#GIL: Features

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

🍜 Chomp Chomp with Myishu: The Time Lord, The Myth, The Legend (AND SNACKS)

HELLO FOOD FRIENDS! 🌟⚙️🕰️

Today we ask BIG QUESTION: What is legend?

Big brain? Two hearts? Fancy coat and bad bedtime?

NO. Legend need POWER SNACKS. Food of TIME LORDS. Food of FAME. Food of DANGER.

So today, we make TWO mighty recipes:

One for glory

One for power

BOTH for eating IMMEDIATELY WITH MOUTH.

Ready? Tuck in cloak. Summon spoons. WE COOK NOW.

🛡️ Omega's Overbaked Power Rings

YOU NEED:

🧀 1½ cups grated hard cheese (cheddar okay, Rassilon Block = better)

🧅 1 red onion, chopped fine

🌶️ 1 spoon Earth cayenne (or star-spice if reckless)

🧂 1 pinch salt (the white thing, not attitude)

🫓 1 sheet puff pastry

🧈 1 egg (for brushing, NOT for combat. Please.)

YOU DO:

🔥 Preheat oven to 200°C (392°F).

🧅 Sauté onion until soft and slightly suspicious.

🫓 Roll pastry. Sprinkle cheese, onion, spice. Roll up like prophecy scroll.

🔪 Slice into spirals. Place flat.

🧈 Brush with egg. Whisper: 'ALL HAIL THE POWER RINGS.'

🔥 Bake 15 mins until golden and screaming 'I AM THE LEGEND.'

YOU SERVE:

Stand on balcony. Eat one. Declare yourself President of Snacks. Also good with Earth chutney.

🌀 The Doctor's Timey-Wimey Paradox Parfait

YOU NEED:

🍓 1 cup smashed red berries (fresh, frozen, just no paradoxes inside)

🧁 1 cup sponge cake cubes (or broken biscuits if lazy that's OK)

🥛 1 cup whipped moon-milk (Earth whipped cream = still good)

🍫 ½ bar dark chocolate, smashed

🌌 1 pinch edible glitter (optional but SO LEGEND)

🫙 2 tsp honey from Gallifreyan Bee (Earth bees = fine, but have less ambition)

YOU DO:

🍓 Mix berries + honey. Let them flirt.

🧁 Layer sponge, berries, cream, chocolate. Repeat. Then again. Like causality glitch.

✨ Add glitter if you want parfait that stares back into you.

❄️ Chill in fridge while timeline stabilises.

YOU SERVE:

Spoon out while muttering emotional backstory. Eat during dramatic regeneration. Cry just a bit. SO LEGENDARY. SO GOOD.

🏛️ FINAL LEGEND TIP

Eat in full cloak. Speak only in riddles. If someone ask what's inside, say:

'Wouldn’t you like to know, Child of Chaos?' Then vanish behind steam.

CHOMP CHOMP, YAY! 🎉🚀✨

Any orange text is educated guesswork or theoretical. More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →📢Announcements |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts → Features: ⭐Guest Posts | 🍜Chomp Chomp with Myishu →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired 😴

[oof-ow-my-bone]

struggling... feat. elves again

[lilcathsmith]

Greg in every episode of CSI (300/328) • Killer Moves pt2 •

[humaforever]

The fucking songs! I can't breathe 😭

"Ticktok" (feat Uma)

"Tortured pirates department"

"My Hook only tears my favorite sails"

"Well, well, well..."

"So long, isle of the lost"

"But daddy, I want to hook him"

"Fresh off the plank"

"Auradon!!!" (Feat Gil)

"Guilty as a sword"

"Who's afraid of captain Hooks's son"

"I can hook him? (Aye I can)"

"Muscles"

"I can do it with a broken hook"

"The smallest clock that ever ticked"

"The elixir of the isle"

"Bow of the boat"

Bonus track "The Clock"

Harry! Drop the album! I'm considering this canon now, thank you very much.

[roszabell]

please i can’t stare at this homosexual any longer

[revvethasmythh]

CRAZY first formal flirtation with a guy you technically haven't even used romantic flirts with yet (positive)

[gwynbleiddyn]

there is something SOOOOOO. JUICY. abt ithilrion lurking around the camp of the host in the wastes during the epic because here you have an elf who, among many others, came to dagorlad in the second age and saw utter ruin come to all that he held dear in middle earth and here he is being asked to stand upon this haunted plain with a hopeless army about to repeat the events that scarred his life beyond recognition and he's just gotta be ok with that for a second. just gotta stand next to legolas on this rock and not recall oropher's splintered force being decimated in the blink of an eye. not recall elendil and gil-galad's collapsed forms suddenly so indistinguishable from the thousands of other dead on the slopes of orodruin. like, yes, legolas, continue, i see nothing but your father's abject horror wrapped about your face like a spectral shroud but i will smile and nod as you tell me your scouting report of the lands below us and the voice that comes out of my mouth in muted agreement is the same voice that shook these same lands with righteous thunder as i lost my king and heart in one fell blow

like damn aragorn you may have left the Dead behind but there is still a ghost amongst your number

meanwhile golasgil's morale-boosting quest is like have a drink :) pls :) i am bereft with social anxiety and crippling self doubt after losing my best friends :) and ithilrion is like yeah ok sign me up

sorry this sucks ass for u ithil. at least you're pretty

[mordsfesch]

The past month in books (April '24)

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

📜 Newly Discovered Academy Archive: The Doctor's Treatise on Romantic Love

During a routine Matrix archive review, an early academic work attributed to the Doctor was discovered. This document, written during their Academy years, was submitted as part of an advanced philosophical analysis—and graded poorly for reasons that will soon become apparent.

What follows is an excerpt from the Doctor's now-infamous treatise on romantic love, along with annotated feedback from their Academy instructor.

"Romantic Love: A Biochemical Delusion"

By Theta Sigma (The Doctor) of Prydon

Romantic attachment, often described as a profound emotional experience, is, in reality, a chemical process entirely explainable by neurotransmitters, genetic programming, and evolutionary necessity. While lesser species insist on assigning poetic significance to these interactions, a closer examination reveals that romantic love is little more than a predictable hormonal response with a limited functional purpose.

The three primary phases of this so-called phenomenon are as follows:

1. Lust – The Initial Biological Drive

Driven primarily by testosterone and oestrogen (or species-equivalent hormonal triggers), this phase ensures reproductive viability and promotes genetic variation within a given population. While lesser species wax poetic about "attraction", this can be accurately modelled through genetic compatibility analysis and pheromone response curves.

📍 Instructor's Note: "This is a compelling argument for a mating algorithm, not a philosophy paper."

2. Attraction – The Temporary Neurological Malfunction

Attraction correlates with increased levels of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, producing an effect not dissimilar to a controlled psychosis. Subjects display hyperfixation, impaired reasoning, and an inability to assess risk accurately. This irrationality is likely an adaptive feature to promote pair bonding, though it is demonstrably counterproductive in higher-functioning species.

📍 Instructor's Note: "Calling love 'controlled psychosis' is, at best, provocative."

3. Attachment – The Long-Term Stability Mechanism

Successful bonding triggers sustained oxytocin and vasopressin release, fostering long-term partnerships to ensure offspring survival (in species that require such support) or mutual security benefits (in societies where resource-sharing is advantageous). This process is entirely functional, with no inherent need for emotional framing.

📍 Instructor's Note: "This section is both well-researched and entirely joyless."

Conclusion: A Highly Overrated Experience

Ultimately, romantic love is a series of chemically induced inefficiencies that can be fully predicted, controlled, or avoided with the appropriate neurochemical regulation. It is an active impediment to logical function.

📍 Instructor's Final Comment: "Theta Sigma, while your analysis is thorough, it fundamentally misunderstands the subject. Love is not a mere biological equation; it is an experience, an act of choice, a force that defies purely chemical explanation. To study it purely in terms of neurotransmitters is akin to defining a supernova by its temperature alone—factually accurate, but wholly inadequate. C-."

Any orange text is educated guesswork or theoretical. More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →📢Announcements |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts → Features: ⭐Guest Posts | 🍜Chomp Chomp with Myishu →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired 😴

[rickchung]

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (dir. Gil Kenan).

I kind of miss when Ghostbusters movies were actual comedies. However, it's also kind of a relief Kenan and co-writer/producer Jason Reitman sidestepped that tricky task (starting in Afterlife) to instead further cement the paranormal franchise into more family-friendly horror adventure territory. While there's a ton of fan service and more than a few unclear details about the present day New York City's relationship with our favourite crew of supernatural protectors, the emergence of Phoebe Spengler (Mckenna Grace) as the central character and heart of these films is a much-needed bright spot. Her misfit coming-of-age (queer-coded) arc alongside a new ghost friend spotlights a welcome contemporary direction.

[lilcathsmith]

Greg in every episode of CSI (229/328) • Wild Life •

[doodle-pops]

Hey, I kinda noticed as I was reading the Feanorians simp hc your wrote, that you gave Maedhros dimples and I was wondering, are there any other elves who you think has dimples?

Dimples, dimples and more dimples 💕💕. I always enjoyed the idea of him and others having dimples. Just makes them more lovable and cuter.

So let's see who else has dimples (not many after I've decided):

Maedhros

Celebrimbor

Fingon

Finarfin (the idea is foreign since the feature doesn't appear to suit him in my eyes. maybe he has one but it's faint)

Aegnor

Gil Galad

Beleg (he has one at the bottom corner of his lip)

Elrohir (he has one on his cheek/it's faint and only viewed when he smiles a lot)

[jethroq]

also, I’ll admit bias to being a Drake Hater, but aside from ”too sexy” interpolating an old hit song, I cannot for the life of me hum a melody or quote anything other than lines that went viral for being cringe from any Drake ”hit” since Hotline Bling.

[michyeosseo]

Happy Birthday, Choi Myung-gil~! ♡

[dweemeister]

Robot Dreams (2023, Spain/France)

There exists an assumption that one has to be an animator in order to direct an animated film. While most cinephiles might reflexively point to Wes Anderson (2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, 2018’s Isle of Dogs), I think Isao Takahata (1988’s Grave of the Fireflies, 1991’s Only Yesterday) the exemplar here. Even so, a non-animator taking the reins of an animated movie is rare. Into that fold steps Pablo Berger, in this adaptation of Sara Varon’s graphic novel Robot Dreams. Moved after reading Varon’s work in 2010, Berger acquired Varon’s “carte blanche” permission to make a 2D animated adaptation however he saw fit. Like the graphic novel, Berger’s Robot Dreams is also dialogue-free.

Beginning production on Robot Dreams proved difficult. Berger originally teamed with Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon (2009’s The Secret of Kells, 2020’s Wolfwalkers) to make Robot Dreams, but these plans fell wayside when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. His schooling in how to make an animated film would come quickly. Despite an increased appetite for Spanish animation worldwide (2019’s Klaus, 2022’s Unicorn Wars), poor distribution and marketing of domestically-made animated movies has often meant Spanish animators have roved around Europe looking for work. With a pandemic sending those Spanish animators home, Berger and his Spanish and French producers set up “pop-up studios” in Madrid and Pamplona, purchased the infrastructure and space needed to make an animated feature, and recruited and hired animators. Berger’s admiration of animated film fuses the lessons of silent film acting (Berger made a gorgeous silent film in 2012’s Blancanieves; in interviews, Berger cites Charlie Chaplin’s movies as having the largest influence on Robot Dreams, alongside Takahata’s films) to result in one of the most emotionally honest films of the decade thus far – animated or otherwise.

Somewhere in Manhattan in the late 1980s in a world populated entirely of anthropomorphized animals, we find ourselves in Dog’s apartment. Dog, alone in this world, consuming yet another TV dinner, is channel surfing late one evening. He stumbles upon a commercial advertising a robot companion. Intrigued, he orders the robot companion and, with some difficulty, assembles Robot. The two become fast friends as they romp about New York City over a balmy summer, complete with walks around their neighborhood and Central Park, street food, trips to Coney Island, and roller blading along to the groovy tunes of Earth, Wind & Fire. At summer’s end, an accident sees the involuntary separation of Dog and Robot, endangering, for all that the viewer can assume, the most meaningful friendship in Dog’s life and Robot’s brief time of existence.

If you have not seen the film yet, let me address a popular perception early on in this piece. Set in a mostly-analog 1980s, Robot Dreams contains none of the agonizing over artificial intelligence or automatons in fashion in modern cinema. There is no commentary about how technology frays an individual’s connections to others. Robot is a rudimentary creation, closer to a sentient grade school science project than a Data or T-1000.

So what is Robot Dreams saying instead? Principally, it is about the loving bonds of friendship – how a friend can provide comfort and company, how they uplift the best parts of your very being. For Robot, the entirety of their life prior to the aforementioned accident (something that I, for non-viewers, am trying not to spoil as Robot Dreams’ emotional power is fully experienced if you know as little as possible) has been one of complete estival bliss. Robot, in due time, discovers that one of the most meaningful aspects of friendship is that such relationships will eventually conclude – a fundamental part of life. And for Dog, Robot’s entrance into his life allows him to realize that, yes, he can summon the courage to connect with his fellow animals, realizing his self-worth. Perhaps Dog gives up addressing the accident a little too easily, but the separation of friends has a way of complicating emotions and provoking peculiar reactions.

On occasion, Robot Dreams’ spirit reminds me of Charlie Chaplin’s silent feature film period (1921-1936) – in which Chaplin, at the height of his filmmaking prowess, most successfully wove together slapstick comedy and pathos. On paper, pathos and slapstick should not mix, but Chaplin was the master of combining the two. No wonder Berger fully acknowledges the influence of his favorite Chaplin work, City Lights (1931), here.

Across Robot Dreams, Berger inserts an absurd visual humor that works both because almost all of the characters are animals and despite the fact almost everyone is an animal. A busking octopus in the New York City subway? Check. The image of pigs playing on the beach while sunburnt to a blazing red? You bet. A dancing dream sequence where one of our lead characters finds himself in The Wizard of Oz performing Busby Berkeley-esque choreography on the Yellow Brick Road? Why not? Much of Chaplin’s silent film humor didn’t come from his Little Tramp character, but the silliness, ego, and/or absentmindedness of all those surrounding the Tramp. In City Lights, humor also came from the rough-and-tumble edges of urban America. Such is the case, too, in Robot Dreams, with its blemished, trash-strewn depiction of late ‘80s New York (credit must also go to the sound mix, as they perfectly capture how ambiently noisy a big city can be).

Amid all that comedy, Berger nails the balance between the pathos and the hilarity – pushing too far in either direction would easily undermine the other. The film’s melancholy shows up in ostensibly happy moments and places of recreation: a realization during a rooftop barbeque lunch, the emptiness of a shuttered Coney Island beach in the winter, and an afternoon of kiting in Central Park. It captures how our thoughts of erstwhile or involuntarily separated friends come to us innocuously, in places that stir memories that we might, in our present company, might not speak of aloud.

As the film’s third character, New York City (where Berger lived for a decade) is a global cultural capital, a citywide theater of dreams, a skyscraper-filled signature to the American Dream. To paraphrase Sinatra, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. But it tends to grind those dreams into dust. The city’s bureaucratic quagmire is lampooned here, as is its reputation for mean-spirited or jaded locals. Robot Dreams also depicts the visual and socioeconomic differences between the city’s boroughs. With such a jumble of folks of different life stations mashed together, Dog’s people-watching, er, animal-watching during his loneliest moments makes him feel the full intensity of his social isolation. With Robot, however, Dog has a naïve companion that he can show the best of the city to. Robot has no understanding of passive-aggressive or outright hostile behavior (see: Robot hilariously not understanding what a middle finger salute is – the only objectionable scene if you are considering showing this to younger viewers). Within this city of contradictions, Dog and Robot’s love is here to stay.

Though he is no animator, his experience in guiding Spanish actresses Ángela Molina, Maribel Verdú, and Macarena García in Blancanieves through a silent film was valuable. In animated film, there is a tendency towards overexaggerating emotions. But with Robot Dreams’ close adaptation of the graphic novel’s ligne claire style and the nature of Robot’s face, the typical level of exaggeration in animation could not fly in Robot Dreams. Berger and storyboard artist Maca Gil (2022’s My Father’s Dragon, the 2023 Peanuts special One-of-a-Kind Marcie) made few alterations to the storyboards, fully knowing how they wished to frame the film, and hoping to convey the film’s emotions with the facial subtlety seen in the graphic novel. Character designer Daniel Fernandez Casas (Klaus, 2024’s IF) accomplishes this with a minimum of lines to outline characters’ bodies and faces. Meanwhile, art director José Luis Ágreda (2018’s Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles) and animation director Benoît Féroumont (primarily a graphic novelist) visually translated Sara Varon’s graphic novel using flat colors and a lack of shading to convey background and character depth (one still needs shading, of course, to convey lights and darks of an interior or exterior).

Robot Dreams’ nomination for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature this year was one of the most pleasant surprises of the 96th Academy Awards. In North America, Robot Dreams’ distributor, Neon, has pursued an inexplicable distribution and marketing strategy of not allowing the film a true theatrical release until months after the end of the last Oscars. The film was available for a one-night special screening in select theaters in and near major North American cities the Wednesday before the Academy Awards. And only now (as of the weekend of May 31, 2024), Neon will release Robot Dreams this weekend in two New York City theaters, the following weekend in and around Los Angeles, with few other locations confirmed – well after interest to watch the film theatrically piqued in North America.

Alongside Neon’s near-nonexistent distribution and marketing of Jonas Poher Rasmussen's animated documentary Flee (2021, Denmark), one has to question Neon’s commitment to animated features and whether the company has a genuine interest in showing their animated acquisitions to people outside major North American cities. This is distributional malpractice and maddeningly disrespectful from one of the most acclaimed independent distributors of the last decade.

In Robot Dreams, Pablo Berger and his crew made perhaps the best animated feature of the previous calendar year. Robot Dreams might not have the artistic sumptuousness of the best anime films today, nor the digital polish one expects from the work of a major American animation studio. By film’s end, its simple, accessible style cannot hide its irrepressible emotional power. Its conclusion speaks to all of us who silently wonder about close friends long left to the past, their absence filled only by memory.

My rating: 8.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog. Half-points are always rounded down.

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[teafiend]