#woody allen mention

[double-features]

CINEMA NERD - MAX COOPERMAN x READER

≽^• ˕ • ྀི≼ ------ max cooperman x gn!reader

SUMMARY : when a film nerd gets invited to the movies by their cutie patootie best friend, sparks fly. reader geeks out over the movie related stuff and max just falls more in love with them. <3

WARNINGS : none!!

GENRE : fluff fluff fluff SO MUCH fluff

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Thank God for Jake being the number one wingman. Without him, Max would have never even gotten close to wooing you..

That wasn't actually the case. At least, not yet. Max was only on step.. uh.. whatever, of his plan to have you fall head over heels with him. Having grown up going to all the same schools, he had always known you as 'that one person in that one class', but when you guys both hit high school, that's when it all changed.

You became hot, and he was just a boy! He couldn't help it at all. Max, the usually dorky and overly confident wannabe fighter, and you, who somehow became the prettiest person he had ever seen in just the span of a summer break, only became a duo after the handiwork of his best man.

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

“You see that kid over there? Brown hair, slightly chubby, dorky shirt.. That's Max. He really likes you.”

“Pardon?”

“You should talk to him, he's a bit weird at times, but he's sweet.”

“..Okay?”

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

To this day, Jake still won't tell Max what he said to make you change your mind on him. Because after that day, you and him became inseparable. Whatever Jake said, it sparked a beautiful friendship between the two of you. Friendship, nothing more.

He learned everything about you, from the smallest details to every interest you had; the way you carried yourself and were so unashamed to be open around him made him feel special. He had seen you interact with your own friends before, but seeing you so up close and personal on a daily basis made him feel like one lucky son of a gun.

In fact, you even seemed to hang out with your original group of companions and started hanging out with his little group more; him, Jake, Baja.. And now, you.

Oftentimes you two would hang out at his house; that boy was rich, and his parents were barely ever home. Today was no different, you two were just curled up on one of the sofas, watching whatever shitty MMA movie Max picked out. You couldn't complain, there was something really heartwarming about him geeking out over his dorky interests.

There was a comfortable silence between you guys, until it was broken by Max speaking over the television. “Dude, you know what would be so awesome!?”

To which, you responded with the same amount of enthusiasm as he did, “What would be awesome?!”

“If we went on a movie date... I saw a trailer for this movie the other day.. It's that one new Woody Allen movie.”

That made you immediately perk up, but not the fact that he was finally asking you out on a date after all this time; no, because of the idea. “DUDE.. You might be onto something. Woody Allen is a sick director, he's made some real gems before. In my opinion, he is wildly brilliant in his abilities to dir--”

“So.. wait, just to be clear, is that a yes?”

“A yes to what?”

“Going on a date with me?” There was his awkward aura radiating off of him in that very moment. As much as he loved you rambling, he need an answer. He seriously hoped you to realize that this was an actual romantic date, and not just some hangout between friends.

Note, he still didn't know that you knew about him being totally enamored with you. So, in his mind, him asking you out on a date would be some big revelation for you to figure out he liked you.

“Well, obviously.”

“I mean, like, an actual date.”

“I knew what you meant, Cooperman.” You giggled and playfully rolled her eyes, the noise made Max's heart skip so many beats that he didn't know how he was still alive. Your unintentional cuteness was going to be the death of him one day.

He stared. You stared back. “And you're fine with that? Because I really like you and if you aren't actually serious about this I want to kn-”

“Oh! I already knew that.”

“You did?” And just like that, his heart felt like it dropped all the way to his stomach, while his face turned a noticeable shade of red out of embarrassment. Was he really that obvious? “How?”

“Jake told me, silly goose! Before we were even friends, he approached me and was like 'hey, my friend Max really likes you, you should talk to him', so I did. And I really don't regret it.”

So That's what Jake said.

“And you like me back?”

“Obviously I wouldn't have hung out with you so much if I didn't. And, obviously I wouldn't have agreed to a date if I don't like you back. You're really dense sometimes, you know that?”

“Holy shit!”

Just then, he started planning out every aspect of the date in his head. From what he would say to the subtle moves he would make during the movie, what he would wear and what snacks he would buy.. He needed this to be perfect! “So.. Meet me at the movie theater later? Around 7? That's when the movie's showing.”

“Of course! See you then!” You hopped up from the sofa and leaned down to press a soft kiss to his cheek, one to prove how absolutely serious you were about the date. You lingered by the couch for a couple seconds to gage his reaction, and proudly sauntered away once the heat rose to the place your lips were just seconds prior.

Woah. Max would either have to thank Jake for this later, or curse him out for being so straightforward about his feelings for you. Either way, it worked out well, so it would likely be the aforementioned.

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

7 PM sharp, Max was already there. Actually, he arrived almost ten minutes before, just to give himself time to mentally prepare for the date.

At first, the dorky boy was going to go all out. Suit and tie and everything.. But then he called Jake, who laughed in his face and told him that he didn't need to try so hard; that you already liked him anyways. There was no need to try and impress you when you were already enamored with him.

So instead, he went with a pair of jorts and a brand new tee he had bought just for tonight. Just a plain white one, no cheesy print on it like usual. It was just the right amount of casual, not trying too hard, still being himself, but also not completely lazy. In his hand, he had a couple of hand picked dandelions, did he know that they were just weeds? Not at all. Plus, he didn't have time or money to buy you a real bouquet. It's the thought that counts!

When you arrived, you were met with the sight of him nervously swaying on the heels of his feet, looking around in every direction to search for you. When he saw you, he was in immediate awe. You were always so effortlessly good looking that it drove him insane, “Y/N! You look.. woah.”

Max was the one who would have this totally hot babe on his shoulder, nobody else, he pulled you. That was an absurd idea. Now, all he had to do was not make a fool out of himself, ask you out on a couple more dates, and finally be able to call you his own; easy enough, right? He caught himself staring for a bit too long and snapped back into reality once that thought kicked in, in an attempt to fix his mistake, he held out the sad little bouquet of dandelions.

You took them with a goofy grin plastered to your face, the way your eyes scanned over them with a seemingly ecstatic demeanor made him feel like he did something right.

Which, to you, he was already doing this entire thing right by taking you; the biggest film nerd ever, to the movie theaters. He knew you aspired to go into film when you graduated, and he really did pick the best possible option for a location to ask you out to, whether intentional or not. “Thanks, Max!”

“Anything for you, baby.”

Good God. There were so many things he wished he could've said in that moment, but instead he landed on quite possibly the worst option of the bunch. Just as he was about to fix himself, you cut him off with a squeaky chortle. “Baby?”

“Sorry, it slipped out, I didn't mean to,”

“Dude, no worries, I kinda like it.”

There was no denying the uncharacteristic behavior from him, truly, he didn't want to make a single mistake on this date. All the cocky dorkiness was replaced with a nervousness like no other. “Hell yeah! Noted! Soo, babe.. baby.. uhh, sweet cheeks, hot stuff, angel, babydoll--”

“Pushing it, Cooperman. You can only be so much of a Casanova.”

“--right, so, wanna watch that movie now? Trailers should be starting soon.”

You gave him a goofy grin, and he felt his heart flutter. Everything you did made him gravitate to you even more, even if you didn't even realize how absolutely precious you were to him. “Sounds awesome!”

With the confirmation, Max took that as his chance to (not so) subtly reach for your hand, lacing your fingers with his own as he confidently walked the two of you lovebirds inside. He was proud to show off a smoke show like you, he didn't even know how he managed to bag someone as angelic as his cinema nerd best friend.

Hand in hand, the two entered and were met with the overwhelming aroma of buttered popcorn, along with the smiling faces of ushers. A true movie paradise, you could practically break out into some big musical number over the feeling of being back in the theater after what felt like forever. Your eyes darted all over to look at the posters, subconsciously gripping onto the palm you held onto-- Max, on the other hand, was more focused on you and gauging your reactions.

He was totally doing this again one day. He was certain this is what love felt like, God, he had it bad for you. Max led you to the ticket booth and released the warmth he held onto, as much as he didn't want to, and instead leaned over the counter and whispered as if it were some massive secret what they were seeing. While he got to business, you began to wander around and look at the upcoming movie posters.

“Hey, so, between you and me.. You see that smokin' hot babe over there? What would be the best seats in the theater that are still open? I need them to have the best movie experience.”

The tired man who looked no older than thirty unamusedly eyed up where he gestured, and was met with a very awestruck version of you. Young love. You were so out of Max's league, yet here he was, getting the perfect date for you. “Depends on what you want to see.”

“That one Woody Allen movie that just came out. Y'know? I think it's called like.. Christina.. Vicky.. Paris? Or something like that. I don't know, man! I just saw a trailer and wanted to use it as an excuse to take her on a date!!” Max didn't even realize it himself, but this was probably the most panicked he had been over an event since.. like, forever!

“Jesus, calm down. Vicky Cristina Barcelona. There's a few good seats in the middle, you can either claim row F or row G. Take your pick.”

“F. I think.” Max reached into his pocket and pulled out some spare money he had so he could just pay and get it over with, so he could get to the date; he slid over a couple hundred dollars. “Keep the change.”

“Holy-! Overkill man! It was twenty dollars!”

“Keep it dude!”

“Alright. Damn. Enjoy your movie, I guess. Maybe don't be so nervous. You'll do fine.” Advice from a (usually) underpaid movie theater worker. Funny, Max went into this believing it would all be easy. But now? Now that he was actually on a date.. with you? He couldn't help but make a fool of himself.

But then he went back over to you and saw those big eyes of yours admiring a poster, and God, that mushy feeling returned. “You ready babe?”

“Maaaax!! We should see Burn After Reading after it comes out. It had Brad Pitt in it! And it's from the same dude who made Fargo! It'll be totally worth the watch,”

“Of course we can!” His response came before he even had the chance to think about it. “But, uh, are you ready or no? I just bought the tickets. I'll buy you whatever snacks you want.”

“Awe, thanks Max. I am. Some twizzlers sound nice. Ooh! And maybe some popcorn!”

Pure admiration in his eyes, he planted a hand on the small of your back and led you two to the concessions. He couldn't have been any more in love with you..

“Whatever you want, baby.”

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≽^• ˕ • ྀི≼ ------ reblogs & likes are always appreciated, keeps me motivated to continue creating :)

A/N : sorry for keeping you guys waiting for so long, finally got back to writing now that i dont have a pile up of missing work. i really like max yall

[phefics]

Alr not a request or anything but a very specific questions bc I'm confused, on ur blog aesthetic the first pic is a chick holding a sign saying "Woody Allen die bitch" what's that for bc I like his movies and idk about any scandals and idk if u chose that just bc of the aesthetic or that plus the fact that u don't like him and pls explain bc my ass is confused 😃

oh my god anon do u genuinely not know?? i'm not trying to be an asshole but i thought this was extremely common knowledge. the person in that photo is one of my favorite singers, ethel cain, and she has a shirt that says that so ppl started bringing those signs to her shows.

woody allen has a LOT of controversies around him but mostly the fact that he married his step-daughter, soon-yi previn, and has multiple SA allegations, specifically by his adopted daughter. you can read a vanity fair article about it here and a nyt article here.

[oyesteryells]

i just realized that when Hugh said he "looks like a celebrity" it didnt just mean Humongosaur, it also meant the fact he was a parody of Woody Allen... bruh..

[whitegownsandflowercrowns]

I’m reading the lawsuit now. I’m not sure. How can I tell if it’s legit vs lies?

Genuine thanks for this question and not just immediately assuming that she's lying.

Look, at the end of the day, none of us were there. The only people that know what truly went down are the people that were on that set (which is true of any lawsuit), but here's what's really convincing me.

First things first, Baldoni hired Melissa Nathan back in August to run his public relations (and this article even mentions the allegations that he made Lively uncomfortable). Nathan worked for Johnny Depp during his defamation trial against Amber Heard, and it has been found that a technique called "astroturfing" was used against Heard on social media during this trial. Astroturfing is defined as "the deceptive practice of presenting an orchestrated marketing or public relations campaign in the guise of unsolicited comments from members of the public." Basically, artificially creating hate or hype for a public figure but making it seem organic. If you remember the Depp/Heard trial, you remember how much social media seemed to turn against her. If you remember this summer, you remember how much social media seemed to turn against Blake Lively. The fact that the same public relations team was on the other side of both alleged smear campaigns is a red flag.

Second, the text messages that have been released between Baldoni and the PR team are, in my opinion, incredibly damning. One member of the team, Jennifer Abel, texted Nathan "I think you guys need to be tough and show the strength of what you guys can do in these scenarios. He wants to feel like she can be buried." Nathan responded "Of course - but you know when we send over documents we can't send over the work we will or could do because that could get us in a lot of trouble. We can't write we will destroy her. Imagine if a document saying all the things that he wants ends up in the wrong hands. You know we can bury anyone." Right below are some screenshots from the New York Times article:

Later texts also involve praise for this article

Now, is it possible that all of these texts have been faked? Of course. But they are also lengthy (I did not include all of them here) and considering what I mentioned above, unlikely.

Thirdly, I'm just considering who has more to gain from this. I will admit my own bias here - I've never bought the idea that women by and large make allegations to become rich or famous or to gain sympathy. Amber Heard is probably still one of the most hated women on the planet. Name five of Bill Cosby's accusers off of the top of your head.

But what does each party have to gain? If Baldoni loses this case and is found in the public eye to have sexually harassed the women on the set of It Ends With Us, that's probably the end of his career. As far as I know, he doesn't have the industry goodwill that Roman Polanski or Woody Allen or even Johnny Depp do, and he will most likely start losing acting and directing roles. If he wins, and the public decides that Lively is lying, his career won't be destroyed. It will almost certainly have been set back, and there will always be people who'll look at him differently, but overall he should be fine. He may even gain a new fanbase.

If Lively loses this case and is found to have been lying, her career is tarnished forever. She will undoubtedly be known as the "next Amber Heard," and she will lose out on acting roles. The taint may even carry over to her husband. If she wins, and the public decides that Baldoni did in fact sexually harass women on set, she will probably be fine. Like Baldoni, there will always be people who'll believe that she was lying, but she'll be overall fine. However, it's important to note that she had a third option: to not pursue this at all. If she chooses not to pursue legal action against Baldoni, both of their careers remain unimpacted. While there would still have been a negative public perception of her, it probably would have blown over eventually. A lawsuit and possible trial is much more permanent in people's memories. So to me, the fact that she's choosing to pursue this knowing what the outcome of her losing would be speaks volumes.

Finally, the fact that her lawsuit states that other women on set were harassed and felt uncomfortable. Again, could be a lie, but that is a lie that is very easy to disprove. And if the women who worked on this set testify that they never felt uncomfortable, that will permanently damage her case. It just feels like too much of a risk to play with if you're lying.

Of course, don't just take my word for it - do your own research, seek out differing opinions, etc. but those are my views. I hope they helped in some way!

[youremyheaven]

The Severity, Spirituality and Stoicism of Saturnians ✊🏼🧎‍♀️💁🏼‍♀️

I will be criticizing Saturnian men throughout this post, if you don't like that, stop reading right now <3

Saturn is the planet of karma, justice, discipline, and order. In Claire's video about Saturnian men, she observed that "in Saturnian men you will find an exact duality contained here in breaking rules and doing strange stunts, pranks and having outbursts etc but also paradoxically find themselves submitting to ideologies, cults, political parties, motivational affirmations etc"

I feel like I touched upon this a bit in my first post about Saturn and in this post I'd like to go into different manifestations of this tendency along with some other things I've observed with Saturnian men.

Timothee Chalamet, UBP Moon

Full disclosure, I've never liked him lmao,, I think the hype he gets is undeserved and 90% bc of the fact that there is a dearth of young charismatic actors in Hollywood.

But anywayyys, Timmy Tim first attracted controversy for working with Woody Allen even though he's since expressed regret for it or whatever,, then he received flak for having sex in a pool during the height of the pandemic and manyyyy blinds about him giving women chlamydia 💀💀started making the rounds and he was lowkey exposed for being a whore

Then last year he drew criticism for smoking indoors at a Beyonce concert (where smoking is prohibited) and he's literally talking to Kylie and blowing smoke ??? at the same time?? which is sooo filthy?? who tf does that??

His silence on the Armie Hammer issue and pretty much all issues lol have also been criticized. Everybody thought he'd be some woke liberal activist but he's just been dead quiet and pretty self absorbed the whole time. He loves to lap attention and give absolutely nothing in return to the community.

The thing with Saturn however is that, bad behaviour does not go unpunished. Timmy Tim has been getting A LOT of flak and the total rose tinted obsession people had with him is slowly fading (even tho he still has legions of fans). People are now starting to see his true colors.

But anyway, this is a very minor issue compared to all the other Saturnians I'm going to mention next.

Jeffrey Epstein, UBP Moon, Anuradha Rising

I'm assuming most of you are familiar with sex offender Epstein. He has trafficked thousands of underage girls over the course of decades and to satiate numerous high profile paedophiles.

He committed suicide while in prison. One thing about Saturn is that, if you stray, are immoral, unfair, undisciplined, corrupt, foul, evil etc it WILL punish you. The truth is Saturnians know deep down that what they're doing IS wrong, they're not like Moon dominants who are completely convinced their corrupt evil idea is a "good" one. Saturnians know full well what they're doing and they do it anyway and they suffer its consequences.

Inviting Saturn's wrath upon oneself is basically how these natives find "balance", they feel like they get away with too much and they're constantly pushing their limits to see how far they can go before this wrath comes for them.

Epstein had been doing this for decades without much consequence, working with extremely high profile people including politicians and royalty. Eventually, he was caught and the truth of his immorality was exposed for all to see AND he ended his own life.

Salvador Dali- UBP Moon

Dali was known for being an eccentric and a weirdo and you can say that the way he pushed his boundaries as an artist is a more "positive" manifestation of Saturnian individuals and their need to test limits.

However, Dali was also a pretty messed up guy

Dali admitted on several occasions to having sadomasochistic tendencies. As a child he enjoyed throwing himself down the stairs, explaining that “The pain was insignificant, the pleasure was immense”. Shockingly, he once pushed his childhood friend off of a 15-foot bridge – as his friend lay injured, Dali apparently sat calmly eating cherries.

Pleasure and pain seemed intimately entwined. Dali wanted both. One other childhood incident of note included a wounded bat. It was kept in Dali's washhouse hideaway and stayed there overnight. When Dali returned to it was being devoured by a mass of ants. He impulsively bit into the seething mass delirious with pleasure. 

I had briefly mentioned how Saturnians tend to be sadomasochistic in my previous post about Saturn and these examples just confirm it further.

When he is an adolescent a girl falls desperately in love with him. He kisses and caresses her so as to excite her as much as possible, but refuses to go further. He resolves to keep this up for five years (he calls it his ‘five-year plan’), enjoying her humiliation and the sense of power it gives him. He frequently tells her that at the end of the five years he will desert her, and when the time comes he does so.

When he first meets his future wife, Gala, he is greatly tempted to push her off a precipice. He is aware that there is something that she wants him to do to her, and after their first kiss the confession is made:

I threw back Gala's head, pulling it by the hair, and trembling with complete hysteria, I commanded: ‘Now tell me what you want me to do with you! But tell me slowly, looking me in the eye, with the crudest, the most ferociously erotic words that can make both of us feel the greatest shame!’ Then Gala, transforming the last glimmer of her expression of pleasure into the hard light of her own tyranny, answered: ‘I want you to kill me!’

He is somewhat disappointed by this demand, since it is merely what he wanted to do already. He contemplates throwing her off the bell-tower of the Cathedral of Toledo, but refrains from doing so.

George Orwell once described Dali this way:

"The two qualities that Dali unquestionably possesses are a gift for drawing and an atrocious egoism."

Art historian and critic Brian Sewell has also claimed that Dali once asked him to lie naked in front of one of his sculptures and masturbate whilst he watched.

He was also obsessed with Hitler in a perverse way.

While the vast majority of the Surrealist group professed far-Left political leanings, Dali kept curiously quiet during his early career, before being kicked out of the group for being a Nazi sympathiser, which he denied. Dali went on to make artwork addressing the Hitler, including “The Enigma of Hitler” (above) and “Hitler Masturbating”, once detailing that he “often dreamed of Hitler as a woman” and that the Nazi dictator “turned [him] on”.

He was a big old fascist who also supported the Spanish dictator Franco which made Picasso stop talking to him for the rest of his life. Orwell who fought in the Spanish civil war called Dali a "disgusting human being".

At age six, Dalí writes in his autobiography, he pre-meditated a "terrible kick" to his three-year-old sister's head "as though it had been a ball." Not simply childish not-knowing-better, this baseless cruelty continued as Dalí got older.

Here is an article that says more about his shitty behaviour.

Here is another article about his fcked up relationship with his sister

Saturn never fails to punish tho. It will let you fck up but punishment is imminent.

Dali died in his 80s, almost penniless, completely alone, as he had driven all his friends off decades prior, his wife had already passed and he was seriously ill and bedridden. He used button to call his nurse and one day that button short circuited and set him/the bed on fire. He suffered second and third degree burns all over his body. He lived for another four years in severe pain before passing away.

Just because you go a whole lifetime avoiding punishment, does not mean it isn't coming. People who suffer in old age have it the worst because you suffer 100x more

Dali was a Saturn defying narcissistic, violent, abusive person and guess what Saturn did? It saved it all up for the very end and left him without any kind of mercy. Friendless, penniless, bedridden, in excruciating pain, FOR YEARS until he finally died.

Saturn punishes you/is a harsh teacher because it wants you to uphold the Saturnian qualities of virtue, justice, fairness, doing your duty etc, you may never see the rewards of your good actions, so it may feel like a waste of time to keep being so principled but if you decide to just do whatever and disobey, you best believe Saturn will come through with that wrath. You have to keep being virtuous and morally upright even if you don't see yourself being "rewarded" for it. No one may recognise your goodness but keep being good anyway.

Alexander Graham Bell, Venus in UBP in 2h, Saturn in Shatabhisha in 1h

He is the guy who invented the telephone but he was also a very controversial deaf educator in his time.

Bell's father was a teacher of the deaf. His method of teaching the deaf was coined "Visible Speech." Bell's mother was deaf/hearing impaired and he would often speak to her by placing his mouth close to her forehead, believing the vibrations from his voice would help her distinguish speech more clearly.

Although he married a deaf woman, a former speech pupil, Mabel Hubbard, Bell strongly opposed intermarriage among congenitally deaf people. Bell feared "contamination" of the human race by the propagation of deaf people even though most deaf people statistically are born to hearing parents.

Bell applied his study of eugenics to his goal of preventing the creation of a deaf race and presented his paper Memoir Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race to the National Academy of Sciences in 1883.4

Bell stated, "Those who believe as I do, that the production of a defective race of human beings would be a great calamity to the world, will examine carefully the causes that will lead to the intermarriage of the deaf with the object of applying a remedy."

In this paper, he proposed to reduce the number of the deaf by discouraging deaf-mute to deaf-mute marriages, advocating speech reading and articulation training for an oral-only method of education, removing the use of deaf teachers and sign language from the classroom.

Suggestions were made to enact legislation to prevent the intermarriage of deaf-mute people or forbidding marriage between families that have more than one deaf-mute member. His preventative strategies for deaf marriage included removing barriers to communication and interaction with the hearing world.

I feel like Saturnians often have a tendency to subconsciously make things harder for themselves and for others. Getting things easy is not Saturn's style. And this can manifest in sooooo many different ways. Bell grew up with a father who taught deaf people/children, his mother was deaf, he married a deaf woman YET he believed that they did not deserve to have separate schools that used communication tools specifically designed for them to make their lives easier. He spent his entire life working with deaf people but still somehow did not want things to be easier for them???

Steve Jobs, UBP moon

He had a pretty stellar reputation for being a major asshole. He was an extremely difficult person to work with and often terrorised his employees and was a toxic vile asshole to the women he dated.

Jobs was given up for adoption by his parents and later in life, he abandoned his girlfriend and baby after he got her pregnant.

His daughter Lisa later said that her mother felt uncomfortable leaving her with Steve alone after an incident in which he questioned and teased the then-nine-year-old Brennan-Jobs about her sexual attractions and proclivities.

Once, as Jobs groped his wife and pretended to be having sex with her, he demanded that Lisa stay in the room, calling it a "family moment."

It is well known that Steve Jobs was really good at conceptualizing things and coming up with ideas (touch screen phones, macbooks, iMacs etc) but he lacked the technical expertise to build anything. His partner, Steve Wozniak was the actual brains behind all of the creations to put it simply.

Early in his career, Jobs worked for the game developing company Atari who promised him a bonus of $5000 for developing a game called Breakout. Jobs did not have the know-how to execute this, so he made his friend Wozniak who worked at a different company stay up all night for 4 nights to design this whole ass game. He gave him $350 for it and told him he was giving him half of what the company paid him. Wozniak only found out much later that Steve basically stole his ideas, used him AND gave him a paltry sum as compensation.

Before Apple went public, Jobs refused to give any major shares to the many many developers and engineers who played a crucial role in pioneering the company. Wozniak gave those employees HIS shares so that they could make a profit when the company went public.

I'm not going to detail all the ways he tormented his employees and staff. You can google it.

Eventually, Saturn's karma started kicking in and Jobs was fired from the company he founded and for 10 years, he had to stay away from Apple. This experience humbled him a bit.

Apple really suffered in his absence and they brough him back in 1997 and we all know the kind of groundbreaking work he did in the next decade there. (hint: iphones, ipods etc)

In 2011, he found out he had terminal pancreatic cancer and resigned from his position and died 6 weeks later.

He refused to get surgery and chemo and chose "alternate treatments" until his disease had progressed so far that, there was no saving him.

He would eat a single thing and only that for weeks. Like apples. He'd eat only apples for three weeks. He was convinced that made him superior to everyone else and that it made him have no body odour, so he never showered either. This made it really hard for others to be around him.

Now back to his daughter, he was incredibly abusive to Lisa. She said she was forced to move home over 13 times before age seven as her mother struggled to pay the bills through a series of cleaning positions, while Jobs, then already a multi-millionaire, refused to help.

During one visit she innocently asked if she could be given his Porsche after learning the flashy vehicle had a scratch and needed to be replaced. His scowling response shocked Lisa, then aged seven.

“‘Absolutely not,’ he said in such a sour, biting way that I knew I’d made a mistake,” she remembers. “I understood that perhaps it wasn't true, the myth of the scratch: maybe he didn’t buy new ones. By that time I knew he was not generous with money, or food, or words; the idea of the Porsches had seemed like one glorious exception. I wished I could take it back. We pulled up to the house and he turned off the engine. Before I made a move to get out he turned to face me.

“‘You’re not getting anything,’” he said. “‘You understand? Nothing. You’re getting nothing.’ Did he mean about the car, something else, bigger? I didn’t know. His voice hurt—sharp, in my chest.” (an excerpt from her memoir 'Small Fry')

Saturn may delay punishment but it will punish and whether or not you learn from it, is up to you. Some individuals are not very malleable and they suffer the most. They make the same mistake over and over again and never learn. Steve died of any entirely preventable disease but he refused treatment. He was in excruciating pain towards his end and was completely bedridden. He expressed regret about not having gotten treatment sooner but :/

It's really scary how your karma catches up with you. Its the worst when it comes for you and leaves you with no time to remedy anything, so you just suffer agony knowing there is nothing you can do.

Woody Allen- Anuradha stellium (Sun, Mercury & Jupiter)

He molested his step daughter Dylan Farrow and is currently married to his former step daughter from the same marriage Soon Yi.

There has been a lot of misinformation regarding him molesting Dylan as a child even though the fact that he is literally married to one of his stepdaughters should be reason enough to suspect him

 Allen had been in therapy for alleged inappropriate behavior toward Dylan with a child psychologist before the abuse allegation was presented to the authorities or made public. Mia Farrow had instructed her babysitters that Allen was never to be left alone with Dylan.

 Allen refused to take a polygraph administered by the Connecticut state police. Instead, he took one from someone hired by his legal team. The Connecticut state police refused to accept the test as evidence. The state attorney, Frank Maco, says that Mia was never asked to take a lie-detector test during the investigation.

(Here is a link to the full article)

But again, Saturn's karmic lessons come through. Numerous actors have refused to work with Allen, he has been publicly condemned, lost all his reputation during #MeToo Actors such as Greta Gerwig, Colin Firth, and Mira Sorvino have recently apologized for accepting roles in Allen’s films, while many of his most avid fans have turned against him.

Johnny Cash, Rahu in UBP in 1h

Johnny was a drug addict and very abusive to his first wife. He creepily pursued June Carter while he was still married and despite her rejecting him MANY times, he did not give up. She was in a financially unfortunate position and he gave her the opportunity of touring with him, which she had to take up to make ends meet and finally in front of a live audience, he proposes marriage to her and basically forces her to say yes.

They remained married for 50 years and died within a year of each other so idk if they had a happy marriage or a troubled one but the Saturnian persistence was coming thru.

Cash's whole life is super Saturnian. His career came to a standstill in the 70s after a stellar decade long run in the 1960s, all throughout which he was abusing drugs.

In the early 1980s, Cash had eye surgery, broke several ribs, and damaged a kneecap, all on separate occasions, and again became addicted to pills. He was hospitalized in 1983 with internal bleeding that almost killed him. Upon regaining strength, he checked into the Betty Ford Clinic and remained clean until his death.

In 1994, after a looooong period of zero hits and chart play. He collabed with Rick Rubin (the GOAT) and then released a number of successful albums until he passed away in 2003 and from 1997 onwards he had been struggling with autonomic neuropathy and was frequently hospitalized.

Its interesting to me how between 1954 to 1973, Cash was undergoing his Saturn mahadasha and this period brought him enormous success and also made him completely addicted to substances. In 1965, he started a forest fire that burned off 500 acres of forest land and killed 49 of the refuge's 53 endangered condors. When confronted about it, he said "I don't care about your damn yellow buzzards".

From 1973-1990, he was undergoing his Mercury dasha, and this was a very low period in his career as he suffered major setbacks.

As he's sobering up at the Carter's family ranch, he's walking along a path. One of their ostriches is standing in the path. Well Cash thinks to himself "Hell if I'm moving" and tries to move it, so the bird starts trying to headbutt/peck at him, so he swings a punch at the bird, it responds by splitting his goddamn abdomen open with it's talon, from top to bottom. (he said the only thing that stopped the talon was it got stuck on his leather belt and couldn't go further). So he's laying on the ground, and grabs a branch (or an old fence post, can't remember) and starts beating it from the ground until it runs away.

Its interesting how his major highs in life were during his Saturn MD (He has Saturn in Uttarashada in 11h) and his biggest blows came during his Mercury MD (he does have Mercury in Shatabhisha in 12h 😬).

Mercury is not an inherently difficult dasha the way Saturn is. But what we sow, we shall reap. Saturn gives you 19 years to get your shit together and if you don't really learn during this period, it gets on your ass long after that. Jennie from Blackpink ended her Saturn MD in 2019 and some of her career's biggest moments have come since then but so have the controversies (she's currently in her Mercury MD) and it's as though the lingering after effects of the Saturn dasha really dictates how we experience our Mercury dasha.

Winston Churchill, Anuradha Sun

In 1943 in Bengal, over 3 million people died due to starvation and Churchill was directly responsible for this.

Churchill deliberately ordered the diversion of food from starving Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and even to top up European stockpiles, meant for yet-to-be-liberated Greeks and Yugoslavs (all of this happened during WW2 for context)

He basically said, this is none of my business. Even though millions of Indian soldiers fought for the British during WW2 and were British subjects until India gained independence in 1947. Also btw India was the biggest contributor to the Empire's GDP. they looted and plundered us and left us to starve, basically.

In the book, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II, written by Madhusree Mukerjee, Churchill was quoted as blaming the famine on the fact Indians were “breeding like rabbits”, and asking how, if the shortages were so bad, Mahatma Gandhi was still alive. 😡🤬😠he was a racist imperialist pig to say the least.

Some people are Churchill defenders and genuinely believe that the Bengal famine was a necessary sacrifice to win the war, and that those who critiqued him were unfair and had little insight about WWII. Aka: the colonized are expendable in a war between essentially imperialist, genocidal and fascist states. And they can kiss my ass.

To Indians, Churchill is a Hitler-like figure and rightfully so.

"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."

Winston Churchill to Peel commission in 1937. 

Here is a thread that elaborates the many fcked up things he did.

When I talk about how cruel, brutal and callous Saturnian men can be, this is what I mean. Saturn restricts, limits and binds. This can easily mean Saturnians subject themselves and others to unnecessary rules, restrictions and limits.

Steve Jobs thought he was superior to others bc he only ate one type of food for weeks and months. Just because someone has discipline, does not automatically mean its good to have it. Free range parents can suck because they dont protect you or shelter you but disciplinarian parents also suck. Both Jupiter and Saturn struggle to learn "balance".

An unevolved Saturnian will be stingy af, very partial, biased and ill mannered. They act like cave men.

Churchill struggled with his mental health his whole life. He referred to it his “black dog:” fits of melancholia that followed Churchill throughout his life and often left him bedridden, suicidal and unshakably depressed for months at a time. It may sound cruel to say poor mental health is "karma" for his actions. (He also suffered 7 strokes and the final one, killed him). But the ways in which we are punished are often not materially obvious??? We may see terrible people thrive but often they are really suffering on the inside. Saturn often punishes by depriving you of peace of mind :/

Thomas Alva Edison, Anuradha Rising

In 1884, Nikola Tesla moved to New York City to meet Edison, who was famous for his low-voltage, direct-current electricity. Tesla believed the higher-voltage alternating current electricity was superior and suggested creating an AC-powered motor, but Edison claimed it was too dangerous. Instead, Edison promised the recent immigrant $50,000 (over $1 million today) if he could improve upon his DC generators, or “dynamos.”

After toiling for several months and making significant advances, he returned for his reward, only for Edison to say, “When you become a full-fledged American, you will appreciate an American joke.” Tesla quit—but the bullying didn’t stop there.

George Westinghouse had purchased Tesla’s patents and became the pioneering force behind AC power and its widespread implementation. Edison, who was ideologically and financially invested in his own DC power, began a publicity campaign against AC power. The campaign was ruthless; he wanted to prove that the high voltage of AC power was too dangerous for public use, so he and his cohorts began publicly electrocuting animals—stray dogs and cats, cattle and horses, and even, notoriously, “Topsy” the elephant. (you can hate me for pointing out how unevolved Saturnians abuse animals all you want but it will not stop it from being true<333)

The story gets worse. Edison was asked whether electrocution was a humane method of execution. In reply, he claimed that with Westinghouse’s AC power, it was indeed a humane and reliable execution. Westinghouse of course tried to prevent such an association, but Harold Brown, one of Edison’s employees, was hired by the state of New York to build the first electric chair. Obviously, he used AC power.

The execution—the first use of the electric chair—took place on August 6, 1890. AC power proved neither reliable nor humane. The first, 17-second-long charge failed to kill the man, an alleged axe murderer; after waiting for the generator to recharge and amping up the voltage, the next charge at last brought an end to the horrible, 8-minute long ordeal. Westinghouse, disgusted, reportedly said, “They would have done better with an axe.”

For his last two years, a series of ailments caused his health to decline even more until he lapsed into a coma and died at the age of 84.

Bo Burnham, Venus/Jupiter/Ketu in Pushya and Anuradha Rising

He does have a reputation for being a dick but I wanted to mention him because I think his sense of humour is VERY Saturnian. He has this tendency to humble his audience and its super Saturncoded to me. Like his whole shtick is serving you with a reality check in a slightly condescending way which is extremely Saturnian.

He often makes "ironically" misogynistic jokes or whatever and its laced with that Saturnian bitterness except he's slightly self aware I guess.

Aziz Ansari, Venus & Mars in UBP and Jupiter in Anuradha

Tbh other than the fact that his stand up comedy routines are hella lame, I dont really have much dirt on him.

However, he did sexually assault a woman in 2018 and nobody has heard much from him since tbh. I guess its an example of "instant karma".

Mads Mikkelsen, Anuradha Sun conjunct Ketu

Mads aka the man who made a career out of playing the bad guy

This isn't about Mads but about his most well known role, playing Hannibal Lecter.

Hannibal imo is very very Saturncoded

 He is highly intelligent and cultured, with refined tastes and impeccable manners. He is deeply offended by rudeness, and often kills people who exhibit bad manners; according to the novel Hannibal, he "prefers to eat the rude". Hopkins described Lecter as the "Robin Hood of killers", who kills "the terminally rude".

Saturnians are either extremely refined or very unkempt. There is no in-between. You can always tell when someone has an imbalanced Saturn influence based on how disorderly, messy and chaotic they are.

In the novel Red Dragon, the protagonist, Will Graham, says that psychologists refer to Lecter as a sociopath "because they don't know what else to call him". Graham says "he has no remorse or guilt at all", and tortured animals as a child, (👀) but he does not exhibit any of the other criteria traditionally associated with sociopathy. Asked how he himself would describe Lecter, Graham responded, "he's a monster. I think of him as one of those pitiful things that are born in hospitals from time to time. They feed it, and keep it warm, but they don't put it on the machines and it dies. Lecter is the same way in his head, but he looks normal and nobody could tell."

Hannibal embodies the disciplined, orderly conduct of an evolved Saturnian along with the cruelty and harshness of it.

Charlie Puth, Anuradha Sun & Mars

half of this guy's discography is about how he hates women from LA. He literally has one song called "Nothing But Trouble (Instagram Models)" and it's just about how instagram models make problems. He has another song called "L.A. Girls" about how women in LA are fungible. It's like yeah maybe instagram models do suck but no one made you date them??? 

These are lyrics from the song LA Girls:

"There was Nikki, Nicole, Tiffany, and Heather But there's only room for you in my world But you say that I changed like the east coast weather How the hell did I get caught up? Messin' with these LA girls"

When I tell you the Madonna-Whore complex runs DEEP with Saturnian men. They will fool around with you and think of YOU as "cheap" for doing so and fall for the girl who never gives it up. The double standards of Saturnians are 🤮🤢

They will get frisky and frivolous with you and judge you for it :/

Woody Harrelson, Pushya Sun, Anuradha Moon

When I think of unkempt Saturnians, I think Woody Harrelson lmao

While filming in London in 2002, Harrelson found himself at a bar when two women approached him. According to the actor, the women asked if he wanted to "take a walk on the wild side." To which Harrelson replied, "I guess I do." A third woman joined in the fun, and the foursome returned to Harrelson's accommodations and enjoyed what the outlet described as "whatever-happened-next." Unfortunately for the Rampart star, "a paparazzo was able to snap a photo that soon hit the tabloids." The worst part — his then-girlfriend and future-wife Laura Louie saw these photos in the press. This "led to a good bit of groveling on Harrelson's part," and the couple worked past the incident.

I think I have noticed about manyyyy Saturnian men is that they often have enabler wives who put up with their shit + encourage it. Steve Jobs' wife, Laurene Powell was like that. Steve was such a perfectionist that he did not even buy furniture for their house and yk what?? she was okay with that lol and they remained married until his death even though literally everybody who has ever known him describes him as an asshole.

Woody Allen's still married to Soon Yi who is also entirely defensive about him. Same goes for Harrelson's wife I guess. How on earth does someone work past a foursome??? wtf

"I used to go to bars and fight the guys I thought were bullies. I've got scars everywhere," he revealed to The Hollywood Reporter. His fighting ways continued even after becoming a famous actor. Like when he once punched a reporter and claimed he thought the photographer was a zombie. 

Saturnians never beating the abusive rumours 😩

On a different note, I've noticed how many Saturnian musicians make sad boy music with a ✨spiritual essence ✨

Sufjan Stevens is a UBP Moon

This is from a 2015 interview:

"I still describe myself as a Christian, and my love of God and my relationship with God is fundamental, but its manifestations in my life and the practices of it are constantly changing. I find incredible freedom in my faith. Yes, the kingdom of Christianity and the Church has been one of the most destructive forces in history, and there are levels of bastardization of religious beliefs. But the unique thing about Christianity is that it is so amorphous and not reductive to culture or place or anything. It's extremely malleable."

Tamino, UBP Moon

He said in an interview:

"We like to look at religious texts from all over the world, [and] they always share a lot of similarities. That's not because they necessarily influenced each other, it's more that our inherent experience as humans comes out through storytelling. It's awesome. So that's something that's really interesting: the story that we need to tell. And the stories that we tell will always survive longest. I think it sort of gives them a higher truth, a metaphysical truth, which makes religion quite beautiful to me. You don't have to necessarily believe in every little thing that's described in a book. I'm not a practicing believer—not in the classical sense. But I do have faith. I think a lot of people have faith without realizing [it]. Even waking up and starting your day, we all have like these little acts of fate throughout our lives without even noticing."

Hozier- Anuradha Moon

Faith is a big theme in their work and their lives and I feel like they are some evolved Saturnian men who have embraced the stoic spirituality of Saturn and poured it into their creativity.

In one interview, Hozier described Quakerism as a doctrine which taught him during childhood “to look for the God in each person” and “the spark of the divine that’s in every individual.” In particular, Hozier seeks this spark in his lover.

Its interesting to me how all 3 of them use religious metaphors often to speak of love because the ultimate form of love is devotion and Saturnians who have transcended the grips of limitations imposed by Saturn understand this more than anybody. They know what its like to love like their life depends on it.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Pushya Sun

Many Saturnians love to talk about working hard and kicking ass. Arnold is one of them, although I will say his preachiness comes from his Punarvasu stellium lmao

Arnold is a good example of a man who has worked very very hard and abided by every Saturnian principle to climb the ladder to the top. Yet he cheated on his wife with his housekeeper. He however did not deny paternity of the son he fathered with her. He has also expressed his regret about cheating and how he lost his marriage.

Kim Kardashian, UBP Moon

She came under fire for her comments about "get your ass up and do the work" but honestly it's just Saturnian tough love

Kim is a good example of someone who has turned every single setback into a career opportunity. She is a true hustler. Obviously she's extremely privileged yada yada yada but she was Paris Hilton's assistant at one point and was at the bottom of the ladder. In 20 years she's built a fortune for herself and her family. Like, if it were Kourtney in Kim's place 🤡they wouldn't be where they are rn. Kim is a worker and its hard to deny that.

Rose- UBP Moon

In her interview with Vogue Australia, she said:

“I ended up fighting for my life, training for my life. Because I couldn’t accept the fact that I’d just be cut and sent back, so I had no time to slack off. I remember I took every minute and every second to work on my craft so that I [could] make it,” 

“When I got [to Korea], I was like, ‘This is quite intense,’” she said of the early period of training. “I notice[d] that there [were] 12 other girls who had been training day and night for about five years. And I had just gotten there.” She feared that if she didn’t catch up to the other she would be cut and sent back to Australia, where she’d already told her school friends that she was dropping out to work on her music. "

“I [had] left and I didn’t want to fly back [to Australia] without having achieved anything,” she said of her worry at the time. “And I think it was a good drive. Just the fact that I had flown all the way from Australia gave me more strength [and] determination to strive.”

Hardworking Saturnians ✊🏼🙏🏼🧎‍♀️making the most of that Saturnian determination and reaping its rewards OOF

[markrosewater]

Hi Mark, a long time ago you mentioned a story about (I think) Woody Allen casting for an role similar to a noted actress and, having trouble finding one, eventually just went "well, why not just use that actress?". Can you recall the details? I'm having to use that anecdote at work a lot and I wish I could remember who you mentioned...

The story is they were casting for a Woody Allen film (Crimes & Misdemeanors, I believe) and one of the parts was listed as "a Daryl Hannah-like actress". Daryl Hannah saw this and said to her agent, "Can you get me this part? I'm a Daryl Hannah-like actress." Her agent submitted her and she got the part.

[brian-in-finance]

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•••••

•••••

WHAT THE STARS ARE SAYING

Check out why so many famed actors use Backstage

Trusted since 1960

Founded in 1960, Backstage has a storied history of serving the entertainment industry. For over 60 years Backstage has served as a casting resource and news source for actors, performers, directors, producers, agents, and casting directors.

Over that time, Backstage Magazine has also appeared on numerous TV shows, such as “Mad Men,” “Entourage,” “Glee,” “Oprah,” NBC's “Today” show, Comedy Central's “@Midnight”, NY1's “On Stage,” and “Saturday Night Live,” as well as multiple mentions on shows like “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” “Girls,” and appearances in films such as “13 Going on 30,” the Farrelly brothers' “Stuck on You” and Spike Lee's “Girl 6,” and even a mention in Woody Allen's short-story collection “Mere Anarchy” and Augusten Burroughs' novel “Sellevision” – and Backstage has received accolades from multiple Academy Award-, Emmy-, and Tony-winning actors and directors. (Plus, the hit musical “The Last Five Years” even includes Backstage in its lyrics: “Here's a headshot guy and a new Backstage / Where you're right for something on every page.”)

CAITRÍONA BALFE

ACTRESS

"I still get Backstage emails 'cause I still subscribe to Backstage. [Backstage is) kind of the Bible in the beginning, which is amazing. Samuel French and Backstage go hand in hand, you know? You go there for your plays when you're in classes, and then you get your Backstage."

Backstage 1

•••••

Brian’s Note: The following story originally appeared in April 2015. Most recent update is December 2020.

The Gorgeous Determination of Caitríona Balfe

Caitríona Balfe is on the move. That's been true most of her adult life— especially the 10 years she was modeling for Victoria's Secret, Dolce & Gabbana, and others—but as she sits on the rooftop patio of a West Hollywood hotel in mid-March, she mentions that she's pulling up stakes from Los Angeles.

"It just feels silly to have an empty place for 10 months until I figure out what I'm doing with my life," the Irish-born actor says. "I've rented the same place for the last four years and now I have to give it up." Her apartment is being razed to put in condos, but her departure from L.A. is extra poignant considering this is the city where Balfe journeyed when she decided to put aside that successful modeling career and focus on the vocation she'd always wanted: acting.

Photo: Luc-Richard Elie

"I've moved so much since I was 18," she says. "I mean, l've lived so many places. New York, I lived in for almost eight years [while modeling], and that's been the longest of anywhere since I left Ireland. But L.A. is where I came and said, 'OK, this is what I wanna do with my life.' "

She refuses to think of her move as a permanent one, though. "I'll be back," she declares, "but it feels really sad. My little apartment, it's got so many memories."

Balfe's sadness is no doubt mitigated by the fact that part of her need to move is due to the precipitous rise in her fortunes. She'll soon be flying to Scotland to shoot the second season of "Outlander," which returns to Starz April 4 to conclude Season 1.

When last we saw Balfe's Claire, the resourceful British nurse who comes home after World War |I only to be inexplicably teleported into the 18th-century Highlands, she was half-naked with a knife to her breast. Don't worry: Claire will get out of that scrape, but more perils await-to say nothing of the emerging multi-era romantic triangle developing between her, the Scottish warrior Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), and her 20th-century husband, Frank Randall (Tobias Menzies), who wonders where she's gone.

Based on the much-beloved Diana Gabaldon novels and developed for television by "Battlestar Galactica" rebooter Ronald D. Moore, "Outlander" is an ostensibly lush period-piece-within-a-period-piece drama that's consistently richer and thornier than its romance-novel trappings suggest. And much of the credit goes to Balfe, who had managed small parts in films such as “Super 8” and “Now You See Me” before landing the central role in this adaptation.

In person, Balfe is far less imposing than the steely Claire, who has to weather the dangers of being a woman in sexist, violent Scotland in the 1740s. Cast late in the preproduction of “Outlander”—Moore has mentioned in interviews how hard it was to find the right Claire—she didn’t have time to consider what the role would do to her life. “I’m so bad on social media," she confesses on this warm afternoon, nestled underneath a cabana. "I had set up an account on Twitter maybe a year or so before I got this job and had, I thought, a lot of followers — 250 or something, and most of them are my friends. Within about a month or two, it was thousands of people — and my phone, I didn't know how to turn off the alerts, so it was just going all the time. That was the beginning of the awareness."

Growing up in the small Irish community of Monaghan, Balfe had considered acting from an early age. ("I was devastated that I wasn't a child actor," she says, smiling. But after traveling to Dublin to study theater, she changed course once she received an offer to model. It wasn't a secret passion of hers, but who turns down a trip to Paris? "My parents felt that I should finish college," Balfe recalls, "but l'm slightly headstrong, so l took their advice and I completely ignored it."

Over the next decade, she lived in France, Italy, Germany, and Japan, her modeling inexperience hardly a detriment. "You'd be amazed how little information or training goes into it," she says. "When I first arrived in Paris, I was told to take a bus to the office. I left my suitcase — I barely spoke any French — and someone took me across the street, helped me buy a Carte Orange. They printed out five addresses that I had to go to that day, and then they sent me off." She still remembers at 18 riding the subway alongside 16-year-old aspiring Russian models, who knew no French or English, homesick and sobbing their eyes out. "That was just the way it was," says Balfe. "You become pretty tough. When I went to Japan, it was similar: They would drive you to their castings, but the minute you got a job, it would be like, 'Here's an address, here's a map. Good luck.' They don't have signposts in English in Japan, so the map and the address are not always very helpful."

Hear Balfe recount her early misadventures in modeling and you can't help but think of Claire, who's equally thrown to the wolves once she arrives in the 18th century amid people wary of the English in general and assertive women in particular. "Honestly, l've been in so many situations in my life where you just are completely displaced," Balfe says. “You have to adapt very quickly and figure it out. I definitely think that informs Claire a lot. It helped me understand her."

Did moving to Paris at such a young age teach Balfe that she can cope in any circumstance? "I think I didn't really realize that until many years later," she replies. "I have a great knack of not thinking about things and just going for it. You learn the hard way sometimes that you're able to get through, but sometimes it's quite tough when you're in a situation where you don't know anyone and you're trying to find your way around cities. But if an opportunity presents itself and it seems like a good idea, l'm just like, 'OK, let's do it, then I'll figure it out.'”

The decision to reconnect with her acting ambitions was conducted just as boldly. Ready to quit modeling, she moved to Los Angeles because a writer she was dating lived there. He was the only person she knew, but she had read a Vanity Fair interview with Amy Adams in which she said she trained with Warner Loughlin. "I could walk to that place from my ex-boyfriend's house," she says, "so l was like, 'Well, I'm gonna go there because I can't really drive. I started from scratch. I didn't have any managers, I didn't know any agents, I hadn't acted in almost a decade." But she just kept taking classes, moving from Loughlin to the studios of Sanford Meisner and Judith Weston. "I think when I first got here, I had a nice little air of delusion: 'It's gonna work out,'" she says with a laugh. “You just don't know how."

And then came "Outlander." By email, Moore admits that he didn't know Balfe's work until her audition tape came unsolicited to his office from her agent. Once she was chosen for Claire, he made it clear how demanding the job would be. “I told her in our first meeting that this was going to be an even bigger responsibility and workload than the normal TV lead," he writes. "Because the story was being told from Claire's point of view, Cait was going to be in every scene, every day for months, which is an extraordinary amount of work, far beyond what most actors are ever asked to do."

Moore's warning didn't faze Balfe. Writes Moore, "After she met with the president of Starz... and it was clear that she was going to land the role, I walked her to the elevator and just before the doors closed on her, I said 'Your life is about to change forever,' and she gave me a grin that was both thrilled and slightly nervous. I never saw her hesitate after that."

She's never hesitated before. As Balfe prepares to say goodbye to L.A. (for now, she thinks back to her early days in the city, trying to convince casting directors that she was more than just a model. "I went on many, many, many, many auditions that were Hot Girl No. 2 — you wanna shoot yourself," she says, laughing. "But, you know, I'm very lucky that l was even getting those auditions in the beginning. And it toughens you up. At least for me, to have that fuel to prove people wrong—it definitely spurs me on and makes me wanna work harder." Then she smiles conspiratorially. "And shove it to them."

Backstage 2

Remember… I told her in our first meeting that this was going to be an even bigger responsibility and workload than the normal TV lead. — Ronald D Moore

[terrence-silver]

I saw your reblogged post about overly-involved girldad!Terry, and while I love that, I'll raise you Terry Silver and his adopted (or not) baby sister

After he leaves for the military, his mom and dad took in a kid who needed help. Terry doesn't find out about her until years later and he becomes instantly obsessed. His baby sister is his and his alone. He knows her better than he knows himself and is so grossly intertwined with her every waking move.

How much do we want to bet it does become matrimonial in the end?

Because hey, there's no actual blood relation at hand and it's technically not unethical (not that something being unethical ever stopped Terry before) but he could very well become one of those people out in Los Angeles and Hollywood who have an adopted sibling or family member they marry at one point (in lieu of the grossness of, for example, Soon-Yi Previn and Woody Allen), because, why not? His parents acquired his sister for him and that would be pretty much be the only and closest thing to family we'd ever see him have, so who's to say he cannot? No law against it and even if there was...you throw enough money at a law and it's no longer a law and by extension, no longer a problem. Not to mention his adopted sibling owes him. Owes the generosity of his family. Owes him and them for all the benefits. All the privileges. All the cushy living. All the everything. And since nothing's for free it only stands to reason that they repay him with their devotion and love. And no, nobody can have them but him. Because nobody gave them as much as he did, so, for all Terry's concerned he has literal legal and moral ownership over them; right there, in the documents. There's Silver next to your name and that's a literal chain that attaches you to his side forever. Becomes one of those relationships where you aren't certain if that's Terry Silver's relative you're looking at, a sibling, a once-upon-a time companion and childhood playmate, a significant other, his lover or his wife because if there were any boundaries in place they were blurred a long, long time ago.

Heck, if his parents bring home this person while he's still in the overseas, in the war, he might just show off their picture and introduce them as an arranged marriage fiancée waiting for him back home because that's the way he'd see it, tactically skipping over the part where that's his adopted sister legally speaking; it isn't a loveless thing, no, no. He'd see this no differently from John's affections for Betsy. But, much like his company, his family's money, his wealth --- Terry inherited, or will inherit his spouse-to-be so it's only a given they're his. He just came to be with them differently than ordinary couples. But then again, Terry Silver was never meant to be ordinary, was he?

[fagsex]

i will never be over the twiggy being interviewed by woody allen "whats your view on serious matters / who's your favorite philosopher" little clip like EAT HIM ALIVE GIRL . her years later saying how she was just a young girl (17) and he was intentionally embarrassing her like HE WAS AND YOU KILLED HIM. SAY THAT. not to mention what a dumbass question "whats your view on serious matters" whatttt do you mean. she even says "like what?" and he cant even answer that so he switches over to the ever stupid and purposefully rude "who's your favorite philosopher" and she is honest and admits she doesn't know many, and then flips it back on him so succinctly and politely and looks and sounds so sweet while she does it and he flounders like a fish and says some dumbbbbb shit like "well theyre all good" when you can barely name two that get along with each other lile philosophy isnt a dusty moshpit and then to top it off she giggles. you can hear his ears turn red. ugh i love it so much they should replace the national anthem in schools with that clip from like kindergarten age onwards

[dorksidefiker]

I've mentioned my Black List a few times in the last couple days, and I've decided to ramble about it a bit more about it because I can. The list is actually multi-tierd -- a Black List and a Grey List, if you will. The Grey List tends to be reserved for people who've continued to work with or spoken in open support of people on my Black List. Anyone who works with Roman Polanski or Woody Allen is on the Grey List for the next five years -- I won't spend money or watch new projects of theirs. People fall off the Grey List faster if they express contrition or walk back their idiocy. The harder they cling, the more likely they'll be moved to the Black List. And then there are The Exceptions. Peter David is, for personal reasons, on my Black List (to the best of my knowledge, he's not a monster, but he IS a shithead), with exactly two exceptions: Babylon 5 and the highly unlikely event that Space Cases ever sees a DVD release. I'm not likely to be spending money on either of these properties again, since I have the B5 DVD set, but his contribution to the series is small enough that I'm willing to let it slide. The same is true when it comes to Scarlett Johansson (grey list) and Transformers One. There are two ways off the Black List: Genuine Repentance along side efforts to make amends, and Death. And even then, Death is no guarantee that I'll ever willingly interact with their properties again. No force in the universe is likely to get me reading anything by Marion Zimmer Bradley again, for instance. Gaiman is probably gonna end up in the Not Even In Death pile.

[lindszeppelin]

It's the typical internet response that all men are trash and all women are the victims in the break up.

That is the mentality people have towards Austin and he hasn't done anything wrong. Vanessa and Kaia are not fucking prizes either. In fact, Austin can do better than both of them.

Vanessa is not a nice person. There are many fan encounters of her acting like an entitled asshole. Not to mention her covid comments and she supports Woody Allen. She loves attention and drama. By the time Elvis came out, she was irrelevant. She hasn't done shit in the industry since HSM. So her being known as Austin's ex was giving her the clout she was desperate for.

Kaia is a spoiled nepo baby who seeks out older man. But nobody is ready for that conversation. She's 23 years old and has dated 3 men years older than her. Nobody finds that odd? But Austin is the creep?He was good to Kaia. She's the one who as fucking around with other men and women and being a complete mess.

Austin isn't obligated to put a ring on someone's finger because they've been together a certain amount of time.

Funny how the internet wants to villainize Austin because he likes to commit to a woman long term. That's the point if dating. If it doesn't work both parties will move on. Vanessa moved on very fast from Austin. Austin didn't date again until 2021. Kaia will have a new man by next month.

Anyways, Austin is a humble, good man. That's rare in Hollywood. He'll be known for his acting career. While Kaia will only be known for her messy dating history. Vanessa, it's 2025 no one cares what she's doing.

Totally agreed and well said! And I will just also say that K and V truly have a lot in common when it comes to their personalities...the only difference is that she loved Austin for real in their relationship and he truly loved her in return. But I guess scorned exes will always reveal their true character at some point.

[deadinthefoam]

Hero Worship, Terrible Artists And Thursday

Trigger warning; this blog/essay contains mentions of sexual violence, racism, ableism and homophobia. Please keep yourself safe.

-

Recently, I've had a bit of a detachment phase going on.

Realising that your heroes aren't perfect is a very natural, and important, part of maturing; no matter how well put together somebody's image might be, no person is incapable of making a mistake, or doing something “problematic”. Notes app apologies seem to have become a staple of online culture, when a celebrity's old tweets resurface about some miscellaneous topic, and the swift hammer of chronically online twitter — oops, X — users falls down to determine whether this person is “good”.

Of course, when the topic is serious, concerning racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, sexual assault etc., I find that saying we should “cancel” these people shows the trivialisation of serious issues in online spaces. Though, I suppose the concept of an angry mob is something that’s been in our society for a long, long time, so it harkens back to our primal instincts of justice. That being said, you can't “cancel” anybody; rich people find their way back to the top and move on 99.9% of the time, and all we can do is watch. This is the hellscape of capitalism (late stage, if we’re going to be specific). And it is frustrating beyond all words, so we have giant campaigns to seek some kind of catharsis, hoping we can get this person beaten with virtual sticks. The internet is often a lawless place, so we create our own type of karma.

What helps us in our quests, naturally, is the fact that all information can now so easily be dropped into our laps. A quick google search is all you need to find out somebody’s achievements, and their greatest “flops”. Exposé articles and think pieces are ready for us to consume, mull over in silent discomfort, before at the end, there’s the unexplainable dread that we now have to come to a conclusion about all of this, by ourselves; there is no definitive authority on this subject, no great philosophical statement, because, as we are constantly reminded by the snot nosed critics, “art is subjective”. Suddenly, after being metaphorically waved off by the high brows, who declare us too unimaginative to understand the genius of Woody Allen, we now have to decide the morality of a piece of work, or person. We are inexplicably burdened by our love for art.

My mother once told me that “all knowledge is good knowledge”. I don’t really consider my knowing of Johnny Depp’s sexual abuse of his ex-wife to be particularly “good”. My knowledge becomes a dead weight. Clair Dederer, in her book ‘Monsters: What Do We Do With Great Art By Bad People?’ [2023], (which I took quite a few cues and good takeaways from), put it best: “Biography used to be something you sought out, yearned for, actively pursued. Now it falls on your head all day long.”

Because of this, I see that the backlash from fans against a public figure can be more vitriolic than most — these are the people who actively seek out those biographies, and delve deeply into them. Of course, you have the adamant defenders, but there's something oddly heartbreaking about the fury of an ex-fan, who found such value in somebody's work, perhaps deriving a piece of their soul from it, only for the creator to do something they find to be unforgivable.

The most recent of this phenomenon, and possibly the most impactful to me personally, I've found, is the case of Neil Gaiman fans, and how his countless sexual assaults have left much of his audience feeling deeply betrayed. I have seen countless fans, or perhaps ex-fans now, speaking about how his work inspired them, made them feel safe despite the world not wanting them — only to be told that, just like so many other rich, white men, Gaiman took advantage of his power, and inflicted unforgivable trauma on many young women. Discussions of death of the author are rife; separation of art from the artist begins (if it can begin).

Full clarity here — I was never a big fan of Gaiman, not to say that makes me better than anyone who was. I do label myself as a nerd, so perhaps not being very familiar with his works makes me a poser, but I was aware of his significance in comic book culture. He was one of those acclaimed figures that people would talk about online as though he were a modern day God, praising his writing, his activism, and all around “good vibes”. I read “Coraline” once, was vaguely impressed by it, and then moved on. That didn’t make the news of his crimes any less jarring to me; many people who I met through online spaces who were fans of his are absolutely heartbroken, and the backlash felt so personal, so devastated, that in a strange, twisted way, I am intrigued by it.

How can we be so emotionally invested in people we don’t know?

Trust is very rarely a two way street when it comes to the artist you like (though it can be possible). We truly don't know anyone through our screens, no matter how hard we could try to. The outpouring of grief over somebody you don't really know is both something irrational yet rational. You are mourning a person you've only seen a speck of; because artists do put a part of their soul into their work, and if you look for it, you can see it. People grasp that with both hands, find meaning in it, and use it to find strength in themselves. That is something vulnerable, intimate — if you choose to kill the author, after they commit some heinous crime, do you kill a piece of yourself?

What I'm trying to get at here, is that relationships between artists and their audiences are fraught; parasocial, if we're going to use that word (whole nother box of worms). Going back to my first statement, I have been going through a process of carefully detaching myself from the artists I enjoy, so I save myself at least a part of the humiliation and heartbreak in case something awful comes out about them. It's a self preservation tactic based on suspicion, that isn't new. And I am not immune to it. Nobody is.

With great effort, I’ve pulled myself away from Shirley Manson, from Chappell Roan, from Jarvis Cocker, from Anthony Green, from Paramore, from My Chemical Romance (efforts still ongoing here — MCR is a terribly easy band to get attached to). Now I attempt to see things objectively, so I don't have to feverishly hope and pray that none of the artists I love have sexually assaulted a child. I'm aware I sound horrifically cynical.

That being said, the band Thursday from New Jersey will always be perfect to me.

No, no — that's wrong. Hold on.

I know Thursday cannot be perfect, because I will always stand by the philosophy that nothing is perfect. Yet, I have the most trouble detaching myself from this band. It's a bit of a twisted cycle, I will go through phases of completely cutting away any personal strings I have to the artists, and yet inevitably I return.

Probably part of the draw is the golden retriever-like charisma of lead singer Geoff Rickly, who's very vocal on his Instagram stories, and is very open to talking with fans. I'm one of those fans, occasionally asking questions in direct messages, or sharing artwork, though I'm sure I'm incessantly irritating. I find Geoff oddly comforting, as a person I maybe could have been — musically gifted, friendly, and able to make good connections with people. Instead, I sit alone in my small room at university, having dropped most of my musical interests in favour of a law degree that I'm not entirely sure I want to do. And I know I'm young, in comparison, I still have (in my opinion far too much) time left; but the existential dread isn't easy to cope with. I have to make decisions that I feel I am wildly unequipped for, in a world that clearly does not want me. Geoff exudes a kind of warmth and openness, which makes me feel as though maybe I can be as content as him, eventually.

The rest of the band are active on social media, each bringing their own unique personalities. Tucker Rule, the drummer, is the most frequent poster, sharing almost every concert he does (which is a fucking lot, considering his position in LS Dunes as well), as well as a few sweet posts about his family. Stu Richardson, bassist and producer, is relatively quiet, but his few words count just as much as anybody else's, and his handprints are all over their new single's (White Bikes) slick production. I definitely found a sense of safety in the band, after I listened to a podcast between Geoff, Steve Pedulla and Norman Brannon, the two guitarists, and found that queer people in hardcore was, well, something that existed.

And the fandom provides warmth as well; a strange mix of older hardcore guys, and younger, mainly gay and/or trans fans, who create a space which is marginally more accepting than probably every other fandom I've ever been in. Then, just as I was furious about none of my favourite musicians speaking about Palestine, Sudan and the Congo, Geoff Rickly calls on stage almost every night for an end to the genocides in each of those countries, and rags on US imperialism.

It's glorious. It's all I've ever wanted in a band.

It's fucking scary.

Because now, what do I do if these people ever disappoint me? How should I proceed? Should I burn my baseball cap that I got from their website and paid extortionate shipping fees for? Should I toss my Thursday albums in the garbage? The CDs that Geoff so kindly signed, after following their concert in London during summer, I utterly blew my chance to meet him and had a panic induced meltdown in front of their tour bus?

(I still feel embarrassed about that.)

All that pain, all that grief, and hatred, and love — where does it go?

Fuck if I know.

Instead, I'd like to perhaps posit something new. Detaching from your heroes is good; but a full disconnect is usually impossible. Perhaps we should find new things to explore, new ways to fall in love, get heartbroken by, and move on from. This is just the human experience, to love and to lose, and to move onwards; not everybody in the world is going to disappoint you, despite what the cynics may argue. We are not naturally selfish and cruel. Not to bring politics into things, but those traits are normalised under capitalism.

At a point, you realise that the artist who has done something terrible is not one of a kind. They are one of many; sexual assault, in the case of Neil Gaiman, is something that occurs so often among rich, high status, powerful men, that it is normalised. Neil Gaiman seemingly did everything right, he was an ally to the queer community, he was a “feminist” by all accounts, and yet here we are. But I find that putting any more effort into someone like that, who wears the face of a good person, to be tiring and not something anyone should go through.

It will take time, but I feel as though a mild detachment is necessary, for yourself, and the artist, because you can have trust both ways, through a sense of mutual understanding. You don't realise you have something until it's gone, how fandoms mourn their favourite creators when those creators step away from fandom and social media entirely (and for good reason!) and leave us behind; like Alan Moore, Gerard Way or Ryan Ross. Their (public) biographies stop — we are no longer privy to their lives. And who are we to tell these people what they can do? Fame is a terrible thing, most of the time, yet it’s a tragedy that we keep having to learn, every time a young artist passes away.

Funny how it takes somebody dying for us to pull together.

So, I’m going to keep being annoying about Thursday, milk that youthful naivety, until I grow up a little more. I’m going to keep making my silly portraits of band members, because I know the day will come where I will have to put my paintbrush down, and permanently trade it in for a keyboard and court documents. With age, I expect that some things will not affect me as deeply as they do now, and I will understand my idols as I become closer to their age. I will learn to distance myself, with time — but I can still care. It is never a crime to care. Love is a burden I will gladly shoulder for a little while more.

I don’t want to wade into faux deep talk, and get in over my head, so I’ll wrap things up now.

Maybe I've been completely pretentious this entire ramble. Maybe all these words mean fuckall in the grand scheme of things, someone’s surely thinking “we have bigger things to worry about”, and I don’t disagree. So, I'll leave you with this: be kind to yourself, fall in love with new art. When the artists you love disappoint you deeply, scream “fuck you”, with righteous rage and sadness — cry and feel. Write that think piece. Burn a book if you want to.

But do not ever give up on yourself for trusting somebody. You still have love to give to those who better deserve it, and your love is worth so much more than you can ever imagine. Love is neither rational, nor logical, but it is real.

[floatingcatacombs]

Do Not Watch Stardust Memory

12 Days of Aniblogging 2024, Day 3

The Universal Century Gundam OVAs are pretty well-regarded as a whole. War in the Pocket is an antiwar Christmas classic from the perspective of a civilian child, and is also one of the most accessible Gundam shows. The 08th MS Team is regarded as having some of the best-animated fights in the whole franchise, and Gundam Unicorn keyed a new generation of fans into the setting, for better or for worse. Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory does not receive any such praise. Every once in a while a weirdo will vouch for it as an underrated series, or someone who grew up with it as their first Gundam will express blind devotion, but otherwise it goes mostly unaddressed, which is a surprise at first glance. This is the Gundam set between the original show and Zeta, bridging the gap by displaying the origin of the Titans and cataloguing the return of Zeon in the public consciousness. But Stardust Memory is buried for a reason: this is a deeply frustrating, slow, and confusing series. I hope I can convey why.

Stardust Memory (no relation to the Woody Allen movie) follows a cohort of soldiers at a Federation army base and later a space fleet as they try, very unsuccessfully, to unravel a scheme by Zeon remnants to… do something very bad! Zeon's central scheme doesn’t actually come into focus until the final episodes. Until then it’s mostly guys in rooms making sketchy deals and Zeon ace pilots screaming “you could never understand the importance of our mission!” and then…not explaining their mission. Being kept in the dark like that with very few other compelling plot developments does not good pacing make!

The main narrative thrust of this show is Kou’s growth from a boy into a man, through being forced to pilot a Gundam in service to a Federation which makes teens do its dirty work. Of course, there are obvious parallels here to Amuro Ray. But Kou manages to get through this ordeal without the introspection and anguish and trauma that makes Amuro’s arc so good. Kou gets plenty upset at himself for fucking up military objectives and not being Strong Enough, and his superiors dig into him plenty as well. But ultimately, it just comes across as a boy who fucked around and enlisted at a backwater Feddie base, and is currently Finding Out. It is much harder to feel sympathy for volunteer soldiers, even if they’re green! This may be my politics leading the conversation, but I just couldn't care about Kou. He’s a jerk and he sucks! So do his squadmates! Everyone in this show sucks!

This is actually a serious structural problem. Stardust Memory does not have likeable characters whatsoever. It’s one of the most negative depictions of the Earth Federation in any Gundam series, and on some level I endorse that! They may have had the moral high ground during the One Year War, but at the end of the day the Feddies are tactically incompetent, laughably corrupt, and morally spineless. Unfortunately, that does not make for an enjoyable cast whatsoever, as this rot extends all the way down from the leadership to our pilot protagonist. You kind of want them dead.

Zeon does not fare any better. Kou’s rival and the show’s main antagonist, the ace pilot Anaval Gato, ping-pongs between anger and extreme emotional stoicism. He flat-out refuses to acknowledge the protagonist as an equal, which means that their dynamic consists entirely of talking past one another. He believes in only the virtue of his mission, and executes it with brutal precision, while refusing to mention any clarifying what his mission is to the view or introducing any personal stakes. He’s just a guy here to start some fights, do some terrorism, and push some evil hacking buttons. Why do people like this guy? Seriously, it’s ridiculous to me that he is the most favorited character for this series on MyAnimeList, far above the protagonist and his love interest. Is it because he’s so flat and boring that he’s not actively jeopardizing his character like the rest of the cast? Maybe it’s just cryptofascism on the part of the site’s userbase. But either way, he’s nothing.

On the other hand, Cima Garhack, the other space fascist in play, is a top-tier Fucker. She enters the plot to cause problems for all sides, betraying whoever she can. Unfortunately, she suffers from what seems to be an irreconcilable number of late-breaking rewrites. Is she the ultimate mastermind? It seems that way for a second, but no. Is she introduced way too late with no context, forcibly sidelined for three episodes, and denied a satisfying resolution? You bet your ass! The fact that there’s a 3-minute short bundled with the home video releases that explains her backstory is indication enough that something went horribly wrong with fitting her into the narrative. She deserves way more to do. Honestly, she should have taken Gato’s place narratively! Instead, she’s left to strike deals with Anaheim Electronics, the Federation, and the rest of Zeon, selling everyone out to the highest bidder. That’s fun, but the contents and value of those meetings are unclear enough to the viewer that they’re just confusing and narratively weightless. Seriously, if I hadn’t played Anaheim Girl’s Love Story, I seriously would have had a tough time piecing together that Anaheim gave her the reskinned Gerbera Tetra as quid pro quo for an agreement of neutrality between the company and Zeon. And then it hardly matters, because all she does is fly it around for a bit before getting impaled by one of the stupidest Gundam designs imaginable. I wish she had been able to go down with agency, whether dignified or as the most pathetic and sopping wet older woman imaginable.

We spend shockingly little time in the offices of Anaheim Electronics, a disappointing decision that leaves me all the more impressed with AGLS for making their whole game using just a few scenes for reference. Our primary window into the company is Nina Purpleton, a mobile suit engineer who brings two of her division’s prototype Gundams to a remote Federation military base for testing at the start of the show. One of those Gundams is notable for having a fucking nuke attached to it. Within minutes, due to the base's laughable security, a Zeon pilot (Gato) manages to sneak in, steal the Nuke Gundam, flee to a Zeon-controlled launch site, and escape into space. Everyone in the Federation blames one another, and Kou is forced to learn to use the remaining Gundam, the one designed by Nina, to find and defeat Gato before Zeon can make use of the nuke.

First things first, Nina Purpleton has an absolutely adorable late-80s fluffy office woman design. For a moment there, it genuinely seems like she’s going to be allowed to be forceful and intelligent and commanding, but hahaha no of course not this show sucks. Within an episode or two she’s made into the Reward that Kou gets for learning how to pilot her Gundam, and the way they put the moves on each other feels so obviously forced. It’s a shame that the central romance here is just no good! And sure, maybe that’s on design, just like how the rest of the show is bad and meaningless and miserable to witness, but it’s a bad design! After mostly being sidelined and told no by everyone for the second half of the show, Nina does get some interesting agency in the very final episode, but we’ll get to that later. Gotta talk politics first.

Gundam broadly carries an antiwar message, though each entry stakes out its own unique position. Even the shows where the depicted war feels necessary and one side is clearly less bad make sure to rub in just how much it sucks for everyone. Except for Stardust Memory. This is the one Gundam series I’ve watched that is blatantly and uncritically fascist in its value system. Femininity and weakness are disparaged and punished, and the military values strength above all else and forces it upon our main character. Zeon of course is just as bad with their culture of valor and self-sacrifice. But for once, the two sides don’t feel that far apart in demeanor. And there's really no civilian perspective to try and remind us of the horrors of the war that they're caught in the crossfire of, which is genuinely unusual for a Gundam show.

The best part of Stardust Memory is clearly episode 5, when Kou gets his fancy new Gundam ripped apart by Cima, who’s actively confused by how bad he is at piloting and is honestly just toying with him. It’s downright erotic watching the Gundam’s limbs get shot off and torn apart and seeing it forced to make a desperate emergency landing, bound up in a series of nets as everyone in the hangar screams in panic (I think mecha guro may honestly be the one valid reason to watch this OVA). This is Kou’s low point, and it really is nice to see such an unlikeable protagonist get put in his place.

After the humiliation of all that, Kou runs away from his obligations while quartering in a lunar city, gets beat up in the street, and ends up getting rescued by Kelly Layzner, a former Zeon soldier turned garbage collector. Kou starts tinkering with the half-wrecked Mobile Armor in Kelly’s garage, only to discover that it’s a weapon that he’s being commissioned to fix up for the Zeon cause. Instead of fighting Kelly, or leaving, Kou continues to help him repair his ship while simultaneously making plans to rejoin his unit. The two of them vow to meet each other on the battlefield as equals and depart in noble esteem, as the heartfelt R&B of the ending theme swells in.

What?? It’s this stupid Honor of Battle character motivation out of nowhere, forcibly asserted by both sides in a broader conflict full of dirty tricks. You can show examples of how the individual fighters of Zeon were not bad people! 0079 does this constantly, and War in the Pocket is built around it. But this series of events is Nietzschean star lovers bullshit – it’s the molding of Kou from cowardly soldier into an ubermensch, through a series of increasingly baffling plot developments. Given how much of a pushover he’s been in the early episodes, this is a deeply drastic series of decisions, and it happens strictly because Stardust Memory needs Kou to Become A Man. This was the moment where the show's blatant, all-encompassing fascism became unavoidably clear to me. Kou's romance is affected as well – he has to become assertive and chivalrous and masculine in order to get the girl, minimizing Nina’s agency and involvement in the show’s important events afterwards. Come on.

Zeon slowly advances their plan in the later episodes of the OVA, scoring win after win from skirmish victories to surprise escapes to nuking half of the Federation fleet during a training exercise. Honestly, they could just keep doing this and probably win the protracted guerilla war? But no, their secret scheme must be executed at all costs! It’ll change everything.

Operation Stardust turns out to be…a colony drop! On the moon! Wait no, that was a fake-out, their real plan was to hit the Earth. And the colony’s going to fall right on Jaburo, as a perfect decapitation strike. Actually, nope, one more twist! The final step of Operation Stardust is for Gato to get to the colony control station and change the trajectory so it hits…North America. Wait, barely anyone lives there after the devastation of the One Year War! Ahh, I see, they’re going after their grain supply with this colony drop, in order to…. cause famine on Earth…. so they have to buy food from the colonies…to tip the scales politically for Zeon’s return and economically uplift the colonies…

Look, at that point why not just hit Jaburo? I get that they want to force the Earth to become dependent on space, but why not just end the military relevance of Earth once and for all? It’s clear that these Zeon remnants are totally insane and amoral and don’t care about human life or the environment – they nuked a whole ship fleet! All in all I really have no idea what the purpose is of this surprisingly inconsequential scheme. I don’t really like Watsonian analysis, but there is so much nonsense to poke at here.

Towards the end of show, Nina and Kou visit La Vie En Rose, a very yonic weapons development factory owned by Anaheim all the way out in space. Kou essentially starts cheating on Nina by agreeing to test the Mobile Suit of another woman – that is the main way they've mediated their relationship, after all. This other woman gets shot and killed later that episode in order to force Kou to be Stronger and willing to pilot her prototype Gundam. It’s Zeta levels of fridging women for the sake of moving the plot forward for guys. Nina Purpleton is the one who’s actually left heartbroken, and I think watching a rogue general execute her coworker like that is what makes her truly lose faith in the Federation. She also reveals around this time that she has a romantic history with Gato, and that watching Kou and Gato fight is the most terrible thing in the world for her, because she loves them both.

But of course, they have to fight, and the show makes sure to valorize kamikaze any chance it can get during the major battle sequences. Out of her two boys, Nina ultimately picks Gato, even while watching him orchestrate a colony drop right in front of her. Sometimes you just can’t beat the old flame. I personally loved watching Nina Purpleton pick up a gun and shoot at Kou and run away with Gato only for him to die, and for her to be forced to watch the Earth burn while court-martialed on a Zeon ship. It’s good, bitter stuff for such a complicated and resentful character. That’s why it’s all the more disappointing when Stardust Memory walks that back in its timeskip epilogue.

A year later, Kou is wandering the wastes of North America outside of his new military base. Nina and her mechanic drive up to greet him, mirroring their introduction in the first episode. Nina and Kou have a complicated staredown and then…completely make up, smiling like nothing happened without even a conversation? Roll credits???

Let me make something clear: Nina is a hated character in the larger Gundam fandom, but I think the reason that most people hate her is that weird thing that anime fans have where they treat the main character getting cucked as the literal worst thing in the world. I’ll probe that complex another day, I promise. But honestly, Nina hasn’t acted any more irrationally than the rest of the cast up until this point. Everyone has been making nonsensical moves, and at least she’s been following her heart with hers. But this final scene is so implausible on all levels that it feels like a slap in the face to the viewer’s intelligence and their suspension of disbelief. You can’t come back from what she did!! You shouldn’t have to!! It’s insane that they tried to give these two characters a happy ending!! Just make Nina run off with her butch mechanic or something!!

you two would have been unstoppable as lesbians

The series ends with the formation of the Titans, who go on to brutalize the Earth Sphere in Zeta. Every one of the insufferable Feddies that we’ve had to endure in this series goes on to join the faction where they’ll be blasted to pieces by the AEUG in a few years for their blatant fascism. Thank God. At least Stardust Memory acknowledges that the Titans are borne out of a collaboration between the most corrupt and power-hungry branches of Zeon and the Federation, with Anaheim signing on to make suits for them. Of course everyone here were going to become bad guys, but they still could have had some traits that would make them compelling to follow this whole time!

Anything else I could possibly say about Stardust Memory has already slipped my mind. It’s a surprisingly dull show for what could have easily been a slam dunk. But instead it’s this strange mix of hugely consequential UC lore and minimal impacts, leaving a confused and inconsequential story. There’s also surprisingly little Anaheim office lady drama, especially after the VN I just read. Do not trick yourself.

me after all of this blogging

Honestly, if you want what this show purports to offer, do yourself a favor and watch Macross Plus instead! It’s another 90’s mecha OVA with some of the best mechanical animation ever put to cel. Like Stardust Memory, it centers itself around testing prototype mechas and a messy MMF love triangle, and even though it’s willing to have messy and unlikeable protagonists, it manages to actually craft intrigue with them. Amazing Yoko Kanno soundtrack too. There’s an awful plot twist near the end that throws the whole story into question, but that’s still a better outcome than 13 drawn-out episodes of a bad story in a good setting! Just please, don’t watch Stardust Memory.

[ribbytherabbit]

MY INTRO! (if anyone cares)

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BASICS!

⏤͟͟͞͞ 𖤐 name . ٭┆ribby, nny, lain or xia!

⏤͟͟͞͞ 𖤐 pronouns . ٭┆he/they/peck/paw/fluff/glam

⏤͟͟͞͞ 𖤐 sexuality . ٭┆gay and abrosexual

⏤͟͟͞͞ 𖤐 gender . ٭┆enby trans (ftm)

⏤͟͟͞͞ 𖤐 what am I? . ٭┆an artist and a to-be character designer!

⏤͟͟͞͞ 𖤐 ethnicity . ٭┆turkish-bulgarian

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INTERESTS!

⏤͟͟͞͞ 𖤐 favorite shows/series . ٭┆TAWOG, Woody woodpecker, spookiz, invader zim, Looney tunes, puella madoka magica, TADC, captain underpants: the series, panty and stocking, pjmasks

⏤͟͟͞͞ 𖤐 favorite games . ٭┆ franbow, tattletail, fnaf, my friendly neighborhood, baldi's basic, Amanda the adventurer(?), Dandy's world

⏤͟͟͞͞ 𖤐 favorite bands/singers. ٭┆X-ray spex (and poly styrene in general), my chemical romance, will wood, DAgames, MotherMother, Kyle Allen's music, Alex Brightman, MASA works DESIGN (I don't support MASA btw!!), ect

⏤͟͟͞͞ 𖤐 other interests . ٭┆welcome home, Japanese horror and urban legends, lost media, scene fashion, the 2000s, Trevor Henderson's art, Milkkirie, Lacey's games, ride the cyclone, heathers, musicals, characters design, horror, essay/rant videos, making ocs, ocXcanon, ihnmaims, Beetlejuice, ect

⏤͟͟͞͞ 𖤐 favorite characters . ٭┆mr. Small, Dib, AM, zim, kongkong, Rachel, GIR, gumball, Tobias, Wally darling, JuneBug, Melvin sneedly, zizi, An yu, Romeo, FranBow, madoka, funtime Freddy, Jax, cartoon cat, Rose, Beetlejuice, Lydia, dandy, shrimpo, Looey, ect, ect!!

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BOUNDARIES!

Please use tonetags around me, when I say no I mean it, don't get into arguments with me for no reason, respect me and Ill respect you, try explaining things to me clearly, if my tone changes towards you this mean I don't trust you/dislike you/you're just a stranger to me, if I get comfortable around you and you feel weirded out please tell me

BYI!

I tend to struggle with keeping my friends, I can sometimes make NSFW jokes and if that makes you uncomfy please tell me, I use emoticon like "^_^" ":3" "XD" ect, I tend to overthink alot, I am a minor, I am an undiagnosed Neurodivergent (but did tons of research), if my interests or existence bother you.. Just ignore me-, I get overwhelm easily sometimes, I'm sometimes bad at conversations sometimes, don't be afraid to befriend me!! ^^

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BIO!

Hello, I'm ribby! As in what people call me usually lol- I'm a young cartoonist, and welcome to my page! XD i love making ocs, fanart and just drawing in general. I wanna grow my page to find more folks! I'm pretty cringe but hey.. Atleast I'm free! did I mention I also have like 4 husbands?? 😈😈 (one of them is my friend's oc..LOL) and oh.. Im making a few projects! I'll be showing them here, if I can.. :3

[notafunkiller]

I've seen that they talk about some of Blake's problems but I haven't understood very well, can you tell me what happened?

She is using a DV film promotion tour to promote her brand, acting as the film is a romcom: “grab your friends, wear your florals, and head out to see it!”, being dismissive of the actual subject aka DV, people who have been through this.

She thanked her husband (who seems VERY problematic and controlling in my pov; wanting the woman by his side in the shadow or connected to him so it's THEIR success all the time & she seems just as problematic... tbh even their acting range is the sane aka the play the same way every character) on the red carpet, not screenwriter Christy Hall or even CoHo — giving him credit for writing the movie’s “iconic” rooftop scene. Which based on the timeline... would have happened during the strike🤡.

She brought him and Hugh Jackman to promote IEWU and also Deadpool & Wolverine (she wants the Oppenheimer x Barbie effect so badly).

She dismissed a good opportunity to give resources for DV help in an interview in a horrible way and let's not forget how she said basically that you're more than a DV victim, minimalizing the impact and basically implying you're not enough if you let yourself being definied by a freaking trauma.

More and more people started to share how rude she was on sets, people remember how most of her costars did not get along with her etc.

She and Ryan got married on a plantation... and they 100% got together while he was still married based on the timeline and if I remember right, she was with someone.

In 2014, Blake created a digital lifestyle and e-commerce site: Preserve. One of the first spreads was titled The Allure of the Antebellum. The shoot was a romanticized version of the pre-Civil War South - should I even mention how those outfits were connected to the slavery time? (source)

Kjersti Flaa, a journalist, uploaded her 2016 clip with Lively on August 10, where Flaa congratulates Blake on her pregnancy and asked about wardrobe (which was an essential subject in the film) and she was offended (even though they have already made the info public), and was a mean girl in response: “congratulating” the woman (who was not pregnant) on her own bump. Which is so "funny" since she accused Justin that he fat-shamed her

The context: Justin has a history of back problems and before a scene involving him lifting Blake into the air: "he went to his on-set trainer and asked how much she weighed and how could he train to protect his back from injury."

(And she also said she “felt he lingered longer than he should have with the kiss” and made her “uncomfortable”, but they did not get along anyway)

Sources have told THR that there was a fracture between Baldoni and Lively in the postproduction stage, wherein two different cuts of the movie emerged. Lively commissioned a cut of the movie from editor Shane Reid, who was an editor on Deadpool & Wolverine, according to multiple sources. (source)

And let's not forget how she defended Woody All*n and acted in a film of his after everything... She said he is very empowering (source).

Lively criticized a host at the Cannes Film Festival last month for making a r*pe joke referring Allen as well as other comments about other attendees. She separately declined to comment about the allegations to the Los Angeles Times, saying, “It’s very dangerous to factor in things you don’t know anything about. I could [only] know my experience. And my experience with Woody is he’s empowering to women.” (source)

More info: here and here

Some videos: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here

[ofc-vi-writes-too]

In honor of me being black and loving being black and thinking everyone should love black people, here are a list of characters I believe love black women with everny bone in their bodies:

• Starting off strong: Steve Rogers. I can’t explain it but trust me please. If you get it you get it if you dont you dont.

• Jason todd. Like c’mon. Look at him. Tell me he doesn’t want to wake up next to a brownskin queen every morning. Look me in my eyes.

• MCU Bucky Barnes. I love to say it, Wakanda changed him. Stepping foot in that country was like seeing the light for the first time. He was basically reborn. I said it before and I’ll say it again. Look at how he looked at Sarah. SAME LITERALLY EXPLICITLY TOLD HIM NIT TO FLIRT WITH HER BEFORE THEY EVEN GOT THERE.

• Gojo, Itadori, nanami, and Toji from JJK. i dont think i need to eloborate here.

• Haley from Stardew Valley. She is not only a fellow girl kisser, but she would genuinely have a real tweak if the farmer was a black woman. Haley needs a 6 ft nonchalant butch dreadhead in her life it would literally solve all her provlems. She has written in her diary about this, and Alex hasnt heard the end of it.

• Fear from Inside out. Just believe me, please.

• This might be controversial but Squidward.

• Bruce Wayne. Literally thinks about eating drywall every time Selina Kyle is even mentioned. “Alfred why hasn’t God hand delivered me what i CRAVE and what i NEED *loud dramatic sigh*” hes also accidentally a perpatrator of hard wig soft life lmao. He donates ridiculous sums of money to black charities like 100 black men, and the black youth helpline. He’s an advocate for his girl’s community and we love to see it.

• Barry Allen. also thinks about eating drywall whenever he sees Iris. She’s just so sigh. And he loves her so much and he’s so glad that he married that beautiful amazing strong and powerful woman.

• Ellanore Shellstrop. After she died she had real clarity about the truths of the universe. If soulmates didnt really exist then wtf were her and Chidi im so deadass.

• Woody from Toy Story. Please do not at me. I will not be taking questions comments or concerns on that one. And for anyone saying “but what about bo peep ?!” Shes albino. Look at those 3B curls and tell me to my face that I’m lying. I dare you.

• lightning Mcqueen. Hear me out here! In universe there have to be like… black cars. He’s def the type to go for a UK baddie ykwim.

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a/n: guys please im just being silly they are fictional characters please dont argue about how much these FAKE characters like black people 😞. also if you try and argue i feel like that makes you a liiiiiiiittle bit racist but like thats a convo for another time. Anyway, sorry to all my sistas out there who’s fav character I forgot. Ur probably right and they probably do belong on this list, I just might have forgotten they exist! Dont be scared to comment them tho. I need to know what yall think too.