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deargodhelpmeaaa · 3 months

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Duckman review

If you are, at all, familiar with my infamous post “ranking my most prominent fictional crushes out of ten” then you will recall that among the horrible men I listed there was a stupid, bespectacled yellow duck named Eric Duckman. So what the heck even is an Eric Duckman anyway? You probably are unfamiliar with him unless you’ve seen those random clips from his show that had a brief heyday on YouTube. He’s a character from this 90’s cartoon (if the art didn’t give that away) that was actually very adult oriented. At the time, it was pretty unheard of to have an adult cartoon out that was dirtier than the simpsons.

Today, however, I’d argue that most kids shows are on par with the simpsons in terms of their maturity. The simpsons is no longer the edgy show that it used to be. It’s very tame by today’s standards, and duckman was sort of one of the first cartoon series to outdo it in terms of edge.

sooo….. was it any good?

Online, I have seen almost nothing but people singing praises for the show, a couple critics here and there and I am, as much as I love the show… one of those critics.

The show reminds me a lot of the Amazing World of Gumball. I’ve seen people compare it to Bojack Horseman and it’s… really not. The characters in Duckman are pretty static and none of them are really that complex. It just seems that way since this show has a main character who is a horrible person with some redeeming qualities and a backstory to sort of but not completely justify his behavior.

Gumball is a much better source of comparison because the shows are both very meta, at times obnoxiously and pointlessly so, but at others it is actually quite charming. The humor in both is pretty absurdist and shockingly inappropriate at times. Both are vaguely satirical at times as well, duckman a bit more overt with its satire than gumball.

I mention earlier that I like the main character quite a lot. He’s my favorite archetype: egotistical, socially incompetent, treated like utter garbage by the narrative. He’s handled okay, sometimes really poorly; it varies per episode. In some the show is like “wow this guy sucks” and nothing else; in others we see some of the depths of his character, the best of this being the episode “About Face” which is a surprisingly nuanced narrative for this show? We sometimes see his insecurities, his desire to do better for his family, his worries about seeing other women after the recent passing of his wife. Most of this is in season 1. It’s pretty good.

What I like about it is that the show never pretends like he’s this great person or anything. It knows what he is and it punishes him for his bad behavior. It does the same for the other characters who are being kind of assholes as well. The show makes an attempt to show how these other characters are right about something’s but in their behavior may be doing something wrong, like Bernice’s bullying of duckman or the teddy bears constantly preaching at him, and duckmans own behavior itself is also shown to be pretty wrong albeit humorous at times. Cornfed however is based and awesome B) I can’t remember right now what his problem was but the show made his relationship to duckman pretty interesting.

Also for some reason I think people ship duckman with him I mean Duckman did offer to have sex with him one time so I see it.

My problem with the show starts with just the characters being kind of flat. Like I said before, people were singing praises for this thing, calling it 90s Bojack Horseman. Sure, duckman has some depth, but the others…. Eh…. I was really hoping to see some depth from duckmans sister in law who he lives with, Bernice (I mean of course I fucking was look at the website I’m on) but she really never went past this bitchy stuck up feminist stereotype who wanted to find herself a husband (the writers probably made her like men to avoid making her an offensively stereotypical lesbian, though it seems she might be bisexual anyway lol) and seems to maybe kind of care about Duckman deep down.

Duckman himself as I’ve said before is a pretty good character especially by the shows standards, but in some episodes he is just annoying and nothing else. And I mean really annoying.

Duckmans kids are just eh to be honest. Like they do their job and his relationship to Ajax is kind of interesting, but none of these characters are especially funny or interesting nor do they go that far beyond their initial premises, giving the show pretty little to do with them in the long run. Ok I lied Ajax is kind of funny sometimes.

What I like about the family aspect of the show is that it isn’t a completely abusive family, with humor being derived from the characters treating eachother like shit all the time. Duckman is an asshole, Bernice is an asshole, the twins are kind of jerks, Ajax is literally just Chris griffin. It’d be easy to just make them abusive and nothing else but the show actually tries to make them sort of love eachother at the end of the day. Duckman still cares about his kids, of course he does. Bernice does too and she wants her nephews to have a better influence than their dad, who sucks. The twins don’t respect him but resemble him in some ways they don’t want to admit. It’s too bad they don’t explore this more!!!

I’m just skipping past the dog that does nothing and the grandma who is in a coma like state and umm communicates exclusively through farts look guys it’s a fucking 90s cartoon I told you it’s more like gumball than it is like bojack horseman and I’m not your mom im not as sophisticated as I look!!!!!

The female love interests for duckman vary in quality. Some of them are kind of interesting even if we only see them through the lens of their relationship to duckman, sometimes their existences are pretty funny, but especially in the later seasons they’re just kind of stupid.

The stuff with Duckman and his dead wife is kind of interesting, especially since if I remember correctly, it was her idea that if she died, duckman would instead live with her sister Bernice since she knew he wouldn’t be able to raise their kids on his own. I wish the show explored his dependency on her more, and really just… her in general. I think it’s sort of implied that his dependency on her was in some ways a kind of bad thing since like after her death, he becomes a wreck, but he still always loves her. I really appreciate Everett peck (god rest his soul) for making the executive decision to kill her off as she was still alive in the pilot which made duckman look like more of an asshole for wanting to see other women, and the concept of her being too focused on other things rather than him also wasn’t very compelling and kind of makes him look worse if that’s what we’re supposed to sympathize with. Changing it absolutely was the way to go.

we see some glimpses of duckmans parents. Again he has a pretty interesting relationship to them. He accidentally killed his own father, who was very hard on him, and his mother, much like him, was a hedonist, especially after the death of his father. She was neglectful much like his father was.

I’m not dissing my boy cornfed, who is duckmans detective partner (not in a gay way but in a detective way. Probably in a gay way too tho idk) He’s cool. I do wish they did more with him though, since it’d be interesting to explore his own flaws despite him foiling the most flawed man on the planet. Literally my only complaint.

The last character to talk about is king chicken. He’s voiced by Tim curry, and is hyped up to be sort of this major villain for the show. The premise behind his relationship is simple: duckman bullied him back in high school, and it’s revealed in the only good king chicken episode (the dinner party one. Forget the title) that duckman only did that because when king chicken there wasn’t around to bully, everyone would turn around and pick on him. Now after all these years, king chicken wants to get his revenge on duckman, as he now seems to be much more successful than he is. Theres also, for some reason, at least on duckmans end, some sexual tension between the two of them?it’s a great premise honestly, and us tumblr bitches love ourselves some good old enemies to lovers, rivalries with weird tension kissimessmitude type stuff.

But I did say there was only one good episode about this guy. Yeah…. It’s the last episode of season 3 and one of I think 2 truly good episodes in there (season 3 kind of sucks lol) which is a dialogue driven experimental episode based on who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf where we get some interesting insight on the relationship between duckman and king chicken, and sort of king chicken and Bernice (who King Chicken also has romantic tension with).

Ok so you probably noticed how I was complaining about how the characters aren’t that complex, about needing to explore depth. You may ask me: “wait isn’t this thing a comedy? It’s like gumball, you said! It doesn’t need that much depth, idiot!!!!” Errmmm yes it does actually. This isn’t because it’s a comedy but because of the type of comedy it sets out to be. Season 1 in particular wants to show us new sides of these characters (mostly duckman) in each episode. It sets the show up to be something that might deconstruct or arc him, and a good chunk of the episodes are trying to do this.

For instance season 4 has one where he meets a girl he knew back in detective school, we get one in season 3 even trying to flesh out Bernice who wants to be a mother but can’t find the right man for her.

We get one I think in season 3 where he has to hold back his veneral desires when they hire a tutor for the kids (I think?) who happens to be a woman he finds really hot.

We get one in season 4 where a sycophantic intern tries to exploit his vices and ruin his life, and he’s too gullible and desperate to notice.

These all sound like good premises but the execution is often quite janky. It doesn’t tend to go far beyond the premise and the writers often find themselves not knowing what to do, so they end up getting lazy and give up on the story.

I think the show could have been fine staying static like that, though I think after a while they would end up needing to write long term character arcs. I saw they planned to potentially write a romance between duckman and Bernice which is a strong indicator that this was what they wanted to do. That doesn’t mean that the episodes would still be good though because it would also need to be funny and entertaining on top of doing things with the characters, and the writers shouldn’t want to just give up on it like they do with so many episodes.

I honestly did enjoy some episodes that don’t try to be deep and just are stupid fun. I’ve indicated here that the show isn’t great at being deep. Season 1, some of season 2 and the Virginia Woolf episode are really the only times this show does it gracefully that I can think of off the top of my head and otherwise, the execution is rather clunky, as the show often does a poor job balancing humor with heart, with serious moments feeling quite forced and often sappy. It reminds me a lot of my earlier personal comics (and weaker current ones) in how it will switch from funny to serious, in a feeble attempt to be bojack horseman, but credit where credit is due for it coming out prior to the show I just now accused it of copying!

It is in a way quite ahead of its time. I won’t deny it. The simpsons obviously did much of what this show tried to do but better, but I will never not love the vulgar, hideous but honest, underground cartoon like feel of duckman. It over simplified things, gets a lot of things wrong and is often quite outdated (I have issues with the one flew over the cuckoos nest episode, as asylums did not look like that in the 90s) it’s a good time capsule from the 90s honestly as it is easily the most 90s thing I have ever seen.

is the show funny? I mention comedy a lot here. Uh. Kind of. It’s hit or miss. It��s either like they asked a horny version of Berdly from deltarune to write for them or it’s genuinely funny with some very interesting in between.

now the art. Yes! I love the art!!! It’s good but some of the character designs are kind of concerning to me. I think some of the really ugly and mannish women they draw are supposed to be trans and it’s not good. I get it the 90s are like that and I’m not saying ugh trans rep and whatever I just think the trans women should look as hot as duckman does when he’s wearing womens clothing. Jk but fr they don’t need to be that mannish it’s kind of dehumanizing and gross and adds nothing to the show and didn’t age well is all.

And before anyone thinks I’m doing the tumblr bit where I get mad at a lack of body diversity: no I don’t care and I think the over sexualized but kind of disgusting designs are hilarious and make a good commentary on duckmans own views towards women as well, and add greatly to the absurdist humor of the show.

All in all it looks great to me. Really ugly but that’s why it works imo and the colors are really nice. The studio behind this series is klasky csupo by the way. They made stuff like rugrats, wild thorn berries, aaaaa real monsters… I love their style and while it doesn’t show that much in my posts on here more of my personal art kind of copies it a bit.

last thing is voice acting. This show has a star studded cast. Jason Alexander, famously known as the guy who played the short balding guy from Seinfeld, actually voices the main character! And he’s great! He was definitely type casted tho lol. Tim curry I think I mentioned earlier was the voice of king chicken. We also have Gilbert gottfried, who surprisingly enough does not voice a talking bird in this show! I want to say there’s some other big names here too, like I think the guy who voiced cornfed or something. Zappa, yeah that Zappa, did the intro theme and some of the music for the show and his son voices Ajax and he’s great. I think everyone did pretty good with this show in terms of acting, it’s really just the writing that is super hit or miss here.

quick talk about the finale. I hate it lol. It’s obvious they were gonna reveal something like it’s all a dream or oh no that’s not his wife it’s an alien shapeshifter pretending to be her. They were told to do a cliff hanger ending to increase ratings. Seeing as how there have been no new episodes in like over 30 years I think it’s safe to say that it didn’t work.

long story short. The shows super hit or miss, not great at balancing humor and serious moments, with a cast of characters that never properly gets fleshed out enough besides the main character, who though rightfully treated as what he is: kind of a jackass who it seems will never amount to anything, the show still does revolve around him so many of the characters are made interesting through their relationships to him and not to each other and they themselves often aren’t interesting on their own either- which is a problem I have too in my own writing, and weirdly enough I also tend to write characters who are duckman like as well…. so it’s okay.

what stands out to me about this show is just how much it appeals to my interests. I mentioned time and again how the main character is literally my favorite type of character ever down to his appearance: which is that he’s a skinny little bastard wearing glasses. He also could be in a way described as a cross between the two characters this blog, thus far, has seemed to be dedicated to (Berdly and filthy frank, as he is basically just a pretentious gross bird guy) not to mention that i initially made this blog to post Seinfeld memes which is…. Crazy. It really just feels like something I would make and that makes sense because I can often be found kind of copying it-

I also just love 90s stuff, and I like stuff that’s super edgy, inappropriate and satirical in nature, and this show does that pretty right. It’s dynamic between a screwball duck and a straight laced pig is an obvious callback do Daffy Duck and porky pig and duckmans womanizing and status as a detective is a likely reference to Howard the duck (which I still need to read). He sort of looks like a simpsons character and much of the show pays homage to the simpsons, homer cameos in it and it references it a ton. I love the simpsons, it’s a massive influence on me as well. I see hints of underground comics influencing it but that might be just the cartoon characters being vulgar thing here.

today honestly…. I won’t lie this show is much better than 99% of adult cartoons being made today, but in a way this show is sort of the norm. I think it is kind of ahead of it’s time, I think in other ways it’s exactly of it’s time. It’s a very interesting show to me and even though I have many qualms with it and the poor writing I do really love it over all.

#Duckman #klasky csupo #90s cartoons #analysis #media analysis #character analysis #review #Cartoon #cartoon review #The simpsons #the amazing world of gumball #deargodhelpmerant #Essay #long post

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junebugwriter · 11 months

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I guess I never had much of a chance.

I just started watching Jessie Gender on Youtube's essay about masculinity and... it hit like a goddamn truck. So much of what she talks about in her past so closely mirrors my own, it's downright eerie. Down to the fact that I was an Eagle Scout. Although, to be fair, it sounds like she had a much better time in it than I did, considering I never really made many friends in my boy scout troop, and I never worked any of the camps.

But to the point... I really did echo a lot of her experience. I tried my hardest to be a man. To live up to the ideals of masculinity that society enforces. But I was never going to be anything close to that. I was always too fat, too sensitive, too emotional, and too unathletic to ever be anything close to Western Masculinity (tm).

I did try though. I was desperate to be seen as something close to approaching masculine, but it came out in such strange ways.

For those who don't know me in person, I grew up in the United Methodist Church, quite literally. My dad was a pastor all his life, and that's the only life I knew growing up. As such, we lived life "in a fishbowl," as we'd call it. That means we were supposed to be the Model Family. Above all reproach, under all scrutiny. If any of us stepped out of line, we were going to be reprimanded for it. Do you folks on here have any idea what that does to a kid? My parents loved me, to be sure, and I bear them little ill will. They did their best under the circumstances. But we were a religious family in Texas. There's very little non-conformity afforded to us. My mother, God bless her, she already bucked tradition. She wasn't exactly feminine, mostly. Sure, she wore dresses, wore makeup, even went square dancing with my dad. But she had little time for the trappings of femininity, and only wore them under obligation. She did not enjoy being a pastor's spouse, for the most part. She endured it, for my Dad's sake, but she made no secret that she wasn't going to pretend to be some Stepford Wife bizarro Tammy Faye Bakker. Not her.

So I grew up with my dad, a uniquely anxious person, stressed about how me and my brother were going to make it. My dad was a pretty old-school guy, but at heart he was a bleeding heart liberal, as much as one could be in Texas in the 80's and 90's in religious circles. There's not a single Democratic president he didn't vote for. He was Democrat til he dies. Yet... that could never be public knowledge. Not in the church. Not in Texas. So already, we became bearers of secrets. Mom isn't a pastor's wife. Dad isn't a Republican. And so we were taught to bear our own secrets.

I'm neurodivergent. I have ADHD. And I am almost entirely incapable of telling a lie. (Ask my partner, she knows!) But little secrets... that was a matter of survival. Little secrets, for the benefit of the Image. Everyone has them, I learned. But God help you if your secrets ever got out.

So I learned, and learned, and learned some more. I'd ask questions, and to their credit my parents answered most of them truthfully, if they could. But there were some things you do not question.

One of them was gender. But I did not know that word.

How could I?

Not in that environment. Not in the fishbowl. Not in Texas. Not in the church.

Girls did x, boys did y, and that's that. Girls were x, boys were y, and that's it. End of discussion. Black and white.

There were signs I did not conform. I loved the show Barney and Friends... until I overheard kids at school call it a show for girls and little babies. Not a show for boys.

Overnight I stopped watching.

I used to sleep with a blanket every night. I loved, adored that little blanket. I found solace in Linus from Peanuts, and his little blue blanket. But my father chafed at its ever-presence. He never said anything against it, but he didn't have to. I could tell. So my mother, God bless her, she stitched me and my brother some pillows with fun animal designs on them. They substituted for the blanket. Father approved, as they had things like tigers and killer whales on them, which were Boy Approved (tm) things to like.

But then there was the ladybug puppet. It was a cute little stuffed ladybug that fit on my hand, and it even had an extra leg so as to be anatomically accurate. I slept with that every night.

Until my mother told me that dad didn't want me to do it anymore. He was worried it was too "feminine." And she said it in a very sing-song voice, a teasing tone I grew all too familiar with.

So into the closet the puppet went. And me with it.

I became hyper-vigilant about what could be perceived as "feminine" from there on out. I watched what I did like a hawk, trying never to ever raise the annoyance or ire of my dad or my peers. But it was never enough. As anyone who has ever had to play that game of gender chess, there was never going to be any chance for someone who is a trans girl to ever be anything but, even if they didn't know that was what they were.

I didn't hear the word "transgender" until I was in grad school. By then, I had already felt a call to ministry. By then, I had long ago locked up all gender nonconformity in a closet back when I was in grade school. I had lost an entire childhood, teenhood, early young adulthood. And by then, I felt like they described what being trans was like, as if it was for someone else. Glad I didn't deal with that issue!

But I did. I simply did not allow myself to question things. Did not allow myself to break the box I was put in as a child. Because I was a white guy, going to be a pastor. I figured I would just be that all my life.

Life has changed about three times since then. I only allowed myself to ask myself the hard gender questions in October of last year. I was 35. I'm turning 36 this next month.

I'm starting my life over again, a fourth time. But I'm actually looking forward to the future, for the first time in my entire life.

Because now it actually exists.

#lgbtq #gender #transgender #childhood #church #religion #christianity #biography #jessie gender #ministry #united methodist church #texas #the south #queer #in the closet #trans femme #trans feminine #personal

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christianbalefanatic · 1 year

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Christian Bale Keeps Trying to Quit Hollywood

He’s spent decades pretending to not be himself. Now, at 47, one of the world’s greatest actors speaks with rare candor about navigating a career he never quite chose and building a life he sometimes can't fathom.

BY ZACH BARON

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GREGORY HARRIS

October 5, 2022

Somehow, Christian Bale found himself shooting three different movies last year, but he hasn’t been on a film set in months, and he doesn’t know when he’ll be back on one, and this fact makes him happy. “I could just go forever not working,” he says. He’s a little late to meet me at this diner in Santa Monica that he’d prefer I not name because he and the director of one of those movies, David O. Russell, come here a lot to bat around scripts and people-watch. In fact, as we talk he keeps getting distracted by what those people are doing, various characters that he’s given names to, locals who frequent the place who he observes like old friends, people who don’t know who Christian Bale is and wouldn’t care if they did.

He’s wearing a dark, shapeless T-shirt and dark, shapeless pants and has enough of a beard going that he could play a Civil War general. From out of the beard peers, well, Batman. Patrick Bateman. A movie star’s face, familiar from 35 years’ worth of movies that have earned him four Oscar nominations and one win—for 2010’s The Fighter. Bale was 13 years old when he starred in Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun, his first major movie role, a part he sought out and ultimately accepted because his family was in need. His life hasn’t been what you’d call normal since, but it wasn’t totally normal before either—his father, a former pilot and financial adviser, moved Bale and his siblings and his mother around the United Kingdom constantly, picking up and starting again. Bale resists self-reflection, but it’s not hard to see that kid in him still: drawn to extremes, transfixed by reinvention, motivated by fixing what happened to his family, and ambivalent about what he had to do and what he had to sacrifice in order to take care of the people he loved.

It’s also worth saying that he resists self-reflection in an absolutely delightful way. His accent is nominally Welsh, the voice more musical and mischievous than it tends to be onscreen, and in that voice he will ask you if you have children. He will ask you what your hopes and dreams are in life. He will seek out other things you’ve written and ask you detailed questions about them, all in the hopes of not talking about himself. Part of it, he says, is that he thinks that if people actually know him it will ruin whatever he’s trying to do as an actor; part of it, I think, is that he’s just genuinely not all that interested in the subject. What he wants, what he’s seeking, is obsession, or oblivion—the total erasure of the self. And let me say!…I recommend talking with people who are into oblivion. They are never once boring.

Because of all that, he doesn’t do many interviews like these, but the movies have added up, and so he’s giving it a shot. This summer he starred as the villain in Thor: Love and Thunder. This month he plays a one-eyed guy named Burt in David O. Russell’s wild new film, Amsterdam. And then at the end of the year he has a 19th-century murder mystery he shot with another frequent collaborator, the director Scott Cooper, called The Pale Blue Eye. “Which,” he says, about having three movies come out in the same year: “Nobody needs that. I don’t need it. No one else needs to see me that much.” And yet here we are.

Bale has lived in Los Angeles since the ’90s. But it’s a very specific Los Angeles. “You can live here and not be in the middle of the film community,” he says. “I’m not. I don’t have anything to do with it. I’m here because my wife is from here. If she wasn’t, we probably wouldn’t. But people sort of imagine film people swanning about, hanging out with each other all the time, talking about films, and that just makes me want to slam my head into the table.”

Christian Bale covers the November 2022 issue of GQ. Coat, $4,995, and shirt, $295, by Dolce & Gabbana.

Jacket, $6,950, and pants, $1,295, by Loro Piana. Shirt, $110, by RTH. Hat, $219, by Begg x Co. Watch, $25,900, by Vacheron Constantin. Necklace, $6,400, by David Yurman.

Well, there are actors who get into acting because they’re obsessed with movies and film people. My understanding is, that’s not your story, right?

Not true, not me, no. I’m a bit illiterate when it comes to films. I disappoint everybody with how little I know about film. I don’t think it matters. I don’t think you have to for what I do.

You’re not filming anything right now. Are you someone who is content to not work?

More than content: fucking ecstatic. I’ve always been bent on “When’s this gonna end? This has to end.” I like doing things that have nothing to do with film. And I find myself very happily not playing dress-up, not pretending to be somebody else for long lengths of time.

When you say things like “playing dress-up,” it seems like there have been times when you were almost…not embarrassed to be doing what you’re doing but—

Oh, no, flat-out embarrassed. Yes, for many years. Actually mortified. You know, I’m under no illusions either about the fact that the only reason I get noticed or feel useful in this world is when I pretend not to be me, right? Which is why doing [interviews] is such a weird thing because I’m like, “Wait a second. This is career suicide, doing this—”

Doing this interview is not career suicide.

Well, on the one hand I’m like, “Yeah, bring it on.” On the other hand I’m more like, “Eh, don’t let this be the reason.” So it’s a slow death. I’m having this very slow death in public.

But you’re answering a question about being interviewed. And I’m asking a question about you being comfortable identifying as an actor. You said, “Oh, I feel embarrassed.”

insanity of the job itself. I guess it’s the idea of what people think an actor is that’s embarrassing. I mean, how many useful jobs are there, really, in life, where you’re helping other people? Am I just creating more stupid background noise? But the acting itself, I enjoy how ridiculous it is. I love something that you can just go too far with. People are fucking fascinating. I love people, I love watching people, and I get to watch them in a way that would otherwise be perceived as verging on extremely bizarre.

When you say, “I love something that you can just go too far with,” I want to make sure I understand that.

Obsession, that’s what I mean. You get to obsess without people saying, “He needs to go in the loony bin.” Right? But, uh, is film what you love writing about? What is your thing? You know, This is what I wanna do…?

I’m doing the thing I want to do right now.

Do you have other ambitions?

This conversation is my ambition. You were saying that you anticipated having more time to make the three movies you have coming out this year, but then a pandemic happened.

We made Amsterdam right in the middle of the surge in LA. I believe we had something like 26,000 tests. Because I spoke with the COVID-safety expert, and they were breaking down all the scenes before filming in order to figure out when my mouth would be open, and saying, “Well, I see that you laugh in this scene” and then “I see you sing in this scene.” And I said, “Yeah, but I might laugh in every scene, or I might sing in every scene.” And, they said, “No, but that’s not in the script.” And I went: “No, this is going to change every day. We change every take.”

I did enjoy your singing in this film.

Oh. Thank you very much. I love singing. All I can promise whenever I do it is that you probably can hear I’m enjoying myself. That’s it. But, like Todd Haynes, for instance, I went in the recording studio for him for I’m Not There. And, aw, man, I had the best time. And I thought I nailed it. And then when I heard it, I was like, “Yeah, they got someone else in, didn’t they?” Maybe they hoped I wouldn’t even notice. They were like, “He’s so fucking tone deaf, he won’t even notice at all.” But, you know, I annoy my family enough by just singing all the time. Once I start, they have to say “Please stop” to me. Because I just love it.

I keep trying to ask you about the movies and we keep ending up talking about something else, like singing, which I suspect is somewhat intentional.

No, but it’s more interesting talking about other things other than stuff that I already know, innit?

Yeah, but I don’t know it.

Yeah.

Your last film before the three this year was 2019’s Ford v Ferrari, in which you play a very difficult race car driver. At some point the director, James Mangold, told you he was just asking you to play yourself, right?

I mean he was fucking with me a little bit there, I think, but maybe not. Though I’ve gotta say, it was our second film. We’re talking about another. We enjoy working together.

Vest, $6,590, by Tom Ford. Sweater, $995, by Ralph Lauren Purple Label. Pants, $1,500, by Greg Lauren. Watch, $75,900, by Audemars Piguet. Ring (throughout), his own.

So, you don’t actually regard yourself as difficult?

No. Not in the slightest. Absolutely not, no. I’m totally grateful and surprised that I get to keep working, right? And you have to maintain that gratitude. But within that gratitude, that mustn’t mean you let standards slip, right? It doesn’t mean you start going, “Oh, I’m so happy and grateful to be working at all, because I never expected this in my life,” which is all true. But that gratitude must turn into, therefore, “I must do things as absolutely well as I possibly can.” But you get passionate characters in the world of filmmaking, right? Because sometimes caring can come across as a certain way for people who might, uh, get a bit overexcited at times.

“I think some people mistakenly believe that I am a leading man, and it just keeps going and I don’t understand it.”

I was thinking that in some ways, the three movies you have this year—Thor, Amsterdam, The Pale Blue Eye—offer a vision of your career in a microcosm. Two are the kind of auteur-driven films we frequently see you in, and then one is a big franchise entertainment. I’m curious what draws you to the big mega-productions like Thor: Love and Thunder.

I was like, “This looks like an intriguing character; I might be able to do something with this, who knows?” And I’d liked Ragnarok. I took my son to see Ragnarok. He was climbing like a monkey all across [the seats] and then he was like, “Oh, I’ve had enough now, let’s get on.” I was like, “No, no, no. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.” I was just like, “I want to finish it.”

Some performers have gone into doing a movie like Thor and come away saying, “Great vibe. Loved the people. The green-screen acting is not for me.”

That’s the first time I’ve done that. I mean, the definition of it is monotony. You’ve got good people. You’ve got other actors who are far more experienced at it than me. Can you differentiate one day from the next? No. Absolutely not. You have no idea what to do. I couldn’t even differentiate one stage from the next. They kept saying, “You’re on Stage Three.” Well, it’s like, “Which one is that?” “The blue one.” They’re like, “Yeah. But you’re on Stage Seven.” “Which one is that?” “The blue one.” I was like, “Uh, where?”

I’m guessing there were no Method attempts to stay in character during this.

That would’ve been a pitiful attempt to do that. As I’m trying to get help getting the fangs in and out and explaining I’ve broken a nail, or I’m tripping over the tunic.

You play the villain in that movie. I feel like you’re more willing to play unlikable characters than some quote-unquote leading men.

Absolutely, yes. I’ve never quite gotten that thing from actors who I respect immensely who go like, “Oh, you gotta like your character.” And I’m like, “I don’t know if they’ll like him. I’m good not liking him.”

I wonder if this helps explain your longevity—what you do has never depended on likability.

Right. I’m always sort of confused when people are like, “Oh, I do it for my fans.” Oh, sounds so lovely. What a lovely person you must be, you’re doing it for your fans. Oh, wonderful. A big heart you must have. Well, why did you start, then? Nobody had fans at the beginning. I want people who do it for themselves. I don’t want to watch people who are doing it for me. I’m like, “How do you know what I want?” Like, surprise me with it, do it for yourself, I wanna know that this is everything to you. Like, be intense about it, go for it, do it for yourself.

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Have you ever been drawn to the more traditional version of movie stardom?

Those are the people who actually are useful for being themselves. And then there’s people who are like me, who only ever found themselves to be useful to anybody when they decided not to be themselves, right? So, “just be yourself” is, like, the worst piece of advice you could give someone like me, because, you know, I’ve got a career because I ignored that advice and said, “No, be someone else. Be someone else.”

I suspect I know what your answer is going to be, but do you have a theory of why you’ve been so successful? Because you’re not a character actor, you do play leads in movies.

Zero strategy. I think some people mistakenly believe that I am a leading man, and it just keeps on going and I don’t understand it.

Some actors come into this business because they love movies. Some come into it because they love acting. Some come into it because they want to be famous, though they probably wouldn’t admit that. The interesting thing about you, I think, is that you’re none of those things, if I understand correctly.

Um, yeah. No. I mean, you tell me whatever you think I am, but no, you know.…

Well, my understanding is that you got into acting for other reasons that related to supporting your family.

And I’ll just nod. But, yeah. Look, me and a couple of friends, we were kinda doing these little skits. But every kid does. Every kid acts a little bit in that way. And then, just, I found myself in the position that family things…finding I can support the family through doing it: That’s why I’m doing it. And I do have an absolute love/hate relationship with it. And I think that is quite a healthy thing.

Have you ever tried to seriously get out of acting?

What does “seriously” mean? I had a couple of moments where I was like, “I never went to college. I have no education. I want to do that.” But it was short-lived. I do try occasionally and then, like, “Oh, come on.” This…I do…

You’re trying right now to say that you actually like acting?

Yeah. Yeah.

What were the family circumstances that pushed you into the industry?

Oh, different things, health stuff. Things like that. And factious Britain. That’s what it was as well.

Your dad, who was a pilot and a financial adviser, and later married Gloria Steinem—seems like he was an interesting man.

He was a character. Yes. He was full of adventure. He’s the only reason that I didn’t flinch in thinking this is possible. He wasn’t unrealistic, but he was like, “Unless you do just go for it, then of course it’s not [possible].” His influence is the reason why I never felt like, “Shit, I need to have a safety net.” He was a roamer. And he wasn’t in the right place. So we moved a fair bit. But you know what it was good for is understanding: Hey, even if you find yourself sitting in a truck, one week out of a house, where you’re having to go live on someone’s couch for a month, whatever… You go, “It will be all right.” You know? You sort it out. He was remarkable at doing that. And not being panicked about that sort of thing, which I think gave a reckless enough attitude that doing what I do didn’t seem reckless in the slightest. Oh, no work? Potentially no work forever? All good. Hey, it’s all going to be all right. So I think that definitely was the reason I have the attitude I do towards what I do now.

He died when you were still in your 20s. Did that leave a mark?

Of course. Of course. How about you? You have parents?

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I have parents. I also have a question for you about this, which is: Your father passes in 2003. Right around then you take some pretty extreme parts in films—I’m thinking of The Machinist, for which you lost a dangerous amount of weight, and then Rescue Dawn, which you shot with Werner Herzog in the Thai jungle. Do you feel like the two things were connected?

He certainly was never boring. And he certainly always taught me that being boring is a sin. And so maybe it did have some connection in there, you know? But I’ve always gravitated towards, you know, the fantastic dream that someone like Werner Herzog has, and how they go through it and the way they approach it and you just dig in. That reminds me of my father a great deal. Unorthodox thinkers who are going to go do it even if everyone is screaming that they’re absolutely crazy.

**You’ve supported yourself doing this for a long time, and I know sometimes you were barely getting roles, and then sometimes there were moments when you really were noticed as an actor, post–**American Psycho, for instance—

Which, by the way, that’s when I first heard of GQ. Right? As a kid, growing up in small towns, Wales, England, I didn’t know what GQ was. And so my first reference for it was that Patrick Bateman loved GQ. Right? And, and they would say things like, “Total GQ.” So I have this impression that GQ is by and for yuppie serial killers. And anyone reading this is a yuppie serial killer.

I’m sure everyone reading this appreciates that. That movie is successful in an iconic way that probably, for the first time up to that point, gave you some choices, right?

Well, in honesty, the first thing was that I’d taken so long trying to do it, and they had paid me the absolute minimum they were legally allowed to pay me. And I had a house that I was sharing with my dad and my sister and that was getting repossessed. So the first thing was: “Holy crap. I’ve got to get a bit of money,” because I’ve got American Psycho done, but I remember one time sitting in the makeup trailer and the makeup artists were laughing at me because I was getting paid less than any of them. And so that was my motivation after that. Was just: “I got to get enough that the house doesn’t get repossessed.”

For a second you were thinking of your career as “I just need to find a way to get paid.”

Yeah. It’s how I’ve supported people since I was 12, 13 years old. So it’s always been there, that element to it. There was never a moment where it was like, “I think I’d like to take four years off.” No. That just isn’t gonna happen. That’s not possible.

I’m surprised to hear that you were getting paid so little: Was that the nature of American Psycho or was it the nature of your position in the industry at the time?

Uh, it was the nature of me in it. Nobody wanted me to do it except the director. So they said they would only make it if they could pay me that amount. I was prepping for it when other people were playing the part. I was still prepping for it. And, you know, it moved on. I lost my mind. But I won it back.

One of the people who was briefly cast ahead of you in the part was Leonardo DiCaprio. I’ve seen it reported that you lost at least five roles to DiCaprio in the ’90s, including Titanic.

Oh, dude. It’s not just me. Look, to this day, any role that anybody gets, it’s only because he’s passed on it beforehand. It doesn’t matter what anyone tells you. It doesn’t matter how friendly you are with the directors. All those people that I’ve worked with multiple times, they all offered every one of those roles to him first. Right? I had one of those people actually tell me that. So, thank you, Leo, because literally, he gets to choose everything he does. And good for him, he’s phenomenal.

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Did you ever take that personally?

No. Do you know how grateful I am to get any damn thing? I mean, I can’t do what he does. I wouldn’t want the exposure that he has either. And he does it magnificently. But I would suspect that almost everybody of similar age to him in Hollywood owes their careers to him passing on whatever project it is.

You broke in as a child actor and know as well as anyone how hard it is for young people to transition into being adult actors. Why do you think you were able to?

I think it hearkens back to that love/hate thing. Because I was never that kid that’s going, “Please. Yeah, I’ll do jazz hands.” I never was that. I often sabotaged things intentionally. I often just didn’t turn up, just was a no-show on stuff, on auditions and whatnot. Fucking awful at auditions as well, because it’s not how I work. I’m like, “I don’t know to do this right now, sitting here. I need to think.” But yeah, I always felt different when I would meet other kids who were doing it. I would sit there going, “Oh, fucking hell. I’m nothing like these kids, actually.” They wanted it, and I didn’t even know if I wanted it.

Eventually you moved to LA, though: How come?

I came here for work. And then I would always go back. But I never got any work back in England. And I’d always get work out here. And then I brought my dad out because, for his health, the climate and everything was much better here.

Did you socialize with other young actors or young Hollywood?

Nothing to do with it. Never met ’em. Never wanted to. If ever I found myself anywhere near it, I was like, “Nah, ah, ah, ah,” and then went the other direction. Oh, you know what? When I did Velvet Goldmine, we did all hang out. I was older by then. I was 23.

But Velvet Goldmine was a movie about a bunch of young cool people hanging out! The part required that.

Exactly. I just have found that there’s wonderful actors who chat and get to know each other and hang out and then act wonderfully. And I can’t do it. And that’s my own limitations with that. I don’t make it into a thing. I just sort of know when I’m going to not be able to separate the person from the character that they’re playing.

“Stay away from me, except for on the set.”

I’m literally like: “I can’t do this because I will be the worst actor you’ve ever seen if we keep on chatting.” You know, with Amsterdam, I had to say that to Chris Rock. I had to go there and say that to him. I fucking love his stand-up. And when he arrived I was like, “Ah, wow, great. Yeah, how you doing, man?” Chatting a little bit. And then I went to do a scene, and I went, “Oh, my God. I’m just Christian, standing here, being a fan of Chris Rock.” So I went to him. I went, “Mate, I got to keep my distance.” Have you tried swimming and laughing at the same time? I don’t know about you. I’d drown. I cannot laugh and swim at the same time. It’s that. So I had to, much as I would’ve loved to have kept on chatting and talking.

How did he react to that?

He went, “Oh, you’re pulling the asshole card. You’re going to be an asshole and not talk.” And I went, “Yeah. Sorry, mate.” And it was my loss, you know?

Now I’m imagining Chris Rock being mad at Batman. I wonder: What was it like to be at the center of something so big and culturally dominant as those three Batmanmovies you did with Christopher Nolan?

I always just felt like it was a thing that someone else did, really, in a lot of ways. I was like, “Oh, yeah. That thing happened over there. And that’s doing very well over there, I hear. That’s great.” And I’m going off to Ralphs, the supermarket, to get bananas.

Was there a part of you, when those movies really worked, that was worried that you’d be stuck being Batman forever?

Yeah, but I loved it. I loved that because I was like, “This could be it. I could never be anything but that.” And for a lot of people, I won’t. I was like, “Ah, maybe I’m going to be forced to go do something different. And maybe this fucking thing that I got forced into doing as a kid that I didn’t fucking want to do in the first place, I’m out. And I’m free.” And then it didn’t happen.

Christian Bale pulls up to the same diner in Santa Monica a few days later, a little late again, and says he’s experiencing déjà vu: “What did I say last time? I forgot my car by the freeway? That again.” Same booth. Same murky Los Angeles characters moving past the booth like sharks at an aquarium. Same Civil War beard.

“My apologies for bringing you here again,” he says. He tells me he thought about taking me dirt biking instead. “But I was like, you can’t talk with anyone when you’re doing that. You’re just going”—he mimes turning the throttle on a motorcycle. “Which maybe would be my dream.”

As it happens, he says, he used to race motorcycles himself. He holds out his left arm: “Metal, all metal, like 20, 25 screws all the way up and down.”

Your left arm is all metal?

No, the collarbone’s all titanium. [My wrist] looks like a bottle opener—if you were to open me up, there’s a big metal piece holding my wrist together, and screws in my knee as well for it. Which just shows my enthusiasm outweighed my skill. I stopped doing it after that. My daughter was very unhappy with the cost of the taxi to come to the hospital to pick me up. And, uh, told me no more spending the family money that way.

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Do you miss it?

Ah, yes, definitely. Yeah, it’s hypnotizing, it’s absolutely wonderful. I mean, look, I definitely know that nobody would’ve enjoyed it if there wasn’t an element of danger to it, of course. Um…but it’s just enormous exhilaration. Strangely relaxing and exhilarating at the same time. Hypnotizing in a wonderful way.

[Here, my tape recorder fails and he helps me find the iPhone app to record our conversation.]

Look in the Utilities section; usually it’s there, because I use it all the time.

What do you use it for?

Just talking to myself. Also dialect stuff. Or when I’m interviewing people. I realized that after we were talking the other day because you were at one point like, “Well, I’m not going to be the one answering questions in this interview.” And usually, that’s what I’m saying. That’s how I view my job. I’m like, “No, I’m the one who interviews and listens to people and then goes and does something. But I’m not the one who gets interviewed.” That’s why I’m always trying to sort of pretend like I’m talking about something but not really saying anything. But I’ve got hoards of wonderful recordings of all the different real people I’ve played. I’m still sitting on that. And then my kids as well.

How do your kids feel about you recording them?

Oh, they love it. There’s nothing better for getting people’s attention than imitating them, right? There’s definitely moments where they’ll be ignoring you completely, and then what you do is, you do an impersonation of them. And they are spellbound. You start pretending to be them, and everybody, they lean in. It’s the instant way of getting people’s attention.

That seems like a good move for a four-time Oscar-nominated actor. I’m not sure about it for myself.

Nah, anybody. Everybody loves it. Oh, you got to try it. Think about it. If I sit with you and you realize that I’ve studied you enough that I can actually imitate you, whether it’s a good impersonation or not, but I’ve looked at you enough that I can say, “You know, Zach, this is what you’re like, and this is what you did.” And I act it out. It’s fascinating to people. They kind of go, “Oh, my God, somebody paid that much attention to me?” I think that’s what is going on in their heads. But instantly, you’ve got their attention, and then you can say whatever you wanna say after that.

That’s a funny view of humanity, that we need to be flattered before we pay attention.

You want to be seen!

You told me this is the same booth you and David O. Russell sat in to work onAmsterdam. How did you guys first meet?

I did an audition for [Three Kings] where he didn’t even want me in the room. And I actually sort of insulted him. He knew who he wanted to cast for the role. But I think he was just being polite and seeing other people. So he was busy working away on a script or whatever, letting the casting director run the show. So I sat there like, “Oh, you’ve got nothing to say? You’re sitting there doing this strong silent thing, you’re gonna say nothing?” And so he kind of looked at me, and there was a little fire in his eyes, and he says to me, “All right, you know how I want you to do it? Remember Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone?” And he slaps his hands on his face, and does the big look, and he says, “That’s the feel. I want to get that feel from this reading now.”

Someone asking you to do an audition like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone**—that’s a “fuck you.”**

Oh, yeah. But I love him to death. And it was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

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You said you guys collaborated on the Amsterdam script. You’re also a producer on the film. What does that mean?

I will qualify it by saying that, after David, I’m the person who’s been on the project longest. Does it mean I’m spending money on it? No. I’m not doing any of that. It’s more of a creative producer you would call it.

You’re a producer on The Pale Blue Eye too, right?

Again, very generously, Scott asked me. Which really comes from my working relationship with David and Scott. They both said, “Hey…yeah, have at it,” you know?

I —

Actually, sorry, sorry. I do just want to say, with David specifically, I went, “Mate, we have come up with something special. I want everything at my disposal to protect what you’ve created right now. I don’t want to find that we end up making a different film and you can’t tell me.” So yeah, I did actually say to him, “Mate, do it.” So I can’t actually say if he would have asked me or not.

Incredible.

Yeah, so I did realize that was my wishful thinking, that he would have asked. But he didn’t. But I hope I was a help and not burden to him.

“There is value in storytelling, you know? I’m going to sound like a total wanker, but the way I like to do it is, you try to destroy yourself in order to build up another character.”

The character you play in Amsterdam, Burt—that feels like a guy you can’t even write down, he’s so specific to you and your performance. I wonder where all these different guys come from. I know it’s the job, to play different parts, but that’s not what most actors actually do.

Well, there’s different approaches to this job, and each one is a good one. You get people who are just undeniably charismatic bastards, and you want them to do the same thing, and if they do something else, I get upset. I’m like, “I love you doing that one thing because that’s reliable, and that’s bloody entertaining.” And you know, that’s not how I do it, but I want all of it. I was thinking about your question about, like, “What the fuck did you do Thor for?” And—

That was not the way I phrased that question!

Well, that was the impression I was getting from the way you asked it. You were like, “Yeah, okay, what the fuck was Thor about?” But I love those films. I love them. There’s a mood and a time for every single one, and I do have a firm belief that every single kind of film can be done brilliantly.

For the record, the question was not “Why the fuck did you do Thor**?” It’s obvious that you, as a creative person navigating a creative career, would work with David O. Russell, who has already gotten you nominated for two Oscars.** Thor is less obvious.

Yeah, no. I genuinely love the films that David and I have made, you know what I mean? It’s the process of doing that because I’ve got no control over the rest of it. So it’s the process with David. Even though we’re not always having what people would term a pleasant day, but we both are absolutely there knowing that we’re totally clued into each other. And so we’re either sort of running down the beach, hugging, or it’s just not talking for weeks on end.

David is well known for having difficult sets: You mentioned Three Kings; that was a rough set for certain people. Huckabees was a rough set for certain people. American Hustle too. What is your experience of those environments?

If I can have some sense of understanding of where it’s coming from, then I do tend to attempt to be a mediator. That’s just in my nature, to try to say, “Hey, come on, let’s go and sit down and figure that out. There’s gotta be a way of making this all work.”

After American Hustle**, Amy Adams came out and said she cried many days on that set. And it’s been reported that you intervened on her behalf with David and were like, “Back off.”**

Mediator.

So that did happen? You’re nodding your head yes. Okay. Does that make you feel differently about the finished film, having seen that happen and having to intervene?

No. No, no, no. No. You’re dealing with two such incredible talents there. No, I don’t let that get in the way whatsoever. Look, if I feel like we got anywhere close—and you only ever get somewhere close to achieving; our imagination is too incredible to ever entirely achieve it—but if you get anywhere close to it, and when you’re working with people of the crazy creative talent of Amy or of David, there are gonna be upsets. But they are fucking phenomenal. Also, you got to remember, it was the nature of the characters as well. Right? Those characters were not people who back down from anything, right?

I had the experience of rewatching the film again and asking myself: Should my knowledge that Amy had a tough time with the director while making this affect my enjoyment of it?

No. No. And, by the way, that’s not me deciding for her, she’s told me that.

She said, “It’s okay, American Hustle can live on.”

Yeah. Yes. Absolutely, yeah.

What about you? How do you feel about how you handled it in retrospect?

I did what I felt was appropriate, in very Irv style.

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Your Irv role in American Hustle is comedic in a way that felt new for you.

No one had asked me for it before. So, suddenly, that happened. And people went, “Oh. Can you do that thing?” You occasionally get a role where you get to do something totally bloody different. And then that opens up a whole different menu, you know? It’s a breath of fresh air…. I think there’s also a certain amount of age that brings that out more, you know.

Last time, I asked you, do you have a theory of why you’ve been successful as a leading man. And you were very deliberately like, “I don’t.”

Well, one thing I definitely think is, I’ve never considered myself a leading man. It’s just boring. You don’t get the good parts. Even if I play a lead, I pretend I’m playing like, you know, the fourth, fifth character down, because you get more freedom. I also don’t really think about the overall effect that [a character’s] going to have. It’s for me to play around, much like animals and children do. Have tunnel vision about what you’re doing, not think about the effect you’re having. You know, I’ve learned some things, very basic—like I used to always turn away from the camera if I had a moment that I thought might be a bit embarrassing. And, you know, literally, the camera operator would have to say, “It was probably great, Christian, but we couldn’t see anything, because you keep turning your head away. Like, please, you’ve got to understand that while this might be a moment in life that somebody wants privacy for, on film, you got to let us in. All right?”

Are you talking about your own embarrassment or the character’s?

If you’re not playing an extreme exhibitionist, or perhaps someone who’s being insincere with their emotions, nobody tends to cry and turn to the whole room, you know? People recognize it’s a moment they’re having, and they cry quietly to themselves, and if you’re too aware of the camera, you turn away from the camera as well, because you go, like, “I can’t have them witness this either.” It’s just natural. Human.

You have to be 95 percent human and in character and 5 percent aware of—

We’re telling a story. And there is value in story-telling, you know? I’m going to sound like a total wanker, but the way I like to do it is, you fucking try to destroy yourself in order to then build up another character. Now, I’ve done many films that you’d look at and go, “Really? It was worth doing it for that piece of shit?” But you sort of try to destroy yourself so that you’re not bothered by humiliation anymore. You’re not embarrassed, because you are as much as possible—and I did begin the sentence with saying I’m going to sound like a wanker here—forgetting that it’s you, completely. Which actually brings me to quite a funny point, because I think, as you know, I don’t know when I last did a thing like this where I actually talk for any length of time, right? So I’m used to just ducking and diving and saying fucking nothing and pretending I’m saying something, and I’m not saying anything, and then it’s over, okay?

And after I last talked to you, there were a couple of things going on—a friend of mine was having a bit of trouble, he contacted me and needed some help and stuff, and I was thinking about that then, but then I also went, “What a terrible mistake I’ve made doing these interviews with Zach.” Like, “Oh, fuck. He deserves me to actually talk to him, and all I’m trying to do is just fucking say nothing, or just go, ‘Eh, I’ve said this before, let’s not say nothing new here at all.’ ” I love movies getting released theatrically, and I’m genuinely concerned that’s going to stop happening. The Pale Blue Eye has got the Netflix safety net. Amsterdam doesn’t. I’m going, “Oh, fuck.” People have always told me this kind of stuff helps. I never believed it. But, I was like, “Oh, well, all right.” I care. I care, you know? This is not the sort of life I get to lead playing characters. This is realpolitik world of like, “Fucking hell. I want to be able to keep doing this.” So, that was my original motivation. I went, “Yeah, all right. Okay. Maybe this is the moment for that.”

Regarding you and me—did you just tell me that you spent our last conversation trying to say nothing?

Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean?

I couldn’t tell if what you were saying is that you went home after the last one and were like, “Next time, Zach deserves the truth.”

You’re looking for something more. Not that it wasn’t the truth, but I was like, “Oh, man.” Yeah. I was like, “How do I do this but at the same time respect what you’re looking for?”

“I just don’t bother with that half-measure gear. I go, ‘Ah, nah, I’m good,’ or ‘Oh, really? Yeah, let’s go further than anyone’s gone before.’ It makes life more entertaining.”

Did you feel after our last conversation that you had successfully stymied me or avoided answering the questions?

It wasn’t that. It was territory I hadn’t been in for a long time, so I didn’t know what had happened. I was just going, “Oh, yeah.” I left kind of going, “What happened? Did I give him anything or was he like, ‘Fucking hell. There was nothing in there’?” And, by the way, should we be talking about other things? Because, I’m feeling like a very egotistical bastard.

You mean like things that are not Christian Bale?

Yeah. I don’t know, what do most people talk about? Because I feel like we’re talking about me a lot.

That is kind of the point of this exercise.

Yeah, but you can, you know, I don’t know. Is it rampant vanity going on here? I don’t know. I like being in your shoes. I like sitting down with real people and interviewing them, getting all the information, taking my tape recorder away, transcribing it, and then figuring out the character. I’m not used to someone else trying to do that to me.

I hate to break it to you but you’re a real person too.

What?!

Jacket, $3,490, by Fendi Men’s. Sweater, $1,790, by Tom Ford. Pants, $1,750, and boots, $1,590, by Balenciaga. Watch, $28,300, by Rolex.

I’m trying to think about what else we could talk about that’s not you.

Well, my interests and passions are still in the realm of me, right? For like 10 years, I’ve been trying to put together this... If I have my family history correct, one of my sisters was in foster care for a while—which should be irrelevant; you shouldn’t have to have a personal connection to care—but LA County has more foster children than [almost anywhere else] in the United States of America. And most people have no clue about that. And I came across an organization that was started after World War II in Austria. That’s SOS Children’s Villages, and I flew to Chicago and I visited them. And it’s a great organization that helps to keep siblings from being separated.

Which is a thing that apparently happened to you.

Apparently. It was an older sister. So, I have no memory, but if my family history is correct, yes. But I do want to say, actually, it shouldn’t matter. People should give a damn about kids because they’re kids, for God’s sake. Right? But I went, “All right, maybe I can buy a piece of land out here [to help start] Children’s Villages California.” I envisioned The Sound of Music and all these happy kids who’d come from trauma running around like, what are they called? The Von Trapp family? I’ve never seen the film. But then I learned I was desperately unrealistic with that. The whole point is integration into community. And so it took forever, finally, and I have wonderful partners, so we just purchased five acres and we are now building with the purpose of keeping siblings together. And if they wish to stay in that place until they’re 21, they stay there until they’re 21. So we’re putting this together now and I have to go into something which is unknown territory for me: fundraising. I’m not good at asking for help from anybody. I’ve got to learn how to do that.

Can’t you just invent a character that’s a very effective fundraiser and play that character?

Exactly. When I went through years where I wasn’t getting work, there were times when, you know, I was looking through like, “Oh, what’s my insurance policy, because the tree just fell from the neighbor’s yard?” And I was like, “I can’t read that.” But I went, “I will become a character who loves nothing more in life than reading insurance policies.” And I read it back to front, and then I called my State Farm representative and I went through it, and they were exhausted. They said, “We’ve never had anybody be this thorough with anything.” But, you’re exactly right. I have to become somebody who loves it, who loves doing that.

Listening to you talk about how deep you are in this project makes me wonder: Do you have a half-measure gear?

I just don’t bother with that half-measure gear. I go, “Ah, nah, I’m good,” or “Oh, really? Yeah, let’s go further than anyone’s gone before.” It makes life more entertaining.

Is that a taxing way to live?

I like being exhausted. I like to exhaust myself. I wanna be totally fucking used up, you know, by the end. It takes you to a place. You know what I mean?

Zach Baron is GQ’s senior staff writer.

PRODUCTION CREDITS: Photographs by Gregory Harris Styling by Mobolaji Dawodu Grooming by David Cox using Kevin Murphy Set design by Heath Mattioli for Frank Reps Produced by Patrick Mapel and Alicia Zumback at Camp Productions

#christian bale #christianbalefanatic #gq interview #interview #2022 #2020s actors #2020s icons #2020s hollywood #2020s photography #early 2020s #2020s movies #2020s films #2020s

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theflirtmeister · 1 month

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🎱🛼🥤🍬❄️🪲

post your AO3 total stats

describe your latest wip with five emojis

🌳🐇🍌🍑🍆

recommend an author or fanfic you love

i have been reading such GROSS fic recently that I'm afraid to rec anything, but!!! shut off the lights, we don't need them to dance by beloved monty!! vampires! vampire sex! mind meld!

post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character

lawrence is a dick and we need to stop pretending he's an uwu repressed soft boy, my man has been cheating on his wife for months

what's your dream theme/plot for a fic, and who would write it best?

i've spoken about this fic before but perez + strahm being small town cops and meeting hoffman post bear trap who is living in a discarded house looking like a CREEP, and i would want any of the bnf hoffstrahm fans to write it <3

add 50 words to your current wip and share the paragraph here

spoilers!:

Lawrence had shown Adam alpha porn, recorded on VHS like it was the fucking 90’s, and set in dark basements that screamed danger, stay away. The alphas back in the day had been purely men, broad-shouldered, covered in hair, with giant cocks with knots that were bigger than Adam’s fists.

#ANSWERED #thank you bestie this was FUN

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whowritesoverthewriters · 2 years

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try guys hot take that didn’t make wapo

In 2014, the Try Guys were a band of friends making YouTube videos for Buzzfeed. In short order, the four attracted a following for being unapologetically themselves. There was Eugene Lee Yang, the queer Korean American guy known for his wit. There was Keith Habersberger, who was tallest and from Tennessee, and Zach Kornfeld, who was a Jewish New Yorker. And, of course, there was Ned Fulmer, a wholesome Florida man who graduated Yale. The foursome entertained viewers by testing out ladies’ underwear, doing drag and attempting UFC fighting.

As the Try Guys grew older, so did their brands. In 2018, they would go on to start their own YouTube channel that now has over seven million subscribers, leaving Buzzfeed behind. Keith launched his own hot sauce for chicken and Eugene came out as gay in a well-choreographed music video commanding 20 million views. Ned, in particular, built his brand around being the ultimate wife guy, going on sweet dates with his wife, Ariel. Videos from the past few years were titled names like “Couple Tries Home-Cooked vs. $120 Roast Chicken,” a series that Ned continued until earlier this year.

It was this perfectly distilled brand of “good husband and father" that Ned cultivated over eight years that came crashing down on Tuesday afternoon, after cheating allegations surfaced. Fulmer admitted on social media that he had “a consensual workplace relationship,” after fans theorized he had cheated with Alexandria Herring, a producer on the Try Guys channel.

On Tuesday, Try Guys announced via all social media channels that Ned was no longer working with them. “As a result of a thorough internal review, we do not see a path forward together,” the channel said in a statement.

The fallout did not go unnoticed by viewers — some of them who had been tuning into the channel since the Buzzfeed days — days before Try Guys made any announcement. Fans claimed online that it looked like Ned had been edited out of recent Try Guys videos, such as the camera cutting to footage of three of the guys, but there being a fourth chair visible in the background. Starting last week, Try Guys videos began with montage photos that were missing Ned. Their Instagram account hadn’t posted content with him since September 4.

The ongoing media fury and obsession would not have happened if Ned had not built his entire career on being the perfect wife guy. Wife guys are men who are known for being extremely into their wives, and just won’t stop talking about how they are so married.

Ned had this branding down to a science, with his wife Ariel Fulmer featured prominently across most of his videos. He spent years going on public dates with Ariel in YouTube videos, even turning pregnancy announcements for his two sons, Wesley and Finley, aged 1 and 4, into content. In a video from 2016 titled, “Couples Break Up For a Week,” Ned laments how sad it is to pretend to be single for a week, while showing us wedding photos of him and Ariel. Removing his wedding ring, Ned cringes at the camera.

Edit Info

Fans on YouTube have compiled the number of times Ned has said the words “my wife,” often in a Borat voice. In a video called “Couple Gets Trapped with No Internet for 90 Hours,” Ned proclaims, “There’s no one I would rather spend 90 years with,” while Ariel looks on at him sweetly.

Try Guys videos capture a certain era of the internet. It was the mid 2010′s, millennial YouTubers who had crafted very specific personas were taking off, especially with the financial backing of Buzzfeed. They were also pumping out videos at a fast and, some would say, unsustainable rate.

Ned and Ariel found the branding that worked for them, which monetized very well. It was the kind of wholesome content the internet craved more of, as fans declared them to be the perfect couple and a good example of a working marriage with two supportive parents. It’s the same premise that then captured viewers’ fascination when it all came crumbling down. What’s a wife guy without his wife?

Adultery alone wouldn’t sustain headlines and Reddit speculation for days. It’s the fact that being a husband and father is what we mainly know Ned Fulmer for. He was an unlikely person for people to suspect would be at the heart of a scandal like this.

Tuesday’s news had people on the internet asking which men they could trust. Increasingly, the internet finds examples of wife guys who just can’t be trusted. John Mulaney, a comedian who had been very public about his loving marriage, shocked onlookers when he filed for divorce from his wife last year and announced he was having a baby with actress Olivia Munn. Adam Levine, who had sang songs about his wife of eight years, admitted in September to sending flirtatious texts to another woman, where he asked if he could name his child after her.

If another Try Guy, say one that had built a brand around being edgy and rebellious (Eugene) had been caught up in a similar scandal, it wouldn’t have captured our collective attention the way that Ned’s quick fall from grace did. Ned’s own admission of guilt and subsequent departure from the Try Guys became the source of an internet meltdown because we want to have good role-models for fathers and husbands. They’re just hard to find.

In the parasocial relationships we form with celebrities, where we feel like we know them, it can be especially bizarre and captivating to see the mask fall away in real time. YouTubers Myka and James Stauffer drew outrage when they announced in 2020 that they had rehomed a child they had adopted and filmed life with for more than three years. When people’s public personas are so inextricably tied to their marriages, to being a faithful spouse and good parent, only for that to be revealed as a façade, it can start to feel like everyone’s business.

Try Guys really invited us into their homes, their lives and their relationships. And fans ate that up. Now that things have gone downhill, they’re still eating it up.

#ned fulmer #try guys #ariel #wife guy #adam levine #mulaney #parasocial relationships #why

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bettyfrommars · 3 months

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What Dreams May Come was my go to movie once it was out on VHS! I think that’s when I started questioning religion 🤭

The cinematography was/is so beautiful at the beginning of Chris’s “heaven.” Finding out the spoiler of where those vistas came from? Right in the heart feels 😭 Honestly, thinking about that movie now hurts in the best way. The hopefulness I felt at the end of the film has made me a romantic. Very much in tune with my cancer Venus and always feeling lovey dovey. I love love and love to share that love with peeps who let me be most most authentic self around them 💕

I would love to know your take away from it.

Idk why my parents let me watch half the stuff that came out during that time. Green Mile, Cruel Intentions, The Devils Advocate, Shawshank Redemption? Oops. Watched those when I was a preteen.

goddamn, What Dreams May Come wrecked me before I lost my dad, so now I'm not even sure I could watch it without falling to pieces. Nothing wrong with falling apart, but I'm an Aquarius and heavy emotions are uNcOmFy 🙃 When Chris decided to go be with his wife in the dark place and the guide was like "what do I tell your children?" and he said, "you tell them I wouldn't go without their mother" I BAWL EVERY TIME ANGIE. If I ever really "need" to cry, I just think about that stupid movie.

oh yeah the movies they sat us in front of in the 80's and 90's were insane. I watch them today and I'm like...woah, I was 8 when I first watched this? A childhood favorite was The Beastmaster with Marc Singer, have you ever heard of it? It's still a favorite, but it's scary and evil as hell. Rip Torn haunted my nightmares for years. Another one was Doctor Detroit where Dan Aykroyd pretends to be a cutthroat pimp for a group of sex workers, and that was just like, a 3pm after school watch, lmao.

#Angie 💛

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luckybyler · 2 years

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Harsh truth time: Assuming neither Hopper nor Jonathan is homophobic, it would be unrealistic for them to hate the idea of Will dating Mike.

It doesn't seem harsh, but the reasoning is. Memes about Hopper frustrated that Mike dates another one of his children are fun, and the Mike Hate Squad of Hopper, Jonathan and Max has gotten a chuckle or two from me, but in reality that wouldn't be the case, at least for the former two.

The same person can mean different things to different people. As El's boyfriend, Mike is some annoying kid constantly making out with Hopper's 13/14 year-old daughter who hasn't even had a chance to see the world and get a notion of herself as a person. Hopper doesn't even hate Mike, but he's annoyed by him. However, as Will's boyfriend not only they wouldn't hate him, but "he's dating Mike" is the part that they would be the least worried about, if not relieved by.

This is a cliché by now, but: this is the 80's in small town, Indiana. Back then and there, if your kid, especially your son, told you he was gay, you pictured him moving alone to the Big City as soon as he turned 18, going to the seediest part of its dark underbelly, mingling with all sorts of predators and weirdos and having sex with the whole city including tourists until he caught AIDS and died a painful death or was killed. I'm sorry to be so crude, but that was the image portrayed on tv even in the 90's. In 1987, princess Diana made worldwide headlines by shaking hands with an AIDS patient without gloves. The first antiretroviral drugs appeared in 1996 (as per the article). The murder of Scott Amedure happened in 1995. The murderer was acquitted of first-degree murder and instead found guilty of second-degree murder after using the "gay panic" defense. The man is now free. In summary, being gay = being in grave danger (see why I headcanon them as quietly being in a relationship instead of coming out to everyone?)

Between having their stepson/brother figuratively get thrown like fresh meat to the sharks and having him be in a relationship with his lifelong best friend who they found kinda annoying sometimes, I think we can all guess what situation Hopper and Jonathan would prefer. They and Joyce know Mike since he was little, they know he's always cared about Will and had his best interest in mind. Hopper has even trusted Mike with Will's life at least once:

Remember when Will was possessed and rabid and Mike, who was there at the uber-classified lab, told the doctors/scientists that they needed to sedate him, and then they did? That's the level of trust, say and "authority" (for lack of a better word) he has.

And the other way around as well: While Karen will probably be accepting like Joyce (and I think they have already talked with each other about the matter extensively even when Mike and Will are still in the process of figuring things out)), Ted will probably think that "that damn kid turned my son gay" and won't be happy about it. However, he (perhaps after a talk from his wife and Hopper) will reluctantly grin and bear it because, again, they've known Will since he was in preschool and know he's a harmless, well-behaved kid and they will keep each other safe from the real or perceived dangers of the gay single life. It would also be easier for Ted to look the other way and pretend they decided to make celibacy vows to one another and spend the rest of their lives being celibate dorks together.

#byler #will byers #mike wheeler #jim hopper #jonathan byers #joyce byers #karen wheeler #ted wheeler

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ahaura · 1 year

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yellowjackets s2e3 lb

THAT'S A GREAT OPENING SHOT I LOVE ME A SKELETON HAND!

omg a glimpse into coach ben's life pre-crash <3

the juxtaposition between the soup and the cannibalism happening outside the cabin... fun

"what kind of asshole puts cumin in clam chowder' comedy time <3

WAIT SO THEY DONT REALIZE WHAT THEY DID... THE FOREST PUT THEM IN A TRANCE/HAZE?

oh it's just tai? poor tai

"taissa! we ate her" i love this show <3

no wonder taissa is in the state she's in in present time like the others seem to recall the ritualistic cannibalism but she completely blocked it out she's dealing with it like she deals with everything else which is shutting down but then having it shoved in her face like that... she succumbed to the forest like the others but she's dragging her feet and kicking the whole way...

"tai... you ate her face" LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

i love how there is something seriously wrong w everyone in this show its so good <3

"at least if you bury her out there it will look like she died with the rest of them" FIRST OF all way to single yourself up for next on the buffet table coach! secondly though... 1) i am pretty sure they would be able to tell that she was eaten, whether by humans or animals i dont know but i think they can tell that even in the 90s and 2) i think given the extreme circumstances and the fact that jackie wasnt like, murdered, it's not something that would be like. held against them? like as a crime i mean. socially of course cannibalism is one of the most taboo of taboos but like. theyre starving in the woods after every possible attempt to escape gone wrong. their friend died of semi-natural causes (stubbornness and the forest's influence, one or the other or both?). so.

lottie helping her cult members w their stuff while suffocating her true self under layers of bullshit while nat hangs out outside scowling... love it

THE ANTLER'S ABOVE LOTTIE'S DOORSTEP... LET'S FUCKING GO I LOVE SOME GOOD IMAGERY

"emotions run high" says the cult member maintaining eye contact while cutting off a chicken's head, to natalie who survived 15 excruciating months trapped in the wilderness and embroiled in cultlike and fairytale-eque dynamics while contending with cannibalism. hilarious. i think it'd be funny if nat PRETENDED to stab her again for a laff

OH SIMONE :( my question is... how much more will taissa go on before the acknowledges it? opens up? peels back the layers and years and releases her control and gives into the fear and unknown and the dark calling her name? the man with no eyes who trails after her? her own ghost? and what will it cost her? and what will it do to her once she's done it? or will she never do it? so many questions <3

(i dont want these answers now btw im just enjoying the ride)

SHE SUBCONSCIOUSLY DREW THE SYMBOL ON HER WIFE'S HAND...

IS IT WEIRDO BESTIE TEAMUP TIME? LET'S GO LET'S GO LET'S GO

i want them to be partners in crime so bad like committed bestie crime team SO bad i NEED it

"you never know when you might need to leave the country sans passport" LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WALTER LET'S GO

i completely forgot about shauna and jeff i wont lie

"i think the stuff is for bisexuals and goths" BISEXUALS MENTION!

SHAUNA SAID YOURE NO FUN TO JEFF LET'S GOOOOOO

"i could've gone strawberry i almost did" this is so fdjksfjdkfshdahdsjf

we all get boring in adulthood i guess even girlies who partake in ritualistic cannibalism of their best friend/current husband's high school girlfriend while stranded in the remote wilderness. ah well.

SHAUNA TOOK A CAR THIEF OUT AND THEN JEFF INTERRUPTED HER BOOOOOOO JEFF BOOOOOOOOO

SHAUNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA IM SCREECHING

bees? beehives? "the first thing a new queen does is sting other queens to death" fun <3 eye see it <3

"otherwise they starve. we all do" LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

"it's what she would have wanted. maybe not for the rest of us, but for you. for the baby" [HIGH PITCHED SCREECHING]

LOTTIE KNOWS ITS A BOY?

the girls all being excited for a baby shower <3 a shred of something to cling to <3 cant wait for the forest to fuck it up <3

"HIT HIM. HIT HIM RIGHT NOW" MISTYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY [snickering]

IM SAJFKJKFSDJFKJFKSF THEYRE SO FUCKING FUNNY <3

"i'd do anything to see [her nephew] again, you'know?" like cannibalism? :)

"that's not the first time ive eaten a person" HUH??????

THE TWIN THING? FJDKFJSFKJAKFJDKSJSDK

coach is mclosing it huh.

"they need me" "and i dont?" FHAFJKHKSDJKDASJDKASJKJ I LAUGHED IM SORRY

"but i do get to decide to be with someone who's ready to live this life with me. all of it" :( im. ok. im :( im. yeah.

this show is crazy because it's a comedy meanwhile it throws very serious situations and implications your way. funnily enough the cannibalism is not the most serious aspect of the show. to me at least. like thinking about how things were just 20-30 years ago etc etc :/ and what it means for both ben and paul :/ yeah i got it

nat telling jackie's eaten corpse that she's lucky <3 once again <3 comedy <3

"way to make everyone jealous one last time" NATALIEEEEEEEE

A MOOSE!

MY MOM TOLD ME ABOUT MOOSE! SHE SAID THAT MOOSE CAN AND WILL KILL PEOPLE ESPECIALLY MAMA MOOSE AND IF YOU END UP STARING DOWN A MOOSE BACK AWAY SLOWLY AND PICK ANOTHER PATH! IF A MOOSE STOPS YOU IN TRAFFIC YOU WAIT FOR THE MOOSE - moose trivia provided by my mother who says alaskan moose are the BIGGEST and DANGEROUS moose <3

(i like that trivia sorry)

WHERE DID THE MOOSE GO

WALTER AND MISTY THE DREAM TEAAAAAAAAAAM

TAISAAAAAAAAAAA ITS HAPPENING LETS FUCKING GO

"only when she lets me" "who is she?" "taissa" "then who are you?" [silence]

IM SCREECHING I THINK THAt they could have held that a few seconds long for effect bec thats SOOOOOOOOO crreepy and cool like its either taissa's subconscious/the suprressed taissa OR it's something trying to get her to open her eyes and herself I LOVE IT ITS SO FUCKING COOL

kevin in the backwards hat tho. sorry. but he. sorry. OSRRY.

"you have terrible intel" your daughter SNITCHED and you're making you and shauna look WORSE it's so funny

"people are so sweaty when you kill them" LET'S GO SHAUNA LET'S GOOOOOOOOO

that was fucking AWESOME that was LEGENDARY LETS GOOOOOOOOOOO

THE SHAUNA UNDERNEATH THE GIRL WE GLIMPSED WHEN SHE KILLED ADAM SHAUNA FROM THE WOODS LETS GOOOOOOOOOOO

coach hallucinating.... :(

i wont lie i love crystal and misty so much :')

OH MY GOD HER REFLECTION

SCARED THE SHIT OUT OF ME

"oh she's not my mother" THEY'RE MEANT TO BE BESTIES LET THEM BE BESTIES IN CRIME LET THEM COMMIT CRIMES TOGETHER LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOO I WANT CHAOS AND FUN

"maybe i'm just a bored moriarty looking for his sherlock"

[CHOKING SOUNDS]

[SPUTTERING]

[SCREECHING]

technnically wouldn't SHE be moriarty because she commits crimes and stuff? oh well <3 its still fun <3

unless theyre BOTH moriarty? idk i cant remember jackshit about those characters anymore

let's go angry girls let's goooooo

HURT NATALIE BACK?

nosebleed leads to mass bird death...?

the forest is coming for lottie i think... i wonder if she isnt working in tandem off of it but proffiting off it it? or using it without delving down into the True Meat of it? and it killed her bees for it? idk idk idk but rip the bees

il veut de sang = he wants blood btw

(i looked it up)

so she HAS been denying it? or running from it? or??????

IT WAS A VISION? NICE!

fun episode all around<3

#📺 lb

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tofiam · 1 year

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Absolution bullshition

I'd like to introduce y'all to messages I sent to my husband during watching DA: Absolution. May contains spoilers. * The main hero is an elfen thief living in Tevinter - who's not a slave which is a red flag - and her... I'd say betrayed love Hira, sorceres, who joined the Inquisition. I have so many questions and it's 6:45 of the first episode. Uh, also, I remember Fairbanks! Go get them, tiger! * Okej, this is a fanfiction. Someone wanted that angst with a happy ending in Dorian/Fenris story. It's a similar setting, sort of. This won't end well. * The qunari joking about their dwarf taking their warrior? Cherry on top! And it's first 12 minutes! I can't believe! * They venture to Nessum. I know that Nessum is a Summer City, I've read my freaking logs. I also know it's in Tevinter, not on borders or somewhere. And that Tevinter is in never-ending war with qunaris, right. And their plan? Just put some capes on and pretend we're traveling with my sick wife! I'm surprise Tevinter wasn't defeated already. * Warrior: blinks - smiling - during friendly fight with the said dwarf Dwarf: "If you're trying to distract me, it won't work. Besides your girlfriend's still got to find a way into the palace." Warrior: "Huh? I don't have a girlfriend." - with a very fucking suggesting smile

It's the fanfiction! Knew it! * Yeah, the most romantic thing, what your mage/tevinter love can say to you? "If you don't comeback, I'll kill you myself." I swear I've read that in some Fenris/Dorian fanfiction.

At this moment I just fangirl if the dwarf ends up with warrior and efie with mage will have a cheese farm in hinterlands. Who cares about plot. I am hyped here. * What? Dorian's grandma made some weird amulet of WHAT?! said in Dorian's voice

I said it in Dorian's voice. Because... What' the f? * Well, I'm at the end of the second episode and I'm expecting: - they already woke up a dragon/old god ('cause Tevinter, right) - they'll cause a new Blight (see 1) - there'll be Dorian at the end, taking that amulet with "I'll take this,m thank you, important family heirloom" - rain of rose petals, the end * There's also very touching relationship between the magister and his Knight Commander. Hint, it's still a fanfiction. * And qunari is the only one saving slaves. And she has a lot of "fuck this" and "I hate this" and suggestive innuendos. Still a fanfiction.

And there goes my fucking dragon!

I knew it!

* There's gonna be blood magic. That poor tevinter mage is gonna do the last resort, I bet. * aaaaand there goes blood magic. Knew it! * You remember all those weird people from the 90's selling things from their coats, like watches and silver chains and stuff? She has daggers everywhere! That's a coat Zevran would die for! * Okej, so the dragon is just a pet dragon. Dissapointing. *

Aaaaand more blood magic, not surprised.

"I almost forgot the dragon." Sure, that's happening in Tevinter all the time. I hear Inquisitor laughing somewhere. Fucking Vints. * Actually, I like the plot twist a lot. Good one. Didn't see that one coming, although I should have. * OOOOOOH YES IT'S HAPPENING THE DWARF KISSED THE WARRIOR

AND THE QUNARI'S SHIPPING IT * Aaaaaaw, and the qunari healed and release the dragon! I love her! I love it!

* Oh hell no, I don't like the ending! Hell no! I know who is the fucking Crimson Knight, like everyone knows that, and I don't like it.

#thank you for reading my scientific study of that #dragon age absolution #dragon age #spoiler: it's a huge fanfiction #overall not that bad #I enjoyed that more than the Dawn of the Seeker #inappropriate dragon age #fanfiction #dragon age humor #funny dragon age

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hi-my-name-is-dotdotdot · 2 years

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combined jumbled ds9 I watched a lot today

mirror Kira. she- I- um. HELLO??

I wanna read like a character study now. also implications for non mirror kira???

got long again and this is about many episodes and it’s all jumbled up, so here’s a cut

I kept thinking that by the amount of times they said “no changeling has ever harmed another” that would change soon, and I was right. feel bad for odo :(

lotsa invasions happening. romulan-cardassian invasion of the dominion, klingon invasion of cardassia, when is the full out war gonna start? also the maquis still exist but they haven’t done much in a while

oh wait, except for when ruler version 2 (tom) pretends to be will and steals the defiant. also I never got to finish tng (it left netflix and I just never got around to watching it on my own on my laptop) so like what happened between will and o’brien?? like. that “I have nothing to say to you” exchange was SO unexpected.

also apparently the enterprise gets destroyed. that was news

back to ds9, umm oh we finally see the ferengi planet! andddd yep, seems right, pay to enter someone’s house, pay for an elevator, pay to sit, pay to stand, pay to find out who’s been charged with a crime and what the crime is, etc

quark and rom’s mother seemed quite interesting. kinda want her to pop up again, see how her secret financial empire is going

nog got into the academy!

rom stood up to quark!

that one episode that’s pov is old Jake and it’s the story of how ben dies but not really was. so sad. good thing his plan worked and it was fixed! but also, feel like it should come with a suicide warning? technically?

who in their right mind thought sending dukat on a mission alone with kira was a good idea? and then he had the nerve to say “actually, I think the occupation was good for Bajor but I’m not here to debate you on politics” THEN WHY’D YOU BRING IT UP, MISTER

also, dukat of all people was in love with a Bajoran? and has a half bajoran daughter? who he couldn’t bring himself to kill even with a weapon pointed at her for a few long minutes? surprising

don’t know if taking her back to cardassia is actually the best thing, sorry major, but I can’t believe most cardassians would ever treat her as equal or respect her. not to mention like. I’m assuming dukat would take her home to his home. and his wife and seven children. so not only would the rest of cardassia think she shouldn’t exist, she’ll probably have to live with people who resent her and just think she’s a “mistake” by dukat. who knows though, maybe cardassian “family is everything” values have a broader definition of family than I’d pessimistically include.

worf is here! funny thing - when we watched tng my mom never liked worf but now that he’s here she’s happy to see a(nother) familiar character lol

JADZIA AND LENORA AND DS9’S FAMOUS LESBIAN KISS why is this episode so tragic I wanted to cry

alsoooooooo I love how not a single complaint was they’re both women but only that they were married in previous hosts like yes go star trek written in the 90’s you did it

oh that reminds me! this was a few days ago, sisko and bashir were talking about reassigning an ensign because he’s “budding” and then have a whole, happy conversation about how “he’s pregnant?” “yes, twins” “well congratulation, of course he’s reassigned” “we’re having a baby shower for him” “I’ll be there are you getting him anything” that just made me happy

also I like how julian and miles’ relationship went from miles hates julian and julian annoys miles and then they grow to like and understand each other and sometime they start spending fixed times together (racquetball, darts) and go to each other with problems, become basically best friends to the point where when they get captured by some jem’hadar who want a cure to their genetic drug addiction and julian refuses to leave with miles because he wants to cure them, miles is willing to risk his career and everything to get julian back to their ship with him no matter what. even if julian’s his superior officer. even if he has to blast his work apart. even if julian might always resent him for it. (happily the end cues seem like they can start hanging out again in a few days, but I don’t think it could be quite the same as before after something like that, not so soon at least)

during jadzia’s (????) ceremony where she meets her previous hosts and curzon somehow joins with odo and both decide they want to stay in odo’s body but eventually realize it’s not for the best. I just. that was sad ok.

also, speaking of odo, he’s in love with kira? I feel like there are literally never signs besides like. two episodes. one is when it’s the bajoran gratitude festival and odo’s like “I was thinking of coming this year… I’ll see you there?” and kira said she’d be with bareil and odo was visibly disappointed

the second episode was when another changeling pretended to be kira stuck in a growing rock and odo admitted it when he thought she was gonna die. (also! I KNEW it was a trap, the second they split up something happens to her? really? also she sounded way too panicked to be kira over getting her foot stuck in a rock)

another point - because of odo I just assumed changelings are bad at being humanoid, but changelings besides odo can imitate humanoids (so far, one vulcan and maybe two humans? including scanning as that species with a tricorder!) so why can’t odo? does he just need more practice or is it some result of being separated from his planet and people so young? or maybe something to do with this great link?

oh and about that episode where odo and garak go off to investigate and then garak is like “huh! I can be a good cardassian again? I can be back in the obsidian order? yes!” like. dude. of course I understand his desire to go home and feel bad for him but do you really trust that? really?? you were EXILED for betraying this man and - even if you say you didn’t do it - you think he’s just gonna let you back into the fold? back into cardassia? after you ran off to save him from ab assassin only to learn he sent the assassin after you? really? I suppose he figured it out at the end, somewhat.

odo in that episode too. so when he can’t turn back to liquid he starts falling apart? like. geez that’s harsh. also why does he always wait until the whole 16 hours have passed? like, 16 hours is his regeneration period, it’s the longest he can hold a form, but wouldn’t it make more sense to go back to his liquid state whenever he has a safe few minutes time? that way his 16-hour “time bank” would always be as full as possible. or does it only count at the 16-hour marks?

also the scene when odo is flaking apart and looking in all sorts of pain and can’t stand anymore and garak runs over like “just tell me something! anything!” and odo bursts out with “I want to go home! not to the station, but to my people! I want to be part of the great link” and he sounds tortured and agonized over it. well. goodness, that hits right in the heart, doesn’t it? (the “goodness” makes me southern in that sentence, lol)

also the whole thing with “need to bleed to prove you’re not a changeling because when separated the blood goes to what I’m now calling default changeling mode (dcm?)” why oh why are they always making big dramatic cuts in their palms? a finger prick would work just as well! at first I thought, just yank out a strand of hair but then I remember wigs could easily make that useless. but seriously. finger pricks! also get something sterile, why is everyone in the room using the same klingon’s knife?

my dad promised to get paramount+ after wimbledon’s over, so I’ll probably finally actually finish tng before I come back to this. since I’m not under “BINGE BEFORE IT LEAVES” constraints it’ll probably just be one or a couple of episodes a day, which’ll hopefully mean I’m actually coherent if I’m possessed to write about it like this

#star trek #ds9 #long post #very very rambling thoughts #just realized a lot of these are about specific scenes in specific episodes and so don’t make much sense

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msfbgraves · 2 months

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Love how all the Silverusso fans collectively gathered together and made Daniel into a total cockslut when it comes to Terry 🥰 I mean, I see this with other Daniel pairings too, but nothing like how it is with Terry. I suppose it’s because the character/actor is such an alpha/dom by nature lol

Thomas Ian Griffith, you gift to the fandom! Oftentimes when actors are supposed to play alpha types they become these huge assholes and it feels like they're trying too hard to mask some insecurity underneath. And it's not like men can't play compelling characters you respect even when they're not sure of themselves. Jared Harris as Valery Legasov in Chernobyl is constantly overwhelmed and you simply want to cheer him all the way! But Thomas is so sure of himself, and when he's playing somebody who isn't, mostly he becomes more extra not less. He's smart! He fires guns! He plays a gay icon in the 90's because is anyone going to doubt his masculinity? Gender may be a spectrum but he's made his home right at the macho end because that's where he fits! He has nothing to prove, he plays piano, sings opera, kisses toddlers, always wants to be seen with kittens and puppies, is just so enamoured with Ralph Macchio and doesn't care who knows it, is so careful with everyone around him but will physically rearrange the Cobra Kai karate kids for a press moment. He literally puts people where he wants them because why not? He's nice guy! He'd never hurt anyone! He loves being slapped by his on screen love interests, it's cute (?!?) He's so proud of his wife! He, on the record, has called her a brat! He writes in a dom scene between him and his girlfriend in Excessive Force because why not? Stigma, him? Being into these kinds of power play is career ending even now but for him, why? It's all good fun!

Anyway, I don't think he bottoms. Not that really masculine presenting guys couldn't bottom, everyone, please, you do you. But every time TIG even has to pretend to be deferential, he looks so confused! Like what? I have to pretend I couldn't take this guy? OK, Thomas, it's in the script. Right. As is romancing the blonde. OK. Sure I can do this...?

But since he wrote Terry as much as anyone - no. Terry's love doesn't top. They may be on top, gladly, but top they won't.

Which, with Daniel, who is clearly bi, presents a bit of a potential unmet need, no? I think Amanda tops him plenty, but going by the dynamic with Amanda, Ali, Kumiko and Ralph's love interests over the years, he can have that "this is my girl" hand holding, arm over the shoulder , pulling close thing going on, so yeah, he's topped. Probably gives amazing head beforehand, but he's topped. And since that is never going to happen again when he is with Terry, who he will stay with forever, no questions, well - he'd better not miss that, OK? Terry will have him right and trained and begging for it and well aware what the rules are, Danny boy. Charm any lady out of fundraising money but go too far and you'll not be walking. Nuhuh. Terry will wring him out so completely he doesn't even think of having more sex in between, as he needs his strength to simply keep up. Them's the rules, and there are Rules. There are always Rules with men like Terry. Better to reward his love and tease out the bratty side only to put them back in place and on and on it goes. They're well taken care of. They can take care of Terry in return, can't you sweetheart? Good boy.

#silverusso #power dynamics

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insomniamamma · 2 years

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Happy Sleepover. I'm going to indulge in one of everything.

FMK (Fling/Marry/Kiss bc I'm not gonna make you kill any boy): Ezra, Din, Nico.

Crush: I have a crush on an artist I hosted last night. He's a short Aussie king with wild silver-threaded black hobbit hair. I want to make a pact with him if we find ourselves single and alone when we're 90 that we move in together and make each other laugh until we fart.

Choose between: One night in bed with Frankie or one day of chaste prospecting with Ez (planet of your choice/dreams).

My day: So far it's pretty good. Had an amazing rehearsal. Now SO and I are going out to our favorite Ecuadorian place for dindin before driving out to the suburbs to see one of my good friends rock the lead in an eerie show.

Secrets. Hmmm. I keep a written diary that I move around to different hiding spots around the house. It's a small house and if I keep the diary in one place I'm afraid SO will find it and read it and then know where it is. Completed diaries are in a lock box with my important documents to which he does not have the combo.

Recommendation: I know we've talked about this already. But. The Great Wall. I'm still trying to find a way to sneak it to you. I may or may not have a plan.

Weird Questions. Do you have a garbage disposal? I'm just curious to know if people still have these spinning pits of knives in their homes.

Personal things. Are you a morning shower or evening shower person? (I guess for your shift that translates to a "before bed" or "after bed" shower person.) Do you shower every day or just when you feel the time is right?

Drama: I do have some drama in my life right now, but I don't need help with it unless you have a very sharp stick with which to poke my set designer so he'll fucking communicate with me. It doesn't sound like drama, but his wife is my playwright and star and I dated him in college. How's that?

Truth: If you could be any celebrity, who would you be and why?

This is me, asking you for some song recs. Don't worry if you think I've heard them before (prolly have). Let's just pretend we're going on a road trip and I'm asking you what to put on in the car.

Unpopular opinion: I would like to see Cobb Vanth try to woo Fennec Shand. And I'd like to see her surprised that she can't seem to say no.

Venting: CAN WE JUST TAKE A MINUTE AND SHAKE PEOPLE? Conservatives would rather keep their guns than save their children. They would rather make women die and bloat the foster care system than squish a nugget of cells. They would rather let a rich man keep his money than have it fund better lives for everyone (and therefore themselves). They would hurt people to double down on their beliefs but change those same beliefs in an instant if their candidate of choice told them to. I could go on. But here is where I close my valve and let the pressure build again....

FMK (Fling/Marry/Kiss bc I'm not gonna make you kill any boy): Ezra, Din, Nico. Adira you are EVIL for this one. These are my BOYS. The ones I most want to squish. Fling? Ezra. I want to have a torrid affair with this man. His lifestyle is pretty dangerous so I don't think I'd want to marry him, but have him drop in and visit me for a few days and absolutely rail me and then fuck off back to space for a while? Sounds like a pretty good arrangement. AND NOW I HAVE TO PIC BETWEEN DIN AND NICO????? S;AKDJFH;ADASKDFHKDSF Sorry, Din, I'm marrying Nico. The star wars universe is dangerous and I'd likely be the first to get shot. Nico. Oh man. I want to study him like a bug, i want to crack him open like an egg. I want to pin him down and tickle him until he's all red in the face. He's broad and warm and weird. He seems cozy. I want to be his weighted blanket. Just squish that man. Sorry, Din, you just get a kiss. I feel like a tender kiss to his forehead would make Din blue-screen for like an hour.

Crush: OK, since you decided to confess things to me, I'll respond in kind. Most of my crushes are either celebrities or fictional space people. There is a guy at work who i thought was cute when he first started there, but he is an antivaxxer and he's dumb as a bag of bricks. Not that I was doing any more than looking anyhow, but yikes. Your Aussie hobbit sounds delightful though.

Choose between: One night in bed with Frankie or one day of chaste prospecting with Ez (planet of your choice/dreams). Since it's planet of my choice, I'm going prospecting with Ezra. Because space! But also, I think I would make a good harvester. I do a lot of fine work with my hands. So, somewhere safe, but exotic. Nothing too dangerous. I'd be content to listen to him ramble on.

My day: Was pretty interesting. My boy is involved in a few different kinds of martial arts, and his kung fu class got to participate in a small scale festival, which was basically just different martial arts schools doing demonstrations, as well as a variety of Asian music and dance groups. It was very cool. Also I got to eat pork-belly ramen from a really tasty food truck.

Secrets. hmmmm....the only thing that's coming to mind is my sexuality. I mean, it's not much of a secret on here, but nobody in my family knows I'm anything other than straight. I'm married to a guy, so it's just easier to let them think what they will. If I'm asked directly I'll answer truthfully, but I generally don't volunteer that information about myself to people IRL. Because it's not really anyone's business.

Recommendation: hahahahaha. I think I'm just gonna make the hubby buy me The Great Wall on itunes. I mean, we do have a metric shit-ton of Cillian Murphy movies because he was my blorbo for a time. Speaking of Cillian Murphy, The Wind That Shakes The Barley is one of the best movies I've ever seen. I cried like a baby when the end credits rolled.

Weird Questions. I do have a garbage disposal. I had to replace it a couple years ago and the original was installed so oddly? Whoever modernized the plumming in our house half-assed everything so spectacularly that every time we've upgraded the plumbing it's just been a baffling shit show. Do you have a spinning knife pit?

Personal things: Honestly it depends on the time of year. and what i'm doing at work. A lot of times I shower as soon as I get home because I end up covered in Sintra dust or metal shavings or primer or the sticky residue that gets left on plex after it's gone through the laser cutter. It's like decontaminating. When it's real hot, I'll shower when I get home and then do a quick rinse before I crash. I can't sleep when my skin feels sticky. In the winter I sometimes go every other day because my skin gets very dry.

Drama: Oh, theater drama. I remember those days 😁. I deeply miss doing community theater, but i stg some of those folks would just invent shit to get all twisted up over. Most of my drama comes from my parents. I love them dearly, but I am very happy that they live several hours away. They still basically treat me like an incompetent.

Truth: This is fascinating question. I'm going to answer this as if it would be a temporary condition and not, like, absconding with someone else's life. I would love to be in Nick Cave's brain for like, 24 hours. He writes such incredible songs.

song recs you say???? ooooh boy. My musical tastes are all over the place. There is very little genre-wise that I don't vibe with, although I do tend to prefer older stuff these days. Yes I'm turning into one of those people. Get off my lawn. I'll give you five. But i could give you, like 50. You've been warned 😁

Lodestar by Sarah Harmer. "Intensity of stars" I love that so much. Intensity as a collective noun for stars. Fuck yeah.

Catapult by Counting Crows. I've seen these fellas 3 times live. People like to crap on Counting Crows but they will put on the most emotional live show you've ever fucking seen.

Spell by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. Ugh. The imagery. The yearning. I could scream forever about how much I love Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.

Gravity by Charlotte Martin. This one has all the Ezra vibes for me.

Birthday by The Cruxshadows. These guys don't really do US tours anymore which is a crying shame. I lot of goth bands feel like you're watching someone do karaoke but not them. I first heard this song at a show a zillion years go and I lost my mind. The energy was nuts.

Unpopular opinion: OMG this would be hilarious! At first she just gives him The Look. She's in total denial right? Then Cobb come to Boba with some sort of business from Freetown. Once his audience is done Boba gives Fennec a playful swat on the arm. What're you smiling at, Shand? I'm not smiling. Why don't you just talk to him? He's obviously interested. Fennec tells Boba to kriff off, but she can't help smiling just a little, and maybe she goes looking for Cobb at the local cantina.

Venting: OMG yes. I had a guy friend I hadn't spoken to in a while be like you're so angry. And it's like yes. I've been vibrating with compressed rage since 2016. I have had actual men in my life treat the whole roe v wade thing like some sort of abstract thing, well, it wasn't a well written arguement blah-de-blah and it's like you think I give a shit? IT'S WHAT WE FUCKING HAD!!!! This is not an academic exercise this is my fucking living body. People who try to both sides of this can fuck off forever. If preventing abortion was the point they would push for comprehensive sex ed in public schools and contraception would be free and widely available to anyone who wanted it. But it's not about life. It's about cruelty and punishment and control. Always has been. My husband's family is mostly catholic and I told him, warn your family because the first man who tries to tell me this is somehow good for me is going to lose a fucking testicle. I could go on forever but i don't want to end up on some sort of list. I hope my FBI agent likes Pedro Pascal.

sleepover asks

#sunshine adira #i love you so much lady #if we ever meet irl i will squeeze you so hard

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