#why do all my favorite jim moments involve him suffering?

[knightofthenewrepublic]

We don't talk about this moment enough!

[sq0ux]

A Critical Analysis Of My Favorite Garfield Comic

This is my favorite Garfield Comic. Unassuming upon a glance, but I believe this comic contains nuances that can only be explained in long form essay context.

To start with, let's discuss how this comic differs from Jim Davis's other work on Garfield. Typically, Davis' work falls into the typical Setup, Heelturn, and Punchline Pattern. First panel establishes the plot, Second panel twists the context in an unexpected way, and the Third panel delivers a punchline intended to make the audience laugh. Let's look at an example:

This is a typical Garfield comic, the initial panel establishes the scene, and attempts a joke to hook readers. The second panel is a mesh between setup and heelturn, letting garfield ask about a smell and the Big Vicious Dog responds in a way that implies it's a cologne of some sort, or at the very least the BVD intends for the smell to be good. Classic heelturn, typically a noticed smell is perceived in a negative context, so the BVD's acknowledgement and pride in the smell twists audience expectations. The final panel is the punchline, we find out the source of the smell, and hilarity ensues. You can hear the laugh track emanating from this strip.

So back to the other comic. Let's try and do the same thing and apply the SHP model:

First panel is very clearly a setup. Jon instigates a conversation with garfield. But when we try to find a heelturn, we don't see anything similar. The Second panel is just more setup, no twisting of audience expectations, just the continuing of the scene. The third panel is a punchline, but it comes out of nowhere. Jon was just speaking, and then Garfield cuts in with a Quip. We found a Setup and Punchline, but no Heelturn. Instead it's just Jon saying something tinted with depression and Garfield mocks him for it.

I saw this comic and thought it was weird for it to deviate so much from the rest of Davis' style. But then I read something that completely changed the way I saw this comic.

To start, we must analyze the structure of Classical Greek Tragedies. There are 2 major moments in tragedies, peripeteia and denouement. Peripeteia is defined as the moment when a character dooms themself to their own fate. Take Oedipus, this would be the moment he sets out to find the truth about the previous king. This is the moment he seals his fate. Denouement is defined as the resolution. The character is suffering under the consequences of their own action and the audience is told every aspect of the story so as to resolve the loose threads.

Now let's take this new structure and take another look at the comic

Setup and all that jazz, but we now have a more accurate description of the second panel: it is the Peripeteia of the story. Jon unknowingly seals his own fate to being the butt of another joke. The third panel is simultaneously a punchline and denouement, Jon is suffering his fate (debatably, as we don't know if he understands Garfield), and it is the punchline of the joke.

It's weird that a comic that is supposed to be funny follows the structure of a Tragedy right? Tragedies aren't supposed to be funny, right? Well, the tone isn't the only thing that changes between this comic and the Greecian Tragedies.

Greek Tragedies involve a character(s?) called The Chorus. The Chorus was a group of people that didn't directly affect the plot, instead they described what was happening. Essentially they were a translator between the actors and the audience; a method of communication that explains what's happening and why.

But hang on, this kind of sounds familiar... a character that only comments on the goings on instead of actually affecting it? I put forth the argument that Garfield (at least sometimes) is a modern interpretation of the Chorus from Greek Tragedies.

For the sake of the remainder of this essay, when I say Garfield, I mean specifically in this comic, as I am only discussing this comic and not the series as a whole.

With that being said, Garfield emulates The Chorus in Greek Dramas, he never directly interferes and instead comments on the events. But there is a slight difference. The Chorus is impartial, describing things as they are factually, but Garfield alters this. Garfield is strictly against the main character, and constantly mocks him. Garfield is a much more antagonistic Chorus, he doesn't describe the events, he instead mocks Jon for his thoughts.

This comic is not funny. It is instead a manipulation of a Greecian Tragedy with the Chorus replaced with a callous, impartial Garfield mocking the character incessantly for his sorrow. A Greek Tragedy in which the usually impartial forces turn against you. A terrifying thought, and an excellent addition to the unofficial Garfield canon as outlined by Super Eyepatch Wolf in his video on Garfield.

[nikibogwater]

What did you think of Nari's characterization in ROTT?

Disliked it, as with most of the other things in the movie.

The short version of it is this: In Wizards, Nari's primary character traits were empathy and compassion for others. In Rise of the Titans, her primary character traits seem to be just a general lack of awareness for what's happening around her, and a tendency to make light of very serious situations.

Now before I get into the long-form answer, I will preface by saying that the writers of RotT were at a severe disadvantage when writing for characters who were introduced in Wizards because Wizards was still in production at the time. So I understand why Nari ended up feeling like a completely different character in the movie, and I am not shaming anyone for it. But the fact of the matter is that I found her characterization in Wizards to be much more appealing, and if that characterization had carried over to Rise of the Titans, I think I would've had slightly warmer feelings towards the movie. But let's get down to brass tacks now, because I've actually been dying to talk about this. This is gonna be a loooooong boi, so I've put everything under the cut to avoid clogging people's queues (I'm just really passionate about this bean goddess, okay? 😅)

When Nari is introduced to us in Wizards, she is quietly watching the arrival of our heroes at the castle. She doesn't make herself known to them, but it is clear she is very interested in what's happening. She does not make any other appearance until the Arcane Order launches their assault on Camelot.

Nari's first spoken words are, "Merlin! This is all my fault!" and as one would expect after hearing this, she is very obviously distressed and feeling guilty for putting everyone in danger. Merlin tells her they need to escape to the past, and that he needs her help in order to do it. Nari's response is to begin charging her magic as she says "I will do what I can."

After our main characters are thrown back in time, we're introduced to Nari as she was in the past. Although she is allied with the Arcane Order in their war against humanity, it's clear that she displays the least amount of malice out of the three. In fact, it's revealed that Nari has always been rather fond of humans, and has even reached out to them in friendship a number of times. After resurrecting Morgana, Nari is the one who does most of the explaining and introductions, showing a bit of a playful/mischievous side as she pokes fun at Bellroc and Skrael. ("I told you she would, Skrael! So old, and they still haven't learned manners.")

During the Battle of Killahead, we see Nari watching the war from a distance, and it's clear from the expression on her face that she is not liking any of this. Though she does briefly aid her siblings when they join in the battle, she reveals afterwards that she can sense the pain and suffering they have inflicted on others--and she doesn't believe the Order's ambitions are worth that. She abandons the Order, presumably spending the next 900 years in hiding, before seeking Merlin's protection.

Once our heroes have returned to the present, Nari becomes a bit more involved in the plot. She expresses genuine sorrow over the destruction of Arcadia Oaks High ("Your beautiful school-home was crushed!") and is clearly distressed by Jim's agony as the shard in his chest begins to work its dark magic. ("Poor soul! Your corruption...I feel it worsening.") After Jim is taken by the Order, we can see her comforting Toby in the background. She continues to show great concern and empathy for the people around her, and is still eager to help wherever she can, though her magic doesn't seem to be combat-oriented. She is also shown to be somewhat timid, hiding behind Merlin or Claire during confrontations with the Order--she is very clearly terrified of her old allies, and seems to want to avoid direct contact with them. When Douxie is struck down by the Order and is falling to his death, it is Nari who runs to try to save him before anyone else--apparently, if someone is in need, Nari's first instinct is to rush to their aid.

So, from all of that, we can gather that Nari, as she was characterized in Wizards, is intelligent, curious, cautious, gentle, empathetic, and very aware of what's going on around her. She is also a little playful and wild, but never to the point of disregarding what's happening or how others are feeling.

In Rise of the Titans, Nari remains consistent with this characterization for all of...seven minutes.

Initially, Nari is still very much herself in this scene (though I wish we could've been told what exactly made her want to stop running and face the Order head-on. Again, in Wizards, it was abundantly clear that that was the one thing she did NOT want to do). When Douxie expresses his anxiety about the situation, she takes him by the hand, offers him a reassuring smile, and says, gently but firmly, "No. No more running, Douxie." Excellent interaction. 10/10. Five stars. That's also the only time in the movie where Nari displays any level of awareness regarding Douxie's (or anyone's) feelings/wellbeing.

The body-swap scene is when Nari's character just completely swings in the opposite direction, and she becomes near-unrecognizable as being the same character from Wizards. Douxie, being our favorite Self-Sacrificing Idiot, swaps bodies with her at the last possible second, causing the Order to take him instead. Nari, now stuck inside Douxie's body, seemingly doesn't think much of this development at all. In fact, her first response is to giggle playfully. UM, NARI. NARI, SWEETIE, YOUR BIG BROTHER IS IN THE CLUTCHES THE MOST EVIL BEINGS KNOWN TO MANKIND. LIKE, THEY LITERALLY KILLED HIM THE LAST TIME HE RESCUED YOU FROM THEM, WHY ARE YOU NOT MORE WORRIED ABOUT THIS?! Up until this point, Nari has never been shown to underestimate the Arcane Order--she seems all too aware of the kind of violence and destruction they are capable of, which explains why she was so terrified of them in Wizards. But in Rise of the Titans she seems to just....not really care anymore? The entire time she is in Douxie's body, she doesn't express the slightest amount of concern for him, or for anyone around her. She just keeps doing...cutesy forest gremlin things, like singing to her flower, batting at a light fixture, and antagonizing Archie (she's definitely not the only character who was severely lacking in empathy in this movie, but this is an essay about Nari, so I'm not going to bother touching on everyone else). This is a direct contradiction to her characterization in Wizards, where she was shown to care deeply for the people around her, and displayed genuine distress whenever they were in danger or suffering.

Nari also persists in being pointlessly cryptic for the entirety of the movie because....reasons. Before the Order breaks Douxie's body-swap spell, she tells Jim, "Trollhunter make ninth configuration--the Kronosphere will make right." Which, of course, doesn't help him in the slightest. And when they finally succeed in rescuing Nari, she doesn't elaborate or explain this at all. She just says it again. Listen, I can get behind Nari being Insanely Ancient, and maybe a little out of touch with modern trends, but I'm fairly certain that Wizards Nari at least knew how to communicate. She never showed any inclination towards being cryptic or mysterious on purpose, at least. We're never given any explanation for Nari's sudden lack of clarity, so I guess it was just there for plot reasons. Which makes it that much more infuriating.

Also I don't know why, but the little "Hehe!" Nari does when Douxie pulls her into a hug kind of grinds my gears, because Nari, love, this is a really serious moment, you were just snapped out of mind control and your siblings are currently rampaging across globe in giant magical mechs, why are you giggling like a four-year-old and not, idk, SOBBING IN A MIXTURE OF RELIEF AND HORROR BECAUSE YOU WERE ALMOST PART OF WHAT DESTROYS THE EARTH?! AS THAT WOULD BE A MORE APPROPRIATE RESPONSE TO WHAT JUST HAPPENED????!!!!! But that's just a stupid little nitpick.

Now this is not me saying that Nari's characterization in the movie is objectively bad. Actually, it's kind of fitting for the Tales of Arcadia brand of humor--Super ancient demigoddess who houses the power to completely destroy the earth is also kind of a clueless ditz and needs to be babysat like a toddler. If she had not been introduced in Wizards, I would've been fine with this. But, much like the rest of the movie, Nari's vastly different characterization felt a tiny bit like a betrayal, and it consistently bothered me in every single one of her scenes. It also kept me from feeling the full impact of her death--seriously, I didn't cry at all when she was killed. Which....yeah, I'm just as surprised as you are.

So anyways, if you've made it this far, thank you so much for the ask, Non! Normally I have a bit more self control than to just....essay-dump like this, but honestly I've been thinking about this for way too long, and I had to get it out of my system. 🥴 And to anyone who really liked Nari's characterization in RotT--that's totally valid! Again, I don't think it was a bad characterization. It was just very inconsistent with her character as she was introduced to us in Wizards. And I just happen to prefer Wizards Nari over RotT Nari. 🌿✨

[aion-rsa]

Best Marvel Comics to Binge Read on Marvel Unlimited

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With an enormous swath of the world involved in varying degrees of social distancing, many of us suddenly find ourselves with a lot of time on our hands. Never fear! There are more options for streaming comics than ever before, and that means we have access to more of comics history, more hidden gems, and more epochal runs than ever before. But the variety of options to read can be daunting. That’s why we’ve put together a recommendation list of some of our favorite comics binge reads to help you through quarantine. Marvel Unlimited has been around for more than a decade. It runs about six months behind print release of books, so it’s a good way to stay sorta-current with the stories you love. But the real draw is the back catalog: with 25,000 issues in its library, you’ve got access to some of the most important and most entertaining runs of superhero books of all time. From Lee and Kirby creating the modern superhero comic in the pages of Fantastic Four through Chris Claremont and John Byrne revolutionizing the X-Men, and through several Wars (Secret, Infinity, or Civil), everything is here. 

You don’t need us to tell you to read some of these stories. You know “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” Kraven’s Last Hunt, “Demon in a Bottle,” or Jonathan Hickman’s behemoth are all important and good. And some of them, Marvel’s even giving you for free. We’re going to skip over some of the obvious ones and point you towards hidden gems, the harder to find stories that fill in the edges of the Marvel Universe and make it such a rich, lush experience. We are also looking for monster runs that will keep you occupied – you can read six issues in one sitting with no danger of nearing the end. Some of these might take you an entire round of social distancing to finish. 

A quick note about the reading guides: We’ll list out the issue numbers for most of these. Many of them may have their own separate entry under Marvel Unlimited’s reading lists – those are helpful, but these are definitive. One of them, we’re going to refer you to the events – to find those, you can go to “Browse”, then scroll over to “Comic Events.” And for one of these, we’re linking to the inordinately helpful Comic Book Herald. They’re a great site for comic reading orders in general, and have helped me through several other binge reads before. 

Walt Simonson’s Thor

Thor (1966) #337-360, Balder the Brave (1985) #1, Thor #361-362, Balder the Brave #2-4, Thor #363-382

This probably shouldn’t be on the list. It is in the conversation for the greatest runs on any superhero comic ever. But if you’ve never read it, you’re truly missing out.

If you watched Thor: Ragnarok and loved how it looked or any of its story, chances are you are going to adore this, the run that Ragnarok borrowed so much from. Walter Simonson took the Asgard realized by Jack Kirby, the mythological realm pumped full of color and Kirby dots, and turned everything way up to create the most iconic Thor run of all time. Simonson started the run on art before handing off to Sal Buscema, and Simonson and Buscema are two of the artists I could recognize by style the soonest. Everything is HUGE. 

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Movies

Thor Comics Reading Order: Ragnarok for Beginners

By Marc Buxton

Movies

Thor: Love and Thunder Release Date, Cast, and Story Details

By Mike Cecchini and 1 other

It’s paced immaculately, with whatever story is in the foreground holding your complete attention, but always with something drip drip dripping in the background that will eventually crescendo. This run made so many characters wonderful, but Loki, Volstagg, and Beta Ray Bill are highlights. And have I mentioned the art? It’s incredible, and doesn’t suffer one bit when Buscema takes over. This is my favorite run on any comic of all time. You absolutely must read it. 

X-Men: the Messiah Cycle

Messiah CompleX, Messiah War, and X-Men: Second Coming

The hottest take you’re going to find on the internet today is this: the Messiah Cycle is the best era of X-Men comics. It has everything I want from the X-Men line: books have distinct voices and missions, but contribute to the overarching direction of the line. There IS an overarching direction to the line. New characters are brought to the front, and new ideas are injected into the line.

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Comics

First New Marvel X-Men Crossover Revealed

By Jim Dandy

TV

X-Men: The Animated Series – The Essential Episodes

By Michael Mammano

You get all of that from the Messiah era. Messiah CompleX picks up with Cerebro identifying the first mutant birth in years; Messiah War has the members of the Mutants with Claws and Swords era X-Force heading to the future to check up on that baby; Second Coming is when she returns to present day. Each one has a different tone; Messiah CompleX and Second Coming bring together every book in the line to tell their stories, but also let each creative team keep telling their stories and end up being the best-handled X-crossovers since Inferno. And Second Coming is the best straight action X-book I think I’ve ever read. 

If you like these crossovers, you should absolutely check out other books from this era. Utopia X, a crossover between Uncanny X-Men and Dark Avengers, is amazing, as is Duane Swierczynski and Ariel Olivetti’s Cable and Zeb Wells’ New Mutants.

Mark Gruenwald’s Captain America

Captain America (1968) #307-422, 424-443

Full confession: this is my current binge read. After years of hearing about how wonderful Gruenwald’s Cap was, I finally decided to jump in and within three issues, I was texting people to scream at them for not forcing me to read it sooner. For starters, the goddamn Serpent Society turns into a union. In fact, the Serpent Society’s union meeting is the most fun I’ve had reading a comic scene in a while, and the fact that it is based on a real meeting of comic book creators from 1978 makes it both more accurate sounding and HILARIOUS (I think Constrictor is Gil Kane, when you read it).

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Comics

Avengers: Endgame – The History of Captain America’s Climactic Moment

By Gavin Jasper

Movies

Captain America Comics Guide and Reading Order

By Mike Cecchini

But the real appeal is how much movie Cap is based on this era. Gruenwald’s Steve Rogers is a really nice guy. Everybody loves him, everyone respects him, and there’s not a lick of condescension or mean spiritedness about anything he does, from sparring with Black Knight to taking on a gang of criminal jugglers with Hawkeye to trying to help joke villains like Rocket Racer. He’s also extremely competent, and Gruenwald and artist Paul Neary do an incredible job of showing this, as Cap breaks into the West Coast Avengers’ headquarters while trying to figure out, through his jet lagged brain, what day it is. It only gets bigger and more traditionally superhero as it goes on, with artistic contributions from the likes of Kieron Dwyer, Ron Lim, and others.

You’ll see even more of this run’s influence in Marvel’s The Falcon and The Winter Soldier TV series on Disney+, as it introduces key characters who we’ll see on screen there, so get reading, and pay attention!

Runaways 

Runaways (2017) #1-current

Rainbow Rowell’s current run as writer on Runaways captures the Marvel spirit better than just about any comic coming out right now. It’s a masterful mix of superheroics, joyful immersion in Marvel continuity, and soapy teenage drama. A lot of people are doing good work at Marvel right now, but nobody is hitting these notes as consistently well as this crew. 

This book is remarkably accessible for something so steeped in its own history. If you’re new to comics, or if you’re here because of the Hulu show, you’ll find plenty to love. But if you liked the original series from Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona, you’re going to be shocked at how much this feels like if that same book had never ended. Even though the characters have grown and changed substantially, their voices are distinct and seamless. This is one of my favorite Marvel comics being published right now, and once you’re all caught up, make sure you add it to your pull list at your shop.

Darth Vader

Darth Vader (2015) #1-12, Star Wars: Vader Down #1, Darth Vader #13, Star Wars (2015) #13, Darth Vader #14, Star Wars #14, Darth Vader #14-25

Remember that moment in Rogue One where Vader just kicked the shit out of everyone without looking like he was trying? And how everyone squealed in delight at old, force of nature, badass villain Darth Vader being back? If you were reading the comics at the time, that moment had already happened for you a full 18 months before the movie came out, in Darth Vader #6. 

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Comics

Star Wars Canon Timeline in Chronological Order

By Megan Crouse and 1 other

Movies

Star Wars: Darth Vader’s Best Moments from the Marvel Comics

By Marc Buxton

This entire series is Vader killing everything he can. It’s like watching a space tornado. What’s especially surprising, though, is how Kieron Gillen manages to sneak some important character development into the book. While Vader slices through Sith intrigue and Rebel scum and the entire royal line of a mining planet and a bunch of others, we’re also learning about why he’s the way he is. This series takes place between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, so some of the lines that get filled in add to the rest of the OT as well. There have been several very good Star Wars comics since Marvel got the license back, but this run on Darth Vader is the best. 

Ultimate Spider-Man 

Ultimate Spider-Man saved Marvel Comics. Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley didn’t do it with flashy variants or crossovers. They did it by telling good, pure, core Spidey stories. 

It’s hard to separate Peter’s origin from Ultimate Spider-Man from Peter’s origin in the 616. The Ultimate origin is so definitive and iconic in how it fills in the spaces between the necessary beats. Bagley’s art especially – even now, thinking about this series that I haven’t read in forever, I can still pull up Peter jumping over Norman’s car, or MJ’s face when she and Peter have “the talk.” 

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Movies

How Shifting MCU Release Dates Could Impact Spider-Man 3

By Don Kaye

Movies

Spider-Man 3 Story Is “Absolutely Insane” Says Tom Holland

By Kirsten Howard

For the absolute best, and purest this book can be, just read the first 38 issues, ending with the first Venom arc, but the book stays solid for its entire run. Bendis’ work with both Peter Parker and Miles Morales is my favorite work of his career, especially when Miles joins the cape world, but nothing will ever match just how fantastic these first few arcs of Ultimate Spider-Man are.

The Annihilation Era

Annihilation, Annihilation: Conquest, War of Kings, Realm of Kings, and The Thanos Imperative

You will be hard pressed to find better comic book space opera than the Abnett/Lanning era of Marvel’s cosmic characters. Marvel’s cosmic line was an afterthought when these first started coming out. By the end, it was a widely beloved corner of the Marvel Universe that was popular enough to be mostly transcribed whole by the movies.

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Movies

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: Cast, Release Date, Director, Story, and News

By Mike Cecchini and 1 other

Comics

Guardians of the Galaxy Reading Order

By Gavin Jasper

The nice thing about this era of the cosmic line is how neatly the main books move from event to event. Annihilation tells the story of a cataclysm that befalls the universe, and how the remaining heroes – Nova, Star Lord, Silver Surfer, Drax, Gamora, Ronan the Accuser, and Super-Skrull, among others – fight a war to survive. Rich Rider gets his own solo Nova comic from there, and it leads right into Annihilation: Conquest, about the catastrophe that follows in Annihilation’s wake. It also sees the formation of the Guardians of the Galaxy as we know them and launches their book, before tying both comics together in War of Kings where the Shi’ar and Kree empires collide. Realm of Kings is the aftermath of that war (and has one of my favorite Shi’ar Imperial Guard stories of all time), and that leads directly into the conflict that mostly closes out the era, The Thanos Imperative. This is a great introduction and immersion in Marvel’s cosmic universe, and will have you hooked by the halfway point of the first crossover.

Black Panther

Black Panther (1998) #1-22, Deadpool (1997) #44, Black Panther #23-62

There are certainly better parts to this run, but there is a scene where Namor, T’Challa, Doctor Doom, and Magneto stand around an apartment outside of the United Nations shouting at each other about diplomacy, and to this day I still have not found a comic book more specifically designed for my interests than this one. 

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Movies

Black Panther 2 Cast, Release Date, Villain, Story, and News

By Mike Cecchini

Movies

Best Black Panther Comics: An Essential Reading Guide

By Jim Dandy

Priest is one of the sharpest minds ever to write comics. He’s so good at misdirection and storytelling – he will overwhelm you with style and flash, and you won’t even notice the subtle clues he’s dropping, or the way themes and characters weave together to show key parts of the story. This run on Black Panther is probably the definitive one for the character, and contributed a ton to the movie version, but there’s so much more depth (and humor!) that Priest puts into the Marvel Universe that it’s very worth reading.

Incredible Hercules

Hulk (1999) #106-112, Incredible Hercules (2008) #113-115, Hulk Vs. Hercules: When Titans Collide, Incredible Hercules #116-137, Assault on New Olympus Prologue, Incredible Hercules #138-141, Hercules: Fall of an Avenger #1-2, Heroic Age: Prince of Power #1-4, Chaos War #1-5

Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente are two of the best people writing comics right now. Each individually writes really good comics, but the two of them working together almost always put something special out. Incredible Hercules spun out of World War Hulk and came out better than it had any business being. 

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Movies

Hulk Movies Marvel Should Make

By Marc Buxton

TV

Who is She-Hulk? A Guide to Marvel’s Next TV Star

By Gavin Jasper

Hercules exists in a unique place. Pak and Van Lente used him as a gateway to the mythology of the Marvel Universe – the Greek pantheon, but also the Norse pantheon, Japanese gods, Inuit gods, even Skrull deities. And several of these aren’t exclusive to Marvel, so you get a very clear and obvious statement about some of the differences between the Big 2 universes, some clever in-jokes, and the requisite moving story about godhood. This all comes with wonderful characterization, clever plotting and a great sense of humor. 

Nextwave: Agents of H.a.T.E.

Read Nextwave after you’ve read everything else, not because it’s a good capstone to your Marvel experience, but because it’s aggressively anti-continuity, and (lovingly) EXTREMELY disrespectful of the rest of the Marvel Universe. It’s also one of the funniest comics Marvel’s ever put out. 

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This whole story is Warren Ellis brutalizing superheroes. Boom Boom from X-Force, Monica Rambeau (sometimes Captain Marvel, sometimes Photon), Machine Man, monster hunter Elsa Bloodstone, and Captain &#($$&*#!@ (or The Captain) are brought together by the Highest Anti-Terrorism Effort (H.A.T.E.) to fight Unusual Weapons of Mass Destruction. It’s aggressive nonsense, less anti-continuity than acontinuitous which isn’t a word but also fits the spirit of the book – characters make no sense even from issue to issue, and only serve the plot, but that nonsense later serves the plot. And it is an absolute tour de force from Stuart Immonen, who draws every type of comedy you can imagine – slapstick, absurdity, somehow sarcasm, puns – with incredible layouts and storytelling. This is not a good Marvel comic, but it is an incredible comic book that you’re going to love.

The post Best Marvel Comics to Binge Read on Marvel Unlimited appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[delicateisfearless-blog]

Stranger Things Review |Season One

So I have just finished the first season of stranger things and I loved it. I had considered watching it in the past, but I thought it would be not as good or just another Riverdale (no shade! But they do drag some things out!!) But I think because the show has like eight episodes that's why it wasn't all over the place. Like the way it was written and the way it was shown to us was just perfect. I felt that we did see all the important characters equally, other shows have a hard time doing that but I really think this show did pretty well at keeping us with everyone each episode.

I would love to talk about every part of this first season but that would take days if I did that and I really need to start on season two. So I'll try to make this review as short and sweet as possible.

The Mother Who Believed

Joyce was one of the characters that truly stuck out this first season. Not only is she the first one to believe all the stuff that is happening, but she believed--or she knew that Will was alive. She isn't selfish in finding her son, she wants him back but she still told El to let her know if she couldn't handle being there long. Despite the fact her life is far from perfect she is a good mother who loves her boys and that's clear.

The females written this season (Joyce, El, and Nancy) were all strong women and I loved that. They had vulnerable moments for sure but that doesn't take away anything. Strong women can show emotion, they can be vulnerable. Joyce wasn't the woman who wanted to be saved, she figured out Lonnie and got him out of there.

Joyce is played by Winona Ryder who I first remember seeing in Bettlejuice as Lydia. (If y'all haven't seen that movie your tasteless af. I don't make the rules y'all!) I think if somebody else had taken on Joyce, then the character wouldn't have been brought to life as much as Winona plays her. Winona honestly had me bawling my eyes out in so many scenes, her talent is just saw raw, real and beautiful.

Even when she was in the most dire of situations she still refused to cower in fear. She didn't care. She had one job to do and that was to bring Will home. And at the end that's what exactly happens, I was crying when he came back and she had me in absolute tears---I'm crying writing this.

The Sister That Lost

Nancy was my favorite character this entire season. I knew before I actually watched that she would be, it was this vibe I got with her. The character isn't by any means perfect---she's this teenaged girl who just wants the guy and to matter. She's a teenager so she is intended to not always make the most calculated decisions, but still she was a major badass this season.

I think Nancy is a little naive in the beginning and even Barb sees that. But I think after she takes the next step with Steve The Shamer (sorry I'm still salty he and his friends pulled that sh*t!), Barb going missing, and the argument with Jonathan makes her realize that she is in fact being naive with chasing after somebody with horrible taste in friends.

There's this scene in the finale where she is smiling at the boys all being reunited. She's smiling but you see it fall and in that moment I just knew she thought Barb, and how she couldn't be reunited with her because she was gone. Her one true friend was dead and she had lost.

What I loved most about Nancy is that she wasn't scared. When it came down to it she went along with Jonathan---it was even her idea to go through with it--she wanted to get rid of it. I do think apart of her wanted to do it to protect Mike, but it was clear the main reasoning was justice for Barb.

The Superhero

El is introduced as this girl with these magnificent powers. She doesn't really know much about the world or what a lot of things mean. She starts learning stuff through Mike by starting off with friend. She doesn't really talk much but we do learn a lot about her as the episodes go on.

We see the brilliant and talent Millie Bobby Brown give off a spectacular performance as we see flashbacks to what she went through and just why she's trying to leave it all behind. I think Winona Ryder was the powerful actress this season, but Millie isn't far behind. When Mike pushes her away from him you see just how hurt she is and that she doesn't really understand. Her portrayal of El was just heartbreaking. She took on this role of this tragic girl who has had to deal with some horrible monsters and gave her hope, and then she lost that hope because she knew she had to take away the monster that was hurting her friends.

The Heartbroken Man

Jim Hopper is a character I wasn't sure what to think of at first. He came off as arrogant but we soon learn that he's this man that is completely lost and heartbroken in the world. As the season progresses we see more of Hopper and we learn that he has lost his daughter Sarah due to cancer.

In his flashbacks we see what appears to be a strong man who is positive. But when we see him by himself he is this broken man crying on hospital stairs because she's sick. I think what drives him to want to save Will is his daughter, it's as if he has this second chance to save somebody's child from dying.

I really fell in love with the character by the end of the season. He was great, a true asset to the series. Without him I don't think they would have had that chance to get Will back. He and Joyce really made a great team and I loved watching them work together.

Oh you should know that David Harbour going to be in the new Hellboy and Blackwidow. I have no idea if Hellboy is out yet but if you like the actor wait for them, I know so many people have waited for Blackwidow movie for years and the fact he's in it might add to the excitement.

The Photographer

Jonathan is a character that I was looking out for. I knew a spoiler and I was scared to watch the scene because I was afraid I would cringe. It's the scene where Steve breaks his camera, it was a well acted scene between the two males who are clearly after Nancy's heart. I think what Jonathan did was um a stranger thing to do--get it?

But he's weird. He's a weirdo, but I don't want to call anyone out here. (Riverdale.) This is how you write a weird socially awkward character. You have them act like this (not the camera thing, that's got nothing to do with being socially awkward.) But there are scenes where we see Jonathan putting up signs and you can just tell this is how he is. You don't need him to proclaim it outloud as him "being weird" you just know he is.

I actually really liked the Jonathan character once we got past the photos. He is this guy who helps around the house, cooks and tries to bring in extra cash. You see just how much family means to him---we see just how different his home life is compared to Nancy's. Nancy's family for sure isn't suffering but they aren't really all that close, but we see that Jonathan had a bond with his brother where they would listen to music together. I think the only thing in common is that there's complication between parents.

And as the season progressed I found myself loving him and Nancy over Nancy and Steve. I am looking forward to what's next for them in season two seeing as it was hinted in the finale something will arise between them at some point.

The Self-Sabotaging Jerk

Steve Harrington. I didn't really like him this season. I thought that he was pretty awful to Nancy this season. I'm not saying he didn't have his "good guy" moments. But he laughed when his friends cracked jokes and mocked her for taking the next step with him and then the slutshaming thing just really didn't set well with me either.

In the finale when he is cuddled up next to Nancy I felt nothing. I didn't feel happy they were together, it just felt like him slutshaming her was overlooked. I know she most likely forgave him by this point but I still didn't feel happy by it. But people said he will grow on me eventually. So I'm not saying I'll never like him, I just feel disappointed in him is all.

I think his problem is that he self sabotages good things in his life. I think he does this by wanting to be in with the right crowd and feel accepted into that life. But I think most likely based on some of the scenes that almost losing Nancy and getting punched he realized that he can't be that person anymore.

I did feel bad for him in the scene where his friends are being horrible to him. I think that's the most I felt bad for him, I didn't care about his selfish worries after Barb went missing. But I am open to seeing what they do with the character and how they'll get me to fall in love with him.

Boys On A Mission

The Party consists of the boys: Mike, Will, Dustin, and Lucas. And now El seems to be a member but seeing as I've discussed her already I'll leave her out of this one. So Mike is very loud in personality and I think that's what people love about the character. I didn't expect to like the character as much as I did, but the thing about this show is you don't hate the main characters, or I couldn't at least. They are all complicated and as the series goes you kind of see that. I did think Mike was a little selfish and didn't consider how his friends (mainly Lucas) was dealing with everything. But I still love the character and the actor did such a good job with the character.

I did kind of feel like Lucas and Dustin weren't really going to be that significant at first which is crazy because they do in fact appear a lot. I think what made me believe that is because Mike did become really involved with El, so I could understand why Lucas was jealous at first. But the fact that Mike became obsessed with El didn't take away Dustin or Lucas, they were still there. Annoyed but still there.

I do think Lucas was harsh with her but I understand that he was scared to trust letting anyone else into the party. Dustin has a very follow the leader type personality but that won't stop him from telling his friends like it is or calling them out on their sh*t.

Will is very interesting. He is bullied for being more I guess feminine and called fairy. Although he is possibly on the feminine side (we didn't really see much of him. He was barely in the season seeing as he was in the Upside Down) but that doesn't necessarily mean he is gay. I think the fact that showing this character be called these names and in his brother's room listening to music to block it out was one of the saddest things. Whether or not the character is gay doesn't matter, it's great if he is it's fine if he isn't. I think this character is a example to what is against toxic masculinity, guys thinks it's weak to cry or do more feminine stuff.

I think the lengths the party would go for one another is beautiful and what true friendship looks like. And I can't wait to see what's in store for these buds in season 2!

And with that...

So I think I covered all the important characters. Maybe I should have said something on Karen Wheeler... So right quick I had seen people talking about her before as not being the best mother. But she actually was a pretty good mother, she spent the entire season trying to get her children to open up to her and she worried about them nonstop. So Karen was a pretty good mother and I actually really liked her. My favorite mom on the show is still Joyce, but Karen is a close second.

And with that I just want to say that this season was one of the best I've ever seen of any show in this type of genre. Thank you and have a beautiful time and I hope to be on season 3 in a few days :)))))

[freakflagbyiana]

Why “David Bowie is god”

As my site turns one year old today, which is also David Bowie’s birthday, I thought I’d try to begin to explain the importance David Bowie has in my personal life and the effect he had, continues to have, on my career.

Childhood influence

My parents had fairly different musical tastes but the one major thing that overlapped was they were both David Bowie fans. My mom was also a Jim Henson fan so I grew up watching Labyrinth with her. I remember it was out of print for a long time and I was the only kid in the neighborhood with a copy that had been taped off of HBO. As a kid I remember being in love with Jareth’s hair itself, asking Mom if I could make my hair do that one day. She replied “Sweetie, that’s a wig, not his real hair” and it was the dream-shattering equivalent of learning that there was no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, and Tooth Fairy all rolled up into one. As a goth teenager I really got into his freaky Ziggy era, finding the idea of being an alien heavily relatable. And when I discovered BowieNet when I was 17, to my surprise my parents agreed to pay my annual subscription... It was $70. I think most parents would be like “Your message board fanclub costs how much? HAH! No.” I won’t go into grave detail of my BowieNet life here, because I could write an entire book, but I’ll summarize it. It began in 1996, and behind the pay wall was lots of exclusive bonus content, access to concert presales and bnet-only events, exclusive chatroom Q&As, and a very active message board. This was before Twitter, before Instagram, before Myspace, definitely before Facebook. David Bowie basically created social media as the everyday form we recognize today. He didn’t post all the time but I would still consider him very active on the message board, for a busy top tier celebrity. His username was “sailor” although there were always whispers about his other secret accounts that he used for trolling. So he basically invented trolling, too. The community itself was close, there were always local meetups and many members would travel internationally to see their closest bnet friends, eventually including myself. I joined this community when I was still in high school and 17 years later I am still close to the friends I made back then. These people are my family, and they vary from all nations, all walks of life, all classes, all ages... The first time I met any of them was at my first ever Bowie concert and that itself was a bnet members-only show to launch the Reality tour, which was eventually known as his last tour. This pivotal moment in my life occurred on August 19th 2003 at the The Chance Theater in Poughkeepsie NY. It was a small general admission venue, arguably a dive compared to the arenas he would play on the rest of the Reality tour. I was 18 years old and was in the process of moving to Chicago for art school. It was surreal to be seeing my first Bowie concert in a GA venue, and yet I knew 80% of the audience. David Bowie himself knew 100% of the audience, and you can hear him speaking to specific people in the bootlegs. I knew more people in the audience than I knew in my high school of 60 kids. A bunch of us were waiting at the venue early enough to catch him coming out to say hello while they were doing soundcheck. I didn’t get anything signed because all the members he knew by name were up in the very front of the group, as it should be. But I could still observe him from afar. He was dressed simply in a crisp white tshirt and white jeans, so the bright summer sunshine gave him a literally radiant, angelic glow. I’ll never forget his slinky catlike walk, and I’ve since never witnessed a creature with more grace.

Lessons I learned from Him

Freakflag began when my last salon closed, suddenly, due to #Austinproblems. As a fantasy color specialist, what I do is so specialized that not many places are going to do it well. The most stable environment for it, on short notice, is a mini salon.  As a hairstylist, this makes sense.  As an artist, this was (still is) terrifying.  I have literally painted myself into a corner where I am my own microcosm, a terrarium of rare creatures emerging covered in sunset locks and lavender hairdust...  None of this would have been possible without David Bowie. I very sincerely celebrate him as a god of my profession. For I am a witch and my profession is transformation magic. In many ways it is the magic of one’s true form, their true Identity. For example, I have many transgender clients who visit me in the early stages of their personal transformation. Sometimes they know what they want but a lot of times they don’t. I accept this task with great reverence for the importance of what I’m being asked to do. If they are not completely comfortable with the hair I’ve given them, it’s more than “a bad haircut will grow out if you don’t like it” - it can shape their confidence and that shapes the way people treat them. David Bowie is the Patron Saint of No Labels & Don’t Tell Me What To Do. The Patron Saint of the Gender Fluid & the Non-Binary. His iconic Ziggy Stardust mullet is the perfect example as to why I don’t attribute gender to my haircuts. Tell me, is a Ziggy mullet a men’s haircut or a women’s haircut? The answer is Yes. He taught me you can walk around with no eyebrows, a pale skeletal alien, and still feel your oats. It doesn’t matter if people “get it” because you “get it.” And you are the only person that really needs to “get it.” This is the lesson of aesthetic integrity. He taught me the importance of artistic integrity. At times he was a starving artist that created beautiful, profound things that no one quite understood or appreciated. But eventually he had a period of being a sellout that pandered to the crowd; it made him so sick of China Girl that he didn’t play it live for years after. I think it’s the period after this, from the 90s onward, where he found his true creative power. He knew he could achieve either end of the spectrum and balanced on that line thereafter. Blackstar being his best achievement in this regard. He taught me you can find your truest love later in life. Many goths say they aspire to a love like Morticia & Gomez, but I aspire to a love like Iman & David. Theirs is a real life love story that endured, and it didn’t happen overnight, she made him work for it! This is the big one... He saved me from flirting with suicide. I could write a lot about this too but I won’t right now. Here are the broadest strokes: As a sensitive, emotionally neglected, eccentric teenager I listened to a lot of angry music; Punk, Goth, Industrial, etc. The summer of age 16 was a tough one, I had been kicked out of one parent’s house and the other one completely left me to my own devices... So when I began flirting with self harm, the only person that noticed and snapped me out of it was a close school friend whom I will always consider a brother. This was about the time I discovered Bowie’s glamorous Ziggy era and it was the first thing that showed me “Truth, Goodness & Beauty” in my darkest hour. He showed me that being a great artist took time to cultivate your skills and not only would suicide mean I was achieving nothing, but self harm was a weakness that would eventually fester and I had to nip it in the bud. Bowie’s brother suffered from schizophrenia and eventually committed suicide so many of his works touch on the theme of your own worst enemy coming from within. A lot of goth music discusses it too, warning against rather than encouraging, but no one can make something relatable quite like Bowie. (For the record, a lot of that angry music is still my favorite! It has its place in the world) A lot of rock stars drank and drugged their way into an early grave but David Bowie was the one that survived and still managed to stay artistically and culturally relevant in the end. This is the main reason I celebrate him as a role model and a god amongst men. If he survived the 70s, made a clear decision to sober up, and could maintain sobriety throughout the 80s, he could achieve anything.

“Just a mortal with the potential of a superman” David Bowie, Quicksand

How I celebrate Him

For the last four years, I’ve been a DJ at Elysium’s New Year’s Eve party, a Labyrinth-themed Goblin King’s ball. And for the last three, I’ve co-hosted as Jareth himself... which means I’ve achieved my childhood dream of wanting to be Jareth with that fabulous hair and bedazzled tailcoat! This prepares me perfectly for celebrating his life a week later. There are a few “Bowie Weekend” events here in town. Drinks Lounge always has a Bowie Birthday Bash and Elysium usually has an 80’s night tribute or some other event in his honor. Then on the day itself I will take the time to clean my Bowie Shrine and think about all the times he helped me get out of a bad place in my life. Here you can see Instagram highlights of my Bowie Shrine. A few months ago, I got to work on a truly special project that is still super secret. But I can say that it involved recreating a famous David Bowie image and it was a great honor to be asked to do the makeup and hairstyling for this. It took all day, longer than expected, and we got about 300 shots... This weekend we got together again to edit them and in the end only 3 shots were picked. I can only imagine the process for the original shoot! I thought I was just invited along to edit because I was a Bowie nerd that wanted to be there and was ridiculously stoked on this project. But I was grateful to witness us work together as group on this tribute in its entirety, the three of us are perfectionists and we all had high standards but we also had methods of editing our standards for the sake of being practical. Unlike the shoot itself, this time a lot of discussion was had on the different elements that composed the original image and all three of us paid great attention to those details in the recreation. None of us expect to profit from it, this was hours of work that we each volunteered out of love of the art form, and reverence for David Bowie himself. The role I played in this image is a minor one compared to the other two people involved, but I am so terribly proud of us. I think He would be, too. Since I can’t post that image, I will instead leave you with my Aladdin Sane selfie tribute from this weekend:

★

[jshi43]

#Week 6 Reading response

Bodies, Surrogates, Emergent Systems, p. 140

I still think it’s kind of arrogant to put human bodies and artificial intelligence parallel together. I’m kinda believe that one day artificial intelligence will break that final door and become completely self functional beings. Look at how fast they involve; once pass the final point there’s no way human can keep controlling them. If that day comes, it’s even hard to say if human can still survive. Just think of the Neanderthal. 

However it all starts with human body. When making artificial intelligence human intentionally made them similar to body functions. We want to make new things that looks like our self. God made human with his image, and human made their creations with their images. It’s creation, but it’s also control. 

Atsuko Tanaka, p. 140

To me this is a very beautiful work for sure. The style of it is also so timely sensitive. It is also a wonderful example to show the artist’s traditional background, but not using any cliche icons or contents.

I think it’s hard to deal with the cultural background thing. On one hand, artists tend to show all the good and beautiful things they think: traditional paintings, icons, hand made styles- but all of those had already be seen too many times and used on too many inappropriate situations that already became such cliches that even not worth to look at; they are also cultural bias in both ways. Artists treasure them think they are the best over all other cultures, while ‘outsiders’ viewed them as the same thing as ‘Asians have small eyes’. 

In fact, I’m thinking of China’s official cultural advertisement- it’s also been a family, father and mother, grandparents and kids who lives happily together. This kind of advertisement is aimed to be a national image for foreigners to show that how good China is. However, just put the good or not part away, it doesn’t make sense. Every cultural, every country on earth will have families of the exact same constructions; every family will have parents, grand parents and children. How is that suppose to be a cultural unique thing? 

What’s more, cultural unique has this easy and dangerous trend of going into nationalism. In this case, I like this art work the most. It’s showing the Japan style; especially these multi-color bulbs. Its similar to traditional color pattern, common modern Japanese light bulbs decoration style(just visit any authentic Japanese restaurant here and you’ll see what I mean), and most importantly its content. The artist was expressing some serious cultural problems; but instead  of saying Japan cultural No.1 or saying Japan gender discrimination sucks, she put it in between- everything looks so decent and honorable on the outside, but what about inside?

In short, I really like her way of dealing those topics.

Harold Cohen, p. 144

I think of Photoshop when I saw this work. Computer art media has difference from traditional media; for most of the time the label will be ‘digital’ or ‘computer’, but no one can really specify which exact ‘digital’. Because computer is artificial intelligence to some extend, so sometime it’ll raise the question about how many percentage of a digital work is actually executed by the artist? Yet how many by the computer?

However, is this really a big question? Cohen’s work might be popular among that time, but seldom do people mention it now. As human we still want to see human’s work; its imperfection made its meaningful to look. It’s almost the same when looking at ‘paintings’ by animals. We’ll never admit those to be art works. Art works have to be made by human, because creative thinking needs to be happy, satisfying, painful and all emotions mixed together during the progress, and only human can achieve that.

Chris Burden, p. 145

I think this one is somehow like Roca’s work since I actually read that first in the book, and I prefer this one. I can’t help to think about all these people with depression that I met online or in real life. Some people just yell a lot about it to get attention, while they probably not suffer it at all; other ‘real’ patients might just kill themselves quietly at one night. However, you can never tell who’s who; and you can never ask. All activities that involving suicide have the similar facts, that is people can only wait for them to come, but cannot change a thing.

Indeed, this is a nice picture. One thing I would like to point out is, except from doctors/soldiers/police, common people don’t really get that many chances to see dead people, or to be more specific, the moment before death. What is more, we cannot see our own moment for that. As a result, I was kind focus this photo on the fact that Burden’s facial expression can be a suicide person’s last minute. No matter how the artist put it as an experiment, an art work or gave it such a long list of meanings, this still is a potential suicide. That fact actually interested me the most than any other thing. We don’t really know how human died; we will never know if there is a afterlife, or if we can thinking during the last minute. As it was put in the book, the author describe it as an eerie clam, but I find it eerie from the reverse angle; It just seems too idealized, like a movie. It’s almost like ‘he passed away peacefully in his sleep’, but that was not supposed to be the result. I just kept thinking of ‘do not go gentle into that night’ when I saw and when I wrote this response, and I have no idea why.

Antunez Roca, p. 153

No doubt this is a powerful art work. To me this one is special because of this description: “A monitor with a digital representation of Antunez Roca’s body allows the user to commit violent virtual acts, like...” 

I think it is a clever way to deceive the viewers, or in this case, users. I think virtual acts cannot represent real life thoughts. For example, the violence in games. Whenever there’s a school shooting/ teenager crime happens, media and public will always blame on virtual worlds. I think it was just ridiculous for Walmart to remove all the video games in their stores after a recent shooting but kept all real guns on sale as usual. Back to the art work, I think it then created this unbalance between virtual and reality acts, because users can see both in a really short time. From this aspect, I think it is powerful to see how  is imaginary movement really out put, and it is about power as the artist choose as his topic.

Another point is its format. Looking at the way the artist put those device on him, it was brutal. I think that this and other similar behavior art have the same trend of wanting the viewers/users to do harsh work. Artists in these performances wanted to be hurt; they are almost inviting viewers to make them pain and even death to justify their topics, whatever those are. It’s like the viewers are physically controlling the artists, while the artists are mentally controlling the viewers.  This somehow sounds like a twisted but yet common form of love.

Stelarc, p. 154

We all heard the phrase of human body is like a computer, but then the artist literally turned his body into one. I might never understand why every artist valued their body to such a high extend, but still this sounds like a good experiment.

The fact that it is remote makes it complicated. Online viewers are different from actual viewers; Online viewers are behind several screens, and also cannot receive actual timely feedback. What is more, in this art work the viewers can almost only view the artist body, which makes it so erotic in some ways than Roca’s work while electric shock could be erotic, but the way the artist put the devices on made it not. Considering the time for this artwork it is innovative at that time, but how should we view it now? It has a weird balance of questioning and teasing the viewers in some ways. The photo showed in the book also made it so irrelevant with actual human beings. 

Just off the topic a bit, I think in the year of 1980-1999 many performance art included hurting body and extreme behaviors, even I can recall seeing those artists in China doing the similar acts and were (and are) viewed as lunatics. After that time, this kind of act become less and less. I do wonder if there was a universal background made it so, or just individual historical progression in individual areas separately involved into the same result. 

Jim Cambell, p. 155

I like this work of trying to be offensive. It’s simple; it doesn’t have any fancy decorative pieces attach to it; but it’s enormous. I can’t really tell how religious people felt when they looked at it, but at least I’m curious. I’m not sure if Mozart’s Requiem worked in here since I can’t experience it myself, but it’s just probably because Requiem is one of my favorite and I’m having a bias of using it as a background music.

This work and Requiem also share a similarity. To some extend, they are all by product of religion; first is the Bible, then come those work. It’s an appropriation, but I can’t see them as appropriation. It’s also extremely difficult to value any aesthetic meaning of any religious holy books; it’s simply a task cannot be done. However, put the religion aside, holy books were made by human. In this case, they should be able to valued by human. 

I remember in one religion and universe class, my teacher ask us to re-read the very first chapter of the Bible. I had this long term impression that in the Bible, woman was made by one rib of man. That’s one of the reason why I don’t like about the whole religion thing. However then the teacher said that there were two version of this creation of woman; in a previous version, man and woman were made in the same time. As I do find the text to prove that, I start to wonder how religion truly worked. Just as this piece, everyone can put his or hers assumption, action, experiment and literation on the Bible; and some of the viewers will be affected by those secondary sources, and leave and propagate these thoughts. Religion is about people putting their faith in a higher thing/figure, but sometimes it also can be putting the faith into other normal human that share the same level with them in this world.   

Coming back to this piece, I think the artist had made his point starting but going beyond religion. However, because it’s religion, so viewers’ focus point will be forever trapped in it, before they going elsewhere.

Ken Feingold, p. 165

I don’t think the artist’s description really matches his work. In fact, I think he is a better writer than artist. To be honest, I won’t be that disappointed if I don’t look at the description but just the art work. It seems like something you can find in every big and small galleries in Chelsea; it looks cheap and unfinished. I can see the artist is telling the truth about how it functions, but there are just some words that make the whole thing not seems appropriate. 

Like “nature of violence”, “interior worlds”, “cinematic sculpture” and “personality”, these are all very big words that should be used with extra caution to not let the viewers feeling they are being deceived and the artist doesn’t know what he is doing at all.  There are just some well handed parts mixed with rough parts, together without transition, and make the art work fragile. For example, the artist used real people looking heads; they are very detailed; but the robotic arm and board underneath them look like some high school student work. All three heads are placing in one line, so honestly there’s not much space for movement. What bothers me the most is “that thing” before them. I can’t see the meanings that it should have; because they look like overnight undergraduate final project. This kind of nonprofessional touch in this work is just making me cannot get into it, or understand it. This is even worth when he got a nice description; reading the description only I’m imagine something that looks completely different from this one.  

[starfleetorbust]

Update. Explanation. Story.

So here’s the update that you can skip if you just want to read the story. Jen got into a really really dark place and withdrew from tumblr and from life and from everything. And no one even seemed to notice and that just made things even worse and some... stuff happened. Stuff that isn’t good. And I took solace in writing. Because I had to, because I had nothing else. And I wrote more words than I think I’ve written in my life. It kinda all came out in this huge long story that I never figured I could write so much about Spock and me. And it took all my thoughts and feelings and put them on paper. This is just a tiny snippet of it, the fic is kinda a collection of these short stories as Spock kinda guided me through my thoughts and helped me make sense of them and keep me from making bad choices. 

This one that isn’t as triggery as most of the fic, which gets really dark at points. I wanted to post the whole thing but I didn’t feel anyone wants to read it because its LONG and it definitely READS as personal and its a lot of my thoughts which I know people but if anyone is interested I really still want to post it? If anyone would even want? Because I still am proud of it, but I know it deals with a lot of things. And I mean a lot. So... idk

But explanation: This chapter (?) was my favorite and one of the least painful ones. And one that I love. And one with a good ending. And one I’m proud of. So I changed up this.  I put it in second person and figured maybe this one was worth something to someone.

Warning: Even as the most mild part in this, this is still triggery. It’s got mentions of suicidal thoughts and guns and stuff. I don’t know how to tag it.

It’s about 2000 words, I didn’t check since it was part of a bigger thing. And it’s definitely not checked. I mostly just ran over it with a vague sweep when I changed it to you’s and your’s.

It also reads very.... TOS Kirk when its out of context like this. They’re meant to be AOS? But if you want to read it as TOS that’s fine.

The stolen phaser had put the ship on red alert while the crew searched to find it. Floors had been locked down, every nonessential crewman confined to quarters. Which left you terrified, hiding in one of the back supply closets, with the phaser tucked against your chest as you climbed one of the cabinets in the back to settle on top of it where there was more room. You curled your knees to your chest and took several unsteady breaths, glancing down at the gun you’d stolen. This wasn’t like you, but it wouldn’t matter in a few moments.

The door handled juttered and the gun immediately went from facing my own chest to aimed at the doorway. The lock held and you heard the voices on the other side.

“Come on Jim, why am I coming along with you to locate an intruder?”

You heard the sound of a sigh as he pressed the buttons into the panel to unlock the door. “Because Bones, there’s no ships in the vicinity. No planets. This was someone already on board. And no one in their right mind on my ship would steal a weapon for any purpose. So it’s gotta be someone in their wrong mind. And /that’s/ what you’re here for.”

You heard a groan as the door opened and you immediately saw the small team that must have been searching the deserted hallways. The captain was there with the CMO on his heels and a security with a phaser trained into the room. Spock trailed behind them, barely visible from the doorway.

“Y/n…” Kirk said, taking the entire situation in hand. You clearly were holding the stolen weapon, hidden in a room. He sounded like he didn’t want to believe the situation in front of him. He grabbed his communicator. “Bridge, put the ship on yellow alert.” The alarms went quiet and you saw his jaw set as his voice took on what you could only call his captain’s voice.

“Y/l/n, what are you doing in here with the stolen weapon?”

You shook your head and tried to pull the phaser closer to you, but the security saw the movement and jumped. Startled, you pulled the trigger without thinking and he collapsed to the ground in the room. Your eyes went wide as saucers and you shook your head repeatedly, trying to understand what you’d just done.

“Dammit! Let me see him” McCoy pushed Jim aside into the hall but was caught by Jim’s arm before he entered. “She’s still armed, Bones.”

McCoy held up his hands, tricorder in one. “Y/n, I need to look at him, can I step in.”

You nodded even though the phaser was still aimed in your shaking hands. McCoy moved slowy and knelt next to the guard, running a quick scan. “He was only hit with a stun but at this proximity, I better check him.” He glanced to Jim who nodded and McCoy carefully picked up the passed out guard and slipped out, heading to medbay.

Your eyes went to Spock now that he wasn’t blocked and you saw a mixture of disbelief and betrayal in them. He didn’t understand, you weren’t trying to hurt anyone. He didn’t understand that you just meant to make things better, this wasn’t supposed to involve anyone else. He must have thought you were a monster.

“I didn’t mean to shoot him,” you whispered loud enough Jim could hear.

“Y/n, what are you doing with that phaser.” He stepped into the doorway with his hands in front of him, making sure he wasn’t a threat.

“I didn’t mean to shoot him,” you repeated. There were tears clouding the edge of your vision.

“And I believe you, y/n. But I need you to lower your weapon and talk to us.”

You realized the phaser was still pointed at the doorways and you lowered it, watching some of the tension of the captain disappear now that you were listening.

“Hand over the gun, y/n.” Your eyes were locked on Spock though, who was still looking like he didn’t want to believe the mess in front of him.

You couldn’t hand it over. You knew if you did, you’d be charged with the assault of an officer and the theft of a weapon. They’d throw you in the brig and then you’d never be able to continue with this. You shook your head and tightened your grip.

“I don’t want to have to order you to hand it over. This can be resolved peacefully, y/n.”

You shook your head harder and felt the tears finally break through, and fly from your eyes. “I can’t,” you said through a cracked voice. “I messed up. I can’t go back now, I can’t…”

“Yes you can,” he insisted firmly. Your eyes hadn’t left Spock’s and now he glanced back at the first officer behind him. “Spock, we need her to come down peacefully. I know she’ll listen to you.”

You saw him step into the doorway, face completely stoic but his eyes betrayed his uncertainty. You knew he’d made a promise once to never order you into a situation that made you uncomfortable, and now you could see him trying to figure out how to get your down without breaking that vow.

“Ashayam,” he said slowly, “why did you take it?”

“I needed to go.”

“Go-?” Jim started but Spock shook his head to indicate this wasn’t the time.

“I need to go Spock. I can’t do anything here. I’m useless, and no one cares.”

“You are mistaken if you believe-”

“Am I?” you countered and slumped slightly. “Last week I didn’t show up for three shifts in a row. You know who noticed? No one. I wasn’t even reprimanded. I could have been dead and no one would have even realized. No one cares about me, Spock. No one notices when I’m gone. No one sees when I suffer. I’m better off gone.”

Jim looked like he was going to say something but Spock held up a hand and let you continue your rant. You needed to get this out.

“It wasn’t supposed to go like this. I was gonna take the weapon and then I’d be gone before they could notice and the phaser would take care of the body. They’d find the missing item in a back closet and no one would think twice about it. No one was going to get hurt, Spock. But now I have to do it. I can’t even try to live a life I’ve just screwed up beyond repair. If this goes on my record I’d be pulled from the ship and the only thing that was anchoring me this long. Don’t you understand? I have to do this Spock.”

“Y/n,” Jim said carefully. “If this is about the charges, I can make you a deal. Ericson was only hit on stun, and from your own story, you didn’t steal the weapon for malicious purposes. You hand over the phaser and come down, and I’ll drop both charges.”

It sounded almost too perfect but you glanced to Spock and he knew your apology from your eyes without it being said. You shook your head slowly. You came here to disappear, you didn’t want to stay on the ship like this. “I can’t. No one cares. No one noticed I was gone before. No one will even know but you two.”

You’d learned to read Spock well and his eyes seemed to almost chuckle. It was a sad chuckle but you saw it. “K’diwa. Jim noticed the minute you were late to shift. I asked him not to take any action. I wished to check on you, but your doors were locked and it would have been an invasion to override your quarters. After several crewman expressed worry that you had not showed up to the dining hall, I asked Doctor McCoy to check that you were eating. Once I was assured that you were, I knew you would come to me if you needed. I apologize that I did not make my presence more available to you.”

You tried to process the words, but you couldn’t seem to decide it he was truthful or exaggerating the story to make you come down.

“If dropping the charges won’t make you give me the phaser, what will?” Kirk tried.

“Nothing,” you said shifting your gaze to the tool. You knew you could just end this now but you felt something was stopping you. Perhaps the way Spock was watching you, the disgust now replaced with fear and worry.

“There must be something,” he pressed. “We can get you help once you come down. What is it you want?”

“A kiss,” you shot snarkily before you could think. You needed to think. This was all too much and he was interrupting your thoughts.

Jim chuckled. “You know, I’m flattered. If you really insist on one…”

“Not…. Not from you,” you tried to amend, realizing what you’d said.

“From Spock?” he asked with a chuckle, and you glanced down. You hadn’t kissed Spock yet. Your relationship was new and you knew he enjoyed your company but now after everything you doubted he’d want to kiss you. He probably would want to terminate the relationship of someone so unstable.

“I’ll accept.” He broke your thoughts. When you blinked hard and looked up he nodded softly. “Come down and hand me the phaser and I will kiss you.”

“I’ll even do you one better,” Jim offered. “After you get your kiss, head down to medical with me. If we get you set up with Doctor McCoy, I’ll drop those charges anyways. This doesn’t have to be the end of a good officer. This needs to be the beginning of a healing.”

Glancing between the two of them, you finally slid down and Jim stepped aside as you walked over to Spock. He held out his hand and you hesitantly set it in it, knowing that was your chance. He locked it on his belt out of reach and instantly pulled you into familiar arms. You instinctively pressed your head into his chest. A finger guided your head up to look at him and your eyes locked only a moment before you were caught in the kiss.

His lips were warmer than you’d expected despite his naturally cool temperature. They were soft and gentle as he guided you in the motions you were almost to nervous to think about. You felt yourself dissolve against him until he finally parted and rested his forehead to yours.”

“I don’t ever want you to feel this way again. We will get you help, y/n. I won’t lose you.”

You nodded silently against him and when you looked back up, Jim was offering his hand. “I won’t force you to come with me. But I have a feeling you want to.”

You took his hand carefully, and glanced back at Spock. “Can he come with us?”

Jim nodded. “Of course he can.”

You felt Spock’s arm wrap around your back. You leaned into him as Jim took the lead and guided to you medbay. For the moment you didn’t feel so ignored.

[literaryinspiredwebserieslove]

LIW Review: The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy

This series is a little different from others that I’ve reviewed because it has three seasons, and I’m reviewing them all together because the whole story is short enough for that to be possible.

The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy is loosely based on Peter Pan, but the characters are now adults living in Neverland, Ohio. Tinkerbell is still an actual fairy, but Peter is now a comic book author and the Darlings own the local newspaper, the Kensington Chronicle. Tiger Lily is now Lily Bhaga, a businesswoman with more money than you can shake a stick at. Hook becomes the owner of a media company (JH Media), and Smee becomes his multitalented assistant.

Format:

This series is very mixed-format. In Season One, everything is either a “Dear Darling” video filmed by Wendy or shot from the point of view of Tinkerbell, which allows the camera to move and allows her to exist as a fairy without having to show her. In Seasons Two and Three, a lot of episodes are shot by the cameras that Jas Hook has installed in all of his offices. The characters were all active on Twitter, and the Kensington Chronicle (later the K-Chron) existed as a real newsletter.

Realism:

Well, there’s an actual fairy involved, so obviously we’re stretching belief a little bit from the start. The real issue with realism is the filming. All the footage exists in-universe, as I said, but there’s no justification for how it’s being edited or for any of its existence on the internet. Since there’s no in-universe YouTube channel, it works, but creating the justification for filming and then not creating a fictional framework for what happens with the footage is a strange combination that doesn’t entirely work for me.

Representation/diversity:

Season One starts out with only five characters. Four of them are white. Lily is Indian and very, very rich. She and Wendy also have a very negative relationship, and Lily is generally not portrayed in a very positive way. I’m not convinced that Season One passes the Bechdel Test, though I would have to rewatch to be sure. If it does, it does not do so with flying colors.

Season Two is different, and just generally better. We get Billie, a female pirate (fine, JH Media employee) who has an actual friendship with Wendy. Ethnic diversity goes up in Season Two. The characters get more complex (Peter does bad things, Hook does good things), and there’s non-stigmatized LGBTQ+ representation (well, okay, just G, but for such a big-budget webseries that’s huge). 

Season Three is the wrap-up season, and it pays equal attention to the gay relationship as to the two straight ones (technically it’s the second most important/spotlit relationship of the three). There’s good parental advice, which is always nice to see. There are discussions of money, which is something the was sorely lacking in the first two seasons (these people are hopelessly upper class, especially for LIW characters). 

I should also mention that John Darling has OCD, and it is discussed frequently, usually in a very healthy way. Other characters (notably Peter) probably have various mental health issues, but these are never discussed or named.

My three favorite things about The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy:

1) Episodes 12 and 13 of Season Three. I can’t say why without serious spoilers, but those two episodes made me feel many things.

2) John Darling. I don’t identify with him, but at the same time I do, very strongly. I sympathize with and understand him more than anything else, and I love him.

3) The aesthetic. The production values are super high, the sets and costumes are a pleasure to look at – visually, everything is wonderful.

Difficult things about New Peter + Wendy:

Well, the money and realism points I mentioned earlier are definite issues, but I think this series suffered from two other big problems. First, an aversion to really digging deep. There were moments of raw emotion and honesty, but not as many as there could have been. The script often just didn’t quite go where it maybe should have gone. The second issue is how dependent they were on funding. Season Two somehow got massive amounts of money, so they cast recognized actors, filmed more episodes, and frequently used multiple camera angles. Then, for Season Three, they had considerably less funding, and so there were fewer episodes and simpler filming setups. While I understand that funding is important, especially if you have to pay your actors, it seems silly to see a series with many thousands of viewers asking for many more thousands of dollars when series with similar formats make just as high-quality content with no money whatsoever or with very little (Nothing Much To Do and Lovely Little Losers spring to mind, though there are obviously others as well). 

The Verdict:

I enjoyed this series immensely, and of course the production itself was nearly flawless, but the lack of depth, the small number of episodes, and the disconnect with the rest of the LIW community cause problems for me that no other series has. It’s in a weird place between television and a regular LIW, and it maybe could have taken some queues from other LIWs in how it operated. That being said, when you need a cute little diversion with high production values, fairly strong representation, a fairy-cam, and actors who people have actually heard of, you really can’t go wrong here. 4/5 stars overall.

Cast:

Wendy Darling – Paula Rhodes

Peter Pan – Kyle Walters (who also played Ed Denham in Welcome to Sanditon)

Michael Darling – Brennan Murray

John Darling – Graham Kurtz

Lily Bhaga – Lovlee Carroll

Jas Hook – Percy Daggs III (you may remember him from Veronica Mars)

John Smee – Satya Bhabha (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, among other things)

George Darling – Jim Beaver (yes, that Jim Beaver)

Billie Jukes – Meghan Camerena 

Created by Kyle Walters and Shawn DeLoache/EpicRobotTV @newpeterwendy

Three seasons, seventy-six episodes. 

Watch the entire adventure here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkF--ahv3nwpPqCfzKh1OyfR9NwVRAXwD

[believermag]

Something Happened on the Day He Died

Jordan A. Rothacker on David Bowie

On Friday, January 8th 2016, David Bowie turned sixty-nine and his final album Blackstar, was released. I purchased it that morning, having waited for months. On the following day I sat for a black star tattoo straight from the album cover; a recent writing project was lousy with black stars and I felt more than ever that Bowie and I were on the same wave. After a weekend of listening to the album I was awoken Monday morning, January 11th 2016 by my wife, “before you look at your phone, Bowie passed away yesterday.” She was right, my text messages were as full as my Facebook feed with tearful and shocked notifications from friends, but I was glad I heard it from her first.

It took until December of 2016 for me to finally read Simon Critchley’s little book, Bowie (OR Books/Counterpoint, 2016). I’ve wanted this book since it came out in 2014 and I remember reacting, “a book by one of my favorite living philosophers on one of my favorite living everythings? Yes, please.” Luckily I put it off until this 2016 re-issue with extra chapters treating Bowie’s death and final album. Although most of the book was written more than two years ago it is hard not to read the whole thing eulogistically. His spirit goes on though, now more than ever, as the last dreadful year has come to a close. I lost of close friends and faith in my country, but now my thoughts turn back to Bowie with hope his art can carry me forward.  

What have I lost in Bowie? For the most part, the same things we all have: the chance for more music, more movie appearances, and just the knowledge that he is out there being brilliant and dashing, making art, and giving a wry smile to a paparazzo. What have I lost personally? True confession time. I have always dreamed of knowing Bowie (I’ve never even seen him perform live), but more so, and more embarrassingly, I’ve always wanted him to know me. I’d hoped one day he would read one of my books and like it. That moment of mutual respect between artists, that bump to my sense of worth from an artist who has helped shape my understanding of the world, art, and myself.

This is why sometimes Critchley’s book feels like it’s talking to me or for me. I haven’t read much about Bowie. He is mine and my feelings for him and about him need not be mediated. Critchley’s book however is now added to a small list of my favorite Bowie books which also includes Hugo Wilcken’s Low and Steve Erickson’s These Dreams of You.

Critchley’s book praises Wilcken’s so I’ll start there and circle around back. Wilcken’s Low (Continuum, 2010) doesn’t need a book review; it’s kinda perfect (I say kinda since perfect is such a strong word). It’s one of the best 33 1/3s I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot. I’m a sucker for this series of tiny books on albums of music as I have always suffered from that most Cartesian of obsessions in regards to my most beloved art works, the need to know how he, she, or they did it. The reverse engineering of a work gives me faith that maybe I could also do or make something comparable. Wilcken’s Low is like the sweetest of candies; I wanted to devour and savor all at once, which is difficult with such a short book. Wilcken chose Low because it was a definitive turning point in Bowie’s body of work and during maybe the most beloved period in the myth of the artist. In 136 pages the reader experiences a thorough historical context for the album and detailed production notes for each song as well as each song. The most important moments I savor from this book are descriptions of his work ethic and the well-researched information about his time in Berlin.

After a teenage obsession with Ziggy Stardust, the Berlin years have always been my favorite period and that’s where Erickson’s These Dreams of You (Europa Editions, 2012) comes in, illustrating the Berlin years in the subplot of a larger novel. The book is about a white novelist, Alexander “Zan” Nordhoc, and his family. The narrative opens with the election of Barack Obama not long after their adoption of a little Ethiopian girl with gray eyes named, Zema (mostly called, Sheba). The structure involves small paragraph vignettes familiar from Erickson’s last Europa novel, Zeroville, but otherwise from the start of my first read I wondered, “is Steve Erickson actually writing a domestic family novel? Where is the trademarked weirdness I love so much?” My worries were for naught, for after about fifty pages it started getting weird, and oh so wonderfully weird. Ultimately it is a novel about race in America and therefore about America itself. On the second page, watching the first black president’s victory, Zan wonders, “Do I have the right… as a middle-aged white man, to hold my face in my hands? and then thinks, No. And holds his face in his hands anyway, silently mortified that he might do something so trite as sob.”

It is the only book by a white guy that I included in my African Diaspora Literature course, and only in a summer section to follow complementarily Obama’s memoir, Dreams From My Father. The book captures the spirit of Obama’s election, his place in history, but never directly names him. This is Erickson’s way of writing historical fiction since Zeroville, never naming names. But what does this have to do with David Bowie? We can only assume that he is the “British extraterrestrial in a dress” or “the man who sings the hero song [with] red hair” whom four year old Sheba/Zema is obsessed with. These Dreams of You is a complicated work that shows all of Erickson’s narrative deftness, the twisting, ellipsing Mobius strip orchestration of strands and timelines that all interweave and make total sense by the end. One of those twists that proves essential to the whole follows a black woman named Jasmine, who while working in the music business is assigned to assist a rocker who seems a lot like David Bowie. She accompanies him and his friend Jim (Iggy Pop?) to Berlin where they record music with a man called The Professor (Brian Eno?). In his not so covert way, Erickson depicts the recording of the albums Low and “Heroes” and all of the escapades of that period: the lingering Crowley occultism, the conviction to kick cocaine through copious amounts of alcohol, the transvestite clubs, the obsession with kraut-rock like Can, Neu!, and Kraftwerk. Moreover, Erickson captures what drew Bowie to Berlin, what first enticed him through the writing of Christopher Isherwood. Berlin was not just the City of Ghosts, it was the City of the Wall, both East and West, Old World and New, Weimar burlesque and pulsing kraut-rock. It was a time and place that inspired Bowie to create two of his greatest albums (and eventually Lodger, which is still pretty good) that both helped take “pop” music to a whole new place, along with great solo work from Iggy Pop (The Idiot and Lust For Life, both produced and co-written with Bowie). In the almost caricatured portraits by Erickson are a stylized ideal of the artists at work, inspired by this liminal space, the guards posted on the Wall just outside the Hansa studio windows. It is a space where maybe the most emblematic theme in Bowie’s work comes out: love as defiance. “I can remember/Standing, by the wall/And the guns, shot above our heads/And we kissed, as though nothing could fall/And the shame, was on the other side/Oh, we can beat them, forever and ever/Then we could be heroes, just for one day,” as he says in the song “Heroes.”

But now, what does this have to do with a book about race in America? The Bowie character in the book tries to explain to Jasmine why he’s in Berlin and what this new work is all about. “Look, the whole century has been about black and white fucking… New York Jews like Gershwin, Kern, Arlen cumming southern Negro music while Duke Ellington ravishes Nineteenth Century Europeans like Debussy,” he says. Erickson’s use of “Bowie” gets at the heart of another central theme in Bowie’s oeuvre, the embracing and merging of binaries.

This is why I chose the book for my class and why I believe the students responded so well to it. The narrator explains, “Zan began pondering race when he was younger only because he began pondering his country, and knew that it wasn’t possible to understand his country without pondering slavery and it wasn’t possible to understand slavery without pondering race. He considered how his countrymen from Africa were the only ones who didn’t choose to be there; Africans were compelled to come and only once they were made to come did they choose to stay. Did that make them, then, the true owners of the country’s great idea, by virtue of having accepted the country in the face of so many reasons not to? If the country is more an idea than a place then are those who were so compelled its true occupants, given how the country’s promise to them was broken before it was offered?”. This is to support a conversation Zan has about race in America a little earlier where he says, “what the zealot or the ideologue really believes in is the zealous nature itself, the devout embrace of hard distinctions—the crusade against gray.”

As this book illustrates, grayness is what Bowie was all about. This AND that. Andro and gyne. Like how gray is both black and white, Bowie was masculine and feminine, straight and gay, artist and pop star (one could be critical and declare that all of this grayness is aspirational and point out that Bowie never escaped being a white, straight male whose aesthetic endeavors were all rooted in privilege and appropriation, but right now I am most certainly here to praise Caesar). Bowie helped destroy binaries by embracing them. His place in Erickson’s wonderful novel helps express this. If you think Erickson might be alone in this sentiment some tangential support might be found in the Acknowledgements of the 2016 novel, Underground Railroad, where Colson Whitehead says, “David Bowie is in every book [of mine].”

It is especially the last duality, Artist and Pop Star, which always excited me most about Bowie. He was legit and fun. Dissertation-worthy and danceable. He was the first side of Low and the second. He was references to Greta Garbo and the Golden Dawn all in one song. Maybe this is what makes David Bowie the quintessential Pop Star to many people. In Low, Wilcken explains how “popular music as it developed in the fifties and sixties turns the cultural paradigm on its head. With pop, postmodernism always came before modernism. Pop culture didn’t actually need any Andy Warhol to make it postmodern. Rock ‘n’ roll was never anything but a faked-up blues—something that the glam-era Bowie had understood perfectly,” and then quoting Brian Eno: “Some people say Bowie is all surface style and second-hand ideas, but that sounds like the definition of pop to me.”

This now brings me back to Critchley’s book in which early on he describes the “inauthenticity” of Bowie. “The ironic self-awareness of the artist and their audience can only be that of their inauthenticity, repeated at increasingly conscious levels.” Bowie clearly understands this as is evidenced in his song “Andy Warhol” off Hunky Dory (1971) in which we find the line, “Andy Warhol, silver screen/Can’t tell them apart at all.” On this topic Critchley continues, “Art’s filthy lesson is inauthenticity all the way down, a series of repetitions and reenactments: fakes that strip away the illusion of reality in which we live and confront us with the reality of illusion;” and, “Bowie’s genius allows us to break the superficial link that seems to connect authenticity to truth.” Finally, after more Heideggerian digressions, he brings it all home with: “In my humble opinion, authenticity is the curse of music from which we need to cure ourselves. Bowie can help. His art is a radically contrived and reflexively away confection of illusion whose fakery is not false, but at the service of a felt corporeal truth.”  

I might not have been able to express this better myself and that is why I’m so grateful Critchely did. He and I are of the same world, a world he describes “of people for whom Bowie was the being who permitted a powerful emotional connection and freed them to become some other kind of self, something freer, more queer, more honest, more open, and more exciting.” Critchley also helped me understand that what makes Bowie’s music so successful in reaching people is that what is at its core is a yearning for connection. For all of Bowie’s lyrics about tragic characters, dystopian settings, solitude, and loneliness, there is a romantic notion about the ability of love to triumph in some small way, to make us heroes even, just for one day. The song that ends the album Ziggy Stardust (1972), that ends the eponymous tragic character’s narrative, is called “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” and it sure hit a nerve with me as an angsty teenager. It can still bring a tear to my eye as the pleading bombast of final lyrics (which Critchley writes about in a short chapter titled, “Wonderful”):

Oh no love! You’re not alone No matter what or who you’ve been No matter when or where you’ve seen All the knives seem to lacerate your brain I’ve had my share I’ll help you with the pain You’re not alone Just turn on with me and you’re not alone Let’s turn on with me and you’re not alone (wonderful) Let’s turn on and be not alone (wonderful) Gimme your hands ’cause you’re wonderful (wonderful) Gimme your hands ’cause you’re wonderful (wonderful) Oh gimme your hands.

Critchley’s little book is heartfelt and thoughtful. I’ve read it twice now—almost as many times as the other two books—and it is another element in my connection to a great artist that I will never know but always love. What these three books reinforce to me about David Bowie, the thing I take the most away from him after sheer aesthetic pleasure, is a deeply committed artistic discipline. Critchley dwells on the fakeness and inauthenticity of Bowie’s artistry, and while I like what he makes of that philosophically, I’ve always understood this about Bowie to just be professionalism. Bowie wasn’t some bright shooting star of a rocker, burning himself out and dying young, although he did get to experience that with his Ziggy Stardust personae. David Bowie was a consummate artist who mostly worked in the medium of popular music and created great work until the end of his life, a year ago today.

Jordan A. Rothacker is the author of the novella, The Pit, and No Other Stories (Black Hill Press, 2015), and the novel, And Wind Will Wash Away (Deeds, 2016). He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and a MA in Religion from the University of Georgia. He lives in Athens, Georgia.

[flauntpage]

It's Good to Have Starrcade Back

For pro wrestling fans of a certain vintage, the name “Starrcade” conjures a restless excitement. It was, in the Territory Era and then the Monday Night Wars, the biggest show on the NWA/WCW calendar, an alternative to WrestleMania. For most of its run Starrcade was a meaner, grittier show than WWE’s fare, shot in darkened Southern arenas in smaller cities like Greensboro (home to the first four) and Norfolk.

When WCW folded, that was it for Starrcade, until last year. WWE brought the name back for a large house show, 17 years after the last WCW version, back in Greensboro. Arn Anderson showed up in a glorious callback to the Jim Crockett Promotion days. And then, nothing. It was supposedly a one-off, or at best Starrcade would be used as infrequent branding for sometimes house shows in the Carolinas.

This past Saturday, WWE ran another Starrcade, signaling that the show might be back as some sort of annual mega-house show. It’s not the rebirth of the Southern rasslin’ tradition, but it’s something, and it’s worth a glance back at the history of Starrcade to understand why even half a show on the WWE Network can get people excited.

Here’s a nugget of history WWE doesn’t like to talk about: WrestleMania wasn’t the first pay-per-view style event. Starrcade was. The Crocketts got the idea to show the first Starrcade on closed circuit television and the NWA, pro wrestling’s waning but still strong ruling body, went all in. It was the first time a major event was available on a live basis to fans not in the arena.

It was a huge success, not just financially but creatively. The 1983 Starrcade has some legendary matches. Ric Flair beat Harley Race for the NWA world title after a months long feud, cementing Flair’s status as the best in the world and helped propel him to those rare heights where, after he returned to heel status, nobody could quite entirely boo him. The Roddy Piper-Greg Valentine dog collar match entered pro wrestling lore as a particularly brutal affair after Piper legitimately got his ear drum popped by a nasty blow to the head from Valentine.

Brutality and quality were the watch words of those first few Starrcades. There was a menacing quality about them, the way the camerawork and production values weren’t the bright, nearly glitzy approach of WWE (which, by the way, was always Vince McMahon’s real genius) and the sometimes ramshackle feel of a style of pro wrestling which already veered toward realistic violence.

Starrcade ‘86 is my favorite of all of them and is where my personal obsession with pro wrestling really took hold. Not all of the matches are classics, but each one in the back half has heavy stakes involved. The hottest match was a scaffold match between the Road Warriors and the Midnight Express. The feud had been simmering for months, with the high point—in which the Road Warriors work out in the gym to the strains of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” before climbing a work scaffold to shout and throw pumpkins representing their opponents onto the asphalt below—becoming one of the great pro wrestling vignettes of its time. The pumpkins descend in slow motion before exploding, while Road Warrior Animal shouts that this is what’s going to happen to the Midnight Express’s heads.

The Road Warriors did win the match and the Express did fall off the 20 feet or so height. So did their manager, Jim Cornette, a notoriously weaselly manager of the golden age for his type. The crowd roared in delight as Cornette fell and legitimately blew out both knees from the fall; as he’s helped to the back by Big Bubba, his kayfabe bodyguard, the camera zooms in on Cornette’s anguished face and you can hear him babbling in very real, very intense pain.

There were lean years in the early and mid 90s, after the transition from the Crocketts to Ted Turner’s ownership and the promotion’s rebranding as WCW. But those were rightly remembered as lean years for everyone except the coalescing alternative wrestling in ECW. Starrcade suffered as well, culminating with the 1994 vintage, which had a main event of Hulk Hogan versus his former best friend but never a main eventer, Brutus Beefcake (The Butcher in WCW).

Things turned again starting in 1996, and the 1997 Starrcade was arguably the biggest show in WCW’s history and marked the high point in its brief supremacy over WWE. Starrcade was supposed to be the night the nWo got their comeuppance. Sting had moved from a blond, happy-go-lucky neon icon to a brooding, Crow-inspired loner after Hogan's betrayal of the fans. For nearly a year, Sting stalked Hogan on WCW television, hitting members of the nWo with baseball bats in show-ending sneak attacks before disappearing again.

When Sting finally got his hands on Hogan, it was electric, except Hogan did most of the offense. Hogan won with what was supposed to be a fast count, except the referee didn’t do a fast count. Bret Hart walked out, fresh off the Montreal Screwjob, and demanded a restart. Sting won, but it didn’t feel quite right. Hogan was too strong, the story too disjointed. That was the start of a decline which wouldn’t fully materialize for three years and was only apparent in retrospect.

This is just a snapshot of big moments for me, as just a fan, from a long, rich history of Starrcade. There are too many names to mention, too many big matches to recap, for one column. The point is that Starrcade was big. The results from Friday’s revival aren’t important or even interesting; Bray Wyatt made yet another comeback which will inevitably fizzle out, the best matches weren’t put on the WWE Network for fear of spoiling more canonical matches in upcoming pay-per-views, and it generally had the laid back, off-beat vibe of WWE’s house shows, where the stakes are low and everyone is there to have fun.

But the fact that Starrcade is back, even if it’s in name only, reveals a tension somewhere in the WWE corporate ranks. WWE seems to strive to stamp out any notion that its competitors were good, sometimes better than WWE. Yet they are, for good and ill, the guardians of American wrestling history. They have all the tapes and all the trademarks, and there are times—maybe even a lot of the time—that they take that charge seriously. Because of that, WWE seems compelled to remember Starrcade properly. It’s magnetic, all that history and the rivers of shed blood. Starrcade was where a particular type of grimy, gritty pro wrestling got its due and where it eventually died. Slowly but surely, at least the name is coming back. Hopefully some of that style can, too.

It's Good to Have Starrcade Back published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[centtaura]

Day Fifteen (In His Image)

The last thing he remembered was twisted metal and smoke, a gray haze that clouded his vision, and a eerie muteness that surrounded the scene, where all he actually heard was muffled yelling behind an all-encompassing ringing in his ears. Like tinnitus, only he thought his ears might actually be bleeding. Later, he'd learn that they probably were.

But that was not where he stood now. His eyes fell shut like steel traps when the fire reached him, opened again to see people hovering -very- close to his face, then rolled back once more into darkness and silence.

And then he was in a cave.

Sure, that made sense, he figured, as much sense as anything else that had happened that day. He took a tentative step forward, and found the ground solid beneath his feet, and even though he couldn't see a damn thing in front of him, he decided there was no reason to -not- keep walking. He moved simply because he could, and because his steps echoed satisfyingly, and because he -swore- he heard a rasping whisper somewhere deep within this system.

The first steps were the easiest.

Over the course of a year, Ash would be thrust back into this domain, again and again, in the name of recovery, or so he was told. He was already a miracle case, a medical marvel, and he still didn't understand -why-. No one told him what happened until they were certain he'd live, or so he deduced, and only then did he realize the severity of his situation.

No wonder his head hurt. His brain swelled and ached, his skin cracked and bled, and the migraines became unbearable until the doctors discovered just how badly his eyes degraded from the damage they'd sustained and started leaving the lights on a dim setting. He couldn't move his left arm more than a few inches, but he was supposed to believe that just the fact he could tap a finger was a sign of miraculous improvement. Sure. Good thing he was right-handed, because his left was basically useless to him now.

But when he fell asleep and dreamed of the cave, all the pain vanished. A hip that had been shattered carried him with ease, as if it -wasn't- held together by pins and rods. He used his left arm to run a hand along a damp wall, jerking it back when he felt something squishy and slimy wriggle beneath his fingers. He still couldn't see, but not because his eyes were sore. Every now and again he caught a glimpse of a dim light somewhere in the distance, the impossible distance, and he walked forever toward it.

The rasping grew louder.

His room in the hospital never felt any warmer. There were no flowers, no cards, no sympathy. Sometimes, he had visitors. They were always his family, and 90% of the time it was his mother and his oldest brother. The one that put him in the hospital did not come by so often. Io said it was because Loki was wracked with guilt every time he witnessed what he'd done, but Ash didn't really believe that. It was all for the best, anyway. Ash did not wish to see -anyone-, particularly not his brother, and he knew he had no friends, he'd made sure of it his entire school career. Still, it would have been nice to see a color other than sterile white in all directions. He only found solace in sleep, and dreams.

To think that a musty, creepy cave in his unconscious brain would feel more welcoming than his hospital room. Figured.

They brought him his laptop, and for a while he entertained himself alone in his room, just like he'd done at home anyway. Turned out that typing was a little harder when you only have one usable hand, and soon Ash grew too frustrated and angry to keep trying, every moment spent on his previous favorite platform serving as a grim reminder that he was broken.

Sometimes, to keep his limbs from deteriorating, the nurses tried to help him talk a walk down the hall and back. It was hard, and distressing, and his legs only ever wanted to shuffle painfully while he leaned with his good arm on another human, and he knew he'd have to live the rest of his pathetic life relying on other people from here on out.

Until he was in the caves, alone, on his own, capable and tireless and determined to get to the end of it, or out of it, or at least to that faded light that never seemed to get any closer.

He heard his name in the whispers.

They toyed with the idea of letting him go home for short bursts before being carted back to the hospital, in an attempt to help him feel more comfortable and independent. This ended up causing too much hassle for everyone involved, and thus Ash was right back to being bound to a stiff bed 24/7, though at least here the IV and other garbage he was stuck with on a regular basis wasn't in the way or awkwardly placed around his bedroom. His notebooks gathered dust. He wanted to write.

Almost a year passed in a torturously slow crawl, his waking moments filled with despair and pain and a lot of medical babbling that he didn't understand nor had any desire to learn, while his sleeping life gave him a strange sense of purpose that he never questioned. Did he ever wake up feeling rested? He didn't know. He'd forgotten what it felt like to be well-rested, and even if he didn't spend his induced comas walking endlessly toward some unreachable goal, being awake was to taxing that it wouldn't have lasted anyway.

The winding system of narrow halls carved through rock and densely packed dirt opened into a clearing, a room wide enough that he could stretch both arms out to his sides and still not touch the walls. The light that always felt so far away, so small and distant that he wasn't sure if it was just his busted eyes playing tricks on him even in his sleep, suddenly washed over him, and cast an eerie glow around the room. It looked just like he'd expected it to - glistening walls and an uneven ground and plenty of weird and unnatural creatures writhing around and in between cracks. There seemed to be a heap of something against a rock pillar in the center of the room, a heap that had attracted a lot of...bugs, he thought they probably were. Worms and millipedes and spiders and other revolting things that even he, king of the unpleasant, found himself recoiling from.

The heap stared at him, and he realized the source of the light was somewhere far beyond its hollow eye sockets. A body leaned against the stone, evacuated of its organs and entrails, viscera piled at its side on the ground. Leathery skin stretched and pulled back across dry bones. It was motionless, but he could sense a soul somewhere inside of it, and just as he was trying to come to terms with what he was seeing, the corpse rasped his name.

"Ah, so we finally meet, eh Sonny Jim?"

Ash sneered, already more annoyed than afraid of the literal talking carcass. "My name isn't Jim."

"Right, right...Ashley. Isn't that a girl's name?"

"Hey, fuck you?"

Ash was met with laughter, though the skull didn't move or show any signs of possession, even its jaw remaining frozen in its silent grin. The sound came from somewhere deep within it. He wished it would shut up.

It did not shut up, though, and instead informed him that he was in the presence of a god. Well, weirder shit has happened, why the fuck not, right? He was already a repeat coma patient, dead once for several minutes, suffering from so much physical and mental damage that he really should have just stayed dead. And if there was a god, or gods, it was not a benevolent entity. It was unsurprising, to say the least, to come face to face with a god of death in the form of a talking goddamn cadaver.

Mictlantecuhtli made Ash an offer that day, one that he snapped up readily as soon as he heard the magic word: power. Work for him, this god of death and decay, do his bidding, and receive untold power in return. Ash would have had a hard time declining even before he was bedridden, but now, with his broken body struggling to regain even a fraction of its strength, there was no other choice. The god even informed the teenager that he was of divine lineage to begin with - but like everyone else in his life, his true father abandoned hoim as soon as he stopped being useful to him. When he died, that was it. Worthless, as usual. Story of Ash's life. But now another deity had come before him, offering to fill that void and awaken his ichor once and for all. He'd just have to deal with the catch.

As his father now, by divine adoption, not bonded by blood but by Fate itself, Mictlantecuhtli had the power to restore Ash's strength to full and beyond, but he was not willing to restore Ash's -appearance-, no. His children were not to be beautiful, as Ash once was, as he'd taken after his true divine father before this. He was to remain ugly, disfigured, ruined. Not all of his ails were to be healed. He was to suffer for his gifts.

It was better than being a cripple for the rest of his life.

When he woke up, he didn't hesitate. He slid out of bed, stood straight-backed and stretched, lifting his left arm above his head casually, like nothing had ever happened. He climbed on a chair to reach his relics, mysteriously hidden inside a ceiling tile, proving that his dreams were never just dreams after all, and that the gods were real, and that he was chosen by them, and by Fate. He always knew he was better than everyone else, he just had to die to prove it.

The light still bothered his eyes. The headaches and the nightmares never really ceased, though they became less frequent; they remained as a reminder of to whom he was bound and to whom he owed his life and power. His hair never grew back. His skin never fused back together until it hardened and left deep scars where the heat had cracked and split his flesh. He thinned, parts of his body growing sharp and long and unnatural. As the years marched on, and he distanced himself from his father, he became more grotesque, with an emotional state to match.

No matter how much space he put between himself and Mictlantecuhtli, Ash could never escape their bond. He would always be immediately associated with that god of the Aztec underworld. He would always be the son of Santa Muerte.

Like father, like son - in body, and in mind, and in spirit. He didn't regret it, though. After all, he had power. And more than power...he had control over his own life.

And that was totally worth it.

[marta-bee]

Marta Rewatches: The Great Game

I'm fighting off a bit of depression, so I'm afraid this is going to be a bit rushed and muted. Bear with me. But The Great Game is easily one of my top three episodes alongside TAB and TRF, and I've put off this rewatch long enough. So let's do this!

When I talked about TBB, one point that kept coming up was how slooooooow it seemed at points. And there's a lot of truth to that (I chalked it up to being worn out by the 90-minute format, which takes mental stamina). Fascinating how TGG goes the other way. There's so much going on, it can be a bit hard to catch your breaths at times. But even fighting through depression, I was still clear-headed and on the edge of my feet. Really, well done keeping the tension up particularly as this is an episode about one case after another getting solved in quick order. But they kept crescendoing, because for an episode so focused on mysteries and crime-solving, this still doesn't feel like a straight-up detective story. The point isn't to solve the case but see the man.

And that's what I love about this episode, particularly on rewatch. It walks the line between Sherlock being so swept away with the mystery and excitement of it all, and Sherlock actually caring about the people involved. Because Sherlock actually is very caring throughout the whole thing. The earnestness in his voice when he solves a case and gets to ask: where are you? where should we come to get you? The way he talks to witnesses, yes it's driven by a need to get information, but there's also a sense that he knows he's dealing with traumatized people and he needs to get the information quickly. Even with Molly and the revelation that Jim's gay: he defends this in terms of: wasn't that kind?

He's wrong, of course, at least on that one; but compare that to Jim's "That's what people do!" when confronted with the deaths he's caused. Watching this in retrospect, he really shines through as a man who cares so much, but maybe doesn't quite know how to care or maybe even that he's allowed to. The first time I watched this I chalked that up to John's influence, but in retrospect it seems like that side of him was there all along.

Let's talk about Westie, the DOD employee killed over the missile plans. After ignoring the case --multiple times!-- despite the fact he's bored, when he finally takes an interest (or rather asks John whether he really believed he wasn't working it out just because it was Mycroft asking), he says he'd never turn down a "case like this." But setting aside the missing memory stick, there really isn't a great mystery to be solved here. Suicide tracks at first, and when it doesn't, the real mystery is pretty easily solved. Lestrade could have worked this one out; certainly Mycroft's men could have. So what is it about this case that so interests him? Well, Westie is young and in love, and the people talking to his fiancee insinuate he did something wrong. Major parallels with the way Sally talks to John at the Ian Monkford crime scene. He's also a case Mycroft wants solved, but instrumentally: he's not motivated by the death of a company man, it's the missing jumpdrive he wants solved. There's a lot for Sherlock to identify with, there.

Which brings me back to perhaps my favorite moment in the series. From Ariane DeVere's transcripts:

Sherlock: I think [Moriarty] wants to be distracted. John: I hope you'll be very happy together. Sherlock: Sorry, what? John: There are lives at stake, Sherlock -- actual human lives... Just -- just so I know, do you care about that at all? Sherlock: Will caring about them help save them? John: Nope. Sherlock: Then I'll continue not to make that mistake. John: And you find that easy, do you? Sherlock: Yes, very. Is that news to you? John: No. No. Sherlock: I've disappointed you. John: That's good -- that's a good deduction, yeah. Sherlock: Don't make people into heroes, John. Heroes don't exist, and if they did, I wouldn't be one of them.

In retrospect, it's worth noting: "heroes" is precisely who Sherlock is. Magnussen saw that. Mycroft saw that. He is at heart a dragon-slayer, or wants to be. And in a post-modern age, for a jaded city boy like Sherlock to still believe in a struggle that can be won if he's only clever enough is almost... quaint. Dragon-slayer, definitely.

But getting back to the main point. I think Sherlock cares quite a bit, but he also recognizes he's extraordinarily gifted, and that caring can limit his effectiveness. It's like a surgeon who loses a patient, possibly through his own mess-up, but who can't cry over it because there's another patient waiting to be save in the next room. You develop a necessary callousness after a time. And John knows this. Remember: army doctor. What bothers him, I think, is that this seems to come easily to Sherlock; and also because it happens in an environment John probably associates with safety. This is London, not Afghanistan, and he went and fought in a war precisely so people wouldn't have to develop those calluses back in England, so they can be safe. Only it's not that simple, of course.

This is a real sign, though, that John's and Sherlock's relationship is moving to the next level. Not just a flat-share or a professional partnership, because why should John care if Sherlock's not a good person, if he doesn't care about other peoples' suffering, at that level of connection? But if they're becoming friends, if he's bound to Sherlock because he recognizes something good or admirable in him that he wants to be closer to, well, Sherlock being so jaded (as he thinks) matters a great deal, doesn't it?

I mentioned over at Tumblr that I was taking some time off between rewatches because I wanted to work out my thoughts on the difference between romantic love and friendship (eros vs philia, or possibly storge, if that distinction carries weight). I wanted to do that because this episode plays with some really interesting parallels between John and Sherlock vs. romantic couples. Westie's the most obvious one. More subtly, we get a gay man overshadowed by his powerful sibling (shades of Mycroft-Sherlock), whose lover is employed by said man's sister (shades of Mycroft's offer to pay John for information on Sherlock), and finally commits murder over Kenny's abuse at his big sister's abuse (hasn't happened with John and Mycroft, but John is increasingly less cowed by Mycroft, and Sherlock is increasingly gratified by this). Even the episode opener in Minsk has a very "married" feel to it if you read the blogs: Sherlock initially wasn't going to bother going all the way out to Minsk, but did when John told him to.

My point isn't that John and Sherlock are romantically involved here. For early seasons, this episode has a decided lack of romantic subtext. But they do seem to be functioning as a romantic couple, sans the romance and sex. It's almost as if they're trying to say romance isn't the defining factor of the kind of relationship that defines a life, gives it structure. As if the hard distinction we draw between romantic partners and platonic friends isn't always so tidy.

All of which makes the pool scene at the episode's end very interesting indeed. The way Jim describes their relationship, it does feel very much akin to romance. "People do get so attached to their pets." I have no doubt that Sherlock came to the pool just to play with Moriarty over the jump-drive (okay, I have some doubts because I personally headcanon this whole scene as being an attempt by Mycroft and Sherlock to trap Moriarty, but that's a long story). That said: when John shows up it becomes something else entirely. Look at the nervous energy, the on-edge almost manic reaction to getting John out of danger; this is no longer a game, and certainly not an engagement where the hostage is unimportant.

And when John delivers that famous line about "people will talk," all resistance does seem to have gone out of him. It's almost like he's playing a role, much like Sherlock is when he uses his uncaring-machine persona elsewhere. But the impression I'm left with here isn't one of romance, it's of a close connection that others would label as romance: as love full-stop, without the distinction.Next week: A Scandal in Belgravia.

That toeing the line between philia and eros isn't going anywhere.

PS: I’m rewatching Sherlock with an aim to see it as non-TJLC fans, and Moffat and Gatiss if we trust recent episodes, apparently experienced it all along. It’s a bit of a paradigm shift but is letting me enjoy the show in a new way. If you’re interested:

Marta rewatches: The Blind Banker

The Blind Banker Contd.

Marta rewatches: A Study in Pink