#Yes its 'just' an adaptation. But believe it or not; not everyone has read the novel. Not everyone has *access* to the novel.

[damiemontclair]

This blog is a spoiler safe blog. All spoilers will be reblogged with appropriate warnings for at least 2 weeks after the show is done airing. Spoilertags to block will be listed on my pinned post

[accio-victuuri]

xiao zhan elle september issue cover story Q&A

ELLE: During this rest period, do you think about things that happened on the set?

Xiao Zhan: Of course, I remember a few days after the filming was finished, I had a dream that we were still filming, and the director and I were still discussing how to say that word? How to handle that scene?

ELLE: Do you actually miss the atmosphere on the set?

Xiao Zhan: I like it very much, because I like the feeling of everyone creating together and working together to get something done.

ELLE: When you first entered the entertainment industry and your popularity grew rapidly, you said that it felt a bit unreal and magical, but now you seem to be quite relaxed. How did this change happen?

Xiao Zhan: Rather than saying it’s unreal or magical, after so many years I feel that I haven’t had time to adapt to the fast pace at that time, so when I wake up from sleep, where am I today? What am I doing? I think it’s a process, just like when you first enter the workplace, everyone is very excited, "I’m here to work, please take good care of me", "I’m here, everyone get out of the way", "I can do it, I can do it". (Laughs) But after experiencing a lot of things, I feel that everything needs to be planned for the long term.

ELLE: In several interviews you mentioned that you like to play roles that "can convey energy". Why do you have such a preference?

Xiao Zhan: Because I think it is the life of the character. The kind of energy I am talking about is not just a single positive energy in the general sense. I mean the nutrition that can be subtle and silent. I believe that every character has a complete story line in his heart. This is what I like very much. As long as you dig deep, you can move people. I don’t like to call the villain a "villain", as if it is defined as a bad character from the beginning, but it is not. He may have his own difficulties.

ELLE: It sounds like “transmitting energy” is just a general term. Is it actually about understanding different people through performance?

Xiao Zhan: Yes, if we break it down to each character, they all convey different things. But if we say they are “good guys” or “bad guys”, I think that’s meaningless.

ELLE: So do you think acting is a form of communication?

Xiao Zhan: Yes, you can say that. I think it’s great to say that (acting) is a bridge to communicate with the audience. Just like when a play is broadcast, I will read some of the audience’s comments and impressions, and feel that they have a rich feeling about the work. When I see some comments that are exactly the same as my thoughts when filming, I feel very magical, as if this bridge is really connected. We don’t know each other in life, and we haven’t communicated, but he suddenly got my thoughts at the time, and I felt that, oh, acting is a very beautiful and magical thing.

ELLE: Do you watch some science fiction movies, TV shows, and literary works?

Xiao Zhan: Yes, I used to like watching "The Three-Body Problem". I have watched some science fiction movies recently, the American TV series "The Stars", and recently I am watching "The Replica". They are all about infinite flow and parallel time and space. Because I think there may really be parallel time and space. Every choice you make will split into a different parallel time and space.

ELLE: Do you imagine Xiao Zhan in a parallel universe?

Xiao Zhan: I really wonder, for example, is he still an actor? Maybe, is he still filming now? Is he still singing now? Or is he still a designer? Is he working for others or is he his own boss? (Laughs) Really, I really wonder.

ELLE: What do you think the future will be like?

Xiao Zhan: Wow, I think the world might return to its original state at that time, and the world might become a better place, and people would return to the most basic communication with each other.

ELLE: This is very interesting. Why do you think so?

Xiao Zhan: Anyway, at least now I am a little disgusted with the ubiquitous Internet. When we were young, when there were no mobile phones, we would chat while eating, and we would call our friends downstairs to play hide-and-seek and various games. I think that time was very precious.

ELLE: Will the profession of actor still exist by then?

Xiao Zhan: I think there will be. I believe that as long as life goes on, drama will continue. Because everyone needs an output, needs emotional resonance and sustenance, whether it is images or sounds. So I think that even if the world is destroyed, as long as there are still people, drama will definitely exist.

-END.

source

[genericpuff]

Rachel did a live Q&A in the LO Discord server and gave some news about the Animated Series, it’s still happening! (Surprisingly) Any thoughts on that or things you’d like to see from it?

Right, like every other time she's said it's "still happening" with no evidence to actually support it. That's always been the issue and still is.

Sorry, that's not me being snarky at you, I'm more so frustrated and absolutely fucking done with all the empty promises and platitudes.

Best case scenario with what was said during the Q&A was that she said "it's still happening" (worst case was that she didn't address it at all).

Like, how is this:

"I can say that… we are currently doing work on it… and it is going well.. and that it looks really cool and that I wish everyone could see what we’ve done because it looks really really really cool, and it’s happening, but that’s all I can say at this point… I can say, making tv shows takes a really long time, it takes so long" (last night's Q&A)

Any different than this:

Any different than this:

“Um, it’s been really interesting. It’s been educational for me. So, what I—what has been done so far is beautiful. Like, if I could share it, I would. But I can’t. Because it’s very naughty.” - Girl Wonder SDCC (July 2023)

She's been saying this for the last two years since people started getting suspicious it wasn't happening in the first place, and despite all the reassurances that "it's still happening", it doesn't seem to have anything to show for itself. Cast list? Nope. Director? Nope. Writers? Nah. Just a showrunner whose bio still says "TBA" and who, despite having a whole ass 40 minute long interview with Girl Wonder, still didn't have anything to show for what's to come, just more empty promises that it's "still happening" (and a lot of banter about Stephanie's life, rather than her involvement with LO).

In fact, most of what Stephanie talks about in the podcast concerning LO is pitching it, not developing it. And this interview happened just a few months ago. Go listen to it yourself if you don't believe me.

So at this point, I see "it's still happening" as "don't panic" corporate speak for "we're still pitching it and trying to find a network for it so we can actually move onto development." Yes, animation takes a long time, even Hazbin Hotel took about three and a half years to finally release after Prime bought the rights to it in 2020. But LO, again, clearly hasn't even started the animation process yet. And while we're comparing it to Hazbin, note that HH actually had LOADS to show for itself along the way of being developed and did a much, MUCH better job at staying relevant and pulling in new people and hyping it up. Even people who never watched Hazbin before in its indie days on Youtube were hearing about it, it made an active effort to sell itself to new viewers and break out of its bubble on Youtube. Is LO doing that? No, not really. Most of the people who know about it are diehard fans who refuse to read anything that isn't shown directly to them on Webtoons, and diehard haters who are tired of the garbage that gets advertised on Webtoons. Ask anyone who doesn't use Webtoons, and best case, they'll know someone who reads LO, worst case, they won't even know what a webtoon is.

Shit, even the new upcoming Zelda movie has names attached to it, including Avi Arad, Wes Ball, and Derek Connolly. And my god, it's gonna SUCK DICK with that bad of a line-up (the guy who ruined the OG Spiderman trilogy and created Morbius, the guy who directed the Maze Runner films, and one of the leading storywriters behind Rise of Skywalker, fucking YIKES) but hey, at least it has more than one name attached to it.

But okay, if we're gonna play the comparison game, let's be fair and compare LO to some other works in its own lane. Let's Play announced last year that it would be getting an animated adaption, and it already has a studio backing it that is FAR more suited for it than JHC is to LO - OLM, the same studio whose animated for massive franchises like Pokemon, Yo-Kai, and Gudetama. JHC meanwhile has animated... motion capture kid shows like Word Party. Because that's the only kind of animation they actually specialize in when it comes to their in-house services. Sure, they also have Harriet the Spy, but that wasn't animated by them, that was animated by Titmouse Inc (heh sorry).

I'm the Grim Reaper recently had its own animated adaption announced, and who's in charge of it? Oh, only SAM FUCKING RAIMI-

And look, maybe the Let's Play and I'm the Grim Reaper adaptions won't happen either. I just think it's ironic that they both have more to show for themselves in terms of credible names attached to them than what LO has managed to scrape up after five years of promising that it's "still happening" (especially when one of those series is nowhere near as big as LO and the one that WAS as big as LO walked away from Webtoons entirely). For Webtoons' own "worldwide phenomenon", they sure have given LO the shit end of the stick by pairing it with a family-with-kids-under-10 production studio that doesn't specialize in animation and a showrunner who got her start with the Cosmopolitan (weird how LO has so many plugs with Cosmo, huh? Why is JHC producing the show again?)

At the end of the day, nothing's changed. It's still just the ole' "it's still happening" record on a loop, while the comic itself falls further out of favor with people. And it's likely gonna be going behind DailyPass soon, so just think about what that's gonna do to its relevancy after it gets sent away to the equivalent of the Webtoons graveyard.

As I've said countless times before every time this topic comes up, at best, if it is still happening, and I'm wrong about all of this, they are doing the worst job I've ever seen at hyping people up and keeping them informed. It is NOT a good thing that people have to keep asking Rachel if it's still happening.

As for worst case... you wanna know what other projects come to my mind that have fallen into the same state of development hell and decay as LO's TV show? YandereSim and Cryamore. What do you think the popular opinion is about those works and their creators now? Because if you don't know either of those names and are about to google them, let me give you a heads up warning - it's not positive.

If it happens, it happens. It will hopefully be before I get all the therapy I need to undo what LO has done to my brain so that I don't have to make repeat visits LOL But if it's after, hey, maybe the show will be good! Assuming Rachel doesn't, y'know, E.L. James the whole thing. Because frankly, the show will need to cut and rework a LOT of stuff to be any good IMO and I don't think that will be possible if Rachel gets directly involved. But I'm not even hoping for that scenario because there's literally NOTHING to give me that hope, "it's still happening" is nothing more than "don't panic" corporate speak to me at this point. It's cynical, but I just can't waste my energy caring about it anymore.

[imagopirateversion]

It’s a Pirate Life for Me!

Why I am an adult who still believes in the pirate philosophy and is not willing to change.

An essay by: a person who really hopes future employers will never find this, but will still put their name at the end of it.

Painting credits: Pirate Boarding, Andrey Serebryakov

Can One Still Call Themselves A Pirate in the Twenty-First Century?

There are two answers to that question, and both of them are "yes".

Pirates do actually exist today: there were around 120 incidents of maritime piracy and armed robbery against ships reported in 2023 and around 115 in 2022 (source x). So yes, one can define themselves a pirate in the twenty-first century in a very literal sense; which is not what I'm trying to do here, of course.

While the world has changed and piracy has (almost) ceased to exist, thanks to stories, legends and media, the idea of piracy has become completely detached from the practice. This has led to a concept of "piracy" that has very little to do with sailing, stealing, and killing, and a lot more to do with what most things become over time: philosophy.

What no longer exists in practice in our era (and sometimes what never existed at all) has become a way of living: think about cowboys, goths, hippies, punks and so on. All these things are much more than aesthetics: each one has its own vision, its own practices, its own style, its own way of living; in other words, its own philosophy.

This text is about pirate philosophy and its origins.

First Things First: Why Did People Become Pirates?

Piracy did not appear out of nowhere in 1600; it's ancient and we have proofs of it existing as a practice since ancient Egypt (read more here). We automatically think of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when we talk about piracy because that period is known as the Golden Age of Piracy. Precisely between 1650 and 1730, there were thousands of active pirates, some of them infamously notorious, as Henry Morgan, Captain Kidd, Calico Jack, Bartholomew Roberts and, of course, Blackbeard himself. But why did that happen? Well, the answer is complex but can be easily summed up in a single word: money. The world was changing, and as Lord Cutler Beckett explains so brilliantly in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: currency was becoming the currency of the country, especially in England. Ruthless landowners forced small farmers to leave their lands, while smaller tradesmen were challenged by larger businesses. Everyone wanted more, and those who couldn't adapt to the new world's rules became unemployed and were forced to move to urban areas to look for work or poor relief. The cities became overpopulated and soon there weren't funds left: distressed people had no hope of making a better life (source x). For this people, piracy was nothing more than a way out: it was either submit to the new society and starve to death, or rebel and survive. What would you have done?

What Kind of People Became Pirates?

Piracy soon became the best choice for many people. Not only for unemployed men who couldn't find a better way to survive, but also for those who, for various reasons, couldn't fit in. people who couldn't conform to societal norms weren't just discriminated against or isolated, they were often killed. That's why, even though piracy wasn't an easy life at all, many people preferred it. So, who were the pirates?

Sailors usually didn't make enough money to survive, and the discipline was extremely strict. Many of them ended up starving, getting sick, and dying. It's not surprising that many chose to become criminals and sail as pirates (source x).

Teenagers, often orphans with no money or future. Young men might have to endure seven-year apprenticeships before they could make an independent living, while piracy offered them a way to earn money quickly (source x).

Rebellious against the oppressive conditions imposed by their governments, specially from the Navy.

People discriminated because of their race. Black people in particular often had no social opportunities all, but could find acceptance within pirate crews, where camaraderie transcended racial or ethnic differences.

People with a religious belief that was considered heretical or nonconformist by the mainstream society could often find themselves persecuted. Pirate crews comprised members from diverse religious backgrounds and were generally more tolerant of religious differences.

People with a criminal background, who were offered an opportunity to start anew and be part of a community, two things that the civilized society couldn't give them.

Queer people, particularly homosexual men. Homosexuality was a crime at the time, often viewed as negatively as piracy, if not worse. Piracy was a male-dominated world; although for a long time media tried to portray pirates as "turning" gay due to the absence of women among them, the truth is that many gay men were pirates because they were gay. Homosexuality was so common among pirates that they had something very similar to same-sex marriage. It was called "matelotage": a legal civil union that bound two sailors together in an informal partnership, uniting one's fortune and future to the other's, and was respected by ship captains and pirate crews (source x).

Women. The majority of pirates were men, but not all of them. In a world that was not at all kind to young girls and women in general, it was not uncommon for them to disguise themselves as men or marry a pirate in order to become one. There have been notorious women pirates, some of them captains, such as Zheng Yi Sao or Huang Bamei (source x).

In short, outcasts. Individuals rejected by society, unable to find their place, and unwilling to conform to strict societal rules.

The Adventurers

There were a few people, a minority of course, who willingly chose piracy even though they had a normal, conforming, and even wealthy life. It's the case of Stede Bonnet, The Gentleman Pirate; he was born into a wealthy English family and inherited the family estate after his father's death in 1694. Despite his lack of sailing experience, Bonnet decided he should turn to piracy in the spring of 1717. He bought a sailing vessel, the Revenge, and travelled with his paid crew, capturing other vessels and burning other Barbadian ships. His story, apart from giving us one of the best pirate stories in the history of media, is significant because it provides evidence that piracy wasn't just about necessity; it was about identity. Piracy had become a way of life long before it was romanticized by the media.

The Pirate Life

What was it about pirate life that was so tempting for so many people? Life on a ship wasn't easy at all; the work was tough, the food was poor, and anyone could die at any moment, whether due to illness, sinking, or murder. Nevertheless, there was something that made it all worthwhile: freedom. People who have had no possibilities nor future in society found in piracy the opportunity to live by their own rules. Civilization's norms had no reason to exist in an uncivilized society; no master telling you what to do, no morality, no societal standards, no need to impress or perform. If you wanted something, you simply had to find a way to get it. That meant you could possibly starve to death, but it also meant that you had a chance of getting everything you had ever desired, and eating and drinking until you died, and in the civilized society you didn't have that chance. You could choose to sail and never touch land again; you could choose to marry or not to marry, to have a family or not to have one, to sleep with whomever you wanted to, to practice your religion. You could change your name and be who you wanted to be. Pirate life was the realization of that question most of us have asked ourselves at least once: 'What if I disappear tomorrow and start all over again somewhere else?'.

Piracy in the Modern World

In our eastern, civilized, technological, capitalist society, we don't need to be part of a crew and sail to be pirates. Piracy as a practice was defeated thanks to pirate hunting in the eighteenth century, but you can't kill an idea, can you? Ideas not only persist, they evolve and adapt to the changes they're forced to face. When we say "pirate" in today's world, we mean a lot of different things:

Sea Pirate: a person who attacks and robs ships at sea;

Software Pirate: a person who appropriates or reproduces the work of another for profit without permission, usually in contravention of patent or copyright;

In Italy, we have a way to describe people who ignore the Traffic Laws, 'pirata della strada', literally 'pirate of the street';

In sexual slang, the word 'pirate' is used to define someone who sleeps around, who constantly looks for casual sex.

The term 'ass pirate' has been used as a slur to describe homosexual men.

In short, the term in today's society is used to describe someone who breaks the rules, whether they are actual laws or societal standards.

If we consider everything piracy represents as a concept, as an idea, in modern society, and put it together, we can sum it up in three words:

Freedom, Anarchy, Resistance.

Freedom

'Freedom' is such an abstract concept it is almost impossible to define. It's widely discussed in philosophy, particularly the question: is it possible to be truly free? As soon as we built a society, in order to gain benefits, we had to partially sacrifice our freedom. We can't freely steal from our neighbors, but in doing so, we ensure our neighbors won't steal from us (at least, we hope). It's a simple concept. However, there's a line beyond which the benefits we gain aren't worth the sacrifices we make to obtain them. This has occurred repeatedly throughout history; it happened in the Golden Age of Piracy, and it was the reason why most of people chose to abandon civilization and sail as pirates, and it continues to happen every day. Whenever a social construct, or sometimes even a law, prevents you from simply existing as a person; whenever your future is dictated by your social status; whenever you're denied free time, enjoyment, rest, and happiness because you have to work ten hours a day just to be paid the minimum wage, if you're lucky enough to live in a country that has one. That isn't a freedom you willingly gave away to have a benefit. It's a freedom someone took from you before you were even born, before you could think and understand that just because everyone acts like it's the normal way of living, it doesn't mean it has to be that way.

Anarchy

It is true that, at least concerning crews, pirate society had a sort of hierarchy, in which the Captain of the ship was at the top. However, it is also true that this hierarchy could collapse at any given moment, considering the possibility of a mutiny, and that, in general, pirate society was anarchic. There has been research on the functioning of pirate society, particularly regarding its potential application in a hypothetical modern society where the value of human life and individual needs are more considered than they were during that era. Most of the work in that sense has been done by Peter Lamborn Wilson in his 1995 book 'Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes'. He provides a definition of what he calls 'Pirate Utopias', that are described as "Early forms of autonomous proto-anarchist societies in that they operated beyond the reach of��governments and embraced unrestricted freedom" (source x). I highly recommend reading his work and all the other research that followed it if you want to go into detail, because that's not what I'm going to do here (for now).

That being said, this is my personal take on the matter:

In our days, the discussion about Anarchy as a political belief is often ridiculed and reduced to a mere "if there were no rules, people would kill each other". That statement is true; people would. What is usually misunderstood and not taken into consideration is that people who profess to believe in Anarchy do not mean we should abolish every existing law overnight and see what happens. With 'Anarchy,' we mean a hypothetical society in which individuals are free to do as they please, and they willingly choose not to kill, steal, and hurt others because they have no interest in doing so. This hypothetical society is, of course, unachievable; it's what is called a utopia.

Most political beliefs are based on utopias (or dystopias, depending on your vision of them), because a society that strictly adheres to a pure political system is impossible to achieve. There cannot be a perfect socialist society, nor a perfect communist one, nor a perfect capitalist one, and of course, there cannot be a perfect anarchist society. What we can do, though, is aspire to one—or, to use a naval metaphor, we can set the course towards it. We can make decisions, take actions, and build societies around a specific vision.

The western society, for example, tends to a capitalistic system; in brief, money are what our society revolves around. The more money you possess, the more power you wield; your ultimate goal in life must be to gain money so that you can afford basic necessities: food, housing, healthcare and so on. Everything is privatized, leading to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, being exploited by people whose only purpose is to become even more rich. Consequently, you are forced to wake up every morning at 6 am to work ten-hour shifts for minimum wage. Don't like it? You're free not to live in the capitalist society. You'll probably starve to death, end up living on the street, be marginalized, isolated, persecuted, but still. You're "free" to do it. Of course, this is not a "perfect" capitalist society, it can't be; not until Democracy exists, not until Resistance exists. Still, our society tends towards it.

'Anarchy' doesn't mean we should live in a society with no rules; it simply means we should strive towards it and build a society that is as similar as possible to that utopia, prioritizing the freedom of the individual, but without causing collapse.

Resistance

Most pirates were hardly educated enough to even understand all of that as a concept, of course. They didn't fight for a political idea, most of them fought to survive. Even though it wasn't a utopian society, they still had a shared belief: dissent. Being an outcast means to be disillusioned in how 'mainstream' society works, and we know most of them were, considering their social background. Piracy was, in its own way, a movement of resistance.

Times have changed, and we don't have to engage in naval battles to resist. As society evolved, resistance as a practice evolved with it, and hence Western society has become less and less violent, as have the harmless but powerful acts of resistance.

Every time you protest, you are resisting. Every time you talk back, you expose a normalized injustice, you rebel towards an unfair authority, you say 'no', you go against what's expected from you, you are unapologetically yourself, you refuse to adapt, you decide to ignore or bypass a senseless law, you are resisting. Every time you prioritize your free time over money, you challenge beauty standards, you don't accept a 'that's how it was always done' as a justification. Even when you have fun harder than how you're supposed to, when you rejoice louder than how's considered appropriate, every time you dance like no one is watching you, you are, somehow, resisting.

Piracy in Media

Much of our perception of things we haven't directly experienced is filtered and conditioned by media. Even when we study historical periods like the Medieval Age or the Roman Empire, a part of our understanding will always be influenced by the media we've consumed about them. This is because media is often how we were introduced to these subjects: you can get very passionate about Indiana Jones, and so get interested in studying the pyramids and ancient Egypt, only to find out pyramids are nothing like it was portrayed in the movies. Nevertheless, you got interested in studying them in the first place because of Indiana Jones, so as much as you understand and accept that that isn't the truth behind ancient Egypt, you can also accept that Indiana Jones is part of your vision of it, and that cannot change. I know Pirates of the Caribbean isn't historically accurate, as much as Our Flag Means Death and Monkey Island aren't; still, I cannot deny that they have a role in creating a general vision of Pirate Philosophy in the modern world.

There are, in my opinion, three main aspects that come out from the combination of what we know about Piracy as a historical reality and as it's portrayed by media, and those are Hedonism, Nomadism and Camaraderie.

Hedonism

Hedonism is defined as 'the prioritization of pleasure in one's lifestyle, actions, or thoughts'. It's a recurring theme in the portrayal of pirate society; from songs, to movies where Tortuga is depicted as a place where people drink, eat, have sex and fight as they please, to legends that speak of treasures to be found so one can live a life of excess.

The reason for this is related to what we already know about the history of pirates, particularly the society they escaped from. The society of the seventeenth century was extremely strict, both morally and legislatively. Sex outside of marriage was out of the question, and many things that we consider normal today were seen as affronts to decency, often punishable. To be considered a respectable man or woman, one had to follow certain rules. Additionally, many pirates came from backgrounds of extreme poverty, making them prone to indulging in every kind of pleasure when they could.

Hedonism isn't just a perpetual search for pleasure; it's actually an ethical philosophy that is grounded in pleasure (defined as the avoidance of pain as much as possible) as the only intrinsic value and therefore the only reasonable expression of ethical good. This philosophy of life can be easily connected to the anarchist society that we described earlier; a society that doesn't have rules and in which you don't have a 'place' or need to 'contribute,' since your only purpose as an individual is to pursue pleasure.

I personally believe in Hedonism as an ethical philosophy, particularly Psychological Hedonism, as much as my research of pleasure doesn't prevail on someone else's.

Nomadism

One of the things that fascinated me the most about the Pirate Life as portrayed in media, was the idea of embarking on a journey that would never end. Our society is a stationary one, and I actually think there's nothing wrong with that. My perspective on this matter has nothing to do with morality, ideology, or politics. Being stationary is good; the human species would have never evolved if it didn't stop and build the world as we know it. This is simply a personal preference and stems from my absolute intolerance and repulsion at the idea of being born and dying in the same place. I've always yearned to explore, to see as much of the world as I could. The concept of 'borders' has always bothered me; I firmly believe in cultural exchanges and in learning about how other human beings live in different parts of the world. Of course, I acknowledge that without nations, traditions, and populations that are local and bound to their territories, there wouldn't even be cultures to discover or different societies to explore. So, this is about me, not a hypothetical, utopian society. I'm the one who always wanted to travel without ever stopping; I've never felt like I belonged in any one place or that there's a good enough reason to settle in a single nation and miss out on all that there is to see out there.

Camaraderie

Pirates encompassed men and women with all different kinds of backgrounds, nationalities, beliefs, ideologies and identities. While we speak in absolutes, in a society with no moral or legislative boundaries, factors such as who you were, where you came from, who you slept with, or what you believed in simply didn't matter. You were a pirate, and that was enough.

The official definition of camaraderie is:

"A feeling of friendliness towards people that you work or share an experience with".

In this case, we could even say "towards people that you share a lifestyle with". Being realistic, in a historically accurate pirate society, it's plausible that hate towards differences and minorities still existed, considering the strict and mentally bigoted society most pirates came from. However, we're talking about individuals who chose to leave that society, probably because of its strict and mentally bigoted nature. It's reasonable to assert that this particular kind of hate was at least less prevalent in the pirate society than outside of it.

Piracy in media undoubtedly plays a significant role in romanticizing the sense of brotherhood and companionship felt among pirates; we saw Pirate Codes, Brethren Courts, battles in the name of a common ideal, epic friendships and romances, songs that speak of a union strong enough to beat death itself and slogan such as "Long Live Piracy!".

What attracts me the most about it is that camaraderie as a concept exists in basically all societies or communities with a shared aim or belief. However, there are always rules that need to be followed, and the risk of being excluded and losing the privilege of deserving such camaraderie is always present. The idea of fidelity toward one's society, community, or even nation is essential for its survival, ensuring that those in power maintain control over their adherents, citizens, or believers. The pirate society is the only one I've stumbled across that doesn't need it. The feeling of brotherhood within these people doesn't need any kind of loyalty, proper rules or the fear of losing privileges to make sure that the community keeps existing. That's because the pirate society is made up of people who have already betrayed, renounced, and lost all of their privileges to be there. All they have is that sense of brotherhood and friendship. They exist in a reality in which none of them belongs anywhere and that, somehow, becomes a sense of belonging; one that doesn't need to be continuously shown or respected, simply because it's the only thing that keeps them there.

I believe that is the only reality in which camaraderie and freedom can coexist in a society, and I think it's one of the most beautiful and powerful concepts I've ever seen portrayed.

Conclusions

We finally arrived at the end of this... yeah, let's call it 'essay'. It was more than two weeks ago when I wrote the first word. It was meant to be brief and simply a way to put in words an intimate belief. I wasn't sure if I wanted to post it, mostly because I rarely share such deep thoughts with people around me; though, I'm trying to change that. As all human beings I strive to find belonging and as a true pirate, I never found anywhere to do so. So, to find but one person who reads this until the end and finds themselves to agree with my view, it would make me immeasurably happy.

Thank you if you made it this far, even if you don't agree with a single word I've written, because you dedicated part of your time to me, and I appreciate it.

If you find syntactic errors, please consider that english isn't my first language and also that grammar is a made up concept anyway.

Don't forget to be free, to resist, to pursue pleasure as much as you can, to explore and to show camaraderie not because you have to, but for the sake of it.

Fair winds t' ye!

Imago

[positivelybeastly]

"I was really tempted to make this a montage of Hank taking sitting on the edge of a chair to its natural extreme, because no-one sits on a chair like goddamn Hank McCoy."

Please don't hold back, just do it 😌 Show us Hank's ways of sitting <3

Hehehe, so, I've been wanting to tackle this one for a while, but it took a little time and I wanted to get my caps together, so, let's get through it, shall we?

So, anyone who's ever consumed a piece of X-Men media is likely aware of the fact that Hank McCoy Does Not Sit On Chairs.

Like, I mean . . . he does.

He is ostensibly capable of sitting in a chair like a human being would.

But then he does this shit. All the time.

Hell, how do we meet him in X-Men: The Last Stand?

Reading, upside down, on the ceiling.

So, this thing that he does - he does do it every now and then to be intimidating, but let's be real here, Hank doesn't really do intimidating very often.

No, the real reason he does it, is because it's comfortable.

He seemingly has absolutely no issue with blood rushing to the head or orientation causing him vertigo or anything like that, which fits with his superhuman agility, dexterity, and balance - his brain and body seem to be perfectly adapted so that he can remain upside down for as long as he wants without issue.

Hell, Hank's physicality and its role in expressing his character is explicitly called out in Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers #18 as a useful way to immediately communicate to new readers what he's about. He's weird, he's kooky, he's playful, he's not quite like everyone else.

But it's one thing to hang from the ceiling. It's another entirely to see how Hank deigns to handle actual chairs. Because you'll start a scene, and he'll be like this. Just sitting, normal. Like a normal person sits.

AAAAAAAND there he goes.

He just cannot help himself.

Never has been able to help himself, in fact!

SIT! ON! THE CHAIR! HANK!

HANK THAT'S NOT EVEN A CHAIR GET DOWN FROM THERE.

Hank, I refuse to believe you're washing your feet often enough for this to be hygienic. You're EATING that popcorn! Someone else might want to read that book without wondering why there's a goddamn footprint on it! ALSO!!! That chair is RIGHT there! Sit on it! Don't use it as an arm rest, that's just weird!

. . . Is this a thing people do? Sleep on their front? I've always found that spectacularly uncomfortable? Just me?

Hank, you've been alive for like 5 minutes, and you're already back on your bullshit?!

Oh, you're just doing this to mock me now, you little fucker.

You too, you little bitch?

But. Yes. Hank clearly does not believe in there being a universally accepted way to sit on chairs.

[sentientgolfball]

Ghoul Files: Aether

Welcome to my little series of ghoul character sheets. The Files are basically little living documents of how I headcanon/characterize each ghoul. I've made one for every ghoul (yes every ghoul) and I'll be slowly uploading them alphabetically by era just for the hell of it.

Starting with Impera/Prequelle we have Aether :3

Check out his design here !

Name: Aether 

Element: quintessence

Pronouns: he/him 

Powers: can heal minor to moderate wounds, soothe emotions, hypnosis, can read surface-level thoughts (has to be focused in order to dig any deeper), can read emotions, dream share 

Love language (giving): He is very versatile and will adapt but his default is acts of service and physical touch. 

Love language (receiving): gift-giving by far. He melts when someone hands him something because it makes them think of him. Also physical touch. Big boy likes to hold and be held. 

Pairings: When not with the whole pack Aether can typically be found in the company of Dew and Mountain. He tries to have time with Zephyr and Ifrit but it’s so hard with how busy he is, so he clings to the others from his original Topside pack. However, since the summoning of Phantom he also sticks to them. He wants to be a good influence on the little bug. 

Influential Others: Omega is probably one of the most influential people in Aether’s life. He taught him how to play guitar for the band. He taught him more about his quintessence than he could’ve ever discovered on his own. Even after all this time and all his experience, he can’t see himself as equal to Omega. Omega will always be his mentor. Cirrus also means a lot to him. She’s the ghoul who finally got him to take a chill pill, finally got him to understand it's genuinely okay to take time for yourself when you need it. They remind each other of that lesson when things get stressful. 

Kinds of People Liked: This is a bit difficult to pinpoint for Aether because he is a quintessence ghoul. He can sense baseline emotions, he can sense deeper thoughts and feelings if he prods. He generally likes most people unless he senses something strange in a bad way. 

Kinds of People Disliked: the type of people that’ll turn his Protector Mode on. So people who he senses violent/harmful/hateful thoughts/feelings from, people who take things for granted. He has lost a lot and has seen his pack lose a lot so it just rubs him wrong when he sees people who can’t appreciate what they’ve got. 

Life in the Pits: Aether’s life in the Pits is…something he regrets deeply since he’s been Topside. He used to be in a rather large pack with an even larger territory. Over half of them slowly got wiped out by an illness that had worked its way into the caves where they resided, something immune to quintessence healing. Aether blamed himself for it. He was the leader of one of the small hunting parties, the only members of the pack who consistently went in and out of the caves. If an illness was brought back it had to have been from a hunting party. Aether took it upon himself to make sure nothing like that ever happened again. He used illusions to hide the cave and essentially kept the remainders under a slight quintosis. Just enough so he could monitor their health, could keep them from leaving. He didn’t want to lose anyone else. 

Sense of Humor: shitty dad jokes. He thinks they’re hilarious and he will make them any opportunity he gets. 

Basic Nature: He is a protector. Honestly kind of like a dad/mom friend. Snacks? He’s got it. Hurt? He’ll use his quintessence before you can even register the pain. Something he doesn’t have the answer for? Well, let’s go find who can help. 

Compulsions/Habits: He always is the last one to turn in for the night. He wants to make sure everyone either gets back to the den safe or that everything is secure before the pack rests. He has a bad habit of believing his quint can fix everything. He’ll get obsessive if he can’t heal something right away, overusing it on his patient. It’s gotten better since Dew told him off after his transition, but it’s still present. 

Fears: He fucking hates animatronics. The uncanny valley is too much (which is funny considering he’s literally a demon, but Swiss nearly got his brain melted when he pointed that out). 

Attitude Towards own Body: no real strong opinion. He doesn’t hate himself, but he’s also not flaunting. He’s just content. 

Sees Self As: the first line of defense for his pack, but also someone soft and approachable. 

Hobbies: He loves to read, something about fiction and stories makes him feel almost human. He also likes to knit but with his work in the infirmary he hardly ever has time to anymore. 

Pastimes: When he’s not super busy he likes to go down to the nursery and read to the children and kits. He also loves to study the stars. He creates his own constellation maps. 

Collections: he keeps every little drawing/craft/gift he gets from either his pack or the children/kits. Like I mean everything. The box looks like a trash can filled with paper and glitter but he keeps it and adds to it. He still has all of the things that were thrown to him when he was touring. 

Reading Materials Preferred: He’s a sucker for romance novels. 

Most Prized Possession: A Polaroid of his original pack (Zephyr, Ifrit, Mountain, and Dew) prior to Dew’s elemental transition. It’s the only physical evidence of what Dew looked like before.

Favorite Colors: Warmer colors 

Favorite Foods: He likes something that’ll warm him up, something filling. His absolute favorite food is creamy mushroom soup. Of course, there’s also his Thing with bananas. 

General Likes: going to museums, colder weather, astronomy, moths

General Dislikes: crowded areas (makes the quintessence buzz), artificial raspberry flavor, cotton bedsheets, snails

Is Seen By Others As: someone to rely on. Someone you can go to with anything no matter how frivolous. 

Typical First Impression: A giant bear in the best way possible. Big strong ghoul. Maybe a little intimidating at first. 

Morning Routine: Go find Mountain and make sure he’s not running himself ragged already. Check with Omega in case he needs help in the infirmary. Go back to the den real quick for some breakfast with whoever is awake by then. Go do his daily chores. 

Evening Routine: He usually comes back from the infirmary in the middle of dinner so he quickly washes up before joining. After dinner he gets some much needed cuddle time on the couch as everyone slowly goes to bed one by one. Once everyone is all accounted for, depending on the night’s activities, he’ll clean up the common area before lighting some incense to help him sleep. 

Strongest Character Trait: His tenderness. He has a strong element and an even stronger body. He can hurt very easily, but he doesn’t. He has soft hands, a soft heart. He’s loving, tender, romantic in just about everything he does. 

Weakest Character Trait: He’s a hypocrite. Constantly fussing over others and telling Mountain he works too hard while he’d turn around and ignore basic self-care if someone needed him. He’s also caring to a fault; it will sometimes lead to him forgiving and forgetting behaviors he shouldn’t. Though, in his defense when he can sense emotions and thoughts it gets hard to rationalize sometimes. 

Mental/Emotional Blocks : sometimes treats Dew (and the rest of the pack but not to the same degree) like they’re helpless. He gets overprotective because of the transition and on bad days it’ll result in him being a bit controlling or overbearing. He’s gotten much better at self correcting this behavior, but sometimes it can still rear its ugly head. 

Chores/other job: He is basically Omega’s assistant. He primarily helps in the infirmary, but on occasion he helps Omega with his other duties. This includes preparing and leading rituals, help newly summoned ghouls acclimate, and taking care of the Ministry’s protective wards. 

Long Term Goals: He’d like to have a kit of his own some day. Dew is trying to argue for naming rights, but Aether can be stubborn if he wants to. Dew says if their kit is quint he gets to name them.  

Present Problems: He feels guilt for retiring from the band. He knew it was what he needed, but watching his pack leave without him was hard. He felt like he was abandoning them. Even now that they’re back, he knows another tour will be coming and he’ll have to do it all over again. 

One Line Characterization: Aether is a strong yet soft ghoul who puts others before himself. 

Room Description: His room is very tidy and organized. He has a queen-sized canopy bed. It always smells of incense. He has his guitars mounted on his wall. The overhead light is never on, he always uses two small lamps to light the space. He has various nightlights plugged in, not for himself, but in case a ghoul comes to him for comfort in the middle of the night. He has a potted scilla sitting on his window. His mirror is packed with various pictures of the other ghouls, Terzo, and Copia. 

Summoning: Despite his summoning being done in a hurry after Delta’s transition fell through, it went off without a hitch. He was more confused than anything, but after that wore off he became horribly curious about everything around him. However, when the novelty wore off, he fell into a depression. He was absolutely exhausted from continuously using his magick for years upon years and from the summoning. That and he couldn’t help but think about his pack, how they’ve lost yet another member. 

NSFW

Favorite position: He absolutely loves watching his partner ride him. Honestly, just any position where he can see their face. 

Dom/sub: He is always always going to be the dom, albeit a soft dom. The only people he has ever subbed for and will ever sub for is Mountain and Cirrus. He’s always soft though, the only way to get him to be meaner is to essentially plan it days in advance like an event…or wait for his rut. 

Risk: He’s not super into risky stuff but he’s willing to play along if it’s what his partner wants. Though this goes right out the window when he’s in the mood for some quintosis or a medfet scene. 

Kinks: Big breeding kink, he is always going to cum inside. Daddy kink, the need to be a protector definitely bleeds into bed. Bit of a voyeur but he’ll never admit it. Using his quintessence, he loves to tap into the mind of his partner and let them feel everything he is thinking and feeling and vice versa (also uses it to edge and deny on those occasions he’s mean). 

Aftercare: He takes his partner straight to the shower. Always. He’ll bathe them if he has to. After that, he’ll pull out his stash of food and drinks and then it’s cuddles for the rest of the night. If it’s like the middle of the day it will take a miracle for him to get out of bed and away from whoever he was with. Also uses his quintessence to soothe sore muscles and coax to sleep. 

Noise level: He’s surprisingly talkative during. Mainly check-ins and praise though. Other than that, at first, he’ll try to stifle his grunts and growls to focus on the other but after a while, he just goes full send. 

Surprise: He has a thing with his horns that was even a surprise to himself when he first discovered it. Also big fat medfet. Like to the point where he’ll always try to keep a spare room open in the infirmary for him to sneak someone into. 

[skaruresonic]

So Sonic 3's trailer finally dropped today. Any thoughts on it?

I had zero hype for this film because I didn't like the previous two and had no reason to believe this one would turn out any different. Lo and behold! ...it doesn't.

There's so much I could talk about.

• The shameless digging up of the corpse of my favorite Sonic game just to dress it up Norman Bates-style. Why yes, I love getting butchered adaptations of SA2 shoved down my throat. Keep 'em coming.

• The fact that the overly-furry aesthetic Paramount chose for Sonic and the other anthros still looks plug-ugly to my eyes no matter how much I try to get acclimated to it. In fact, it somehow looks even worse here than it did in previous movies.

• The fact that they ripped off a scene from Matrix Revolutions. Interesting choice, lmao.

• Jimbotnik continuing to register as "Jim Carrey in a costume" and not as Eggman.

• Agent Stone continuing to be a nothingburger of a character aside from being a living footstool for Jimbotnik. I thought everybody said he was going to be 3's main antagonist. Why is he even here.

• Jimbotnik calling Gerald "Pop-Pop," cutesy-ing it up for no real reason, when Eggman simply called him "grandpa" at most in the games. What, is his grandfather Mike Ehrmantraut now?

• The original game's "fuck the police" angle now being ignored in favor of maybe making GUN look like the good guys (what?).

• The fact that the ARK, an iconic location, is nowhere in sight is making me more than a tad apprehensive. Idk if this thing is supposed to replace it:

• This one really steams my hams: the fact that Paramount portrays Jimbotnik's weight gain via hateful stereotypes of fat men which the games do not employ in their overall portrayal of Eggman. It reflects a fatphobic attitude I could have told you was the case years ago judging by the fact that they cast a thin man in the role.

Games!Eggman is stylish and immaculately groomed, but Jimbotnik has to be a slob who dresses like The Dude just because he gained a little weight. Of course. 🙄

It really bothers me because Eggman is quite possibly one of the only examples of positive fat male representation I can point to, and they can't even let him be a little fat onscreen without literally exposing his belly with the intent to make fun of him in ways the games seldom do, if ever.

God fucking forbid he actually weighs the 281 lbs. he does in canon; Paramount would probably portray him like Fat Bastard from Austin Powers.

In lieu of being portrayed as dumb and weak, as is usually the case for fat male characters, Games!Eggman is portrayed as cunning, intelligent, powerful (physically and mentally), and stylish in a way that commands respect, despite whatever this Chili's says to discredit him. Eggman is fucking cool, and y'all are tripping if you don't think so.

• The fact that this movie is probably going to be cringe on the basis of its constant bathos-inducing insistence on making the characters crack mistimed jokes during serious moments.

• Doing a double take when Sonic called Shadow an "alien," possibly realizing that "alien" is the film universe's designation for anthros, then promptly short-circuiting and catching on fire. Can we not.

• Why does the trailer insist on making Shadow look like a wet cat? They did not deep-freeze my boy like they did in the games. Games!Shadow emerged from stasis minty-fresh, whereas Movie!Shadow looks like a newborn kitten yeeted straight out of the womb:

Disgustang. Stop that.

• The fact that everyone gives '06 flack for aesthetic whiplash but thinks Shadow looking like a muppet beside an irl little girl is fine, actually:

And the fact that said little girl may be killed just making dead Maria jokes 10x more uncomfortable than they need to be.

• They missed an opportunity for a fun visual gag by having the bathroom sign read "occupied" instead of "eggupied" or "hatching" (as in hatching a scheme. or a shit. maybe both, lol). Something like that:

They can pay homage to the Akira bike slide and the Super Burly Brawl from Matrix Revolutions, but God forbid we actually allude to Sonic games :v

---

...But most of this can be boiled down to "Paramount gonna Paramount."

All in all, I'm likely to continue my time-honored tradition of seeing the movie when it releases in theaters because deep down, I'm still a Sonic whore and subsequently pretending the films don't exist thereafter lol

[nrilliree]

https://www.tumblr.com/iscend-phines/751334706465947648/bookdaemon-would-never-he-was-a-somehow-worse?source=share

Daemon is not a pedophile or a groomer in Fire and Blood. You have to review your definitions after a while.

And sorry, but the fact that there was domestic violence in the feudal era in no way justifies adding it into a show that adapts source material already rife with violence against women in the first place, including for the affected character of Rhaenyea.

Why add domestic violence when there isn't any in the source material ? What's the point ?

GRRM has already written about other relationships with domestic violence. So why add domestic violence where there was none AKA Daemyra ?! What's the fucking point ?! Not to mention that Rhaenyra already experiences various realistic violence in her own story. No need to add domestic violence to all that if it doesn't serve the story.

And I remind you that not all men, even in feudal times, were necessarily violent with their wives. Throughout history, good men and their wives have always existed.

So the excuse of “realism” to justify the fact that Daemon is violent with Rhaenyra they can kick it in the ass.

GRRM has written stories of domestic abuse before. Do you want to read this ? Well go read that. Or did the producers want to adapt that ? Well they just had to adapt another GRRM story ! Same if they wanted romance between girls! GRRM wrote about it ! No need to invent Rhaenicent !

And yes, the show is trying to make Alicent look better ! Alicent wasn't a victim in the book, and she wasn't that young. What do you call it other than trying to make his character more likable for the audience ?!

And no, the producers don't understand anything about what they are adapting. They're not even able to admit that the entire central conflict is based on pure misogyny and tries to send the message that not everyone, including Rhaenyra, is apparently equally bad. That's not what dance is about. So sorry, but yes, if you are not capable of understanding the basic message of a work, then you do not understand anything about it in its entirety either.

Alicent stans disgust me deeply.

Well, under the last similarly stupid post, I wrote the definition of words that someone used without understanding and therefore looked stupid, but instead of appreciating the help and educating themselves, the person got offended. Typical.

So please, @iscend-phines , take advantage and educate yourself, because you need it too:

Meaning of pedophilia:

the condition of being sexually interested in prepubescent children, or sexual activity with prepubescent children.

Meaning of prepubescent:

relating to the period before children start to develop adult sexual characteristics: prepubescent girls/boys/children. Preadolescence is commonly defined as ages 9–12 ending with the major onset of puberty.

So very simple:

Daemon, suspected of sexual contact with 16-year-old Rhaenyra in the book/19-year-old Rhaenyra in the series, may be an ephebophile. But there is no evidence.

Aegon suspected of sexual contact with a 12-year-old girl may be a pedophile. But there is no evidence.

But, anon, what exactly do you expect? This is Alicent stans. They use the argument "penetration is not shown on screen, so there is no proof that Aegon raped anyone!!!!!!1111", they believe that Rhaenyra is to blame for Dance because she has no relationship with her siblings, and Alicent is a poor victim, who did not abuse Rhaenyra and her children for several years, did not sell parts of her body in exchange for benefits, and is not complicit in the deaths of many people who died due to the usurpation of the throne. They are so strange and blinded that they see abusers everywhere but at home, and some are even happy that Rhaenyra would be a victim of domestic violence. Apparently they got it from their idol who wanted other women to suffer like she did, THE victim.

And you know what makes me laugh the most? When TGs throw incest accusations at Daemon. Uncle and niece are still less incest than siblings. And Aegon, the beloved king of TG, bangs his own sister-wife because his mother told him to :D

[x0401x]

Hi! I've only watched the anime for Tsurune and I LOVED the first two seasons but after reading some of your Tsurune posts it got me curious. How different is the anime adaption from the source material? It sounds like an entirely different thing! I really liked the first season, but apparently it was a disaster? In what ways, if you don't mind me asking? Should I read the novels instead? I'm sorry for so many questions or if you've answered these already

Oh.

Oh, holy shit.

This is not the kind of ask I was expecting to get in the year of our lord 2024.

I’ll start by saying that you’re totally right. It sounds like an entirely different thing because the original work and the anime adaptation are, in fact, almost entirely different from each other. If you ever look for reviews of volume 1 on Japanese sites, the comment you’ll see the most from people who also watched the anime is “it’s so different from the novel that it might be best to just view the two as separate stories��. If I had to estimate how much of the novels was actually included into the animation, I would say 5% to 10%. I’m being pretty generous here.

You’re also right about the first season being a disaster. I remember that when I first watched the first episode of S1, by the moment that the series title came up, I immediately thought to myself, “This won’t sell well. 3k DVD copies, give or take”. And turns out I was wrong. It actually sold around 2.7k, which is even worse than what I had predicted. It did so infamously bad that many fans were worried about the second season before it came out, and some people were being rather foul-mouthed about it, which was a shock for me because you don’t usually see Japanese fans not following fandom etiquette. However, there was much more effort put into S2 than S1, thankfully. There’s also the whole thing with the arson attack, which pulled in people’s interest and support for the series. Overall, it did fairly well, I believe. I would never say that S2 does the novel any justice, but it was light years better than S1. That’s something everyone agrees to, even those who enjoyed S1.

Still, though. Even with S2 being far more successful than S1, that’s technically not so big of a deal, considering S1’s tragic underperformance. The series is known here in Japan mostly because of its association with the arson, but not many people are really into it. I would say that it has a niche audience consisting of 1) people who were already fans of KyoAni to begin with, 2) novel readers and 3) people who practice Japanese archery. As for the overseas audience… barely anyone has ever even heard of Tsurune, be it the anime or the novels. Many people who do know the anime have dropped it by S1, and the reason I see being pointed out the most is that it was “boring as hell”.

Other than this, I’ve noticed something in common when reading comments on S2 from Japanese Twitter. One thing people say a lot (and I do mean a lot) is that they didn’t like S1, but after watching S2, they were able to see that “KyoAni was, in fact, taking this franchise seriously”, so they gave it a second chance. This is meant as a compliment, but although it’s not backhanded per se, it’s kind of underhanded. I mean, who wants to be told, “Thank God you got your shit together this time around”? It’s good that S2 changed people’s opinions on the series, but the fact that it had to be changed speaks volumes about what people thought of S1.

Now, as to whether you should just read the novels, I would say yes. It’s literally the only way to know what Tsurune is truly about. But I have to warn you that, if you loved the anime, you might have to prepare yourself to see the things you loved about it either not being in the novel or taking a completely different turn in it. If you’re able to handle that, then by all means, go ahead and give the source material a try. It’s honestly one of the most unique novels I’ve ever read, and I’ve read just about every light novel out there. The depictions of Japanese archery and Zen go way deeper and you’ll learn much more about the characters, so I’m sure you’ll have a fun time!

[halucygeno]

[Draft] Why Roadside Picnic is a timeless masterpiece and why everyone missed the point

(DRAFT NOTE: Otherside Picnic and PAFL are tagged because I intended to conclude this essay by explaining why I think those works, ostensibly inspired by R.P., don’t understand and fail to capture what makes the novel so powerful. My writing never got to that point, but it might still be of interest to fans of Otherside Picnic and PAFL, so I’ve kept the tags. If I ever manage to somehow finish this, I’ll take it down and replace it with the full version.)

ESSAY START:

With that needlessly provocative title out of the way, I hope people are still here and willing to listen as I try to explain myself:

[SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE BOOK, GO READ IT IF YOU HAVEN’T DONE SO YET]

At its very core, Roadside Picnic is a character study. It acts as philosophical and social commentary too, but a vast majority of that is delivered and explored through Redrick’s character arc.

The sci-fi stuff which everyone loves referencing, and which every adaptation and “inspired” work can’t help but include: the Zone, the artefacts, bolt tossing, Mosquito Manges - none of that matters. You could replace it with magic, or dragons, or some other arbitrary plot device - it just needs to be beyond human understanding and have no clear explanation or origin, to allow for the ideas discussed by Noonan and Dr. Pillman in Chapter 3. This basic premise is all you need to discuss xenology, human psychology, “what’s a rational being”, how insignificant we are in the universe, etc.

All the other details are either little tid-bits of worldbuilding, window-dressing, or serve a specific narrative purpose. Witches’ Jelly could be any “super dangerous substance”, because what matters is not that it eats your bones, what matters is that Redrick sells it to a shady dealer, betraying the morals he espoused in Chapter 1:

All of these objects aren’t just “cool artefacts”, they’re tools for the Strugatskys to get across their themes.

And those themes are... Well, that’s harder to summarise. The main theme of the story seems to be about how economic circumstances and crises in one’s personal life can rot a person’s moral compass and kill their faith in the possibility of a better world. The events of the story turn someone like Redrick - an honest worker who believes in Kirill’s promises that science has the potential to save humanity - into an evil hypocrite, a murderer who lies to himself to justify his reprehensible actions. The question asked of the audience is “how responsible is Redrick for his own fate”, while the ending asks “will any of it amount to anything”?

To be clear, Redrick is a BAD person. By the end of the book, he has quit his job at the Institute, sold Witches’ Jelly to shady 3rd parties (which ended in a laboratory accident that killed 35), cheated on his wife (with a woman he supposedly despises) and murdered an innocent kid. He even draws sadistic pleasure from the emotional pain he will inflict on Burbridge by killing his son, savouring the irony of Burbridge being the one who kept encouraging him to take some newbie to the Meat Grinder:

But he wasn’t always like this. At the start of the story, he is cynical and rough, but he has principles. Like already mentioned earlier, in the excerpt where Noonan tells him about someone looking to buy Witches’ Jelly, he even goes as far as saying that he’ll work with the police to turn them in. The same police which, earlier in the chapter, stopped him in the street because they profiled him and assumed he was up to something:

Redrick has done his time in prison, gotten an honest job (yes, I know that he says that he still makes "a few bucks on the side”, but he’s actually relieved when he hears they’ll be walling off the Zone because it’ll mean “less temptation”. He wants to make money as a decent citizen), and he’s still being treated like a criminal and stopped by the police on-sight. And despite this, his fear of what the wrong person might do with Witches’ Jelly is so strong, he’s willing to go to them and report the buyer.

And this rejection of his prior Stalker persona is deeper than just getting a job at the institute and being willing to cooperate with police. When Kirill assumes that Redrick suggested getting the Full Empty as a ploy to sell his services, at first, Redrick doesn’t understand what he means. When he does, he feels outright insulted:

When he finds out about Kirill’s death, he is devastated, but notably, this sorrow quickly turns into a hatred of the systems which throw young men to their deaths for money. He curses Ernest for profiting from this exploitation. A key scene is when he hands Creon (a young man who just arrived in Harmont and wants to become a Stalker) a wad of cash and urges him to go back to Malta:

Another pillar of Redrick’s character is the fact that he loves and is loyal to his fiancée, Guta, despite her family being openly antagonistic towards him - not just because of his criminal past, but the fact that he’s been afflicted by the Zone:

He marries her at some point after this.

Most importantly, he actually has a purpose. This is shown when he is pestered by the emigration agent, as he makes a speech about how Harmont is a “hole into the future”, which will change life around the world for the better:

The crucial detail here is that the one who inspired him to think this way is Kirill. Redrick is always portrayed as cynical and bitter, so this high-mindedness is not coming from somewhere within him - it’s external. He’s drawing inspiration from the idealistic, honest people around him. So when Kirill dies, it is not merely the death of a close friend. It is the death of Redrick’s faith, his hope in the future. He even says “How will I get on without you?”:

Basically, Chapter 1 sets-up Redrick AT HIS BEST, so that the story can send him on a downward spiral in every chapter that follows.

Chapter 2 has several important developments, and it marks the start of Redrick’s moral decline. Before getting into that, though, I’d like to draw attention to another part of Redrick’s moral compass which is highlighted - his hatred of Burbridge and, more importantly, his hatred of Burbridge’s daughter, Dina.

Buzzard Burbridge embodies the most reprehensible, slimy aspects of being a Stalker. He is a selfish profiteer, willing to sacrifice his comrades and leave them to die just so he can get away with the loot. Redrick hates Burbridge, and, very importantly, believes himself to be better than Burbridge:

Redrick hates that Burbridge has no regard for human life, and this hatred applies in equal measure to Dina. When Dina tells Redrick that he should have left Buzzard to his death, he slaps her in the face:

This is not done out of sympathy for the man - Redrick hates Burbridge. What insults him is the implication that he should’ve left a comrade to their death - even a piece of sh*t comrade. He hates Dina, because even though what she says about Buzzard is true, it’s not a reason to abandon him to his death. Just like her father, she has no regard for human life.

In this scene, it’s also worth noting that Redrick is very respectful to Hamster. Hamster is the only Stalker to survive entering the Meat Grinder, supposedly saved by Buzzard. He seems to hang around the Burbridge household, possibly acting as some kind of servant, but is deformed and crippled from his injury:

The contrast between how he speaks to Dina and Hamster sends a clear message; Dina’s beauty means nothing. She’s evil, and deserves less respect than ugly, deformed Hamster.

Another key moment is Redrick’s conversation with Noonan in the café near the Métropole hotel. There, we learn why he quit working for the institute; money. He could no longer earn bonuses when expeditions to the Zone began being handled by robots:

Important here is that his salary still isn’t terrible, and the institute did not fire him. He chose to quit, because he wants a sense of freedom, of not being bossed around, and the money to splurge on things (like cigarettes) and have peace of mind. This is aptly summarised in the line “a man needs money so that he doesn't have to always be counting it”.

Obviously, another reason why he quit is Kirill’s death. In his final, rambling monologue, Redrick admits that he hated working for the Institute, so it’s very likely that Kirill and his idealistic visions for the future were the only things keeping him there.

So, to summarise, at this stage, Redrick’s character looks more or less like this: 1) Wants to do honest work and disassociate from his criminal past. 2) Believes the world can be saved by technology from the Zone. 3) Will never sell Witches’ Jelly to dangerous 3rd parties. 4) Needs money for a basic standard of comfort and freedom from authority. 5) Won’t abandon someone to their death, even someone as bad as Buzzard. 6) Beauty doesn’t matter if, morally, you’re an awful person. 7) Loyal to his wife and daughter.

Having lost Kirill, and with him, his hope for a better future, Redrick’s new source of meaning is his wife and daughter. His purpose in life is providing for them, especially Monkey, whose condition makes her the target of bullying.

(Side note: One thing always annoyed me. Why did they call her Monkey?! That’s asking for people to bully your kid! Was it just a coincidence, or did they really name her after her birth defect? And this is an accurate translation of the Russian “Мартышка”, no weird translation problems here.)

But this new purpose - providing for his family - crashes into him hard when he’s set-up, betrayed, caught by the police, and is forced to flee. It’s then revealed that Redrick had a trump-card up his sleeve - a jar of Witches’ Jelly and an interested buyer, willing to pay the money to his wife in instalments while he rots in prison. It’s never stated how long his prison sentence is, but Redrick estimates that evading arrest (which he did to arrange the transaction) will add another year to it.

To be clear, this jar was prepared as a last resort. He clearly doesn’t want to do this. Earlier, in the Métropole, when he's asked if he managed to procure it, he lies, saying that he didn’t:

He promises to get it later, keeping Throaty interested, but not giving it to him. Later, as he’s about to make the call, he admonishes himself:

This the first major step in Redrick’s decline, where his self-interest explicitly endangers the lives of others, and he still picks himself over others.

Before moving into Chapter 3, one part which I’d like to quickly touch on is the circumstances of Redrick’s arrest. I didn’t pick up on this on my first read, but Ernest wasn’t the one who set-up the police ambush in the Borscht. The one who set up Redrick’s arrest was Richard Noonan:

At first, I was confused as to why Redrick never realised that Noonan betrayed him, but after looking at it more closely, and despite how stupid it may sound, I genuinely think Redrick was so sleep-deprived that he forgot Noonan was the one who told him to drive to the Borscht in the first place. After getting into the cab, he falls asleep and wakes up, incorrectly thinking he told the driver to take him to the bank:

Regardless, in Chapter 3, we learn that Richard Noonan is some sort of government agent, working for the Institute or with law enforcement in some capacity. His mission is to shut down the “flow of materials from the Zone through Harmont”, which is why he has been befriending Stalkers and infiltrating their social circles, monitoring them. His activities include buying artefacts from Stalkers and rerouting them to the Institute:

If you’ve been paying attention, the Stalker which Noonan mentions in the above excerpt, the one he is stringing along and exploiting for his swag, is Creon, the Maltese Stalker which Redrick tried to pay to give up on the profession and go back home in Chapter 1. He persevered, became a successful, and what did it get him? He’s not an adventurer - he’s a pawn, drowning his sorrows in booze, getting closer to death, unaware that he’s being exploited by Noonan.

The worst part of this, which is never said explicitly, but heavily implied, is that the Institute is allowing certain Stalkers to operate because real humans are better, more effective gatherers of artefacts then their officially sanctioned robots. They are supposedly cracking down on this illegal activity, but they don’t mind taking advantage of it while they can:

There’s a sickening duality to it. Officially, Stalkers are criminalised, thrown in jail, ostracised. But behind the scenes, the Institute relies on them to deliver them materials, strings them along and keeps them on their payroll.

(Side note: I’ll let you draw whatever real-life parallels you find applicable. The ones that immediately come to my mind are the US prison-industrial complex and the funding of the the Taliban, but I’m sure you can find many, many more.)

Later, we generally get to see Richard Noonan being a horrid person - beating up a subordinate for having overlooked a group of Stalkers who were sneaking into the Zone without the Institute’s awareness.

Following this, Noonan has his conversation with Valentine Pillman, where the analogy of a “roadside picnic” is used and where the book derives its title. The general message is that we’re completely insignificant. The visitation wasn’t an instance of aliens coming to contact us or conquer us - they were just passing by and accidentally dropped a bunch of their trash on us.

Of course, Pillman qualifies this by saying that this is just his personal theory, and that there is no evidence to support this, or any other interpretation. He points out that to speculate about the motives of non-human beings by applying human psychology to them is folly, and calls xenology a pseudoscience.

For how central this conversation seems to be to the book (it’s in the title, after all), I don’t actually think that it’s a particularly interesting concept. It speaks to a general existential dread many people can probably relate to, being insignificant in the face of the infinitely complex, incomprehensible mechanisms of the cosmos. But it seems quite simple and self-contained, especially compared to the layered, interconnected themes of the rest of the book. It’s quaint.

Much more interesting to me are the things we find out about the artefacts recovered from the Zone. Eternal Batteries, seemingly capable of producing infinite energy, are used to power people’s private cars. Black Sprays, little beads which one theory claims are huge swathes of compressed space, are used to decorate jewelry:

To be blunt, Kirill was wrong. The artefacts from the Zone and the research done by the Institute are not “saving the world”. They’re accomplishing almost nothing. At best, they become the playthings of the wealthy and powerful, while the working class is literally killing themselves in the Zone to acquire them. At worst, they’re causing horrible accidents and killing people, like the Currigan labs incident:

The point of this is to show that fancy new technology does not inherently uproot old systems of injustice and exploitation. Without societal change, even something as reality-shattering as an alien invasion will be slotted into the old way of things. There’s even a passing mention of more luxury accommodations being built in Harmont in response to... tourists:

I saw another Tumblr post tagged with #roadside picnic, complaining about how people are trying too hard to make every soviet novel into something political. Well, I’m sorry. IT IS POLITICAL. You’re just not paying attention. If you disagree, I challenge you to read the above passage about “the suburbs being emptied” and tell me that it’s not trying to communicate anything about the economical systems ruling Harmont.

And if I need to spell it out, the force consuming and destroying the lives of Stalkers is not “the Zone”. It’s capitalism. The characters constantly talk about greenbacks, about needing money. The reason Stalkers need to break the law and risk their lives is either because they have rent to pay, or because they want to become financially stable enough to be free from the coercion of bosses and landlords.

The entire reason Redrick betrays his moral convictions in Chapter 2 is because of money. He leaves the Institute because his job is being automated, his pay is being cut, and he doesn’t want to live paycheck to paycheck. He wants to be free. And finally, he sells the Witches’ Jelly because he has to keep his family fed while he’s stuck in jail.

And if you still think I’m just reading too much into things, seeing what I want to see, I’d like to take you back to Chapter 2 for a few notable passages. Namely, Redrick’s experiences as he is entering the luxury hotel, Métropole:

This is Redrick, talking to a cop. Yes, the police, so eager to harass him in Chapter 1, are suddenly asking him if he’s alright, offering to help, calling him “mister”. So what changed?

Well, he is wearing a suit, holding a suitcase, standing in front of a fancy hotel. They assumed he’s rich. That he’s a respectable citizen, that he’d never need to steal anything.

There’s a genius reversal here - in Chapter 1, Redrick was an honest lab worker, but was profiled and stopped by the police. In Chapter 2, while the cop is trying to help him, he’s on his way to an illegal deal with a suitcase full of contraband. He’s an actual criminal, but he’s treated with kindness, because he looks upper-class.

And if you still somehow think this is all a coincidence, I ask you - why is this scene here? Why was it written? Seriously, it’s such a random moment, a complete non-sequiteur from everything happening beforehand, and I never hear anyone talk about it. Redrick, out of nowhere, begins having strong hallucinations and has to stop to catch his breath. If the key information being conveyed here is “Redrick suffers from hallucinations”, why not just have him catch his breath and move on? Why add this random cop, trying so hard to be helpful?

The answer is simple. It’s not a “random cop”. It’s social commentary on how cops exist to protect and serve the ruling class.

In the hotel itself, we have this moment where Redrick steps into an elevator full of absurdly, comically obnoxious rich people:

If you’ve been ignoring the attached excerpts so far, I urge you to read this one. I cannot adequately summarise how seeping with contempt and revulsion these descriptions are. Redrick closes his eyes to try to “shut out” these people, to not have to look at them. The young boy is eating chocolate, of course, drooling, while his mother has the Black Sprays we talked about earlier on her necklace. This is the privileged, wealthy elite and Redrick HATES them and what they represent. It’s textbook class antagonism.

And this doesn’t just affect Redrick. Returning to Chapter 3, Noonan visits Redrick’s house and speaks to Guta, who tells him about their struggles with Monkey, whose condition had worsened, destroying most of her cognitive abilities:

Noonan is wealthy. He’s one of the people who uses a car powered by an Eternal Battery. He lives in hotels. But more importantly:

Noonan genuinely sympathises with Redrick and Guta’s plight, and the suffering they’re going through because of Monkey’s condition. He genuinely wants to help them, and is ready to, but then remembers his boss. He remembers that his job is not to help the ones who are struggling and need it the most, but to serve the system. To label these people criminals and “infiltrate” them, monitor them, instead of simply befriending them.

Of course, Richard Noonan is an awful person. But we're almost given the sense that, given his position, he doesn’t even have an opportunity to be a good, honest person. When he genuinely feels sympathy for those he exploits, he forces himself to stop and suppresses his good nature. Because that’s what’s expected of him, what his job requires. He’s there to protect the interests of the Institute - the ruling class.

I really hope these examples adequately demonstrate what I believe to be the main political themes of the story, because I’m going to put those aside for a moment and go back to the personal, moral journey of the main character.

The only thing of note left in Chapter 3 is Redrick’s father and his reaction to news of the lab accident.

[UNIFNISHED DRAFT ENDS HERE]

(TRANSLATION NOTE: All quotations are taken from the Antonina W. Bouis translation, despite there being an arguably more accurate translation by Olena Bormashenko. This is out of habit, not preference - I’m more familiar with the Bouis translation, which made searching for quotes easier.)

(Huge thanks to Antonina W. Bouis and later Olena Bormashenko for bringing this book to an anglophone audience, to Irena Lewandowska and Rafał Dębski for translating it to Polish, and to Siergiej Rajkov and Milan Asadurov for doing the same in Bulgarian.)

[cloudcountry]

Part 3 of rant ig?

But yeah, idia is fucking doomed by the narrative in every way and for whatever reason it make my brain light the fuck up.

I would definitely consider myself the emotional support dog to a degree? I like helping people with mental health and I feel obligated to help those I can. I've had a bad run with my own brain and my shit can be considered MILD compared to a lot of stuff. And so I look at characters like idia, I relate, and I immediately go "HOLY SHIT I NEED TO TAKE HIM OUT OF STRESSFUL SITUATIONS IMMEDIATELY " I'm the oldest of my siblings I'm a care taker I look at those people who need validation or brain feelings help and I go "I GOTCHU BRO" because if my brain made me feel as bad as I felt.. WHO KNOWS WHAT ITS DOING TO THIS POOR GUY :((( LIKE

Liking idia is like finding the wettest most pathetic half dead cat that's scared of ppl and has behavioral issues, and helping it becuase that kitty has the potential to be the bestest and most happiest cat ever

Tldr: he's so fucked up he triggers my protective and nurturer instincts

Plus!!! He likes anime and I was literally raised on that! Since I was like 8, every Saturday the whole family would watch an episode of Dragon Ball and an episode of Bleach. Otaku??? Ranting buddy??? Someone the theorize and binge with?? YES. Dude have you ever shit talked your least favorite character and everyone hyped you up becuase they ALSO hate that character???? THAT SHIT CATHARTIC!! AnD THAT HALLOWEEN GETUP???? HONEY DO YOU WANT TO COSPLAY WITH ME PLEASE I JUST WANT TO WEAR MECH ARMOR---

Idia is Hella nuerodivergent coded and it makes me salivate because like!!! He knows TM. Existing around other people with fucked up brains is so weirdly cool becuase alot of the time you can just tune in to the other on a subconscious level like Bluetooth connection. PARALLEL PLAY WOULD BE FUCKING AMAZING WITH IDIA BC HE WOULD JUST PLAY GAMES AND YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT!!! Also the infodumping. INFODUMPING BELOVED. I personally, would love to hear him go off about tech shit that I would not understand becuase just the feel of the passion is intoxicating!! (This feeling extends to Jade leech btw) FREE DOCUMENTARY!!!

Another thing I also appreciate is the Sass that they stole from Hades, Idia is a sassy little bitch and it is WONDERFUL. He is a petty little shit. A horrible stinky gremlin man. I love the slang, the puns, the utter bullshit. He intrigues me and I wish to study him!!!!! He would send me a blurry picture of bread with the caption "me living that crumb life " at 2:47 am and I would lose my shit BECUASE YES. CRUMB LIFE!!! YOU ARE LIVING IT!!!! He's also genuinely smart and I like smart characters. Idia is a little shit, but he's also smart. I 100% believe in the "you can think your way out of anything if you just get creative enough" way of looking at things. IMPROVISE ADAPT OVERCOME!!! I appreciate the technological skills and alternative thinking patterns! (camp Vargas where he motivated himself to pick up sticks by comparing it to something he liked? Boom. Creative thinking beats out executive dysfunction!!!)

It's a type of friendship and weird bullshit I couldn't see myself doing with a lot of other twst characters ? There potential for a deep emotional understanding and connection that is just really alluring for my mind ig

Just 2 fucked up ppl trying to exist, but at least it's easier together sort of thing? Also idia would probably let me kill someone.

okay WOW you and edie sent me so much about this man and i like just woke up so now im reading this with a hazy sleep brain LMAO AKSJDHHSFGJDHSGDFH

but you know its very interesting to see how things that bother me SO MUCH are things that make other people laugh. they make other people like him. THE THINGS I DONT LIKE ARE ENDEARING TO YOU PEOPLE!!!!! its all about perspective!

idia is really fucking smart like i may not like him but i can acknowledge his good parts. he cares about his brother hes smart and uhhhh ummmm uhhhhhhhhhh ANYWAY. im just teasaing SDJJSDDJ but thats why i love when i get these long winded messages about characters i dont like because if i can change my mind about rook and vil i can change my mind about idia

all it takes is people who loves him!!

[fuckyeahjasonschwartzman]

im becoming a fan bc of spiderverse and i love your blog <3 ive seen a couple wes anderson movies/scott pilgrim but are there any movies or shows you’d recommend? thank u!!

okay so fair warning, outside of the animated movies, the wes anderson ones, and spvtw, pretty much all jschwartz movies and shows are going to contain something mildly graphic at the least. usually it's weird sex which I think is awesome but I can't recommend viewing if you're a minor (most of my followers aren't tho so I'm not worried)

anyway, here are recs with my personal thoughts! (reading the little reviews is not mandatory but suggested? I guess if you want a better idea of what you're getting into)

Shopgirl (2005)

Besides Steve Martin's absolutely rancid performance, I'm actually a huge fan of this movie and I think it's so enjoyable. it's not a masterpiece, but there was clearly a lot of intent and thought put into the design choices and cinematography (I've written papers on the color symbolism!) and though the story isn't amazingly coherent because it was adapted from a much better written novella, it is still at least enjoyable. I love the atmosphere, and I think it's a very unconventional romance film that explores the unhealthy relationships that are glamorized in similar media as sexy and desirable (ray porter is a character that existed before, and yet still makes fun of toxic love interests like christian gray). and I like how it extremely accurately represents what it's like being a severely depressed lonely woman.

I'm inherently biased here because I watched this movie for the first time while I was in an abusive relationship and it still really resonates with me. most people luckily do not experience that so I'm a bit of an outlier here :')

2. I Heart Huckabees (2004)

I have no deeper reason for loving IHH I just find it delightful. it's weird, it's confusing, its kinda gross, it's shocking and you don't start understanding it unless you think about it really hard for a while. it's essentially a beginner's guide to different schools and concepts in philosophy, which I'm a big ol sucker for. lovely message that I believe is handled better than a lot of movies who go for the existentialism thing. not a fan of the director, but this movie is pretty enjoyable and leaves you with a lot to think about (if you're into that). LOVE the score.

3. Spun (2002)

INITIAL WARNING THIS MOVIE IS DISGUSTING. and I love it. it's so fun and experimental especially with the editing and cinematography, the pacing is insane, not to the mention the animation, the color correction, the everything... has one of the most amazingly satisfying closing shots in a movie, ever. but it's definitely not for the faint of heart, if you can't sit through watching someone snort meth off a urinal stall or a close up of someone injecting themselves with a needle, this is definitely not for you. (not to mention the sex, again).

4. Marie Antoinette (2006)

yayy finally an option that most people agree is good! unless you're French. I was almost named Antoinette after my French g-g-gma (got named after my French g-g-g-gpa Raymond instead), plus rococo is a huge interest of mine so I adore this movie. it was shot on location at Versailles, the costumes are GORGEOUS, and almost everything is accurate! it has a mixed classical-modern soundtrack and aesthetic that I find very effective in getting its message across. however I do tend to like this movie more than most because I know who everyone is and what's happening already! it's based on a biography by Antonia Frasier which is sitting next to me as I type this lol.

5. Funny People (2009)

HEAR ME OUT. OKAY. mark taylor jackson was my "ohhh shit this dude's hot" moment and this movie was The Beginning for me. YES, it's an Adam Sandler movie co-starring Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill. AND YES. I FIND IT TO BE AN EFFECTIVE DRAMA. I don't like drama in film in general, I find most to be very unrealistic and unrelatable for me so I get bored easily, but I do think this weirdly works? I love how it's kind of an introspective look at Adam Sandler's career, with liberties taken, and the characters seem to actually have some chemistry and realism to them, even in the sillier moments. jason schwartzman is super cute. need I say more.

6. S1m0ne (2002)

ok, admittedly jason isn't in this one too much. and yet it's still worth mentioning because it's an insanely underrated and likeable movie! if anything al pacino is hot, and the entire premise is so unsettling and dystopian in an ACTUALLY WELL HANDLED sci-fi manner (good sci-fi concepts tend not to be "what ifs" but allegories for things that are actually happening already). S1m0ne is a criticism of hollywood, celebrity culture, and mass media, and it's genuinely just so creative to me. another contender for the best ending shot in cinema. ALSO, very pretty cinematography and a very fun early 2000s feel to it. the writer/director also wrote the Truman Show iirc!

7. Bored to Death

saving TV for last. let me tell you one thing! if you're looking for jason schwartzman at his best, you need to watch this show. it is so funny, so entertaining, and best of all, every character in it is so terrible and fucked up and it's wonderful. it's crazy, but grounded in reality, which makes it even crazier. jason schwartzman plays a hopeless romantic author who's boredom and disappointing love life lead him to becoming an "unlicensed private detective" who accepts jobs through craigslist. also there are zach galifianakis and ted danson, who play the two other main characters. the entire premise of the show is these three guys getting high and solving mysteries together and it's phenomenal. there's an actual episode where jason runs down the streets of brooklyn in full leather bdsm gear. there's an episode about furry sex. It's so weird and perverted and SUCH a good comedy noir(?) I can't not recommend it, despite having the worst fucking ending out of anything ever cause it got canceled.

tldr: I like bad movies

there are a ton more I could go ok about but these are the ones I personally enjoy the most. good luck

[margridarnauds]

top three period dramas?

Not counting musicals, because it would be a rigged game then:

(1) I, Claudius. Yes, it's inaccurate. Yes, its portrayal of the women of the Julio-Claudian dynasty is undoubtedly sexist, not helped by the fact that Robert Graves was a massive sexist. Yes, it's based on something by Robert Graves, who, as a Celticist, I am professionally obliged to have a strong hatred for.

But it's also well done, the actors are all phenomenal, I quote things from it every day ("WHERE ARE MY EAGLES?" "Don't eat the figs, dear" "You may kiss me and go" "Uncle CLAAAAAAUDDDDDIIIUUUUSSSS" "IS THERE ANYONE IN ROME WHO HAS NOT SLEPT WITH MY DAUGGGHHHHHTAAAAHHHH"), and for something that was made with a limited budget, I think they actually do a good job of showing the intimate world of the dynasty in a way that a lot of more recent series (Rome) failed to do with bigger sets, and the scriptwriters deserve credit for dusting off Graves' incredibly dry prose and making an adaptation that's crackling with wit in just about every scene for all of its six episode run length.

(2) Pride and Prejudice (1995). Such a shame that there hasn't been one made since then, but I can't blame them, given this set such a high standard. As a child, me and my mom were up to 2 AM watching it because we had no idea how it was going to end and we kept going "just one more episode!" until we'd reached the end.

And sharing third place: The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) and Ladyhawke (1985) -- Both of them were formative for me. The Man in the Iron Mask is very much putting multiple experienced actors together and letting them ham it up alongside Leonardo DiCaprio alongside gorgeous sets and costumes with a great score by Nick Glennie-Smith. It has next to no accuracy to the OG novel, it's wildly historically inaccurate, but my god it's *fun*. Ladyhawke, meanwhile, is probably one of my favorite depictions of the Middle Ages, specifically because it doesn't go into either the extreme of the Dung Ages or the extreme of, say, the 1950s where everyone is looking absolutely pristine. I think it's a nice compromise between the two of them. The plot itself, of two lovers forced to change shape, always together, never apart, by the machinations of a wicked bishop, reads like something from a medieval romance, even though I know, logically, that it isn't, just because it really does capture the *feeling* of the era. (And I will not hear a bad word against the soundtrack.)

Bonus round: Brennus, Enemy of Rome. This film is not good, but it IS the only film adaptation of Brennus' Invasion of Rome to date and...believe me, it being good would ruin the fun of it. ("KILL THE ROMANSSSSS ARRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH" Best introduction to an antagonist ever.)

[qqueenofhades]

honestly, reading comics canon & the end of said comics canon while at the same time reading really well-thought-out takes like AITWW which takes what is, indeed, a beautiful queer bit of unpredictability flung into an otherwise faithful adaptation of comics canon and turns it into a whole story of its own-- is really making me personally excited for all the ways fanfic writers can use that as a Spanner in the Works/disruptor for Morpheus's canon ending. being Also An Old that potential gets me far more than anything canon may or may not do with hob, personally.

(which is to say thanks, AITWW has made my own creative brain do several backflips of excited Possibilities. so many possible stories.)

I mean... yeah. Obviously there are a lot of queer characters/themes in the Sandman to start with, but I think everyone imprinted on Dreamling like a baby duckling because a) it fulfills the obvious Grumpy/Sunshine trope that fandom loves, and b) it offers the thing that everyone loved about Our Flag Means Death, where the queer characters got to talk to each other, share interests, develop over time, and actually offer a real emotional basis to ship them as lovers. Of course, OFMD did that in ten episodes as opposed to just the back half of Sandman 1.06, but it's the same thing. And also, I would note that despite all the other queer representations/characters in the show, there isn't really anyone else to actively ship in a canon-supported LGBTQ context? We see Johanna's lover Rachel die in the same episode that we meet her, the Corinthian's entire life motto is be gay and do crimes but you don't exactly ship a serial-killing nightmare with any of the minor characters who he menaces and/or eats, Hal is great but still a bit-part player who gets paired off with Carl in the background, and Alex and Paul are already out of the picture by the end of the first episode. (Besides, Alex, keeping the dude you desperately want to fuck locked up in the basement for decades even after your terrible dad is dead is, uh, Bad.)

Fandom can, of course, imagine and headcanon interactions between various queer characters, but as far as an active, possible, ongoing relationship goes, where we are shown them developing feelings for each other and the narrative makes a point of underscoring them in a romantic context, Hob and Dream are kind of IT. Many shows just throw a queer couple in there as token representation and don't really take the time to actually show why they're compatible as a pairing, but there's so much possibility with Hob and Dream both that is already depicted in-show and can easily be extrapolated from the source material, the actors' and writers' interviews, the themes that are present in their narrative, and so forth. They're one of the most deeply romantic interactions in the whole show, despite never explicitly verbalizing their feelings or having any physical moments. You genuinely believe that these two immortal beings are truly affected by each other, they have incredibly complex feelings about each other, it absolutely means something special for them to reunite, and that no matter what happens, they will never entirely let go of each other. Which I think is a credit to the acting, writing, and how quickly we got that in the course of 20-30 minutes in one episode.

So yes: Dreamling IS a deeply queer and deeply romantic disruption of the source material (in a good way), and offers possibilities that have already been foreclosed or minimalized in other storylines, including in comics canon itself. They're one of the relatively few moments of sheer queer happiness, they were left open-ended and in a good place, Dream is obviously the main character of the whole series so developing a queer relationship for him is more than just what's going on in the background, and I really hope they continue to lean into this when writing/planning future seasons. Obviously, I love them and want to see more of them, but I feel Some Kinda Way about queer immortals, who can persist in all ages and eras of history, and not be consigned to just die, whether from narrative carelessness or Bury Your Gays or whatever else. There's something incredibly powerful about queer characters who literally can't be killed (also why I imprinted on Old Guard so much), and who are shown experiencing and overcoming adversity in so many different ways, and at the end of it, still choosing to keep living. I just have many feelings about that.

[sainteda]

Hiya! I saw this gifset of Kit speaking about the Wesper slow burn romance in the book vs the fast-paced relationship in the show, and I just thought I'd share it with you 😅

[Link]

hello! <3

thank you for sharing!! i don't keep up with panels or cast stuff at all anymore so i prob would have never seen this otherwise.

i've seen a few people make the same point kit makes, and i think what frustrates me is that the problem with show!wesper isn't necessarily a lack of realism or age-appropriateness (i don't actually know who is arguing that) but the error in the heart of the adaptation. because yes, sure, with older characters certain behaviour will change, so the new dynamics makes Sense (although i would like to say adding more sex is quite literally just the least challenging way of portraying an aged-up character, it is absolutely not a requisite for maturity or realism lol) — but why should it have to?? why adapt a series with the crows as half-fledged, aged-up backdrop characters (who later overshadow the supposed central plot in repeated bouts of cheap fan service) instead of one where they keep their original ages? in the duology, the crows being teenagers is literally crucial to the theme of the story. everything is 10x more impactful and devastating because of how young they are. those ages have purpose. changing them has more consequences than just changing wesper, but i'll never shut up if i start talking about them and i briefly mentioned a few qualms in The Essay, so...

obviously i don't expect kit to say/believe that the show is splintered at its core and tear apart the whole thing but yk 😭

yes, based on the changes, there's nothing illogical about a fast-paced wesper, but also — "if we're a slow burn, everyone's a slow burn" — GOOD?!!!! i have never ever met anyone who doesn't like a slow burn. it's not like slow burns pigeonhole their ships into repetitive tropes; they're universal and can be done a thousand different ways. show!wesper, however 'logical' their development may be as adults (and i'd argue the rush, the forgotten one night stand, the appalling lack of wylan as an individual and the half-hazard attempt at jesper's arc leaves Much to be desired) lacks the deliberately paced mutual longing, (mis)understanding, acceptance, trust, and love that makes book!wesper so great.

i've already talked about my discomfort with show!wesper as the only built and established lgbtq+ rep considering fivan vanished this season and if you blinked you could have missed tamadia entirely, but i will reiterate again that i think that's where A LOT of people's discomfort stems from as well. i think some people arguing in favour of show!wesper might be missing that aspect because it's a very individual, personal gripe. i won't pretend six of crows didn't lean into the bi promiscuity stereotype occasionally, but i've always loved nina and jesper and honestly never felt misrepresented or offended reading either of them. they were both capable, full characters with plenty of other attributes, virtues and vices like all the other characters. on the other hand, a fast paced lazily aged wesper, the liberal handling of jesper as comedic relief with an established pattern for sleeping around (including during important missions), the lack of mention for nina's sexuality OR explicit recognition of jesper's for that matter, all rubbed me the wrong way. personally. and that's not to mention wylan's disability being used as a prop for wesper angst, making me get angry all over again about the way kaz's disability was handled and inej's trauma and and and...

listen, i could complain forever and still find more to complain about. it'll just go on and on. sorry, once i get started i don't know how to be normal or rational about this show, i hope you don't regret your message and ty again 😭

[bigcutebutt]

oh yes, i wanted to talk about this. omegle shut down last year. i only found out in the last week or so

i'm going to be weirdly honest about something i would have otherwise kept to myself forever, but i spent far too much time there, for many, many years of my life. only in text chat, i dont know who in their right mind would want to do the video chat lol. mostly, it was a fruitless and self-destructive behavior that left me feeling not good, but i can't help feeling sad it's just outright gone now, since it was always there for me on and off over so long

as you can probably guess, i used it to talk about what i like to call "weird things" and what now most people call "kinks" - but it's always more complicated than that for me. generally i would roleplay as some exaggerated ideal self - deliberately too exaggerated to be believable, of course (i wasn't trying to deceive). i didn't like to "roleplay" as if i was actually physically interacting with people, i just liked to roleplay that i was someone else, an ideal me, typing on a computer on omegle.com

what made it so special to me was that it was completely ephemeral. usually i'm someone who likes to hoard data, but the way omegle worked was absolutely ideal for exploring myself. every conversation was fresh, and i could try new approaches to "being myself" that had generally zero consequences (with the caveat that of course i never tried to upset or hurt anyone!). nobody had a pre-existing idea of who i was. there was no false image i could possibly build around myself. i could try out human interaction in a distinctly private way. (when people wished to keep in touch outside of omegle, i almost invariably failed completely at keeping anything going)

the relation this has to gender is blindingly obvious, of course. just like literally everything i post about

(though the recurring faces who would show up in the same tags over years and years were an exception to this, but interesting to think about. a weird sense of texture, other lonely people repeating the same fantasies over years of their lives just as i was, for better or worse. fuck you, michael) (sorry to any michaels reading this)

it is probably a good thing that the temptation to go on omegle can never recur for me, given how many nights i ended up disgusted with myself. but again, something is lost forever. a kind of opportunity for self-exploration is lost - one uniquely suited to my own neuroses about being observed. not to mention the general trend of the internet of my youth vanishing piece by piece

as i often complain about, im not sure how to explore myself now when im on my own. its harder for me than it is for others. i dont masturbate, so i cant do what literally everyone else ive met does. i guess i'm just saying that publicly now. i might be too old to even need to explore myself now (but a philosophy of "its never too late" is certainly admirable). but damn it, sometimes i'm just in a mood!

i can only hope that i keep evolving and changing, indefinitely. and hopefully in a way that involves becoming even weirder

theres so much more to say about omegle culture - there were truly so many little quirks that will remain with me forever, especially in the weirder tags. it's an embarrassing part of my life, but also, i think, an important and telling one. sometimes i wanted desperately to have close friends who would keep me from going on it, as if helping me with an addiction - but i never quite achieved that with anyone. but it's still sad. it's an ending. and like most endings on the internet for me, nothing takes its place. i refuse to adapt to the new internet, the web of smartphone apps. its just another part of me that is now vanished. sealed. retired