#german humour hits different

[avocadontdie]

tschick calling a bunch of cows opfers and telling them to go away is still one of the funniest things ever

[shadowvalkyrie]

There are a lot of things about Taskmaster that feel very... culturally British. That mixture of extreme silliness with occasionally very dark humour for example.

Or the particular tone of affectionate bullying and the way it's (mostly) taken in good humour. (And expected to be taken in good humour, even when it hits a nerve. Something that caused quite a bit of bad blood between the Brits and the Germans in my former workplace, because we generally don't shrug off insults that easily.)

But I think one difference is sort of... simmering under the surface in ways that aren't immediately obvious to international audiences (and makes me wish I was still writing uni papers, because it would be a GOLDMINE), is how much of the humour is based on the British class system.

I mean, the basic premise of "tyrannical taskmaster makes people jump through arbitrary hoops for his favour and then belittles them for doing so" is already something only an audience with a slightly monarchical bend would accept unquestioningly. Add to that the way the Taskmaster/Assistant relationship is set up... Let's just say it fetishises a social dynamic that doesn't exist in quite the same way elsewhere.

Which I think may partially explain why so many people seem to be oblivious to the D/s undertones. -- Of course it's often kink-blindness on the part of non-kinky people, but I strongly suspect it's helped along by the cultural perception of what constitutes an acceptable power differential acting as a buffer to seeing anything off about it. The threshold for when it becomes weird is different.

Now, I think (and since I'm not British, do correct me if I have it wrong!) a key part of what makes the basic premise funny to British audiences (and differently from how it's funny to international ones) is the way cultural expectations of power vs submission are subverted.

Purely based on accent? Alex is the posh one. By miles. And Greg -- very pointedly! -- doesn't do the matching Fauxbridge that most viewers would probably expect from someone presented in a position of authority (or even just a "neutral" BBC accent). It seems bizarre from a foreign point of view, but I've found that this kind of discrepancy immediately and viscerally registers with Brits. (It's uncanny how little it takes, too -- ask your favourite non-TM-aware English person to just listen to the different ways they say "taskmaster" and they will extrapolate things you cannot even imagine.) Instead of just the regional connotation, there are always implications of class and social status to an accent that are absolutely baffling to the unaware.

Add the fact that Greg Davies is from Wales, and a lot of English people have a weird colonial superiority complex towards Welsh people to this day... It's enough to make all these obvious gestures of devoted subservience from Alex very unexpected and therefore funny.

(Also notice how it adds interesting layers to Katherine Ryan buying Greg a fake lordship title? And makes it funnier in a way she may not even have fully been aware of herself, being Canadian? It's delightfully irreverent and pokes fun at the whole system.)

My guess is that this is also why the studio audience's reaction to linguistics-based jokes is always so strong. Lets take the recurring bit about Alex correcting Greg's grammar. To an international audience, the main joke is that Alex is a nerd and cares too much about grammar, with maybe a side of him being a smartarse towards his boss in a potentially ill-advised way. But to a British audience, the level of audacious insubordination implied there? Much stronger. Wildly offensive thing to do. (And a level of arrogance that is extra hilarious coming from someone shown to be sleeping in a dog bed.)

The same mechanism also puts Alex's snide little asides towards contestants with regional or "urban" accents into perspective. Offensive dick move on his part? Oh yes, extremely. But the audience is very much not supposed to be on his side in this. He's being a bigoted little bully, and either the contestants get to humiliate him in retaliation (it's certainly not a coincidence that the Welsh and Irish contestants are generally the ones having the most fun putting him in his place) or Greg calls him out on it in the studio. In a society in which Alex's brand of micro-aggression is still incredibly commonplace and accent discrimination a widely accepted default, it's actually very cathartic to see it openly acknowledged and condemned.

I mean Tumblr obviously loves Alex, because he's cute and funny and we love the Greg/Alex D/s thing (I'm definitely guilty of this as well), but we have to remember that -- in the context of the show's premise -- his character is supposed to be pathetic and ridiculous, so when Greg does the "next to me a man who once told me while drunk that he thinks regional accents are inversely correlated to intelligence" intro thing, we're meant to see it as an asshole opinion that is actually unacceptable to hold and no one in their right mind would openly admit to. So Greg is humiliating Alex by (supposedly) exposing him as someone who would spout that kind of opinion. (Same as the jokes about Alex's misogyny. I see people criticise these jokes all the time, but I think that's because they refuse to understand how the underlying mechanism actually works and take them at face value as the real Alex's actual opinion, rather than something deliberately assigned to his in-show character to make a point about them being terrible.)

[denimbex1986]

'Review at a glance *****

So it’s goodbye David Tennant again, and over to you Ncuti Gatwa! Except, no! The big twist in this twistiest of episodes – one that may well be the best hour of Who ever – is that the three-episode reprise of Tennant’s Doctor is not quite the end for him at all.

What seemed to be simply a canny way for Russell T Davies to bring some goodwill back to the Whouniverse, using a Tennant as a drum-roll for Ncuti Gatwa’s new reign, was not merely that, not just cynicism: it was a chance to crowd please a crowd in need of a damn good pleasing.

What a rare delight to watch prime time Saturday night TV delivered with such aplomb. This short run has echoed Marvel’s accomplishment with the Avengers films, matching drama with humour, and never taking itself too seriously even as it brings you to tears.

The Giggle topped it all off with a genuinely brilliant and thrillingly unpredictable episode that started off as a fun satire for all the family before turning into a Carnival of Horrors, by way of a murderous Spice Girls set piece by the lead villain that would make the Joker frown in envy. This was pop culture hitting some kind of high-on-itself high.

Last week the Doctor and Donna landed back in present day London to find Wilf waiting (sadly Davies revealed on a post this week that Bernard Cribbins died before he could film any more scenes so he does not appear in this episode). He told them humans had turned on each other and were fighting in the street and the world was basically ending.

Turns out that back in the day, 1925 in Soho to be precise, when John Logie Baird invented the TV, the first image he recorded was the head of a ventriloquist’s dummy (actually true, Stooky Bill, was his name, and yes Stooky was as spooky looking in real life; what was Baird thinking? Sick man, with all due respect).

A dummy which happened to be a magical evil puppet that was sold to him by a German-accented, racist Toymaker (played by a sensational Neil Patrick Harris having the time of his life here). And the image has sat hidden within every screen since then, not just TVs but phones too.

Back to ‘Today’, where Bonnie Langford is back as Melanie Bush after her companion stints with Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy (incidentally, I wonder how many near-misses they had in Who writing rooms over the years, with character names veering close to Bond-esque smut) to help out because a satellite launched by South Korea has made the world 100% online – “For the first time in history everyone has access to a screen,” the Doctor frets, and our skinny hero does do a lot of fretting here – which triggered the hidden puppet into doing an evil laugh, that in turn sent everyone’s brains crazy.

Pilots are landing wherever they want, people are fighting for their right of way on the road, insulting the infirm and different, seeking angry justice for the mildest of questioning, and everyone is basically turning into a conspiracy theory loon. It’s described as so: “Basically, every single person on earth now thinks they’re right and everyone else is wrong.” Sound familiar?

OK, yes the first half is a very bludgeoning satire of social media-infused life today, which includes a red-faced buffoonish Prime Minister addressing the nation by saying, “Why should I care about you?” But as I keep saying, Doctor Who is family viewing and making sure the kids get it without making the adults groan is a line which Davies navigates masterfully here.

Assessing the imploding world, the Doctor rants about “humans hating each other,” suggesting the “anger and lies and righteousness,” was always there waiting to take over. Tennant has always channeled rage in his Doctor but here he gives it his full ‘den of thieves’ moment, and orders the UNIT agents to shoot the Korean satellite out of the sky, since all of the world leaders have gone crazy too. The Doctor making decisions on behalf of the earth? Treating it as his kingdom? It feels like he’s overstepped a mark and he knows it.

Anyway, while humanity is on a precipice the Doctor and Donna take a trip back to Frith Street in 1925 to confront The Toymaker.

Cue a sequence of surrealist delight reminiscent of classic carnivalesque horrors like Dead of Night and Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice in which Harris revels like Gambit meets Dr Strange meets the Joker. The scary puppets that attack Donna hit some great old notes, bringing flashbacks to Trainspotting and Poltergeist.

The climax comes with the Toymaker dealing out death to ‘Spice Up Your Life’, and bringing an end to Tennant, who almost seems relieved by it.

This proves to be one of the most moving narratives related to the Doctor. Donna took him to one side earlier and said that when she saw inside his mind, “You’re busy every minute of the day… it’s like you’re staggering along… is that why your old face came back? Because you’re wearing yourself out.”

That skinniness that has been joked about throughout the specials is recast as evidence of a man coming undone, not taking care of himself, consumed by self-loathing as he’s haunted by his past failures. “I’m always so certain,” The Doctor cries in full tortured Tennant mode, “Take away the toys and what am I now? Lost and broken.” (“You big idiot,” Donna retorts).

So when the Toymaker takes his life, the Doctor almost want it. Except, he’s not given it. He doesn’t die and regenerate into Gatwa, rather he splits in two. Two Doctors! He’s Tennant and Gatwa. One can remain on earth with Donna, while the new Doctor is free to roam the universe on the new Disney funding.

I loved this explanation for Tennant’s return, the haunted figure that he became post-Rose and post-Donna taken to the logical extreme, his mental health disintegrating after too much death and loss and destruction.

Doctor Who has always been about loss. Companions leaving people on earth behind or never having them at all (like Melanie Bush), the loss of time, loss of life. The Doctor is a kind of charismatic god of life, taking on death always, trying to save everyone, everywhere, all at once. Exhaustion was coming…

But so was regeneration – or rather bi-regeneration, which is a first for Doctor Who, and is portrayed as rehab: to save himself, he has to become a new person entirely. He splits in two! Tennant is still here, but so is Gatwa’s Doctor. And lo, parents across the land are spared the tears of a million children.

Gatwa is immediately a new kind of Doctor, not falling apart – “thin as a pin and running on fumes” he observes – but so sure of himself that he gives Tennant a hug and a kiss, the younger man like a father, and when Tennant says, “You can’t save everyone,” he replies, “Why not?”

It sets up Gatwa’s new Doctor deliciously as a capable, flamboyant, winner, a very ‘out’ figure who will continue to annoy the anti-wokies/anti-BBC/anti-vaxxers/anti-youths but who will deliver the thrills. The Errol Flynn moustache he sports can be no accident, given how swashbuckling the trailer of the Christmas Day episode is.

Will Tennant keep a presence in the Whoniverse? Not sure if the new guy is going to need him…'

[thelensofyashunews]

NEMZZZ FOLLOWS SMASH DEBUT MIXTAPE DO NOT DISTURB WITH BRAND NEW SINGLE ‘ATM’

The prolific Manchester rapper Nemzzz today drops his new single ‘ATM’. In a fast follow up to his recent debut mixtape DO NOT DISTURB which landed in March and reached #17 in the UK album charts.

Blending cinematic, sweeping orchestral instrumentation spliced with an icy industrial production from Zel, ‘ATM’ is brimming with Nemzzz’s sharp wordplay and playful adlibs as he reflects on his recent successes. 

Nemzzz is fresh from his sell-out second headline tour, hitting stages in Dublin, Glasgow, London (with a surprise drop in from K-Trap) and a homecoming show featuring Central Cee at Manchester Academy - Nemzzz’s biggest show to date in the city. Nemzzz will be returning to Wireless Festival this summer and has a sold-out EU tour set for this October including dates in Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels and more.

Nemzzz’s debut mixtape DO NOT DISTURB landed in March to acclaim from NME (4*/Cover), Hypebeast UK, Wonderland, NOTION, DMY, Acclaim and support from Spotify (Global Hip-Hop Cover, Rap UK Cover), Soundcloud (Album of the Week), Apple Music, YouTube Music and more. 

The 11-track tape marked Nemzzz’s most expansive drop to date, an exploration of how the young artist is shaped by his upbringing and his fame. Nemzzz surprised fans the week after release, unveiling the Deluxe version featuring collaborations with rap heavyweights from both sides of the Atlantic, including Lil Yachty on the ethereal ‘IT’S US’, Headie One with the bouncy ‘I KNOW YOU CARE’ and  K-Trap on the siren-like ‘MAYFAIR’. The tape has already racked up over 120M+ streams since launch.

Marrying bars laced with Nemzzz’s wicked sense of humour, earworm hooks and a raw soulful-drill production - DO NOT DISTURB cemented Nemzzz’s status as the new titan of UK Rap. On singles including ‘ETA’ (a collaboration with German rap star Luciano), leadback mental health commentary ‘PTSD’ and the shimmering, jazz inflected ‘L’S’, Nemzzz drew acclaim from Central Cee, The Observer, Fader, CRACK, NME spins across BBC Radio 1, 1Xtra and more. The tape was rounded out by ‘MONEY AND VIBES’, which saw Nemzzz bring UK flavour to a flip of Justin Timberlake’s ‘Rock Your Body’. The single topped the A list at 1Xtra on release last year and continues to rack up over +1M streams a week. 

Nemzzz is one of the most exciting breakout rap talents of recent years. An old head on young shoulders, Nemzzz is relatable in a different way than a lot of his rap peers; driven less by punchlines about Birkin bags and more by the challenge of helping his young fans navigate their way through growing pains. The rapper is shaped by his tough upbringing in Gorton, using his music to reflect on his experiences including heartbreak, fake friends, financial literacy, finding your own path, and managing mental health amid social media addiction.

2023 was a massive year for the young star with a consistent slate of releases including his debut EP Nemzzz Type Beat (which was pulled together in just 17 days in a flex of his innate talents) alongside a string of singles including ‘Therapy’ (Spotify Rap UK Cover) and ‘8AM IN MANNY’ which landed to props from some of the biggest rappers in the world - Drake and Lil Yachty. Last year saw Nemzzz deliver his first sold-out headline tour alongside performances at festivals including Glastonbury, Ibiza Rocks and more. 

Since bursting onto the scene at the tender age of 14, Nemzzz has relentlessly chipped away at his craft – building steady buzz amongst the industry, media and fans alike. With over 180M combined streams in 2023, 9 Million TikTok views, tips including BBC Radio 1xtra's Hot For 2023, Amazon Music x Hunger Magazine Ones To Watch, No Signal Class of ’23, Best Newcomer Nominee MOBO Awards 2022, plaudits from Pitchfork, The Face, DAZED, The Guardian, HYPEBEAST, CLASH, Complex UK and NME - Nemzzz is making serious moves.

[her-masters-voice]

Plagiarist's revenge, part 1

"Hi there." The unexpectedly broken silence made you jump, leaving you teetering on the bookshelf ladder as you reached to put Hegel in his place next to Kant on the top shelf. It wasn't strictly following the owner Sarah's instructions to arrange the texts by year of study but, in your brattish act of rebellion, it seemed far more apt to keep the German idealists together, even if Hegel was in second year and Kant in first.

Hegel still clutched in your hand, you turned, relieved to see your favourite customer. "Oh, hi..." His name didn't come to your lips and, in the pause, it vaguely occurred to you that you hadn't learned his name in the entire six months or so he and you had been chatting over the counter over Murakami or Mitchell. "You startled me," you said, clasping the book to your beating breast in a faux swoon, adding "Weird I didn't hear the bell on the shop door."

He took a step closer. For a moment it seemed he might take your hand and help you down. He didn't, retorting, "Ha, I noticed it didn't ring when I came in. Perhaps it has begun to be skeptical of its existence despite the empirical evidence of its tinkle."

You smiled at the quip despite your still-elevated heart rate.

You went to step down. He was standing close. Too close. You felt you couldn't quite step off the ladder and waited for him to move away. He gave one of his disarmingly charming smiles as he looked up towards you. He didn't move. Here in the back corner of the shop, hidden from the view from the street, a trickle of heat ran down the back of your spine in the odd atmosphere. "Anyway, you will excuse me, but I should get back to the front of the shop. I'm in sole charge on Tuesdays."

He smiled, "Yes, I know the shop schedule, Alice. Don't worry, I doubt anyone will disturb us. This is the quietest time of the week." The trickle amplified, the stream of heat running right up your spinal cord now. You felt the hair on the back of your head standing on end. Something was different about him today. Still several rungs up the ladder, you were very aware of the shortness -- and flimsiness -- of your dress with his face more or less level with your crotch. In spite of your discomfort, or perhaps because of it, the heat spread into a dull ache between your legs.

You attempted humour to defuse the tension. "I wouldn't want to miss a sudden deluge of paying customers," you said, taking one step down a rung. "Sarah would kill me if I missed a bunch of sales." The attempt fell flat in his fixed expression. His eyes remained steadfastly on yours and if he could be said to be smiling it wasn't at your pathetic joke.

"It's really all right, Alice." His tone was even and calm. Calculating. He looked down now and, shockingly, with his left hand he grasped your ankle as you took that tentative step, locking your shin bone against the ladder. "In fact, Sarah knows I'm here. She wants me to be here. Alone with Alice." You were too taken aback to react, preoccupied with the sudden pain in your skinned shin. In your precarious position on the ladder, you dropped the book and grabbed at the upper rung to gather your balance. Hegel hit each rung as the book dropped in the slow motion of your spinning mind in this bizarre situation. Even as you processed him talking about Sarah -- your mentor, your occasional lover -- his other hand was under your dress, crawling up your thighs and tugging at your panties, fingernails scratching your skin.

Your instinct was to fight, shouting "What the fuck!? Fucking...!!" You grabbed for his hair and pathetically slapped at his hand under your skirt but in one swift movement he pulled your foot off the rung and you clattered downwards. You would surely have fallen to the floor had he not pinned your body between his bulky chest and the hard wood of the rungs of the ladder. Dazed, you grunted before his hand was clamped over your mouth to stifle the scream caught in your throat. He waited, holding you still for one, two, three, four breaths.

His revolting weight held you fast, helplessly pinned. The sudden exertion made his breath heavy in your ear, even as you felt your own chest heaving painfully against one of the rungs. His voice was changed, a dark whisper: "You would be wise, Alice, to comply." Keeping one hand on your mouth, he removed the other slowly from holding you. In your stasis you felt his arm move to his hip, then being a slow path back up your body, an unnatural hardness digging into your back that finally revealed its malevolent cool steel against your skin as the blade cleared the neckline of your dress and pressed into the naked vulnerability of your neck.

Your mind shuffled through the disordered permutations of why he was doing this, why he mentioned Sarah. As instructed, you did not resist. His arms were strong, his body subsumed yours, but most of all something in his tone commanded complicity even more than the cold steel digging its edge into your skin.

He shifted his hips, grinding himself against you from behind. To your horror you felt the unmistakable swell of his cock in his pants pressing against the soft flesh of your ass through your summer dress. But perhaps even more horrific was the realisation of the gnawing heat in your pussy. You liked it.

[mildlypastel]

The Sad, Sad Tale of Hanswurst.

Alright, so I've got a BFA in Acting degree and am not using for a whole lot of anything right now so... gather around children, and let's learn you some *Theatre History*. So, in general, by the late 16th and early 17th century, theatre was doing pretty well in Europe, and Comedy Especially. Everyone was enjoying their own form of semi-satirical farce utilizing stock characters; whether it be Commedia Dell'arte in Italy, or Comedy of Humours and Comedy of Manners in England. Germany (Or, the general region which would become Germany if you rather) however, had a slightly different take on Comedy. While they did use stock characters, most of their biggest original hits were formed around a central recurring character: Hanswurst (Aka "Johnny Sausage" or, as I prefer, "Weiner John"). A name derived from a popular insult at the time. Hanswurst was basically your typical buffoon: Bumbling into and out-of danger and trouble without really paying much attention to it. And people LOOOOOOVED it. Whether he was played by flesh and blood actors or portrayed by a Puppet, Children and Parents alike could not get enough of the little guy.

This, *would* be a problem to some, however.

You see by the mid 1700's, some folks in German theatrical circles started to feel a bit constrained by the clownish, half-improvised stylings Hanswurst symbolized. Theatre elsewhere was rapidly growing and evolving, but some German Actors, Writers, and Philosophers felt like their theatre was stagnating.

Scholar and Philosopher Johann Christoph Gottsched and Actress Friederike Caroline Neuber agreed that Hanswurst was the root cause of their problem. And so, they conspired to KILL the Puppet.

"But, how do we get rid of Hanswurst?" "The heart, Johann! We need to go for the heart!" And so, their dark plot was put into motion. The pair, and fellow conspirators, held a public execution of Hanswurst. They burned a Hanswurst puppet on-stage in an effort to 'Banish' him, once and for all. The public and the audience did not take kindly to this.

Whether or not it was immediately successful, the execution of Hanswurst did mark the end of an era, as it were. Though German Comedy wouldn't really take off the way Comedy in other European countries did, Germany would leave a mark in the form of musical theatre (for better and for worse, one cannot talk about German theatre without bringing up Wagner). The "Hanswurst Debate" will always be a story that will always stick with me, both because of the absurdity of it, and because it serves as a reminder that no matter the year or the country; theatre kids will always solve problems like theatre kids.

[sumquiasum]

Skulduggery Pleasant for the series / film ask meme?

My rating (1-10)

7/10, it has some minor weaknesses but I love the worldbuilding and the humour and the second season was soooo fun

My favourite character

Gonna be basic and say Tanith Low followed by Valkyrie Cain and Omen Darkly. I am really bad with the English names but I loved the zombie chapters. Oh also China was a blueprint for me for sure.

My least favourite character

Don't have one, I think all the characters work super well

The character I think I'd be friends with

Probably Militsa!

The character I think I won't hit off with

The main man himself probably, love him on the page, irl I'd find him irritating.

My favourite episode/scene

My favourite books in the series are tied between The Faceless Ones (WOW the English title is different from the German one.) and Bedlam.

Whose clothing style I like best

I always wanted to dress like Valkyrie as a kid.

Times I watched it (and if I would again)

I've read the original series twice, the newer books once and if I had the time I would definitely revisit them.

Send me the name of a series / film

[sci-fiworlds]

A Sci Fi Worlds Interview with Lex Gigeroff: Lexx Co-Writer/Actor

Most of our readers have probably never heard of this very strange Canadian-German and later UK co-production, which is a shame, because Lexx has to be easily the most unique sci-fi series to hit our screens since the original (and best) Star Trek made its debut back in 1966. Not content to do yet another Gene Rodenberry rip-off series and bored by the endless (and often archaic) moralising of The Next Generation and Voyager, the Lexx writers (known as the Supreme Beans) created something totally different and very, very weird.

With its characteristically dark sets and black humour, and operating from the perspective "humans are a flawed species," Lexx was a revolutionary series. Its characters weren't on any spiritual quest to "better themselves" or "save the day," rather, they were motivated by the mundane things that motivate 99.9% of the human race: boredom, lust and hunger. Throw in "the Lexx," a Manhattan sized bioengineered insect craft and "the most powerful destructive force in the two universes" and you had something just as fun as the original Trek but just about as different as you can get too. I guess that's why Lexxicons lovingly still call it "Star Trek's evil twin."

Richard Thomas: First things first, thank you so much for giving the BoA readers the time to answer these questions. I'm a huge fan of Lexx and I'm sure that, after reading this, many of our readers will want to check it out too.

Lex Gigeroff: I had known Paul Donovan for a few years before Lexx, and he approached me about writing for the series after seeing a play I had written/performed in. Paul decided to go with a couple of virtually unknown writers (Jeff Hirschfeld & myself), because there was something in our approach that appealed to Paul's odd sense of humour.

Richard Thomas: In the DVD extras on the TV movie releases I heard you and the other writers say that Ridley Scott's Alien and John Carpenter's Dark Star were big influences. The longer story arcs and extensive CGI (not to mention the chief villain's name "His Shadow" ) might suggest Babylon 5 was at least a little influential too. Also Red Dwarf stars Craig Charles and Hattie Hayridge appeared in season four so I don't know if that series was a influence or not.

What were some of your other influences and are there any sci-fi shows you just hated and wanted to get away from? If so, why and what were you trying to do different with Lexx?

Lex Gigeroff: Dark Star and Alien were somewhat influential -- Dark Star for its anarchy, Alien for its production design. But I can categorically state that Babylon 5 had no influence whatsoever as we never watched it, and to this day I've never seen an episode. I liked Red Dwarf, but can't really say it was an influence. Monty Python had as much of a background influence as anything. We wanted to get away from the heavy, preachy, moralizing sci-fi of shows like Star Trek: TNG, which in my view took all the joie de vivre out of the original series. I've always been a big sci-fi fan - but I think my influences tend to come more from writers like Phillip K. Dick and the dystopian novels of J.G. Ballard, rather than the Heinlein-Clarke axis.

Richard Thomas: Lexx is often called Star Trek's evil twin. I can see why some fans might consider Lexx anti-Trek but personally I think in some ways Lexx is actually a lot closer to the 1960s series than any of Trek spin-offs are. I've heard Lexx creator Paul Donovan talk about being a fan of the original Star Trek so what are your thoughts on this? Were you trying to be a little like the original Star Trek or were you trying to be something completely different?

Also, are you a fan of the original series yourself and, if so, what are some of your favourite episodes?

Lex Gigeroff: There was a sense of fun in the original series, and I think we wanted to try and create three characters as distinctive as Kirk-Spock-McCoy with Kai-Stan-Xev (plus a robot head). I watched the show quite a bit when I was younger, and enjoyed some of its campier moments, i.e. The Squire of Gothos. I also liked the one with the weird head in the sky that turned out to be Clint Howard.

Richard Thomas: Back to Lexx. Given that the show and the ship were both named after you, did you have much input on developing the early mythology of the series, i.e. the Insect Wars, the two universes, cyclic time, proto blood, the Divine Order and, of course, love slaves?

Lex Gigeroff: I had a lot of input conceptually from the ground up, as the three of us really developed the concept and bible following Paul's general brushtrokes. A lot of the 'backstory' went in as a result of our collaboration with Showtime in the beginning, who seemed to want a lot of stuff about 'prophecies', etc. We were a little reluctant about going this route, as we feared it would lead down the rabbit hole of pretentiousness that we were trying to get away from.

I think looking back on it now the thing I'm proudest of is that Lexx wasn't really like anything else on television. Most shows are just rip-offs of other shows, but I think there was something different about what we were doing that made it hard to come up with a good comparison with others shows -- not that it isn't comparable in some aspects to other shows, it's just that we weren't following anyone else's model. So it was, I think, a little unique in that respect.

Richard Thomas: One of the things I love most about Lexx is that all four seasons look very different and distinct from each other, each introducing their own new chief villains: His Divine Shadow, Mantrid, Prince, Vlad, oh and Lyekka and her sisters. Where did the ideas for these head villains come from and do you have a personal favourite?

Lex Gigeroff: Who knows where ideas come from? I liked all our villains, but if I had to pick one I'd go with Mantrid, because there was something just otherworldly strange about Dieter Laser's performance.

Richard Thomas: Mantrid has to be my personal favourite too, the fact that there's so little left of him when we first meet him reminded me a little of my favourite Doctor Who villain, the crippled mad scientist and Dalek creator Davros.

Lex Gigeroff: I think we thought about bringing Dieter Laser back, but it wouldn't have been Mantrid exactly. As we liked to say, "death is never final", which was our excuse for bringing back actors we liked.

Richard Thomas: Lets take a step back a bit. I think out of the four two-hour TV movies the first one I Worship His Shadow is probably my favourite, I loved the holographic show trials and ridiculously severe penalties. What was your favourite of the TV movies and why?

Lex Gigeroff: Hmmm... I guess Eating Pattern for me, because it wasn't quite as burdened with having to deliver back story and setup. Plus I got to hang around as Rutger Hauer's sidekick. But I liked all four.

Richard Thomas: You actually made an appearance in I Worship His Shadow, playing the part of His Shadow's new host body. You appeared in a lot of other episodes too, the crazy surgeon in Tunnels and the sleazy porn director in Fluff Daddy were two of my favourites. What character did you enjoy playing the most in the series?

Lex Gigeroff: I was very happy to play the parts I did. I had the most fun with Dr. Rainbow in Tunnels, but I think my best performance, such as it was, came as the Bound Man in I Worship His Shadow.

Richard Thomas: Probably the most unique episode of Lexx has to be Brigadoom. I have to say I was really sceptical about the idea of a musical episode but it's become easily one of my favourites. Come to think of it there's an awful lot of singing in Lexx, the first episode even starts with the Brunnen-G battle song.

Where did the idea to have so much singing in the series come from and what did you think of it? Also, do you have a personal favourite Lexx song?

Lex Gigeroff: We knew from very early on that we wanted to do a musical, but we had to come up with a good angle on it, which in the end I think we did. I don't really have a favourite song. I sometimes sing Bog is the king of Pattern in the shower.

Richard Thomas: Season three's Battle and season four's The Game are another two of my favourites, I really enjoyed the competition between Kai and Prince in those episodes.

I could go on all day about the different episodes but other than the ones we've already discussed what do you think were some of the best episodes of Lexx?

Lex Gigeroff: I also really liked The Game, 769, Prime Ridge, Stan Down to name a couple. Twilight and Apocalexx Now have their moments as well.

Richard Thomas: A Midsummer's Nightmare is probably my least favourite episode, though, it's pretty funny. Are there any episodes you just dislike or wish you'd done differently in hindsight?

Lex Gigeroff: Sure. Lots of things could have been better if we'd had more time. But I don't have any regrets. Some episodes didn't work all that well, like the one you mentioned and, say, Patches in the Sky.

Richard Thomas: I think I'm right in saying Lexx ended the way you and the other writers always intended, the Lexx blowing up the Earth after four seasons, but not long after the final episode Yo Way Yo went out I remember hearing a rumour that a spin off series about Prince, Priest and Bunny was being planned. Was there any truth to this rumour at all or is this the first you've heard of it?

Lex Gigeroff: There was never any serious talk of a spin-off.

Richard Thomas: If Lexx ever did return for a fifth season or maybe even just a new TV movie, what do you think the story would be about? Would it still be set in the Dark Zone or would the Lexx crew find its way into the mysterious Other Zone? Would Kai be alive or dead? Would 790 fall in love with Stan? Would the bad carrots be back?

Lex Gigeroff: We could have gone back into the Insect Wars, I suppose. But on the whole we were satisfied with the way it ended. I'll leave it to Fan Fics to think up alternate story lines.

Richard Thomas: It's been nearly eight years now since the series ended, personally, I think Lexx has been a little underrated.

Lex Gigeroff: I don't think we had much influence, if any. I'll leave it up to others to suss out if we were ahead of our time or not.

Richard Thomas: Thanks again Lex, are you working on anything now and/or do you have any websites or anything else you'd like to plug?

Lex Gigeroff: My pleasure, Richard. It's always great to hear that folks enjoyed our strange little show. I've always got a couple of projects on the hop, and I'm trying to promote my new play, Conrad & Barbara - about Lord Conrad Black and his consort. I've also had a sports-comedy blog for some years which can be found at: www.theobgcommunique.blog.ca Cheers!

READ RICHARD THOMAS'S SCI-FI WORLDS COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

[mcrmadness]

RSD is so stupid. I just mind my own business and suddenly RSD goes "you know you can never be as liked as you want in this fandom because you're from a wrong country and speak/use the wrong languages etc."

[transmutationisms]

Would you be able to give some references or places to read more about the humour stuff? I looooovvveee purgation motifs

YES. so first of all, just for getting an overview on humouralism, my go-to would probably be "passions and tempers: a history of the humours" by noga arikha. this covers a pretty broad historical sweep.

looking at purgation more specifically, "the expressiveness of the body and the divergence of greek and chinese medicine" by shigehisa kuriyama is sooo good. it's a comparative history, but the parts on chinese medicine are really mostly to illustrate points about greek med. also, the focus is on bloodletting specifically, but very similar logic about purgation and cleansing motivated a lot of other humoural medical treatments, and kuriyama does draw some of that out. this book is just so cool.

ok fuck it i'm just gonna bullet point the rest of this lmao

"a reconstruction of the hippocratic humoural theory of health" (balzer & eleftheriadis, 1991, journal for general philosophy of science. doi 10.1007/BF01801207) -- another good overview. more digestible length than a whole book

"humoring the body: emotions and the shakespearian stage" by gail kern paster -- really good look at how much we're missing when we disembody early modern drama, and given the influence of shakespeare over succ... yes

"the rise and decline of character: humoral psychology in ancient and early modern medical theory" (jacques bos, 2009, history of the human sciences. doi 10.1177/0952695109104422) -- historical argument is problematique but it gets the noggin rotating

"diseased bodies, defiled souls: corporality and religious difference in the reformation" (charles h parker, 2014, renaissance quarterly. doi 10.1086/679783) -- on catholic views of humoural 'defilement' vs calvinist views of sinful sensuality. reminder that the roys are catholic lol

"you are what you eat: historical changes in ideas about food and identity" (steven shapin, 2014, historical research. doi 10.1111/1468-2281.12059) -- intro to food and temperaments, including humoural aspects. side note, literally love steven shapin. please read him.

"'you have no good blood in your body': oral communication in sixteenth-century physicians' medical practice" (michael stolberg, 2014, medical history. doi 10.1017/mdh.2014.71) -- patients' views of the body as unclean and in need of purification/evacuation/etc

"blood matters: studies in european literature and thought, 1400–1700" ed. bonnie lander johnson & eleanor decamp -- as the title suggests, mostly focussed on blood. but includes analysis of blood as a humour, and also shows how this kind of analysis can help us make sense of literature/media

"humoural wombs on the shakespearian stage" by amy kenny -- more shakespeare, lots of Gender. looks at performance history in conjunction with humoural theory

most of these books you should be able to find free on z lib etc, and with the articles access varies but if you hit a paywall, lmk and i might be able to float you a pdf. also if you read german or french there's a lot of lit on humouralism out there.

oh and also you can snowball the reference lists in any of these things and be pretty sure you're finding good stuff!

[builtyouahousefromabrokenhome]

So I actually listened to Liam on Impaulsive and I’m so tired of this flood of people hating and concerning on him. Holy fuck the hosts are obnoxious (it’s their trademark) but when people are piling on like this I have to check the source. And I wish others would do that too before posting ...

I think it just comes down to:

1. People not getting Liam’s self deprecating deadpan humour.  He exaggerates about negative and uncomfortable topics as a joke (like the stuff about his “demons”). I do that too and it makes especially Germans and North Americans upset because they just don’t understand sarcasm.

2. People not actually listening to it but just repeating what others are saying, or only hearing snippets out of context, and it gets distorted in a game of telephone. I mean I really don’t blame anyone for not wanting to expose themselves to that podcast, but then maybe just accept that you don’t know what exactly he said and in what context.

3. People not knowing enough about 1D because Liam didn’t actually say anything new. He’s said variations of the same stuff before, and the rest are known facts. I’m a quarantine Larrie and “even” I know all this stuff. O_o The one thing that I didn’t know as much details about before was about S*mon having dinner with Liam and “having a plan” for him, and pretty much building the band around him. Of course S*mon had a plan for Liam, as he did for everyone on his show. And of course he had a plan for each of the other 1D members. Liam only talks about himself and S*mon’s plan for him, because it’s his own story and this podcast is about him, and maybe he really doesn’t know about the others in that respect, like he says on the podcast.  If you actually watched them on X Factor you’d have seen what Liam said, about having to start all the songs because he had more experience and the others were too nervous. Liam was set up as a “frontman” in the beginning, until they all got more comfortable and found their vibe together.

Liam didn’t put Louis down by saying Louis “found his voice behind the scenes” - he said Louis basically masterminded their sound and direction as a band. And that’s also something that’s already known, they have talked about it before, how Louis was paying a lot of attention to their contracts etc. 

As for the Zayn comments, when he said “that didn’t age well” I took it to refer to that Gigi went from defending Zayn on twitter against JP to reporting him to the police lol for basically swearing on the phone at the Yol///anda incident. Liam wasn’t making any judgement on Zayn, and he actually said he’d always be on Zayn’s side. But he spoke in a kind of bungled up way and said a lot of different things. And a few of the things he said on their own out of context can sound pretty negative. EDIT: Oh, and I didn’t even react much to when Liam compared the support he got from home to Zayn, and said something like that it was different for Zayn. Liam also talked about how his own dad was very much involved and coaching him through it all, and that it was like he was more or less just doing everything for his dad, and for example asking his dad first what he thought about being put in a band, before making the decision. And while Zayn’s mum did get him out of bed to go audition for X Factor, it’s not a big surprise if Zayn didn’t get the level of support/coaching from home as Liam got from his dad. Doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, just different, and that he’s had to figure out stuff on his own and fend for himself more than Liam has. (Both of their situations surely have pros and cons tbh.) So I don’t think it’s time to jump to the conclusion that Liam was shitting on Zayn and his family and stereotyping him in a racist way ... :/ 

Strip That Down really did reach a billion streams very quickly, before anyone else from 1D had reached that many streams. Zayn was huge from the start but didn’t quite have a smash hit like that. In the last couple of years Harry surpassed them both and broke huge records this year, but it wasn’t so back then. 

.

I actually enjoyed listening to Liam and thought he was funny, and I think he made the best out of being on that kind of podcast. Social chameleon in action, basically. And maybe it’s like giving him a cookie for just basic human decency, but I appreciated it that he shut them down when these shitty hosts wanted to talk about JD/AH and other obnoxious topics.

[ashleyfableblack]

Just picked this up on XBL on sale and yes, I do recommend it. As to why...

For starters, it's more of a story-telling experience, what some of y'all might call a "walking simulator". The game has a fairly linear progression as you move Koala P.I. protagonist Stone through the events. Not so much "laser-whoosh kapow" as what many traditionally think of as a "game". So your enjoyment is going to be mostly based on how much you enjoy the story and characters.

Now- on THAT point- to be transparent here, they HAD me at "gay koala".

Gay males get next to no representation in movies and less in gaming. What little exists is mostly archetypal and either over-the-top or degrading, the mincing comic relief, the preening, prissy villain or some anime-teen-twink. The titular Stone is a believable, relatable, flawed character as are the supporting cast. Their interactions are realistic and not The usual cartoonish caricatures LGBTQ characters are boxed as. The tension at the center of the story is a relationship I've seen firsthand as I know many of y'all have as well, for better or worse.

The Australian setting added an interesting feel to the world. As I enjoy other cultures, hearing the different cadence of speech and vernacular was refreshing and fun, even with the emotional and occasionally bizarre tone.

The humour was chuckle-worthy, dipping into the crude or abstract wells a few times.

The art style is simple. A few character models are noticeably 're-used to fill in here and there. Still, the use of animal-characters ironically is very humanizing. Alex being a bird, for example, communicates so much about him. He's aloof, mobile, has a detached view you might expect from an artist. Stone, the bear is more sedentary, gruff, coarse.

If you're a horror-hound like me you might enjoy a special in-game extra. One location Stone can visit as he explores the town is a cinema featuring several full-length movies you can watch. Among these are the original "Night of The Living Dead", The German impressionist silent great "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and the SUPER-classic "Häxän: Witchcraft Throughout The Ages".

Should you play through the game(and it is fairly short)don't rush off at the ending. There is a post credit epilogue level which really brings things home.

Though I know it's not for everyone, if the genre is one you like, I say give it a go. It's on sale right Now for cheap and is a pretty quick play-through that'll probably hit you right in the feels, as the kids say.

Qhttps://news.xbox.com/en-us/2020/01/27/stone-now-on-xbox-one/

[carriagelamp]

I read more books this month than I anticipated. I should probably wait before doing a February book round up, but I already feel like I’m struggling to decide which ones to cut from my list so I’m doing it this weekend instead of next. If I read much next week I’ll bump ‘em up into March’s round up

Asterix and the Missing Scroll / Chieftain’s Daughter

I got the last two “new” Asterix books out of the library so I could officially say I had read them all. Over all my opinion is… they’re fine! None of these would ever become one of my favourites, but they’re all fine stories. The art is good, it is completely in-line with the original, and the stories are… fine. I liked The Missing Scroll quite a bit more than The Chieftain’s Daughter but I never find a ~hurr hurr teenagers~ plotline that interesting, whereas I do enjoy seeing Romans get chased down by unicorns so that’s probably not surprising. There’s some spark I can’t put my finger on that the new Asterix books just seem to be missing though… a bit of humour or cleverness or something. Still, they’re fine reads if you’ve been hungry for more Asterix and I’m glad I read them. (Though the library gave me the American translation of The Chieftain’s Daughter, something I didn’t realize until I started reading and realized that this is wrong??? I’ve been reading these books since I could read and I know this is wrong??? What the hell is happening??? The I realized the publisher was different and I simmered in fury the whole time I read it — WHY ARE YOU CHANGING NAMES AND WORD CHOICES IN A WELL ESTABLISHED SERIES THAT ALREADY HAS AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION YOU ANIMALS WHY ARE YOU DUMBING DOWN THE LANGUAGE AAAUGH

The Bride Was A Boy

This one was cute! The Bride Was A Boy is an autobiographical manga written by a transwoman recounting her experience with transitioning, meeting her boyfriend, and eventually getting married. It’s mostly done in a 4-panel style and is interspersed with lots of information about the LGBT community, particularly in Japan. A lot of it was stuff I was already familiar with, but I still found it adorable and a very worthwhile read. it would be a fantastic book for young queer people who are looking for more of an introduction into international queer space

Cul de Sac: Children At Play

Cul de Sac is just a weird, fun newspaper comic series about the children who live in a small neighbourhood. It fully taps into the children-as-semi-feral-chaos-agents, and there’s something hilariously nostalgic about the whole thing. Lots of times when stories try to portray children there’s always something… wrong about it, something that doesn’t mesh with true childhood, but in this comic I can see glimpses of my grimy, dirty-covered self as a preschooler running around the pages. I would definitely recommend trying them!

The Cremation of Sam McGee

I reread The Cremation of Sam McGee and The Shooting of Dan McGrew and man, they don’t stop being buckwild. These are two really famous Canadian poems that were then illustrated by equally famous Canadian artist Ted Harrison. Harrison’s style is gorgeous and distinct and given what strangely grisly stories these poems are they fit the mood perfectly. Everything feels just a little tilted and wrong and unsettling. If you enjoy an occasional poem (especially ones that are super fun to read out loud) and haven’t read these before, I would recommend them! Or do what my teachers did, and read Sam Gee to a young child in your life and watch them be baffled and concerned and horrified.

There are strange things done / in the midnight sun / by the men who moil for gold...

The Gryphon’s Lair

The second book of the Royal Guide to Monster Slaying series written by Kelley Armstrong; I’ve been eagerly awaiting this book! It’s a very cool fantasy series because it really leans into environmental stewardship and the importance of studying animals and conservation so you can find ways to live alongside a healthy ecosystem. In this book Rowan is officially accepted as the Royal Monster Hunter, which means a whole new set of trials and burdens. She has to contend with a baby gryphon that is becoming increasingly large and dangerous, plotting family members, doubt about her abilities, a potential curse, and a daunting quest deep into the mountains in order to set things right. If you’re looking for some very gentle high fantasy, this series delivers.

Hogan’s Heroes comics

What to say here. Anyone following this blog has suffered the knowledge that I’ve been rewatching Hogan’s Heroes lately. When I found out that there was a short-lived, shitty comic series in the 60s? Of course I had to hunt them down. And so I’ve read them! And they sure were a shitty comic series from the 60s! They were, shall we say, of wildly varying quality. Some were actually really funny (like #5, it easily had the best art and best jokes imho), others were a slog, and most were fine and amusing enough to read the whole way through but not much more.

If you don’t know what Hogan’s Heroes is about: it was a 1960s sitcom that took place in a WWII POW camp, in which the Allied prisoners trapped there had a massive, complex sabotage/spy ring right underneath the camp. The whole show is about constantly outwitting the bumbling Germans while keeping up the pretense that they’re all just normal prisoners. The show is hilariously funny and I would recommend that, even if I can’t say the same for the comics unless you’re like me and are just really thirsty for more content...

Magic Misfits: The Fourth Suit (Ripley)

The final book of Neil Patrick Harris’ middle grade series, The Magic Misfits. In this fourth book, the group is fragmented and forced to meet in secret to avoid notice from the mysterious and powerful Kalagan whose cruel machinations have already turned the quiet little town on its ears, putting people’s lives in peril and destroy Leila’s fathers’ magic shop. The Misfits are going to need all their skills to finally unmask this sinister magician and break the mesmerism he seems to have placed over the entire town before it’s too late to save no only the town, but their friendship and trust.

Super charming series, and the illustrations are gorgeous.

Marsupilami

HOUBA! I watched a very bad TV adaptation of this as a kid that still managed to find a place in my heart, and so I decided to finally try reading some of the original comic! On one hand: it was exactly what I had hoped! The art is cute, the marsupilami is so dynamic and fun to see on the page (and has a way better characterization than he does in the show), and it’s really funny! Unfortunately! It is also pretty racist! Yikes! That seems to be a reoccuring downfall for some of these older Belgian comics... I also tried reading the first book of Les Tuniques Bleues and aye ye ye… I couldn’t actually get through that one. That being said, these were older volumes and frankly, North American media was also real fucking racist at that point so I’m not gonna write them off either. I really liked most of this book, and will probably try to get my hands on one of the more recent volumes of both Marsupilami and Les Tuniques Bleues to see if they get better with time. (If you’ve read either of those series and have volume recommendations hmu)

The Pagemaster

I’m a sucker for novelizations, I have no excuse beyond that. I recently rewatched The Pagemaster and decided to read the chapter book. And it was a solid little adaptation! It’s about Richard Tyler, a young boy with a head for statistics which unfortunately means he lives in constant fear of (in his opinion, statistically likely) injury or death. However that fear is put to the test when he gets caught in a horrible thunderstorm and has to shelter in a nearby library with halls and shelves that stretch beyond the imagination and with untold perils hidden among the pages of the books. Richard, with only his library card and three novels that hope to be checked out, has to venture through the different genres and horrors housed int he library if he ever wants to find the exit and get home to safety.

Pumpkinheads

A very charming little graphic novel. Cute art, and really loveable characters. Josiah and Deja work every year at a local pumpkin patch, and are best friends during those weeks. However this is their last year working there before going off to university and as the last day at the patch comes to a close they realize that they both still have regrets. Deja sets off on a mission to avoid work, eat all the interesting snacks around the patch, and get Josiah to find the girl he’s been crushing on every year and has never worked up the nerve to talk to.

After being deprived of human contact for almost a year, this book really hits you right in the heart.

The Screwfly Solution

A deeply upsetting scifi/horror short story! I read it on the recommendation of a friend and, yes, can confirm that this fucked me up a bit. I honestly don’t even know what to say about this that wouldn’t spoil it, but frankly with everything being as it is, this hit a little bit too close to reality. (That being said, it was very well written, like this is a very good story on a literary level and it does exactly what it sets out to accomplish.) If you feel like reading twenty pages and being really disturbed, give it a go! Otherwise go and read any number of the much happier books on this list!

The Whipping Boy

This was a book I remember reading as a lit circle book back in elementary school and really loving. After telling myself I’d reread it for years, I finally sat down with it again. If you somehow got through school without reading this one, it’s about a brat of a prince and his whipping boy — since it would be unspeakable to strike a prince, when the prince misbehaves it is Jemmy who gets whipped. Unsurprisingly, there is no love lost between the two of them, because the prince is always intentionally causing problems that Jemmy has to suffer for. Things begin to change though when the prince decides to run away and drags Jemmy along with him. On the run, being chased by highwaymen, and desperately trying to hide their identities, these boys go on a fast-paced adventure beyond the castle walls. It wasn’t as special as I remembered it being as a kid, but it’s a fine little chapter book.

[sastrugie]

john entwistle biography review

ok so first: I didnt really like the biography because I thought it would focus on totally different aspects. John was a musical virtuoso and that hardly ever gets mentioned in the book. But we get exact axccounts on how much money he spent on what day and in which pub he bought which champagne. like wow thanks. The other personal stuff is basic who knowledge you can read in any other Who biography. His autobiographical bits were joy and fun! Maybe the only reason to buy the book in my opinion. He writes totally different than the author...

ANYWAYS: here my fav facts from the book that you probably didnt know before

this is the face of a man who -when his father gave him driving lessons for his 21st birthday as a present- decided driving wasnt really his thing and he spent the money on clothes and parties instead. He never had a drivers license ever and also never desired to have one 

the hospital he was born in, was bombarded and destructed one day after his birth

as a child he was really weak and thin and had basically every disease that existed

his family was poor af

his father left the family early and held contact with his son, but soon disappeared with a new family

his stepdad, Gordon, disliked John alot and would ignore him, hated everything John did or said and he let his bad moods out on Johns mother, which caused John to be very silent and observative around the house so that there wouldnt be any trouble

he did everything to please Queenie (his mom) so that there was no fighting, according to Alison

loved drawing and playing but usually alone since he had no friends apart from their dog

he heard a trumpet solo once from a trad jazz band when he was 6 or so and decided he wanted to learn the trumpet

my fav line of the book probably: “despite his own expectations, he passed the exams to go to grammar school” like same

at school he was bullied from the older boys but soon left alone by them because he would fight back with badass comments 

he applied for the school band for the trumpet but the tallest guy in the year was chosen (he was the 2nd tallest)  which made John mad, but he discovered the french horn

soon he found a friend, mickey brown, at last and he gave him the nickname “ent”

he was so terrible in P.E that he was dismissed with other pupils to play somehwere else, they were called “the hockey misfits” and guess who was among them: Pete Townshend.

yeah as you might know they became besties because they loved music and black humour.

he found himself a gf (alison) and Pete & a school gang (like 4 ppl) and his life seemed to finally get where it should.

his worst subjects were geography and german like wow (im a german geography student lmao)

once they played in a pub and johns stepdad was there and was super angry and gave john a list with his fav pubs and told him “these are the places I never want to hear your fucking music playing”.

after walking home pete decided to switch the guitar and john wanted to become a musician more than ever

Roger found him and John kind of convinced him (it took months apparently) to get Pete into the band and then it all started

he judged the beatles because John Lennons harmonica was “out of tune” in love me do, wow ok you nerd

john started smoking with 20 and was the last one to quit his job for the band and he was against drugs at first (bc he had a “civilized” job) but then decided to give a shit, dyed his hair black, bought cigarettes, smoked dope with pete and did speed too

he wanted to step out of himself and feel good about himself and he was always a fashionnerd so he started buying and trading and selling clothes (he once was dismissed from school bc he wore the school uniform incorrectly)

with 18 or so he was still living at home, had a toy soldier collection and a pet budgie

pete and his college friends made fun of john bc he wasnt a student and still lived at home, although john could have gone to college too and he wanted to, but his stepdad again said no and he had no choice.

he was very awkward and introverted but could open up with his music 

he was really into pop art (esp pop art clothes)

was a pseudo mod bc he only liked the fancy clothes and motown music

with the who he found a purpose in his life and finally could be different than ordinary ppl

hated when people touched his hair, he literally hated it

would fuss much about his hair in general

once after a concert they were starving and the room service was alreday home so they had to look on used plates and food wagons and John found a shrimp and said: “who wants to dine with me tonight?” (idk that really made me laugh)

keith moon was john entwistles soulmate and they were the cutest, most iconic and funniest duo ever end of discussion

his amps would soon be called little manhatten bc he had so many bc he wanted to be loud

he actually went to sing at church once when he was like 24 and the band made fun of him then he stopped

in the late 60s he bought a house with alison in a normal neighbourhood and went walking the dogs on sundays and stuff

but he was a party animal and always the last to go

he was really sensitive and cried often according to Alison but only in front of certain people

he would totally step out of his way to please people

when they played at the monterey pop festival they didnt bring their own amps along and john was furious bc he said the american amps are shit and kit was like “no” and john didnt talk to him for the whole festival until their perfomance was over and they had sounded like shit to tell kit “I TOLD YOU SO” thats how extra he was

when he got money he would spend it bc he was so used to being poor that he thought it wouldnt last long and he had to enjoy it NOW

he was always calm and everyone respected him and kit told a story where he entered the room and roger was at keiths throat and and pete was screaming something and john was sitting in the corner cleaning his nails. thats who energy

liked to dance at parties

his fav drink was rémy cognac with 40% and he would drink like 1 bottle alone everyday in his later years...wow dude

he was also gentlemanTM and once paid taxis for girls from london to brighton after a party

once at a wedding the free drinks were out and John just gave the barkeeper his creditcard and said he will pay for all the drinks of the night for everyone (it wasnt his wedding)

Roger once said: “John made smartass comments that deserved a punch in the face” sounds like him yes

he didnt really care about money and always wanted to pay and never told anyone how much things had cost and brought gifts for everyone

soon that ended in a shopping addiction tho and he bought ridiculous things for ridiculous amounts of money

when the who was inactive he sank into depression :(

held the band together during who by numbers & who are you

wrote and played all the quadrophenia horn parts himself

never lost his passion for art and always drawed alot, said Alison

cried when Christopher was born aww

once he saw their manager in an art museum and how he wanted to buy a painting but couldnt afford it, so John bought it secretly and shipped it to said managers home as a gift

We all know John was a huge collector. His most treasured collection was .. wait for it: teapots.

he tried to save Keith from being arrested once and ended up being arrested too lol

wanted to write a scifi concept album but desorted the idea and gave some songs to the who (905) or Pete

was a good cook apparently

When he gave a hug HE was the one who decided when to let go sdfghjk

hated confrontation and would hire other people to tell someone bad news

he spent so much money on dumb shit like wtf

but didnt really care either

probably the master in picking up and seducing girls

he let his stepdad live in the quarwood mansion when he wasnt there but Gordon was still an asshole wtf

the contact to his real dad was really sporadic

when the who ended, it hit him really hard and he didnt know what to do besides partying and buying stuff/hording stuff

was very insecure and selfconscious in the 80s according to Maxene :(

he actually took pete breaking up the who really personal and was sad 24/7

was that kind of guy that said bad stuff about the who but when you said bad stuff he would try to kill you on spot

with cocaine he felt really confident and still like the 60s/70s rockstar he once was but he didnt understand that these times were over and he needed to move on

sometimes went into random pubs with friends and made jam sessions for the guests

he still was generous and loving until he died and tried to play with other bands but it was not the same

he really liked Kenney and hung out with him more than with his wife at some point lmao

was a total giver and people who worked at quarwood would steal money from him but when someone pointed that out he got angry with that person for even suggesting that

was a real softieee (and a huge nerd)

all his friends said that he was shy at first but once you got to know him he would come totally out of himself, was very funny, loved to tell stories, was very very loyal and would try evertyhing to make you laugh aww

all in all a glorious story with a sad ending and he did destroy himself completely, but lets remember that Pete Townshend described old John still as "wonderful, mature and elegant” so lets cling on to that :)

[doorsclosingslowly]

tagged by the glorious @sl-walker

How many works do you have on AO3? 44

What’s your total AO3 word count? 265.827

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Star Wars, Shadow and Bone/Six of Crows, Supernatural. If we're counting stuff that never got polished enough to post, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Harry Potter, Cobra Kai, Lord of the Rings, Inu Yasha, .......

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The blue man (Star Wars TFA; Kudos: 547)

Armor (Star Wars TFA; Kudos: 417)

Coarse and irritating (Star Wars TFA; Kudos: 358)

Head shot (Star Wars TFA Kudos: 344)

Reveille (Star Wars TFA; Kudos: 344)

All the same series!

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I respond but sometimes I'm super slow. I do appreciate every single comment and some of them I've read so often I can almost recite them, but I'm not actually good at making the words go (yeah I know I write for fun but that's one of the reasons why I'm such a slow writer, and also I love suffering)

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

They're both about Maul after losing to Sidious, which is such a miserable point in this life already: the one in which I made it Worse aka the OG zombie Savage fic, Coming home early is always a mistake, and then there's Maul decades after, trapped with something that might just be his brother, Keep quite still and wait

Do you write crossovers? If so what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I invent crossovers to torture my best friend. In the last one, Gilgamesh was made Hokage. Generally though, I sometimes enjoy the characters-in-world-from-different-story type but I haven't written anything of the sort. Except! My Supernatural/Mines of Falun crossover. And I'm currently writing a Shadow and Bones fic with a de Sade pastiche in it. Those are my kind of crossover

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I'm not remotely visible enough to get hate I think! Like, I generally get less than 500 hits, so why would anyone bother

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I do write sexually explicit fic when the characters vibe with it (like From Each According to Their Ability, To Each According to Their Need which is Jesper/Kaz/Inej) but I would describe it as... more interested in the tenderness you get from being utterly weird in the way that makes your partners feel understood than in sexiness, I guess.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know. As I've said, I am a minuscule slug in a massive ocean

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Someone asked about translating Your death is a number but I cannot count that high into German! They haven't finished and sent me the link though, and really, I don't envy them. Translation's fucking hard

What’s your all time favorite ship?

I've never had one single favourite for anything in my life! I like way too many things

Whats a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I genuinely plan to finish very single one of my million WIPs posted at some point. Yes, even Epicenter

What are your writing strengths?

Weird set-ups and texture through details maybe? Honestly being positive about myself is hard except in terms of: I do really like the ideas I come up with and how I'm spinning out the implications

What are your writing weaknesses?

Humour is super hard and not my strength, which means the fact I've decided that Jesper is the most interesting character in Shadow and Bone/Six of Crows should be classed as an act of self-harm. Honestly, why. Part of that struggle is that there's so many kinds of funny and in-between working out the character's sense of humour and trying really hard, I sometimes stop caring about what possible readers might find funny as long as I do.

Also, I'm slow. So slow. I plot several fics per week and take weeks to write a chapter

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I've written dialogue in other languages! Maul talking to Jagrub in Your death is a number but I cannot count that high, where Jagrub speaks way better Mando'a than basic and because Maul only half-understands some Mando'a words that's how I wrote it.

Death Watch must be getting impatient. As soon as Maul forces himself to raise his eyes—turning away from the coddling indifference of the holocam—Jagrub starts talking. “Mand’Alor? Vercop’ashnar verborir—” and then she lets out a jumble of other words, even more unfamiliar, before she cuts herself off.

She’s not one of those, usually, who address him directly. Maul understands Death Watch’s tendency to converse in Mando’a—if he is to avoid appearing an outsider and risking another schism, replying in kind is indispensable—but his early training held no space for anything that would not advance the revenge of the Sith, let alone the languages of minor regional hegemons, and neither Kast nor him prioritized resuming the lessons interrupted when Sidious attacked Sundari. Jagrub’s brow bunches up with the effort of simplifying her words to a level he can understand. “We should… Permission to send… scouts to find more of Rook’morut'yc?” A frustrated grunt. “No, what will he… Weapons? Goore.”

Kast glances at Jagrub, and then at Ventress. She must decide the suggestion is urgent, because she explains in Common, “Jagrub is talking of slugthrowers. Impossible to deflect with a lightsaber. Mandalore has not fought a war against the Jedi in centuries, but they were more effective than blasters then, and enough should remain as heirlooms or in museums to furnish our army. A delay of a few days to retrieve them, if you believe that Savage will survive that long. Else, we’ll make do with the five we currently have.”

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

I've been spinning off stories from what I've read for as long as I can remember. The first thing I actually wrote and posted was an Inu Yasha fan comic about extremely minor characters the Shichinintai, because even as a thirteen-year-old I was niche

What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

I love most of them, but the ones that made me dive really into myself are probably my favourite. Your death is a number, Down in the Ground where the Dead Men Go, Riches and Wonders, To Each According to Their Ability

tagging @expatgirl @humanformdragon @submeowchinegun @skitter-kitteruwu @pomodoriyum @merfilly

[billantoinette]

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