#Didn’t Netflix animations strike last year?

[commissions-yourmajesty-open]

I’m so fucking glad because what HBO Max did was attrocious (I’d strike too if I was forced to animated 20000000000000 episodes of Teen Titans Go)

[disasterarea-podcast]

So given the writer’s strike, some people are concerned about their shows and movies being postponed or canceled, and aside from the fact networks have already BEEN canceling shows for no reason for years (I still maintain a healthy anger about what Netflix did to Sense8), I thought I would suggest some books on disasters you might want to read if you’re into that sort of history. Which you are if you’re here, I imagine.

Note: I’m suggesting these books because most books on disasters don’t get a huge audience, and so I recommend them because this sort of writing can be hard on the writer and requires a bunch of research. We throw so much money at true crime, we can spare a few bucks for the stories of people who died in disasters.

Also, please check with these with your local small bookstore or library. Amazon can be great, but let’s lend a hand to those who need us more.

Recommended books:

“The Circus Fire,” by Stewart O’Nan - This is one my favorite books on a disaster, because the whole thing creates a very vivid image of the circus prior to the fire in Hartford in July of 1944. There’s one specific line in the book which always makes me pause because it’s so affecting, about how everyone who escaped being able to hear the sounds of the animals screaming as they died - except all of the animals were out of the tent by then.

“The Only Plane in the Sky,” by Garrett Graff - This, I highly recommend you get on audiobook. It’s an oral history of the events of 9/11 with a full cast, and it’s incredibly affecting to listen to.

“Ada Blackjack: A True Story of Survival in the Arctic,” by Jennifer Niven - Ada Blackjack was a badass: flawed and weak at times, but hardy and steady when necessary. Half of her story is how she survived, but half is how she was exploited following her rescue. Both stories need to be known.

“Alive,” by Piers Paul Read - If you’re watching “Yellowjackets,” this should be required reading. If you’ve seen the movie adaptation from the 90s, there is WAY more you don’t know. The story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 is a tough read, but a worthy one.

“A Night to Remember,” by Walter Lord - This is to disaster nonfiction what “In Cold Blood” is to true crime. It’s not a long read, but it’s a great one. Lord had the advantage of writing the book while many of the Titanic survivors were still alive and could give a very good description of what they went through.

“Dying to Cross,” by Jorge Ramos - I recommend this not just because it is good, but because it is timely. Nineteen people died in an un-air-conditioned truck as they were attempting to make their way into the states from over the Mexican border. It’s a horrific story, and one that humanizes an issue for whom some people need to be faced with the humans involved and what they go through.

“Bath Massacre: America’s First School Bombing,” by Arnie Bernstein - Harold Schecter also wrote a very good book on the Bath school massacre called “Maniac,” but I have a preference for this version. It’s a good reminder that schools in the U.S. didn’t just become targets in the last twenty years or so.

“Into Thin Air,” by Jon Krakauer - I feel like this is a gimme, but it’s a fantastic book from someone who was actually on Mount Everest during the 1996 disaster and knew those involved very well. I happen to like Krakauer’s work anyway - I even like “Into the Wild” despite my feelings about McCandless and his legacy - but it’s understandably my favorite.

“And the Band Played On,” by Randy Shilts - The one thing I will say is that Shilts’ treatment of Gaetan Dugas is *rough* to say the least and outright wrong on some points, God knows. But it’s still an amazing book, and if you come out of it not wanting to dig up Reagan and punch him a bunch I’m impressed at your restraint.

“Triangle: The Fire That Changed America,” by David von Drehle - The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire is one of the disasters I am most interested in, and I would argue this is the definitive book on the subject. Also, if this book introduces you to both Clara Lemlich and Frances Perkins … I mean, talk about badass women.

“The Radium Girls,” by Kate Moore - Look, I’ll say this. If you know of the Radium Girls, this is a great book on their story. If you don’t know, go in blind and prepared to be horrified.

“Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine,” by Anne Applebaum - Ukraine has always been a target. During the Holodomor, they were victims of one of the worst genocides in history.

“Midnight in Chernobyl,” by Adam Higginbotham - Like the miniseries? This is a great source for more information for what happened at Chernobyl and all of the ass-covering involved.

"Boston Strong: A City's Triumph Over Tragedy," by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge - If you’re interested in the Boston marathon bombing, I really thought this book did a good job of connecting the stories of the victims, the authorities searching for the killers, and the killers themselves.

“Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Tower,” by Peter Apps - As I understand it, Apps did a lot of covering the Grenfell Tower fire for the British press, and it shows. He provides a mountain of information, and you will come out of reading this book absolutely LIVID about what authorities allowed to happen in Grenfell and so many other council estates in the UK.

“Dark Tide: The Great Molasses Flood of 1919,” by Stephen Puleo - I feel as though the molasses flood gets treated like a joke a lot of the time, but y’all, twenty people died. That area of Boston was *wrecked*. The photos of the devastation are terrifying. Puleo treats all of this with the proper respect it deserves.

“In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex,” by Nathaniel Philbrick - Forget the movie. Read the book.

“The Great Influenza,” by John M. Barry - Want to read about the 1918 flu epidemic? Want to be mad that a hundred years later we didn’t learn a damn thing?

Now, that’s just a start. If anyone wants, I can always post photos of my disaster book collection on Kindle and next to my recording desk. Or if there’s a specific disaster you’re interested in, I may know of a good book about it you can read.

But just remember if SAG and the directors’ guild joins the strike too - there is so much out there to occupy your time until they come back. Entertainment work is work, and it deserves to be supported financially and fairly as such. Rock on, WGA. ✊

[beeclops]

Cartoon Network’s Website Was Deleted. That Should Scare You All.

Warner Bros. Discovery is deleting some of our most beloved movies and TV shows—and some may be gone forever.

The most remarkable feat that Warner Bros. Discovery CEO and president David Zaslav has accomplished this decade may be his rapid transformation from relatively little-known network executive to name-brand villain of the culture. For this, he can thank such disastrous high-profile decisions as stonewalling the striking writers and actors, crudely stereotyping his properties’ audiences, and tanking much-hyped movies that were all but ready for release—all of which reflected poorly and played out rather publicly.

Lest you be inclined to defend all this as just a hard-nosed boss making tough-but-fair decisions, consider that Zaslav continues to be very, very bad at making money and managing a media conglomerate—just ask the investors who depressed WBD’s stock value to a near-all-time-low valuation of $6.62 per share on Monday. Or look to the company’s loss of its long-held NBA broadcast rights to Amazon, the $9 billion write-down of its other TV assets, and its nonstop waves of steep layoffs. Or even its wildly unpopular move to shutter Cartoon Network’s iconic 26-year-old website, scrubbing an almost historical archive of clips, show episodes, and digital games in order to direct young viewers to sign up for the clunky streaming platform known these days as “Max.”

Nuking a kids’ network’s digital presence is hardly a sin on par with, say, killing Cartoon Network altogether, as was rumored to have occurred last month. Even though Zaslav didn’t go that far, it wasn’t unreasonable for so many to assume he had. Since April 2022, when he finalized the megamerger that fused his Discovery Communications juggernaut with WarnerMedia, Zaslav has repeatedly invited mass criticism for actively degrading and torching so many of the treasured creations that made his media empire such a highly valued asset.

First came the sudden cancellations of already-completed films like Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, then the secretive removal of dozens of HBO originals (e.g., Westworld, An American Pickle) from the HBO Max streaming service—which subsequently received an unholy intrusion of selected titles from Discovery+, the streamer that shuttered just so that HBO Max could just become Max.

Max kept shedding beloved entries from its historic catalog, including large chunks of Sesame Street and Looney Tunes. This continued into 2023 with the erasure of Cartoon Network and Adult Swim classics such as Dexter’s Laboratory and Space Ghost Coast to Coast, along other Max Originals like Game Theory With Bomani Jones, which was soon removed altogether. Later that same year, Zaslav’s mismanagement of the treasured Turner Classic Movies channel spurred Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson to basically stage an intervention.

In fairness, many (though not all) Max Originals are either available on other services, on physical media, or via video on demand. Some other shows from WBD have been licensed to Netflix. Still, in light of CartoonNetwork.com’s demise, it’s worth keeping in mind something key about David Zaslav, who hasn’t made an effective turnaround in valuation or revenue after two straight years of nonstop cuts across all his properties, extending into last month’s CNN layoffs.

It’s worth taking stock of how many of your favorite shows, networks, catalogs, and films belong to Warner Bros. Discovery, because it weighs a ton. In addition to every entertainment behemoth already mentioned, the company once known as WarnerMedia brought TNT, the CW, and DC Comics to the WBD marriage. In turn, Discovery imported its namesake channel, Animal Planet, TLC, Food Network, HGTV, GolfTV, and the Oprah Winfrey Network, among many other names.

Unless you grew up without any electronic screens, you’ve likely seen at least a couple of shows and flicks from any or all of those brands. You probably have a meaningful attachment to those works and thus a vested interest in making sure they remain available so you can share those experiences with your friends and loved ones. If you’re of the nerdier variety, you view all this media as an invaluable resource of important cultural markers. Where would cinema and TV of all kinds—comic, prestige, edutainment, reality, talk, news—be without these rich treasures, and how much would our collective consciousness have suffered in their absence?

Zaslav should understand this better than anyone. He’s had a front-row seat to shifts in media consumption since the fall of communism. He also ushered some of those major changes into being through his role in helping to launch CNBC and MSNBC. He should know the importance of preservation better than anyone, having gauged early on how rapidly physical media was subsuming into pixelated microscreens, and how urgent it was to ensure his brands retain their recognition, familiarity, and quality in the midst of that transition. What better exhibition of that than a rich, thorough catalog made readily available to consumers via a streaming platform?

But this man, to put it gently, couldn’t give a flying fuck. Because, much like Paramount’s decimation of the online MTV and Comedy Central archives, Zaslav’s own butchering of the Cartoon Network website is a cheap ploy engineered to force viewers into signing up for his own increasingly enshittified streamer—and at a time when the internet as we’ve broadly recognized it is rapidly crumbling.

In recent years, we’ve seen once inescapable media disappear from the internet at a frightening rate, whether it’s general-interest blogs and websites closing down (or worse, turning into A.I. slop factories), popular old browser games losing their adaptability and functionality, pre-Spotify music streamers tanking their servers, social networks collapsing into the void along with all their memories, hyperlinks degrading in functionality, or copyright-flexible artworks from an older internet age getting hit with suits by rights-holders and then being pulled from distribution.

The most remarkable feat that Warner Bros. Discovery CEO and president David Zaslav has accomplished this decade may be his rapid transformation from relatively little-known network executive to name-brand villain of the culture. For this, he can thank such disastrous high-profile decisions as stonewalling the striking writers and actors, crudely stereotyping his properties’ audiences, and tanking much-hyped movies that were all but ready for release—all of which reflected poorly and played out rather publicly.

Lest you be inclined to defend all this as just a hard-nosed boss making tough-but-fair decisions, consider that Zaslav continues to be very, very bad at making money and managing a media conglomerate—just ask the investors who depressed WBD’s stock value to a near-all-time-low valuation of $6.62 per share on Monday. Or look to the company’s loss of its long-held NBA broadcast rights to Amazon, the $9 billion write-down of its other TV assets, and its nonstop waves of steep layoffs. Or even its wildly unpopular move to shutter Cartoon Network’s iconic 26-year-old website, scrubbing an almost historical archive of clips, show episodes, and digital games in order to direct young viewers to sign up for the clunky streaming platform known these days as “Max.”

Nuking a kids’ network’s digital presence is hardly a sin on par with, say, killing Cartoon Network altogether, as was rumored to have occurred last month. Even though Zaslav didn’t go that far, it wasn’t unreasonable for so many to assume he had. Since April 2022, when he finalized the megamerger that fused his Discovery Communications juggernaut with WarnerMedia, Zaslav has repeatedly invited mass criticism for actively degrading and torching so many of the treasured creations that made his media empire such a highly valued asset.

First came the sudden cancellations of already-completed films like Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, then the secretive removal of dozens of HBO originals (e.g., Westworld, An American Pickle) from the HBO Max streaming service—which subsequently received an unholy intrusion of selected titles from Discovery+, the streamer that shuttered just so that HBO Max could just become Max.

Max kept shedding beloved entries from its historic catalog, including large chunks of Sesame Street and Looney Tunes. This continued into 2023 with the erasure of Cartoon Network and Adult Swim classics such as Dexter’s Laboratory and Space Ghost Coast to Coast, along other Max Originals like Game Theory With Bomani Jones, which was soon removed altogether. Later that same year, Zaslav’s mismanagement of the treasured Turner Classic Movies channel spurred Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson to basically stage an intervention.

In fairness, many (though not all) Max Originals are either available on other services, on physical media, or via video on demand. Some other shows from WBD have been licensed to Netflix. Still, in light of CartoonNetwork.com’s demise, it’s worth keeping in mind something key about David Zaslav, who hasn’t made an effective turnaround in valuation or revenue after two straight years of nonstop cuts across all his properties, extending into last month’s CNN layoffs.

It’s worth taking stock of how many of your favorite shows, networks, catalogs, and films belong to Warner Bros. Discovery, because it weighs a ton. In addition to every entertainment behemoth already mentioned, the company once known as WarnerMedia brought TNT, the CW, and DC Comics to the WBD marriage. In turn, Discovery imported its namesake channel, Animal Planet, TLC, Food Network, HGTV, GolfTV, and the Oprah Winfrey Network, among many other names.

Unless you grew up without any electronic screens, you’ve likely seen at least a couple of shows and flicks from any or all of those brands. You probably have a meaningful attachment to those works and thus a vested interest in making sure they remain available so you can share those experiences with your friends and loved ones. If you’re of the nerdier variety, you view all this media as an invaluable resource of important cultural markers. Where would cinema and TV of all kinds—comic, prestige, edutainment, reality, talk, news—be without these rich treasures, and how much would our collective consciousness have suffered in their absence?

Zaslav should understand this better than anyone. He’s had a front-row seat to shifts in media consumption since the fall of communism. He also ushered some of those major changes into being through his role in helping to launch CNBC and MSNBC. He should know the importance of preservation better than anyone, having gauged early on how rapidly physical media was subsuming into pixelated microscreens, and how urgent it was to ensure his brands retain their recognition, familiarity, and quality in the midst of that transition. What better exhibition of that than a rich, thorough catalog made readily available to consumers via a streaming platform?

But this man, to put it gently, couldn’t give a flying fuck. Because, much like Paramount’s decimation of the online MTV and Comedy Central archives, Zaslav’s own butchering of the Cartoon Network website is a cheap ploy engineered to force viewers into signing up for his own increasingly enshittified streamer—and at a time when the internet as we’ve broadly recognized it is rapidly crumbling.

In recent years, we’ve seen once inescapable media disappear from the internet at a frightening rate, whether it’s general-interest blogs and websites closing down (or worse, turning into A.I. slop factories), popular old browser games losing their adaptability and functionality, pre-Spotify music streamers tanking their servers, social networks collapsing into the void along with all their memories, hyperlinks degrading in functionality, or copyright-flexible artworks from an older internet age getting hit with suits by rights-holders and then being pulled from distribution.

The Internet Archive can only do so much to preserve all of this, especially when the nonprofit is already staving off endless, expensive lawsuits (and making steep cuts to its own selections while at it). The great irony is that modern life and culture’s hapless dependence on a functional internet—CrowdStrike, anyone?—makes it imperative that vast troves of history be copied in some form onto cyberspace; otherwise, it might as well not exist. This goes for a classic movie missing from any digital service or a publication of yore finding a new life and preservation online.

To seal off great works of art behind increasingly paywalled, pricey, and ad-choked streamers is to rob an already overwhelmed public of any actual choice in creative exploration. It’s further maddening when you never know that a given show, movie, or special will even remain on that service. If it does indeed go away, you may not even be able to find it through a physical copy or via some weird black market of cast-offs. No wonder the production company behind Adult Swim’s The Venture Bros. is currently offering a DVD sale of the complete series while the show itself remains in limbo between its recent Max removal and its upcoming Netflix entrance.

This is no way to treat some of our greatest cultural legacies—but it’s inevitably the result when we trust them with the David Zaslavs of the world. We should look at streaming-service erasure as an issue on par with that of greater internet fragmentation and the worsening digital amnesia that results.

It’s only going to get worse, especially as creators rightfully concerned about A.I. apps training on their hard work elect to take their stuff off the digital commons to protect their artistic contributions from cannibalization by the power-hungry networks attempting to supplant them. The data centers lose their higher-quality building blocks, but keep churning along in order to make something more artificial and just plain terrible. David Zaslav will stand by, burning more cash and trashing more titles, only to keep failing, and making our culture—as well as our history—all the poorer for it.

[natlacentral]

IAN OUSLEY | YOU WANT FRESH KICKS, HUH? PUT THESE FRESH KICKS IN YOUR PIPE AND SMOKE IT

Ian Ousley is an American actor hailing from College Station, Texas. This year he reprised the role of Sokka in the much anticipated live-action adaptation of the Netflix fantasy series Avatar: The Last Airbender. Here we sit down with the actor to discuss his latest project, his process and his style influences.

When you start a creative project like Avatar does it consume you or do you strike a balance? Does your acting and your personal life feel separate or very much attached?

Doing a creative project is a very intimate thing for me. I feel like the relationship between my life and these creative endeavors is that they just end up merging together. When I’m filming a project, it becomes my life. It might just be because I haven’t learned how to do both at the same time but my biggest concern when I sign onto something, especially something like Avatar that means so much to so many people, is to give my everything to the work that I can. It took about 13 months in Canada to film Avatar, and it really became my life.

The people that started out as co-workers like my co-stars Dallas, Kiawentiio, and Gordon have become like siblings to me. I had the opportunity for the last year and a half to live some life away from the project while we were waiting for the release and that felt very separate from the show but I didn’t feel separated from the people I met on set. We all still stayed in touch, especially me and Dallas because he lives in LA as well.

How are you approaching taking on a role in a series that has such a passionate fan base? How is this fan base influencing your work and preparation? Is there a new or familiar angle from the cartoon series of Avatar you want to bring to the role?

I was a part of that passionate fanbase before I was cast and that definitely influenced my prep. I rewatched the first season of the original show and tried to embody the soul of who Sokka is but I did a lot of journaling and asked myself a lot of questions about how to show the humanness of Sokka and match the tone of the show we were making while honoring the original animated series. It was fun to dive into the vulnerability of Sokka while maintaining the comedic elements of who he is. It’s rare to find that balance with a character so it was really exciting for me to get to wrestle with.

What is unique about your acting process for this particular role in Avatar? How did you prepare for the physical aspect of the role? 

Well this was my first time preparing for a role that came with pre-existing IP, which is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because you have so much to pull from with the show and knowing what the character’s arc is going to be and the comics and getting to really dive into the world that you will be bringing to life. The curse is that everyone who is familiar with the IP has a visual representation of the character in their head and loves it, so the balance really becomes how do I stay truthful to who this character is while getting to add the components of what isn’t there already, which is him being a real human going through real human emotions. The way I prepared physically was really just unlearning some of my martial arts techniques that I have and acting like I’m untrained.

What do you want people to take away from the series?

I want our show to inspire people to embrace family whether that be blood-related or chosen family like the Aang gang.

What emotions are most tied to creativity in your acting process in this show? Which emotions trigger ideas and inspiration and which do not?

For me, intellectualizing emotions while acting doesn’t always mix very well. For Sokka, who is 16 and has a lot riding on his shoulders, I don’t think he always knows why he’s feeling what he’s feeling. He often pushes down his true emotions or covers them up to protect his sister and his tribe. So, I think that is where I pulled my inspiration for a lot of my creative choices for him.

Which of the four elemental powers are you really and why?

I think that I would be a water bender because it correlates the closest to being an artist in my opinion. Being a creative in general is often becoming formless and shapeless in the words of Bruce Lee.

How does fashion influence your life and how does life influence your fashion? Do the two work in conjunction? How has your style changed as your career has progressed? Do you have a staple piece that feels most personal?

Fashion is awesome because people infer a lot about you just from what you’re wearing on the daily. So, my life definitely influences my fashion because I’m often dressing based on what I’m feeling when I wake up that morning. My style has changed drastically in the last 2 years and I’ve gravitated towards a lot of black and white clothing and experimenting with layers.

My style has also evolved into a lot of highs and lows. I love zip-up hoodies and dress shirts and really exaggerated silhouettes right now. The most personal part of my wardrobe is my jewelry and most of the time I have on a cross necklace from Tiffany and Co. that my great aunt gave me, which has been a staple for me since I was 16.

[shocotate]

Live Action Movie 2 Ramble

Here’s stuff I wrote while watching the second live action movie. My more articulate ramble about the first movie is here (back in 2018, I have not watched it again before watching these two), and my ramble about movie 3 is here.

WB's new logo is disgusting, but at least it’ll help people remember that Netflix didn’t make this.

Golio is here, I guess it might as well use something from Scar's reintroduction to speed things along. In the anime he was killed way earlier back in episode 15, when in the manga he was killed while Ed was away in Resembool

The water titles were an interesting choice

Ling has devoured the apple pie. I guess it makes more sense him going to Central on a train than somehow ending up dead in Rush valley. Boy better be careful though or else he’ll be getting arrested for no passport even sooner.

These god damn subs. Shin = Xing, add that G there. Rin = NO G HERE CERTAINLY NOT. Lin Yao strikes again.

Ed about to bring the northern chokeout on Lan Fan but then she blew up the train so.

Glad Envy got his topup

Well that's something

This shit with Roy and Bald doesn’t matter when he’s already wasted two homunculi last movie. At least with Lust dead already Havoc’s lighter is safe.

May Chang gets her G in the subs, but Shao May’s CGI is scaring me.

Alex’s hair is too funny my god

No Scar don’t go underground, unlike East City there’s actually stuff down there in Central

Boroboro dana oretachi OH HE SAID IT sorry I’m losing my mind from hearing that every time the mobile game starts – DEMO IKKITERU, AA, IKKITERU, start singing Nana Mizuki he said it.

Despite being Ed and Al’s escort in place of Ross, Falman couldn’t make it to the group shot. Hope he’s ok.

He’s in the next scene he’s ok.

Damn they’ve moved Ishval down the map, time for Resembool to be the real crest of blood spot here

Marcoh’s dead so there will be no diversions on the way to Resembool, right?

Three faction sewer fight lets go

As far as Wrath saying he saw Edward to his family, I think going on the rollercoaster train is pretty impressive, but I guess seeing Edward on a place he was already going works too.

They finally let Hoho say that Ed is the smallest state alchemist in history.

I was expecting a impressive one handed hair braiding but hair down Ed is fine.

I haven’t seen Alphonse in a while, did he get left at Central

At least they got Xerxes right, must have watched 300 before this…

Ed’s leaving the country alone, mad lad. No Alex and Breda kidnap for him.

*forgets to write anything for a while*

Edward doing the finger gun pose was kinda endearing

Only 40 offspring of the emperor? Has there been a culling or are some yet to be born, those later clans are screwed in the battle.

Edward asking the real questions of how can Ling become emperor if the plan is the make the emperor immortal. Finally. We know Ling does become emperor within only 2 years so maybe his coup plan happened

I can’t remember if Al could always do clappy alchemy in this because he’s older, or he just can now.

Collateral damage out of control, rip those dudes

I like how Ed blocked the hammer of the gun with his finger when trying to convince Winry to put down the gun, that’s actually clever of him to do.

I thought it was arm-doggo but it was actually envy-doggo. You’ve fooled me once, movie, it won’t happen again

Winry can’t leave yet, what about the tiny screw. Also there’s like 50 minutes left of this movie and I know where it ends, how are they gonna stretch this out.

Arm dog is here, and what a stray dog to have. Find that on the street and you’re winning.

I wonder where Fu is

I wonder where Shao May is.

Oh she’s here now.

Winry gets to use her hands of healing on Lan Fan, that’s kinda neat to give Knox, or whoever this is, some backup.

Headbandage Ed the best Ed of all is now here. I didn’t see him get the headwound but I guess it happened.

Wrath gets a solo flashback with Father (unless it’s not a flashback, explaining why Envy and Gluttony aren’t there). The anime took Father out of it, so this one of just Wrath and Father is the same as the psp game. The full manga version stays unadapted, until the mobile game does it, if it does.

Hughes is back, yay, also good to adapt scenes the anime didn’t in the flashback.

UM Riza said “Mustang-san” not Major Mustang. These subs I swear…

Shao May and May reunion, guess she has no reason to go underground now. Also shao may has no eyes, I don’t like that.

What about Gluttony, is he just gonna stew for days.

I’m liking Ed’s penchant for attempted murder with his very dangerous attacks, I hope he will continue, and make it happen where it counts. Gimme this one, plz.

Winry again, stop interrupting Scar and Ed fighting. Oh we’re doing the north thing – but I know Olivier is in the next one so—

Winry’s parents force ghosts what

We’ve got 15 minutes left get in Gluttony’s belly already. If I had my way we wouldn't even be going in there since Ed already knows Al’s body exists from the last movie, but we have that big envy model and damn it needs some use.

Ok gluttony is here now and he’s doing the sloth run. Oh no roy has a tiny cut on his outer leg

Scar protecc, Scar attacc, and most importantly, holds Gluttony bacc

Horse Envy is here now. I wish he’d have talked first though as a horse. Loves me some Mr Ed

Father will be big mad

Al held out his arm but his arm survives, interesting choice.

Fire in the belly dimension when gluttony swallowed no fire. oh no no no.

The punch doesn’t go as well without Ed asking about Ishval bro.

Noo Envy cgi is like all slimy, no nooo

To Be Continued...

[thessalian]

Thess vs Research Rabbit Holes

I honestly blame my upbringing for this. Because I was Like This well before the advent of the internet and it’s honestly my mother’s fault.

The main thing that separated my mother (and eventually me) from ... well, almost everyone else on either side of my family was the mentality of, “If you don’t know, and you’re curious, look it up”. My mother was thrilled to bits when she could justify the expense of the full set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Now, picture - woman who almost certainly has ADHD, raised to that mentality, and then handed the internet. That kind of tells you everything you need to know about me. I learned pretty epic Google-fu because of all that.

That’s the backstory. Now, the evening.

See, I was going to watch Nimona. I still intend to, but I intend to do so curled up on the sofa because MASSIVE PAIN DAY - I just needed to check my Netflix password because my digibox logged me out of Netflix for no reason. ANYWAY. So I switched on Nimona while sitting at my desk and paused it almost immediately - not because of the ow (though grateful for all of this because it made me realise I probably didn’t want to watch a couple of hours worth of movie with this much ow anyplace but on the sofa), but because of the logo - Annapurna Pictures. And yes, the logo did look exactly like that of Annapurna Interactive. So I did some Googling, and the first thing I found out is that yes, Annapurna Interactive is just one division of Annapurna Pictures, and they have a pretty good reputation as that goes. Turns out Nimona is the first major offering of their Animation division. So the company that gave us Nimona also gave us What Remains of Edith Finch and Stray. Awesome.

Thing is, there were a couple of other names in terms of co-production. One of them was Vertigo Entertainment. So I went to look at their filmography and that was pretty impressive too - various Lego movies, a fair few remakes of Japanese horror flicks and a couple of Stephen King films (the recent IT remakes, for instance) ... and then I saw the TBA section of the television series section:

Horizon. And, in the “Creator” section of the table, “Based on Horizon: Zero Dawn”.

So ... while it’s early days and TBA and could be cancelled like that and the writer’s strike may well eat it ... they seem to be talking about a live-action Horizon: Zero Dawn TV series along the same lines as happened with The Last Of Us. And one of the showrunners is the guy who was also showrunner of The Umbrella Academy. (Apparently this was announced about a year ago but I guess it slipped under my radar.)

..................I ... really, desperately want this to be a thing. I want to see how they do the mechs.

Of course, after that I got it into my head to poke around at what some actors that had just come into my head were up to so I left that alone, but there you have it: my going down the research rabbit hole can yield some interesting results. And it’s way easier than flipping through an encyclopaedia.

[conflagrate]

Winter 2024 Anime + TV Season

I can’t believe it’s another year, another season!

Anime

Thanks to the Hollywood strikes I watched a fair amount of anime this past autumn~

Top shows

1. Sousou no Frieren 2. Kusuriya no Hitorigoto 3. Atarashii Joshi wa Dotennen =. Seijo no Maryoku S2 5. Jujutsu Kaisen S2

Shows completed: 10 Continuing: 2

New year new season new batch of shows to bitch about-

Must Watch: Dungeon Meshi, Yojitsu S3, Hikari no O S2, Yami Shibai S12 [FOOOKK WHY!!!!] (4)

Sounds Interesting! Hope It Doesn’t Suck!: Pon no Michi, Yubisaki to Renren, Gekai Elise, Metallic Rouge, Snack Basue, Meiji Gekken:1874 (6)

3episode Taste Test Needed: Sasaki to Pi-chan, Momochi-san’chi no Ayakashi Oji, Kekkon Yubiwa Monogatari, Dosanko Gal, 30sai made Dotei da, Gekkan Moso Kagaku, Bucchigiri, Ishura, Majo to Yaju, AraFou Onsen Mania (10)

Do I Have To…? (No I Don’t): Mato Seihei no Slave, Maho Shojo ni Akogarete, Kyujitsu no Warumono-san, Hime-sama, Fomon no Jikan desu, Oroka na Tenshi, Sengoku Yoko

Sequel/Spinoff Hell: Jaku Chara Tomozaki-kun S2, Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu S2, Mashle S2, Kingdom S5, Ao no Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati-hen, Shin no Nakama S2, HIGH CARD S2, Tsukimichi S2, Synduality Noir S2 (I give up I don’t wanna sit through another season of this tripe), Shaman King Flowers, Cardfight Vanguard Divinez

Light Novel/Isekai/Villainess/Mecha Hell: Isekai de Mofumofu, Sokushi Cheat, Chiyu Mahou, Ore dake Level Up na Ken, Saikyo Tank, Loop 7-kaime, Nozomanu Fushi no Bokensha, Akuyaku Reijo Level 99, Bang Bang Bravern, Saijaku Tamer

Idol/Vtuber/AI/Musical Hell: NONE! WOW! HALLELUJAH!

Continuing: Sousou no Frieren, Kusuriya no Hitorigoto

Expected Load: 8-9

Looks manageable!

TV & Streaming

I’ve actually been watching precious little TV over the quarter thanks to the strikes and the increased amount of palatable anime…and because I spent the last 3 months overly obssessed with PDJP3. MY HEART STILL HURTS COS MY OSHI DIDN’T DEBUT LEAVE ME ALONE

Disney+/Hulu: Loki S2, Culprits*, Murder At The End of The World* Netflix: Bodies Apple TV: Slow Horses S3, Lessons In Chemistry Amazon Prime: Reacher S2* BBC: Boiling Point, Time series 2, Vigil S2 Others: Kinou Nani Tabeta S2, The Irrational (NBC) Gameshows: Only Connect Reality: Produce 101 Japan The Girls

Total series completed: 9Full-length films watched: 18

Strike’s over and shows are cranking up production for a super-truncated half-order season so I’ll be there to check out my favourite shows as they return to air in Jan/Feb…

CBS: NCIS S21, NCIS: Hawai’i S3, Tracker? Netflix: The Brothers Sun?, The Tourist S2 [also BBC], 3 Body Problem?, The Gentlemen? Disney+/Hulu: Death and Other Details Apple TV:Criminal Record, Masters of the Air?, The New Look?, Constellation, Manhunt? Amazon Prime: Expats HBO: True Detective: Night Country?, The Regime? Others: The Irrational (NBC), Will Trent (ABC), Mr Bates vs the Post Office? (ITV), Truelove? (Channel 4), Sexy Beast? (Paramount+)

[tobiosmilktea]

hello there. my bday is around the corner and i was wondering how would random haikyuu boys celebrate it with u 💓

how the haikyuu boys will celebrate your birthday with you

a/n: my birthday is just around the corner too so this was really fun to write 🥺 i decided to do it by team bc i couldn’t pick who boys to do lmao

— karasuno

i think they’ll definitely pull some intricate plan that will go wrong one way or another

like a surprise party maybe

it was fs nishinoya and tanaka’s idea to set one up after school in the gym where they tell everyone to pretend to forget your birthday just to add that special element of surprise

but then again, guys like tsukishima and kageyama don’t need to pretend they didn’t know your birthday because they truly didn’t until hinata brought it up to them (don’t take it too personally tho lmao)

speaking of which, hinata almost spoiled the surprise for you if yachi wasn’t there to distract you 💀

despite being the second year’s idea to throw this surprise party for you, it’s primarily the third years doing all the work since tanaka and nishinoya don’t know how to organize a party for shit

poor kiyoko is actually doing all the work while daichi and asahi are putting up decorations with the help of the first years (tsukishima had to be forced tho smh)

yamaguchi and yachi seem like the types to overthink what to get you for a birthday present, probably going all out while kageyama would just buy you your favorite drink and snack from the vending machine near the gym literally five minutes before the surprise

it’s the thought that counts ig

sugawara made your cake as well with the usual message, ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY Y/N !!’

and since the surprise party was being held in the gym after practice, everyone had to hurry and clean up before setting out all the decorations. and can i just say, it’s chaotic™️

yachi had to distract you for a good ten minutes by asking you to walk all the way towards the other end of campus to ‘get something’ that didn’t exist in the first place

meanwhile in the gym, the second years were in charge of taking down the volleyball net to replace it with a badly homemade painting with tanaka’s messy ass handwriting wishing you a happy birthday

the third years and first years as mentioned before were setting up decorations, hanging up streamers, setting out balloons, and handing out party poppers

with kiyoko, takeda-sensei, and ukai set out a table for sugawara to place the cake he made for you (which it almost fell cause ennoshita bumped into him)

hinata was also on the lookout if you and yachi were nearby

and when you were, he shout so loudly that even you heard down the hall

finishing up any last minute details, the team sets out their presents for you with their party poppers in hand before shouting, “SURPRISE!!”

it’s all fun and games until nishinoya accidentally released confetti at your face by accident

he made up for it with his present though lmao

— aoba johsai

saying that seijoh probably won’t do anything as big as a surprise party is a complete lie

knowing oikawa and the moment he found out it was going to be your birthday soon, he’ll plan something more extravagant than some lame surprise party (albeit, badly planned without the help of iwa)

he’d probably rent out a party bus to drive around the city before stopping by at some random karaoke place downtown

he’ll only invite the third years and your close friends so it isn’t too big of a celebration that it doesn’t feel like it’s your own party

the best part of the night was mattsun absolutely outshining oikawa in literally everything

there was even a stripper pole in the party bus and he just started fucking around with you to pretending to make it rain on him,, it was hilarious

you love rewatching the videos you took of that night

your favorite (besides stripper matsukawa) was iwa singing a ballad for you and when i say that man has vocals i mean it

at the end of the night, all your friends got up to sing happy birthday to you on the karaoke machine

the second years would probably feel bad celebrating your birthday with you, so instead they take you out to get udon after school and just vibe

you were honestly just surprised that it was kyotani’s idea to take you out like this, not to mention the cute gift he gave you that he put a lot of thought into

meanwhile i think the first years are just too intimidated by you minus kunimi

like kindaichi knew of your birthday but he was just too scared to go up to you and wish you a happy birthday before handing you your favorite convenient store snack as a little gift

— nekoma

unlike karasuno and seijoh, the way the nekoma boys celebrate with you is definitely on the more laidback side, yet they still put effort in wishing you a happy birthday

kenma, kuroo, and yaku would definitely stay up with you the night before your birthday playing video games just to be the first ones to wish you a happy birthday the moment the clock strikes midnight

they’ll even set up a minecraft server that kenma spent hours setting up and building everything that you like with a gigantic banner made out of your favorite colors of wool saying ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!’

the rest of the night staying up playing party games on hypixel despite having school the next day

in the morning, you’d find kenma and kuroo waiting outside your house so they can walk the birthday celebrant to school, plus they had bags in their hands to which you assume were presents for you

it was then did you realize that you were going to get more throughout the day after kuroo mentioned how he told the team that it was your birthday

there was something embarrassing and a bit cringey being showered with attention for your birthday, especially at school, but you still appreciated the team’s efforts

throughout the day, people would notice the gifts in your hands and would wish you a happy birthday, definitely causing a stir in the school when yaku, lev, and yamamoto burst into your classroom to shout happy birthday

while yamamoto is literally showering you with birthday wishes and presents, lev would give you a cute plushie of your favorite animal along with a little cake

he’d probably ask to eat it with you during lunch lmao

by the end of the day, kuroo and kenma would help you carry all the presents you received as you guys end the day off getting ramen

— fukurodani

i don’t think they’ll make a big deal out of it knowing you don’t like making a big deal out of your birthday either

the only reason why they even found out that your birthday was around the corner is because bokuto couldn’t keep his mouth shut

it played out somewhere along the lines like this: akaashi would ask you if you were free this weekend so you two could study for the upcoming math exam

bokuto was there as well when you had to ask for a raincheck on studying as your parents were forcing you to go out on a celebratory birthday dinner (as by their words, “it’s the least you could do.”)

to which bokuto literally gasps and shouts, “IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY THIS WEEKEND?” his words echoing throughout the gym and definitely catching the attention of the rest of the volleyball team

if that’s his reaction to finding out it’s your birthday soon, just imagine how shocked he would be when you tell him that you don’t really like celebrating it

akaashi would definitely understand and opted to buy you a little something for his appreciation and give it to you the following day, but bokuto wants to full on throw a party for you

“come on! it’ll just be a little get-together at the park!” he would beg

“thank you, bo, but i’m honestly fine just going out to dinner with my family.”

he would huff, planning to throw one as a surprise party instead, but akaashi immediately shoots down his idea out of respect for you

instead, bokuto would channel all that energy to giving “the best birthday gift of your life!” (end quote)

even konoha would challenge him on that just to tease him, but would still give you a well thought out gift

and yeah, it’s honestly kind of embarrassing seeing him walk into school with a box full of things you’re into including a giant owl plushie (school spirit ig??)

poor bo was outshined by yukie and kaori when they made a birthday cake for you

— shiratorizawa

lowkey i feel like shiratorizawa is definitely one of those private schools that would announce when their student’s birthdays are when they come close

like no one of the vb team would’ve found out your birthday was in a couple days if it wasn’t for that overhead announcement made by the vice principal

however, i wouldn’t think they’d make a huge deal out of it besides tendou maybe

the moment you would walk into the gymnasium, he’ll immediately wish you a happy birthday loudly before nudging ushijima to do the same

instead of one big party, you celebrated with them almost individually

tendou and ushijima both took you to the aquarium and bought you a gift that you specifically chose out cause they’d probably wouldn’t be bothered to do so without you

and then you’d go out with semi and reon to which you three just get sushi after school

lowkey i feel like they would buy literally anything you show even the tiniest amount of interest in and they’ll buy it within a snap

you literally had to stop semi from buying you anything else as he’ll end up spending all his pocket change when the sushi was enough

and unlike their upperclassman, shirabu and goshiki would probably just celebrate with you by just hanging out at your house--watching netflix, playing video games, maybe ordering some pizza

it’s pretty simple, but they’ll be there all day cause the time spent together is just really nice

— inarizaki

the twins literally cannot keep their mouths shut

the team was already pretty aware of your birthday, but they have been keeping the surprise party for you on the downlow ever since the twins proposed their idea of doing a little picnic for you

but go figure that it would be atsumu and osamu exposing their entire plan in front of you after nagging their team not to say jackshit in front of you

they’d still follow through with their plans, however, despite not being a surprise anymore

the little celebration would be held at the park, suna being in charge of the picnic blanket, kita being in charge of bringing drinks, osamu being in charge of bringing the food, and atsumu being in charge of... well,, bringing you ig

aran would arrive late only because he had to get his bday gift for you (which btw was the best one fs) as well as picking up your birthday cake with the words ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY BITCH <3′ 

it’s so obvious that suna was the one who ordered the cake, but it’s literally the best you have every received

overall, it’s pretty chill but you couldn’t ask for anything more knowing their efforts and how you’ve been laughing your ass off the entire time

you guys would even watch the sunset as yall sat atop a hill, taking photos to put on your stories and to post on social media

out of the hundreds of photos taken of you with your cake or aran force feeding suna food, the group photo taken exactly at golden hour was your absolute favorite

[agentnico]

The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021) Review

This new film warns of the dangers of tech consumption yet it appears on a streaming service that’s entire business model is based upon screen addiction with their endless binge worthy content. As they say the irony is most definitely present!

Plot: A quirky, dysfunctional family's road trip is upended when they find themselves in the middle of the robot apocalypse and suddenly become humanity's unlikeliest last hope.

A new animated film produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller who are yet to make a miss, having made a career out of taking familiar formulas and turning them upside down on their heads, whether it be 21 Jump Street that took the idea of the original TV show and gave it more energy and modernistic humour, to The Lego Movie that took the excuse of squeezing more money out of a popular children’s brand and actually made a well made movie and then there is Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse which basically went and created its own animation style inspired by graphic novels. These guys have a very original voice in Hollywood and they prove it time and time again. Their new Netflix animated venture The Mitchells vs. The Machines is no exception. 

I watched this film with my girlfriend and the most recent animated feature we watched together was Soul, which was one of my favourite films last year for its emotional heft and good hearted message, and I am not at all sorry to embarrass her and report that my girlfriend balled her eyes out at that movie. Well wouldn’t you know the same thing happened here with The Mitchells vs The Machines. And honestly it caught me off guard, as this movie is really funny and has that fast paced high-energy load of constant jokes being thrown at you right from the get-go similarly to The Lego Movie that when the dramatic scenes do strike they surprise you and so one moment I’m chuckling away and the next I’m staring at my girlfriend who’s eyes have turned into Niagara Falls. Would have taken me nothing to get a canoe and go down that stream whacking her cheeks with my paddles! However her tears were well founded as behind the comedy and the central plot revolving around this alien invasion is a tale about a father and his daughter and them reconnecting and it reminded my girlfriend of her with her dad but even in itself this is a plot point that many audiences can connect with and this element is handled super well in the film. Also helps that the voice actors for these two characters - Danny McBride and Abbi Jacobson - share great chemistry, or do I call it VOCAL chemistry?... Is that a thing? Can I say that? Do I make sense or am I a fool? The likelihood is the latter, but I digress. Nevertheless with this emotional thread I bet Disney is gutted they didn’t acquire the rights to this movie as it would have fit perfectly in their Pixar catalogue. 

Typical to other Phil Lord and Chris Miller produced animated projects, the animation in this film looks super unique. The blend of CGI with 2D motion drawings scribbled over many shots make it look as if the lead character Katie, a tech-heavy arts college student is literally doodling on each frame, just like with filters and captions that appear on our phone screens in real life. Overall the film is directed really well and the comedic timing is spot on with so many highlight sequences, whether its the goofy short films that Katie makes from documenting her family’s disastrous road trip that includes traffic jam road rage and a seven hour mule tour gone wrong where we unfortunately lose the unsung hero that is Prancer to the canyon, to then the weirdly intense scene where the classic childrens toys Furbies are turned into monsters that act like gremlins, or Olivia Colman’s villainous Siri-type phone AI passive-aggressively being furious and cranky in her evil robot lair that looks like it was designed by Pink Floyd or Daft Punk. There’s so much attention to detail packed into this film and a lot of it is just random additions that are added for the sake of fun, and the entire thing reminded me of the new co-op video game that me and my girlfriend have been playing recently called It Takes Two (which I highly recommend!!) which to be honest shares a lot in common with the spirit of this film. It’s all so CONNECTED!! Honestly the only reason I referenced It Takes Two is cause me and my girlfriend have been enjoying it immensely and I needed to find a pointless excuse to share some non-paid unnecessary advertising for this game.

The Mitchells vs The Machines is an exciting and hilarious family adventure that has something for everyone, and to be honest is a welcome treat for our current pandemic times. I loike it a lot, it’s noice! 

Overall score: 8/10

[sometimesiwrite]

Sick of This

 A/N: Modern AU inspired by a random piece of dialogue from TW2 (Roche’s Path) in Vergen when Geralt and Zoltan speak with Yarpen and Burdon (I think). We hear a story about how Geralt took care of Triss while they were travelling together and she had a horrendous illness. I’m working with hybrids of these characters, but primarily drawing on game dynamics with a bit of book influence for Yennefer and some Netflix influence for Triss. 

Summary: Geralt and Yennefer are in town for a an important political dinner when Geralt learns that their friend, Triss is down for the count with a terrible stomach flu. With some time to spare, he visits her, intending to stay a short while, but her condition worsens to the point where Geralt feels he can’t leave. Internal and inter-personal conflict arises as Geralt vies to skip dinner in favour of caring for a friend in need. tl;dr: Going through a relationship rough-patch (again) and realizing you might have feelings for a close friend makes for a difficult night.

Characters/pairings: Geralt x Triss; Geralt x Yennefer; Yennefer x Istrid; Jaskier

Warnings: Infidelity, verbal abuse/toxic partnership, detailed descriptions of vomiting/severe nausea/stomach pain.

MASTERLIST

Triss looked down at the illuminated screen of her phone: “In town for a few days,” the text read. “Long story. Yen has a work thing. Anyway, let me know if you want to grab a drink.” The number didn’t belong to a name in her contacts—but then again, Geralt’s number never did. Every few months, he’d get a new pay-as-you-go so that old clients wouldn’t try to contract him under the table. It only took two calls from the same tight-assed, penny-pinching hypocrites who’d tried to low-ball him on his first case to make him realize an ever-changing phone number was a good idea. So: burner phones. As a nice added bonus, it made it harder for the Redanian Secret Service to keep tabs on him which meant a little more… investigative freedom when push came to shove. The few people he ever contacted regularly—Triss, Yennefer, Eskel, Lambert, Jaskier (Vesemir didn’t text)—never bothered putting his number in their contacts. By the time they got around to updating his number, he was changing it within a few weeks anyway. Besides, he insisted it was safer for all of them if they didn’t have his name in their phones in the first place. By now, everyone knew that if they got a text from an unknown number, there was a 99.9% chance it was Geralt. 

The toilet gurgled as Triss returned to the sofa with a groan, scrunching her knees up against the pain in her stomach. She checked her phone again: “Only if you’re free, I know Foltest keeps you pretty busy…” She rolled her eyes and replied, “Thanks, Ger. Ordinarily, I could use one right about now, but I’m feeling pretty sick. Think I should stay home </3” She smiled weakly as the text fwiipped its way up the screen. Too bad she was laid up. Would’ve been nice to see him. Her friends always said he was too grumpy and moody to be any fun, but Triss always thought of him as being quite mellow and calming to be around. He never imposed expectations on their time together, unlike her other friends who were always scheming, gossiping, or bitching about their bosses. Just easy conversation and a few good laughs as they caught up on the past few months or years or however long it had been since they last saw each other. 

She checked her phone again and fired off a few brief “not today, babes, sorry, I’m just so sick” texts before her mouth started watering again and she headed into the bathroom: a routine by this point. A few girlfriends had offered to keep her company with rom coms and ginger tea, but she was already feeling so exhausted and it was only 1pm. Besides, Triss wasn’t sure she was prepared for anyone other than her cat (who was hiding under the bed) to see her like this: tawny cheeks flushed with fever, tight brown curls haphazardly bunned on top of her head in a pragmatic attempt to keep them out of the toilet and away from her face, frizzy ringlets falling loose down the back of her neck… and she was acutely aware that she smelled of sickness. Her body’s best attempt to rebalance itself meant that her underarms would overpower even her best deodorant. IF, that is, she cared enough to put any on which she Did Not. She was also, like any sensible woman in her current state, not wearing a bra. 

Nope. Today was a day of horrendousness. Her phone pinged. “You need anything?” 

“A new body might be nice. If you happen to see one that would suit me… 😝” 

The fwoop! came in before her screen went dark: “LOL, I’ll see what I can find. Any preferences?” 

Triss smiled despite the pain in her stomach. “Hmmm I did always want to be a physiotherapist. Oooh! Or a gymnast!” Fwiip!

Fwoop! “Still at your same place? I can send it by courrier. Should get there before 3:00”

Triss was trying hard to come up with a witty enough comeback, but her head was starting to ache. Hmmm. Yes, body, I would love to hydrate you, but you keep rejecting everything I put inside you. “Ugh,” she groaned again and made her way to the toilet. When she got back a few fruitless minutes later, she checked her phone again. Nothing. She just replied, “Thanks, Ger. BRB, going to go die now. When the courier gets here, just tell him to transfer my soul into the new body. I’ll leave it under the Welcome mat.” The TV flipped on as its owner began the endless Netflix Scroll of Indecision. She finally settled on Blue Planet for the 50th time hoping that slow-moving sea blobs would be soothing in some way. 

It didn’t. Another excruciating hour of bathroom visits every ten-to-fifteen-minutes had her googling ‘pressure points to relieve nausea’ by 2:30. She had just pinched a spot on her wrist between her thumb and forefinger when she heard a soft knock on her door. “Ugh, no, GO AWAY! LEAVE ME TO DIE IN PEACE!” she called out from her nest on the sofa. It was too late. The she heard the door brush against the spongy beige carpet as someone poked their head inside, “Triss?” It was Geralt.  

“Oh gods, no, Geralt, stay back, save yourself!”

He gave a low chuckle and Triss already felt a little better. How does he always manage to do that?  “I don’t have a new body for you, but I might have the next best thing. Permission to enter?” 

Triss let out a rueful groan, “Alright, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She heard him step in quietly and toe off his shoes as the door closed. A second later, he came around the corner with a Rexall bag in hand. He’d been to a barber recently, and his silvery hair was looking more stylish than usual—cut shorter on the sides and stylishly swept back from his face. Paired with his dark-teal flannel shirt and grey denim jeans, Triss thought he looked unusually striking. 

Geralt tilted his head sympathetically at the sight before him. Triss was bundled on the sofa in an oversized sleep shirt and sweatpants, fuzzy socks bunched around her ankles, and what looked like any and all home remedies gathered around her: hot water bottle, cold pack, three mugs of tea (ginger, peppermint, and chamomile by the smell of them), a glass of ice water, a barely-touched bowl of chicken broth, a mangled bag of oyster crackers, and a thermometer. 

“You’re really down for the count, huh? Got a fever?” before she could object, the back of Geralt’s hand was on her forehead. It felt cool and refreshing against the dry heat of her face as he assessed her condition. “Meh. Could be better, could be worse.”

“I could’ve told you that,” Triss retorted with a halfhearted smile. “Ugh… sorry, um, I have to…” she pointed towards the bathroom and Geralt raised his hands (‘say no more’) as his friend scuttled exhaustedly around the corner. He busied himself with watching manta rays gliding through the open ocean until he heard the toilet flush and Triss emerged again, looking ragged and a little sheepish. “Sorry,” she said, pouring herself back onto her nest of blankets and stuffed animals. 

Geralt shrugged, “No need to be, you’re sick. Here,” he reached into the pharmacy bag and brought out a box of ginger Gravol tablets and a medium-sized bottle of Cherry Punch Pedialyte—she was allergic to most over-the-counter cold and flu medication.

“Geralt, you didn’t have to do all this for me. How did you even know I had the stomach flu?”

He looked over her shoulder at her laptop which was still open to the page of various nausea-relieving pressure points, “Hm. You should have this stuff around anyway,” he paused as Triss swallowed heavily and went to the bathroom again. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to take care of herself, her mother had been a nurse practitioner for heaven’s sake. Still, Geralt was never one to leave a friend in need if there was something he could do about it. A particularly visceral sound drew him from where he was perched on the arm of the sofa. Triss was crouched on the bathroom floor, shivering with her forehead resting on her elbows over the toilet bowl. She spat. Geralt sat on the edge of the bathtub. “How long has it been like this?”

“Since about... 10am,” she managed to get out before her entire body heaved. Geralt instinctively reached out to place a hand on her back. She didn’t object. She never objected to these little shows of affection from Geralt. There was always something reassuring about them, and it felt particularly nice to be reminded that she wasn’t alone just now.

Geralt rubbed slow circles across her back as he coaxed her through retching and dry heaves. “You know you could've just asked.”

“I know but—”

“Stubborn?”

“Uh-huh,” Triss admitted, sitting back on her heels and flushing the mostly-empty toilet. “Besides, the last thing you need is to be taking care of a gross friend right before getting ready for a fancy business gala.

“You clearly don’t know just how little I’m looking forward to this evening,” Geralt grumbled, passing Triss a cool glass of water to rinse with. 

“Not looking forward to talking the talk, Mr. Slick P.I.?” Triss’s eyes gave a twinkle as her freckled cheeks pulled into a cheeky smirk.

Even when she’s a mess she still finds a way to light up. Geralt furrowed his brow at his own thoughts. Where did that come from? “You know how it is, all this high-society stuff, rubbing elbows, laughing at tasteless jokes. It’s just not me. But Yen—well…” he sighed heavily, “I dunno. She’s right in that it’s a good way to get the information we need, stay visible to the right people but… I shouldn’t be talking to you about this. I know she’s your friend.”

Triss raised an eyebrow, “Oh, go on. Trust me, there’s nothing you can say about Yennefer of Vengerberg that will surprise me. Besides, you’re my friend, too.” 

“Hm.” Geralt stared down and fiddled with his crossed thumbs. “Lately I can’t get anything right. I’m always asking the wrong questions, or I’ll try and talk to her about something I want us to work on and it’s never worded the right way and then it just turns into a fight which is what I want to stop doing in the first place. And then I’m either too sensitive or not sensitive enough and… it’s like she has a set of rules inside her head she won’t tell me about. Feels like it’s harder than it should be. But who am I to know?”

“I’m sorry, Geralt. Yennefer can be so unfair sometimes. I don’t think she understands how much she can push against the people she cares about. It’s one thing to be a friend, at least I can take a breather every now and then if I need to. But it’s different for you. You don’t like taking time apart.” Triss offered an apologetic smile before groaning and leaning back over the toilet and Geralt’s hand took up its place on her back again as he worked her through another round. 

Geralt’s phone rang as Triss flushed the toilet. “Sorry, it’s Yen. I should take this. Be right back. Yen? Yeah, I’m with Triss, got a stomach thing, I stopped by to bring her some...” his voice disappeared around the corner as he went into the bedroom. Triss couldn’t make out their whole conversation, but it sounded tense. The phrase, “...just trust me to dress myself, I’m not a—,” came through the drywall. Triss sighed sympathetically. It certainly hadn’t been smooth sailing for the two of them. Geralt had his own flaws and foibles in the romance department—he could be callous and insensitive in favour of honesty at times, and never shied away from pushing buttons—but Yennefer was mercurial, brazen, rash, and brutal; all excellent qualities for a powerful and influential chief advisor. But as much as Geralt was his own handful, she’d never known him to willfully hurt someone he cared about, and was quick to apologize when he did. 

When Geralt came back, Triss was trying to push herself to standing. He caught her as she swayed on her unsteady legs. “Whoa, whoa, Triss, easy. Here, sit back down, wait here for a second.” Triss did as she was told and settled miserably back onto the bathroom floor. Geralt immediately returned with two blankets before disappearing again. A few minutes later, he returned once more with a tea tray on which was balanced Triss’s laptop, a small glass of Pedialyte on the rocks, the pack of gravol, and the box of oyster crackers. 

Triss let out a soft giggle, “What is this?”

“You need to try and get something in you. Might not be pretty at first, but if you don’t get some fluids soon, you’re going to be in bigger trouble.”

“Really. I had no idea. I can take care of myself, you know… sorry that was,” Triss sighed. “It’s been a long day

Geralt hunkered down next to her on the floor on top of a throw pillow, “Hey, I get it. But that’s not why I’m here. Just because you can doesn’t mean you have to. So take this, with a sip of this,” he handed her a blister pack of the Gravol and the glass of Pedialyte, “and let’s see if you can keep it down.” 

“Cherry Punch. How did you know this was my favourite?” Triss could no longer hide the fondness that was welling up despite her unrelenting discomfort and growing exhaustion. Geralt gave a muted smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “How’s Yennefer?”

The lines on Geralt’s face became more pronounced, “She’s… fine.” Triss tilted her head (‘really?’) and Geralt relented, “There’s a chance Istrid will be there tonight.”

“The head of the Archeological Association? I don’t get it, what’s he got to do with you and Yennefer?”

Triss could guess the answer from Geralt’s pause. His words merely confirmed it, “They have history.” 

“You don’t think that Yennefer will—I mean, she wouldn’t—”

“She has. She doesn’t know that I know, but…” Triss’s heart sank. “I don’t know why I’m waiting for her to tell me. Guess I don’t want her to feel like I went out of my way to find her at fault—which I didn’t, by the way. I found out by accident.” 

“I’m sorry, Ger.” The weight of Triss’s head against his shoulder brought Geralt out of his daze and he looked down at the messy updo of mahogany hair. He smiled again, a delicate, private, unconscious thing that sparked from an unconscious uplifting somewhere in the middle of him and pulled the corners of his eyes. He thought about ignoring it, not wanting to have to go digging inside himself for what it meant. Instead he wrapped an arm around Triss’s shoulder and pecked a chaste kiss to the top of her head. 

“How’re you feeling?”

The answer to that question proved complicated. Triss’s spirits were a bit better thanks to Geralt’s stubborn-yet-easygoing caretaking. But the introduction of contents into her contrary stomach was yielding less-than-desirable consequences. Painful cramps persisted between more frequent bouts of vomiting—which by this point was mostly dry-heaves followed by the occasional expulsion of bile. Meanwhile it was 5:30 and Geralt’s phone beeped a notification. He checkecked the screen with one hand while he soothed Triss with the other: Where are you??? Yen. Who else could it be? He’d have to call her.

“Geralt, go! Really, I’ll be fine I promise. You’ve got to rub elbows and laugh at bad jokes, remember?” Triss propped herself up on wobbly elbows over the toilet bowl, not trusting the wave to be over. 

Geralt was already dialling. Triss heard the faint echo of her friend’s voice on the other line as she answered with, ‘Where the HELL are you?’ 

“I’m still with Triss, Yen. Things aren’t looking good here, she’s just gotten worse. If I can’t—Yen, listen if she doesn’t—if she doesn’t get any fluids in her I’ll need to take her to the hospital.” Geralt pulled an apologetic face and Triss gave him a reassuring wave that she’d be fine if he stepped out for a minute. “Yen, please, I thought we talked about this, please don’t use that tone, it makes me feel…” The conversation continued, though this time in the living room: “I know this is an important night for us to both be there, Yen, you’ve been reminding me for the last month, but I can’t just leave until… what’s that supposed to mean? That’s not—no, hang on, that’s not fair, Yen… Well if you already don’t believe me I don’t—Okay, then you tell me what I’m supposed to say! I’m tired of this, Yennefer, I am so. Exhausted trying to figure out exactly what to say in order for you to not react like this every time I… can I finish?...”

Geralt was pacing back-and-forth now, and Triss could tell from the tone on the other end of the line that Yennefer wasn’t backing down anytime soon, “Geralt, if you don’t leave Triss’s apartment and come back here and get dressed this instant, I swear I will—”

Geralt paused outside the bathroom door for Triss to flash a wilted thumbs-up as she tried to drink more Cherry Punch Pedialyte, “Or you’ll what, Yen? Count to ten and then chuck me in the coi pond? I—you know what?” he moved back into the living room, “No, you know what? How ‘bout this: I’m staying here with our friend who needs help, and you can go to this big event, embarrassment free, and do what you do best without the big idiot holding you back. Whatever needs to get done at this dinner tonight, I bet you’ll do better on your own than worrying about me screwing something up.” 

Triss heard his phone flip shut followed by a heavy sigh before his sock feet padded back into the bathroom. Unfortunately, just then, her suspicions about not being finished proved correct as her mouth, once again, began to water. Thankfully Cherry punch wasn’t nearly as bad coming back up as other flavors were known to be. In less than a second, Geralt was there with a warm hand and a blanket around her shoulders. They didn’t talk much over the next little while as Geralt continued his attempts to soothe Triss’s stomach enough to hold something down. After an hour, Triss finally was able to rest a little, albeit still in quite a bit of pain. But with the toilet no longer an ongoing necessity, the sofa once again became a viable option. Geralt scooped up the blanketed bundle and carried her back into the living room to continue their journey under the sea, complete with cold compress and bendy straw.

By 7:30 Triss hadn’t needed the toilet at all in the last hour, and some of her stomach pain was starting to diminish. However, she was still shivering and achy, and not interested in food. She kept insisting that Geralt had time to meet Yennefer at the gala, that she would be perfectly fine on her own, but Geralt wasn’t convinced. Showing up now would not only put Yennefer in the awkward position of having to save face by not murdering him in cold blood in front of a dozen or more foreign dignitaries, but it would also mean having to face Istrid who, if he wasn’t already, would doubtlessly be very interested to hear Yennefer’s thoughts on a great number of things before the night was over. Geralt didn’t trust himself not to do something he’d regret—or at least that Yennefer would regret.

Another hour in and Triss was starting to perk up: minimal stomach pain, and she was making a decent dent in her Cherry Punch. Geralt decided it was time for a little chicken soup. He made a freezer pizza for himself and cracked a beer while he warmed up a can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle, ladelling out all the broth into a mug for Triss so she wouldn’t be tempted to eat more than she could handle. Geralt had only one goal for her tonight: keep everything down. If she could do that, then he had at least been able to do something for her. If not… Geralt tried very hard not to listen to the voice that said, ‘then you’re no use for anyone’ in the back of his mind. Thankfully, Triss finished her broth without concern and he didn’t have to worry about that voice for the time being. Instead, he settled a little deeper into the sofa cushions as Triss resumed a comfortable spot against his shoulder. 

After another little while, a miracle happened: Triss started to have fun. That characteristic sparkle came back to her eyes, and the two friends quickly began to actively enjoy their evening. They watched The Fellowship of the Ring and took a drink of beer or Pedialyte every time Frodo had a dramatic closeup, was stabbed, or rolled his eyes for dramatic effect. Geralt microwaved a bag of popcorn, and Triss cautiously had a few oyster crackers as they laughed and caught up. Finally. It may not have been the original vision for what drinks and casual hangs would look like, but it was good. It was nice. Relaxed, and pleasant. Easy. Geralt’s mind wandered as the Fellowship fled the Balrog, and he didn’t notice the little line his thumb was leaving on Triss’s blanket as it traced up and down her shoulder. He also didn’t think twice when she shifted, half-asleep, to lie her head in his lap and his hand moved to the curve of her waist. It wasn’t until he looked down in the direction of soft snoring that he was reminded exactly who was lying in his lap. 

His initial thought was, ‘shit,’ as he slowly removed his hand from her waist, not wanting to wake her, but also not knowing what to do. It was suddenly all so intimate, though he didn’t quite know why. As he watched her, peacefully asleep in his lap, he realized he didn’t want to break away. Didn’t want to wake her to adjust to a more ‘appropriate’ orientation. He touched her shoulder again. That was nice. That felt… nice. She stirred, and Geralt wondered if she was comfortable as he brushed a tight ringlet behind her ear. She smiled in semi-consciousness and his heart sang. This was bad. This was very very bad. He reached for the remote and flicked the tv off. It was after midnight, and high time everyone went to bed. Alone. 

That was the only option. Right? In theory, no. There was another option, and a significant part of Geralt wanted to go with that one, stay in this soft warm place where everything felt easier… where he felt happy. But a louder part of him knew that wasn’t right, wasn’t fair; that even if he was unhappy—even if Yennefer had spent the night with Istrid (Geralt tried not to think about that). The bottom line was Triss felt well enough that he no longer needed to stay with her to make sure she was alright. That was why he’d come. If he stayed for other reasons, it wouldn’t be fair to anyone. End of discussion.

“Triss,” Geralt murmured, rousing her as gently as he could. 

“Hmm?” Her eyes fluttered open to see Geralt staring down at her. She didn’t remember lying down in his lap, but she must have just before she fell asleep. “Did I fall asleep on you?” 

Geralt’s eyes crinkled, “Hm. Yeah. You were pretty out of it.”

“Ah, shit, I’m so sorry!”

“You needed the rest. Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s passed out on me, and you’re significantly easier to deal with than Lambert.”

Triss bunched her blankets around her shoulders and shivered sleepily, “You should go. Yennefer’s probably waiting for you.”

“Hm. Yeah, probably,” Geralt heaved himself off the sofa as Triss released her hair and gathered her nest to head to the bedroom. Geralt waited until she was bundled in bed. “All set?”

A little smile peeked over the tops of the covers, “Mmmhmm, thanks.”

“Need anything else?”

“No, I’m good. Goodnight, Ger.”

“Goodnight, Triss,” Geralt flicked off the light. In the entranceway, he paused with his hand on the doorknob, took a deep breath, and left, locking the door behind him and putting the key back in its usual hiding place. Enough now. Done. He was determined that whatever he had felt, whatever warm, unexpected thing had bubbled to the surface, would forever exist behind that locked door, frozen in time. A blip. The important thing was nothing was acted on. Not really. At worst, they wandered into a grey area by accident. These things happen. The key now was not to dwell on it, to move forward. 

Geralt’s stomach soured as he slid his keycard into the slot of room 622. The lock clicked open as the little light on top flashed green and Geralt turned the handle, closing the door behind him as quietly as he could. He toggled the dimmer switch next to the door; the lowest setting would give him enough light to get changed without waking up—Yen? The bed was empty, still freshly turned-down, with his pre-approved evening attire laid out as he had suspected. He fucking hated that tie. He put the suit back in the garment bag from whence it came and checked his phone. Nothing. No texts, no missed calls. Might still be out. It wasn’t unusual for these events to turn into afterparties which was where most of the juicy information was gathered. He hit speed-dial. 

“Hi, Jaskier? It’s—yeah, hi. Listen. Are things still going over there? I just—hm? Yeah, she’s doing okay now. Took awhile for me to get anything in her, but no hospital visit so… yeah, she finally got to sleep just as I was heading out, made sure she was hydrated and had a little something… I’m sure she’d appreciate that… Actually, that’s why I’m calling, I just got back and she’s not in, I was wondering if you knew where she…When?…Okay…No, archeology… Mmm no, they’re very different fields. Nevermind, thanks, Jas…Yeah, no it’s, um, I just wanted to make sure that she was okay. Didn’t want to bug her in case she was in the middle of—something. Yeah… Well don’t let me interrupt that. Okay, all the best. Go get ‘em tiger. ‘Night.” 

Geralt tossed his phone on the bed and flopped heavily on top of the duvet and rubbed a hand over his face.

“Goddamnit, Yen.”

__________________

@the-space-between-heartbeats 

@just-a-sad-donut 

@oxenfurt-archives 

@thirstyforred 

@titaniafire 

@belalugosisdead 

@lonelygayz 

@awkward-turtles-world 

@iloveyouyen 

@criminaly-supernatural

@friendlybelladonna

@enkelikauneus 

[duhragonball]

So the only two Terminator movies I hadn’t seen were Salvation and Dark Fate, which was why I bought this box set.  I was looking forward to T4, but wasn’t very impressed with it.   T6, on the other hand, yeah it’s pretty damn good.  But, like T4 and T5, this was also meant to be the first part of a reboot trilogy, and just like T4 and T5, it didn’t perform well enough at the box office to make that plan a reality.  

I don’t know what the future for this series holds.  The Wikipedia article for Dark Fate talks about plans to make a Terminator anime on Netflix, which sounds pretty stupid to me, but I thought that Sarah Connor Chronicles show was a bad idea, and I seem to recall it did okay.  People seem to think there’s money to be made off this franchise, but it feels like each new attempt ends in failure, sort of like how Skynet keeps trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. 

Just to recap...

T1: Kyle Reese travels back in time to protect Sarah Connor from a Terminator, so that her yet-to-be-born son can lead humanity to victory in the Future War.  Ironically, Kyle turns out to be the father of Sarah’s baby.  

T2: Skynet sends another Terminator to kill John Connor, but the Future John sends a reprogrammed Terminator to protect him.   Meanwhile, Sarah Connor is determined to prevent Skynet’s creation.

T3: John Connor thinks the Future War has been prevented, but he can’t quite believe it.   After surviving another Terminator attack, John realizes that Skynet’s rise to power is inevitable, and he reluctantly accepts his fate as the leader of the human resistance.

T4: Fifteen years after Judgment Day, John Connor has to save Kyle Reese from a Skynet plot to wipe out the Resistance.  

T5: Repeated time trips and assassination attempts have left the timeline from 1984 to 2029 unrecognizable.    Skynet captures John Connor in the future and converts him into a T-3000.   This new John is tasked with facilitating the rise of Skynet in 2017, but he is defeated by Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese, and a T-800 sent from the future by an unknown benefactor.

There’s a lot of details that prevent these movies from fitting together into a single storyline, but the broad themes still make for a good meta-narrative.  The first movie introduces Sarah and the central conflict, the second movie introduces John and provides an origin for Skynet.   The third movie depicts the worldwide nuclear strike that marks the beginning of the Future War.   The fourth movie shows us the middle of the Future War.   Finally, the fifth movie depicts the end of the war and the part where Kyle goes back in time to start the cycle again.   Circumstances change from one movie to the next, but you can chalk these up as the result of all the various time travelers.    I mean, a lot of people get killed in these movies, and they sort of act like it doesn’t matter much in the long run, but it could add up in a hurry.  

Knowing all of this about the first five movies, I was really curious to see what the sixth one would even be about, especially with Linda Hamilton returning as an older Sarah Connor.  She was dead in T3 and 4, and T5 recast the role and overhauled the character.  Of course, T6 just sort of pretends those three movies never happened, but even so, what else is there to do with Sarah?

Well, Dark Fate opens with John Connor getting shot in 1998.   In this movie, the effort to prevent Judgment Day in T2 was successful, but Skynet had sent multiple Terminators throughout the 1990s to hunt down John, and they kept looking for him even after Skynet itself ceased to exist.  

It’s a ballsy move, but it’s almost inevitable.   They literally did every other thing there was to do with this story.   It’s not even the first time John has died to a Terminator.   The T-850 in T3 did the honors in 2032, albeit off-screen.   In T5, Skynet decided that it had to team up with John in order to win, so it turned him into a Terminator.   I’m not sure if he was killed in that movie or not, but it might as well have been his death.    But those were future versions of John, and Skynet’s goal was always to kill him before he could defeat it, not after.   And so, T6 decided the only road left was to let the coyote catch the road runner.

So John’s dead and Skynet’s gone, so now what?   Well it turns out there’s another dark future down the road, and this whole formula plays out again.  This time, the bad guy is a “Rev-9″ Terminator, sent to kill Dani Ramos.   But the Rev-9 isn’t working for Skynet, it’s working for Legion, which is just another AI that became self-aware, took control of the world’s defenses, etc.  

Ramos’ protector from the future is a human “augment” named Grace Harper.   She looks cool and kicks ass but she’ll run out of gas if she doesn’t take her augment medicine.   Also, she isn’t powerful enough to beat the Rev-9.   Luckily, Sarah Connor steps in and offers to help, because she’s been hunting Terminators ever since John’s death, and because she knows what it’s like to be in Dani’s shoes. 

Over the years, Sarah’s been getting tips on where new Terminators will show up from a secret informant, and Grace’s orders are to proceed to a particular location if things go poorly, and it turns out that’s the same place where Sarah’s been getting her tips from.  They go there and find an old T-800 named Carl.   Carl’s the one who killed John in 1998, and afterward he had no purpose and no further instructions to follow.  He eventually studied human behavior and developed the AI equivalent of a conscience, then married a human wife and helped her raise her young son.  

Sarah still holds a grudge, but they need Carl’s help to survive, so they all join forces to have a big showdown with the Rev-9.   Grace and Carl sacrifice themselves to help Dani win, and the movie ends with Sarah promising to help Dani prepare for the future that’s to come.  

At first, Sarah assumed that Dani would be the mother of the eventual leader of the resistance against Legion, just as John was fated to lead the resistance against Skynet.  But eventually it comes to light that Dani herself will be the leader who saves the world, and Sarah realizes that she’s the new John.   I guess that’s Sarah’s character arc for this movie.   She loses her own son, spends the next 22 years without a purpose, and then she discovers a new purpose.   It also allows Carl to redeem himself for John’s murder.  Now that he’s grown a soul, he can choose to die for Dani instead of killing for a Skynet that no longer exists.   Grace’s arc is probably weaker than the others, but she initially saw the Rev-9 as a threat that could only be avoided and not defeated, but in the end she stood and fought, so I guess that’s good enough. 

More importantly to me, though, is that T6 serves as an answer to the previous film.   Skynet was obsessed with John Connor, like he was the only thing that allowed humanity to defeat it.    So in T5, Skynet decided that if it could just convert John to its side, it would be unbeatable.    That always struck me as silly, because without John Connor, someone else would have stepped in to fill the void.  And T6 demonstrates this by introducing Dani.   Legion and Skynet might as well be the same idea, but even without John Connor, there’s another human leader who can rise to the occasion.   And if something happened to Dani, someone else would step up, and so on.   

Skynet thought it could win the war by defeating John, but it’s reasoning was flawed: it had to defeat what John represents, and there isn’t a Terminator powerful enough to do that.   As long as it kept pursuing the man, it would never succeed.  It would have to kill every human to achieve the victory it craves, but it couldn’t seem to make that work either.

So with that conclusion reached, I really don’t see where else this franchise can go.    They could do a movie about Sarah and Dani fighting more Terminators, but that would just be a retread of the previous movies.  And the outcome is already understood to be pointless.  Either Dani will prevent Legion’s creation in the present-day, or she’ll tough it out and win the Future War in the 2040′s.  We know that’s inevitable, or Legion wouldn’t have sent a Terminator back in time in the first place. 

This reminds me a lot of my initial thoughts after seeing Genisys in 2015.   It seemed like Skynet was getting increasingly desperate to find away to avoid losing the war.   It couldn’t beat the humans on the ground, and time travel never seemed to help, and hijacking John Connor didn’t help either.    Now we see that killing John would make no difference either.  So it seems like the only option left would be for “The Machines” to sue for peace, or accept defeat.    I’m not sure that would make for a very good movie.  

That might be the only major flaw I see in T6.   The action’s great, and I never got bored watching it, and the story is compelling, and it’s a great sendoff for Arnold Schwarzenegger if he ever stops coming back for more of these movies.   But it’s also kind of redundant.   This movie just reinforces lessons already learned in previous movies.  

I really hope this is the last one.  I suspect that a lot of the themes that made T1 and T2 so successful have been superseded by other franchises.  You can get a lot of the same gonzo action sequences out of an Iron Man or Captain America movie, and the threat of “technology gone too far” isn’t exactly novel anymore.  There was a scene in T6 where Dani’s brother lost his job to a robot, and that seemed downright quaint.    They were doing stories about that in the 80s.   T6 does some thought-provoking stuff with the Border Patrol and their detention facilities, but I’m not sure we need a Terminator movie to cover that ground.   I’m not saying the Terminator movies aren’t allowed to get into social justice topics.   It’s been doing that for decades.   But it’s hardly unique in that respect.   By now, the question James Cameron and the others need to be asking is “What problem would a new Terminator movie solve?”  It’s not going to be a financial success, and critics probably won’t like it.   So what are we going for here?  I’m not sure there’s been a good answer in a long time.

[elderbwrry]

first lines meme

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line. Then tag 10 of your favorite authors!

Tagged by: @desynchimminent! Thanks! Seriously, you find the best writing tag things.

Tagging: @kyberkills, @cleversturmhond, @thembohux, @ashenpages, @need-more-meta, and anyone else bc no thoughts head empty

1) Long Hair || The Witcher (Netflix), Geraskier, 5.4k, - Geralt realises just how long it's been since he's seen his favourite bard

Geralt came trudging into town by the main road, pocket heavy with the reward of a job well done.

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2) Millicent || Star Wars (Sequels), Kylux, 19.5k - Hux and Kylo bond over Hux's cat and end up catching feelings

Hux was about to get into his sleep clothes just as a chime of beeps sounded to inform him someone was at his door.

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3) Rocks Break Gifts || Star Wars (Sequels), Kylux, 16.7k - The five times Kylo proposes, and the one time Hux says yes.

“This is your fault,” Hux accuses him, and, as if he is underwater, his voice is so far away, so muffled.

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4) Sacrifice || Star Wars (Sequels), Kylux, 3k, Huxloween 2020 - College AU

“Who will do it?” Phasma asks gravely, looking around at their little group.

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5) The Boy and His Wolf || Star Wars (Sequels), Kylux, 3k, Huxloween 2020 - Werewolf Kylo, Medieval AU

The boy stands cold and alone, outside the thin wooden door of the house.

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6) Hare Before, Trouble Behind || Star Wars (Sequels), Techienician, 6.5k, Huxloween 2020 - Were-animals farm AU, based on a poem

When Matt had first laid eyes upon the young man at the farmer's fair, he'd had to remove his glasses and rub them clean on the inside of his shirt.

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7) Unholy Is The Lust In Your Eyes || Star Wars (Sequels), Kylux, 5.2k, Huxloween 2020 - Band AU, Vampire AU

There were a number of things Kylo Ren loved.

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8) The Mean Bean || Star Wars (Sequels), Kylux, 43.2k - University AU, Coffee Shop AU

It was almost one thirty in the morning and Hux, as usual, was buried inside a book.

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9) We'll Go To The Woods No More || Detroit: Become Human, Reed900, 19.6k - Vampire AU, Revolution France AU

“Brethren, please be seated,” the Évêque Fowler announced, and a general scraping of chairs followed from all over the dingy château dining room, the hunters still somewhat prickly around each other even as they sat cramped at the long tables that had been broken out for their visit.

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10) The White Hound || Star Wars (Sequels), Kylux, 1.9k - When Hux becomes Supreme Leader, one of his first orders is to put Kylo in white.

Hux narrowed his eyes.

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11) Even if he doesn't say so || Star Wars (Sequels), DarkGingerPilot, 10.5k - Witcher AU, Witcher Kylo, Mage Hux, Bard Poe

Whenever someone asked Kylo, he always said he preferred to keep to himself and the company of Silence, his horse and his best companion for the very fact of her name; she didn't talk, she didn't disturb the meditative quiet of his lonely rides, and, most importantly, he wasn't unsure how to curry her favour.

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12) Girls' Night || Star Wars (Sequels), Kylux (kind of?), 3.6k - The Knights Of Ren spa evening

Hux marched down the corridor in the Finalizer's quarters deck, the section dedicated to command personnel.

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13) Too Wise To Woo Peaceably || Star Wars (Sequels), Kylux, 6k - Teacher AU, School Play Co-Directors - written with @KyberKills, but the beginning line happens to be one I wrote with his revisions :)

Narrowly avoiding running over some scurrying second years at the school gates, professor Armitage Hux pulls into the school parking lot, turns off his car and sighs.

-

That's all I have up on ao3! They're more varied than I expected them to be, but I appear to like a strong, character focussed intro, sometimes with a nice bit of dialogue. Consistent beginning sentence length, on the other hand? I don't know her. I really like focussing on Hux first though, wow, it's almost like I think he's a really striking focal point who should be utilised to his fullest extent or something. Fun!

[bluecrusadearcade]

Harrison Osterfield is not your regular irregular

By Baker Street, Gentleman’s Journal quizzes the star of Netflix’s new drama on world records, Sherlock Holmes and his golf swing…

Draped in a silk shirt and paisley scarf, Harrison Osterfield is shivering his way across a brisk Regent’s Park. But he’s not complaining. Why would he? After all, the 24-year-old has dealt with worse. In his latest television series alone — Netflix’s The Irregulars — he’s tussled with demonic crows, paranormal serial killers and even the occult. So a little nip in the air? Nothing to worry about.

“I do have my eye on that jumper, though,” beams Osterfield from behind a bold pair of sunglasses. I don’t blame him. It’s a chunky-knit, funnel-neck number from Connolly, and the next piece of clothing lined up for this al fresco photoshoot. But, for now, the young actor must grit his chattering teeth — and continue striking willowy poses in that billowy shirt.

And those poses are turning heads. Dog-walkers, taxi drivers and tourists are all picking up on Osterfield’s energy; a coolly British blend of big grins and bouncy enthusiasm. He swings from a lamppost! He dances through daffodils! He feeds the pigeons! NW1 hasn’t seen this much action in months…

And we’ve come to Regent’s Park for obvious reasons; Baker Street snakes down from its south-west corner. And, on that famous thoroughfare, sits the fictional digs of Sherlock Holmes. But The Irregulars, a supernatural-tinged drama named for Holmes’ gang of trusty street informants, wasn’t shot in London. Rather, it was filmed on the authentically old streets of Sheffield and Liverpool — the same cobbles walked by the Peaky Blinder boys. So this, Osterfield grins, is a fun opportunity to see the real thing.

“All of the rest of the cast,” he admits, “are really big Sherlock fans. I’ve never really read any of the Sherlock books. I’ve seen maybe one Robert Downey Jr. film? So I was very new going into it.”

Today, then, will be a crash course. Because, after we get Osterfield out of the park (and into that jumper), we’re heading to the Holmes Hotel for a coffee and a catch-up. It’s a relatively new hotel just off Baker Street, decked out with knowing nods to the world’s greatest detective. There’s a bronze bulldog guarding the door, pipe-patterned wallpaper and signature cocktails at the sadly-closed bar (anyone for a ‘Case Closed’?).

But, though there are only suggestions of Sherlock in the Holmes Hotel, Osterfield explains that they’re even subtler in the show. Because The Irregulars, in a nutshell (wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma), sidelines the sleuth, and shifts the focus onto Osterfield and his fellow gang members. The actor plays one of the show’s leads; frail runaway nobleman Prince Leopold. All sullen glances and broken bones, his story is the heart of this first season.

“And it’s been a long project in the making,” says Osterfield, noting that filming on The Irregulars began almost two years ago. “That’s quite daunting. When you’ve spent that much time on something and you’ve got no idea how it’s going to turn out?

“It means that, now, it’s crunch time,” he continues, face creasing with mock-worry, “and I have no idea how people are going to react. But I’m really proud of the work, and that’s what I’m taking away from it.”

The Irregulars may be Osterfield’s first lead role — but he’s been acting for years, popping up in several short films and the George Clooney-directed adaptation of Catch-22 before Netflix took notice. His first role came at 11-years-old, when he was cast as Tiny Tim in his school’s stage production of A Christmas Carol. “It’s funny, actually,” says Osterfield, “because it’s quite a similar physicality to my role in The Irregulars”.

“But that’s where it started,” he continues. “And the real reason I got into acting was because there was this girl in the drama class who I really liked. I thought, if I joined up and impressed her, I could take her out on a date. That didn’t happen. But, although she wasn’t interested at all — the acting seems to be going okay!”

It certainly does. But, like actors all over the world, it’s been a very slow year for Osterfield. He returned to set in September to finish filming the Netflix show — but the rest of his lockdown was eerily, cannily familiar to everyone else’s.

“I went back to my home in Kingston,” he nods, “where I was living with three of my best mates who are also actors. Quite a few of my friends are in theatre, and they had a really tough time of it — not knowing what was going to happen next. I was very lucky, knowing that I was going back to finish something”.

The actor says it was strange being locked-down with fellow performers. With sets closed around the country and curtains falling on theatres, it was one of the first times they had all been at home together. But, even with the additional pressure, he says there were no problems. And there never have been, according to Osterfield — as it’s rare that he and his friends ever compete for the same role.

“We’re all very different castings!” he laughs. “Which is good. It’s a mixed bag, really. But it’s very useful when you’ve got to self-tape an audition and there’s another actor literally upstairs. Also, we’ve all known each other for ten years, so we’ve grown up together and, luckily, know when not to push each other’s buttons.”

With no work, Osterfield spent most of his 2020 getting stuck into lockdown. And he shamelessly tried every self-isolated stereotype. He binge-watched every sports documentary from Drive to Survive to Last Chance U. He upped the frequency and intensity of his workouts. He even tried his hand at cooking. He tried everything.

“I did try everything!” the actor laughs, fizzing once more with that lamppost-swinging, daffodil-dancing energy. “Really! I think I went though every lockdown activity there is. I gave baking a go for two weeks — that didn’t work out. I made a banana bread and that was it. I’m not going to be delving into that any more…

“We were quite lucky, though,” he adds, “because we had an outdoor space. We built a homemade golf net in our garden, by putting up two wooden poles and hanging a blue screen we had left over from filming. That kept us entertained most days”.

But, despite the failed banana breads, closed-off golf courses and Irregulars anxiety, Osterfield says that the worst thing about lockdown was missing his family.

“Because we’re a very close family”, he explains. “Massively so. And, usually, we’d have family gatherings every other weekend – my whole family are in East Grinstead and closer to Brighton, so real countryside. I’m honestly just looking forward to the day, with summer on the horizon, that we can do some good barbecues outside.

“We even tried family Zoom quizzes over lockdown,” he adds, “and they all figured out that I’m not that clever. The rest of my family all seem really, really intelligent. I don’t know if they were just revising beforehand, but I was definitely last a couple of times…”

And Osterfield’s most inspiring family member — not to mention the most irregular — is his 89-year-old grandfather. Despite the young actor upping his own fitness levels during lockdown (“I started doing handstand push-ups. That’s my new skill!”) Osterfield’s grandfather put those athletic achievements to shame.

“He’s fitter than me!” laughs Osterfield. “He’s been kept at home for most of the time and, as a family, we’ve been quite worried about him. But I struggle to keep up with him. I’ll ring him up and ask how his day’s going and he’ll say ‘Oh, hi Harry. Can I call you back later on? I’m just doing some exercise’. So he’s doing better than okay!”

But the exercising, Osterfield says seriously, has been a real lifeline. It’s kept both him and his mind busy during lockdown — and has motivated the actor to pursue more physical, active roles in the future. If he can look back at a body of versatile work, measured out in marked body transformations, he says he’ll be happy.

“I’ve been doing a lot of bodyweight exercise over the last year,” he nods. “I thought it would be quite cool, while in lockdown, to break a world record for something — so I’ve been trying lots of fitness challenges. I’m very close to getting the most burpee chin-ups in under a minute. I’ve got to knuckle down on that.

“I also tried to eat an apple in under 38 seconds,” he laughs. “Which sounds like a long time, but it’s actually quite difficult. And, with apples, I eat everything. Even the middle bit. Even the stem. I just chuck it down. I’m a big fruit bat, so I eat everything apart from the seeds.”

There’s that bouncy energy again; that fun-but-utterly-sincere enthusiasm. It’s an odd thing for an actor, to be so happily unabashed by everything — but the 24-year-old is as animated when talking about his acting as he is about his apples. And that’s nice to see. He’s clearly relishing every opportunity to better himself, and just getting started with what promises to be a very exciting career. Harrison Osterfield, it seems, takes every bite of the apple — literally. Talk about irregular.

[jostenneil]

I recently read Balancing Toy and Cross Game because of you and I loved both! They were so good at depicting mundane life and packing emotion in subtle ways. Could you recommend some slice of life manga?

this makes me so happy, omg! 😭 i’m really glad you enjoyed them, i love the slice of life genre so much for how it’s used as a medium. i’m going to recommend some other titles here, but i think yamakawa aiji and mitsuru adachi’s other works are definitely worth checking out as well! 

sangatsu no lion (manga/anime) - this may be one of the more obvious recent choices within the genre, but i think it’s with very good reason! chica umino has the slice of life genre down to a science. the story primarily follows rei, a shogi prodigy who has recently started to live alone due to tensions he felt he was creating within his adoptive family. he’s very lonely and depressed due to what he felt was an invasive experience on his own part, so a lot of the narrative follows him being reached out to by other people and him learning to ask for help rather than keeping all of his struggles to himself. there’s a lot of complex emotions and trauma tied into the narrative, but they’re often depicted against very simple situational backdrops, so it feels like you’re walking through ordinary people’s lives but in a way that’s deeply relatable. i believe the anime is on netflix so that’s very convenient as well, and i think it does a beautiful job of conveying a lot of the imagery that’s so crucial to depicting the ideas contained within the story. i would definitely recommend chica umino’s other primary work, honey and clover, for similar reasons as well, but i recommended that in my shoujo recs post already so i won’t rehash that here

azumanga daioh (anime/manga) - i’m not sure how to describe this series. it follows a group of teenage girls (and a few of their teachers) as they navigate three years of high school. and that would sound like an at least semi-serious endeavor, except it isn’t really on the surface. the series operates as a progression of chronological one shots centered on different gags and nonsensical situations, and it makes for comedy that i think has remained pretty timeless despite the series being nearly two decades old. the anime is great, both the sub and dub are phenomenal, and the manga is written in the form of those comic strips you used to read as a kid on sundays. it’s just super simple, lightheartedly funny, and surprisingly heartfelt when it wants to be due to the relationships you see illustrated between the girls. i would recommend kiyohiko azuma’s other primary work, yostuba&!, for similarly lighthearted and funny material. also, these are some of my favorite scenes from the anime

ojamajo doremi (anime) - this falls more into the shoujo category, esp since the mcs are witches who navigate a witching world, but i think it operates by slice of life parameters because of the way the story is told. ojamajo has received a lot of praise for its timelessness due to the relatability of its multiple scenarios to people of all ages and backgrounds. most simply put, it starts as a show about a girl who accidentally becomes contracted to a witch and so becomes a witch-in-training herself. doremi gets into all sorts of ridiculous messes and has to solve them not just through use of her powers but also just per normal problem solving skills. there’s narratives about friendships, relationships with our family and our teachers, growing up, learning to accept different kinds of people, etc. and similarly to azumanga, tho it initially feels like a purely one shot set-up, the plot and development of the characters builds in a way that’s subtle but also pleasingly noticeable. it’s just super down to earth and kind and funny, and there’s even a movie that came out last year (i believe?) to celebrate the twentieth anniversary, which made its main characters be girls who had grown up watching ojamajo and were now seeking out their own adventures as they grew up. i think that’s really sweet

horimiya (manga/anime) - this is perfect to get into right now bc the anime just started airing! it follows a pair of students, hori and miyamura, who come to find out about each other living “double lives”. hori hides the fact that she goes home everyday to take care of her house and her brother bc her parents are always at work, and miyamura looks like an otaku bc of the way he dresses but is actually just a normal guy with some tattoos and piercings. they coincidentally cross paths one day and are made privy to each other’s “secret” lifestyles, so a friendship and eventually a romantic relationship strikes up between them. the nice thing about the manga is that not a lot of time is spent on getting them into the relationship. you actually see them as a couple for most of it, doing couple-y things, engaging in couple-y conversation, having couple-y squabbles. there’s also a cast of characters outside of these two who deal with their own day-to-day issues and such, so overall it’s a nice casual read about people and how they interact. i wouldn’t say it ever gets angsty (at least not that i’ve read so far) but it’s nonetheless very enjoyable for its straightforwardness and simplicity

bokura ga ita (manga/anime) - i haven’t watched this in a long time so my memories are somewhat hazy, but i think this features one of my favorite explorations of grief in a shoujo manga. it starts with nanami, a high school freshman who hopes to make new friends but is also put-off by the most popular boy in school, yano, bc of his superficial attitude. yano is actually still emotionally recovering from the death of his girlfriend the year prior. she died in a car accident and was with her ex-boyfriend at the time, so yano assumed she was cheating on him, and instead of properly processing the event, he pretends to act like he doesn’t care. he and nanami grow close over the course of the narrative, but there are a lot of levels to yano’s trauma and grief that keep them apart in various ways. it’s very much true to that era of romance manga in the sense of all of the ridiculous drama and love lines, but i think it’s really weighted because so much of that drama stems from real trauma and characters’ issues with depression, etc. if you loved nana or paradise kiss, i think you would enjoy it. also, if memory serves, i believe the anime covers only half of the story, prior to a major time skip 

i didn’t want to feature any repeats, so i’m going to direct you to my shounen recs post for some more stuff i love from the slice of life genre as well. in particular, i think silver spoon and sket dance are great for that (as is oofuri, but it’s also a sports series very detailed with its sports lore, so idk if you’d be interested in that). and while i haven’t read the following personally, these are some trusted recs that i’ve either been meaning to read or got from friends: mushishi, oyasumi punpun, barakamon, nichijou, beck. i hope this all helps! 

[natlacentral]

Exclusive Interview: Yvonne Chapman Talks ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender,’ Channeling the Avatar State in Her Craft, ‘Superman & Lois,’ and More

Yvonne Chapman, much like a skilled bender mastering the elements, excels in her craft. Whether she’s directing, writing, acting, or producing, her purpose and mission as an artist is to serve the stories she tells. She’s best known for transformative performances in projects including Kung Fu, The Stranger, and Family Law.

Currently, she can be seen starring as Avatar Kyoshi in Netflix’s critically-acclaimed hit new series, Avatar: The Last Airbender. A live-action reimagining of the beloved animated series following Aang, the young Avatar, as he learns to master the four elements (Water, Earth, Fire, Air) to restore balance to a world threatened by the terrifying Fire Nation.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to catch up with Yvonne to discuss Avatar: The Last Airbender, her preparation in bringing Avatar Kyoshi to life in this live-action adaptation, channeling the Avatar state in her craft, Superman & Lois, and her love for filmmaking.

PC: We find worlds colliding with your latest project, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Michael Goi, with whom you worked on Kung Fu, championing you for this role. Is there an added sense of pressure when someone is recommending you for such an iconic character? Yvonne: Yes! [laughs] Also because it’s somebody that I truly respect. Michael is fantastic. I really didn’t want to let him down. I didn’t want to let the fans down or anybody. Kyoshi is such a beloved character, as you said. It was a lot of pressure, but the team is so good. It’s everybody coming together, not just me. It’s everyone who brought this together. Thank goodness. I’m not alone in this, that’s for sure.

PC: Not only were you a fan of this franchise, but you also did so much research in your preparation to play Avatar Kyoshi. As you brought this beloved character onto the screen, what’s something you wanted to make sure was translated from the novels and animated series to this live-action adaptation? What’s something new you brought to her? Yvonne: I really wanted to strike that balance. I wanted to explore what she would be like as a mentor because that’s a new capacity that we’re seeing her in as opposed to the original source material. But I also wanted to honor what the fans saw and what I saw in the novels.

In this particular circumstance, there are so many ways that Kyoshi could have interacted with Aang, and a lot of them would have been true because, as we see in the novels, there are so many facets to this character and woman. But given the circumstances at the time when Kyoshi Village was under attack, literally as we were talking, tough love was needed. I feel like that’s very true to who she is, especially as we’ve seen her before. She’s a no-nonsense, get-to-business kind of woman. I really wanted to make sure that was part of the characterization of her.

PC: You also get to narrate and kick off this series in Episode 1. How did they reveal that news to you? How different is that filming experience when it’s just your voice as compared to Episode 2 that has all of those intricate fight sequences? Yvonne: It’s very different. First, the ask came from Michael and Albert [Kim], who again, have been such wonderful caretakers of the series. They used the original source material as their Bible. The original had Katara’s voice. They still wanted to keep it female, but Kyoshi is someone who has been around for 230 years. She would be somebody who would know what’s going on, and they thought the narration would suit her well. That’s why they asked me to jump in on that.

It’s very different because when you’re acting or doing action sequences, you’re in the embodiment of the scene. You’re working off somebody else. You’re in a different environment that lends to a more reactive response whereas this, we did tons of iterations of the voiceover and tried different things. It’s the sound technicians who brought it all together. So kudos to them. But it was fun. It was a different experience being in the sound booth and trying out different ways of saying that intro.

PC: Kyoshi and Aang have a conversation about the Avatar state, and how it’s the place where they can access the energy of past lives and thousands of Avatars. What is the creative equivalent to that? What was a scene that you filmed throughout your career where you were in a similar state and felt that magic? Yvonne: That’s such a good question. In general, in acting, we always talk about a toolkit of different things that you need to use on set. Sometimes one thing doesn’t work, and another thing will work another time, but it’s a mixed bag of everything. If I had to compare it to the Avatar state of being able to use all elements and channeling all your lives and everything, it would be that. It’s the part of the work where you’ve got to try whatever works at the time because you’ve got to get the job done.

PC: Kyoshi really drives home to Aang what it means to be an Avatar. Gordon [Cormier] is someone who’s getting his big break with this project. Did you share any words of wisdom with him as he traverses this industry and what it means to be an artist and storyteller? What was that point in your own career when you defined what this craft and its responsibility means to you because you’ve always brought such an empathetic quality to the roles that you’ve played? Yvonne: Thank you so much. I feel like I learned something from him. Honestly, Gordon is wonderful. He’s so giving, kind, and professional, especially at the age that he is. I don’t need to tell him anything. The support system he has is fantastic. His father was with him on set all the time. They’re such a wonderful presence through and through. As we’ve all seen, he’s played Aang beautifully and perfectly. I am so thrilled that they’re getting Season 2 and 3.

As far as traversing this thing, at the end of the day, I’m so happy that I get to do what I love. Each and every project that I get, I am so grateful for because being an actor, it’s more rejections than acceptances. There are more times that you’re not working than when you’re working. So whenever I get the chance to work, that’s always at the forefront. Each and every job is so difficult to get that when I’m there, I want to show up and do the best that I can. I’m so grateful that I get to work.

PC: Something that you did so brilliantly with this role is the ways in which you were able to infuse hints at Kyoshi’s past because there’s only so much that you can fill into a show. There’s a moment when she shares a bit of tough love with Aang, which for those familiar with the source material, feels as if she’s projecting her own shortcomings in her journey. Was that contrast something that was written in the episode or was it something that you brought to it having done that prep work? Yvonne: It was definitely written in there with that intention in mind. Then, having those discussions and performing it, it’s definitely something that I wanted to bring to her as well because it is a projection. She had such a hard time finding out that she was an Avatar for those who read the book.

She has a very tumultuous childhood and upbringing, and then figuring out that she was the Avatar on top of all that with the very few people that she trusted, betraying her, all of those things she had to learn the hard way. Her saying that to Aang in that moment is definitely a projection. Because right after she says, “I was like you once.” This is where that’s coming from. You hit the nail on the head. That’s exactly what that was.

PC: The series is so well done, and it’s so cinematic. It feels like you’re watching eight films. What was it like getting to see that final product and collaborating with everyone to bring Kyoshi to life on the screen? Yvonne: I was so happy at the premiere because we all got to celebrate with each other. That hasn’t been a thing for a few years because of COVID and everything. To be able to meet people that I didn’t get to meet on set was so special. Every single time someone new appeared on screen, we cheered. It was so wonderful to do that with the whole team.

The hair, makeup, and wardrobe were everything. You can’t not feel like Kyoshi in that hair, makeup, and costume. It completes everything. Like I’ve said before with any project, when you step into the hair, makeup, and wardrobe, it’s like putting on a different skin. It’s putting on the skin of that character. It completes the whole deal.

PC: It’s transformative. You’re a multifaceted talent who has such a strong affinity for writing and directing. What are the types of stories that you’re most interested in telling through those disciplines? Yvonne: I’m a sucker for those kinds of stories that really delve into the quiet moments in life. Because there’s so much to be said about those little quiet moments that we have when interacting with one another or even with ourselves that sometimes don’t get enough airtime to be shown. I love that kind of style, but I also really love the epic stuff too.

If I could do that in a sci-fi, I’d be totally down for it. A huge comedy as well. For me, at the end of the day, what it really comes down to is sharing the human experience and seeing those full colors on screen. If I can participate in that in any way, whether it’s through writing or acting, I’m on board.

PC: Your 2024 is off to the strongest of starts with Avatar, and then it was recently announced that you’re joining Superman & Lois. Amanda has a very small role in the comics, but through the screen adaptation, you’re going to get to write a new chapter for her. How different was that character development and preparation process compared to Kyoshi, where you have this wealth of source material? Yvonne: It’s quite different. Because, as you said, with Kyoshi, there’s a wealth of source material. I can pull from so many different things. With Amanda, what I had to go by were the scripts for Superman & Lois and my discussions with the showrunners who were wonderful. Anyone who is a fan of Superman & Lois, oh my gosh, you’re not going to be disappointed with this final season. It’s so good. There was more than enough, honestly, reading the scripts. It’s so clear to me who she is, and the showrunners are so great at breaking it down for me in that sense. In their description to me and what was released of the role, it made perfect sense with the world-building of it and the final season of it with Lex Luthor. It was very different but still enough to work off of.

PC: Similar to many of the characters you’ve portrayed, there’s also a significant contrast in the types of projects you’ve worked on, from bigger budgets like Avatar and Kung Fu to indies like The Stranger and Dragon Fruit. What is it about independent filmmaking that excites you as a creative and a storyteller? Can you share some of the indie projects you have in the works? Yvonne: With the indie projects, I love doing them because I’m usually working with really good friends. Dragon Fruit was done with Jeremy Brown, who wrote, directed, and produced the short film. He is such a force, and oh my gosh, the amount of work that goes into an indie project because you’re wearing a thousand different hats all at once. I wasn’t part of that project for the full four years, but it took him four years to finish the project from inception to the final product.

On The Stranger, it was a friend of mine, Curtis Lum. I worked with him on one of the first things I ever booked as an actor. We kept in touch. He was like, “I’m producing this short film and I’m acting in it too. You’d be really good for it.” When it’s your friends and it’s a passion project, I love those sets because you get to work with the people around you. We always hope for that.

I send so many auditions to my friends and I’m like, “You should go out for this. You should go out for that because we’re just hoping to be on set together one day.” So when projects like that come and you can support somebody that you know and really care about, it’s a win-win.

To keep up with Yvonne, follow her on Twitter and Instagram. Watch Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix today.

[birdlord]

Everything I Watched in 2020

We’ll start with movies. The number in parentheses is the year of release, asterisks denote a re-watch, and titles in bold are my favourite watches of the year. Here’s 2019’s list. 

01 Little Women (19)

02 The Post (17) 

03 Molly’s Game (17)

04 * Doctor No (62)

05 Groundhog Day (93)

06 *Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home (86)

07 Knives Out (19) My last theatre experience (sob)

08 Professor Marston and his Wonder Women (17)

09 Les Miserables (98)

10 Midsommar (19) I’m not sure how *good* it is, but it does stick in the ol’ brain

11 *Manhattan Murder Mystery (93)

12 Marriage Story (19)

13 Kramer vs Kramer (79)

14 Jojo Rabbit (19)

15 J’ai perdu mon corps (19) a cute animated film about a hand detached from its body!

16 1917 (19)

17 Married to the Mob (88)

18 Klaus (19)

19 Portrait of a Lady on Fire (19) If Little Women made me want to wear a scarf criss-crossed around my torso, this one made me want to wear a cloak

20 The Last Black Man in San Francisco (19)

21 *Lawrence of Arabia (62)

22 Gone With the Wind (39)

23 Kiss Me Deadly (55)

24 Dredd (12)

25 Heartburn (86) heard a bunch about this one in the Blank Check series on Nora Ephron, sadly after I’d watched it

26 The Long Shot (19)

27 Out of Africa (85)

28 King Kong (46)

29 *Johnny Mnemonic (95)

30 Knocked Up (07)

31 Collateral (04)

32 Bird on a Wire (90)

33 The Black Dahlia (05)

34 Long Time Running (17)

35 *Magic Mike (12)

36 Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (07)

37 Cold War (18)

38 *Kramer Vs Kramer (79) yes I watched this a few months before! This was a pandemic friend group co-watch.

39 *Burn After Reading (08)

40 Last Holiday (50)

41 Fly Away Home (96)

42 *Moneyball (11) I’m sure I watch this every two years, at most??

43 Last Holiday (06) the Queen Latifah version of the 1950 movie above, lacking, of course, the brutal “poor people don’t deserve anything good” ending

44 *Safe (95)

45 Gimme Shelter (70)

46 The Daytrippers (96)

47 Experiment in Terror (62)

48 Tucker: The Man and His Dream (88)

49 My Brilliant Career (79) one of the salvations of 2020 was watching movies “with” friends. Our usual method was to video chat before the movie, sync our streaming services, and text-chat while the movie was on. 

50 Divorce Italian Style (61)

51 *Gosford Park (01) another classic comfort watch, fuck I love a G. Park

52 Hopscotch (80)

53 Brief Encounter (45)

54 Hud (63)

55 Ocean’s 8 (18)

56 *Beverly Hills Cop (84)

57 Blow the Man Down (19)

58 Constantine (05)

59 The Report (19) maddening!! How are people so consistently terrible to one another!

60 Everyday People (04)

61 Anatomy of a Murder (58)

62 Spiderman: Homecoming (17)

63 *To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (95) Of the 90s drag road movies, Priscilla is more visually striking, but this has its moments.

64 Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (92)

65 *The Truman Show (98)

66 Mona Lisa (86)

67 The Blob (58)

68 The Guard (11)

69 *Waiting for Guffman (96) RIP Fred Willard

70 Rocketman (19)

71 Outside In (18)

72 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (08) how strange to see a movie that you have known the premise for, but no details of, for over a decade

73 *Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country (91)

74 The Reader (08)

75 Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (19) This was fine until it VERY MUCH WAS NOT FINE

76 The End of the Affair (99) you try to watch a fun little romp about infidelity during the Blitz, and Graham Greene can’t help but shoehorn in a friggin crisis of religious faith

77 Must Love Dogs (05) barely any dog content, where are the dogs at

78 The Rainmaker (97)

79 *Batman & Robin (97)

80 National Lampoon’s Vacation (83) Never seen any of the non-xmas Vacations, didn’t realize the children are totally different, not just actors but ages! Also, this one is blatantly racist!

81 *Mystic Pizza (88)

82 Funny Girl (68)

83 The Sons of Katie Elder (65)

84 *Knives Out (19) another re-watch within the same year!! How does this keep happening??

85 *Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (10) a real I-just-moved-away-from-Toronto nostalgia watch

86 Canadian Bacon (92) vividly recall this VHS at the video store, but I never saw it til 2020

87 *Blood Simple (85)

88 Brittany Runs a Marathon (19)

89 The Accidental Tourist (88)

90 August Osage County (13) MELO-DRAMA!!

91 Appaloosa (08)

92 The Firm (93) Feeling good about how many iconic 80s/90s video store stalwarts I watched in 2020

93 *Almost Famous (00)

94 Whisper of the Heart (95)

95 Da 5 Bloods (20)

96 Rain Man (88)

97 True Stories (86)

98 *Risky Business (83) It’s not about what you think it’s about! It never was!

99 *The Big Chill (83)

100 The Way We Were (73)

101 Safety Last (23) It’s getting so that I might have to add the first two digits to my dates...not that I watch THAT many movies from the 1920s...

102 Phantasm (79)

103 The Burrowers (08)

104 New Jack City (91)

105 The Vanishing (88)

106 Sisters (72)

107 Puberty Blues (81) Little Aussie cinema theme, here

108 Elevator to the Gallows (58)

109 Les Diaboliques (55)

110 House (77) haha WHAT no really W H A T

111 Death Line (72)

112 Cranes are Flying (57)

113 Holes (03)

114 *Lady Vengeance (05)

115 Long Weekend (78)

116 Body Double (84)

117 The Crazies (73) I love that Romero shows the utter confusion that would no doubt reign in the case of any kind of disaster. Things fall apart.

118 Waterlilies (07)

119 *You’re Next (11)

120 Event Horizon (97)

121 Venom (18) I liked it, guys, way more than most superhero fare. Has a real sense of place and the place ISN’T New York!

122 Under the Silver Lake (18) RIP Night Call

123 *Blade Runner (82)

124 *The Birds (62) interesting to see now that I’ve read the story it came from

125 *28 Days Later (02) hits REAL FUCKIN’ DIFFERENT in a pandemic

126 Life is Sweet (90)

127 *So I Married an Axe Murderer (93) find me a more 90s movie, I dare you (it’s not possible)

128 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (67)

129 The Pelican Brief (93) 90s thrillers continue!

130 Dick Johnston is Dead (20)

131 The Bridges of Madison County (95)

132 Earth Girls are Easy (88) Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum are so hot in this movie, no wonder they got married 

133 Better Watch Out (16)

134 Drowning Mona (00) trying for something like the Coen bros and not getting there

135 Au Revoir Les Enfants (87)

136 *Chasing Amy (97) Affleck is the least alluring movie lead...ever? I also think I gave Joey Lauren Adams’ character short shrift in my memory of the movie. It’s not good, but she’s more complicated than I recalled. 

137 Blackkklansman (18)

138 Being Frank (19)

139 Kiki’s Delivery Service (89)

140 Uncle Frank (20) why so many FRANKS

141 *National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (89) watching with pals (virtually) made it so much more fun than the usual yearly watch!

142 Half Baked (98) another, more secret Toronto nostalgia pic - RC Harris water filtration plant as a prison!

143 We’re the Millers (13)

144 All is Bright (13)

145 Defending Your Life (91)

146 Christmas Chronicles (18) I maintain that most new xmas movies are terrible, particularly now that Netflix churns them out like eggnog every year. 

147 Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse (18)

148 Reindeer Games (00) what did I say about Affleck??!? WHAT DID I SAY

149 Palm Springs (20)

150 Happiest Season (20)

151 *Metropolitan (90) it’s definitely a Christmas movie

152 Black Christmas (74)

THEATRE:HOME - 2:150 (thanks pandemic)

I usually separate out docs and fiction, but I watched almost no documentaries this year (with the exception of Dick Johnston). Reality is real enough. 

TV Series

01 - BoJack Horseman (final season) - Pretty damned poignant finish to the show, replete with actual consequences for our reformed bad boy protagonist (which is more than you can say for most antiheroes of Peak TV).

02 - *Hello Ladies - I enjoy the pure awkwardness of seeing Stephen Merchant try to perform being a Regular Person, but ultimately this show tips him too far towards a nasty, Ricky Gervais-lite sort of persona. Perhaps he was always best as a cameo appearance, or lip synching with wild eyes while Chrissy Teigen giggles?

03 - Olive Kittredge - a rough watch by times. I read the book as well, later in the year. Frances Mcdormand was the best, possibly the only, casting option for the flinty lead. One episode tips into thriller territory, which is a shock. 

04 - *The Wire S3, S4, S5 - lockdown culture! It was interesting to rewatch this, then a few months later go through an enormous, culture-level reappraisal of cop-centred narratives. 

05 - Forever - a Maya Rudolph/Fred Armisen joint that coasts on the charm of its leads. The premise is OK, but I wasn’t left wanting any more at the end. 

06 - *Catastrophe - a rewatch when my partner decided he wanted to see it, too!

07 - Red Oak - resolutely “OK” steaming dramedy, relied heavily on some pretty obvious cues to get across its 1980s setting. 

08 - Little Fires Everywhere - gulped this one down while in 14-day isolation, delicious! Every 90s suburban mom had that SUV, but not all of them had the requisite **secrets**

09 - The Great - fun historical comedy/drama! Costumes: lush. Actors: amusing. Race-blind casting: refreshing!

10 - The Crown S4 - this is the season everyone lost their everloving shit for, since it’s finally recent enough history that a fair chunk of the viewing audience is liable to recall it happening. 

11 - Ted Lasso - we resisted this one for a while (thought I did enjoy the ad campaign for NBC sports (!!) that it was based on). My view is that its best point was the comfort that the men on the show have (or develop, throughout the season) with the acknowledgement and sharing of their own feelings. Masculinity redux. 

12 - Moonbase 8 - Goodnatured in a way that makes you certain they will be crushed. 

13 - The Good Lord Bird - Ethan Hawke is really aging into the character actor we always hoped he would be! 

14 - Hollywood - frothy wish-fulfillment alternate history. I think the show would have been improved immeasurably by skipping the final episode.