#he’s old though so that’s just normal 60+ year old behavior

[bottomvalerius]

I gotta just start posting straight to AO3 instead of to tumblr first because I still get that dopamine rush of posting but don’t feel the need to undergo the stress that is posting serious-er writhing on tumblr.net lmfao

[decaffeinatedbasementchild]

Umbrella Academy season 4:

I finished the entire season a few nights ago, so lets talk about some things;

I haven't checked in with the fandom in any way, but from most of the tiktoks i've seen, not many like this season. Completely understandable, makes sense, especially after seeing that weird (a lot of people used the word:) predatory relationship which went down between Five and Lila. I definitely did not see it coming, and though I don't find it predatory myself, as they are both consenting adults, since Five is in the body of an (i think) 20-something year old, but has the mind of an (if i remember right) 60/70 year old(?). I think how it happened can also be an excuse; they were trapped together for (what felt like to them) 7 years. Not to mention that Five had probably been lonely for some time now, and though Lila claimed that her marriage satisfied her, I really don't think it did.

This all however, is totally not an excuse for their behavior. Lila was married with three kids, and Five was the brother of her husband. They were in-laws, which does add to the weird pile.

The only thing I really enjoyed about their "hang", was their travels through all the different timelines. And now we have another academy (The Phoenix Academy), that's just a fun thought. I would have loved to see an episode where they explored the different timelines with different academies.

In other news: I love Luther.

I'm sorry, but I just do. I think the way he desperately tries to keep everything together when it comes to their family is commendable. In previous season, I always hated how he excused Reggie's behavior, but now that he's left that behind and focuses solely on his siblings instead is adorable. Both and he and Allison have given up on the whole incestuous relationship they had, and now they don't even mention it nor acknowledge it. Though normally I would say that that's not a healthy way to deal, I think it's actually better to just leave it all be.

Yes, I know he's kind of pathetic. Yes, I know he is also somewhat selfish. No, I do not care. He's trying very hard to be cool older brother Luther and cool uncle Luther. I think his whole descent into sex work should have been talked about in a better way, but somehow he always brought it up as a thing he enjoys doing? I'm not going to go into prolematic things that the writers have been doing, but this is definitely one of them. There's nothing consensual about sex work, and it should never be shown as something that one might enjoy doing.

This is one of the first actual seasons, however, where we get to witness Diego doing his thing! (I know we've seen him do some other tricks, but they never been this detailed.) I was so shocked to see him do his little spin in the air to redirect the bullets during the second episode, but I was disappointed to see that Lila did NOT care.

Talking about Lila and Diego, did anybody else catch that one part in the first episode about how they basically had the twins accidentally? Diego explains to Luther that though he loves Lila and his kids, he feels exhausted and not at all satisfied. Then he explaines that they had the twins through Lila telling him that since she was breastfeeding, she couldn't get pregnant. It's unclear now if they were both mistaken, but just the way he was talking about it, it felt like to me that he felt betrayed by Lila. I'm pretty sure that Lila was aware that she could still get pregnant, she just knew that she wouldn't be able to convince Diego, so instead she did this.

Viktor is as cool as ever. He's always been very cool, but thinking back to all other old (pre-transition) Elliot Page roles, its so noticiable how uncomfortable he was in his body, and getting to see him now, playing a male character, whos not only accepted by his siblings but Reggie too?! Amazing. And him bonding with Reggie? Delicious, I ate that right up. Reggie calling him "boy" (and other masculine nicknames)? Love, love, love.

This is one point for the writers and Netflix, this is exactly how Hollywood should handle an actor coming out, and I hope that this will be an example for future media that will feature transgender actors in the middle of transitioning.

Klaus is our little weirdo who DESERVES a break. He needs it. Please.

We get to see him clean this season, but I did not expect him to behave like this while off drugs. Honestly, I'm not sure I expected anything. I guess I kind of just thought he'd do drugs anyway? Or that he'd get clean but still behave somewhat the same way.

Poor Klaus was also a character subjected to sex work this season, it just made a bit more sense this time. He definitely did not enjoy it, that was something they made very obvious, but they still couldn't do it just right. It was awful watching him have to make a choice between getting money to pay off his debt and leave or a sole condom for "dealing" with costumers. They didn't make it obvious how many clients he really had, but through dialog, you could kind of guess that he had way more than the one girl whose money he tried stealing.

I loved seeing his relationship with Allison this season. And I loved his relationship with Claire even more. I felt the scene where he went home to rob Allison's place so he could get money to buy drugs was realistic, but since I've never had any experiences with addiction of that kind, I won't speak on it.

The villains of the season were kind of nothing if I'm being honest. I loved their sense of style, but other than that they were basic, text-book style villains, who were mostly around to just help the story along. They weren't too memorable, but neither was Reggie's wife? Partner? I'm not sure who she was, or if she counts as a villain or not? I didn't really understand her role, but I did like how she treated the siblings the first time they met.

Then there is Ben and Jennifer.

I feel like we never really made Ben an official part of the siblings, even though he is supposed to be. His relationship with Jennifer was very cute, but once again, it was not too memorable, even though it was supposed to be the main story of the entire season. I find it weird how it all looks unplanned while also being completely planned? Like, you'd assume that ever since season 1, this has always been the story of Ben's death, and yet it still feels like it just wasn't? It feels like they were putting this whole thing together blindly, and then someone thought of the right thing and that was what made it all make sense.

And I don't like how things with Jennifer went unexplained! What does that fucking squid have to do with anything???

But anyway, other than all that, this season was a very basic example of a Netflix series. It was entertaining but not deep. It was a good watch, but I don't think I could ever do a re-watch. I think it was overall, just nice.

[glitterytorturedpoet]

the saltburn review

saltburn hit pretty close to home. largely because i lived it. at times it was personal and surreal, shocking and true. but in the end it was just another misguided attempt at understanding the misunderstood.

and whom are the misunderstood? the middle class and the one percent? or the soul searching queer? according to emerald fennell, it’s the latter.

for the most part i felt that oliver was created and portrayed accurately, though i was ultimately disappointed by his character arc. while the idea of him m*dering Felix and his family is darkly humorous and seems like an appropriate conclusion, i think it actually misrepresented his character entirely. simultaneously, it absolutely destroyed any sense of romanticism the film spent close to three acts persuading the audience on. instead of the psycho-erotic masterpiece you think just might serve as the male counterpart for killing eve, you get just another fuck you to the LGBTQ community and the one-percent economy. which i might add is grotesquely overdone in media, and the audience knows it by the time they reach the film’s stale ending.

and it is stale. every scene plays like a fever dream of conversations one has already heard before. with the most cliché monologues coming from Farleigh and Venetia. every word seems so painstakingly familiar one can’t help but draw the similarities to F. Scott’s Jay Gatsby. Though where Fitzgerald cuts his dreamy romance and imagination short before any nightmare can begin, Fennell embraces the demons of the night, dragging her Gatsby through the mud and the blood until he’s so unrecognizable she has to provide an alternate origin story to make up for Oliver’s unnatural behavior.

and it is unnatural. so unnatrual that by the credit roll, you’re not quite sure who Oliver is, or what his motives are. on the pretense of reality, it seems pretty rigid for a guy who grew up in a decent neighborhood to go from erotically obsessed with his classmate to a murderous usurper. a conclusion so categorically absurd, it’s impossible to believe- largely because anyone on Oliver’s spectrum would never be able to sustain the public image it takes to uphold Saltburn let alone the ghost of Felix. His nude dance around the estate might as well be his seven seconds of heaven before the vultures descend at Farleigh’s call. And who would Farleigh find? Venetia claims her family believes Oliver to be a spider while she herself is partial to the idea that he’s a moth. [though ultimately she decides he’s a freaky nobody.] i personally concluded he was a werewolf. Normal when the prodigal *son is out, but absolutely possessed at night. Oliver himself professes that he is in fact a vampire. but much to every viewers dismay, we’re not entirely sure why.

3/5 stars: guess it’s just an oliver Quick Horror movie for the rich and famous.

bonus:

which saltburn plague are you?

let me know in the comments

the vampire: dead. cold hearted. bloodsucking. manipulative. stealing the life out of everyone and everything after they invite you in. guaranteed to love you forever or your money back.

the spider: the silent observer, hiding in corners, working in the shadows, whispering half-truths to make your bed of lies. and once you’ve captured your lovely guest, up up and away they go. down your throat for dinner.

the moth: addicted to the light, and the money, and the scene, and the shiny diamond irresistible things. you do nothing but eat holes into everything and everyone until the light is yours alone.

the freaky nobody: you have an erotic obsession with the guy you met in chem class, or the 60 year old lead actress on an emmy award winning tv show. you spend your days, weeks, months admiring from afar and planning how you’ll end up being together. you like to spy on them while they masturbate and after they’re dead you wear their aromas and old underwear.

the werewolf: an absolute darling pet during the day. someone's best friend and best mate. you wait by their side and do everything they ask in complete and utter obedience and loyalty. but as soon as the full moon comes out you can't be trusted. the demon inside comes out, no one is safe, and everything is considered dinner.

would you / did you / never ever

let me know in the comments

1. lend your bike to your secret crush

I WOULD ABSOLUTELY. wouldn’t go so far as pre-sabotaging the bicycle, but if she needed a ride, i’d give her mine.

2. watch your crush sleep with another person

never ever. i don’t think i could. it’s one of those things that i think i never would want to see. I think i would black out. I think I would get jealous in a way that i’ve never been jealous before. and i think it would haunt me in a way that nothing’s ever haunted me before. i can’t see it being healthy.

3. make out with your crushes love interest

there’s a duplicity to this. maybe even a triplicity given the nature of the game. would I? yes. if the circumstances were right. have i? I have - sort of. not really. there was a guy that i knew who had worked with her previously. and they weren’t romantically linked at all. but i remember thinking when we made out, this guy has been near her. they've touched. because of my circumstances, it felt mystical and urgent, but i never allowed it to happen again. mainly because deep down i knew i was using him. and all i would ever do was use him for precisely that reason. and that wasn’t fair. so i never talked to him again. never ever? she’s married. her husband is this guy. i don’t think i could kiss him. i don’t think i would. but if i did i would imagine it being for the sole reason of missing her because she was no longer with us.

4. tell your crush you suffered a traumatic event to get them to befriend you even more

no. not to the extent that Ollie lied. that was pretty big even for me. i’d tell a white lie. I have told a white lie to get my crush to befriend me even more, but to lie about trauma is diabolical. [the lie i told, was about not having a twitter account in my crushes honorum. in truth, i really did. and i didn’t want her to know about it because it was my place to be transparent. and curious, and sexually fluid. it was my place to be absolutely mental. but i never lied about traumas. [that’s gnarly.]

5. spend the night over your super rich friend’s house

never ever. for precisely the reasons detailed in this film, however parody the script may have been, there’s a lot of truth to the scenario. to the reactions. I always did my best to avoid putting myself into those situations. when you’re in social settings like that i think it’s important to realize and establish your role early on. if they’re fire, you’ve got to position yourself as water, or earth, or wind and be realistic about that. if you’re not, you’re just setting yourself up for failure. you just seem delusional. you've got to be strong. be your own character. set your boundaries and don’t apologize for them. if you don't you''ll only ever be a play thing. you want to make an impression? you want to be memorable? my advice is to keep networking. don't limit yourself to one person just because they're so and so and they have connections. keep networking. make your own connections. and make connections that are outside of their circle. that way if things do go south, the most you lose is an understanding, but never your newly earned position. when you limit yourself you become dependent on others for your happiness and growth. you don't just come off as a moth, but a leech. [that's your que pamela!] it's just not attractive.

6. slurp your crushes masturbation bathwater

abso-fucking-lutely - on second thought it might be a bit too soapy for my tasting. but i’d definitely do a finger dip.

7. perform oral sex during someone’s menstrual cycle

like a full session? probably not. some people try and justify it and make it acceptable but the fact is it’s unsanitary, unhealthy, and unclean. there’s even risk of giving your partner a bacterial infection. so no. not exactly. but i know it’s possible for some women to become aroused. i’d be open to fingering long term, but nothing oral. i have nothing to prove in doing that.

8. play psychological mind games with your competition

i did. don’t recommend it at all. it’s enough to make a person go insane. and there are so many other wonderful things you could be doing. like being kind and being genuine. that’s not to say that being that way will inherently make you exempt from offensive behaviors- and by offensive behaviors i am referring to the unmentionable hazing experience wealthy young adults play on middle class young adults. that's the ugly side of ambition. the part that you’re unprepared for because no one really expects it. you're so focused on socially advancing that once you've gotten your foot in the door the only thing you can process is the success of it. the next steps of it. it's a lot. one minute you think you've just secured generational wealth for your family and the next you're standing in an arena with a sword while all the advanced gather for entertainment. it can just be impossible and manipulative, and jealous for no reason. they’ll hurt you just because they can, just because they’re not having a good day. and it can cost you everything. so don't go in it with the expectation you're going to win. the game is rigged. go in with the intention to survive. you never know, you might get lucky.

9. kill your crush after they found out about your deception and decided they no longer wanted to be in a relationship with you

nooooo!!!! never ever! if anything, i’d kill myself before i had the nerve to kill my crush. to ruin those eyes? and that hair? and those legs? and that ass? and those lips?! PLEASE. the last thing i’d want to do is kill someone i’m in love with! it's just unfathomable. i can't even imagine it. life just wouldn't have meaning without my crush. even if she is married. i don't care. i still want her alive and breathing. if anything i want her to live forever.

10. masturbate on your crushes grave.

this one made me laugh. in hindsight no. maybe you know, i’d think about us being together when i go to lay some flowers, but full on, naked and thrashing against the dirt? i can’t say that’s for me. I can’t speak for what happens in the car though- especially if the grave just happens to be by the beach...

[patricia-von-arundel]

CONTENT WARNING: transphobia, other prejudices, suicide/murder, violence, family and religious trauma

I am going to tag with "transphobia" for now, but please let me know if there is another tag you need, especially considering how curious the human mind gets. Anon is on if that's your preference.

And for the record, I am not trans.

Irony being that she blocked me yesterday (TDOV) for saying there are reasons to include pronouns in your info besides being trans after this:

Well, lady, I'm long past silence, period, with people who refuse to realize that they are perpetuating the same sorts of dehumanizing behaviors they would likely call horrendous when safely viewed through being decades removed from it. It's theoretically no longer acceptable (wantonly and unapologetically - you have to at least pretend there was some other reason... like being trans/gay) to murder, ostracize, belittle, etc., people for their religion, or skin color, or ethnicity, or political orientation, or or or...

I know it happens everyday. I'm a lot of things, but stupidly naive isn't one of them. Not my point here -

And that point is, that openly making fun of, demeaning, or verbally abusing a particular group of people generally only happens when the person doing it knows they will have at least some community support. This is true in people from the moment they can toddle around with enough balance to hit the kid who has the toy truck they want. The 2-year-old gets upset not because of empathy with the other, but because they got caught and in trouble.

Empathy develops to some extent for most. But not all. 🤷‍♀️ And many adults never seem to escape the desperate need to be part of an in-group, and potentially dehumanize or disenfranchise an out-group to be given that part.

While being "normal" gay/lesbian (aka, "stop complicating things and get in the box we've assigned you!") has slooooowly begun to swing closer to being mainstream acceptable or at least somewhat tolerated (and I would dearly love to take a stick to "love the sinner, hate the sin" bullshit), those who do not fall neatly into such categories are still stuck fleeing the field of open season.

I do have a question, though, for those who mock gender identities, pronouns, etc. -

My grandmother died 13 years ago. She grew up in the rural Southeastern US, born in the 1920s. She supported the Civil Rights movement.

But she would not let POC use the bathroom in her house.

My question is: do you think this acceptable? Do you think it is okay to use a particular time, place, and social norms to justify continuing to support and perpetuate microaggressions that were seen only 60-odd years ago as normal?

If you would find it demeaning and horrifying that there are white people who continue to refuse to let black people pee in their toilet, answer me honestly:

How is it not just as demeaning and horrifying to refuse someone's preference for what you call them, in names, or pronouns, or both?

"But I never actually hurt anyone!"

Yeah - neither did my grandmother.

"Look, it's funny. Sorry. But it is. What the fuck is a Ze/Zir? Sounds like some crazy lesbian sci-fi move. 🤣"

Verbal aggression is still aggression.

And here is what I said that got me blocked:

Human history is full of people who shrug and accept the status quo, people who look the other way, and people using the former behaviors to justify their own. Mocking and demeaning seem "harmless" - until they aren't.

"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?!" asked Henry II, frustrated that his new Archbishop of Canterbury was being difficult. After all, Thomas had been picked specifically so that he would side with the king and nobilty over the pope and church! And now he wasn't cooperating. At all.

And maybe the quote above isn't quite how it went. The Zapruder manuscript has yet to be found. 🤷‍♀️ But he said something while grumpy and sulking.

And by the end of 1170, Thomas Becket's brains were splattered all over the altar at Canterbury Cathedral.

I'm not saying one obscure author mocking pronouns is going to end up with anyone murdered. Almost certainly, it will not. But such microaggressions can snowball. If more and more people find more and more dehumanizing behavior acceptable... where does it stop?

With heads smashed open before a church altar? With the wanton murder of thousands through Crusade? With civil war and invasion? With slavery and genocide? With forced marriages, chemical castration, jail, banishment?

All have happened.

But whatever your personal stance on pronouns... even just mocking, arguing that the trend of choosing gender and pronouns is "absurd," may leave you one day wondering if anything will be capable of scrubbing away the stains it may leave on your hands.

Ask yourself what your grandchildren might think of your behavior, one day.

And for anyone reading while dealing with your own trauma and self-harm, please reach out, if at all possible, to people who can help you. You deserve to be safe, and respected, and loved.

You deserve to live. And I hope we can keep working together to make that a life you'll love to live. 💖🏳️‍⚧️

[leespinoodle]

I was thinking about ways in which I could make Ice Age sad, as one does, so let's talk about which of the main trio is dying first. Strap in, this one's a bit long, but worth a read and very educational.

The average lifespan of a woolly mammoth was about 60 years, similar to modern-day elephants. Sabertooth tigers lived about 20-40 years (let's just say 30 for simplicity's sake), about 15 more years than their closest living relative, the clouded leopard. I couldn’t find any information on the lifespan of giant ground sloths because apparently nobody cares about ground sloths, but based on my research into megafauna, we can assume it was around the 20 years of modern-day sloths, perhaps even up to 30 years. Judging by their physical appearances, behaviors, and the fact that Manny has only had one mate and kid by Ice Age 1 and Diego and Sid have presumably never had one, we can guess that Manny is around 20 and Diego and Sid are AT LEAST 3, though they're almost definitely a little older than that (maybe 5).

So Manny's definitely going to outlive his friends, but who's dying first: Sid or Diego? They live together in a very protected area, so normal predation and severe weather conditions such as blizzards aren't an issue, and Sid's own stupidity isn't going to get him killed since he has plenty of other people watching his back (can you call anthropomorphic animals "people"?). They are shown to live amongst a variety of other (mainly herbivorous) animals, so it's safe to assume they have access to water and herbage. The only things they need to worry about are illness/injury or food (in Diego's case, or in the case of a drought).

If a drought happens, that'll increase the chance of dying for all of them, so we can just ignore that. When it comes to food, Diego either has to hunt or scavenge. He is seen hunting in Ice Age 3, so this is probably his main way of getting food. Sabertooth tigers hunted in packs, so hunting alone (I do not respect Ice Age 4 or 5) would make hunting much more difficult, but not impossible. He would probably only be able to hunt small animals, like the deer in Ice Age 3, which should be enough to feed a single smilodon.

Illness/injury is always a threat in the wild, as it reduces an animals ability to protect or feed itself. However, we've already addressed that by living in a group, just like many social animals of today, they have people to protect and care for them while they recover. Except Diego. If Diego is unable to hunt for himself (how he managed to get by after that fight with Soto, we can only guess), it's very unlikely that he'd be able to get enough food to recover well. I'm certain that Manny and Sid would do their best to scavenge things for him to eat, but they aren't predatory animals. They aren't built to hunt, and I don't think they'd mentally be able to go out and kill other animals on the daily.

In Ice Age 3, when Diego is unable to catch the deer due to being out of shape, he just straight-up doesn't get to eat. Even if he were to survive the recovery process, if he was injured in a way that permanently affected his ability to hunt (for example, a lame leg or blindness), he would have a very rough time surviving. In real-life cases of solitary hunting animals that have been permanently injured, they often resort to attacking whatever the easiest prey available (humans in many cases), even if it isn't a part of their typical diet. Diego can't do this, as the easiest prey available is his neighbors, and I don't think that he has it in him after Ice Age 1 to eat anyone he talks to on at least a semi-regular basis, let alone what anyone else's reaction would be.

Most animals are usually considered old when they are 3/4ths of the way through their life, so by his earlier 20s, Diego's physical abilities, and by extension his ability to hunt, would be declining regardless of any injury or illness. While Manny and Sid will be able to eat and live comfortably well into their geriatric years, Diego's health will be taking a turn long before anyone else (except the possums, which have a lifespan of about 4 years, but they’re at least twelve years old already if we assume that Ellie was at the youngest possible age to be an adult in Ice Age 2).

[gorlsgurlsgirls]

Actually, I didn’t want to do this here bc I don’t want to be another person complaining about their husband, but I don’t have a lot of spare money for therapy at the moment and I don’t feel like I can talk to friends and family. I was nervous about that before I got married - who do I talk to when I need to talk about my marriage, my husband? I went into this not really knowing the answer. But this is my private tumblr damnit, so I need to get this out, if only for me.

Marriage is hard. And I knew it would be, even if I didn’t know specifically how. I’m trying my hardest but I don’t think I’m doing well with it. J works 60 hours a week in shipping/logistics and now that it’s the holidays, he went to work today. Who knows how many more weekends he’ll volunteer. I asked him not to, that I’ve been stressed with Teddy, but he said that the time and a half was too good to turn down. This hurts me. I know money is a huge stress factor, but it feels like he’s putting money before my sanity. I do the grocery shopping, the laundry, the cleaning, and try to manage his spending habits. I don’t want to paint him out as some loser - he is in recovery for opiate addiction from a gym injury years ago and a doctor that was too eager to prescribe him stronger and stronger meds. He’s three years clean, but his addictive behaviors show up in other ways that we’re working on. He didn’t have a good example of a healthy marriage or home/family life growing up, so I know he wants to overcome that. He tries, and I am grateful, even if I am impatient sometimes.

I had a meltdown last night because Teddy was being difficult all day. I am the one who is home with him the most - who wakes up to feed him and take him potty at 6:30 before I get ready for work. I buy his treats, prepare any snacks or puzzles for him during the day, take him for walks, feed him dinner, try to tire him out before bed. I work on training new skills and reinforcing things he’s already learned. There is mostly dirt with some patches of grass in the front yard where he goes potty so I wash his feet off daily and bathe him often. I don’t have a lot of free time bc he’s like a toddler, and some days it’s just very difficult. My MIL is home with him so I try to make things as easy for her as possible, but there are times where I feel like he’s annoying her and my FIL. So I look into obedience classes so I can get some help in the areas where I’m struggling.

I’m grateful that they let us live with them, but I’m so tired of living with my in laws. They should have been divorced 20 years ago and they snap at each other often. Their language can sound harsh sometimes when it’s a normal conversation, so I can never tell if they’re fighting or talking about the weather. My body always assumes fighting, so I try to hide in our room. But that’s difficult with a puppy. I think my FIL has dementia or something. He makes choices that are seemingly based in no logic, and it makes things stressful or difficult for everyone in the house, as he has hoarding tendencies and often leaves messes everywhere.

The house itself is quite old and has random holes and poorly done renovation that lets in bugs and pollen and so much dust. So there’s always always always something that needs to be cleaned. I’m desperate to move out but finally just replaced J’s 20 year old car so much of the savings went to the down payment. We live in Orange County and it’s just a difficult time to try and find a reasonably priced place to live.

I work in special education which wasn’t my plan, but last year the principal asked me to as a favor so I did. Even though I had no experience in special ed, it’s been alright for the most part. My schedule has changed about 8 times at random and they pull me to work wherever is needed, including things that were not in my job description. I have to be an expert on my 7 kids that I am with throughout the day. 4 of the kids are in a class where I hate the teachers management style, and that has led to a lot of disrespect from his students (not my kids) when I’m in there. Nothing gets done about this. I hate the new principal who is a raging jerk and think he’s gods gift to this earth. I don’t think I’ll stay past this year, if I make it through this year.

Earlier this year I decided I had to leave Mormonism. This has been one of the most devastating things in my life to experience. It felt like this was no longer my home, that they were becoming more extreme in beliefs that I couldn’t agree with or reconcile, that my personal beliefs didn’t align with them - the place where I learned my sense of integrity. It’s a strange thing to comprehend. Then after a lot of uncomfortable research, I realized it wasn’t true. I think there are so few experiences in life where you realize that everything is a lie, and I never expected my religion to be one of them. That has led to so much grief and an identity crisis, because the beliefs of Mormonism are so deeply intertwined with your sense of identity, how you move throughout the world, how you see others, what you think is coming after this life, what the purpose of anything is. I don’t have many answers now. I don’t know what this life is all for and must now create my own meaning. I’m also in the process of deconstructing the ways I’ve been hurt by sexuality and a strict purity culture and how this has affected my relationship with my husband. Mormonism also informs my sense of community so I’m not quite sure how to develop one outside of the church and I’m lonely at times. But the worst part is that I don’t feel like I can be honest and tell my family about it, because I am afraid of the way they will treat me, or how our relationship will change. The idea of love, in Mormonism, is somewhat conditional, so I have no idea how they will accept this news, and the ways I will disappoint them.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder around this time in 2020 after a difficult year. During a recent first time meeting with a psychiatrist, she informed me that she wasn’t sure this diagnosis was correct. I have often wondered this myself, which has been uncomfortable to think that you’re making things up about yourself, like it’s for attention. She thinks I could have a lesser version of it, as more people are starting to view bipolar as a spectrum, but at the very least, she says it’s some sort of mood disorder. All I know is that several times a year, I think I’m going insane. I try my damndest to keep my emotions under control, and wish I could get credit for how hard I try to be nice to others and to not destroy my own life regularly.

It’s not bad all the time. Some beautiful light is shining through the window right now. I live somewhere that keeps me warm at night and relatively safe. I have people who love me, even if they live far away. I’m listening to good music. Christmas is coming. I’m working on our room with holiday decorations so I can enjoy them. My car is running. We have food to eat. In this moment I am happy to get this all off my chest and give myself space to realize that I am sad about a lot of things, both yearning and contented. That is life, I suppose.

[comicsforyall]

The Original X-Men: Mutants Before the Metaphor

Marvel’s Merry Mutants

The Silver Age of comic books was picking up steam in the latter half of 1963. With the immense success from Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and other recent creations, Marvel was looking to add titles to their roster. Establishing a universe and core audience for their comics was seemingly at the forefront of the company’s minds. With perhaps a bit of a peak over at DC’s Doom Patrol, Kirby and Lee debuted the X-Men, a team of the ‘strangest’ superheroes of all. However a glance at the group would not necessarily back up the claim.

Looking at the new teen team, there’s not a lot of strangeness on the surface. Four teen white boys, with identical hairstyles of varying shades of blonde and brown, alongside one red headed teen girl isn’t exactly a circus act. However the makeup of the team showcases two major points for the series. First, the idea of secretly being different, of not outwardly displaying differences is a distinct theme for this era of X-Men. This is in slight contention with the development of the idea of the mutant metaphor in the ensuing many years, but that has not taken hold yet. The second implication of the included roster is a bit simpler, it’s just demographics.

Marvel as a company tends to be comics made by and for young white guys, often not for the better. The modern understanding is that the X-Men’s mutant metaphor is applicable to various oppressed groups, but that’s not really the case in 1963. The goal of this team seems to be much more for young boys to project themselves and their friends onto the teen superheroes, and their related drama. The series is not a progressive social commentary at this point, if it ever truly is.

Understanding the approach of the creator’s at this point is essential in enjoying these classic comics with the current and long running context of the X-Men. The story is light, the plots are relatively simple, and the character’s are consistently inconsistent. This has to be taken in stride with a story over 60 years old, and under the surface there are actually more persisting elements in the first nineteen issues than it may seem.

Meet the Original Five

Warren Worthington the Third, aka The Angel

Blonde haired, with white feathery wings, Warren Worthington is exactly what’s expected from someone with his code name. Besides being a bit of an overconfident rich boy, there’s not too much depth to the Angel. He spends about half his time dodging airborne projectiles, and the other half hitting on his younger teammate Jean Grey. The unfortunate side for Warren is that his haughty advances mostly serve as a foil to the reserved Scott Summers, and his own pursuit of Jean. Warren’s passes often result in Jean’s admonishment, and her thoughts indicate she is much more interested in Scott.

He’ll be more fleshed out and overly complicated down the road, though he won’t ever completely shake his womanizing behaviors. The flying X-Men comes out a bit boring in the debut run, but is certainly fun to see swoop around when drawn by Jack Kirby.

Hank McCoy, aka The Beast

Everyone’s favorite bouncing blue beast makes his start in a decidedly paler than expected fashion. The transformation of Hank into the hairy version of himself is so iconic across other media, it is a stark realization that the character does not begin with this in mind. Besides his outward appearance though, it is remarkable how much of Beast’s personality is already shaping up in the Silver Age.

A central point of Hank’s character is that his brain is as useful, if not moreso, than his mutation. Whether he looks like a regular teen, ape, or cat monster, he keeps the mind of a genius. Even as a normal looking guy, Hank is already insecure about others not recognizing this trait. Early on he adopts an overly verbose way of talking, clearly meant to showcase his smarts to those around him. It’s charming to read, but would almost certainly be unbearable in regular conversation. As seen in issue eight however, the way he uses his words may be the least concerning aspect of Hank.

Professor X leaves the team for a short while to battle the elusive Lucifer, after surprisingly graduating the team from the school. This progression, along with a traumatic incident involving an angry mob of humans, pushes Beast to exit the X-Men. The harshness of what happens and the speed at which Beast turns are compelling lines when connected to the long term moral failings that will besiege him. Even when he returns, the methods Hank employs are ramped up in intensity.

Since Unus the Untouchable (a mutant enclosed in a personal force field) easily defeats the X-Men in combat, Hank turns to his brain in an attempt to take down the villain. What he devises is questionable and borderline sinister. He whips up a device that increases Unus’s mutation, extending the force field that covers him further outward. This creates the practical issue of Unus being completely unable to touch anything, and he cannot manage to eat or drink. The X-Men use this as leverage, and tell him that should he ever try to join Magneto they will zap him with the ray again, and force him to die of malnourishment.

It sounds bad for Beast and the others, but to be completely fair Unus is a man trying to murder a bunch of teens so that he can join a madman in conquering the world. Still, with the long term arcs of Beast, and the idea that he always is willing to go a little further than other mutants in order to secure safety is cool to see established so early on.

Bobby Drake, aka Iceman

The youngest of the original five teens, Bobby Drake/Iceman, will face a continued character struggle that is exemplified in his uncreative name. For the vast majority of his publication history the threat of being generic or shallow will haunt the quickly named superhero. A consistent jokester, Bobby often falls into the trap of being just comedic relief in lieu of any personal depth. Arguably that is true even in the genesis of the series, but a couple of creative decisions boost the coolest X-Men up a couple of tiers.

First and largely unimportantly, the costume. Iceman’s costume is essentially just a pair of boots he slides on over his completely snowy exterior. It’s a charming and simple gag that goes with Bobby well. The most interesting aspect of his getup is the frozen layer he manifests for himself.

At the start of the series, Bobby is covered in a layer of fluffy snow. Kirby draws him with lots of curved lines, creating a rounded pile effect that is reminiscent of The Thing with a softer exterior. It’s a distinct look that may be unfamiliar, as it is not the typical look that Bobby will sport for the rest of his career. A bit unceremoniously in issue eight, Cyclops suggests to Iceman that he try and ‘harden’ his snow form into a harder ice material, and he is quickly successful. This quick but lasting development points to major themes for the character, including his vast capacities power wise, and his stark lack of self-awareness.

For the duration of the run, Kirby essentially utilizes Bobby’s ice as an artistic outlet and convenient plot device. It’s apparent that Iceman can essentially create anything with his ice, and this intense versatility helps to push the story. From teleportation via water, to revitalizing an entire planet, the throughline of being naively wielding great power will continue to come up. As he gains abilities though he doesn’t always develop personally, which results in a character with too much power and too little motivation. It’s funny that this potential flaw could be due in part to Kirby and Lee simply having fun with their character, and the trend continuing.

Some of Bobby’s displays of strength are done when he himself is not even in control of his body. As outlined by Taylor Lancaster for Screen Rant, when Emma Frost inhabits Bobby’s body in Uncanny X-Men 314 she unlocks levels of the powers that were previously unknown. He’s embarrassed and upset after the realization that she immediately was able to master and utilize his own mutation better than he had any conceived.

This characteristic of lacking self introspection is expanded on by Brian Michael Bendis later on in reference to the character’s sexuality. It is a neat throughline to track, since Iceman will be woefully relegated to a banter-fueled powerhouse of a plot convenience for large stints of his publication.

Scott Summers aka Cyclops

The fourth member of the starting five falls into a similar pattern with the rest of being relatively well established. Though these are dated comics, and in some senses shallow, there is still an undeniable kernel for the character of Cyclops that is already present. Perhaps due to superhero comic’s tendencies to reset characters to their established base, Scott feels firmly on track to fulfill his future roles. Even today when the character has evolved ten times over, there is still a likely chance that any adaptation of the character will mirror the personality seen in these pages.

The first highlight of Cyclops is slight, and that is his mutant ability, and in some instances disability. Laser eyes themselves may be one of the most run of the mill power sets, right up there with angel wings. However Scott is unable to control his optic blasts, and that decision from the creators alone adds a lot of complexity to him. Throughout the issues, all of his teammates are ‘mastering’ their mutations and generally expanding their capabilities, but Scott is never able to do this.

Cyclops remains reliant on his glasses or visor lest he unleash destruction. It’s a simple setup, but for fans it works time and again. He has a rollercoaster of a story ahead of him, but the concept of having to be so careful all the time and never truly being in control remains as an undercurrent and terminal anxiety. Ironically being in control is exactly something that Cyclops is known for, again just not of himself.

Many times over Scott will be touted as a ‘natural leader’ and will consistently be handed the reins of the X-Men, at least in the field. On the other hand, the leader role will just as often be stripped from Scott and given to someone with more experience, capabilities, or trust from peers. It’s a mix of character developments and the ever present editorial pull to reset the original five, coming together to create a somber scenario.

When following Scott it adds a lot to know that he will go through so much, and he will ever so slowly change, but eventually he will become fleshed out, with relatable ideals and flaws alike. He has a much more explicit arc in long running comics than a lot of characters, even more so than his preceding teammates.

These issues see the birth of the golden boy, and he does ascend to be the official leader. Of course it is taken from him in the end, and he never is able to match his teammates in mastery and scope of their mutations. Scott Summers has a lot to learn, and his lessons will be much more enjoyable for the reader than to him.

Jean Grey aka Marvel Girl

The last and certainly least well written of the original five is unsurprisingly the only girl on the team, Jean Grey. Pretty and stereotypical, while Jean is initially introduced as almost a viewpoint character for the reader, she is quickly relegated to girl to pine after for each of her boy teammates. Marvel’s overall writing of women is a well known weakness in almost all eras of the company, due in large part to their refusal to hire them to write. Setting the more antiquated bits aside, there is plenty to be appreciated around the growth of Marvel Girl.

Much like her chilly teammate, Jean Grey’s powers will only grow and grow over the years, to the point she will serve as the ultimate plot convenience when written poorly. She will be able to do essentially anything that is needed to move the story, but that is still far in her future. To begin, she can only lift small objects for a short time, though over the course of these issues that drastically changes.

As early as issue six Jean is lifting Hank in the air, demonstrating a marked increase in power since her recruitment. This continues with her establishing a patented technique of defeating the super speedster, Quicksilver, by simply lifting and spinning him in the air. In the tenth issue Jean is able to disassemble and rebuild a rifle, and a couple of issues later she shows that she can lift herself off the ground, in the introductory battle against the Juggernaut.

The seventeenth issue gives the first indication that Jean’s mutant ability is akin to the likes of Magneto, meaning it can essentially do anything. In a rush to return to the mansion, she utilizes her telekinesis powers to run and leap over obstacles for miles, alongside Beast. It’s a unique usage that shows just how versatile being a telekinetic can be. Altogether her gradual growth is another early indicator of later significant developments. Dealing with immense power in all facets, physically, emotionally, morally, etc, will be a massive recurring theme for Jean. Besides her capabilities though, there is little beyond her basic relationships that will define her personality in the long run.

The Mutant Metaphor or Lack Thereof

For the original team, there are plenty of character points that are long running and get their start in the opening run. However the underlying thematic framing of the mutant metaphor is simply not present in the way it will be for the majority of the series. Applying the analogy of mutants to most any oppressed groups doesn’t really work beyond surface examination, and isn’t explored by the narrative.

Take for example the famously inaccurate casting of Professor Xavier as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Magneto as Malcolm X. At this point in the series, Magneto is a cartoonish, over the top villain who can only be rationalized as a deeply traumatized person. He does not have a cogent ideology and to relate him to any real world person is simply silly. Xavier and MLK though are a bit more comparable, but far from similar.

In the eyes of the public, Xavier is a non mutant expert on genetics, evolution, and human mutations. He advocates for assimilation and nonviolent compliance from the mutants, so they can integrate into society. MLK obviously never presented as a white man, and openly called for radical change and equality. Xavier is the white moderate, and anyone unaware of MLK’s opinion on the white moderate shouldn’t be.

Community of Freaks

Alongside the lack of metaphor, the story structure itself is distinct from that which will come to define the series. Long running plots, multiple threads weaving through each other, heaps of melodrama, and other staples of the X-Men universe are not seen in these issues. Instead and in line with the times, the stories are mostly self-contained, starting and wrapping up in a single issue or two. Though to say ‘story’ may be a bit of a stretch in some instances.

The experience of the first nineteen issues is not so much a singular narrative experience as it is a wild tour through a wacky corner of a wacky universe. Characters and concepts are introduced quickly and often, making the pace change depending on how thorough of a reader one is. There’s a lot of fluff in the dialogue, but also a lot of wit to make it worth it. At no point does there seem to be a logical endpoint, and through the whole run there is a palpable focus on building out the mutant community and filling its ranks. The universe feels poised to facilitate a much larger ensemble for a longer time than other superhero comics, with more of a focus on community and relationships.

Ironically it will be one of the few canceled comics started by Lee and Kirby a bit down the road, though when it comes back it will double down on pretty much all the melodrama and worldbuilding. It is genuinely impossible to gauge accurately how much of the heart of the X-Men comes from Lee and Kirby directly, or how much their work has inspired other creators on the title. While other authors will completely recontextualize it, these beginning issues lay the foundation for the community of muties that will attract readers for generations.

Y’all Seen This Jack Kirby Fella?

Very little feels as close to reinventing the wheel as analyzing and praising Jack Kirby’s artwork. It’s pure fun, but that’s no revelation. It’s remarkable how characters such as Magneto, Cyclops, Iceman, many of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants alongside others, are already iconically designed, and won’t have a ton of true changes in their looks for years. It is a bit disappointing and surprising that through all the many mutants introduced, they are consistently just normal looking dudes with powers. The costumes are more striking than any of the physical mutations that are introduced. There is surely some missed potential, given how the mutants will be portrayed later on it would have been interesting to see Kirby’s takes on some really radical looking mutants.

It’s clean, simple, and borderline tells the story itself. Some may feel it’s dated obviously given the limitations at the time, but honestly it holds up really well. The bold art even works pretty well when the comic is read on something as small as a phone. There is a real staying power to Kirby’s drawing that gives the issues lasting worth even in the modern context.

Graduating to Greater Things

They are the X-Men we know, not necessarily the ones we love. With less than twenty issues, Lee and Kirby leave a lot on the table. The heart of the series will captivate readers in masses, but that’s arguably not quite here. What is present is foundational groundwork that continues to influence the X-Men and the Marvel comics universe as a whole. Of course that is to be expected with these two creators, but nonetheless is impressive. While it may not resonate as strongly as it did once, the wit and pace of the story both in art and writing create a timeless good time.

Score: 65/100

Citation Station

The Cover Original Article

Emma Frost Proved Iceman's Powers Can Make Him a Mutant God, by Taylor Lancaster

Letter from Birmingham Jail, by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, by Sean Howe

X-Men, Issues 1-19

1-19 written by Stan Lee

1-17 art by Jack Kirby

12 art by Alex Toth

13-19 art by Werner Roth

[boundbyflesh]

I want to word my thoughts on protag wayne and old wayne relationship in my head better...dis is just my take on it though

Summary: distant, and a bit rocky, but not awful- good, even, if they both try on it.

Wayne growing up would be what society would call a "problem child". I think he has shown symptoms of thought and personality disorders, and autism since he was a kid. He has a flat affect and he barely smiled, didn't play or otherwise mingle with other Wayne's, fell behind on training to focus on little niches. and had self harming behaviors and outbursts. Old wayne was never horrendous to Wayne, but he was ignorant and displayed those harmful ways of parental thinking where you turn concern into "I wish you could be normal!" Probably pushed wayne a lot and tried to do ineffective therapy, nothing extreme or long-lasting i.e wilderness therapy...at least i don't personally think so, but definitely could've been a more insightful father figure. Wayne was even moodier than the average teen and got into even more trouble. began being super reckless. Although I think this is where old wayne began to hear our Wayne's cries for help almost and began to care for him better. I do also think Wayne's have generational trauma from being considered a peasant or well, "hylic" species and they need to keep each other close even when it's hard so the two heard each other out a bit more...although, old wayne still isn't perfect anddd..neither is wayne. he's definitely just not social, and barely asks for help. He has trouble finding the motivation to turn up to family events, and since he went away, he never called or visited old wayne and his family. I think their reunion is years later and very bittersweet. they just don't have proper communication with one another so they argue and wayne is still moody as ever (thank god old wayne has eternal patience). one think I think pisses wayne off is old Wayne's perceived apathy about the warpos. in reality old wayne hurts a LOT but he's just seen so much shit that he wants to move on faster, and Wayne doesn't like that because the warpos was the worst thing to happen to him yet. I think old wayne is proud of our wayne and company for sticking it up to old Gibbous, and wants to meet the friends (eventually does). I think one good thing they do together, is because wayne is an oldhead wrt music they listen to old music together. (it would be their in universe 60s psychedelic rock history repeating itself. and then dedusmuln probably dug up pink floyd and ween I imagine they dig up old human music somehow). I think Wayne's taste and being in a band impresses old wayne so much. I think old wayne is a funny grandpa who tries to use modern slang...I think he gets a kick out of embarassing our wayne and has some attitude to him which I find common in waynes. he cares for wayne deeply. wayne does too he GUESSES(he does).

[lizzy-frizzle]

I’m going to start this by saying, I have bias. Everyone does. I do not intend for this to come off as “the thing you like is bad”, but moreso “the corporation that controls the thing you like is manipulative”.

My background; I am a 26 year old trans mom, I have a history with addiction, particularly gambling, and spend most of my time playing video games. I have gone to college for about 3 years for my psychology degree, and while I do not have my degree, I have been studying psychology for roughly 12 years. This is to say, my views will reflect this background. Just because I present this information like I do, does not inherently mean I’m right, though it also doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Try to view things with a critical mind, and know that most topics have nuance.

Ok, so lootboxes, booster packs, gacha games, all of these are gambling. This is not really an argument. You are putting money into a service of sorts, and receiving a randomized result. Be that a fancy new gun, that same boring legendary you have 5 of, or that final hero you’ve been trying to collect. You don’t know the outcome before you give your money. As defined by the merriam-webster dictionary: “Gambling; the practice of risking money or other stakes in a game or bet”

You are risking your money in not getting an item you want. There are ways this is handled acceptably, and ways this is handled poorly. Gambling is also illegal to people under 21 in a lot of places, but places online aren’t quick to tell you why. I don’t have any sources because every source requires a paywall to get any information, but pulling from my own personal experience and what I learned in college, it’s because children are very impressionable. I say “I like pokemon” and suddenly my 2-year old can’t go anywhere without her pikachu. I remember distinctly playing poker with my mom and her friends when I was 12. When you normalize gambling, what it does is lower the risk aversion of gambling. You are less likely to see a threat in playing that card game, because when you are that young you have no concept of money. You don’t know what a dollar is, so why not throw it away so you can have fun. This is...I hesitate to call it fine, but it’s mostly harmless. The issue is with children and their lack of knowledge of money. When I grew up and got a job, it’s a lot harder to tell my brain, “hey, don’t spend that money, you won’t get it back and you won’t get what you want.” Because my brain just acknowledges the potential for what I want. I want to buy the booster pack so I can have the potential to get that masterpiece misty rainforest. I want to buy that diamond pack so I have the chance to get the cute hero. I want to buy that lootbox so I can get the battle rifle that does a cool effect. These are harmless concepts, but very dangerous.

Make no mistake, companies know how psychology works, and will use it to their advantage. MatPat from game theory states that companies have even go so far as to have systems in place that change the odds as you’re losing, and monitor your skill level to put you up against harder opponents, to see the better weapons and go, “Oh I want that!” and entice you to buy more lootboxes. As it turns out I found an article covering what he was talking about, Activision had actually acquired a patent to arrange matchmaking to do just that [x], and the article says it’s not in place, but my trust in companies is not high enough to actually believe them.(honestly, matpat made a 2-part video series about lootboxes, and I’d recommend watching them)

So, companies are trying to manipulate you to buy more gambling products. There’s proof of it. It’s also more blatantly obvious in games like Magic the Gathering, where they release fancier versions of cards at rarer probabilities. To better explain it, from a collector’s standpoint, you want the fancy card cause it has value, it has value because it’s rare, rarer than the other versions, so if you’re on the lower end of the income ladder you buy a pack, or two. After all, you could get lucky and get it. On the higher end of the income ladder, you buy the card outright and hoard it. Maybe sell it off later if you notice the price goes down. From a player perspective, you see a card is being used by tournament players, you want to win more games, so you want those cards, which encourages you to buy products and try to get those cards. That’s predatory behavior. It’s predatory from the company’s perspective because that poor person might not be able to afford the card outright, but $5-$10 isn’t much, plus they always entice you with that Chance. They also further this desire for the cards by making it limited runs, such as the secret lair packs, if there’s a low amount purchased and it’s made to order, or worse, if they limit the order capabilities themselves, that drives up the value, and provides further incentive to buy the cards and packs. This not only creates an impossible barrier between the poor and the rich, but also heavily encourages people buy their gambling pack than people would have in other conditions.

For the record, I love magic the gathering, I’m not saying the game itself is bad, this is just a VERY predatory marketing tactic.

Let’s switch gears. Gacha games. I play AFKArena, because like I said, I have a gambling addiction and cannot stop myself. In AFKArena, you collect heroes, and battle with them in various ways. If you collect more of similar heroes you can rank them up. If I’m to believe what I’ve heard, it sounds like this is pretty common for gacha games. So what makes it bad. In AFKArena you use diamonds to summon heroes, now, you can acquire diamonds by beating specific story chapters, logging in every day, random limited time events, or paying for them with real money. AFKArena hero drops don’t seem that bad compared to the free diamond amount they dish out, which has resulted in me not spending all that much money on it, all things considered ($20 over 2 years). I believe that for a mobile game like this, that’s fair. I get way more enjoyment out of the game than I do most $60 games, so it balances out. However, this isn’t the case for every gacha game, and my trust in companies, as previously stated, is very low. The issue lies in them making the rates for good heroes so low that you HAVE to spend money on the game to really get over a roadblock of sorts. I do think that there is this issue in my game and I just didn’t notice it, someone with a lower tolerance or patience might absolutely have the incentive to drop hundreds of dollars on the game over a month. There are people of all different flavours, and it’s important to keep that in mind when discussing these topics, just because a marketing technique doesn’t work on you, does not mean it doesn’t work on anyone. After all, they have those $100 packs for a reason, you might not be that reason but someone is. That’s predatory.

I feel like I’ve gotten off track, let’s get back on the rails. Where was...gambling...predatory…ah, kids. So my biggest issue, is that Magic the Gathering is marketed towards 13 year olds. Not directly, but the packs say 13+. AFKArena and any mobile game for that matter, can be downloaded by anyone with a phone for free, with minimal mention that there’s microtransactions. AAA title games like Destiny 2, Overwatch, Fortnite, etc. are probably the worst offenders. A kid spent $16,000 of his parents money on fortnite in-game purchases, and that’s not the only time this has happened [x] [x] . More often than not, what happens is, the kid wants to play a video game, like halo on xbox, or destiny, or something, they ask their mom for their credit card, and the system saves it. I mentioned before that kids do not have a concept of money or its value, so giving kids unlimited access to the credit card is going to result in this kind of thing happening. I’m not blaming the parents for not being hypervigilant, sometimes you are really busy, or disabled, or whatever the reason, and you don’t notice the system just saved your card. I’m not blaming the kids cause their brains are literally underdeveloped. I blame the corporations, because they make the process as easy as possible to prey on kids and people with gambling addictions. (as a personal anecdote, I found that if I want a magic card in MtG:O, I’m way less likely to try and buy it if I have to get up and get my card, I’d recommend not saving your card if you suffer from gambling/addiction problems)

So after all of this evidence, how can anyone still view these things as anything but predatory? The answer is simple. You’re told they aren’t. Businesses spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on really good marketing, and public relations. I tried to google why gambling is illegal for people under 21, and got nothing, I got a couple forums asking the question, and a couple religious sites saying it’ll make them degenerates. I try looking up sources to prove the psychology behind these concepts, but they are locked behind paywall after paywall after paywall. Businesses and capitalism has made it so incredibly hard to discover the truth and get information you need, and it’s on purpose. They want you to trust that that booster pack is a good idea. They want you to spend money on lootboxes (look at all the youtubers that shill out for raid shadow legends, or other gambling games to their super young fanbase [x]). They want you to lower your guard and go, “well, it’s a video game, how can it be predatory?” “it’s a card game with cute creatures on it, surely it’s not that bad”

But it is. So why did I make this post? I dunno, my brain really latched onto the topic, I see so many people enjoying gacha games, but I’m worried that it’s going to ruin lives...I just want everyone to be informed and critical of what is going on.

[7-seasof-fandom]

Don't get your hopes up

Tw: alcoholism, coffee addiction, indication of selfharm

"You do realize that pushing your body this much could kill you, right?" Five scoffed before downing his fifth cup of coffee that morning. He didn't even flinch from how burning hot it had to be and Allison found herself wondering if he was numb to the pain or if he just simply didn't care. Given his usual behavior, she wouldn't be surprised if it was the latter. Usually she would've just chalked this up to Five being Five and it still was, but lately she had found herself realizing just how self destructive of a person Five really was and it was starting to worry her. Maybe it was the fact that she was a mother and he looked like a 13 year old kid, or maybe it was simply the fact that no matter how much of an asshole he was, she still cared about him. He was her brother after all.

Five looked at the, now empty, coffee mug, seemingly in deep thought. "Yeah, but I haven't died yet, so... we shouldn't get our hopes up too much." Five let out a laugh. Something in Allison stung at how he said it. He sounded so careless.

"No one is getting their hopes up, Five," she said softly, barely having time to worry about what he had just implied before he answered.

"I sure am." The sentence seeped with as much bitterness as the black coffee he was constantly chugging down. He laughed bitterly, placing the coffee mug onto the counter with way too much force. In spite of the laugh, it was quite obvious that Five wasn't joking, however that apparently didn't stop Klaus from interrupting with a loud "What a mood." Allison's head snapped to look at him, giving him a glare. Klaus hadn't mentioned it, but she was quite sure that he had been drinking again, which would explain his lack of judgment of the situation. However, that didn't excuse it. She would have to talk with him later about that and also the drinking. God knows the only other somewhat functional member of this family was Diego.

Sure, Luther was nice, but he did have his problems, even if he hid them a lot better than Five and Klaus. Allison was well aware that those scratches on his upper body didn't just appear out of thin air and that was only the start with him. Same went for Vanya. She was sweet and Allison loved her, but her outbursts were... something. She was working on it and that already put her levels over Five, and even Klaus, but it was still a lot. Sure, Diego was a mess too, so was she, but they had both managed to lead somewhat normal lives. Allison's first attempt had been built on lies and misuse of power, but in the 60s she had really managed to do it. All on her own. She was quite proud of that achievement, if she was honest.

Allison looked at Five, who seemed to be preparing his next cup of coffee and found herself wondering if it was possible to overdose on caffeine. She knew coffee addiction was a thing, had personal experience with it, but she had never really realized how serious it could be until now. After all, everyone liked coffee, right? So she had just brushed Five's constant consumption off as that. He liked it. Now she thought about all of the articles she had read, about kids who had died from drinking too much caffeine. Their bodies just couldn't take it. She looked at Five's small frame, wondering if he was taking his new (old?) body into account when drinking this much. Given his previous statement, she doubted it.

Behind her Klaus was trying to discretely look through the bar's liquor cabinet. Five, who had just been deeply concentrated on his coffee making, was snapped out of his trance by the sound. Allison eyed him. There was a look on his face that seemed a bit too familiar, but she was used to seeing it on Klaus', not his. For a moment she feared that he was gonna join Klaus, but instead he spoke the words of a saint, completely ignoring the fact that he, himself, was in the middle of sinning. "You shouldn't be drinking so much."

Allison had to hold back a scoff, as Five then continued preparing his sixth cup of coffee, though he did throw a few more glances Klaus' way. Allison realized that the hypocritical bastard looked worried. This time she couldn't hold back the scoff, as she sipped her lemon tea she had got from Vanya. Five's eyes shot to her. His reflexes were impressive. She found herself wondering if he was just that alert, or if it was the caffeine. Maybe both. "What?" he asked. She gave him a look that was usually reserved for the rest of their siblings. Five used to be the sensible one. Jeez. "You're one to talk?" Five shook his head. "That's different," he mumbled, before again turning his attention to his coffee which seemed to be done. "Mmmm," she took another sip of her tea.

It wasn't that she didn't understand. Heck, if it was up to her, she'd be joining Five in chugging down coffee, but she had recently sworn it off, after realizing that she had gotten to rely on it a bit too much. She wanted to be better, both for herself, but even more so for Claire. This was also why Vanya had gifted her said tea, which she was currently drinking. Tea had caffeine too, but this one sure had way less than coffee and it actually tasted way better. Point was, she understood what he was doing, to a certain extent, but that didn't stop her from worrying about her brother. Quite the opposite, actually.

Behind her, Klaus had stopped rummaging through the liquor cabinet to instead observe them. He let out a soft chuckle. Allison doubted anything was funny, Klaus was just like that when he had been drinking. "How many cups are you on, Fivey?" Five froze for a moment before giving Allison a look. "Three." She shook her head, giving him another look back. "Oh, Alli, that's not so bad. Don't worry so much," Klaus commented in a sing song tone, before continuing looking through the cabinet. Apparently he still hadn't found what he was looking for. "I thought you were sober," Allison commented over her shoulder, shooting him a worried glance. "Oh, I was, but you know how it is."

She looked back to Five who was looking down at his, still full, cup of coffee. A distant look in his eyes and his fingers ran over the side of the mug in repetitive motions. He mumbled something to himself which Allison couldn't quite hear, even though she was seated right opposite him. Then he looked up, his gaze back to being sharp and quick as it fell on Klaus. "If you're looking for the vodka you won't find it." Klaus looked at him in confusion. "I got rid of it," he clarified, before finally downing his coffee. "Son of a bitch." Klaus slammed the cabinet door with an annoyed laugh and Allison had to force herself not to flinch. "Why?" Klaus demanded and Allison found herself wondering too. After all, from what she had been able to hear, there had been plenty of other bottles left in the cabinet. Why take the vodka only?

"Drank it," Five answered a bit too quickly. Allison looked at his hands. They were shaking lightly. "The whole bottle?" Allison felt a sense of relief at the tone of worry in Klaus' voice. Maybe she didn't have to be the only sensible one in this conversation after all. "You could've shared it." Right. Drunk Klaus didn't exactly have his priorities in place. How could she forget? She let out a deep sigh, tapping her fingers on the table. Five looked at her again. "What?" it sounded sharper this time. Less casual. Clearly he was on edge. "You drank a whole bottle of vodka?" he shrugged. "When?" he shook his head before returning her question with one of his own. "Does it matter?" he obviously tried to sound as careless as possible. She nodded, pressing her lips together. He let out a sigh. "Last night," he mumbled, averting his eyes down to the mug, which he was still holding on to. "It wasn't full anyways," he did one of those strained smiles he always did when he was stressed. Allison wasn't even sure he noticed it whenever he did it. He tapped three times against the mug, before he just suddenly blinked out of the kitchen. Allison stared at the spot he had been a second before. "Damn it," she breathed, before getting up to try to find him.

Typical Five to just disappear right as a conversation got serious, she thought, but shot that down quickly, realizing exactly where it came from. She wasn't 13 anymore. Leaving Klaus behind, she hope that he'd take to giving up in his search for alchohol now that the vodka was gone. Sometimes she felt like Five and Klaus were trying to outdo each other in self destruction without realizing it, but from what she had gathered, Five had been like this without Klaus too and, speaking from experience, so had Klaus without Five.

She made her way up the stairs and towards Five's room, hoping that he'd be there and that, for once, he wouldn't push her away. She knocked on his door, then waited for a response. At first she didn't hear anything and she was about to leave when she heard footsteps on the other side of the door and Five opened it. He gave her a puzzled look, and it only now occured to her how unusual this situation was. Her and Five had never been exactly close and while they had never not cared about each other they had never really gone out of their way to do the opposite either.

For a moment she considered just brushing it off, figuring she might bother him more than help. But looking at her brother's face, the dark circles under his eyes, his tense jaw and the wrinkle between his eyebrows which, when they were kids would indicate when he was stressed or upset. Now it just seemed to have a permanent presence. She realized that maybe he needed someone to bother him about this. She placed her hands in her back pockets, giving him a gentle smile. "Can I come in?" Five looked at her in confusion for a moment, his whole body tense. Maybe this was a bad idea, she thought, but then he gave her a weak, exhausted smile and nodded, before stepping aside and letting her into his room.

She wasn't 13 anymore, but she felt a childish hope build up in her chest. A hope that maybe her and Five could be closer than just two people acknowledging and tolerating each other's presence. As she sat on his bed with him and he for the first time allowed himself to open up to her, trusted her, she couldn't help getting her hopes up.

___________________

Big thank you to my dearest moonshine and husband @deadliest-little-thing for helping me proofread this. Ilysm, dear.

I hope y'all like it!!!

[bcdluhm]

&  29  |  cis male  |  he/him  —  ah  ,  bedlam  “beddie”  novak  ,  you  again  .  we  expected  we'd  see  your   { wisps  of  cigarette  smoke   ,   wafting  within  the  studio  ,   up  and  around  your  quick  feet   —   a  ball  change  to  the  left   ,   a  scuffle  to  the  right   .   }  feel  around  these  parts  .  on  the  c  list  as  a  hoofer ,  aren't  you  ?  we  can  help  with  that  !  for  starts  ,  we'll  need  to  make  the  headstrong  and  cheeky  side  of  your  personality  shine  and  do  something  about  leaving  that  childish  and  directionless  side  of  yours  behind  closed  doors  .  at  least  those  luke  pasqualino  looks  might  just  give  you  a  real  shot  .  that's  if  your  inclinations  ,   those  dangerous  habits  which  caused  your  previous  fall  from  fame  don’t  destroy  you  first  !  [  kit  ,  28  ,  pst  ,  she/her  ,  n/a  .  ]

                                                   [[   easier  to  read    ]]

–––  𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫  .

[  *  basics  !  ]

full  name  ;   bedlam  lee  novak nickname(s)  ;    beddie   ,   vak age  ;    29 date  of  birth  ;   january  17th zodiac  sign  ;    capricorn place  of  birth  ;   chicago  ,   illinois gender  ;    male pronouns  ;      he/him sexual  orientation  ;    heteroflexible  —  he’s  straight   ,   but  shit  happens   ,   op   . romantic  orientation  ;     same  as  above language(s)  spoken  ;     english  &  italian accent    ;     n/a

[  *  appearance  !  ]

face  claim  ;    luke  pasqualino  hair  color  ;    brown eye  color  ;    hazel height  ;    6′2 tattoos  ;     none    piercings  ;      none

[  *  family  !  ]

parents  ;   vivian  &   mitch  novak sibling(s)  ;     none   ,   only  child  syndrome   children  ;    ha  !   maybe   (   omg  no  i’m  totally  kidding  —   no  kids   ...  unless   ...   )  financial  status  ;   well-off occupation  ;   hoofer since  ;   16  years  old   .   though  he  came  out  of  retirement  at  28    list  status  ;    used  to  be  a   .   now  c career  inspiration(s)  ;   gene  kelly   ,   donald  o’connor   ,   fred  astaire  . body  of  work   ;   several  musicals  and  tours  throughout  the  late  1950s  and  early  1960s   .

–––  𝐣𝐨𝐛  .

hoofer   :   a  professional  dancer   .    however   ,    he  has  talents  in  singing  and  acting  too  as  he  starred  in  several  musicals  in  his  early  twenties   .

–––  𝐛𝐢𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐲  .

spoiled  beyond  belief   ,   bedlam   (   nicknamed  beddie   ,   pronounced  betty   )   was  given  everything  his  little  heart  desired  .   toys   ,   new  clothes    ,    whatever  snack  was  proudly  displayed  near  the  front  of  the  grocery  store   .   but  he  was  never  satisfied   .   he  was  an  endless  pit   ,   demanding  what  others  couldn’t  give   .

and  with  a  stomp  of  his  foot   ?    he  would  get  even  more   .  

and  boooooooy  did  he  stomp   .   left  foot   ,   right  foot  —  even  his  tantrums  held  a  beauty  to  them   .    his  mother  ,   vivian   ,    cooed  over  her  talented  baby  boy   .   buy  him  some  tap  shoes  and  i  might  just  charge  an  audience  fee   ,    she  laughed  obnoxiously   ,   head  tilted  back  as  flawless  silk  locks  cascaded  down  her  back   .    i’m  serious   ,   mitch   ,   buy  our  boy  some  tap  shoes   !  

to  say  beddie  was  gifted  would  be  both  an  insult  and  an  understatement   .   while  clearly  born  with  talent   ,   he  worked  his  ass  off  to  be  the  best    .  not  because  he  enjoyed  it   (   he  did   ,   but  that  wasn’t  the  point   )    —   no   ,   it  was  because  he  loved  the  attention   .   

his  need  to  be  better  than  everyone  else  resulted  in  bloodied  socks  and  damaged  tap  shoes   .   he  danced  and  danced  and  danced  some  more   .   if  not  tap    ,   he  was  perfecting  classical  ballet   .    if  not  ballet   ,   he  was  learning  to  waltz   .   beddie  possessed  a  natural  athleticism  that  turned  a  normally  effeminate  activity  into  a  test  of  masculinity   .   he  did  things  no  others  could  dream  of   ,   and  he  looked  wonderful  while  doing  it   .

by  his  early  twenties   ,   beddie  earned  unparalleled  fame  as  he  was  given  countless  opportunities  to  showcase  his  talents   .   a  “hoofer”  they  labelled  him   .   what  gene  kelly  was  for  the  50s   ,   bedlam  novak  was  for  the  60s   .    they  gave  him  singing  lessons  ,   tossing  him  in  musicals  for  the  big  screen   .   but  unsurprisingly   ,   he  grew  cocky   .   considered  an  a  lister  at  the  time   ,    he  began  to  drown  in  the  luxuries  that  fame  offered  him   .   women   ,   booze   ,  and  cigarettes  became  his  three  favorite  vices   ,    each  threatening  the  career  he  worked  so  hard  for   .

women  because  his  focus  lied  elsewhere   .   booze  because  of  the  terrible  actions  that  followed  its  consumption   .   and  cigarettes  because  of  the  way  it  screwed  with  his  body  (   something  that  wasn’t  common  knowledge  at  the  time   )   .   he  spent  several  years  on  top  only  to  be  hospitalized  at  the  age  of  25  .   the  reason  for  his  visit  was  kept  out  of  the  press   ,    though  most  people  could  wager  a  guess   :    he  drank  too  much  .   

suddenly  directors  were  hesitant  to  work  with  him   .    he’s  the  best   ,   but  fuck  if  he  isn’t  a  giant  pain  in  my  ass  !    they  started  to  weigh  the  options   ,   realizing  his  gifts  weren’t  worth  the  smart  mouth  and  childish  behavior   .   desperate  to  save  face   ,    bedlam  did  the  only  thing  he  could  think  of   .

he  retired   .

returning  to  the  fold  after  leaving  so  many  years  ago  is  more  an  issue  of  pride  than  anything  else   .    comments  regarding  how  he  USED  to  be  gifted   ,   and  how  he  USED  to  be  revered  drove  him  crazy  .   he  practiced  and  practiced   ,   endless  cigarettes  over  the  years  causing  his  endurance  to  drastically  shrink   .    but  he  was  still  one  of  the  best   .    his  reputation  though   ?    it  was  making  it  difficult  for  him  to  return   .   once  an  a  list  celebrity   ,    beddie  was  lowered  to  a  standard  of  human  who  actually  had  to  pay  for  his  own  lunch  .    the  audacity  .

–––  𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝  𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬  .

coming  soon

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Isabelle Huppert: The Most Dangerous Actress in European Cinema

Etre actrice, c’est avant tout faire l’apprentissage de sa liberté.

- Isabelle Huppert

At 66 years old, Isabelle Huppert has had a long, celebrated career and is regarded in the highest echelon of French actors. Among actresses, Isabelle Huppert holds the record for César Award nominations (France’s Oscar award), with a whopping sixteen. She has also had twenty of her films in competition at Cannes, more than any other actress. And she is among just four actresses who have won the Best Actress prize at Cannes twice.

Not a bad track record.

Though she has appeared in a few American productions over the years, including “Heaven’s Gate” (1980), “The Bedroom Window” (1987) and “I Heart Huckabees” (2004), her best films have all been European.

Extraordinary women marked by tragedy and surrounded by mystery — these are Huppert's trademark cinematic roles. The films of Isabelle Huppert tend to be filled with sociopaths, self-mutilators, and murderers.

There was the jealous postmaster in “La Cérémonie,” the gun-toting young bride in “Coup de Torchon,” and the prostitute who poisons her family in “Violette Nozière. “The Piano Teacher,” “Elle” and “Greta” would make a crazy triple feature. Overall Isabelle Huppert, one of the iconic dames of French cinema, has garnered a reputation for being cold and steely. The French actress, now in her mid-60s, consistently chooses roles that are morally complex and sometimes hard to watch. And yet we can’t bring ourselves to look away.

Susan Sontag, who once called Huppert “a total artist,” said she had never met “an actor more intelligent, or a person more intelligent among actors.”

Huppert has been called France’s Meryl Streep for her technical skill, but for all her shape-shifting, Streep’s strongest women have never gone so dark as the roles Huppert has played.

Huppert expresses the moods and mental state of her characters with precision and great sensitivity. Her seemingly expressionless face and sparing facial expressions have become something of a trademark.

Fiction has a tendency to inflate things, she said once in an interview with The Financial Times in July 2017. "But when I look at people on the street, I find that most of them are pretty empty in their eyes. I have to do even less." To observe, she has been taught, you have to take away, not add something.

Isabelle was the youngest of five children, born in Paris to an engineer father and a mother who taught English. Her mother is credited with spotting her talent early on, and encouraging her to develop it. She was already well on her way as a teenager, getting acting jobs while studying at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Paris.

Huppert’s résumé is remarkable over five decades: Just over 140 films since her debut in 1972, for many of cinema’s most audacious visionaries, including Claude Chabrol, Claire Denis, Curtis Hanson, Hal Hartley and François Ozon.

In “Things to Come,” a wistful, funny drama by the French director Mia Hansen-Love. She plays Nathalie, a Parisian philosophy teacher whose husband leaves her for a younger woman, whose mother dies, whose publisher won’t reissue her book — and yet, who finds unexpected freedom in all of these losses. Nathalie heads toward the light and Michèle toward the dark, but both roles showcase Huppert’s great ability to derive power from vulnerability.

What directors loved about Huppert — and she prides herself on being an auteur’s actor — was her ability to convey moral complexity in the most unique ways.

Working with such auteur directors, Huppert can inhabit extreme characters — "survivors who can be victims and rebels simultaneously," says the actress. "My films give these women a voice. Because even though they live on the edges of society, they are there: women who live brutal lives. It's a brutality that they themselves never sought out," Huppert told Zeit Magazine.

Paul Verhoeven who directed her in “Elle” described Huppert as a “pure Brechtian actor,” in that she puts distance between herself and the audience, without trying to seduce it or seek its sympathy. 

The actress is notorious for her illegibility - her almost Bressonian lack of expression, and the profound unrest she’s able to convey from behind the stillness of her freckled resting face. Pauline Kael, the famous film critic, once complained that “when [Huppert] has an orgasm, it barely ruffles her blank surface.” If Kael had lived to see “Abuse of Weakness,” “Elle,” or “I Heart Huckabees,” perhaps she would have come to appreciate how the stillness of Huppert’s unbeatable poker face allows her to normalize even the strangest and most perverse of characters; to make it seem as though any of their behaviors, no matter how unusual or demented, are as natural to them as we are to ourselves.

It’s a quality that European directors and audiences have embraced, but which can seem more foreign to Americans. Huppert loves American cinema, but she also knows her sensibility is distinctly French.

Huppert is known for her privacy and reserve - she generally doesn’t talk to the press about anything other than her films - and if there’s a connection between her autobiography and the roles she chooses, that’s something that only she knows.

Aware of her own enigmatic appeal, she has no qualms about exploiting it. She has even less desire to charm, although her formidable impassivity sometimes betrays a hint of vulnerability. Not that she will let the viewer get too close, however, as she is forever intent on remaining “more like a question mark than a statement”.

Isabelle Huppert is not just courageous when it comes to choosing film roles and artistic collaborators. She is fearless, and such is her integrity that we trust her instincts and follow wherever she leads. That’s what makes her the most dangerous actress of our time.

Below is a top ten list of Isabelle Huppert films. They are not in order nor are they her very best. There are simply too many films in her body of work that would deserve equal consideration. Instead the list is made up of films that given an introduction to her wide ranging talents.

1. The Lace Maker 1977

Isabelle Huppert won the most promising newcomer award for her graceful, guileless performance as Pomme in Claude Goretta’s masterly adaptation of a Pascal Lainé novel, which took its title from a Vermeer painting. Whether doing her chores at a Parisian beauty salon, playing blindman’s buff on a Cabourg clifftop with dashing Sorbonne student Yves Beneyton, trying to eat an apple without disturbing his reading or choking over dinner with his snooty parents, Huppert is mesmerising.

2. Violette Nozière 1978

The first of her seven collaborations with Claude Chabrol earned Huppert the best actress prize at Cannes. She was 25 when she played the demure schoolgirl who shocked 1930s Paris when details of her double life as a prostitute emerged following the poisoning of her father. Violette claimed he had abused her, but Chabrol thinks otherwise and exploits Huppert’s genius for switching between fragility and cruelty to counter the surrealist myth that the teenage parricide was an anti-bourgeois icon.

Huppert embodies this character that’s chiefly concerned with finding love. She walks the streets at night, characteristically promiscuous, but don’t call her a prostitute. She’d refute. Throughout the film, she gives more money to the men then vice versa. At night, when she leaves her quiet bourgeois home, and finds a man to accompany her, she looks unusually bothered. The film is sometimes maddeningly ambiguous but perhaps that’s the point - Chabrol and Huppert want us to feel mixed about her.

Violette is a woman with an air of mystery around her. She’s precocious but not as clever as she thinks. Huppert gazes and kisses her own mirror reflection. She writes fictional love letters to herself as well. Huppert quietly stresses the motivation behind the character: desperate to find someone to love, or else she’ll have to love herself. Except, she can’t even love herself because she feels stifled by her home life. And as ever with narcissism, there are dangerous consequences.

3. La Cérémonie 1995

“Chabrol only ever cast me as fairly ordinary characters,” Huppert once revealed. “They just have rather particular destinies.” While she would go on to embody Chabrolian womanhood (“not victims, not fighters, somewhere in between”) in Rien ne va plus (1997), Merci pour le chocolat (2000) and Comedy of Power (2006), she gave her finest performance for him in this seething adaptation of Ruth Rendell’s A Judgement in Stone.

An upper-class family warns their meek maid (Sandrine Bonnaire) about the local mail lady, Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert). They become friends regardless. Huppert plays Jeanne as kooky, comic, and rebellious. We gradually find out more cryptic background on her character, which gives her spirited attitude a darker edge. She’s either heartbroken or heartless. Huppert portrays a character with so many contradictory traits without ever making it feel false.

Huppert performs the role cunningly. Jeanne is energised like a child, but she’s smart enough to know how to win over the maid. She’s a little silly - when she enters the family’s home while they’re away, she touches everything. Huppert balances all of this next to the near-mute Bonnaire, both slowly exacting their revenge against the upper class. Chabrol’s trademark: clash of the classes.

Huppert thoroughly deserved her first César.

In 2014, Huppert performed Jean Genet’s play The Maids with Cate Blanchett. The play was inspired, as was La Cérémonie, on the same true-story about the Papin sisters.

4. The Piano Teacher 2001

The Piano Teacher is an elegantly made film about the deranged endeavors of love. Huppert plays a buttoned-up music instructor, Erika, who attracts the eyes of an unassuming man half her age. She still lives with her mother and there’s a danger that lurks behind her carefully placed gaze. She’s been sexually repressed for such a long time; her repression and self-hatred has slowly evolved into masochism. It drives her to haunt peep shows, spy on copulating couples and mutilate her own genitals. This disturbing film really made an impact world wide. 

Nobody said this film was an easy watch!

Haneke gives the spectator all the intricacies of the concept of perversion inserted in Huppert’s character of Erika, a successful piano teacher and an apparently impeccable social life. Well, that’s what Erika keeps on the surface.

Huppert declared the second of her four collaborations with Haneke to be the film she had long been searching for.

5. 8 Women 2002

There’s no validity in the truism that Huppert doesn’t do comedy. In fact she proved she could both dance and sing (the plaintive ‘Message personnel’ is a career highlight) in François Ozon’s chic 1950s musical whodunit. Sporting a tight bun, a buttoned-up twin-set, pursed red lips and butterfly spectacles, Huppert invokes the spirit of legendary farceur Louis de Funès as Catherine Deneuve’s argumentative sister. She gives an indelible display of neurotic, spinsterly bitchiness that is simultaneously piteous and hilarious.

6. Elle 2016

A successful woman enters a real ordeal after being raped by a stranger in her home. Powerful, ‘Elle’ unravels all the nuances of a character’s life inserted into a completely incongruous personal, social and psychological reality. Here, the character will demonstrate how her attitude towards the world follows a sociopathic pattern of acting, despising any form of emotional attachment and using other individuals solely to satisfy her most primitive instincts. The film earned her an Oscar nod for Best Actress, which was fabulous but also made me wonder what took so long. Certainly she’s turned out enough superb performances over her nearly five decade career to have earned this recognition sooner.

7. Coup de Torchon 1981

Having survived a seven-month stint in Montana for Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate(1980), Huppert ventured to Saint-Louis in Senegal for Bertrand Tavernier’s Oscar-nominated transposition of Jim Thompson’s pulp novel, Pop. 1280, from a small Texan town in the 1910s to west Africa on the eve of the Second World War. Although Pierre-William Glenn’s sun-scorched Steadicam imagery seems antithetical, this is a darkly droll noir that sees Huppert in an unusually skittish mood, as the abused colonial wife who forges an unlikely alliance with Philippe Noiret’s pathetic rogue police chief, who is humiliated by everyone around him, and suddenly wants a clean slate in life - but resorts to drastic means to do so.

8. Merci pour le chocolat 2000

The film follows the nuances of a French upper class family, exploring the destructive ways in which each member acts on the world. Directed by Claude Chabrol, ‘Merci pour le Chocolat’ is an interesting film, bringing a more cadenced plot that values studying each meander of the behavior of its central characters.

The movie is set in Lausanne, and that Swiss location, having an ambient sense of buttoned-up severity and menace, is an appropriate setting with a Nabokovian mien for this horrid tale of sociopathy.

Huppert dominates the film with the slightly frigid poise of a great dancer who has retired to become an exacting teacher. She plays Mika, a woman who presides wearily and almost negligently over the prosperous chocolate business built up by her late father. But however disengaged she is in the boardroom, in the kitchen she loves chocolate with a passion - concocting various types of drinking chocolate, using subtly differing recipes, with fanatical and murderous care.

There is something fascinating about Huppert's face here. In repose, it has a kind of unsettling serenity, the serenity of a cunning and covert predator who has already decided on an unspeakable course of action.

9. La Séparation 1994

Isabelle Huppert and Daniel Auteuil play a couple on the verge of a separation. The relationship’s mainstay is their child, one-year-old Loulou. Autueil gets most of the film’s focus, but he’s essentially a sitting duck, nervously shifting between passive-aggressive contempt and hopeful endearment, as he prepares for the outcome of his girlfriend’s infidelity. He says, “Never two without three.” This could be the quote-totem of the film.

The director smartly leaves the interloping lover out of the film (he’s never seen or even named). Instead, we study Auteuil’s growing impatience and Huppert’s pivotal decision. She adds a lot of depth to a character that could’ve just been the unsympathetic partner of the cuckold.

Huppert gives her character integrity and even though she’s ostensibly guilty, she never comes off as purely selfish. She’s troubled, as well, by their situation - we sense her detachment not due to ego but because she’s boggled in trying to assess the right mode of conduct. Huppert and Auteuil have great chemistry, changing gears effortlessly between vitriol and affection.

Huppert’s distinctive talent for suppressing suffering is readily evident in her slowly disintegrating relationship with Daniel Auteuil, as Huppert imparts chilling intimacy to a withdrawn hand, an unanswering gaze, a treacherous silence and a careless word in conveying the pain of falling out of love.

10. Madame Bovary 1991

Not her greatest film but certainly one of the most accessible for anyone not familiar with the talents of Huppert. Based on Gustave Flaubert’s fabulous novel, the film brings the exacerbated trajectory of a young girl who has a highly romanticised view of the world and craves beauty, wealth, passion, as well as high society. It is the disparity between these romantic ideals and the realities of her country life that drive most of the novel, leading her into two affairs and to accrue an insurmountable amount of debt that eventually leads to her suicide.

This adaptation of ‘Madame Bovary’ is perhaps the best of any adaptation to date. Claude Chabrol manages to capture even the most emblematic nuances of Flaubert’s book, elevating a unique atmosphere for the unfolding of scenes. 

However, the main point of distinction between this work and the others is the presence of Isabelle Huppert as protagonist, delivering a powerful and visceral performance from the first to the last scene.

[lovelivresse]

A non-exhaustive list of reasons why Baz needs therapy

those are only the examples I could think of when I wrote this, there are probably other things

That boy is suicidal or “I don’t have a death wish” my ass or RAINBOW PLS ADDRESS THIS 

“Stake through the heart?” he asked, falling back into the corner and resting an arm on a pile of skulls. “Beheading, perhaps? That only works if you keep my head separate from my body, and even then I could still walk; my body won’t stop until it finds my head.… Better go with fire, Snow, it’s the only solution.” (Carry On, Chapter 17) Baz… Baby… You know too much about how to kill a vampire. Also, talking about the boy he loves killing him, and genuinely believing that the boy he loves would kill him… not cool

“She would have killed me.

She would have faced me, what I am, and done what was right.” 

and “He will … Finish me.

Snow will do the right thing.” (Carry On, Chapter 40) He thinks of him dying as something that’s “right” TWICE, and also the whole being killed by loved ones thing… Baz you need a hug

[about the fire] “This is what I deserve” (Carry On, Chapter 60) NO IT’S NOT 

“I could hear him singing, even after I’d been walking for ten minutes. “Ashes, ashes—we all fall down.” (Carry On, Chapter 17) This one doesn’t really count, it just hurts my feelings that the part of the song Baz is singing that is highlighted is the one about ASHES. 

So in conclusion, after his LITERAL SUICIDE ATTEMPT it’s never addressed again that he has some serious suicidal tendencies. He says he doesn’t have a death wish and that’s all, it’s completely overlooked after that when CLEARLY, he HAS a death wish.

Fucked up things that seem to have impacted him the most or you think that Fiona is a better parental figure for Baz than Malcom but she isn’t really, Baz is just biased

“I know fuck-all about vampires. It’s not like I got an instruction pamphlet when I was bitten.” (Carry On, Chapter 30) A BIG part of who he is is completely unknown to him. As seen before, what he knows best about vampires is how to kill them. On top of that, even the things he thinks are true about vampires aren’t necessarily (Lamb can bite a human without killing or turning them) and he gets mixed signals (Nicodemus seems to age normally while Lamb is something like hundreds of years old and he still looks like he’s in his thirties)

“I don’t think my father ever would have mentioned it, even if he’d caught me draining the maid [...] Though he’d much prefer to catch me disrobing the maid.… (Definitely more disappointed in my queerness than my undeadness.)” (Carry On, Chapter 40) Malcolm’s complete lack of acknowledgement of Baz’s vampirism + Baz thinking that his sexuality is even a bigger deal to his father than his vampirism. He has those two things that are both parts of his identity that he didn’t choose and that are both considered to be something bad by his father, that CAN’T be easy and it definitely caused him a lot of shame and self-hatred. We have the point of view of 18-year-old Baz, I’m not sure he would be nearly as okay with his sexuality as he is if we were in the head of the Baz who just came out/thinks of coming out to his father

“My father never acknowledges that I’m a vampire—besides my flammability—and I know he’ll never send me away because of it.

But my mother?

She would have killed me.

She would have faced me, what I am, and done what was right.” (Carry On, Chapter 40) Once again, Malcolm’s complete lack of acknowledgement of Baz’s vampirism + the fact that Baz thinks his mother would have KILLED HIM if she knew he was a vampire. 

“He swings his wand and practically howls, spraying fire all around us. “This is what my mother would want for me, you idiot. [...] “My mother died killing vampires,” he says. “And when they bit her, she killed herself. It’s the last thing she did. If she knew what I am … She would never have let me live.” (Carry On, Chapter 60) Natasha wanting him dead because of his vampirism is something that’s mentioned again after chapter 40, here in chapter 60, which shows that 1) the opinion his mother would have of him really matters to him 2) he believes this opinion would have been VERY negative 3) he doesn’t even CONSIDER the option that his mother might have loved him enough to accept that he had been turned

“My father still isn’t ready to admit I have a boyfriend, and it would be too exhausting, living in a place where I have to pretend I’m not a vampire or hopelessly queer.” (Carry On, Epilogue) Malcolm please stop ignoring most of who your son is I’m begging you

I also wanted to say a few words about Fiona because I feel like in general we (as in, the fandom) really see Malcolm’s bad behavior towards Baz but not Fiona’s, while she’s also far from perfect. She saved him from the Numpties, that’s a good thing, that’s what we see, but look : “She berated me all the way home, and all the way back to Watford. She made me sit in the back seat of her MG. (A ’67. Glorious.) “The front seat is for people who’ve never been kidnapped by bloody numpties. Jesus Christ, Baz.” 

The front seat thing is a joke now but when you really think about it and when you focus on that whole paragraph and not just Fiona’s words, this is the situation that is presented : Baz just spent 6 WEEKS locked in a coffin, starved, not knowing what would happen to him, and instead of, I don’t know, TRYING TO COMFORT HIM, his aunt “berates” him, as if he was the one to blame in this situation. Jesus Christ, Fiona, give the boy a hug and ask him if he’s okay instead. 

And then there’s this : “Then the Coven made her a vampire hunter” (Carry On, Epilogue) That part would have fit better in the 3rd category but since I’m talking about Fiona let’s put it here. SHE LITERALLY KILLS VAMPIRES AS A JOB. I love Fiona but it makes me so angry whenever I think about it. I don’t know, I feel like a NORMAL PERSON wouldn’t become a VAMPIRE HUNTER when their nephew IS A VAMPIRE. That must fuck Baz up so bad that she does that, even if he doesn’t even realize it himself, and I hate that the impact of Fiona killing vampires for a living on Baz isn’t tackled at all.

So in conclusion, Baz thinks that is father is disappointed in him for existing, basically, he thinks that his mother would have wanted him dead AND KILLED HIM for what he is, and then there’s Fiona

Other fucked up things that are just barely mentioned or RAINBOW PLS ADDRESS THIS part 2

“He slipped a flask out of his jacket and took a swig. I didn’t know that he’d been drinking” (Carry On, Chapter 17) Baz was drinking. Was it a one time thing? Did Simon somehow catch him the ONE time he got drunk in the Catacombs? If it was not the first time he went there and got drunk, did he have a problem with alcohol in fifth year? I NEED ANSWERS 

“Of course I’ve read Anne Rice. I was a 15-year-old closet case whose parents pretended they didn’t notice when the family dog disappeared” (Wayward Son, Chapter 22) Once again, his family doing a poor job when it comes to handling his vampirism but we've been over this. INSTEAD CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE FACT THAT HE FED ON HIS DOG, AN ANIMAL THAT HE VERY PROBABLY LOVED, BUT THE BLOODTHIRST WAS JUST TOO STRONG TO RESIST???????? It must have been so difficult and traumatizing for him, and it’s just dropped like that in the story like it’s nothing while I’m over here crying about it

[zelda-ffitzgerald]

Cole’s fans are concerned. Not the 12 year old Brazilians or the 60 year old grannies, but the semi-normal ones. They talk about it in their group chats sometimes. I am a part of a couple so I know firsthand🤭. They know he’s struggling and they are embarrassed and frustrated at what his public image is becoming. It started with the partying last summer but really ramped up when ari came into the picture and Riverdale started airing so everyone saw how bad he looked. The erratic behavior and public grope fests were embarrassing for them. No matter how much they say on their TLs “he looks so happy, that’s all that matters!”. They are dwindling in size because it’s just too stressful to watch a downfall like this. His choice of women, friends, and bad habits are clouding the image they have of him in their heads. I don’t think he cares much about his fans anymore so maybe it doesn’t matter, but it has been interesting to watch. And sort of sad. He will always have Brazil though🤗. If anyone wants to know the inner workings of Cole stans please ask questions and I will answer as best I can. I’ve been friendly with a lot of these people for years.

Thanks! This is great. What I don't get is why are they so ashamed to say this stuff publicly? Why is it such a state secret to admit he doesn't look well? Or he needs help? It's almost like a feedback loop of denial between fan and idol. Cole and his friends/family act like there's nothing wrong, nothing to see here, folks! and they pick up on it. A complete denial bubble, if you will.

And I know he doesn't give a shit about his fans, but at the same time - if he's worried about his career (maybe panicked?) he should do everything he can to save the fans he currently has. But I guess that's asking for rational, thoughtful, logical behavior and Cole hasn't been able to do that in months.

[popculturebuffet]

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: The Master of the Mississippi! or “How Much Satisfaction Can There Be?”

Hello everybody. I’m back to the life of scrooge mcduck.. it’s been an eternity hasn’t it and that’s for a simple reason: I had other reviews to do, especially comissions, I kept pushing this back further and further as while I love this series i put my paid work ahead of any other projects, until Kev, i.e. the guy paying for most comissions out and out asked that this be done before I got to the rest of The Ride of the Three Caballeros. It’s also why I finally put a loose schedule in place, to keep projects from slipping so the MANY retrosectives and what not I have going can move along at a steady pace and I can slot in comissions easier, 5 bucks an issue or episode if your curious. So now things are a bit tider, i’ll try to have an installment of scrooge’s storied past up a week from now on, so keep an eye out for that, minus christmas week as I have something else planned Duck Comics wise. So with all that out of the way and any exposition able to be baked into the plot proper, we can FINALLY get back to the life and times of scrooge mcduck

PREVIOUSLY ON THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SCROOGE MCDUCK:

A Young Scrooge got his inspiration, his start and also scared the crap out of some asshole scooby do style. Also his sister Hortense was adorable. SO there’s that. But eventually with some inspriation from what he didn’t realize was a ghost, Scrooge decided to head to america to find his Uncle Pothole. So that’s where we left off, with Scrooge heading to

Since then as the scrapbook page explains, Scrooge has worked his way up the Missippi to Louieville, Kentucky... which is where Rosa lives, and it is not a concidence it’s set here as a result. But much like how the Marvel staff being in new york in the 60′s lead to that universe having it’s unique and vibrant New York setting that’s lasted to this day, sometimes a creator using where they live as the basis can lead to really great and intresting stuff and here he had a valid reason as Louieville was one of the main hubs on the Mississippi river and thus a massive boomtown. 

Not the kind of boom town I meant but I can never say no to boomtown. But yeah it’s not only a bustling hub usually anyway, but things are extra amped up given it’s Derby time. I mean the Kentucky Derby’s no steel ball run but what could be? So naturally the crowds are booming and scroogie is impressed. I mean he’s a 13 year old boy from a poor community in Scotland. This is huge to him. But he has no time to dawdle and asks the closest random gentleman where he could find his Uncle Angus, who was mentioned last time and is the one needed for this. The guy is genuinely helpful and points him to his uncle... but as I only noticed on this read through also uses a knife to swipe his bag by cutting the handle off. It’s part of why I admire this series so much: rosa snuck so many small background gags into the margins you can always find something new reading it or always get something fresh out of it.  We also meet Gyro’s grandpa Ratchet. 

I mean there’s no might about it. David Byrne is rich and he’s the delightful weirdo we all deserve and the autistic icon I needed. 

I have no context for this, I just figured searching David Byrne in Tumblr’s Gif Search would find something delightfully batshit in that way only hec an do and I was right. 

So as the tweenager enters the gambling establishment, we find Uncle Pothole, whose playing poker with local asshole and tophat enthusiast Porker Hogg...whose name keeps tripping me up as I write this as he’s not the only pig named porker I know of but is far less memorable than this one

He and Pothole are playing cards, and while Porker can go on for days he can’t go on for eight weeks.. or even two days really and prepares to finish it. He puts up his boat the Dilly Dollar, which Angus takes offence to since Porker sank his. Angus offers up the location of the Dreenan White, a legendary, and real legend at that, riverboat that sank. Since Angus was a Cabin Boy on the boat, he knows where it is. So the final hand is dealt and Angus wins with five aces, mostly because Porker’s ace ejector jammed. When Scrooge questions if this is dishonest, Angus explains their under riverboat captain rules which basically means you can cheat your ass off and it’s not only expected it’s an insult NOT to. So Angus takes Scrooge with him, seeing the boy as a good luck charm and finding out to his shock Scrooge is his nephew, but gladly takes his newly found relation under his wing as he relates to his coming to america to find his fortune, having done the same. 

Angus is the first of Scrooge’s many mentors and easily the best part of this chapter. He’s lively, intresting but a contrast to scrooge, someone whose not AFRAID to work but wouldn’t mind an easy victory or giving up the adventure game, as he ends up doing. He’s a lively, clever guy and very charming. I”ll get back to the mentor part of it in a bit, but needless to say in a chapter that i’ll admit, and get more into the why as we go, is not one of life and time’s better chapters, he’s a highlight.  So the two get to the Dilly Dollar while Hogg decides to follow to find where the Dreeynan Whyte is. As for why he hasn’t drudged it up Angus simply can’t as the Mighty Missisippi’ s too muddy for that, making another mark twain quoted joke about it. But Scrooge mentions the clarity pills from Ratchet, meaning he has a way to do so, and Angus is now elated and decides to head there to get his fortune, specifically near Monkey’s Elbow kentucky, which while relocated slightly to fit the story, is a very real town and an objectively great name for a town, much like Forty Fort, which is also a very real town name. Hogg overhears and after being literally booted out of the boat, as we’ll see literal asskicking is a McDuck family staple, goes to recruit some hired goons. 

Yes hired goons, as every good villian needs some hired goons. And these specific goons.. are a bit.. familiar. And you’ll find out who they are under the cut!

Yup it’s the Secret Origin of the Beagle Boys. And if your wondering “Wait are they immortal too?” well. their not these are their grandpas. Also Hogg’s whole complaint about “wearing them if there yellow” just.. bugs me. They .. they aren’t cowards.. Grandpappy’s just being smart and knows his sons are excessively dumb, as is family tradition. They have no issue with committing crimes, they just don’t want to be arrested by the first Navy boat that finds them. That’s just.. common logic. This is one of Life and Time’s weaker atrributes: Due to being built around barks stories, that means most of his foes here are the random greedy asshats of the week Scrooge faced who had some loophole to his fortune or the grandparents of said assholes. With the exception of hte Beagles, who show up a few times, Glomgold and Soapy Slick who wihle a minor vilian is at the center of one of the best chapters of the story, most of these guys are just forgettable hooligans. Not terrible, and the stories around them are good enough to make it enjoyable but nothing really distinct from what Scrooge normally faced outside of his origin story. Really Barks was simply stronger at STORIES than he was at creating villians: As Magica, The Beagle Boys, Gladstone, Rockerduck and Glomgold all show he wasn’t untalented at it, it’s just more often than not he fell back on some random asshole.

Instead of using a dedicated Rogue’s Gallery of intresting baddies, most writers of most comics just used villians of the week and maybe ONE OR TWO designated hitters. Batman’s Rogue’s gallery wasn’t big enough to form their own country at this point is what i’m saying, it just meant Rosa had to build more vilians of teh week. It dosen’t drag the story down entirely, as the story is about SCROOGE and his growth: sometimes the villians are just a secondary ingrident in a good story. But it’s still something very noticable and one of the weaker parts of the story, it’s just like I said, with the story being more on Scrooge and where a lot of his personality came from, it’s something I really didn’t notice before and really dosen’t bother me now I have. The villians are weak btu the hero is so intresting and grows so much it just dosen’t matter. Their there to provide Scrooge with opportunites to evolve, and the really good ones are saved for the best moments of that and for when a villian IS needed to change scooge as a person. So it all evens out. 

So naturally the next day when the McDucks head to get the pills, Hogg’s beat them to it, and when Ratchet refused to cut cards for his stock had them beat Ratchet while they were at it. Though oddly Angus assumes he’s just passed out while Scrooge is the one to recognize someone knocked him out. You’d think a well experienced guy like Angus would know that eh whatever. Point is Hogg is ahead and Angus dosen’t have a crew... though Scrooge and Ratchet naturally volunteer since both have skin in the game: Scrooge wanted a job with Pothole anyway and Ratchet is out a job and out his pills. Angus gladly takes them on.. but accidently sets the Dominos in place for one of Comics!Scrooge’s worst behaviors down the line. 

Yeahhh.... Pothole is partially responsible for Scrooge criminally underpaying his staff and family. That gag.. is easily one of , if not my least faviorite part about Rosa’s work. It’s a holdover from Carl Barks work naturally, and one that makes some sense: Rosa set his work shortly after barks, so some time in the 1950s, having barks works take place around when they were written. There isn’t a strict timeline of what happened which year outside of life and times, but Rosa’s works are delieberate period pieces. That’s not a bad thing and if he’s going to base most of his stuff around stuff Barks did, then it’s a good call to make.  The issue is the execution: While with Barks it was in part because there was less income inequality, it was also clearly a bit of satire, as Donald was the every man and companies could be unfair, cheap douchebags then as they are now. IT feels more like a joke on Scrooge. Donald still puts up with a lot of stuff, but he’s more liable to complain. In the Rosa stories.. it feels more like he just makes Donald the butt monkey and it dosen’t play well as.. Donald dosen’t want to be there. He has every RIGHT not to want to be there as he’s not being paid a decent wage, not being compensated in any other ways, and could be searching for a boss who actually pays him a living wage. Donald is more the victim in Rosa’s stories but he simply doesn’t realize this, or the fact it’s even worse since Donald is you know RAISING THREE CHILDREN AND SCROOGE KNOWS THIS BUT DOES NOT PITCH IN ONE EXTRA CENT.  So already without even adding the decades on, it hasn’t aged well.. but add in the modern day business where it’s a STRUGGLE to get states to raise minimum wages, the job market was hit horribly even BEFORE Corona came and made things worse, and companies horribly abuse their employees to ludcirous extremes such as time crunch in the video game industry, black friday in retail and of course the house of nightmares that is the amazon warehouse, and I say that being a frequent use of amazon.. just because I rely on a company dosen’t mean I have to LIKE doing so in any way shape or form. 

What i’m saying is Scrooge’s actions were already bad, making this joke fall flat, but it comes off as downright unfunny after all of that. Even given the times Scrooge was raised in it’s just not a funny gag that “oh ha ha a 70+ year old man ever learned right from wrong when it came to paying his family or workers”. It just paints scrooge in the worst light possible as man who never grew, in at least one aspect, from being a goddamn tweenager and is easily one of the weaker moments of an otherwise epic and well crafted saga, and as i’ve said of Rosa’s exemplary work as a whole. 

Anyways the race is on and with the DIlly Dollar gaining on Hogg’s Cotton reiver witch, Hogg has them ram into the boat and flip it over. And no i’m not descrbing a sex act. In a show of competence while Blackheart Beagle’s actions send them close to the falls too he just uses the dilly dollar as a ramp. We also get a really cool flipped over panel as our heroes are waterlogged. A snag boat shows up, I assume it removes snags and dangerous objects and complains about rescuing them. .even though CLEARLY they had some kind of accident. It’s.. never a good look to complain about having to save someone’s life or livelyhood unless that someone is Tucker Carlson. Then it’s ABSOLUTLEY okay to grumble a bit about having to do the right thing. 

So after a quick gag we’re introduced to a chekovs gun as a massive tree sprouts out of the river and spooks Scroogey.. and Angus who explains it’s a “sawyer”, something that happens when a dead tree falls in a river.. sinks in.. and then can rise right back up suddenly, violently and boat destroyingly. 

So our heroes head on and find the location and Angus dumbly assumes that Hogg, who had a clear start is just lost.. and not you know lurking in the bushes watiting to strike. And strike he does as he once again rams hard and long into the Dilly Dollar, leaving it on a sandy shore. Schwing. Our heroes are landlocked but Hogg, just to earn himself a dare to be stupid award, gives the Beagles their deed, and tells them theirs diving equipment. You can take a wild guess what happenes next. 

Angus understandably laughs at his misfortune because it’s funny.. and Hogg responds by dropping him down a well. Before Scrooge can raise a benefit concert to send his love down a well, Angus asks Scrooge to join him instead.. and soon we find out why as the Beagles only find a wrecked town. Turns out thats where Monkey’s Elbow WAS, and they build the new town near it.. with the farm Angus ended up at being where the wreck is now. 

Our heroes explore the wreck which honestly, looks really damn impressive, a muddy destroyed riverboat hauntingly beautifully lit by candle light, which Scrooge is holding naturally. I may of had my criticisms for Rosa this chapter, and I will again, but it’s moments like this that reinforce that the man is still one of the best comic book artists i’ve ever seen and knows how to beautifully meld his art with storytelling. 

Speaking of which our heroes find the safe with the money. Angus is ritch but Scrooge.. dosen’t get how he can be happy. Scroogie questions “How much satisfaction can there be in having your life’s fortune handed to you? “ It’s easily the best moment of the chapter.. while it’s only two panels before we get to Angus moving things right along... it really speaks to Scrooge’s character. Even as still a naive boy from Glasgow... his whole life has been hard work, effort working your way up. To just.. LUCK into fortune like this baffles him. To be satisfied with that and not seem to have any amibation to use it to go further, to make more of yourself. To be more. While he hasn’t quite got his love for adventure yet, we’ll get there next time, even now there’s a hunger inside him, a desire to not just get rich, that’s all fine and good.. btu to have EARNED IT. To truly feel like he made his way. 

And it perfeclty makes sense with his background: Scrooge was raised with nothing, and found out at the start of the story his family had lost everything, a once glorious clan reduced to a poor starving family on the edge of Glasgow. To him it can’t just be about getting Money.. he wants to bring his clan back. To make his family happy and proud. To make sure his father’s faith as the last of their line wasn’t misplaced. He has a lot of expectation on him and that’s bred his character. Angus.. just sorta left at a young age and has been incommuincado. He dosen’t really care about family or legacy.. not that I don’t think he would’ve sent some money back to buy the castle, I just think he was never that concerned with his family’s legacy like Scrooge despite coming from a similar cloth. He wanted the money, but Scrooge cares about the money.. and his family. It’s what anchors him. What keeps him from his worst impulses and keeps him grounded.. for now anyways but that’s a ways off. Point is it really speaks to Scrooge’s character. 

But soon the beagles find our heroes, and a fight breaks out.. and naturally even without years of experince yet, Scrooge is still a McDuck and while previously his fighting was based on ingunity.. this time the little runt’s just out for blood and suprises the beagles with a clump of mud and then beating the shit out of them. When one of them tries to respond by wacking him with a piece of wood... he instead breaks a collumn and with the dreenan unable to handle the mud without it... the place starts to collapse. However our heroes don’t make it out unschathed as the Beagles capture them and the gold... for some reason. Seriously Scrooge dosen’t fight back or anything nor does angus they just.. let hte beagles overpower them. WHen Scrooge fully fought the grown ass men just a few mintues ago. What the actual hell. 

But we do get another Badass Scrooge Moment, as once hteir on the ship, Scrooge mentions another treasure.. which baffles Angus despite you know.. the boy clearly playing at something. Yeah whlie I do like Angus.. he can be grating in parts and here he just comes off REALLY stupid. But after being tortured by running on a boat, with the beagles mistaking Angus’ genuine confusion for being a bastard man, which naturally their impressed by, Scrooge fessses up.. and you can see exactly’s coming.. the sawyer raises the boat into the air and harpoons it. The beagles try to play off the port authority but scrooge unmaks those “infamous beagle boys”.. and thus names one of his greatest threats. Blackheart vows revenge while our heroes go for a sasparillia..though Scrooge keeps the money.. as he says the memory of that adventure is worth more than anything. As for the Gold, the goverment took it back, but did give them a reward, and Angus only dosen’t give Scrooge a share because he’d have to refloat it, but offers him a job and the dollar in two years at a bargin price. Alls well that ends well. A truly poetic way to end the chapter and prepare scrogoe for the next... TO BE CONTINUED...

FINAL TH...

Yeah.. as you probably know this is NOT the end of the chapter. Instead we go on for a bit more. And a few more pages would’ve been fine, to help bridge the gap.. we see scrooge get the Dollar at a bargin price as his uncle promised, though the deal turns out to be a bit of a lemon as the riverboat industry has dried up. But then.. we get a couple page adventure with the beagle boys, where the beagles try to steal the goverment gold scrooge is transporting, Ratchet helps him escape, and we DO get the utterly badass image of scrooge driving the boat onto land and it exploding and causing a massive flood> While that is awesome.. the pacing just takes a huge hit and it’s easily why this chapter is one of my least faviorite. It probably would’ve been better if they just had a passage of time montage of events at the start of the next chapter and ended on that bit before.. but instead it just goes on a bit and really tries my patience every time as instead of moving on to a bold new adventure.. we just get some filler to help pad things out so Rosa can get it to the right page length. I don’t blame him, sometimes shit happens, but it dosen’t make it any more fun to read.  So the Dollar is scrapped and Scrooge is back at the bottom with barely a cent to his name. But he’s resolute: since the river boating days were winding down anyway he’s going west to become a cowboy, and heads off on the Wabash Cannonball as a fireman, i.e. the guy who stokes the engines, to make his way there. So we end our story for now and again.. this would’ve been much better condensed but whatever. We’re finally done. 

Final Thougts

As you could probably tell but I saved for here, and I outright even said this is one of my least faviorite chapters and one of the weakest if not the weakest. Part of it is the structure issue I mentioned, but the other part is it just.. isn’t as intresting at least to me personally. The rest of life and times have pretty unique stories that while not removed from genres Scrooge stories have covered, use the story of his rise to make them really pop as we slowly see how the iconic Scrooge we know became the legend and what shaped him that way. Here while we get bits of that, it’s mostly just a standard uncle scrooge story but with him as a kid. It’s not a BAD one, it dosen’t drag the whole of life and times down and it’s servicable but it just feels a bit more standard for Rosa’s work. Still enjoyable, but nothing really spectacular like the next two chapters. On it’s own or as one of the side stories it would’ve been fine but as part of this huge sprawling masterpiece, it’s just a bit underwhelming and just makes me eager to get to the next part every time rather than really suck me in as much as the others. Again the pacing dosen’t help with that and only makes it drag further. It just dosen’t have the weight the other ones do character wise and as such just makes me want to get to part 3 already, which naturally that story within a story dosen’t help with. Overall while not a bad comic, I don’t think any part of life and times is truly bad, it’s still not a GREAT comic like what’s to come or what came just before. 

NEXT TIME ON LIFE AND TIMES: Scrooge heads out to the wild wild west.. though instead of a giant mechanical spider he fights some cattle rustlers and meets Teddy Roosevelt HELL. YES. 

Until then, happy holidays and later days!

[vanityloves]

anyways im gonna listen to/read the fuckin...rise of the ogre shit bc ive been putting it off 🪓🥴 im gonna put stuff under the cut bc im gonna be TALKING n dont wanna make a new post everytime

piss

ok he performed for 2 pounds 50. which is basically $3 today i- well it was absolutely a power play on his father behalf that also had the promise of money so.

also lol he said Rejection fueled my ambitions which, yknow,, i already knew but it still hurts and i will continue to talk ab it xoxo

AH HELP. "...if ebay had been invented at the time he would've sold me online there and then,"

"man hands on misery to man, yknow"

THEN PROCEEDS TO CONNECT IT TO MUSIC/HIS CAREER. this man said :) the one thing i truly have a passion for. the one thing i fucking like.

oh yeah. bullied by students AND teachers.

oh god hes 42ish during this interview? ok.

the fuckin school bully saying he wouldve acted differently if he knew what hed become

getting called "faceache", then proceeds to call 2d that. jfc he really does just repeat what everyone says. really "treating others how i was treated/how they treat me"

maybe thats why? hes kinder to fans? bc :] you support me and like me so, ok ill return that energy

MURDOC GETTING HIS ASS BEAT N PARADING HOME LIKE WELL I WON BC 'I PISSED YOU OFF' SJDJD

a real rowdy boy. absolute nasty boy. fraud and arson... shooting ppls windows with his air pistols

black sabbath being a huge inspiration? fucking absolutely.

became a satanist n shit at age 16? "it fitted me like a glove" "heavy metal and devil worshipping became my favorite past times" ajsj funny that ppl in trying times often seek religion or following of some sort

heavy metal being his favorite, n loving the clash, while hannibals was more punk based

hannibal breaking murdocs nose for the 2nd and 3rd time for playing his music on hannibals turntable

he doesnt sound that bitter? ab hannibal? he doesnt sound incredibly fond but he talks ab how he got him into a lot of music. so, i imagine they we're a bit closer than i thought?

international baccalaureate in antisocial? anthropology?

MURDOC IS ACTUALLY SMART HE WAS JUST. NOT INTERESTED IN THE SUBJECTS? I GUESS? (also,,, he literally Built cyborg noodle and i think he had a PhD too lol. but its always nice to hear hes actually...yknow, interested or good at other things)

alright but murdoc having a fascination w/ other cultures - or at least some interests, that lead him to actually study the damn subject and "pass with flying colors"

'fuck college though. im gonna be a rockstar'

he sold his soul at 18ish? whenever the fuck he got kicked out but college was mentioned so my brain goes to 18ish idk

he lived with his father still and paid rent via low paying jobs one including 'part time dressing as santa'

help he was ab to take a Personal Job for quick cash and uhh well, "still made me call him sir though" he really said 20 dollars is 20 dollars, huh "that story was totally true"

alright, 1997,,,

2d stuff

loves zombie stuff? thats really cute, and is freaked out by the way they move. god he rambles

both he and murdoc are horses in the chinese zodiac

[[jfc ok if the official shit compares them a lot i understand why ppl ship them but Dont. its a narrative foil and that doesnt always mean Romance jfc.]]

SUMTHINK.

truly... a lil stinker. super cute bouncing baby and a "bit thick" which is stull so endearing to me. hes just a happy man!

excitable 10 year old and would dance around his room

jfc the fact he has normal/caring parents. i kinda forget how opposite hes supposed to be from murdoc but i think thats another thing jsjsysg (murdoc said why isnt my tragic story making me famous why does he get to be the Star. no wonder he acts like a loon)

i still dont get how gettin bonked by a tree branch made him go bald and also turn his hair blue

big tiddy nurse mommy,,,

went to the same school as The Cure and got decent grades despite hittin the noggin quite hard. WANTED TO BE A STORM CHASER... OMG??

oh thats really cute, hed bond with his dad by building keyboards toegther 🥺💕

messed around with paints and graffiti? artistic king

MURDOC AGAIN: QHDJ 'VILLANOUS' GANG HELP

oh yeah d day...new instruments, new band, new singer - and 'had to be the best or no dice' and absolutely CONFIDENT that his songs were bangers ajsjd

but on that same note, had absolute faith (or desperate) in 2d which i love

ransacked the fucking music shop jdjdj and 2d said he was Just Standing There behind the counter the whole shift hdhdh

"thats when your eye came out, yeah" "yeah!-" HELP WHY DOES HE SOUND SO HAPPY AB IT ?? yes he said ut hurt but he sounds...ok

jfc murdoc ragdolling this poor mf around. dunking him and slapping him around. actually? so incredibly terrible and abusive and i hate him for that 🔫 im sorry 2d stans. we dont condone that behavior here ong.

how and why the FUCK did 2d's parents allow that fucker near their child after that i??? help. wtf. his moms a nurse why didnt she just have murdoc sit in plain view of other people. god damn.

2d flying out the window n hitting the curb "whoops"

"just two black holes...[ah] it looked great...a blue hair, blacked eyed GOD- the girls would go wild-" "pretty boy looks" ???? HELP. HE DOESNT GO LIGHT ON THE COMPLIMENTS, HUH

RUSS TIME

oh yeah, he straight up kiddnapped this man help. idk how he managed that, russ is a Big Man??

AND MURDOCS MUSIC WAS SO FUCKING SEXY GOOD that russel said hm alright ill stay, :] out ifbhis owm free will im screaming.

"oh this is one of them febreeze commercials" "uh . yeah sure. *murdoc turning on his Sick Tunes*" but that either means? it was just his guitar playing the convinced russ? unless he and 2d recorded sumn?

"2d was the looks, murdoc the brains, then russel truly was the heart"

'while 2d and murdoc liked music, this man was a MUSICIAN' god fucking bless this book holy shit ny man russ getting some respect. he said back hurts from carrying this band.

murdoc basically heard this guy had big trauma that gave him So Many Skills n said "thats what i want" ok idk thats actually really? inch rest ting to me. seems that murdocs fine handing out compliments but i guess that where his charisma really helps out yeah?

"he was going to be in my band whether he liked it or not" ...murdoc-

HELP. 2D IS LIKE BRO GO ON IM LISTENING 🥺 despite hearing the story 50-60 times and murdoc said fuck off you lil shit.

ok irrelevant but i love his voice! its super comforting n nice to listen to 🥺

HELP MURDOCS SO BITTER. "NOTHING THAT HAPPENS TO US IS NORMAL" WELL YEAH. THIS IS TRAUMA CENTRAL.

idk how/why he sucked up all his friends souls though ... how are they all possessing the same person. they said "its my turn on The Russ"

DELL IS HIS ACTUAL, LITERAL SOULMATE...KING...😭

went to a private school,,, and was already possessed? and the thing where he gets bigger and smaller is a reoccurring thing?

was in a coma for 4 years?

hiphop machine...time and history...the ultimate set i guess.

his knowledge was infinite and hes a "Renaissance man" hes so fucking smart our king. jack of all trades but a master of drums. he said i know im good and what of it

PAULA.

HELP. HE RMBRS THE STALL: CUBICAL NUMBER 3 🥴 IF I DO RECALL 🤤

yes russel our king. fuck up his nose 5 more times. probably stunted his growth too. he shrunk after russ gave him a wallop im sure

why dies paula sound like tracer overwatch

also only dated 2d for 2 months before joining the band?

HELP SHE REALLY WAS THE FIRST MURDOC FUCKER: "but when i saw murdoc with his thick greasy hair, green teeth and yellow skin i thought 'oh this is the ine for me!'" "OH HES SUCH A DANDY-" HELP ME IM HQJDHD

sick in the head...like i want to hurt people help girl. shes fucking Crazy. but she rly said damn i didnt hear back from him again 😭 and my purse is gone JSHHD

MURDOC: SHE WAS DEPRESSINGLY UGLY *still fucked her*

NOODLE TIME

"small japanese person!"

2d: we werent gorillaz until noodle arrived!

im dying the reason he chose gorillaz. 'swinging through the jungle baring my ass'

noodle really said "im just happy to be here" and she balanced everyone out 😭 "she gave off pure love and the fact that she could laugh at murdoc REALLY helped too" RUSS... IS BABY

JFC MURDOCS SO FUCKING CONFIDENT IN THIS BAND IM LIVING FOR THAT. HE SAID YOU WANT US SO BAD IT MAKES YOU LOOK STUPID. THE CHARISMA

2d rambling ab some girl he met and "ssSs" "whats the s stand for hawhaw" "i dont know!".

THE RECORD LABEL GUY.

one song is all it took i ❤ good for them

just murdoc talking ab the party that they threw for thier deal and saying "you dont know how much of a dick i felt like [when carrying one of those huge checks]" like oh thats whatll make you a dick? alright.

A FOOD FIGHT THAT WENT SO HARD THAT IT KNOCKED 2DS TONSILS OUT? WHAT THE FUCK

ahshdj damon and murdoc not getting along bc of Rival Band One Uppery + damon calling murdocs cuban heels crap since ge wore steel ones with gold spurs.

MURDOC FEELIN EMBARRASSED BC HES 'QUITE PROUD OF HIS SHOES'

but the band and damon getting over music and their ambitions and became a "paternal figure"

HELP MURDOC SAID AWIOGA @ RACHEL WHICH MADE HER THROW HER DRINK IN HIS FACE AND SPLIT FROM 2D. kinda sad actually, she said i still like 2d but murdoc kinda ruined it by trying to get it in with me, it put a strain in our relationship :/ oh god murdocs That Dude

nov 31 1998: started recording :]

40 tracks that got cut down to 15 holy shit

KONG STUDIOS 🤲

hooking up cameras in every room ejdjsu

webby artist of the year in 2006? holy shit

noodle learning ab kong studios omfg

JFC. YES I KNEW KONG WAS BUILT ON/IN A CEMETERY BUT I DIDNT KNOW PPL FOR THE FUCKING PLAGUE WHERE THROWN THERE HDJD

built in 1739?

the ghost of the first owners ghost still roams around in the kitchen in the early hours and moans 'aaa glass of water'

theres some rotting bullshit near the studios and in the summer its fucking TERRIBLE

the former owners were a biker gang, and they all died in a fire

murdoc said this place has bad vibes. i want it.

grim weather

the building feels impossible to escape from huHgg