#while more men died

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

main take aways from Halloween (1978) rewatch:

michael myers is canonically 21??? this bitch should be at the club

*sees tiddies* ***MURDEROUS RAMPAGE NOISES***

that's it that's the movie

outside of the fact that everyone who has sex is murdered by the narrative, this is a surprisingly chill portrayal of female sexuality? these teen girls are horny and actively enjoying Getting It On with their boytoys. no pushy boyfriends sneaking in through their bedroom windows--these ladies are taking the initiative to sneak out and GET SOME. one of them gets laid and then immediately orders her boyfriend to get her a beer. (yes she gets Slashered soon afterward, but so does the boyfriend so honestly, gender equality.) yes the Final Girl is the only one not having sex, but she's not bullied for that, nor are her friends slut shamed except possibly by being murdered by the narrative

actually the only character who is shown being morally condemned on-screen is michael myers. specifically FOR his violent overreaction to other people's sex lives. (people he is spying on). metaphorically, the villain is American Puritanism sticking its judgy nose into other people's business.

aka Michael Myers Is A Republican

but actually the real villain is the doctor. guy's a judgemental, shaming, pathologizing asshole. and he's been in charge of michael's care since he was SIX YEARS OLD? kid never had a chance. i'd go on a killing spree too

also the parents. where are the parents? it's halloween night and all the teenage girls are home babysitting their younger siblings? come to think of it, michael's first victim was his own older sister, whom he killed while she was babysitting him. teen girls are really shouldering a labour burden here. maybe parentification is the true villain

side note: mike commits his first murder wearing a clown costume...which is never referenced again? his 'iconic' costume is a generic mask and wig and jumpsuit, when we coulda had a Killer Clown Michael Myers??? travesty

i like how the Final Girl and her friend casually smoke weed in her car. yeah she's an honor student and her friend is the sheriff's daughter. yeah they smoke weed. so what it's 1978

(to reiterate, mike is 21 and should be at the club. im not saying he shouldn't be rampaging, im saying it's sad that he broke out, tasted freedom for the first time in his life, and immediately snuck back into his childhood home to go rampaging. let's have a remake where he goes to a nightclub and has a few beers. maybe some slutty dancing. then rampage)

oh no he's hot

[my-pjo-stuff]

Percy is giving "Storm of Steel" while Luke is more "All Quiet on the Western Front" in terms of experience with the gods ngl.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Wait is the baby beam an official thing.. can I see baby mags.. I imagine him as Jank Boteko

this aint even the only time he's turned into a baby but here's the instance i keep seein on my TL

(X-Men Unlimited Infinity #64)

[problemswithbooks]

Onyx Storm and LGBT+ Rep

How does everyone feel about the LGBT+ rep in the series post Onyx Storm? Personally, I'm not very impressed.

Now, the LGBT+ rep was never the best. Frankly it was always a blink, and you'll miss it type deal, but I have to say after reading Onyx Storm I'm seeing some worrying signs.

One thing I noticed in particular was that the two main LGBT+ characters we have are the only ones without clear love interests/ they're the characters pointed out as sleeping around and unattached. This is in comparison to the straight side characters, who almost all have clear end game love interests or close relationships with one person. The straight characters also have their love interests as part of the side cast, who have at least some lines, as opposed to the LGBT+ characters whose lovers are barely mentioned by name, let alone are a part of the group.

Take Dain. He's one the main side characters. This book it appears his love interest and end game (because no one simply has a crush in a romance novel, or breaks up) is Sloane. Sloane didn't have many scenes in this book, but she's still around, she still has moments. She's apart of their Wing. She has multiple interactions with Dain on page. Also she was a pretty big character last book, who has family ties with an important character from the first book.

In contrast, Ridoc. He was a major character in this book, getting far more scene time than he did in previous installments. He's gay and the only thing we know about his love life, something that's been brought up multiple times, is that he loves sleeping around. In the book where he gets upped scene time, his only romantic interaction is flirting with a new Flier who never shows up again. The only other thing he does romance related (if you can even call it that) is to jokingly mock his straight friends for having steady partners, instead of living it up by sleeping around.

Rhiannon gets similar treatment, though she's not as much of a player. Rhi is an incredibly important character in the first two books and Violet's bff. Her romantic partner is a woman called Tara. They have an off and on again relationship, that is implied to simply be sexual, not romantic. Tara maybe gets a line in one of the books, but I can't recall it at all. Tara is in First Wing.

Unlike the straight characters (or at least those pursuing opposite sex relationships) these two prominent LGBT+ characters are not allowed to have romantic interests, only sexual hook-ups, none of which who are other important side characters, therefore get zero character interactions.

Also, the only LGBT+ character that had a romantic partner (who again is not part of the main friend group) died in this book, so that's not great.

I'm not saying that Yarros has to write an epic LGBT+ romance, but it'd be nice if she at least gave one of these characters as much care as her straight side characters get in the romance department. I mean, would it have killed her to have Ridoc or Rhi have crushes on someone in the main friend group and have cute interactions with them, similar to Dain and Sloane, or Sawyer and Jesinia, or Imogen and Garrick? Why can't Ridoc be interested in Bodhi and get some cute moment during the sparing matches?

I doubt it was intentional, but Yarros is playing into the trope (especially with Ridoc) that LGBT+ people are very promiscuous and rarely have meaningful relationships based on love, rather than sex. Past that, it really feels like they aren't treated the same as the 'straight' characters (because they could be bi) who get at least some dialog with their love interests, who in turn have scenes independent of that relationship, because unlike the LGBT+ characters' love interests, their crushes are important to the story.

[moved-to-thanatologie]

yeah okay, but i wanna talk a minute about how lichdom is actually the bad ending for emmrich a second, because i just played through the last part of his personal quest agaiin, and i've been chewing on it for the last, like, week.

so, you can romanticize it all you want, but emmrich changes after lichdom, which...you know, can be expected, but it's not in a good way. in a shallow sense he has more of a temper, he's more...i'm sorry, i don't think the overprotectiveness of rook is exactly ~so romantic~, i think it's...not great, to put it lightly. it's a little guilt-trippy about how he'll have to mourn them forever if they die, which...newsflash, he's gonna be doing that anyway. and on that shallow level there's just a layer of ickiness to it that i think some people just are...overlooking.

the fact that it's his life's work notwithstanding, like...this isn't the same healing and head on confrontation other companions get for what's eating at them, it's enabling emmrich's aversion to looking the facts dead (no pun intended) in the face: people die. he'll die one day, too, and literally nothing is forever, no matter what promise lichdom makes. like there's some banter with lucanis that i don't have exact quotes for at the moment, but it basically boils down to the fact that if you spend all your time reaching for undeath and hoping to return one day, you're ignoring and wasting the life you can have in the here and now and it's passing you by, which is...i mean, is that not it? is that not exactly what emmrich's doing? and i mean, if there's anyone to point that out, it's probably lucanis.

then there's hezenkoss, who has absolutely fed his fears, and if you search your heart you'll know it to be true. like @ofeluvians and i were talking about, i don't think it was ever a real, true friendship, i think it was almost entirely one-sded (boy, is that ever a character quirk i'm familiar with, i say, looking pointedly at 616 tony stark - ask me how!), and his insecurities were exacerbated to at least some degree. emmrich says himself that johanna never had an easy time of making friends, and if you read the flame eternal you can see she was acerbic even then, and not exactly what i would call compassionate to either emmrich or the spirits they were dealing with.

there's the fact that he was taken into a place that terrified him after his parents died, and i don't think it's necessarily some lofty, grand, scholarly thing that makes the memorial gardens his favorite place in the grand necropolis, i think it's because - out of all of it that we at least get to see - it's actually the most peaceful and least scary. just like i don't think it's hugely a shocker that his favorite spirits are definitely the wisps, which, by and large are manifestations of curiosity and by and large harmless.

i think, instead of a paralyzing fear of death, it's anxiety. like...big anxiety resulting from trauma that's never been addressed (his parents' deaths) and loneliness to a degree (manfred). he's so eager to share things with people, there's a recipe from his mother he passes on to lucanis (which i'm sure was a what's your favorite food conversation), or his books with taash and bellara. his skills to help neve solve a murder. going camping with harding. even the dad talks with davrin have shades of this, funny as it is. he...speaks to people on their level, i think, to a degree, once he knows what their level and their comfort level is (taash). he can empathize with situations he'll never actually experience himself. and it's like he says, a good instructor never makes a student feel inferior.

it's the loneliness thing i wanna circle back to a second, though, because it's my ultimate point: for all of this, for all of his flaws and his fears and his kindness, what the heart of his actual issue that needs addressing is is that loneliness. if you bring manfred back, he'll tell rook, you know, that he has pangs for what might have been, but seeing manfred grow and his excitement for his new magic and getting to be an apprentice mage is something he wouldn't change for the world. if unromanced he stumbles into one, anyway, full of adventure that wouldn't necessarily be the kind he'd find himself in, in his daily, normal life. his genuine distress toward the beginning, after he's recruited, when he feels like he's being judged and shut out (his commentary on other people's commentary on his skulls and manfred, his and taash's issues finally coming to a head).

like this man is lonely, y'all, and looking for human connection, and i don't think he entirely realizes it as the core of that overwhelming sense of dread. thinking about all his little notes in the codices, like...outside of lecture notes there's always some mention of someone from the veilguard in them, davrin and silly questions, or harding and burning the dead, or how davrin showed him flowers he's only seen in herbalism books and how excited he is for that. and if he turns to lichdom, he loses all of that. he loses manfred, and he does not get over it. instead he gets, like, five minutes of euphoria and then it's people finding him crying over manfred in his room and the deep regret when even spite confronts him about how manfred should be there.

so...yeah. that's a lot of words to say i don't think lichdom solves anything, and in fact actually probably makes things worse, because sure, he gets to live forever. with everyone around him that he loves dying, no manfred, and in the end he'll still end up alone, which is the core of the issue, i think.

[comradecowplant]

so Ivanova is nearly killed off, saved by actually killing off sweet baby space legolas, and now she's left anyway? AND my boy lennier is going off to "find himself" too? mkay.

[greasydumbfuck]

frank and his stupid girlfriend he hates

[lesbian-cowpoke]

Probably an unpopular opinion: I don't like a lot of modern Dazzler appearances. Like after New Excalibur. I thought her 4ish issues in Astonishing were pretty good, and A-force v2. That's it really. Essentially every more modern Dazzler comic and appearance feels like it's trying really hard to re-create Dazzler v1, and that's not something that can happen, or even should happen. Ali has had so much growth and experiences past v1, and even in v1 you can tell it does start to shift from fun cameos to actual character growth, around the time she killed Klaw. And while I think callbacks to the silly storylines in v1, she is more than that. Especially post Dazzler the movie, and the gross relationship with Roman. And her time with the X-men and Longshot are important, too. She became more serious, more hardened cause she went through some shit. And like you can balance serious and silly that like never happens. Like most of her modern appearances really feel like they are completely reversing her character growth and it's. Frustrating and annoying :/

That's all I just had to rant about her character loss 👍

[femslashspuffy]

I HATE straight movies. Tony stark dies and what? best the twin chrises can do is a little lip quiver and some glossy eyes? This happened with venom too I need bad action movies to at least let men break down into tears like they're fucking will graham or something. Good god people

[musical-chick-13]

See, I think the thing about deranged, toxic relationships in fiction, is that everyone involved has to actively choose to walk into or keep coming back to this relationship. That's the interesting part for me. What would make someone, against every single ounce of reason, decide that being in a relationship like that is genuinely worth it for them? Why would someone willingly put themselves in that situation? What has to be going on in their psyche? What do they get (or think they get) out of it?

If the toxicity is one-sided or one party is completely railroaded into the relationship at every turn until they finally cave, or there's some outside force trapping both of them in the relationship and they don't actually want to be there, that's not particular interesting to me, personally.

(Obviously, other people can disagree with this; people have a wide variety of opinions and ways they engage with fiction, which is good, actually. I'm simply talking about my own thoughts.)

[constantvariations]

Jaune is the Sakura Haruno of RWBY send tweet

[lemmiestar]

watched saw for the first time and my god

Kinda alot to unpack but it was a really good movie. 10/10

[boypr1ncesss]

my naming scheme for the resurrectionists causes me undue stress a lot of the time but when it works it Works

[marzipanandminutiae]

Sophia, the Boston woman from 1875 who haunts a lamp I got at Brimfield: what is a stay at home girlfriend, if you please?

me: well, it's a woman who's financially supported by the man she's dating, and she lives with him and usually keeps house and cooks for him

her: and they're not married?

me: well, no; hence "girlfriend" rather than "wife." I know that may alarm y-

her: oh calm down I know about Kept Women. he has no legal tie to her, though? she has no sort of standing with him in the eyes of the law? only his word that he'll follow through?

me: yes

her: and remind me again- you don't have to be financially dependent on a man anymore, right? there are more than like three careers open to women that will let you support yourself at a decent level now? and society isn't pressuring you 24/7 to get married and stop working outside the home?

me: yes

her: so these women. CHOOSE to be dependent on a man. who could leave them at any moment without legal consequence. because they don't like their jobs. the jobs, while imperfect, that let them live on their own, answerable to no-one

me: yes

her: that had better be some absolutely amazing jewelry they can pawn off if he leaves them, then

me: it's usually not

her: THERE'S NOT EVEN SECURITY JEWELRY?!

me: oh by the way they blame feminism for "having to work"

her:

her: I became fully dependent on my in-laws who hated me, after my husband died two years into our marriage, because I was a 23-year-old orphan with no marketable skills in any avenue besides Running A Household and the only men left unmarried in my social circle were widowers thirty years my senior. I also couldn't establish lines of credit as a widow because the merchants said my husband dying so soon meant that I didn't have stable enough income. and that was entirely legal

me: yeah

her: I'm going to go slam some doors please do not bother me

[inquirenorth]

.

[wp100]

it sounds kinda pathetic and silly, but this scene is going to haunt me for a while... fuck. i hate it when they kill off the more... 'innocent' characters (well, he still shot his rifle and killed men, but yknow, i think he was the youngest out of the lot? which makes it even worse)

This shit was well-done. it's not like, hollywood-standards, but it was enough to make me tear up and cry a little. think these scenes hit a little harder when someone's comrade/friend dies in their arms, rather than a romantic partner