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phoenixtakaramono · 3 years

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So I'm here to say that I really love your Bingyuan fic! The research you do for it and share with us is just amazing! I also have a q regarding LBG. From SV we know that he felt admiration for his Shizun so do you think that if SJ wasn't cruel to him LBG's admiration would've grown into love and attraction like it did in LBH's case for SY? Which then also raises a question: would LBH/LBG fall in love with any Shizun who was kind to him? Or was he just drawn to SJ's type of personality. WDYT?

Hi there, Anon! I’m glad you’re liking the Untold Tale! Thanks for reading! I think it lowkey helps when the story I’m writing (in general) is from a culture I’m familiar with and that I know some of its language nuances (just general Mainland dialect; I’m unfamiliar with Shanghainese, the Beijing dialect, etc etc). So fortunately for me, as someone who is Chinese but was born in the Western side of the world speaking Mandarin to family and friends, emulating the Chinese aesthetic and atmosphere in TUT comes a little bit easier to me than someone who did not grow up with this culture. I bet if I had been raised in China, I would be able to write something even more multilayered and deep but, alas, the youthful rebellious me of the past hadn’t taken my pinyin and Chinese character writing lessons seriously so I can only communicate verbally and understand audibly 😫. It’s very special for us writers in fandoms to be able to write a story of a culture that we actually know and can identify with. But high key it’s been immensely fun injecting some references of things I’ve come to notice from watching period C-dramas and the C-novels I’ve read, and I’ve come to learn interesting things about Chinese history and mythology even I didn’t know! So the story really writes itself.

Shen Jiu (OG!Shen Qingqiu)

To answer your question 🤔, to be honest this is why the SVSSS fandom is great—because there’s so many interpretations of the original source material. That’s why we have our headcanons and fanfictions to explore these many different possibilities. So for me personally, I can see it happening both ways: *1) LBG does develop a crush/falls in love with SJ, or 2) no matter how SJ treats him LBG regards him respectfully or coldly. I think Possibility 1 is more likely, since SY transmigrated into SQQ and we saw what happened with “Bunhe.”

Now, mind, for Possibility 1 to be more likely to happen, the SJ in PIDW will have to undergo a massive personality change/ a change of heart/ develop a good conscience and will need to clean up his image aka clear up the massive misunderstandings from PIDW canon (like him being mistaken as a pervert for Ning Yingying, visiting whorehouses, killing LQG, etc). It’ll be difficult though considering who Airplane has changed SJ into for his stallion harem novel (reading through SVSSS, my impression of PIDW besides it being the harem stallion novel is that it sounds similar to a “dog blood plot,” where audiences tune in to see how the villains are brought to justice). I literally have a line from TUT in a future chapter where SY says this about SJ since I will resurrect SJ and bring him into the story for closure:

People like Shen Qingqiu naturally had a set of deeply-rooted values. If one wanted to change them, it’d be easier to just have them reincarnate. (—TUT, ch???)

At his core, he’s a flawed man (which makes sense with the underlying cycle of abuse theory, considering his upbringing and backstory). He’s jealous and petty and prickly. His image is that of a proud and cold immortal. In Chinese terms, he’s the type of character archtype who I can see being àojiāo (definitely not canon characterization; this is just a stray thought that amuses me) in a romantic relationship.

LBH will have to recognize that^, or be in a position where he finds SJ’s caustic side endearing instead. He will also have to be extremely patient with him (although, since the joke in SVSSS is that LBH is an incurable M, it shouldn’t be that hard).

A fun thing about OG!SQQ is that he’s the cannon fodder scumbag villain of PIDW. He’s the reason LBG blackened from a white lotus. And, as you know, villains aka antagonists aka bad boys resonate strongly with people for a reason. That’s why we see a lot of Enemies to Lovers tropes, etc. It squicks me to use this phrase but “the allure of dating a ‘bad boy’ is strong.” SJ is that type of bad boy we could identify as a “fixer-upper project” (ugh, that phrase)—even with the red flags and warning signs—especially for those said to have a troubled past with rejecting neglectful parental figures/ family members/ friends and have have not outgrown their wish to convert that sort of person into a loving, accepting person. When we want something we can’t or shouldn’t have, our desire for it grows exponentially. In fanfiction this is a concept writers and readers can explore safely in a world of the imaginary.

From a Meta Perspective

Although, if we look at it meta-ly, the cold and proud and/or knowledgeable Shizun (teacher/ master) character who comes to know love and “is redeemed” by whomever is the love interest (typically a cute and quirky girl who may or may not have started off as naive to the innerworkings of the Cultivation World and therefore needs an established and mature mentor to guide them) is a very well-known archetype for a reason in Chinese fan culture.

Seeing a terrible person change their ways and try to become a better person because of the influence of the one they love is also a popular depiction for a reason.

It’s almost like gap moe. The crueler and aloof one starts out as (arrogance is a staple), the more impactful the shift is when we see such characters soften their edges.

The draw of the sacred master/disciple relationship is that it’s taboo, so I think it’s fair to say that such a relationship in fiction is a popular trope precisely because of this aspect. From a writer’s perspective, the main appeal is to show that there is someone out there who can cause this respectful figure to lose control (undergo emotional change) and go to great lengths to protect his/her precious person. That precious person also has to fall into the “not like other girls” trope (so they can show the ML a different world he would not have seen the beauty of before). On the other side, we look forward to the point of the story where the love interest has their “Oh” moment and realizes their admiration has somehow shifted into love and attraction over the course of events.

Other Romantic Possibilities

It’s very likely. I personally like the fanon headcanon where anyone with Heavenly Demon blood running through their veins feels a compulsion to “obsessively fixate on one person” (TLJ —> SXY, LBH —> SQQ). Personally I don’t recall if this was canon or fanon, but someone had written something about LBH imprinting on one person in his lifetime on the account of his demon nature. And I like that theory (I think it’s likely more fanon than anything but it’s an intriguing idea full of possibilities!).

For him to fixate romantically on one person, I personally don’t think the prerequisite is just by being kind to LBH (but it probably adds to the person’s appeal). There’s probably other factors that go into this to capture the male protagonist’s eye, such as him finding someone attractive (or passes his own personal standards) and/or having good chemistry with that person. So I could see him being into other Shizuns and whomever else. Personally I also think there is appeal in the unobtainable. It’s one thing to have someone’s affection (see LBG and his harem of 600 wives who definitely aren’t shy about giving him affection), but it’s another to know you’ve earned the affections of someone you really like and respect (especially if it’s someone thought to be unobtainable).

As long as the writer can provide a plausible justification for me to suspend disbelief and they set up events to justify it, I can swallow just about any ship possibility. It doesn’t necessarily have to be SJ’s type of personality. (For example, I read a very good fanfiction before where the writer paired Luo Binghe with Ming Fan. Ming Fan, people!!! And they actually pulled it off! What a madlad! Mind, it’s Shen Yuan who had transmigrated into MF in that premise, but the writer set up events that showed how these two characters came to bond and develop a deep friendship which inevitably had LBH developing a crush on his shixiong. I use this as an example because this is the type of unexpected (crack)ship, but because the writer did their work trying to make it seem plausible, we can only admire their hard work and effort at pulling it off.)

As the saying goes, there are plenty of fishes in the sea! As the protagonist, LBH/LBG can have many OTP possibilities with just about anyone as long as the writer can make it plausible. It’s all about the character development and the story/ central themes they wish to tell with the ship!

(Note, these really aren’t hot takes, lol. I’m just having fun answering to this casually from the perspective of a writer. Thank you for your Ask, anon!)

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angelharness · 4 years

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DBD Killers as Yandere Archetypes

WARNINGS: yandere content

Not a request, but more so a graph I made while stuck in a bad mix of boredom and curiosity. Wanted to delve into the Killers as they’d fit in the ‘yandere’ trope, specifically what subsets they’d be (or archetypes, more accurately).

Foreword that I doubt I’ll write something of this nature in the future (unless explicitly a commission) as I’m not entirely comfortable with the matter. It’s very important to recognize this characterization as unhealthy and to never enable such behavior in any real relationships.

Will be sorting each killer into seven classes, including Isolating, Manipulative, Dependent, Possessive, Obsessive, Delusional, and Lucid

The definitions vary greatly depending on the Killer, while some may not fit an archetype listed, or could be a hybrid of any number of them. It’s also very possible for them to fit multiple subcategories.

For reference, a general key would be

Isolating - (Usually gradually) cuts off s/o from their friends and family, secluding them and asserting themselves as their only social contact. Goal is perhaps to make s/o reliant on them.

Manipulative - Fairly straightforward, though the means of manipulation vary. Often emotionally controlling. Might resort to guilting the s/o or self-destructive tendencies to get them to stay. Goal is to assert control over s/o.

Dependent - Depends on s/o for stability or comfort. Might suffer from separation anxiety and as such is terribly clingy. Often ignores other social ties to focus on their s/o. No implicit goal, but usually wishes for reciprocation of feelings.

Possessive - Similar to Manipulative and often a package deal. Would under no circumstances share their s/o, likely frets over losing them (perhaps to romantic rivals or even misguidedly anyone they falsely deem a threat). Goal is to assert control over s/o.

Obsessive - Not necessarily Possessive, though the two sometimes come together. An Obsessive might not outwardly act on their fixation, but silently pines intensely for their s/o. Fixates heavily on their s/o. Goal is to become closer to the person of interest, or wishes for reciprocation of feelings.

Delusional - Hard opposite of Lucid. They likely wrongly believe their feelings are reciprocated, believe them and their s/o are meant to be, or that their s/o is in denial of their feelings and it’s up to them to help them realize this. No implicit goal, but usually wishes for reciprocation of feelings.

Lucid - Hard opposite of Delusional. Well aware that their feelings are unhealthy and destructive, but usually represses these thoughts or simply doesn’t care. Might feel guilt, but it’s often overshadowed by longing. May have any of the formerly listed goals.

EVAN MACMILLAN / THE TRAPPER

Lucid, Possessive

Right off the bat can tell there’s something harmful about his feelings. They’re too heavy, intense; he’s wary of scaring you off, but once you establish a relationship you’re pretty much trapped, and he’s sure to make this known. He’ll sever any means of escape and isn’t terribly against offing any other persons he perceives as a threat. This might be as minor of an offense as another survivor expression concern for your situation.

PHILIP OJOMO / THE WRAITH

Obsessive, Lucid

Will largely attempt to repress his feelings, sensing that it can’t quite be healthy. He considers himself too horrible of a person to ever be able to offer you a stable relationship, so he pines from afar. It aches endlessly, but he is unlikely to act on his emotions. This might come to be self-destructive, and you’ll find he lashes out at you in an attempt to distance the two of you. For your sake, he convinces himself.

SALLY SMITHSON / THE NURSE

Delusional

Her time in the fog is washed intensely in delusion. She believes, though her method cruel and unforgiving, her intentions are good-natured. The same will apply for any romantic feelings. It’s impossible to reason with her mindset, soiled with delirium, and she’ll shut down any arguments with the accusation that you’re the delusional one; she only wants to help. You’re callous, pushing her away, she convinces herself.

MICHAEL MYERS / THE SHAPE

Possessive

He’s hard to figure out. He keeps his intentions unknowable, preferring that power over you. Feeds from your unease, and thrives off of displays of fear. He wants a reaction, that much is obvious, and no means are excessive to get that out of you. It is unavoidable that he will eventually tire of you; when you spend so long jabbing at your food with a fork, it gets cold. When that time comes, he’ll rid of you lethally.

HERMAN CARTER / THE DOCTOR

Lucid, Manipulative

Well aware his feelings could quickly become dangerous, though doesn’t find himself caring an awful lot. He has way too much fun messing with you, making you doubt yourself, him, others. Might also be categorized as the type to isolate you, purposefully confining you, starving you of interaction beyond him. His end goal is to make you entirely and completely reliant on him, though finds the process more exciting than the desired objective.

ANNA / THE HUNTRESS

Possessive, Isolating

To a certain degree she is definitely delusional, but I wouldn’t consider it severe enough to categorize her as such. She recognizes your fear, though believes it’s something that can be overcome with a lot of pushing. In that regard, she's impatient, and is swift to become frustrated at an immediate lack of progress. Oblivious to why you would ever need anyone else beyond her; she supplies all you’d require.

BUBBA SAWYER / THE CANNIBAL

Dependent, Possesive

Partly delusional, but knows you’re unwilling. Still, relies on you for a feeling of normalcy, that distant echo of a real, functional relationship. Couldn’t bear the thought of you with anyone else, so much he might resort to threats of violence to coerce you into staying. Whether these are empty or significant falls on you to figure out. Liable to tantrums when you’re away, though the severity of these outbursts is determined by his current stability.

AMANDA YOUNG / THE PIG

Lucid, Manipulative

Fairly coherent regarding her emotions, though this regulation never translates into her actions, which are twisted by impulse and anxieties. Unintentionally incredibly manipulative, will very quickly turn to self-destructive exploits to gain your sympathy and convince you to stay. Eventually, she stops caring if you’re only sticking around out of a feeling of necessity. If you ever show intent to leave, though, she’d panic. Can’t conceive a life without you now that she’s met you.

RIN YAMAOKA / THE SPIRIT

Dependent, Manipulative

Another case of unintentional manipulation. On the verge of lucidity, but blinded by the hunger for comfort and stability you offer her. If she feels you’re losing interest, may also fall back on harmful habits, though herself isn’t certain if it’s a cry for recognition or a method of escapism. Horrified of losing you, and it’s very clear that’s the case, however she tries to subdue such feelings. Becomes incredibly reliant on you very quickly. Fixates on any acts of kindness.

THE LEGION

FRANK

Possessive

Possessive through and through. I can’t really see him fall into any of the other categories much, but may also employ a bit of manipulation, usually in the field of threats against loved ones. It’s never clear if he’d follow through on these remarks, but given his impulsivity and history of spontaneous violence, you’d prefer not to risk it. Intensely against you socializing outside of the Legion, where he trusts them immensely and sometimes relies on them to keep you in check.

JULIE

Possessive, Isolating

Can be likened to Frank, but will never entirely trust you around the rest of the Legion; she loves them so, but is dazed in her worries of losing you. Often lashes out at them, all in her desperation to confine you to her. Never above physical threats if it means you staying. Her capacity for guilt will gradually thin, though there are moments, glimpses of lucidity where she reflects inconsolably over her actions. It all falls into a cycle, though, and she traps herself in a descending spiral.

JOEY

Lucid, Possessive

His descent is a gradual, aching one. He watches passively as he careens into devastating obsession, worsening but with no will to stop it. Like Julie, he adores the family he’s established in the Legion, but can’t stand the possibility of losing you to one of them. It would be more personally crushing, so he figures he’d rather be safe than sorry. Calmer than Frank, but not entirely beyond threats of violence if he felt the situation called for it.

SUSIE

Obsessive, Dependent

Lucid to a degree; she’s never been in a relationship herself, and the possibility of a stable one now is unfeasible in these circumstances, but she’s witnessed enough to understand there’s something profusely wrong with her feelings. Eventually, her mood will come to depend heavily on yours, and how you treat her. Praise and displays of affection make her day, though alternatively, something as simple as a drop in tone can ruin her entirely.

ADIRIS / THE PLAGUE

Possessive, Delusional

Adiris is not delusional in the sense of wrongly believing you return her feelings, but instead, ignores the possibility entirely. She’s banished the notion from her mind, naively trusting that you love her wholly and unquestioningly. It will take time for her to view you as equal and acknowledge you have needs separate from her; she prefers the bliss of complete control over you. She finds comfort in her ignorance, and would never want to trade that for the much more bitter reality.

DANNY JOHNSON / THE GHOST FACE

Lucid, Possessive

Absolutely aware of the unhealthy nature of his emotions, though thrives off the high of it. As time goes on, he needs more and more to reach that pleasure again, until he’s wrung you dry, left you empty and disjointed, and no longer sees a use in you. Views you as a beloved item, and treats you as he pleases, which is dictated by his mood (which itself fluctuates sharply). Threats are abundant but sporadic; you could be having a nice dinner and he’d flip out a knife and direct it at your neck.

CALEB QUINN / THE DEATHSLINGER

Possessive

Does not exactly view you as an object or possession as much as he views you as just his. Wants you to be reliant, and never expects you to stray far from his side. He’ll show you off to the other killers, boasting, going on about how obedient you are, no matter if you express discomfort; he laughs it off coldly. Quickly gets frustrated at any acts he might consider instances of disobedience or defiance. Relies heavily on threats, and he can get intense.

PYRAMID HEAD / THE EXECUTIONER

Possessive

He is an intriguing case. The only real category I could see him falling into is possessive, where in his head you belong to him and in return, he is to protect you. If he failed that task, the only reasonable response would be punishment. Similarly, if you exhibit a lack of faith, he’ll supply discipline as he sees fit. There’s no way out once you take that plunge; a beast that can’t perish and a realm that won’t let you die sets up an eternal commitment.

#dbd imagine #dbd x reader #slasher x reader #slashers x reader #slasher x you #slasher x s/o #slashers x you #reader insert #x reader #horror x reader #villain x reader #cw yandere #💾:harpy writez

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life-rewritten · 3 years

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TharnType 7 Years: A flashback to the past and A foreshadow of the future aka The truth of TharnType and LeoFiat ;Episode 6

Guess what another Tharn and Type analysis, another repetition of the duality, mirroring, shadowing of Tharn and Type (TT) and Leo and Fiat, but this time it's even more complicated, and every time I analyse these two it gets even more complicated and painful. I'm going to try and write out a full analysis of why Leo and Fiat (LF) are more complicated when you try to compare them to TT. Fiat reminds us of Type in season 1; he's stubborn, immature and problematic and Leo reminds us of Tharn just by longing secretly for Fiat and always putting Fiat's well being first, but that's only on the surface. Leo and Fiat have even more depth than those comparisons, there are times where Fiat is actually more like Tharn and Leo is more frustrating as Type. Confused? Let's go into more detail. Also JUST realised that it’s both episode 6 of season 1 and season 2 that are mirrored this way. That’s incredible.

What I like Mame and her writing for shows is that she loves making sure you go through a journey with her characters. Her villains usually are not just one-dimensional irrational villains, they have depth, in fact, most of the time they have their own love interest later, sometimes we root for them (like Tin from Love By Chance Season 1, and Tul from a chance to love), sometimes we feel upset and angry and frustrated at the actions they do. It's no surprise in a show as explosive as TT we get Fiat, someone who is also very polarising. But you know what? I love that about him. I didn't think this series will make me fall for another couple as much as I love TT, but no I am obsessed with Leo and Fiat, their dynamic, their requited longing that they both don't see and think it's unrequited from their point of views, their love for each other and what they mean to each other.

You can find my previous Tharn and Type posts about how this season is about Misunderstandings, Misreading and Miscommunications from two different perspectives, our couples all have something to overcome since they don't see each other's views, and Leo and Fiat are the same. The most important thing they don't know about each other is how much, how great, how uncontrollably they are with their love for each other. Leo is refusing to show it, and Fiat is more reactive and preventive to it. Both are idiots who can't see something so obvious, but hey that's what makes this trope even more angsty and dramatic, both couples go through drama, pain and we the audience join the ride. And it's funny people complain that this show has no angst as the past season. Still, Leo and Fiat literally are the plotline of the past season, just as angsty, just as passionate (despite no s*x) and just as dramatic and idiotic.

What I love about TT and LF as a couple is that they both are flawed. It's funny because other people always focus on just one of the couples as the most problematic, but no, they are always both all in need of growth and change. Shocking right? It seems like we should feel sorry for Leo, and hate and complain about Fiat's personality, but actually, Leo is just as problematic as Fiat, he's also been a source of hurt to Fiat for so long. The same way in season 1, Type was to Tharn, and Tharn was to Type at the beginning when he didn't know what Type went through. The beautiful thing is seeing how love changes these characters, how needing each other makes them finally become who they're meant to be and how they finally get to their end; confident, happy and satisfied. And we the audience are part of this, we end up crying, and never wanting to let go of the show. Let me show you how:

Tharn Type and Pufai vs Leo Fiat and Type dilemma

Ah yes, I'm sure you've seen the similarities and mirroring to Leo and Fiat with Tharn and Type in season 1 episode 4-7. The introduction of Pufai caused a massive problem for Tharn and Type and almost caused them to end everything. One because it was the most hurtful Type was to Tharn, and two because it was the only time Tharn almost gave up on Type. It's so interesting when you look at what was happening at that time, and then when you look at Fiat and Leo, you see the similarities on a different level. Let me explain;

When Pufai shows up Tharn and Type are unofficial, they call themselves s*x friends, Type ensures Tharn that they're not in a relationship and he shouldn't overstep the line with it. Tharn as always is more believing that he can make Type agree to be his, and everything seems great at that time. Except then Pufai shows up, she's interested in Type and is precisely what he thinks is his type, he also is enjoying getting to know her, and he finds himself intrigued by her flirting with him. Type does not see any problem (though there's guilt) to flirting with Pufai because he's not dating Tharn, they're not official, they are just friends with benefits. Type keeps it a secret; he's seeing Pufai, but Tharn finds out and loses his cool, how could Type do this? Isn't he his? This leads Type to emphasise on the unofficiality of their relationship with a list of rules, they were never meant to be anything. Tharn is accepting of this at first because it's the only way he can stay with Type however the more Type gets close to Pufai, mostly planning to sleep and ask her to be his girlfriend, the more his heart shatters. Tharn proceeds to break down and cry about the futile love he has for Type. He has to move on, but he doesn't know how. Except, Type realises that if there are people like Pufai in his life, there'd be others for Tharn, he doesn't like that; Tharn is his, and so from here we see Type apologise, and TT become official to each other. Their relationship is now deemed unbreakable, no one else is allowed to break it, they've chosen each other as their person. You may be wondering why I have just repeated this whole storyline, but it's crucial, now read through this summary of Leo and Fiat and try and find out why:

Leo and Fiat are friends, but not really. They've been close to each other for 10 years. I say not really because everyone even we can tell there's more to them. Fiat is always trying to cross the line with their friendship; he ensures Leo knows he wants him to flirt and notice him. Leo ignores this and thinks Fiat is fickle and not serious. Fiat then proceeds to sleep with others, and flirt with others to take his attention from that. But each time that happens, he gets bored and returns back to Leo flirting and asking for his attention like a child. Leo is comfortable with this, as long as he's Fiat's main focus, as long as he's able to keep Fiat by his side, then what they have is excellent. Except Type shows up, he's Fiat's type, he's intrigued in getting to know him, and Type pays attention to Fiat more than others do, for Fiat, they have a connection, something feels warm and safe with Type, and wow he wants to pursue what he has with Type. Pause before episode 4 Fiat didn't know Type wasn't single, he just chose to be serious with Type before that, he fell for Type before that.

Leo is uncomfortable; this doesn't sit right for some reason, Type is actually important to Fiat and Fiat is not paying attention to him. Leo tells Fiat, Type is dating, Fiat brushes it off and says he still wants Type. Leo explodes, and Fiat ends up broken-hearted and hurt that Leo would kick him out. More shockingly, he unveils that the reason he's desperate to be with someone like Type is because; Surprise! Leo, and yet Leo isn't thinking about how he feels. Shocker. Leo returns and apologises and takes Fiat inside but now we the audience are confused? What does he mean by that? Why is liking Type for Leo? Why is Fiat so problematic, and why is Leo and Fiat's dynamic confusing?

Did you see the similarities? Let's look at it differently. Let's give roles to Fiat and Leo as TT, who is more like Tharn in the Pufai arc and who is more like Type?

On the Surface and Personalities.

Obviously, the first thing you look at is the designated Uke and Seme role. Who in this story on the surface so far is longing for the other, and who is acting like what they have doesn't matter and is problematic. Well, Leo is acting more like Tharn then. He's longing secretly and hurt because of Fiat's actions with other people, just as Tharn did with Pufai and Type, he's the one showing jealousy and fear of being left. He's not okay with the shift in their unofficial relationship and seems like he wants more. Like Tharn he looks perfect, protective and romantic than Fiat. He seems devoted and loyal like Tharn is to Type. And he's the seme just like Tharn. So he must be mirroring Tharn, right?

And we have Fiat like Type his eyes wander, he's the one who's treating what he and Leo have as nothing, he's problematic and loud and stubborn and childish just like Type was in the arc. Type shouted, was rude, and even punched Tharn remember? He proceeded to keep being nonchalant towards Tharn's feelings because Tharn wasn't the one for him. After all, he was homophobic. Fiat is not homophobic, but he's spoilt, childish and selfish, he's an attention seeker, so he acts like a brat to get attention. When he has the attention, he takes people for granted, and he does things that are problematic for example he doesn't think it's wrong to stop wanting Type after finding out he's not single. Fiat is like because I want it I must have it. And Type was similar; not the same way (trying to ruin a relationship) but he was selfish and cruel to Tharn because he refused to acknowledge what Tharn wanted, he could tell it was killing Tharn, but he proceeded because it didn't mean anything or he was trying to convince himself that it didn't mean anything, he was just as bratty and childish as Fiat was when questioned about his choices. So yeh he's mirroring Type in this situation right?

Except still looking on the surface, mind you; let's look at the mindsets and psychological past of the characters and see who mirrors who here. Bare with me, let me explain.

On Background and Mindsets

Let's look at the background: Tharn is used to getting what he wants, that's why when Type continues to reject him he keeps holding out hope it'll happen, he also is rich, spoilt and manipulative but in a more sneaky way. He knows how to guilt Type into feeling sorry, and he convinced Type to continue what they have. When he realises things aren't going his way, he mopes, rejects it but then goes back to Type until he can't take it anymore. I also want you to notice who ends up crying and heartbroken in this arc it's Tharn this is important for later.

Tharn also felt unlovable and always was seeking for someone to pay attention and stay by his side; he's the middle child who ended up having to grow quicker and be a tiny bit neglected, he also had his heartbroken from the previous relationships; he's always felt left behind, neglected and not taken seriously. Who does that remind you of? Fiat.

Although Tharn's family loved him, so he still ended up okay. Fiat is a worse version of Tharn; in this case, he was just as neglected but even graver because his parents paid no attention to him and only gave him material things (hence why he's spoilt and selfish), he realised that acting like a baby got him attention and what he wants; that's why he's manipulative. He also felt not taken seriously by people, like people didn't get him. Even the person he cared about; Leo, who he was confident was someone he can rely on also made him feel neglected (because he kept ignoring his feelings). Fiat knows how to act like a baby to get Leo to bend to his will, but just like Tharn with Type in the Pufai arc, he doesn't think it's because Leo is 100 % devoted to him. It's also Fiat who ends up crying broken-hearted during this episode. I'll explain later.

Type is different, his mindset is shaped by his past. He doesn't think what he and Tharn could be is right, he's homophobic and determined to keep what they have unofficial. He doesn't want to cross the line, he keeps on pushing away Tharn's feelings refusing to deal with it seriously, and this is why he gets fixated on Pufai. He's desperate to avoid what he feels for Tharn, and he's desperate to keep his walls up no matter what because he's afraid to be hurt. It makes sense. As much as people don't yet see this, same as Leo. Type is protective of his heart, himself and his environment, Leo is the same, he doesn't think crossing the line with Fiat is right not because he's homophobic but because he thinks Fiat's feelings are fickle and not real; he keeps refusing to see that Fiat wants him because he's afraid showing Fiat feelings will make him bored and move on, and ruin their friendship. He's desperate to keep pretence that what they have is friendship, is defensive when people joke about him and Fiat and is repeatedly ignoring anytime Fiat tries to make a move. It's frustrating, and each time he does it, Fiat gets hurt even more.

This is why he's on the stairs crying wondering if Leo ever actually thinks about how he feels in their situation. It's the same way Tharn thought about Type. Leo is determined to not seem vulnerable, in love or weak, he even pretends his selfless actions to Fiat has no meaning even when Fiat prods him for answers he refuses to tell him why he does all the things he does, he claims its because he wants to, he has to because Fiat is crazy, but we all know it's because of three simple words, he loves him. And Fiat has guessed and questioned that just as Tharn assumed that Type also loved him but wasn't ready to show it. Tharn stayed loyal and patient with Type until Pufai entered the picture. Fiat is the same, when Type shows up (a difference because Pufai was for Type) he's desperate to change his loyalties so he can stay by Leo's side without hurting and giving up, on them.

Basically, Fiat is doing what Tharn would have done if Type had not returned to him during Pufai arc, he would have started looking for someone else to take the pain away from not having Type. And Leo is like Type when Type realises he can't keep things unofficial because it means; others like Pufai could come to Tharn, he doesn't like that, and he proceeds to cross the line with Tharn. Leo is becoming that way, the way Fiat wants Type is starting to no longer be a meaningless thing he can avoid, he's beginning to realise that their unofficial status, he so desperately tried to keep has no hold or control over this situation, he's still learning, but soon he'll realise being vulnerable is the only way to remedy this, but he might be too late.

So on the surface, you see how these two mirror each other? Let's look at this even more further. The unofficial list that Type sent Tharn is the same as the determination to keep things unofficial Leo has with Fiat. It's more unspoken, but it's the same rules without the sleeping together aspect. Leo is okay with Fiat being with others as long as they're not interfering with what he and Fiat have. Leo is okay with them cuddling and being close and doing things for each other but never crossing that line. Leo has the role as Fiat's person to everyone, he's the protector, most intimate relationship and the designated 'boyfriend' role to Fiat as long as no one tries and label it. Leo is okay with certain rules and understandings about what he and Fiat have, like rules, and as long as Fiat and others don't try and label it, it shouldn't be an issue. It's the same way as Type.

Duality and Differences of Opinion

The difference here is Leo isn't chasing after someone else, he's not the one with the Pufai. Fiat is. Leo isn't being cruel to Fiat by proceeding to find someone else the way Type does, but he's still doing the same thing Type does to Tharn with or without another person. He's still invalidating Fiat's feelings, he's still preventing the line from being crossed no matter how much Fiat tries, he's still defensive when it comes to others seeing them as more than friends, and he's adamant that what Fiat is saying he's feeling is not right, it's just Fiat being Fiat, and it's not going to last, it's the same way Type thought about Tharn's feelings.

Fiat may be the one who seems like the one invalidating the relationship, but it's actually more complicated than that. In Leo's perspective, he's Tharn; he's the one with the unrequited love, the one with the person who doesn't take his feelings seriously, who sleeps with others cruelly without taking account his feelings, the person he's had to stay loyal and patient with because he's devoted to him entirely.

In Fiat's perspective? He's Tharn, he's the one who's been trying years to cross that line with Leo, he's the one who has been waiting for Leo to take him seriously, he's the one who has to try and search for others to ensure that he's distracted by his rejected feelings so he can keep being by Leo's side, he's desperately searching for someone else like Leo, so he doesn't keep hurting secretly by his invalidation of what they have. For Fiat, he's the one who's loyal, patient and devoted to Leo ultimately; everyone can see it, he even lets Leo know how he feels. But also it's the reason why he keeps on acting spoilt and bratty; it's all for Leo's attention and love. It's the only time Leo shows him affection. Everything Fiat does is for Leo. He wasn't being dramatic when he said it in this episode. So why is he falling for Type then? What's the deal with Type then?

The importance of Pufai

To understand why Fiat wants Type. You have to again return back to the surface similarities he has with Type in season 1. You have to look at why Type decided to give a relationship with Pufai a go despite knowing he had Tharn. The reasons why Type wanted Pufai:

She was right for him

She was his type

She intrigued him

He liked talking and being with her

Let's break this down and compare it to Fiat then:

The right person for him

Type thought Pufai was right for him. One she was a girl, and he was finally relieved he found a girl he liked, someone who was just as into him, as confident and flirty as him, and he wanted that about her. She also showed him she had similarities to him, she mentioned the type of food he liked and found they had a lot in common. She was an ideal girlfriend. For Fiat, Type is not right for him because of the same reasons, but because he found someone who was just like him. Remember Fiat reminded Type of a younger him; Type was inspirational to Fiat, he also was someone who paid attention to him and showed him care and nurture when others didn't understand him. Type showed him the same kind of patience Leo showed him, but he also called Fiat out, and Fiat liked that. He could tell he and Type were similar, and it made him feel safe and happy when he was with Type. Type also was the person who was helping him deal with the fact that he couldn't play basketball, he was involved in the process of healing and assisting Fiat to become stronger to return to his passion. Fiat found that as another reason for why Type was right for him. Finally, there was someone else other than Leo who made him feel comfortable, happy and was determined to help him get to his passion. Type replaced the empty space Leo left when he went to Italy. Fiat embraced that and became obsessed with it.

His Type

In case it's not apparent his type are people who aren't afraid to call him out. People who make him calm down. Remember Fiat liked that Leo was able to be someone who helped deal with his emotional crisis, someone who was able to keep him in control, he trusted and appreciated who he was with Leo. Type reminded him of Leo, just like Leo paid attention but also made sure to scold Fiat whenever he took things too far;Type did the same, Type managed to tame Fiat by just speaking to him and calling him out on why he was throwing tantrums. Type is also good looking, and mature (same as Leo) and calm. We know he isn't generally like this, but this is how he appears in front of Fiat, and Fiat likes that about him. Plus Type is a quest. Or started off as a quest. Type had his walls up remember to Fiat? He was confused why he wasn't giving in to his manipulations, or his charm like others will. The other person who had walls up and didn't give into Fiat's charm was you guessed it, Leo. So Type is a similar copy of Leo to Fiat, someone who makes him excited, giddy, but also someone he can't win over easily. The idea of the chase also ensures that for the first time, he won't be easily bored, he'd always be distracted if he chooses to chase after Type.

Intrigue and Needs

It's that chase that kept Fiat intrigued and wanting to know more about Type. For Type Pufai fascinated him because she did not shy away from him, she flirted and was direct to him. Also, she intrigued him because at that moment, he was dealing with intense internalised homophobia and confused feelings. He was starting to be scared of falling for Tharn, for the way he was feeling for Tharn and how it was beginning to consume him despite his need to try and ignore it.

Fiat is the same. Fiat was falling for a futile relationship. Not falling; was already addicted and attached to the idea of a hopeless relationship that was hurting him. He was realising how much it was becoming a problem for him to be without Leo; it was killing him, and if you watch episode 2 again you can see how much Leo's absence was breaking him. He was realising he had to do something otherwise he would be forever stuck in this cycle. It would ruin the friendship he had with Leo.

Type was intriguing because he was the first person in so long that Fiat wasn't bored of, he was the first person that made Fiat want to do something, to forget Leo, the first person who distracted Fiat from his ache. So Type was like a cure he needed desperately, he needed someone to keep him in denial, to make him forget about the issue with the unofficiality with Leo, to make him stop resenting the fact that his feelings were invalidated. Type did that. It doesn't matter if Type has a boyfriend (the more the chase becomes intriguing for him) because Type is the first person he feels this way for. It has to be Type he chases after, it has to be Type who he ends up with because if not; his choice is to stay stuck in this painful cycle with Leo.

That's why he tells Leo it has to be Type, that's why he breaks down when Leo tells him it can't be because he was now sure he wasn't going to be able to keep being quiet and patient about what he had with Leo. The same realisation Tharn had in the bar with Type and Pufai, it had to end. But for both Fiat and Tharn, the idea of losing their person was a damaging thought, they didn't know how to cope with. Hence Fiat was desperate to find a solution for him; it was Type.

Talking and Being with him

That's another thing Type found out with Pufai, he liked replying to her texts, their flirtations made him smile, and he enjoyed speaking to her despite being in love with Tharn. Fiat is the same, he smiles just at the thought of seeing or talking to Type. He likes learning, and seeing that Type is a good person. He enjoyed observing Type, and how he acted, but also he liked the conversations they had, their discussions were deep even if people don't want to acknowledge it. Type's first conversation with Fiat was about how he understood what he was feeling and how he knew why he was acting the way he was. It was vulnerable, it was inspiring it was deep, not surface level. And Type also opened up to Fiat this episode, about his stress, burdens and others.

Their conversations are actually interesting and important, and they both help the other feel better. It's why Type is okay with showing Fiat attention (despite how he acted when he was angry and stressed) he sees Fiat like a little brother, a version of his old self. And Fiat sees Type as a role model, someone to look up to and learn from and be with. That's why he liked talking to him. But Leo is the person who Fiat loves the most to discuss with, to be with and to stay with. But when Leo can't be an option, Type is a perfect replacement, distraction and copy.

How Pufai affected TT

Tharn: He broke down and tried to accept it, but he was broken-hearted. Similar to Fiat breaking down at the Futility of what he and Leo have. He realised like Tharn there was no way to get over Leo if it's not Type. Hence his determination that it must be Type even if he has kids or a boyfriend.

Type: She made him think others could do the same to Tharn. If he got with her; Tharn would be free to sleep around and find someone else. This is why he runs back; meanwhile, Leo is also finding this out slowly the more Fiat falls for Type. If he doesn't show ownership of Fiat, then he's free to do what he wants. Leo knows that, and he's afraid because he also can see that Type isn't like others to Fiat, Type is a replacement for him. That's what he was angrier about; not Fiat saying Type had a boyfriend, but he'll still chase him, he was mad because this was more serious for Fiat than he wanted it to be.

That's the difference with TT and LF. Type realised that Tharn was the one once he couldn't sleep with Pufai, once he realised what he wanted was Tharn. Leo knows what he wants but refuses to let himself be vulnerable, refuses to try and cross that line and keeps finding excuses why he and Fiat are friends. Fiat is like Tharn; patient, sulky and devoted, but he's also different to Tharn because he had a different environment with family. Fiat is what Tharn did before Type if you remember: he slept around with people desperate to find the one and be loved. Unfortunately, he got bored, left and hurt each time he returned back to his situation and the permanent realisation that Leo was his person. It was futile he wouldn't be able to get over him. Tharn at that moment had given up on the idea of finding love, so seeing Type, he was determined to make it real no matter what. Same as Fiat just not the same way, for Leo he was determined to make it stay the same no matter what so he was determined to find someone else no matter what. If Fiat didn't try to find a way to move on from Leo, he would end up being Long in season 1, he'd be angry and upset and manipulative and determined to ruin whoever tried to be with Leo. But the reason why he tried to move on was that he didn't want to be resentful of Leo, he tried to find a way to stay by his side without breaking each time he did. That's why he's determined it must be Type.

Oh wow. The way I'm obsessed with these two couples dynamic, the way I live every Friday to see more, to uncover more, to know more about them. I live for this trope. I keep repeating it. But it makes me appreciate Mame's genius so much, I know it's forbidden to praise her as a writer. Still, when it comes to TT, Mame is a gift, she's incredible. She ensures that her characters are written with so much depth, and intrigue, their love is so deep it transcends everything, it makes everyone lose their minds, it makes everyone want to keep on watching and obsessing over the stories when she reveals the truth. Fiat and Leo are her reveals and plot twist this season. They're incredible. I hope people see why I love this show so much. I hope it stays this way until the end.

More Tharn Type Analysis: Masterpost Check under Tharn and Type Here

#tharntype 7 years of love #tharntype #tharntype 2: 7 years of love #tharn and type #thai bl #bl series #bl drama #mewgulf #tharntype the series #december #cwg #fvete

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thenightling · 4 years

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Differences between The Sandman graphic novels and The Sandman audio drama

Besides the obvious fact that one version of the story is told with pictures and written text while the other is told as an audio play here are some of the actual differences between The Sandman graphic novels and The Sandman audio drama.

This list does not contain every difference between the comics and audio drama but it contains all the ones I can recall over a month later after having listened to The Sandman audio drama.

At this point I have listened to the whole thing all the way through once, Sleep of the Just (Chapter 1) twice, Imperfect Hosts (Chapter 2) three times, and bits and pieces of the rest over again.

As we proceed, know that each chapter of the audio drama usually correlates with an issue of the original Sandman comics.

I do not mind most of these changes but I did feel that they were worth noting.

1. (This one was apparently a mistake). Though the importance of the binding circle was described in the audio drama, as was Alex’s wheelchair, the description of Alex’s wheel accidentally breaching the binding circle around Morpheus’ crystalline cage was not described in the audio drama. This impacts the story in that either we are to just assume the circle was broken at some point “off camera”, lost its power at Roderick’s death, or never really was part of what was containing Morpheus at all. As I am a bit of a purist I choose to pretend it just happened “off camera.” I wish a little narration was inserted to correct this though. I’m being petty...

2. At least twice in the first chapter of The Sandman audio drama we are told that Alexander Burgess and Paul McGuire are lovers. In the original comic this was only heavily implied and not out-right confirmed until The Sandman: The Kindly ones. This is definitely a positive change.

3. The Sandman audio drama quite specifically tells us that Doctor Destiny (John Dee) is actually the son of Roderick Burgess and not Ruthven Sykes. Sykes is listed as his father on the DC Wikia. I always had a suspicion that he and Alexander Burgess may have been brothers but thought my math was poor.

4. The story that introduces Hob Gadling (Men of Good fortune, issue 13 of the comics) is moved to Chapter 10 of the audio drama. This is another change I actually appreciate as I happen to love this story and like that now it stands alone instead of interrupting The Doll’s House. I never minded the interruption but now it seems to flow better.

5. The story of Elemental Girl (Facades) is issue 20 of the comics but moved to chapter 19 instead so that the audio drama could end on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Personally I was never a big fan of Facades, it’s probably my least favorite stand-alone Sandman story but I love A Midsummer Night’s Dream and I think that’s a much better spot to end on. This was the right decision, in my opinion.

6. Small details are changed at The Serial Killer convention. Nothing that changes the story too drastically but make it slightly more palatable to modern readers / listeners.

7. There is a new scene of one of The Corinthian’s victims realizing that none of them can see (and they are still quite alive) and The Corinthian announces that he is eating their eyeballs. It is sincerely disturbing, perhaps more so than any of the original illustrations.

8. The T. S. Elliot line “I will show you terror in a handful of dust” that was used on original 1988 advertisements for The Sandman gets used seamlessly in the story as early as the first issue. Needless to say, I liked this.

9. Virtually no one directly calls Morpheus The Sandman in the audio drama. This is a little odd but not necessarily bad. He is called Lord Morpheus or Dream of The Endless. In fact the original scene of Alex finding Morpheus listed in the Paginarum Fulvarum (Yellow Pages) is altered to accommodate this change of using Lord Morpheus and Dream of The Endless in place of some other titles. In that scene in the comics he was originally “Kinge of Dremes.”

10. Some accidental subtle changes to Death’s characterization. Death comes off as more distracted while Morpheus is trying to tell her what he has just done and been through. I realize this was partly to describe to the reader that she was picking a flower and playing with it but it unfortunately impacted how her personality came out. It was like she just didn’t care. And Death, herself, takes over the narration, including some rather cruel sarcastic narration commentary during the scene where the stand-up comedian dies. This is a bit of a criticism but sometimes changes like that influence how you see a character. Also why did she sound slightly disgusted when Morpheus asked where they were going next and her reply was New Jersey? It’s a common joke for those of us who were raised in New York but it doesn’t really fit Death.

11. Between chapters 5 through 8 I could pretty much sense DC corporate overlords looming overhead and determining how certain canon characters must be described or not described. Even in chapter 3 there is a change with John Constantine, a small one, but it’s there, nevertheless. This is one scene that was changed for the audio drama. The story ended with Morpheus agreeing to deal with Constantine’s nightmares for him in the comic but I guess since Constantine having nightmares became a thing in later comics by different writers they had to acknowledge that Morpheus couldn’t get rid of them forever somehow...

12. Morpheus is now given a little magick word to say when unlocking a door. It’s used twice. I believe it’s "âpreté." This is added for obvious reasons.

13. This is one that bothers me a little bit. Jed Walker’s foster parents are referred to as his “step parents.” This is a common mistake. A step parent is someone who marries your biological or legal parent. A foster family is not a step family. Foster parents are often temporary and are paid by the government to look after the foster child. Foster parents have not legally adopted the child. Sometimes the lack of official adoption is solely because the birth parents are still alive and have not relinquished the rights as parents. Most foster parents do have good intentions. Foster parents are often NOT evil abusers but much like the negative literary depictions of orphanages (which lead to America renaming most of them “Group homes” instead of actually improving the bad ones...) it has become a common trope in fiction writing.

In misusing “Stepfather” I see this mistake often in comics, such as in Marvel where Odin has been called both Loki’s Foster Father and Step Father. He’s Loki’s adoptive father. Laufey wanted nothing to do with him. And Odin is not being paid by the government to look after him. Nor has Odin married one of Loki’s birth parents. He adopted him. The distinction can be very important to many people.

Similarly I got annoyed by the 1999 DVD and VHS re-release of Labyrinth because the back of the box called Toby Sarah’s step-brother. Canonically Toby is her half-brother, not step-brother. A half-brother means he is her brother by the genetic biology of one parent. A step-brother means he is her brother because his parent married her parent and there is no genetic connection. It is an annoying and common mistake. Yes, you can have a deep emotional bond with step-family but the terminology matters to many people.

And there you go. All the changes to The Sandman that I can recall from comic to audio drama. Most are petty, some are good, some not so good. But unlike the many articles claiming it’s a word for word transfer, I’m obsessive enough to have noticed the differences.

#The Sandman #Neil Gaiman #Neil Gaiman's The Sandman

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darlingxdarkling · 4 years

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I can’t believe my first Medium article is a pop culture piece criticizing Sindel’s depiction in MK11 Aftermath, but you know what? It’s totally worth it.

Full text under the cut in case the article is inaccessible because of Medium’s paywall. I want my pieces to be as accessible to the public as possible.

Warning: Heavy spoilers for Mortal Kombat 11 and its expansion, Aftermath.

Ever since its first release in 1992, the Mortal Kombat franchise is known for its extreme, action-packed violence and gore that led to the creation of the ESRB. It’s also know for its controversial depictions of scantily-clad women; however, did this not deter female gamers from becoming fans of the franchise, myself included. Admittedly I am one of the fans of Mortal Kombat who was late to the party, partly due to my age and inaccessibility of gaming platforms, only discovering Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 in 2010 while playing with my older cousins, who were mostly boys.

Eyes fixated on the pixelated, motion-captured sprites on the screen in wonder, I remember being a fan of characters such as Raiden, Nightwolf, and Sindel. Especially Sindel, whom I grew to adore because of her regal, gothic appearance. Due to the stereotype that gaming is a masculine interest prevalent during those times, I felt alienated at times, having no other female playmate aside from my younger sister. However, seeing female characters such as Sindel gave me characters to identify with in my formative years.

A decade later, I still am a fan of the franchise, and of those characters. With the years that passed, there had been significant changes in the video game industry, and the clamor for better depictions of women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and other minorities. Mortal Kombat is one of the franchises that changed with the times, even introducing their first confirmed gay character Kung Jin in Mortal Kombat X, and depicting classic character Mileena and 3D era character Tanya as lovers in the same game, confirming that Mileena is indeed canonically bisexual.

Mortal Kombat X’s female character designs were diverse and realistic too; there were some female characters whose designs didn’t show too much skin, like Sonya Blade’s main costume, befitting her role and demeanor as a tough-as-nails general, and there were female characters like Mileena who had more skin in her costumes, justified by her character’s desire to compensate for her monstrous Tarkatan genes. It’s not perfect, but overall, Mortal Kombat X is a breath of fresh air to the franchise. As a bisexual, an Asian, and a woman, I felt seen. I felt good, because minorities like me are respectfully represented.

As for its sequel, Mortal Kombat 11, there are some noteworthy depictions of real-life social issues in the game, such as colonization, which is explored with Nightwolf’s revamped lore. In the rewrite, Nightwolf is depicted as someone who used to be angry that his people, a fictional Native American tribe called the Matoka, resigned themselves to colonizers in his youth, but was blessed by his tribe’s deity, the Great Spirit, with power to help his tribe move forward after he defended the Matoka’s honor against Kano. The subject of race is also explored with Jax’s ending, where he uses the power he obtains from the hourglass to create a world where Black people were never enslaved, which garnered manufactured outrage despite the lack of any real controversy. Another example is Fujin’s ending, where he uses his power to experience the lives of mortals of different races, realms, genders, and faiths, putting emphasis on the value of integrating with the masses in order to understand and serve them better.

However, there are some aspects of the game that left a bad taste in my mouth. No, that would be an understatement. It left me furiously disappointed.

John Vogel is the lead writer for the franchise since John Tobias’ departure, writing the bulk of the story until he left around after Mortal Kombat X. Dominic Cianciolo becomes co-writer, alongside Shawn Kittelsen. Cianciolo is credited as the Story Director for Mortal Kombat 11, and thus responsible for the bulk of the plot.

After being unplayable in MKX, Sindel returns to the MK11 roster in a Kombat Pack, expansions featuring characters who aren’t present in the main story or are guest fighters from another franchise, such as Nightwolf and the Joker from the DC Universe. At the announcement of their return, I was ecstatic. The way Nightwolf’s character is handled and the added lore left me positive and hopeful for Sindel’s return.

But then, the retcon happened.

Originally, Sindel is the deceased mother of Kitana whose husband was killed by Shao Kahn. She then sacrificed herself through a suicide pact in order to protect the realms, and was brought back to life as an evil queen by Shao Kahn milennia later, but then escapes his hold. Here, she is made to be evil all along, responsible for her husband’s death and willingly coming with Shao Kahn to rule alongside him. Sindel becomes a character from her society’s ruling class who is obsessed with preserving her privileged position. Some fans claim that this new depiction is “empowering”, but is it really progressive?

Today, the terms “empowerment” and “women’s empowerment” are becoming buzzwords used by advertisers and big industry writers in an attempt to sell their product to a growing number of women who takes part in geek culture or play video games, and a society with values that are getting more and more progressive. Some people call this phenomena “woke capitalism”, where a corporation adopts progressive political causes. The gaming industry is not exempt from that; people pay for games, downloadable content, and microtransactions after all.

More often than not, when male writers write “strong” female characters, they tend to focus solely on enhancing traditionally masculine values, such as fighting ability, ignoring what other values female characters have that make them strong, or they tend to be horribly, horribly tone-deaf, which I will explain in detail later. These representations of “women’s empowerment” should force us to reexamine the media we consume, and discern whether these are genuine depictions of social issues or woke capitalism disguised as such.

In the first place, why are so many writers obsessed with “empowering” female characters, instead of writing them as characters capable of fighting for their emancipation?

Empowerment is passive; it’s something granted by those who hold power, not earned nor fought for. In the rewritten Sindel’s case, she is empowered by Shao Kahn when he took her as his wife and gave her the privileges he enjoys. Sindel’s empowerment is selfish; her rise to power did not empower, emancipate, nor liberate her daughter Kitana, nor Jade, nor Mileena, nor the women of Outworld. On the contrary, it made life worse and oppressive for all of Outworld’s denizens, including its women, who now have to serve not one, but two privilege-drunk monarchs who rule with an iron fist. If that’s the values the writers want to impart on their audience, I have serious doubts on the sincerity of their “wokeness”.

The release of Aftermath takes things up to eleven, where Sindel betrays her own daughter to be with Shao Kahn, who, originally, enslaves her and forces her into marriage, which holds so much unfortunate implications for those in abusive relationships. It doesn’t help that Cianciolo liked a tweet from a fan that said the original Sindel, an abuse survivor, was never an empowered female character and a was bad mother for killing herself and leaving her child behind, bringing even more unfortunate implications not just for women in abusive relationships, but also for people who struggle with suicide. Somehow, Cianciolo and the fans that agree with him ignore these implications altogether and believes that the new haughty, tyrannical Sindel is an example of a strong female character. This isn’t the first time male writers tried their hand at feminist writing and ended up with tone-deaf plot decisions.

Cianciolo took a nuanced and well-written character and turned her into Shao Kahn 2.0. What happened is essentially the creative butchering of Sindel’s character; she went from being a survivor to an oppressor. Shao Kahn already fills the role of a cruel tyrant who refuses to relinquish his privilege for the good of the masses, and rewriting Sindel to become his distaff counterpart is not necessary at all. This treatment of her character isn’t feminist or progressive at all; it’s poorly-disguised misogyny. It’s implying that a woman can only be powerful if she submits to her husband so that he may grant her a taste of privilege reserved for powerful men, an antiquated sentiment best left to the feudal ages. Granted, the fictional realm of Outworld is ruled by a monarchy, but Sindel’s previous characterization is proof that writers can refuse or avoid using that trope.

Emancipation, on the other hand, is an active role; according to Ruane and Todd, it is “a process by which the participants in a system which determines, distorts and limits their potentialities come together actively to transform it, and in the process transform themselves.” This concept can be applied more appropriately to pre-retcon Sindel.

Going back to my days as a highly impressionable teenager, though I grew interested in her for her benevolent demeanor despite her intimidating appearance, Sindel’s roles as a survivor and a leader are what cemented my love for the character. Shao Kahn murdered her husband, usurped the throne, conquered her kingdom, and coerced her to be his wife. Later, she sacrificed herself for the greater good of a realm, and after being resurrected as an evil brainwashed puppet, she finally broke free from her abuser. With her newfound agency, she became a queen of Outworld who recognized her privilege and used it to stand with its masses against tyrants, and she also becomes a doting mother to Kitana, demonstrating great love for her family. When finally removed from her abuser’s influence, Sindel chose to be free, she chose to lead her people benevolently, and she chose to be with her true family. This Sindel broke free from the traditional Outworld power structure that Shao Kahn perpetrated for thousands of years, no longer a bride to be forcefully taken, nor a pawn to be manipulated by its emperor.

If you can look past the scanty costume design standard for video games of that era, the original Sindel could be a female character ahead of her time. Original Sindel not only can kick ass, she also has agency, willpower, and a heart; a strong female character with good writing. For those reasons, Cianciolo’s Sindel is #NotMySindel.

#mortal kombat #mortal kombat 11 #mortal kombat aftermath #sindel #shao kahn #kitana #king jerrod #not my sindel

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Over the Moon Review: Lunar Lessons in Grief

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Animated movies for children walk a tricky tightrope between imparting sobering life lessons about coping with loss and confronting societal evils, without also extinguishing all of the magic that guides a child through the world. It’s rare to find a kids’ movie that doesn’t involve the loss of at least one parent, yet this trope is usually more backstory than anything else—a distant event that establishes the emotional stakes but isn’t actively engaged with. Not so in Over the Moon, Pearl Studio’s poignant musical about a Chinese girl who builds a rocket to seek out the Goddess of the Moon. The film, written by the late Audrey Wells (Under the Tuscan Sun, The Hate U Give) and directed by Glen Keane (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast), gives the stages of grief as much weight and care as the phases of the moon.

For young Fei Fei (Cathy Ang), there is no question about the different magics that stitch her world together: it’s in the mooncakes that her Mother (Ruthie Ann Miles) and Father (John Cho) lovingly bake for the Mid-Autumn Festival, and in her parents’ stories about the tragic love between Moon Goddess Chang’e and human archer Houyi. When a magic potion conferred immortality upon Chang’e, but tore her away from the mortal Houyi, the goddess chose to live on the moon. Even if she could not be with her beloved on Earth, she would still be as close as possible, looking down on him. The myth takes on special significance for Fei Fei, as Mother quickly becomes ill and passes away, all in the span of the movie’s second song.

Four years later, the grief is no less sharp for preteen Fei Fei, who projects onto her widower father the role of Houyi. But when the Mid-Autumn Festival comes around and Father looks to be moving on with a new family in the kind Mrs. Zhong (Sandra Oh) and her hyperactive son Chin (Robert G. Chiu), Fei Fei fears that he has forgotten her mother altogether. Fueled by anger and an unwavering belief in the existence of the lunar goddess a mere 238,900 miles away, Fei Fei bargains with her sorrow by building a rocket and launching it at the moon. If only she can prove that Chang’e exists, then Father won’t stop hoping to be reunited with Mother someday.

But the movie really sparkles with its creativity when she gets there, and Chang’e (Hamilton’s Phillipa Soo) isn’t the ethereal, serene figure of Mother’s stories. Upon her DIY moon landing, Fei Fei discovers that the goddess long ago dropped that mantle in order to become an “extraordinary, ultra-luminary” popstar: lunarpunk by way of Lady Gaga-inspired costumes and K-pop-inspired earworm beats. Centuries of rattling around a neon prison of her own making—literally, created by her tears—has transformed Chang’e into a vain, self-obsessed performer who wants only the validation of her peons’ applause. This Chang’e resembles more a cruel queen than the maternal figure Fei Fei needs

Sony Pictures Imageworks (the company behind Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) deftly balances the magical with the scientific, the complex with the simple, in animating this movie that can best be described as a space fantasy. On Earth it’s refined by the incredible details, down to the design on the mooncakes, and the photorealistic fireworks acting as rocket boosters. A single spectacular sequence combines crimson-and-golden lion guardians, like something out of an old painting, with the desolate, craggy surface of the moon. Then there’s Chang’e’s entire neon aesthetic, bright and pulsing with life, as if it were something out of The Lego Movie.

Meanwhile the soundtrack is best appreciated not for individual numbers—no single song attains Disney classic status—but rather as the sum of its parts. There is a clear emotional arc to these varied numbers that when experienced as a whole is remarkable. The movie’s first few tracks draw their inspiration from traditional Chinese music, with later numbers layering on the K-pop influence, and then ultimately stripping the songs back down to their purest essence, matching Chang’e’s various phases.

That said, the songs do peak via the goddess’ popstar persona, with the most memorable numbers including her epic introductory performance of “Ultraluminary” and “Hey Boy,” a fun ping-pong/rap battle between Chang’e and Chin. While the team of Christopher Curtis, Marjorie Duffield, and Helen Park worked together on all of the songs, no doubt it was Park’s influence that made these particular numbers soar. (She was behind the 2017 Off-Broadway musical KPOP, in which Ang starred.) Composer Steven Price’s alternately playful and stirring score ties it all together wonderfully.

These sequences are so spectacular that it leaves something to be desired by a late in the movie scavenger hunt where Fei Fei begins pursuing a “gift” to save her family. Unfortunately, it is no more than a lunar MacGuffin: a distraction from the grief that weighs down both Fei Fei and Chang’e herself.

Nevertheless, Over the Moon never loses sight of the fact that this is not a story about gaining something or someone, but rather about learning how to cope with an unimaginable absence. Tragically, Audrey Wells died in 2018 following a long battle with cancer. A prolific screenwriter with a talent for writing across genres (rom-com The Truth About Cats & Dogs, Disney’s The Kid and the live-action George of the Jungle), Wells left behind a tremendous gift in this script. This is a heartfelt, empathetic lesson in moving on, written by someone who must have been considering exactly that ordeal from the other side. (It should be noted that Jennifer Yee McDevitt and Alice Wu contributed additional material to the screenplay.)

Parents may wind up ugly-sobbing while their children dance along to Chang’e’s pop numbers, but hopefully the film will provide the opportunity to talk candidly about embracing grief and memorializing those lost while looking to the future—magic for all viewers, regardless of age.

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Over the Moon is available Oct. 23 on Netflix.

The post Over the Moon Review: Lunar Lessons in Grief appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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dreamerinsilico · 4 years

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the obligatory “I just saw Rise of Skywalker” post

TLDR: My very low expectations were met. I didn’t consider it a waste of two hours.

Spoiler-free overview: It had some genuinely good, often funny banter, and a few character moments and narrative beats I thought were good at least in theory, if not necessary in implementation.

A lot of good actors did their best with a lot of bad writing. Structurally, I thought the way the ending resolved worked, if you accept the premise of the conflict. Unfortunately, the premise of the conflict was ridiculous from so many different angles I was rolling my eyes every few minutes.

JJ Abrams really needs to learn that not every fucking scene needs to be some flavor of highlights reel-worthy bombastic - it cheapens every actual Big Moment when the music and the cinematography and the delivery of the dialogue is trying to communicate “big moment” in every scene.

Spoiler-ridden rambling below the cut:

It speaks to the overall ridiculousness of the film that both my absolute favorite and least favorite things about it are minor details. :P

My favorite: When Our Heroes asked Hux why he turned on the First Order, I stage-whispered to my brother, “Because Kylo Ren is a dick!” right before Hux said almost exactly that. It was just such a perfect “...and we all know I’m that petty” detail, but it also really.... it stood out hardcore to me as an anomaly in the Star Wars saga, being basically the one and only case of one character’s shitty treatment of another having direct, major consequences! There’s plenty of friendship-based loyalty in Star Wars, and obviously a few big turncloak cases (Anakin, Anakin/Vader again, Kylo/Ben) where it was about the person’s loyalty to someone(s) on the other side, but Hux betrays the First Order strictly because Kylo Ren is an asshole and he’s fed up. (Contrary to every other Empire/First Order character who gets abused by a Sith on the regular.) A+, most believable thing in all of Star Wars.

My least favorite: FORCEGHOST!LUKE GAVE REY LEIA’S LIGHTSABER, WHICH WAS GREEN, AND WAS LIKE ‘YOU’LL TAKE BOTH OF THESE TO SITH PLANET’ (yes, good, setting up the eleventh-hour Rey-Ben alliance, symbolically appropriate, I like it) AND THEN WHEN SHE WAS FACING PALPATINE AND BEN WAS COMING TO HELP BOTH THE FUCKING LIGHTSABERS WERE BLUE! IS THIS FINAL-SEASON-OF-GOT-THERE’S-APPARENTLY-STARBUCKS-IN-WESTEROS LEVEL CARELESSNESS, OR DID SOMEONE ACTUALLY THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA FOR SOME UN-FUCKING-FATHOMABLE REASON?!?!?!

*clears throat* Anyway. I may have walked out of the theater ranting about that one.

Okay, next on the docket, the Reylo in the room:

It is not and has never been my ship, but in a big-picture sense I don’t actually hate it, and I definitely don’t hate the way their final scene went down. However, any actual satisfaction I might have taken in their arc is inevitably hamstrung by the fact that Kylo Ren does not, in my opinion, have one good line of dialogue in any movie he’s in, and his characterization has been actively cruel and unsympathetic the whole series, except for a very few moments with Rey, and most of the time with her he’s still being a condescending prick. “I’m going to find you, and I’m going to turn you to the dark side.” My dude. Maybe say literally anything other than that, if your goal is to actually change her mind.

I actually like (*coughs* love, more and more obsessively), on a big-picture level, the whole “bonding with your nemesis” thing, as a trope. But the nemesis needs to have some redeeming qualities other than the ability to look sad and tortured. With better writing in general, and an antagonist with any actual depth/substance, it could have worked, and worked well. As it is, I find I’m not mad at it as a thing, but like... what a damn shame. It could have been great; instead it’s hollow and incredibly under-realized. Incredibly. Even setting aside the fact that the set-up was hamfistedly awful (I’m talking about their interactions in the previous movies and this one, where he spends all his time telling her what she Has To Do, Inevitably, and she spends all her time telling him to fuck off), shouldn’t she... have some kind of reaction to his death? Like, any reaction? Contemplation after the fact? Acknowledgement that someone she had a Force connection to so strong they could communicate telepathically wherever they were is now dead? But no, we’re cutting to triumphant music and the Resistance winning and Rey’s back in the X-wing and Ben Solo will not be mentioned again.

All of it is so damn hollow I’m peripherally kind of amazed at how riled up people seem to have gotten about it. I just can’t summon an emotion stronger than exasperation.

I can summon an emotion stronger than exasperation for the way the script played Finn’s implied romantic love for Rey for laughs. Finn Deserved Better; Disney is Terrible. I’m so glad John Boyega is apparently telling them to piss off regarding future opportunities for him to be disrespected.

<333 Poe and Finn’s “bickering married couple” dynamic, which apparently both actors have been intentionally playing up to the extent that they were able.

Rey’s internal conflict, while beautifully acted by Daisy Ridley, did not make any damn sense, just like it didn’t make sense in TLJ. Of course I get that one of the central themes is birth versus who you choose to be, but like.... she’s never once done anything that should make her or anyone else worry that she’s going to suddenly become a megalomaniacal Sith Lord. As my brother pointed out, if they’d actually had her accidentally kill Chewie, as we were very briefly lead to believe, that might have lent it some credence. But as it stands, her fear of herself just feels... completely inappropriate and unreasonable, given that aside from a few short outbursts that had no lasting consequences, she’s never deviated from the compassionate, generous person everyone except Kylo Ren (and Luke, I guess, in parts of TLJ) knows her to be.

I could spend another few thousand words talking about how nothing about Palpatine being Back or the Final Order existing and having planet-cracking weapons on every one of their enormous fleet out in a hidden system no one knows how to get to makes no fucking sense, but let’s just... leave it at that. I’d rather not.

It was a typical Disney conglomerate soulless cash-grab that had some entertaining bits, and some bits that could have been fantastic had anyone with power actually cared about telling a cohesive story rather than relying almost entirely on dramatic music and the actors’ facial expressions to make people feel things.

(PS: Where the heck did that yellow lightsaber come from?)

#star wars #the rise of skywalker #rise of skywalker spoilers #movies #rise of skywalker

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eternityservedcold · 5 years

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My Three Page Pseudo-Essay on How the Kirby Anime Would/Should Be Made Today

This was written due to @hedeservesbetter tagging my post with “i woukd [sic] love to read this[, Akira]”.

Let me start off by saying there is a little more to this essay than what the original post says. We’re going to touch a number of topics not listed in it, but those are my biggest ideas. Let’s all also note the I don’t hate the Kirby anime. People accused me of hating the anime or trying to make it edgy the last time I made a post like this, and I still don’t understand why. It’s my favorite anime, probably. If it isn’t, it’s up there with Paranoia Agent and Perfect Blue as one of my favorites. Also note that the two “main” versions of the anime (Japanese and English) blend together in my head, and I’ll talk about both of them as though they are the same (because, honestly, you’re kidding yourself if you think they aren’t), but if I need to specify the version, I’ll use their full titles (Kirby of the Stars and Kirby: Right Back at Ya, respectively).

To say that nearly any animation that was made before the late 2000’s wouldn’t be better if it were made today is lying to yourself. There is so much technology we have today that we didn’t have before then. There’s a very big chance that if the Kirby anime was made today, it could be 100% 2D animation instead of half-3D like it was. That’s only possible because of programs like Flash or Toon Boom, which allow 2D animations to be made easier and faster. Most of the reason that characters like Kirby or King Dedede were animated in 3D half the time was to cut costs and development time. It’s hard to draw so many perfect circles and curved lines almost the exact same on every consecutive frame, but this downside is entirely negated by the use of digital animation tools, which allow you to copy shapes from one frame to the next. My sentiments seem to be echoed exactly by the development staff on the anime. Here’s a quote from Yoshikawa Souji (director and a writer on the anime), translated by Ivyna J. Spyder:

“3D is a way to increase the number of frames. If you make a 3D model once, then you are able to make efficient use of that. [...] [I]f it’s 3D, because you make a model, you can make movement from just clicking it.

“Therefore, the animator doesn’t have [a] hard time with drawing and can instead devote their time to movement, and it’s easy to get information of production and camera. [...] Already, it has 3-5 times the movement of normal TV anime.”

There’s also the option of it being a 100% 3D anime, like its 3DS-exclusive short, Kirby 3D. Being made only in 2012, the 3D already looks so much more competent. Of course, I can also point to the many fully-3D cutscenes that have been in Kirby games since then, the best-looking being the ones in Kirby: Star Allies. It’s very obvious that Nintendo has been becoming more competent with its 3D animations and models very quickly, considering their almost company-wide switch to 3D games, as opposed to 2D. Even with a television budget, ignoring the fact that Nintendo and HAL have infinite money to throw at anything they wish, this could still happen. A lot more fully-3D cartoons and anime have been popping up lately, including the visually gorgeous Land of the Lustrous and Miraculous Ladybug.

God, that’s a lot of words to just be talking about animation. And I haven’t even gotten to the part I started this essay to write! Let’s get on with that, shall we?

Escargoon is my favorite character in the Kirby anime, and right now, is my favorite character of all time. While that’s always subject to change, I suspect he’ll always be in the top ten. Anyone who knows anything about me knows I love this guy. I’ve even gotten others who don’t even know of the Kirby anime to love him.

Which makes me infuriated that he’s treated so badly.

You may have noticed I didn’t mention a certain penguin king in that sentence, even though he’s the one most associated with torturing Escargoon. But the truth is everyone, even the anime itself, seems to love to torture him. I don’t get it! I like the gay snail! I think he’s neat! And I’m sure at least a few of the writers and animators do too! So why does he get deprived of sleep and basic self care because “Haha, it’s funny to see him obsess over a robot”? Why does he get possessed by Erasem, causing him to go nearly insane from being forgotten by everybody? Why does he get abused by his boss so much it actually unsettles him when he treats him nicely? I don’t get it! I want good things to happen to him. I don’t want to watch him go insane from something out of his control every thirty episodes. Dedede isn’t treated like this, and he’s worse than Escargoon, objectively.

The anime starting with Dedede being nicer to Escargoon is a really, really good way for this issue to be remedied. Not only is the trope of a villain power couple way more interesting than “man in power beats his assistant who is clearly in love with him in Kirby of the Stars and has a choice to leave at any time in both versions, but doesn’t for some reason”, the latter is just unnecessarily cruel. Even if they don’t date or whatever, Dedede and Escargoon working together to formulate plans would actually be a force to be reckoned with, instead of making everyone that watches the show think “If Dedede is such an idiot, and Escargoon hates him, why haven’t the Cappies just killed him or something?”

Of course, you can have this and have the Escargoon torture porn episodes. Or! Just… don’t. Or make Dedede have an equal amount. Or is Dedede is still “more evil” in this scenario, make him have more. Listen, if Escargoon is still half-good like he is in the anime we got, he doesn’t deserve torture. I never understood this trope. Why do awful things happen to characters that aren’t actually terrible people? Especially for entire episodes?

I digress.

Let’s talk about Sirica. The fan favorite who was in... two episodes (or three in Kirby of the Stars)?

HELLO?

Are you insane, Kirby anime? Why is this character shelved for most of the series? She’s so goddamned cool! Are you OUT OF YOUR MIND? You packed this much character into one episode and not only is she shelved afterward, she doesn’t even get a satisfying ending so GODDAMNED KIRBY CAN BE COOL? This is not even addressing the fact that her mother died to make Meta Knight look cooler! You can read an excellent post about everything I’ve said here, said in a more compact way, but...

I feel like I’m going to scream at the top of my lungs!

I’m so sorry, Sirica. Let’s talk about how we can fix this.

First. Just put her in more episodes! It’s absolutely not fair that I can glean more character from her one episode than I can for Knuckle Joe, and he’s got THREE, but she still isn’t used! I can even think of an episode description right now, in like, two minutes. Here I go: The monster of the week needs to face an opponent who can change tactics quickly. We think Kirby can do it, but it’s still too strong. But wait! There’s a character with a SHAPESHIFTING GUN who can help Kirby defeat the monster! And the day is saved because Sirica is a relevant character in this scenario. It even draws a parallel to the Masher episode. This could also be fun to explore because Sirica is really stubborn and she might just straight-up refuse.

Also what’s up with Galaxia refusing her, by the way? What the hell, Galaxia? I just never understood that. I have no idea how to fix it, so I ended up having to write around it in my own writing, which was really annoying. I don’t see why she and Kirby can’t just fight together after that, even. She sits out for the rest of the fight after getting rejected by the sword. Like you still have a gun, Sirica, you don’t need to move around to use it. OH WAIT, NO YOU DON’T, META KNIGHT TOOK IT. THE ABSOLUTE MADMAN. IT’S BAD, MISOGYNISTIC WRITING!

Oh, I made myself upset. This was supposed to be a positive essay.

Some other miscellaneous ideas I have, that don’t need to be their own paragraphs: What’s with all the one-off characters that seem like they’re going to be important? If the anime was made today, the GSA would probably have a way larger role. If the anime was made today, it probably wouldn’t be episodic (See this video).

I don’t know how to write a conclusion, so here’s a little MS Paint drawing of Sirica instead:

Thanks for reading, and sorry mobile users, if that glitch still exists.

#cant catch me gay thoughts #kirby #kirby right back at ya #hoshi no kaabii #krbay #it takes a lot of effort to write like this i hope u all like it. mwah #also i wrote this very early in the morning so if theres anything wrong with it uh. suck it up

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addictedforbooksquad · 6 years

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S U M M E R R E A D I N G L I S T

Summer is here! What are you all up to these days?

Are you lying on the beach, sipping some cool drink with a fancy name and enjoying the sun? Or sitting on a long monotonous flight to your holiday destination? Or perhaps you’re chilling in the park after work?

And is there something missing in all those scenarios?

Why, a good book, of course!

So here’s a list of some of our favourite books; ones that we love coming back to again and again and ones that we might’ve read only once so far but already know we’ll be rereading them in the future :) And since summer is a perfect time to read something new as well, you’ll also find some upcoming releases that we’re excited about here.

Happy reading!

UPCOMING, NEW AND NEWISH RELEASES

The Chase by Elle Kennedy (expected publication date : August 6th) - not only Fitzy was shook by Summer’s appearance in The Score, we were too! Now we cannot wait for their story and with our love of Off Campus series, our expectations for this book to end up being the hottest read of the summer are pretty damn high.

The Governess Game by Tessa Dare (expected publication date : August 28th) - the first book in Girl Meets Duke series, “The Duchess Deal”, was an absolute delight to read and we’re hoping this one will continue that happy hot streak.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik (expected publication date : July 10th) - a good retelling by one of our favoruite authors sounds like a must-read and must-read it is.

Hot Asset by Lauren Layne (published : May 22nd) - the first book in Lauren Layne’s newest series, 21 Wall Street, has it all - steamy romance, great cast of characters, some crime and mystery and last but not least, hot brokers in suits.

Sea Witch by Sarah Henning (expected publication date : July 31st) - MERMAIDS. Enough said.

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang (published : June 5th) - we fell in love with this book and we’re sure many of you will too! It’s funny, it’s warm, it’s sexy and Stella and Michael are definitely our faves this summer <3

I Think I Love You by Lauren Layne (expected publication date : July 10th) - the last book in Oxford series and we’re definitely curious about it. We love us some fake dating and friends to lovers trope xD

Pride by Ibi Zoboi (expected publication date : September 18th) - contemporary Pride and Prejudice retelling? WE. ARE. SO. IN.

Jock Row by Sara Ney (published : May 3rd) - in our minds, you can’t go wrong with some steamy sports romance for a summer read and this one is just so freaking cute!

Mirage by Somaiya Daud (expected publication date : August 28th) - YA fantasy with Moroccan-inspired setting and the summary sounds oh-so-intriguing. Is this the next series we will get obsessed with? Seems probable!

To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo (published : March 6th) - bloodthirsty mermaids? Check. Ruggedly handsome pirates? Check. Enemies to friends to lovers trope? CHECK, CHECK AND CHECK, GO READ THIS BOOK NOW.

The Naked Truth by Vi Keeland (expected publication date : July 23rd) - most of us on this blog have a “hit and miss” experience with Vi Keeland’s books but this one seems like a perfectly balanced hot meal of romance and angst, so we’re here, ready for it xD

FAVES WE LOVE COMING BACK TO

The Score by Elle Kennedy - again, you just can’t go wrong with sports romance for some summer reading and Allie and Dean will surely knock your socks off. WE LOVE THIS STORY!

Addicted series by Krista & Becca Ritchie - it won’t come as a surprise, surely, that this is one of our most beloved series. In fact, we’re planning on rereading it sometime in August! So...anyone else ready to go through ten books full of love, friendship, heartache, pain and utter bliss? Join us and fall in love with Lily, Rose, Daisy, Lo, Connor and Ryke just like we did!

Walk of Shame by Lauren Layne - one of our favs by Lauren Layne, it’s SO CUTE and FUNNY and will make you feel good!

Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman - at first sight, this is a story of summer romance set in Italy - which makes it perfect for summer reading list - but in reality, it’s. So. Much. More. And it might very well break your heart but it’s worth it.

Foolish Kingdoms series by Natalia Jaster - creators of this blog have declared themselves crazy for Natalia Jaster’s writing - and it all started with the first book in this series, “Trick”. Fantasy setting, poetic prose and entertaining layered characters - what more could one wish for?

All for the Game by Nora Sakavic - this series is by no means a “light” summer read but we still love it so much and can’t help rereading it again and again. The Foxes have claimed our hearts and refuse to let go, just as we do.

Devil in Spring by Lisa Kleypas - how can one pass summer without reading at least one steamy historical romance, right? And this one doesn’t disappoint! With a charming and refreshing heroine and a dashing hero who becomes her biggest fanboy in a matter of a few chapters, it’s a real treat :)

When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon - young love at the summer program for aspiring web developers with romance and cuteness overload, are you in or are you in???

Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover - friends-slash-neighbours with benefits arrangement meets Feelings. Rules are broken. Complications ensue. Read it *whispers SUBTLY*

Tell Me Three Things by Julia Buxbaum - perhaps a book set in high school doesn’t exactly scream “summer” but this is one of our favourite YA contemporaries. There’s just something about the way this book makes you feel...we just cannot recommend it enough!

From Lukov with Love by Mariana Zapata - sure, this is a sports romance revolving around figure skating which happens to involve lots of ice but rest assured, the chemistry between Jasmine and Ivan will leave you in need of ice for cooling down purposes.

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black - granted, we’ve read it only months ago, but this one has us absolutely obsessed. And you could be too, just dare to venture into the mysterious and deadly world of faeries - just remember to guard your mortal heart.

Everless by Sara Holland - YA fantasy with an usual concept of time as currency - it keeps you on the edge of chair as you read it. If anyone feels like reading some quality fantasy this summer, go for it!

Married by Morning Lisa Kleypas - favourite one from The Hathaways series! Catherine and Leo just own our hearts <3 This book will make you laugh and (maybe) cry and (surely) fan your heated face (because the hotness levels? Phew🔥

The Foxe and the Hound by R.S. Grey - this is such a make-you-feel-good book and the main character, Madeleine, couldn’t be more relatable. She’s in her mid/late-twenties and - plot twist - doesn’t have it all figured out yet. Luckily, not all hope is lost yet xD

Forbidden Hearts series you by Alisha Rai - it saddens us greatly how underappreciated Alisha Rai’s writing is. She writes compelling diverse characters and her smut is the ultimate proof that Consent Is Sexy. Join us in fangirling!

#nadaily #dailylit #book recs #bookworm #bibliophile #reading #literature #books #ya literature #na literature #booksquad talks books

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reactingtosomething · 7 years

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Solo Reaction to Orphan Black Episode 510: “To Right the Wrongs of Many”

Well Done, Show.

The Setup: This is it, Clone Club. The final ride has ended, and I for one loved the hell out of it. Check below for my final Orphan Black solo reaction. Spoilers for the last five years, basically.

SARAH: Art knows what they need and is not the one who is Helena’s twin, clearly she should go be with Helena and he should get the medical supplies. I mean I know it had to be Sarah vs. “PT” at the end, obviously. But in-universe I’m right about that logic. But yeah, Sarah killing him with very little ceremony and none of his acolytes to watch was pretty appropriate.

OH GOD they pulled no punches with that suffocation visual.

This is EVOLUTION. More on that later.

The Sarah/Mrs. S parallels during the births, though. Sarah (and all the clones) are moving out from under the control of their lives and destinies. They are not S’s to watch over or Neolution’s to control. They are the adults. They’re raising each other and their kids.

Sarah and Helena’s joyful laugh/cries after the birth(s) are just lovely.

Is Sarah getting her GED?? I’m so proud! She’s turning into such a grownup, but is also still herself. Well done, show.

Honestly I do think that Sarah should sell the house. She needs to become her own version of an adult, not just step into S’s shoes entirely. Like, don’t move away to wander the earth apart from the whole support system, but get an apartment instead maybe.

Sarah. Get your ass back in there and take the GED test!

“I don’t know how to be happy. There’s no one left to fight and I’m still a shit mum.” There is SO MUCH here. For one thing that language is super telling—Sarah may not always be good at being a mother, but she’s far from a shit one compared to Coady, the other person who’s been described as such. There’s no question about Sarah being wrong here. (Admittedly she has not always been a good mother but she has been improving and she does always have Kira’s best interests at heart.) For another thing, this is very important and realistic. Ending an all-consuming battle and returning to normal life is never simple. Sarah was good at guerrilla warfare, essentially. Those skills don’t immediately translate to healthy coping mechanisms or finding a day job. Sarah is still Sarah. They’re all still the people they were before and during this shitshow. Alison is still the woman who sold drugs and hot glue gunned her husband. They’re all still just people and they can’t go from living one life to living a totally different one with no bumps, even a normal/“easier” one. Just because Sarah can’t do it immediately doesn’t mean she can’t do it at all.

None of them are perfect and they’re all in it together and it’s the most mellow but effective multi-clone season ender ever. No one look at me.

HELENA: This is basically a nightmare birth situation and I am NOT a fan.

Helena is preparing for vengeance even while ACTIVELY CONTRACTING and all I can say is damn, woman. Props.

OH MY GOD Art and Helena are such a good team! That was highly effective tag team murder.

It’s a boy. Of course they’re boys. Kira was (nearly) exploited the way Kendall and the Ledas' birth mothers were. Kira and Charlotte are the intermediates, the ones who are part of the Leda story but won’t grow up entirely within it, but these boys are the true next generation. They’re not just repeating the script over again, they’re a departure from the Neo controlled past.

That is the cutest and creepiest mobile ever.

Orange and Purple!! Ok, but babies lose their socks ALL THE TIME. This is an imperfect method.

“Always when I eat, he poops.”

Super into her Hawaiian shirt over overalls look.

“Where does this sand come from?”

They’re still not going to explain the black part of Orphan Black, are they?

I’m touched by the significance of naming the boys after Donnie and Art, but doesn’t that get confusing? Sure, call the baby Arthur instead of Art, but there’s nothing that far away from “Donnie,” sound-wise. And at least for now they live on the same property. (The one bit of Judaism that has managed to enter my psyche the most is the custom of not naming kids after living relatives, so I’m a little weird about this kind of thing.)

RACHEL: Is Rachel coming? Is that the secret person Felix is expecting? Yesssss. Even if she can’t be a part of the happy family, she is still a part of this and the show/Felix acknowledges it.

So we’re just straight up discussing this in front of the uber driver?

She gave them the list of Ledas. Rachel’s final redemptive act saves the rest of the clones she helped to subjugate, and is a final screw you to the people who made her do it for so long.

General Rachel thought: Rachel needed redemption. She was cruel and a part of the structure that controlled and killed a lot of people. She was a product of a deeply abusive situation that made her that way, but she still was that way. She still stomped on the potential cure, she still ordered the deaths of clones and others. In a way she and Helena are a better “two sides to the same coin” comparison than Helena and Sarah are. Both were raised largely without love or proper socialization. Both were made “self aware” while fairly young. Both are taught that they are the special one, and can only continue to do they terrible things they do by believing that fact. Both self-harm. Both learn that their extremely black and white world views are limited primarily by being exposed to the family of their clones, primarily Kira. Helena made the change much more quickly, but they are both on that arc.

ALISON: “I was a drug dealer for Pete’s sake” is peak Alison Hendrix.

The Hendrixes have joy and laughter as a part of their sex lives and I am happy about this.

I know this is not from this episode, but it’s amazing

COSIMA: Cosima is curing the Ledas!! She is doing it! And of course she feels like it’s not enough because she’s Cosima, but she’s doing it!

Science monkey! I love this.

Cos, you don’t have to be good with kids if you don’t want to be. Although she actually is excellent with kids, just not babies. So I guess the point is you don’t have to be maternal if you don’t want to be. You can love the children in your life without wanting your own. And if you do want children, being scared doesn’t mean you can’t do it.

Cosima is coming so close to meeting all of these women, but not quite. That’s beautiful and sad in its own way. She’s always been the one to embrace sisterhood the quickest, so I imagine she loves each of these sisters a little bit. But she’s not destroying their lives by telling them about all of this when there’s no need to. There is an argument to be made about not making the decision for them by keeping the info from them, but telling them would also be making that decision for them. I’m going to choose to believe that they leave a semi-conspicuous web trail so that any Ledas who start to become self aware can find clone club if they’re looking.

Also, can we talk about how gorgeous this artwork is and how I’m now obsessed with it? Please illustrate all of their adventures around the world.

TONY!!!! Guys, Tony has at least been acknowledged again! He and Krystal are cured and that is good.

EVERYONE ELSE: Goddammit Coady why are you so resilient?

“PT” (AKA JOHN) losing his grip is both terrifying and delicious. I was honestly hoping he would die of a heart attack—none of his cruelty or his science could save him from a simple failure of the body. But again, it being Sarah’s action was probably necessary.

Honestly, this was an underuse of Enger after they set her up to be such an interesting character in such small moments earlier. Clearly the focus here is on the Ledas more than their subjugators, but come on. I wonder if she had anything that ended up being cut for time? I’m excited to follow the actor’s career.

I know I already used this one, and it wasn’t from this episode. But look at how compelling she is! And this ^ isn’t even as good as the toothbrush scene!

There really is a kill them in the throat theme this season.

Art calling people sestra is adorable!

274??? Living or total ever? That’s so many!

I’ve done a lot of discussing parenthood as a sign of adulthood, and I certainly don’t want to say it’s a 1:1 situation. I think it has come up a lot this season especially because the show is a discussion of both family and evolution. It’s hard to have evolution without future generations, so there is a lot of kid focus. I don’t think the show goes to far in the direction of accidentally suggesting that motherhood is essential for adult womanhood—that’s the beauty of having a lot of women in your show. You can tell multiple stories, and multiple versions of the same story without suggesting that it is The Story.

I have no idea how intentionally Fawcett and Manson created this discussion of feminism and bodily autonomy. I think the later was the main intent and the feminism came out of the realization/acceptance of what they were already in the midst of creating. By making the lead a woman, they made most of the leads women, who all had to be different from each other. They couldn’t fall into the tropes many writers do when it comes to female characters. And when they began discussing This may be wrong and ungenerous of me—they may have had exactly this intent from the beginning!—but two things: 1) I think if they had a huge focus on feminism from the beginning there would have been more than one director who was a woman in the entire run (Helen Shaver, 3 episodes) and 2) Honestly, them learning the lesson as they went and freaking going for it is kind of great. Without meaning to (from the beginning—I’m not suggesting they were totally unaware this whole time!) these guys made a show that is all about women reclaiming their bodily autonomy from a big-for-tv version of forces that are very real in our lives. Realizing that that was the story and leaning into it effectively and without becoming a morality play is impressive and it gave us the show we have known and loved.

Ok, “this is evolution.” So true, on the science side and the personal side. Sarah and Helena have always been the outliers. It was a quirk of biology that lead to twins. And then their birth mother was willing and able to keep them safely away from Neolution. And they are actually able to conceive. None of these facts were intended or planned for. Evolution comes from gene mutations. Sometimes mutations are harmful, but sometimes they’re beneficial or neutral, and they get passed on and help the species become something new. If that happens enough times, you get a whole new species. There’s nothing intentional or graceful about it. You can’t plan for it, and you can’t do much to control it. “PT” tried to, and it never worked out for him. There were always other changes, or not enough change, or the small detail of people being people and thus not entirely controllable. He was beaten by the results of the uncontrollable parts of evolution, an unexpected twin who unexpectedly became a mother. And Sarah has evolved as a person because of both of those things, as well as everything else. In killing “PT" she completes the final step of not just no longer running from her problems, but truly stepping out from underneath them.

Finally, let’s talk happy ending. Finishing this was hard—I’ve had trouble taking a long view of anything this weekend, in light of the events in Charlottesville, VA. This is the first time I’ve sat entirely still in at least a day. It’s made me even more glad that this show, which has always contained darkness and some shocking violence, let the “core four” of clones and most of their nearest and dearest survive. There were deaths along the way, and a shit ton of suffering, but they could have gone much darker about the ending for the sake of Realism and I’m damn glad they didn’t. The show was about finding the light and hope and family amidst all of this darkness. Sarah has been trying to be allowed/allow herself to be a part of her family since she got on that train. It doesn’t look like what she thought it would, but neither does she anymore. This is the version of family that works for this version of Sarah, and it works for the show too. Everything’s not perfect. S is dead, Rachel will never be a part of the family. They’ve all suffered massively. But they made it, and they have each other for support moving forward. Bad things can end. Good things can endure. That hasn’t always been an explicit message of the show, but it is the one they chose to build to.

That’s all, folks. For more weekly reactions, check out Kris’s GoT series. For more ass-kicking genre women, check out Wynonna Earp. For more of Miri have a lot of feeling, check out The Bold Type (and I guess this blog in general).

#Orphan Black #Clone Club #orphan black spoilers #OB Spoilers #ob finale #orphan black season five #Sarah Manning #Alison Hendrix #Rachel and Helena's semi-parallel arcs of becoming less murderous through their love of Kira #Helena #Helena Orphan Black #Rachel Duncan #Tony Sawicki #Krystal Goderitch #To Right the Wrongs of Many #Reaction #Miri #Guys seriously what do I do with myself now?#Rewatch?

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thisiswhatwereupagainst · 7 years

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Random Things You Should Know About the Brotherhood in the Comics

Fun fact, there’s been more than one Brotherhood of Mutants, and not all of them were led by Magneto. He wasn't even in all of them! There's a lengthy list of members, some more widely-known than others, these are just some fun facts about a few of the more well-known members.

- Toad has one of the worst backgrounds in the Brotherhood. He was abandoned as a baby by his parents, probably due to his appearance, and grew up in an orphanage where he was bullied and tormented by the other children for the same reason. Toad is actually very intelligent in the comics (he's an expert with machinery!) but due to his shyness and learning disabilities as a child, he was considered to be mentally disabled. I'm not sure what specific learning disabilities he's stated to have had though. I'd really like to know though, so tell me if you do! Between this and the bullying, he dropped out of school at an early age.

He was later recruited by Magneto, and they developed an abusive relationship. Not romantic, mind you, but besides that the dynamics were the same. Toad believed that Magneto cared for him and became dependent on him, while Magneto physically battered him and verbally belittled him. Read more about it HERE

I like Magneto, but people who think Magneto is a good man aside from his villainy need to take a good look at how he treats his followers. He abuses all of them, including Wanda and Pietro, but Toad got it the absolute worst and actually has a form of Battered Spousal Syndrome as a result.

- Pyro and Avalanche are super duper best bro-friends in the comics and I love it so much. Also, while they may or may not actually be lovers, depending on how you want to interpret it (I generally see them as friends), they were used to metaphorically represent gay lovers in THIS issue.

- Pyro is not an aggressive fire-obsessed nutjob like in Evolution or the movies. He's not angry, he's not insane, he's not a pyromaniac. He's a very nice, normal dude who just also happens to be a fire-controlling super-villain. Besides terrorism, he's also an author who writes Gothic romance novels. I'm not making this up, it's canon and it's terrific and I love it so much.

- Pyro's first name in the comics is St. John, not just John like the movies. It's pronounced Sinjin, I think. He's Australian, maybe it's a more normal name there? Also, speaking of him being Australian, his buddy Avalanche is an immigrant from the Greek island of Crete, and Toad is from England, specifically York.

- Pyro once saved a group of children from a T-rex

- Daredevil once tricked the Blob into getting jealous that Pyro always got the girls on their Freedom Force missions so that the two of them would fight with each other, suggesting Pyro is probably a ladies man ;D

- Once, when Pyro thought he was going to die, he held Mystique's hand and said "Worse ways to go, than with friends" ;A;

- But Pyro did NOT in fact die then. His death would come later. He contracted the Legacy Virus, and his last act alive was saving the life of Senator Kelly, a man he'd once tried to assassinate. The strain of this good deed was too much on Pyro's weakened body, and he passed away with a plea to Senator Kelly to change things for the better. Kelly promised that he would, and he kept his word, changing his anti-mutant stance and working towards improving mutant/human relations instead. Sadly, this led to Kelly being assassinated by a human who felt he'd turned traitor.

- Just as Pyro was made American in the movies, Avalanche and Toad were made American in the cartoons.

- Toad's real name is Mortimer Toynbee in the comics, and Avalanche is Dominikos Ioannis Petrakis. In X-Men: Evolution, they were re-named Todd Tolansky and Lance Alvers, probably to make them easier for children to pronounce. Alias that the comics Avalanche has used include Dominic Janos Petros, Jon Bloom, Dominic Szilard, and Nick.

- Avalanche enjoys gardening and establishes a bar under the name "Nick" to get away from his life of crime.

- One of the Red Skull's S-Men claims to be Avalanche's daughter. Her name is Dancing Water and she's basically a woman made of water who has squid tentacles for legs. She can reshape her body at all, spray blasts of water from her hands, control any nearby water, and teleport via water. As far as I know, it's unknown if her claims of being his daughter are true, who her mother is, what her history is, and why she wants to help the Red Skull destroy mutants.

- Fred "Blob" Dukes is fat because of his mutation, and the X-Men make fun of his weight ALL THE TIME. Making fun of someone for being fat is pretty bad, but there are some X-Men for whom I can still see it as in-character, they're not all the nicest people. But making fun of someone for how their physical mutation effects them? I'd think they'd ALL know better than that. If it's not okay to do to Nightcrawler, it's not ok to do to Blob!

- Blob eating a lot is frequently a gag too and haha I get it, fat people are gluttons, real nice Marvel. Besides that being a cruel stereotype in a series supposed to be a statement AGAINST bigotry, let's go back to the fact that THIS IS BLOB'S MUTATION. He is going to be this size no matter what. And a bigger person or animal needs MORE CALORIES. That's why a bear eats more than a chihuahua! He is eating a lot because guess what, he would probably DIE if he did not, it's basic biology, but it's made into a joke at his expense by the narrative itself. It's so messed up.

- Blob has a super duper best friendship with Unus the Untouchable, they are mega bros and it is so sweet and it is made even sweeter by the fact that Blob is frankly a HUGE JERK (no pun intended) to everyone else. But Unus is his BFF!! Read more about their Brotp HERE!

- Lesser known female Brotherhood members: Lorelei, Phantazia, Mastermind (Martinique Jason), and Astra. When Magneto abandoned his second Brotherhood and they became the Resistants instead, a woman named Mist Mistress joined them, and Spiral joined Mystique's Brotherhood when they became Freedom Force. The more well-known female Brotherhood members are, of course, Mystique, Destiny, Rogue, and the Scarlet Witch. See a post on Lorelei HERE and on Phantazia’s tag HERE for more about these ladies!

- While Mystique has consistently been portrayed as Magneto's subordinate in the movies, this has NEVER been the case in the comics. In fact, they have never even worked together until VERY recently. In the comics, they both led different Brotherhoods, and Mystique was the LEADER of hers, not anyone's second-in-command. In fact, up until recently, she and Magneto barely even crossed paths; the only time I'm aware of them even meeting was in the 1980s when she arrested him at a Holocaust memorial (this was when she and her Brotherhood were working for the government as "Freedom Force" in return for being pardoned for their crimes) So, needless to say, they do NOT have the same relationship depicted in the movies! Currently, they're both X-men and serving on the same team. Yeah, weird.

-Sabretooth is on the same X-Men team that Mystique and Magneto are, but contrary to the first X-Men film, I don't think he's ever been a Brotherhood member. I could be wrong though. But considering Sabes led the massacre of the Morlocks, I have a hunch not...by the way, Riptide was part of that too, he's sure as hell not a Brotherhood guy in the comics. Magneto HATES the Marauders!

- Ah, ok, I checked TV tropes on Sabes: "Something of an associate to Mystique's Brotherhood, as he was never affiliated with the team's present-day incarnation, but was shown in a flashback as joining up with an earlier iteration, even declaring himself their leader before being betrayed and handed over to the authorities by Mystique the next morning. He also worked for Exodus's Brotherhood, and is usually affiliated with the Brotherhood in adaptations."

-As mentioned, Mystique was NEVER subordinate to Magneto, she led her own independent Brotherhood as LEADER...and at her side was Destiny, aka Irene Adler. Implied to be the woman who inspired the Sherlock Holmes character of the same name (with the equal implication Mystique inspired Sherlock himself...hey, she's Raven DarkHOLME) Destiny was a blind mutant who could see visions of the future. She was also Mystique's lover. Yup. They could not be explicitly referred to as such during the 1980s due to the Comics Code, but Claremont did everything he could to convey to the readers they were couple. They lived together, were affectionate with each other, and even raised a child together...none other than Rogue of the X-Men! In fact, his original plan was that Destiny would be Nightcrawler's mother and Mystique would be his FATHER, having impregnated Destiny in male form, but of course Marvel wouldn't let him get away with that. He also managed to sneakily slide in characters referring to Destiny as "Mystique's leman"---an antiquated word for "lover" obscure enough to slip by editors.

It used to be a common trope in media to use same-sex desires and relationships for villains as a way to emphasize their wickedness. For instance, a movie would never allow a hero to do such a thing, but it could be suggested with villains because it cast homosexuality in a negative light, as something bad people do to show how bad they are, like showing them kicking puppies. Claremont, however, went the opposite route. He used Mystique's tenderness with Destiny to humanize her instead, using their relationship to show a capacity for goodness in Mystique rather than play up how evil she was. They were depicted as loving and normal together, not depraved and decadent and bizarre. They were downright domestic.

While Claremont did have a notable fascination with lesbians, as shown by his use of sexy evil women who would pursue young heroines with a thinly-veiled subtext of sexual creepiness, he didn't fetishize Mystique and Destiny at all. He could have made Destiny a hot leather-clad young dominatrix like Selene or Emma Frost, but she's actually an elderly woman. Neither she nor her relationship with Mystique are ever sexualized. There are some f/f scenes in the X-Men series where you can imagine Claremont wrote it with one hand, but there's never anything like that between these two. Speaking of Destiny being old, she and Mystique were together FOR LIFE. They met during the 1800s when Destiny was much younger, and while they do seem to have had sexual relationships with men during their time together (as evident by both of them having children and grandchildren) their true loves were always each other. Destiny aged slower than an average person, but she did get old, and yet Mystique still stayed with her even though she remained young and I just love them so much. Destiny eventually met her end not by old age, but at the hands of Legion, Xavier's son.

Also, sorry to turn this into a personal soapbox but I have to here: Tumblr is all about "uwu LGBT representation uwuuu" but don't actually give a fuck about an actual canon woman/woman couple, even though tumblr's X-fandom collectively threw a fucking SHITFIT over Cherik not being made canon in DOFP and each of them having a girlfriend/wife and it being the worst most homophobic thing ever and the women in question getting bashed despite them being involved with these same women in canon...but Azazel gets to totally replace Destiny, who is nowhere to be seen in the movies, and fandom doesn't make a PEEP. Fandom is cool with that. In fact, they love Azazel and love drawing him in a happy heteronormative family with Mystique. Tumblr likes to be “uwu support LGBT representation uwuuu” but they give absolutely no fucks about Mystique's bisexuality and Destiny's very existence being erased. I've seen so much fucking Azazel/Mystique/Kurt fanart, but I don't even see much of Destiny even in COMICS fanart.

I get that it's an AU, it's not the comics, but it just leaves such a bad taste of hypocrisy in my mouth considering how tumblr X-fandom AS A WHOLE flipped out about Erik and Charles having relationships with Magda and Moira instead of each other in DOFP , even though they had relationships with those women in canon and, despite all subtext, have never been confirmed as a canon same-sex couple like Mystique and Destiny have. But people were ready to go to WAR for them. But two women who are a CONFIRMED CANON QUEER COUPLE? Who cares, right? Seriously, if it's not hot young cis white men, NO ONE CARES, even when it's a case of a REAL CONFIRMED CANON queer character (two, in fact!) being erased in the films. They had a lifelong relationship together, they raised a child together, they have all these affectionate moments...there is so much Mystique and Destiny stuff in canon, and Claremont WANTED to put in more and wasn't allowed.

And now that we're in a time period where that could be allowed, I think it's a fucking TRAVESTY that this wasn't put in the movies to make up for what wasn't let into the comics, to finally let them be “out” while Destiny was still alive. But it's even bigger travesty to me that tumblr not only ignores this, it endorses the heterosexual ship that replaces it, and then pats itself on the back for being “progressive” when it comes to shipping two DUDES (especially if they can shit on women in the process---there was a LOT of bashing Moira and Magda both in fandom when DOFP came out). Seriously, I swear the reason some people are into slash is just because there's not any EW GROSS GIRLS in it.

Sorry I had to get salty but this really bothers me. Mystique's bisexual and had a lifelong relationship with another woman in which they raised a child together and the movies not only erase that, movie fandom just accepts it while patting themselves on the back about being progressive because they have fanon m/m ships.

#xmen #x men #x-men #brotherhood of mutants #mutants

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malicejudged-a · 5 years

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really LONG CHARACTER SURVEY. RULES. REPOST , DON’T REBLOG ! GOOD LUCK !

TAGGED. I found this somewhere and felt like doing it so. Uh. TAGGING. Yoink it from me.

BASICS.

FULL NAME: Judge Nemo (formerly Edgar Hellewege)

NICKNAME: N/A

AGE: 425 (physically 27)

BIRTHDAY: July 7th

ETHNIC GROUP: German

NATIONALITY: Rekidonan

LANGUAGE(S): Mainly German, English, and Japanese (knows other languages though he may need a refresher)

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Bisexual

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Biromantic

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single

CLASS: Low-class as Edgar, High-class as Nemo

HOMETOWN / AREA: Rekidona

CURRENT HOME: The closest thing he has to a home nowadays is his office / base of operations

PROFESSION: Ruler of the Human World / Judge of Humanity

PHYSICAL.

HAIR: Blond

EYES: Sky blue

NOSE: Straight

FACE: Has a square jaw

LIPS: Somewhat thin

COMPLEXION: Cream tone

BLEMISHES: N/A

SCARS: Has numerous. He has them on his arms and legs but the most noticeable and vicious-looking are those on his chest.

TATTOOS: N/A

HEIGHT: 185 cm / ~6′1″ ft

WEIGHT: ~94 kg / 208 lbs

BUILD: Muscular

FEATURES: Has a beard

ALLERGIES: N/A

USUAL HAIRSTYLE: Short, somewhat spiky at the back, two strands are loose

USUAL FACE LOOK: He usually has a slight smile on his face that makes him look either genial or smug

USUAL CLOTHING: He wears a red suit with a blue long-sleeve button-up shirt underneath, a black tie with a yellow design, and a black cape with a thin red line and fluff on it

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR(S): Artina hating him, going back to his past self

ASPIRATION(S): Destroying all of humanity, leaving the demons and the angels to slowly wither away and die, and then fading away

POSITIVE TRAITS: Charismatic, intelligent, good humored, loyal (... though only to some), driven

NEGATIVE TRAITS: Self-hating, vengeful, obsessive, cruel, distrustful, manipulative

ZODIAC: Cancer

TEMPERAMENT: Choleric / Melancholic

SOUL TYPE(S): Leader

ANIMALS: Fox

VICE HABIT(S): Manipulation, blackmail

FAITH: Though he poses as an Atheist, he’s actually a Christian

GHOSTS?: He is one, so yes

AFTERLIFE?: Again, he’s a ghost and knows about the Netherworld, so yes

REINCARNATION?: He understands how Prinnies work, so yes

ALIENS?: Considering that he’s interacted with them, yes

POLITICAL ALIGNMENT: Doesn’t care enough about human politics to align himself with a particular side. Will gleefully use both sides, however.

ECONOMIC PREFERENCE: Though he’ll indulge when trying to manipulate someone, Nemo himself is somewhat... Spartan. And military. His own living spaces have only what they need for his purposes.

SOCIOPOLITICAL POSITION: He’s the ruler of the Human World, albeit one the majority of humans don’t know about.

EDUCATION LEVEL: Had essentially a high-school level of education

FAMILY.

FATHER: ??? Hellewege

MOTHER: ??? Hellewege

SIBLINGS: N/A

EXTENDED FAMILY: N/A

NAME MEANING(S): Nemo -- Latin for ‘no one’. / Edgar -- fortunate, powerful ; Hellewege

HISTORICAL CONNECTION?: Aside from being a Latin word, it’s also the name of a certain captain from Jules Vernes’s novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. / One of the more prominent Edgars in history is Edgar Allan Poe, a macabre writer.

FAVORITES.

BOOK: The Art of War by Sun Tzu

MOVIE: Nemo knows that humans have taken to making movies, but he doesn’t care enough to watch and find favorites

5 SONGS: Same with songs. He may listen to music here and there but not enough for favorites.

DEITY: Nemesis

HOLIDAY: Hasn’t celebrated a holiday on his own in a long, long time

MONTH: He doesn’t care

SEASON: Spring

PLACE: Aside from his office / base of operations, he does get somber around medical spaces

WEATHER: Sunny, rainy

SOUND: Nemo likes it quiet, actually. Either quiet or white noise.

SCENT(S): ... He’s a ghost, he hasn’t really smelled anything in a long while

TASTE(S): He... hasn’t truly eaten anything in 400 years

FEEL(S): Just give him something soft and he’s surprisingly happy

ANIMAL(S): Dogs

NUMBER: 4

COLORS: Red, blue, strangely fond of (and gets almost sad around) pink

EXTRA.

TALENTS: Tactics and strategy, various acts of subterfuge

BAD AT: The arts, being in touch with his emotions

TURN ONS: Being genuinely loved

TURN OFFS: Sadism

HOBBIES: He likes strategizing in his spare time and that’s about it. Aside from being a bastard.

TROPES: Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds ; Omnicidal Maniac ; Manipulative Bastard ; Large Ham ; War Is Hell

AESTHETIC TAGS: Crying while laughing, suits and ties, rusty chains, a man alone in a ruined battlefield, manic grins,

GPOY QUOTES: “I hate and I love. Why should I do this, you may ask? I do not know, but I feel it happening, and I am troubled.”

FC INFO.

MAIN FC(S): Himself

ALT FC(S): N/A

OLDER FC(S): N/A

YOUNGER FC(S): N/A

VOICE CLAIM(S): Kanehira Yamamoto (JP)

GENDERBENT FC(S): N/A

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1: IF YOU COULD WRITE YOUR CHARACTER YOUR WAY IN THEIR OWN MOVIE, WHAT WOULD IT BE CALLED, WHAT STYLE WOULD IT BE FILMED IN, AND WHAT WOULD IT BE ABOUT?:

If Disgaea ever started spin-off animated movies and the moons aligned and Nemo got his own, I would personally make it about his backstory as a whole! From his time in the Rekidonan army, his entire downfall and transformation into Judge Nemo, and then cover how he spent the 400 years. Maybe also have a moment where’s he really detached from reality and talks to “Artina” and expose his fears and his genuine desire to join Artina and his belief that destroying humanity is his only purpose in existing anymore.

Q2: WHAT WOULD THEIR SOUNDTRACK / SCORE SOUND LIKE?:

He, uh, has his own theme song so something like that I guess?

Q3: WHY DID YOU START WRITING THIS CHARACTER?:

1. I love Nemo more than life itself. I wuv one terrible judge man.

2. Nemo and his struggles are a topic I enjoy exploring for uh, reasons, as depressing as those explorations may get.

3. The man needs at least one RPer.

Q4: WHAT FIRST ATTRACTED YOU TO THIS CHARACTER?:

Aside from hitting my villain checkbox, and then my tragic villain checkbox, I just feel for that for Disgaea he’s a surprisingly deep character? Like, Disgaea is known for hilarity and then gut-punching you right in your emotions when you least expect it but dang they went hard for Nemo.

Q5: DESCRIBE THE BIGGEST THING YOU DISLIKE ABOUT YOUR MUSE:

Other than him being a bastard to everybody and everything? Probably his obsessive tendencies and how he kind of... can’t see grey anymore. He may acknowledge the morally gray but...

Q6: WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN COMMON WITH YOUR MUSE?:

............. Uh. We both wear glasses?

Q7: HOW DOES YOUR MUSE FEEL ABOUT YOU?:

I’m a human. Nemo hates humans. Therefore, he would hate me.

Q8: WHAT CHARACTERS DOES YOUR MUSE HAVE INTERESTING INTERACTIONS WITH?

In canon at least, I really think Nemo has a fascinating dynamic with Valvatorez. It’s interesting to see how he alternates between being a complete shit to Valvatorez and then letting all his hatred and anger towards the vampire be completely exposed. Also I lowkey headcanon that Nemo as a soldier was similar to Valvatorez except, way toned down and chiller.

Q9: WHAT GIVES YOU INSPIRATION TO WRITE YOUR MUSE?:

Music from my playlist for him or watching the cutscenes he’s in.

Q10: HOW LONG DID THIS TAKE YOU TO COMPLETE?:

I didn’t work on this in one sitting, I just... did it whenever I had the time or braincells for it so I really can’t say?

#⟨ ♢ OOC. ↪ crear becomes nemo on main. ♢ ⟩#⟨ ♢ HEADCANON. ↪ and in that moment i was reborn. ♢ ⟩#i guess also because hoo boy

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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A24 Horror Movies Ranked From Worst to Best

https://ift.tt/3dkDWeU

It is arguable that no studio, distributor, or production company has had a greater impact on the horror genre in the last decade than A24. While Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions might also lay claim to that legacy, the remarkable thing about A24 is the company lacks a particular house style or formula for its filmmaker-driven indie releases. And yet the words “A24 horror movie” call to mind words like weird, offbeat, and unsettling. They’re frequently slow-boiling, and almost always greeted with reviews celebrating high-quality.

Every A24 horror movie is distinct, but they nevertheless claim a mystique which in less than 10 years has helped some critics make the dubious claim that the 2010s were “the decade of elevated horror.” We personally don’t subscribe to the theory that horror is a caste system of “elevated” vintages vs. cheaper swill. However, we are ecstatic A24 and other companies have provided unique voices the ability to reveal profoundly artful interpretations of cinematic dread. For that reason, we’re celebrating the indie tastemakers by ranking their very best (and sometimes not-so-great) thrillers and chillers.

So sit back and join us for a list voted on by our critics and horror aficionados.

18. Tusk (2014)

We begin our countdown with the rare A24 horror movie that comes not from a new perspective, but an old, one-time favorite. A defining voice in comedy and indie filmmaking during the ‘90s, Kevin Smith drifted away from studios by the beginning of the 2010s in favor of trying his hand at horror. I wish I could say the results were better than Tusk, yet this dispiriting attempt at body horror might be the high-point of his latter day monster movies.

Movies

Why Kevin Smith’s Superman Lives Was Ahead of Its Time

By Mike Cecchini

Originally constructed as a joke on Smith’s Smodcast podcast, the finished film is every bit as listless and rambling as a weed-fueled diatribe. Not that the movie is lacking in talent. Justin Long makes an appropriately smarmy podcaster named Wallace Bryton who’s travelled to Canada to find oddballs to interview and mock, but gets more than he bargained for when he winds up in the home of Howard Howe (Michael Parks). Ever the scenery-chewer, Parks gives more gravitas to the material than it deserves as a shut-in obsessed with recreating from a human subject the walrus which saved his life one snowy night following a shipwreck. The subsequent makeup effects are grotesque, but the movie stumbles over their reveals like a standup comedian who’s forgotten the punchlines.

It’s a bizarre and repellent narrative, and can’t even be saved by Johnny Depp’s admittedly amusing French-Canadian accent and Peter Sellers-eque transformation as a late arriving police detective. – David Crow

17. Slice (2018)

Austin Vesely’s Slice plays like the pilot of a potential television series. This isn’t because when it’s over you wish there was more, but that the film is so muddled in its narrative threads that you’re sure it was cancelled before more talent could be wasted. It’s a shame because conceptually there is a lot of appeal in Slice’s setup. As a horror-comedy about a small town where ghosts walk among the living as second class citizens, witches are pushy real estate developers, and the local werewolf is a misjudged Chinese food-delivering vegan played by Chance the Rapper, on paper this reads as hilarious.

Movies

Best Horror Movies to Watch on Shudder Right Now

By Rosie Fletcher and 1 other

Buffy: The Animated Series – The Buffy the Vampire Slayer Spin-Off That Never Was

By Caroline Preece

Unfortunately, the actual film is paper thin. Loosely following a series of murders inflicted on a crappy pizza joint’s deliverymen, the film never unties its tangled and knotted threads about ghosts and humans living side by side, or witches manipulating local city politics in a bid for demonic gentrification. And more damning than its Gateway to Hell is that none of this is very funny. At only 83 minutes, Slice feels like an eternity of waiting for a pizza that never arrives. – DC

16. In Fabric (2018)

When it comes to horror movies, A24 has certainly done its best to (mostly) steer away from the traditional tropes of vampires, zombies, werewolves, and masked killers. As a result, the company has attracted talent like British filmmaker Peter Strickland, who followed up the atmospheric Berberian Sound Studio (2012) and the erotic The Duke of Burgundy (2014) with this bizarre tale of a haunted dress.

The clothing item in question is a red number that passes from one owner to another, leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake. Fortunately, Strickland plays a lot of this for laughs, smartly realizing that a sentient dress might test the patience of even the most diehard horror fan. The film is a slow burn, but Strickland finds just the right balance of weird humor and surreal horror to wring both laughs and genuinely eerie moments out of his odd premise. – Don Kaye

15. The Monster (2016)

Bryan Bertino’s The Monster is a strange one to include on this list, if only because at its heart this is an archetypal creature feature with little more to say than “boo.” Compared to other horror movies released by A24 this can seem slight, but when The Monster works, its boo is occasionally bloodcurdling.

Movies

Katharine Isabelle on How Ginger Snaps Explored the Horror of Womanhood

By Rosie Fletcher

BBC/Netflix Dracula’s Behind-the-Scenes Set Secrets

By Louisa Mellor

Centered on a mother and daughter trapped at night on a country road with an obscured beastie in the woods trying to get into their broken down car, The Monster could’ve been produced as B-schlock in the ‘80s. Why it’s better is twofold: First the film leans into its atmospheric use of shadows and silhouettes by cinematographer Julie Kirkwood—who takes Steven Spielberg’s “less is more” approach in framing the monster—and second, there is the headlong dive into the unpleasant by Zoe Kazan. Playing a young mother who has little interest in her daughter or her well-being, Kazan’s Cathy reveals in one flashback at a time a cruel apathy far more beleaguering than the attacks of the titular monster in the present.

Alas the third act turns into pure pulp when the creature comes out of the shadows, and the cast and body count are needlessly increased. Still, the effect of some of the attack scenes, and Kazan’s nuanced exploration of a mother who fails to impress even herself, makes The Monster worthwhile. – DC

14. The Hole in the Ground (2019)

Being a single parent is hard. Being a single parent is harder when your child suddenly turns into a monster and you have to deal with the consequences. Such is the plot of The Hole in the Ground, A24’s solid but vaguely underwhelming chiller.

Lee Cronin’s debut may hit all the right parental panic beats, summon up a couple of worthy performances, and stick the mysterious, open-ended landing, but it still suffers compared to other A24 efforts because genre fans have seen it all before. As the film slaps a slick coat of paint over its influences, from Don’t Look Now to The Babadook and beyond, it elevates its fairly standard ‘changeling child’ theme, but in doing so it also gives us way too much room to breathe when we should be suffocating under the weight of tension between Seána Kerslake’s spiralling mother and her demonic son.

The result? A middling horror that you’re more likely to describe as “quite good” rather than “great.” – Kirsten Howard

13. Life After Beth (2014)

When a relationship is over, it’s over and it’s never the same if you go back: This is the central theme of Life After Beth, a zombie comedy about moving on. Dane DeHaan stars as Zach, a boy devastated after the death of his girlfriend Beth (Aubrey Plaza). But when she unexpectedly returns from the dead things just don’t quite click. Is it because the relationship has run its course? Or is it that she’s gradually turning into a flesh hungry undead monster? Either way things can’t carry on…

Movies

Zombie Comedies Ranked

By David Crow

The Walking Dead vs. Real-Life Survivalists: How to Prep for The Zombie Apocalypse

By Ron Hogan

A light comedy with a strong supporting cast (Molly Shannon, John C Reilly, Anna Kendrick, Paul Reiser) Life After Beth made its debut at Sundance in 2014. Though zombie rom-coms are somewhat a dime a dozen these days, this one stands out for its performances and certain set pieces like zombie Beth hiking with an oven strapped to her back. – Rosie Fletcher

12. The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015)

As what I would argue is the most underrated horror gem in A24’s catalog, The Blackcoat’s Daughter is a wicked subversion of horror tropes that benefits from the less you know about its story. Suffice to say the film is a slow-burning march toward perdition told in triptych. With three protagonists, first-time writer-director Oz Perkins seamlessly drifts between the perspectives of Kat (Kiernan Shipka), Rose (Lucy Boynton), and Joan (Emma Roberts).

Movies

Gretel & Hansel and Returning to Dark Fairy Tale Roots

By Don Kaye

Movies

Best Modern Horror Movies

By Don Kaye

It is easy to see how the first two intersect, with Kat and Rose being the only two girls at their Catholic boarding school whose parents haven’t come to pick them up for winter break. How their long weekend connects with Joan’s separate hitchhiking through a snowy stretch of America is not immediately clear, but the bubbling sense of despair in all three narratives is omnipresent, even before Rose gives it shape by mentioning the urban legend of nuns worshiping the Dark One in the boiler room below.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter trades in horror archetypes, but then digs deeper by revealing untapped, feminine complexities to previously well-worn narratives where young women are merely vessels or victims. Unspooling like a waking nightmare, Perkins’ dreamlike atmosphere is only for the patient, but the climax is so shocking and brazenly subversive that it demands to be reexamined as the full extent of its desolation becomes clear. – DC

11. Climax (2018)

One could argue that every one of the five feature films directed by Argentine filmmaker Gaspar Noe, including such controversy-courting titles as I Stand Alone, Irreversible, and Enter the Void, has been a horror film in some way. Noe’s movies are often filled with nihilism, despair, and existential dread, with even the act of sex portrayed as an often violent invasion instead of an expression of love.

Having said that, Climax is clearly Noe’s most formal attempt at the genre yet, as a troupe of dancers isolated at an abandoned school begin to suffer from the effects of punch spiked with LSD during an after-rehearsal party. Predictably, the wheels quickly come off as the assembled dancers rape, beat, torture, and kill each other throughout the horrifying, increasingly frenzied night. – DK

10. Saint Maud (2020)

The directorial debut of Rose Glass sees a pious young nurse (Morfydd Clarke) who believes God talks to her directly, on a mission to save the soul of her dying patient (Jennifer Elhe). Saint Maud is a mix of psychological, religious, and body horror against the setting of a run down seaside town which plays like hallucinogenic social realism.

Clarke as Maud is terrific–slight of frame with a troubled mind, she is still a fierce warrior doing what she believes is God’s work from the humble hovel of her home. While Maud punishes her body in service of her spirit, her patient, Amanda, celebrates hers while it lets her down. As a former dancer, she will drink, smoke, and love in her final days.

Movies

The Scariest Films Ever Made and How They Frighten Us

By Matt Glasby

Movies

Saint Maud Review: Elevated Horror That’s a Revelation

By Rosie Fletcher

Glass’ debut is beautiful and powerful with a score, visuals, and setting that all contribute to a sense of disquiet that grows to a euphoric/horrific conclusion. An unforgettable film that singles Glass out as absolutely one to watch. – RF

9. It Comes at Night (2017)

The exact nature, origin, and spread of the grisly infectious disease that shreds society to pieces in It Comes at Night is never deeply examined; the movie is not interested in exploring the end of the world on some epic scale. Instead the effect it has is on a very small, very frightened group of people–two families that include Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Riley Keough, and Carmen Ejogo among their dwindling ranks–who are trying their best to stay alive and sane.

In that sense, the title of the movie (and, to a degree, the way it was marketed) is somewhat misleading. What comes at night is not some rampaging horde of flesh-eating walking corpses but rather the cold, insidious effect of fear, grief, and distrust. These two invisible threats eat away at what’s left of our civilized selves.

Director Trey Edward Shults (Waves) spares nothing and no one in this grim fable; by the time it reaches its inconsolably bleak conclusion, the cumulative effect of this quiet, bare bones film is devastating. – DK

8. Enemy (2013)

Before he tackled science fiction epics like Blade Runner 2049 and the upcoming Dune, French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve made smaller, independent dramas and psychological thrillers. One of those was Enemy, which stars Jake Gyllenhaal in a double role as two men who are exactly the same physically but quite different in temperament and personality.

Based loosely on the novel The Double by Jose Saramago (who wrote the horrifying novel Blindness), Enemy is less a horror film and more an exercise in neo-noirish surrealism. It’s anchored by Villeneuve’s chilly direction and two excellent performances from Gyllenhaal, who deftly explores the definition of manhood, the male-female dynamic (as he navigates the wife of one man and the girlfriend of the other), and the nature of identity.

Enemy doesn’t offer easy answers and its shocking ending is very much open to wide interpretation. It’s a challenging early work from a director who’s now moved on to become one of cinema’s most ambitious science fiction auteurs. – DK

7. Under the Skin (2013)

Jonathan Glazer’s loose adaptation of Michel Faber’s novel is a strange beast to be sure. Developed over more than a decade, using several first time performers with scenes shot with hidden cameras, it stars Scarlett Johansson as a predatory alien scouring the Scottish countryside, picking up men that she then lures into a strange black liquid which consumes them.

It’s a convincing look at humanity through the eyes of an extraterrestrial, in all its oddness–from the kindness of girls in nightclubs, the utterly futile act of a man trying to save his drowning wife, and in doing so ending both their lives, to the idiosyncrasies of beans on toast and Tommy Cooper. Johansson is a revelation, going unrecognized in her interactions with real people, bringing an authenticity and later an aching sympathy to her performance.

If the ending is bleak, and there are moments of true horror, there’s levity here too, as well as something quite profound to be said about human nature. – RF

6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos–already a purveyor of the weird, surreal and darkly satiric before this or The Favourite, as seen with 2016’s The Lobster–went into full horror mode for this relentlessly unsettling tale of supernatural revenge in which a surgeon (Colin Farrell), his wife (Nicole Kidman), and their kids are made to pay for the death of a man who Farrell lost during surgery.

The impetus of all this is the man’s son, Martin, played by Barry Keoghan in one of the most disturbing performances of recent years. Farrell and Kidman are equally unnerving as their purposely stilted work in the early part of the film gives way to show the cracks in their seemingly perfect family façade.

Games

How Scorn Turned the Art of H.R. Giger into a Nightmarish Horror Game World

By John Saavedra

Movies

The WNUF Halloween Special: The Making of the Most Fun Found Footage Horror Movie Ever

By Gavin Jasper

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is horror at its purest: an unexplainable examination of what happens when the irrational intrudes on the rational. It leaves you rattled without a single jump scare or visual effect. – DK

5. Green Room (2015)

Writer/director Jeremy Saulnier followed up his excellent breakout feature, 2013’s Blue Ruin, with this taut, suspenseful and dread-inducing thriller set in the grimy, sweaty environs of an out-of-the-way punk rock club. There, a hardcore group on a micro-budget tour of the Pacific Northwest manage to grab a make-up gig after their original show is canceled, but find to their horror that the bar is a white supremacist hangout… and they’ve just witnessed a murder to boot.

It’s not surprising that Saulnier rings maximum tension out of the situation since Blue Ruin was such an accomplished piece of work. What is surprising is seeing Captain Picard himself, Patrick Stewart, playing the local neo-Nazi leader with such believable, low-key malevolence. The rest of the cast, including the sadly missed Anton Yelchin and the always reliable Imogen Poots, is equally effective in making this an exceptionally smart, intense roller coaster ride. – DK

4. Midsommar (2019)

Emerging director Ari Aster made two very different horror movies for A24 virtually back-to-back with Hereditary and Midsommar, and was vocal about the mental and emotional breakdown that ensued thanks to this near-impossible endeavor. Accordingly, Midsommar evolved into what could be considered a “difficult second album,” one which managed to exorcise some of his personal demons for both the entertainment and discomfort of an intrigued audience.

Movies

Midsommar: Florence Pugh Considers Ending Theories, May Queen Fandom

By David Crow

This ambitious, unsettling masterpiece about one young woman’s struggle to process trauma while she is simultaneously expected to perform the emotional labor of holding together a substandard relationship became a visual flipside to Hereditary’s darkness, creating a bright, horrifying world full of flowers, lush green pastures, and organic pagan rituals that all combine delicately to present us with a piping hot mug of “good for her” energy.

Though the argument over whether Hereditary or Midsommar is the superior film will probably never end, this often-hallucinogenic folk tale isn’t just one of A24’s best horror projects, but one of the greatest horror movies of all time, period. – KH

3. The Lighthouse (2019)

“How long have we been on this rock?” It’s a simple question posed by one lighthouse keeper (or “wicke”) to another in Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse. But as anyone who’s viewed the movie can attest, its answer is nigh unknowable. Eggers’ follow-up to The Witch is as phallic as that first movie was feminine, as evidenced by the titular structure that old seaman Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) constantly demands his new second Ephraim (Robert Pattinson) keep scrubbed clean.

Filmed in black and white, and in a 1.19:1 aspect ratio—similar to what Fritz Lang used to shoot Expressionist serial killer movie M (1931)—The Lighthouse is steeped in the old ways of doing things, both as a piece of cinema and as a sea shanty of a tale. As writers, Robert and his brother Max Eggers revel in the nautical jargon of their characters, particularly Dafoe’s Wake, who is like a corncob pipe given legs. Yet Dafoe and Pattinson never descend into caricature; they instead feast on their Sisyphean characters.

Movies

The Lighthouse: the myths and archetypes behind the movie explained

By Rosie Fletcher

Movies

The Lighthouse: Willem Dafoe Reveals the Secret of a Two-Hander Film

By David Crow

More esoteric and ambiguous than The Witch, some might defy categorizing The Lighthouse as a full-throated horror. But the picture’s haunting ghost story setup and heightened use of both claustrophobic interiors and barren exteriors beg to differ, as do the film’s final Lovecraftian overtures toward madness. A masterful exercise in the macabre and hellish, The Lighthouse confirms Eggers as one of the most interesting voices to emerge from his generation. – DC

2. The Witch (2015)

To fully appreciate The Witch, it must be made clear that there’s a literal witch in the woods. Writer-director Robert Eggers emphasizes this early on, allowing the audience to glimpse her scraggly and unholy shape as the crone sacrifices a newborn to Satan. This not only signals the movie is playing for keeps, it also removes any sort of psychological ambiguity about what’s going on.

Movies

The Witch Has One of Horror’s Greatest Endings

By David Crow

Intensely committed to immersing audiences in the daily lives and nocturnal dreads of 17th century Puritans, The Witch is steeped in a deep-seated anxiety for supernatural entities that could poison your crops, or live in every bump heard in the black of night. With a meticulous eye for historical detail, Eggers creates the best cinematic approximation of Calvinists ever put to screen, and in so doing, allows viewers to both live with superstitions of the Dark One taking the shape of animals, and to judge those obsessed with him.

For The Witch is also an unnerving character study about a family disintegrating before our eyes, and allowing their biases and patriarchal repressions to lead them toward the damnation. With a captivating ensemble of actors, including a star-making turn by Anya Taylor-Joy as Thomasin, the Puritan who is desperate to remain pure, the film basks in its dexterity with early modern English. All of which heightens the tension until a transcendent third act, which can rightly be read as an embrace of despair or liberated ecstasy, depending on who you ask. More than just a great horror movie, The Witch is flatly one of the best American movies produced in this century. – DC

1. Hereditary (2018)

Ari Aster’s directorial debut has become something of a benchmark for horror of a particular kind, whether you want to label it “elevated,” “artsy,” or anything else. Whatever you want to call it, Hereditary is an exceptional debut and a crushingly oppressive work about a cursed family laden with grief.

Movies

Hereditary Ending Explained

By David Crow

Movies

Hereditary: The Real Story of King Paimon

By Tony Sokol

A shock scare about 20 minutes in will leave you reeling and everything just gets worse from there, leading to a finale that is so insane and horrific that it almost comes as a relief after the excruciating misery and unease of the rest of the movie.

Toni Collette won multiple awards (though notably she wasn’t Oscar nominated) for her extraordinary performance as Annie, the doomed daughter of the dead matriach whose demise sets in a motion a series of events that are disastrous for her disaffected son (Alex Wolff), stoic husband (Gabriel Byrne), and strange daughter (Milly Shapiro). A story about family, tragedy, and inexorable catastrophe Hereditary is one of the best horror movies of the century so far. – RF

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