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automaticneon · 3 years

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Clouds

Chapter 1: Automatic Love (NSFT)

Baron Helmut Zemo x Reader

Summary: “When desires go unfulfilled, they turn into needs”

Clouds is the most technologically advanced dollhouse in Madripoor. It’s a void for people to escape into, or at least the lucky few that can afford to visit.

And Zemo is very lucky.

The reader meets a strange new client, a man of mystery and poetic language and when she uncovers a secret most valuable to Helmut Zemo, their relationship goes from professional to something much more profound.

A/N: It’s essentially a Cyberpunk AU, but you don’t need to know a thing about the game! I’ve just borrowed the names of locations and the concept of Clouds. The reader is essentially a high clas s*x worker, if that isn’t your cup of tea, this probably isn’t the fic for you!

If this was high-end, there was no way to tell.

At least that’s what Zemo thinks as his car pulls up outside the mega-building. It’s an unsightly structure but not uncommon for this area of Madripoor, about fifty-storey’s tall and covered in vibrant LED screens.

For a minute he considers instructing his driver to take him back to his apartment in high-town so he can pretend this never happened. He had been averse to this idea already, but a friend from his military days had been convinced he should try coming here. “It’s cutting-edge” is what he had been told, but what exactly cutting-edge meant was a mystery to Zemo.

“Would you like me to wait for you, Sir?” the driver asks, snapping Zemo out of his thoughts.

The baron swipes his hand over his face, taking one last look at the building outside the window before responding.

“No, I’ll call when I’m done.”

He reckons his driver knows what he’s doing here. Mega-building H8 was known for only one thing, its position on the layline between high and low town meant it was frequented by all wealthy inhabitants of Madripoor. Mobsters and politicians alike congregated at this monster of architecture, hopeful of its contents and desperate to go unrecognised.

And now they can add a Baron to that list of unfortunates, Zemo thinks with resignation.

He leaves the car before the embarrassment can fester in his chest.

The building is worse up close than at a distance.

Climbing the flight of concrete stairs Zemo is transported from the sidewalk and into the belly of the beast. The entrance to the megabuilding is a low-ceilinged sprawl of street-vendors and food stalls. It’s loud and busy, but Zemo has no problem blending into the crowd. He weaves through the stream of people, illuminated by neon signs that grow increasingly vulgar in their images the deeper into the building he moves.

Eventually, towards the back of the building, he finds the metal gates of an industrial-style elevator. He slides the grate open and steps inside to find the space is lit by multiple illuminated advertisement screens rotating through various commercials, each more obscene than the last. For a moment Zemo takes the moral high ground, musing with distaste about the sort of men these adverts are geared towards. He takes the moral high ground until he remembers what he has come here to do. Defeatedly he admits to himself he has no right to feel lofty.

The illuminated keypad flashes at him, and he reaches out to input his destination.

Floor 12 – CLOUDS

The elevator is slow as it climbs past the levels of cheap apartments and eventually comes to stop at level 12. As Zemo goes to open the grate again, he wonders if he’ll be greeted by some of that high-class sophistication he was promised.

He is not.

This floor is much like the entrance hall, only this time it’s a balcony that wraps around the interior of the mega-building and faces down into an open-air atrium. Zemo notices that the elevator he steps out of does not go any higher than this level, the floors above must be the luxury apartments and must have their own entrance. He begins to follow the neon signs again.

“I don’t get why you’re so hung up about this?” A man near him says to his friend. Zemo bristles at the strong American accent, but carefully allows himself to eavesdrop.

“I don’t know, man,” The friend responds “It just feels wrong, you know? Like I’ll be cheating on my girl with one of these dolls”

“But that’s just it! These girls are dolls, man. They’re not real. It’s like sleeping with a blow-up-doll. No difference”

“You know that’s not true; the difference is they’re real. They’re made of flesh.”

“That’s what makes them great though. They’re dolls made of flesh.”

Zemo moves on before he can hear anymore.

He follows the signs until he reaches a wide hallway into the building, and there at the end is the rather simple looking entrance to Clouds dollhouse. The low ceiling of the hallway allows for little decoration, but he supposes a place with such an infamous reputation needs little in terms of advertisement. Soft pink neon signs flash the name of the establishment, and beside the double glass doors a glitchy hologram of a woman dances away. As he approaches, a pre-recorded voice rings out from a speaker at the base of the hologram.

“Looks like you could use a little automatic love.”

He refuses to acknowledge the projection.

Inside clouds is arguably worse than outside. The hallway is lined with tattered posters and it smells of something cheap and artificial. When Zemo enters the small, empty reception the lady behind the desk looks up with a smile.

“Welcome to clouds, where we always know what you’re looking for.”

None of you can hear a thing from the changing room.

“Do you think he’ll fire her?”

“I’m not sure. Depends how angry the client was,”

“Shut up I’m trying to hear,”

The room falls silent as Divine presses her ear to the door.

Moments ago the dressing room had been full of the usual chatter as you and the other dolls prepared for the evening shift. There was nothing to indicate the night would be anything but normal, that was until a few minutes ago when Woodman, the caretaker of dolls, had knocked furiously at the door and demanded that Azure come to his office down the hall for an immediate meeting.

“Is it just Woodman?” you ask. Azure could be abrasive at times, but she was certainly one of you favourite colleagues and you desperately wanted her to avoid being fired by management.

“I think so. I can’t hear anyone else.” Divine says, leaning back from the door.

“She’ll be fine, I’m sure,” one of the other dolls assures the room “She’s been here the longest. If they haven’t fired her yet, I doubt they ever will.”

“True. We can’t let this ruin a good Friday night. Five minutes until we need to be out in the booths, girls” Divine announces, and promptly returns to her table to finish her makeup.

Moments before the timer goes off the dressing room door flies open, and Azure stalks back to her table in silence. She’s not upset, but you can see the frustration hidden behind a poor attempt at offhand indifference. You want to ask if she’s alright, but the aggressive way she’s searching through her desk drawer makes you think it’s better to leave her be. The other girls do the same, cautiously looking over at her but making no attempt at conversation.

When the timer rings out you take one final sip of water and head to the door, grabbing the key-card for booth three as you leave.

“Welcome to clouds, where we always know what you’re looking for.”

The pink light of the glowing reception desk illuminates her face from below. That, combined with her uncomfortably bright smile makes the receptionist look like some sort of robot from a sci-fi film. Zemo lets out an amused huff at the very ambitious welcome promise.

“With all due respect, how could you know exactly what it is I want.”

“Clouds always knows. Your deepest desire – we find it. You’ll have your needs fulfilled – and maybe much more. ‘Less’ is not a word we use around here.” The receptionist replies.

“And how is that supposed to work then,” Zemo questions with a tilt of his head.

“Our algorithm searches your social media. With your permission it will create a personal profile based on any information if can gather, including personal preferences for you partners appearance. The algorithm will then select a doll for you, and create an experience based off that information.,” She slides a form across the desk “of course we ensure this is entirely confidential, this form confirms our promise.”

“I’ll admit I’m impressed. However I do not have a social media presence I’m afraid.” Zemo responds.

He couldn’t lie, the process seemed interesting. It was obviously a successfully programmed algorithm if the establishment had such a strong reputation. He found himself for the first time tonight not entirely doubting his choice to come here. He was interested to see what they would do for his situation.

“In that case I’ll have to ask you a few general questions to select a doll for you. If you are unsatisfied with their performance, you’ll be entitled to a refund at the end of the session.”

The receptionist begins to read a series of questions from her computer screen, gender preferences, what sort of experience he’s looking for. She concludes with organising payment, and the price is eyewatering even with the slight discount she applies since they cannot use the algorithm. When all is paid and signed for, the receptionist asks for a safe word. Admittedly it throws Zemo for a minute.

“It’s company policy” she says.

“Pontiac” he says bluntly, after a moment of thought.

“Fantastic.” The receptionist enters his response to the computer “Welcome to clouds. Serenity will be waiting for you in booth three.”

Zemo passes through another set of double doors and finds himself in a labyrinth of pink lights. The walls are lined with black, opaque glass and every so often a blue neon number protrudes from the wall indicates the booth behind it.

It doesn’t take long for him to find booth three, but he pauses before pressing the button to open the door. He takes a breath, collects his thoughts and lets his head and shoulders drop. He doesn’t want to look at his reflection in the tinted glass. Five years ago the thought of coming to a place like this would never have touched his mind, even in his questionable youth he had always been opposed these places. The risk that they were run unethically was far too great for his conscience. But he was not the man he was five years ago. Since Sokovia he wondered if he had a conscience at all anymore.

He presses the button, and the glass panel slides open.

It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the room. It’s dimly lit, faint blue and purple lights shine against the walls that are lined with the same dark, opaque glass as outside. There’s a chic, white sofa against the left wall, and against the right is a simple bed.

Sat atop it, kneeling with her thighs spread and covered by a short black night dress is the prettiest girl he’s seen in years.

He’s handsome, is the first thing you think when the glass door slides open.

It’s rare that you ever receive a client you’re inclined to call attractive, even the most conventionally attractive men that come here bring with them such a foul soul that it taints their appearance. Not this man, though.

He’s smartly dressed in dark trousers and a well-fitting grey jumper. His hair is styled nicely, it’s either brown or very dark blond (you can’t tell in the coloured lighting). He carries himself well, but after a year of working here you’ve grown accustomed to seeing through the façade’s of your clients. He’s apprehensive. Unsure if he belongs here. Hesitant.

“You must be Helmut. It’s nice to meet you,”

You try to make your voice sound soft and gentle, cocking your head to one side to beckon him in. You get the sense he wants something authentic, or at least that’s what his profile had said when it was sent through from reception moments ago. No porn-star moans or obscene pick-up lines tonight.

He collects himself, and the harsh line his lips have been pressed into relaxes as he enters the room. The glass panel slides shut, trapping the two of you in the bubble of the booth. It’s tranquil. You think he must need that.

“And you must be ‘Serenity’” He responds, crossing the room to sit on the sofa. His eyes don’t leave you as your ‘name’ rolls of his tongue with amusement. You can hear the next question in your head before he even opens his mouth again.

“So what’s your real name?”

They always ask you that. They ask every doll that. The clients are desperate to form a connection with you. To brag to their friends that they have a special relationship with a doll at clouds. You’ve never told anyone your real name before, it’s against company policy. Clouds attracts the rich of Madripoor, and rich in Madripoor usually means dangerous. It’s for your own protection more than anything else, you really don’t need work following you home.

You picked a name the day you were hired and that’s the name every client has known you by. This man will be no different. You begin your usual response:

“A name is a name, Helmut. A title. An advertisement of who you are. I want my name to tell you exactly who I am, so that you can know everything about me. I want to bring you peace.”

He adjusts his hips and rests his arms across the back of the sofa. He regards you quietly, and you’re positive he can tell that your response was a deflection. His eyes squint slightly, and a flash of humour appears in his dark pupils.

“Well I hardly think that’s fair. You get to call me by my name, but I don’t get to know yours?” He lets out a huff of laughter “Actually, I don’t think I’ll let you use my name. We should be equals, should we not?”

You admit you’re enjoying this. The smooth accent and playful tone of his voice keeps you interested. You swing your feet around so that you’re sat facing him on the bed, reclining back on your palms to match his casual stance.

“What should I call you then?”

“You said a name is just a title. So then my title can become my name. You can call be Baron, Serenity” He says your name like it’s some sort of inside joke, taunting you to give up and tell him who you really are. You won’t be so easily swayed.

“So what’s a Baron doing in Madripoor then?” You say with genuine curiosity. If it weren’t for the NDA’s you’re forced to sign you would be buzzing to tell the other girls who you’re spending the night with. You can’t imagine that aristocracy visits this place frequently. “And do you drink?”

“I do, thank you” he says, and you hop down from the bed and walk to the low table in front of the sofa that carries a few glasses and a bottle of expensive-looking alcohol. You know he’s looking at the satin hem of the night dress as it tickles to top of your thighs, and when you bend down to pour him a glass, you make sure he gets a tasteful peak at your cleavage.

“I’m here to work, actually.”

Did aristocrats work? You thought they were just for show.

“I’m… translating some documents. It’s taking me a very long time,” He continues, watching intently as you finish preparing his drink.

“A Baron and a translator? Sounds like you’ve got a lot on your plate” You loop around the table, perching beside him on the sofa and handing him his drink.

“It’s more of a personal project I suppose, but a very important one” he says, accepting the drink with his free hand. The one that rests behind you on the back of the sofa comes up to rest between your shoulder blades. It’s a very gentle touch, just the tips of his fingers making contact with yours skin and moving in a tiny little circle. He’s testing the waters with you, seeing how receptive you are. It’s almost gentlemanly.

“It must mean a great deal to you. We could talk about it, if you like? We can talk about anything you want to,” You reach up to play with the hair at the nape of his neck, enjoying how he melts into the action.

“Anything but your name?” He shoots you teasing look from the corner of his eye, and you give a little strand of his hair a small playful tug in response.

“Anything but that, Baron”

“Tell me something else about you. Like why you came to Madripoor, I can tell you weren’t born here.”

Jesus you can’t tell if this man is a pest or just being polite. It’s unusual for him to be asking these questions of you, most men would usually have you on your knees by now. You hum and give him one last stroke down the back of his neck, before climbing off the sofa and walking back towards the bed.

“Very perceptive. I’m not from Madripoor, no,” you crawl onto the bed, taking your time so that the baron can take a good look at where the night dress rides up over the curve of your ass “but we’ve only just met, and only my friends get to know my life story.”

You settle yourself comfortably at the top of the bed, lying down and propped up on your elbows so you can maintain the measured look he’s giving you.

“Perhaps I should come over there and get to know you better” he says calmly, with the barest hint of a suggestive undertone.

Thank god he’s dropped the topic of your true identity. You can handle sex; you don’t need an interrogation tonight. Slipping into character you drop your voice to a low whisper and cock your eyebrow.

“Perhaps you should”

The corner of his mouth twitches into a smile as he accepts your little challenge. In one fluid motion he downs the rest of his drink, places the empty glass back on the table, and rises to walk towards the bed. No, he stalks towards the bed with a natural swagger that admittedly makes your chest squeeze tight.

Within a second he’s onto you, slotting himself between your parted thighs and pressing his lips to yours. Your baron kisses well, is the only thing you’re capable of thinking as he uses his body to push you down into the cushions. One of his hands slides up your body, skimming across your neck before coming to rest below your jaw. He doesn’t squeeze, just gently holds you in place so that he can kiss you how he pleases.

After a moment he tilts your head up slightly, pausing the kiss so he can look down at you. You reckon you look a picture of arousal, pupils blown and cheeks flushes as you catch your breath. Your baron seems to agree; he’s looking at you like the cat that caught the canary, and you shiver when his grip gets just a fraction tighter on your jaw.

“So pretty,” he praises quietly as he dips down to skim his lips over your pulse.

The tender pressure makes you whine and arch up beneath him and he acknowledges you with a hum and a hand on your breast. As he continues his assault on your neck, the free hand on your chest squeezes the flesh softly, finding your nipple beneath the silky fabric and circling it with his thumb.

When it pebbles to his satisfaction he pulls away and you keen at the loss of contact. He tuts, pulling down the straps of your nightgown and peeling it down below your chest, shuffling down slightly so that his face is level with your now exposed torso.

He breathes out against your nipple before latching onto it, with one hand he squeezes your neglected breast and the other slides from its place on your jaw to the base of your neck. Again he doesn’t squeeze, just exerts a level of control that lets you know where he wants you. If you wanted to you could break free, but why would you want that? The way his thumb begins to circle your pulse point has you practically melting into the bed, the thought of telling him to stop can barely manifest in your mind.

You reach down to dig your fingers into the baron’s back, instead only making contact with his expensive-feeling jumper. You huff in disappointment and pull him from where he’s entertaining himself with your tits, meeting his hazy eyes that are riddled with confusion.

“I thought we were trying to get familiar with one another?” you ask, and his eyebrows pinch in confusion “How are we supposed to do that when you’ve got so much between us?”

The baron’s face melts in amusement, and he reluctantly pulls himself away from you to pull the jumper off and start undressing fully. You take a moment to catch your breath, watching him peel away his clothes to reveal his impressive body. He’s slender but impeccably well-toned, his torso is covered by a light dusting of hair that leads your eyes down to the impressive bulge in his underwear.

Tonight should be very entertaining.

Your sit up, reaching out to run your hand down his chest but before you can begin to pull at the waistband of his underwear, his hand shoots out to grab your wrist.

“I don’t know where you think you were going, but I was quite enjoying myself” he says roguishly. He gathers both of your wrists into one hand and pins you pack against the bed, with both hands restrained you have no choice but to let him bury hid face into your neck again.

This time he uses his free hand to skim along the inside of your thigh, getting high enough that you think he’ll reach the apex between your legs but instead he trails his fingers back down towards your knee again.

You whine in frustration as he continues his cycle of teasing up and down your leg, he ignores you until you tug against his grip on your wrists. He makes a low noise and quickly tightens his hold on you. The sudden movement sends a chill down your spine, and for the first time in a long while, you feel genuinely inclined to beg a man.

“Please-” you breathe out shakily “I want-”

Your voice cuts off suddenly as his hand moves boldly to cup your pussy. You can hear how embarrassingly wet you are as his fingers move through your folds, and he hums happily when he finds your clit with his thumb. Slowly he circles it, applying just the right amount of pressure to have you wriggling in his grip.

“This? Is this what you want?” he asks, and his voice has dropped at least another octave.

You shake your head furiously. Right now this is just not enough, you can feel his dick rubbing against your leg and you’re beyond desperate to have him fuck you open with it.

“No?” he says with feigned innocence “What is it that you want then?”

“More” is all you can get out “I want you in me. I’m wet enough, see?”

Your baron seems unconvinced. He circles a finger around your entrance before pushing in, rocking it gently inside you as he tries to decide if he thinks you’re really ready. He continues for a moment more before adding a second finger, now with two fingers stuffed in you and his thumb still working on your clit you’re almost ready to cum. It’s making you desperate, and it doesn’t help at all when he buries his face in your tits again.

Finally he lets your wrists go and immediately your hands grab at whatever part of him they can, eventually you settle with gripping his shoulder and hair as you try desperately to urge him to fuck you. He gets you right to the edge, literal moments away from finishing on his fingers when he pulls them away from you with an obscenely wet noise.

You let out a frustrated, desperate whine as he separates from you. He looks down at you with satisfaction as he takes in your flustered state.

“Stay still, you’ll get what you want” he says, and he reaches for his pants to retrieve a condom. It takes him a minute to pull himself free of his underwear and put the condom on. In your desperate state it feels like an eternity.

He positions himself between your legs, lifting the hem of the nightdress so he can get a good view of your pussy whilst he lines himself up. He pauses before he presses forward, looking up at you for any last-minute hesitation.

You nod your consent instantly, not trusting yourself to get any words out.

When he pushes in you think you might cum from that alone. He’s a perfect size, long enough that you feel as though you could feel him in your belly. When he finally bottoms out you can’t help but squeeze him tight, and he slumps over you, his face tucked into the side of your neck and swears in a language you don’t recognise. He nudges his hips forward as if to get deeper than he already is. The both of you gasp out at the sensation and he repeats it a few times, just the tiniest movements of his hips that causes him to rub against something deep inside you.

He pushes himself up on his forearms so that he can get a good look at you. In turn, you get to see the state of him as well – his eyes are impossibly dark and glazed over with something wildly lustful, his once pristine hair hangs dishevelled over his reddened forehead. Your baron’s lip curls wickedly as he sets a punishing pace, pushing you deeper into the sheets. It feels like he’s trying to fuck you through the bed.

His previous teasing had done a real number on you, and within minutes you’re moments away from cumming. You don’t think you could get much out of your mouth other than pathetic little whimpers right now, instead you reach up and pull the baron down for a deep kiss, one that he melts into fully.

When you do cum it’s fucking incredible. You’d never use a word that strong to describe a client before, but your baron brings with him many firsts for you. You cry out into his mouth as he picks up the pace to ride you through your high, your fingers dig into his shoulder so tightly you wonder if you’ve drawn blood. If you have, he doesn’t seem to mind. If anything it spurs him on as he fucks you to the point of oversensitivity.

He finishes just as you think you can’t handle anymore. His hips stutter momentarily, and tremors run down his spine in waves. The entire time he’s rambling in a foreign tongue against your skin until his pants of exhaustion overtake his ability to speak.

Your baron collapses on top of you but you hardly have the brainpower to care that he’s crushing you. Instead you reach up to run your fingers through his hair, listening to him as he catches his breath against your chest.

You yourself are struggling to even out your breathing, it feels as though you’ve run a marathon and the man on top of you seems thoroughly amused by that.

“Come now,” he says as he smooths a hand up your side “I wasn’t that good.”

You can hardly help the genuine laugh that escapes you.

“Humility doesn’t look good on you baron.”

The man in question huffs out a laugh before peeling himself away from your sweat-slicked body.

“I suppose I should make myself scarce. I imagine you have other, much more interesting clients to see tonight” he says, moving to sit on the side of the bed.

“You can stay and talk if you want, it’s entirely up to you. You paid for this, after all.” You say, secretly hoping he’ll stay for just a minute longer. You don’t intend to entertain anyone else tonight, but part of you is quite intrigued by your newest client.

“Well in that case I have one final question I’d like to ask” he says as he slowly begins to dress himself again.

“Ask away.”

Once his trousers are securely over his hips he pauses to look at you. There’s a soft expression on his face, as if he already knows he’s not going to get the answer he wants.

“What’s your real name?”

You really shouldn’t be surprised that he’s asked again. Truthfully, it’s not the question itself that’s thrown you, it’s how tempted you are to answer it. His voice is so compelling at the moment that your name nearly springs from your tongue without you noticing.

“Oh baron,” you say quietly “you know I can’t tell you that.”

His lips press together in acceptance, and for a second his eyes leave yours. As he begins to get ready again, he gives his response.

“It was worth a shot.”

#my writing #clouds #baron zemo #helmut zemo #baron helmut zemo #baron zemo x reader #helmut zemo x reader #zemo x reader #baron zemo x y/n #helmut zemo x y/n #marvel x y/n #tfatws x reader #tfatws #marvel

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sarasa-cat · 3 years

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Life, Gaming, Fannish goodness & Cyberpunk 2077 anticipation thoughts:

@fereldanwench (one particular bit of good news may be of interest to you)

The days are starting to edge toward autumn and evening starting ever earlier, so outdoor exercise soon needs to move to the normal midday hours rather than late in the evening after dinner. Because after dinner is now either deep twilight or DARKNESS depending on how late dinner is.

And that means returning to evening gaming and watching things on TV too pretty soon!

I have So Many Unfinished Games that want my attention but the list of additional games that have caught my interest (thank you mutuals ;) has grown over recent years too.

Given the state of the world, I am not one to complain about the gaming gear I own — quite a lot actually bc I’ve kept and collected since the late 90s and I baby my electronics, new and vintage — but my systems no longer meet the requirements of modern AAA gaming.

But(!) I now have a modern-enough gaming machine on order that will supposedly arrive in early October(big improvement from the wait time of sometime in late Nov to mid Dec, which was what I saw just last week when shopping around for systems that more or less met my specs etc etc). So, Yay! And it should also run graphics programs (photoshop etc) blazingly fast too so that’s also a big win.

Thus (drum roll) — My Cyberpunk 2077 escapism will hopefully begin in Oct!

Still no luck on a PS5 but… shrug… someday that luck will win out. Having a windows based gaming machine that is of 2021 specs opens up a lot of goodness for the upcoming months of the Long Dark, especially since I am stuck for a second winter in a row in the US (thank you covid). Sure, there is ONE game that I very much want that is PS5 only but … I’m okay. Maybe by the time I finally get a PS5 they will have made a fancier model of it? Shrug.

The new gaming computer-on-order is entirely a mental health purchase.

Fwiw, some years back, long meanders in Dragon Age Inquisition’s sunny environments got me through a winter trapped in the Long Dark. I might need to revisit something of that style — if not DAI itself during the worst of winter.

Additionally, I have very recently gotten back into coding as a hobby (long long long after software dev as a 9-6 career or graphics & human computer interaction applied to Serious Things as an academic job). Except I am already thinking of actual software I might want to design so… it may stop being a true hobby if it becomes a side-hustle.

Remembering how relaxing and flow-state inducing programming can be — which it was when I was a tween and a teen, killing long evenings in my room “playing” (rather than grinding) at programming projects purely for fun. (Or gaming, ahaha, because some things never change.)

So….. given that (a) america, with all of its resources in medicine, is dragging its fucking heels at ending its own pandemic and literally tossing vaccines in the garbage while other nations are in need of vaccines and have ppl who desperately want the jabx2 (which raised my blood pressure just typing that); (b) politics have become so depressing and so regressive and so corrupt that I just need to step back (quit) after a couple of decades of on the ground organizing— honestly I cannot even read the news without wanting to scream and my partner of 2 decades is now incapable of discussing political-related things at any level; (c) at least until next summer (and just like life for the past 18 months), my entire physical world has pretty much shrunk to most of my time being in my house or being outside in my walkable urbanish hood, (d) I need a hobby that is actually just a hobby — one that cannot be side-hustled into a non-hobby, AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS: Fandom goodness.

Mmmmmmm.

Thinking about messing around with tumblr themes and fannish graphics.

Will definitely get back to fanfic writing v soon.

Will almost certainly rearrange my main blog (this one) and my side blogs.

Will also get back to that much threatened Dirgepalooza- ahahahaahah- bc ffvii is my original fandom.

Might finally start making fanart after threatening to do so for years?

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ahouseoflies · 3 years

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The Best Films of 2020

I can’t tell you anything novel or insightful about this year that has been stolen from our lives. I watched zero of these films in a theater, and I watched most of them half-asleep in moments that I stole from my children. Don’t worry, there are some jokes below.

GARBAGE

93. Capone (Josh Trank)- What is the point of this dinner theater trash? It takes place in the last year of Capone's life, when he was released from prison due to failing health and suffered a stroke in his Florida home. So it covers...none of the things that make Al Capone interesting? It's not historically accurate, which I have no problem with, but if you steer away from accuracy, then do something daring and exciting. Don't give me endless scenes of "Phonse"--as if the movie is running from the very person it's about--drawing bags of money that promise intrigue, then deliver nothing in return.

That being said, best "titular character shits himself" scene since The Judge.

92. Ammonite (Francis Lee)- I would say that this is the Antz to Portrait of a Lady on Fire's A Bug's Life, but it's actually more like the Cars 3 to Portrait of a Lady on Fire's Toy Story 1.

91. Ava (Tate Taylor)- Despite the mystery and inscrutability that usually surround assassins, what if we made a hitman movie but cared a lot about her personal life? Except neither the assassin stuff nor the family stuff is interesting?

90. Wonder Woman 1984 (Patty Jenkins)- What a miscalculation of what audiences loved about the first and wanted from the sequel. WW84 is silly and weightless in all of the ways that the first was elegant and confident. If the return of Pine is just a sort of phantom representation of Diana's desires, then why can he fly a real plane? If he is taking over another man's soul, then, uh, what ends up happening to that guy? For that matter, why is it not 1984 enough for Ronald Reagan to be president, but it is 1984 enough for the president to have so many Ronald Reagan signifiers that it's confusing? Why not just make a decision?

On paper, the me-first values of the '80s lend themselves to the monkey's paw wish logic of this plot. You could actually do something with the Star Wars program or the oil crisis. But not if the setting is played for only laughs and the screenplay explains only what it feels like.

89. Babyteeth (Shannon Murphy)- In this type of movie, there has to be a period of the Ben Mendelsohn character looking around befuddled about the new arrangement and going, "What's this now--he's going to be...living with us? The guy who tried to steal our medication? This is crazy!" But that's usually ten minutes, and in this movie it's an hour. I was so worn out by the end.

88. You Should Have Left (David Koepp)- David Koepp wrote Jurassic Park, so he's never going to hell, but how dare he start caring about his own mystery at the hour mark. There's a forty-five minute version of this movie that could get an extra star from me, and there's a three-hour version of Amanda Seyfried walking around in athleisure that would get four stars from me. What we actually get? No thanks.

87. Black Is King (Beyonce, et al.)- End your association with The Lion King, Bey. It has resulted in zero bops.

ADMIRABLE FAILURES

86. Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (Cathy Yan)- There's nothing too dysfunctional in the storytelling or performances, but Birds of Prey also doesn't do a single thing well. I would prefer something alive and wild, even if it were flawed, to whatever tame belt-level formula this is.

85. The Turning (Floria Sigismondi)- This update of The Turn of the Screw pumps the age of Miles up to high school, which creates some horny creepiness that I liked. But the age of the character also prevents the ending of the novel from happening in favor of a truly terrible shrug. I began to think that all of the patience that the film showed earlier was just hesitance for its own awful ending.

I watched The Turning as a Mackenzie Davis Movie Star heat check, and while I'm not sure she has the magnetism I was looking for, she does have a great teacher voice, chastening but maternal.

84. Bloodshot (David Wilson)- A whole lot of Vin Diesel saying he's going to get revenge and kill a bunch of dudes; not a whole lot of Vin Diesel actually getting revenge and killing a bunch of dudes.

83. Downhill (Nat Faxon and Jim Rash)- I was an English major in college, which means I ended up locking myself into literary theories that, halfway through the writing of an essay, I realized were flawed. But rather than throw out the work that I had already proposed, I would just keep going and see if I could will the idea to success.

So let's say you have a theory that you can take Force Majeure by Ruben Ostlund, one of the best films of its year, and remake it so that its statement about familial anxiety could apply to Americans of the same age and class too...if it hadn't already. And maybe in the first paragraph you mess up by casting Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, people we are conditioned to laugh at, when maybe this isn't that kind of comedy at all. Well, don't throw it away. You can quote more--fill up the pages that way--take an exact shot or scene from the original. Does that help? Maybe you can make the writing more vigorous and distinctive by adding a character. Is that going to make this baby stand out? Maybe you could make it more personal by adding a conclusion that is slightly more clever than the rest of the paper?

Or perhaps this is one you're just not going to get an A on.

82. Hillbilly Elegy (Ron Howard)- I watched this melodrama at my mother's encouragement, and, though I have been trying to pin down her taste for decades, I think her idea of a successful film just boils down to "a lot of stuff happens." So in that way, Ron Howard's loss is my gain, I guess.

There is no such thing as a "neutral Terminator."

81. Relic (Natalie Erika James)- The star of the film is Vanessa Cerne's set decoration, but the inert music and slow pace cancel out a house that seems neglected slowly over decades.

80. Buffaloed (Tanya Wexler)- Despite a breathless pace, Buffaloed can't quite congeal. In trying to split the difference between local color hijinks and Moneyballed treatise on debt collection, it doesn't commit enough to either one.

Especially since Zoey Deutch produced this one in addition to starring, I'm getting kind of worried about boo's taste. Lot of Two If by Seas; not enough While You Were Sleepings.

79. Like a Boss (Miguel Arteta)- I chuckled a few times at a game supporting cast that is doing heavy lifting. But Like a Boss is contrived from the premise itself--Yeah, what if people in their thirties fell out of friendship? Do y'all need a creative consultant?--to the escalation of most scenes--Why did they have to hide on the roof? Why do they have to jump into the pool?

The movie is lean, but that brevity hurts just as much as it helps. The screenplay knows which scenes are crucial to the development of the friendship, but all of those feel perfunctory, in a different gear from the setpieces.

To pile on a bit: Studio comedies are so bare bones now that they look like Lifetime movies. Arteta brought Chuck & Buck to Sundance twenty years ago, and, shot on Mini-DV for $250,000, it was seen as a DIY call-to-bootstraps. I guarantee that has more setups and locations and shooting days than this.

78. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (David Dobkin)- Add Dan Stevens to the list of supporting players who have bodied Will Ferrell in his own movie--one that he cared enough to write himself.

Like Downhill, Ferrell's other 2020 release, this isn't exactly bad. It's just workmanlike and, aside from the joke about Demi Lovato's "uninformed" ghost, frustratingly conventional.

77. The Traitor (Marco Bellochio)- Played with weary commitment by Pierfrancesco Favino, Tomasso Buscetta is "credited" as the first informant of La Cosa Nostra. And that sounds like an interesting subject for a "based on a true story" crime epic, right? Especially when you find out that Buscetta became a rat out of principle: He believed that the mafia to which he had pledged his life had lost its code to the point that it was a different organization altogether.

At no point does Buscetta waver or even seem to struggle with his decision though, so what we get is less conflicted than that description might suggest. None of these Italian mob movies glorify the lifestyle, so I wasn't expecting that. But if the crime doesn't seem enticing, and snitching on the crime seems like forlorn duty, and everything is pitched with such underhanded matter-of-factness that you can't even be sure when Buscetta has flipped, then what are we left with? It was interesting seeing how Italian courts work, I guess?

76. Kajillionaire (Miranda July)- This is another movie so intent on building atmosphere and lore that it takes too long to declare what it is. When the protagonist hits a breaking point and has to act, she has only a third of a film to grow. So whispery too.

Gina Rodriguez is the one to inject life into it. As soon as her motormouth winds up, the film slips into a different gear. The atmosphere and lore that I mentioned reeks of artifice, but her character is believably specific. Beneath a basic exterior is someone who is authentically caring but still morally compromised, beholden to the world that the other characters are suspicious of.

75. Scoob! (Tony Cervone)- The first half is sometimes clever, but it hammers home the importance of friendship while separating the friends.

The second half has some positive messaging, but your kids' movie might have a problem with scale if it involves Alexander the Great unlocking the gates of the Underworld.

My daughter loved it.

74. The Lovebirds (Michael Showalter)- If I start talking too much about this perfectly fine movie, I end up in that unfair stance of reviewing the movie I wanted, not what is actually there.* As a fan of hang-out comedies, I kind of resent that any comedy being made now has to be rolled into something more "exciting," whether it's a wrongfully accused or mistaken identity thriller or some other genre. Such is the post-Game Night world. There's a purposefully anti-climactic note that I wish The Lovebirds had ended on, but of course we have another stretch of hiding behind boats and shooting guns. Nanjiani and Rae are really charming leads though.

*- As a New Orleanian, I was totally distracted by the fake aspects of the setting too. "Oh, they walked to Jefferson from downtown? Really?" You probably won't be bothered by the locations.

73. Sonic the Hedgehog (Jeff Fowler)- In some ways the storytelling is ambitious. (I'm speaking for only myself, but I'm fine with "He's a hedgehog, and he's really fast" instead of the owl mother, teleportation backstory. Not everything has to be Tolkien.) But that ambition doesn't match the lack of ambition in the comedy, which depends upon really hackneyed setups and structures. Guiding Jim Carrey to full alrighty-then mode was the best choice anyone made.

72. Malcolm & Marie (Sam Levinson)- The stars move through these long scenes with agility and charisma, but the degree of difficulty is just too high for this movie to reach what it's going for.

Levinson is trying to capture an epic fight between a couple, and he can harness the theatrical intensity of such a thing, but he sacrifices almost all of the nuance. In real life, these knock-down-drag-outs can be circular and indirect and sad in a way that this couple's manipulation rarely is. If that emotional truth is all this movie is trying to achieve, I feel okay about being harsh in my judgment of how well it does that.

71. Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov)- Elusive in how it refuses to declare itself, forthright in how punishing it is. The whole thing might be worth it for a late dinner scene, but I'm getting a bit old to put myself through this kind of misery.

70. The Burnt Orange Heresy (Giuseppe Capotondi)- Silly in good ways until it's silly in bad ways. Elizabeth Debicki remains 6'3".

69. Everybody’s Everything (Sebastian Jones and Ramez Silyan)- As a person who listened to Lil Peep's music, I can confidently say that this documentary is overstating his greatness. His death was a significant loss, as the interview subjects will all acknowledge, but the documentary is more useful as a portrait of a certain unfocused, rapacious segment of a generation that is high and online at all times.

68. The Witches (Robert Zemeckis)- Robert Zemeckis, Kenya Barris, and Guillermo Del Toro are the credited screenwriters, and in a fascinating way, you can see the imprint of each figure on the final product. Adapting a very European story to the old wives' tales of the American South is an interesting choice. Like the Nicolas Roeg try at this material, Zemeckis is not afraid to veer into the terrifying, and Octavia Spencer's pseudo witch doctor character only sells the supernatural. From a storytelling standpoint though, it seems as if the obstacles are overcome too easily, as if there's a whole leg of the film that has been excised. The framing device and the careful myth-making of the flashback make promises that the hotel half of the film, including the abrupt ending, can't live up to.

If nothing else, Anne Hathaway is a real contender for Most On-One Performance of the year.

67. Irresistible (Jon Stewart)- Despite a sort of imaginative ending, Jon Stewart's screenplay feels more like the declarative screenplay that would get you hired for a good movie, not a good screenplay itself. It's provocative enough, but it's clumsy in some basic ways and never evades the easy joke.

For example, the Topher Grace character is introduced as a sort of assistant, then is re-introduced an hour later as a polling expert, then is shown coaching the candidate on presentation a few scenes later. At some point, Stewart combined characters into one role, but nothing got smoothed out.

ENDEARING CURIOSITIES WITH BIG FLAWS

66. Yes, God, Yes (Karen Maine)- Most people who are Catholic, including me, are conflicted about it. Most people who make movies about being Catholic hate it and have an axe to grind. This film is capable of such knowing wit and nuance when it comes to the lived-in details of attending a high school retreat, but it's more concerned with taking aim at hypocrisy in the broad way that we've seen a million times. By the end, the film is surprisingly all-or-nothing when Christian teenagers actually contain multitudes.

Part of the problem is that Karen Maine's screenplay doesn't know how naive to make the Alice character. Sometimes she's reasonably naive for a high school senior in 2001; sometimes she's comically naive so that the plot can work; and sometimes she's stupid, which isn't the same as naive.

65. Bad Boys for Life (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah)- This might be the first buddy cop movie in which the vets make peace with the tech-comm youngs who use new techniques. If that's the only novelty on display here--and it is--then maybe that's enough. I laughed maybe once. Not that the mistaken identity subplot of Bad Boys 1 is genius or anything, but this entry felt like it needed just one more layer to keep it from feeling as basic as it does. Speaking of layers though, it's almost impossible to watch any Will Smith movie now without viewing it through the meta-narrative of "What is Will Smith actually saying about his own status at this point in his career?" He's serving it up to us.

I derived an inordinate amount of pleasure from seeing the old school Simpson/Bruckheimer logo.

64. The Gentlemen (Guy Ritchie)- Look, I'm not going to be too negative on a movie whose crime slang is so byzantine that it has to be explained with subtitles. That's just me. I'm a simple man. But I can tell you that I tuned out pretty hard after seven or eight double-crosses.

The bloom is off the rose a bit for Ritchie, but he can still nail a music cue. I've been waiting for someone to hit "That's Entertainment" the way he does on the end credits.

63. Bad Hair (Justin Simien)- In Bad Hair, an African-American woman is told by her boss at a music video channel in 1989 that straightening her hair is the way to get ahead; however, her weave ends up having a murderous mind of its own. Compared to that charged, witty logline, the execution of the plot itself feels like a laborious, foregone conclusion. I'm glad that Simien, a genuinely talented writer, is making movies again though. Drop the skin-care routine, Van Der Beek!

62. Greyhound (Aaron Schneider)- "If this is the type of role that Tom Hanks writes for himself, then he understands his status as America's dad--'wise as the serpent, harmless as the dove'--even better than I thought." "America's Dad! Aye aye, sir!" "At least half of the dialogue is there for texture and authenticity, not there to be understood by the audience." "Fifty percent, Captain!" "The environment looks as fake as possible, but I eventually came around to the idea that the movie is completely devoid of subtext." "No subtext to be found, sir!"

61. Mank (David Fincher)- About ten years ago, the Creative Screenwriting podcast spent an hour or so with James Vanderbilt, the writer of Zodiac and nothing else that comes close, as he relayed the creative paces that David Fincher pushed him through. Hundreds of drafts and years of collaborative work eventuated in the blueprint for Fincher's most exacting, personal film, which he didn't get a writing credit on only because he didn't seek one.

Something tells me that Fincher didn't ask for rewrites from his dead father. No matter what visuals and performances the director can coax from the script--and, to be clear, these are the worst visuals and performances of his career--they are limited by the muddy lightweight pages. There are plenty of pleasures, like the slippery election night montage or the shakily platonic relationship between Mank and Marion. But Fincher hadn't made a film in six years, and he came back serving someone else's master.

60. Tesla (Michael Almereyda)- "You live inside your head." "Doesn't everybody?"

As usual, Almereyda's deconstructions are invigorating. (No other moment can match the first time Eve Hewson's Anne fact-checks something with her anachronistic laptop.) But they don't add up to anything satisfying because Tesla himself is such an opaque figure. Driven by the whims of his curiosity without a clear finish line, the character gives Hawke something enigmatic to play as he reaches deep into a baritone. But he's too inward to lend himself to drama. Tesla feels of a piece with Almereyda's The Experimenter, and that's the one I would recommend.

59. Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)- I can't oversell how delicately beautiful this film is visually. There's a scene in which Vitalina lugs a lantern into a church, but we get several seconds of total darkness before that one light source carves through it and takes over part of the frame. Each composition is as intricate as it is overpowering, achieving a balance between stark and mannered.

That being said, most of the film is people entering or exiting doors. I felt very little of the haunting loss that I think I was supposed to.

58. The Rhythm Section (Reed Morano)- Call it the Timothy Hutton in The General's Daughter Corollary: If a name-actor isn't in the movie much but gets third billing, then, despite whom he sends the protagonist to kill, he is the Actual Bad Guy.

Even if the movie serves up a lot of cliche, the action and sound design are visceral. I would like to see more from Morano.

57. Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen)- Well-made and heartfelt even if it goes step-for-step where you think it will.

Here's what I want to know though: In the academy training sequence, the police cadets have to subdue a "berserker"; that is, a wildman who swings at their riot gear with a sledgehammer. Then they get him under control, and he shakes their hands, like, "Good angle you took on me there, mate." Who is that guy and where is his movie? Is this full-time work? Is he a police officer or an independent contractor? What would happen if this exercise didn't go exactly as planned?

56. Wolfwalkers (Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart)- The visuals have an unfinished quality that reminded me of The Tale of Princess Kaguya--the center of a flame is undrawn white, and fog is just negative space. There's an underlying symmetry to the film, and its color palette changes with mood.

Narratively, it's pro forma and drawn-out. Was Riley in Inside Out the last animated protagonist to get two parents? My daughter stuck with it, but she needed a lot of context for the religious atmosphere of 17th century Ireland.

55. What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (Rob Garver)- The film does little more than one might expect; it's limited in the way that any visual medium is when trying to sum up a woman of letters. But as far as education for Kael's partnership with Warren Beatty or the idea of The New Yorker paying her for only six months out of the year, it was useful for me.

Although Garver isn't afraid to point to the work that made Kael divisive, it would have been nice to have one or two interview subjects who questioned her greatness, rather than the crew of Paulettes who, even when they do say something like, "Sometimes I radically disagreed with her," do it without being able to point to any specifics.

54. Beastie Boys Story (Spike Jonze)- As far as this Spike Jonze completist is concerned, this is more of a Powerpoint presentation than a movie, Beastie Boys Story still warmed my heart, making me want to fire up Paul's Boutique again and take more pictures of my buddies.

53. Tenet (Christopher Nolan)- Cool and cold, tantalizing and frustrating, loud and indistinct, Tenet comes close to Nolan self-parody, right down to the brutalist architecture and multiple characters styled like him. The setpieces grabbed me, I'll admit.

Nolan's previous film, which is maybe his best, was "about" a lot and just happened to play with time; Tenet is only about playing with time.

PRETTY GOOD MOVIES

52. Shithouse (Cooper Raiff)- "Death is ass."

There's such a thing as too naturalistic. If I wanted to hear how college freshmen really talked, I would hang out with college freshmen. But you have to take the good verisimilitude with the bad, and good verisimilitude is the mother's Pod Save America t-shirt.

There are some poignant moments (and a gonzo performance from Logan Miller) in this auspicious debut from Cooper Raiff, the writer/director/editor/star. But the second party sequence kills some of the momentum, and at a crucial point, the characters spell out some motivation that should have stayed implied.

51. Totally Under Control (Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, Suzanne Hillinger)- As dense and informative as any other Gibney documentary with the added flex of making it during the pandemic it is investigating.

But yeah, why am I watching this right now? I don't need more reasons to be angry with Trump, whom this film calmly eviscerates. The directors analyze Trump's narcissism first through his contradictions of medical expertise in order to protect the economy that could win him re-election. Then it takes aim at his hiring based on loyalty instead of experience. But you already knew that, which is the problem with the film, at least for now.

50. Happiest Season (Clea Duvall)- I was in the perfect mood to watch something this frothy and bouncy. Every secondary character receives a moment in the sun, and Daniel Levy gets a speech that kind of saves the film at a tipping point.

I must say though: I wanted to punch Harper in her stupid face. She is a terrible romantic partner, abandoning or betraying Abby throughout the film and dissembling her entire identity to everyone else in a way that seems absurd for a grown woman in 2020. Run away, Kristen. Perhaps with Aubrey Plaza, whom you have more chemistry with. But there I go shipping and aligning myself with characters, which only proves that this is an effective romantic comedy.

49. The Way Back (Gavin O’Connor)- Patient but misshapen, The Way Back does just enough to overcome the cliches that are sort of unavoidable considering the genre. (I can't get enough of the parent character who, for no good reason, doesn't take his son's success seriously. "Scholarship? What he's gotta do is put his nose in them books! That's why I don't go to his games. [continues moving boxes while not looking at the other character] Now if you'll excuse me while I wait four scenes before showing up at a game to prove that I'm proud of him after all...")

What the movie gets really right or really wrong in the details about coaching and addiction is a total crap-shoot. But maybe I've said too much already.

48. The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu)- Porumboiu is a real artist who seems to be interpreting how much surveillance we're willing to acknowledge and accept, but I won't pretend to have understood much of the plot, the chapters or which are told out of order. Sometimes the structure works--the beguiling, contextless "high-class hooker" sequence--but I often wondered if the film was impenetrable in the way that Porumboiu wanted it to be or impenetrable in the way he didn't.

To tell you the truth, the experience kind of depressed me because I know that, in my younger days, this film is the type of thing that I would re-watch, possibly with the chronology righted, knowing that it is worth understanding fully. But I have two small children, and I'm exhausted all the time, and I kind of thought I should get some credit for still trying to catch up with Romanian crime movies in the first place.

47. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Jason Woliner)- I laughed too much to get overly critical, but the film is so episodic and contrived that it's kind of exhausting by the end--even though it's achieving most of its goals. Maybe Borat hasn't changed, but the way our citizens own their ugliness has.

46. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)- Despite how little happens in the first forty minutes, First Cow is a thoughtful capitalism parable. Even though it takes about forty minutes to get going, the friendship between Cookie and King-Lu is natural and incisive. Like Reichardt's other work, the film's modest premise unfolds quite gracefully, except for in the first forty minutes, which are uneventful.

45. Les Miserables (Ladj Ly)- I loved parts of the film--the disorienting, claustrophobic opening or the quick look at the police officers' home lives, for example. But I'm not sure that it does anything very well. The needle the film tries to thread between realism and theater didn't gel for me. The ending, which is ambiguous in all of the wrong ways, chooses the theatrical. (If I'm being honest, my expectations were built up by Les Miserables' Jury Prize at Cannes, and it's a bit superficial to be in that company.)

If nothing else, it's always helpful to see how another country's worst case scenario in law enforcement would look pretty good over here.

44. Bad Education (Cory Finley)- The film feels too locked-down and small at the beginning, so intent on developing the protagonist neutrally that even the audience isn't aware of his secrets. So when he faces consequences for those secrets, there's a disconnect. Part of tragedy is seeing the doom coming, right?

When it opens up, however, it's empathetic and subtle, full of a dry irony that Finley is already specializing in after only one other feature. Geraldine Viswanathan and Allison Janney get across a lot of interiority that is not on the page.

43. The Trip to Greece (Michael Winterbottom)- By the fourth installment, you know whether you're on board with the franchise. If you're asking "Is this all there is?" to Coogan and Brydon's bickering and impressions as they're served exotic food in picturesque settings, then this one won't sway you. If you're asking "Is this all there is?" about life, like they are, then I don't need to convince you.

I will say that The Trip to Spain seemed like an enervated inflection point, at which the squad could have packed it in. The Trip to Greece proves that they probably need to keep doing this until one of them dies, which has been the subtext all along.

42. Feels Good Man (Arthur Jones)- This documentary centers on innocent artist Matt Furie's helplessness as his Pepe the Frog character gets hijacked by the alt-right. It gets the hard things right. It's able to, quite comprehensively, trace a connection from 4Chan's use of Pepe the Frog to Donald Trump's near-assuming of Pepe's ironic deniability. Director Arthur Jones seems to understand the machinations of the alt-right, and he articulates them chillingly.

The easy thing, making us connect to Furie, is less successful. The film spends way too much time setting up his story, and it makes him look naive as it pits him against Alex Jones in the final third. Still, the film is a quick ninety-two minutes, and the highs are pretty high.

41. The Old Guard (Gina Prince-Bythewood)- Some of the world-building and backstory are handled quite elegantly. The relationships actually do feel centuries old through specific details, and the immortal conceit comes together for an innovative final action sequence.

Visually and musically though, the film feels flat in a way that Prince-Bythewood's other films do not. I blame Netflix specs. KiKi Layne, who tanked If Beale Street Could Talk for me, nearly ruins this too with the child-actory way that she stresses one word per line. Especially in relief with one of our more effortless actresses, Layne is distracting.

40. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin)- Whenever Sacha Baron Cohen's Abbie Hoffman opens his mouth, the other defendants brace themselves for his dismissive vulgarity. Even when it's going to hurt him, he can't help but shoot off at the mouth. Of course, he reveals his passionate and intelligent depths as the trial goes on. The character is the one that Sorkin's screenplay seems the most endeared to: In the same way that Hoffman can't help but be Hoffman, Sorkin can't help but be Sorkin. Maybe we don't need a speech there; maybe we don't have to stretch past two hours; maybe a bon mot diffuses the tension. But we know exactly what to expect by now. The film is relevant, astute, witty, benevolent, and, of course, in love with itself. There are a handful of scenes here that are perfect, so I feel bad for qualifying so much.

A smaller point: Daniel Pemberton has done great work in the past (Motherless Brooklyn, King Arthur, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), but the first sequence is especially marred by his sterile soft-rock approach.

GOOD MOVIES

39. Time (Garrett Bradley)- The key to Time is that it provides very little context. Why the patriarch of this family is serving sixty years in prison is sort of besides the point philosophically. His wife and sons have to move on without him, and the tragedy baked into that fact eclipses any notion of what he "deserved." Feeling the weight of time as we switch back and forth between a kid talking about his first day of kindergarten and that same kid graduating from dentistry school is all the context we need. Time's presentation can be quite sumptuous: The drone shot of Angola makes its buildings look like crosses. Or is it X's?

At the same time, I need some context. When director Garrett Bradley withholds the reason Robert's in prison, and when she really withholds that Fox took a plea and served twelve years, you start to see the strings a bit. You could argue that knowing so little about why, all of a sudden, Robert can be on parole puts you into the same confused shoes as the family, but it feels manipulative to me. The film is preaching to the choir as far as criminal justice goes, which is fine, but I want it to have the confidence to tell its story above board.

38. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV)- I have a barfly friend whom I see maybe once a year. When we first set up a time to meet, I kind of dread it and wonder what we'll have to talk about. Once we do get together, we trip on each other's words a bit, fumbling around with the rhythm of conversation that we mastered decades ago. He makes some kind of joke that could have been appropriate then but isn't now.

By the end of the day, hours later, we're hugging and maybe crying as we promise each other that we won't wait as long next time.

That's the exact same journey that I went on with this film.

37. Underwater (William Eubank)- Underwater is a story that you've seen before, but it's told with great confidence and economy. I looked up at twelve minutes and couldn't believe the whole table had been set. Kristen plays Ripley and projects a smart, benevolent poise.

36. The Lodge (Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala)- I prefer the grounded, manicured first half to the more fantastic second half. The craziness of the latter is only possible through the hard work of the former though. As with Fiala and Franz's previous feature, the visual rhymes and motifs get incorporated into the soup so carefully that you don't realize it until they overwhelm you in their bleak glory.

Small note: Alicia Silverstone, the male lead's first wife, and Riley Keough, his new partner, look sort of similar. I always think that's a nice note: "I could see how he would go for her."

35. Miss Americana (Lana Wilson)- I liked it when I saw it as a portrait of a person whose life is largely decided for her but is trying to carve out personal spaces within that hamster wheel. I loved it when I realized that describes most successful people in their twenties.

34. Sound of Metal (Darius Marder)- Riz Ahmed is showing up on all of the best performances of the year lists, but Sound of Metal isn't in anyone's top ten films of the year. That's about right. Ahmed's is a quiet, stubborn performance that I wish was in service of more than the straight line that we've seen before.

In two big scenes, there's this trick that Ahmed does, a piecing together of consequences with his eyes, as if he's moving through a flow chart in real time. In both cases, the character seems locked out and a little slower than he should be, which is, of course, why he's facing the consequences in the first place. To be charitable to a film that was a bit of a grind, it did make me notice a thing a guy did with his eyes.

33. Pieces of a Woman (Kornel Mundruczo)- Usually when I leave acting showcases like this, I imagine the film without the Oscar-baiting speeches, but this is a movie that specializes in speeches. Pieces of a Woman is being judged, deservedly so, by the harrowing twenty-minute take that opens the film, which is as indulgent as it is necessary. But if the unbroken take provides the "what," then the speeches provide the "why."

This is a film about reclaiming one's body when it rebels against you and when other people seek ownership of it. Without the Ellen Burstyn "lift your head" speech or the Vanessa Kirby show-stopper in the courtroom, I'm not sure any of that comes across.

I do think the film lets us off the hook a bit with the LaBoeuf character, in the sense that it gives us reasons to dislike him when it would be more compelling if he had done nothing wrong. Does his half-remembering of the White Stripes count as a speech?

32. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (George C. Wolfe)- This is such a play, not only in the locked-down location but also through nearly every storytelling convention: "Where are the two most interesting characters? Oh, running late? They'll enter separately in animated fashion?" But, to use the type of phrase that the characters might, "Don't hate the player; hate the game."

Perhaps the most theatrical note in this treatise on the commodification of expression is the way that, two or three times, the proceedings stop in their tracks for the piece to declare loudly what it's about. In one of those clear-outs, Boseman, who looks distractingly sick, delivers an unforgettable monologue that transports the audience into his character's fragile, haunted mind. He and Viola Davis are so good that the film sort of buckles under their weight, unsure of how to transition out of those spotlight moments and pretend that the story can start back up. Whatever they're doing is more interesting than what's being achieved overall.

31. Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg)- It's definitely the film that Vinterberg wanted to make, but despite what I think is a quietly shattering performance from Mikkelsen, Another Round moves in a bit too much of a straight line to grab me fully. The joyous final minutes hint at where it could have gone, as do pockets of Vinterberg's filmography, which seems newly tethered to realism in a way that I don't like. The best sequences are the wildest ones, like the uproarious trip to the grocery store for fresh cod, so I don't know why so much of it takes place in tiny hallways at magic hour. I give the inevitable American remake* permission to use these notes.

*- Just spitballing here. Martin: Will Ferrell, Nikolaj (Nick): Ben Stiller, Tommy: Owen Wilson, Peter: Craig Robinson

30. The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell)- Exactly what I wanted. Exactly what I needed.

I think a less conclusive finale would have been better, but what a model of high-concept escalation. This is the movie people convinced me Whannell's Upgrade was.

29. On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola)- Slight until the Mexican sojourn, which expands the scope and makes the film even more psychosexual than before. At times it feels as if Coppola is actively simplifying, rather than diving into the race and privilege questions that the Murray character all but demands.

As for Murray, is the film 50% worse without him? 70%? I don't know if you can run in supporting categories if you're the whole reason the film exists.

28. Mangrove (Steve McQueen)- The first part of the film seemed repetitive and broad to me. But once it settled in as a courtroom drama, the characterization became more shaded, and the filmmaking itself seemed more fluid. I ended up being quite outraged and inspired.

27. Shirley (Josephine Decker)- Josephine Decker emerges as a real stylist here, changing her foggy, impressionistic approach not one bit with a little more budget. Period piece and established actors be damned--this is still as much of a reeling fever dream as Madeline's Madeline. Both pieces are a bit too repetitive and nasty for my taste, but I respect the technique.

Here's my mandatory "Elisabeth Moss is the best" paragraph. While watching her performance as Shirley Jackson, I thought about her most famous role as Peggy on Mad Men, whose inertia and need to prove herself tied her into confidence knots. Shirley is almost the opposite: paralyzed by her worldview, certain of her talent, rejecting any empathy. If Moss can inhabit both characters so convincingly, she can do anything.

26. An American Pickle (Brandon Trost)- An American Pickle is the rare comedy that could actually use five or ten extra minutes, but it's a surprisingly heartfelt and wholesome stretch for Rogen, who is earnest in the lead roles.

25. The King of Staten Island (Judd Apatow)- At two hours and fifteen minutes, The King of Staten Island is probably the first Judd Apatow film that feels like the exact right length. For example, the baggy date scene between a gracious Bill Burr and a faux-dowdy Marisa Tomei is essential, the sort of widening of perspective that something like Trainwreck was missing.

It's Pete Davidson's movie, however, and though he has never been my cup of tea, I think he's actually quite powerful in his quiet moments. The movie probes some rare territory--a mentally ill man's suspicion that he is unlovable, a family's strategic myth-making out of respect for the dead. And when Davidson shows up at the firehouse an hour and fifteen minutes in, it feels as if we've built to a last resort.

24. Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis)- The tricky part of this film is communicating Hunter's despair, letting her isolation mount, but still keeping her opaque. It takes a lot of visual discipline to do that, and Claudio Mirabella-Davis is up to the task. This ends up being a much more sympathetic, expressive movie than the plot description might suggest.

(In the tie dispute, Hunter and Richie are both wrong. That type of silk--I couldn't tell how pebbled it was, but it's probably a barathea weave-- shouldn't be ironed directly, but it doesn't have to be steamed. On a low setting, you could iron the back of the tie and be fine.)

23. The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson)- I wanted a bit more "there" there; The film goes exactly where I thought it would, and there isn't enough humor for my taste. (The predictability might be a feature, not a bug, since the film is positioned as an episode of a well-worn Twilight Zone-esque show.)

But from a directorial standpoint, this is quite a promising debut. Patterson knows when to lock down or use silence--he even cuts to black to force us to listen more closely to a monologue. But he also knows when to fill the silence. There's a minute or so when Everett is spooling tape, and he and Fay make small talk about their hopes for the future, developing the characters' personalities in what could have been just mechanics. It's also a refreshingly earnest film. No one is winking at the '50s setting.

I'm tempted to write, "If Andrew Patterson can make this with $1 million, just imagine what he can do with $30 million." But maybe people like Shane Carruth have taught us that Patterson is better off pinching pennies in Texas and following his own muse.

22. Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello)- At first this film, adapted from a picaresque novel by Jack London, seemed as if it was hitting the marks of the genre. "He's going from job to job and meeting dudes who are shaping his worldview now." But the film, shot in lustrous Super 16, won me over as it owned the trappings of this type of story, forming a character who is a product of his environment even as he transcends it. By the end, I really felt the weight of time.

You want to talk about something that works better in novels than films though? When a passionate, independent protagonist insists that a woman is the love of his life, despite the fact that she's whatever Italians call a wet blanket. She's rich, but Martin doesn't care about her money. He hates her family and friends, and she refuses to accept him or his life pursuits. She's pretty but not even as pretty as the waitress they discuss. Tell me what I'm missing here. There's archetype, and there's incoherence.

21. Bacurau (Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles)- Certain images from this adventurous film will stick with me, but I got worn out after the hard reset halfway through. As entranced as I was by the mystery of the first half, I think this blood-soaked ensemble is better at asking questions than it is at answering them.

20. Let Them All Talk (Steven Soderbergh)- The initial appeal of this movie might be "Look at these wonderful actresses in their seventies getting a movie all to themselves." And the film is an interesting portrait of ladies taking stock of relationships that have spanned decades. But Soderbergh and Eisenberg handle the twentysomething Lucas Hedges character with the same openness and empathy. His early reasoning for going on the trip is that he wants to learn from older women, and Hedges nails the puppy-dog quality of a young man who would believe that. Especially in the scenes of aspirational romance, he's sweet and earnest as he brushes his hair out of his face.

Streep plays Alice Hughes, a serious author of literary fiction, and she crosses paths with Kelvin Kranz, a grinder of airport thrillers. In all of the right ways, Let Them All Talk toes the line between those two stances as an entertaining, jaunty experiment that also shoulders subtextual weight. If nothing else, it's easy to see why a cruise ship's counterfeit opulence, its straight lines at a lean, would be visually engaging to Soderbergh. You can't have a return to form if your form is constantly evolving.

19. Dick Johnson Is Dead (Kirsten Johnson)- Understandably, I don't find the subject as interesting as his own daughter does, and large swaths of this film are unsure of what they're trying to say. But that's sort of the point, and the active wrestling that the film engages in with death ultimately pays off in a transcendent moment. The jaw-dropping ending is something that only non-fiction film can achieve, and Johnson's whole career is about the search for that sort of serendipity.

18. Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee)- Delroy Lindo is a live-wire, but his character is the only one of the principals who is examined with the psychological depth I was hoping for. The first half, with all of its present-tense flourishes, promises more than the gunfights of the second half can deliver. When the film is cooking though, it's chock full of surprises, provocations, and pride.

17. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittmann)- Very quickly, Eliza Hittmann has established herself as an astute, empathetic director with an eye for discovering new talent. I hope that she gets to make fifty more movies in which she objectively follows laconic young people. But I wanted to like this one more than I did. The approach is so neutral that it's almost flat to me, lacking the arc and catharsis of her previous film, Beach Rats. I still appreciate her restraint though.

GREAT MOVIES

16. Young Ahmed (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne)- I don't think the Dardennes have made a bad movie yet, and I'm glad they turned away from the slight genre dipping of The Unknown Girl, the closest to bad that they got. Young Ahmed is a lean, daring return to form.

Instead of following an average person, as they normally do, the Dardenne Brothers follow an extremist, and the objectivity that usually generates pathos now serves to present ambiguity. Ahmed says that he is changing, that he regrets his actions, but we never know how much of his stance is a put-on. I found myself wanting him to reform, more involved than I usually am in these slices of life. Part of it is that Idir Ben Addi looks like such a normal, young kid, and the Ahmed character has most of the qualities that we say we want in young people: principles, commitment, self-worth, reflection. So it's that much more destructive when those qualities are used against him and against his fellow man.

15. World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime (Don Hertzfeldt)- My dad, a man whom I love but will never understand, has dismissed modern music before by claiming that there are only so many combinations of chords. To him, it's almost impossible to do something new. Of course, this is the type of thing that an uncreative person would say--a person not only incapable of hearing the chords that combine notes but also unwilling to hear the space between the notes. (And obviously, that's the take of a person who doesn't understand that, originality be damned, some people just have to create.)

Anyway, that attitude creeps into my own thinking more than I would like, but then I watch something as wholly original as World of Tomorrow Episode Three. The series has always been a way to pile sci-fi ideas on top of each other to prove the essential truths of being and loving. And this one, even though it achieves less of a sense of yearning than its predecessor, offers even more devices to chew on. Take, for example, the idea that Emily sends her message from the future, so David's primitive technology can barely handle it. In order to move forward with its sophistication, he has to delete any extraneous skills for the sake of computer memory. So out of trust for this person who loves him, he has to weigh whether his own breathing or walking can be uninstalled as a sacrifice for her. I thought that we might have been done describing love, but there it is, a new metaphor. Mixing futurism with stick figures to get at the most pure drive possible gave us something new. It's called art, Dad.

14. On the Record (Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering)- We don't call subjects of documentaries "stars" for obvious reasons, but Drew Dixon kind of is one. Her honesty and wisdom tell a complete story of the #MeToo movement. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering take their time developing her background at first, not because we need to "gain sympathy" or "establish credibility" for a victim of sexual abuse, but because showing her talent and enthusiasm for hip-hop A&R makes it that much more tragic when her passion is extinguished. Hell, I just like the woman, so spending a half-hour on her rise was pleasurable in and of itself.

This is a gut-wrenching, fearless entry in what is becoming Dick and Ziering's raison d'etre, but its greatest quality is Dixon's composed reflection. She helped to establish a pattern of Russell Simmons's behavior, but she explains what happened to her in ways I had never heard before.

13. David Byrne’s American Utopia (Spike Lee)- I'm often impressed by the achievements that puzzle me: How did they pull that off? But I know exactly how David Byrne pulled off the impish but direct precision of American Utopia: a lot of hard work.

I can't blame Spike Lee for stealing a page from Demme's Stop Making Sense: He denies us a close-up of any audience members until two-thirds of the way through, when we get someone in absolute rapture.

12. One Night in Miami... (Regina King)- We've all cringed when a person of color is put into the position of speaking on behalf of his or her entire race. But the characters in One Night in Miami... live in that condition all the time and are constantly negotiating it. As Black public figures in 1964, they know that the consequences of their actions are different, bigger, than everyone else's. The charged conversations between Malcolm X and Sam Cooke are not about whether they can live normal lives. They're way past that. The stakes are closer to Sam Cooke arguing that his life's purpose aligns with the protection and elevation of African-Americans while Malcolm X argues that those pursuits should be the same thing. Late in the movie, Cassius Clay leaves the other men, a private conversation, to talk to reporters, a public conversation. But the film argues that everything these men do is always already public. They're the most powerful African-Americans in the country, but their lives are not their own. Or not only their own.

It's true that the first act has the clunkiness and artifice of a TV movie, but once the film settles into the motel room location and lets the characters feed off one another, it's gripping. It's kind of unfair for a movie to get this many scenes of Leslie Odom Jr. singing, but I'll take it.

11. Saint Frances (Alex Thompson)- Rilke wrote, "Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." The characters' behavior in Saint Frances--all of these fully formed characters' behavior--made me think of that quotation. When they lash out at one another, even at their nastiest, the viewer has a window into how they're expressing pain they can't verbalize. The film is uneven in its subtlety, but it's a real showcase for screenwriter and star Kelly O'Sullivan, who is unflinching and dynamic in one of the best performances of the year. Somebody give her some of the attention we gave to Zach Braff for God's sake.

10. Boys State (Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine)- This documentary is kind of a miracle from a logistical standpoint. From casting interviews beforehand, lots of editing afterwards, or sly note-taking once the conference began, McBaine and Moss happened to select the four principals who mattered the most at the convention, then found them in rooms full of dudes wearing the same tucked-in t-shirt. By the way, all of the action took place over the course of one week, and by definition, the important events are carved in half.

To call Boys State a microcosm of American politics is incorrect. These guys are forming platforms and voting in elections. What they're doing is American politics, so when they make the same compromises and mistakes that active politicians do, it produces dread and disappointment. So many of the boys are mimicking the political theater that they see on TV, and that sweaty sort of performance is going to make a Billy Mitchell out of this kid Ben Feinstein, and we'll be forced to reckon with how much we allow him to evolve as a person. This film is so precise, but what it proves is undeniably messy. Luckily, some of these seventeen-year-olds usher in hope for us all.

If nothing else, the film reveals the level to which we're all speaking in code.

9. The Nest (Sean Durkin)- In the first ten minutes or so of The Nest, the only real happy minutes, father and son are playing soccer in their quaint backyard, and the father cheats to score on a children's net before sliding on the grass to rub in his victory. An hour later, the son kicks the ball around by himself near a regulation goal on the family's massive property. The contrast is stark and obvious, as is the symbolism of the dead horse, but that doesn't mean it's not visually powerful or resonant.

Like Sean Durkin's earlier film, Martha Marcy May Marlene, the whole of The Nest is told with detail of novelistic scope and an elevation of the moment. A snippet of radio that mentions Ronald Reagan sets the time period, rather than a dateline. One kid saying "Thanks, Dad" and another kid saying, "Thanks, Rory" establishes a stepchild more elegantly than any other exposition might.

But this is also a movie that does not hide what it means. Characters usually say exactly what is on their minds, and motivations are always clear. For example, Allison smokes like a chimney, so her daughter's way of acting out is leaving butts on the window sill for her mother to find. (And mother and daughter both definitely "act out" their feelings.) On the other hand, Ben, Rory's biological son, is the character least like him, so these relationships aren't too directly parallel. Regardless, Durkin uses these trajectories to cast a pall of familial doom.

8. Sorry We Missed You (Sean Durkin)- Another precisely calibrated empathy machine from Ken Loach. The overwhelmed matriarch, Abby, is a caretaker, and she has to break up a Saturday dinner to rescue one of her clients, who wet herself because no one came to help her to the bathroom. The lady is embarrassed, and Abby calms her down by saying, "You mean more to me than you know." We know enough about Abby's circumstances to realize that it's sort of a lie, but it's a beautiful lie, told by a person who cares deeply but is not cared for.

Loach's central point is that the health of a family, something we think of as immutable and timeless, is directly dependent upon the modern industry that we use to destroy ourselves. He doesn't have to be "proven" relevant, and he didn't plan for Covid-19 to point to the fragility of the gig economy, but when you're right, you're right.

7. Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen)- swear to you I thought: "This is an impeccable depiction of a great house party. The only thing it's missing is the volatile dude who scares away all the girls." And then the volatile dude who scares away all the girls shows up.

In a year short on magic, there are two or three transcendent moments, but none of them can equal the whole crowd singing along to "Silly Games" way after the song has ended. Nothing else crystallizes the film's note of celebration: of music, of community, of safe spaces, of Black skin. I remember moments like that at house parties, and like all celebrations, they eventually make me sad.

6. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht)- I held off on this movie because I thought that I knew what it was. The setup was what I expected: A summer camp for the disabled in the late '60s takes on the spirit of the time and becomes a haven for people who have not felt agency, self-worth, or community anywhere else. But that's the right-place-right-time start of a story that takes these figures into the '80s as they fight for their rights.

If you're anything like my dumb ass, you know about 504 accommodations from the line on a college syllabus that promises equal treatment. If 2020 has taught us anything though, it's that rights are seized, not given, and this is the inspiring story of people who unified to demand what they deserved. Judy Heumann is a civil rights giant, but I'm ashamed to say I didn't know who she was before this film. If it were just a history lesson that wasn't taught in school, Crip Camp would still be valuable, but it's way more than that.

5. Palm Springs (Max Barbakow)- When explaining what is happening to them, Andy Samberg's Nyles twirls his hand at Cristin Milioti's Sara and says, "It's one of those infinite time-loop scenarios." Yeah, one of those. Armed with only a handful of fictional examples, she and the audience know exactly what he means, and the continually inventive screenplay by Andy Siara doesn't have to do any more explaining. In record time, the film accelerates into its premise, involves her, and sets up the conflict while avoiding the claustrophobia of even Groundhog Day. That economy is the strength that allows it to be as funny as it is. By being thrifty with the setup, the savings can go to, say, the couple crashing a plane into a fiery heap with no consequences.

In some accidental ways, this is, of course, a quarantine romance as well. Nyles and Sara frustratingly navigate the tedious wedding as if they are play-acting--which they sort of are--then they push through that sameness to grow for each other, realizing that dependency is not weakness. The best relationships are doing the same thing right now.

Although pointedly superficial--part of the point of why the couple is such a match--and secular--I think the notion of an afterlife would come up at least once--Palm Springs earns the sincerity that it gets around to. And for a movie ironic enough to have a character beg to be impaled so that he doesn't have to sit in traffic, that's no small feat.

4. The Assistant (Kitty Green)- A wonder of Bressonian objectivity and rich observation, The Assistant is the rare film that deals exclusively with emotional depth while not once explaining any emotions. One at a time, the scrape of the Kleenex box might not be so grating, the long hallway trek to the delivery guy might not be so tiring, but this movie gets at the details of how a job can destroy you in ways that add up until you can't even explain them.

3. Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell)- In her most incendiary and modern role, Carey Mulligan plays Cassie, which is short for Cassandra, that figure doomed to tell truths that no one else believes. The web-belted boogeyman who ruined her life is Al, short for Alexander, another Greek who is known for his conquests. The revenge story being told here--funny in its darkest moments, dark in its funniest moments--is tight on its surface levels, but it feels as if it's telling a story more archetypal and expansive than that too.

An exciting feature debut for its writer-director Emerald Fennell, the film goes wherever it dares. Its hero has a clear purpose, and it's not surprising that the script is willing to extinguish her anger halfway through. What is surprising is the way it renews and muddies her purpose as she comes into contact with half-a-dozen brilliant one- or two-scene performances. (Do you think Alfred Molina can pull off a lawyer who hates himself so much that he can't sleep? You would be right.)

Promising Young Woman delivers as an interrogation of double standards and rape culture, but in quiet ways it's also about our outsized trust in professionals and the notion that some trauma cannot be overcome.

INSTANT CLASSICS

2. Soul (Pete Docter)- When Pete Docter's Up came out, it represented a sort of coronation for Pixar: This was the one that adults could like unabashedly. The one with wordless sequences and dead children and Ed Asner in the lead. But watching it again this week with my daughter, I was surprised by how high-concept and cloying it could be. We choose not to remember the middle part with the goofy dog stuff.

Soul is what Up was supposed to be: honest, mature, stirring. And I don't mean to imply that a family film shouldn't make any concessions to children. But Soul, down to the title, never compromises its own ambition. Besides Coco, it's probably the most credible character study that Pixar has ever made, with all of Joe's growth earned the hard way. Besides Inside Out, it's probably the wittiest comedy that Pixar has ever made, bursting with unforced energy.

There's a twitter fascination going around about Dez, the pigeon-figured barber character whose scene has people gushing, "Crush my windpipe, king" or whatever. Maybe that's what twitter does now, but no one fantasized about any characters in Up. And I count that as progress.

1. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman)- After hearing that our name-shifting protagonist moonlights as an artist, a no-nonsense David Thewlis offers, "I hope you're not an abstract artist." He prefers "paintings that look like photographs" over non-representational mumbo-jumbo. And as Jessie Buckley squirms to try to think of a polite way to talk back, you can tell that Charlie Kaufman has been in the crosshairs of this same conversation. This morose, scary, inscrutable, expressionist rumination is not what the Netflix description says it is at all, and it's going to bother nice people looking for a fun night in. Thank God.

The story goes that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, when constructing Raiders of the Lost Ark, sought to craft a movie that was "only the good parts" with little of the clunky setup that distracted from action. What we have here is a Charlie Kaufman movie with only the Charlie Kaufman moments, less interested than ever before at holding one's hand. The biting humor is here, sometimes aimed at philistines like the David Thewlis character above, sometimes at the niceties that we insist upon. The lonely horror of everyday life is here, in the form of missed calls from oneself or the interruption of an inner monologue. Of course, communicating the overwhelming crush of time, both unknowable and familiar, is the raison d'etre.

A new pet motif seems to be the way that we don't even own our own knowledge. The Young Woman recites "Bonedog" by Eva H.D., which she claims/thinks she wrote, only to find Jake's book open to that page, next to a Pauline Kael book that contains a Woman Under the Influence review that she seems to have internalized later. When Jake muses about Wordsworth's "Lucy Poems," it starts as a way to pass the time, then it becomes a way to lord his education over her, then it becomes a compliment because the subject resembles her, then it becomes a way to let her know that, in the grand scheme of things, she isn't that special at all. This film jerks the viewer through a similar wintry cycle and leaves him with his own thoughts. It's not a pretty picture, but it doesn't look like anything else.

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tiramisiyu · 3 years

Text

【未定事件簿】 Tears of Themis: 【惊心一刻】 Xia Yan’s Shocking Moment Date Translation

Translation Masterlist | Xia Yan Masterlist

Video: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Hh411Z7qk

I love how Mihoyo takes every opportunity to remind us about Xia Yan’s three years. (I do not)

PART 1

Detective Office

MC: Today’s recommendation: “Extreme Rock Climbing” – a documentary that’ll make your palms sweat wildly…

I flipped through the magazines on Xia Yan’s desk and couldn’t resist making a sound in surprise.

MC: So amazing, how do people climb up this…

I had just finished speaking when a little black figure, accompanied with the sound of a few crisp chirps, flew towards me. It then stably landed on my shoulder.

MC: Peanut? Are you very interested in this? I feel like Xia Yan would also like this a lot.

Xia Yan: What is it that I’d like? What are you whispering to Peanut…

Xia Yan walked in front of me, holding a tiny little box.

Xia Yan: This is for you – Peanut’s baggage is all in here. Its birdcage and bird frame can be folded into a light, portable shape.

Xia Yan: These few days when I’m gone, I’ll have to trouble you to take care of it well.

MC: No problem. What about your luggage, then? Have you packed it all?

Xia Yan: Don’t worry, I’ve packed all of it. Though I’d just finished packing when I heard you two talking about something interesting – quick, tell me.

MC: There’s a film review in this magazine about a documentary on barehanded rock climbing.

MC: So I thought that you’d like this kind of sport!

Xia Yan: Is that so? Show me the magazine!

I handed the magazine I was holding to Xia Yan, specifically pointing out the illustration for this review. A man without any protective measures on was barehandedly scaling a cliff that barely had any footholds.

Xia Yan: Mm… it is very impressive, but it’s too dangerous. I won’t go try it.

MC: Even if you wanted to go, I would definitely hold you back anyways.

MC: I’m guessing that what you would be interested in would be the more typical rock climbing activities with safety measures.

Xia Yan: Is it that… you want to go rock climbing?

I was completely befuddled until Xia Yan handed the magazine to me and pointed to the rock climbing club advertisement, published behind the film review…

Ads these days really are unpredictable…

MC: I hadn’t seen that side…

I was just about to explain that I didn’t mean it that way, until I saw Xia Yan’s slightly worried expression. Was it because rock climbing is troublesome? Something that could make him feel that it was difficult… I’m suddenly looking forward to it a lot! I’ve never seen him in an activity that he’s not good at!

MC: Although, it’s not like I mind trying it out!

Just when I was looking forward to seeing Xia Yan admit defeat for the first time, he instead laughed and nodded.

Xia Yan: It’s just rock climbing. Since you want to try it out, then let’s go after I return!

MC: Eh?!!!

One week later.

Novice Rock Climbing Area

On the weekend, there were a lot of people at the location, but most of them were all at areas of different difficulty levels, so the novice area seemed somewhat calm.

As for me, when I saw the rock climbing walls that I’ve only seen in magazines and entertainment programs, I inhaled a deep breath.

MC: I never would’ve thought that we really would come.

Although, I’m lucky that Xia Yan found this outdoor rock-climbing site. I’d originally thought that we really would go out into the wild to climb a cliff.

MC: We’re here anyways. If I don’t experience it properly, I’ll be letting myself down.

MC: I’ll do some warm-up exercises first.

Right then, Xia Yan walked towards me, holding two bottles of mineral water.

Xia Yan: I’ve bought the water. How are your warm-ups?

MC: Almost done!

Xia Yan: Let me see. Mm… raise your arms a little more, your elbows should be leveled with your shoulders…

My posture didn’t seem to be up to standard, so Xia Yan directly walked behind me to help me adjust my movements.

Xia Yan: That’s right! Remember to flex your fingers after finishing those.

MC: Mhmm!

After warming up, a coach headed over with rock climbing gear to instruct me on novice rock climbing techniques. But after the coach finished with his instructions, he didn’t seem to intend on leaving – instead, he looked over Xia Yan and I back and forth.

Coach A: The two of you must have come here together. Are you interested in participating in today’s rock climbing speed competition?

MC: Competition?

PART 2

Novice Rock Climbing Area

Coach A: We often hold some interesting competitions. Today is the two-person speed competition, where the competition scores are based on the total duration rankings of the individual climbing of the two.

Coach A: Signups for the competition are done at one’s will. Whether you participate or not, either is fine. The prizes are four journals, specially designed and custom-ordered by this rock climbing place.

I’d originally been completely disinterested in the competition, but when my attention was perked as soon as I heard that the prize was journals!

MC: Are they rock-climbing themed?

Xia Yan: I remember that you used to like to collect pretty stationery before!

Coach A: Of course. A lot of people who come to compete, come for the prize – after all, they’re limited-edition.

MC: I’m a little interested. Xia Yan, are you joining?

Xia Yan: Since you want the journal so much, then I’ll definitely join!

Coach A: The competition is happening at 3:30. Don’t be stressed, you can get a prize as long as you rank.

Coach A: Though I have to let you both know that the rock wall used in the competition is a bit different from what’s usually used.

Coach A: It doesn’t have that many routes. With pure speed and force, people with a foundation in sports won’t find it difficult to start with some more practice.

MC: Thank you, coach! It’s 2-o’clock right now – one and a half hours of time to practice.

Xia Yan: Want to try climbing the novice cliff first? We have time to compete after adapting to it.

MC: Mm, then I’ll try it out first. Are you going to do it with me?

Xia Yan: Me?

He seemed to have thought about something. After revealing a surprised expression for an instant, he very quickly smiled at me helplessly.

Xia Yan: The novice area is pretty safe, so I’ll observe here. If your posture is off somewhere, I can also immediately correct it.

MC: …Have you remembered all that the coach taught us?

Distracted by the journal and competition matters, I had already forgotten a good portion of those movements.

Xia Yan: Wanna guess? Although, no matter how much theory you listen to, it can’t compare to experiencing it yourself. Only practice results in true knowledge.

I nodded and began to apply slip-resistant powder to my palms. When I was preparing to stand in front of the rock wall, Xia Yan inspected the safety equipment I had on.

Xia Yan: Shouldn’t have any problems… try and see.

MC: Mm.

I stood in front of the rock wall, then reached out to grab the chunk of rock in front of me, then visually searched for a suitable foothold. When both of my feet had stepped on the rock points, my whole body had pressed against the rock wall. I followed Xia Yan’s instructions, gradually shifting my body. Though each movement was very slow, they were quite stable.

Xia Yan: How do you feel now?

MC: No problems whatsoever!

I had just spoken when my foot, which had just stepped on another rock point, applied the slightest bit of force and then slid. Luckily, my other foot kept my body stable.

MC: Good thing I hadn’t stepped completely onto it. I really can’t afford to be careless at all…

Xia Yan: Are you alright?

I turned around with difficulty and looked down at Xia Yan. His eyes were full of worry.

MC: I’m fine! The occasional mistake is also a part of accumulating experience.

Xia Yan: Seriously, you’ve never changed in how you are when you encourage yourself.

Xia Yan: Although, being able to do this much for your first time rock climbing is already really amazing. Do you want to come down and rest for a bit?

MC: Xia Yan, do you think if I try a little harder now, I’ll be able to get to the top?

Xia Yan: You want to get to the top?

MC: Mhmm! Giving up halfway isn’t my style.

Xia Yan: Though it’s a bit hard for a novice to reach the top… but if it’s you, there definitely won’t be a problem!

Hearing Xia Yan’s encouragement, I turned around and looked at the rock wall in front and spurred myself on mentally. I can definitely do this!

Though my progress in climbing the wall was somewhat bumpy, I was still able to successfully get on the top of the rock wall in the end. After getting down from the rock wall, I immediately ran to Xia Yan.

MC: I understand why so many people enjoy rock climbing.

MC: The sense of accomplishment after getting to the top feels just like I’ve conquered both sky and earth!

Standing beside me, Xia Yan smiled as he looked at me, but he didn’t say anything.

MC: What are you looking at? Is there magnesium powder stuck on my face?

Xia Yan: There is a little.

Xia Yan raised his hand, seeming to want to wipe it for me, but he had only stuck out his hand halfway before putting it back down.

Xia Yan: Here, there’s a little bit rubbed on beside your lips.

I rubbed at it with the back of my hand.

MC: Any more left?

Xia Yan: No… ahem, I’m gonna go buy two bottles of water again. Rest a bit before the competition starts to restore your stamina.

After speaking, Xia Yan left rapidly. No matter how you looked at it, it looked like he was running for his life. What’s up with him?

MC: …

I didn’t have the time to ponder over why Xia Yan’s reaction was so strange before my attention was drawn to a person nearby. That person was in the middle of climbing the other side of the rock wall quickly. The cohesiveness of his actions was absolutely smooth and natural – it was clear that he was a veteran.

MC: Though I signed up in a moment of interest, it’s really hard to achieve that level of familiarity within this short time.

Xia Yan: No matter how hard it is, you won’t give up, right?

MC: Xia Yan! When did you get back?

Xia Yan: Just when you were sighing about how familiar others were with rock climbing. Here, this water’s for you.

After taking the mineral water from Xia Yan, I opened the bottle cap and took a drink. Within the period of time when Xia Yan and I were talking, that person had already climbed to the top.

MC: He must be a professional to have gotten to the top so fast.

Xia Yan: It’s not that fast. The rock wall that he was climbing only had one route, so it’s supposed to be used for speed practice anyways.

Xia Yan: If he wants to get on the level of a professional, he’s got to improve his speed by at least 50 seconds.

MC: Saying this, do you think you can do it faster than him?

Xia Yan: That’s for sure!

MC: Then why did you look so unwilling when I brought up rock climbing at the beginning…

Xia Yan: That was because…

MC: Because what?

Xia Yan: Ahem, that was because I wanted to surprise you. I’ll prove it to you now!

PART 3

High-speed Rock Climbing Area

The rock wall that the person had just climbed up was from the high-speed rock climbing area, which was also the area where the competition would be held. Xia Yan and I walked over, and Xia Yan had me get on the top platform to wait for him.

Xia Yan: The competition will be held soon. The built-in timer for the rock wall needs to be reset to zero – I’ll need to trouble you to time me on the top platform.

MC: No problem. The person just now used around one minute – can you…

Xia Yan: Then I’ll be a bit conservative – 40 seconds.

MC: 40 seconds is conservative?

Xia Yan: Because I’m not too familiar with the equipment here yet.

Xia Yan: Hurry up there – I’ll start right after warming up!

MC: Mm.

Only when standing at the top of the rock-climbing wall and looking down did I truly feel how high the rock wall was.

MC: 50 metres… Xia Yan bragged that he could do 40 seconds, but is that too much of a rush…

I looked towards Xia Yan in the middle of his preparations. Maybe he felt my gaze, since he tilted his head up and smiled at me. Though Xia Yan had a lot of confidence, I still suspected that he was putting on a brave front, especially in how he wanted to climb up a 50-metre rock wall in 40 seconds.

MC: Xia Yan! Don’t force yourself, I’m worried…

I yelled in his direction.

Xia Yan: No way. When have I never successfully done what I’ve promised you?

Well, that was true.

He walked to the fixed spot two metres away from the rock wall, adjusted the position of the starting mat, and waved at me.

Xia Yan: I’m ready! After counting down from 3 seconds, start the time!

3, 2, 1… the moment I pressed the timer, Xia Yan got on the rock wall at a speed that surpassed my imagination. His movements were agile and smooth – it was clear that he was no novice.

MC: Is there anything that he can’t do…?

Other people who were resting all gathered around, watching Xia Yan climb up the rock wall at a high speed.

Bystander A: Who’s this expert – how come I’ve never seen him before? That speed really is something else!

Bystander B: The expert’s agile skill simply can’t be criticized! I bet the club’s records are gonna be broken very soon.

Bystander C: Breaking the record? That record has stuck around for three years – how could it be broken so easily.

In the blink of an eye, Xia Yan had long passed the middle of the rock wall.

His expression was focused and firm, and magnesium powder floated around him, sparkling brilliantly in the sun. The closer he got to the top of the rock wall, the more I couldn’t shift my attention away from him. Even the noise on the ground was nearly inaudible.

The more Xia Yan passed over that protruding rock wall, the more the endpoint became within his reach.

MC: Do your best, Xia Yan!

Hearing my voice, Xia Yan smiled slightly, then grabbed a rock point and rose up suddenly…

My heart suddenly tightened. Under the surprised gasps of the crowd, Xia Yan stably grabbed onto the last rock before the top. He, who’d just finished this with skill and ease, winked at me, not even forgetting to casually say a few words…

Xia Yan: It’s almost over. Watch the second timer and prepare to stop it.

MC: You haven’t gotten on the top – there isn’t much time left.

Xia Yan: This is just a warm-up – of course I won’t unleash my full ability.

Xia Yan: But since you’re using provoking methods, then I have to…

As he spoke, my eyes suddenly seemed to blur. I didn’t see Xia Yan’s movements at all when he successfully got on the top, appearing by my side.

Xia Yan: How was that – how much time did I take?

Time? Ah! I forgot to stop the timer!

MC: 34:57 seconds…

Even though I pressed it late by a few seconds, Xia Yan was still able to do as promised within 40 seconds.

MC: Congratulations, Great Detective Xia, you were successful!

Xia Yan: Now you believe that I really am amazing at rock climbing, right.

MC: Yes yes yes, super amazing, I’m in complete awe!

Xia Yan: Then did you think that I looked really cool?

MC: Yes yes yes, the Great Detective was especially cool!

Xia Yan: Then, do I have the honour of being the private rock-climbing instructor for the Great Lawyer?

MC: Haha, no problem, this lawyer will definitely hire you!

Laughing, I high-fived Xia Yan. As our fingertips brushed over each other, he transmitted his warmth to me. The moment that our palms pressed against each other, I could even feel his beating heart clearly.

PART 4

High-speed Rock-Climbing Area

After laughing together, I carefully thought back on Xia Yan’s movements as he got on the top. My eyes told me that I could do it, but my body… clearly wouldn’t be able to learn it…

Xia Yan: What are you thinking about?

MC: I was thinking that your movements in getting to the top are unsurprisingly very hard.

Xia Yan: I was showing off my skill – a typical person wouldn’t do that when getting to the top. I’ve got to perform in an eye-catching way to have you forget about that person just now.

Xia Yan: Although, I only dared to do those kinds of movements because I was sure of my success, so don’t worry.

Seeing Xia Yan’s happy expression, I thought again of his distressed expression that day.

MC: Now can you tell me why your expression was so odd back when I brought up rock climbing?

MC: I’d even thought that you weren’t skilled at this…

Xia Yan: This… one reason was that I was afraid that your stamina wouldn’t be able to catch up. After all, rock climbing isn’t like other sports – it consumes a lot of energy.

MC: Being a lawyer means that I often have to work overtime over several days, and I have to run around to different places to get evidence. I feel like my stamina should pass the standard.

MC: You said “one reason” just now, so there are other reasons?

Xia Yan scratched at his hair, seeming somewhat embarrassed.

Xia Yan: It’s not good... for my...

MC: Ah?

His voice became as quiet as a mosquito, and I didn’t hear what he said clearly.

Xia Yan: To a novice, falling down in the middle of rock climbing is very typical.

Xia Yan: As long as I imagine this, even if there are safety measures, I still feel very anxious.

Xia Yan: So… it’s not good for my heart!

MC: You’re worrying too much. Since you had me trust in you more, you also have to trust in me a bit more.

MC: Plus, with such an amazing Teacher Xia instructing beside me, I won’t fall down, right?

Xia Yan: That’s for sure. The Great Lawyer is right!

Thinking of Xia Yan’s skill just now, my confidence in the competition increased by a few points.

In the high-speed rock-climbing area, Xia Yan taught me for a while longer. Only after confirming that my start and acceleration all had no problems did he bring me to the rock wall to be used in the competition.

it was probably because the competition time was nearing, but the competition area was bustling with activity. It was much noisier than the practice ground from earlier.

MC: So many people… it must be very hard to rank…

Xia Yan: The prize journal must be very special for it to attract so many people to participate in the competition.

Xia Yan: This also proves that we were correct in choosing to join the competition, right?

MC: That’s also true.

MC: Ah, there’s no point in overthinking anymore. It’s better to not pressure myself too much, and to instead focus on participating.

Xia Yan: Are you really nervous?

I felt somewhat discouraged, being exposed by Xia Yan all at once.

MC: Even if this isn’t a field that I’m skilled at, the me who’s tried hard still hopes to get a good result.

MC: I know that this kind of thought process is a little willful and unrealistic, but…

Xia Yan laughed, then looked towards the faraway rock wall and spoke.

Xia Yan: Having a strong will to win is a good thing, especially for a lawyer like you…

Xia Yan: But sometimes, letting go of your will to win and simply enjoying the pleasure of competition is also an excellent choice.

Did Xia Yan say that? I didn’t hear wrong, right? This sort of sincere, earnest tone that would usually come from some old veteran doesn’t suit him at all!

In my past memories, Xia Yan was the most persistent and stubborn person, and having him admit defeat was basically an impossible task. Sure enough, something must have happened in those past eight years…

But seeing Xia Yan’s smile, I realized that this wasn’t the time to ask.

MC: If you’re saying these things to make me less nervous, then I’m so sorry, but you’ve gotten the opposite results.

MC: Pleasure and victory – I’ll have them all!

Xia Yan showed an expression with “I knew you would say that” written all over it. I released a breath for my correct response.

Xia Yan: Ah… I never thought that it would become a way to provoke you.

Xia Yan: Since you want it all, then it’s time for me to show off my true strength!

MC: Don’t forget that this isn’t a single-person competition. There’s also the absolute novice that I am.

Xia Yan: Are you talking about the absolute novice who got to the top on your first time here?

Xia Yan: With a teammate like this, isn’t my win basically guaranteed?

Just when I had been teased by Xia Yan until I was grinning from ear to ear, I heard the coach shouting at us.

Coach B: Team Xia Yan! It’s your turn, are you both ready?

MC: We’re ready!

Coach B: Who’s climbing first?

Xia Yan and I looked at each other for a moment. Immediately after, Xia Yan clapped my shoulder and strode forward one step.

Xia Yan: I’ll go first! Let me set a good foundation, so you can also confidently and freely do your thing!

MC: Do your best!

PART 5

High-speed Rock-Climbing Area

After the sound of the coach’s whistle, the timer started. Like an arrow fired from a bow, Xia Yan climbed upwards, faster than the speed that I had seen earlier. The surrounding crowd, including me, were completely focused on Xia Yan. We hadn’t even recovered from our shock before Xia Yan arrived at the top.

The display screen beside the rock-climbing wall declared Xia Yan’s score – 9 seconds.

The same rock wall, yet he performed even better than last time by nearly 30 seconds! Looks like he really was just warming up earlier…

Enthusiastic applause suddenly sounded in the grounds, only dissipating when Xia Yan got down from the rock-climbing wall.

Xia Yan: I beat second place by nearly half a minute – not bad, right?

MC: Xia Yan, you’re too… I don’t even know how to describe it!

Xia Yan: You’ve got a new recognition for how amazing I am, right!

Xia Yan’s eyebrows curved, and his smile was quite proud. If he had a tail, it would definitely be sticking up towards the sky.

MC: Mm! It’s my turn! I definitely will not hold back! I’ll do my best for our journals!

Xia Yan: Do your best!

After high-fiving and making the switch with Xia Yan, I stood ready and waiting in front of the rock wall. I had just placed my hands on the rock points, waiting for the start signal, when I noticed that Xia Yan had already put on the safety lock and was standing by my side.

What’s going on?!

Xia Yan made an “OK” hand signal towards the coach with a “let’s go again” expression, and looked at my totally confused face.

MC: Did the competition change rules? Why did you come again?

Xia Yan: I just sought out the coach and said that my partner was coming for the first time, so I wasn’t too at ease.

Xia Yan: The coach made a special allowance for me. Under the fair competition circumstances of no interference, I can accompany and protect you on the side.

MC: You really are too worried…

Xia Yan: An excellent detective will always consider all possibilities and carry out his plans after.

MC: …

Xia Yan: Do you think I’m a hindrance?

MC: How could that be? I’m just a little surprised.

Xia Yan’s joining in made me feel safer, as well as more courageous, with the desire to give it my all.

Xia Yan: That’s good!

Hearing the coach’s start order, I didn’t have time to reply to Xia Yan before I put all of my body and heart into the competition. The race start, a burst of speed… the high wall in front of my no longer seemed to be a hard-to-surmount obstacle. Everything happened very smoothly, and my condition was even better than when Xia Yan took me to practice.

In the middle of the competition progress, my arm suddenly felt sore when I applied strength.

It was probably because I was somewhat tired from practicing earlier. I stopped all my movements and tried relaxing my hand exchange.

Xia Yan: What’s wrong?

MC: Nothing, I’m just taking a bit of a rest.

As I spoke, I continued climbing up, but the soreness in my arm got worse and worse…

MC: I should be able to hold on until the end…

I muttered quietly to myself, took a few deep breaths, wanting to get to the top with a spurt of energy.

Xia Yan: MC, slow down a bit, there’s still time!

Xia Yan’s warning had me calm down slightly. Only then did I realize that I had been too impatient.

However, I had just slowed down when my arm suddenly went numb. As if it was a slow-motion playback, the motion of my powerless fingers releasing the rock point played frame by frame in front of my eyes, and my heart gradually went cold…

MC: Ah—

After I let go, I could no longer maintain my balance, and fell in midair…

During the sudden matter, I unconsciously closed my eyes, waiting to come down on the safety mat.

But the image I predicted never occurred. Something tightened abruptly around my waist, and I fell into a warm embrace.

Xia Yan: MC! Are you alright?

When I heard the familiar voice, I opened my tightly-closed eyes. Xia Yan’s face full of worry fell into my sight. One of his hands held tightly on a rock, and the other held me, with both of his feet placed squarely on the rock wall. His arm then tightened around my waist a little more, probably because he saw me not reacting.

I unconsciously reached my hands towards his chest and carefully took a few breaths. Only then did I get back my feeling of safety.

Xia Yan: I already told you…

Xia Yan’s raised voice seemed to be a little angry, but he had just started speaking when he frowned again.

Xia Yan: Ss—

Seeing the moment when Xia Yan frowned, my heart jolted.

MC: Xia Yan, are you alright? Were you hurt anywhere?

Xia Yan: Don’t worry, I’m not hurt.

MC: How could that be? I saw you frown just now. Did you get hurt when you caught me?

MC: I’ve been dieting for weight loss recently, but regardless, an adult shouldn’t be able to pull their arm muscle into a state of injury from the force of falling…

Xia Yan: I really am alright. Look, does my expression look like someone who’s been hurt?

I stared at Xia Yan’s face. After confirming that he really wasn’t showing any signs of pain, I calmed down.

Right then Xia Yan and I reacted, realizing that the distance between us was so close.

Xia Yan: We… we should head down first…

MC: Mhmm…

PART 6

Because of my mistake, Xia Yan and my competition score did not bear results, so ranking was out of the question. Plus, after seeing Xia Yan’s pained expression as he held me, I looked for the coach after landing safely for the infirmary’s location.

Infirmary Hallway

MC: …

I sat on the chair outside the rock-climbing infirmary door, pinching my sore arms, waiting for Xia Yan’s examination report.

Xia Yan: The doctor said I didn’t have a single wound, so you can completely relax.

Xia Yan, who had just walked out of the infirmary, looked relaxed, forming a sharp contrast with the worry all over my face.

MC: Good thing you’re alright. Losing the competition isn’t a big deal, but if I hurt you��

Xia Yan: Even if I got hurt, it would just be a little wound – it’s nowhere near as important as your safety.

Xia Yan: You’ve already confirmed that I’m fine, so now you should be willing to find a doctor for an examination, right?

MC: You’re talking like I’m avoiding this on purpose.

Xia Yan: No no, I know you had me get examined first because you were worried.

Xia Yan: I’m also worried about you… so…

Seeing Xia Yan’s face, I didn’t know why, but the scene when we came down from the rock wall emerged again in my head.

MC: I’ll go do the examination – take a good rest here.

Xia Yan: Mm, I’ll wait for you.

I nodded, then pushed open the infirmary door.

After hearing the infirmary door close, Xia Yan sighed quietly. He hadn’t done any examinations in the infirmary – he just discussed an excuse with the doctor to prevent him from saying the wrong thing when asked.

Xia Yan: I don’t have much time left…

He clutched tightly at the key in front of his chest, until the joints had whitened from the force he was applying.

Xia Yan: …

After turning around to look at the infirmary door, he smiled helplessly, then closed his eyes.

After coming out the infirmary, I saw Xia Yan leaning on the chair, closing his eyes in rest. Probably because he heard my footsteps, he suddenly opened his eyes just as I was planning to play a trick to scare him awake.

Xia Yan: Seeing your movements… did you want to launch a sneak attack on me?

MC: Yeah, though I didn’t have time to carry it out before you noticed.

Xia Yan: How were the examination results? What did the doctor say?

MC: The doctor said that I just pulled my muscle a little, and it’ll be fine after a few days of rest. Don’t worry.

MC: Although… I feel a little sad when I think about how we didn’t rank because of my mistake.

Xia Yan: Learn from our lessons of failure, and next time we come, we’ll definitely win!

MC: You’re right!

Just when we were about to leave the infirmary, the coach who instructed us at the beginning blocked us.

Coach A: Please wait, are the two of you Team Xia Yan? There’s a gift that the club wants to give you two.

MC: Present?

I took the present in the coach’s hand. When I opened it, I saw – two journals?!

Coach A: The prize pack with four journals was prepared for the athletes who were the ranked winners of the competition. However, Mr. Xia Yan broke our single’s speed rock climbing record.

MC: He broke the record? Then how many seconds was the last record?

Coach A: 11:57 seconds. That’s basically the limit for typical people who haven’t undergone professional training. After all, the world record is 5:58 seconds.

I looked at Xia Yan. Though I knew a long time ago that he was very amazing, I never would’ve thought that he was this amazing…

Coach A: Mr. Xia Yan, would it be alright if you let me know what your occupation is? Me and my colleagues are all very curious about exactly where such skill comes from.

Xia Yan: That’s easy, I own an antiques shop. Here’s my name card – if you’re interested, you can come take a look.

He took out a name card and stuffed it into the coach’s hand.

Coach A: Antiques shop? Strange…

The coach muttered quietly as he left. Xia Yan shook his head, then sidled up beside me, carefully scrutinizing the notebook.

Xia Yan: The design of the layout isn’t bad – it looks pretty good!

I handed one to Xia Yan and flipped through one myself. The workmanship really was very good.

MC: In the end, we still had to rely on you to get the prizes…

MC: But I won’t admit defeat. The next time we come, we definitely will take the other two books!

Xia Yan: I’ll accompany you anytime! Although, we have to wait until your arm has completely healed.

Thinking about how my arms might hurt so much that I wouldn’t be able to raise them after today, I silently postponed this promise.

MC: Then it’s a promise – we’ll challenge it again next time!

-END-

#tears of themis #weiding shijian bu #xia yan #夏彦 #未定事件簿 #mihoyo #gotta echo mc here #is there anything that xia yan can't do #also yes the regular dose of knives for xia yan fans #it hurts #tot translation

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arcticdementor · 3 years

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On July 16, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken sent a cable to American embassies across the globe with new instructions. In the face of what he described as the growing threat from authoritarian and populist forces emanating from countries around the world, he urged U.S. diplomats to actively “seek ways to exert effective pressure on those countries to uphold democratic norms and respect human rights,” and vowed that “standing up for democracy and human rights everywhere is not in tension with America’s national interests nor with our national security.” This, he specified, must apply even to America’s allies and partners, declaring that “there is no relationship or situation where we will stop raising human rights concerns.”

U.S. President Joe Biden has explicitly characterized his foreign policy as waging “a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies,” and described the world as at an “inflection point” that will determine for the future “who succeeded, autocracy or democracy, because that is what is at stake.” And while he has named China and Russia as the top threats to democracy, he has stated that, “in so many places, including in Europe and the United States, democratic progress is under assault.”

This kind of rhetoric has led many to describe Biden as gearing up to lead a new round of global ideological competition akin to the Cold War, and Blinken’s cable appears to be a step toward operationalizing this conception into everyday U.S. policy.

…

Blinken’s invitation had in fact been a response to a June 26 declaration made by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, which itself followed the completion of a “comprehensive report on systemic racism,” which had unsurprisingly discovered its titular subject ingrained around the world – especially in the “excessive policing of Black bodies and communities” in the United States. In her statement, Bachelet castigated the West for a “piecemeal approach to dismantling systems entrenched in centuries of discrimination and violence,” declared that “the status quo is untenable,” and called instead for an immediate “whole-of-society” “systemic response,” with a “transformative agenda” to uproot systemic racism everywhere and implement the “restorative justice” urgently demanded by “the worldwide mobilization of people calling for racial justice.”

The Biden administration could hardly have responded with anything less than full-throated support for such an idea, given that battling the omnipresent specter of America’s “systemic racism” has become a core feature of the administration’s political identity.

And few administration officials have embraced this battle with as much personal zeal as Blinken, who moved immediately after his confirmation to not only install a Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at the State Department (in a powerful new position reporting only to himself), but ordered every bureau in the department to also appoint a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Diversity and Inclusion as well – with his stated goal being “to incorporate diversity and inclusion into the [State] Department’s work at every level.”

…

Speaking of that kind of thing, most of those upset about Blinken’s invitation of the UNHRC’s racism inquisitors strangely seem to have missed another development in a related front of the global culture war.

This despite the fact that the State Department is eager for you to know that, “On June 23, the United States led, and 20 countries co-sponsored, its first-ever side event on the human rights of transgender women, highlighting the violence and structural, legal, and intersectional barriers faced by transgender women of color.”

So there’s that. But side event to what? That would be the last session of the UNHRC, where the U.S. worked to address assorted “dire human rights situations” by helping to pioneer the launch of the “Group of Friends of the Mandate of the United Nations Independent Expert on Protection Against Violence and Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity” (GoF IE SOGI).

Besides the United States, the inaugural SOGI Group includes: Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, Greece, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Israel, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Norway, Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Who is this Independent Expert with so many friends? That would be Víctor Madrigal-Borloz, Senior Visiting Researcher at the Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program.

After its formation, the Group’s first act was to consider a report produced for the UNHRC by Mr. Madrigal-Borloz titled “The Law of Inclusion.”

“The Law of Inclusion” states that all evidence necessarily “leads to the conclusion that all human beings live in gendered societies traversed by power hierarchies,” and declares that, as we all seek to “build back better” (here inexplicably adopting Joe Biden’s campaign slogan) the “adoption of gender-based and intersectional analysis” is “a fundamental component of a diligent discharge of [all countries’ human rights] responsibility.”

Crucially, an intersectional approach leads to a “recognition of how race is gendered and gender is raced, as well as the many other factors which affect how one is allocated rights.” Plus, as a bonus, “gender theory is also relevant as a tool to address, analyse and transform systems of violent masculinity.”

…

Ultimately, based on his intersectional analysis, the Independent Expert declares a new “fundamental duty of the State” based on his careful investigation:

To recognize every human being’s freedom to determine the confines of their existence, including their gender identity and expression.

(I don’t think you will find a more flawless one-sentence summation of the End-Stage Liberalism I’ve previously outlined, characterized by its endless quest to liberate us from any and all limits, than this, by the way.)

…

The United States and the rest of the SOGI Group immediately issued a statement fully endorsing the report, noting that they “would like to reaffirm” that: “As clearly demonstrated by the thorough analysis provided by the report, gender is a social construct”; that intersectional analysis has “proven to be fundamental to the design and implementation of inclusive public policies”; that they support “the importance of advancing legal gender recognition based on self-identification”; and that they “oppose any attempt to erase gender from international human rights law instruments and processes.”

I hope you will retain at least one takeaway from my subjection of you to this word salad of intersectional jargon on race and gender: that the distinctive language and doctrinal ideological concepts of the New Faith have extended far past the Harvard Quad, crossed the oceans, and have now, as the report puts it, thoroughly “permeated” themselves through elite-managed global institutions like the UN Human Rights Council.

Conservatives, in particular, are typically dismissive of the UN in general and the UNHRC in particular (President Trump officially pulled the U.S. out of the council in 2018, after which Biden rejoined as an observer), as they see it as a pointless talk-shop that spends a majority of its time criticizing the United States and its allies, though with little practical effect. This is a mistake.

What is happening here is the steady creation and entrenchment of new norms that aim to redefine what is considered the normal and acceptable window of cultural, political, and legal practice by countries the world over. The UNHRC may have no direct political power, but it is precisely the ignorance or flippant disregard for the transformative long-term power of norms that has so far lost conservatives every culture war battle they have fought. Somehow conservatives – and now Liberals – have been consistently blindsided by norms falling out from under them (gradually, and then suddenly) even as they have held positions of political power.

Meanwhile, under the Biden administration, Washington has now embraced this kind of norm-setting mechanism for remaking the world in its new and ideologically improved image.

…

Not every country is completely woke to the need for unlimited gender self-identification or a “whole-of-society transformation” to address its hierarchies of oppression, however.

International Expert Mr. Madrigal-Borloz has also noticed this problem, which is why he and the SOGI Group are producing a follow-up companion report to “The Law of Inclusion,” this time to be titled “Practices of Exclusion.”

…

Probably in most other contexts, when an external power or powers attempt to “deconstruct” and replace the “traditional values” and “cultural and religious” norms of a distinct people against their will, this would be called that what it is: imperialism (or, occasionally, worse).

Nonetheless, “Practices of Exclusion” is set to be published at the upcoming UN General Assembly meeting in New York this September and will undoubtedly be endorsed by the U.S., U.K., and the other progressive members of the SOGI Group at that time – even as many of these same countries are actually still experiencing their own fierce bouts of “resistance” to its core ideas.

What does this all mean? In short, that the ideological battles of Cold War 2.0 are not going to be limited to categories similar to those which at least broadly seemed to characterize Cold War 1.0, or necessarily even uphold the classic conceptions of “liberal-democracy” and “authoritarianism” or “autocracy” with which we are familiar.

Instead, it should be understood that the Biden administration and its like-minded partners are now operating under a rather different ideological calculus about what “democracy” and “human rights” mean, even as, similar to the original Cold War, that calculus directly links domestic and international ideological foes.

In this worldview, in order for a democratic state to be a legitimate “Democracy,” it is not enough for it to have a popularly elected government chosen through free and fair elections – it also has to hold the correct progressive values. That is, it has to be Woke. Otherwise it is not a real Democracy, but something else. Here the term “populism” has become a useful one: even if a state is not yet authoritarian or “autocratic” in a traditional sense, it may be in the grip of “Populism,” an ill-defined concept vague enough to encompass the wide range of reactionary sentiments and tendencies that can characterize “resistance” to progress, as based on “traditional values,” etc. And ultimately, we are told, “Populism” is liable to lead to Autocracy – because if you aren’t progressing forward in sync with Democracy, you are sliding backwards along the binary spectrum toward Autocracy.

Moreover, as in the case of the struggle between Capitalist-Liberalism and Communist-Authoritarianism during the original Cold War, the insidious “forces” of Populism-Autocracy are present not only out in the undecided “Third World,” but even lurking inside Democracies in good standing – constantly threatening to tip them, like dominoes, into the opposite camp. Hence why Biden issues warnings like the one claiming that, “in so many places, including in Europe and the United States, democratic progress is under assault.” The fight against the perceived forces of Populism-Autocracy within the United States, or within the European Union, is not in this conception at all separate from the fight against the likes of China and Russia on the world stage; they are the same fight.

…

Exacerbating this sense of fear and division is the fact that a Democracy can’t just hold some of the correct values – it has to hold all of them, in toto. This is after all the prime conclusion of intersectional analysis: all injustice is interlinked, forming interlocking systems of oppression; therefore injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Intersectionality thus demands liberation in totality; there can be no pluralism – no one can simply be left alone or granted the slightest leniency, because no injustice in any place or of any degree can be suffered to exist, lest it pollute and threaten the entire system.

The conclusion is inevitable: the New Faith must be a missionary, evangelical faith. By its own internal logic, for its own survival, it must march abroad to convert the heathens even as it hunts heretics at home.

…

There are still plenty of countries out there – in fact, a vast majority of them – who think intersectional gender theory and other fruits of the New Faith are in essence stark raving mad, and are also rather attached to keeping their own cultures and traditions.

So even if you are a strong supporter of LGBT rights, feminism, or other liberal-progressive ideals (and yes, many countries around the world of course do treat LGBT people, women, and racial minorities terribly), it is still worth considering the practical consequences of Intersectional Imperialism. If the West makes ideological conformity an integral requirement for joining, receiving aid from, or even working with its Democracy bloc (as Blinken has implied), then many of these countries are liable to flee into the arms of China and other genuinely authoritarian but ideologically non-missionary states, despite the security concerns they may have.

…

At this time it was the Soviet bloc, including communist controlled Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia, who argued that freedom from discrimination should take precedence over the rights of freedom of expression and assembly.

And it was the Western liberal democracies, together with the Latin American states, that rose to (unsuccessfully) oppose this idea.

The “fundamental right of free speech” was, argued U.K. representative Lady Gaitskell, “the foundation-stone on which many of the other human rights were built,” and it was the U.K.’s position that, despite abhorring racism, “in an advanced democracy the expression of such views was a risk that had to be taken.” Hungary shot back that free speech and tolerance was pointless if “fascists” were tolerated anywhere.

When the U.S. delegation attempted to restrict the scope of speech defined in the law to that “resulting in or likely to cause acts of violence,” the move was blocked by the Soviet group, with Czechoslovakia countering that there could be no democracy if “movements directed towards hatred and discrimination were allowed to exist.”

…

Times have changed. As the European Union prepares to consider writing “hate speech” into the official list of EU crimes, tweeting “gender-critical” thoughts is already an arrestable offense in the United Kingdom, and the United States looks to enlighten the world about the dangers of oppressive microaggressions, one wonders if there is any country remaining, the world over, still willing to genuinely represent liberal values in these terms today.

Instead only the crusaders of the New Faith remain to march into battle against the Autocrats and their Populist allies, and you are either with them or against them. Welcome to the Woke Cold War.

#n.s. lyons #substack #left wing cultural imperialism #read the whole thing

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