#apparent to everyone but Louis who is narrating

[hergan416]

@shreddedleopard has tagged me in another 6 sentence "sunday"

The less this is Sunday the better it is tbh

True tumblr meme right here

6 sentences of a wip + tag 6 people

This is from something I started for the "merchandise" prompt of Sherly week and never finished... and also is 7 sentences for completing the thought

Sherlock Holmes (the man) was tall and lean with an over-exposed neck. His mouth was constantly open, whether it was to smile too-widely in glee over nothing, or to jabber about useless topics that Louis drowned out more often than not: forensics and medical science and chemistry, his latest monographs and cases, difficult formulas and criminal psychology. Once he even discussed musical theory with his brother for over a day. And his eyes were a bright, sparkling blue that could put a sapphire to shame. 

Sherlock Holmes (the toy) was stout and round, with stubby limbs added only as an afterthought. He had no neck to speak of, his mouth was sewed shut in a thin-lipped smile, and his eyes were made of dull, lifeless, black thread. He was soft and supportive and quiet and gave good hugs.

No-pressure tagging hmmmm I'll try for different people than last time @straycrayoncrypt @eternallaughter @shinyphoenix @millenni-em-tauk @arielxlazarus @arien-elensar

[murfpersonalblog]

Fire & Sunlight: AMC vs Books on Vampire Powers

"if lestat's blood and louis' blood are the same, and lestat drank from akasha before meeting louis, and therefore cannot be burned, why louis can? because he was willing in that scene in the seventies? or just because blood does not transfer that way?"

I just saw this great question posted by @notfeelingthyaster, and I've been wanting to rant about this for awhile, cuz AMC is very inconsistent with Anne RIce lore wrt vampire powers.

This line is valid...kinda, cuz fear IS the mind-killer, and vampires who give up on life & stop fighting DO have a tendency to just wither away and expire. But Imma still call him out: As of S2, Lestat can 100% be burned--he was bragging/showing off/exaggerating/calling Loumand's bluff.

Magnus was old AF, and had powerful blood in him--his bloodline is descended from Rhoshamandes (the Big Bad of the final Prince Lestat trilogy), one of the First Brood made directly by Akasha. But Magnus himself never drank from Akasha, so he's not sun/fireproof, and having his blood is nothing to brag about. Lestat is strong for his age cuz Magnus was old/strong--Les got the preorder bonus--but that's about it.

What determines vampires being sun/fireproof is HOW MUCH of Akasha's blood they have in them.

And even then, the First Brood can still burn up because of the sun, as we see in the books during the Great Burnings, when TWMBK was left out in the sun. SHE got a tan, but every vampire on the planet went up in flames. Only the strongest/oldest survived, but they were still EFFED UP for centuries. Which is why Marius was created--to get TWMBK to safety.

Marius drank occasionally from Akasha, the most out of anyone for 2000 years. And even HE burned when the Children of Satan/Darkness jumped him & kidnapped Armand.

Marius was effed up for decades/centuries, even with the blood Akasha let him drink to quicken his healing. Fire is no joke for vampires (which is why the Fire Gift is like hax mode).

Lestat drank Akasha's blood ONCE before he met Louis (& Enkil nearly killed him for it). That gave him a significant boost in powers, way too much for a fledgling not even 100 years old. But he wasn't sun/fireproof yet--which is why Pyromaniac du Lac was able to do what he does best and set Lestat on fire in the book/movie:

Even on the show, where Lestat is 100 years older/stronger, he's STILL not sun/fireproof, as we see in 1x2:

Unless AMC's changed the rules & this is part of Lestat's ACT/ruse, deliberately hiding his REAL powers from Louis 👀 👀):

Cuz that whole scene in 1x2 with Louis even walking OUTSIDE should NOT be a thing for AR vamps, who can't be out in daytime PERIOD. (Only OOOOLD AF vamps like TWMBK, the Twins Mekare & Maharet, Khayman, Nebamun, etc. can get tans.) But for AMC, they just apparently can't be in DIRECT sunlight. So AMC's vamps are ALL daywalkers, technically.

But whatever--back to Lestat: IF the rules haven't changed, and Lestat was being HONEST in 1x2, hiding from the sun under his cloak, then no, he's not sun/fireproof yet in S1/S2.

What he says in the S3 promo/teaser is BS; "but then again, they might not." (No, they TOTALLY WILL, boy, stop, lol. XD )

He's showing off, and still calling vampires' bluff; cuz he's going on tour to distract everyone from killing Mr. I Own the Night Louis. Les wants vampires to be afraid of him, and THINK he's unkillable/unstoppable, and that not even the sun/fire can get rid of him. But that's just not true--YET. Les's an unreliable narrator par excellence.

BEFORE the tour, he CAN be set on fire. Les doesn't become truly sun/fireproof until Qotd, AFTER Akasha wakes up & stops his tour & they become lovers/partners-in-crime, & he feeds on her regularly.

In TotBT, he realizes just how much more powerful he is, when he tries to commit suicide but just gets a (painful) tan.

So what about Louis (& Claudia)?

Louis & Claudia are stronger than they should be for their ages (so is Lestat), because Les drank Akasha's blood ONCE before he met them.

But Lou's weak cuz he starves himself & doesn't sustain his powers; and Claudia's weak cuz she's "built like a bird" in a too-small body with too-little blood to even make her own fledglings.

AMC!Louis's been given a significant boost in power with the Fire Gift, which he should NOT have yet, but AMC!Les is 100+ years older, and apparently he's already gone to ground (his dates during the Trial are obvs a LIE--he didn't sleep for all 100+ years, cuz he met Marius & AKASHA, but he doesn't want the coven to know about TWMBK--again: Les is an unreliable narrator, too). In the books, going to ground in a torpor also gives vamps power upgrades when they wake up., which would explain why Les, Lou & Claud are stronger than their book counterparts.

But beyond the Fire Gift, Louis isn't sun/fireproof, cuz HE didn't drink from Akasha, and he's just way too young, and way too underfed.

Likewise, Armand being fire/sunproof ticks me off to no end cuz it effs up his character plot in MtD/TVA; so I have no idea wtf AMC's doing with him, cuz he never even knew Akasha EXISTED.

514 years is nowhere NEAR old enough for a vampire to be ok walking in the sun--Marius was 2000 years old and still burned.

TL;DR: It's a numbers game; but the math ain't mathin, AMC. Vamps being fire/sunproof isn't not about AGE, it's about ACCESS--to AKASHA.

[crazykuroneko]

Tbh I think a lot casual viewers / non book fans are probably going to not continue the show after s2 unless it diverges quite drastically on louis's storyline? iwtv is very bleak and I genuinely think they underestimated how much show viewers ended up hating lestat after s1 (and they may end up in a similar situation with armand in s2) and then you're asking the audience to watch an entire season of this guy's whole backstory. plus you're killing off one of the two likable characters by the end of s2 and shifting louis into more a side character.

a big red flag to me was the lady who hosts the podcast who doesn't have a book background saying a lot of the same stuff as show-only people. like she clearly does not like lestat or loustat at all lmao and its literally her job to promote the show.

First, I want to address the "shifting louis into more a side character" because no I don't agree with that. Contrary to fans believe, Hollywood-standard wise (from the number of episodes they are in, how integral their characters are to the story), both Jacob and Sam have been considered as lead actors/cast of IWTV. You can see industry news outlets calling them both as such. But because IWTV is about Louis' past specifically and AMC knew IWTV still has some hope in Emmys even though it's small, they put them in different categories to not split the votes between them (they even only submit one actor in each category for it). So, look at what we have now, Louis is the narrator yet we still get Lestat in all episodes, and he's leading the NOLA narrative forward together with Louis despite not existing in the Dubai narrative. I bet we'll still get Lestat in most, if not all episodes, in S2, because Rolin has said many many times, the show is about both of them. And I expect they'll do the same in TVL season(s); Lestat is telling the story while Louis is leading whatever will be going on in the modern time. (No, i don't believe they'll make Louis stuck on a couch the whole season to listen to Lestat's story even though it sounds tasty. He'd definitely have a way to know what Lestat's saying, but I don't see anything good writing-wise from sticking your well-developed character in one place for such a long time)

About whether the audience will be willing to listen to Lestat's past, I'll see how S2 goes first before judging that. A lot of people don't like him, but there are a lot of them who are like, "I will miss him if he dies, he's an interesting character".

And IWTV is a niche show, its genre is gothic horror/romance. Who the hell is doing gothic romance for a series in this decade? (Hannibal doesn't count, it's not gothic and still about will/won't they). Like, what AMC is doing with IWTV now is extremely daring. And with a niche show, it's always the same: you can't please everyone. There will always be part of the general audience who will leave because either it's simply not their cup of tea or they can't stomach it. Especially now when there's this purity sentiment going so strongly in general (apparently now we shouldn't ship fictional characters, every sex scene has to have a grand purpose, and you shouldn't watch any portrayal of abuse even though it's produced by the victim herself). God forbid IWTV would ever want to please those people yikes. So, IWTV won't ever get as "mainstream" as what, Succession, Ted Lasso, Better Call Saul. But IWTV would still appeal to people who appreciate good writing, people who are "idc how bad the characters are as long as they're exciting!", and people who really love horror (not that "comfort horror" BS) - there's this review of IWTV from an horror website who is like "I wish they gave us more gore and horror of vampires", oh these people would love S2.

So, tl;dr you could say it's a natural selection (hell yes Darwinism), it's inevitable. I'd rather have that audience leave than stay and ruin fans' experience by whining about the plot that won't ever satisfy them. And I'd always applaud writers who don't give a shit to what people say and stick to what they're meant to do. They slay!

EDIT: ah I forgot about this. but don't underestimate the number of old fans who will probably check the show again when the TVL season(s) come. Because no matter how big their hatred for AMC is, it will be the first time ever for TVL to be adapted on screen. First time in 38 years (yes no one considers QotD movie ever existed). That's too big a temptation!

[kazz-brekker]

wait tell me more of your thoughts on interview with the vampire (1994), i'm intrigued

Okay SO, me and my friends watched the Interview with the Vampire TV show (I persuaded them by being like "I hear it is extremely good and also gay and also vampires and also dramatic unhinged gothic romance" and so dragged them on a journey that involved a lot more fake blood and levitating sex than we originally thought it would) and to cope with the stress of final exams we then later watched the 1994 movie. I think it was definitely an … interesting experience to have watched the show first and then the movie rather than the other way around.

So, thoughts on the movie. The movie is incredibly not heterosexual and yet still, somehow, not gay enough. Louis and Lestat are basically a married couple raising a daughter but the movie can't quite seem to commit to making them canonically a couple even though there are, like, scenes of Lestat lying on top of Louis whispering to him about how great it is to be turned into a vampire. There is a scene where Louis and Armand have an entire conversation with their faces approximately half an inch away from each other, there is basically no other way to interpret their relationship than gay, and yet they DON'T KISS. It's absolutely maddening.

Another weird thing is how … compressed the movie feels? I'm pretty sure I would think this even if I hadn't seen the TV show first, it's just really hard to fit 100+ years of plot into a 2 hour movie. Louis is turned into a vampire so quickly in the movie that I have absolutely no sense of why on earth Lestat is so obsessed with this guy that he HAS to turn him into a vampire and live with him for eternity. The whole Louis-Lestat-Claudia household drama also unfolds wildly fast (there's like, one scene with Lestat and Claudia having drama and then she kills him). The vampire theater in Paris is pretty fun (all vampires are secretly theater kids, this is a simple fact of the world) but it only gets introduced in the second half of the movie. It felt like there was so much to fit in the story that things didn't have time to breathe.

Every single act of this movie ends with arson, which is kind of iconic and I do have to support that.

Louis owns slaves in the movie. This is extremely bad and awful. It is never remotely portrayed to be as evil as it is and the whole thing is basically forgotten as soon as he and Lestat leave the plantation. I support the slaves for burning down his house. Yvette should have gotten to stake him and set him on fire.

Louis in this movie is just … sad and kind of whiny and drinks blood from rats. He almost feels like a Nick Carroway sort of character where he is a very boring guy narrating a story full of people much more interesting than him, except those interesting people (Lestat, Claudia, and Armand) are all totally obsessed with him. One of my friends said that Louis is the most boring character in the movie but everyone acts like he is the most interesting, which is 100% correct. Brad Pitt you are nothing compared to Jacob Anderson.

Lestat is fun though! Not as good as Sam Reid (who could be!) but he is at least entertaining to watch. At one point he dances with a corpse.

There are fun 18th and 19th century outfits. The coats and dresses in this movie are pretty cool and according to one of my friends at least somewhat historically accurate.

Claudia's actress was very good! Apparently Kirsten Dunst was only 10 when she filmed this movie which is nuts, she honestly acted circles around everyone else and did a great job pretending to be an adult stick in a child's body.

The interviewer in this movie is basically a non-entity and I had sort of forgotten he existed until he came back at the end. No interrogation of the narrative going on here!

The ending of the movie is quite obviously a sequel hook for a movie of The Vampire Lestat that never got made but is still kind of fun.

End verdict: not a horribly, irredeemably bad movie, I had a somewhat entertaining time watching it and I don't regret doing so, but the TV show really is light-years away from it. I am now EXTREMELY hyped to see Louis and Claudia go to Paris in season 2.

[ladyaj-13]

“The Next Bit Was Spanners To My Plan” is one of my all-time favorite fics. It’s so heartfelt and beautifully written, I just love it and have so much admiration for your writing. I’ll be thrilled with anything you can share about it, but I’m especially thinking questions 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11. (I’m sorry for being so greedy! 😞) Thank you! ❤️

Thank you so, so much! That's so sweet of you to say :) And sorry for such a stupidly late response - this managed to come in just before I headed off to my parents; for Christmas and while there I never even opened my laptop.

Read here: 'The Next Bit was Spanners to My Plan'

2: What scene did you first put down?

I think, as usual, I simply started at the beginning! So it would have been the little prologue and then the two of them at the industry party.

3: What’s your favorite line of narration?

He’s sort of stupidly into Love Island, because apparently finding yourself without a band and without a world tour and without a normal job either, you end up sinking hours into TV shows you’re embarrassed to tell anyone about. It makes it easier, because everyone else is into it too, so as soon as the show starts they’re passing crisps and taking the piss and not talking about any potentially touchy topics such as Why Louis Tomlinson is in Nick Grimshaw’s Living Room, or How Come He’s Displaced Pixie as Pig’s Favourite. 

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

I quite like Nick's distracted radio-patter-rambling near the end, after he's just received Louis' selfie:

“That was… Fifi, what was that? Florence! That was Florence, and up next we’ve got, erm, Beyoncé? No, I played that already. Fifi, stop laughing! She’s laughing at me folks, you can’t get the staff these days, absolutely no respect. Oh, that’s right, it’s Charlie XCX. Banging. Here we go, this is ‘Boys’.”

5: What part was hardest to write?

The bit where they actually talk. Because Louis is driving it, but also he's not sure he wants to and he doesn't know what he wants to say, and so balancing that with actually making something happen was not straight-forward...

10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?

I'd previously written a Stylinshaw fic, but I'd been on a complete Tomlinshaw reading binge and I really wanted to write something for that pairing specifically. So it was pairing first, plot second for this one!

11: What do you like best about this fic?

At only 6k, what I like best if probably the whole package :D But if I have to pick, I have a soft spot for the original character Charlie, who's the taxi driver. I love a bit of outsider POV and I had fun with his rambling and misunderstandings - and going back to him seemed the perfect way to end things too.

[mossflowermouse]

[As with the third part, I wrote this post several months ago while reading WCaHSS for the first time]

Fourth and final post of my thoughts while reading ‘When Chist and His Saints Slept’. (part one, part two, part three). I read most of this part in one sitting, so it’s a bit of a mess and I gave up on trying to separate the chapters partway through.

In this part, nobody dies, ever, and they’re all happy. Robert gets to see his grandchild grow up. Matilda lives to see peace. Brien...um. Yeah I honestly don’t know how to fix that without rewriting 25ish years of history.

XXXI-XXXIII

Ancel confronting Ranulf. Oh dear.

Enjoying all the scenes of Stephen, Matilda, de Ypres and Bishop Henry deciding matters (and not just because the trusted inner circle is literally "extremely close family and William de Ypres"

"Stephen had been closeted all morning with his wife, his brother, and William de Ypres, gloomily assessing their options." What did I just say about this little group and how well-trusted de Ypres is. I appreciate the narration laying it out as clearly as that.

Matilda's worried that something's wrong with him :(

And Chester, having been freed, has now switched sides once again (now loyal to Maude's son Henry). I think by this point he's definitely racked up more betrayals than the Bishop.

Ypres is going blind. I hope Matilda was able to reassure him about what would happen.

XXXIV-XXXVI

Oh my god. Okay. Henry, now 14, invaded England, couldn't pay his troops, and ended up writing to STEPHEN for help with payment. And Stephen agreed. Wow. This family.

That was quite the list of barons going off on crusade - mostly Stephen's supporters, unless I'm mistaken.

Annora's pregnant and Ranulf's being reckless.

He saw Annora but didn't speak to her. I think that's that.

Oh no he's back and being asked if he's heard. Heard what. I'm very afraid to turn the page.

Gilbert's dead. After everything he'd survived.

No. Oh no. Ranulf's gone to Bristol and Robert is apparently dying. That was my main fear a few pages back, that if someone was dead it was Robert - Ranulf's close to him and he's older than most of them.

Robert's dead. His family was there, though, and Maude arrived just in time with her son. I'm getting a little choked up.

Aww, Stephen and Matilda and Ypres <3 it’s really sweet seeing how much all three of them trust and care about each other by now

XXXVII

Ranulf's gone and nobody knows where.

Maude and Brien :( this entire scene. Just. My heart.

So this is Maude's final goodbye to England and the people there.

Brien and Adeliza and Hugh watching her ship from the beach even after everyone else has left 

everyone on the ship finding somewhere to shelter during the crossing and Adeliza and Hugh finally leaving and then it’s just Maude and Brien still looking out over the sea until they can’t see each other any more

something something Brien something something England I’m too emotional to even look for symbolism in this right now

That was a very depressing few chapters. I'm in mourning not just for Robert, but for everything that's been lost.

XXXVIII-XLII (a mix of ‘too gripping to write stuff’ and ‘I’m still emotionally compromised by the many things that happened leading to Maude’s departure’)

Maude's seen her sons for the first time in eight years.

I'd assumed Ranulf would come back eventually, but what if he doesn't?

Loth! No!

I like all the people Ranulf's meeting

XLIII, XLIV

Henry and Ranulf's campaign is really driving home how long this war has gone on for - half their powerful allies are the now-grown children of Maude's allies (plus Harry and Eustace themselves were children at the start of this war). But also they're all so young.

Poor citizens of Lincoln. Again.

Oh wow, Geoffrey did something good. I'll concede that he's generally been a good father, but pretty much everything else about him means it was still kind of a surprise that he'd give Henry his title of Duke of Normandy.

XLV

Rhodri is suggesting Ranulf marry Eleri and Rhiannon's upset :(

(Also it's kind of weird from a modern perspective because first cousins, and Ranulf brought up that they'd need a papal dispensation in England, but I'm going to try and see this from the point of view of 12thc rural Wales)

Ranulf wants to marry Rhiannon, not Eleri! Yay!

Wait, will he be going back to Normandy at all? Does Maude get to see him again? (I'm assuming Maud and Harry will because they'll be in England and easier to visit.)

And he's going to tell Rhiannon :)

Ranulf's 31? What. When did this happen. Rationally I know how much time this book's covered, but it's difficult to not still think of him as 18/19. Or even as the toddler Stephen stopped from falling into the sea.

XLVI

Timeskip, and Ranulf and Maud are visiting Maude!

...grieving? Who's dead this time?

Ranulf and Rhiannon are going to have a kid :)

"A friend of your mother's has died." I'm narrowing it down to Brien and Adeliza. Possibly Amabel. Doesn't bode well regardless.

BRIEN NO :( and Adeliza's already died apparently.

:( :( :(

Truce with Louis of France - and Henry's mention of the chance he'll meet Eleanor of Aquitaine for the first time reminds me, they're going to be married at some point. His line seems a bit meta.

There she is!!! Finally!

A blur of the remaining 200 pages:

I like her already

Ooh, so their eventual marriage was Eleanor's idea.

Geoffrey's dying. I feel bad for Henry, but also am not remotely as upset as for the various other deaths.

MATILDA OH NO

She's apparently ill and asking to see her confessor. Please no.

Matilda :(

(also side note that she died on my birthday)

And the monks are grieving too. The description of the funeral :(

William de Ypres just showed up to visit her tomb. I cannot take any more sadness today.

Henry and Eleanor may have underestimated the opposition to their marriage (and I wasn't expecting Geoff to actually switch sides, certainly not so soon)

Maude's lost so much.

(But also, aww, nice scene with her and Will)

They've won the war with Louis. That was fast.

Good lord, Stephen almost ordered the death of a five-year-old. Also wow Marshal, that was quite a gamble.

Stephen's besieging Wallingford; Henry's going to its aid. They're all talking about its symbolic value, and I agree (and am a little sad every time someone mentions Brien - it may have been over a year for them, but I only got to his death a few hours ago). It's also making me think the end might be near, and not just because there's less than a hundred pages (and two years of Stephen's reign) remaining - iirc, the Stephen-Henry succession was formalised by the Treaty of Wallingford.

Will and Roger joining Henry and Rainald to free Wallingford is giving me emotions about the people who didn't live to see the end of this war.

I really love this part with Stephen and Ypres:

they’ve come so far and trust each other so much and I can feel Matilda’s ghost in this scene because this never would have happened without her

His first loyalty is still to Matilda, when he’s thinking about Eustace he refers to him as “Matilda’s son”, my heart

Of all the ways I was expecting Eustace to go, choking on lamprey eels was not one of them.

Eleanor's had her child!

Twelve years since Winchester. It doesn't feel like that much, probably because I was reading that part yesterday. (yikes I've read about half this book in two days, it's too good)

Rumour has it that Chester's dying. Like Ranulf, I'm finding that hard to take in - he's just the sort of person who doesn't seem killable, by disease or person. And he's grown on me over the last few hundred pages.

The agreement's been reached. I'm glad it was in Winchester.

Henry's just met Thomas Becket. I look forward to seeing this go horrifically wrong in the next book.

Aaand there's a conspiracy to kill Henry. Because nothing can ever just go straightforwardly well in the 1100s.

Stephen's dying.

@de Ypres would it kill you to admit to having an emotion

Okay, I have tears in my eyes from that line about Maude  - "a smile nineteen years overdue"

The end.

[arecomicsevengood]

More Movies I Watched. Should I Just Join Letterboxd?

Is Letterboxd fun? Not really sure if anyone gets anything out of these posts being located here, but also not sure I have any desire to join a website I’m not sure anyone I’m friends with is on, don’t necessarily feel a yearning to be around more people with too many opinions, who are maybe trying to parlay their “expertise” into writing jobs.

Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (2020) dir. Celine Sciamma

I’m going to consider this a 2020 movie as that’s when its wide release was in the States; also, this movie’s great and if considered a 2020 movie is easily the frontrunner for best of the year. Well-shot enough I felt I was in good hands from the very first minutes, which feel vaguely reminiscent of The Piano (which I don’t remember super-well), this movie ends up also have a very intense relationship with music as well. This is a lesbian love story between a woman betrothed to be married to a man she’s never met and the painter who is making her portrait for the approval of said man. The painter is initially working on the portrait secretly, the film’s attention is tuned to the two leads’ furtive glances and studies of one another, the gaze intensely felt, but returned and mutual. Lots of great stuff, real delight taken in faces, the ability to change another’s expression by making them laugh. the power of music, the incommunicable aspects of subjective experience. I watched this director’s other movie, Girlhood, but don’t remember it, and this is a lot better. This is also a lot better than Blue Is The Warmest Color, where the only thing I remember is the long and graphic sex scene. This movie has no such scene. One of these actresses led the walkout when the French film industry gave Roman Polanski an award.

Summer Hours (2008) dir. Oliver Assayas

Just did an IMDB search and found out Assays cowrote a movie with Polanski a few years ago? That sucks. This one’s about an artist’s estate being sold off after a widow dies, as the kids need money. Plenty of nice bits about the subjective value of art and nostalgia. Assayas is not my favorite filmmaker by any means but he’s consistent enough. I guess Personal Shopper is my favorite of his?

Two Friends (1986) dir. Jane Campion

TV movie about two teenagers, told somewhat in reverse order for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Not great.

The Day Shall Come (2020) dir. Chris Morris

Beginning with like a series of “establishing shots” of Miami that eventually get to college kids partying is such a terrible way to begin a movie, really signals a degree of indifference to the language of film in favor of a a product of constant churn of content that “television” once served as shorthand for. Chris Morris comes from TV, of course, so I should know what I’m in for, and British comedy of a subversively-intentioned sort puts it in the wheelhouse of things I pay attention to anyway. That’s not to say I laughed at this thing, but I sort of observed it and its intentions — it never really wants you to be comfortable enough to laugh, and while the posture it takes to its black leads is sympathetic there’s still a feeling of anthropological indifference as part of its satirical thrust. Film comedies are meant to work in a theater because of the contagious properties of laughter, and when you lose that you end up with a thing that, even if I don’t want to subject it to “Hm, this seems kinda racist” thinkpieces that are the worst-case scenario, everything about the movie seems like the best case scenario is a reaction of “I see what you did there.”

Midnight Special (2016) dir. Jeff Nichols

Fits into the tradition of not-a-superhero-movie-but-basically tradition of Scanners and The Fury, but while those are basically the X-Men, this kid, kept from the sunlight because his dad think it will hurt him but really it’s good for him, is basically The Ray, of the 1990s Christopher Priest series I didn’t read consistently but liked a few issues of. The first half of this movie, spent speeding down streets at night, while some weird things happen, involving government agencies and a cult, is considerably better than the payoff, which is the child (a kid from Room and later, Good Boys) is an angel and is going to ascend to heaven. Part of it is so low-key and tense (but in a way where it feels like if it were on mute nothing would appear to be happening) and then the other part of it has these special effects that are fairly corny? So while the whole “indie guy makes a more mainstream movie” thing generates some interest, the idea of what constitutes a mainstream movie at this point in time (while also being a throwback in some ways to eighties Spielberg, or riding an It Follows/Stranger Things wave) means being forgettable.

Atlantic City (1980) dir. Louis Malle

This was a rewatch, which normally I avoid doing, but it turns out I had forgotten basically everything about this movie, besides vague memories of shots of stairwells, the sprawl of its plot, the roaming camera. That, still, is sort of the main thing to take away, because I love how the plot sort of swirls around this apartment building, and the streets of the city, the casino where Susan Sarandon works. She plays a woman whose husband left her for her sister, and they have rolled into the city with a large amount of cocaine. Burt Lancaster plays Sarandon’s neighbor, who lusts after her, but watches after another neighbor in the apartment, an old gangster’s ex-lover. Maybe I would suggest this as a good first Louis Malle movie to watch? Then you could watch Au Revoir Les Enfants, Murmur Of The Heart, Elevator To The Gallows, and My Dinner With Andre, and some of those are maybe better movies but this is arguably the most “accessible” in terms of its relationship to gangster/crime stuff while nonetheless feeling expansive and deeper than that. It relates to Burt Lancaster’s larger career but also has such a depth of feeling it’s not just a film history thing. Wallace Shawn has a cameo as a waiter also, it’s nice to see him.

Cat People (1982) dir. Paul Schrader

This movie’s a rewatch but I remember it being “watchable” but not really good, at least not nearly as good as the original. If memory serves, this has pretty much nothing in common with the original, but there’s a scene in the original that’s very memorable that’s reprised here. There’s a lot of gratuitous nudity in this one, and it even ends with a scene that seems perverse enough it should be memorable- Where Nastassja Kinski’s limbs are tied to a bed in a bit of bondage before she has sex and gets turned into a panther, so she can safely be put into zoo custody, but I didn’t remember at all on account of it feeling more perfunctory than indelible. Also I thought there was a scene where you see a naked man climb out of a cage at the zoo but maybe that’s in another movie too. Remember when Paul Schrader made a facebook post asking whose were the best tits in the history of art?

Affliction (1997) dir. Paul Schrader

When there was a little featurette documentary on Criterion Channel where Alex Ross Perry interviewed Schrader, Schrader cited Affliction as one of his best movies. Takes place in a snowy landscape reminiscent of Fargo and A Simple Plan, the vision of small-town life feels slightly familiar from Twin Peaks too — all of these things feel “nineties” in a way. About the cycle of domestic violence being passed on from fathers to sons. Stars Nick Nolte, with Willem Dafoe as his younger brother, who narrates intermittently. Mary Beth Hurt plays Nolte’s ex-wife, Sissy Spacek plays his current lover. James Coburn plays the abusive father but I kept thinking it was Rip Torn.

Rancho Notorious (1952) dir. Fritz Lang

Another solid Fritz Lang movie, that I believe was a favorite of the French new wave filmmakers? (Who didn’t like his German stuff for some bullshit reason.) This one’s a western. A man’s fiancee gets murdered, and he tries t to track down the guy who did it, in search of revenge. There’s a recurring bit of a song narrating his desire for revenge that’s pretty bad. It turns out there’s a large ranch, run by Marlene Dietrich, where criminals can hide out if they don’t ask questions of one another and give her a share of their haul. He forms alliances, does some crimes, gets his revenge, there’s some great technicolor shots of landscapes, it’s unclear how real his feelings are for Marlene Dietrich or if they’re partly put on to win her affections, I don’t think Dietrich is that appealing personally. The thing that makes this movie cool or interesting (and maybe makes it feel particularly American, but seen from an outsider’s perspective) is this sense of bonhomie that is maybe just a total front for long-standing resentment, with love as a conditional thing.

Slightly French (1949) dir. Douglas Sirk

I found this one pretty watchable. A rough-around-the-edges fairground actress is recruited to play a French ingenue in the press as part of a long play for a director to get his job back with a studio he was fired from after alienating the original lead actress and everyone above him. The director basically only cares about making movies, and is sort of a psychopath, but she falls in love with him. The director’s sister, who warns that she also has no feelings, ends up being paired off with the producer who competes for the star’s affection for a while. Written by a woman, and feels very psychologically insightful and unjudgmental about women’s tendency or willingness to fall in love with people who treat them poorly, and to allow for the movie/genre expectations to respect that choice as the right one.

A Scandal In Paris (1946) dir. Douglas Sirk

Apparently Sirk considered this his best movie. It’s before his melodrama period, and is based on a memoir, so there’s a bit of a biopic quality to it, though it does try to be fairly concise and well-structured. About a criminal who solves a crime he committed in order to become chief of police, ostensibly to become an even bigger criminal who pulls off a huge robbery, who then goes straight instead. The criminal is also a casanova type, who seduces a series of women and makes them fall in love with him and forgive him his crimes. I would probably have liked this movie more if it was a stylized seventies thing and/or liked the actors better.

Story Of A Cheat (1936) dir. Sacha Guitry

This movie’s wild! One of the best credit sequences I’ve ever seen, establishing a pattern that the whole thing will be told mostly via narration, and this narration goes on to tell so much of the story that the visual storytelling almost seems redundant, or illustrative of the text, in a way I’d never seen in a movie. It’s structured as a man writing his memoirs, and is more literal about that structure than we normally see. But then there are parts where his writing gets interrupted and these scenes use dialogue and employ elision to discreetly set up punchlines… Really cool. Criterion’s website says this was an influence on Orson Welles, and maybe they mean F For Fake?

The Immortal Story (1968) dir. Orson Welles

I hadn’t seen this one, despite being an Orson Welles fanatic, I guess because most people would not consider it a feature film, as it’s under an hour long, and made for French television. It’s not great, kind of feels like a long short film. Welles plays an old rich man who hates the existence of fiction so much he tries to make a story that’s basically a Penthouse letter become true, casting Jeanne Moreau in the role of the woman and a much younger man as the dude who has sex with her. Based on a story by Isak Dinesen, which I’m just learning now was the pen name of a woman.

If You Could Only Cook (1935) dir. William Selter

So I kept on watching Jean Arthur movies, binging them before they left Criterion Channel at the end of June. You would expect them to blend together, and maybe they will in time but having just watched this one it’s great. Totally absurd premise becomes legit funny. The master chef from History Is Made At Night here plays an Italian gangster. The two movies would be a pretty solid double feature, as both feature pretty involved, absurd plots, based around love stories, but also featuring this weird comedic element. This one features Jean Arthur as a down-on-her-luck woman who strikes up a conversation with a guy on a park bench, convincing him they should get a job together working as a butler and cook team. He is secretly rich, and gets lessons in being a butler from his butler, and falls in love with her, a week before he is scheduled to get married to a rich woman he doesn’t actually care about. This movie is just over seventy minutes long. I am pretty unfamiliar with the screwball comedy genre and really wonder how they play with a different lead actress.

The More The Merrier (1943) dir. George Stevens

This one’s great too. Super comedic, with sort of intricately choreographed visual gags, but then the romance culminates in a scene that’s wildly horny, bordering on the pornographic despite the absence of any nudity. That’s a seduction shot in close up, where a sort of oblivious and distracted conversation occurs absentmindedly as kisses move from hand to neck. Jean Arthur rents a room to a domineering older dude (Charles Coburn, the guy from The Devil And Miss Jones, who’s funnier here) who then rents half of his room to a man he thinks would be a good for her. Feels like a big part of the comedy in these is people being absolute nightmares who force other people into going along with things they absolutely hate, and as much as I hate the idea of being someone who can’t handle an old comedy because of my modern cultural mores, such scenes are pretty nerve-wracking to me. Still, there’s something to the storytelling in this, how the initial gags build on themselves when it’s just the two of them, then the introduction of the second man sort of continues the sort of jokes that were already being made, how the comedy sort of snowballs but then takes the shape of this very real romance.

The Impatient Years (1944) dir. Irving Cummings

This was originally conceived as a quasi-sequel to The More The Merrier. It is a weird one, with a vaguely comedic premise it takes a pretty emotionally intense first act to set up. The first half hour has these long dialogues filled with tension of people not really being able to communicate. It’s written by a woman and you can really tell, holy shit, it’s closely observed. But the whole premise is fucked! Begins with a court hearing for a divorce. Jean Arthur has been hit by her husband, and her father (Charles Coburn again) who witnessed it says he can’t recommend a divorce, because then the judge would have to give a divorce to all the couples who got married too quick before the man shipped off to war. A flashback structure shows him, freshly home, smoking cigarettes above the crib of the child he’s never seen before and pretty irritable. The father argues the issue is the married couple has forgotten while they’ve fallen in love. Coburn basically sucks too- he’s in all these movies as this railroading paternalistic figure, and apparently was in his real life a white supremacist? And while The Devil And Miss Jones shows him learning to not be a piece of shit, this movie basically takes his side and argues for him being right. The judge agrees with this plan that they should spend four days retracing the steps of when they first met, before he shipped off to work. And it works, they fall back in love in the movie’s second half. But basically Jean Arthur’s whole behavior at the beginning of the movie is predicated on her having the responsibilities of a mother? And the movie just sort of argues that she’s got to learn to be a wife too, and she agrees, pitching it as this sort of romantic thing, but the actual central cause of tension is never resolved. So this movie is flawed and kinda nonsensical, but it’s interesting, partly because the beginning is like Bergman-level brutal before the contortions of a plot push it into this unnatural light comedy shape.

Arizona (1940) dir. Wesley Ruggles

This one has Jean Arthur as the female lead, opposite William Holden, but is more notable for its scope as a Western. A pretty good example of the genre being about society in microcosm, being forged from this conflict between the wild and domestic spheres. Jean Arthur both brings this semi-feminist sense of freedom to all of her roles, and she also built up a body of work of populist politics and class consciousness. This one has her as a rugged individualist frontierswoman, who runs a series of businesses as a way to make more money and accrue wealth, which ends up being a good vehicle, from a storytelling perspective, to increase the scale of action consistently. The villain runs a series of scams/conspiracies to win a profit via dishonest means. This culminates with a wedding where the man leaves his bride immediately afterwards to murder the person who’s been trying to take over her property. Probably the best western I’ve seen where the threat of Native American violence is a major plot point. It does lack the sense of atmosphere and landscape I value in a western, favoring a more storytelling more focused on plot and characters. Ends with a scene where a dude gets married and then immediately leaves to go kill someone waiting in a bar for him. (I should try to track down the George Stevens western Shane, that also features Jean Arthur.)

Whirlpool (1934) dir. Roy William Neill

This isn’t as top shelf as the other Jean Arthur movies but it’s pretty good. A man goes to prison, fakes his own death for the sake of his wife so she’ll move on. Jean Arthur plays the daughter, who meets him once he gets out, but needs to keep him a secret from her mother, who has remarried but would probably wreck her life for the other man’s sake. This is a pretty weird movie, both structurally, and because the father-daughter relationship feels quasi-incestuous: She abandons dates with her fiancee to spend time with her father, etc. The movie handles it semi-innocently, but I guess I had just been hearing about how when things like this happen in real life, and adult children meet their parents for the first time as adults, there often is an irresistible desire between them. So the movie kind of feels like it’s basically about something super-fucked-up but is trying to depict it as innocent, but also just the raw emotion Jean Arthur displays as she cries when they meet for the first time is really intense! She doesn’t even show up until like 1/3 of the way through the movie but she gives it such emotional weight.

Party Wire (1935) dir. Erle Kenton

This movie’s charming and watchable but yeah not one of the better ones. It’s about a pretty interesting thing- In small towns in this era basically cheaper for there to be a telephone line everyone can listen in on. This ends up being a movie about small town gossip and resentment, where the villains are old women with too much time on their hands. It’s also about Jean Arthur being a wildly charming “real” person who wins the heart of a rich man who every woman is after, so while she’s good in the part there’s an element of formula executed better elsewhere. Here she has a father who’s drunk all the time, his alcoholism is a big running gag that gets a little exhausted. Also apparently there’s an app now that’s basically a party wire?

The Whole Town’s Talking (1935) dir. John Ford

Felt pretty ambivalent about this one too, which is more of an Edward G Robinson vehicle. This is meant to be a comedy, but I don’t really think the jokes come off that well, and the sense of reversals feels a little pat. Realized my best friend from high school looks sorta like Edward G Robinson now and worked out a way to remake it starring him. The Robinson version is about a guy who works as a clerk in an office, writes on the side, but learns he is the doppelganger of a killer gangster who just escaped from prison, who’s played by Robinson as well. This leads to his worldly coworker he has a crush on developing an interest in him, but also a lot of cases of mistaken identity with the police, who give him a note saying that while he looks like the person they’re trying to arrest, they’re not the same guy. The gangster then reads about this in the news and breaks into his apartment to get this “passport” from him. The remake I envision plays off of the fact that people are no longer famous for doing crimes enough to attract the attentions of a savvy young woman. But what if it was some dumb Youtube prankster, who is constantly committing crimes, that has the police after him? And then it’s basically the same movie.

Public Hero No. 1 (1935) dir. J. Walter Rubin

More of a heavy-duty crime thing, about the head of a gang busting out of prison, reuniting with his gang to do crimes, not knowing the cellmate he broke out of prison with is an undercover cop. Jean Arthur ends up caught in the middle, falling in love with the cop (not knowing he’s a cop) while being the sister of the criminal she hopes goes straight. She enlivens the movie quite a bit but it’s a  familiar enough plot to still come up a little bit short. Would maybe benefit from more atmosphere in the crime bits and less comedy bits about an alcoholic doctor slowing it down.

You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939) dir. Frank Capra

Watched these for Jean Arthur, though they are classics for being Frank Capra movies, Jimmy Stewart movies, and sort of archetypal in their depiction of sincerity and the opposition of the rich and powerful. So that is to say that while my favorite movies I’ve watched recently have felt genre-less, or like they participate in every genre, these feel far more like you know where they’re going pretty much from the start: In the case of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington that’s partly because of things like there being an episode of The Simpsons that parodies/reuses it.

Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936) dir. Frank Capra

Also has Jean Arthur as the female lead, here playing opposite Gary Cooper. When they remade this as an Adam Sandler vehicle, Winona Ryder took the Jean Arthur role. Gary Cooper inherits money, comes to the big city, everyone wants the money, Jean Arthur writes news articles mocking him as a rube while slowly falling in love with his sincerity. In the end his decision to give the money to the poor outrages everyone in power and they try to argue he’s not mentally fit. All these Frank Capra movies are longer than the other Jean Arthur movies, (two hours, as opposed to an hour and a half) and also are not really focused on her, though she’s the best part of them.

Ball Of Fire (1941) dir. Howard Hawks

Billy Wilder cowrites this, and it’s maybe his best comedic script? Lot of good jokes in this, feel like this would’ve blown people away in 1941. Gary Cooper plays a naive nerd grammarian who in the course of realizing he needs cover modern slang for his encyclopedia runs into Barbara Stanwyck, as a gangster’s moll, hilarity ensues, they fall in love, both leads are great, supporting cast is big and funny, Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds plays a somewhat naive hayseed, the character here is similarly out of his element but it’s because he’s a big nerd, which is a lot funnier. Stanwyck’s world-weariness giving way to affection for a bunch of old people while continuing to use language they don’t understand and sort of run all over them as they fall over here is a great bit. Really well-written, there’s a Billy Wilder movie starring Jean Arthur (A Foreign Affair, from 1948) I haven’t seen but would like to track down. Sort of fascinating preoccupation with gangsters in these movies, but also positing innocence as a virtue, but in a way that runs counter to “virgin/whore” reductionism. I guess a lot of this comes about because it precedes the post-war mass migration of white people to the suburbs? Organized crime was a big part of people’s lives. I hadn’t seen any Howard Hawks movies until recently I think? Unless I saw one of his westerns or screwball comedies in college. He’s good!

The Sniper (1952) dir. Edward Dmytrk

This one’s interesting in terms of feeling very ahead of its time but also like it would never be made now. About a dude whose misogyny causes him to shoot women with a sniper rifle, the same rifle that apparently any ex-soldier would carry. Probably a pretty tough and upsetting watch, as it’s just about a dude being insane, hoping the police arrest him, and him having interactions with women where he very quickly becomes upset when they realize he’s weird, so he follows them with a gun. Director was blacklisted, the only real overt political sentiment is “get perverts and people who assault women serious mental health care after their first offense.”

[snicketsleuth]

Slackin’ with the Sleuth: reviewing Netflix’s “The End”

There were many goodbyes, and there were many beginnings.

“The End” is perhaps the strangest and most controversial episode to date. It’s difficult to assess the actual quality of the episode as we are constantly reminded of all the ones which preceded it.

At the risk of sounding like a fool rather than a prophet, it’s possible that Netflix’s version of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” will go down in the history of adaptations. We’ve never had quite a literary retranscription like this one: no one has dared to go as deep into the source material, its themes, its inspirations, since, perhaps, Peter Jackson’s recreation of “The Lord of the rings”. The amount of mindwork necessary to make the imagination of the original author fit the screen is absolutely comparable. Let’s wrap up the series after the cut.

Let’s get the elephant out of the room: why would you give the longest book in the series less screentime than the others? The only other example which comes to mind is David Yates’ attempt at adapting “The Order of the Phoenix”, an achievement in shoppy editing, lighting mistakes, script derailment and overall cinematographic incompetence. That is not a strong pitch. Worse of all is the fact that the idea apparently came from Daniel Handler himself! In his words, “The Penultimate Peril” is the real ending while “The End” serves as more of a coda. Even though the ending, by classical tradition, is only supposed to come after the denouement. It’s right in the name of the hotel, for crying out loud. As moving as the montage to “There’s no happy endings, not here, not now” is, its inclusion could have worked just as well in the final episode. In fact, it already worked as the conclusion of the first season!

The reasoning behind this choice is quite skewed, because "A Series of Unfortunate Events" already had a coda: it's called "Chapter Fourteenth". It's short, it's sweet, it's symbolic, it serves as a moral compass for the entire series. It's the only epilogue the series deserves. On the surface, of course, the decision to fusion "The End" with "Chapter Fourteenth" is perfectly reasonable; even the fans don't know whether to classify "Chapter Fourteenth" as a chapter of "The End" or as a fourteenth book which just happens to be published in the same volume as "The End". It's also doubtful that Netflix would allow the showrunners to release a 10-minutes episode as a conclusion. We get it. But somehow, the show writers have convinced themselves that fusioning the last act of the story and its coda turns the entire final act into a coda, and... that's simply not how narration works. There's simply too much going on in that book in terms of plot, character development and themes to adapt it in less than an hour without something missing.

There may be several reasons behind this change. One might be a personal dislike for that particular book, a reluctance to certain chapters of it, a desire to get it over with as soon as possible. But it's unlikely given that the screenwriters adapted the story rather faithfully (the deaths of Kit and Olaf, in particular, are pretty much verbatim) in spite of the time limits. We personnally believe that budget may have had something to do with it: "The End" was always supposed to be filmed last, at a time where budget may be scarce. Recreating the illusion of many exterior shots when the series is filmed mostly on soundstages can't have been cheap, and most of "The End" happens on the outside, in a tropical location. So condensing the book could work as an excuse to cut corners when it comes to money: less screentime, less sets to build. What makes it believable is the fact that "The Penultimate Peril" was officially the most expensive episode to film because of the large crowds and the many returning cast members. Prior to the season, screenwriters had sold this format to the fans as a "mega-episode", which would be longer than the others. But in reality Netflix"s version of "The End" lasts 52 minutes, while the first part of "The Penultimate Peril" stands at a whooping 55! Unless official sources deny it, there's a strong possibility that the showrunners had originally planned a hour-and-a-half episode and had no choice but to "trim the fat" as buget ran out. As we explained in our review of "The Slippery Slope", production of Season 3 was more troubled than we were led to believe, and the final episode could be its greatest casualty yet.

So what did we lose exactly? Well, namely plot elements which drive home the most important themes of the book. The island of "The End" presents the fantasy of an utopia: an opportunity to flee society and regular contact with other human beings, as well as all your problems. But as the history of the island unfolds, we see that this utopia is impossible, nefarious, even. Society inevitably recreates itself, and schisms occur. Beatrice and Bertrand tried to turn the island into a force for good in the world, but that scared the refugees who only wished to be left in peace, away from the rest of humanity. So the Baudelaire parents, who had worked so hard for the happiness of the islanders, had to be banished. And there lies the contraduction: in their effort to flee from oppression, the islanders had to resort to exclusion themselves. The Baudelaire parents tried to break the schism only to create another. And the worst part of all that is that it didn't even work. In their desperate efforts to disengage from the world, the islanders installed Ishamel as a tyrant... only for a second schism to occur when he killed them all as he started to lose power. And even before that, islanders had started another schism by aligning themselves with Olaf and freeing him from his cage. The island is not an utopia, it is just a microcosm of the world at large and a poetic recreation of VFD's tragic history. A failed experiment which only reinforces the issues it tried to solve. And that's the real reason the Baudelaire orphans decided to leave the island at the end of "Chapter Fourteenth": they know that safety and neutrality are an illusion. Had they stayed there, chaos, dissession and conflicts would have occured eventually. Accepting our inability to control things is all part of growing up.

Therefore, the question is: did Netflix's version of "The End" manage to convey that philosophical discussion? Not really. There's simply too much going on in these 52 minutes for anyone to stop and think for a moment about the moral consequences or thematical implications of staying on the island or leaving it. What we get on a screen is a mostly plot-focused adventure where characters do the things they do in the heat of the moment, because they're forced to react to other brisk events. It's not badly written, as their decisions make sense, but it's undeniably a lesser product than the original. A story of this quality needed some room to breathe and explore its symbolism.

Then again, there is another point of adaptation where Netflix's version is actually superior to the books. You see, alongside "The End", a supplementary material called "The Beatrice letters" was released, detailing the actual ending of the Baudelaires' story. It focuses on Lemony, years after the events of "The End" and now famous for writing the books, being chased by a mysterious "Beatrice". He eventually realizes that this Beatrice is actually his niece, who was raised by the Baudelaire orphans, and who is tracking them down once again. This fundamentally changes the ending of the series as 1) Beatrice's survival strongly implies that the Baudelaire orphans are alive too, 2) Lemony, after losing so much of his friends and family members, once again has someone to care for. This is in stark contrast with Lemony's depressing "rock fall, everyone dies" conclusion to "The End". Most readers will never read "The Beatrice letters" or even know it exists, which is infuriating as it contains the "real" ending of the books, one that the author very much intended. So one has to applaud the screenwriters' decision to end the series with the reunion of Beatrice and Lemony. They had obtained a deal to adapt "A Series of Unfortunate Events", not "The Beatrice Letters": they were under no contractual obligation to do so, but we're glad they did. It prevents the series from devolving into mere nihilism, and instead proposes something more interesting.

But more impressing is this episode showing how the TV series has truly come into its own in two aspects. The first one is the aesthetic, as the overly-saturated scenery engulfs the actor. The show has always dismissed realism as a passing craze, but this is the most extreme example of how cartoony the world of Lemony Snicket would look: it’s so fake, it’s real. As the island is a pretty good allegory of purgatory, it makes sense that the story would take place in a completely surreal atmosphere. The care taken to the production design remains, in our humble opinion and careful hypothesis, the real reason “The End” was cut so short, but that money is well-spent. As your eyes get used to the CGI, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish what’s real and what’s not. However even this exploit has its limits: the arboretum is a far cry from the biblical majesty of the scene as depicted in the books, but it will have to do.

The second aspect where marked improvements are to be mentioned is the acting, mostly that of Louis Hynes and Malina Weissman. We were lucky enough that they were decent at all in season 1 (casting child actors is a pretty hit-or-miss line of work), but as of season 3 they really stand head and shoulders with the rest of the cast. They deliver the right emotion in every single emotional scene, in spite of the challenge. Klaus and Violet have come alive. Their recollection of their own tragic existences in the trial scene of “The Penultimate Peril” is particularly impressive.

But the real standout of “The End”, of course, remains the death scene of Kit and Olaf. For a moment, everything goes quiet and we forget that we are watching an adaptation. It was perfect in the books and it’s perfect here, to the letter, although letting Olaf look intently into the Baudelaire orphans’ eyes as he mutters his last verse is a welcome and tasteful addition. We were all wary of the way the showrunners were going to adapt the end of “The End”: the Netflix series has taken a comedic approach and this is the least comedic scene imaginable. It should have been a monumental failure, but judging by everyone’s reaction, it seems to have worked. So bravo to the production team for having the nerve to take a risk and deliver the tragedy of it all in spite of tonal dissonances with the rest of the show. Hard work pays off.

So is this the adaptation of our hopes and dreams? Of course it’s not. But is it the best possible story we could have hoped for in the Hollywood system? No, it’s much better than that. There’s something particular about the age of streaming television which somehow allowed this adaptation to happen. We hope it’s no a fluke, and we hope the success of Netflix’s homage to “A Series of Unfortunate Events” will give inspiration to many other creators. It’s a teachable moment on how to nail down the emotion and message of an original work. And that’s perhaps why the end of the TV series is a tad more hopeful than its book version: because its showrunners were happy, so happy they could complete this project the way they had intended, in spite of impossible things. So of course they put a few less deaths into the conclusion of the overall story. Happy people write the most frightening horror stories, and, in spite of its reputation, horror loves a happy ending. After all, the publication of the books was an anomaly, a miracle in and of itself. Daniel Handler has confessed many times that he’s still dumbfounded at their success.

So for now on, and in spite of our many gripes and nitpicks, let’s be grateful. There are so many fans of other works out there who have it worse than us, guys! But not us. We had the books, we have the show, and we will have each other. At long last... we’re the fortunate ones.

[lululawrence]

3/3/3

I... was tagged by a lot of people so here we go hahaha thank you tooooo @a-brighter-yellow, @runaway-train-works, @allwaswell16, @laynefaire, and @himynameiszayn! sorry this wasn’t timely, but honestly who expects timely out of me anymore? no one. lollll I honestly don’t know who has and hasn’t done this, so I’m going to just... share my three lines and then answer the three questions everyone asked me. if you see this and wanted to be tagged but weren’t, say i tagged you and answer the three questions out of the list of 15 that i’m apparently going to be answering and do your own post! i’d love to see what you have as well. Soooooo here we go!

Three lines from my WIP (i’m doing five instead cause i was tagged by five people, hope that’s okay):

Harry had done them a favor, really.

Louis’ heart didn’t believe him just yet. The tears running down his face and the fact that he was having a hard time breathing as he tried to hold back the worst of his crying until he was done driving were physical evidence of that. But he knew that given time, it would.

Hopefully.

Three Questions from Sage:

1. Do you have a strategy for writing dialogue?

uhhhhhh.... not so much. lolll i just try to make it sound natural and have a good rhythm to it. but i guess i don’t really think much about it other than trying to make it sound like something they’d say, if that makes sense? i’m afraid people who bother to read my answers to these questions are gonna be like “wow she doesn’t really think about much of anything ever while writing, does she?” noooo i really don’t. lol

2. Do you keep a note in your phone related to your fic/fics? What kinds of things do you jot down?

uhhhh i mean kinda. lollll i mostly keep a fic list in my planner, actually, but i also will brainstorm in chats in whatsapp and then i star the messages so i don’t lose them. other than that, i don’t really keep any notes in my phone. 

3. Who’s characterization do you think you have the best handle on? Does writing a particular one of the boys come easier to you than the rest?

Nicholas Grimshaw’s. Because he is the gay male version of me, i swear he is. lolllll otherwise I don’t really know? I mean, i feel like it’s a really opinion based subjective answer because we don’t really know them, so what i think is a good handle on their characterizations might have someone else reeling and upset lol that said, i do often find it easier to write from Harry’s pov as opposed to anyone else’s, but over time I’ve come to be comfortable writing from Louis’ too.

the rest is going under a cut cause wow this got long

Three Questions from Rebecca:

1. What’s a trope and/or pairing you love to read but haven’t tackled yet yourself, and why?

uuuuuuhhhhhhh that’s a really good question actually. i am not really sure? i LOVE fake relationship, friends to lovers, bed sharing, hybrid, abo, f/nf... oh! i know! i love royalty fics and i’ve never tried one of those! and same with regency fics. all the pairings i love to read i have officially attempted writing now, so i’m actually quite proud of that.

2. Which fic of yours are you most proud of and why?

i... this is mean. lolllll Goodness. I have a handful of fics that I’m actually really proud of. But one I’ll use for one of Anitra’s questions and another I’ll use for one of Michelle’s hahaha SO I’ll say the fic I’m most proud of is You Don't Care About Me (One More Night). There’s a lot of reasons why, for this one. One, it’s the longest fic I’ve ever written and I wrote it in something crazy like 3 weeks. Another is I have tried writing canon compliant fics in the past and they are SO FREAKING HARD. like SO HARD. And I promised myself I wouldn’t write another one, but I got this idea and I wanted to write it since I hadn’t found anything like it. So I took on the attempt to write a long canon compliant fic, and i did it! I also wasn’t sure how successful I would be with getting the emotions and sensuality across with this fic, because it’s a friends with benefits fic, right? but, i decided a few years ago i wasn’t going to write smut anymore. would i be successful in getting that across? the connection they have? the desire? the sexual tension? would people be able to feel the growth in the attachment between them as their relationship grows and changes and morphs without it? I didn’t even touch on all the reasons why i was concerned and nervous but also excited to write this fic that all come together with me being so proud of it. but in the end, it was SUCH a growing experience and such an incredible writing experience for me and in the end, i think i truly produced exactly the fic i wanted to. i think this fic is one i would thoroughly enjoy reading again later, and that i would love it. which is always my greatest goal, so yeah. i think my tomlinshaw fic is probably the fic i’m most proud of.

3. What three tips would you give to a new writer in the fandom?

oh goodness okay so let’s see here. 

1- get good support around you. i’m talking friends, cheerleaders, betas, just anyone and everyone. writing is hard and if you feel like you’re doing it alone it’s that much harder. so surround yourself with good, wonderful, and supportive people.

2- write what you want to read/write for yourself. i enjoyed writing the first few years i was doing it. it was fun being inspired by other people’s ideas and participating in a lot of exchanges where i was focused on the recipient and writing something for them. the year i wrote something like 42 fics was such a growing experience for me and i don’t think a single one of those fics was actually for myself. after that year i decided i wanted to focus on what I wanted to write and what i would like to read, and ever since i changed that focus in my writing, it’s changed entirely. i’m so much more proud of the fics i produce overall and i enjoy the process so much more because they’re for me. if they aren’t hugely popular, that’s okay. i like them, i love them, and that’s what’s most important for me. i’ve become so much more settled in my writing and just all of it since i made that change.

3- write often. it makes the biggest difference and makes things become so much easier if you do. it’s so hard at first, but you will strengthen those writing “muscles” and become such a stronger writer and narrator and just improve vastly the more you do it. so, write often.

Three Questions from Anitra:

1. Which of your fics do you wish more people would read? (Include a link please!)

You Try To Be Everything (I Need)! i know i know i know. it’s fantasy. those never get huge amounts of hits. AND it’s kinda future/dystopian. those ALSO never get huge amounts of hits. AND it’s a non-linear narrative which ALSO never gets huge hits. BUT I LOVE THIS FIC, OKAY??? it’s one of the top three i’ve posted this year that i’m most proud of and i ADORE IT. it’s one of my absolute fic babies. it FLOWED from me in a way i’ve never experienced before and i used symbolism! and visuals! and created a world! and took them on an epic journey! this fic is just. one of the best examples of how i can write as well. i loved how i was able to reveal information as it needed to be and was pertinent to the story. i feel like it gave a power to it that it wouldn’t have had without those flashbacks. and the art!!!! gosh the art that @hrrytomlinson did for it was just stunning. so yeah. probably that one. 

2. What are three of your favorite tropes to write? Why?

ooohhhh i LOVE writing friends to lovers. i think it’s the pining. i ADORE writing pining. probably because until my husband i had very few experiences that went past pining so i’m quite familiar with that in my own life lollll i also love writing disaster gay/humor fics. they’re so fun and also feel so relatable to my life. they’re easy for me to write and just SUCH A BLAST. and lastly i think... my other favorite trope to write is... meet cute. i just love writing that point in time when two people meet and immediately like each other and have to figure out how the hell they’re gonna ensure that they see that other person again. you know? i love those beginning stages so much! so yeah. i think that would probably be my other favorite trope to write.

3. Do you write side pairings in your fics? Which side pairing is your favorite? Why?

i dooooooo! i dunno if i have a favorite. i feel like i often rely on ziam because, well, why not? right? but i do have a LOT of fun writing shiall. there’s just something about their two personalities and getting to write them that allows me to be a bit silly but also just have fun and be cute and fluffy. so yeah. i guess maybe shiall. ooh but i do love a good rare pair of side gemma/niall as well hehe

Three Questions from Layne:

1. Do you have a writing routine? What is it?

mmmmm i guess kinda? lolll generally i have a very hard time writing at home. if i’m at home i’m going to get interrupted by my husband or kids or parents. it’s bound to happen. either that or i’ll remember any number of five million things that i should be doing around the house instead of sitting there and writing, so overall i have to write somewhere other than home. i’ll shove all of my errands and chores and everything into a smaller time frame so i have a bit of time to myself that i can leave the house and write for. whether that time amount is just 20 minutes or 3 hours, i’ll go and get set up (usually at starbucks or the library) and i’ll check in with any number of people or chats and let them know i’m writing. i’ll give them a starting word count, the fic i’m working on, and when i’ll be checking back for accountability. i then write like the wind. often, i’ll have a playlist going in the background, but not always. then when my time is up, i’ll check back in with the chat and share my ending word count so i can see how much i wrote that 20 minutes/hour/whatever and then i’ll also usually share a snippet so they can yell at me in excitement and help me stay excited too. and then rinse lather repeat until the fic is done! soooooo yeah. if that counts as a routine, then that’s my routine. haha!

2. Which of your fics was the most challenging to write? Which was the most fun? Why?

oh goodness, there have been a few that were difficult as fuck to write. i think the one that was the hardest was probably I Don't Mean to Frustrate. it was for an a/b/o exchange and i got three prompts that i just... was not really comfortable with tbh. i wasn’t sure any of them were tropes i could take on or i was not emotionally equipped to handle, which left me with a canon compliant prompt. i LOVE reading canon compliant a/b/o fics, but i hate writing canon compliant as i think i’ve said before. because of that, it felt like pulling teeth. i wanted to be sure that i was holding true to their schedule, i wanted to be sure i was sticking with what we knew of the band at that time etc but then mix things up a bit with the a/b/o dynamics. i think i just put a lot of pressure on myself and didn’t feel confident in it and that just made it suuuuuuuper hard to write. i do like it now, but it was really hard for me. the most fun? oof uhhh probably I Like Digging Holes. That fic is so self indulgent. i was meant to be writing at least another two or three other fics that actually had deadlines and instead i saw a silly interaction that grimmy had with an instagram person and i had to write it. something ridiculous like two days later this fic was posted and it was just a blast to be ridiculous and over the top and silly. 

3. Do you make playlists to write to, and if so, do you ever share them when you post your fics? Which fic’s playlist do you enjoy most, and why?

sometimes? if there’s a fic that has a really specific vibe i’m looking to channel in it then i will and USUALLY i’ll link them in the author’s note for the fic, but i don’t do it very often. generally the playlists i listen to as i write are just the ones i’ve made most recently of music i’m currently enjoying. that said, i do really love the playlist i made for my 50s direction fic (A Word We've Only Heard), because i made sure it was all era appropriate and it was the music that had inspired that fic in the first place, so yeah. you can find the playlist here, if you’re interested. 

Three Questions from Michelle:

1. Which fic of yours holds a special place in your heart?

I have a little list of my fic babies mentally that i have, but the one from this year that i’m most proud of and is special to me that hasn’t already been talked about is The Only Thing That Keeps Me Grounded. i feel like i’ve talked a lot about it, but there were a lot of emotions and self realization moments and just... i tried really hard to make it true to those who identify as polyamorous. i think i really hit that on the head with that and made it so it’s a fic that actually can be relatable and others can identify with whether they’re poly or not, and because of all those things, it’s just really special to me.

2. Is there a pairing you refuse to write?

mmmm no? i mean there are going to be some pairings that i find more difficult, but if there’s anything that i’ve learned over the almost five years i’ve been writing in this fandom, it’s that i can write pretty much anything i set my mind to. i just might not enjoy it as much haha

3. What do you prefer Fests or challenges more?

i... dunno? lollll i love a good fest and a good challenge, so i guess it just depends on what the challenge or the fest is as to whether i prefer one over the other. haha!

And that’s it! if you actually read all of this, you are a GEM AMONG MERE ROCKS. lolll i appreciate you caring enough about me to read the whole thing. i hope i didn’t bore you. and again, if you want to do this, consider yourself tagged! please tag me in your own post so i can read it and enjoy your answers too!

[claritalunaluna76]

This time nine years ago, five teenage boys’ dreams were in tatters after being rejected from the X Factor .

But determined not to let a good-looking gang go to waste, show boss Simon Cowell and his genius decided to put solo hopefuls Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson together.

It took the lads just five minutes to agree to his plan and have another crack at the competition - this time in the groups category.

They would go on to be one of the most successful boybands of the century, selling out stadiums and dominating the charts for five years before splitting in an explosion of bitterness and animosity.

But with no experience of harmonies, group singing or even each other, even then Liam wondered what they were really getting into.

“We had seen each other at Bootcamp and got on well, and Niall and I had shared a room. But we were competition then, and at the back of the minds we knew were against each other,” Liam would later recall.

“So it was strange when we were put together and my first thought was, ‘How are we going to make this work when we don’t know each other? It was such a leap of faith.”

A fractious start

Desperate to catch up with the other bands, the newly-formed five-piece spent an intense two intense weeks practising in a bungalow at the bottom of Harry’s step-dad’s garden in Holmes Chapel, Cheshire.

But contrary to their bright white smiles and boyish banter, their very different personalities were already beginning to show, laying the foundations for the resentment, jealously and anger that would one day cause the group to implode.

“We used to be at each other’s throats on the X Factor,” Louis admitted on their This Is Us DVD of his clashes with Liam.

“Whenever I wanted to do anything slightly mischievous, he was always the daddy.”

“Me and Louis did not get on at all,” Wolverhampton-born Liam agreed. “We were two completely different characters. There was one point where I literally wanted to whack him.”

Nevertheless, they sailed through the live shows and came third in the final before scoring a record deal with Cowell, who for them made n exception of only signing the winning act.

A mysterious fall out

By the time they scored their first number one with What Makes You Beautiful in September 2011, Harry and Louis were living as housemates in a rented £3million North London flat in the same block where Ashley Cole and Cheryl once met.

Then suddenly at the start of 2012 they allegedly stopped talking and moved out.

“Apart from Harry and Louis, no one knows exactly what caused the falling out — they didn’t even tell the other boys the full details,“ a source told The Sun at the time.

“But it was very serious and their friendship has never recovered. Everyone involved in the band is well aware of the animosity between them.

“It’s been central to everything else that came next with the band because there was suddenly a massive divide.”

From that point on Harry apparently refused to even travel with Louis and the fall-out would become so serious that bosses reportedly had to find a way to make their last three albums without the boys having to spend any time together in the studio.

However, Niall dismissed the claims, telling fans not to believe the reports.

"We stand strong as a band and we’re brothers,” he tweeted.

Those 'gay sex’ rumours

One theory was that the 'Larry Stylinson’ fan fiction depicting the pair as lovers had pushed them apart.

Louis, in particular, was extremely sensitive about the claims and admitted the speculation about their sexuality 'created an atmosphere’.

“People can believe what they want, but it comes across as a little bit disrespectful to the ones that I love, like (girlfriend) Eleanor (Calder),” he said.

“I’m so protective over things like that, about the people I love. So it created this atmosphere between the two of us.”

Zayn told how Harry and Louis had even dialled back their physical friendship in an attempt to stop the rumours.

“It’s not funny, and it still continues to be quite hard for them. They won’t naturally go put their arm around each other because they’re conscious of this thing that’s going on, which is not even true,” he said.

While Harry likes to keep people guessing about his sexuality, refusing to put a label on it, Louis has categorically said he is heterosexual.

And he was raging when a cartoon featured in HBO show Euphoria depicted a sex scene between him and Harry last month.

“I can categorically say that I was not contacted nor did I approve it,” he raged on Twitter , with a source telling The Sun he was 'angered’ that an 'awkward’ situation had been made worse.

Drug scandal

Whatever the cause of the tension, the rift only grew wider when Zayn and Louis were filmed smoking what appeared to be cannabis in the back of an SUV en route to a concert in Peru in 2014.

Narrating from behind the camera as he filmed Zayn lighting what appeared to be a joint, Louis could be heard saying, “So here we are, leaving Peru. Joint lit. Happy days!”

Talking about Zayn taking his warm-up 'seriously’, he continued, “One very very important factor of Zayn’s warm up of course if Mary J herself. In fact I will present it to him now for some fantastic singing.”

Straight-laced Harry - who wasn’t even much of a drinker - was apparently 'furious’ they’d taken the shine off the start of their UK stadium tour with their 'stupid and reckless’ behaviour.

“Harry is annoyed about the whole debacle. This should be one of the biggest weeks of the band’s career… Instead it has been taken over by this controversy,” an insider told The Sun.

“Despite Harry’s reputation, he’s incredibly professional and mature, and not into these sorts of antics,” the source added.

Booze battles

It wasn’t just Louis and Zayn who were in Harry’s bad books.

Liam’s partying was so out of control that Harry reportedly refused to go socialise with the band unless good guy Niall was there to keep the peace.

The pressure of spending two solid years on the road coupled with rumours about their future caused Liam to have a backstage meltdown in October 2015 with the band forced to cancel the gig in Belfast.

“The pressures of fame and being on the road for two years have made Liam ill,” a source told The Sun of the star, who would go on to admit fame 'nearly killed me’.

“He was devastated about letting everyone down, especially the fans, but he wasn’t physically able to get on stage. He had a complete meltdown.”

On another occasion he turned up to a fan event so drunk that it finally gave him a wake-up call.

“I’m not afraid to say that I actually went through a pretty bad [drinking] stage,” he told Attitude magazine.

“There were just a few times that I went over the limit with things and then I had to pull it back.

"I was very fortunate that I had lots of great people around me who said to me, 'Look Liam, you need to chill out a bit now.’”

Admitting he used alcohol to cope with the strain of performing near-constant touring, he said being drunk was like putting on a Disney costume before stepping out on stage.

“Underneath the Disney costume I was pissed quite a lot of the time because there was no other way to get your head around what was going on,” he told Men’s Health.

“I mean, it was fun. We had an absolute blast, but there were certain parts of it where it just got a little bit toxic.”

The pact

The band was fraying at the seams. Zayn was constantly in the headlines, accused of cheating on then-fiancée Perrie Edwar - which he vehemently denied.

There were rumours that he wanted out of 1D - despite the deal they were said to have made to release five albums and a greatest hits record before going on a 'hiatus’.

But Zayn blindsided everyone by suddenly quitting in March 2015 after a concert in Hong Kong.

In a statement he later admitted had nothing to do with him, he claimed he wanted to be a 'normal 22- year old’.

"I wasn’t going to spend another minute doing something which made me ill and which I no longer believed in,” he said of his shock exit.

Harry was seen openly crying on stage during their performance the next night.

But behind the scenes, the lads were reportedly furious.

“The others knew Zayn would have a head start by leaving first, like Robbie Williams did when he quit Take That,“ said a pal.

“It was frustrating to them as Zayn only had to hang on in there a few months and 1D would have gone on their long break united.”

Zayn would later go so far as to claim he’d wanted to leave the band from the very beginning and that he hated their music.

Friends no more?

Meanwhile, absence has only made the feud grow stronger, particularly between Louis and Zayn after the latter failed to support him on the X Factor following his mum’s death in December 2016.

"I had a couple of calls with him after I lost my mum and all the boys had agreed to come to that performance and he didn’t show, so that really bugged me,” he said on the Dan Wootton podcast.

“It was just seeing everyone there – Harry, Niall and Liam – that was what I needed that night, that support,” he said. “So on the other end of the spectrum it kind of really showed. So, eh, I hope he’s alright, but…”

Niall admits he doesn’t even have Zayn’s number and that he’s constantly changing it, while Zayn sniped that he didn’t 'really’ speak to Harry when they were in the band so didn’t expect to have a friendship after.

“I ain’t spoke to any of them for a long time, to be honest with you. That’s just the way it is,” he told Vogue.

“There’s things that happen and things that were said after I left…Snide things. Small things that I would never have expected.”

So could they ever reunite?

Mirror - July 23, 2019

[aflamethatneverdies]

2.8.4-2.8.5

2.8.4

Was there really a need for Valjean to make another reference to Madame Thenardier as the bogeyman who will come get Cosette if Cosette’s not quiet. She’s been living with Valjean for some time, she knows how things work this will not help. I’m afraid Valjean is sowing the seeds of driving Cosette away by telling her to remain quiet, do as she’s told, not ask things. I know he’s dealing with a lot here but still.

Valjean’s plan is to get buried in the coffin. I have to appreciate how goth Valjean is, he solves the problem by being buried in a coffin, any other way would have been way less dramatic and more sensible for his tastes. The whole plot of being buried alive feels like a nice trope. I can just imagine Dumas and Hugo sitting together and Dumas going, ‘Well, my hero escaped by stitching himself in a burial cloth and having the guards throw him off the edge of the window to escape prison’, whereas Hugo while writing this goes, ‘Clearly being buried alive is the way to escape into the convent. No other way will be good enough.’

We also get another mention of how this is nothing to Valjean, because he is an ex-convict. Hugo does not let us forget that fact as other people in the brickclub have already mentioned. Some of Valjean’s talents have been developed because he is an ex-convict, this desperation of wanting to escape is motivated by the fact that he still thinks like an ex-convict. He does not forget it, the narrative does not forget it and yet he still gets to be good and redeemed. This is a great thing about this book. 

We also get the cat comparisons. Fauchelevant is compared to cats because he is still hesitating and very rightly so because it is a dangerous plan and even at the end of the chapter when everything is decided, Fauchelevant is still not sure whether the plan will work. I do like that he trusts Valjean and I really love these two, spending time together like this.  

2.8.5

Some cemetries like Vaugiraud have their rules and there are appropriate cemeteries for the rich (Pere Lachaise, whereas Vaugiraud is for the poor). I shouldn’t be horrified at the clear distinctions of class in 19th Century Paris by now, but I still continue to be. Obviously, because Vaugiraud cemetery is for the poor, it is falling into disrepair. I’m always extremely salty about old buildings left for disrepair because the government does not think they are important, and it happens a lot where I live, so this annoys me, because apparently even when you’re dead you’re not equal to the rich. This does make Valjean’s insistence of being buried in a pauper’s grave clearer.

I did like the narrator also pointing out the old terms being used for the cemetery, along with the old-fashioned hearse opening the scene, it does add a very nice touch.

The cemetery is also very macabre and grim after dusk, I continue to love how Hugo gets very gothic with the setting and mood. He really should have written more gothic stories. Obviously in typical Hugo fashion, there’s another pun even during a very serious death scene and I love the idea of treating death casually, making a joke in the midst of death – very Romantic.

I find the distinctions between the government’s laws and the God’s laws interesting when it comes to the convent nuns, who hold God’s law above the government and its policies, It feels as if it is meant to echo Hugo’s opinion as well.  

It’s too late for Fauchelevant to go back and change things, so it is fine if he is okay with the plan but there is a snag obviously. And the snag is a new gravedigger, I do like the line ‘After Napoleon, Louis XVIII and after Mestienne, Gribier.’ It doesn’t matter whether you’re rich and powerful, or a poor ordinary gravedigger, death comes for everyone although Fauchelevant is surprised at the gravedigger’s death.  I do like the new gravedigger. He reminds me of Pierre Gringoire in some ways, as a poet/writer almost a philosophical man who cannot live off of his writing entirely because he has seven kids to feed, so he digs grave. It is funny that through his professions he is acquainted with the whole breadth of human emotions, love in the mornings and death in the evening. I don’t know, I feel a bit sad at the fact that he cannot feed his family through becoming a writer full time and that he might not be able to write in the future because of the nature of his work. I know I’m referencing Hugo’s own characters in his own work, but I think it’s interesting to see how writers borrow/use some parts of their own characters to create new characters. I don’t know if that makes sense, I’m really interested in looking at not just what the writer is doing, but how they do it, I find it interesting. 

He does refuse any and all attempts of Fauchelevant to get him to go for drinks and Fauchlevant is worried that this plan might be going downhill very fast. That was to be expected in such a plan but it adds to the drama and the tension. This chapter was from Fauchelevant’s point of view, we will get Valjean’s perspective next time. 

[glenrocklibraryteens]

BOOK LIST: THE BEST OF DYSTOPIAN BOOKS

List compiled by Anonymous

1984 by George Orwell

Have you ever heard the phrase “Big Brother is watching you”? Well, you can thank George Orwell for that. 1984 follows Winston as he struggles to conform to the societal standards put in by the party that controls the government (AKA “Big Brother”). I would recommend this book because it serves as the blueprint for modern dystopian books - and if you like modern dystopian books such as the ones described on this list, you will love this book. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins Arguably, The Hunger Games was one of the most popular books of the early 2010s. This book follows the story of Katniss - just a normal girl who ends up volunteering to participate in the Hunger Games in place of her sister. The ‘game’ itself involves a bunch of teenagers getting trapped in an area together and being forced to fight until one person remains. Although this book is violent and quite dramatic, action is not the reason I would recommend this book. The Hunger Games is a book I would recommend due to the complexity of characters that get developed as they go through the games. Many books, movies, and television shows have tried to copy this troupe but none can do it as well as Collins did in this book.

Animal Farm by George Orwell This book is easily one of “the classics” when talking about dystopian books. Taking place on a farm, Animal Farm discusses how a group of animals attempts to overthrow the farmer in order to make a more fair society. While in theory the animals fought for equality for all, it becomes apparent very quickly that some animals see themselves as above this. The gradual decline of the animals from when they first got their freedom to where they are at the end of the book is what makes this book worth reading - and what causes you to put the book down after and really think. Divergent by Veronica Roth The world in Divergent is based on everyone belonging to a faction. People can choose to remain in the faction they grew up in (the most common), or change factions. When the main character Tris has to face this choice, she ends up making a decision that permanently changes her life and the life of those living in this society. Divergent is definitely a book worth reading due to the compelling plot, complex characters, and plot twist after plot twist. Lord of the Flies by William Golding Lord of the Flies is not what you might consider traditionally ‘dystopian’ - after all, this book follows a group of preteen boys after they get stranded on a deserted island. However, the themes and character development that occurs throughout the book is definitely in line with the rest of the books on this list. If not required by your school, I would definitely recommend reading this book. Relatively, it's a quick read and will have you on the edge of your seat until the final page. The Giver by Louis Lowry Another iconic title from your school’s required reading list. The Giver revolved around a society in which there is no emotional depth nor color. After the main character Jonas is selected to be the one to receive the memories of life before this society, he undergoes a lengthy and difficult process in which he questions the entire world that he lives on. The dramatic shift from utopia to dystopia is what makes this book such an incredible read - and the narration to accompany it truly makes it one of the best dystopian books ever written. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancy Written in the early 2010s, The 5th Wave is another incredible book. This book follows Cassie as she tries to survive in a world that has been brought to its knees by aliens. In my opinion, this book is severely underrated. The 5th Wave is truly a one of a kind book - even though it uses the common troupe of aliens invading earth - which is why it is on this list. Cinder by Marissa Meyer Cinder is a severely underrated book. Taking its inspiration from the well-known fairytale Cinderella, Cinder takes place in a dystopian society with cyborgs walking around (even the main character Cinder is one). Although this book is mainly considered to be a dystopian type book, I would recommend it for the sci-fi aspect of it. It is a very interesting retelling of a classic story, and one that you would not be able to find anywhere else.  Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury A dystopian book about books! Fahrenheit 451 describes a society in which books are illegal and any book found will be burned (hence the title is the temperature at which paper in books would burn). The main reason I would recommend this book, much like 1984 and Animal Farm, is because it lays a foundation for what a dystopian book should strive to be. With a compelling story and characters to go with it, this book is definitely a must read. Ready Player One by Ernst Cline As the title would suggest, Ready Player One revolves around a dystopian society that has a virtual reality game. In this book, the main character Wade searches for an “Easter egg” in this game in order to inherit the fortune of the creator of the game. Ready Player One is the perfect book for both those who love video games and those who have never picked up a controller due to the complex world Cline is able to create in this book. 

The Best of Dystopian Books Playlist

“Hey Kids” - Molina This song has a very 80s-sci-fi movie feel to it and could go with 1984 or Ready Player One. “Radioactive” - Imagine Dragons “Radioactive” is a song about someone’s world being completely changed and now they have to live in it. I think this goes very well with the overall idea of a dystopia and the idea of needing to adapt. “Yellow Flicker Beat” - Lorde The main connotation I have with this song is The Hunger Games, since this song was used specifically for the promotion of the movie. Nonetheless, this song can be applied to other books on this list who also deal with a main character who becomes the face of revolution. “Sign of the Times” - Harry Styles “Sign of the Times” describes someone as they prepare for what the song calls ‘the final show’. I think this song goes with the idea of dystopias because of its discussion of moving onto something better, and getting away from the past. “Renegades” - X Ambassadors The word renegade means someone who goes against society. This song goes with the theme of breaking away from a dystopian society and being independent. “As the World Caves In” - Matt Maltese This song describes the world ending, and how the character in the song only wants to be with one other person. I think the feel of this song of the world ending fits with the theme of this book list, but also explores the romantic aspect that is shown in some of these books. “Skyfall” - Adele Much like “Yellow Flicker Beat” was written for The Hunger Games, “Skyfall” was written for a James Bond movie. Although James Bond is not dystopian, the theme of this song and making “a final stand” definitely fit with the theme of these books. “I Want to Break Free” - Queen I think that breaking free, whether literally or mentally, is a common theme of dystopian books and this song by Queen captures that theme. “Pompeii” - Bastille In history, Pompeii was the Roman city that was destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius. In this song, Pompeii serves as a symbol for restarting after a tragic event happens. I think this song goes well with this book list due to the fact that it very much goes with being happy with a change in society, but upset on how it happened. “Welcome Home” - Radical Face “Welcome Home” is about finding inner peace and finding what home is. I think that this goes with this book list due to the fact that many of the characters throughout these books are looking for peace both internally and in their world.

[brightbeautifulthings]

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

"'Don't you see? I'm not the spirit of any age. I'm at odds with everything and always have been! I have never belonged anywhere with anyone at any time!' 'But Louis,' he said softly. 'This is the very spirit of your age. Don't you see that? Everyone else feels as you feel. Your fall from grace and faith has been the fall of a century.'"

Year Read: 2018

Rating: 3/5

Context: I vaguely remember trying to read this once when I was younger and giving up on it for the slow pace and dense descriptions. I've seen the movie many times, and despite my general dislike of Tom Cruise, I think it's a great adaptation (and possibly one of the best performances of his career). This Halloween-month, I resolved to get through it once and for all, since The Vampire Chronicles have long been some of my dad's favorite books. This year, he finally gave in and read the first Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter novel after years of listening to my mom and me rave about them, so it only seems fair that I read one of his favorites. (Spoiler alert: I'm still Team Anita.) Actual spoilers will be clearly marked. Trigger warnings: blood, death, and endless brooding from the world's most reluctant vampire.

About: After more than two centuries of living (such as it is) as a vampire, Louis has consented to tell the story of his long life. At first disbelieving and then enraptured, the boy recording it listens to the gruesome tale with shock and fear. The story chronicles Louis's brief human life in the 1700's in New Orleans to his descent into immortality at the hands of the violent and erratic vampire, Lestat. Their relationship far from easy, however, Lestat soon makes a third vampire, Claudia, forever trapping her in a child's body. The three live as an uneasy but happy family for decades, but Lestat's villainy and Claudia's rage at being forever helpless constantly threaten their peace. Before long, Louis and Claudia flee to Europe in search of other vampires, but their quest may lead them into more danger than they've ever faced.

Thoughts: I empathize with my younger self, since this is not an easy novel to get through. Even before I consciously acknowledged things like "pace", I could tell that it moved at the speed of a glacier. It wallows in Louis's life before vampirism and those early days with Lestat for entirely too long, and Louis isn't the most exciting of narrators. He spends most of his time staring at things with his cool vampire eyes and hating himself for being a killer. In hindsight, maybe this is what the world of vampire fiction needed to spur it on its way to Twilight, TrueBlood, and The Vampire Diaries. Interview is the mother of all of them, and it's perhaps the first time we're given the opportunity to understand them, to see the story from their perspective. However, there's no mistaking the fact that Rice's vampires are still monsters who kill innocents every night. A vampire narrator who regrets the blood he spills might be the necessary middle-ground between remorseless monster Dracula and vampire love interest Stefan Salvatore. The story doesn't really pick up until Claudia joins them, and her love for Louis is matched only by her hatred of Lestat. Unlike the directionless Louis, Claudia has agency, and her ruthless efforts to achieve her goals (kill Lestat, find other vampires) prompt the story forward.

I like the characters more in theory than on the page. It's difficult to see how Lestat turns out to be the main character for much of the series, since he's painted mostly as a villain in this story. He's a trashcan fire with a gleeful disregard for human life, but he's not without depth or regret when it comes to his family. Claudia's situation is fascinating as she struggles to come to terms with the fact that she'll never age, and her bitterness makes her even colder and more ruthless than Lestat. Louis is more difficult. His whining, brooding, and pointless spirals of introspection (that far too frequently disrupt the narrative for no apparent reason) are difficult to get past. (Sorry, Lestat momentarily took over my keyboard?) His devotion to Claudia is probably the most interesting thing about him. I'm about 90% sure that none of the vampires in this book are sexual, otherwise it would lead to some seriously questionable moments between Louis and Claudia, as well as a young human boy later on. He keeps using the word "lover" to refer to her, and I'm like... not literally, right? ...Right? On the other hand, two gay vampire dads raising their vampire daughter is probably the cutest image in the book. I can see why LGBTQ fans latched onto the series, but Lestat and Louis's relationship is one aspect I wish we'd seen more developed. If it's there, it's almost all subtext.

While the title states plainly that there's an interview, I was expecting it as a framing story, perhaps in the first and last chapters where we see Louis with the unnamed listener. To my dismay, the entirety of the novel is the interview, with frequent interruptions from the boy and side commentary by Louis. Literally all the narrative is dialogue of him speaking. These asides add nothing to the story and contribute to its already slow pace. The world-building could also use some work, but that's in part due to Lestat's insistence on secrecy. We know very little about vampires--what can kill them, what powers they might have--because Lestat won't tell Louis or Claudia anything. Whatever we learn about them, we learn by seeing it happen rather than having it explained, and it's frustrating. I have so much sympathy for Claudia when she dumps that diva bitch into a swamp.

The last fifth of the novel gets extremely tense, and if I hadn't already seen the movie, I think I would have been more furious about the outcome. Like the boy recording the story, I can't help feeling that it doesn't/can't end like that. Louis is finally moved to action for the first time in the novel, but I have misgivings about his motivation for that. On a character level, it's utterly justified and even kind of satisfying, but I'll go into that more after the spoilers. While the ending provides closure on Louis's story, it's somewhat open-ended for the rest of the cast. I didn't totally enjoy this book (and, indeed, in the middle I despaired of getting through it), but I'm planning to read at least one or two more in the series before I make up my mind whether to finish it.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS. TURN BACK BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.

I suspect I would have been bawling at Claudia's death if I hadn't been expecting it. Like everything else, it's more immediate and suspenseful in the film than the novel, since Louis isn't actually there for it. I dislike the fact that Louis's character development is motivated by the death of the only female character in the novel though. Women have been dying in fiction to motivate men's personal growth for centuries, and I was expecting better for Claudia, who's such a powerhouse otherwise. The idea that Armand thought Louis could eventually forgive him for her death is laughable; he clearly doesn't know his vampire companion very well or seriously underestimated the bond they had. I’m looking forward to Armand having his own book about as much as I’m looking forward to re-reading the dreaded Memnoch the Devil, assuming I get that far.

[evenstevensranked]

#11: Season 3, Episode 11 - “Hardly Famous”

An off-brand Harry Connick Jr. comes to town and holds auditions at LJH for a new performing arts school! Seeking change in her life, Tawny decides to audition and kills it! Louis’ world crumbles around him at the thought of her transferring -- to the point where he’d do anything to get into that school. ANYTHING...

This one opens with a handsome and famous guy by the name of Barry Hudson Jr. (who’s definitely supposed to be a “Great Value” Harry Connick Jr.), arriving at LJH in a freaking chopper lol. Of course, Ren is right there alongside Principal Wexler to welcome him! We learn that he’s there in search of talented recruits for a new performing arts school dubbed the Sacramento Arts Conservatory for Creative Youth a.k.a. “SACCY” (pronounced “sassy,” of course.) This is a very important moment because Barry asks Ren if she’ll be auditioning and she says “Um, no. I wish I could, but auditions are only for 7th and 8th graders,” yet Ren is still a student at Lawrence. This is subtly confirming once again that LJH does, in fact, include grades 7th-9th! Meaning Louis and his friends have moved up to 8th grade. I wonder why they never made a big deal about that or acknowledged it clearly? I feel like it would’ve been a good plot point for an episode or at least a passing comment like “We’re EIGHTH GRADERS NOW, guys! We’re no longer the Scrubs of the school. We’ve got the fancy bathroom with assorted toiletries!” I could totally see Louis saying something like that as a callback to Easy Crier, lol. Oh well. The common misconception that they stay in 7th grade for the whole series lives on... 

Hello, Not Harry Connick Jr. Nice to meet you! 

Ren is scheduled to be Barry’s “coordinator” for the duration of his stay, I mean... who else?! Actually, I’ll tell ya who else... State Senator Eileen Stevens shows up outta nowhere and gushes over Barry, claiming to be his biggest fan. Ren claims to be a big fan too, which is kinda weird? If he is based on Harry, he would’ve been around 36 at this point in his career and Ren is like... 15. But then again, Wexler mentioned that Barry is a Broadway star and we know that Ren is into opera and theater. So, maybe that makes sense. Anyway, Eileen mentions that she sponsored the bill that funded SACCY which is pretty cool imo, but she ends up fangirling and offers to give Barry a tour of the school as an excuse to spend time with him because she’s State Senator Eileen Stevens and can do whatever she wants.

It cuts to Tawny and Tom in the hallway chatting about SACCY. Tom’s planning on auditioning with a tap dance routine, but Tawny says he should sing instead because that’s really his “strength.” We’ll get to THAT later, lol. Tom is excited about the idea of going to school with ~sophistated artistic~ kids. Tawny tries to argue that there are kids like that at Lawrence, but right about then is when Louis and Twitty come walking over holding a “gum blob” made up of used gum they’ve collected from every nook and cranny around the school. Very sophisticated, indeed. Needless to say, Tawny and Tom are disgusted. 

Tawny and Tom both tossed the blob into the air after realizing how many diseases it might be carrying and Louis is about to have a heart attack. Also this screenshot makes it look like Shia doesn’t have legs below the knee? I’m perplexed. 

At lunch that day, Louis is taunting Tom about wanting to go to SACCY and how embarrassing it would be. Twitty agrees and says “Everyone in that school is gonna be walking around in tights and feathered caps! Does that sound like fun?!” Tom slowly replies “Well..... What color’s the feather?” which cracks me up. There’s an immediate collective groan from Louis and Twitty which is great. Tawny defends Tom’s desire to attend a school where people “appreciate the beautiful things in life,” which... being talented and going to an arts school isn’t a prerequisite to appreciating the beautiful things in life but ok. Louis says that he finds used gum beautiful and Tawny has had enough.

It cuts to the audition room where everyone is setting up. Eileen returns with Barry after giving him that school tour which ran overtime because she didn’t know where anything was. Wow! Eileen also took this opportunity to invite Barry to dinner. Yikes! 

The auditions start up and we get a montage. Louis and Twitty are sitting in to support Tom, but spend their time making fun of the other auditioners while they wait. You might’ve seen these gifs floating around the interwebz: 

As you can see in the first one, Tawny is so over their antics. I love how they’re not even discreet about it tho?! Like, what the heck that’s so obnoxious to do while someone’s auditioning -- especially in a small classroom. I would’a kicked them outta there so fast!

It’s finally Tom’s turn to audition and Doris (who is played by Fred Meyers’ real-life mom, btw!!) is there to accompany him on piano lol. He performs “Dear Old Dad” which is about wanting to marry a girl who is just like your mom. Oh, my lord. Tom’s relationship with Doris is such a strange one. I can’t tell if it’s innocent or a ridiculously inappropriate obvious in-joke like Miranda Sings and Uncle Jim. Either way, he completely butchers the song and it’s fantastic. Part of me always assumed it was a song written for the show and the other part of me always hoped it was a real song. I never bothered to google it until today and I’m oddly happy to discover that it’s legit. After the audition, Tom casually says “So long, suckers!” as he walks off arrogant as all heck arm n’ arm with Doris. He thinks he’s got it in the bag. I can’t. Remember how Tawny said that singing is what Tom is best at? Imagine being so untalented that singing horribly is your strong suit.

It had to be gif’d because Tom is always quality content. 

Louis and Twitty are about to peace out now that Tom’s audition is over, when suddenly... Tawny’s name is called as the next auditioner. AWWWWW, SNAP!!!! The slopski’s hit the fanski now, guys. The juicy drama has arrived. Tawny’s auditioning for the theater department and explains that her reasoning for doing so is because she’s “ready for a change.” Twitty is all “Dude, I think she’s serious,” and Louis retorts “OH, YA THINK SO?!” I love sarcastic Louis, man. 

Tawny proceeds to perform the most melodramatic monologue from fictional production “Fried Green Magnolias” HAHA. (An obvious humorous combination of the films Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias.) I have no idea how Margo Harshman kept a straight face when she hits the reveal “...he wasn’t just a turtle. He was my best friend” line. To be honest though, this scene is a great example of the stark contrast between the talent Disney Channel was churning out back then in comparison to now. Margo is playing a character within a character who’s also playing a character in this scene and she is selling the hell out of it. Whereas newer Disney actors can’t even pull off a regular ‘ol crying scene without looking like they’re laughing. So, yeah. Tawny kills the audition and everyone’s raving about her performance. Louis is immediately torn up about Tawny wanting to leave LJH and the fact that she’s pretty much a lock to get into the school. 

My heart. 

Louis approaches Tawny later that day and congratulates her on a great audition, but he’s clearly itching to know why the heck she wants to leave when Louis ~the love of her life~ Stevens is right in front of her, damn it! But of course, he’s not gonna come right out and ask that. Tawny is pretty dead set on transferring if she gets in. Louis beats around the bush saying things like “You realize what you’ll be leaving behind, right....? Like... Pizza Stick Thursday! And, ya know that water fountain on the 2nd floor? The water isn’t even brown anymore, IT’S JUST TAN!” Tawny is unimpressed and says that it’s gonna take a little more than “almost clear water” to make her stay. I always got a kick outta this, lol. She explains that she wants to be around people who care about things. So, basically, her decision was motivated by being fed up with Louis’ immaturity. You can tell that Louis is crushed about this. I love it. We’ve seen time and time again that Tawny’s opinion means the world to him. 

It cuts to dinner that night at the Stevens house where Barry Hudson Jr. makes his grand appearance. Eileen and Ren are dressed to the nines and continuing to fawn over Barry. The best part of this bit is when Steve finishes preparing cheese and crackers and announces “I just cut some cheese in the kitchen. Why don’t we all go in there!” I love Tom Virtue. The tables eventually turn though when Barry recognizes Steve as Steve “Stiffy” Stevens (which is definitely another innuendo) from his football days when he played for Michigan State. Apparently, that’s Barry’s alma mater and now he’s the one totally fanboying. 

The dinner turns into a nostalgic football sesh between Barry and Steve, leaving Ren and Eileen totally ostracized lol. Louis interrupts and pulls Ren aside to talk. This is really where the episode starts tugging at the heartstrings. Louis pretty much begs for her to help him get an audition for SACCY. Ren immediately knows that the real reason he wants to audition is because of Tawny, she thinks it’s sweet of him -- but all of the slots are already taken. Louis will not take no for an answer and we get one of the greatest moments that foreshadowed Shia LaBeouf’s future. He shouts “JUST DO IT, REN! If ya say ya can, ya can!!!” I made a Vine about this and it was my Vine claim to fame with nearly 1M loops. *takes a bow.*

Ren ends up working some magic and gets Louis an audition the next day. Oh, man. This is so great. Louis drags Twitty into it and the two do a totally improvised interpretive dance narrated by Tom. Tom also has an incredible line before they start the audition: “I’d just like to take this opportunity to say that although I was not selected to attend SACCY, I bear no ill will towards Barry Hudson Jr. or any member of his family.” He says it in the most menacing and creepy voice. TOM IS THE BEST. Louis and Twitty begin their audition and, well... It’s one for the books...

I’ve flip-flopped over how I feel about this scene. I used to be in absolute stitches, then I thought it was cringy for a while, but now I’m back to dying laughing. This is definitely one of the best moments ever, lol. Doris rocked that banjo solo. 

Tawny is me when she witnesses the audition and accepts the fact that she’s unconditionally in love with Louis and the great lengths he’ll go to in order to stay close to her. She kinda melts there for a sec. Same. 

Later that day, Louis comes to terms with Tawny possibly leaving and decides to be mature about it and wish her good luck. But Tawny lies and says she didn’t get in. “It’s okay. I don’t mind staying here with.... my friends. :)” she coos, and the emotional piano kicks in as Tawny heads outside to catch her ride home. I’d like to point out that Tawny has a goofy picture of Louis in her locker here. Precious. She also has a photo of her and Popular Mute Tad Taylor from the Sadie Hawkins Dance too! As well as a photo of the first show The Twitty-Stevens Connection played together. Ahh. I love these tiny details. Again, it makes the show’s universe feel more authentic. 

Just then, Louis runs into Ren and rants to her about Barry Hudson Jr. not knowing what talent is! (“Uhhh... You really stunk up there,” / “No, no, no. Not me! Tawny!”) hahahahaha. He’s so confused as to why she didn’t get in because “her audition was awesome.” Ren agrees and discloses “yeah, that’s why she got accepted. But she told me she wasn’t going...” Louis puts two and two together and runs after Tawny in true rom-com fashion. I’m a sucker for this. He catches her right as she’s getting into her mom’s car and the lil lovebirds share an ~emotional~ glance across the parking lot.

THE MOST UNDERRATED DISNEY CHANNEL PAIRING OF ALL TIME RIGHT HERE!!!! What a love story, tbh.

And that’s it!

The final minute bit is Louis deciding to give up the gum blob and pass it down to Beans. Undoubtedly because owning a gum blob is immature and Tawny makes Louis wanna be a better man basically. Gotta love dat development. 

Note the sad clown painting on Louis’ wall! He painted that back in Season 2′s “Ren-Gate.” Such a small detail I never noticed before. Love it!  

This was always one of my favorites. I love this episode. Mainly because of the Louis/Tawny storyline, of course. I thoroughly enjoy seeing hopeless and confused Louis here doing everything in his power to stay close to Tawny and ultimately grow up a bit in the end. The dinner with Barry is probably the lowest point, but it doesn’t go on for too long so I’m not bothered by it. This is just a solid episode all around. It’s got character development, ace comedy, emotional weight, and a few great quotes! 

Thanks for reading! We’re officially hitting the Top 10 now and I cannot believe it. Wow. 

Don’t forget about the Disqus comment section below ;) 

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[kashif1550]

Post 3 - Multicultural America

1.What is the subject of your film, program, or internet/social media selection? Provide a brief summary, describing your selection and how it relates to our course topics, readings, and screenings.

For the site I picked, I used the root dot com because I wanted to find a way to discuss white-passing and also how it’s changing. Initially, I was going to do that by introducing the 1950s movie, Imitation of Life, for my post about films. Both the remake and original, though, give off a white person’s narration of what it’s like to be a white-passing individual, similar to how Gone with the wind is a white supremacist view of how slavery in the south was like. 

(The way the slaves were depicted is far from reality, making it uncomfortable to watch at times when they portray the mammy character.)

In short, it sugar-coats the trauma, glossing over the true pains that black people faced when navigating their world—and for that reason, I avoided it. 

Before I dive into the article about white passing, let us review what “passing” is first. Passing can be used in more ways than just race. For someone to pass, it means to be perceived as something they aren’t. When it comes to the topic of race, white passing is when someone passes as white, but in actuality have a mixed-race background. Throughout US history, African Americans have passed as white as a means of survival, understanding that there life would be at risk if the truth was told about their parent’s racial background. Society was closed off for non-whites; the best schools, best towns, best jobs were in the segregated white side of town. 

For someone of mixed-race heritage to venture into those areas safely, they would have to embrace only one side and play into the image of what they wanted others to see when they looked at them. Because, at the end of the day, the system of how race operates is based on perception.

Still, to this day, people have to put up an inaccurate front, maybe even lie about their real name, to secure a job. Race-based implicate bias in workplaces has led to research being brought to the public’s attention due to how serious the issue has gotten throughout the years. 

Looking at a study conducted by Princeton professors, Paul von Zielbauer, of New York Times, discusses how race plays a big factor—despite having problems with law enforcement. White men with a criminal conviction get just as much, if not more, job offers than an African-American man with nothing on his record.

“White men with prison records receive far more offers for entry-level jobs in New York City than black men with identical records, and are offered jobs just as often—if not more so—than black men who have never been arrested, according to a new study by two Princeton professors.” (Zielbauer, 2005) 

Decades past The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom led by MLK Jr., African American men are still hindered at entry-level jobs. People tend to push the blame on minorities, stating that the problem lies that, however, that can’t be the case when the entire system of race was built on injustice. The system cannot be deemed broke if it is doing what it was meant to do, discourage darker skinned people from providing for themselves and achieving upward mobility. 

And that, sadly, leads us to why white-passing was so prevalent after slavery and into the 20th century. It was not because these individuals wanted to, but because they had to. Connecting this back to the reading, I think back to Peggy Mclntosh’s piece on white privilege. 

She says, “I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cash in each day, but about what I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes tools, and blank checks. Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable.” (Mclntosh, 1989) 

As Mclntosh stated, white privilege is ‘unearned assets’ given to you on the bases of your skin, not your skills. Continuously, we see people try and paint minorities as the ones that caused this curse of bad fortune, dismissing the existence of white privilege entirely in the process. Even more childish than that, people demand the end of affirmative actions as though the playing field has been set leveled for everyone. It isn’t, and to say it has is a clear slap to the face of every disadvantaged black and brown person who lives in this country. 

2. Referring to related and appropriate readings and screenings from the course, describe how your selection represents racial and ethnic identities (and if applicable, intersectionality). In what ways does your selection for each of the journal entries generate a conversation regarding race, ethnicity, and cultural diversity?

The way my selection has represented racial identity is through the lens of the one-drop rule. Through Henry Louis Gates Jr. article titled “How Many ‘White’ People Are Passing?’ he discusses how the roles are beginning to show what was the aftermath of the one-drop rule. 

When talking about the fallout of such a law, it iscreated a precedence of people ignoring the existence of their white parent in order to box that person in to a ‘colored only’ section. For the piece I picked, it creates a conversation by questioning about how often that rule wasn’t used and how it created an unneeded divided. 

“‘Bryc found that about 4 percent of whites have at least 1 percent or more of African ancestry […] “the percentage indicates that an individual with at least 1 percent African ancestry had an African ancestor within the last six generations, or in the last 200 years. This data also suggests that individuals with mixed parentage at some point were absorbed into the white population,’ which is a very polite way of saying that they ‘passed.’” (Gates, 2011)

However, when you compare that to African Americans, the percentage is far more staggering, showing that people who looked “white enough” wasn’t always the case for mixed-race people. Shockingly enough, it is stated that: “research shows that the average African American has a whopping 24 percent of European ancestry.” (Gates, 2011)

24?! That’s means, unlike with white people, African American’s bloodline had someone fully white not as far back. Many people of mixed-race background submerged themselves in to the African American community, as well as the obvious underlining effects of sexual assault of enslaved black women. The article gets even more interesting when they dive into where the hidden ancestry might show up more, showing that whites living in the south had a higher chance of having unknown African DNA. 

“In South Carolina at least 13 percent of self-identified whites have 1 percent or more African ancestry, while in Louisiana the number is a little more than 12 percent. In Georgia and Alabama the number is about 9 percent. The differences perhaps point to different social and cultural histories within the south.” (Gates, 2011) 

It begs to ask the question how many people are unaware of their own identity due to the fear of the past, having grandparents who lied about their linage in order to get a better life for their offspring. 

3.How does your selection relate to the course readings, screenings and discussions?  Reflect upon the representation and circulation of racial and ethnic identities in popular visual culture. Your reflections should be attentive to the intersectionalities of race, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, socioeconomic class and gender.

When it comes to the popular visual culture and “white passing” the stories are definitely there. At the turn of the century, literature had a bit of an obsession of the concept of “passing” as white. The novel like “Passing”, “Imitation of Life” and other tales followed ambiguous African-Americans. The novel “Invisible Man” was less about running between the lines of white and black, but rather a social commentary about a fictional scenario of an ambiguous African American man who drifts between two worlds, unnoticed as an onlooker, and discussing economical and political tensions that are rising.

Overall, when we thinking of “passing” individuals in the media, we notice that many sided with their white side to secure roles. For Broadway star, Carol Channing, she did not even claim her black ancestry until 2002 - at the age of 80. Before that point, she only identified as of European descent. Having been shielded from her own identity till the age of 16, it wasn’t a surprise that Channing had a lot of unsettling ignorance resided about her own heritage, making cringeworthy comments.

When she was told that her father was partly black from her grandfather, she said: “I know it's true the moment I sing and dance. I'm proud as can be of [my black ancestry]. It's one of the great strains in show business. I'm so grateful. My father was a very dignified man and as white as I am. My [paternal] grandparents were Nordic German, so apparently I [too] took after them [in appearance]” (Chicago Tribune, 2003)

I feel uncomfortable now even looking at her say that being black was “one of the great strains in show business.” Her comments were distasteful, dismissing how slaves were forced to perform in front of their masters and how that led into subcultures of new music like blues and country. She chalked up all of her talent to her black grandfather and her white looks to her white ancestors. If only she knew that wasn’t how genetics work. Perhaps, if the divide placed on mixed-race people wasn’t so strenuous, we wouldn’t have cases of ignorance like this.

For the most part, the media has mainly shown the stories of mixed raced women, not showing the struggle of mixed-race men who have to choose if they’d “pass” as only one race. As I stated before, “Invisible man” isn’t really about passing because his own race wasn’t up for debate, but rather what he saw due to his ambiguousness. 

There’s many reasons as to why women were the main focus when talking about “passing.” However, it becomes obviously clear in the film Imitation of Life, writing the mixed-race girl off as a trickster for being something she wasn’t. In a sense, Hollywoods take on “passing” women was that they were deceptive, completely disregarding the essential need of passing as white. Sadly, in Imitation of Life, the mixed-race girl is beaten to a pulp after her white date finds out she’s mixed with black.  

Sources:

Zielbauer, Paul von 2005

    “Race a Factor in Job Offers for Ex-Convicts”

      New York Times, July, 17, 2005

 Mclntosh, Peggy 1989

      “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”

Gates, Louis Henry

    “How Many ‘White’ People Are Passing?”    

https://www.theroot.com/how-many-white-people-are-passing-1790874972

Rusoff, Jane

    “At 82, Channing still in step” Chicago Tribune 

[thelarryficrecplace]

can you recommend me any funny fics, like ones that involve alot of commedy

Hello love! I’ve got a rec for humorous fics already, but here’s some more for you: 

Like Master, Like Pet by orphan_account:

Summary: In which Louis’s cat apparently wants to date Harry’s frog, intense studying of eyebrows is a thing, pillows can turn into flamingos, and a lot of really lame-ass jokes are made.

The Hell in Hello by CalamityK:

Summary: “You said that out loud you know.” Satan says. “And you should probably call me Louis.”

Or the one where Harry answers a craigslist ad and ends up in Hell.

cook for me (if you can handle me) by yoursongonmyheart:

Summary: louis tomlinson, much to his own despair, gets thrown into a four week cooking class taught by culinary student harry styles. pair that with his classmates zayn and niall who may or may not know his roommate liam, and you’ve got a recipe for fun.

aka, a wildly self-indulgent crack fic.

I Can Be Your Hero Baby (Just Let Me Get My Sword) by CalamityK:

Summary: “Musketeer?!” the man snorts, ignoring his hand, “Yeah right, you’re a Musketeer and I have a fat bottom!”

Harry observes the man’s body, letting his hand drop, and decides that he has a very nice bottom indeed, “Your backside is not in the least lacking, this is true.”Or that AU where Louis is a private investigator with London’s biggest crime boss out for his head, and Harry is the Musketeer he accidentally calls through time to save him.

Fate’s A Bitch Really (Yes) by CalamityK:

Summary: Louis is twenty-three now, and painfully aware that “Yes.” Is quite a common response when first meeting someone. or that soulmate au where everyone has the first words their soulmate is supposed to say to them tattooed on their body

fall into my arms instead by eversincewefellapart:

Summary: AU. Louis’ not a princess but he is the love of Harry’s life, and Harry’s not a prince but he is a frog.

come on jump out at me by yoursongonmyheart:

Summary: “you know, i offered for you to fake out me, but, i don’t know anything about you other than you being my biggest celebrity crush probably since posh spice.”

louis almost chokes on his chicken, “jesus christ,” he sputters.

harry takes a swig of his beer with a smirk. “i was very disappointed when you didn’t say i was your celebrity crush after you came out.”

louis almost cries. “you know i did plan on it. then i ran into you narrating taking a piss and talking about my ass and i thought ‘wow this kid does talk some shit’ and decided against it.”

harry barks out a laugh, his ears tinged red. he takes a bite of his pizza. “i suppose i do have no filter while high.”

louis rolls his eyes, “bit of an understatement, mate.”

harry giggles, “whatever pal,” louis screams internally.

Or, the one where actor louis tomlinson and one direction superstar harry styles try to fake a sex tape to help harry get out of the closet and they both get more than they bargained for.

kiss me on the mouth (and set me free) by tempolarriefics:

Summary: Harry, being his endlessly patient self, asks with a wry smile, “And who am I going to spontaneously marry for financial aid?”

He clearly intends for it to be a rhetorical question, for it to shoot down Louis’ ridiculous marriage idea. But Louis answers easily, “Me. You’ll marry me.“

aka the not-so fake marriage AU in which Harry and Louis get married to keep Harry from dropping out of uni (and if they discover that they’re in love along the way, well, that’s neither here nor there).

the frost covers all by ihavetoomuchfreetime:

Summary: “What about ‘pookie’? ‘Sweetipie’? ‘Sugarpie honeybun’?” Harry suggests, with a grin. “They’re couple-y, right?.”

“You might as well call me ‘clogged arteries’ or ‘diabetes’,” Louis says, deadpan. 

au; harry and louis are pretend boyfriends with pretend feelings, but then it’s not pretend anymore. feelings ensue.

or a friends-to-lovers/fake relationship when harry needs a boyfriend for a family thing, and louis obliges.

Ache To Know The Song He Sung by onlyhuman:

Summary: Ogling hot men is a part of his job that Louis thoroughly enjoys. That is, if the ogling hadn’t been reduced to a bare minimum the second DJ Harry Styles set foot into Funky Payno and ruined every other man for Louis, ever.

Or: Louis is a bartender and Harry is a DJ in a club in Barcelona. All they really need to do is get their shit together. Of course, that’s not what happens.