Thank you Grace.

“I talked to Jo this weekend and I prayed about it last night” Oh come on, they’re going to have her mention praying about Zoya’s participation on the team and then not even address the sex-religion topic? Okay. Kelsey doesn’t even have to be abstinent or opposed to premarital sex, not all Christians are, I feel like it just makes sense for someone to be like, “Isn’t having sex before marriage against your religion?” And if Kelsey objected to the question on the grounds that they’re making assumptions about her religion, they could always come back at her with “Well, you assumed Muslims couldn’t dance.”

Kudos to Grace for talking sense about the Zoya situation and being very calm and careful about the Daniel thing.

Clip 3 - Backseat

The editing at the start of the clip made me think the mom might be talking to Megan at first but no, the mom is on her phone. Mom’s communication skills weren’t so great in this clip.

The dialogue is pretty on the nose and super specific to the theeeeeeme, with the mom putting all this implied pressure on Megan, but the passive aggressiveness about Megan’s dad is sadly accurate to how certain married-with-kids dynamics are, with the parents always at each other’s throats and dismissive of each other and not caring about how the kids react to these constant fighting.

I saw some people wondering why Megan was sitting in the backseat and honestly, that didn’t seem too weird to me. It’s not typical but I’ve ridden in the backseat even when I was the only passenger before (usually because sometimes riding in the front seat makes me sick) but I could see like, a moody teenager wanting to text her boyfriend and not wanting her mom to glance over at her phone. Although the simplest explanation is that Julie wants to hide the parents’ faces.

I didn’t even notice the giant concert posters at first, I was focused on the homeless man. I am assuming he was there to remind us of the stakes to succeed in this world if you’re much of a “dreamer” as Meg’s mom puts it, where if you don’t get a good job that can be you living on the streets, and to get a good job you need to get a degree from a good school, and to get a degree from a good school you need to perform well in high school, and if you make one mistake you are ruined, RUINED forever.

Meg trying to ask her mom for relationship advice and instead getting reminded that her parents have a shit relationship, lovely.

The difference in the tone between the coworker call and the dad call is very telling. Right off the bat, when the dad calls, the mom has a pissed-off attitude. They’re at the stage where they fight just to fight.

Also, note the guilt trip caused by the mom yelling at the dad for not remembering she was going to her friend’s (and like, who cares, I mean this might be part of a larger problem but this sounds like the pettiest shit to argue about) and saying people show they appreciate and support each other by listening and taking interest in their loves, when that’s exactly what Megan didn’t do (skipping Marlon’s show that he was so hyped for) and that’s how she feels she can make it up to him (by buying tickets to the concert he had mentioned).

And the mom says people show they care by listening when she doesn’t even listen to her own daughter and interrupts her when she’s trying to ask a question, and she’s definitely not paying attention to Megan’s life. Like, how is it that they can miss that she’s not on the dance team? Surely the team has some performances or competitions that they’d attend? Fundraisers? I can see them not attending all of Megan’s dance performances, but any of them?

Megan’s mom is a piece of work, though I’m sure the dad plays his part in the dysfunction too, I don’t want to put it all on the mother.

Clip 4 - Straw

Franz Ferdinand???

Not that this is the point but I’m intrigued by this locker setup. But I am from a place with cold cold winters so the idea of having one of these lockers in January seems terrible.

I was curious if Kendrick Lamar was actually supposed to perform in Austin on Friday, so I checked it out, and lo and behold, it was a real concert. Good job, Skam Austin.

It kinda just makes me sad that THIS is how Meg gets Marlon’s attention again, by buying (probably) expensive concert tickets.

“you two are smashing in that bathroom by the nurse’s office” at least you’re nearby if you need offbeat advice and some condoms? Oh wait, this is Texas. Never mind the last one.

This is my chance to talk about how gross I find the word “smash” in any sexual context. It just sounds uncomfortable and makes me think of potatoes.

Shoutout to Tyler’s Prince shirt, certainly a unique wardrobe choice.

Man, Kelsey is just such an easy target. Especially with the way she talks, like-like-like … blood in the water. Tyler and Shay are not here for Kelsey and Jo right off the bat and once Kelsey opens her mouth, it’s doom.

At least Kelsey had the sense to keep Zoya on the team list even if it was for self-serving reasons.

I applaud these actresses for effort, but every version of the iconic spoon scene has felt forced compared to the original. Josefina, my darling, if you’re going to be seductive with your straw, you might wanna purse your lips instead of letting it roll around in and out of your mouth.

I think it’s great that Jo and Tyler spoke Spanish to each other, and that they didn’t have subtitles, but lol at the brazenness of asking that question right in front of Shay when Shay could possibly speak Spanish herself. Or lmao, anyone who has taken Spanish I could understand what she was saying. (Like what if Shay was his girlfriend? Kinda think Jo isn’t concerned with technicalities.)

Calling him jefe, lmao, wow.

Tyler referring to Kelsey as Drew Barrymore made me laugh. Do kids these days have a firm grasp on Drew Barrymore’s legacy? What has she been in recently other than Santa Clarita Diet?

Maybe instead of references to Romeo + Juliet, we can get allusions to Ever After, The Wedding Singer, or Never Been Kissed. (Maybe not that last one.)

Also, I’m glad Meg spoke up for Kelsey so they weren’t just bashing her new friends.

Clip 5 - Internet quizzes should not be used to make major life decisions

Zoya is just looking through a book while Kelsey is talking.

Some of Kelsey’s rules:

“Always act classy”

“No cursing, fighting, messy hair or appearance” while wearing the uniform

“Positive vibes ONLY”

But yeah, here’s another example of why the dance team wasn’t the best way to adapt russ because like … of course Kelsey is being rude and ridiculous, and I can’t say I’m on her side against Zoya, but … if the team founder calls a meeting to discuss rules, it’s expected that you will be there to discuss the rules and not blow it off?

With Vilde’s bus, first of all, russ was several years away and they had time to pull it all together. A dance team is going to require some results in the near future, especially if the team is school-approved and getting them out of P.E. Someone is probably going to be checking up on the girls and making sure they’re not getting P.E. credit for sitting around and doing nothing. Second, pretty sure a bus group is not going to require as much day to day practice, training, and energy as a dance team.

I don’t know, however silly Kelsey’s motivations might be, if you sign up for someone’s dance team … you should expect to dance, dude. That goes for all the girls.

When prompted to give her opinion of Zoya, Jo cleverly deflects with the quiz, as her opinion of Zoya is clearly ❤️❤️❤️

I do love and appreciate Grace trying to persuade Kelsey to rethink the whole sleeping with Daniel thing. Not being too harsh, but being firm and not hesitating to point out all the ways it’s not a good choice.

Also being like “keep in mind he’s not your boyfriend” thank youuuu.

Kelsey sure doesn’t like that part about people judging her for having premarital sex. At least they might bring it up in the aftermath of hooking up with Daniel?

“That definitely didn’t happen.” “It did happen and she can’t eat Sweet Tarts anymore.” Jo continues to be the shining star of this show, I laughed out loud at her delivery of that line.

Whenever one of the Chrises is like “I was totally wasted” about their first time, I’m just like 😧

Kelsey saying option A on the quiz, for her “boyfriend” and her being closer once they sleep together, is the most depressing thing. Stop this train before it goes off the rails.

Oh God. Kelsey does not need to be anywhere near a penis at this juncture. The way she starts giggling and laughing when Grace suggests to think about what turns her on about Daniel … you are not ready to have sex. You are barely ready to talk about sex. None of the Vildes has seemed so young and not ready to go through with this.

Kelsey did not talk about not wanting to be involved in lesbianism, hmmmMMMM. Foreshadowing? Or maybe Julie just realized that people didn’t like the casual lesbophobia if you don’t have a lesbian character?

I haven’t been all that complimentary to the actors on this show, but I do want to give Kelsey’s actress some props for reciting that whole monologue, which is just a detailed Teen Vogue photoshoot.

It’s amusing that Kelsey integrated the Kittens uniform into her erotic fantasy but sad that Kelsey still wants to be a Kitten so much. She’s not wearing a uniform for her own group, whatever she might want it to be, she’s wearing a Kitten uniform in her ideal scenario.

You know Jo is listening to this fantasy and getting inspiration for her next Kelsey makeup experiment.Also, it makes me laugh that they’re having this discussion in a library.

Overheard in Bouldin - TMI Girl in Library: “People get turned on my different things all the time. My cousin’s thing is dirty socks. She keeps a pair of her ex-boyfriend’s in a Ziploc bag under her bed.”

May we one day meet this intriguing cousin of yours, Jo.

But don’t encourage this Daniel nonsense.

It’s too bad we didn’t get the classic doctor visit but lol, a school doctor in Texas might not be able to be so blatant with the sex ed tips, so I get it. And ultimately I would prefer if Julie tried out new scenes instead of trying to recreate old ones.

At first I thought Kelsey maybe didn’t know who Kendrick Lamar was. Which is perfectly plausible, let’s be real.

“When I have ever asked you for anything?” In the short time Meg has known you, Kelsey ... find Jo, join the dance team, get closer to Penetrator Jo, give you her birth control pills.

Clip 6 - Bowling

Kelsey’s outfit is almost exactly what she described in her fantasy! No access to a Kittens dance uniform, but otherwise very close. Follow your dreams, kids.

“Martin had a dream … Martin had a dream …” look, I like that Skam uses a variety of music and not just white indie rock, but can we like … quit syncing music by black artists talking about black cultural topics to scenes of this white dude being a big deal.

Look at that dipshit taking up two parking spaces. Fuck offffffffffffff

Kelsey looks so happy and Daniel looks like he’s already 75% checked out.

How long is this Kendrick bowling montage going to go on?

Ha, Kelsey easily had the worst bowling score of the four of them.

“Daniel just touched my ass.” The way Kelsey was thrilled about this was kind of cute and alarming.

Kelsey wanting Meg to stay with them as long as she can makes me think she really just doesn’t want to go through with the impending loss of virginity.

“Then how’d you know my name at Talent Night?” I mean ... you do go to school together, and Jo is on the football team with a high social profile. I could name a lot of my high school classmates by name even if I’ve never spoken to them.

Is Julie going to go full Chris/Eva with this version to give the shippers their day in the sun? I love original Eva/Jonas but Meg/Marlon is an unpleasant trainwreck so I can’t say I’m disappointed. I mean I can’t say I love Meg/Penetrator Jo either,, but I’m not sad about this version of Eva/Jonas not being endgame.

Penetrator Jo is still sleazy in at least a few respects (don’t be a cocktease) and we have still have to meet his girlfriend but his memory of her seems legit so maybe he does really like her. Unless, I don’t know, he stalked her IG and remembered some relevant details and embellished this whole story?

Lmao, I can get why people might think the “No Signal” scenario would be a contrivance but that exact thing has happened to me, so I buy it.

I will give Julie this credit, she’s good at setting up Fredag/Friday scenarios where we think one thing will happen, and instead something else occurs that’s completely different from the fan theories. I figured it would be as simple as Meg or Marlon missing the concert, not that we’d spot Marlon (or “Marlon”) with Abby

I don’t think it’s Marlon, though. That seems a lot like Tyler’s walk, and the person doesn’t seem to be wearing Marlon’s ugly shoes.

General Comments:

It’s kind of depressing to see people in the FB group and in the comments be like, “I haven’t seen the original show but could Grace be a lesbian? 😃” and the replies be like “No, Noorhelm is coming 😃”

Another “fun” aspect of having this show on Facebook: the MAGA edgelord assholes who leave comments on the episodes about “cucks” and “libtards.”

My opinion of Grace rose so much in this episode just by how doggedly she is trying to bring Kelsey back to earth. and telling her she can back out of this choice.

In the texts, Grace said she would buy condoms for Kelsey - good job - and later, when Kelsey asked the girls what she should wear for losing her virginity, said, “I know what Daniel will be wearing” and said that she put condoms in Kelsey’s purse - excellent job.

I feel like Grace would roll the condom on Daniel’s dick herself if it meant Kelsey had safe sex.

Abby was stressing over finals on IG so I’d bet that was a hint she needed something to help her out, hence meeting up with Marlon/Tyler for Adderall.

I was wondering what kind of music would be on Skam Austin since original Skam had all sorts of high-profile artists, and that would not be cheap, but so far, it seems like Facebook spared no expense with the soundtrack.

Grace and Shay had IG posts reacting to the Santa Fe High School Shooting. IDK how much Skam Austin would address gun violence in the episodes itself in the future, and I can think of ways it could go very badly, but sadly, as one of the biggest concerns of American teenagers today, it would be very relevant, and that’s what Skam’s supposed to be, after all.

#skam austin reactions #skamus reactions

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harrietvane · 7 years ago

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thatgothamguy replied to your post: sandovers replied to your photoset: There was a...

This get me wondering, Sus, what’s you favorite Thre Musketeers material? Wording it oddly, sorry, as there are sveral movies and…well, I think there is only one TV Show but I’m not sure. Any who, out of the various movies and TV show, which is your fav version of The Three Musketeer?

In all honesty if I had to keep just one that gladdens my heart the most? This 1993 Young Guns version. I mean it’s astoundingly cheesy and Disney-fied but like I’ll skip right over that low bar and go right to admiring everyone’s amazing mullet hairdos. And anyway, it’s not like Monsieur Dumas was unfamiliar with a basic rollicking tale of adventure suitable for all ages.The genuine downside is having to watch Sheen. But also there’s the benefit of TIM CURRY RICHELIEU just giving it the full Curry treatment (THAT CAN BE!! ARRANGED!!!) Idk how much of my devotion to it is based on having seen it as a tiny baby with zero discernment, but like it’s Mine Now and that’s the way it is. Michel Wincott as the Man From Meung to which all others should aspire. Rebecca de Mornay’s amazing 1990s fringe/bangs. Julie Delpy just adorably arch and way to much for tiny O’Donnell to handle. Paul McGann?? in TWO roles? Both of which were speaking parts, but unrelated?? WHY NOT. That Michael Kamen score. The Bryan Adams/Rod Stewart/Sting mega-hit cheeseball tie-in pop song. Every scene is just one long excuse for someone to be sassy and sarcastic, like I’m talking fanfic levels of sarcasm in everyday speech. Good hats, I mean proper big Franz Hals style hats. It’s just got an overall joyful tone. It’s the reason POTC 1 worked, they just did this movie tonally, but on the ocean with magic.

Runner up being The BBC Baroque Boyband - 3 perfect seasons and so much amazing leather. Unbeatable trio dynamic. Long-term developed Athos/Milady angst. PORTHOS MY LOVE. Anne and Constance. Neo-baroque costume with juuuust enough weirdness. I cannot BELIEVE you SLEPT with THE QUEEN!!!! Honestly it’s a joy from start to finish. It’s not what I’d call ‘accurate’, but then again Book!d’Atagnan is kind of a dick so I don’t really care about accurate. It’s a crime adventure show set in Baroque France - CSI: 1630. They’re good lads and I love them.

Other versions I have enjoyed:

The musketeers (but not necessarily movie as a whole) of the DiCaprio 1998 Man in the Iron Mask, bc i do enjoy seeing the older msuketeers, and that cast was pretty impressive as a visual, even if they didn’t all give the impression they knew what they were there for. Byrne and Irons are always good value.

Look. Here’s the thing. I own a copy of the 2001 Paul WS Anderson The Musketeers and I have watched it. More than once. What can I tell you. I’m sorry. I know it’s bad. But it’s Macfadyen as Athos!! He does sad so well! It has zeppelins?? Orlando Bloom allowed to be silly for once in his whole career. Anne and Louis are actually pretty adorable. RAY STEVENSON PORTHOS. It is genuinely so, so dumb. I kind of love it.

The 1994 La fille de d'Artagnan (aka english title ‘Revenge of the Musketeer’) was always a fun time, even if it was more French and less Disney than baby teen me was used to. It has Sophie Marceau fighting with sword. I mean, need I say more?

#thatgothamguy #replies

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liuwdere · 7 years ago

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the gay ass anime masterpost*

*not actually a masterpost, since i give about two and a half fucks about keeping this updated or properly categorized. real loose classifications to follow. shit i haven’t seen in italics; stuff i’d highly recommend in bold. now updated w/ streaming links (some are US-only tho, sorry)

no predatory lesbians or okama joke characters or else we’ll be here all day. k? k.

LGBT-THEMED: anime that directly addresses LGBT identity as one of its primary focuses

Revolutionary Girl Utena

the ez one

Yurikuma Arashi

Class S is bullshit, did u know that. Also, thirsty-ass bear girls and a real angry takedown of the patriarchy

Flip Flappers

I don’t know how you can read this show as anything but lesbian sexual awakening, especially given the Class S Yuri Hell episode

Wandering Son (Hourou Musuko)

pls pay attention to the T friends

Aoi Hana (Sweet Blue Flowers)

Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju

Kikuhiko is def not cishet and i will fite u if u insist otherwise. Half the show’s choices make no sense without that lens

Yuri!!! on Ice

fite me

LGBT-THEMED; LIMITED REP: anime that addresses gender or sexuality as a secondary focus, though perhaps lacking explicit representation (e.g. LGBT narratives in the secondary cast).

The Woman Called Fujiko Mine (from the director of Yuri!!! on Ice)

One of the supporting characters is a gay man struggling w/ masculinity

Gay schoolgirl episode all about female sexual repression

did i mention the titty is good

Princess Jellyfish

Prominent focus on gender presentation

Kuranosuke can be read as a closeted trans woman

Paradise Kiss

Heroine’s love interest is bisexual

Trans woman in the supporting cast; trans identity plays a major role in her story

Ouran High School Host Club

Discusses gender + gender presentation, though protagonist isn’t explicitly stated to be nonbinary

Protagonist’s parents implied to be genderqueer; father definitely bi

Plenty of gay subtext among the male cast

Scum’s Wish

Strong focus on female sexuality; main character is bisexual

Central cast also includes a lesbian

Simoun

Discusses gender as more of an abstraction? Takes place in a world where everyone is born female to later choose a permanent gender. It does less to directly address gender than you’d expect, though, which is why I’m sticking it here

From the New World (Shin Sekai Yori)

Future dystopia where societal norms practically mandate bisexuality. Honestly, I dunno where to put this; the story’s more concerned with sexuality in general than with LGBT identity

Devilman Crybaby

Classic characters reinterpreted through a queer lens; important theme of coming to terms with one’s own sexuality and identity. Ryo is the definition of disaster gay

LGBT REP: anime w/ positive depictions of LGBT characters, though not necessarily concerned w/ addressing queerness directly.

Samurai Flamenco

Four words: gay naked gunpoint proposal. the show makes about that much sense but it’s a lotta fun

i don’t care what the director said

bisexual girl in a poly relationship

No. 6

boys kissing tho???

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid

pls ignore the manga and its magic dick nonsense

Haruchika

One of the two leads is a gay boy. He explicitly says so in the first episode. Avoid the live-action movie like the plague.

I should probably list Kase-san and Bloom Into You here

Mikagura School Suite

The heroine is REALLY THIRSTY for all the cute girls

Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo

Beyond the obvious homoerotic overtones of Albert/the Count, there’s Franz’s gay crush

Sympathetic trans girl character in the secondary cast

Michiko and Hatchin (from the director of Yuri!!! on Ice!!!)

Girls are good ok

Atsuko is gay

Macross Delta

two girls in the supporting cast do a hell of a lotta cuddling on screen

some versions of Sailor Moon

namely the ‘90s anime

Sailor Moon Crystal and the manga do address gender in… questionable ways

Tokyo Godfathers

Trans woman in the main cast

Tiger and Bunny

Reasonably respectful portrayal of a gay man once it gets going

Central relationship between two men could be read as romantic

Genshiken

Whispered Words (Sasameki Koto)

Psycho-Pass

One of the officers is a lesbian. She gets a focus episode

Monogatari series

Really just limited to Kanbaru, but she’s the most accurate depiction of the constantly horny dank meme problematic gay (e.g. me) i’ve ever seen, ironic propositioning of her straight dude friend and all. The rest of the franchise is obnoxious though, so ymmv

Kill la Kill?

i don’t know how else you interpret one girl kissing another on the mouth

Attack on Titan

If you’ve been living under a rock and somehow haven’t heard about it Ymir and Christa are all but explicitly stated to be in love with each other

Kino’s Journey

Kino asks people to use non-gendered pronouns, apparently? I haven’t seen this yet.

Knights of Sidonia

Non-binary character in the main cast

The manga goes some iffy places with their character tho, be warned

Really though, I mostly like this show for the sentient pink penis alien

Gatchaman Crowds

Several gender non-conforming characters

Trans girl in the main cast

Cardcaptor Sakura?

Fuuka

One of the dudes is canonically gay, not that it makes much of an improvement to the show

A Centaur’s Life

there’s a moment where a lesbian objects to her PDA being considered more obscene than the straight equivalent, which is nice but pretty off-the-cuff

Rose of Versailles

Oscar’s debatably genderqueer, though the show goes some real questionable places towards the end

Gay ladies?

Hunter x Hunter

Trans girl in the supporting cast. Her story’s extremely minor in the grand scheme of things but it’s there and it’s good

Love and Lies

potato-kun gets a harem that includes his male best friend

Land of the Lustrous

non-gendered rock people searching for meaning in life

Bodacious Space Pirates

via @madscientist212: “two explicitly lesbian characters who are lovers, and one of the story arcs involves the crew helping one of them avoid being forced into an arranged marriage to a dude by her uncle”

Banana Fish

Extremely dated BL-flavored crime drama; unfortunately falls into the pitfalls of old-ass exploitation films: csa, sexual assault, etc. It’s such a problematic fav tho

Kiss Him, Not Me

Reverse harem includes a lesbian

Double Decker! Doug & Kirill

heavy gay subtext between leads and secondary cast members; well-intentioned trans representation that’s... kinda clumsy, tbh

Zombie Land Saga

one of the zombie girls is a trans girl who dies from the shock of puberty. it’s p incidental to her character but the show’s real cute otherwise so go for it

Anima Yell

apparently one of the girls admits to having a crush on a female teacher. or something. idk this show looks hella boring why bother

THE SUBTEXT IS STRONK: not textually gay (some you could argue could fall under category #2 and vice versa; not the point of this post) but can be read that way, even though these shows aren’t super concerned w/ romance in general

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Neon Genesis Evangelion?

Depending on the version, Shinji’s sexuality can be read a variety of ways. Manga Shinji is pretty clearly bi; TV anime Shinji you could debate.

Free, I guess

Love Live (Sunshine esp.) if I’m counting Free

Symphogear

Dear Brother (Oniisama e, otherwise known as BE STRONG)

Kids on the Slope (Sakamichi no Apollon)

Nominally they’re straight and pining for the same girl but BOY do Kaoru and Sentarou have a LOT of chemistry with each other, so much that it’s hard to read them otherwise

Marimite (Maria Watches Over Us)

Izetta: The Last Thing I Would Watch Even If I Had a Gun Pointed at My Head

Despite what you may have heard, this show is bad and 100% plays in bait territory. Also, obnoxious gun fetishism and way. too. much. goddamn. phallic imagery.

Tanaka-kun is Always Listless

Umamusume: Pretty Derby

Princess Principal

Spiritpact

I have complicated feelings about this goddamn trash fire of a show, but halfway through the second season it turns into a genuinely compelling gay pseudo-romance (?) about two boys navigating heteronormativity. also i guess the main couple exists, tho they spend a ridiculous amount of effort no-homoing

Amanchu

basically any sports anime ever tbh

Golden Kamuy

MADE FOR THE STRAIGHTS BUT STILL OK: the yuri, BL, etc. that’s clearly targeted at a heterosexual audience but respectful enough to be enjoyable for the people they’re about

Doukyuusei

This Boy Caught a Merman

This Boy is a Professional Wizard

Strawberry Panic

Love Stage??? I have some qualms about putting this here but of the trashy BL anime that exist this is probably the least offensive

Maria-Holic

TEXTUALLY GAY BUT BLUGHHHH: the yuri and BL that just sux

Sakura Trick

Junjou Romantica (how the hell does this thing have three seasons)

Sekaiichi Hatsukoi

Gakuen Heaven

Dramatical Murder (POTATO DOGGO)

Super Lovers UGH

idk Gravitation and all that other crappy BL I don’t have the patience to list

GIMME THE TRASH NOW: problematic as all hell but i sure ain’t complainin b/c i’m gay ass trash

Netsuzou Trap (NTR)

Riddle Story of Devil

Love to Lie Angle

if you ever wanted a generic ass harem comedy except with a potato girl instead of a potato guy, here’s that compressed into 3 minutes

Citrus

Corpse Party wwww

Gakuen Handsome FITE ME

NOT TOUCHING THIS HORNET’S NEST WITH A TEN FOOT POLE: pls,,,, save me from the Disk Horse

Sound! Euphonium

One of these days I might organize this a lil better. Maybe if/when Tumblr figures out how to make editing not a pain in the ass

#gay shit #long post

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 7 years ago

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Michael After Midnight: The Killing Joke

The Killing Joke is a pretty damn good comic. Considering how much I resent Alan Moore, this should tell you a lot about the overall quality; it’s a fantastic tale of the Joker, featuring a potential origin and an incredible monologue and one final, actually pretty funny joke at the end. It asks the question: can one bad day drive a man to be as evil as Joker? It also is incredibly controversial because Joker pops a cap in Barbara Gordon, shattering her spine and leaving her in a wheelchair. People have long argued that this is some offensive shit, a true “women in refrigerators” moment, a horribly offensive use of the character that turns Barbara into a helpless victim, and honestly, I have to say… these arguments are really fucking stupid. What’s the title of the comic again? Oh, right, The Killing Joke. This comic isn’t about Barbara; hell, it’s not really even about Batman. This is the Joker’s story, first and foremost, so why do people act like it should have focused a bunch on Barbara’s suffering here? There were plenty of stories after that focused on her, and it’s not like she was an undeveloped character here, it’s not like she was created solely for this one moment. Really, this comes across as an occupational hazard more than some evil, misogynistic plot device designed to ruin Barbara.

If you want that, just watch the movie version!

God, how do you fuck up one of the most interesting and fascinating – if not the best – Batman tales ever written? In ways so mind-boggling that I just have to tell you about it, though let’s be real: you already know what they did wrong here. You’ve heard just how poorly they handled this. I’m just here to throw my two cents in.

The tale is, well, The Killing Joke: the Joker tries to drive commissioner Gordon to madness to prove a point, and we get to see what MIGHT be the Joker’s origin. But here, we get an extended prologue! We get to see Batgirl develop, and see her fight a criminal named… ugggh… Paris Franz. He is a creepy rapey pervert with a sick Batgirl obsession. This stuff was clearly put in to alleviate all the “stuffed in the fridge” crap the comic got, and so really doesn’t amount to anything, so you might as well just skip this part. Anyway, can Batman stop the Joker or whatever? I mean, this is kinda rhetorical, you already know the answer.

Let’s just get the prologue part out of the way. How is it? It fucking blows. Moving on.

...Okay, fine, to be fair to this I will explain exactly WHY this blows. One of the biggest problems is Paris Franz himself, a villain so dumb, creepy, and uncharismatic that it makes any scene he’s in a chore to watch. There’s no gimmick to him, no Batman villain colorfullness, he’s just a creepy stalker with a name stupid even by the standards of a universe where there is a guy named Edward Nygma who became a villain called “The Riddler.” I may go so far as to say Paris Franz is the worst Batman villain ever seen in a movie, edging out the awful Bane in Batman & Robin by a bit of a margin, but here’s the thing: if he were the only bad part of this section of the movie, I could forgive it. He’s not. He’s not even the worst part.

No, the worst part is, depressingly enough, Batgirl herself. In their attempts to make the story less sexist by giving Barbara focus, they somehow made the film exponentially more sexist than if they had just done a straight adaptation. Remember when I said The Killing Joke is Joker’s story? This is the kind of thing that happens when you try and make it someone else’s story too. In this, Batgirl is reduced from a kind, badass protege of Batman who decided to fight crime out of her own sense of altruism to a hotheaded young woman who is pretty much obsessed with Batman in an uncomfortably romantic sense. You read that right. In trying to make a story that is already mildly sexist AT WORST less sexist, they turned the badass, capable woman who does what she does because she’s into a good person into a whiny, bitchy moron who does what she does because she wants attention from Batman. It doesn’t take a feminist to tell you that’s fucking sexist.

And, of course, there is the infamous cherry on top of this sundae… a cherry that is popped, by Batman. Batgirl and Batman fuck. I’m not even going to dance around this, this is fucking abysmal and ruins both of the characters and fucks their motivations in the ass. Look Bruce Timm, I get it, you have this weird, creepy desire to ship Bruce and Barbara, I remember the vague allusions to it in Batman Beyond, but for fuck’s sake can you keep it out of The Killing Joke? This leads to Batman being characterized as a creepy pervert, Barbara to being motivated by penis, and this movie being an absolute embarrassment. This is like the most fascinating and spectacular backfire I have ever seen. They so clearly thought the original story mishandled Barbara and treated her in a sexist way, and then they just… make the most misogynistic Batman story put to film. It’s a disrespect to every character involved, except Paris Franz because he blows anyway. And you want to know what the worst part of all this is?

As soon as it’s over, it’s never mentioned again.

Yeah, remember how we’re watching an adaptation of The Killing Joke? Well, as soon as this movie gets past this bullshit and into the adaptation part, it kind of ignores this whole first hour of the film save for a couple of vague allusions. So, ultimately, nothing that happened matters, and it only serves to sully the shit people actually came to see. Are you really going to be kind to the actual adaptation after having to sit through a bunch of boring, pointless filler that does nothing but turn a character into a sexist caricature, make Batman into a creep who fucks the people he’s training, and basically just exists to fill screentime? It’s even worse because, when all is said and done, the actual adaptation of the comic is actually really good, save for a couple of bumps here and there.

Hearing Mark Hamill finally get to read the Joker’s monologue, something he’s wanted to do for years, is just oh so gratifying, and seeing all the insanity of the page come to life on screen, from the Joker’s carnival to the flashbacks of his possible origin, is all so good. Even the final joke, the “killing joke” if you will, is done well. Like this is what we came for! This is what we wanted to see! And yet the lingering problems of the prologue remain, and come to a head in a single line of dialogue.

One of the creepy things about the comic is Joker stripped Barbara naked after shooting her, and showed the pictures to her dad. It’s not outright stated or really implied, but you can come to the not totally unreasonable conclusion that Joker stuck his funny bone into Babs without consent. It’s fucking creepy to think of, and it’s not how I personally interpret it, but it’s there and open to be seen that way if you choose. Now, here, it’s outright stated Joker visits hookers after getting out of jail, and the hooker who says this wonders out loud if he found a new girl since he hasn’t visited them. And so, what was a possible interpretation has gone from an interpretation to basically outright implied. It’s hard not to assume that Barbara was raped with this information given to us, and so the ugly issues of the first half rear again, and suddenly the adaptation we’ve all come to see has become as misogynistic as its detractors have always claimed it to be. Even without the opening part, this would still be gross, creepy, and far worse than what happened in the comic, but in the context of the already sexist chunk of the movie that focused on Batgirl, this just becomes so much worse. This is why the story should never have been about anyone but the Joker, because ultimately nothing Batgirl did in the first part really mattered except to set her up as a wholly unlikable protagonist by the writers smearing her image and turning her into a bimbo who does nothing but crave the Batdick.

Still, ignoring that… the adaptation is good. If you just skip through the whole opening part of the movie, you’ve got a solid adaptation on our hands, with the voicework of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill bringing this infamous story to life. If I recommend this, it’s only for the actual The Killing Joke part; for the love of god, just skip that bullshit with Batgirl in the opening. You’ll have a much, MUCH better experience. As it stands, though, this is an adaptation sullied by well-meaning idiocy, proving once and for all that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

I can’t help put think this movie was some sort of “Springtime for Hitler” ploy; they set out to make the most ass-backwards, unprogressive, misogynistic take on The Killing Joke as possible with tons of awful characterization and terrible decisions, all in an attempt to prove that the original comic isn’t nearly as misogynistic as it’s claimed to be, especially in comparison to this. I mean, if that’s the case… it sure seems to have worked. I definitely don’t think the original comic is a flawless masterpiece or anything – it is something made by Alan “Harry Potter Dick Lightning” Moore after all – but all of its problems are inflamed and exacerbated here, turning it into an offensive caricature that drags the name of its heroes and villains through the mud. In the end, the biggest joke of all isn’t the one Joker tells Batman, but the movie itself. What a waste.

#Michael After Midnight #Review #movie review #Batman #Joker #The Killing Joke #animated movie #DC #comic book movie

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lovedreaming · 8 years ago

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himnusz. || drabble

@chcpxn. continued from here.

(j.s. bach included with @oktova's blessing.)

she isn't actually about to kill someone (well maybe). but her eyes scream bloody murder.

these kids. these stupid kids. well, they were probably more college age than actual kids, but--how in God's name did they manage to beat up her Cho-chan?! sure, he's frail for a classicaloid, but given their inherent nature, not even the most muscular of these kids should be able to put a dent in him, no matter how many tough-looking gang signs they made to make themselves feel stronger. which meant that somehow, somewhere, they had some semblance of the power that ran through her and her fellows. could there really be such a thing?

apparently, there is.

they call themselves UPROAR, a policewoman told her when she asked about gang activity near one of cho-chan's favorite outcluse spots. they've occupied this area for the past day--we thought we'd be able to clear them out in no time, but then their leader took out a boombox and when his mixtape started playing--i don't even know how to explain it, but he used some sort of sound-force from it to keep us away. now if you want to cross over to the highway, i suggest--

don't worry, said franzi, giving the woman a wink as she brushed past her. i'm sure everything will be all right.

and now they're standing right in front of her. and now they are going to be judged.

the place is a mess thanks to them, that's for sure. the trees are all graffitied tops to roots--whatever tags the gang had, they spray-painted them vertically instead of horizontally to accommodate. it appears they've taken over a park of some sort, with benches dragged out to form a barricade with the group name plastered across a cardboard plank in bold letters: U P R O A R. they even marked out their territory with physical signs: orange cones sporting amateurishly photoshopped signs that read PASS IT, GET HIT. (ugh--the font is cheap, and she can barely read it underneath the edgy grunge overlay. did these kids have any sense of style?)

there is, so to speak, a line in the sand.

she steps right over it.

two neon blue heads turn at the clack of her heels on the concrete--two teens with too many piercings and hideous dye jobs, crouching on top of the barrier they've thrown together.

❝ay yo, who is this clown?❞ one of them yells. immediately the whole gang clambers over the barricade, buff japanese men with arms crossed, gold chains hanging from their necks--even sporting the backwards caps, nike tank tops and sagging baggy jeans in the american style she'd seen in the hip hop music videos that rapper schubert had shown her during his phase. college punks, trying way too hard to be tough. she'd never met the type before, but she knows it when she sees it. she can almost feel the insecurity radiating from their power-grubbing souls. hell, she doesn't even think they're authentic--they can copy the bare bones of the hip hop aesthetic to a T, but there's something missing from their empty display (aside, that is, from healthy emotions). it just doesn't feel real. though the black american rappers that schubert showed her were shocking at first, she could still sense a certain spirit inside them, which perhaps came from where they came from and how they'd lived--a spirit that, in these young men, is clearly deficient.

❝you hurt my cho-chan,❞ she snarls. ❝you hurt my cho-chan.❞

at her words, a giant boombox appears out of the middle of the throng, and the other uproar members part to let it through. definitely the leader--which she can tell for sure because he is the tallest, with the most buff physique, the biggest gold chain and the saggiest baggy pants. she narrows her eyes as he swaggers to the fore, giving the boombox an extra heft to show off his well-muscled arm. that thing should be too heavy for a normal human to carry--not only does he have mujik, but his mujik seems at least as far advanced as hers. not to mention--there are two other people there--do they have mujik as well?

no matter. she would beat them all. ALL.

❝hey, big nose,❞ he calls, and the whole group guffaws. ❝why don't you get that bird beak out of our business and run off crying like your limp noodle boyfriend?" he turns to uproar. ❝outdoor walker choppin'. ha. we had a ton of fun choppin' him to pieces, didn't we, boys?❞

the guffaws rise as he makes his second gaffe. she balls a fist at her side.

❝i bet my nose is bigger than your dick.❞

the group ohhhhhhs--doesn't matter who gets burned as long as the burn is sick--which the leader doesn't seem to mind. he just gives a contemptuous snort and talks right back.

❝lady, i'm gonna tell this to you once," he replies, giving his boombox another heft. "these guys all know i'm not the type to leave a nice pair of ass 'n tiddies a bloody smear on the concrete, but i mean, you seem to be asking for it. so what's it gonna be? you gonna give it to me, or are you gonna git gud?❞

she whips out her nunchucks and whirls them around, each one dancing like a butterfly in the air.

❝oh, i'll give it to you, all right. i'll give you the beating of your LIFE.❞

he snickers and steps forward. the rest of the group moves behind him like a pack, but he holds a hand up and tells them, ❝she's mine.❞ in a swift movement he flicks the switch on his boombox and the opening notes of his mixtape ring through the occupied park: A, G#, C# on piano, over and over again, easy yet deadly like he wants his footsteps to be. she knows this is mujik once she sees the soundwaves--each one washes over the scene in a different hue, sonic coatings of red, orange and yellow graffiti paint that warped the world around her at its edges. with each note, the park sinks deeper into a different place--the mujik dimension. he can take people to the mujik dimension.--until the trees are no longer there, only towering grunge-stained treelike pillars of uproar's machismo--

and then the beat drops.

❝gather 'round motherfuckers, come on, where you at, yo it's ya boy AKI D. up against a cheap hoe BACH bangin' on them keys is what gave me this magic he made me the real deal--bitch you just plastic! you know what i'm sayin', bet you don't even have dick to face me--hell, i don't think you'll ever have dick! yeah, you look okay with your makeup and titties but up in the morning, what would your man see? you heard me right, bet you ain't even a three you'll need more than a nose job to get a hot ride like me!❞

those words. those words. ordinarily they would roll off her like raindrops off a leaf, but here? it's as if every syllable is built to drain the spirit out of her, along with the sharp slices of pain in her face, so fierce that she can't even open her eyes. and her head--her head pounds with the insults swirling inside it, unable to resist: he is right. i'm not even a three. i look okay with the makeup on but without it i look like a man. i'm plastic and i don't even do a good job of being plastic. yes, i know i haven't had dick. i will never have dick in my life.

this is not schubert's rap. this is not even the rap of those american hip hop stars she heard. it is something crueler, sicker. thirsty for the pain of those it targets, instead of simply trying to prove a point. not even pretending to be righteous in its viciousness--seeking only utter degradation, damn the moral consequences. blood runs down the shredding fabric like the tears down her face. the mixtape's dubstep slams into her, one sound wave after another throwing her about. she's forgotten why she's here. all she can do is sink to her knees, covering her face in her bleeding arms over her worthlessness--

no.

NO.

YOU ARE NOT THIS.

YOU ARE A GOD ABOVE THIS.

slowly she stands, green mujik ribbons swirling around her, healing her wounds, wrapping swathes of new cloth around her once-bleeding body. not just any cloth, she realizes--but clothing, actual clothing--a traditional hungarian dress with white billowing sleeves and a flower-patterned chest and skirt. the dubstep dims to a whisper as a cadenza begins to roll and the ribbon glides away to its sway; the nunchucks melt into a baton in her hand, but no sooner does the baton than it turns again into a saber, silver-bladed, gold-hilted--she doesn't question it. it could have been an extension of her hand--she has never held a sword before in her life, and yet using it seems so simple.

a rush of anger bubbles up within her, an anger surging with rap battle rage--step aside, spineless, step aside, amateur / i bet you've never faced this level of power / ever heard of franz liszt, you whiny little spastic / don't call me a fake when i know i'm i'm a classic--but she does not give in. she will not give in. she will face him her own way. she will face him not as someone like him, but as LISZT. what could someone with such a frail sense of identity have against that? what could any mortal musician have against that?

he is an electronic musician. she is a pianist. she will face him with the piano, the whole of herself--or nothing at all.

there's no need for her to strain for this. the power's at her fingers and it's ready to scream.

♫❝Mujik is asskicking--asskicking is MUJIK!❞♫

the cadenza stops dramatically--in this context it almost parodies the dubstep's beat drop--and in its place the fierce chords of a hungarian march surge forth like the pounding of soldiers' boots in battlefield dirt. a sea of red, white and green washes over the dimension, wiping out the tidal wave of mujik spray paint. the others rush forward with CDs of their mixtapes in hand, flinging them at her like discuses, but a wave of furious fortissimo chords cuts them down--and smashes the bench barricade that they’d made to block the path. as aki d. looks on in shock, she slices the air with her saber, and a massive wave of sound sends them all flying back, splattering them in the hues of the hungarian flag, the hues that just replaced their gang colors on this turf.

❝I saw right through you from the start,❞ she snarls. ❝I don't know why the hell Bach-sama would give such strength to people as pathetic as you--but whyever he did, even he wouldn’t want you to use it like this!!❞

❝ayy, you gotta rap!" aki cries. ❝you're not allowed to do that shit, you gotta rap!❞

he turns up the volume of his mixtape. the red, white and green quivers, and the red, orange and yellow begins to seep its way back in.

❝so even music such as this has rules,❞ she says, using the sheer force of her hungarian rhapsody to speak over the noise. ❝well, i got news for you kids. i don’t play by the rules.❞

her blood strums to a boil in her veins as the march theme builds to a punishing row of descending and ascending intervals. and now here comes the army for whom this piece was originally written--scores of hungarian soldiers and their cavalry lining up behind her, each man tall and fit with a cockade pinned to his chest, each horse’s dark pelt shining with health, rippling with strong muscle underneath. as one they advance with franzi in the lead, surrounding aki d. and his three-man band--no way out. as the volume climbs and then descends, the troops immediately around her begins to melt, infusing her with their strength, as the rest of the troops stand guard from behind, and it is with their strength that she begins to speak.

they are strength of a thousand men in one. the strength of franz liszt.

❝Mujik is the expression of the soul. I’m surprised you three can use it when you don’t seem to know your souls at all. You talk tough and you fight hard, but your power--there’s nothing to it. There is nothing here you have that is your own--not your clothes, not your confidence, not even the culture that you’re trying to ape with all this posturing. You have nothing. YOU ARE NOTHING.❞

frantically aki d. cranks the boombox to full blast--but she hears only own mujik, feels only the surge of ecstatic confidence and the strength of a NATION that two hundred years ago poured out its entire heart to her. for she sees them. they are nothing. once you see nothing as nothing, it can do nothing to hurt you.

❝I see how your mujik makes others helpless. You prey on those who don’t know their true selves, just like you, and so they let you define them in the only way you know how: through a view of the world that makes everyone your inferior. But your reign has breathed its last--I know who I am. I’ve always known who I am. I am Hungarian. I am a pianist. I am a woman. I am Liszt. Who are YOU? WHO ARE YOU?! WHO ARE YOU?!!❞

she doesn't wait for them to reply. several troops rush to restrain them, pinning their arms behind their backs as she strides toward them, into the circle of men and horses. one slice of her sword--and all their manhoods vanish, just before the troops shove them to the ground. each uproar member seizes his crotch, screaming in pain, undoubtedly noticing that nothing is there as they hold and hold but feel nothing.

❝I'll tell you what you're not, she breathes. A man who uses his strength to harm the weak is no man at all.❞

❝YOU BITCH!" the uproar leader howls, clutching his dickless crotch. ❝YOU BITCH!❞

she cocks a hip to the side.

❝You know, I'm not actually sure what to fire back because I don't know who the hell you are.❞

the mujik fades out with the end of the piece, restoring the park’s scenery in a clamor. she returns to bach skydiving out of a helicopter, his epcot ball wig descending from the sky onto his head as he makes a perfect landing with his capelike celestial jacket billowing around him. ah, yes--the uproar leader himself said that bach gave them their abilities, so perhaps he can sense if they are misused, but why was this even an issue in the first place? if he's so great, shouldn't he be able to tell right off the bat they were terrible people, even if they tried to hide it? franzi crosses her arms, but says nothing.

it's the same as before. it’s the same as every other time she’s tried to face that man. she can't say anything.

he looks briefly down at the perfectly castrated privates of the now-unconscious aki d. the others appear to have regained theirs, for a stage 2 mujik user’s changes usually only last in the world of mujik. but their unfortunate ringleader seems to be the victim of a common phenomenon among untranscended classicaloids: as they get stronger, some of the changes they make in the mujik dimension become permanent in this world as well. no blood drips there in graphic fashion--instead his dick and balls have simply disappeared, leaving empty flesh behind.

❝…permanent change," he muses, after several moments of silence. ❝you're making progress.❞

❝b-bach sama?!❞ she stammers, mouth falling open. isn't he going to comment on the fact that the guy doesn't even have a dick anymore? her first instinct is to make a big speech to justify herself, telling him of how they'd beat up her cho-chan and then tore at her with beats like knives. but as it turns out, he just--understands.

❝you've done enough. stand back.❞

his voice is almost a growl. she obeys.

she watches from a short distance as he raises his baton, and the well-tempered clavier begins to play. long rainbow threads pour from the three bodies into his baton, not haphazard ones, but rather--music strings. he's taking the mujik from them. the two other uproar members leap at the hem of his coat, seizing it and begging bach-sama, oh, bach-sama, PLEASE--but he continues to let the mujik play, sweeping his variations through the air as his gift disappears back into the wand from which it came. the notes are ever so repressedly controlled, but she can feel the anger rolling off him like a series of arpeggios. no--she can see it in the shining gold aura that surrounds him, so hot with sunlike rage that it causes the whole park to heat-shimmer.

he turns to her when the ritual is done, as though expecting her to say something. and oh, there's a thousand things she wants to say--you can give and take mujik? why did you give it to them in the first place? how did you give it to them? i thought you didn’t like rap. are you upset with me? would you be upset if i asked you how the hell you missed the fact these are objectively terrible people if you’re supposedly omniscient? but they don’t give each other any time to converse. she nods to him, he nods to her, and then he turns and dissolves back up to his helicopter in a ray of golden light as though he were never there at all.

the two uproar subordinates gape at her, then gape down at their leader’s crotch. saber in hand, she slashes the air between them with a yell--to which they seize the arms of their still-unconscious friend and hurry away as fast as they can--they don’t even stick around long enough to see the sword turn back into nunchucks.

as for aki d.?

he never did get his dick back.

❦яάкσ́czι мαяcн: υηƖσcкєɗ.❦

#;drabble #chcpxn #oktova #classicaloid #|| eNJOY

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star-nova · 5 years ago

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The Lives of the RiffRaff: Charmain Dekker-Frankfort

We Are the RiffRaff Rickie Johnson-The Art of War Vera Sherwood-Little Sister Kali Muburu-Hair Tracy Kwan-Vergil Franz Fawke-Hecklers James Weaver-The Preacher Mamoru Hayagawa-Three Weddings

Tanager's no different from any other little mountain town. If you stand from its highest point, the old unmanned fire tower that has long been taken over by the woods, you can see the Alleghenies way off in the distance. They stand tall and proud like the watchful guardians of us all, and sometimes I wonder if they see us with the eyes of fellow RiffRaff or the same critical eyes as the Others. Do those mountains see my garden, and if so, do they too see it as an “attractive nuisance?”

I catch a lot of hell for letting the neighborhood kids play in my garden. But it's the kind of garden that kids want to play in, and what kind of wicked witch would I be if I put up a fence and hollered at them? When I was a little girl, a garden like this would lead to hours of roaming and running, fairy hunting and tea-partying, and conversations with distinguished ladybugs and praying mantises. If I love to play in my garden, why shouldn't I let anyone else? It's the perfect garden for games of tag, for scrambling under rhododendrons and for climbing big old trees. To be so crotchety as to order these kids out would be an act of true cruelty that the world needs a lot less of.

The kids call me “Auntie Charmain.” Their parents call me “That Crazy Lady Down the Street.” It makes me laugh. I know real crazy ladies; they don't have tea parties with the neighborhood kids and give them fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies. Crazy ladies hollered “Raaaaah!” right in their faces if they so much as looked at them and slammed a metal nightstick against the fence when they passed by. Crazy ladies sat on their front porch steps sharpening their knives, smiling menacingly at anybody who walked by. Kids avoided the hell out of crazy ladies. No child would call my across-the-street neighbor “Auntie Talia.”

Talia Santiago is the boogeyman of Tanager, six feet of rage and uninhibited impulses in the shape and form of a twenty-nine-year-old Portuguese woman. She hails all the way from Frankfort, and any explanation for why she came all the way to little Tanager is left up to local legend. The most common speculation, of course, is that she's on the run from the law. The more savvy of us—myself included—know that Talia's far too well-acquainted with the law to be running from it. The law is Talia's personal plaything that she has wrapped around her little finger. She used to be a cop. She claims to be “retired,” but we all know the truth. Various speculations on just what she had done to warrant her discharge were passed around like ghost stories. Either way, she knew the law just well enough to ensure that even her most brutal antics fell just within its lines. She had never once been to jail, and it's likely her police connections had something to do with that as well.

Talia loves anything and everything that causes pain to others. Knives are her favorite, and she has quite the collection, but she appreciates the effectiveness of a gun as well. She cemented our unusual friendship by leading me into a locked broom closet and showing me her “treasure,” a Glock 19X. “Ask me where I got it,” she said as she looked upon the cold steel like a loving mother looking upon her child.

“I don't think I want to,” I told her.

“Good,” she said, slamming the case shut, “because it's none of your damned business.” From then on, whenever I laid eyes on Talia I could not unsee that Glock. Even on the rare occasions when she did normal-people things, I knew she must have had that thing concealed somewhere on her person. I wish she had never decided she liked me enough to show it to me.

Our relationship with the Others was one of mutual confusion and annoyance. They have no idea why are the way we are, and that caused the unease that typically comes to people in the presence of the unknown. Talia was the only one we knew who actually hated the Others just for being Others. Their greatest transgression, in her eyes, was that they were Others, and it was a crime worthy of any amount of hostility. “They hate us,” she justified, “so they deserve any damn thing they get. I'm gonna keep on showing them what it means to fuck with us.” What she doesn't get is that a lack of understanding does not equal hate. She's just so full of her own hate that she attributes it all to them. It's the only way that she can understand why we have to be RiffRaff.

So while the neighborhood kids leave my garden with arms full of flowers and bellies full of brownies, Talia rips the wings off butterflies and chucks the bodies at their feet. While other towns have alleged ghosts and theorized haunts and haints, Tanager has Talia Santiago. She is disconcertingly real.

Talia's thirtieth birthday came around in the middle of June. She had a party, and I went because if I didn't, only James and Arthur would be there. Even Talia deserved to have everybody she considered a friend at her milestone birthday. Besides, it would give me the chance to bake a cake, which I loved to do but never got a chance to. It would be my gift—I knew better than to get her another weapon, which is what she wanted. I also knew that if I gave her flowers from my shop, I would later find their chopped-up remains strung along her front lawn.

I had expected to see James and Arthur and nobody else, so when I found Sophia and Elsie Bolshevik along with Ellia Rambeau, I nearly dropped the cake I was holding. Talia busted up laughing at my shock. “S'matter, Charmain,” she said in her signature knife-like tone, “you thought you were my only friend?”

“Well...” I fumbled around for the right thing to say. “I just..I didn't know you were close with Ellia and the sisters.” I set my cake down in the center of the table.

“She isn't,” Elsie said flatly, and then I was spooked. I had the eerie feeling that the girls had been forced to come here by some very sharp object, or worse.

“So...what are you doing here, then?” My god, it was probably the worst thing to say, and I saw Talia looking at me out of the corner of her eye. But I needed to reassure myself.

“We're here because it's her birthday,” Sophia told me, and then it all made sense. Sophia, one of the sweetest among the RiffRaff, couldn't stand the idea of anybody being snubbed on their thirtieth birthday, especially not a fellow RiffRaff. She'd come here out of a feeling of necessity, and brought her sister and her best friend with her. In that moment, I admired the hell out of Sophia for her bravery, as she was utterly terrified of both Talia and Arthur the rest of the time.

There was a shiny new motorcycle parked in the driveway, and Talia caught me eyeing it. “Present from Uncle Sal,” she said. “He had it sent all the way over from Frankfort.”

“It's lovely,” I said.

“You wanna take a ride?” “Thank you, but I'll pass.”

“I do!” Arthur jumped up out of his seat, spilling his poker cards everywhere.

“Sure ya do,” Talia said, and gestured for him to follow her. I was grateful for the opportunity to talk to Ellia and the sisters in peace while those two tore up the town. I didn't mind having James around; he never spoke, and he was totally harmless.

“I got a very important announcement when I get back,” Talia said, “so make sure they don't walk out on me, Charmain.”

“We'll be here,” I assured her. “Is it all right if I pour them some lemonade and iced tea?” There was wine, but Sophia didn't drink and I preferred not to most of the time.

“Pour 'em whatever you want,” Talia said with a shrug. “Cut your arm and offer 'em your blood for all I care.”

When Talia returned, and after she had taken James around for a ride, she said, “I'll be going back to Frankfort.”

“You're moving?” I was surprised at just how upsetting the news was to me. As bad as she was, I couldn't imagine life in Tanager without Talia. She was one of the only things that set us apart from every other mountain-rimmed little Southern town.

But she said, “Hell no, I'm not moving. I'm just going over there to catch up with my family. I ain't seen 'em in a good, long while, and my brothers wanna see me now that I've turned thirty and all.” Talia had one older brother and three younger. She was the only girl.

“I'll take good care of your bike while you're out,” Arthur said.

“It'll be the last thing you do,” Talia assured him.

“Well, now.” I didn't quite know what to say. Things would certainly be different around here without Talia. “I hope you have a nice time,” I said finally. “Give my regards to your brothers, and if you need anybody to watch the house, I'll...”

“You ain't watching the house,” Talia said, “you're coming with me.”

“Pardon?” I'd have been less stunned if she told me we were going to Mars.

“Do I fucking stutter?” Talia asked. “I said your ass is coming with me. And so are the rest of you ladies.”

Sophia visibly paled. “Me too?” she squeaked. The poor thing looked like she was going to faint.

“Just the girls?” Arthur asked, only a little disappointed.

Talia nodded. “This is gonna be a girl thing. We don't need your dicks flopping around everywhere.”

The guys were unbothered; with Talia gone, Arthur would have to take her place as the local boogeyman.

“But why do you want us?” I asked. “I mean...don't you want a private affair with your family?”

“Hell no,” Talia said. Then, “To be honest, Charmain, I've been planning to bring you round my homeland for a long time now. Sweet little country girls like you need at least a certain amount of exposure to the city. Besides, my bros want to meet you. I told 'em about you, and they're shocked to death that I have a friend like you at all.”

I, too, was shocked to death that Talia had a friend like me at all. But it made me more than a little uneasy to know she had told her brothers about me; who else had she told about me? Nobody knew what Talia did for herself after her discharge from the force, but a network of shady connections was the stuff of rumor. Pushing my discomfort aside, I simply said, “I see.”

“So why do you want us too?” Ellia asked.

“Same reason,” Talia said, playing with the cake-cutting knife.

“You told your brothers about us?” Sophia asked.

“No,” she said, “but they're gonna learn.” She ran the knife over her fingertips a few times, and her smile was as cryptic as what she had just said. She stood up and sank the knife into my double-layer red velvet cake (the color of blood, in honor of the birthday girl), taking off the H in “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TALIA.”

“And you're gonna learn,” she went on, “that this shithole town is nothing like the real world.” She served the first slice of cake to me instead of to herself.

The more I thought about it, the better two weeks in Frankfort sounded. I had been a country girl all of my life and had never been to any city larger than Stonesville, which was more of a gentrified suburb than a true city. My best friend Anna had been to Washington a few times, but when she returned she was never in much of a hurry to go back again. Either you embraced urban life, or you stayed right here in the country among the trees, dirt roads, and the birds for which Tanager was named.

Here in Tanager, I was one of the town misfits, the “RiffRaff.” The neighbors didn't trust a woman who spent so much time with the neighborhood kids, nor did they trust one who still romped about in gardens and made little houses for fairies. Some older ladies caught me talking to Prince, one of my tallest hydrangeas, and muttered that I may not be “all right in the head.” The poor kids who were warned against visiting “Auntie Charmain” would stand on the other side of the street and watch with longing as the other kids hopped on my stepping stones and scrambled in and out of my pink rhododendrons. It made me terribly sad, both because I could see how much they wanted to come over and play and because they were made to see me as something that I'm not.

Then there were the ones who cared more about my hooked nose and my slight harelip than they did about my garden. They called me a witch and told stories about hexes and potions and children baked into cookies and pies. “If you go in there,” I heard a boy of about twelve say to his younger siblings, “she'll put you in her oven, and bake you into brownies. That stuff she feeds to the kids is made out of other kids who got lost in there.”

“Hey, kiddo,” I told him, “telling lies to scare your siblings is a very mean thing to do.” But they took off down the road, screaming the whole way, and it almost made me cry. I only hoped that one of my regular visitors would set them straight later on--”She's not a witch, she's Auntie Charmain!”

Thinking all this over cemented my decision to go to Frankfort. Would I be RiffRaff there too? Or would I transform into someone completely different when I took my first step into that capital city, like Cinderella when she stepped out of the carriage that had once been a pumpkin?

In the end, we all decided to go to Frankfort—Sophia, Elsie, Ellia, and me. “It'll be new,” Elsie told me. “Talia's right, country girls should see the city at least once in their lives.” I was incredibly grateful that I wouldn't have to be alone with Talia in a strange city, and so with all of that said and done, we prepared to leave for Frankfort on the 15th of June. We'd be riding in Talia's Subaru the whole way there.

I trusted Anna with the care of the house and garden. “Remember,” I told her as I was giving her the keys, “if any of the kids want to come by and play, go ahead and let them.” I doubted the kids would show up without me there, but it never hurt to give a heads-up. Anna did not object to allowing them in. Melinda Andrews, who had just graduated high school and had yet to find a job, was willing to cover my position at the flower shop for the next two weeks.

The day before we left, Talia went down to the park and stood up on the ledge of the central fountain. The security guards eyed her with distaste, but as she wasn't standing in the fountain, they had nothing to say. “So long, ya bastards!” Talia hollered at the top of her lungs. “I'm outta here!”

Nobody paid her any mind. It was just Talia being Talia.

#Fiction by Me #The Lives of the RiffRaff #writing #work in progress

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mycasandstarrs · 6 years ago

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SPN 9x13: “The Purge”

THEN: The brother’s relationship has hit a new low.

Stillwater, Minnesota.

Hot dog eating contest.

“Looks like we got a wiener!” Still love that.

“I saw you slip a hot dog in your pocket!”

“Well, I hate to break it to you, pal, but that's no hot dog.”

OOOHHHHHHHH GOT HIM.

RIP Wayne McNut.

Did Dean sleep at all?

Apparently, he did not.

“You sure you're okay, Dean?” Gee, Sam. What do you think?

“This isn't about what I said the other day, is it?”

“Oh, about that we're not supposed to be brothers? No, don't flatter yourself. I don't break that easy.”

“Oh, good, 'cause I was just being honest.”

Donna! My lovely queen.

Slim Jim Morgan, first vic’s enemy, possible suspect.

I love her accent.

“When I gear up for a competition, I eat lettuce -- stretches the stomach.” Does it?

Mala, Jim’s wife.

Aww, I love the photo of their wedding.

Mala was having an affair with Wayne.

“I don't mean to be rude, uh... But how is it that Wayne McNut is your type? I mean, you're married to a man who's barely a buck -- wet.”

“What can I say?”

“Oh. Yeah, I get that -- a little extra cushion for the, uh...” Never forget.

Mala hadn’t been cursing Wayne. “Putsi bags are also used for blessings. I wanted Wayne to win.”

“Wayne used to call me his ‘Princess Jasmine’." Awww.

“Up Where We Belong” by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes.

Aww, I remember how we all cheered for her.

RIP Workout Bride.

“All women lie about their weight and age.”

“Wait, you told that waitress the other day you were 29.”

Wow, Dean.

“Check this out. What is that? A birthmark?”

“Huh. So the weight had to come off somehow, right? What if it's a suction mark?”

Sam’s right.

“You're weird around girls.”

“What does that mean, weird?”

“You're awkward. You know, weird -- Sam Weird.”

i’d argue he’s gotten better.

“Sorry, man. I'm just... being honest.” The passive aggressive comeback.

Trainer has the same suction mark.

It all comes back to Canyon Valley.

“You boys are both certified personal trainers?”

“Yeah. Yeah, personal training brothers. Kind of like Hans and Franz, but, uh, less German.”

“And you're certified in...”

“Makin' people sweat! Yeah. Kickin' ass and takin' names! That's how we do!”

Dean, hon...tone it down.

Maritza and Larry.

“I was Maritza's first client back in Peru. I was on a student visa -- homesick, stressed, eating my troubles away.”

“Oh, he was the size of a casa.”

“Oh, it's true! I was one empanada away from a heart attack. But then this... gorgeous godsend made me the lean, mean, fighting machine I am today.”

*Larry busts out some kung fu moves*

Well, ok.

WOWZA I FORGOT ABOUT YOGA TEACHER SAM.

“How the hell do you know anything about yoga?”

“You're not the only one who's ever dated someone bendy.”

You son of a bitch.

There’s our girl!

OoOoohhhh that’s gross.

“Flojo. You got time to lean, you got time to clean, huh?” lol

That pudding looks pretty good, actually.

Dean would sneak pudding for himself.

“Okay, good job, guys. Go to, uh... Downward dog. Hold for five minutes.“

“Five minutes? It's usually 30 seconds.”

Downward dog for five minutes would be exhausting as hell.

I can’t say I’d object to having Sam as my yoga instructor.

Oh dear.

OH DEAR.

“Agent Frehley? What are you doing here?”

“Agent Frehley?”

“Uh, I-I-I don't know. She must be pretty out of it, huh?”

Walk away, Sam.

“Dean? What's wrong with you?”

“I need your help.”

“Where are you? Dean?!”

I somehow never noticed that the phone landed in the pudding bowl.

“Pudding. It was supposed to be for the clients, but I couldn't resist.”

“What, salted caramel?”

“Yeah, man. The best of both worlds -- salty and sweet.”

Can’t argue with that.

Dean knew what roofies are. “You think I want to end up in a hotel bathtub with my kidney carved out? In Chechnya?”

“You know, I didn't mean to bail on you fellas, but I've been waiting over six months to get into Canyon Valley. And let me tell ya, it was worth it. I already lost 10 pounds!” Aww.

“...'cause he said I loved cookie-dough milkshakes more than him.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, Doug's a dick. You deserve better.”

AMEN.

“That was a dark time for me. Whoever said you eat your pain? Not me. I guzzled it.” Can we hug her yet?

Larry and Maritza know about the brothers being hunters.

“Relax. I'll take care of it. Just get rid of the evidence.”

Ew, jars of fat.

“Okay, I'm no health nut, but that is just wrong.”

“A fish taco?” lmao.

“Look, I would never hurt anybody! Okay, this -- this is why Larry and I started Canyon Valley. We could help people lose weight, and I could feed. It was a win-win.” It really was. Kinda reminds me of the grief counselor in S13; both are monsters but they’re trying to use what they are to help others.

Cafeteria dude, Alonso, is Maritza brother.

“Listen, freak! Your sister and I spent years building this operation. And if you think I'm gonna let your gluttony destroy it, you got another thing coming. I want you out. Now.”

“I'm not leaving Maritza.”

“Well, I got news for you, pal. She doesn't want you here, either. Either you leave... or I'll make you.”

Them’s “kill me” words.

RIP Larry. Killed by Alonso.

Damn it, Maritza just wanted to help her brother. Now her husband’s dead.

“Well, till we figure out which side she's on, she stays put.”

“I am on your side.”

I was about to say, what do you mean “until you figure it out”?? She’s willingly giving you info, including info on how to kill her own brother.

I’m gonna get jumpscared at any moment, it’s too quiet.

RIP chef. Killed by Alonso.

I don’t know if taunting him is the best idea, Sam???

RIP Alonso. Killed by Dean.

Maritza lost everything.

“Once this place clears out, we're gonna make this a family affair.” NOW HOLD ON.

“We're not gonna kill Maritza.”

“She’s a monster.”

“Yeah, who saved our asses.”

Yep.

“What if I had crossed paths with a hunter back when I was possessed by Gadreel? I could've ended up dead, too. Would I have deserved that? Would I have deserved to die?” (Shit, who’s to say some dummy is gonna try to kill Michael!Dean?)

Oh no, OH NO. I know what’s coming.

“Just once, be honest with me. You didn't save me for me. You did it for you.” ...I can’t fully argue with that.

“You are certainly willing to do the sacrificing as long as you're not the one being hurt.” Oh, you say that now...

“All right, you want to be honest? If the situation were reversed and I was dying, you'd do the same thing.”

“No, Dean. I wouldn't. Same circumstances...I wouldn't.”

I don’t believe you....but I just felt my heart wither and die, so that’s great.

#supernatural #spn summer rewatch #spn liveblog #spn 9x13 #the purge

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