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morallyinept · 3 days

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Shoot: So It Goes Magazine, published online 28th September 2016

Photographer: Victoria Stevens

Interviewer: David Benioff

Grooming: KC Fee

Full interview, behind the scenes, outtakes & shoot photographs below. 👇🏻

Jett's Pedro Shoots Masterlist

• Shoot photographs & outtakes

• BTS video clips via stylist Ashley Pruitt

• Full Interview

We jumped at the chance to listen in as Game of Thrones co-creator David Benioff got the low-down from actor Pedro Pascal ahead of the launch of Season 2 of Narcos on Netflix.

The pair let us in on how Pascal ended up on Game of Thrones, walking the line between reality and fiction in Narcos and working on upcoming Chinese epic The Great Wall.

DAVID: Hi Pedro. So what’s the best way for us to destroy your career once and for all?

PEDRO: I figured you would know, that’s why I asked you to do this interview.

DAVID: I feel like some good anti-semitic commentary could do it.

PEDRO: I’ll leave that to you.

DAVID: I can’t do it, I’m Jewish! Shall we begin at the beginning, Pedro? Tell me - how did you escape from Orange County?

PEDRO: Well we moved there in ’86 or’ 87, I was turning 12 and I had to attend Corona del Mar High School from 7th to 12th grade. I don’t know how else to tell it other than the 7th and 8th grade being truly dark years in sunny Orange County - which inspired a blossoming drama nerd. After the 8th grade, I just didn’t fit in. My sister did though.

DAVID: I know your sister, she’s really fun and cool.

PEDRO: I wasn’t fun and cool. Or I just didn’t know how to fake it yet.

DAVID: I’m picturing one of those California schools where everyone’s beautiful, and everyone’s tanned and you - were you a punk rocker back then?

PEDRO: No, I was just the kid crying because, like, Empire of The Sun didn’t get nominated for Best Picture… everyone was like, ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’

DAVID: Which is a crime, by the way, it’s one of Spielberg’s best movies.

PEDRO: I was the one buying the soundtrack, and people would catch me on my walkman listening to that weird Danish song from Empire of The Sun. So my mom found out about a performing arts programme - Orange County School of the Arts - that you had to audition to get in. I ended up going to high school in Long Beach and commuting like 40 minutes every day and essentially spending four years outside of Newport Beach in a more middle-class kind of environment. I got into NYU - I begged my parents to let me go, and I won that fight so I ended up in New York in ’93 and sort of got stuck here.

DAVID: So what happened in ’93? You started getting jobs, did you get an agent quickly? What was the path?

PEDRO: I started auditioning right away and I signed with some representation while I was in school. I graduated and I didn’t get hired for anything at all – I was a waiter, I was getting fired left and right. Despite not fitting in in Orange County, it had definitely made me quite sheltered. Seriously, I got fired from maybe 17 places in about a year and a half.

DAVID: All restaurants?

PEDRO: Restaurants, cafés, coffee shops…

DAVID: Was it incompetence, or being rude to management, or showing up late? What got you canned?

PEDRO: All of the above. Incompetence mostly.

DAVID: And was it around this time that you met Sarah Paulson [American Horror Story]?

PEDRO: Yeah, she was one of my first friends in New York. That’s where I was really lucky, in New York I made a sort of family of friends right away. It definitely built a great foundation in New York City and they’re still my friends to this day.

DAVID: So, aside from Christian Bale in Empire, who were the people you were watching and thinking, ‘Fuck, I wanna be like that guy?’

PEDRO: I was watching everything. I started to consume voraciously very early as a viewer and a reader. It’s funny, as an actor, once you get some exposure people ask you what are your interests? What do you do? And you feel like such a loser, because you’re like I don’t do anything! I’m not athletic, I haven’t developed any intense interest in, like, scuba diving, or spelunking - I still just watch TV and read books and that’s how I was as a kid. When I couldn’t make friends in Orange County, I started reading and renting videos voraciously. And I got into the classics, I had an early obsession with Marlon Brando, James Dean, and reading American and English playwrights, like Pinter. Which, come on, I didn’t understand at all. But it was still very entertaining to imagine myself as one of the characters on the stage. So Empire of the Sun was only one of a basket of Spielberg movies that totally shaped my imagination.

DAVID: Are you campaigning for a job with Stephen Spielberg right now, or…?

PEDRO: (laughs) Definitely

DAVID: Nah, after he hears the anti-Jewish stuff, it’s over. Not gonna happen dude.

PEDRO: Just keep trying to force anti-semitism on me.

DAVID: So now, you’re in New York, getting fired from 17 different restaurants. What was your first big acting break?

PEDRO: That’s what’s funny, I never got a big acting break I guess, in the way that that seems to be understood by the general public. I stuck it out in the theatre and wanted to follow in the footsteps of the people I was inspired by. I was attached to the idea of someone who came from New York theatre - Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Robert DeNiro, that whole crew. Unfortunately that romanticism kept me in New York, killing myself trying to pay rent. Finally I got an off Broadway play at Theatre Club - where your wife, Amanda Peet, had her play introduced. I’d say that I stopped waiting tables by the time I was 30? Kept things going, did all the Law & Orders, all the cop shows, The Good Wife, and managed with cheap rent to keep the theatre thing going.

Listen, David, I become very inarticulate talking to you because I know you’re smarter than me. It was a big mistake to have this interview. In fact I’d like to cancel it right now and get someone else. Can we get Dan [Weiss, Game of Thrones]? Wait no, get me one of the kids. (laughs)

DAVID: Anyway, as this is happening… do you have some friends who are starting to succeed or fall by the wayside?

PEDRO: Well, Sarah [Paulson] was one. She got her first job and she never really stopped. She got a guest spot on Law & Order which amazed all of us - we couldn’t believe it. To me that was a very early success that I envied and that inspired me, but I bet if you talked to her she’d say things are finally coming together this year. Which is insane, but I bet that’s how it feels. My first off Broadway play in New York was with Oscar Isaac, freshly out of Juilliard. He seemed like a comet to me, totally leaving me behind. Shooting with Leo DiCaprio, Ridley Scott, then you talk to him now as well and he’s like, ‘Yeah, this year things are coming together.’ This is going to sound so corny but it’s extremely comforting when people you care about are successful. Whether it’s happening to you or not, it feels good when it’s happening for someone you love and respect.

DAVID: Gore Vidal said, ‘A little part of me dies every time a friend succeeds.’

PEDRO: Yeah, but not the two friends I mentioned. (laughs)

DAVID: Did you ever have doubts? Did you think about going and doing something else?

PEDRO: I think it came down to a very simple thing - realising that I’d stuck at something for so long, I’d made the grind and the uncertainty into a familiar thing and it wasn’t too scary any more. The desire to do it started to shape my identity at such an early age, starting with that childhood fantasy of wanting to be in a Spielberg movie - literally lying and telling people that I was the silhouette of Christian Bale in the Empire of the Sun poster. Which is part of why I didn’t make friends.

I started to realise that I didn’t know how to do anything else… That I was fated to be that 73-year-old in the Law & Order casting room furiously trying to remember the words for a 4-line role. That still very well could be me.

DAVID: How did this Game of Thrones thing come about? The people want to know. It’s an interesting story.

PEDRO: I was helping this kid that I was mentoring, and he put himself on tape for this amazing part on your show, which I was already watching. I was initially curious because the script contained one of the most important spoilers for most of us. Some of us kept punishing ourselves by watching your show to see if something terrible would happen to Joffrey. But I had that satisfaction ripped away from me when I was helping this kid tape and reading for Oberyn. As I kept reading, it’s embarrassing to admit, but I connected to it so completely that it lit this crazy fire in me. I felt instantly attached to the character so I was totally focussed on my representatives getting me the material and taping an audition. I was pretty convinced that because I wasn’t known and didn’t have a European passport, that there was no chance. So I called the first friend I made when I moved to New York and was 18-years-old, Sarah Paulson, one of my closest friends, who is best friends with your wife Amanda. I called her and told her that I’d just put myself on tape for this part that no one’s gonna see. She didn’t even let me finish asking - she insisted that I send her the audition and she and Amanda showed it to you that night.

DAVID: Even after we hired you, you didn’t believe you had the part? I kept hearing back from Sarah [Paulson] - ‘He doesn’t think he has the part.’ We were flying you to Belfast for a costume fitting and you still didn’t believe it.

PEDRO: This is great because it backs up my story… no one had told me! Maybe my agents were nervous, I obviously was nervous and I found it a little hard to believe. Having been in the game as long as I have, there have been a lot of close calls and I could tell the good ones from the bad. And the kind of parts that could change things. It obviously had so much to do with how popular the show is, but it was such a good part – thrilling and terrifying at the same time to be able to get a part that good. They don’t come around very often.

DAVID: There’s no one like Oberyn on the show and he does his own thing. That was something you brought beautifully to it. When you came to that first meeting, you still didn’t think you had the part and I guess we hadn’t signed the deal yet but you would’ve had to get up, pull your pants down, and shit on the desk not to get that part because the audition was so strong. I was still hearing through Sarah that you didn’t think you had it…

PEDRO: Come to think of it, I did pull down my pants and shit on the desk.

DAVID: We weren’t going to tell that story though…

PEDRO: When you sent me to London and were pouring goop on my head and making a cast of my shoulders, head, face, I still didn’t believe 100% that I had gotten the part.

DAVID: You did get the part. What was your first scene?

PEDRO: My first scene was with Peter [Dinklage]…

DAVID: I remember we were shooting abroad and I was watching the dailies so I emailed you and you were like, ‘Thank god, I thought I totally blew it.’ Maybe that’s your secret - if you ever realise how good you are, it’ll ruin you.

PEDRO: I still don’t believe you and it’s an illness - a psychological illness. I remember panicking a bit on my first day because there wasn’t any way I could fulfill the potential of that scene having come to it so early and then you emailed me. You didn’t say ‘great job’ but I’d say you’re a pretty busy man with a pretty large cast and complicated locations and you took the time to write me a very generous note that settled me into the whole experience. I’m very grateful.

DAVID: Well I know it can be intimidating working with Peter. People don’t know about his violent side…

PEDRO: It’s tough when he throws benches at you and stuff like that.

DAVID: So moving on into the real life drama of Narcos. How did that come about? Did Eric Newman just see Game of Thrones and think, ‘Shit, I need that guy,’ or did you audition?

PEDRO: I think someone at Netflix saw the scene that we just talked about. Eric, our executive producer on Narcos, was initially extremely disappointed that I was available. He, anticipating the big fight with the Mountain while trying to cast his show, was extremely upset that I was available to play Javier Peña. A bit of a spoiler. It came at me very fast and it was the first time I’d been offered something without having to audition for it. There was only about 12 hours to decide whether to do it.

DAVID: How closely does your character adhere to the real life person [DEA Agent, Javier] Peña?

PEDRO: I think he actively keeps his real experience there secret - whether that’s because he did more than what we’re telling? Or less? I want to be able to interpret a character that was actually there on my own terms as much as possible. The things that are the most interesting to me, and the audience, are ways to move through [the story] with more ambiguity; without seeing things in black and white. More than good guys fighting bad buys. With the show, they’re making a very authentic visual experience. In the playing of it, you’re very much a piece in this visual landscape and I think you would stand out if you tried to control it.

DAVID: Have you ever gotten feedback from him and he’s like, ‘Oh, I’d never smoke with my left hand,’ or something like that? Or is he hands-off?

PEDRO: He’s totally hands-off. We call each other and he’ll be like, ‘This cute girl at the Mac store asked me if I could give you her number when she found out you were playing me in Narcos‘, ‘This cute girl at Starbucks asked…’

DAVID: He’s just telling all the girls that he’s been immortalised on Netflix.

PEDRO: He’s been very supportive and available at any given moment to talk about it - he’s so chilled. I think we could take it in any direction with the character - put him in a wheelchair, make him a serial killer, and he’d be like, ‘Yo man, it’s just TV.’ Cause he knows no one really knows what happened.

DAVID: So now bring us to China and another director you were very excited about working with. Tell us the story of The Great Wall.

PEDRO: So, as we’ve covered so extensively in my movie nerd-dom, I was introduced to Zhang Yimou pretty young. I saw Raise The Red Lantern and The Story of Qui Ju and Shanghai Triad in the movie theatre. So I didn’t take my agents very seriously when they brought up the project that was me, starring alongside Matt Damon in this huge Hollywood and Chinese cinema collaboration. I was wrong - it turned out to be true and they offered me the part. I went to China for nearly five months and shot the movie with Zhang Yimou, Matt Damon, Willem Dafoe, and Andy Lau.

DAVID: Was that terrifying? To be directed by one of your idols?

PEDRO: I was really nervous at first but I wrote him an email. I felt like I had to confess - it felt stupid to play down that I’d never imagined I could work with someone I admired to that degree. I think I saw Shanghai Triad like, four times in the movie theatre - I took my mom, I took my friends. He was a filmmaker that I really studied and prided myself on knowing. It was the 90s and he was making some of the best independent films that are out there. Then suddenly everyone was like, ‘Have you seen Hero?’ and I was like ‘DUDE, I’ve seen SEVEN movies before Hero!’, you know? So I wrote to him and told him, and when I got to China, one of the producers gave me an envelope - this beautiful envelope and I pull out a response from Zhang Yimou that he had hand written in Chinese characters on this elegant paper. It was like a piece of art. I have it framed, actually. It was him thanking me for my note and for being involved in the movie. The guy’s a class act. He’s as kind as he is talented. So he beat you and your email…

DAVID: I was going to send it to you in Chinese characters but then I realised I didn’t know Chinese and it would have just been gibberish.

PEDRO: The only way you could’ve won is by sending a singing telegram.

DAVID: So five months in China sounds almost as good as three months in Belfast. Not quite, but any adventures there you can tell us about?

PEDRO: I travelled around like a tourist whenever I got the opportunity. We spent so much time shooting and I got to pal around with Matt Damon because as everyone knows, he’s a real jerk (laughs).

DAVID: Yeah, famously terrible.

PEDRO: A notorious bad guy in the industry. He and his wife adopted me into their family and took me through the experience and I had the time of my life. We were tourists together whenever we got the chance - we went to Hong Kong and I went to see some friends in Bangkok. I can’t tell you about that weekend.

DAVID: When you’re talking to Matt Damon, are you ever not thinking, ‘Here I am, having a conversation with Matt Damon.’

PEDRO: It took a while. Initially, in getting to know him, the jet lag helped - I was so out of it. Matt came to say hi, and we were doing all these scenes together so he just said, ‘Hey man, let’s be friends,’ and I was just like… Okay sure! Whatever you say!

DAVID: Is it fair to say you’ve supplanted Ben Affleck as Matt Damon’s best friend?

PEDRO: Yeah. I’ll make room for Ben, I guess.

DAVID: You and Matt need to write an Oscar winning script to really make Ben jealous.

PEDRO: That would be the next thing… To end my career instead of anti-semitism.

DAVID: So when is The Great Wall out?

PEDRO: February!

DAVID: Originally when you were cast as Oberyn, there was controversy that you weren’t Latino enough. What do you make of the controversy around Matt Damon in this film? Is it about him being a white guy?

PEDRO: Yeah, him being a white guy is very…

DAVID: Incontrovertible? No one can deny that Matt Damon is a white guy.

PEDRO: No one can deny that. It’s not an issue of him not being Latino enough, that’s for sure. But his being white has very specific context in terms of the plot. I think that the arguments should be made after the movie comes out, instead of a one minute and 20 second trailer. I’m sure very good arguments can still be made from both sides in terms of ethnic representation but this is a Hollywood creature feature combined with epic Chinese cinema and it’s ultimately helmed by this visionary director who is Chinese.

DAVID: One of the greatest living directors.

PEDRO: Shall we say, the Spielberg of China?

DAVID: And if he wants to work with the whitest guy in Hollywood, who’s to say no?

PEDRO: Exactly! (laughs) This is a Chinese crew, and there are big Chinese stars and newcomers playing heroic roles in this movie. What people are given is just a film that’s called The Great Wall with Matt Damon, and basing the argument on that. But the movie needs to be seen.

DAVID: Yes, that sounds like good reasoning to me. I do think it’s hard to deny that you’re not Latino enough though. So you’re born in Chile and your parents had to flee after the CIA-sponsored coup - if the coup hadn’t happened, you would just be Chilean. It’s almost like the CIA fucked everything up. What do you think about that?

PEDRO: Are we actually giving credit to the CIA?

DAVID: Maybe you would’ve never become an actor and all the things that led to Game of Thrones may never have happened.

PEDRO: I would have made it happen. I would have crawled from Santiago, Chile all the way to you, to knock on your office door and be like, ‘I will be your champion.’

DAVID: Where is your character from in The Great Wall?

PEDRO: España. Which is exactly where my ancestors were from.

DAVID: No one can argue with that. Where’s Matt’s character from?

PEDRO: He’s English.

DAVID: Does he have an accent? Is he speaking Chinese in the movie?

PEDRO: No, he’s not speaking Chinese. He is English – it’s 1100 AD so whatever that accent is.

DAVID: He has an Old English accent? This is sounding pretty awesome. I don’t think anyone would know how that would sound. Probably it sounds just like Matt Damon, that’s what I think. So, have we covered all the bases? Have I left anything out that you want to talk about? Your political stance - does everyone know about your pro-Trump agenda? What’s it like being one of the few Hollywood actors who supports Mr. Trump, can you tell us about that?

PEDRO: (laughs) My combover is very much modelled on the earlier part of Trump’s hair career. What are you going to do, David? Are you going to move if Trump-

DAVID: This is a Pedro Pascal interview! No one’s interviewing me here, buddy. So I’ll be asking the questions.

PEDRO: Do you really think it’s not going to happen?

DAVID: I really think it’s not going to happen.

PEDRO: I just got into an argument with a stranger literally five minutes before you called. I was getting coffee and they asked my name so they could put it on the cup and call my name when it was ready. And he was like, ‘Oh, vote for Pedro,’ - first time I’ve heard that. Then he was like, ‘Yo, I’d rather vote for you than either of the two candidates that we’ve got.’ I was like, ‘Dude, really?’ - this was a mixed race guy making the coffee - I was like, ‘Do you really believe that? Do you dislike Hillary so much that you would consider voting for Trump?!’ And that sort of reignited my terror. It feels like such a no-brainer, but here’s this hard-working mixed race guy at Starbucks who is undecided! That scares the shit out of me.

DAVID: Well I hope you talked some sense into him.

PEDRO: He just kept saying, ‘I don’t know about Hillary,’ and I said, ‘What don’t you know?’ ‘Oh, I just don’t trust her,’ but he didn’t have any real answers about what makes her different from other politicians that you do believe in and do trust.

DAVID: That feels pretty good, I think we covered everything.

PEDRO: I think we covered too much.

Jett's Pedro Shoots Masterlist

#pedro pascal #jose pedro balmaceda pascal #pedro pascal magazine #pedro pascal photoshoot #pedro pascal interview #pedro pascal shoot #pedro pascal words

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transgenderer · 9 months

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The Epic of Manas is a traditional epic poem dating to the 18th century but claimed by Kyrgyz tradition to be much older. Manas is said to be based on Bars Bek who was the first khagan of the Kyrgyz Khaganate. The plot of Manas revolves around a series of events that coincide with the history of the region in the 9th century, primarily the interaction of the Kyrgyz people with other Turkic and Chinese people.

The government of Kyrgyzstan celebrated the 1,000th anniversary of Manas in 1995. The eponymous hero of Manas and his Oirat enemy Joloy were first found written in a Persian manuscript dated to 1792–93.[1] In one of its dozens of iterations, the epic poem consists of approximately 500,000 lines.

The epic poem's age is unknowable, as it was transmitted orally without being recorded. However, historians have doubted the age claimed for it since the turn of the 20th century. The primary reason is that the events portrayed occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries. Central Asian historian Vasily Bartold claimed that Manas was an "absurd gallimaufry of pseudo-history,"[1] and Hatto remarks that Manas was

"compiled to glorify the Sufi sheikhs of Shirkent and Kasan ... [and] circumstances make it highly probable that... [Manas] is a late eighteenth-century interpolation."[2]

Changes were made in the delivery and textual representation[3] particularly the replacement of the tribal background of Manas. In the 19th century versions, Manas is the leader of the Nogay people, while in versions dating after 1920, Manas is a Kyrgyz and a leader of the Kyrgyz.[4] Use of the Manas for nation-building purposes, and the availability of printed historical variants, has similarly had an impact on the performance, content, and appreciation on the epic.[5]

Attempts have been made to connect modern Kyrgyz with the Yenisei Kirghiz, today claimed by Kyrgyzstan to be the ancestors of modern Kyrgyz. Kazakh ethnographer and historian Shokan Shinghisuly Walikhanuli was unable to find evidence of folk-memory during his extended research in 19th-century Kyrgyzstan (then part of the expanding Russian empire) nor has any been found since.[6]

While Kyrgyz historians consider it to be the longest epic poem in history,[7] the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata and the Tibetan Epic of King Gesar are both longer.[8] The distinction is in number of verses. Manas has more verses, though they are much shorter.

Manas is said to have been buried in the Ala-Too mountains in Talas Province, in northwestern Kyrgyzstan. A mausoleum some 40 km east of the town of Talas is believed to house his remains and is a popular destination for Kyrgyz travellers. Traditional Kyrgyz horsemanship games are held there every summer since 1995. An inscription on the mausoleum states, however, that it is dedicated to "...the most famous of women, Kenizek-Khatun, the daughter of the emir Abuka". Legend has it that Kanikey, Manas' widow, ordered this inscription in an effort to confuse her husband's enemies and prevent a defiling of his grave. The name of the building is "Manastin Khumbuzu" or "The Dome of Manas", and the date of its erection is unknown.

heroic levels of cope from the kyrgyz

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random-brushstrokes · 1 year

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Melchior Lechter - Blaue Blume Einsamkeit (1892–93)

The present work is a particularly fine example of Lechter's Symbolist works. His so-called mood pictures deal with human emotions, although they are often mysterious and not easily interpreted. Lechter has lent the work a sacred character through various attributes and compositional elements: the symmetrical structure and the static stillness of the woman are reminiscent of ancient representations of saints. The laurel wreath in her hair is traditionally a symbol of artistic fame, or of art renowned in itself. The woman's nudity symbolises her purity. Her large eyes look to the “Ehemals und Einstmals” (days of yore) as Lechter himself poetically formulated it. They probably point to the rapture, the contemplation of art, which also goes hand in hand with solitude. The title of the painting, “Blaue Blume Einsamkeit” (translated: Blue Flower of Solitude) also refers to an important symbol of Romanticism: the “blue flower”, a motif from a novel by Novalis. (source)

#Melchior Lechter #german art #symbolism

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afuturewithoutus · 5 months

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something i've been thinking about, essentially non-stop, every time i think of tma is how mag5: thrown away is, to me, an almost perfect representation of & unintentional foreshadowing for the eyepocalypse. i know, i know, jonny's said himself that it was during when he was still playing around with themes for the entities, and it was initially meant to be... i think the flesh? but hear me out on this.

the eye rules the eyepocalypse, and all other fears are therefore feeding it while also feeding themselves; the eye's servants are also the catalyst for the eyepocalypse. with this (albeit common) knowledge laid out, let me explain what i mean by the claim i made:

the episode follows a bunch of garbage truck drivers, and their visits to 93 lancaster road where they find... incredibly odd garbage. it also features several themes of several entities.

the large collections of specific types of waste could be categorized with the extinction, and it being, in general, garbage could tie into the corruption (since... filth).

the bag of doll's heads easily fits under the stranger.

the bag of singed strips of the our father (also called the lord's prayer) can be a hint to the desolation, this isn't even just due to the papers being singed, to me it also feels as if the prayer's “potential” is being destroyed as it now cannot be finished, if this makes sense; the dark, mostly in relation to the people's church of the divine host and the religious themes the cult brought into the dark; and of course the flesh which has some of the strongest religious themes, particularly in relation to christianity (albeit this most often being when cannibalism is at play).

the bag of teeth may also tie in with the flesh, it manifesting in bones and all; the stranger, think “bone apple teeth” (mag34: anatomy class); the corruption, unsanitary/filth, decay (if any of the teeth are decaying/decayed, that is); the end, also manifests in bones; and potentially the extinction due to human remains, which i know the extinction is specifically “destruction of human skin/tissue,” i do think over 1000 teeth could end up falling under it.

and then there's the eye; alan parfitt became so intensely focused on 93 lancaster road, to the point where it started to be a detriment to his health and relationships. the intense desire and morbid curiousity to learn who is leaving these bags at 93 lancaster road, and potentially why they're doing it, not only lead them to keep checking what's in these bags but it also ultimately lead to his death.

and, of course, alan's heart, plated in metal, ties back to the flesh. one could also argue that keiran woodward (the statement giver) sending alan's heart to a medical incinerator could be another small manifestation of the extinction (and this time it's actually destruction of human tissue).

i think i previously said (to friends, not really here) that i've seen a connection to every entity in this episode though i'm not sure whether i was hyperbolizing or if i simply don't remember the potential ties to the hunt, slaughter, spiral, lonely, vast, buried, and web.

i guess what i'm saying, and what my thoughts are, is that mag5: thrown away is a mixed bag (badum-tssss) of entities and the eye, mostly through alan parfitt though also keiran and the others, is kind of like a catalyst to the spiral into their constantly checking what's in those bags, showing manifestions of all the entities, feeding them with their fears. it just a very unintentional amalgamation of entity manifestions that blend in a very eyepocalypse-y way? or, at least, i like interpreting it that way.

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borisbubbles · 18 days

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Eurovision 2023: #26 & #25

26. AZERBAIJAN Fahree ft Ilkin Dovlatov - "Özünlə apar" 36th place

youtube

Decade Ranking: 98/153 [Above James Newman, below The Roop]

We're nearing that point of the ranking where I'm feeling "okay this is enjoyable moreso than flawed", but there are a few entries on that cusp that just fall short.

And I think Azerbaijan are a very good example of that, actually. If you wanted to know the entry that is the most smack-dab-average of the year's musical representation look no further. "Özünlə apar" is the posterchild of this contest - an entry that showcases its home country's musical traditions while also not being particularly competitive.

On a bad-to-good scale,"Özünlə apar" lands at "Not Bad". Which is... fine? But is that something Eurovision songs should strive for?

Well, staging and context can improve matters, but in Azer's case those worked against them. Semi 1's second half was a weaksauce affair, and I felt like Azerbaijan were one of the main contributers to that. You have this not uninteresting ethnic mugham song with two conventionally attractive vocalists that -by their sheer appearance- exhude massive sexual tension (both of their looks are so gay-coded lmao <3). It can become good, if you give it the right care.

This is not the right type of care:

Those visuals would work for Veronika maybe (god Raiven WOULD kill for that backdrop wouldn't she?) but for an ethnic ballad, eh. Wouldn't it be better to just focus on the main vocalist? Try to make it intimate rather than have him swallowed by the LEDS (i am SO not marking Natalia down for the same thing btw, dwi) The "big prop on an empty stage framed by copious wideshots" staging is not one that suits the genre.

(tho lol at how you can see the crew WHEEL THE HANDS ON THE STAGE in the background of this gif)

We saw with Hersi's "One Night's Anger" and Blas Canto's "Voy a quedarme" how the deadly combination of slow + empty can murder an average song's immersion, and I felt like this was one such example. Staging that outclevers the audience is a thing of the past, Azerbaijan. Back to the "Miracles", I think, or you will not see a final for a long, long time.

And since this one was a short write-up, let's add in a second:

25. GERMANY Isaak - "Always on the run" 12th place

youtube

Decade Ranking: 93/153 [Above Malik, below Sudden Lights]

Like Fahree and Ilkin, Isaak is right on the cusp of the Green Zone, but falls just short. I feel like the year was good enough for me to not cling to a "Not Bad" banger.

That said, I did feel like Isaak was marginally better than the average German entry - half a decade behind the pop curve, as per Germany's usual (I mean, the German jury 12'd Sweden. SWEDEN!!) but catchy enough. The real ringer was always Isaak himself. I don't know why the Germans were so outraged about when the international jury put him first (esp since Isaak also won the Televote? lmao). When in doubt, pick someone who can perform, you dipshits. I saw the German NF live (it was -mothershocker- really bad) . The only two that came anywhere near "serving" (SMFD RYK & MARIE!!) and didn't have a song that made me wish homicide on the composer/performer (DIE MAX!!) were Isaak and Bodine Monet? And Germany were NEVER going to pick an individual with a vision and a personality, let alone if that person is Dutch, not Deutsch, so~

Indeed, it was always Isaak's ability to sing while emoting that made me question whether I just liked him or liked the combo of him + the song, but I now know it's the former. "Always on the run" is -again- Not Bad, but we've had so many fucking Counting Stars pass pver the counter over the years (the fact that I've spent YEARS headcanoning "Counting Stars" as ID despite KNOWING it's a 1R song says enough for how fucking interchangeable these "indie" poprock songs are). How can one be excited by one at this point, I don't understand.

However, if Isaak's live skills were my main draw, then we must also admit that the performance in the Semi (the non-canonical one) was better than the one in the Grand Final. The one in the GF felt like one where Isaak went through the motions of Having To Perform. Maybe it was the backstage tension, maybe it was because Tuesday had a piss-poor line-up that made him look better, maybe it was the bad R/O that put him behind the far more exciting Ukraine, but Finale Isaak was just kinda there for me, singing his song one final time, neither adding nor detracting from the proceedings. That is hand-on-heart a high yellow, not a green, so here we are.

But I do think it's good the juries handed him a 12th place (is 12th the default placement all the generic dated radio pop gets nowadays? Cannot wait to confirm that again with 2025's inevitable Pompeii clone)(sent by Denmark, bank on it), because (1) AOTR was well-staged with respect for its introspective narrative, which is rare for GERMANY (2) Germany needed some sort of pick-me-up after the Ryk fanboys terrorized everyone for not getting their way (3) the surprise left-side result FINALLY PROVES THAT SANDBAGGING RYK WAS THE CORRECT CHOICE, EAT A MOULDY DYK!!! It's MY meta now, and Bubblevision has no time for your shitty also-ran fanfaves...x

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 24 GOOD(ish) ENTRIES OF 2024

The efforts to improve the year despite the ongoing shitstorm have been noted and appreciated. ^_^

THE RANKING

#eurovision #borisbubbles #esc #eurovision song contest #ESC 2024 #Eurovision 2024 #Malmö 2024 #Germany #Azerbaijan #Fahree #ilkin dovlatov #Fahree ft. Ilkin Dolvatov #Özünle Apar #Isaak #Isaak Guderian #Always On The Run #Youtube

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mrfandomwars · 3 months

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Among the Jedi and the people of Mandalore, Tarre Vizsla is a towering figure who unified two factions that were once mortal enemies. Around 1,050 BBY, Vizsla became the first Mandalorian to join the Jedi Order. During his years of study, he crafted a unique lightsaber, a symbol of Mandalorian power: the Darksaber.

The Darksaber is a singular engineering feat among the weapons of the Jedi due to its beskar hilt, the same metal alloy that makes Mandalorian armor impervious to lightsaber blades. When ignited, it creates a blade of crackling black light, perhaps the result of the contradiction inherent in its design. After Tarre’s passing, the saber was housed at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. An heirloom for House Vizsla for centuries, the Darksaber was stolen by his descendants and became a symbol to unite the clans of Mandalore under one ruler.

[...]

For many years, in the deserts of Mandalore, a magnificent statue of Tarre Vizsla kept watch over his people. Standing at some 93 meters (305 feet), the stoic face of the Mandalorian warrior, eyes downcast as if in deep thought, could be seen for miles. Those who wandered close enough, entranced by the splendor of the carving and its historical significance, saw a stone representation of the Darksaber. But Vizsla was not holding the weapon aloft as if preparing for battle. Instead, the Darksaber was ignited, the blade aimed downward, symbolically pointing to the soil of the planet the Mandalorian people called home."

- From Star Wars 100 Objects, New Republic Era, The Darksaber

#tarre vizsla #the darksaber #star wars #sw #tarre vizsla statue #quotes #star wars quotes #new republic era #star wars 100 objects #mr talks #mr quotes

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perrysoup · 1 month

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Been seeing stuff about the Green Party and one part has me worried.

Jill Stein

Now, I want to say that I have a hard time fully understanding all propaganda I get shown. That's literally the point of it, confuse people into thinking it's right.

(Note: this is using Propaganda as the following definition: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.)

With that, I remember not knowing who she was until 2020 came around, and the key thing I was shown over and over was her apparent (I say that because I'm genuinely curious if what I was shown was evidence or lying by omission) ties to Putin and the Russian Oligarchy.

I'm gonna just Copy/Paste the section from Wikipedia so I don't miscommunicate what it shows:

On December 18, 2017, The Washington Post reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee was looking at Stein's presidential campaign for potential "collusion with the Russians."[90] The Stein campaign released a statement stating it would work with investigators.[91]

In December 2018, two reports commissioned by the US Senate found that the Internet Research Agency boosted Stein's candidacy through social media posts, targeting African-American voters in particular. After consulting the two reports, NBC News reporter Robert Windrem said that nothing suggested Stein knew about the operation, but added that "the Massachusetts physician ha[d] long been criticized for her support of international policies that mirror Russian foreign policy goals." Windrem reported that his publisher (NBC News) had found that in 2015 and 2016 there had been over 100 favorable stories about Stein on Russian state-owned media networks RT and Sputnik.[92] In 2015, Stein was photographed dining at the same table as Russian president Vladimir Putin at the RT 10th anniversary gala in Moscow, leading to controversy.[93][94] Stein contended that she had no contact with Putin at the dinner and described the situation as a "non-event".[95]

In an official statement, Stein called one of the reports, the one authored by New Knowledge, "dangerous new McCarthyism" and asked the Senate Committee to retract it, saying the firm was "sponsored by partisan Democratic funders" and had itself been shown to have been "directly involved in election interference" in the 2017 US Senate election in Alabama.[96]

By July 31, 2018, Stein had spent slightly under $100,000 of the recount money on legal representation linked to the Senate probe into election interference.[97] In March 2019, Stein's spokesman David Cobb said she had "fully cooperated with the Senate inquiry."[98]

In October 2019, Hillary Clinton said that Russia's ongoing efforts to influence U.S. elections included a plot to support a third-party candidate in 2020, which could either be Jill Stein, whom she described as a "Russian asset," or Tulsi Gabbard.[99] A few days later, Clinton's comments were clarified to indicate that she thought that it was, in fact, Republicans who were behind the plot.[100] Stein denounced Clinton's comments on both herself and Gabbard, describing them as "slanderous".[101]

So the question is, is she a Russian asset? Does she genuinely have a history related to Putin? I believe there is a photo of her at a dinner with Putin and some other GOP people, but is it taken out of Context? Is it a meeting where she realizes she doesn't agree with them stuff? Legit I don't know, I want information, with sources please.

#green party #republicans #democrats #jill stein #us politics #american politics #us government #politics #uspol

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northoftheroad · 1 year

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I really like your blog and read a lot of things you had to say about Wolfman, so can I pick your brain about Devin Grayson?

A lot of people seem to say she wasn't good for the Nightwing run. Just wanna know your opinions about it

I'm gonna read her run anyways. It's just that I like your takes on things. Especially since you make connections with older comics.

Honestly, I think there is a lot to enjoy in Devin Grayson's stories. In Titans, she wrote Dick as a competent workaholic and the Titans as a group of very close friends. JLA vs Titans has a worried bat-dad, which is always adorable. Dick and Tim have fun together, and Bruce is emotionally complicated in Batman: Gotham Knights. Batman plus Arsenal is great (Roy chews out Batman!). Her story in the Robin 80th anniversary comic has a fun twist. Etc.

Batman: Gotham Knights # 8 & 9

Then there's things I don't like.

The rape. IMO, you shouldn't write rape in comics unless you're prepared to deal thoroughly with the consequences in the story. Admittedly, the sexual assault in Nightwing vol 2 # 93 is probably dealt with more seriously than the Mirage situation by Marv Wolfman, but I still wanted something more. Blockbuster's murder and the rape had an enormous impact on Dick's mental health; we should have got a resolution where Dick could admit out loud (if even only to himself) what happened, where he could get what help he needed and decide to move on. (Preferably, I would also have liked other characters to realise what had happened and not only be assholes…) (That Devin Grayson, in some interview, wanted to call it not consensual instead of rape doesn't help (full disclosure: I don't know if she's backed down on that).)

The retconning of Dick as part Roma. Now, it's for people who are Roma to have opinions about representation; I've seen (allegedly, because who knows what is correct on social media) both Roma people who like it and those who don't. From where I'm standing, it wasn't well done. The only comic arc where a Roma parent is essential to the story is quite problematic; you get the impression that the writer did it… to exoticise Dick and have Bruce talk like a racist…?

Gotham Knights # 20.

Some later stories have acknowledged this retcon, but only a handful of issues from decades worth of comics. Most writers ignore it, and Dick has never been portrayed as being fluent in a Romani dialect or adhering to any customs (other than looking for Romani food and talking about some legend.) He didn't even speak Romani when Devin Grayson wrote him.

How she wrote the relationship between Dick and Barbara. They were supposed to be old and dear friends, apart from a couple. Barbara blamed Dick for being sexually harassed (kissed), and when he came to her for comfort, reeling from Haly's circus being burned down, she asked him to leave after few hours night. That's not a relationship I, as a reader, would root for.

To be fair, she intended to write a story about how Dick went from being happy, to making his life living hell, and presumably end in a new happy place for him. Dick and Barbara are written in a way that would end in their splitting up. (Writers will create conflict because the storytelling needs it, and sometimes we as readers can think it was out of character, or unnecessary.)

I expect I would like her writing better if she could have finished her story. Maybe she would have got together the Dick/Barbara relationship and delivered a satisfactory resolution to the rape. But DC editorial interrupted her plans with Infinite Crisis, where they almost decided to kill Nightwing, and she had to make a rushed conclusion that never went anywhere. And when the Nightwing comic continued, it was in another town and one of the worst Nightwing stories ever.

As I said, I like part of her characterisation of Dick – how he can be ultra serious just as well as joking around, has a tendency to overwork himself, blame himself, he wants to give everyone a chance. But… I know she's said in an interview that she thinks of Dick as a contact junkie* who processes with his body before his head. I'm not down with that. Ok, as an acrobat, you could argue that body memory and responding to the touch of his fellow performers is essential for survival. And Dick might be freer with hugs than Bruce Wayne and Alfred, but that's a very low bar to set. Marv Wolfman wrote a Dick Grayson who was very private and could hardly show his love for Kory physically in public. (To be fair, when Dick dated a few girls in college in the comics from the 70s, he didn't mind holding hands and kissing in public. But, as much as I enjoy citing examples from older comics, the 80s is the start of a deeper characterisation for Dick Grayson.) I read Dick as a guy who's very much in his head – if not for any other reason, Batman must have drilled into him to think and question everything. There are panels where he seeks out solitude or watches nature programmes without talk to relax. And I also read him as uncomfortable with strangers touching or ogling him.

Anyway, happy reading. Of course you should read and form your own opinions. I guess you'll find things to love and things to loathe - I find that's true about most comic book writers and runs, myself 😎

*The way I think about him, he likes everyone, he's sort of a contact junkie — just this incredibly physical (and attractive) person who lives wholly in the corporeal plane and responds with — processes things in — his body before his head or heart. I imagine that he can be hypnotised by a touch the way other people can be stopped dead in their tracks by the sight of money or the promise of true love.

#Dick Grayson #Nightwing #Robin #Batman #Devin Grayson

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justforbooks · 2 months

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The American novelist John Barth, who has died aged 93, was a noted evangelist for experimental fiction, beguiling his readers with complex stories within stories.

He claimed as his patron saint Scheherazade in the Arabian Nights, the vizier’s daughter whose tales, spun out for 1,001 nights, entranced King Shahryar: “The whole frame of these thousand nights and a night,” Barth said, “speaks to my heart, directly and intimately – and in many ways at once personal and technical.”

He came to notice with his third novel, The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), a riotous mock-epic pastiche that drew upon a satire of American manners of the same title published in 1708 by one Ebenezer Cooke.

Reviewers compared the book to Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, and enjoyed Barth’s rollicking use of coincidence, parody, farce, sentimentality and melodrama. It was much-hyped – “One of the greatest works of fiction of our time,” said the writer and artist Richard Kostelanetz – but Gore Vidal found Barth’s humour to be laboured: “I could not so much as summon up a smile at the lazy jokes and the horrendous pastiche of what Barth takes to be 18th-century English.” Other critics complained of its excessive length, narrow emotional range and an underlying facetiousness in Barth’s tone.

His next novel, Giles Goat-Boy (1966), brought Barth critical and commercial success. It was a mythology drenched campus novel, complete with cold war allegories and self-reflexive narratives, 766 pages long. Barth’s penchant for addressing political, religious and philosophical issues gave his novel a flavour of seriousness that was widely praised. Vidal, however, called it “a book to be taught rather than read”.

The following year, Barth published The Literature of Exhaustion, a manifesto for literary postmodernism, in the Atlantic magazine. The traditional forms of representation were used up, he argued. There were too many contemporary writers who went about their business as though James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett and Vladimir Nabokov had never written. Barth’s impatience with most fiction and his eloquent enthusiasm for the experimental caught a moment in contemporary culture. He became the poster boy for postmodernism.

One of the three children of Georgia (nee Simmons) and John Barth, who ran a sweet shop, he was born in Cambridge, a small crab and oyster town in Maryland, and grew up amid the flat, low-lying tidal marshlands on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

His twin sister was whimsically named Jill, and Barth’s family knew him as Jack, a source of teasing during their schooldays.

After graduating from high school, Barth enrolled in a summer programme at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. An enthusiastic jazz drummer, he hoped for a career as an arranger, but at the Juilliard he encountered some seriously talented performers and his ambitions shrank.

Instead, he enrolled at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, to study journalism. He remained at Hopkins to complete a master’s degree, and in 1953 landed a job in the English department at Pennsylvania State University, where he remained for 12 years.

Barth’s first published novel, The Floating Opera (1956), was a traditional first-person narrative about boozing, desire and nihilism on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake. The End of the Road (1958), described by the critic Leslie Fiedler as an example of “provincial American existentialism”, was a darker novel about a grad-school dropout, ending with an abortion. Some of the more gruesome details were cut at the insistence of his publishers, but restored when the novel was later reissued.

In 1965 he took a job teaching at the Buffalo campus of the State University of New York, where he remained until 1973. During that time of student unrest, the campus was repeatedly occupied by local police and troopers of the National Guard. Barth was less sympathetic to the protesters than some of his colleagues, but he wholeheartedly threw himself into the trashing of the practitioners of “traditional” fiction such as John Updike and William Styron, whose work he felt was a literary dead end.

Under the growing influence of Borges and 60s counterculture, Barth turned away from fat pastiche-novels to short fictional forms. Lost in the Funhouse (1968) was a melange of short fictions for print, tape and live voice, which he staged on campuses across the nation. In 1973 he returned to Johns Hopkins to take up a chair of creative writing, and stayed until retirement in 1992.

By the 80s, the frisky, postmodern self-consciousness that had made readers sit up in the 60s had lost some of its capacity to shock. It had gone, within a generation, from being a great cause to a routine, a shtick. Barth’s books increasingly needed to be explained to readers, and sales fell away. Complex, self-referential novels such as Chimera, which shared the National Book Award in 1973, the epistolary Letters (1979) and Sabbatical (1982) were seen as working out the implications of The Literature of Exhaustion.

In 1980 he revisited this essay with The Literature of Replenishment, in which he repented his youthful scorn for the 19th-century novel as practised by the “great premodernists” such as Dickens, Twain and Tolstoy. If, as the modernists asserted, linearity, rationality and consciousness are not the whole story, argued Barth, “we may appreciate that the contraries of those things are not the whole story either … A worthy program for postmodernist fiction, I believe, is the synthesis … of these modes of writing.”

Barth’s essays were collected in three volumes as The Friday Book (1984), Further Fridays (1995) and Final Fridays (2012). A further collection of short nonfiction pieces, Postscripts, was published in 2022. Once Upon a Time (1994), with its teasing promise of tall tales, was his most autobiographical novel. Coming Soon!!! (2001), with its references to The Floating Opera, showed that the old postmodernist playfulness was unquenched.

In 1998, Barth won both the Lannan Foundation’s lifetime achievement award and the Pen/Malamud award for excellence in the short story.

He married Anne Strickland in 1950 and they had three children, Christine, John and Daniel. The couple divorced in 1969 and the following year he married Shelly Rosenberg. She and his children survive him.

🔔 John Simmons Barth, writer, born 27 May 1930; died 2 April 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

#just for books #John Barth #in memoriam

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