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captnjacksparrow · 3 years

Note

if you had to rank your fav naruto characters how would it go? love your blog btw!!

Hmmm... Complicated ask, anon.😂

[My personal life would be splashed here and there. Please bear with me]

Before 5 months, if you asked me about Naruto, my response would be ‘What the fuck is that?’. I absolutely had no idea such a treasure existed. For me, it started out like a blockbuster movie for the sheer variety of fights and the resulting emotions it brought within me.

However, there was a point I stopped and thought, ‘Wait a fucking second. This resembles my family dynamics. This person is speaking the exact same lines I spoke to my parents few years ago. This person’s situation resembles mine. Did this creator a time traveler?’. Naruto is the only piece of media that gave me such feel. Am not even exaggerating, believe me.

I really liked so many characters very much but am going to try my best to list just 10.

The only characters I hate in this series are Danzo, Sakura and Hinata in no particular order. Meaning, I absolutely cannot see any positives in them. They are crassy, cringey and completely detestable.

FAVOURITE NARUTO CHARACTERS

10. Killer Bee

HaHaHa :-) Just seeing this character makes me smile and light-hearted.

It’s a pity that he is the only character who don’t belong to Konoha in my Top 10 rankings who was developed well apart from Gaara.

I loved him from Frame 1 onwards and I sincerely wished Team Taka should be packed up with their ass beaten up mercilessly. And that’s what happened.

Despite being a Jinchurikki, he never bothered to mind his surroundings and filled his heart with love from his over protective Brother alone was nice to watch.

He makes a great Tag Partner with Naruto next to Sasuke. No doubt.

The way Killer Bee treated Team Taka like some annoying flies and his cool and don’t care attitude was top notch. It’s not just with Sasuke, Bee treated Naruto with the same IDGAF attitude at first.

Best Moments:

Lariat punch to Sasuke (TBH, Sasuke deserved it. LOL)

Blasted off every member of Team Taka like a doll

His entire conversation and fight sequence with Kisame (Their banters and exchanges are way too hilarious)

His dynamics with his Elder Brother (God!!!! Whenever Raikage gives him an Iron Claw.... What a hilarious duo!!!!)

9. Hatake Kakashi

Kakashi was my most favourite character when I started the series for simply being ultra-cool with the way he conducted the Bell-Test and taught a valuable lesson for those bratty kids in Team 7 called ‘Team Work’.

Best Moments:

Kakashi vs Obito Hand-to-Hand Combat (the best in the series)

Kakashi in the Gaara retrieval arc (His fight with Itachi & Deidara gave a good start to the shippuden series. His Mangekyou reveal was surprising).

Kakashi & Guy teaming up with Naruto to reveal Obito in a twisty and tragic way. (Kakashi couldn’t handle the truth at all and neither did I)

Kakashi vs Zabuza (That’s when I realized that the series was getting real serious)

8. Jiraiya

Jiraiya was my next favourite to Kakashi during my Part 1 days. His open perversion and his entire dynamics with Naruto was one of the best things during the Chunin Exams arc. Taught Naruto about Chakra Control and about the way of a shinobi by just enduring. Naruto follows this even today.

Best Moments:

Kuchiyose No Jutsu training (Man, I never expected him to push Naruto off the cliff)

Rasengan Training (One of the best arcs in part 1 and it was soo satisfying to see Naruto punching his first Rasengan on Kabuto, He also acted like a quasi parent to Naruto... heartwarming)

Jiraiya Vs Six paths of Pain ( 6 vs 1 was always doomed but still he had the guts of a shinobi and plunged ahead)

7. Uchiha Madara

Geez. What is there to not like him??

Everything he did was absolutely wrong ever since he broke up with Hashirama in a romantic way much similar to how couples break up in my country.

I am an Uchiha. You are a Senju. I wish it had been different.

This roughly translates to how 75% of lovers break up and marry someone else from their own clan in my state. (Duh!!!)

I am from XXX clan, you are from XXX clan. So we can’t love each other and my parents won’t accept this relationship. So let’s break up.

Alright, my first shipping couple in this series is HashiMada for this exact reason. (I started shipping SNS only after episode 478).

Just like Hashirama, Madara had an extensive build up right from episode 1 where Kurama compares Sasuke with Madara. And flashbacks from Itachi and Tobi spiked my curiosity and I wanted to see his face so badly ever since.

But the moment he landed gracefully like a diva in episode 321.... Woaahhhh!!!! He literally danced in the battlefield and ate up 100′s of guys with just a fucking Sharingan.

Best Moments:

Going Shirtless before 1000′s of people with Hashirama’s face, no less (Well, I literally went heart-eyed for 5 minutes. Sorry Sasuke, your ancester was way much sexier than you in the Orochimaru hideout and beats you by a million points).

Screaming Hashirama’s name like a cockatoo for 300 times even till the very end (Sorry Naruto, your obsession towards Sasuke for about 6 arcs is pale in comparison to Madara’s obsession which was established in just 6 or 7 episodes.)

I have 25 clones now. Do you want me to put Susanoo or not? You can’t answer. The answer is yes. (Man, his I don’t give a fuck attitude is just an alien level thing)

Openly admitting Only Hashirama Can Beat Me (Say what you will about Sasuke, Madara has no qualms about accepting his inferiority in terms of power. An absolute Straight Forward diva-queen)

Awakening Sharingan for breaking up with his ‘friend’ rather than for his 3 dead brothers. (Geez, Poor Soul. He is the forefather of a Romantic Uchiha. That romantic blood still flows in Sasuke)

6. Senju Hashirama

Man, I would have placed him somewhere in top 5 if only he was introduced early or had more scenes. I started watching Naruto only because of this very name. There is a local podcaster in my state who goes under the alias of Senju Hashirama and in his podcasts, he hinted about this character and how he was inspired by his ideals. I just googled and saw that this character belonged to Naruto series and I considered watching it. Here I am, making analysis on that very series.

There was this excellent build up for him right when we got introduced to Captain Yamato. He was constantly referred in flashbacks from Itachi and Tobi especially.

But the moment he was reanimated again..... Geez..... It was an hilarious ride all throughout. Out of all the flashbacks we got from this series, Founders Era flashback was my absolute favourite.

From where I come from, we are still under the stupid influence of Clan infrastructure and are not growing up in many aspects like people in western countries do. For me, I hope, one day, someone like Senju Hashirama appears in our state and change our lives for better by uniting all clans as one and treats everyone equally without the shitty favouritism for their own children, friends, parents, siblings.

That’s why this dialogue struck a thunder in my heart

“Be they a friend.... Be they a sibling.... Be it even my own child. I will not forgive anyone who threatens the village.”

Because the clan leaders in our place are absolutely selfish, trash bastards who serves their own needs with no regards for other people from other clans. For a person like me, Hashirama is not just a fictional hero, he is someone who many aspires to become. No wonder that podcaster chose this name as his alias.

He rightfully deserved the title ‘God of Shinobi’. And no one can surpass him, not even Naruto.

Best Moments:

Wood Style vs Eternal Mangekyou sharingan + Kurama powered Madara (He just beats Madara’s ass by a wide margin. This shows he was a whole fucking different level than Naruto + Sasuke combined. In terms of strength, nobody surpassed him YET. Sorry Naruto and Sasuke, you guys are no match even now with your Rinnegan and Kurama lost forever).

His entire banters with Madara (ROFLLLL. Without him, it would have been just another lifeless arc.)

5. Senju Tobirama

Hmmm, let me tell you something about him.

First off, he is not a racist or fascist as many hardcore Sasuke fanatics claims. He is one of the best hokages according to me. He is abso-fucking-lutely practical, rational, logical and holds no grudge. And Sasuke resembles Tobirama with all these characteristics as compared to soft and naive Naruto. If only he had more screen time, he would be easily in my top 3.

Just because he didn’t lick the boots of Uchiha (many people’s favorite clan or may I say the only clan that was given any shit about in this series), it doesn’t make him a racist or fascist.

No, he never persecuted the Uchihas. Danzo, the crass bastard, driven off the Uchihas only after the Kyuubi incident. It was explicitly mentioned in the databook and was clearly explained in the series.

He literally gave the highest position in the village for the entire clan. That is, a military power inside a military village. ‘Shinobi who can cause crimes can only be stopped by shinobi who are even better’. In my state, if a powerful clan decided to persecute another clan, they simply start by cutting off basic amenities like Water and Electricity. Compared to what I’ve seen, Tobirama did nothing but given the Uchihas, the highest position in their village.

Orochimaru only said giving such a power made them conceited (arrogant). Tobirama had a trusted subordinate called Kagami, an Uchiha in his team. He suggested Kabuto to help Sasuke and even teleported him on his request. He even spited Madara for killing Sasuke, an Uchiha. He openly claimed Uchiha clan exceeds Senju in terms of Love. He openly appreciated Itachi and Kagami as someone who sees beyond their clan. In what world, would a racist or fascist do all this for a clan he hates???

Yes, he was cautious of Sasuke at first because he saw him with Orochimaru and even went full-on battle mode because of Sasuke’s carefree threat to destroy the village. But once he decided to go to the battlefield to fight Madara, he simply forgot everything that happened before and started to work with him as a comrade, and even helped him twice. In which world, a racist or fascist behave this way?

Believe me, a person like me who was grown with these clan politics surely can say who is a fascist. He was not. He was just cautious of them because of their ability to attain superpowers with just emotions alone. Let me ask you all this, ‘Would you be okay with people getting crazy powers whenever they are depressed?’. Being cautious is not racism. It really disrespects people who faced real oppression under fascism.

What Madara and Danzo did was a classical example of fascism.

And No, Izuna didn’t die only because of Tobirama. He died because Madara was too arrogant to instigate war with Senju clan. And this was way before forming Konoha. If Tobirama killed Izuna after the alliance between Uchiha and Senju, I would agree that he was a racist. Izuna lost his life just like any other Uchiha and Senju soldiers in that battlefield.

Just because he shitted your beloved ‘Sasuke-Kun’ doesn’t mean he is a racist too. Tobirama saw Sasuke along with that scoundrel Orochimaru who once used this very two hokages to destroy the very village they strived hard to create and protect. What will you do, if you were in his place?? Please don’t lie and say ‘I wouldn’t be judgemental’.

And Imagine you are Tobirama, Sasuke is threatening to commit genocide against the entire village who had no idea about this coup detat instead of going against those old hags. Will you sit quiet as a Hokage??

He was the first person to suggest his brother, Itama, that Revenge against Uchihas are futile. All we need is an agreement to make truce. That gave the idea for Hashirama to pursue his dream. And Tobirama was happy to follow that dream and very supportive.

It’s because of all these reasons I placed him above Senju Hashirama.

Best Moments:

Amazing power display against Sasuke & Co with just an index finger (It was a pleasure to see everyone’s face trembling with mild sweat including Sasuke).

Acted as a decoy to save his young subordinates. (The way he sacrificed his life saying young wills of fire must be protected is just Woow!! I wish his subordinates listened to his words and passed the mantle to the younger ones rather than playing game at such an old age and screwed up many lives. Pfft!!!)

Any time he says ‘Shut Up’ to Hashirama (ROFL)

His absolute ‘I don’t give a fuck’ attitude to Naruto, Sasuke, Hashirama, Minato and Madara (He trolled them all mercilessly and I love it)

4. Senju Tsunade

It hurts me to say that Tsunade is the only female character in my list because every other female characters were written in a much more piss poorly way. Only Konan came close to Tsunade but her role was very short.

Despite her character’s purpose revolved around another male character (Dan) and a blatant objectification of her breasts, I liked everything about her other than those mentioned above.

She is the Second Best Hokage who took Konoha right after the destruction made by Orochimaru, excellently handled the aftermath by making friendly relations with Suna (Sand village), provided her best medical support to Konoha in the Pain Arc and successfully handled the fourth Shinobi world war.

She is such a badass who developed her own original jutsu called Byakugou no Jutsu, which can heal herself.

She is just way too amazing and it’s a pity that we got very less scenes in Shippuden.

Best Moments:

Took 25+ stabs from Madara’s Susanoo like a piece of cake (Man, I simply couldn’t describe that scene. All the other Kages were shocked and even Madara too)

Lifted her advisors like a cabbage sack (Those fucking old hags deserved it. Those shits should’ve died)

Her index finger flick assault on Naruto (Aww, Naruto was definitely bratty in his first meeting and Tsunade didn’t hold back at all)

Played Orochimaru like a basketball (In that same arc, she fought Orochimaru mercilessly like a devil left and right. Someone who claimed to have surpassed Tsunade never even dared to fight Orochimaru’s student and crying for his attention after just receiving one stab from Madara. Just saying)

3. Uzumaki Naruto

Naruto is the titular character and your emotions evolve along with him. He surely deserves a spot in Top 3. The only reason I didn’t place Naruto even more higher is because he didn’t experience something very important which many characters in this list faced. That is, Losing a loved one before his eyes. Every villain in this series became what they are because they lost someone important before their eyes like Nagato, Obito. (Nope, I don’t count Neji as his loved one). I think this tests the mettle of any character and Naruto failed to experience this. The only person he ever lost was Jiraiya and that too from off-screen. That’s why I felt his journey to his dreams seemed little easier compared to the rest of the characters.

His best block of episodes will always be the part 1 Episode 1, 2, 3. Episode 1 is the character defining episode for Naruto and what he learned there will be applied everywhere till the very end of the series. He learned 3 things

Forgiveness, Empathy and Acceptance

Talk-No-Jutsu

Kage Bunshin no Jutsu

From then on, this boy wins many friends to his side, not only from Konoha but from other villages too and even made them to acknowledge his strength only through his sheer hard work.

However, there is this person, whose acknowledgement he wants the most. That person is his most important bond along with Iruka Sensei. He is none other than Sasuke. One day, Sasuke left him alone for some unavoidable reason at the end of part 1 which left a huge scar in him and he vows to bring him back to the place where he belongs. That becomes his ultimate goal rather than becoming an Hokage.

The way he goes to any extent to protect the people he cares about is just simply entertaining to watch.

Every time he makes an heroic entry to save the day was never boring, not once.

Best Moments:

Sobbing from his heart after hearing Iruka Sensei acknowledging him (It just makes me feel heavy for no reason. The anime team did an awesome job to capture his emotions convincingly)

Awakening Kyuubi Mode for the first time after seeing Sasuke die in his arms (Man, out of all the collective hatred he got from the villagers, this moment affected him a lot speaks volumes)

Punching Neji from the underground to win the Chunin exams (God, I honestly believed Naruto lost but he just surprised us heavily from nowhere. And that failure speech was just pure bliss to watch even today)

Pain Vs Naruto (One of the best arc for Naruto. Because unlike other arcs, where Naruto fought with a team, this arc he was all alone fighting a person with Rinnegan. Be it the exuberant landing from the frogs with a dramatic kabuki music, creating multi-step attacks, coming up with novel solution in that difficult situation, finally ending the conflict without killing the enemy, becoming an hero. Superb journey. The only thing I didn��t like in that arc is some shitty selfish proposal. PUKE!!)

Bearing the burdens of his most important person and die along with him (This boy always shouts he will never die until he becomes an Hokage. But for Sasuke, he was ready to die along with him in order to not leave him alone proves how much he loves him. This shows his emotional maturity rather than shouting at Sasuke like he always did before which never reached his ears. This time it did)

Final Good Bye to Minato (Honestly, I was bawling just like Naruto in that scene no matter how many times I watch it. It started out slow but as he speaks more and more, he simply couldn’t hold back and wept a sea of tears 😭😭😭)

2. Uchiha Sasuke

One of the well written characters in this series, with all the flaws and positive stuffs which makes him more of an Anti-Hero. He always subverts my preformed opinions and never ceased to surprise me.

Despite being aloof and cold, his warmer side will always be exposed towards Naruto. This is evident by many things he had done for Naruto which he don’t have to or no reason to. Starting right from roasting Sakura, offering lunch, asking for tips, enquiring about breakfast, protecting him many times and dying for Naruto.

Why I placed him above Naruto is because of his unavoidable decision to tread in a complicated dark path primarily due to the trauma he carried and was stirred up again by collective factors such as Orochimaru’s cursed seal, Itachi’s arrival and Naruto’s growth. Compared to Sasuke, Naruto had an easier path because he never saw anyone die before his eyes and hence he don’t carry any trauma which can divert his path.

Even after watching his entire clan and family members murdered before his eyes at an age 8, he managed to pull himself and never snapped out like many other good characters does. But the moment when he found out that Itachi was good all along, he simply couldn’t tolerate the truth and gave himself to Vengeance. Because, he loved his brother more than he hated him all these years. This shows he loved his brother more than his parents. His resolve to destroy Konoha was perfectly understandable. But is it good? Nope. He can kill Danzo and those old hags but killing other people was never justifiable.

But still, his resolve to have his vengeance was diverted by Naruto and weakened by Itachi, at some point. So, he decided to know the truth and when he heard it, he understood the Hokages also sacrificed many precious things to protect this village just like his Brother Itachi. He understood the mistakes of his clan and decided to protect the village which he swore to destroy. [Many Sasuke fanatics think that he succumbed to the Government and Kishi wrote Sasuke to bootlick them. Their idea was to tackle genocide with another genocide. What a stupid idea!!!!]

And No, I don’t consider him trying to kill Sakura, Karin and Kakashi as his bad moments (though I feel bad for Karin). For the simple reason being, he became a monster by losing himself in the darkness who lost the rationality to differentiate friends from foes. Much similar to how Naruto lost himself to Kyuubi’s hatred against Orochimaru and in Pain Arc. It’s so hypocritical to ignore Naruto and accuse Sasuke here. Plus, Sakura had no business to be there otherwise Sasuke would not have tried to kill her.

But does it mean Sasuke did nothing wrong???

Nope.

He definitely shouldn’t have joined Akatsuki and hunted Killer Bee like an animal. Because, he knew that Tobi was the one who helped Itachi massacre the clan. When fighting Itachi he specifically vowed to kill Madara (Tobi). On top of that, Itachi passed on Amaterasu in his eyes specifically to stay away from Tobi. Why did he ally with him? Plus, Sasuke was one of the few characters who was exposed to the name ‘Akatsuki’ in part 1 itself. He clearly knew that this organization targets Naruto, his closest bond. Why did he join there? This is where the stupid part of Sasuke came out. I was grunting... ‘Oii Where did that clever Sasuke, who faced 1000 soldiers without killing any of them, went??’.

And his plan for Revolution???? I thought it would be reasonable. But his vision was eerily similar to Danzo’s vision. Grrr..... Danzo also wanted to create his ideal village by destroying the current Hokage. He wanted to unite the Five Village and put himself on top of everyone as evident from the Kage Summit arc.

I appreciate him that he finally adopted the Will of Fire, by wanting to protect the village at all costs just like Itachi and Hashirama did. But his methods are not very democratic. Plus, he wanted to do it alone. I was screaming at him... ‘Grrr, Sasuke, did you listen to Itachi at all???. He failed because he did everything alone. Why can’t you understand????’ This is also another instance, Sasuke’s stupidity glanced out.

I am happy Naruto knocked some sense into him by telling him not to do it alone but together.

Many fanatics also ask, ‘What did Sasuke do wrong to atone for his sins at the end?’.

I was like ‘Reallly????’

He joined Akatsuki, an organization which terrorized all the 5 villages and he hunted someone like an international criminal.

He spoiled the Kage Summit and attacked Raikage who lost his arm because of him. I know what happened over there is not Sasuke’s fault. But these are the kages who was loved by many people in their own villages. How can the world forget it and simply let him go?

It’s exactly because of all those lovely stuffs he did in Part 1 and all these mistakes he did in Part 2 but willing to correct his mistakes by sharing the burdens of his other half in the end made him more interesting, complicated and exciting and that’s why I love this character.

I also have a personal bias to love this character sooo much because of the character on top of my list.

Best Moments:

Defending Naruto before Sakura (Awww!!! Such a good boy he was. Eventhough I thought he was a typical arrogant K-Drama hero, he just subverted my opinion in that one scene. I always have a thing for people who stands up for someone even though they don’t have to. This is where I started to like Sasuke)

My body moved on its own. (Is there anything that trumps this scene in terms of emotions and love in this series?. This moment is where I understood the depth of Sasuke’s emotions towards Naruto).

What is a Clan? What is a Village? What is a Shinobi? (I was really hoping for Sasuke to question himself something similar to this. Because he was so self-absorbed in his hatred and failed to look outside him ever since he left the village. It was so gratifying that he did that)

Killing Orochimaru (I always thought Sasuke will kill him only after he tries to take over the body. Never imagined that he will strike the snake first)

Killing Danzo (Man, what an amazing battle!!!. It was so gratifying to see such a crass bastard die many times over and over).

His dramatic confession through his monologue (After the mystery of Who is this Tobi, Sasuke’s obsession towards Naruto remained a mystery for me. Why did he listen to Naruto under the bridge? Why did he protected Naruto in the War? I got the answer only after this confession. It was so heartwarming to see this mellow side of Sasuke)

1. Uchiha Itachi

I could write pages about him. The foremost reason I like Itachi and earns the top spot in my rankings is because he shockingly resembled me in many ways. As I already said, I come from a place where clan politics plays a major role and when I see Sasuke’s flashback in part 1, I was simply dumbstruck by such a detailed similarities.

Elder child of the family - ✅

Have an adorable younger sister who loves me more than my parents - ✅

Same age gap (5 years) with my sister as Itachi and Sasuke - ✅

Parents paying total attention on me while ignoring my sister completely - ✅

Parents constantly comparing my achievements with my sister - ✅

A sister who bear hugged me every time I entered the home after returning from my school - ✅

Despite my mom being a teacher, my sister always prefers me to teach her stuffs as she considers me to be way too better than my mom - ✅

Love my sister more than my parents - ✅

Clan-Obsessed parents - ✅

Used me as a tool for the benefit of the clan - ✅

Sending another person from my clan to spy on me - ✅

Strained relationship with my parents - ✅

Disgusted with my clan - ✅

Most importantly, this dialogue from part 1 episode 129,

Clan? Clan?

Obsessed with the organization, Obsessed with the clan, Obsessed with the name, that’s merely the detestable action that restrict yourself.

I have given up all hope in this worthless clan

Because, people obsess themselves to their clan, a thing so petty, they lose sight of the things that are truly important.

A real change cannot occur under restraints and controls

I confronted my parents with the exact same dialogue (almost 98% similar) in my own native language some years ago.

I didn’t even know the existence of Naruto series at that time. I was simply shell-shocked by all these similarities with this character.

And Yes, The moment I heard these dialogues, I knew Itachi, was a good guy, who had a very strong reason for his actions and I instantly knew Sasuke’s revenge will not bear him any happiness.

It is exactly because of all these striking similarities of myself with Itachi, and my lil’l sister with Sasuke, my family dynamics with the Uchiha family.... I could understand the magnitude of Sasuke’s love towards Itachi.

And precisely because of that, I could understand Sasuke’s love towards Naruto is not fucking ‘brotherly’ one but something that leans towards Attraction.

No wonder, Itachi left Sasuke in Naruto’s care.

Anyways to speak objectively,

Itachi is an extremely self-sacrificial person whose life is full of pain and miseries but never blames it on the world unlike other Uchiha members like Madara, Obito and Sasuke to an extent.

He did things considering the bigger picture which never benefitted himself in anyway and was willing to go to any extent even at the expense of his own family and his brother’s happiness. That is, Uchiha Clan Massacre and Joining Akatsuki. None of this benefitted him in anyways but he did it anyway, for the village of Konoha.

His ideals are shockingly similar to Hashirama, Which Sasuke pointed this out and Hashirama acknowledged that Itachi was a better shinobi than he was. ❤️❤️❤️

Now, does this means I support Uchiha clan massacre?

No way. Even Itachi didn’t.

This massacre happened because of the huge clusterfuck from Hiruzen’s incompetence, Danzo’s paranoid arrogance, Uchiha clan’s devious plan to over throw the government by force rather than approaching it in a peaceful way, say, a peace talk or a protest.

All these people acted on their own self-interest. Itachi and Shisui caught in their whirlpool, bear their burdens and paid for it with their life. Sasuke suffered for it.

But, it’s not the only reason I love this character. It’s because, the moment he decided to massacre everyone, he marked his own death by the hands of his beloved brother. I love people who owns up their mistakes and face the consequences rather than making excuses (even though it’s not entirely his mistake).

Itachi is also the only character in this series who realized his failures on his own without anyone’s interference or Naruto’s Talk-No-Jutsu.

And he apologized for everything he did to Sasuke.

Again, some hardcore Sasuke fanatics criticize/hate him for torturing their poor ‘Sasuke-Kun’ with his Tsukuyomi. I was like ‘Hmmm...What?’.

First off, Itachi apologized to Sasuke for not thinking out from his point of view and also for not telling him the truth earlier.

Second off, Sasuke never even blamed Itachi for anything (even he didn’t hold him for killing their parents). If Sasuke himself, forgiven Itachi... Why are his fans being so rabid?

Third off, for all of his supposed ‘crimes’, he paid for it by dying as a disgraceful Madman rather than a Hero who really saved the village. He is someone who should be celebrated like Naruto but instead died proudly as a Traitor of Konoha.

All in all, One of the wonderfully written character I have ever seen in the media.

Best Moments:

Itachi vs Sasuke (That battle was a pure brilliance and highly emotional especially after knowing the truth. When Sasuke released his Kirin, Itachi showed off his ultimate armour Susanoo like a badass. Seeing Susanoo for the first time gave me chills. No, Sasuke didn’t kill him. Itachi died on his own)

Itachi vs Orochimaru (Man, Itachi may look mellow but when it comes to Orochimaru he is a pure Sass. He screwed that snake up both the times by a wide margin. It seems Uchiha brothers like to fuck up Orochimaru, LOL)

Talk-No-Jutsu’ing Naruto (Geez, Naruto was being completely bratty and was full of saviour complex like he was going to bear everyone’s hatred by himself. I was almost annoyed. Thanks to Itachi, he realised. Probably he is the only character to shut Naruto using his own jutsu)

Izanami’ing Kabuto (Other than Naruto, he is the only character to go out of his way to empathize with a villain and put extreme effort to change him. I think this is why Sasuke loves Naruto, for seeing these similarities??? ).

Goodbye to Sasuke (The first time when he said ‘Forgive me, Sasuke. This is the last’ by poking his forehead and finally closing the distance by butting with Sasuke’s head softly saying ‘I will love you always’.... It always evokes uncontrollable tears in me, no matter how many times I watch it 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭)

HONOURABLE MENTION

Uchiha Obito

God, Am such a sucker for Uchiha guys individually, though collectively as a clan they fucked up big time. I simply couldn’t find the place for him in the top 10. He is a classic example of What Naruto will be like if he becomes a villain?

However, all those horrible stuffs he did just for a girl whom he had a crush on which was never reciprocated seems childish. That’s why I couldn’t put him in Top 10.

And his understandable but weird obsession on Naruto was always enjoyable to watch.

One cute thing I liked about him was, whatever criminal stuffs he may have done, he was never a cheapskate though. He had every chance to take back Kakashi’s Sharingan to activate his own Susanoo. But he never even thought of such an idea. He was a bad guy. But a good friend, no matter what.

Pure Baby!!! But lost his way!!!

Best Moments:

Importance of Team Work (’In the ninja world, Those who break the rules are scum. But those who abandon their comrades are worse than scum’. This very legacy he left to Kakashi came to defeat him later. And Naruto follows this motto even today)

Sacrificing his Sharingan (’I am giving you my Sharingan. No matter what the villagers say, you are a great Jonin. Please take it’. Awww!!! Obito. He left his Sharingan which helped Kakashi to complete a jutsu called ‘Chidori’, which is a go-to jutsu of Sasuke)

Thanks for the ask, anon. I thoroughly enjoyed writing this. ❤️

#ask #itachi #itachi uchiha #sasuke #sasuke uchiha #naruto #naruto uzumaki #hashirama #tobirama #hashirama senju #tobirama senju #madara uchiha #madara #killer bee #kakashi #jiraiya #tsunade #obito #obito uchiha

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lilydalexf · 4 years

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Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with bugs

bugs has 40 stories at Gossamer. They mostly focus on Mulder and Scully, but there are also some goodies featuring Reyes and Doggett. I’ve recced some of my favorites of her fics here before, including The Link. She also co-ran WhyIncision, a fun, smart X-Files mailing list that dissected fics like a book club. Big thanks to bugs for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

Not really. While I was still in high school, I started watching the then 20 year old OG Star Trek and became a Trekkie of a sort. Starlog magazine, James Blish novels and the other novelizations, and while I was working as a library page, I found fanfiction one day among the periodicals. Who knows how fanfiction ended up as part of a library's materials, but there it was, this tattered mimeographed collection. The fic that had the most impact on me was one where Nurse Chapel wrestled a giant alien snake to save Spock's life.

So when I got into XF, one of the first things I did was look for fanfic, knowing somewhere out there, Scully was wrestling a big snake for Mulder.

That experience showed me the power of fandom, that even without the internet, how the second generation of Trekkies joined the original group to advocate for the franchise to be revived. I remember sitting in the theater for that first awful Star Trek movie, choked up with what we'd done.

Tragic backstory way to say, no I'm not surprised that a well-produced show like XF would beget future generations of fans, and that they'd be chewing their way through the fanfic archives still being maintained.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

I'm so grateful to the fandom. Literally formed the life I have today through the confidence it gave me. Many of my friends to this day are 'pocket friends' from the various fandoms I've been in, and the longest friendships were formed in XF. I learned how to write, both technically and finding my voice. I learned how to think analytically, more than any college courses.

The two most important things I took away were, write for yourself first and always, and shit ain't that damn important. In the end, it's a TV show.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

YIKES. I came in at the Fight the Future summer hiatus, so the waning days of ATXC, then we moved to mailing lists, right? Yahoo Groups was in there somewhere. Finally message boards. Live Journal rose up at the end of the run which began to fragment the fandom even before the show ended, along with the migration off our individual websites to Archive of Our Own, fanfiction.net and such. We went from group discussion platforms to 'come look at my blog for my thoughts'. It was different and I didn't particularly like it, but in the end, when I came back to fandom for a new show....I had to get a Live Journal. That's the most interesting part of fandom, that a platform doesn't mold a fandom; we use the platform and when it's no longer useful to us, we abandon it en mass.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

I've touched on that a bit, but to elaborate, I'm glad I started in the XF fandom. It had such high standards and I hope that I maintain those standards for myself to this day. These days, I don't usually have a beta reader, but that took a couple hundred posted fics to get to that point.

Having seen the same exact flamewars and divides and squabbles over and over, seen how the taste of 'fame' can drive someone to be rather unpleasant, has given me a much more 'whatever' attitude. It's sort of comforting when joining a new fandom to know what's going to happen next in its natural progression.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

There's a meme "I have a type," and XF definitely had that type, but it just took me a while to get there. I was away at college then working on the road when the show started, and wasn't home on Friday nights most of the year. My mother has always been a big sci-fi fan, so she actually was watching before me. I don't like scary things, and would leave the room if it was on when I'd visit her. I was home for Christmas when Christmas Carol/Emily aired and I remember standing tentatively just inside the room so I could flee if necessary, and watched Scully go through the wringer, and ranting, "What the hell is this? Why are they putting that poor woman through this!?" I also saw how the show was doing the big ship tease, and I was like, uh, I don't have time for this. Even by my 20's, I'd been done wrong by so many shows that I'd become bitter. But the first film trailers suggested they were actually going from UST to RST, so I figured I could give 2 hours of my time for that. And yeah...but I was hooked, and WENT TO BLOCKBUSTER AND RENTED THE VHS TAPES TO CATCH UP....this interview is making me feel very old.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I've always been a shipper and have no shame in that, as I think forming and maintaining a relationship is the most conflict-ridden enterprise humans can attempt, and thus is the most challenging thing to write about. Like many fanfic writers, I'd 'told stories in my head' ever since I can remember about the characters from books, shows and movies. It was just a matter of then writing it down for the first time.

After I was sucked into the show and it was still the summer hiatus, I got on my first computer, dialed up that screeching modem, and went on Netscape to search for that fanfic I knew had to be out there from my Trek experience a decade ago. Like many people, after inhaling much of the delicious fics out there, I decided I can do that. I'm someone who's very methodical on my approach to something new, so I studied what worked/what didn't, the expected formatting, got a sense of the culture I was entering, acquired a critical beta reader, so when I actually submitted the first chapter to AXTC, I was calm and confident.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

I watch from the sidelines, with a vague little smile on my lips.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

Yes, I have. Battlestar Galactica had a lot of Philes, but it was still a big step away from the very organized fandom in X-Files. Plus, with so many characters, there could be lots of little groups focused on their favorites. Same in the Downton Abbey fandom. Just a different dynamic.

On the other end of the spectrum, one of my most popular fics is in the Silence of the Lambs fandom which I've never been involved with any other fans or their fandom, if it exists. It just sits out there on fanfiction.net and chugs along with the reads. My current fandom is The Doctor Blake Mysteries which is tiny but mighty--the saying is, we're six people and a shoelace. It's shown me that it's not the size, not the 'fame' possible, but the passion that makes a fandom.

Sadly, at least at this time, I don't think there will ever be an experience like The X-Files heyday. It was such a golden moment of the rise of internet and home computer use by the general public, a large generation of educated women having the time to participate in fandom, and there wasn't the amount of 'noise' that is distracting us all now. I'm so glad that you're doing this exercise to record our thoughts. We've already lost so many of the OG folks. My first beta, Janet Caires-Lesgold; Trixie, way too young; Shari, also too young; Brandon D Ray, leaving his family too soon; and many more.

(Posted by Lilydale on March 9, 2021)

#old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #bugs

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delightful-mystery · 4 years

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ALIEN: motherhood, masculinity and the original Bechdel Test

“Last film I was able to see was ALIEN”: how does the original marker of the Bechdel test hold up 41 years later?

Alien (1979) is a particularly important film for this blog. As you can see from the comic below, it was the original marker which Alison Bechdel used as an example in her comic, Dykes to Watch Out For, in the episode which pioneered the Bechdel Test (for recap; Alien is therefore a film which includes more than one named female character, and these characters have a conversation together about something other than a man). For its time, the issues surrounding gender that were raised and debated in Alien were pretty forward-thinking and controversial. And, since it is totally up for debate whether the bar has been at all raised since then, I would argue that these issues are still completely relevant in 2020.

Namesake of this blog, Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch out For

Written in its original draft as entirely gender-neutral, all the crew members of Alien were given androgynous names and the bare bones of their personalities were built as gender-blind. It’s an innovative way to make a film, but it is not only this which lends to the film’s excellent portrayal of what it can be like to be a woman growing up under the thumb of patriarchy. As a side note, what’s also worth noting is that it’s confirmed in ALIENS (sequel) that Lambert is in fact a trans woman, confirmed in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment when biographies of the deceased flash up on a screen. This is more used as an extra detail of backstory than a main aspect of the plot, but still, this may be the first appearance of a trans character in a major blockbuster. Gender is both at the forefront and at the core of this film, in its main themes and smallest details in equal measure.

Horror films are fascinating because we can learn so much from them about what a culture fears. From Alien, we can tell that the culture was afraid of… A lot. Technological advancements. The unknown. The idea that we may not be alone in the universe. And, overwhelmingly, birth and the loss of bodily autonomy. What happens when motherhood, something so revered and mystified even now (how many times have you heard the phrase “the miracle of life”?), is perverted and twisted to become something evil and wrong. Pregnancy is twisted into a form of body horror in Alien, something which not even the cis men of the film can escape.

I honestly don’t think you even want this image in higher quality.

Let’s talk about mothers. The two examples of actual mothers we see in this film are the spaceship Nostromo and its AI, actually called Mother, and the alien herself – a character design which actually smacks of some weird combination of both a penis and a walking, dripping vulva. These two characters are inextricably linked by appearance, with the alien hiding in amongst the ship’s crevices and walls at several points throughout the film. The alien is large and unknowable and unfixed; so is the ship (especially during the self destruct section, where nothing is where it should be or behaving in the right way). The alien is wet and slimy (yup, we’re going there), and so is the ship – and all the shafts where the alien lives and moves are profoundly yonic (bandname?).

The two are also linked in their shortcomings. Both examples of motherhood fall short in the expected role of a nurturing maternal figure. Instead we see the ruthless queen bee of an alien species determined to do whatever it takes to help her species survive, and the cold robotic voice of an AI under strict orders that its crew is expendable. The linking of these two characters culminates towards the end of the film where the alien lays its eggs in a room of the ship, and traps the near-death victims of the crew amongst its spawn. It’s a perversion of the children of the ship, in the crew, and the children of the alien, as the eggs laid inside them.

Fear of the unknown in Alien manifests as fear of impregnation and motherhood. Long has horror been an outlet for the maligned genders of society to explore their frustrations, fear and as a way to lend them strength. Motherhood is a subset of this. Motherhood is a subset of the ways in which horror movies provide an outlet for the maligned genders of the world. Women have been able to explore their frustrations, fear and strength in final girls, femme fatales and in this instance, fear of rape, forced impregnation or just fear of forced motherhood in general. Alien provides this outlet to perfection, illustrating the fear of rape and body invasion through its presentation of the invasive nature of the alien and the perversion of motherhood as a whole.

Next let’s discuss masculinity in Alien. Specifically let’s talk about Ash, a manufactured version of masculinity in the form of an undercover android, tasked with making sure the alien life form is brought back to Earth at any cost, including the lives of everyone on board. Ash is the true villain of the piece – more so than the Alien, whose objective is just the survival of her species. It’s interesting to note that this true villain is a manufactured version of masculinity, under the directions of a nameless and faceless corporation, The Company who prioritise scientific advancement over human life. This characterisation means that we have Ripley, a woman, fighting not only against losing control of her body and against being invaded/raped/impregnated by the alien, but also against masculinity itself (and also against corporations. Ridley Scott said down with capitalism) – and also against traditional gender roles and the expectations of motherhood.

And here is a picture of Ripley being attacked and smothered with a literal porn magazine. It’s kind of heavy handed as a gender commentary but in this instance we have no choice but to stan.

So why is this 1979 film still so acclaimed, important and relevant today?

All in all, Alien encompasses many timeless themes. The issues of gender, fear of motherhood and rape are all too relevant now compared to then, and are explored and played out in perfect metaphor. The reproductive rights of people with wombs are still, somehow, under attack. It’s still “men” (or capitalistic robots, lol) widely in charge of these decisions. There’s a known rapist in the white house (at least, there is at time of writing…) Alien is something of a call for solidarity and strength for anyone who has ever felt like their body is not their own, who has ever had their autonomy or physical safety threatened. Oh, and yes, it passes the Bechdel test.

I like that this exists

Thanks for reading!

xo, The Bechdel Bitch

from ALIEN: motherhood, masculinity and the original Bechdel Test

#ALIEN: motherhood #masculinity and the original Bechdel Test #personal #mylife

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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A good description. For my part, I don't like talking about it because of my own experiences. I can, however, see Batman, a story where nearly every memorable villain and even the protagonist himself is a Svengali, could attract a disproportionate number of rape apologists, though fandom is full of them. (Oh, hey, that's the other thing with Jason. Talia.)

Ugh I’m so sorry to hear you can relate, and I totally understand not wanting to talk about it. I have no idea what your particular situation is, obviously, but I also want to reiterate since its been awhile since I’ve mentioned this part.....I don’t feel any like....basically, my choice to talk about this stuff is simply put, MY choice, made for my own reasons, that aren’t a reflection on any other survivor. There are a million and one reasons NOT to come forward, or to struggle with it or not to be open about what happened to us, and none of them are a reflection on any of us, but rather the position it puts us in.

Again, I don’t know your situation or what gender you might be or anything else, and this isn’t at all because your ask made me feel defensive or anything like that. This is just something I’ve wanted to put into words for awhile now seems relevant today, and here’s as good a place as any to put it down:

For myself, being a male survivor....like, there’s never really been any getting around the existence of that kinda, idk, caveat that not many male survivors come forward. Sure, we all see the posts and tweets reminding “remember, men can be raped too!” But that’s not the same thing as men sharing their stories and experiences the way far more women have come forward. And that’s why I ultimately began talking about my own experiences in order to express how I felt about my own positioning in society and how as a survivor I interact and am interacted with by others. Because frankly, there wasn’t anywhere else I could really look to in order to see others talking or sharing about similar things and see myself reflected in what they were saying or the experiences they were describing. So, if I couldn’t find what I felt I needed or could have benefited from, I figured at least I could put it out there in case anyone else who could relate could benefit from mine.

Except, ultimately I’ve come to feel that I honestly don’t believe its that men just flat out don’t come forward with their stories or experiences, its that even when we do, we’re rarely signal boosted - as you can kinda see from the fact that I can post the most inane shit and get it to a thousand notes, but in the five plus years I’ve been making posts about this subject, I’m lucky if I can get a single post on the topic to double digits as far as notes go.

People just flat out are a combination of uncomfortable with the novelty of actual discussions about and around male survivors as well as being not really sure how to talk about it because we’ve never really developed the tools for it.

And to be 100% clear, this has NOTHING to do with female survivors, as a point of comparison or ANYTHING else. It drives me up a fucking WALL when people try and compare and contrast even just how much men being raped is talked about vs women being raped, no matter WHAT their reasons are, because I promise people, I PROMISE - NO survivor, of any gender, has EVER benefitted from being pitted against other survivors to ANY degree. Its not a zero sum game and it doesn’t help male survivors to pull shit like “well at least female survivors are acknowledged” because a) eww, and b) nobody asked anyone to say that on our behalf, and c) hyper-visibility isn’t a privilege (or whatever the best parallel to that might be, I’m not trying to appropriate an anti-blackness specific term so much as its the closest comparison I have at the moment for something that isn’t even a matter of marginalized identities but rather marginalized experiences) and d) its COMPLETELY beside the point and actually misses the point by a WIDE margin.

Because what I’ve come to realize over the years, from my own experiences and talking and sharing with survivors of all genders and demographics and walks of life, is that first off....nobody really needs the reminder that hey, men can be raped too. We see it happen all throughout entertainment and other aspects of society, its not an experience that’s hidden away from the light, its just not ever really CALLED what it is, or followed up on, and talked about.

Like Dick Grayson isn’t a statistical outlier in media. Take Horrible Bosses, a summer blockbuster comedy a few years back with a cast of fairly big name comedians, and whose running B plot throughout the whole movie was Jennifer Aniston’s character wanting to rape her employee, Charlie Day’s character. Not only was this not objectionable to audiences in any sizable way, not only did this never really get called out as wtf by critics and reviews, the movie was successful enough to warrant a sequel with even BIGGER names in its cast, like Christopher Pine, and the continuation of the Aniston’s character trying to rape Charlie Day’s subplot. With zero awareness. And its not like that’s the only movie. There’s plenty more I could name.

Or then you’ve got television, where like, take Riverdale, a well-promoted, well known CW show....whose first few episodes featured the lead character Archie in a sexual relationship with his much older female teacher. Except not really a relationship, because that’s textbook, no debate, literal statutory rape.....that ended with Archie’s character being condemned for it as though he were on equal footing with the teacher, who ultimately left town, and it never really acknowledged that he was literally a victim of statutory rape, that any teacher who does that is not an equal partner but a predator. I stopped watching the show for a lot of reasons by like the fourth episode, but I see enough gifs on tumblr to know that several seasons later, this left little enough impact that some kind of Archie-goes-to-jail plotline has resulted in more memes and jokes about prison rape than I can count, and zero awareness that people are compounding jokes about a character who is literally already an unacknowledged survivor.

That’s one. Or you can take Once Upon A Time, a popular ABC show of multiple seasons, and the running subplot where Robin Hood’s character is raped by the Wicked Witch literally the same way Dick was by Mirage in the comics. She shapeshifts into Maid Marian, who ends up dead, and has ‘sex’ with Robin Hood (no, she rapes him) and ends up pregnant. Not only is this never really called what it is, later on, other characters LITERALLY CHEW HIM OUT for objecting to this baby being left in the care of her mother, aka his rapist, and for ‘not being willing to give her the benefit of the doubt/let her change’ as though him not wanting to co-parent with his rapist is no different from any of the show’s other dubious redemption storylines....except for the fact that this particular part of her redemption arc isn’t ever really one she actually needs redeeming for, because nobody ever fucking points out that she literally raped him and he was her victim. Fast forward to the end of the series, Robin Hood’s been dead for seasons, the Wicked Witch is happily redeemed and has a loving wholesome relationship with her daughter, named after Robin Hood like they were some kind of loving, happy family instead of a rapist, her victim, and the child that was born of it.

Or you can take Grimm, a fairly successful NBC show of multiple seasons WHICH LITERALLY DID THE EXACT SAME THING. The main character Nick was raped in season two by the antagonist of the time, who shape shifted into his wife and had ‘sex’ with him, with him not realizing the truth until later on, by which point she’s pregnant with his child. Fast forward to the end of the show, not only was this never really called what it was, his wife’s character was killed off seasons earlier and he is now, get this, ‘happily’ in a romantic and sexual longterm relationship with his rapist (who he by now knows exactly what she did do and what happened between them and just.....got over it without ever actually like, reacting to it)....and oh yeah, not only are they raising the child born of it together, they’ve had a second child since then.

Anyone ever hear much outcry about the male rapes in these shows? And again, like Horrible Bosses, tip of the iceberg. There’s a LOT more shows I could name, just like there are movies.

Or take comics. Its not even just Dick Grayson that’s a survivor. Or Bruce. Or Jason as you pointed out, which......I know a lot of people ignore both Morrison AND Winick’s take on Talia in order to not write her as the rapist she is in their stories, which I can totally understand as she was a well-established character of color for long before either of them got their hands on her and its perfectly valid for people not to want to have to write her as being tarnished as a rapist because two different writers wrote her that way....without.....either of them ever really acknowledging that was literally how they were writing her. I myself write her as a character of complicated and often dubious morality, but never a rapist, for that reason and many others, but its definitely there. And even in a fandom that has never lacked for acknowledgment of Dick being a survivor whose rapists were women.....a LOT of people still romanticize Jason’s ‘relationship’ with Talia as being something other than a grown woman taking advantage of a minor in an extremely vulnerable and compromised state.....with a TON of other takes out there about the two of them, in posts and fics alike, where its somehow danced around or outright called something other than “that time Talia raped Jason in the comics.”

But its not just the Batbooks. Its like how I’ve mentioned in the past, Garth Ennis wrote into one of his storylines that Kyle Rayner was raped when he went to Gotham one time.....not to make it a plot point, but to use it as a JOKE. Or take Marvel comics, Bobby Drake, one of my other all-time favorite characters....who is also a rape survivor of multiple occasions, without it ever acknowledged as such. Like, he was briefly in a relationship with Mystique, who turned out to have entered the relationship under false pretenses, shocking, and who used having sex with him to depower him and take him out of the upcoming fight between the X-Men and the Marauders, which...we don’t have time to unpack all that right now. But fast forward about a year later, and Bobby has since gotten back together with his ex-girlfriend Opal Tanaka.....who, it turns out, is actually just Mystique in disguise, having sex with him again without it ever being called rape since he was consenting to sex with Opal, not the woman who slept with him that one time just to make sure he was helpless to stop a whole lot of people from getting killed. But hey, forget about Mystique! How about that time Chuck Austen wrote him ‘having sex’ with an empath who was EXPLICITLY noted in the narrative as using her powers to manipulate his emotions to even WANT to have sex with her in the first place, and when an issue later it comes out she’s married and her husband starts beating up Bobby for ‘sleeping with his wife’ all the other characters present, all of them friends and teammates of his, condemn Bobby for this without it ever being acknowledged that he was literally manipulated into it by a superpower and he was the victim.

Again. Tip. Of. The. Iceberg.

But you see what I mean? Male rape isn’t an outlier and it isn’t an unknown....its everywhere! Its just.....never called that, really, and never really talked about, even by people who normally would, except for the fact that I don’t think we as a society have ever really forced ourselves to FIND a way to talk about it, because of the fact that like.....the very notion of it threatens and undermines the essence of the patriarchal beliefs that are hammered into us all from day one. Even when we know the patriarchy is crap, we still have so much ingrained in us from early childhood that stuff like this, which is a blatant symptom of it even if not one aimed primarily at disadvantaging women.....like, it slips under the radar because its never fully called out or spotlighted in loud enough or widely enough ways to keep us from overlooking how much its impacted our POVs.

Blatantly put, the patriarchy and sexism RELIES on the idea that men are somehow more powerful/stronger/whatthefuckever than women. And male victims - of abuse as well as rape, though definitely rape.....like, even just a widespread awareness of our existence is enough to kinda destabilize that belief that is so foundational to the patriarchy its DEPENDENT on it being upheld as unassailable truth.

Because if forced to acknowledge that men are just as vulnerable to even something like rape as anyone else in the ‘right’ situations or dynamics, it forces confrontation with the reality that no matter what the patriarchy has claimed for as long as its existed.....men aren’t inherently any more powerful, or stronger, or resistant to harm/humiliation/VICTIMIZATION as anyone else.

And the patriarchy flat out can’t afford that confrontation, so it can’t afford to acknowledge male survivors.

Again, just want to be beyond clear - nowhere here am I okay with making this about a compare and contrast between the experiences and interactions society has with male survivors and around male rape, and the same with female survivors and rape. Because I mean, we all should be more than aware that society as a whole sucks at the acknowledgment, addressing and handling of rape in any context, in any of the ways it comes up as a topic, in terms of any survivor who comes forward no matter who or when or how.....like. We suck at this topic, and at any and all discussions about this topic. Period. Flat out. So when I say the patriarchy can’t afford to acknowledge male survivors, I am in no way aiming to diminish the reality that it does just as fucking an abyssmal job at acknowledging and responding to female survivors....the point here is not the poor reception any and all survivors receive to disclosing their experiences in our society, but rather the specific why of this when it comes to male survivors just as the particular subject of focus here.

And again, like, my only credentials here are just like. My life experiences, lol. I’m not trying to claim anything more or other than that, make no mistake. I’m a literal college drop out, this is not the result of comprehensive studies or vetted by the scientific method. This is literally just “like, my opinion, man” and makes no pretenses at being other than that. Its just the conclusions I’ve formed over the years and why, completely anecdotal and not aiming to be any kind of authoritative or expert viewpoint with my personal take here. Largely because I haven’t really found anywhere that I feel the conversation has proceeded enough in earnest that its even at a point that would ALLOW for that yet. So this is all more just.....my feel of things, and why, as just kinda idk, hopefully a starting point for further ACTUAL exploration of all this. My attempts at starting the kind of conversation I feel we need to be having in order to be at all productive instead of just constantly spinning around in circles, which is what it so often feels like.

So when I say I think the patriarchy can’t honestly AFFORD to acknowledge male survivors specifically, I’m not positing some grand conspiracy or active cover-up.

Because nothing like that is even necessary.

Its built into the framework of the system itself. Its not that I believe anyone goes out of their way to “hide” male survivors from anyone, I’m saying there’s no need. Because its been so ingrained into us from such a young age and in so many ways, most of us never even think to question whether anything is even being hidden, or if its just as simple as, well men don’t really come forward, because their pride and self-esteem is so impacted by what happened to them, due to the expectations heaped on men by the patriarchy.

Its kinda stunning, actually. Even while ACKNOWLEDGING that the patriarchy does impact male survivors in ways as well, we’re kinda....led away from the ACTUAL ways and ACTUAL reasons why....because despite literally calling the patriarchy out as the bad guy in this way, it still manages to weasel itself out of this confrontation by virtue of the fact that you can’t ever really effectively address a problem when you’re being misdirected to a tangent that’s not really the REAL problem that needs addressing.

So personally, I’m of the belief that its not that men just don’t ever really come forward. Its that even when some do, like myself, we can scream our heads off for years and it just echoes into the void, because its not being heard in the ways we need to be heard in order to effectively....signalboost our stories and experiences and needs. Much like I just mentioned above, its misdirection......everybody’s too focused on addressing an issue that doesn’t actually NEED solving (ie, reminding everyone/promoting awareness that men too, CAN be raped), and thus at least feeling productive, feeling like they’re contributing to tackling the problem.....that meanwhile, the ACTUAL problem (men CAN be raped too, and are, and here are men talking about it only for the signal to get lost and fizzle out rather than get boosted)....it flies right under the radar.

Because in line with what I said earlier about how it does no good to compare our experiences, both in terms of assault and our lives in the aftermath, with women survivors - its because its apples and oranges.

Rape isn’t a gendered issue, because it can happen to anyone of any gender, at any time....its situational. Dependent on context. Rape culture, however, IS a gendered issue.

Because rape culture, how our society INTERACTS with the very idea of abuse and rape and its victims and perpetrators....spills out entirely from that core foundation of the patriarchy and sexism, and thus much like those things themselves, how it affects women survivors is always going to be totally different from how it affects men who are survivors. Our experiences are not interchangeable - that has nothing to do with being better or worse, more publicized or less, etc, etc. They just....manifest different ways. The cause of our trauma-related problems might be the same thing, but the problems it creates for us are not, and none of us can ever really benefit from it being treated as a one size fits all kinda deal, nor is it to our benefit to treat it like there’s only so much conversation about the topic available to go around.

What I mean here is, like I said, the patriarchy at the foundation of our society can’t afford for it to be widely acknowledged that men can be victimized too.

But it can’t actually stop this from happening, given that its basis for saying it never happens is an inherent uneven-ness that only exists because it made it exist, not because like....we’re innately born uneven.

So....it had to come up with a narrative, a response, for when men DID step forward and say hey, I too was abused. I was raped. Etc.

And it did.

As a result, a lot of women don’t come forward because they fear not being believed, with reason. And this is true for a lot of men as well, just as the following is true for a lot of women too....

Which is that IMO the bigger reason/more immediate reason a lot of men don’t come forward, is that our concern isn’t so much that we won’t be believed....

Its that we will be believed, but rather than this getting us the help we need or the justice we ask for, it only ever really creates more problems for us, due to the patriarchy’s go-to fix-it job for this situation:

Paint the male victim as being not so much a victim as a victimizer-in-training.

See, the lie that men are innately more powerful, stronger, more ‘deserving’ of being in charge can’t afford the admittance than men are also vulnerable, can be victimized, taken advantage of.....

But it CAN afford the idea that men can be abused/raped/etc with this going on to eventually result in us becoming abusers/rapists/victimizers ourselves in the future, as long as THIS is kept the clear focus and emphasis of the narrative.

Because after all, there’s nothing in the idea that we all inevitably take out our pain (whatever it may come from) on others that contradicts the idea that we’re stronger, more powerful, etc.

And its not like the patriarchy and its supporters give a shit if this throws even other men under the bus, because the only thing institutions and systems of power actually care about is POWER.

They’re not our friend, even if in a different life, we could have ended up wielding more of that power than we do in this one. Even if we do in other aspects of our lives gain social and other forms of power more easily/with less obstacles than other people.

They only care what we can do for them, to spread that power, perpetuate it, preserve it....so just like white supremacy will happily screw over poor white people and America doesn’t give a shit about its prison population and the LGBTQ+ community so often ignores the issues of its members of color and so on.....the patriarchy is more than willing to make male survivors from any and all groups and communities take the hit it has no intention of taking by letting it be confirmed its built on sand and bullshit.

So just as much as we’re ingrained from early childhood with the idea that men can’t be victimized the way others can, the linked lesson we’re taught is that men who have been hurt badly or in certain ways will almost certainly end up hurting others.....

With the implicit acknowledgment that there was just an admittance that we can be hurt badly/in certain ways ending up just swiftly glossed over. As the focus is instead kept on the harm done to our hypothetical future victims.

Because the easiest way to keep someone from being sympathetic, is to give people someone else to sympathize with MORE. To give people reason to feel a person doesn’t even deserve your sympathy in the first place.

And so now think about not how often we see men victimized by abuse and rape in media, or how often we see men portrayed as survivors and yes, victims of these things.....

Think instead of how often in media we see men who victimize others, who are the antagonists, the villains, the serial killer/rapist/abuser of the week.......and with it offhandedly being dropped into a scene and then never really focused on again, that these men were almost always said to have been abused or raped or victimized in the past....and this is the REASON for why they all ended up doing what they did.

Suddenly, the numbers go up, don’t they? The second you think about it from THAT angle?

Its just....the reason that angle literally exists to the extent it does in society and the messages we’re fed, the entertainment we’re given.....is because that’s the POINT.

Because its natural for us not to think of any of those men as victims when by the time we find that part out, we’ve already internalized our view of them as victimizers, and solidly put our sympathies with their victims in the present. Because what was done to them in the past doesn’t excuse what they do to others in the present. Being hurt doesn’t give you carte blanche to hurt others. We all know this. Hence....WHY IT WORKS.

Except, this isn’t actually a reflection of reality. The myth of the perpetual cycle of abuse is just that, a myth. Oh, it happens, certainly. With men, with women, quite probably more often with men than women, not much doubt about that....

But its not that it happens, we’re told. That’s not the issue here.

Its that we’re pretty much told it ALWAYS happens. Its always GOING to happen. That there’s no real point in sympathizing with a male victim who is most likely going to end up victimizing someone else in the future and thus he’s not really gonna deserve your sympathy at that point, will he? Which makes him not really worth wasting it on him in the first place. Makes it easy to come up with something to focus on more instead of his story or experiences, something just as deserving of your focus or sympathy, but that you’re less likely to end up regretting in the future like you would if a male survivor you sympathized with now ends up in the news five years down the line for having hurt someone else.

Because over centuries and generations the idea of male survivors at all has been cultivated into having this almost mythic quality, there’s just enough subtle feeling of wrongness around the very idea of it, like, that it just doesn’t quite make sense...that it ends up being almost a relief to give our minds a reason, an explanation for why they don’t have to come up with a way to adjust the paradigm there, to make room for that idea, realign a worldview into one where there’s a specific spot for male survivors much like any other subject that needs focusing on or evaluating for whatever reason.

And this point, this conclusion that no matter how tragic what happened to make a male survivor was, it will only ever ultimately end up in the same spot, with him later on passing along the harm, a warped kind of paying it forward....this is hammered home over and over. We see it everywhere, without even often realizing what it is we’re seeing and internalizing, like with the examples I cited of all the times men are raped in entertainment without it being called that. Its the flip side of that....the times that men are raped in entertainment with it being called that, but swiftly moved past that to introduce the reason not to care that that’s what it was we just saw.

And thus throughout several seasons of Law & Order: SVU we’ve had male survivors, usually teens, who at first seemed eminently sympathetic for what had been done to them.....but who by the end of the episodes, ended up becoming school shooters exacting revenge on their bullies. Or ended up killing the coach who raped them in high school and then went on to rape a dozen others. Or in the last scene of the episode is found kneeling over their abusive father’s corpse with blood on their hands and the detectives standing over them in sadness that now they had to take the boy they thought was the victim away to jail as the victimizer he didn’t have to end up becoming.

Except.....he only becomes that because they make the choice to write him becoming it! Every single time!

Like in 13 Reasons Why, where another male survivor ends up....another school shooter. Or in Criminal Minds, where pretty much every single killer throughout the series ended up with a backstory of abuse and rape and victimization as a child, making it ‘all the more tragic’ and with the protagonists often literally using the phrase “almost like the guy never had a chance.”

Well no, they didn’t. Not when it was written to BE that way.

And then we see the idea root and take hold in audiences. And spread and perpetuated. Validated.

Its why I hate the woobification thing in fandoms, where fans of (white) villain characters fill in their backstory for themselves with all the REASONS they are the way they are, and with the reasons never being that they’re just a sadistic entitled asshole, but because they were hurt. They were abused as a child, they were raped offscreen, the heroes said mean things about them in the burn book once and that’s why they just had to kill the hero’s whole family, see.

And everything comes full circle.....not only is it that all male victims are destined to end up victimizers....its equally true that all male victimizers must have once been male victims. Even if we didn’t see it onscreen or on the page.

Except, and why I loathe that fandom tendency.....

THAT NARRATIVE IS NOT AN INEVITABILITY AND NEVER WAS! The end point and point of origin presented there are NOT innately set in stone!

And all that does is just validate and accept as truth the LIE that patriarchal society puts forth in order to play smoke and mirrors with this one specific facet of human experiences that innately possesses the potential to destabilize the lie at the very rock bottom foundation of everything the patriarchy’s ever built at everyone else’s expense. The reason it offers up for why its not only allowable, its for the best that we look elsewhere from any male victims that actually step forward and say hey, can you all listen to me for a second, I want to tell you what happened to me.

And the fun irony of THIS aspect of things is if you think this woobification fandom thing benefits male survivors as a whole in some way or another, like the tendency of fans to find even villainous victimizers sympathetic means that they can and do sympathize just as much with actual male victims.....I’m fairly certain it doesn’t.

See, because with villains in fandom......this retroactive sympathy for imagined past traumas happens to only the characters that fandom has already decided they liked DESPITE the awful things they’ve done. Its made up to be used as an excuse instead of an explanation....

And like we all know damn well, even if we don’t always admit it or like to acknowledge it....

Explanations are not actually excuses. The harm you do can not be wiped away by the harm done to you.

So, because that’s still inside of us, our awareness of that, even if its ignored on the surface while defending hot white villains or whatever.....it doesn’t actually give anyone reason to ignore the narrative our society constructs around actual male survivors who it encourages people to condemn or ignore on the basis of purely hypothetical FUTURE abuses or wrongdoings.

And after all, you can’t actually decide you can look past the harms a person enacts and still view them as sympathetic if....you don’t actually know yet what those harms are going to end up being and thus whether you can make your peace with them, can you?

You just know that harms WILL be done, so....might as well err on the side of caution and assume they won’t be forgivable when deciding here and now to be thrifty with sympathies and spread any actionable effort taken on behalf of survivors in areas where those sympathies are more likely to be put to better use.

And yeah, all of this plays into why I focus so much on certain aspects of Dick’s narratives, and they usually AREN’T the rapes themselves.

Because for me, for many other male survivors I know......

Acknowledging those happened, examining how he felt when those happened....its not the biggest issue. Just like in our own lives, having it acknowledged or known what was done to us, having to face how it made us feel....that’s not really our primary concern.

Its what happens AFTER that.

How people view us and treat us AFTER their initial sympathies, whatever they are, dry up - which, we’re given reason to believe, they always inevitably will.

Because it isn’t all that different from what I frequently complain of happening with Dick in fandom, and hell, its WHY it bothers me so much, because its literally been a recurrent theme throughout my life:

The most widely acknowledged male survivor in comics, just also happens to coincidentally be....

The character most often spun as having a wicked temper, being almost irrationally angry at times, with his temper being likened to things like an eruption, an earthquake, a NATURAL DISASTER....something to be avoided at all costs, something the other characters fear, with good reason, but also impossible to avoid, because its too intrinsic to his nature. Its an inevitability. Dick Grayson WILL erupt or explode again at some point, and its going to be ugly. Like he’s a time bomb.

Even though....as I frequently go in depth on.....Dick’s never actually been shown as having particularly poor self-control either on just its own merits or specifically in comparison to others. He doesn’t really actually HAVE a track record of taking out his own hurts on others. On giving people REASON to be afraid of his temper even while they continue to take no responsibility for giving him reasons to be angry at all.

Its why I so often emphasize the discrepancy between the fact that whatever someone’s own personal character preferences, the FACT remains that Dick Grayson is the character in this family that most often bears the BRUNT of everyone ELSE’S anger.......just as the fact equally remains that Dick Grayson is still ultimately the character most often singled out in posts and headcanons and fanfics as unleashing his temper on others in unjustifable ways and usually without actual provocation.

None of this is a coincidence to me.

Its how we see over and over again that its okay for Dick Grayson to be angry FOR others, ON others’ behalf....its just when he’s angry FOR HIMSELF, for being taken advantage of, ignored, walked all over or mistreated....that’s when his anger is unjustified. Irrational.

Dangerous.

Or you guys know that one fanon about how Dick forces his hugs on his siblings, and his displays of physical affection are often unwanted, and thus violations?

Yeah, that one hits me right in the Issues too, because again, that’s not remotely supported by anything in canon....there has NEVER been an instance of Dick’s family asking him to cut it our or feeling like......IMPOSED upon because he likes to hug his family.

Its not to say people can’t feel that way about even well-meaning displays of physical affection that aren’t cleared with them first....

Its that this is something that people had to DECIDE to make a thing with Dick and his family. To actually craft the narrative that the many-times victim of unwanted touching was effectively violating his family’s wishes and boundaries every time he hugs them without being asked or invited to.

With that number being however many times a writer wants to write him doing when highlighting it as a violation.

And is this a thing we really see with any other character? Is my question there. How often do you see literally any other character being chewed out or resented for....hugging?

Just the one character most known for giving physical affection freely with his FAMILY and close friends.....

Who just so happens to also be the one character most often the guy who has his bodily autonomy violated.

The canon rape survivor has literally had HUGS weaponzed against him.

With the end result being.....every time he does it, every time this pings on a reader’s radar as Bad and Unwelcome....the linked takeaway is its one more reason for that reader to then ask themselves....well if he doesn’t care whether other people want him touching them, why should I care when he doesn’t want people touching him either?

Which ultimately just winds up another form of: why should I feel bad if bad things happened to someone who isn’t really that great of a person?

See what I mean?

Its all connected. Its not me getting frustrated with a bunch of different random things, its all the same thing at the end of the day, all so often traceable back to the same places.

I couldn’t untangle myself from so much of this and how it impacts me and my view of things even if I wanted to, to such an extent that in the end, want really has very little to do with it.

(And uh, you think those bug the shit out of me, let me tell you about just the very SIGHT of all those fics where Dick the widely acknowledged, perhaps best known male rape victim in comics.....is a rapist himself. Because yeah....even if people like to keep their incest light and fluffy or sweet instead of predatory, to someone who is y’know, personally familiar with all of this, Dick and ANY of his younger brothers is never going to appear as anything BUT predatory. As yet one more time where the linear journey of a male survivor all the way to the final evolution into male predator is born out and treated as so matter-of-fact, so inevitable, it hardly warrants noting as anything especially obscene or gross to write about a character famous for his survivor status. And its not like Dick is actually the only character in the franchise I like, so its not like its any better when its Jason painted as the aggressor in a fic, for instance....and while I will always be hugely critical of how Bruce is written as abusive in canon, that’s a wildly different thing from sexually preying on his sons so again, seeing him as his own sons’ rapists is yet again more upsetting than most people would think without connecting Bruce’s own status as a canon rape survivor, whether we like that story or not.....and plugging it into again, this pre-programmed route traveling from survivor to predator, over and over again. Victim to victimizer. Like clockwork.)

Anyway, my point is not to harp on this but rather to just lay it out there in this way. And how it plays into so much of my own personal approach to dealing with all of this when it comes up.......because the simple fact is I have to, there is no opt-out lol, and it comes up a lot, in large part because its so easy t reframe as being something else that most people who don’t have direct experience being directly impacted by all of this in its various myriad expressions are understandably not going to see it pinging on their radar and getting logged into their awareness the way it always does in mine.

*Shrugs* It is what it is. Its there. Avoiding it has never done me any favors, so.......as I so often demonstrate in a variety of degrees of Hmm Probably Coulda Done That Better, lol, I try and deal with things head-on and adjust as needed.

Easier said than done, not always pulled off, never any guarantee that I’m going about things the right way, just that like.....

There’s problems that need addressing that stem from all of this, and I know where mine lie and put a lot, a LOT of effort into addressing them and keeping an eye on them and not letting them get the better of me.

But the flipside of paying that close attention and that much means I’m also keenly aware of when and where I couldn’t take responsibility even if I wanted to, because the responsibility literally just isn’t mine to take....because yeah, I live in a society but guess what, so does everyone else, and its the same damn society, so at the end of the day, no matter HOW well or not I go about handling the matter of my rapes and their overall impact and shaping of my life.....that’s just me handling the rape part of things.

The rape culture? And how THAT affects and informs every survivor’s life in whatever way it does going forward?

That’s kinda.....only ever going to be improved upon or not, on like....a cultural scale. That’s a society thing. Not a survivor thing.

Because we are all shaped by our cultures, every aspect of our cultures, and this one is unfortunately no different. But, its shaped by us too.

But to actually shape it INTO something, or more accurately, to shape it into LESS of what it is, blunt some of its edges, lessen some of its ability to do harm to survivors, to compound the harm already done.....

Something like THAT requires intent. Conscious effort.

And intent requires like....first being able to SEE what problems need addressing.

And that’s kiiiiinda the whole point of survivors coming forward when so rarely, so MINUTELY does it EVER result in actionable justice for that individual survivor.

And I don’t for a second believe a single one ever believes or assumes otherwise.

Cuz its super not fun. It never like......I don’t fucking know how it looks to other people, tbh, because I’ve literally been a survivor since before I even really knew that I was being abused or molested, that there was something I was surviving....but trust me, I’ve thought about it, I’ve wondered, and I don’t know if like, people think a survivor ‘telling their story’ is somehow an equivalent of like, getting a book deal or something, there’s the attention it brings after all, and isn’t there that saying that no publicity is bad publicity.....

LOL. Yeah. Umm. Just saying, if you don’t have personal experience as a survivor having come forward or shared openly about your experiences, let me refer you to another saying as counterpoint: Don’t believe everything you hear.

Cuz that’s definitely not one anyone else ever forgets when ‘listening’ to any of us.

Anyway, wrapping this up by bringing it back to like.....my extremely evident mood and irration of this past week.....this is ALL connected, this is ALL part and parcel of every single time this comes up as an issue for me and its never less of one at one time than it is at another, its never a little easier this time because this reason or that....its always the same damn frustration every single time. Stuff like this doesn’t get doled out in manageable portions, its all or nothing. Its either a problem right this current second or its not, and if its not, that’s only until the next time its a problem again, likely sooner rather than later.

And that’s the part that makes me talk about this as much as I do, and get as frustrated as I do when people just do not seem to get.....

I don’t have an off switch on this matter because there IS no off switch for me. The times I get frustrated and vent about this stuff are actually only at MOST a TENTH of how often it rears its head for me to deal with.....the times my reactions or responses boil over into public view, into something you guys see, or ‘have to deal with’ are literally just the times where there is no keeping a lid on it because the pot was already full to start with.

And so it really. Epically. Beyoooooond doesn’t help matters, when despite being the only male survivor I’m aware of being consistently vocal on the matter in the only fandom I know of where a prominant male character is almost universally acknowledged as a survivor....

I usually only ever hear the response:

“Mmmmmm, I’m not really sure what makes you think there’s a problem here and that it has anything to do with us, when see, I don’t agree, and I don’t really see why you think your opinion on the matter of how this particular character is written about and viewed and depicted interacting with others and how fandom interacts with him, is like.....of any kind of real relevance? This is just like....your opinion, man.”

Me: ........have I ever claimed for a second it wasn’t? Didn’t I use those exact words at least once in all of this already?

fahsklhfaklhflakfhalffha

Cuz for the record, ultimately, that’s what this all boils down to. I’ve wanted to post about this stuff for awhile now, but make no mistake:

It literally is all just my opinion? Formed of my own personal experiences and the conclusions I’ve taken away from them. Laid out as fully and extensively as I can manage, specifically SO people can take all of that into context when deciding for themselves how much weight or not to GIVE my opinion......

In which case, y’know, the experiences I have with this matter and how they correlate to these opinions, like, have contextual relevance and seem necessary to include.

Its NOT because I’m trying to use them to browbeat everyone into agreeing with me because I think I’m the only one whose opinion matters here, lol.

No. Just that like....it DOES matter? And its kinda exhausting when people act like all of this is arbitrary and abstract to me, that its some kind of superiority complex or me moralizing from a pulpit or some shit when I’m literally saying none of it is abstract or arbitrary to me, and the louder I say that, the more people THEN say “oh so basically your opinion is the only one that matters here unless we disclose the same kind of experiences or background huh?”

*headdesk*

I just.....it seems my stance is either born of self-righteousness and nothing personal whatsoever....unless I make enough of a fuss about how that’s NOT true, in which case my stance is that apparently I think I’m the only one who is allowed to have an opinion here because I’ve made such a point about it being personal.

But its definitely not that people are just determined to invalidate anything I have to say on this subject one way or another, right?

Anyway.

So all of that’s like...whatever that was. Make of it what you guys will, but I do hope that at least for some people whom it might be a new perspective or new information to, you’ll consider asking why is it that in a fandom that prominently features a canon male survivor whose survivorhood is so frequently denoted as a key and critical part of his character....someone like me, who is frequently cited as a resource on many, many other kinds of meta about Dick Grayson......seems to have more people interested in discouraging me from ever expounding on my own experiences in this matter and any correlations I see between those and Dick’s experiences and narratives, than there are people interested in like......utilizing me as the freaking resource on male survivor experiences and viewpoints that I’ve literally been out here offering to be from day one....specifically BECAUSE of how rarely men are viewed as coming forward and being open about our shit here.

*Shrugs*

Just food for thought.

#rape cw

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blackswaneuroparedux · 5 years

Text

Anonymous asked: You are one of the rare intelligent traditionalist blogs that appreciates high culture of art, music, and aesthetics. I don’ consider myself racist and people can call me an old stick in the mud but I love high culture as it is central to our European identity. I have been concerned how classical music especially concert hall performances are in terminal decline. Do you think this is because diversity killing classical music?

Classical music concerts are in decline. That’s the bad news.

Classical music is thriving. That’s the good news.

Classical music attendance for concert performances have been generally low especially when compared to pre-1945 levels in Europe and the US. It’s also true if sales of CDs etc are an indicator too.

Like you, as a believer in the heritage of tradition of western civilisation I find this deeply troubling. Western classical music is an achievement of high culture and more importantly an integral and unique to the DNA of Western civilisation. The questions as to why is a tricky one because it’s not just one thing. Is it the music being performed that’s old hat? Is the audience or the lack of one thereof?

It’s painfully obvious that audiences are not there to support it. Why?

I think part of the blame can be laid at the foot of the producers of classical music concerts. The largest contributors to keeping today's orchestras alive and functioning are usually old, rich, white, conservative people who enjoy their Beethoven and Brahms. They don't care about any music post late 19th century.

Firstly, I would take issue with where they think classical music begins and ends. Classical music is not music trapped in amber for all time. It can and must move forwards. This is why - despite some truly stinkers in 20th Century classical music composition - music composed in the 20th Century is given short thrift and met with sniffy indifference.

The paradox here is that they say there is no demand for such contemporary pieces because the audience isn’t there. But if they don’t show the courage to showcase new works then how will they grow an audience? It’s a sticky wicket to say the least.

Secondly, in being such stiff shirts, there has been a stunning failure to educate and entertain the next younger generation of the value of classical music. The decline of classical music has been a tragic failure of handing down tradition from one generation to the next. Its root cause has everything to do with the material corruption and spiritual laziness of its own native European people - young and old.

But I don’t want to lay the blame too much on the older generation despite the above criticism. This is because at least they invest money into classical music. The younger generation can’t - because they need to make a living - or won’t - because they are not emotionally invested in it.

This nicely leads me to another crucial part of my answer.

I think blame can also be laid at the feet of us, the audience.

With each passing generation our Western society is nurturing its own people to be musically illiterate. By that I mean millennials have no real grasp of appreciation of classical music, let alone learning a music instrument or going to attend a classical music concert. Like Latin in school, we don’t teach children how to be musically literate and enjoy the wonders of Peter and the Wolf or Holst’s The Planets as a starting point on a life long journey of cultural enrichment. This enrichment is a unique inheritance of their Western civilisation unlike any other culture or society.

This isn’t an either/or argument i.e. less Taylor Swift and more Schubert. It’s a false choice.

Why limit your musical palate?

Is diversity the reason for decline of classical music?

No. Not in the way you might think.

In my humble opinion the decline of classical music in the concert hall has precious little to do with the controversial topic of diversity. Diversity is not the cause of it but a symptom of it.

Today's classical orchestras are quite diverse. Classical music will always be considered as stuffy museum music by the general population. Being sensitive to diversity of today's classical composers won't fix things.

Any classical composer writing music these days, regardless of ethnicity, gender or skin colour, is doomed to failure because of the economics of the business. So giving preference to today's composers by gender, skin colour or ethnicity won't help revive it.

Diversity within orchestras is wonderful - and I have seen some virtuoso performers across the globe, especially in Japan and China where they have a genuine love for classical music which is inspiring to witness. But ‘diversity’ within classical music itself is muddle headed.

'Diversity' is a concern of disintegrating societies in malaise that have lost contact with their heritage and identity.

The honest truth is that Western classical music was the creation of aristocratic Europe. It should not be forced into something it isn't. The foundation of classical music was created by White, European, males of a Christian background - after all classical music began in the church.

Without taking a thing away from some very talented and wondrously creative African, Asian and female composers, the music simply didn't include Africa and Asia - or America, for that matter! - as part of its origins.

It would be as if one were to insist that any forum that highlights the many fantastic forms of American music that was started by African-American people - Gospel, Ragtime, Jazz, Blues, Rock, Hip-Hop, Rap - should have to include a fair sampling of non-Blacks that contributed.

As for the dying of classical music, it is not dead or even on life support.

It has simply moved, though, from the church to the concert hall to electronic and digital media.

As far back as the 1960s, the pianist, Glenn Gould stopped touring and began recording exclusively in the studio. His final recording from the 1980s included his conducting debut (Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll"), and if not for his untimely death, his next step was to record piano concertos with himself as both conductor and soloist; able to use technology for the purpose of editing and dubbing every aspect to his own specifications.

People will continue to attend concerts. I try to attend when I can. Indeed not too far from my place of work I can attend lunch time recitals and concerts in an old church and it’s heavenly to feel uplifted to such sonorous heights.

But such is the pace of modern life it’s not always possible. But my thirst for live classical music means, like for many others, the technology has made it so much easier to enjoy what ever music you like without being economically and geographically inconvenienced.

I look at films (another love of mine) and accept that even this most modern of mediums is changing with the viewing habits of people through digital online technology. Going to the cinema is really going to see big blockbusters and watching your artsy niche films increasingly on laptops and phones through streaming services simply because of economics of the film industry.

To me not watching a film - any film - on the big screen loses not just the romance of the occasion but also the bonding of diverse people into one room. Going to the cinema was like a social glue to bond community of people who lived in the shared neighbourhood. It’s also changed the nature of film itself in the way we tell stories - think of the decline of episodic television to more serial arc based stories to - what we have now - binge watching series in one sitting.

Likewise the challenge for classical music is learning how to adapt with the times without compromising the rich tradition it carries....too much. How it continues to meet that challenge will be fascinating to watch.

Thanks for your question

#question #music #classical #concert #glen gould

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ashleyjouharphotowords · 5 years

Photo

In a revealing interview for the Image Source Picture Library, I talked to Miles Aldridge about his early influences, 90’s fashion photography and how at the moment of news-stand success he headed off in a radically different creative direction.

Miles Aldridge shoots sexy, glamorous women in opulent settings. But all is not what it seems in his pictures. Scratch the surface and a common thread runs through the imagery – the strange ominous unease of the dreamworld. Film-maker David Lynch wrote, “Miles sees a colour coordinated, graphically pure, hard-edged reality”. Artist Glenn O’Brien says Aldridge, “uses impeccable instinct in crafting something like ‘stills’ from the fractured narratives that we normally experience nocturnally and unconsciously.”

Aldridge talked to me about his influences and traced the rich visual journey he took from being a graphic design and illustration student, through music promos, to being a photographer who has shaped and stretched the idea of the fashion photograph.

Ashley Jouhar: What was your background to taking the kinds of photographs you take now and what was it that kick started your career in photography?

Miles Aldridge: Well, my father [Alan Aldridge] was a famous illustrator and art director so I grew up around quite surreal, psychedelic and sometimes shocking imagery – and it seemed clear to me I would go into the arts and follow my father. So I went to art school to study illustration, which was incredibly liberating – because I had been at Grammar School and none of my fellow students were interested in art. Being at Central St Martin’s around 1983 – surrounded by a lot of like-minded and talented people – the teachers, the studies and the classes were very good and I immersed myself in everything for the first year and then specialised in Graphic Design with an illustration bias.

Ashley Jouhar: So at that point you were exposing yourself to all the disciplines – life drawing, filmmaking, illustration, graphic design – the whole lot?

Miles Aldridge: I was also getting exposed to cinema, taking girlfriends on dates to see art movies, not blockbusters. I was seeing David Lynch films and it broadened my horizons immensely.

I did become an illustrator when I graduated from art school but I found it quite boring and I wasn’t anything like my father who was a sort of psychedelic whizz kid right in the middle of swinging London, working with everyone from David Bailey to The Stones and The Beatles. So he was really tapping into the zeitgeist. But I didn’t find the work very challenging and I was still very young so I started making enquiries about pop videos. It seemed to me that the film directors I liked were artists, packaging their thoughts and point of view of the world into hour and a half statements.

Ashley Jouhar: A little like you are now doing with your current imagery, except in a photograph?

Miles Aldridge: Yeah, but at that time I had no film training, apart from a couple of days at art so it was all quite new to me. But I bought a Super 8 camera and started shooting films. Then I bumped into Derek Jarman in Soho, who was often drinking tea in the same café I used to hang out in called Maison Bertaux. He was interested in me because I was a good-looking young man and I was interested in him because he was a famous film maker and so we had a few conversations. He was very enthusiastic and encouraging and through this naïve enthusiasm I started to make films. Another person who came into my life then was Sophie Muller, a well known video director who pretty well invented the form, shooting videos for The Eurythmics and many others.

Ashley Jouhar: MTV was exploding at this time so it was perfect timing for you, in the right place at the right time?

Miles Aldridge: Yeah, yeah, exactly and actually because of people like Derek Jarman and other like-minded artists were doing Super 8 presentations to music because of its relatively low cost it was very much the film medium for the 80s. You don’t need masses of finance to make a film on Super 8 – the idea is translated quickly to images. So I started making pop videos for a while.

Ashley Jouhar: Were you coming up with the concepts for these videos – were they very much ideas-driven shoots?

Miles Aldridge: Yes, very much so and I was good at coming up with the ideas but I wasn’t very good with the music! I would come up with an idea that might be loosely based on something from the universe of Hitchcock, Lynch or Godard and I was aware of cinematic tricks and conceits and would play with those. Like for instance, The Shining – I would do a pop video based on a long corridor with different weird things happening in different rooms but I didn’t really know how to put it all together with the edit. During this time I suppose I would have been known as a middling pop video director and therefore lived in a council flat, didn’t have any overheads as such so was very happy doing the odd pop video and hanging out with my girlfriend, who it transpired wanted to be a model. That’s when I took these photographs of her because she looked very much like the kind of girl of the moment – that sort of grungy, heroin chic sort of look of the time.

Ashley Jouhar: I remember it well – the bed-sits and anti-fashion poses.

Miles Aldridge: Yes, and the pictures of her were very well received at Vogue and they asked who had taken them and it was explained that it was this girl’s boyfriend. I was then called in to Vogue to meet them and I had this amazing realisation that instead of all this hard work involved in making videos – starting at five in the morning and ending at five in the morning, horrible food and no money to do anything, I could possibly become a fashion photographer.

Ashley Jouhar: So those original pictures, did you imbue them with something that we would recognise now in your work?

Miles Aldridge: No, I shot them all in black and white on Hampstead Heath on a Nikon and the film was dropped into Snappy Snaps… and picked up two hours later and pasted into her portfolio! They were really, to all intents and purposes, a boyfriend photographing his girlfriend. I mean she wasn’t styled and there was no hair and make up and she wasn’t trying to sell any fashion. Because that was what was happening with London photography then, when fashion photography almost slipped into Reportage.

Ashley Jouhar: Yes, it was very pared down compared to what had gone before.

Miles Aldridge: Yes, very much so and the heroes of that period were people like Robert Frank and Bruce Davidson and also Richard Avedon’s book ‘In the American West’ was kind of like a bible for that kind of styling.

There was this idea of real people rather than glamorous people being pushed to the forefront and being shown as something heroic and wonderful. So I moved from illustration to video to photography in the space of about six years, I think. I really enjoyed the photography and the early work was really about being locked in studios with very beautiful creatures and trying to think how to photograph them. I didn’t come with any technical knowledge – all I had was an eye that still serves me very well today and those pictures were almost a repetition of the boyfriend/girlfriend pictures earlier where in my imagination, these models who were now wearing fashion clothes and hair and make up were, for that six or seven hours in my studio, my girlfriend. Interestingly, when the hair and make-up and styling was being done and I wasn’t paying any attention at all, I left that up to them. In a way, I liked to rendezvous with the model on the white background and see her there for the first time with my camera.

Ashley Jouhar: So at this point your shoots were very spontaneous with what was happening, there were no storyboards planned out or themes?

Miles Aldridge: Yes, it was very spontaneous, it was about having a good time, listening to loud music and being swept up in the energy of a pre-9/11 fashion shoot and I mention 9/11 because after that, the whole world and especially fashion became much more gloomy and serious. Up until that point it was a big party. There was so much energy and money sloshing around and I enjoyed the decadence of it.

Ashley Jouhar: When did you start shooting in a more ‘David Lynch-ian’ way with these very considered, choreographed images and sets?

Miles Aldridge: Well, literally all I was shooting was white background pictures for magazines like W and British Vogue. Those pictures were about energy and shapes and in a way my talent was in trying to find graphic shapes on the flat two-dimensional page. I was successful with that kind of work straight away and sort of fell into it but at a certain point I looked at all this work and I remember I was at a magazine store in New York and saw a cover for W magazine, a cover for British Vogue and a cover for a magazine called Vibe – three white background covers, all by me. One could feel really good about oneself with that but for some reason, seeing them all there together I kind of loathed it and wondered where I’d got lost. Because back when I was an art student and even doing pop videos I was much more interested in darker and stranger things and the books I grew up with were books on Hieronymus Bosch and Breugel. The complete opposite of what I was producing, which I thought was trash. I felt really uncomfortable about that, even though my pockets were full of dollars.

Ashley Jouhar: So this was the turning point?

Miles Aldridge: I realised that when you get into a photo studio as a photographer, even if you said nothing and were dumb, the picture would still get taken because there is the momentum the stylist, the hair and make up artist and the model bring to the shoot that creates the energy for these pictures to occur. Instead of giving myself up to the madness and the freedom of the shoot, I wanted to put the brakes on it – to divert that energy and create a picture you really want to do in advance.

In part 2 Miles tells us how he creates the ‘fantastic’ images that have become his signature pieces…

#fashion photography #miles aldridge #vogue italia #british vogue #art photography #art #ashleyjouhar #pop art #david lynch

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buzzdixonwriter · 5 years

Text

The Rise Of Skywalker Review [SPOILERICIOUS]

=0=

I’m going to post all the SPOILER stuff way below in section 3, so as not to ruin anything for anybody who hasn’t seen the movie yet.

You’ll get plenty of warnings.

=1=

In my old age I’m starting to divide creative works into three groups: Good, bad, and not-so-good.

A good creative work is any where the strengths overwhelmingly outweigh the weaknesses; a bad one is the obverse.

A not-so-good work is one where the strengths and weaknesses balance each other out.

It’s the kind of a work that will doubtless please those audience members who really enjoy the strengths in it, and equally irritate those annoyed by the weaknesses.

In my estimation, a not-so-good work is one done with straight forward intent and as often as not, a fair degree of technical and aesthetic competency, but fails to jell as a cohesive whole.

No one need feel ashamed for enjoying a not-so-good work, and no one involved in the making of a not-so-good work should feel bad about their contribution (unless, of course, their contribution turns out to be one of the weaknesses that should have been avoided).

Theodore Sturgeon famously observed “90% of everything is crap.”

I think that’s a little harsh.

I agree with him that only 10% of anything is good, but think only 40% falls into the crap bin.

Most stuff falls in the 50% I call not-so-good.

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise Of Skywalker is in that 50%.

. . .

The good stuff is really good.

Elsewhere I’ve posted my enthusiasm for Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens and Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi hinge in no small part on just how emo Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) could get, and holy cow, does he ever deliver in The Rise Of Skywalker.

Easily my favorite parts of the picture.

Doesn’t really mesh with anything else in the movie but, hey, ya can’t have everything, right? (I’ll discuss his performance in a little more detail in section =3=.)

Other performances range from adequate to doing-the-best-they-can-with-the-material to okay-smartass-you-try-recreating-a-dead-actress-via-CGI.

The dialog in The Rise Of Skywalker is the worst of any film in the series, with the possible exception Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge Of The Sith, which I haven’t seen and have no intention of seeing (but more on that below…).

It’s not an attempt to depict characters talking, it’s a series of shouted declarative sentences.

Elsewhere I’ve referred to The Rise Of Skywalker as the best Jason Of Star Command episode ever made.

For those who don’t get the reference, Jason Of Star Command was a low budget albeit imaginative Saturday morning kid-vid Star Wars rip off by Filmation Studios.

To make sure the youngest kids in the audience understood what was going on, they tended to hammer home plot points repeatedly.

DRAGOS Jason! In just sixteen hours my space fleet will destroy Star Command!

STAR COMMAND Jason! Dragos is going to destroy us with his space fleet in just sixteen hours!

JASON Don’t worry, Star Command! I’ll stop Dragos from destroying you with his space fleet in sixteen hours.

NARRATOR (i.e., Norm Prescott) Jason has only sixteen hours to stop Dragos from destroying Star Command with his space fleet!

There is far too much of that in The Rise Of Skywalker.

Ten minutes into the movie, and there was already far too much of that…

The opening credit crawl reveals an off camera plot development that literally deserved an entire film of its own to fully explore.

There is no sustained coherent plot to The Rise Of Skywalker:

Well, we gotta do this,

now we gotta do that,

first we gotta find this thing,

then we gotta find that thing,

now I’m feeling blue,

now I’m gonna get encouraged,

etc., etc., and of course, etc.

Everything feel frenetic, not fast paced.

There are far too many scenes that exist just to sell action figures and toy vehicles.

There was a desire to tie off loose ends and say good-bye to favorite characters and that was a mistake.

It undercuts the urgency of the story (or rather, the desired urgency; the fact the film is called The Rise Of Skywalker means everybody in the freakin’ audience ALREADY KNOWS HOW THE DAMN THING IS GONNA END!

(This is not a problem unique to Star Wars. Gene Siskell famously upbraided Roger Ebert for spoiling the ending to the third Star Trek movie, to which Ebert retorted, “Oh, come on! They’re going to call a forty million dollar movie The Search For Spock and not find him?!?!?”)

There is one nice little breather scene (“little” only in screen time; visually it’s pretty big and impressive): The Festival of the Ancestors on the desert world Pasaana that gives a nice touch of exotic space opera flavor to the proceedings.

All of the Star Wars movies offer really great art direction and visual design, and The Rise Of Skywalker certainly delivers in that category.

Which makes the occasional mediocre special effects shots all the more obvious.

The Rise Of Skywalker has a few painfully obvious matte shots, a few shots obviously composed in post-production, and a few shots where the audience becomes aware the actors are performing in front of a greenscreen.

You can get away with mediocre visuals so long as there is consistency in their mediocrity.

If everything else consistently looks great, a so-so shot spoils the illusion; if everything consistently looks so-so, it’s simply part of the work’s look.

Indeed, you’re better off with consistently mediocre work highlighted by a few great shots than consistently great stuff undercut by a few mediocre ones.

Best thing about the movie is the complete lack of Jar Jar Binks.

=2=

Before diving deeper in The Rise Of Skywalker, let’s look at the series as a whole (just the numbered theatrical episodes, not standalone films, TV series, video games, comics, novels, etc.).

I’ve said the original Star Wars was the movie an entire generation had been waiting all their lives to see.

George Lucas wanted to do Flash Gordon but when Universal turned him down, created his own space opera.

Lucas, it needs be noted, is not a good writer.

Whatever visual talents he has, they don’t extend to telling a good story.

One can easily find early drafts of Star Wars online, and while they all share certain elements, they’re all pretty bad.

The development of Star Wars the movie grew organically with storyboard and production art, characters and incidents changing and evolving along the way.

It’s long been rumored that a more skilled writer than Lucas came in to do the final draft; one thing’s for sure, the shooting script is head and shoulders above the earlier drafts.

Star Wars the original Han-shoots-first-dammit theatrical release is very much a product of the 1970s.

20th Century Fox thought they had a good enough kiddee matinee movie for summer release; they expected their big sci-fi blockbuster of the year to be Damnation Alley.

Instead, they hit a nerve and found themselves with a blockbuster on their hands.

Lucas did show one great example of foresight: He trademarked all the names / characters / vehicles and held the licenses on them, not 20th Century Fox.

This gave him the war chest he needed to build the Lucasfilm empire.

And let’s give Lucas and his crew their due: They added immeasurably to the technical art of film making, as well as making several entertaining films.

What Lucas did not fully envision was how to mold his Star Wars material into a coherent and thematically cohesive saga.

He started out with grandiose plans -- four trilogies with a standalone film connecting each for a total of 15 movies -- but that gradually got whittled down to 12, then 9.

After Star Wars Episode VI: The Return Of The Jedi, Lucas put the Star Wars movie series on hold, waiting for film making technology to develop to the point where he could tell the stories the way he wanted to tell them.

Okay, fair enough.

But the problem is that while the film making technology improved, the technology of the Star Wars universe didn’t.

As I said, the original Star Wars is very much a 70s movie in taste / tone / style / sensibility.

While the designs look sufficiently sci-fi, they reflect robots and spacecraft designs of the 1970s -- in fact, even earlier in many cases.

That fit in with Lucas’ “used universe” look and the tag line “A long ago in a galaxy far, far away...”

But compare the original Star Wars with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Kubrick spent a lot of time researching where technology was heading.

Long before visual displays and vector graphics became commonplace in real world aircraft, he showed them being used in the future.

The first example of what we refer to today as a computer tablet appeared in 2001 as a throwaway background detail.

Kubrick’s next film was A Clockwork Orange and he successfully predicted punk culture a decade ahead of reality (his only mistake being the assumption white, not black, would be the base color).

Star Wars Eps I - III take place a generation before the original Star Wars movie.

Star Wars Eps VII - IX take place a generation after.

Name a two generation span since the start of the industrial age that is not marked by radical technological change that produces an ensuing change in the social order.

Now I grant you, the Star Wars universe isn’t trying to tell that kind of story, but the story it is telling is static.

Characters in The Rise Of Skywalker talk about cloning as if it were A Really Big Deal.

Cloning today is cutting edge bio-tech, to be sure, but it’s already common place.

It’s as if the Star Wars characters were getting worked up over steam engines.

One can intercut scenes from the movies and, unless one is a familiar with each movie, it’s impossible to tell one film from another.

Lucas’ financial success enabled him to issue edicts re Star Wars (and other Lucasfilm projects) that undercut the strengths of his projects.

Lucas is a technological guru and a savvy businessman, but he really struggles to tell a story.

Frankly, I think he would have been a better film maker if he’d spent a decade or so making American Graffiti scale movies, not space operas and epic fantasies and adventure movies.

His decision to make the original Star Wars the fourth episode in his saga and going back to start his story with his villain was fatally flawed.

I grant following the Skywalker saga from Anakin to Luke to Rey could work if it started with Anakin.

But what he did was the equivalent of the James Bond movies jumping back in time to follow the pre-Bond career of Ernst Stavo Blofeld.

(And the Bond movies, at least up until the Daniel Craig era, are all standalone films insofar as one does not have to see any of the previous films to understand and enjoy the one being watched, not does the sequence they’re viewed in matter. And the Craig films were conceived from the beginning as having a coherent overall arc, so in that case they are the exception to the rule.)

The joyous whiz-bang space opera of the original Star Wars got bogged down in a lot of meaningless politics and talks of trade treaties, none of which explained why anyone would want to conquer the universe in order to rule it as a decrepit, diseased dictator in a dark hole.

Look at Hitler and Stalin and Castro and Mao and the Kim family in North Korea.

These guys enjoyed themselves (well, Hitler did until things went south for him). They loved the attention and went around preening themselves in public.

The off screen Empire (and implied Emperor) of the original Star Wars served that film well: It was a story about a tactical conflict, not a treatise on the philosophy of governance.

Lucas’ universe does not make sense even in its own context.

And because of that, it becomes harder and harder to fully engage with it.

A sci-fi movie doesn’t have to explain everything, but it has to at least imply there is an underlying order that links up.

Lucas began subverting his own universe almost immediately.

The Force was originally presented as a spiritual discipline that any sufficiently dedicated intelligent being could gain access to. (Robots seem to be specifically excluded from The Force, implying it needs a biological connection. But that would seem to exclude intelligences that may not be organic in the commonly accepted sense of the word, which means such beings cannot appear in the Star Wars universe, which means…well, I digress…)

That was a big hunk of the original Star Wars’ appeal, the thought that literally anybody could become a Jedi if they so desired.

It speaks to a religious bent in audiences from many different cultures around the world, and it offers up an egalitarian hope that allows everyone access to the Star Wars fantasy (“fantasy” in this context meaning the shared ideal).

But already in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back Lucas began betraying his original concept, sowing the seeds for self-serving deception and innate superiority as endemic in The Force.

By the time he got around to Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Lucas abandoned the hope established in the original Star Wars movie.

Now one has to be a special somebody, not just dedicated.

Mind you, that sort of story has its adherents, too.

Way back in the 1940s sci-fi fans were saying “Fans are slans” in order to claim superiority over “mundanes”. Today many Harry Potter fans like to think of themselves as inherently superior to “Muggles”.

It’s a very appealing idea, so appealing that the United States of America is based on it, the assumption being that white people are endowed with more blessings -- and therefore more rights -- than non-white people (add force multipliers such as “rich” / “male” / “Christian” / “straight” and you get to lord it over everybody).

Lucas with his stupid midichlorians robbed audiences of their healthy egalitarian fantasy and replaced it with a far more toxic elitism.

It appeals to the narcissistic stain in the human soul, and encourages dominance and bullying and cruelty and harm as a result.

It’s an elitism that requires a technologically and sociologically stagnant society, one where clones and robots and slaves can all co-exist and nobody points out they are all essentially the same thing.

A progressive society -- and here I use “progressive” strictly in a scientific and technological sense (though as stated above, advances in scientific fields invariably lead to changes elsewhere) -- does not let such conditions exist unchanged for generations.

As technology changes and improves, the culture/s around it change (and hopefully improve, too).

As I mentioned above, I’ve never seen Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith.

My reason for not seeing it? Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones.

Little Anakin Skywalker and his mom are slaves in The Phantom Menace.

He saves the Jedis and Princess Padame’s collective asses in that movie.

Okay, you’d think at the end of the movie that Padame would hand Qui-gon her ATM card and say, “Here, go back to Tatooine and bail the kid’s mom out. He did a solid for us, it’s the least we can do for him.”

No, they leave her there because there is no desire to change the underlying social order of their universe.

There can be no changes in Lucas’ bleak, barren moral universe.

There can be no help, no hope, no improvement.

When an edict is issue -- be it Jedi council or Emperor (or president of Lucasfilm) -- it is to be obeyed without question or pause.

Daring to say one can change their status -- change their destiny -- results in tragedy (and ironically, proof that is their destiny).

It’s dismaying enough that a large number of people enjoy cosplaying Star Wars villains, especially storm troopers, as that seems to indicate they’re missing the whole point of why the rebels were striving against the Empire in the first place.

Originally that could be written off as (at best) just enjoying the cool costumes and props or (at worst) finding an excuse for bad behavior (i.e., “I vuz only followink orders”).

But Lucas’ tacitly endorsing a sense of innate superiority pretty much destroys everything about The Force that the original Star Wars audience found enlightening and ennobling.

The Star Wars universe has become at its core a very ugly thing, and The Rise Of Skywalker doesn’t really clean it up.

SPOILERS ahead.

=3=

Seriously, SPOILERS follow.

Holy crap, The Rise Of Skywalker is a damn mess.

Nice eye candy, but a mess.

It pretty much undoes everything good in the previous two episodes.

I’m glad it’s the “official” end of the original saga because now I never need to see another Star Wars movie ever again.

(Oh, I’ll keep my DVD of the original Star Wars and if I find Solo in a bargain bin somewhere I might pick that up, but as far as the rest of Star Wars goes, I am D.O.N.E.)

The series stopped making sense long ago, so I’m really in no mood to analyze why nothing links up or really works.

It’s full of absurd, stupid ideas, such as space barbarians galloping across the deck of a star destroyed on their space horsies.

The whole back and forth between among Palpatine / Kylo / Rey goes on for two long. If hating somebody is bad because it sucks you over to the Dark Side, then why doesn’t somebody start building Terminators that can track down beings with midichlorians and kill them? (They’ve got the technology to detect midichlorians, that’s canon.)

It’s not anywhere near a good movie. It’s not as bad as George Lucas’ Star Wars Episodes I - III, but it’s clearly the worst of the last trilogy.

The scene where Rey gets off camera encouragement from all the dead Jedi? It seemed awfully familiar to me, as if the writers consciously or unconsciously remembered the John Wilkes Booth / Lee Harvey Oswald scene in Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins where all the presidential assassins and would-be assassins past and future encourage him to plug Kennedy.

Not what I want in a Star Wars movie.

I think we may be seeing the end of Star Wars. It’s been crammed down our throats for too long. I’m aware of The Mandalorian series and how insanely popular it is, but y’know, sooner or later every pop culture craze dies out.

Star Wars has nowhere to go. Star Trek is hemmed in, too, but nowhere nearly as bad as Star Wars.

We’re about to enter a generational shift in America, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a badly dated 1970s sci-fi concept fails to make the cut.

It ends on a frustrating note, taking much too long to come to a close, far too much self-congratulatory bullshit, and the deliberate planting of clues for a future set of sequels should the Mouse start jonesin’ for that sweet, sweet Star Wars franchise money fix.

It’s a really bad script, and dragging Carrie Fisher’s digitally reanimated corpse into it and then killing her off by suicide is a damned stupid / offensive idea.

Mark Hamill’s ghost walking out of the flames of Jedi hell (thank you for that analogy, David Brin)? Wow, who didn’t see that one marching down the avenue?

Harrison Ford coming back as a memory / hallucination to tell Kylo to do the right thing? Skrue dat noiz.

(Though I have to say Kylo Ren is the best thing about the movie and his character turn parallels both Luke’s and Vader’s in The Return Of The Jedi only his is much more believable and poignant so dammit, Disney, you could have done a much better job with this movie than you did.)

The plot and pacing is straight out of a video game. First do this, then do that, now ya gotta do another thing -- feh!

And unless I misheard the dialog, this whole film supposedly takes place over a span of sixteen hours!!!

They visit a half dozen worlds, crash and repair spaceships, go undercover, get captured and escape, fight duels to the deal -- all in sixteen hours?!?!?

Yeesh.

And I’ll say this, the last line is wrong wrong WRONG.

If the Star Wars saga has taught us anything, it’s that Force users are a threat to everything.

They should be eliminated for the good of the universe.

Rey shouldn’t have buried the Skywalker lightsabers.

She should have destroyed them -- and the one she made, and any others she found lying around.

And when she’s asked at the very end what her name is, the answer should have been: “Rey…just Rey.”

I know I put The Rise Of Skywalker in the not-so-good bin, but truth be told, that’s the nostalgia talking; it’s only a eyelash away from being bad.

The whole epic saga is a failure as far as I’m concerned. One and done is the way to go; the moment it started making money as a toy franchise it went south.

#sci-fi #Star Wars #The Rise Of Skywalker #Kylo Ren #The Force #movies

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elareine · 5 years

Text

In the shallows

Chapters: 1/6 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, some swearing Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd Characters: Tim Drake, Donna Troy Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Celebrity, NO CAPES, Identity Porn, Romantic Comedy, Drama & Romance, Texting, Online Dating AO3: /18803473

Summary: Jason Todd is a rock star... and an asshole. Dick Grayson has to do a movie with him. Luckily, there's this cute guy he's started texting recently.

Jason Todd was a rock star.

Yeah, exactly. Now, Dick had worked with some… less than talented people on set before. He’d made his debut in dance movies, for God’s sake, of course not everyone had been ready to play Hamlet.

But a total newbie? Never been on stage or on a movie set before? Dick really wished the producers had consulted him about that before making the decision. They hadn’t even done a chemistry test.

Okay, sure, it was a blockbuster movie about an interracial gay couple. Funding wouldn’t come easy. If the names ‘Richard Grayson’ and ‘Jason Todd’ had to be attached to make the money happen, they would be. And Dick knew Tim Drake, the executive producer, well enough to trust him with this. Tim wouldn’t have cast Jason if he thought it’d be a total shit show.

The thing was - the script was beautiful. The writers had really poured their hearts into it, and it showed. Dick had almost forgotten to read it from an actor’s perspective, he’d been so engrossed. By the end, blinking away tears, he had texted his agent that he would do it before going on a run to shake some of the heaviness away.

It wasn’t like there was a sad ending, exactly. Dick wouldn’t have taken anything with a ‘bury your gays’ feel to it. It was just… it made him feel a lot, this script.

He wanted to do it justice. Hopefully, Jason Todd wouldn’t be the one to drag them all down.

Dick sighed and looked at the script in front of him again. Specifically, at the part marked: ‘Vano: [singing]…’

The other worry he had was quite the opposite from his first. At least Jason Todd didn’t have to worry about singing. Dick had heard his songs as much as anyone could without actively seeking them out, which was to say all the time and everywhere. Jason had been around for years at this point; it didn’t seem likely that his popularity would be abating any time soon.

(When he wasn’t busy critiquing Jason’s casting, Dick could freely admit that his songs were pretty great. They always gave him that on-the-road-looking-for-freedom feeling that he loved. He might be following Jason on Spotify, even, but shush.)

Dick, however… well. He’d been taking singing lessons ever since he’d moved into closer consideration for this role. His vocal coach attested him with enough skills for the songs he’d seen so far. He’d gotten the accent of his character down to pat, too, even when singing and screaming. Still, compared to Jason Todd…

And they would be singing duets.

Giving up on his concentration for the evening, Dick decided to just go for a run. He was already pretty sure he wouldn’t sleep tonight, but exhaustion might help.

It didn’t really. Dick slept like shit and then had to deal with the worst traffic he’d ever seen (and he’d lived in New York for years). He barely made it in time. Tim was already waiting for him outside the lot. That was a sure sign he was getting ready to herd Dick exactly where he needed to be as quickly as possible.

Tim greeted him with a friendly wave. “Hi, Dick, welcome on set! Kate is over at the sound studio, but she’ll be here any minute to start the read-through.”

“Thanks, Tim. Good to see you.” Dick refrained from hugging him only because he knew the younger man preferred it that way on set. “Sorry, I wanted to be here early. I seriously underestimated LA traffic.”

“Yes, I expected that. Just plan in enough time from now on, okay?”

“Of course, Tim.”

Tim sighed. “We’ll see, I guess.”

They entered the building together. Tim guided him towards a smaller meeting room. Jason Todd was already there, sitting in the small circle of chairs. There would be a full cast reading tomorrow; today it was pretty much only Kate, Jason and Dick with the producers.

Dick’s first thought was that he hadn’t expected Jason to look so… soft. He was used to the torn jeans and t-shirt look he rocked in his videos. The knitted sweater he was wearing didn’t exactly fit that image.

The smirk on his face, however, did.

Dick mentally steeled himself. Here we go. He held out his hand. “Hi, Jason. Nice to finally meet you.”

“Hi, Dick.” Jason’s handshake was firm without being too crushing. “Sorry we couldn’t meet up before. I’m pretty literally just coming back from a World Tour.”

Oh, great. Bragging.

“No worries. It’s good to get this started now.” He looked pointedly at the script in Jason’s hand. If Jason had just been on a world tour… “Did you get any time to prepare?”

“I’ll know my lines if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“It’s kind of about more than that.” Okay, that came out catty. “Like, the music, for example.”

Jason seemed to perk up at that. “Oh, yeah, that’s done. I did send the tapes of some suggestions to Kate. But we’ll workshop together, see what you think first.”

Dick would’ve preferred it if Jason had just presented him with finished sheet music and a tape he could imitate, honestly. He had no idea if he had any musical input to offer. And how did you workshop music, anyway? He’d done that with scenes before (though Kate wasn’t the type to welcome a lot of input from her actors beforehand), even settings, but music?

“Sure. Yeah. Let’s do that.” He tried to smile. “I’m looking forward to hearing what you came up with.”

It was probably a good thing Kate entered the room at that moment, introducing herself again and bidding them to start the read-through.

Dick usually lost himself in a performance pretty easily. Even in a read-through, it only meant that he focused even more on letting every emotion shine through his voice.

Vano was pretty unlike Dick himself. Sensitive, shy, in desperate need of approval (okay, that one Dick could relate to) and unsure. Dick found it interesting how his character was juxtaposed with his actions. Vano was so, so afraid; yet he let himself be swept up in a whirlwind romance and even ended up the one pursuing Jason’s character when everything seemed to fall apart. His courage, in the end, was as quiet as it was present. Dick was determined to do him right.

So he concentrated on developing his voice further. He wanted it to be recognisably different from Jason’s character, but also harmonious.

Still, he couldn’t help but judge Jason’s performance.

He wasn’t bad. Honestly, this wasn’t a great script for a read-through - a lot of stuff went unsaid between the two main characters. So a little wooden-ness was expected. Dick was a bit annoyed at the way he stumbled over lines sometimes as if he was reading them for the first time, though. Unprepared partners were the worst.

Afterwards, Kate didn’t look happy. Her first critique was voluminous, including more background notes on their characters and a very detailed rundown of what had sucked about their dialogue. Ah, well. Dick didn’t mind. She wasn’t known to be a coddler.

She complimented Dick on his excellent accent, though. He thought Jason (who spoke in his own accent, or at least the one he always used in interviews and stuff) looked a bit sour at that, which pissed Dick off. He’d worked hard for this, okay. He was actually a trained and studied actor, despite what some people might think.

It also made him wary of the months ahead. Jealousy on set wasn’t cool, even if it was purely professional.

“Tomorrow we’ll go through the script scene by scene and talk through your suggestions. Is there anything fundamental you’d like to say now?” Kate asked.

Dick shook his head. This was honestly one of the best scripts he’d ever read, and he trusted her direction fully. Jason seemed to hesitate, but then he followed suit.

Dick spent some time after talking with some of the crew members that were setting up the sets. He knew some of them from previous movie sets - Tim liked to reward good work with more, better-paid work - and was glad to chit-chat about their careers and families.

Still, Jason seemed to take his time, too. They arrived at the parking lot at about the same time.

“Can I give you a ride?” Dick offered when he noted that Jason was looking a bit lost.

“I’m actually here on my bike,” Jason said, pointing at a frankly gorgeous machine, black, sleek and utterly pretentious.

Dick mentally snorted. Of course he was. Rock star and all that

His own family sized van didn’t match up to that, but honestly, who cared.

“Okay. See you tomorrow, then.”

Jason didn’t even say goodbye, just waved. Dick was tired of him already.

When he entered the house he’d rented for the year, Dick headed straight for his studio and dropped down onto the mat. He needed a proper stretching after today and couldn’t quite face this house yet.

Mostly he was happy with it. It was spacious, including his own dance studio and a pool, and not too far away from the Wayne Brothers lot, but he was able to keep it up without no personnel beyond a cleaner and the occasional garden hand.

Days like these, it was a bit… lonely.

He would have been better off staying with his friend Donna Troy. She’d offered, after all. Dick had thought he would need some quiet to focus on this part, not to mention a room where he could practice his singing parts without annoying the shit out of everyone.

It was just that he wasn’t made for the quiet. His head got too loud when he wasn’t exercising. Usually, he filled that space by concentrating on his current role; he wasn’t precisely method but slipping into someone else’s headspace had always come easy to him. Today, though, that was exactly what he wanted to get away from.

He briefly toyed with the idea of going out and picking someone up. Getting laid worked better than pretty much anything else for him.

Except that wasn’t exactly what he wanted, either.

Look. It wasn’t as if Dick had problems meeting people. The opposite, really. Dick knew he had a good body, okay, and he was charming enough.

He wanted something else, though. He wanted to get to know someone without them already knowing (or thinking they knew) everything about him. He wanted to be sure someone actually liked him for himself. He wanted someone to call in the evenings when he came home from set. Someone to come home to.

Dick sighed and re-arranged his limbs into a backstretch.

People wished for this kind of things all the time. He was just being silly. His mother would’ve straight up laughed at him if he went to her complaining about the drawbacks of fame, a profession he loved and obscene amounts of money.

Dropping his hips open and leaning into that delicious burn, he took out his phone and texted Donna: Going out and getting laid, yes or no? Any bar tips?

The answer was immediate.

Donna: Honey just use tinder like the rest of us

…Why not.

Donna: That was a joke.

Donna: But go ahead I guess.

Thinking about it, Dick finished his routine and headed upstairs to change into some comfy sweats, then back down to the kitchen. A bowl of cereal wasn’t exactly a glamorous meal for a movie star - but neither were Dick’s cooking skills.

Grabbing a beer, he plopped down on his couch and gave in. At least the tinder app was free on the app store. Going through the set-up motions, he hit the next snag, though.

What do I use as a profile picture??? I can’t show my face on this, can I?

Donna: Use your abs

Donna: no wait

Donna: Your butt

Donna: Or maybe that’s too recognisable. Abs it is.

Dick chuckled.

…Thanks I think.

For a second he considered just cutting something out of a promo pic or one of his dozens of semi-nude photoshoots, but who the fuck knew how well Google would be able to match these up. Dick wasn’t going to risk the headline ‘Actor famous for starring in romances is looking for hook-up on tinder’ (though of course TMZ would be far pithier than that) just for his vanity.

Though he did find some shots that hadn’t ever been released and cropped his face out of one of these. That would do. As for his username… he went with the hero of the first movie he’d ever starred in and combined that with his year of birth once the system informed him the name was taken.

After a brief hesitation, he set his sexual preferences to ‘all genders’.

Finally, everything was set up. Dick settled down to check out some hot singles in his area.

Sadly, the selection wasn’t that great. Especially with the dudes. Dick was sure that about half of them were either a decade older or younger than they pretended to be. The women were clearly better at taking selfies, too.

It was possibly the wrong time to be picky. Dick wasn’t usually - a good smile was pretty much all it took on a good day. But hey, he had just spent the day in the company of the hottest rock star the 21st century had produced so far. Every mortal would have difficulty competing with that.

(Not with Jason’s personality though. Easily bottom 20% material there. Urgh. Dick was trying to forget about that.)

After that thought, he swiped right a few times. So far, no one had matched with him, but that was fine. He had just signed up, after all.

Then, finally, came a pic that stood out.

Funnily enough, this profile pic was as profile-less as Dick’s. All it showed was a bare back. It was mirror shot, probably, but with none of the glariness of the other pictures. The guy’s skin was almost as tanned as Dick’s, but what caught his eyes was the sheer endless mass of muscles it stretched across.

Dick swiped right.

A message appeared on the screen. ‘You matched with Rock_n_Rumble, 29’.

He switched apps and texted Donna again: There’s a cute guy! We matched! But I can’t just go meet up with him, can I? Wally would kill me

Donna: you genuinely just thought of that???

Yes^^’

Donna: Stop trying to make manga emojis happen again, Dick

Donna: Just… talk to him, flirt a bit; maybe it’ll be ok

Donna: This is LA after all

Donna: Or he’ll just send you a dick pic

Donna: I do not want to know if either of these possibilities occurs.

I will describe everything that happens in explicit, excruciating detail.

Dick switched back to tinder and pressed ‘OK’. A chatroom opened. He stared at the entry field for a long second, pondering how to start the conversation. He’d never felt the need for chat up lines before. Honesty and friendliness had always worked best for him. Hopefully, that would translate over into the Internet.

Nightwing86: Hi

Rock_n_Rumble: Hi.

This was where Dick would usually make a comment about the venue they were at or the way the other person looked, but… how did you compliment someone’s bare back without sounding like a total creep?

As he watched the seconds tick by without either of them writing anything, he realised that oh. Rock_n_Rumble wasn’t exactly in a better situation. Oh well, there was nothing for it then.

Nightwing86: With a body like that - what on Earth are you doing on this site?

Rock_n_Rumble: Shouldn’t I ask you the same thing?

Rock_n_Rumble: Musician, ex-addict, grew up in New York - and also shit at flirting, in case you didn’t notice. Should I continue with that list?

Nightwing86: Eh, you’re doing fine.

He was. Dick kinda dug the self-deprecating sarcasm. And at least he had something to work with now.

Nightwing86: Musician?

Rock_n_Rumble: I’m a guitarist

Nightwing86: Oh, you’re in a band?

Rock_n_Rumble: Kind of

Rock_n_Rumble: Nothing fixed, but I go on tour a lot. Weird staying in one place for work right now

He must be recording an album then. Considering that good guitarists in LA were like sand at a beach, Dick mentally re-evaluated the fame level of his conversation partner.

Nightwing86: I get that; I travel for work a lot too

Rock_n_Rumble: What do you do?

Dick considered lying, but honestly, what was the point? And anyway, they were in LA. There were thousands of people calling themselves actors here.

Nightwing86: I’m an actor.

Rock_n_Rumble: oh cool. Film or theatre?

Nightwing86: Mostly film these days. Was up on stage in NY for a bit, kinda miss it.

Rock_n_Rumble: Oh really? When? Might’ve seen you, I went to Broadway a lot once I could afford it.

Nightwing86: its been a while, 2004-2006

That information wouldn’t give him away. Again, tons of people tried to make it on Broadway. Still, maybe he should address the fact that he wasn’t ready to talk about who he was.

Rock_n_Rumble: So I notice neither of us is forthcoming about names and identifying information.

Rock_n_Rumble: Proposal: We stay anonymous for now, see how we get along, decide if we want to actually meet up later.

Nightwing86: oh thank god

Nightwing86: yeah, that would be great. I don’t like lying, but coming out to a stranger isn’t…

Rock_n_Rumble: same. Like, I’m technically out, but with the industry being what it is, the gossip isn’t fun.

Nightwing86: How does being ‘technically out’ work? All I ever get is ‘if you so much as breathe into the direction of someone who isn’t a cis woman we’ll kill you’

Rock_n_Rumble: It’s called ‘being a shit liar’.

Rock_n_Rumble: Also contrary enough that management knows that my reaction to being told that would probably result in me sucking a dick on stage.

Dick laughed.

Nightwing86: Now that is a mental image to take to bed with.

Rock_n_Rumble: I like that we’ve been chatting for ten minutes and I’ve already got a kink noted down.

Nightwing86: You remember you’re talking to an actor, right? Pretty sure we’re 85% exhibitionists.

Rock_n_Rumble: …okay, that’s a fair point.

Rock_n_Rumble: Still noting it down, though.

Nightwing86: Please tell me you’re not literally doing that.

Rock_n_Rumble: Maybe.

Rock_n_Rumble: Look, you want to exchange numbers? I’m not going to stay on this platform, I think.

Nightwing86: Aww, am I enough for you?

Nightwing86: 344-394-2222. Do me a favour and don’t pass that on.

Rock_n_Rumble: Promise. I’ll text you, just one sec.

Barely a few seconds later, a WhatsApp message popped up: Hi it’s Rock_n_Rumble. Thought this might work out better than text if you’re travelling a lot, too.

After some consideration, Dick saved the contact as ‘R_n_R’. The consideration was mostly about adding a butt or shoulder emoji to it, but he decided to be classy instead.

Out of curiosity, he checked out the WhatsApp profile of the other guy. Sadly, the pic was of a bright red guitar. His own was of the bird plushie that had accompanied him through his childhood and ever since, though, so he probably shouldn’t complain.

Hi again. Good thinking.

R_n_R: Oh good, it’s you and not someone completely unsuspecting.

R_n_R: So what are you up to? Apart from tindering, obviously.

Trying to decide if I want to watch something. Any Netflix recs?

Dick later mentally congratulated himself, because that question started a conversation that lasted for at least half an hour. Their taste didn’t seem too different, though Dick kinda had to snort when R_n_R recommended some of his own movies to him. In the end, they settled on ‘Luther’, because Idris Elba and murder. How exactly ‘recommend me a movie’ had turned into ‘let’s watch this series at the same time and shoot the shit over text’, Dick wasn’t sure, but it was pretty fun.

So fun, actually, that it took a text from Donna to remind him how much time had passed.

Donna: So how was it? Don’t leave me hanging, bird-boy.

I’m getting rid of tinder. All I got were three dick pics and two girls accusing me of catfishing them using Dick Grayson’s photos. Another girl explained to me that headless pics usually mean someone is married or in a relationship and doesn’t want their significant other to see. She called me an asshole for that, that’s why she even swiped right. Then she blocked me.

And if Dick was honest… he kinda liked the thought of trying this with Rock_n_Rumble, and Rock_n_Rumble only. The first person he’d talked to on there. The only one he connected to, even if only on a superficial level so far.

(Yes, he had screenshotted and saved that picture. Whatever.)

Donna: One gender clearly came out ahead in this.

And the cute guy is still chatting with me. We’re keeping it anon for now though. It’s been an hour and no sex talk, so I guess he’s legit.

Donna: facepalm Dick, do you ever consider your life might’ve turned into a romantic comedy?

We’re just talking.

Donna: Right. Well, I’ll leave you to do that. Good night, Dick. Have fun.

#jaydick #jason todd #dick grayson #fanfic #elareine writes #in the shallows #dc

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murfpersonalblog · 5 years

Video

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The 7 Greatest Heroes of Greek Mythology - Mythological Curiosities - See U in History

Heracles of Thebes

Achilles of Thessaly

Odysseus of Ithaca

Theseus of Athens

Perseus of Argos

Jason of Thessaly

Bellerophon of Corinth

_________________________________________________________

Cool video, but my Heroes list is very different. They’re all amazing, or they wouldn’t be heroes, but IMO the most impressive heroes are the ones who persevered despite a series of what would otherwise be insurmountable odds. Their greatness is not just due to their general popularity, but the greatness of the obstacles they overcame. You have to beat the best to be the best.

So my TOP TEN Greek Heroes list is:

Heracles of Thebes

Odysseus of Ithaca

Jason of Thessaly

Cadmus of Thebes

Perseus of Argos

Theseus of Athens

Diomedes of Argos

Honorable Mention: Bellerophon of Corinth

Honorable Mention: Achilles of Thessaly

Honorable Mention: Atalanta of Arcadia

1) HERACLES: because obviously. Son of Zeus, strongest man alive, he bested the 10 (or 12) Labors, plus his 9 Minor Labors, his numerous feats with the Argonauts, his critical role in winning the Gigantomachia on Mt Olympus, freeing Prometheus, rescuing Theseus, fathering a effton of babies, etc etc. He was literally worshiped as a god, one of the only Greek heroes to live on Mt. Olympus after his death. Even Hera had to back down and respect his gangsta. #Iconic #Legendary #YourFaveCouldNever

Hercules sets the bar for the 4/4 main criteria for what makes MY IDEAL top-tier Greek mythological hero:

Monsters: Defeating mythic creatures/beings on epic adventures

Underworld: Going to Hades and back

God-Tier: Divine patronage/assistance, lineage, apotheosis, etc

Legacy: Founding cities, dynasties, etc

2) ODYSSEUS: smartest Greek hero EVER, and biggest liar/trickster. Odysseus’ adventures were OP. Despite not even being a demigod, just a mortal man (blessed by Athena but cursed by Poseidon), he still survived the entire Trojan War, Scylla & Charybdis, the sirens, the Lotus Eaters, Polyphemus the Cyclops, Circe, the Laestrygonians, and numerous shipwrecks & storms; went to Hades and lived; got shapeshifted into an old man; and still reclaimed his place as king of Ithaca by taking out all of Penelope's suitors cuz he’s a #BAMF archer and warrior, too. Odysseus also has the 4th highest kill count in the Iliad (after Patroclus, Diomedes, and Achilles). It took 20 years, and he lost everything but his life & his wits, but he made it home. (4/4)

3) JASON: Leader of the Argonauts, the most boss collection of heroes ever -- Hercules, the Gemini Twins, Orpheus, Nestor, Pelops, Meleager, Theseus, Autolycus, Atalanta*, Peleus, etc. -- #SquadGoals. Their adventures together are literally the stuff of legend -- the Crashing Rocks, fought harpies, sirens, giants, fire-breathing bulls, Talos the automaton, AND the Colchis Dragon guarding the Golden Fleece (and an army of Spartoi, sown dragon-teeth -- see Cadmus). Jason survived it all, and his travels and feats were effing impressive, designed explicitly cuz King Pelias KNEW finding the Golden Fleece was 100% impossible -- but Jason beat the odds and did it anyway.

Jason was a mortal man, blessed by Hera, and husband of the sorceress Medea. #JusticeForMedea, Jason did her dirty, ditching her for some rando chick (Hera’s classic trigger). Hera renounced Jason cuz he broke his wedding vows to Medea, and Hera’s sacred stern on the Argo brained him to death (AKA: Eff your heroics, if you’re a scrub). One of his & Medea’s sons, Thessalus, managed to escape Medea's carnage, and Jason’s kingdom of Thessaly gets its name from him (or one of Heracles’ sons of the same name, depending on your source) . (3/4)

4) CADMUS: the very FIRST Greek hero, founder of Thebes, brother of Europa, defeater of the Ismenian Dragon, sower of the Spartoi (dragon teeth warriors), ancestor of Dionysus. I am super biased when it comes to dragons and dragon-slayers (Hercules, Jason, Cadmus). A mortal man from Phoenicia, Cadmus was blessed by Athena, favored by the other gods, but was cursed by Ares for killing the Ismenian Dragon (Ares son), and depending on the source was killed or turned into a snake, etc.

Jason benefited entirely from knowing what Cadmus did before with the Dragon and Spartoi. But I rank Jason higher than Cadmus, because although Cadmus killed a dragon first, and adventured before ALL of the other Greek heroes (Heracles included), he did relatively less than they did. Heroes (and their storytellers) were all trying to one-up the feats of the heroes that came before them, so Cadmus’ bar naturally lowers in light of that. But IMO I still see Cadmus as a more impressive hero than some others, because Cadmus set the bar for Heracles, Jason, Odysseus, everybody. Cadmus 👏 Did 👏 It 👏 FIRST.👏 (3/4)

5) PERSEUS: Son of Zeus and a mortal woman; slayer of Medusa the Gorgon and Cetus the Sea Monster; founder of the Myceneans; ancestor (and half-brother) of Hercules. Out of the pre-Heraclidean heroes (Cadmus, Perseus, Aeacus, Bellerophon, Pelops & Oenomaus, Oedipus) Perseus’ adventures were the scariest, IMO. The Graeae, the Gorgons, AND Cetus? Yikes. However, Perseus only managed to kill Medusa cuz she was asleep the whole time. All those depictions of him facing off against her in some thrilling battle? Pop culture fabrication -- it never happened, he crept up on her like a ninja. (#JusticeForMedusa) And thanks to the frikkin Renaissance, people think Perseus tamed Pegasus, which he never did either, that was Bellerophon vs the Chimera.

Still, he’s awesome. On top of his #Iconic armor set (sword, helm of invisibility & winged sandals), Perseus has a lot of similarities with Hermes (god of, amongst other things, thieves and liars), cuz his opponents were literally impossible for mortals to face otherwise. Perseus needed all of those sneaky wiles to steal the Graeae’s eye, and sneak past the other Gorgons, and nab Medusa, run off with her head without the other Gorgons tearing him to shreds, and make it back home. But he only managed to kill Cetus & rescue Andromeda & reclaim his birthright as King of Argos because he had Medusa’s head.

So...cool adventures, great story, sweetest god-tier gear EVER (#Deus ExMachinaRealness), and really impressive monsters. (3/4) (Perseus never went to Hades & back, but some sources interpret the Cave of the Gorgons, Graeae or both as a chthonic journey, too.)

6) THESEUS: Son of Poseidon and a mortal woman (his step-father’s King Aegeus, whom the Aegean Sea’s named after -- a really sad story that’s Theseus’ fault), Theseus is the founder of Athens & the Acropolis, and slayer of the Minotaur. (3/4) But I have to explain a few things:

Monsters: IMO beating the Minotaur is Theseus’ most impressive feat. That was a legit monster. Theseus also caught & sacrificed the Cretan/Marathonian Boar (sire of the Minotaur), and killed the man-eating Crommyonian Sow. But compared to Dragons & Gorgons (asleep or not), IMO I can’t rank Theseus’ defeat of the Minotaur over heroes who killed a lot more than that. According to Ovid, Theseus also slayed the Centaur King Eurytion, who started the Centauromachia vs the Lapiths, but AFAIK he’s the only one who says so. Theseus also went on many adventures, slaying bandits and pacifying barbarians in his 6 Labors, which established Theseus as an official Athenian folk hero well before his battle in the Labyrinth. But again, I’m can’t rank bandits over an army of draconic spartoi.

Hades: Theseus technically gets (4/4) on my criteria, but I deducted that point cuz he only hit it just barely. By the skin of his butt-cheeks. LITERALLY. Theseus’ jaunt to Hades was one of the BALLSIEST examples of hubris and straight up idiocy in all of Greek mythology, IMO. Theseus decided that being the wingman in his BFF Pirithous’ harebrained plan to kidnap Persephone for a bride was a good idea. O_O The only reason Theseus made it out alive (spoiler: Pirithous did not) is cuz Heracles RIPPED Theseus off his seat, allowing Hades to get his literal POUND OF FLESH from Theseus’ arse in appeasement. That was not heroic on Theseus’ part at all; he was crying like a baby the entire time, TRAPPED in Hades for MONTHS until HERACLES happened to go there to collect Cerberus. POINT DEDUCTED! #sorryboutit

7) DIOMEDES: Diomedes 👏 Gets 👏 NO 👏 Respect 👏 . Omg, where is the Hollywood blockbuster featuring MY BOY? Other than Heracles, name another Greek hero who fought against not one but TWO OLYMPIAN GODS and WON? O_O Diomedes, a mortal man, King of Argos and founder of several Italian cities, was a hero of the Trojan War. After Patroclus, Diomedes has the 2nd highest kill count in the Iliad. He managed to wound Aphrodite & her son Aeneas at Troy, AND left Ares -- THE God of WAR -- screaming & hollering like a toddler with a tantrum when Diomedes & Athena wounded him, making Ares retreat from the battlefield like a wuss. Ares, y’all. ARES. Diomedes didn’t KILL any gods, no, but he’s still thebomb.com.

Blessed by Athena, Diomedes was the 2nd most clever warrior after Odysseus, and after Achilles died, together they came up with the most iconic plots against the Trojans: creating the Trojan Horse, and stealing the Palladium. In antiquity Diomedes was venerated as a god as part of his hero cult, but his fame was later supplanted by Achilles & Odysseus, to the point that in today’s pop culture Diomedes is rarely ever mentioned. #UnderratedAF (3/4)

Honorable Mentions

8) BELLEROPHON: A mortal man, grandson of Sisyphus, Bellerophon was falsely accused of rape, and as punishment the king (the lying heifer’s father) sent Bellerophon to kill The Chimera (a 3-headed FIRE BREATHING monstrosity) to clear his name (knowing full well it was impossible). Blessed by Athena, Bellerophon was able to tame Pegasus (Medusa’s son by Poseidon’s rape), and reach the Chimera’s lair. He lathered himself in fire-proof oil, and stabbed the Chimera in the frikkin throat till it choked on the melted metal from his speartip.

Unfortunately, the king didn’t believe him, and sent Bellerophon on a series of labors to kill Amazons & pirates, which Bellerophon did, with Poseidon’s help. Unfortunately, his glory went to his frikkin head, and when Bellerophon tried to fly Pegasus up Mt Olympus Zeus struck him dead with lightning bolts for his hubris. (2/4)

9) ACHILLES: Achilles is THE greatest hero of the Trojan War, leader of the Myrmidons and Greece’s best warrior EVER. He had mad skills. But by my 4 Main Criteria, I can't rank him above the other heroes. Achilles is a great icon for warriors to aspire to, and in many ways is the most realistic hero of the bunch, IMO, but that’s just it. He did a lot of incredible things. But not impossible things. He’s too normal for me, compared to the rest. :\ (2/4)

Monsters: All the other heroes on my list faced off against gods, giants, the brood of Echidna & Typhon, unnatural beasts, etc. Achilles’ greatest foe is Hector, Troy’s greatest warrior, yes, but who is another mortal man. Achilles did defeat Amazons (like Penthesilea, daughter of Ares), but so did Bellerophon, on top of the Chimera. And as far as kill count goes, Patroclus killed the most people at Troy, while Achilles pouted in his tent! Diomedes killed a effton, as did Odysseus (who earned Achilles’ armor rather than Ajax), so.... Imma need some gods & monsters, Achilles. :\

Hades: When Achilles died he went to the nicest place in Hades, in the Isles of the Blessed/Elysian Fields. Not exactly the Greek Valhalla, since the gods don’t live in Elysion, but close. But several heroes ranked higher on my list came back from the Land of the Dead (I’ve seen some Heroes Lists put Orpheus, another Argonaut, in the Top 7 cuz of the Orphic Cult & having been to Hades and back). Achilles chose to fight at Troy and die young & heroically; but when Odysseus spoke to Achilles’ ghost in Hades he told Odysseus he regretted his decision. XD

Divinity/Assistance: Achilles is the son of the water nymph Thetis -- whose wedding to Achilles’ mortal dad started the Apple of Discord & Judgement of Paris which caused to the Trojan War -- so he’s not 100% human, but he’s not the son of an Olympian, either. Thetis had Hephaestus craft god-tier armor for Achilles, and made him invulnerable to further injury (sources vary on if he was lathered in ambrosia lotion; or dunked in the River Styx; or was slow-roasted on a magical fire). But Achilles was still mortal, as seen by that little ankle problem of his. So I wonder which demigod would win in a fight, Achilles, Perseus, or Theseus? (Hercules beats everybody, duh.) But I gave Achilles 1 point here.

Politico-Religious Legacy: Achilles’ son Neoptolemus founded Epirus, and the line Alexander the Great’s mother Olympias hails from, thus making Achilles Alexander’s ancestor (depending on who you believe). That’s dope. Another point. (2/4)

10) ATALANTA: AFAIK Atalanta’s the only non-Amazonian mortal warrior woman Hero in Greek myth (Cyrene & Callisto were nymphs). A mortal woman, Atalanta was abandoned in the woods at birth for being born female, and was nursed by a she-bear. A SHE-BEAR. In the WOODS, y’all. Atalanta was found by hunters who took her in, and grew up to be a fierce huntress. She took part in the Calydonian Boar Hunt, and was THE FIRST to actually wound it, while the other heroes were busy shaking in their sandals. She got to keep the pelt as her prize. Depending on your source, she did or didn’t join the Argonauts, or was only with them briefly. She also beat Achilles’ dad Peleus (another Argonaut) in a wrestling match. She also slew two Centaurs who tried to rape her. Atalanta was NOT to be trifled with. 👸

Thanks to the impiety of her husband (from Atalanta’s famous race with the Golden Apples; his name varies depending on the sources), both he and Atalanta were cursed by the gods (precisely which one varies by sources), turned into lions and slaughtered. #SMDH. (2/4)

#Greek Mythology #videos

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vintagegeekculture · 7 years

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Hi, I've enjoyed many of your posts on Dead Fandoms. Just now, for no apparent reason, Roswell popped into my head; you couldn't swing a 2-button mouse by the cable without hitting half a dozen Roswell fansites at the turn of the millenium, whatever happened to all of them? Dark Angel and Tru Calling also were very popular at the time, and still rate highly on iMDB, but I've not seen any of these three shows on repeat channels for years, nor mentioned much/at all online!

How right you are. Roswell was such a big deal for a while that it spawned imitators. Smallville for instance, was basically Roswell with only one main character. It would not shock me in the least if the casting call for Smallville’s Clark Kent read “Jason Behr type wanted.”

If I had to look for an explanation for why the fandom around it died down, it was that Roswell had the bad luck to come around in the days before social media existed in the form it currently does, which kept alive the fandom for many similar programs (Supernatural comes to mind, which for a while literally aired in Roswell’s old time slot). The most important thing about a work isn’t the work itself, but the community and interactions around it.

Another factor in why the fandom around it died down is that it’s an artifact of a time before superheroes were big in pop culture; the “need” Roswell met, the itch it scratches, is now met by outright superhero movies and shows, like CW’s Supergirl and the Flash. Remember when Cyclops asked, in the first X-Men movie, “would you prefer yellow spandex?” It was a laugh line then, but today most people would unironically say “actually....yeah.”

Apart from that, I’ve said this before, but one thing I like about media aimed at young adults is that it seems to be what all media everywhere used to be like: eager to take chances to find the next big thing, very little institutional memory, and prone to bandwagon jumping. People think I am insulting young adult media when I say this but I am not; I’m praising their dynamism, especially compared to blockbuster movies, where everyone just remakes the same 5-15 movies from the 1980s over and over. A side effect of this creative dynamism is that young adult novels and TV series often have a short shelf life afterward; audience turnover is high and people move on.

You know, Jason Behr reminds me of Ron Ely or Lynn Collins in that he was someone I always thought would be a really big star, but for some reason it just never happened. I expected him, not Katherine Heigl, to be the breakout performer.

Side note: I actually once tried chocolate cake with Tabasco sauce, the favorite food of the aliens on the show, and it was surprisingly delicious. It was like a Skrull Dessert.

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thotyssey · 7 years

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On Point With: Charles Busch

A native-born playwright of considerable success both on and off Broadway, Charles Busch captured our hearts and funnybones with material that hearkened gently back to to a time when stories were told with a glamorous sheen and a heavy hand... yet their comedic appeal remain timeless. Soapy melodrama, hilariously earnest dialogue and fabulous fashions are his bread and butter, and his most famous leading lady has always been Busch himself. Now bringing a new cabaret show about growing in in 1960′s New York to town, Charles sits down with us to talk about his incredible life and career, the people and things that influenced his own work, and the queens of today whom he’s inspired.

Thotyssey: We’re so honored that you’re talking to us, Charles. Let’s get right into it! This summer at the Pines, you performed a show called Naked & Unafraid. Was that literal?

Charles Busch: Whoa!!! I was not actually "naked." It was metaphorical in that I was performing my cabaret act NOT in drag. Of course, what I call "not in drag" would be considered "full drag" by some. That's funny that you thought I was actually nude. People are doing that sort of thing now, and I think it's very cool. But for me, I'm happy with myself from the neck up and the waist down. In between, I need some work.

You are known largely for writing comedic plays that pay homage to the melodrama and style of movies from the 40s through the 60s, and for starring in them as the female lead. It’s a very enjoyable experience for audiences that are fans of that era of film, but as younger generations become farther removed from that period, do they respond differently to your work in that genre?

Good question. Well, my audience has certainly aged with me, but there are SOME gay people under thirty who watch TCM and love classic film. I may be delusional, but I like to think that my plays and performances are funny in themselves and not totally reliant on a knowledge of old movies and stars. But a familiarity with that type of star certainly adds to the experience.

I've never actually done a parody of a specific movie. It's always an homage to a movie genre, and usually one so obscure that it's a given that 90 per cent of the audience has never seen any of those movies. It doesn't seem to be a problem. Funny is funny.

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I was raised on the film versions of two of your best known works where you play female characters, Psycho Beach Party and Die, Mommy, Die. Were you happy with the adaptation process in these cases?

Both films were great experiences for me, particularly Die, Mommie, Die. I loved every minute -- and I mean every minute -- of making that film. Every day I couldn't believe my incredible good fortune at being able to star in my own movie and get to play all those wonderful scenes: love scenes, suspense scenes, mother love scenes. I suffered real withdrawal when the filming was over. I would lie on the sofa, replaying the entire movie in my head over and over.

Needless to say, I would kill to make another film. Both Psycho Beach Party and Die, Mommie, Die were basically handed to me and put together very quickly. Now I'm in the position of trying to get a movie made, and it's been very frustrating. One week it sounds like we're about to start shooting in a month, and the next week the entire movie has fallen a part.

Will we ever see a film adaptation of your first stage hit, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom?

Years ago, there was some talk that evaporated. However, these days it's looking optimistic for movies of both The Tale of the Allergist's Wife and The Divine Sister.

There’s a rumor that Lauren Ambrose of Six Feet Under fame may take the lead of a My Fair Lady revival! Lauren got her breakthrough as Chicklet, the heroine of the Psycho Beach Party film (a role you originated). What was it like working with Lauren during that early period of her career, and do you think she’d make a good Eliza?

I think Lauren would be a wonderful Eliza. She is a trained opera singer, and has great comic and dramatic skills. We haven't stayed in touch. But I like her a lot, and she was a joy to work with on Psycho Beach Party. We were very, very fortunate to have found her. She carries that movie with great authority.

You’re a native New Yorker. Can you describe the NYC that you grew up in, and were exploring, during your early creative years? Were you going to the bars and clubs, off-Broadway, etc.?

Oh honey, New York in the late seventies and early eighties was so much fun. Sex in the seventies was the best sex in the history of the world. I was in my twenties, and while I was too much of a hypochondriac and broke to get into drugs or alcohol, I adored going to the baths and back room bars. Orgies! I would leave the bar with seventeen gentlemen callers. It was my only experience enjoying the physical camaraderie of men. Sex was a great sport, individual and group. We thought "what's the worst that can happen to you?"

As far as my creative life, I was full of hopes and dreams and gritty determination to carve out a career in the theatre. I think the older men I dated found me a bit exhausting, when they'd take me to the theatre and afterwards I'd be shaking my fist. "That oughta be me up there!!"

Did any drag queens in the city influence your look and performance style? I know that famous female impersonator Charles Pierce was an inspiration. Charles Pierce was hysterically funny and terribly glamorous, and that certainly intrigued me. I was very influenced by the work of a brilliant actor/ playwright/ director named Charles Ludlam, who had his own theatre company, The Ridiculous Theatrical Company. Before I saw him, I had no idea that I could have a career creating my own theatrical universe. His plays employed drag and camp humor, and film and theatre history references. His plays were wildly funny but also at times poignant. He was dazzling, and changed my life forever.

One of our city’s top queens today, Paige Turner, credits working on an early production of yours as an inspiration for her own drag. She’s gonna be a reality TV star soon! I adore Paige Turner. She is a true original. Paige in her boy alter ego has had a very full career as an actor/ singer/ dancer in plays and musicals. Many well known drag performers seem to have been in my plays early in their careers. My plays seem to be a halfway house for young actors who become drag stars.

Tale of the Allergist’s Wife was a hugely successful production that ran on Broadway in 2000, which many consider your first foray into “mainstream” playwriting. When you were writing that, were you conscious of how different it was from your previous work? Did you intend it to be different?

I had actually had something of a commercial success five years earlier with a very mainstream comedy called You Should Be So Lucky. It was conveniently forgotten when The Allergist's Wife moved to Broadway and the narrative about me was streamlined into "East Village drag queen writes Broadway comedy." Everyone has a publicity narrative, and the simpler the better.

I'm beginning to think that the only difference between "downtown" and "mainstream" is the size of your publicity budget. If the Broadway play A Doll's House Part Two or even Dear Evan Hansen were done below 14th Street with very little publicity, they would be downtown. Conversely, if some very obscure avant garde piece was produced on Broadway and had subway posters and TV ads, it would be considered mainstream.

There are so many great works of yours that we can talk about (Our Leading Lady! The Third Story! The Divine Sister!), but then this would stretch into the longest interview ever. Is there any one work of yours at this point that you are the most fond of, or have the happiest memories attached to?

I'm very sentimental about a play of mine called The Lady in Question that was first done in 1989. It was the apogee of the work we were doing with my theatre company Theatre in Limbo. It was a beautiful and rather lavish production, and we all loved each other and were so proud of the work we were doing. And it was the last show we did with the original company before we lost two of our great colleagues, Bobby Carey and Meghan Robinson, to AIDS.

Do you think that Hollywood lost a little bit of its flavor when actors, writers and directors moved towards more “realistic,” grounded storytelling? It seems like even in these outlandish comic book blockbusters today, there is an attempt to tell the story like it is really happening, and that the superheroes and villains are these real, multi-layered people.

That's a very good point. I'm often asked to compare today's stars with the great pantheon of stars of old Hollywood. It's not really fair, since the actual technology influenced story telling and style. The stars of the past were seen in silvery black and white, and in a highly stylized world. It's an entirely different art form, and a different kind of actor is required.

Whose take on Joan Crawford did you enjoy more: Fay Dunaway’s in Mommie Dearest, or Jessica Lange’s in Feud?

I love both. I think Faye Dunaway's performance defines the word "brave." So audacious and committed. I've never seen any actor convey such undiluted rage. However, I also appreciated Jessica Lange's more vulnerable Joan. You must remember that Mommie Dearest was an adaptation of Christina Crawford's book, and Christina had a definite point of view of her mother which was definitely not sympathetic; whereas Ryan Murphy in Feud wanted the audience to see more facets of Crawford's character, and what prompted her more outrageous behavior.

As I’m writing this, I’m watching this goofy “psychedelic” movie called The Big Cube on TCM from 1969, where this heiress and her evil boyfriend are trying to poison the heiress’ poor stepmother Lana Turner with LSD. It’s ridiculous fun, and I never heard of it before. Have you ever seen this?

It's one of the great truly bad movies. Lana Turner's array of blonde wiglets alone makes it a camp semi-classic. It was actually one of the many movies that I was evoking in Die, Mommie, Die. It was very interesting in the sixties and early seventies, when Hollywood was taking the old genres and trying to be more hip and putting in references to LSD and sexual promiscuity, but they couldn't really pull it off without looking silly and exploitative.

This is a good segue to discuss My Kinda 60’s, your new cabaret revue that’s coming to Feinstein’s for four nights starting Tuesday, October 17th! You’ll be telling stories about growing up in the 1960s, plus covering songs from the stage and the pop charts of that decade. What inspired you to do this?

I love the intimate quality of cabaret. My act is a combination of music and true stories of my life in a very conversational way. I love the music of the sixties. It's the decade in which I grew up. This show is all about my childhood and coming of age in the sixties, when I was raised by my indomitable Aunt Lillian in Manhattan against the background of that fascinating decade. All of my shows are personal, but this one is very much a dual portrait of my Aunt and I. My musical director/ arranger Tom Judson and I have put together a very eclectic and fun collection of songs.

What’s your favorite song to do in this show?

We loved singing duets, and we're doing a very cool arrangement of the Henry Mancini film theme song Two for the Road.

Also oddly enough, the Glenn Campbell song By the Time I Get to Phoenix. Every performer hopefully brings something unique to a song. And for me singing it, it can be read as a gay man who has led an inauthentic life and finally has left his girlfriend to become his true self, and how painful that decision is for both of them. I haven't changed a single word. It's just interpretation and the audience creating their own subtext.

Are you mad at hippies for not fulfilling their promise of creating world peace and harmony, or is that an unfair expectation of anyone?

That would expecting far too much. The hippies made their mark. They did influence the gay rights movement. They did influence the civil rights movement and the women's movement. Let's not discount the influence of the counter culture.

What’s something about 1960’s pop culture that should inspire younger people today?

Well, it was the beginning of every movement that we're still fighting for today; gender and racial equality. A relaxation of gender roles. Rebellion against government authority. These song,s and hopefully my personal stories, should not seem like something redolent of the past and sweetly nostalgic. These are cool, tough songs that could be written today.

Would a Melania Trump-inspired character in a future, theoretical Charles Busch production be a villain or a tragic heroine?

Well, you're talking to someone who has always felt great sympathy for Marie Antoinette. She does seem like someone who signed on for one thing and got in way over her head. I would not like to be Melania.

Piggybacking from that -- you’re famous for writing about nostalgic eras, but do you ever want to tackle the gritty reality of times like this in a play, script, etc.?

I have written contemporary plays, ya know! Not all of my plays are based on classic film. Some of my more recent plays, Olive and the Bitter Herbs and The Tribute Artist, were very much about life in NYC today, and how real estate forces so many life choices onto people. I'm not a didactic or issues-oriented political writer. If I attempted something like that, it would come off fake and pretentious. A creative artist has to have the insight to know what they personally have to offer.

So, what else is coming up for you?

I've written a new play that we'll be doing for a very limited run this spring called The Confession of Lily Dare where I age from a sixteen year-old convent girl to an old crone. Gotta get it done now, while I can still put off the sixteen part. No wisecracks, please.

In closing: OMG. when will we be seeing you judging on RuPaul’s Drag Race!? These queens out there need to go through the Charles Busch musical theater challenge!

Start the whispering campaign. Start it now! I would love to appear as a judge, It's such a fun show, and RuPaul deserves all of those Emmys. World of Wonder, sign me up! I think I have something to offer those girls. I would be encouraging, loving but tough.

Thanks so much Charles, and have a great show!

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Charles Busch’s stage show “My Kinda 60′s” runs from October 17th through the 21st at Feinstein’s. Check Thotyssey’s calendar for other scheduled appearances, and follow Charles on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and his website.

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srtringbean · 8 years

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First Love

Pairing: Namjoon x reader Genre: angst, romance, smut later on, angst Warnings: nothing yet Word count: 3731 Summary: “Don’t fall in love with someone like me… you’ll just be disappointed and leave…”

Part 1 Part 2

Since you moved to Korea about a year ago things have been rather different for you. For starters, because you were a filmmaker Big Hit noticed your work inspired by BTS and so they contacted you for an interview to work for them. I know exciting right? Well you ended up taking the offer and loved it. About a month in you met the boys and boy you nearly melted into a puddle that day but they were very welcoming. It’s been over half a year now working for the company so making friends wasn’t as bad as you thought. The unnies would help you in your korean since you weren’t exactly native speaker fluent but you were fluent enough. It was even better when Namjoon actually spoke to you in english here and there. He was trying to make you feel more comfortable since you started working there so you two became close friends.

It was around the time that their comeback was approaching making it very stressful and busy for them. Filming for the music video, getting the set ready, having to edit, etc. man it was a load on you. “Oh, y/n do you think it’s possible to redo those two scenes this week and have editing finished by Monday?” Your sunbaenim asked knowing you were going to start editing today and thank the gods he asked today and not when you were halfway done. “Ummmm yeah I think I can but i’ll have to stay here all week since it’s a lot of editing to do and filming again.” In all honesty you weren’t very thrilled to stay and do overtime but you got paid more and had no plans either way so you took the offer. “Are you sure it’s not too much to ask? I know you’re one of our best editors and directors but don’t over do it.” Everyone in the company knew how hard you worked within the six months of being there just to go from editing to executive director and the head of the editing department but your sunbaenims were concerned about you since you were also the youngest there being only 20. “Yeah it’s okay i’ll just go home and pack some stuff to stay over the night.” giving him a smile to reassure him he nodded and smiled back leaving the room.

The walk home wasn’t far from the studio though the cold air freezing your body up made it feel far. You approach the building to greet the man letting you in. “Ah y/n there was someone looking for you earlier.” he was the cutest ahjussi ever and he treated you so kindly you being a foreigner. “Really? Who?” “It was a tall handsome young man with blond hair? Pink hair? You kids and your crazy hair colors.” you couldn’t help but chuckle at his remark. It was Namjoon he was talking about so you head to the elevator and press the number 4 button. Namjoon was basically the only best friend you had since moving and he made you feel very comfortable to be around. He wasn’t just an idol in your eyes unlike how most fans viewed him that way. Yeah you liked BTS a lot before working with them but even then you only saw them as human beings who happened to make really catchy music. When meeting them for the first time yeah you literally cried because they’re a group who holds a lot of meaning to your heart. “Oh sunbae what are you doing here?” It was hard to recognize him wearing all black (almost everything he wears really) face covered with a mask and wearing sunglasses but his pinkish blond hair was all you needed to know it was him. “Yahhh y/n you don’t need to be so formal just call me namjoon.” Giggling at his request you did it on purpose sometimes knowing it bothered him so you spoke up, “ Okay Namjoon what are you doing here?” “Oh yeah uhh the boys got you this…” He pulled out small bag with a light blue bow on it. “What’s this for?” curious what was in he gave it to you and before opening it he cleared his throat. “Well we know you’ve been working hard and we wanted to thank you for all the hard work and sleepless nights you’ve had for dealing with us… and uhh yeah open it.” There was excitement in his eyes when you opened the bag as if he was a child getting ice cream and you thought it was cute. “Oh my god….” It was a group photo you being the center of it. It was taken on your first day on the job and you had a bad start messing up but in the end there was a picnic with the boys cheering you up. It was as if it happened yesterday making you smile. “Do you like it? Oh god you don’t like it. I told them it would be stupid i’m s-” “I love it… thank you.” tears started to form in your eyes and out of pure instinct you hugged him tightly and let out a soft cry. As shocked as Namjoon was he returned the hug and man did his heart flutter. “I also got you something too..” He pulled out of the hug not wanting to but had to. “Wait what you did?” As you opened it there was a piece of paper folded nicely and then a locket. Opening it, it was a picture of when you guys visited home in LA recently looking at the other half was a selca of him making you laugh a little. You missed home... “Yah~ why did you put yourself on the other half?” It was funny but very adorable. “Well your best friend is always here for you.” He said with the biggest smile. There it was the smile that won everyone over. The dimples the were the cutest thing you’ve ever seen in your life. “Well i’m glad that I have this to remind myself who my best friend is. Do you want to come in I made some hot coco earlier.” “You sure aren’t you busy? I don’t want to interupt your day.” “Yes I don’t have to go back until like 3 and it’s 1:30.” He came over many times that everyone asked if you were dating but you said no and brushed it off. Of course he was handsome and very good looking yet also a sweetheart who was actually an amazing person that you wished people knew about him like you did but- no no no you didn’t like him stop. “Sorry I didn’t have time to clean up the mess.” Looking at the mess you were too lazy to pick up for the past what two weeks now? Gross you thought to yourself. “If you’ve seen the dorm then this is nothing compared to that. Plus I’ve been here so many times it doesn’t matter.” Well… he is right.

Watching her heat up the hot cocoa he made his way to her living room and noticed her bookshelf stocked with film books and movies. He loved watching her geek out over blockbuster films or when you would show him the difference in lens or shots and loved it most when you showed him projects you were working on. The work you made was beautiful with the stories you tell making viewers being moved. Looking up and down he saw a photo laying there with y/n and another man who looked a hell of a lot older than her. “Y/n?” You hummed in response while stirring the drink. “Who’s this?” holding up the photo you looked up and immediately froze. God why did you keep that picture? Bringing back awful memories making you feel emptiness you walk over grab the picture and burn it. Taking a deep breath you feel your hand shaking but try to keep calm. “He’s nobody…. Do you want some cake too?” trying not to crack. “Are you okay?” noticing your change in expressions “Did I do som-” “It’s fine Joon…. It’s just nothing…” “Are you sure you’re okay?” Just breath y/n just breath…. “Just…. Just drop it okay? I’ll tell you some other time Joon.” He was concerned but knew not to push any further so he didn’t say anything else. Namjoon knew how difficult it was for you to express your feelings to anyone really but he noticed your efforts in trying to loosen up. He wanted to know more though and just wanted you to trust him, not that you didn’t but obviously there was more to know but your walls were too high up and too thick to break down due to your stubbornness. After eating something he helps pack some clothes and anything else you might need to finish your work. “Hey i’m going to take a quick shower do you mind picking up a little?” “Yeah sure.” “DON’T break my stuff okay?” “What I would never do such a thing! Now go take a shower stinky butt.” Yes it seems odd that he would stay while you shower but you reached that comfort level of friendship with him when you first invited him over. You kind of wish you had a picture of his reaction because it was priceless. After showering you picked out your daily comfortable style that everyone loved not knowing why. It was literally the same thing you were probably the girl version of Jungkook with his white shirts jeans and timberlands. Picking out a black shirt that was lose and a pair of jeans that were high enough to cover your not so toned sides and picking out your favorite long black cardigan that the boys got you since you literally loved cardigans. Especially the long ones. Walking out you saw Namjoon on the couch reading who knows what. “Hey let’s go.” clearing your throat loud enough for him to hear. “Oh okay.” As you guys arrive the other members seemed to be showing up as well. “Y/n!!!” Taehyung ran and picked you up to hug you and embarrassed you pat his back while spinning you. “Yah! Put me down you know I hate being carried.” You did… You really hated it thinking you weighed too much for them so you ended up dropping weight though you still hated being picked up. “But you’re so light!” he said pouting “Anyways… how’ve you been? Why do you have another backpack?” “Oh i’m staying the night here to finish your video and this week we have to reshoot two scenes.” “Yahh paboya Isn’t that too much work since our comeback is next week?” Yoongi was another good friend of yours since he understood you 100% emotionally. “It’s okay sunbae I can get it done if I focus and not get distracted that’s why i’m staying here for four days.” “Aw we wanted to go bowling Saturday but you’re working…” Jungkook was only two years older than you making you the maknae of the group. It boosted his ego tenfold really and you didn’t know why. “We can go some other time oppa.” Also did I mention he loved it when you called him oppa? He loved it knowing that he actually was older than you unlike fans older than him would call him that and he hated it. You on the other hand found it hilarious. “Yah she’s busy with work jungkook-a we shouldn’t even be going out since we have our comeback next week.” Jin and yoongi both scolded the younger one but you couldn’t help but smile. “Yahhh it’s okay to go out without me and plus you should go out and have fun and relax you’ll be busy next week and for the next month and a half or so. It’s okay.” “Are you sure? We’re concerned about you overworking yourself.” Jimin was always concerned about you over doing it with work. “Listen short stuff i’m fine okay i’ll be fine once I finish this i’ll rest okay I promise.” The boys couldn’t help but laugh at you calling jimin short even though he was taller than you slightly. “Yah! I’m taller than you and older!!!” “Yeeees sunbaenim~~!!” As you walked into the building before he would start scolding you. Namjoon stayed in the front talking to boys forgetting he had your stuff. The guys started to head inside for practice before yoongi pulled him to the side. “Hey is y/n okay? She looks exhausted lately and thinner too. I don’t think she’s taking care of herself.” If anyone knew you it was Yoongi and Namjoon. They both worry you being the youngest taking in so much work and them also knowing what it feels like going through their own personal matters. “I don’t know hyung… today she seemed off..” thinking about the picture he saw earlier today. “Why what happened?” Lately yoongi noticed you staying later than usual working on projects that didn’t need to be done until another month. It certainly wasn’t invisible to the naked eye on how tired you looked for the past month and a half but every time a member insisted for you to rest, you’d ignore them and continue to work. It’s been getting worse and out of hand. “There was a picture of her and what I assume her ex and when I asked her she became upset and burned it saying he was a nobody.” “Namjoon... “ putting his hand on his shoulders to help him relax, “ Everyone knows you see her differently, I mean you make it pretty damn obvious and she is either really slow in catching on or she’s afraid to let someone in. She trusts you well us enough but she also shows you her trust towards you differently than towards me. There is obviously something holding her back but her overdoing it with work won’t help her and I know for a fact it’s to distract herself. Even PDnim noticed and is starting to get concerned. She trusts you more since one you’re the only fluent english speaker making her feel somewhat more relaxed. Try to talk to her.” Taking in a deep breath he knew his hyung was right but it wasn’t easy talking to you being so damn stubborn. “Hyung trust me I’ve tried, she’s the most stubborn person i’ve ever met. Way more stubborn than you are and that says a lot but I’ve tried, I really really really have tried. I’m scared she’ll hurt herself.” He sure as hell wasn’t lying about that because every time someone got passed a stubborn wall, good luck getting through the next 50. “Yah it’s okay we’ll talk more about this some other time okay?” Yoongi patted Namjoon back to walk in the building.

You were so focused on you work that you hadn’t realized Namjoon still had your stuff until he walked in. “Oh you had my stuff. Sorry i was working I forgot about it.” “Do you need anything? Food? Anything?” “No i’m okay i’ll call you or yoongi sunbae if i do.” you smiled before you went back to work. He left the room and went to the practice room and the rest of the day was just work.

After a long night the boys left back to their places and Namjoon told the boys he would stay to check up on you. He knocked on the door before entering only to find you sleeping. You looked so peaceful and even though there was some drool he couldn’t help but let out a slight laugh. “Man you really need to let yourself rest.” There was a box of tissues across the table so he grabbed a few to clean you up causing you to move slightly making him become cautious trying not to wake you up but he failed when trying to put a blanket over you. “Hmmm….Joon?” your voice was scratchy and your eyes were squinted trying to figure out what was going on. “Oh sorry I didn’t mean to wake you up. Are you okay?” “Mmm I’m okay just tired….. What time is it?” “It’s almost 11 why?” Rubbing your eyes you take a big sigh and get up leaving him looking at you confused. It’s been about 8 hours of working but technically 5 since you fell asleep. “Let’s go to the convenient store I’m hungry.” Half awake and half asleep walking out with your bag. You didn’t even care how you looked with your messy hair and squinted eyes. “I can order take out if you want? And go to a cafe and get you coffee.” Watching you always eat ramen noodles when working annoyed him and everytime he offered you always said, “No it’s okay joon, it’s close by so I don’t have to walk that far.” There it was, the same sentence making him feel bad. Before he knew it you were already outside going towards the elevator so he caught up. Nope he wasn’t letting you eat another sad bowl of ramen again so he pulled you the opposite way to who knows where. “Yah~ what are you doing the store is that way.” Still trying to wake up but not trying to get out of his grip you being too tired. “Y/n you need to eat a real meal okay not cheap ramen.” Without arguing you let him drag you around. “Ajumma can we have a spicy bulgogi with the dumpling stew!” “Ahhhh Namjoon Ah!! Yes coming right up!” This was your and Namjoon’s favorite place to eat on your days off. After waiting for a while the food came out and it smelled so good you were kind of glad he dragged you here. It took a while for you to convince the ajumah and namjoon that you could eat spicy food and they doubted you but you told them that you were mexican and when they gave you the “spiciest” they had boy were they dumbfounded after you finished barely breaking a sweat. You were sniffling but you weren't dying that you needed milk. You may be a foreigner but you could do spicy food all day every day.

After the meal you thanked the ajumma again. It was already 1:30 into the day and you had to get to work but nope he decided to drag you some more. “Joon i have work to do now isn’t the time~” whining hoping he would comply but didn’t. “Come on y/n you need a break you can go back after the sun rises. Please come on we haven’t hung out in forever since we’ve been busy with work~ pleeeeeease.” “OKAY OKAY OKAY FINE just…. Please stop whining please.” You said burrowing your face into your hand. This boy just didn’t know how to give up didn’t he. Both of you sitting down on a bench looking at the view you couldn’t help but rest your head on his shoulder. He was warm and it felt comfortable you wish- No y/n no stop he’s just a friend. “Hey y/n… can I ask you something?” You looked up at him with a slight smile. “You technically already did.” “You know what I mean.” “Yeah what’s up?” Curious to what the boy had to say you sat up and faced him. “Do you believe in love?” You didn’t expect for such a bold question making you freeze. It was a tough and soft subject for you to talk about and you thought you should tell him how you felt. It was only fair to him. “S-sorry i shouln-” “I do…” looking forward at the river. He seemed shocked that you responded since you normally pushed the subject away. It felt unfair that you had to keep a secret from him because of your fears. So little by little you started to let him in to see if he was worthy of your trust. “I believe in what I fear the most. I believe that it exists yet I don’t know how it feels. It’s scary for me to fall in love so I run away when I feel it approaching me and end up hurting those I love.” He looked at you while you stared out in front of you motionless. It was a bold question to ask but he had to. “Do you feel it approaching you?” Nervous for your answer he mentally prepared himself for rejection. “I do…. But this time, I don’t feel scared. I mean I’m terrified but I have to face it at some point. I can love someone but…. I don’t know how to be in love with someone.” She wanted him to know so badly why she was so fucked up but she was scared he’d leave her. She knew he was a caring person and she knows how he feels but she wants him to tell her when he feels ready and although it’s unsure of what she’ll do, y/n doesn’t want to hurt someone who doesn’t deserve her burden. It’s scares the living hell out of her that she’ll crumble down so hard that nobody would want to put her back together and that’s why she pushes the thought of being “in love” away. “Y/n…. you know I’m here for you right? You don’t have to tell me if you aren’t ready.” You looked at him and gave him a genuine smile. Reaching out to place your hand on his face he took in the warmth of you palm and closed his eyes. “I’m never going to be 100% ready to tell you Joon. I just don’t want you or any of the boys to see me at my worst. It’s not something to be seen knowing people can walk away. Don’t fall in love with me.... You’ll just be disappointed and leave...” But it was too late for him not to. He’d fallen so hard for you that you were a delicate feather to him and he held you so gently thinking you’d break apart at any moment. He didn’t care anymore whether you push him away because he mentally prepared himself to break those walls you’ve built. Or so he thought….

Okay okay okay so I don’t know if it’s good but feedback would be very helpful I hope you guys like it i’m hella nervous ~.~

#Kim namjoon #Namjoon #Fanfic #Bts fanfic #Namjoon fanfic #bts scenarios #rap monster #bts angst #bts smut #bts fluff #bts romance

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wellpersonsblog · 5 years

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10 Plant-Based Athletes Absolutely Crushing It (And What You Can Learn From Their Success)

It’s no secret that plant-based athletes are having a moment…

Many of the world’s top and most talked about athletes follow a plant-based diet, such as soccer stars Alex Morgan, co-captain of the US Women’s World Cup winning soccer team, and Lionel Messi, not to mention the countless plant-based athletes making their way onto the tennis courts, racetracks, football fields, and in NBA basketball arenas across the country.

Runners, bodybuilders, weight lifters, and athletes from all stripes seem to be leaning toward plants for optimal athletic performance more than ever before.

Why? Because the benefits are real.

You’ve known that. I’ve known that. And now professional athletes and the entire world are getting to know that at an incredible rate.

And with each new professional’s success story comes additional motivation and drive…

Motivation to get stronger and fitter, and drive to spread the word about what’s possible on a plant-based diet.

So today I’m sharing some of my favorite stories and athletes right now who I hope will give you the same level of motivation they’ve given me.

Athletes who are absolutely crushing it on a plant-based diet, and what you can take away or learn from their success.

#10: Natalie Matthews

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A post shared by Natalie Matthews IFBB PRO (@fitveganchef) on Jan 9, 2020 at 10:54am PST

The Athlete Natalie, a bikini competitor in one of the divisions within the larger bodybuilding and fitness industry, turned pro in 2018 within the IFBB (International Federation of Body Builders) as one of the top bikini competitors in the world. In 2019, she competed across the country, placing as high as 4th in an Olympia-qualifying pro show at the Battle at the Falls in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, just one spot behind three-time world champion, Ashley Kaltwasser. Natalie also placed 7th at the IFBB Indy Pro in Indianapolis, Indiana in her first full season as an IFBB Pro. Her bikini division is the most popular, and therefore most competitive, of any category within the bodybuilding industry. In addition to being one of the world’s top bikini competitors, Natalie is a former professional surfer, and is a professional chef and cookbook author. If 2019 was any indication of what to expect from Natalie in the future, it’s a good bet that 2020 will be even more epic for the Puerto Rican chef turned world renowned fitness model.

Having worked and toured with Natalie, I’ve seen that her recipe for success is her passion combined with her work ethic.

When she sets a goal, she creates a plan, develops habits, and makes deliberate, daily actions that help her achieve her goals.

The Takeaway Look inside and find what your own passion is and create action plans for daily steps that get you closer to your goal.

It could be as simple as writing a goal down that you see every single day, or waking up early to complete your workout before your day gets away from you. With Natalie, it’s all about priorities, and if it matters to her, she’ll find a way. It has served her well as a newcomer to a sport where she is already one of the best on the planet.

For more information about Natalie, and to see how she crushed it in 2019, follow her on Instagram at @fitveganchef or on www.fitveganchef.com.

#9: Torre Washington

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A post shared by Torre Washington IFBB Pro (@torre.washington) on Feb 10, 2020 at 11:02am PST

The Athlete Torre is a champion bodybuilder and physique competitor at the highest level — he has been either a vegetarian or vegan nearly his entire life. He earned his IFBB professional status in 2018, and competed throughout the past year, placing as high as 3rd at the first fully drug-tested IFBB Pro show in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He also finished 4th at the Muscle Contest in Los Angeles, California. Along with his top 5 finishes at the most prestigious level of professional bodybuilding, within the most competitive category of men’s physique, Torre also traveled the world promoting the plant-based athlete lifestyle from Australia to Mexico. He is a sought after personal trainer, eBook author, coach, and international public speaker. Torre is also featured in the film, From The Ground Up, and he has become one of the most influential vegan bodybuilders in the world.

Torre’s success stems from a sincere desire to help others. This is evident to anyone who has followed him online in recent years, and very clear to me, as someone who has known Torre for more than a decade.

Torre is also a true fan of the sport he competes in. He cheers on other competitors, and wants to see everyone become the best versions of themselves. In a sport that is inherently competitive, based on subjective judging, where athletes are quite literally compared to one another on stage, Torre is a fan of the process. He knows that at the end of the day, it’s him vs. him, and he has never lost sight of that. It is that approach that has made him one of the best vegan bodybuilders in the world, and certainly one of the most influential.

The Takeaway Smile often, lift others up, and share your passion with others. Torre always seems happy, and it is likely that positive attitude that keeps him ahead of the competition in a fairly isolated sport of bodybuilding.

For more information about Torre, and to see how he crushed it in 2019, follow him on Instagram at @torre.washington or on www.torrewashington.com.

#8: Mary Schneider

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A post shared by Mary Schneider (@greenbodymary) on Jan 30, 2020 at 7:26am PST

The Athlete Mary is a long distance runner who qualified for the 2020 USA Olympic Trials in the marathon. With a personal best time of 2:42.01 (which is a 6:11 pace for 26.2 miles), she qualified for the USA Olympic Trials in 2019, and eyes the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Summer Games. Over the past year, Mary has been a key member of the Prado Racing Team in San Diego, CA, and she became the 2019 San Diego USATF XC Women’s Champion. With a blistering pace for the half marathon at 1:17:38, which is a 5:56 pace, she has been an Overall Female Winner in races from her native San Diego to Virginia Beach, and from Lehigh Valley to Delaware.

As a plant-based athlete since 2017, Mary has seen a significant improvement in her athletic performance, recovery after training, and has set her all-time personal records in distances from 5k to marathon. She works as a holistic nutritionist and is a USATF certified running coach, having coached beginners to those who have qualified for Olympic Trials. If that wasn’t enough, Mary is also a lawyer and a yoga instructor, and leads by example as she follows her passion to make her dreams happen.

What I find especially inspiring about Mary is that she took time away from the sport of competitive running to pursue a law degree and get her career started, but then she returned to running at the highest level and performed at her very best.

The Takeaway A great lesson from her example is that it is never too late to do what you love. I know first hand as a former runner, turned bodybuilder, turned runner again (and eventually turned weightlifter again), that even after a long hiatus, success and joy can be found in a sport you love. So if there is a sport that tugs at your heart, but that you haven’t pursued in quite some time, today could be the perfect day to do something again for the first time.

For more information about Mary, and to see how she crushed it in 2019, follow her on Instagram at @greenbodymary or on www.greenbodyrunner.com.

#7: Liz Cambage

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The Athlete Liz is a professional basketball player in the WNBA, as an all-star center for the Las Vegas Aces. Following her exceptional 2018 season, where she set a WNBA scoring record with 53 points scored in a single game, she returned to the WNBA all-star game in 2019 and led her team to the post season playoffs. In addition to being a three-time WNBA all-star, Liz was also named to the 2019 All-WNBA Second Team, and she finished the season ranked 10th in the league in scoring, 7th in rebounding, and 6th in blocked shots.

Liz not only had another breakout basketball season, but she also had a breakout year as an international star when she graced the cover of ESPN Magazine’s Body Issue, in which famous athletes pose nude or semi-nude, showing their professional athlete bodies in tasteful ways. Liz is a part of a growing group of WNBA and NBA players who have adopted a plant-based diet. Other notable plant-based basketball stars include Kyrie Irving, Chris Paul, JaVale McGee, DeAndre Jordan, and Diana Taurasi.

Excelling in sports hasn’t always come easy for Liz. In fact, she has spoken openly about her struggles with mental health. She penned an open letter to the Players Tribune where she shared her own struggles, but also with some uplifting words for readers, including, in a description of her letter, “I just want everyone to remember that we are all human, we all have our ups and downs and we should never be ashamed of our feelings. And please remember to be kind to one another, for you never know what others are going through.”

The Takeaway There are many lessons here, including the simple fact that we all have feelings, no matter how famous we are, and fame, success, and money don’t make underlying issues go away. Liz encourages us to address our feelings, embrace them, and talk about them, before they take control over us.

For more information about Liz, and to see how she crushed it in 2019, follow her on Instagram at @ecambage or on Twitter.

#6: Morgan Mitchell

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A post shared by Morgan Mitchell (@morganmitch) on Dec 10, 2019 at 7:50pm PST

The Athlete Olympic sprinter Morgan Mitchell is a star in the blockbuster film, The Game Changers, and she had an incredible 2019 season on the track. Between distances of 200 and 1600 meters, she racked up three 1st place finishes, and a whopping 13 top 3 finishes. She also won multiple relay races and had four top 3 finishes in the 4 x 400 meter team relay. In addition to her native Australia, Morgan competed around the world, taking her talents to China, Italy, Great Britain, France, Qatar, Japan, and the United States. With the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics around the corner, keep an eye out for Morgan to crush it in 2020 too.

As Morgan addresses in The Game Changers, she is looking for an edge as an elite athlete, and she discovered that edge through diet. Many of us talk about results we want to achieve someday, as simple as a New Year’s Resolution, or as lofty as qualifying for the Boston Marathon, but there is a fundamental difference between wishing and doing. Morgan knows that today’s workout impacts tomorrow, and that hundreds of days in the future, the Olympic Games take place. Having a goal, setting a target, and working every day to reach a destination that is far off in the distance is the mentality of an Olympic athlete.

The Takeaway Whether you have aspirations of being one of the best in the world at what you love, or you simply want to have more energy and a better mood, take a page out of Morgan’s playbook and focus on the future by making the most of today.

For more information about Morgan, and to see how she crushed it in 2019, follow her on Instagram at @morganmitch or on teammathewsrunning.com.au.

#5: Hin Chun Chui

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The Athlete Hin Chun Chui is a vegan bodybuilder, and is quickly emerging as one of the most successful and dominant competitive bodybuilders in the industry. In 2019, Hin took 6 first place trophies, following a year of taking home gold 6 times in 2018. Competing around the world, promoting the vegan bodybuilding lifestyle, Hin has become an international star. Winning the IFBB Denmark Pro Nordic World Show in multiple divisions, as well as the IFBB Canada Ben Weider Natural Championship in physique and in bodybuilding, and the IFBB Asia Pro Qualifier Taiwan in two divisions at the end of December, capped off an outstanding year for Hin taking on the world stage. With twelve first place finishes, including multiple world championships over the past two years, while just in his early twenties, Hin has an incredibly bright future in the sport of bodybuilding and beyond.

Something I’ve learned from Hin after watching him compete in person, and from meeting him, as well as following his career for years, is that he doesn’t let anything get in his way. He literally trains six or seven days a week, allowing his body to adapt to a high workload, just like a marathon runner is able to sustain a training routine of six or seven days a week of running as a result of adaptation, and he has conditioned himself to manage a high volume of exercise to achieve his goals. He believes he can be one of the best in the world, and he enthusiastically pursues that mission because of his love for the vegan lifestyle and his desire to spread awareness of veganism as a result of his athletic success as a vegan bodybuilder.

The Takeaway Despite his incredible success, Hin is also humble and gracious and knows that to be great at anything takes a team effort, and is quick to thank his training partners, coaches, sponsors, and fans who cheer him on along the way. That’s a lesson that all of us can get behind. Be grateful, but stay hungry.

For more information about Hin, and to see how he crushed it in 2019, follow him on Instagram at @vegan_bodybuilder_hin_chui or on cleanmachineonline.com.

#4: Robbie Balenger

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A post shared by Robbie Balenger (@robbiebalenger) on Feb 7, 2020 at 6:08am PST

The Athlete Robbie is an ultra endurance athlete, best known for his 3,175-mile run across the United States over the course of 75 days from March to May of 2019. That’s a minimum of running 40 miles per day for 75 consecutive days, with an average of 42.3 miles covered daily, with no days off, which is unimaginable for most people. Not only did he run from Los Angeles to New York in two and a half months, he did it largely to raise awareness of the power of a plant-based diet. Robbie’s transcontinental run was sponsored by the Texas-based vegan ice cream company, Nada Moo, and his effort raised awareness of the dairy-free lifestyle at large. Robbie appeared on the Rich Roll Podcast at the end of 2019, reaching a vast audience, sharing his unique journey across the country.

I followed Robbie’s journey across the country, and regrettably never joined him for a few miles when he ran through my current home state of Arizona. Robbie’s accomplishment reminds me of the late Steve Prefontaine who was America’s greatest running legend in the ‘70s known for testing the limits of the human heart.

The Takeaway Robbie had the audacity to believe he could run substantially further than a marathon every single day for 75 consecutive days, and so he did. If he can believe in himself enough to make that dream happen, imagine what potential lies in each one of us. What dreams do you feel like chasing? What goals do you want to conquer?

For more information about Robbie, and to see how he crushed it in 2019, follow him on Instagram at @robbiebalenger or on plantpoweredmission.com.

#3. Lewis Hamilton

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A post shared by Lewis Hamilton (@lewishamilton) on Dec 1, 2019 at 10:07am PST

The Athlete Lewis is a Formula One race car driver, considered to be one of the greatest of all-time. He is a six-time Formula One World Champion driving a Mercedes on race tracks around the world. In 2019, he seemed to be winning races around every turn. Lewis took the first place crown a record 11 times, including in four consecutive races, and six out of seven consecutive starts. He brought home the title from racetracks in Bahrain, China, Spain, Monaco, Canada, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Russia, Mexico, and Abu Dhabi. Lewis uses his platform, including his Instagram audience of more than 14 million followers, to promote a plant-based diet. As an executive producer of The Game Changers, Lewis made a big splash in 2019 among a plant-based community largely previously unaware of his accomplishments on the racetrack.

He speaks out for animals and the environment, and crosses over into various other ventures beyond the racetrack, including fashion. In 2019, Lewis set an all-time record in Formula One racing with 413 points and 17 podiums, with his sights set on a bright racing season in 2020.

The Takeaway I’ve never met Lewis, but have followed him online for many months, after I heard about his involvement with The Game Changers. Something that strikes me as particularly inspiring about Lewis is that he seems to be more authentic than many other celebrity athletes. He really appears to have a quiet confidence about him that is a strength that sets the tone for the success he achieves in sports, in business, and in life. He comes across as truly himself, whether you like it or not, and there is something highly admirable about that as viewer and fan watching from afar.

If there is one thing we can learn from Lewis, it’s that there is power in being your authentic self. If he can have a positive influence on millions of others to communicate that idea, he will have done a great service to humanity.

For more information about Lewis, and to see how he crushed it in 2019, follow him on Instagram at @lewishamilton or on lewishamilton.com.

#2. Novak Djokovic

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A post shared by Novak Djokovic (@djokernole) on Feb 2, 2020 at 5:47am PST

The Athlete Novak is the number one ranked men’s tennis player in the world. In 2019, he won five tournaments, including the Australian Open, Madrid Open, Japan Open, Paris Masters, and the prestigious Wimbledon title in epic fashion over Roger Federer in one of the greatest championship matches in history. With a 57-11 singles record, and more than $13 million in tournament earnings in 2019, we can safely say that Novak crushed it last year. Like Lewis Hamilton, Novak is also an executive producer of The Game Changers and has used his platform to encourage others to adopt a plant-based diet. The sport of tennis is no stranger to plant-based athletes. Venus and Serena Williams have dominated the sport for decades, and for the past ten years they have followed a mostly or exclusively plant-based diet. Martina Navratilova is considered to be one of the greatest female tennis players of all-time and is a long-time vegetarian.

As the year and the decade came to a close, Novak was named the ATP’s Men’s Tennis Player of the Decade. But not to be complacent, he kicked off 2020 with a bang by winning the Australian Open for a record eighth time and is on pace to become the greatest men’s tennis player of all time.

The Takeaway What I like about Novak is that it seems like every time I see him talking on camera, he is discussing a plant-based diet. The plant-based athlete movement is still new enough that there is a lot of ridicule out there toward those of us who live and eat this way. But Novak is living it boldly, and that will hopefully inspire other athletes, from world-class to weekend warriors, to feel comfortable saying “I am a plant-based athlete.” Maybe that inspires you to be unapologetically plant-based too.

For more information about Novak, and to see how he crushed it in 2019, follow him on Instagram at @djokernole or on novakdjokovic.com.

#1. Alex Morgan

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A post shared by Alex Morgan (@alexmorgan13) on Sep 16, 2019 at 3:02pm PDT

The Athlete Alex is the co-captain of the US Women’s World Cup Champion soccer team, and she uplifted an entire nation with her performance in the 2019 Women’s World Cup. As arguably the most popular athlete of the year, with her summer spent in the global spotlight, this plant-based athlete World Cup champ is my 2019 Plant-Based Athlete of the Year. Alex not only let her skill on the soccer field do the talking, but she graced magazine covers, appeared on television shows, and won awards all year as the quintessential champion of champions. Alex provided inspiration to an entire gender, and entire nation, and to the world at large on the biggest stage in the world’s most popular sport.

Fueled by plants, Alex has established herself as one of the greatest of all-time in her sport and will remain a sports icon for years to come. It comes at no surprise that Alex made the TIME 100 Most Influential People list for 2019. Like Torre, Alex was also featured in the plant-based athlete documentary, From The Ground Up. With her long list of accolades and awards, perhaps her most exciting news of 2019 was announced in October when she and her husband shared the news that they are expecting a baby girl in April.

The Takeaway The thing that inspires me about Alex is that she was already on the world stage as a famous athlete and she didn’t let that deter her from changing her diet to eat exclusively plants. Often times, the world’s greatest athletes have been discouraged from changing their approaches to nutrition or training with a fear from coaches, teammates, nutritionists, team sponsors, and team owners that their performance will be negatively impacted.

Alex shows us that it is okay to trust your gut and eat in alignment with your beliefs. And she did it while walking right into the global spotlight as the brightest star of 2019 of any athlete in any sport.

For more information about Alex, and to see how she crushed it in 2019, follow her on Instagram at @alexmorgan13 or on alexmorgansoccer.com.

And This is Just the Beginning…

More and more athletes are switching to a plant-based diet and excelling because of it.

And as that growth continues, so does our motivation to show the world what’s possible eating only plants.

Which plant-based athletes are your biggest inspirations?

About the Author: Robert Cheeke, best-selling author of Plant-Based Muscle, Shred It!, and Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness, 2-time champion bodybuilder, and founder/president of Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness – www.veganbodybuilding.com.

The post 10 Plant-Based Athletes Absolutely Crushing It (And What You Can Learn From Their Success) appeared first on No Meat Athlete.

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