#but then i was rewatching it today and remembered this scene existed
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Don't Ask Me for QL Recommendations Because My Taste is BAD
Bad as in TRASHY.
For your own good, don't ask me for recommendations.
I'm writing this because I've gotten some asks lately for QL recommendations and I wanted to spare you the pain.
If you still don't trust me (because to be fair, why would you? I'm just a random weirdo on the internet), let me tell you how bad my taste is so you'll know why I'm doing you a great favor by sparing you the pain.
(I also watch, and rewatch, series/films for ridiculous reasons, yet another reason not to listen to me. I’ll come back to this in a minute.)
Let's start with a brief rewind to a couple of decades ago (because it matters in this context).
The first queer content of any kind I can remember watching was Xena: The Warrior Princess in the late 90s and early 00s (I was a child/pre-teen at the time). It was such a pivotal point for me, which is why I remember it vividly. Not only was Lucy Lawless (the actress playing Xena) the most beautiful human being I had ever seen at that point, Xena was also queer and I loved her.
The series, though? It’s bad.
It’s over-the-top, contains ridiculous humor, face-palm-worthy fight scenes, etc., etc. (But, it was also the 90s, so it was quality television at the time, no matter what anyone else says.) It was so bad that it was ridiculously entertaining. I would watch it today (if I could find it anywhere…). That’s how bad my taste is (or how attached I am to bad shit).
That’s when the groundwork for my bad taste was laid. I blame THANK Xena: The Warrior Princess for it.
Then there was a huge skip until July last year when I found the Asian QL world, because I had no idea it even existed (I’m from Europe, btw).
(My personal story is that I fell into the queer/gay film world before the QL world, and the queer films I could find were made and released very sporadically. But ever since I found the treasure trove of Asian QL series in July 2023, I’ve watched 291 series/films as of right now.)
The reason I fell into the Asian QL world was thanks to a Short on YouTube with the main characters from Roommates of Poongduck 304 kissing. (Want to know what convinced me to watch it? One of them was wearing blue and the other pink, two of my favorite colors. Yep, that’s the reason. Told you it would be ridiculous.)
Since then, I’ve been exploring this rabbit hole and loving every second of all the bad shit that’s out there (there’s some great shit too, and some great things that aren’t shit at all, but they’re not really my taste because my taste is trashy, remember?).
I quickly noticed what my taste was pulling me towards and, in some cases, the trashier it was, the more I liked it.
(I’m talking about fiction here. I’m mature enough to be able to separate fiction from reality. Just because I enjoy watching a series/film that depicts a problematic topic, and sometimes do it in a problematic way, doesn’t mean I condone it in real life. I’m just putting this here as a disclaimer because people on the internet are easily offended nowadays. And I honestly don’t have time to respond to people who are venting their anger after purposefully misinterpreting what I’ve said, unless there’s a very valid reason, which there usually isn’t.)
So, what are some of my favorites that I absolutely do not recommend you watch?
Unless you want to watch trash, then, have at it. Just don't say I didn't warn you.
(Btw, if you like any of these, I apologize for calling your taste bad and trashy. But, if you like any of these, I think you already know your taste is bad. Also, if you like any of these, hey, bestie!)
Let’s start with the less extreme ones so I don’t scare you away from the start. After that, they’re in no particular order.
(With the issues/TW section for each series/film I include possible trigger warnings, taboo topics, what viewers/commenters have brought up as problematic, my possible issues with the writing, etc. I won’t list everything (because some of them would have looong lists) but I’m including some of the major ones.)
Kiseki: Dear to Me (Taiwan)
Issues/TW: Dubious consent, age gap, “adoptive” brothers becoming lovers, etc.
Both couples in this series have their own set of issues. Ai Di and Chen Yi are the “adoptive” brothers who become lovers while Ze Rui and Zong Yi have an age gap (I can’t remember how big of an age gap but I think it was close to 10-ish years).
(Before I move on there’s one thing you should know about me… I was born into a family with a varying degree of age gaps within marriages, from 2 to 23 years. Even though we’ve talked about the bigger age gaps occasionally, it’s never been an issue. I don’t mind age gaps as long as they’re legal. Does that mean I would hook up with someone in their late teens or early twenties? No. I would rather hook up with someone who has a fully developed brain, which science suggests doesn’t happen until somewhere in the mid-to-late-twenties. But it does mean that age gaps (as long as they’re legal) aren’t something I’ll be bothered by or judgemental of.)
Kiseki: Dear to Me is one of my favorite series because:
It’s from Taiwan, and the Taiwanese QLs are generally great at dealing with more difficult and taboo topics.
Ai Di is the feistiest, most colorful, and pettiest bitch and I love him with my entire ice-cold heart.
Chen Yi looks amazing in black.
The neon lights (because I’m a slut for that).
Also, the kissing (from both couples) is great.
You know, I did say that these would be series/films I absolutely do not recommend you watch. But I’ll actually recommend this one. Watch it. It’s great.
Unknown (Taiwan)
Issues/TW: Age gap, “adoptive” brothers becoming lovers, etc.
This is another one I’ll actually recommend you watch because it’s great.
The main couple (Qian and Yuan) are the “adoptive” brothers becoming lovers while the age gap is most prominent between San Pang (Qian’s business partner) and Lili (Qian’s younger sister). There’s also the fact that San Pang is part of their chosen family and has seen Lili grow up and stuff. So, if that bothers you, then don’t watch it.
The biggest reasons I would personally recommend it to those I know aren’t particularly bothered by taboo topics are because:
The yearning is palpable (and I love shit like that).
Qian would move heaven and earth for his family.
The great story.
The even more amazing acting.
Some moments made me bawl (and since I'm an ice queen, I get obsessed with shit that shatters my ice and makes me cry).
I know I said my taste is trashy… but I would actually give myself a gold star for loving this one.
Now, back to the real trash…
Love in the Air (Thailand)
Issues/TW: Dubious consent, SA, rape, MAME, etc.
Everyone and their aunt (or however the saying goes in English) seem to have an issue with MAME (the original creator of LITA and several other trashy BLs) and for good reason. (I would say that she improved a lot with Wedding Plan, which is the least problematic thing I’ve watched from her and it’s the latest series of hers, as of right now.) If she’s grown, remains to be seen. But it doesn’t change the fact that LITA has some issues.
Honestly, I just watch this for the visuals, as in the motorcycles and the neon lights. That’s it. That’s the reason.
I mean, if you look at the whole first sex scene between Sky and Prapai, you get what I mean with the neon lights. It’s divine. (I recently rewatched LITA for this very reason. A waste of time, you say? Not when you’re a slut for neon lights.)
Don’t watch this though! Just enjoy this gif instead…
I just saved you 13-ish hours of your life. You’re welcome.
TharnType and TharnType 2: 7 Years of Love (Thailand)
Issues/TW: Dubious consent, homophobia, domestic violence, MAME, etc.
Don’t watch this. This is bad. As in, really bad. And all the issues are in the main couple’s relationship.
But, since my taste is really bad, I rewatched this recently for horny reasons (it’s Mew, after all, and he’s got me in a chokehold for some reason). It’s still as bad as I remembered it, but I would still rewatch it for Mew’s sake (and because Techno is ridiculous throughout both seasons, which means I love him).
To be fair there are other, a lot spicier, series that I watch more often for horny reasons (yes, some of them are in this post because they’re trashy too), but none of them include Mew. And since I have to get my dose of Mew from time to time, I return to TharnType (especially the second season).
Big Dragon (Thailand)
Issues/TW: Dubious consent, blackmail, etc.
This isn’t that problematic in my opinion, but there is definitely a drug-induced sexcapade that’s taped and used for blackmail for a while. And that's how the series starts.
I recently did a rewatch of this and it was still bad (in a good way) and I loved every second of it.
What I love about this series are:
The visuals. The set designs are beautiful (especially Yai’s home and the bar, before he demolishes it). As a visual artist, this is speaking to my soul.
The chemistry between Yai and Mangkorn.
Pong and Park. Two idiots I love with my whole ice-cold heart.
And the title track because it’s addictive as hell to listen to.
Also, the sex (which my horny ass needs). Let's not forget the sex. Those scenes were also visually stunning, which made me love them even more.
Honestly, I'll kneel and bow down to this shit because it's that great.
Don’t trust my judgment, though, because my taste is trashy.
Only Friends (Thailand)
Issues/TW: Manipulation, stalking, promiscuity, etc.
This series is messy in terms of intrigue (especially from Boston and then Boeing’s part). The ending had some issues. The sex isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, either. I, on the other hand, would drink a whole pot of this.
Overall, I loved this trash. Mainly because of:
How visually stunning it is.
Sand. He’s a hardworking, good person. He’s also a proud bi!
How they depicted and handled Ray’s addiction and recovery. (I know some watchers were upset that the focus of the series landed on Sand and Ray towards the end while neglecting the other characters, which is a valid point. However, setting that aside, the way they portrayed Ray’s addiction and then his road to recovery in the last couple of episodes was realistic, and I loved it.)
The promiscuity, because I loved it and the mess it created.
Boston being a slutty asshole. The more of a slutty asshole he was, the more I loved him. (I know, it’s a me-problem.)
Boeing coming in and kissing (almost) everyone.
It’s trashy, it’s messy, and I love it!
But, I don’t recommend it to anyone.
My Beautiful Man 1, 2, and 3 Eternal (Japan)
Issues/TW: Dubious consent, obsession, bullying, lack of (or no real) communication, etc.
I love this series (2 seasons + 1 film), but I honestly don’t see it as particularly problematic. But I know others will disagree with me, so here it is on my list of trashy QLs.
I don’t mind Hira’s obsession because I know Kiyoi is just as whipped for Hira (even though he doesn’t know how to communicate it to Hira at first, especially in a way that Hira understands). Would I be okay with someone’s obsession and stalking in real life? Of course not. But, as I mentioned before, I’m mature enough to separate fiction from reality.
Also, I love miscommunicating characters, especially when the misunderstandings they create bring out all the emotions (angst, hurt, anger, sadness, embarrassment, etc.) and even the flight response. I especially love miscommunicating characters when they learn to communicate throughout the series/film. And this series is especially delicious on the miscommunicating part.
But, it’s also problematic, apparently. So, don’t watch it.
The End of the World With You (Japan)
Issues/TW: Blackmail, biphobia, cheating, etc.
I’ll be honest and say that I’ve only watched this series three times. And that’s because the biphobia is fucking annoying. In this series, the bi character is depicted as a cheater (which is common in QLs, btw). It’s an exasperating stereotype. Cheating has nothing to do with your sexuality and everything to do with who you are as a person.
(I mean, you can be a proud bi like Payu in LITA or Sand in OF. They have eyes only for one person as soon as they’re pursuing or dating someone. Give me more bi characters like this, please.)
We could discuss how cheating can be used as characterization in certain stories. But not in this one. Here, they’re basically using Ritsu’s bisexuality as the reason he’s cheating (since he’s sleeping with Masumi while having a thing going on with a girl, and then sleeping with a girl when he has a thing with Masumi), which is why it’s bothering me in this series.
If I’m going to tell you why I like this series, however, it’s for 2 reasons:
It’s about getting a second chance, a topic I love.
The sex (laser-focused horny Ritsu is my favorite Ritsu).
Check Out (Thailand)
Issues/TW: Biphobia, cheating, lazy writing, etc.
(It should be mentioned that I’ve read some comments about some issues involving the company behind this series. I haven’t dug deeper into this so I don’t really know if there’s any substance to the comments I’ve read (like official statements from the company or the other people involved, etc.). But I’m putting this out there in case this might be a potential issue for you (even though I’ve already told you that I don’t recommend you watch any of these because they’re all trashy).)
When I first checked this out at the beginning of this year, this series seemed to have created a storm of bad comments and reviews on MDL since it first came out. So, obviously, I needed to watch it because my taste is trashy.
And, you know what? I loved it!
Besides having the bi character depicted as a cheater (again, the use of this biphobic stereotype is so fucking annoying) and the sporadic clunky and stale scenes, I loved this series because:
It’s about second chances. As I mentioned before, I love that topic.
Best (the actor playing Daonuea) is the best in this series. There’s just something about him that grabs my attention every time. He has me in a similarly tight chokehold as Mew.
There’s sex (and my horny ass needs it).
But, it’s also trash, so don’t watch it.
Pit Babe (Thailand)
Issues/TW: Domestic violence, non-consensual, SA, age gap, etc.
This became popular. Really popular. I saw people comment about it everywhere. And usually, when stuff becomes popular, it’s more than likely reduced to trash quality by the general public. So, obviously, I had to watch it.
Did I end up loving it? Yes.
Honestly, the biggest issue this series had for me was the whole omegaverse thing (this was a new thing for me because I don’t come from an erotic fiction background, my head was rather stuck in fantasy fiction). And, from my limited understanding of this, they didn’t seem to fully commit to the omegaverse thing in Pit Babe, which was unfortunate.
The racing was also so-so for me, which hurt my soul because I usually love racing (cars, mcs, boats, etc.).
What I did like, however, was:
The chemistry between Pete and Kenta (and I’m so sad I only got crumbs of this).
Pavel (the actor playing Babe). I would watch and listen to him recite product placement scripts for toothpaste all day long.
The sex, especially the scene with Babe and Charlie in ep. 9 (even though it was mixed with clips from the racing) and Jeff and Alan’s scene in ep. 13 (because it was sensual, if we ignore the music).
The neon lights (have I mentioned that I’m a slut for neon lights?). I mean, just look at this:
I can watch that pinkish light all day long, even though Babe and Charlie are trying to distract me. (Especially Pavel!)
Dead Friend Forever (Thailand)
Issues/TW: Grooming, bullying, suicide & suicide attempts, etc.
Besides the issues listed above, this also suffered from lazy writing at the end. BUT, I fucking loved DFF anyway.
I never expected to love this series because it’s just a bunch of teenagers stuck at a house in the woods. How interesting could that be? Turns out, very.
DFF wasn’t perfect (perfection doesn’t exist anyway), but what I loved about it was:
The morally ambiguous characters.
The revenge plot.
The poetic justice.
The questioning of what was real vs hallucination.
The visually stunning shots.
The mask!
And Tan’s mask!
The beheading scene.
I could go on, but you get the point. I just love this piece of trash.
But, please, don’t watch it. You will suffer from brain rot. Trust me.
I, however, am currently rewatching this because I choose the brain rot. And my taste is trashy, remember? Or, perhaps I just love watching chaos unfold…
HIStory 3: Make Our Days Count (Taiwan)
Issues/TW: Dubious consent, age gap, tragic ending, etc.
Everyone and their aunt and even their dog have an issue with the ending of this one. And it’s understandable.
I don’t necessarily like or dislike the ending. Obviously, the bury your gays trope is tragic in itself, and, tragically, it’s still being used. That’s why I couldn’t find myself liking the ending, even though I don’t mind tragic endings. (Romeo and Juliet is one of my favorite classics, which people tend to forget is a tragedy and not a romance, btw, but I digress…)
At the same time, though, this series made me cry for a whole episode before tragedy struck because I could feel it. And you have no idea how obsessed I get about shit that makes me cry (since I’m an ice queen).
(Another side note: one of my favorite BLs is Once Again, which made me bawl throughout the whole series. It’s not on this list because it’s neither trashy nor bad, but it’s still one of my favorites because it broke me in the best ways. But, anyway…)
The best part of this series from beginning to end was the other couple, at least for me. This couple is the one with the age gap (which, again, doesn’t bother me) and I fucking love them! One, because Wilson Liu (the actor playing Bo Xiang) is such a gem. Second, because their first time was such a spur-of-the-moment thing fueled by a desire that went from 0-100kph in less time than a Ferrari would. And I loved it (just as much as the squeezing of boobs from behind, which, for some reason, appeals to me).
Also, the twins are so pretty it’s annoying.
Do I recommend it, though? No, because I don’t have time to respond to the clap back I’ll get when you come to the end.
HIStory 4: Close to You (Taiwan)
Issues/TW: Dubious consent, SA, obsession, age gap, stepbrothers becoming lovers, etc.
This one has some problems (especially the relationship between Yong Jie and Xing Si), but I love both the series and its problems (yes, I’m trash). You could say that I’m as obsessed with this series as Yong Jie is with Xing Si. Would I get this series drunk and fuck the living daylights out of it? No. But I would watch it once every 3 months or so. Oh, wait… I already do that. Because I’m trash.
What do I love so much about this series (other than what I mentioned above):
It’s from Taiwan.
Li Cheng is ridiculous, which is exactly why I love him.
Every time I rewatch it, it gets funnier.
The chemistry between Li Cheng and Teng Teng is amazing.
As well as the chemistry between Yong Jie and Xing Si.
The kissing is just as amazing.
The main fujoshi girl, Mei Fang, is so cute I can’t handle her.
And the bathroom scene! In that lighting! It’s iconic!
I don’t care what anyone else says. This is fucking gold to me. But, then again, my taste is trash. So, don’t listen to me.
KinnPorsche (Thailand)
Issues/TW: Dubious consent, SA, torture, Stockholm syndrome-ish, etc.
This is some next-level trash, and I fucking love it.
Two of the major relationships in this series (Kinn & Porsche and Vegas & Pete) are problematic at some point. Especially Vegas and Pete who have this whole captor/captive, torture, BDSM-ish type relationship. Of course, I love Vegas and Pete because my taste is super trashy (yes, it’s a me-problem, but I don’t force my taste on other people, so, for the love of all that is holy, don’t watch this!).
Other reasons I love this series and rewatch it from time to time:
It’s visually stunning! The cinematography is amazing. As I mentioned before, I’m a visual artist, so this is a very valid reason for me to watch it again and again. And again.
The neon lights.
The whole mafia thing.
The sex (because my horny ass needs it).
Playboyy (Thailand)
Issues/TW: SA, homophobia, suicide, etc.
I was debating whether or not to add this to my list solely based on the ending. However, up until that point, I really liked it.
The fact that every episode starts with a whole ass list of trigger warnings tells me this is my shit. And it was.
At times, it was so bad that it was good (until the ending, which was just so bad it was bad). The things I liked were:
The mystery.
Win (who played Nuth). His acting was great.
The chemistry between Nuth and Phop.
The tattooed daddy that’s Aob and his chemistry with Puen (there’s also an age gap here, btw, but as I’ve mentioned before, it’s fine by me as long as it’s legal).
The weird ass sex scenes (and the underwear).
And the not so weird ass sex scenes (like the ones between Aob and Puen and the ones between Nuth and Phop).
But, this series is trashy. Keep as far away from it as possible. If you still decide to dip in, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Red Wine in the Dark Night (Thailand)
Issues/TW: Obsession, blood, human blood bags, etc.
This is a queer film that’s BL-ish with some dark themes. Mainly, it’s about how far Wine would go to help the person he’s fallen for (or become attached to).
What I loved about this film was:
Fluke (who plays Wine). He’s such a great actor and I love him in everything he does.
Wine who is so desperate to love someone and be loved that he ends up doing some weird shit.
The darker and sadder vibe, which I love.
Irresistible Love 1 and Irresistible Love 2 (China)
(This is also called Uncontrolled Love.)
Issues/TW: Obsession, homophobia, codependency, adoptive brothers becoming lovers, etc.
This is another queer film (in two parts) that is more BL-ish than the films I’m getting into below.
This depicts a weird relationship dynamic between Xie Yan and Shu Nian where Shu Nian was basically adopted into the family to become Xie Yan’s friend/babysitter/lackey. This is some weird ass shit, and I love weird ass shit so I really enjoyed this rare, uncensored, gem from China.
But, it’s also trashy. So, don’t watch it.
The next couple of films I’ll mention are (obviously) trashy, but also complex and deep (which is why I love them).
One Summer Night (South Korea)
Issues/TW: Obsession, dependency, oppression, etc.
This is a low-budget film from 2016 (so, production-wise, it’s definitely nothing like the usual stuff from South Korea you can watch on Netflix), but I love it.
It’s gritty, it’s raw, it’s explicit (an emphasis on explicit because you’ll see dicks), it deals with being a North Korean defector but ending up in an impoverished situation in South Korea, and it ends with a dubious ending you can interpret in different ways.
This is definitely not for the general QL viewers who watch QLs for the cutesy stuff.
And it's trashy. So, don’t watch it.
Dangerous Drugs of Sex (Japan)
Issues/TW: All the trigger warnings! Seriously. I feel like it’s better to say that so you’ll look up the TWs for yourself (if you choose to watch this, which I'm asking you not to) rather than me mentioning a few and forgetting others.
With this film, what others see are all the trigger warnings (and, yes, I see them too, they’re fucking obvious). However, I can see beyond that and watch it for what it is at the core: Two characters dealing with incredible grief.
Grief is a topic that often affects me and I can relate to it because I’ve had to deal with a lot of grief in my relatively short life. Watching a film like this where grief pushes the characters to their very limits will (often) get a special place in my heart, especially if done well. And it’s done very well in this film.
Do I condone the characters’ behaviors? No (especially not Yoden Ryoji’s). But I do understand that grief can send you over the edge (and in some cases throw you off the edge) because I’ve experienced it. I do understand that grief can cause you to make horrible decisions because I’ve done it (though, not this extreme). I do understand that grief can be self-destructive because I’ve been there. This film shows it all. That’s why I love it so much.
Do I recommend you watch this, tough? No. Don’t do it. This is not for everyone. It’s definitely not for those who watch QLs for the cutesy stuff.
But it is for me because I love trash. Especially good trash. And this is the best trash I’ve ever seen when it comes to gay films.
Anything by Scud Cheng
Lastly, I want to mention any film by Scud Cheng because…
And I’m an artist so art means everything to me.
Cheng is a screenwriter and director from Hong Kong. His films, the ones I’ve seen, are gritty, nude, and real. They are more on the art side than the others I’ve listed above, which is why they have a special place in my heart.
They’re also deep and explore themes like introspection (are we doing things because we believe they’re the right thing to do, or because external forces have “brainwashed” us to believe they’re the normal thing to do?), the porn industry and how it exploits young and queer men, death, politics, and love, to name a few.
These are not for the average QL watcher. They’re not for the faint of heart. They’re not for those who want an entertaining watch.
These films require multiple viewings. I’ve watched some once, some twice, and some more times, and I still find new themes and meanings woven into the stories. So, they’re complex and deep.
But, don’t watch them because I know you’ll come at me later. So, to spare us both the time and energy it would take to argue about this shit, just don’t watch any of it.
Now, if you still want to ask me for recommendations after all that, don't tell me I didn't warn you!
#kiseki: dear to me#unknown#unknown the series#love in the air the series#tharntype#big dragon the series#only friends the series#the end of the world with you#my beautiful man#utsukushii kare#check out the series#pit babe the series#dead friend forever#dead friend forever the series#dff#kinnporsche#kinnporsche the series#history 3: make our days count#history 3: modc#history 4: close to you#playboyy the series#red wine in the dark night#irresistible love#uncontrolled love#one summer night#dangerous drugs of sex#taiwanese ql#taiwanese bl#taiwanese series#thai ql
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"Fernando" S1E4 - Fernando Alonso & Carlos Sainz Sr.
#im sorry i also thought i qas done gifing this season#but then i was rewatching it today and remembered this scene existed#ive talked abt this before but ahhhh theyre very cute to me#like how theyre both older drivers but act very young with each other and tease each other#but in this ep especially nando is so so so cheeky with him#but the mood lighting and the camera angles my god#its filmed like a gay romance drama i swear#'do you think two old racing drivers can fall in love? 🥺'#fernando alonso#carlos sainz sr#what's their ship name??#carnando#??? is that it???#f1#formula 1#fernando(show)#we do a little bit of f1#fernando s1e4
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So I was thinking about Hell's understaffing problem today while rewatching S2 for the nth time...
I remember wondering "Why the hell is Hell so understaffed?" during my first few watches. I think I even made a post about it somewhere, and I think someone had suggested it was because they were all on Earth tempting humans. That didn't sit right with me, because demons view Crowley's position with envy--posts on Earth are clearly extremely limited--if not completely exclusive.
And then I remembered seeing a post about how empty Heaven is, especially when compared to Hell. Hell is FULL. There's no shortage of people/demons milling about in those awful conditions, while Heaven is clean and crisp and white and sterile and EMPTY. Muriel even remarks on how rarely they see another person.
And then it hit me--as I'm sure it has hit several others by now--of course Hell is understaffed. And it's not because the demons are on Earth. It's because all (or very nearly all) of the human souls are in Hell being tormented.
Furfur tells Shax that they could "have an order from Satan himself" but that he doesn't have the demons they're asking for. It's not because the demons are gone or don't exist, it's because they're all assigned to tormentor duties.
And it reminded me of that scene in S1 where Crowley asks Aziraphale how many first class composers are in Heaven and then lists off some that are in Hell. Aziraphale doesn't give any names--he only remarks that the ones in Hell have already written their music.
Maybe he doesn't list any because there aren't any there. They're all in Hell.
With all that said, there's still 2 things that make me curious about the whole setup. At the end of S1, when our poor International Delivery Guy comes to pick up the artifacts he asks if they believe in life after death. Aziraphale remarks--in a somewhat reluctant tone--"I suppose I must do." That's always struck me as strange when he's a literal angel and is very much aware of the whole Heaven/Hell and how they relate to the human soul thing. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it feels off.
And then there's the fact that human souls, canonically, go "somewhere very cold" when they die. And Death's appearance/wings give off a vibe that suggests there may be a void-like place that souls go to. God says something about Death's wings looking like a rip in space and filled with glimmers of something that could be stars or "something else entirely" (like souls, perhaps?).
Perhaps Aziraphale's noncommittal answer is because he knows how empty Heaven is, or because he knows souls go somewhere and exist in a way that doesn't, in his mind, constitute "life." Or maybe Aziraphale knows that humans experience some form of an afterlife, but that there's no such thing for celestials/infernals, and perhaps he's a little bitter about it. Or maybe he DOESN'T know whether an afterlife exists for celestials/infernals, because God does enjoy playing ineffable games of Her own devising, and clearly has no issue leaving Her own creations "in the dark" so to speak. And I'm not talking about discorporation here--I'm talking proper angelic/demonic destruction a la hellfire/holy water.
And as for the cold... Well... Perhaps it's a void. Perhaps it's space. Or, perhaps... Hell has frozen over.
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no i am not done with the breakup scene yet. it haunts me during the day and it haunts my dreams, soon i will be able to replay it in my head on command. today's obsession: tell me you said no
firstly, i think it's important to point out just how deep the miscommunication runs here. aziraphale is excited, outright giddy about the news he is delivering, and he expects crowley to be just as happy about them.
after all, he thinks he is giving crowley what he has always wanted - they can go off together, he can be an angel again, which to zira equals being on the good side. the side of *light*. he remembers crowley's creation, remembers how in awe and happy he was with it, and thinks that is what he is offering.
aziraphale's expressions during this scene are probably gonna be their own post, but long story short he switches between excited and confused like a broken light switch, unable to decide which one to settle on.
crowley, well, crowley is angry. angry and confused and completely caught off guard because aziraphale is shaking the very foundation of what crowley currently thinks to be their relationship. the horror dawns on him pretty early, but he tries to fight it off, tries to convince himself that no, aziraphale wouldn't. he wouldn't agree to that, he KNOWS me. he knows i don't want to go back, he knows both sides are equally bad.
tell me you said no. tell me i wasn't wrong about you, about us. tell me i didn't misjudge our entire relationship. tell me the last millennia were worth something, anything.
tell me you said no.
if you rewatch the scene, you will notice that crowley never breaks eye contact, he stares aziraphale down the entire time. unless it was literally blink and you will miss it, i am pretty sure he does not even blink. not once. aziraphale on the other hand is looking everywhere but at him, his gaze flicks around just as much as his expression. crowley tries again, one last time. tells him you know they will both destroy this planet, humanity, us. it doesn't matter which side wins, the result will be the same. we KNOW that. we SAW that. we stopped it from happening.
aziraphale does not answer.
he does not have to. crowley can read him well enough to know exactly what he responded, and even if he couldn't - he knew from the beginning. he just cannot believe the answer. he still can't.
it's one of his fatal flaws, isn't it, believing in aziraphale and in them against every rule and threat the universe throws at them.
now to get to the part that breaks my heart.
crowley repeats himself again, not breaking eye contact while aziraphale tries to avoid his gaze.
tell me you said no.
he still hopes. after that entire conversation, he still hopes.
when the silence stays unbroken he steps towards him, asking one. last. time.
angel tell me you said no.
this. this frame. this is when the realization hits him full force, the truth he has been trying to talk and rationalize his way out of. he has been begging aziraphale to tell him that he did not betray him, them.
everything he has been fighting for the last six thousand years, all the thoughts telling him he is worth less than aziraphale because he fell, because he is a demon, evil, on the wrong side. everything he has been unlearning, accepting that he can be kind, he can be good. accepting that aziraphale cares about him, fuck, maybe even loves him.
crowley thought aziraphale is the one being that sees him, truly sees him, which is why he offers himself without his glasses - his last layer of protection.
he betrayed us. he has never been with me, we have never been on our side, not when he chooses heaven over the fragile, peaceful existence they have carved out for themselves. he took care of the bookshop, allowed zira to take his bentley, cleaned up and tidied and prepared it for his return, for the both of them. just to get all of it thrown into his face, to have it degraded as not good enough. to have HIMSELF degraded as not good enough.
and after all that. after that realization, the pain, the break in what he thought was their reality.
after aziraphale telling him that he plans on leaving earth and wants crowley to be someone he is.
crowley swallows his tears and he steps back, keeps his glasses off and continues with his confession anyway. his voice breaks several times throughout it, he is on the verge of crying. i will probably make a separate post about all that but once again, tldr he suppresses tears throughout his entire speech.
i want to spend eternity with you and he cannot say it because he knows he would break on eternity and start crying. somehow, crowley still hopes that maybe this will change his mind, this will make him realize that he needs to stay here, stay with me.
crowley hopes and hopes and hopes and aziraphale finally meets his gaze and all he responds is nothing lasts forever.
no, i don't suppose it does.
still, what is left but to keep hoping that maybe one day, they will be an us, even if it isn't forever. even if it's just one day, one kiss, one second of being held and kissed back.
crowley keeps hoping and that, to me, is the most painful part of it all.
#alex talks good omens#good omens#good omens season 2#good omens 2 spoilers#ineffable husbands#aziraphale#crowley#aziracrow#aziraphale x crowley#good omens meta#this got so much longer than i intended for it to be rip#i feel like it is important to mention that these posts are not planned in the slightest#i look at some screencaps experience emotions and then write a stream of consciousness#i hope it has enough of a red thread that people can follow though#any spelling mistakes and the like are because i do not proof read my tumblr posts#you get my unfiltered brain vomit
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Love for Love's Sake | Things You Didn't Notice #9
(okay it's not an episode number this time i just still have many details to point out oops pls let me go)
I swear. I thought I'd stop mentioning small details because I already wrote like 10 posts on Tumblr translating and explaining all the cultural stuff regarding this show and the obsession is already becoming embarrassing, but I rewatched the last episodes again and I've got tiny. Little. Details. That I can't help but point people to once again. Because damn, the amount of thought put into this show!
(trigger warning: first part talks about suicide and depression, next ones are linguistic and cultural)
The Black Suit & The Sea
I would've asked Koreans I know about the significance of such symbolism but they are celebrating Seollal (New Year) today and I don't wanna ruin the festive mood asking about "how would people dress for suicide" x)
But after watching this scene, I recognized some strong parallels in Korean media depicting depression, suicide and one's decision to end their life. One of it is bridges and jumping (if you don't know what Bridge of Life is, ask me and I'll share, so this post wouldn't become too long) but another one is sea.
My interpretation - Koreans wear black suits to funerals, so if someone is headed to the sea in a black suit, it might mean this is the character's attempt to "have" their own funeral before finally ending their life. Why do I think this combination is somehow significant?
Because I remembered a music video one of K-pop artists I like (Kim Hanbin) made, after he experienced the downfall of career, extreme hate and rejection from the public, and severe depression. His whole album Waterfall tells Hanbin's personal story, dark thoughts and his battle to survive during the time when he was gone for 2 years, but in the music video for this album (illa illa) he is seen emerging from the sea in a black suit – metaphorically regaining his music and, most importantly, desire to live. Watch with lyrics!
youtube
If we think, this is how you depict suicidal thoughts/attempt in Korean media (of course, Love for Love's Sake was even more blunt in telling us the meaning), then Myungha wearing black suit wasn't just for the pretty or dramatic picture. More than that, we see him wearing the black suit for the whole last evening – especially when he goes to finally meet his mother.
Which tells us Myungha has already decided to disappear from this world, and was determined to do it on that day, and his mother rejecting him and pretending she doesn't know her son might not have been just the last straw... but it definitely could've been Myungha's last attempt to find anything in his life worth staying for, worth not going through with his plan.
Anyway, what a scary but beautiful symbolism.
Let's talk about something happier! More heartwarming!
Do you remember when we talked about the carefully placed movie posters in previous episodes? I payed more attention to the background this time when in Episode 8 Yeowoon ran to the cinema searching for Myungha in his world. And what an amazing discovery! When Myungha starts existing again and calls Yeowoon, the movie poster behind Yeowoon says "Guardian" (보호자).
And I already said in another post that Myungha in previous episodes admitted himself being Yeowoon's "guardian, protector" in the exact same word. But now this word is shown next to Yeowoon! As Yeowoon is the one who changed the main mission and has now declared himself Myungha's guardian and protector and will do his best to make him (his favourite pereson/bias/blorbo) happy. They have now both become guardians for each other. This. Goddamn. Show.
And I also want to shout out the VFX & Production team for this show – all the visual effects are very down to earth, gentle and not over the top but enhancing the series to the max. Like, maybe you wondered where on the screen does it say "Monday, August 14" and "Saturday, August 12"? Well, as expected, you see it on four monitor screens above the box office – the date, the ongoing movies (yep, still our favourite two fake movies) and available dates etc.
But when Yeowoon and Myungha agree to meet each other in the exact system time, they are facing each other without a barrier, and the screens are now counting down the time until the Game End. Instead of normally showing movies, like in the previous shot, it says "Time remaining: 3 hours, 23 minutes, 15 seconds". It was either done with VFX or practically, but still, the thought of incorporating system messages into the actual background is insane and I'm always happy to discover such details.
I don't know how many of you have motivational stairs at your schools, we definitely didn't have this but it's quite a popular thing in Korea. They put popular and uplifting sayings for students on each stair, sometimes they even quote motivational phrases from idols, like this:
And it's interesting that when system gets broken and Myungha is about to disappear, we see the deep cracks coming through the stairs, we see ruined school BUT at the same time the quotes in the show are so obviously in our focus. And they are already written (see screenshots above) in Korean and English, but I'll still write down: one is saying "Stay hungry, stay foolish" and "If you dream it, you can do it, you will succeed". So, perhaps... motivational quotes from sunbae?
And the last moment isn't heavy on translation but I still want to talk about it because cool Korean culture!xD You see the gang grilling meat on the roof (it's called samgyeopsal and it's very popular to have for gatherings), and then Myungha makes a "ssam" and feeds it to Yeowoon – but Sangwon steals it.
Ssam is a wrap, you grill meat then put it on the salad leaf, add other ingredients (like mushrooms, sauces, garlic, green onions etc, there are many side dishes) and then you wrap it in this sort of salad sack and eat it. It's very tasty and unusual combination. But the thing is! There is no way to make it for someone else and leave it on their plate so if you make a ssam wrap for someone and want to give it to a person, you literally have to feed them (like Myungha does with a very fond smile). This is why it's often seen as a romantic gesture (aka feeding someone from your fork etc) and why it's hilarious that Sangwon steals this ssam from Yeowoon (because he wants and he gets Myungha's affection and he's not above being a brat about it!)
I'm sure you can already sense it anyway without me telling you about romantic/close-friend implications, but I thought you guys might wonder why are the guys fighting over the salad leaf.
Another funny thing – Sangwon mentions "There's a saying, 'Don't scold dogs while they eat'". This is a Korean proverb "밥 먹을 때는 개도 안 때린다" ("You don't hit even a dog when it eats") which means that, no matter how annoying you find someone, no matter how angry you are, you can't scold this person while they are eating. Eating is a very important cultural thing in Asia, of course, so do not have arguments at the dinner :D But it's funny how Sangwon uses old proverbs to be mischievous and steal Myungha's love without consequences xD I adore him
I swear, this gotta be my last post about all the details in Love for Love's Sake. There is one more scene with the mirror and a caption, and I'm very curious if it means something because it was seen twice, during system breaking down scene as well, but it's either in Chinese or Japanese and I can't read it.
Anyway! Hope you enjoyed your everyday magazine, I love reading all your tags and thoughts and comments, and if you want to read all my previous translations and pointed out cultural details in Love for Love's Sake, go read this tag!=)
#love for love's sake comments#love for love's sake meta#love for love's sake#bl meta#korean drama#korean bl#bl series#love supremacy zone#myungha x yeowoon#tae myungha#dropthemeta#i love hyperfocusing on the show and have amazing community to go insane over it#i love reading all your comments guys#tw suicide#tw depression
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I have to be so honest the *only* reason I decided to rewatch and finally edit Critical Care today is bc I remembered this scene exists
#girl who needed to see james spader’s thighs right away or she was going to die#he is SO touchy feely in this movie he cannot stop kissing his lips are so needy
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Dean DeBlois coming up with THW: do you remember Gift of the Night Fury? And do you remember In Dragons We Trust? what if we did that but bad
So I kinda held off from answering this because I thought it would become a little ranty but oH WELL
Truer words have never been spoken my friend.
Past media has shown us how humans and dragons were better off (happier, even) co-existing together, rather than sending them away, and THW just took all of that and threw it out of a window.
It simply just doesn't fit in with the rest of the franchise (ranging from the 'this is berk' intro to the different animation style, and even the different title), especially thematically. HTTYD 1 and 2 are all about love and hope and friendship and overcoming adversity together because there is nothing stronger than the bond between best friends, between family and love. Yet THW throws this all away because... the world is now too dangerous for the dragons and humans to co-exist peacefully? Because the dragons belong in the Hidden World? Because Hiccup and Toothless need to separate n order to bring the story closure?
It completely undermines the message the previous two movies, short films and shows sent us. We grew up with these characters. We saw them laugh together, fight together and cry together. And we get to laugh and fight and cry with them. We ca see Hiccup and Toothless bond over and over again, and we can cry each time because look at the beautiful friendship that we get to see blossom before our very eyes! We get to live their experiences with them, through the shows that for a lot of us were our childhood, through the shows and films that literally made us who we are today, because of that message, that the love that comes from the friendships you makes can help you face any adversity, as long as you face it together. Hiccup and Toothless are stronger as one - all of the riders are. The situation at Berk improved once the humans and dragons made peace, we literally see it in the movies and shows!
I just rewatched the scene where Hiccup lets Toothless go, and they animate it so as Hiccup pulls away from the hug, his hand is outstretched and falls away, mirroring the Forbidden Friendship scene in the first film. I know this is supposed to symbolise the end of their chapter, paralleling the start, but to me it just feels like the story crumbling away, like everything we've fought for has failed, and it just gives me this crushing feeling about the hopeless ending of the story I (and many others) grew up with.
sorry that this became a thw salt mine, but now is probably a great time to say GO WATCH ROB/DOB!!! ITS AMAZING!!! FEEL JOY AGAIN!!!
#THANK YOU FOR THE ASK BEV ILY <3#dizzybevvie#httyd thw salt#httyd thw criticism#httyd thw#httyd#httyd 2#rob/dob#asks
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HAPPY 60TH ANNIVERSARY DOCTOR WHO
My love for Doctor Who & the Whoniverse, the impact it has had on me & how it has shaped me as a person- An Unhinged Essay by witchofthemidlands
I can definitely say in all honesty that Doctor Who has changed my life, it is my favourite television series of all time. There’s nothing quite like Doctor Who & it's spin offs & there’s not enough words in any language to describe just how much I love this show. It has had such an impact on me. Both of my parents are Whovians, my dad has seen it since Patrick Troughton & my mum started watching it when Jon Pertwee was the Doctor, we have Doctor Who coasters & for a long time, my dad even had a framed card collection of the Doctors 1-8 & aliens just around the downstairs bathroom (imagine going to the bathroom & having pictures of all eight Doctors, Davros, a Dalek, The Master, a Cybermen, an Ice Warrior & more staring down upon you 😂)
Through my love for Doctor Who, I have met two of my best friends in the world, my friend from college & my fantastic housemate from uni. It birthed this channel when I became hyper-fixated on series 10, It has helped me through depression, anxiety & has taught me to accept myself. It has also shown me so many beautiful places, I’ve been to three Doctor Who exhibitions, walked down to Durdle Door & I’ve been to Cardiff five times. I was in Cardiff last weekend & saw the place they filmed scenes from Eye of the Gorgon for the first time & it was BEAUTIFUL 🤩 I am so grateful for the existence of Doctor Who, I would not be the same person without it. I’d like to now share a couple of anecdotes from my personal life about the way in which I came to discover this fantastic show.
My first exposure to Doctor Who, was not in fact, to Doctor Who itself. The year was 2007, I was seven years old & I was just at home, after school, watching CBBC when a beautiful program called The Sarah Jane Adventures started to play. It was the episode Warriors of Kudlak & was it the incredible & wonderful Sarah Jane Smith? The fantastic & lovely Maria Jackson, the brilliant & hilarious Clyde Langer? The socially awkward Luke Smith? I’m not sure what it was about this show that made me become instantly attached but I did & from that day on I watched series one of The Sarah Jane Adventures RELIGIOUSLY. I watched it over & over again. Sarah Jane Smith was my hero & I loved her so much, she was clever, fun, looked amazing & I can just remember thinking she was so cool, I just really loved that character, I still do even now, I will always love Sarah Jane. I watched series one of that show until my parents, got sick of seeing it & decided that it was time that I started watching the show that started it all, Doctor Who.
The exact date I started watching Doctor Who was the 5th of April 2008. I was eight years old & my parents had decided that I would be watching the new season of Doctor Who with them. I did not know what to expect, I was used to Sarah Jane. I’d heard of this Doctor of course but I had no idea what I was in store for but all I can say was that eight year old me's mind was BLOWN & I’ve never looked back. I’ve watched Doctor Who ever since. I saw my first Doctor, the Tenth Doctor played by David Tennant & my first companion, Donna Noble played by Catherine Tate & I just loved them. Their energy, their humour, they were fantastic. The scene where they find each other again at the window is just brilliant. There was so much in that episode, every time I rewatch it I keep thinking to myself, no wonder I became the Whovian i am today after witnessing that masterpiece & IT ONLY GOT BETTER FROM THERE!
Of course, I do have to take a moment to talk about my favourite scene in Partners in Crime which is where Wilfred Mott waves Donna & The Doctor off at the end of the episode. Wilfred Mott reminds me of my own grandad in the way he was so kind, how he supported his granddaughter & was just a really beautiful soul. That moment where Wilfred is cheering is so euphoric, it is pure happiness & is what made me fall in love with Doctor Who. It is one of my favourite moments in the entire Whoniverse.
I would have to say that my favourite scene in the Whoniverse of all time is in my favourite episodes of Doctor Who, The Stolen Earth & Journey's End. Nothing has ever quite captured the joy of Doctor Who for me like that scene where The Doctor, Donna Noble, Metacrisis Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Captain Jack Harkness, Mickey Smith, Sarah Jane Smith, Martha Jones & Jackie Tyler (well, not really 😂) are flying the Tardis, bringing the Earth home, Song of Freedom is playing & on Earth Luke Smith is holding onto K9 & cheering, Gwen Cooper & Ianto Jones are holding on for dear life, Wilfred Mott & Sylvia Noble are watching their house shake & Francine Jones, smartest of them all, has got under the table. & then in the most beautiful, happy moment, everyone on the Tardis is embracing at the end of it. Nothing will ever quite match the joy I felt watching that for the first time & the emotions it makes me feel now.
I got my first exposure to Classic Who when I was nine years old & it had been announced that David Tennant would be stepping down as the Tenth Doctor & Matt Smith would be taking his place. Now, I’d seen the transition between Nine & Ten, I knew other people had played the Doctor & I loved Christopher Ecclestone as the Doctor but I just remember being very negative about the Tenth Doctor regenerating & I went through a phase where I didn’t want to watch Doctor Who & went back to just exclusively watching The Sarah Jane Adventures, of course now, I welcome new regenerations, I’m so excited to see what Ncuti Gatwa brings to the table because I loved him as Eric Effiong but back when I was a kid, regeneration was just not something I was keen on at all.
Now my nana had watched it since William Hartnell was the Doctor, my dad had watched the Doctor since he was Two & my mum, since he was Three so they were determined to show me that other versions of the Doctor have been fantastic in the past & they decided on this random Saturday night that I should be exposed to Doctor Who The Movie.
I loved that film, I really did. I haven’t seen it in a long time & I always think that I must have dreamt up some elements of the plot but NO, the plot of that film is something else, it really is. It’s camp, it’s funny, it has the best Tardis interior ever, it’s absolutely balls to the wall unhinged but IT HAS HEART, Paul McGann is THE Doctor & the fact he didn’t get a season after this I don’t know because he was brilliant. Honestly The Night of the Doctor changed me fundamentally as a person when that aired. If the rumours are true about the Eight Doctor coming back for a show, I am going to be the most annoying person on this site. I am going to lose my mind.
Now I genuinely think the reason I have such love for the Seventh Doctor is because my first real impression of this Doctor & Classic Who was Seven getting shot by a gang outside his Tardis 😭 which is I think why in my teens when I went into my local HMV the first Classic Who DVD's I picked up were Third & Seventh Doctor era serials. The Seventh Doctor is a brilliant, Machiavellian scheming little gremlin & I love him more than anything & I just fell in love with Classic Who, I really did because I’d seen the Third Doctor appear in a flashback in The Sarah Jane Adventures, he was also my mum’s first Doctor & I knew I had to see a full episode of his & he was a wonderful, the first time I saw a serial of his properly, he reminded me of Twelve.
Another story I would like to share is a Doctor Who related moment that brought me & my uni housemate to our knees at 2 O’clock in the morning on 27th of January 2020 when I was twenty year old.
I was just getting ready for bed, casually scrolling through tumblr when I saw a post. Now, I will admit I’d sort of taken a short break from Doctor Who in its 12th season after Spyfall because I was busy with uni so I wasn’t exactly up to date but Fugitive of the Judoon had just aired & I was reading that apparently one of my favourite Doctor Who characters of all time, Captain Jack Harkness had returned to the show now this is the first lgbtq+ character both me & my uni housemate had ever seen on tv, Captain Jack Harkness & Torchwood helped both me & my housemate accept our identities & taught us to not be afraid of who we are & that there’s nothing wrong with us. Captain Jack Harkness & Torchwood were the first positive representation we’d been given in our youth. I knew my friend was doing the bins at the time so I just opened the window & screamed down to him CAPTAIN JACK'S BACK ON DOCTOR WHO!
Both me & my uni friend are still apologising to our other housemate to this day for what conspired next. My friend dropped the bags, ran back inside the house & got the episode going. We recruited another friend of his that loved Doctor Who & the three of us sat & watched Fugitive of the Judoon together & oh my god when Captain Jack showed up, the three of us at half past two in the morning were screaming like it was a sports match, we were cheering, throwing things around the living room, hugging & all in all, losing our minds. Yes, we did wake up our non-Whovian housemate who was not happy but it is a core memory for me & really showed to me just how Doctor Who had brought me & my friends together.
On another note, I will always be so grateful to Torchwood because of that, no it wasn’t perfect & no neither was Doctor Who in terms of representation but it mattered to me, it mattered to my friend, it was important for us to see Captain Jack Harkness kiss a man (alien) on our screens when we were growing up, for Ianto Jones & Captain Jack Harkness's relationship to exist, for me to see Gwen Cooper kiss a alien presenting as a woman & to also see Toshiko Sato also kiss an alien presenting as a woman.
When it comes to favourite Whoniverse characters, I love every Doctor there is no version of the Doctor that I don’t love. I’d have to say that the Tenth Doctor is my favourite version of the Doctor & that Donna Noble is my favourite companion because of their significance to me but all in all if I had to choose, I’d say my favourite Doctor is The Ninth & the Tenth, the transitions between the two are so seamless. The fantastic Christopher Ecclestone & brilliant David Tennant will always be my favourite versions of the Doctor. The same way that Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, Billie Piper as Rose Tyler & Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones are my favourite companions. I have a definite soft spot for Rose Tyler because she was my nana's favourite as well, Martha Jones because she’s so brave, clever & beautiful and of course, Donna Noble because she is brilliant.
I have to mention the spin offs because it’s The Sarah Jane Adventures that began my adventures as a Whovian, other than Sarah Jane Smith herself my favourite character was always Maria Jackson. That girl meant the world to me when I was seven, I loved her, oh I loved her so much she was fantastic, kind, clever, amazing & I was DEVASTATED when she & her brilliant dad, the best tv dad to tv dad ever, Mr. Alan Jackson, went to America at the start of series 2. I’ve always liked to imagine that Maria turned out to be a lesbian like I did because I, very much like Maria was also ✨attached✨ to Sarah Jane Smith.
Clyde Langer, Clyde Langer is getting his own paragraph because of how much he means to me. I think I’d had to say that Clyde is my favourite over all because apart from Invasion of the Bane, Clyde was there from the start to the end of The Sarah Jane Adventures & I loved him, he was the funniest character around the stuff he came out with was comedy gold, he was resourceful, sweet & one of the most incredible characters in the entire Whoniverse. He may be my favourite male character in the entirety of the Whoniverse.
Seeing Daniel Anthony as Clyde Langer again in Tales of the Tardis has made the 60th for me, out of everything we’ve been given for the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who, David Tennant & Catherine Tate, new Murray Gold music & RTD back as showrunner, everything I’ve ever wanted & more and yet none of that means as much to me as seeing Clyde Langer again did.
Talking of Whoniverse spin off characters that have my heart in a choke hold I have to talk about my favourite CLASS character. I have to talk to you all about Ram Singh, my SON, my lad who can do no wrong. The sweet boy who loved his girlfriend so much, who suffered more tragedies & pain than any other character in the entire Whoniverse other than the Doctor did in only eight episodes. My guy lost his leg, watched his girlfriend get butchered in front of him, watched another woman get torn apart by an alien in front of him, watched his loving, wonderful dad (who was also one of the tv dads of all time) get killed by an alien & then had to watch his friend kill his new girlfriend who had just professed her love to him. I just love him, I really do, he started off rather mean but he grew as a person over the course of the series.
Now I love EVERYONE in the Torchwood Three team equally, they are fantastic characters who mean the world to me but there’s always that one character who just has something about them that makes me love them the most & that character is Dr. Owen Harper.
I mean this when I say this with my whole chest that Burn Gorman is one of the best actors in the Whoniverse. I mean, I came to Torchwood when I was fourteen for Captain Jack Harkness because I loved him so much & I was so happy to FINALLY get to watch his show but as it turns out, Owen Harper became my favourite character even over Jack who I love more than anything because Owen was just so good. The Dead Man Walking / A Day in the Death storyline is potentially a showcase of the best acting in the Whoniverse. Owen Harper is brilliant, he’s sarcastic, funny, morally questionable here & there, the reason I got into Big Finish, a genuinely good person who did care even if he pretended not to, whose story tore my heart out thew it into oncoming traffic & stamped on it like a herd of wildebeests to the power of mufasa dying in the lion king because oh my GOD the character that Owen Harper was but ABOVE ALL OWEN HARPER IS & ALWAYS WILL BE my favourite ratman. He’s the reason that I met one of the kindest most brilliant people on this site, my mutual, my friend who is so wonderful & WHO UNDERSTANDS the level of feral I reach for Owen Harper & the fact they scrapped his action figure is both of our villain origin stories. @kirstyth you are fantastic, I am so grateful that we started talking, you have shown me some incredible Owen audios & I am on my way to respond to your message now because I haven't done that & I am so sorry but I just wanted to say that I am so grateful that the Whoniverse introduced me to you.
Out of the Classics I would have to say that Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor & Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor own my heart because they were my first Classic Doctors but in this past year I have grown to love the Second Doctor so much, oh he’s just wonderful & so is his companion, Jamie McCrimmon, I mean I’ve only known of this character for a year & I was crying my eyes out during Tales of the Tardis so I can’t even imagine how my dad was feeling watching that when he’d actually seen The War Games when it aired & talking of companions, Ace, Ace McShane, my love. I was still mostly in the closet when I was sixteen & first encountered her but it is undeniable now how much I was attracted to her & I STILL AM! She’s absolutely gorgeous 😍
Of course Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith is my favourite Classic Who companion because she was my first Whoniverse character I ever saw, she was my hero when I was a young kid & quite potentially the reason why I am the deranged lesbian that I am today. I still remember that morning, I was eating breakfast & rewatching The Lost Boy for the millionth time when my mum came in & told me that Elisabeth Sladen had passed away. My mum was devastated too because Sarah Jane Smith was her first companion she ever saw, she’d grown up with her like I had & she’d meant so much to both of us. We were both crying through Clyde & Jo's segment of Tales in the Tardis when they mentioned her. I still haven’t watched Farewell, Sarah Jane Smith in full yet, one day I will.
I can’t finish this essay without thanking Doctor Who for introducing to me to a fellow TimePetals shipper because it is & will always be my favourite Whoniverse ship, the loveliest most wonderful mutual a person could ask for @sallysellsseashellssundays You are brilliant, I am so grateful that Doctor Who brought us together. I love talking to you about Doctor Who & the Whoniverse, it’s one of the highlight of my weeks seeing your messages, they really are fantastic, absolutely fantastic, they are supportive & so kind about my own writing & they are currently writing a fantastic TimePetals fan fiction which has got to be one of the best fanfics I have read in a long time, it’s a masterpiece, they are a genius & one of the greatest writers I know, the way they write the characters & craft the stories are inspired, it’s like watching actual episodes of the show.
Thank you, Doctor Who, I am so grateful that Partners in Crime was the first Doctor Who episode I ever saw & for that (and many other reasons) series 4 will always be my favourite season of Doctor Who, The Tenth Doctor & Donna Noble will always be my favourite Doctor & companion because they were the first & I can’t even begin to explain what it means to me that David Tennant & Catherine Tate are reprising their characters in THREE DAYS TIME 🤩
With all my love to The Sarah Jane Adventures, Doctor Who & Torchwood. I love you so much, thank you for making my life better.
#sarah jane smith#tenth doctor#donna noble#rose tyler#martha jones#clyde langer#maria jackson#ninth doctor#eighth doctor#seventh doctor#owen harper#ram singh#doctor who#the sarah jane adventures#torchwood#bbc class#whoniverse
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I remember people said the scene in Transmission, where Ladynoir renounce their Miraculous and "seemingly" not thinking about each other are mean to be a plot hole, not character inconsistency.
Bt for me, if the character NOT even make a slight uncomfort gesture/expression when they see Scarabella and Black Minette out there instead of their team mate, then it's not a plot hole, it's character inconsistency.
"Plot hole" excuse only work if Adrinette make any comment/looks surprised/make any reaction upon seeing the new duo but the aired time won't let the show do more than that. But the show doesn't let them react negatively which resulting people interpret it as "Yeah I don't care about my team mate, I already got my gf/bf anyway" which is not plot hole at all.
It's 100% character inconsistency. Plot holes are when the plot is wonky, and some logic doesn't logic. When a character acts OOC, it is character inconsistency. Adrien and Marinette have both become wildly OOC since the second Adrienette became canon on this show. They don't care about superheroing anymore, they don't care about each other as Ladybug and Chat Noir anymore. Outside of like, one line about "I hope Ladybug/Chat Noir are okay" (which is quickly overshadowed by some Adrienette, cause we sure do need more of that when we're talking about the late Ladynoir), they just don't give a fuck.
Actually, this isn't even character inconsistency anymore, this is a whole character overhaul a la whatever happened to Felix Fathom. Cause Adrienette only works if you change significant aspects of their characters. What about Chat Noir meaning freedom and a means of escape for Adrien, what about Ladybug being the narrative opposite of his abusive father who gives him unconditional love and acceptance? Fuck that, what he really needs is to start centering his identity around his classmate (with whom he isn't even that close because she thinks he's perfect) and defining himself based on her needs. And what of Chat Noir being the only one who can understand Marinette's struggles? Chat Noir being her special partner whom she can always lean on? Nah, fuck that shit lmao, here's Marinette trying to tell Adrien something he already knows and Marinette trying to hold Adrien's hand even though she's done that before without a problem!
Anyway, like I was saying, they had to change their characters up so that Adrienette could make sense, because it sure wouldn't make sense if it became canon in the show that devoted the bulk of its development to Ladynoir, now would it? So that's why we get episodes like Determination, where Adrien is suddenly head over heels for Marinette out of fucking nowhere, right after the Jubilation dream sequence where they had those cabbage patch kids, and Ladybug initiated a kiss even though they realized this was a dream, and they were clearly having some complicated feelings about the whole thing at the end of the episode. Cause fuck Ladynoir, amirite? Like, why would we waste time on the relationship we spent 5 seasons developing when we could focus on some cookie cutter high school romance with retcons galore and multiple, I tell you, multiple scenes featuring Marinette suddenly having the inability to do things she's done before with no problem, and apparently, it's all Chloe's fault, like what a fucking shocker, who could have seen that coming.
And lets not get into the actual plot holes in Transmission too, cause those also exist? How does Adrien Agreste know and proudly state Scarabella's name when no civilian knows she exists? How does this not make Marinette question why he knows? Why does Marinette expect that someone else becoming Ladybug means she's free when she's still the Guardian? Make it make sense, please.
Anyway, that's all I got. I'm sorry for using your ask as a venting post, anon. I just rewatched Gamer today, and god, Adrienette are so cute and adorable in Season 1. Like, they actually have chemistry and fun interactions and it's the lucky charm debut episode! I will never forgive this show for taking that Adrienette away from me and replacing it with... whatever Season 5 coughed up.
Thank you for your ask!
#ML Salt#ML Writing Salt#ML Writers Salt#Marinette Salt#Ladybug Salt#Not really but tagging to be safe#Adrienette salt#Asks#Meta#My meta
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rewatched “thank you” (the show golem episode) today, and it had been a while since i’d seen it, but i remembered it being a very lovely and poignant episode. something that struck me on this watch was the way in which the snow golem’s story was juxtaposed with scenes of ice king “fighting” finn and jake, and how the episode ends on finn being so moved by the display of unlikely and even destructive love between the snow golem and the fire puppy that he leans down to give ice king a little kiss on the cheek, to which ice king whispers “thank you.”
adventure time often masterfully reveals windows into background characters’ lives for the very purpose of reminding the viewer how just because finn is our primary perspective into this world doesn’t mean that he is its sole inhabitant, or that everyone who plays a role (big or small) must solipsistically be filtered through his lens. as finn’s perspective widens as he matures, so too does the multiplicity of characters whose perspectives we are given expand. this episode constitutes yet another example of a seemingly bit/background player in the land of ooo being focalized, with finn and jake as background players in the snow golem’s story (a character who is never focalized again).
however, i don’t think that’s all this episode is doing. i think that the b-plot involving ice king is highly relevant to the snow golem’s a-plot, and in fact the snow golem’s journey can be read as a commentary on ice king’s character. the snow golem is, presumably, one of ice king’s creations, and thus an extension of himself, or if not his creation, clearly evokes similarities between the two figures.
the episode begins with our golem going through the motions of his day. it is all very mundane, and while he doesn’t seem outwardly miserable over his sisyphean routine, his silence is noticeable. adventure time is a show with a lot of dialogue per minute, and for once, the main character does not speak. through the quiet, we implicitly recognize a sense of loneliness pervading his existence. it is only when a baby fire wolf starts to follow the snow golem around that he begins to find meaning in his life. as much as the fire wolf is ostensibly causing problems for the snow golem, it is clear he loves the fire wolf, and by the end of the episode, allows the baby fire wolf to destroy him as he laughs, overjoyed, receiving the fire wolf’s affection even as he melts into the ground.
finn and jake, sitting on the bound form of ice king while eating the stolen sandwiches they valiantly repossessed from him, remark that they assumed snow golems and fire wolves were sworn enemies, further complicating the initially established dichotomy of hero and villain that is gradually deconstructed throughout the show. overcoming their initial antagonism in such a genuine display of friendship resonates with finn, prompting him to give ice king a little kiss on the cheek, much in the same way that the fire wolf licks the snow golem’s face.
finn is obviously the baby fire wolf. nascent to the world, especially to a man who has been alive for over one thousand years, finn initially appears as nothing more than a thorn in ice king’s side, disrupting his steady yet existentially unsatisfying routine of kidnapping princesses day in and day out. however, even as finn litters ice king with bruises from their daily fights, his presence helps to alleviate ice king’s fundamental loneliness. in this episode, they are fighting ice king not because he kidnapped any princesses, but because he stole their sandwiches. it becomes increasingly more evident as the show progresses that many of ice king’s schemes to directly antagonize finn and jake are merely thinly-veiled cries for help. he provokes them into fighting him, inviting his own bodily harm, simply so that their presence will fill the void of his isolation. here, he freezes himself in what is essentially a giant block of ice in the hopes that finn and jake will stay with him until it thaws, which they do.
even though the snow golem is harmed by the presence of the fire puppy, he nonetheless laughs with joy at having a companion with whom he can spend his life. of course, ice king has his penguins, but it would also be disingenuous to imply that ice king’s loneliness could be solved by having a pet in the same way that the snow golem’s is. the snow golem and the fire wolf reflect ice king and finn in a more abstract way than that. but it’s also hardly subtle throughout the episode, which is why it closes on the image of finn replicating the fire wolf’s affection towards the snow golem with ice king. and ice king, his screaming silent plea for affection finally recognized, thanks him.
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hello!!! i have a bit of a lengthy monkey spaghetti update to show you all today :^)
before i place the rest under a cut, here is what it looks like currently!!
and now the cut is here.
alrighty, so. i know it has been DAYS (more specifically, 10 of them) since i said i was gonna post an update on the other half of new additions to the web, however now after some time to think about it, i can better explain my additions to you guys!!!!
let’s start with what i added to the larger blob. i went on a tiny theory tangent about what shrike’s backstory could be!!!
here is most of it!! (as in just that tangent, not the whole blob. im trying to make sure that no part of the blob gets deleted, in case there are things i would like to go back to!!) some of it stretches over to other parts of the web, but it’s kind of hard to capture all of it in screenshots, so im doing what i can.
anyhoo, remember that one quote that i just left floating around because i couldn’t connect it to anything? well. a few days ago when i was rewatching the whole show, i noticed that i completely forgot the rest of that scene existed!!!!! wow!!!!!!
technically the quote i connected to it actually came BEFORE it, however they ARE connected so the arrow makes sense i think. anyway, i expanded upon this idea:
i also added additional things i had also forgotten before!! see:
and after gathering all this, i made somewhat of a brief shrike lore timeline i guess????
and so yeah. made a little meme because of how much time i spent on this. (the other screenshot i inserted is the part that stretches into a different section of the web)
and now for the additions i made to the smaller blob!!!! here is an overview of it.
and now for some closer screenshots:
in essence, i made a realization that colors may not JUST be significant in terms of LAW and stuff, but that maybe they connect whole themes?? like, green may symbolize something like loss or destruction??? (for the loss part im thinking Us losing Them and all the things lost because of the cataclysm, however destruction makes more sense i think, considering the cataclysm, which is always depicted as green, spreads its corruption, and beebs’ shoulder gets hit with a sword and then is fixed up with green bandages, but i feel like im just spitballing here)
anyway, hope you guys enjoyed this update!! as always, lmk if you have any questions/comments/concerns/suggestions you may have. i love answering them!!!! ive spent a lot of time on this trying to get the web to be the best that i can make it, so much so that im pretty sure ive got the tetris effect, because whenever i close my eyes i see shrike 😭
with all that said, that concludes this update. thank you so much for reading!!! have a good day/night/afternoon/whatever time of day it happens to be for you right now :^D
#monkey wrench#monkey wrench spoilers#monkey wrench theory#monkey spaghetti theory web#for the most part i get the most motivation to add more to the spaghetti whenever i listen to red vox#which is very specific and i dont know why im like that#but ehh whatever#the world may never know i suppose
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Here we go again, we're changing the scene.
Script below the break.
Hello and welcome back to The Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies in a 20-year period. Today I will be discussing number six on my list: Shipwrecked Comedy and American Black Market’s 2017 film noir parody The Case of the Gilded Lily, directed by William J. Stribling, written by Sean Persaud and Sinéad Persaud, and starring Sean Persaud, Sinéad Persaud, Sarah Grace Hart, and Mary Kate Wiles.
It's 1939 in Los Angeles. Hardboiled private eye Ford Phillips (Sean Persaud) doesn’t touch Hollywood cases, until junior ace reporter Fig Wineshine (Sinéad Persaud) convinces him to help her childhood friend, starlet Wilhelmina Vanderjetski (Sarah Grace Hart) find out who is blackmailing her.
In my episode about Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party, which was number 13 on this list, I discussed how I found and fell in love with the work of Shipwrecked Comedy. If you haven’t listened to or don’t remember that episode, to summarize, I had incredibly high expectations for Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party, aka Poe Party, that were exceeded in every possible way, and in joining this small but enthusiastic fandom, I finally felt that I had found my people. I was very excited to learn what Shipwrecked’s next project would be, and I didn’t have long to wait. On May 30, 2017, just under seven months after the Poe Party finale, they shared a teaser poster for The Case of the Gilded Lily, which showed silhouettes of the Core Four (Sarah Grace Hart, Sinéad Persaud, Sean Persaud, and Mary Kate Wiles) in a style consistent with film noir. Since one of my favorite things about Poe Party had been the way it reminded me of classic movies, I was ecstatic to see them leaning even more directly into Old Hollywood.
The Kickstarter campaign launched a week later. Unlike Poe Party, which was an 11-episode series, Gilded Lily would be a short film, and they were only asking for $25,000. It didn’t even occur to me to be disappointed that this was going to be so much smaller; I was just excited that Shipwrecked was making another project so soon. In some ways, this Kickstarter experience was similar to the Poe Party one – the fun livestreams with backers’ names on the wall, the character reveals when milestones were reached – but in others, it was very different. For one thing, I had by this point met Shipwrecked and gotten to know many of their other fans, so instead of interacting with a bunch of pleasant strangers, these livestreams felt more like hanging out with friends. And for another, they reached their goal in less than a week, whereas Poe Party had taken almost a month, so it felt a lot less stressful, at least from a will-this-get-to-exist? perspective. They set a few stretch goals and ended up raising just over $43,000 by the time the campaign ended on June 25. I pledged a bit more to this project than I had to Poe Party, partly because I felt like I owed them for how much Poe Party had already changed my life, but also of course because of how thrilled I was that they were making something else that was related to my interests.
The main reason they were making Gilded Lily right then was because they had been invited to premiere a new project at Buffer Festival in Toronto, where they had screened all of Poe Party the year before when only the first 9 episodes were up on YouTube. I would have loved to have gone, both to see Poe Party and to see Gilded Lily, but it didn’t work out. However, Kickstarter backers at the $25 level and up would get access to watch The Case of the Gilded Lily soon after Buffer, before it was posted publicly, and that was good enough for me. Buffer Festival was only about three months after the Kickstarter ended, so Shipwrecked had a ridiculously short period of time to complete this video that they had originally intended to be about 20 minutes long but ended up with a runtime nearly twice that. I still don’t understand how they did it. I know, from talking to members of Shipwrecked at the time and from behind-the-scenes content they’ve released, that they were incredibly stressed about things like finding and locking locations, a cast member having to drop out last minute, and, of course, the budget, but still, they managed it. They successfully premiered their 38-minute long “short” film at Buffer Festival 2017 and emailed a link to backers a couple weeks later, on October 12.
I had a lot of trouble setting my expectations for The Case of the Gilded Lily. This group had just made Poe Party, so I knew they were capable of greatness, but I also knew I had no right to expect this to be on the same level as that, since it was always intended to be a much smaller project. I was sure I was going to enjoy it, but I was very curious to see how much. The first thing that struck me after I clicked the early access link was the music. The soundtrack was composed by Dylan Glatthorn, who had also composed the Poe Party soundtrack, which I absolutely should have mentioned in that episode because it is incredible. But the Gilded Lily soundtrack is somehow even better. Shipwrecked had released a video of a song from the short called “A Change of Scene” in September, written by Glatthorn and performed by Mary Kate Wiles as lounge singer Vivian Nightingale (a name that had been mentioned in Poe Party), so I already knew that was a bop, but it didn’t prepare me for how hard the opening credits music would slap. The theme is so delightfully jazzy that even after nearly six years, I can’t sit still when I hear it. That music over the black and white shots of the Hollywoodland sign and palm trees was the perfect way to set the scene. And then the opening credits finished and the film itself began.
So here’s the thing about film noir. In general, I enjoy it: I think it’s a fascinating filmmaking style and a very effective technique to tell a certain type of story, and two of my other top 40 most frequently rewatched films – Notorious and Gaslight – are fairly noir-esque, but also, film noir can get very dark. Every November, along with many film lovers on the internet, I celebrate Noirvember, a time to watch and appreciate film noir. In 2015, I actually managed to watch 30 noirs in Noirvember, and by the end of the month I noticed that it was really getting to me. I was starting to feel a constant vague sense of unease, dread, and despair. So in every November since then I’ve forced myself to consume noirs somewhat more moderately. I must have known that Gilded Lily was going to be more of a parody and not like one of the darker noirs. The group was called Shipwrecked Comedy, after all. But even Poe Party had had some pretty dark moments. I’m sure I expected jokes in The Case of the Gilded Lily, but I was utterly floored by just how laugh-out-loud funny the whole darn film was. It wasn’t dark at all, at least compared to most noirs or even to Poe Party. There wasn’t even any murder! The first time I watched it, I must have missed at least half the jokes because I was still laughing at prior gags. The plot was just as complicated and twisty as most noirs, but that first time I was barely paying attention because, again, too much laughing. Therefore, once I finished it, I naturally had to immediately rewatch it several times to pick up on the jokes and plot points I’d missed, and I was delighted but not at all surprised to find that it held up very well. I don’t recall exactly how many times I’d seen it before the link was made public on December 11, but by the end of 2017 I’d watched it nine times. I then watched it four times in 2018, six times in 2019, five times in 2020, three times in 2021, and four times in 2022. And I still think the jokes are funny. So if you haven’t watched it, you absolutely should, it’s still available for free on YouTube (link in the show notes) and it’s like the length of one episode of a TV show.
There are so many different types of humor in this film, and all of them are great. There’s the whole playing with and making fun of noir tropes aspect, including several instances of characters interrupting each other’s voiceovers, a camera rotation into a Dutch angle causing Ford to fall over, and Wilhelmina trying to smoke and drink to fit in but not quite understanding the concept. That last one serves the dual purpose of making fun of the excessive smoking and drinking common in noirs and further developing one of my favorite types of character: the confidently clueless. The Case of the Gilded Lily has two of these: Wilhelmina Vanderjetski, the starlet who’s being blackmailed, played by Sarah Grace Hart, and Dash Gunfire, Ford’s rival private eye, played by Joey Richter. Wilhelmina’s cluelessness mostly makes her happy and charming, whereas Dash’s makes him frustrated and annoying, and it’s very entertaining to see two such similar yet very different characters in the same project. Basically everything either of them says or does makes me laugh. There’s also some great physical comedy, mainly from Clayton Farris as the disgruntled Buster Keaton. Similarly, there’s humor with the set and props, like when Cliff Calloway (played by Tom DeTrinis) switches between smoking a cigar and a cigarette in the same scene depending on who he’s talking to, and when Officer Claudette Knickerbocker (played by Joanna Sotomura) is talking to Ford on the phone about how hot she finds Cliff, and it cuts away to Ford putting down the phone and pouring himself a drink and when we see Claudette again her office is in complete disarray. And then there are all the hilarious running gags. Like how whenever someone brings up that Wilhelmina’s real name is Lily THomas, Ford has to argue that it should be pronounced Thomas. And how every time the scene changes after Vivian sings “A Change of Scene” the first time, there’s a little reprise of her singing about how we’re changing the scene. And the way Fig is obsessed with cookies and keeps getting them – I am truly in awe of Sinéad Persaud’s brilliance in writing a character for herself that required her to eat lots of cookies. What an iconic move. And then there’s the running bit where Ford will pause and stare into the distance dramatically before mentioning The War, much to Fig’s confusion, until it’s finally revealed that The War was a movie he and Claudette acted in when they were children. Another running bit is the bartender Bixby Crane (played by Dante Swain) repeatedly saying his own name unnecessarily, and taking things very literally in unexpected ways. This bit was particularly funny to me because my high school band director’s name was Parker Bixby, and when we marched in the Tournament of Roses parade, one of the announcers commented, “I want to change my name to Parker Bixby.” Later somebody put that on t-shirts and Mr. Bixby ended up with one. So seeing a character named Bixby who was obsessed with his own name made me laugh even harder than it would have if they’d picked any other name for that character.
Like in Poe Party, the actors in The Case of the Gilded Lily were encouraged to play around, at least as much as their limited production time would allow, which once again resulted in an excellent blooper reel, and also some great moments in the film. One of the best is when Wilhelmina’s husband, producer Roger Haircremé, played by Gabe Greenspan, comes into the lobby from the Sufferin’ Safari premiere and says, “Sweetheart, it’s nearly giraffe time!” which was improvised. Also, major shout out to the Persauds for their incredible character names, and also to Gabe Greenspan, who filled in last minute when the original Roger had to drop out of the project. It’s kind of mind boggling that this was the first time Gabe worked with Shipwrecked and that he almost wasn’t even in this, since it’s hard to imagine their more recent projects without him. Another unscripted moment that I love is when Vivian is telling Fig about an underground gambling ring and says that they meet on Wednesday nights, adding, “Tonight. And next Wednesday. And the Wednesday after that…” That last part wasn’t in the script, but they brought it back again when Fig passes this information on to Claudette, saying, “Vivian only knew they meet tonight. And then next week. And the week after that. Basically, it’s a weekly thing.” And Joanna, not really knowing how to respond to that, just had Claudette go, “Oh, okay” and move on with her lines, and for some reason that just really tickles me.
I think the thing I appreciated the most about The Case of the Gilded Lily, once I stopped laughing long enough to analyze it, was that it felt like a typical Shipwrecked project while also feeling completely different from what they’d done before. The sense of humor felt the same as Poe Party, even though the Gilded Lily gags tended to be on the sillier side. The story was just as well thought out as Poe Party’s, but while Poe Party was being released I was constantly trying to figure out who the murderer was, whereas with Gilded Lily I didn’t even attempt to guess who the blackmailer was, I was too busy laughing. Also, being a short film rather than a series released over 11 weeks, there was much less time for speculation. Of course, the overlapping cast made the projects feel similar, and I particularly enjoyed seeing Ryan W. Garcia, who had played Eddie in Poe Party, show up as an extra in about half the Gilded Lily scenes. This ultimately inspired me to write a rather long and intense fan fiction tying a bunch of Shipwrecked projects together with the time traveling ghost of Eddie. Tom DeTrinis’s Cliff Calloway seemed about what you’d expect if Oscar Wilde was trying to pretend to be a straight film star. Joey Richter’s Dash Gunfire was similar to his Ernest Hemingway in that both were rivals with Sean’s character, although Dash is way sillier.
And then there’s the Core Four. Sean and Sinéad’s characters and dynamic were very similar in A Tell-Tale Vlog, Poe Party, and Gilded Lily: both Poe and Ford are loners who secretly desire friends, and both Lenore and Fig are outgoing and talkative and enjoy winding up Sean’s character, who begrudgingly appreciates them despite his best efforts to abhor them. But of course, they are unquestionably different characters, and I think they both did an excellent job of adjusting their mannerisms to make them feel distinct. Mary Kate and Sarah’s characters, on the other hand, are essentially the complete opposite of what they played in Poe Party. Annabel was sweet and naïve and wanted everyone to be happy, whereas Vivian is bitter and jaded and having affairs with four different men in five different states (another great line) and doesn’t seem to care about anyone besides herself. Going straight from an ingenue to a femme fatale and absolutely nailing both was an excellent way for Mary Kate Wiles to demonstrate her incredible acting range. I’d already been a huge fan of her work for over five years at that point, and I was still blown away. Vivian doesn’t even get that much screentime, but gah, what MK does with her voice, like, just, close your eyes and listen to Annabel and then listen to Vivian, you can’t even tell they’re the same person. I feel like this also helps distinguish Edgar and Ford from each other. It’s a running theme in most Shipwrecked projects that Sean’s character is super into Mary Kate’s character, although they rarely end up together, and I can’t really explain why, but I don’t feel like Poe would be particularly into Vivian, nor would Ford be interested in Annabel. But I could be wrong about that, I don’t really understand how sexual or romantic attraction works. Anyway, all that being said, if I had to pick one single favorite aspect of The Case of the Gilded Lily, it would have to be Sarah Grace Hart as Wilhelmina Vanderjetski, mostly because she is absolutely hilarious, but also because she is so different from Emily Dickinson in Poe Party. Emily is forgotten by everyone the second after she introduces herself, whereas Wilhelmina is one of the most famous stars in Hollywood. Emily seems to know what’s going on, and I have a theory that she could have figured out the whole thing if people would have just listened to her, whereas Wilhelmina, bless her, is paying blackmail while also telling everyone what she’s being blackmailed for. Also it’s literally just… having a stage name. Not really something worth paying $20,000 per week to keep secret, especially if you’re just going to tell everyone anyway. But Sarah commits to this character so hard that you never once doubt that Willie would absolutely fall prey to this ridiculous scheme. She’s so earnestly oblivious in the most endearing and hilarious way that she’s probably my favorite Shipwrecked character, and possibly my favorite character in anything ever.
What I didn’t know at the time was that originally, Shipwrecked had planned to follow Poe Party with a whole series featuring these characters, but when they got invited to Buffer they knew they wouldn’t have time for all that, so they made The Case of the Gilded Lily as kind of a pilot for the Fig and Ford series. They did make it clear that they had at least some intentions of continuing the story, with a question mark appearing after “The End” and a quick post-credits scene with Vivian bursting into Fig and Ford’s office and saying, “Mr. Phillips, something terrible has happened!” After years with no word of what this could be leading to, I had almost given up hope of more from this world, and then, in 2022, Shipwrecked launched a Kickstarter for an audio narrative called The Case of the Greater Gatsby, currently coming out weekly on all major podcast platforms, and we’re finally getting more, and it is so delightful. Once again, I don’t feel like I’m doing a very good job of trying to figure out what’s going on, but I am living for the jokes.
Classic film noir tended to be relatively sexually explicit for its time – at least, as much as it was allowed to be under production codes. In particular, the male protagonist was often led astray by his attraction to the sexy but dangerous femme fatale. The Persauds had said that they were inspired by Who Framed Roger Rabbit, another noir parody, which turns these sexy expectations around with a femme fatale type character who is, if not overtly asexual, certainly ace-coded – she’s married to a rabbit, and when asked what the attraction is, she says, and I quote, “He makes me laugh.” The Case of the Gilded Lily finds a different way to put a twist on the femme fatale trope with Vivian Nightingale, who is certainly not ace-coded, but also doesn’t seem to be particularly dangerous – at least in the Gilded Lily plot, I don’t know where Greater Gatsby is going yet. Vivian is a possible suspect, and Ford is very attracted to her, but she’s innocent and nothing bad really comes of her involvement in this story. She has an attitude of, “I have no clue how I got mixed up with you clowns, but I’ll be fabulous while I’m here" that you have to admire. Really the only romance in The Case of the Gilded Lily is the one between Wilhelmina Vanderjetski and Roger Haircremé, and that one is… questionable, to put it mildly. For one thing, Willie lied to Roger about her background to get him to marry her. For another, Roger saw through her ridiculous story but pretended not to, instead blackmailing her to pay off his gambling debts. When Fig and Ford uncover this, instead of being furious with her husband, Wilhelmina is delighted that the blackmailer was just her kind, loving husband who’d never do anything to hurt her. Typically I’m very much in favor of forgiveness, but in this case I really don’t think Roger deserves it. In a way, this could be seen as illustrating the harms of amatonormativity, showing that Wilhelmina thinks staying with a blackmailer is preferable to having no husband, but it definitely comes across as her genuinely believing that Roger has done nothing wrong. It’s weird, but I love the way this shifts the noir trope of sexy-romance-gone-wrong to be about a couple who was married at the start and has no intention of getting divorced at the end, and involves a woman who bears zero resemblance to a typical femme fatale.
Like pretty much every other Shipwrecked project (besides Kissing in the Rain), The Case of the Gilded Lily is way more focused on platonic relationships than romantic or sexual ones. Even though the crime is related to Roger and Wilhelmina’s relationship, it’s solved mainly because of Fig’s friendship with Wilhelmina, Fig’s attempts to befriend Ford, and Ford’s friendship with Claudette. I didn’t know I was aroace when this came out, but I certainly appreciated all the non-romantic storylines. And I would argue that Gilded Lily does have at least one ace-coded character, although it’s not the one who reminds us of Jessica Rabbit: it’s Fig Wineshine. She wants to be friends with everyone but doesn’t show any signs of attraction to any of them. And she has this great line in Greater Gatsby when she’s describing how Cliff Calloway is a Hollywood heartthrob: “He didn't really do it for me. But then again he wasn't circular with crispy edges and a gooey middle.” She’s saying that her type is a literal cookie. There’s no allosexual explanation for that.
My main takeaway from The Case of the Gilded Lily back in 2017 was that Poe Party was not a fluke. I had truly stumbled upon an underappreciated group of talented, hardworking geniuses when I found Shipwrecked Comedy, and I was going to keep following and supporting their work from then on no matter what. And I have never regretted doing that for a second. Most of the projects they’ve made in the years since The Case of the Gilded Lily have been too short to count as movies, but they have all been incredibly delightful. I would highly recommend everything on their YouTube channel, in addition to the Greater Gatsby podcast they’re currently releasing, especially if you enjoy Old Hollywood; I am thoroughly enjoying all the references to actual movies and actors that I love by the fictional characters from the world of Fig and Ford that I also love. Shipwrecked keeps telling the exact stories I want to see and hear, and I cannot even begin to adequately express how much joy they have brought to my life. I truly hope everyone out there has found or will find a group of artists whose work means as much to them as Shipwrecked’s does to me.
Thank you for listening to me discuss another of my most frequently rewatched movies. Next week I will enter my top 5 with the oldest movie on this list, which I also watched 31 times. As always, I will leave you with a quote from that next movie: “Always remember that the truth has never hurt any man! …And anyway, if it does, I’ll go to the hospital with you.”
#the case of the gilded lily#fig and ford#shipwrecked comedy#the rewatch rewind#please watch this short
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REMEMBER THAT OEOEOE SONG FROM NOT ME?
I SURE DID.
AS MENTIONED, WinTeam are my favorite best babies, and while that's so, I watched Between Us and had a regular urge to re-edit the series and make a supercut for myself to rewatch. That's a fairly massive undertaking, and I've never made a supercut before, so I decided to do a few trial runs on small, isolated scenes.
I just made two other edits, so this'll be the last one for today! I've had an enormous amount of fun doing these, and I feel a little more confident about making a supercut. …Though I admit, I'm probably gonna do a few more of these for funsies.
My third and final scene of the day is the near-drowning scene from episode 6! Originally, I hoped to do a more gradual build-up with "Everlast" throughout the scene, but I could only extract one vocal track, and in it, the lyrics of the existing song and the actors' vocal track are fused together. So I decided to start later in the scene for the big emotional climax of "Everlast," an instrumental made famous by the SeanWhite rooftop kiss in Not Me (dir. Anucha Boonyawatana). This truly is such a gorgeous, uplifting track, and I think it contrasts beautifully with WinTeam shaken and weeping – here, the music frames this moment in a perspective the characters can't access. Team is safe. Win got to him in time. The bright vocals in "Everlast" are like a thread of relief growing stronger as they hold each other.
I love them so much. >:'''(
I HOPE YOU'VE ENJOYED TODAY'S JOURNEY AS MUCH AS I HAVE \:D/
#between us the series#winteam#teamwin#between us#bounprem#premboun#boun noppanut guntachai#boun noppanut#prem warut chawalitrujiwong#prem warut#kiranokira edits#key cut
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What are some of your favorite anime, and why?
Hope you're ready for an infodump lol
My two favorite anime are really different, one of them is Naruto- which some people may say is cringe, but I'm talking about pre shippuden specifically.
The first ~40 episodes of Naruto are some of the best anime in existence. It starts off slow with the exception of the Iruka Mizuki scene(s) that are raw as fuck for an anime so early in it's airing, but it genuinely just builds and builds and builds until it's just so incredible. The Haku arc is still one of my favorite in all of anime and Haku is also one of my favorite characters and trans allegories. Then you have the Chuunin exams which are so incredible that you still see gifs today, close to what, 20 years later? It's an incredible anime that showed over and over again that you should never stop believing in good things, should never stop hoping, and that kindness can have such an impact on everyone around you. There are definitely so, so many problems with it, because Kishimoto kind of sucks as a person, but it's still just so good. I think the pacing of Shippuden is pretty irredeemable but it and the filler isn't quite as bad in the OG (don't get me started on flashbacks though), Boruto unfortunately just takes everything from Shippuden/Naruto and rips it into shreds for no particular reason.
But it's still some of my favorite anime and something I very often re-watch for nostalgia purposes and often cry about tbqh lol.
My other favorite anime is comparatively a lot more obscure, called Aria The Animation, which has multiple seasons that are all really good. It's a very different anime than so, so many other anime because there's very little pushing forward of the plot. It's not something that creates drama or events just for the sake of doing so, it's something that lets things run to their logical course, and takes the ideal of slice of life to it's natural extreme. I know a lot of people find it boring because it's not the kind of anime that you can watch the shinies and it's not exciting like a shounen anime is, or even other slice of life anime like Toradora or others- there's very little suspense or anxiety about things, it's very low stakes. It's the kind of anime that wraps you up in it's comfortable warmth and good animation that calms you and is the exact opposite of stressful. There is a plot that's very good- even though it's slow there's still a ton of buildup towards it. And the character development is also really, really good. It's another of those anime that I occasionally rewatch just because not only is it somewhat nostalgic for me, it's an anime that it's really really hard to be stressed while you watch, and is also something you can really easily fall asleep too...so it's kind of like my emotional support anime? Lol.
Funnily enough my favorite genres are really neither of these as I like a lot of Isekai anime and romance/slice of life anime as well, but I do like a lot of other anime that has been or is popular. I watch a LOOOOT of anime, so there's always stuff I'm forgetting about, but some other anime I like is Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Senpai, Owari no Seraph, Reincarnated as a Slime, Jobless Reincarnation, Bleach (at least the Soul Society Arc), Toradora, and a whole, whole bunch of others I'm not remembering.
Also honorable mention to Fate/Apocrypha for having Astolfo because I am Astolfo and I love Astolfo so, so much, she's everything I strive to be.
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i went to bed instead of watching abaab and i woke up and im ✨sick✨
its not the plague but i have a sore throat and im really congested and i feel like a dump truck ran over me and poured all the bin juices in my brain, but its fine cos im here, im queer, and threezo are near
CONTENT WARNING: if youve seen this episode, youll be aware that there will be discussions of rape, sexual assault, and pedophilia. if any of these topics are triggering for you, please take the measures you require to stay safe, and please call emergency services if you require help, and talk to someone you trust. remember: you are not alone, and there will always be people who love and care for you, but you havent yet met some of them. stay safe everyone, i love you
i cannot for the life of me remember how the last episode ended so its lucky that they have little summaries at the starts of episodes cos otherwise id have no clue whats going on
OH YEAH THOOP WAS ARRESTED
hang on, dont they still need to go to work?
i cant remember what day it is and what they were doing before cher got that phone call but still
dang it ive already had a cup of tea today but i think i need another one
THREEZO HELLO (ft jack's luscious hair on the side there)
THREEZO ARE SO SWEET WHY ARE YOUR FACES LIKE THAT JACK AND TUB
okay, yeah, fair
HE IS HAPPY
HIS HAIR IS FLUFFY AND HE IS HAPPY
GREHJKDFGKJRB
aww
AWWWHHHH
awhh thoop is cryinggg
bro is in desperate need of a hug
IM GONNA CRYYYY
i love deep platonic bonds
especially when its found family
fnjgbhfbvhfb
**gasp** despicable!
HELLO THREEZOOOOO
hes so prettyyyy
and hes also so prettyyyyyy
GJKRTBNFDHKJRG I LOVE THEM
am i crying? yes.
im crying a lot
i love threezo so much
the grip these two have on my mental health and sanity--
have i rewatched this scene four times? yeah. do i now kinda just wanna curl into a ball and sob for a day or two? yeah. unfortunately i have to keep watching the episode
okay so its literally like six hours later now, ive tried having two naps, ive had three cups of tea today, as much medicine as i can have, and the sickness has done nothing but get worse which is just so fun but the only reason i wasnt watching abaab is bc i was trying to sleep and that's just not happening so im continuing the episode now
the commentary is gonna be very little tho btw bc im having trouble making coherent thoughts through all the conjestion clogging my brain
the way they smile at each other is so 🥺🥹
im TRYING--
sorry, last week i couldnt stop talking about the freaking pomegranate i was eating, today i cant stop talking about how sick i am, ill try and shut up about it and just watch the episode lol
SCREW THAT GUY
VAFFANCULO
I HATE HIM
I HATE HIM SO MUCH
idk much about the mother
BUT THE STEPFATHER CAN GO SHOVE A PIGNA UP HIS CULO
look, i hate cops and law enforcement
but i even more hate thoop's stepfather
and law enforcement, unfortunately, have a lot of power, but thats fortunate in this situation bc they can force him to shut up which is nice
oh, wouldya look at that. i was right.
im not happy about it. its freaking horrible. and its even worse that it happens every day in every single country and state and city and suburb and yet nothing is being done about it.
um. yeah. thats all i can think of to say.
SHE HAD TO PUT UP WITH IT FOR THREE YEARS???
holy hell thats freaking disgusting
i hate this so much. not that they included this in the show, im really glad they included it because it's freaking disgusting and not talked about enough, especially in mainstream media and stuff. i just freaking hate that rape exists and people have to put up with it every single freaking day of their freaking lives, and NOTHING is happening to fix this freaking disgusting issue
this episode is a lot heavier than i was expecting and idk if anything im saying makes any sense because im too sick for this and the things that happened are making me even more sick
HUZZAH, I WAS RIGHT
AND THIS TIME ITS A GOOD FEELING THAT IM RIGHT
HES NOT HOMOPHOBIC
HUZZAH, HUZZAH, PRAISE OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JACK'S ALMIGHTY FLUFFY BEAUTIFUL HAIR
sobbing, i cant do this, theyre too sweet
AH SHOOT, I JUST REALISED IVE BARELY DRANK ANY WATER TODAY
as per usual, your hair is on fleek today, my friend
he's angry at laem, but his hair is perfection
the perfect way to get someone to shut up: shove food in their mouth as fast as possible (im using this at some point) (also how the hell is his hair so pretty i love his hair too much. i think i always spend more time talking about jack's hair than i do talking about the actual episode)
gun's mother has such a sweet sounding voice but her words sting like poison, jeez
OH HELL YES ITS THIS PART
IVE SEEN SCREENSHOTS
side note: look at three and zo's knees pressed together gjfngjbhfgbh
HEYYY GUYS
ITS SO FUNNY
WHAT ARE THEY DOING WATCHING SIMM
wait so. bad buddy exists as a series inside the msp universe. simm exists as a series inside the abaab universe. what's next??
the frame changed suddenly, kluen was looking down slightly earlier and now he's looking right in nuea's eyes (yes i had to include jack's hair in the screenshot, so what?)
side note: i love all of jack's ear piercings (and his hair) so much
(ive now used all my 30 photos for this post so you just have to deal with that. on the bright side, the final photo was of jack's beautiful face and beautiful earrings and beautiful HAIR)
i love this friend group so much, theyre all just sitting in a circle in their gaming chairs supporting cher as much as possible in their own little ways and its so sweet and so happy and gfbhbrhgb
ignore your bfs phone calls only to show up at his house with food
AWWW, THE WAY HE JUST PULLS HIM INTO A WORRIED HUG AS SOON AS HIS HANDS ARE EMPTY- I LOVE THEMMMM
"promise me no matter what happens, we will fight it together" RGHBKRDFHGKRBDFHB
AWWWW TEHY KISSSSS
"(talking to himself) if your mum knows about this, she will hit you to death, cher" "know about what?" "she gave me only one heart and i gave it all to you" "youre as cheesy as i am" IM DYING WHAT THE HELL THEYRE SO SWEET
BRO CHILL
CALM DOWN
I DONT NEED TO SEE THIS
I MEAN LIKE GOOD FOR THEM
BUT WHY DO WE NEED SUCH A LONG SHOT OF GUN'S BARE ABS
theyre so soft with each other what the hell
"i just want to hear it from your mouth-" AND CHER CUTS HIM OFF WITH THE SOFTEST KISS EVER??? (well, not ever. no one can ever kiss as softly or lovingly as freaking akk, but that's neither here nor there) THAT ONE TINY MOMENT IS GONNA PLAY IN MY HEAD FOR AGES NOW OMG
keep the pants on please guys
oh thank goodness they finished the episode before it got to that, i appreciate that
anyway THAT WAS SO SWEET GBFHGBFHBHG
im desperately hoping that next episode will be mostly fluffy happiness bc i cant take much more of this seriousness, especially not if my sickness persists (which i really hope it doesnt, id love to be functioning this week)
um yeah. that was that. i hope you enjoyed that? sorry for all my ramblings about being sick, i just really hate being sick.
once again, i hope youre all safe and healthy, if you're not, i hope you can find a safe space and people you trust, please contact someone who can help you if you need it. i love you all, have a great week :]
#quodekash rambles about abaab#abaab#a boss and a babe#a boss and a babe the series#chergun#guncher#mike chinnarat#jack’s almighty curly hair#jack abaab#abaab jack's hair#threezo#zothree#zothree supremacy#flukeohm#ohmfluke#fluke pusit#ohm thiphakorn#forcebook#force jiratchapong#book kasidet#leo saussay#java bhobdhama#abaab thoop
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"You've got me? Who's got you!" Rewatching the 1978 "Superman" movie starring Christopher Reeve
The 1978 “Superman,” starring Christopher Reeve, launched the superhero film genre as it exists today. We rewatched it recently, enjoyed it, and I recommend it.
However, the movie takes a painfully long time to get going.
”Superman” starts with pages turning on the 1938 Action Comics issue that launched the Superman character, narrated by a child’s voice-over. We did not remember this from seeing the movie previously. We wondered whether we had accidentally rented the wrong version of “Superman.” We had not. Onward.
Then we go to Krypton, where the movie creeps forward. We see Marlon Brando as Superman’s father, Jor-El, wearing white stunt hair and a turtleneck with the Superman logo in it.
I wish the phrase “phoning it in” was not a cliche so I could use to to describe Brando’s performance. He drones on and on, making one speech after another.
He’s concluding the prosecutor’s statement in the trial of three insurrectionists (ripped from the 2020s headlines!), who end up being sentenced to the Phantom Zone. I’m sure we won’t see these insurrectionists again—they won’t be any trouble and will not turn up in “Superman II.”
General Zod, played by Terence Stamp, is the leader of the trio, and his scenery-chewing is the only good part of this scene.
I saw “Superman” with friends in the theater during its first run in 1978, and I was very excited to tell them after the movie all about the Phantom Zone. I even guessed that the three villains would feature in the movie sequel. I was very proud of myself for this. Possibly related: It took me a long time to lose my virginity.
Jor-El warns the leadership council of Krypton that the whole planet is about to explode within a month. The leaders say this is fake news because they did their own research on YouTube. The council nopes out on evacuating the planet and tells Jor-El he can’t tell anybody about his beliefs or else he’ll be an insurrectionist (that word again). A sensible person would have told the council to fuck right off because the council was not going to have any clout after the ENTIRE FUCKING PLANET EXPLODES. But Jor-El just goes along with it.
Brando goes back home, where he and his wife (if her name is spoken, I didn’t hear it) put on matching glowy silver lamé jumpsuits. They put their baby in a spaceship. Before sending the baby off to Earth, Marlon Brando makes a very long speech, while his wife looks at him with an expression like she wants him to shut up because she needs to pee.
Then we’re off to Earth, to whip through young Clark Kent’s childhood. The costumes and cars and brilliant. The scenery from the Kent farm is beautiful, but there is way too much of it. Can we get this movie moving already?
Clark challenges his father to run from the end of their driveway to the barn. Pa Kent has a heart attack and dies. Clark never mentions his own role in Pa’s death. That seems odd.
Next stop: the North Pole, where young Clark spends 12 years being lectured by the holographic Marlon Brando, and we, in the audience watching the movie, get to experience every painful second of those 12 years.
All this time, Clark is played by an actor who is not Christopher Reeve and doesn’t even look much like Christopher Reeve. This guy:
But after 12 years at the North Pole, demonstrating powers of super-boredom-resistance, Clark becomes Christopher Reeve and emerges in his spiffy super-suit, which makes all the girls swoon. He is a hunka hunka burnin love. The suit is very flattering, but he really should be wearing something modest below the waist and above the knee to better cover his prominent super-johnson. Maybe bermuda shorts with a festive luau pattern?
And we’re off to Metropolis and the movie takes off and keeps going. Finally! Lois Lane is fast-talking and smart; Christopher Reeve transforms from a nebbishy Clark into a charismatic Supe through the power of acting. Gene Hackman, Ned Beatty, and Valerie Perrine are the villains, and they chew the scenery delightfully. The sets are gorgeous, particularly Lex Luthor’s lair in the underground lobby of Grand Central Station. Why is Grand Central Station abandoned and apparently nearly forgotten in this movie? Does it even matter? No, it does not.
Lois’s costumes are the height of 70s couture. The first thing we see her in is a nice skirt and blouse. And the skirt has pockets. And they look like BIG pockets. In some ways, technology has gone backward since 1978.
The Daily Planet newspaper takes up an entire skyscraper and has a helicopter to shuttle reporters around. I started work at a daily newspaper not long after “Superman” came out—we didn’t even have a budget to buy coffee for the staff. Employees had to pay for their own.
Lois arranges an interview with Superman, which turns into a date. He flies her around the skies above Metropolis. She recites a love poem in her mind. The poem is painfully bad. It is like watching someone you like embarrass themselves in a talent competition.
We see a very neatly dressed and well-groomed mugger. Nice blazer, turtleneck sweater. He needs a closer shave, but we’re otherwise good.
It’s part of a whole sequence of Superman’s day’s work, as he stops a cat burglar heist, rescues Air Force One after it loses an engine, and rescues a little girl’s cat from a tree.
The ending of the movie, where Lois Lane dies (spoiler for a 45-year-old super-popular movie—don’t DM me!) is surprisingly dark. She’s smothered after being buried in an earthquake and we see all of it happening. But Superman quickly brings her back from the dead with his superpowers.
Superman’s flying SFX are every bit as good and dazzling now as they were in 1978. Oh, some of the matte shots with the New York City skyline in the background are a little fake, but Superman’s movements are brilliant. A one-second bit where Superman changes from his Clark street clothes into his superhero costume while in flight is just wonderful—nothing much today but brilliant in the pre-CGI era that this movie was made in. Some of the other special effects, like Hoover Dam disintegrating and a downstream town flooding, are a little obviously done with miniatures but they still look fine.
(Why do the sfx look fake now but not in 1978? I have a theory. In 1978, we saw these sfx on the big screen, where they looked great. They might still look great today on a big screen. Soon after, we saw the movie on smaller TVs, with lower quality screens than today, and the sfx still looked great. But today’s high-quality TVs make the sfx look fake—the screens aren’t big enough to compensate for the flaws revealed by the high definition.)
The movie can’t decide if it’s a camp superhero parody, or a serious superhero movie. It would have been better if it toned down the broad comedy and made Lex Luthor more scary.
Reeve’s acting carries the movie. There’s a scene that’s famous among fans where Lois Lane and Clark Kent are in the living room of her apartment. She leaves the room, and he decides to tell her he’s Superman. Until that moment, he’s a shlub, round-shouldered and with a goofy expression on his face. He stands up straight, squares his shoulders and jaw and takes off his glasses—and now he’s Superman. He starts to tell her. His voice as Clark is querulous and shaky, but Superman has a firm baritone. And he changes his mind, slumps his shoulders, puts on his glasses and now he’s Clark the shlemiel again. It all goes by in a few seconds, but it’s striking.
Even the special effects are carried by Reeve’s acting. “You will believe a man can fly,” was the marketing slogan for the movie when it was released. You believe it in large part because Reeve was hanging from wires, moving like a person flying. Acting. )
I don’t have anything to say about John Williams’ musical score for the movie, except that it’s brilliant. I’m going to carry a Bluetooth speaker with me and play that score every time I enter a room.
Overall, well worth a watch. Maybe skip the first 48 minutes though. You don’t need to see it. You already know Superman’s original story.
Superman is my favorite superhero. He is optimistic and hopeful. He knows there is great evil in the world, but he knows that there is also great good, and he serves that good—“truth, justice and the American way." He knows some of what he says is corny and he says it anyway because he believes it. He is nearly all-powerful and invulnerable, but he is in awe of human beings because we are neither of those things, and yet we are capable of great kindness, nobility, and courage.
Sloppy Internet research
Four-year-old Clark Kent is played by an actor named Aaron Smolinski, who went on to a bit role in the 2013 Superman movie “Man of Steel” and also as Lex Luthor in a movie called “Superman: Solar,” which seems to be either an indy or fan-made Superman movie that got terrible reviews.
Larry Hagman has a cameo as an Army Major, making a joke that doesn’t age well.
John Ratzenberger plays an air traffic controller. He went on to play Cliff from “Cheers,” and do a lot of voice-overs for Pixar movies.
Kirk Allyn, who played Superman in 1940s Superman movies, has a cameo as Lois Lane’s father. When Clark is a boy in Smallville, little girl Lois sees Clark while passing through on a train, and Allyn appears in that scene. via
Noel Neill, who played Lois Lane in 1940s movies and the 1950s Superman TV series, also has a cameo. She’s Lois Lane’s mother in the same scene. via
“According to Sir Roger Moore’s autobiography, he witnessed Christopher Reeve walking through the canteen at Pinewood Studios in full Superman costume, oblivious to the swooning female admirers he left in his wake. When he did the same thing dressed as Clark Kent, no one paid any attention.” via
The Incomparable Mothership podcast did an episode about their “Superman” rewatch. They hated it. I don’t disagree with their criticisms, but for me, the virtues of the movie made up for its flaws. I enjoyed listening to the episode.
What happened to the actors
Marlon Brando continued working until his death in 2004. “Apocalypse Now” came out soon after “Superman.” His work in later life included two movies I quite enjoyed: “The Freshman” and “Don Juan DeMarco,” both of which are about charismatic rogues (though he only played the rogue in one of those movies). Brando also features in a delightful 2009 novel, “Chronic City,” by Jonathan Lethem, which explores the theme of whether we can believe anything or truly perceive reality. Brando isn’t a character in the novel. The characters can’t agree whether Brando is alive or dead, and the Internet is no help.
Margot Kidder struggled with mental health in later life. Her 2018 death was ruled a suicide. via
As of April 2023, Valerie Perrine, age 79, was suffering from advanced Parkinson’s and needed a hydraulic lift to get into and out of bed. The Hollywood Reporter did an excellent profile—recommended reading: Ailing ‘Superman’ Star Valerie Perrine Finally Finds Her Hero: “The Guy Should Be Sainted”:
Perrine insists she wants no pity and regrets nothing about her Technicolor life: not one affair (she’s been romantically linked to everyone from Jeff Bridges to Elliott Gould to Dodi Fayed); not one hit of acid (she’s taken LSD more than 400 times, by her estimation); not one career move (well, she probably should have said yes to 1981’s Body Heat and no to 1980’s Can’t Stop the Music, the Village People-starring megaflop she says killed her career, but you can’t win them all).
She sounds fantastic.
Gene Hackman has been retired for about 20 years. As of March, he was fit and healthy at age 93, spotted doing yardwork, buying and eating fast food, and pumping his own gas.
Christopher Reeve died in 2004, after being paralyzed in 1995 in a horse-riding accident.
Terence “General Zod” Stamp was one of the stars of “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.” He played a drag queen named Bernadette.
Sarah Douglas, who played Ursa, one of General Zod’s cronies, appeared in a lot of B science fiction movies and TV shows, including one called “Strippers vs. Werewolves.”
Which Superman II?
We want to watch Superman II, which I remember as being even better than the first Superman, which was itself great. But which version?
Richard Donner directed the original movie and started directing on Superman II, but was fired, and Richard Lester was hired as a replacement. Donner had already done a lot of work, and Lester reshot many scenes and shot more. The Lester version was the original theatrical release, which I saw in theaters. We saw a fan cut of the Donner version in the early 2000s and did not care for it. It was unfinished. Some of the scenes were audition scenes; I remember some other scenes had cheap SFX that looked like they’d been done on 1990s home PCs.
Soon after we saw the fan cut of the Donner version, an official—and presumably more polished—version was released. We haven’t seen that.
I think when we do a rewatch, we’ll go with the original, theatrical version, directed by Lester. According to Internet discussion—for example, here—the official Donner version, while more polished than the fan cut we watched, is still unpolished and unfinished. And the theatrical version is lighter than the Donner version, while still having some serious moments. Generally, I like my superhero movies light; when they get dramatic and heavy I start having difficulty suspending disbelief.
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