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#and theyre still iconic two decades later
bubbieboy · 1 month
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the boys really do just stick to people. Like little fungi
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youareunbearable · 3 years
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Catch me not having a clue who any of these gods(?) and people are, but still sitting here like, "I ship that pretty one with the gruff one, and that brown haired one with the other(?) gruff one?" without knowing names or what this is except the fanart I see you reblog, because this fandom apparently has lots of nice art
Fam i have no idea what ur talking about or when u sent this im so sorry asfkjhfkjhf but i thiiiinnnkkkk??????? it’s “Heavens Official Blessing” or  Tiān Guān Cì Fú (TGCF for tagging stuff) its originally a chinese gay novel that is soooooooo long by the author  Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (MXTX) who wrote 2 (two?????) other novels that I know of that are also gay historical fantasy but i personally havent actually read TGCF???? im just watching the anime and looking at the wiki and reading fanfics so i have a vague idea whats going on but not really???? so i cant really give a good review BUT i LOVE THE CHARACTERS MXTX WRITES SO MUCH AFHAFKFHKFAKF IM SO SORRY IM SHIT WITH TAGGING SO U HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IM HYPER FIXATING ON BUT
LISTEN
LISTEN 
LISTEN
Pretty one and the gruff one im THINKING is He Xuan (or Ming Yi/ Ming-Xiong/Ming Bro) for the grumpy one and Shi Qingxuan for the pretty one and both are kinda gender fluid?? (more Shi Qingxuan but they both change their forms to be both women and men which is Iconic and the anime put her in the TRANS FLAG COLOUR instead of her canon white and green which is ICONIC) AND THHEYRE SO TRAGIC AND HOT AND I CRY JUST THINKING ABOUT THEIR STORY LIKE AFHDFKJAFDSGS like i want to kinda read the book just for them, the two super minor characters, but i also read somewhere that their story doesn’t really have a clean ending so im also holding back from just getting Emotionally Hurt because im a cancer and i know it’ll wreck me
I think The Two Gruff Idiots are Feng Xin (dark haired gruff boy) and Mu Qing (brown haired gruff boy) and theyre both martial gods and both knew each other for over 800 years and both tried to take care of Actual Human And Heavenly Disaster Xie Lian, failed, and tried to do it again 800 years later but with stupid glasses with moustaches in hopes that Xie Lian cant figure out that they care about him but OOPS Xie Lian does in fact have the braincell of the three of them fajfafjajf 
Heres the link to watch the anime, there are 11 eps rn but it updates every weekend (I dont actually know when but i watch it on sundays) Make sure u have ur ad block on tho lol there is a manga too and the art style is TO DIE FOR like its GORGEOUS but its roughly at the same pace as the anime so eh
Heres where to read the whole thing online, just a warning its BIG AS FUCK like 244? plus extras I think?? 
I’d also recommend MXTX’s other books!
Mo Dao Zu Shi (or Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation/ The Untamed/MDZS) is both a Book as well as an Anime (the whole thing is on youtube) , a Live Action which you can watch on Netflix (look up Untamed, also a warning, the plot is a little different from the book and anime cause of uhhh censorship?? also i guess to make it more live drama friendly, my friends an i binged it and really liked it, but some of the fandom doesn’t), a manga which is not finished I think???? idk im not caught up, and a fucking chinese AUDIO DRAMA LIKE BITCH ITS SO WELL DONE but i have to stop listening sometimes cause like there is a difference between watching/reading characters kiss, and then like just hearing them, i get so embarrassed i have to skip the kissing scenes and god forbid i accidentally click on the smutty extras alfjajlfjalfjaljf u can find it on youtube, i linked the one i listen to but i havent finished it and i don’t think it’s all of it, but you can find other episodes/chapters easily
Its about 1 Dumb Yet So Smart gay/bi man (Wei Wuxian) who honestly tries his fucking best, fucks up everything, dies for over a decade, and then is forcefully brought back to life to solve a murder mystery with the guy who has been in Super Gay Love with him since they were teens (Lan Zhan), a bunch of teens Who Are Just Honestly Here For A Good Time And Yet (Lan Juniors, Jin Ling, and Best Boy Ouyang Zizhen ) while badly hiding his real identity from all the people he knows, including his foster brother (Jiang Cheng) who is out for blood and hunting his ass down with a whip and also Lan Zhan who is travelling with him. Also the Killer. There is a killer on the loose and is willing to murder whoever to keep their secrets. Also Nie Huaisang. I adore him and his brother Nie Mingjue, if there is one bitch u gotta remember from this summary it’s this little twink (he and his brother also have a fucking spin off movie from the live action drama THAT I HAVENT BEEN ABLE TO FIND A ENGLISH SUB VERSION AND ITS BEEN KILLING ME SINCE I STARTED WATCHING THIS SHOW LAST YEAR. GOOGLE GIVE ME MY FAVOURITE TWINK AND HIS BEAR OF A BROTHER HAVING A FUN FAMILY ROAD TRIP!!!!!!!)
My Personal Current Favourite is Scum Villain’s Self Saving System (SVSSS) which is SOOOOOOO FUNNY Like it’s not as popular cause the comic was discontinued, and the anime looks like its from 2005 with the weird 3D animation but its my current comfort media!!! 
Its basically about a spite reading millennial (Shen Yuan) who died after reading a REALLY awful popular cheesy smut harem novel (think like 50 shade series but worse cause the protag had 600 wives) and was forced into the body of a minor but important villain (the protagonist’s teacher, Shen Qingqiu) from the novel who was fated to die with all his limbs cut off and his eyes and tongue plucked out and is told he has to fix the story so its not trash, he reasonably freaks the fuck out and hugs the protagonists (Luo Binghe) thigh so hard he turns him gay without realizing. Sadly, he does have to make sure certain plot points happen, which fucks him over a lot,  and he thinks Luo Binghe still wants to kill him instead of love him cause he has the Emotional Intelligence of a Rock, but its so funny reading about him handling all the awful tropey stuff, like imagine u have to be a character in My Immortal But With Porn?????? without breaking out of character too much?? I wouldn’t be able to handle it ajhakfkfhjfj He also finds out that he’s not the only transmigrator in the novel either, but it doesn’t matter cause theyre both So Fucking Stupid Collectively but everyone would honestly die for the both of them
warning for this story though, the main relationship is a teacher/student relationship, but nothing happens until the student is in his 20s and also kinda not his student anymore cause he’s running hell??? but if that squicks u out i totally understand and offer you to PLEASE still enjoy some of this media, and instead of the BingQiu ship, I offer you the LiuQiu one, where both me and the main character cry over how a beautiful man/fellow immortal lord loves the main character so much that he literally fought every day for 5 years to be by his side and I Think Thats Beautiful and I kinda like this ship more than the main one tbh PLEASE just look at the art for Liu Qingge because i love him so much, he’s like if you took Lan Zhan and Jiang Cheng from MDZS and mashed them into one beautiful man the author is trying to tell me is straight but u take one look at him And Tell Me Otherwise
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saints-row-2 · 6 years
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film watch day 31: Every Halloween Film
happy Halloween today i watched every Halloween film currently available to me. i couldnt get to rewatch Halloween 2018 but i already wrote about it a couple of weeks back so feel free to revisit that post. anyway, i watched ten Halloween movies today. It took around 17 hours. i started at 11:15am and im writing this now at 6 am.
so lets get to the post. for the most part i went in chronological order, except i chose to start with Rob Zombie’s remakes because i knew if i didnt id be finishing the day by watching them at the break of dawn and the idea of doing that was so fucking putrid to me that i decided to get them out of the way first.
Halloween (2007)
i hate this fucking movie. i mentioned in an ask the other day but im happy to repeat here, i dont hate the idea of expanding on Michael’s backstory. like the fact is we largely know his backstory, the issue is how this film chose to portray it. the original Halloween is frightening because its based around the idea that the seemingly safe, quiet suburbs are not as safe as they seem; you can be on a street youve known your entire life, only a few metres from your own home, and still at risk. the whole idea of showing Michael as a murderer when he was six is to tell us that anyone could be a threat, that our conventions that all killers are a particular kind of person is false.
Halloween 2007 says fuck that, we know what serial killers are, and theyre those poor kids who come from shitty neighbourhoods and have abusive parents and mothers who are sex workers. everything that Halloween brings to the table is fucking tedious, played out, and massively uninspired. it wants to bring us the truth about why Michael is like he is, but Rob Zombie’s only understanding of serial killers is in the cliche and exploitative. he has nothing honest about human nature to show us, only the exact same stories that have been fed to us by crime and horror movies past.
this film is incredibly loud and in fucking constant motion. even on steady shots of still scenes the camera constantly shakes, and in every other scene its always whirling around from tracking shot to panning over the scene to just idly zooming in and out of nothing. Zombie’s favourite shot is to have something large and out of focus in the foreground -- like some plants -- and to shoot the characters standing about six feet away muttering to themselves. every single fucking shot in this movie lingers too long, every scene drags a little longer than it needs to. this film moves with the pace that i would describe as “family guy gag”.
and this film is so loud. people are always talking or screaming, largely about nothing important or interesting. theres always music, but it never particularly adds anything; for reasons i fail to fucking understand the entirety of the original theme plays over mostly uninteresting tracking shots of a minor character walking around yelling filler lines about nothing.
the writing is horseshit. everyone in this film is vile, no one talks or behaves like real human beings. almost every exchange in this movie is the characters saying the exact same thing back and forth inanely, frequently punctuated by screaming FUCK as loudly as possible and talking about sex in a way that 40 year old men really really wished teenage girls talk about sex. Halloween (2007) is thoughtlessly gross and mean and nasty, disconnected from any kind of human sensitivity and empathy. it wants to be complicated and to be deep but its crushingly simplistic and stupid. the only thing that redeems it is that its not Halloween II (2009). speaking of which...
Halloween II (2009)
jesus christ this movie is so fucking boring. Halloween II is two hours long but feels like its about twenty hours long. i felt like i was watching this film for twenty days and twenty nights. i was trapped in an eternal purgatory with this movie.
i really cant fucking emphasise how boring this film is. endless scene after scene of nothing of consequence happening, uninteresting death scenes that add nothing, and Michael wandering around doing jack shit. Halloween II fucking made Michael Myers boring, and im saying this as someone who (as i repeat once every 8 seconds) has a tattoo of him. this film couldnt hold MY interest in two of my favourite characters of all time.
the big fun new addition from the first movie is the presence of Michael and Laurie’s mother as a kind of weird goth ghost guiding Michael to kill. i dont know why Michael had to be Jason Voorhees and be a mommy’s boy all of a sudden, but this addition brings absolutely nothing of interest to the film or to his character. its meant to be symbolic of fucking... something im sure, but it feels meaningless. somehow Michael and Laurie are both able to see and interact with this ghost and the ghost has an agenda to do... something? it feels about as intelligent and coherent as the bullshit cult of thorne shit from 6, but a lot less fun. at some point Michael Myers apparently has mind control powers?
not to repeat myself a hundred fucking times but this film is insanely unpleasant to watch. every scene someone is screaming, generally wailing “fuck you bitch” at anyone in their vicinity. this is two hours of people howling swear words at each other and not infrequently making rape jokes. Rob Zombie loves rape jokes! almost as much as he loves putting sexual assault in his movies over and over again for no reason.
there is nothing to enjoy in this film. theres nothing to gain. there is too much slow-mo and far too many strobe lights and absolutely nothing of any intelligence or grace. Halloween II is a thirteen year old boy in a korn T-shirt calling his mom a bitch while he draws zombies on  the back of his homework, which he will get an F for because the only thing he wrote was “reading is for faggots”.
Halloween (1978)
what the fuck can i say. this is one of the greatest horror movies ever made, if not the greatest. its one of my favourite movies. its forty years old and still just as chilling and frightening as it ever was. it has some shot composition and cinematography thats up with the best ive ever seen, all while being shot on a budget of $300,000. it does more with less than just about any film, launched the slasher genre, shot Jamie Lee Curtis to stardom and created a pop culture icon that stayed strong for decades. its a masterclass in tension and suspense, a lean-cut perfectly paced film with heaps of atmosphere and character.
i love this film with a frantic passion that makes me unable to talk about it in a particularly helpful way. i cant “review” Halloween. I love this film beyond reason and sense and you either get it or you dont.
Halloween II (1981)
Halloween II is largely one of the less remembered entries in the franchise; its a decent enough movie, neither matching up to the highs of the original or the lows of the later films. its a pretty enjoyable little film, created under the logic of ‘well the first one did well, lets do the same thing again’. Carpenter wrote the script but didn’t direct, and while the film has a solid story, the directing lacks his signature flair. its hard to pinpoint, because the film is generally fairly well-shot, but lacks a kind of eye for shot composition that Carpenter made look easy, doesnt have as much patience for suspense.
on its own merits, theres still some great shots and great scenes in the movie. and a lot of really cool kills; II got a lot more creative with what Michael was capable of, and i think the boiling water drowning kill is rightfully pretty infamous.
this was the last Halloween movie Carpenter wrote, and it was the film where the idea of Laurie and Michael being siblings was introduced. and believe me ill defend this fucking decision to the grave. adding the human connection between Michael and Laurie gives a whole other layer to their relationship thats so fascinating to me, and i love that other films try to expand on the themes of family. in general, deciding that this film would continue to focus on Laurie and not do what later slashers did with bouncing around between different casts was a great fucking move, ironically for a franchise that was intended to be an anthology.
quietly exploring the aftermath of the first film was a good idea for a follow-up, and i especially really enjoy Loomis’ role in this movie, and his discussion about who Myers is. the biggest disappointment for me personally is that Laurie lacks a lot of presence in this film. Curtis is great, as always, but the movie dawdles on some side characters who are too disconnected from her to get a sense of what shes going through.
all that being said, Halloween II is decent. the ending is really great, with some really powerful shots. Michael bleeding from the eyes of his mask after Laurie shoots him is one of the best fucking images in horror and him swinging blindly as Laurie and Loomis slowly orchestrate his death is a fucking amazing scene. i have an immense fondness for this movie, with all its flaws. it brings a lot of really cool concepts to the table, and i think it deserves some appreciation.
heres a question tho; where the fuck were Laurie’s parents. theres a suggestion theyre missing, but theres no explanation why and we never hear from them. did michael kill them too? hello? mr and mrs strode? your daughter just fucking killed a guy and all her friends are dead. where the fuck are you.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Halloween III is infamous as being the Halloween movie that isn’t about Michael Myers at all. when it first released it was wildly unpopular and remained so for quite a while, but has had a surge in popularity over the last few years. i think just about every horror critic i know now considers Halloween III one of the best in the franchise. and to be fair to it, its a great little movie. not a slasher at all but rather a conspiracy thriller, Halloween III is all about the mystery of what the Silver Shamrock mask-making company are really up to, and why people are disappearing. its a weird and creative little movie, with some really fucking great practical effects that turn it from just being a thriller to being an all-out horror film. it has a few too many ineffective jumpscares and some of the plot twists are kind of disappointing and feel a little too much like the easy option -- and then others are so wildly bizarre no one would see them coming because theyre fucking completely out there. but i kind of love that sort of nonsense in a horror movie. like lets just have a fucking good time in here for once in our fucking lives.
Halloween III is not a perfect or even a really great movie, but yknow, fuck it. the idea that only perfect films are worth watching is dumb. i appreciate the weird shit this film tried and i think it deserves a lot more respect than what it got; if it had been released under another title it probably would have gone down as a classic instead of being derided for years, you ask me.
now things start going rapidly downhill
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
Halloween 4 is when Jamie is introduced as the new final girl; Laurie’s seven year old daughter, after Laurie herself died off-screen in a fucking car crash. the decision to kill off Laurie came from Jamie Lee Curtis decided not to return to the character and instead of recasting her, they went with just having her… die. off-screen. in the franchise where the previous two movies were about her triumph and determination to stay alive. like its the casual thoughtlessness of this that, the idea no one would give a shit a character returned, that in my eyes epitomises how fucking little anyone cared about this franchise going forward.
man the idea of Laurie dying completely irrelevant to Michael… thats a lot. anyway continuing on his quest to erase anyone related to him, Michael starts targeting his niece Jamie for the three movies in the franchise. this is where the series started rapidly losing any grip on reality. while Michael always had some kind of superhuman elements to him (he took six bullets to the chest and survived in the first movie) these became increasingly wildly exaggerated. now hes crushing peoples skulls with his bare hands shit like what the fuck. first of all do that to me and secondly, it was this kind of slide into unreality that let the supernatural elements of the series creep in further until you end up with the shitshow that is Halloween 6. like it was the decrease in the impact of violence and human life that really fucked this franchise over.
this film is not great. its a definite decline in quality after 2 and was on the slippery slope downwards. it has some high points, primarily in Dr Loomis. Donald Pleasance is a better actor than most movies deserve and brings gravitas to a role that in the hands of a less capable actor would be laughable. his sincere plea to Michael at one point to just kill him instead of going after Jamie is honestly fucking tragic.
outside of that, the film isnt massively interesting. Michael himself isnt particularly threatening or engaging, and his mask looks like shit in this film. the characters in this film are largely very stupid, also, which doesnt help anything much.
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
if theres a Halloween movie people talk about the least, its this one. II has the sibling twist, III is the black sheep, 4 is the return, even 6 gets talked about for its troubled production history. no one has anything to say about Halloween 5. and thats mostly because there is fucking nothing to say about Halloween 5. it is a relentlessly fucking dull movie that pads out its 100 minute run time with endless unnecessary scenes of shit that does… nothing. this film is dull in a way that i find incredibly detestable. i cant even watch it through a haze of impassioned anger like i can with the also incredible dull Halloween II (2009). its just fucking boring. every single scene drags like its trying to walk on two broken legs. the plot is so bare bones its nonsensical. it constantly adds new characters and new elements but all that does is makes it more incoherent and confusing. watching this movie i literally found my fucking eyes glazing over in my skull. if this film was edited correctly it would be twenty minutes long. i cannot fucking emphasise enough how much of relentless slog it is. Halloween 4 was dull but even that had the lifeline of ‘some cool ideas’. Halloween 5 is nothing. Halloween 5 is puddle dirt water.
Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers
if Halloween 5 is puddle dirt water Halloween 6 is just a fresh hot glass of piss. there are two versions of Halloween 6, the director’s cut and the theatrical release, and both are wretched. this film went full ham with introducing the supernatural elements, telling us that Michael was his whole life psychically controlled by a pagan cult called the Cult of Thorne in order to make Halloween scary again or summon the devil or who fucking cares. this movie is fucking insufferably dull, totally absurd, and wildly unsympathetic. i loathe Halloween 6 and every terrible, stupid plot decision it makes. Paul Rudd defeats Michael Myers by drawing druid symbols on the ground and Michael just gives up and lies down. theres a baby that does nothing and serves no purpose. Halloween is apparently banned in Haddonfield, which makes this more closely related to Footloose than Halloween i think. this film takes itself incredibly seriously while spouting nothing but total fucking bullshit drivel and i dont believe that anyone involved in this movie, from the cast to the cameraman to the guy who served the lunch had any faith in this movie outside of the vague hope it might make money and i wish this movie had been burned at the stake. also i hate Paul Rudd.
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
oh thank fucking god finally some good fucking food. Halloween H20 took the decision to retcon all the sequels (except II) twenty years before Halloween 2018, proving that everyone knew 5 and 6 were fucking mistakes.
this film loses a lot of the Halloween feeling in favour of making a more generic late 1990s/early 2000s style horror. theres nothing particularly interesting about the way this movie is directed or shot, the music is largely very generic, it has a generally uninteresting glossy quality to it that studio movies always do. its very obvious this movie was inspired by Scream and it looks a lot more like Scream than it does Halloween. all of this makes me kind of sad, but other films in the franchise have proved that other directors generally are not capable of imitating Carpenter’s style so maybe its better they dont really try.
what H20 does so well, and the reason i love it so much, is that it explores the relationship between Michael and Laurie, which is something im endlessly fascinated with. this was the first movie to have Laurie shake off her fear and rise up against Michael, and while it doesnt do it with quite as much depth and intelligence as Halloween 2018, it still has a fucking good crack at Laurie’s character, and its still powerful watching her turn on the man who terrorised her for years. Michael is great in this movie too; while he has a terrible mask, watching him back on his shit as a furious force of nature who wants nothing more than to destroy anyone who gets in his way.
honestly i kind of enjoy having a Halloween in a different style; theres something fun about seeing characters recontextualised and done with justice and empathy. most of the Halloween sequels before this one (and after, looking at Resurrection) are shallow, unconcerned with any kind of emotional depth or personality. and while a lot of the stock filler characters in H20 who are lined up for the chopping block arent that interesting and dont particularly standout, watching Jamie Lee Curtis’ performance and seeing her interplay with Michael is enough. and most of the side characters arent particularly annoying, which is more than i can say for half this franchise.
this film also has what is one of my absolute favourite endings in a movie ever; the final confrontation between Michael and Laurie has a particular interaction between them that i absolutely adore and that alone is enough to make this movie one of my favourites.
H20 isnt perfect; it weirdly feels like a blueprint that Halloween 2018 would later refine into a better movie, but the idea its going to be completely disregarded for Halloween 2018 in the future makes me a little sad. in the face of so many fucking mediocre and awful Halloween sequels it did the right thing in trying to focus on what actually mattered; the connection between Michael and Laurie, although i dont feel like it succeeded in making Michael as scary as 2018 would much later. that said, the shot where Michael and Laurie just stare at each other through the glass of a window? that gives me chills every time. and hearing the Halloween theme kick in as Laurie marches off into the school with an axe looking for Michael is so fucking triumphant.
i love H20 even if Michael’s mask looks like his hair was dunked in a bucket of water and then gently blow-dried. i have no idea why it looks so fucking stupid in this movie. why is it so hard to get Michael’s mask right. you wouldnt think it was that fucking hard. anyway, i really fucking love Laurie Strode a lot, which didnt help to make Resurrection any easier to swallow.
Halloween: Resurrection
so whats the obvious thing to do after you have a movie where the power and emotion all comes from the emotional catharsis of seeing a woman get her vengeance on her tormentor? you, uh, make a sequel in which she is immediately defeated and pointlessly killed after its revealed her victory at the end of the previous film was entirely false, and then you never return to focus on her and instead introduce a horde of entirely uninteresting stock characters. yeah, makes sense.
Resurrection is fucking incredibly stupid, in the kind of fucking hysterical way only really bad horror movies can capture. theres absolutely nothing of Halloween in this other than the presence of Michael, who just as easily could have been replaced with anyone or anything. the story has a group of people on a reality show staying in the Myers house to… stay there? its not entirely clear what the challenge is meant to be, other than to just be inside the house, which i imagine gets to be pretty dull viewing pretty quickly. theres no suggestion theyre like, hunting for ghosts or something along those lines, theyre just… looking at stuff.
Michael slopes around this movie like he doesnt fucking understand where he is or whats going on, an entirely out of place relic of better times past while the cast cavorts around him doing nothing of interest and having no plots or characterisation to speak of. the film has exactly two or three funny moments, including the legendary ‘Michael Myers getting electrocuted in the dick by Busta Rhymes’, but youre way, way better off just looking that up on youtube instead of watching this movie. there is an hour of pointless plot development about characters no one cares about until Michael starts fucking killing people. this movie shouldnt exist and we should all go back to pretending it doesnt.
and thats it. thats all the halloween films. i can die now.
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soft-butch-cassidy · 6 years
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what'd bungo do?
https://comics.bungie.net/en/5/warmind-3
spoilers under cut
andal brask: not a white man! also a gr8 sniper shot! love him! 
camrin: not dead! a black woman! interracial lesbian couple! and now she has a cool robot arm! they unburied their gays! my url is canon!
explanation for how ana faked her death, more lore about how long she’s been researching the brays. very nice! also she has had so many cute hairstyles! lesbian icon!!!
finally an explanation for why ana and zavala were so at odds during warmind. he understood her desire to research her past, but knew the city needed her more. plus, it was right after osiris was exiled. people were probably, rightfully, uneasy about guardians shirking their duties for obsessive research. 
sloane is there! yay! and mystery hunter? maybe cayde? and mystery warlock (not osiris, we know this)
chronology, finally, in a way. commander zavala was using an exotic machine gun known as “thunderlord.” it was available in destiny 1. according to the lore for it and its two sister weapons, thunderlord was created by a titan who died on the moon at the battle of mare inbrium, also called the great disaster. thunderlord was created first. twilight gap was about a century ago from present-time. this means that the great disaster happened after twilight gap-- within the last one hundred years. 
cayde hasn’t been commander for terribly long. saint-14, osiris, and andal were vanguard much much longer, since six fronts. before six fronts, the speaker was the sole leader of the guardians, working alongside the consensus since the early-city faction wars. osiris, saint-14, and tallulah fairwind were the warlock, titan, and hunter vanguard at that point. sometime after, tallulah was presumably killed or otherwise mia, and andal took her place. 
saint-14 was vanguard commander during twilight gap, but lord saladin led the charge. zavala was saint’s highest ranking scout. we already know this, since zavala is seen at saint’s side in the osiris comics. which, granted, will need retconning, since twilight gap happened after osiris was exiled, and saint was still like,,, Alive and There and would still be commander during twilight gap, even if he left right after to crusade against the fallen. 
ikora is not in this comic, but we know that she is warlock vanguard at this point. she’s been warlock vanguard for about a century, the longest of the three current vanguard.
after this, saint goes on his crusade. zavala is appointed vanguard commander. why are the osiris comics so out of place and can they please get retconned, bungie? saint goes missing, presumed kia.
sometime after saint goes missing, andal is killed, and cayde takes his place, presumably very shortly before the great disaster. not a great first battle to be a leader during.
within a span of about twenty years, the guardians lost all three of their vanguard who had guided them for a very long time. and now hunters, most of whom are definitely old enough to remember andal, have lost cayde, too, just a few decades later. 
so thats :(
i really hope the osiris comics get retconned bc theyre........ hm Not Great and futz up the established lore and timeline :/
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duaneodavila · 5 years
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Return of the Mink
About 30 years ago, I bought Dr. SJ a full-length black mink coat as a birthday present. It was not one of my better “investments,” as a few years later, PETA was out on the streets of New York City throwing red paint on women in mink coats. She put it in the closet and never wore it again.
It was never clear to me what purpose was served by not wearing the coat, as it wasn’t as if the pelts would regenerate into happy little playful minks, but I understood both the symbolism of wearing the coat as well as the potential of confrontation. To wear it was a political statement Dr. SJ didn’t choose to make. Fair enough. So it still sits in the closet, unworn and lonely.
It thus came as a surprise to find that mink coats are making a comeback, according to the New York Times. Not because cute little minks were now deemed vermin with nice fur, or nobody gives a damn about slaughtering living creatures for the luxury and warmth of their pelts. 
My mother purchased her first fur some 15 years ago, when she was a single woman, employed at the drug rehabilitation center she credits with her own sobriety. “I saved some for a down payment, then paid the rest off over three, maybe four years with an installment plan — a layaway,” she said. The second coat, the fox, was an anniversary gift from her husband, also a longtime fur wearer, whom she married in 2010.
What made the writer immune from the influences that compelled my wife to closet her coat? It wasn’t that we suddenly recognized a compelling human need to wear mink.
These days there are plenty of other materials available to cover one’s nakedness, a point that anti-fur activists readily make. The past few decades have seen a humanitarian backlash to animal fur clothing. Major fashion designers, including Gucci, Stella McCartney and, most recently, Chanel, have forsaken it; several cities in California, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, have banned sales of the material.
And yet, unacceptable as wearing real fur had become for some, it wasn’t for others.
But there is a sense among many black women that this broader, cultural disavowal of fur has coincided with our increased ability to purchase it. (Or as Paula Marie Seniors, a historian and professor of Africana studies at Virginia Tech, reported her mother saying: “As soon as black women could afford to buy mink coats, white society and white women said fur was all wrong, verboten, passé.”) For women like my mother and grandmother, my aunts and my sisters, a fur coat is more than a personal luxury item. It is an important investment.
The taboo against wearing animal fur as a status symbol is a white woman thing. Whether the “cultural disavowel” of mink coincided with black women’s ability to purchase it isn’t entirely clear. There may be some distant coincidence, but the correlation is shaky. But that the shift was somehow a racist plot to deny black women the luxury of mink that white women had enjoyed before them is a curiously twisted contention. So it had nothing to do with the cute little critters, but was about white women who saw black women with cash in their pockets heading for Saks and started screaming, “Hide the minks, HIDE THE MINKS”?
The cultural disavowel of fur coats was largely the product of a very effective campaign by PETA back in the 1980s to inform people of the suffering inflicted upon animals for the sake of their luxurious wrap. One of the tactics used invoked comparing the animals to the suffering of black people.
In 2005, a PETA exhibition juxtaposed a photo of a black civil rights protester being beaten at a lunch counter with images of a seal being bludgeoned. Another piece from the show, titled “Hanging,” paired a graphic photo of a white mob surrounding two lynched black people, their bodies hanging from tree limbs, with the image of a cow in a slaughterhouse. In 2007, in an advertisement, the organization compared the American Kennel Club to the Ku Klux Klan.
If PETA rode the coattails of the civil rights movement to save animals, was there not a debt owed to black Americans? And what did PETA do for “maginalized communities” anyway, as they were all about the animals and let the human suffering go unmentioned? If black women were denied the opportunity to bask in the luxury of mink before because of racism, are they not entitled now to their luxury?
My mother’s furs are her insistence on public elegance in a world frequently inhospitable to her. It is a point of pride that she wears, and will pass down to me.
There is no serious contention that the wearing of fur by black women is any different than white women. Rather, the argument is that they didn’t get to do it when this awful thing when was socially acceptable, so they’re going to make up for it now by insisting on “public elegance.” Or to put it more curiously, in reparation for their deprivation before, they get to do wrong now with impunity. Was this really the perspective?
I have worn and sold my share of recycled furs while purveying vintage to stylists, designers and all. I have long questioned the notion that we black people should expend energy on being anti-fur.
On one outing, I channeled Mary Tyler Moore’s iconic fox piece as I strolled unself-consciously through a city department store. Within a few minutes, a white woman in her 30s followed me closely as she erupted in high-volume condemnation.
Her reaction failed to filter harsh realities about race: Black human beings in our country have historically endured worse treatment than the animals such freelance activists protect.
Suffering no detriment as a result of one’s race is certainly a constitutional right and a cause for which everyone should be willing to fight. But when the “right” at stake is to wear a mink coat with social impunity in reparation for historic racism, the ramifications are stunning.
Return of the Mink republished via Simple Justice
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Over 70 Years Ago, Nazis Victimized This Community. They Still Struggle For Acceptance.
BERLIN They were demeaned, stripped of their rights, forced into labor, sent to extermination camps, murdered. Theirs is a story of the Holocaust that often goes untold, and even so many years later, this community remains socially marginalized.
The Roma, also known as Gypsies, a term some consider insulting, are believed to havecome from India to Europe between the 8th and 10th centuries. Before the Second World War, it is estimated that there were nearly 1 million of them in Europe. The precise number who perished during the Holocaust remains unknown, but historians sayabout a quarter of the European Roma population was murdered by Germans and their allies, while the Council of Sinti and Roma suggest the figure is about half a million.
Around seven decades later, when Germany constructed a memorial for the Roma Holocaust victims between the German parliament building and the iconic Brandenburg Gate, it seemed to signal that the countrys leadership was finally making headway with its largeethnic minority community and recognizing its importance in German history.
Yermi Brenner for The WorldPost
Visitors pass through the Roma memorial in Berlin, Germany.
At the opening ceremony for the memorial in October of 2012, for instance, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that it is a German and European task to support [the Roma] people wherever they live, no matter what country.
But since her speech, facing political pressure to limit the arrivalof migrants and refugees, the German government has instead taken actions to restrict asylum opportunities for applicants from the West Balkans, many of whom are Roma.
Meanwhile, those in the Roma community for whom Germany is home, continue to facewell-documented racism, while Roma in other countriesare targeted in hate crimes. And Germanys Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency found that derogatory stereotypes and prejudice about Roma are still prevalent in most segments of German society today.
At a time when far-right politicians are gaining attention and popularity in Germany and other nations around the continent and world, The WorldPost looks deeper into the current plight of Roma in German society, through the stories of a new generation leading their minority communitys battle for acceptance.
Neo Sanchez for The WorldPost
Joshla Weiss says members of the Roma community, which she is part of, regularly face discrimination and racism in German society.
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Trauma and Racism
Seven relatives of Joshla Weiss, including both of her grandfathers, were murdered in Nazi concentration camps. Weiss is a 36-year-old German citizen, whose origins are Sinti, one of the larger ethnic subgroups within the Roma. Shehas lived in Germany her whole life; her ancestors came to this part of the world more than 600 years ago.
The Nazis viewed Weiss ancestors and the rest of the Roma asracially impureand deprived them of rights before eventually sending them to extermination camps. Up to 220,000 Romaare estimated to have been murderedby Germans and their Axis partners, according to historians cited by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Trauma is in our genes, Weiss told The WorldPost.
They were demeaned, stripped of their rights, forced into labor, sent to extermination camps, murdered.
It is this trauma, she said, that has made the Roma population in Germany less trusting of ethnic Germans. But the lack of trust is not only rooted in the past. In todays German society, people of Roma background face everyday racism and discrimination, Weiss said.
The racism Weiss mentioned is reaffirmed in a recent Pew study that found as many as 40 percent of Germans have an unfavorable view of Roma, as opposed to 29 percent for Muslims and 5 percent for Jews. Instances of stereotypes about Roma suggesting they are undomesticated, have no concept of private property and dont like to work regularly occur in German politics, media and culture, according to a study from 2013 by the Remembrance, Responsibility and Future foundation, a German nonprofit that promotes rights of Holocaust victims. And in another studyat the University of Leipzig, a little over 50 percent of interviewees felt that Roma are prone to crime, and almost the same amount said they would have a problem with having Roma neighbors.
Invisible Roma
There are about 70,000 Roma who are citizens in Germany today. But according to Weiss, many Roma hide their cultural identity rather than embrace it in part because of the high levels of xenophobia theyre exposed to in the country.
The Roma in Germany are often invisible in the public, not recognized, not viewed as Sinti or Roma, Albert Scherr, a sociologist from the Freiburg University of Education in Germany who has studied Roma in the country extensively, told The WorldPost. Scherr said most of them were born in Germany and work in normal jobs, have academic careers and live a normal life.
Yermi Brenner for The WorldPost
One woman dances in a crowd of Berliners as they listen to traditional Roma music at the 2016 Herdelezi street festival.
Making Roma people and culture more visible in the German public sphere is the goal of the Herdelezi festival, which takes place annually in Berlin. Several hundred Roma and non-Roma gathered for last years cultural celebration on a sunny weekend afternoon in May. An entire street was blocked off and instead of cars, there were two rows of food stands serving an array of Balkan pastries, stuffed vegetables and barbecued meat. Next to the stands of food were arts and crafts booths, where children made their own colorful badges and engaged in other creative activities.
This street festival organized by Amaro Foro e.V, the Berlin branch ofthe national Roma youth association that Weiss works for aims to counter negative stereotypes about Roma by showing the diversity of the community. The goal of this festival is to come together to celebrate ourselves, to introduce ourselves we are here! Weiss said.
‘Trauma is in our genes.’ Joshla Weiss
The festivals participants included Roma musicians from Germany, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia, who performed everything from sentimental pop love songs and rhythmic Balkan beats to American-style hip-hop. An enthusiastic crowd of young and old Berliners of all ethnic backgrounds danced in front of the stage, while others stood around and cheered.
Rejected Roma
The population of Roma in contemporary Germany is made up of several groups, Scherr said,each with a different legal status and different social status in society. Aside from the invisible German-born Roma people who are citizens, there are two other main groups.
The first includes Roma who immigrated to Germany from other European Union countries mainly Romania and Bulgaria and therefore have a legal right to stay due to their EU citizen status. The second consists of Roma from West Balkan countries, whose situation is much more complicated because they are not EU residents, and as a result, have limited options for legal immigration to Germany.
NurPhoto via Getty Images
Roma march in a national demonstration against the risk of a new Holocaust and discrimination of nomad people in Berlin, Germany, on June 3, 2016.
Rejection and deportations of Roma asylum seekers from the West Balkans is what led to a series of demonstrations in support of the Roma community throughout Germany last year. On a warm Friday afternoon in June, people marched across Berlins tourist district, shouting slogans and holding up signs like All Roma remain here! and For Roma there are no safe countries of origin!
Documenting it all was Kenan Emini, who works for the Roma Antidiscrimination Network, a project funded by the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. Emini is the filmmaker behind The Awakening, a documentary that showcases the stories of Roma who came to Germany for shelter but have been since been deported or face the threat of deportation.
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I just want to give them the voice so somebody can hear their story, Emini, who is in his thirties, told The WorldPost.
Their story is also his. Emini grew up in a Roma family in Yugoslavia, and after fleeing war-torn Kosovo in 2000, received a residence permit in Germany. But he said that in his first seven years in Germany his right to stay was constantly up for review and he feared deportation to Kosovo a place where as a Roma he had always felt targeted.
The Roma minority in Kosovo and in the rest of the West Balkans suffers from systemic discrimination and poverty, according to reports by Human Rights Watch and by the U.S. State Department. In the past decade, a large number of West Balkan Roma fled to the European Union in the hopes of finding shelter and Germany was a prime destination.
Yermi Brenner for The WorldPost
Kenan Emini grew up in a Roma family in Yugoslavia. Today, he works for the Roma Antidiscrimination Network in Germany.
The overall number of people from West Balkan countries who applied for asylum in Germany started increasing in 2009 and peaked in 2015.The ethnicity of asylum applicants is not recorded, but German media reported that many of the applicants who held citizenship of a West Balkan country were in fact Roma.
The arrival of the West Balkan asylum seekers coincided with an influx of asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa, particularly in 2015, a year in which over a million peoplecame to Germany. Facing political pressure to halt the flow of newcomers, the German government added six West Balkan countries Kosovo, Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and Albania to its list of safe countries, allowing authorities to easily and quickly reject asylum applications of nationals from these countries.
Good Refugees, Bad Refugees
Emini said that the safe countries law has turned the Roma who come to Germany for protection into unwanted or bad refugees, as opposed to the good refugees from Syria.
But the German government sees the system differently. A spokesperson of Germanys federal minister of the interior, Tobias Plate, explained via email that every asylum application is reviewed individually, and applicants have the opportunity to state their case to German authorities.
‘I just want to give them the voice so somebody can hear their story.’ Kenan Emini
This applies, without exception, to all asylum applicants from safe countries of origin, including members of the Roma ethnic group, Plate wrote.There are no facts that justify the assumption that the situation in the Western Balkan countries forces the Roma ethnic group and other groups of persons to leave, he added.
Listing countries as safe risks less favorable procedural treatment to people of certain nationalities, according to European Council on Refugees and Exiles, orECRE. The ECRE legal briefing points out that it often happens where nationals generally enjoy state protection [and] certain minorities … find themselves exposed to ill treatment.
Yermi Brenner for The WorldPost
Roma migrants in Germany carry a sign that reads “ALL ROMA STAY HERE!” and “STOP THE DEPORTATIONS!” during a protest.
In the case of Germany, the addition of the six West Balkan countries to the list of safe countries has been very influential. The asylum recognition rate for West Balkans applicants in Germany are currently very low, and German authorities have seen a sharp decrease in the number of asylum applications from these countries since the designation was assigned.
Emini helped draft a petition addressed to Chancellor Merkel stating that Germany has an historical responsibility to victims of the Holocaust, and that just as German authorities offered protection to Jews fleeing Soviet Union in the 1990s, they should offer protection to the West Balkan Roma.
Jewish people, they were smart, they talk about the Holocaust a lot, and the whole world knows about the Holocaust, and this is their right. They do a good job of fighting for their rights and this is very important for us to learn from this, Emini said.
‘[The Jewish people] do a good job of fighting for their rights and this is very important for us to learn from this.’ Kenan Emini
Regarding his identity as a Roma, Emini is ambivalent. He is proud of his background but does not feel a need to define himself by ethnic or national terms.
I dont have this nationality trip in my head if I am Roma or not Roma, Emini said. We are all human.But I am in this role, so I must live with this.
Opportunity Mixed With Racism
Emini managed to secure his residency in Germany after a seven-year bureaucratic struggle. On the other hand, for Roma who emigrated from European Union countries, the path to residency in Germany is much shorter.
Twenty-six-year-old Aurel Dinu is from Romania, an EU country where the Roma minority faces systemic discrimination, according to a report by Amnesty International and a survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. He grew up in a poor Roma community, and dropped out of elementary school after four years because his parents could not afford to provide him with books, pens and other school equipment. He spent his teenage years finding different means of making money like collecting valuables from dumpsters and begging people on the street for spare change.
Yermi Brenner for The WorldPost
Aurel Dinu left Romania for Germany in 2014 with his four kids and pregnant wife, escaping systematic discrimination of Roma in his home country. 
Three years ago, Dinu was married with four kids and a fifth on the way. Thats when he and his wife, realizing they had no chance to give their children a good life in Romania, decided to come to Germany.
If we had stayed in Romania I would not have been able to put my children in school right now because there is too much discrimination. That is what I myself experienced, Dinu told The WorldPost in Berlin.
I want to stay here. I dont want to go back to Romania. I want a better future for my children. I want them to go to school and to have a better life than I had, he added, noting the even more blatant and systemic racism Roma face in Romania than in Germany.
When the family came to the German capital in 2014, they lived in a public park for four months until they were able to find space in a local homeless shelter. At first, Dinu earned money by wiping car windows in city intersections, and by collecting empty bottles for recycling. Then he got hired to work in a cleaning company, where he was employed for a year and a half. After working 18 months in Germany, Dinu and his family members gained free access to German health care as well as basic welfare support.
‘If we had stayed in Romania I would not have been able to put my children in school right now because there is too much discrimination.’ Aurel Dinu
Last summer, Dinu got a scholarship from the Hildegard Lagrenne Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes integration of Roma, to study the German language full-time. German welfare authorities cover the rent of the 2-room apartment Dinus family lives in. He said he is thankful to Germany for the opportunity his family has in the country.
But Dinus comfort in Germany comes with an underlying fear of racism. And while he said the discrimination feels much less than in his home country of Romania, he still insists that on some occasions his wife not wear her traditional, colorful dress a visible indication of their Roma identity.
It is important that she keeps wearing the traditional clothes, but I know that sometimes that can cause problems, Dinu said. So if we are going to an important meeting, for example in [meetings with German welfare services], then I tell her to not wear that skirt for that moment, take it in her purse and put it back on after we are out of the meeting, just because of the impression it makes, the way it makes people react.
Monika Skolimowska/Getty Images
A German official lays down a wreath during a commemoration ceremony at Berlin’s Roma memorial on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jan. 27, 2017.
Dinus worry, like many Roma in the country regardless of their residency status is that some Germans might discriminate against him and his family.
Over seven decades have passed since Roma were deemed racially inferior by the Nazi regime. But the scars have yet to heal. The reality for Roma in Germany is a mixed bag, which includes an opportunity for a better life for some, deportations for others and racial discrimination for most. As another International Holocaust Remembrance Day comes and goes and as the anti-immigrant message threatensto dominate polls, Chancellor Merkels promise of support seems more and more empty.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2m1vDwv
from Over 70 Years Ago, Nazis Victimized This Community. They Still Struggle For Acceptance.
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Drew Barrymore ‘I don’t pretend to be perfect’
Drew Barrymore is back on our screens, this time as a flesh-eating estate agent. She tells Rebecca Nicholson about the endless ups and downs of her life from child star to teen rebel, and savvy producer to business woman and explains why shell fight to the death to be happy
Drew Barrymore walks into the hotel room in Berlin flanked by assistants, caked in heavy TV make-up and wrapped in a brown fluffy jacket that makes her look like a very glamorous teddy bear. Within seconds, the entourage has disappeared, shes wiped every last scrap of foundation from her face and shes rummaging around underneath her dress, a kind of earth mother hippy smock, regretting her decision to wear tights on this sub-freezing day. Why does anyone wear pantyhose? she exclaims, barefaced, faux-exasperated, shifting in her armchair, trying to get comfortable. Theyre so fucking sadistic! Theyre not even control pants, she says, conspiratorially, but Im forcing them to be.
For a lot of women, especially women who grew up between 1982 and the early 2000s, Barrymore is a particular kind of icon. Shes the accessible rebel we all wanted to be, or be friends with. Shes the child star of ET who hit the skids early and hard, and not only survived, but went on to be one of the most popular (and bankable) female stars of the past three decades. She appeared in, and often produced, the kinds of movies that are vital viewing for teenagers, from the trashy taboo-busting rebellion of Poison Ivy, to the triumphant high school romcom Never Been Kissed, to the moody angst of Donnie Darko. Plus, in her 20s, she seemed to hang out with the best bands, go to all the best parties and always looked like she was having the time of her life. She was the manic pixie dream girl before it became a tacky indie film stereotype. The memoir she wrote in 2015 is, appropriately, called Wildflower.
She looks genuinely pleased that she holds such a place in peoples minds, and decides that if people do like her, If anyone has any goodwill towards me, careful not to sound arrogant, its because she extends goodwill to other people. Not in an annoying way, but just, like, being in peoples fucking corners. Its this combination of soft and sharp, all wrapped up in that valley girl lilt, that has carried her through life. I want people to be happy, but I know happiness has to be fought for. Its a warrior trophy. Its not hippy, she insists. Im like, fight. Fight to the death to be happy, and dont kill anyone along the way.
Little riot grrrl: Drew Barrymore with Steven Spielberg at the age of five on the set of 1982s ET. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features
Were in Germany to talk about Santa Clarita Diet, the new Netflix series which has brought her back into the spotlight again at 41. Its a warm and occasionally gross 10-part comedy about Sheila and Joel, estate agents who have been together since their school days, and whose marriage is tested when the amiable Sheila develops a sudden taste for human flesh.
I stopped working to have my kids and take care of them and raise them, and so I was nervous about working again, she says. I was going through a dark time in my own life. And then I read it and I liked it. Now what am I supposed to do? I cant do this right now, its terrible timing, my whole life is falling apart. She ended up executive producing it as well as starring.
That her life was falling apart out of the spotlight was a new thing for Barrymore, who had played out most of her life in a very public sphere. No ones talking about my life. I mean, yes, I had a divorce, but even that was real quiet. She split up with actor Will Kopelman, the father of her two children, Olive, four, and Frankie, two, at the beginning of 2016, but recently posted an Instagram of him running the New York marathon; she was there, with their daughters, to support him. It was like, Oh, they didnt work out, I wonder why? Oh my God they seem like such good friends, and so amicable, I guess well stop giving a shit. I was so happy about that, she says, breezily.
Warm and occasionally gross: Barrymore in Santa Clarita Diet. Photograph: Erica Parise/Netflix
In the midst of her divorce, Santa Clarita Diet was a transformative experience. Ironically, it wasnt the worst timing. It was great. It was really happy. It was a good summer. My daughters and I got to go out to California and I got three days off a week. Just as becoming a proto-zombie saves Sheila from the numbing boredom of domestic life, Barrymore went through her own kind of rejuvenation. I feel like Sheila. I feel like maybe I was dead inside, she says cheerfully, blowing her nose. I dont know. I was in a place in my life where I had gained a lot of weight, and been in a place of fear and sadness, and I felt stuck. I dont think thats so much unlike the character.
Until she took time away from acting to have kids, Barrymore had never not worked. She began her career at 11 months in an advert for dog food, quickly becoming the main breadwinner for herself and her mother, Jaid, who raised her alone. Her father John Barrymore, of the Barrymore acting dynasty The great line of loonies from which I come, as she puts it wasnt around much. Her extraordinary youth was public and well-documented. Her breakout role in ET, at five years old, was followed by an outlandish few years of childhood boozing and drug-taking, rehab and institutions, and the sense that, at 14, she was washed up and her career was over.
But it wasnt. She moved into an apartment by herself, got a job in a coffee shop, learned how to do her own laundry and, eventually, clawed her way back into the business, defeating the curse of the child actor where so many others have been lost. She has said her 20s were a kind of delayed adolescence. Now, in her 40s, shes had a lifetimes worth of parties and experiences, and says she doesnt miss it at all. I dont feel like Im not at the centre of things. I dont worry about career stuff. I dont worry about who the hottest band is or that Im not at that show that night. I dont care if the latest trend is happening and its just passing me by.
Star quality: Barrymore with Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu in Charlies Angels. Photograph: Image Net
Her idea of a good time these days is taking the girls to Disney World, or setting up movie nights for the kids in my daughters class. I just watched Home Alone and all the moms and I were crying at the end. Oh my God, its so good! I appreciate it now much more than I did when I was younger.
Shes too classy to be drawn into any child actor comparisons it would be patronising, annoying, no thanks, she says, nicely but firmly but we talk more broadly about celebrity scandals. Everyone goes up and goes down. Thats life. Nobody wants all of it looked at and discussed. However, if you do put yourself out there, then you need to be prepared for that to be examined and you have to handle it to the best of your abilities. So for people who are like [she puts on a whiny voice]: Dont look at me you put yourself out there!
Is there any way to avoid being examined and discussed? Not in this day and age. You just try to manage things in the healthiest way you can. And by the way? You wont all the time. Youre gonna fuck up. So fuck up, then pick yourself back up. But just be nice and kind and humble and gracious and have a sense of humour. And dont pretend to be perfect.
Golden girl: winning a Golden Globe for Grey Gardens in 2010. Photograph: NBC/Getty Images
Barrymore dealt with her own initial fuck-ups in an incredible and startling memoir, Little Girl Lost, which she wryly calls, The mea culpa book I wrote when I was 14. She appeared on Oprah with her mother to promote it, to go over what went wrong. You can watch it on YouTube; shes 15 going on 35. Yet the book has a cult following, in part because it makes all the partying she did as a young child sound kind of adventurous. Yeah! Its like an 80s cult tragedy book, which is super cool and wrong and fun all at the same time. Its a little riot grrrl, you know?
Theres a chapter where Barrymore describes being hauled off to an institution at her mothers behest, and shes furious at the starstruck guards. God, youve just yanked me out of my house with cuffs on, I thought, and now youre asking me what it was like to meet ET. What jerks, she writes. Even at 14, she had a disdain for celebrity. Still do, she says, today.
We meet on the afternoon of Trumps inauguration. She plans to watch it later, as shes a total news junkie, but she doesnt particularly want to talk about what she thinks of him. Im not a painter and Im not a musician and I think people dont want to hear it from actors, she says. I read this op-ed in the New York Times that was saying, just do things quietly, in your art.
Slasher: Barrymore in Wes Cravens Scream, 1996. Photograph: Allstar
Barrymore is more about the practical. During her screen break, she wrote Wildflower, which became a New York Times bestseller, and shes built a sizeable business empire, including Barrymore wines, a production company, Flower Films, and beauty brand Flower Cosmetics. All of which channel some of that free-spirit warmth into profits reports suggest shes worth $125m. Theres a line in Santa Clarita Diet where Sheila announces: I sleep two hours a night. I get so much done! It struck me that for Barrymore, spinning so many plates, that might be funny. Actually, she says, it was originally written that Sheila would use her spare time to learn French. Me, in my real life, would spend time learning French. This woman literally has a ticking clock on her mortality. Shed be studying fucking Bruce Lee moves and learning to do shit. The line was changed at Barrymores request: instead of learning a language, Sheila would get the ability to parallel park in one move. Im, like, yes! Thats practical!
Its strange to see Barrymore, who seemed to be an eternal teenager, starring as the mother of a teenager in Santa Clarita Diet, partly because her fame is life-long, and you can see interviews with her at almost every age on YouTube. But, she says, she never watches them, never goes back. Hell no. The only thing I ever think when I see myself when Im younger, if Im on a talk show and Im stuck there having to watch clips, is that I was so much more brassy when I was young. Im like: Where do you get the balls, kid?
She says it as if those balls have disappeared with age. She claims shes much more polite now. Sarcastic, but polite. And worse still, she tries to say shes newly dull. In my life Im just so quiet and boring, she declares, not entirely convincingly. This is Drew Barrymore, after all, who talks with the hunger of someone who will always be on the lookout for something new, whether thats being a mother, a businesswoman, or playing a friendly estate agent who kills and eats bad people. I am pretty boring, she insists. I tell her I dont believe it. She smiles slyly, and leans in. Theres a rebel in her still. Im not sure I believe it either.
Santa Clarita Diet launches on Netflix on 3 February
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from Drew Barrymore ‘I don’t pretend to be perfect’
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