#Same reason why there's like only 1 interesting movie that comes out in American Cinema Wide Release

[curiousorigins]

Man, I just really miss when they bothered lighting things on TV Shows and in Movies. Like the shadows were beautiful and everything had more depth.

Now they just brighten up everything use fills and like add shadows after.

It looks cruddy. Maybe because with all the post-darkening it's too much work to make them move when things move? Like they're doing their best, but nothing beats a scene that was lit properly in the first place.

I'm watching a no-name B-Horror Movie from 2005 (This was right before they started lighting everything cruddy and doing it in post.) And I'm 3 minutes in and it's just so much more beautiful than what's on TV and what's in Movies today. Like I can think of one movie that had particularly good lighting, and that's "Ready or Not". Probably because it was an Indie Movie and the people were filming in a historical place and were required to light it very carefully. (Similar to what happened with Woman on Fire which was also quite beautiful and an indie film.)

[beaudeanw]

Soldier Boy- What can we expect?

- Possible spoilers ahead

Gif credit : @justjensenanddean

The Boys S3 will have Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy - A Captain America-esque Supe, also known as the original superhero.

In the comic books, there are three versions of Soldier Boy. Ackles will be playing the first one. According to Eric Kripke, Soldier Boy is like the Homelander before Homelander. He has a similar kind of ambition & ego. It will just come in a different way.

He was a leader of the Team Payback - a Parody of The Avengers.

In the show, Soldier boy was the only one to ever exist.

Soldier Boy as a Character

As said above, Soldier Boy is touted to be very powerful. His powers are almost on the same level as Homelander.

According to a recent q&a with Kripke, he mentioned that Homelander will be threatened by Soldier Boy. Soldier Boy is said to be very Charming and Funny.

He will have this charisma that attracts the public towards him. As mentioned in the first episode of The Boys Season 2, Soldier Boy killed Nazis by a huge amount and he helped the Allies win the World War 2 against Germany. After that he went on to become a movie star and a huge mainstay of American culture.

During the course of S2 we saw some Easter eggs like his movie posters on the wall. Kripke compared his character to somewhat like John Wayne. If you google search John Wayne, you will get to know that he was conservative, racist, homophobic etc. John Wayne although famous for playing Soldiers in cinema, never served in WW2. He also had a complicated relationship with women.

Soldier Boy might take some similar route considering the fact that he is in fact from the 1940s. The q&a mentioned that he will be involved in a lot of Sex, Violence & Swears. Needless to say, soldier boy can totally be a. One of the 2018 tweets of Kripke said that Soldier Boy was involved in drugs & stuff. This might also be a part of his personality.

Since it's also said to be a parody of Cap America, Soldier Boy a complete anti-thesis of what former stands for. Cap America is sort of a moral, altruistic, kind & good superhero. Soldier Boy might be completely opposite. That he has no shame in hurting people & possesses no morals in order to get his work done & his ambition fulfilled. He can be the reason for the war crimes that America did after the WW2.

How the character might fit in S3

Now The Boys Season 2 ended with Stormfront becoming Stump-front. We have Homelander who got blackmailed by Queen Maeve with the footage from the airplane back from S1. We have Starlight & A- Train back in the Seven. However, the most important part is how both Vought & Homelander are completely screwed in the public eye. As we know in S2, Homelander was getting boo-ed by the public for indulging in war crimes. Now Stormfront's Nazi reveal should have some serious repercussions. The public people might boycott Vought because of their alleged ties with a literal Nazi. Homelander might not get the same love & respect in the public because he had love affair with her. We also have a Federal Bureau of Supe Affairs to keep Vought into check by Victoria Neumann, who is also a supe but thats not the point. The point is Vought needs a good PR to get themselves out of this mess.

Enter- Soldier Boy

Now there is a common theory that Vought must have kept him in some kind of facility & have him trapped. This is a very good possibility since that will mean that he is basically has no idea about the modern world. During S2 we saw a statue of Soldier Boy which showed that he sort of died in the 80s. So it will be interesting to see how Vought brings Soldier Boy back in the public eye.

Now Soldier Boy coming back to Vought can help them with Good PR. I mean who better than a Supe who killed Nazis in WW2 can help Vought clean up the Nazi shitstorm. He is the golden boy of patriotism. He is like a blue print of how they wanted Homelander to be when they created him the lab.

Another common theory that spread which was also kind of agreed by Laz Alonso, the actor who plays Mother's milk said that only his character until now never had something personal against a supe. We also learnt sort of MM's backstory in S2 which mentioned his father working against Vought & how he fought until he died. We have an idea that there is a possibility that both Soldier Boy & his father might have existed at the same point & SB might have something to do with his dad.

This can also be the reason why he vanished in the 80s & Vought lied about his death.

This also makes sense because at the end of S2, we saw all the members of The Boys seperated. One of the major reasons why they come back together is to help MM. I mean MM has been kind of a backbone keeping all of them together. A moral conscience. He is a good friend of all. So if he is in problem, the boys will come back together to help him for a change.

I am pretty sure that with Soldier Boy we will get to learn a lot about the dirty past of Vought & metaphorically, America.

Soldier Boy and Homelander

So first of all, Ackles' Soldier Boy & Homelander didn't have any sort of sexual relations. What happened in the comics was a sexual assault. That was Solder Boy #3. That character was a bumbling idiot, subservient to Homelander who got manipulated by him. It's also not logical for the show to have that kind of relationship of SB & HL. Homelander doesn't have that kink that is shown in the comics. Also, soldier boy in the show looks like has a dominating personality as opposed to of an idiot.

What Ackles is playing is Soldier Boy #1, the one fought in WW2 & as mentioned above, he is the only one to ever exist in the world of TV Show.

However, both of these characters have a lot of similarities. They are both powerful, egotistical, narcissistic, pathetic male superheroes. The difference is the situations they will be in. Homelander is currently in a problematic situation as his issue with wanting validation are bare open. He is emotionally at its weakest point. He wants to be loved. He longs for validation from the public which Maeve uses to threaten him. As he was made in a lab, he didn't have a normal childhood. He didn't have friends or anything. However, Soldier Boy was given Compound V when he was an adult. That means he might not require the same kind of validation. He is a very self-assured man. Also, since he was around in public life for decades, he has received love for years. So he not only he is physically strong, he might be emotionally capable against Homelander.

S3 might create a problem of Power Struggle.

Homelander might struggle to keep his head strong & possibly be threatened by Soldier Boy. Since the latter seems very confident, he might be able to take his position in Vought back. In the S2 premiere, we get to see how Homelander thinks of himself as indispensable for Vought as a company & how Stan Edgar shuts him down. Now think about how Homelander will react when Vought's original golden boy comes back & takes his what he thinks is his. There is a power struggle here. It's likely that Soldier Boy might corner him because of how popular he is in the public and how Homelander wants that same love that SB is getting. S3 might present a situation in front of him when a supe who might almost be as powerful as him & emotionally stronger than him kind of threatens both his power and position.

Soldier Boy and Stormfront

Speaking of Stormfront, Eric Kripke mentioned in a TV guide article that Soldier Boy had a connection with her when she was Liberty. Now both of them were created at the same time by the same man. Liberty was married to Frederick Vought but he then joined the Allies & injected Soldier Boy with Compound V. Now they are basically two sides of the same coin.

Some of this is from articles with Kripke's description of the character, some of them are common theories that have floated around & some of it is my predictions about what direction the character's storyline can take. This is majorly based on everything I have read, heard or watched. It doesn't mean that any of it will turn out the way it's written here. But I still hope this is helpful.

Anyway, I am very excited to see Jensen in this new role. I know he will rock it and I can't wait.

Some Articles I took into consideration -

[aion-rsa]

Friday Night Lights: A Non-American’s Guide to American Football

https://ift.tt/3zYMt15

Friday Night Lights is now back on Netflix and you have to watch it. 

Just to be clear, that isn’t a request – it’s an order. The NBC football drama is simply one of the most affecting, thrilling American TV shows of all time. Though premiering in 2006, the show can mark its lineage all the way back to a true story from the late ‘80s. In 1990, sports journalist H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger published the non-fiction book Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream. The book follows the story of the 1988 Permian Panthers high school football team in Odessa, Texas as they make a run for a Texas state championship.

The book was adapted into a Peter Berg film of the same name in 2004, starring Billy Bob Thornton. The story of the Permian Panthers was dramatically rich enough to conquer two mediums already, but when a third was announced in the form of a TV series for NBC it seemed like overkill. Did the world really need more high school football drama after a successful book and movie? It turns out that the world really did.

Friday Night Lights, the TV show, further fictionalized Bissinger’s story. Odessa, Texas becomes the fictional Dillon, Texas (though the Permian Panthers logo remains a big yellow “P”). Kyle Chandler steps into the role of a new coach, the magnanimous Eric Taylor. Shot in a cinema verite-style where blocking is optional, Friday Night Lights makes the viewer feel like they are just another Dillon citizen, desperately dreaming for a state championship. Above all else, this empathetic show never speaks down to its small town characters. 

As previously stated, Friday Night Lights is a must-watch. But if you’re one of our many non-American readers (Hello, everyone! I see you out there, writing “s” in words that need “z”), the football angle may seem like a real roadblock. So let’s tear down that roadblock. American football is the most popular sport in the United States but also perhaps its most impenetrable. The rulebook is thick and its connection to American culture deep. What follows is an attempt to explain American football for non-American viewers who are hesitant to tackle the show. Hopefully this will also prove useful to existing Friday Night Lights fans who have some questions about the game. 

To simplify matters, we’ve broken our football school down into three parts: The Different Levels of American Football, which explains the sport’s place in American culture and why high school football is a big deal; The Rules of American Football, which is as succinct a distillation of how the game is played as possible; and The Strategy of American Football, which examines whether Eric Taylor is even a good coach anyway. 

The Different Levels of American Football

Football is a pervasive force in American society. The highest level of play in the country (and the world) is the National Football League in which 32 teams of well-paid professionals compete against one another. The NFL is the richest sports league in the world by revenue and its championship, the Super Bowl, is usually watched by roughly 100 million people per year. Football’s influence doesn’t begin and end with the NFL though. The NFL doesn’t have a minor league or development system, so those interested in watching younger athletes are able to do so by following the sport on the collegiate or high school level.

College football is a huge deal. Some major universities’ football stadiums can house upwards of 100,000 fans. Four-year universities and colleges across the country field their own football teams that compete against one another in 12-game seasons (before a postseason consisting of “Bowl Games” but that’s too complicated to get into right now). Football at the collegiate level contains hundreds of teams split up into different leagues based on size and different conferences based on geography (for the most part). There isn’t any promotion and relegation like in European football leagues but if an institution grows big enough they can secure an invite to a higher level.

Though the decision-makers of the sport like to pretend it’s an amateur exercise and the players are not paid, college football is really a multi-billion dollar business. In fact, college football’s governing body, the NCAA, was just spooked enough by a U.S. Supreme Court decision that it allowed its athletes to finally pursue “Name, Image, Likeness (NIL)” deals in which they are allowed to make money from personal sponsorships. 

Read more

TV

25 Best Sports TV Shows: Cobra Kai, Ted Lasso, and More

By Alec Bojalad

TV

12 Best Movie and TV Quarterbacks of All Time

By Chris Longo and 1 other

Then we come to the high school level of football. Longtime viewers of American teenage dramas may have a pretty good idea of what a U.S. high school is now but here’s a primer for those who don’t. High school is the highest level of free public education in the U.S. before the more academically (and financially) strenuous college system. High school follows eighth grade (which together with seventh grade usually comprises of “middle school”) and consists of freshmen (ninth graders or 14-15-year-olds), sophomores (tenth graders or 15-16-year-olds), juniors (11th graders or 16-17-year-olds), and seniors (12 graders of 17-18-year-olds).

In some areas of the country, high school football is a bigger deal than college football or even the NFL. Though this level of the sport is played by essentially children, a high school football team may be the only competitive sports enterprise within hundreds of miles for some communities. This is particularly true in the massive U.S. state of Texas. Every region of the U.S. loves football, but passion for the sport is particularly acute in the Southeast, Midwest, and Texas. West Texas, where Friday Night Lights is set, is really high school football mad. The region is distinctly rural and far removed from the state’s three big cities – Houston, Austin, and Dallas. As such, high school football is the singular cultural force that many oil-drilling West Texas communities rally around.

High school football leagues across the country differ considerably, but like in college football, schools are generally grouped together by size and funding. Public and private high schools are able to compete in the same sports conferences as long as they have similar enrollments and budgets. Typically a high school football season consists of only 10 games (football is a physically brutal sport and as such plays far fewer games per year than other sports like baseball, basketball, or soccer). The regular season is usually followed by a bracket-style playoffs culminating in a state championship. There is no country-wide tournament, which is why “winning state” is the ultimate goal in Friday Night Lights. 

The Rules of American Football

I won’t lie to you: this is going to be difficult. Explaining any sport from scratch is a tall task, let alone a sport as complicated as football. Let me attempt to do so from the ground up and please be patient. There will be some visual aids as well.

First, it’s probably helpful to know about the field that football is played on. There’s a reason why in some European markets that the sport is known as “Gridiron Football” and that’s because the field resembles a cooking utensil known as a gridiron.

Every American football field consists of 100 yards (split into two sides of 1-50 yards). At the end of each side of the field is an “endzone.” A player entering into the endzone with the football is called a “touchdown” and nets a team six points. At the back of each endzone are the goalposts – yellow tuning fork-like structures that the ball is occasionally kicked through for more points. These are akin to rugby’s goalposts but slightly differently shaped. Let’s table the whole kicking thing for now and focus strictly on the action on the field.

The goal of football is to enter into the endzone with the ball to score points and have more points at the end of the game than the other team. A football game is 60 minutes, split into four 15-minute quarters (with a lengthy halftime break after the second quarter). Eleven players take the field for each team, one side on “offense” and one side on “defense.” A coin is flipped at the beginning of each game to decide who gets to start as offense and who gets to start as defense. The team who began the game on defense will get to be the offense at the start of the second half.

The offense is charged with advancing the ball 100 yards down the field into the end zone, while the defense is tasked with stopping them by tackling the person with the football to the ground. The offense is granted four tries or “plays” to try to score. The action isn’t continuous in American football like it is in European football. After a team runs a play to attempt to advance the ball, they get a 40-second break to plot their next play. A play simply refers to the action on the field that the offense takes to get down the field. It begins with the “center” “snapping” the ball to the “quarterback” behind him and ends when the offense either scores (rare) or is foiled in some way – whether that means being tackled in bounds, stepping out of bounds, or throwing the ball out of bounds. Here is a chart of the typical football positions.

The offense’s two most reliable ways of advancing the ball downfield are either throwing it or running it. On a running play, the quarterback (Jason Street or Matt Saracen in Friday Night Lights) will receive the snap and hand it off to a running back (Smash Williams or Tim Riggins) who tries to run the ball upfield while his teammates block for him. Alternatively, the quarterback can throw the ball to an open wide receiver as long as the throw originates from behind the line of scrimmage (the area on the field where the play originated). 

Four tries to reach the end zone are rarely enough opportunities for the offense. Thankfully, that’s where “first downs” come in. If the offense advances 10 yards, their “downs” or attempts to score reset back to the full four. That’s where terms like “1st and 10” or “2nd and 7” or “4th and 1” come from. The first number refers to which “down” or attempt the offense is on (1, 2, 3, or 4) while the second number refers to how many yards they need to reach to achieve another first down. Due to penalties or a player being tackled well behind the line of scrimmage (called a “sack” or a “tackle for loss”), the number of yards needed to reach a first down can exceed 10. One time in 2012, the Washington Football Team even had a “3rd and 50”, meaning they needed to move 50 yards for a first down. 

If the offense fails to score or get a first down while on fourth down, possession of the ball is granted to the other team on the same spot that the offense failed. This is called a “turnover on downs.” The team that was previously on offense will bring their defensive unit into the game while the other team will bring their offensive unit. At the collegiate and professional level, players usually only play on one “side” of the ball – offense or defense. In high school, where the level of talent is more inconsistent, it’s not uncommon for several players to be on both the offensive and defensive units. This doesn’t come up much on Friday Night Lights though – for the most part the offensive players stay on offense and the defensive players stay on defense.

It is possible for the defense to force a turnover in other ways beyond just a turnover on downs. If the offense drops or “fumbles”’ the ball and the defense recovers it, it belongs to them. If the defense catches a ball thrown by the offense it is an “interception” and the offense suddenly becomes the defense and the defense suddenly becomes the offense. This situation factors prominently in Friday Night Light’s first episode. 

Turnovers are awful, so the offense has a couple of tools to combat them. At any point during their drive down the field, the offense can choose to “punt” the ball. This means that if they’ve reached 4th down and are unlikely to convert a first down (if it is 4th and 10 from their own 30 yardline for instance), they can choose to have a kicking specialist called a “punter” enter the field. The punter receives the snap, tosses the ball up in the air, and punts the ball far down the field to the other team to catch and try to advance. This is a surrender from the offense but at least they’re making things a bit more difficult for the other offense by pushing the new offense further down the field. Punts rarely factor into Friday Night Lights as they aren’t particularly interesting. 

Alternatively, if the offense is close to the end zone but not close enough that they’re confident they can reach it, they can attempt to kick the ball through the aforementioned goalposts for three points. A “kicker” is brought onto the field and attempts to kick the ball through the goalposts from the ground. A “holder” is allowed to hold the ball upright for the kicker but the ball must be touching the ground for the attempt to count.

Let’s delve a little further into the scoring system. We’ve mentioned that kicking the ball through the uprights is a field goal and nets three points while carrying the ball into the endzone is a touchdown and nets six points. But there are a couple other ways to score in football as well. After a touchdown is achieved, the offense is immediately granted the opportunity to score again. They must choose whether they want to kick the ball through the uprights from extremely close range (which nets one extra point) or to try to reach the end zone again from extremely close range (which nets two extra points). Additionally, if the offense is tackled in their own end zone, it nets two points for the opposing team and they receive the ball back via punt. This is called a “safety.”

To recap: 

Safety: 2 points

Field Goal: 3 points

Touchdown: 6 points (+1 for a field goal attempt, +2 for a scoring attempt).

This means that football scores can generate pretty much any result other than 1-0 or 1-1. Typically a “normal” scoring game will be somewhere between the 20-40 range in divisions of 7 or 3. A score of 35-28 is a pretty usual final football score.

Still confused? That’s understandable. Football is a fairly confusing sport at times. But hopefully you are a little better equipped to understand the action on the field in Friday Night Lights. The show certainly isn’t trying to present a complicated depiction of football. Armed with the basics, you should have a rough idea of what’s happening during all the football action. 

If you feel like you’ve mastered the basics, feel free to move on to the final section of this piece.

The Strategy of American Football

The only constant in football is change. The rules of the sport are tweaked every single year and sometimes the sport undergoes truly massive alterations. In fact, the forward pass itself (now a staple of the game) wasn’t even legal for the first few decades of football’s existence. As such, the offensive and defensive strategies of football are in a constant state of flux. 

What’s interesting to note about Friday Night Lights is how old-fashioned its depiction of football appears to be at the series’ beginning. Keep in mind that this story began with the 1988 Permian Panthers. So despite premiering and taking place in 2006, the Dillon Panthers offense looks quite antiquated at first. 

The Dillon Panthers open the series as a run-first offense in a “Wing-T” formation. Running back Brian “Smash” Williams is the cornerstone of the Panthers’ strategy because back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, athletically superior running backs were usually the most dominant force in any high school offense. The Panthers plan of attack is to have a fast tailback (colloquially called a “running back” because they begin the play in the backfield and then…run)  and a strong fullback in the backfield alongside the quarterback. The Panthers’ plan is to snap the ball, give it to the fast guy, have him follow the big blockers, then rinse and repeat.

Interestingly enough, the show uses the primitiveness of the Panthers’ offense to its advantage in later seasons. When some parents and Panthers boosters (literally just rich people that support a high school or college team) want to oust Coach Eric Taylor, they point to his inability to change with the times and create a sophisticated passing attack as one reason. Coach Taylor does eventually attempt to implement a “spread” offense. 

Spread offenses were all the rage at the high school and collegiate level in the early aughts. The “spread” strategy refers to “spreading” three to five wide receivers on the line of scrimmage to force the defense to cover them man-to-man. Defenses are always strategizing just like offenses, and by forcing the defense to spread out and guard many receivers, it takes away a lot of their more sophisticated coverage options (like double-teaming or divvying up the field into “zones” of coverage). 

In later seasons, when Coach Taylor gains access to a fast, dynamic quarterback, he incorporates a bit of the “option” into his spread offense. This is where the QB uses the spacing from the spread to scan the field, analyze certain players’ positioning on the defense, and decide to pass the ball, hand off the ball, or run the ball himself.

Based on all this, it sounds like Eric Taylor is a pretty brilliant coach, right? Well, not exactly. The internet is littered with breakdowns of Taylor’s strategy from smart football minds. Most of said articles criticize him on two big fronts. The first is his tardiness in adapting to a pass-heavy offense. The second is his absolutely abominable clock management. Since the clock counts down in American football and there is no stoppage time, managing time is a huge part of a coach’s responsibility. 

Since the show naturally wants to inject some drama into its football scenes, the Dillon Panthers as coached by Eric Taylor often have next to 0 clock awareness. This breakdown even notes than in the pilot episode, the Panthers somehow only move the ball 30 yards in five minutes of gametime. That is…pretty curious. 

Also, while it’s not uncommon for a head coach to specialize in either the defensive or offensive side of the ball, Eric Taylor’s is particularly offensive-focused. Defensive plays aren’t as exciting to depict on television, so Coach Taylor is rarely shown coaching up the defensive half of his team. That’s a pretty big blindspot when it comes to head coaching. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Now that you’ve read through this full breakdown of American football, give Friday Night Lights a watch or a rewatch. Who knows – you may even be a sharper football mind than Coach Taylor at this point.

The post Friday Night Lights: A Non-American’s Guide to American Football appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3lnaaMj

[selfcareparker]

yesss the letter format 💝💓💘💖💞💕💖💞💓 (lovely anon)

my dearest aria (a hamilton reference lmao),

i’m home alone (bc i wanted the house alone to get my head together after my brothers were mean to me 🙃) and i’m so hype LMAO but i’m watching chloe x halle’s tiny desk concert and honestly just vibing. (this is so random) besides zendaya like they are my badass black women role models. my one accomplishment would be to learn to body roll like them LMAO

oh nevermind i can’t have anything nice, my dad just came home 🙃 WHAT A WAY TO START OFF THIS ASK WTFFF

i’m liking tfatws, the second episode was veryyy intense imo but WANDAVISION IS SO GOOD😭 i knew it was going to be my favorite from the really old trailer but it’s really good and i promise it’s not just sitcoms, girl especially cuz you’ll have all the episodes already out- we were having to wait every week😭 BUT ITS SO GOOD I PROMISE HDJSHDJSH lmao reading this i was like “i- the episodes aren’t an hour long” but i feel that, it’s hard for me to watch tfatws bc they are an hour long and i’m like 😐 but wandavision episodes are less than 30mins bc I KID YOU NOT they have the damn 10 MINUTE CREDITS DHDJSJ no i don’t think we’ve talked about this b4 lol but it all depends on the series for me. i binged love island uk in less than a week bc i was so invested and LITERALLY LOVE IT but uh those episodes are like an hour and a half, but say i was binging tfatws (it’s so hard to type that ohmigosh) i honestly would not be able to do it bc of the intensity (you may be like what intensity but if you’ve seen episode 2 by the time you’re reading this.......... isaiah and the scene afterwards is all i have to say, esp me being black it was so tough :/)

girl you’re fine, as long as you’ve experienced it once hahaha i think the reason why it’s so important to my family (this letter feels so personal and extreme HSJSJA IM SORRY) is bc my grandmother loved it and in my family i guess it’s just important to us lol like my mom and dad love it too and we have the literal VHS tapes LMAO, but it only came up recently cuz my youngest brother was watching lion guard HAHA and he wanted to see the originals :) and fun fact (unless you already know) but there’s a lion king part 2 and 1 1/2 and i have all three ON VHS HAHAHA but i love lion king 1 duh (the og) but part two’s music and love story..... is so good. anyway. 🦁

I WAS THINKING THE SAME THING DURING THE WHOLE MOVIE THEATER ENCOUNTER THING HAHAHA AND WHEN SHE WAS SAYING AWKWARD I WAS LIKE WTF THE NOISE LMAOOOO i don’t think there’s a better way to describe that whole situation than ZKDHDJSHAJAJSHDJSNAHA. yeah. yeaaaa at the cinemas (i like the word cinema more than movies 🥰) here they have chips (fries), some have ice cream, nachos, drinks, hot dogs, the cinema we were at had pretzels and like BURGERS I WAS LIKE HUH OKAY and ya know obviously popcorn but i don’t know why the theaters (or cinemas) here do that, it started a long time ago though like yearsssss

PLEASE i have the longest movie watchlist and uhh haven’t seen any of them JDJSKA (istg i use HSJSSKSH as a period - like . ) i’m still hype for cherry but very hesitant (idk if i can handle it) but i’m thinking about watching it in the next couple of weeks? i know it’ll take me forever bc i’m gonna have to keep pausing and shit but idk. i’ve asked around for very specific trigger warnings and time stamps so i REALLY know what’s coming (even if it spoiled the film a bit for me) but i do really wanna see it (i think? writing this now i’m not so sure lol) so whooooooo really knows lol, but chaos walking YES i was really excited about it :))) and about my friend uhh dude you don’t sound mean at all i was literally thinking the same thing but worse HAAKL idk what she was there for???? she bought my ticket tho so 💁🏾‍♀️ whatever

“SIMS ahh, BUNK BEDS ahh” had me cracking up lmao and you know my sims status JAJAHHAJ but i’m gonna become like you, saving every 5 minutes 😭 but that’s exactly what happened to me, i really didn’t know whether to shut it off or not but after 2 hours i was heartbroken lol i’m literally making a list of things i need to redo that wasn’t saved lmao

CAN I JUST SAY UR A MASTERMIND THOUGH??? UR SIMS GAME SOUNDS SO *chefs kiss* IM CRINE university is PAINFULLY long and LITERALLY I FEEEL THAT like you can’t do anything else without failing, i had my sim go to a party once for like a few hours and i felt so dumb afterwards like urgh he should’ve been studying LMAOO just cracking down on work honestly. UR NEIGHBOR!AU IN THE SIMS PLEASEEE i am very much in love with it, yes. (pouring rain has just suddenly begun where i am rn wow ok) i love that you put them on the same lot, that was really really smart and i love that ur living out your sexuality in the sims😭 i was abt to say “now you can say you’ve got experience bc of the sims” but ANYWAY IGNORE ME fhdhs THE ALIEN BABY DHSJSK i hope it’s not a dealbreaker for enisa. that’d be tragic. IM BACK IN UPPERCASE THO BC YES MAKING OUT IN THE SIMS IS SO HOT TO ME??? I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE STFU OH MY GOSH- all the stuff, whispering sweet nothings, and the making out, and JUST ALL OF IT!!! AM I TOUCH STARVED????? there was this time i made my sim just continue to woohoo bc it was turning me on big time. ANYWAY

half way through that i had to go to my grandmothers house (not the one that likes lion king, but uh hmm idk if you remember but i was talking abt my shit family so yeah that grandmother lol) so now i’m finishing this 🥴 and instead of chloe x halle i’m watching a tom interview lmao & if this takes me longer than 30 minutes.... imma cry

I REALLY WANNA ASK- IS IT BC UR GERMAN LIKE YOU CAN JUST WRITE OUT THAT LONG ASS WORD???? i mean i can’t write out supercalafrag- anyway, but that word is a bit nonsense, UR WORD IS A REAL WORD DUDE HDJSHS i love how ur like “maybe i mixed up these words” YEA OK.

lol i had to google what are waveformers lol (lol makes a comeback) and they look like curlers that you would sleep in (here we would call them curlers or uhm i forgot uhhhhhhh rollers i think) but ur fine when am i ever making sense?? i think the best part about these is the chaos yet we understand what the other means 😌

H20 H20 H20 OH MY GOODNESS SHE BROUGHT UP H20 OK MY LIFE WAS H20🥲 I HAVE THEIR LOCKET NECKLACE AND (short storytime) when i was younger i thought they were american despite their accents (idk i was dumb) but then i figured they weren’t when lewis went to go study in america HAHAH ALSO FAVORITE COUPLE CLEO AND LEWIS UGH WATCH ME REWATCH THE SHOW NOW THANKS (also i hated elizabeth so much) but anyway back on topic, when lewis went to go study in the US i looked up where the show took place and all that good stuff and i found out they were australian HAHAH and that started my obsession with accents LMAO the uk :’)) (i’m proofreading AND AUSTRALIA IS NOT A PART OF THE UK LMAOO IM SOO DHSJSSHS) also it is now one of my many goals (besides the body roll HAHAH) to go to mako island (that’s what it’s called right??)

about music, i googled stormzy and i might listen to a song of his.. LOL I WANNA GIVE IT A TRY IMMA DO IT FOR YOU NFDVSFSG lmaoo the german rapper had me cackling (autocorrect once again being helpful and said raper and i’m like nOO) i mean we all have that one person. can’t lie, won’t lie. my one (IM SORRY BUT AUTOCORRECT HAD “MY ONE TRUE ACCOMPLISHMENT” SITTING AND READY HDJSJA I DONT EVEN TYPE THAT wHAT) person out of my white soft boy with brown hair and brown eyes type would beeeee pete davidson. love me some petey. i was gonna say rex orange county as well lmao but i don’t really loveeee him i’m just in love with his music... and wanna be friends with him..... so 👉🏾👈🏾 (i never do that fdshsh)

oh my goodness, i love tattoos too- GASP what are you thinking of getting 🥺 i want tattoos too but i’m too indecisive to figure out what to have & where. especially in my family... idk they aren’t frowned upon but my mom’s not applauding the thought lol, if i got one it would have to be meaningful but i am absolutely in love with (for example) ariana grande’s finger tattoos !! they’re so cute and simple :’) i don’t even know if i can get tattoos? my skin is... interesting. not in a bad way!! just like.... idk how to explain it??? keyloids run in the family & i got a piercing once and it got infected soo :/ the doctor also confirmed that if i wanted tattoos they couldn’t be in color so LMAO

ONCE AGAIN THIS WHOLE THING FEELS SO TMI DHSHSSJ IM LIKE OHMIGOSH SHUT UP SHE DOESNT CARE JESJSKS

in regards to you not sleeping, i wanted to mention that dumb bird, what was the reason it was up so early aT 4AM???? SIR WHO YOU CALLING TO??? also it’s 11:30pm and idk why i’m tired???

yeah i was never SUPER into justin so i don’t know exactly what albums you’re talking about lol, i do know yummy though.. but everyone did hahaha also i listen to so much pop 🙈 i mean maybe... idk what would count as pop and what wouldn’t. that new person feeling though.. i get that. it’s like who is this new person..? i kinda feel like that with taylor swift (i was never THAT into her either though so it’s like oh wait i didn’t know you from the beginning instead of hello old friend but you’re different lol)

about the concerts, thanks 🥰🥰 that’s so sweet what you did for your mom too, it’s nice seeing them so happy like 🥲 awh AND GLEE IS AND WAS MY LIFE FOR A V V LONG TIME, i’ve been meaning to rewatch it for the longest time lmaooo but i’m just so lazy and it’s such a commitment... i’ll have to get emotionally involved again and idk if i want that rn. but i have a friend on instagram and she runs a glee fan account and it’s such a big part of her life i really don’t think i could ever be THAT obsessed with something. like another one of my friends loves tom holland so much that she changed her mom’s name in her phone to what tom’s mom’s name is in his phone (that was confusing lol) and obviously i’m not judging them AT ALL, it just couldn’t be me lol

CONCERTS LOOK LIKE SO MUCH FUN 😩😩 LIKE THE EXPERIENCE AND THE FEELINGGG URGHSJS i wanna see a few people live like ari and chloe x halle and- hmm.... idk who else FJDSJ rex orange county i guess huh anyway, the experience just sounds so amazing and the atmosphere is just ✨✨✨ yeah

aria do it do it do it do it do it- watch hamilton!! but with subtitles bc you won’t catch half of the things they’re saying without them LMAO (me and my family watched it and they all didn’t like it bc they didn’t know what was happening lol) BUT DONT WATCH IT AT 4AM LMAO ITS LITERALLY 3 HOURS LONG

yes!! superior peter fics 🥺🥺🥺🥺 and it just shows how much of an incredible writer AND PERSON you are through your fics that you can turn a blurb into 2k....... like what.

LMAO the annoying thing, sometimes i feel like i’m bothering people (like right now HAHAH) but i think it’s my antisocial side being like yeaa no one wants to talk to you like you wanna talk to them :’) idk it’s strange!! sometimes i get really ✨insecure✨ and overthink everything LOL like is this too long, im talking too much, i’m swearing too much, oh lord i’m a pain, all that good shit lmao so that’s fun:))

ALSO YOUR BLOG IS SO FUN TO ME HAHAK LIKE ITS JUST YOUR OWN AND I LOVE THAT!!! like you talk about everything and anything on here lol,, and i say that bc what you said lmao how if i was someone else i would want to fuck me so bad😭 i honestly don’t understand how i don’t have people lining up though..... but if no one’s gonna tell you... then you tell yourself, period (and sometimes telling yourself is fucking yourself HSHAJKS OK NEXT)

ohmigosh the realization you had that you graduated last year and are going to uni this year🤧 but the fact that you had a teacher who LEFT THE GROUP CHAT bc she was mad at y’all i- 😭 but yeah about your maths (i always wondered why you guys call it maths and the US calls it math. like i know so many people out of the states, not just in the uk that say maths) teacher- i saw this post that said online school is looking a lot like dora the explorer😭😭 “you have any questions?” 🦗 “okay bye then” lmao and please i love when tests have nothing to do with what you studied like ??? thanks? sometimes i get scared that my teacher will somehow find out that i googled everything? or like my answer is too close to the answer sheet or something. i get sooo nervous lol but i’m already past that point of not being able to do anything myself DHJS i mean i’m still learning like i said!! read the question, read the answer. boom. now i know the answer to the question and i learned!

THANKS 🙈🥰🤧 idk how else to explain my feelings LMAO i feel it’s cool that you find my dance lessons and voice lessons cool so thanks :’)

oh god not headache season 😭😭 allergies are the worst like it’s not even funny. is headache season just when the seasons are changing or is it like... all throughout the summer? cuz i love the summer lmaoo i love the winter too but i just love wearing as little clothes as possible LMAO

GIRL IF THAT BIRD DONT STOP CHIRPING- i am 100% convinced that it is the same bird trying to give you headaches and no sleep and it needs to stfu 😤 and pLEASE ur theme is adorable and pretty and cute but also it just feels like you? idk if i’m explaining this right or if it’s bc i’ve been talking to you for a bit but it’s cute but not innocent in a way that i’m surprised that you write smut and- yeah, that didn’t make sense!! but ur new theme is gonna look pretty too and as long as you like it, it’ll be amazing🥰

yessssss the fact that megan is gonna be ur pfp YES JUST YES

edit: ok i just need to 🥺😭 sometimes u make me wanna cry cuz i feel like you’re just a kind person. i truly mean this, the fact that you celebrate yours & others stretch marks makes me so 🥺🥺🥺 i honestly don’t know anyone who has said they want need more stretch marks and it’s just all very lovely to me :’)) OKAY IMMA STOP BEING SAPPY

#yes my fake tags are back #by popular demand #aka me #and look i have actual tags this time! #i’m seriously craving water ice rn....... huh #but it’s past midnight and i fr fr want a snack #aw man #i wrote that last paragraph while doing my tags yes #and i hope you become responsible for that anon’s orgasm #assuming they had one #and i saw your response to the tom thing and yeaa when they only look like that for something and it’s like aw bae be yourself #i’m gonna shut up now and find a snack but goodnight!! morning?? IDK #IF THESE TAGS END UP AS ACTUAL TAGS I AM SO SORRY HAHAHA #alright proofreading done and i’m gonna go eat cereal

okay i‘m on my way to a driving lesson rn and afterwards i have a zoom uni thing, and then another uni thing lmao. but hopefully i can reply to this in between because i‘ve been dying to talk to you since i got this ask dldjds💘💘💘 (i really like this heart. i had a 💖 phase for a while and now it‘s 💘 (seems like a very romantic heart but.... it is what it is idk dkddj)

^okay that was literally all i wrote before my lesson lmfao. just had the worst driving lesson ever dbdvsnylkxsksj i think i‘ve gotten too used to being good at driving and now i‘ve gotten too cocky with it 🥴 anyway i‘ve had such a stressful day and overall week but tbh i‘m already feeling better bc i can (indirectly) talk to you <333

omg i went to chloe or halle (i don‘t remember who out of the two)‘s instagram the other day and found out that they are not twins alejeleksjsksj but yes oh my god their voices are literally angelic and i can‘t wait to see Halle as Ariel (Arielle??)🥰 and omg it‘s literally 2021 and we‘ve only had......... one(?) black Disney Princess like it‘s about fucking time (I might be forgetting someone, I‘m not too familiar with the new Disney films, but as far as I remember there‘s only Tiana right? (who is literally a frog for 3/4 of the film 😭😭) so yes i‘m here for it too😌😌😌 (obviously she‘s not a cartoon like tiana ekdlek but she‘s a disney princess you know what i mean ddkjdh)

pfkejdj i‘m already overwhelmed with my parents i can‘t imagine having siblings too 😭😭 (sometimes i wish i had siblings but then other times (like after reading what you wrote dksjj) i‘m glad that i‘m an only child lmao like your brothers being mean to you and i remember when you cried and he was just like 👁👄👁 ok. like i’m totally okay being an only child sksjsj———and he doesn‘t listen to music 🤧🤧🤧 (although i guess that‘s good for you because at least he can‘t annoy you by listening to loud music that you hate dmdn)

okay okay i might watch wandavision then??? I‘ll definitely let you know!!! and yes omg i‘m loving tfatws (that really is so fucking hard to type omg) but same i totally get what you mean, i‘m not used to watching action series at all and every episode so far has been like a little movie so i‘m glad that i didn‘t wait until it was all out cause there’s no way i could binge watch that lol) and yes last episode was really intense. i‘m glad that marvel are talking about racism because (from what i‘ve seen) they haven‘t been the best in that department, and i‘m really curious to see what they‘ll do in the next episodes (curious isn‘t the right word but excited isn‘t the right wort either, like i‘m excited but in a neutral way ? i‘ll shut up dslsksj i hate that german has so many words that you cant translate because theres a really good german word that describes how i’m feeling but i cant think of a good translation ugh)

okay i absolutely need to watch lion king (and part 2 and 1/ 1/2 dksksj) AND hamilton, i might even do it soon 👀

BURGERS AT THE CINEMA? EBEEISNDBEKSK i‘ll come to the US just to go and watch a movie lmaooo, i think all the popcorn sizes and drinks are bigger as well, i‘ll come and watch chaos walking with you 😌😌 does next week work?

and yeah i‘ve seen posts with specific time stamps and trigger warning for cherry too so if you haven’t looked on tumblr yet i’ve def seen some! (but ive also seen some on twitter and yeah- i mean idk youve probably looked on tumblr but yeah- then there’s also imdb which doesn’t have time stamps i believe but quite specific warnings, mostly without spoilers!)

Tbh i don‘t think i would have even considered watching cherry if tom wasn‘t in it... (i’m personally fine with most of the triggering topics/things like for some reason i’m just stoic when i’m watching the most tragic films ever dldldldlbut the plot just... idk if it‘s for me you know? just entertainment wise?).... and even with tom in it i‘m unsure skeldls, i‘d totally get if you decide not to watch it but let me know if you do i‘d want to hear your thoughts! <3

SKSLSJJ my sims both finally graduated!! i think i played sometime last week, and i literally got the achievement/notification that i‘d been playing with this household for 24hours.... and that was BEFORE they graduated dldjdldkdksjjs

oh no my tumblr broke and three paragraphs of me talking about sims were deleted 😭😭😭

WAIT NO I TOOK SCREENSHOTSSKSK because i couldn’t press save so i knew they might be gone okay okay okay i‘m a genius

*move out

oh no idk if the quality is too bad to read... idk how good your eyes are dkdkdjjd (also sometimes it will be really bad quality for some but not for others so i hope that the you can see the pics in a normal/good quality)

Okay let me continue

OMG THE ROMANTIC AND SEXUAL STUFF IS THE BEST PART ABOUT THE SIMS DIDLDKJIkdkj i kind of miss how in the sims 3 they would be making out basically lying on top of each other if they were on a bed— but in sims 4 when they‘re sitting next to each other and everything that‘s definitely hot too 😌😭 or with hot tubs dkdkdk how one sim climbs on the other sim‘s lap before they woohoo (i used to make them skinny dip in the hot tub and then make out and woohoo so they’re like naked on top of each other even if you can‘t see anything- en e waysss)

Dkdkdkdj so @ Rindfleischet.. blah bla. so it‘s basically just loads of individual words put together/connected and that‘s a really big part of german. so yesterday i had an online Einführungsveranstaltung for uni (like it was a zoom meeting where they just talked about general stuff about the uni and i was really anxious before, idk why, but it turned out absolutely fine so) and that words consists of the two words Einführung (introduction) and Veranstaltung (event) which are also two individual words but you can make a new word (Einführungsveranstaltung, so in english that‘s basically “introduction event“ lmao) by combining those two words. there are obviously some rules like you can‘t just combine random words in a random order but you can basically make infinite words (technically). for example (i feel like i‘m teaching a class just skip this if you don’t care 🙃🙃🙃djdjdkdlns)

for example i could say Einführungsveranstaltungsteilnehmer (which is not underlined with red by tumblr because it is a grammatically correct compound word (i think that‘s what they‘re called?)) which is the words introduction + event + participant, so that word just means “participant of an introductory event“ but instead it‘s one word? i hope that makes sense? dkdkkdksks i mean it makes sense in german but idk if it makes sense to you cause idk if i‘m explaining it very well lmao,

(I just deleted a really really long paragraph that i wrote about gender in the german language and grammar, you‘re welcome slsksksj)

my capacity to think has now been used up for the week 🥴🥴🥴 i absolutely do not blame you if you just skipped over that part or can‘t be bothered to (re)read my awful explanation edkflsksjdjdj (again, i had double the amount of words but i just deleted it dkdkdlslsl but what‘s left lf my german lesson is probably confusing enough already😭i‘m sorry🥴)

so to answer your question LEJDKSKJ: it‘s really common to have long words in german, words that are just word+ word+ word + word made into one long word. obv rindfleischetikettierung..... is a very extreme example and it‘s normally just 2-4 words made into one! So yup i think that comes mostly from german and talking german and growing up here and going to school here and everything dmdfnsksx

i think the best part about these is the chaos yet we understand what the other means 😌— YES. YES. Yes. I love that about us 😌😌🥰🥰/ I love us. Yes.

okay but your friend changing her mom‘s name into tom‘s mum‘s name (was that right? Dkdkdjh)—— so Justin Bieber once posted something where you could see that his Dad‘s number was saved as „Daddy Cakes“ (which, thinking back, sounds very weird ekejjej) and till this day I have my Dad’s contact name as Tata (which is serbian for Dad lmao), “Tata🍰“ in my phone because of it 😭😭😭😭🙃🙃🙃 it‘s not because of justin anymore like i‘ve just gotten used to it by now but at first i did it because of justin lol........ but nowadays i don‘t think i‘m THAT type of fan of anyone- like you know how people have fandom names (Justin‘s fans are the Beliebers, One Direction fans are Directioners (writing that hurt my soul💔💔💔)) and I wouldn‘t consider myself a fan of anyone like that. like even with tom i wouldn‘t call myself........ does tom even have a name for his fans??? Well if he does, I wouldn‘t call myself that. Like i used to be such a hardcore stan for any celebrity that i liked and now it‘s just... okay, i like em. (She says on her blog where she writes fan fiction about Tom Holland — WJDJEJDKELSKSKKSNSNDXB🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃)

Omg rex orange county!!!!!! I don‘t know that many songs like I‘ve only listened to the album pony, but i love it 💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘

thanks again for what you said about my fics/writing I‘m🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

Pete Davidson Pete Davidson Pete Davidson I‘m-🥰🥰🥰🥰 and I can‘t explain why. But as blissfulparker said the other day (i don‘t want to tag her and make her read through all of this lolll) “I like my men when they look like they are on the brink of death 😍“ (or something along the lines of that) eskkejs okay pete isn‘t that bad, he looks quite good on some days but other days you‘re like... is this man alive? Like i don‘t want to be mean I love Pete so much The King of Staten Island is literally my favourite film ever (although it‘s not my #1 because of how he looks, but i mean he does look good) VUT ALSO

(Okay i was gonna look for a terrible picture of him but he really doesn‘t look as bad as people say??? like. i think he‘s hot. can‘t necessarily explain why. so that‘s that on that.)

i‘m not going chronologically right now (i just keep scrolling up to your ask and replying to whatever i see first sksksksh) so i might miss a thing or two that you said

Okay Stormzy, you really really don‘t have to dkdkdjd like i think you said you don‘t really listen to rap, and uk rap is a whole nother thing from us rap because of the accent i feel like??? (That sentence did not make sense) BUT if you‘re looking for a few songs that aren‘t like RAP rap, then I‘d recommend One Second (feat HER), Superheroes, Own it (which you might know?), ummm maybe the song Lessons?, he has a ton of Lion King references by the way dkdjdj for example in Rachael‘s Little Brother but that‘s like more RAP again if you know what I mean?😭 and it‘s also like 5 Minutes long and tbh i only started liking that song a year after that album came out lmao but Rachael‘s Little Brother is possibly my fav Stormzy song, then there is Shut Up which you absolutely need to listen to just for fun dldjdjd like it‘s just pure fun and also a little funny lmao, especially if you‘re not British (i imagine so at least) cause he‘s like shuTTTT up idk dldkdjdldkjdhdhfjfbfldlsksksks

Vossi Bop is one of his classics, and then maybeee - ok so there‘s Blinded By Your Grace Pt. 2 lmaoobdjsj it‘s very (Christian/) religious but i like it a lot even though i‘m not really Christian (at least not practicing or anything) so idk about your views on religion but i do like the song a lot just by like the sound lmao

Okay so again you absolutely DO NOT have to listen to any, especially not for me dlskdj but I really do recommend the songs Superheroes, One Second and Rachael‘s Little Brother (and all the other ones i mentioned but if you don‘t listen to a lot of his songs you should at least give these three a try <3333) also let me know some of your songs? 🥺 like i dont care who they‘re by but i‘d love to listen to some that you like and Recommend 🥰🥰🥰

Okay so skdjdjdjddhhddhdhjsk... I used to watch all of my series in German (like H2O) bc obviously they were on german tv so they were german- and i knew that most of these actors i saw on tv were american and i was always SO fascinated that they all learned german for this show??? Like I actually thought they were the people‘s real voices and that these English and American actors were learning german so they could re-record the whole ass show and do everything in german dkdkdldjdjjd... i swear I thought that until I was like 14 omg. And then the first time that I watched H2O in the original version i was sooo confused about their accents because to me all actors who spoke english were American?? I mean MOST of those shows are American so I wasn‘t completely off but yeah i was definitely caught off guard when I heard all of their Australian accents for the first time 💀💀😭😭😭

@ math vs maths, math actually makes more sense in my opinion. like you have the word mathematics, then the abbreviation would obviously be math... why would English people randomly add the s from the end??? Or maybe it makes more sense after all because it‘s like plural??? Now I‘m unsure dkdkdkdj but i do say maths because that‘s how i was taught to say it and i hear the word maths more than math but yeah dldkdjs i think math might even make more sense (okay i just tried saying math and maths is easier to pronounce but again tjat might just be me, oh god i‘ll stop talking about that disgusting thing (mathematics).)

not the crickets and dora LMAOOOSNSNSMDNBS yeah that teacher was... a lot. a lot a lot a lot didjjd but she kinda liked me so she always gave me good grades/marks but the people she didn‘t like..... ooft. OOF.

Fksksjsj idek about headache season like i just know that i get headaches from the sun and i‘m allergic to only one.. type of...pollen??? (I don’t understand the science of that whole pollen thing and idek if it’s called pollen in english i just know sex pollen from fan fics😔)and yeah we have this weird wind that makes a lot of people get headaches yeahd dkdkdj. i loved the i just love wearing as little clothes as possible LMAO lllioool i love that i really do. i always struggle so much in the summer cause i never have anything to wear. i feel like i buy so many new summer clothes every year but when i end up looking for an outfit i don‘t ever find anything 😭 (so i just go naked— lmao jk jk) but i‘m generally not the biggest fan of summer so-

OMG THIS FUCKING BIRD ISTG, okay the first time i heard it i went to sleep at like 5 am, so the next day i was like let me go to bed earlier so the bird doesn‘t keep me up, so i went to bed at 4 am (🥲) and THE BIRD JUST STARTED FUCKING CHIRPING SO LOUDLY, so the next day i went to bed at 3 am AND IT FUCKING STARTED AT 3 AM and it‘s still there 😁 every. night.

and since you said you‘ve gotten used to my theme and everything (idk where this transition came from😭) so tomorrow (2nd april) we have our... wait what‘s an anniversary but for a month.? I think month is like mensus in latin OK NO THATS DEF WRONG DKDKDJ wait

So Tomorrow is our... mensiversary💘💘💘💘💘💘 or at least from the first time you sent an ask. i couldn‘t find it on my tumblr anymore because tumblr is a bit of a bitch but i remember the first thing you ever sent (in an ask) was something lovely about my writing and i always take screenshots of stuff like that, and i found it in my gallery. and i took that screenshot of your ask on the 2nd of march so i‘m assuming that‘s when you sent it 🥰🥰 i feel like i‘ve known you for a week not a month like how is it a month already????? (i mean this in a good way lmao but i really can’t believe that its been a month wtf)

omg no you make me want to cry because i just love you so much 😭😭🥺 but about the stretch mark thing it‘s just.. it‘s not even me trying to empower other women (or anyone else who has stretch marks) to shake off these dumb insecurities that the patriarchy and capitalism have instilled in us— ok no it‘s definitely that too lmao. But i mean I‘ve always loved stretch marks, i‘ve just always loved loved loved them so much so it makes me genuinely sad that people don‘t like them. so yeah. i dont really know how to explain it lol, like i‘m not (only) hoping that people realise that hating your stretch marks is giving the men and the patriarchy what they want per se- (that made no sense) it‘s just because i love stretch marks and think they‘re beautiful and also sexy. idk dldkdjls and omg the fact that you called me kind 🥺🥺🥺 like i don‘t really have a goal in life or anything, but if i had to choose a ‘goal‘ in life it would just be to be kind. (i‘ll end this here otherwise i‘m gonna talk about being kind for 30 more lines—)

And please. Do not ever feel like you‘re annoying me or sending too much. never ever ever. I get so happy when i see that you‘ve sent me an ask. No matter if it‘s a long one like this or just a short one where you‘re saying something about a post that i reblogged or something. I love hearing from/about you and talking to you 💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘

P.S: i‘m so sorry for the tags you‘re about to read they make even less sense than this post, also i reached the tag limit dkdkdj but i said some butterfly tattoos look tacky... and the next thing i said was since we‘re already speaking about Ariana- I DID NOT MEAN THAT SHE WAS TACKY dldkdjsj, i meant since you already mentioned some of her tattoos lmao

[lastsonlost]

Oh gasps, I'm shocked.

Who would have thunk it?

The story:

Updated with Sunday figures: In the wake of Terminator: Dark Fate’s failure at the B.O., and Paramount’s recent decision to make Beverly Cops 4 for Netflix, we have the further breakdown of cinema IP in Sony’s Charlie’s Angels reboot, which is tanking with a God-awful $8.6M domestic opening, $27.9M worldwide (from 26 markets), 3 Stars on Screen Engine-Comscore’s PostTrak, and a B+ Cinemascore.

The Elizabeth Banks-directed-written and produced pic is also opening in 27 offshore markets,

China being one where it’s also bombing,

with a $7.8M 3-day take in third place behind No. 1 local title Somewhere Winter ($13.1M).

All of this is primed to further spur a WTF reaction and anxiety among film development executives in town in regards to what the hell exactly works in this have-and-have-not era of the theatrical marketplace. Many will make the hasty generalization that old, dusty IP doesn’t work, or is now deemed too risky when it’s not a superhero project. However, moviemaking is an art, not a science, and annoying as it might sound, good movies float to the top, and this Charlie’s Angels reboot didn’t have the goods going back to its script.

<Maybe somebody should have been working on a good story instead of pushing an agenda.

We’re going to break down for you what went wrong in another graph, but we don’t want to bury the success of Disney’s release of Fox’s James Mangold-directed Ford v Ferrari, which looks to be coming in at $31.5M, well ahead of the $20M+ many were seeing, with an awesome A+ CinemaScore and 4 1/2 stars and a 68% definite recommend on Screen Engine/Comscore’s PostTrak. After a franchise-laden summer which buried originals, now an original pic is sticking it to the IP.

When it comes to the bombing of Charlie’s Angels, the takeaway is this is what happens when you have IP, but there’s no reason for telling the story.

In the walk-up to developing Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, and in the wake of its near $1 billion success, a fever broke out at the Culver City lot in the post-Amy Pascal era to reboot former Sony franchises or extend them, i.e. Zombieland: Double Tap (well over $103M at the global B.O. now), the upcoming Bad Boys 3, and, of course, Spider-Man, the latter electrified by Disney’s Marvel. Development studio executives define their being by getting films greenlit, and whenever that happens, it’s 90% of the job.

And the pressure is on to fill a 10-12 picture annual slate in a world where Disney vacuums up all the best IP. A third Charlie’s Angels with McG directing and Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu starring, wasn’t made immediately after the second chapter, 2003’s Full Throttle, as the sequel turned out to be 29% more expensive than the 2000 original at $120M, and also made less worldwide, $259.1M to $264.1M. With Elizabeth Banks coming off her hot feature directorial debut with Universal’s Pitch Perfect 2 (which over-indexed in its stateside opening at the B.O., going from $50M projections to $69.2M, and finaled global at $287.1M); after she expressed interest in September 2015 in taking on a Charlie’s Angels reboot with a modern feminist spin, there was no question in Sony’s mind that the project should move forward.

<Yeah Sony, how's that working out for you? You think they would have learned their lesson...

Guess not.

Back to the story.....

However, there were script problems, I hear, that could never be resolved. A few months after Banks boarded, Evan Spiliotopoulos came on to write. By the time cast was assembled in July 2018, Banks had penned the latest draft off a script by Jay Basu (The Girl in the Spider’s Web), and earlier drafts by Craig Mazin and Semi Chellas. Andrea Giannetti oversaw the project on the lot. However, I hear that the script for Charlie’s Angels didn’t really attract top talent, i.e. Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone and Margot Robbie (a trio that would have potentially jazzed up business). Hence, why the production opted to go with largely a fresh face cast outside of Kristen Stewart. While we overwrite that stars mean nothing at the box office, they do, sometimes, when it comes to propping IP, and unfortunately and arguably, no one in Middle America knows who British actress Ella Balinska is, and they’ve only became recently acquainted with Naomi Scott from Disney’s Aladdin and Lionsgate’s Power Rangers. Stewart, who is hysterical in the movie and even needed more funny bits, is in a different place in her career professionally, publicly, and privately. It’s unfair to think that she could delver her Twilight fans now.

Had she done Charlie’s Angels promptly in the swell of the Twilight whirlwind (like Snow White and the Huntsmen) then maybe it would have popped.

But she has largely been dormant from popcorn wide releases for the last seven years since 2012’s Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, busy excelling and wowing in specialty awards season and festival fare like Clouds of Sils Maria, Still Alice, and this year’s Seberg, to name a few. Stewart needed to be paired with equal or bigger-name actresses.

was a one quadrant movie, eyed at women 13-39, especially given its lack of action scenes, and wisely limited their exposure to what I hear is 50%, with co-finance partners 2.0 Entertainment and Perfect World. Sony claims the budget is $48M net; we’ve heard in the mid $50Ms. Tax incentives were taken in the pic’s Berlin and Hamburg shoots. Perhaps Sony should have spent more, because Charlie’s Angels biggest problem is that it has very low-octane, we’ve-seen-it-all-before action scenes. Heck, there’s more action in a 1980s Chuck Norris movie. After watching Charlie’s Angels earlier this week, I put the first two McG movies on Netflix, and it was like watching Star Wars in comparison to this reboot, with his sharp production design, camera movements, unique action, and comedy set pieces, and, of course, the first movie blasted Sam Rockwell out of a cannon. Understand that the first two movies in the series were able to compete and hold their own in an action space where, yes, Mission: Impossible and Fast & Furious (the first two films came out in 2001 and 2003) also thrived. Mission and Fast sequels distinguish themselves on multiple 10-minute action sequences that we’ve never seen before on screen; it doesn’t matter who the villain is. This Charlie’s Angels doesn’t have that. And not even a super-duper hit song “Don’t Call Me Angel” for the movie from Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus, and Lana Del Ray can trigger lines at the multiplex; the music video clocking over 116M views on YouTube, per entertainment social media monitor RelishMix.

Some will claim that Banks’ version was never intended to emulate the meat and potatoes version of McG’s films; that this version was expected to be more comedic, and more feminist. Unfortunately, after McG set the table here with the franchise as an action film, you can’t reverse it. You can only outdo him. And with a franchise movie like Charlie’s Angels, you can’t make it for a one quadrant audience.

The film arrived on tracking with a $12M-$13M start, and really never budged, but sank. That means marketing didn’t work. I heard that a $100M global P&A was first planned on Charlie’s Angels, with the studio now reducing that overall cost greatly to around $50M and pulling back on expensive ads. Another hurdle in activating the young girl demo is that much of the pic’s cast isn’t on social media. RelishMix says that Banks is the social media star with over 6.6M followers across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, with Scott counting 3.4M.

Sony kept pushing Charlie’s Angels, which in hindsight means there were development issues. In May 2017, a release date was announced for June 7, 2019. When the cast was locked down in July 2018, Charlie’s got moved to Sept. 27, 2019. In October 2018 when Warners pushed Wonder Woman 1984 from the first weekend in November to summer, Charlie‘s took over the autumn spot, which was the same exact place the original 2000 opened. However, when Terminator: Dark Fate moved onto the same first weekend in November, Charlie‘s relocated to this weekend as they vied for a China release which they ultimately got.

Charlie’s Angels drew a 66% female crowd, split between 36% over 25 and 30% under 25. But both demos respectively graded it low at 68% and 79%, with men at 35% giving it a 68% grade on PostTrak. Diversity breakdown was 52% Caucasian, 21% Hispanic, 14% Asian/Other, & 13% African American. Charlie’s Angels best markets were on the coasts and big cities. But again, nothing to brag about in Friday’s $3.2M gross, which includes $900K from Thursday and Wednesday previews.

Says RelishMix, which also foresaw this disaster approaching on social media chatter, “Angels is the latest example in a ‘woke’ effort to reboot a franchise that many were not all that interested in to start with. In fact, many references to the 2000 version get a call-out as a reason this one doesn’t seem to compare – whether it’s the cast or the action teased from the film.

And, as observed with other recent films, some action/adventure, unfortunately fans say they’re steering clear of this one because of its ‘girl power’ messaging.”

[thisbluespirit]

James Maxwell TV/Film List

More of a guide than a recs list, because old tv/film depends so much on availability.  It’s also hard as there’s nothing surviving that’s really like SotT for him (his voice is always slightly different, too & rarely the grand one from SotT) - I found it hard to find where to start back in the day, so I hope this makes it easier.  However, I have starred my favourites (rated for JM content only). 

I’ve divided things into categories and @jurijurijurious​ (or anyone) can make up their own mind as to what to go for.  (Also @jurijurijurious I have NO idea what old telly you’ve already seen, so forgive me if I’m telling you things you already know.)

Where to find it:  Luckily in the UK, it’s not too bad!  Network Distributing are the DVD supplier to keep an eye on (they do great online sales), you can find secondhand things cheap on Amazon Marketplace & eBay, and several Freeview channels show old TV & film, especially Talking Pictures.  I’ll note if things are on YT or Daily Motion, but they come and go all the time, so it’s always worth searching.

***

Film serials (ITC mainly)

British TV made on film in the US mode with transatlantic cash, so generally pretty light,  episodic (continuity is almost unheard of) etc.  Some turn up on ITV3 & 4 on a regular basis (colour eps). 

*** Dangerman “A Date With Doris” (ITC 1964)  James Maxwell is a British spy friend of Drake’s (Patrick MacGoohan) called Peter who gets framed for murder.  Drake goes to Fake Cuba to rescue him by which time JM is dying from an infected wound and faints off every available surface, including the roof.  It’s great.  On YT.  (The boxset is v pricey if you just want 2 eps.)

“Fair Exchange” (ITC 1964) JM is a German spy friend of Drake’s called Pieter who helps him out on a case.  Not as gloriously hurt/comfort-y as the other, but it does have some excellent undercover dusting. (Why  Patrick MacGoohan has JM clones all called variations on Peter dotted around the globeis a mystery.)  On YT.

The Saint “The Inescapable Word” (ITC 1965) This is pretty terrible, but  entertaining and James Maxwell plays the world’s most hopeless former-cop-turned-security guard. With bonus collapsing.  On YT.

“The Art Collectors” (1967).  JM is the villain of the week.  It does include a v funny bit, though, where the Saint (Roger Moore) goes for JM’s fake hair (and who can blame him?  How often I have felt the same!)  This one’s in colour so should pop up on ITV3 or 4. 

The Champions “The Silent Enemy” (ITC 1968).  Surprisingly good JM content as the villain of the week who drugs sailors and steals their clothes before realising that maybe he should have worked out if he could operate a sub before he stole it.

The Protectors “The Bridge” (ITC 1974, 30 mins.)  Not worth seeking out on its own, but ITV4 seems fond of it and James Maxwell gets to do some angsting and wears purple, so it’s worth snagging if you can, but too slight otherwise.

*** Thriller “Good Salary, Prospects, Free Coffin” (ITC 1975; 1hr 10mins, I think).  James Maxwell moves in with Julian Glover and runs an overcomplicated murdery spy ring where they bicker a lot in between killing girls by advertisement and burying them in the back garden.  What could possibly go wrong??  Anyway, it’s solid gold cheese, has bonus Julian Glover and a lot of natty knitwear.  What more does an old telly fan want?  (tw: Keith Barron being inexplicably the very meanest Thriller boyfriend.)  On YT but tends to get taken down fast.

***

Films

Design for Loving (1962; comedy).  Can be rented from the BFI online for £3.50.  Isn’t that great or that bad (or that funny either), but does have JM as a dim layabout beatnik, which is atypical.

***The Traitors (1962).  This is a low-key little 1hr long spy B-movie, but it’s also thoughtful and ambiguous with a nice 60s soundtrack and location work (it’s a bit New Wave-ish) and the central duo of JM and Patrick Allen are sweet and it all winds up with James Maxwell going in the swimming pool. One of the things where JM is actually American. (Talking Pictures show this occasionally & it is out on DVD as an extra on The Wind of Change.)  The quality of the surviving film is not great, though.

***Girl on Approval (1962).  A Rachel Roberts kitchen sink drama about a couple fostering a difficult teenager.  It’s dated, but it’s also really interesting for a 1950s/60s slice of life (and very female-centric) & probably the only time on this list JM played an ordinary person.

***Otley (1969).  Comedy that’s generally dated surprisingly well & is good fun, starring Tom Courtenay +cameos from what seems like the whole of British TV.  JM is an incompetent red herring & there are more cardies and glasses as well as a random barometer. 

Old Vic/Royal Exchange group productions

(Surviving works made by the group that JM was involved in from drama school to his death, made by Michael Elliott or Casper Wrede.  I like them a lot mostly, but they are all slow and weird and earnest & not everybody’s cup of tea.)

Brand (BBC 1959).  The BBC recording of the 59 Company’s (the name they were then using) landmark production, starring Patrick MacGoohan.  This was a big deal in British theatre & launched the careers of everybody involved.  It’s very relentless and weird but interesting & I’m glad they decided it was important enough to save.  First fake beard alert of this post.  It won’t be the last.  On YT & there is a DVD, which is sometimes affordable and sometimes £500, depending on the time of day.

***Private Potter (1962).  The original TV play is lost and this film has an extraneous storyline, but otherwise has most of the TV cast & gives a pretty good idea of why as a claustrophobic talky TV piece it made such an impact.  Tom Courtenay is Private Potter, a soldier who claims to have had a vision of God during a mission & James Maxwell his CO who needs to decide what to do about this strange excuse for disobeying orders.  Tw: fake eyebrows (!) and moustaches.  Only available on YT.

[???]One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (1970).  Again, no DVD release (no idea why), but it is on YT.  I haven’t seen this yet, but it’s another Casper Wrede effort starring Tom Courtenay and apparently JM is especially good in it.  (I’m just not good at watching long things on YT and keep hoping for a DVD or TV showing.)

Ransom (1974).  A more commercial effort starring Sean Connery & Ian McShane; it gets slated as not being a good action movie, but is clearly meant to be more thinky and political with the edge of a thriller. JM’s part isn’t large but Casper Wrede shoots his friend beautifully, & it’s a pretty decent film with nice cinematography, shot in Norway, as was One Day.  I liked it.

[I think this post might be the longest in the world, whoops.  Sorry!]

Cardboard TV (the best bit, obv)

One-off plays etc./mini-series

Out of the Unknown “The Dead Planet” Adaptation of an Asimov short story; this is very good for JM, but hard to get hold of unless you want the boxset.  I think someone has some of the eps on Daily Motion.  (His other OotU ep is sadly burninated.)

The Portrait of a Lady (BBC 1968).  Adaptation of the novel; JM is Gilbert Osmond, so it is great for JM in quantity and his performance, but depends how you feel about him being skeevy in truly appalling facial hair.  Do the bow ties and hand-holding make up for it?  but he’s in 5 whole episodes, and Suzanne Neve, faced with Richard Chamberlain, Edward Fox, and Ed Bishop as suitors, chooses instead to marry the worst possible James Maxwell.  Relatable. XD

***Dracula (ITV 1968, part of Mystery & Imagination).  JM is Dr Seward, fainty snowflake of vampire hunters, who falls over, sobs and can’t cope for most of the 1 hr 20 mins.  More facial hair, but not as offensive as last time.  Suzanne Neve is back again, although now JM is nice, she’s married Corin Redgrave, who’s more into Denholm Elliott. Anyway, I love this so much because it turned out that I love Dracula as well as shaky old TV with people I like in getting to fight vampires and all be shippy.  Good news - TP keep showing M&I, the DVD is out, and there are two versions of it up on YT.

The Prison (Armchair Cinema 1974).  This is the one with Lincoln in it, but it’s not that great & JM isn’t in it that much, so depends how curious you are for the modern AU!  (But my Euston films allergy is worse than my ITC allergy, and I watched this when very unwell, so I may have been unfair.)

Crown Court “Fitton vs. Pusey” (1973) - part of the Crown Court series, set in a town full of clones who all keep returning to court.  JM is on trial for his behaviour in (the Korean war?  I forget?) although he ought to be on trial for his terrible moustache.  It’s not that great, but it is nice JM content.  He probably did it, but for reasons, and he wibbles & panics whenever his wife leaves the courtroom.  Also on YT.

*** Raffles “The Amateur Cracksman” (ITV 1975) - He is Inspector Mckenzie in the Raffles pilot & is a lot of fun.  At one point when there was a Raffles fandom someone in it claimed he was too gay for Raffles, which I’m still laughing about, because Raffles.  Anyway, watch out if you try to get the DVD because it is NOT included in S1, whatever lies Amazon tells. It is up somewhere online, though, I think.

Bognor “Unbecoming Habits” (1981).  Some down marks for possibly the worst 80s theme & incidiental music ever, but fun & has been shown on Talking Pictures lately.  JM is an Abbot running a honey-making friary that is actually a hotbed of spies, murder, gay sex and squash playing.  This is the point at which he chooses to strip off on screen for the first time, because strong squash-playing abbots do that kind of thing apparently.

Guest of the week in ongoing series/serials

Since even series with a lot of continuity tended to write episodes as self-contained plays (like SotT), these are usually accessible on their own.

Manhunt “Death Wish” (1970).  This is one of the most serialised shows here, but this episode is still fairly contained.  WWII drama about three Resistance agents on the run across France.  JM is... a Nazi agent & former academic trying to break an old friend (one of the series’ three leads, Peter Barkworth) with kindness, possibly??  (Manhunt is very angry and psychological & dark and obv. comes with major WWII warnings (& more if you want to try the whole thing), but it’s also v good.)  Up on YT, I think.

Doomwatch “The Iron Doctor” (BBC S2 1971).  “Doomwatch” is the nickname of a gov’t dept led by Dr Spencer Quist that investigates new scientific projects for abuse/corruption/things that might cause fish to make men infertile etc. etc.  JM is a surgeon who comes to their attention because he’s a bit too in love with his computer for the comfort of one of his more junior colleagues.  (I think it’s perfectly comprehensible & a nice guest turn, but it is hard to get hold of outside of the series DVD.  Which, being a cult TV person, I loved a lot anyway, but YMMV!)

***Hadleigh “The Caper” (S3 1973).  Hadleigh is a very middle of the road show, but watchable enough (lead is Gerald Harper, who’s always entertaining) and this is pretty self-contained as it centres around an old con-man friend (JM) of Hadleigh’s manservant causing trouble by pretending to be Gerald Harper, for reasons.  JM seems to be having a ball.

Justice 2 episodes, S3 1974.  He guests twice as an opposing barrister & gets to be part of some nice showdown court scenes.  Again, a middle of the road drama, but stars Margaret Lockwood, who was still just as awesome in the 1970s as she was in the 1930s & 40s.  On YT.

Father Brown “The Curse of the Golden Cross” (1974).  JM is an American archaeologist getting death threats; stars Kenneth More as Father Brown.  Just a note, though, that 1970s TV adaptations tended to be really really faithful and this is one of the stories where Chesterton comes out with an anti-semitic moment...  (JM was unconscious for that bit and, frankly, I envied him.)  But otherwise lots of angsting in yet another fake moustache about someone trying to kill him.

The Hanged Man “The Bridge Maker” (1975).  Confession time, I have v little idea what this one was about apart from Ray Smith being an unlikely Eastern European dictator, as this whole series went over my head and was not really my thing.  (Ask @mariocki they’re cleverer than me and liked it & can probably explain the plot!)  I don’t know if it’s available anywhere off the DVD but on a JM scale it was v good/different as he was a coldly villainous head of security & it wouldn’t be too bad to watch alone, but there was an overarching plot going on somewhere.

Doctor Who “Underworld” (1978).  This is famously one of the worst serials in the whole of classic Who, but largely because of behind-the-scenes circumstances, not the guest cast.  There is some nice stuff, though, esp in Ep1 (JM is a near-immortal alien who’d like to lay down and die but still the Quest is the Quest as they say... a lot) & it’s bound to pop up on YT or Daily Motion.  The DVD has extras that include v v brief bits of JM speaking in his actual real accent (which he otherwise does in NONE of these) & making jokes in character.  Honestly, though, this is the only DW where the behind-the-scenes doc is genuinely the most exciting bit as they desperately invented whole new technologies & methods of working to bring us this serial, and then everybody wished they hadn’t.

*** Enemy at the Door “Treason” (LWT 1978).  This is a weird episode but I love it lots - from a (v v good) series about the occupation of the Channel Islands.  (So obv warnings for WWII & Nazis.)  JM is a visiting German Generalmajor, but he’s come for a very unusual reason - to ask for help from his brother-in-law, a blackballed British army officer (Joss Ackland).  It’s all weird and low key and JM is doomed and nevertheless probably my favourite thing of his that isn’t SotT.

* The Racing Game 2 eps (1979).  Adaptation of Dick Francis’s first Sid Halley novel Odds Against (ep1) + 5 original stories for the series.  This is an interesting one - JM plays Sid’s father-in-law & they have a lovely relationship that’s central to the book BUT Dick Francis loved this adaptation and Mike Gwilym who played Sid and was inspired to write a sequel Whip Hand, which he tied in with TV canon - and adopted at least three of the cast, including JM.  Which means that all the Sid & Charles fanfic is also JM fic by default and it’s quite impressive. (There’s not much but it’s GOOD.)  On YT.

Bergerac “Treasure Hunt” (1981).  Not a major role, but pretty nice & it’s one a Christmas ep of the detective show (also set on the Channel Islands) that involved Liza Goddard’s cat burglar, which was always the best bit of Bergerac.

His guest spots in Rumpole of the Bailey (1991) “Rumpole a la Carte” and Dr Finlay (1994) are both really just cameos, but both series come round on Freeview; the Rumpole one is funny and the Dr Finlay one his last screen appearance before his death the following year.

Not worth getting just for JM: Subway in the Sky; Bill Brand and Oppenheimer.

These films only have cameos but some quite fun ones and they come around on terrestrial TV: The Damned (1962), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964) & (more briefly) Far From the Madding Crowd (1967).  (I think his cameo in Connecting Doors must be at least recognisable as someone spotted him in it just based off my gifs, but it’s not come my way yet.)  I’ve never been able to get hold of any of his radio performances, not even the 1990s one.

ETA: I forgot The Power Game! This is the one surviving series where he occurs as a semi-regular (at least until halfway through S1 when he went off to the BBC to be in the now-burninated Hunchback of Notre Dame).  This isn’t standalone, but it’s a good series and it is on YT.  See how you go with crackly old TV before you brave it but it’s the snarkiest thing ever made about people making concrete and stabbing each other in the back.  JM is a civil servant who tries to run the National Export Board and is plagued by Patrick Wymark and Clifford Evans as warring businessmen.

***

[... Well, now I just feel scary.  0_o  In my defence, I have been stuck home bored & ill for years, and often unable to watch modern TV while trying to cheer myself up with James Maxwell, so I didn’t watch all of this at once.  It just... happened eventually after SotT. /waves hand 

But if anyone feels the need to unfriend my quietly at this point, I understand. /o\]

[sim-songs]

“hi, I’m not from the US” ask set

So I wanted to answer all of these, because why not you know? @dreamsongsims now you can learn more about Belgium ;)

It’s under the read more so I don’t clog up your dashboards.

1. favourite place in your country? Honestly my home. I am living in Antwerp right now with the bf and I honestly love it, even though we aren’t really going outside much right now bc of the virus. I do miss the green and the “not city” smell haha

2. do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad? I am okay with both. My family always goes on vacations during holidays, the last few years we’ve gone to Thailand for example but I’m more interested in staying closer to home. I LOVE Norway and want to go on holiday there again but it’s expensive.

3. does your country have access to sea? Yes. 67 kilometers of ugly “badsteden” lol (literally means bathing towns). To be honest I like the coast in the Netherlands better because it isn’t as gray and superficial.

4. favourite dish specific for your country? A nice “frietje van de frituur” (french fries), specifically a “frietje speciaal”, that’s french fries with ketchup, mayo and thinly sliced onion.

5. favourite song in your native language? I hate Belgian music, absolutely despise every Dutch song on the radio. But if I have to pick one its Goud from Bazart, it’s an older song by now but it’s one of the few I did not mind listening to.

6. most hated song in your native language? As soon as I read this I immediately thought of Banaan from Jebroer. Just shudders ugh. But really all Dutch songs in this style.

7. three words from your native language that you like the most? I’m gonna paste my earlier answer here: Hmm that's a hard one for me... Gezellig is a word I've always liked bc it doesn't have a real translation, just like cozy or smt. Another one I like is grassprietjes, meaning blades of grass bc it sounds funny and kinda rolls of the tongue and non dutch people will never be able to properly say that! and a third is eenzaam, meaning lonely. I don't really know why I like that one tbh

8. do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom? I don’t really remember ever being confused for another nationality. I have read that Dutch sounds like German on crack, and that Belgian Dutch is easier than Netherlands Dutch for foreigners.

9. which of your neighbouring countries would you like to visit most/know best? Visit most: France and Germany, I have been to them both already but never for long and a long time ago. Know best: Probably the Netherlands. We share a language after all so we share some cultural things! (Does Temptation Island count as a cultural thing lol?)

10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language? Mmm tough one to answer, because me and my bf are big English speakers so most of our swearing is of the “fuck” variety. I like “godverdomme” (god dammit) and what my dad sometimes says “godverdomme miljaarde nondeju” (there is literally nothing I can do to translate this)

11. favourite native writer/poet? I can’t think of any poets, but I like the writer Valerie Eykmans, specifically the book “Verloren Maandag”

12. what do you think about English translations of your favourite native prose/poem? So I really like “Het Weer” by Hugo Claus, I even have a poster in our living room with the poem in his handwriting.

Weather

How was the weather in the country without you? At first mist fell over the concrete mountains.

Then the sun hung like mist over the mother-of-pearl sand.

Then the sky moved and became clammy as your armpits.

A lightning closed my teeth.

And everywhere the smell rose of the big animals that don't exist

unless in the ringing of your ear, in the rustle of your hair.

That's how it was back there without you. You are the air pressure and the dew and the snow in my skull.

It does not rhyme much in Dutch, it’s more about the rhythm of the words, so as far as the translation goes it’s pretty accurate in it’s contents but the rhythm is definitely off in the translated version

13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders? What immediately comes to mind is the whole “Sinterklaas” problem where every year the discourse starts again whether or not the “Zwarte Pieten” are racist. Honestly not gonna comment on that because it’s not my place to feel offended or otherwise about this issue. Another thing that’s a bit more lighthearted is the “jaarmarkt” in our hometown, it’s like a big market that always finds place on the first sunday of the year. There’s a “stoet” (procession) with the walking orchestra, horses, horses and carriages, dogs and a whole load of tractors all going to get blessed at the church where the pastor throws holy water on everyone passing by. I have a love hate relationship with this tradition because it’s always freezing, and the tractors take forever to end. Oh and the main street of our town is completely closed of and there’s a big market with stalls in the street and everyone gets drunk of of the “jenevers” from the Scouts stalls lol.

14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV? Not really, the only thing I used to watch was “Helden van Hier: Brandweer” (Heroes from here: fire brigade), it was just following the fire brigade around to fires and what not.

15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get? ah je moe kakken moe je kakken he 😉

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with? Hate: Belgians are small-minded people not interested in anything going on outside of their home. Just not true at all. Sure there are people like that but every country has those. Agree: Belgians are hard to get to know. I hear this one a lot and I can see why people say that.

17. are you interested in your country’s history? Copied from an earlier answer: I am interested in history in general, it was one of my favourite classes in high school. I do like learning about Belgian history, mainly because Belgian history is, in one term, a messy bitch

18. do you speak with a dialect of your native language? Yes, I speak with a “Kempisch” accent, but in general I’m still pretty understandable.

19. do you like your country’s flag and/or emblem? what about the national anthem? I really don’t care about our flag, the Flemish Lion is being overly politicized to exclude the Walons lately and our national anthem is meh, no one can sing it and it’s more of a joke to people my age I think.

20. which sport is The Sport in your country? Soccer (or football idk) and veldrijden (literally field riding, but cyclo-cross as the translation) GO Wout van Aert! (idc abt sports but he’s local to me so)

21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be? I’m not sure if this means you want to get rid of it or if you want to memorialize it? Getting rid of “Manneken Pis” because he’s stupid and memorializing an entire classic “frietkot”

22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed? Proud: Our cultural diversity and lately our banding together during the crisis Ashamed: All the racists (looking at you Vlaams Belang)

23. which alcoholic beverage is the favoured one in your country? BEER, ALL THE BEER

24. what other nation is joked about most often in your country? Honestly our own nation is most joked about for good reasons. Flemish joke about the Walons and vice versa, and everyone jokes about the joke that is our government.

25. would you like to come from another place, be born in another country? I’m happy where I’m at now, so no.

26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal? I have never seen any prominent representation of Belgian in a Hollywood movie.

27. favourite national celebrity? Probably Tom Waes

28. does your country have a lot of lakes, mountains, rivers? do you have favourites? We dont have much haha, we have rivers, most notably “De Shelde” which runs though Antwerp not too far from my apparment.

29. does your region/city have a beef with another place in your country? Flemish and Walons have always had beef, so yeah.

30. do you have people of different nationalities in your family? I had a phase where I was into genealogy and it’s safe to say I’m one of the most Belgian Belgians out there lol, especially on mothers side her family literally has been living in the same place since the 1600′s and my grandparents had never seen the ocean until my parents took them.

[auntynationalsblog]

5 Netflix Films for the Week, set before the 21st c.

How’s quarantine going? Yeah, same here. But it’s Monday after all, and you still have over 150 hours to kill if you’re dealing with this quarantine via a week-by-week approach. I can help you kill around 8%, 12 of those hours. Here are five must-watch films set before the twenty-first century. Don’t watch them all at once, that’s lame. 

No spoilers. 

5.  The Revenant (1823)

Main Cast:  Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy 

“Revenge is in the Creator's hands.”

Many of you will know of this film as the one which finally gave LDC his first Oscar, for Best Actor, at the 88th Academy Awards. Unfortunately, you would have stopped at that information and not bothered to watch the film. Released in 2015, the film is based on a novel of the same name. The definition of ‘Revenant’  is “a person who has returned, especially supposedly from the dead.” The story-line does not deviate from the title, as an American frontiersman named Hugh Glass is engulfed in a bear attack and is left for dead by his hunting crew. But he survives. And he’s fucking pissed. The novel is called The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge, and yeah, the film is pretty vengeful too. Interestingly, even though Hugh Glass was indeed a real person, and it is mostly believed that the film and novel are based on a story, there exist no writings from the man himself to verify the description of his story. His story was first published in a Philadelphia literary journal known as The Port Folio. Some say that it is no more than a legendary tale. Nevertheless, a brilliant film, don’t miss out. 

4. Before Sunrise (1994)

Only Cast (LOL): Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy

“If there's any kind of magic in this world…it must be in the attempt of understanding someone.”

If you’re a fan of love stories/romantic films, and if you haven’t come across the Before Trilogy, I don’t know what kind of love stories you watch. Why is this film unique? In technical terms, it’s minimalist. In simple words, there’s no real plot. There’s no action or drama or horror. These two just walk and talk. Then they talk some more while walking, and when they’ve nothing to talk about, they just walk quietly. So why watch the film? For starters, it’s very peaceful and relaxing, unlike The Revenant, which is fucking intense. Secondly, the conversations in the film constitute some of the best dialogue-exchanges in the history of cinema. Their characters are very carefully crafted, as their varying perspectives on living and loving bring out some deep AF points throughout the film. It is a slow film no doubt, but I promise you that the blandness is worth it, and the ending is too nice. Don’t get bored, give the film some time and thank me later. 

3. Django Unchained (1858)

Main Cast: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, and Leonardo DiCaprio

“Sold! To the man with the exceptional beard and his unexceptional nigga!”

Django Unchained is Tarantino’s highest-grossing film ever, for good reason. Although it has been criticized for historical inaccuracies, violence, and unprecedented high use of the N-word, Tarantino delivered one of the most dramatic and entertaining films from the era of plantation slavery. While the image above portrays Foxx, a slave, and LDC, a rich plantation owner, the highlight of the film was the German dentist-turned-bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz, played by Christoph Waltz. Waltz’s performance is impeccable, only matched by his portrayal of Standartenführer Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (also directed by Tarantino). While the film starts off with Dr. Schultz hunting for his bounties, it eventually goes on to become a rescue mission, where Django and Schultz look for the former’s estranged wife, Broomhilda von Shaft. TW; extreme cursing and racism. But the film is a work of art. In fact, Jamie Foxx has revealed that LDC was pretty uncomfortable on the set, as his character had to use extremely racial slurs. But boy, he pulled off that role brilliantly.

2. Zodiac (1969 - 1980s)

Main Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr.

“I wanna report a double murder. If you go one mile east on Columbus Parkway, to a public park, you'll find kids in a brown car. They were shot with a 9mm Luger. I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye.” 

What happens when Iron Man, Hulk and Mysterio gang-up against one of America’s most notorious serial-killers? For now, I can only tell you that it was a pretty uneven contest. Based on a true story, this film depicts the useless San Francisco Police Department’s hunt for the Zodiac Killer, led by Dave Toschi (Ruffalo), and aided by political cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Gyllenhaal) and crime reporter Paul Avery (Downey). In case you’re wondering if they’re fictional characters, they’re not. They became pretty famous while the Zodiac Killer was running havoc, and have multiple articles and Wikipedia pages dedicated to all three of them. The Zodiac Killer remains unidentified by the way, and the cases are still officially open. Why watch the film then? Because the mysteriousness of it will blow your mind. Note that the film is directed by David Fincher, the same guy who directed Seven, Fight Club, Gone Girl and Mindhunter, among many other murder mysteries and thrillers. Don’t be surprised if you spend the rest of the day investigating the case yourself, happens to the best of us. 

Consolation Prize: The Irishman (1950s - 1970s)

Main (legendary) Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci

“I work hard for them when I ain't stealing from them.”

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking how can a film with a cast of three actors who redefined cinema in the late twentieth century earn only a consolation prize on this list? The truth is, that such crime/mafia/gangster films, no matter how legendary the cast is, only appeal to a particular audience. A lot of film buffs who truly appreciate cinema and actors are simply not enticed by this genre, which is okay. Nevertheless, this film, which spans over 200 minutes, is one of Martin Scorsese’s best works, along with other mob movies like Goodfellas and The Departed. Based on a true story, it follows the adventures of ordinary truck driver-turned-assassin Frank ‘Irishman’ Sheeran (De Niro), who gets mixed up in some extraordinary business with mobster Russell Bufalino (Pesci), his Pennsylvania crime family and American labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino). The punchline of the film is “I heard you paint houses” - a mob code implying: I heard you murder people for money, the paint being the symbol of the blood that splatters when bullets are riddled into the target. Typical Scorsese, mesmerizing direction. The punchline is also the name of the novel the film is based on, in case you love reading about organized crime. 

1. Dallas Buyers Club (1985)

Main Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner and Jared Leto

“Sometimes, I feel I'm fighting for a life that I just ain't got the time to live. I want it all to mean something.”

On the day of the 86th Academy Awards, Facebook and Twitter erupted in outrage. LDC had not been awarded the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of  Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, also known as The Film You Must Never Watch With Your Family. I merely asked every hot-tempered schmucks who posted that LDC had been snubbed, “Have you watched Dallas Buyers Club?” Either the answer was no, or the answer never came. The point being, Dallas Buyers Club is one of the best films ever made. Based on the true story of Ron Woodroof, a once homophobic, junkie cowboy diagnosed with AIDS, co-starring Jared Leto (who won best supporting actor) as Rayon, a fictional trans-woman with HIV, this film tells us an extraordinary tale of friendship, hope and empathy. When Ron discovers that the Federal Drug Administration has been systematically banning cheap drugs that can improve the condition of existing HIV-AIDS patients, he opens a ‘buyers club’, that enabled sick people to make drug purchases at lower prices. Things get more interesting with the role of  Dr. Eve Saks, an AIDS doctor, who recognizes the villainous role of the state, but wants to remain within the ambit of the law. Ron’s character development might be the highlight of the film, as he transforms from a selfish, homophobic asshole to a dying man waging war against the American government, fighting for the healthcare of the underprivileged. Very few equally magnificent films have come out post Dallas Buyers Club. Don’t miss out. 

So that’s it folks. Make good use of your quarantine by immersing yourself in good quality cinema. I’ll come up with some more suggestions on films and TV shows soon enough. Till then, Netflix and Don’t Chill. 

[thisislizheather]

July Jiffs 2020

This was me all month.

The key word being was. We bought an air conditioner! We’ve been an A/C-free family for some time now, but since we’re spending so much time at home, we figured now was the time to be cool. In other news, everything still blows! What a shock! Here’s how I spent July.

I didn’t even know another Halloween movie was being made but of course I’ll go see it even if it turns out to be trash, you gotta support classic horror franchises, that’s just basic horror etiquette 101.

This is the most basic, boring-sounding sandwich on planet earth, but it tastes incredible I promise you (I didn’t add bacon, but I did add fresh mozzarella) and whatever bread you use, it’ll still be great. I find myself constantly forgetting about the greatness of mayo because I, my dear, am an idiot.

I ordered a bunch of new address labels on Zazzle because they were having a Christmas in July sale, so I bought some seasonally inspired labels to use over the next few months. If you’re not seasonally co-ordinating your return address labels, are you even living?

I’m still doing Nathan’s podcast on Patreon incase you’re interested. (You can find more clips on his Instagram.)

I attempted to watch the new Baby-Sitter’s Club on Netflix and it’s really not meant for me. I was never into the books or the movie or any of it, I never liked the idea of kids caring about making money, it seemed too sad to me. “Just be a kid!” I’d always thought.

Speaking of childhood nostalgia, I have started to watch reruns online of Sweet Valley High, which I loved as a kid. It’s no Breaker High, but it’s still pretty great to rewatch. God, Jessica really was an absolute bitch.

Some other things that I’ve rewatched: Con Air (practically a perfect movie, will always love, *Nic Cage forever* might be the only tattoo I’d ever get), Supermarket Sweep is on American Netflix and I was so excited (for about three episodes) then I moved on with my life, Sleepless in Seattle (still a very nice, average, reliable movie), Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (actually a really great summer movie, will always be a fun time to watch, will forever be a huge Keanu fan, I just feel like I could trust him??), and Dick Tracy (will always love this movie even if it has eight million too many montages, the set design is gorgeous, and this one outfit that Madonna wears makes me question… everything).

Some new movies that I’ve watched: Always Be My Maybe (so, so great! How did it take me so long to see this! So many good scenes, such a good movie), The Karate Kid (insane that I hadn’t seen it before, kids were uncomfortably mean in the 80s, favourite part was when Mr. Miyagi beats up the children, great movie), The Stepfather (pretty fun time, so happy we’ve starting watching horror movies again), Eat Pray Love (ugh, I don’t know, I do love movies about women just leaving and doing fun shit alone and abandoning their lives, but this was pretty lame, I hated James Franco’s character more than life and truly didn’t understand how Julia Roberts was even briefly into him), and finally the original The Hills Have Eyes (which I loved weirdly enough despite being incredibly tense the entire movie, I just thought it was so well done and scary and incredible, the rape scene is of course awful and I shut my eyes for that part, but that was the only thing I hated, it doesn’t make sense that I liked this movie so much).

I don’t know how to word this, but something is off with the reasonably priced (and almost too cheap) parmesan sold at Trader Joe’s. It melts weird. It doesn’t taste like normal cheese. Something is afoot and I won’t buy it any longer. I’m truly dreading and equally anticipating the day that all of Trader Joe’s secrets are exposed. Be warned.

That being said, obviously I’m in love with the seasonal summer candles that TJ just released. We have a complicated relationship.

I made this gruyere mac and cheese with caramelized onions (I used almond milk and it still came out good) and can every recipe just include caramelized onions? The world is ending, let’s just put sweet, tiny, brown onions on everything and call it a day.

Ennio Morricone passed away last month and I find myself listening to the Cinema Paradiso soundtrack on repeat.

Read this great piece about summer blockbuster movies which also has just some great ideas for movies to rewatch right now.

I have to remember that Essie’s vibrant colours just f-ing suck. Only their muted/bland colours are good. They should really just stick to those. And if you’re looking for loud colours that stand out, the summer collection at Urban Outfitters is my go-to (and there’s always a 3 for $10 sale with them).

I listened to Taylor Swift’s new album and so far my favourites are definitely: the 1 and this is me trying.

Ugh, Astoriaaaaaa, DO BETTER.

I’ve been thinking about cancelling my Ipsy subscription again (because I think I don’t care about makeup at this current moment in time) and when I logged on to cancel, they let me choose one of the items being sent next month as if they knew I wanted to leave! So I chose a Sunday Riley product (because any sample I’ve tried from them, I’ve loved) so maybe I’ll cancel next month?

I tried a sample of Drunk Elephant’s shampoo & conditioner (which smelled so lovely) and my hair did seem softer the next day. There’s something about this brand though, I feel like they might be tricking us with their beautiful packaging and minimalist persona.

I bought and tried the ancient Biore Strips and I have absolutely no idea if they did what they’re supposed to do. Are you supposed to see the blackheads or whiteheads come off onto the strip? It felt like it just tried to peel my face off. No idea what’s going on with these.

I have been in love with the Peter Thomas Roth Correction Pads, I use one pad before bed each night and I think they’re doing something good because I always wake up with no new pimples. It has even started erasing all of the redness I’ve been experiencing lately from the summer heat and sweat and mask-wearing. At this point, I can definitely see myself rebuying when I run out, and if I do then I’ll definitely not get them from Sephora because you can get them way cheaper at other online retailers.

I’ve also started using this Dr. Dennis Gross All-In-One face cleanser and I think it’s a good one. It’s hard to tell because I started using it the same day at the correction pads I mentioned above (yes that was a bad idea but here we are), so maybe they’re working together to make my face good? We’ll revisit this. 

I finally opened up this Belif set I bought a few months ago and it’s really nothing special. I think the face cream is probably the best item in there because you truly don’t need to use a lot to feel moisturized. But the face cleanser? Meh. I don’t think it does very much, it definitely didn’t help any redness. And the toner? Don’t get me started on how I kind of think toner might be a scam. And the “eye moisturizer”? Seems superfluous. My eye area is plenty moist, thanks.

Perfect summer soap scent: Fresh Rainfall. If I can’t travel this year, I will escape into this scent. (Send help.)

Very excited to hear about Lindy West’s new book.

So I heard that Lady M now ships their cakes to Canada and I was able to scream in excitement for approx. four seconds before looking into it and seeing that it’ll cost you over $100 to get ONE cake sent. THE GALL, I tell you. THE GALL.

I briefly looked into the app Sweatcoin after hearing good things, but it really just seems like an app where its main goal is to track you. And yes, your phone already does that whether you’re aware or not, but I think I’ll pass on the extra tracking.

I heard that the upcoming Halloween Bob’s Burgers episode will “follow the kids as they try to deliver a burger to the hotel on their street.” It’s such a sad little bit of tiny information, but I love their seasonal episodes so much that I’ll take any crumbs available.

Actually helpful tips on how to clean your home efficiently.

Christ, why do I keep forgetting that Bareburger is absolutely nothing special? Why in the good fuck is it taking so long for a Shake Shack to come to Astoria?!

I ate on the patio at Hoja Santa in Astoria and the tacos were nothing to write home about. The service, drinks and chips were outstanding though, so I may have just ordered badly.

New favourite beer alert.

Best tweets of the month over here.

I tried Thai iced coffee and it was so wildly sweet and too aromatic, I probably wouldn’t get it again. And I also tried a Vietnamese iced coffee and it was the perfect level of sweet! What’s the difference between the two, you ask?

I finally tried the katsu sandwich at Hi-Collar as takeout in the East Village and it was absolutely nothing special. No idea why people are so into it.

I haven’t been to Bite in so many months, so it was nice to get takeout earlier this week. God how I’ve missed their ciabatta bread. They use it on their sandwiches and it comes from Balthazar each morning and it’s always heavenly.

I have found the perfect, light summer blanket and I’m trying not to focus on the fact that it came from Amazon.

I tried a grapefruit shandy and holy shit, it might be my favourite new summer drink. 

I ate on the patio at L’Artusi since it just reopened and good god, that carbonara will change you. So psyched to see they have the wagyu steak tartare on the menu now, too. The burger, the panzanella salad and the charred corn were all great, but that carbonara was the standout.

Some things I’d like to do this month: I’d love to try this tomato toast with blue cheese mayo, I’m going to start using a new clothes steamer I just bought with the hopes of getting rid of my iron & ironing board, I rebought a tube of Revitalash because of how great my lashes were looking when I used it a few years ago so I’ll start using it on August 1st and track my progress to prove how great this product is, I can’t wait for Moesha to be coming to Netflix this month, and I am waiting waiting waiting until I can find time to return to Lilia (on the patio) to eat this incredible tomato focaccia & garlic butter (shown below).

If you’ve got any interest in reading last month’s roundup, you can see what went down in June over here.

[misssophiachase]

Hooray for prompts! Here’s a few ideas if you need some ideas! (1) “At some point, this will stop being weird, right?” (2) And then, Klaus noticed the giant claw marks in Caroline’s new table...bloody hell, he may need to leave the country for a bit. (3) No amount of sorry was going to fix her idiot friend Enzo breaking Rebekah’s heart...but her first priority was to hide him before Klaus found out. (4) She drew the line at broken necks before breakfast.

Wow, thanks for so many great prompts, Julie! Two down (2, 3) and think I will combine the last two (1,4) for this final drabble. Thanks for always giving me so many amazing ideas. 

(1) “At some point, this will stop being weird, right?” (4) She drew the line at broken necks before breakfast

Family Affair

New Orleans, LA

“Why do these meetings always end in at least three broken necks before breakfast?” Caroline murmured, taking in the mess that was their kitchen strewn with broken and displaced furniture.

“You suggested family meetings before 8am,” he offered. “I told you it’s not really the best time given my siblings haven’t had the optimal time to sleep off their blood hangovers nor have had their morning caffeine fix.”

“I made beignets, Klaus,” she whined, looking at the remnants of choux pastry spread across the table. “Not only that, I sent out the agenda well in advance.”

“While I respect your organization Caroline, my siblings aren’t really into rubbish or plumbing matters or sharing anything in general especially when it comes to food. The help usually tends to such menial matters.” 

“How grown-up and mature,” she scoffed, rolling her eyes for extra effect. “But even so, look at the state of this place. Why are your siblings and their partners these uncivilized beings that don’t understand proper breakfast etiquette?”

“They’re bloody animals, love,” he reasoned, his arm finding its way around her waist soothingly. “And to think I’m the only wolf in this unorthodox pack.”

“At some point, this will stop being weird, right?” She asked, nuzzling into his chest housed in a familiar, grey henley. 

“That we are married but can’t escape my relatives living with us? I”m not sure, they have this weird tendency about wanting to stay stiflingly close.”

“I blame you for daggering them and carting them across the country in coffins, it must be repressed memories.”

“I can do it again if that would help,” he suggested. “Kol is getting way too mouthy for my liking.”

“You can’t dagger your siblings, Klaus,” she sighed, even if she wished he could at times. “All I wanted when we decided to give this living arrangement a go was some semblance of order.”

“My brothers and sisters don’t necessarily like routine or order. it ruins their ability to perform massacres at short notice.”

“Well, Elijah certainly needs it when it comes to his suits.”

“Maybe so but he does have Katherine in his ear and we all know how unpredictable she can be.”

“Elijah I’m not worried about, he’s the most polite relative I have. He may remove hearts as a party trick but he never throws food or furniture at our family meetings.”

“Sounds promising then.”

“I swear, I almost had Marcel on my side the other day,” she huffed. “We were watching Terminator 2 and just when the T1000 was covered in liquid nitrogen your sister stormed in and denigrated all that is American cinema.” 

“Well…you do realize that James Bond is English, right?”

“I wasn’t asking for your wrong opinion,” she growled. “I was merely saying that we were bonding and Rebekah didn’t like it.”

“She’s a tad possessive, sweetheart,” he explained. “Trust me, I’ve been held hostage by her drama for over one thousand years now.”

“Davina and I went shopping and Rebekah, who’d had no interest in going out, showed up out of the blue. Then proceeded to berate the dress I bought for the Masquerade Ball.”

“You mean the dress I ripped off as soon as we were alone?” He smirked, pulling her closer, his fingernails massaging her soft skin. “She’s just jealous of your style.”

“Maybe but it’s not the point, Klaus,” she uttered defeatedly. “Your family hates me, sometimes I feel like I’ll never be truly accepted.”

“Sweetheart, that’s not true,” he promised, pulling her into a hug. His arms encircling her waist and by his possessive grip, Caroline knew he was threatening not to let go. Ever. “They love you in their own unique, Mikaelson way.”

“What exactly does that mean?”

“They are jealous because they consider you the most normal, well even with your compulsive love of lists.”

“Sarcasm, really?

“Says the girl who has color-coded and alphabetized her to-do lists?”

“I thought you were supposed to be making me feel better, Mikaelson?” She shot back, removing herself reluctantly from his arms. 

“Fine,” he said, accepting her challenge. “Take a seat, love.” She wasn’t sure what to think but found the closest piece of furniture that hadn’t been broken in the latest altercation. 

“We’re not the most affectionate family but even the smallest gestures can mean so much in our world.”

“Go on.”

“The housekeeping staff overheard Davina accusing Rebekah of sabotage and praising your fashion sense. The most interesting part was that Katherine backed Davina up and apparently Rebekah has ordered your same dress in four colors.” 

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.” 

“I always liked Davina” Caroline lied. She had fancied Bonnie with Kol for the longest time but when she’d run off with Enzo, she didn’t have much choice but to get on the Kolvina ship. 

“Marcel insisted on watching every Terminator movie because he thinks you have good taste in movies.”

“Well, damn straight,” she mumbled. 

“Kol considers himself the prankster of the compound but was jealous this past April Fools that you had better jokes.”

“I can’t help that I’m the master.”

“And that’s why Kol can’t wait to try and beat you. My intel tells me that he has some more pranks up his sleeve,” Klaus shared.

“Well, bring it on little Mikaelson.” Caroline thought she’d feel upset at the prospect but her competitive streak was out in full force. 

“Acting out like brats isn’t the best way but it’s how the Mikaelsons do things and given your responses I can’t help but think you’re going to fit in better than expected.”

“Your logic is completely whacked, Mikaelson, but I can’t help but feel a little more part of the family. Whether it is a good or bad thing, I guess I’ll find out.”

[comicreliefmorlock]

So here's a fun game. What are, let's say...10-15 pieces of media (books, tv, movies, whatever) that seem to have been made JUST for you? why?

*cracks knuckles*

Surprisingly, not all of these will be Tanith Lee.

…however…

{And this goes under a cut because this is going to be a very long, verbose post. A really long, verbose post.}

1. “Tales from the Flat Earth” by Tanith Lee

These books are essentially like sitting by a crackling fire on a cool summer night beneath the glimmering night sky while a smiling crone cards wool and tells you the stories that come from a time aeons before your birth. I have never in my life found a quartet of books–let alone one book–that have so completely and absolutely captivated me. From the first page of “Night’s Master,” I was gone.

Not only the language–breaking the fourth wall and referring to “words lost when the world reformed itself in the chaos”–but the characters… Azhrarn, the personification of Wickedness who saves humanity with love. Uhlume, the personification of Death who faces a form of mortality and is forever changed by it. Chuz, the walking embodiment of Madness, who is gentle to those under his domain and understands that he cannot understand why he does what he does.

Ferazhin and Narasen and Sivesh and Simmu and Jornadesh and Kassafeh and Zhirem and Azhriaz and Dunziel… Names I have never forgotten because they all but sang to me. A flat earth that holds the best and worst of humanity, often balled into a single person, with Underearth and Innerearth and Upperearth holding gods that have grown so distant they no longer recall humans were their creation at all. 

I have always loved mythology and these books? These are myth.

2. Pan’s Labyrinth -dir. by Guillermo del Toro

I’m not from Spain or know Spanish. I knew nothing about the Spanish Civil War when I first saw this movie. And this was the first film I saw that cemented del Toro for me as the only man I would ever trust to turn Tanith Lee’s books into cinema. 

I love fairy tales, mythology and folklore. And when you read enough of it, you see how bloody it actually is. How terrifying it is to realize that you’re not the only one in the world, humans aren’t the only ones, there are creatures on the midnight side of reality that share space with you. 

And I never really liked the Disney version of fairy tales with “happily ever after” and weddings. 

This movie was literally like watching something I’d imagined for myself. The acting was fucking phenomenal, the sets and costumes were off the hook and the comparison of “fairy tale horror” and “real horror” that overlapped just blew me the hell away.

And Doug Jones… Doug Fucking Jones. I never respected mimes until him and now I give all the respect. Being able to act, to breathe real life into a concept and a costume until it becomes a character you could picture walking through a forest or peering around a corner while not being able to use your own voice OR your own facial expressions is a kind of magic I think does not get enough appreciation.

DOUG FUCKING JONES, LADIES, GENTS AND GENDER REBELS.

3. Fatal Frame - Tecmo

I’m a writer/reader, not a gamer. When I have downtime or I want to relax, I almost always gravitate towards a book instead of a video game. The few games I’ve played purely for my own enjoyment have usually been MMOs and involve roleplaying.

Except for the Fatal Frame series.

Survival horror is my favorite game genre and I lamented when Resident Evil became more “survival action” than survival horror. (Fuckin’ lickers in the original Resident Evil game oh my god.) I wanted a survival horror game that had some meat to it, had something really compelling about it.

And I found Fatal Frame.

I love Japanese mythology. I especially love Japanese ghosts. For some reason–maybe out of sheer novelty because I, being an ignorant American raised near the US-Mexico border, have had little exposure to it–Japanese ghosts are my absolute favorites. Yurei (and the other subclassifications) just have something to them that I haven’t found in other mythologies. I’ve read and reread Oiwa and Okiku’s stories, been fascinated by the concept of the Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai and wanted more of what I found.

Which Fatal Frame provided.

Not only do the game mechanics work beautifully for someone as easily startled as I am, but the story behind each individual game is achingly intense. The intricacy of the interwoven histories, the rituals, the underlying question of “was all this really necessary or was this a priesthood trying to stay in power”… I love absolutely everything about these games. 

4. “The Blue Sword” by Robin McKinley

I’m not going to lie–this book took me forever to actually read. The first two pages were so achingly boring that I had no fucking clue why my mother had recommended it to me.

And then one day, bereft of anything else to read, I flipped through it. I still distinctly remember the line that made me stop and go “wait, what?” – “…your horse tells me where you’ve been…”

me: wait what horses can talk in this? wtf? *flips to the beginning and sits down to fuckin’ read it*

Slogging through those first few pages? Worth it. Because Harry/Hari/Harimad was the first heroine I’d ever encountered that I could imagine myself being. She was too gangly and not particularly pretty and kind of clumsy. She didn’t draw admiring eyes everywhere she went, spent a lot of time going ‘I can’t do this wtf’ and had aches and saddlesores.

Meeting Harry felt like seeing myself on a page for the first time in my life. And seeing someone with flaws like me going through adventure and fighting and succeeding and failing and getting a happily ever after felt like a warm blanket. Like someone had written a book just to tell me: “It’s okay that you’re not beautiful or graceful or soft-spoken and elegant. It’s okay that you’re clumsy and a goof and your hair is fuzzy as fuck because you can be a heroine, too.”

5. “Whoever Fights Monsters” by Robert K. Ressler

No, I’m not a serial killer. :D Nor am I an FBI profiler.

However, after reading “The Silence of the Lambs” by Thomas Harris for the first time in ninth grade, I was fascinated by serial killers. Like… how did they do it? How did they get away with it? WHY did they do it? What kind of person did things like this? I wanted to know so much more and I started grabbing every book on serial killers that I possibly could find.

And the reaction of classmates and teachers who saw my reading material was… less than stellar. Even my mother was vaguely worried about what I was getting out of reading all…that.

It felt like my fascination with serial killer psychology was a flaw in my character that no one else seemed to share. Until I read “Whoever Fights Monsters” and saw Robert K. Ressler talking about the exact same thing. He wasn’t a “sicko” or a “freak” or a “lunatic” or a “killer-in-training” for being fascinated by the psychology of humans who could treat other humans like a moment’s disposable entertainment. 

And suddenly, neither was I. 

6. American Horror Story: Hotel - FX

‘American Horror Story’ is entirely my thing. Interwoven narratives of fascinating (and often awful) people combining “American horror history” with interpersonal storylines? Yes, thank you, I’ll take a dozen.

This season in particular, however, is just more for me than any other. 

Maybe it’s the vampires that are self-obsessed and not particularly powerful but end up with petty grudges and complaints. Or the ghosts that bitch and whine at each other, find consolation together, use Twitter and spend their long, long days doing little more than drinking, smoking and obsessing over their lives and deaths. Maybe it’s the single location with so many years of history weaving together like a book of short stories. 

I love ‘Hotel’ because it feels like Brandenburg to me. I could so easily see the entire season taking place in my fictional city and mentally insert my own characters into the show without losing a single step.

Also Kathy Bates is absolutely glorious and I desperately wish to be a tenth as glamorous as Liz Taylor. 

7. “The Butterfly Garden” by Dot Hutchinson

Books about serial killers? Yes, please.

Books about serial killers told by a victim who barely survived and understands what trauma really means? Yes, please.

What especially got me about this book is my thing for dioramas. The first one I ever remember seeing was in the El Paso Museum of Archaeology (yes, I’m from El Paso, Texas) and it always both frightened and fascinated me. 

^ This one in particular would keep me motionless for ten or twenty minutes at a time, kind of terrified at a house within a building and then absolutely enthralled at a house inside a building.

And the dioramas mentioned in “The Butterfly Garden” were akin to those in “The Cell” –some terrible, awful glimpse into someone’s mind that was visualized and externalized in a permanent way. 

8. “War for the Oaks” by Emma Bull

I love the fae. 

And I also have read enough to know that those sprightly little fucks are terrifying and humans are rarely left unscathed by them.

This book was my introduction to “urban fantasy,” much as Charles de Lint was my introduction to what I consider “mythic fantasy” and a city that felt so much like my own. 

And what was so quintessentially, absolutely me about this book–other than the main love interest being the Phouka :D :D :D–was the underlying theme about creativity.

It’s a driving force, a magic that humans have. It’s uniquely human (as far as we know) and often the only talisman against the dark that we’ve got. With creativity, there’s magic. There’s a spark of something beyond the mundane realities of survival. Creativity is a sword and shield all in one, complete with a lure to bring others along with you.

Whether it’s through music, art, poetry or graphic design, creativity is the actual drive for immortality that pushes us to reach beyond ourselves and touch those we have no possibility of seeing or speaking to in our own short, real lives.

9. Good Omens - Neil Gaiman/BBC

I loved the book when it came out. I didn’t expect to love the mini-series. I especially didn’t expect to love the mini-series for the #IneffableHusbands.

I won’t belabor the point about why this is on my list. The #IneffableHusbands tag on my OOC blog is enough. :D

10. What We Do in the Shadows - Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi

Vampires who are as absurd, incapable and oblivious as me? Yes. All of my yes. 

Having played the old World of Darkness tabletop games for years--and absolutely fallen in love with them--I found this movie and was in absolute heaven. These are vampires I can actually imagine hanging out with. These are vampires (and werewolves) I can envision walking around a city.

Noble creatures of the night don’t seem real to me (aside from the obvious reasons.) The supernaturals in this movie? They felt like people I knew. Like people I could meet or characters I’d written myself. 

I like the fantastical being put into the mundane--which is why my genre is ‘urban fantasy’ although I have such an eye-twitch about it being all supernatural detectives chasing various pieces of ass now--and I especially love it when the fantastical doesn’t outweigh the mundane.

Imagining vampires vacuuming and riding the bus fits in nicely with my desperate belief (and hope) that the fantastical isn’t JUST imaginary but actually exists. 

{And there, I’m restricting this to 10 or we’ll be here all NIGHT.}

[squadron-leader-farrier]

Let's spice things up a bit; ANSWER ALL OF THE QUESTIONS

oh baby, you answered m prayers lol this is gonna be long so buckle up ?

1. favourite place in your country? my hill station, because of the weather, and because i haven’t been to many places, and the ones that i have been to were extremely hot and i never want to go there again,

2. do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad? depends on the holidays tbh. what the festivals the holidays fall near and that. i’d stay here for some, but for the ones that we don’t celebrate in my country like Halloween, i’d like to go abroad.

3. does your country have access to sea? peninsula, babey!

4. favourite dish specific for your country? chicken biryani. boy, oh boy, just thinking about it makes my mouth water. it’s that good. gosh, the flavour, the spice. the way they cook it,,,, the colours ahhhh

5. favourite song in your native language? ones made before the 60s. and the patriotic songs. there are too many to name, but two (non patriotic) ones are this and this (because they’re sad love songs and give me flyboys feels ya kno?)

6. most hated song in your native language? like, as a nation? idk. but personally, i hate, absolutely loathe any songs made after the 60s. they lack originality and creativity. all they did was rip off popular english songs, and changed the lyrics. that’s literally all they did. and they are super proud of it. i hate it. the music industry had gone to complete shit. even today they don’t know what good music is and ow to make it. they’re remixing all the old ones because they lack creativity. i hate it. 

7. three words from your native language that you like the most? i don’t like any three words, because they’re not that appealing on their own (not the ones i can think of right at this moment) but rather, phrases. when you string those words and make poetry or prose. it’s really beautiful, and really poetic. perhaps the best ones are in those two songs, and others like them.

8. do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom? i haven’t been in a situation like that so i can’t say.

9. which of your neighbouring countries would you like to visit most/know best? probably Russia because the ones right next to me are exactly the same in topographical, cultural and architectural respects. there’s literally nothing new to see there, so i’d like to go to Russia.

10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language? so it’s basically three: bhenchod/madarchod/chutiya. all of them mean motherfucker in their basic essence, but are used to describe people, cuss out people, call your pal, so basically, the hindi equivalent of fuck. can be used as adjectives, prepositions, verbs, nouns, whatnot. can be used individually or all together. perhaps splash one of them in a conversation to make the group giggle a bit more while telling a funny story. 

11. favourite native writer/poet? the ones who wrote nationalistic literature during the freedom struggle. so, to say, i like Sarojni Naidu, and Tagore. they’re perhaps the most famous ones of the time, and i like their work. 

12. what do you think about English translations of your favourite native prose/poem? i don’t have any, because they’re already written in english by the authors. i read a poem or two lying around somewhere, but the thing about hindi is that the translations don’t bear the same feelings as the originals. 

13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders?  oh there are too many. too many by far. most of them are the usual black cat and others, oh, one i heard when i was in like 4th grade was that you shouldn’t go out with open wet hair at night because a spirit can get caught in em and come home with you. so that was strange. my family doesn’t have any, we’re rather realistic.

14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV? no not in the least. you know why? because of this. i swear to fuck, the person who uploaded this compilation didn’t edit a single thing in. how do i know? because i’ve watched these on actual television. when i was young. in my neighbour’s tv. 

15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get? remember when some of you motherfuckers got offended by bitch lasagna because you lack basic understanding what a fucking joke is? you don’t know what satire is? you are the reason why people think indians have no sense of humour because you DON’T it was a fucking JOKE holy shit i’m so triggered by this

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with? haven’t heard of many stereotypes about us, but the laziest one i can think of is that we can do math and are good at science. we’re not. i’m shit at all of that. so are my 34 other classmates. 

17. are you interested in your country’s history?  not really, tbh. maybe the period just before independence, and some post-independence stuff, because i got dirt on those politicians and i want more of that so that i have a reasonable justification for hating politicians.

18. do you speak with a dialect of your native language? i don’t know, maybe i’m so used to it i don’t even realise lol. but i guess so.

19. do you like your country’s flag and/or emblem? what about the national anthem? YES. YES. YES. i love them. i absolutely adore them. the flag is so symbolic and so beautiful i love her (orange on top for sacrifice, white in the middle for purity, green at the bottom for prosperity, the blue circle in the middle for resolution and justice, just ahhhh). the national anthem always gives me the chills. everytime i hear it playing somewhere, or when we sing it sometimes after assembly, or during days like today (independence day) or republic day, when we finish singing the last line it just always makes me a bit emotional and proud? yeah. today i almost started crying because i love it so much.

20. which sport is The Sport in your country? Cricket. even though the national sport is hockey. no one cares about hockey :(

21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be?  the memers who think they’re very funny, (which they are not in the least), and the anti nationalists and separatists. i do not want them here. get lost. fuck off. shooo.

22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed? what makes me proud, is the freedom struggle of the revolutionaries, and the progress we’re making in every field, the hospitality of the people, and the unity in diversity. what makes me ashamed is that there’s still so much corruption in the government, can’t help it, the law’s delay, gosh the people who think they’’re better than everybody else, the entertainment industry, the music industry, some of the people, most of the politicians, etc.

23. which alcoholic beverage is the favoured one in your country? bold of you to assume we have a single favourite beverage for the entire country. i think it varies from state to state. for mine i think it may be something apple related, because we have lots of apples here. the season is also coming lol and also, it’s very confusing because some states have completely banned alcohol and in some the legal drinking age is 18. 

24. what other nation is joked about most often in your country? canada and ‘murica mostly because so many people immigrate there 

25. would you like to come from another place, be born in another country? i’d like to be British, because  i like the aesthetic and weather. 

26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal? i don’t watch many movies, but i think it’s not much/a small amount and neither do i mind nor do i care. 

27. favourite national celebrity? no one. i hate all of them.

28. does your country have a lot of lakes, mountains, rivers? do you have favourites? yep!! she’s not called a subcontinent for nothing, babey! i live near the Himalayas, so i like that.

29. does your region/city have a beef with another place in your country? oooooh yes. ooooooooooh  boy. with Pakistan lol. mainly because of the union territory of jammu and kashmir. because pakistan wants it, we want it, and it legally also belongs to us. there’s separatists there, anti nationalists, and there’s poverty there, so it’s easy to instigate the people against the government. there were wars fought for it, most of them ended in our favour, but the other side is still making so many ceasefire violations, it is insane. it has been years, and every other day there’s a new violation. there’s lots of unrest in the valley, which is a shame, because it is a truly beautiful place. 

30. do you have people of different nationalities in your family? my uncle is British, my cousin’s husband is also a Brit. a great-grand relative of mine was also British. there are none on my mother’s side.

[man-creates-dinosaurs]

I was swamped with various obligations all throughout #JurassicJune. So while I did celebrate by re-reading both Michael Crichton novels and re-watching all the previous Jurassic films and attending the premier of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - I wasn’t able to blog about it. Now #JurassicJune has come and gone and we are in #Kaijuly. But I have one post that I really wanted to make that I think appropriately touches on both month’s themes...

Jurassic Park as Monster Movie

“Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park is nothing more – and nothing less – than the world’s most extravagant Godzilla movie.”

So said film critic David Ansen in his 1993 Newsweek review of the first Jurassic movie. Today this may sound like a rather dismissive assessment of a film which has come to be regarded as one of greatest sci-fi movies ever made. But rather than the snarky opinion of a single critic I find Ansen’s appraisal to be a rather frank and refreshing summation of what Jurassic Park actually is. A high tech monster movie.

Today everyone who was of the right age in 1993 agrees that Jurassic Park is a great movie. But curiously when you ask them “Why?” many have trouble explaining exactly what it is that made the film so great. This goes for professional film critics as well as self-proclaimed fans. Usually people put in this corner tend to fall back on vague adjectives claiming that Jurassic Park was great because it invoked a sense of “awe and wonderment,” a somewhat ironic claim since back in ‘93 legendary film critic Roger Ebert argued that it was exactly these qualities which Jurassic Park lacked... along with decently realized human characters and an interesting story. Both of which further adds to the amusement since in recent years a number of videos have started to pop-up on YouTube (see: here, here & here) made by people attempting to elucidate Jurassic Park’s greatness by examining its themes and characters. Much of the content of these videos is simply a rehash of observations made about Jurassic Park by academics over the last 25-years and deals with how the movie touches upon ideas regarding the perils of scientific advancement while advocating an agenda of reproductive futurism via its characters. See paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould’s essay “Dinomania” and sociologist John O’Neill’s essay “Dinosaurs-R-Us” as well as W.J.T. Mitchell’s The Last Dinosaur Book (U. of Chicago Press, 1998) and Joshua Bellin’s Framing Monsters (S. IL U. Press, 2005) for an example of some of this scholarship. Furthermore, what these YouTube commentators seem to have missed, which the actual scholars did not, is that these elements – the themes of technophobia and the importance of marriage and children – are among the most hackneyed and clichéd aspects of Jurassic Park, not to mention utterly retrograde in their outlook. These elements are certainly not what made Jurassic Park great or what has allowed it to endure for 25-years.

So what does make Jurassic Park great? For critics like Ansen and Ebert the answer, back in 1993, was obvious. The special-effects of course! “You want great dinosaurs, you got great dinosaurs,” wrote Ebert, “[and] because the movie delivers on the bottom line, I'm giving it three stars.” Jurassic Park spent nearly three years in special-effects research and development and combined the artistic might of stop-motion maven Phil Tippett, animatronics maestro Stan Winston and the cutting edge CGI work of Dennis Murren and ILM studios to usher in nothing less than a revolution in special-effects technology. Back in 1993 everyone who saw Jurassic Park left the theater believing – despite their better judgment – that they had seen real dinosaurs. And because of its special-effects after Jurassic Park the world of cinema has, quite literally, never been the same.

Yet as sci-fi author John Scalzi notes in his surprisingly provocative book The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies (Rough Guides, 2005), the fact that Jurassic Park – which Scalzi counts as being among the then 50 most important sci-fi films ever made –  is great precisely because of its groundbreaking special-effects work has often led to the film being severely underappreciated. Again this may sound odd in 2018 when everyone is celebrating the 25th-Anniversary of Jurassic Park and the fifth film in the franchise – Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – just finished its second week as the Number 1 movie in America, but it’s important to remember that Scalzi was writing this in 2005 when the Jurassic Park brand was effectively dead in the water and Universal was seriously considering rebooting the franchise as something approaching a live-action adaptation of the cheesy 90s cartoon Extreme Dinosaurs.

Today Jurassic Park has regained its cultural capital in large part due to the phenomenal box office success of 2015’s Jurassic World - which as horror author and film critic Kim Newman observed succeeded in being the first film in the series to bring a definite “kaiju feel” to the franchise - but also because of the wave of 80s and 90s nostalgia currently surging through American popular-culture. But this same nostalgia has now caused Jurassic Park to be put on a pedestal, elevated far above its station to such an extent that many people now become nervous when you point out that they are venerating what is essentially a glitzy Godzilla flick. And make no mistake this is exactly what Jurassic Park is. In Don Shay and Jody Duncan’s highly recommended book The Making of Jurassic Park (Ballantine Books, 1993), Spielberg talks about what his seminal cinematic influences were when filming Jurassic Park. Among the foremost were a number of films which I have blogged about here including the original KING KONG (1933), THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1954), GORGO (1961) and of course GODZILLA (1954) which Spielberg singles out as “the most masterful of all dinosaur movies because it made you believe it was really happening.” Other obvious influences, as noted by author Mark Berry in his The Dinosaur Filmography (McFarland, 2005), are the movies DINOSAURUS! (1960) and THE VALLEY OF GWANGI (1969). Jurassic Park – depending on your point of view – may have better special-effects than all of these films, but it is certainly not any better or more sophisticated than any of these films. In many ways, what Jurassic Park really is is a culmination of these films. The ultimate pop-culture dinosaur potpourri.

Currently there seems to be a great deal of monster-movie-denial going around with regards to Jurassic Park for a variety of different reasons. In fact, the only time people seem to want to mention the phrase “monster movie” in conjunction with Jurassic Park is when talking about the sequels and here the association is always negative. As in: ‘Jurassic Park was a great movie, but the sequels are just a bunch of dumb monster movies.’ I happen to like all of the Jurassic sequels to a greater or lesser extent, even the most recent film – Fallen Kingdom – which I nevertheless do acknowledge as being the most seriously flawed movie in the franchise to date. (If you want to hear my opinion of each film I suggest popping over to The Film Find podcast where I recently recorded an episode with regular host Adam Portrais on the entire Jurassic franchise.)

And while I would never insist that everyone who likes Jurassic Park also has to like the sequels I do expect that when someone is going to say a film is bad that they at least lay out a series of well thought out arguments about why they feel that way. And in this case saying that the Jurassic Park sequels are bad because they are “monster movies” when the original film wasn’t simply doesn’t count as a valid argument. I’m not sure how you prove to someone that Jurassic Park is a monster movie - really seems self-evident to me - but in the following series of posts I’m going to endeavor to demonstrate some of the ways that Spielberg used Jurassic Park to pay homage to the dino-monster movies of yesteryear and by doing so firmly seated his film as existing within that same tradition of fantastic film-making. 

[femsff]

Every number that contains a 2 please 🍍

“hi, I’m not from the US” ask set

given how Americanized this site is, it’s important to celebrate all our countries and nationalities - with all their quirks and vices and ridiculousness, and all that might seem strange to outsiders.

For the record, I’ve included previously answered questions.

1. favourite place in your country?

Is it weird if I say my bed?

2. do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad?

This is a toss-up. If I could choose without any consequences it would definitely be abroad. However, holidaying for me has always meant relaxing, preferably near the beach and an occasional stroll around town and maybe, depending on the company, a cultural outing, but I’ve been diagnosed with melanoma in the past and therefore such vacationing is out of the question. So, in actuality, it more often means I’m staying in my country and I’ll go somewhere (or visit friends/family) for a long weekend or something. It’s unfortunate, but I’m pretty sure my two cats are happy with the arrangement.

3. does your country have access to sea?

4. favourite dish specific for your country?

5. favourite song in your native language?

Hmm. I actually don’t listen much to the radio and especially not to songs in my native language specifically. The only one that really comes to mind right now is an older one that I heard a lot in my teens and it’s actually a sequel to another song by the same band. Part one is about when a good relationship starts to get rocky, all the dangers threatening their relationship, but that he (the singer) will keep the course because he knows their final destination. It’s pretty hopeful, I guess. Part two is when everything is ending, how they’re always fighting and love has turned to hate. Both songs have a maritime theme, and in the beginning he’s the strong one, the captain who’ll get them through it and in the second it’s like their ship has two captains and they’re steering in opposite directions.

6. most hated song in your native language?

7. three words from your native language that you like the most?

Gezellig - has no direct English translation but basically means something along the lines of cozy, intimate, warm, fun, snug, homey and can be applied to situations (like having a great time with family/friends), an atmosphere or even the interior of a house or something.

Katuitdeboomkijker - has no direct English translation but literally translated means ‘someone who stares a cat out of the tree’ and basically means that you tend be a bit reserved and will observe everyone/a situation first before engaging. Often used to describe a person’s behavior in social settings.

Mierenneuker - literally translated it means ‘ant fucker’ and is basically the same as a nitpicker or hairsplitter.

8. do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom?

9. which of your neighbouring countries would you like to visit most/know best?

I’ve already been to all my neighboring countries several times. My least favorite was probably Belgium (no offense, Belgians) although my friends and I did have a blast there when we went there on a week-long school excursion in high school (I think as freshmen or maybe sophomores). I haven’t explored much of Germany yet, so maybe that would be it? I also like the UK and would definitely want to explore more of it (and yes, I’m using UK rather than England because that way there’s more to explore!).

10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language?

Oh my. Hmm. I think I’m going to have to go with ‘kut’, because of the k-sound which just sounds really good when expressing it in dismay/anger. It’s basically a vulgar word for a woman’s private parts and can be used in a similar manner as the English ‘fuck’. It is not considered as being on the same level of offensiveness as the English cunt. I also like ‘tering’ because you can really draw out the e. That’s the word for consumption (tuberculosis), by the way, but I only use it as an exclamation (there are variations where people basically wish it on you or, from the olden days, accuse you of suffering from it).

I probably should have prefaced this answer with the fact that in my culture, we tend to use diseases (often dreaded ones from the past) and sex organs in our swearing and profanity (also, often food for insults, like calling someone a pancake for being a dumbass).

11. favourite native writer/poet?

12. what do you think about English translations of your favourite native prose/poem?

Eek! I feel like this answer might disappoint folks, but I’m not a big fan of prose/poems and honestly, couldn’t name one. In my experience, translated written works always seem to lose something in translation though.

13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders?

14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV?

15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get?

This is a tough one. I think I’m gonna go with a saying, “doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg”, which basically means ‘act normal, that’s weird enough’ because we don’t like crazy or over the top things.

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?

17. are you interested in your country’s history?

I feel like this is a trick question and am now wondering if this questionnaire was created by an American or non-American. Why? Because, in comparison, Americans are very patriotic and nationalistic. My country and many in Europe are far less so, not in the least due to having seen the devastation such extremes can bring (WWII). This is not in any way meant as an accusation, it’s just an observation and I think, for the context, an important distinction that should be made.

Anyway, to answer the question, I’m not obsessed with my country’s history but am informed. History has never been my favorite subject (dropped it in high school as a freshman) but I do like to learn the origin of certain things in my country/culture.

18. do you speak with a dialect of your native language?

19. do you like your country’s flag and/or emblem? what about the national anthem?

20. which sport is The Sport in your country?

Looking at the Olympics, probably ice skating. But soccer (football for the Americans) comes as a pretty close second and it’s definitely one the whole country goes wild for when the national team is in the EC/WC (think: orange madness). Don’t get me wrong, we also like the Olympics but it’s not on the same level. Yet.

21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be?

In order to destroy them? Or to make contact with the aliens?

22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed?

Like I’ve said in another answer, we don’t really do the whole national pride thing to the same extent as some countries, but I like how we’re so small and yet are pretty good at certain things (water management, infrastructure, sports, agriculture, healthcare, science). My identity is not really tied to my country or vice versa, so I can’t say I’m really ashamed of something my country as a whole has done or does, but we used to be known for being very tolerant and the past decade or so you see more and more intolerance and that’s just a shame.

23. which alcoholic beverage is the favoured one in your country?

Good question. I think maybe beer or wine? A quick google search gave me no definitive answer either.

24. what other nation is joked about most often in your country?

Belgium! There’s a long standing tradition of us calling the Belgians dumb and, apparently, they do the same thing about us! However, lately, the US is a very hot topic as well.

So, I’d say historically/traditionally the former but in every day conversation and such it’s the latter.

25. would you like to come from another place, be born in another country?

I used to feel that way, but now that I’m older I think I’m far more appreciative of my country and culture.

26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal?

Yes, sometimes. They’re all cliches and many of the stereotypes are very dated. Also, for some reason certain movies/shows like to use the language probably because they feel it’s “special” since, relatively speaking, so few people speak it worldwide but then they apparently can’t be bothered to actually hire a voice coach who speaks the language and it ends up being incomprehensible for native speakers as they pronounce the words often in a mix of German and some kind of Eastern European language or something. Very strange. I mean, why even bother?

27. favourite national celebrity?

I’m not really into celebrities, so I’ll pick the king&queen.

28. does your country have a lot of lakes, mountains, rivers? do you have favourites?

Nope, flat as a pancake as we like to say.

29. does your region/city have a beef with another place in your country?

Not really, anymore. We just have a long standing tradition of mocking the Belgians for their lack of intelligence and accusing Germans of stealing our grandparents’ bikes.

30. do you have people of different nationalities in your family?

[raijinhasverybigpecs]

Can we have more attention on Fenrir? I really want to see your take of him dating in this highschool au. With that in mind, I think Hel is crushing on Ullr. Both of the twins are. Additionally, love this au. It so great

would you like an entire dating sim path for fenrir? if not then idon’t care bc i’m doing it (it’s roughly 1000 words and it’s v messy oops) 

background: fenrir has a bad reputation around the schoolbut he doesn’t care - he’s known for starting fights and generally being stand-off-ish and cold to everyone aside from his sisters and tyr

intro

starts off with you being in a few of his classes, you sit next to each other in maths and that’s how you initially bond when helping him out with algebra and the like. at first he ignores you but over time he begins to open up to you 

even the act just acknowledging him with a simple hi before class means a lot to him

one day he decides to sit next to you at lunch when you’re by yourself. you make light conversation with him, and he rants about a show he’s been watching recently - it’s cute how invested he is and you say that you might start watching it as well…

over time he hangs around you in your other classes more, pairing up with you before your other friends can say anything. you sometimes notice him trailing you awkwardly as he doesn’t know how to start talking to you outside of class and you notice that when you walk to class he’s awfully close to you and seems to stick to you like a bodyguard

(if this was an actual dating sim route this stuff would be over a few weeks or so :P)

special event #1

eventually he asks you to sit with him and his sisters at lunch - you know that he’s very protective about them it’s nice to know that he trusts you enough to talk to them

you’re a bit nervous but you have nothing to fear – light hel is super friendly and sweet, asking lots of questions about you to keep the conversation going

fenrir is embarrassed bc he considers you a friend but he doesn’t know simple things like your favourite colour as you’ve mostly been listening to him in conversation. he does care but he hasn’t had a close friend in forever and needed someone outside his family to talk to

dark hel is a bit cold towards you but she joins in by teasing fenrir. when fenrir goes to the bathroom she interrogates you too see if you’ve got any ulterior motives talking to fenrir but light hel manages to hold her back before he returns dark hel makes it a point to emphasize that he doesn’t try to talk to others often, and she thinks that someone has a crush on you.

at the end of the lunch break fenrir apologises for his sisters (mostly light hel), and he asks you to go out with him to a local shopping centre to hangout. it’s just a casual thing but seeing fenrir lightly blushing makes you wonder if there’s something more to dark hel’s words

first date

when you arrive at the shopping centre you find fenrir rocking a super nice leather jacket - you say that he looks good and he tries to return the compliment but he’s too flustered to say anything

you explore a few stores, but fenrir gets the feeling that you’re being watched by something – while you’re going from store to store he spots his sisters and dad not-so-secretly spying on you two. fenrir drags you into the cinema, trying to get away from them. he quickly buys tickets for the next film showing – it’s a romantic comedy :^)

it’s cold in the cinema, and fenrir offers his jacket toyou. it’s surprisingly comfortable and warm, smelling faintly earth-y. you finish watching the film (you do note that he was trying to wrap his arm around you but when you moved closer to lean against him he had to excuse himself to the bathroom instantly... weird) and decide to go to a nearby arcade to finish off the day. he wins a few prizes for you but you manage to win a little wolf plushie and give it as a gift for his company today.

…and he invites you to come to his house tomorrow!

second date

you arrive at his house and fenrir instantly remarks about the strangeness of his father. you don’t see his father until you walk to back fenrir’s room. loki’s there with a glass pressed against the wall trying to listen to fenrir - you just decide to walk in and not say anything…

basically you spend another day messing around watching movies and playing games~

you end up finding out that he likes being scratched andpetted like a dog much to his great embarrassment. you also notice that the wolf plushie you won for him is on his mantle alongside all his sports awards and pictures of his family - it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy thinking about it

while you’re talking you manage to get on the topic of his behaviour at school and you learn that a big reason why he hasn’t dropped out yet is because of tyr – you’ve seen the pair around school before and you’ve always wondered what their relationship was about (you’ve even got a weird relationship where if you see tyr he gives you a knowing nod of acknowledgement). he says that tyr was the only one (outside of his family duh) to put in the effort to treat him like a real person with respect, everyone else just didn’t care about him or put on a fake act just to be polite to him.

he then thanks you for trying to get to know him even despite his reputation and personality 🥺

cheesy sports event - prologue

when you arrive back at school fenrir is pulled out of class in the afternoon to visit the guidance councillor’s office – he asks you to wait for him at the school gates. he comes back after 10 minutes at the school gates with tyr in tow. tyr makes an offhand remark about you two being a couple, fenrir punches tyr’s arm hard and is all flustered about it and you tease him just a little bit but make sure to hold back before you become the target of tyr as well

fenrir decides to walk home with you even though his house is the other way. he’s stumbling over his words and while you’re glad he’s decided to carry your things you’re really quite confused by his immediate offer to do so. he can’t even look at you half of the time and as you get very well acquainted with the road he tells you about his upcoming football game (side note: i have literally no idea about american football so don’t @ me). of course you accept his offer, and seeing him literally jump for joy in response is all the motivation you need to stick with it

cheesy sports event - game time

friday comes along and smite high is playing at home. you’re sitting with fenrir’s family - they’ve basically accepted you as one of them. they make it their personal goal to tell you about fenrir’s crush on you through poorly disguised hinting - but you know that you can’t just say that you have feelings for him, you have to wait for the right time and even with the universe pointing to all the right signs you’re still uneasy and unsure if he feels the same way

you spend the night cheering wildly for fenrir and the team, and fenrir waves at you when he gets the chance - seeing him in his element makes your cheeks go rosy although you could say you have the same effect on him - you figure it’s the result of you putting a little more effort into your appearance tonight and you hope your outfit compliments your features as your friends say it does

smite high is doing well, but as the game progresses it seems as though the away team gets better and better, catching up with smite high with ease. the game continues on, and it’s down to the final minutes – smite high is down by one point and i’m sure you can guess by now who’s going to score the point ˙ ͜ʟ˙

anyways, smite high wins because of a lucky score by fenrir and everyone cheers for him but he doesn’t care – he finds you in the crowd with his sisters and picks you up, spinning you in his arms. he’s got a wide smile on his face, and says “i could almost kiss you!”

both hels and loki are chanting “do it!” while sigyn just shakes her head in silence. his hands are wrapped around your waist and something about this moment just feels so natural, as if the closeness of your bodies is just how it should be. fenrir’s hot and breathless but so are you, and you want to take the next step so badly and the way his eyes twinkle makes you want to call him yours...

yet he puts you down with a sheepish grin as you’re brought back to reality with the sound of the crowd clapping around you. you suggest that you two go for a walk to cool down and escape the crowd, fenrir giving you a silent nod in agreement. you don’t realise how truly close he is to you and how his hands haven’t left your waist before dark hel complains and says that she wants to see the action happen. light hel and sigyn drag dark hel and loki away before they can spy on you two

before you leave tyr stops you both, giving fenrir a bear hug (which he’s surprised at first but sinks into eventually) and telling him how proud he is of smite high’s star player. he says they’ll talk later and tells him to wash up before exposing you to how bad he smells. fenrir leaves and tyr pulls you aside away from the crowd

he remarks about how you’ve really helped fenrir out by being a close friend. he notes that fenrir has never acted this attached to someone and tells you to not break his heart... and also to use protection otherwise you might lose an arm like he did. he then promptly shoves you off to overthink your feelings for fenrir

you’re both obviously into each other, no normal guy like fenrir would do the things he does around you without being somewhat interested in you - he literallly said he could kiss you! and you can’t help yourself from blushing thinking about his striking looks (it’s like he came out of a scandinavian calvin klein commercial and those eyes are so deep and piercing), his bad boy with a heart of gold attitude and how secretly goofy and aloof he is... where do you go from here?

luckily before your brain implodes from thinking too much he returns from the lockerooms, looking as spiffy as he could in his ripped jeans, band t-shirt and leather jacket. you note that his clothing seems more wrinkle free than usual, and that he’s put a little more care in taming his hair. naturally it makes you swoon at the knees

cheesy sports event - resolution

you’re both alone while walking around the school, slowly walking nowhere as the celebration has promptly moved on to some poor student’s house. fenrir’s given you his jacket - he says he’s too hot after the game and he knows you get cold anyways. that doesn’t stop him from walking so closely beside you that you can feel him brush aside you, and you just want to grab his hand and tell him how you feel but you’re afraid of breaking the silence between each other. fenrir speaks first, telling you that he won when he saw you in the crowd cheering for him – he didn’t want to let you down after you went out of your way to watch the game

you say that he would never let you down, and the conversation dies for a bit - you want to make a move but you’re afraid that it won’t work out.

you suggest that you two should go somewhere else to talk but before you can finish your sentence he pins you against a wall and starts confessing his feelings to you. he’s breathless, spitting out the words like a manic and half of the time he can’t even look at you but you just press a finger to his lips and start kissing him. it feels like a promise of things to come.

you’d never imaged the big bad wolf of smite high would be your boyfriend but you hope you can see all the sides of fenrir to come 💖

and then you’re dating and shit! yaaay

(also both hels are totally justififed, i’d have a crush on ullr too lol)

(and thanks for the nice comment! i’ve spent a lot of time on this au and it’s nice to have people appreciate it ˙ ͜ʟ˙)

[sildarmillionsays]

Black Panther Review

Yes, the hype surrounding Black Panther has everything to do with the all-black cast, black director, black screenwriters, etc. But at the same time, this movie is going to be looked upon as a landmark in African American cinema. I'm not the best person to explain why, but if you are interested, here is a video that talks about why.

As a popcorn movie, Black Panther is okay. Thor: Ragnarok serves better as a popcorn movie. But, being familiar with Ryan Coogler's previous work, I wasn't expecting this to be a action-filled blockbuster. I went in expecting him to have some profound things to say. And I thought he did have a lot of interesting things to say.

1. I am very used to watching Euro-centric fantasy. So getting to see an Afro-centric fantasy that was markedly difference was a strange and refreshing experience. Black Panther falls under this niche genre of Afro-futurism, one of the aspects of which is to imagine what Africa could have been without the influence of colonialism. This, I thought, made for a great genre for speculation and world-building. And the world of Wakanda, with its 5 tribes with their distinct cultures and clothes and customs, was a vivid and immersive experience.

2. A lot of the weight of the movie comes from the fact that it is from an African perspective rather than an American one. Imagine what the story might have been like from an American perspective. Say, five years ago, if you heard we were going to get a fantasy story set in Africa told from an American perspective (but let's say it wasn't based on the Black Panther comics), you might expect something like this: An African American kid from the inner city learns that his father was a prince from a technologically advanced African nation that stays hidden from the world. He trains himself to become strong and then travels there. he makes a challenge from the throne. And when he becomes king, he vows to fight against the oppression that black people face all over the world. Sounds like an inspirational fantasy, no? Except that's not what it feels like to all those other countries who are not the USA. At the end of the day, Erik Killmonger is an American go goes into an African nation and overthrows the government. Like America does. Like America has done. America is not viewed as a hero across the globe.

3. After his experiences with Killmonger, King T'Challa is forced to consider his priviledge and he wonders whether he has a responsibility to use his knowledge and wealth to help the poor, the downtrodden, the refugees. What a powerful way for Ryan Coogler to speak directly to the most powerful nations of our world. (There is also a little but of commentary on how present-day Africans, especially the ones who are wealthy and priviledged, often look down upon and do not sympathize at all with the plight of those of African descent in the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean. It hardly ever gets talked about, but it happens.)

4. Lastly, this movie had the best representation of women I have ever seen in any fantasy. You have 4 prominent female roles and they are each allowed to be different. They each have their own ideas, own views, beliefs, and convictions, and their own sense of purpose. They are similar in some ways and different in others. Some of them represent the traditional side of Wakanda and some of them represent the progressive side and their interactions reflects the struggle Wakanda faces in balancing the two. Each of them - Shuri, Okoye, the queen mother, and Nakia are fully fleshed out characters. And because there are so many of them, the female representation does not come down to only one person who then gets picked apart. Becaue there's four them, they each get to be different and diverse.

I understand that to most audiences, these reasons above aren't why they go to the movies. And so it's completely understable why all of this commentary doesn't factor in to their enjoyment of the film. I happen to be part of that group of audiences who enjoy the heck out of commentary, especially when it is doen masterfully and about a topic that appeals to me. That's why the movie had such a big impact on me.

Crossposted to WordPress