#and then sometimes something not in his interal script happens and he just

[mystycalypso]

I love that this is something Venomous does, even before his mutation. I sadly don't have the screenshot rn (Maybe I'll edit it in when I have access to my computer)

But the face Laser makes seeing the donut shop get shrunk-teleported is a perfect example of this.

As for Venomous, some lovely examples for y'all

[natbat666]

Scenarios from my DRs ☕️🪐:

Note: these are from both my stranger things dr and my hogwarts uni dr, and some are 18+!

Things from my DR that just make sense

straight from ye old script!

Stranger Things Related:

> Certain movies that have yet to come out are in my DR, such as Scream, and the Lord of the Rings movies

> In downtown Hawkins there is a really cool old bookstore, comic book store, witchy shop, and on the weekends there is a farmers market

> Steve throwing his annual Halloween party, dressing up and just having fun with the group

> Going to the mall with Nancy and Robin

> Eddie tries to desperately teach me to play DnD, but I just can’t really get the hang of it

> Going to the bookstore with Nancy, Dustin and Eddie. They come with us to go to the comic book store after, and complain the entire time Nancy and I shop around. Eddie mostly just messes around, trying to piss me off enough so that he can get his way and get to the comic store faster

> matching tattoos

> Eddie is a lurker okay?!? He likes to watch me and I will often just catch him staring, totally making a pervy face. I’ll snap him out of it and he gets sooo embarrassed but it’s funny. But also he will just sneak into my house?!? And suddenly I will wake up with a man in my bed?!

Hogwarts Related:

> In 7th year our dorms switch to either single dorms or up to rooms of four. They can be coed and they can be inter-house too

> The Yule Ball happens on December 22nd. Pansy and I go dress shopping beforehand and get ready together in the Slytherin Common rooms. The morning after the dance we all we load onto the train super tired and hungover and we just get all cozy in a bench seat room and sleep

> One time draco is trying to practice and keeps getting distracted knowing that I am there watching. This is before we start dating and Pansy says something like “you know he is so crazy for you right?”

> the portraits are literally gossip mongers, I heard one time that a Hufflepuff boy had to do a task for a portrait to get info from it?!

> it’s not abnormal for students to eat in their rooms or even in the library with a special pass. And they can have whatever they want for dinner or whatever meal

> Hermione and I go on girls trips!! The summer between 3rd and 4th we went to Germany!!

> While it does seem cliche, Draco is big on getting gifts as a form of affection and showing that he cares. But generally they are aggressively specific and curated. Idk how he sources his gifts sometimes. Like one time I was talking to Blaise about this Muggle tradition that I used to do with my friends in America ( bc I went to Illvermorny). Next thing I know there is a gorgeous dress on my bed and tickets to go see the Nutcracker in London. How he organized that I will never know bc we are literally in school, in the middle of the Scottish Highlands, with no contact with anything Muggle?!?

> Inappropriate uses of the signet ring to in fact happen, no I didn’t script this in tehehe

[guyhobbsart]

week 4: Tues - Fmp

This week, again, is more written development of our stories, the last few weeks have been gearing us for writing a script to base our animation on. this weeks was in the form of an outline, a brief description of each scene that allows us to understand what is going on. i enjoyed this as i sometimes have trouble with getting my ideas out of my head but this was actually very useful and quite a few changes had been made. it read as follows:

Scene 1: the bedroom

Setting: dark, organised but teenage bedroom, foreshadow hand puppet (crafty room?), wood pidgeons and the distant noise of a fan.

Action: Becky awakens to see clock is wrong, jumps up and falls out of bed, calling out to siblings

Emotion: daze turning into panic

Scene 2: the bathroom

Setting: close up in bathroom mirror, hallway slightly visible through door on wall opposite mirror, music starts

Action: 3 characters each taking turns in the bathroom brushing teeth with comedic character relationship dynamics being shown in the hallway behind.

Emotion: rush, playful, funny

Scene 3: quick shots

Setting: front door

Action: characters slinging bags on 1 by 1 in quick succession

Emotion: raising pace, joy

Scene 4: title card

Setting: outside on the road, passing by a large open field with the title across the sky

Action: 3 characters running, Becky in front, Olivia behind glued to her phone, Bailey at the back, slips and falls at the end of the scene in front of a road sign

Emotion: joy and whimsy

Scene 5: crossroad

Setting: on the same road under the road sign

Action: characters deliberate about how they wont make it to school at this pace, olivia uses her phone to find a quicker route and they run off, becky last as she is unsure

Emotion: stress, whimsy

Scene 6: construction site

Setting: characters descend to dangerous construction site, cranes constantly moving around them and cars driving past. Loud machinery and chatter heard all around

Action: characters run through site and get stopped by a site manager, bailey whispers he has an idea and sneaks out of frame, only to (A. use a digger to push the site manager really hard out the way. B. throw something nearby to create a distraction or C. have a ‘look over there its ‘…’ gag).

Emotion: stress then shock

Scene 7: construction site pt2

Setting: same construction site

Action, characters shortly biker along the lines of ‘THAT was your plan’ ‘thank me later’, eye rolls and continue running off frame

Emotion: humour, whimsy

Scene 8: map 1

Setting: cartoony map board

Action: map seen has character icons moving to their next destination, short graphic shows what just happened very simplified in a humorous way, fades out when reach ‘train station’

Emotion: cool down, humour

Scene 9: train station (removed)

Setting: hustle and bustle train station, lots of people walking and can hear announcer over Tannoy

Action: characters run through crowd, bump train (individual quick cuts?) and get on train

Emotion: rush, overwhelming business

Scene 10: on train

Setting: in seats on train, contrastingly quiet compared to station, low rumbling heard as train moves, music stops

Action: characters struggle to catch breath while sat in a 4 seater booth with a table between them. ‘that was a close one’ one of them says, they hear the sliding doors go and whip their heads

Emotion: relief

Scene 11: sliding doors

Setting: Other end of train carriage, can hear the noise of inter carriage doors opening

Action: ticket inspector pictured in the doors, strumming his oversized moustache

Emotion: rising tension

Scene 12: back to characters on train

Setting: back in the booth

Action, bailey is looking over the booth knelt on the chair, olivia is on her phone still, becky is stressed, she comments on the fact they have no tickets. ‘uh oh’ kind of expressions plaster the other 2’s faces. Becky says she might have a plan.

Emotion: stress, curiosity

Scene 13: characters on train 3

Setting: still in booth.

Action: ticket inspector is standing at the table without any of them noticing, ‘hello all, can I see your tickets please?’. A brief hesitance from becky before a nervous ‘yes of course!’. She rummages in her bag only to pull out a hand puppet. She talks in a put on voice ‘would you also like to see my ticket?’. The old ticket inspector is charmed and starts talking to it as if it’s a person.

‘now approaching pitch black tunnel before the station’ (something silly), then the lights go out, when they come back on the 3 characters have disappeared and the puppet is left on the table.

Emotion: tension then humour

Scene 14: map 2

Setting: same map as before

Action: character representations on top of a train travelling from first station to second, showing funny enactment of old man and the puppet (sad?)

Emotion: calm, humour

Scene 15: outside station

Setting: opposite station

Action: we see a policeman lent up against his car. He hears police radio going off about a puppet murder at the station and the suspects are 3 kids. The radio muffles as he sees our 3 main kids and he springs into action, jumping behind his car. We hear him imitating car noises only to ride out from behind the car on a tricycle.

Emotion: subversion, humour.

Scene 16 : on the run

Setting: dirt road

Action: the kids are running but notice theyre being trailed. They start to panic and run off in another direction to try and fake him out. Possible akira slide reference? (removed)

Emotion: rising tension

Scene 17: on the run pt 2

Setting: another dirt road

Action: kids panicking more, ‘we cant lose him!’ bailey starts thinking, he suddenly has an idea, he throws his astronaut helmet off (a lightbulb appears above bailey as he thinks, he jumps up and grabs the lightbulb and throws it at the policeman) and it causes the policeman to spin out and cartoony explode, they all celebrate

Emotion: tense then shock then funny

Scene 18: map 3

Setting: map

Action: simple events of last few scenes play out in funny style

Emotion: humour

Scene 19: school

Setting: school classroom

Action: all sit in their chairs in separate classrooms, (removed) the bell goes just as becky sits, she celebrates only to immediately hear the school speaker request their presence in the principles office.

Emotion: relief then suspicion

Scene 20: office

Setting: principles office, its dark and moody, the site manager, ticket inspector and policeman are stood behind the principle, all pissed and dirty

Action: the principle begins to berate them, his words muffle as the music picks up again as becky looks side to side, their chairs are kicked out and the scene fades to white

Emotion: fear then happiness

Scene 21: credits

Setting: dirt road

Action: mirrors the title scene, possibly have pissed characters running after them, fade to black

Emotion: joy, whimsy.

since it was another written based week i decided to develop my characters further, with more exploration of outfits and colours to really get a good feel of what i want them to look like. these are below.

and finally all of them together, i really like how they have come out and think they all show their personality very clearly in poses and certain design choices. one thing i want to keep consistent is each character having a distinct eye, this will help me differentiate them and also hopefully stop 'same face syndrome'.

[cksmart-world]

SMART BOMB

The Completely Unnecessary News Analysis

By Christopher Smart

August 1, 2023

ALIENS ON ICE — U.S. HIDING EXTRATERRESTRIALS

A “whistleblower” told a congressional subcommittee that the United States has recovered the dead bodies of little, green men believed to be aliens from outer space. Former DOD intelligence officer David Grusch testified before a House Oversight subcommittee that several crashed spacecraft and the bodies of aliens who piloted them are secreted away in a warehouse in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. They haven't been found because the U.S. Space Force engaged a “cloaking device” taken from one of the UFOs to make them invisible. When Republican Rep. Eric Burlison asked how the aliens could get here from faraway galaxies, Grush said the non-human spacecraft had inter-dimensional potential. “You can be projected, quasi-projected from higher dimensional space to lower dimensional,” he said. But he could not explain why the aliens crashed if their technology is so sophisticated, except that a nearby McDonald's was advertising the McRib Meal Deal. Committee Republicans steamed over what they called a cover-up. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said the government is trying “to gaslight Americans into thinking that this is not happening.” But as Mr. Spock said to Capt. Kirk: “In critical moments, men sometimes see exactly what they wish to see.” Beam me up, Scotty, it's too weird down here.

10 THINGS THE MOVIE “BARBIE” TEACHES US

1 – Men are worthless

2 – Well not totally worthless

3 – Women can be astronauts

4 – Women can be spacey

5 – Pink is everything

6 – Barbie is not a feminist

7 – Barbie is a feminist

8 – Women should be beautiful

9 – Women should not be too beautiful

10 – Barbie is subversive — that sneaky nefarious passive-aggressive little plastic doll!

“THE BIG LIE” JUST WON'T PAY OFF — LITERALLY

Well this is a fine how-do-you-do — the once and future president has lost again in court. This time a federal judge tossed Donald Trump's $475 million defamation suit against CNN, ruling that viewers would have to be crazy to believe the cable news channel was comparing him to Hitler when it labeled his big lie about the 2020 election as “The Big Lie.” Darn the luck. The Hitler allegation goes back to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, who reportedly said: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it.” Nonetheless, the court ruled that “CNN’s use of the phrase ‘The Big Lie’ does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people.” Trump loves to sue people and corporations, but he's also up to his eyeballs in defense attorney fees. Federal elections filings show that Trump paid $40 million from his Save America PAC in legal-related payments so far this year. And he's going to spend a lot more on federal criminal cases in New York and Florida. Two more are likely in Washington D.C. and Georgia. A passel of civil suits also await. His political donors don't seem to mind picking up the tab. As Goebbels also said: “A sucker is born every minute.” Or was that P.T. Barnum? Whatever.

Post script — That's a wrap for another week here at Smart Bomb were we keep track of climate change so you don't have to. Wilson, did you know it's so hot in Phoenix that Republicans there are wondering if there really isn't something to this global warming hoax, after all. It's so hot in Phoenix that you can roast a lamb on the dashboard of a 2007 Cadillac El Dorado. But Phoenicians are used to the heat and many wear asbestos gloves to avoid burning their hands on the steering wheel. In fact, it was so hot in Phoenix last week that it melted the steering wheel on a 1958 DKW F94. Don't tell Republicans this, but scientists say July was the hottest month in 120,000 years. For real. Here's a big surprise, President Joe Biden will visit Utah, Arizona and New Mexico from Aug. 7 – 10 and he's going to address the hot heat and his administration's response to climate change. That should go over big here in the Beehive State where we all know God is in charge. If you're wondering where Utah Rep. Burgess Owens has gone, wonder no more: He's out with a new email urging constituents to impeach Joe Biden. But when voters click on “demand an impeachment inquiry,” they are sent to his fundraising page where they can donate big bucks so Burgess can continue to do God's work — or not.

Well Wilson, we're in one big galaxy and there must be intelligent life somewhere. But as noted physicist Enrico Fermi said to Edward Tellar: “If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now. So where the hell are they?” OK Wilson, wake up the band and take us out with a little something for our star gazers and E.T. lovers:

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs.Brown And things seem hard or tough And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft And you feel that you've had quite enough Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned A sun that is the source of all our power The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see Are moving at a million miles a day In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way' Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars It's a hundred thousand light years side to side It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point We go 'round every two hundred million years And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions In this amazing and expanding universe

So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure How amazingly unlikely is your birth And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space 'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth

(The Galaxy Song — Monty Python)

[that-random-chaos-entity]

How does your OC display love? What are some habits your OC has picked up?

Forgive me as this is a LONG post, but I felt it would be better to show, rather than tell, this one:

Words could not describe how awkward Perturabo felt being back in the Emperor's palace. It would have been bad enough if it were just his deadbeat father, a half-rotten corpse sitting in an overglorified golden life-support casket, ignoring him as per usual. But it wasn't just his father; so many of his brothers had come for this... ...this Sanguinala... ...in many ways it almost felt like the Heresy had never happened.

Vulcan, Corvus, Fulgrim, ROGAL FUCKING DORN, Magnus.... ...hell, even SANGUINIUS had come back from the dead. Raised by the same mysterious chaos entity that had turned Perturabo's world and soul inside out. Made him live his own life over and over again, through the eyes of the people around him, until he got the point. The people he impacted. The people he used, abused, and destroyed without a second thought. The people he...

...Perturabo shook his head, the physical action somehow dislodging the poisonous psychic tumor from his soul. Even though that parasite was long gone and the Eye of Terror no longer loomed over him, it had been feeding on his twisted spirit for so long that its blasted and withered hide still bled for it. Casting his self-destructive thoughts into the warp. This was a good thing (or so the Lanky Llama said). Though sometimes, when he started to brood and sulk, things would get... ...gummed up. He could shake any errant clots loose himself, but nobody helped the darkness bleed out of him like Nehetari.

And holy shit did he wish she were here right now. When she and her robotic people were around... ...the Lord of Iron actually felt like... ...himself. Or the version of himself that he wanted to be, anyway.

But no, "No xenos allowed at a family gathering," the Emperor had said. Not that it even would have mattered if they were; it was one of those weird weeks where the lanky llama disappeared on him and holed up in her room by herself. Something about a "Necrontyr biological cycle," that would, "likely make her act inappropriately," or "embarrass herself and him," but she would say no more on the matter.

Of course it would happen over the day when he needed--erm could have used her presence the most.

"Aren't you going to open your gifts, brother?"

Perturabo snapped out of his brooding to see Magnus looming beside him. It took him a second to process what he said, but when he did he scowled.

"Gifts Magnus? Really? Do think anyone here would ever give me a gift?"

"Excuse me! What am I, grox manure!?" there was no real irritation in Magnus's voice. He gestured to table in front of Perturabo, where three gifts sat that he could have SWORN were not there before. "And if you must know, you're the only brother here I saw fit to even GET a gift for."

"Aside from Sanguinius."

"Well... ...yeah..." the Crimson King shuffled his wings awkwardly. Both primarchs stole a glance at the MOUNTAIN of gifts that their brother had received. "...b-but he doesn't count."

Perturabo sighed. He didn't feel like feeling jealous of Sanguinius right now. Instead he grabbed the first package; it was obviously Magnus's gift. Whatever was in it was so warp-touched that it levitated a solid three feet off the table and changed size randomly. It turned out to be a small inter-dimensional rift that contained a book of arcane engineering, one that Perturabo had surprisingly not seen before. He thanked his brother; something that drew a surprised look from Magnus and a complimentary hug that Turbo awkwardly returned. The second gift was from Sanguinius, as it turned out, and when he opened the box he saw his own face, reflected in a simple yet elegant mirror. After a moment of wondering if this gift was actually meant for Fulgrim (clone fulgrim), he saw the inscription on the box lid which read, "to my big brother: it brings me joy to see happiness in your eyes now. I hope with this you can see it too."

Perturabo swore under his breath and slammed the box shut, furiously hoping that Magnus hadn't heard him sniffle just a tiny little bit. It was a moving gift to be sure, but after everything that had happened... ...somehow it just made the Lord of Iron feel like garbage. Well... ...more so than usual.

Thankfully, quick-thinking Magnus directed his brother's attention to the third gift. In fact, if he didn't know better, Perturabo would have sworn Magnus seemed even MORE excited for him to open this gift than his own.

"What is... ...is this from...?"

"MHMMM!" Magnus's enthusiasm was all-consuming, his grin audible in his tone. "She asked me come and pick it up from outside her door earlier this morning."

Perturabo's melancholy dissipated into a wave of curiosity. What sat before him was a perfect cube of blackstone, though if he knew anything about Nehetari, he knew that wasn't all there was to it.

Sure enough, when he picked it up, glyphs flashed along its side.

"Is... ...that..."

"Necrontyr," Perturabo murmured in deep concentration. "...and not just any form of Necrontyr; this is Ksakhemet Script."

"What?"

"Think of it as our high gothic. Except it's as if we had a high, HIGH gothic. Only the three Necrontyr kings and their families even knew how to speak this script, let alone how to read and write it. It is ancient, according to Nehetari... ...it's from a time even before the Necrontyr first started their galactic expansion."

Those statements alone were like a different language to Magnus, but his lust for ancient knowledge ignited like a blazing inferno. He would absolutely have to grill both Perturabo AND his xenos companion for more information once she was.... ...*ahem* no longer indesposed.

Perturabo turned the cube over and over in his hands, reading the ornate lettering as best he could. He'd only just started learning how to read Ksakhemet; he couldn't speak it properly because he lacked the extensive Necrontyr vocal range, but the lettering started to make sense the more he plied his fantastic mind.

"It is... ...a puzzle cube. I believe."

"D'AAWWW... How sweet...!"

Perturabo punched his brother in the shoulder, but it phased through his immaterial form.

"Shut your mouth!" He could already feel the heat creeping up his neck and he HATED it. Although he had to admit he was a little touched, if amused, that Nehetari had put together such a... ...thought-out gift.

And well-thought-out it was indeed! It became clear to the Lord of Iron that this wasn't just some slide and lock, physics based puzzle toy for mortal children. It was a custom-made testing tool designed to challenge his understanding of spacial compression, sub-atomic energy transfer, and even Necrontyr cultural theory. Each segment was challenging, unique, and soon he found himself absorbed. Magnus tagged along for the ride of course, and his respect for Nehetari grew each time he heard his brother growl in frustration, or give a small "...Ha! So that's it..."

"She has... ...quite the impressive mind. Especially for a xenos."

Perturabo grunted his affirmation. "...you don't know the half of it. She makes the Hrud look like a bunch of children." With a click the puzzle changed shape in his hands again, "...I would even say she has a mind similar to ours."

"...you don't say..."

"Hmph, she's DEFINITELY smarter than Dorn. I know that for sure."

Magnus chuckled. Of course she was.

The Lord of Iron didn't realize it immediately, but the puzzle cube was meant to serve another function, not just being an intriguing mental exercise. The more he fidgeted with it, the more time passed. Not by some technomantic power or magical means; he was just so absorbed in Nehetari's gift that he didn't notice his brothers packing up their gifts and starting to drift around and away from the throne room. Magnus, realizing he wouldn't be much help with this exercise, had taken notice of the custodes' Captain General (the one they call "kitten") and had begun to chat with him. Sanguinius was now at the Emperor's side, trying to pacify an impatient and belligerent Angron who just wanted to go celebrate Khornnuka with Lotara and Kharn. Corvus had dissapeared to... ...somewhere, and Vulkan was... ....had he somehow jackknifed himself into the psychic fireplace that the Emperor created!? Russ was laughing at him and drinking himself stupid (not that he had many IQ points to lose in the first place), but thankfully nobody was paying any attention to Turbo. Huh, who'd have thought; Perturabo was actually HAPPY that he was being ignored right now.

With a satisfying ding the cube shifted again, and to his surprise, glyphs flashed indicating that this was, in fact, the final challenge.

"Let's have it then. I'm ready..." the Lord of Iron grinned. He flicked the raised pad below the text and the final task scrolled across blackstone. Surprisingly, this time it was in High Gothic.

"...who is... ...my... ...favorite... ...human?"

He stared at the screen, dumbfounded. "Really? After all that, the last puzzle, is 'who's my favorite human?' Really?"

But wait... ...was the answer actually as easy as it appeared? Perturabo wanted to put his own name, but what if he was wrong? What if he wasn't her favorite human? He was hardly even "human" in the first place. Maybe she meant a true, normal human? But if this was supposed to be a present for him, why would she blatantly make him answer that her favorite human WASN'T him. What if...

"Hey nerd, the answer's obviously you."

Perturabo jumped to see Leman Russ passing him.

"What the-! Whe-how did you... ...you can't read!" Perturabo stammered. There was no way Leman just waltzed over here...

The Wolf Lord grinned, "Hey, ye nerds aren't the only ones who know how teh learn things. If I taught meself teh read Fenrisian runes, I can teach meself teh read some wolfin' High Gothic!"

"..."

"...that and I may or may not have used some of meh own psychic powers to read yer mind. You know, teh fill in teh blanks."

Considerably less impressed, Perturabo grumbled as he keyed the letters of his name into the cube. With another ding and a flash of green light, previously invisible cracks along the cube's surface began to glow and the cube began to shift one last time. When it finished, a tiny black tray was left in its place, revealing... ...a letter? And a pict?

"What's all this now?" Leman reached towards the tray.

Perturabo snatched it away, "Fuck off Russ! This is MY gift!"

"Oooh, is this from yer GIRLFRIEND!?"

"SHE'S NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!!"

"Hey fuck you Leman!" Oh boy, here comes Magnus, "Like you could ever understand the subtlety and genius that went into that puzzle box! Let him enjoy his gift in peace!"

"LeT HiM eNjOy HiS gIfT iN pEaCe!" Leman crooned. "Shut her trap and go back teh yer boyfriend, yeh big red canary."

Magnus puffed up in outrage and looked about ready to turn Leman inside out. When Perturabo noticed Sanguinius inbound, no doubt to dissolve the impending battle, he took his chance to dip out. And by "dip out" I mean grab the tray and its contents, and duck under the table. It would hide him for all of a second, but that would be as long as it would take him to read the letter.

Or it would have, if Leman hadn't, SOMEHOW, been able to reach the tray before him. He snatched up the letter, practically from between Perturabo's fingers, and with utter horror the Lord of Iron watched as his brother brandished the page, cleared his throat, and began to read:

"Perturabo..."

"FUCK YOU LEMAN THAT'S NOT YOURS!!" Magnus howled. Perturabo roared in fury. Both brothers made a mad lunge at the Wolf Lord but he dodged, shit-eating grin on his face as he continued reading.

"...Perturabo,

I'm sorry, but I...."

"....failed you?"

At the mention of the word "failed", Perturabo's onslaught faltered, as did Magnus's. Leman's grin died on his lips as he read the next line, his eyes widening for a moment before they squeezed shut. He then passed the letter back to Perturabo, mumbled a barely audible apology, turned, and without a word walked off.

"That's not what I... ...uh... ...expected?" Magnus muttered. "He looked like a kicked pup. What did that letter..."

Perturabo clutched the paper looking the most feral Magnus had ever seen him.

"...you know what, never mind. That letter's meant for you anyway." He added quickly. "I'll be in the library if you need me, brother."

And just like that, Perturabo was alone. Well, mostly; the Emperor was still there, but he was oddly quiet. Sanguinius was watching him too, but from a discreet distance.

The Lord of Iron backed up into the corner of the room, still riled up but looking a little less crazy. Once he was satisfied that NOBODY ELSE would attempt to confiscate his stuff, he finally began to read what Nehetari wrote for him.

"Perturabo,

I am sorry, but I failed you. You said you wanted your brothers' appreciation for a Sanguinala gift, but of all the ones I interviewed asking for an appreciative memory they have of you, the only ones who gave me a response were your brothers Magnus and Sanguinius. So instead I instigated a situation to make one (please reference the included image). If your brother's expressions are to be believed, then I believe they all enjoyed attacking your snow bunker. I certainly enjoyed helping you defend it.

May you have a somber and pleasant celebration,

The Mehlrose,

Nehetari of the Szarekhan Dynasty.

Heir to the Silent Throne."

...Perturabo couldn't believe it.

He's asked for that as a JOKE. He hadn't actually been serious. When she's approached him, asking what he wanted as a "Sanguinala gift," he'd been in the middle of a complicated programming script and had said that just to get the point across that he didn't want to be bothered.

Slowly, and with a shaking hand, he lifted the pict from the tray and turned it over.

And she was right. This shot must have been taken by one of her tunneling scarabs. Or maybe one of her guard as they were circling the perimeter, hurling snow and distracting Russ. But however it was taken, somehow it was able to get a perfect shot of every primarch, including himself and Nehetari, hurling fucking snow or getting completely dunked on, but every single one of them had varying degrees of stupid fucking grin on their faces. Even Corvus was smiling!

It struck him: had that been her plan all along?

Minutes passed, and finally the Emperor himself spoke up. "My son, you're shaking like a Dark Elder nightclub on a Tuesday."

Perturabo didn't hear him. It took everything he had just to hold the pict in his trembling hands.

Why? Why. Why would she bother. How did she... ...why, why, why WHY? HOW!? When did she even have the TIME to plan this out!? There was no way. And not for him. Why? Why for him? And ALL OF THEM. How could she have known they would ALL come?

"Brother, are you ok?"

Perturabo snapped out of the loop to see the Angel standing beside him with a hand on his shoulder. He hadn't realized just how loudly his two hearts had been thundering, how BADLY his whole body had been shaking, until he felt that steadying touch. Instinctively he tried to regain control over his mind and body, and stowed the pict away in his belt.

Sanguinius asked no questions; he simply nodded.

"I'm going to find her..." Perturabo's voice sounded like sandpaper. He could feel the tears rolling down his neck, but he ignored them. "...I don't care if she FUCKING KILLS me; I am going to find her. She has no right.... ...she had no right to... ...to..."

"...go ahead brother." Sanguinius's smile was warm with understanding.

Salvaging what little dignity he felt he had left, Perturabo straightened up, turned on his heel, and walked shakily out of the throne room. He disappeared into the darkness, leaving his father and his brothers to stare after him in wonder.

(Sorry this is such a long post, but I started writing it and just went to town. I wanted to SHOW, rather than just tell, the kinds of things Nehetari does for the individuals that are important to her)

@gracia-regina @ask-a-scheming-sorcerer @luwupercal

[sepublic]

Starkiller Base was unnecessary

           Re-watching The Force Awakens, and… It’s occurred to me that, even more than I initially thought, Starkiller Base is a genuinely useless, pointless part of the plot that’s just shoehorned in for the sake of arbitrarily raising the stakes, in a blind attempt to redo the Original Trilogy while one-upping it at the same time; Taking pot shots at the original Death Star’s ‘absurdity’ to try to make Starkiller Base’s destruction feel more ‘involved’ and ‘sensible’ with having an inside job to sabotage and blow up key components, yadda-yadda; Almost feels like the writers are punching down at the Original Trilogy in a vain attempt to look more clever and ‘self-aware’, without considering how reckless power-scaling doesn’t work (Which we see once more and somehow even worse in The Rise of Skywalker).

           The thing about why the Death Star works is like… It’s relevant. It has build-up. We’re introduced to it from the start, the entire story revolves around destroying it; R2-D2 is important because he has plans to the Death Star, Vader is seen chasing Leia because she had those plans. It all comes around to and circles back to the Death Star, we have a sense of what it is from the start, there’s build-up. You NEED the planet-killing machine for the climax of A New Hope, because the only reason to go there is because, surprise- The Death Star IS there, it just arrived right besides Yavin IV!

           But Starkiller Base… When you watch the movie, it just pops in out of nowhere, amidst the pre-established plot threads. Without any prior context or build-up, we’re just suddenly treated to a shot of this huge, mechanized planet, and then Hux almost casually drops that the ‘superweapon’ is ready, and then suddenly it’s firing and blows up the Hosnian System. The Death Star is justifiable because it’s the first of its kind, Starkiller Base is the third. In canon and Legends, there’s a lot of side-material going into the sheer enormity and horror of the Death Star, the amount of manpower it takes to construct such a thing, its formation is treated with gravitas; And yet something WAY bigger and more advanced comes out of nowhere, from a group even less powerful than the Empire?!

           Again, you need the Death Star, it’s why the rebels are being chased, it’s why Leia was captured, it’s why R2-D2 meets Luke and then Obi-Wan, bringing up the Rebel journey; It’s why Luke’s aunt and uncle die, it’s why there’s no Alderaan and instead the Death Star itself to capture the protagonists when they arrive there. But Starkiller Base is pointless- The plot is about BB-8 because he has the map to Luke Skywalker, it’s about finding Luke through BB-8. Starkiller Base is just so casually dropped for something that should be so much bigger than the Death Star in the narrative… And likewise, we don’t need it for anything.

           Is it to prove to Finn that the First Order is dangerous, that he can’t just ignore its destruction? The thing is, he already has Rey’s capture to motivate his participation. Starkiller Base could not fire, but Finn would still help the Resistance infiltrate, because Rey would still be captured. It’s not needed for Poe and the Resistance to arrive on Takodana, because they came for BB-8 after getting that message, the Hosnian Cataclysm totally unrelated. You could argue it gives the Resistance an excuse to fight back against the First Order in the film’s climax… But that does not justify creating another superweapon, much less one as implausible and redundant as Starkiller Base.

           Like, maybe the writers wanted to REALLY return to the status quo, so having the New Republic be devastated was a requirement… But was it really? Just have the New Republic continue to be ineffectual, it’s even a plot-point in side material that its military is embarrassingly small; So just say the Resistance IS the full extent of that military! You still get an underdog situation. And again, if you really want to forcibly cut off any support for the Resistance… You don’t need a giant superweapon to one-up the Death Star. Just have the First Order demonstrate its traditional military power, by having a fleet invade the New Republic’s capital, unexpected, able to waltz in because everyone is so incompetently lax about these rising fascists; And with recent real-life events, it only makes more disturbing sense.

          Instead of getting a pointless superweapon, have a bunch of Star Destroyers attack Hosnian Prime and take it over, show a montage of destruction and civilian death, etc. This still establishes the danger of the First Order and how it’s quickly decapitated the New Republic and left it in shambles, setting the stage for the underdog conflict; But you don’t have to rely on something as absurdly over-the-top as Starkiller Base, which has no build-up to its unprecedented firepower besides “Oh yeah this exists” and then watching it fire and finding out firsthand.

          The death of trillions with the Hosnian System is senseless violence both in-universe and from a narrative, writing perspective… And again, this arguably establishes the First Order as a threat better, because they don’t need to rely on a superweapon; And even after The Force Awakens ends, the audience still knows that they have access to an entire fleet… Whereas with Starkiller Base, that threat is lost by the end of the film and thus made redundant. The scene could become even more disturbing if we straight-up see some civilians on Hosnian Prime welcome the First Order, adding additional world building that helps explain why the First Order was able to develop, how it got support- And again, being topical to what happens today. It connects with canon lore about the First Order’s supporters in other worlds (such as Coruscant), and could even be a callback to liberty dying with thunderous applause in Revenge of the Sith! We could still have the people on Takodana react in horror, through the Holonet’s broadcasting of the coup.

           Of course, this is Star Wars- And what’s more iconic than thrilling space battles and trench runs? Sometimes you want sci-fi fun and stuff for the sake of it, nothing wrong with that, that’s always important too… But again, you don’t need a giant super-laser to have that. Just make up something else; Like Starkiller Base is the planet that the First Order has taken over. Perhaps they intend to launch a bunch of new Star Destroyers, or are about to finish production of a whole new batch, which would make things even worse. Instead of destroying a superweapon, you could have the Resistance crippling the factories that finish these Star Destroyers- There’s your trench run! Have them blow up a power plant that’s running the factories, instead of a thermal oscillator. There’s still a victory at the end, and while the threat is far from over, time has been bought- And it makes the First Order’s immediate retaliation in the next film more sensible, adds to the idea that every second, every bit of progress helps, you gotta take what you need… Even an extra day to prepare and evacuate is a miracle that furthers the underdog motif.

           Plus, with a batch of Star Destroyers that need to be stopped- There’s still the need to rescue Rey. The Resistance still needs to cause damage at the First Order’s base, and Finn is still needed to infiltrate and lower the shields, while taking advantage of this operation for himself and Rey. Most importantly, you don’t get a contrived superweapon that only adds to the bland, carbon-copy standard of the Sequel Trilogy; And perhaps best of all, we don’t have to see Ilum retroactively bastardized and destroyed, with Starkiller Base’s identity revealed AFTER we see it get blown up… The legacy of the Jedi and its history is not further destroyed with the loss of this sacred planet of kyber crystals.

          And that’s better, because this trilogy about passing the torch, seems as insistent as Kyle Ron, the villain, on interpreting this theme as utterly wiping out all traces of the past, and leaving nothing for the next generation to work with. Which, I’m not surprised at a corporation thoughtlessly razing and salting the earth in selfish disregard for those who will need and use it afterwards, but still. And while a star that burns brighter than most thanks to its heart of Kyber IS a neat concept that could be worked with, especially with what Chirrut Imwe says, in addition to the motifs of flames of rebirth and the Phoenix… It’s not something that justifies the further eradication of Jedi history and effort on a level that even the Empire didn’t go, just to arbitrarily raise stakes with yet another uninspired superweapon.

           Like, the Duel of the Fates script and its concept of a device that blocks off all inter-galactic communication is MUCH more interesting, clever, and innovative than the Death Star Lite, and it hits closer to home in this age of internet and mass communication; In contrast to the Death Star, which fit more in its time as a criticism of the stockpiling and development of nukes, and how that tapped into the public’s fear at the time of nuclear Armageddon. And a device blocking off intergalactic communication provides good reason for why the Resistance doesn’t have the full might of the New Republic behind them, because they can’t even communicate to collaborate, and it adds to that idea of people made to feel ‘alone’ or whatever and thus isolated, so they can’t band together and rise up. That adds to Rey feeling alone, and makes Poe and Zorii’s discussion at the end of the trilogy that much more meaningful… Not that the Sequel Trilogy was planned to consider the latter, of course.

           (Actually, I wonder if it’s possible to cut Starkiller Base’s superweapon scenes from the film. Like a cut where any references to its superweapon, and the scene where it fires, is cut out; I think the film might still work that way.)

[ladyonfire28]

Here’s a (disastrous) translation of the interview Adèle Haenel in France Inter back, in their « Popopop » radio show back in June 2019, when she was promoting her film Le Daim. They rebroadcasted a couple of days ago. I’m really sorry about how messy that translation is, it’s even worse that usual lol. But anyway here you go:

Begins at 6:00 - 

The lady interviewer, Charline Roux (CR), talks about Adèle’s filmography: Les diables, Naissances des pieces, l’Apollonide, Suzanne, Les Combattants etc.

6:45

The presenter Antoine De Caunes (ADC) says that if she gets two more Césars she can make a coffee table out of them (the 4 legs of a table). And she replies that only one César is enough for that.

7:00

De Caunes asks her how does she feel when she wins awards.

AH: It’s enjoyable obviously and it gives you confidence. And it’s encouraging. I try to be sincere in my work and to have this support reinforces my desire to work that way.

ADC: It makes you feel like you didn’t take the wrong turn ?

AH: Or everybody is taking the wrong turn with me

CR : You’ve been nominated almost every year for the César (2014, 2015, 2018, 2019 and she didn’t know yet but 2020)

AH: Yes it true

CR : So you’re not really taking any wrong turn here

AH: Yes but it’s not the reason why I do this, but I’m happy when it happens of course. It helps me staying confident in a job envrionment that is quite unsettling.

8:00

So then they said they asked for her « pop » list, which are her favorite book, film, tv show and song.  So De Caunes says that Adèle’s book choice was Mémoire de fille by Annie Ernaux published in 2016.

Charline then talks a bit about the book and then Adèle reads a short extract of the book. Then she explains why she likes it.

9:23

AH: I love Annie Ernaux and you chose a very good extract for me to read because it talks about how she tries to find her presence in her absence of life. And this where she really tries to find who she is. And it’s very powerful and it’s a very honest writing.

DC: You like all of her writing  ?

AH: Yeah I love the writer she is.

Then De Caunes says Adèle chose Carol as her favorite film. And then Charline explains the plot of the film.

10:35

Then De Caunes asks why she likes the film so much. If it was because of the complicated love story, Todd Haynes, Cate Blanchett, the drama, all of that ?

AH: It’s all of this together. To me it’s an amazing film, a film that makes the emotions speak. For me Cate Blanchett is an incredible actress, she plays that fantasized character but we also see the fractures that appear in her character and in the image. I find her way of working wonderful and the image is beautiful. And also the relationship between brave and beautiful people. I love that film.

ADC: When you see Cate Blanchett acting you as an actress -

AH: I’m so thrilled haha, it’s amazing

ADC: Yes but do you tell yourself « this is what I’m trying to reach »  ?

AH: What I like about her is that she doesn’t try to just act well, she takes the job as a artistic research. And it wouldn’t be good to try to do like her but to follow that way of working, that spirit, that’s interesting.

CR: And what is great is that she does that no matter what is the film. She does that with Carol but also with Thor. Even in Thor we believe in it and she’s really good.

AH: She’s always searching and I don’t know her personally but this way of being is always the most enjoyable and the most interesting one.

12:08

ADC says they also asked her to chose a tv show but Adèle had nothing. And he asks her why she doesn’t watch them.

AH: Well I don’t know why. I just don’t. And I wasn’t going to give you a show like Une femme d'honneur *laugh*  (it’s a terrible cheap French show)

CR : Because you really watch Une femme d’honneur ?

AH: No but not anymore *laugh*, it’s awful, but yeah I just don’t watch shows. I find them very interesting when people tell me the story but I don’t watch it.

ADC: Is it because it’s too long ?

AH: I don’t know, I just don’t, I don’t find the time for it, I’d rather read.

ADC: Well since we’re not scared of anything, we will recommend you one show that is linked with one of your inspiration for Le Daim

CR : You said you got inspiration from the Goosebumps books so we’re recommending you the series adapted from the books that was broadcast in the late 90’s on France 2. They’re now on Netflix

AH: I didn’t think of it but if I did I would have watched it.

ADC: Let’s finish your pop list with the song you picked and it’s this one: *Mississipi Goddamn by Nina Simone is playing*.

13:55

ADC: So what’s up with Nina Simone ?

AH: Nina Simone is an wonderful artist. Sometimes in her songs she’s really in the present moment and it’s the goal of every artist. I love everything she does and here it’s really beautiful because there’s a political thought that leads to anger that is used as an artistic inspiration and that’s very powerful.

DC: So you’re more Nina Simone than Joe Dassin, who’s in the soundtrack of Le Daim

AH: Well a priori yes.

Then they’re doing a mix of all her pop list.

15:20

DC: So do you recognize yourself in that mix ?

AH: Well it’s pretty well done live yes.

They play some music

17:00

De Caunes explains the story of Le Daim and tells Adèle it’s a pretty weird plot. She agrees. And he asks her if that’s how they presented her the movie.

AH: No they gave me the developed version of the story, which is called a script. And then I made my own pitch with it.

CR: So Quentin Dupieux didn’t just come to you and tell you « its’ a story about a guy with a jacket »

AH: Actually he didn’t explain me anything, he sent me the script directly

ADC: In the past Dupieux made Steak, Rubber and Réalité. But for that one he said he he wanted to film about madness. So are we close to that with that film ?

AH: Well to me there’s always a part of madness in all his films. I don’t know if we’re close to that but we’re in his world.

CR : What did you see from Dupieux before saying yes ?

AH: I loved Réalité. I didn’t know much about his films. And so I’ve been told to watch Réalité and I loved it. And I also saw Au Poste later. And What I love is that crazy side. And that’s why I wanted to do that film. The main character is the jacket, the supporting role is Jean Dujardin, and the third character is me. And I tried to make a character that goes along with the film's craziness.

Then they play a extract of the film.

19:35

Charline talks about Denise, Adèle’s character. And since we don’t know much about the character’s background she asks Adèle if she imagined one for her.

AH: No, not at all. I think all the characters are really uprooted in this film. What I tried to do is to find a goal for her. Her goal was to shake her reality by adding some craziness in her life, even if it becomes macabre in the end. So I tried to focus Denise’s fascination on the jacket. That was the idea. ADC: A suede jacket, which is the main character as you said, worn by an Oscar winner. How did you work with the jacket, did you feel like you had two different co-workers with Jean Dujardin and the jacket ?  Was it easier, harder ?

AH: No it was great because originally, Denise was written in support of the character of Georges. And what I tried to do with Dupieux was to change this so Denise wouldn’t just look at Georges but also the jacket. And that’s how the relationship with Jean Dujardin could really be developed. Georges was so obsessed with that jacket, the only thing he was looking at were the people interested in the jacket and everything around the jacket. And when Denise started to focus on the jacket Georges saw a partner in her. So we built our relationship like that.

ADC: And you also yourself stopped wearing jackets, you came here in a sweater.  

AH: No no, I just let my jacket outside

DC: Oh well sorry

CR: Dupieux said he wanted to talk about madness with this film but he also wanted to make his first realistic film. So how do we try to be realistic as an actress in that kind of film ?

AH:  That was the whole point of the movie in the first place. My idea was to include my character into this crazy film and I didn’t try to be realistic. Jean Dujardin has an amazing character and totally crazy from the beginning and I thought I had to make my character become even crazier because she’s a normal person and we don’t see her becoming mad.

CR: So we have to ask that question. Do you consider your fashion style as « un style de malade » (it’s a catchphrase from the film that means « dope » basically)

AH:  *laugh* yes yes… nope.

22:33

ADC: So I read that you have many inspirations from the Wolfe in Tex Avery, to Jim Carrey in The Mask or even Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut. What do you take from those people to make your own thing ?

AH: Well I kinda say this without really thinking about it. We all say stupid things sometimes. But what I like in Tex Avery is how you imagine your body as something else that what it is and I creates an physical imaginary that I love. For Nicole Kidman I don’t know, I must have answered that without really thinking.

ADC: You prefer Cate Blanchett now

AH: Yes I do, but I already talked about her. And for Jim Carrey, he’s the human version of Tex Avery. I love how he doesn’t even think about his acting and if he’s acting well. He’s going mad but with so much honesty. And it’s so great to see imagination pictured like that.

ADC: Is it something we develop more in comedy ?

AH: I think it’s more necessary in comedy. It’s harder to run away from that. But you can bring that in drama and all genres. There’s not just one way of acting, which is why it’s great.

24:11

CR: We’ve seen you more in dramas but comedies suit you very well like we saw in Le Daim or in En Liberté !. Is it a choice not to do a lot of comedies or don’t you get a lot of offers ?

AH: Until now people didn’t offer me a lot of comedy roles, they probably thought I was boring as fuck. But I’ve always loved comedy as a spectator, it’s a way to discover everything we can do in acting. We’ll see what happens now.

ADC: What do you find in comedy that you don’t in drama ?

AH: The imaginary is stronger in comedy. There’s also a very strong accountability. But it’s also present in drama, it’s pretty much the same, there’s a dialogue in both. And we’re also less in the continuity in comedy. That’s what I learned with Salvador in En liberté!. There’s a much more discontinuous rhythm in comedy, where in drama it’s usually more flat and it’s about the rise of emotions.

CR: And didn’t you talk about an experience that was more collective in comedy ?

AH: Yes we built the rhythm with two people. So yeah it’s a collective work with your colleague but also, for me at least, I can’t do comedy on my own, so the look and support of the director is really needed and they can help us with the acting. We’re more independent in drama.

ADC: in the soundtrack of Le Daim we only hear one song : *Et si tu n’existais pas by Joe Dassin plays*

AH: I love that song, it’s beautiful.

ADC: Is it a song that capture the craziness of the film ?

AH: well there’s that kind of nostalgia - I think it’s a very beautiful song, it wasn’t in my pop list but I love it. But yeah there’s that nostalgia, like a boat that leaves the coast and won’t ever come back.

26:43 - end.

[fanfoolishness]

To Tell the Truth (Bartrand & Varric, Bartrand POV)

It’s tough to be the eldest. Especially when your little brother’s name is Varric. 2000+ words.

***

Bartrand lied to Varric about... a lot of things.

Like Orzammar. He didn’t really remember it all that well. How could he? Their father had thrown everything away over lousy rigged Provings, and they’d lost it all when Bartrand was practically an infant.

All he remembered of the city itself was glow, warm golden light of the carefully tamed magma far below their feet, and vast, the nearly endless stone ceilings far above him.

In the Tethras home in the Diamond Quarter, he remembered glimpses of books bound in bronto leather, thick blocky dwarven script marking the pages with neat patterns. He remembered Father in his finery, Mother in angular gold jewelry. Back then he did not remember her drinking. He never knew the smell of mosswine.

Later, he knew wine and whisky all too well.

She started drinking up on the surface. She slurred when she talked, the harsh edges to her words softened by the alcohol, and sometimes she sat on her bed with huge tears in her eyes in yesterday’s clothes. She missed Father, and she missed Orzammar, and the sky dizzied her.

Bartrand felt the same. But Varric -- he barely remembered Father at all, and he’d only ever known the sun.

Bartrand knew his duty, and he tried to teach his brother what he should know. At first it was the things Father had shown him, about how to be clever, how to watch out for things that felt wrong. And it was the things Mother had told him, about counting, about money, about leverage.

But he ran out of those things to tell him soon enough, and Varric filled the space between with his own stories. It made Bartrand uneasy. If he wasn’t careful, Varric would start to make up the wrong things. He felt very deeply, very sternly, that an older brother should not let a younger brother become an idiot.

So Bartrand talked of Orzammar, and he strove to pull stories and legends out of half-remembered glow and vast , out of bronto leather and finery and the stories Mother used to tell him, and he thought that even if he’d made some of it up, he’d done pretty well as an older brother. He thought he’d taught him what mattered. He thought he’d done what his father would have done, should have done.

… Except that Varric was a little shit.

***

Varric only got worse the bigger he got. Once Bartrand had been excited about the idea of a younger brother, someone to share in the Tethras name with him. Instead he discovered younger brothers were an exercise in pure frustration.

Varric teased him when his beard finally came in, snide little comments about old Paragons and making fashion statements. Bartrand’s fingers twisted jerkily at the clumsily woven braids he’d made. At the look in his eyes Varric threw back his head and laughed, then ran as fast as he could when Bartrand raised his fist. Later Bartrand stared at himself in the mirror and undid the little braids, one by one.

Varric ignored him when Bartrand showed him old accounts and ancestors’ names written finely on delicate deepwood parchment, trying to make him understand where they’d come from, filling in the details as best he could remember. Maybe some of it was lies. Just a little, just enough to make his obnoxious brother pay attention. The lies didn’t work, though, and Varric would pull out pages of human-made vellum scribbled on with child-sized handwriting, grinning from ear to ear.

I made it more interesting, he’d laugh, building scaffolds of bigger lies and wild fantasy on top of Bartrand’s dusty foundations. More than once the lessons ended with Bartrand threatening a black eye, and Varric sullen and kicking his chair with his feet.

But then there was the time Varric broke the dish, one of the last from Orzammar that hadn’t broken or been sold off when they’d first come to the surface. At first Varric looked like he would burst into nervous laughter. Before Bartrand could work up the anger to start yelling, Varric crumbled. Fell on his knees, started sweeping up the shattered pieces, said he was sorry, all right, I didn’t mean it, honest.

Bartrand still yelled, but he was strangely gratified when Varric left a glued and scarred plate on the kitchen table for him to find a day later. It broke apart when he touched it, gold filigree forever cracked in half, a useless repair job.

It was the best thing Varric had ever done.

When Varric asked Bartrand if the glue had held, later that night, Bartrand lied to him. Sure it did, brother. You fixed it, in the end.

He wondered what Varric thought when the plate was never displayed again. He wondered, but never asked.

***

Bartrand was fifteen when he entered the meeting house of the Merchants’ Guild for the first time as the head of House Tethras. He’d trained hard the past three years under older members of the Guild, cut his eyeteeth on smaller, safer trades until he started to see the patterns, sense them in a way that was hard to describe and easier to feel. Parchment and coin felt at times like an extension of his hands, a medium he instinctively knew how to manipulate. He wasn’t much for imagination, but when he allowed it a place in his head, he imagined a painter or a sculptor felt much the same way.

He tried to include Varric, ancestors knew he did. It got harder and harder to try and teach him, but he kept it up, gruffly trying to explain the patterns and their intricacies. Especially since Ilsa had grown more and more isolated, keeping to herself in her bedroom, rarely interacting with them.

It was up to Bartrand now. And he could rise to the challenge. So he thought, anyway.

He tried to drag Varric along to meetings at the Guild. He pointed out who was a useful contact, who would stab you in the back, who was broke and pretending he wasn’t, who was drowning in coin and pretending he was broke. He hired bodyguards after the first time Varric insulted a particularly violent house, and temporarily kicked his brother out of the Guild after the third round of insults ended with a knife to Bartrand’s throat, a dead fourth son of a minor family, and an arrow in Varric’s leg. The night was a blur but Bartrand clearly remembered his coinpurse emptying out by half, his brother’s face white and sweating, and his hands sticky with Varric’s blood. Not something he ever wanted to relive.

After that Bartrand broke down and started paying for dueling training for his mouthy little brother. Bastard might as well fight his own fights, if he was going to start them. He showed little promise with daggers or swords, but the tutors said he had a fine eye with a bow.

***

Years on, Bartrand still worried about Varric. Oh, sure, in some ways he was making progress. He’d become downright skilled in archery, both in shortbows and crossbows. He was developing some side proficiencies in setting traps and lockpicking, neither of which was respectable, exactly, but at least they were useful. And he’d started making contacts here and there, working on developing a little spy network of people who didn’t run their mouths off nearly as much as Varric himself. He wasn’t entirely hopeless.

But he still didn’t seem to understand what it was to be a Tethras. Bartrand wondered if he’d gotten too influenced by surfacers and the sun, the way he went on so about novels and publishing and other crap the humans had invented.

He took Varric aside one day, pulling him into the kitchen. Ilsa slumbered in the sitting room, already drunk despite the early morning hour. Bartrand had long since accepted that queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach her stupors gave him, but something new was happening, something worse.

“You said you wanted to talk to me, brother?” Varric asked.

Bartrand nodded gruffly, tending the kitchen fire in preparation for breakfast. Bacon and the last of the eggs. He knew he could have hired a scullery maid, but he preferred the money staying in their coffers, and besides, he was a pretty good cook himself. The coals flared, flame dancing merrily above them.

“Mother’s getting worse,” said Bartrand baldly. “I brought a healer in to see her.”

“When was this?” Varric asked.

“You were out. Sources say you were meeting up with a smith? Could be a good alliance.”

“Right,” said Varric, looking away. “It can never hurt to know a good smith. And she’s the best this side of the surface.” He gave Bartrand an uneasy chuckle.

“Anyway, the healer said Mother….” He grimaced. “It’s only a matter of time now, Varric.”

Varric crossed his arms, letting out a deep breath. “But she’s still so young, Bartrand.”

“Maybe so, but she’s poisoned herself. You had to know she couldn’t drink like that for years without it catching up to her.” He stoked the fire, harder than he meant to. The poker sent sparks to the back of the fireplace.

“I guess that’s true.” He sighed. “Does... she know?”

“No. I didn’t see a reason to make it worse for her, understand? The healer thinks months. Maybe a year, if things go well.” He rummaged with the bacon. “But she shouldn’t be alone here anymore. Not all day, like before.” He hesitated. “I was thinking of hiring someone.”

“I can take care of her,” said Varric.

Bartrand closed his eyes, hoping this wasn’t one of Varric’s fancies. “Huh.”

“It makes sense. You’re busy. You have Guild crap, and this venture, and that venture… I can work on my writing while I’m here with her. It’ll save you having to pay for someone,” Varric said. “And Mom never liked surfacers in the house, anyway.” He smiled at Bartrand, but it lacked the usual attempt at charm.

Bartrand nodded, fighting back something unfamiliar. Was it pride? Maybe? He wasn’t sure. “That sounds fine, brother. I think it’s for the best.”

***

Bartrand watched the funeral procession pass, laborer dwarves taking their mother away to be interred in the finest stone he could afford. Steam puffed out from their breath in the cold winter air. Bartrand couldn’t help a sense of relief, knowing she would finally be reunited with their father in a beautiful crypt on the edges of the dwarven quarter.

He turned to see Varric coming out of the front door, his face blotchy, eyelids swollen. Bartrand glanced around worriedly, hoping none of their neighbors would see. Some of the other houses could make use of such a display.

It wasn’t that Bartrand didn’t grieve their mother; she was their last connection to the past, the one who had kept them going after Father died, as best as she could. But Varric still needed to learn the difference between a public face and a private one. Public grief could be showed in careful visits to the crypt, composed and calm and cool. This — the snot glistening at the edge of Varric’s nose, the red cheeks, the puffy eyes — was utterly private.

“I guess that’s what she wanted, isn’t it,” said Varric dully at Bartrand’s side. The wagon passed out of sight, the sound of the wheels faint on the riven stone. “She never got over leaving Orzammar.”

Bartrand swallowed, uncomfortable. He’d never get used to Varric saying out loud the shit that should have stayed quiet. “She was a fine woman. She did what she had to for this family, as best as she could.”

“She shouldn’t have had to,” said Varric. “You ever wonder if it was exile that did it? And not the alcohol?”

Bartrand bristled. “Come on. Let’s get inside,” he muttered. “Walls have ears.”

They sat in the sitting room where Ilsa had spent most of her days in the end, drinking enough to fight off the shakes and the terrors, being sick as a dog when her body started rejecting even that. Bartrand leaned back against the settee, thinking hard.

“Look,” said Bartrand. “Now that Mother’s gone, we’re gonna have different priorities. You’re freed up again. And I’ll be honest, Varric, I think you might finally be getting the hang of being a Tethras. You stepped up, when you had to.”

Varric snorted. “Was that a compliment?”

Bartrand glowered at him. “It was, but I can take it back if you’re going to be smart about it.”

“You know me, brother. I’ve never not been a smartass.”

“That’s true enough,” he grumbled. “But I think you’re figuring it out. A silver tongue can get you out of trouble just as much as it can get you into it, you know.”

“That’s what I hear,” said Varric. He lifted up the blanket from the settee, pulling out a flask of whisky, Mother’s favorite. “Huh. Guess we can get rid of this now, can’t we.” His face crumpled, but he recovered quickly, putting on a twisted smile before he could start crying again.

“Pour a glass,” said Bartrand.

“If you insist.”

“And I do. As eldest, it’s my right.”

“Is that a little sass I detect, brother?”

“It’s been a trying day,” Bartrand admitted. He watched as Varric rustled up some glasses and poured them two large measures of whisky. For a moment, both stared at the amber liquid. He could almost hear Ilsa’s voice again, parchment-thin and rustling by the end, begging for just a little more.

Varric picked up his glass, holding it so that the firelight caught the curves. “To Mom.”

“To Mother,” Bartrand echoed. Their glasses clinked. He took a sip, whisky burning his throat, and swallowed the bitterness down.

Varric took a drink, shuddering. “Burns, doesn’t it.”

“No gains without a little pain.” He stared into the fire.

“It’s rude to call me that, Bartrand.”

Bartrand turned to his brother, raising an eyebrow. “I’d say you’re a bastard for that remark, but technically, I’d be lying.”

“And you’d never lie to your own brother, would you?” Varric asked, nudging him in the shoulder.

Bartrand considered. The Tethras clan, starting to make their way in the world. The Tethras brothers, coming into their own.

“Lie to you?” he said. “No, never.”

[pricefudge]

Avengers Endgame Rewatch - Spoilers!!!

So, I went and gave in to my baser desires and watched Endgame again. Beware, massive spoilers ahead, especially on the ending and my opinion on it. Because I need to shout it into the void. Long and Rambly.

I know a lot of people have a problem with how characters were treated (Thor’s depression as a joke? Not okay.), but I see the sense behind it. To be honest, and as much as I live in the timeline Thanos got out from and IW never happened, Tony Stark had to die. Because, we all know, we fans are craaaaazy sometimes. We would have bothered the creators so long until they revived the Iron Man Franchise with RDJ at the head and we would have lost our collective shit because it wasn’t what we wanted or expected (I mean, look at the whole Fantastic Beasts shitstorm) or worse gotten another actor - ha, no. Let’s let the poor actors retire. Same thing, but to a lesser extent, with Captain America and Black Widow. 

So. much.

foreshadowing

I mean, with Tony it was obvious from the beginning. Movie rule - every character that gets happiness and domesticity dies (a dog gets mentioned? Character dies. Kids to go home to? Character dies. I won’t risk everything! Character dies. That whole fucking Howard Stark the Greater Good Scene? Character. effing. dies.)  Believe me, the second time around I almost cried every time Tony was on Screen. That whole Morgan interaction? Cryyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Like every Tony fan, I felt vindicated at the beginning of the movie, the little argument he had with Steve. Yes. Tell him. First time around it was more cringe. Second time, YAS MAN. And, god, I can’t stop gushing about Dad!Tony. The growth. The love. The moment he was finally able to give Peter a hug. My heart was so open, my crops are watered (with my tears) and my skin is clear (due to tears washing away everything).

But I hadn’t expected the foreshadowing to hit so hard with Natasha. Like, whoaaaaa. Don’t do anything stupid. See you in a sec. Until later. Like whoaaaa, there were so many goodbyes directed at Nat and in my panic for Tony I completely missed it the first time. At least she got to say some kind of goodbye. Whoa.

And I imagine, Clint went back for her bones sometime. Or sent Carol. Because due to Soul Stone teleportation and very important goal, he couldn’t get her body back to the future, but like hell is he leaving his family there. She’s the girl he gave a second chance, the one he watched grow from machine to person, who pulled him out of the darkest spot he’s ever been in. The only reason she was even alive these last five years is bull-headed determination that there has to be something that can be done - she was the only one to stay at the Avengers compound. Did Not Move On. This was what she lived for and what she gave her live for. He probably interred her on compund grounds or next to the plot his family’s going to be resting in.

Now Captain America, Mister Steven G. Rogers. I do absolutely dislike his ending, but. BUT. Imagine the absolutely mind-boggling shenanigans he had to go through to keep the timeline intact. No, Sir, I am not Captain America. No you didn’t see me lift that car to get my son’s toy from under it. No, Peggy just married someone who looked extremely alike. No my name is Steve Rodgers, with a d, you see? Peggy probably took Howard Stark into the know, so he could hack all official files and exchange the picuters of Steve with some other dude. Probably explains his obsession with finding Steve, And their kids! Well kids, you’re gonna see Daddy in a lot of pictures and movies, but you must never tell anyone that he’s at home. And you’re gonna meet him at my funeral in the future, but don’t tell him anything! He doesn’t know yet he get’s the girl! It is a bit hilarious.

But people being mean on him for leaving behind Bucky - boy knew what Steve was gonna pull. “I’m gonna miss you, Bud! and “How could ? You’re taking all the stupid with you” for like the next five seconds? NAH. Bucky knew Steve wasn’t gonna come back spry and shiny. He was gonna pull some bull-headed thing. Bucky probably saw a picture of Older Peggy and Older Steve and thought - huh, she definitely got a type! - and suddenly time travel is a thing? Light-bulb moment! Ding ding ding! Get the girl :D. Don’t forget, Bucky was always right next to Steve during doing stupid things. He knew and approved. Don’t forget, he got a lot of healing done in Wakanda. Time for some healing for Steve.

On the other hand, Thor was just absolutely mistreated. I mean, props to Marvel for realizing emotions and trauma exist (again), minus points for handling. At least he is not magically healed and fit at the end through some heroic-fight-panacea. I loved Thor in Ragnarok. Why did you do this to him? I mean, I heard that Chris Hemsworth wasn’t interested in any more movies after Thor 2, understandably, so maybe it was in part to honour that decision. Shitty, but well........ And Bruce’s growth, puff. Where is it gone? Bye, Hulk, gonna miss your smashing. But at least he got in touch with his inner self. Even literally, hi Ancient One.

Every. Ducking. Character. Loved it. So many people, stories, faces, all together. 

And for all the very, very dedicated Loki stans out there - do it like me, live in timeline a) where Thanos left and nobody died or timeline b) where Loki got the Tesseract in NY, noped out of there and lived happily in shenanigans until Thanos went to get the Tesseract. Or timeline b.1) where Loki gave the Tesseract to Thanos and became one of his Children (like, Yikes). This evolves into b.1.1) where Thanos wins or b.1.2.) where the 1 in 14 million happens again and Loki also lives, because Hulk like Puny God and wants to redeem him. And to further these shenanigans let’s make b.1.2.1) where Loki long ago learned healing magic from his Mom, who Loves Him tm and manages to keep Tony alive, injured, but alive. Happy endings for all!

I mean, Endgame gives us ALL THE POSSIBILITIES. Endless timelines, endless headcanons, endless fic.

Once again, and louder for the ones in the back, THANK YOU TO ALL THE ACTORS, FILM CREW, SUPPORTERS, DIRECTORS, SCRIPT-WRITES, CATERERS AND EVERYONE ELSE WHO MADE THIS JOURNEY WITH US!!!!

[oscar-isaacs-number-one-bitch]

“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” Movie Review

When Sony decided to allow Marvel Studios to put Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, many were relieved, citing Sony’s missteps with their previous two Amazing Spider-Man live-action outings as sufficient evidence that Marvel Studios would better handle the character in their universe and that it was time for Sony to let go of the character. Sony would maintain creative control of the property, but they would no longer be able to make live-action Spider-Man films, at least not ones featuring that character (hence their Venom franchise, which is off to a surprisingly lucrative start). Without the most popular version of their largest tentpole franchise to bring in the big bucks, Sony would have to innovate with a fresh new idea if they hoped to keep it going.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, then, is Sony’s first ever feature-length animated film with the title character, only this time, there’s a slight twist to their usual formula: there are six of them. Yes, in this iteration, there are six Spider-people all running around New York City at once, trying to save the world. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? The film begins by giving us a glance into the life of Miles Morales, a scrappy Afro-Latino high school boy from the streets of Brooklyn who’s not super jazzed about going to a Charter school due to having won his spot in a lottery. When a radioactive spider from another dimension bites him during a little subway adventure with his Uncle Aaron, Miles gains the powers of Spider-Man, and following a tragic event involving an inter-dimensional portal built by Kingpin, five other Spider-beings show up in his universe, all seeking a way to get back home. With very little training from a roughed-up Peter Parker and a whole host of family issues to deal with, Miles must train to become a new Spider-Man, and send all these other Spider-people home before this universe is damaged forever (and that’s about as much as I can say without giving away spoilers).

I loved this movie, a lot. Of course, there’s always a market of people like me waiting for a new Spider-Man story (the original 2002 film is what got me into acting, after all), so I may be going into this with the tiniest bit of fanboy-ism running my energy levels, but as a film critic attempting to give as objective a review as possible to any material I happen to view, I still genuinely loved this movie. In fact, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that this is perhaps the third or even second best Spider-Man film ever made (theatrically), and that’s not hyperbole. As much as I enjoyed Homecoming, I think it’s a far stronger high school comedy than it is a Spider-Man movie, and to that film’s credit, it works well enough for what it had to accomplish in terms of the MCU’s full-length introduction to the character. Into the Spider-Verse, though, truly understands the fundamental staples of what makes the character compelling, those being guilt, consequences, and most importantly, differences.

Part of what works best about this film, which was written by Phil Lord and produced by himself and the other half of his creating team, Chris Miller, is that it doesn’t see the differences between the different Spider-beings as reasons why other kinds of people can’t occupy the costume or wear the mask. One of the most prominent lines in the entire movie is Miles telling the audience that anyone, no matter who you are, can wear the mask. And instead of having anything to prove anything, or thinking that it owes anyone an explanation as to why there’s a black Spider-Man this time, or a Spider-Woman, or an anime Spider-girl named Peni Parker, or even a literal Spider pig called Spider-Ham (voiced by my favorite stand-up comedian of all time), the script just assumes that this is normal because it should be. Anyone being able to wear the Spider-Man mask, not despite but because of their differences, is one of the film’s main themes, and the script takes pride in that rather than treating it like a chore to get over and done with (which a surprising amount of films do).

The film is also genuinely funny, with trademark Lord & Miller humor sprinkled in just the right amounts throughout the film’s runtime, the recaps of each Spider-person’s origin providing some of the most consistent and uproarious laughs of the bunch, particularly during the recap of Peter Parker’s backstory. Part of what makes the story in Into the Spider-Verse not just fun, but compelling as well, is that even within this humor, there are real life lessons being taught, sometimes ones that even adults need to learn from. And that’s what makes a great animated film great, when it can transcend that line between children and adults and have something everyone can learn from and take away from the experience of watching it. So many animated films this year have failed to send messages as compellingly as this one, and yet Into the Spider-Verse makes it look so effortless that one wonders why other films fail to do it so often (it’s because it’s not effortless; it’s genuinely hard to make a movie, but the people who worked on this really put in the effort and it shows).  

The voice talent work in this film is fantastic, from what I’ve already mentioned with Jake Johnson as Peter Parker and John Mulaney as Spider-Ham, to Shameik Moore as Miles Morales, to Hailee Steinfeld as Gwen Stacy (she’s having a great weekend for early screenings, huh?), to smaller parts like Brian Tyree Henry as Miles’ father and Mahershala Ali as his Uncle Aaron, and of course, the great Nicolas Cage as Spider-Noir. Each performance is full of heart and fun, and there are many moments where one feels that only that actor’s voice could deliver that line in that way, and it is perfect. Perhaps the only true flaw in the movie is Kingpin’s characterization (since he kind of acts like a cutout cartoon character still despite what they give him to work with, but then again it is animation), but that has more to do with the writing than the voice casting. Major kudos to the casting directors on this one.

And yet in all of this, I have yet to mention the animation, which is astounding. Each time an exaggerated sound effect or a narration happens in the film, a little comic book style text or text box appears on the screen to accompany it, and it feels genuinely conceivable that someone could have written this film as a comic book with every panel brought spectacularly to life. One would think the hybrid style of 3D modeling made to look like a come-to-life comic book panel should have been by now one of the most obvious techniques in animated history, but then again, we just got CG-Lego hybrids only 4 years ago and photoreal animation from Jungle Book only 2 years ago, so maybe there’s still more to be realized in this medium (I, for one, can’t wait to see if there is).  

I was looking forward to this movie from the moment I saw the first trailer drop, but what I didn’t expect was that I would genuinely love it this much; the more I reflect on it, the more I find right with it, and the less it’s very few flaws bother me at all. This is perhaps the greatest Spider-Man movie since Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, and by far the best animated film of this year – certainly the most unique in terms of animation style, story, humor, and charazterization. Lord & Miller are one of the world’s greatest creative forces in the cinematic landscape, and if there were any movie this year I actually wanted a sequel to, it’s this one (stay for both credits scenes; it’s 100% worth it).

I’m giving “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” a 9.1/10

[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2018, Part V

We’re finally here. Thank you for reading. Or at least scrolling around to the movies that you care about. GREAT MOVIES

12. Minding the Gap (Bing Liu)- In part because it's produced by Steve James, Minding the Gap's easy short-hand is "Hoop Dreams for skateboarding." Because most of the film's pleasures come from following the subjects over the course of five or six years, that makes sense. What differs is that director Bing Liu is so young, which makes this a promising film if a less definitive one than James's feature debut. It’s trying to do so much, but it never feels calculated or constructed as it expands. Boldly, Liu seems to suggest that people don't really change that much, that what drives them or gnaws at them just manifests itself in different ways. The cycle of abuse ends up being a common element for the three skaters, and, as Liu admits on camera, domestic violence is the reason he made the film. (The treatment of it is raw, a blunt object when a more delicate instrument might work better.) He got the hard part right though: delicately getting us to care about people who sometimes don't care about themselves. 11. A Quiet Place (John Kransinski)- Strong early Shyamalan vibes from this lean chiller. Krasinski's directing debut, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, didn't do much for me, and I skipped his obligatory man-comes-back-to-hometown-because-his-mom's-dying follow-up. But the filmmaking really impressed me here just by understanding how to set the table of this kind of movie. A close-up on an important nail sticking out of a floorboard here, an effortless explanation of a rule there. The hang-up for a film this high-concept is that you get distracted by all of the unanswered questions. (How did he get a printer quiet enough to print out all of those radio call signals?) But this world is fleshed out enough, especially an eerie dinner sequence, to bypass that kind of stuff for me. More than anything, there's a sort of elasticity of shot selection that serves the suspense. A tender early scene in which the central couple is dancing while wearing headphones goes on for maybe twice as long as one might expect. So later, the cross-cuts and smash-cuts have even more weight because the camera was allowed to linger earlier. Here's maybe the biggest reason for the movie's success: The characters are all slightly smarter than the audience, whereas the temptation might have been to go the other way with it. 10. Black Panther (Ryan Coogler)- I don't know if I can add anything to the discourse on this meditative yet ambitious film. I do think one early scene points at what makes it special for the genre. When T'Challa is first named king, he has to be drained of the Black Panther powers to fight anyone who wishes to challenge the throne. A member of an outsider tribe challenges him and nearly beats him. It shows a) the world-building of this noble, fair culture, b) the existence of this fully developed clan that will be important later, c) just how human T'Challa is if his reign can come so perilously close to ending just as it has begun. Every scene like that has a logical purpose. Of course, once Killmonger, the best, most realistically motivated Marvel villain of all time, gets introduced, we return to that method of challenging the throne, and writers Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole aren't afraid to let the worst possible thing happen to T'Challa. What occurred forty-five minutes earlier makes this fight seem like a fait accompli. And it's in this sort of narrative detail that the film is able to work up to its thematic purpose. The first half is about, to quote T'Chaka, whether a good man can be a good king. But the second half is about the responsibility of goodness. Show me where Iron Man bit off that much. 9. Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski)- Although it takes place mostly in one location during one day, Support the Girls has a bigger world going on in its margins. We hear it on radios, or we see it in the people taking a pitstop in Double Whammies while they're on their way somewhere better. But the force that's really encroaching on the characters' insulated environment is Mancave, the national chain that threatens to put them out of business. "They have commercials and everything," one character complains, and we get snatches of those commercials that were presumably directed by Andrew Bujalski himself. It's ten seconds of content maybe, shot in a bigger, broader style than the modest approach of the rest of the film. But the key to understanding how far Bujalski has come is realizing that he is no longer making fun of the people in the commercial, even if they're jacked bros screaming for a boxing match. That portrayal is amplified, sure, but Bujalski is mature enough now to not ridicule those people. It's okay that they're just not the people he's interested in. He's supernaturally empathetic toward the rogue's gallery of people he is interested in, who spin the ordinary challenges of the working class into something extraordinary. The sunniest member of the team is played by Haley Lu Richardson, who deserves special recognition as the indefatigable Maci. I can't think of parts that are much different from her roles in this, Columbus, and Split, to the extent that people probably don't realize they're played by the same woman, but she rules in every single one. The sky is the limit for her. When a workplace is described as "a family," it's usually just a way for the boss to take advantage of workers when the "family" designation does nothing to help them: "I know I shouldn't ask you to work off the clock, but can you help me out as a FAMILY MEMBER?" Occasionally though, it does feel like a family when people work closely to one another for hours on end and depend upon one another for real life needs. This movie is about what happens when a work family is both control and support.

8. Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)- The trailer for Children of Men advertises itself as "from the director of The Prisoner of Azkaban and Y Tu Mama Tambien," and I remember an audience giggling at that strange CV. For one thing, at the time people didn't understand yet why someone would brag about contributing to a Harry Potter movie. But to pair that children's picture with either a Spanish title they hadn't heard of or a movie that they knew was sexually explicit? Who was this guy? Roma is who he is. I like some of his other films more--I would argue that his approach hurts the performances here--but it seems impossible for him to make anything this personal again. The baldly emotional highs that it reaches come not only from the direct simplicity of the story but also from the sophisticated perspective with which it's being downloaded directly from Cuaron's memory. (It's also, accidentally or purposefully, quite a political film at this moment in time. It insists, sometimes in the dialect of Mixtec, that these people around us silently washing dishes or picking up dog poo are, in fact, part of our family.) There's a moment when one brother throws something at another's head, barely missing, and they both stop in their tracks with fear about how tragically things could have ended up. My dad experienced a similar moment in his childhood, and he would tell the same story about Uncle Steve throwing a shoe at him any time we passed the wooden door with a dent in it at my grandma's house. What a tiny moment to live on for decades, in tangible and intangible ways. Cuaron claims that all of these moments shape us, and taking us to the moon was only a warm-up for resurrecting them for us. 7. Happy As Lazzaro (Alice Rohrbacher)- Alice Rohrwacher won the screenplay award at Cannes, probably because her script for Happy As Lazzaro is fundamentally unpredictable. Games of checkers are unpredictable though. That word doesn't quite cover the way the viewer is forced to guess at something as elemental as "What year is this taking place?" And none of the twists and turns of the storytelling--I refuse to spoil--would gel if Rohrwacher as a director wasn't teaching you how to watch the film the whole time with a rich, warm, light touch. Considering the purity of this vision as a fable, buoyed by realistic labor concerns on the other hand, it's a pity that people are calling Birdbox "crazy" when something like this is just a few clicks down on that service. 6. The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos)- When assessing The Favourite, the easy temptation is to say that because it isn't stuffy, because of its scabrous wit or its intimate filming techniques, that it "isn't your mother's chamber drama." It is invigorating, but in a lot of ways, the film isn't saying anything that the average Masterpiece Theater production doesn't. Instead it takes cultural touchstones about the emptiness of power and distorts them, much like the fish-eye lenses that Yorgos Lanthimos favors to photograph the palace. It says an easy thing in a hard way, with conviction to burn. Lanthimos seems freed by not having to write the screenplay, and every decision of his is rooted in making things more narrow. The barrel distortion of the fish-eye seems apt for this idea, but so do the secret passageways that Queen Anne gets wheeled through to avoid the lower rungs of the estate. Of course there's no outside world to intrude upon her majesty. But there's even an inner world to the inner world. (It's impossible to watch Olivia Colman's gonzo depiction of Anne's incurious indolence and not think of Trump.) I'm convinced that Emma Stone can do anything, and the final shot, an all-timer, only validates that suspicion. 5. Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (Gus Van Sant)- You have to check out every Gus Van Sant movie, even after a few missteps, because you never know: He might take the emotional climax that you didn't even know you wanted and score it to inter-diegetic "Still Rock 'N Roll to Me," thus grounding real poignance with even realer goofiness.I'll admit that the bar is low, but this is probably the most authentic, least treacly movie ever made about addiction recovery. Van Sant, who wrote, directed, and edited, tells the story with patient command. We take Joaquin Phoenix for granted at this point, but everybody on the poster is exceptional. And Udo Kier gets to say, "Pop, pop. It's always about penises." INSTANT CLASSICS

4. A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper)- In one scene Cooper's Jackson Maine wears a black leather jacket under a brown leather vest, and the movie itself risks that kind of hat-on-a-hat silliness and redundancy. But instead it comes off as the best kind of big swing, a comforting and warm serving of Old Hollywood. Cooper's camera knows how to embrace silence and let the leads play off each other to craft raw, touching performances. Sometimes the close-ups are so intense and focused that, when he cuts back to a master, it's disorienting to be reminded that there are other people in that space, in the world at all.The movie's deficiencies come from "Wait, how much time has passed?" moments in the writing, problems that I always have had with Eric Roth projects. But it's easy to get swept up in a movie of moments that believes so much in itself.

3. Mission: Impossible- Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie)- The pattern of Mission: Impossible- Fallout is: infodump that explains the stakes and the strategy of what we're about to see, followed by an action sequence that is somehow even more thrilling than the one that came before it. Imagine a really interesting day of grade school classes, in which you learned, like, multiplication, followed by recess every other period. As for T.C., what more could you possibly want out of a human being?

2. Wildlife (Paul Dano)- When Jerry, Jake Gyllenhaal's groundskeeper of pathetic pride, figures out that his boss is about to fire him in front of his son, he smiles and, through clenched teeth, asks if this talk can happen tomorrow. Part of him actually believes that postponing the meeting will help; maybe the boss's temper will cool overnight. But this is a man who is bound by the same desperate spirit as his wife Jeanette, who muses, "Tomorrow something will happen that will make us feel different." When people are living day-to-day, clinging to their dignity--he refers to himself as a "small person" at one point--tomorrow really does offer a regenerative power. Those characters are the same-pole magnets that inform this coming-of-age tale, and the subtext of the film is "Can you believe Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal have a fourteen-year-old son?" It works for the 1960 setting because these are people who defined themselves before they knew who they were, and they'll now do anything to re-define themselves as brave/sexy/valuable. But it works for the actors too. Gyllenhaal in particular is tender and heartbreaking in a true supporting role, allowing himself to look his age, framing himself with the dad akimbo arms. But Mulligan's fake confidence is great too, especially in a scene in which she nearly begs her husband to let her work. Something tells me that I should credit a director for coaxing two career best performances from two great actors. Some people just have it, and Paul Dano does.

1. First Reformed (Paul Schrader)- In 1998 I dragged my father to see Paul Schrader's Affliction, a movie that was kind of about my father's father. When the end credits rolled on that bleak, wrenching film, my dad turned to me and said, "I feel like I have to take a shower." We walked around a nearby hotel and talked for an hour, not that he was able to articulate why he was so shaken. We discussed the difference between entertainment and art and what makes a piece of either successful. Even though he hated the experience, he couldn't deny that it was an experience. He kept on saying, "That's not why I go to the movies." And no matter what I, fifteen at the time, told him, he couldn't understand that's exactly why I go to the movies. First Reformed had the same mesmerizing effect as the best of Schrader's work: When I exited the building, I stumbled into the sunlight because I had been trapped in someone else's mind for almost two hours.

Part of that effect comes from the narrative device of Reverend Toller's journal, which plants us in his headspace from the beginning. Part of it comes from the intimate scale of the film, which features only a handful of locations. But if what I'm explaining seems small, then I'm doing a bad job. The canvas expands. Schrader insists that our care for the environment is our most immediate responsibility; this film historian has no problem with planting the film at 2017 in dialogue. And that emphasis is matched only by his disdain for how big business encroaches on personal aspects of our lives. There's even a scene that tries to account for a recent rise in extremism among young people. As if to prove that he isn't being pedantic, he has one character communicate one of those ideas, letting you assume that role is his mouthpiece, then he has another character reply with something just as convincing. First Reformed weaves in those elements, but it's ultimately a character piece that humanizes the type of person we think we know but for which we have no frame of reference. In Ethan Hawke's piercing performance, we see a Reform minister who punishes himself actively and passively for what he thinks are sins. He uses faith as an armor and as an excuse, being so of the mind and--as another character puts it--"in the garden" that he denies himself medical care. No matter what anyone else tells him, he is convinced of one of the tenets that Schrader could never shake from his Calvinist upbringing: There's nothing you can do to save yourself.

[xtruss]

Fascist Hindus’ Randia

Why India’s Muslims Are in Grave Danger

In a Q&A with FP's Ravi Agrawal, Ashutosh Varshney said he believes last week’s riots in Delhi bear some of the hallmarks of an organized pogrom.

An expert on communal riots says the country may well be witnessing the start of a larger pogrom.

By Ravi Agrawal | March 02, 2020 | Foreign Policy

Security personnel patrol a street following sectarian riots over India's new citizenship law in New Delhi, India, on Feb. 28, 2020.

India has been jolted by the deadliest communal violence in New Delhi in decades. The fighting began on Sunday, Feb. 23—just before U.S. President Donald Trump arrived in the country for meetings with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi—and quickly escalated into mass riots, with Hindu mobs targeting Muslim homes in the city’s northeast. At least 45 people were killed—mostly Muslims.

Ashutosh Varshney, a Brown University professor and author of the prize-winning Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India, believes last week’s riots in Delhi bear some of the hallmarks of an organized pogrom. India has been there before: In 2002, in Gujarat, when Modi was the state’s chief minister, more than 1,000 people were killed in religious riots. Most were Muslims. While Modi was later cleared of wrongdoing by the country’s judiciary, critics say that he could have done much more to prevent the attacks. And in 1984, again in Delhi, an estimated 3,000 Sikhs were targeted and killed after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. In both cases, experts say, riots could not have been conducted without some complicity on the part of the police.

Varshney believes last week’s deadly clashes could be repeated in other parts of the country—and that Muslims are particularly vulnerable. Here is a transcript of Foreign Policy’s interview with Varshney, lightly edited for clarity.

Ravi Agrawal: There’s been a bit of debate about whether the violence in Delhi last week should be defined as a riot or as something more serious—a pogrom. Can you explain the difference?

Ashutosh Varshney: Pogroms are a special class of riots when it’s no longer simply a clash between two mobs or groups. Instead, the police are siding with one group either by looking away or by abetting and sometimes even directly participating in the violence. The key difference between riots and pogroms lies in the behavior of the state—through its police. The term was born in tsarist Russia when pogroms were launched against Jews.

RA: Given what we know now, how would you classify the violence in Delhi?

AV: On the first day and night—Sunday, Feb. 23—we saw two mobs going at each other. There were deaths on both sides. But on the second and third day, the partisanship of the police became clear. A mosque, a Muslim shrine, and Muslim homes and shops were attacked. The police did not respond to calls for help. Logs suggest a high volume of those calls came from predominantly Muslim parts of northeast Delhi. But the police failed to show up. Hindu mobs then attacked with abandon.

The second part is more direct participation. There are videos, in particular one which shows young Muslim men being hit by a Hindu mob. And the cops are asking the fallen and beaten Muslim men to sing the national anthem—as they’re being hit. That is quite egregious.

But the more significant evidence thus far is of the police simply looking away and not responding to Muslim pleas for help as homes, places of worship, and commercial enterprises were attacked with impunity.

RA: The fact that all of this happened in New Delhi, the capital city of India, is significant.

AV: Delhi has a unique structure for police operations. In every other part of India, the police report to the state government, and not to the central government, because law and order is defined as a state subject by India’s constitution. But Delhi’s police reports to the central government, not to the state government—technically, Delhi is not a full-fledged state. The fact that the central government is led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would therefore make Modi’s government responsible for law and order in Delhi. And the minister of home affairs, Amit Shah, would be the final authority to which Delhi’s police force would report. So the responsibility for the failure to maintain law and order also lies at his door.

RA: Some of the perpetrators of the attacks were heard shouting “Jai Shri Ram,” or “Victory to Lord Ram.” Can you explain the significance of that chant?

AV: “Jai Shri Ram,” theologically speaking, is a celebration of Lord Ram, the Hindu deity known for compassion and considered to be the embodiment of the highest morality and ethics. But in recent Hindu nationalist ideological campaigns, Jai Shri Ram has been weaponized to express muscularity, masculinity, and coercion—as opposed to kindness and compassion. So, the meaning of Jai Shri Ram has been transformed into a battle cry for the establishment of a Hindu nationalist polity, presided over by a Hindu nationalist state.

RA: Given that you describe last week’s events in Delhi as bearing the hallmarks of the beginning of a pogrom, how severe is the danger of other, similar outbreaks of violence across the country?

AV: The most vulnerable Muslim populations are in BJP-ruled states, because the role of the police is critical—and the police comes under the state government. If BJP governments in various states of India push the police against the Muslims, then only the bravest police officers would resist, because the authority structure is very clear. The danger to Muslim minorities in BJP-ruled states is grave. Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state with a population of 200 million, seems particularly vulnerable. Muslims comprise about 18 percent of the population there, and they are spread out all over the state. There was a big riot in Muzaffarnagar in 2013, for example, and the police were nowhere to be seen. UP is also ruled by a politician, Yogi Adityanath, whose anti-Muslim prejudice and fervor is well-known and has been openly displayed.

RA: What can civil society and the media do to prevent outbreaks of violence?

AV: Civil society can be quite important in creating bulwarks of resistance and peace, but that is not something it can do instantly. The creation of inter-religious networks between Hindus and Muslims takes a few years, if not more. The probability of integrated communities coming apart is much lower than the probability of segregated communities coming apart.

A more immediate issue always is how to minimize the extent or the intensity of violence. And that’s where the media plays a key role. By reporting courageously; by condemning what it finds unacceptable and sees as clear violations of norms, rules, and laws; and by creating a narrative of critique, the media can slow down or reduce the intensity of violence.

Sometimes the police intervene, too—even without political approval. Legally and constitutionally, the police can step in during moments of crisis. However, those police officers, administrators, and bureaucrats seem fewer in number today than was the case earlier. They are not entirely absent: I repeatedly came across in my research examples of police officers and administrators who would simply apply the law and not follow a political script. But a large number of police officers and bureaucrats do not have the courage to stand up to political authorities.

RA: Journalists in India are under threat, meanwhile. One photographer told the Washington Post a mob threatened to remove his pants to check whether he was circumcised—essentially to determine if he was Muslim. How much of this has to do with messaging from the government?

AV: The ideology of the government has created a ground-level situation where instructions do not have to come from the top. So-called agents devise their own strategies and think that by acting in a bigoted manner, by attacking Muslims, they could rise in the political hierarchy. So the incentive structure that gets created from the top begins to acquire a logic of its own and activates storm troopers and lower-level functionaries on the ground who try to interpret what the party bosses might appreciate or be pleased by.

RA: Prime Minister Modi’s second term began last May, after he won a landslide national election. While signs of the current muscular, chauvinistic brand of Hinduism were there in his first term as well—as we saw in several incidents of lynchings of Muslims, for example—there’s been a marked acceleration in the ruling BJP’s push for its social agenda. Why is that the case?

AV: Ahead of Modi’s first term in 2014, the political campaign had very few Hindu nationalist themes. I couldn’t count more than two speeches. You can say there were dog whistles and some displays of bigotry in the functioning of the midlevel politicians, but it wasn’t a dominant narrative.

In the campaign ahead of Modi’s second term, in 2019, the platform was more directly about the Hindu nationalist reconstruction of India. It can be claimed that given that the BJP’s vote share increased by 7 percentage points, India’s elections have authorized a more ideological and cultural push of the Hindu nationalist variety. But it’s also clear from the election data that the mandate was a complicated one. The vote in favor of Modi was not necessarily one of simply pushing a social and cultural agenda. National security was also an issue. Welfare programs had gained popularity: The BJP’s programs for sanitation and cooking gas were popular. To see the May 2019 election as a vote for an ideological restructuring of India would be to place an excessive interpretation on the wishes of the electorate. But that’s what happens in politics. The BJP seems sufficiently emboldened to use the legislative route to start restructuring the polity. And the Citizenship Amendment Act that passed on Dec. 11—leading to the current spate of protests—was the culmination of that.

— Ravi Agrawal is the managing editor of Foreign Policy. Twitter: @RaviReports

[insideanairport]

SUVA - His artistic works & the notion of “Public Anatomy”

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I sat down with Suva in his kitchen at his Hakaniemi apartment and conducted this interview with him over breakfast. Suva is a well-known visual artist, musician, and performance artist who lived in Tampere, at present residing in Helsinki. He is represented by (and also part of) the gallery Myymälä2, I have also collaborated with him on a few projects which have motivated me to interview him as a teacher. The most recent project that we have done together was a group performance in Vaasa organized by Filmverkstaden.

Suva approaches subjectivity, identity, and movement in a very unique way. His method is stimulated by improvisation, intuition, and senses. He is active on the local scene as an artist and musician, his social-media and blog contain his personal and participatory/public works. During my research, I have learned that all the journalists who have been interviewing him in Finland, had their stories centered around his immigrant status, which takes the focus away from his amazing art and the philosophy behind it.

After finishing the breakfast and coffee, we went to his amazing balcony to have a glimpse of the Helsinki’s cityscape view. In his studio, I saw the enormous archive of his work, I was telling myself that without any doubt, any contemporary art museum can have a retrospect of Suva’s art. He has works going back to the ’90s from multiple cities and art-scenes.

By Hami Bahadori 23.04.2019

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Performance “The Other is not the One” – Image credit - Julius Töyrylä.

Hami: Let’s start with the term “public anatomy”.

Suva: It is a term that functions as a laboratory to explore the notion of “other” and “otherness” in the space of “an-other”. And also, the concept which I call; “the Other is not the One”. You can’t use the other as a “scapegoat”, “black-sheep” or a token for diversification. The term became a tool for my search and my working process.

Hami: I can think about differences in privilege, can you explain a bit more what does it mean “the Other is not the One”?  

Suva: My recent performance was about this topic. There is the element of language. For example, in one of my previous workshops in Hirvitalo (Tampere), I invited people to discover a language of their own, a language that is not coming from themselves. It can be illustration, symbols or other things. The adults generally came up with symbols. The kids are more inventive than adults because they are free from the norm and convincing theories. As an adult, you tend to deal with a situation which you are convinced about. You are used to a certain kind of representation. The kids; they are still into the being-ness, but the adults when they deal with this particular form; they are more stuck into “belonging” and “becoming”.

Hami: I agree. I feel the same. People are stuck in preexisting solid categories. How do you see kids different in this sense?

Suva: Kids are free. They are free to express. If I give an instruction to an adult, they just follow a pattern and carry on. Kids have the ability to come out of that pattern. They are free enough to keep their own perception –however abstract that can be. And that’s how the formula of the language, which is very static in the daily life of adults, operates and in later phase indoctrinates the kids.

Hami: The way people see beauty and the way they experience language varies based on many factors such as culture and geography. It’s unfortunate that when hearing the word culture, some people, think about “national-culture” and the nation as a manifestation of culture. What aspect of this workshop was most intriguing to you?

Suva: That was a workshop based on my artistic work of my MA, LAPS degree, where I explored the pictorial context. In the workshop, the assembled people encountered each other and communicated by writing in an inventive script. Not forming any particular language but simply trying to understand each other by scribbling. There was another part where people had to tell a story in their own language, and other people have to write down what they heard and understood.

Hami: Okayyyy, so it’s the translation process.

Suva: Yes, they were trying to understand not based on words, but based on the sounds of words. I was trying to show the importance of the sound, and how it connected to language. And during this process, I was acting as the “customs officer” and checking on participants to see how they are doing.

Hami: Let’s go back a bit, I am curious what you think about the art scene in Helsinki and society as a whole?

Suva: After I moved here, I was introduced to Hirvitalo. And thanks to Erkki Pirtola who was an eminent figure in the Finnish art scene, for his huge archive of outsider art and artists. He was the one who actually introduced me to the artist community of Hirvitalo Center of contemporary arts, Pispala, Tampere.

Hami: What do you mean outsider-artists?

Suva: Anyone who is working outside of the mainstream academic environment. I have the term: “intertextual” that I am using quite often in my work. The academic atmosphere is infected with this frame of art mafia-ism. Going back to the story. When I arrived in Hirvitalo, (here am not talking about the present day- Hirvitalo which is rather different) I saw how the artists there dealing with the situation, I was very amazed. They had the guts to bring up a lot of deep topics. Of course, we know a lot of conventional problems with Finnish society, depression, and alcoholism, but aside from that, when they wanted to deal with other issues, they actually went for it and expressed with boldness. And I have been part of the same scene. The respect they showed to me was immense!

Since I have moved to Helsinki, I can see that Hirvitalo has become a bit Finnish-centric. It’s not a problem for me, but as an immigrant of color, I need to get some foothold to present my experiences. That’s one of the reasons why I chose to shift here. Language is important, but at the same time, I found it as a kind of hindrance. All the time, I have been in search of different ways of communication against wordification. Although I don’t like to use text in my work, often I use these terms. There are other types of communication, such as sharing food, playing music together, using gestures to communicate, (gestures are almost half of the language), and performances. All these years of my stay in Finland, I managed to make friends with Finnish artists through other means of communication. All these happened, not because of the acknowledgment of how language is important, but through other forms of communication.

After living in Tampere, I moved to Helsinki, and I heard the “migrant-artists” are working in an international scene to uplift each other. Yet, with this lobbyism of mostly “academic-coated immigrants”, there is no room for those immigrants who are working outside of the academic system.

Hami: This is very interesting to me; can you explain a bit what you mean by “academic-coated immigrants”? Is it simply those who have graduated from an academy?

Suva: Okay, maybe I have an academic tag since I graduated with a Masters degree in Live Arts and Performance Studies. Still, I never associate or relate myself with the academy, or “academic-immigrants”. What I have found out with the academic way of approach, is that they are too uptight with their intertextual bubble. Everything has to be based on some philosopher or reference. All the time, its blah blah blah.

Hami: …and no action?

Suva: No action, and when it comes to doing something DIY –which I really admire as an alternative approach in spite of the ongoing academic scene, the inter-textuals fight shy of such ways and approach. Also, I had been in that phase of art when this technological fever was not present –I am talking about the ’90s in India– we didn’t have the same technology, computer design, and modeling. In those days, Art was done with an organic approach, more based on manual work. I don’t necessarily want to have a conflict on that subject, of course, the world has changed, and certain things are necessary. Here things are different, and more pixel-oriented or robotic.

Hami: What do you think about the word “immigrant” and the way it’s used often? Do you think it’s needed, or do you think it’s possible to pretend that everybody is equal to the system, and migrants have equal representation?  

Suva: You can’t be pretentious. Why? because we have a color. First, you have the “EU immigrants” and then other immigrants.  Even here a hierarchical game is on the score. Who has the upper hand, who has stayed more? The connotation of “let’s help the newcomers” doesn’t work, because most of these people: the peer group of immigrants or the so-called “white immigrants”, they are dealing with the lobby system of their own. When you want to seek help, they tell you: you have to work on it yourself. In some public events dealing with these issues, there are a number of divas, that are regularly being portrayed on behalf of their own lobby system.

Hami: …Because they accede to the system. Who is “they”? When you say they have regular events? politics in Finland is colorblind. Do you think that’s a problem?

Suva: In this situation, even if there is an “us”, within this fold of “us”, there is an ‘us’ and ‘them’. The system is not the only problem, the problem is also part of people’s psyche. There are “academic influences”, “status”, and of course “money”. Money is an important element here. When a bunch of them devoid of their color come from higher economic status, then the color becomes secondary here and so this monetary status becomes the main element. In the quest for money, the connotation of being colored doesn’t exist (and I don’t mean grant-money). It actually works in a reverse way. In the small circles of the migrant-artists, one can see that, sometimes money becomes the upper hand. In my case, I came to the scene with zero influence.

Hami: Do you think there needs to be more attention paid to the issues in the small community of minority artists? I don’t mean just materiality.  

Suva: Yes. Very few people in the art-academic circles know me, and I am not a fan of “let’s make India proud” (laughs). I don’t exist in this situation. I came here in search of this alternative thing. But at the same time, I am not looking to be famous. I have a language, I am here to be recognized, I have things to contribute and I do exist among you people.

Hami: Amazing Suva, thank you very much.

Suva: Thank you, I think you have enough materials for today. (laughs)

MITÄTÖN, 2018 | Galleria Lapinlahti, Helsinki

[rebelsofshield]

Panels Far, Far Away: Two Weeks in Star Wars Comics 4/10/19  & 4/17/19

I’m back from the Windy City and have only begun to start the acclimation to real life. Good thing I have two weeks’ worth of Star Wars comics to catch up on!

Star Wars Adventures #20 written by Cavan Scott and George Mann and art by Derek Charm and Valentina Pinto

With the mountain of Star Wars that has happened over the last two weeks, it can be easy to overlook a relatively unassuming and playful little comic like Star Wars Adventures. Telling two prequel based stories, Cavan Scott and George Mann continue IDW’s gleefully light hearted take on a universe that is too often dire and epic in scope.

Anytime Derek Charm is brought onto this title is sure to be a delight, and while his work here may not be as standout as on Destroyer Down or Tales from Vader’s Castle, the stylized pencils and creative layouts still remain. Charm is a gifted visual storyteller and his particular visual flair meshes well with Cavan Scott’s particularly goofy team-up between Anakin Skywalker and Yoda. The result is often times smile worthy and frequently charming (no pun intended), but it also doesn’t leave much of a lasting impression. It makes for a great and distracting read but will unlikely be a standout when the series is remembered.

George Mann’s secondary story following Barriss Offee’s padawan training proves less successful. While the general conceit of seeing Barriss attempt to navigate her way through an Indiana Jones style tomb to uncover an ancient text is fun enough, it struggles in its execution. It is often hard to track the action in Valentina Pinto’s art with certain set pieces being resolved seemingly off panel and Barriss often feeling like a static figure floating or sliding through a complex landscape. It’s an unfortunate setback given how strong Pinto’s art was on her Star Wars Resistance issues and it holds back what would have been a fun “Tale from Wild Space.” Score: B-

Star Wars Age of Rebellion -Special #1 written by Simon Spurrier, Marc Guggenheim and Jon Adams and art by Caspar Wijngaard, Andrea Broccardo, and Jon Adams

The benefit to these Age of… special one shots is that they allow Marvel’s team of talented writers and creators to spread their talent across a wide variety of characters and subject matters. Age of Rebellion offers three stories focusing on IG-88, Yoda, and fan favorite X-Wing pilots Biggs and Porkins. Unfortunately, the shotgun approach to storytelling also leads to a wide spread of success leading to comics that are: stellar, forgettable, and oddly confounding.

Of the three, Simon Spurrier and Caspar Wijngaard’s IG-88 centered tale is the standout. Wijngaard’s cartoony artstyle may seem like an odd choice for the story of a self-modifying murderbot, but he is also a gifted visual storyteller and combined with a stellar coloring job by Lee Loughridge, “The Long Game” is a visual treat. Simon Spurrier impressively shrinks the intricate plotting and payoff that he has trademarked over on Doctor Aphra to this smaller page length and in the process he shapes this iconic droid mercenary into an eerie, legendary force of death and destruction. This creative team has done wonders every time they find themselves together and one can only hope that they get the chance to flex their storytelling muscles on a much larger scale very soon.

Marc Guggenheim’s story of an in-exile Yoda proves to be largely forgettable. Whether it is the narration heavy script or the serviceable but comparatively less striking art of Andrea Broccardo, Yoda’s escape from a cave-in before meeting Luke just doesn’t leave much of a mark. The intent may have been to show Yoda’s survival through a period of extended despair in the middle of his long exile, but the shorter length of this project doesn’t allow for this to take full effect.

Finally, we have the truly bizarre Porkins and Biggs installment by Jon Adams. Attempting to describe this comic is a feat in and of itself and on a basic level it is hard not to admire what Adams appears to be doing here. Using two classically killed rebel pilots as its focal point, Adams tells a story of a man who is beginning to be worn down by the cyclical violence and loss of war and places him in a bizarre landscape that looks like it was ripped from a series of 70’s era fantasy cartoons. The feeling is not unlike reading a Kurt Vonnegut or Joseph Heller style post-WWII take on the absurdity of war and using a character that for 40 plus years has existed mostly as a fat-shaming joke as its emotional core is an inspired choice especially given the bleak ending that the comic ends on and the future we all know is coming for its central duo. It’s easily one of the most conceptually and thematically interesting Star Wars comics published in the Marvel era and can’t help but remind one of the myriad of bizarre stories told in Dark Horse’s similarly enigmatic Star Wars Tales series, but in the end its execution is often times too silly, crude, or just strange for it to be a full success. The result is thought provoking, but not always in the manner that Adams likely intended, but sometimes intent is enough, right?

Score: B

Star Wars Age of Rebellion- Princess Leia #1 written by Greg Pak and art by Chris Sprouse, Karl Story, Will Sliney, and Marc Deering

Marvel’s Age of… publishing initiative for 2019 has mostly aimed to tell one shot stories of iconic Star Wars heroes and villains at key moments in their lives. While writer Jody Houser often succeeded in providing revelatory peaks into the psychology of her leads, these one shots commonly struggled in finding interesting things for its characters to do. Two issues in, Greg Pak seems to have found a strong solution to this conundrum. Pak in both his so-far released Princess Leia and Grand Moff Tarkin centered comics continues Houser’s technique of interesting character study but also chooses to ground his narratives in key moments for both character and franchise.

“Princess Scoundrel” sees Leia shortly after last year’s Forces of Destiny short that saw her stealing the armor of Ubese bounty hunter, Boushh. When a distress call from Lando Calrissian sends her on a pit stop on her trip to rescue the still carbon frozen Han Solo, Leia must learn to tap into her inner scoundrel and also reconcile with a man who betrayed her and the man she loves.

Above all, “Princess Scoundrel” is just a fun read. Pak has a strong sense of Leia’s voice but also that of Lando and Chewbacca. Watching Leia get to play bounty hunter is incredibly satisfying and seeing how she gets to mess with a reconciliatory, but still smarmy Lando and a veteran bounty hunter like Bossk is a literal blast. It allows for a bit of a friendship to build between Leia and the former mayor of Cloud City and to also allow the reader to see just how Leia so easily slipped into the role of a mercenary that would be willing to pull a thermal detonator in on a Hutt in his own home.

Even the crowded art team manages to feel cohesive. It may be due to the solid and consistent color work by Tamra Bonvillain, but any switchovers between artist are hard to pinpoint, which is commendable given the number of hands in the pot.

The heroes of the Rebellion are off to a great start here and I’m very hopeful to see where Pak and this art team take us next.

Score: B+

Star Wars Age of Rebellion- Grand Moff Tarkin #1 written by Greg Pak and art by Marc Laming

Few characters have benefited from the new canon quite like Grand Moff Tarkin. Despite being a central villain to the original 1977 film, Peter Cushing’s imposing member of the Imperial military machine never made much of an impression in the old Expanded Universe/Legends continuity. Beginning with The Clone Wars and into James Luceno’s novels and even an uncanny digital resurrection in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Tarkin has become a key face of evil in the era of the Empire. Greg Pak and Marc Laming luckily live up to this continued exploration, building on what has come before to create a haunting peak into the workings of a violent and dangerous man.

Taking place before, during, and after the destruction of Alderaan, “Tooth and Claw” is an effectively unnerving character study of both the title character and what are essentially the triggermen for planetary genocide. Tarkin tries his best to crack down on what he sees as emotional hesitancy or weaknesses in the weapons technicians aboard the Death Star and in the process, the scars of his own emotional upbringing boil just beneath the surface. We see violent glimpses into Tarkin’s past and fantasies in ways that help us understand this man, but far from humanize him and the depths of his villainy reach new lows here just before he meets his fiery demise.

Marc Laming’s detailed pencils prove to be an excellent choice as he is able to capture both the emotional nuance of Tarkin’s facial expressions but also the bloody, brutality of the action present. Laming even manages to make a shirtless Grand Moff something to fear.

Score: B+

Star Wars TIE Fighter #1 written by Jody Houser and art by Roge Antonio and Michael Dowling

As part of an ambitious tie-in (again no pun intended) to Del Rey’s upcoming military procedural Alphabet Squadron, Marvel has Jody Houser and artists Roge Antonio and Michael Dowling shepherding the stories of the novel’s antagonists, the infamous Shadow Wing. Functioning as a mix of origin story, dogfighting action, and military drama, Houser has crafted an Imperial war story that looks to be a standout.

On a surface level, TIE Fighter bares more than a passing resemblance to this year’s Han Solo: Imperial Cadet. Not only do characters like Lyttan Dree carry over between series, but we are treated to a Top Gun style drama of aerial (spacial?) derring-do and inter-pilot relationships. However, while Imperial Cadet struggled in both artistic execution and in the creation of its larger ensemble, TIE Fighter rockets to life fully formed.

It is impressive how quickly the ensemble of Shadow Wing coalesces into cohesive characters. After an opening set piece, Houser takes the time to walk us through each member of this team and how they relate to one another. While Houser makes the smart move to establish each with clearly defined personality traits, the script already begins to hint at personality conflicts at play and even deeper discussions of loyalty to the Empire or the Republic that came before. It may be an issue of mostly ground work, but its done so in a way that is fun to read and promises payoff down the road in a manner that many recent comics have struggled.

Roge Antonio and Michael Dowling excel both in the cockpit and in the mess hall. The team create detailed recreations of fighter and capitol ships without sacrificing the blocking and energy so essential to Star Wars style space battles. However, they prove just as talented as bringing these pilots to life after they remove their helmets with clear and personality filled designs that help to bring to life the detailed characters that Houser has crafted.

There are rough patches though. An end of issue cliffhanger is confusingly staged and an epilogue that directly ties into Alexander Freed’s upcoming novel is momentum breaking and a bit hard to make sense of in how it connects chronologically to our main story.

Regardless, this is a great start and one that hints to an exciting story (hopefully stories!) to come.

Score: B+

[meetingofstars]

Translation for the cross-talk between Masuda Toshiki and Takahashi Naozumi for the upcoming MARGINAL#4 anime, MARGINAL#4 KISSから創造(つく)るBig Bang in Otomedia, 2017 February issue.

Q: When the anime adaptation for MARGINAL#4 was announced, what were your feelings on it?

Masuda Toshiki: I was very happy about it! Takahashi Naozumi: Same here! Masuda: Besides that, there were also other feelings like “finally” and “that’s really something” 50-50 within me.

Q: Does “finally” mean that you’ve been anticipating for an anime adaptation for a while now?

Masuda: MARGINAL#4 was originally formed in 2013 for Rejet Fes as an event-only unit. That in itself was something to be happy about, but we were invited back to Rejet Fes every year even after that. Also, this project being a part of Rejet’s (regular) lineup and having it grow so much over the years was something to be happy about. Many of Rejet’s works have gotten anime adaptations which was why I was wondering “Will (the MG4 anime) be soon? Will it be soon?” Takahashi: Really? (laughs) Masuda: Yes. But an anime adaptation is a huge deal so there was also the wonder of whether or not we would get one, which was why the feeling was a little half-hearted. Takahashi: That’s true. As for me, my reaction was largely directed to “Uwa! That’s great!” (when the announcement came out). I mean, up till now, we have already released so many things like 3 best albums, drama CDs and, a (PSV) game. I somewhat was hoping for the progression to something like an anime adaptation, or a huge live concert with everyone where I personally experience the feelings that comes with it. Which is why when I heard the news of the anime adaptation being confirmed, I felt like this was an opportunity to get hyped up!

Q: This time, other than seeing MARGINAL#4 as idols, we also get to see them in their daily school lives right?

Masuda: Actually, in the drama CD* there was a scene where the boys went on a school field trip so I thought there wouldn’t be much of a difference while recording for the anime, but during the recordings I definitely felt it. Takahashi: It definitely felt different during the recordings. Masuda: This time we were working with the anime staff for the dubbings so instructions given were different (from when we were recording with Rejet) such as certain expressions that we had to show, etc. But that doesn’t mean destroying the previous MARGINAL#4 image that was built, it just felt like we were showing another side to them instead.  

Q: After going through the script, what were your thoughts on the characters?

Masuda: Ah! I felt like Atom might be calmer in the anime! Takahashi: That may be true! The Atom up till now is more... Masuda: He’s more stupid. Takahashi: The way you said it (laughs). But it feels like he’s pushing on very straightforwardly that you really need to stop him sometimes. Masuda:  For example, 90% used to be him howling all the time and 10% would be him being in a “ahh I see” kind of contentment. But in the anime, about 30-40% of the time he’s just sulking like “seriously…” (laughs). Takahashi: Atom like that is cute too!

Q: What about Rui?

Takahashi: Initally I was wondering, “had Rui always been so cold!?” When we were recording, the director in-charge told me to hold back and be patient in getting chummy with the other characters for now (laughs). The story starts from their debut, so naturally there would be a reset to all the character relationships that have been built in previously released works. But this really shows how much time we had given into this project and how us, the cast’s relationship had grown and how it had reflected in the characters too. Which was why in recordings I wasn’t doing it like how it was in the very beginning where Rui was colder. Masuda: The impression I got from Rui in the anime was kinder though. Takahashi: Oh, really? Masuda: Initially, it was like “you are you, and I am me”. And in the anime, Rui at least listens to Atom. Takahashi: You’re right. Initially in the drama CD, there were a lot of times where Rui got really angry (laughs). When Rui used to be unforgiving, I felt like I had to do something, and I really fell in love with this and having a chance to reenact it again made me really happy. Masuda: Also, the Nomura twins are really close huh! Takahashi: Very close! I felt like it was a really good thing that the brothers are on such good terms with each other. Masuda: In the recent CD releases, we were all separated but in the anime you can really feel that the twins truly come in a set.

Q: The first episode of the anime will air soon. Are there any points to look out for during the broadcast?

Masuda: The first episode isn’t a prologue, but more of an introduction showing you how MARGINAL#4 will proceed from now on. It should be easy on the eyes in the beginning. Takahashi: In the first episode, it reminds me of the scenery at Rejet Fes and I couldn't stop the goosebumps. I vividly remembered being on stage with all of them at that time and it was a really happy moment seeing it again. Masuda: You’re right!! Other than the stage, there are also scenes like backstage and in the dressing room. Also the happenings on backstage, you’ll never know who’d appear… Those who know of Pythagoras Productions’ members would definitely be in for a treat! Takahashi: Ever since that one day at the event, the four of us had been together up until now. I hope that our passion for this can be conveyed to the Star Cluster through the anime as well. 

Q: With those feelings in your hearts, dubbing sure sounded enjoyable.

Masuda: I was… Bullied… (coughs)

Q: Eh!?

Takahashi: Ahaha! That happened in between recordings right? (laughs) When we were sitting down, we were even in the same order as MARGINAL#4! Atom (Masuda Toshiki) and Rui (Takahashi Naozumi) were in the centre, with Aru (Suzuki Yuuto) on the right and Eru (KENN) on the left! Masuda: That’s why I was surrounded by KENN-san and Naozumi-san and got bullied! Naozumi-san just kept staring at me thought (laughs). Takahashi: (He) picks up on everything and his reactions were really funny so I kind of just wanted to mess with him a little (laughs). Masuda: I felt like it was how I’m always the one that gets bullied during dubbings. 

Q: Let’s move on to the songs. With the ending song changing every week, Atom and Rui has a duet together right?

Masuda: With the songs that have been released up till now, I’m sure everyone has been enjoying themselves with it. But with the anime, the songs are more inter-linked with the story, so it feels like you’re enjoying a full song of 30 minutes as well. Takahashi: Our seniors and juniors in Pythagoras Productions also have had released songs but lately, MARGINAL#4’s songs are more towards pop and cute sounds. When you think about it, Atom and Rui’s duet would be just like how MARGINAL#4 was in the beginning, and leaning more towards cool and a bit of rock. The opening now leans towards, pop and catchy, like how MARGINAL#4 is lately.

Q: Lastly, any words for the readers?

Takahashi: In the anime, you will get to see a side of MARGINAL#4 where they are just normal high school boys. All four of them have very strong personalities, which makes them look like the entire group is very out of place, but from there, different kinds of episodes are born and you can see how the bond between them is formed. I’d really like for the Star Cluster to enjoy that part. We have always been saying to the Star Cluster, “let’s make the stars rain down”, but with the anime, I’m sure that the smiles from them would definitely make the stars rain. I would be happy if you would watch over the four of them. Masuda: There are many scenes that have not been shown in the drama CDs, and also surpassing the barrier of drama CDs, you can watch even the smallest of their reactions and their interactions with the people around them. The original works still do exist but the anime comes with new content that even people new to the story could enjoy it too. For those who have been supporting this series, I am sure you would enjoy the new content as well.  

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T/N: *In the first drama CD ~星降る夜に、新たな誓いを~, released 28 August 2013, where they all went to Kyoto.

[gadgetsrevv]

Sarri and Juventus tweak recipe

It’s hard to avoid a wince when someone asks for Parmesan on their pasta with a seafood sauce. And many of us felt it was a similar faux pas when Juventus appointed Maurizio Sarri in the summer. Could these prime preachers of ‘winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing’ really add a sprinkle of ‘let me entertain you’ to their footballing philosophy?

That’s an over-simplification of the situation, for sure, but there’s a grain of truth somewhere inside. For most of his career, the former Napoli Coach has found himself on the side of the underdog in his most important matches with the odds stacked against him. How will it feel for him to go into the biggest game of the Serie A season so far – the Derby d’Italia – with a victory the expectation rather than simply the aspiration?

In truth, he tackled a few of these issues during his short sojourn in England. Before he went to Chelsea, he had a reputation in Italy for delivering beautiful football, but with a bit of an allergy to silverware. Most fans at Stamford Bridge would confirm that he tackled both of those claims by lifting a trophy, but without regularly producing anything like the attractive play that had been his hallmark in his homeland.

Now he faces a new challenge at the Allianz Juventus Stadium, where he no longer has any excuses for not winning things. This is a club that has the Scudetto – at the very least – in its DNA and anything less will not be easily accepted. No longer will it be sufficient to earn plaudits for your performances without something concrete to show for it. La Vecchia Signora is a demanding mistress.

The transformation he is expected to carry out was never going to happen overnight and there have been some occasional signs of weakness from his team so far. The simple fact that they find themselves playing catch-up to Inter is something that is a bit of a novelty for the Bianconeri. Italy’s most powerful club is unlikely to settle for being plucky losers.

That wasn’t always the case for Sarri’s sides in the past, of course. However, his managerial record against Juventus has seen him lose twice as many as he has won. Now he must show that he is just as comfortable at the helm of a finely tuned winning machine as he has been with sides where spectacle was sometimes a substitute for success.

Adding to the intrigue is the fact that he is coming up against a man who is almost his polar opposite. Nobody could ever imagine Antonio Conte being worried about pretty patterns if they failed to produce points. Plus, he knows his opponents inside out from years within Serie A’s most regularly triumphant organisation.

How comfortable Sarri will be in his new position among the favourites to win pretty much every competition he enters remains to be seen. Will he end up having to sacrifice style for substance? Can he combine both power and panache? What heights can he scale if he manages to unleash all the potential of this club by allying its addiction to trophies with a sprinkling of sexy football? The mind boggles.

Some more answers will be delivered on Sunday night in the special surroundings of San Siro. It will give us more early insight into where this new era is heading for both Coach and club. Will he be able to settle into his new surroundings like a comfy old tracksuit? Or will he ultimately remain a little incongruous in such illustrious circumstances – like that grated cheese atop some luscious langoustine?

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