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#i like the theory that clockwork was evil this whole time and danny would never escape clockwork
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"Do you require assistance?" Phantom perked up at the mans voice. Red Robin was the guy multiple ghosts had recommended to him even though he was still alive. Okay, so they kinda did it in a half joking manner, but Phantom was desperate!
The nine year old came out from the shadows and could immediately feel the man in front of him cataloging everything about his appearance. Wierd. But he had dealt with Weirder. Besides, he was glowing, so he guessed the human had a right to be curious. "I heard you were really good with machines."
Red Robin looked somewhat tense, like he was ready to fight if need be. Why does everyone wanna fight him? He's nine!
Phantom quickly brought out a little silver sphere with an OwO face from his bag and quickly began speaking, "This is my friend Livvi, she started acting wierd a while back and I haven't been able to fix her."
To his credit, Red didn't attack him. He just looked gobsmacked. "You came out to Gotham, in the middle of the night and tracked down a vigilante to ask for tech support?"
"Livvi is different!" He fumed, "She's my friend!"
A sigh escaped from the mans lips and Phantom looked up to see him pinching the bridge of his nose, "Okay, you're probably not going to go away until I fix her. Just promise me you'll try to be safer."
Phantom hummed as if contemplating, "I'll try."
With that, the vigilante took Livvi from him and began working on her from the blanket Phantom had laid out. Red Robin began to look more and more curious about Livvi as he worked on her. He even took out one of Livvis ectoplasm powerbanks to examine it more thoroughly. "Can you explain to me what problems she's been having?"
The kid bit his lower lip, clearly worried about the little robot, "Shes having trouble maintaining flight and producing shields. Her speech sometimes comes out glitch or warped despite me not finding anything wrong with her voice box or programming. A few times she's just turned off mid flight and dropped."
The man looked thoughtful for a few seconds before asking, "Have you ever heard of the Lazarus Pit?"
"I've heard of Lazarus, but I don't know what it is. I've only ever heard of it in passing. Why?" The ghost was genuinely confused by the change in topic
"Can I text a friend about this?"
"I don't see why not. The more help Livvi gets the faster she'll get better right?" The bird wasted no time activating his coms and whispering into it telling some unknown people about "an unknown glowing meta child with futuristic tech that runs on Lazarus water"
Within the next ten minutes a guy dressed as a bat landed on the rooftop alongside a boy around his age dressed like a trafic light and scowling as if he had just been told that he was grounded from ever having ice cream again. The big goth dude introduced himself as batman and offered him a lollipop. "I'm not supposed to take candy from strangers." Phantom said seriously, "Unless its Halloween."
Batman...well he didn't smile exactly but he didn't seem angry. "Do you know where you're parents are?"
"No. But thats okay. They don't like me."
Batman maintained a cool pokerface, "why don't they like you?"
"I don't remember. I think I knew when I was older-"
"Older?" The other boy interrupted, "Is this not your true age?"
Phantom pouted at him, any hopes he had of making a friend he didn't construct himself were flung out the window, "Yeah, but I don't remember it. Appearently I ate a time god and lost six-ish years from absorbing his powers."
There was a beat silence, then: "You ate a time god?!" Red Robin looked horrifed
"In my defense, I have no memory of what was happening at the time. All I know is that the place i used to live is in ruins and I'm dead."
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vladdyissues · 3 months
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(I should ask it anonymously from the first time, shouldn't I?)
Tumblr resembles the old Rich History pairing. It returns me to the thought of how dark this pairing must be if it was a background. I mean, if Vlad wanted to be loved for whole series then CW must be secretly in love with this man (if we see this pairing as bg canon), Vlad didn't knew about it. But CW should know better how Vlad tortures in his loneliness, there's no reason to keep your feelings secretly only unless you do your best to your crush was left alone. That's the great and insidious plan: Clockwork let Vlad first find out how wonderful to be in love (let him to have a crush on Maddie), but then has been doing his best for loneliness, torture and, at last, desperation devoured the whole Vlad, abstract any potential partner using your Time-control power, so, at the end, when CW reveals his feelings to Vlad, he would 100% accept it. And even if their relationship would be a little abusive to hold Vlad, there wouldn't be any person around Plasmius to help him. Even his little badger.
I know, it's too dark and most in phandom sees CW as absolutely good guy but I always have seen him as true neutral (good guy for the whole reality but still can be a little egoistic)
I agree; characters and relationships are more interesting (to me and in general) when they're not 100% good or 100% evil. True neutral characters run the same risk of being flat and boring, unless there's an element of omniscience and/or omnipotence, like Clockwork. Then it gets interesting.
Let's examine canon: Clockwork is charged with keeping the flow of time in order and making sure things happen as they should—which would have to include terrible events. Terrible events that happen to innocent people. To do his job, he must be truly impartial*. He's like a force of nature or an element—the same rain that nourishes the earth also causes destruction and loss of life, but it's neither wicked nor divine.
(*He violated his neutrality in The Ultimate Enemy and intervened to give Danny a second chance, clearly showing favoritism. But this is a kids show, and cartoon logic dictates the good guy never loses.)
Maybe Clockwork is compassionate and capable of loving others, but he can't let it interfere with his job. And his job is perhaps the most important one in the universe.
But my question is this: What would Clockwork possibly find attractive about Vlad? What could Vlad, a half-mortal man who's only existed 40-some years, a mere blink of the eye in the scope of eternity, possibly have in common with the Ghost of Time?
Loneliness. That's my theory. The curse of the overpowered (Clockwork) and the overzealous (Vlad). I would argue that it's more likely for Clockwork to take an interest in Vlad because of their mutual loneliness rather than any kind of perverse desire to manipulate someone he happens to find attractive. (For that matter, what's so attractive about Vlad? What could Vlad have to offer someone as omnipotent as Clockwork? Nothing—except maybe companionship.) They would understand each other, perhaps Clockwork more than Vlad, since he's omniscient and has been living alone much longer.
Being understood is, in my opinion, better and more important than being loved. For this reason, and the fact that canonically we never really saw any indication of Clockwork being selfish or egotistical (a little mischievous, but nothing malicious), I just don't see him using/abusing his powers to manipulate Vlad into loving him. Why would he? Boredom? Self-indulgence? The thrill of enjoying his absolute power? That's something villains do, not neutral characters. If anything, Vlad seems more likely to try to manipulate Clockwork into loving him just so he'd have a powerful ally who might bend time as a little favor.
But Rich History is definitely a ship with potential for a lot of really good angst and "darkness", and the more I'm in this fandom, the more attractive it becomes to me.
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The Revenge of GLMR!!! | Reasons, Review & Analysis
Because opinions are like voices, we all have a different kind, so just clean out all of your ears, these are my views • atcq "award tour"
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There’s a lot different ideas that run through my head when I’m listening to music, and - although it’s been a while - especially when I try to review music. Obviously, there’s going to be bias because I have certain sounds and textures and concepts that I like more than others, but there are three that I expand on down below: effort, competence, and experimentation.
Of course that’s not to discount other aspects like... production value, mixing style, lyricism, songwriting, composition, style and a lot of other aspects to what makes a song work or an album flow - egads! - album sequencing!!!
I really like music, and at the bottom of that, I really want to like music. I’ve spent a lot of time writing my own music and sitting next to friends as they mix and produce the music I write, and so it’s exciting, new and different to sit on the other side and seriously think about the music that I get to listen to. I want to take more time with this endeavor and put in the work to maintain this thing. Maybe that means starting with familiar stuff and getting a feel with how I think about music with artists or albums I know. At the end of the day, I’m a guy on the net with a blog, but I hope you sweet, beautiful people find something worthwhile, interesting, funny and hopefully insightful from this thing. Maybe you can get something cringeworthy out of it. We may never know, but hopefully, we may.
In the words of Josh Homme:
If you've got the time and you've got the space you've got to make something of it. We might balls the whole thing up but you've got to try!
Effort
One of the things I put a premium on is effort: did’ja at least try to make a good song or record? Because if you didn’t, then fuck you.
In my teenage years I listened to a lot of alt-metal, post-grunge, hard rock and generally loud guitar music, so understand that I speak with some authority when it comes to that genre of music. Seether, Hinder, Nickelback, Godsmack, Papa Roach, Saving Abel, Three Days Grace - even bands that were influenced from the original crop: Daughtry, Theory of a Deadman, Popevil - and even bands that were just a little outside of generic rockers, bands like Foo Fighters, Audioslave, the sort of acts that were pretty well-respected but still made similar music but of a little better quality than their imitators. So I’m a bit of an expert when it comes to the post-grunge sound, that sound a generation or so removed from the Seattle heavyweights they hold in such high regard. My favorites of the bunch were: Foo Fighters, Nickelback, Seether, Puddle of Mudd, throw in some Everclear and that’s a good sampling of bands that I really liked at that time. These are bands that sounded like they put in a good amount of effort in the records that they made.
I hear distant scoffs, but only because it’s fallen out of fashion to dislike Nickelback, but hear me out: if you think Nickelback was generic and derivative, then you weren’t given the chance to hear Nickelback-lite.
Nickelback is a band whose blueprint was always more CCR, ZZ Top and Metallica than anything else, and their albums, save for maybe Curb typically reflected this.
They combined these three somewhat disparate influences with the sonic template that the Big Four of Grunge popularized and made some incredibly catchy and well executed music.
Hoobastank, on the other hand, you could tell sort of wanted to imitate Incubus, but recognized the immediacy of a band like NIckelback. Their music was similar, though never venturing further than Drop-D tunings, but their songwriting was sub-par. There was never, I sensed, the effort that truly made certain bands stand out. The lyrics especially, where they offered fairly banal observations and pleas for help:
Show me what it's for Make me understand it I've been crawling in the dark Looking for the answer Is there something more Than what I've been handed? I've been crawling in the dark Looking for the answer
- “Crawling in The Dark” by Hoobastank (2001)
The sound is part and parcel of what rock bands in the mid-2000s were aiming for in order to receive radio play: dull production value, samey chord progressions, vaguely introspective lyrics and leads that sound like U2 outtakes. Was there any effort, any character, any color, any life to your production, music or lyrics? Unfortunately, once executives and the ilk come in, well, that’s where a lot of “corporate rock” gets its reputation from.
Competence
Competence is one of those things where all it’s asking is, did’ja do it well? Does it sound awkward or cringey, or is it well-executed and hits the mark?
An example that comes to mind is Foo Fighters’ 2014 album Sonic Highways. After 2011′s Wasting Light, which was a watershed moment for the band, they began to really lean into their own legacy. Grohl and Co. became a standard-bearer for rock music at this time, and to an extent still do. What came after was a pretty bloated concept record about the musical history of the United States in 8 different cities tied together with an HBO documentary. While the documentary was actually decently made though not perfect, the record suffered from the band overextending themselves. They recorded the album in 8 different cities while interviewing famous musicians with deep roots in those cities, and then Grohl would go and write lyrics based on what he had learned in those interviews, weaving in little things they said here and there in order to form a coherent narrative for the song.
It didn’t quite work. The music is decent for the most part, but Grohl was just not able to make it compelling enough. Dave’s insistence on the record not straying too far from the band’s original sound didnt’ make sense when the entire concept was based on a city-by-city celebration of American-made music. The finished product was colored by Vig’s by-the-numbers production and Grohl’s own hesitation about making it too different.
There are musical projects that are well-performed and well-produced (i.e. competent in a couple different dimensions), but the overarching concept can be marred by the artist’s own musical limitations.
Danny Worsnop has had a successful stint with Asking Alexandria. His foray into country music with The Long Road Home is pretty good. Kid Cudi, the rapper whose Man On The Moon records were well-done pop-cum-rap albums, didn’t quite hit the mark with 2012′s WZRD and much less with 2015′s Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven, both attempts to make rock(?) records.
An artist’s own musical limitations can hinder musical projects, even if other aspects of the music are otherwise done decently well.
There’s a dimension where a record can be “competent” in what it does and score a 5/10 or higher. There’s also a dimension where a record can be “competent” in what it does and score a 4/10 or lower. It’s tied to the effort made, and of course, goes by an artist-by-artist basis. Same thing with...
Experimentation
Not every song or album has to be a genre-bending, mind-expanding, sound-expanding trip through another universe, but artists that make an attempt to go beyond their comfort zone or beyond an established boundary get credit for doing so.
This is, again, kind of by an artist-by-artist basis. You can’t have multiple Beatles, for example, who rewrite the music playbook or whatever. But when an artist tries to go even a little out of their comfort zone, it’s appreciated. Take an artist like Ian Thornley. An extraordinarily talented guitarist and songwriter, his band Big Wreck recorded In Loving Memory Of... in 1997 and, although it took its blueprint directly from Led Zeppelin III, did some pretty interesting things sonically and early on demonstrated some great potential in developing their sound. Their follow-up was a bloated piece of work that unfortunately fell into the trope of “let’s go thicker on the guitars and have overblown ballads” that most rock bands in the 2000s fell into. After their break-up, Ian continued this trend with the plodding generic music of Thornley.
A band that actually threads this needle pretty well is Queens of the Stone Age. Josh Homme creates each record with its own unique identity, doing so competently, with effort, and not sounding (at least not all the time) like a phoned in attempt to sit on his haunchy laurels. Era Vulgaris, a personal favorite of mine, was this dirty, sleazy, almost evil sounding record while its follow-up ...Like Clockwork plumbed the depths of Homme’s struggle with depression and created gorgeous sonic landscapes on songs like “The Vampyre of Time and Memory” and “I Appear Missing.”
I like a little experimentation whether with production, music or lyrics. It’s not going to kill a record if they don’t really experiment, but the artist gets points for at least trying.
Final Thoughts, Concerns & Whatever Else
These three things are what immediately came to mind when I thought about what goes through my head when thinking about music. It’s not super technical, and probably comes from my own background as a musician without a background in theory and who pieces music together mostly through feeling and intuition. But there’s a bunch of other things that I know should look out, and want to look out for. Things like production value, lyricism, composition and style. The way I listen to music hopefully will change for the better, and looking back to previous reviews, I can do a hell of a lot better, and plan to. I actually hope to find better and more unique and interesting ways to describe how I hear certain sounds and even improve on listening out for certain, subtle aspects of production jobs.
Welcome back to Green Light Music Reviews! Sub-par music reviews for a healthy colon! Enjoy!!
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nitrateglow · 6 years
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Halloween 2017 movie marathon: The Shining (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
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“You've had your whole fucking life to think things over! What good's a few minutes more gonna do you now?!”
Frustrated writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) agrees to spend the winter as the caretaker of the picturesque Overlook Hotel, with his meek wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and troubled young son Danny (Danny Lloyd) in tow. Problems brew to a boiling point as the alienated family spends their days in the remote resort: Jack’s encounters with what may or may not be malevolent ghosts bring his already-existing resentment toward his wife and son to the fore, causing him to engage in ever-more sadistic and violent behavior. As his father and the sinister atmosphere of the hotel grow more hostile, Danny, informed by the Overlook’s telepathic chef Halloran (Scatman Crothers) that he has a psychic ability known as “shining,” attempts to contact the outside world before he and his mother are butchered.
As it is with James Whale’s Frankenstein, discussing Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of The Shining can prove a daunting task. Everyone and their grandmother seems to have an insane interpretation or conspiracy theory about just what the hell it means. Stephen King enjoys bitching about it every few years. It is endlessly parodied and homaged. But as with James Whale’s Frankenstein, I’m going to talk about it anyway, because my reaction to this movie is a strange one, at least by my standards. When I first saw The Shining, I didn’t find it that scary. If anything, I saw it as more of a black comedy with a lot of suspense. Over repeated visits, most horror movies lose that visceral edge that comes with an initial viewing, but The Shining somehow grows more frightening every time I come back to it—and yet, despite its disturbing themes and eerie atmosphere, I would argue that in Kubrick’s oeuvre, few films are as optimistic. (No, I’m not crazy!) Unfortunately, most of the discourse surrounding this movie is ridiculous, all Illuminati and government conspiracy—but never fear: if you have not seen the film, rest assured that it is a fine horror picture; you do not require a tinfoil hat to enjoy its considerable artistic merits and entertainment value.
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Placed alongside the other horror movies I’ve covered in this marathon thus far, The Shining does not seem particularly gothic: it lacks the chiaroscuro aesthetic of Frankenstein or The Mummy. Compared to The Cat and the Canary and subsequent haunted house films, The Shining’s Overlook Hotel is picturesque and contemporary, with not a hint of dust or decay to be seen on the premises. Everything is bright and well-lit—perhaps even over-lit and garish. There are no shadows hiding ghouls or spooky paintings, only kitschy 1970s decor. But if there is a running theme throughout this film, it’s making normal things look as creepy as possible. The stillness of the abandoned hotel, not to mention the way these already disturbed characters are kept in close quarters within it, creates an eerie atmosphere from the moment the Torrance clan set foot on the premises.
Like all great gothic stories, The Shining concerns itself with how the horrors of the past linger in the present, and the Overlook Hotel has no shortage in that regard. Despite its glamorous past, where the “jet set” of the 1920s and 1930s used to hang in the lavish ball room, the Overlook has its share of atrocities, such as the desecration of the Native American burial ground it was built over or the young family slaughtered by the former caretaker a decade before the events of the film take place. The Torrances bring their own baggage: Jack and Wendy’s marriage is already strained, and Jack’s one instance of drink-induced physical abuse of Danny has marred the family dynamic even further. Evil is a constant presence in this film; it infuses the hotel and Jack’s mind, though slowly. Much of the suspense comes from this slowness; I think Kubrick is the only filmmaker who could make the audience jump out of their seat just by throwing an intertitle at us unexpectedly (I’m not even kidding). A series of intertitles are inserted between segments, counting down to the climax where Jack decides he might want to give the whole “murder my wife and child” thing a try. These measurements of time start out broad, but slowly become more specific, counting down to the minute. It is such a simple strategy, but an effective one in making us fear for the more sympathetic characters.
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And that’s not getting into the ghosts! I’m not often frightened by paranormal stories, but The Shining’s ghouls are the sort that make you nervous about getting out of bed to use the bathroom at night (I know this from experience). The famous Steadicam use adds to the ghostly ambiance, gliding swiftly through the Overlook’s labyrinthine corridors. The iconic tricycle sequences are so creepy because the camera movement makes it seem as though Danny is being stalked by something. Then there are the ghosts themselves, who manage to be incredibly scary without ridiculous spectacle. The creepy twins are ingrained into the popular culture, of course, but I’m especially unnerved by the eroticized woman in the bathtub or Charles Grady, the former caretaker played by Kubrick regular Philip Stone. There’s something far, far more malevolent about them, as they both represent Jack’s ultimate desire: to break free of his family by any means necessary. They also possess a stillness that makes them creepier than any CG-generated ghoul could ever dream of being (see the remake of The Haunting if you need ample proof of that).
Unlike the book, we are never given extensive backstory for any of these characters; however, Kubrick and co-writer Diane Johnson are wise to allow us to make our own inferences about the messed-up family life of the Torrances just from the way they behave around one another, because this approach prevents the movie from being bogged down by too much verbal exposition. When the Torrances in public or attempting to be “normal” in private, their conversations are bland and trite—even strained— almost like people re-enacting normality, the kind of family bonds you might see on televised sitcoms. Jack’s feelings toward Danny are ambiguous; I can never quite decide if part of him loves “the little son of a bitch” or if he’s always resented him. The scene where Danny sits on Jack’s lap and asks him if he would ever hurt him or Wendy might be the most uncomfortable scene in the movie: the way Jack plants a kiss on his son’s forehead feels performative, forced, just like his unconvincing denial that he would ever hurt his family. However, it’s clear his marriage was never ideal. Not once does Jack ever look upon Wendy with anything other than barely contained contempt or tolerance. One gets the feeling that Jack probably married Wendy out of obligation rather than love, while the opposite was true for her. From her frumpy wardrobe and intense efforts to be supportive, Wendy comes off as a woman who has settled—and settled hard. Her few moments of joy in the hotel are with Danny, such as when they run through the Overlook Maze for the first time.
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Kubrick is often accused of being a “cold” filmmaker, but the strong love Wendy feels toward Danny in this film belies any argument that this adaptation has no emotional core. I know some people find Shelley Duvall’s Wendy annoying, but I could not disagree more. She is heartbreaking and believable as a woman with so little confidence that she tries to make a miserable marriage to an abusive man work. She’s trying to make the best of a bad situation, but even she has her limits and that limit is Danny’s well-being. Once she believes Jack is a hazard to her son once again, she is fully against him and fights like hell to survive the night. Danny Lloyd gives one of the best child performances I’ve ever seen in a movie. He captures both the alienation and cleverness of this young boy, all without precocious cuteness or terrible line readings. By the end of the movie, both Wendy and Danny have to rely on their inner strength and wits to escape Jack, who gradually becomes more beast-like as the ghosts of the past overtake what little tolerance he already had in regards to his wife and child.
I don’t think anyone in their right mind would argue Kubrick is a feel-good filmmaker; most of his mature films criticize society, emphasize the absurd tragedy of the human condition, and border on nihilism in their philosophy. However, after 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining has the closest thing to a happy ending in all of Kubrick’s filmography, even as it does remind us that evil is a constant presence in the human heart. Nevertheless, even if evil is eternal, it can be escaped—and coming from the guy who made such bleak works as A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket, that is quite a sunny message! As a psychological horror movie, it remains influential, with The Babadook, Black Swan, and The Neon Demon being just three recent films which have felt its impact. It is a work which bears repeat viewing well; for most, repeat viewings might be necessary. I’ve seen it four times and I still haven’t gotten a solid interpretation of it yet, and this keeps it evergreen.
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