#when i was younger and more naive i had a lot of Opinions on things i have since calmed down on

[aninkwellofnectar]

will never not be funny watching a friend i once had flip from militant feminism to militant anti-feminism in the span of under 6 months but my controversial opinion is a lot more women are on the brink of that than they will ever admit...

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Little random, but you've answered asks about Disney Princess movies before a while ago.

What are your thoughts on Frozen and Anna and Elsa?

Thoughts on Frozen

People like it, but to me it's a thoroughly "ok" film. It's far from Disney's best, not one of the worst, but sort of middle of the road. The plot's a giant mess and was clearly subject to last minute revisions (Hans's sudden villainy comes across as so sudden that it fails to make the point it was trying to make. It wasn't necessary, as the point Elsa makes isn't invalidated even if he wasn't evil and Anna still could have dropped him at the end. And we just get this "YOU FOOL, DIDN'T YOU KNOW I WAS THE MUSTACHE TWIRLING VILLAIN ALL ALONG?!" To which I can only say, "No, Hans, I didn't know that, kind of makes that scene where you left the castle to look for Anna personally very pointless. Nobody would have questioned you, dude." It makes a lot more sense when you consider Elsa was supposed to be the antagonist/misguided in initial drafts and the then desperate need for somebody to be the bad guy.)

Tangled, by comparison, is a much more put together film and in my opinion is much better, but it didn't have a hit song sung by Idina or Anna's adorable nerdiness and Elsa's general angst.

So Frozen gets to be the beloved film for over ten years on, rejuvenating the Disney brand for another generation, and I just have to sit there and take it.

(Perhaps a hot take, I'm not tuned in enough to know, but I thought Frozen 2 was much better as a film in general, much more put together/hard hitting, though it had far less memorable music/the big numbers just weren't as good. It's also a lot more hard-hitting, with none of the comedy and very little of the narrative of empowerment.)

Anna and Elsa

I do like these two and they're very believable characters who do go through character development that feels very real.

In Anna we have an isolated, awkward, young adult who is convinced that 'love' will save her, doesn't know where she stands with what was once a beloved older sister, and when she fucks things up tries to fix it without really addressing the issues she had in the first place until the very end of the movie.

She's fun, she's relatable, if short-sighted and naive, and it's clear that she does have to learn something from her adventure, and that she really didn't understand her sister and what she was going through.

In Elsa, we have someone who has been under immense pressure her entire life while also knowing that she has this terrible secret which means she will never live up to what she has to be to rule a nation. She ends up isolated from her younger sister out of terror of hurting her, which damages their relationship, and she too has growth where when we first meet her in the film, she sees coronation as only a one-day event she has to simply get over with as quickly as possible.

She's also a very relatable character, her struggle is something that speaks to a lot of people and has been iconic for over a decade for a reason, and she's refreshing in that her problems despite being a female lead have nothing to do with men and a man never enters the picture for her.

Even her moment of "WHEEEEEEEE I'M FREEE!" to Anna arriving and "NOOOOOOOOOO! ALL MY ACTIONS HAD TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES!" is a great one as Elsa is only then really forced to confront both herself, her loved ones, and finally accept who she is by the end of the film.

TL;DR

Basically, I like both characters and I think people really like them for a reason.

But I do think the movie's a hot mess.

[my-hi-universe]

Breaking my silence

I DON'T hate Maddie 😭😭

I know that's and unpopular opinion around here but she honestly didn't do anything wrong, and let's say you think, "she got with Cait when she knew she had something with vi," wouldn't Cait be more at fault?

And I hate to be the friend that's too woke, but Cait is her boss, sure she was in a bad mental state but I'm seeing a lot of people saying Maddie manipulated her...mmm I don't know, that feels a bit off to me. It was a power imbalance, I don't know their ages, but maddie seems a lot more...I wont say younger, but youthful? Naive even?

At the end of the day Cait is her boss in a position of power and she shouldn't have been engaging in those relationships. And now, I feel really bad for Maddie because we know Cait will get back together with Vi and imagine how Maddie will feel? She won't be happy or excited— she'll be absolutely torn apart. No one deserves to feel important, or special and have that all go away in an instant just because Cait felt sad about abandoning her complicated relationship.

But again, maybe I'm reading into it. Maddie seemed like she really liked cait, and I'll be honest Cait didn't seem that into her, but this was a recurring thing with the lines, "I'll come back to bed," and Ambessa saying something along the lines of, "I'm seeing you(Maddie)around here a lot recently," so Cait didn't make a mistake—you can't make the same mistake more than once.

I'm not sure how vi will react to it, technically they weren't even together so I'm not talking about how she'd feel, I'm talking more about Maddie not only as a character, but a person in the arcane world.

I get it, she tore up your favorite ship, but that's only because Cait allowed her to. Some of you guys are hurt and don't want to admit the fact that Cait is more at fault than Maddie. She's not a homewrecker, or any demeaning name for sleeping with her boss. I think simply put, she really liked Cait. She wasn't in a healthy relationship dynamic, and it's a shame that some of you guys, and Cait doesn't seem to care.

[powdermelonkeg]

Out of curiosity, why Gale/Taliesin? I'd have thought you'd match Astarion with Taliesin and maybe Lucien or Remiel with Gale. Not to say I dislike the ship, I can see the potential, but I'm curious where it came from.

Funny answer:

"I have a cat, a library, and a weakness for a good glass of wine. And if the mood takes me, I'm known to try my hand at poetry."

Divines, ask him to dinner before you make a proposal, Gale! Have some decorum!

Serious answer:

So, I do get the impulse to match like with like. Astarion and Taliesin have a LOT in common; roguelike qualities and smooth, self-assured charm, an affinity for knife tricks, sass and drama, some good vanity. Same with Gale and Lucien (can't say anything for Remiel, haven't had a chance to do a proper playthrough with her yet).

But camaraderie and shared personality traits don't necessarily mean they'd compliment each other in a romantic sense.

Let's start with Lucien. He's the youngest of the group, younger even than Wyll (iirc, Joseph said he was 21? He might be a couple years older, but regardless, Wyll is 24). Bubbly, bright, full of enthusiasm and scholarly wit, with a penchant for jokes and a drive for exploration.

Can Lucien talk Gale out of blowing himself up for Mystra?

Would he, Mr. I'm-going-to-ride-a-daedric-horse, my-new-best-friend-is-a-murderous-automaton, discourage Professor Hubris from claiming the Crown of Karsus?

I think Lucien would be concerned for Gale. I think he would know the right option. But I don't think he has the finesse to navigate the tangled weave (heh) that makes up Gale. Lucien is naive, he's sweet, he's willing to accommodate, to the point that I don't think he could tell Gale "no" when it mattered most.

Would they get along? Absolutely! Lucien could teach Gale how to handle magicka, Gale could teach Lucien how to conduct the Weave. Both of them could have lengthy philosophical debates that go over everyone else's heads. Gale would have enough caution to temper Lucien's dwemerology enthusiasm, Lucien would encourage all kinds of discovery into Tamriel's wonders. But I see that manifesting as a mentor-apprentice sort of relationship. Still very close, but having them depend on each other in the way Gale approaches romance would be...self-destructive, I think.

Taliesin and Astarion are a similar, if slightly more dark-tinted, deal. Tally's just gotten out of an organization of horrible, horrible people, whose actions in which he was complicit. He's trying to be better. Astarion has just left a situation of literal slavery to one of the most awful people on the Sword Coast. He's enjoying the chance to be worse. We know how Astarion feels and his opinions on things; he likes hurting people, he's very self-centered, he has a lot to work on himself across his entire character arc as he comes into his freedom.

Personally, I think they'd make each other worse.

That's not to say that I can't see it happening. I could, definitely. It would take a good chunk of meeting in the middle, tiptoeing around each other's baskets that they're struggling to unpack, Tally's aversion to vampires, Astarion's casual cruelty as he lashes out. My personal opinion is that any getting involved would be via Astarion's seduce-and-fling strategy so he gets that foot in the door for Tally's sympathy, and Tally not ever taking it further because Astarion reminds him too much of his fellow justiciars and never assumed it to be more than transactional.

If they DID somehow make it to the endgame, assuming they did everything right, I can see it all falling apart at Cazador.

Tally would probably object to Astarion becoming the Ascendant. Everything in Astarion's life points to ascension being a dangerous thing--if not for continuing Cazador's reign of terror, in subjecting mortals to his will and viewing them all as beneath him, because Astarion's cruel streak would get all the power to fuel every whim it draws up. That kind of dynamic, on a romantic plane especially, is SCARY. If he fails to persuade him but still refuses to help, Astarion leaves him: "I hope you die screaming."

But say Tally DID let him become Ascendant. Whoever the man he fell in love with before ascending is dead. Astarion is a wholly different person with that much power. And he wants to make you his spawn. I can't see Tally willingly becoming a vampire, and I DEFINITELY can't see him becoming a vampire without free will. His whole deal with leaving the Thalmor is getting his autonomy back and being able to make his own decisions. So they leave each other.

I see Tally/Astarion ending in abject tragedy either way. An entertaining story, definitely, but one that brings out the worst in both parties until its inevitable spiral, if it even takes off the ground.

Hence, why Wyll is with Astarion in my plans. He'd bring out the good in Astarion, Astarion would crack the self-sacrificing shell Wyll has. They'd compensate for each other's flaws and compliment each other's strengths. I could write an entire essay about their potential dynamic, not to mention all the flirty lines between them in-game.

Would Tally and Astarion be friends? Absolutely. They share gossip and snark around the campfire. Would Tally help Astarion absolutely gut Cazador? Would Astarion offer to carve out Tally's dad's throat? Definitely. The two are inseparable, and would kill anyone who dared raise a finger against the other. They'd mull over their shared plights of terrible overlords and being used and abused. They'd push each other's buttons and be petty together until it was time to buckle down and win a fight, then celebrate after. But a romance would require so much compromise on one side or the other that I think they both risk falling to pieces over it. There's much more room for differences in lifestyle if you're not planning to spend your life with someone and pour the whole of your heart out to them.

Now, the crux of the question: Gale/Taliesin.

The way Gale shows love is in unwavering devotion. However, he never expects it in return; he's prepared to make his case many times over when he first asks you for an artifact, and half-expects you to throw him away when he reveals the bomb in his chest.

Taliesin is willing to follow his rescuer to the ends of Nirn if you save him. Even into dwemer ruins that terrify him, even if you (to his knowledge) go as mad as Septimus when you read the Elder Scroll, he's prepared to look out for you. Even when it's your destiny to fight the end of the world and be surrounded by death as you do it, with a high probability that he'd be a casualty.

Gale's fatal flaw is his hubris. Tally would have no problems telling him "no" when the Crown came into play, or any other similar power for that matter.

If you talk to Taliesin about his past, he mentions that at one point, his father made him resent many aspects of himself, "even [his] own body."

Gale is willing to marry a MIND FLAYER if they're the person he's come to love. Completely seriously! He loves them! He doesn't even flinch, he even pays them mind flayer-specific compliments in the epilogue and means it with his whole heart!

Would Tally be willing to hang out with the walking apocalypse? Would he be able to talk down detonating the orb, and beg Gale to choose him over the Absolute's demise? Would he be able to tell Gale that going for the Crown of Karsus is a bad idea? Would he be willing to put his enchanting skills to use to buy Gale a few more days of life? Would he like Gale for the man he is over the magic he commands?

Would Gale be able to commit himself to Tally, regardless of how different Altmer are from Eladrin? Would he appreciate every part of Tally, no matter how he differs from conventional Altmer standards? Would he be willing to stand between Tally and his dad, and do it without shattering the rest of Tally's family (as murder threats would)? Would he appreciate Tally for the mer he is, the mer he's TRYING to be, as Tally leaves the Thalmor behind?

They both share a taste in books, both educational and spicy. They both like cooking, and Gale would be willing to cook up vegetarian meals in a snap. They both have a curiosity for culture and knowledge they have yet to encounter. They both love cats and a good bottle of wine.

The clone spell would let Gale match Tally's lifespan.

Tally would love and pay perfect respects to Tara (as everyone SHOULD).

Misty Step could be a solution to crossing bodies of water, and Ice Spike could be an upgrade to Ray of Frost.

Imagine, after several tendays of roughing it, a perfect illusion of a fancy date on a warm shoreline under the stars.

Imagine the two of them reading together by a warm hearth while it pours outside, wearing silk robes and sipping Alto Wine.

I think they'd bring out the best in each other, they'd enjoy each other's company and each other's idea of relaxation, and they'd share enough interests that they'd be happy to trade back and forth.

Also I think Gale's mother would absolutely love him. She HAS to meet him. And spoil him. He'd join her and Tara for tea and gossip, I guarantee it.

[st-danger]

Phantom/Aeon, gimme that bug

How I feel about this character

Adoration. Pure, unadulterated adoration. He's got big younger sibling energy in the "teasing and causing problems" kind of way, and brings a levity to the group that the others don't. Are all of them fun in their own way? Of course.

Does Aeon just have a little more of a playful, carefree edge?

I think so.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Dew- I don't think there was any bad blood between them, ever. I think they connected from the get go, and that Dew really enjoys the energy and playful nature. They're both really good at interacting with the crowd, and I think Dew revels in the idea of getting the chance to be a corrupting, dirty influence in any way he can.

Swiss- affectionate towards him on stage, and just like Dew, can't resist a little troublemaker. They're both very "fun" focused, and Aeon's carefree, down to try anything twice with zero shame is something Swiss is unable to resist.

Ifrit- Just for the sole reason I want to write him dangerously seducing Aeon and giving him the most overwhelming, borderline scary experience of his unnatural life.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Mountain. They're both playful and a little goofy, but I think it would be more of a teasing, sibling kind of energy.

My unpopular opinion about this character

This is my opinion only, so don't come after me- I struggle to see the appeal of what seems to be fairly widespread infantilization of his character. Even outside of agere, which is something I am not comfortable with and so do not engage with, I think that while he may be a little naive about life on Earth, and has a lot to explore and figure out, he's not a child. He's certainly not innocent- they all came from Hell, and none of them are innocent. Pinning him as an inexperienced little child does his character a disservice by ignoring the part that he's still an infernal, supernatural creature, and removes a lot of agency from him when he is a capable, curious, and sneaky critter.

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

Give me more interaction with Dew. I love that Rain and Swiss have their bits with him, but I want to see more, personal interaction between the two.

[revivemyreverie]

Hai Rev 🙈, congratulations on releasing Marcoritas, the concept is truly intriguing !

Please can I have ⛺ for Marcoritas or Toytoriya about Mélancosmos ? Or maybe, Marcoritas about Hexeons ? I will let you choose.

I'll stick with Melancomos and Toytoriya for now! Cope dorms...

⛺ To see how our dorms would get along

RSA is considered to be on more neutral terms with members of Toytoriya. After all, its always better to make friends than foes! As such, Mélancosmos is considered one of the dazzling dorms students can only imagine to visit someday. 

🧸.

If there’s anyone Lotsie likes in RSA, its got to be Ptolemy! With the both of them being known for their kind dispositions, it only makes sense that they get along. Concerning his overwork though…Lotsie can’t say there’s anything wrong with that. Don’t all dorm leaders work hard anyways?

Even carefree Lotsie has heard of the ever-worried Calchas. He thinks it’s good that the dorm’s leader has such a good friend, but does think Ptolemy should break away from Calchas sometimes. In his words, “friends are a necessity, but don’t let them control your life!”

Lotsie’s never been good with tricksters, and even worse at confusing debates. So with Plutarch, he had to develop a very quick yet simple plan to escape the Grand Schemer of Mélancosmos. All Lotsie does is put on a sad smile, while tilting his head in confusion. Most times, its able to hint enough that Lotsie isn’t prepared for the complex questsions Plutarch likes to ask. 

Lotsie finds Calixte to be absolutely adorable, even if his dorm members tend to disagree. When it comes to the first year, Lotsie never minds giving the RSA student a hug and even a few souveniers from Toytoriya itself. Secretly, Lotsie thinks Calixte happens to resemble an old toy he used to have as a child. 

⛏️.

Fortunately, it appears Pat’s more judgmental side has failed to find anything too bad with Ptolemy. To him, the dorm leader is nothing more than a polite guy who cares a lot for his classmates. But being unable to deny things can get troublesome, especially if someone has to say no on Ptolemy’s behalf. For that, Pat deducts 5 points!

Pat understands Calchas to quite the degree, with having a best friend like Lotsie. He thinks Calchas choosing to intervene with Ptolemy’s choices will benefit the dorm leader, even if others don’t think so. To him, even if their friend gets mad, it’s better that than chaos infecting their lives.

Plutarch’s debates may prove difficult for other students, but Pat’s sharpness has helped him gained the respect of the fox beastman. That said, he doesn’t enjoy needing to argue over things, he already gets enough from his arguments with Lotsie after all! Still, if any student wants to avoid being tricked, calling Pat to deal with Plutarch is all they need to know!

Pat doesn’t like mischievous students, even the more calm ones like Calixte! He disregards the reputation that follows the unnerving student, and likes to let him know to stay away from the more dangerous places around Toytoriya when school swaps occur. 

🚀.

Saturn finds Mélancosmos’ dorm leader to be nice, if not a little too naive. A younger version of Saturn might have picked on a student like him, but he’s grown out of that phase a long time ago. If anything, he’d probably tell Ptolemy to loosen up every now and again! 

Despite his more nonchalant nature, Saturn can relate to Calchas’ protective nature with his dorm members. He also agrees with his liking for flying. The sky is just one of those things that make Saturn feel free!

Saturn’s a far more simple guy than Plutarch, but that doesn’t mean he gets trapped in his tricks! His now-mature attitude towards life means he’s able to see a trap of wit when the opportunity arises. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s able to avoid a hard discussion all the time. 

Concerning his opinion of Calixte, Saturn falls into the category of finding the first year to be unsettling. Because of this, he has a tendency to avoid the underclassman, or even avoid eye contact as to avoid being spotted by him. Outside of his fears, Saturn doesn’t know too much about him!

🔋.

A true, fairytale character in Zackery’s head, Ptolemy is absolutely a prince to defeat if Zackery ever wants to take over the world! However, that plan requires going to RSA itself, so he has to sadly put a pin in it. Despite his proclaims about his one-sided rivalry, Zackery is more likely to help the dorm leader than attack him. 

The Royal advisor to Prince Ptolemy, Zackery believes Calchas would be far more suitable on the side of villains! Not to say Zackery thinks he needs an advisor, he just likes the idea of having a full “team”! 

A fellow villain, and a trickster at that! Zackery, being the smart student he is, is usually able to see through any trick Plutarch throws at him. However, instead of using this knowledge to avoid the RSA student, Zackery appears to have gotten intrigued by the fox beastman’s “evil ways”.

Zackery enjoys the company of Calixte as another “mad scientist”. He disagrees with the belief that he’s a rather cute student, but instead sees Calixte as someone scary, as anyone on the side of villainy should be! Although, Zackery say his appearance is quite adorable, which makes it better to trick heroes! 

🤠.

Any buddy of Lotsie’s is a buddy of Winston’s, especially ones from RSA! Ptolemy’s workload is almost erased when this cowboy is around. He won’t need to repay Winston either, all that matters to him is that the leader is able to get a good break!

Meeting Calchas after stumbling upon the vice-leader doodling, Winston regards him as a very creative character! He tries to hype him up whenever school meet events occur. It might get a little obnoxious for Calchas, though….

Unfortunately for Winston, he’s far too susceptible to Plutarch’s tricks. Being the gullible cowboy he is, Plutarch has gotten Winston to fall for both obvious pranks and goaded into debates. Someday, hopefully, he’ll learn to think more with his head!

Being reminded of his current rival (Zackery), Winston finds Calixte to be a little aggravating with his mischievous attitude, but tries his hardest to not let it get to him. Outside of that, he finds the RSA student to be cute, like a little sheep! 

[pink-strawberry-kissess]

Leon x ships (and why I don’t support anything other than aeon)

THIS IS MY OPINION, you are free to ignore this. But these are my particular reasonings as to why I do not enjoy the other ships for Leon and why I find them incredibly problematic. 

❤️ Aeon (Leon x Ada) 

I started this blog because I fell in love with the ship. It has the right amount of hurt/comfort that I was desiring at the time, and when I really broke down all the intricacies of the ship, I couldn’t get over it. 

To get things as crystal clear as possible. MOST AEON shippers do not think that aeon is a healthy relationship. It’s very much a push and pull of two people that realistically shouldn’t be together but find each other in each other’s lives. 20 years were spent to work through this “relationship.” (think batman and catwoman)

re2 we have the meeting. The way they gravitate towards each other, but the way that Leon changes Ada. Only when she realizes that he’s simply a good person wanting to do the good thing, she struggled to finish what she needed to do. Which was HER JOB. It’s not too far to say that she WOULD’VE maybe been killed if she didn’t complete her job. She’s not in a safe position. People don’t realize that. When Ada “dies,” a part of Leon dies with him. 

re4 we have another meeting. Leon’s hurt. He’s confused and all of sudden Ada is alive again. He had years of mental anguish and survivors guilt. He holds a lot of resentment towards her. And yet Ada still finds the desire and need to want to protect him. She protects him during her entire campaign. (Play Separate ways before speaking to me..) and at the end, he lets her go with the virus. He doesn’t want this to happen but he can’t stop her. They leave each other in less that desirable circumstances. But he still doesn’t stop her.

off screen re5 we have simply, “the night,” they spend together. Romantic, maybe in a hotel. How we go from re4 to this is never expanded on and since it’s off screen, we’re only here to speculate on what could’ve happened. (They had sex) which is implied in-

re damnation “the sexy one.” a film in which they simply flirt with each other the entire time. The “so when are we going to um, carry on from where we left off that night?”

“So you missed me huh?” Even in this film, we have Ada saving Leon AGAIN. “You owe me one,” before she’s off again.

we have to remember that between re4 and damnation there’s SEVERAL YEARS for them to have potential other meetings that are simply not explored on screen.

more time passes and we have re6 “the aeon fanservice one.” I won’t go into too much detail for this one, but re6 aeon is still superior to me. we have established a sexual relationship at this point, we don’t know if they’ve explored more, and yet Leon’s willing to jump off a burning building the second he see’s Ada needing help? This is the Leon we know. Also they just have each other’s contacts at this point?? They leave again and this is the final time we see them together in the franchise. 

“See you down the road, Leon.”

❌ cleon (Leon x Claire)

Now to be completely honest. I DON’T HATE THE SHIP. I think it’s a delusional one, but the main reason I dislike the ship a lot, is actually because of the shippers. It’s a constant, “claire better,” fight. (I don’t have to say that Claire is a shitty character for me to not ship them etc. which seems to be the core of what cl*on shippers do, which is *drumroll* shit on Ada.)

And I find that most of these shippers are younger, white, and conservative and or naive. And also tend to lack in their abilities to read characterizations and understanding the complexities of morality. 

The shippers have lowkey ruined the character of Claire for me. And I always thought she was a cute character. Not my favourite, but she’s fine. I just never thought of her characterization or storyline to be particularly interesting. But what I do find interesting to me that most Leon x Reader fics simply have a character similar to Claire written in as reader instead.

The idea of two morally good characters together is simply not as interesting to me. It’s always been like this. They are not pulled to each other in a sexual or romantic way which is why I mostly think the ship is delusional. There are SEVERAL instances of this.

Claire does flirt with Leon briefly in re2r. However it’s very clear on Leon’s side that he does not read it as flirting. He barely spends any time with her, and at the end of it, Claire suggests that it “would’ve been one hell of a date,” not knowing that Leon spent more time with Ada for the entire duration of re2r. 

I don’t count degeneration since there’s a weird moment with Angela which I also don’t really count since she’s never heard of again. 

The only other time is infinite darkness. In which Leon refers to her as “a kid.” And that he doesn’t see her “as a woman.” OR to put it more clearly, he does not see her as a love interest. Not to mention the one scene cleon stans cream themselves over, in which Claire falls on top of Leon, where she’s like visibly disgusted. 

And to put the cherry on top, at the end of infinite darkness, they are no longer on speaking terms, and or no longer friends from what we can see. I’ll give cleon shippers one thing. They had a potential moment. “A dinner,” that could’ve happened and yet Claire and Leon both do not see eye to eye. They disagree morally (which is actually interesting) and so they separate. And as for the timeline now, they are no longer friends.

One final note, is that I find cleon shippers INCREDIBLY racist and misogynistic. OBVIOUSLY NOT ALL OF THEM. But all men, until it’s not all men. A large portion of cleon shippers use Ada is a scapegoat for their ship. Painting Ada as a sexual, manipulative, con woman that “steals,” Leon away from Claire. It’s so laughable when Leon was never Claire’s. 

When you have to resort to pinning women against other women, then I just simply do not care to interact with that. 

I also find the whole “caring mother figure,” to be incredibly gross. It’s the same kind of incel talk that guys use to declare what is desirable in a woman. That if you’re not good at being a mother, caring, nurturing etc. Then you’re just NOT DESIRABLE. That being a “pure, wholesome, good girl” is the only reason why you deserve a man, is something YOU need to work out on your own. Maybe do some soul searching on why you think that’s the only reason why you deserve love. 

❌  Leon x Ashley

Similarly, Leon speaks of Ashley as “a young girl,” or a “kid.” “Is this what they’re teaching kids these days?” He does not see her as a love interest. Sure, Ashley does flirt with him a lot. Who wouldn’t?

But at the end of the day, Ashley is a 21 year old girl in university. Still figuring out her life and what she wants. While Leon is a 27 year old trained special agent, whose boss is Ashley’s FATHER. Sure you can get into that fantasy all you want. I totally get that and I’ve been into that ship before. And as you age, oh boy does that ship dynamic not age well. 

There are huge age gap and dynamics that will not work. And I totally get people wanting that type of ship. But it’s REALLY GROSS FOR ME. 

But again, Leon turns her down multiple times, and rejects her as well. Ashley is also no longer seen in the canon.

❌  Leon x Helena

NOW BEFORE PEOPLE SAY ANYTHING. I ACTUALLY DON’T HATE THE SHIP. It’s when it comes down to the fact they have a 12 year age gap that makes me a bit barfy. But furthermore that Helena is younger than SHERRY.

Now if I were to exclude the age gap, I think that they’re VERY HOT. I really enjoy Helena’s character model and them in re6 is SO FUCKING FINE. BUT yup, I can’t get over that age gap. But one of the main issues is that Helena is also canonically an aeon shipper. Which I kind of find adorable? It definitely adds to the aeon storyline in re6.

Helena being 24, while at this point Leon is 36-37. And during re6, Sherry is 26-27. And KEEP IN MIND. When Leon met Sherry, he was 21 and SHE WAS 12.

So when Leon was 21, Helena would’ve been 9 YEARS OLD.

And I won’t even justify Leon x Sherry because

When Leon met Sherry, he was 21 and SHE WAS 12.

And all other ships I honestly do not care for or think are fine.

I’m also supportive of Chreon, metaltango, serrenndy. I read them occasionally but I’m just not that personally emotionally invested in them. I find them cute, and I support people who want to write lgbtq ships. Also chreon shippers are typically also Aeon shippers and I find they mingle well together in the same spaces sometimes.

[2009jorose]

Hi, I just want to send a huge thank you for your recent appreciation to one of my edits! :D As well your work for The Six Musical are amazing. I am curious too, why did you cast who you did?

Aww thank you <3 and no problem you make some really amazing edits :)

As for Six I went through a few different options for a few of the Queens before deciding.

Catherine of Aragon - Esmeralda has great church and praying scenes that match with Catherine's plea to Henry. She was pretty much the only one I had in mind for this since her scenes fit so well.

Anne Boleyn - I went between Jasmine and Meg for a while. Meg has that sass that Anne has and that same sexuality. I ended up going with Jasmine because she has so many good scenes that work for Anne, she has the sassy attitude and the sexual scenes but also some good emotional scenes that I felt worked well.

Jane Seymour - I was originally looking at Aurora for her because of her "death" scene as well as the scenes of her in the bed because of how much that plays a part in Jane's song. The thing with Aurora is she has such little screen time so trying to edit multiple long videos with her was going to be a challenge. Then I remembered Odette's death scene and she has so many good emotional scenes as well as big singing numbers that match so well with Heart of Stone and I have so many ideas for that one with her.

Anne of Cleves - This was a toss up between Pocahontas and Mulan. The both have similar makeover scenes where they're made to look like a completely different person which fits both Haus of Holbein as well as Get Down. I went with Mulan though because her transformation is so much more drastic when you look at her makeup version vs the Ping version since Pocahontas is still feminine in her original outfit.

Catherine Howard - I was originally just going to make one video and it was this one which is why the series is so out of order cause it wasn't until I was like 3/4 of the way done that I decided to do more of them. I saw this animatic All You Wanna Do | Six the Musical animatic [FLASH WARNING] (youtube.com) which was one of my main inspirations to do the series and the way they drew the character as well as the way the character is in the musical I wanted a character who was sexual and had a lot of dance scenes which of course is Holli. I cast Thumbelina as her younger self because in my opinion they look similar but also Thumbelina has that naive youth about her plus I didn't want to cast a really young character in a romance role with an adult character.

Catherine Parr - Books and writing, there's so many verses in that song that focus on that. Belle is the perfect fit scene wise for a song about writing letters as well as a super emotional song.

I have seen other people's casts and there are so many different characters that you could use for each role. For me it mainly came down to footage for the scenes I wanted to make. I would be interested to see you make an edit with your casting choices ;)

[thisselflovecamebacktome]

So I'm stealing this from @tayloralisonswift and you should definitely check out their version, but I'm going to listen to and rank all of Taylor's songs album by album (and then maybe her non album songs at the end). You can also see my debut rankings and what I've changed here + my Fearless rankings here.

So with that in mind, it's Speak Now's turn. The only thing to note before we start is that I will be primarily ranking the OG tracks (a reminder that I own all the CDs here before you come at me for that) as they are my preferred ones but will note when I'm listening to TV. There is also mentions of suicide (nothing too in depth but still), so read at your own discretion.

Mine: This is one of those songs that have somewhat grown on me with time. It's very cute and relatable. 7.5/10.

Sparks Fly: Always a fun time. Has always and may always be upper half of this album's ranking. 8/10.

Back To December: I have a very complicated relationship with this song for personal reasons. Ultimately it is great though and arguably underrated, even by myself. The tour mashup was also iconic. 7.5/10.

Speak Now: Now you may think that the girl who ruined her brother's wedding (obviously not in the romantic love way the song depicts but still) would love this song. And yes, my friends and I have a good laugh about how I did it before this song came out. But ultimately I think it's a fun little number that I don't go back to much. 6/10.

Dear John: I actually hated this song when it first came out... or moreso I was very in denial about my own situation so was not ready to hear it and called the song whiny. Obviously it has grown on me a lot in the 14 years we've had it and is one of her best both lyrically and production wise in my honest opinion. 9.5/10.

Mean: I'm sorry I still can't get over her being like "you can't lead me down that road" just to call him a pathetic loser who's alone in life in the same song. And all over one bad review? Anyway it's a song that I've never clicked with even outside of her. 3/10.

The Story Of Us: Definitely one of my most listened to tracks on this album over the years. 18 year old me had it on repeat for months (iykyk). An absolute bop despite being sad. 8.5/10.

Never Grow Up: This song is to me what songs like Ronan and Soon You'll Get Better are for the majority of the fandom. So I don't listen to it all that much, but it is very good. 7/10.

Enchanted: This song was a favourite when the album first came out but overtime has fallen a bit into the background. Had I been a bit younger/more naive, it could have been THE late 2021/early 2022 song for me (iykyk) but alas. Again, still a good song, and very nostalgic at that. 7/10.

Better Than Revenge: So I'm listening to TV here, but not for the changed line. I'm actually very much team 'she should have kept it the same'. But the production of TV feels harder/more in your face and I love that. Having grown up in a left leaning area, this is a song that never really hit for me lyrically though because even at the time it came out, it was the 'this is such a 13 year old song' to my year group (I was the ripe age of 15 when Speak Now OG came out lmao), so the production really carries it here. 5/10.

Innocent: My stan song from the album and first self love song from Taylor! Very underappreciated. It, especially in the era where fans are rude about other fans not wanting to separate Matty from the music, leaves me so frustrated that this song is underappreciated because these same people saying to remove Matty sure as hell didn't do it for this song. Anyway amazing song all around. 10/10.

Haunted: I spoke about how Breathe was on repeat for a lot of 2011 during my Fearless rankings, and Haunted (+ Last Kiss) were right beside it. While Breathe was my song for one friend's death and feeling like I could not talk to my other friends about it, Haunted was the exact emotion I felt witnessing the other friend's suicide. So yeah, it's another song that will always have a special place in my heart for helping me through the worst period of my life. 9/10.

Last Kiss: I don't have much to say on this past what I said in Haunted, but having the bridge (and whole song) retextualised as a song about losing someone to suicide really changed this song from a part time love to long term love for me. 9.5/10.

Long Live: This is one of those songs that I need to be in the mood for but when I am? God does it hit. I also nearly teared up hearing TV (in general I was surprised how much Speak Now TV had me emotional because it's the album [out of the ones being rerecorded] that I have the least emotional ties to). Great song all around. 7.5/10.

Ours: This is another one that I don't really listen to all this much, but love queer readings of and always have a good time while listening to it. 7/10.

If This Was A Movie: I don't care what Taylor says, this is and always will be a Speak Now track and I'm annoyed the TV version was not on the CD lmao. Anyway I've always loved this song. 7.5/10.

Superman: Very cute song. Not a favourite, but I feel like I like it more than most people. 7/10.

Electric Touch: ... I need to be real with you all, apart from When Emma Falls In Love, I really do not listen to this vault at all. Like this is maybe the third time I've heard this song (and the second was the piano tour version). And in Electric Touch's case, this is sad because I feel like this song has everything I would like in a song. It's pop rock, even though I am fussy with collabs I quite like FOB, it's about new beginnings and more. Like it should have been a home run for me, but it's just boring to me. 5/10.

When Emma Falls In Love: I know I'm in the minority here, but I really love this song. It's so cute and very much something I would have been obsessed with in my teens if it had come out with the OG album. 8/10.

I Can See You: I once said that Fortnight was my 'This could have been us, but for it to have been, I would have needed to be a different person' song, and this song lives in that same universe. Now is probably a good time to mention that I think that both the Speak Now and 1989 vaults were very much the blueprint for TTPD:TA and I can see both men in all of the choices made lmao. Anyway, it's catchy and the music video was such a nice moment for the rerecordings. 7/10.

Castles Crumbling: This is another song that like I get why she put it on the vault, I think objectively it's a great counterpart to Long Live, but ultimately I just find it boring. 4/10.

Foolish One: This is one of those songs that had it been on the OG album, I'd probably have a sweet nostalgic feeling towards it because teen me would have loved it. But it didn't so I don't and again, just find it pretty meh. 4/10.

Timeless: I sound like a broken record here, but like it's objectively sweet, definitely is a blueprint to what was coming, but ultimately I just don't click with it, feel it drags on and find it boring. 4/10.

Final score: 158.5/230 - 68.9%

[brotherslayer]

I find it quite strange that you say that Siyeon and Eckles' age difference is creepy, when you shipped them a lot before, even if Siyeon had owner behaviors you didn't care. What happened? Just because they didn't stay together were you able to take off the blindfold? Because, be honest with you, if they had stayed together in that toxic relationship you wouldn't be attacking the characters so much right now.

I shipped Cha Siyeon and Iklies two years ago. Back then I was still young and the implications of abuse were much more subtile and harder to pick up on as not many chapters had been translated. At that time Iklies had been presented as Cha Siyeon's only safe route, ergo everything was much more toned down otherwise the plot twist wouldn't have come as a surprise. Naively I had assumed that Iklies and Penelope would end up together and raise a rebellion together freeing the other slaves. I wasn't familiar with the problematic portrayal of slavery and colonialism that seems to be so widespread in isekai as I had not consumed many manhwas yet.

You seem to be under the assumption that liking a character = endorsing the actions of said characters and shipping a ship = wanting such relationship irl. You are wrong. Even if Callisto committed genocide and Penelope is a groomer I'm not going to come into your ask box and demand you to stop shipping them or start a bullying campaign by writing out a callout post against you. I'm of the opinion that anyone should be allowed to ship whatever they like as long as it's fiction.

But does that mean that no one is allowed to share their criticism of characters with each other? Does that make it okay to shut down the voices of those, especially poc readers, who find the implications of the author chosing to despict the colonizer with aryan features as a hero and the indigenous boy who had witnessed the genocide and enslavement of his nation by said man's hands as a villain deeply uncomfortable? I don't think so. Specifically because it's so frowned down upon to point out the flaws of the fandom faves we have readers who say with their full chest that Iklies betrayed Penelope (slaves cannot betray their master), Delman deserved to be subjected to the genocide because some of them plundered at the borders (did the women and children plunder too?) and the slaves deserved to remain in bondage because they dared to rebel against their masters and it would make Callisto look bad in front of his citizen to free them (uhm what the fuck???).

Let's keep things civil, shall we? If these discussions bother you and you can't contribute without feeling the need to resort to insults and passive-aggressiveness, feel free to block the tag anti Cha Siyeon and anti Callisto Regulus or even block this blog alltogether. I'm surprised that you didn't do this already. I, as an Iklies stan, don't even have the luxury of blocking the anti Iklies tag as such consideration isn't shown by diehard Callisto stans who loved crosstagging their hate into the character tag.

Anyways as for the age gap thing. I'm generally not an age gap kind of gal unless it's under very specific circumstances where the narrative aknowledges the fucked up-ness ⬇️

I bought the physical copy of vadd this summer, saw the ages and went "hey wait". Sometimes you don't notice everything at once. And I'm not all knowing. I didn't know about South Korean laws on statuatory rape when I was younger. It's also not only the age gap that was an issue but the sum of all things together.

Now the last sentence is very funny. "if they had stayed together in that toxic relationship you wouldn't be attacking the characters so much right now." Anyone who follows me knows that this assumption is false. I'm happy to inform you that I ship lots of dark and fucked up ships and I love to point out and analyze in what ways they are toxic to each other. For example Nai and Vash? I literally call Nai an eco fascist and wrote an entire essay how it is doubtful that Nai even loves Vash. I called episode 11 and 12 a rape allegory. It's the Vashwood/Plantcest antis that are in deep denial that Trigun features incestuous abuse and not the Plantcest shippers who will happily explain the layers of trauma caused by Nai that Vash carries within him.

I ship Derrick x og Penelope but do you see me woobyfying him or wishing they had ended up together and being mad that they didn't? Heck no. If anything I'm mad that he got away with everything and Cha Siyeon even lets him hang around her daughter. My ideal ending is Penelope shooting with her crossbow at him and setting the mansion on fire. If it's true that he fell in love with 12 y/o Penelope at first sight that would make him a pedophile. I'm being honest. Someone needs to talk about these things because I don't think that even the author was fully aware of this.

[pseudowho]

Hiiii Haitch!! First of all, happy belated birthday — I hope you had a lovely day, and that this ask finds you well 🎉 (We’re both August babies!!!)

Now, I was wondering if you could offer some insight into something, since I look up to you writing-wise. I want to write a story with a compelling narrative, a fanfiction, where the main character is unreliable. She’s young and fallen for someone she can’t have due to an impossible age gap; he acknowledges this and rejects any advances sternly. Possibly too personal but as someone who experienced something similar (the young girl, at one point) I really want to portray it in an accurate, emotional, and digestible way. To do so, I wanted to know if you have any thoughts on how I should go about this perspective wise.

In your opinion, should I include tidbits of perspective from the man she’s yearning for? Someone who knows what she wants, knows it’s critical that she understand she can’t have something with him, while still caring for her in a purely paternal way?

On the other hand, I could write solely in first person, which would make her perspective and decisions more fathomable. Or third person to share pieces of both. I’ve fought over this for months — even put off writing over this one dilemma. Sounds silly but🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

I’d love to know your thoughts, or if you’ve ever struggled with anything like this. I think you write in second person, and you do so excellently, might I add. There’s multiple upsides and downsides to which POV you write from so I’d just love to hear what you think.

Much love to you and family ❤️

I'd personally say third person multiple perspectives; but from her POV, she reads the things he's doing and saying to deter her completely wrong. She seems to be making reasonable decisions with a mature understanding, but when you see it from his POV and reasoning, it shows how young, naive and out of touch she really is.

I think that would be the best representation of how a young person's brain works before they've fully developed. That absolute certainty and surgery that they're as emotionally advanced as they'll ever be...then the POV of the older man (especially one who's a genuinely good egg, saying no, because this girl is just a girl and they're not into that) showing that she's not making the best decisions for herself.

That's how I'd write it. I actually had a scene just like that in my Nanami story 'Raising You'.

It's funny, I tend to find that most 29-30+ women find that the older men who tend to go for younger women are more often than not red flags. It's something I didn't see when I was younger, and would have easily been flattered by being told I was "mature for my age".

Thank you very much for the belated birthday wishes! Best of luck with your writing. It's a nuanced and complex subject matter, that the recent hyperfetishisation of extreme youth in women, and the pushing of the "daddy" hypermasculinity culture in men, contributes to with a lot to unpack.

Love love love,

-- Haitch xxx

[miscelliteeous]

Hi hi!! Marina & 0, 4 and 6!!

Thank you so much for sending! Gonna put these under a cut because I rambled.

0 – What are some of the inspirations behind your S/I? Are they exactly like you? Were they an OC? Did any of your favorite characters have any influence in their design/personality?

I'm very loosely in there but a lot of her is inspired by various stuff, like I gave her younger design a "dead anime mom" hairstyle and that encouraged me to give Marina a more tragic backstory. I think there's also a bit of Fluttershy and Rarity in her too, with the Fluttershy being more prominent in her younger self and Rarity in her older. Oh! And the songs "And She Was" by Talking Heads + "As I Sat Sadly By Her Side" helped inspire her personality.

4 – Which of the elements best represents your S/I? Which of their aspects does it resonate with? (e.g.: their personality, astrology sign, powers, etc)

I think wind/air works best with her maybe? She's a bit of a free spirit and has big, peaceful dreams but she also fucks off for at least a decade and travels the world. Though she does eventually settle down into more of an earth type as she gets in her 40s: dependable, solid, unwavering in her commitment.

6 – What's the relationship dynamic between your S/I and your F/O? Be as vague or as descriptive as you'd like

Almost wrote out a massive wall of text detailing their whole history but that wasn't necessary lol. Silco's opinion of her changes drastically throughout their lives. When they're young, he sees her as weak, naive, foolish, and a pathetic dreamer, before she manages to prove her dedication and they start dating and he falls kinda in love. When he's much older and she comes back into his life in their late 30s/early 40s the dynamic becomes a very husband/wife "long lost loves reunited" kinda thing. They also both co-parent Jinx!

Marina, on the other hand, had a thing for him since they met as teens and a ridiculously unwavering loyalty and it only grows as she ages and through her time spent away. And both feel guilty for not being there when the other underwent a horrifyingly traumatic experience (Silco being stabbed and almost drowned by Vander, who was like a brother to him. Marina being kidnapped and tortured for 7 days to send a warning to Silco), so they both have that going on too.

[chibivesicle]

‘Times, they be a changin’

After a drop off due to Golden Kamuy ending and my overall disappointment with the last arc. And of course, Ogata’s death, I’ve been wondering where I want to go with these things.  I put a lot of GK content out and I don’t want to just shelve it but I don’t want to split myself between fifteen thousand side blogs.  I’ve decided that I’ll keep my live action meta over on my ‘I don’t want to be exterminated, upgraded, turned into pudding’ side blog and I’ll keep all my anime and manga opinions here.  Since I have been reading manga for a long time and watching anime for even slightly longer. 

To reflect this, I’ve removed my last previous Ogata icon and I’ve jumped straight to God; Kuroneko-sama that is.  It isn’t that I’ve stopped reading manga or watching anime either and I have just one of the many opinions on the internet. 

Let’s go with an easy current on topic target for some mild-meta.  Trigun.  

Many moons ago, my best friend from undergrad introduced me to Trigun.  She had a Vash poster in her dorm room in university that she picked up at Katsucon, which was the first con I ever went to with her.  She’s quite the influence!

I watched all of the original Trigun anime on fan subbed VHS tapes that were passed around the anime black market of the 90s and early 2000s before they’d be bumped out of the way by file sharing services and online fansubs.  Honestly, I can’t even remember when I first watched it, but I do remember crying at a character’s death and just rolling with some of the more hand wavy sci-fi elements.

Not surprisingly, as someone who loved Ogata as a character, my favorite character from Trigun was none other than Nicholas D. Wolfwood - wandering man of the cloth toting around his cross which is heavy b/c it is full of ‘mercy’.

How much of a Wolfwood fan was I?  Enough of one that I paid likely waaayyy too much money in a dealer’s room at either Otakon or Katsucon for this capsule version of Wolfwood with Kuroneko-sama.

I used to have him up on my desk when I was in uni, but he always fell over and at some point, I popped him back into the bubble and shoved him under a bed at my parents’ house forgotten for over a decade or so.  He moved to the desert (still in that capsule) and I just dug him out after moving to my current location along with two Ruroni Kenshin figures that are back in a box.

What is with this path down memory lane all about?  I was at Anime Expo in 2022 (with exact same friend mentioned above) and we didn’t make it to the Trigun Stampede panel but, I did get an awesome photo of an amazing Vash cosplayer.

With the Trigun 2.0 on the horizon and the Sony merger stuff, all of the older anime titles that were on Funamation have moved back onto Crunchyroll - meaning a lot of titles I loved when I was younger could be rewatched.

And that’s what I did last month!  I dusted off my little Kuroneko-sama and Wolfwood and sat down to watch Trigun for the first time in over 20 years, I think.

I was both surprised by what I remembered and what I did not remember.  Plus, rewatching something you haven’t seen in years allows you to have a sort of fresh pair of eyes.

First off, for a manga that started in 1995 and had the anime in 1998, it has great female characters.  Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson wear normal clothing, have professional careers and are packing heat in a wild west environment. These are the least sexy main character ladies!  Milly wears a dress shirt, tie and pants with suspenders along with her long coat.  Meryl wears boots, tights, skirt suit and then a cloak (with all her guns) as well. 

Meryl is the older skeptic/pragmatist and Milly is naive yet if the most obvious thing is the best answer, then accept it as the truth.  They are great characters and I love how they are a great perspective and point of view into the events.  Sure, they are completely overpowered by Vash or Wolfwood, but they are neither a non-human-pseduo-angelic being or a man who had his entire body altered [manga] to be a better killer or just a much more on the job experience [anime] soooooo yeah.  I’m okay with Meryl and Milly not having to hold their fighting prowess with the boys. 

I finally decided to break down and read the manga.  Little did I know that Darkhorse owns the current rights and the series is out of print.  Gah, I was hoping to score the series cheap used but that will not be the case.  I’ve read the original Trigun from the shounen mag that went belly up (3 tankobons, 1 volume via Darkhorse) and the moved into a seinen publisher for its continuation as Trigun Maximum.  I went ahead and purchased all the way up to Trigun Maximum volume 5 and have read it all as well.

As someone who enjoyed the anime, I can appreciate the way the anime ended at the time.  They were years away from the end of the manga’s run and the anime team needed to come up with a nice way to tie things up.  Honestly, I’m fine with how things went in the anime.  Well, other than Wolfwood’s death, which made me cry and still pulled at my heartstrings on the recent watch.  So far the manga has more details, and is taking the time to fill in motivations of characters like the Gung Ho Guns (why would you willingly sell your humanity to destroy it?).  It however, still keeps an air of mystery about Vash’s past and the exact reason why humans got stuck on the planet.

The two major differences I see between the anime and manga are as follows:

Anime Vash has that sort of 90s MC perv side being a ham towards women early on when it later has him questioning who’d love him anyways.  Manga Vash doesn’t even go there which is something I like - dude’s got a lot more problems.  No space for chasing skirts and hitting on ladies.

Life on the planet Gunsmoke is fucking terrible in the manga.  You think it is pretty shitty in the anime?  Pffftt, that’s nothing compared to the manga.  People are worse, humanity is more like how Hobbes would view it and less like Locke.  I honestly, don’t know all of the differences yet, since I’ve barely cracked the manga story line but it is clear it is only going to get darker.  Yet at the same time there is more hope since the humans who’d kept themselves ‘above the fray’ were able to contact other people and they are supposed to possibly be rescued.  If Knives doesn’t throw a giant bloody wrench in there. 

In a way, these differences do reflect the shift that the anime gives us.  We go from a goofy guy who is overly competent trying to bumble/drift through life and has biblical levels of trials/tests of his faith in his own belief system to come out with a resolution and faith in the future.  You feel it when you get to around episode 13 and you realize that shit is gonna get serious and you can’t just go back to zany antics.

What I like about the anime is that we have a range of how characters act and view humanity.  Vash will punish himself to not harm others as he sees it as the unalienable right that every living thing has the right to life and it isn’t right for you to take that away from anyone.  Not sure how he resolves eating those salmon sandwiches with great vigor unless it is artificial salmon (desert planet out?).  Milly is the extremely naive and optimistic, Meryl is sarcastically pragmatic.  Of course Knives is the exact opposite of Vash, thinking humans are a scourge and no one is worth their own lives. 

And in the middling grey area we have - Nicholas D. Wolfwood.  Yep, is it shocking my favorite character straddles the moral grey line?  Seeing that it is a rhetorical question, we all know that yes, I love my characters that move between different philosophical spaces.  Is Wolfwood a good or bad character?  It depends; the narrative and other relationships tell us in the anime that we should see him as more good than bad character.  He is a friend to all children and uses it as a rationale why he has to do his job.  Without him making money from being a traveling clergyman/gun for hire the children would not have financial support.  However, we can see that the closer he gets to Vash the more conflicted he is and keeps verbalizing why he has no option but to kill; or else someone else would be killed. 

What I like about him is that his observation skills are top notch.  When he first meets Vash, he get straight to the point that Vash is wearing a mask in front of others.  He’s trying to get by, not die, but has a lot of anger at the shitty hand he was dealt in life.  It is the classic example of I had a crap childhood and ended up stuck in this less than ideal path but I want to protect others from it.

He’s one of those characters who really compliments Vash both visually and personality wise.  Vash could never haggle down the price of anything but Wolfwood squeaks by talking his way out of pay full fare for the bus or trying to run a tab (as a drifter).  Yet at the same time those two idiots are as thick as thieves getting in petty arguments over stupid shit and feeling resolved to deal with each other.  I also like how he’s one of the few characters who pushes back at Vash’s need to take on extreme burdens and that sometimes you have to accept all your options are going to suck.

We are going to get in a stupid fight about how Wolfwood’s motorcycle broke down again.  Which he named Angelica II.  RIP Angelica I.

We just tossed our water bottle over!

And just this.  Like sticking out your tongues at the same time will allow you to capture that last bit of water . . .

Does it end here?  God no, it continues to the extent that man who saved them is ready to toss them off his truck.

The manga has a very similar visual dynamic between them.  They are two guys with rough pasts and are navigating the present in very different ways.

Anyways, I’m still not sure where I exactly want to go with things, but a deep dive into Wolfwood (anime & manga) may be a worthwhile endeavor.  I’ve got a ways to go in the manga and I’m not rushing through it or anything like that.

What I am worried about is the remake/reboot/re imagining of Trigun as Trigun Stampede.

I first watched the preview videos about it.  I’m not here to argue if CGI is good or bad.  What I do have an issue with is the general character designs - I get it, Trigun is a 90s manga/anime and it looks like a 90s series.  I really like the Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These, for me it has less to do with the character designs and for how the storytelling perspective is more people driven and less sterile/historical documentary style.  I’ve read most of the novels and LOGH:DNT leans much more on the novels/format than the original epic long OVA.  The creative team behind LOGH:DNT are really giving it their all.

But for Trigun Stampede the new character designs are seriously rubbing me the wrong way. 

Vash: I get that Vash would be considered ‘best sad boi’ if the series were new, but the lack of spiked up hair is baffling to me.  His prosthetic arm is obviously not of this world in origin/tech and it really kills the slow reveal of what it can do.  Wearing a jacket with the Project Seeds logo on it - sure - most people on the planet aren’t the most educated about all that info.  We also have the changing of his type of firearm, which any detail nerd is going to be up in arms about the switch from a long colt .45 to a .22 caliber revolver style handgun.  I blame Ogata and his love of the Type 38 over the Type 30 rifle for sniping.

Meryl Stryfe: not only gets a tomboy look but a career change and a shit mentor/supervisor.  Let’s give her a newsboy hat, shorts with her old suit coat and a large parka and random gloves with chunky sneakers.  Oh and she’s the underling of a chain smoking whiskey drinking misogynistic asshole whose job is to treat her like shit and insult her.  She neither looks nor acts like a young twenty something professional.  In the anime and manga she’s just a petite woman.  But episode one of stampede has me concerned.

Milly Thompson: does not exist?  Information about this is vague at best and I’m not going to troll the internet for what the creative team may have told the Japanese press.  Milly’s character design was top tier.  Her character added great value to the anime and manga so far.  She’s not on the promo artwork and Roberto De Niro is - which is a bad sign.

Nicholas D. Wolfwood:  Looks like a hipster from Tokyo.  And any other ikemen type of character.  Or from a Jdrama.  Really, he looks like if you took a fashionable guy off the street and threw him into the mix.

We see here, an unbuttoned jacket.  His dress shirt is unbuttoned at the top, but also not tucked in.  He’s got skinny/tapered pants and exposed ankles.  And those black shoes that might be sneakers or loafers? 

Now, you live on a desert planet my man.  You know what absolutely sucks when you live in the desert? Getting sand and shit in your shoes!  How do you do that?  Don’t wear shoes that aren’t covered by your pants.  I can forgive the lack of hats on the entire main cast b/c they are the main characters and we want to see their faces.  But if they actually lived on a twin star planet, Vash, Wolfwood, Meryl and Milly would all be wearing hats; you want to keep that sun off your face and block a lot of the crap floating by.  Honestly, that’s one design element which is spot for the characters except for the lack of hats - the long sleeves and layers.  You wear layers and long sleeves and pants when you live in the desert to protect yourself from the elements.

Sadly, not only does his wardrobe suffer from the ‘upgrade’ but his hair as well as a lollipop instead of his hallmark crumpled cigarette.  Smoking kills but Wolfwood is going to die young anyways so do you think he cares that much?

His hair is tamed down the long locks in front of his ears are gone and I’m guessing his nose will be shrunk as well.  My most recent watch had me appreciate a few elements of his character design.  First off, he’s got a rather ‘normal’ looking nose that doesn’t make that weird point.  I like this it gave him a more unique appearance without doing too much.  We can also see the long shaggy bit of hair as well as the much messier overall look.

Looking at him more closely, it really seems as though he had a sort of almost retro (for the 90s) 70s look with a scruffy chin.  That sort of makes sense since he was designed in the 90s, his style might refer back to the previous 20 or so years for his overall look.

I am a huge fan of the added rough around the edges look with the lines on his cheeks which are more pronounced in the manga.

I also visually read this to be an indication of age.  Which in the anime, I read him to be the oldest human of the bunch, over thirty.  His observational skills, the way he talks to others, how he rationalizes things at least in the anime. Wolfwood has seen more of life and some of his solid statements really make me think this.  I haven’t gotten to his whole backstory in the manga yet which from what I’ve seen - is vastly different than that with him being much younger but appearing older.  Which is why he gets the scruffy/blushy lines all the time?  Maybe?  I’ll get back to this.  However, this point doesn’t sit well with me since some types of wisdom require one to reach a certain age to get them so I’m not keen on the concept for appears old but is much younger Wolfwood.  But I’ll see how it plays out in the manga before judging it. 

I’m not the type of person to get my knickers in a twist over logical updates to characters and their design but the creative team for Stampede went hard.

Honestly, I already found a much more professional review that really highlights a lot of the issues I had with episode 1.  The reviewer never saw the original and still highlights a lot of the things someone who’d watched it before would or could be bothered by.

https://www.themarysue.com/even-as-a-trigun-newbie-trigun-stampedes-first-episode-didnt-feel-right/

This article completely captures why I hate Roberto De Niro and why if he dies as a character I will be happy.  But not happy enough without Milly!

Anyhoo, I’ll give Trigun Stampede the college try, but they are going to have to work very hard to convince me it is a worthy remake.  If only to see Roberto De Niro to die and try not to ask Tanigaki why he’s toting around Punisher - which is a heavy cross b/c it is full of mercy. 

[withloveheart]

Opinions on racism in the upper class? How does one navigate?

Hey Habibti,

Most of the women who would be considered well-off are women who are from my own culture or other MENA cultures. At least the ones I keep in contact with or my mom is in contact with. So there isn't any crazy racism I see with these women but again they don't really care to interact with women who aren't Arab, can't speak Arabic, or aren't Muslim. That being said, I do remember small instances here and there that would make people feel uncomfortable though. I remember a mutual friend of mine having a crush on an Asian dude and her mother and friends - who have million dollar houses in Canada - laughing about her choice and mentioning his eye shape. They also expressed concerns that Asian genes are dominant and that if she were to marry him, the baby would look Asian. That is one off the top of my head. From the people I know the children who have been raised in America are going to be more understanding. But I've met some who have been FOBs and have had very uncomfortable opinions.

As far as navigating, I wouldn't bother lecturing them about right vs wrong. When I was younger, I would always talk to my mom's friends about what they were doing was wrong and they barely cared or have changed. Some of the more religious ones changed slightly over the years after I mentioned that it was a sin but not by much. The best way to go about it is to know who to keep as close friends and who to keep at arm's length. I grew up in a culture where a lot of "jokes" would make my American friends cry. And I was one of those girls who would be pissed off with the jokes all the time, but now I just keep track of the ones I feel uncomfortable around.

I think it's possible to look at someone who doesn't hold the same opinion as you and express your opinion, if need be, but also remaining cordial with them. It makes it easier when you are to navigate any social class.

At the end of the day, if someone has more influence and say so then you, it would be best to not attack them with your ideologies because that these people can easily say one bad thing about you and that's it for you. I made sure to express my opinions in a respectful manner while maintaining my polite, good mannered, and sweetheart image. And it's thanks to that I met women who would be considered upper middle class and agreed with me on my political beliefs when it comes to racism, etc. But I would be naive to think that if I ever tried to anger those women (the ones who would occasionally say something stereotypical or lowkey racist) that I would get the same opportunities.

Overall, look at your position and understand the power or lack of power you hold. Ally yourself with people who agree and respect your opinions, but you need to make sure you aren't stepping on any toes. Not all of the upper class are raging racists, but you won't ever have the chance of meeting those who aren't if you are too busy pissing off the wrong people. There is so much I could talk about but I'll leave it at that.

With Love,

Heart💚

[akiarathewitch]

Saw Wish (2023) recently and tbh it wasn’t as bad as ppl said it was, but it was pretty unbefitting for disney’s 100 anniversary movie. I feel like if it weren’t high stakes put on it and was just a regular disney film, it wouldve gotten average reviews. Tho i dont think it deserves to be nominated solely for the fact that a lot of better animated movies came out, i think it still had a lot of neat stuff in it (I mildly enjoyed the message and some of the songs). But even then, it still had many flaws, like the songs being all pop instead of a broadway-style and not rly memorable, as well as not developing the story more.

Another thing I would like to add is that it truly doesn’t appreciate the legacy it’s trying to showcase here. it only encapsulates what the company is to a marketable and modern audience, so it only includes relevant and recent disney pop culture references rather than include stuff from one of the older movies. it shows us what disney, the corporation, is; not disney, the animation studio, is.

I’m just gonna blurt out a list of things what I personally think would make the movie better since it had a lot of potential but wasn’t directed well. again this is my opinion so no need to get all defensive or aggressive:

• first of all, the music. they shouldve gotten either a.) a new and upstart musician from broadway since Ashman himself stated that most of the disney melodies we now know are pretty much a broadway musical but animated or b.) gather a band of all the musicians that wrote for disney and each of them contribute a song. Like in the beginning the songs could sound like golden age of disney songs and then it progresses until we get to the end where we get the modern taste of it.

• wouldve also been nice for the animation to also progress with the music. from 2d to 3d as the film goes on but that could translate poorly so I suggest just making it 2d since it’s the best way to incorporate the storybook style.

• next, the villains. i rly agree with the concept of a villain couple, not just because it would be really fun but also could comprise of characteristics from both past male and female villains of disney.

• random idea but these villains should have like henchmen/apprentices. I know asha’s there to be the apprentice but I think I wanna shift the plot a bit here. now all these apprentices reference a disney villain and agree with magnifico’s philosophy about wishes. at the end of the movie, when the big baddies are defeated, they hide and go out into the world where they become the true baddies we know them to be. Preventing dreamers from achieving their dreams.

• Asha as a character should have traits that resembles the majority of the disney princesses, not just the recent quirky trope. Should be somewhat naive but a dreamer and still kind but also misunderstood. idk just like a character that symbolizes the typical disney heroine. They also shouldve given her clothes that resemble more of a fairy godmother (specifically the one she wore during the climax) rather than her rapunzel-esque outfit to distinguish her more

• they shouldve made star have human-like qualities and included the romance with the star. i like how disney’s going with the no-romance thing but romance was a big part of the disney franchise for a long time, and it wouldve been nice to see that again, but with more modern romance tropes (e.g. black cat gf/golden retriever bf, etc) to appeal to modern audiences, so younger kids could understand what made the early films so dreamy and charming.

• flesh out the citizens!!! if the seven friends are the seven dwarves, add more to them. i was especially sad with grumpy since he was more annoying than grumpy. Justify his personality, as well as the others. give us a reason why the citizens need their wish back instead of just showing one character that without their wish, they are just boring. Show the entire population just being outright miserable and blank without their wishes.

• another thing to add to the point above is to establish the people of rosas’ dreams. Because we see in one scene with magnifico that each person dreams of becoming something magical (e.g. one person dreaming of being peter pan and another wanting to become mary poppins). wouldnt it be nice to establish that the people of rosas ARE the disney characters we love and know, which makes them getting back their wishes so important. without it, they wouldn’t be the childhood favorites we know and love today.

• it wouldve been really swell for the grandpa to be a walt disney adjacent character that dreams of learning how to draw. yes he’s a controversial figure nowadays but if ur gonna make a disney 100 celebration, at least make it a point to include the guy u named the company after.

• it also wouldve been really swell if the sidekick character wasn’t a goat but a mouse that resembles mickey in a way, plus a whole gang of other side characters that references mickey’s gang (a female mouse, two ducks, two dogs, etc). they are the official mascots of the company so it’d be really weird to not include or reference them.

• this is going into fanfiction territory but i want the ending scene to be about how the people of rosas finally achieving their wishes and setting forth out into the world to inspire others to follow their wishes (including the evil apprentices in the hopes of destroying those dreams). in the end, when nothing is left, asha just looks out into the distant and transforms into the fairy godmother and then the rosas castle kinda becomes the disney castle we see in the intro. ik this sounds bad on paper and it probably is but by adding stuff i think we could make it better.

I know all of this is bordering fanfiction but like it wouldve been nice for the disney creatives to just go all in. And as a viewer, i did see the potential this movie had, but it just wasn’t done right. And it rly did make me sad to see a good premise go to waste because the message of the movie is what captures that disney magic: the ability to make a wish and seeing that wish come true.

tl;dr: Wish, although one of the less better animated movies this year, really had the potential to be great but wasn’t done right due to pressure of it being the disney 100 celebration. Instead of showcasing the passion and heart that the Walt Disney animation studios did for 100 years, it only displayed the heartlessness of the corporation it has grown to be. And I for one, though I attempted to fix it, am still saddened to see that what was once (and should be) a celebration of creativity and passion got turned into a moneymaker that billionaires see only as products, not as art.

[nichestation]

INSIDE THE UNSETTLING, HOMOEROTIC TERROR OF ‘THE HITCHER’

Director Robert Harmon looks back on his 1986 classic, discussing the ambiguous relationship between its main characters, the brilliance of Rutger Hauer — and why he never thought he was making a horror movie

In the mid-1990s, Robert Harmon visited David Fincher on the set of The Game. “I’m a huge David Fincher fan,” Harmon tells me. “Seven, to me, is one of the great movies of all time — it’s just crazy-good, first to last.” But when the two directors met, Harmon discovered that the younger filmmaker was just as big a fan of his. “He said, ‘Your movie changed my life.’ It meant a lot to me, especially from somebody you admire so much.”

For more than 35 years now, Harmon has been pleasantly surprised whenever he learns that someone loves his first feature, The Hitcher, a nasty little horror movie with Hitchcockian vibes that terrorized viewers. The funny thing is that Harmon doesn’t consider himself to be a big horror guy — and, as he confides, “I don’t want to be controversial, but I was never even that much of a Hitchcock fan. His reputation just seemed way greater than his movies seemed to suggest it should be. I know it’s a minority opinion.”

And yet, this elemental story about a young man who foolishly picks up a hitchhiker in the middle of nowhere, realizing too late that he’s made a terrible mistake, remains a primal cautionary tale — a worst-case scenario of what your mom always warned you about in regards to talking to strangers. But few strangers are as unnerving as John Ryder, the enigmatic loner who torments feckless young Jim Halsey. The film’s power goes beyond its killer hook, however, touching on something bizarre and unspoken between hunter and hunted. At its core, The Hitcher is a film about a codependent relationship, maybe even a twisted love story. It’s about finding something you weren’t expecting out there on the highway, something that’s been waiting for you all along.

The Hitcher was the brainchild of Eric Red, an aspiring writer and filmmaker who had driven from New York to California. He was somewhere in Texas, fighting off exhaustion, when it happened. “I picked up a hitchhiker just to pass the time, to help keep me awake,” he’d later recall. “But the guy just sort of sat there, smelling dirty and staring at me. I started feeling uncomfortable about the whole situation and thought maybe it wasn’t such a good idea picking him up. He had a rough edge. I finally stopped the car a few miles down the road and asked him to get out. He left willingly enough, and that was it.” 

But the brief encounter, mixed with his memory of the Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” — which contained the ominous lines “There’s a killer on the road / His brain is squirmin’ like a toad” — gave him the idea for a screenplay. Inspired by what he’d come up with, Red would later send that script to producers, declaring in an attached note, “When you read it, you will not sleep for a week. When the movie is made, the country will not sleep for a week.”

The 1980s were a haven for horror films, especially slasher flicks. What had started in the late 1970s, thanks to seminal works like Halloween, had morphed into a cottage industry, giving moviegoers franchises such as Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Cheap to make but potentially lucrative, horror movies preyed on adolescent fears, with the story’s bogeyman going after helpless, naive young people, punishing them for their horniness or lack of life experience. In these films, there was a strong sense that the victims had it coming.

The Hitcher played into that trend, while tapping into a deeper cultural anxiety. Hitchhiking had, at one point, been seen as an act of freedom, playing into a Kerouac-ian love of the open road and the possibilities out there beyond the horizon. It was a romantic notion, but as historian Jack Reid describes in his book Roadside Americans: The Rise and Fall of Hitchhiking in a Changing Nation, that wide-eyed optimism eventually faded away. “[H]itchhiking was [once] a common form of mobility for students and travelers of all ages,” he writes. “This held true from the Depression era, when those seeking work could find transportation by sticking out a thumb, through to the early 1970s. … Yet by the time Reagan reached the White House, hitchhiking had lost traction. … [I]n the 1980s few Americans saw hitchhikers as heroic. To them, hitchhiking was a taboo form of mobility reserved for desperate and often unsavory individuals.”

That shifting attitude toward hitching — mixed with fear and loathing directed at those who would engage in such an activity — put fuel in The Hitcher’s narrative tank. We don’t know this as the film begins, but Jim (C. Thomas Howell, who’d been in 1980s teen-centric movies like The Outsiders and Red Dawn) is on his way to San Diego, driving through the night, rain pouring down, when he sees a solitary man standing by the side of the road. Feeling bad for the guy and deciding he needs the company, Jim offers him a ride. (“My mother told me never to do this,” he tells John with a friendly smile.) And for the next 90 minutes, John (Rutger Hauer) toys with this kid, clearly enjoying having the upper hand. Early on, he pulls a knife on Jim, demanding, “I want you to stop me.” Freaked out, Jim is able to get John out of the car, but not unlike the Terminator, John just keeps coming, following Jim — sometimes inexplicably — wherever he goes. John is like a curse Jim has inherited: By stopping to give him a lift, he now will never be rid of him.

Harmon’s path to The Hitcher was not a straight line. He was already in his early 30s when the script came his way, supporting himself as a photographer. But movies were his passion. “I’ve always wanted to make films,” he tells me. “Even when I was making a living as a still photographer, which I did for quite a long time, I was just biding my time. First thing I did when I moved out [to Los Angeles] from Boston was to start putting myself out there as a cinematographer. I had no experience, so I did student films to start with. I was always working my way towards this.”

Born in 1953, growing up “outside of Manhattan,” he was one of those guys who never got over the thrill of being at the theater as a kid, the curtain opening and a movie playing on that big screen. “It may be the reason, among about 4,000 others, that 2001 remains, to this day, my favorite film of all time,” he says. “It wasn’t just the scale of the original Ziegfeld screening — it’s because it’s a real movie. It’s essentially nonverbal, which is very unusual for a commercial, Hollywood-style [movie].” Before seeing Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi masterwork, Harmon had been tempted to apply to architecture school. “I saw 2001, I took the application, and I threw it in the garbage,” he tells me. “I never even sent it.”

When Harmon came out to L.A., “I had literally never directed anything,” serving as a cinematographer in order to see how people made films. Eventually, he was ready to direct his own: the 1983 short China Lake, which starred Charles Napier as a bad cop wreaking havoc across the California desert while on vacation. The short, which is currently available on YouTube, sans some of the original music, very much feels like an unintentional dry run for The Hitcher. Like his feature debut, China Lake probed the psychology of a disturbed individual, the action set against a vast, arid landscape that was both inviting and unsettling. “It was an insurance policy,” he says of making China Lake. “It was a kind of ‘If this whole directing thing doesn’t work out — if I’m going to spend every cent I have for X number of years on this — I better have some use for it so at least I can put it on my [cinematographer] reel.’”

He hustled to ensure China Lake opened doors for him. While writing the script, he saw Napier at a screening at L.A.’s venerable arthouse theater the Nuart, deciding that he had to play the cop. An attempt to get the script to Napier’s agent went nowhere, but then, through a friend, Harmon obtained Napier’s number and cold-called him, telling the character actor, a veteran of Jonathan Demme’s films, that he’d written the dark role with him in mind. “The reaction was very unlike anything I would’ve expected,” Harmon recalls. “He read it, loved it and fired his agent for not having ever even shown it to him.” 

Short films tend to do only so much for a burgeoning director, but in the case of China Lake, it was enough to get him noticed. As Harmon remembers, “[Napier] dragged Jonathan Demme to a screening over at Warner Bros. It was great. It was really fun.” China Lake only played one festival — the prestigious Telluride Film Festival, in Colorado — but the response helped stoke interest. “We’d hardly shown it to anybody, and I was stunned by the reaction. The audience was, by my recollection, exactly bifurcated. People were on their feet, clapping and whistling — and other people were screaming and yelling. I very clearly remember a voice from the back of the theater: ‘Who admitted this piece of shit to the festival?’”

Harmon smiles: “The answer to her question was her husband, who was on the board of admissions of the festival.”

Soon, he’d signed with a top-flight agent at William Morris, which was fielding offers for his first feature. There was just one problem. “I didn’t like any of the scripts,” he says. “I didn’t [think] it would do me any good to make those scripts. Then at a certain point, I said to myself, ‘Who do I think I am? I’ve wanted to [be a filmmaker] for my entire life. I can’t keep saying no.’ And then I read The Hitcher.”

Red’s spec script hadn’t gotten much positive feedback in Hollywood, but David Bombyk, a development executive, was blown away by it. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times in 1986, he recalled that the screenplay was 190 pages, far longer than the traditional script. “I kept avoiding it,” he said, “but finally I picked it up. Then, it was just ‘Oh, my God!’”

The story’s violence and gore may have shocked Bombyk, who later would serve as a producer on the film, but Harmon was a little more muted when the screenplay came his way. “I thought, ‘Okay, I have all kinds of issues with this and with that,’ but I felt I could do something with it,” he tells me. “And it also had the thing I loved most in movies” — including his all-time favorite, 2001 — “which is, it was essentially nonverbal.” Many of the scripts Harmon had turned down after China Lake were, as he put it, “Much more slasher-y,” and even he acknowledges that Red’s screenplay made China Lake seem like “Hitcher Junior in a lot of ways.” Plus, Harmon felt pressure to finally commit to a project.

“Probably a good 50 percent of making me say yes was I’d said no too many times,” he admits. “I really thought, ‘I’d just like to do something.’ Not that it was a sacrifice, because I really did like the script — with some minor exceptions that we changed. And I liked the fact that it wasn’t run-of-the-mill. Eric Red is unique: Like him, hate him, his thing is a thing that you don’t find that often. It’s very singular and it’s very him. I think that’s rare.”

One thing he was clear about, though: The Hitcher wasn’t a horror movie. “I’m not the most objective person about that movie, but I don’t think of it as a horror movie,” he says. “I just don’t. We never did.” So what did he think he was making? “I was never conscious [of that],” he replies. “I didn’t have a target.”

Harmon had his heart set on Terence Stamp to play John, going so far as to have a picture of the Billy Budd actor in his wallet to show casting people who he had in mind. “But Terence turned it down,” Harmon recalls. “He said to me — and I thought it was actor bullshit, it may have been — ‘I don’t want to put myself through what it’ll take to do a good job on this part.’ But the sweetest thing in the world, I ran into him at some party years later, and he said, ‘That was one of my biggest, most sincere regrets, not having taken that part.’ Whether he meant it or not, it meant a lot to me. But still, how lucky could I have been to get Rutger?”

Hauer, who died in 2019 at the age of 75, was a Dutch actor who’d worked with the likes of countryman Paul Verhoeven before starting to make his mark in American films in the early 1980s, his big breakthrough coming in Blade Runner as Roy Batty, the serene, menacing leader of the Replicants, the future society’s enslaved robots who don’t want to be terminated. “It was just a miracle,” Harmon says about landing the in-demand actor just as he was getting hot. But he hoped Hauer could bring something to the character that wasn’t there on the page. “The script that I read, John Ryder was just a monster,” says Harmon. “He was just evil, just a force of awfulness. And that seemed less interesting than it could be.”

In a 2012 interview, Hauer noted, “Out of all the films I did, I never quite understood why I liked it so much. The Hitcher for me was another dance, like Blade Runner. It felt like a haunting dust bowl in the desert. The games played were like a tap dance on a drum. I sort of created a little bit of a vague backstory for myself; there should be some sort of mad, strange magic to this guy who always shows up in weird places; he’s a real ghost I think. You can only do that with film — in a book it’s harder, in film you can be a phantom.”

That level of unreality was something Harmon was pushing as well. “The idea that we eventually did was, this Rutger Hauer character wants to commit suicide, doesn’t have courage to do it himself and wants help,” Harmon explains. “He’s desperately looking for someone who’s up to the challenge. It’s in a lot of the dialogue we changed, and it’s in his performance. It seemed like an interesting thing: This guy is doing all this terrible stuff, but it’s really because he’s desperately depressed. I used to say to everybody who’d listen when we were shooting the movie, ‘The way this has to feel is, if Tommy Howell hadn’t driven down that road, Rutger wouldn’t have been on that road.’ He’s there for him — their [relationship] became sort of weirdly codependent.”

At one point, Matthew Modine, fresh off the romantic drama Vision Quest and about to dive into Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, was going to play Jim. Harmon admits that he didn’t necessarily have a particular actor in mind like he had for John, but Howell “was great, he was a delight.” As for Howell, it was a chance to graduate from the types of roles he’d been doing up to that point. “I was rolling from gig to gig as a kid,” Howell recalled last year. “I didn’t give a shit. I felt like it was never going to end, I was never going to grow up, and I was going to play this kid role forever. Well, I did The Hitcher, and it changed everything.”

It didn’t take much work for Howell to convey Jim’s fear of John. As Howell put it in that same interview, “I’ll never forget how everybody else on set was petrified of him,” remembering how “Rutger ate alone in his trailer every single day. Nobody would talk to him apart from perhaps the director if his back was against the wall and he had to give him a direction.” The one time Hauer did invite Howell to have lunch with him, Howell meekly tried to engage his co-star. “Everybody’s been talking about Blade Runner and his other movies, and how nobody plays the villain better than him, but I just looked at him, and with my squeaky, petrified voice, I was like, ‘So, Rutger, everybody says you’re an amazing bad guy, so why do you play bad guys so well?’ What felt like an eternity went by as he just finished that final drag on that cigarette, and he hissed at me in that guts deep whisper, ‘I don’t play bad guys,’ and didn’t say another frickin’ word. I didn’t know what to do. I think I inhaled the rest of my food and started to back out of the trailer. That rattled around my head for a long, long time.”

Harmon, who stayed friends with Hauer for the rest of his life, says, “[If] he was just sitting here listening, [he’d] be slightly intimidating. His hands are like the size of catcher’s mitts. He’s really big, and he just commands space. He doesn’t have to do anything. I don’t know whether he works on that, or if that’s just one of those things.”

For those who haven’t seen The Hitcher in a while — or who have never seen it — the film’s cat-and-mouse game deviates from the classic slasher narrative in certain ways. Traditionally, the hero is trying to stay a step ahead of the killer, hoping to get others to believe that he’s being targeted. But Harmon’s film isn’t so much about John trying to kill Jim — rather, it’s as if John wants to teach him something. Framing Jim for murder, which puts him on the run from the police, and pulling bizarre pranks — such as secretly putting one of his other victims’ fingers among Jim’s fries — John hovers around the periphery of the young man’s life, driving him to the brink of insanity rather than simply hunting him down. Jim doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve this harassment, but for John there’s almost something personal about his antagonism. The fact that he won’t quite reveal his motives makes it all the more upsetting.

When I press Harmon on The Hitcher’s themes, he’s reluctant to spell things out, although he makes the film sound, in some ways, like an unconventional coming-of-age saga. “Not to explain it all, because I don’t think that’s ever a good idea, but on some unconscious level, the Tommy Howell character knows that he needs help in his maturation process. He’s not turning into the man he wants to be. He’s so naive — so almost childlike — when he stops and [picks up John]. And as a result of meeting Rutger, this maturation process that would have taken another 10 years is compressed into four days — like a diamond [which is a] piece of coal under pressure.”

After being told that there’s almost something paternal about the way John seems to be doling out tough love to poor Jim, Harmon responds, “That was a key piece of direction that I know I bonded with Rutger [over]: ‘Treat him like your son, with love.’”

Indeed, there’s a weird occasional tenderness that Hauer brings to the role — in particular when the two men are in a diner, Jim pointing a gun under the table at John, who knows it’s not loaded. John seems to be encouraging the frightened young man, like a proud papa teaching his skittish boy how to ride a bike. “Why are you doing this to me?” Jim asks, near tears. John calmly puts pennies on Jim’s eyes, cradling the young man’s face in his hands. “You’re a smart kid,” John says, “you’ll figure it out.”

Of course, that tenderness was perceived in some quarters to be homoerotic — or, perhaps, homophobic, just one more example of a horror movie that queer-codes its villain. Harmon has heard the objection, but he doesn’t agree. Asked if he noted a homoerotic quality in the tense rapport between John and Jim, he says, “Sure, but only in the movie — it was not in the script. That was something that just evolved — it was never a part of a plan. But I think Rutger has a kind of almost gender-neutral kind of thing. As I said, he has very large hands — big guy, certainly masculine — but there’s something ethereal about him. His presence and Tommy Howell’s flailing around trying to find himself — I don’t know, one thing led to another, and suddenly there we were.”

Whether you wanted to read The Hitcher as a father/son story or something more erotically charged, there was no denying that the two characters felt connected, as if their destines had become intertwined when their paths crossed out on that highway. Jim wants to get away from John, but if John is simply trying to kill the young man, he passes up several opportunities to do it. (He has no such problem offing others along the way, including cops and innocent passersby.) That tension of Jim not knowing what John wants from him — why this crazed hitchhiker won’t just kill him — gives the film an existential dread that was unique among slasher/horror films of the time. And it posed a troubling question: If your seemingly all-powerful nemesis isn’t out to murder you, is there actually something even scarier about the fact that he won’t let you go?

At one point during our conversation, Harmon recalls working with Hauer on set and it dawning on him how the actor viewed John. “He’s been playing him like he’s God,” Harmon remembers thinking. “Almost regal. It was something beautiful and strong, and that was very interesting to me.” And just like God, John could be anywhere in The Hitcher, sometimes able to do things that, logistically, he wouldn’t have been able to be present for. (For instance, how did he get that severed finger into Jim’s fries?) But Harmon liked the script’s logic-defying elements.

“I never felt we had to ‘fix’ that,” he says, “because I think for those who are open to that kind of ambiguity, it helps to understand that this isn’t 100 percent real.” And by the way, in Red’s original screenplay, Jim finds an eyeball, not a finger, in his food. “This is indicative of the change in the tone between the original script and the movie,” Harmon says. “Not only was there an eye in there — I don’t remember exactly how it was described — but he must have bitten [into the burger] and thought, ‘Hmm, that’s weird, what is that?’ And he pulls the top of the bun off, and there’s an eyeball and a note that says, ‘I have my eye on you.’ [And I thought] ‘That’s got to go.’ I thought it was unforgivably wink-wink. It just was totally wrong to me.”

If The Hitcher is about the saga of these two men, locked in this odd death dance, the closest the film comes to introducing a significant third character is with Nash, the friendly waitress who makes that hamburger and fries for Jim, unaware of the human appendage inside it. She was played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who’d had her breakout a few years earlier with Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Like many of the people involved in The Hitcher, she was someone Harmon landed on just before she got huge. His cinematographer was John Seale, who hadn’t yet received his Oscar nomination for 1985’s Witness, his first of five. (He won for The English Patient.) The music was written by Mark Isham, who was starting his composing career. (He’d later be nominated for A River Runs Through It and worked on the score for the Best Picture-winning Crash.)

Asked about getting such huge names for his first film, Harmon says the secret was simple: “They weren’t John Seale and Mark Isham at the time.” And that was also true of Leigh, who came in to read for the part like any other actress. “She might have been the third person we read,” says Harmon. “And then, we just stopped reading it — she was so fucking great. We all agreed: ‘As long as we can make the deal with her, let’s not waste our time seeing anybody else.’”

Nash becomes a potential love interest for Jim, but in keeping with The Hitcher’s playing around with genre tropes, nothing really comes of it. After all, not that long after she meets him, Nash meets a grisly, and memorable, end. Even those who have never seen the movie know what becomes of Nash. In his scathing no-stars review, Roger Ebert focused on that moment: “[T]he Leigh character’s death — she is tied hand and foot between two giant trucks and pulled in two — is so grotesquely out of proportion with the main business of this movie that it suggests a deep sickness at the screenplay stage.”

The scene had appeared in the original script. As Red later recalled, “I asked [truck drivers], ‘Well, look, if you wanted to kill a girl with a truck, how would you do it? They were suggesting things like ‘Put her in the back of the transom and run a kingpin through her.’” Technically, Ebert was incorrect — Nash is actually tied between a truck and its trailer, with John sitting in the cab behind the wheel — but, still, the image of a screaming, gagged Jennifer Jason Leigh begging for her life was a disturbing one. In the film, however, it was just the latest step in John’s plan to test Jim, egging the kid on to shoot him, which Jim won’t do because then the truck will lurch forward, ripping Nash in two. The scene amplified the idea that John just wanted Jim to end his life, but for Hauer it was more complicated, which Harmon discovered when they were about to start filming the sequence.

“[Executive producer] Ed Feldman comes to me and he says, ‘We got a problem,’” Harmon tells me. “I said, ‘Really? What’s the problem?’ He said, ‘Rutger won’t come out of the trailer. He doesn’t want to do the scene.’ I thought this was like a joke, because you hear about actors. That scene had not been touched from maybe the first draft — it had never been changed, there was never any discussion about it. So this came out of the blue.”

Harmon went to see Hauer, who “was almost near tears. He said, ‘I’m really sorry, I don’t mean to cause this production trouble, I know it’s costing time. But I just can’t play the scene the way it’s written. I don’t know what took me so long to realize this, but if I play the scene as written, the audience will think I’m the bad guy.’ I almost laughed, but I didn’t. A light bulb went off [in] my head: ‘That’s why he’s been so unbelievably great [in the movie].’” As he’d told Howell during that uncomfortable lunch, Hauer never thought of John as a villain.

Funny enough, in later interviews, Hauer would sometimes take credit for the grisly scene. “I mean, you know, they’ve been doing this for 400 years, but they did it with one or four horsepowers,” he once said. “They’d pull people apart. The Indians did it. In the Middle Ages and other countries they were doing that sort of stuff. And I thought, it might be nice to do it with a tractor trailer, that’ll just up the stakes a bit. And Robert liked that. The scene was originally, she was standing against a wall and the pickup truck was pinning her against the wall, and the final thing was that he would drive her against the wall. But that was weak. So I came up with the tractor-trailer. The tying. Cirque de Soleil.”

But according to Harmon, Hauer only agreed to do the scene if they included new dialogue that Hauer himself had written. “Luckily, I recognized immediately what he had done — and what he had done was ruin the scene.” Harmon can’t recall specifically what the new lines were, “but it was so wrong, I do remember that. But all the changes were right at the tops of the ends of the existing dialogue, so we shot the scene with all these godawful lines in there, and then we cut them out, so it [remained] the scene as Eric had written it. And I never heard a word about it from [Hauer]: ‘I can’t believe you [cut my lines]!’ Never mentioned it again.”

The scene was so traumatizing that some might forget that we never actually see Nash get dismembered. “I do remember very clearly there was no discussion about it,” Harmon says. “Nobody wanted to [show] it, including me. It just seemed gratuitous, even then.” Naturally, in the 2007 remake, the filmmakers show the dismemberment.

Making a feature film had long been Harmon’s dream, but that didn’t make the actual process any easier. “It was a rollercoaster,” he tells me, “and then it was really a rollercoaster to shoot it. I put a lot of pressure on myself, because it was very obvious to me that if I blow this, that’s that — I’ll never get another chance. Sometimes [the shoot] was fantastic and sometimes it was hellish for me, but mostly I put it on myself.”

Harmon shot for about 40 days, not quite sure what the outcome would be. “I had people around me telling me that they thought it was fantastic and it was going to be great, on and on,” he says. “I didn’t trust it ‘cause I didn’t know. I knew it wasn’t a piece of crap, and I liked certain things. I don’t think I ever felt worried ‘cause I guess I knew it was good enough not to be an embarrassment and to be a career-killer before I’d even done anything.” Yet even as the film was being prepped for release, he had to fight against the notion that he’d made a horror movie. “I don’t like the poster,” he tells me, “but they didn’t listen to me. It’s the poster for a horror movie — or much more of a slasher movie.”

The reviews were decidedly mixed when The Hitcher opened on February 21, 1986, but what Harmon most remembers is a particular L.A. Times profile piece that came out soon after the film’s release. “Infamous — for me, anyway,” he says. “We were completely — all of us, all the producers — duped by that reporter.” In the story, writer Deborah Caulfield detailed the gory elements of the original script and the finished product, asking, “How do films like this ever get made? What could the people who make these movies possibly be thinking about?”

The article provoked disgusted responses from readers, with one woman wondering, “How does a writer — or anybody — even think of such scenes as a woman ripped in two, an eye in a hamburger, et al? What does it say about our society that such an unconscionable film is deemed to have a market?”

“It didn’t really bother me that much,” Harmon says now about the L.A. Times piece. “I was so green at the time, just the attention was welcome.”

The Hitcher wasn’t a commercial success, although it put Harmon on the map in Hollywood. “I started getting offers right away and made some very bad decisions,” he says bluntly. “One was from Joel Silver for Lethal Weapon. And the other was from Sherry Lansing to replace Brian De Palma, who had fallen out of Fatal Attraction. And I turned them both down.”

How come? “Because I was an idiot,” he replies self-deprecatingly. But then he adds, “Just because those movies were wonderful and huge hits doesn’t mean that would’ve happened [if I’d directed them].” He goes on to explain that after making The Hitcher, which he describes as “really difficult for all kinds of reasons, mostly political,” he was leery of being involved in films whose producers were known for being a handful — especially Joel Silver. “Offers were coming in for real movies all over the place,” Harmon recalls. “And [my agent] said, ‘You don’t have to waste your time with that jerk — he’s just impossible, he’ll make your life hell.’ And I thought, ‘All right, there’s a good excuse not to do it.’”

As for Fatal Attraction, Lansing was paired with producing partner Stanley Jaffe “who had a reputation for being not an easy character. I had lunch with Ed Feldman to talk to him about whether I should do this Fatal Attraction thing. And he said, ‘If you think I gave you a hard time, you won’t survive [working with Stanley].’”

Harmon has no hard feelings about saying no to two massive hits, although he acknowledges the lesson he’d quickly learn: “I didn’t realize that every movie is traumatic. So how I keep doing it is I have to just accept the occasional trauma. My advice [to first-time filmmakers] is you cannot predict how you’ll feel [while you’re making a movie] — and it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. There’s things coming at you from every direction — from the floor, from the ceiling, from every compass direction. That’s the way it is, and how you react to that is how you react to it. If you react to it negatively, you have to just find a way to deal with it. It doesn’t mean you’re fucking up — it’s just the nature of the work.”

In the ensuing years, he’d make movies with John Travolta (Eyes of an Angel) and Jean-Claude Van Damme (Nowhere to Run). He directed the 1996 HBO film Gotti, which won Armand Assante an Emmy and earned Harmon directing nominations from both the Emmys and the DGAs. (He garnered a second Emmy nomination for his 2004 television film Ike: Countdown to D-Day, starring his frequent collaborator, Tom Selleck, whom he’s worked with on Blue Bloods and a series of Jesse Stone TV movies.)

Meanwhile, The Hitcher’s influence and popularity has grown over time, unexpectedly impacting later projects. When Harmon was filming 2000’s The Crossing, a Peabody-winning A&E TV movie starring Jeff Daniels as George Washington, “We were out in the middle of a field, near Ottawa, on the St. Lawrence River. I’m wandering around because we have a big sequence due the next day, and I’m trying to get it blocked out in my head. And some guy walks across this field — this older guy — having heard that the director of The Hitcher was directing the movie. He wanted to know if I was him, and we talked about [The Hitcher]. Literally, nobody around as far as we could see, in the middle of fucking nowhere in Canada.”

The Hitcher inspired a direct-to-DVD sequel, The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting, which came out in 2003. Howell reprised his role as Jim. Jake Busey played the new hitchhiker. (“That was probably a mistake, to be honest,” Howell said later. “It was mishandled. There was a time when Rutger was involved as well, so I sort of committed with the understanding that that was what was taking place, but then that didn’t happen. It was a bit of a mess. … It probably should’ve never been made. And thankfully, nobody really even knows it exists.”) Then, four years later, Michael Bay’s production company Platinum Dunes, as part of its plan to remake classic horror movies, did a new version of The Hitcher, with Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton as college students who pick up Sean Bean’s mysterious loner.

“I don’t know what he wanted. I didn’t have to,” Bean said when he was asked about his character’s ambiguous motivations. “There are a number of possibilities. Maybe he wanted to die and be rid of the evil inside him? Maybe he just didn’t care? Maybe he just wanted to kill who he wanted until he was killed himself? Maybe it’s just a combination of all those things? Or maybe it was just nothing at all.” It was just one way in which the bloodier, less psychologically-resonant remake differed from the 1986 original. Harmon and Hauer didn’t want to explain everything about John — and his strange relationship with Jim — but it was clear they had ideas about it. 

The original film is currently available in its entirety on YouTube and streaming on HBO Max. Ironically, you might be better off watching it on YouTube, where at least it’s presented in the right aspect ratio — the film on HBO Max is a fairly cruddy pan-and-scan version, which annoys Harmon to no end. “You cannot believe how angry I was,” he says. “I don’t know what to do about it. It’s awful, it’s really terrible.” He’s excited about an English company that will be putting out The Hitcher on Blu-ray for the first time. “They got the original negative. They’re doing [a new] transfer — it’s fantastic.” It will take some time, he reckons. “They [still] have to do the color correction. And a restored China Lake is also on there.”

That’ll be good news for all the Hitcher fans out there, whether it’s David Fincher or that random man who accosted Harmon in the middle of nowhere in Canada, or the thousands of other people who have been obsessed with that strange drifter who decides to insert himself into one unlucky kid’s life. “That experience is one of my favorite experiences in my career,” Howell said in 2013 about The Hitcher, “and it’s also one of my favorite films.”

The movie’s enigmatic attitude toward its two characters’ relationship carries all the way to the end, when Jim, convinced that he’s killed John by hitting him with his car, walks over to the body, lightly caressing John’s hair with the barrel of his shotgun, displaying the same surprising tenderness John had displayed earlier. To this day, Harmon doesn’t exactly want to assign meaning to that moment. “Make of that what you will,” he tells me. “But there was a very gentle gesture to someone who’d spent the entire movie trying to kill him.”

As for Harmon and Hauer, they stayed connected over the decades, sometimes meeting up if the actor was visiting L.A. “We’d have coffee and go to lunch or dinner,” Harmon tells me. The last time he saw his friend “was probably about a year before he died. He was doing his thing, making these very interesting, mostly European, smaller movies.” Their conversations were very rarely about The Hitcher. “I wouldn’t say we never mentioned it, but it certainly wasn’t centered on that. It was what we’re both doing — and that we had to find something [to work on]. ‘Let’s get back on set together.’”

They never got the chance. During my time with Harmon, he would sometimes talk about Hauer while gesturing at the empty seat next to us. “I’m pointing to that chair,” Harmon commented wistfully, “like he’s here.”

The impulse was poignant, but also fitting. After all, Rutger Hauer always said that John Ryder was a ghost.

X