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laufire · 2 months

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although I've enjoyed stories that went down that route before, I can't see jason & talia's relationship in the comic as surrogate mother and son. I don't think the reading came completely out of the blue (I still have this edit of the pietà cover in lost days #2 as my background pic lol. that's some culturally ingrained imagery! although given the issue it precedes, I wonder if it was more of a hint to antichrist!jason lmfao), and can see how lost days #1 would inspire it (although the same events in batman annual #25 end with talia kissing jason after the pit... and I read that first because lost days wasn't out yet when I was catching up in my jason reading, way back when. lost days erases this moment and I do prefer it that version though. that moment, at that time, made no sense).

but after that first issue that's not what I see in the run. jason's certainly not in the market for a parental figure, and he wouldn't have responded well to talia, had she approached him as one (and at this point, talia was very much about finding the right approach to manage jason... because jason had attempted to kill bruce -the comic attributes this to temporary psychopathy but winnick and I differ on this one-. and this didn't happen only because jason decided not to go through his plan at the last moment. ymmv at to why). this reading comes from a mix of things in fanon, but one of them is literally "well she's bruce's love interest and he's bruce's kid sooooo", and I just don't vibe with that, basically.

reading talia's first appearances and realising she's meant to be close to dick's age also compounded my own interpretation of talia's dynamics, sometimes for the worse sometimes for the better, but it's a canon detail that just feels so fitting for the talia comics I've read that now I'd struggle to see her differently, when beforehand I really hadn't thought about her age. this way, they're not exactly peers (dick seems around 4-6 years older than jason in new earth, ymmv), and I usually land on talia being a couple years older than dick. but this colours how I interpret their dynamic, too. how I think they'd see it, in particular.

since I'm talking about the nature of their relationship I do have to mention That Scene. very contentious and I do get why (I do not care for any m/f/m triangle dc has ever tried to pull with the bats, especially bruce vs. dick-slash-jason). but fandom either sees this as "talia, a much older woman, statutory raped jason, a teenager" (jason in the last issue of lost days and in utrh looks very much in his twenties), OR "I've decided talia is jason's mother figure, and I'm -with good reason!- tired of how often she's villianised, so I just Don't See It" [insert mariah carey's i can't read suddenly.gif], as thought there's no other possible interpretation.

and the way I see it is. it's not a Good Thing to happen, nor is it written with that intention! the characters are NOT in a good place and they're NOT making wise, healthy choices lol. and it's something that sidetracks what could've become a really interesting, closer friendship & alliance (I want them to be friends and allies sooooo badly lol. I think they'd work so well!! there's reblogs in my queue about it!!). but I don't see it as something to completely handwave if I'm writing new earth canon; just something to tackle head on, if I ever write about them after this period beyond having it as a secondary dynamic (which I plan to do, but that's another story).

ironically, these ramblings came to me because I'm developing their dynamic in a WIP for a different canon (the young justice cartoon. for reference, the ages there are: Talia, 1984; Jason, 1999; Damian, 2018), and rn if you asked me if they have a surrogate mother-son relationship in it my answer would be a solid... maaaaaaaybe? LOL. if they end up like that, it'll be with MASSIVE ammounts of spousification, though. which is how I see any parental relationship involving jason going, outside of 80s!bruce & jason, to be honest.

#bruce already parentified one robin*. now it's talia's turn #*i've seen posts saying this about tim too but i haven't read enough about their dynamic to be completely sure #(most of what I've read with tim is with bruce very much elsewhere lol. absent deadbeat if you will)#talking to the void #my thoughts #man this post has so many parenthesis... i'm not looking through it again though. i'm tiredd #dc #dc thoughts #dc comics #red hood: the lost days #jason todd #talia al ghul #jaytalia for ts #since i mention That Scene #anyway. cancellable offense number 3192 etc.

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mitochondriaandbunnies · 2 years

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You Should Watch Miami Vice:

A treatise on the most poorly-remembered show of the 80′s

If you’re like most people, when you hear Miami Vice outside the context of a bar, you picture the following: shoulder pads, speed boats, bikinis, and pink and teal pastel. You probably think about the worst excesses of the 1980′s, of a kind of cultural sinkhole where there was nothing cooler than Ray-Bans and masculine posturing.

However, much like Captain Kirk is (mis)remembered as a sleazy womanizer, and the first Rambo movie is (mis)remembered as a paean to how AWESOME KNIVES ARE, Miami Vice has been frozen in pop-culture memory as something it really isn’t. A funhouse mirror reflection of what it was actually all about. Because the thing is: Miami Vice is good. Like, really good.

At its core, it’s a show that is:

Well-written, with a coherent emotional and thematic arc across its seasons, despite being made before the era of arc-based TV

Incredibly beautiful, with cinematography, directing, and musical/sound editing choices that literally changed the way television was produced

Deeply, sometimes painfully human, with main characters who are often wrong and/or make bad decisions with real consequences, and who often ‘lose’

And on top of that, it’s not really copaganda (no, really), and it’s pretty damn queer (yes, really.) It’s also an old-school episodic show, which means the characters have a ton of space to breathe and grow and be multi-faceted, and the production has room to experiment, both with technical stuff and the writing. There are episodes that are so deadly serious your mouth feels dry as the credits roll; there are weird, silly, fun episodes where utterly bonkers things happen; there are episodes that feel like David Lynch was moonlighting as director. It’s neo-noir, it’s magical realism, it’s a workplace comedy, it’s a treatise on how there’s no reforming unjust systems, it’s a love story about two men who refuse to grapple with the idea that they’re the most important thing in each other’s lives.

You should watch it. But let me keep trying to convince you, anyway.

Vice was the brainchild of Michael Mann and Anthony Yerkovitch, and in 1984, it looked and sounded like nothing else on TV. There’s an auteur touch to the majority of episodes-- not just a unified look, but a willingness to try things that worked in the movies on the small screen. When you watch a lot of shows from the early to mid 80′s, they look the same as shows from the 70′s-- en episode of Spenser for Hire could’ve been shot on the same day as an episode of Starsky and Hutch. People talk about the legacy of shows that led to our modern era of “prestige TV--” there’d have been no Sopranos without The Wire, etc-- but in a lot of ways, with its artistic, film-like framing, melancholic New Wave aesthetics, and abnormally high production values, Miami Vice is the grandpappy of all of them.

The recurring cast is very small: for most of the show, it’s these seven characters. (No, I don’t know why this cast photo is posed like they’re at a wedding for someone they don’t seem to like very much. Literally all of the promo photos for this show look like terrible wedding or prom shoots.)

From the top left, we have Larry Zito (Hawaiian shirt) and Stan Switek (pink stripes); they’re initially the comic relief. They love Elvis and bicker like an old married couple, and as partners they get a lot of the surveillance jobs. They do not escape the show unscathed.

The two ladies are Gina Calabrese (blue belted dress) and Trudy Joplin (palm tree dress); I adore them and they are wonderful, and each of them gets a couple of solid episodes, but they aren’t always given the most spectacular scripts. Gina is both the sweetest, most naive member of the group and the one most likely to shoot first and ask questions later; Trudy is an expert researcher and cannot be arsed to do emotional labor for her dumb male colleagues.

The man in the black suit with the moustache is the squad’s lieutenant, Martin Castillo. Castillo doesn’t show up until episode six, and when he does the show’s whole tone kind of suddenly clicks into place. Castillo is weird. He speaks very little and blinks less; he makes eye contact with no one unless he is making so much eye contact it makes you want to bury yourself in the dirt. Also he’s maybe secretly a samurai?

Then we have the two assholes in front, our main characters: Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs. Sonny (white guy in spring green and lavendar, the kind of man who wears a sleeveless shirt under a blazer) is a career Miami cop with a history of unprocessed trauma, a conga line of dead friends and partners, a wife who is trying her best to divorce him, and a six year old son he has no idea how to parent but loves very deeply. Rico (Black guy in grey and white, the kind of man who wears a three piece suit in 98 degree weather with 100% humidity) is a New York transplant with a dead brother, an utterly bizarre sense of humor, the world’s worst taste in women, and a terminal need to fix every broken person he’s ever come across while also probably sleeping with them. Their relationship is the emotional core of the series. Neither of them is equipped to handle this.

Sonny is probably the worst-remembered part of the whole badly-remembered series. Pop culture positions him as a wise-cracking cowboy cop who drives too fast and lives even faster, when in reality mostly Sonny is just very depressed, very lonely, and almost certainly a self-hating closeted bisexual.

He is a sad, bitchy pretty boy who legitimately thinks the only thing he’s good for is waving a gun around, and he only drives his government-owned drug dealer Ferrari so fast because he’s trying to drive away from his feelings.

Vice is a five season show, and unfortunately, you’ll often see fans arguing about the seasons and whether or not you can or should skip any of them. Here’s the thing: it’s an episodic show from the 80′s. No matter how much Mann or any of the other showrunners tried to make it consistent across its runtime, that’s not really how TV works. 113 episodes does not a movie make. Because of this, each season does feel a bit different from prior seasons, and which season you prefer is going to depend a lot on your personal tastes. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t recommend skipping any of them-- when you do watch the show from the pilot to the finale, it really does feel like one coherent storyline.

Season 1: Many people’s favorite season. A good mixture of tragedy, comedy, mystery, etc. The first six episodes are still kind of “working things out” tonally, but the whole season is worth watching. My personal favorite S1 episode (Evan, the second to last of the season) isn’t available on all sources, but is an absolute must watch, especially in terms of providing context for understanding Sonny as a closeted queer man.

Season 2: My favorite season. The show has its footing and knows what it wants from its characters and its audience. I would argue that almost every episode of this season is a good one, and it’s thematically very consistent. (Also, I think, possibly the most “fun” season despite a lot of darkness?)

Season 3: Also a lot of people’s favorite season, although PERSONALLY I think of S3 as “the police brutality is good, actually” season. Dick Wolf (yes, that Dick Wolf) was the showrunner for this one, and he wanted it to be “grittier.” I think S3 is necessary for understanding Sonny and especially for understanding the relationship between Sonny and Rico, but it’s definitely the copaganda season.

Season 4: The season a lot of people feel you should skip, because it’s “too weird” or where the show jumped the shark. There are some... real strange episodes in this season, including one about aliens and another about cow semen. For real. I’ll be honest: I kind of love S4. It backpedals the grittiness and focuses more on the characters’ inner lives again, S4 also ends with a fantastic two part cliffhanger that is picked up at the beginning of S5.

Season 5: A truncated half-season with a couple of “lost” episodes that actually fit in before the finale. Season Five is sad. The fallout from the end of S4 is heavy, grim stuff, and S5 doesn’t shy away from showing how that has fucked everyone to hell and back. The finale of the show is thematically excellent and emotionally satisfying; while the show was cancelled, they wrapped it up successfully.

“Okay, fine,” you say, sipping the cafecito I handed you while I explained all of this, “so it’s not just about a cool guy in an Armani suit driving an Italian car really fast. But you mentioned it was gay? It still doesn’t sound very gay.”

Well. Let’s see.

There’s what should be a cringey “very special episode” about gay cops in 1984 that is instead one of the most heartfelt and upsetting episodes in the series. Never once does this episode no-homo the main characters, and in fact, men being able to touch each other is positioned as healing and necessary.

Sonny and Rico are the only people who think the other is funny. Their hands and eyes are on each other all the time. Rico used to watch Sonny’s college games on TV and remembers his number. They both repeatedly throw missions for each others’ sakes. They spend all of their time together. There’s an on-screen “I love you” (there’s a ‘man’ at the end but it rings like someone hedging his bets) and a few episodes later the character who received the I love you marries a random woman he literally met less than a week ago in what can only be described as the saddest and most desperate attempt to Not Be Gay Anymore ever caught on film. They cradle each others’ heads more than once. A song about “loving the boy with the pretty green eyes” plays in the background of a conversation they have about following each other to the end of the earth in the finale.

All.

these.

prom.

photo.

shoots.

and whatever the fuck this is.

You finish your third cafecito, shaking slightly from the caffeine, trying to prevent me from handing you a fourth. “Fine,” you admit. “But I still need more convincing. I can’t just watch something that’s good and thematically whole and about two sad men in love. It needs to also have... have some kind of, I don’t know, je ne sais quoi about it. A little extra spice.” Your hand rattles the demitasse against the saucer as you speak.

I pull off my food service uniform to reveal that underneath, I’m dressed as a carnival barker.

WELL. LET ME TELL YOU, FRIEND, WE’VE GOT:

An absolutely golden 80′s soundtrack that is atmospheric, consistently used at pitch-perfect moments, and which has been preserved in its entirety without any licensing issues

A guest cast list that includes a ton of super fucking cool genre actors, musicians, poets, and other assorted famous people playing weird, fun roles (James Hong! Earth Kitt! Pam Grier! Frank Zappa! James Brown! ...G. Gordon Liddy!?) AND many of the future stars of the 90′s before they were famous (Bruce Willis! Julia Roberts! Liam Neeson! Helena Bonham Carter!)

Sonny has an actual pet alligator named Elvis. He lives on his boat and sometimes Sonny has to take him to the vet

Jai Alai

Rico is a vegetarian, which feels like a difficult thing to be in Miami in the 80′s

Izzy. Just. Izzy. The most perfect, most ridiculous, rat-bastard con man and wannabe poet, Izzy.

Episodes directed by both Starsky and Hutch

Sonny’s pathological need to put things in his mouth

Whatever is happening here:

I watch your face carefully for signs of acquiescence, but all the frothing at the mouth I’ve been doing has made it a bit hard to see through the foam. I assume you are convinced and hand you a seventh cafecito. You have not drank the fifth or the sixth. I will drink them when you leave, that’s fine.

MY JOB HERE IS DONE, I announce.

You ask me to elaborate on the whole “not copaganda” thing, trying to grab me by the candy-striped suspenders.

I can’t totally elaborate on that without spoiling a bunch of the show, but suffice to say: ultimately, Vice is about how you can’t change corrupt systems from the inside, that the police serve the rich and powerful, the function of vice cops is basically to create the illusion of order while letting the government quietly destabilize the countries the drugs are originally coming from, and that anyone who tries to be a “good cop” ends up eaten by the system, corrupt, or dead.

There’s some backpedaling on this in the middle of the series with the whole Dick Wolf thing (that man loves his fucking cops), and not every episode is totally consistent with its messaging, but season five definitely doubles down on “this is actually a bad system that really can’t be fixed.”

The show isn’t perfect (I mean. it’s still a cop show from the 80′s)-- it’s a product of its time, for better or for worse. But Miami Vice is really damn good. It’ll make your heart hurt in the best way possible. You will want, desperately, for Sonny to figure out that he’s worth something more than his career as a police officer. You’ll come out of it with a lot of feelings about Phil Collins. I think anyone who likes a good story about people has the potential to really fall in love with Vice-- I’ll admit I literally started watching it as a joke, and realized pretty quickly that everything I thought I knew about the show was wrong.

Satisfied with my answers, you try to leave.

I hit you with a plate of cocaine.

#miami vice #tv recommendations #fandom #80's #retro tv

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elvenking42 · 5 months

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100 New Things I Checked Out in 2023

It's the end of the year and I wanna make a list of media I checked out. Movies, shows, books, songs, etc. I like getting to talk about all this stuff! If you wanna know what something made the list, just ask! I'd love to talk more about it!

Tyrellosolo New Years art

Wingspan (2019)

INU-OH (2021)

Two Earthlings - John Brosio

Zip Gun Bop - Royal Crown Revue

Super Mario Brothers: Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach (1986)

Forest (2017)

Fantastic Planet (1973)

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967)

Bei Mir Bist du schon - Ella Fitzgerald

Connordraws I Sing to my Cat

Contact (1978)

Donks (2023)

Dynasty AMV

Eddie burback- The Deceptive World of Ghost Kitchens

Ice Merchants (2022)

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021)

Womanizer - Britney spears

The Super Mario Bros Movie (2023)

MilleBourne (1954)

The Birds (1963)

RRR (2022)

Pigdemonart - Bowuigi Comics

Everydaylouie 's 3d blender work

Guide to Heraldry - Ottfried Neubecker (1980)

Buss Down Wig - Baddie Brooks

Genius Party Anthology (2007)

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023)

Pretty fly (for a white guy) - The Offspring

Millennium Actress (2001)

God's Alternative Medicine - Knowing Better

On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes - Alexandra Horowitz (2013)

Blackberry (2023)

The Flintstones (DC Comic) (2016)

Maintenance Phase Podcast

The Bus - Paul Kirchner (1987)

Nimona (2023)

Black book of hours

Nintendo World Universal

Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind (1984)

Daydream - Timeshare 94

Jerma House Flipper invitational

Pokemon Sleep (2023)

Atlantic Oscillations (disco dub) - Quantic

Barbie (2023)

Don't You Want My Love - Moodymann

Good Omens S2 (2023)

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (2007)

Even Flow - Pearl Jam

Host Club 'Ai Honten' - Tokyo, Japan (1971-2020)

TMNT Mutant Mayhem (2023)

No Diggity - Black Street

Expansions 12" Mix - Scott Grooves

Planet of the Bass - DJ Crazy Times

I Love Hue (year)

Canisalbus: body heat

Horny '98 Radio Edit) - Mousse T

We Love Katamari + Royal Reverie (2023)

Music theory and White Supremacy - Adam Neely

Rope (1948)

Sanctus-ingenium: who are you loyal to, who are you lying to?

Rhythm Nation - Janet Jackson

Joseph Melhuish - "Some Dogs"

Jacob Geller- How Can We Bear To Throw Anything Away?

Novov - Interactive Art Museum

Thefaiao - Ganondorf practicing piano commission

Russian picture book illustrations by E.Bulatov and O.Vasilev

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time (1998)

Bacardi Raising Spirits ad

Curse of Strahd (2016)

Black Magic Woman - Santana

OFMD S2 (2023)

Dynasty AMV

The Owl and the Pussycat - Scott Gustafson

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Soylent Green (1973)

Christian Riese Lassen's digital gallery

Oye Como Va - Santana

Guardian deity, Thunder God, Wind god - Mori Yoshitoshi

Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

Scavengers Reign (2023)

WRTV Sonic Forum Simulator

A Little Night Music

Monkey Gone to Heaven - Pixies

Mike's Mic - Scooby Doo 2002

Wasteland Weekend - People Make Games

Lethal Company (2023)

Closer to Fine - Indigo Girls

Don't Speak - No Doubt

George Sherwood Hunter "Jubilee Procession in a Cornish Village"

Plagiarism and You(Tube) - Hbomberguy

Rainbow War (1985)

Ezlo-x’s Lost Family LoZ Fancomic

Ocarina of Time manga (2012)

Suolaxier's fursuits

Doctor who: Wild Blue Yonder (2023)

How Do You Smoke a Weed? - Owlin (year)

Mario Wonder (2023)

A Tiger in the Land of Dreams - Tiger Tateishi (1984)

#personal

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