#I need to draw Dirge from behind to show off his markings when I can tbh | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

findmyrupertfriend · 6 years

Photo

Strange Angel - “Augurs of Spring”

(This is a recap/review of the first episode of Strange Angel. There are spoilers, so proceed with caution!)

The first episode opens on an ancient hunting scene, beneath a bright red moon. The hunter (Wan Hu portrayed by Telly Liu) strikes against a large tiger. The scene is bathed in deep reds, with dramatic music. A whistle interrupts the action, and we are introduced to Jack Parsons (Jack Reynor). He’s on his lunch break, reading a comic, Amazing and True, The Path of the Hunter by Christopher Dexter. His boss orders him back to work, and we immediately discover Jack’s resistance to authority.

Turns out Jack is a janitor at Pueblo Powder Co. He steals some gunpowder on the sly and gets to work in his garage building his experiment, before driving out into the desert to meet his partner, Richard Onstead (Peter Mark Kendall).

Jack: “Ad astra…”

Richard: “Per aspera.”

(Per aspera ad astra (or, less commonly, ad astra per aspera) is a popular Latin phrase meaning "through hardship to the stars.”) Jack lights the fuse, and the rocket falls well short of their hopes.

Susan Parsons (Bella Heathcote) is at home reading the Bible, waiting up for Jack. She hides it in the mattress. Jack arrives home and fills his wife in, casually lying about the distance the rocket reached. Then he hits his wife up for more money when they’re behind on their mortgage. Nice!! (Blowing shit up is expensive, honey!!)

What’s even nicer is having sex with your wife while she lays still, looking uncomfortable as fuck. I didn’t quite catch this on my first watch, but thanks to Sydney, it looks like Jack pulls out before coming (because he never wanted to have kids, per the book. Susan gives Jack a sex rag to clean up. The whole scene shows their awkwardness and stiffness with one another. The music is also a little creepy here, just a piano playing simple keys before a slightly fuller sound. Jack hears a noise outside, and that’s when he sees Ernest Donovan (Rupert Friend) moving in next door.

Jack: “Who moves in the middle of the night?”

The next morning, Jack heads over to Caltech for a big meeting with Richard and Professor Mesulam (Rade Serbedzija). Again, you see Jack breaking rules, going where he is not allowed. Richard is clearly not happy with him and doesn’t think they are ready to present their proposal. However, Jack is not deterred one bit, maybe because Richard has his professional career at stake.

Jack: “Have a little faith, Rich. They’ll be naming buildings after us by the time we’re done.” (clever, eh?)

Professor Mesulam is not convinced and warns Jack and Richard about biting off more than they can chew.

Professor Mesulam: “Small advances needed before big ones can be made.”

Jack: “What if we’re not content to be someone else’s stepping stone?”

Jack continues countering Professor Mesulam, even minimizing the fact that he did not complete his undergraduate degree. Protocols just “weigh him down.” The meeting ends on the wrong note, so Jack returns to convince (exaggerating along the way) Professor Mesulam to observe their next demonstration. Much to Richard’s anxiety, the professor agrees.

The objective of the meeting was to get approval to build a functional rocket motor, but of course, Jack misrepresented their work as they already built one. Can you spell L-I-A-R?

Richard: “I just wish that you’d stick to the facts once in a while.”

After the meeting, Jack once again stretches the truth to Susan, who seems to be very much invested in her husband’s success. Next, the Parsons decide to walk over some banana bread and introduce themselves to their new neighbor.

Ernest answers the door with his lovely, calm goat in his arms. His oversized clothes and he, himself, look rather dirty. Ernest sports a semi-confused/bemused look on his face at the Parsons and all their neighborly pleasantries. Susan invites Ernest and his wife (who is not currently present) over for dinner. Ernest fixes Susan with a creepy smile, as if he’s slightly mocking them, and adds, “Well, that’d be swell.”

The next scene returns to the comic Jack enjoyed. He reads it out loud to his wife. The ancient hunter is naked in bed, surrounded by naked women writhing around him. Wan Hu is seeking more thrills, but is he is filled with “restless longing.” The comic is used to illustrate Jack’s own relentless pursuits in life.

Susan: “I know. This man wants to glimpse the sublime.”

Jack: “Yeah. exactly.”

Susan: “They could make that clear enough without all the lurid detail.”

Jack: “Yes, but then who would want to read it?” (ha-ha)

The couple waits for Ernest and his wife to join them for dinner, but Ernest had other plans it seems. He stands them up, and the Parsons are left to finish their awkward dinner alone with one another. There’s a lot that’s not being said between these two.

Jack is working in his shed again when he hears Ernest return home on his motorcycle. He crashes/slides into the garage. Jack helps him up and tries to engage a drunk Ernest in discussing why he didn’t show up for dinner. At first, Ernest just ignores him, walking off.

Jack: “Hey. I’m talking to you.”

Ernest: “Eh, I didn’t feel like it.”

Jack: “You didn’t feel like it?”

Ernest: “I’m trying to find my true path. How can I do that talking about barbecues and lawnowers?”

Ernest looks incredulous when Jack tells him he’s never gone up to the oil derricks on the hill above their house. He persuades Jack to follow him, while Ernest sings, almost chants, really. It was described as dirge-like signing.

Ernest: “A ka dua…tuf ur…biu…bi a’a”

Jack and Ernest make small talk as they make their way to the top. They come across a mountain lion. Jack looks scared. Ernest looks…delighted.

Ernest: “Look at that. Step outside your yard, never know what you find.”

Ernest extends his right arm out, with index and middle fingers pointed at the mountain lion in the shape of a handgun.

Ernest and the mountain lion stare each other down. Ernest shapes his hand into a fist, and the standoff ends with the mountain lion walking away. Ernest continues on as if nothing happened, but Jack is still shaken. When Jack declines to move further, Ernest mimics a chicken, arms, body, voice and all. I totally snickered at this part, because now Ernest is the one goading Jack into taking risks, whereas Jack is always the one pushing the other people in his life to accept more risk. And what does Jack do? He runs after Ernest…

Their small talk continues, and Jack attempts to explain Newton’s third law of motion. Ernest is sharp and picks up the gist of it in a flash.

Ernest: “So there’s a part that’s trying to burst free, and another part that needs to keep it in control.”

Interesting…so is Jack the part that’s trying to burst free? And who is keeping him under control?

Jack offers to light Ernest’s cigarette. Ernest cups his hands over Jack’s and takes a deep drag while staring straight at Jack. The flame from the cigarette lights up Ernest’s face, and you can see his intense eyes. Ernest appears to be on the verge of leaning forward as he smokes, but Jack takes a clear step back from Ernest. Jack’s face looks hard, and this time he stares back at Ernest, suggesting he should head back home. Ernest’s face is covered in shadows now, but you can see some clenching of his jaw and the angles of his cheekbones. It’s an odd, intimate moment followed by more eerie-sounding music. (Can’t wait to hear that soundtrack!)

Jack and Ernest are now walking together on the street, presumably headed back home as Jack suggested. The street lighting and old cars lining the curbs are just beautiful in this scene. Here, you also see more of Ernest’s gait. He walks in an almost bow-legged and bouncy fashion.

Ernest: “You know, my teacher always told me there’s only two kinds of people in this world. The ones who want to follow the rules, and the ones that want to break them.”

Jack: “Oh yeah? What kind of teacher is that?”

Ernest: “Only teacher ever taught me anything worth learning.”

Jack: “Now you take all these houses here, (Ernest outstretches his arms to gesture towards the houses surrounding them.) with their walls designed to keep us out. Now why should we obey that?”

Jack: “Cause the law says we have to.”

Ernest: “Whose law?” (Ernest takes off running.)

Jack: “What are you doing?”

Ernest: (Ernest turns around and yells, wide-eyed.) “There is no law, beyond “Do what thou wilt!”

That Ernest jumped the damn fence into someone’s yard. This guy is full of surprises! And what does Jack do? He follows Ernest once again…

Jack finds Ernest at the bottom of a pool, and he won’t come out. So Jack jumps in to find a smiling Ernest.

Jack pulls him out of the water as laughter bursts from Ernest’s mouth. Of course, Ernest thinks he’s funny. Of course, Jack isn’t amused. I find it amusing because Jack is getting somewhat a taste of his own medicine. And who better to give it to him, than Ernest? Oh, but Ernest keeps pushing Jack further…quite literally, Ernest pushes Jack’s head under water until Jack frees himself. Ernest tries to pull him back in.

Ernest: (laughing) “You are gonna have to try harder than that.”

Jack elbows Ernest in the face and draws blood.

Jack: “Is that what you wanted?”

Ernest: “That’s what you wanted.”

Ernest is most pleased, wiping some blood on a finger and loudly sucking it off with his grinning mouth. Jack climbs out of the pool, and Ernest howls like a wolf, arms raised, almost chasing Jack out of the yard. But the whole incident was not for nothing. Being held captive under the water with the air bubbles rising gives Jack an idea on how to fix his problem with the demonstration.

Jack explains his plan to Richard at a bar. He just needs methanol, liquid fuel, to eliminate air pockets. Richard has access to methanol at Caltech but doesn’t want to budge, even when Jack enlists the help of two young ladies at the bar. Jack presents Richard as an up-and-comer to the ladies.

Woman: “Caltech, huh? We don’t get to meet a lot of smart guys.”

Richard: “I’m not surprised.”

Wow. Richard is quite the wet noodle. These two have a push and pull relationship. We learn Jack and Richard knew each other as kids, with Jack beating up other kids who picked on Richard.

At the end of the discussion, Richard has an epiphany on inverting the launch and holding it in place.

Later that night, while Jack is sleeping, he hears a noise and walks outside. (The noise was our poor little goat bleating and being slaughtered off-screen. You can actually hear the blood flowing.) Jack sees Ernest walking from his backyard to his motorcycle, carrying two glass milk jars filled with some very red blood. Ernest wipes off a long, slightly curved knife onto a rag, hops on his motorcycle, and leaves. (He’s wearing a great, light-colored leather jacket in this scene, by the way. It looks filthy, but still cool.)

Jack follows Ernest to a gorgeous house in a very nice neighborhood. Jack watches Ernest walk into the home along with many well-dressed (well, better dressed than Ernest, that’s for sure) people. Jack approaches the house slowly, then moves quickly, peeking through a window to see two people pouring and mixing a glass jar of blood into a bowl of some kind? Maybe it’s a pot on the stove because you can hear the bubbling as the blood is poured and stirred (blech). Jack hears the singing, the same singing that came from Ernest when they walked up the hill. He follows the sound, climbing on top of a carport, up to the second story of the house.

Jack sees people standing in rows, as a man in vestments pronounces himself as “priest and king.” The man reaches for a knife, and Jack is clearly stunned. As the man approaches a naked woman, who he calls a virgin, he raises his knife. Jack yells out, causing everyone to stop and turn. It’s dead silent. Jack slides off the carport and falls onto the ground as people run out of the house. Jack makes it to his truck and speeds away as Ernest rushes out of the house, just in time to see his neighbor. Ernest has a sly look on his face. You know he has more games planned for Jack.

In the next scene, Susan is at work for her father (Virgil Byrne portrayed by Michael Gaston), typing up collection notices to delinquent borrowers while he dictates. He adds a lovely piece of scripture at the end of the note, and the irony is not lost on me.

Virgil: “As it is written in Psalm 37, the wicked borrows but does not pay back, but the righteous is generous and gives.”

Susan’s father is quite over-bearing and strong-arms his daughter into coming for dinner on Sunday. He especially wants to speak to Jack about their delinquent mortgage.

Meanwhile, Jack and Richard are working on their demonstration. They have a nice little heart to heart, where Jack once again lies to Richard. He gives Richard a hug, and there’s a strange awkwardness. I wonder if Richard has some kind of repressed feelings for Jack - maybe…maybe not. But the hug was just a ruse to pickpocket Richard, getting his wallet, and impersonating him for some methanol at Caltech.

(There’s a scene on the comic with Wan Hu again while Jack dreams. This time, Wan Hu attaches rockets to his throne.)

Susan wakes Jack the next morning, and he hurries off. Jack and Richard travel along in one car, followed by Professor Mesulam. Jack speeds up in order to come clean on the methanol before the demonstration begins.

Jack: (to Richard) “Do what thou wilt.”

The demonstration gets off to a shaky start, so Jack floors the methanol to illustrate they could launch a rocket into the ionosphere.

Richard: “That’s enough.”

Jack: “You can’t know what’s enough til you know what’s more than enough.”

The readings show they achieved their objective, and the professor is impressed. While they celebrate, the apparatus catches fire. As it catches fires, Jack imagines Wan Hu.

Wan Hu: “If you never face down death, you’ll never glimpse what’s on the other side.”

Wan Hu lets a fiery arrow loose, but it’s really a piece of debris from the explosion. This time, Richard saves Jack by pushing him out of the way. And Jack laughs like a hyena…kinda like someone near and dear to our hearts.

While Jack is blowing shit up, Susan comes home from praying at church to find a note impaled by a knife, into their front door. Jack returns ready to celebrate, but Susan is shaken and shows Jack the piece of paper.

Susan: “What could it possibly mean?”

I really enjoyed this first episode. Jack is definitely an exaggerator and a liar of all sorts. For all the risks he is taking in his professional life, he is taking close to none in her personal life - yet. Susan appears to be...unhappy, yet she is a very supportive wife. They just both seem so repressed in their lives together.

Ernest is everything and then some, as we have gathered from various articles and interviews. I cannot look away from this character. I can sense he is absolutely a catalyst to change the Parsons’ lives completely, and I can’t wait to see more! Til next week...

#strange angel #augurs of spring #season 1 #strange angel recap review #ernest donovan #by: laura #hot damn #i am enjoying this too much #can't wait til next week

16 notes · View notes

thewrestlingmuse · 7 years

Text

Thank You, Taker, Or What Wrestling Means To Me

(Originally posted to my Facebook shortly after Wrestlemania 33, now with revisions!)

I'm a pro wrestling fan. A huge one, and have been for a good part of my life. A lot of people don't understand why, or they just plain think it's ridiculous...but I want to tell you a story about my life, and how it was changed by a bunch of musclebound, sweaty men and women pretending to kill each other.

I was probably eight years old, give or take, the first time I watched a wrestling match--well, several wrestling matches. It was patently forbidden in our house, because my mother thought it killed brain cells and was overly violent. Dad, however, liked it, and he'd sneak it when he could get away with it. I can't tell you which classic program I saw, but I can tell you the promotion and the wrestlers that made an impression: it was a WWF show, featuring the likes of the Road Warriors, Hulk Hogan, and the Undertaker.

These were the three matches that stuck with me. There were others, and I don’t think I sat still for the whole program. Still, I remember being awed and a little scared by the vicious Road Warriors stomping to the ring in their spiked shoulder pads, with their crazy hair and face paint. I remember the charismatic Hulk Hogan, resplendent in his red and yellow, who made me a raging Hulkamaniac with his smiles, his fury, and his flexing.

However, the one wrestler that stuck with me on a primitive level was the Undertaker. His eerie music made me wary, and it was during this period that he was stuffing his fallen opponents into body bags after the match. I remember an interview with the shrill and spooky Paul Bearer, just before the Undertaker spoke up from beneath the brim of his hat. He was a pale giant with evil in his eye and a voice as deep as grave dirt. Yes, the ghoulish Paul Bearer could control him with that powerful brass urn, but the Undertaker moved with purpose and conviction...he was more than an instrument of his manager, he enjoyed those battles.

He was a monster, and he was terrifying.

I never forgot him, not for the rest of my life. That walking corpse with the dead gaze chilled my blood even seven years later, when wrestling came up in our house again. My mother had been gone for two years now, so there was no hiding: only Dad in his favorite chair, looking both puzzled and frankly upset as he announced that he wasn't sure he liked Hulk Hogan anymore.

"What?!" I asked, incredulous. Everyone liked Hulk Hogan, even people who didn't know wrestling! I loved Hulk Hogan!

"Dad, why?"

"Because he's a bad guy now."

That was the night I watched WCW Monday Nitro for the very first time, bearing witness to the aftermath of the single most shocking and memorable heel turn in professional wrestling history. Nothing stopped me from going straight down the rabbit hole, and with the grief that haunted me, the troubled sibling that terrorized me, and the single parent that was just absent enough to give me my head, I marked out hard. Greedily, I tumbled into the heart of every storyline when I tuned in. I scoffed at the nWo and cheered Sting’s visits from the rafters. I was especially enchanted by the enigma of Diamond Dallas Page, not because he was older and smaller than most of the other wrestlers, but because he represented a new breed of the Hogan Era. He worked hard, he never gave up, and he fought for his dreams, but he did so with a practicality and a pragmatism I aspired to. Determination, drive, and desire weren’t lofty or unattainable: they were there for the taking. Heroes were just people, and I could be one, too.

I bought the magazines with carefully saved lunch money. I’d have bought way more merchandise if I hadn’t been so broke. I loved professional wrestling on its surface unironically and with a passion, and while I had no real insider knowledge, I knew it was athletic entertainment.

Still, for the better part of a year, WCW owned my soul. However, I finally got curious about the WWF...so I eventually started switching back and forth on Monday nights.

And wouldn't you know, the Undertaker was right there.

I read about him a little in the magazines, and he was still a terrifying sight, but it wasn't until I tuned in that I saw he wasn't the same soulless monster that struck fear into my heart as a young child. No, the Undertaker was very much a man, one with a dark past and demons that lived within him. He'd lost his mother as a child, the same way I had, and there were monsters in his life that even he couldn't slay: a brother that wouldn't let him walk away from a fight, tragedy he couldn't escape, and the conniving Paul Bearer, once a valued friend and father figure, had turned his back on the Undertaker and began using his own demons to control him instead of the sacred power contained within that magical brass urn. Through it all, he drew strength and an otherworldly power from his pain and darkness to become feared, adored, and absolutely unstoppable.

The war with the nWo fell swiftly away in the wake of that. This man had suffered just like me, and he'd become a superhero. As thrilling as the physical battles were, as impressive as his athleticism and agility for a man of his size proved to be, more than anything I saw myself in this man. I saw my heartache, I saw my struggle, and I ached to rise the way he had...the way he did every time he was beaten down in the ring.

I wanted to be able to sit up, like the corpse come to life. I wanted to shut the casket lid on my fallen enemies. I wanted, more than anything, to find as much power in my pain as the Undertaker had.

Very soon, the fate of the WCW became secondary to the struggle of the Undertaker. I was one of his faithful creatures of the night as he was finally driven into battle against his own brother, and I watched as those wars stripped him of his soul. Even as he rose to lead the Ministry of Darkness in a hellish siege against the WWF, I sat horrified by his actions against the innocent Stephanie McMahon...and while I reviled the heel he had become, I still found a smile on my face every time his entrance music played.

The years passed, and I not only grew older, I grew wiser. I became more of a smark, a smart mark or educated fan, and through heel turns and face runs, the Undertaker was always my guy. I drifted away and back from wrestling as the eras passed and the industry changed, and learning more about the way things worked only made me love the Undertaker more. The man behind him, Mark Callaway, wrestled zealously through ungodly injuries because he was old school at heart, a warrior in his soul. He was loyal when he was so over with the fans, he could have written his own ticket. He was so devoted to the business, and to the man who put him on the map, that he became the unofficial man in charge in the locker room,

And on top of it all, Mark Calaway breathed life and color into a character that I turned to in my darkest hours so I could stand against my own hardships with my back just a little bit straighter. Through family conflict, financial ruin, personal catastrophe, and even sexual mistreatment, I would think of those cold, remorseless eyes, the square of his shoulders, and I would fight to stand like the Undertaker, be he the tortured Dead Man, the Lord of Darkness who ruled the Ministry, the big dog of the yard calling himself the American Badass, or The Last Outlaw still quick on the draw after twenty plus years in the wilds of the squared circle. By any name, in any costume, Mark Calaway was a dazzling athlete, and the Undertaker was never less than the stuff of legend.

Heel or face, new or old, no matter the era, the clang of that ominous gong and the haunting strains of a funeral dirge filled me not with fear and dread, but with strength and even hope.

Because you can't stop someone with nothing left to lose: you can't kill a dead man.

Tonight, as I watched Wrestlemania, I watched as the Undertaker was laid to rest in the middle of the ring, and as Mark Calaway walked down that ramp for the very last time. He went out the way he wanted, he said goodbye...then he kissed his wife and stepped into legend.

After he got pinned, I watched the walking corpse slip his jacket and wide brimmed hat back on.

Then I watched as that otherwordly man with the black heart and the painful past carefully removed his fighting gloves and laid them in the middle of the ring.

I watched the monstrous Lord of Darkness stand tall as he slipped off his long black coat, dusted it off, and folded it up.

I saw my hero remove his hat, and lay it atop both...and I watched that mythological creature become a man.

A man I respect, a man I admire, and a man to whom I am so grateful, I wept as I watched him walk away for the last time.

I'm not ready to say goodbye. I never will be, but Mark Calaway has shed enough blood, sweat, and tears. He's earned this, and I wish him all the best...but I will mourn this loss. Tonight, I mourned unabashedly as I wept while he laid the Undertaker to rest, and tomorrow I will mourn as I watch Monday Night Raw, wistfully realizing that the Reaper of Wayward Souls probably won't be there.

But when Roman Reigns appears, I'll pray they take advantage and turn him heel. When Tuesday night Smackdown hits, I'll turn to Bray Wyatt instead, and revel in his sinister exploits. I'll still mark out when a cool match turns up, and I'll find new heroes to cheer.

I will always and forever love watching a bunch of sweaty, musclebound men and women pretend to kill each other because they do more than toss each other around: when the right person and the right gimmick comes along, they can tell stories that make them into gods and heroes.

I love wrestling because of the Undertaker, and Mark Calaway, and tonight, I needed to cast my voice out into the void.

To Mark Calaway, from a grateful fan: thank you for being my hero.

Thank you for being the Undertaker.

#thank you taker #pro wrestling #wwe #wcw #the undertaker #mark calaway #wwe undertaker

2 notes · View notes