#getting access to foreign films isn’t as hard as Americans want it to be

[catfe-overlord]

“Feral”

Part 4

Read part 1 here

Read part 2 here

Read part 3 here

::in which Bakugou makes a mistake, Kirishima pays the price, but it all works out and the quirk is gone for good... right?::

+++++++++++++

Kirishima couldn’t help staring at the empty desk across the room. It was Monday, and Bakugou still hadn’t returned.

Over the weekend, Kirishima had periodically visited his best friend after meal times. That was when he seemed to be on his best behavior, but the quirk still sent him into frenzies at pretty random times. He’d been able to feel most of them coming. Most.

It appeared he was making some real progress. The claws, fangs and cat-like eyes hadn’t gone away yet, but he was acting more like himself each day, and the fits of rage grew less and less frequent. Until this morning, when Kirishima had decided to bring him breakfast.

Kirishima was already in his school uniform, having woken up a half hour early to go see the blond before class. He’d grabbed a protein bar on his way through the kitchen for himself, but for Bakugou he’d prepared a quick meal of home cooked eggs and vegetables. He was no chef like Bakugou, but after all the meals the blond had prepared for him, he figured he’d try to return the favor. He made sure to grab some of the spiciest seasonings and a bottle of sriracha sauce before heading out though.

Cementoss was the one stationed outside of Bakugou’s room today. He let Kirishima in without hassle, and Bakugou was simply lying on his bed, staring up at the white ceiling.

“Hey, hey, Katsuki!” he greeted him cheerily. Bakugou gave no response, no acknowledgement. “I’ve got breakfast, dude.”

It wasn’t until Kirishima was standing beside the cot and set the tray down on the bedside table with a small clink! that Bakugou stirred.

Before Kirishima could even register what was happening, Bakugou was on him, pinning him to the ground, claws at his throat. Kirishima hadn’t hardened fast enough, and he could feel the hot, sticky blood on the back of his head where it'd collided with the ground. The claws were already dug into the flesh of his neck. He struggled to get out a choked yelp in an attempt to alert Cementoss.

It must have worked, because the Pro Hero came bursting into the room. He surged forward and lifted Bakugou off of Kirishima like he was nothing more than a rabid puppy. Bakugou struggled against the hero’s grip, but he would’ve had better luck fighting a brick wall. Cementoss was sturdy and unyielding.

“Get out of here, Kirishima!” his teacher demanded of him.

Kirishima managed to climb to his feet and stumble out. He put pressure on his neck where it hurt worst, but blood almost immediately seeped through his fingers. He was horrified at how much poured down his arms after hardly a few moments. He could only stare at all the red that stained his shirt and sleeves.

“Kirishima?” asked Cementoss as he emerged from Bakugou’s room. “What are you still doing here? You need to get to Recovery Girl.”

Kirishima couldn’t seem to move. His feet were glued in place, his eyes trained through the window to stare at Bakugou as he curled in on himself. His entire frame was shaking, and he buried his face into his pillow to hide it.

“Kirishima, can you hear me?” Cementoss was asking, but the teenager wasn’t listening. His brain was too busy screaming at him to get back to Bakugou, to tell him it’s okay, to beg him not to cry.

He stepped up to the door, trying to pry it open but unable to without the keycard to grant him access inside. Cementoss put a hand on his shoulder, pulling him away from the door as gently as he could, but he had to use more force when Kirishima fought against his hold.

“Please! Please, I—fuck! Katsuki!”

Everything became a blur after that. He remembered Cementoss delivering him to Recovery Girl, who looked panicked at the sight of all the blood. She was quick to heal him and wrap up his wounds. She’d wrapped bandaging all around his neck and some around his head. She decided he had a mild concussion and needed four staples where he’d bashed his head open. Bakugou’s claws had gone deep enough into his throat to have cut his larynx, so she said to avoid speaking as much as possible at least for the rest of the day. After all said and done, she told him he wasn’t allowed to leave until he’d gotten some rest.

But he couldn’t sleep. He had so much going on in his mind, his brain wouldn’t allow such a foreign concept as sleep. After a couple hours she let him go, but she made it known she preferred he didn’t go back to school until tomorrow due to the concussion.

But he couldn’t just sit in his room and dwell on his thoughts. He knew the teachers wouldn’t let him back in to see Bakugou so soon, and he needed something to distract him. So he went back to the dorms and showered, changed into a fresh uniform, and headed to class.

Everyone was obviously surprised to see him, Aizawa included. Kirishima took notice of the way their eyes caught on the bandaging around his neck that peeked out of the collar of his uniform, but no one said anything as he made his way to his seat.

And he spent the whole hour staring at Bakugou’s empty seat, not a word of Aizawa’s lecture reaching his ears.

Once the bell eventually rang, signaling lunch, the Bakusquad was surrounding him faster than he could even close his textbook.

“Kiri, babe, I don’t want to sound like that person, but you look like shit,” Ashido offered. “What happened?”

“We heard you went to visit Bakugou this morning and he attacked you again,” Kaminari explained.

Sero’s expression was full of pity. “Yeah, man, are you seriously okay?”

Kirishima gave them an O-K, then signaled to his throat with a shake of his head. He grabbed his notebook and wrote out Can’t talk yet. Nicked my vocal chords.

Ashido looked horrified. “He tried to rip your throat out? Seriously?!”

“Dude, that’s so messed up.” Sero shook his head and folded his arms. “Even under a quirk, you’d think he’d have enough self control not to nearly slit his best friend’s throat.”

Kirishima choked. It hurt, but he couldn’t help it. Hot tears leaked down his cheeks, and he could only bury his face in his sleeve to keep his friends from seeing him crying. He felt so unmanly.

“K-Kirishima?” Kaminari gasped. “Whoa! Are you alright?”

“Shit, Kirishima, I’m sorry!” Sero apologized. “That was really insensitive of me to say. I’m sorry, man.”

“It’s okay,” he tried to say, but his voice was horrifically gravelly and much too quiet for anyone else to understand. On top of the pain his throat was in, he could feel a marble forming in it, threatening to choke him. He had to get himself under control.

Ashido pulled him into a hug then. The effect was almost immediate. He relaxed in her grip, leaning into her and turning his head into her shoulder.

“Kirishima,” came Aizawa’s voice then. The redhead turned to see his teacher standing a few rows of desks ahead of the group, hands in his pockets and face expressionless. “A word in private, please.”

Kirishima slumped. He was about to get chewed out. Ashido tightened her embrace reassuringly before slipping away. “We’ll wait for you in the hallway so we can head to lunch together.”

He nodded his thanks, and the group retreated. Aizawa sighed once the door was closed behind them. “I just spoke to Recovery Girl. You shouldn’t be here.”

Kirishima looked down at the floor. He wasn’t sure how to reply, considering he couldn’t verbally answer anyway.

“Listen,” Aizawa continued, lowering himself onto his haunches to be level with Kirishima, “I can’t say I know what you’re feeling right now. But I can tell you I know what Bakugou is feeling. I spoke with him this morning after the incident. He wouldn’t say it out loud, but he was taking it really hard. He was pretty devastated, actually. I’m sure he’d like to see you and know that you’re okay. Would you like to see him?”

Kirishima stared up at Aizawa with big eyes. He nodded vigorously, and Aizawa chuckled softly at that.

“Alright, kid. Not until after you’re fully healed though. Seeing you like this would only make him feel worse.”

He stood again, stretching his back and Kirishima heard a few quiet pops of his joints. He pointed to the door with his thumb as he folded his arms. “Get out. You’re excused from classes for the day. If you’d like, I can give you your homework now, but I want you resting. Don’t come to classes until tomorrow.”

Kirishima nodded. He’d take the leave of absence if it meant he could visit Bakugou again. He stuffed his books in his bag and headed for the door, giving Aizawa a nod of thanks before dipping out.

Ashido, Sero, and Kaminari were waiting for him like they’d promised, but they looked caught off guard by his sudden change in attitude.

“Whoa, uh, you okay, man?” Sero asked.

He gave a thumbs up and flashed one of his toothy smiles.

“What did Aizawa do to you?” Ashido questioned, a lop-sided smile growing on her lips.

Kaminari cocked his head. “Yeah, Aizawa isn’t the type of guy to strike me as ‘uplifting’. Usually people leave his presence feeling worse.”

Kirishima shook his head with a smile meant to put them at ease. He tried his best to signal he was heading back to the dorms, but he was sure he just looked like an idiot waving his arms around. When the others only scrunched their eyebrows, he just pointed in the direction of the dorms.

Ashido’s mouth formed an ‘O’ and she nodded her approval. “Get some rest, Kiri. We’ll stop by and visit later! ‘Kay?”

He gave another thumbs up, then waved goodbye as he sauntered off.

Once in his dorm and changed into jogging pants and a tee shirt, he truly did try to fall asleep, thinking maybe it would help time go by faster. He ended up just staring at the ceiling for two hours. He attempted to get some of the homework done, but without Bakugou’s usual help, he was hopeless.

Finally, he decided to head into the common area and crash on one of the sofas, playing some cheesy American action film on the TV. He snuggled up under a layer of blankets with a bowl of ice cream and watched as two burley men duked it out on the small screen.

He must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew he was blinking awake at the sight of a few of his classmates above him.

“Hello, Kirishima,” said Yaoyorozu, a sheepish smile on her soft face. “Sorry to wake you. We wanted to make sure you were alright. We let you sleep for a while, but it’s dinner time.”

He wiped some drool off his chin. Ugh, how embarrassing. He blinked the sleep out of his eyes, then noticed Iida standing beside her with a tray in his hands.

“We thought you might be hungry,” Iida said with a kind smile. “Aizawa informed us you weren’t quite eating solid foods just yet, so we have some miso soup, and chocolate pudding for dessert.”

Yaoyorozu produced a small table from beneath her shirt and helped him prop it up over his lap. Iida set the tray down, and Kirishima felt his mouth water at the smell of the soup. His stomach growled almost comically loud. He winced, but the two only laughed.

“Glad to help, Kirishima,” Yaoyorozu smiled pleasantly. “Also, I made you some chamomile tea with honey. That’s always best for a sore throat.”

He grabbed the tea cup off his tray and took a small sip. It was delicious! It tasted just like his moms always made it whenever he was sick.

He cleared his throat and voiced a hoarse reply. “Thank you, guys.”

“No need to thank us,” said Iida. “Aspiring heroes should always be there for one another when they’re in need of a little help. Please, if you need anything, don’t be afraid to ask. Yaoyorozu and I would be pleased to help.”

He nodded his gratitude, and they left him to eat his meal in peace. The quiet didn’t last once his band of juveniles were passing through and saw him up and awake. Ashido squealed, and Sero and Kaminari were hot on her heels.

“Kiri, you’re up!” she squeaked, plopping down on the couch beside him. “Feeling better?”

“Much,” he answered. His voice was rough, like he’d just finished a long night of screaming at a heavy metal concert. He was just thankful to be able to speak at all and with almost no pain. At this rate, Aizawa might let him in to see Bakugou tonight!

“So, are you mad at Bakugou about what happened?” Sero asked then.

Kirishima shook his head. He didn’t want to strain his voice more than he had to.

“Good. I’d hate to see you guys stop being best friends over an accident that happened because of a quirk. And I’m really sorry about what I said earlier. It wasn’t true, and I know Bakugou would never hurt you on purpose.”

“It’s okay, Sero,” Kirishima said through a mouthful of pudding. “You were mad. I say things I don’t mean when I’m mad too.”

“How much longer do you think this quirk will last?” Kaminari asked. “I’m actually starting to miss all of Bakubro’s yelling and screaming. Especially his cooking.”

“What I wouldn’t give for a bowl of his curry right now,” Ashido said dreamily.

“I’m going to see if I can visit him again after dinner,” Kirishima explained, “but I need to see Recovery Girl first to get the OK.”

“Ooh! Please tell Baku we miss him.”

He laughed at her pouty lips and puppy dog eyes. “I’ll make sure he knows.”

The three chattered for a while about school and quirk training and all kinds of gossip as Kirishima finished his soup and listened in. He wished Bakugou was there more than ever. Sometimes when they hung out in the common room, he’d let Kirishima lean on him, and once even allowed the redhead to use his lap as a pillow. Kirishima was always a very touchy kind of guy—it was a part of his love language and how he showed affection. Bakugou would never admit he appreciated it too, but Kirishima could read him like an open book. Underneath his hard exterior, Bakugou was human like everyone else.

A little later into the evening, Recover Girl was happy to see his wounds had nearly healed over the course of the day, just little pink scars left that should disappear by morning and a scratchy throat that wasn’t giving him enough pain to bother him. She removed the staples in his head, checked his pupillary responses again, then planted another kiss on his forehead for good measure, but she said with Aizawa’s supervision she’d allow Kirishima to go see Bakugou tonight.

He just about ran all the way to the holding cells. Aizawa looked him over and must have deemed the teenager worthy, because with a sigh he swiped his keycard without saying a word.

Kirishima stepped into the room with a smile plastered to his face. After this morning and spending his whole day worrying about how Bakugou must be feeling, it was a massive weight off his chest to finally be here.

Bakugou was lying on his side in his bed overtop of the sheets. He had his back to Kirishima and didn’t make any efforts to look and see who it was entering his room. For a second, Kirishima wondered if he was sleeping.

“Katsuki,” he said, taking a couple steps forward.

That got him moving. He shot up and spun on Kirishima, shock clear across his face. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Kirishima shrugged. “I’m here to see my best bud. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Me? You wanted to make sure I’m okay? Are you a fucking moron?”

The redhead only took another step forward. “That had to be scary for you this morning.”

“Tch. Kirishima, I almost fucking killed you.”

“Eijirou.”

Bakugou glared at him. “What?”

“Call me Eijirou. This morning hasn’t changed anything.”

Bakugou clenched his fists tight enough that his knuckles were white. He bared his teeth, and it was in that moment Kirishima noticed two things.

“Your fangs are gone! And your claws!”

All the tension in his body seemed to drain at once. Bakugou blinked a few times, then held his open palms in front of him. He looked up at Kirishima, his eyes no longer slit like that of a cat’s.

“Your eyes too! Katsuki, I think the quirk has worn off!”

Bakugou stood, his expression sinking. His head drooped and he held his face in his hands. Kirishima surged forward when he noticed his shoulders begin to tremble.

He wrapped his arms around Bakugou, holding him close as he cried. Bakugou burrowed his face into the crook of Kirishima’s neck and returned the hug.

“What’s wrong, Katsuki?” Kirishima asked in a gentle voice. “I thought you would’ve been happy?”

“I am,” Bakugou answered with a choked sob. “I’m just—relieved.”

Kirishima traced soothing circles into his back. “It’s okay, man. Let it out.”

He took a shaky breath. “I’m sorry I’m so fucking weak.”

“What? You’re not weak. You’re the manliest guy I know, Katsuki. The bravest, strongest, most heroic man I’ve ever known.”

“I-I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

Kirishima shushed him. “It’s alright. You don’t have to be embarrassed. This is what friends are for.”

“Friends,” Bakugou echoed. There was a strange undertone in his voice that Kirishima couldn’t quite pinpoint.

“Best friends.”

Kirishima tightened his embrace, wishing Bakugou saw him as something a little bit more.

<><><><><><><><><>

Soooo hope y’all liked part 4 (and a big fat sorry for how long it took me to get the damn thing posted). I’ve started part 5 and should have it up ASAP bc I’m HELLA excited to get my one-shots posted.

Anywho, thanks for the read!! You guys are the best, and I really appreciate all the love you’ve given me and my writing💕

Read part 5 here

Read part 6 here

8/24/2020

[letterboxd]

Bong Hit!

Today Parasite overtook The Godfather as the highest-rated narrative feature film on Letterboxd. We examine what this means, and bring you the story of the birth of the #BongHive.

It’s Bong Joon-ho’s world and we’re just basement-dwelling in it. While there is still (at time of publication) just one one-thousandth of a point separating them, Bong’s Palme d’Or-winning Parasite has overtaken Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscar-winning The Godfather to become our highest-rated narrative feature.

In May, we pegged Parasite at number one in our round-up of the top ten Cannes premieres. By September, when we met up with Director Bong on the TIFF red carpet, Parasite was not only the highest-rated film of 2019, but of the decade. (“I��m very happy with that!” he told us.)

Look, art isn’t a competition—and this may be short-lived—but it’s as good a time as any to take stock of why Bong’s wild tale of the Kim and Park families is hitting so hard with film lovers worldwide. To do so, we’ve waded through your Parasite reviews (warning: mild spoilers below; further spoilers if you click the review links). And further below, member Ella Kemp recalls the very beginnings of the #BongHive.

Bong Joon-ho on set with actors Choi Woo-shik and Cho Yeo-jeong.

The Letterboxd community on Parasite

On the filmmaking technique: “Parasite is structured like a hill: the first act is an incredible trek upward toward the light, toward riches, toward reclaiming a sense of humanity as defined by financial stability and self-reliance. There is joy, there is quirk, there is enough air to breathe to allow for laughter and mischief.

“But every hill must go down, and Parasite is an incredibly balanced, plotted, and paced descent downward into darkness. The horror doesn’t rely on shock value, but rather is built upon a slow-burning dread that is rooted in the tainted soil of class, society, and duty… Bong Joon-ho dresses this disease up in beautiful sets and empathetic framing (the camera doesn’t gawk, but perceives invisible connections and overt inequalities)—only to unravel it with deft hands.” —Tay

“Bong’s use of landscape, architecture, and space is simply arresting.” —Taylor Baker

“There is a clear and forceful guiding purpose behind the camera, and it shows. The dialogue is incredibly smart and the entire ensemble is brilliant, but the most beautiful work is perhaps done through visual language. Every single frame tells you exactly what you need to know while pulling you in to look for more—the stunning production design behind the sleek, clinical nature of one home and the cramped, gritty nature of the other sets up a playpen of contrasts for the actors and the script.” —Kevin Yang

On how to classify Parasite: “Masterfully constructed and thoroughly compelling genre piece (effortlessly transitioning between familial drama, heist movie, satirical farce, subterranean horror) about the perverse and mutating symbiotic relationship of increasingly unequal, transactional class relationships, and who can and can’t afford to be oblivious about the severe, violent material/psychic toll of capitalist accumulation.” —Josh Lewis

“This is an excellent argument for the inherent weakness of genre categories. Seriously, what genre is this movie? It’s all of them and none of them. It’s just Parasite.” —Nick Wibert

“The director refers to his furious and fiendishly well-crafted new film as a ‘family tragicomedy’, but the best thing about Parasite is that it gives us permission to stop trying to sort his movies into any sort of pre-existing taxonomy—with Parasite, Bong finally becomes a genre unto himself.” —David Ehrlich

On the duality of the plot: “There are houses on hills, and houses underground. There is plenty of sun, but it isn't for everybody. There are people grateful to be slaves, and people unhappy to be served. There are systems that we are born into, and they create these lines that cannot be crossed. And we all dream of something better, but we’ve been living with these lines for so long that we've convinced ourselves that there really isn’t anything to be done.” —Philbert Dy

“The Parks are bafflingly naive and blissfully ignorant of the fact that their success and wealth is built off the backs of the invisible working class. This obliviousness and bewilderment to social and class inequities somehow make the Parks even more despicable than if they were to be pompous and arrogant about their privilege.

“This is not to say the Kims are made to be saints by virtue of the Parks’ ignorance. The Kims are relentless and conniving as they assimilate into the Park family, leeching off their wealth and privilege. But even as the Kims become increasingly convincing in their respective roles, the film questions whether they can truly fit within this higher class.” —Ethan

On how the film leaps geographical barriers: “As a satire on social climbing and the aloofness of the upper class, it’s dead-on and has parallels to the American Dream that American viewers are unlikely to miss; as a dark comedy, it’s often laugh-aloud hilarious in its audacity; as a thriller, it has brilliantly executed moments of tension and surprises that genuinely caught me off guard; and as a drama about family dynamics, it has tender moments that stand out all the more because of how they’re juxtaposed with so much cynicism elsewhere in the film. Handling so many different tones is an immensely difficult balancing act, yet Bong handles all of it so skilfully that he makes it feel effortless.” —C. Roll

“One of the best things about it, I think, is the fact that I could honestly recommend it to anyone, even though I can't even try to describe it to someone. One may think, due to the picture’s academic praise and the general public’s misconceptions about foreign cinema, that this is some slow, artsy film for snobby cinephiles, but it’s quite the contrary: it’s entertaining, engaging and accessible from start to finish.” —Pedro Machado

On the performative nature of image: “A família pobre que se infiltra no espaço da família rica trata a encenação—a dissimulação, os novos papéis que cada um desempenha—como uma espécie de luta de classes travada no palco das aparências. Uma luta de classes que usa a potência da imagem e do drama (os personagens escrevem os seus textos e mudam a sua aparência para passar por outras pessoas) como uma forma de reapropriação da propriedade e dos valores alheios.

“A grande proposta de Parasite é reconhecer que a ideia do conhecimento, consequentemente a natureza financeira e moral desse conhecimento, não passa de uma questão de performance. No capitalismo imediatista de hoje fingir saber é mais importante do que de fato saber.” —Arthur Tuoto

(Translation: “The poor family that infiltrates the rich family space treats the performance—the concealment, the new roles each plays—as a kind of class struggle waged on the stage of appearances. A class struggle that uses the power of image and drama (characters write their stories and change their appearance to pass for other people) as a form of reappropriation of the property and values ​​of others.

“Parasite’s great proposal is to recognize that the idea of ​​knowledge, therefore the financial and moral nature of that knowledge, is a matter of performance. In today’s immediate capitalism, pretending to know is more important than actually knowing.”)

Things you’re noticing on re-watches: “Min and Mr. Park are both seen as powerful figures deserving of respect, and the way they dismissively respond to an earnest question about whether they truly care for the people they’re supposed to tells us a lot about how powerful people think about not just the people below them, but everyone in their lives.” —Demi Adejuyigbe

“When I first saw the trailer and saw Song Kang-ho in a Native American headdress I was a little taken aback. But the execution of the ideas, that these rich people will siphon off of everything, whether it’s poor people or disenfranchised cultures all the way across the world just to make their son happy, without properly taking the time to understand that culture, is pretty brilliant. I noticed a lot more subtlety with that specific example this time around.” —London

“I only noticed it on the second viewing, but the film opens and closes on the same shot. Socks are drying on a rack hanging in the semi-basement by the window. The camera pans down to a hopeful Ki-Woo sitting on his bed… if the film shows anything, it might be that the ways we usually approach ‘solving’ poverty and ‘fixing’ the class struggle often just reinforce how things have been since the beginning.” —Houston

The birth of the #BongHive

London-based writer and Letterboxd member Ella Kemp attended Cannes for Culture Whisper, and was waiting in the Parasite queue with fellow writers Karen Han and Iana Murray when the hashtag #BongHive was born. Letterboxd editor Gemma Gracewood asked her to recall that day.

Take us back to the day that #BongHive sprang into life. Ella Kemp: I’m so glad you asked. Picture the scene: we were in the queue to watch the world premiere of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite at Cannes. It was toward the end of the festival; Once Upon a Time in Hollywood had already screened…

Can you describe for our members what those film festival queues are like? The queues in Cannes are very precise, and very strict and categorized. When you’re attending the festival as press, there are a number of different tiers that you can be assigned—white tier, pink tier, blue tier or yellow tier—and that’s the queue you have to stay in. And depending on which tier you’re in, a certain number of tiers will get into the film before you, no matter how late they arrive. Now, yellow is the lowest tier and it is the tier I was in this year. But, you know, I didn’t get shut out of any films I tried to go into, so I don’t want to speak ill of being yellow!

So, spirits are still high in the yellow queue before going to see Parasite. I was with friends and colleagues Iana Murray [writer for GQ, i-D, Much Ado About Cinema, Little White Lies], Karen Han [New York Times, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The Atlantic] and Jake Cunningham [of the Curzon and Ghibliotheque podcasts] who were also very excited for the film. We queued quite early, because obviously if you’re at the start of a queue and only two yellow tier people get in, you want that to be you.

So we had some time to spare, and we’re all very ‘online’ people and the 45 minutes in that queue was no different. So we just started tweeting, as you do. We thought, ‘Oh we’re just gonna tweet some stuff and see if it catches on.’ It might not, but at least we could kill some time.

So we just started tweeting #BongHive. And not explaining it too much.

#BongHive

— karen han (@karenyhan)

May 21, 2019

Within the realms of stan culture, I would argue that hashtags are more applicable to actors and musicians. Ariana Grande has her army of fans and they have their own hashtag. Justin Bieber has his, One Direction, all of them. But we thought, ‘You know who needs one and doesn’t have one right now? Bong Joon-ho.’

And so, you know, we tweeted it a couple of times, but I think what mattered the most was that there was no context, there was no logic, but there was consistency and insistence. So we tweeted it two or three times, and then the film started and we thought right, let’s see if this pays off. Because it could have been disappointing and we could have not wanted to be part of, you know, any kind of hype.

SMILE PRESIDENT @karenyhan #BongHive pic.twitter.com/Dk7T8bFYtv

— Ella Kemp (@ella_kemp)

May 21, 2019

But, Parasite was Parasite. So we walked out of it and thought, ‘Oh yes, the #BongHive is alive and kicking.’

I think what was interesting was that it came at that point in the festival when enthusiasm dipped. Everyone was very tired, and we were really tired, which is why we were tweeting illogical things. It was late at night by the time we came out of that film. It was close to midnight and we should have gone to bed, probably.

Because, first world problems, it is exhausting watching five, six, seven films a day at a film festival, trying to find sustenance that’s not popcorn, and form logical thoughts around these works of art. Yes! It was nice to have fun with something. But what happened next was [Parasite distributor] Neon clocked it and went, ‘Oh wait, there’s something we can do there’. And then they took it, and it flew into the world, and now the #BongHive is worldwide.

I love the formality of Korean language and the way that South Koreans speak of their elders with such respect. I enjoyed being on the red carpet at TIFF hearing the Korean media refer to Bong Joon-ho as ‘Director Bong’. It’s what he deserves!

I like to imagine a world where it’s ‘Director Gerwig’, ‘Director Campion’, ‘Director Sciamma’… Exactly.

Related content:

Ella Kemp’s review of Parasite for Culture Whisper.

Letterboxd list: The directors Bong Joon-ho would like you to watch next.

Our interview with Director Bong, in which he reveals just how many times he’s watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

“I’m very awkward.” Bong Joon-ho’s first words following the standing ovation at Cannes for Parasite’s world premiere.

Karen Han interviews Director Bong for Polygon, with a particular interest in how he translated the film for non-Korean audiences. (Here’s Han’s original Parasite review out of Cannes; and here’s what happened when a translator asked her “Are you bong hive?” in front of the director.)

Haven’t seen Parasite yet? Here are the films recommended by Bong Joon-ho for you to watch in preparation.

With thanks to Matt Singer for the headline.

[skidblast]

The Villains of Transformers.

This seems like a basic non-question. We got Unicron as the world-ending threat, and various incarnations of Megatron doing the rest of the job to keep the threat going. However, there is another angle to it.

Often we hear the phrase “write what you know”. Which seems simple enough, that you got experience with something that you can write it pretty true. But what does one know about mechanical aliens that have been fighting a war for 4 million years?

But the various writers of the Transformers franchise throughout the years have written what they know. There is an overarching threat in each one of the transformers incarnations that is different from the Megatron the Tyrant or the Planet-eating Unicron. It’s more like background noise, providing the constant that is happening, a crutch when writing.

Unfortunately I won’t be touching on Japanese produced media, I haven’t studied the history of Japan to know the nuanced details of culture background noise or incidental historic events to comment on Headmaster, Victory, RID2001, Unicron Trilogy and any other that I have missed.

I will also skip the Marvel, Dreamwave and FunPub comics/media as I’ve not read them. Cyberverse and the second IDW release are skipped as they are pretty recent additions. Rescue Bots and Rescue Bots Academy is skipped as well due to simplicity.

The main theme of the G1 cartoon is energy shortage. Cybertron is out of Energon, they flee Cybertron to find more energy. The Decepticons set up base on Earth because the humans have begun to harness the energy of their planet, allowing easy access to said energy and to ship it home.

This doesn’t come out of nowhere. In fact, most people have heard of the precursor in passing. The time when cars were lined up at the gas stations.

1979 was a bad shock for the oil market. Iran revolted, causing oil production to shrink a bit and caused panic, which in turned caused the prices of oil to rise dramatically. This was also the year where the Three Mile Island Accident happened, so people got vary of nuclear power. Gas rationing was discussed, and in some states actually implemented. Then recession hit in the wake of this.

The effects of the oil crisis and the following recession were still felt, so a cartoon about an energy crisis was very easy to write.

Beast Wars is an odd one to analyse. It came as the Transformers franchise was dying, and Hasbro was desperate to reinvent Transformers for the new kids. The appeal of cars turning into robots was no longer around, but making them animals was the push Hasbro needed to refresh the Transformers.

So we end up with the beginning basically rehashing the Transformers cartoon, but when the overarching plot hits, when the threads get revealed after a whole season of basically filler, we find the inspiration that the writers had. This time, it is not energy crisis, in 1996 we had put that behind us.

We have Megatron leading a team trying to restore the Decepticons as rightful rulers via time travel. We then discover he had actually gone against the so-called Tripredacus Council, the fractured Predacon Alliance who were biding their time and see the usefulness of what Megatron is trying to accomplish. In order to gain more power without breaking the peace made with the Pax Cybertronia, they use secret agents and secret police.

This is very familiar to a lot of people who haven’t seen Beast Wars or heard of it. This is Russia.

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and with that the Cold War ended. Peace was had. But as Russia threw off the communism ties from them, the ruling body still needed to exert control over the nation, and to broaden their influence beyond their borders. Russia went from Communism to Mafia-like control, using secret police, subtle threats and various other shady things. People saw what was going on, and with the new fear they were facing, they made it known in the media.

Beast Machines is a bit easier to figure out compared to its predecessor. It’s mostly because the message of Beast Machines resonates strongly today. 

Beast Machines came shortly after Beast Wars, as the toyline was trying to go away from the purely animal transformers and going for more mechanical look. But how do you really bridge those together?

At the tail end of the 80ies, environmentalism was on the rise. There was an undercurrent of that happening in Beast Wars, but in Beast Machines it had much more weight to it. With Megatron wanting to stamp out any biological influences from Cybertron, ready to eradicate any traces of it and mass-producing purely mechanical beings to repopulate Cybertron. While Optimus Primal was embracing the biological side of it, becoming sort of a guru through the Oracle.

The rise of industrialism is frightening prospect, seeing the nature retreat into near nothingness, and seeing the callousness of the industry just ignore it completely in favour for profits. But there was no denying that industrialism was there to stay, so while it is the main fear of the series, the message of the series was not to abolish it but to tame it, not let it out of control and make sure that the environment was put on equal grounds to it.

Animated is a strong reboot like Beast Wars was, coming at the same time as the Michael Bay films. Japanese production had taken over after Beast Machines finished, but Hasbro sought to retake the American market with media that they controlled. Importing Anime and dubbing it was all and good, but if they had complete control, they would have better chance to make it appeal to the market they wanted, the Western one.

It’s 2007. Following 9/11 the USA goes to war. And it is still going, with a certain hopelessness attached to it as people are getting more and more jaded by it. But most people never really felt the impact, only heard about it. There was no draft, there was no conscription. People joined the military, and those who came back came back either just a little bit off, or really suffering, and couldn’t get proper help.

Transformers Animated touches on civilians being basically forced into the war, against foes that were thought to be defeated long ago. It touches on the hardship of those civilians as they are part of it, feeling both the elation of being thought as heroes, and feeling the terror of the situation that they are in. A highlight of this is the episode Thrill of the Hunt, which came rather early, and touched on themes that are not common to see in media aimed at children, looking at Ratchet going too far, and suffering from some form of PTSD as well.

While the actual war had never visited the US or the spacebridge repair crew, the impact of it was felt on them, with all the horrors that entails.

Transformers Animated and first Michael Bay Transformers film came out on the same year. Yet the themes of the film series is far from what Animated did. One part of it is that Hollywood movies are more constricted as they have to appeal to a whole lot of audience in order to gain any return from the production cost. So everything is analysed in detail, making sure that nothing would alienate the vast majority of the Western World. We are in fact seeing it more obviously as China is growing stronger as a consumer market for Hollywood movies, and we see how the movies are made to appeal to that market as well.

So doing a commentary on the Afghanistan war like Transformers Animated did was out of the question. But it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a fear in the movie like in anything else.

Technology is on rapid rise. The rule of CPU power doubling every 18 months was still holding. New technology comes before anyone can really adapt to what had been introduced not so long ago.

The fear in the Michael Bay films is the rampancy of technology. We have severely advanced alien race make contact, and in fact made most of the technology based on one of them, found at the turn of the previous century. Technology that wasn’t even fully understood, that people thought they could easily control. But it goes out of control.

This concept is called Technological Singularity, where technology eventually becomes uncontrollable and we get swept up in the wake of it, having to deal with the new reality that we are no longer the masters of the world we are in. Grey Goo is one of the better known representation of this idea. Another is the idea of an overlord AI that either seeks to exterminate humanity, rule it with iron fist, or simply think of humans as we think of ants, insignificant.

IDW Publishing was on the scene two years earlier, in 2005. However given how long the first G1 iteration of it ran it gets mentioned after TFA and the movies due to that, allowing for Aligned continuity to come after it.

While TFA showed how the Afghanistan War impacted US citizens, who had not really experienced being at war while being so interconnected with the world and able to receive so much information, the IDW comics went for the other angle, the other fear that ruled in the USA at that time.

9/11. The fear of terrorism happening, the fear of foreign infiltration. The Decepticons had a plan on how the infiltration happened, every step of it planned, making sure that they could make the residents of the planet do most of the work of disrupting the peace, making it easy for them to swoop in and destroy the rest.

While things didn’t go as planned as the Autobots intervened pretty early, the Decepticons went public on full force, taking over New York City and almost dropped an atomic bomb on it. The connection to 9/11 is pretty hard to miss.

And then Phase 2 hits. James Roberts becomes one of the more interesting writers in the series. And this is where things go slightly off. James Roberts is more of a writer that knows what he’s writing about, instead of being influenced by current events.

And James Roberts has made known he has major interest in politics as he worked with politicians before picking up the pen for IDW Publishing. Write what you know, and James Roberts know politics, and political history.

In Phase 2 there is increased focus on the actual motivations behind the war. While Megatron Origins did go into how Megatron became the leader of the Deceptioncs, it was James Roberts that made it into the communism reflection that it became in the comics. It isn’t really some overarching fear in the background of the comics, it’s known quantity woven into the narrative of the comic.

Transformers Prime came in 2010, after Transformers Animated, seeking to remove the stylised aesthetics of the former toyline and try to be more like the movies.

And it wasn’t the only thing it changed. What was changed as well was the work that was actually put behind the actual lore of the series, making a true production bible that was used not for just the TV series but the accompanying video games as well, War For Cybertron and Fall Of Cybertron. And there was also a clear message along with that, this was a new continuity, new setting. Aligned, seeking to mesh together all the good from the various franchises into one good package.

But with all that background done on it, it’s easy to point out how Megatron went from a revolutionary to a tyrant and that would be about that. But it is not that simple.

What colors Transformers Prime is subtle and easily overlooked. In 2007 we experienced a dire financial crisis. Unemployment shot up, investments plummeted, there was no good safety net for people and a lot of them fell through the cracks. But these things are hard to really put into a show like this without it being explicitly about it. But there is another side effect of the recession that wasn’t that apparent in 2010, is more obvious now, but with the Transformers lore from the 1984 cartoon being similar, it blends into the usual Transformers noise.

Refugees.

Optimus Prime and his small team are simply refugees. Cybertron did run out of fuel, but the plots of harvesting energon and fighting over resources is more rehashing of the old cartoon plots. The focus is more on the Autobot team as they deal with being literal aliens in the US, escaping the tyranny that they fled. How they are treated by the locals, how they deal with the isolation of being in a culture different from theirs. They simply try to survive. Like how most people hit by the recession felt.

Robots in Disguise was released after Transformers Prime, going away from the expensive production and to more cheaper look. But with the so-called Aligned continuty having been a strong reboot of the “TV cartoons” series, Hasbro was in no hurry to abandon it, making Robots in Disguise a sequel to Transformers Prime.

Though with the war over, a new kind of threat had to be made. And Steeljaw steps into the role, not only as the main antagonist of the series, but as the representation of the fear theme of the series.

What isn’t really that obvious in Robots in Disguise is just how powerful Steeljaw is. Steeljaw isn’t just some generic Decepticon villain who escapes just so they can reuse his model instead of having to create even more Decepticons. He has fighting prowess, he is able to outwit the Bumblebee team. And the most dangerous weapons he has are his personality and voice.

Steeljaw is able to talk himself out of trouble. He has major ambitions, he knows what to do in order to recruit others. He wants power and respect, and if left unchecked, he will have it. And he knows that if there is some that he can’t convince, he can fight, and he will fight dirty.

Steeljaw represents a fear that people have experienced for a long time, but it wasn’t until recently that it really put into the spotlight. He is the abuser, the person in power that will make your life miserable. He antagonises Bumblebee and his team by causing them trouble, drive them off their safe haven of Earth and later drives them from their safe space, forcing them to go on the run. He finds power by leading a pack of Decepticons, then later by allying himself to the new council until he realises that he will not achieve his goals with him.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this massive post of mine.

[kyleisme14]

My trip to Area 51 - unedited

On Facebook, a kid from Bakersfield created an event. He uses his page, perfectly named, shitposting because my life is in shambles and makes 'storm area 51, they can't stop us all' and seemingly overnight a million people said that they would be attending. I did attend. Shitposting because my life is in shambles is inadvertent the most zeitgeist worthy name for this page. Shitposting is when you share terrible content that you know is bad just to get a reaction. You are sharing a low effort joke for the sense of connection from others.  Because my life is in shambles, this anonymous statement of personal vulnerability, I shall try and make a low effort attempt at connection. This is what our age is all about. We are doomed to be as connected and as isolated as possible. This had a chance of being a real life meme where we'd be isolated no longer.

The page became an immediate stronghold for memes. It adopted other internet jokes like Karens asking to see managers, Kyle's drinking monster energy drink for invincibility, and Naruto runners being faster than bullets, as ways of infiltrating the base. And also generated new ones about what people would find inside Area 51 like the 10th doctor to recommend a toothpaste or where my girlfriend wants to go for dinner or how we'd sneak in with a minivan but escape with a space ship. The killer meme was how once we 'free them aliens' we'd keep them as lovers and bang them so hard that we 'clapped them cheeks'. This was the low effort comedy that this meme page generated.

Was it a joke or would people actually go? At first I did not know why I needed to go to area 51, and everybody seemed to ask me. I failed to recruit any friends to join me on the quest, 7 hours driving to the infamous base. Most thought I was crazy for going. My brother told me to be safe. My sister thought I was joking, and called to counter my bluff. Whenever somebody said they couldn't go, I pittied them because I was sure they were going to miss something incredible and life affirming. I was excited because I had no idea what was going to go down, and nobody in the whole world did. I stopped at the army surplus. I thought we'd either see a humanitarian crisis like fyre fest or a government crackdown. Don't forget, 2 million people clicked GOING online, so even if 1% came that'd be 10,000 people to a town with a population of  1000. The airforce released a warning about 'raiding' active military bases being a bad idea and the use of deadly force being a possibility. Lincoln County, one of nevadas sleepiest, had to call in enough police to potentially break up a neo-woodstock.

I always wanted to go to area 51 since I first learned about aliens as a kid. When I asked the big question of are we alone in the universe? If there was an answer, if somebody had the evidence, if it was anywhere, it was stored at area 51.  UFO's and little green men were hiding somewhere in Nevada... at least according to pop mythology. In grade school I would check out the same book over and over from the library, about aliens and the search for exterterestrial life and the scientists who were looking at the stars. There was a spooky section about times aliens might have visited early humans based on cave paintings and statues. And then the next page was all about area 51, where the government did secret expirements on alien artifacts and maybe had a specimen. So I've been captivated since at least then. Area 51 represents a big secret. A mystery! And somebody powerful, a general or established congress person, knows and is keeping the answers from us. So as an anti-establishment, meme and alien lover, I was fascinated with this 'movement,' that would of 'raid the base'. I wanted to go and find out how many people like me were out there! Turns out I wasn't completely alone! But... for the ignorant... What is Area 51? I could never believe people weren't following the biggest BREAKING news of our lives. But for those out of the loop, Area 51 is an infamous hotspot for UFO lovers. It has a rich history in alien folklore. But here is the factual history: Nevada is almost all federal land. and it was used back in the day for nuclear testing. an original tourist attraction to Las Vegas was watching nuclear testing in the distance...

Some airforce commanders were flying around dropping bombs when they spied a dried lakebed next to a mountain, Groom Lake. They landed on it and found it to be a perfectly flat natural runway. Excellent for testing expiremental aircraft. The facility became known as  Area 51. And was where the airforce and Lockheed Corp developed the U-2 stealth bomber. They brought the best and brightest scientists and engineers to develop new aeronautics and weaponry for the US military. At the height of the Cold War, any foreign technology that was aquired would be brought to Area 51 to be tested and backwards-engineered. You can imagine Chinese reactors and Russian jets being taken apart and used by the best tinkerer's and best test pilots. People at the highest levels of classified access. Because if you are one of the folks who are handling stolen foreign items, you are so classified that your spouse isn't supposed to know what you do all day. Yes honey, I was testing out the Ruskies new fighter plane! They don't even know we have it! These were experts in aeronautics and weapons science who could decipher technology even if the instructions were in another language... so perhaps if the US government were to encounter any other 'foreign technology' of an unknown origin, maybe they'd  send it to Area 51 to be backwards engineered? That's the set up, those are the facts, the rest is conjecture and tinfoil hats stuff. Like unexplained phenomena,  military released sightings that definitely aren't weather baloons and general mysticism. Do you believe in aliens or not?

If you believe that it's more likely that our government would keep aliens a secret than releasing that information to the public... welcome to the club! If not, do some reading. As I drove across the desert, down lonesome roads and through one horse towns, I realized what I was doing. I was driving into the middle of nowhere, likely to stand around doing nothing... and boy was I excited. My plan was to go and maybe film something and if that didn't work out I'd put on an alien costume and hold a sign. I figured that there'd be a bunch of cameras and I could use it to collectively protest all sorts of wrongs in the world. One of the initial reacitons to the playful event was, 'hey there are more imporant places to raid! why not raid the border detention centers, why not congress, why not the oil companies?' To which I say, hell yes... but that's not shitposting. That's being earnest and noble. This was about being ironic and part of a joke. This was about chasing an internet meme into the ground and disecting it until all that was left was the human connection. I had a sign and costume and figured that even if nobody showed up at least news organizations would be covering it.  The sign I held said, Peace on earth ain't coming from outer space, and I really believe that. We shouldn't expect peace to come from somewhere else in the universe, it has to start right here at home, inside each of us. I wanted to get that message out. The day of the event, due to classic internet decentralization, people debated whether the raid meet up (located at the Area 51 gate) should be at 3am on friday morning or 3am on saturday morning. Most people kind of agreed to just gather sporadically between those two times. I monitored a live stream late on thursday to confirm that millions of people weren't gathering to make American History. Instead, about 30 people gathered for that 3am moment. I only missed a photo-op. I awoke on friday morning and drove towards my destiny. There were two events scheduled. One hosted by the facebook Shitposting kid who decided to use his 15 minutes of fame to organize a rave in the desert at the local Little Ale'inn, a motel close to the gate. The other was set up by a filmmaker who made a movie about Area 51 at the Alien Research Center. Both locales are alien themed tchotchke paradises designed to sell the eager UFO tourist any manner of t-shirt, shot glass or Alien doll. These spots have a fun feel and would be desert trinket spots selling only desert sage and gems if not for the boon of being next to an infamous mystery base.

The dueling events were both hoping to capitalize on the rush of people to the desert for the raid. Alienstock, as shitpost called it, was going to be a kumbaya style gathering. But everybody thought it was an alibi for shitpost incase anybody got in actual trouble at the gate and roped him in. Shitpost from bakersfield ended up not even going to his own event out of fear. Also the county sued him for the cost of preparing for a potential fiasco. The Alien Research Center event was going to have famous Alien Community folks speak and some high end music performances. But as I drove down the dusty route 375, known as Exterterestrial Highway, I saw very few people on the roads. Lots and lots of cops. It became obvious that the whole county and the organizers of these events had been preparingor at least 30,000 people. They had nearly 200 port-a-potties. Which makes  sense, if 1% of the people who claimed they were coming online came! The reality was that maybe only 1% of 1% showed up to these sleepy nevada towns on the edge of a fabled military base. The imediate reality of the events was that they were extremely underattended, but that was also a blessing. it made everything a little bit more intimate and accessible. I pulled into the dusty parking lot of the Little Ale'inn to find a rag tag DIY music festival set up. People were essentially tailgating on the side of the road. It was a scene and it was dusty. All sorts of folks were jovially milling about, some in alien themed costume, many with cameras. Many folks with booze, despite the morning. I pulled out a camera and tried interviewing people, but found that everybody I talked to had the exact same talking points. Do you believe in aliens? Duh. Why are you here? Free them Aliens. Do you really think they are in the base? Yes, but maybe now they've been moved. What did you think would happen if we charged? We'd all get killed or arrested. Nobody seemed to have really believed in the facebook post's idea of 'they can't stop us all.' Most people were sure that, especially with the meager turn out, the military and police could stop us all. Everybody just wanted to see what would happen, expecting anywhere from fyre festival 2.0 to a bloodbath to nothing. Everybody had listened to the same Joe Rogan podcast, where he'd interviewed Bob Lazar who claims to have worked at the base. That podcast was the bible of this gathering and  was what had inspired Shitpost to shitpost.

It was special that everybody was a believer. That's rare that strangers are all on the same wavelength. Nobody seemed to have any doubts that the government knew about aliens and weren't telling the public. And it was agreed that UFO's had been tested and stored at the base. Everybody I ended up meeting seemed pretty prepared. They had plenty of water and booze and camping supplies, so the idea that a humanitarian crisis was going to occur dissapated completely and reminded me of a group outting to the desert. Most important was that everybody at the event seemed to be in on the joke. They might believe in aliens but had no plans of raiding the base in actuality. Aliens might exist but the might of the US government is way more certain. The police presence alone was insane, but they merely hinted at the military might behind the base's perimeter. The police actually became quite friendly once they realized it wasn't going to be a boodbath. But the silent and hooded guards behind the gate remained terrifying with big guns and big dogs. There was definitely the threat of violence if you crossed. But we all joked that maybe if a million more people showed up we'd actually start Naruto running passed the guards.

After a while of milling around quasi-interviewing people I decided there were enough people with cameras that I should just put on my alien costume and go to the gate and get in front of the camera. I was taken to the gate by some friends I'd made while trying to get interviews. Evan and Kevin were two dudes I became super weirdly close on the day of the Raid. Each of us had come by ourselves from far away, San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles, with a vague intention of documenting it in some way. I had a vision of either a mini doc or article, Evan was a photographer and who took some insanely beautiful photos (featured here).

Kevin was a video creation guru who just wanted to make as much instagram content as possible. Kevin was by far the most successful, he's got that showman's knack to always get on camera with insanely high energy. There were a lot of cameras and each one he'd run up to and start lecturing about how the governemnt needed to release the secret documents! It was a great bit especially with his Boston Townie accent turned all the way up.

Evan explained how he was drawn to the site by a mysterious desire to see what would happen.  He expressed it best as, 'this is like a reddit safe post.' People will find safes while remodeling or cleaning a house and say, 'hey reddit, look i found a safe, i'm going to open it and see what's inside!' Then people get excited trying to guess what marvelous jackpot could be in that old dusty safe. They wait desperately for the original poster to share an update. More often than not the poster never returns and people are left waiting for nothing.

Once and a while there will be an updated post to show what was found inside and sometime's it's a haul of trinkets and dubloons and rare items that were saved throughout time to be found by some noble internet user. but then most of the time it's like, wow a roll of coins from 1953! "so yeah i felt obligated to go and find out what was in the safe and share it with reddit even if there actually was nothing inside. reddit deserves to know.' evan said. Because sometimes those posts are just as important, the safe find coming back to say, 'hey we cracked the safe, but turns out there was nothing in it! here's a picture of an empty safe."

So I was beginning to realize that I was standing inside an empty safe. But wow, all of these people had also come to be here and that was something special. It's not often that we get to organically be around likeminded strangers that all have such clear and imediate shared experience. Here we all were, because of a a meme, just to see what would happen. The gathering had a magical quality because we were an internet joke that had left the cyber space and entered the meat space. It was a silly idea that was reaching a physical end point.

I stood around the gate for a good while, we chatted with everybody, shook hands with the police guarding the gate, exchanged instagram handles and shared jokes we'd heard on the internet. You could tell people were really cutting loose. Most people spent most of their time on their computers it seemed. Hey, me too. We shouted 'clap them cheeks' and 'let them out.' We were all in on the joke. There were still mainly cameras and I got interviewed and photographed by dozens including history channels ancient aliens and the nytimes and countless youtubers and instagramers. It all kind of culminated when Kevin and Evan were getting cold and saying we should leave, I heard a distant 'clap them cheeks' chant and booty shuffling down the lonesome road to the infamous Area 51 gate was Riley Reid! Pornhub's number 1 star. She's somebody I have searched for all my life, on google. She did a strip tease and pretended to rush the gate. She was an internet hero in the flesh, and she was in on the joke too! A perfect metaphor, eh?

The next morning, hungover from the excitement and extrovertism of the day before I was sitting in a diner scouring news websites for mentions of the raid and looking for photos of myself. Behind me I heard some locals discussing, a gravelly voice said, "usually this town has 1 car every 10 minutes. this weekend we've got like 1 car every minute!" The townsfolk seemed to have had the wildest weekend of their lives. Me too. I managed to get into a few articles in my green alien suit.  A USA Today affiliate newspaper even printed a whole write up about me and my sign. On the way back, realizing I expected nothing, and found little more than nothing, I was completely satisfied. I had held my sign for peace and found a version of it, internet strangers, weirdos from all over had gathered peacefully to celebrate an idea. A silly and anti authoritarian conspiracy idea, but an idea none the less. I decided the reason I was drove all this way through beautiful american desert land, was because it's something I would have thought was cool as an 11 year old. A mission to see aliens and the people who wanted to meet them. Radical.

[sadcatbug]

v i v a r i u m

Have you ever happened upon a magical place?

This piece is perhaps the first time I started to unpack my identity in my artwork. I am constantly reflecting and internalizing my perception of myself as a young female with Chinese heritage and Southern American culture.

I was adopted by my amazing mother, the late Traci Presley, when I was 1 year old. And ever since then, I’ve lived in the American South. I grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas and the only time I ever went back to China was when we adopted my younger sister when I was 4 years old.

I believe the prompt for this project was a ‘terrarium inside and aquarium.’ Inspired by this Youtube video (https://youtu.be/h9rKepQaCXE), the assignment was to build a space within a space. I became very interested in spiritual spaces and shrines. There’s a scene in the Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli animated film, Spirited Away, where a cluster of abandoned shrines are shown for a brief moment in the beginning of the movie. Chihiro, the main character, is a young girl forced to leave her friends and move to a new house. She notices the shrines along the back road they’re taking which leads them to eventually become spirited away to the magical spirit realm.

I particularly became interested in the fact that this was the first Asian movie I ever saw as a child. It has been a family favorite ever since and I have deep connections with this coming of age film. More interestingly, however, is perhaps the fact that American audiences would not really know the significance of this brief scene: these are discarded shrines long forgotten by believers and abnormally clustered together, letting us know they are entering a place of high spiritual energy. Recognizing this tiny detail made me realize how fine a line cultures can connect/disconnect and this led me to focus on how we notice things around us.

There are 157 shrines, each with their own fortune from a fortune cookie I have physically collected. I started collecting them during the summer of 2014 at Arkansas Governor’s School because every Saturday my friends and I would order Chinese takeout and I would keep everyone’s fortunes afterwards. I don’t know if that’s creepy, but I like to think of it as sweet and perhaps overly sentimental.

In the midst of the production of these shrines, my professor came up to me and said, “Isn’t it funny how you’re trying to make these precious shrines and yet you are mass producing them like a machine?” I realized then how hilariously perfect my art making was echoing my own identity and experience: the only way I have had access to my Chinese heritage is through imported/mass produced items like Chinese takeout, translated foreign films, mass produced ‘authentic’ Asian items (cups, bowls, prints, etc.). I loved this realization and found a real synergy with this project.

The shrines are in 12 locations making up a dodecagon in Fayetteville. 12 sided shapes have strong significance in my work because that was the first shape I built in my freshman engineering class as a balsa wood tower to support a specified amount of weight. The number 12 is also significant for many other reasons: https://numerologysecrets.net/numerology-12-meaning/

Over the course of making these shrines, my compulsive interest in numbers and numerology couldn’t help but make its way into the work. Because I was making these spiritual and religious objects from the Japanese Shinto indigenous religion, I started to think about how to combine meaning and symbols from long established religions with more hokey kinds of believing like lucky numbers, astrology, numerology, etc. Because for me, my own religion and spirituality is a combination of religious practices and believing in things like lucky numbers and horoscopes. I like to think I have a whimsical worldview; that everyone can believe in whatever they want and if you’re wrong, or I’m wrong, or everyone’s wrong about the inner workings of the universe and what happens after you die then that’s just how it is and that’s okay.

Here are some of the fortunes you can find in the shrines:

A bold & dashing adventure is in your future within the year. 24 25 29 32 37 40

Fortune is on your side - play it for all it’s worth Panda Express Panda Inn

Your skills are needed by others at this time. 3 10 15 23 29 32

Don’t get so caught up in the daily grind that you never find any time to enjoy yourself. Learn Chinese - Dishwasher 洗碗機 Xǐ wǎn jī

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. How about another Fortune? SecondFortune.com Lucky Numbers 38, 44, 41, 23, 28, 33

I think the fortunes speak for themselves... so many of them are hard to take seriously yet every now and then one can really change the way you feel.

Long story short, I decided to make these shrines and put them in overlooked and under-used places within our spaces. I placed them along baseboards and along stairways under the railings where people don’t walk. My ultimate intention is bring the realms of spirituality and physicality closer together. I believe something really special can happen when you overlap the energies of the spirits of the shrines with our daily places of work and production.

[georgieh]

Georgie Henley for The Times of London - ‘There is pressure on child actors not to admit it’s hard’

She had a ball as a child playing Lucy in the Narnia films, but her schoolmates were unkind — not that it stopped her. Now she’s on the London stage // Keep reading for full interview

Georgie Henley vividly remembers her first day in Narnia. She was eight years old, 12,000 miles from home and surrounded by a film crew waiting for her to act on camera for the first time. Henley was playing Lucy, the plucky youngest child of the Pevensie family in the Walt Disney film version of CS Lewis’s wartime fantasy classic The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. On the first take she looked at the camera because she didn’t know better. That error aside, she thought she spoke her lines all right. Yet the director, Andrew Adamson, kept asking her to do the scene again. And again. And again.

After about an hour of this she started welling up. Adamson came over and asked why she was upset. “And I just said, ‘I’m getting it wrong, that’s why you keep doing it over and over again, isn’t it?’ And he said, ‘No, we have to position the camera in different places, we do different shots and then we edit them together.’ ” She laughs at the thought. “I mean, it’s basic stuff, but I didn’t know because I was just plucked from nowhere.”

Now 22, Henley has just started her first professional stage role. She is starring in Angry, a collection of monologues by the restlessly provocative playwright Philip Ridley at the Southwark Playhouse in south London. She is upbeat, articulate and aware of the negative narrative that surrounds child actors and quietly determined to buck it.

She is hugely grateful for her experience on the three Chronicles of Narnia films: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in 2005, Prince Caspian in 2008 and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in 2010. They have set her up financially, so that after finishing her degree in English at Cambridge University in 2016, she was able to move to a flat of her own in London. Unlike some other child actors, she says, who get pressured to support their families, her parents — Mike, a former solicitor who now works for HSBC, and Helen, who chaperoned her on all three Narnia films — made sure she kept her earnings.

“And I don’t take any of this for granted,” she says. “To have a franchise at a young age, it’s what a lot of actors spend their whole lives trying to get because you have guaranteed work and a guaranteed pay cheque. Not that I really thought about that at the time.” On the first film she didn’t even realise she was being paid. She did by the second film. “But it was like Monopoly money to me.”

Yet while she thinks there is “scaremongering” about what it’s like to be a child actor, she is quick to admit that it had a big impact on her school life. It happened almost by accident: a casting director, Pippa Hall, who had discovered Jamie Bell for Billy Elliot, held an audition at the drama club to which the seven-year-old Henley went each Tuesday after school in Ilkley, Yorkshire. “I was just lucky,” she says. She laughs awkwardly at the suggestion that, however she got the job, she was unusually good once she started doing it. “Thank you! I can’t cope with people saying nice things to me.”

She was “quite a weird child; on the fringe socially, just always off in my own world”. At first she thought she was auditioning for a panto in Bradford. As the process dragged on for months, and she started to travel down to London to audition alongside children from stage schools, she and her parents got to realise what it might involve. In fact, her parents pulled her out of the process when they were told it would involve four months filming in Canada. Her older sisters Rachael (who played the older version Lucy in the first film) and Laura stepped in, insisting that this was too big an opportunity to pass up. Her parents relented. Whereupon it became seven months in New Zealand instead.

“It changed my life,” Henley says. “It sounds cheesy, but it’s true. And I didn’t know anything. All I knew was what I had learnt in my drama club every Tuesday, and having parents who never told me to be quiet or anything, who liked me for being a little bit odd.”

Filming, give or take that first-day wobble, was wonderful. She apologises again for cheesiness. “It was like this magic thing. Every day it was a new costume, a new setting, new creatures to imagine you were talking to.” She watched the first film again two Christmases ago with her grandmother and enjoyed it. Certain memories from filming linger more than others: the day she played mini golf with Tilda Swinton, who was playing the White Witch, or the surprise party on set for her ninth birthday, when her father and sisters flew out to join her mother. “It was one of the best days of my life. It was just amazing. But it’s so funny when I meet children that age now and I think, ‘You are tiny.’ I remember what I was doing at that age and I can’t believe it.”

She has kept in touch with her co-stars, although they are rarely in the same room together. William Moseley, who played the oldest boy, Peter, acts in Hollywood. Anna Popplewell, who played Susan, still acts and lives round the corner from Henley in north London. Skandar Keynes, who played the younger brother, Edmund, overlapped with Henley at Cambridge. He was in his final year when she was in her first, but by that time he had stopped acting. “Nobody else will ever be able to understand what we did together. It’s this crazy, amazing thing. You just can’t explain it.”

As well as filming in New Zealand — and Eastern Europe and Australia in the later films — there was foreign travel for publicity junkets. She has visited Japan three times, she says, but doesn’t feel she knows the place since she spent most of her time there in hotel rooms. The same goes for New York. She will never forget being 15, waking up in her hotel room in Tokyo and remembering that she had a mock chemistry GCSE to do. She kept up with school work through tutors. The child actors shared classrooms as well as dressing rooms while on location.

Returning to normal life between films was difficult, though. Her family did a great job of keeping her feet on the ground, she says. They are all “very close”. However, she struggled when she got to Bradford Grammar School when she was 11. “Secondary school is where I struggled. I loved the work side of school, I loved learning, but the social side was a minefield. And part of that was worsened by the films that I had done, by me being in and out of school.

“There is such a pressure on child stars not to admit that it’s hard. To smile in interviews and say, ‘Yeah, I love my double life,’ and pretend they are a special agent or something. Because if they admit that it’s hard sometimes they sound like they are difficult.” She wouldn’t change anything about the films, but wishes she hadn’t played her achievement down so much when at school. She didn’t act in anything at school until her final year. “It was that thing of not wanting to put your head above the parapet for fear of it being sliced off, but I should have had the confidence to be proud of what I did. I was bullied mercilessly; people were so awful to me at school. It was amazing getting to uni and people being, like, ‘That’s so cool!’ And I was, like, ‘I know, right, isn’t it?’

“So I wish I could say to the 13-year-old me, ‘Be proud of what you’ve accomplished.’ And that doesn’t mean being arrogant. They are not the same. I think I conflated the two things.”

At university she studied English, but did theatre too. “You can experiment and f*** up or succeed, and if you do well nobody cares a week later and if you f*** up nobody cares a week later.”

She wrote and directed a couple of short films while there. She also kept up her film acting, although without Narnia budgets. In Perfect Sisters she played one of two Canadian teens plotting to kill their mother. The Sisterhood of Night, an American film, was a bit like The Crucible reworked for the age of social media. She also made Access All Areas, which was about a bunch of teenagers who go on the run to an island music festival. “It was amazing to be doing different characters,” she says. “People thought it was me trying to get away from the Lucy Pevensie thing, and maybe it looked like that, but your tastes change.” Before that, she was offered other fantasy or period films, but preferred to wait until she could do something different.

Talking of which, her professional stage debut certainly ticks that box. Ridley, known for troubling plays such as Mercury Fur or Dark Vanilla Jungle, has written six “gender-neutral” monologues, including one long one that is one of Henley’s favourites, about a teenaged sexual experience that may or may not have been entirely consensual. How you view it, Henley suggests, depends on which night you attend. She and her co-star, Tyrone Huntley, alternate who performs which three monologues each night. “You’ve got me, a white, straight woman, and Tyrone is a black, gay man; it’s two entirely different identities, but it’s the same words.”

Henley was already a fan of Ridley and had even written an essay about him at Cambridge, although she was mortified when one of the producers told him this. She will not let him read it, she says with a chuckle. She did some directing at university and would like to do more. Later this year she shoots her next short film. Beyond that some other work seems to be looming, but nothing she is sure about yet. She lives on her own, loves having her own space and isn’t in a relationship. “I’m a single Pringle. I don’t know how people my age have time for anything like that because I sure as hell don’t. I’m trying to keep myself together, let alone worry about someone else.”

The previous day she had picked up her first pay cheque for Angry.Fringe wages can’t be huge, but she’s thrilled to be paid for doing a job she loves. She is happiest when working. “Some child actors grow up and their career gets quite calculated. Their management say, ‘You can do an indie film, then you have got to do a blockbuster, and then you can do two more indies,’ but I’m just looking for stuff that scares me and challenges me; things I haven’t done before. Because I still feel like I don’t know anything and I have still got lots to learn, so having to jump in at the deep end like this . . .” she laughs. There is nowhere to hide when you’re doing monologues. “And that is terrifying, but it’s also a gift.”

[allyxmethstuff-blog]

Avengers: Infinity War and it’s Relevance to 45′s Regime (Some Spoilers)

So, did you see the latest Avengers movie? If you haven’t you may want to not read part of this review but I want you to; because while you may ignore the film’s message for the fun the movie absolutely is - the statement it makes is necessary. I can understand how you don’t want to think about the outside world in a summer blockbuster. However, this is the most important piece of pop culture that relates to our world.

Thanos as we all know from the trailers is looking for the Infinity Stones to end all life on Earth. We’ve heard it before. We’ve seen the heroes in these stories time and time again defeat these foes. To many Americans - this is the story we were told through Joseph Campbell’s “The Heroes Journey” and some never questioned it. We were taught that we were heroes but many other Americans know this isn’t true at all. To those that this country committed genocide against, to those that this country enslaved, to those that have been lynched, to those that have been killed by cops for doing nothing wrong, to those that have been destroyed through nuclear bombs we dropped, to those that lost their leaders so this country could obtain their resources without giving anything back, to those that cops would never help because we are not white; cis; and affluent, to those that would be put in jail because of bigotry, to civilians of foreign countries killed by our own army, to our own journalists that have been killed by our own army, to those that lost their country because this one stole the borders only to then kill - we know that the good guys do not always win.

And in this movie the good guys do not win. And it’s important to take note that the consequences are the destruction of half of life across the universe. So what does that mean? Is this the beginning of a broken cycle in the Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey”? Not exactly as this is the first film of a two-part movie. Despite knowing that let’s consider what this means. It’s a weapon of war. A weapon of mass destruction. And the man that wants to do this is not infamous in the Milky Way Galaxy - but so well known and feared that people only wish they never come across him and he would leave them alone. Who can blame these people when Thanos’s title is “The Mad Titan” along with his massively powerful army. Does this sound like anyone we know? You’d be lying if you said you didn’t know who this sounds like.

Its 45. C’mon the title says it. 45 has been itching to use nukes since the moment he won the general election in 2016. He has killed more civilians in the Middle East than President Obama did his entire presidency just within a few months. There is no way that many Middle Eastern civilians died unless it was deliberate. The man became a war criminal in his first few days. His racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism, sexism, and anti-lgbtq+ personality has made him worse than even Andrew Jackson. And Andrew Jackson killed so many First Nation citizens that 45 has worked hard to surpass him. He has left Puerto Rico a death island with no help which has left fellow citizens drinking contaminated water and almost no power during a gigantic economic depression there. He allowed the Dakota Access Pipeline to continue after President Obama told them they must suspend work on the pipeline. The protests were started by the First Nation people because it mostly went through the river in their reservation and they knew the oil pipeline would contaminate it. And it did. He has called black football players and countries with higher populations of black people derogatory words. He hired Nazis to work in the White House. He himself has a book of Hitler’s speeches on his bedside table and this man is not an avid reader. This comes straight from Ivanna (45′s first wife).

I could go on about all of the discriminatory things he has done and that is unfortunately as American as apple pie. After all 45 did not make slavery legal but this country did make it legal. This country also made slavery illegal with the 13th amendment but during the Reconstruction Era we still had to work hard to stop slavery. It’s still not over though. That same 13th amendment allows the country’s incarcerated to be paid slave wages for their work by getting paid pennies. Not even a full dollar sometimes but literal pennies. These are human beings that hopefully reform and get out some day but when you pay them nothing for work they do for years with hopeful reform in mind how can they live off of their earnings? The food their given is so unhealthy and the water to clean them is so disgusting you might as well wonder how someone leaving our justice system could see the good in doing what’s right after? 

And then there are those paid a minimum wage. Even if you’re paid what the Los Angeles minimum wage is at the time I wrote this you’d be making $12/hr. The average rent as of writing this is $1450/month for a 1-bedroom/1 bath. How much would it take for us to make for that to be a quarter of our monthly salary? $36.25/hr. Minimum wage is $12/hr in a good area and $7.75/hr. That means in a good area you’d need to work 120 straight hours or 5 days without breaks to get enough for your rent to be a quarter of your wages. No job would give you that many hours so you’d be working 3 jobs without a break for 8 hours straight. Do you know what happens in three days if you don’t get enough rest? You die. Now do you see what this is? Now do you see how this is unconstitutional? And how our country has only grown to be incrementally less atrocious? And the person in charge doesn’t want to pay people. He’s done it before by not paying contractors after working for him.

But that’s not the most important part not unless you count those among the actions he’s taken that are something to fear. He has begun to strip away freedom of the press by allowing the DoJ to strip the rights journalists have from their handbook. Leading a way for them to shut down dissenting public opinion. It has already begun through multiple journalists attacking Michelle Wolf when they have agreed with what she has said on their own stations. What of his unwillingness to invoke the sanctions against Russia? What of his willingness to fire those investigating him (a Nixonian precedent albeit)? What of the Nazis that he gave safe harbor to in his statement that there are good people on both sides? What of his assault on the environment in which we cannot live if we do not protect it from turning deadly? What of that moment when he found out the President of China was able to turn his appointment in office into a life term and wished for it to be done here? What of those moments he praises dictators and eschews democratic leaders? What of his desire to ban a group of people from entering the country based on inalienable qualities? What of his actions to hold immigrants both undocumented and legal from being given due process? What of his acts to keep these immigrants indefinitely and not allowing pregnant girls who do not want these babies access to abortion? And what of this man who has no humanitarian bone in his body who wishes to hold immigrants indefinitely?

The important part is do you see the abuses our own country has committed and do you see how he has gone further? Now consider what I said earlier. He keeps a book of Hitler’s speeches on his bedside table and he doesn’t read. He called for the murder of the innocent Central Park 5. He kills his citizens of multiple countries and not just his own. He tells his supporters to assault people and that he’d pay for their legal fees (but then never doing so). He says he wants to use nukes! I could go on but let’s get to where him and Thanos align.

Nukes, are a weapon of mass destruction. He wants to do exactly what Thanos has done in Infinity War. Kill as much of the world as he possibly can. He would be safe. He has an entire army that would protect him because they don’t see the issue at hand. But where would the rest of us be? Where would you be if he accomplishes this task? Would millions of people die or just a few hundred thousand? What about the radiation fallout? What about the 2 degrees Celsius temperature increase that would ensure climate change would get worse than we’ve seen already within just a few years? What of the Reichstag Fire he would create to hold power forever?

Thanos says he wanted to erase half of the universe so life could continue. All villains see themselves as the good guy. I’m not saying 45 is that smart. In fact quite the contrary. He isn’t doing anything for anyone else other than perhaps his daughter Ivanka and to an extent there is another similarity here. Yet, I would say his idol Adolf Hitler fits more in line with Thanos for just their intelligence. Hitler wanted to create a world without anyone not Aryan. In the movie you see some of the genocide Thanos enacts. The soldiers carried out the dirty work in both worlds. Hitler attempted to get a nuclear bomb but was thwarted. He had death camps. Thanos wasn’t looking to have those but where Hitler and Thanos don’t coalesce whereas Thanos and 45 do is a weapon of mass destruction. The difference is Thanos had no one to keep him in check. 45 does but those people are growing smaller in number. Those that would try to stop him from doing so get smaller day by day.

Imagine an unchecked 45. I’ve outlined his past and I’ve outlined his idol. I’ve outlined small amounts of spoilers for Infinity War’s antagonist and his goal. You’re going to see the movie if you already haven’t because it is a cultural flashpoint. And when you see the deaths of people through this weapon of mass destruction it is harrowing. Now you have an idea for what he could do just with a nuclear weapon. Imagine what he could do with a Reichstag Fire and becoming a dictator. And imagine what you wish you could’ve done before then.

[misomilk]

hi :) is it possible to get an answer for all of the country questions? if no, can i pls get the answer to what you think of translations to eng, your fave song in your native tongue and fave author?

Hello~! You’re so sweet, anon. Thanks for giving me something to do to pass the time while I ignore what I’m supposed to do. LOL

This was so much fun to answer. I hope you pick up things about where I’m from. :) Have an awesome day!!!

1. favourite place in your country? I really love El Nido. It’s super pretty, and not so tourist-filled the last time I went. (That was many, many years ago…) The water is so clear. The critical spots for animals are properly preserved. Gosh. It was perfect. :’) Arashi’s Aiba Masaki had gone there HUEHUEHUE Too bad I went like, a year before he did. A year before I ever found Arashi. XD The beaches of the Philippines are really super lovely.

2. do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad? I prefer traveling abroad. I pretty much fly to Japan every chance I get. LOL But if I were to travel with family, yes. I’d rather just kick back and relax in one of our beaches. We went to Coron last time! It was beautiful, too. But El Nido remains my favorite.

3. does your country have access to sea? Yes! We see the sea all over. (laughs over XV joke)

4. favourite dish specific for your country? Oh, boy, oh boy. I gotta name three of them.1) Kare-kare - I guess?? It’s our version of curry but it’s so different from any other curry. It’s peanut-based, normally soupy, with boiled vegetables and (typically) ox tongue. I love my mom’s take on it. Very thick sauce and very peanut-y. * W * She uses normal beef parts bec I dont eat ox tongue.2) Lumpiang Shanghai - this is probs taken from Chinese cuisine but still. Very Filipino in its own way. Always see it in parties. I LOVE IT.3) Adobo - The #1 Filipino dish, probs. I think there’s no “XXX tastes Filipino Food” video out there that doesn’t include this. Every household has its own take on it—white or brown, sweet or salty, soupy or not. I LOVE IT A LOT. Brown, sweet, and soupy, please.

For desserts, I fuckin love leche flan, ube (purple yam) and pichi-pichi.

5. favourite song in your native language? I fucking love “Ang Huling El Bimbo” (The Last El Bimbo) by Eraserheads and “Beer” by Itchyworms. They’re my go-to karaoke songs, and are very much #hugot—which is the word we use for when we “pull out all them feels”, normally related to heartbrokenness. I’m not particularly heartbroken atm, but these songs are just so good.Lately, I’ve been hearing the song “Tagu-taguan” (Hide and Seek) by Bita and the Botflies. I hear it on the radio. I love it coz it gives me such Shiina Ringo vibes.

6. most hated song in your native language? probably that fuckin moshi moshi ano ne song. it makes fun of those japanese words :/ and any song by william revillame (an asshole gameshow host) or used in Eat Bulaga. hayyyyy :/

7. three words from your native language that you like the most?1) takipsilim - deep word for ‘sunset’2) bukang liwayway - deep word for ‘sunrise’3) ulap - lit. ‘cloud’bonus: nakakapagpabagabag - lit. ‘worrisome’ bec it felt like a tongue twister when i was younger. hahahabonus2: maharlika - lit. ‘nobility’ just bec it sounds cool hahaha

8. do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom? strangely, though I am Filipino, I get mistaken (by fellow Filipinos) to either be Chinese, Korean or Japanese. I guess it’s in the way I dress?

9. which of your neighbouring countries would you like to visit most/know best? I know Japan best. For sure. Haahaha. I have no other nearby country that I want to travel to.

10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language? ‘pakshet’, which is just ‘fuck shit’ but said tagalog-like? XD

11. favourite native writer/poet? I’m sadly not well-versed in our native prose. See, it’s hard for me to understand my own language sometimes. :’( But I hear Ricky Lee is very good.

12. what do you think about English translations of your favourite native prose/poem? Hmm, strange. I haven’t heard of any English translations of our books, actually???? I think it’d be really cool if there were! But I guess Filipino prose/poetry isn’t popular enough to be translated. XD

13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders? I think we have a lot. Like, removing the ring on someone’s finger when you weren’t the one that put it on them means you’ll get in a fight with them. (Personally, I extend it to bracelets. LOL) Or, we can’t take a shower after 3pm on Good Friday bec blood will come out instead of water. xD

14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or TV? No. It has very shallow comedy, or really awful flat storylines. We have really good quality films, but sadly those aren’t the ones that catch attention here. :/

15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get? “susmaryosep”, i guess? (Jesus Mary Joseph) Is that considered a saying? Somehow my first thought was: “bababa ba?” (are we going down?) HAHAHA that cracks me up every time it’s used in the elevator when foreigners are around. They get this look like, “… did they really just understand each other?”

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with? I HATE that people assume when we go to other countries it’s either to be prostitutes, caretakers or maids. :/ What do I somewhat agree with……… that we’re cheerful people.

17. are you interested in your country’s history? yes, but idk where to start. I wish I’d listened more carefully back when I was still in high school or college.

18. do you speak with a dialect of your native language? No TWT I want to speak Kapampangan, which my sisters and my dad speak. By the time I was born, we already moved to the city, so, I didnt have the chance to learn it.

19. do you like your country’s flag and/or emblem? what about the national anthem? The flag, yes. The Anthem, tho there are parts that are iffy, yes.

20. which sport is The Sport in your country? Pacquiao’s boxing. specifically Pacquiao’s boxing. -_- I HATE IT. I wish we had more baseball. I’m glad we’ve been getting more into volleybal in the recent years.

21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be? A Filipino treat, like Napoleones or bibingka or ube. And, an abaca fan.

22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed? I’m proud of our beaches. They’re seriously so B E A U T I F U L— go north or south. I’m also proud of the Filipino hospitality, although I for one am not so amazing at that bec of my introvert-ness. LOLI’m ashamed of a whole lot of aspects, sadly. Like how a lot are poor, yet we have a fuckton of malls. The government is shit. (Always has been since I can remember.) Many Filipinos are racist, sexist, homophobic bastards that focus on physical wayyy too much. It’s awful. Just. AWFUL.

23. which alcoholic beverage is the favoured one in your country? San Mig or Red Horse beer, I think. I don’t like those tho.

24. what other nation is joked about most often in your country? Every other nation aside from ours, I think. :/ If there’s one that sticks out more than others, maybe China.

25. would you like to come from another place, be born in another country? YES. I’D ANSWER YES IN A HEARTBEAT. HAHAHA I’d so love to be born Japanese instead. Their values really resonate with mine. Sometimes my mom, my bosses and my friends say that I’m a Japanese spirit lost in a Filipino body.

26. does your nationality get portrayed in Hollywood/American media? what do you think about the portrayal? We get portrayed as the shitty English speaker who’s a maid.  I can fuckin speak in an awesome accent, thanks v much. In Japan we’re portrayed as hostesses in a bar and it really disheartens me. I don’t like it at all, but what can we do? sighs

27. favourite national celebrity? uhhhhh She’s not my “favorite” bec I’m not into local showbiz, but I really love seeing Liza Soberano. She’s so pretty (/o\)

28. does your country have a lot of lakes, mountains, rivers? do you have favourites? YES! I guess my favorite would be Taal Lake, since it’s the one I get to see the most. It’s got a volcano in the middle of the lake!!

29. does your region/city have a beef with another place in your country? uhhh I dont think so

30. do you have people of different nationalities in your family? well, technically my family’s a mix of a whole lot of races: Chinese, Spanish, Japanese. Idk if I have American blood, otherwise I’d have the blood of all our conquerors in my system? XDD

Thanks again for asking!!

[mailorderfictionalcharacter]

a list of semi coherent thoughts I’ve had about mcu wanda maximoff

0.5 this post is open to discourse. if u are unwilling to see viewpoints that are pro wanda or anti wanda this is not the post 4 u.

1. wanda runs off of very powerful emotions and that’s an a + character trait. her rage fueled grief and power is just fascinating to watch.

2. ew whitewashing why do you do this to me mcu. stop. enough.

3. yeah it’s kind of ridiculous to kill the ex-ceo of a weapons company that killed your parents as compared to whoever fired the missiles or whoever ordered said military action but it’s not that ridiculous if you apply the barest modicum of generous interpretation to it.

Tony Stark was emblematic of the very destructive American ideal of we’re great and right and coming with guns. Going off of IM2, even as he was doing great things (”I’ve successfully privatized world peace”) his performance was still very um American (”no one’s man enough to go [against me]”). Like as audience members we get it but I could see how that sort of look-at-me attitude would not ring like redemption to someone in that much emotional pain. Like, you could easily read their actions as being about attacking every American/foreign influence figure head, which is sort of supported by the fact that the twins wanted the avengers down not just Tony Stark.

If the weapons were illegally sold there’s no guarantee the twins knew that Tony wasn’t responsible. It’s possible Tony leaked the truth about Obadiah after the “I Am Iron Man” press conference, but the original plan was a SHIELD coverup.

I’m not inclined to conflate profiting of our wrongs or moral ambiguities on the same moral level as instigating wrongs, but it’s also up in the air whether or not Stark Industries cared about collateral damage in the design of their weapons and that’s something the twins could legitimately blame them for. IM1 canon is a mixed bag - we have intellicrops (concern for philanthropy) but we also have, y’know the Jericho (the weapon that levels mountains)

(read more under the cut)

tl;dr: wanda is a fascinating flawed character who suffers from writing problems but she’s also wearing the name of a jewish/romani woman even though marvel studios is too much of a coward to translate that to film & i’m perpetually bitter and indecisive about everything.

4. the twins had enormous social factors encouraging them to hate the avengers/america. even american media was questioning the avengers; shield had fell; people were putting up anti avengers graffiti

5. considering the twins spent their formative years in a country at war and lost their parents I’m assuming they went through quite a few economic hardships.

6. what sort of access did the twins have to media or education?

7. I’m not inclined to blame the twins for their desire to get revenge but it is worth noting that they seemed to have very little concern for collateral damage even though the only thing we as an audience knows for certain is that the whole reason they’re seeking revenge is because of collateral damage.

8. there’s a gap of 8-12 years between the death of their parents and their attack on the avengers. no matter what mitigating circumstances there were (and I think there were a lot) that’s a premeditated crime

9. there’s a lot of parallels between wanda maximoff and kira nerys except the writers on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine actually cared about Kira Nerys.

10. both of Wanda’s major fuck ups (willingly unleashing the Hulk on Johannesburg and failing to protect everyone in Lagos) happened in African countries. I believe in some suspension of belief for superhero movies but I’m not sure it’s entirely appropriate to be like hey! look at Wanda! the whitewashed character who fucks things up in African countries! such girl power! great anti-imperialism message!

(I mean, the same disregard applies to all the avengers though. I’m pretty sure the safest interpretation of Lagos is “the avengers could have done better by not fighting in proximity with a bunch of civilians” which is on Steve. And unless I fever dreamed this Steve tosses his cowl at the feet of anti-avengers graffiti in the beginning of aou and there is nothing appropriate about that).

11. Wanda was introduced in AOU, a movie with sub par dialogue and tbh I have a feeling Whedon et.al never thought through the implications of Johannesburg bc he just wanted a convenient way to introduce a hulkbuster fight.

12. tbh I really want a scarlet witch movie to fix all of this but I also really want a recast and I know I won’t get either (fanon wanda is the best because we can fix all of this with a hammer).

13. CA:CW seemed to draw on a lot of Wanda’s comic history (specifically in the oppression metaphors) but since it followed the clusterfuck that was AOU I can’t exactly give them a standing ovation for that.

14. ca:cw did a very bad job following through wanda’s plot threads from aou. tbh I’m not even team we need to stretch Wanda’s redemption arc further but idk, it might be nice if she mentioned her dead brother or tied the Lagos incident/Sokovia accords to, idk, her past living in a war zone.

15. ca:cw could’ve given me wanda wryly commenting on how luxurious the compound was compared to sokovia but instead it gave the should-be-jewish character a cross in her bedroom and fuck that marvel why don’t you just stake me through the heart so I don’t have to deal with your bullshit

16. I wish wanda in the airport scene was more about her desire to do good (go stop the supersoldiers) than the awkward oppression metaphor

17. although push come to shove I would’ve focused on poverty/american foreign intervention over calling the powers she volunteered for the source of her oppression the whole raft scene does demonstrate that people whose powers (or even training) cannot be separated like say Sam and the Falcon or Tony and the suits face a special criminal justice risk.

but this isn’t really relevant to the accords, which are not the SHRA and honestly the same ethical problem of how to incarcerate enhanced people exists whether or not someone is acting as a superhero (is it ethical to put a psychic murderer in solitary confinement if that’s the only way to prevent them from using their powers to escape or assault guards?)

18. according to beta canon/film subtext wanda & pietro did not willingly sign up to work with hydra. Just good to remember.

19. I will forever be attached to the idea of wanda liking Vision’s company because he is both practically invulnerable (not going to get shot 7 times on a floating city) and emotionally dependent on her support (just like Pietro). (this is not implying twincest btw)

20. I think wanda’s house arrest in ca:cw is not completely unreasonable (she’s probably awaiting investigation & is at risk of being hurt/hurting others from mob violence) but definitely steve (and probably natasha & sam) should be under house arrest as well. but they aren’t, and I think it’s fair to say that in universe that’s xenophobia/anti-immigrant sentiment. why be afraid of the american icon when you can be afraid of the poor sokovian woman?

21. antis make way too much of the whole “she’s just a kid line”. like steve was responding to tony calling her, a human being, a weapon of mass destruction. like, he was just trying to humanize her and calling the youngest person in a group a kid even when they’re an adult isn’t that strange.

22. in lagos wanda was trying so damn hard to stop that bomb and yes she didn’t manage it but blaming her instead of steve? uh gross.

23. how much experience does she have? yes tony stark throwing himself into superheroics worked out surprisingly well but superheroes need training

24. I insist marvel release a 22 page dissertation on wanda’s mind powers but also if I don’t like it I’ll call it not canon. (my initial theory was that she produces ptsd symptoms - even if the person normally doesn’t suffer from ptsd - but something in the confidence that she can manipulate tony before entering his mind makes me think she has slight suggestive abilities beyond fear and also thor’s vision arguably followed a different vein)

25. antis like to argue that the maximoffs only turned on ultron because it benefited them but let’s be clear the maximoffs fought ultron because they thought he was wrong and wanted to personally help. they could’ve just tipped off the avengers and left or left ultron to do whatever ultron was going to do and only fought him if he directly came after them okay the twins had options and they chose the most altruistic option.

26. ppl who say wanda isn’t really whitewashed because marvel’s decades of retcons have whitewashed her at past points are pretty much using a two-wrongs argumentative fallacy.

[tiredoftonkies-blog]

Cap and Tony Motivations in CW

Alpha_Storm from Reddit

Tony is feeling upset because his murderbot caused the death of young American whose mother showed up at a speech he gave, handed him a picture and made him feel guilty about it, and Pepper has broken up with him because he’s broken one too many promises to her. The Accords drops in his lap and he’s looking to hand off responsiblity so he won’t feel guilty anymore so he isn’t particularly interest in the particulars of the Accords, he just doesn’t want to feel bad anymore and he thinks it will help him win Pepper back. He ignores the clear signs of corruption evidence from the minute they handed to him(they given to them 3 days before they are to be signed, meaning they will not be able to lodge any objections or get any sort of movement going to get any changes to them made, Thaddeus Ross who destroyed Bruce Banner’s life is also clearly going to be taking a big hand in running them on a ground level which should give anyone pause). He is also apparently fine with human rights violations we quickly see take place under the Accords(esp in the area of legal due process), just so long as they can somehow assuage his guilt and take the responsiblity he feels off his shoulders.

Steve has seen governmental corruption up close too many times to trust governmental oversight in the form the Accords takes, which is a UN panel, the UN is slow and at the mercy of the security council which is controlled by the US, Russia, France, China and the UK. The Accords is handed to them as a done deal drawn up completely without their input and knowledge, they have no ability to make changes to it because while they are governed by the Accords, they are not in fact parties to it, only the countries who sign it are parties to it and only those parties can make changes and it’s a very very very slow process, esp when having gotten what they wanted, they will have no motivation to make changes. Steve is immediately brought into conflict with it because a shoot to kill order was put out on Bucky, who it will turn out was framed for bombing the UN. Steve wants to bring Bucky in alive so he can have due process.The people in charge have other ideas. They are arrested but Steve is fine with this because his only goal was to have Bucky brought in alive to figure out what happened. However Bucky and him and Sam are immediately denied access to legal counsel and basically put at the mercy of getting “favors” to get anything resembling fair treatment. Then he finds out Wanda has been put under house arrest without charges filed and again without access to legal counsel. (and mind you she saved lives in Lagos, she did not set off the bomb, Rumlow did, she attempted to move it away from the population, she got it away from the largest area of people but unfortunately was not able to completely control it out of range and so there were people int he building who died, but Wanda saved lives and did NOT set off or create the explosion).

The point is Steve would NEVER support this sort of thing, whether it involved Bucky or not. In point of fact Steve makes multiple choices which shows he is NOT putting Bucky first - he doesn’t sign the Accords just to get Bucky “off”(not that Tony actually had the ability to promise it but he tried very hard to convince Steve he did) , he doesn’t run off and hide with Bucky, hell he puts Bucky to work trying to find the very dangerous man who is actually responsible for the UN bombings, etc. And anyone who says he only does it “because Bucky” should look no further than the Maximoffs - whom he was willing to give a second chance to as well and he barely even knew them(Clint also did this and Clint’s done it in the past, he did it with Black Widow too, some people do stuff just because it’s the right thing to do) And his initial actions in Bucharest were to take Bucky in to custody, alive - he was not in fact going to help him escape, he was going to bring him in(he even admits that Bucky may in fact be “that far gone” “If he’s really that far gone(to blow up the UN of his own volition), then I’m the least likely to die trying”(to go up against him)). Steve’s actions throughout the film are very reasonable given the information he has. And he really doesn’t do anything for Bucky he wouldn’t do for someone else if he knew they were in the same circumstances. The fact that he’s his friend certainly adds emotional depth to the situation but it’s not like Steve would ever be just fine with imprisoning people without access to legal counsel or other human rights violations which the Accords clearly allows or even encourages. He’s not always in the position to do something about it, but in this case he was - because he was given information which allowed him to do so.

Tony’s motivations are mainly the emotions of fear and guilt for which he’s using the Accords as an excuse for his actions. Tony in fact breaks the Accords mutliple times - he breaks them to bring Spiderman(a 14 year old child, which is illegal in general, child endangerment, kidnapping, etc) into the fight - Peter Parker is an enhanced American engaged in conflict on foreign soil. As such he should only be able to take part in this fight if he has signed the Accords. He has not signed the Accords(nor can he because he’s too young to legally sign them but…that is the law of the Accords Tony claims to support, to cross borders in conflict as an enhanced person you must sign the Accords). So that’s #1 how Tony breaks the Accords he’s literally fighting his former teammates over. #2 Tony, upon finally being presented with independent incontrovertible evidence that Steve was in fact telling the truth, that his reasoning was in fact not “askew” as Tony accused him at the airport, he breaks the Accords to do exactly what his imprisoned teammates are in prison for - he goes to Siberal to help capture the real culprit behind the UN bombing, the Berlin bombing, triggering Bucky, etc - Zemo. He is probably also breaking them when he puts Ross on hold during the breach of The Raft where Steve actually does break his team out, because Steve is loyal to his team and would never leave them behind esp in those circumstances.

So Tony signed the Accords but continues to do whatever he wants to do and then uses his money and resources to avoid the consequences of his actions. Steve and Sam did not sign the Accords because unlike Tony they were not willing to sign their name to a lie, to make promises they knew they wouldn’t keep. They were not going to sign and then try to “work the angles”(besides which they aren’t billionaires and that sort of thing is harder to do without lots of money to hide behind) and basically behave exactly like crooked politicians do.

[utsukushiishoujomangas]

Trip to Japan recap! (Part 3 - Himeji, Hakone and Tokyo)

Hello all,

Here’s part 1 in case you missed it:

http://utsukushiishoujomangas.tumblr.com/post/164067970528/trip-to-japan-recap-part-1

Aaand Part 2:

http://utsukushiishoujomangas.tumblr.com/post/164134921428/trip-to-japan-recap-part-2-kyoto-and-nara

Our primary method of long-distance transportation: Shinkansen (Bullet train)!

We dropped off our luggage in Osaka and left to visit Himeji Castle, widely regarded as the best intact Japanese castle (survived 400 years through WW2 and the 1995 earthquake!), its original construction dating back to 1333 (rebuilt in the 1600s).

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The castle itself sits on a hill, making the views from inside spectacular!

The breeze through the windows is also very refreshing~

It’s a bit hard to get good pictures inside due to the sun’s glare.

The castle itself has 7 floors, all of which are accessible through very steep wooden stairs.

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Sign at the entrance of the castle complex.

Back in Osaka!

We were too tired to go out explore Osaka, so we just grabbed takoyaki at Shin-Osaka Station (Osaka being known for street food style food; eg: takoyaki, okonomiyaki, etc). So no Dotonbori/Glico Man, Denden Town, Abeno Harukas, Umeda Sky Building, Osaka Aquarium, Osaka Castle, Hep Five Ferris Wheel pictures to show here… >.<

The next day we went to Hakone, a region known for its picturesque views (with Mount Fuji in the background if weather cooperates) and onsen (hot springs) within reasonable distance from Tokyo (1h30 from Shinjuku station) making it the perfect weekend getaway for Tokyoites. The bus ride winding through the valleys isn’t really a pleasant one (tight roads, many abrupt turns) but from what I understand, we passed through the old Tokaido road linking Tokyo and Kyoto. The road was once made for foot travel, not cars so that makes sense.

The view over Lake Ashi was worth it though.

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Our hotel was in Ryokan style of traditional Japanese inns.

The price was indeed expensive, but it included a hearty Japanese-style dinner served in our room and a breakfast.

It was hard to take good pictures of the lake view owing to the sunlight glare, but it looked much brighter IRL.

We visited Hakone Shrine next.

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Two of Lake Ashi’s famous sights, the floating Torii gate, along with…

The pirate ship! xD

The sight just outside our hotel.

No pictures of the onsen (for obvious reasons) but I can say that anime/manga portrays it accurately (other than the usual tropes surrounding it).

The next day we took a cruise on the aforementioned pirate ship, and managed to get a glimpse of Mount Fuji (the tall faded mountain in the distance). 8D

Odawara Station, where we changed to the Shinkansen.

Back in Tokyo Station, we passed by the Suica store. Suica is an IC card, essentially a rechargeable card with electronic money used mainly to pay for train/metro fares (transport fares are mostly based on distance traveled in Japan, so buying a ticket every time you go out is a huge hassle), but it can also be used in many stores. 

The penguin mascot is so cute. ^^

How Tokyo Station looks like from the outside.

We went out in Shibuya for supper. Here’s the famous Shibuya 109, that probably appears in every manga where the protagonists go to Shibuya for shopping. xD

The famous Shibuya Scramble about to unfold.

Mario-like go kart rides. Not sure if legal (foreigners driving vehicles on your streets without permits) but looks cool. :D

We then went to karaoke. Sooo cheap (360 yen per hour if I remember correctly; ~3.25 USD) and even the English song selection is better than those where I’m from, which is kind sad in a way. o.O

The next day we wanted to go to Mashiko, a little town known for its pottery, but got a bit confused on how to take the very local train there. Two young JR staff at Shimodate Station helped us out but after much lost time we decided to go back to Tokyo anyway. Here’s some pictures from your typical countryside Japanese train station.

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Next up is Ueno Park. This is Saigo Takamori’s statue, a tragic figure in Japanese history. A samurai from Kumamoto Prefecture in Kyushu, he helped the Imperial faction win against Shogunate forces during the Boshin War (civil war between modernist forces advocating the restoration of power from the Shogun to the Emperor and the Tokugawa Shogunate). Thereafter, disgruntled samurai in his home province rebelled because their samurai privileges were being stripped. Takamori was personally against the rebellion, but eventually agreed to lead it and died in battle against the very forces he helped establish. He is the inspiration for Hollywood’s 2003 film The Last Samurai.

Ueno Park also has many museums, like the National Museum of Nature and Science, which has a nice whale statue in front. :D

We didn’t go there though, instead opting for the Tokyo National Museum, Japan’s largest art museum. The pavilion buildings are nice-looking.

No pictures from inside as that would drag this post on even more. :P

Back in Ueno Park.

The top of Ueno Station.

Views on the Shohei bridge, near Akihabara where we went shopping after.

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I went to Yokosuka alone the next day, a city with a strong naval heritage (hosts a major Japanese and American naval base).

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I went there for the Mikasa, a preserved pre-dreadnaught battleship from 1902. What can I say, I like naval stuff. I won’t post the other 1.1 GB pics of it I took. >:D

Night shopping at Akihabara again.

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Next up is Senso-ji Temple, Tokyo’s oldest temple.

Tourist-filled, but Nakamise Shopping Street in front of it is a great spot for souvenir-shopping.

Our final day was spent mostly in and around Harajuku. First stop is Meiji-jingu, dedicated to the first modern (post 1868) Japanese emperor, Emperor Meiji.

There was a traditional Japanese wedding ceremony when we were there:

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Many foreign tourists here, so you won’t be the only one if you hang your Ema wishing plaque here for all to see. ^^

No visit to Harajuku would be complete without a stroll through Takeshita Street. Very touristy. Pretty sure it’s no longer the “central point of Tokyo teenage culture” anymore like it’s advertised in all tourist brochures.

View on Shibuya Station from our airbnb apartment on the last day. Needless to say, I was very sad that day.

 Shibuya Station.

Hachiko and the Green Car in front of Shibuya Station.

I reached the maximum photo limit (30) while drafting this post, so I’ll make a final post with miscellaneous stuff about my trip (food, drinks, non-shoujo otaku stuff). So keep watching out for that one. Hope it was entertaining ^^

[mst3kproject]

The Astro-Zombies

This one was directed by Ted V. Mikels, who also brought us Girl in Gold Boots (released the same year).  It stars Wendell Corey, who was in both Agent for HARM and Women of the Prehistoric Planet, and John Carradine's also in it.  Poor John Carradine.  I told you we'd be seeing him again.

The Astro-Zombies is kind of a hard slog.  The opening feels like we're seeing a series of beginnings to stories we will never be told the rest of.  First, a woman drives home and is attacked by an astro-zombie in her garage – the thing's face looks like a cross between a rubber skull mask and a rubber alien mask.  Then the opening credits play over a sequence of toy robots fighting.  Then a car accident, where the dying driver is being dragged away from the scene by a guy whose name is definitely Igor.  I don't care if the credits call him Franchot (which John Carradine pronounces to sound like 'Bradshaw'), he's got Igor written all over him.

(The shot above is re-used several times in the same scene.)

Then we see a man in a car, rewinding a tape and putting it in a case.  Then we cut to an office or something – whatever it is, it's got a table of plastic innards – and somebody finally starts talking.  Seven and a half minutes into the movie, characters explain to us that there have been a series of unusual murders, which seem to indicate that somebody is trying to build a Frankenstein-like 'astro-zombie', a creature of synthetic organs and actual human body parts which can be controlled remotely by radio. The original purpose of this creature was for long-distance space flight, allowing actual humans to stay safely on earth while artificial ones did the dangerous stuff for them.  But naturally when somebody actually built one of the damned things, it immediately went mad and started killing.

Now, the mad Dr. DeMarco and his assistant Igor are trying again, hoping to build a functional astro-zombie to fight the evil one, which is still searching for beautiful women to kill. Meanwhile, the CIA (I think), with help from DeMarco's former partner Dr. Petrovich, are trying to track him down – and agents of a never-identified foreign government, led by a woman who calls herself Satana, want the astro-zombie for themselves as the perfect weapon.

So eventually, all those disaparate beginnings do start to make sense.  The woman in the car was murdered by the rogue astro-zombie, who apparently mistook her for Jeanine, one of Dr. Petrovich's assistants – she was the last person the brain donor saw before he died.  The corpse Igor stole from the car wreck is destined to become the second astro-zombie.  The rewound tape is a recording of a speech Dr. DeMarco gave on how to create an astro-zombie, which the man in the car sells to Satana (and is then run down in the parking lot so she can get her money back).  I guess in the end it all makes sense... except for the toy robots, I have no idea how those figure in.  They do reappear over the closing titles, so we have that.

I've talked before about misleading titles and posters in old movies, which tended to promise (or at least imply) things that were in no way actually in the movie.  One of the things that strikes me about The Astro-Zombies is that its marketing is surprisingly honest.  The movie certainly is about astro-zombies, and all the things the poster promises us we will SEE! are in fact in the film, in pretty close to the form we were promised them.

The main image here is a skull-headed dude with a machete threatening a woman in her underwear.  While we never see any of the little rockets or satellites in the backdrop, this is in the movie, albeit in a scene so dark and badly-shot that we can barely see it at all.

The poster tells us that we will SEE an Astro-Space Laboratory!  There are two labs in this movie, Dr. Petrovich's and Dr. DeMarco's.  The former's doesn't seem to have much that's astro or spacey about it, but while the latter's is in his basement it is used to make astro-zombies for space travel.  Astro-Space Laboratory?  Seen!

SEE Brutal Mutants Menace Beautiful Girls!  Not only do the astro-zombies themselves hack up the redhead at the beginning before going after Petrovich's foxy assistants, there's also a weird sideline where Igor has a woman in a bikini duct-taped to a table in the lab.  I dunno if Igor's a brutal mutant but he's definitely menacing her.

SEE Crazed Corpse-Stealers!  Igor steals the corpse from the car wreck at the beginning, and he seems pretty crazy (what with his duct-taped bikini girl and all), so that's another yes.

SEE Berserk Human Transplants!  Dr. DeMarco isn't crazy enough to count as berserk himself, but he does perform human transplants – and the result of those transplants, the astro-zombies themselves, are definitely berserk.  Seen!

Of course all these things are kind of watered-down from what our imaginations may produce at reading the poster, and that's because the movie is obscenely cheap.  It was mostly filmed in a suburb of Los Angeles, with people's kitchens and living rooms standing in for high-tech labs and secret hide-outs.  The only actual location appears to have been the nightclub.  The day-for-night is on a par with Attack of the The Eye Creatures.  Only one astro-zombie is ever on screen at a time because they could only afford one mask.

There is one place where the cheapness actually enhances the movie: I quite like the garage sale aesthetic of Dr. DeMarco's lab.  This guy is a mad scientist working outside the system.  He's not gonna have access to the best high-tech equipment, so of course he's building it out of bits and pieces, using a fish tank to keep his artificial heart alive and part of an old lamp to make a brain scanner!  It works far less well in Dr. Petrovich's laboratory, which is full of test tubes of different kool-aid flavours and plastic models of various organs, some of which appear to be standing in for real organs and some of which may be plastic organs within the movie, but it's hard to tell which.

Cheapness is rarely a movie-killer in and of itself – in fact, cheapness can be hilarious under the right circumstances.  The plastic brains that stand in for the more realistic props the production couldn't afford are funny as hell.  What makes The Astro-Zombies so difficult to watch is that the whole movie is very badly constructed.  I already mentioned that the movie seems to begin several times, and the way all these beginnings are put together makes them confusing rather than intriguing.  This continues on into the movie, as we will see something that makes no sense and must then wait several scenes to see it explained, by which time we may have forgotten about it entirely.  By the time we find out that the guy who sold the tape to Satana was apparently an Italian count(!), it's hard to remember who 'the hit-and-run victim' even was.

Far too much time is devoted to things that turn out not to matter. We get to watch the process of astro-zombie creation in great detail – the corpse's memories are erased, its blood is drained, and then it is frozen so work can begin on it.  Most of this serves no purpose except for killing time – the only part that turns out to be important is that astro-zombies run on solar power (no, really).  We see various double-crosses and murders among the secret agents who are after the astro-zombie secret, but have only the vaguest idea who these people are.  Satana speaks with an American accent, her crazy-eyed, knife-wielding assistant is called Juan, and the guy who betrays them is some kind of Eastern European.  Maybe they're Canadians.

Oh, and we can't forget the topless dancer.  There's an extended scene of a dancer at the club, wearing nothing but panties and body paint.  The paint makes her look like she has a very strange physique and her breasts are weird.  This is occasion for a number of jokes about 'studying anatomy' but is mostly just an excuse to have a topless woman in the movie.  The two secret agents have also taken their girlfriend along to this (just one girlfriend for the two of them – the best sense I can make of the relationship among the three of them is that they're polyamorous).  Does anybody in the real world actually take their girlfriends to strip shows and call it a date?  Because I suspect that's a good way to become single again right quick.

At the end, the movie tries to make some kind of a point.  I think we're supposed to assume that astro-zombie mark 1.2 deliberately electrocutes itself along with Satana because it is horrified by the monster it has become, but I wouldn't bet money on it.  The other characters then observe that it is impossible to fully remove emotions from the human brain.  This has so little to do with anything that came before it just feels like an afterthought.

Then they leave without searching the lab.  I hope CSI came back to give the place a good once-over later, or that bikini girl on the table might starve.

[newagesispage]

                                                            JUNE        2019

 PAGE RIB

***** Catch the new stand up: David Cross: Oh Come On

***** There is no more smoking at Disney.

***** Psilocybin mushrooms have been decriminalized in Denver!!

***** Adam Sandler is touring and he has a new stand up special out: 100% Fresh.

***** The new book, ‘The Castle at Sunset’ is coming. Looks pretty juicy!

***** FORD is cutting about 7,000 jobs.

***** Ben Domenech, Meghan McCain’s hubby did a rant about Seth Meyers after Meyers called her out on his show about some of her comments.

***** Eddie Redmayne is in pre- production on ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7.’ where he plays Tom Hayden.

***** Sexual misconduct news: Alan Dershowitz is being accused by the victim of a former client.

***** Steak n Shake is being sued again. Somebody straighten this out. Will they go out of biz?? It seemed to change when new owners took over.

***** A final rule was issued May 2 by the Department of Health and Human Services that health care workers can’t be compelled to participate in medical care that disagrees with their religion or conscious. Fuck You Patients!

***** Martin Scorsese, Brian Grazer and Ron Howard are bringing us’ Once were brothers.’ This will be the telling of RobbieRobertson’s truth about The Band.

***** Is this true? One of the reasons the USPS is struggling so bad is that senators voted to make them pre pay pensions?

***** The NRDC night of comedy with Seth Meyers, John Oliver, Tiffany Haddish, Hasan Minhaj, Sarah Silverman, John Mulaney and others raised 1.7 mil for environmental protection.

***** Edwin Hiatt was arrested for the murder of Barry Crane. Crane was a champion bridge player as well as a director and producer of such shows as Mannix, Dallas, The Incredible Hulk and Hawaii Five-0 among others.

***** Visit the site of The Alliance for lifetime income that is sponsoring the Stones No Filter tour.

***** CBS is shaking it up. Word is that the morning show will be hosted by Gayle King, Tony Dukoupil and Anthony Mason. John Dickerson will move to 60 minutes and Norah O’Donnell will anchor the CBS evening news where she’ll be perfect. What took them so fucking long??

***** Days alert: Stephen Nichols is returning as Patch.** Word is also that Tony and Anna are headed back. Best news ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Kristen may be back. So, more possibly coming back from the dead.. Will, Nicole, Jack.. None of these people are what they seem, they just aren’t quite themselves. Brainwashed? Plastic surgery on others? Fake faces? It could be any old soap opera trick. Was the whole burning building a set up?  What do Rolf and Rex have to do with this? How is it all connected? ** I am really glad that Mel and Haley are gaining story. Keep it coming. Love the pairings going on. JJ and Haley have such chemistry as do Ben and Ciara, of course.** Is Xander really Victor’s son?? Ok.. ! fake face so far with Nicole.** LET’S GIVE RORY A REAL STORY!!!!!

***** So much entertainment is bringing Trumptopia to their universe. People seem so upset and genuinely scared and they have to get it out and put their take on it.

***** Marie Osmond takes Sara Gilberts chair at The Talk.

***** Arnold Schwarzenegger was attacked by a man in South Africa.

***** Chris Hemsworth and Tiffany Haddish will star in Paramount’s buddy movie, Down Under Cover.

***** Support the National Popular Vote Compact for the Electoral College.

***** Country House @ 65-1 won the Kentucky Derby after a historic disqualification of first winner, Maximum Security. There was also much controversy before the race after 23 horses have died at Santa Anita.

***** So to be clear that we are on the same page: Obstruction is impeding or attempting to impede for a corrupt purpose like helping yourself.  Even the parts of the Mueller report that we can see show obstruction. Also, If the statute of limitations are about to run out, an indictment can be made and sealed against a sitting President. The case would be prosecuted after he is out of office. So let’s quit fucking around.** Republican Rep. from Michigan, Justin Amash urges action on our President. He writes that Trump has been engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment. He actually read the report.** Why does it seem that the ‘Great again’ and ‘Taking it back’ conservative family value crowd often turn out to be doing the shady stuff behind our backs?

***** Mueller finally spoke and seemed to reinforce both sides. He is leaving his post but the Grand jury investigation chugs along.** A Federal judge ordered all Mike Flynn passages in the Mueller report to be made public.

***** The McCain naval vessel and Japan?? Really??

***** The President is tweeting agreement with North Korea about Joe Biden? That is about right.** Scary Clown also stormed out of a meeting after Pelosi was talking about his cover up earlier in the day. The signs for his little ‘impromptu’ press conference that he ran to were already set up.

***** So the WH seems to be telling everyone not to testify before congress. No more rules. I suppose the time has come that we can do whatever we want and there will be no consequences. It is good to know we can all fight subpoenas till the bitter end, it opens up a whole can of worms. Really this is all about seeing how far they can go, what can they get away with??

***** The Pentagon has diverted 1.5 billion from various defense department funds for his wall. The money earmarked for training troops and equipping our forces is apparently better used for the border. ** Congress has now threatened to take away the defense department’s ability to move money around. There is usually consultation but they are, of course, ignoring it.**

***** Jared wants a merit based system for the illegals. So, we want to bring immigrants into the country that will take all of the good jobs?  I do not understand this family, they want a wall so nobody gets in, they want immigrants to work at Mar A Lago to service them and now they want only people qualified to work high end jobs.** Kushner’s real estate company has gotten about $800 mil in federal loans.

***** At this point Trump’s 225 days of golf have cost us $122 mil and he is making money for his resorts every time.

***** Theresa May is out.

***** Kim Jong Un’s top aide is said to have been put in hard labor.  North Korea also executed Kim Hyok Chol and four foreign ministry officials in March after the Trump summit charged with espionage.

***** Mexico is getting a 5% tariff.

***** Native Americans are being killed by police officers at a higher rate than anybody else.

***** Fuck dementia.. Just TRIP!!

***** Manafort’s condo in Trump tower is being put up for auction as the Government takes possession.

***** The New Haven documentary film fest is running a 7 film retrospective of Michael Moore’s work this month.

***** A new report says that the EPA has been ordered to get thousands of deaths “off the books” by altering the way they calculate the risks of air pollution.

***** Ben Carson will never live down his ‘OREO’ moment. If there wasn’t enough proof that people without a clue have been put in charge, this is it. Supporters have to be pretty stupid to think it is a good idea for the stupid people to be in charge. What is so wrong with smart people, not crafty, slick people, I mean smart people who know how to actually solve problems and come up with good ideas? I can’t help but think of an Uncle in our family called Mort. There was much talk when I was a child of Mort being so smart and quiet. When he came to family gatherings he would sit in the corner and read and learn instead of socializing. I always wondered why they thought that was wrong. I was so envious of him. I realize that isn’t exactly on the same page but smart is good.** One day after Carson’s ‘testimony’ there was a new proposal to HUD’s equal access rule. It would allow federally funded homeless shelters to consider sexual and gender identity, privacy, safety, practical concerns and religious beliefs when deciding if they want to accommodate someone.

***** The Harriet Tubman $20 bill will be delayed for circulation until possibly 2028. Scary Clown has always criticized the move and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin says that Andrew Jackson will remain on the bill for now.

***** The costuming on HBO’s The Young Pope is so fucking awesome.

***** Former WH chief of staff John Kelly has joined the board of Caliburn International. This conglomerate operates facilities that hold the detained immigrant children in our country.

***** Matt Smith stars in ‘Charlie Says’ in the latest incarnation of Manson.

***** Hooray for Chobani!! The company is paying off school lunch debt in Rhode Island for students so they don’t have to eat jelly sandwiches.

***** Bill De Blasio is running for President.

***** Gene Simmons of KISS gave a press briefing at the Department of Defense.

***** Citrus farmers are using antibiotics to fight bacteria in crops. Health officials are afraid this could fuel antibiotic resistance in us.

***** Sen. Michael Bennett is running for President.** He said that his Mother found out he was running from the newspaper. There was some talk about Jello when he was interviewed on Seth Meyers.

***** The Chief Pig compared Mayor Pete to Alfred E. Neuman. Pete said he was glad that he inspired the President to make a literary reference, even though the Mayor was too young to know the reference.

***** There is a Variety series : Actors on Actors. See the one with Jason Bateman and Bill Hader. Yeow. oh to be the cream in that Oreo. Can I say that in the Me Too era? Are there reverse problems with that??

***** For Putin, things started off as a mountain and ended up being a _____. He is laughing at this country every day.

***** ‘The Quiet One’, a doc about Bill Wyman is here.

***** Matthew Modine is running for SAG AFTRA president. He is getting endorsements from Ed Asner, Vincent D’Onofrio, Mira Sorvino, Nancy Sinatra, Patricia and Rosanna Arquette, Sean Astin, Ernie Hudson, Alfred Molina and Bill Mumy.

***** The Cool Kids was cancelled. BOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WTF?? Their September debut was the most watched Friday broadcast comedy debut in almost 6 years.

*****Empire will end after season 6.

***** The Daytime Emmys didn’t do much for Days after all those noms. Kyler Pettis was the only winner. I was happy for GH’s Max Gail. CBS Sunday Morning won best morning program. There has been some controversy over some of the regulations and some tv shows threatened to boycott. At one point, Patrika Darbo had an Emmy revoked. There was some stunning fashion. My faves were Annika Noelle, Jaqueline Macinnes Wood, Camila Banus, Lexie Stevenson, Linsey Godfrey, Olivia Rose Keegan, Brandon Barash, Carolyn Hennesy and Victoria Konefal.

***** There is some shady business in Wisconsin with Foxconn. The Taiwanese company made big promises with Scott Walker and Trump. They have since been backing out of the manufacturing side of the deal. Republicans want to blame the new democratic Governor but he was warning them about this company way back when.  Why are these hucksters always blaming others for the kinds of things they do??

***** HB 1633 in Illinois is a bill to, among other things, make a felony of peaceful protests!! Thanks oil lobbyists!** But, Illinois is making some progress in the right direction on some fronts.. House Bill 1438 was approved by the Senate to legalize possession and sale of weed. At the end of May it passed the house. The bad news is that police already have records of those that use medical marijuana and if they pull you over, they can charge you if you have used any that day. ** The Reproductive Health Act passed which states that an egg, embryo or fetus does not have independent rights and the state can’t deny or restrict reproductive rights.

***** After chickengate, the committee voted to hold Attorney General Barr in contempt of congress. Now it moves on but the contempt can be denied by the DOJ. Rep. from Texas, Sheila Jackson Lee made a great speech and broke it down to show that they were only making a simple request of documents and the WH and Barr will not comply.

***** The WH has been revoking press passes from journalists they do not want there, nearly the entire corp. They granted exceptions for the press they like.

***** Amal Clooney helped to free Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe OO from Myanmar. Many other journalists are still being held.

***** A man in Illinois takes old bikes and parts and makes them useable again. He gives them to people in need of transportation. A Morton woman put out a call on the internet to gather old bikes for him and got them beyond her wildest dreams. Way to go!!

***** In Georgia abortions could soon be illegal after 6 weeks. 3 production companies, Blown Deadline productions, Killer Films and Duplass Brothers productions say if that happens they will no longer film in Georgia. Now Alabama has jumped on board with the want to prosecute Doctors. And it goes on with Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, Iowa, Louisiana, Utah and North Dakota.  The Reich is chipping away at our rights. Why do we keep putting so many conservative men in powerful  places?? Why are the 1% ruling the rest of us??** Debbie Harry commented at the ASCAP pop music awards, “I think it’s criminal.”** Some states are saying they may even investigate miscarriages. Why not just follow all ejaculations?? I have had a miscarriage and the last thing I would have needed in my pain was someone investigating me. WTF?

***** Did anybody else the owl clock on American Housewife?

***** John Waters has a new book: Mr. Know it all

***** Letterman is back with his Netflix gig where he will interview Tiffany Haddish, Ellen, Melinda Gates and Kanye West. Doesn’t it seem like our world went crazy after Dave left his CBS show? More Dave!  On the talk show rounds he does sort of seem like an old guy holding court but still hot!!!

***** The Wal Mart pick up ad with all the famous rides makes me a little crazy when the lowly Wal Mart employee worker is getting hit by a customer.

***** Liam Neeson will star in The Minuteman.

***** Caterpillar has sent a cease and desist to coffee company Cat and Cloud because of their name.

***** McDonalds is said to be bringing America the best of their international menu this summer for a test drive.

***** The Al Franken podcast is here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

***** A cancer diagnosis usually ends with 4 in 10 patients depleting their savings.

***** Secretary Amy L. Bedwell was arrested for theft from a parent teacher organization in Illinois. She will go to court for the Riverview grade school incident on June 12.

***** Spielberg’s Amblin tv is severing ties with the show Bull. CBS has paid 9.5 mil to settle harassment claims by Eliza Dushku against Michael Weatherly.

***** The Met Gala was at its best with wonderful camp looks from Harry Styles, Lady Gaga, Billy Porter, Janelle Monae, Zendaya , Laverne Cox, RuPaul, Darren Criss, Ashley Graham, Dua Liba, Natasha Lyonne and Lupita N’yongo.

***** August will bring us John Goodman and Danny McBride as part of a televangelist family in The Righteous Gemstones.

***** Cannes person of the year in entertainment award this year is Lorne Michaels.

***** New show, Bluff City Law looks pretty good even though we really don’t need another lawyer show.

***** Mick is back at it and new dates have been set for the Stones tour which will begin June 21 in Chicago!!!!!!

***** The Illinois department of corrections have not been able to account for 3, 568 items in a recent audit.

***** Ava Duverney has made a movie that needed to be made about the Central Park 5.

***** There is a helium shortage.

***** Steve Kroft of 60 minutes is retiring.

***** Director Bong Joon-Ho’s ‘Parasite’ has won the Palme d’or at Cannes.

***** Duff Mcagan has a new solo album with help from Shooter Jennings.

***** Conan has settled a lawsuit over joke theft. A blogger claimed that his writers had stolen 4 jokes from his blog. The jokes were not that unique and there are so many hundreds of similar jokes out there anymore with the crazy news cycle and so many late night hosts and on liners. Conan wrote about hs odyssey in Variety.** Conan also wrote a theme song for NPR news.

***** Mike Pompeo seems happy that when the ice caps melt there will be new, easier to travel trade routes. So, do you think it is a hoax or are they really melting?

***** Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield will pay Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker in a biopic.

***** Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost are engaged.

***** Meghan Markle and Prince Harry brought us 7 lb. 3 oz. Archie Harrison Mountbatten Windsor.

***** R.I.P. Peter Mayhew, 9 gray whales, Kendrick Castillo, Jim Fowler, Doris Day, Sammy Shore, Alvin Sargent , Tim Conway , Ron Hiatt, all the children who keep dying in our custody , victims of the Virginia Beach shooting, John Pinto and Peggy Lipton.

[shirlleycoyle]

Disc-Free Gaming Is an Archival Nightmare

Carly Kocurek is the author of Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade (Minnesota, 2015) and Brenda Laurel: Pioneering Games for Girls (Bloomsbury, 2017).

Microsoft’s new Xbox One S launching May 7 boasts “disc-free gaming,” a feature that has already raised issues about ownership and access for players. However, the upcoming xCloud game streaming service indicates Microsoft may be moving towards streaming as a dominant distribution model. If the goal is to migrate away from downloads entirely, the new Xbox disc-less console is the harbinger of what could be a pretty grim trajectory for video game history.

According to Andrew Borman, Digital Games Curator at the Strong Museum of Play, there is currently no model for preserving playable versions of streamed games.

“Other than video, which is a key part of preservation and what we do, there is no record of the game,” Borman told me. “We can’t see the files and the elements of the game including art and story. We have no means to revive the game so that it can be played not just now, but decades from now. The idea of ownership disappears in this model. You have a license to use that for as long as the company wants to let you play the game.”

The diversity of films readily circulating has declined sharply because of the dominance of streaming. For example, Netflix started as a mail-order movie-rental service offering hard-to-find foreign films and cult favorites alongside new releases. However, as the service has shifted to focus on streaming, the number of titles has compressed. As of 2015, Netflix’s disc library included just 7,500 titles, much of it television—and if that sounds like a lot, consider that Chicago video store Odd Obsession has at least 20,000 titles.

Many movies are not digitized and ownership of current copyrights can be ambiguous, making digitization efforts difficult. Movies drift on and off streaming services due to complex issues including licensing of the movies themselves or even of the soundtracks. This drift creates holes in history and presents sometimes weird challenges; a film professor I know reported recently having to run a class screening of the 2006 movie Shortbus from Pornhub, the only site that had it available. Disc-free consoles and streaming services similarly present an acute challenge for historians and archivists. While digital distributors like Steam have driven the move to the cloud, most of these still allowed downloads. Newer streaming platforms remove that possibility, which means access is entirely dependent on the corporation.

I serve on the board of directors for the Learning Games Initiative Research Archive, one of the largest collections of video games and related artifacts. Co-director Judd Ruggill says streaming raises fresh challenges for an area of collection and preservation that is nascent.

“There’s a reason this model works well for game companies—there’s security and the ability to update constantly or create additional content, but the number of dependencies and scale of operations is huge,” Ruggill said. “We’re trying to imagine how to save games in the past, and we have ideas, and we’re starting to implement them, but going forward, when there’s no material object, it’s really tough. The industry isn’t super helpful.”

Media producers often don’t act as benevolent cultural stewards. Disney has carefully managed its own racist past, recutting Fantasia to remove racist caricature and, for decades, keeping Song of the South out of circulation as best they could. Game companies can exert control over versions of available games more easily with newer media forms. “Even if they were to re-release the game, you’re not necessarily getting the same experience that was available on day one of the original release, due to changes that have been made to the game. You only can play what the current developer wants you to play,” Borman said. This is perfectly reasonable from a corporate standpoint, but the effort to protect brand reputation can also shut down criticism and undermine future demands for accountability. Corporate histories—and corporate secrets—kept in corporate archives exist at a remove from the public’s cultural memory.

If streaming becomes the new norm, corporate control of today’s games may persist for decades and games may fall out of access or even disappear entirely. I don’t think Microsoft is going to fold, taking its game library with it, any time soon, but nobody in 1979 would have guessed Atari’s decline, either. There is a huge difference in the problems presented by streaming in the present tense and the 40 years from now – I’m most concerned with the latter.

Preservation standards and practices in video games are less well defined than those for film, television, or other established media forms. Today’s archivists, a mix of professionals and committed collectors, are already unsure of how to handle emerging forms due to the complex interdependencies between software, hardware, servers, and networks. The Library of Congress holds physical copies of games submitted by producers and distributors, but there is not an established way to submit games that can’t be sent in as a complete hard copy.

“Some game companies pack up everything and send it to Iron Mountain, and theoretically you could construct virtual machines and everything from that, but the likelihood of doing that is very low,” Ruggill says. “Everyone interested in these things whether it’s at a high scholarly level or just in general is going to be in trouble.”

Disc-Free Gaming Is an Archival Nightmare syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[techscorn]

You know what's a nightmare? Buying a game disc, only to be forced to download and install a 6-8GB "patch" before playing. Shipping around content on pieces of plastic isn't all rainbows and kittens. via Motherboard

Carly Kocurek is the author of Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade (Minnesota, 2015) and Brenda Laurel: Pioneering Games for Girls (Bloomsbury, 2017).

Microsoft's new Xbox One S launching May 7 boasts "disc-free gaming," a feature that has already raised issues about ownership and access for players. However, the upcoming xCloud game streaming service indicates Microsoft may be moving towards streaming as a dominant distribution model. If the goal is to migrate away from downloads entirely, the new Xbox disc-less console is the harbinger of what could be a pretty grim trajectory for video game history.

According to Andrew Borman, Digital Games Curator at the Strong Museum of Play, there is currently no model for preserving playable versions of streamed games.

“Other than video, which is a key part of preservation and what we do, there is no record of the game," Borman told me. "We can’t see the files and the elements of the game including art and story. We have no means to revive the game so that it can be played not just now, but decades from now. The idea of ownership disappears in this model. You have a license to use that for as long as the company wants to let you play the game.”

The diversity of films readily circulating has declined sharply because of the dominance of streaming. For example, Netflix started as a mail-order movie-rental service offering hard-to-find foreign films and cult favorites alongside new releases. However, as the service has shifted to focus on streaming, the number of titles has compressed. As of 2015, Netflix’s disc library included just 7,500 titles, much of it television—and if that sounds like a lot, consider that Chicago video store Odd Obsession has at least 20,000 titles.

Many movies are not digitized and ownership of current copyrights can be ambiguous, making digitization efforts difficult. Movies drift on and off streaming services due to complex issues including licensing of the movies themselves or even of the soundtracks. This drift creates holes in history and presents sometimes weird challenges; a film professor I know reported recently having to run a class screening of the 2006 movie Shortbus from Pornhub, the only site that had it available. Disc-free consoles and streaming services similarly present an acute challenge for historians and archivists. While digital distributors like Steam have driven the move to the cloud, most of these still allowed downloads. Newer streaming platforms remove that possibility, which means access is entirely dependent on the corporation.

I serve on the board of directors for the Learning Games Initiative Research Archive, one of the largest collections of video games and related artifacts. Co-director Judd Ruggill says streaming raises fresh challenges for an area of collection and preservation that is nascent.

“There’s a reason this model works well for game companies—there’s security and the ability to update constantly or create additional content, but the number of dependencies and scale of operations is huge," Ruggill said. "We’re trying to imagine how to save games in the past, and we have ideas, and we’re starting to implement them, but going forward, when there’s no material object, it’s really tough. The industry isn’t super helpful.”

Media producers often don’t act as benevolent cultural stewards. Disney has carefully managed its own racist past, recutting Fantasia to remove racist caricature and, for decades, keeping Song of the South out of circulation as best they could. Game companies can exert control over versions of available games more easily with newer media forms. “Even if they were to re-release the game, you’re not necessarily getting the same experience that was available on day one of the original release, due to changes that have been made to the game. You only can play what the current developer wants you to play,” Borman said. This is perfectly reasonable from a corporate standpoint, but the effort to protect brand reputation can also shut down criticism and undermine future demands for accountability. Corporate histories—and corporate secrets—kept in corporate archives exist at a remove from the public’s cultural memory.

If streaming becomes the new norm, corporate control of today’s games may persist for decades and games may fall out of access or even disappear entirely. I don’t think Microsoft is going to fold, taking its game library with it, any time soon, but nobody in 1979 would have guessed Atari’s decline, either. There is a huge difference in the problems presented by streaming in the present tense and the 40 years from now – I’m most concerned with the latter.

Preservation standards and practices in video games are less well defined than those for film, television, or other established media forms. Today’s archivists, a mix of professionals and committed collectors, are already unsure of how to handle emerging forms due to the complex interdependencies between software, hardware, servers, and networks. The Library of Congress holds physical copies of games submitted by producers and distributors, but there is not an established way to submit games that can’t be sent in as a complete hard copy.

“Some game companies pack up everything and send it to Iron Mountain, and theoretically you could construct virtual machines and everything from that, but the likelihood of doing that is very low,” Ruggill says. “Everyone interested in these things whether it’s at a high scholarly level or just in general is going to be in trouble.”

[innominatewritings-blog]

If you are smart, then you’ll know that some journalists are extremely bad at their jobs. I was going to say that the media is whack, but it really isn’t and I’m not going to diss the platform I am able to write this on.

Before I throw around facts and examples, I am going to write about my truth and why I love the media and then my beliefs on the simple thing that is representation. As, once the facts and examples come in to play, they will fully support the truth.

Love and Truth: Mine

I think back on my childhood and I realise the views I hold to this day, have always been with me. I honestly do not know how this has happened or what impacted me to have these views. All I done was watch a lot of TV and read fair few books.

I attended a mixed primary school, it was a Church of England school, and we truly treated everyone as equal. From what I remember there was no racism on the schools part. We were children so we never saw each other as what adults with judgement would see.

Being a white person, when I think back on how things are I don’t think much difference  of me and my friends. I have foreign friends and friends of colour, but it is hard for me to understand if I blend us together because of the privilege that comes with my ethnicity. But the fact that I have these thoughts is a safety net for me. It helps me realise where I stand, and allows me to always be cautious. So I do not succumb to the ignorance. I care for everyone like I care for myself. If they are not allowed to do something that I am, younger me would blindly defend them not knowing the real issue, whereas, adult me? She is woke and ready to set you ignorant bigots in your place.

My friend and I are planning to go to America sometime soon and she jokes that she hopes she can get through customs. At first it didn’t click, then I realised, she is mixed-race and UK customs is bad enough as it is, imagine what American customs are like especially when a bigot runs the country. Trump truly does put the C(o)unt in Country. 

OK, this is already pretty lengthy and I am nowhere near done. Please leave me your thoughts on this, as I am after all, a white person speaking up on something I can never fully understand, so when I overstep I would like to be shoved back into my place..

Love and Truth: Media

The reason I love the media so much is because you can access it from anywhere and get your little fix of information. Currently we are in a media divide and it is hard to find any reliable sources. You think you have found one and then this obscene article promoting malicious views pops up. #cancelled.

The media used to be a place you could go to find out genuine facts and information but now all it seems to be is made up articles for clicks and reads. When did it all become so childish?

I’m going to skip to the more important factors now.

I saw the sentence “#CrazyRichAsians is a reminder that representation is important” and although I am yet to see it, I completely agree on that front. (I will be referring back to this at some point.)

Currently the media I am seeing is people fighting for things not to be whitewashed, and all though there has been a lot of accurate casting done and people are happy, there is a behind the scenes; how much did they fight for the truthful representation that they needed?

Examples and Facts: Media

Tim Burton was an artist I once admired, but his views on representation saying that POC weren’t a demand to be had cast in his projects, well that’s because he’s in his own little bubble of privilege and only thought about his norm.  No one asked for us whites to come and take over everything. We have never been the only ones to interact with one another. Movies are supposed to represent life right? So you’re telling me you have never once interacted with a person of colour? OK, lets think about this: I am white. I live my life from a white perspective. If I was played in a movie you can cast me as any ethnicity. This is because there is no experience I go through that someone else hasn’t also experienced. A POC lives their life as one. PERIOD. You cannot taint that by making a white person play that, because that instantly gets played down and washed out.

We cannot portray lives where we cannot truly empathise with their experiences.

I am obsessed with art, books, films, paintings/drawings, etc. The lot of it makes me over the moon with joy. I would love to write a book. Then I saw that sentence: “Crazy Rich Asians is a reminder that representation is important“. It got me thinking about my book, I personally didn’t have anything in mind about what the characters I wrote about looked like, but then I remembered something: any book I have read, unless stated otherwise, my mind has subconsciously whitewashed it. That is an accident on my part as that was the originality of my minds programming. Once aware I would focus on the words blocking out any false imagery. But, this is a minor part.

Jenny Han has had her book, ‘To All The Boy I’ve Loved Before’, turned into a Netflix original. Upon watching the film, because of its strong representation with Lana Condor’s portrayal of the movies lead character, Lara-Jean Covey. The tea here is that Jenny took the book to numerous Casting Directors and they all wanted to whitewash Covey even though her ethnicity was a crucial part of the story. Does the cover suggest otherwise? 

  Thankfully, Jenny found some professionals willing to develop her work exactly as she had written it, thus began Lara-Jean’s journey with Netflix. Thank you to those of pure heart who saw the greatest potential was to keep the character as her true self.

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Remember that film briefly mentioned ^? #CrazyRichAsians? Despite it’s name, people also tried to diminish its reality and tarnish it with white people. I know, its SHOCKING. Do they have brains? I know my brain doesn’t exactly work properly, but I’m glad it isn’t that broken. The images in the slideshow are taken from Emma Stefansky‘s article on Vanity Fair. I am currently tearing up at the powerful statement in the last slide:  ‘What makes these people think that all we want to do is see the same white actors or actresses on screen?’.

That statement really caused me to breakdown and just think. I hope it had the same affect on you.

Sincerity to all of You

There are so many powerful, and influential artists I admire and look up to. If you’re a person of colour in any industry related to the media, you are a step in the right direction to putting bigots in their rightful place. It all starts with people noticing what’s wrong and standing against it to make it right; even if it means not getting paid. As long as you are not taking someone else’s rightful place, then its worth it. We have to speak up for those who need us to, but remember not to speak for them or over them.

This has been a very long post and I am sorry for that. I just wanted to write about this on my blog. I am still, quite literally shook, from reading about Kevin Kwan’s experience. As someone who one day hopes to be in the film industry, I am stunned that there are shameful people like this still thriving in the industry. I am hopeful and uplifted by this change, that they won’t be for much longer. I pray that once the new generation are grown that there are very little bigots in the industry. One can only hope.

  I thank and love you if you stayed with me through all 1392 words. So much love xo

    It's 2018 and this is still happening..?! If you are smart, then you'll know that some journalists are extremely bad at their jobs. I was going to say that the media is whack, but it really isn't and I'm not going to diss the platform I am able to write this on.