#i need more structure than this steven (fake name)

[bookwyrminspiration]

oh sick! I love Frankenstein!! read it last year for school and wrote sooo many essays on it it was fabulous

It's incredibly sick! It's diseased and unhealthy! It's downright unwell!

My school for all it's benefits is a little bit horrible at exposing us to the classics so I'm taking it upon myself to read them on my own time, and the Frankenstein emails are just add a little fun to it all! It's nice to get to see others' thought and to supplement my own conclusions and thinking with that from others. Maybe I should join a book club hmm.

Anyway, I will not be writing any essays for any classes over Frankenstein--unless it comes up in a later college class, but for now I will be enjoying the experience :)

[rachelbethhines]

Vintage Shows to Watch While You Wait for the Next Episode of WandaVision - The 60s

So the 60s is the era that Wandavision pulls most heavily from for it’s inspiration. So much so that one could make the argument that each of the first three episodes are all set in the 1960s. Episode one pulls from the early 60s with multiple Dick Van Dyke refences, episode two is very Bewitched inspired, and episode three is aesthetically very similar to The Brady Bunch which started in ‘69. As such it was hard to narrow down the list for this decade and I had to get creative in some ways. 

1. The Andy Griffith Show (1960 - 1968)

The Andy Griffith Show gets kind of a bad rap now a days for being, supposedly, a conservative’s wet dream. People claiming it as such have apparently never actually seen the series. Oh yes, it’s very much set in white rural 60s America and will occasionally present the obliviously outdated joke, but the story of a widowed sheriff being the only sane man in a small town full of lovable lunatics, who prefers to solve his and others problems with negotiation and hair brained schemes as opposed to violence has far more in common with modern day Steven Universe than whatever genocidal fantasy fake rednecks have in their heads.  

As the gif above shows Andy Griffith was very subtlety progressive for its time. Andy was a stanch pacifist, pro-gun control, treated drug addicts and prisoners with respect, and all the women he would date had careers, ect. and so on. It’s not a satire making any sort of grand political statements but the series had a moral center that was far more left than many realize. 

But if it’s not a satire, then what type of comedy is it? 

The Andy Griffith Show excels in what I like to call, ‘awkward comedy’. See everyone in Mayberry is far too nice to just come out and tell a character they’re making an ass of themselves, so therefore whoever is the idiot punching bag of the episode’s focus must slowly unravel as everyone looks on in helpless pity until said character realizes the folly of their ways and the townsfolk come together to make them feel happy and accepted once more. Wandavision takes this polite idyllic awkwardness and plays it up for horror instead of laughs.  

2. The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961 - 1966)

The creators of Wandavision actually met with Dick Van Dyke himself to pick his brain and learn how sitcoms were made back then. Paul Bentley also took inspiration from Van Dyke in his performance of the sitcom version of Vision, while Olsen stated Mary Tylor Moore had a heavy influence on her character of Wanda. But more than just being a point of homage, The Dick Van Dyke Show was hugely influential in modernizing the family sitcom and breaking a lot of the unspoken traditions and ‘rules’ of the 50s television era. It’s also just really, really funny.  

3.The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962 - 1965) 

Bit of a cheat here. Alfred Hitchcock Presents actually started in 1955 as a half hour anthology show, but in ‘62 the show got a revamp and was extended into a full hour tv series. I knew I wanted The Twilight Zone to be covered in my episode one recap, but ‘The Master of Suspense’ couldn’t be forgotten. While The Twilight Zone reveled in the surreal and supernatural, Alfred Hitchcock pioneered the thriller genre and made real life seem dangerous, horrifying, and other worldly.   

4. Doctor Who (1963 - present day) vs Star Trek (1966 - present day) 

Just like how westerns dominated the air waves during the 50s, science fiction was the center of the cultural zeitgeist of the 60s. From Lost in Space to My Favorite Martian, space aliens and robots were everywhere. So naturally I had to name drop the two sci-fi juggernauts that still air to this today. If you thought that the rivalry between Star Wars and Star Trek was bad then you’ve never seen a chat full of Whovians and Trekkies duking it out over who is the better monster, the Borg or the Cyberman. But which one has the more influence over Wandavision?

Well Star Trek owes it’s existence to sitcoms. As with The Twilight Zone before it, Star Trek was produced by Desilu Productions and it’s co-founder and CEO, Lucille Ball, was the series biggest supporter behind the scenes, lobbying for it when it faced early cancelation. As with all things sitcomy, everything ties back to I Love Lucy in the end. However despite that little backstory, it would seem that the series has very little to do with Wandavision itself beyond being quintessentially American. 

I would argue that Wandavision owes much to Doctor Who though. Arguably more so than any show mentioned in this retrospective. Time travel, alternate realities, trouble in quite suburbia, brainwashing, people coming back from the dead, ect... just about every trope you can find in Wandavision has also appeared in Doctor Who at some point. As a series that can go anywhere and do anything, Doctor Who was a pioneer of marrying genres in new and interesting ways. 

5. Bewitched (1964 - 1972) and I Dream of Jeannie (1965 - 1970)

It’s hard to pick one series over another because they’re essentially the same show. A mortal man falls in love with a magical girl who upends their lives with magic filled hijinks as they try their best not to have their secret discovered by the rest of the world. And both have their fingerprints all over the DNA of Wandavision. 

There’s only two core differences; Samantha and Jeannie have completely different personalities, with Sam being confident and knowledgeable and Jeannie being naïve and oblivious, along with their relationships with their respective men, Sam and Darrin being married and in love at the start of the series and Jeannie chasing after Tony in the beginning in a will they/won’t they affair, finally only getting together in the last season. 

6. The Munsters (1964 - 1966) vs The Adams Family (1964 - 1966)

Fans of these two shows are forever sadden that there never was a crossover between them. Because they’d fit perfectly together. Both shows are about a surreal and macabre family living in American suburbia and disrupting the lives of their neighbors with their otherworldly hijinks. Sound familiar?     

The main difference between the two shows is the way the characters viewed their placement in the world they inhabit. 

The Munsters were always oblivious to the fact that didn’t fit in. They just automatically assumed everyone had the same personal tastes as them. Whenever they encountered anyone who behaved strangely around them they would write that person off as being the odd one rather than questioning themselves. As such the main cast was structured like a stereotypical sitcom family who just happened to be classic movie monsters. 

The Addams were well aware that they were abnormal and they loved it! They lived life with in their own little world and didn’t care what anyone thought of them. As such the characters were far more colorful and quirky as individuals but there was little in the way of refences to other horror franchises beyond just a general love of the twisted and strange. 

7. Green Acres (1965 - 1971) and the Rual-verse (1962 - 1971)

So the MCU is not the first franchise to bring viewers an interconnected universe to the small screen. Far from it, as sitcoms had been doing this for decades, starting with the ‘rualverse’. Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, and Green Acres were all produced by the same company and were treated as spinoffs of each other, complete with crossovers and shared characters and sets. 

Of the three, the last show, Green Acres, has the most in common with Wandavision. A well to do businessman and his lovely socialite wife settle down in small town America on a farm in order to get away from the stresses of city life, only to find new stresses in the country. Eva Gabor, herself a natural Hungarian, plays the character of Lisa as Hungarian making her one of the few non-native born Americans on tv screens during the cold war. Despite her posh nature and original protests to the move, Lisa assimilates to the rural life far easier than her husband, Oliver. Who, as the main comedic thread, can’t comprehend his new quirky neighbors’ odd and often illogical behavior.  

8. Hogan’s Heroes (1965 - 1971) and Get Smart (1965 - 1969)

So as comic fans have been quick to point out, it’s looking like both A.I.M. (Hydra) and Sword (Shield) will be players in the story of Wandavision. To commemorate that here’s two shows to represent those opposing sides. Although in truth, neither series has anything else in common with each other but I need to condense things down someway. 

In Hydra’s corner we got Hogan’s Heroes. A show all about taking down Nazis from within. 

I love, love, love, ‘robin hood’ comedies where a group of con artists try week after to week to pull one over the establishment. The Phil Silvers Show, Mchale's Navy, and Top Cat, just to name a few examples are all childhood favorites of mine. However while those shows had a lot of morally ambiguous characters, Hogan’s Heroes has very clear cut good guys and bad guys, cause the bad guys are Nazis and the show relentless makes fun of the third reich as should we all. In fact I was watching Hogan’s Heroes while waiting for the GA run off election results. Fortunately my home state decided to kick out our own brand of Nazis this year. 

For Shield, we got the ultimate spy spoof, Get Smart. Starring, Inspector Gadget himself, Don Adams, as the bumbling Maxwell Smart. Get Smart, is a hilarious send up of Cold War espionage but the real selling point of the show, imho, is Max and his co-worker 99��s relationship. You can cut the sexual tension in the air with a knife all while laughing your ass off. 

9. Batman (1966 - 1968)

First was Superman and then came Batman. Yet while Superman was a serious action show, Batman was a straight up comedy. Showcasing that superheroes could indeed be funny. 

Also shout out for Batman being the only show on this list to have an actual crossover with it’s competitor, The Green Hornet. 

10. Julia (1968 - 1971)

Since episode two features the first appearances of Herb and Monica, let’s highlight the first black led sitcom since the cancelation of Amos ‘n Andy over a decade earlier. The show focuses on single mother and military nurse, Julia, as she tries to live her life without her recently decease husband, who was killed in Vietnam, as she tries to raise their six year old son on her own.  

The series is cute. It’s more of a throw back to earlier family sitcoms where there’s no fantasy and life lessons are the name of the game. It’s the fact that the main character is a single black woman is what made the show so subversive and important at the time. 

Runner Ups

There’s much good stuff in the 60s, so here’s some others that didn’t make the cut but I would recommend anyways. 

Car 54, Where Are You? (1961 - 1963)

I call this the Brooklynn 99 of the 1960s. Bumbling but well meaning Officer Toody longs to do good in the world and help anyone in need, but often screws things up with his ill thought out schemes. He often drags his best friend and partner, the competent but anxiety riddled, Muldoon into his escapades. 

Mr. Ed (1961 - 1966)

The grandfather of the sarcastic talking pet trope. 

The Jetsons (1962 - 1963 and 1985 - 1987)

Hanna-Barbera often took popular sitcoms and just repackaged them as cartoons with a fantasy theme to them. The Jetsons has no singular show that it rips-off but is rather more a grab bag of sitcom tropes that feature, robots, computers, and flying cars. 

The Outer Limits (1963 - 1965) 

The Outer Limits was The Twilight Zone’s biggest competitor in terms of being a sic-fi/horror anthology series. 

Gillian’s Island (1964 - 1967) 

The only comparison to WandaVision I could think of was that this is a sitcom about people being trapped in one place. But by that point I was running out of room on the list. Still it’s one of the funniest shows on here. 

So yeah, this took longer than expected cause there’s a lot, here. Hopefully the 70s will be easier. Which I’ll post on Friday. 

[thewatsonbeekeepers]

Chapter 4 – It is always 1895 [TAB 1/1]

TAB is my favourite episode of Sherlock. It is a masterpiece that investigates queerness, the canon and the psyche all within an hour and a half. Huge amounts of work has been done on this episode, however, so I’m not going to do a line by line breakdown – that could fill a small book. A great starting point for understanding the myriad of references in TAB is Rebekah’s three part video series on the episode, of which the first instalment can be found here X. I broadly agree with this analysis; what I’m going to do here, though, is place that analysis within the framework of EMP theory. As a result, as much as it pains me, this chapter won’t give a breakdown of carnation wallpaper or glass houses or any of those quietly woven references – we’re simply going in to how it plays into EMP theory.

Before digging into the episode, I want to take a brief diversion to talk about one of my favourite films, Mulholland Drive (2001).

If you haven’t seen Mulholland Drive, I really recommend it – it’s often cited as the best film of the last 20 years, and watching it really helps to see where TAB came from and the genre it’s operating in. David Lynch is one of the only directors to do the dream-exploration-of-the-psyche well, and I maintain that a lot of the fuckiness in the fourth series draws on Lynch. However, what I actually want to point out about Mulholland Drive is the structure of it, because I think it will help us understand TAB a little better. [If you don’t want spoilers for Mulholland Drive, skip the next paragraph.]

The similarities between these two are pretty straightforward; the most common reading of Mulholland Drive is that an actress commits suicide by overdose after causing the death of her ex-girlfriend, who has left her for a man, and that the first two-thirds of the film are her dream of an alternate scenario in which her girlfriend is saved. The last third of the film zooms in and out of ‘real life’, but at the end we see a surreal version of the actual overdose which suggests that this ‘real life’, too, has just been in her psyche. Sherlock dying and recognising that this may kill John is an integral part of TAB, and the relationships have clear parallels, but what is most interesting here is the structural similarity; two-thirds of the way through TAB, give or take, we have the jolt into reality, zoom in and out of it for a while and then have a fucky scene to finish with that suggests that everything is, in fact, still in our dying protagonist’s brain. Mulholland Drive’s ending is a lot sadder than TAB’s – the fact that, unlike Sherlock, there is no sequel can lead us to assume that Diane dies – and it’s also a lot more confusing; it’s often cited as one of the most complicated films ever made even just in terms of surface level plot, before getting into anything else, and it certainly took me a huge amount of time on Google before I could approach anything like a resolution on it!

Mulholland Drive is the defining film in terms of the navigating-the-surreal-psyche subgenre, and so the structural parallels between the two are significant – and definitely point to the idea that Sherlock hasn’t woken up at the end of TAB, which is important. But we don’t need to take this parallel as evidence; there’s plenty of that in the episode itself. Let’s jump in.

Emelia as Eurus

When we first meet Eurus in TST, she calls herself E; this initialism is a link to Moriarty, but it’s also a convenient link to other ‘E’ names. Lots of people have already commented on the aural echo of ‘Eros’ in ‘Eurus’, which is undeniable; the idea that there is something sexual hidden inside her name chimes beautifully with her representation of a sexual repression. The other important character to begin with E, however, is Emelia Ricoletti. The name ‘Emelia’ doesn’t come from ACD canon, and it’s an unorthodox spelling (Amelia would be far more common), suggesting that starting with an ‘E’ is a considered choice.

When TAB aired, we were preoccupied with Emelia as a Sherlock mirror, and it’s easy to see why; the visual parallels (curly black hair, pale skin) plus the parallel faked death down to the replacement body, which Mofftiss explicitly acknowledge in the episode. However, I don’t think that this reading is complete; rather, she foreshadows the Eurus that we meet in s4. The theme of ghosts links TAB with s4 very cleanly; TAB is about Emelia, but there is also a suggestion of the ghosts of one’s past with Sir Eustace as well as Sherlock’s own claims (‘the shadows that define our every sunny day’). Compare this to s4 – ‘ghosts from the past’ appears on pretty much every promotional blurb, and the word is used several times in relation to Eurus. If Eurus is the ghost from Sherlock’s past, the repressive part of his psyche that keeps popping back, Emelia is a lovely metaphor for this; she is quite literally the ghost version of Sherlock who won’t die.

What does it mean, then, when Jim and Emelia become one and the same in the scene where Jim wears the bride’s dress? We initially read this as Jim being the foil to Sherlock, his dark side, but I think it’s more complicated than this. Sherlock’s brain is using Emelia as a means of understanding Jim, but when we watch the episode it seems that they’ve actually merged. Jim wearing the veil of the bride is a good example of this, but I also invite you to rewatch the moment when John is spooked by the bride the night that Eustace dies; the do not forget me song has an undeniable South Dublin accent.* This is quite possibly Yasmine Akram [Janine] rather than Andrew Scott, of course, but let’s not forget that these characters are resolutely similar, and hearing Jim’s accent in a genderless whisper is a pretty clear way of inflecting him into the image of the bride. In addition to this, Eustace then has ‘Miss Me?’ written on his corpse, cementing the link to Moriarty.

[*the South Dublin accent is my accent, so although we hear a half-whispered song for all of five seconds, I’m pretty certain about this]

Jim’s merging with Emelia calls to mind for me what I think might be the most important visual of all of series 4 – Eurus and Jim’s Christmas meeting, where they dance in circles with the glass between them and seem to merge into each other. I do talk about this in a later chapter, but TLDR – if Jim represents John being in danger and Eurus represents decades of repressed gay trauma, this merging is what draws the trauma to the surface just as Jim’s help is what suddenly makes Eurus a problem. It is John’s being in danger which makes Sherlock’s trauma suddenly spike and rise – he has to confront this for the first time – just like Emelia Ricoletti’s case from 1895 only needs solving for the first time now that Jim is back.

At some point I want to do a drag in Sherlock meta, because I think there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye, but Jim in a bride’s dress does draw one obvious drag parallel for me.

If you haven’t seen the music video for I Want to Break Free, it’s 3 minutes long and glorious – and also, I think, reaps dividends when seen in terms of Sherlock. You can watch it here: X

Not only is it a great video, but for British people of Mofftiss’s age, it’s culturally iconic and not something that would be forgotten when choosing that song for Jim. Queen were intending to lampoon Coronation Street, a British soap, and already on the wrong side of America for Freddie Mercury’s unapologetic queerness, found themselves under fire from the American censors. Brian May says that no matter how many times he tried to explain Coronation Street to the Americans, they just didn’t get it. This was huge controversy at the time, but the video and the controversy around it also managed to cement I Want to Break Free as Queen’s most iconic queer number – despite not even being one of Mercury’s songs. There is no way that Steven Moffat, and even more so Mark Gatiss would not have an awareness of this in choosing this song for Moriarty. Applying any visual to this song is going to invite comparisons to the video – and inflecting a sense of drag here is far from inappropriate. Moriarty has been subsumed into Eurus in Sherlock’s brain – the male and the female are fused into an androgynous and implicitly therefore all-encompassing being. I’m not necessarily comfortable with the gendered aspect of this – genderbending is something we really only see in our villains here – but given this is about queer trauma, deliberately queering its form in this way is making what we’re seeing much more explicit.

Nothing new under the sun

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun” (Ecclesiastes)

"Read it up -- you really should. There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before." (A Study in Scarlet, Sherlock Holmes)

“Hasn’t this all happened before? There’s nothing new under the sun.” (The Abominable Bride, Jim Moriarty)

This is arguably the key to spotting that TAB is a dream long before they tell us – when TAB’s case is early revealed to be a mixture between TRF (Emelia’s suicide) and TGG (the five pips), and we see the opening of ASiP repeated, we should be questioning what on earth is going on. This can also help us to recognise s4 as being EMP as well though – old motifs from the previous series keep repeating through the cases, like alarm bells ringing. Moriarty telling Sherlock that there is nothing new under the sun is his key to understanding that the Emelia case is meant to help him understand what happened to Jim, that it’s a mental allegory or mirror to help him parse it. This doesn’t go away when TAB ends! Moving into TST, one of the striking things is that cases are still repeating! The Six Thatchers appeared on John’s blog way back, before the fall – you can read it here: X. It’s about a gay love affair that ends in one participant killing the other. Take from that what you will, when John’s extramarital affection is making him suicidal and Sherlock comatose. Meanwhile, the title of The Final Problem refers to the story that was already covered in TRF and the phone situation with the girl on the plane references both ASiB and TGG, and the ending of TST is close to a rerun of HLV. It’s pretty much impossible to escape echoes of previous series in a way that is almost creepy, but we’ve already had this explained to us in TAB – none of this is real. It’s supposed to be explaining what is happening in the real world – and Mofftiss realised that this was going to be difficult to stomach, and so they included TAB as a kind of key to the rest of the EMP, which becomes much more complex.

However, if we want to go deeper we should look at where that quote comes from. I’ve given a few epigraphs to this section to show where the quote comes from – first the book of Ecclesiastes, then A Study in Scarlet. It’s one of the first things Holmes says and it is during his first deduction in Lauriston Gardens. This is where I’m going to dive pretty deep into the metatextual side of things, so bear with the weirdness.

[we’re going deeper]

Holmes’s first deduction from A Study in Scarlet shows that he’s no great innovator – he simply notices things and spots patterns from things he has seen before. This is highlighted by the fact that he even makes this claim by quoting someone before him. If our Sherlock also makes deductions based on patterns from the past, extensive dream sequences where he works through past cases as mirrors for present ones makes perfect sense and draws very cleverly on canon. However, I think his spotting of patterns goes deeper than that. Sherlock Holmes has been repressed since the publication of A Study in Scarlet, through countless adaptations in literature and film. Plenty of these adaptations as well as the original stories are referenced in the EMP, not least by going back to 1895, the year that symbolises the era in which most of these adaptations are set. (If you don’t already know it, check out the poem 221B by Vincent Starrett, one of the myriad of reasons why the year 1895 is so significant.) My feeling is that these adaptations, which have layered on top of each other in the public consciousness to cement the image of Sherlock Holmes the deductive machine [which he’s not, sorry Conan Doyle estate] come to symbolise the 100+ years of repression that Sherlock himself has to fight through to come out of the EMP as his queer self.

This is one of the reasons that the year 1895 is so important; it was the year of Oscar Wilde’s trial and imprisonment for gross indecency, and this is clearly a preoccupation of Sherlock’s consciousness in TFP with its constant Wilde references, suggesting that his MP’s choice of 1895 wasn’t coincidental. Much was made during TAB setlock of a newspaper that said ‘Heimish The Ideal Husband’, Hamish being John’s middle name and An Ideal Husband being one of Wilde’s plays. But the Vincent Starrett poem, although nostalgic and ostensibly lovely, for tjlcers and it seems for Sherlock himself symbolises something much more troubling. Do search up the full poem, but for now let’s look at the final couplet.

Here, though the world explode, these two survive

And it is always 1895

‘Though the world explode’ is a reference to WW1, which is coming in the final Sherlock Holmes story, and which is symbolised by Eurus – in other chapters, I explain why Eurus and WW1 are united under the concept of ‘winds of change’ in this show. Sherlock and John survive the winds of change – except they don’t move with them. Instead, they stay stuck in 1895, the year of ultimate repression. 2014!Sherlock going back in his head to 1895 and repeating how he met John suggests exactly that, that nothing has changed but the superficial, and that emotionally, he is still stuck in 1895.

Others have pulled out similar references to Holmes adaptations he has to push through in TAB – look at the way he talks in sign language to Wilder, which can only be a reference to Billy Wilder, director of TPLoSH, the only queer Holmes film, and a film which was forced to speak through coding because of the Conan Doyle estate. That film is also referenced by Eurus giving Sherlock a Stradivarius, which is a gift given to him in TPLoSH in exchange for feigning heterosexuality. Eurus is coded as Sherlock’s repression, and citing a repressive moment in a queer film as her first action when she meets Sherlock is another engagement by Sherlock’s psyche with his own cinematic history. My favourite metatextual moment of this nature, however, is the final scene of TFP which sees John and Sherlock running out of a building called Rathbone Place.

Basil Rathbone is one of the most iconic Sherlock Holmes actors on film, and Benedict’s costume in TAB and in particular the big overcoat look are very reminiscent of Rathbone.

Others have discussed (X) how the Victorian costume and the continued use of the deerstalker in the present day are images of Sherlock’s public façade and exclusion of queerness from his identity. It’s true that pretty much every Holmes adaptation has used the deerstalker, but the strong Rathbone vibes that come from Ben’s TAB costume ties the 1895 vibe very strongly into Rathbone. To have the final scene – and hopefully exit from the EMP – tie in with Sherlock and John running out of Rathbone Place tells us that, just as Sherlock cast off the deerstalker at the end of TAB (!), he has also cast off the iconic filmic Holmes persona which has never been true to his actual identity.

Waterfall scene

The symbol of water runs through TAB as well as s4 – others have written fantastic meta on why water represents Sherlock’s subconscious (X), but I want to give a brief outline. It first appears with the word ‘deeper’ which keeps reappearing, which then reaches a climax in the waterfall scene. The idea that Sherlock could drown in the waters of his mind is something that Moriarty explicitly references, suggesting that Sherlock could be ‘buried in his own Mind Palace’. The ‘deep waters’ line keeps repeating through series 4, and I just want to give the notorious promo photo from s4 which confirms the significance of the motif.

This is purely symbolic – it never happens in the show. Water increases in significance throughout – think of Sherlock thinking he’s going mad in his mind as he is suspended over the Thames, or the utterly nonsensical placement of Sherrinford in the middle of the ocean – the deepest waters of Sherlock’s mind. Much like the repetition of cases hinting that EMP continues, the use of water is something that appears in the MP, and it sticks around from TAB onwards, a real sign that we’re going deeper and deeper. I talk about this more in the bit on TFP, but the good news is that Sherrinford is the most remote place they could find in the ocean – that’s the deepest we’re going. After that, we’re coming out (of the mind).

Shortly after TAB aired, I wrote a meta about the waterfall scene, some of which I now disagree with, but the core framework still stands – it did not, of course, bank on EMP theory. You can find it here (X), but I want to reiterate the basic framework, because it still makes a lot of sense. Jim represents the fear of John’s suicide, and Jim can only be defeated by Sherlock and John together, not one alone – and crucially, calling each other by first names, which would have been very intimate in the Victorian era. After Jim is “killed”, we have Sherlock’s fall. The concept of a fall (as in IOU a fall) has long been linked with falling in love in tjlc. Sherlock tells John that it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the landing, something that Jim has been suggesting to him for a while. What is the landing, then? Well, Sherlock Holmes fell in love back in the Victorian era, symbolised by the ultra repressive 1895, and that’s where he jumps from – but he lands in the 21st century. Falling in love won’t kill him in the modern day. What I missed that time around, of course, was that despite breaking through the initial Victorian layers of repression, he still dives into more water, and when the plane lands, it still lands in his MP, just in a mental state where the punishment his psyche deals him for homosexuality is less severe. This also sets up s4 as specifically dealing with the problem of the fall – Sherlock jumps to the 21st century specifically to deal with the consequences of his romantic and sexual feelings. There’s a parallel here with Mofftiss time jumping; back when they made A Study in Twink in 2009, there was a reason they made the time jump. Having Sherlock’s psyche have that touch of self-awareness helps to illustrate why they made a similar jump, also dealing with the weight of previous adaptations.

Women

I preface this by saying how incredibly uncomfortable I find the positioning of women as the KKK in TAB. It’s a parallel which is unforgivable; frankly, invoking the KKK without interrogating the whiteness of the show or even mentioning race is unacceptable. Steven Moffat’s ability to write women has consistently been proven to be nil, but this is a new low. However, the presence of women in TAB is vital, so on we go.

TAB specifically deals with the question of those excluded from a Victorian narrative. This is specifically tied into to those who are excluded from the stories, such as Jane and Mrs. Hudson. Mrs. Hudson’s complaint is in the same scene as John telling her and Sherlock to blame the problems on the illustrator. This ties back to the deerstalker metaphor which is so prevalent in this episode; something that’s not in the stories at all, but a façade by which Holmes is universally recognised and which as previously referenced masks his queerness. Women, then, are not the only people being excluded from the narrative. When Mycroft tells us that the women have to win, he’s also talking about queer people. This is a war that we must lose.

I don’t think the importance of Molly in particular here has been mentioned before, but forgive me if I’m retreading old ground. However, Molly always has importance in Sherlock as a John mirror, and just because she is dressed as a man here doesn’t mean we should disregard this. If anything, her ridiculous moustache is as silly as John’s here! Molly, although really a member of the resistance, is able to pass in the world she moves in in 1895, but only by masking her own identity. This is exactly what happens to John in the Victorian era – as a bisexual man married to a woman, he is able to pass, but it is not his true identity. More than that, Molly is a member of the resistance, suggesting not just that John is queer but that he’s aware of it and actively looking for it to change.

I know I was joking about Molly and John’s moustaches, but putting such a silly moustache on Molly links to the silliness of John’s moustaches, which only appear when he’s engaged to a woman and in the Victorian era. He has also grown the moustache just so the illustrator will recognise him, and Molly has grown her moustache so that she will be recognised as a man. In this case, Molly is here to demonstrate the fact that John is passing, but only ever passing. Furthermore, Molly, who is normally the kindest person in the whole show, is bitter and angry throughout TAB – it’s not difficult to see then how hiding one’s identity can affect one’s mental health. I really do think that John is a lot more abrasive in TAB than he is in the rest of the show, but that’s not the whole story. Showing how repression can completely impair one’s personality also points to the suicidal impulses that are lurking just out of sight throughout TAB – this is what Sherlock is terrified of, and again his brain is warning him just what it is that is causing John this much pain and uncharacteristic distress.

This is just about the loosest sketch of TAB that could exist! But TAB meta has been so extensive that going over it seems futile, or else too grand a project within a short chapter. Certain theories are still formulating, and may appear at a later date! But what this chapter (I hope) has achieved has set up the patterns that we’re going to see play out in s4 – between the metatextuality, the waters of the mind and the role of Moriarty in the psyche, we can use TAB as a key with which to read s4. I like to think of it as a gift from Mofftiss, knowing just how cryptic s4 would be – and these are the basic clues with which to solve it.

That’s it for TAB, at least in this series – next up we’re going ever deeper, to find out exactly who is Eurus. See you then?

[ottitty]

Do you know how to cope with gener dysphoria because of the three friends I have I’m only out to two and one’s cis and as far as I know the other one doesn’t experience dysphoria so I’m just sitting here trying to forget I exist :,)

Unfortunately I am all too familiar with that experience, so I've got you covered.

>dysphoria hoodie- any good old hoodie or item of clothing that's familiar and you find comfort in helps for the days when you're just really not feeling it.

>experiment a little- it doesn't have to be big for it to feel good. Whether it means adding a beanie you dont usually wear, a pin, earrings/gauges, makeup (there are tutorials on how to make your face look either more masc or fem online, whichever you prefer), rings, anything. If it gives you some sense of comfort or even euphoria, do it.

>thrift stores- second hand clothing is cheap, often soft and worn in so you wont have to worry about the textures and structure of an item of clothing changing bc its already like that. Theres a lot of room to experiment with different styles or just get cheap ass oversized flanels and tshirts.

>music- I've found that there are some songs/bands that can make you feel really good and can be almost gender affirming. Whether that's a more mellow song about dysphoria, or mother mother, or the front bottoms, whatever. (Side note: 10/10 recommend Dysphoria by Saint Wellesley if you're looking for something a little more mellow, and heres the playlist I made for gender affirming shit- it's called They-Whore Wednesday on spotify)

>If possible, surround yourself with people who will validate you. Even if its 10 seconds of conversation with someone on the internet. I know of many people who have sent anons saying "hey, can you please type out a sentence or two using [name] and [pronouns] for me?" And I've heard back from them once or twice and apparently it really helps.

>take some time for self care. For some people that looks like bathing and face masks, but sometimes it feels bad and it doesnt help at all when you struggle with dysphoria. That's okay. Take the time to eat, drink, brush your teeth, if you haven't changed your shirt in more than a day then do so (even if that's just the one under your hoodie or it means putting one on under it).

>Once again, surround yourself with media and communities that support you. TV shows (POSE, Steven Universe, Queer Eye, even just shows you used to watch that bring you comfort), movies, music, books, fanfiction, etc etc. Anything that either 1) brings you comfort, 2) has characters that you can identify with, or 3) provides that sense of community.

>to add onto that; block out all the transphobic nonsense online for a while. Even if it's through a reaction video or someone sharing it and being like, "this is fucked up!!!" It still hurts to see the origin of that stuff, and you have every right to step away from that. You are not obligated to take down and/or educate exclusionists and transphobes.

>Fuck around with packing/tucking/binding/whatever and see if you like it (please for the love of god be safe while binding or tucking)

>remember that you're allowed to sit in that discomfort if you need. If dysphoria's telling you you gotta sit underneath piles and piles of blankets and just kind of exist for a while, then goddamnit you should let yourself do so.

>that being said, make sure you do get up and around every once in a while. Go out and get some sun if at all possible, make sure you're taking care of your bodily needs.

>hold your head up and walk whatever way feels affirming, whatever gives you confidence and fake it a lil til you make it. Ik it seems weird or untrue, but it helps.

>use lower or higher voices. There are many tutorials to learn how to speak in a higher/lower voice, just make sure you do a bit of research to make sure it isnt hurting you.

If anyone has anything I may have missed, please do add on.

[dansiere]

✩⋆ . manner of articulation; first sign of rebellion.

mini-headcanons #1

Whenever her articulation is concerned, Pearl is well known for her rather precise but sometimes long-winded dialogue. She is prone to ramble whenever given the chance & hardly replies to a question or comment with a single sentence. Usually one to articulate herself almost flawlessly, Pearl can come off as haughty or patronizing from time to time -- this, however, has not always been the case. 

     Pearl’s change of speech is inevitably linked to her shift in status & occupation; beginning with her role as a servant on Homeworld, & altering drastically throughout growing more & more independent, with most of her alterations becoming evident during the GEM WAR. -- to Pearl, these changes made out of her own volition [alongside becoming a “knight”] hold immense importance. After all, they embody a break with the diamond authority & a step towards personal freedom.

DISCLAIMER: The following includes my own headcanons & ideas & should, by no means, to be perceived as canon. While my headcanons are usually rooted in canon lore & use analysis of aforesaid material, the very ideas are my own.

1) HOMEWORLD. as a default pearl in White Diamond’s service, Pearl possessed a high-pitched equally default voice, very clear but also extremely monotone & robotic, lacking any signs or traces of individuality. She usually articulated herself by using specific sentence components alongside ending or beginning aforesaid sentences with “MY DIAMOND”. As a default [lacking common configurations] her vocabulary as such was fairly limited. She rarely used pronouns to refer to herself. Instead, she spoke in allegories by using her superiors as a means to convey whatever she was supposed to convey [”My Diamond would like to see you now” instead of “I am here to pick you up” or “My Diamond enjoys dance performances” instead of “I like to dance”]. Needless to say, Pearl never truly expressed her own wishes or thoughts but indirectly stated her concerns through, again, using “her diamond” as a reference. While other pearls sometimes spoke more freely in private, Pearl never felt the wish to do so. In addition to her linguistic limitations, she also yielded to behavioural rules & regulations. -- pearls were only allowed to talk whenever spoken to, were supposed to listen to verbal & gestural commands [an example for a keyphrase being “that will be all” followed by clapping twice]. -- this usually led to Pearl developing the habit to silently stand in the background, waiting for a command or anything similar. 

    The first alteration to her common manner of articulation was made after being handed to Pink Diamond, approximately 1500 years after her emergence. Pink often asked Pearl questions & encouraged her to speak up whenever she felt the need. It took Pearl several years to actually do so. -- eventually, in an attempt to “make Pink happy” she unsolicitedly, on her own volition, suggested interstellar travel; Pink Diamond rejoiced & believed she had finally gotten through to her silent & dull “companion”. Things did not progress much further from there, however, even if Pearl started adapting by learning how to use the pronouns “I” & “me” instead of constantly expressing herself through referring to Pink as “her diamond”. 

2) LIFE ON EARTH / THE GEM WAR. partially in an attempt to further adjust to her NEW lifestyle, Pearl started speaking more freely, allowing emotions to influence her pronunciation, developing her own, personal sentence structure & melody. Whenever Rose & her travelled to Earth together, Pearl grew more confident; instead of reverting to her head-voice, Pearl focused on speaking in a lower pitch, in addition to shortening words [i.e. negations]. Still, she hardly initiated conversations, waited for commands or questions, sometimes fell back into old habits or apologized for “speaking out of turn”. However, shortly after the outbreak of the rebellion, Pearl started to ramble more frequently, laughed & learned eagerly. -- it was difficult at first & required a lot of concentration & new-found strenuousness but she managed, at least in a certain scope, eventually.

     Upon meeting other Gems, things grew more complicated & complex. At first, Pearl was usually assumed to be Rose Quartz’ personal servant & thus addressed as such. This proved to be an issue that triggered Pearl’s programming & basically erased what progress she had made so far. While she could speak more freely with Rose, the stress that other gems evoked caused her to go back into servant mode, forcing her to silence herself to prohibit any personal “slip-ups” that could have led to her revealing Rose’s & her status. -- she had never learned how to talk to any Gem aside from other pearls or diamonds, leaving her with no other choice than to relearn how to properly react & respond to people in specific social scenarios. To overcome her conditioning’s interference & personal inability to muster up the nerves to actually converse, Pearl spoke in a strictly monosyllabic manner at first. “Yes”, “No”, “Okay”, “So?” “What?”, “Go there”, “Negative”, “Positive”, etc were commonly the only words others would come to hear. -- either that or she did not say anything at all. 

     -- --. Needless to say, part of Pearl’s status as “Terrifying Renegade” came from her being perceived as mute, usually glaring at whoever happened to be in her proximity, rather letting her deeds “do the talking”. While people never truly expected a pearl to speak, it was the way she carried herself, the way she poofed / shattered enemies seemingly out of nowhere before disappearing again that struck fellow rebels & Homeworld soldiers with fear. -- instead of a soft-spoken, demure “yes, my quartz” other gems would hear gruff retorts or receive nought but a long, direct stare. -- needless to say, many perceived that as quite unnerving. 

     In truth, however, Pearl had troubles rearranging her sentences, ever afraid of "messing up”. Speaking had suddenly become a fight of its own; on the one hand, she fought her programming by not only speaking out of turn but also by using words & phrases she was not supposed to use, addressing Rose not as DIAMOND but by her NAME or as LEADER OF THE REBELLION while on the other concentrating on using the right pronunciation, taking the pitch of her voice, sentence melody & social etiquette into consideration. Most of her attempts came out languidly spoken & overcautiously phrased; Pearl had to completely remodel EVERYTHING she knew whilst constantly biting her tongue whenever the urge to be “just a pearl” arose. -- most of her learning process consisted out of observing other Gems & listening to their conversations, through reading, or having Rose teach her specific vocabulary during sword-fighting practice. Due to this, it took her quite a while overcome her emotional limitations, her fear of failure, & the ongoing inner conflict which the very situation had inevitably set free. 

3) POST WAR / SHOW-CANON. at this point in time, after approximately 1000 years, Pearl had come a long way. Her affinity to pay close attention to every spoken word led to her developing quite the pristine grammar & a low-pitched voice alongside quite a lively tone. Nowadays, she usually speaks rather formally, using little to no abbreviations unless she interacts with people she knows [such as Steven, Garnet, Rose & Amethyst]. Additionally, she has a hard time keeping her sentences brief; she rambles, & joyously so. 

     Yet despite all of her improvements & pride, most of her “lofty” & eloquent talk is deeply rooted in a certain hyper-awareness & a terrible fear of “messing up” or falling back into old patterns. Even if she has long moved past the servant phase of her life she still feels like she has to prove that she is as smart as anyone, that she is not “just a pearl” but in fact as good as any other gem. Her urge to earn validation makes itself known in various situations, often subconsciously coercing her to “show off”. -- her desire to constantly share what she knows, her patronizing manner of addressing / calling out mistakes or correcting “grammatical flaws”, her seemingly neverending ramblings; it all ties back to her past & having been confronted with her status throughout her entire life. 

     While she is quite GOOD at covering up her insecurities through partially “faked” bravado, her inferiority complex often shows whenever she is agitated or emotions get the best of her. In the worst cases, her nervousness & emotional instability makes her speak faster than she thinks, lets her stumble over her own words, has her trail off, swallow vocals & consonants or have her at a loss of words. It makes it harder for her to express what she means, pushing her into this unbearable situation of not knowing how to continue or what to say; she loses her red thread & tries to save face by fleeing the premise.  -- it is something she hates but cannot really control.

[sebastbu]

My Top 40 Movies of the Decade

***just my opinion***this list is not set in stone either***

1. 12 Years A Slave (2013)

What Steve McQueen has managed to do with this movie in nothing short of the best thing art is capable of. He takes the horror of humanity and turns it into a heart shattering tale of the best of humanity. A film that could have sunk easily among the brutality it contains, instead soars with Solomon’s survival. It is one of the most life-affirming, uplifting works of art I’ve ever seen. It makes you cry, it makes you shout, it makes you cheer, it makes you breathless. In short, all the things movies are best at. Not just a definitive movie, but a definitive work of art.

2. The Act of Killing (2012)

This has my vote for the best documentary film of all time. What begins as a transfixing profile of the mass murders responsible for the 1965 Indonesian genocide quickly transforms into a Brechtian nightmare as director Joshua Oppenheimer somehow convinces these men to stage scenes for a fake movie reenacting their crimes. As the film progresses you can hardly believe what you’re witnessing. Horrifying, yet you can’t look away. Oppenheimer holds your attention for every second. What’s captured for film here is truly unique, ground-breaking, soul shaking. A statement about the banality of evil as profound as Ardent’s essays. 

3. The Tree of Life (2011)

Malick has reached his final form here. An organic art form, pure cinema, visual poetry, whatever you want to call it. Nothing but a movie could be this. The images he crafts here are as close to a religious experience as I’ve ever had watching a movie, and probably ever will. In exploring childhood memories, Malick’s style perfectly matches his subject manner. He use of ellipsis and fluidity mirrors the way memories flash through our heads. It is as if we are witnessing memory directly, unfiltered. This movie will move you in ways you didn’t know a movie could. 

4. The Social Network (2010)

That Facebook movie? Hell yeah that facebook movie. What Fincher and Sorkin have managed to do is take what could be a standard biopic, or dull tech movie, and made it into an epic tale of betrayal, greed, friendship, coming of age, and identity. Ross and Reznor’s score pulses, as does the dialogue. This movie starts the instant you press play and it doesn’t let you catch your breath for one second until the very end. Endlessly quotable, perfected acted. A masterclass.

5. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

What can I say about this movie? Every shot is perfect. Every joke, beat, pan, zoom. Well, I guess I’ll say this. This movie disarms with its charm, its facade. But at its heart is a wrenching tale of loss, nostalgia, and the fleeting nature of everything, especially those we love. A jewel of a film. Anderson makes sure you’re cozy and then pulls the rug out from under you, and suddenly you’re crying. 

6. The Master (2012)

Career best performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Lushly shot. Greenwood delivers another ground breaking score. PTA has made an aimless film about aimless characters that nevertheless is riveting. At the end, you may not know exactly how far you’ve progressed, but you’re sure glad you went on the journey. 

7. Drive (2011)

This is not an action movie. It’s a love story. The now famous dream pop soundtrack. Ryan Gosling doing so much with so little. Refn’s breathtaking cinematography. Diluted dreams. Crushed hopes. Silent gazes, filled with more emotion than dialogue could ever render.

8. The Revenant (2015)

An achievement of pure cinematic insanity. I still have no idea how they got some of these shots. A brutal, thrilling story of survival among nature’s cruelty. Inarritu’s camera is like magic in this film, uncovering the previously thought not possible. 

9. La La Land (2016)

A reinvention of a genre that somehow manages to have its cake and eat it too: a nostalgia trip that also subverts expectations. Right up there next to Singin’ in the Rain, in my book at least. How on earth was that only Chazelle’s second ever movie? 

10. The Lighthouse (2019)

TELL ME YE FOND O ME LOBSTER! WHYD YA SPILL YOUR BEANS? IF I HAD A STEAK ID FUCK IT. That about sums it up.

11. Parasite (2019)

Bong Joon Ho has made a beautifully twisted psychological thriller that is also hilarious, touching, and a lasting commentary on class and social mobility. 

12. The Florida Project (2017)

Baker’s approach of setting this story from the viewpoint of children makes it a glorious romp through a world of innocence as well as tragedy, and also makes it all the more emotionally impactful.

13. Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

It’s all about the cat. Alongside the Coen’s mastery of dialogue and the side character, as well as the beautiful folk music, this film acts as a deeply moving portrayal of depression, and how sometimes we are our own worst enemy. 

14. Moonlight (2016)

Expertly crafted. Expertly acted. Expertly shot. A gorgeously rendered coming of age story. I’m not really the person who should speak of its importance. I’ll just say: it is. Very. A movie that will stun you. 

15. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Practical! Effects! Yeah, that really is Tom Hardy swinging fifty feet off the ground on a pole as explosions go off behind him. A feminist, post-apocalypse, road trip movie brought to you by the director of Happy Feet and Babe 2. What more could you want?

16. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

A wonderful celebration of childhood and of fantasy. Anderson crafts a world you want to return to again and again. Anyone else get jump scared when they realized Lucas Hedges was in this??? 

17. Arrival (2016)

I love Denis Villeneuve’s films for so many reasons. The most important I think is that he balances entertainment and artistic depth so well. Like all great scifi Arrival is not really about aliens, it’s about us. 

18. Inception (2010)

A film that runs on all cyclinders. Smart, funny, jaw dropping, just plain fun. Nolan manages to build some surprisingly moving moments as well. 

19. Gone Girl (2014)

Ah Fincher and his twists. Rosemund Pike at the top of her game. Ross and Reznor return with another gripping score. Around the narrative, Fincher creates a fascinating portrayal of the media and marriage, one with endless twists and turns. You never quite know where it’s headed.

20. Sicario (2015)

A second thing I love about Dennis Villeneuve: he does point of view characters better than anyone else. 

21. Enemy (2014)

A third thing I love about Dennis Villeneuve: he plays with genre and narrative structure unlike anyone else working right now.

22. Incendies (2010)

A fourth thing I love about Denis Villeneuve: he’s given us some of the best female lead characters this decade.

23. Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

A fifth thing I love about Denis Villeneuve: he somehow managed make a Blade Runner sequel work. Here’s hoping for Dune. 

24. The Look of Silence (2014)

The companion film of The Act of Killing. Oppenheimer does it again, this time focusing more on the victims of the genocide. Groundbreaking cinema.

25. Shame (2011)

Slow clap for Michael Fassbender. Slow clap for Carey Mulligan. Slow clap for Steven Mcqueen.

26. Hereditary (2018)

Using horror to examine mental illness and family trauma. Aster has made a new classic of genre, taking it to new heights.

27. Under The Skin (2014)

How to make a movie about an alien descended onto earth in order to capture men and engulf them in her weird black room of goo? Make a very alienation movie. Chilling. Otherworldly. Haunting. 

28. Son of Saul (2015)

In making any holocaust film there’s always the risk of feeling exploitative. Nemes’s radical camera work, focusing almost entirely on the main character’s face in close up leaves this concern in the dust. The horrors enter only at the corners of the frame, while humanity is firmly centered the whole time. An important film everyone should see. 

29. Whiplash (2014)

As visceral and heart pounding as the solos performed, the film as a whole is a perfectly made portrait of a obsession. 

30. Amour (2012)

Haneke takes his unforgiving approach and lays bare a topic with incredible emotional depth. The result is deeply moving without ever being sentimental. I’m hard pressed to find another film about old age that is this poignant. 

31. Birdman (2014)

A whirlwind of a film. A high wire act. The long takes turn it into something more akin to a play. A pretty damn good one at that. 

32. Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (2011)

What’s Chekhov doing in the 21st Century? He’s in Turkey. He name is Nuri Ceylan. 

33. The Favourite (2018)

Lanthimos turns down his style and turns up his humor. The result is the best of both worlds: a dark, twisted tale of power and a hilarious parody of monarchy and British costume drama. 

34. Phantom Thread (2018)

PTA delivers again. What could easily have been another tired tale of the obsessive artist and the woman behind him is instead a fairy tale-ish ensnaring of two people’s ineffable pull towards each other. 

35. A Hidden Life (2019)

Still fresh in my mind. Malick’s late style is given the backbone it needed in the form of a relevant tale of resistance and struggle. A meditative, prayer-like film about the power of belief. 

36. Prisoners (2013)

A sixth thing I love about Denis Villeneuve: his movies have layers, but only if you look. Otherwise, the ride is pretty great as well. 

37. Manchester By The Sea (2016)

A masterclass in doing less with more. 

38. Foxcatcher (2014)

Bennett Miller does biopics unlike anyone else. That is to say, maybe better than anyone else working today. 

39. The Witch (2015)

Eggers’s first foray into historical New England horror. A chilling commentary on the evils of puritanism.

40. The Kid With A Bike (2011)

The Dardenne brothers managed to make a gut-wrenching tale of childhood, masculinity, abandonment, the power of empathy, belonging, and redemption in 84 minutes. Here’s a suggestion. Watch this movie. Then watch it again. A better use of the same amount of time it takes to sit through The Irishman. Oh wait, no you still have 30 minutes left over. 

[dogcopter]

Watermelon Mom

This is a "Rose is Lion" post. Super long theory Steven Universe meta post. I originally did a brain dump of similar content (Rose Quartz Is Melon Mutt) with more images, if you need to see the scenes listed there are caps there. This is a more organized text version but the other one has more notes on the art. 

TL;DR: Lion is sometimes being possessed by the Pink Diamond/Rose Quartz character, and that that explains why he knows secrets Rose didn't tell anyone but also genuinely acts like a cat. At this point Rose “faking” her death twice is in fact more plausible than Lion being a 2-dimensional character or Rose having a secret confidant. Every other character in the series has concrete explanations for their behavior, so why wouldn't Lion. End theory. Below cut is a list of scenes and character design thoughts.

My hypothesis is: Lion's behavior is explained by being Rose (see below), AND it's also explained by being a normal (magical tame and cuddly) lion. 

-Based on what we've seen Steven do, a body swap is possible, in which case he could be both Lion and Rose at different times, and there's a reasonable in-universe explanation for all of his contradictory behavior together. 

-Lion is the only character of the main group who hasn't really had character development. 

-Rose has an unresolved character arc that dovetails nicely with Lion's existence (running from the past, hiding things, reinventing herself and leaving her old self behind, etc). 

-Lars and Lion have identical powers and there are things Lion knows that aren’t covered by Lars’ powers that also are characteristic of Rose.

I can’t fathom how it would literally play out in the story, but narratively it makes more sense for Rose to keep her own secrets than reveal them to another living soul, since we saw in A Single Pale Rose that she took pains to even make sure Pearl wouldn’t tell anyone about her past. Lion holds ALL of her secrets. His music is designed with hers. He’s been implicitly linked to her from the start. It also makes more sense that we simply haven’t seen Lion go through a character arc yet than that he is exactly what he seems, when Crewniverse put all this worldbuilding that includes almost every named character around Steven growing and changing in their independent lives. It fits. It fits for a post-Steven learning he is really 100% himself and always was show, even when Steven still has growing to do and personal challenges to face. 

While maybe totally bananas to contemplate right now, Rose appearing is no longer an emotional existential threat to the Crystal Gems because they’ve now grown as people and separated their identities from their relationships to her, even though it would still be bananas. IMHO.

I’m gonna just list points below. I'd appreciate anyone's thoughts on how one can interpret Lion as a character. It’s the only explanation that, to me, accounts for everything.

Lion bio

-Rose had several lions during Buddy's Book. Lion appears in the desert when Steven finds him a couple centuries later.

-She also had a secret place in the desert full of secrets that would compromise her secret identity, and Lion knew about it. 

-At some point Lion died and Rose revived him, but we don't know more than that. 

-Rose put many of her secrets into his mane, including Bismuth, the sword used to perform Pink Diamond's shattering, her Mr. Universe shirt, and whatever the hell was in that chest. 

-Only Steven can open the wormhole to enter Lion’s mane. (Presumably it’s a Pink Diamond thing and Rose would also have been able to when alive.

-Steven found Lion in the desert. Lion followed him home and started participating in Steven's life, although he comes and goes. Lion showed Steven things his mom left behind and started to fight alongside him and Connie. 

-When Steven went in Lion's mane for the first time, he found a tape addressed to him from his mom. 

-That tape is the first first-person appearance of Rose Quartz in the show. The only other one is a nearly-identical tape that appears much later.

-Lion continued to back up Steven and Connie and Stevonnie in fights and act like a housecat at home. Lion stayed behind when the gang went to Homeworld, but otherwise was present for most major group fights.

-(If Lion is in fact the melon dog, he was present for all of them)

Lion powers

Lion ages very slowly, can create warps, use a sonic boom kind of attack, and walk on water. His eyes and mane glow at times and Steven can enter his mane dimension to store objects. Lars and Lion have identical abilities. Steven can travel between them. Lion can run for hours without getting tired, as shown specifically in Lion 4: Alternate Ending, but does get tired out by using his warp magic too much, as seen both times he travels to the moon.

-Absent among Lars' abilities is the ability to locate Steven or intuit knowledge only Steven has. Steven has to bring him care packages and letters and updates for Lars to get the news, and Lars loses Stevonnie in Stranded until they’re able to send out a signal.

Lion travels to places (sometimes, only) Rose has been.

Recap of all of Lion’s travel in the series ep by ep below. 

Beach City warping blanket explanation: For now let’s assume both Rose and normal Lion would have reason to know their way around Beach City, Rose from Greg/living there for so long and Lion from hanging with Steven, although Lion likely hadn’t been there before the start of the series. I will be skipping teleportation around the boardwalk and nearby areas for that reason.

-In Steven's Lion, Lion warps independently from the desert to the beach house. None of the gems knew Rose had a lion, so it's unlikely that Lion had been there before, although not impossible.

-In Lion 2: The Movie, Lion brings Steven and Connie to Rose's armory. Pearl later in Rose's Scabbard tells Steven that this is a place only she and Rose knew about, and that it is a secret even from Garnet and Amethyst.

-In Rose's Scabbard, Lion quickly digs up Rose's lost scabbard from where it dropped after Pearl faked Pink’s death.

-At the end of Rose’s Scabbard, Lion also knows when Pearl has run off to the strawberry battlefield and takes Steven straight there, although they are still basically strangers at the time and a point is made of them not getting along in the episode.

-In Cry for Help, Lion takes the team to the Communication Hub, even though he wasn't there with them before in Coach Steven. However, it is shown on the screen of a computer in the moon base in It Could've Been Great, explicit evidence that Pink Diamond would know about it. (Implicitly, Rose was a Crystal Gem and could have known even were she not Pink. But she was.)

-In It Could've Been Great, Lion teleports to the moon base, which Pink Diamond would have been to. Only Rose and Pearl of the main cast had been there before at that point, and the galaxy warp was destroyed before the corruption, well before Lion was born.

-In Lion 4: Alternate Ending, Lion brings Steven to Rose's landfill, a location known to Rose and this time not known to Pearl.

Lion knows secrets Rose took pains to hide.

Thought: Rose repeatedly kept massive secrets even from her closest friends, tried to erase the past and ran from mistakes, right up until she made Steven. It doesn't track with established behavior that Rose would risk exposing secrets (or challenge herself) by telling someone else. Why does Lion know everything, and if he isn’t Rose, how did he find out?

In Lion 2: The Movie, Lion brings Steven and Connie to the armory that only Pearl knew about.

In Lion 3: Straight to Video, originally in Lion's mane are Bismuth, Rose's sword, the flag of the rebellion, the tape for Steven, the chest and the picture of Rose and Greg.

-Bismuth was betrayed by Rose and would upend her reputation among the Crystal Gems.

-The sword and Bismuth's knowledge would also be incriminating evidence in the faked shattering of Pink Diamond, which was covered up by Rose and Pearl.

-The tape explains exactly where Rose went after the rebellion.

Lion also summons Rose's sword in Lion 2, although he doesn't summon other items, with the exception of the landfill key coughed up in Lion 4. Steven claims Lion can’t get into his own mane; it’s true that only the PD gem can open the wormhole and others can’t enter on their own, including Lars and Lion, but we have seen Lion take the sword out at least.

-In Lion 4: Alternate Ending, Lion of course takes Steven to the landfill. This place also holds incriminating evidence.

-The Nora tape left there contains the same information about Rose Quartz giving up her form.

-The location is framed by the ruins of a PD structure and Pink Diamond's ship. Plus all of the junk. Any gem from Homeworld who found this place could piece the story together.

-Also relevant about the tape, as has been noted many times, Rose wouldn't have known whether the Steven or Nora tape was the correct one to leave for Steven until after she gave up her physical form. Greg says even Garnet couldn’t predict what would happen when Rose attempted what she did.

Lion is sentient and has relationships and tries to communicate. Therefore, he can be regarded as a character designed with personality.

Lion acts like a person in some episodes, particularly the Lion eps. He “talks” to Steven verbally in Steven's Lion, Lion 3, Can't Go Back, and It Could’ve Been Great, to name a few. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those instances are meant to be specific lines. He talks to Steven and Connie both in Lion 2. He responds directly to what Steven is saying in It Could've Been Great, Lion 2, Lion 3 and Lion 4 at minimum and takes battle commands from Steven, Connie, and Stevonnie. He takes Connie's side after Steven returns from Homeworld. He expresses affection and annoyance towards characters. He’s visibly grumpy when Steven hides his Thunderbird shirt in his mane. Et cetera, just watch a Lion episode.

Steven doesn't have a magic psychic destiny.

Confirmed in Lion 4. Rose wanted to make a child and she wanted that child to be loved, that's it. The rest of the plot was just the unfortunate coincidence of Rose's loose ends + mostly just Steven, like his decision to talk to Connie (aw) that set off many of the later events with Lapis and Homeworld.

How would Rose sometimes be possessing Lion logistically

I think Steven's powers have been established in a way that this is plausible. I also think sleep might be the trigger indicating a switch between Rose-as-Lion and Lion-Lion, like in the start of Steven's Lion. As a lion Lion sleeps a lot and Steven's astral projection type powers tend to come back to a change in his state of consciousness as well.

-Sidenote, in Know Your Fusion, Sardonyx says her room only exists for as long as she does. Rose’s room has never stopped existing.

Steven's "psychic ghost" powers & that dimension. (pay no attention to Ronaldo astral projecting by the stove)

-In Reunited, Steven sees people's consciousness and their bodies as separate constructions.

-The poofed gems don't have little psychic ghosts but their gemstones are there, for the others it shows their whole body dormant with their personality in miniature on top.

-Steven is able to reach the Diamonds emotionally in that space and get them to recognize his gem. He can communicate, albeit indirectly.

Thought: This could answer the question of "she's gone". After all,

-in Nora’s tape in Lion 4, one of the only lines that has changed in Rose’s speech is “We can’t both exist, but I won’t be gone.” This is one of the two times in the series we explicitly see Rose speak for herself and she uses the same words as Steven’s gem half.

Is it possible that Rose in “giving up her physical form” gave up her literal physical form - her gemstone - without destroying the “psychic ghost” part of her personality? We still don't know the ins and outs of the gem body/personality connection, but we know gems' minds and projected bodies are damaged differently by strong emotions vs. damage to the gemstone vs corruption, and we know they're capable of fusion, which causes an entirely new personality to emerge from two gems who are also their own people.

Steven and dreams

Seen in: Steven's Dream is about Steven having a Pink Diamond dream. Steven, while dreaming, spoke to Lapis in Chille Tid when she was inside Malachite. Steven traveled into Kiki's dreams and changed them in Kiki's Pizza Delivery Service. Steven also had various strange Pink Diamond memory dreams like the ones in Can't Go Back, Jungle Moon, and Together Alone. Steven demonstrably has some ability to get into people’s heads and leave his own, sometimes even affecting what’s in there. Technically he even stopped White by getting into her head ;-)

Body hijacking

-Steven occupies the bodies of two different Watermelon Stevens in Super Watermelon Island, and one in Escapism.

-He also took over Lars's body in The New Lars.

-He doesn't need to take his gem along, but he does need to be asleep in his own body.

-He can do so across great distances, as in Escapism he's in Homeworld at the time.

-Unlike a fusion it is not a new person or a combination of people occupying the same headspace, he takes over completely and behaves as himself but wearing another form.

-Lars doesn't have any memory of what his body has been doing when it is returned to him.

-Both Lars and the Watermelons are organic; we have NOT seen Steven take over a gem's body either like he does with Lars and the melons, or like White Diamond does.

This is where the watermelons come in.

-In Super Watermelon Island, the same melon dog finds Steven twice after he loses the first body he hijacked and appears to recognize him. Originally it comes to him right away, but later it finds him when he returns and is speaking in front of everyone in the cave.

-In Escapism, a different melon dog finds Steven immediately and follows him around.

There is one other character who behaved this way towards Steven when he first appeared - sought him out to act as an animal companion with no independent motivation or goal - and that character is Lion.

At the end of Escapism, the melon dog watches Steven float away while frowning. Steven runs into hazards on the sea, and eventually Lion shows up to rescue him.

I believe that PD-Rose-Lion is also the melon dogs (which also would act as precedent to the body swapping aspect of the Lion/Rose situation for future payoff) and that Lion found Steven on the open ocean because he saw the general direction and region he drifted off in. After all, unlike this rescue, every time he’s found Steven in the rest of the series, there’s an explanation, and Lars with his identical powers cannot find Steven.

But Lion is just a lion. He acts like a cat and eats lizards.

Even though Steven Universe is a cartoon, every character still behaves with an internal consistency even when they're very exaggerated. It's actually part of their cartoonishness that their core traits are emphasized? Only with Lion is there this duality of, sometimes he's more "cat", sometimes he's more "person". Maybe he is just a cat mascot but it feels contradictory to the thoughtful design of the rest of the cast if they chose to make this character totally static while everyone else from Peridot to Sour Cream is getting development and upending tropes and gender norms.

Conclusion: Lion is only sometimes Rose, and sometimes just her very tame immortal lion.

In Steven's Lion, they make a point of showing Lion's eyes glowing at certain points before he takes action in a more motivated way or responds to Steven. This also happens in Rose's Scabbard and It Could’ve Been Great. Across Lion’s episodes the glowing eyes are usually accompanied either by use of another magic power (mane) or by a switch from more catlike behavior to more characterlike behavior. I think this might be a body swap visual indicator.

Characters are designed with motivation for their behavior. There’s a reason for every design decision in the show.

So, ok, let’s say Lion's behavior is motivated by caring for Steven. But what about when he first found Steven, then? Was he just really loyal to Rose and grew to love Steven later? If he’s just Lion, why did Rose trust him with the secrets she hid from everyone else?

If we assume Crewniverse has an explanation for character motivations, even the animals (Pumpkin! She loved Steven but learned to fear death more. Now it has her. RIP) would the backstory around Lion’s death and revival explain his choice to protect Steven as, for example, out of devotion or a debt to Rose?

Would that explanation track with the other messages in the show, after the four main cast members have finally divested of Rose-dependent personal narratives? Wasn’t that kinda the whole point? If Lion really is just a mascot, do you think the show overlooked the obvious implications for the sake of having a cool magic animal, or might there be a reason he is the way he is?

Also, we see Lion’s personality. Does Lion really not have a character beyond his role in Steven's life? Is some connection to Steven's gem compelling Lion or inspiring magical animal affection? I can see that there are a lot of options but I don’t believe these explanations are thematically consistent in Steven Universe. It doesn’t quite track with the level of detail and lore put into everything else.

His episodes are all about Steven and Rose. His behavior is motivated by a) being a cat or b) being helpful to Steven and protecting and teaching him.

The only explanation for his behavior is that he was clearly connected to Rose and therefore he has some kind of magical connection to Steven and/or Rose and/or the gem itself.

If you think of Lion as a character, that means he's been helping Steven for a reason. What is the reason in this case? His knowledge and behavior tracks with what we know of Rose Quartz's character, and an alternative explanation tends to contradict it in equal measure. Rose is the other major character who is treated differently than most of the cast in terms of character arc. 

The most obvious explanation makes the most sense at this point. Also, this would really mess with Steven. It would dig up so many of the personal issues he has been pushing aside. And it sounds like that’s what we’ll be getting in Future so wouldn’t it fit? 

Link to sound clip It also struck me that in this podcast episode, when they answered questions about Lars and Lion they were excited and went into detail about the mechanics, except for when it came to the question about Lion finding Steven. I think that scene is important.

Idk, what do you think about Lion after all this time? What are the other possibilities, given what we know?

[sageofmagic-squeaks]

To start, 2D animators and 3D animators are both animators and are both skilled in their crafts. 2D is not inheritably better and this is on par with the traditional vs digital artist debate with people thinking the technology does all the work for you. 

For background on me, I’ve animated both ways. I did animations on paper, 2D digital animations in photoshop and clip, 3D animation in maya, and mocap with a program I forgot the name of. Each has their own benefits and all are valid ways to animate. They also each have their own feel and also can cross into each other as we’re seeing now with 3D models trying to take from 2D effects.

2D animation (referring to pen on paper methods or the digital equivalent without puppetry/computer tweens) is great for exaggeration and a very clearly human touch. You can go absolutely wild and your limit is your skill, time, and imagination. When I say skill, this varies WILDLY. Not every 2D animator is gifted with the perspective knowledge of gods. There is a good reason animators lose their collective minds over James Baxter. Understanding how fake objects move through fake space and making it seem REAL and consistent is a challenge.

Speaking of consistent...that’s a problem in itself because no two artists draw alike. Remember all the complaints for Steven Universe because the style would vary so much between episodes depending on the artist?

Yeah this is just a very common thing but it’s usually a lot more subtle. In fairness to SU, this was intentional and imo endearing to the show. But usual practice is for all artists to follow the singular model sheet as close as possible so that the average viewer can’t distinguish who did what and it all looks consistent. This is much easier said than done, especially when your character has to do dramatic movements or get into odd perspectives that the model sheet won’t cover.

Another problem with 2D is complicated design and actions. Ever wonder why 90% of anime is standing and talking with only specific episodes dedicated to sakuga fanfare? Ever wonder why Disney can have such silky smooth movements but tv animation can sometimes look stiff and jank? Combo of time, money, and how much you want to make an animator cry. 

All that being said though, 2D animation is absolutely LOVELY and has incredible room for stylization. 

3D animation solves a lot of problems mentioned with 2D while introducing a lot more...teeeechnical know how. 

Lets Start With Positives 

Your model is always consistent because everyone gets the same one to move around

You don’t have to draw every single frame between key poses which leaves room for more polish as well as much faster edits. Don’t like how that arm moved? No need to redraw, you can simply grab the arm and readjust on the fly.

The model and environment exist in front of you, making it easier to understand the space you have to work with. Also you can go hog wild on camera and angled shots. This means dynamic fight scenes like this are much more achievable and can really emphasize the action. 

I want to make it clear on that last statement that when I say more achievable I do not mean this is ‘easy’. There is MAJOR skill at play, but instead of the animator in question having to focus on how the body warps with perspective, where details on clothes go, keeping facial structure looking good, etc they can put all their energy into the motion itself. And have energy for more than one big shot! 

Cons

The 3D program hates your existence and wants nothing more than to watch you and your entire studio burn

The 3D program will do everything in its power to do the stupidest things you cannot predict. Why is every single model suddenly 2 feet off the ground when you opened the file? Who freakin knows.

The model and objects will break and you will not know why.

There’s a lot of set up to make this work. Hence why there’s concept artists, modelers, riggers, technical artists, animators, lighting team, rendering etc. It’s also not one and done. When I was asked to animate, the model was still being tweaked, the rig would break and I’d have to report it so it could be adjusted. It’s a constant communication to make sure it works together smoothly. 

The model has limitations. Think of a old school Barbie Doll versus a Ball Jointed Doll. One has much more mobility than the other and that’s the same with 3D. The model starts as just a stiff doll doing a T or A pose 

If you want something that can do fluid animation like 2D, you need to spend a lot of extra time telling the computer HOW this thing should move and making sure this doll won’t break on you. 

Eugene’s faces here are a work of art. 

Also despite having the 3D model in the 3D environment, there is absolutely no collision. Ever play a game and run through something you shouldn’t have like a tree or rock? Or see a videogame that picks up a cup and it looks hilariously dumb? That’s everything. If you want the character to pick up an object you need to rely on technical means and wizardry else it will phase through their hand. When I last had a character pick up a pen, I needed to specify what frame the object would attach to the ‘wrist’ and then spent the whole scene making sure said pen didn’t pierce through anything. 

So after all the negatives, why work in 3D? Despite the heavy initial set up, it really does save so much time and money. Plus once you get past that initial learning curve the ability to pose and fix quickly is extremely valuable. 

I personally prefer to work in 3D as someone with ADHD. My goal as an animator isn’t really about showing off technical prowess as the camera sweeps around my drawing. My enjoyment comes from character acting and the mechanical motion itself. So by working in 3D, instead of starting at point blank I’m given something already to focus on and a very clear directive. Plus it’s not like my entire identity as an animator is stripped this way either. Everyone has their own approach to acting. Also I just really REALLY like studying how animals move.

(Not animated sadly, but making this dog run back in college was a highlight for me)

And while I’m here...mocap. Mocap is still animation and still takes a hell of a good eye to make it work. When I did it, I was handling the whole thing start to finish. I made a sheet for the actions needed, had to suit up the actor, had to make sure the cameras and programs were working in sync and reading the actor, then had to take the data from that, clean it up, and attach it to the model it was intended for. 

Mocap is great for when you need a HUGE batch of animations for something or want to get that specific actor’s approach to a scene. In my case I was doing videogame animations. Suit up knowledge requires knowing where the tracking orbs go and how it applies to different body types. Trust me when I say not everyone works in the suit. Some people have THE PERFECT skeleton to read off of and others the camera just doesn’t like them for some reason or another. You really don’t know until you got your actor on stage. Those orbs will fall off too if you’re not careful so you need to be aware. 

Setting up cameras was pretty routine once you know it. Then comes the acting which...is a huge mileage may vary situation. I actually had my best luck pulling fellow animators into the suit because when I asked them to exaggerate motions for the camera they knew exactly how to deliver. Subtle acting for mocap isn’t the best unless you have a whole lot of tracking on them. Never got to suit up a pro stuntman for anything which is a shame. Anyways, the animation part comes from taking all this data and cleaning it. You have the core motion which speeds the process along, but it is far from perfect. The feet are not on the ground and constantly wiggle in place. Tracking orbs will get blocked by limbs and the program will get needlessly confused. I had an actor bend over to pick something up and the program decided to switch the tracking of the toe and neck so the model looked like a pretzel.

And you’re not done after clean up. Again this is just the base. From there, the animator can tweak things to be more exaggerated or emphasize any acting that was lost. 

Man, this got long winded. But the point is that 2D? 3D? Mocap? Hybrid? We’re experiencing an age where there’s a lot of new tech. We saw the ugly baby start of 3D and its rise into what I feel is an exciting new exploration period. And we sure as hell haven’t forgotten our roots with 2D. One isn’t better than the other and animators are animators no matter which they prefer to work in. 

Dunno about you all, but I’m pretty excited about what we’re coming up with these days.

[lookinghbo]

'Looking' Made Raúl Castillo A Sex Symbol. Sheer Force Made Him A Star.

In New York, in the middle of July, if the fickle subway system allows it, you’d be wise to arrive at a destination 10 minutes early. You’ll need that time to let the sweat evaporate, to stamp out the damp spots that have betrayed your outfit.

Raúl Castillo forfeited his chance to cool down before shaking my hand at a Manhattan hotel restaurant on a sweltering Thursday morning. I didn’t mind. It was an honest mistake.

The “Looking” star was running slightly late and looking slightly frazzled when he bounded toward our table. He’d confused this hotel for another within walking distance where, the previous night, Castillo had attended a screening of the new Alexander McQueen documentary with his girlfriend, the costume designer Alexis Forte, who has the late fashion maverick’s biography at their Brooklyn apartment.

It’s cute to see celebrities frayed, even ones who are still building their marquee value. Castillo is the type who hasn’t yet abandoned public transportation when navigating the city, even though it’s becoming harder to do so without attracting strangers’ gazes. While trekking home from the “McQueen” event, a Latina teenager tapped him to say she loved “Atypical,” the Netflix series in which Castillo played a charismatic bartender sleeping with Jennifer Jason Leigh’s married character. The teenager’s mother loved “Seven Seconds,” the Netflix series in which Castillo played a narcotics detective tending to a racially charged investigation.

Raúl Castillo: a guy you can bring home to Mom, punctual or otherwise.

It’s his voice that people recognize, the 40-year-old actor said, a modest notion considering his breakthrough role as the sensitive barber Richie on “Looking” made Castillo a veritable heartthrob, despite the HBO show’s modest ratings. But it’s true that his warm baritone gravel is a distinguishing trait. Earlier this year, when I saw “Unsane,” Steven Soderbergh’s scrappy iPhone thriller set inside a mental institution, I recognized Castillo’s intonation before his face appeared onscreen.

That’s a significant feat. Castillo mumbled so much as an adolescent that a teacher recommended he see a speech therapist. He refused, instead reminding himself to enunciate or else using the impediment as a defense mechanism. “I have all these things wrong with my voice,” Castillo said, though few today would agree.

Castillo’s cadence may be growing familiar, but fame hardly seems like his long game. This is, after all, a guy who studied playwriting ― hardly the creative pursuit that commands the brightest spotlight ― at Boston University, after which he paid about $300 a month to live in a garage in Austin and perform local Chicano theater. “We the Animals,” a Sundance indie opening this weekend, marks the first time Castillo is the one generating a project’s star power. He portrays the father of three tight-knit boys storming through a wooded town in upstate New York. The movie, adapted from Justin Torres’ autobiographical novel of the same name, combines elements of “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “Moonlight” to capture a domestic home life that’s equal parts tender and volatile, where abuse and affection are equally common.

Castillo’s enthusiasm about “We the Animals,” and about the possibly of again working with its director, Jeremiah Zagar (“Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart”), speaks to his ambivalence toward the celebrity ecosystem.

“He could be like Tom Cruise without the child slavery,” Zagar said, roasting the “Mission: Impossible” moneymaker’s Scientology association (and its alleged history of forced manual labor). “Raúl’s that kind of a dude. He’s a perfect-looking dude, and yet he’s incredibly real and honest and true. There’s never a false note. He’s also incredibly collaborative. As a director, that’s a wonderful thing. I didn’t know what I was doing, really, because I had never directed a narrative before, and Raúl had a way of making me feel comfortable and confident in my own beliefs and my own material. He’s so seasoned and so clear about what he needs to do to make a scene work and a character work and to elevate other people around him.”

It’s a small movie with grainy aesthetics and an impressionistic lyricism ― in no way the kind of thing that will make a killing at the box office. For someone who first fell in love with theater by discovering the plays of Puerto Rican and Mexican writers like Miguel Piñero and Luis Valdez in his high school library, playing the complicated patriarch of a mixed-race family feels like a destiny fulfilled. (Sheila Vand, star of the Iranian horror gem “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” plays Castillo’s wife.) At this point, opportunities to extend his commercial footprint ― guest spots as a cannibal on “Gotham” and a music teacher on “Riverdale,” for example ― will find Castillo one way or another.

“I’ve always felt that I was never cookie-cutter,” he said. “For as much as I tried to fit my square peg into round holes, constantly, my whole career, I could never do it. Whenever I read ‘We the Animals,’ I didn’t think I would be cast in that film. [...] I felt viewed more as a Richie. People think I tend to find those roles easier than I do a role like this, ’cause it’s harsh. I knew that I could do it. I’m so grateful for both Jeremiah and Justin, who did see that in me.”

Born in McAllen, Texas, a midsize agricultural town that sits on the Mexican border, Castillo’s triumphs were born out of people believing in him at the exact right moments. He belongs to a first-generation immigrant family, even if home was a mere 10 miles down the road. Castillo didn’t feel othered, but his dual identity instilled a sort of anti-establishment fluster.

“I just saw a lot of bullshit in the structures that were established for me,” he said. “I found a lot of hypocrisies. People valued money, and I think when I was very young, I valued money and I didn’t have it. I think I hated myself for it.”

Slowly shedding the Catholic mysticism that once awed him, he took up bass and played in punk bands. When his friend Tanya Saracho, who would go on to write for “Looking” and “How to Get Away with Murder,” likened his GPA to a lifeline out of McAllen, Castillo decided to care about school. But in Boston, he was suddenly the minority. His “bad attitude” kept him out of second-year acting courses, until mentorship from a professor of color let Castillo understand that he shouldn’t punish himself for being subjected to an overwhelmingly white institution. And when he moved to New York in 2002, his pal Mando Alvarado, now a writer for “Greenleaf” and “Vida” (on which Castillo will soon appear), posited presentation as a mark of self-worth; if he didn’t put care into his résumé and headshot, why should anyone put care into hiring him?

Of course, when success takes years to manifest, it’s easy to forget the lessons you’ve learned. Living with four or five roommates at once, Castillo worked his way into the Labyrinth Theater Company, an experimental off-Broadway troupe founded by Philip Seymour Hoffman and John Ortiz. He still wanted to be a writer ― in high school, Castillo only ever acted to impress girls anyway ― but in 2006 he found himself starring in a Labyrinth production of “School of the Americas,” a play by “Motorcycle Diaries” scribe José Rivera. The acting bug stuck. In 2009, his play “Knives and Other Sharp Objects,” a multigenerational drama about class in Texas, opened off-Broadway, earning a mixed review from The New York Times.

Still, nothing quite lasted. The business side of things was grueling, and his coffee-shop gigs were getting old, even if he did count Lili Taylor and RuPaul as customers. An agent sent him on auditions for “huge” Hollywood movies ― which ones, Castillo wouldn’t say ― but dropped him after none proved fruitful. He was ready to give up altogether when “Looking” came around. Castillo had starred in the short film that became a prototype for the series. Its director, Michael Lannan, called him to audition for Richie (the character he’d initially played) and Augustin (a more prominent Latino character who worked as an artist’s assistant). He didn’t land either role, even though he’d originated one of them.

But by the time “Looking” was a week away from shooting, a Richie still hadn’t been cast. The producers called Castillo to read for Andrew Haigh, the gifted English director who shepherded the half-hour dramedy. Haigh had seen Castillo in an indie mystery called “Cold Weather” that gave him “street cred.” Crashing on John Ortiz’s couch in Hell’s Kitchen, wondering what else he could do with his life, Castillo was at a bar one night when he received an email with a contract attached. He had no representation to negotiate his salary, but it didn’t matter: After living check to check, he was on HBO.

“I was like, ‘Yes. Take my soul. I don’t care. Pay me. I need money,’” Castillo recalled. “I needed not just a paycheck but the affirmation. I needed something artistically that I could sink my teeth into that had value to it. Something that was substantial. Something that had a real point of view. I needed a character that gave me a platform to do what I do in a really great scale in the best way possible. And it ended up being that. That show was such a great gift to me.”

All of Castillo’s ensuing fortune can be linked to “Looking.” It made him a sex symbol, a love interest, a fan favorite, a rising star whose claim to fame meant a great deal to anyone hungry for frank depictions of queer intimacy. Richie was the good-natured, self-righteous ideal ― a perfect counterpoint for Patrick (Jonathan Groff), the series’ unsettled protagonist. It became gay viewers’ great disappointment when they learned that Castillo, their anointed hunk, was in fact straight.

“His inability to be fake as a person translates directly into his acting,” Groff said. “There is nothing extraneous or false about Raúl, and he brought a grounded, honest integrity to the character that absolutely no one else could have. He’s also just innately magic on screen and has that ‘it’ factor.”

Perhaps it was Castillo’s dual identity as a Mexican-American that helped him shine as a gay, blue-collar Californian who was sure of himself despite being rejected by his family. It’s certainly what lets him shine as the cash-strapped paterfamilias, caught between unremitting love for his kin and an inescapable pattern of violence, in “We the Animals.” This dyad comes at time when Castillo sees his identity splashed across the evening news.

McAllen houses the U.S. Border Patrol’s busiest hub for detaining immigrants suspected of entering the country illegally. While Castillo was vacationing in Europe and playing make-believe on sets, children were being ripped from their parents’ arms in his hometown.

“I would always have to explain where McAllen was, and now it’s this name you’re seeing constantly in the news for all these reasons that represent, for me, everything that’s wrong with this country,” Castillo said. “It was paralyzing. I was sitting in a beach in Europe, wondering why I deserved to be there. My parents had access to this country in ways that people who are coming from longer distances don’t. We had the great gift of citizenship, which is an incredible privilege. But my parents were immigrants, and they navigated that dynamic our entire lives. I saw my mom and my dad deal with all the insecurities and all the precarious nature of what being an immigrant in this country is. [...] Having grown up going back and forth across the border throughout my whole life, it’s disheartening and upsetting to see what’s happening. And then to think about this particular movie that deals with children, who are especially in that age when their minds are being formed and their view of the world is taking shape, to think about [the ones] locked in cages is enraging.”

Castillo may be miles from that crisis now, but he’s done more to better the world for brown people than he can know. His goal hasn’t been to diversity Hollywood roles written for white ensembles; it’s been to find work that naturally accentuates the grooves of his Latino heritage. He saw almost no Chicano role models in popular culture growing up, and now he is writing and starring in artistic endeavors that paint all shades of the human experience ― gay, poor, brown, cannibalistic, whatever ― with a dynamic brush.

Which isn’t to say everything’s gotten easy. He was slated to play the lead in “Mix Tape” (a musical drama set in Los Angeles) and appear on “One Day at a Time” (the Norman Lear reboot), but has since exited both series and would rather not disclose why. I got the sense, during our two-hour breakfast, that Castillo is still protective of how he is perceived. Maybe he always will be. He’s comfortable reflecting on his upbringing and his relationship with race ― concepts he’s spent his whole life processing ― but being candid about recent setbacks, as routinely asked of celebrities in interviews, does not yet come easy.

It’s the “ego business bullshit” that still eats at him. It’s what eats at most of us. But when someone makes a name for himself, that burden slowly fades to the periphery, replaced by a newfound comfort, even power. The man who once served RuPaul coffee now shares an agent with the drag dignitary.

“For so long, it was all feast or famine,” Castillo said. “I just took work when I could take it. And at this point, I’m in a new place where I want to be more thoughtful about the roles that I take on from here on out. The projects, the roles, the people. I’ve learned so much in the journey that now I want to apply all that and also honor my experience, because at this point I want to work with people who challenge me in all the right ways and push me to become a better actor and a better artist.”

[fuckblizzardbearlover]

Pink Diamond And Why You are Objectively Wrong

Why anti pink diamond naysayers are wrong under the cut

The problem is that all the negative propaganda i’ve seen about Rose (yall should stop Dead-naming her probably) is that its all based on nothing.

Evidence doesnt matter only wild speculation? You want a character to be bad so thats all you see

the apparent philosophy is that Rose should have used her authority to try to stop the colonization. The problem is that there was no evidence she didnt. People spent WEEKS talking about it. We dont know jack squat about homeworld other than what the Crystal Gems have told Steven, what we saw in the Trial and what we’ve heard Peridot say. There was no reason after we found that out to think that “Pink Diamond” DIDNT do everything she could. People made the Assumption and went about that.

Expecting a single person to completely overthrow society is nuts but not as nuts as assuming people are bad until proven otherwise

Yet after learning she did some people still arent satisfied. Saying that she should have openly rebelled....Despite NO evidence that could ever work.

See we dont know anything really about gem society, we dont know how diamond Authority works, how the armies are structured, how Big the empire is. We dont KNOW. But instead of deciding to give the benefit of the doubt, they are deciding to assume the worst. Thats a choice and a baseless one at that.

Thats just...not how people work. Most people are good. even people supporting horrible things can be good, and their problem is that they’ve been misled by misinformation, by propoganda, were raised wrong.

You give people the benefit of the doubt, and only stop when they have PROVEN to not show any progress and no intention of ever trying to change.

The problem is we DO know some things. 

Its safe to assume that in a kids show that good people are good even if they make mistakes even bad ones

We know that Rebecca Sugar is allegedly a good person, as are the developers of the show. We know that its a cartoon show meant for kids, and so its suppose to have a positive message.

So in the light of a lack of information one would assume that since Rose is a GOOD character that she tried everything she could think of.

Just ask Princess Leia why a single woman cant save the galaxy

And we DO have info on why an open rebellion wouldnt work.  We DO know that their empire is galactic, that hundreds of worlds of gems are out there, that its pretty easy for even a fusion like Alexandrite to be outclassed by a mere two gems, that they have weapons to destabalize the forms of gems. We DO know they have instantaneous transportation (Galactic Warps). We have every reason and mountains of evidence that a full galactic war with Earth would have been won easily by homeworld.

We DO know that any gem seen as ‘unfit’ whether they came out wrong or not doing their job has a high chance of being shattered and harvested (i’.e. broken, and their life sucked out killing them. because remember shattering isnt killing its shattering. HARVESTING would kill a gem).

With these two important pieces of information we can make the SAFE assumption with no wild mass guessing that any Open war with homeworld that resulted in the full brunt of Homeworlds military power would have easily  overpowered the gems. That the colonization which based on We’re all falling apart, happens with minimal interaction from a Diamond, would have continued, all life including the ancestors of the current 8 billion humans would have been killed. And every gem on the planet, whether a loyalist, P.D.’s army or Crystal gem would have been murdered and their bodies used to fuel Loyal gems.

“but Pink Diamond could have fought till the end, used her army...”

Could she? where is the evidence. She wanted to stop the gem way of life, stop the colony and the other Diamonds just thought she was being lazy. She didnt want to kill human cities and the Diamonds thought she was just lazy. Gems like Peridot or Agate’s dont even doubt their way of life and understand what any other is. they are sheltered to the point they dont know what weather is. If P.D. gave the order to stop colonization would her armies just laugh at her saying “oh those Diamonds are so funny!”? We know from that same episode that Diamonds dont even interact with the troops, she was expected to not even step foot on earth. allegedly spending the last thousand years stuck on the moon base giving commands through a computer. So we can assume that colonization is fairly automated with gems knowing what their general purpose is, obeying the next higher up with Diamonds being mostly a figure head answering questions that confuse their underlings like “do we go ahead and murder all these people?” or what structures to build.

If open war did start and she actually  fought homeworld from earth....does she even have any space ships? she had 1 kindergarden worth of Amethysts vs  the entire homeworlds. is 100,000 to 1 good odds?

“well maybe the entirety of the Army wouldnt be brought to bare”.

THERE ARE LITERALLY ONLY 4 PEOPLE IN THE GALAXY WHOS LIFE MATTERS AND 1 OF THEM REBELS AND YOU THINK THEY ARE GOING TO JUST LET HER?

A DIAMOND, the ONLY entity in homeworld whos life is valued? Openly rebelling against gem society? You dont think that would have got their attention? we saw from the other episodes that they see her as a stupid lazy child whos SUPPOSE to be a galactic commander. They didnt listen to her because they thought she needed to learn how to completely obliterate a planet on her own like a Diamond is suppose to. They’ve repeatedly shown that not only do they not value organic life they dont value any life but a diamonds. The concept of destroying their way of life to protect some easily  harvested gems and easily squished bloody pulps of humanoids  would be seen as some weird crazy idiot thing the Kid Diamond was doing. From the Evidence of the well documented lack of care for life we know homeworld has, and the Evidence of how the Diamonds view P.D. we can extrapolate that they might do something like Either blow up Earth and “start over” but maybe with supervision, or just automate the construction and “ground’ P.D. while she got reeducated and given another colony in a few thousand years..

BUT DESPITE ALL THIS EVIDENCE WE STILL DONT KNOW BECAUSE WE BARELY KNOW JACK SQUAT ABOUT GEM SOCIETY

so we dont know For sure if all this evidence points to the proper conclusion. My point is that we Dont know what could have happened and what options they had, but we DO know the tone of the show, intent of the author so its safe to say even if Rose didnt magically know the perfect way to rebel that she tried everything she could think of. saying she should have done this or done that is like saying “X war would have ended sooner if the allies had just magically known that these bases up here were working off a skeleton crew and a blitzkrieg would have easily broken through to the capital”

So yes if We Dont know the Details, but you Still Assume the Worst, then Its Your Own Fault and has nothing to do with the story. I saw someone post about how we got a non reaction from Greg...but...why would we? Rose was  a hero, it doesnt matter to him if in some war that took place a thousand year before his greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat grandparents were born the rebel leader USED to be one of the homeworld leaders.

the reason this person was mad was because they extrapolated despite no evidence that P.D. did something wrong, because Allegedly (based on no evidence) she could have rebelled in a better way (using “Baby’s First Rebellion handbook, no doubt”).  OF COURSE GREG DIDNT HAVE A PROBLEM WITH IT, he already knew she fought a war to save earth and she won and Earth is saved. The outrage over this is artificial, fake and has no basis in fact!

So yes like i said twice already we dont have all the details and its wrong to assume the worst....

EXCEPT

We do have SOME Details, and not the ones i just listed. We have evidence that what Rose did was good because of what happened.

We DONT know if more gems could be saved, we DONT know if the war could have been ended early, we DONT know whether or not open war would have worked.

But we DO know She wanted to scare the gems off first, she wanted to save earth without a SINGLE person getting hurt, not one human, not one gem. Yes its apparently traumatic to get Poofed otherwise Saphire wouldnt have refered to it as a sacrifice, however we know its ultimately Harmless. Obviously Roses plan was to make the Colony not worth it. But because the Diamonds are shitty people and thought Pink was just being lazy it didnt work and so things had to escalate

We ALSO know that Blue Diamond arrived to oversee the end of the rebellion. Seeing as Pink wasnt even allowed to go onto her own planet it seems safe to assume troop deployment was based on Blues command, so peoples conspiracy that Pink sent out her own troops to fight the crystal gems is baseless with evidence against.

There isnt enough information to know whether P.D.’s plan was a sound one but we KNOW that P.D. was the closest to the other diamonds, if they didnt show enough love to Pink to convince her she mattered it was the Diamonds Fault not Pinks, for not picking up love where none existed. And we can assume based on her characterization that if she knew that the Diamonds would retaliate with evil in their hearts, rather than just leave out of disappointment, she WOULDNT have done that. Again blame the person who fires the bullet, not the person who denied the gunman’s feelings. stop blaming the victim.

And we DO know that Earth was saved. As i said i think there is a high possiblity Earth would be obliterated if Pink rebelled. Essentially the child doesnt want to shoot their dog, so the parents do it for them. But we DONT know. But we DO know that Rose’s decision lead to saving literally billions of lives.

And we DO know that not a single gem life was lost. yes its tragic that many gems were corrupted, but we know based on centipeedle they can be made to be happy and are in peace in their bubbles till they can be cured,  And despite thousands of years of torture, the gem shards are now at piece, and may be able to live a fulfilling life in the future as a fusion. We know based on all evidence that a broken gem is still alive, just disoriented from having its body not attatched. So the only lives lost were whatever humans fought for their freedom, and a few thousand gems were critically injured. I’d say a few thousand casualties is a small price to pay in any war.

We DO know that the Crystal Gems legitimately thought they were safe on earth, thought all dead, As we learned in “alternate ending” that Rose didnt even WANT steven she just wanted to have a child and have them grow up. No magical gem destiny. We DO know that Earth is safe and in good hands. And there is a possibility that even all the gems who were shattered may one day be happy again.

We DONT know what could have happened if Pink openly rebelled. But the only way to be ‘better” is things lead to a few more crystal gems being unshattered. but it also might have meant millions dead.

We DO know that her decision worked out for the best. Stevens happy, Gregs, happy, Pearl is happy, Garnet is happy, Peridot is Happy, offcolors can migrate to earth, corrupted gems can achieve happyness despite their disability, and shattered gems can find piece

So Stop going out of your way to ruin this for yourselves and being angry

[furashuban]

An Outhouse Phantom

my first submission to @lapidot-week . this was a challenging fic to write and i hope you guys enjoy.

Day 3 Prompt: Haunting/Ghost Hunting

AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12524416

Summary:  Two paranormal investigators are asked to go and inspect an abandoned barn that is greatly rumored to be haunted by a vicious entity. 

Words: 6.1k

a little angst and gore warning on this one (hopefully that’s allowed). so for that, i’m gonna heavily apologize if i took some parts a bit too far .

Reported findings of odd and ghost like activities were being rumored by random teenagers and elders, telling stories that they were wandering around an open field in the middle of dusk for dalliance or curiosity. They would bump into this structure sooner or later. It was an empty red barn, possibly abandoned for decades, and they let their curiousness make them wander even more. But some would come back to tell that accounts of what happened, while some would never came back as told.

They enlightened the play-by-play as evident as they can. One goes in and saunters further to discover the artifacts of a pilot, and then the activity occurs from there. The sound of repeated footsteps and grumbling would be heard behind the trespassers. As an outcome, they emulated anxiety and a feeling that they were being observed. Soon items and boxes would clatter to the ground on their own. Sometimes, plane engines would start up autonomously and jumps scare the driven trespassers. Then finally someone, or something, would begin to actually grasp their limbs. And if possible, it managed to reach their souls.

“It looked at me. Spoke to me. It wanted me dead grinned like a mad reaper.” Some added vaguely.

It was never clarified for sure whether it was human, animal, dead or alive. But it aggressively distressed its bolted victims and it was swift as wind. Of course, not everyone would come to believe the accounts. Indeed it was too superstitious to be true. Heck, even a little too cliché to be real at all. An abandoned shelter? In the middle of the field in late hours? And a beast is said to repose in the location? It was right out of a fictional horror story.

And yet it wouldn’t be so false if it traumatized the story tellers so drastically.

October 31. Halloween Night.

The accounts were suddenly getting out of hand all over town. And to many, it was certainly getting bothersome. It was time for someone, or two people for this matter, to put an end to the stories spread by strangers on the sidewalk and determine whether the barn haunting is a reality or a hoax…

Paranormal investigators ‘Lapis and Peridot Warren’ were the best and only certified experts of their jobs in town. For a while, they were involved in numerous but infamous cases of hauntings, and even dispelling ethereal encounters. The Beach City Lighthouse Haunting and the Dead Man’s Mouth Haunting were two out of a hundred cases they have solved. But these couple was a fitting couple, an obsessed and artistic who bunch who understood each other when no one else did.

In Halloween morning, a hasty priest from a nearby church rushed to their outlying home and entreated them to finally explore the countryside. He conveyed along some evidence to their house’s workplace, most of them obviously being recorded videos and photographs by the barn’s trespassers to prove them cognizance of the haunting. It was all there. The repetitive footsteps, the collided items, even glimpses of the entity haunting the outhouse. But all that was grasped was glimmering yellow eyes with a large silhouette.

“This must be helpful, right?” he enquired cogency of the proofs. “Please, I’ve already been approached about this absurd occurrence for a few days now, and there’s no one else I can confront to sanction this request other than you two.”

The couple only had to do was just confirm that they will accept their trip.

“So what do ya say, Lapis?” Peridot asks in the other side of the workspace. “Should we solve this case or does this look like wind-up to you?”

“Hmm. I don’t know.” Lapis answers. “I’m going to be honest, Peridot, a lot of the actions in the clips we saw looked sort of fake. And so do the images. They seem kind of edited or something like that.”

“I have the same idea too. We really can’t accept this offer right away…You do remember the last time someone walked up to us and claimed that they had seen some kind of ghost haunting, right?”

There was this one time. A bunch of arbitrary visitors claimed to have seen a ‘possessed demonic’ child trying to ransack the boardwalk. And after confronting the family and already preparing a full-proof exorcism, it turns out the child named Onion was just a rather audacious juvenile who lacked the desire to speak. This caused the two investigators to be mortified and promised to be careful next time.

“Okay sure, we haven’t been getting a lot of demands lately, let alone successful ones.” Lapis says. “But then again, a lot of our cases have been proven right before, despite skeptics saying that we’re crazy.” She took some time to ponder as she gazed down and concerted. “…I say we should give this one a go. The priest mentioned that our only task was to settle the barn haunting to be real or not. Once we find that out, that will be the end of it and we can still do our jobs right.”

Peridot nodded. “I guess we’re skipping trick-or-treating for this then.” She settles. “I’ll inform our client about it and tell Greg that we need a ride.”

The scrutinizing couple did not begin to think about what they could be up against once they prepared for the barn’s excursion…But to be prepared, they owned and packed their various essentials; holy water, crucifix, and technological advancements to track down their entities. And all were put into two solid suitcases. The priest offered a little more information of the barn’s whereabouts before leaving. “Just know that dusk is when the hauntings presumably happen.” He notifies. He even provided a hand-drawn map that located the predicted area. Also added was a scripture on the down left side; Proverbs 4:6 – Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you.

Six to seven o’clock in the evening. Greg Demayo, a close friend of theirs, drove them in his van to the rural area of their ocean-side town and navigated cautiously. The hand-drawn map was at use find to where the possible location might be…But it took them yearning minutes to get themselves lost for a while. And ironically, going astray got them to where they were.

At that juncture, they decided to stop at an open field and perceive the setting to be empty and calm. “This could be the place, right?” Lapis asks. Peridot guaranteed while contemplating. Nothing but winds and leaves were blanketing the locale. Nonetheless, it would not take long for all three of them to realize that there was a wide-open barn just a few inches away to pinpoint.

The atmosphere adapted stouter and rousing. “Dang, that must be the most upsetting piece of architecture I’ve ever seen.” Greg commented. “I don’t think it would have killed them to fix the place a little before leaving it out here in the open.”

The first thing to describe the barn in front of them was…well, a barn. It was red and white, large, and what people normally pictured what a barn would be like. But there were a few aspects that made it so eerily unalike. The roof was dented gravely and left with a vast hovel on it. Then there was the alley way doors which were half way opened unprecedentedly. A good first impression for the investigators. And it was time for work.

Lapis, Peridot and Greg drove closer to the edifice and got out. They unloaded their equipment and left them by the unsettling entrance. Far along and almost right off the while assuring the equipment, there was an unnerved chilling sensation after the autumn squalls blew. Worrying sounds were already being perceived inside the barn. “Hmm…Is that weeping in there?” Lapis considers.

“Are you sure you two can solve this case on your own?” Greg enquired. “I don’t think I could last a whole hour in this busted up barn.”

“We’ll be fine. Thanks for taking us here, Greg.” Lapis answers.

“It’s going to be a short task. Why don’t you come along and help us here?” Peridot offers.

“Well I’d love to but I promised Steven that I’d join him for trick or treating.” He replies. “Speaking of which…I got to find a way out of here. Just try to call me if you guys need to go back to Beach City.”

They said their farewells and safe travels, and Greg retreated back to the van. The vehicle left off and drove back to pavement, auxiliary to town. Then Lapis and Peridot were left alone and looked at each other, nodding with poised expressions. They were assured for this task. They were always assured for any of their tasks.

“Well here goes nothing.” The petite investigator utters curious. Peridot did the honors of gradually pushing the alleyway doors even more and snuck in afterwards. She peeks as she saunters while breathing inaudibly.

A startling moonlight peered through the dents and traveled inside the barn to partly illuminate the setting. With the help of Peridot’s flashlight that she brought out instantly, it revealed the true circumstance of the interior. The old owner must have been a hoarder since packages of priceless items were stacked or displaced. There was an old photo hung on the center corner which showed a couple who could have owned the barn before. Then the floors were perceived as made of birch wood and poorly gutted. Peridot noticed a bit of scratch marks and reddish stains marked on the bases. Maybe this was enough the proof that there was something in here already?

The two stepped foot even more until they reached half of the sector. This time they were standing upright and assertive rather than prowling. Two flashlights revealing the space, skulked around the walls and floors, were close-fitting it to be not so lavishly menacing.

“Hmm…It’s just messy here.” Peridot remarks. “Actually, if this place might not be haunted, we could try to acquire this property for our own.”

“Why would we want to do that?” Lapis asks.

“Well, you do have a lot of artworks in our house. We could use this place as like a studio. Or maybe even a vacation home for just the two of us, unless we can find a way to clean up this mess though.”

But the conversation stops abruptly as Lapis and Peridot perceive a disquieting holler that made their eyes widen…It was indistinct and seemed like the growl of a forest animal. And at the same time, it was a human-like outcry. One thing for sure was that they both sensed it to be coming from only one, unknown entity.

“aaughhh…”

“…You heard that, right…?” Peridot whispers. Lapis nods.

Without warning, a cumbersome object violently soars across the room and nearly hits behind the couple.

*CRASH!*

They tensely turn around and shine their flashlights at where they heard a deafening noise. It was simply a busted up engine, and it seemed to have already been blown up before. Peridot and Lapis held their hands tightly and looked at the other direction to track down who would have thrown such a weighty element. There was no one.

“…I guess we’re about to deal with a poltergeist.” Lapis assumes.

“…Perhaps. But if someone managed to take physical pictures of this thing, we could just be dealing with a basic demon.” Peridot adds. “Come on Lapis, let’s assemble the equipment before we miss anything else.”

The petite sleuth also happened to be a technician; hence a lot of the ‘ghost tracking gear’ was designed by her. Out of the luggage’s they brought with them was a very sensitive studio microphone, and 6 cameras attached to tripods. Two of them were thermal cameras, four were night vision cameras, and another two were cameras would take a picture automatically if sensors detected heat signatures. Lapis stabled most of them in different points of the floor they were standing on. All were turned on to record. One was reserved for when they could get up to the barn’s extra floor.

*Growl…*

But noises and sanities seemed to noticeably follow Lapis more than her partner.

Other equipment had to be armed to by person. Hence Peridot furnished the UV lights and sound detector to her body while configuring them for a second. The last thing in her luggage was her trusty tape recorder, where most of her and Lapis’ journeys are documented.

She installs a new tape inside and presses the record button. “Log Date; 7 11 3. This is Peridot Warren, and with me currently is my wife and investigating partner Lapis Warren. Today we were urged by a client to examine an abandoned outhouse in the middle of the countryside, largely rumored to be haunted. As cases of hauntings in this location are only told in stories, we were qualified to gather as much evidence as possible to prove that there could be an entity roaming these parts, needless to say that this more of a like side quest instead of a serious mission to us.”

She begins to amble and use a radiation detector around the cluttered corners. “We’ve already found out that there is indeed something here. A minute ago I spotted these scratch marks on the floor boards, and me and Lapis were nearly hit by a tossed apparatus. All we must do now is just track it down perceptibly.” She continues to talk. “We don’t know how long we intend on being here, but we’ve come prepared to spend the night if we have to. My only hopes so far are that we dissipate this creature, still keep our titles as the best the paranormal investigators in town, and that Lapis will be safe tonight.”

She moseys to her blue haired wife who was standing by a now steady camera. “This is Peridot, signing out for now.” She concludes and presses the stop button. “Okay, looks like I’m not picking up anything down here. Let’s go and…what’s wrong?

Lapis was looking behind her with a disturbed expression and arms folded chillingly. “I think whatever is in here wants to grasp me more than you, Peri…”

“Nah, that can’t be. We’ve only just been acquainted with this thing now. Maybe anxiety is just getting the best of you.” Peridot replies.

But the blue haired girl was sure that debauched occurrences can happen if either of them would not cautious. “Let’s just be careful here.”

They discovered a ladder foremost to the second floor and scaled it nippily. The sector was a lot weaker to stand on and hazardously reeking. Indeed they should be careful. They prowled with tools at range and eyes wide open. Peridot’s sound detector was not working at all, neither was the radiation detector either. Lapis was behind her with more cameras on her grasp. They stopped so they could plant one of them in half the room they were on.

The heat perceiving camera was placed. All of a sudden, it flashes on its own and snaps a photo shockingly quick, startling them yet again.

*CLICK*

A conveying printer connected to the camera’s sensors was already printing an image of what it caught by the equipment downstairs.

“…We can get that later. Right now I’m picking up something…” Peridot says pressured. She pointed the radiation detector to the shadowy room where their camera faced. It was beeping like feeble sirens and exposure was off the roof. And moreover, there were footsteps heard in the direction. Therefore both of them swiftly amble towards the area.

Lapis grabbed her flashlight and shined a light again. “Where is it?”

The detector stopped buzzing and the footsteps faded. “It ran off. It must be playing games with us then.” Peridot says. “Where are we now?”

The exceled lights uncovered them to be by a corner, and what looked like to be a lounging spot or a really sad living room. A green couch and a CRT television on the floor were professed, as well as a box of VHS’. They shawled the minute to inspect the room like what a detective would normally do.

They see the VHS’ to be comprising the show Camp Pining Hearts. “We’re taking that home.” Peridot says. Then they beheld the couch and TV. The couch smelled like crap, that’s guaranteed. And what do you know…more blood stains and graze marks. As for the TV, it looked mid-conditioned but quite unsure if it even was. They stared at it for two moments, only to see it turn on by its own and play loud static.

“What in the…” they both utter but pause again. The radiation detector was back at it again as it was picking up a reading downstairs. “Quickly! Let’s go!”

Hurrying down the ladder, they follow the appraisals and hunt down the entity. They did not even make it half way to the room, however, as a heap of packages flew over and blocked their view and their way. *CRASH!* yet again.>

Lapis heard a recurrent stomping partial from where they were standing. And it did now sound so passive. Peridot struggled to get the loot out of their way and hassled more to catch this entity. She groaned and jolted her way out, and proceeded to the equipment.

Alas, it vanished again, and the printer was discovered to be crushed. “Oh damn no. Where’s the photo…?” Peridot panicked and tried finding out if the picture it had produced was still fine. Recognizing later, she finds it outside and nearly crumpled. And the winds conveniently blow it inside for Peridot to grasp and examine.

“Okay…Hmm…” she squints. “It…turns out we’re faced with a human apparition then?” Lapis also takes a peak and observes in awe.

The hazy and rutted photograph revealed the top floor’s living room with an unfamiliar phantom sprawling in it. The physique gave this impression…A tall, suntanned woman standing blandly in the open. Hair was outsized and white, and covering half her face. Her size was likewise large, actually quite brawny as recognized through her bare arms. The last aspect is the eyes, shining a frightening absorbent yellow, and surprisingly what seemed to be the only thing glowing orange was her nose.

“Who is this…?” Peridot inquires. “This was not what I was expecting at all.” She also thinks to herself ‘how did this buff and petrifying lady die?’

“Me too.” Lapis says “But hey, we finally have clear evidence to give to our client.”

“I wouldn’t say clear…” Peridot explicates. “This just looks like one of the proofs we saw this morning. We need more than just this image of whoever this is.” She paced around front and back while deciding what undertake next.

“Okay. We should split up for this one.” She announces. “I’ll be examining the living room upstairs and find out how the TV turned on. You on the other hand should find our phantom down here.”

Lapis instantly did NOT feel comfortable with that plan. She was covertly afraid of the entity but she could not wholly express why. And she was used to being close to Peridot whenever they were in a task; otherwise bad things happen to either of them.

“Wait, Peridot, let’s not do that.” Lapis expresses. “We never separate. And this barn is getting on my nerves quickly. I could feel the entity lurking up on us and I think it’s angry with us for being here.”

The blonde notices the obvious worries of Lapis. Her expression mimics hers and bites her lip. “I know we shouldn’t detach. But we have to finish this task soon. Whoever we’re with right now keeps compromising our tactics.”

Her wife looks away and sighed wearily. “Okay then.”

Peridot crept and grasps the side of Lapis’ face. She softly kisses her cheek and looks onto her blue eyes while consolingly grinning. “It’s fine. I’ll be above you anyway and watch over you. You’ll be safe, I promise.” She tries to comfort. Lapis grins back and holds her partner’s own grasp to feel more comforted.

After Peridot dashed up the ladder once more, she began to look over. All her detectors were at use at the same time so she could hunt down the tall woman further. Also at the same time, she had her gaze down at Lapis every minute so she could keep her two obligations active. Lapis can also overhear her speaking to her tape recorder and explaining the recent activity they have witnessed. Then and there, she thought that one of the cameras could have picked up something by now. So she chose one of them hoven by the portrait’s corner and facing the equipment, which was a thermal camera. She makes it stop recording for a brief moment and watches the 1 minute film it created with its temperature filter.

“Let’s see what we got…” she utters. The footage rewinds and she prudently observes any uncanny motion. Everything looked to be in place for a while. Most of the items were all just shades of blue and purple. But as the clip advanced, the unusual exploit is finally seen. The snapped apparition literally flashes out of nowhere like she fell from the roof and ensnared their equipment. The heat signature was heavily read and yellow. This was either be a powerful or very frustrated ghost.

The figure grabbed the printer and crushed it with its bare hands. But it seemed to have just left the photo to fly off outside. Then it flashed again to the corner, where it most likely pushed the packages to block their way. The figure returns to the gear and damages the microphone, and crossly retreats to the other crook. There was hope with this one. The uncanny movements of the apparition had just given them their second proof. But Peridot wouldn’t be so happy to realize that her technology was ambushed by a ghost.

Lapis saves the footage into the memory drive attached to the camera. She takes it out in case the apparition destroys the camera too, and so she could showcase it to Peridot. As she walks back to the gear to aquire some holy water, she halts. The footsteps were back. And something was behind again.

“heh heh heh heh….” She hears a coarse laughter.

The blue haired woman felt her shoulder caressed smoothly and sensed a hand inch to her neck. She gasps and turns back edgily once more, only this time she believed she saw an actual silhouette pass by her. Her eyes prolonged out of dread and felt herself quivering. She needed to call Peridot right now but she could not get herself to do it. She turns back to the equipment and tries to step another foot. But as soon as she ensues, her face was grappled and clasped mildly by an unseen being. The laughter is heard again only it was more intense this time. Lapis did not have the ability to struggle and run away. She did not even know if Peridot could see her, or if she was just hallucinating. But as she was contemplating and panicking, she sees the faint face of the apparition they have been hunting. An undeniably scary woman was staring at her with a grin so appalling. It petrified Lapis to her uppermost limits. No ghost has ever been so dangerously close and visible to her before.

“…Where do you think you’re going…?” The physique speaks. Her voice was rough and neurotic.

Lapis’ torso is clenched and she was forcefully thrown within the rubbish and bends of the barn. The white haired spirit fades and proceeds to afflict her recent victim more.

On the other side of the precinct, Peridot stops speaking to her tape recorder when she hears more clutter downstairs. And she was already given sign that there was danger before she could use any of her devices to confirm ghost emission.

“PERIDOT! HELP ME!”

The blonde gasps heavily. “LAPIS!!!”

Her tape recorder, including her detectors was dropped to the ground and broke into scrap. The outcry of Lapis was so lurid that it was even picked up by the recorder before plummeting. Its smashed condition caused it to somewhat still work, and only repeatedly play “Peridot! Help me!”

Peridot stood upright and turned her head all over the place to anxiously find where her partner was. “Lapis, where are you?!” she exclaims. All that was retorted was a fleeting shriek of woe and suffocation. She then strides around the room like she was lost in a dense forest. Or in this case, she was looking for someone in a dense forest. Her panting could quickly be perceived as she tried scouting through the hoarded artifacts and skulked every corner. She cried out Lapis’ name with too many times to count. Their side quest had escalated WAY too quickly than any other task they had in the past and there has never been a time where She was untraceable from her.

Yet she did not have to completely weep or collapse just yet. Peridot stops prowling around the barn when she hears someone grunting within her radius. She gradually turns to find a familiar form stood up upright and banally. It was Lapis. But Peri did not feel relieved to see her. She looked at her with a calmed expression that turned into a confused one. Where did the blood around her mouth come from? Why was she looking at her funny? Why was she standing there like nothing even happened to her? This could not be some kind of messed up joke since both of them were professionals.

Peridot inquired her condition. “Why were you screaming for my help…?”

Lapis stops grunting and rather chuckles instead. “…You have to learn to keep you promises…” she says and chortles again. But her voice was incredibly altered. It sounded like two voices, jagged and serene, were trying to mash together into one voice. And it scared Peridot real good. “…I’ve had a hell of a night trying to figure out which one should I take. But right now, I’m realizing how much fun I’ve been having…”

The petite detains backwards and her attained fear was seen through her pupils. “You’re not my Lapis…” she says aggressive.

“It’s not going to matter who this is sooner or later.” She replies. “You two have made a big mistake coming in here and trying to find me. And now you’re going to wish you would have minded your own business after I’m done with you and this body…”

“Wait, what are you going to do with her?!” Peridot asks angered. “Tell me your name right now, spirit! That way I can use it to expel your soul out of her’s!”

The spirit now scheming Lapis takes an unnerving step forward. “Now that’s the thing; you’re never going to take me out. No one has ever succeeded in that…”

Now she was inching a lot closer. By her own instinct, Peridot grabbed a flask of holy water out of her pockets and faced it to the entity. It wasn’t the best idea, but she had to do something. “Step back now…” she says.

The grin on Lapis’ face fades away as she looks at the carafe and steps back. “…Hey, you put that crap out of my face.” She demanded. An unusual reaction for Peridot to see and listen. Was she vulnerable to something as basic as liquids blessed from vicars? Maybe trying to cast her out was not going to be as hard as initially thought.

“I suppose you don’t like this stuff.” Peridot utters and opens the cap of the water ampule. This time she was the one the taking a step forward. “I’m going to say this once…Get out of my wife or I’m going to spread your poison like it’s a garden sprinkler!”

The apparition became perceptibly angry and did not hesitate to use Lapis’ body against Peridot right away. She becomes swift, and slaps the carafe out of her short hands and onto the wall. “You’re a real nuisance, aren’t you?” she asks. And this time, the facets of Lapis’ voice was heard no more and it was only the coarseness of the spirit’s actual voice. “I am NOT LEAVING THIS FORM!”

She strikes Peridot right in the stomach with her wife’s own fist and watches her fly to the equipment. The blonde groans in agony, feeling the sensation as if the strength of a tank missile just embattled her physically and mentally. She barely had the ability to stand up again, let alone remembering that it was a spirit that punched her and not actually Lapis. But she could not help it. This thing had just possessed her completely.

She coughed up blood that now became part of her guise and the floorboard stains. But then there came the tears that leaked down her barred eyes. She must have been feeling pain that Lapis had to endure while being possessed. If only she had known how to defend her a lot more. She failed to keep her oath in protecting her most important person at all cost during investigations, and she hated everything including herself for that.

The possessed Lapis was leisurely creeping to her again since she knew her pain was not taking her anywhere. Yet Peridot sojourns lasting her abdominal strike and reached for one of her suitcases. It opens, and she feebly grabs another holy water ampule to use against her ghostly opponent. But the more she moved, the more she had to sorely whimper. Then she knew she was going to receive more discomfort, as she felt a bare foot gently stomp through her thick hair.

“I’m impressed.” The spirit speaks. “When I choose to slay you two immediately, you somehow manage to stay alive…” Her other victim’s head was being pressed to the ground more. “…Everyone who comes to this dump instantly sees me as a monster. But I never did anything wrong…No one knows what death is like, you lose your identity. That’s why I decided to become the monster anyway.”

Peridot only comprehended a little bit of her story as her mind had to be focused in hopefully getting out of this. The spirit continued to speak anyway. “Since you and ‘Lapis’ are going to die here anyway, I might as well tell you who I really am.” She says and bends down to the petite. “…I am Jasper.”

The bottle of holy water that was unnoticeably still in Peridot’s grip had its cap open with only her fingers. With one immediate act, she shrieks loudly and squelches a heap of liquid above her to drizzle the blue haired girl’s figure. Jasper stops placing her feet at her face and annexations begin to trigger the spirit. Peridot overhears her screaming and wildly reverting to Lapis’ voice. It was a disturbing thing to listen to, but it was also a sign that she could free her from control.

The pain Peridot received was only trivial now, hence she stances with her only weapon and confronts the bent and aggrieved Lapis. Another heap of holy water was spread across her body, and more screeches was heard. Lapis’ body sauntered towards the boxes and hid itself from plain sight.

She could not begin to process what she had heard, saw, or witnessed in general for those brief and horrific moments of encountering a possessed version of her love. She wiped the remaining tears off her face and wondered if the apparition had stop control over her body. “…L-Lapis…?” she dimly calls out.

The shouting stopped. Indeed, the entity was casted out by mere drips of water and Lapis’ body was free. She popped out of the scrap limply and unconsciously, landing on the floor and disquieting Peridot. The blonde investigator kneels down and checks for any vitals of her being. “Oh God please be okay…” she speaks. Lapis was okay. And she was relieved finally.

This was not over yet, however. The whaling of Jasper was still heard and waring off soon. Peridot looks over and turns out she could see the large ghost this time. Jasper’s true form came out through the boxes too and stood in front of her exorcist. Before, she looked human and impartial. But she looked more exhausted, and now there were green spots and growing out of her arms. The holy water must have affected that hideousness.

“That’s disgusting…” Peridot utters. Being assured that Lapis was going to be safer, she walks around and provokes her new adversary. She had enough. It was time for defeat. Jasper did not know where this was going. But she was soon met with a whole flask size of demon-killing liquors when Peridot threw the whole container at her. The last screech was caught and she completely stumbled down to her face, just like what happened to her prey.

The investigator began to yell her name and label her. “You are Jasper, the abuser of depths and the embodiment of suffering.” She says belligerently. She proceeded to chant a number of devout words that she had saved a long time for dispelling a demon. They were not too long, but the speech was enough to make Jasper feel her throbbing. Shortly, she did not appear to be human anymore. The incantation caused her to transform into a truly monstrous, hirsute, corrupted version of her. It was a beast made from vengeance and pride.

Peridot’s tone had rose aggressively and stopped the chanting. She did not care to process if Jasper had become a beast. All she did was place her own boot on her and said the final words to disperse her for good. “I condemn you back to hell.”

Jasper’s figure had faded to a normal silhouette. And her silhouette had faded into nothing more than inexistence. Peridot’s fearlessness was conducted solely because she wanted to save her most important person to her.

She panted incredibly vast after that excursion of an exorcism. She looks back and dailies to Lapis who was comatose on the floorboards. “Lapis! Wake up!” she bellows. “I defeated Jasper. She was the one who was haunting this place all along.”

Surprisingly, Lapis immediately wakes up from her partner’s voice. She rises up like she had just taken a nap. A nap filled with nightmares at least. “Peridot…” she murmurs. And after realizing the bloodstained look on her acquitted expression, she panicked.

“Oh gosh…Peridot, your face!” she grasps it softly. “I-I can’t believe I…….Peri, I’m sorry I let that happen. I would never mean to hurt you and scare you so much like that…Fuck, I should have never said yes to take this task otherwise we would have been okay…”

She did not answer. All she did was gape down and let one last tear drop from the side of her face. And then she was gaping back at Lapis. “It’s…okay, Laz.” She absolved. “I’m the one who should be sorry. You were possessed, and I did not think ahead of that.” She grasped one of Lapis’ and felt their warmth getting the best of them. “I made many promises when we were engaged that I would protect you from all kinds of risk. Tonight I just got both of us hurt, and I might as well deserve it more than you.”

Lapis got herself closer to Peridot’s nearness and tried to ease her. “Please don’t say that. You just saved me, and I love you Peridot.”

Their venting ended with a deep embrace by the petite and sniffling blonde. “I love you too Lapis…”

The blue haired ceased the embrace and instead pulled her closer to kiss her ardently on her lips. The caress lingered for a while, not minding whether their lips were sanguine or they were inside a broken down barn anymore. They just needed to be at ease and forget about the task.

The next morning.

The couple never contacted Greg to bring them back to Beach City. They literally stayed and passed out on a hammock for the whole night. The task to uncover the long rumored Barn Haunting was the most short-lived yet laborious case the two partners have faced so far in their lifetime.

When they did choose to go back home eventually, they met with their eager client with what was left of their proof. Several different types of video clips were submitted including one photograph. Not to mention the wreckage of Peridot’s tech to verify the haunting.

They confirmed the barn to be ONCE haunted. And they did not care if he was going to spread the news to everyone or keep it confidential. What they wanted now was some time alone

[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2019, Part III

Part I is here. Part II is here.

PRETTY GOOD MOVIES

80. Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (Martin Scorsese)- Can one put a star rating on Bob Dylan, with renewed purpose, belting out "Isis" in a head and shoulders close-up to New Hampshire teens? What about a naked moment when he and Joan Baez simultaneously realize they should have married each other, and he, for maybe the first time, has nothing to say? As a Dylanologist, I'm glad that this footage from an under-reported period saw the light of day. You can start to think about stars when Martin Scorsese, my other dad, does everything he can to complicate and ultimately undermine that footage with his contributions. I appreciate that he uses his documentaries to experiment and chart his passions, and I think that I get what he's doing with his present-day chicanery, but it does not work for me. Shout-out to when Bob Dylan claims, of one of Scorsese's fake people, "He seemed to need enemies. Even when there weren't any." I felt that. 

79. Serenity (Steven Knight) Djimon Honsou: Lawful Good Jeremy Strong as "The Rules": Lawful Neutral Anne Hathaway: Lawful Evil Diane Lane: Chaotic Good The Kid: Chaotic Neutral Jason Clarke: Chaotic Evil The Bartender: Lawful Neutral Matthew McConaughey: True Neutral Me, Believing Almost Sincerely That This Is a Good Movie: Chaotic Neutral

78. Atlantics (Mati Diop)- It's plenty effective as a window into a patriarchal society I wasn't familiar with, but Atlantics doesn't ever match the heights of its exquisite opening. At the risk of getting banned from this website--and I do realize what I'm implying here...not enough happens.

77. Birds of Passage (Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego)- After enjoying the formal invention of Embrace of the Serpent, I was interested to see Guerra and Gallego's spin on a well-worn genre like crime. So I was surprised to see how conventional Birds of Passage was. The indigenous Colombian rituals provide some color and grandeur, but otherwise this is a rise and fall that I've seen before, complete with a hothead character that threatens the whole operation. Perhaps my favorite part of crime movies, the alluring sinful fun that ropes the viewer in and makes him complicit, is nowhere to be found.

76. The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot)- I admire Joe Talbot's debut more than I like it. It's straightforward in its ideas of African-American and masculine performance, and it boils its essence down into a really effective scene near the end (on the bus). It does get tedious though. The protagonists' goals keep changing in a way that makes it seem like the film is overcompensating for how simple it actually is. 

75. Running with Beto (David Modigliani)- Beto O'Rourke is both inspiring and goofy, able to get me to look to the stars and roll my eyes within the same breath. This movie is pretty standard for its genre, but its greatest strength is getting us to see that all people present those contradictions on an individual level, while most people, if we're talking about blue and red states, are the same collectively. 

74. Gemini Man (Ang Lee)- Ang Lee treats Gemini Man like a test reel for 3D high-frame rate presentation, and I think I would have liked the film much less if I hadn't enjoyed the bells and whistles. (Find me in the club and ask me about the HDR--I can go deep.) You could read the film as a comment on Will Smith's Movie Stardom: We're the product of our experiences, and up-and-comers lack some of the character/baggage that Smith brings even if those imitators can approximate his bluster. (The fact that the film is a commercial failure adds another layer. Perhaps the cultural bridge that Smith created is no longer necessary.) 

But you'll notice that none of that stuff is dealing with the text, which rarely does the unexpected, especially when it comes to the mustache-twirling Clive Owen character. The film pointedly avoids a romance between Smith and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and that's another absence that I'm pretending is a plus.

73. The Hummingbird Project (Kim Nguyen)- At first, the film has trouble selling itself, almost underplaying how quixotic the characters' plan to beat the stock market is. Once it settles in after a few false starts, it expands into a story about how precious time is in general, an idea that Jesse Eisenberg sells in his sympathetic performance. The other characters don't fare as well. Skarsgard's foil is comparatively static and dull, and a dialed-up Salma Hayek makes this a more external, obvious picture than it should have been. But there are long stretches that I like. 72. Escape Room (Adam Robitel)- I was exhausted in a good way as the movie rocketed through its setup, showing us the backstory of half of its characters while bypassing the rest. I was exhausted in a bad way by its fourth ending. Basically though, this movie does its job. And I'm glad that some of these thrillers are still envelope-pushing PG-13's. 71. Late Night (Nisha Ganatra)- There's a preposterous scene swinging into the third act that I just cannot accept or get behind, and it introduces a wave of Serious Scenes of People Getting Real with Each Other. But I haven't seen such a distilled juxtaposition of second-wave feminism and third-wave feminism before, let alone in a comedy. Some solid jokes. And John Lithgow playing piano while feeling bad about himself! 70. Non-Fiction (Olivier Assayas)- Non-Fiction is a sign that Assayas, always prolific, is entering the Woody Allen Zone. That is, he, a filmmaker capable of great formal beauty, has left behind formal rigor for a moderately funny tale about pseudo-intellectuals having conversations that would have been provocative five or ten years ago. 90% of the film depicts infidelity, but it isn't really about infidelity. Just as every latter-day Allen picture has two or three immaculate jokes or inward moments, Non-Fiction, despite its lack of ambition, has some perfect Assayas inter-textual flourishes. The Selena character bemoans the disposable nature of the TV show she works on, but Assayas drops us into one of the show's wintry, over-exposed shoot-outs as if to capture a genre he'll never fully pursue. He also writes a joke in which Selena, played by Juliette Binoche, claims that she'll try to talk Juliette Binoche into recording an audio book.

69. Crawl (Alexandre Aja)- I guess you could say something negative about this movie, but you would also have to mention that ol' girl lets off a full clip from inside the gator while it is chomping her arm off. So it pretty much has that Academy Awards category sewn up. 68. Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan)- as Chinese Jerry Seinfeld once said, "Why don't they make the whole movie out of the hour-long unbroken 3D take?"

67. The Art of Self-Defense (Riley Stearns)- The Art of Self-Defense is a film of two halves--in a way that, actually, Riley Stearns's previous film Faults was. For me, those two halves, one being slow and pre-ordained, the other being wild and unpredictable, are too extreme on either end. The vagueness of the setting is a weapon that goes a long way in unifying those parts though. Even if I couldn't get down with the silliness, The Art of Self-Defense is worth checking out for Alessandro Nivola's career-best performance. The movie is about performative masculinity, so he has the challenge of playing a sort of confident monolith while also being totally specific. He's everything you would imagine a karate instructor to be, but he also takes his glasses out of their case in a way I've never seen before.

66. Dolemite Is My Name (Craig Brewer)- Keep in mind that I couldn't make it all the way through Dolemite proper, so I'm not the intended audience for this film's "let's put on a show" awe. The structure is notable: It starts with Rudy Ray Moore as a failure who has tried everything, crests past the shooting of his movie, and uses that completion as a plot point, only to focus on the distribution for the third act. That is, the screenplay breathes new life into the plot right when it needs it. Eddie Murphy's best performances always seem like regretful commentaries on his own relationship with the audience, (I'm picturing the final speech of The Nutty Professor.) and he follows suit here. Even better is an effete Wesley Snipes as the too-cool-for-school D'Urville. Despite all of the talent involved, however, the thing just isn't funny, and it's least funny in the comedy club scenes that are supposed to sell us on Rudy Ray Moore's genius. If it's not supposed to be funny, then why populate the movie with five comedic supporting actors?

65. Harriet (Kasi Lemmons)- History classes could do a lot worse. Like a history class, the film has so much ground to cover that it has to make choices for pacing, and even then it still feels like a greatest hits. It does have a surprising, brazen edge though, and it's more spiritually curious than I was expecting. Kasi Lemmons leans in to the mystical side of the story, using Tubman's spells as conversations with God that give her the confidence that she needs. The device is a double-edged sword though: What distinguishes and others Tubman, what makes her the chosen one, is also kind of passive and out of her control. Speaking of out of control, Joe Alwyn plays the slaveholder who ain't gonna be as nice as his pappy was. "Seems to me things have gotten a little too easy 'round these parts." 64. Motherless Brooklyn (Edward Norton)- Like Edward Norton, Motherless Brooklyn is sincere and smart and shows its work. Also like Edward Norton, it sort of tires you out after a while with how hard it's trying. I respect the ambition--the film tangles itself in race and jazz and urban planning and makeshift families--but by the third or fourth time that the hero blacks out while getting roughed up, the film reveals that it can't quite thread the needle between noir pastiche and noir cliche. It's satisfying enough as a mystery in general.

63. The Two Popes (Fernando Meirelles)- I'm the target audience for 21st century papal fan-fic, and even I started to zone out during the flashbacks. Jonathan Pryce sort of disappears, but I think this is the first Netflix prestige project being judged on a curve.

[shinneth]

Gem Ascension Tropes (General: C - E)

Refer to the initial post for details on this. Here’s the full version on Google Docs.  

Call-Back: There are loads of these in GA. So much that, much like Shout-Outs and Mythology Gags, really warrants its own page.

Campfire Character Exploration: Happens towards the end of Act I’s first chapter with Peridot and Greg. A similar scene plays out late in Chapter 6 of Act II; this time with Greg, Lapis, and Bismuth.

Capital Letters are Magic: Word of God imposed an unorthodox rule in the story: in the context of a gem’s gemstone, the name of the gemstone (which matches the gem’s by default) will not be capitalized. So, Peridot’s gemstone will be referred to as a peridot. However, in reference to the hard light forms of Peridot’s fellow kind that aren’t her specifically, whether individually or in a group, they are referred to as Peridots (or a singular Peridot). The rationale is that while the gem species will always be lower-case as it would be for any kind of species, the specific type of gem is more analogous to a nationality/ethnicity, which is always capitalized for humans on Earth. So, gems in their hard light forms such as Peridots and Pearls are (as far as grammar is concerned) analogous to Americans and Germans. 

The only exception to the rule is quartz, which is always left in lowercase unless the type of quartz is specified, as there haven’t been any gems in canon that were ever just called “Quartz”. That might make quartzes more like another subclass, such as a “superhuman”. 

Clip Show Episode: Chapter 7 of Act II can be seen as a slight parody of this, as the climax is comprised of a collection of excerpts from Peridot’s Video Wills from each chapter of Act II up to this point, including a repeated part of the message introduced earlier this chapter. Justified, since this is presented as a group-effort project (led by Amethyst) in order to awaken Steven from the Angst Coma he put himself into at the end of Chapter 1, and snap him out of his Heroic BSoD regarding his refusal to watch Peridot’s message to him.

Coitus Ensues: After Romance Ensues for Sphalerite and 5XF in This is Who I Am, it transitions to this pretty quickly. Chapter 6 ends just as they start getting into it. The following chapter timeskips this, but makes it very clear the last 41 hours was full of nothing but this for the couple.

Colorful Theme Naming: For certain characters that are exclusive to GA’s continuity, they follow a similar naming pattern to their canon counterparts, but deviate a little. Peridot’s Super-Powered Alter Ego is named Chartreuse Diamond, while the fusion comprised of Chartreuse and White Diamond is called Celadon Diamond. Steven’s awakened form is named after his mother as Pink Diamond 2.0.

Commonality Connection: 5XF and Sphalerite quickly bonded over their shared issue of trying to find out who they really are; Sphalerite hasn’t existed long enough to learn who she is independent of Steven and Peridot, while 5XF has to completely start from scratch as a Homeworld refugee learning how to live for herself for the first time in her life.

Convenient Cranny: In Chapter 7 of Act I, while Peridot and Sapphire are stuck together in a crowded terminal, Sapphire informs Peridot of a small hiding space like this that they’re closing in on and can use for cover. Sure enough, it’s found moments later; Peridot and Sapphire duck into the alcove just in time to evade Yellow Diamond and the pallified Blue Diamond.

Costume Evolution: Peridot and Lapis reform at the very start of GA with a cheap upgrade (basically stars added where diamonds once were on their original outfits). By the end of Chapter 6 in Act I, Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl receive their canon CYM outfits upon reforming. Lapis is poofed midway into the final chapter of Act I and reforms in the final scene of said act with her CYM ensemble. Peridot poofs offscreen after Act I and doesn’t reform until the second scene of Act III’s opening chapter, where she finally gets her CYM upgrade.

Crapsack World: Homeworld, per canon. Probably even more exaggerated in GA, though. On top of the fact that Individuality is Illegal, it’s both told and shown through Peridot just how cutthroat the environment is for the working class. She pretty much had to be a Manipulative Bastard just to get the opportunity to learn life could be better than that.

Crisis Makes Perfect: Throughout Act III, Steven and Peridot attempt to fuse on two separate occasions – both times result in failure that neither can make sense of, but it strongly implies Peridot’s Era 2 limitations simply make her incapable of it, much to her despair. It’s later proved that Peridot can be fused with in Chapter 7, but that was through a forced fusion with White Diamond where Peridot had little to no control or involvement as Celadon Diamond. Once Peridot is so heavily triggered by Pumpkin’s death that her rage and agony actively tears apart the already-dying Homeworld throughout Chapter 8, she brings about the Darkest Hour for everyone as it becomes apparent that everyone’s going to die along with Homeworld. Steven takes it upon himself to calm Peridot down; not only to stop her destructive behavior, but to fuse their Alter Egos to make the Diamond of Miracles, which is their only hope coming out of this situation with their lives. It’s unknown at the time whether or not Pink 2.0 and Chartreuse’s fusion is the miracle diamond; it could just as easily be a fusion of Pink 2.0 and White Diamond, and presumed to be more likely given Steven and Peridot’s fusion track record. However, with some intensive Epiphany Therapy, Peridot (as Chartreuse) can finally fuse with Steven (as Pink 2.0) – they become Iridescent Diamond, the miracle-granting Diamond they need to survive Homeworld’s apocalypse – and manage to escape Homeworld just before it explodes.

Cult of Personality: Per canon, the Diamond Authority as a whole has been this for untold amounts of millennia. It’s especially prevalent with the propaganda-fed Era 2 gems like Peridot, who weren’t around during the infamous war with Rose Quartz rebelling against the order. In GA, this mostly applies to White Diamond exclusively, as Yellow and Blue aren’t around long enough to properly represent any kind of threat or notoriety to the Crystal Gems. Although Peridot has long since overcome this sensationalism in canon, she and Steven legitimately worry that this Diamond Propaganda will shift over to their Diamond Alter Egos after the main GA series, now that the OG Diamond Authority and Homeworld are gone and they’re left to guide millions of confused Homeworld gems who were abruptly immigrated to Earth.

Curb-Stomp Battle: The Crystal Gems are on the losing end of one in Chapter 6 of Act III after it’s revealed the White Diamond they’ve spent so much time fighting is a fake.

Darker and Edgier: Compared to Change Your Mind, yes, GA very much is. Word of God phrases Gem Ascension’s premise basically as “What would happen if everything just went to pot after the first few minutes of CYM?”. It’s not all-serious, all the time, but unlike CYM, there are quite a few major character deaths, not every villain is redeemed, and the story ends giving Status Quo is God the middle finger.

Darkest Hour: Chapter 8 of Act III is where this happens. The situation is bleak enough at this point, as the Crystal Gems’ spaceship has been obliterated. While Peridot finally managed to break out of the Celadon Diamond fusion, Greg is severely injured, and Pumpkin succumbs to her wounds not long after reuniting with Peridot. Prior to this, Peridot (who never suffered loss like this before) was in hysterics and highly unstable. Steven forced himself to implement tough love to drag Peridot back down to reality after the latter snapped and brutally hit Lapis, but by the time Peridot got her act together, Pumpkin died. Heroic BSoD ensues, combined with an Angst Nuke, and suddenly Peridot is unwittingly tearing up an already-dying Homeworld with her agony alone. Once she Involuntarily Shapeshifts into Chartreuse Diamond, every structure still standing on Homeworld is shattered into pieces and all forms of transport crumble, which eliminates any hope of the Crystal Gems finding another way off the planet. Peridot is so consumed with grief that she can’t hear anyone else, and the storm she conjured is so potent that it’s dangerous to even get near her. It’s looking like foregone conclusion that the Crystal Gems will be going down with Homeworld after all. Once the group spots White Diamond approaching them again, Steven realizes he has to act before White tries to force him into fusion. The only hope he and his friends have now of leaving Homeworld alive is to make the Diamond of Miracles a reality – and most don’t even believe such a being truly exists. Even more unlikely is Steven and Peridot’s Alter Egos being the miracle they’re looking for, as the pair has not been able to fuse at all. At this stage, however, Steven either has to make it work, or be obliterated with his friends.

Dawn of an Era: Garnet believes in Plans Change that Era 3 starts now, rather than a week or so prior during the Era 3 ball on Homeworld. Thematically, it is more appropriate to consider a time post-GA to be the real starting point of Era 3, given how much of a drastic shake-up there is in the status quo, as well as an entirely different setting for most of gemkind where they’ll lead vastly different lives than they had in the past two eras.

Death of Personality: Another way to interpret a pallified gem.

Delaying the Rescue: Steven attempts to defy this at the end of Act II, but the Crystal Gems begrudgingly acknowledge that they should return to Homeworld only when they’re better-prepared to take on whatever traps White Diamond has laid out for them, as well as how to fare in White Diamond’s Homeworld. They all hate having to leave Peridot to be tortured for so long, but know there’s no point in going back if they don’t know what they’re doing. Especially since Peridot made it clear in her messages that she’d never forgive them if anyone was to lose their life attempting to rescue her.

Despair Event Horizon: Once Steven and Peridot’s Alter Egos form the Diamond of Miracles, White Diamond – while she doesn’t outright say as much – is done. She was so certain she would be this mythical being and make her planet perfect again, but instead White is now reliant on the two people she tormented the most and was driven to make minions of. Her omniscient powers mean nothing now since there are no bodies left to snatch (and on top of that, she no longer has subjects to lord over), and the Crystal Gems don’t hesitate to rub it in White’s face that she has nothing left. Though it’s mostly at Steven’s behest, the Crystal Gems won’t even kill her and are quick to dismiss White once they’re finally granted a way off Homeworld. Above everything else White lost, her relevance and her legacy are what she can’t bear to lose most of all. She attacks the Crystal Gems one final time with the Energy Donation Steven granted her on request, but that was not only thwarted, but Peridot nearly destroyed her with her own attack… until she saw White Diamond’s fear, which was much more satisfying to the low-caste gem than a shattering. Added with suffering a final parting shot from Connie, which gave her form blemishes, White could no longer live with herself. The mightiest of all Diamonds being terrified of a Peridot and cracked by a human was too much to bear… and a short while later, White self-destructed.

Don’t Look Back: At the climax of Act I when the Crystal Gems escape through the terminal tunnel to their spaceship, this order from Peridot is the last time most of the Crystal Gems hear from her until they reunite with her in Act III.

Doomed Hometown: Homeworld. Once White Diamond starts a hostile takeover of her own planet at the end of Act I, infecting every bit of it with her pallification, the planet itself is drained of what little structural integrity it still had and is set to crumble. The planet itself is completely gone near the end of Act III.

Downer Ending: Compared to Change Your Mind, it certainly is. On its own, it isn’t so bad as there’s an optimistic view that everything is starting on a clean slate and will be done better this time around. But compare that to White, Yellow, and Blue Diamond all still being alive (and White Pearl) in CYM, now friendly with Steven and the Crystal Gems, and casually visiting to enjoy time with everyone on Earth… meanwhile tying up every possible loose end, including curing all of the corrupted gems. Gem Ascension concludes with many loose ends, on top of another set of gems in need of a cure outside of the corrupted.

Dream People: Peridot and Steven have grown very close together even before they became an Official Couple, so it’s no surprise that Peridot’s idealized perception of Steven who takes place of the real deal in her imagination and dreams looks and acts almost exactly like Steven himself. When Peridot is imprisoned in her own subconscious with him in Chapter 2 of Act III, she talks to him just like she would with the real Steven. And while under the impression that she’ll never see the real Steven again at the time, Peridot is more than happy to cherish her imaginary Steven as the next-best thing she’ll ever be able to have.

Dual Age Modes: Chartreuse Diamond and Pink Diamond 2.0 are not only a great deal taller, but have much more developed bodies than Peridot and Steven.

Earned Stripes: How one can interpret Lapis and Peridot gaining stars on their outfits after reforming. Even more prevalent in GA since they first reform with their original outfits only with stars added, then Lapis reforms a second time at the end of Act I with the new outfit she gained in CYM. Peridot follows suit at the start of Act III.

Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Homeworld’s fate when Gem Ascension concludes.

End of an Age: As Gem Ascension ends, it’s evident that life for the Crystal Gems will never be the same again, but for entirely different reasons from Change Your Mind. 

Not only is the Diamond Authority completely eradicated, but Homeworld itself no longer exists. 

Homeworld’s colonies are still intact, but have no idea what happened to their home base. It’s a safe bet many will devolve into anarchy with civil wars abound once they learn the truth. 

Most gems who lived on Homeworld were rescued, but the majority are pallid and thus stuck in stasis like their corrupted counterparts. And unlike CYM, no cure has been made for either affliction, which means that is an ongoing endeavor made doubly harder. 

The Homeworld gems who aren’t affected have abruptly immigrated to Earth and are just as Locked Out of the Loop as their brethren in the colonies. It’s up to the Crystal Gems to educate thousands of confused and terrified citizens what happened and what their lives will be like from here on out.

Getting Homeworld gems adapted to Earth will be hard enough, but it will be even harder for them to comprehend how to live free from Diamond rule. It won’t help when they eventually learn Steven and Peridot’s Alter Egos are the only Diamonds left in existence, as the couple have no desire to continue the regime of their predecessors.

Unfortunately, they will have to use their Diamond identities to make any headway with the colonies, meaning Steven and Peridot are doomed to be put on a pedestal and garner a lot of unwanted public attention.

Garnet invokes this in Plans Change, when she voices her belief that Era 3 didn’t start with the ball that took place shortly after Steven went to Homeworld. Instead, she believes Era 3 starts at this point, on a clean slate, where life will be completely different for everyone.

Enemy Civil War: The fate of the Homeworld colonies after the events of GA, or at least the presumed fate. The Crystal Gems intend to set things straight after they figure out how to run their own operation on Earth.

Ensemble Cast: During Act II.

Epistolary Novel: Act II

Evil Power Vacuum: Acknowledged In-Universe in Act III after the deaths of Yellow and Blue Diamond. It’s a bit hard to ignore the fact that White Diamond obliterated two thirds of her own order, so it’s painfully obvious why she seeks to have Pink Diamond 2.0 and Chartreuse Diamond under her thumb.

Exposition Beam: Used twice only in Act III. In Chapter 4, Steven uses his empath abilities while touching Peridot’s gemstone to link their minds; not only to catch up on what he missed with her over the past six days, but to figure out what exactly White Diamond did to her mind so he’ll know how to fix her current problem. This ends up backfiring in the form of a traumatic side effect, unfortunately. In Chapter 5, Peridot does this for the rest of her friends, only this time using her gemstone as a Mental Picture Projector rather than directly linking minds with them.

Exposition Cut: As lengthy as GA is, there are a few times where this is put in place. Namely a speech from Peridot that starts at the end of Chapter 6 transitions to Peridot ending her speech at the opening of Chapter 7. Another exposition speech told by Peridot is cut like this in Chapter 5 of Act III.

[thisdaynews]

POLITICO Playbook: Hurricane Trump at the G-7

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/politico-playbook-hurricane-trump-at-the-g-7/

POLITICO Playbook: Hurricane Trump at the G-7

SCOOP — ANDREW DESIDERIOandELIANA JOHNSON: “House Judiciary Committee to subpoena ex-White House aide Rob Porter”:“The House Judiciary Committee will subpoena former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, a key witness in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s obstruction of justice investigation into President Donald Trump, as the panel weighs whether to recommend articles of impeachment.

“Porter, who resigned his post last yearamid allegations that he abused his two ex-wives, was at the president’s side during several episodes of potential obstruction chronicled in Mueller’s 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and Trump’s attempted to thwart the probe.

“The White House is likely to block Porter from complyingwith the committee’s subpoena, which seeks public testimony.” POLITICO

G-7 WRAP-UP…

— THE LATEST ON CHINA: “Trump says serious trade negotiations with China to begin,”by AP’s Zeke Miller and Darlene Superville in Biarritz, France: “President Donald Trump, under pressure to scale back a U.S.-China trade war partly blamed for a global economic slowdown, said Monday that the two sides will begin serious negotiations soon. Trump said his trade negotiators had received two ‘very good calls’ from China. He did not say when the calls were made and he declined to say whether he is in direct contact with President Xi Jinping.

“Trump said the conversations were a sign that Chinais serious about making a deal following the latest tit-for-tat tariffs between them. ‘I think we’re going to have a deal, because now we’re dealing on proper terms. They understand and we understand,’ Trump said as he met with Egypt’s president on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in France. ‘This is the first time I’ve seen them where they really want to make a deal. And I think that’s a very positive step,’ Trump said.” AP

BUT, BUT, BUT — BLOOMBERG’S MELISSA CHEOK (@mkcheok):“JUST IN: China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang says has no info on phone calls to U.S. cited by Trump, adding later ‘I can tell you clearly that I haven’t heard of such a thing’ * Says China will protect itself on trade if U.S. persists with current approach.”

— STATE OF PLAY: “G-7 summit set to end with little consensus amid Trump’s mixed messaging on the trade war,”by WaPo’s Toluse Olorunnipa, Michael Birnbaum and Damien Paletta in Biarritz: “[A]s the summit entered its final day, there was little sign that Trump and other world leaders had reached anything nearing a consensus on thorny issues including trade, climate change, and how to deal with Iran, North Korea and Russia.

“Illustrating the growing divide between world leaders,the French all-but-abandoned efforts to craft a joint statement at the end of the summit, cognizant of how the United States is drifting further away from other nations on a growing number of issues.” WaPo

— NOT ON THE PRESIDENT’S PRIORITY LIST: L.A. TIMES’ @EliStokols:“Trump attended a G7 working session on Syria security issues but missed the one about climate, biodiversity and oceans. Other leaders attended both.”

— FROM 30,000 FEET: NYT’S PETER BAKERin Biarritz:“Rule 1 at the G7 Meeting? Don’t Get You-Know-Who Mad”:“For a day, at least, everyone was on their best behavior when the cameras were on, eager to present a show of bonhomie after so many previous meetings ended in discord. But behind the scenes at the annual gathering of some of the world’s leading powers, President Trump still found himself at odds with his counterparts on Sunday over issues like trade, climate change, North Korea, Russia and Iran.

“Ever so gingerly, as if determinednot to rouse the American’s well-known temper, the other Group of 7 leaders sought to nudge him toward their views on the pressing issues of the day, or at least register their differences — while making sure to wrap them in a French crepe of flattery, as they know he prefers.

“It was far from clear the messages were received,or in any case at least welcome. Like other presidents, and perhaps even more so, Mr. Trump tends to hear what he wants to hear at settings like this, either tuning out contrary voices or disregarding them. Through hard experience, other leaders have concluded that direct confrontation can backfire, so they have taken to soft-pedaling disagreements.” NYT

— POLITICO EUROPE’S DAVID HERSZENHORNandRYM MOMTAZ: “Macron’s G7 descends into summit of spin”

MARKET WATCH — “Global Stocks Fall as Trade Tensions Escalate,”by WSJ’s Shen Hong and Steven Russolillo: “Global stocks and government bond yields fell on Monday as a fresh escalation in the U.S. trade war with China, followed by conciliatory moves over the weekend, cast fresh doubt on growth prospects. China’s Shanghai Composite Index shed 1.1%. …

“On Monday, investors’ concerns about the impact on global tradeplayed out in the markets. U.S. futures tied to the S&P, which were briefly negative on Monday, turned positive after Mr. Trump said China had called U.S. trade officials and asked to ‘get back to the table’ for talks. Investors are losing faith in how both sides are approaching the trade war and whether a resolution could be reached soon, according to Peter Atwater, a research analyst and adjunct lecturer at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.” WSJ

TRUMP’S TAKE — @realDonaldTrumpat 7:30 p.m.: “In France we are all laughing at how knowingly inaccurate the U.S. reporting of events and conversations at the G-7 is. These Leaders, and many others, are getting a major case study of Fake News at it’s finest! They’ve got it all wrong, from Iran, to China Tariffs, to Boris!” … “My Stock Market gains must be judged from the day after the Election, November 9, 2016, where the Market went up big after the win, and because of the win. Had my opponent won, CRASH!”

Good Monday morning.

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK —STEVE BULLOCKis announcing a slew of staff and senior policy advisers later today, including Maura Matthews as national finance director and Mark Spengler as senior adviser and chief of staff for finance. Bailey Mohr is coming on board as digital director. James Wise will be policy director, and Marc Heinrich will be deputy policy director.

Bullock is also announcing more than a dozen policy advisers,including Chris Lu, Anne Slaughter Andrew, Andrew Shapiro, Frank Rose and Tracy Stone Manning.

WHAT THE … AXIOS’ JONATHAN SWANandMARGARET TALEV:“President Trump has suggested multiple times to senior Homeland Security and national security officials that they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States, according to sources who have heard the president’s private remarks and been briefed on a National Security Council memorandum that recorded those comments.” Axios

— JUST SAYING … AP:“Forecasters say the fourth tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season is maintaining its strength as it moves toward the Windward Islands. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Sunday that Tropical Storm Dorian could intensify to near hurricane strength over the eastern Caribbean Sea by Tuesday.”

BURGESS EVERETTin Old Town, Maine:“Inside Susan Collins’ reelection fight in the age of Trump”:“Shortly after Barack Obama won and Susan Collins was reelected in 2008, the president invited her to the White House to pitch the economic stimulus. It was not particularly subtle. ‘He said: “You know Susan, they really like me in Maine. And I did really well in the last election,”’ Collins recounted over sandwiches at the Governor’s Restaurant in Eastern Maine. ‘I practically had to bite my tongue in two to avoid saying: “They do like you Mr. President, but they liked me better.”’

“For Collins to win a fifth term, she needs Mainers to again like hermore than the current White House occupant. A whole lot more. The 66-year-old political giant is facing the race of her life despite her universal name recognition and bipartisan reputation. President Donald Trump is targeting Maine as a battleground while his divisive politics has cleaved the state in two, and Collins has to share the ticket with him. …

“Projected to be the most expensive in Maine’s history,the race is of imperative importance for party leaders and the Senate institution itself. With scarce opportunities elsewhere, Senate Democrats essentially need [Sara] Gideon to win to gain a minimum of three seats and the majority. In the Senate, a Collins loss would be a potentially fatal blow to the reeling center of the chamber.” POLITICO

2020 WATCH …

— MARC CAPUTOin Seattle:“‘The rock star’ vs. ‘The rock’: Warren and Biden hurtle toward collision”:“Elizabeth Warren has the crowds. Joe Biden has the lead. The split-screen story of one of the most intriguing match-ups of the Democratic presidential primary is unfolding in a glaring contrast of style and substance.

“On Sunday, Warren stood on the biggest stageof her presidential campaign for a rally here that drew an estimated 15,000 people — eclipsing an estimated 12,000-person event she held in Minnesota earlier in the week, according to her campaign. Across the country in New Hampshire, Biden presided over a series of intimate, subdued events in New Hampshire and Iowa, hosting crowds that numbered in the low hundreds.

“Warren roused her supporters with calls for ‘big, structural change,’and the crowd roared with chants of ‘Two cents! Two cents’ while waving two fingers in the air as Warren discussed her 2 percent ‘wealth tax.’ Biden pounded away at President Donald Trump, his campaign subtly and overtly reminding voters that polls consistently show him as the party’s best general election candidate and the primary’s frontrunner.

“The parallel displays by two of the threeleading Democratic candidates offered a possible preview of the collision course looming if Biden and Warren maintain their current trajectory. It would be a clash of opposites: the progressive firebrand against the establishment favorite; the cerebral candidate of big, bold plans vs. the elder statesman offering himself as a safe haven for people who simply want a return to pre-Trump normalcy.” POLITICO

— “When they go low? Dems navigating nasty race against Trump,”by AP’s Steve Peoples

— “How Bernie and Cardi B became 2020’s oddest alliance,”by Holly Otterbein

TRUMP’S MONDAY —The president will meet with Indian PM Narendra Modi this morning. He will participate in a G-7 working lunch on digital transformation followed by a closed session of the G-7. Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron will hold a joint press conference at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time before Trump and first lady Melania Trump depart for Washington.

FOR YOUR RADAR — “Attacks blamed on Israel across three Middle East countries ratchet up tensions,”by WaPo’s Liz Sly and James McAuley in Beirut: “Attacks against Iranian-allied forces in three countries, all blamed on Israel, escalated tensions across the Middle East on Sunday, drawing threats of retaliation and intensifying fears that a bigger conflict could erupt.

“The attacks Saturday and Sunday targeted Iranian forcesand their proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, in what appeared to be a significant escalation of Israeli efforts to contain the expansion of Iranian influence in the region that could jeopardize the continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq and draw Lebanon into a new war.” WaPo

SOUNDS LIKE A SWEET DEAL … REUTERS/KABUL:“As U.S. and Taliban negotiators push to wrap up talks aimed at securing the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan, Taliban sources say a pact will not mean an end to fighting with the U.S.-backed Afghan government. … ‘We will continue our fight against the Afghan government and seize power by force,’ said the Taliban commander on condition of anonymity.” Reuters

MEDIAWATCH — “Trump Allies Target Journalists Over Coverage Deemed Hostile to White House,”by NYT’s Ken Vogel and Jeremy Peters: “A loose network of conservative operatives allied with the White House is pursuing what they say will be an aggressive operation to discredit news organizations deemed hostile to President Trump by publicizing damaging information about journalists. …

“Four people familiar with the operation described how it works,asserting that it has compiled dossiers of potentially embarrassing social media posts and other public statements by hundreds of people who work at some of the country’s most prominent news organizations.

“The group has already released information about journalistsat CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times — three outlets that have aggressively investigated Mr. Trump — in response to reporting or commentary that the White House’s allies consider unfair to Mr. Trump and his team or harmful to his re-election prospects.” NYT

—Canadian reporterCarolyn Dunnsays she was blocked from entering the United States …@carolyndunncbc:“Guys, I’ve been refused entry into US. Sections 212 (a) (7) (A) (i) (I). Me going to DC is ‘entry into the labor’ market and I’d be ‘imported labor.’ I’ve never been pulled aside at a US border let alone refused entry.”

—MSNBC’sKasie Huntis going on maternity leave, she announced on her show Sunday night. Ayman Mohyeldin will be filling in while she’s out.Video

Send tips to Eli Okun and Garrett Ross at politicoplaybook@politico.com.

TRANSITION — Yagmur Cosaris now comms director at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Corporate Citizenship Center. She previously was a VP at Burson Cohn & Wolfe.

ENGAGED — Tyler Q. Houlton,senior adviser at the State Department and former DHS spokesman, proposed toAlli Papa,RNC Midwest finance director, on Saturday at Ladies Beach in Nantucket. The couple met at the NRCC in 2013.Pic…Another pic

WEEKEND WEDDING — SoRelle Wyckoff,a University of Maryland PhD student and John Cornyn and House GOP Conference alum, andMichael Gaynor,a staff writer and editor at the Brookings Institution, got married Saturday at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church. They celebrated at the Meridian House and with a karaoke after-party at Colony Club.Pic

BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Ilyse Hogue,president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.A trend that she thinks doesn’t get enough attention:“Right now? The fires in the Amazon. More broadly, the international movements toward gender equity by removing restrictions on abortion — from Ireland to Poland to Argentina — and how the United States is moving in the opposite direction.”Playbook Plus Q&A

BIRTHDAYS:USA Today White House correspondent David Jackson is 6-0 (h/t John Fritze) …Robert Barnett … Oracle’s Josh Pitcock (h/t Matt) … Tom Ridge, chairman of Ridge Global, is 74 … Eric Fehrnstrom … Joe Weisenthal, co-host of “What’d You Miss?” and editor at Bloomberg … Savannah Sellers,co-host of “Stay Tuned” and NBC/MSNBC correspondent … Eddie Vale, partner at New Paradigm Strategy … Messina Group partner Sean Sweeney … Navin Nayak, executive director of the CAP Action Fund … Amanda Wood … Robert Flock … Jenn Sherman, director of public affairs for the surgeon general … Devan Cayea, operations director for Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) … Jim Harris … Satyam Khanna … Evan Zimmerman … POLITICO’s Quint Forgey is 24 …

… Justin Dillon,partner at KaiserDillon, is 45 …BuzzFeed’s Miriam Elder (h/t Ben Chang) … Patrick Dorton, partner at Rational 360, is 51 … Brielle Appelbaum … Morra Aarons-Mele … Don Sweitzer (h/ts Jon Haber) … Katie Sienicki (h/ts Teresa Vilmain) … Ammar Akkash … Kiran Chetry … Julian Epstein … Myles Miller … Keith T. Tomatore … Ari Ratner, founder and CEO of Inside Revolution … Kirk Anderson … Kimberly Overbeek … Andrew Ross … Lee Ann Calaway … Drew Halunen … Thomas Rice … Tiffany Cox … Corey Cooke … Jamal Halaby … Jason Goings … Jackie Smith … Don Preston … Arthur MacMillan … Bill Whitaker … Rebekah Jorgensen Hoshiko … Grace Segers, political reporter at CBS … Stephen Dubner, co-author of the “Freakonomics” series … Marissa Currie

Anna Palmer @apalmerdc

Jake Sherman @JakeSherman

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[shapesweets83-blog]

Best Architecture, Urban Design, & Public Art Of 2018

We’ve been saying this for a few years now, but 2018 really did feel like a year where significant changes–much of them highly-anticipated–came to Philly’s built environment.

Comcast Technology Center | Photo: Bradley Maule

A refashioned LOVE Park opened without skateboarders and a replacement National Products building with its faked but convincing historic facade began filling up with renters; some might say the original versions were better. The iconic Curtis and Bourse buildings emerged from renovations as upscale food destinations. In West Philadelphia, the development of uCitySquare, a joint project of Science Center, Cambridge Innovation Center, Wexford Science and Technology, BioLabs, and Ventas continued apace with the opening of its first mid-rise tower.

A significant extension to the Schuylkill River Trail from South to Christian street closed part of the gap between the existing boardwalk and Grays Ferry Crescent, while the Fairmount Water Works Trail and Boardwalk opened, affording views of the small island wetlands behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We like how at this point all of these Schuylkill projects have come to an understanding about the materials, finishes, and street furniture that they will be using going forward.

In fact, there’s much to like about all of the above developments but whether in scope or aesthetics, context or contributions, they weren’t the most transformative ones of 2018. What ties our winners together are linkages–past to present, city to nature, interior to exterior. For those, read on.

New Building: Skyscraper

The eastern view from the Comcast Technology Center | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin

Who needs Amazon when we have Comcast? With its second skyscraper, the 1,121-foot, $1.5 billion Comcast Technology Center, the media giant has risen to the occasion by using corporate architecture to positively impact downtown. Granted, Foster + Partners’ glass tower isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but its interiors are. An installation by the world-class contemporary artist Jenny Holzer and an extensive use of wood (from slatted sides and ceilings to distinctive woodblock flooring) integrate the building into the life of the city and elevate its performance as public space. An elegant and reasonably priced cafe offers a great addition to the lunch scene (as I witnessed one recent afternoon, CEO Brian Roberts thinks it’s good enough to entertain Steven Spielberg). The expansive glass opens up respectful vistas of, and a connection to, the two towers’ stalwart neighbor, the Arch Street Presbyterian Church, and the Robert Morris Building beyond.

New Building: Hidden Gem

Entrance to the Discovery Center overlooking the East Park Reservoir | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin

Discovery Center in East Fairmount Park has a grand exterior, perhaps more so than its relatively modest mission demands. Designed by Digsau for the offices and services of the local branches of Audubon and Outward Bound, its long flat planes emerge from the Fairmount Park landscape seemingly out of nowhere, promising an oasis amidst the sea of chickenwire fencing that surrounds a decommissioned reservoir/now native habitat. Serene and bold at the same time, it reminds me of some of the best of modern Japanese architecture, not only in its forms and materials but in its embrace of nature. Your first steps through the portal of a hand-forged steel gate (it looks like wood lattice) positioned in the middle of a 500-foot facade of shou sugi ban will pretty much take your breath away.

    Public Space

Cherry Street Pier | Photo: Michael Bixler

Among the many civic achievements of Race Street Pier (2011) was the crystallization of the allure of its near neighbor to the south, Cherry Street Pier. The realization of that tease came this fall, with a little piece of tactical urbanism designed by Groundswell Design Group and Interface Studio Architects. Drawing on the lessons of GDG’s wildly successful Spruce St. Harbor Park–namely that people like beer, street food, and things to do along with their views–it’s a fun and dynamic environment that aims to delight. Someone please give the folks at Delaware River Waterfront Corporation (the force behind all three spaces) an award for recognizing that interventions don’t always have to take dozens of years and hundreds of millions to be transformative.

Adaptive Reuse

The Rail Park | Photo: Bradley Maule

The idea of the Rail Park was a big meh to me–until it opened. As was the case with Cherry Street Pier’s first weekend, though, the excitement and interest in the unveiling that morning (of course I went!) was tangible and encouraging. If they do nothing else, such projects foster a dialogue about how we use our urban spaces, and for that alone they deserve high praise. Sure, The Rail Park’s first phase is just a little spit of a thing and sure it can’t boast the views or (as of yet) the landscape vision of New York’s High Line. But Studio Bryan Haynes nailed it with a plan that’s firmly of its place and with enough design twists and turns (literally) to keep things interesting–and swinging (also literally).

      Preservation

Sprouts Farmers Market | Photo: Michael Bixler

The debut of Philadelphia’s first Sprouts Farmers Market, the Arizona-based chain with a natural/organic bent, was particularly noteworthy because it’s filled a demonstrable market need on South Broad Street. Part of Lincoln Square, an otherwise ordinary development that offers 322 apartments and a retail coterie that includes a tired trio of Target, Starbucks and Pet Smart, its real significance is its success as a bold example of both historic preservation, of the 1876 Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad depot, and adaptive reuse. Though the corporate strip mall treatment of the entrance to the market fails to acknowledge the urban setting, the historic architecture of the train shed, or the contemporary design of the multi-use apartment building, Sprouts gets shouts simply because of how it’s smartly wedged into the historic train shed. That and the free samples.

New Place

Looking east toward East Market, with the under restoration Stephen Girard and under construction Girard apartment hotel tower in the foreground | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin

East Market touts itself as “dynamic” and while that’s an overstatement, I kind of like it there. An expert mix of new construction, historic restoration, and adaptive reuse that keeps it from feeling bland, this refashioning of the downtrodden former Snellenburg Department Store site into a true mixed-use pedestrian street by BLT Architects is something we haven’t seen before. A new hotel and more local retail (Federal Donuts!) suggest things will only get better. Best of all, the development adds vibrancy to the urban fabric that surrounds it, allowing new vantage points to gaze on the Reading Terminal, PSFS Building, and the former Horn & Hardart at 11th and Ludlow Streets.

              Restoration

The Met: White elephant no more | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin

It’s hard to believe that The Met was ever allowed to devolve into a ruin, but after years kept alive by the Holy Ghost Headquarters Church, developer Eric Blumenfeld’s 2013 plan for the Oscar Hammerstein opera house has come to fruition. The careful $56 million renovation by local firm AOS Architects is ruby velvet and gilded surfaces–and bars, lots of bars. It’s been modernized (of course) but with much of its astounding plaster ornamentation recreated, it looks like a concert hall should. Visitors say the sightlines are almost uniformly great, too. Take that, Academy of Music.

Transformation

The Hale Building | Photo: Peter Woodall

Day in, day out the miracle of the 1887 Keystone National Bank Building, designed by Willis Hale, has proven the most pleasurable for me, located as it is on a prominent corner that I pass a couple of times each week. When I first saw the spiffed up red brick and cleaned-up facade in full reveal of the “Hale Building” I do believe I let out an audible gasp. While I’m not in love with the new entrance on the Chestnut Street and I’m not expecting much from the interiors, I thank JKRP Architects for a careful revival of this masterful mashup and making my walks around town that much more pleasurable.

Design Vision

Rear view of the Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin

Long under-utilized, the stately West Philadelphia Trust Building has renewed presence on Walnut Street thanks to a smart restoration and intervention from Toronto-based KPMB. Freshly engraved with the name of its tenant, the University of Pennsylania’s Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics, the 1925 Art Deco building has been seamlessly linked to a new glass-and-aluminum tower that echoes the older structure’s massing and window cutouts. Interiors, too, are elegant with clean lines and a dramatic staircase that suggests both the old and the new bones of the intertwined university building.

    Placemaking

Trolley Car Station cafe adjacent to the SEPTA Subway-Surface tunnel | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin

With outdoor seating and beds of native plantings, Trolley Portal Gardens makes a there out of something whose assets–historic Woodlands Cemetery, a charming tunnel–belie its utilitarian functions (catching and disembarking from mass transit). The wood structure of the Trolley Car Station café echoes the form of the adjacent tunnel and bumps up the space from an amenity for transit users to a gift for the entire neighborhood.

    Public Art

Deck the Hall light show, City Hall | Photo: Nathaniel Popkin

Robert Indiana’s LOVE was returned to a renovated Love Park, the Parkway Holocaust memorial expanded, and the better-in-concept-than-reality (thus far) sculpture Pulse finally debuted at Dilworth Plaza. From Winter Fountains, the luminous orbs that decorated the Parkway, to Sea Monsters HERE, an Insta-ready serpent that wreaked playful havoc at the Navy Yard, it was certainly a big year for public art. My favorite, though, came courtesy of a brilliant burst of color and movement from the geniuses over at Klip Collective: the City Hall Deck The Hall Light Show. Granted, this iteration differed only slightly from the version the group premiered last year. But because it so lovingly touted City Hall as a dazzling piece of architecture and because it comes from a homegrown operation that’s rapidly gaining a national reputation, I’m giving it the nod. Next year, guys, maybe switch it up?

About the author

Freelance journalist JoAnn Greco writes about the fascinating people, places, trends, and stories found in the worlds of urban planning, arts and culture, design, hospitality, travel and, of course, Philadelphia. Her work has been published in the Washington Post, Art & Antiques, Toronto Globe and Mail, Amtrak’s Arrive, PlanPhilly, Penn Gazette, and dozens of others. She lives in Bella Vista.

Source: https://hiddencityphila.org/2018/12/best-architecture-urban-design-public-art-of-2018/

[thousandmaths]

A Weyld Group Appears!

Hey folks, this is the second of three posts (1 2 3) based on a talk I am giving (today!), based on Steven Griffeth’s lecture series that he gave at the CRM Equivariant Combinatorics seminar.

I’m more or less using this space to write up my talk notes. Since the audience for the talk is a graduate seminar in representation theory, the post will (hopefully) be a lot more dense than the stuff I usually write here.

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In the last post we talked about the Weyl algebra, it’s PBW theorem, and a coordinate-free version. In this post, we throw a group action into the mix and see what happens.

Unfortunately we need to start with two rather dense definitions.

Definition. Let $A$ be an associative algebra which is also a representation of some finite group $G$. Then the semidirect product $A\rtimes G$ is isomorphic to $A\otimes \Bbb C[G]$ as a vector space, but it has a different product structure: $(a\otimes g)(b\otimes h) = ag(b)\otimes gh$.

If you have some familiarity with semidirect products of groups, this definition probably feels fairly comfortable. You want to multiply coordinate-wise, but as the $b$ commutes past the $g$ it gets acted upon.

The next definition is not standard terminology, but this thing is going to come up often enough that I want a name for it.

Definition. Let $G\leq \text{GL}(V)$ be a finite group, and $\langle\cdot,\cdot\rangle$ be a skew-symmetric “bilinar form” $V\times V\to \Bbb C[G]$. Then the corresponding $G$-twisted algebra is

$$ \mathcal H = T(V)\rtimes G / (vw-wv-\langle v,w\rangle: v,w\in V). $$

(The name is not very good, I admit: it suggests something much more general than what it is. But it will be good enough for now.)

At this point, I’d like to write down a couple facts about $\mathcal H$, which I will pose as exercises:

Exercise: Prove that if $G=1$ and $V=\Bbb C^2$, then there is a choice of $\langle\cdot,\cdot\rangle$ that makes $\mathcal H \cong D(\Bbb C)$. Prove the analogous statement for $D(\Bbb C^n)$.

Working in $\mathcal H$, show that $gvg^{-1}=g(v)$, and $g\langle w,v\rangle g^{-1} = \langle g(w),g(v)\rangle$. Moreover, define

$$\langle\cdot,\cdot\rangle =: \sum_{g\in G} \langle \cdot,\cdot\rangle_g \, g $$

and show that $\langle w,v\rangle_g = \langle g(w),g(v)\rangle_g$.

These exercises are designed so that they give an intuition about calculations in $G$-twisted algebras, rather than requiring an intuition about them. So if you get lost during the talk, it might be worth your while to try one of them out.

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It would be nice if these algebras satisfied a PBW theorem, but that’s not always the case. However, we can specify exactly when they do!

Theorem. Let $\mathcal H$ be a $G$-twisted algebra and $v_1,\dots, v_n$ a basis for the underlying vector space. Then the set $\{v_1^{a_1}\cdots v_n^{a_n} g\}_{a_i\geq 0, g\in G}$ is a basis for $\mathcal H$ if and only if

$$ \langle v,w \rangle_g (g(u)-u) + \langle u,v \rangle_g (g(w)-w) + \langle w,u \rangle_g (g(v)-v) = 0 $$

for all $u,v,w\in V$ and $g\in G$.

A few words about the proof of this theorem.

If you squint really hard, the long equation that we want the thing to satisfy looks maybe, kinda like the Jacobi identity. And that’s how you prove the forward direction: you use the Jacobi identity for the commutator.

For the reverse direction, this is a PBW theorem. And while the details are really dreadfully tedious in this setting, but the idea is exactly the same as for the Weyl algebra. Namely, to prove independence you construct the fake regular representation, show that all the $vw-wv-\langle v,w\rangle$ act as zero, and then use bootstrap the linear independence in the representation up to linear independence in the algebra.

To give a feel for the details...

In this case, suppose $v_1,\dots, v_n$ is a basis for $V$, and the representation is the group algebra over a polynomial ring: $\Bbb C[z_1,\dots, z_n][G]$. To define the representation, we need to say how each $g\in G$ acts, and how each $v_i$ acts. It is easy to describe the action of the group elements in terms of the actions of the $v_i$:

$$ g\cdot z_1^{a_1}\cdots z_n^{a_n}\gamma = [g(v_1)]^{a_1}\cdots [g(v_n)]^{a_n} \cdot g\gamma. $$

It is also easy to describe how this resolves: straighten out the $G$-twisted algebra element that results from multiplying together all those $g(v_i)$, so that each monomial has the $v_i$ in increasing order. (This is possible because the proposed basis spans $\mathcal H$, a fact whose proof is uncomplicated enough (relatively speaking) that we have ignored it.) Then, simply remove the $\cdot$ and change all of the $v$’s to $z$’s.

Rather than explaining the definition of the $v_i$ action, it is more enlightening to look at an example: let us consider $v_3 \cdot (z_1)^2 z_3 z_4$:

\begin{align*}  v_3 \cdot (z_1)^2 z_3 z_4  &=  v_1v_3 \cdot z_1z_3z_4 + \langle v_3,v_1 \rangle \cdot z_1z_3z_4 \\\  &=  v_1\Big(v_1v_3 \cdot z_3z_4 + \langle v_3,v_1 \rangle \cdot z_3z_4\Big) + \langle v_3,v_1 \rangle\cdot z_1z_3z_4 \\\  &=  (v_1)^2v_3 \cdot z_3z_4 + v_1\langle v_3,v_1\rangle \cdot z_3z_4 + \langle v_3,v_1 \rangle \cdot z_1z_3z_4 \\\  &= (z_1)^2(z_3)^2 z_4 + \cdots  \end{align*}.

The important features come through in this calculation: $z$-variables are commuted to the correct side of the $v_i$, one at a time, and in the process are converted to $v$-variables and spawn a term with a bilinear form. The whole process is inductive, with the base case being that all of the $v$-variables immediately convert to $z$-variables when there is no longer an issue with variables being out of order.

As you can imagine, it is a logistical nightmare to actually do any calculations with this representation. And unfortunately, to complete the proof, you do need to do such a calculation: namely, to show that each $v_iv_j - v_jv_i-\langle v_i,v_j\rangle$ acts as zero.

So as promised, the details are tedious, but you can do it, and hopefully you see that this thing sort of looks like a fake regular representation, so the idea really is almost identical to the technically simpler Weyl algebra setting.

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