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prentissluvr · 3 days

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makes you wonder — sam winchester

pairing : sam winchester x gn!awkward!reader ➖⟢ genre : fluff ➖⟢ cw : uses y/n, some of the lore/history is totally made up, swearing, workplace bullying/verbal harassment (i’m so sorry if your name is mark, he’s the asshole character), likely contains a few mistakes, mentions of canon typical violence and monsters ➖⟢ wc : 5.2K summary : you're the local expert on ancient weaponry, and fake fbi agent sam needs your help finding a certain dagger for a case. pronunciation guide (using scottish gaelic) : each-uishge — yahk-oosh-ga (hk is pronounced in the back of the throat like loch). biodag — bidag (the g is almost a k sound) [ disclaimer, i found these pronunciations off of the internet! i’m not scottish nor do i speak scottish gaelic, so if anyone can correct anything i got wrong, i’d be super grateful for it! ]

certainly including the fact that it’s exactly what you want to be doing, working as a curator at your city’s history museum is near total perfection for you. not without much hard work and research, you were able to get a job that focuses on your specialty. historic weaponry. plus, your extra knowledge and fascination with mythologies and folklore gave you the perfect edge (pun intended) during interviews.

as a plus, you’re also able to spend minimal time interacting with people, even less so with those who don’t share the common interest of at least museum curation. of course, even that can’t magic away your awkwardness, and you still dread team meetings, but none of your coworkers save the resident asshole care at all when you stumble over your words or speak in clunky sentences. you’re smart, kind, and good at your job, so everyone except mark lessinger is more than happy to have you around. mark, the aforementioned resident asshole, is only around still because he’s the single person for miles who cares about the bland history of the town that is “strongly encouraged” by the local government to be kept in the museum. you’re sure he doesn’t do anything other than watch tv shows at his desk, lounge in the museum café. and make snide comments about anybody he can, because that exhibit hasn’t been updated in years and likely never will be unless something spectacular happens.

when you hear the click of the office door opening, you glance up from the work on your desk on instinct. it’s no surprise to see the devil himself (a mean and entirely pathetic thirty-four year old white man) walk through the door. mark was probably off slacking in the café like he does whenever he can get away with it, which is often considering he has nothing helpful to offer anyway.

it’s the man who follows him that snags at your gaze and keeps your eyes lingering on the doorway for a second longer than usual. in the split second that you take his appearance in, you’re surprised by how much you want to keep looking at him, rather than the diagram of a seventeenth century revolver you’re hoping to include in the exhibit you’re planning for next fall. the gun is fascinating to you, moreso than just about anyone who could walk in that door. but something about this man is beautiful, so much so that you don’t want to look away. then both mark’s and his eyes fall on you, and you snap your chin back down to refocus on your work. this, of course, doesn’t work, because you can still feel them looking at you.

“that’s them right there. you know, weapons are the only thing that they’re useful for,” mark begins to ramble, and now you know without a doubt that they’re headed towards you, “which, unfortunately, isn't very helpful at all most of the time. but maybe they can do you some good, agent.”

that word is what catches your attention; you don’t even blink at the condescending tone to his voice or the fact that he doesn’t make any sort of attempt to hide his criticisms from you or this agent. you don’t even look up until the two men are right at your desk, so you miss the judgemental look that the stranger gives to mark’s unsavory comments about you. the idiot obviously misses the look too, because he’s smiling down at you all smug and patronizing when you give him your attention.

“this is agent giles from the fbi. the federal bureau of investigation,” he begins, cocking his head in a way that makes him look like he’s got a knot in his neck, rather than intelligent and important as you figure he intends. you just nod as the agent flashes his badge, resisting the urge to examine the tall man like one of your exhibit pieces. “well, he’s looking for a certain type of knife–” mark says slowly, like you don’t understand what he’s implying. you, on the other hand, couldn’t care less about him as you look the agent up and down, trying to look casual. you’re usually far more into ancient weaponry than men, but he is straight up gorgeous, you conclude.

“–so, you should help him look for it. it’s very important, so don’t make us look like fools by saying something weird.” you grimace internally, but don’t show much of a reaction because all you can really think about is how much of an idiot he is. and how agent giles is too pretty to be an employee of the federal government. that part is far more important than mark’s rudeness, as you’re fully aware that he has nothing of value to offer, while you absolutely do.

“i’m sure y/n will be very helpful,” says agent giles firmly, and for a moment it surprises you that he knows your name before you realize mark must have given it earlier, “thanks for the sandwich recommendation mr.” he clears his throat because he’s clearly forgotten mark’s last name, “linser.” you stifle a laugh at both the insult of this agent remembering your name, but not mark’s, and the image of mark recommending an fbi agent his favorite sandwich from the museum café.

“lessinger,” he corrects with a stupid, haughty smile that suggests he has no idea that the agent thinks he’s a dumbass and couldn’t care less about him. he doesn’t even get the memo that he’s supposed to leave until agent giles clears his throat again and gives him a pointed look. “well, if y/n can’t get you what you need, i’m sure i can figure it out, so just let me know if you need anything else,” he lands a final insult before scurrying away to his own desk.

“it’s very bad,” you say with a matter of fact tone and shake of your head, once he’s finally out of ear shot.

the agent raises his eyebrows in question, like he’s not one hundred percent sure what you’re referring to. “him?” he scoffs, “yeah, he’s a total asshole.” agent gile’s tone is much lighter and pleasant when he’s talking just to you, though he certainly means what he’s just said.

“oh, well, no. i mean, yes, he is a complete asshole, but i meant to say that– um, well, the sandwich. it’s very bad,” you repeat the sentiment in earnest after realizing you started speaking almost completely out of context. now you feel the need to explain, “he always gets the same sandwich, and it’s not a good one. if you’re hungry you should get the superfood salad. very healthy, and really good– or, i mean, if you wanted a sandwich, the blt is quite good, especially if you add avocado,” you trail off and realize you’re completely off topic, “but, uh– that’s not what you’re here for, obviously. i’m sorry, i don’t mean to waste your time, agent. uh, how can i help you?”

“no, no, that’s okay,” he says, his pretty hazel eyes full of sincerity, “i am in fact hungry, but i’d never take his recommendation, so i’m glad to have yours. i love salad,” he smiles.

“oh, thanks,” you relax, before wondering if that’s a normal response. but, instead of trying to correct yourself like you normally might, you stay silent to avoid going off topic again and preventing him from getting to the point.

“i’m looking for a certain type of dagger,” he begins, and you realize it’s taking quite a bit of effort to keep looking up at him from your seated position. he’s so tall. “i saw your museum has a weapons collection and was wondering–,” without thinking, you stand to alleviate the pressure on your neck. he pauses in his speech, but is quick to realize you’re simply just standing and that he’s free to keep talking, “–if you’d be able to help me find out if you have any. i hear you’re the weapons expert?”

“yep, that’s me!” you say, unable to completely tamp down your excitement about the topic. only then do you realize that your timing to stand up was slightly odd, but you forge on for the sake of daggers. your favorite subset of weapons. “um, what sort of dagger are you looking for?”

“a scottish dirk?” he answers like he’s asking a question, as if he’s not sure how odd it is to ask that. it is sort of odd, only because you can’t understand exactly what the fbi’s interest is in scottish daggers, but you couldn’t care less.

your eyes light up and you grin, “we have plenty. actually, it’s quite a collection for a small museum like ours. uhh, let me show you! we have one on display, but personally, i think the ones in storage are the ones you’ll want to see,” you brush past him and head out into the hallway towards storage.

he follows behind as you continue talking, “i mean, of course the one on display is incredible, it’s just that the best one doesn’t quite fit into the right time frame for this particular exhibit,” you explain, though you think a moment after that he surely couldn’t care less about those details. then, your curiosity gets the best of you, “so, am i allowed to ask why the fbi is looking for scottish dirks? i just didn’t think they’d be something the u.s. government would be concerned about for any reason. oh, well– not that it can’t be! you can certainly investigate anything you want, obviously,” you stop yourself there before you can say anything else borderline embarrassing.

“well, it may be connected to some odd deaths we’re investigating here. we’re just following every possibility.” his answer is completely cryptic and absolutely no help in calming your curiosities. you can’t think of any possible way that sixteenth century scottish daggers could be connected to unexplained deaths.

“you mean the… body in the lake?” you question aloud when the news article you read last week pops into your mind. the word “body” is used lightly; they only found the woman’s liver floating on the surface. you swipe your key card to open the door to storage and lead him inside, then you register that he said “deaths,” plural. “there was more than one?”

“yeah, over the course of the past … few years. the one from last week is just the most recent, second to the one we found this morning.” you’re not sure why he hesitates over the word “few,” but you figure he’s got all sorts of reasons to act secretive.

“o-oh,” you stammer out, as everything suddenly turns so morbid, “i didn’t know that,” you reply as you stop without thinking at the right storage container. from the desk behind you, you grab a pair of gloves and ask him to put them on as well before you carefully extract the three long knives from their shelf. “so, what? you think someone’s using a scottish dirk to cut people up and throw their livers in the lake? odd considering the dirk is a thrusting blade. wouldn’t be very effective for such a task. well, uh, not that i’d really know. well, i do because i– but not like that! obviously, i’ve never used a scottish dirk to– nevermind.” you let out a little breath that’s half laugh half sigh and force yourself to focus on unwrapping the blades in front of you, each around at least a foot long.

you completely miss the endeared look that the agent gives you. sam only came in to see if the museum had the dagger and figure out how to steal it after hours to complete this case, but you’ve completely occupied his attention. he wants to hear you talk, loves the way you got excited when he asked about the dirk, thinks it’s sweet the way words tumble out of your mouth and your eyebrows change when you realize it was an awkward way to say things. and as a plus, your knowledge of the blade and its history could very likely be helpful.

“we’re not sure exactly how the dirk fits in, but that’s helpful to know,” he says kindly, peering down at the daggers. they’re beautiful and well-crafted, one with a particularly intricately carved handle. “that douche back there,” he begins, and you laugh a little at his unprofessional language, “he said you were interested in “fairy tales” related to weapons. i assume he meant folklore and mythologies? is there anything you can tell me about the folklore behind these?”

you almost cringe, thinking agent giles must find you silly until he proves just the opposite.

“yes, definitely! mark—the douchebag—loves to make fun of me for it, but it’s an important part of the job,” you explain, “it’s just, you might have to interrupt me, i get kind of excited about this kind of thing and, uh, i might start rambling,” you warn with a sheepish smile.

“any information helps,” he reassures. with that, you can’t help yourself, silently apologizing for the pure shitload of nerdy information he’s about to have dumped on him.

“well, if you insist. don’t say i didn’t warn you, but i’ll do my best to stick to the highlights,” you glance at him fleetingly and send him a smile you hope isn’t too awkward. you can’t help but notice he sends back a similar expression. so worried about your own behavior, you hadn’t realized that he’s also sort of awkward. it’s sweet and it makes you feel a bit more relaxed as you turn your attention back to the topic at hand.

“the dirk, biodag in scottish gaelic, is a particularly important part of traditional scottish highlander culture. it was very common for warrior cultures to swear their most important oaths on their swords, but for the highlanders, it was done with their dirk. these oaths were binding with what was called the force of a gaes, which involved severe supernatural consequences were the oath to be broken. the iron of the dirk was considered to be holy, which stems from the folk superstitions that iron can protect against mythological creatures. these two,” you point to the simpler of the three knives, “are 17th century dirks, crafted with soligen steel, as there was a sort of magic ascribed to the forging of germanic steel that became popular in later centuries.

“but, this one is a very early version of the dirk from the early 16th century, and made frompure iron,” you smile as you move on to talk about the third dirk, the one sam had noticed to be particularly ornate, “and therefore more aligned with traditional scottish folklore, as iron is considered to be stronger than any sort of alloy, like steel, against supernatural forces. this one’s definitely my favorite, just don’t tell the others,” you finish off with satisfaction, and even an affection that sam secretly finds adorable.

“it is a beautiful blade,” he agrees, in a way that makes you think he genuinely appreciates its value. “now, is there any sort of supernatural creature that the dirk specifically is used to kill?” sam knows the answer he’s looking for, but he’s always eager to confirm any sort of lore that he’s not intimately familiar with, so he asks despite the weirdness of it all.

this question is certainly very odd to you, and you can’t understand why he’d need to know, but you answer anyway. “well, it can depend on who you ask or what records you look at. in many cases, any old thing made of iron, or silver, depending, would do, especially because most folklore dates back to before the development of the highland dirk. but, there are definitely accounts of supernatural creatures being killed or warded off using a dirk, especially one used for a blood oath that was never broken. some believe the strength of an oath fulfilled made the weapon stronger and able to kill creatures otherwise thought unkillable.”

he takes in all of this information with such a serious and straight face that you really begin to question how this could all be about unsolved murders. he seems to think the folklore is going to help him solve real life mysteries, or maybe he’s just secretly interested in this sort of thing and using the opportunity to learn about it.

“and do you know anything in particular about a creature called the each-uisge?”

“each-uisge?” you repeat, unable to stop yourself from laughing a little in surprise. now you’re perfectly sure this federal government investigator is just a secret nerd with an interest in niche folklore. even his pronunciation is decent, though he neglected the back-of-the-throat sound of the “ch.”

“well– i mean, yes, there are accounts of each-uisge being warded away by both silver bullets and an iron dirk,” you indulge, “i know less about the each-uisge themselves than dirks, but i’ve never read any account of one being killed. though, i do suppose an oath-strengthened dirk might be just the thing to do it.”

he nods intently. “listen, i’m sure this is a long shot,” agent giles begins, gesturing haphazardly with his gloved hands, and you wonder what sort of strange thing he could ask this time, “but is there a way of knowing if this one,” he points to the pure iron dirk, “might have been used to fullfill an oath?”

at that you can’t help but snort out a laugh. “what, are you trying to hunt down a each-uisge?” you tease. “you know that they’re only located in scotland, right? ... i mean, if they were real, obviously.” by the end, your tone is no longer playful as your mind returns to the news of missing, presumed dead people, with nothing left but their livers found in the nearby lake. then you think about the history of the town, once heavy with scottish imigrants when it was founded in the early eighteenth century. and finally, all in just a second or two, you fully recall the story of the each-uisge, a vicious, shape-shifting horse that drowns its victims at the bottom of the nearest lake and eats their whole body except the liver, which floats to the surface. a chill runs up your spine before you tamp down the ridiculous suspicions that fill your mind.

“right, obviously,” agent giles laughs too, but it’s sort of stiff, like he wasn’t really joking when he asked. you’re certainly not laughing anymore. “as for the dirk?”

you raise your eyebrows, “hm?” is all you can manage as your mind goes sort of blank. there’s absolutely no way that what you’re thinking about could actually be true, so you brush it off and try to listen to the agent—if that’s really who he is.

“can you tell?” he asks again.

“uh– tell what? oh– oh! if it was used to swear an oath?” you prompt. he nods. “well, i mean, ha. not really, not for sure. we have tested, and there are traces of blood on the blade,” you gesture towards it vaguely, “but, um, that could be from anywhere, not just an oath, you know? lots of fighting…and stuff, uh, those days,” your voice trails off as you laugh and nod a little awkwardly, starting to feel more and more confused about this agent giles, no matter how pretty his soft-looking brown hair is. you tell yourself he’s just curious, but he just looks oh so serious, despite the fact that he’s trying to seem casual and normal about this unconventional conversation.

“hm,” is the only little sound he makes in response, like he’s almost disappointed and considering something weighty you don’t know about because of your unsure answer.

and because you hate to see that little frown on his face, you keep talking, “but, it’s more than likely that this blade was owned by a high ranking clansman, possibly even the chief, as indicated by the ornate nature of the handle and overall high quality. oaths were, in retrospect, decently common to make, even more so for high ranking clansmen.

“which means it is very likely that at least one, maybe many oaths have been sworn using this blade. of course, there’s no telling whether each oath was fulfilled, but considering the cultural importance of loyalty and honor and the roles of oaths in such, it wouldn’t be far fetched to consider this dirk as the kind strong enough to kill a each-uisge. if, you know, you wanted to know a random, cool, and totally niche fun fact about one of my favorite weapons in this museum’s storage room,” in the last sentence, you speak in a clunky, awkward sort of way as you run out of interesting tidbits to info-dump and your mind instead wanders back to the undeniably peculiar circumstances surrounding this conversation. the laugh you let out at the end is quiet, and far more nervous than humored.

the smile he gives you then is sympathetic, like he knows this is all weird and maybe a little alarming if you’re willing to question your non-belief in the supernatural. you’re no longer sure at all that he’s an fbi agent, but strangely enough, you don’t find yourself feeling distrustful of him. your gut tells you that he’s good, and you decide to trust it.

“all of this was a big help,” he says, the sincerity in his voice almost tangible, “thank you.” that makes you feel good, because it seems to you like he’s just trying to help people. with what, you’re not sure, and then you sort of wish that he’d made some sort of joke about how this last part of the conversation wasn’t actually helpful, just interesting. interesting and completely irrelevant to the livers on the lake.

you swallow hard, “of course. glad i could be of help to you, agent.”

“sam,” he corrects. “just sam is alright.”

“oh. right. just sam,” you nod and wonder if the feeling in your chest could be your heart fluttering. your eyes flicker from his face to his broad shoulders, to his pretty, big hands and the way his right middle finger taps against the side of his thigh. then, worried you’re staring, your gaze flits down to your own hands, resting on the table, then to the daggers you know so well. yet, you look at them different this time. you’ve certainly wondered about the oaths that may have been sworn by their blades and their connections to traditional superstitions. but now you look at them and wonder if it’s real. if one of these blades had been used to ward off a real-life myth in the past, or been magically strengthened by blood and kept promises. sam—you think sam fits him so much better than agent giles—has shifted your perspective of the things you’ve been studying and learning about and loving for years and years of your life.

it’s true that you’ve always been one to daydream, to wonder; that’s where your fascination with folklore and fairy tales comes from. always, you’ve looked for rumored mythological weapons in the real world and marveled at the less historic possibilities of the things you study. and you think that if it were anyone else, or if he talked to or looked at you in a different way, you wouldn’t be questioning your reality like this, but you are. maybe you’re predisposed to believing, or just too curious for your own good, but you know at that moment that you won’t be able to let this go.

sam clears his throat to break the awkward silence, and he thinks he can see the gears in your head turning, the way they have been since he asked about the each-uisge. he hopes desperatly you won’t ask him if he thinks this is all real, all because he doesn’t think he could lie to you anymore. there’s something about your authenticity, your intelligence and innate curiosity, and the goodness that you so clearly carry with you that simultaneously makes him want to tell you everything and protect you from the truth. the latter option is always his go-to, rightfully so, but he can’t explain to himself the way that he purely just wants to share with you, bring you closer to him through a shared understanding of the world. sam thinks he must be crazy, because he just met you and thinks it would be entirely possible to fall right in love with you if he got the chance to get to know you.

then he realizes that he’s the one staring. “right, well… i should get going. you know. i’ve got another lead i need to follow up on,” he forces the words out like he doesn’t want to go, and it’s true. he doesn’t, but if he spends more time with you, he’ll have to keep lying, and he doesn’t want to do that. more importantly, he doesn’t want to expose you to anything more that could put you in danger.

“right. right, of course,” you nod, and you’re practically breaking his heart because you fail to hide the disappointment on your face for a split second. he hadn’t realized he was looking at you that carefully to catch the look, but he doesn’t regret it. he’s discovered that he likes looking at you enough to not care much about that sort of thing. “would you like me to show you out, or do you remember the way?”

“i’m alright,” sam answers on instinct before his heart breaks doubly because your eyes look sad again for a moment, “but let me walk you back to your office. or, no, let me buy you that superfood salad for taking up your time,” he amends quickly.

“i already ate lunch, but– shit,” you interrupt yourself, cursing when you realize he was flirting. then you get flustered, “no, i mean– uh, well– okay! er, no, that’s okay, i mean,” because there’s no taking back the fact that you already said you ate lunch already. you take a breath to steady yourself, “but you can definitely walk me back to my office, let me just put these away, it’ll be quick–,” your hands rush to wrap up the daggers before you remember their fragility, “oh– sorry! thank you for the offer, though! that would’ve been completely unnecessary, i’m just glad i could help. not that i wouldn’t– uh,” you gulp anxiously, “not that i wouldn’t eat lunch with you, of course– well, if that’s what you were implying which maybe it wasn’t, which, in that case–”

sam who cuts you off, “it’s alright,” he reassures before you can keep rambling, “that is what i’m implying, but…” he quiets for a split second, only because he’s a littly shy, “it’s okay. maybe, yknow, when the case is over, we can go for lunch, if that’s alright with you?”

you inhale sharply, nodding silently before remembering you should answer aloud too. when you do, your voice is a little breathless, “yeah, yeah, that sounds good.” then, you’re fighting back a grin.

“great,” he doesn’t hide his own smile as he dips his hand into a jacket pocket and hands you his card. “call me tomorrow, we can set up a time.” you accept the card with a shy smile, and one beat, two beats of silence pass before the both of you realize you’re staring at the other.

in sync, you snap out of it, gazes jerking elsewhere and hands flying anywhere to get busy. you turn to the blades on the table and he focuses on fixing up the black jacket of his suit. you try to ignore him as you put the artifacts away, expecting for him to have said goodbye and left by the time you turn back to him. when you look at him in confusion, the corner of his mouth quirks up when he realizes you’ve forgotten that you said he could walk you back to your office.

he vaguely motions towards the door, “shall we? i’ll walk you to your office, then i’m good to find my way out.”

“oh! right, of course!” you nod, “yeah.” with your lips pursed in an awkward smile, you turn to the door and walk towards the exit without looking to see if he follows. but you don’t have to, because a half-second later, he’s right by your side, which you can attribute his long strides to. you like the way he lingers close to you, closer than he did when you first walked in together, even if it makes you feel flustered so that your hands mess with the hem of your shirt.

you stop at the office door, turning to him and expecting your goodbye to happen surrounded by the empty, white walls of the hallway.

but, he points to the door with his chin. “i’ll walk you in,” he explains, “show that asshole, mark, that you’re friendly with an fbi agent.”

“oh,” you sigh out through a smile, “you don’t have to do that, yknow. i know he’s an idiot.”

he laughs at that. “yeah, he absolutely is,” he agrees readily, “but, i still wanna. i think of it as part of my job to scare off assholes.” especially from pretty people like you, he wants to say. he’s just too shy for that, thinks it would be too soon to say it.

“well then, be my guest,” you smile as you open the door and let him follow close behind you.

“thank you for all of your help,” sam says, repeating what he said before, louder than he has to so that mark, a few desks away from yours, can hear it all, “you really helped move our investigation along. i think we’ll be able to wrap it up soon, thanks to you.” you’re sure that he’s over-exaggerating, but you certainly aren’t going to stop him from proving a point to mark.

“it was the least i could do,” you play along, trying to hide your grin from your coworkers, because you can feel all their eyes on you. when you sit, sam looks down at you with nothing short of affection, just for a moment before your eyes settle back on his pretty face.

“have a nice rest of your day,” he smiles before turning away. then he reaches the door, not too far away, he turns back around and speaks for everyone to hear, “don’t forget to call me, yeah?” before disappearing and leaving you a flustered, grinning mess. you can’t help but steal a look at mark and feel satisfaction run through your veins at his utterly shocked expression.

he looks to have gone through the five stages of grief in a matter of seconds, and it’s frankly hilarious. he can’t seem to possibly consider the fact that you absolutely just pulled a (not?) fbi agent, not to mention one who’s that tall and just plain attractive. you can’t wait to catch whatever comical expression he wears when he sees you greeted by sam in the museum foyer during your lunch break for a date (because surely he’ll be sitting in the café watching people walk in and out as he’s chewing on his nasty sandwich).

lmk if folks are interested in a part two since i do have a bit of an idea for it if there's enough interest!

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occulthours · 6 months

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Can you rate some bonnie ships

Sure! This is just based on my personal preference, combining what we got in canon and the potential Bonnie stans explore in fanon.

This is pretty long so I'll put a text breaker (or whatever that's called) here. If you wanted me to go in-depth for a certain ship, feel free to ask! I apologize in advance for any misspells, grammar mistakes or errors.

1. Stefonnie and Bonkai

I have a few posts dedicated to my love of Stefonnie, but I’ll say it again, out of all of Bonnie’s ships, they had some of the best foundations based on canon alone. Same with Bonkai. There easily could’ve been a smooth transition into a relationship for both ships.

Season 5 was the perfect time to set Stefonnie up instead we got the blandness that is Ste.roline due to how similar their arcs were up to that point and how the main conflict of that season affected them two the most out of the main cast.

Anyone with eyes could see that Bonkai had a similar setup to TVDUS “dark romance” ships like DE and KC. The whole “bad boy x good girl” trope combined with the “evil guy is willing to change to earn the heart of the morally rich girl” trope was very on brand for Julie and Bonkai did it in a way that, again in my opinion, subverted from the norm. Bonnie held Kai accountable in a way that Elena and Caroline simply didn’t when it came to their highly questionable boyfriends. On top of that, I loved how Kai brought out the more vengeful side of Bonnie that had been somewhat watered down in seasons 3-5. Bonkai had one thing that was missing from all of Bonnie’s canon ships; passion. Out of all of Bonnie’s ships, canon or otherwise, Bonkai had the most electric chemistry. You can feel the emotions from Kat and Chris through the screen and they played off each other so well.

2. Klonnie

Bonnies ship with the most wasted potential. Klaus and Bonnie had everything in place to be a well-done ship. Not only did Kat and Joseph have great chemistry, but they were the biggest captains of this ship when Klaus was just getting started in TVD. They individually had the most interesting lore of all the TVDU characters and given how intertwined the Mikaelsons and the Bennetts were, should’ve interacted far more times in canon. Klaus was said to always have a witch by his side but wouldn't want to seduce Bonnie into joining his team after nearly reaching the damn near impossible feat of killing him? As a "novice" witch at that!

Additionally, Bonnie would've THRIVED in The Originals. TO was a very witch-centric show with a lot of characters I would've loved seeing Bonnie interact with. No offense to Hayley, but there's no denying that Bonnie being Hope's mother would have made more sense than what canon gave us.

3. Bonora

If Julie and Co didn’t want Bonnie to date one of their precious fan-favorite white men, fine. Bonora was there and would’ve been such a nice ship for Bonnie. Kat had been advocating for Bonnie to be bisexual for a long time to no avail instead we got Fr.eelin which, no shade, is basically shein Bonora despite Kat having great chemistry with women as well as men. If you had put Nora in Enzo's place in the later 2 seasons of the show very little would’ve changed. In fact, Bonnie’s arc would’ve significantly improved.

4. Kennett

Kennett has somewhat slipped down my ranking due to how disgusting the actor who plays Kol is, but for the ship's sake let’s just imagine Daniel Sherman was the one to start off playing Kol, okay? Okay <3

Kol was said to have a love of witches very early on in the show. The most consistent thing about his character was how he stayed connected to magic despite no longer being able to practice it himself. Bonnie was undisputedly the most powerful witch he had ever come across. Why wasn’t he more interested in her? Bonnie was the one solving everyone’s magical issues as a 17-year-old self-trained witch. Kol would’ve loved to dissect her mind, watch her do spells, and even share his own 1000 years' worth of knowledge about magic with her.

5. Tonnie

I honestly don’t have much to say about Tonnie, but I do think they could’ve been fun in the later seasons. Julie said that her shitty alternative ending for Bonnie was her ending up with Matt and having children with him, which sucks ASS by the way, and while I had the idea of Bonnie getting an even more half-baked romance than she got with Jeremy and Enzo, I would've sucked it up if it were with Tyler. Bonnie and Tyler were childhood friends and should've gotten even closer when Elena and Matt started dating considering they were their best friends. I can definitely imagine Elena trying to force Bonnie on a double date with her, Matt, and Tyler.

While Forwood is one of my favorite canon TVDU ships, Tyler and Bonnie bonding early on over their supernatural heritage would've made a lot more sense given that witches and werewolves traditionally get along significantly better than either species do with vampires.

6. Bamon

If you had asked me this in 2020/21, Bamon would've topped my list. I don't by any means hate them, but I'm admittedly not as fond of them anymore. I feel like Bamon is most serious Bonnie stans first, and/or most beloved ship. And it makes sense! Bonnie and Damon had excellent chemistry, a large amount of focus on their relationship in season 6 and onward, and a lot of romantically coded scenes despite the writers' hopes of dissuading the fans. My biggest gripe with Bamon is that, like most dynamics including Damon, Damon benefits from having Bonnie in his life significantly more than Bonnie benefits from having Damon in her life. Additionally, given how they wrote Steroline in regards to Stelena, how Bamon would play out in canon in regards to Delena sounds like a nightmare to me.

7. Bonenzo

Bonenzo is Bonnie's best canon ship but lord knows that's not saying a lot. The ship felt as if the writers took bits and pieces from Bamon and Kennett/Kolvina and said "Here, damn!" in hopes to shut Bonnie fans up. I honestly wouldn't dislike them nearly as much if they were actually endgame. Enzo's presence was merely to give Bonnie a romance, and he didn't even fulfill the means that justified his existence.

8. Beremy

He cheated on her with a ghost. Enough said.

#bonnie bennett #tvd #thinkinghours

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im-just-a-little-freak · 11 months

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Monster Hunter eaten by another monster Hunter

Warning: safe vore, non-descriptive injuries characters: reader, hellboy, dr broom, Abe (mentioned)

story under cut

You looked at your phone, waiting to see if you got that job at the cafè you had applied to earlier that week, the phone screen bright in the darkened room.

You had only just moved to New York two weeks ago, looking for a new life and A tad bit of adventure, not that the huge city could offer much adventure, but the stories were… interesting.

Tales of demons and monsters in the sewers and train tracks. That Was the main reason you moved there, the horror stories of what happens when the lights go out, the many sightings of things that shouldn't exist, the pictures of all sorts of monsters. All filled your horror-obsessed mind with ideas. And being a wood-be Monster Hunter, you wanted to find some monsters.

A dig came from your phone, taking you out of your daydreams of monster hunting and adventure, you looked down at it and saw a notification from the manager of the café and it simply said "Can you start tomorrow?" You frowned at the text, monster hunting could wait, and you had work to do, much to your annoyance.

the next few days had been boring as all hell, you mopped floors, cleaned tables and listened to angry middle-aged women yell at you for ever daring to ask if they wanted sugar in their tea. It wasn't the worst job you have ever worked, but it was up there! Your boss wasn't great either, he was rude and entitled, acting as if he owned a huge company that everyone knew about, it was a tiny hole-in-the-wall café, a few crumbs on a table won't kill anyone.

weekends were fun though, you didn't work so you could wander, normally to museums and libraries, looking for myths and legends of monsters and demons. What can you say, it fueled your desire for adventure.

It was a day at one of these museums that you find yourself in today, looking at paintings of demons being Banished to hell, the images of the hideous beasts being shoved down by beautiful angelic men and women where amazing portraits, the paint old and shining on its canvas.

"beautiful piece isn't it?" someone said, an older man said, he wasn't very tall and had white hair and wore a brown suit, you smiled "Yeah, it's marvellous, must have taken a lot of time" you replied and looked back at the painting, you could see the individual brush strokes on the canvas making up the picture. "professor broom" the old man introduced himself, yet still looked up at the painting, you looked at him, and looked back up to the painting "(Readers name), nice to meet you"

you continued to speak to the old man, he was polite and quite kind, you learned he was alive in world war two and had an adopted son who he did not name, and that he was here for work, you found it odd that a man of his age was still working, but you didn't say anything about it as too not offended him, he seemed capable to work.

He soon left the museum, saying that his son would be wondering where he was and that he didn't want to worry him, you nodded understandingly and the old man went on his way, leaving you to admire the masterful art exhibits of The museum.

When you left for the day, kissing the gorgeous paintings goodbye, it had begun to rain, which was not ideal, but you stored into the rain, waving a taxi down and getting them to take you home.

The next day was annoyingly a work day, you woke up, got the taxi to the cafe and checked in, dressing in the blue and brown uniform, you stood in front of the register and took orders, you had mastered it by now and could take orders in seconds, a useful skill. although in itself, the day was a bland drag, you couldn't stand it! The minutes ticked by like hours and prayed for the end of your shift as if it was the second coming of Jesus.

Well, lucky for you, the boredom was going to end shortly.

you heard a shout coming from outside, and in a second, the cafe's windows were shattering, making you back into a wall, you looked outside to see a huge fleshy worm-like creature covered In spikes squirming its way by the buildings. Its body hit the cafe again, and you felt the walls begin to collapse as the huge worm hit against it again, All you could think of doing was crouching and covering the top of your head with your arms as you watched the chaos outside.

You heard screaming from outside the shop, and then gunshots, and an inhuman shriek, you looked up.

a large red person was jumping around on the worm, along with a blue person following close behind, you didn't know if this scared you or fascinated you, you were looking at the creatures you dreamed of, the monsters you had wanted to see your whole life…and they could kill you!

you tried to move, but your legs hurt, a shooting pain spiking into your body as you attempted to move, and you cried out tears springing from your eyes and running down your cheeks, you looked, your leg had been crushed by the debris of the building. it hurt, a lot, you tried moving again, and more pain shot up your back, you cried out again, this time louder, now praying for something to save you, like an angel or-

"you really shouldn't call out like that when a death worm is so close"…a demon, you looked up, the red creature that had been attacking the worm had heard you.

at seeing him, the red skin, the yellow eyes and the massive right hand, your panic increased, you make a shrieking sound, now trying to pull away from the demon in front of you, who grunted in annoyance.

"you trying to worsen that leg? I know I ain't a pretty sight, but I didn't think you'd be that admitted to getting away from me" As he spoke, he placed his hand on your back, making you stop struggling, making you wince in fear.

he dragged you out from under the piece of ceiling, it hurt, but only for a few seconds, and he held you like a cat, you're body dangling.

he looked at your legs and grunted "Eh crap, that ain't good" This made you panic even more, and you almost instantly tried to look at your legs, but he growled a warning at you "Don't look at that, you'll be even more scared" you looked back at him, still terrified, you didn't get to see your legs, but that still terrified you, making you want to look more.

"I can fix it, but I'll need to do a little something first," he said more calmly and held you more security, you felt terrified, you couldn't help but be terrified of what this demon could do, you were so frightened that you didn't notice yourself becoming light-headed, you only realised something was happening as you saw the demon getting visibly larger.

you obviously panicked, trying to flail but the pain in your legs caused you to immediately stop, almost screaming in pain, the large demon who held you murmured "Don't do that, you're only gonna hurt yourself" and now only held you in one hand, his far smaller left hand.

you only stopped shrinking when you were around the size of a small cat, you looked at him, and despite him saying he was gonna fix your legs, you were still terrified of the massive demon.

he spoke again, this time with a bit of an apologetic tone "Alright, I lied, I'm gonna do another thing before I heal you" You were confused for a second, but immediately felt terrified as he opened his mouth. you instinctively tried to struggle away from him, but the shooting pain in your legs and back made you stop any attempts to get away from him, he quickly eased you into his mouth, his bright red tongue licking at you as he did, covering you in sticky saliva, and he swallowed you up, closing his mouth.

you were squeezed down a tight tube that amazingly didn't hurt your probably shattered legs and slid into a far larger area, it was warm, and your panicked mind took that warmth as his stomach acid, but you didn't move, you just sat there, shaking and crying.

"let me out…please" you begged, you had never been this scared before, you regretted moving here, you wouldn't be about to die if you didn't move here.

"sorry, but I can't let you out" the demon that surrounded you said, sounding almost apologetic, maybe he did, just not enough to let you out.

you found it a tad ironic that the reason for your being eaten was your obsession with monsters, and now, you had been eaten by one, and you were going to die inside of it.

You lay there, silently crying, you wanted to punch him, to kick him, maybe give him a stomach ache out of pure spit, but you didn't have the energy and you were in horrible pain…at least the warmth of his belly soothed your legs…

you felt him walking, and heard him call out to someone "ABE!! HOLD IT THERE FOR A SECOND, I CAN GET A CLEAR SHOT!!" You flinched as he yelled, it was even louder from inside his stomach, and a few seconds later, you heard a gunshot, and then another, and felt him continue walking. You dipped out of conciseness about then but woke up maybe a minute later as you heard him talking to someone, you couldn't make out any words over your tiredness, and you promptly fell asleep again, this time for much longer.

You woke up again, feeling the demon walking again, your legs didn't feel as sore, and you began to wonder why and how you were still alive. you heard a door open and close, then felt your host flop down on his back, onto a bed you thought.

He lay like that for around a minute, then sat up "You still asleep?" He patted his stomach as he spoke, you didn't respond for a second, then mumbled "yes" still terrified of him.

He lay back down, and rested his hand on his stomach "I haven't eaten this well in months, you tasted amazing by the way" You weren't sure whether you should feel threatened or flattered, it was a compliment…but it wasn't a great one in this situation.

He hummed at your lack of response "Hm, how's the legs, are they healing well?" You were confused, but your legs did feel better, and then it hit you, he was healing you, you were shocked, looking at where his voice was coming from before muttering "You're healing me?"

"yep, didn't I tell you that…hm, sorry for not saying anything then" he grumbled out, the relief was amazing, a strong sense of euphoria washing over you as you relaxed "Thank you…wow" Maybe you shouldn't believe him, but you couldn't do much else, and you were so SO tired, and the comfort of you being able to wake up tomorrow with unbroken legs may have been the best feeling you had ever felt in your life.

you slowly fell asleep again, the warmth and comfort of the organ that held you inside it not feeling nearly as threatening as it did earlier, and the owner or said organ feeling just as redeemed from your fear

#safe vore #soft vore #extreme cuddling #tw vore #fear play #g/t vore #non fatal vore #hell//boy #healing vore

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bushs-world · 1 year

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Rant: The protagonist doesn't always need to move the plot

So a few things resulted in this post. One, I was reading a writing article and the number one advice was that the protagonist has to move the plot or they are boring

And two, Tumblr recommended a 'Loki was useless in the series' post to me so here I go

Why this advice came in the first place

A good protagonist moves the plot!!

This is the first writing advice you will ever get when you are learning to write interesting, multidimensional characters and this isn't without reason coz some writers will put in the least effort to write their protagonists (it's mostly women written this way but sometimes men too). The result is a bland, boring who keeps sitting passively while the entire plot happens to them and they do nothing to try and change their situation. Instead, the writer adds other characters to fix their problems for them while they dont move a finger. This results in flat, uninteresting and often annoying characters.

A good example of this is Bella Swan from Twilight or the Sleeping beauty or Snow White. And I always believe this was a guideline to make sure people don't write flat, cardboard cut out protagonists but people took this rule as a checkmark indicator of whether that means the character is well written or not, totally forgetting that sometimes the protagonist doesn't need to move the plot.

The Subversion of this advice

This advice can be (and has been for a long time) subverted by a very clever but simple flip in the structure - when the plot impacts the protagonist and instead of focusing on how the protagonist overcomes the situation, the focus is on what they experience. And this is such a common trope, often used when the character is placed in an environment way outside their control or when the conflict is so big that they can't single-handedly change anything or when the odds are so stacked against them that there's nothing much they can do.

A very good example of this is Dani in Midsommar. She rarely moves the plot. The actual movers of the plot are the Harga tribes and Dani just follows whatever ritual they put her in and yet she is getting impacted by the plot. For one, she has no idea these friendly looking tribes are actually a death cult and even if she did, there was nothing she could have done. There's also evidence she was drugged and brainwashed but the story is rarely about Dani and her group escaping the clutches of the cult, it is about her experience both with the cult and her own sorrow.

Similarly, Pi rarely moves the plot in The Life of Pi. Everything that happens in the story is caused by coincidence and forces of nature yet the story isn't about Pi surviving the shipwreck to reach land. It's about his experience while he's stuck in the sea with Richard Parker.

A Christmas carol, Gulliver travels, the British soldier in Dunkirk, to some extent even Oliver Twist are all examples of stories where the protagonist don't move the plot, yet the characters aren't badly written. Heck, even in Infinity War, it is Thanos who moves the plot, not the heroes.

Thats also prominent in Frank Kafka's 'Metamorphosis' which Loki S1 takes some inspiration from where the protagonist Gregor rarely moves the plot but the plot impacts him and the entire novel focuses on his experience (which is also something because unlike the genre fiction which relies heavily on plot, literary fictions many times apply this technique to deep dive into the protagonists experiences).

The protagonist is not always the hero (and won't always win)

One reason I think this advice is taken as a holy grain of writing is because many people confuse the protagonist with the hero. A hero is essentially a hero, fighting the evils and bad guys but the protagonist is simply the character whose story we are following and I think this line blurs in the superhero genre because we are literally seeing it because we want to see heroes.

A character experiencing the plot is not a passive character

Another thing people forget is that a character experiencing or getting impacted by the plot instead of fighting to overcome the conflict is not a passive character. A passive character is one who doesn't try to change their situation. In contrast, characters in such stories where the plot impacts them often try to overcome their conflict but fail, either again because they can barely make an impact alone or because they don't have the necessary power or control.

So, is Loki in the series a badly written protagonist??

So, I have seen many posts claiming that Loki was totally useless in the series or incompetent or that he didn't matter in the series. And I see three reasons for this

1. He rarely moved the plot

2. He was incompetent

3. He had no importance in the story

I will tackle each of these points individually

He rarely moved the plot: Ok, this is partly true but again this doesn't prove that Loki was a badly written protagonist because Loki was experiencing the plot. The series was never about Loki defeating the TVA, it was the journey of Loki and his growth as he experienced the TVA and the restraints of the sacred timeline. And Loki didn't have neither the knowledge or the power to drastically change something or to defeat the TVA because he was facing off against an organisation that went far beyond his comprehension and knew everything about them, stripping him of the upper hand. And idk why people are so shocked of this particular point coz the trailers always hinted towards Loki being forced to work with the TVA.

Another way this argument is flawed is because this totally ignores Loki's importance to the emotional aspects of the plot. Loki's role in the series is that of the archetypical trickster (as described in the myths, not a literal trickster). Tricksters were often people who shook the status quo and uncovered the harsh reality with their plans and that's what Loki does. Ever since he landed foot in the TVA, he had been challenging the TVA dogma and his presence causes every person be it Mobius, Ravonna, the Void Lokis or even Sylvie, Loki shakes their moral stance and forces them to reconsider their opinions. Some like Mobius or Classic Loki change while others like Ravonna shut him down with their dogmatic views.

Another thing is that he's the moral and emotional centre of the series and he provides the series the much needed depth.

People mistake Sylvie as the person who moved the plot because of her strong screen presence and compelling storyline but if you look carefully, it's the TVA that moves the plot. HWR even says this in episode 6 that he paved the road, they merely walked down it. But people just see Sylvie's plan and think that she moved the plot when in reality, her plan was an important part of the series but it wasn't the plot. The series was never about killing the timekeepers, it was never about saving the multiverse. It was always about Loki's experience with the TVA. Everything else was just audience opinions.

And then Loki did move the plot. He moved it in episode 2 when he located Sylvie, he moved it in episode 3 when he hid the tempad. So, how did he not move the plot?? It's only possible if you think the series was about killing the timekeepers but tell me where it was said??

He was incompetent: Again, Loki wasn't incompetent. He was just placed in a situation out of his control. And most people who say this don't say it in regard to the situation in the series. No, they will bring Avengers Loki and point out how he was a badass, which frustrates me so much coz are you telling me that a character is only nice if he's an overpowered badass who defeats everyone. And if the character suffers defeat, then he's worthless. Idk it seems like a very toxic and shallow take to me.

It's also not that Loki isn't trying. He tried yet he failed coz the TVA knew each of his tricks and were so powerful that there wasn't much he could do. It's one thing if there was something Loki could have done which he didn't. But that's not what the complains are about. It's always about how Loki wasn't how he was in the Avengers or how this cool thing that this other character did should have been done by Loki instead.

They want an overpowered gary stu and since that's not who Loki is, or even if he's a little goofy, he's pathetic and weak and whatnot because he doesn't show outward, superficial displays of strength. If you think your character getting hit or losing is insulting, especially when there's a narrative reason why he can't win, then it's not the writing that's bad, it's you who's superfacial. Which I don't mind if you just want your fav to kick ass but then they won't say it simply. No, they have to add some weird twisted logic of how it's humiliating when nowhere in the series is Loki mocked for being weak and the only one who has problem with underpowered Loki is them.

He has no importance in the story: Again debatable coz one which plotline are we talking about? The series was always about Loki and his experience so without him there won't be a plot but also if you think that the series was only about killing the timekeepers (which was a subplot no doubt but it wasn't the main focal point ever), even then Loki played a big narrative role.

Without him, there would have been no Mobius and B-15 turning against the TVA, no Ravonna struggling to keep the TVA afloat and doubling down on her beliefs, no internal breakdown in the TVA, no Classic Loki redemption, and I don't even think Sylvie might have been able to enchant Alioth alone. Without Loki, even Sylvie's emotional struggle won't have come to surface so if you remove Loki from the series, you remove all the emotional aspects of the series which the series was definitely not.

The motto of the series was 'No one bad is ever truly bad. No one good is ever truly good' and it wouldn't have come out without Loki.

And yes, Sylvie's plan and mission made an equally important part of the story as Loki's own journey, and the series balances both along with the world building quite well.

In the end, it's ok if people don't like the series but can they please kindly stop saying it's bad writing when they don't have the nuance to critique the writing on an objective level. Just because one doesn't enjoy something doesn't make it a bad writing.

#loki #loki series #loki meta #loki series meta #tva loki #sylki #kinda minor but still

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rockanroller · 4 months

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another thing on why conservatives would like HH is because Charlie is a very heavy coded Christian white woman who’s trying to better the “degenerates” in her world so they can be redeemed. Charlie is portrayed was “pure” and “innocent” and goal as “righteous” in world that’s in opposition to her. She’s all about second chances which is a thing Christianity is huge on. Charlie is exactly what that servile said “repackaged Christianity” Alastor no matter what viv says is NOT black coded. I know he’s VA is Iran but alastor is so white coded they should’ve redesigned him with black features or got a black VA. Funny how they got a black VA for a character that’s was never black coded in the first place and they make him into a slave

yeah, for those just reading i mentioned in this post how i felt Charlie weirdly comes off like a Christian woman trying to "save" her friends while trying to cover her own biases with how much she "loves" and "cares" for them.

and it's interesting, there's the extra angle that in her own series that she is the Main Character of, she doesn't really...do much?

she's virtually useless as a Princess of Hell and has to be saved or supported by others constantly--something that aligns with the conservative Christian belief that women are lesser and need the support of others, particularly men (Alastor, her own father Lucifer,) bc of it. women are too "weak" and should just "stand there and look pretty." (yes, i'm aware there are stronger female characters in the series like Vaggie, this is about Charlie specifically.)

Charlie was embarrassing in the first season, she was literally crying in her bed over her failures and needed Alastor to be the one to push her into a deal with him and bring in other troops she, as The Princess Of Hell, couldn't rally or even think of rallying, herself.

then even when she finally got a chance to fight she didn't want to and was all "sowee i'm hitting youu sowweee <83" and when she finally fired back (which she needed Vaggie's reminder to do) it was just fireworks. the two times she actually did damage on Adam, one she got herself, the other she made while being literally held by her father and it was like a demon power she theoretically could've used the entire time.

and no, personally i don't think a few outbursts (ooo she got red and scary for 2 seconds when speaking with Adam, or ooo she angrily flipped off the cannibal crowd woww!) make up for the majority of the 8 episodes where she did barely anything to help anyone.

it's not bad for a female character to need support from others, but Charlie is shockingly bland in addition to that.

#anon ask #vivziepop conservative fandom #thoughts #charlie critical #charlie morningstar critical

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tuttle-did-it · 5 months

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Rewatched Timeless since the finale took place the week of Christmas, 2023.

This show frustrates me SO, SO much. So much.

They have Rufus, who is amazing. Especially when paired with Jiya. Seriously, Malcolm Barrett is a massive part of why this show went more than 6 episodes, and he has wonderful chemistry with Claudia Doumit.

They have Goran Visnjic who manages to play the villain with so much heart that you pay far more attention when he's on screen.

Goran and Malcolm are the two elements of why this show-- when it worked-- worked. The two of them had SO much charisma, so much put into their characters that no matter what was going on on the screen, you wanted to know what happened to them. You needed to know if they were okay.

They have Susanna Thompson, who aside from being a very compelling actor on her own, was stellar as the Queen Borg on Voyager.

They have Annie Wershching, who manages to play a villain without being absurd or over the top. (She also played the Queen Borg for Picard, but I really, really hate Picard. But I quite like Annie. RIP Annie.)

They had a main woman character who had agency, and a storyline of her own.

They have a creepy clandestine cult trying to destroy the world, that's always fun.

They had Sakina Jaffrey and Paterson Joseph, both of whom are enjoyable to watch.

They had Colman Domingo as a guest star playing Bass Reeves-- just before he exploded and became known to the world. As expected, he was brilliant every moment.

Sean Maguire guest starred in an episode, he was great as well. Karen David played a young Denise Christopher with excellence.

They didn't let Matt Frewer do an accent, so he was fine.

They have a time machine where they can go anywhere in time. How can you go wrong with this premise?

They have writers from Mad Men and The Walking Dead.

They have stories where they can focus on women, People of Colour and queer people who have all been forgotten in history. This is the key point on why the show should have worked-- the hidden histories.

This all could have worked. This should have worked. This fucking show SHOULD HAVE WORKED.

If they hadn't had a forced love story between the main woman character and the horrible, stupid, possessive toxic masculinity wrapped up in insecurity soldier boy.

Everything else about this stupid show worked. But they spent so much time focussing on a love story between the two most boring, most under-developed, worst characters on the show that they ruined it.

I don't know if it was Matt Lanter's acting, if it was the writing, the directing, I don't know.

What I do know is that every time Rufus, Jiya, Flynn, Denise, Connor and Emma were on the screen, I cared what happened. When Lucy was on the screen by herself, I cared less, but it was fine. When Lucy and Wyatt were on the screen, I zoned out. I came on Tumblr, I checked my emails, I replied to texts from friends. I could not care even a second every time they were on screen. When just Soldier Boy was on, I started to doze.

This show is SO frustrating. SO much of it worked. But not the bits they were so focussed on showing.

This show makes me mad sometimes. I'm mad at the lost opportunities, I'm mad for the moments that worked well and were never unpacked. I'm mad for all the episodes we could have had highlighting women, People of Colour and queer people forgotten through history. I'm mad that to get to all the great moments with Flynn, Rufus, Jiya, Denise, Connor and Emma, I have to sit through SO much crap with Lucy and Soldier Boy.

This show is like two different shows-- an interesting one with lots of great characters in interesting situations, and a horrible soap opera with the dumbest, most selfish, most bland white people ever that I wish would just die.

And then two minutes later, Rufus or Flynn is on scene and I care again.

This show makes me mad.

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frostyreturns · 1 year

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Frosty Ruins The Neighborhood

One of the benefits from unplugging from most pop culture is hearing about all the dumb shit people are watching that I've never seen. Eventually you get to a point where a show you've never even heard of has five seasons by the time it reaches your awareness. Every new show gets one of two reactions from me "no I haven't seen it" or "what the hell is that?" This show falls into the latter category.

Sometimes it's interesting though to dive into the middle of a show that's totally escaped your notice. I've not experienced an ounce of the shows marketting, I've not seen so much as a second of a commercial for it, I've not seen a clip of it online and I have not even come across a gif or image set of it on social media. This means my impression of it is completely my own.

My first impression is that it's going to be a terrible sitcom. Sitcoms can be bad in a good way and there are some sitcoms that are bad that I'll still enjoy as something mindless you put on in the background while I do other shit. But then there are bad sitcoms that hurt to watch. Right off the bat I notice two actors from different tv comedies, one is the blonde chick from two broke girls…which is a bad sign because that show was fucking terrible. However I also notice the extremely jewish gay but not really gay dude from New Girl which was the good kind of bad tv comedy.

A minute into the show I think I understand the premise of the show I think it's a reaction to percieved tokenism. I think they wanted to make a black show with token white people. It's the racial equivalent of the female ghostbusters, ignore all the positive black representation on tv and get mad about a fake problem and solve it by doing the thing you accuse others of doing. No wonder they picked the bland basic white chick from 2 broke girls and the persnickety magoo dude from new girl.

And like female ghostbusters it's full of horseshit libtard socjus political propaganda pretending that it's funny and entertaining. It delves very quickly into complete and utter cringe with lines like "set your alarm it's time for me to get woke." And of course like any show that follows this formula the men are also all dumb or jerks or dumb jerks.

The point of the episode I'm reviewing seems to be to create a strawman justification of regressive racial politics being pushed onto kids. They act like all they're doing is teaching kids about history and telling the truth…and any resitance to racial politics in schools is just trying to deny history…when in the real world these "diversity" classes are full of lies hatred and insane cultist marxist ideas designed to breed social conflict and societal upheaval.

The characters say things like "I just think its important for kids to get the whole picture." when what they meant to say was "I just want to ignore all of human history except for what a small number of people of a certain group did at a certain point in one specific place so I can paint one race as being victims and another as being perpetrators so that the murderous pedophiles who wrote this curriculum can turn people of different races against each other so none of us notice that it's always just the government committing atrocities and trying to rule all of us like tyrants."

For some reason I don't think teaching kids that slavery means 'that time when white people enslaved black people' is "giving them the whole picture." Treating slavery like it's this thing that happened once in American history rather than something that every group of people has engaged in and been victim to is retarded and evil. Evil because it's being done specifically for the racist and malevolent purpose of demonizing white people. Nevermind that the word slavery is named after slavic (white people) because of how those people were viewed. The retards who wrote this will say things like "it wasn't that long ago" to try to place collective blame on white people but will ignore slavery happening today…currently in Africa.

The other angle the propaganda here takes is one not everyone might notice. They pretend these kind of divisive racial politics is a new thing…it's a new curriculum that they are fighting to add and that most except a few are in favour of. In reality they've been teaching this shit virtually forever and almost everyone hates it. It's just gotten progressively worse and boomers and gen x have been mostly unaware of how batshit insane the stuff being taught to their kids in public schools is. It's insane as someone who's been out of the system for a long time watching tv shows like this pretend like this is a new thing being introduced when I had to listen to it daily. They don't want anyone to make the connection between how retarded people have become and the things they've been teaching. By pretending it's new they can act like the consequences are an unknown but we've been seeing the consequences for a long time and they're very real…and they're fucking intentional.

The other thing about jumping into a comedy like this in the middle is you really notice whenever it lacks comedy. Shows like this rely on character gimmicks and self referencing to generate the appearance of funny. I keep hearing the laugh track going…and genuinely have no idea why what was said was supposed to be a joke. The dialogue is stilted unnatural, the acting is terrible, the characters are wooden and pointless and everything just seems so empty and soulless. I'm really starting to believe that conspiracy about everything being written by AI. Sitcoms have always kind of been like that…but there's just something so alien about the way this show is put together. Like it was written by someone who's watched a lot of tv but has never talked to a person before. I think every character in the show would fail a turing test.

This hurt to watch, everybody who was involved in it should be ashamed and embarassed. If you like this show you have a cultural gutter palate. I refuse to believe that anyone watches this earnestly. I will believe that there are men who enjoy getting kicked in the balls, that makes more sense to me than there being a single viewer for this show. Once again I'm proved right that you should never watch anything made after 2017 if you want to have a good time.

F- late stage cancer

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cursedcomics · 1 year

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Dream Job writing the Legion of Super Heroes pt. 9

Lets talk race.

I wrote a lot about it and then realized the last thing people want to actively talk about today is race, even if what I had written was kind of celebratory of the history of the legion. (Did you realize that if DC editorial hadn’t stopped Jim Shooter from making Ferro Lad black, he would have appeared the same month as Marvel’s ground breaking Black Panther? Did you know Tyroc was a full member of the Legion a year before Black Lightning made it to the stands -- a character pushed for the JLA and denied full membership in the 1970′s by DC editorial?)

As a mixed guy who spent my youth being studied by adults trying to figure out my racial background to determine my trustworthiness, who saw others look disapprovingly at my white father and black mother, I always had an appreciation for the fact the the legion’s only mixed racial character, Val Armorr, the Karate Kid, was competent bordering on being kind of a badass on the team. No one ever questioned whether he belonged and his race was never an issue.

In a future where humanity had moved towards being their best selves, a mixed marriage was... just a two people in love.

And a mixed character was ... just a character.

It was a soothing thing about the Legion that I truly appreciate and I think a lot of fans did as well. I think that plays a roll in why Legion fans are frankly quite socially progressive.

But that’s still a lot about race so let me sum it up and move on.

Every Legion fan I have ever heard from wants more racial representation involved in the Legion.

Brian Bendis gave them more racial representation.

And the fans hated it because it cost them their favorites who were replaced with cyphers.

Simple as that.

What I am offering as a new timeline would not cost you your favorites.

Minority legionnaires Computo, Kid Quantum I, and Dragonwing would be merged into this timeline at earlier intervals. XS and Kid Quantum II from the reboot timeline would be merged in as well. (I’ve opted out of including some other non-white Legionnaires from other timelines like Catspaw because, frankly, I find her bland and uninspired as is and I very much like the “distinct power” guideline in general. I’d rather include her as a random character in the Legion Universe. More on this later.)

I would also mix in a few new Legionnaires in inobtrusive ways to give a more racially balanced Legion to the next writer.

But race in the 31st century should not be depicted as we experience race today. With things like the eras of Kamandi and OMAC happening, there should not only be more “actual” race representation, there should also be representatives of other earth species on the legion.

“MightyGodKing” thinks there should be a descendent of Gorilla City on the team. I agree. I’d love to collaborate and introduce his creation.

And DC’s earth is not just home to gorillas. Both Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel comics in the 1940′s were filled with lost civilizations and animal men living on earth. As fans of both of those titles in those eras, I also have plans for a walrus man Legionnaire and would love to introduce a recurring crocodile man character.

Being “an earthling” should be a pretty wide range of biology in the 31st Century and that should allow some interesting stories that allow writers if so inclined to tackle the issue of race on earth without being painfully preachy.

Opening that can of worms opens the door to all kinds of ideas....

If you are a racist like Earthman who hates Superman for being a closet alien, how do you feel about smart gorillas, tiger men, or Walrus Men?

Are they OK as earthlings because they are larger groups in society so it is in your best interests to include them with the majorities as you demagog against foreign born aliens?

How racist are THOSE groups against space aliens?

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catatonicreality · 2 years

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I'd like to talk about this Netflix original directed by Tim Burton.

My history with Tim Burton projects is checkered at best and I flat out can't stand the pretentiousness of his newer work, at worst. I applaud his earlier work for being out of the box at the time, but the man did nothing to develop his style since. This could be said about most directors who find a niche and fill it ad nauseam. It's predictable and worn out and I don't see it fitting in with gen Z, but I might be wrong.

Here are my arguments.

The series is written by 2 men of which one is for sure cis het. These two adapted a piece of media/culture from another white guy and is all directed by another white cis het guy. Saving grace if there's one is that it's produced by a woman although the influence is not seen or felt at all. The two guys who're responsible for some of the very bland and unimaginative dialogs are also the showrunners. It's...tired.

The main characters are well established so there's no need to reinvent the wheel yet the dynamic between pretty much all characters is very detached, plastic and devoid of good acting. I don't blame the actors since they had nowhere to go with such crap script. Why is the script crap? Because yet again two white grown men are giving voices to teenagers in the 21st century. The dialogues suggest that the story is set in today's time (mentions of TikTok and other social media) which very much shows the age of the writers. I'm an older millennial and I honestly wouldn't be so bold and arrogant to write in the voice of today's teenagers; from very specific slang and taste for things, I feel like I might have been born in the 1884. when trying to keep up. That's why you don't keep up, instead you either hire or completely give over the project to the generation you're trying to portray. It looks, sounds and feels like raggedy old white men, it's uncomfortable and feels tired, ya know like (say it with me) old white men wrote it.

Then there's the lousy and clumsy attempt at queer baiting. These attempts are very on the nose and very, again cis white men's understanding of queer youth today. I must reiterate, I don't claim to know what queer youth of today is but I was cringing the whole time.

Catherine Zeta Jones is not Morticia. She's an evil stepmom from another franchise but she's not Morticia. Again, failure to understand the original character's voice. Everyone else is doing an ok job all things considered.

There are just way too many characters and plotlines for an introductory season. It's crowded and annoying. There's the three pilgrim anti-freak antagonists, the mayor, the policeman, the policeman's son who has a thing from the main protagonist, another guy who has a thing for the main protagonist, the roommate, roommate's love interest, a guy who has a thing for the roommate, another guy who has a thing for roommate, the "nemesis" of the main protagonist, the principal, the psychiatrist, the principal of the school... All these characters have their own story lines interspersed throughout the whole thing. It never ends and it's exhausting. It's a mess.

In some episodes there are unnecessary interactions and sequences that absolutely do nothing for the plot because they're never revisited and when a conflict happens it's forgotten until the characters are in the same scene again and then the conflict is resolved with the "oh no worries" method. Not like most of these characters can and probably do run into each other on a daily basis. This kind of disjointed plot is expected when studios meddle into the work but Netflix has produced very questionable shite (see Dave Chappelle's and Ricky Gervaise's stand-ups) so I doubt that the incoherent plotlines comes because Netflix had ideas on the direction of the story.

There so much more but I've already said enough. I wanted to like it but it's not funny, it's not very political, it has no discernible agenda...it has no heart. I have no idea what the point of this show is other than to make money.

TLDR, it's incoherent and unfunny, lacks heart.

P.S. One last thing, even visually it's boring and unimaginative. That's it. Goodbye.

#wednesday addams #wednesday netflix #Netflix #the addams family

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theartisticcrow · 7 days

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Fuck it, I'm making a post about this because I've never before have I watched such a wild fucking film as the 2016 BBC film A Midsummer Night's Dream. So in my English class, we've been discussing the works of William Shakespeare a bit, more specifically, William Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. For those who don't know what it's about here's a rough explanation of the plot: It takes place in Athens in the Elizabethan era. It revolves around the marriage of Theseus (the Duke of Athens) and Hippolyta (Queen of the Amazon) and several subplots that are more or less connected to said marriage. Firstly, there are the four Athenians that run away to the woods (a pair of couples: Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius). Then there are the Mechanicals, a group of guys (Quince, Bottom, Flute, Starveling, Snout, and Snug) who are soon meant to be performing a (really bad) play for the royals. They go off into the previously mentioned woods to rehearse. And finally there is Oberon and Titania, the King and Queen of the Faeries, who are arguing about who should get to keep this little Indian boy (indian as in india, not first nations).

So here's the big plot points: Bottom get's turned into a donkey and Titania is magicked into falling in love with him by Oberon. Helena and Demetrius enter the stage then, with Helena saying she could love Demetrius better than Hermia is able to love him and Oberon orders the faerie known as Puck to take the same flower juice used on Titania and spread some of it on the eyes of the "Athenian man." But remember that other Athenian couple I mentioned earlier? Well Puck makes a mistake and puts the flower juice on the eyes of Lysander, not Demetrius. Basically, Lysander falls in love with Helena and later both men are magicked into falling in love with Helena (who thinks they are mocking her). Stuff happens, later they all wake up in a field or something and are found by Theseus and some other people who were all on a morning hunt. Oberon also undoes the thing that he did to Titania and Bottom turns back to normal. Then the wedding happens and the Mechanicals, now back together, perform the worst play imaginable for these royals and somehow make it out alive. And that's about it, as far as I'm concerned.

Still here? Cool. So after we watched the play, we talked about it a bit then we were told we were going to do a comparison of two films based on the play. This is where things start to get interesting.

First film we watched was from 1999 and I didn't care for. Boring, sappy, romantic with an entirely white cast and bland characters. It took place more in the 1800s it seemed (it didn't even take place in Athens) and the women in it were often portrayed as sort of dumb and helpless. I didn't like it, I feel asleep for fifteen minutes while it was playing. After we finished it, we talked about it and no one really had anything positive to say.

And then we started to watch the second film... My english teacher told us before hand that it was weird and so I went into it expecting it be a little weird and maybe confusing, however I greatly underestimated the weirdness of it. So we start watching it and it's sort of the opening credits and almost instantly*BAM*

SURPRISE NAZIS!

Yep, off to a great start already. Everyone in the room was very taken off guard by this and I wasn't able to stop thinking about it for the rest of that class. So in this film, Theseus is basically Hitler now and Athens in under this nazi dictatorship. And though it's not actually a swastika they're wearing, it is most certainly meant to looked like it. But it doesn't stop there. So it's the opening of the film, there are fucking nazis already and quickly we are introduced to Hippolyta. However, Hippolyta in this film, much like Theseus, does not fit into the usual depictions of the character. This is the Hippolyta we are introduced to:

Hippolyta is no fair lady, she is a hostage, and presumably a dangerous one at that.

Continuing on, let's talk about a few other changes made. Firstly, in A Midsummer Night's Dream the Mechanicals are traditionally depicted as being all men. However the 2016 film actually depicts Quince (the sort of leader of the Mechanicals) as being a woman. And this is never made to be any kind if joke. If anything, it shows her as holding certain power and knowing how to use it. Secondly, the Mechanicals lives are actually on the line if they mess up. Theseus will and does intend to kill them if he dislikes the performance. Thirdly, I really like how they depicted Titania in this version. She is no helpless faerie queen in this film, she is depicted much more as this powerful, savage, warrior queen of the Faeries. In fact, all the faeries are depicted as these strong warriors and I quite like that version of them (especially over the 1999 version).

Oh and also for a moment, Demetrius is gay for (notorious Harry Potter lookalike) Lysander.

Oh yeah, and while Titania is magicked into falling in love with Bottom, she's actually a LESBIAN AND SO IS HIPPOLYTA (who is a faerie, not a human in this version) AND YES, THEY KISS.

Oh also there's gay nazis, which really doesn't seem like two things that should mix, yet here we stand.

And then Theseus (basically Hitler) drops dead of a heart attack in some random hallway while the lesbian faeries watch him just fucking die.

All in all, weird film, I was not disappointed. Super camp and I love it. You had no idea what to expect and 10/10, it was so funny to me and way more entertaining that the 1999 film.

#a midsummer night's dream #shakespeare #william shakespeare #a midsummer night's dream 2016 #queer film #queer fiction #queer characters #lesbian faeries #lesbian #queer #lgbtq+#lgbtqia #lgbtq representation #lgbtqia+#i can't believe there were gay nazis #2016 was one hell of a year

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terras-diary · 11 months

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game review - final fantasy xvi

some context: the only thing i knew about this game was it had a medieval setting. literally did not bother to look up anything about it, i kind of got the feeling there wasn’t much out there to begin with.

the story: the world and lore of ff16 is interesting. the idea that the crystals were bad and causing environmental problems, even though in the short term they helped society so much, you could tell it was a comparison to our world. similar to the whole environmental overlords and their private pinkerton army which was final fantasy 7. but how the story and game progression actually played out? well that’s kind of a different story.

it was much longer than it needed to be. after each story mission you always had to backtrack to our hideout, just to watch a cutscene to lead to another story mission. the plot never really picked up, it was always stilted and held back by the fact you never felt like you did much. you could all but guarantee that whatever you did would be met with, ‘let’s go back to the hideout.’ i just always got the feeling of we were in the first fetch-quest part of the story before it was suppose to pick up, but it just never did.

it would have flowed so much better if you could just cut out the middle man hideaway cutscenes, like just keep going!! why do we keep traveling halfway across the globe just to turn back!! keep moving forward!!!

the characters: the two main characters (i contest jill being a main character, even if the ffwiki says otherwise, btw) were so bland. clive was just some guy, and jill was just there. pretty much every other characters whether good, bad, or neutral outshined these two wet blankets. i will admit they had their moments. for jill in particular when she killed that priest. this isn’t a dig on the voice acting, i actually thought it was okay, but just how those two are written... ugh....

clive was just noctis if he wasn’t a twink and didn’t have his iphone. he had black hair, was a prince, had a dog companion, and had antagonist induced headaches.

don’t even get me started on their ‘romance’. good lord. they were just together because clive was a man and jill was a woman. remember how i said i knew nothing about this game? yeah for like the first four hours of this game i thought they were siblings. it didn’t help they looked exactly the same. (on that note, i thought benedicta was anabella pretty much until her history with cid came to light.)

speaking of anabella, literally what was her problem. she is the most cartoonishly evil villain i have ever seen in a piece of media that wants to be taken seriously and have a dark/gritty vibe to it. genuinely, why was she like that. i wanted her and benedikta to play a larger part but they never really did. i find the women of this game were severely undermined larger parts which i think they could have fulfilled. (the misogyny......)

another thing about jill, though: she is practically written out of the story after having sex with clive and giving him shiva!!!! what the fuck! she was practically demoted to a npc. and there was a sidequest to cheer her up because even the writers knew they threw her to the wayside after putting out! in the above paragraph i wrote the misogyny halfly joking but the more i think about it i am very serious.

ultima, oh ultima. you had buttholes for eyes and gaping holes for ears. when he was a mysterious character, i enjoyed the mystique, but after a while it just kind of wore off. the mystique i am interested in is leviathan the lost. that was a cool concept, i was wondering why some more common final fantasy summons did not make the cut. guess they are just lost eikons.

my favorite character: barnabas, the mega dilf. he was hot as fuck, i cannot tell a lie. his accent was hot as shit too. i love crazy men. and that other white haired motherfucker was his got damn horse.

the battling: like it was okay, half the time i pressed R1 to defend it never worked. i guess i just couldn’t time it right. it was still pretty easy though. i played on the action focused version and the only time i really got game over were during the eikon fights and when i tried my hand at the s rank hunts.

the eikon fights, wow. some of the highest highs and lowest lows of this game. the beginning fights were pretty interesting, all the good things about them culminated in the hugo kupka fight. that was the best fight of this game, full stop. it was somehow cinematicly choreographed while still having some stakes that required you to actually try to beat it. i’ve never had more fun in a modern game’s fight than this battle. the subsequent bahamut and odin fight, well.... uhh..... they were definitely battles.

this is kind of fits in the under characterization as well but, there is no dialogue when you are on the field between clive and any of the npc party members. it is absolute silence, i forgot who was in my party half the time because they were mute.

side quests: i did all the side quests that popped up and all the hunts bar the s ranks (because i thought i may be under leveled.) there were a lot. it was definitely a chore. a lot of characterization for secondary characters were found in the side quests that i thought should have made it to the main scenario, but whatever. by the end i was sick and tired of it, such a fucking slog.

other odds and ends: i liked walking around the map and finding all the little places, that felt rewarding. but the treasures you would find were absolutely useless. you’d get an abundance of crafting materials, yet there were so few recipes you’d learn (which most were single use creations i.e. armor and weapons) that you were left with an overabundance of useless shit. maybe it picks up in the post game? i haven’t really played the postgame much, maybe it changes. at least for the main scenario, completely and utterly useless.

overall: well, it wasn’t the worst final fantasy (8 and 12, i am looking at you two.) all modern games pale in comparison to their predecessors of the 1990s and 2000s. i will always believe this i think. ff16 is definitely better than other modern games i’ve played. but the hay day of the final fantasy franchise where a game could be enjoyed by anyone while also not really having any glaring problems is over. the final objectively great final fantasy was 10. i enjoyed 13 and 15, but they just aren't as good. the same can be said for final fantasy 16. it was alright.

ok, i think that’s all i have to say right now. maybe i’ll think of more later.

#game review

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jaskicr · 3 years

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let’s talk about fandom racism

i have seen so many people say that they don’t like yennefer, or they don’t vibe with her, or she isn’t compelling, or she is irrelevant to their fics/art/creations...

yes. everyone is allowed to like and dislike characters. everyone is allowed to have their preferences. and i’m not disputing that. but when people brush yennefer off, justifying it some of the reasons above or other reasons they come up with, i question whether there’s something rather dodgy behind this, especially when those very same people really, really stan white male characters (geralt, jaskier, the wolves etc)

some people are going to come at me, ‘why are you making everything about race??!??’ or accuse me of calling them racist, when they aren’t racist, how dare i say stuff like that. but it’s interesting, isn’t it? the way fans justify their dislike or their dismissal of female characters of colour with excuses like they’re not ‘compelling’ or they’re ‘problematic’ - when their fave white dudes are arguably just as bland and problematic, but those fans continue stanning their faves anyway.

it’s important, i think, for many fans to take a step back and evaluate their preferences. ‘fandom is for fun,’ you might say. ‘why do i need a reason to like a certain character? can’t i just like them because i do!’

you can! what i want people to evaluate, though, is how their preferences have been shaped by unconscious bias. unconscious bias is created as people grow up, shaped by people around them, shaped by the structure of society - and in society, white-dominated ones in particular, racism is embedded deep within, and it influences the way many people perceive and treat media, the way they interact within fandoms.

that is what i want people to examine and evaluate. you might reject it - because no one wants to be told that they’re racist, that they have unconscious prejudices that they don’t even notice. everyone wants to think that they’re open-minded, that they’re inclusive, that they are completely accepting of every minority group ever - when in fact, the way they’ve been brought up, the way society has influenced them, has created biases within them that shapes their preferences and perception.

i’m not saying people are being intentionally malicious and sidelining characters of colour like yennefer on purpose. i’m saying that there are unconscious prejudices that influence their views in a way that they likely aren’t aware of, leading to them dismissing characters of colour, or demonising them, or magnifying the flaws that a character of colour has while excusing a white character (usually a white man) for similar flaws.

this can very clearly be seen in how so many fandoms have white male characters as the most popular amongst fans, with many white mlm ships being the centre of those fandoms. meanwhile, people of colour, whether or not they have a compelling or interesting story arc, are relegated to the side, either ignored or used as a facilitator to help the two white men get together, or acting as a side character who has no life outside their connection to the white man.

sound familiar, fandoms?

i’m not telling you that you have to like characters of colour. i’m not saying that if you don’t like yennefer, you’re racist. i can’t make you like them, and it would be wrong of me to make you. but i am imploring that you examine and evaluate your preferences, and see if you have any unconscious prejudices and biases that you might not have noticed before, and become aware of them and how your prejudices might affect the way you treat others, the way you engage with fandom content.

then maybe - maybe, poc like me won’t feel so unwelcome in fandom. we all recognise that representation is important, and the fact that characters of colour are so often pushed aside in fandom tells us that you want to push people like us aside. it tells us that, because of your internal biases, you prefer white men over us, and for me? it makes me feel unwelcome, sometimes, the way i see characters like yennefer and triss and fringilla ignored or dismissed in favour of geralt and jaskier and the wolves.

and i get that people have preferences! i too enjoy writing and reading about geralt and jaskier. but sometimes i bring up yennefer or triss or fringilla and i simply get talked over - this really doesn’t make me feel welcome, and though i can’t speak for every poc in this fandom, i can imagine that at least a few of us feel the same way.

geraskier is still one of my favourite ships, but i’ve noticed that i tend to gravitate towards white mlm ships, and i wonder - what does that say about me and my internalised prejudices? what can i do to improve and evaluate myself?

not liking yennefer or other characters of colour doesn’t automatically make you racist. you don’t have to like them in order to not be racist. i’m merely asking that you be conscientious of your preferences, and be mindful of how you engage with fandom especially regarding characters of colour.

consider whether you hold characters of colour to a different standard than a white character - if a character of colour were white, would you dismiss them in the same way? would you demonise them for their flaws?

consider how you write and interpret characters of colour. do you fall into harmful stereotypes? do you use characters of colour to uplift white characters, and do characters of colour only have significance in relation to white characters?

consider how you treat fans of colour. do you listen to us when we express our concerns, or do you talk over us and try to speak for us, rather than amplifying our voices? consider your white privilege, because there are parts of fandom that impact on real life.

there is so much more i want to talk about, so much more i could talk about in this post (going into women of colour specifically), but the post would become far, far too long, and i’ve answered quite a few asks regarding this issue, so do check them out if you’re interested in knowing more about my take on different issues regarding fandom racism.

(and here’s an ask where i link several posts about fandom racism in the witcher fandom, and in fandom in general)

feel free to send me asks or dm me about this! this is just my take on things and i’m speaking from my limited experience, so i might not be the best equipped to talk about this. i’m open to discussion, i’m still learning and developing my views on this, so please do talk to me if you find an issue with what i’m talking about or want clarification on anything<3

#fandom racism #racism #the witcher #yennefer of vengerberg #yennefer #okay to reblog

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volterran-wine · 2 years

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everyone i’ve heard from has different takes but i’m curious, what are your opinions on the movie casting of the volturi?

Good morning dear, and thank you for your question! I do have quite fond memories of going to the movies, Volterran-Wine was the absolute right age to get into them. That being said, I do have my criticisms of them as a grown adult. But for now, on to The Volturi!

The thing with the Saga is that it is Bella and Edwards story, that is the main focal point. No matter how much potential The Volturi had they were side characters, and when you adapt books into movies a lot of things end up on the cutting floor. In the end they are just simple bad guys that they needed at the end of the story to round off everything. I wish they put some more effort into describing who they are and showing that they aren't just these evil bad guys, because they really aren't.

I know that Stephenie Meyer had strong opinions about casting, and allegedly that's why a lot of the cast is white-washed. This is very obvious to me when it comes to The Volturi. Because you cannot tell me that Aro, Caius and Marcus are these three terribly white looking men when they are from the times of Mycenaean Greece. Another example; Demetri and Felix are described as having olive skin and black hair... we don't see that in the movies. They had the opportunity to do some gorgeous Mediterranean casting for these characters, but they didn't.

The Volturi is a fascinating concept that Stephenie created, and it is a shame that they were handled the way they were. The only really good thing from the movies is that throne room in New Moon, that was very nicely done. I do not want to talk about wardrobe and hair + makeup.

Below the Read More I will discuss the specific characters and their actors/actresses.

Aro Michael Sheen was the only Volturi member who got a decent amount of direction and motivation in order to play his role. Because of that he had the most developed character. Do I think it was accurate to the books? No, but adaptations rarely are. Michael Sheen is not MY Aro, but he is A Aro. Therefore I will give him 10/10 for a memorable performance that he put his everything into. That Laugh? Iconic.

Caius I described in detail how I feel about Jamie Campbell Bower as Caius in this post, as well as defending why I would cast him again under different cirstumstances. The poor guy's only motivation on set seemed to be 'Caius angry', and that's not enough to work off of. I wish he got better direction, Marcus and Aro are miles ahead. 4/10 simply because of JCB's voice alone and he seems like a cool guy.

Marcus Christopher Heyerdahl had the right motivation because he was very invested in giving Marcus this rich inner life. He really had the right idea, especially because he had the story about Didyme in his mind while he played character. Sadly, that doesn't come across on the screen because he doesn't get a lot of focus. He just seems downtrodden with tiny glimpses of something special. Bonus point because he is of Norwegian decent and speaks my language, because I am biased. 7/10

Jane & Alec Now, these two are quite interesting. Because I fully understand why they casted the twins the way they did. If they had picked someone who was say 11-13 years old, they would have aged too much by the end of the franchise to maintain the illusion of vampirism. Not that they cared about that much in general, but with the twins it would have been so obvious. It makes sense that they chose these two because they were between the ages of 15/16 and 18/19 during production, it is visible but not glaringly obvious. I like Dakota Fanning, she was a talented child actress but like everyone else she had little to use as a motivation and came across as very stoic and bland. Cameron Bright I also saw in a movie when he was younger, and he did just fine; but it all goes back to not getting enough screen time to develop anything. The twins did give off some creepy vibes from time to time so... 6/10.

Demetri Charlie Bewley like everyone else had little to work with, but he did try to give Demetri these little quirks. I do appreciate that, and I think in some of the scenes he does give Demetri hints of that sass and flare I think is canon. Again, seems like a chill dude who tried his very best at making something out of the character. So I'll give him a 5/10 for the little spice he brought and an honest try.

Felix Sweet Daniel Cudmore had nothing to base Felix's protrayal on besides being tall and violent. I know him and Charlie Bewley made up their own little story about how Felix and Demetri were there before The Twins and they are kinda jealous, but that doesn't check with Canon at all, so... he is a handsome delightful man in interviews but the performance is just nothing. 3/10 and I feel bad giving him that because its almost not fair.

#Questions for The Author #Volturi Questionnaire #Cinematic Volturi

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pi-cat000 · 3 years

Text

BNHA: Kakashi dimension hops crossover (2)

Summary: Kakashi gets dumbed into the My Hero Academia universe through random plot devise.

Characters: Kakashi Hatake

Fandoms: My Hero Academia and Naruto

WARNINGS: Mentions of violence/injury

... PREV / NEXT

...

Life in his hospital bed passes slowly while he waits for his chakra to replenish. Always a sluggish process for Kakashi. With nothing to do, nowhere to go and a significant lack of motivation to find either, there is a lot of time to think. Too much time. With what was shaping up to be the fourth great shinobi war, there was no time for reflection or resting. To suddenly have this much downtime thrust upon him is throwing him through a loop. And he doesn’t even have his periodic trips to the memorial as a distraction. If only Sakura could see him now, resting and recuperating like a good injured shinobi.

Doctor Wada, the ever-attentive physician, returns a few more times to ask more questions and offer more reassurances. He seems set on his theory that Kakashi’s yet to be properly identified quirk was the cause of his memory problems. Kakashi runs through a sweet of memory and vision tests. A baseline for later testing when his eye is healed he is told.

“The police have a few questions regarding your situation. With your permission, they would like to conduct an interview,” says Wada on Kakashi’s third day of being officially awake, “Of course, as your doctor, I have the final say in the matter so if you would rather wait just say the word.”

Kakashi gives another bland smile, “Ah, you are too kind.” Police…as in, an authority the dealt with civilian conflict? “I think I’ll answer their questions. Wouldn’t want to stall an investigation.”

He had been wondering when or if he would be investigated. How similar would it be to Kohoha’s internal police force?

“Humph. If you think you’re ready for it.”

He maintains his smile. It was as good an opportunity as any to continue gathering information with the bonus of breaking up the monotony of waiting in a hospital bed for his injuries to heal. Doctor Wada spends the rest of the check-up muttering about pushy police officers and how underappreciated his medical opinion was.

The two men that come to question him are wearing matching uniforms which are very telling of the sort of organisation they belong to. White and dark blue. Not made to camouflage or reinforce. Restrictive seaming around the arms, preventing any extreme movement. Their shoes are sturdy but inflexible with heavy soles. Manurable but not designed for any excessive combat. Not a uniform you would give a force intended to physically subdue threats. Whereas Konoha’s police force was comprised mainly of genin and chunin, these men were closer to civilians in pure physical ability. Ah, but he is beginning to suspect that this was the norm here. The people here were softer in a way that was hard to define.

Kakashi watches them approach, seated upright in his bed, hands resting loose in his lap, aiming it create an impression harmlessness. One good thing to have come from agreeing to this interview was getting his own private hospital room. Now there was no one around to raise an alarm if something went wrong and he was forced to act.

“Good morning,” The older one of the two starts, politely dipping his head, “Kakashi was it?”

“Hmm,” he smiles, “Morning.” There is a pause like they are waiting for him to give his last name. He doesn’t.

“Well,” The man clears his throat, “I am officer Takata Toyokazu, currently in charge of investigating the circumstances surrounding the assault on your person.” An ID card, very similar to Konoha’s own ID cards is presented, “This is my partner. We’re from Hosu’s Central Police and we have a few questions if you don’t mind answering them for us.”

“Ah,” Kakashi eyes the ID, lamenting the fact that his sharingan is covered under a swatch of bandages and thus inaccessible without obvious movement, “I am afraid my memory just isn’t all there. Apologies in advance if my responses are lacking.”

He lets a little humour leak into his tone. It was time to do a little prodding and gauged how this place's ‘police’ conducted their investigations.

“Yes. We were informed about your memory problems.” The two share an obvious glance and there is a definite note of scepticism there. “Nevertheless, any information would be appreciated.”

“Of course.” He easily agrees, shrugging, projecting an air of casual nonchalance.

Takata blinks “Right,” and Kakashi can practically see his brain stalling, “Well, you were found on the corner of First and Eleventh street in Hosu’s Central Business District. Would you say this is accurate?”

Kakashi thinks for an exaggerated moment, “I do remember a lot of people. I think someone called for help?”

“You were picked up in an ambulance yes. Do you remember what happened before that?”

“Hmm, I was attacked…there were a lot of trees.” He nods like he has just delivered a useful bit of intel.

“Trees?” Is the deadpan response.

“You know…tall plants with leaves and a….”

“We know what trees are. So, you were in a place with a lot of trees before you were in Hosu’s business district.”

“Probably.”

“A park maybe? There are a few around Hosu. Do remember anything else. Distinctive landmarks?”

“Ah,” he waits for a beat, “No.”

Kakashi is the subject of a disbelieving squint. “No names. Streets. Nearby locations?”

“Nope. All gone.” He says cheerfully and Takata’s brow twitches into an irritated frown.

“You were admitted with multiple stab wounds. Do you remember how you got them?”

He shrugs, “A knife probably.”

“Well, do you remember anything about who was holding the knife?”

“OH!” The two men startle at this sudden exclamation, “It was a man.”

There are a few seconds of silence. “What did the man look like?”

“I don’t remember that bit.”

This time he gets a very obvious frown. Apparently, realising that the current line of questioning is getting them nowhere, the officer motions to his partner and is handed a large envelope. After some shuffling around, a paper file is produced and flipped upright in Kakashi’s direction. It is a photograph of kunai, shuriken, senbon, razor wire and assortment of other weaponry he carried around on his person. He had wondered what the hospital had done with his stuff.

“These are the weapons found on your person when you were admitted to hospital. All confiscated. It’s illegal to carry these sorts of thrown weapons and knives in Japan.”

He scans the photo with interest. The image has his weaponry all laid out in neat lines.

“Really?” He is not even faking his curiosity this time. No one carried around any weapons at all? That wasn’t just a trend limited to the hospital?

“Yes.” Comes the short response, “what were you using them for.”

“Oh, I don’t remember,” he says gleefully, “How scary.” And gets another round of scowls. After doggedly refusing to give more than vague answers and misdirection, the two increasingly frustrated men prepare to leave.

“If you do remember anything, please call.” A small paper card displaying a string of numbers is presented to him. “You’ll have to come down to the station and give an official statement once the hospital clears you as well so don’t forget. We’ll get in contact if any arrests are made regarding the perpetrator.”

Kakashi knows enough about investigations to recognise that one, the two standing next to his bed were searching for some specific information and had found Kakashi’s responses lacking, and two, they had no idea who Kakashi was and knew even less about how he might have gotten here.

In the end, they just leave. No threats. No mind games. No attempts to arrest or move him to a secure location for further questioning. Nothing. Kakashi follows after the pair, pausing behind his door to listen to the two talk just outside his room. Officer Takata is obviously angry going of his slightly uneven breathing.

“That was a waste of time,” he grumbles.

“Do you think he was lying?”

“Oh, that smiley bastard definitely knows something more than he is letting on. Tch. Memory problems my ass…”

The is a pause before the younger man asks, “still think it’s connected to that Hero Killer sighting from a few days ago?”

“If he is telling the truth then no. The stabbing lines up with the Hero Killer’s MO but the target is all wrong. There is no Kakaski with a ‘sharingan’ quirk listed on the Registry or as any Hero, Sidekick or Hero agency employee. If he did have a run-in with the Hero Killer, it wasn’t targeted. Probably annoyed the guy into stabbing him if anything.”

There is the sound of footsteps as the two men begin to retreat down the hall.

“A dead-end then.”

“Yeah, looks like it.”

“What a shame. I thought for sure, what with the extent of the injuries, that this was a Hero Killer case. Perhaps it was another Villain? Or a vigilante maybe?”

“Who though? Hosu doesn’t have any active Vigilantes or big-name Villains. Not ones who go around stabbing people to that extent. You saw the hospital report. The man was seconds away from bleeding out and that head wound was obviously aimed at disabling his quirk.”

“Tch. Without any leads, we have nothing to go on. And if Kakashi is a Villain or criminal himself, there’s no evidence and nothing we can pin him with other than a fine for carrying banned weaponry.”

The voices grow fainter as the two walk further away from his room. They seemed suspicious but not overly concerned with Kakashi’s lies so it is not a huge surprise that nothing came of the interview. Despite their obvious irritation, their response had been ones of mild annoyance and moderate distrust. If either of them had had a kekkei genkai it hadn’t been used. Perhaps, their abilities weren’t suited to interrogation. Kakashi had been obtuse enough that surely, they would have been tempted if it were a possibility. It does conform to a general trend in which people underestimate his threat level, treating him like a civilian. It was probably for the best.

Kakashi returns to his bed and stares at the paper card with the numbers. Obviously, they expected him to know what to do with it. Something to do with communication. Probably related to the small plastic devices nearly everyone in the building carried and spoke into on occasion. A radio of some sort. He had seen a few with numbers running across them.

From the exchange, he has a few more points to consider and mull over. Villain. Hero. Vigilante. He knows these terms, has heard people in his ward mention them before and knows they are important in some way.

…

Having a new room meant he needed to relearn everyone’s schedules. While doing so, he finally pinpoints why the people here feel so off. They lacked a level of…weariness…vigilance…that was both hard to describe and hard to notice until it wasn’t there anymore. Kakashi eyes the young nurse as she enters his room yawning, fixing her hair up as she walks, talking over her shoulder at someone behind her.

He had always thought the civilians of Kohoha lived free from most trouble. Not completely relaxed but still having a calm enough life. Well, calm when the village wasn’t being invaded. Now, he is revaluating that opinion. When compared with these people, Kohoha civilians were stiff, suspicious, almost paranoid. Konoha’s people had hardiness to them, a useful trait when living in a Hidden-Village. They were especially wearily when it came to interacting with shinobi no matter how banally and harmless the shinobi acted. It was an attitude to be expected when there was a very real chance of deadly injury should the shinobi be unfriendly or unstable. A very real possibility with all the war and ever-present threat of enemy invasion and chakra monster attacks.

Or maybe that was just his own experience as he never really interacted with many civilians and he his reputation wasn’t great.

“Hello Kakashi, how are you this evening,” The nurse greets him with a relaxed grin. He gives his bland smile and watches as she checks the various medical apparatus around Kakashi’s bed.

“I talked to the ward supervisor about your television. It should be working now.”

“Is it?”

Kakashi knows what a television is…they had a few of them in T&I, used for surveillance, and for a few more for monitoring remote training grounds like 44’s Forest of Death.

“Here is the remote. There are quite a lot of channels so now you’ll have something to keep you entertained.” He stares at the metallic rectangle object. He thinks that there might be a cultural difference between his understanding of a television and the nurse’s because watching an interrogation was never something he found particularly entertaining.

“Maybe it will help jog your memory as well.” The nurse gives him an encouraging smile before returning to her work.

Kakashi examines the object, bemused, “Ah, thank you Ms.”

“My name is Iori Ie I handle this ward on weekday evenings. I’ll be happy to answer any other questions if you have any. Anything to make this transition process easier.” She is sincere in her next assurance, “Just you wait, by the time your injuries are healed, we’ll have you right back up to speed.”

Television is…interesting and somewhat baffling. It’s not that Kakashi hasn’t seen examples of this sort of technology before now, it is just the availability and use he finds strange. Whereas a sensible village might hoard any new technology of its own use, here it is distributed and shared without limit. There was one of these things in every patent’s room! The same went for the information it communicated. Information so undervalued there was almost too much of it. Kakashi gives up trying to make sense of anything a few days into gaining access to the television and its hundreds of ‘channels,’ pumping out a constant stream of information. Some of it was obviously fictional, movies, entertainment, but most of the time it was hard to tell if what he was looking at was staged or if he was misreading a cultural difference. There were ‘channels’ devoted to daily status updates, delivering ‘news’ on everything from the weather, local politics, villain attacks, general crime and everything in between.

One thing he does confirm is that he is nowhere near any hidden villages or even on the continent, maybe not even in the correct world. This place was separate. This village or city as it was called, consisted of millions in a country of billions. There were more people in ‘Hosu’ than there were in the whole Fire Country. A logistics nightmare for sure. No wonder security was so lax around the hospital. Kakashi shakes his head and ends up switching off the television. Never would he have thought that having too much intel could be a bad thing.

“Ms Iori how would I go about getting something to read,” he asks the next day. She seems to be genuinely happy about his sudden sudden request. Kakashi hasn’t spoken or interacted much since waking, to busy trying to gauge whether the people surrounding him were threats.

He ends up with a pile of old manga volumes detailing the heroic adventures of some up and coming Hero protagonist and a stack of thin ‘magazines’ belonging to the nurse’s grown up son. The magazines are full of Hero analysis, speculation, and rumour like some sort of super detailed self-defeating bingo-book. He just…doesn’t understand why anyone would let this sort of information circulate.

At least now he has a better idea about what a Hero and Villain was. A Hero was this word’s shinobi equivalent- if shinobi went out of their way to draw attention to themselves- acting more like a police force in that they managed threats to civilians instead of taking commissions and repelling external threats. Actually, they were nothing like Shinobi apart from their use of blood line abilities in combat. A Villain was like a missing-nin, hiding among the ridiculously large civilian population…sort of…

He needs to start working on a way home because he definitely doesn't understand this world.

...

NOTE: When Kakashi discovers the internet his brain will explode.

PREV / NEXT

#bnha #naruto #my hero academia #boku no academia #hero killer arc #CrossOver #dimension travel AU #hatake kakashi #fanfiction #crossover fic #kakashi headcanons #culture shock

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innuendostudios · 3 years

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Thoughts on: Criterion's Neo-Noir Collection

I have written up all 26 films* in the Criterion Channel's Neo-Noir Collection.

Legend: rw - rewatch; a movie I had seen before going through the collection dnrw - did not rewatch; if a movie met two criteria (a. I had seen it within the last 18 months, b. I actively dislike it) I wrote it up from memory.

* in September, Brick leaves the Criterion Channel and is replaced in the collection with Michael Mann's Thief. May add it to the list when that happens.

Note: These are very "what was on my mind after watching." No effort has been made to avoid spoilers, nor to make the plot clear for anyone who hasn't seen the movies in question. Decide for yourself if that's interesting to you.

Cotton Comes to Harlem I feel utterly unequipped to asses this movie. This and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song the following year are regularly cited as the progenitors of the blaxploitation genre. (This is arguably unfair, since both were made by Black men and dealt much more substantively with race than the white-directed films that followed them.) Its heroes are a couple of Black cops who are treated with suspicion both by their white colleagues and by the Black community they're meant to police. I'm not 100% clear on whether they're the good guys? I mean, I think they are. But the community's suspicion of them seems, I dunno... well-founded? They are working for The Man. And there's interesting discussion to the had there - is the the problem that the law is carried out by racists, or is the law itself racist? Can Black cops make anything better? But it feels like the film stacks the deck in Gravedigger and Coffin Ed's favor; the local Black church is run by a conman, the Back-to-Africa movement is, itself, a con, and the local Black Power movement is treated as an obstacle. Black cops really are the only force for justice here. Movie portrays Harlem itself as a warm, thriving, cultured community, but the people that make up that community are disloyal and easily fooled. Felt, to me, like the message was "just because they're cops doesn't mean they don't have Black soul," which, nowadays, we would call copaganda. But, then, do I know what I'm talking about? Do I know how much this played into or off of or against stereotypes from 1970? Was this a radical departure I don't have the context to appreciate? Is there substance I'm too white and too many decades removed to pick up on? Am I wildly overthinking this? I dunno. Seems like everyone involved was having a lot of fun, at least. That bit is contagious.

Across 110th Street And here's the other side of the "race film" equation. Another movie set in Harlem with a Black cop pulled between the police, the criminals, and the public, but this time the film is made by white people. I like it both more and less. Pro: this time the difficult position of Black cop who's treated with suspicion by both white cops and Black Harlemites is interrogated. Con: the Black cop has basically no personality other than "honest cop." Pro: the racism of the police force is explicit and systemic, as opposed to comically ineffectual. Con: the movie is shaped around a racist white cop who beats the shit out of Black people but slowly forms a bond with his Black partner. Pro: the Black criminal at the heart of the movie talks openly about how the white world has stacked the deck against him, and he's soulful and relateable. Con: so of course he dies in the end, because the only way privileged people know to sympathetize with minorities is to make them tragic (see also: The Boys in the Band, Philadelphia, and Brokeback Mountain for gay men). Additional con: this time Harlem is portrayed as a hellhole. Barely any of the community is even seen. At least the shot at the end, where the criminal realizes he's going to die and throws the bag of money off a roof and into a playground so the Black kids can pick it up before the cops reclaim it was powerful. But overall... yech. Cotton Comes to Harlem felt like it wasn't for me; this feels like it was 100% for me and I respect it less for that.

The Long Goodbye (rw) The shaggiest dog. Like much Altman, more compelling than good, but very compelling. Raymond Chandler's story is now set in the 1970's, but Philip Marlowe is the same Philip Marlowe of the 1930's. I get the sense there was always something inherently sad about Marlowe. Classic noir always portrayed its detectives as strong-willed men living on the border between the straightlaced world and its seedy underbelly, crossing back and forth freely but belonging to neither. But Chandler stresses the loneliness of it - or, at least, the people who've adapted Chandler do. Marlowe is a decent man in an indecent world, sorting things out, refusing to profit from misery, but unable to set anything truly right. Being a man out of step is here literalized by putting him forty years from the era where he belongs. His hardboiled internal monologue is now the incessant mutterings of the weird guy across the street who never stops smoking. Like I said: compelling! Kael's observation was spot on: everyone in the movie knows more about the mystery than he does, but he's the only one who cares. The mystery is pretty threadbare - Marlowe doesn't detect so much as end up in places and have people explain things to him. But I've seen it two or three times now, and it does linger.

Chinatown (rw) I confess I've always been impressed by Chinatown more than I've liked it. Its story structure is impeccable, its atmosphere is gorgeous, its noirish fatalism is raw and real, its deconstruction of the noir hero is well-observed, and it's full of clever detective tricks (the pocket watches, the tail light, the ruler). I've just never connected with it. Maybe it's a little too perfectly crafted. (I feel similar about Miller's Crossing.) And I've always been ambivalent about the ending. In Towne's original ending, Evelyn shoots Noah Cross dead and get arrested, and neither she nor Jake can tell the truth of why she did it, so she goes to jail for murder and her daughter is in the wind. Polansky proposed the ending that exists now, where Evelyn just dies, Cross wins, and Jake walks away devastated. It communicates the same thing: Jake's attempt to get smart and play all the sides off each other instead of just helping Evelyn escape blows up in his face at the expense of the woman he cares about and any sense of real justice. And it does this more dramatically and efficiently than Towne's original ending. But it also treats Evelyn as narratively disposable, and hands the daughter over to the man who raped Evelyn and murdered her husband. It makes the women suffer more to punch up the ending. But can I honestly say that Towne's ending is the better one? It is thematically equal, dramatically inferior, but would distract me less. Not sure what the calculus comes out to there. Maybe there should be a third option. Anyway! A perfect little contraption. Belongs under a glass dome.

Night Moves (rw) Ah yeah, the good shit. This is my quintessential 70's noir. This is three movies in a row about detectives. Thing is, the classic era wasn't as chockablock with hardboiled detectives as we think; most of those movies starred criminals, cops, and boring dudes seduced to the darkness by a pair of legs. Gumshoes just left the strongest impressions. (The genre is said to begin with Maltese Falcon and end with Touch of Evil, after all.) So when the post-Code 70's decided to pick the genre back up while picking it apart, it makes sense that they went for the 'tecs first. The Long Goodbye dragged the 30's detective into the 70's, and Chinatown went back to the 30's with a 70's sensibility. But Night Moves was about detecting in the Watergate era, and how that changed the archetype. Harry Moseby is the detective so obsessed with finding the truth that he might just ruin his life looking for it, like the straight story will somehow fix everything that's broken, like it'll bring back a murdered teenager and repair his marriage and give him a reason to forgive the woman who fucked him just to distract him from some smuggling. When he's got time to kill, he takes out a little, magnetic chess set and recreates a famous old game, where three knight moves (get it?) would have led to a beautiful checkmate had the player just seen it. He keeps going, self-destructing, because he can't stand the idea that the perfect move is there if he can just find it. And, no matter how much we see it destroy him, we, the audience, want him to keep going; we expect a satisfying resolution to the mystery. That's what we need from a detective picture; one character flat-out compares Harry to Sam Spade. But what if the truth is just... Watergate? Just some prick ruining things for selfish reasons? Nothing grand, nothing satisfying. Nothing could be more noir, or more neo-, than that.

Farewell, My Lovely Sometimes the only thing that makes a noir neo- is that it's in color and all the blood, tits, and racism from the books they're based on get put back in. This second stab at Chandler is competant but not much more than that. Mitchum works as Philip Marlowe, but Chandler's dialogue feels off here, like lines that worked on the page don't work aloud, even though they did when Bogie said them. I'll chalk it up to workmanlike but uninspired direction. (Dang this looks bland so soon after Chinatown.) Moose Malloy is a great character, and perfectly cast. (Wasn't sure at first, but it's true.) Some other interesting cats show up and vanish - the tough brothel madam based on Brenda Allen comes to mind, though she's treated with oddly more disdain than most of the other hoods and is dispatched quicker. In general, the more overt racism and misogyny doesn't seem to do anything except make the movie "edgier" than earlier attempts at the same material, and it reads kinda try-hard. But it mostly holds together. *shrug*

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (dnrw) Didn't care for this at all. Can't tell if the script was treated as a jumping-off point or if the dialogue is 100% improvised, but it just drags on forever and is never that interesting. Keeps treating us to scenes from the strip club like they're the opera scenes in Amadeus, and, whatever, I don't expect burlesque to be Mozart, but Cosmo keeps saying they're an artful, classy joint, and I keep waiting for the show to be more than cheap, lazy camp. How do you make gratuitious nudity boring? Mind you, none of this is bad as a rule - I love digressions and can enjoy good sleaze, and it's clear the filmmakers care about what they're making. They just did not sell it in a way I wanted to buy. Can't remember what edit I watched; I hope it was the 135 minute one, because I cannot imagine there being a longer edit out there.

The American Friend (dnrw) It's weird that this is Patricia Highsmith, right? That Dennis Hopper is playing Tom Ripley? In a cowboy hat? I gather that Minghella's version wasn't true to the source, but I do love that movie, and this is a long, long way from that. This Mr. Ripley isn't even particularly talented! Anyway, this has one really great sequence, where a regular guy has been coerced by crooks into murdering someone on a train platform, and, when the moment comes to shoot, he doesn't. And what follows is a prolonged sequence of an amateur trying to surreptitiously tail a guy across a train station and onto another train, and all the while you're not sure... is he going to do it? is he going to chicken out? is he going to do it so badly he gets caught? It's hard not to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, wondering how you would handle the situation, whether you could do it, whether you could act on impulse before your conscience could catch up with you. It drags on a long while and this time it's a good thing. Didn't much like the rest of the movie, it's shapeless and often kind of corny, and the central plot hook is contrived. (It's also very weird that this is the only Wim Wenders I've seen.) But, hey, I got one excellent sequence, not gonna complain.

The Big Sleep Unlike the 1946 film, I can follow the plot of this Big Sleep. But, also unlike the 1946 version, this one isn't any damn fun. Mitchum is back as Marlowe (this is three Marlowes in five years, btw), and this time it's set in the 70's and in England, for some reason. I don't find this offensive, but neither do I see what it accomplishes? Most of the cast is still American. (Hi Jimmy!) Still holds together, but even less well than Farewell, My Lovely. But I do find it interesting that the neo-noir era keeps returning to Chandler while it's pretty much left Hammet behind (inasmuch as someone whose genes are spread wide through the whole genre can be left behind). Spade and the Continental Op, straightshooting tough guys who come out on top in the end, seem antiquated in the (post-)modern era. But Marlowe's goodness being out of sync with the world around him only seems more poignant the further you take him from his own time. Nowadays you can really only do Hammett as pastiche, but I sense that you could still play Chandler straight.

Eyes of Laura Mars The most De Palma movie I've seen not made by De Palma, complete with POV shots, paranormal hoodoo, and fixation with sex, death, and whether images of such are art or exploitation (or both). Laura Mars takes photographs of naked women in violent tableux, and has gotten quite famous doing so, but is it damaging to women? The movie has more than a superficial engagement with this topic, but only slightly more than superficial. Kept imagining a movie that is about 30% less serial killer story and 30% more art conversations. (But, then, I have an art degree and have never murdered anyone, so.) Like, museums are full of Biblical paintings full of nude women and slaughter, sometimes both at once, and they're called masterpieces. Most all of them were painted by men on commission from other men. Now Laura Mars makes similar images in modern trappings, and has models made of flesh and blood rather than paint, and it's scandalous? Why is it only controversial once women are getting paid for it? On the other hand, is this just the master's tools? Is she subverting or challenging the male gaze, or just profiting off of it? Or is a woman profiting off of it, itself, a subversion? Is it subversive enough to account for how it commodifies female bodies? These questions are pretty clearly relevant to the movie itself, and the movies in general, especially after the fall of the Hays Code when people were really unrestrained with the blood and boobies. And, heck, the lead is played by the star of Bonnie and Clyde! All this is to say: I wish the movie were as interested in these questions as I am. What's there is a mildly diverting B-picture. There's one great bit where Laura's seeing through the killer's eyes (that's the hook, she gets visions from the murderer's POV; no, this is never explained) and he's RIGHT BEHIND HER, so there's a chase where she charges across an empty room only able to see her own fleeing self from ten feet behind. That was pretty great! And her first kiss with the detective (because you could see a mile away that the detective and the woman he's supposed to protect are gonna fall in love) is immediately followed by the two freaking out about how nonsensical it is for them to fall in love with each other, because she's literally mourning multiple deaths and he's being wildly unprofessional, and then they go back to making out. That bit was great, too. The rest... enh.

The Onion Field What starts off as a seemingly not-that-noirish cops-vs-crooks procedural turns into an agonizingly protracted look at the legal system, with the ultimate argument that the very idea of the law ever resulting in justice is a lie. Hoo! I have to say, I'm impressed. There's a scene where a lawyer - whom I'm not sure is even named, he's like the seventh of thirteen we've met - literally quits the law over how long this court case about two guys shooting a cop has taken. He says the cop who was murdered has been forgotten, his partner has never gotten to move on because the case has lasted eight years, nothing has been accomplished, and they should let the two criminals walk and jail all the judges and lawyers instead. It's awesome! The script is loaded with digressions and unnecessary details, just the way I like it. Can't say I'm impressed with the execution. Nothing is wrong, exactly, but the performances all seem a tad melodramatic or a tad uninspired. Camerawork is, again, purely functional. It's no masterpiece. But that second half worked for me. (And it's Ted Danson's first movie! He did great.)

Body Heat (rw) Let's say up front that this is a handsomely-made movie. Probably the best looking thing on the list since Night Moves. Nothing I've seen better captures the swelter of an East Coast heatwave, or the lusty feeling of being too hot to bang and going at it regardless. Kathleen Turner sells the hell out of a femme fatale. There are a lot of good lines and good performances (Ted Danson is back and having the time of his life). I want to get all that out of the way, because this is a movie heavily modeled after Double Indemnity, and I wanted to discuss its merits before I get into why inviting that comparison doesn't help the movie out. In a lot of ways, it's the same rules as the Robert Mitchum Marlowe movies - do Double Indemnity but amp up the sex and violence. And, to a degree it works. (At least, the sex does, dunno that Double Indemnity was crying out for explosions.) But the plot is amped as well, and gets downright silly. Yeah, Mrs. Dietrichson seduces Walter Neff so he'll off her husband, but Neff clocks that pretty early and goes along with it anyway. Everything beyond that is two people keeping too big a secret and slowly turning on each other. But here? For the twists to work Matty has to be, from frame one, playing four-dimensional chess on the order of Senator Palpatine, and its about as plausible. (Exactly how did she know, after she rebuffed Ned, he would figure out her local bar and go looking for her at the exact hour she was there?) It's already kind of weird to be using the spider woman trope in 1981, but to make her MORE sexually conniving and mercenary than she was in the 40's is... not great. As lurid trash, it's pretty fun for a while, but some noir stuff can't just be updated, it needs to be subverted or it doesn't justify its existence.

Blow Out Brian De Palma has two categories of movie: he's got his mainstream, director-for-hire fare, where his voice is either reigned in or indulged in isolated sequences that don't always jive with the rest fo the film, and then there's his Brian De Palma movies. My mistake, it seems, is having seen several for-hires from throughout his career - The Untouchables (fine enough), Carlito's Way (ditto, but less), Mission: Impossible (enh) - but had only seen De Palma-ass movies from his late period (Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia, both of which I think are garbage). All this to say: Blow Out was my first classic-era De Palma, and holy fucking shit dudes. This was (with caveats) my absolute and entire jam. I said I could enjoy good sleaze, and this is good friggin' sleaze. (Though far short of De Palma at his sleaziest, mercifully.) The splitscreens, the diopter shots, the canted angles, how does he make so many shlocky things work?! John Travolta's sound tech goes out to get fresh wind fx for the movie he's working on, and we get this wonderful sequence of visuals following sounds as he turns his attention and his microphone to various noises - a couple on a walk, a frog, an owl, a buzzing street lamp. Later, as he listens back to the footage, the same sequence plays again, but this time from his POV; we're seeing his memory as guided by the same sequence of sounds, now recreated with different shots, as he moves his pencil in the air mimicking the microphone. When he mixes and edits sounds, we hear the literal soundtrack of the movie we are watching get mixed and edited by the person on screen. And as he tries to unravel a murder mystery, he uses what's at hand: magnetic tape, flatbed editors, an animation camera to turn still photos from the crime scene into a film and sync it with the audio he recorded; it's forensics using only the tools of the editing room. As someone who's spent some time in college editing rooms, this is a hoot and a half. Loses a bit of steam as it goes on and the film nerd stuff gives way to a more traditional thriller, but rallies for a sound-tech-centered final setpiece, which steadily builds to such madcap heights you can feel the air thinning, before oddly cutting its own tension and then trying to build it back up again. It doesn't work as well the second time. But then, that shot right after the climax? Damn. Conflicted on how the movie treats the female lead. I get why feminist film theorists are so divided on De Palma. His stuff is full of things feminists (rightly) criticize, full of women getting naked when they're not getting stabbed, but he also clearly finds women fascinating and has them do empowered and unexpected things, and there are many feminist reads of his movies. Call it a mixed bag. But even when he's doing tropey shit, he explores the tropes in unexpected ways. Definitely the best movie so far that I hadn't already seen.

Cutter's Way (rw) Alex Cutter is pitched to us as an obnoxious-but-sympathetic son of a bitch, and, you know, two out of three ain't bad. Watched this during my 2020 neo-noir kick and considered skipping it this time because I really didn't enjoy it. Found it a little more compelling this go around, while being reminded of why my feelings were room temp before. Thematically, I'm onboard: it's about a guy, Cutter, getting it in his head that he's found a murderer and needs to bring him to justice, and his friend, Bone, who intermittently helps him because he feels bad that Cutter lost his arm, leg, and eye in Nam and he also feels guilty for being in love with Cutter's wife. The question of whether the guy they're trying to bring down actually did it is intentionally undefined, and arguably unimportant; they've got personal reasons to see this through. Postmodern and noirish, fixated with the inability to ever fully know the truth of anything, but starring people so broken by society that they're desperate for certainty. (Pretty obvious parallels to Vietnam.) Cutter's a drunk and kind of an asshole, but understandably so. Bone's shiftlessness is the other response to a lack of meaning in the world, to the point where making a decision, any decision, feels like character growth, even if it's maybe killing a guy whose guilt is entirely theoretical. So, yeah, I'm down with all of this! A- in outline form. It's just that Cutter is so uninterestingly unpleasant and no one else on screen is compelling enough to make up for it. His drunken windups are tedious and his sanctimonious speeches about what the war was like are, well, true and accurate but also obviously manipulative. It's two hours with two miserable people, and I think Cutter's constant chatter is supposed to be the comic relief but it's a little too accurate to drunken rambling, which isn't funny if you're not also drunk. He's just tedious, irritating, and periodically racist. Pass.

Blood Simple (rw) I'm pretty cool on the Coens - there are things I've liked, even loved, in every Coen film I've seen, but I always come away dissatisfied. For a while, I kept going to their movies because I was sure eventually I'd love one without qualification. No Country for Old Men came close, the first two acts being master classes in sustained tension. But then the third act is all about denying closure: the protagonist is murdered offscreen, the villain's motives are never explained, and it ends with an existentialist speech about the unfathomable cruelty of the world. And it just doesn't land for me. The archness of the Coen's dialogue, the fussiness of their set design, the kinda-intimate, kinda-awkward, kinda-funny closeness of the camera's singles, it cannot sell me on a devastating meditation about meaninglessness. It's only ever sold me on the Coens' own cleverness. And that archness, that distancing, has typified every one of their movies I've come close to loving. Which is a long-ass preamble to saying, holy heck, I was not prepared for their very first movie to be the one I'd been looking for! I watched it last year and it remains true on rewatch: Blood Simple works like gangbusters. It's kind of Double Indemnity (again) but played as a comedy of errors, minus the comedy: two people romantically involved feeling their trust unravel after a murder. And I think the first thing that works for me is that utter lack of comedy. It's loaded with the Coens' trademark ironies - mostly dramatic in this case - but it's all played straight. Unlike the usual lead/femme fatale relationship, where distrust brews as the movie goes on, the audience knows the two main characters can trust each other. There are no secret duplicitous motives waiting to be revealed. The audience also know why they don't trust each other. (And it's all communicated wordlessly, btw: a character enters a scene and we know, based on the information that character has, how it looks to them and what suspicions it would arouse, even as we know the truth of it). The second thing that works is, weirdly, that the characters aren't very interesting?! Ray and Abby have almost no characterization. Outside of a general likability, they are blank slates. This is a weakness in most films, but, given the agonizingly long, wordless sequences where they dispose of bodies or hide from gunfire, you're left thinking not "what will Ray/Abby do in this scenario," because Ray and Abby are relatively elemental and undefined, but "what would I do in this scenario?" Which creates an exquisite tension but also, weirdly, creates more empathy than I feel for the Coens' usual cast of personalities. It's supposed to work the other way around! Truly enjoyable throughout but absolutely wonderful in the suspenseful-as-hell climax. Good shit right here.

Body Double The thing about erotic thrillers is everything that matters is in the name. Is it thrilling? Is it erotic? Good; all else is secondary. De Palma set out to make the most lurid, voyeuristic, horny, violent, shocking, steamy movie he could come up with, and its success was not strictly dependent on the lead's acting ability or the verisimilitude of the plot. But what are we, the modern audience, to make of it once 37 years have passed and, by today's standards, the eroticism is quite tame and the twists are no longer shocking? Then we're left with a nonsensical riff on Vertigo, a specularization of women that is very hard to justify, and lead actor made of pulped wood. De Palma's obsessions don't cohere into anything more this time; the bits stolen from Hitchcock aren't repurposed to new ends, it really is just Hitch with more tits and less brains. (I mean, I still haven't seen Vertigo, but I feel 100% confident in that statement.) The diopter shots and rear-projections this time look cheap (literally so, apparently; this had 1/3 the budget of Blow Out). There are some mildly interesting setpieces, but nothing compared to Travolta's auditory reconstructions or car chase where he tries to tail a subway train from street level even if it means driving through a frickin parade like an inverted French Connection, goddamn Blow Out was a good movie! Anyway. Melanie Griffith seems to be having fun, at least. I guess I had a little as well, but it was, at best, diverting, and a real letdown.

The Hit Surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. Terrance Stamp flips on the mob and spends ten years living a life of ease in Spain, waiting for the day they find and kill him. Movie kicks off when they do find him, and what follows is a ramshackle road movie as John Hurt and a young Tim Roth attempt to drive him to Paris so they can shoot him in front of his old boss. Stamp is magnetic. He's spent a decade reading philosophy and seems utterly prepared for death, so he spends the trip humming, philosophizing, and being friendly with his captors when he's not winding them up. It remains unclear to the end whether the discord he sews between Roth and Hurt is part of some larger plan of escape or just for shits and giggles. There's also a decent amount of plot for a movie that's not terribly plot-driven - just about every part of the kidnapping has tiny hitches the kidnappers aren't prepared for, and each has film-long repercussions, drawing the cops closer and somehow sticking Laura del Sol in their backseat. The ongoing questions are when Stamp will die, whether del Sol will die, and whether Roth will be able to pull the trigger. In the end, it's actually a meditation on ethics and mortality, but in a quiet and often funny way. It's not going to go down as one of my new favs, but it was a nice way to spend a couple hours.

Trouble in Mind (dnrw) I fucking hated this movie. It's been many months since I watched it, do I remember what I hated most? Was it the bit where a couple of country bumpkins who've come to the city walk into a diner and Mr. Bumpkin clocks that the one Black guy in the back as obviously a criminal despite never having seen him before? Was it the part where Kris Kristofferson won't stop hounding Mrs. Bumpkin no matter how many times she demands to be left alone, and it's played as romantic because obviously he knows what she needs better than she does? Or is it the part where Mr. Bumpkin reluctantly takes a job from the Obvious Criminal (who is, in fact, a criminal, and the only named Black character in the movie if I remember correctly, draw your own conclusions) and, within a week, has become a full-blown hood, which is exemplified by a lot, like, a lot of queer-coding? The answer to all three questions is yes. It's also fucking boring. Even out-of-drag Divine's performance as the villain can't save it.

Manhunter 'sfine? I've still never seen Silence of the Lambs, nor any of the Hopkins Lecter movies, nor, indeed, any full episode of the show. So the unheimlich others get seeing Brian Cox play Hannibal didn't come into play. Cox does a good job with him, but he's barely there. Shame, cuz he's the most interesting part of the movie. Honestly, there's a lot of interesting stuff that's barely there. Will Graham being a guy who gets into the heads of serial killers is explored well enough, and Mann knows how to direct a police procedural such that it's both contemplative and propulsive. But all the other themes it points at? Will's fear that he understands murderers a little too well? Hannibal trying to nudge him towards becoming one? Whatever dance Hannibal and Tooth Fairy are doing? What Tooth Fairy's deal is, anyway? (Why does he wear fake teeth and bite things? Why is he fixated on the red dragon? Does the bit where he says "Francis is gone forever" mean he has DID?) None of it goes anywhere or amounts to anything. I mean, it's certainly more interesting with this stuff than without, but it has that feel of a book that's been pared of its interesting bits to fit the runtime (or, alternately, pulp that's been sloppily elevated). I still haven't made my mind up on Mann's cold, precise camera work, but at least it gives me something to look at. It's fine! This is fine.

Mona Lisa (rw) Gave this one another shot. Bob Hoskins is wonderful as a hood out of his depth in classy places, quick to anger but just as quick to let anger go (the opening sequence where he's screaming on his ex-wife's doorstep, hurling trash cans at her house, and one minute later thrilled to see his old car, is pretty nice). And Cathy Tyson's working girl is a subtler kind of fascinating, exuding a mixture of coldness and kindness. It's just... this is ultimately a story about how heartbreaking it is when the girl you like is gay, right? It's Weezer's Pink Triangle: The Movie. It's not homophobic, exactly - Simone isn't demonized for being a lesbian - but it's still, like, "man, this straight white guy's pain is so much more interesting than the Black queer sex worker's." And when he's yelling "you woulda done it!" at the end, I can't tell if we're supposed to agree with him. Seems pretty clear that she wouldn'ta done it, at least not without there being some reveal about her character that doesn't happen, but I don't think the ending works if we don't agree with him, so... I'm like 70% sure the movie does Simone dirty there. For the first half, their growing relationship feels genuine and natural, and, honestly, the story being about a real bond that unfortunately means different things to each party could work if it didn't end with a gun and a sock in the jaw. Shape feels jagged as well; what feels like the end of the second act or so turns out to be the climax. And some of the symbolism is... well, ok, Simone gives George money to buy more appropriate clothes for hanging out in high end hotels, and he gets a tan leather jacket and a Hawaiian shirt, and their first proper bonding moment is when she takes him out for actual clothes. For the rest of the movie he is rocking double-breasted suits (not sure I agree with the striped tie, but it was the eighties, whaddya gonna do?). Then, in the second half, she sends him off looking for her old streetwalker friend, and now he looks completely out of place in the strip clubs and bordellos. So far so good. But then they have this run-in where her old pimp pulls a knife and cuts George's arm, so, with his nice shirt torn and it not safe going home (I guess?) he starts wearing the Hawaiian shirt again. So around the time he's starting to realize he doesn't really belong in Simone's world or the lowlife world he came from anymore, he's running around with the classy double-breasted suit jacket over the garish Hawaiian shirt, and, yeah, bit on the nose guys. Anyway, it has good bits, I just feel like a movie that asks me to feel for the guy punching a gay, Black woman in the face needs to work harder to earn it. Bit of wasted talent.

The Bedroom Window Starts well. Man starts an affair with his boss' wife, their first night together she witnesses an attempted murder from his window, she worries going to the police will reveal the affair to her husband, so the man reports her testimony to the cops claiming he's the one who saw it. Young Isabelle Huppert is the perfect woman for a guy to risk his career on a crush over, and Young Steve Guttenberg is the perfect balance of affability and amorality. And it flows great - picks just the right media to res. So then he's talking to the cops, telling them what she told him, and they ask questions he forgot to ask her - was the perp's jacket a blazer or a windbreaker? - and he has to guess. Then he gets called into the police lineup, and one guy matches her description really well, but is it just because he's wearing his red hair the way she described it? He can't be sure, doesn't finger any of them. He finds out the cops were pretty certain about one of the guys, so he follows the one he thinks it was around, looking for more evidence, and another girl is attacked right outside a bar he knows the redhead was at. Now he's certain! But he shows the boss' wife the guy and she's not certain, and she reminds him they don't even know if the guy he followed is the same guy the police suspected! And as he feeds more evidence to the cops, he has to lie more, because he can't exactly say he was tailing the guy around the city. So, I'm all in now. Maybe it's because I'd so recently rewatched Night Moves and Cutter's Way, but this seems like another story about uncertainty. He's really certain about the guy because it fits narratively, and we, the audience, feel the same. But he's not actually a witness, he doesn't have actual evidence, he's fitting bits and pieces together like a conspiracy theorist. He's fixating on what he wants to be true. Sign me up! But then it turns out he's 100% correct about who the killer is but his lies are found out and now the cops think he's the killer and I realize, oh, no, this movie isn't nearly as smart as I thought it was. Egg on my face! What transpires for the remaining half of the runtime is goofy as hell, and someone with shlockier sensibilities could have made a meal of it, but Hanson, despite being a Corman protege, takes this silliness seriously in the all wrong ways. Next!

Homicide (rw? I think I saw most of this on TV one time) Homicide centers around the conflicted loyalties of a Jewish cop. It opens with the Jewish cop and his white gentile partner taking over a case with a Black perp from some Black FBI agents. The media is making a big thing about the racial implications of the mostly white cops chasing down a Black man in a Black neighborhood. And inside of 15 minutes the FBI agent is calling the lead a k*ke and the gentile cop is calling the FBI agent a f****t and there's all kinds of invective for Black people. The film is announcing its intentions out the gate: this movie is about race. But the issue here is David Mamet doesn't care about race as anything other than a dramatic device. He's the Ubisoft of filmmakers, having no coherent perspective on social issues but expecting accolades for even bringing them up. Mamet is Jewish (though lead actor Joe Mantegna definitely is not) but what is his position on the Jewish diaspora? The whole deal is Mantegna gets stuck with a petty homicide case instead of the big one they just pinched from the Feds, where a Jewish candy shop owner gets shot in what looks like a stickup. Her family tries to appeal to his Jewishness to get him to take the case seriously, and, after giving them the brush-off for a long time, finally starts following through out of guilt, finding bits and pieces of what may or may not be a conspiracy, with Zionist gun runners and underground neo-Nazis. But, again: all of these are just dramatic devices. Mantegna's Jewishness (those words will never not sound ridiculous together) has always been a liability for him as a cop (we are told, not shown), and taking the case seriously is a reclamation of identity. The Jews he finds community with sold tommyguns to revolutionaries during the founding of Israel. These Jews end up blackmailing him to get a document from the evidence room. So: what is the film's position on placing stock in one's Jewish identity? What is its position on Israel? What is its opinion on Palestine? Because all three come up! And the answer is: Mamet doesn't care. You can read it a lot of different ways. Someone with more context and more patience than me could probably deduce what the de facto message is, the way Chris Franklin deduced the de facto message of Far Cry V despite the game's efforts not to have one, but I'm not going to. Mantegna's attempt to reconnect with his Jewishness gets his partner killed, gets the guy he was supposed to bring in alive shot dead, gets him possibly permanent injuries, gets him on camera blowing up a store that's a front for white nationalists, and all for nothing because the "clues" he found (pretty much exclusively by coincidence) were unconnected nothings. The problem is either his Jewishness, or his lifelong failure to connect with his Jewishness until late in life. Mamet doesn't give a shit. (Like, Mamet canonically doesn't give a shit: he is on record saying social context is meaningless, characters only exist to serve the plot, and there are no deeper meanings in fiction.) Mamet's ping-pong dialogue is fun, as always, and there are some neat ideas and characters, but it's all in service of a big nothing that needed to be a something to work.

Swoon So much I could talk about, let's keep it to the most interesting bits. Hommes Fatales: a thing about classic noir that it was fascinated by the marginal but had to keep it in the margins. Liberated women, queer-coded killers, Black jazz players, broke thieves; they were the main event, they were what audiences wanted to see, they were what made the movies fun. But the ending always had to reassert straightlaced straight, white, middle-class male society as unshakeable. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy demanded, both ideologically and via the Hays Code, that anyone outside these norms be punished, reformed, or dead by the movie's end. The only way to make them the heroes was to play their deaths for tragedy. It is unsurprising that neo-noir would take the queer-coded villains and make them the protagonists. Implicature: This is the story of Leopold and Loeb, murderers famous for being queer, and what's interesting is how the queerness in the first half exists entirely outside of language. Like, it's kind of amazing for a movie from 1992 to be this gay - we watch Nathan and Dickie kiss, undress, masturbate, fuck; hell, they wear wedding rings when they're alone together. But it's never verbalized. Sex is referred to as "your reward" or "what you wanted" or "best time." Dickie says he's going to have "the girls over," and it turns out "the girls" are a bunch of drag queens, but this is never acknowledged. Nathan at one point lists off a bunch of famous men - Oscar Wild, E.M. Forster, Frederick the Great - but, though the commonality between them is obvious (they were all gay), it's left the the audience to recognize it. When their queerness is finally verbalized in the second half, it's first in the language of pathology - a psychiatrist describing their "perversions" and "misuse" of their "organs" before the court, which has to be cleared of women because it's so inappropriate - and then with slurs from the man who murders Dickie in jail (a murder which is written off with no investigation because the victim is a gay prisoner instead of a L&L's victim, a child of a wealthy family). I don't know if I'd have noticed this if I hadn't read Chip Delany describing his experience as a gay man in the 50's existing almost entirely outside of language, the only language at the time being that of heteronormativity. Murder as Love Story: L&L exchange sex as payment for the other commiting crimes; it's foreplay. Their statements to the police where they disagree over who's to blame is a lover's quarrel. Their sentencing is a marriage. Nathan performs his own funeral rites over Dickie's body after he dies on the operating table. They are, in their way, together til death did they part. This is the relationship they can have. That it does all this without romanticizing the murder itself or valorizing L&L as humans is frankly incredible.

Suture (rw) The pitch: at the funeral for his father, wealthy Vincent Towers meets his long lost half brother Clay Arlington. It is implied Clay is a child from out of wedlock, possibly an affair; no one knows Vincent has a half-brother but him and Clay. Vincent invites Clay out to his fancy-ass home in Arizona. Thing is, Vincent is suspected (correctly) by the police of having murdered his father, and, due to a striking family resemblence, he's brought Clay to his home to fake his own death. He finagles Clay into wearing his clothes and driving his car, and then blows the car up and flees the state, leaving the cops to think him dead. Thing is, Clay survives, but with amnesia. The doctors tell him he's Vincent, and he has no reason to disagree. Any discrepancy in the way he looks is dismissed as the result of reconstructive surgery after the explosion. So Clay Arlington resumes Vincent Towers' life, without knowing Clay Arlington even exists. The twist: Clay and Vincent are both white, but Vincent is played by Michael Harris, a white actor, and Clay is played by Dennis Haysbert, a Black actor. "Ian, if there's just the two of them, how do you know it's not Harris playing a Black character?" Glad you asked! It is most explicitly obvious during a scene where Vincent/Clay's surgeon-cum-girlfriend essentially bringing up phrenology to explain how Vincent/Clay couldn't possibly have murdered his father, describing straight hair, thin lips, and a Greco-Roman nose Haysbert very clearly doesn't have. But, let's be honest: we knew well beforehand that the rich-as-fuck asshole living in a huge, modern house and living it up in Arizona high society was white. Though Clay is, canonically, white, he lives an poor and underprivileged life common to Black men in America. Though the film's title officially refers to the many stitches holding Vincent/Clay's face together after the accident, "suture" is a film theory term, referring to the way a film audience gets wrapped up - sutured - in the world of the movie, choosing to forget the outside world and pretend the story is real. The usage is ironic, because the audience cannot be sutured in; we cannot, and are not expected to, suspend our disbelief that Clay is white. We are deliberately distanced. Consequently this is a movie to be thought about, not to to be felt. It has the shape of a Hitchcockian thriller but it can't evoke the emotions of one. You can see the scaffolding - "ah, yes, this is the part of a thriller where one man hides while another stalks him with a gun, clever." I feel ill-suited to comment on what the filmmakers are saying about race. I could venture a guess about the ending, where the psychiatrist, the only one who knows the truth about Clay, says he can never truly be happy living the lie of being Vincent Towers, while we see photographs of Clay/Vincent seemingly living an extremely happy life: society says white men simply belong at the top more than Black men do, but, if the roles could be reversed, the latter would slot in seamlessly. Maybe??? Of all the movies in this collection, this is the one I'd most want to read an essay on (followed by Swoon).

The Last Seduction (dnrw) No, no, no, I am not rewataching this piece of shit movie.

Brick (rw) Here's my weird contention: Brick is in color and in widescreen, but, besides that? There's nothing neo- about this noir. There's no swearing except "hell." (I always thought Tug said "goddamn" at one point but, no, he's calling The Pin "gothed-up.") There's a lot of discussion of sex, but always through implication, and the only deleted scene is the one that removed ambiguity about what Brendan and Laura get up to after kissing. There's nothing postmodern or subversive - yes, the hook is it's set in high school, but the big twist is that it takes this very seriously. It mines it for jokes, yes, but the drama is authentic. In fact, making the gumshoe a high school student, his jadedness an obvious front, still too young to be as hard as he tries to be, just makes the drama hit harder. Sam Spade if Sam Spade were allowed to cry. I've always found it an interesting counterpoint to The Good German, a movie that fastidiously mimics the aesthetics of classic noir - down to even using period-appropriate sound recording - but is wholly neo- in construction. Brick could get approved by the Hays Code. Its vibe, its plot about a detective playing a bunch of criminals against each other, even its slang ("bulls," "yegg," "flopped") are all taken directly from Hammett. It's not even stealing from noir, it's stealing from what noir stole from! It's a perfect curtain call for the collection: the final film is both the most contemporary and the most classic. It's also - but for the strong case you could make for Night Moves - the best movie on the list. It's even more appropriate for me, personally: this was where it all started for me and noir. I saw this in theaters when it came out and loved it. It was probably my favorite movie for some time. It gave me a taste for pulpy crime movies which I only, years later, realized were neo-noir. This is why I looked into Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and In Bruges. I've seen it more times than any film on this list, by a factor of at least 3. It's why I will always adore Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's the best-looking half-million-dollar movie I've ever seen. (Indie filmmakers, take fucking notes.) I even did a script analysis of this, and, yes, it follows the formula, but so tightly and with so much style. Did you notice that he says several of the sequence tensions out loud? ("I just want to find her." "Show of hands.") I notice new things each time I see it - this time it was how "brushing Brendan's hair out of his face" is Em's move, making him look more like he does in the flashback, and how Laura does the same to him as she's seducing him, in the moment when he misses Em the hardest. It isn't perfect. It's recreated noir so faithfully that the Innocent Girl dies, the Femme Fatale uses intimacy as a weapon, and none of the women ever appear in a scene together. 1940's gender politics maybe don't need to be revisited. They say be critical of the media you love, and it applies here most of all: it is a real criticism of something I love immensely.

#film noir #neo-noir #criterion channel

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