#its stupid pulp sci fi but...

[neuroncryptid]

Magnus's fall was inevitable. Of that, I can be certain. The deck was stacked. The dice rolled snake eyes. There was no other way it could have ended.

Ask someone why it happened, and the answer you receive is as predictable as the sunrise. He was arrogant. He thought he knew better. He was gullible. And while yes, these did play a role, they do not explain how that would allow for the gods to play him like a fiddle. No, it quite simply was love.

He loved deeply. He loved his sons with all that he was. When he found them, they were ripe with corruption. Their gifts were ripping them apart. There was nothing to be done. And yet Magnus, without a second thought, gave his eye to save them. Metaphor aside, he gave a piece of himself to save those who were in reality simply tools of empire. Barely people, a resource. But to him, they were more. His legion were scholars. They were mages. They were artists and poets and astronomers. They were his children; children that he loved nearly unconditionally. Where many of the other legions were facsimile of their fathers or bear no resemblance in character, the Thousand Sons were merely related. Each one was shaped by the bond they had with their father and the lessons he taught.

So when facing oblivion of his children and the home they shared, one he brought upon himself admittedly, is it any surprise that he shattered himself to save them?

[neuroncryptid]

[master-thief-gray-shadow]

It's been a while since I've been in the right headspace to make a post after finishing a show, but not only is the warmer weather clearing my head up nicely, but I liked G Gundam enough to have something to say about it!

It's different. Like, I knew going in that it was gonna be different, but wow is it different. I got into Gundam via G-Witch and since then I've seen several UC series, and both of those continuities have a generally grounded, modestly hard approach to sci-fi. Not this. This is a 50s pulp novel approach to science fiction, with a generous dose of 90s battle shounen insanity that doesn't care how anything in its setting works, and doesn't want you, the viewer, to care about that either. That's not important. What's important Domon kicking ass in a kungfu robot.

Gundam is considered a pioneering series for real robot mecha, but this isn't real robot at all. It's a super robot series all the way down. The mechs aren't regarded as complex, precisely-engineered war machines, but rather as extensions of the pilots themselves. Hell, the word "pilot" isn't even used in the series - a person who operates a gundam in the Future Century timeline is a "fighter!" Battles aren't fought with bullets or missiles or lasers, but with whatever impractical doohickey was somehow installed onto these already impractical looking mechs, and if the fighter inside knows kungfu or ninjutsu or whatever other kind of martial art you can think of, they can just do that! Inside the robot! Half the time the direction and framing wholly ignores that the characters are even in mechs. Not a shred of technowank, but plenty of heartfelt conversations among manly men in skintight suits beating the shit out of each other!

The plot is completely ridiculous, and simultaneously extremely predictable and littered with bizarre swerves. It's full of national stereotypes that at times veer into being kind of offensive. The protagonist is an adult chuunibyou. There is an eldritch abomination robot that is defeated with the power of true love. This show is incredibly, unbelievably stupid, and seeing as it was a first shaky step into AU Gundam as a concept, that's not terribly surprising. I completely understand why they immediately went back to a more traditional "WAR IS BAD" type of story and setting for subsequent AU Gundam series. But I think because of that, G Gundam remains something special. Something unique. My understanding is that Tomino himself gave it his seal of approval because it dared to be different. And with its earnest, heartfelt presentation, and its sincere belief in the power of friendship, it's hard to hate.

I really did find this show riveting in spite of its...everything. I don't think I've enjoyed a Gundam series this much since 0079 (not counting G-Witch here even though it's my favorite because I watched it as it aired, so the experience was a little different). It was certainly a nice palate cleanser after Victory Gundam. And while we're definitely never getting anything like this ever again, the idea of mecha bloodsport is one the franchise seems intent on further exploring, so I'm very glad to have sat down to watch it!

[sinclair-wax-fan]

Bo and Vincent would have had their teens through the 80's and their 20's through the 90's.

I don't think the boys watch a ton of TV--I don't think they've ever had cable, so they have to rent everything or pick it up on the antenna--but I think they both like genre and pulp stuff.

Horror is something they both like but other genres are split. Bo likes stuff with intrigue and action--so speculative sci-fi of the harder variety, heist/crime thrillers, war movies. Vincent likes surreal fantasy and art house stuff.

(I noticed Vincent has an interesting split in his own art--with his sculptures being all about realism and classic beauty. His paintings however are very surreal and allegorical--very Dali and Picasso. I guess he feels more comfortable experimenting in painting. It's easier to unfuck mistakes on canvas--you just paint over them.)

Anyway, Alien would have been a favorite for both of them.

Both would hate Star Trek (too moralizing) but enjoy The Twilight Zone. They're okay with Star Wars but it's not something they'd go out of their way to rewatch. Bo loves Indiana Jones and Vincent's enjoys it well enough. Blade Runner gets close to being too abstract for Bo's taste but he likes Harrison Ford so he indulges Vincent. Vincent liked Eraserhead and Twin Peaks but Bo couldn't stand them. Bo loves The Breakfast Club and (relates hard to Bender but would never admit it out loud) but Vincent resents 80's coming of age stories because they're "stupid" alienating.

They wouldn’t be super up to date on many movies/tv shows past the mid-90's but Bo still picks up rentals and discounted tv shows from store from time to time, when he's wanting to indulge in some downtime.

When it comes to books, Vincent is all about the classic "western literary canon." He likes classics from both antiquity and the romantic period. His favorite book is Frankenstein but he would never admit it because he's embarrassed to be so obvious and would claim his favorite is something like Dante's Inferno or Paradise Lost.

Vincent also likes graphic novels like The Crow and The Sandman and Tales from the Crypt but is generally disdainful of superhero comics unless its something really cool like Ghost Rider, then he'll take a little peak and tell Bo to STFU because "I saw you reading it on the couch last week too!"

Bo isn't much of a reader but he's been known to curl up with a detective novel from time to time--partially because he gets a giggle from the irony and partially because he always liked a good thriller, even before he started murdering people. He also picks up some non-fiction from time to time, usually something related to engineering or mechanics.

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/11/2022: MONKEY SHINES

MONKEY SHINES drives me crazy for the sole, stupid reason that for much of my life, I have been walking the earth assuming that it is a Stephen King adaptation. This is absolutely not true. I'm sure I just think this because of George Romero's frequent collaboration with King, and because its famous poster so has the bold, exaggerated look of pulp horror covers from the 1980s. MONKEY SHINES is adapted from a novel by British author Michael Stewart, but the screenplay is by Romero himself. It is entirely possible that by 1988, a lot of King's style and approach may have rubbed off on the director, so maybe I'm not completely crazy for harboring this delusion: it's got psychic powers, a domestic animal that goes berserk, and small town drama overlayed with outrageous sci-fi and horror elements. But still, it bugs me that I thought this. I should know better!

MONKEY SHINES is a deeply weird movie that passes for normal due its above-par production value, fine performances, name brand actors, and naturalistic dialog. Perhaps also in the heyday of writers like King and Michael Crichton, this wacky sci-fi thriller, about a paraplegic who forms a corrupting psychic link with his helper monkey, didn't seem so unusual. But inside of this mainstream thriller is a freaky psychodrama with which Freud would have had a field day.

A Capuchin helper monkey named Ella enters the life of law student Allan Mann (Jason Beghe) when an accident renders him paralyzed from the neck down. His days are brightened by Ella's surprising competence and seemingly personal affection for Allan—and by the arrival of her trainer Melanie (Kate McNeil), who also develops personal feelings for Allan. However, the deeper Ella and Allan's bond grows, the more Allan is given over to emotion, struggling to control his escalating rage. Eventually it comes out that Ella is a test subject for an experimental drug, and as the resulting mind meld with Allan makes him more animal than man, it also enables Ella to act out Allan's wrathful impulses.

Somehow the monkey part of the movie isn't as bizarre as the interpersonal drama. When Allan becomes paralyzed, his whole existence turns into a power struggle with the women in his life. His plight begins when he is cuckolded by his own surgeon, and without his girlfriend around to help out, his mother Dorothy (Joyce Van Patten) forces her way into the house. Dorothy forms a sort of infantilizing tag team with the pious Nurse Maryanne (Christine Forrest, Romero's then-wife and frequent collaborator), from whom Melanie and Ella have to defend Allan. Where Maryanne is a castrating school marm type, Dorothy is inappropriately intimate with her son, insisting on bathing him and trying to drive out his new girlfriend. Melanie is mainly worried about Allan's increasing loss of civility…and also, perhaps, about Ella's increasing possessiveness. The monkey is firmly the other woman. There are male antagonists in the film—ambitious, inhumane scientists played by Stanley Tucci and Stephen Root—but they tend to take a back seat to Allan's conflicts with women. From his wheelchair-bound position, Allan needs to literally grow up, wresting power back from his nurse, putting his mother in her place, and choosing a mature relationship over the regressive, obsessive affair with the monkey.

MONKEY SHINES may look like a regular mainstream movie of the period, but with all that going on, it has more in common with a neurotic exploitation movie like THE BABY, or SOMETIMES AUNT MARTHA DOES DREADFUL THINGS, or BUTCHER, BAKER, NIGHTMARE MAKER. This may not be the sort of place where you normally expect to find a bunch of psychoanalytic rumination, but it's sure in there, and it's part of what makes MONKEY SHINES so surprising. That, and the fact that it's not a Stephen King movie.

But, there is one more thing about MONKEY SHINES the surprised me, personally. When I first started dating my husband some eleven years ago, we hit it off immediately, but we seemed like a pretty unlikely pair. I was (am) an inverted little horror ghoul, and he was almost aggressively normal: a friendly, handsome data specialist who liked beer, bikes, and coffee, and whose cultural tastes skewed just a little indie. I wasn't sure what I could have to offer such a person, but on our third date, he made an effort to reach across the aisle by informing me that when he was a kid, his mother's therapist was the former owner of one of the monkeys in MONKEY SHINES. We don't know if it was the star, Boo, or one of the lab extras (probably the latter), but this therapist had a framed lobby card mounted on his waiting room wall featuring the movie's shocking key art. My husband used to have to stare at it while he was waiting for his mother's appointment to end, and when he finally asked about it, he learned that the doctor used to have one of the movie's animal performers. When my then-new boyfriend told me this, I nearly fell out of my chair, and we've been laughing about it ever since.

[bigskydreaming]

So, how far do you think Jasons booktastes goes? Is he like a hard-core classic fan or does it variate between his moods?

Absolutely the latter, IMO. I know there’s a tendency to lean hard into the idea that Jason’s just all about the classics, but I think overall we have a rather finite and white European and American skewed 'definition’ of what constitutes a classic in the first place, and you know me and my classist rantings.....unless you don’t but whatever, now you do, I’m personally leery of over-emphasizing Jason’s sophisticated reading palette or whatever as like, some kind of pushback against his otherwise lower-class origin because I don’t think its necessary. I mean who knows if that’s how its intended in any given specific situation, but I definitely feel like there’s a general undercurrent of that threaded through a lot of Jason’s depictions overall that I’m like ‘no thanks’ to.

I think Jason’s all over the place as a reader. His only defining characteristic as a reader IMO is that he’s a voracious one, and he reads anything and everything he can get his hands on, and finds something appealing and in new and different ways in every genre. I think as his skills develop as Robin and a detective, he hungrily reads mystery novels to see how quickly he can figure out who did it. I think he reads true crime to try and solve it ahead of the book’s conclusions the same way we’ve seen Dick solve cases watching America’s Most Wanted. 

I think before traveling was an option for Jason, living with Bruce, he enjoyed travel guides/pieces and nonfiction, to get a sense of places far away from Gotham. I think once he was living with Bruce and encountering colleagues of his dad’s who were literally from other planets and had advanced technology and magic, he had a growing personal collection of fantasy and sci-fi books just so when he did get a chance to join Bruce when he was around other heroes he could be like “okay I read in this one book where they did this spell are there any real spells like that huh huh?” or “so in this one series they had a spaceship that could do this do you know of any spaceships that are like that like could that be real?” I think he loves mythology because a) he’s gay duh and b) Diana is an actual Amazon, like why wouldn’t you love mythology when you could fact-check Edith Hamilton against an actual Amazon it just makes sense.

I think he’s got shelves full of old-school dimestore pulp fiction novels, the long-running series kinds, because he doesn’t think cheap equals bad and also they’re just fun. And also also, he loves the serialized nature of a lot of works because one of the biggest evidences of stability in his young life, before ADITF, like, one of the things that finally got him thinking like wow this is like how I live now huh, was the realization that when before, the unpredictable nature of his life meant he kinda just had to read things in one go and not count on ever being able to follow up on them, like......when living with Bruce, he suddenly just realized one day that like, all those series that have so many more books in them than I could ever read in one go, the kind of things you’re meant to RETURN to, to follow along over periods of months and years.....I can do that now, here. 

And even after his return as the Red Hood, once he slowly started settling into his new life and put his focus not just towards reacting to his trauma but trying to build beyond that again and have actual hobbies, interests, etc.....one of the biggest evidences to him that he could do that, be more than JUST the Red Hood, was literally no different from when he first had that epiphany living with Bruce. When he looked into all those series that he perhaps never got to finish, or that were still ongoing when he was killed, and found an unexpected continuity in the reminder and awareness that they were still out there, waiting for him to finish them, that they were still being published, available for him to catch up......that his life had ended, but then he came back so maybe it was more just interrupted. That so many things are different now from how they were before, but some things are still the same, that he’s so different now but in some ways he IS still the same.

Like yeah, sure, I do think he’s got plenty of Jane Austen on his shelves, but he’s also got Octavia Butler and Ursula K. LeGuin and Mary Shelley not once but twice....nah let’s go wild and make it five times....cuz I think he’s got very specific SYSTEMS for how his books are arranged, one of those particular things that arose from the awareness that he actually COULD be particular about his books, that it was entirely up to him......and once he found out that Frankenstein’s Monster existed he was like okay but is the book based on that or was that based on the book, did art imitate life or did life imitate art I HAVE TO KNOW IF IT GOES IN FICTION OR NON-FICTION! And so Alfred and Bruce and Dick and Barbara all had the same idea of like, why not both, both is good, and gave him an extra copy and so he ended up with like five copies of Frankenstein.

Also, literally every time he ends up with a case or aware of a case where vampires or werewolves or aliens or gods are involved, you can find a whole new section of fiction and nonfiction on the related subject in his room, and he’s scribbled all throughout the margins like LOL WELL THIS ISNT RIGHT and NOPE GOT THIS WRONG and IF THIS AUTHOR WAS ALIVE TODAY I WOULD TELL THEM RIGHT TO THEIR STUPID FACE ABOUT HOW NOT ACCURATE THEIR SAFETY PROTOCOLS FOR DEALING WITH VAMPIRES ARE LIKE THATS THE LAST TIME I BRING GARLIC TO A VAMPIRE FIGHT AND THINK IM DOING ANYTHING BUT SMELLING LIKE A TASTY PASTA FLAVORED TREAT, LIKE THANKS FOR NOTHING YOU ABSOLUTE HACK.

(Also I think Jason thinks Poe’s a pretentious boor, mostly because I find it funny to script scenes in my head where Jason just goes OFF about various authors and his Opinions on them, but he still likes his stuff for the mood and is like DONT @ ME, IM COMPLICATED, but this is entirely because of an old personal headcanon of mine where like, the frequent references to the gothic nature of Gotham tied to Jason’s very Gothammite nature resulted in my brain doing a What If where Jason either post-Robin-where-he-didn’t-die or even post-Red Hood picks a raven themed ensemble and calls himself something like Nevermore, and is like, Caw Caw, Im Gotham, Bitch).

In summation, I think Jason is eclectic as hell, and like, if its a book, and he’s got the time, he’s gotta read it because duh, that’s just the law of the jungle, he’s like lololol what there’s a book and I’m just what, just not going to read it? That’s what you think? LMAO that makes no sense you sound so dumb right now.

[magic5ball]

Thoughts on The Complete Fiction of Stanley Weinbaum

Have you ever heard a really good song on the radio and looked up more songs by the band that wrote that one song, only to discover there was a reason that song was a one hit wonder?

That’s the feeling I got after reading the a collection of short stories written by Stanley Weinbaum.

For those of you who don’t know, Stanley Weinbaum was a jewish writer of pulp sci-fi in the 30′s most famous for his short story ‘A Martian Odyssey’, which garnered fame for bizarre aliens that were unique among the more humanoid aliens more popular at the time. Tragically, Weinbaum passed away from lung cancer in 1935, a year and a half after his magnum opus was published. He was just 33 years old. 

I first read ‘A Martian Odyssey’ back in 2017, and let me tell you, I absolutely loved it! Weinbaum vision of a Mars inhabited by  strange half animal, half plant creatures gave me a sense of wonder and joy for adventure you don’t get from a lot of science fiction these days. The aliens were strange and unique, bounded by scientific rules, but not to the point Weinbaum didn’t try to get creative or have fun. And of course, their is a creature that lives in a house composed of its’ own turds, so really, what more could you ask?

I came in fully expecting to love his other works, but well...

There are science fiction authors who play with unique and revolutionary ideas; write stories that stay fresh decades after they are written. Weinbaum is an author who can do the former, but not the latter. 

Weinbaum had a lot of great ideas, and his worldbuilding for alien planets was top notch, but the actual plots of the stories tended to be very typical of 30′s pulp sci-fi. It doesn’t help that he recycled ideas from story to story. A lot. And nowhere is this worse than with...

                                     THE ROMANTIC SUBPLOT TUMOR!

In almost all of his tales, the overarching plots for the unique worlds are bogged down by this same. Stinking. Formula! Tell me if you’ve seen this before:

1.) Guy meets girl on dangerous alien world.

2.) Girl does a reckless/ stupid.

3.) Guy saves girl by skin of his teeth. Using SCIENCE AND LOGIC!

4.) Romance!

Not surprisingly, ‘A Martian Odyssey’ is one of the only stories without a romantic subplot, and is all the better for it! And don’t get me started on ‘The Red Peri’! 

Anyway. 

That being said, there are some tales I found worth a special mention:

The Van Manderpootz Trilogy- A trio of short stories involving a perpetually tardy guy trying to use an egotistical genius’ inventions of find the perfect girl/ get laid. Feels like a spiritual predecessor to Futurama or Rick and Morty. 

Flight on Titan- Has cheesy romance, but is more than redeemed by intense action, interesting alien ecosystems (a Weinbaum specialty), suspense, and a genuinely good plot twist. I’ve actually thought of rewriting this one, as it could easily be retooled for the modern day. 

The Red Peri- SO CLOSE to being something special, but I’ll get into that some other time. 

Pygmalion’s Spectacles- Again, cheesy romance alert, but it does predict virtual reality in the 30′s. 

Shifting Seas- Climate change causes people to try migrating en masse to the United States. Has commentary on anti-immigration policies in the U.S. that still feel relevant today.

So is Weinbaum worth your time? Maybe. He’s definitely not for everyone, and his stuff can get very 1930′s (see: casual racism; albeit less so than some of his cotemporaries) at times. That being said, if you like unique alien worlds, or just want to see what mainstream sci-fi was like in the good old days, give this guy’s work is worth a look-see.

[guardiandae]

I’ve been binging horror movies lately, because it’s August September and that means we’re already in phase two of Halloween!!! So I wanted to share some of what I’ve watched, and my thoughts on the films! 

Below: (Event Horizon, Thirteen Ghosts, Pandorum, The Mangler, The Graveyard Shift, I Am Mother)

Event Horizon (1997) - A crew ventures into space to retrieve an abandoned ship, but quickly realize they need to try to save themselves. Wow. I thought the acting in this was amazing, especially since I eyeballed the 27% rotten score before watching and assumed it was going to be pure trash. First half is rock fucking solid. Sadly, they could’ve done better later on, but I saw an in-depth youtube video on it beforehand which explained that a ton of the gore and hell scenes had to be trimmed out, and a director’s cut never emerged. That’s exactly what would’ve made this movie better... and also, frankly, if they cut out the monster-of-the-week gimmick towards the end and instead just let hell itself slowly be unleashed... now I wish they’d do this movie justice with a proper remake. Anna oop-.  Stars Laurence Fishburne and he is wonderful. Warnings: some disturbing gore/mutilation, but I (a very squeamish person) was able to handle it and wish there was more tbh, not actually much for jumpscares

Thirteen Ghosts (2001) - A ghost-hunting collector dies and leaves his house to his remaining relatives, but they realize quickly................ IT’S A TRAP. Pretty cheesy, but I love the way the entire house is like a giant, elaborate puzzlebox, I’m actually curious how they did that kind of effect. Plus the ghosts are neat and don’t get enough screentime and I’m gay @ the Angry Princess. If you watch, take a moment to google the ghosts and read their backstories (or look in the DVD extras, I think) because the movie doesn’t expand on them. Stars Tony Shalhoub and I stan him. Warnings: a lot of blood and body mutilation, titties on display, probably jumpscares but it’s all old hat to me and cheesy imo, I just wanted to revisit it

Pandorum (2009) - A crew is in space but the sleep pods malfunction and when they wake up, some terrible shit has gone down and there are cannibal monsters now. This one fully fucking deserves the 28% rotten score. I saw a review that it was underrated and the plot sounded interesting, but once I started watching I couldn’t handle the awful fucking audio balance. The characters whisper a lot, meanwhile the monsters SCREECH non fucking stop. I got so fed up, tbh, I just watched it on fast forward and jumped ahead. I’m not convinced the plot was done as brilliantly as the reviewer I listened to wanted to believe. It was pretty stupid, but that’s just my opinion or whatever. Warnings: umm idk. probably blood and the usual death. Audio that is jarring - not frightening but really fucking jarring and obnoxious. Don’t waste your time. Watch Event Horizon instead tbh.

The Mangler (1995) - I didn’t know industrial laundry press machines were a Thing but apparently they were, also I’ll never feel like my boss is an asshole ever again after watching this. When I was little my family rented a couple movies regularly, and I only ever wanted to watch horror movies, especially every single Stephen King thing I could get my hands on. I’m not such a staunch fan anymore, but I randomly remembered this one and wanted to see it again. I didn’t remember 99% of the plot. It stars Ted Levine (Captain Leeland Stottlemeyer from Monk??? I was SHOOK) and also Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger, guys). Warnings: blood and detailed gore. People get pulped up in this big machine, and they show the aftermath. The last death is pretty fun and creative, though. Don’t take the movie too seriously.

The Graveyard Shift (1990) - A shitty boss hires people to clean up his shitty factory and then they all almost get eaten by rats. This movie is ditto to The Mangler. The two mentally go hand in hand for me. Both involves imagery of machines + blood, but this one has more focus on the rats in the mill. It’d probably be a dry watch for anyone else, but it personally OFFENDS ME, A MAINER, because the actor who plays Warwick (shitty boss and rapist in the film) attempted to do a Mainer accent but ended up sounding like a cross between German and a few heavily stereotyped New England words like “CAH”. I mainly watched for the imagery that still stuck in my mind since my childhood -- the blood in the cotton machine and the rats feeding on it, them falling into a massive pool of blood, the guy getting his arm bitten off, and the monster’s death at the end. Honestly felt like the best part of the movie was the proto-remix song at the end which is just a funky beat overlaid with snippets of dialogue from the movie. And that’s not saying much 😂 Warnings: blood and gore, and uhhh a main villain who is a total asshole and also mentioned to be a rapist :/  Don’t bother, just listen to the end credits.

I Am Mother (2019, Netflix!) - SUPER GOOD GO WATCH IT RIGHT NOW. This one is a sci-fi film, but I’d also consider it a thriller/psychological kind of horror film? The plot is about a robot (Mother) that was programmed to raise human children after the extinction of mankind. It’s one of those movies where, for a while, you’re really left wondering what is real and that’s why I’d rec it as a horror, plus I feel like the philosophical angle is unsettling in its own way. The actors, including the voice actor for Mother, are A+++ Warnings: post-apocalyptic setting, death, I cried at the end???

I know there are better movies but I kind of wanted to binge old shitty ones tbh. I didn’t expect Event Horizon to be so good! Well, half good, but that half was a diamond in the rough imo. Maybe it’s just the fanfic writer in me that lives for the potential of how it could’ve been. and I Am Mother isn’t in that “shitty old horror” category, it’s new and just super fucking good and doesn’t pull punches and it takes the plot thread all the way through to its conclusion, please go watch it.

If you guys have any recs I’d love to hear some! I prefer psychological horror when I really want to be scared, tbh. I loathe jumpscares, and as I mentioned above, genuine blood/gore is bad unfun time for me, so I will not be watching any torture-porn like Hostel. But I’m thinking of watching some of the classics I feel I never really got to enjoy, like Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, maybe Alien. I also wanna rewatch some stuff like Hellraiser, The Thing, and Annihilation. And at some point I’ll probably seek out really, truly, good & scary ones and maybe later I’ll torment myself with some  infamously gory films. We’ll see!

Have you seen any of the above? Lemme know what you think! 😋

[dictionarywrites]

      Know Your Jeffs: A Guide To Goldblum’s Characters

This isn’t an exhaustive list, and I will be updating it as I watch more Goldblum movies, adding in the characters as I pick them up! Everything is below the cut so that I can just update as I take more stuff in. 

The descriptions of movies and characters are very much not impartial, but they should give you an idea of what you’re in for if you want to look the film up. I’m only including stuff I’ve already seen, plus Raines, which I feel like I’m never gonna be able to get hold of, and am heartbroken about.

Movies are listed in CHRONOLOGICAL order, but if you CTRL+F, you can search for a particular character name, date, or movie/TV title. This is very much under construction. There are currently 40 Jeffs on the list. 

1978 - Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers, dir. Philip Kaufman - IMDb

Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers is a film about a kind of alien who comes to Earth and steals people’s bodies - effectively, they make up their own pod-versions of them, and then turn the original to dust.

Jack Bellicec is a poet in New York City, who owns a bathhouse with his wife, Nancy. This film is a sci-fi horror, and Jack is earnest but antsy throughout - he’s a real cutie, and every much a good guy. He’s just the sweetest, and is generally in a state of complete and utter terror, whilst still trying to keep grounded and keep thinking forward.

1980 - The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow, dir. Henning Schellerup, IMDb

Okay, so, for a stupid TV movie from the 80s, this is actually really cute It loosely follows the plot of the short story, but generally with a happier ending and a lot more fun antics from Ichabod Crane, and it’s just great fun. A schoolteacher comes to the valley of Sleepy Hollow, and finds himself facing down the silly ghost stories continuously thrown forward by the locals.

Ichabod Crane is the cutest - he’s soft and sweet with the children, like he is in the short story, on top of being lanky and clumsy and a little stupid; he lacks a lot of his arrogance that he has in the short story, and instead he’s much less of a dick when he criticizes the ghost stories and stuff. He’s lovely, I adore him. 

1980 - Tenspeed and Brownshoe, TV Series - IMDb

Tenspeed and Brownshoe is a delight - it’s a detective TV series with a very light-hearted tone, and it’s very comfortable to just settle back and watch casually. 

Lionel Whitney is... a trip. A chartered accountant turned gumshoe, Lionel starts his own detective agency in L.A. after breaking up with his fiancée and meeting the charming (and duplicitous) E.L. Turner, a conman and scam artist. E.L. is his partner in the business, and the two combine strengths - Lionel with his idolisation of and knowledge of the 40s pulp fictional detective, Mark Savage, as well as his black belt in karate; E.L. with his thousands of accumulated skills, including being a master of disguise, a smooth-talker, and a winner at sleight of hand. 

Lionel is a dote: he’s just the sweetest, and he really gives off Bertie Wooster vibes, but with an air of genuine competence Mr Wooster never had. He’s truly incredible, and all the episodes of Tenspeed and Brownshoe are up on YouTube, so it’s really worth watching!

1981 - Threshold, dir. Richard Pearce - IMDb

Okay, so Threshold... Big old snooze fest. Not a very engaging movie, not an especially good movie - I forgot a good deal of the movie after I finished watching it. It was uninspiring and a bit bland. The concept is basically that a pioneer in mechanical science re: bio-engineering comes up with a heart valve to replace a little girl’s heart - the pioneer being Jeff Goldblum’s character - and a doctor puts it in the little girl, but it’s a very unpopular decision, because it’s not organic. Obviously, in the 80s, that was a much bigger deal than it is now. 

Aldo Gehring is just... Adorable. Too earnest, a little bit arrogant, and he’s just far too baby-faced for the age he’s textually said to be to be believable, but like... You know! It’s a dull movie either way, and Aldo isn’t a huge part of it. 

1983 - The Big Chill, dir. Lawrence Kasdan - IMDb

The Big Chill is a film about a group of college friends that meet up for the first time in like, a decade after one of their closest friends commits suicide. They all come for the funeral, and spend a few days together in the aftermath.

A lot of people seem to dislike Michael Gold, but like, he’s kind of one of the most tragic of the figures in the movie - a lot of their friends don’t remember him initially, and he really isn’t good at doing anything other than compartmentalising and shoving down his emotions. He’s brittle and a little sharp, and maybe a bit too honest for his own good, but I really love him, and I totally rec him if you can handle the subject matter, which is obviously very grim and very sad.

1984 - The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, dir. W.D. Richter - IMDb

Buckaroo Banzai is a guy who’s basically, like, any eight-year-old’s Mary Sue - he’s a cowboy, a neurosurgeon, an expert test pilot, a rockstar, etc... And they play it completely straight. Leading his band of hypercompetent pretty boys, The Hong-Kong Cavaliers, he saves the world, if not the universe, on the regular. 

Doctor Sidney Zweibel, a.k.a. New Jersey, is a new addition to the team in The Adventures, and he’s a neurosurgeon who went to med school with Buckaroo. He’s a would-be cowboy, complete with boots, hat and chaps, and he’s just the cutest thing in the world, a sweet and pure boy. 10/10 Goldblums for Sid Zweibel.

1985 - Silverado, dir. Lawrence Kasdan - IMDb

Mmm, Silverado is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, and it has little to no plot. Even for a Western, I found it incredibly dry and disjointed, and I can’t in good fatih recommend it to anybody, even though John Cleese is inexplicably a sheriff midway through.

However. Slick (whose actual name is Calvin Stanhope) is really fucking hot, and so you should watch his scenes on YouTube, even if you don’t watch the movie (which you shouldn’t). Slick’s screentime tocks up to around 15-20 minutes, out of a movie that’s genuinely like, two and a half hours long.

Slick is like, a casino man with a knife in his boot; he wears furs; he’s terrible. He’s so great, I adore him. 

1985 - Into The Night, dir. John Landis - IMDb

Into The Night is... a little hard to describe. It’s like, a crime thriller movie with Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer, and with a cameo from David Bowie, as well as about 700 other Hollywood lads who Landis knew. I think the plot is... loose, and the film itself isn’t the greatest, but the main characters are pretty great.

Ed Okin is an astrophysicist dissatisfied with his job and his life in general, who abruptly becomes plagued by this inescapable insomnia, and subsequently becomes embroiled in this whole crime plot across from Pfeiffer. I really love Ed - because of the insomnia, he tends to underreact to most of the situations around him, and he’s very likable.

1985 - Transylvania 6-5000, dir. Ruby de Luca - IMDb

Is TR 6-5000 a good movie? No, absolutely not. But should you watch it? Oh, yes. 

This is like, a comedy/absurdist horror/pastiche, lots... It’s lots of stuff. Basically, these two reporters who do a Weekly World News style thing go to Transylvania to report on Frankenstein, and also meet some Igors, a werewolf, a vampire, etc.

Jack Harrison is such a great character - he’s pretty much eternally looking after his hapless partner, Gil, but both of them are as ridiculous as the other, each of them stumbling into bizarre situations. Definitely don’t take the movie too seriously, but it really is a fun thing, and it’s certainly worth watching for the goofy trip it is. Jack is a real sweetheart, and he’s so lovable - Gil certainly thinks so. ;)

1986 - The Fly, dir. David Cronenburg - IMDb

So, fair warning, I nearly vomited like, several times watching The Fly, and was on the verge of just turning it off a few times. It’s nearly forty years old, but the body horror of the effects really stands up, and it’s very gory toward the end.  Despite its well-earned rep as such a gory film, though, The Fly is actually a heartbreaking tragedy, so definitely don’t expect it to be lacking in the feels department if you can stomach it.

Seth Brundle (yeah, poor guy, what a name) is a really impressive engineer and scientist, and he invents a machine that should enable him to teleport objects from one electronic pod to another. Unfortunately, when teleporting himself, he becomes melded with an intruder to the pod - a fly - and begins a horrifying transition into something other than human.

Seth at the start is... He’s a genius, but he’s naive, arrogant, and a little too trusting in how earnest he is. As time goes on, and he begins the change into Brundlefly, he becomes much more erratic, and his personality changes a lot. I totally rec Seth, honestly. 

1988 - Vibes, dir. Ken Kwapis - IMDB

Vibes is a fucking trip. It’s a movie about two psychics - Jeff Goldblum’s character, Nick Deezy, who can tell the history of an object by touching it, and Cyndi Lauper’s character, Sylvia Pickel, who is a medium. Yes, you read that right. Cyndi Lauper. It’s incredible.

Vibes is actually a much better movie than I expected - it’s a genuinely funny comedy, it’s ridiculous and cartoonish and stupid, but it’s fun. Cyndi Lauper and Goldblum have a tango scene at one point, and the height differential is so extreme that she’s literally wrapped around his waist and he’s just carrying her around.

Nick Deezy himself is a really interesting character - he’s kinda used to being used and pushed around because of his psychic powers, but he’s a guy with such a lot of courage and genuine empathy for others, and I just think he’s so sweet. 

1988 - Earth Girls Are Easy,  dir. Julien Temple - IMDb

So... Earth Girls Are Easy is in the same vein as Vibes for me - it’s a fun romp, and so long as you don’t take it too seriously, it’s a really enjoyable movie. It’s about these three furry aliens that drop down to Earth, and are trying to pick up the language and have a good time. It’s good banter, and it’s also a musical, because-- It was 1988, okay? 

Mac is like, probably one of the most genuinely sweet characters out of the ones on this list - he’s very caring, and he’s doing his best to do good whilst not really being able to navigate the world around him very easily. He’s wonderful, and I can’t rec Earth Girls enough.

He’s also a big, furry, blue guy in his underwear for the first part of the movie, if that helps.

1989 - The Tall Guy, dir. Mel Smith - IMDb

So, disclaimer. This film is written by Richard Curtis, so like... It’s snappy, it’s clever, but it’s also a little insufferable and kinda misogynistic the whole way through, with the classic Curtis obsession with infidelity, where characters cheat on one another whether it makes sense or not.

That aside, I really enjoyed the first two acts of this movie, and while the third one falls very flat, I still think it’s worth watching. Goldblum’s character, Dexter King, plays the straight man in Rowan Atkinson’s comedy sketch act, but goes on to have a romantic relationship with Emma Thompson, and those links are just... So cute.

I think Dexter is kind of a dick, but by no means does that make him unlikable, and I’d still rec The Tall Guy! I’m not sure how long Goldblum was in the UK for - there’s a nude sex scene with Goldblum and Thompson, and I was really thrown, because he’s super pale in this film, compared to similar nude scenes in like, The Fly. So there’s your fun tidbit for the day lmao.

1990 - Mister Frost, dir. Philippe Setbon - IMDb

This film is... Odd. As a thriller, it’s fine - you know, it’s average. It isn’t so terrible, but it’s not great either. But as like, a film, there are aspects where it’s just inexplicably terrible - some of the lines are dubbed over, for some reason, and the sound quality is so off in random moments; there are odd moments where the camera is just too close to the actors’ faces, even for a close-up; technically, this film just has some bizarre and glaring... errors.

The plot is interesting, though, and I did enjoy it for that aspect - Mister Frost is a serial killer institutionalized in an attempt to cure him of his murderous tendencies, and he then professes to be Lucifer himself. 

Mister Frost is a funny guy. He’s snide, clever, self-obsessed and sharp - I really liked him, and I totally think he’s worth a watch.

1992 - Fathers & Sons, dir. Paul Mones - IMDb

[icon to be added if I can ever get a decent fucking picture or screencap or something of this film]

This film was bad. I didn’t care for it. Fathers & Sons is, however, like... Very human, I guess. Max, Goldblum’s character, runs a bookstore on the coast and is having trouble communicating with his son, Ed; there’s a lot of tension between them based off the death of Ed’s mother and Max’s own character flaws, as well as Max’s temper. There’s fucking voiceover in the film, which is used clumsily and just comes across as terrible, but there aren’t any glaring technical issues throughout like there are with Mister Frost.

Max himself is not, in my opinion, a very likable character? He’s certainly relatively sympathetic, and you can see where he’s coming from, but he’s got a terrible temper and the tension with Ed is very much his own doing in a lot of respects - despite my personal dislikes, however, Goldblum is as ever a marvel, and you really do feel that Max is a whole, complete person.

1992 - Shooting Elizabeth, dr. Baz Taylor - IMDb

This film was a fucking trip and a half. The premise is that this guy, Howard, really hates his wife, and decides he hates her so much that he’s gonna kill her, but when she goes missing, he is arrested for her murder even though he never got around to it. It’s a generically confused movie which neither really meets its labelled genres of comedy or thriller, but wouldn’t do well under drama or romance either. It’s odd.

Howard Pigeon, as a character, is deeply unstable. A lot of the moments in the movie that I think are meant to be comedic just end up being tragic, because you can see how upset he is, how freaked out he is, and how disconnected from reality and rational thought he is. He’s also just... A really fucking bad person, but to be honest, so is his wife, so like... Hey. It is what it is, I guess. 

1992 - Deep Cover, dir. Bill Duke - IMDb

Deep Cover is fucking incredible. It’s easily one of my favourite movies now, and I just die over it, to be honest. Playing across from Laurence Fishburne (then billed as Larry), David Jason (Elias in the script, and I don’t know why they changed it, maybe to make his name less blatantly Jewish, but I assume none of them had ever heard of Only Fools and Horses) is a low-down cocaine mogul trying to break out on his own from the local boss. 

He’s a fascinating character, and I just adore him - the film itself is a very gritty noir that really considers lines of racial intersection and prejudice within both the police force and the drug trade, and David himself is constantly suffering from antisemitism and a lot of very targeted homophobic remarks, and it’s heavily implied he wants to fuck John, Laurence Fishburne’s character. David is erratic, sharp, and extremely brittle with a very short temper: he and John kinda balance each other out, because John’s a much cooler, calmer guy, and I just love their dynamic.

David’s my son. I love him. I will cry over him forever. 

1993 - Jurassic Park, dir. Steven Spielberg - IMDB        ↪1997 - Jurassic Park: The Lost World, dir. Steven Spielberg - IMDb        ↪2018 - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, dir. J.A. Bayona - IMDb

So, like, I’m sure you know the basic concept of Jurassic Park. A crazed Walt Disney parody in white linen with seemingly unlimited money decides to clone a bunch of fucking dinosaurs and put them into a theme park, and it goes horribly wrong. These films are genuinely great sci-fi, raising some wonderful philosophical questions about ownership, ethics, and our place in the universe, and the voice of that philosophy usually belongs to Doctor Ian Malcolm, a mathematician who specialises in chaos theory.

Ian Malcolm... I just adore him, I really do. You know, I’ve read the book of course, as well as the seen all the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies, and Ian is just a delight - he’s bright, he’s sarcastic, but he’s genuinely full of feeling and so eager to talk to other people, to connect with them, etc. I just find him fascinating, and even if sci-fi isn’t your thing, you’ll love Jurassic Park for him alone.

He reprises his role in the latest Jurassic World movie - I can’t, in all good conscience, really recommend the Jurassic World movies, but... He is a silver fox. 

1995 - Hideaway, dir. Brett Leonard - IMDb

Hideaway is a supernatural thriller based around the concept of demonic possession, and an antiques dealer - Hatch Harrison - finds he has visions of a local serial killer after being revived from being dead for several minutes. Using those visions to thwart the killer, he and his family realise the cause is supernatural. 

Hatch is a really cool dude, and I like him a lot - he’s got the strongest dad energies, and he’s so, so caring. Even grieving and tense, like, he’s just doing his best, and he’s such a good guy, I really adore him. 

1995 - Nine Months, dir. Chris Columbus - IMDb

Nine Months is a terrible movie thick with a deeply unsettling ideology re: the whole “everybody really wants kids and must have them”, and I honestly despised it throughout. It’s just a terrible movie, and Columbus always ranges from “this guy is a vaguely bad director” to “this guy is a fucking twat”, and there is nothing vague about the badness of this movie.

That aside, however, Goldblum’s character is kind of a delight. Sean Fletcher is a painter (of paintings, not houses) and like... Layabout? He’s a little erratic, he changes his mind about stuff constantly, but he’s a really sound guy, and he cares a lot about Hugh Grant’s character, who is the protagonist. He’s really fun in a movie that’s just garbage the way through. 

1995 - Powder, dir. Victor Salva - IMDb

Powder is a very sad movie, to be honest. It’s about this lad who’s like, an albino with telekinetic powers, and when his parents die, he ends up having to go into the public school system, where he’s bullied an awful lot. It’s extremely brutal about a lot of the bullying stuff, and it does come across very accurately; just as a general warning, there’s... an uncomfortable tone to it, although nothing directly or graphically terrible, especially re: sexuality, which I noticed even before looked Salva up and realised he was that paedophile that did Jeepers Creepers. It’s just something to be aware of.

Jeff’s character is... a delight, however. Donald Ripley is a high school teacher who’s genuinely really passionate about teaching, has no small amount of sympathy for all of his students, and is just-- He’s really sweet, and I love him. Despite the uncomfortable gaze of the film, he retains a paternal air, and I love it.  

1996 - Independence Day, dir. Roland Emmerich - IMDb          ↪2016 - Independence Day: Resurgence, dir. Roland Emmerich - IMDb

Independence Day, honestly, I expected to be like, bad sci-fi dreck, and it genuinely isn’t. While I think the premise is inherently stupid (the whole evil aliens invade thing), it’s actually executed so well, and I just love it as a flick - Judaism saves the day in many aspects, and it’s so nice to have that positive thing mixed up in it.

David Levinson is such a sweet guy - he’s arrogant and a little bit of an ass, but like, he’s so caring: he constantly worries about his dad, he’s so loyal to his ex-wife without being creepy or weird about it after like, three years; he fucking recycles and uses his bike to get around the city... Like, he’s an underachiever initially, but he’s a genuinely nice guy despite his abrasive personality at times, you know?

I just love him.  

And he reprises the role in the new movie, which isn’t as good as the first one, but is still worth a watch for Julius Levinson’s antics, picking up grandchildren as he drives across America. 

1998 - Holy Man, dir. Stephen Herek - IMDb

My full review of Holy Man is here.

Holy Man is not a good film. It’s about an exec who runs a TV shopping channel, but is like, really shit at it, and he ends up getting G., a homeless guru played by Eddie Murphy, to sell stuff for him. Nonsensical and odd although the film is, it’s actually surprisingly sweet and wholesome, and I really enjoyed a lot of the humour. 

Ricky is a pretty bad guy at the beginning, but he’s slick and fun and good-humoured - he’s mostly just selfish more than outright evil, and he actually ends up becoming a lot less selfish toward the end of the film. He’s a sweetheart, in some respects. 

2001 - Cats & Dogs, dir. Lawrence Guterman - IMDb

God, this movie is so bad, and so much more racist than I remembered? There’s this whole racist sequence with some ninja cats, complete with the chopsticks-style music playing in the background, and that’s... Awful. 

But Charles Brody is actually really funny, to be honest. Goldblum somehow makes him feel really human - earnest and work-obsessed, but still desperate to be a good father despite not being naturally inclined, and that’s... Honestly, I hate it when he does this. He takes the stupidest character in the stupidest movie and makes them feel like a real person, and I hate him for it.

Brody is cute. 

2002 - Igby Goes Down, dir. Burr Steers - IMDb

Igby Goes Down is... Hm. What best to call it? Insipid teenage horseshit. The whole film is just fucking terrible, honestly - it centres around the Culkin that isn’t Kevin in Home Alone, and he’s some unbearable little New York teenager who thinks the world revolves around him and is upset at the prospect that perhaps he should go to school and/or get a job. 

Anyway, Goldblum is at his least moral and most hot, he is revolting, and he is so sexy. There’s a weird thing where he’s the family friend of a family that’s pretty anti-semitic, but they play it straight, as if Jeff Goldblum’s face isn’t one of the most Jewish faces anybody’s ever seen, but that aside, he’s really sexy. Sociopathic, abruptly violent, and infrequently undressed, but it’s not worth watching the rest of the film for, to be honest. 

2003 - Spinning Boris, dir. Roger Spottiswoode - IMDb

Spinning Boris. What a film.

Here, listen, we just watched this, me and @annethecatdetective, and it was absolutely nothing that I expected,or could expect. It’s a heavily fictionalised “based on a true story” film about three Rpublicans who went to work on the Boris Yeltsin campaign in ‘96. We, apparently, are once again meant to believe Jeff Goldblum as a goyische Republican, which--

I mean, what can I tell you? He does it so well. George Gorton’s fictionalised counterpart is charismatic, charming and funny, but so is most of the movie - the Republican trio are all morons, but that actually lends to their likability in the end, and Gorton is the most lovable of the three, taking the foreground. This movie was like, actually really good.  

2004 - The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, dir. Wes Anderson - IMDb

I hated this film, and had to fast-forward a lot of it. I’m not a fan of Anderson at all, much as Goldblum is always singing his praises - I just don’t get it, I guess. Anderson is a master of visual spectacle, but he’s one of the worst writers out there, and pithy lines don’t make up for the complete lack of character that any of his films have.

Alistair Hennessy is no exception. He’s pithy, vaguely (comedically?) sociopathic, and is kinda DTF... And that’s about it. Even Goldblum can’t really add that much depth to this guy, because there’s no depth in other characters for him to play off. 

2006 - Man of the Year, dir. Barry Levinson - IMDb

Mmm, so, Man of the Year surprised me. 

It’s definitely quite weak, when it comes to plot and writing - the jokes aren’t at their strongest; it can’t really decide whether it wants to be a comedy or a political thriller; some of the jokes and commentary are very off-colour and have not aged well; it seeks to set out a political moral without making any particular targets. Nonetheless, I rather enjoyed it - it doesn’t pretend to be a higher art than it is, and I think it’s still enjoyable. The primary drawback is probably that the premise of a comedian being elected president of the USA is much less hilariously unbelievable in the wake of the Trump campaign, and that colours my perception a little - some of the protag’s comments about immigration or women, the way he responds to other candidates in debate, Hell, even Robin Williams’ wearing of a red baseball cap at one point... All of those elements kinda take the humour out of it a bit because of the Trump election, but hey, it was 2006 - how could they possibly know?

Goldblum’s character in this, Mr Stewart, is the lawyer and primed attack dog of a corrupt company that produces the electronic voting machines responsible for Williams’ character being elected. He isn’t at his most Goldblum-esque in this, I have to say - he’s sharp, nasty, and very business-focused, but he doesn’t get that much time on screen, and his on-screen moments don’t lean very much into his usual charm and humour. Stewart is actually a very dull, run-of-the-mill evil corporate type, and he was a pretty boring character. 

2007 - Raines, TV Series - IMDb

I will write whatever you want if you can get me a download link for this, or somewhere where I can just buy the fucking series, from Ireland. I am desperate to watch it, because it looks fucking awful. Michael Raines is a detective who hallucinates that his victims help him solve the crimes.

Doesn’t that sound so bad? I need it. 

2009-2010 - Law & Order: Criminal Intent, TV Series - IMDb

So like, you know the shtick with Law & Order. It’s a gory, stupid crime procedural that’s just really stupid. This one, Criminal Intent, is about major crimes, but honestly, I have little to no idea exactly what a major crime is, even having watched the two seasons in which Zach Nichols is a marauding force. 

Zach Nichols himself is... Fascinating. So, you know how there’s this fucking trend of just, mean detective who everyone lets be mean because he’s a ~genius~ or whatever, and everyone is always like “ugh, he fucking sucks, but we gotta let him do that”? That is not the case with Zach Nichols. Zach Nichols is nothing short of a genuine sociopath, continuously manipulative, randomly and without provocation is he cruel to victims, witnesses and criminals alike. At no point does anybody call him out for being terrible, or even admitting he’s being terrible. It’s like no one registers the cruelty of his behaviour, or cares.

Honestly, I expect it’s quite accurate as to the New York police system, and in the mean time, it’s really fucking hot. He’s my favourite of all of Goldblum’s characters, and he disgusts me on literally every level. 

2010 - Morning Glory, dir. Roger Michell - IMDb

Morning Glory is... It starts out very bland and uninspiring, but it does grow on you more as it goes on. In my opinion, it would have been better if they’d just tried to bill it genuinely, as a comedy-drama, which is what it is - instead, they tried to shoehorn in a very ugly actor I forget the name of as a love interest for Rachel McAdams, I presume in desperate hope of earning that rom-com dollar. Nonetheless, it’s a cute enough concept - TV journalist gets her dream job running a news studio, and has to get bully and asshole anchor Harrison Ford to be fun and wholesome for the morning show. It’s cute, and I do think it’s worth watching despite some of the issues with it.

Jerry is like... He’s so fucking great. Jerry is just an ass. He’s rude, he’s biting, he’s constantly telling McAdams’ character to make stuff that is impossible work, and he very much eats, breathes, and sleeps his job, while packing in time to jog and to fuck an extremely stupid girl, Lisa, he put in the newsroom, who believes in shit like past lives and angels, and is literally the best character in the movie. 

Jerry and Lisa are the fucking greatest, everyone else can go home. 

According to the IMDb credits, he has a wife who is unnamed, but like... I have no memory of her even being in the movie, honestly. It’s not the greatest of cinematic works.

2010 - The Switch, dir. Josh Gordan & Will Speck - IMDb

The Switch? Bad concept. It’s about Jason Bateman’s character stealing the sperm donation that Jennifer Aniston was going to use to get pregnant, and then replacing it with his own. So like, off the bat, the whole reproductive rape, grievious sexual assault thing, that the movie... Kinda expects you to view as romantic? Somehow? I don’t.... get it. Apparently it’s okay because their characters are “friends”.

Anyway, moving onto the important part, Leonard, Jeff’s character, is great. He’s go the BDE going on; at one point he’s walking on the treadmill while eating a candy bar, and mocks Jason Bateman for not doing the same; he’s sarcastic, eccentric, and a massive THOT that lets women handfeed him; and, inexplicably, despite being Jason Bateman’s boss, him and Bateman are best friends. 10 out of 10 Goldblums for Leonard, who they didn’t bother to give a last name to. 

2012 - Zambezia, dir. Wayne Thornley - IMDb

Egh. Like, even for a kid’s movie this one was pretty bland? The actual design and animation is pretty beautiful - I love the designs of all the wildlife, which is the main focus of it, and that’s really well-done throughout; there’s also a star-studded cast of voice actors. The story is pretty dull, and the script ain’t great, but hey. It’s a kid’s movie, and I think it does what it means to do. 

Ajax, Goldblum’s character, is pretty cute - he’s like, a busybody, like the fucking... Toucan or whatever he is in the Lion King. He’s the advisor to the bird king or whatever. That’s... I mean, that’s pretty much it. There’s very little to say here. 

2013 - Le Week-end, dir. Roger Michell - IMDb

Le Week-end is fucking adorable. It’s about this struggling middle-aged couple who go to Paris for a weekend to try to rekindle their marriage, and they run around committing shenanigans, arguing, and generally being a little bit adorable. 

They meet Morgan, who is an old schoolfriend of Jim Broadbent’s character, and is now like, a best-selling writer in economics, and he invites them for a really stupid dinner party full of really impressive people, which makes both of them feel very inadequate. Jim Broadbent spends a lot of the party with Morgan’s weird teenage son, chatting about how Morgan is kind of a dick, but honestly, Morgan is just... Not self-aware. He’s pretty much in love with Jim Broadbent the entire time, and sings everybody’s praises, then comes to rescue them both at the end.

He’s very cute, kinda selfish, kind of disconnected from reality, and I have a lot of affection for him. 

2014 - The Grand Budapest Hotel, dir. Wes Anderson - IMDb

The Grand Budapest Hotel is like... It’s a Wes Anderson film. Egh. 

Deputy Kovacs is probably the least Goldblum-y character in any Goldblum role. He doesn’t have many of the verbal tics, and to be honest, he doesn’t even move his hands in the typical Goldblum fashion - if you look at the dinner scene, you can see his fingers twitching as he tries to keep his hand still. 

Kovacs has some good lines, but like any Anderson character, doesn’t really have a character. 

2015 - Mortdecai, dir. David Koepp - IMDb

Mortdecai is a terrible fucking film, and I despised it. It was just awful, it really was, and Johnny Depp and Gwyneth Paltrow’s characters were each fucking insufferable. It’s about this posh cunt who sells art, and then lots of people try to kill him because he’s posh, and a cunt.

Jeff’s character, Milton Krampf, is the father of Olivia Munn’s character, and Olivia Munn is a nymphomaniac who wants to fuck Johnny Depp. Milton gets like, 5 minutes of screentime, and is weirdly on board with his daughter banging Johnny Depp, but that’s it. If you ask my opinion, they should have had Milton try to bang Depp, and let Olivia Munn be in charge, but like... It was a bad movie. There was no thinking outside the box. 

2017 - Thor: Ragnarok, dir. Taika Waititi - IMDb

I mean, what do I even say? 

Thor: Ragnarok is like, my least favourite Thor film, but not because it’s not great. Thor: Ragnarok is so much better than most of the other Marvel films put together - it’s fun, it’s snappy, it’s beautifully shot, it has a vision, etc. etc. Taika Waititi’s humour mostly isn’t my thing, but his comedy is so well-ranging and so well-done that like, even if it isn’t your thing, you still get laughs out of his movies. Ragnarok is a great movie - it’s not my favourite for like, Loki’s characterisation, but... Honestly, when you’re watching it, that stuff just falls away. It’s so entertaining and so well done, even if I don’t agree with some of the characterization and story choices. 

And the GM, God, he’s... Just terrible. I adore him. You know I adore him, this whole blog is just GM fanfiction. He’s an Eldritch being with unlimited power who forces people to fight in an intergalactic alien arena while shtupping Loki Laufeyson and being too lazy to properly rule a planet. What’s not to love?

2018 - Seth Rogen’s Hilarity for Charity, dir. Ryan Polito - IMDb

Hilarity for Charity was not funny, and was generally very painful to watch. I would recommend you skip through all of the “comedy” except for Tiffany Kaddish and John Mulaney. 

At the end of the special, Jeff Goldblum plays the human face of the Netflix Algorithm, and playfully talks about destroying all human life. It’s pretty cute. 

2018 - Isle of Dogs, dir. Wes Anderson - IMDb

I fell asleep during this. Like, within a half hour, I fell asleep. 

Goldblum is underutilised, but to be honest, so are a lot of the characters - Isle of Dogs is a very weird movie, and I’m a little unclear as to some of the choices Anderson made with it, but visually, it’s a very strong movie, and it’s more enjoyable than most. 

I still fell asleep. 

Goldblum’s character, Duke, is like, a husky with a cheerful attitude, and he’s constantly gossiping and making shit up. His lines are good fun.  

2018 - Hotel Artemis, dir. Drew Pearce - IMDb

Now, Hotel Artemis, not a great movie. The plot is very lacking, the characters mostly cardboard archetypes instead of developed individuals... I think the film has a lot of issues with telling the audience the stuff that could be shown much more artfully, but like, egh.

Despite those issues, Orian Franklin - Niagara - is a very interesting character. He’s in the movie for a very short amount of time (barely twenty-five minutes of screentime, if that) but he’s a really interesting enigma, and I really loved what little they bothered to do with him.

He’s one of those characters that’s much more interesting in fanfic than in the canon. 

[green-eyeddragonfanfiction]

War of Attrition: Chapter 13

Pairing: Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier x Reader Summary: Best friends with Steve Rogers, renowned Howling Commando, and married to one James Buchanan Barnes, your life wasn’t perfect, but it was as close as it could possibly be in the middle of World War II. Then you fell from a train in the Alps, and everything changed. You spent nearly 70 years as a tool of Hydra alongside your beloved, though your past with him was more often than not forgotten. You and Bucky set your plan in motion. It’s time to track down IS-003 and put an end to this chapter of your life. However, per usual, things don’t go as planned. Warnings: Swearing (always), mentions of torture and death Word Count: ~3,929 A/N: Sorry, Diablo 3 has stolen my soul. I swear I’m not neglecting my blog on purpose. 

Masterlist // Book One // Book Two

Previous Chapter // Next Chapter

It worked, more or less. Bucky’s lip quirked up at the corner, though his smile was more of a grimace. “We’re not gonna stay there though, are we?” he asked knowingly.

You shook your head slowly. You hadn’t wanted to talk about this just yet, but he knew you too well for your own good. “Only for a few days. I’m… we’re not done yet,” you said, nodding your head towards the file that Bucky had carefully stowed on the dash.

Bucky’s gaze turned hard. Determined. There was absolutely zero hesitation when he looked expectantly at you. God, you did not deserve this man. “What’s the plan, Doll?”

The plan, as it turned out, was to retrieve the last of the tech you’d left in Indiana, but only after you’d given the Batmobile flight capabilities. Coulson’s little corvette, Lola, had reminded you almost violently of Howard, though you’d put a lid on those thoughts before you had a breakdown in the middle of your little auto shop.

After that, it was to wipe Hydra off the face of the Earth.

The nano mask you gave Bucky hid his features flawlessly (too well as far as you were concerned. You missed his face the moment he put it on). Austin was elated to find out you had a boyfriend (explaining a readily absent boyfriend was much easier than explaining a readily absent husband). Austin was surprised you were leaving for good after a week, but he didn’t dwell too long on it, which you appreciated. Bucky got twitchy when people started asking too many questions.

Bucky was taking full advantage of the nano skin you’d made for him. He only wore short sleeved shirts and tanks the entire week, not that you could blame him.

When Austin went home for the day and you were alone in the safety of your shop you removed his nano skin and kissed every inch of the scarred skin near the edge of the metal limb. 

It was these quiet, peaceful moments that you cherished.

“We could just hide,” you said quietly one day while you were under the Batmobile and half-covered in grease.

Bucky, who was sitting in the chair next to the car, shifted almost silently. “Whaddya mean?” he asked after a moment, though you were sure he knew what you were talking about.

“Steve. And Natalia. And their friend Sam. They’re all looking for us,” you said quietly.

“And so’s the entire world government,” Bucky said quietly.

You scoffed and rolled your eyes as you fiddled with a capacitor. “Yeah, and the world government is run by a bunch of inept politicians who’ll never find us. We both know Natalia and Steve would find us way before them.”

Bucky grunted and you could almost see the grim half-smile on his face when he spoke. “They’re more stubborn than the rest of ‘em combined.”

“Can’t ever imagine where they got that from,” you muttered dryly.

Bucky huffed dismissively. “Natalia’s at least half your fault and Steve was born stubborn. I ain’t got nothin’ to do with that.”

You sighed and rolled out from under the Batmobile, satisfied with your upgrades. You accepted Bucky’s hand without thinking, a “thank you” slipping from your lips without even consciously thinking about it. How easy it was to slip back into living with this man.

“Fine, I take credit for half of Natalia’s stubbornness... so long as I get full credit for her ingenuity,” you said with a hint of playfulness as you hopped into the Batmobile.

“Denied,” Bucky said through the open window.

You frowned but nodded after a second, considering. “Yeah, I s’pose you were the one to teach her how to make a flamethrower seventy-six different ways, huh?” You said, pushing the button for hover-flight capabilities.

“Seventy-nine, thank you very much,” Bucky said, smile working its way onto his face as the car shuddered then shot two feet up into the air and stayed there, humming gently. “Alfred, you finish decrypting the data we salvaged from Reinhardt’s lab yet?” he asked the air.

“Decryption protocols at 97% completion, Master Barnes. I recommend you and the Mistress finish packing immediately if you wish to leave the moment it is concluded.

“Got it, Alfred. Thank you,” Bucky said easily. It had amused you how easily Bucky had taken to the AI. It was adorable how much Bucky loved all the futuristic tech you’d shown him. He’d always liked [questionable quality] sci-fi pulp novels. While Steve had brought books like the Machinery of War, Heroes of the Western Front, and other military-themed books, Bucky had brought all sorts of science and sci-fi books. When you heard about their visit to the Stark Expo back in ‘41 you’d laughed (back when laughter was much easier to come by, even on the European front). You’d been there that day, helping Stark out (he’d bribed you with shiny schematics and a fat wad of greenbacks that would buy you the raw materials you’d been eyeing enviously for months). You and Bucky had been mere feet away from each other and hadn’t even known it.

“How’s integration with the flight systems, Alfred?” you asked, smiling at Bucky’s retreating back as he went into the apertment. The first few days you hadn’t left each other’s sides, but he’d lately taken to leaving you for brief periods, almost as if he was seeing if he could. There was always a brief flash of relief on his face when he returned and you were there, waiting. You’d curse yourself forever for leaving that doubt in his mind, but you hadn’t figured time travel out (yet), so there was no changing it. You’d have to prove his trust well-placed each and every day from now on.

“Perfectly, Mistress Barnes. Although the decryption has taken some of my computing power, I’m still uploading efficiently into the programming. Transition should be complete by the time decryption is finished.”

You smiled and turned the flight function off, watching out the window as the tires righted themselves and the car dropped back to the ground gracefully.

“You’re wonderful, Alfred. Did I ever tell you that?” you asked the AI with a proud smile.

“At least twice a day, Mistress Barnes,” Alfred said. He sounded fondly amused.

“I’m going to go help Bucky finish packing. Let us know when decryption and integration are done, alright?” you said as you slipped out of the car and gave the hood a loving pat.

“Of course, Mistress Barnes. You will be notified upon completion of both programs.”

You nodded in satisfaction and left the garage to go back into the repair shop through the back door. You immediately went up the stairs to the apartment part of the building, not too surprised to hear the gentle movement of items and clothing coming from the direction of your room.

You turned the corner and watched Bucky work silently, admiring his broad shoulders and lithe, graceful movements.

“See something you like?” he asked after a moment, not pausing in his endeavor of folding up all the clothes you’d accrued in your time in Indiana.

“Yup,” you said, popping the ‘p’ playfully.

That earned a short laugh from Bucky, breathy and exasperated, but it was music to your ears.

“You got alotta clothes,” Bucky said, shaking a flouncy white top in his hand to prove his point.

You shrugged. “Got used to living in one spot for a while. Things tend to gather when you aren’t constantly on the move,” you said, glancing at the single backpack he brought with him, placed on top of one of your duffels.

“Is that what you meant earlier? Hiding in plain sight? Living as other people? Not contacting Natalia or Steve ever?” he asked quietly, hands stilling.

You sagged against the door frame and a deep frown creased your brow and pulled your lips down into a grimace. “They’re doing good now, Buck. Even Natalia. She got out. Saved the fucking world. She has friends now, or at least as close as she’ll ever let herself get to having ‘em. Steve... Steve doesn’t need us muckin’ up his life. He’d fight the whole damn earth if he had to, just to save us. We might need him, but the world needs him more, Buck, even if they don’t know it yet. I won’t make him choose between helpin’ us and defendin’ the world.”

Bucky’s shoulders sagged. He turned his head to smile sadly at you from over his shoulder. “I hate it when you’re right, you know that?” he asked quietly. “I was hopin’ you’d try to convince me to go see ‘em. So I had an excuse to put the lot of us in danger... but being stubbornly reckless was always Steve’s thing, wasn’t it?”

You walked up behind him and wrapped your arms around his waist. He leaned back into you and you placed a kiss firmly between his shoulder blades. “Not so sure, Buck. We had alotta stupid to go around.”

He smiled ruefully and turned in your arms so he could gather you up in his own big, muscular limbs. “S’pose you’re right. Again. Peggy really was the only one with her head screwed on right, huh?”

You smiled and refused to let yourself cry as you thought about Peggy and the guys. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“I hate to interrupt, but the decryption and integration programs are complete, Mistress and Master Barnes,” Alfred said quietly from the communication device in your ear.

You nodded and placed a kiss to Bucky’s cheek. He caught your lips in a brief kiss before he released you and finished folding the last few shirts into the bag.

“Where we headed, Alfred?” you asked as you picked up the full bags and began walking to the garage. Your mobile lab was already packed into the space in the hood. The bags would be shoved in the back seats for lack of anywhere else to put them. The Batmobile wasn’t exactly built for travel, but you’d make do.

“Sokovia, Mistress Barnes,” Alfred informed you as you walked into the garage. “It is a country in-”

You waved his explanation away. “I know about it. I read about it more than once in Reinhardt’s physical files. You’re sure that’s where he took IS-003?” you asked as you shoved the heavy bags into the back seat. One was full of Bucky’s weapons. Why that man needed fifty guns when you could build one that could do everything else the others did but better was beyond you.

“It is the most likely location, though not the only possibility. According to the information I’ve gathered from Reinhardt-Whitehall’s data banks, there is an active Hydra base near its capital, Novi Grad. It is under the command of one of the last heads of Hydra, Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker.”

“Still active, you say?” you asked as you slipped onto the hood, waiting for Bucky to bring down the last of the bags.

“That is correct. After the death of Reinhardt-Whitehall, activity increased greatly. It is unclear exactly what prompted the sudden increase in activity. I would recommend moving cautiously until their goals have been discerned.”

“Noted. Thanks, Alfy. Make sure the boat’s ready to go, alright? I want to get there as soon as possible.”

“Or course, Mistress Barnes,” Alfred said diligently.

Bucky slipped in a second later, somehow still graceful even while carrying two large, heavy, bulky bags. If you weren’t enjoying the show so much you might have been perturbed at how elegantly he managed to move at all times.

“That all of it?” you asked as he hefted the bags into the back.

At his nod you pulled him into your arms and stood on your toes to plant a loving, long kiss to his lips. “Let’s get goin’ then, yeah? We have some truly evil bastards to put in the ground.”

He smiled and pecked you once more on the lips. “Now you’re talkin’ my language, Sugar,” he said, voice so low and syrup-sweet that your knees felt all wobbly... and you didn’t even have human knees anymore.

You smiled and kissed him once more, but didn’t let yourself linger. “If you don’t get in the car this instant we’ll be here for another four hours.”

“Four hours?” he asked playfully, waggling his eyebrows at you. “Someone has faith in my stamina. I’m almost a hundred years old, y’know. Give a guy a break,” he said winking playfully at you.

You stared flatly at him. “Your record is eight hours and we only stopped because I was so tired I was passing out from exhaustion.”

Bucky’s grin turned lecherous. “I was a younger man then. I can’t be ex-”

You brought your hand up and slapped it over his mouth. “That was two days ago, Buck.”

His eyes actually twinkled with amusement in the dim light of the shop. It was a look you saw so rarely on his face you couldn’t help but enjoy it. You took your hand from his mouth and brought your lips to his in a slow kiss that left your mind blissfully blank of everything except how wonderful it felt to have Bucky up against you.

“Get in the car, Mister Barnes,” you said after you moved away, a small smile of your own dancing on your lips.

His response was to slip into the driver’s side before you got the chance.

You mock-glared at him before you went to the passenger side and got in. “If you crash the Batmobile you won’t see under my clothes for a month,” you threatened as he turned the car on.

Bucky turned to look at you as the garage door rolled up, smirk dancing on his lips. “We both know that’s not true, Doll,” he said with such conviction that you glared at him in earnest.

“No, it’s not, but I’ll definitely be cross with you for a long time,” you admitted.

“I will ensure Master Barnes does not crash the Batmobile, Mistress Barnes,” Alfred assured you.

“Argh, two against one. Your faith in me is inspiring,” Bucky said dryly as he pulled out of the garage and onto the street.

You rolled your eyes. “Let’s just hurry and get to the coast, yeah? We have a long trip ahead of us.”

Bucky turned to look at you with a stare that had you panicking for a split second. “Whatever you say, Doll,” he said evenly, giving you only the briefest second to ponder your poor decision before he slammed the gas pedal down and sent the Batmobile rocketing forward.

Novi Grad, Sokovia. Europe - 2015

Sokovia was beautiful, if a little poor and very unstable. You and Bucky slipped seamlessly into the population. The people hated SHIELD and the Avengers, especially Steve and Tony Stark. The SHIELD here, though, was Hydra. They slipped in during the rebellions a short time ago.

The Hydra base wasn’t exactly hidden, even if it was a little distance from the city. You could see it up on the hill from nearly every point in town. The problem was that it was heavily fortified. The tech they were using was advanced. Far more advanced than any other Hydra base you’d seen up until now. Even your drones couldn’t pierce the shield they had protecting the main building. There were enough turrets inside and along the perimeter to level the city. You had no idea how to attack it without getting blasted to bits before you got anywhere near the perimeter. The rest of their weapons were advanced enough that you wouldn’t chance the Batmobile’s shielding against their big guns. 

“You’re doing the thing again,” Bucky said quietly from the doorway.

You slowly tore your gaze from the schematics of the base, blinking a few times before you processed what he’d said. “What?” you asked eloquently.

Bucky huffed out a laugh and walked over to your spot on the floor, carefully stepping over schematics (though he walked straight through the hologram of the base) and sat down next to you. He pulled you into his lap and you went willingly, squirming a bit until you were comfortable. You tucked your head under his chin and stared at the schematics, mind already going back under. “You’re doing the thing where you try to stare your problems into submission. Have to say, with the exception of Morita, that’s never really worked so well for you,” he said playfully, wrapping his big arms around your waist as he stared over your head at the blueprints and plans.

You sighed and leaned back against him. “According to the civilians I talked to today, ‘SHIELD’ took volunteers from the population to run tests on. They’re being collected by this man, Doctor Henri List. He offers them power in exchange for their cooperation. Most of the people he takes are victims of the riots in one way or another. Wanna know the kicker?” you asked Bucky grimly.

Bucky squeezed you gently. “I have a feeling you’ll tell me anyway, not that I can’t guess.”

You sighed. “Hydra started the riots. They caused the unrest. They changed their public faces a few times, set each faction against the other.”

“So they’ve set the people at odds with their government.”

“And other large global powers, such as the U.S. and the U.N. Not to mention each other.”

Bucky let out a long breath. “So we don’t know who or what exactly could be inside waiting for us,” he surmised.

You nodded and flicked through the images on the hologram. “It’s hard to get readings on the inside of the base while the energy barrier’s up, but the outside defenses are fairly straight forward, if hard to work around. The more I look at it... the more I think we won’t be able to get inside with brute force.”

Bucky tensed slightly, just like you knew he would. “You’re not going in there. Not undercover. If they find you-”

“I know, Buck,” you said, cutting across that train of thought. “I know.” And you did. You knew what would happen if they found out who you were. “But the longer we stay here, the longer that horror factory stays up and running... Primary mission is still to retrieve IS-003 or any information we can find on it, but we can’t just leave them to their own devices. The tech they’re churning out... I haven’t seen anything this advanced since Zola and Schmidt...”

Bucky shifted nervously beneath you. “Do you think it’s the Tesseract? I thought Thor Odinson took it back with him after the Battle of Manhattan,” Bucky said, frowning as he shifted through his mind for the right memories.

You shrugged helplessly. “I can’t be sure. If it’s not the Tesseract itself then it’s something with similar properties. I’ve only been able to analyze a few small samples, but none of them match any models from earth up until now. It’s a combination of Chitauri and something else.” You sighed and relaxed back into his arms, absolving yourself of that particular problem for just a moment. “How did surveillance go?”

You felt him shrug his shoulders ever so slightly. “Nothin’ new. I’ve been keepin’ track of shipments in and out like you asked, but it’s hard to get close without being noticed. I’m good, but they have some seriously sophisticated scanning equipment.”

“That sounds about right...” you said quietly, staring despondently down at the files. You chewed on your lip as you deliberated. “I could... I could call in SHIELD. The real SHIELD,” you said finally, almost regretting the words as you said them.

Bucky tensed beneath you, arms nearly crushing you to his chest. “We ain’t doin’ that,” he said quietly, face buried in your hair. “I don’t trust ‘em.”

You smiled sadly and ghosted your fingers gently over his right hand. “I know, Buck. I don’t trust most of ‘em, either. Gabe’s grandkid is one of ‘em though, y’know. They can’t all be bad,” you said quietly.

“All it takes is one. One word whispered in the right ear by one person who isn’t loyal to Coulson or the new SHIELD and we’re right back to where we were a year ago. Brainwashed, in a cryo pod or out killing innocent people. We’re not trustin’ ‘em, (Y/N). ‘Sides, Coulson said himself he’d bring you in himself if he got the chance.”

“He didn’t try to take me in in Puerto Rico,” you said softly.

“Cause his entire team was beat to hell and you’d just saved Gabe’s grandkid.”

You groaned and ran a hand through your hair. “I just don’t know what to do, Bucky,” you admitted at last.

Bucky brushed your hair out of the way and placed a few tender kisses to your neck. “It’s okay, Doll. You don’t have to come up with all the answers. I’m here. We’re together now. And there’s not a single problem that can’t be solved with some good old fashioned Barnes ingenuity.”

You turned to look at him, faint smile playing on your lips. “Where did this optimism come from?”

Bucky shrugged. “I think it’s less optimism and more an awareness of the lengths you’d go through to get revenge. Hell hath no fury like a woman spurned and all that. And we both know the many, many methods I have for taking down a Hydra base and all the inhabitants. I spend a lot of time fantasizing about it.”

You smirked at him. “Should I be insulted you spend more time thinking about killing people than you do about your lovely wife?”

Bucky raised a single eyebrow. “Who said that? Sweetheart, I didn’t leave the house often because I spent most of my time thinking about ya. It’s hard to get anything done with a stiffy, y’know?”

You stared at him for a moment before breaking into genuine laughter. “Oh my god, Bucky.”

Bucky frowned and got up from his seat in front of the computer and made his way over to you. The tiny apartment you’d rented out while you were in Sokovia meant the two of you were never more then a short walk away and you could hear each other from any part of the house.

“Hey, Doll?” Bucky asked from the doorway, looking at the tablet in confusion.

“What’s up, Sweetheart?” you asked, tearing your gaze from yet another simulation.

“I’m getting some chatter...” he said, frowning down at the pad.

“Whaddya mean?” you asked, still distracted by the numbers running across your screens.

“(Y/N),” Bucky said quietly. Something in his voice made you truly look at him and you froze at the look on his face. “They’re here,” he said softly.

You swallowed thickly. “Who?” you asked, though you were pretty sure you already knew.

Bucky turned the tablet around so you could see the blurry images on the screen. You could see the audio feed that Bucky had muted while he talked to you. He pressed a button on the screen and suddenly voices were filling the cramped room.

“Shit!” said a voice you recognized from countless interviews and reports. Anthony Edward Stark.

“Language!” said a voice you’d know anywhere. Steve Rogers. You nearly laughed at that. It seemed that Steve’s knee-jerk response of rebuking your and Bucky’s foul language had survived the ice.

Bucky paused the audio log and brought up a different one. “At long last is lasting a little long, boys.” Natalia.

“They’re here, (Y/N). Attacking the base.”

Next Chapter

If you’d like to be tagged in this series, like this post! Sorry, but responses to this post asking to be tagged will be ignored, so send me an ask or like one of the taglist posts!

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[neuroncryptid]

With the recent reveal of several Phoenix Lords (RIP Karandras) I've been kept up at night, stuck on just understanding what it means to don their armor and what it says about the Eldar. As evidence by the Harlequins, an army of clowns is many things but subtle is not one of them, a lot of Eldar identity is defined by theatre. Its all so. . . enticing.

The Craftworlds, the traditional "vanilla" flavored space elves, live lives in the neat constraints of the paths. In order to stave off the ever hungry gaze of Slaanesh, the Aeldari dedicate themselves a particular craft or occupation. This is shown on the tabletop most clearly through the Aspect Warriors: Striking Scorpions, Warp Spiders, Howling Banshees, Dire Avengers, and more. They are masters of a particular art of war, individuals who dedicate themselves to replicating an aspect of Khaine, the god of murder. But do not be mistaken. The paths are not just a warrior thing. The poet, the musician, the painter, the sculptor, all of these things are represented by a path. They each are incredibly specific.

An individual Eldar may spend a century, maybe even thousands of years, on a singular path. But they might also just simply dip their toes into one only to hop to another after a short time. The goal of the paths is not to lose oneself to one or even master a particular thing. The act of a repeated task is enough. That, the self control, is the purpose of the paths.

Most captivating to me is the getting lost though. We are told this is a tragedy but being lost to the paths is nonetheless shown in both lore and tabletop to produce the best at a task or role. This of course makes sense. Should you spend a thousand years on one thing, have it become your person and you will become the best at that thing. But I can't help being stuck on what's lost.

The 1995 animated film Ghost in the Shell depicts a world of cyborgs and cybernetics. Every body contains some artificial product. The physical self is produced piecemeal on an assembly line. Some, like Major Motoko Kusanagi, have their entire bodies replaced. Only the brain remains, but even that is enhanced, probed, has metal shoved into it.

Of course these artificial bodies are designed with aesthetic in mind, but the individual is housed in an impressive array of augmentation and precise tuning. This leads to bodies being specialized for the tasks they need to fulfill. The Major is made for police work, her entire being curated to the application of force on behalf the state.

Not even the sparks of electricity in your brain is safe from this sense of artificiality. The thoughts that race through your skull can be manipulated, reprogrammed, hijacked. If this is what it means to exist in this imagined future, then what does it even mean to be a person.

This brings me back to the concept of the Phoenix Lords and the Aeldari. The Lords are in a way, just sentient suits of armor. But when they are worn they do not just speak to the individual. The individual becomes the person in the armor. To wear these plates is to cease to exist. You die so an individual "great hero" may walk again.

This is seen too, though in a less destructive to the individual form, in the Exarchs. These are the "sergeants" of the aspect warriors on the tabletop. They are those who lose themselves to the paths, those who become so dedicated to a form of murder that the act becomes more themselves than whoever took the first step into the shrine. Like the Phoenix Lords, Exarchs are kind of a sentient armor but unlike them, a person donning it is not completely lost. They are subsumed into the gestalt of past wearers. They become amalgamation, reshaped into a more honed individual.

But this doesn't just end there. Even the non-war focused Eldar see a form of this loss of self. When a conflict requires the conscription of the civilian population, the people take on a "mask" that separates the mind from the excess of war. The individual is hijacked to better suit the role. Of course, once any eldar leaves an aspect or the battlefield they are returned to their former self.

The Aeldari culture sees this as normal. It is made from the ground up with systems which facilitate the donning and discarding of a self depending on the role they find themselves in. There is of course tragedy in this from their perspective, but its only in the complete loss of self. The narratives of 40k place the war mask and the exarchs as separate things, diametrically opposed but they're not really are they? In a way the craftworlds are an assembly line producing bodies who's particular inhabitant is repurposed, reshaped for whatever path they find themselves on.

This. . . implied lack of actual self is so interesting by sharing space in the same civilization which has each of its citizens wear a spirit stone, a device which may save the soul from the jaws of She Who Thirsts by containing it in a gem. Clearly there is something, someone who is contained within them; the Wraith constructs show this. But who are these stones saving? Who is that self, the individual being kept?

[helenofsimblr]

I have a LOT of catching up to do!

I was tagged to do the 57 facts thing by @fayts4 @tabbyrhsims4simblr and @midnightdevotions I think I got everybody if not you’ll have to forgive me my shoddy memory. But I have so many blogs to catch up on I am ready to cry!

1. Simblr is a secret thing for me, only my husband knows about it. Its my own guilty pleasure.

2. I recently became a parent and I am very much planning to have at least 1 more while there is still time!

3. I have done a lot of work on some really amazing stuff, none of which I can ever talk about due to secrecy agreements. 

4. I have a PhD in mathematics, so that proves I am super boring.

5. I tried my first cigarette at age 11, but didn’t touch it again till age 26 which was when I took it up, I would smoke anything from 0 to 10 cigs a day depending on the day I had. I quit cigs this year aged 32 in January. So hopefully didn’t do myself too much damage.

6. At age 29 I started smoking cigars on special occasions those are: my birthday, Christmas, New year, Valentines, and my wedding anniversary. Being the “badass” I am, I inhale every 5th drag for a little extra kick, even though you shouldn’t do that... I have not quit the cigars!

7. I have a younger brother and an older sister, I am the middle sibling.

8. I have only ever had 3 boyfriends in my life. And 1 “fancy man.”

9. I was engaged to be married to my second boyfriend, I basically twisted his arm into it because of my condition I was afraid I’d be some old woman called Ms instead of Mrs, he did not want to be married, not to me anyway. I should have realised that back then...

10. While I was engaged to boyfriend number 2 I had an affair which lasted about 8 months, it was with a colleague at work, and it was amazing! I don’t condone cheating, not in the least, but I realise, the sensible thing to do would have been to call off the engagement. 

11. I had giganstism (Acromegaly) as a child, I am 6 foot 7 inches tall bare foot. I do not like being this tall... not one bit. There are so many health issues that come with this, that it really isn’t worth it.

12. When I stopped growing, Acromegaly causes your face and hands and feet to carry on growing... I have size 14 feet. UK size. My hands are large enough that I can grip 4 tennis balls in one hand easily. 

13. I have no tattoos. I have never ever wanted a tattoo. I don’t actually like them very much.

14. I don’t have any piercings anywhere else beside my ears. I have 2 piercings in each ear.

15. I am a huge petrol head. I love cars and I will happily have a discussion with any man about them, or woman if she is so inclined!

16. Due to the facial changes caused by Acromegaly I decided to go and get cosmetic surgery in late 2017 to change my face back to a more softer look.

17. I love Star Trek. Captain Kirk is my favourite captain, he is the best. No discussion. If it wasn’t for Kirk there would be no Picard, no Sisko, no Janeway. None of those pretenders would be here!

18. I think Quentin Tarrantino and his films are vastly overrated and often incomprehensible and worst yet, non linear. 

19. I really dislike the taste of alcohol. The only drinks I get on well with are Guiness and Gin and tonics. Most others I don’t like. I hate wine.

20. I hated that stupid Pokemon Go craze!! The amount of people who walked into me in the street... That shit was dangerous.

21. My hair used to be naturally blonde, but in recent years its started to get darker, which is why I now use colouring to keep it where it was.

22. I should wear glasses to read, but I don’t bother.

23. While preggers I had gestational diabetes. Which was not fun at all.

24. I love swimming, but I hate the sea because I am afraid of whats in it. Sharks, jellyfish, all sorts of wonderful, yet horrid creatures designed to kill and maim!

25. When I was doing my PhD, somebody on my research team literally took about 80% of my thesis content and used it in their thesis. I had  no time to appeal or go through proper channels as I already had a job lined up, and was due to have my pituitary tumor removed, therefore, my only option was to redo 80% of my thesis. 

26. I am not religious (at least not in any organised way), however, I find the theory of how the universe came into being utterly laughable. A big bang... seriously?? If before the universe, there was nothing, where did the shit that exploded come from? Its bullshit. Truth is, nobody knows for sure, but we’re so desperate to know that scientists will happily invent theories to fit what few facts they have.

27. Despite not being religious, I firmly believe in existence after death. I say existence, not life, there is a difference. I have seen what would be colloquially referred to as a “ghost” when I was 13 years old.

28. I love the old pulp sci fi, things like Lost in Space, and voyage to the bottom of the sea

29. My favourite foods are pizzas. I cannot get enough of them! In particular just bog standard pepperoni

30. I suck at sports. Any sport, and I suck at it.

31. I often worry about things so much I lose my perspective, I cannot help but worry and it usually leads to a cascade of worry and I may make poor decisions. 

32. I am part German. I can speak German, to a fashion... its not very good as I rarely use it.

33. I have regular chiropractic care and I have to say its worth every penny. I feel better physically now than I have in years! As a bonus, the IBS I suffered with, since I have been seeing my chiropractor has actually cleared up! 

34. I am currently trying to complete something on my bucket list, I am attempting to watch EVERY John Wayne film.

35. I hated Star Wars the Last Jedi. Shit film!

36. I have a cuddly toy from I was a baby which I still have! (I don’t sleep with it of course)

37. I love inappropriate/dirty jokes.

38. I am, somewhat, anti-abortion. I understand there is a time and a place for everything however, but given birth control and access to morning after pills... 

39. I am not political, I loathe politicians. None of them have a clue what it is like to be in the real world. Also... why do we have Ministers of health who have never been a nurse or doctor? And so forth... doesn’t make sense!

40. I have been married 3 years now. 

41. I cannot bend over and touch my toes.

42. I recently took a woman to court and won! After she keyed (Scratched the car with a key) my Range Rover from bumper to bumper in the supermarket. 

43. I hate shopping. I find it so tedious and inconvenient. I honestly do not understand how other females can find this a pleasurable activity!

44. I have never tried any illegal drugs in my life.

45. Apparently I was late performing all my children milestones. Walking, talking and potty training. I took months longer than my siblings did.

46. I find it really hard to go to the toilet in a public toilet. It disturbs me.

47. I hate it when people tell me “You’re late.” As though I have no concept or track of time. I usually reply with “I was quite aware before you pointed it out.” I never apologise for being late, unless I know that my being late was definitely my fault.

48. I am often amused by simblr. Especially at all these “dramas” that pop up round here. Particularly over custom content and how it should never be uploaded by anybody but the creator or changed or whatever... did I mention how somebody took 80% of my PhD thesis and used it in their work? Oh yes. Point number 25.

49. If I go for ice cream, doesn’t matter where it is, I will always go for vanilla.

50. White chocolate is my favourite chocolate of all. So sweet and creamy...

51. I am allergic to penicillin.

52. I love superhero films. Particularly the Marvel ones. I think Marvel do better films than DC but DC do better animated films / television than Marvel do.

53. I think Nolan’s batman trilogy is overrated speaking of superhero films.

54. Speaking of films, only once ever have I walked out of the cinema. I remember I went to see Mr and Mrs Smith, and half way through I walked out. Have never seen the end of that film since.

55. My favourite Junk Food is bacon double cheeseburgers! 

56. Due to having acromegaly... every year... without fail... I have to go and get a camera up my ass! Yeah its great being tall(!)

57. I HATE pears. I mean hate them! I hate the texture of them in my mouth, I hate the feel of their skin, I hate EVERYTHING about pears. Even sat here typing this I get goosebumps. If I was trapped on a desert island where all there was to eat was Pears. I would starve to death!

I tag, @themoonglitch @rebelsoulsims @igglemouse and @flowers--girl  and @sparkiemonkey and @alittledaylight do this EPIC tag. If you think you can’t. or done it, or don’t want to cool. 

[scifimagpie]

Global Warming: Why The Winds of Winter May Never Come

This morning, I found myself penning a feisty screed about sequels, and I've been meaning to write an article about them for some time. Apparently, the moment has come. 

I have a theory about why ASOIAF's main storyline is screwed up beyond repair. It's not unrelated to the issues of the Kingkiller Chronicles, which have also been all but abandoned by Patrick Rothfuss. As much as authors don't owe their fans instant gratification or satisfaction of every whim, offering a finishing date and moving that is a breach of etiquette and trust, especially since it's been going on for so many years. I'm no stranger to setting up sequels and struggling to finish them. No author is. But these books have gotten somewhat out of control, and after a few years of trying to discuss it, I think I can summarize the reasons why, both quickly and simply.

The what now? (No, really.)

If you've somehow been living under a rock or in a windowless void in some alternate dimension, A Song of Ice and Fire is the series by George R R Martin that's been adapted to a big-budget tv show by HBO. It's been a smash hit, especially for its controversy-courting topics and often blunt, insensitive approach to issues. It's basically historical fanfiction combining The War of the Roses (mostly as presented by Shakespeare), the Borgias of Renaissance Italy, Mongolian Huns circa Ghenghis Khan's reign, and Vikings, with protagonists plucked from other works of classic literature for spice, and absolutely shameless borrowing from Memory, Sorrow and Thorn's plots and themes (a series by author Tad Williams that features a fire priest, coming winter, undead creatures, nasty political conflict, and the reawakening of magic). (If you don't know those names, I recommend a wander through Wikipedia for the basics, because the history stuff is really cool. There's also somewhat inaccurate but entertaining and lush series about the Borgias, Vikings, and Mongolian rulers on Netflix. Shakespeare covered the whole War of the Roses, so you can listen to or watch readings of the plays on Youtube if you're wondering what those were about. There's no shame in reading notes for Shakespeare, and hearing all that intricate speech is easier than reading it sometimes. So now you know!) Oh, and there's some dragons, intriguing bits of Lovecraft/Robert E. Howard fanfiction that doesn't go anywhere, and nods to Celtic myth cycles that also don't really get used that much. Everyone else and their dog has covered the feminist and representation issues in the series, but this should give you a rough idea of what it's about or what it's like. He also kills way too many peasants in the series, which did not happen in mediaeval Europe, because a) they were civilians and b) peasants are an important resource in a non-industrial country, but I guess that's what it takes for an adequately upsetting body count. It has some strong points, like the way Martin manages to subvert tropes by exploring them very fully, and the disability representation is pretty good, in my opinion. It has tons of worldbuilding porn and description porn, but long-term readers of fantasy and pulp aren't going to find anything truly challenging here. Basically, it's fine. But it's not perfect, and it could be better - as I'll explain in a second. SO - be aware of the SPOILERS SPOILER SPOILERS referred to herein.

Why should we care? 

The thing is, A Song of Ice and Fire about the Starks. There are other characters, but we meet them first, we are given cues to care about them, and we connect with them. We explore more of their perspectives than those of any other family, including the Targaryens and Lannisters. Ned Stark died in the first book, as we probably all know. However, that wasn't a dealbreaker - as his family got scattered to the winds, readers and Martin had a strong motivation to see them reunited. The reuniting a family theme is actually underused, but it worked in Fivel Goes West and it worked here. Eagerly devouring the books, we all hoped to see the Starks come back together, surviving their harsh circumstances (which are historically inaccurate as heck, by the way). BUT - in book 3, when the Red Wedding happened (killing eldest son Rob Stark, his mother, and his new wife - even though his mother returned as a scary undead lady), it all fell apart. Sure, it was a brilliantly unpredicted plot twist - but it messed up the emotional throughline. 

Who do we care about, and why?

A land is made up of people. The history of a world is meaningless if it doesn't include individuals. By killing off so many Starks one by one - and by killing their direwolves, too - GRRM completely nuked his own emotional throughline. That's why books 4 and 5 start focusing on Noble #5 and Suitor #3, characters that we don't care about, and why they're such a mess. The books would benefit from focusing on non-noble characters, but classism fetishization is an important problem in fantasy as it is, and GRRM does little to remedy it. All the other families could be torn apart, but by killing too many of his real protagonists, he made the emotional throughline of the book completely collapse. I don't know if it can be fixed, and I think that's why The Winds of Winter just keeps failing to come out. He's trying to write his way out of a hole, but the fact remains that he killed the characters who gave us a reason to give a shit about the story. Someone might say "but the story is bigger than the Starks!" But that's the point - it isn't. They symbolise so many other families torn apart. There is no real hope in the series. It's equivalent to a romance novel where one of the protagonists gets killed halfway through (in a contemporary setting without magic or tech to bring them back) or a mystery where there's no solution.

What's wrong with that? 

Artistic works usually set up an emotional contract with the reader, albeit an unspoken one: "I will create people and a journey for you to care about, and you will spend your hours reading my work--and in exchange, I will provide you some kind of satisfying conclusion, or at least finish what I set up." ASOIAF has broken its most important throughline, and the author has inadvertently sabotaged himself. Between that and the pressure of living up to what he's set up - because The Big Fight That Changes Everything is a risky creative choice at the best of times, actually - Martin has to fight himself to get it out. Hence the years of delay. But if an editor had been allowed to cut all those stupid and unemotionally interesting attempts (far too late in the series, I might add) to hook us into someone else to care about, and to mess with his stupid murder-fetish earlier, maybe the series could have been saved. Of course, I might be wrong, and we might see The Winds of Winter come out any month now. But it sure is hard, as a former fan, to watch the deadlines keep getting pushed. Because it's not just "the book isn't done yet" - it's that he's mentioned release dates, and they fall through over and over. Even if that's his right, it does suck to deal with. And personally, I just don't care anymore. In such times as these, I've gotten weary of endless dark and gritty tales with few redeeming features. Having outgrown Can Lit and the fetishes of literary fiction - more on that in my next post - I need more than chronically depressed murder-hobo protagonists. I need hope, and life, and a world outside the muggy, stifling confines of imaginary Western Europe. ***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime, housemate, and their cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and nightmares, as well as social justice issues. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. Catch up with Michelle's news on the mailing list. Her books are available on Amazon, and she is also active on Medium, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and the original blog.

[darklink82]

Thor: Ragnarok is the First true Comic Book Movie

I’m not saying that it is the first superhero move nor the first movie based on a comic book, that would be stupid and wrong on so many levels. 

I’m saying that Thor: Ragnarok is the first superhero movie to show the true cracktasticly insane glory that is comic books. From the Jack Kriby inspired visuals to the absolutely insane world that seamlessly goes from mythological high fantasy to pulp sci-fi to a thunder god fighting a gamma monster in a gladiatorial arena this movie represents everything I love about the genre. Its freaking glorious and everything works perfectly. Black Panther followed this trend very well and while it was more grounded it was still a comic book movie that does not try to justify the awesome stuff and just lets it be awesome (epic sci-fi tech mixed with spirit walks and you don’t question it) The other movies could always be designated as either a sci-fi movie, spy movie, or fantasy movie. This is the first movie that can only really be called a comic book movie, along with black panther. I hope they continue with this in Infinity War and Captain Marvel. And keep the Jack Kirby inspired desings, if DC isn’t going to take advantage of it in the justice league movies Marvel should milk the hell out of it. 

[wasaninsee]

“Old,” Reviewed: M. Night Shyamalan’s New Old-School Sci-Fi Movie

Just as it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken, it takes a smart filmmaker to make a stupid movie, which I mean in the best possible way. Science-fiction films, once a cinematic counterpart to pulp fiction, are today often big-budget, overproduced spectacles that substitute grandiosity for imagination. M. Night Shyamalan’s new film, “Old” (which opens in theatres on Friday), is different. His frequent artistic pitfall is complication—the burdening of stories with extravagant yet undeveloped byways in order to endow them with ostensible significance and to stoke exaggerated effects. With “Old,” facing the constraints of filming during the pandemic—on a project that he’d nonetheless planned before it—Shyamalan has created a splendid throwback of a science-fiction thriller that develops a simple idea with stark vigor and conveys the straight-faced glee of realizing the straightforward logic of its enticing absurdity. สูตรโกงสล็อต

[thecorteztwins]

hexiva replied to your post “Eyyy I found my copy of X-Men Noir! I thought for sure I must have...”

X-Men Noir: What the fuck was that?

I remember you asking me that before and I don’t...really know? I assume you mean thematically rather than the actual story/murder mystery (although that gets a little confusing too). So uh, this gets long, and there’s a lot of mention of eugenics (in a WHOLLY CONDEMNING CONTEXT but still) under the cut, so warning for that:

The issue of eugenics just seems a bizarre topic for the story to start with. A 1930s noir murder mystery where everyone is human, okay, I’m listening. Like, the basic idea of Magnus and his Brotherhood as corrupt cops, ok. Xavier as training criminal teens to be better criminals, ok. I’m on-board. A debate about nature vs nurture, terrific. But then trying to work that in with the concept of “genetic hygiene” and the idea that “sociopaths are the next step of evolution!” (which is completely stupid for numerous reasons) is just...buh?  Now, for the record, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to address eugenics in an X-Men comic. In fact, I think it’s almost an elephant in the room at certain points. And this was the time period for it in America, something people really don’t want to talk about. But then the entire discussion/message is so...jumbled? Like I think ultimately it is aiming to say “it’s bad!” at the end---it’s something the bad people believe in (tho everyone is kinda a bad guy), the villain proclaiming herself merely this way by her nature is killed by the twin of the good guy in an attempt to prove that nurture triumphs over nature, and see it does because the good guy was adopted by a good family and his twin wasn’t so that’s why his twin is like this, and the story-within-a-story sci-fi tale ends with the “carefully bred and created from all the best genes” hero getting rid of the Breeders Council and now going to procreate with the supposedly genetically-inferior natural-bred people, yay! And yet...it doesn’t do a good job of arguing the point I think it’s trying to make. Bad Twin may have gone to a bad family, yet he still grows up trying to be good? He’s the one who stops the villain? And the villain seems to be telling the truth, she really was just born this way? So like, Dukes is right in the beginning when he says it’s really all down to nature. And likewise, in the pulp-style sci-fi story that serves a metaphor for the larger story, the reason that the Breeders Council turns out to be evil isn’t that they’re eugenicists selectively controlling human reproduction like show dogs, that’s explicitly stated not to be the issue ( “The Breeders Council planned not to just retain humanity’s best qualities and remove the bad, but they would also remove every part of us that is spontaneous and unpredictable!”) So like, eugenics are fine until free will is bred out, I guess? But it’s cool otherwise! And it doesn’t help that the coolness and superiority of the eugenically-bred hero BECAUSE of what specific genes were use for him--his super sense of directions from Bedouin nomads, voice from the most accomplished Neapolitan baritones, reflexes from three generations of Hessian sharpshooters---is constantly harped on and shown as working for exactly what it was intended for, whereas the “mongrel” population falls before him easily and is emphasized as hideous.  And like...the reason they’re going to start breeding with the “unfit” population...is it turns out they’re the ones with the “spontaneity genes”...so...that’s...still selective breeding for genetic reasons? Also, back to the elephant in the room...it’s trying to be about eugenics, it’s not shy about that, that word is literally used in the first few pages. Yet the racist and ableist aspects of eugenics never comes up. Not in the noir story itself, not in the sci-fi story-within-a-story. The noir story focuses specifically on the idea of criminal/evil tendencies innate vs inborn; the racist, ableist, xenophobic/anti-immigrant parts of eugenics are never even mentioned. And in the scifi story, it’s averted even harder, with the genetically “superior” people being specifically noted as bronze-skinned and having had their genetic traits picked from all over the world.  So like...they wanna debate eugenics, they wanna throw that right at the center of things straightaway...but not ever mention its really nasty parts? And set it in a time period where those parts are why it was popular? Like, I get wanting to focus on the issue of criminal traits in a crime story, and I get just not even wanting to debate these other parts in the story because there shouldn’t be a debate, but just avoiding the whole thing altogether seems...it just seems wrong. If you’re going to bring up something like that, BRING IT UP. Maybe they wanted to ask the question of “ok but would it be okay if it WASN’T prejudicial about race or disability?” but it seems more like it’s just trying to avoid/ignore that in general for the sake of the story...which I get because there’s a LOT there, but again, if you’re going to tackle something like this, tackle it. Don’t go halfway. Also, given that the anti-immigrant aspect of actual eugenics beliefs at the time means it makes no sense for Magnus, whose background as an immigrant is a plot point because of how it indebted him to Shaw, to believe in it. Which is also never addressed to my memory, not even to call him a hypocrite or even just explain how/why he believes it at all. And of course, making Magneto in any universe, even one set before WWII, a proponent of eugenics is GROSS AND A TERRIBLE CHOICE AND WHY WOULD YOU EVEN i guess because his 616 counterpart’s belief in mutant supremacy makes it seem like a good analogue but oh my god think for two seconds?! I genuinely do not think a malicious message was intended but due to the shitty handling, the moral I think they’re trying to deliver ends up mixed at best. I think they were trying to use the theme of mutants in a noir somehow without actually having mutants, and they got the idea of “well how about people who are genetically criminal” and then that leads itself naturally to a nature vs nurture debate, and it’s a cool idea to have some deeper questions like that within what would otherwise just be a straight murder story. But then I guess they connected the idea of “criminal by nature/born sociopaths” to “eugenics in general��� which is admittedly not a huge leap, and it is easy to tie the idea of eugenics to a series whose characters are literally meant to be “homo superior” by virtue of their genes...except in this case they’re not homo superior, they’re a bunch of criminals, and only one seems to have been born that way. Like I feel like this theme would have worked a lot better in the 616 universe, not a human AU.  Basically, I think they were trying to do too much in one story, they didn’t want to tackle all the implications of their theme despite those implications being what it’s most known for, the theme frankly doesn’t even really work with the story or setting that well even though it seems like it should (time period, etc), they don’t seem to realize how to convey their message or even what that message really is (as said, I think it’s nature over nurture, but the story itself seems confused on that) and when you add all that to the convoluted, confusing plot (which is okay for a noir, but when it’s added to all this mess it’s just hard to follow) with the twist at the end, it’s just...what just happened? It’s just kind of a mess, and given the themes they decided to tackle, ends up a mess with some Unfortunate Implications...assuming you can even follow it that far. ALL THAT SAID...I enjoyed it? I know that sounds so terrible to say because of all the problematic shit I just described, but I genuinely liked exploring this world and what everyone was in it, and how their mutant powers in 616 were translated into mundane traits and skills, finding all the little references to stuff from 616, etc. I think they would have done a lot better to just focus on that, on translating the characters into these roles and how to keep them still those characters (instead of people who really just have their names) while in these roles, and just doing a straight noir story with that. I feel like trying to tackle deeper themes ended up just distracting from the story, and then ended up not even really tackling those themes anyway, so it just ended up a mess in both directions. But I think it was a good idea at its core! I really do! And I like what’s there of it! You know me, I fucking love a mess with good potential. Also, two other things--I understand noir means black, but the art is in so much shadow it’s often hard to tell what’s going on, or who is who. Lighten it up some and include some fun time-appropriate fashions. It would be easier to follow and better communicate the fashions, plus look cute as hell. And get another protagonist because why was the protagonist Tom Halloway?! He’s not an X-Men character! Why is he the lead?! LIKE THAT IS REALLY MY BIGGEST QUESTION