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greetings-humans · 10 months

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introductory post (includes some interaction boundaries, more details on me (ao3 acc, etc) & a dni under the cut)

yeah it's about time I made one of those ig (disclaimer: I'll edit this, if/when the need comes)

so, hi! im deelay! you can call me dee, if you want! [btw if you know my irl name, not here you don't unless we're DM-ing]

gender is so weird and I'm okay with any and all pronouns (barring it/its)!

for details on what to use when talking to me or about me (like pronouns and gendered terms etc) you can go here

-currently in uni, studying to get an english degree (every new thing I learn about teaching makes me want to yell at some of the teachers I've known, did they even study in uni? did they even keep in touch with pedagogical studies?? definitely not, form what I can tell)

-im a young adult and that's like all imma say age-wise. however please take that into account when interacting with my blog! i don't wanna dni under 14s, but some of the reblogs/posts here might not be what I'd have been okay with seeing when I was under 14. so yknow. exercise some modicum of caution please.

-I'm technically a writer? like I write,,, supposedly lmao. like all the greats, the one thing I never seem to do is yknow write-

I write sometimes, let's say. and I'm also really interested in writing my own crime fiction novel one day. but that's for some day in the future lmao

-definitely a reader tho (yes ao3 and i are in a committed relationship)

my interests and fandoms are. a lot. for example (and in no particular order):

DC (the bats, mostly)

the magnus archives (ive never listened to a podcast before and I'm just around the end of s3 as of April 2024)

fullmetal alchemist brotherhood! (i used to have roy on my pfp, he's my favorite character! i also wanna write a huge character analysis essay on him but uni responsibilities mean that's very slow going)

riordanverse (pjo, hoo, magnus chase, a little bit toa, pjo show [which was very good, it just needs more screen time to fix up the pacing and add more depth in the appropriate moments])

star wars (prequels, kotor, clone wars)

criminal minds (im at early s13 as of November 2023, so mind your spoilers humans) (ngl as of Jan 2024, this hyperfixation of mine is dying a slow and steady death but who knows there might a revival one day)

jujutsu kaisen! (I'm just about to finish s2 as of April 2024 but I know what's happening by the end of s2 and I've given up on the storyline so spoil away, I'll just ignore you and okay in my fanfic sandbox:] )

yuri on ice is an old love of mine (ice adolescence😭😭 one day😭😭 oh one day😭😭so that was a fucking joke, mappa count your days and also im stealing viktor you can't have him, im gonna write iceado WITHOUT YOU) (well imma write it with a friend but like most importantly WITHOUT MAPPA and I urge all creative yoi fans that think they wanna try doing their own version of iceado to go ahead and give it a go!)

sasaki to miyano (saw the anime and the movie and fuebdehhshahgdhe)

haikyuu!!(all caught up, manga and anime-wise! also patiently waiting for the movies that should've been a season but anyways they better not fuck this up too much-)

bungo stray dogs is also an old but semi revived interest of mine (im pretty much up to date with the manga, just haven't read all of the light novels)

tian guan ci fu / heaven official's blessing (as of Jan 2024, I've finished s2 and tgcf is amazing it's wonderful, im starting book 1)

there's like. so much more.

sooo muuuuch moooreeee

so I'll just let you figure the rest of it out

If you wanna see some of my thoughts without infinite scrolling, you can also search for the tag "deelay words".

Another tag of mine is "deelay's tbr" (which stands for "to be referenced") which you'll find at posts that really make me Think™ and that I want to keep in mind when I do anything creative with the characters involved.

That said, I'd also appreciate it if you gave me a heads up on spoilers in any asks.

When interacting with my blog, if you want to avoid spoilers at all costs, I suggest blocking the fandom tag because what you consider spoilers might not be what I consider spoilers if we're at different arcs of whatever that media is.

if you're here for any of my fics then well.

if you're here for pjo, um. those fics are truly discontinued/on indefinite hiatus. that hasn't changed. I have tentatively decided to attempt to reread some of the books, and I'm also watching the show, so if I get inspired enough and manage to plan out a decent fic out of Percy Jackson Revealed,,,, then maybe there shall be a fic. But!!! I have no idea what the ending is gonna be, and without an ending I'm doing nothing because the chances of me dropping the fic (again) would be higher than my anxiety during exam season (aka very very high)

if you're here for the man behind neal caffrey tho!! hi, there. I am working on that sequel, don't worry. it's just long and I'm also working on uni and this other writing project I have going on. feel free to send me an ask with any questions or comments or whatever.

unnamed grishaverse project: yeah so, I have a project going with my friend noel @fifteenth-entity, we're fixing the darkling! this fic will take place like around 50-100 years pre-alina, and will feature the darkling doing darkling things while that generation's most prominent grisha (aka a bunch of queers) also do things that may or may not affect the darkling. and his views. and personality. there may or may not be character development in the works. (there is, he gets better). this fic is canon divergent before canon even happens. the entire plot of shadow and bone will be eventually reworked. (also, no darklina, no darkling romance, in general, this boy needs to get mentally healthy without worrying about romance or sex okay) [for more info on this just search "unnamed grishaverse project", it's the tag I've used in like the only post about this. do feel free to send me an ask about this tho!!]

Another thing: If you have a genuine, not malicious or mean-spirited, question, feel free to send me an ask. Keep it chill, though! if you try to pick a fight i will delete the ask for the first time, but on strike 2, you're blocked.

i like to think that I'm open to discourse but not if you're starting out all aggressively cause if you're aggressive, I will be defensive (while privately having a panic attack) and we're not gonna get anywhere.

so. once again for the people in the back

If you're here to pick a fight with me then gtfo please.

I don't like fighting, it makes me anxious, so save us both the trouble and be as civil as you can be if you have a disagreement with me.

that said, unless I'm literally at your post saying shit you disagree with. don't come at me. literally block me. it's fine. I quite literally do not mind or care. like, if you saw my post or reblog and decided I suck then just block me will you? if your goal is discussing tho, then go on!! debating can be very fun!

Moreover, if you ever want fic recs for a fandom I'm in, you're definitely welcome to send me an ask! but if you don't feel like talking, anything I will ever tell you is straight from my ao3 bookmarks. sooo, feel free to hunt around those! [in case the link isn't working for you, my ao3 username is Justice_not_Revenge]

ao3 disclaimer: anything before 2021 is not necessarily something I claim. So like don't think I'm into this thing or that I'm passionate about this ship just because in 2019 I bookmarked 100 fics with it, people tend to grow and change so yeah.

some generic DNIs

if you're anti-lgbtq+ in any way

if you support AI art or AIs stealing fic content

if you support relationships between adults and minors (with an age difference over 1-2 years or sth)

racists, ableists, sexists/misogynists (yes incl. swerfs), incest shippers

literally anyone who thinks violating someone's concent is nice and fun and quirky

okay that's all! thank youuu-

#introductory post #dni #btw im treating my dni like a fucking contract which is why it's a bit weirdly detailed #im just covering at least a lot of my bases #i don't wanna leave a lot of loopholes there and all

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writemarcus · 3 years

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HITTING NEW HEIGHTS

BY MARCUS SCOTT

ORIGINAL RENT STAR DAPHNE RUBIN-VEGA TAKES YOU INSIDE THE IN THE HEIGHTS FILM

Qué quiere decir sueñito?” The disembodied voice of a girlchild ponders. “It means ‘little dream,’” responds an unseen authoritative figure, his feathery tenor with a soft rasp and tender lilt implying there’s more to the story.

Teal waves crash against the white sand coastal lines of the Dominican Republic and a quartet of children plead with the voice to illuminate and tell a story. Usnavi de la Vega (played by Anthony Ramos), sporting his signature newsboy flat cap and full goatee, begins to narrate and weave a tall-tale from the comforts of his beachside food cart: “This is the story of a block that was disappearing. Once upon a time in a faraway land called Nueva York, en barrio called Washington Heights. Say it, so it doesn’t disappear,” he decrees.

And we’re off, this distant magic kingdom ensnared within the winding urban sprawl of farthest-uptown Manhattan, the music of the neighborhood chiming with infinite possibilities: a door-latch fastening on tempo, a ring of keys sprinkling a sweet embellishment, the splish-splash of a garden hose licking the city streets like a drumstick to a snare fill, a manhole cover rotating like vinyl on a get-down turntable, the hiss of paint cans spraying graffiti like venoms from cobras and roll-up steel doors rumbling, not unlike the ultra-fast subway cars zigzagging underground. So begins the opening moments of In the Heights, the Warner Bros. stage-to-screen adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical by composer-lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton) and librettist Quiara Alegría Hudes (Water by the Spoonful) that is set to premiere in movie theatres and on HBO Max on June 11, 2021.

This stunning patchwork of visuals and reverberations combine to create a defiant and instantly memorable collage of inner-city living not seen since Walter Hill’s 1979 cult classic The Warriors or West Side Story, the iconic romantic musical tragedy directed on film by Robert Wise and original Broadway director Jerome Robbins. With Jon M. Chu at the helm, the musical feature has all the trademarks of the director’s opulent signature style: Striking spectacles full of stark colors, va-va-voom visuals, ooh-la-la hyperkinetic showstopping sequences and out-of-this-world destination locations.

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A Kind of Priestess

Joining the fray of proscenium stage vets in the film is Broadway star Daphne Rubin-Vega, who originated the role of Mimi in the Off-Broadway and Broadway original productions of Rent. She returns to major motion pictures after a decade since her last outing in Nancy Savoca’s Union Square, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011. When we caught up with Rubin-Vega, she was hard at work, in-between rehearsals with her In the Heights co-star Jimmy Smits on Two Sisters and a Piano, the 1999 play by Miami-based playwright Nilo Cruz, a frequent collaborator. Rubin-Vega netted a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role as the enraptured Conchita in Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics; that same year Cruz was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, making him the first Latino playwright to receive the honor. Despite significant global, social and economic disruption, especially within the arts community, Rubin-Vega has been working throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

“People around me have [contracted] COVID… My father-in-law just had it. I’m very fortunate,” Rubin-Vega said. “This collective experience, it’s funny because it’s a year now and things seem better. Last year it was, like, ‘Damn, how inconvenient!’ The one comfort was that, you know, it’s happening to every one of us. That clarity that this is a collective experience is much more humbling and tolerable to me.”

The last time Rubin-Vega graced Washington Heights on screen or stage, she acted in the interest of survival and hunger as a probationer released after a 13-year stint in prison and given a new lease on life as an unlicensed amateur masseuse in the basement of an empanada shop in Empanada Loca, The Spalding Gray-style Grand Guignol horror play by Aaron Mark at the LAByrinth Theater Company in 2015. In In the Heights she plays Daniela, an outrageously vivacious belting beautician with a flair for the dramatics, forced to battle a price-gouging real estate bubble in the wake of gentrification.

“She’s like the deputy or the priestess,” Rubin-Vega said. “Owning a salon means that you have a lot of information; you’re in a hub of community, of information, of sharing… it’s also where you go for physical grooming. It’s a place where women were empowered to create their own work and it is a place of closeness, spiritual advice, not-so-spiritual advice. Physical attention.”

She said, “Daniela also being an elder; I think she’s not so much a person that imposes order on other people. She’s there to bring out the best—she leads with love. She tells it like it is. I don’t think she sugar-coats things. What you see is what you get with Daniela. It’s refreshing; she has a candor and sure-footedness that I admire.”

With the film adaptation, Chu and Hudes promised to expand the universe of the Upper Manhattan-based musical, crafting new dimensions and nuances to two characters in particular: Daniela and hairdresser Carla, originally portrayed as business associates and gossip buddies in the stage musical. On the big screen they are reimagined as romantic life partners. Stephanie Beatriz, known to audiences for her hilarious turn as the mysterious and aloof Detective Rosa Diaz in the police procedural sitcom romp “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” co-stars as the fast-talking firecracker, Carla.

It’s been a year waiting, you know. It’s like the lid’s been on it and so we’re just so ready to explode.

Where Is Home?

“Well, Quiara and Jon really expanded on what Lin and Quiara originally created and now they’re partners—and not just work partners, right? But they’re life partners,” Beatriz said at a March press event celebrating the release of the film’s two promo trailers. “What was so gratifying to me as a person who is queer is to see this relationship in the film be part of the fabric of the community, and to be normal, and be happy and functioning, and part of the quilt they’ve all created.”

She continued, “So much of this film is about where home is and who home is to you. And for Carla, Daniela is home. Wherever Daniela is, that’s where Carla feels at home. I thought that they did such a beautiful job of guiding us to this, really, you know, it’s just a happy functioning relationship that happens to be gay and in the movie. And I love that they did that, because it is such a part of our world.”

Rubin-Vega said she had no interest in playing any trope of what one might think a lesbian Latina might look or act like, noting that the queer experience isn’t monolithic, while expressing that the role offered her a newfound freedom, especially with regard to being present in the role and in her everyday life.

“Spoiler alert! I felt like not wearing a bra was going to free me. Did I get it right? Am I saying that gay women don’t wear bras? No, it was just a way for me to be in my body and feel my breasts. To feel my femaleness and celebrate it in a more unapologetic way,” she said, laughing. “To be honest, I was really looking forward to playing a lesbian Latina. It’s something that I hadn’t really explored before. Latinos [can be] very homophobic as a culture, and I wanted to play someone who didn’t care about homophobia; I was gonna live my best life. That’s a bigger thing. It’s also like, maybe I’m bisexual. Who knows? Who cares? If you see that in the film, that’s cool too, you know?”

Stand-out performances abound, especially with regard to the supporting cast; newcomers Melissa Barrera (in a role originated by Tony Award winner Karen Olivo) and Gregory Diaz IV (replacing three-time Tony Award nominee Robin de Jesús) are noteworthy as the aspiring fashion designer Vanessa and budding activist Sonny. Olga Merediz, who earned a Tony Award nomination for originating her role as Abuela Claudia, returns to the silver screen in a captivating performance that will be a contender come award season. However, Rubin-Vega may just be the one to watch. Her performance is incandescent and full of moxie, designed to raise endorphin levels. She leads an ensemble in the rousing “Carnaval del Barrio,” a highlight in the film.

Musical Bootcamp

“We shot in June [2019]. In April, we started musical bootcamp. In May, we started to do the choreography. My big joke was that I would have to get a knee replacement in December; that was in direct relation to all that choreography. I mean, there were hundreds of A-1 dancers in the posse,” Rubin-Vega said. “The family consisted of hundreds of superlative dancers led by Chris[topher] Scott, with an amazing team of dancers like Ebony Williams, Emilio Dosal, Dana Wilson, Eddie Torres Jr. and Princess Serrano. We rehearsed a fair bit. Monday through Friday for maybe five weeks. The first day of rehearsal I met Melissa [Barrera] and Corey [Hawkins], I pretty much hadn’t known everyone yet. I hadn’t met Leslie [Grace] yet. Chris Scott, the choreographer, just went straight into ‘let’s see what you can do.’ It was the first [dance] routine of ‘In The Heights,’ the opening number. He was like, ‘OK, let’s go. Five, six, seven, eight!’”

Rubin-Vega said that she tried to bring her best game, though it had “been a minute” since she had to execute such intricate choreography, noting that they shot the opening number within a day while praising Chu’s work ethic and leadership.

“There was a balance between focus and fun and that’s rare. Everyone was there because they wanted to be there,” she said. “I think back to the day we shot ‘96,000.’ That day it wouldn’t stop raining; [it was] grey and then the sky would clear and we’d get into places and then it would be grey again and so we’d have to wait and just have to endure. But even the bad parts were kind of good, too. Even the hottest days. There were gunshots, there was a fire while we were shooting and we had to shut down, there was traffic and noise and yet every time I looked around me or went into video village and saw the faces in there, I mean…it felt like the only place to be. You want to feel like that in every place you are: The recognition. I could recognize people who look like me. For now on, you cannot say I’ve never seen a Panamanian on film before or a Columbian or a Mexican, you know?”

Another Notion of Beauty

Rubin-Vega’s professional relationship with the playwright Hudes extends to 2015, when she was tapped to [participate in the] workshop [production of] Daphne’s Dive. Under the direction of Thomas Kail (Hamilton) and starring alongside Samira Wiley (“The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Orange Is the New Black”), the play premiered Off-Broadway at the Pershing Square Signature Center the following year. Rubin-Vega also starred in Miss You Like Hell, the cross-country road musical by Hudes and Erin McKeown, which premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in 2016 before it transferred to The Public Theater in 2018. With her participation in the production of In the Heights, she is among the few to have collaborated with all of the living Latinx playwrights to have won the Pulitzer Prize; Hudes won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Water by the Spoonful, while Miranda took home the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Hamilton. Speaking on her multiple collaborations over the years, Rubin-Vega also acknowledged having known Miranda years before they would join voices.

“Lin to me is like a little bro or legacy; he’s a direct descent to me from [Rent author] Jonathan Larson, which is a bigger sort of all-encompassing arch,” she said, though she stressed that she auditioned like everyone else, landing the role after two or three callbacks. “Quiara and I have a wonderful working and personal relationship, I think. Which isn’t to say I had dibs by any means because…it’s a business that wants the best for itself, I suppose. […] So, when I walked in, I was determined to really give it my best.”

Life During and After Rent

Rubin-Vega has built an impressive resume over the course of her career, singing along with the likes of rock stars like David Bowie and starring in a multitude of divergent roles on Broadway and off. From a harrowing Fantine in Les Misérables and a co-dependent Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire to a sinister Magenta in The Rocky Horror Show, her evolution into the atypical character actor and leading lady can be traced back 25 years to January 25, 1996, when Larson’s groundbreaking musical Rent, a retelling of Giacomo Puccini’s 19th-century opera La Bohème, premiered at the New York Theatre Workshop. On the morning of the first preview, Larson suffered an aortic dissection, likely from undiagnosed Marfan’s syndrome and died at the age of 35, just ten days shy of what would have been his 36th birthday.

On April 29, 1996, due to overwhelming popularity, Rent transferred to Nederlander Theatre on Broadway, tackling contemporary topics the Great White Way had rarely seen, such as poverty and class warfare during the AIDS epidemic in New York City’s gritty East Village at the turn of the millennium. Rubin-Vega would go on to be nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for her role as sex kitten Mimi Márquez, an HIV-positive heroin addict and erotic dancer.

The show became a cultural phenomenon, receiving several awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and four Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Rubin-Vega and members of the original Broadway cast were suddenly overnight sensations, recording “Seasons of Love” alongside music icon Stevie Wonder, receiving a photo shoot with Vanity Fair and landing the May 13, 1996 cover of Newsweek. Throughout its 12-year Broadway run, many of the show’s original cast members and subsequent replacements would go on to be stars, including Renée Elise Goldsberry, who followed in Rubin-Vega’s footsteps to play the popular character before originating the role of Angelica Schuyler in Hamilton, for which she won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

When the screen adaptation of Rent hit cinemas in 2005 under the direction of Chris Columbus, Rubin-Vega’s conspicuous absence came as a blow to longtime fans. The confluence of pregnancy with the casting and filming process of Rent hindered her from participating at the time. The role was subsequently given to movie star Rosario Dawson.

“First of all, if you’re meant to be in a film, you’re meant to be in it,” Rubin-Vega said. “That’s just the way it goes. It took a quarter of a century but this [In the Heights] is a film that I wanted to make, that I felt the elements sat right. I always felt that Rent was a little bit darker than all that. Rent to me is Rated R. In The Heights is not. It’s also a testament. Unless it’s sucking your soul and killing you softly or hardly, just stick with it. This is a business and I keep forgetting it’s a business because actors just want to show art. So, it’s really wonderful when you get a chance to say what you mean and mean what you say with your work. It’s a really wonderful gift.”

Rarely-Explored Themes

Like Larson’s award-winning show and the film adapted from it, In The Heights is jam-packed with hard-hitting subject matter, addressing themes of urban blight, immigration, gentrification, cultural identity, assimilation and U.S. political history. When Rubin-Vega’s character Daniela and her partner were priced out of the rent for her salon, most of her clientele moved to the Grand Concourse Historic District in the Bronx. Her salon, a bastion of the community, is met with a polar response when she announces she’s joining the mass exodus with the other victims of gentrification who were pushed out by rising rents. The news is met with negative response from long-time patrons who refuse to take the short commute to the new location. Daniela counters, “Our people survived slave ships, we survived Taino [indigenous Caribbean people] genocide, we survived conquistadores and dictators…you’re telling me we can’t survive the D train to Grand Concourse?”

The question is humorous, but also insinuates a more nuanced understanding of the AfroLatinidad experience in the Western world. The film also looks at the American Dream with a naturalistic approach. Leslie Grace, who plays Nina Rosario, a first-generation college student returning from her freshman year at Stanford University and grappling with finances and the expectations of her community, noted that while her character “finds [herself] at some point at a fork in the road,” she may not have the luxury to be indecisive because of the pressures put on by family, community and country.

“The struggle of the first-generation Americans in the Latino community is not talked about a lot because it’s almost like a privilege,” Grace asserted. “You feel like it’s a privilege to talk about it. But there is a lot of identity crisis that comes with it and I think we explore that.” Speaking on the character, she elaborated: “Home for her is where her heart is, but also where her purpose is. So, she finds her purpose in doing something outside of herself, greater than herself and going back to Stanford for the people she loves in her community. I really relate to where she’s at, trying to find herself. And I think a lot of other people will, too.”

Worth Singing About

For Miranda, a first-generation Puerto Rican New Yorker that grew up in Inwood at the northernmost tip of Manhattan before attending Wesleyan University where he would develop the musical, this speaks to a larger issue of what defines a home.

“What does ‘home’ even mean? Every character is sort of answering it in a different way,” he said. “For some people, home is somewhere else. For some people, home is like ‘the block’ they’re on. So, that’s worth singing about. It’s worth celebrating in a movie of this size.”

Given the current zeitgeist, it’s no wonder why Chu, Hudes and Miranda decided to pivot with adapting the stage musical for the big screen, leaning in to tackle the plights and predicaments of DREAMers [children of undocumented immigrants seeking citizenship] stateside. In one scene, glimpses of posters at a protest rally read “Immigrant Rights are Human Rights” and “Refugees Are People Too.” Growing up in a multicultural household as a Latina with a Black Latina mother, a white father and a Jewish American stepfather, Rubin-Vega said she was used to being in spaces that were truly multiracial. Nevertheless, there were times when she often felt alien, especially as a du jour rock musical ingenue who looked as she did in the mid-1990s through the 2000s.

“Undocumented people come in different shapes and colors,” she noted. “To be born in a land that doesn’t recognize you, it’s a thing that holds so much horror… so much disgrace happens on the planet because human beings aren’t recognized as such sometimes.”

The film “definitely sheds light on that, but it also talks about having your dream taken away and its human violation—it’s a physical, spiritual, social, cultural violation,” Rubin-Vega said. “There’s a difference between pursuing dreams and being aware of reality. They’re not mutually exclusive. What this film does, it presents a story that is fairly grounded in reality. It’s a musical, it’s over the top… but it reflects a bigger reality, which is like an emotional reality…that people that are challenged on the daily, have incredible resolve, incredible resoluteness and lifeforce.”

She said: “Growing up, looking like me, I got to ingest the same information as everyone else except when it came time to implement my contributions, they weren’t as welcomed or as seen. The dream is to be seen and to be recognized. Maybe I could be an astronaut or an ingenue on Broadway? You can’t achieve stuff that you haven’t imagined. When it talks about DREAMers, it talks about that and it talks about how to not be passive in a culture that would have you think you are passive but to be that change and to dare to be that change.”

Dreams Come True

Dreams are coming true. Alongside the nationwide release of the much-anticipated film, Random House announced it will publish In the Heights: Finding Home, which will give a behind-the-scenes look at the beginnings of Miranda’s 2008 breakout Broadway debut and journey to the soon-to-be-released film adaptation. The table book will chronicle the show’s 20-year voyage from page to stage—from Miranda’s first drawings at the age of 19 to lyric annotations by Miranda and essays written by Hudes to never-before-seen photos from productions around the world and the 2021 movie set. It will be released to the public on June 22, eleven days after the release of the film; an audiobook will be simultaneously released by Penguin Random House Audio.

Hinting at the year-long delay due to the pandemic, Rubin-Vega said, “It’s been a year waiting, you know. It’s like the lid’s been on it and so we’re just so ready to explode.”

Bigger Dreams

“Jon [Chu], I think, dreams bigger than any of us dare to dream in terms of the size and scope of this,” Miranda said. “We spent our summer [in 2018] on 175th Street. You know, he was committed to the authenticity of being in that neighborhood we [all] grew up in, that we love, but then also when it comes to production numbers, dreaming so big. I mean, this is a big movie musical!”

Miranda continued, “We’re so used to asking for less, just to ask to occupy space, you know? As Latinos, we’re, like, ‘Please just let us make our little movie.’ And Jon, every step of the way, said, like, ‘No, these guys have big dreams. We’re allowed to go that big!’ So, I’m just thrilled with what he did ’cause I think it’s bigger than any of us ever dreamed.”

Speaking at the online press conference, Miranda said, “I’m talking to you from Washington Heights right now! I love it here. The whole [movie] is a love letter to this neighborhood. I think it’s such an incredible neighborhood. It’s the first chapter in so many stories. It’s a Latinx neighborhood [today]. It was a Dominican neighborhood when I was growing up there in the ’80s. But before that it was an Irish neighborhood and Italian. It’s always the first chapter in so many American stories.”

#Marcus Scott #MarcusScott #Write Marcus #writemarcus #Encore Monthly #theatre #Theater #Musical Theatre #musical theater #daphne rubin vega #rent #rent musical #Jon M Chu #lin manuel miranda #in the heights #Anthony Ramos

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kerikaaria · 3 years

Text

Premiere

(Jungkook x gn!Reader) Oneshot, Established relationship

Genre: (G) Fluff

Warnings: None!

WC: 1.8k

Description: You’d do anything for your boyfriend, even if that meant sitting through the premiere for a horror movie.

A/N - Written for the lovely @aroseforyoongi ‘s birthday! We were given random prompts by picking two random numbers. My words were: Dedication and horror. AND I HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO DO. HORROR???? I couldn’t figure out where to go with that! So I’m also giving a HUGE thanks to @eternalseokjin for being amazing and giving me the basis for this little oneshot!

Happy birthday, Dianchie! I wish you all the best, always.

You hated horror movies.

It was a mystery to you how people actually enjoyed being scared out of their wits as they watched a killer hunt everyone down, or a ghost slowly drove its victims to insanity. So why, one may ask, were you currently on your way to the opening premiere of a horror movie?

Simple—you loved your boyfriend much more than you hated horror movies.

Jungkook had been working hard at his dream of being an actor, getting his hands on any role he could. With each job, he hoped the right people would manage to see him and his potential in the few scenes and fewer lines he was offered and be able to make his big break.

This was the first big step to that for him. With a little luck, the director had picked Jungkook out at the auditions and offered him the lead role for the movie. And even luckier, it was a movie that a lot of people were looking forward to and was projected to do fairly well. If it did go as well as hoped, then maybe this could lead to that big break he’d been hoping for for years.

What kind of person would you be if you didn’t agree to attend with your loving boyfriend to the movie premiere of what could be the start of the future of his career? So of course, you agreed to come. Jungkook was really apprehensive when he asked if you wanted to go, knowing your severe aversion to horror movies, and you were absolutely sure he would have understood if you said no. But there was no way you could do that to him. If he could sit through hours of those family gatherings your grandma set up every year and deal with the back-handed comments from relatives you hardly knew about how he’s wasting his time on his dream, you could do this for him. It couldn’t be that much more torturous than that, right?

That’s what you kept telling yourself while you were attached to Jungkook’s arm, a smile on your face for the cameras. Much more important than your anxiety of sitting through the movie was the crucial real-life role you knew you had to play for Jungkook right now. He would never say it out loud in fear of putting pressure on you, but you knew that he needed you for support. The cameras couldn’t pick up the subtle hints you knew all too well that meant your introverted boyfriend was extremely nervous about making a good impression, and about how well the movie and his acting would be received by viewers. It was easy to shut down the anxiety when you knew he was relying on you to be a pillar for him.

As soon as the two of you made it into the room and found your seats you could feel Jungkook relax, body feeling lighter after being able to get away from the reporters’ questions and prying eyes. He loosened your grip on his arm so he could properly entwine his fingers with yours, giving your hand a firm squeeze as he leaned toward you.

“Thank you for coming, baby,” Jungkook whispered against your skin before placing a chaste kiss on your cheek. “I appreciate you being here with me.”

“Of course,” you responded, turning to smile at him. “You know I’m always here to support you.”

“Let me know if the movie gets to be too much for you, okay?” Jungkook said, squeezing your hand once more. “We can leave at any point if you need to.”

You had absolutely no plans to cut this short for him. Even if turned out to be the scariest thing you’d ever seen, you were already steeling yourself to sit through the entire film. But to comfort Jungkook, you assured him that you’d indeed tell him if you felt like you had to leave.

Once the lights dimmed to signal that the movie was about to start, you felt the anxiety you’d kept at bay start to crawl its way up your chest. You kept it tampered down for the time being, reminding it that these movies didn’t start out with the really creepy stuff and you still had some time before the ghost was going to do anything.

It was made even easier when you first saw your handsome boyfriend appear on the screen only a few minutes in. You always watched everything he was in, no matter how small the role was. But now that he was the main focus and in the center, you couldn’t help but to be even more proud of him than ever.

Jungkook loved to learn every detail he could about his craft, including having an interest in directing and filmmaking as well. Days spent listening to him critique filming techniques made you also moderately familiar with the subject. While the movie wasn’t doing anything much different than you’d expect from this kind of film, you immediately noticed everything that set up the mood for a horror story. The desaturated and dark tones, soft ambient music and sounds in the background rather than a full-sounding soundtrack, and the ominous feeling behind Jungkook’s character being left a whole estate by a rich relative he had hardly even heard about. It was honestly incredibly well set-up, even if the plot was a bit predictable so far.

By distracting yourself with picking apart the details of how the film was setting up the story and admiring Jungkook’s talent and good looks, you almost forgot what kind of movie you were watching.

Almost.

When the first genuine jump scare happened about half an hour into the film, it held up to its name by making you nearly jump out of your seat. Even though he kept it quiet, you could tell Jungkook held back the chuckle that bubbled up due to your overreaction. He quickly steeled his expression though, leaning in to whisper, “You doing okay so far?”

“Yeah,” you were quick to respond. “I was just distracted.”

“Distracted? By what?”

“By how talented you are, of course,” you easily answered.

Seeing the hint of a shy smile on Jungkook’s face and the tension in the movie having calmed down for the time being put your restless heart temporarily at ease.

But of course, it wasn’t too long until the horror aspect of the movie was pulling into full swing and it was ominous music, jump scares, and creepy old ghost lady creeping around every corner galore. You tried to continue distracting yourself with the well-done editing and admiring your boyfriend some more, but it only went so far. Especially when your mind forgot to remind you that what you were seeing on screen was fiction and not your actual boyfriend in danger.

After a while, you gave up trying to actually see what was going on and hid your face in Jungkook’s arm, letting the close proximity remind you that he was indeed safe and sound next to you.

“Should we leave?” Jungkook gently asked, whispering close to one ear while he covered the other with his hand to help mute the sounds of the movie for you.

You shook your head, determined to make it through this. “I’ll be okay,” you meekly replied after lifting your head up so he could hear you. “How much longer, do you think?”

“It should be getting close to the climax, and then it’ll be a lot calmer. Are you sure you don’t want to leave?”

“I can do it,” you assured him. You turned your head back toward the screen in time to see Jungkook’s character running down a hallway to try to get some distance from the ghost. I can do it, you repeated in your mind.

Honestly, you would have preferred a slasher flick. Demon ghosts had too much power and were too unpredictable in what they could do, and the idea of fighting something virtually intangible scared the living daylights out of you. But this was your current reality and you were going to make it through this for Jungkook.

He was right, and it wasn’t too long before the climax began building up. It was a little easier to bear despite the increasing tension, knowing that Jungkook’s character was close to stopping ghost lady—you certainly hadn’t paid enough attention to find out if she had a name. Soon enough, the climax of the movie hit its peak and things started settling down to a much more manageable finish.

It took another five minutes for you to realize you were still clinging tightly to Jungkook’s arm out of reflex. Letting go, you mumbled out an apology for no doubt hurting him and telling yourself to remember and check him for bruises later.

When the credits finally rolled, you felt infinitely more relieved. You slumped in your seat, Jungkook not holding back his chuckle this time.

Before long everyone was shuffling out of the theater and while Jungkook smiled endearingly at you, you were listening to what others had to say about the movie. It relaxed you and put a smile on your face when you heard people complimenting Jungkook’s acting and about the plot twists that they didn’t expect—and you didn’t really know about because you were too busy burrowing into your boyfriend’s shoulder to notice.

You were glad the two of you lived together because even just walking out to your car in the dark had you constantly looking over your shoulder, expecting a murderous demon ghost lady to be on your tail. On the way home, the two of you kept conversation light by talking about how well you thought it went. Jungkook was still nervous about what the reception would be like, but he was much more excited now as well.

It was when the two of you were laying in bed that Jungkook said, “You know, I’m really proud of you for making it through the movie, baby.”

Playfully, you rolled your eyes. “Good to know me watching a fictional horror film all the way through is such an accomplishment to be proud of.”

“You ran out of the room when we watched ‘Haunted Mansion’ because you thought it was too scary,” Jungkook deadpanned.

“It was! There’s a crystal ball with a floating head in it! How is that not scary?”

“The head wasn’t actually in there. Sorry to tell you babe, but a movie with a singing statue quartet isn’t scary.”

“Shut up,” you mumbled, running out of juice to argue.

“Seriously though,” Jungkook said after a moment passed. “I really am proud of you. And I’m really happy you chose to come with me. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.”

“I love you,” you said in return, knowing he’d understand that those three words held a lot more meaning than just that.

“And I love you.” Jungkook smiled as he pressed a soft kiss to your lips.

You would readily do this again for Jungkook if he ever starred in another horror film. But that didn’t mean you’d stop being a big clingy scaredy-cat about it.

My ask box is always open!

Also, if you’d like to donate to my Ko-fi, feel free! Absolutely no pressure though :) You can also check out my Etsy shop for BTS inspired charms as well!

#bts fanfic #jungkook #jeon jungkook #jungkook x reader #fluff #actor!jungkook #thebtswritersclub #btscreatorscorner #kafenetwork

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 3 years

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Psycho Analysis is a series that looks at villains across various media in the hopes of coming to something of a consensus on the overall quality of the character. Are they performed well? Do they enrich the narrative? Are their motives fleshed out? Are they voiced by Tim Curry and thus a sex icon?

There are a lot of important questions that I look into, but ultimately, Psycho Analysis boils down to asking one simple little question: How bad can a character be?

Thankfully, there’s one villain who decided to answer that question for me... in song form.

Psycho Analysis: The Once-ler

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Yeah, I’m finally talking about everyone’s favorite greedy bastard who, back in some of the darkest days of Tumblr history, ended up being the premier sexyman on the website. People were thirsting over this twiggy weirdo, acting as if he were God’s gift to women and shipping him with alternate versions of himself. Much like the movie he’s from, he is now incredibly hard to take seriously.

But hey, speaking of alternate versions of himself, I’m going to be covering him from the original book and the animated short film as well. Might as well just knock it all out of the park at once, right? Now let’s see how ba-a-a-ad this guy can be.

Motivation/Goals: The Once-ler is all about biggering. He’s making thneeds (things that everyone needs) and he is gonna stop at nothing to craft these things. Not even the power of the Lorax, Danny DeVito or otherwise, is going to stay his hand from getting that sweet, soft Truffula fluff to make his wares. This is ultimately a little unrealistic, at least for the Illumination version; if Danny DeVito asked me not to do something, I’d listen, no questions asked.

Performance: In the animated special, Bob Holt does double duty, as he is portraying both Once-ler and the title character. It works really well for what they’re going for, and the double casting is interesting because it highlights the ultimate role of the Lorax as the Once-ler’s conscience given form.

In the film, Ed Helms portrays the Once-ler, and he’s fine. He’s certainly better casting than Audrey, but that’s not particularly saying much considering that’s a non-singing Taylor Swift (when Cats is able to utilize Taylor Swift better than your musical, you know there’s trouble). I don’t know, Ed Helms is fun and all, but I’m just not sure his take on the Once-ler is all too compelling overall.

Final Fate: In the original book and the special, the Once-ler wins… but even he realizes it’s a terrible, pointless victory, and all he has achieved is ruin, his family leaving him, his business ultimately collapsing, and the environment permanently damaged. He’s left as a miserable, jaded hermit, broken by the bleak consequences his greedy actions have sown upon the world and only able to tell his story and pass on the last Truffula seed in the hopes that maybe, maybe someday the trees can regrow and the Lorax will return. The Illumination version follows this but then tacks on a happy ending where the Lorax and Once-ler reunite because as we know ambiguity and bittersweet endings cannot exist in children’s films.

Best Scene: Obviously it’s the scene where he shakes his ass to seduce Jack Frost, in one of the greatest gay romances ever put to film.

Joking aside, it is undoubtedly his villain song. It has become such a meme, but real talk? “How Bad Can I Be” slaps. This is a really good song, probably too good for the movie but you know what, I’ll take it.

youtube

Best Quote: HOW BA-A-A-AD CAN I BE? Yes, I’m using a line from his villain song. Sue me.

Final Thoughts & Score: What can one really say about the movie version of the Once-ler that hasn’t already been run into the ground? Well, how about… He’s not too bad, honestly? Like, yes, he has next to nothing to do with his book counterpart and they really go way too far into trying to make a capitalist pig sympathetic… but the animated special from the 70s did that too. I think the Once-ler honestly works better when there is a dash of complexity to him and he isn’t just a simple-minded Captain Planet villain.

Of course, the issue here is that the 70s version took a simpler approach, kind of less is more. The 70s Once-ler brings up some valid points to the Lorax about his work, and the Lorax can’t help but agree that there’s no easy answer while also stressing that the environmental devastation is still really, really bad. It works, it feels complex, and it arguably helps the ultimate point that we need to protect the environment better than even the book did (and I love the book, don’t get me wrong, but its take on the Once-ler is a bit too simple for its own good; it almost runs into the Femme Fatale problem by being a bit too much of a strawman). The movie version has a bit too much going on, especially with his family. His family are much more blatantly evil, greedy, and manipulative, but they’re relegated to the background for much of the film and don’t effect things all that much. The whole narrative would have been infinitely stronger if they were the greater scope villains behind Once-ler and were who needed to be defeated and maybe taught a lesson, but instead they are ignored in favor of someone I’ll address very shortly.

All of this leaves movie Once-ler feeling extremely disjointed, but not irredeemably so. As I said before, his villain song is unironically awesome, and as lame as it is compared to the more haunting, contemplative ending of the book and the special, I’m not so much of a curmudgeon that I didn’t at least smile when he finally reconciled with the Lorax. Ultimately though, him being memed to death really didn’t help his case, but it means I’m not giving the movie version anything less than a 3/10. He might in fact be the best “so bad it’s good” villain ever, or at least up there. He’s just so undeniably enjoyable even if the narrative isn’t making him as complex as it thinks it is. The animated special version gets a 9/10, the book version is a 7/10, and the Once-ler’s family gets a 5/10 for being an interesting concept they sadly do little with, which will now be elaborated on as I follow up on the foreshadowing from the last paragraph...

Psycho Analysis: Aloysius O’Hare

Remember how I said the Once-ler’s family gets ignored in favor of someone else? Here he is, Aloysius O’Hare, one of the absolute lamest villains ever put to screen.

Motivation/Goals: He’s greedy. That’s it. I’m not kidding. He’s just a cartoonish caricature of a rich person, which still makes him a realistic portayal but also makes him boring as sin compared to the wacky dude with a big musical number about how bad he can be.

Performance: Rob Riggle does a decent job, but there’s really not much for him to work with here. This character is a cardboard cutout who exists to be as cartoonishly greedy and evil as possible with no nuance so the kids know who to root against and so that Once-ler doesn’t look bad in comparison.

Final Fate: Look, he’s a blatantly evil corporate villain in a kid’s movie about the environment. Of course he gets defeated and everyone turns on him. What’s especially funny though is that, on the brink of learning his lesson, he rejects any form of redemption and just goes whole hog on being a villain.

Best Scene: I will absolutely give him this: in the face of his ultimate defeat, after having the virtues of trees sung to him and the entire town turning on him, he for a moment contemplates turning over a new leaf… and then absolutely rejects the thought and instead decides being evil is just too much fun, at which point he tries to get everyone back on his side by seeing a funny little song about death while wavedashing. If more shitty villains did this, I don’t think there would be shitty villains.

Best Quote: LET IT DIE, LET IT DIE, LET IT SHRIVEL UP AND DIE! Yes I’m quoting a song again.

Final Thoughts & Score: Look, I’m not gonna mine words here: O’Hare sucks. Big time. He is a prime example of why The Lorax failed as an adaptation. In a story that is dealing with a moral grayness with no easy answers, O’Hare is just a big, blatant target, a dark shade of black in terms of black-and-white morality. He’s like a reject Captain Planet villain with Edna Mode’s haircut.

The movie would have been infinitely better if, instead of him, the Once-ler’s family were in control of the town, and they needed to learn the lesson about saving the trees instead of simply vanishing from the story. They were shown to be overbearing, manipulative, and greedy, and they had a much more personal connection with Once-ler being, you know, his actual family. The fact they abandon him and never really get any sort of comeuppance despite being perhaps the most evil people in the move, egging on Once-ler and taking full advantage of him, makes O’Hare all the more egregious, because there could have been some strong thematic elements that would have tied the film together and made it come off as much less preachy and more nuanced.

But we don’t live in a world where that happened, we live in a world where we got O’Hare. Aside from some genuine hilarity from him at the end, O’Hare really adds very little to the film. I gotta give him a 2/10, but I will say he’s a lot closer to a 3 than he is to a 1; there’s no denying his absolute rejection of learning a moral is absolutely hilarious. I love when villains do that. It’s just a shame those funny moments are wrapped up in something monumentally unimpressive.

#Psycho Analysis #The Once-ler #The Lorax #Ed Helms #Aloysius O'Hare #Rob Riggle

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skellebonez · 3 years

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Monkie Kid Headcanons 3: Just Tang This Time

It’s been so long since I did one of these... I actually have more headcanons for Tang than I thought I did and while slightly lighter than the other posts they’re a bit more complicated in my feelings on them. Most of these have no backing in canon and are just from my brain going haywire, and are definitely subject to changing if season 2 gives them the boot.

Given the shots of him in the opening I believe he would be some kind of scholar, librarian, or both. I like scholar more but I headcanon both.

Like I said in my first post, he’s a descendant of a relative of Tripitaka. A very distant nephew at the closest, distant cousin at the farthest.

Tang has known Mei and MK longer than he has known Pigsy and had known Mei the longest out of everyone, if only by a little bit. He had no idea everyone knew each other until Mei and MK visited the library together as teens and then Pigsy described a couple of his regulars and realized “oh I know them, neat”.

He did his best to support MK on his trips to the library since he could see how much he wanted to learn despite how quiet he was as a child, and when he learned just how his parents were he took it upon himself to teach MK a lot of what he missed out on under their roof.

He can and will put the fear of death into anyone. When he is genuinely angry, not just regular angry but seething rage, he gets quiet and terrifying.

He is actually incredibly skilled in conversations in the exact right circumstances and has years of practice talking around people to lead them to the information he wants out of them at work. This is much less effective against demons who can see that he is terrified, however...

He was a very early regular customer of Pigsy’s Noodles and has eaten literally everything on the menu. He INVENTED some of the menu.

He can absolutely pay for his food, he just thinks it is infinitely more fun to tease Pigsy with no paying since they are so close.

I don’t care what the show says they live together until I am proven wrong. We all also know I ship them, they’re just. So damn close all the time. Either they’re together or they’re the closest friends I have ever seen.

Given how close he seems to be with Mei (rooting for her over the person he claimed to be a father figure to in a race? come on they have got to be close somehow) I believe he is either an actual relative of hers as well or a close family friend, but the later is more likely.

He could have met her parents through his job as a scholar, since they have so many artifacts and they are directly related to JTTW, which is his main line of study. And they were on extremely good terms when their relationship was strictly business related, so close that people thought he actually was a brother to one of them.

Then they asked him to finally meet Mei and he realized “OH this Mei and MK’s Mei are the same person I wasn’t just overthinking” things went kinda sideways.

While I think he was still on very good terms with and is in very good standing with Mei’s parents... it’s a bit more one sided on their part, unbeknownst to them. I don’t think he is fond of their parenting of Mei in the least and stays on good terms with them more so he can remain in Mei’s life as outside support since he knew MK cares a lot about her and he also wants her to thrive the way he sees her when on her bike racing or at the arcade. Deep down he is a bit bitter and jaded at this before the show, he is just extremely good at pushing it down for Mei’s sake.

He’s been slowly trying to push them toward being nice to Mei and it kinda worked a bit, slowly but surely.

At least until episode 3. He went full “fear of death quiet anger” after episode 3 if the above is the case in my book. That would have been his breaking point, hearing about how they changed their tune so fast when she got the sword. He was just that angry.

BUT until canon proves me wrong, I think that (as well as Mei’s shocked reaction to their acceptance and pride) was a wake up call for them to take a more active role in her life and to be much more understanding.

Like I said, until canon proves me wrong: Later on the three of them are actually on even better terms than they were before he met Mei since they are now taking an active (if very confused sometimes) interest in her hobbies and friends when they find time (they are still the Long family and have duties to fulfill that cannot be canceled, and Tang and Mei both understand that).

Please LMK let me have one story line where parents improve even a little. If you don’t give it to me with DBK and PIF let me have this one headcanon. MK’s parents don’t even exist on screen. Please. Let parents improve?

He is more of an Uncle figure to Mei than a father figure, but it’s a damn close margin, and her parents are absolutely accepting of this fact now.

This is super indulgent and silly and not connected to anything really, but I think Tang just... really really likes mystery and thriller movies. I don’t know why. It just feels like he would.

#doing that prompt fill engaged my brain enough to finish this dang thing #tang #monkie kid #lego monkie kid #monkie kid headcanons

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anxious-logic · 3 years

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"I Win" Chapter 6

(Find more chapters on my pinned post!)

@analogicalweek

Day 6: Past/Future

Ship: Analogical (Logan/Virgil), both pre-romantic and romantic

Chapter Warnings: None that I can think of

AO3 Rating: G

Word Count: 1,025

Summary: Hi Logan, this is Virgil.

Hello, Virgil. I'm glad to hear from you.

Virgil nervously fidgeted with the cuffs of their hoodie. They’d gotten Logan’s number yesterday, but they hadn’t gotten to do any more than that before the two of them had gone off in different directions. They hadn’t texted xem yet, but they were trying to get the courage to do so.

Hi Logan, this is Virgil.

The cursor blinked at them from the screen of their phone, seeming to taunt them with the infinite possibilities of what else they could say. Before they could think too much longer on it, they hit send and promptly turned the phone off, placing it face-down on the bed next to them.

Oh, god. What if yesterday, Logan had just been being polite? What if xe didn’t actually like them or want to get to know them any better? What if xe’d forgotten all about them already because they didn’t matter, and xe only had talked to them out of pity for an overwhelmed college student-

Their phone vibrated from the bed next to them. Their thoughts cut off and they froze, staring at the wall across from them. Was it from Logan? Should they look? They weren't doing anything, just sitting there. What if it was someone from their group project, or they were ignoring an urgent message from someone that they should respond to?

They inched their hand toward the phone, picking it up just as it began to buzz with the two-minute reminder.

Hello, Virgil. I’m glad to hear from you.

Virgil let out their breath in a whoosh as they read the text. Logan was glad to hear from them. Xe hadn’t given them xir number just to be polite. This was… this was good.

They looked down as they felt their phone vibrate with another received text.

It occurred to me that perhaps you asked for my number yesterday because you felt some version of romantic attraction to me. I wanted to disclose the fact that I am demiromantic and am therefore not interested in an immediate romantic partnership. However, if this does not deter you, I would enjoy the opportunity to become friends.

Virgil read through the long text, nodding to themself as they finished it.

You seem cool. Friends is good, Virgil sent, feeling a little awkward about the way they approached it but doing their best to push through the uncomfortable feeling to continue communicating with Logan.

Wonderful, xe sent back. Virgil felt a smile break across their face as a thought occurred to them.

I won, they sent, quickly following it up with another text when they realized how vague the statement was. I sent a text first.

I suppose you did, Logan replied. I seem to remember saying a similar statement yesterday. Is this going to be a common theme in our friendship?

Virgil chuckled to themself. Maybe.

***

“Nini!”

Logan looked up to see Thomas running towards xem as fast as his legs could carry him, his hands in front of him opening and closing. “Up!” he demanded. Logan smiled down at him, scooping him up and placing him on xir hip.

“Hello,” Logan said seriously, though a happy smile was still on xir face. “Are you liking the playground?”

Thomas giggled. “Yeah! It’s fun!” He flapped his hands a few times before leaning back in Logan’s arms, forcing Logan to counterbalance xir son’s weight by leaning back xirself.

Thomas looked around him, seeming to take in his surroundings from the new vantage point, before squirming in Logan’s arms. “Nini, down?”

Logan had no hope of stopping the fond smile from crossing xir face. “Okay.” Xe put Thomas down, watching the four-year-old run back to the toddler playground.

“Hey.”

Logan turned around to see xir spouse standing behind him, their other son in their arms.

“Hi,” Logan said, stepping closer to Virgil. Xe watched as Remy slowly began to wake up, making quiet sounds as his tiny hands waved around in the air and his legs kicked a bit.

“Hello,” Logan said to xir son, unable to stop the way xir voice went soft as the infant blinked slowly. Xe held out xir finger, letting Remy grasp it tightly.

“Love you,” Virgil said, brushing their lips along the top of Logan’s head. Logan turned xir face up to Virgil’s, letting them place another kiss on xir lips.

“Eww! Nini, Ren! Stop it!”

Logan pulled back to see Thomas standing in front of the three of them, his hands on his hips and a disgusted look on his face. Xe carefully detached xir finger from Remy’s tight grip.

“Sorry, Thomas,” Virgil apologized with a smile, carefully kneeling down and bringing Remy to Thomas’s eye level. “We just want to say we love each other.”

Thomas carefully stepped closer to Virgil as his eyes were drawn to the baby, distracted from his previous revulsion. “Can I touch?” he asked, his voice much quieter than before.

“Be careful,” Logan reminded him. Thomas nodded, carefully stepping a bit closer and holding his hand out near Remy’s fingers.

“Do you want to hold hands?” Logan asked.

Thomas nodded eagerly. “Mhm!”

Logan gently guided Thomas’s fingers to where Remy’s hand was laying on the blanket. The younger curled his fingers around Thomas’s, their hands intertwining and holding on tightly.

“I love you,” Thomas said to Remy, then up to Virgil and Logan. “I love you all.”

“I love you too, sweetie,” Virgil said, carefully smoothing a hand through Thomas’s hair.

Remy began to fuss, enough that Logan reached for him.

“I’ll take him,” xe said as Thomas let go of Remy’s hand. “You go play with your Ren, okay?”

Thomas gave him a bright smile, then turned to Virgil, grabbing their hand and leading them to the small slides.

Logan sat Remy up on xir hip, supporting his head, and rocked back and forth, trying to soothe xir child. As xe looked out over the playground where Virgil was holding their hands out at the bottom of the slide to catch Thomas, xe smiled.

Xe had never been sure if life was a game or not.

But if it was, xe had certainly won it.

#ts logan #ts virgil #analogical #logan sanders #virgil sanders #romantic analogical #sanders sides fanfiction #i can write sometimes #ts thomas #character!thomas #ts remy #remy sanders

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mintchocolatechipnut · 4 years

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the boys in a haunted house

ft. shinsou hitoshi, todoroki shouto & kirishima eijirou

Note: This came to me in a vision... okay not really but SEVENTEEN’s GoSe episode on the ghost really inspired me to write this. Hope you enjoy!

Tags: fluff, real comedic geniuses here, vague understanding of haunted houses

Word count: 2.3k

SHINSOU HITOSHI

Now Shinsou isn’t really afraid of anything in particular, as in he’s not rattled by jump scares in movies

Instead, he has a penchant for psychological thrillers, because as much as he doesn’t use his quirk for villainous motives, he does like to fuck with people in general

So when you ask to go to a haunted house with him, he’s pretty indifferent, only letting out a non-committal hum as you tell him how this new set has been getting rave reviews from your friends

When you get there, Shinsou’s reminded of the time his class set up a haunted house for the cultural festival, and wonders if he could glean more ideas from this experience should they decide to hold it again this year lmao

As you enter, you’re relieved to know that Shinsou’s interested to at least a certain extent (but for the wrong reasons lol)

When the first jumpscare appears, Shinsou doesn’t so much as flinch, even as he feels your fingernails dig into his arm where you clutch him

He just stares, as if memorising the appearance of the zombie/mummy/ghost and wondering how he could replicate the look with the limited budget his class had for the festival

You didn’t hear this from me, but some of the haunted house actors were creeped out by Shinsou himself

I mean, his purple hair sticking up all ways like that of a mad scientist, coupled with his piercing unnerving stare, while the bags under his eyes carry even more bags and stand out against the pallor of his skin? Boy is setting himself up to look like a real zombie or vampire here

Anyway, if his s/o is more on the timid side, he doesn’t mind letting them hold onto him in any way as they walk through the set

Clutching his arm so tight he wonders if his skin will break under their hold, or the hem of his sleeve being tugged so hard it might tear, Shinsou just likes that you can depend on him and that he makes you feel safe

Though do not put it past him to mess with you even though you’re afraid

He won’t be pushing you toward the ghosts despite your shrieks and wails, or giving you a jumpscare of his own while in the house, but since he likes psychological thrillers so much, he’ll play a prank once the experience is over

‘Gee, Y/N, did you see that guy? He wouldn’t leave you alone at all’

‘... wait what do you mean’

‘You know, the one who followed you around with a knife in his hand? Don’t tell me you didn’t notice. Oh wait, you didn’t? Could’ve been my imagination then. Just it was so vivid...’

You’re scared shitless when you talk to the owner and there’s no such ghost, while Shinsou stands a ways behind you and winks conspiratorially at the owner

Cue you hanging onto his arm even on the way home, but Shinsou doesn’t mind one bit

Seems like he’s up for a night of suffocation where you’ll be holding onto him like your life depended on it

Maybe then he’ll tell you it was all a joke. Or that the man with the knife seemed to have followed you home...

Whatever he’ll do, he knows he’ll have fun as long as it’s with you (and as long as you don’t get too mad and kick him out of your room)

Now, if his s/o isn’t easily scared and is more of the playful sort, he’d like doing gag commentary with you as the ghosts show up one by one

Whether your laughter is a coping mechanism, or just the result of plain unadulterated fun, Shinsou’s having fun nonetheless

If you’re really playful, and Shinsou’s feeling it too, you two cook up a plan to scare the ghosts together

While it’s only semi-successful (in which you scare one or two of them and actually earn some human-like screams from them), the both of you can’t stop cackling on the way home

Overall, Shinsou has fun, and he isn’t afraid to tell you so

‘Maybe we should do it again next time, and make a record of how many we can scare individually’

You: ‘BET’

TODOROKI SHOUTO

Given his upbringing, it’s no secret that Todoroki has never had the chance to do things normal teenagers do

So naturally his first reaction to you suggesting a visit to a haunted house is pure curiosity

He knows they exist when class 1-C did it for the cultural festival but he didn’t get the chance to visit it the last time, so why not now?

As you tell him about it, Todoroki’s already whipping his phone out to do some research beforehand, but he relented when you tell him it’s better if it’s a surprise

He doesn’t show it on his face but he’s infinitely excited to be there, in a ‘I have no idea what to expect’ kind of way as he watches you buy tickets

Cue him thinking the whole thing is like the simulations in class and actually creates flames in his hands so you can see clearer in the dark

You have to tell him amidst your laughter that he’s not supposed to do that, and he’s bewildered alright, but he complies

Now Todoroki isn’t a big reactor by any means but since you know him so well, you can tell how the haunted house affects him

Like, he’ll pretty much react the same way he did during the test of courage during summer camp last time in that he’ll flinch silently, but you can see in the dim light how his eyes widen a minuscule fraction and how his shoulders tense up during jumpscares

It’s weird, because as a future hero nothing should faze him, but even when he’s expecting to be scared it does nothing to stop him from actually being scared

Halfway through his hand would automatically reach for yours, and when more jumpscares occur he’ll tighten his grip on it

His grip varies; when he senses a jumpscare his fingers will curl around yours a little more but when he’s actually frightened expect a violent squeeze of your hand, but nothing too painful

If you’re the timid sort, Todoroki’s glad that you feel the same way in some sorts, and feels reassured that it’s the normal way to react to such things as haunted houses (poor baby doesn’t have a clue about social norms, so he’s always questioning whether he’s weird for being the way he is and not being typical in his reactions—the answer is, of course, that he’s loved either way)

If you’re the unfazed sort, Todoroki will admire you as you march through the haunted house hand in hand, his gaze on your small but strong back as you move towards the exit. How you don’t react to anything, and instead even exchange pleasantries with some of the ghosts makes him see you in a whole new light

And then when you’re finally out in the open, where you return to your usual caring self and ask if he’s okay, Todoroki thinks that he couldn’t fall in love with you more than he already has

Spoiler alert: he’s wrong

When you cheekily tell him you’ll protect the next time you visit a haunted house, he buries his face in your shoulders while he hugs you to him tight

‘Thank you.’ You can hear him whisper beside your ear, ‘but let’s not do that again for a while.’

If you’re an absolute horror junkie, you’ll try to convince Todoroki to visit with you again

If he’s still hesitant, you opt to getting him used to jumpscares by watching horror movies together

Sometimes Todoroki can’t help but question what you find so fun about them when you yourself squeal in half-horror and half-delight when you get scared by something on the screen

But if the way you cling to his side is any indication, he likes it anyway

Pretty soon he does get used to jumpscares, in that his heightened senses from all his hero training lead him to predict the right moments where jumpscares occur

Cue him telling you ‘There’s a jumpscare at this part’ and two seconds later a monstrous face appears on screen

At first you’re in awe at his sudden ability only after watching like three films, but pretty soon it gets old and you have to break it to him that it ruins the show for you

Your heart nearly melts when he murmurs in a low voice, ‘I thought I’d just warn you in advance so you wouldn’t be scared.’

In that moment you’re eternally grateful to have someone as awkward and kind as Todoroki as your boyfriend who constantly looks out for your well-being and does his best in making you happy

You kindly explain to him what makes horror movies so good and why jumpscares are supposed to be unpredictable, but not before leaning in to whisper a ‘thank you’ and plant a kiss to his cheek

KIRISHIMA EIJIROU

Now Kirishima’s usually game for anything you want to try, but just so you know, he wouldn’t exactly consider a haunted house as an ideal date spot

What’s so romantic about getting scared by a bunch of ghosts who are also paid actors in a small dark space? But hey, if it’s for fun and you want to, why not

But just because he’s the glue of class 1-A, he’ll ask if he can bring some of his friends along since ‘it’ll be more fun that way’

The thing with Kirishima is if he sees other people enjoying this kind of thing he’d like to invite them, and when he can’t picture something being just between the two of you he’s likely to call other people to join

You might be a little disappointed and exasperated about it, but knowing where he’s coming from you can’t really get mad at him

Though if you’re truly bothered about it, just say the word and he’ll change

Sweetie will do anything for you as long as it’s within reason and he knows where you’re coming from

But anyway, you’re not against the idea of having the rest of the Bakusquad join you, since they’re a fun-loving bunch and having them at a haunted house is bound to be ten times funnier

So there’s Bakugou in his usual black skull shirt and Sero and Kaminari, while Mina’s ready to snap away with her camera so she can get some funny reaction pics out of the boys

While lining up for tickets you’re surprised by Kirishima learning in from behind you and whispering into your ear: ‘Don’t worry babe, I’ll protect you from anything you find scary in there!’

Heat immediately rises to your cheeks when you think about the utter cheeseball he is, and when you turn around to face him Kirishima has his trademark toothy grin on his face as he looks at you

How could you even be disappointed about this not being a date when Kirishima is still being his caring, romantic self?

Mina, who’s behind the both of you in line, immediately scrunches up her face in mock disgust. ‘Ew, you two,’ she says in mock disgust and you know she’d heard Kirishima. ‘Get out of here and get a room.’ The three of you end up laughing it off anyway.

When you step into the haunted house, Kirishima naturally takes your hand in his, and an immediate sense of safety washes over you when you feel his hand encapsulating yours

Going through the haunted house with Kirishima is an absolute hitch, as he knows just how to react and still have fun with you

Kirishima isn’t the kind to be scared easily, but he always acts scared alongside you because he doesn’t want you to feel alone in your fear

Jokes on him because you can tell exactly when he’s scared or not, because laughing is his coping mechanism for these things

The louder he laughs, the more scared he is, and he laughs a fair bit while you’re walking through the haunted house

When he really gets frightened though, he accidentally activates his quirk so you feel his skin harden a little in your hand

Just as quickly he retracts his hand and forgets his fear in favour of worrying over whether he hurt you, the sweetheart that he is

But the highlight of the night is really when Bakugou nearly blasted Kaminari to smithereens when he appeared behind him wrapped in Sero’s tape like a mummy, but not without Mina’s acid melting through the tape so he looked like he’d just escaped from his ancient sarcophagus

The only reason Bakugou stopped himself from yelling ‘die!’ is when he hears a ‘whey~’ escape from the mummy’s mouth, which is when he drags the ‘mummy’ by the collar out through the exit while the rest of you rush after him in hysterical laughter

Whether it’s because Kaminari instantly sobered up when Bakugou threatens to blow him up, or that Kirishima notices that Bakugou’s palms and forehead are tinged with cold sweat, you all have a great time nonetheless

When you confront Kirishima about purposely faking his fear in front of you, an embarrassed blush immediately overtakes his face

‘I just thought it’d cheer you up, so you wouldn’t focus on your own fear too much,’ he says, and his face turns even redder when you laughingly point out his own tells

‘I guess I really can’t hide anything from you,’ he then smiles after looping his arm with yours on the way back, the Bakusquad squabbling a ways in front of you so they can’t hear his next words that make you swoon. ‘But I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

#bnha x reader #bnha headcanons #mha x reader #mha headcanons #shinsou hitoshi x reader #shinsou x reader #hitoshi shinsou x reader #todoroki shouto x reader #todoroki x reader #shouto todoroki x reader #shouto x reader #kirishima eijirou x reader #eijirou kirishima x reader #kirishima x reader

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woozapooza · 3 years

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Moby Dick 1998 reactions

Literally just the notes I took watching the 1998 Moby Dick miniseries. I enjoyed it a lot but I like the 2011 one better.

Elijah is pretty goofy here

Note to self--find video of Henry Thomas talking in his normal voice. Is he doing a weird accent for this role, or is that just how he talks? He sounds almost Irish. [BTW after I finished watching, I looked up a video of him talking in his normal voice and he does not sound weirdly Irish-tinged in real life, so I have no idea why he was talking like that in this adaptation.]

They shoehorn some narration from the book into Ishmael’s dialogue

Not sure if the problem is with the actor or the dialogue, but Henry Thomas’s performance is...rather stilted

Here, Ishmael has no nautical experience.

“I fear I must make a confession. I used to be a schoolteacher.” HE SAYS THAT LIKE IT’S SO EMBARRASSING

When Peleg says that Queequeg “doesn’t look like much of a Christian,” Ishmael fires back with “HE’S KILLED MORE WHALES THAN YOU CAN COUNT” and seriously looks like he’s about to punch Peleg until Queequeg puts his hand on his shoulder.

Queequeg is less worldly here than in the book. Ishmael takes him to church to teach him about the concepts of God and souls.

STARBUCK IS PLAYED BY BUFFALO BILL FROM THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS?!

Ishmael is so serious here

Stubb is perfect

Interesting that Ishmael is a brand-new sailor, but he already knows the song (shanty?) the other sailors are singing

The guy playing Flask could stand to rein it in a bit

Pip is younger than I imagined him. But then, I don’t think his age is specified in the book.

Ishmael’s hands are burned by the rope. Later, below decks, Queequeg patches them up :)

One guy literally refers to Ishmael and Queequeg as “lovebirds” and another guy makes kissing noises at them

Those guys try (pathetically) to bully Queequeg. Ishmael says to Queequeg, sounding kind of ashamed, “You pagans should teach us Christians the art of kindness.” Queequeg reassures him that they (Q & I) are friends *emotional emoji*

This is so weird! There’s a scene where basically the whole crew converges on Ishmael and tells him scary whale facts while he looks terrified!

I feel like Ahab needs to have a beard. I forget if he has one in the book but he SHOULD.

Ted Levine has the absolute BEST judgmental face.

They keep the scene of Ahab throwing his pipe overboard!

Pip sounds like he’s from the Caribbean? Interesting. I looked up the actor and he’s from Wisconsin.

Fedallah is east Asian instead of Parsi for some reason

“There’s no savagery of beast that’s not infinitely outdone by that of man.” I love that they retain Ishmael’s bursts of human-phobia!

The little swing Captain Boomer uses to get to the Pequod looks like so much fun

After the encounter with the Samuel Enderby, Starbuck openly stands up to Ahab, but Ahab shuts him down. Then there’s a shot of Pip angrily throwing down his tambourine. I like that. It adds some depth to Pip.

Wait, Bulkington’s name is in the credits??? He’s here??? I looked up the guy who plays him and I don’t recognize him but apparently the character is here somewhere.

The whale looks so silly

Pip is in Starbuck’s boat here, and the emphasis is on Starbuck, not Stubb, choosing not to bother helping him. That’s an odd choice. I like that Ishmael is trying to get Starbuck to go back for Pip. When the hunt is over, Starbuck proposes going back for him and Stubb argues against it. Now that I think about it, I kind of see what they were going for. Starbuck’s first priority is to get the job done and his second priority is morality.

A SHARK ALMOST GETS PIP?! WHAT’S GOING ON

When the rescue boat approaches the Pequod, there’s a shot of Ishmael holding Pip in his arms <3

When Pip is lifted aboard, Stubb celebrates. Sir, kindly shut up. You were in favor of leaving him to die. Okay, to be fair, I guess the novel is coloring my view of the miniseries’ take on the character. Here, Stubb wasn’t the one who left him behind, that was Starbuck. Stubb just thought he was probably dead, which I guess is reasonable.

Out of nowhere (unless I’ve forgotten something), Bulkington is an actual character in Part 2.

I love the choice to literally film from Pip’s point of view to depict his terror and disorientation.

I don’t love this portrayal of Queequeg, to be honest. He lacks subtlety.

Pip starts dressing up as Ahab. I’m trying very hard not to find this funny. I KNOW it’s serious. It just reminds me of when I was a kid and I would entertain my mom by putting on her hat and shoes.

Unlike in the book, here Pip doesn’t become...I don’t know the word for it. Disidentified with himself? He doesn’t talk about “Pip” in the third person or say that Pip is dead or missing.

I like that, unlike the 1956 and 2011 versions, this one is really making an effort to depict the bond that forms between Pip and Ahab. However, the fact that it only forms once Ahab sees Pip dressed up as him cheapens it a bit, I feel.

Ooh, they have Queequeg stand up to Ahab! That’s a fun choice.

Ishmael is very angry that everyone on the ship is going mad.

Why do some of the actors pronounce Queequeg’s name “kee-quay”???

THEY HAVE QUEEQUEG DECLARE THAT THERE IS NO GOD ON THE PEQUOD AND THROW YOJO IN THE FIRE???

Starbuck catches Bulkington trying to jump ship and go home to his wife. Instead of trying to stop him, he gives him a letter to deliver to Mary. Bulkington suggests that Starbuck just come along with him, but Starbuck can’t bring himself to do that. That’s really interesting. I like that.

Starbuck comes into Ahab’s cabin, where Ahab and Pip are both asleep, and stands menacingly over Ahab. Maybe thinking murderous thoughts? I’m not sure, but DEFINITELY thinking malicious thoughts. But then he sees Ahab put his hand on top of Pip’s, and he softens. I love that.

Ahab takes the wheel in a storm. Major Flint vibes!

Patrick Stewart seems to be having a great time

I THINK QUEEQUEG JUST DECLARED AHAB HIS GOD? WTF

Ishmael and Starbuck commiserate about how everyone else on this crew has lost their minds. In the book, Ishmael is clear about the fact that he was under Ahab’s spell just like the rest of the crew (minus Starbuck), but I guess they wanted to give him stuff to do in this adaptation aside from just being one of the crowd.

Whoa there is something weird going on between Starbuck and Ishmael. I’m starting to ship it, frankly.

I don’t like what they did with the “let me gaze into a human eye” scene. In the book, it’s really moving. Here, Starbuck literally has a knife in his hand. Ahab puts his hand on Starbuck’s face and Starbuck looks extremely uncomfortable. However, as the interaction continues, you see Starbuck start to feel less murderous and try to reason with Ahab, so I guess that’s good.

Oh snap! Starbuck holds the knife to Ahab’s chest...and then starts crying. And then voluntarily lowers the knife. This is wild. Ahab says “what have I done” and you get the sense that he’s on the verge of being persuaded...when the guy on the masthead spots the whale.

I like that this version includes Fedallah at all but Kee Chan is simply not given a whole lot to work with.

OH GOD QUEEQUEG GETS BADLY INJURED—I THINK HE SOMEHOW GETS HARPOONED?—AND HIS LAST WORD IS “ISHMAEL” AND THEN HE SINKS UNDER AND ISHMAEL SCREAMS AND DIVES AFTER HIM AND TRIES TO PULL HIM UP BUT QUEEQUEG SHAKES HIM OFF I’M GONNA DIE

AND THEN WHEN ISHMAEL RESURFACES HE SCREAMS AGAIN I AM DEVASTATED

The cook and the carpenter are both trying to get the doubloon. Guys...priorities.

Starbuck is just hanging out inside the boat this whole time and then the whale rams into the boat and Starbuck and Pip both get overwhelmed by the water :(

As the carpenter dies, there’s a shot of the doubloon in his hand. I like that.

As with the 2011 version, the “epilogue” feels a little rushed. I guess maybe it just doesn’t translate all that well to the screen. Oh well.

#Moby Dick #Moby Dick 1998 #x

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ultrahpfan5blog · 3 years

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Watching Snyderverse Part 3 - Zack Snyder’s Justice League

After BvS, I was honestly not particularly looking forward to Justice League. For me, it was obvious that Snyder’s versions of these characters and his overall doom and gloom approach was not something I was particularly enjoying despite some promising elements in both MoS and BvS. Then we saw exactly how JL production went down. Despite the happy face they tried to paint, the fact that there was going to be a 2 hour mandate, the fact that Whedon basically reshot a bunch of Snyder’s film with the film being a mishmash of two directors who couldn’t be any more different in their sensibilities, and that that the actors, specifically Ben Affleck, looked like they couldn’t wait to be done with this movie and this role, made it obvious that the movie wasn’t going to turn out well. So my expectations were rock bottom for the theatrical cut. As it happens, that was a good thing. The theatrical cut of JL is a thoroughly unremarkable movie. I don’t abhor it but it is so obviously a patchwork job and a studio mandated film that there is no passion or vision in the movie at all. I mean, I didn’t like BvS much at all, but there was a vision there. Theatrical cut of JL seemed like a film that felt like WB just felt they had to put out there and then move on. And then years later, we get Zack Snyder’s full version of Justice League. I watched it in one sitting, which was maybe a mistake because it is heavy viewing for 4 hours. Without a doubt it is a better movie than the theatrical cut. Its a little tough to judge this film because this is no way a movie that would have been released theatrically. But its also impossible to judge on what it may have been if it was edited down to a 3 hour length. So best to just judge it on its own merits.

Firstly, the positives. This is definitely a more coherent and clear movie. The plot is not rushed and every sequence, be it a character moment or an action sequence, is fully realized without any weird edits. The film does have some more humor than the previous two Snyder films. Mainly courtesy of Ezra Miller and Jeremy Irons. And the humor is not awkward like in the theatrical cut. Ezra Miller in particular benefits from that because some of his cringey lines from the theatrical edition are cut. The special effects are largely impressive and definitely an improvement over the theatrical edition. On a character level, definitely Cyborg gets the most benefit out of all the characters. As we get a full and thorough backstory for him. We get insight into his relationship with both his parents. Steppenwolf also gets significantly more screen time and his motivations are definitely more clearly defined in the movie than in the theatrical. Miller and Momoa also get some more scenes to flesh out their individual characters. What does surprise me is that the film contains a lot of scenes which are essentially just alternate versions of scenes from the theatrical cut. The film isn’t radically different from the theatrical version, but the scenes included in this version feel a little more real. Like a scene with the entire League discussing Superman’s return in the theatrical cut made it obvious that the actors weren’t in the same room together, whereas the original scene in this movie has them clearly in the same physical space. The Superman scenes are also infinitely better without the CGI upper lip. Thankfully, Snyder doesn’t do what he did with the previous two movies and gives some breathing room between action sequences. Probably a bit too much time, but that’s better than no time at all. the tunnel action sequence and the climax set piece is definitely pretty cool. Flash actually having an active role in the climax was a big improvement. My favorite action sequence is still the Superman vs the League because it shows just how powerful Superman can be. Also, the color palette is a lot more consistent and better than the weird bright and red color palette that is used in the theatrical cut.

When it comes down to the performances from the cast, nobody really stands out. They are all fine, but unlike in BvS, where Affleck stood out. Everybody here is just motoring along. In the theatrical cut, Affleck looked completely checked out. I was hoping the original cut would beef up his performance. While it is slightly better, he’s still just a bit too restrained in the role and doesn’t leave the type of impression he left in BvS. Everyone is at their most dour self. Gal Gadot’s WW is more serious and therefore does not get to show her more radiant side in Patty Jenkins’ movies, Momoa is also similarly more dour and serious and not quite as fun as he was in Aquaman. Ray Fisher is decent but its a role that requires him to be very robotic for large chunks of the film. So its a little difficult to assess his performance. Cavill is in far too little of the movie to give much of a performance. He’s perfectly fine in the handful of scenes he has. Miller is probably the best of the lot, even though he’s still more Peter Parker than Barry Allen. Some of the supporting cast actually fare a little better. Irons is a delight whenever he’s on screen and Affleck is also at his best when they have scenes together. That dynamic works. Joe Morton is surprisingly affecting as Silas Stone, as is Billy Crudup in his brief scenes as Henry Allen. Its always nice to see more of Willem Dafoe, Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen, and JK Simmons. Simmons as Gordon was great casting and its a pity we won’t get to see more of him in that role. Amber Heard for some perplexing reason has a British accent in this film as Mera. Given Dafoe and Momoa both speak in their normal voices, that must have been a choice. It did feel a bit funny. Jared Leto and Jesse Eisenberg are back as Joker and Lex and neither of them particularly improve on their performances. I mean, they have a scene each so its no harm done, but the Joker scene particularly drags on for too long. Amy Adams has a small role and she does manage to make to get some emotion out of a handful of scenes.

The film has more than its fair share of issues. Firstly, it is just way, way too long. The pacing is glacially slow at times. And I mean that in the most literal manner. There is so much slow mo in this movie, its crazy. I swear, if you removed the slow motion, you might lose 20 minutes of the run time. Snyder is clearly in desperate need of an editor here. The film has the exact opposite problem of the theatrical cut. Whereas in the theatrical cut, it always felt that every scene was just edited a little too short, in this movie there are scenes that are going on for far too long. There are some very strange edits. Like an entire scene where women in the village are singing hyms when Arthur leaves and smelling his clothes. There is a meet cute between Iris and Barry which is completely unnecessary and is frankly slightly creepy where Barry is caressing her face while she is in the process of being thrown out of her car. Some music choices in these scenes are also a little bizarre. Everything involving the Martian Manhunter is not necessary. I mean, his involvement in a crucial Martha and Lois scene actually takes away from the emotion of that moment. And then he has a very tacked on final scene which is kind of awkward. The Knightmare scene also drags for a bit too long, especially given they are supposed to be in danger while being out in the open. We still have no more clarity as to why Bruce is having these visions. The slow pace does make things boring at times as well. While I am glad that Cyborg’s backstory gets beefed up, there is a bit too much of Cyborg being angry at his father. After a while, it gets monotonous. The film takes too long to get the team together and the first JL action sequence doesn’t happen until over 2 hours into the movie. The film should have spent a bit more time with the team interacting with one another. That’s what made the Avengers movies work and some of the best parts of this movie are also the team together. There are some Snyder tone deaf moments as per usual. While WW’s entry action sequence is very cool, I do find it funny that they have her comforting a girl and the girl wanting to be just like her after she basically obliterates the terrorist into dust. Given her abilities shown in that sequence, there is no reason she wouldn’t have been able to disable him. But instead she just obliterates him. Its all very Snyder. I do also have to wonder about that sequence. I still don’t get exactly how terrorists feel that blowing up a few city blocks will bring down the modern age. I thought this was a weird Whedon thing but it turns out to be a weird Snyder thing. Also, for all the hype about the black suit Superman, its really nothing more than an aesthetic choice for no rhyme or reason. I honestly prefer the Blue and Red if the black suit doesn’t have a point, like the restorative factor from the comics. Also, for all the blame people put on Whedon about the skimpy outfits on Amazons and the weird backside shots of WW, turns out they were all Snyder. There are a few select things that the Whedon cut did slightly better. For example, there is no real major debate or conflict within the team other than minor objections from Arthur over the implications of using the mother box to bring back Superman. Also, a sequence in the theatrical cut where Bruce admits that Clark was more human that he was, is a better version of a similar scene in this movie. Also, while not perfectly executed, the theatrical cut did acknowledge that Bruce was a human fighting amongst superpowered individuals. Also, most importantly, while Steppenwolf is an improvement over the theatrical cut, this is still a movie where the plot involves a villain trying to find three boxes. Steppenwolf is still pretty boring and the main story is not interesting at all. The Darkseid angle of this story is also overhyped since he’s barely in the film.

In the end, it feels that there is a pretty decent 3 hour movie hidden in an ok but dragged out 4 hour film. I’m glad the Snyder fans got to see it. I have had my issues with Snyder’s vision. While I feel he has grand ambitions and a sense of scale and scope, he hasn’t really got the sense of story and script to really make it work to a degree where the audience at large would appreciate it. I have seen his old storyboards and read his recent interviews about what he was going to do. It sounds very grand and very cool, but with a big potential of being a gigantic mess. Who knows what will happen in the future but at least it right now seems that they are moving on from Snyder’s vision. For this film, I am right now landing at about a 6/10, which is the highest mark out of all the Snyder DC movies. I’ve only watched it once and watching it again is a big endeavor so I won’t do it anytime soon, but maybe revisiting it will make me either like it more or less.

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paranoia-assault · 3 years

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Fate/Stay Night Review

I've been meaning to get around to this for a while, so this post will contain my thoughts on Fate/Stay Night. I'll be going in order of how you're supposed to play the routes. Massive spoilers btw. Also this is copied over from Twitter, so sorry for any weird formatting.

Keep in mind I enjoyed every route, so any negative points I bring up never made me think the route wasn't worth reading. That said, UBW > HF > Fate, so we'll be starting with my least favorite route.

There's 2 reasons why the Fate route is my least favorite. The first is that is has to explain a lot, so it feels like not much happens in it compared to the other two routes. The second is Shirou's "girls can't fight" bullshit. I can't stand Shirou in the 1st half of the route. Shirou does get better, but this is probably my least favorite version of him. I cannot stand every moment he tries to hold Saber back from fighting and almost gets himself killed because "girls can't fight." It is extremely aggravating.

That said, Shirou is fantastic in the second half of the route. The Fate route is Saber's story, and he plays the perfect part in it. His dream of being a super hero goes perfectly with her wish of being a great king. Seeing these ideologies clash, then come together, is amazing. It's why I like the Shirou/Saber ship despite Shirou/Rin being my favorite. These two were practically made for each other. Last Episode only adds to this, and it made me retroactively like the Fate route more. Saber's ending was beautiful and their eventual reunion even more so.

Illya was also great as a villain. I do think Gilgamesh and Kirei both have routes where they shine better as villains, so when I think "the villain of the Fate route," it's Ilya who comes to mind. Berserker was the perfect threat, and the two together were genuinely terrifying.

Summed up thoughts on the Fate route: Good starting point. A bit slow, and Shirou is very annoying in the first half, but the Saber/Shirou dynamic in the second half makes the route worth playing. 7/10.

Time for my favorite route: Unlimited Blade Works. I fucking adore this route. When I think "Fate/Stay Night," this is the route that comes to mind. If I were to recommend one route, it would be this one. I even plan on watching the anime for it at some point.

The main reason I love this route is Shirou. UBW Shioru specifically is one of my favorite Fate characters. He is confronted with a massive challenge to his ideals. He's pretty much shown they're flawed. But rather than toss them aside, he strengthens his convictions. He denies his future self, determined to be different. Yeah, his ideals might have flaws, but why should that matter? Carrying on Kiritsugu's dream is meaningful to him. The pain is worth saving those he can. Even if it's a thankless, miserable task, he won't turn away from it.

Oh, and let's talk about Archer. I love him. Seeing a pessimistic side of Shirou, a potential result of his ideals, was fascinating. I was genuinely shocked when the twist happened, and it made me deeply appreciate Archer's character. Archer is another of my favorite F/SN chars.

Now, let's talk about my favorite F/SN character, Rin. Rin is great. She was trained to understand and accomplish what has to be done, but has a soft spot not unlike Shirou's that leads her to help others. She had a painful upbringing, but doesn't regret a second of it.

She is the perfect foil for Shirou. She recognizes the pain his ideals are putting him through, but rather than force him to throw them away, she decides to stay with him to make sure he doesn't push himself too far. She tries to help Shriou learn to enjoy himself. Shirou/Rin is my favorite ship in the VN for this reason. They compliment each other so well. Their personalities clash in a way that lets them both grow, and they're genuinely cute together, though you can say that last part about any of the 3 main Shirou ships.

The villains are also great. Caster isn't the same type of threat as Illya/Berserker, but her backstory and dynamic with her Master is really interesting to see. I enjoyed her moments on screen. Gilgamesh was the perfect final boss for this route though. Specifically for Shirou. Gilgamesh' powers match Shirou's reality marble perfectly. Infinite Noble Phantasms. Gilgamesh calls Shirou fake, but that leads to Shirou showing how an imitation can outclass the original. It's such a smart hero/villain dynamic, and the perfect end to Shirou's story in UBW.

Saber even gets some closure in this route, though not as much as in Fate. She gets to be Rin's Servant at the end (which I adored btw), and once again chooses to destroy the girl, moving on from her past. Also, she lives in the good ending which makes me happy.

I also need to talk about Illya. Her scene with Berserker is one of her best scenes in the entire VN. She's barely on screen in this route compared to the other routes, but somehow she made just as much of an impact with that time. I felt so bad for her in that last scene.

Summed up thoughts on the UBW route: This route is where all the characters shone their brightest. Shirou's ideals are handled perfectly, almost every Servant gets the attention they deserve, and the writing is overall high quality the entire route. 9/10.

Finally, Heaven's Feel...I think my thoughts on this route will be the most controversial, as I have very mixed feelings.

I do want to say this first. I love Sakura. She is a fantastic character, and she deserves the world. I'm glad she gets the spotlight in this route.

I also think Kirei was at his best this route. His backstory, along with his final confrontation with Shirou, were both extremely well written. He went from a despicable villain to a despicable written I love to hate. He almost stole the show as much as Sakura did, honestly.

Rider was great this route. I love the twist that Sakura is her true master, and her protective nature over Sakura was great to see. This is the only route where she manages to stand her ground against Saber for a decent period of time, too. I'm glad she lives to the end.

The highlight of the route, however, has to be Sakura and Rin's bond. Learning that they were sisters, and seeing them slowly and awkwardly get closer, is fantastic. That final confrontation between the two of them blew me away with the spectacle & Rin using the second sorcery. Of course, the hug that ended the fight was the best part. Rin realizing she can't kill Sakura after all, despite everything she said to Shirou, was beautiful. Sakura's horror at thinking she killed her sister, showing she's not a full monster yet, was tragically heartwarming.

Them bringing the sorceries in with Illya and Rin was nice. I like how we got an epilogue that took place two years after the final battle rather than a few months. There is a lot to like about this route.

...But there's also a lot I don't like.

Zouken and Assassin are just...okay villains. I don't think they're terrible, but they're not as interesting as any of the other villains in F/SN.

My main complaint is that this route introduced too much. So many elements are here that aren't even touched on in previous routes. Zouken, true Assassin, the crest worms, the true Holy Grail, Angru Mainyu, these are all elements of the route that I'm just supposed to accept only come into play under these circumstances. Sometimes it feels like they came up with it all after the other two routes were written. None of them are badly written per se, it just feels so out of nowhere that I couldn't fully get into the story here.

As for what I do think is badly written...I don't like Shirou in this route. He feels more selfish than in the others, often pushing aside others' feelings. The main moment that comes to mind is when Illya goes with Sakura. When Shirou finds her, he slaps her and yells at her, not accepting her feelings of wanting the end of her life to be meaningful. And there is no way to escape her death. The route makes that clear. Shirou also throws away his ideals for Sakura, which I don't like. The route before this one had him stick to his ideals despite being given evidence of the despair it will lead to. Yet here he tosses them aside without that, simply for one person.

Maybe badly written was too harsh. Shirou's fine, I like him more than in the first half of the Fate route, but he just doesn't seem to fit with the other instances of Shirou, and there were often times he frustrated me. Again, I did love his confrontation with Kirei though.

Now for the romance of this route. Shirou/Sakura. I'm sorry, but...I'm not a fan of this one. It's cute, even made me emotional at times. I think these two can have a great relationship. The thing is, I don't like how it happens here specifically. I think these two are way too dependent on each other, to the point that one can't live without the other. Just look at the bad ending where Rin kills Sakura and Shirou gives up entirely, or the normal ending where Sakura wastes away her life after Shirou's death. There's even a physical dependence due to the state of Shirou's body at the end of the route. It's honestly worrying how much they need one another.

I think they can grow past this, and I'm sure they do since the true end is a happy one. I don't hate their ship. It's my least favorite of the three, but I can easily see it being someone's favorite. Hell, I know someone for who it is. The ship isn't awful, just has some issues.

Back to the route as a whole, it is certainly the most ambitious, but I think they got carried away at times. It's certainly more geared toward horror as well, especially with those bad endings. Not that that's a bad thing, even if I'm not often into horror.

Summed up thoughts on the HF route: A spectacular finale to the VN, but it has a few hiccups along the way. There are a lot of great character moments and interesting ideas that make it worth the time. The true ending is beautiful as well. 8/10.

Overall thoughts on F/SN: A great time that I would recommend to anyone who can get it working on their computer. Fantastic characters and cool concepts drive what can be just decent writing at times, and the high points are really high. Definitely worth the lows. 8/10.

Quick add on for my thoughts on the prequel, Fate/Zero: An amazing first half that got me attached to so many characters, but it falls apart in the second half due to Gen Urobuchi's more problematic writing tendencies. Those have been discussed to death, so I won’t go into detail on them here, Still, the show has enough moments that make it worth watching. 6/10.

That's my experience with Fate so far. I'm about halfway through the first arc of FGO, so I'll make a thread summarizing my thoughts on each singularity when the time comes. Also I want to read Fate/Hollow Ataraxia if I can. Overall I can say I’m glad I got into this franchise, and I’m excited to engage in more Fate content.

Anyway, this review took me 80 minutes to write, and another 15 to copy over here. Clearly I’m pretty passionate about this franchise.

#fate #fate stay night #fate stay series #fate stay ubw #unlimited blade works #heaven's feel #fate stay night spoilers

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thefilmsimps · 3 years

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Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (dir. Destin Daniel Cretton)

-Jere Pilapil-

I feel like I should start with a little bit about the “representation” angle that Marvel and Disney have been pushing with regards to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Marvel has finally done it and made a movie starring a mostly Chinese cast. I’m Filipino-American, and I’m pretty sure that specific movie isn’t coming any time soon, so I gotta live vicariously through movies like this and Crazy Rich Asians. I’m not going to lie, though - on a pure representation level, it seems to me that it’s not that progressive that the first Asian Marvel Cinematic Superhero’s power is “He is good at martial arts”. I’m sure this is deeply meaningful for some people who wish to “see themselves” standing shoulder to shoulder with Captains America or Marvel or whoever (eventually, one assumes), and I wouldn’t want to take away from that.

But it feels at least a little unimaginative, no? Like Marvel’s creative endeavors aren’t really creating a new definition of Chinese or Asian identities; they’re just absorbing existing imagery and ideas, polishing them up and selling them back to us. I can’t think of a better example of the limits of big-budget spectacle as a vehicle for representation. Marvel and Disney have thousands of characters, ideas and stories that they could choose to adapt, and yet, they apparently find themselves limited to updating hoary tropes, tweeting “We did a progress!” and calling it a day.

The biggest challenge in adapting Shang-Chi for a movie would be the source material. Sure, it’s been well-covered how the Shang-Chi comics are insanely orientalist. They’re not “racist” in a cruel way, but every, say, 2 pages you think “Right, yes, this was created by white guys in the 1970s”. The more insidious issue is that Shang-Chi is… not much of a character. Partly as a result of the cultural blind spots of its creators, most Shang-Chi stories are either “Shang-Chi must stop his father’s evil plans” or “Shang-Chi’s father has sent assassins to kill him” (we get a little of both in the movie). The narration provided by Shang-Chi tend to be goal oriented (gotta stop dad), or pseudo-philosophical riddles. There’s just not much personality there.

The core concept has a stench of rot to it, but Marvel went ahead with it anyway, retrofitting some of the central idea to something palatable to a modern audience. They come away with a movie that at least fixes the Orientalist sins of the past. As for the hollow innards of the titular character, well, they’re smart enough to surround him by heaps of supporting characters. Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) floats through his own movie, not as goofy as his BFF Katy (Awkwafina), nor possessing the gravitas or emotional arc of his father (Tony Leung), nor as interesting a backstory as his sister Xialing (Meng’er Zhang). I can’t really tell you much about this iteration of the character other than, well, he must stop his dad’s evil plans.

Simu Liu is very likable in the role, though. His chemistry with Awkwafina and Meng’er Zhang is solid. It just feels like large chunks of the movie are big setpieces meant to distract from the character being thin. That said, the setpieces are mostly knockouts. And as seen in other action movies (shout out to The Night Comes for Us), character depth can be overrated if the action is cool enough. The strength of the old Shang-Chi comics is true of the movie, too: the action scenes are very well-realized. The choreography is tight and creative. A fight scene on a bus featured in the trailer is fantastic. A fight between Shang-Chi’s parents is deeply romantic. Shang-Chi deserves credit for understanding that martial arts movies treat fighting as its own language. This manages to still be true on the very Marvel climax, which is high on CGI bullshit but manages to at least do some almost subtle nonverbal communication between its main characters.

This is especially thanks to Tony Leung’s Wenwu, who steals the movie as the most fully realized character (probably true of the recent MCU movie characters stretching back to at least Spider-Man: Far From Home). I’ve said before that Marvel’s spectacles might function better as award shows than as movies, where the best actors get to sleepwalk through roles with a big stack of money at the end of the road. Leung’s sad eyes do more work than most villains’ monologues can, letting us in on the emotions of a man who has lived with infinite power for thousands of years and has finally found something he can’t have. There’s more than a little Neon Genesis Evangelion influence to his character, but given more humanity. It’s beautifully realized performance.

Ultimately, this is a Disney/Marvel production. Several of the normal flaws apply. The darkest stuff happens off screen. The action can sometimes be too reliant on CGI (disappointingly obvious CGI, considering this studio has infinite resources). But the action on the whole is stronger than the average Marvel movie, echoing and aping the martial arts greats in equal measure. As with all of these, it’s at least partially an ad for more adventures with some of these characters, and it succeeds on that level and as its own standalone film. And hey, now that we’ve ripped the bandage off the “First Asian-led MCU movie”, maybe we can finally get somewhere more interesting next time.

7.5/10

#movie review #marvel #MCU #Shang-chi #martial arts

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vroenis · 3 years

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Part 2

This is part 1.

Can you tell how tired I was getting by the end? This is life under meds, but given the other benefits (I think?), I’ll take it for now.

When I woke up the next morning, I had a whole lot I was thinking about and it’s stuff I want to say given I said a lot, but didn’t cover this stuff. I’m still happy with part 1, I think that’s just how I write, moving from subject to subject more or less organically and it does show me to more unstructured even if there is a vague plan for how I want the piece to go.

Anyway let’s get going.

As always, mild spoilers for well, everything. If you haven’t seen this stuff and are mildly interested in watching them then ah, you may have a lot of catching up to do. I don’t think I’ll drop any real hard spoilers for anything but you never know.

Ghost In The Shell is an Outsider story

There are whole stacks of lore you could dive into with Stand Alone Complex in particular, with Motoko having been in an aircraft accident and getting her first shell (cyber-body) at a very early age, what that means, the thing with Kuze (avoiding spoilers here), and the extended cast - not that Paz, Boma and even Ishikawa get a whole lot of time anyway - but it’s not really that important.

Looking at just Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 film, and even more-so his 2004 film Innocence (not really a sequel but usually regarded as such), the narratives cast the characters very much as Outsiders. In the first film, Section 9 is already at odds with the government in general and while it’s subtle, Aramaki as a department head is certainly different from his contemporaries, even if we don’t see much of it - again, so much more of this in Stand Alone Complex. Motoko’s early conversation with Togusa in the first film is probably the most telling as far as playing it loud. She speaks in pragmatic terms to why he’s there, but this is a precursor to what will ultimately transpire for herself at the conclusion of the film, something very intentionally written into the film. Batou is also an Outsider in more ways than one, not only in the role he plays in the department but in the very clear personal boundary between him and Motoko. There are boundaries between Batou and everyone and they become more apparent in the second film. Togusa is easy pickings so I’ll leave him alone, suffice to say if the film needs one, he’s the audience’s window of ignorance which is why he’s discarded so willingly half way in. He gets his time in the spotlight in Stand Alone Complex and it’s pretty amazing.

As for Motoko... I admit it is difficult separating my understanding of her character from Stand Alone Complex and attempting to just isolate what’s shown of her in the first film but I’ll try.

I mentioned the film’s centrepiece montage in my previous journal, in which we might say Motoko is the centrepiece but if so, she probably shares it with the city itself, and I feel much more is being said about the two together rather than separated simultaneously. This would be one of the first indications of Motoko’s sense of identity, of otherness, isolation, questioning. Again the scene that plays it most loud would be diving on the boat and her speech to Batou. There are other moments tho; single frames of her face, looks, movements that are lingered on, I feel like Oshii is constantly telling us about her and what she’s going to do, but more important than that, why she’s going to do it and how she feels.

Ghost in the Shell is a film about great emotion, and not like I’d know because it’s been a long time since I’ve looked into the discourse around it, but I suspect no-one really talks about it as a film about feelings.

I realise these days I talk more and more about moods and art being mood pieces. I labelled my Instagram account as being “A catalogue of moods” and I’m very fond of the use of the word in vernacular. It might seem flippant but it’s immensely empowered, especially for me as an individual when I understand my moods and can translate them into, via and thru art. I do appreciate many struggle with Oshii’s cinematic language as it can appear cold and detached and that’s fine, but it’s anything but for me - it’s immensely emotionally charged, it just appears differently to what audiences are perhaps accustomed to seeing. It’s a different language that perhaps takes time to learn, but it’s all there.

This couldn’t become more evident than in Innocence (the Ghost in the Shell 2 moniker I think was a western addendum). Batou takes centre stage and is immediately presented as bluntly as possible as an Outsider, reaffirmed later by Aramaki who also cements Togusa’s position in limbo.

I should pause and say that within the GitS canon, I feel Togusa is definitely embraced by Section 9, so he’s not wholly an Outsider to the department, but for obvious reasons, he doesn’t fully share all of their daily or philosophical concerns - hence not wholly. He would also definitely be an Outsider to most other members of the force after joining Section 9, but unfortunately I’m not here to love Togusa, poor guy - I feel like he’s always a bit unloved. Someone write a giant essay in service to his greatness. He actually is great.

But I adore Batou in Innocence. I love his story, his struggle, his emotion. I love how present Motoko is without ever appearing on screen and then when she does, the impact she has on everything, especially with the lines she delivers, one of which I quoted to open the last journal. Batou is in many ways a shadow of what Motoko was and is/has become, just in physical form, mirroring her in a real world manifestation with the natural physical limitations that comes with.

For some reason I feel like I need to inject a comment about Batou putting the jacket/vest on Motoko’s body. I don’t know if people perceive this as an act of masculine modesty but it’s not how I read it. I did stumble on this action for years but as I began to interpret the films as Outsider stories, I realised that he does this as an act of inclusion, and that Motoko consents, permits him to and doesn’t immediately react with violence or technological recourse we know she is well capable of, indicates it’s mutual. Their inclusion isn’t just about the boundaries of the Section 9 department but extends beyond that, an inner circle that may only contain the two of them - inside which there are still boundaries between them Batou can never cross. Those boundaries become infinitely more apparent after the final events of the first film, and the second film effectively is all about how he feels about them. He is an ultimate Outsider, but so is Motoko in the state she now is in.

Section 9 is a department of stray dogs. Individuals who haven’t quite fit in where they belong, and found belonging with one another. Then, after a time, one of them moves on - at the conclusion of the first film, and then another feels an almost permanent and ultimate sense of separation - more or less the duration of the second film.

Ghost in the Shell isn’t about technology and sentience and hacking and corporations at all. It’s about loneliness and belonging and acceptance and affection. It’s about how that feels.

I’m Not Sure Why People Struggle With David Lynch Films

I need to stop talking about anime. Honestly I looked at the list at the start of the last journal and thought hell yea Sky Crawlers, Jin-Roh, Haibane Renmei and Lain let’s unpack some shit! but honestly I’ll run out of time and I should really draw from a variety of mediums and sources.

OK I’m not being facetious when I say Lynch’s films are fairly straight-forward narrative-wise. Again, it’s hard for me to position myself in a place where I’m not into the stuff I’m into and maybe that’s what gives me the cinematic language familiarity to parse them but that just sounds like wanker bullshit to me. I don’t mind if folks don’t like Lynch films, that’s fine. But they aren’t difficult.

So in the context of everything else, even on that short list on the last journal, plus how I keep trying to shift the discussion of works from the pragmatic reading of them to an emotional reading of them from a mood perspective, I feel as tho the same process can be applied to Lynch. So much about his films are about how they make you feel, or I’ll say - how they make *me* feel. It might be grandiose to assume I’m feeling the correct emotion, that these are the moods that David Lynch himself is attempting to create and evoke and thus, I am interpreting them correctly but hey - I enjoy the hell out of the films, feel I understand them and watch them over and over again so that’s all I’m basing it on.

That’s not to say there are things I dismiss as meaningless or that I don’t understand in his films, it’s just that I don’t have to parse them immediately at first watch and perhaps that’s the audience’s problem. I don’t know if reverse-diagnosis is appropriate but looking at how much hand-holding there is in other directors’ films might be just as telling. I mean I saw Nolan’s Tenet and was about the least confusing thing I’d ever seen in my life but apparently *that* confused people, and you know hey that’s fair I guess, but I mean Nolan did a whooooole lot of audience hand-holding in that film, I mean, the dialogue was terrible. There was so much unnecessary exposition, which I generally find in all of his films, so if an audience can’t follow that then OK sure, Lynch is going to be a problem.

The thing is popcorn cinema is totally OK. I watch it. I really love it, I’ve written about it before, it’s good Industry. There’s a lot of great creativity in popular cinema, I don’t at all think poorly of it and I love seeing a really well produced, Hollywood picture... but I guess if that’s all you consume, and I guess if folks’ short-format episodic media (aka series - think Netflix, HVO etc.) is more or less to the same standard, then it begins to make sense that anything outside of that isn’t going to make sense.

Long story short - Lynch films tell simple stories where the feeling of the film is as important as the narrative of the film. To understand the story, you have to understand the feeling, and vice-versa.

Surprise surprise, it turns out independent and deemed “fringe” film-makers... aka Outsiders... make films about Outsiders.

Now I wouldn’t know if any of the Marvel films thematically are about Outsiders or Outsider culture, they probably are and very loudly at that, but the reason I’ve never included one in my catalogue of moods is they all read the same way. Not only are Marvel films mostly indistinct from one other to me, they’re also mostly indistinct from much of popular culture in general. That doesn’t make them bad, some of them still have some pretty awesome stunts, visfx, even parts of the narratives, funny jokes etc. in them, but on the whole they’re not useful to me as things I deem truly valuable in the long-term.

It’s OK, I’m not at all going to lament the proliferation of Marvel films, a lot of them have been pretty cool and they keep people in work. Meow meow meow “the death of cinema” mate, sure - I find it more difficult to find the sorts of films I like but that’s always been the case. Humans will do what they do, it’s not a read on cinema, it’s about being an Outsider and what that’s all about. True, maybe weird shit like Lynch and Noe might be more difficult to make, but the weird-indie corner was also dominated by white men and that needs to change, so who knows what the future holds.

Can you detect the point at which I took my meds and started getting tired?

Ghost in the Shell // Innocence // What We Want // What We’re Left With

Growing up as an Outsider, I feel as tho the first Ghost in the Shell film carries the weight of isolation, questions of identity and belonging, ultimately of acceptance, empowerment and liberation. Then Innocence brings to bear very similar moods but states that things may not necessarily change for the better, they simply change state. I love that in both narratives, the main texts of hacking or corrupt corporations, crime etc. are the least common denominators and barely relevant to heart of the films. I think about the theme of icons in Innocence, icons operatively being the dolls throughout the film, and the final image of Togusa’s daughter’s gift. As humans we assume we’re to take the position of biological humanity as representative of sentience, taking moral priority over all other beings. Earlier in the film we think Togusa is in limbo, but at the conclusion Motoko asks the question, or perhaps states that perhaps we’re all in limbo together.

I think that’s a significant part of what growing up as and being an Outsider is like, what it feels like. Christians have this saying about “living in the world but not of the world” (derived from a bible verse) and honestly I don’t think they know what it means because they just operate like a cult, but I think queers and folks with long term mental health conditions have a better idea. We are pushed out to the fringes of our social groups from an early age, long before we know or understand what’s different about us. Our peers and the adults around us do this to us because their social behaviours are so well hard-coded, even they may not even know precisely what’s different about us, they just do - and they’re right. We are different. And they don’t accept us.

Maybe I am starting to get a little more upset that weird/different art is becoming more difficult to fund and make, because it’s for us, for me. It speaks to me. You already have so much, and representation and inclusion is so important. I don’t just need queer cinema, I need weird cinema, I need moods. I need quiet, introspective, pensive, reflective, Outsider moods.

I still feel like an Outsider. I have a few people who understand more about me, but I don’t think I have a place, not in a real sense. I have never felt that. Art is one of the few places I feel any connection with anything, and connecting with people is a very odd thing to consider - honestly, I actually would really like to connect with people but the unique combination of being queer *and* autistic comorbid with bipolar makes it really tough, more difficult the older I get. And now all you want to do is fund Marvel movies. I can’t feed off of that.

I’m getting tired, I’m not making any sense. It’s time for bed.

#2021 #chrono #ghost in the shell #innocence ghost in the shell #outsider culture #outsider #queer #queer culture

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