#who i assume got it from the internet archive
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a world not big enough for the two of us
#hehehehehe#prey duo#quackity#technoblade#c!quackity#c!techno#dsmp#mcyt#fanart#art#you don't need to know how many times i redid the background on this. you dont need to know.#bright colors#eyestrain#blood tw#tw implied death#bg image is from nemfrog by the way!!!!!#who i assume got it from the internet archive
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argument
its a big one
TG: alright this is probably a bust
TG: more i think about it how the fuck do you even make a marinara
TG: can i even alchemise cheese or do i gotta like alchemise the milk and curdle it myself
TG: how do you even curdle
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TG: make a goddamn
TG: curgler
TG: whatever
TG: internet archive gonna pull through
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CG: ALRIGHT DAVE
TG: shit
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CG: YOU BETTER BACK THE FUCK OFF. I DON'T KNOW WHERE IN BULGEMUNCHING VIRULENT FUCK YOU GET THE IDEA YOU HAVE ANY RIGHT TO TELL ME WHAT I SHOULD THINK ABOUT MY OWN GODDAMN PLANET. SORRY TO HAVE TO DEAL A BLOW TO YOUR IMPOSSIBLY INFLATED FUCKING EGO, BUT HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED THAT YOUR SIDE-EYE SLACKJAW HOPELESS DEADPAN BULLSHIT BEHAVIOUR IS ACTUALLY INCREDIBLY FUCKING CONTEMPTIBLE AND DOESN'T PUT YOU ABOVE OTHER PEOPLE? HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THAT?
CG: OR DID YOU JUST ASSUME FROM THE MOMENT YOU FOUND OUT I'M A REVOLTING FUCKING MUTANT LOWBLOOD FREAK THAT I'M SUDDENLY NOT ALLOWED TO LIKE THE IDEA OF MY LIFE MEANING SOMETHING AT SOME POINT?
TG: okay you are wildly misquoting me where the fuck did that come from
TG: also you scared the hell out of me
TG: im just trying to science some pizza here
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CG: OKAY THEN, DAVE! EXPLAIN TO ME AS WELL AS YOUR AMBLING ONE-NOTE SMOOTH EXCUSE FOR A 'THOUGHT'SPONGE CAN
CG: IN SOMEWHAT COHERENT TERMS, ALTHOUGH I KNOW THAT'S A TALL ORDER:
CG: HOW YOU SAYING MY ADOLESCENT DREAMS OF BECOMING A THRESHECUTIONER ARE "FUCKED UP AND IRONIC IN A NASTY ASS WAY" DOESN'T QUALIFY AS UNDERHANDEDLY KICKING ME IN THE MANDIBLE PRONGS!
CG: YOUR AUDIENCE AWAITS YOU WITH BATED BREATH! TAKE IT AWAY, M.C. BRAIN HEMORRHAGE.
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TG: okay i dont
TG: know how you got a hold of that phrasing because i said that shit in confidence
TG: get out of my business bro
CG: NEWSFLASH, ASSHOLE: THIS METEOR IS A PHYSICAL, LITERAL LOCATION WE'RE BOTH IN. IT'S NOT A FUCKING PRIVATE CHATROOM. THIS MIGHT BLOW YOUR PITIFUL MIND BUT PEOPLE CAN ACTUALLY HEAR OTHER PEOPLE TALK WHEN THEY HAVE TO SHARE A SPACE! BRO!
TG: ugh
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CG: AND IT'S VERY INTERESTING YOU ACCUSE ME OF MISQUOTING YOU, AND THEN SUDDENLY TURN AND SPOUT FROM THAT SHITTY DRONING GROANSHAFT OF YOURS THAT I'M INVADING YOUR PRIVACY WHEN I DIRECTLY QUOTE YOUR SMARMY LITTLE SHAMEGLOBES!
CG: WOW! TURNS OUT KARKAT IS ACTUALLY BEING GENUINELY FUCKING UPSET ABOUT SOMETHING — WHO KNEW, RIGHT? WHO WOULD'VE GUESSED THAT I ACTUALLY HAVE GENUINE COMPLAINTS TO LEVEL AGAINST THE PEOPLE WHO GO SPOUTING HOOFBEASTSHIT ABOUT ME BEHIND MY BACK TO THEIR ECTOSIBLINGS?
TG: no dude can you shut up a second
CG: I MOST CERTAINLY FUCKING WILL, THANKS FOR THE OFFER! I'M NEVER TELLING YOU A GODDAMN THING AGAIN, SO I HOPE YOU MANAGE TO GAIN SOME WRINKLES TO THAT VESTIGIAL FLAWLESS ORB FLOATING AROUND IN YOUR CAVERNOUS NUGBONE FROM ALL THIS. I HOPE IT WAS WORTH ALL THE EFFORT ON YOUR END.
TG: listen!!!!
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CG: MHM! MY AURICULAR CHAMBERS ARE WIDE OPEN!
TG: jegus
TG: okay
TG: i have no defense for my literal phrasing but how expeditiously did you shadowstep the fuck away after i said that
TG: because that is some shrek tier "princess and ugly dont go together" level misrepresentation of my sweet self
TG: like if this wasnt obviously a heated platonic argument we were having i would probably be digging what the reference even if it was a shitty trope
====================
TG: i just
TG: have been thinking about some things and none of those things have got an iota of a thing to do with you or your blood
TG: thing
TG: man
TG: i dont know why you think id be so pressed about your vein juice its like
TG: a normal ass color for a normal ass guy
TG: and obviously it was a major fucking deal from how you talk about it but it doesnt need to be anymore
====================
TG: the thing is i just dont like have the same attitude as you about fighting and stuff and thats not something i am getting into right now but i am gonna make it expressly clear
TG: that its just kind of fucked up for me to sit my ass down and listen to someone spew gold and medals and confetti colored shit going googoo all over tall and loathsome ass bloodletters he never knew
TG: and have him tell me he wants to be the best guy at combat since samurai fuckin jack
TG: and thats my capital B business believe me the emphasis is there
====================
CG: SO IS THIS ABOUT ME WANTING TO BE PART OF SOMETHING YOU DON'T AGREE WITH? BECAUSE THRESHECUTIONERS DON'T EVEN FUCKING EXIST ANYMORE. I LITERALLY COULD NOT DO THIS IF I TRIED AT THIS POINT, SO YOU CAN UNKNOT YOUR “KNIGHTY WHITIES” ABOUT IT.
TG: being anti-military is not my point but damn if it isnt a thing thats probably true anyways so good job sleuthing that out
CG: WHAT IS YOUR POINT, DAVE.
TG: bluh
TG: i just said i dont wanna talk about it man
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CG: OKAY,
====================
CG: OKAY.
CG: I MEAN. IT FEELS KIND OF IMPORTANT TO THE CONTEXT OF THIS WHOLE UNAMBIGUOUSLY PLATONIC ARGUMENT WE'VE BEEN HAVING
CG: WHICH I'M RELIEVED WE AGREE ON BY THE WAY
CG: BUT IF YOU DON'T WANT ME TO KNOW I'M NOT GOING TO WRING IT OUT OF YOU. IT'S FINE.
====================
CG: …IF YOU DECIDE AT SOME POINT THAT YOU WANT TO TELL ME THOUGH, MY RUMBLE VESSELS ARE STILL OPEN.
TG: i swear youre making those up on the spot at this point
CG: I'M KEEPING MY LANGUAGE'S ART ALIVE, DAVE. IT'S BASIC DECENCY TO THE PLANET THAT RAISED ME.
TG: heh
====================
TG: yknow we got these things called anatomical snuffboxes
TG: its got that right amount of vague nose wrinklage to it that i feel like youd be right at home saying that
TG: snug as a grub even
CG: WHAT PART IS THAT???
TG: its that little weird bone bit that sticks out on the back of your palm when you flex your thumb right
====================
TG: look
CG: HUH. LOOKING AT THAT IS KIND OF WIGGING ME OUT.
TG: yeah its kinda gross rose told me about it
TG: but anyways
====================
TG: are we cool
CG: I MEAN… I GUESS SO. YOU WEREN'T ACTUALLY INSULTING ME, RIGHT?
TG: hell no dude never
CG: OKAY. I COMPLETELY RESCIND THE MYRIAD OF WAYS I JUST INSULTED YOU. AND I'M SORRY.
TG: nah i know its just fluff at this point
====================
CG: I STILL DON'T APPRECIATE YOU TELLING ROSE THINGS I SAY TO YOU IN CONFIDENCE. THAT WAS BETWEEN YOU, ME, AND MY NOW NON-EXISTENT HOME PLANET ROTTING AWAY TO A CRATERED GRAY HUSK IN ANOTHER DEAD UNIVERSE.
TG: i swear that was like the only thing its just that she gets it and i cant keep my mouth from going on about the gettable stuff
TG: they call me the babbling brook the way my flows so audible
TG: i wont do it again
CG: NO,
====================
CG: I GET IT HONESTLY.
CG: I'M BASICALLY THE NUMBER ONE PROPRIETOR OF AIRED GRIEVANCES IN ALL OF PARADOX SPACE AND THEN SOME, AND I'D ALSO BECOME ITS BIGGEST HYPOCRITE IF I HELD IT AGAINST YOU.
TG: thanks
TG: but i mean
TG: at the gigantic risk of sounding uh
====================
TG: ………..
CG: ?
====================
TG: well
TG: i kinda just think youre better at being a guy to chill out and watch movies with than a guy to tangle fists with
TG: and i dont think theres anything wrong with being that
TG: i think its cool
====================
CG: …THAT'S AN ALARMINGLY BRAZEN OBSERVATION TO MAKE OF SOMEONE YOU'VE KNOWN FOR ABOUT THE SPAN OF SEVEN SEASONAL EQUINOXES, DAVE.
TG: i dont know what that means but it sure is probably
CG: AM I ALLOWED TO ASK WHAT EVEN GIVES YOU THAT IMPRESSION????
TG: i just got that inkling about you man
====================
TG: and you can do whatever you want with that info
TG: throw it in the load gaper or whatever if you want i dont really care
TG: give it a swirly and slam it in a locker call it a nerd break its glasses whatever
TG: but beyond this whole lord english thing weve got going on i am pretty content to never aggress my fellow man slash alien slash monster again if i can help it
TG: i think thats pretty fair given what thats been like so far
====================
TG: and yknow its cool to have some company when im waxing emotional over the narrative depth of click starring adam sandler which we are watching next by the way
CG: UGH, FIIIIIIIIINE. JUST TO MAKE UP FOR CALLING YOUR THINKPAN SMOOTH AND SUPERFLUOUS.
====================
TG: score
TG: we should argue all the time
CG: SNRK
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I haven't seen anyone else talk about this yet so I'm going to assume no one has (and if this is the millionth post about this I am so sorry), but apparently there was a leak at Viacom last month, and one of the things that got leaked was the original Danny Phantom pitch bible, and let me tell y'all, there is some interesting lore to be had. I've taken the liberty of summing up a few notable points, but feel free to read for yourself - it's pretty short.
Jack was originally written as an ex-spy, test pilot... basically if it was a daring job, he probably had it. His IQ was supposedly only one point off from Maddie's, and his bumbling was more of a result of him being more "brave than smart."
Maddie was originally written as "one of the world's most respected theoretical physicists" and the brains between her and Jack. Get this: her full name was supposed to be Madison!
Sam and Danny's psychic connection was actually a result of the accident. When he was in the hospital and still very much saturated with ectoplasm, she gave him a "get better" kiss on the forehead, which sparked the connection. The connection would've manifested in a number of ways, including a perpetual ability to "sense" the other, see visions, and hear each other's thoughts, though it was supposed to be somewhat unpredictable.
Jazz hid her brains from her cheerleader friends because she wanted to fit in with them.
Danny was supposed to be the only person able to see, hear, and interact with ghosts.
On the subject of Danny, his reputation for being a scaredy-cat was much more well-known, even to the point where Sam and Tucker gave him the nickname Danny Phantom before he even had his accident. This kid was scared of his own shadow, frogs, you name it.
Overshadowing was originally called "ghosting," and the more intelligent a person, the more difficult it would be to control them.
Jack and Maddie were hoping to break the barrier between the "Real World" (our world) and the "Unreal World" (the ghost world). They wanted to get through to the spirit realm to be able to communicate with the dead in order to help make the world a better place (think picking Einstein's brain a little more, seeing what other music Mozart has cooking, etc.). That dimensional barrier was damaged when they first tried out their experiment, and Danny - who was hiding out from Dash in the lab - would be caught in the middle.
Much like how fans have interpreted things and how the show tried to imply, Danny felt responsible for unleashing the ghosts into our world and decided to adopt the name Sam and Tucker had teased him with to help put a stop to their reign of terror.
Seriously, y'all should read this. There's a lot of interesting info in here, and really it sounds like such a cool concept?? Like I'll probably add my personal thoughts in a reblog, but there's a lot of potential for untapped creativity from the phandom here. Plus it's always nice to see what's technically official content almost 20 years after the show's premiere.
#danny phantom#danny phantom bible#nickelodeon#dp#official content#pitch bible#danny phantom pitch bible#danny fenton#sam manson#tucker foley#jazz fenton#jack fenton#maddie fenton
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Orin Scrivello's Lost Head Prop: A Masterpost
Written and researched by Calliope Avery
Content Warning: Very very mild and low quality special effects gore, implied violence, uncanny valley stuff(?), Orin Scrivello's face.
Little Shop of Horrors (1986) has an unfortunate reputation of leaving a lot of really cool things on the cutting room floor. The most infamous would be the movie's original ending, a beautiful and impressive sequence of puppetry that ended up completely scrapped. However, today we're talking about a prop that never made it into the final movie in any form:
Orin Scrivello's Decapitated Head!!!
Pictured above are the only 2 photos of the prop in its original state that I can find at the moment. The left photo was taken for promotion and advertising purposes, and the right image is actually a Topps trading card! (Which I have a physical copy of, hehe!)
To put it bluntly, I am slightly (very) obsessed with this prop head. There's so much mystery around it, and everything I've managed to dig up both fascinates me and makes me very upset. So much thought and hard creative work was put into the creation of this thing, and it was left completely left out and forgotten! I desperately want more people to be aware of this, so here is my big and (hopefully) well organized masterpost on everything for your learning pleasure. Alright, let's talk about some heads!!!!!!!!!
Forming a Timeline
The earliest mention of the head can be found in an early draft of the movie script, dated February 14th, 1985. There's plenty of concepts in this script that never seemed to get past this draft, but the severed head concept was not one of them. Here, take a look!
source
This section, found on page 66 of the script, not only established the existence of the head, but also establishes the facial expression it will later take on! Clearly, this concept was good enough to be held onto once actual production started, which is good for us! If it wasn't, then this post would be a lot shorter.
Early production of the prop began after the actors were cast, as face molds of Steve Martin were created as bases for the head.
source for the left image - source for the right image
Oooo, check these guys out!!! The left one is made of plaster, and the right one is made of rubber. The website sourcing these images included a quote from Steve Martin about the casting process. Here's the full provided quote:
"These molds were taken of my head for Little Shop of Horrors. It was cast on the lot at Pinewood Studios outside of London, and I got exceedingly claustrophobic during the casting. My entire head was covered with plaster and two straws were placed in my nose for breathing. Argh." - Steve Martin
I unfortunately don't have much information about the crafting process of the prop. I'm currently trying to track down anyone who could've worked on it, but the few people I've managed to contact haven't responded to me yet. So I can't say anything concrete about who worked on it and what went into creating it. The only thing I can assume somewhat confidently is that the creation of the prop happened around the same time as filming for Orin's scenes. It would allow them to make the face molds and also match up Martin's post-mortem Orin face with the facial expression of the prop.
Here's where it starts going downhill. From what I've found, the prop was never filmed with its face toward the camera. In the workprint that I accessed from the Internet Archive, the prop appears for 2 shots, and both of them only show the back of the head. Take a look:
source - timestamp: 1:02:59
[Video description: a low quality, slightly green tinted video depicting a deleted scene from Little Shop of Horrors (1986) where Seymour is feeding the decapitated head of the dentist, Orin Scrivello, to the plant. The video starts with a man in glasses reaching into a garbage can and pulling out a dark-haired decapitated head, holding it upside-down by the fabric on its neck. The head is faced away from the camera, so only the back of its hair is visible. There are vines flailing in the foreground of the shot. The video cuts to a shot of the plant puppet laughing silently. The video cuts again to a shot of the man slowly shuffling forward while dangling the head in front and away from himself. The plant is seen on the left side, still laughing and flailing its vines. Throughout the video, there are brief flashes of light that resemble lightning. The video's audio only consists of thunder noises and an unidentifiable sound that resembles chewing noises. End ID.]
My best guess for this choice is maybe it isn't as convincing when filmed? In the photos it looks really well made and realistic, but perhaps it didn't come across that way during shots. Regardless, the head was still in the film at this point, so that counts for something!
But as you and I both know, those 2 shots were left on the cutting room floor, completely removed from the final product. The prop was left completely unused and unspoken of... except for one instance.
Remember the trading card I mentioned at the beginning? It's a part of a full set of trading cards that were made and distributed by the brand Topps. Back when the movie first came out, you could buy a pack of 5 mystery Little Shop of Horrors themed trading cards, along with a stick of bubblegum. This 44-card set is notable for featuring a lot, and I mean a LOT of images from cut movie scenes. There's photos of the original ending, there's photos from the cut sequence The Meek Shall Inhereit, and of course there's also the card featuring the prop head! However, those 2 sequences would later be rediscovered, cleaned up, and then added into the Director's Cut rerelease of the movie. The prop head wouldn't get this treatment, staying obscured, unknown, and unmentioned.
Fast forward about 30 years. A certain unused movie prop would be offered in an auction, allowing us to not only see high-quality photos of said prop in its current state, but also to allow us to know the exact materials it was made of! Without further ado, I present Orin Scrivello's decapitated head, circa 2018:
source
This absolute freak of a guy was up for auction at the "Profiles in History: Icons and Legends of Hollywood" auction on June 5th, 2018. No one ended up buying it (I would. I need to buy it actually. Please sell it to me.), but the auction gives us some absolutely divine information about the prop, such as what it's made of and its dimensions! Here's a quote from the auction website describing its materials:
"Vintage original hollow cast resin character head painted in realistic flesh tones with brown eyebrows and eyes. The 13 x 8 x 9 in. head has been polyfoam filled for stability. Exhibiting cracks to the crown, which is brittle and with other wear and age. A striking likeness of Steve Martin. In vintage good condition."
How neat! The high-resolution images allow us to see the detailed sculpting of the prop, which is still evident and impressive with its age and missing parts! The creases on the forehead, and around the mouth and eyes, the realistically colored teeth, this was clearly sculpted with a lot of attention to detail. I would've loved to have an image like this back in the prop's prime, back when it still had hair and a fresh coat of paint.
Why was it Scrapped?
This is entirely just me theorizing, but I have a feeling it's for the same reason the original ending got snubbed.
If you take the time to watch the archived workprint, you'll find a lot of cuts and changes were made that changed the tone of the whole finished project. Orin's death and dismemberment scenes got edited down a lot. Shots of him struggling and knocking things down as he falls to the ground got cut, the voiceline where he begs Seymour for help is gone. The shot where Orin's legs jolt when Seymour brings down the axe is gone too.
It's not just Orin-related scenes either! Mushnik no longer cries out for Seymour when being killed and eaten, and that's ignoring how different the scene happens in the stage musical. And obviously, the entire ending got changed so that Audrey and Seymour survive, leading to the cut of the magnificent ending sequence where all the Audrey II's destroy New York. In a way, the film got murdered and gutted of any of its real horror, with attempts to cover up any of the blood they couldn't scrub out.
In the movie's later quest to rebrand as a softer version of itself, it only makes sense that 2 shots of a decapitated head wouldn't make it. The appearance of the dismembered leg made it through, probably because it's less gruesome, but a head is... different. I obviously think it should've been kept it in, along with almost everything they trimmed from the workprint, but alas.
Tldr, they cut the head off of the movie because it wasn't funny enough.
Conclusion
This is where the information I have ends, unfortunately. I do have more research routes I would like to take, but one of them involves desperately contacting random people who I suspect could've been involved (I've tried this, I've gotten no responses from those who I've managed to find an email for), and the other route involves taking a road trip to the actual goddamn Library of Congress, which is not something I can do right now or even in the near future. So this is probably as far as I'm getting!
However! If I find anything new, this post will be updated and/or remade again, depending on how big or little the info is. For now, I think this is good enough to share, and maybe letting people know will encourage others to research this prop as well! It'll probably be easier if it's not just me, y'know.
I'll finish by saying that I think research and preservation of art like this is very important. While it's common for cool artistic things to end up cut from movies, I think preserving that those cool things existed in the first place is something worth doing. Even though this prop head was a very small part of the movie, it's clear a lot went into creating it! I feel bad that I'm not able to credit any person or people for their work, but I hope getting the word out about it will do some justice.
If you've read this whole thing, thank you so much! I appreciate your interest and I thank you for taking the time to read all this. I hope you found it as interesting and fascinating as I do!
Oh, by the way, if this post looks familiar at all, you've probably seen the original version of this post I made awhile ago. I wasn't happy with the formatting of that post, and I ended up making too many discoveries to just continue updating it. I'll keep the original up to preserve it, but reblogs will be off for it, as I want this version to be the one to go around. Thanks!
#i dont usually do this but reblogs are So appreciated#i worked on this for way too long lmao#little shop of horrors#lsoh#little shop of horrors 1986#orin lsoh#orin scrivello#lsoh orin#orin scrivello dds#steve martin
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30/30 One last thing.
(Previous) | (Index) | ⛬
⛬
We have come to the end of Prometheus. But depending on how you’re feeling about death of the author right now, it’s not. Not quite yet.
Because Ridley Scott had some things to say after Prometheus came out.
Two months after the movie's release, Ridley Scott gave an interview. Its original home has succumbed to link rot, but it’s still available in a couple places, in the Internet Archive and within the corporate acquisition mass that is Fandango, featuring a weird note of brand revisionism in the relabeling of the interviewer’s affiliation.
Now. Let’s begin by saying this: A movie is a movie. The things around a movie are not the movie. This seems obvious, but it’s to say that a single creative work can be viewed entirely free of outside context, and in most cases it’s best to assume that it will. If a director comes out later and tells people what their intent was, then that’s not part of the movie.
…But it can still sit in your brain for years, leaping out to ambush unsuspecting passers-by.
So! This interview. Ohhh, this interview. I’d forgotten most of it, because the final lines of it just knocked the top of my head clean off, so we’ll be discovering bits of this together.
We start from the end of the movie, with the interviewer asking about the openness of the ending to a sequel. Scott, among other things, said:
“I’d love to explore where the hell [Dr. Shaw] goes next and what does she do when she gets there, because if it is paradise, paradise can not be what you think it is. Paradise has a connotation of being extremely sinister and ominous.”
This came across well in the movie, though it was festooned with the random bit of organic bigotry from Shaw toward David. A short answer won’t capture everything, so I still have no idea if Scott intended for that to be so brayingly insensitive, this is the guy who was fine with Joel Edgerton as Ramses II. In any case, Paradise might be ominous, but Shaw’s not bringing along ideas that will improve it by any means.
This isn’t really the film we eventually got from Alien: Covenant. Is that bad? Honestly, I don’t know that either. Shaw as a character did not have a lot of depth in this movie. Noomi Rapace ended up playing her hurt very well by the end of it, but if that’s your standard of quality in horror acting, then Josh Stewart’s leading role in the grungy Saw-adjacent movie The Collector (2009) will serve you well.
I think they could have built something out of her character, but they didn’t. David is definitely the stand-out character from Prometheus, and they do at least focus on him quite a lot. But I’ve yet to watch Covenant, partly because the structure of it does not interest me. Also, because I’ve heard about what David does when he shows up on the new planet, and bad things happening to crowds are one thing that can make my brain wig out something awful.
Speaking of the Engineers, Scott speaks about their character:
“they’re such aggressive f**kers … and who wouldn’t describe them that way, considering their brilliance in making dreadful devices and weapons that would make our chemical warfare look ridiculous? So I always had it in there that the God-like creature that you will see actually is not so nice, and is certainly not God.”
Again, we find ourselves at the casual gnosticism of the movie, in which the Engineers are kind of the demiurge in this context. Some christian-influenced people assume that if there is a true god, it must be omnibenevolent, and find the violent and threatening behavior depicted in the Old Testament to be at odds with their understanding of divinity. A lack of benevolence is seen as a sign that the figure depicted must be something else, something that may think that it is a god, but it is not truly, regardless of its role as a creator. Hence, the gnostic idea of the demiurge.
But Scott also seems to confirm my suspicion that he’s not aware he’s recreating gnostic cosmogony through Prometheus, because he doesn’t reach for any of the older sources or the language around him. He instead invokes a rather surface reading of Paradise Lost:
“ In a funny kind of way, if you look at the Engineers, they’re tall and elegant … they are dark angels. If you look at [John Milton’s] Paradise Lost, the guys who have the best time in the story are the dark angels, not God. He goes to all the best nightclubs, he’s better looking, and he gets all of the birds. [Laughs]”
Setting aside the fact that Paradise Lost ends with all the fallen angels having a bad time because God’s turned them into snakes, I will give Scott the tiniest bit of credit, there’s a bit of my brain that saw this and thought “this is a strong start”:
Scott eventually continues on the Engineers, and the sacrifice scene at the start:
“That could be anywhere. That could be a planet anywhere. All he’s doing is acting as a gardener in space. And the plant life, in fact, is the disintegration of himself.
If you parallel that idea with other sacrificial elements in history – which are clearly illustrated with the Mayans and the Incas – he would live for one year as a prince, and at the end of that year, he would be taken and donated to the gods in hopes of improving what might happen next year, be it with crops or weather, etcetera.”
Scott is misremembering some things here, which is understandable given the off-the-cuff nature of the remark, but it’s still worth correcting. This is a misattribution of Aztec rituals that would involve the sacrifice of a “teixiptla” representative of a god (such as Xipe Totec, Tezcatlipoca, etc). The Inca didn’t carry out this ritual–they did engage in a human sacrifice ritual called qhapaq hucha, but its form and function was not the same. The Classical Maya also engaged in different human sacrifice rituals, but there was also an emphasis on non-fatal self-administered bloodletting–Maya nobility in particular were often depicted shedding their own blood for this purpose.
This also, to my memory, conflates stories of european human sacrifice rituals, where crop failures are sometimes linked to the sacrifice of kings, such as Dómaldr in the Ynglinga saga, and noted in the placement and treatment of certain bog bodies. The Aztecs did sacrifice to the god Tláloc for crop for good harvests, but the rituals involved were quite different.
It should be noted, of course, that Tláloc was later syncretized with the Christian god during the Spanish conquest, likely as a result of conceptually linking Tláloc’s sacrifices to the demand that Abraham sacrifice Isaac. And, y’know, that conquest was concurrent with the Spanish Inquisition, and the wider religious belief that a heretical witch army was being organized by Satan to stand against God to forestall the Second Coming of Christ, with crop failures being the most feared result of their rituals.
I’ve added all these details not because I want to say Scott is bad for misattributing this stuff, people make mistakes. I have several hours’ access to the internet, Scott did not. However, it is worth noting: How we frame an idea can say a lot about how we conceive of it. Variations on these behaviors are found throughout history, and across cultures. Sacrifices and martyrs are powerful symbols still invoked in western culture today. There’s a potential wandering back and forth between appreciation and exoticization that Scott’s engaging in.
Then Scott says something that made me get up from my chair to find a book to shake at my computer.
“I always think about how often we attribute what has happened to either our invention or memory. A lot of ideas evolve from past histories, but when you look so far back, you wonder, Really? Is there really a connection there?”
Yes.
Yes there is. Ancient peoples weren’t stupid. Ancient peoples didn’t even necessarily have less information to work with than any one modern human, they just had different information that kept them alive and finding solutions to their problems, be it “I need to find food” or “how do I meaningfully participate in my culture’s artistic and governmental traditions, and should they even be followed at all?”
If you want a great and thorough examination of that, check out the book I gesticulated with.
Highly recommended. Graeber was an anthropologist and Wengrow is an archaeologist, and the two of them together are a force to be reckoned with. There are definitely subjects covered in this book that I’ve seen from different angles before, and I feel like their interpretation pulls in more context than I’d gotten previously. Especially pertinent to this, the first part of The Dawn of Everything is spent examining the origins of modern western thought on “primitive” cultures and their character and capacity, and then digging into what evidence we actually have on the subject.
But the movie does not, fundamentally, engage with cultures outside of westernized, christian thinking. Not to any serious extent, anyway. It has a certain worldview, and that’s fine. That can be explored intelligently, although we’ve seen that I think it squanders that chance. It’s fundamentally a christian-centric movie.
And despite Scott’s protestations in the interview that they toned it down, quite a few readers have already guessed how far Scott originally intended to go on that.
“But if you look at it as an “our children are misbehaving down there” scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire. And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, “Lets’ send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it.” Guess what? They crucified him.”
Yes. Jesus of Nazareth was actually Jesus of Space.
This is why the movie says the Engineer corpse died about 2000 years ago. This is why they decided to destroy humanity.
Presumably the original quote on the cross was “Father, forgive them, for they know not that we’ve got deadly black goo.” Engineer 23:34, I guess.
Now that the screams in the audience have hopefully settled down, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.
Alright. So, this is bad. Let’s break down why, beyond the obvious questions about “why does nobody ever draw Jesus as bald, huge, and ripped.”
There’s a fake script circulating that actually has a decent interpretation of this: a human kid got zwooped up to be taught the ways of the Engineers, and sent back as an emissary. Why? Dunno. Also apparently the gospels that mention Mary and Joseph fleeing to Egypt with the baby Jesus were off the mark by a few lightyears.
This is laughable to christians, because “what if Jesus was an alien” is the sort of thing that twelve year olds come up with. It’s offensive if it’s taken seriously, because it says their literal god was actually a mortal critter from outer space. Ha! Your god is not all-powerful, or all-good. He’s not even All-Might.
But you know what’s almost worse? It implies that, sure, Christianity isn’t the inspired word of a deity. It also implies some level of exclusive factual accuracy to Jesus’ teachings, not shared with other religions. Jesus was a celestial emissary, endowed with the teachings that could save humanity, and his death doomed the Earth to the Last Judgment.
The Torah is insufficient, and all Rabbinic literature was produced following the rejection of the true way to salvation. The enlightenment of the Buddha counted for nothing, the Dao is not the way, Vishnu cannot defend or restore dharma, the Prophet Muhammad is only so valid as his acknowledgment of the Prophet Īsā ibn Maryam.
All other faiths are superfluous under this premise. If people had just listened to Jesus and accepted him as their savior, everything would’ve been fine!
This is the one point of alien contact with western canon in the entire setting, after the deep prehistory of Skye. Every other literate culture that was contacted got the Engineers’ message wrong. Or they didn’t listen. Only christians got it right.
That’s incalculably bad. That’s not even counting the fact that the wall o’ artifacts that Shaw and Holloway presented included a notable oversight: the only two artifacts further from Europe than the Middle East are chronologically impossible, based on the movie’s own timeline. It implies the rest of the world was thrown in as an afterthought.
This whole Jesus thing is a piece, a big, jagged piece of why this movie drives me so far up the wall that I’m now residing on the ceiling. It’s not, as far as I can tell, actively malicious. It’s just dumb. It wasn’t thought through the way it should’ve been. If they wanted to do a movie like this, they should’ve gone all-in. Really dig into the implications of what they’ve done.
And the movie seems wholly ignorant of it. There are basic questions presented to the audience, but there’s no deeper consideration that could make this respectful to anybody.
So, what are we left with?
A mess. A beautiful, stunted, confused mess that was poorly served by its script and lack of conviction.
The movie turned away from asking big questions, and focused instead on traditional horror. A genre that works best with good characterization to drive audience investment, but then it cut out most of the characterization, and what it left was scattershot. It gave us a flashback of Shaw’s childhood before we’d even really met her to understand why it was meaningful for her. The movie then failed to add any emotional weight to her.
The movie failed to give us characters with emotional weight or intelligence. It gave us a single, compelling character in David, driven largely by Michael Fassbender’s delivery and physical performance. It gave us a tactile, carefully constructed setting that was beautiful and often an accomplishment in filmmaking craft, but these spaces remained emotionally empty without a story that gave them meaning. It gave us the potential of something new, and then retreated to imitate the old.
I went into the theater in 2012 looking forward to a good film. I suppose this one has stuck with me more than a good film would have, but its primary value is as a flawed thing to critique, to learn from, and to put tooth marks on when the frustration gets to be too much.
Prometheus got one sort-of sequel in Alien: Covenant (2017), and it seems to have been abandoned. The first trailer for Alien: Romulus just came out the day I’m writing this, and it looks like it’s going to be just a monster movie.
If you want a good, modern Alien, play or watch Alien: Isolation (2014). Apparently its content was recut into a web series in 2019, though I can’t speak to the quality of that. For now, I’m done with the series. I’m not going to be rushing out to see anything new, because I don’t think it’s doing anything new. Prometheus could’ve been a chance to do that, but it failed.
Still. Writing this was fun, I will admit. My weird little obsession with this movie turned into a month and a half of writing and prepping this thing, totaling–Jesus E. Christ, over 82,000 words. I wish it could’ve been about something that hid more intellectual heft or careful thought than Prometheus did, but hey! There’s always next time.
And there will in all likelihood be a next time, as I’ve already started on another document. It won’t be for quite a while, though. This was a lot of fun, but a lot of work as well. I’ll be taking a break, and only releasing more stuff once I have it fully written ahead of time, as opposed to how I handled this one.
Thank you, brave readers, for making it this far.
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Citations for alt-text rambles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023%E2%80%932024_Sundhn%C3%BAkur_eruptions#Eruptions
https://tubitv.com/movies/314320/the-collector
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dettifoss
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Magliabechiano
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tollund_Man
https://youtu.be/nT2ueyFrVgk
https://www.deviantart.com/pretty--kittie/art/Prometheus-Engineer-407316113
https://nebula.tv/videos/hellofutureme-is-netflixs-avatar-any-good
Overflow Ramble 1
Hey, does anyone else remember Stephen Speilberg’s War of the Worlds (2005)? I saw that in the theater, and I cannot watch that thing again. Yes, I was younger, but the overall content of that movie absolutely shredded my nerves to pieces. Even though I’d grown up knowing the full H G Wells story and reading things like The Tripods book series as a kid, Spielberg managed to make a movie that felt so viscerally unpleasant to me that it gave me nightmares for years.
My main theory is this: You know in movies that the protagonist is almost certainly going to survive what happens, doubly so in War of the Worlds because it was goddamn Tom Cruise. But my brain did not treat Tom Cruise as my viewpoint character. Something in me says “well, I’m not Tom Cruise, I’m one of those other people around him, and they’re all gonna die horribly.”
This tends to happen with me in disaster films and similar stuff like that. I have to be real certain I want to be there if I watch a kaiju movie, for example. I can do Godzilla (2014), but I’m not so sure about Godzilla Minus One (2023). Shin Godzilla (2016) is off the table.
Horror movies have to hit a balance of giving people a rickety feeling of potential safety they want to preserve, rather than letting them feel too safe or too screwed. Too far either way and you lose people, either to apathy or just pure bad vibes. The paradox of enjoyable horror is that it can’t scare you too much.
Overflow Ramble 2
I personally don’t think the tone of Fede Álvarez’s horror fits with what I’m looking for in an Alien movie. The xenomorph life cycle worked best and most subversively when it was deliberately targeted, to take the sexual/reproductive menace usually placed on female characters in horror and forced it onto a male character instead. Álvarez has historically played that trope straight instead. From a horror perspective, that’s boring to me. The xenomorphs also appear to be aggressive monsters here rather than animals, more like Aliens than Alien. Not my favorite interpretation.
And to be honest, when I saw the trailer, my first thought was “Oh, it’s Sevastopol Station.” The setting looks exactly like Alien: Isolation, and there’s not a chance the movie’s going to outshine Isolation. That game’s only narrative sin was a bit of slow pacing toward the ending. Romulus’ trailer makes me think it’s going to go too far in the other direction.
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Wait, Zhao Yunlan's gun is actually a...?!
(I've never claimed production meta for @guardianbingo before, but after the amount of time and research I put in on this, I feel like I've earned the "Zhao Yunlan's Gun or Whip" square, haha)
SO. GUYS.
Maybe this is something fandom as a whole figured out back in 2018, but I, who didn't hear of Guardian until 2020, did not realize until now and I need to share the knowledge because when I finally noticed, I made an unholy sound.
I've tracked down where Zhao Yunlan's gun came from -- or at least, what it most likely started as. Not the in-universe dark-energy-maybe-uses-bullets-maybe-doesn't-device-that's-best-not-thought-about-too-long, but rather the actual fake-steampunk-revolver-that-is-best-not-looked-at-too-long-because-it's-awful prop.
Y'know, this disaster:
I was actually working on a different Guardian Bingo fill and needed to look something up for continuity, so I'd flipped through a couple of episodes at super high speed trying to find a scene. As luck would have it, one of my skips forward happened to land on the scene I screencapped above, when ZYL confronts Zhang Shi.
Normally we don't get this clear (or this stationary) a shot of the godawful gun prop. I'd assumed all along they had just taken a plastic gun, glued some extra bits and bobs on it to make it look fancy, and hit it with some dry brushing (fun fact: you can watch the paint flake throughout the series; check out the top of the barrel and the side of the cylinder in the above screenshot!) to make it look #steampunk like the abandoned aesthetic of 25% of the show (as I've said before, I have theories about what happened in preproduction, but that's another post). This sort of thing is exactly what I've done for cheap cosplay weapons or background props for film work that aren't going to be seen at HD detail range.
Anyway, since the detail showed up better here than in other shots, I paused the video to look at the random screws and hex bolts (why??) they'd glued on it, since I recalled that I had the aforementioned gun/whip bingo square to fill.
That's when I noticed a detail that had eluded me before: An inverted V shape at the bottom of the grip.
Only looking more closely, that's not an inverted V. It's a symbol that I've seen a whole series of variations of over the past 15+ years... every time there's a new installment of the Assassin's Creed video game series:
So I started hunting. The principal weapons in each game turned up no matches, but eventually I found a gun that looks almost exactly like ZYL's:
It's not a perfect replica, but the details are certainly all there: The stylized logo; the leaves and swirls on the grip; the feathers up the back; even the Victorian scrollwork beneath the barrel.
Now, what's really interesting is that this gun isn't actually from the AC game series. It's part of an elaborate fan project by artist David Paget that started as a class assignment back in 2014. Even though it gathered a bit of steam in the AC fandom and generated a couple of forum role-play groups, OCs and the like, nothing about this artwork was ever connected to a real Assassin's Creed title. So why would there be a physical version of a gun that was only someone's fanart?
This is where the smoking gun (*rimshot*) goes missing, because I can't prove any of this, and it's been long enough that digging through the archives of the internet to find answers is going to take way more time than I can afford to spend on a project I'm not getting paid for. But there are two likely possibilities:
Scenario A: Some employee in a toy factory somewhere in China got told, "This Assassin's Creed franchise is really big, so we need to be producing replicas from those games to sell. Work up some designs." So the employee Googles "assassin's creed gun," finds David Paget's very professional-looking art, and whips up a replica to mass-injection-mold without realizing it's not actually from a game. Later, someone on the cash-strapped Guardian production team needs a gun to mod, and finds a cheap toy revolver on clearance after several years of sitting in storage because there was little demand for a replica of a gun that was never in a game. They buy several, glue hex bolts on the cylinder for reasons unknown, and poof! Instant pseudo-steampunk!
Scenario B: Other fans were involved in the design. Someone did build a 3D model of David Paget's design that's still available on Sketchfab (screenshot below), and it's not unreasonable to assume that other fans could have thought it looked cool and built 3D printable models. Later, someone on the cash-strapped Guardian production team needs a gun to mod, and acquires the 3D print file of one of those models from the interwebs. They mod the file a bit, print some, glue hex bolts on the cylinder for reasons unknown, and poof! Instant pseudo-steampunk!
Personally, I find Scenario A far more likely than Scenario B, for two reasons: First, the hero prop looks more injection molded than 3D printed, especially given the technical state of 3D printing back in 2017-8. And second... Budget-challenged dramas do have a history of picking up bulk video game replicas and using them as cheap props. I made a post back in 2019 about the WoW Horde shields we spotted in a different drama...
Anyway, no firm answers about the source of the hero prop -- the world may never know! -- but we have now confirmed that in some alternate universe (possibly one of the first eighty?), Zhao Yunlan and/or Zhao Xinci is an Assassin.
Wait, wait, wait... *recalls mechanics of how the whole Assassin's Creed frame story is supposed to work* Uh... so... who wants to write a genetic memory explanation for the whole Kunlun -> [lots of lifetimes] -> Zhao Yunlan thing?
.
(I did actually check the catalogue of a friend of mine who makes replicas of props from various media franchises to see if he'd done a commission of the David Paget design, since a surprising number of his custom pieces actually do end up on film and television, but while he has a gorgeous replica of a revolver that actually appears in an AC game, it appears he has not done the Zhao Yunlan gun. I didn't really think it likely, since he's in the U.S., but you never know.)
#guardian#zhen hun#c-drama#guardian bingo#assassin's creed#tv props#it's always fun when my various hats end up stacked on top of one another
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In response to your previous post, why do you think people still love Anakin despite all the selfish and violent things he has done?
Just for archival sake, this is the post I assume you're responding to.
I love when you guys force me to drop the bitter old hag act and be more legitimately analytical about characters I dislike lol.
The somewhat less analytical response to this post is that people like him due to protagonist bias, Hayden Christensen being considered attractive, and Darth Vader having a lot of nostalgia from the OT.
However, while I think those things are always a major aspect in why people like the character, the more analytical version is that Anakin is a character created to be relatable. He's got flaws that most of us can look at and recognize in ourselves and even though he does become a monster because of them, he is also capable of saving himself in the end and doing something heroic despite that, he is allowed to get better and stand next to confirmed good guys like Yoda and Obi-Wan as what seems to be equals, he is capable of being loved by someone as kind and good as Luke Skywalker DESPITE his many flaws and heinous choices. And like... that's an impressively compelling character journey, to see someone become the worst version of themselves it is possible to be and still be loved enough to make the choice to be better.
And it's not like I haven't enjoyed my fair share of selfish characters who do heinous things in my day, even within Star Wars itself. Some of my favorite characters include people like Saw Gerrera and Luthen Rael and Cassian Andor and Reva Sevander, ALL of whom made some pretty nasty choices or acted selfishly at some point or another. Reva is literally built to be a parallel and then foil FOR ANAKIN.
So it's not like I don't necessarily see the appeal of Anakin as this massively flawed character with sympathetic motivations for his immensely awful choices, someone who wanted to be good and, for a little while, WAS good, but who was led towards a dark path that he knew he shouldn't take but took anyway because he let his fears control him. Anakin making the mistakes he does is literally a cautionary tale, you're SUPPOSED to relate to him and see yourself in him, the story kind-of doesn't work if you don't in some ways.
So I think a lot of people who like him probably just see a lot of themselves in him, both good and bad. They project onto Anakin and sympathize with his motives and his struggles and, even though they know he's a screw-up, they root for him. They want him to get better because if someone like Anakin can get better, then so can they, so can we all. Anakin is a cautionary tale saying that even those of us with the best of intentions can lead ourselves down a road of selfishness if we aren't careful about our motives, but he's also a hopeful tale saying that even the WORST of us can lead ourselves back to a road of selflessness if we're willing to put in the effort. So you can feel sympathy for the first half and take strength from the second half of his story, depending on where you are in your life.
This is obviously all sort-of said in like the best faith interpretation of why people might like Anakin. There's plenty of people who like him as a power fantasy, people who see Anakin as this impressive strong character who takes down his abusers and takes control of his narrative by defying the prophecy and killing the Jedi. And, you know, everyone gets to take what they want out of stories of course, but boy do these people and I take VERY different things out of Star Wars. I curate my internet experience so I never have to have anything to do with these people, but they absolutely exist.
And at the end of the day, all of that is wrapped up in a character who, in one trilogy, is played by a very classically attractive actor who gets to kiss Natalie Portman and is occasionally funny, and in the other trilogy, is represented as this cool-looking villain in an imposing black costume with a skull helmet and cape and some memorable quotes. So while the deeper reasons for people's enjoyment of his character definitely exist, the surface-level ones are still there and can enhance that enjoyment a lot.
And I'm sure there's any number of other, smaller things that impacted people's reactions to Anakin. He was introduced as a child in TPM and so people who were expecting this young adult character already in the throes of darkness might've ended up seeing him very differently and relating to him on a whole different level. People might've ended up rooting for him because the representation of the Jedi was so far away from what they THOUGHT Jedi would be that they ended up liking Anakin simply because he's pitted against the Jedi they didn't like. Maybe some people didn't like him until TCW and they really appreciate THAT version of Anakin quite a lot, maybe especially his relationship with Ahsoka. Maybe some people just really fell for the doomed romance plotline with Padme. Maybe some people like him because Obi-Wan and Luke like him and those dynamics are intriguing to them.
But for me, Anakin has just never felt all that compelling. I was introduced to the Prequels first as a kid and I was far more invested in Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon (who were way funnier than Anakin ever was) and Padme (who had really pretty costumes). I didn't HATE Anakin by any means, but he wasn't all that funny, he didn't have the cooler action scenes for the first two films, and the romance plotline didn't hook me. I didn't mind Anakin as an accessory to Obi-Wan, but that was about as far as I went.
As I got older and more into the fandom, though, I started learning a lot more about the Jedi and why they WEREN'T the true villains of the Prequels the way everyone said they were and what Lucas's messages had actually been intended to be, and the romance with Padme just kept aging like milk, and my investment in the Jedi often meant defending them AGAINST people who saw them as no more than Anakin's abusers at worst, or a repressive society that unintentionally led Anakin to darkness at best. Arguing FOR the Jedi usually meant arguing AGAINST Anakin and pointing out all of the places HE was wrong and selfish and why the Jedi were RIGHT not to trust him. And the more passionate I got about defending the Jedi, the less and less I ended up liking Anakin. I wasn't overly invested in him in the first place, so it wasn't hard to take me from neutral to decidedly negative. Had I enjoyed him more as a kid, either in the Prequels or the Original Trilogy, maybe I would've landed in a different place with him, but I didn't. It didn't feel like any great loss to decide I didn't like him that much anymore. By comparison, I liked Padme a lot more as a kid and so even though I often find her just as selfish as Anakin, I like her a lot more usually.
So I get why people find him compelling, I really do, but he just doesn't speak to me. I highly doubt he ever will anymore.
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TMAGP (and TMA, indirectly) Spoilers and Thoughts...
You have been warned...
I wasn't part of the original TMA crowd back when it was first airing. I'd heard mutterings of it, but never really thought much about it. To be honest, I probably wasn't mentally ready for it back then. Instead, my younger sister started listening to it last year and then kept talking about it until something she said made me go, "Y'know what? Okay. I'm in."
I ended up bingeing through it during work this past October, and holy sh*t. I fell down the rabbit hole hard. (Maybe, in this case, it would be more akin to running face first down those coffin stairs? I digress.) Being so new to it when everyone else had already been swallowed up by the sky, it was cool to dig into the Wikis that had already been made, to see the links and foreshadowing.
But now, it's the beginning of TMAGP, and I actually get to listen the day they release, to jump on here, or reddit, or tiktok, or wherever to be a part of the theorizing AS IT HAPPENS. And boy oh boy, I'm happier than Simon Fairchild in the stratosphere.
Do I have a notebook to jot down my thoughts as I listen? Of course, I do. Do I have multiple tabs open, some with ARG info, some with TMA info, and yet more with references to alchemical symbols and practices? Duh. Have I started my own spreadsheet for it all? Well, if you knew about my Lego Dimensions spreadsheet.... nevermind. Yes, I have.
But nothing beats being able to talk (or type) about it with other fans, like my sister, or those faceless avatars (lol) of the interwebs. And man, has my brain been CHURNING.
First, let me get out of the way that I wasn't able to take part in the ARG as it was happening, and my goodness! I'm so happy there are other people out there like me who were able to sum up and load it up for the rest of us to learn about. No idea how much of it will be *necessary* to unlock all the secrets, but I'm the kind who loves to know trivia just cos. And the details I am learning definitely pull me deeper.
Second, I feel like in the beginning of TMA, there was barely anything for the listeners to dig through. One guy working on behalf of an organization, trying to dig through seemingly implausible and overly spooktastic first-hand statements dating back centuries that are in crazy disarray from the previous archivist, and he's laying on a hefty helping of "this is utter balderdash, complete poppycock, and absolute piffle" opinion. It was a slow burn, something that (as an American, and being exposed to so much more instant gratification in storytelling than necessary) UK storytellers seem to be experts in, and was even more expertly done in this case, since so many little things had to eventually build up without listeners automatically assuming what would happen next, without them getting bored.
But TMAGP is already so full of so much extra stuff, so many little things (even before it was released) that we may all get BURIED in the sheer amount of data we think is vital. We're not listening to tapes this time, we're definitely listening via internet-connected devices, like computers, mobile phones, and security cameras. So, while TMA had old tape recorders magically appearing (or were they being dragged by hordes of spiders?) and switching themselves on so they could hear all the random happenings within the archive, TMAGP is no longer reliant on such hand-wavery. Whatever/whoever is listening can do so from anywhere to anyone they want. That makes the world of TMAGP
SO
MUCH
BIGGER.
Third, I know not everyone who listens to these things is like me (or, let's face it: us--there are so many fans doing regular deep dives on here, we should have our own categorization on the wiki). There are bound to be listeners who just leave everything at face value and wait for the story to unfold itself organically, and when it's done, it's done. But even as an adolescent, when I got into something, I did my best to listen to, watch, or read everything I could find on that very niche thing. At least for a while. (Hello, undiagnosed ADHD!)
So, I watched/listened to a couple interviews and Q&As regarding the new show prior to release. And while both Alex and Jonny have been clear saying you don't have to have listened to TMA to enjoy TMAGP, I kind of think just saying that is leading us TMA fans in a very specific direction. And I think it's very intentional, and that a lot of fans either haven't heard about it yet, or are choosing to ignore it.
They say that TMAGP is tangentially related to TMA in that there will be familiar themes, but
it's taking place in a completely different universe from TMA;
time in TMA worked differently (especially during the Entity Torturepalooza in S5) towards the end, so dates of events there may not line up with dates or events in this universe; and
the main or overarching theme is different.
In TMA, the story was "what makes a monster a monster?" As in, is there a line one crosses that they can't return from? Is it a physical manifestation, like it alters their appearance? Is it an action they have to take? And does that action have to be done willingly, or can it be coerced? Does becoming the monster to protect someone else, or to achieve a greater good... does any of that matter?
In TMAGP, they've already said that the story will be "what makes a person a person?"
The implications of that sentence are many and mind-boggling.
I first thought it had something to do with the idea of the humane (not human): kindness, empathy, compassion. The ties that bind us together as people (like being fans of a little horror podcast from across the pond) could be part of this.
But, now that we have 5 episodes out, and a metaphorical army of lore-deep-divers digging through every word and sound effect and episode title, I think we can truly start to figure out where we're heading.
Artificial Intelligence.
It struck me as I was re-listening to the first episode this morning. (I really am trying to fill out my spreadsheet in a semi-logical manner and with as many pertinent details as possible, really. That's the main reason I was doing that this morning. At least, that's what I tell myself.) We are hearing all these happenings over web-connected devices (don't think I don't see you, Alex and Jonny, and your oh-so-hilarious punning!), the OIAR employees are working on a modified business-forward version of Windows NT 4.0 that precedes Windows 95 that has a name that we interpret as 'Freddy' (or Freddie, depending on where you are in the transcripts), one of the documents from the ARG was a spreadsheet called 'Klaus' (which IS the name of the former IT guy Gwen's asking about because she heard/saw young Lena arguing with him), and we have at least 3 text-to-speech "voices" that Alice has given names (Chester, Norris, and Augustus).
All of that was running through my brain, and then I heard this passage within the first few minutes of the episode:
LENA - Nonsense. Sam is the only one who has had any cake so far.
GWEN - And that was only because you practically forced it down his throat.
SAM - No, no, it was… nice.
LENA - People like chocolate cake.
People like chocolate cake? She didn't even ask her employees (all 5 of them at that time) what flavor they'd prefer, or if they'd want something else? No. She just knows a fact that "people" like chocolate cake, so of course, her employees--who are people--would like chocolate cake.
Almost like a computer following a logic-based workflow, perhaps?
Lots of people have been trying to figure out who in the office is the Big Bad, and many are saying Gwen just because of her ambition and her last name (Bouchard), but I think her name is a red herring. Others are saying Alice knows more than she lets on (and so many are hating on her, and I will NOT ABIDE THE ALICE DYER SHADE because I love her and I would very probably hide bodies for her) but I agree that certain things she's said are a little sus, though they really could just be her personality. I really have known some women like her, and they are some of my favorite people. (Plus, the fact that we now know that she's the most tenured employee at the OIAR--save possibly Lena--does make the brain churn some more.)
But with this line about chocolate cake, and how she was unable to join them at the pub, and how we haven't had a scene with her outside of the OIAR office, it makes me think that Lena might just be part code.
[Let me also add this really quick: I've seen A LOT of people trying to make the current episodes fit into Smirke's 14 +Dekker's 1, but I don't think the Entities as we codified them are what we're dealing with in this universe. I think trying to link everything back to that show will be a lot of wasted thought, because as they said, this isn't a direct sequel. (Do I think it's actually Jon, Martin, and Jonah--yes, Jonah, not Jurgen--trapped in the computer system? A bit, but it won't shatter my appreciation if the voices are something else entirely.)
Plus, I've seen others saying that the statements we've heard, while creepy, aren't all necessarily to do with fear. Most of them are about desires and obsessions.
The woman who wanted so desperately to see her dead husband again that she'd get scammed over and over to possibly resurrect him;
the person who wanted to spelunk an 'unsolved' site to the point of crime;
the woman who wanted to finally feel comfortable in her skin to the point of disfiguring herself;
the man who wanted so badly to climb out of his assigned station and achieve fame that he'd regularly 'feed' his violin blood from other people;
and the man who wanted to feel the same terror he felt when watching scary movies with his dad when he was a kid to the point of chasing down 'borderline illegal films' and ignoring LITERALLY ALL the red flags to the end.
I think that theory is the closest to what we may actually encounter.]
I've seen others on reddit saying they think that this series will be about the race to create the philosopher's stone--the stone that creates the elixir of life and, essentially, immortality. I think it's a valid idea. But, what if it went further than that?
Because with all the alchemical hints dropping in the show's logo, the ARG, and the 3-category system to the statements (yes, I'm keeping track) that could make one think of the spirit, the mind, and the body in alchemy....
What if they're trying to create life from software?
What if these entities or desires or whatevers have been working through some ancient busted code, feeding off statements from "real" humans experiencing strong emotions, watching the employees that work with it every single night, so they can create something as close to a human as possible from just wires and 3 decades of unreadable code?
Oh lord... it just occurred to me that--due to this being a HORROR podcast--they might need to collect a skin suit for the Not Quite Human. Is that what happened to Klaus? Ick. And now I'm hoping I'm wrong.
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What to do if Durarara over
I'm going to assume you've finished the anime and have not gone into anything else Naritaverse wise
So! You can read the novels. Since they're officially licensed by yen press, you can buy the soft cover books or get them as an ebook / kindle from barnes and noble or amazon. I don't really endorse this but I'm sure if you do enough digging around you can find old, still available, free translations like anni_fiesta who did a lot of translating back in the day. Here's the link to their Index of Translation. I still use it since it's the only place I know that has the white day story translated and it's one of my favorites (For Kadota Related reasons haha), plus a couple of other side stories.
(I think the internet archives have the novels if you do some poking around but for Narita Please Write SH 5 reasons, I'll ask you to dig those up lmao)
Speaking of Side stories, Kazinha-726 translated a bunch of drrr side stories
But since they haven't updated in a while, you need to change the links from kaedesan721 to their new URL kazinha-726. I'll directly link what you need here
Izaya Spin Off Translations
I don't think these are officially licensed for translation so it's fine for me to link. This is the story of Izaya now that he's been forced out of Ikebukuro, and there's two books as of writing this.
Durarara Gaidens
It's some gaidens, but It's also a handful of translated convos from 3 way stand of alley relay, the links use that kaedesan721 link, so while I won't be fixing all those links for you, I can at least link the tag for all of them here. you can probably find audio for this game on youtube, though I'm not sure anyone's like.... fully translated? perhaps? Which ALSO reminds me of the relay manga
Durarara Epitome of Eighteen Histories
Written along side the release of season 2, we've got some stories involving Kazane Kinomiya, who's the half sister of Shinra, and a reporter. They have all 18 listed there nicely EXCEPT the Erika and Walker Link is a little messed up, and if you search through the posts you can get to it but anyway here's the link to that story specifically
DRRR x Hakata Tonkatsu Ramens
Actually I haven't seen HTR or read it so I can't really tell you about this one but if you're into that series--
There's ALSO MiniDura which are little gag comics of the durarara cast in chibis! there should be 4 books as of me writing this. Godspeed on finding translations they seem to be around.... but this post is long and I'm scared of losing it so I'll update later on how many chapters there are so you don't miss any, though I'm seeing up to 10 in my cursory search.
Shizuo, Izaya, and Celty are also in uh.... Dengeki Bunko's fighting Climax, which you might be able to find some stuff on on youtube. but since it's Dengeki Bunko you also have other series... I can only remember A Certain Magical Index / A Certain Scientific Railgun / the other titles in this series as being part of it whoops.
So you've done all that, what do you do next?
Well Narita has other series, like Baccano! which had an anime before DRRR did, which is 16 episodes. Since Funimation lost the license back in like... 2012 it's not officially uh licensed for viewing anywhere, so uh. wink wink. message me if you need more help here.
There's ALSO the novels which... there are so many more than there are for drrr, also available to purchase, though these are hardcovers! Last time I checked they had.... around 20 translated? Since I'm more drrr side I'd have to ask about fan translations and if I can still find them around. But again I don't really condone it since we want more written you know?
Narita also has a couple other series, but the one that's my favorite besides DRRR is Etsusa Bridge (It's pronounced Essa Bridge don't make the same mistake I did. )
And i NEED more people to read that one please please please please
Unfortunately, the person who did the fan translation closed their Blogspot to the public so uh. the first 4 books, and really what is the main story, is available on the internet archive here
Though I'm saying thank you to baka-tsuki for my life by having a page of links here, which includes the 5th book, 5656 part two (NARITA..... I NEED 5656 PART 2 PLEASE...... PLEASE)
and Vamp on the internet archive here and baka-tsuki here
I also know about Hariyama-san but i don't actually know... if anyone translated that one.....
Narita has also written for Bleach and Fate Strange/ Fake if you're into those. Straight up just linking this wiki page in case you have any interest in other stuff he's written
And finally! Currently, Dead Mount Death Play (often shortened to DMDP) is a manga written (or co written?) by Narita! which is currently getting an anime and all of his attention.
All that being said I've been really into Trigun lately lmao
Anyone else feel free to add on or tell me what I may be missing
#durarara#naritaverse#baccano#izaya orihara#celty sturluson#shizuo heiwajima#long post#info#info post
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TMP EP 1
.Gewn, Alice, Lena (boss), teddy (just got another job), colin (IT), and sam
.FREDY, search engine for looking for incidents
.Already mentioned ‘dolls watching’ and ‘dolls, human skin’ the Stranger????
.The universe that the entities got pulled through to??
.MARTIN VOICE/Alex (NORIS)
.FREDY started reading out certain statements in different voices around a year ago
.There are 3 voices
.Alice has named them NORRIS, CHESTER, AUGUSTUS
.NORIS and CHESTER are the most common
.Assuming this is the statement format
.Statement 1: checking in red by NORIS
.Statement reading less robotic voice, more Martin
.Could be the Burried?? Cemetery mentioned
.The Stranger? Dead dude skin/ voice
.Defo the stranger
.Taken over the dead husbands body, ‘it’
.Statement ends
.The enitites sound the same
.Partial reanimation crossreference
.Gewn seems to have a LOT of experience, sus
.Gwen and Lena in office
.Audio interference and different audio quality
.Interference by the eye???????
.Giving Elias
.Manipulation 10000
.Gwen wants Lenas job
.Lena warning Gwen about trying to take her job because of what it ‘entailes’ sus
.Colin is defo hiding something, kinda a scary dude, could be an avatar, he is trying to fix the system eg.FREDY
.Is this recorded through security cameras????? The audio keeps being different
.Also recorded by the pc cameras??
.No one realy likes colin
.Alice and Sam know eachother from uni, she got him the job
.Introducing the idea that everyone who works there has had an ‘encounter’ which leads them there
.JONNNNNN/john/ CHESTER
.YES YES YES YES YES I MISSED HIS ANOYING VOICE OMG
.Statement, Magnus Institute Ruins
.Statement made on April 10th 2022 3.31pm
.Manchester???? Not our version of the institute
.No pictures of it suprise suprise
.‘Realy weird place’ yeah no shit honey
.No pictures are uploading (just like the ‘real’ statements, they wouldnt be able to be uploaded onto the computer), she is realy paranoid after going there
.Was a fire about 20 years ago (so in 2000 ish)
.‘Got a realy cool vibe’ offices, old furnishings, the feeling that ‘doors would randomly shut even through most of the doorframes are empty’ ALRIGHT HELEN CHILL
.No old papers????? All files gone????? SUSPICIOUS Old graffiti???
.Symbols on the walls, stains, from a ritual??? Could be an alternate universe Institute where the Desolation managed to complete their ritual??
.The photos have disappeared off her phone
.She found an empty box with symbols on it, picture wont upload or format
.‘Photographic distortion’
.Getting threats from random people on the internet about the box she took
.Anonymous dms coming in
.‘Image removed by moderator’ she finally managed to upload a photo of the symbols at 2.01am but it was taken down
.‘Canaries should stay above ground’ the mod of the chat is incredibly sus
.People saying the picture was ‘gross’ before it was taken down????
.‘Are those eyes’
.Was potentially a gore pic about eyes
.She was banned from the chat room
.She real dead
.The thread was then locked by the moderator
.Statement ended
.No one has heard of the Magnus Institute except maybe Sam?
.Listening through a phone??
.Sam is thankful for the job, something to focus on? What happened to him
.Gwen is his ex?? Or Alice??
.Alice doesn't believe the cases are real, apparently the pay is good
.‘To new beginnings’
.Colin trying to ‘find’ someone???? He knows something, he could be talking about the voices in the server??
Overall an amazing start to the new show, so many mysteries already and im so so so exited to hear the third voice and see if its Jonah/Elias, also to find out which universe we are in and the timelines matching up with og Magnus Archives!!
#the magnus archives#tma fandom#tma#jonathan sims#martin blackwood#the magnus protocol#the magnus protocol is destroying my brain#sam seems like a little baby man#plz nothing hurt him
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Just listened to the first couple episodes of The Magnus Protocol and I have stuff to think about
(Spoilers ahead ofc)
Okay so immediately I like the new format, I think it opens a lot of opportunities for really unique stuff. I find it interesting how despite the apparent lack of tape recorders, there’s still a canon reason they’re being recorded, albeit in a way that raises way more questions (Like wdym Sam’s phone dialed a number on it’s own to listen in on him and Alice??)
Second thing is, like, Gwen?? Girl you are following in the footsteps of the other Bouchard and I am so worried for you. I was incredibly worried for her during that performance review, but I’m really interested in what’s going to happen. Like it’s uncanny how she seems to literally have the exact same ideas about her place in the institute as Elias did.
That first incident is going to come up later I’ve learned from the original that they’re gonna do callbacks and it’s gonna be really important.
Evidently I’ve figured the entities that each incident were are End, Eye, and Flesh in order, but that first one is just so weird??
Also when Sam questioned what ‘DPHW’ meant I immediately thought that the DP part stands for Dread Power(s) but I have no idea what the rest could mean.
Touching on Alice’s brother for a second I think that he’ll be relevant later (I mean obviously) but also the mention of his band name including ‘bullet’ immediately is setting off Slaughter flags in my head.
Also!! The second incident!! Erm!!
‘Canaries should stay above ground’ went so fucking hard and I’m curious about what actually happened in this case cause like it’s pretty obvious they didn’t write that themselves given the whole “Probably carved out their eyes” thing.
I started The Magnus Archives after it was already done and I unintentionally and intentionally spoiled myself before finishing it so I’m excited to actually listen along this time. I’m treating the second incident like everyone mentioned will be important because again internet usernames probably will be important.
(Can you tell I’m rambling as things come to mind)
I can’t tell if it was intentional or if it’s just a reoccurrence of the infinite name recycling thing again but the fact that the email from the first incident was to Daria while the person from the third was named Darla is interesting
Also haha hey Colin what are you up to you got cut off there
Also assuming that something terrible happened to Teddy because of course it did
They put Jon and Martin in Windows 95 truly tragic and also terrifying considering Binary
I’m curious who the third voice will be? Maybe Elias?
That’s all I’ll reblog this with more if I think about it
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every single little detail they managed to fit into bmc
yeah there are SO MANY details in this show and its driving me crazy so im gonna amass everything into posts
ik many of these are well known or obvious or whatever but im doing it so anyone who didnt know about any of these could easily learn it all in one go without having to scour the internet or rewind and watch the background in every single scene yk (also i noticed so many of these myself and im kinda proud and its a way for me to get it all out)
i’m also going to be using @/thesquirrelqueer's be more chill archive which is amazing and frankly scary so go give em some love
edit i changed my mind halfway through this cause thats gonna take me forever so if you want to see all the visual details go check that out. its like thats the artists reference and this is the writers reference i think all the little quirks showcase their personality quite well
im gonna start all the way from the beginning so FIRST UP is 2river's "More Than Survive" (album+show, specifically the one 35 minute 👢)
im telling you its LONG so prepare yourself for that. maybe pull up the video to watch side by side so yk what im talking about (the video on yt is "this isnt be more chill" because its NOT be more chill) tiny warning for very mild nsfw mentions cause its bmc
from the first "c-c-c-cmon" up to "and now of course its time to hit the road" theres a sound that sounds like a mouse clicking to the beat in the background. i thought this was to reflect the show when jeremy stops clicking at his laptop at the line "and now of course its time to hit the road" to gets up and put his pants on, but during "but that really isnt such a change/if im not feeling weird or super strange" you can still hear the clicks. maybe its there just for repetitions sake cause it breaks off at "which means ill be uncomfortable all day" and resumes for those two lines, then you dont hear it again. you can hear this one very clearly if you watched the show, but its a little fainter in the album (i figured it out from the album lmao go me)
during the bus scene in the show when everyones going to their places, jeremy almost crashes into rich and you can hear his voice hitch
christine watches this interaction before "sitting down" on the bus to read
i think brooke is asleep during the bus ride, and gets woken up when the bus jerks forward
jake nearly drops his phone too (again this is all based on the 35 minute video on yt. im sure small things change every show, but this is all we got so im picking this one apart)
jeremy keeps smoothing his hair behind his right ear with his palm, probably a nervous gesture. he does it when they "get off the bus"
during the ensembles (i dont think thats the right word but it just makes it easier for me you know who im talking about) "c-c-c-cmon", michael loses his signal on his phone when they get to school, hence the "cmon"
chloe impatiently gestures to brooke to "cmon" and follow her (yk)
jenna waves to christine. christine puts her book down and waves back, then again just watches jenna and then people
rich messes with jenna and she goes to hit him
after the "c-c-c-cmon"s rich jumps out from backstage and hits jeremy in the nuts you can hear jeremys faint noise of pain
in the little dance break jake and jenna are dancing on opposite sides of the stage, then wave at each other (im pretty sure). jeremy looks back and forth between them while they dance and mistakenly waves to jenna when they spin around (just watch it youll know what i mean)
when chloe, brooke and jenna are gossiping, up to jakes "its a good thing i rock at pool" the "rich set a fire" tune plays in the background (something something gossip rumors) chloe is holding a textbook with the earth on it, so science or something probably. there’s a magazine article page that says “what cheating does to [i can’t see what it says]”, which i’m assuming is a reference to jake?? she also have page cutouts of hair products, straighteners, etc, and i think a picture of either taylor swift or brooke i really can’t tell 💀💀when rich writes on jeremys backpack, he pulls him up by the collar to say "youre dead", then pushes him (jeremy pushes his hair back again) into mr reyes' path where hes walking to put up the play sign up sheet. (side note gerards voice cracked on 'dont touch me tall ass" so it sounds like hes having a tantrum and will connolly looks like a meerkat and i love them both)
when jake says "its a good thing i rock at pool" chloe and brooke hide behind a pillar and listen in, then chloe does a sort of "i told you so" gesture. during the whole "i navigate the dangerous hall" scene, brooke chases after chloe as she storms off upset. rich messes with jenna again and she chases him offstage, then mr reyes follows (im pretty sure he pinched her ass) i dunno if this is a coincidence but christine runs after them offstage too. christine and jenna friendship w
jeremy genuinely sounds so excited when he realized it was a sign up sheet and i wholeheartedly believe he wanted to join the play even before christine, she was just the final push
when the ensemble comes back out before the "christiiiiiiiiine" mr reyes comes out dragging rich by the ear while jenna smugly walks behind them (read back to him pinching her ass). rich flips him off after he lets go. jake walks past chloe without looking up from his phone and chloe does a 180 to chase after him. forgot to mention michael has his hood on and bops to his music in the background of all the ensemble scenes but yk its pretty well known
oh god class scene here we go. rich and jake make the 👌👈 sign at michael. rich very aggressively shoves his WHOLE HAND into the circle and opens his hand. jenna raises her hand and mr reyes brushes her off in favor of trying and failing to get jake to stop, so he moves on to rich. he puts a hand on richs arm and sorta makes the "wtf" gesture. rich makes the "sorry about that" motion with his hand still around his wrist which is kinda funny to me (just watch it i cant even describe it) jake turns to talk to brooke, who was previously talking to chloe. jenna waves to christine again. also christine seemed really shy every time jenna waves at her, and never waves first. idk if this is a coincidence but chloe flips her hair back and brooke mirrors it right after. there’s a poster for an anime club on the bulletin board with the sign up sheet
MICHAEL
jeremys fucking bops to his intro i love him
really quick when michael goes "and were almost at the end of this song" and does his dance jeremy bops along with him. NOW if we stretch a bit and say this actually happened then that means jeremy knew what song he was listening to/where hes at based on him dancing to it earlier they know each other so well they are best friends and possibly boyfriends in this essay i will
jeremy flops his head to the side on the beat and with michaels "how was class" slap hes so dramatic
i think i might be tripping but right after "i hate this school" and during the tore it up and flushed it thing michael in the bathroom plays very very faintly in the bg. IM NOT TRIPPING in the album mitb plays during the humanity stopped evolving thing up to "better time in history to be a loser". and THEN from "so own it" up to the christine jingle THE PANTS SONG PLAYS. you can just barely hear it in the boot too
during the first "canigula" michael waves in front of jeremys face and he kicks at him
before jeremys sign up verse michael takes his lunch tray and jerks his head towards the sheet in a "go on" motion and then ofc pushes him towards it HES SUPPORTIVE OF HIM HELLO this furthers my belief of jeremy being a secret theatre kid. jeremy looks back at him on "who cares if people think im lame" like hes reassuring himself can you hear my heart
when rich shouts "GAAAY" mr reyes points and goes after him
when they all come out to dance, jeremy first mistakenly waves to chloe when she waves at jenna, then rich when he goes to dap jake up, then tries to wave at michael but he spins away while presumably listening to his music. christine just watches chloe and brooke talk again
when they all start slowly standing up at the "go"s jeremy looks so confused
also when he jumps off the chair that is PEAK meerkat moment. then he lands and just stands there for like a solid 3 seconds its so funny to me
LORD almighty we're done that took weeks okay uhh please tell me if i should do EVERYTHING everything like broadway off broadway australia cause lord knows im the ceo of bmc australia rn also i dont want to sound pretentious but please reblog cause i spent so much time and effort on this useless fucking post 😭😭 but whatever i had fun
#WOW i am so normal about this fucking show#also a while ago i learned fucking joe iconis is in fact on tumblr so mr joe iconis if you see this hello you have a very nice musical#shoutout to thesquirrelqueer for giving me permission to use the archive even though i ended up not using it#like i said thats the artists reference and this is the writers reference#watching the background gives you a lot of insight into the characters#i tried to seperate them into sections i hope its not too hard to read#im heavy tagging this idc im not spending so long on this for it to flop#bmc#be more chill#be more chill musical#bmc two river#be more chill two rivers#jeremy heere#michael mell#rich goranski#brooke lohst#chloe valentine#jenna rolan#jake dillinger#christine canigula#bmc jeremy#jeremy bmc#michael bmc#bmc michael#rich bmc#bmc rich#bmc brooke#bmc chloe#bmc jenna#bmc jake
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David Tennant's Obscure Short Films: 1996's Quality Control
I'm back for a short(er) little David Tennant in Obscure Performances post today. Let's have a teeny-tiny chat about another rarity of David's, shall we? - a short film he did in 1996 called Quality Control. And when I say this is a rarity, believe me….it's a rarity.
I've at least been able to confirm David acted in this short film, for he mentions it as a film credit in two places: the 1996 programme for The Herbal Bed, and the 1997 programme for Hurly Burly - as evidenced by this cast listing of his from my Hurly Burly programme:
Quality Control has very little to no presence on the Internet, and there are only a few mentions of its existence. The first one I've been able to track which attributed the short to David was from a "David Tennant Fact Of The Day" post from May 2012.
The second mention is from the British Film Institute (BFI). If you study this notation, you'll notice another interesting detail: unlike many other works, the BFI does NOT hold any film or video materials relating to Quality Control. So they don't have a copy!
The BFI describes the film as a "comedy in which a job centre trainee finds himself totally inept in his new position of quality controller at a skateboard factory." But I hoped I might find a few other clues from another contemporary source: newspapers. So that's where I went!
All of the descriptions said Quality Control was a 20-minute short comedy - but I also learned it was the trainee's first day on the job, too. One can also assume (and I certainly do) David plays the role of the trainee. Here are some various listings I found:
What's very interesting, though, is something the BFI doesn't list: Quality Control was also re-broadcast two years later in 1998! The 'Fact of The Day' I mentioned earlier clued me into that detail, and that tidbit was invaluable in my search for mentions of the short. Why? Because this one's a real tough one to search. David's never mentioned in any printed synopsis, and seriously…just try to do a search using only the words, "Quality Control." It's an utter nightmare!
But knowing what I knew, I was able to add to the information the 'Fact Of The Day' had provided. Quality Control originally aired at 1:55p on 10 Jun 1996 on BBC Channel 4. In 1998, Channel 4 aired it two more times: on 8 Feb 1998 at 3:30p, and at 1:30p on 26 Oct 1998. It was also repeated regionally on S4C at 1:30p on 6 Nov 1998.
Its repetition in 1998 has intrigued me. It implies the BBC kept a copy of the short from 1996 to its re-air dates in 1998. The BFI listing for the short says it doesn't have a copy in its archives, but unless the BBC has subsequently erased it, a copy of that short might still exist. Somewhere. I'd love to find it, as it's one of the few things David did during that time I haven't seen. So we have no screenshots. But we know he did it. And who knows if the BBC has it in their archive.
But you know, maybe someone's got it recorded somewhere on an old Betamax tape.
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20 Questions For Fanfic Writers!
I got tagged in this by the lovely @onewhoturns, and I'll tag some others at the end!
1: How many works do you have on Ao3?
I only have 8 actually published there, but for reference, I went into my WIP folder and found over 100 more... So I do write things! I'm just really really bad at actually publishing them.
2: What's your total Ao3 word count?
Assuming I've done my math right, my current total word count sits at 262,909. Most of that is probably the longfics I've done with Turner, but there are almost certainly some hidden gems in there as well.
3: What fandoms do you write for?
Well, I haven't actually written and published something for a specific fandom for a while now, but my more common interests these days are Genshin Impact, Fire Emblem, Metal Gear Solid, Ace Attorney, Shadow & Bone (Netflix TV show specifically) and a few sporadic others! But my past works were for Oxenfree, Destiny, Ava's Demon, Homestuck, Overwatch, Critical Role, The Magnus Archives and Half Life.
4: Top five fics by kudos?
That would beeee So It Goes, Blue Hair, Red Jacket, A Different Angle, One Foot, and finally Holy Spirits!
5: Do you respond to comments? Why/Why not?
As much as I love getting comments on fics, I don't often respond to them. I don't really have enough published to get engagement super often, and even then, I'm just not the kind of person to reach out at random simply because I've heard too many Internet Horror Stories(tm). But, maybe if I do publish more in the future, I'll make a habit of answering then!
6: What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
I... Don't really know? Most of my fics are either one-shots or unfinished multi-chapter works. There's probably something really angsty in my WIPs, but since it's never seen the light of day, we'll never really knows.
7: What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?
Hmm. Hm hm hm. That would probably be a toss up between A Different Angle, which is just meant to be a nice, feel-good oneshot, or Pyrite-50: Quiet Moments, which is a kind of character study of one of my Destiny PC's.
8: Do you get hate on fics?
Since I only have 8 published, and I'm not like a super-duper popular author, I don't really think I get hate. All of the comments I've seen have been really sweet and lovely, which I'm thankful for.
9: Do you write smut?
I've been known to partake... On occasion....... <- Currently hiding most of it away in that damned WIP folder
10: Do you write crossovers?
Aside from the every-so-often "AU fic inspired by another piece of media", no, not really. But maybe that will change sometime! I wouldn't be truly opposed.
11: Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Not as far as I'm aware!
12: Have you ever had a fic translated?
Nope. My reach, like I said, is pretty minimal. But if anybody were to ask, I'd say go for it, as long as I got credit as the author.
13: Have you ever co-written a fic before?
Most of my published fics are co-written! My co-author was actually the one who tagged me in this, Turner. You can go check out all our Oxenfree stuff on Ao3 right now.
14: What's your all-time favorite ship?
Oooooh, this one is hard. The one I've undoubtedly written the most for is jonalex, but I'm a huge multishipper, so I've never really preferred one pairing over another before. It's always so dependent on my mood! Can I just say all of them?
15: What's the WIP you hope to finish but doubt you ever will?
The forgotten Kaz Brekker/Darkling smut. It sits in its little google document, taunting me. I know that you're there. I KNOW.
16: What are your writing strengths?
I'd like to think I'm good at metaphors? Generally, getting into a character's psyche is what I strive for, and when I get it right it feels like a real achievement. I've also been told that I'm very good at making dialogue that feels real, or that flows in a way that makes sense, which is something else I'm really proud of.
17: What are your writing weaknesses?
Finishing things. Fight scenes (of the physical variety). The two big F's.
18: Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?
Seeing as I am a person who only knows one language (and guess which one that is), I don't often write in other languages for my fics, because I'm a liiiiittle too scared of fucking up. On the rare chances I have, I usually use someone I know as a translator, but that limits me on how many languages I can conceivably use. As far as foreign languages in other fics go, I'm all for it!
19: First fandom you wrote for?
It's either Harry Potter, and that fic has now been orphaned to the wind, or maybe Homestuck?
20: Favorite fic you've ever written?
Of my published fics, it has to be So It Goes. That one has a special place in my heart for a multitude of reasons, and not just because Turner and I got to write it together. Of my WIPs, there's an unnamed freemance fic that I've been dying to finish that I just recently found again, and it made me fall in love with my writing for a second time; in a strange way.
Tagging!!
@artemis-crimson @reddgiant @starchemist @starlit-bawka @cranehusbands @duvirii and basically whoever else wants to do it.
#ask meme#ask game#writing#writers#tag meme#tag game#ao3#archive of our own#writing game#fic#fanfic#fanfiction#fic writing#20 questions
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OC-tober day 3 prompt: old oc
Featuring my first oc, Caroline Cophix, from Gondeil Aspirations
As Rei looked around the courtyard of the academy, all they saw were unfamiliar faces. It was obvious they were far from home now, as their attire did not fit typical Veshgan fashion. Which was why, as they were about to give up looking for potential friends (for now) amongst the first years, a specific person caught their eye. She was about their age, if not a year younger. Her clothes uncharacteristically simple. Black pants made of material from Yertu- she was probably from Urtox. The style of her blouse corroborated that if not for the light material it used. Rei was able to recognise it thanks to their sister begging them for months on end to get her this fabric- a task hard as it was only available in mainland Merga, those "high brow" areas. Her lack of magical equipment and clothing fit for ease of movement, she definitely came from Merga. Which made things even weirder. She was absent mindedly nodding at what a middle aged man was telling her. Her father? No, it didn't feel right.The man patted her on her shoulder and left, no real indication of affection or warmth in this gesture. She just looked melancholic, if not dejected, but was she pretty. Rei gathered up their courage and approached her. "Hey, there, you must be one of the transfer students, right?". The girl glared at them. "I assume? Because of the clo- well I am a transfer here as well! So maybe we could get to ha-" "I am not here to make friends". Rei couldn't help but laugh. She got even angrier. "The hell you think's so funny" "Sorry, sorry, you just reminded me of someone. Call me Rei" "I am not here to make friends" "What are you here for then?". She looked at them confused. She breathed in as if ready to say something, but deflated, trying to process the absurdity of the question. "What do you go to school for?" "Well I doubt You are here to study, considering how you act like an angsty 12 year old" "No I don't!" "Well you sure do act a lot like my little brother, who is 12". She paused, her face painted with an unreadable expression. "It's Caroline. The name is Caroline. And I am here for reasons. Satisfied?" "For now"
Very long intro, as I had said to a friend to describe her personality towards strangers, it's as if a 21 year old was just like a 12 year old who just discovered the internet and thought being angsty and edgy was the coolest thing in the world. But she is actually a really huge musclebrain. Kind of stupid, kind of a dork. Before the rewrites of the story she used to be the main character but now she is just an important character to the narrative. I wouldn't call her a deutoragonist because she doesn't have that much screentime.
Have a bunch of stuff I have made of her over the years:
also a very crude rendition of what happened the first time they met I made like a year ago
From bweirdart's OC-tober prompt:
While I am doing this challenge mostly to keep an archive of my characters on tumblr (and to incentivise myself to draw them), if you, person stumbling upon this post, are curious and wanna learn more, my askbox is open >:3c
#oc-tober#bweirdOCtober#Gondeil aspirations#gonasp Caroline#kyeterna oc#don't ask a translation of what she is saying in the comic#they are very mean things#the other person featured in the comics is Rei- whom I will feature at a later date of the challenge hehe
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i cant believe you had me thinking dream of lestat was real
Alright so I'm gonna go a bit more in depth about it here because the Dream of Lestat is something that really is interesting to consider within the scope of not only Anne Rice as an author but how we talk about spanning bodies of work in general, especially ones that weren't started in an internet age with pieces being more easily archived this is gonna get a bit long.
As is the case with many genre defining authors there is an insistence that critiques people raise these days were things that people just didn't care about back when the books were first being published... you already know where I'm going with this. I've been very open about how much I hate the sympathizing angle for White Lewis as a plantation(s) owner and especially a lot of the comments he specifically makes about black people in the book and while luckily I haven't gotten too much flack for that there are a number of older book fans who get mad when you bring that up as a negative. And bring up the idea of this sort of critique comes from a place of immaturity or is something "new" that people didn't really care about back in the day. The idea that no one back in the late 70s would have qualms with the way book Louis talks about those he's enslaved is not only bullshit on a basic level but laughable when you consider Anne Rice actually took those critiques to heart.
I think that playboy short story with armand has been making the cycles around lately but what people DONT know is that a bit after the release of the first movie (Interview with the Vampire 1994) conversations about White Lewis having slaves started popping back up again. And I'm totally blanking on the name of the journal but like some black lit journal I wanna say was like part of a college? Actually reached out to Anne Rice talking about some of that and not only did she respond she went ahead and shared a rough chapter for an unpublished short story that would have been The Dream of Lestat, which I wanna say? Is maybe the only part of the series with Lestat openly lusting after a real life figure..... Martin Luther King Jr. Just on like a base premise you can already see her ass didn't learn anything from whatever convo she had with the journal like I guess on one hand I wanna say that she did try????? And there is something that can be said about Lestat being this being of impossibility trying to do the impossible as well as merging in those ideas of personal redemption. This is like.... 1994 1995? And Body Theif was 1992 so we know she was already working with themes of Lestat struggling with immortality and his own concept of humanity and more importantly guilt and redemption. And said redemption in Dream of Lestat would be a bit more removed, a sort of attempt of mass redemption via one civil rights leader lmao???
I mean anyway like I said whatever bit got published in the lit journal was very partial and we're never gonna get the full. But going by the way Lestat talked about MLK in such like grandiose terms and with the knowledge he would DEFINITELY have some attempt at saving MLK's life-- most likely through damning him to immortality-- we can assume there would be some level of sensuality going on.... People got real mad when the show was announced that Louis would be black but listen man LISTEN Lestat has always been a chocolate chaser
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