#it feels very weird talking about this openly but also its very difficult to talk about with friends because most of them dont get it

[paging-possum]

Who up listening to good luck babe by chappell roan and having it resonate not in the way intended but resonating nonetheless. About to go ham in the tags about the overlap of being a lesbian and being aromantic...if u even care....

[readymades2002]

it is very frustrating because my mom does not know What The Deal Is but she certainly Suspects (for good reason. to be fair to her.) and she has Insinuated and she has Implied but she has not asked anything specifically. and its...not unreasonable for her to do this i guess because the last relationship i was in i didn't tell her for a year and a half. because the relationship BEFORE that was my first and it was with a girl and i asked her EXPLICITLY AND URGENTLY to not tell my dad about it because he was a massive homophobe and i knew this and saw this where she did not and she told him anyway and i have not trusted her since though, having few other options, i have continued to confide in her things that i should not confide in her that have then mysteriously made their way through all our shared coworkers back to me. and its.....its so. i don't know what to do about it. she..."stalked" is the wrong word but she followed my blog against my wishes and knowledge as a child and the more i lost trust in her and stopped talking to her the more she pried into my private life. i know my sister had similar experiences with her. and it has created this cycle where i keep trying to keep her out for my own privacy and dignity and safety and she just gets even more desperate and pathetic trying to get in after breaking my trust over and over and OVER again but i live with her and depend on her for far too many things and so it just. is this. awesomesauce

[meanbossart]

omg i loved that insight into some of drow's most important relationships it was so juicy...now...i gotta know what orin thought of this guy. we get some idea based off the game and other asks but what did orin really think of drow? especially when he first arrived at the temple it must have been something to be told this feral bastard is another of Bhaal's chosen. when do you think she decided to betray him?

GLAD YOU ENJOYED THE READING I love love Love getting into the nitty gritty of personal relationships so thank god some of you guys also like hearing about it LOL

But boy! That's a difficult one. Orin is a very mysterious character to me, we get a fair bit about her life and a vague idea of her relationship with you, but it's always from a second-hand source - the woman herself seems so stripped of humanity that it's difficult to imagine her doing trivial things like going to sleep at night or eating lunch - let alone how she felt about the people around her.

And there's an allure to that that I'm hesitant to try and demystify; not to mention how it itself was a source of frustration to DU drow. While its not like he ever desired to have a sit down and talk about their feelings together as a bhaalspawn, he did want to be let in, whatever that meant - and Orin never ever allowed that, though she did let him get close enough to keep trying.

I do like to believe they were both much less brazen when they met as young adults, DU drow being the shellshocked looking freak who barely knew how to carry out human interaction that he was, and Orin being a lot more explicitly reliant on Sarevok's approval and guidance to exist in the temple. With this, I think there would have been room to some insecurity - if there's another bhaalspawn, her need and effectiveness would come into far more scrutiny than it already did, after all. She would have probably disliked and avoided DU drow not on the basis of his appearance or past, but just because of this threat that he represented to her alone.

And while they inevitably grew close in a very weird way, that very first impression would have planted this seed of resentment in her which would eventually result in the betrayal; but it definitely wasn't the only thing that led to it.

Orin would have been all too aware that DU drow wanted her as more than a sister or a cohort; he was INCREDIBLY unsubtle and would have made attempts to escalate their relationship at least a few times. Because of my theory that Sarevok wanted them to breed together, this behavior was never discouraged, and while I highly doubt it was ever explicitly and openly discussed, I do think Sarevok would have found ways to imply to her that he would like to see the line continue through them.

Obviously Orin never reciprocated DU drow's feelings or desires, but she did enjoy toying with him - while she probably did love him as family, I don't have to spell out to you how weird a situation this is and how it might lead to a lot of bitterness on her end. I don't know if she "led him on" out of malice, out of a desire to feel in control of the situation, or just because she enjoyed the mind games, but these instances of teasing and holding things over DU drow's head only came after many blunt attempts at shooting him down, and looked very different from any sincere displays of affection they may have had as "siblings". Whenever DU drow wanted to push her boundaries, it would be as if a switch flipped and their dynamic ever so slightly changed - and she met in kind. This would usually reach a peak where it broke out in violence, and always ended with them beaten, bleeding, but laughing. And then it would never be spoken about again.

So, with this growing resentment, plus Sarevok's growing favoritism towards DU drow and his seeming desire to see them mate, PLUS Orin's very real ambition to pursue Bhaal's plan and gain some recognition of her own, she would have eventually decided that she didn't want want DU drow around anymore. What feelings precisely led to this decision I do not know, but whatever they were they had been festering for a very long time.

[idolomantises]

talking abt that one thing in velma thats on my mind a lot for the past few days (that turned into a big incoherent rambling about gay rep in media)

i'm seeing jokes about how the queer representation in mystery inc being so much better than the queer representation in velma and honestly it makes me want to go on a whole tangent about my thoughts on queer representation nowadays vs the more subtle examples decades prior.

There's this weird debate that goes on online about what is "good" queer representation, and one of the most notable and honestly annoying examples is that queer representation has to be so subtle that you could easily miss it/ignore it. i've always hated that take because its a claim mostly said by straight people who are uncomfortable with seeing characters who are openly queer and/or state their identity, but they present it as some sort of push for subtle and nuanced writing. personally i do prefer it when a character just, identifies as how they are without explaining their identity, but that doesn't mean flat out explaining your orientation is inherently bad representation. its why i will always defend the very clunky and awkward high guardian spice scene. it is absolutely poorly directed and written, but that doesn't make it "bad representation". however, I do consider the character who explains that he's trans bad representation because he is flat, uninteresting and very clearly a creator self insert. he doesn't feel like a well rounded character who's also a trans man, but just an incredibly sanitized example of trans representation.

i have many, many issues with helluva boss/hazbin hotel and i do genuinely find some depictions of queer characters just flat out offensive (you can argue with me about how angel dust being written like your average 90s gay stereotype is woke actually because he has trauma, i dont care), but i do admire and appreciate that the series doesn't want to sanitize its queer characters, even if its done poorly. though i could go into a whole rant about how i find it very telling that female characters that are queer are far less sexualized or allowed to be problematic compared to their queer male counterparts.

anyways back to velma. that show does something that i've always found pretty irritating in queer representation which is just this weird lack of faith in its audience. characters can't have a slow burn anymore. internalized thoughts, anger, frustration, longing. you have to immediately know that two characters are gay for each other, even if they're lifelong enemies. its like when modern horror movies open with the gore because they're scared people are going to be bored or leave early. there's no subtlety or chemistry between daphne and velma, they're just lovers because idk, its two girls who hate each other and who doesn't love that.

then i think about how mystery inc handled velma and her sexuality, how she was allowed to be well rounded and nuanced before you slowly realize that "oh, she doesn't like boys". i know her whole thing with shaggy is controversial among fans but i always loved how she does do something pretty unlikable but not immoral. yeah, it is shitty to force shaggy to choose between her and his dog, but i can understand her line of thinking and empathize with her. and i do like how they become friends in the end despite their awkward break up. It's always fun rewatching it and realizing that their incredibly awkward and cringe relationship was meant to be awkward and cringe. it was supposed to be weird and difficult to watch, because those two weren't meant to date each other. you could see how hard velma was trying to make the relationship work despite the fact that you never get the vibe that either character was full invested in it, unlike daphne and fred's relationship.

then you had velma and her relationship with marcie, which started off as sort of a catty rivalry (not full on attempted murder, i mean holy shit hbo velma) that slowly grows to where you're completely convinced that these two did gradually like each other. and i do really enjoy stuff like that, more subtle writing like that. which doesn't just apply to queer rep btw, my favorite ships are relationships that feel understated, something you have to really dig for and pay attention to. its why i consider bubbline the best f/f representation in cartoon. because its subtle, but not too subtle where it feels out of no where when they kiss, and nuanced in ways that enhances the relationship AND characters.

there's a good amount of relationships i see in cartoons where the creator, who is usually queer themselves, often wants to depict queer relationships, but is weirdly adverse to depicting the uglier aspects of that character, and refuses to add subtlety to it. steven universe is a show i've always felt conflicted on its handling of queer representation because on the one hand i appreciate writing lesbians that are messy, traumatized and make constant mistakes. but on the other hand, the show goes out of its way to ignore these issues and/or make excuses for it, making the decision to make these characters messy and complicated genuinely baffling (this is also one of the big issues i have with catradora and stolitz).

it makes me think back to my own work too. i really enjoy making fluffy, easily digestible gay content for my followers and myself because it puts me in a good headspace. But even now and then i like exploring those little nuances too, because i don't really enjoy stories with little conflict. Because of that acknowledgement of how satisfying it is to write fluffy, queer rep, you end up putting yourself in other creator's shoes. you're so used to media that either dehumanizes gay people or tells people that they don't exist that you push yourself to make the most in your face queer rep you can but its at the cost of an interesting and subtle characters. characters that don't really have arcs or places to learn and grow.

With bugtopia i made a joke about how i want some of my queer rep to feel like you're being queerbaited. It's not literal, obviously, but mixed in with characters who are already married and in same gender relationships, i really want to write dynamics that feel subtle enough for a bit of a slow burn. even if you know they're going to end up together, to at least value the characters on their own before centering them on their relationships. queerbaiting is something that deserves all the criticism it can get, but it is embarrassing when queerbaiting feels genuinely more interesting than actual queer rep because queerbaiting has that factor of "maybe they won't get together" that adds that bit of intrigue, vs so many shows that repeatedly hammer in your head "don't worry guys, they're gonna be lesbian lovers".

mystery inc (and many other shows) being forced to keep a relationship obvious while subtle to get through censorship really forced creators to be creative with their storytelling and not center characters around their relationship and identity. but nowadays i think shows like to take the easy way out. for me, i always thought the most impactful example of queer representation in steven universe is "Rose's Scabbard". I genuinely don't enjoy that episode because it's a good example of the show thinking that trauma is an excuse for shitty behavior, but i cant deny that an entire episode of pearl breaking down and finally accepting that she wasn't the center of rose's world. it's the crew being forced to be creative and push through censors to telling a compelling story about a traumatized lesbian slowly realizing that she basically deluded herself into thinking she was someone's savior.

I think it's silly to try to place good queer representation in one box. like subtle queer rep is good, but also queer rep where a character flat out states that their gay. where I think it falls apart is when it either reinforces stereotypes without properly deconstructing or expanding on them, makes the characters so overly kind and non-controversial that the relationship is just boring, or try to make your messy and complicated characters but the narrative refuses to hold them accountable or at least acknowledge that they're doing something wrong. and to clarify on that last part, i'm not asking for some hays code nonsense where every bad person goes to prison and/or promises to stop being a bad person again. i mean the narrative doesnt just fucking sugarcoat their behavior. i don't want to see helluva boss ignore the fact that stolas made blitzo call him out for only using him for sex and then pathetically rush to justify their relationship by giving them a bizarrely sanitized and sweet backstory. and i don't want to see catra literally end the fucking universe and only do something good because she's straight up out of options and the show just decides that that was her redemption and she doesn't need to do anything to atone for what she did (including repeatedly abusing and verbally berating adora).

anyways velma has none of those interesting qualities and i'm pretty sure daphne and velma kissed because the creator is a weird pervert who thinks two girls kissing is hot.

[ratgirlcopia]

Nah, i think what you said in your lore opinion makes a lot of sense, actually, and as your token mutual who is (unfortunately, here) very fond of terzo and meliora, i think, from a 'what is ghost to someone just getting into it' perspective its probably the most coherent way to approach it!

(My migraine addled brain last night suggested it's like. Vampires before and after Dracula. Prequelle and Impera are putting a definite and more specific thing together. The earlier albums and papas play with a premise, and it's not that there's *not* stories there, but. If you're writing a dracula story you don't really have to integrate other earlier, potentially contradictory, vampire concepts unless you want to, because we've got a single, specific iteration we're working with now. The previous papas and how they interact with copia's lore are functionally, as you say, more like fun AUs than equal canon)

yeah i think this is a really good way of looking at it! the previous papas are essential to how the concept evolved, but they're just not part of it anymore, they were a separate thing, and that time is pretty much over. sorry in advance for how long this is, this ask just made me start thinking about it again and i think it's an extremely interesting topic.

it's sort of wild, because i guess they figured that in order to keep people invested, copia had to be part of the "same" universe, and there had to be background characters carrying over across eras to bridge the gap, but the longer it goes on, the more it becomes obvious that the story probably would've benefited a lot from doing something like, "hey, the three previous guys were all from, say, the swedish location of the ghost ministry, but now we're going to talk about all-new characters from the los angeles location and it's a separate thing." but the decision to keep imperator and nihil as characters who have always been orchestrating things across eras (thus retconning a lot of stuff in the process) means we have these very ambiguous connections that weigh down the narrative.

even nihil's whole existence is contradictory. they present him as if he's been "papa" forever, we also have the "there can only be one papa" rule copia throws out during the ascension show, so then we're left with...what, nihil was papa before, then his kids were papa, then he went back to being papa? if the title is that easy to toss back and forth, it doesn't really mean anything. but if we view nihil-imperator-copia as their own universe, with nihil holding onto that title forever because there just isn't anybody else who's good enough for it, his whole deal makes a lot more sense.

the previous three are killed off SO unceremoniously, and because they are literally never brought up again, it just feels like (again, understandably) the writing at the beginning of the prequelle era was pretending there's a connection to the past eras that wasn't really there, to convince people to stay invested in what was essentially a brand-new thing. but now that it's worked and people are invested in copia, there aren't any more call-backs to previous eras, because they don't need them. but that weird "is it the same thing or isn't it" connection is still there because they relied on it in the beginning of the prequelle era.

it's the kind of thing that would drive me absolutely crazy if i was responsible for figuring out how to tell a coherent story, but thankfully that's not on me so i can just watch.

i think ghost is probably a very, very difficult thing to write for because of all this, which is part of why i'm so interested to see what the ghovie ends up doing. i think it could be a really cool opportunity to retcon the parts that don't make sense and try to edit all the weird, ambiguous loose ends together into a good, internally consistent story. they'd have to be willing to risk going "hey, these things aren't connected at all, sorry," more openly than they have before (even though that's basically the reality, with the current era not acknowledging the previous guys at all), but i think it would be worth the risk in terms of turning out a story that can stand on its own as a logically sound thing.

[elipheleh]

advance warning im going to be complaining about behaviour of some people on rwrb twitter and crossing lines and/or parasocial relationships so. feel free to skip. its also not super concise/coherent because im tired and annoyed.

tl;dr - the actors are strangers. you cannot joke about with them on social media in ways you would joke with your friend. they do not know you. you do not know them.

under a cut because it’s a bit long & i’m tagging it so i don’t want to clog the tags.

—

theres a certain group of people that i see on rwrbtwt who act in a kind of… invasive parasocial way specifically towards nick galitzine and it’s getting really frustrating. (it’s plausible its also at taylor zakhar perez but im not seeing that personally so i can’t say.)

it’s things like screenshotting his old tweets & posting them and tagging him in the tweets where they’re joking about it. and then when he deletes the tweet they call that out & laugh about it or cry about it because from their pov it was innocuous, but they laughed at it and drew attention to it. not because they want to be cruel but because they would do similar with friends (where it would be okay, depending) and have a parasocial relationship with him that makes them think its okay to act similarly.

the most recent one was posting screenshots of accounts in his insta following & not necessarily mocking him for it, but being overly familiar about it (very easily could be read as mocking though especially if you’re sensitive about it). then they are drawing attention to him unfollowing the accounts, which was likely because he’d seen the tweets because they continue to tag him in stuff. they laugh about it and don’t see it as a bad thing but are crowing about getting noticed & getting him to do something. they’re proud of it and of it being proof he’s lurking on social media. and not seeing that they’re why he’s lurking and not posting stuff.

—

quite frankly, it’s invasive and gross behaviour. i expect they would find it incredibly weird if a stranger went through to find tweets they made 5 or so years ago & then screenshot and sent it to them. why is it okay because he’s a celeb? they’re quick to talk about how you shouldn’t talk about certain things just bc they’re famous but will be fine about doing this.

i think the worst thing is they have talked about how nice it is nick has openly talked about his mental health & anxiety struggles and then do this kind of thing with absolutely no regard for how it might be affecting him. i know i would be finding it very difficult not to delete all my past tweets if that was happening to me, i definitely wouldn’t be wanting to tweet more.

and it’s just conjecture, but the fact he’s deleting the tweets & unfollowing the accounts makes it look like it is affecting him. they’re actively making social media an inhospitable place for him to be and then complaining he doesn’t tweet anymore, or that he’s rebranding/archiving insta posts.

if you really want to act like that, which is your choice, dont do it publicly. do it on private accounts, in a groupchat, in a private forum. if you’re determined to get validation from the numbers going up, don’t tag nick in your posts. let him avoid stuff.

[soracities]

Helloooo I'd love some advice please. So I went out on a couple of very lowkey dates with this guy I've known for about 13 years. We went to school together and I kind of befriended his friend group when we were around 13-14 (he was a grade below me) and then kept in contact with only him throughout the years, but that mostly included periods of us chatting online and never hanging out irl (we were honestly only school friends even in the beginning). He kind of told me he loved me out of nowhere when we were maybe 16-17 and I freaked out, and we never really talked about it and I'm not sure if he was serious about it. Due to some personal stuff I have a very hard time dealing with people (mostly guys') interest in me, at least when they straight up ask me out etc. Anyway, flash forward and we lost contact not for any particular reason, but he moved back to the area a couple of years ago and we randomly saw each other on walks and would walk together a bit. We've been talking a little throughout the past two years and he suddenly asked me out in the spring. I of course freaked out, but am trying to get over this weird fear I have and just give it a shot and see where it might lead. The problem is that he's shown that he's interested for over 10 years while I myself am not, really, so I reckon I wonder if it's "ethical" to agree to the dates even if I don't see him like that (yet)? On one hand it's just two dates where nothing happened. That's what dates are, right? Getting to know people to see if you'd work out. But on the other I wonder if it's mean to "waste" his time if it might not lead to anything? Gah, I don't know. I've also been trying to date women (no luck there) this spring and summer, and now I feel like I have to put that on pause because I feel weird about dating several people even if nothing's been said. I decided at the beginning of the year to try out the whole dating thing, being nearly 28 and never been with anyone, but I'm afraid of hurting him while also not wanting to really get into the whole "what are we" thing because right now we're not really anything to me but a curiosity. Is that bad?

Your feelings aren't "bad" necessarily—feelings just are, and there are reasons underlying them that relate to your own particular constellation of circumstances. But I do think it is unfair to keep seeing him without being clear on where you stand with him, especially if he has consistently shown you he's interested, and especially if he has very deep feelings for you; I know it was ten years ago, but I think it may help for you to talk to him about his confession when you were teenagers and find out exactly where he stands now, because I think this could be necessary for both of you.

Dating is about getting to know someone, absolutely, yes—but I do think there's a difference between dating someone to find out if you're both on the same page, and dating someone where you know one of you definitely isn't. I also think it can put a lot of pressure on yourself to try and date someone, for the first time in your life, whom you already have some kind of pre-established "history" with—it's daunting enough to try and date for the first time, to get used to the idea of being able to accept someone's interests in you, let alone to learn how to open yourself up and be vulnerable enough to let them care for you, let alone, again, the prospect of someone offering very real romantic intentions that you don't know whether or not you can reciprocate—it creates a whole new confused medley of obligations, expectations and anxieties that may just feed into the fears and difficulties you already have when it comes to people being openly interested in you, and all this in turn can make it difficult for you to discern what it is that YOU truly want and need.

Again, I don't believe much in marking feelings as "bad" ( or "good" for that matter); I try to see them as indicators more than anything, and I think its important to try and understand those indicators and what they're trying to tell you about particular situations so that you can be mindful of your intentions in them; in this, I think it's very important for you to ask yourself if you're curiosity is in fact informed by some level of genuine interest (I don't want to make presumptions so I can only go by your ask, but based on what you've described this seems unlikely to me), or if it is just that you wanted to try dating and that he happens to be interested and happens to be close at hand (because I think it can be's very easy sometimes, especially if you're conscious of never having been with someone and are trying to change this, to confuse the two).

More than anything I think the best thing you can do for yourself is be honest with him (you may not want to hurt him, but not being honest with either of you about how you feel will cause more hurt than being upfront) and clarify where his feelings for you stand. If they haven't changed in all these years then it definitely isn't a good idea to continue seeing him, for either of you—you both deserve the freedom to explore potential relationships with people who are better suited to where you are in your lives right now. I don't know if any of this helps, but I hope you can take something from it, anon 🤍

[salt-baby]

Hello! I am a person with an invisible disability, and I also have trouble socializing because I’m autistic. I sometimes worry that my interactions with other disabled people will come across like I have a weird attitude toward disability just because I’m incredibly fucking awkward and seem like I have a weird attitude about everything. I would like to have some friends who are also disabled in real life- I feel very lonely and isolated right now, struggling to manage my disability and slipping under the radar, and I just wish I had some people to commiserate with. But I worry that if I try to seek out conversations with disabled people they might take it the wrong way or not believe me, i.e. think I’m just some weirdo trying to identify with them baselessly and invade their personal lives. I just wondered if you had any advice. I have gotten the message loud and clear that I’ll never fully be welcome in my social circles of able-bodied people, but I’m scared to try and forge relationships with other disabled people. Thanks for any advice!

Good news - I'm also autistic! I haven't talked about it on my blog before, because to me, my autism doesn't feel disabling and I like my blog to have a narrow focus, but I definitely do relate to wanting to reach out to people and feeling too awkward to manage it.

Regarding other disabled people doubting you because you have an invisible disability, or because you might talk about it in a different way than other people, I wouldn't be too worried. In my opinion, disability is an indelible trait - that is to say, it's something that changes you as a person and always leaves its marks on someone. When reading, I can usually tell when an author is disabled. The shared experiences we've all had make it easy to recognize each other, even if medical gear or signs of illness aren't explicitly visible.

Even if the way we communicate isn't the same as others, that doesn't mean that the truth that you are disabled won't come out. It'll be in the way you talk about disability (likely radically more accepting than most people would be), the way you treat others with a disability, and the way you talk about yourself. There are some things that only disabled people ever seem to understand, because some things you just have to live to get.

I won't lie and tell you that all disabled people will recognize you as one of their own - some disabled people, insecure in their own disability, will try to claim you're "not disabled enough" to make themselves feel better. I can tell you that I believe you, that your disability is an objective fact, and that these are people you wouldn't want around anyway. Every disabled person is already "disabled enough", and I think doubting our fellow disabled people always does more harm than good.

As for seeking out disabled people, I think it can be difficult to navigate. It's a lot easier for people over thirty to find other disabled people than it is for people younger than that. You might try looking for local disability organizations, support groups, or local Facebook groups, but often the people who attend these events are older, and these sorts of groups can be hard to find outside of big cities. There is also a symbol of invisible disabilities: the sunflower lanyard, which you might find helpful. I personally like to wear sunflower motifs, to represent my POTS, but nobody has ever commented on them.

Still, 1 in 4 people in the US are disabled - we're the world's largest minority. By happy accident, I've found that being open about my own disability has helped other disabled people find me. If I talk openly and casually about my knee braces, other people who wear braces will start to mention theirs to me. I think this makes it easier for others to talk about it - disability is still a taboo topic, and sometimes other's aren't brave enough to discuss it openly. When I mention it first, casually, and often, it not only normalizes it but makes it easier for others to join me.

As a little autism pro-tip, I think we tend to have a bit of a surprise tool when it comes to social interactions: our sincerity. I personally find it very easy to be blunt and sincere, and others very much so appreciate being told they're valued. If you meet someone with a disability, and they talk about it with you, thanking them genuinely for it can be a great tool. "thank you so much for talking about that with me, I'm so relieved to find another disabled person" or "that was genuinely such a helpful tip, thank you so much for sharing that with me" or "you're a really cool person, I'd love to talk with you again!" can all be really great ways to make sure our autism isn't read as disinterest. You and I may not show our emotions like others do - sometimes neurotypicals need it spelled out, and if they don't, saying something sincere like that can never hurt. Just make sure you're telling the truth and that it's from the heart. It took me years to realize others thought I was checked out and standoffish when really I was listening closely and excited to be there, and this is the solution that's worked best for me.

I wish you all the best. You seem like a very lovely person, and I think if we knew each other in real life, we'd be friends.

As always, if you want, you're welcome to send me another ask or dm me. I'm always happy to talk about disability.

[ravenkinnie]

oh of course! I don’t think my question I too personal but it felt weird to just drop it on you without making sure it’s ok. Of course that doesn’t mean you have to reply. Please just ignore this if you think it is too personal. You are the only other person I „know“ with bpd and you always seem honest so I thought maybe you’d have some perspective on this.

So I have a new partner and they have bpd. We are really open about it and they taught me a lot. Recently they have been asking me a lot if I still love them and told me they have been feeling very insecure even when they logically know my feelings won’t just change overnight. They told me to look up „fp“ and how that was the intensity of attachment they had towards me. Now I really fell down a rabbit hole with this (especially on tik tok) and there are some people (with bpd themselves) who suggest people shouldn’t „feed“ this sort of attachment too much. Not ignoring the other person or rejecting them but setting clear boundaries and not reassuring them every single time. They said in the long run this would help them detach themselves again so they become more rational and less likely to act impulsively.

Ive talked to my partner about this and they said it sounds reasonable but difficult to handle for them as well. In the end we decided as long as we communicate openly it would all be ok.

Now that was like a month ago and lately my partner has become really detached. They won’t talk to me and when I caught them crying they told me to leave them alone. Now I know it’s not cool but I asked their friend if they knew what was wrong and they just said my partner has been feeling like it’s hard to maintain our relationship lately. Basically as I understand it they don’t feel loved enough but they also know those feelings aren’t rational and feel guilty about them.

Now of course you aren’t a therapist and my question isn’t really about this situation because that’s between me and my partner but all of this just made me wonder if there even is a universal way to support someone with bpd. I absolutely love them but more often than not it feels like both trying to connect more and keeping my distance is hurting them. And it’s starting to hurt me as well.

How do you as someone with bpd feel about the balance between closeness and detachment? Can it really work to try and „make them“ love you less so they can more easily handle a close connection in the long run?

Im sure of course there isn’t a one answer fits all but sometimes I feel like no matter how much I read about it I don’t quite understand how bpd affects the way people think and feel.

Im sorry again if this too personal and too much. Regardless of if you answer or not I hope you’ll have a nice weekend :)

tbh there's no general answer to this, people are just different. everyone experiences different parts of bpd differently and the way they navigate these things in relationships will differ. the thing about bpd attachments is that they are just not stable lmao and that makes forming relationships v hard because it feels like you can't control those emotions. I've experienced splitting in relationships before and it's a very difficult and crazy thing to experience and explain because you know its not rational but that doesn't mean that you can stop feeling these things. and honestly maybe it's controversial to say but there's a point where you have to accept that maybe recovery means not being in relationships like this for a while - not not forming connections at all but maybe not committed relationships like this because you need to reach a point of recovery where you can handle these things by yourself to some extent before you can learn to handle it with a partner.

now I'm not a bitch to be telling people whether that's something they should do because I've been in relationships continuously since I was 19 so I'm not the brightest example hshshsjsk but personally, one thing I learned is that you can't form a healthy attachment in a relationship until you can learn that you can be okay by yourself, whatever that looks like. I think it can look like a detachment but I think of it more like independence that allows you to rationalise those bpd feelings because you can handle that fear of abandonment better.

that's why I also don't like framing bpd as loving too much or sth, like forming this independence is not loving less, I don't love my girlfriend less now than I loved someone before her just because I feel more like my own person in our relationship and set boundaries that don't rely on needing to be dependent anymore. if you want to work on a healthy relationship despite issues that will pop up because having a disorder that fucks you over constantly will create friction, you need to work on your own identity and separate stable personhood too on top of emotional regulation that helps with mitigating issues related to splitting etc

[rat-loves]

cant sleep just yet so im slapping down some hcs for the bebis before i forgor 🙃 might add more later or make another post 🤔🤔

--—--—--

Nico

was an incredibly quiet, but clingy baby- never wailed unless he was in pain or thought hed been abandoned

wasn't much of a crier either, but when he did cry, the only real giveaway was little hiccups and lots of tears, very difficult to hear especially from another room

struggles a lot with his feelings, has no idea what crushes are or how they feel- the first time he liked someone, he thought hed been poisoned and began listing off symptoms (still did not understand even after 'the talk')

again, quiet, and honestly a little awkard, but generally mild-mannered. its hard to get him worked up over something, so he doesnt get into many arguments. if anything, he just stares at someone until theyre done talking 🙃

when he's not feeling well, all he really wants is his dads cooking and hot chocolate, but he has a hard time asking for it as he gets older, since he doesn't want to be treated like a toddler

loves spicy things, can and will drink straight hot sauce if left to his own devices

also eats alot more than most people- thinks food challenges are easy because he's practically a bottomless pit from how much energy his body processes regularly (gabe was absolutely relieved to learn nico doesn't need to sustain himself in the same way he does- feeding himself discreetly was hard enough already)

cat person, 100%!!! he does like dogs, but he thinks cats are cuter and respects that they're a little more work to befriend than a dog

--—--—--

Snowfall

shiver reaper's variant!

snow lost his mom at a pretty young age, so its just been him and his dad for a while now, but he tries his best to live up to her memory

a little gentleman! very polite, but also still a bit awkward from isolation, very open-minded and unlikely to get upset unless someone is being openly disrespectful (very yes sir, no sir type)

also very reflective! he likes to spend alot of time finding pretty places to sit and think for a while, often wonders about his mom and if shed be proud of him and his dad

likes to hum alot, occasionally sings very quietly (its mostly old love songs and little tunes he picked up from his parents- his dad probably hummed him to sleep when he was a baby 🥺)

loves vanilla things- he thinks its a beautiful and delicate flavor and doesn't understand why its considered bland

he's cold to the touch! and when he blushes, its more of a navy blue tone than anything else

practices crafting little permafrost sculptures in his down time- has a tendency to make bear figurines since they remind him of his dad more than owls do 🥺

very curious about other people, but shies away when he's approached at first- he doesn't really get lonely when he's on his own, but he does appreciate the company once hes comfortable

--—--—--

Trick

pumpkin reaper's variant!

a flirty little MENACE, he is full of mischief, hence his nickname- loves to pop out of nowhere to surprise people

definitely a more social variant, loves being around people and observing crowds

considers himself a bounty hunter, but really is just looking for fights and to impress people 😮‍💨

hes half forest witch, so hes got a little power over plants, and loves to sprout seeds in weird places- especially making flower crowns in someones hair (he has been scolded for making a corn maze to the front door before)

loves soups and bread, and while he likes the smell of pumpkins, he does NOT like eating them in any variety- he cant unsee his dad's makeshift head when he tries

absolute favorite treat has to be candied apples! his top pick is granny smith with salted caramel 💕 very easily bribed with it

plays the fiddle! but gets embarrassed if he's not the one to bring it up

won't admit to it, but he loves his dad's horse. he's regularly sneaking that thing carrots and sharing apples with it ✌️

sneaks into taverns, he likes the vibe and thinks drunk people are interesting/funny (his ass is NOT old enough to drink 😒)

--—--—--

Paint

a variant from an au where gabe is still commander reyes/human! he grew up in la!

a little bit flirty, but overall more sure of himself than anything- he doesn't get insecure and likes to socialize with strangers (drives his dad nuts)

he took alot of different martial arts classes as a kid, but the only things that stuck were lessons his dad gave him

very flexible! got into gymnastics and cheerleadering in middle and high school, stretches religiously to stay in top form

prefers pizza and burgers above all else, but likes to have 'dad days' where they go looking for local places and food trucks to try together

LOVES the beach, you have to drag him out of the water when youre ready to go home

his hair is naturally brown, but he wore his dad down enough to get it dyed pretty colors, takes his hair-care VERY seriously and pouts when his roots grow back in- until he realizes thats also pretty cute in its own way ☺️

he picked up babysitting as his first job and once he realized he liked being around kids he started trying to drop hints that he wanted siblings lmao

a little slower than his dad due to the size difference and what the SEP did, but still tries to join him for morning runs before school and work

a huge dog person, has been begging his parents for a dog pretty much since he could talk- desperately wants a lab/german shepard mix, and has researched extensively + made a whole presentation to get gabe on board. (he was always on board, just wanted to make sure it wasn't a phase lmao)

[blushingcookie]

Finished Amphibia season 1 and on the bus to work my brain lit up and i feverishly wrote down my thoughts about the themes of the season and i am too lazy to turn that into an eloquent text so here is my obsessive improvised bus-TedTalk lolol:

been reflecting more on the writing of season 1 and i cracked the CODE pfjfkfkdkd,, idk if this is for the whole show but season 1 to me seems to be about fighting for acceptance and a sense of belonging. the core of this is of course the friendship between anne and sasha, with sasha clearly being manipulative and abusive of annes desire to feel loved and accepted by her, a friend she's had since kindergarten (and also we never see her mention any other friend other than marcy, but we do see her getting bullied for bringing non-american food to school, so that hits even harder with her wanting to "belong" and be accepted). Since Marcy had zero lines idk what their relationship is like yet, but from what ive seen annes foundation of "belonging" is "be the person sasha wants you to be", and of course that gets her in the amphibia mess in the first place. ok so they end up there and while watching i didn't rly notice just how much of the episodes revolve around this same concept of wanting to belong and be accepted, especially between two difficult cultures. One of the first mirrors to her is Sprig, who is an outsider among the kids so he rly quickly wants to be friends with anne, and it's so interesting how anne sometimes adapts sasha's methods of being a friend. It's not as blatant as it is with sasha, with the most obvious example being in episode 1 where she literally tells sprig that's what friends have to do to stay friends, but it keeps happening a few times throughout the season, like with her pushing him to confess his love TWICE for purely entertainment despite him being uncomfortable with it. Tho when moments like these happen and she gets called out on it, unlike sasha, she feels very bad and apologizes and works to be better. She also embraces the culture of amphibia more and more as the season goes on, with the first few eps her always being like "ew" and fighting with hop pop over it, but working to understand their world better and feeling more and more comfortable with their way of living (something that sasha doesn't do). The town also is weirded out by anne at first, making assumptions about her and making fun of her, but slowly they learn to accept and be kind to her. I think it's rly important that anne does NOT do things she's uncomfortable with to be accepted by them, but is just being herself, and often addresses the things she messed up openly. That openness and honesty is what brings her a true sense of belonging in the town, especially after standing up for them in the tax-collectors episode. Everyone can understand at one point that anne is not perfect, but she cares for others and is genuine about it. They all become really fond of her and she is even elected as frog of the year, which hits really hard because that's one of the few times where anne feels like she has to live up to rly high expectations, but in the end they didn't vote for her because she's some superhero or perfect person. She is just herself, and they accept and appreciate her for that. I think the Wally episode is also really important for this. He talks about a nice way to look at the stressful situation of being in an unfamiliar environment with people who don't know or understand you: you don't have to keep up any appearances.

I think it's also interesting that the planter family are kind of outsiders and looked down upon themselves, with a bunch of episodes about them trying to belong more (the food competition, the groundhog day stuff). As such they are the first who can accept anne and sympathize with her, and along with anne they find more belonging and love from the townspeople as the season goes on.

Ok so ALL of that stuff is going on but then we get sashas episode and its like the reverse situation: all the toads at the tower feel like they don't belong, like they're not accepted. Sasha immediately takes advantage of that and showers them in a false sense of acceptance and love. Unlike Anne, we know that she doesn't care for or wants to understand their culture, and doesn't even see them as conscious people, just "gross frogs". But the toads find that acceptance they were longing for, even Grimes, who felt unseen as a leader, gets to have what he felt was missing. So while for sasha it's all just a strategy to get home, i think grimes genuinely feels thankful and belonging with her, which is why he gets so pissed in the season finale when she almost dies.

AND YEAH THE SEASON FINALE,, it's like the culmination of these two opposing storylines clashing, with anne now finally able to understand how harmful sashas way of friendship was to her, and communicating that to her. And it seems like it got through to sasha as well, seeing as she was willing to cut herself off from her for anne's own good at the end. It's such a good finale because of all the thematic buildup, and because it highlights that when people are not able to understand one another and each others perspectives, the most important thing they need to do is to just communicate that to each other, openly and genuinely, without putting on a facade.

i talked mostly about how this applies to different cultures cus that seems to be most fitting for the show so far but these themes of belonging and acceptance of course are also a great fit for lgbt and neurodivergent stuff lolol, figured out why i'm so obsessed rn at last

[luimagines]

I was wondering how the boys would react to you having a breakdown?

Masterlist

SO so softly.

This one won't be as long as the others but I will be splitting it into two parts.

This one contains Hyrule, Sky, Legend, Warrior and Wild.

Content under the cut!

Hyrule

Hyrule had noticed that you were having a rough day.

He wasn't sure what had set it off or how it started because you were fine in the morning but something happened along the lines that tipped you over the edge.

You were walking down the trail of this unknown Hyrule. Until you tripped and landed directly on your knee.

Hyrule stopped in his tracks at the sight.

Usually you'd just get back up and brush it off, act like it never happened. But this time...

He hears you sniffle and his heart breaks.

"Hey," Hyrule makes his way over to you. "Are you ok?"

"I... I don't know." Your voice cracks.

You shift to get off of your knee and look at the cut. It appears that you landed directly on a rock and it cut through your pants.

"No... I'm not ok." Your eyes quickly fill with tears and Hyrule all but runs to your side.

He's quick to pull you close and rub circles on your back. The touch seemed to be the final straw on the camels back and sobs began to rack your body with such force that it shook Hyrule to his core.

His heart bled with you as you cried.

"Anything I can do to help?" He asks after a few minutes of silence.

"No." You sniff and hug him tightly.

"You sure?"

"My brother... He's sick." You admit. "And I... I can't-"

You look up and into his eyes. "I can't go see him. He's not getting any better. I'm stuck. I-"

You freeze, glancing over his shoulder and the sobs turn to rage. "YOU!"

Hyrule lets you go and turns around.

A shadow. Formless and floating. A single black mass with no face or discernable features but all the more watchful.

You rip yourself away from Hyrule and stand up again. "Why are you here?!"

You know this thing?

"Is it dangerous?" Hyrule stands up as well and makes a grab for his sword.

"To me? No." You admit and grab his hand. "But it's never really shown itself to be an ally."

You glare at it, wiping the last of your tears away. "You can't hurt my friends, you hear me? I'll kill you if you even try."

Hyrule put his hand on your shoulder and begins to lead you away. "Ca you even kill that thing? Are we safe?"

Your glare hardens. "I don't know, I've never tried. We should be safe though. It's a long story."

"I've got time." Hyrule smiles. "We're at the back of the group, so it's not like we have to worry about the other walking up on us."

"Maybe later." You sigh and take his hand in yours. "Let's go."

Your voice is soft and quiet, he has to strain himself a bit to hear it but he knows its because the sadness has returned.

He takes his hand out and places it around your shoulders instead, holding you close.

Hyrule walks with you, side by side until to reach the rest of the group.

Maybe you just need a friend right now.

He can be that friend.

Sky

Sky had noticed that you were quieter than usual.

And not within the same brand that Link’s were typically used to.

It was like a loaded spring waiting to burst from confinement and he thinks he can see the moment when it happens.

The group was simply teasing and rough housing each other until someone said something and you didn’t appreciate it.

You shoot straight up from where you’re sitting, fists at your side, jaw clenched and what looks like to be tears beginning to build in your eyes. Without a word, you turn on your heel and leave the group behind. 

The camp falls silent at your departure, no one knowing what went wrong.

Sky hums in contemplation and stands up as well, silently waving to the group that he has you covered.

He’s to follow where you went and he picks up the pace to make up for lost time. You didn't seem to go far, just out of ear shot.

When he finds you, you’re pacing back and forth, muttering to yourself in a language he doesn’t understand or even heard for that matter. Your hands are still clenched into fists, but one’s by your mouth, pressed tightly enough that the skin pales and the other is gripping your wrist tightly enough that he thinks you’re digging into your skin.

There are tears openly falling from your eyes but aside from the miniscule voice cracks that he barely catch, you’re silent.

If no one followed you, he doubt that they wouldn’t have even known this was happening.

“Hey.” Sky clears his throat and he sees you snap in his direction. You’re eyes widen in shock and he’s made a witness to all your pain and frustration and he’s aware how vulnerable you’ve made yourself by not leaving them entirely. 

You knew that any of them could have followed you and didn’t actively try to hide yourself.

He doesn’t want to make it worse.

“Hug?” He opens his arms and tries to show how unjudgmental he’s being. He doesn’t want you to think he’ll think less of you. That any of the group would think less of you. It has to be why you just left. But he also knows that there is a time for talking and a time for silence.

This is not a time for talking.

You look at him a moment, your grip on yourself tightening by a fraction.

The spring is wound up even more. 

“You don’t have to talk about it fi you don’t want to.” Sky reaches out.

It explodes.

You run to him and collapse into his arm. He’s quick to wrap you up and hold you tight. As tight as he can manage without the fear of actually hurting you.

You don’t say anything and sob into his shoulder.

He lets you.

He doesn’t lessen his grip until you stop crying, and even then, he holds you until you pull away first.

You stay close to him until you’re breathing easier and the evidence of your breakdown lessens somewhat. At least until it’s not so obvious.

“Thank you Sky.”

“Any time.”

Legend

“Hey, The Old Man is looking for you.” Legend walks to where he knew you ran off.

It wasn’t any of his business to know where you were going or why.

It... tickled his curiosity however, he couldn’t help the want to follow you and make sure didn't just go off and die.

But he knew you could handle yourself if you needed to.

So he shrugged and let you be.

But now that he sees you....

He regrets it.

Your back is turned to him and you don’t turn to face him when he calls him. The air around you is heavy and somber and your completely still in posture. You’re leaning up against a tree with your arms crossed and with one leg crossed around the other.

It’s a blocked off stance that Legend is familiar with. What’s concerning to him is that there was no one around you to consider blocking off- unless you were blocking off the group... And he supposes that you did, since you left... But to still be blocking something off...

He hates to think about the other option.

You’re blocking off yourself.

He creeps closer, trying to be as quiet as possible, until he’s close enough to hear you gulp.

“Yeah I’ll-” Your voice cuts itself off with a slight crack. He knows what you’re doing. You’re trying to project your voice to be as normal as possible. “I’ll be there in a minute. I didn’t mean to be away for so long.”

Legend creeps around you until he’s facing you head on. He sees that your eyes are closed and shut tight and there are tear tracks on your cheeks. Not to mention that you have an iron grip on both your arms, enough so that your knuckles turn white.

Oh... Now Legend feel like a horrible friend.

The worst actually.

He knows he’s probably the last person to be here. He’s not at all equipped for the emotional...anything. But he’s also not inclined to go back and find someone who is.

This.... Looks really personal. He doubts that you want more people to know about this.

Legend takes a step closer and places a hesitant hand on your shoulder you.

You wince and slowly, oh so slowly, lift your head and open your eyes.

Legend gulps and puts his other hand on your opposite shoulder. “I’m not very good at this-”

Your legs give out.

Legend is quick to fall with you and pull you away from the tree and against his chest. You cry openly and loudly this time, clinging to him like your life depends on it. He’s your life line in this vulnerable moment and Legend feels.... Honored is not the word he wants to use. But he does feel a certain way about being the one here to share this moment with you, to be the one you trust with this, to be the one you’re clinging to.

Forget the others right now, he thinks as he begins to cling to you just as hard as you do him, this is more important.

Warrior

Warrior wakes up with a start one night. He’s confused and disoriented, the only thing he’s aware of right now is that something is wrong.

But it’s quiet, his brain registers a second later. So no monsters.

Weird. Why is he awake then?

He sits up slowly, trying to gather his surroundings and what could have woken him up.

Legend, Hyrule and Wind are accounted for, they’ve gathered together in a twisted pile of limbs that makes it difficult to tell where one starts and the other ends, but they look warm and comfy.

Wild and Twilight are both leaning up against Time, the Old Man has both of his arms around them and holding them close.

Sky and Four are by his side, Four is wrapped with Sky’s sailcloth and is snuggled close to the knight and wait a minute...

It was your watch. Where are you?

Warrior shoots up straighter and makes a quiet maneuver to his feet to not wake the others. He gets his sword and stands up turning in a circle to survey the whole camp.

You’re nowhere in sight.

A striking fear hits him right in the heart, like a bucket of ice water dumped over his head. He’s immediately thinking the worst.

You’ve defected. You’ve betrayed them. You’ve been kidnapped. You’ve deserted them. You’re hurt. You’re dying.

He stops himself from screaming out your name.

He’s overreacting.

You’re fine.

Healthy even. You probably just had to relieve yourself and would be back just as soon. He can wait until you come back.

Warrior takes the post and sits by the fire. 

This is fine. You’re fine.

It’ll only a be a few minutes and then he’ll go right back to bed.

Minutes pass.

You don’t show up.

Warrior stands up again and tries to look around for you or any evidence as to where you might have gone. He doesn’t really find anything. He begins to panic again.

He makes the executive decision to move away from the camp and try to find you. He gets a little ways into the tree line and begins to travel in around the perimeter. The group will be fine for a minute. If he can’t find you then he’ll go wake the group up, start a search party and then go find you.

Then he hears something.

A sniffle.

A chocked sob.

Warrior should expect a wave of relief to wash over him at you both being nearby and alive but instead, a different sort of dread washes over him and he all but runs in the direction of the sound.

You’re not fine.

He finds you sitting against a tree, almost camouflaged with how dark it still is, with your legs hugged close to your chest and your head against your knees. 

He places his sword down and kneels next to you.

“Hey...” Warrior reaches out and places his hand on your shoulder. You don’t react to his presence and it breaks his heart. 

He sighs and takes a seat next to you. Warrior takes his arm and wraps it around your shoulders, pulling you against his side. His other arm comes up to cradle your head and his finds that his fingers gently take your hair and methodically begin to run through it.

Warrior resolves to stay next to you until you’re done, until you feel better.

And he does.

Wild

Wild was cooking lunch and minding his own business for a change when he sees you storm into the camp, ignore absolutely everyone, and continue power walking through until you’re gone again.

It stuns him enough that he actually drops his spoon into the pot, losing it to the boiling contents within.

Twilight hisses by his side. “That’s... unfortunate.”

“Watch this.” Wild points to the pot and stands up, not giving Twilight a chance to say his piece.

He storms after you, trying to match your pace before you get too far for him to track.

Wild considers himself lucky that you don’t go that far from the group, only just slightly beyond what would have been the perimeter of their camp.

You’re entirely wound up, hands by your face and pacing back and forth.

Words fail him in that moment and he watches as you press harder against yourself trying to calm yourself with deep breath.

It’s not working.

Wild calls your name quietly and you freeze up in your spot. “Are you ok?”

You lock eyes with him and crumble.

The Champion rushes to your side and catches you before your knees hit the floor. You curl into him and grip his tunic like a life line as the strongest sobs Wild’s ever heard just completely rack your body. He’s quick to wrap his arms around you and hold you close and tight. One arm goes around your waist as the other cradles your head by his neck.

The position is familiar to him and the deja vu Wild’s experiencing is a kin to a smack to the face but he powers through.

It’s not about him right now.

He says nothing while you cry. He asks no questions and makes no claims. Comfort words don’t flow either however and the only sounds that reach his ears are your broken gasps and his own quiet breaths.

I’m here, he thinks. I’m here for you. It’s ok. Let it out.

He’s almost jealous for a moment about how you still have the energy to cry, to still find the strength and space to let out your emotions even after everything you’ve been through.

He’s cried for a long time, coming to terms with what’s happened to his home, his love, his friends, and at the same time he thinks he hasn’t cried enough.

But he’s has no more tears to shed.

He’s also has no shoulder to cry on.

But you need one right now and he’s not willing to leave someone he cares about alone in a time of grief.

Hopefully Twilight doesn’t let the food burn. Good food is always good for the soul.

He thinks that it’ll help when you’re done.

Part 2

[tobi-smp]

hello! i’ve seen some ppl saying that whenever new members ask others why dream is in prison, their answer is never a concrete/real/justified one, and that’s why it’s not really ‘fair’ that dream is in there. what do you think about this? what would you say he’s done to deserve being locked up? (for the record im not even close to being a dream apologist)

I'm not sure I Entirely understand the question, so feel free to elaborate if I don't cover what you're actually asking me for !

the way it makes sense to me is: there's a line between the information that the characters actually have and the full situation. many of the characters would have a difficult time putting it into words because they don't have the full picture of what happened that night or what lead to it.

so it makes sense that a lot of the characters wouldn't know what to say or wouldn't be able to express what they wanted to say the most coherently when randomly prompted by people with No context about the rest of the server. to that end, lets go over what various members of the cast Did actually know about that situation at that point in time.

1: most important here is that they were going to kill dream. dream is in prison because he has a magic revival book that can bring back the dead that he used to bargain for his life. that's why quackity and sam are trying to get the book, because once anyone else has that information they can kill dream (or at least, that was the idea until things changed).

2: Murder. dream did lots of murder and lots of attempted murder. everyone knew that tommy and tubbo (two children) were going there to confront dream and when they found them dream was 10 seconds away from killing tubbo for good. he was also Very Famously a mass murderer with the final control room, where the highest number of canon lives were lost at one time and has yet to be topped. he also Tried to murder the people that made up mexican l'manberg (quackity, sapnap, karl, and george). he chased them all the way into the holy lands and threatened to break the no killing rule, he only didn't because he was talked down by quackity. it's debatable whether or not anyone besides tommy knew that he killed mexican dream at this point, but he definitely did do that. methodically hunted down All three of his lives until he was dead.

I didn't include the duel for independence here, because it was a Duel, but it's kinda scummy to get in a duel with a teenager anyways so that's notable.

3: politics? sort of. dream's whole thing is that he doesn't want anybody to create any factions at all because he wants everybody under his rule. he's played politics before, but the goal has always been in destroying any and all factions. he gave l'manberg its independence, and yet he was trying to encourage jack to betray them the next day. he backed schlatt in the elections, allowed him to come into power, and then played both manberg and pogtopia until both faction leaders were dead. he dethroned eret on a whim, dethroned george on a whim, rethroned eret on a whim, and eret was perfectly aware that dream was completely in control. he of course Did What He Did to mexican l'manberg because he didn't want them to become a new faction, nearly murdered four people. And Then he manipulated new l'manberg until he got his hands on the thing he Actually wanted (the discs) and then promptly burned it to the ground until nothing remained.

it's a blatant abuse of power through and through, and one that affects the entire server whether they realize it or not (and many certainly do).

4: The Weird Shit. he openly admitted to manipulating tubbo, a teenager, in front of most of the server. he burned down the community house and intentionally framed a different teenager that he got exiled for months. that teenager Has Made References to dream having Done something terrible in exile, tried to make dream Admit to what he'd done only for him to refuse. when dream tried to run away that teenager threatened to kill himself if he didn't come back And Dream Did Return. in the location that he was captured he has a vault full of people's attachments from all over server, which tommy said were meant to be used to control them, in that vault there's a cage labeled for skeppy implying dream was going to imprison a Full Ass Person. they only Had a prison because dream commissioned it right before he tried to murder and take a teenager. etc etc etc.

there's more that dream Has done of course, the specifics of what he did to tommy especially. but all of that is what would've been public knowledge at that point, or at least things that various people who showed up would've known individually.

[dreamii-yume]

SPOILERSSS for Twisted Wonderland Chapter 6 : 1-16!!!

*rubs hands* aight it wont take long before genshin has me in its gacha hell grasp again, I just barely escaped this time— NOW ITS TIME TO SEE THE BOIS CHAPTER 6 omg— wtf happened last time lol it’s been too long

So, no voice over because of some problems which is understandable but— meh I don’t feel like reading lol So I’m watching otome ayui translations this time, because im that one dumbass student who skipped kanji class and now i cant read without sounding like im five _:(´ཀ`」 ∠): “what up im yume im way passed 19 and i never fucking learned how to read”

Also watching Hanayura Kanon stream for the rest that’s not yet been translated lol Because he’s very good at voice acting for the characters and he’s funny af lol

- OKAY OKAY— WTF HAPPENED EXPLAIN

- Fun fact : I haven’t watched Hercules yet so I legit don’t know what’s about to come lol

- Aw, that’s cute— We called over Ace and Deuce late at night AND THEY REALLY CAME OVER AAAAA

- I forgot how fckin pure their friendship is _:(´ཀ`」 ∠):

- Aight, so we actually have a huge-ass scratch from feral Grim lol That’s just fantastic, isn’t it

- FINALLY— We’re talking about Mickey and the stones my monster cat has been eating with Crowley AAAAA

- “Yeah there’s this bitch called mickey and i took his photo—“

- WE’RE FINALLY TALKING ABOUT THIS. AFTER 6 CHAPTERS.

- Bruh this crystal of blot sounds really dangerous why are we discussing this just now

- Speaking of this crystal, Crowley— you were looking for this crystal in chap one and when we asked you about wtf you’re trying to find you just went— “oH itS NothING.”

- I SUPPOSED ITS NOT NOTHING NOW IS IT

- I didnt see you searching for crystals after every chapter mr. crowley where were you 👁👄👁 dont you think it was weird that you didnt see a single one after like— five blotting incidents

- Oh so its rare i see— BRUH R U SURE ABOUT THAT grim literally found one every single chap LMAO

- Okay okay— see, he may be violent but listen— you aint gonna throw out my fucking cat okay

- Wh— THERE WAS A FESTIVAL!? Im dumb so its not just VDC LOL

- Listen LISTEN— GRIM IS FINE. HOLD UP— NO NEED TO THROW HIM OUT JUST LET ME HAVE ANOTHER LOOK AT HIM

- Aww, Ace and Deuce looked pissed about it too AAAAHH THE TRUE DEFINITION OF THE BOIS

- BRUH NO— ALL THE DORM LEADERS TO GO AND CAPTURE GRIM?? HE’LL DIE

- CROWLEY PLS— WE CAN TALK ABOUT THIS, HONEY

- #Grimportectionsquad

- “It’s bout time for them to come” Who?

- FUCKING— CROWLEY STOP SAYING ITS NOTHING— This is why this school is so fucked, you never tell us anything ahead of time _:(´ཀ`」 ∠):

- Aight he left, Ace Deuce hurry help me what you guys got

- He may be a monster but see— the worst he did is eat the whole tuna stack SO PLS HES STILL BABY AND I LOVE HIM

- THATS RIGHT DEUCE MY MAN GRIM CAN DO NO BAD I SWEAR

- HE WOULDNT EVER AGAIN I SWEAR

- Ace ヽ(；▽；)ノ The character development— im so proud of you, son

- THIS IS THE BOISSS— LETS GOOOO

- Fuck this is so beautiful— just me and the bois on our way in the middle of the night to find our MISSING CAT I—

- CROWLEY REALLY DID ASSEMBLE THEM DORM LEADERS AAAAAAA AT THIS HOUR TOO WTF

- BRUH WE CAN TALK

- Kalim Kalim Kalim Vil Vil Vil— Pls we’ve been through so much last chapter ＨＥＬＰ

- Leona…A big fat ｍｏｏｄ honestly lmao

- Ey ey riddle pls— dont make this any more difficult—

- Shut up azul stay where u are all you’ve done is nothing but chaos since you arrive so SHHH

- MALLEUS IS NOT HERE AGAIN LILIA PLS— where is he when we need him the most LOL

- Ortho, your bro where?? Also— SURVIVAL STATUS BRUH—

- YES PLS DONT HURT HIM OMG

- oh i forgot idia lives in his tablet LOL OF COURSE

- Omg he’s in the apple trees still looking scary as shi aaaaaaa pls kitty come home u just had too much catnip

- OH GOD 15m HE’S CLOSE

- “Starting operation” ORTHO WHAT TF

- EY EY EY oh good he’s knocked out sighhh

- Aight I know this has been translated but I can’t help but to look at the original japanese and im just— wtf is RTS and TAS idia i dont understand this advanced gamer otaku language

- But Idia and Ortho really do be speedrunning on who can fucking kick my cat the hardest LOL

- THATS RIGHT IDIA You understand me— Fellow cat lovers unite, Grim is very cute, he can’t do no bad

- …so can i have him back pls—

- Can we just appreciate the fact that these bois are willing to take the risk of getting their heads chopped off by Riddle by doing all this for us??

- If this isnt what you call true friendship then i dont know what this is

- Lol ambrose is going to appear in this festival again and crowley’s prideful ass is QUAKING

- WHY are we not allowed to see him crowley im sure we can handle it— We’re the BOIS. CMON

- Imagine if they just summon a fcuking— magic vet or something lol

- It’s the next day lol

- HAH ITS THE VDC LOSERS BY ONE VOTE SQUAD

- I mean the NRC Tribe— ٩( ᐛ )و

- VIL. what you have my queen

- Vil pls dont remind me that my cat isnt here but thank you for saying thank you i do not deserve—

- AWW THE ADEUCE SQUAD LOOKS SO SAD AAAAA

- Vil i miss the bad bitch but absolute oneesan energy but the apology— yeah are we gonna cry again lol

- AAAAAAHH why am i so proud— THAT vil is apologizing

- You dont need to maam what we had in chapter 5 was a fucking journey i regret nothing

- I swear if rook goes like— bitch that aint beautiful imma bonk him I WILL DO IT dont think i forgot what u did last chap

- Man i love me a man who can openly admit his mistakes MMMGH

- Rook i swear—

- Im glad that we’re not toning down ace’s brutal honesty lol

- BRUHHH I DONT LIKE IT WHEN VIL US TAKING ALL THE BLAME i mean what he said was kinda true BUT STILL

- Cheer up Vil, it’s not like it’s a complete failure anyways (；ω；) it was fun at least

- Hearing Jamil encourage Vil like this feels surreal BUT YES BOI U TELL EM

- What is this beautiful character development

- Ooff way to hit where it hurts the most vil my queen lol

- AAGH IT HURTS VIL RECOGNIZING NEIGE’S HARDWORK LIKE THIS— THE PRIDE I CAN FEEL IT ＣＲＡＣＫ

- Bruh we appreciate Neige’s impeccable smile in this household— REMEMBER WHEN EVERYONE WAS LIKE NEIGE’S GON BE A BAD BOI??? WELP—

- It was me, i was that person and i shall drown in apple juice for it

- Of course, the ultimate Neige simp already knows that lol

- Bruh the background music has no business being this sad　ｓｔｏｐ

- I hate it when vil is right sometimes omg— TRUEEE KALIM especially wouldn’t be able to stand properly on stage after knowing Neige’s own hardships aaaa

- NOO BABY DONT CRY

- Vil redemption arc??? 👀👀 you can help us cure our cat—

- !? Are we gonna get that money promised in that poster?? 👀👀

- WHAA FUCKING WAHAA VIL IS GONNA PAY THAT US??? THE WHOLE 5 MIL EACH??!! VIL CALM DOWN WHAT I SAID WAS A JOKE

- Damn vil is ＳＴＡＣＫＥＤ He really didnt want to owe anyone anything LMAO YES QUEEN

- WHA— KALIM IS ACCEPTING??? OUT OF EVERYONE HERE, I DID NOT EXPECT YOU TO ACCEPT THAT KALIM

- Kalim is making my heart go boom boom again baby boi ✨👁💧👄💧👁✨✨

- HE’LL DONATE IT TO THE RAMSHACKLE DORM BABY BOIIII

- …sumimasen kalim for having a very rundown dorm 👁💧👄💧👁 but thank you for being nice about it lol

- OKAY OKAY KALIM YOU DONT HAVE TO LIST ALL THE THINGS WRONG IN MY DORM PLS—

- THIS IS EMBARRASSING PLS KALIM IM SORRY FOR BEING POOR

- But this man be such a sunshine holy shit i cant even be mad about it lol

- AW YEAH RAMSHACKLE DORM IS GONNA GET A MAKEOVER

- EVERYONE BE DONATING THEIR MONEY TO US AAAAA Were they always this NICE

- Aight adeuce pls— y’all dont have to force yourself to donate my guys (´；ω；`) being friends is enough lol i get it my bois

- Find me a man who can make me feel like this the way Vil can

- Man if only Grim is here :’) he’d be soo happy :’)) you can have all the tuna you want buddy :’)))

- GRIM PLS ADEUCE IS WILLING TO TREAT YOU TO LUNCH BABY

- Bro this is so wholesome omg

- Im sorry but still up to this day, my understanding of Epel’s accent is still　ｌａｃｋｉｎｇ lmao

- Aight they be talking about how Rook already knew that they were going to lose from the very beginning

- The FORESHADOWING LOL The difference with how Rook said “What a wonderful performance” rather than “What a beautiful performance” sigh

- Honestly we gotta respect Rook’s resolve here lol man just knows what he wants

- Rook and Vil’s friendship lmao

- 👁👄👁 …!?

- EARTHQUAKE WTF How dare you ruin such moment—

- WHAT IS GOING ON

- EY WTF DONT DESTROY MY DORM WTF ARE YOU GUYS

- WHAT ARE THESE ROBOTS OUTSIDERS KILL THEM WITH FIRE

- They look like something that belongs to the Ignihyde dorm HUH

- Oh bruh— Vil in his Dorm Leader mode is so cool AND YES I KNOW THIS IS NOT THE TIME BUT wheww~~ Vil YAS QUEEN

- KALIM TOO AAAAAA JAMIL’S 「はっ！」SO COOL

- so SO— the dorm leader’s have a protocol for outsider attacks like this 👁👄👁 OMG THEY’RE SO HOT

- They don’t seem like our bois anymore aaa just pure professionalism at this point—

- GOD I FORGOT HOW COOL THEY ARE OMG

- HEEEYYY OUR DORM IS GETTING DESTROYED WTF ARE THESE GUYS’ PROBLEM

- We were just talking about renovating it too wtf

- AAAAAHHH HOW DARE YOU— VIL R YOU OK

- Bruh i dont know what is going on but dont touch my man’s face

- They’re targetting Vil and Jamil WHY— overblot men!!??? WHERE ARE YOU— GIVE THEM BACK

- I didnt understand what epel said here lmao BUT—!?

- THEY HAVE GRIM TOO FUCK HE’S BACK LET GO OF MY FUCKING CAT

- WHAT IS GOING ON DARLINGS

- BUDDYY >:’0000 Grimmm MY HEART—

- Are they kidnapping the overblot men?? What— the fucking absolute ｂａｌｌｓ on these robots

- God we’re getting absolutely ｆｕｃｋｅｄ in here

- AND THERE’S A CAULDRON IN THE BACKGROUND LOL DEUCE WENT HAM

- BRING ME BACK MY FUCKING CAT— >:’0000

- I thought there’s going to be a festival not a fucking kidnapping event HEY

- Oh 👀 Rook pls help

- AAAHH SERIOUS ROOK IS HOT—

- IS THE OTHER DORM LEADERS CHILLING WHERE ARE THEY KALIM PLS BE SAFE

- OH RIDDLE IS NOT ANSWERING THEY GOT HIM TOO

- Oh ghad they got him during clubs WTF HOW—

- *nervous hornii chuckling* …angry expression silver 👁👄👁 im sorry

- AAAA Dorm leaders actually be acting like dorm leaders is soo cool i cant—

- Bruh the story is all chaos what is this chapter

- Are they gonna get Leona and Azul too what—

- RIDDLE BABY Jesus christ dont overblot like this again lol

- DAMN HE STRONG FOR A SMOL BOI THO

- Whoever made these robots wtf is their deal lol TO BE ABLE TO BEAT A DORM LEADER—

- …Bruh where is our horned friend when u need him

- Silver and Sebek theorizing with dorm leaders but they took Jamil tho?? It’s probably the overblot men they’re after

- Also Malleus is probably good so you two calm down lol Lilia’s probs having tea with him right now

- Okay, Leona how are you going to get captured KING.

- Omg everything is getting destroyed wtf

- AW LEONA SAVED RUGGIE THATS CUTE AND COOL AF

- Bruh leona these are material robots— cant you just turn them into sand lol

- Oh they do have some kind of brand cmon just turn them into sand pls

- WHAT THE FUCK

- LEONA-SAN!? WHY ARE YOU GIVING UP— OJI-TAN!!!

- OLD MAN WHAT—

- *hearing leona whisper his reasons ✋ 👁👄👁 🤚 okay sir im sorry

- Damn Leona acting like a real prince right now— it’s kinda hot 👀👀

- BRUH PLS COME BACK DONT TALK LIKE YOU AINT GONNA

- BRO WHERE ARE THE TEACHERS

- THE BOARD GAME CLUB

- Idia : “bro we just chilling be cool— MY CHESS PIECE“

- “Aight ortho what’s the situation” “ｆｕｃｋｅｄ＂

- So Idia of course knows about this— why does he look like he’s so done lmao me getting the feeling this isnt the first time idia has encountered this situation before lol

- Man i want to see azul in action too but mehh— Idia told him to settle down cries

- LOL WHAT IS THIS KARONE ROBOTS

- Wait— are they taking idia too?? OH IS THIS THE DOING OF IDIA’S FAMILY

- WHERE IS CROWLEY— THE TEACHERS, YOUR IMPORTANT STUDENTS ARE GETTING KIDNAPPED

- AH THEY ALSO KNOW ABOUT THESE STYX BITCHES WHAT— and they’re just letting them GO whaaat

- Sounds to me that this must be idia’s family taking care of the overblotting students?? Like to protect Idia or something?? I DONT—

- “Gather all the dorm leaders” No, sir, they’re already gone besides my sunshine and the horn boi

- Malleus??? 👁👄👁 TSUNOTAROU

- Pls kill the robots they destroyed my place

- AAH UPSIDE DOWN LILIA long time no see lol

- Bruhh the diasomnia students are so lucky to have Malleus as a dorm leader omg

- BRUH LILIA’S RINGTONE IS SO CUTE LMAO

- Kalim sounds so desperate im so sad

- ARE WE— ARE WE GONNA MEET MALLEUS AGAINNN

- Bruh they just goku teleported their way out of the dorm lol

- AAAAHH EVERYONE IS HERE THIS IS SO FUN

- Wait jack is not here lol did they just forget about him wtf

- Oh shit we here too i did not know LMAO

- S-So are we just gonna..continue school like— like these styx bitches didnt just ruin half the school, my dorm, injure my bois, and took my cat or…???

- GASP AAAA STYX IS A BLOT RESEARCH FACILITY WHAAAT

- So that’s why leona and idia be like bro this is not worth it

- O-Oh yeah— they…they didnt know that Vil overblot— PFFT

- Malleus pls information who are you talking about—

- WHO— LILIA MALLEUS OH NO

- Ey, overblot squad are assembled lol this looks so dangerous

- LMAOO Riddle was sleeping on Leona’s lap for three hours THATS SO CUTE

- Where the fck did they take them, ITS CRAMPED AF

- Bro they’re just exposing Vil and Jamil’s overblot that’s supposed to be a SECRET LOL

- Oji-tan can sound so wise and reliable like this if he really tried lol sugar daddy energy

- Wtf these guys never thought that idia was from a big shot family??? They thought it was just coincidence that they had the same family name PFFT

- AZUL AAAA He was right there my guy BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY MAN

- oh. They finally opened— isn’t this the ignihyde dorm what

- WHAT THE FU— IDIA

- Bro— WHAT WAS THAT IT WAS IDIA ALL ALONG???

- WHAT IS THIS CHAPTER

This chapter is a fucking roller coaster like— literal 0 to 100 ＱＵＩＣＣ From having a moment with Vil and the bois to a FUCKING TERRORIST ATTACK LMAO IM HYPED FOR NEXT CHAP—

It’s been so long, I hope they released the next part soon (๑>◡<๑) I forgot how fine these men are lol at least I want to hear their voices again 👁👄👁

[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on: Criterion's Neo-Noir Collection

I have written up all 26 films* in the Criterion Channel's Neo-Noir Collection.

Legend: rw - rewatch; a movie I had seen before going through the collection dnrw - did not rewatch; if a movie met two criteria (a. I had seen it within the last 18 months, b. I actively dislike it) I wrote it up from memory.

* in September, Brick leaves the Criterion Channel and is replaced in the collection with Michael Mann's Thief. May add it to the list when that happens.

Note: These are very "what was on my mind after watching." No effort has been made to avoid spoilers, nor to make the plot clear for anyone who hasn't seen the movies in question. Decide for yourself if that's interesting to you.

Cotton Comes to Harlem I feel utterly unequipped to asses this movie. This and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song the following year are regularly cited as the progenitors of the blaxploitation genre. (This is arguably unfair, since both were made by Black men and dealt much more substantively with race than the white-directed films that followed them.) Its heroes are a couple of Black cops who are treated with suspicion both by their white colleagues and by the Black community they're meant to police. I'm not 100% clear on whether they're the good guys? I mean, I think they are. But the community's suspicion of them seems, I dunno... well-founded? They are working for The Man. And there's interesting discussion to the had there - is the the problem that the law is carried out by racists, or is the law itself racist? Can Black cops make anything better? But it feels like the film stacks the deck in Gravedigger and Coffin Ed's favor; the local Black church is run by a conman, the Back-to-Africa movement is, itself, a con, and the local Black Power movement is treated as an obstacle. Black cops really are the only force for justice here. Movie portrays Harlem itself as a warm, thriving, cultured community, but the people that make up that community are disloyal and easily fooled. Felt, to me, like the message was "just because they're cops doesn't mean they don't have Black soul," which, nowadays, we would call copaganda. But, then, do I know what I'm talking about? Do I know how much this played into or off of or against stereotypes from 1970? Was this a radical departure I don't have the context to appreciate? Is there substance I'm too white and too many decades removed to pick up on? Am I wildly overthinking this? I dunno. Seems like everyone involved was having a lot of fun, at least. That bit is contagious.

Across 110th Street And here's the other side of the "race film" equation. Another movie set in Harlem with a Black cop pulled between the police, the criminals, and the public, but this time the film is made by white people. I like it both more and less. Pro: this time the difficult position of Black cop who's treated with suspicion by both white cops and Black Harlemites is interrogated. Con: the Black cop has basically no personality other than "honest cop." Pro: the racism of the police force is explicit and systemic, as opposed to comically ineffectual. Con: the movie is shaped around a racist white cop who beats the shit out of Black people but slowly forms a bond with his Black partner. Pro: the Black criminal at the heart of the movie talks openly about how the white world has stacked the deck against him, and he's soulful and relateable. Con: so of course he dies in the end, because the only way privileged people know to sympathetize with minorities is to make them tragic (see also: The Boys in the Band, Philadelphia, and Brokeback Mountain for gay men). Additional con: this time Harlem is portrayed as a hellhole. Barely any of the community is even seen. At least the shot at the end, where the criminal realizes he's going to die and throws the bag of money off a roof and into a playground so the Black kids can pick it up before the cops reclaim it was powerful. But overall... yech. Cotton Comes to Harlem felt like it wasn't for me; this feels like it was 100% for me and I respect it less for that.

The Long Goodbye (rw) The shaggiest dog. Like much Altman, more compelling than good, but very compelling. Raymond Chandler's story is now set in the 1970's, but Philip Marlowe is the same Philip Marlowe of the 1930's. I get the sense there was always something inherently sad about Marlowe. Classic noir always portrayed its detectives as strong-willed men living on the border between the straightlaced world and its seedy underbelly, crossing back and forth freely but belonging to neither. But Chandler stresses the loneliness of it - or, at least, the people who've adapted Chandler do. Marlowe is a decent man in an indecent world, sorting things out, refusing to profit from misery, but unable to set anything truly right. Being a man out of step is here literalized by putting him forty years from the era where he belongs. His hardboiled internal monologue is now the incessant mutterings of the weird guy across the street who never stops smoking. Like I said: compelling! Kael's observation was spot on: everyone in the movie knows more about the mystery than he does, but he's the only one who cares. The mystery is pretty threadbare - Marlowe doesn't detect so much as end up in places and have people explain things to him. But I've seen it two or three times now, and it does linger.

Chinatown (rw) I confess I've always been impressed by Chinatown more than I've liked it. Its story structure is impeccable, its atmosphere is gorgeous, its noirish fatalism is raw and real, its deconstruction of the noir hero is well-observed, and it's full of clever detective tricks (the pocket watches, the tail light, the ruler). I've just never connected with it. Maybe it's a little too perfectly crafted. (I feel similar about Miller's Crossing.) And I've always been ambivalent about the ending. In Towne's original ending, Evelyn shoots Noah Cross dead and get arrested, and neither she nor Jake can tell the truth of why she did it, so she goes to jail for murder and her daughter is in the wind. Polansky proposed the ending that exists now, where Evelyn just dies, Cross wins, and Jake walks away devastated. It communicates the same thing: Jake's attempt to get smart and play all the sides off each other instead of just helping Evelyn escape blows up in his face at the expense of the woman he cares about and any sense of real justice. And it does this more dramatically and efficiently than Towne's original ending. But it also treats Evelyn as narratively disposable, and hands the daughter over to the man who raped Evelyn and murdered her husband. It makes the women suffer more to punch up the ending. But can I honestly say that Towne's ending is the better one? It is thematically equal, dramatically inferior, but would distract me less. Not sure what the calculus comes out to there. Maybe there should be a third option. Anyway! A perfect little contraption. Belongs under a glass dome.

Night Moves (rw) Ah yeah, the good shit. This is my quintessential 70's noir. This is three movies in a row about detectives. Thing is, the classic era wasn't as chockablock with hardboiled detectives as we think; most of those movies starred criminals, cops, and boring dudes seduced to the darkness by a pair of legs. Gumshoes just left the strongest impressions. (The genre is said to begin with Maltese Falcon and end with Touch of Evil, after all.) So when the post-Code 70's decided to pick the genre back up while picking it apart, it makes sense that they went for the 'tecs first. The Long Goodbye dragged the 30's detective into the 70's, and Chinatown went back to the 30's with a 70's sensibility. But Night Moves was about detecting in the Watergate era, and how that changed the archetype. Harry Moseby is the detective so obsessed with finding the truth that he might just ruin his life looking for it, like the straight story will somehow fix everything that's broken, like it'll bring back a murdered teenager and repair his marriage and give him a reason to forgive the woman who fucked him just to distract him from some smuggling. When he's got time to kill, he takes out a little, magnetic chess set and recreates a famous old game, where three knight moves (get it?) would have led to a beautiful checkmate had the player just seen it. He keeps going, self-destructing, because he can't stand the idea that the perfect move is there if he can just find it. And, no matter how much we see it destroy him, we, the audience, want him to keep going; we expect a satisfying resolution to the mystery. That's what we need from a detective picture; one character flat-out compares Harry to Sam Spade. But what if the truth is just... Watergate? Just some prick ruining things for selfish reasons? Nothing grand, nothing satisfying. Nothing could be more noir, or more neo-, than that.

Farewell, My Lovely Sometimes the only thing that makes a noir neo- is that it's in color and all the blood, tits, and racism from the books they're based on get put back in. This second stab at Chandler is competant but not much more than that. Mitchum works as Philip Marlowe, but Chandler's dialogue feels off here, like lines that worked on the page don't work aloud, even though they did when Bogie said them. I'll chalk it up to workmanlike but uninspired direction. (Dang this looks bland so soon after Chinatown.) Moose Malloy is a great character, and perfectly cast. (Wasn't sure at first, but it's true.) Some other interesting cats show up and vanish - the tough brothel madam based on Brenda Allen comes to mind, though she's treated with oddly more disdain than most of the other hoods and is dispatched quicker. In general, the more overt racism and misogyny doesn't seem to do anything except make the movie "edgier" than earlier attempts at the same material, and it reads kinda try-hard. But it mostly holds together. *shrug*

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (dnrw) Didn't care for this at all. Can't tell if the script was treated as a jumping-off point or if the dialogue is 100% improvised, but it just drags on forever and is never that interesting. Keeps treating us to scenes from the strip club like they're the opera scenes in Amadeus, and, whatever, I don't expect burlesque to be Mozart, but Cosmo keeps saying they're an artful, classy joint, and I keep waiting for the show to be more than cheap, lazy camp. How do you make gratuitious nudity boring? Mind you, none of this is bad as a rule - I love digressions and can enjoy good sleaze, and it's clear the filmmakers care about what they're making. They just did not sell it in a way I wanted to buy. Can't remember what edit I watched; I hope it was the 135 minute one, because I cannot imagine there being a longer edit out there.

The American Friend (dnrw) It's weird that this is Patricia Highsmith, right? That Dennis Hopper is playing Tom Ripley? In a cowboy hat? I gather that Minghella's version wasn't true to the source, but I do love that movie, and this is a long, long way from that. This Mr. Ripley isn't even particularly talented! Anyway, this has one really great sequence, where a regular guy has been coerced by crooks into murdering someone on a train platform, and, when the moment comes to shoot, he doesn't. And what follows is a prolonged sequence of an amateur trying to surreptitiously tail a guy across a train station and onto another train, and all the while you're not sure... is he going to do it? is he going to chicken out? is he going to do it so badly he gets caught? It's hard not to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, wondering how you would handle the situation, whether you could do it, whether you could act on impulse before your conscience could catch up with you. It drags on a long while and this time it's a good thing. Didn't much like the rest of the movie, it's shapeless and often kind of corny, and the central plot hook is contrived. (It's also very weird that this is the only Wim Wenders I've seen.) But, hey, I got one excellent sequence, not gonna complain.

The Big Sleep Unlike the 1946 film, I can follow the plot of this Big Sleep. But, also unlike the 1946 version, this one isn't any damn fun. Mitchum is back as Marlowe (this is three Marlowes in five years, btw), and this time it's set in the 70's and in England, for some reason. I don't find this offensive, but neither do I see what it accomplishes? Most of the cast is still American. (Hi Jimmy!) Still holds together, but even less well than Farewell, My Lovely. But I do find it interesting that the neo-noir era keeps returning to Chandler while it's pretty much left Hammet behind (inasmuch as someone whose genes are spread wide through the whole genre can be left behind). Spade and the Continental Op, straightshooting tough guys who come out on top in the end, seem antiquated in the (post-)modern era. But Marlowe's goodness being out of sync with the world around him only seems more poignant the further you take him from his own time. Nowadays you can really only do Hammett as pastiche, but I sense that you could still play Chandler straight.

Eyes of Laura Mars The most De Palma movie I've seen not made by De Palma, complete with POV shots, paranormal hoodoo, and fixation with sex, death, and whether images of such are art or exploitation (or both). Laura Mars takes photographs of naked women in violent tableux, and has gotten quite famous doing so, but is it damaging to women? The movie has more than a superficial engagement with this topic, but only slightly more than superficial. Kept imagining a movie that is about 30% less serial killer story and 30% more art conversations. (But, then, I have an art degree and have never murdered anyone, so.) Like, museums are full of Biblical paintings full of nude women and slaughter, sometimes both at once, and they're called masterpieces. Most all of them were painted by men on commission from other men. Now Laura Mars makes similar images in modern trappings, and has models made of flesh and blood rather than paint, and it's scandalous? Why is it only controversial once women are getting paid for it? On the other hand, is this just the master's tools? Is she subverting or challenging the male gaze, or just profiting off of it? Or is a woman profiting off of it, itself, a subversion? Is it subversive enough to account for how it commodifies female bodies? These questions are pretty clearly relevant to the movie itself, and the movies in general, especially after the fall of the Hays Code when people were really unrestrained with the blood and boobies. And, heck, the lead is played by the star of Bonnie and Clyde! All this is to say: I wish the movie were as interested in these questions as I am. What's there is a mildly diverting B-picture. There's one great bit where Laura's seeing through the killer's eyes (that's the hook, she gets visions from the murderer's POV; no, this is never explained) and he's RIGHT BEHIND HER, so there's a chase where she charges across an empty room only able to see her own fleeing self from ten feet behind. That was pretty great! And her first kiss with the detective (because you could see a mile away that the detective and the woman he's supposed to protect are gonna fall in love) is immediately followed by the two freaking out about how nonsensical it is for them to fall in love with each other, because she's literally mourning multiple deaths and he's being wildly unprofessional, and then they go back to making out. That bit was great, too. The rest... enh.

The Onion Field What starts off as a seemingly not-that-noirish cops-vs-crooks procedural turns into an agonizingly protracted look at the legal system, with the ultimate argument that the very idea of the law ever resulting in justice is a lie. Hoo! I have to say, I'm impressed. There's a scene where a lawyer - whom I'm not sure is even named, he's like the seventh of thirteen we've met - literally quits the law over how long this court case about two guys shooting a cop has taken. He says the cop who was murdered has been forgotten, his partner has never gotten to move on because the case has lasted eight years, nothing has been accomplished, and they should let the two criminals walk and jail all the judges and lawyers instead. It's awesome! The script is loaded with digressions and unnecessary details, just the way I like it. Can't say I'm impressed with the execution. Nothing is wrong, exactly, but the performances all seem a tad melodramatic or a tad uninspired. Camerawork is, again, purely functional. It's no masterpiece. But that second half worked for me. (And it's Ted Danson's first movie! He did great.)

Body Heat (rw) Let's say up front that this is a handsomely-made movie. Probably the best looking thing on the list since Night Moves. Nothing I've seen better captures the swelter of an East Coast heatwave, or the lusty feeling of being too hot to bang and going at it regardless. Kathleen Turner sells the hell out of a femme fatale. There are a lot of good lines and good performances (Ted Danson is back and having the time of his life). I want to get all that out of the way, because this is a movie heavily modeled after Double Indemnity, and I wanted to discuss its merits before I get into why inviting that comparison doesn't help the movie out. In a lot of ways, it's the same rules as the Robert Mitchum Marlowe movies - do Double Indemnity but amp up the sex and violence. And, to a degree it works. (At least, the sex does, dunno that Double Indemnity was crying out for explosions.) But the plot is amped as well, and gets downright silly. Yeah, Mrs. Dietrichson seduces Walter Neff so he'll off her husband, but Neff clocks that pretty early and goes along with it anyway. Everything beyond that is two people keeping too big a secret and slowly turning on each other. But here? For the twists to work Matty has to be, from frame one, playing four-dimensional chess on the order of Senator Palpatine, and its about as plausible. (Exactly how did she know, after she rebuffed Ned, he would figure out her local bar and go looking for her at the exact hour she was there?) It's already kind of weird to be using the spider woman trope in 1981, but to make her MORE sexually conniving and mercenary than she was in the 40's is... not great. As lurid trash, it's pretty fun for a while, but some noir stuff can't just be updated, it needs to be subverted or it doesn't justify its existence.

Blow Out Brian De Palma has two categories of movie: he's got his mainstream, director-for-hire fare, where his voice is either reigned in or indulged in isolated sequences that don't always jive with the rest fo the film, and then there's his Brian De Palma movies. My mistake, it seems, is having seen several for-hires from throughout his career - The Untouchables (fine enough), Carlito's Way (ditto, but less), Mission: Impossible (enh) - but had only seen De Palma-ass movies from his late period (Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia, both of which I think are garbage). All this to say: Blow Out was my first classic-era De Palma, and holy fucking shit dudes. This was (with caveats) my absolute and entire jam. I said I could enjoy good sleaze, and this is good friggin' sleaze. (Though far short of De Palma at his sleaziest, mercifully.) The splitscreens, the diopter shots, the canted angles, how does he make so many shlocky things work?! John Travolta's sound tech goes out to get fresh wind fx for the movie he's working on, and we get this wonderful sequence of visuals following sounds as he turns his attention and his microphone to various noises - a couple on a walk, a frog, an owl, a buzzing street lamp. Later, as he listens back to the footage, the same sequence plays again, but this time from his POV; we're seeing his memory as guided by the same sequence of sounds, now recreated with different shots, as he moves his pencil in the air mimicking the microphone. When he mixes and edits sounds, we hear the literal soundtrack of the movie we are watching get mixed and edited by the person on screen. And as he tries to unravel a murder mystery, he uses what's at hand: magnetic tape, flatbed editors, an animation camera to turn still photos from the crime scene into a film and sync it with the audio he recorded; it's forensics using only the tools of the editing room. As someone who's spent some time in college editing rooms, this is a hoot and a half. Loses a bit of steam as it goes on and the film nerd stuff gives way to a more traditional thriller, but rallies for a sound-tech-centered final setpiece, which steadily builds to such madcap heights you can feel the air thinning, before oddly cutting its own tension and then trying to build it back up again. It doesn't work as well the second time. But then, that shot right after the climax? Damn. Conflicted on how the movie treats the female lead. I get why feminist film theorists are so divided on De Palma. His stuff is full of things feminists (rightly) criticize, full of women getting naked when they're not getting stabbed, but he also clearly finds women fascinating and has them do empowered and unexpected things, and there are many feminist reads of his movies. Call it a mixed bag. But even when he's doing tropey shit, he explores the tropes in unexpected ways. Definitely the best movie so far that I hadn't already seen.

Cutter's Way (rw) Alex Cutter is pitched to us as an obnoxious-but-sympathetic son of a bitch, and, you know, two out of three ain't bad. Watched this during my 2020 neo-noir kick and considered skipping it this time because I really didn't enjoy it. Found it a little more compelling this go around, while being reminded of why my feelings were room temp before. Thematically, I'm onboard: it's about a guy, Cutter, getting it in his head that he's found a murderer and needs to bring him to justice, and his friend, Bone, who intermittently helps him because he feels bad that Cutter lost his arm, leg, and eye in Nam and he also feels guilty for being in love with Cutter's wife. The question of whether the guy they're trying to bring down actually did it is intentionally undefined, and arguably unimportant; they've got personal reasons to see this through. Postmodern and noirish, fixated with the inability to ever fully know the truth of anything, but starring people so broken by society that they're desperate for certainty. (Pretty obvious parallels to Vietnam.) Cutter's a drunk and kind of an asshole, but understandably so. Bone's shiftlessness is the other response to a lack of meaning in the world, to the point where making a decision, any decision, feels like character growth, even if it's maybe killing a guy whose guilt is entirely theoretical. So, yeah, I'm down with all of this! A- in outline form. It's just that Cutter is so uninterestingly unpleasant and no one else on screen is compelling enough to make up for it. His drunken windups are tedious and his sanctimonious speeches about what the war was like are, well, true and accurate but also obviously manipulative. It's two hours with two miserable people, and I think Cutter's constant chatter is supposed to be the comic relief but it's a little too accurate to drunken rambling, which isn't funny if you're not also drunk. He's just tedious, irritating, and periodically racist. Pass.

Blood Simple (rw) I'm pretty cool on the Coens - there are things I've liked, even loved, in every Coen film I've seen, but I always come away dissatisfied. For a while, I kept going to their movies because I was sure eventually I'd love one without qualification. No Country for Old Men came close, the first two acts being master classes in sustained tension. But then the third act is all about denying closure: the protagonist is murdered offscreen, the villain's motives are never explained, and it ends with an existentialist speech about the unfathomable cruelty of the world. And it just doesn't land for me. The archness of the Coen's dialogue, the fussiness of their set design, the kinda-intimate, kinda-awkward, kinda-funny closeness of the camera's singles, it cannot sell me on a devastating meditation about meaninglessness. It's only ever sold me on the Coens' own cleverness. And that archness, that distancing, has typified every one of their movies I've come close to loving. Which is a long-ass preamble to saying, holy heck, I was not prepared for their very first movie to be the one I'd been looking for! I watched it last year and it remains true on rewatch: Blood Simple works like gangbusters. It's kind of Double Indemnity (again) but played as a comedy of errors, minus the comedy: two people romantically involved feeling their trust unravel after a murder. And I think the first thing that works for me is that utter lack of comedy. It's loaded with the Coens' trademark ironies - mostly dramatic in this case - but it's all played straight. Unlike the usual lead/femme fatale relationship, where distrust brews as the movie goes on, the audience knows the two main characters can trust each other. There are no secret duplicitous motives waiting to be revealed. The audience also know why they don't trust each other. (And it's all communicated wordlessly, btw: a character enters a scene and we know, based on the information that character has, how it looks to them and what suspicions it would arouse, even as we know the truth of it). The second thing that works is, weirdly, that the characters aren't very interesting?! Ray and Abby have almost no characterization. Outside of a general likability, they are blank slates. This is a weakness in most films, but, given the agonizingly long, wordless sequences where they dispose of bodies or hide from gunfire, you're left thinking not "what will Ray/Abby do in this scenario," because Ray and Abby are relatively elemental and undefined, but "what would I do in this scenario?" Which creates an exquisite tension but also, weirdly, creates more empathy than I feel for the Coens' usual cast of personalities. It's supposed to work the other way around! Truly enjoyable throughout but absolutely wonderful in the suspenseful-as-hell climax. Good shit right here.

Body Double The thing about erotic thrillers is everything that matters is in the name. Is it thrilling? Is it erotic? Good; all else is secondary. De Palma set out to make the most lurid, voyeuristic, horny, violent, shocking, steamy movie he could come up with, and its success was not strictly dependent on the lead's acting ability or the verisimilitude of the plot. But what are we, the modern audience, to make of it once 37 years have passed and, by today's standards, the eroticism is quite tame and the twists are no longer shocking? Then we're left with a nonsensical riff on Vertigo, a specularization of women that is very hard to justify, and lead actor made of pulped wood. De Palma's obsessions don't cohere into anything more this time; the bits stolen from Hitchcock aren't repurposed to new ends, it really is just Hitch with more tits and less brains. (I mean, I still haven't seen Vertigo, but I feel 100% confident in that statement.) The diopter shots and rear-projections this time look cheap (literally so, apparently; this had 1/3 the budget of Blow Out). There are some mildly interesting setpieces, but nothing compared to Travolta's auditory reconstructions or car chase where he tries to tail a subway train from street level even if it means driving through a frickin parade like an inverted French Connection, goddamn Blow Out was a good movie! Anyway. Melanie Griffith seems to be having fun, at least. I guess I had a little as well, but it was, at best, diverting, and a real letdown.

The Hit Surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. Terrance Stamp flips on the mob and spends ten years living a life of ease in Spain, waiting for the day they find and kill him. Movie kicks off when they do find him, and what follows is a ramshackle road movie as John Hurt and a young Tim Roth attempt to drive him to Paris so they can shoot him in front of his old boss. Stamp is magnetic. He's spent a decade reading philosophy and seems utterly prepared for death, so he spends the trip humming, philosophizing, and being friendly with his captors when he's not winding them up. It remains unclear to the end whether the discord he sews between Roth and Hurt is part of some larger plan of escape or just for shits and giggles. There's also a decent amount of plot for a movie that's not terribly plot-driven - just about every part of the kidnapping has tiny hitches the kidnappers aren't prepared for, and each has film-long repercussions, drawing the cops closer and somehow sticking Laura del Sol in their backseat. The ongoing questions are when Stamp will die, whether del Sol will die, and whether Roth will be able to pull the trigger. In the end, it's actually a meditation on ethics and mortality, but in a quiet and often funny way. It's not going to go down as one of my new favs, but it was a nice way to spend a couple hours.

Trouble in Mind (dnrw) I fucking hated this movie. It's been many months since I watched it, do I remember what I hated most? Was it the bit where a couple of country bumpkins who've come to the city walk into a diner and Mr. Bumpkin clocks that the one Black guy in the back as obviously a criminal despite never having seen him before? Was it the part where Kris Kristofferson won't stop hounding Mrs. Bumpkin no matter how many times she demands to be left alone, and it's played as romantic because obviously he knows what she needs better than she does? Or is it the part where Mr. Bumpkin reluctantly takes a job from the Obvious Criminal (who is, in fact, a criminal, and the only named Black character in the movie if I remember correctly, draw your own conclusions) and, within a week, has become a full-blown hood, which is exemplified by a lot, like, a lot of queer-coding? The answer to all three questions is yes. It's also fucking boring. Even out-of-drag Divine's performance as the villain can't save it.

Manhunter 'sfine? I've still never seen Silence of the Lambs, nor any of the Hopkins Lecter movies, nor, indeed, any full episode of the show. So the unheimlich others get seeing Brian Cox play Hannibal didn't come into play. Cox does a good job with him, but he's barely there. Shame, cuz he's the most interesting part of the movie. Honestly, there's a lot of interesting stuff that's barely there. Will Graham being a guy who gets into the heads of serial killers is explored well enough, and Mann knows how to direct a police procedural such that it's both contemplative and propulsive. But all the other themes it points at? Will's fear that he understands murderers a little too well? Hannibal trying to nudge him towards becoming one? Whatever dance Hannibal and Tooth Fairy are doing? What Tooth Fairy's deal is, anyway? (Why does he wear fake teeth and bite things? Why is he fixated on the red dragon? Does the bit where he says "Francis is gone forever" mean he has DID?) None of it goes anywhere or amounts to anything. I mean, it's certainly more interesting with this stuff than without, but it has that feel of a book that's been pared of its interesting bits to fit the runtime (or, alternately, pulp that's been sloppily elevated). I still haven't made my mind up on Mann's cold, precise camera work, but at least it gives me something to look at. It's fine! This is fine.

Mona Lisa (rw) Gave this one another shot. Bob Hoskins is wonderful as a hood out of his depth in classy places, quick to anger but just as quick to let anger go (the opening sequence where he's screaming on his ex-wife's doorstep, hurling trash cans at her house, and one minute later thrilled to see his old car, is pretty nice). And Cathy Tyson's working girl is a subtler kind of fascinating, exuding a mixture of coldness and kindness. It's just... this is ultimately a story about how heartbreaking it is when the girl you like is gay, right? It's Weezer's Pink Triangle: The Movie. It's not homophobic, exactly - Simone isn't demonized for being a lesbian - but it's still, like, "man, this straight white guy's pain is so much more interesting than the Black queer sex worker's." And when he's yelling "you woulda done it!" at the end, I can't tell if we're supposed to agree with him. Seems pretty clear that she wouldn'ta done it, at least not without there being some reveal about her character that doesn't happen, but I don't think the ending works if we don't agree with him, so... I'm like 70% sure the movie does Simone dirty there. For the first half, their growing relationship feels genuine and natural, and, honestly, the story being about a real bond that unfortunately means different things to each party could work if it didn't end with a gun and a sock in the jaw. Shape feels jagged as well; what feels like the end of the second act or so turns out to be the climax. And some of the symbolism is... well, ok, Simone gives George money to buy more appropriate clothes for hanging out in high end hotels, and he gets a tan leather jacket and a Hawaiian shirt, and their first proper bonding moment is when she takes him out for actual clothes. For the rest of the movie he is rocking double-breasted suits (not sure I agree with the striped tie, but it was the eighties, whaddya gonna do?). Then, in the second half, she sends him off looking for her old streetwalker friend, and now he looks completely out of place in the strip clubs and bordellos. So far so good. But then they have this run-in where her old pimp pulls a knife and cuts George's arm, so, with his nice shirt torn and it not safe going home (I guess?) he starts wearing the Hawaiian shirt again. So around the time he's starting to realize he doesn't really belong in Simone's world or the lowlife world he came from anymore, he's running around with the classy double-breasted suit jacket over the garish Hawaiian shirt, and, yeah, bit on the nose guys. Anyway, it has good bits, I just feel like a movie that asks me to feel for the guy punching a gay, Black woman in the face needs to work harder to earn it. Bit of wasted talent.

The Bedroom Window Starts well. Man starts an affair with his boss' wife, their first night together she witnesses an attempted murder from his window, she worries going to the police will reveal the affair to her husband, so the man reports her testimony to the cops claiming he's the one who saw it. Young Isabelle Huppert is the perfect woman for a guy to risk his career on a crush over, and Young Steve Guttenberg is the perfect balance of affability and amorality. And it flows great - picks just the right media to res. So then he's talking to the cops, telling them what she told him, and they ask questions he forgot to ask her - was the perp's jacket a blazer or a windbreaker? - and he has to guess. Then he gets called into the police lineup, and one guy matches her description really well, but is it just because he's wearing his red hair the way she described it? He can't be sure, doesn't finger any of them. He finds out the cops were pretty certain about one of the guys, so he follows the one he thinks it was around, looking for more evidence, and another girl is attacked right outside a bar he knows the redhead was at. Now he's certain! But he shows the boss' wife the guy and she's not certain, and she reminds him they don't even know if the guy he followed is the same guy the police suspected! And as he feeds more evidence to the cops, he has to lie more, because he can't exactly say he was tailing the guy around the city. So, I'm all in now. Maybe it's because I'd so recently rewatched Night Moves and Cutter's Way, but this seems like another story about uncertainty. He's really certain about the guy because it fits narratively, and we, the audience, feel the same. But he's not actually a witness, he doesn't have actual evidence, he's fitting bits and pieces together like a conspiracy theorist. He's fixating on what he wants to be true. Sign me up! But then it turns out he's 100% correct about who the killer is but his lies are found out and now the cops think he's the killer and I realize, oh, no, this movie isn't nearly as smart as I thought it was. Egg on my face! What transpires for the remaining half of the runtime is goofy as hell, and someone with shlockier sensibilities could have made a meal of it, but Hanson, despite being a Corman protege, takes this silliness seriously in the all wrong ways. Next!

Homicide (rw? I think I saw most of this on TV one time) Homicide centers around the conflicted loyalties of a Jewish cop. It opens with the Jewish cop and his white gentile partner taking over a case with a Black perp from some Black FBI agents. The media is making a big thing about the racial implications of the mostly white cops chasing down a Black man in a Black neighborhood. And inside of 15 minutes the FBI agent is calling the lead a k*ke and the gentile cop is calling the FBI agent a f****t and there's all kinds of invective for Black people. The film is announcing its intentions out the gate: this movie is about race. But the issue here is David Mamet doesn't care about race as anything other than a dramatic device. He's the Ubisoft of filmmakers, having no coherent perspective on social issues but expecting accolades for even bringing them up. Mamet is Jewish (though lead actor Joe Mantegna definitely is not) but what is his position on the Jewish diaspora? The whole deal is Mantegna gets stuck with a petty homicide case instead of the big one they just pinched from the Feds, where a Jewish candy shop owner gets shot in what looks like a stickup. Her family tries to appeal to his Jewishness to get him to take the case seriously, and, after giving them the brush-off for a long time, finally starts following through out of guilt, finding bits and pieces of what may or may not be a conspiracy, with Zionist gun runners and underground neo-Nazis. But, again: all of these are just dramatic devices. Mantegna's Jewishness (those words will never not sound ridiculous together) has always been a liability for him as a cop (we are told, not shown), and taking the case seriously is a reclamation of identity. The Jews he finds community with sold tommyguns to revolutionaries during the founding of Israel. These Jews end up blackmailing him to get a document from the evidence room. So: what is the film's position on placing stock in one's Jewish identity? What is its position on Israel? What is its opinion on Palestine? Because all three come up! And the answer is: Mamet doesn't care. You can read it a lot of different ways. Someone with more context and more patience than me could probably deduce what the de facto message is, the way Chris Franklin deduced the de facto message of Far Cry V despite the game's efforts not to have one, but I'm not going to. Mantegna's attempt to reconnect with his Jewishness gets his partner killed, gets the guy he was supposed to bring in alive shot dead, gets him possibly permanent injuries, gets him on camera blowing up a store that's a front for white nationalists, and all for nothing because the "clues" he found (pretty much exclusively by coincidence) were unconnected nothings. The problem is either his Jewishness, or his lifelong failure to connect with his Jewishness until late in life. Mamet doesn't give a shit. (Like, Mamet canonically doesn't give a shit: he is on record saying social context is meaningless, characters only exist to serve the plot, and there are no deeper meanings in fiction.) Mamet's ping-pong dialogue is fun, as always, and there are some neat ideas and characters, but it's all in service of a big nothing that needed to be a something to work.

Swoon So much I could talk about, let's keep it to the most interesting bits. Hommes Fatales: a thing about classic noir that it was fascinated by the marginal but had to keep it in the margins. Liberated women, queer-coded killers, Black jazz players, broke thieves; they were the main event, they were what audiences wanted to see, they were what made the movies fun. But the ending always had to reassert straightlaced straight, white, middle-class male society as unshakeable. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy demanded, both ideologically and via the Hays Code, that anyone outside these norms be punished, reformed, or dead by the movie's end. The only way to make them the heroes was to play their deaths for tragedy. It is unsurprising that neo-noir would take the queer-coded villains and make them the protagonists. Implicature: This is the story of Leopold and Loeb, murderers famous for being queer, and what's interesting is how the queerness in the first half exists entirely outside of language. Like, it's kind of amazing for a movie from 1992 to be this gay - we watch Nathan and Dickie kiss, undress, masturbate, fuck; hell, they wear wedding rings when they're alone together. But it's never verbalized. Sex is referred to as "your reward" or "what you wanted" or "best time." Dickie says he's going to have "the girls over," and it turns out "the girls" are a bunch of drag queens, but this is never acknowledged. Nathan at one point lists off a bunch of famous men - Oscar Wild, E.M. Forster, Frederick the Great - but, though the commonality between them is obvious (they were all gay), it's left the the audience to recognize it. When their queerness is finally verbalized in the second half, it's first in the language of pathology - a psychiatrist describing their "perversions" and "misuse" of their "organs" before the court, which has to be cleared of women because it's so inappropriate - and then with slurs from the man who murders Dickie in jail (a murder which is written off with no investigation because the victim is a gay prisoner instead of a L&L's victim, a child of a wealthy family). I don't know if I'd have noticed this if I hadn't read Chip Delany describing his experience as a gay man in the 50's existing almost entirely outside of language, the only language at the time being that of heteronormativity. Murder as Love Story: L&L exchange sex as payment for the other commiting crimes; it's foreplay. Their statements to the police where they disagree over who's to blame is a lover's quarrel. Their sentencing is a marriage. Nathan performs his own funeral rites over Dickie's body after he dies on the operating table. They are, in their way, together til death did they part. This is the relationship they can have. That it does all this without romanticizing the murder itself or valorizing L&L as humans is frankly incredible.

Suture (rw) The pitch: at the funeral for his father, wealthy Vincent Towers meets his long lost half brother Clay Arlington. It is implied Clay is a child from out of wedlock, possibly an affair; no one knows Vincent has a half-brother but him and Clay. Vincent invites Clay out to his fancy-ass home in Arizona. Thing is, Vincent is suspected (correctly) by the police of having murdered his father, and, due to a striking family resemblence, he's brought Clay to his home to fake his own death. He finagles Clay into wearing his clothes and driving his car, and then blows the car up and flees the state, leaving the cops to think him dead. Thing is, Clay survives, but with amnesia. The doctors tell him he's Vincent, and he has no reason to disagree. Any discrepancy in the way he looks is dismissed as the result of reconstructive surgery after the explosion. So Clay Arlington resumes Vincent Towers' life, without knowing Clay Arlington even exists. The twist: Clay and Vincent are both white, but Vincent is played by Michael Harris, a white actor, and Clay is played by Dennis Haysbert, a Black actor. "Ian, if there's just the two of them, how do you know it's not Harris playing a Black character?" Glad you asked! It is most explicitly obvious during a scene where Vincent/Clay's surgeon-cum-girlfriend essentially bringing up phrenology to explain how Vincent/Clay couldn't possibly have murdered his father, describing straight hair, thin lips, and a Greco-Roman nose Haysbert very clearly doesn't have. But, let's be honest: we knew well beforehand that the rich-as-fuck asshole living in a huge, modern house and living it up in Arizona high society was white. Though Clay is, canonically, white, he lives an poor and underprivileged life common to Black men in America. Though the film's title officially refers to the many stitches holding Vincent/Clay's face together after the accident, "suture" is a film theory term, referring to the way a film audience gets wrapped up - sutured - in the world of the movie, choosing to forget the outside world and pretend the story is real. The usage is ironic, because the audience cannot be sutured in; we cannot, and are not expected to, suspend our disbelief that Clay is white. We are deliberately distanced. Consequently this is a movie to be thought about, not to to be felt. It has the shape of a Hitchcockian thriller but it can't evoke the emotions of one. You can see the scaffolding - "ah, yes, this is the part of a thriller where one man hides while another stalks him with a gun, clever." I feel ill-suited to comment on what the filmmakers are saying about race. I could venture a guess about the ending, where the psychiatrist, the only one who knows the truth about Clay, says he can never truly be happy living the lie of being Vincent Towers, while we see photographs of Clay/Vincent seemingly living an extremely happy life: society says white men simply belong at the top more than Black men do, but, if the roles could be reversed, the latter would slot in seamlessly. Maybe??? Of all the movies in this collection, this is the one I'd most want to read an essay on (followed by Swoon).

The Last Seduction (dnrw) No, no, no, I am not rewataching this piece of shit movie.

Brick (rw) Here's my weird contention: Brick is in color and in widescreen, but, besides that? There's nothing neo- about this noir. There's no swearing except "hell." (I always thought Tug said "goddamn" at one point but, no, he's calling The Pin "gothed-up.") There's a lot of discussion of sex, but always through implication, and the only deleted scene is the one that removed ambiguity about what Brendan and Laura get up to after kissing. There's nothing postmodern or subversive - yes, the hook is it's set in high school, but the big twist is that it takes this very seriously. It mines it for jokes, yes, but the drama is authentic. In fact, making the gumshoe a high school student, his jadedness an obvious front, still too young to be as hard as he tries to be, just makes the drama hit harder. Sam Spade if Sam Spade were allowed to cry. I've always found it an interesting counterpoint to The Good German, a movie that fastidiously mimics the aesthetics of classic noir - down to even using period-appropriate sound recording - but is wholly neo- in construction. Brick could get approved by the Hays Code. Its vibe, its plot about a detective playing a bunch of criminals against each other, even its slang ("bulls," "yegg," "flopped") are all taken directly from Hammett. It's not even stealing from noir, it's stealing from what noir stole from! It's a perfect curtain call for the collection: the final film is both the most contemporary and the most classic. It's also - but for the strong case you could make for Night Moves - the best movie on the list. It's even more appropriate for me, personally: this was where it all started for me and noir. I saw this in theaters when it came out and loved it. It was probably my favorite movie for some time. It gave me a taste for pulpy crime movies which I only, years later, realized were neo-noir. This is why I looked into Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and In Bruges. I've seen it more times than any film on this list, by a factor of at least 3. It's why I will always adore Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's the best-looking half-million-dollar movie I've ever seen. (Indie filmmakers, take fucking notes.) I even did a script analysis of this, and, yes, it follows the formula, but so tightly and with so much style. Did you notice that he says several of the sequence tensions out loud? ("I just want to find her." "Show of hands.") I notice new things each time I see it - this time it was how "brushing Brendan's hair out of his face" is Em's move, making him look more like he does in the flashback, and how Laura does the same to him as she's seducing him, in the moment when he misses Em the hardest. It isn't perfect. It's recreated noir so faithfully that the Innocent Girl dies, the Femme Fatale uses intimacy as a weapon, and none of the women ever appear in a scene together. 1940's gender politics maybe don't need to be revisited. They say be critical of the media you love, and it applies here most of all: it is a real criticism of something I love immensely.

[mrsgiovanna]

The confession (Don Giorno x Fem! Reader

A cute request from a nonnie mouse, I hope this is what you were looking for my sweet 🥰💭💜🐞

No warnings, just fluff

Word count: 1506

“Buongiorno, Gio, I have the documents you requested yesterday,” you greeted the young mafia Don with a sunny smile as you handed the envelope to him.

“Buongiorno (y/n), thank you so much for getting these to me as quickly as you did, I really appreciate it. I’m sorry for just springing this on you as well,” Giorno apologized, returning your smile with one of his own.

Ever since Giorno had taken over Passione, you had been his support structure, whether it was help with the copious amounts of documentation he had to go through or intricate missions that he trusted nobody other than you with, you were always ready to serve your Don. Similarly, you could always rely on Giorno for anything. Everything you both did was aimed at protecting each other, and there was nothing that you wouldn’t do for each other. Mista Fugo and Trish always commented that you and Giorno always behaved like a couple, earning dismissive laughs from you both. Sure, you both cared deeply for each other, but a couple? No, you were certain he didn’t think of you in that way.

Just as you turned to leave, Giorno had called you back, asking you to stay for the meeting he was going to have with the Capos and Mista. No sooner had you taken your seat, had Mista brought everyone in. You sat quietly, offering your input when requested, keeping your game face on for the duration of the time. There was one Capo however, that took advantage of every opportunity he had to address you, either directly with his questions or indirectly with his flirtatious glances.

You had only encountered Lucian a few times prior to this, each time proving to more difficult than the last, however, he has never openly behaved this way in front of Giorno before. You wished they would conclude their agenda so you could escape his piercing gaze.

“Well, if that’s everything, this meeting is adjourned,” said Giorno, almost as if he was able to read your mind, bringing the meeting to a close.

“If that’s all, (y/n), would you mind walking with me, there’s something I’d like to speak to you about, I won’t take too much of your time,” said Lucian to you.

You wordlessly looked towards Giorno, and sought his permission to leave, which he gave you with a curt nod, as his intense eyes followed you until you disappeared out the door.

“You’re scowling Giorno,” Mista was somewhat amused but he actually felt bad for his friend. Whether it was confusion or just awkwardness regarding these matters, you and the emerald-eyed man have been dancing around this issue for the longest time. It was becoming tedious to watch. Perhaps the threat of another person potentially taking you away would force Giorno to give a definition to his feelings.

Mista watched him intently, deciding to speak frankly, “You know you’re in love with her… and you know she loves you too. I don’t know what it is that’s tripping you both up, but I know you can’t keep doing this forever. She’s young and beautiful and will attract the attention of others who will be more brazen in their approach. If not Lucian, then someone else will take her from you.” The gravity of Mista’s words hit Giorno all at once. Before he could say anything more, Mista had returned his attention to what he was reading, and you had returned to the room with a soft smile on your face.

“What was that about?”

“Oh, he just needed my input on one of new territories he’s taking over, we’re meeting for dinner later,” you explained nonchalantly, unable to pick up on Giorno’s discomfort.

“Dinner? Like a date? Pried the young Don, trying to think about how best to thwart these plans.

“No… yes… I guess it is a date. He seemed excited enough…”

“I see…”

“You two are beyond frustrating, I’ll see you later,” with that Mista left in an exasperated huff.

You looked at Giorno, wondering what annoyed the gunslinger to that extent, but he just shrugged it off.

The rest of the day was spent quietly working, and the hours passed by faster than you would have liked them to.

“I think we’ve made good progress today, is there anything else I can do for you before I leave?” you ask as you start gathering your things to make your exit.

“Thanks, I think we’ve covered everything… can I send one of the drivers with you? Oh, I’ll send a guard too, I’m sure none of them would mind, they’re all very fond of you and…”

“Giorno, it’s fine, it’s not such a big deal, just dinner, and I can take care of myself you know. Or have you forgotten the times I’ve beaten you while we were sparring?”

“Beat me? I let you win… I… I miss those times…” The sad smile on his face mirrored your own feelings, this nostalgia was bitter sweet.

“Me too… we should make time to do those things again… well I should go now, see you tomorrow Gio,”. Giorno sadly watched as you exited his study for the second time that day, feelings of guilt and jealously overtook his senses in waves. He wanted you to be happy, but he could no longer ignore the glaringly obvious fact that he wanted- no, needed- to be the one to make you happy.

You decided to stop at Mista’s house before going home. You wanted to make sure he was okay after the way he left earlier.

“Hey Mista,”

“(y/n), what are you doing here? Did something happen?” said Mista in a concerned voice as he stepped aside to let you in.

“No, no, I came to see how you were doing… You were acting a bit weird this morning, is everything okay?” you ask as you walked in. You always thought of Mista as an older brother, he messed with you incessantly, but you could always talk to him about the things that mattered.

“Ah, haha, I’m fine, you didn’t have to come all this way, don’t you have somewhere to be?”

“You creep, I came all this way to check on you and you sound like you want to get rid of me,” you said, playfully punching him on the arm.

“Whatever, gallinella, so is everything okay with you?”

As you and Mista spent some time chatting in general, you felt a sense of calm slowly permeate your mind. With this clarity, you also realized you forgot to tell Giorno about a very important meeting he needed to be at early the next day. Just as you fished out your cellphone to call him and let him know, Mista’s phone rang.

“Oh its Giorno,”

“Perfect, Mista can you place the call on speaker please, I need to talk to him really quickly,”

With a nod, he answers the call, “Hi Giorno, listen (y/n) is…”

“You were right Mista, you were right about everything. I’m completely in love with (y/n) and I don’t know what to do. Should I just pretend? Should I tell her?”

“You just did… I was going to tell you that I put you on speaker because she was here and wanted to talk to you, but you just kept talking…”

“Goddammit Mista!”

“Hey don’t blame me, anyway , I think you should call her…” suggested Mista as he gave you some space to process the information you had just become privy to.

Your eyes grew larger than saucers and your breath hitched in your throat, you couldn’t believe Giorno felt that way. No sooner had he hung up on Mista, did you see his name popping up on your caller ID.

“(y/n), I suppose you heard all of that… even though I didn’t want you to find out like this, I meant every word. I know you have other plans tonight, but can we please talk about this tomorrow?” explained Giorno.

“I did… I heard everything. I’ll cancel my plans tonight, I can’t go with him in good conscience after all of that, it’s not fair to anyone,”

“I won’t tell you what to do, and I’ll be respectful of whatever you decide, I just feel we need to talk…”

“Thank you Gio, and yes I agree, we’ll talk when I see you tomorrow…” you respond, the smile on your face was almost audible in the happy lilt your voice carried.

“Alright then tesoro, well, have a good evening, be safe on your way home.”

After saying goodbye to Mista and driving yourself home, you had the awkward task of calling Lucian, who was more understanding than you gave him credit for. For the rest of your night, your thoughts kept returning to Giorno, and it was then that you realized exactly how deep your feelings for him ran. With those sweet feelings effervescing in your chest, you went to sleep with a smile on your face, dreaming about what the future might hold for you both.