#it is a good adaption. i’m enjoying it. the sets fantastic and the casting is fantastic. the dialogues fun usually too.

[sammygender]

also why did they make grover not a vegetarian. and why did they make him not mention his quest for pan.

[absolutebl]

10 Sunshine/Sunshine AKA cinnamon roll couple BL

A note: usually one half of the sunshine is a bit more quiet and introverted than the other, but they are both still sunny sweeties. Side dishes not included. 

1. My Ride

Thai 2022 Gaga

Thai BL grew up with this pulp - a truly lovely and special little show featuring mature explorations of relationships using one of the softest, sweetest and most innocent friends to lovers vehicles. Kindly, overworked doctor meets broken-hearted motorcycle taxi driver in an “other side of the tracks” slow burn romance. The support cast is excellent, making for great friendship groups and family dynamics. With honest queer rep that adds to, but doesn’t impede the story, and genuine conversation about the nature of class, wealth, and classism, not to mention communication, honesty, and respect for boundaries, you can’t go wrong with this show. In other news, I am a sucker for a single dimple. Full review here.

2. Vice Versa

Thai 2022 YouTube

Jimmy is insanely charismatic and takes up all the air in (the proverbial cinematic) room, but I warmed up to Sea eventually. As a couple they read as more teasing and brotherly than sexy, but that’s GMMTV’s brand for you. I enjoyed the concept of this show (I’m big into magical realism and skewed reality - see my adoration for Color Rush) but JittiRain’s plot was contrived and weak (normal for them). Look, here’s the thing, flaws and all I pretty much spent this entire show smiling.

3. My Only 12%

Thai 2022 iQIYI

Y-novel adaptation (author Afterday - Bad Buddy) and strong little BL romance (tailor made for SantaEarth) about holding onto first love and childhood, but it’s buried under waffling family drama and formless side characters so that it took a lot of digging to get to - still I recommend it for the killer softly domestic couple chemistry.

4. About Youth

Taiwan 2022 Gaga

A truly lovely little coming of age high school BL with a classic YA low drama but high angst and an earnest depth. I didn’t even mind the singing, and that’s saying a lot. A weak seme/uke dynamic but tons of BL tropes (both rare in a high school setting but common for Taiwan) makes this one feel both sweetly and colored by an almost real world authenticity and grit. Full review here.

5. Ghost Host Ghost House

Thai 2022 YouTube?

This is light horror combined with family drama built around a well executed BL trough-line that felt honestly queer with fantastic chemistry from the lead pair. (I hope that we see more of them.) Pluem delivers the softest most seductive krap ever, Tod Techit (Kewin) is one of the prettiest humans on the planet, and watching these boys flirt over noodles is an unalloyed pleasure. Use of I/you pronouns is super interesting and cute as well. For me, personally, the surrounding cast, premise, and story didn’t resonate but if you like a touch of gothic in your BL this might appeal.

6. Dear Doctor, I'm Coming for Your Soul

Thai 2022 iQIYI

This is a romance between a doctor trying to save his patients and a reaper who is both his enemy and (eventual) lover (basically the genius premise of a gay Doom at Your Service). High concept looks good on you, Thailand. It’s lovely to see KarnNat back on screen together and they are still great, and Karn is just as painfully beautiful as ever. I enjoyed this one more than it’s ending deserved, and the best I can say is that it’s not strictly HEA but if you’re okay with Life: Love on the Line, you’ll be okay with this BL. It’s set up well, there’s no surprise unpleasantness like HIStory 3: The BL that shall not be named. Full Review here.

7. Secret Crush On You

Thai 2022 YouTube

Formerly call “The Stalker” for a reason. Highest cringe factor in the biz mixed with flashes of unparalleled genius and insanely good representation of multiple different kinds of queerness makes this entirely unique content we’ve never seen before in BL, the opposite of sanitized gay, like a naked glittery hello kitty doll having kinky sex. I was ALL OVER THE PLACE about this show. SCOY drove me nuts and made me bush but had flashes of unparalleled genius. It had a ton of things I really did not like (e.g. the humor was crass and awkward, and the whole stalker thing was extremely stomach churning, I suffer from bad second hand embarrassment). It also had things that really worked: (e.g. all the queers are INTO each other, it very Taiwanese feeling - in that there was no doubt that the characters want to bone). Honestly, if you can make it through the first half and survive the never ending cringe-factor that IS this show, the second half is entirely unique and kinda special. But I, personally, could never really like this show for all there were bits I loved. Full review of mixed feels.

8. The 8.2 Second Rule

AKA 8.2 Byo no Hosoku

Japan 2022 microfilm YouTube

Very short JBL about a schoolboy who makes magic candy for a series of handsome classmates, questing for a soulmate. Each ep is a new love interest and while the sweets help others, they keep failing to bring our sunshine the love he wants. Of course, he’s overlooking someone. The lead was very good and the theme, cooking, and eventually romance were charming, but it is a series of BL vignettes not really a cohesive story, no kisses or anything. Japan doesn’t give us sweet BL this short very often, so it’s nice to see them try out the style.

9. Ai Long Nhai

Thai 2022 iQIYI

Look, this show was just a typical Thai BL university pulp about a confident gay and a clueless manic pixie dream boy. It had potential, chemistry, and earnestness going for it, but no plot and not enough attention side dishes. In the end, it was boring and you know I always rate boring lower than hot messes (because at least the hot mess TRIED). That said, Ai Long Nhai is better than your average Thai pulp, nothing happens but at least the nothing was mostly shirtless and there were GREAT gay dads (IRL husbands Arm & Porsch). 

10. Coffee Melody

Thai 2022 Viki

Stars Pavel (my love) as a cafe owner (Forth in 2 Moons 2) and Benz as a composer (Call it What You Want). This should have been my kind of BL - on the fluffy end of the spectrum plus honestly queer. Unfortunately, the slow pacing, manufactured angst, odd secondary story arcs, and a selfishly immature unlikeable wet dishcloth main character, Yi, meant its flaws outweighed its charm. Jean (flame on snark fairy) is MINE, I love him so much but in the end neither he nor Pavel in an apron could save this show for me. It’s not bad. It’s not good either. Ultimately so forgettable I’ve probably already forgotten it.

BONUS Strongberry 

Please Tell Me So

AKA That's my Mr.Right!

Korea 2021 microfilm YouTube

Cute barista (played by Han Hyun Jun star of Love Class) has a crush on his customer, musters up the courage to ask him out.

Every list should come with a Strongberry bonus, like a cherry on top... 

This lists dated Dec 2022, not responsible for keeping it updated. But if you have more to add or ones I have forgotten please comment or repost with additions! Keep the dream alive. 

(source)

[ridley-was-a-cat]

Winter 2024 Anime Roundup

Anime of the Season – The Apothecary Diaries

I’ve been hearing about this series since Raven of the Inner Palace aired a while back, and the fans spoke so highly of it that I was dubious of anything living up to the expectations they’d set. Luckily for me, they weren’t exaggerating one bit, and the anime adaptation delivered a story that had me itching to watch the next installment as soon as the episode ended each week.

The story opens with Maomao getting abducted and sent to work in the imperial palace, where she intends to keep her head down and just quietly do her work in the inner palace, only to find a little matter involving poison she can’t resist poking her nose into, leading a powerful young man in the palace to take notice of her. Throughout the story, her desire to mind her business and not get tied up in palace affairs wars with her absolutely insatiable curiosity wherever drugs or poisons are involved, and it leads her in and out of a series of mysteries involving the residents of the palace, changing the course of her life. It was an absolute treat to watch her and Jinshi dance around each other, as Maomao wants nothing to do with the beautiful man all the women fawn over, and he finds her lack of interest in him irresistible, and seeing the way all the seemingly unrelated mysteries built towards a larger conspiracy was immensely satisfying. When you combine all this with an equally colorful supporting cast, a gorgeous color palette, excellent background art, and solid animation, you get the sort of anime you feel lucky to get to watch. 9/10

First Runner-Up – Brave Bang Bravern!

Equal parts sincere and farcical, this series takes all the tropes and homoeroticism of mecha anime and dials them to eleven. It boasts some of the best 3D mecha animation I’ve seen, a star-studded voice cast, and a story with the perfect mix of comedy and action. If you’ve ever clapped your hands and cheered for an over the top robot fight, this is the show for you. 9/10

Second Runner-Up – Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End

The entire series is beautifully drawn and animated, with a perfect soundtrack and voice cast to match, and it takes a fantastic, heartfelt story about valuing the connections you make with others and elevates it to another level. A poorly paced exam arc in the second half that takes the focus off the main trio dampened my enjoyment somewhat, but it easily would’ve been my anime of the season in most seasons. 8/10

The Dangers in My Heart S2 – Kyotarou and Anna keep getting closer and closer over the course of this season, and the way they timed the emotional high of each episode to the soundtrack and the title card has me ready to swoon the moment I see the word “karte” written in white on a black screen. A nicely produced romance about a middle school boy and girl pushing each other to be their best selves that I’m really glad I watched. 8/10

Kingdom S5 – Xin and his Fei Xin force are under the command of the ruthless general Huan Yi in this arc, and they rediscover how merciless and inhumane war is as they fight a battle in Zhao territory as part of Qin’s effort to unify China. Xin’s voice actor completely knocks it out of the park here, delivering several emotional speeches with the perfect amount of gravitas. 8/10

7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy! – I knew when the female lead leapt off a balcony in front of the male lead after being jilted by her fiancé and he immediately fell in love with her that I was in for a good time, and it never let me down. Rishe’s constant scheming that drew on things she learned in her six previous lives, and Prince Arnold’s mix of bewilderment and affection for his unpredictable fiancée, made this one of the best fantasy romance series in years. 8/10

Mr. Villain’s Day Off – The premise of a general in the evil organization fighting the rangers for control of Earth strictly avoiding work on his day off sounds like the setup for a sit-com, but the story it actually settles in to tell is one that quietly highlights the beauty and comfort found in the ephemeral moments of daily life. A relaxing slice of life series that was the perfect capstone to my Sunday evenings this season. 7/10

A Sign of Affection – I have some nitpicks about some adaptation decisions in the anime that made the female lead appear less disabled than she is in the manga, but, on the whole, this was a lovely shoujo romance about a group of young adults doing their best to forge their own path in the world, with some nice production values. 7/10

Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! – If you can look past the wild title and premise, and you don’t mind some inconsistent character models or animation, there’s a nice workplace romance in here centered on a group of grown men talking things out and supporting each other as they navigate their messy feelings. (It’s not as funny as the manga is, though.) 7/10

Sengoku Youko – It took me a few episodes to warm up to this historical set fantasy adventure, but once the story got going, with a solid mix of strong character development and the occasional emotional punch to the gut, I was all in. The character designs are unique and expressive, the action is nicely choreographed and animated, and the voice actors really put their backs into some of the more intense moments. 7/10

Undead Unluck – The pacing was a bit of a problem, with some incredibly long recap segments in episodes in the second half, but the chemistry between the two leads – a man who can’t die and a young woman who causes life threatening bad luck to anyone who touches her – made this action series about fighting to stop the apocalypse a really fun time. 7/10

The Witch and the Beast – If you’re like me, and you go weak in the knees for a chain smoking man with bedroom eyes in a long coat, and a messy woman who might get you both arrested when you go out drinking, then this supernatural themed noir is the show for you. Production values are inconsistent over its run, but the writing and voice acting are solid throughout. 7/10

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic – A boy getting isekaied by accident when his classmates are summoned to be heroes in another world could easily have been the start of yet another story about an aggrieved loner making it big as an overpowered hero in a fantasy world, but it thankfully subverted expectations and delivered an isekai adventure with a bit of heart and a cast of likeable characters. 7/10

The Foolish Angel Dances with the Devil – What appeared to be a gimmicky battle of wits love comedy in the beginning turned into a solid forbidden romance between a demon and an angel with genuinely good chemistry between them. The two leads were easy to root for as they caught feelings for each other while fighting their way through the ridiculous situations they kept landing in. 7/10

The Demon Prince of Momochi House – This is a neither good nor bad anime about a teenage girl inheriting an old house in the woods that serves as a gateway between reality and the spiritual world, and moving in with the mysterious teenage boy and his ayakashi attendants who protect it. The characters are likeable, and the romance is pleasantly cheesy like an otome game, but the rushed pace of the relationship development and the quickly resolved yokai cases just feel like they adapted more manga than the runtime supported. 6/10

Villainess Level 99: I May Be the Hidden Boss but I’m Not the Demon Lord – Deadpan, autistic-coded Yumiella is a ton of fun as the OP main character in this otome isekai, and she and her love interest make a great couple, but the level grinding wasn’t exciting enough, and the jokes weren’t funny enough to overcome the poor visuals. 6/10

Bucchigiri?! – Hiroko Utsumi directing an original anime mixing old school delinquents with Aladdin and the Lamp sounded like it could be a rollicking fun romp in the style of her previous original, Sk8, but pacing issues led to a repetitive first half, the main character was deeply unlikable, and the rushed ending felt unsatisfying. The art and animation were generally quite good, with some great fight scenes, but the writing needed to be better. 6/10

Solo Leveling – The series is very well produced, with exciting action scenes set to a lively soundtrack, but any time I started to relax and enjoy some nicely animated fights, the main character would come out with some eye-rolling, angsty teen speech about the strong preying on the weak, and it just wasn’t for me. 6/10

Shangri-La Frontier – There’s little to criticize in the production of this VR MMO themed action series. The voice actors gave great performances, the monster fights are well animated, and the art has a distinctive feel to it. Unfortunately, the story just never really grabbed me, the stalker girl really annoyed me whenever she appeared, and the extras at the beginning and end of most episodes felt like padding. 6/10

My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered, No One in This Other World Stands a Chance Against Me! – An unusual teenage boy with the ability to instantly kill anyone by just thinking about it gets sent to another world with a bus full of his classmates, and the ensuing adventure kept me entertained the whole time, but I can’t quite call it good. The manzai comedy dynamic between the male and female lead was a fair bit of fun as they traveled across the land, poking fun at common isekai tropes. 6/10

Blue Exorcist: Shimane Illuminati Saga – I remember really enjoying the first two seasons of this series, and I still love the characters, but this season just never clicked right for me. The opening arc felt rushed through, and the main arc had a cartoonish buffoon of a villain that completely undercut the horror of the story. It wasn’t a chore to watch or anything, but it could have been better. 6/10

Metallic Rouge – Like many others, I had high hopes for this original sci-fi series Bones put out as an anniversary project, but despite the generally solid visuals, the poor writing drags the whole show down, making this one of the biggest disappointments of the season. The incoherent plot fails to come to a point, the dialog is a terrible mix of forced quirkiness and tedious monologuing, and the characters are largely one-note and undeveloped. 6/10

Sasaki and Peeps – The hour-long premiere episode suggested this story about a middle aged salaryman who discovers his new pet bird is a reincarnated wizard from another world might be a fun take on the isekai genre, but the end product felt more like someone playing with their dolls than crafting a coherent story. It continually introduced new characters and new tropes all the way through to the last minute without tying anything together. 5/10

The Fire Hunter S2 – On the one hand, I appreciate how different it is from other series, with unusual character designs and an imaginative fantasy story that isn’t an amalgamation of light novel conventions. On the other hand, though, the production is incredibly rough, and the plot got increasingly hard to follow, making this a bit of a slog by the end. 5/10

Fluffy Paradise – I was basically on board in the first half to two-thirds of the series, when it seemed like a harmless little reincarnation isekai about a girl collecting animal and monster friends, but it completely lost me when it broke out the reservation camps and dead bodies in the last arc. Just a poorly written show that misunderstood its appeal. 5/10

[measureformeasure]

Hey June! I was wondering, what medias/books would you recommend for a person wanting to get into the ancient greek classics? The Iliad/Odyssey/Aeneid stories fascinate me, but as there are so many versions and translations and retellings, I don't really know where to start. How did you get into them?

hey anon! I feel mildly underqualified to answer this as I actually haven’t read the Iliad or Odyssey or all of the Aeneid but I will do my best (i’m working on it! promise! iliad is up next and i’m gonna read it and i’m gonna go crazyinsane)

firstly you should totally read the original texts. remember that they aren’t The One True Story, they’re just written-down versions of wobbly cultural stories that change from person to person. and you don’t have to read them before reading retellings or adaptation but it’s good to read them fairly close together. just read what you wanna read. the bit of the Aeneid I read was translated by Robert Fagles, and I’ve heard Emily Wilson’s Odyssey is good. my friend Theo @fifthlydoyoudream recommends E. V. Rieu’s Argonautica translation, if you wanna read that. poetry in translation has decent translations of most plays i’ve tried to find, and that’s nice because it’s online and super accessible.

the way I first got into the greek classics was reading Anne Carson’s An Oresteia, which is Agamemnon, Elektra, and Orestes. it’s a really great intro because Anne Carson’s translations are just fantastic & it’s one play from each of the three big greek tragedy-writers & it’s a pretty well-contained story so you don’t need much context - you could read Iphigenia at Aulis first but that’s not really necessary. (confusingly there is also The Oresteia, which is different). if you can find an Anne Carson translation of a play you should totally read that one. that’s my rule of thumb. I always recommend Antigone too - it’s also fairly self-contained and it makes me crazyinsane. Anne Carson has two translations, they’re both good - Antigonick is better if you have a little context beforehand in my opinion. also Oedipus the King/Oedipus Rex is good.

tbh what i recommend is just following characters or stories that you like and seeing where that gets you. like i’m having a pretty intense house of atreus moment atm but i still barely know who penelope is because i haven’t read the odyssey. who is penthesilea? still do not know. but don’t get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff out there!! it can be a little scary but wikipedia is your friend and also you do not have to know everything.

and some adaptations/retellings:

Lavinia by Ursula K. le Guin is an adaptation/retelling of the Aeneid from Lavinia’s point of view and it is very very good.

Luis Alfaro’s Greek Trilogy are play adaptations of Oedipus Rex, Elektra, and Medea set in modern-day LA with a Latino cast and it is so fucking good it makes me want to bite glass and explode. you can find oedipus el rey by googling but the other ones might be a bit more annoying to find

Iphigenia and the Furies (on Taurian Land) by Ho Ka Kei is a good deconstruction of the colonialist nature of Iphigenia among the Taurians, and it is also absurdly hilarious, so I recommend. I read it before I read the play it adapts and I was fine but it is good to have context.

i’m having an iphigenia moment anyway i also recommend Iphigenia at Zero by Lisa Schlesinger if you get into iphigenia’s story.

I’m like 15 pages in to Cassandra by Christa Wolf and I am thoroughly enjoying it so far

Antigone directed by Sophie Deraspe is a great French Canadian adaptation of Antigone in the modern day I really like it

and who would i be if i didn’t recommend max @goose-books‘s godsong, aka the aeneid (among other things) with lesbians

also. note on adaptation - a lot of adaptations i have read flatten the morality of these plays into good and bad. i think that’s dumb. let them be shitty, adaptations!

ok thats all good luck brave soldier o7

[gffa]

I'm really glad you're enjoying the lockwood and co books and series so far!! they're very special books to me and my friends, i remember reading them when i was 16 and absolutely adoring them, they;re just SO GOOD.

one thing i've really enjoyed about the series is the very clear depictions of issues of class and worker's rights, and its one reason i want to reread the books again, because those just went completely over my head as a kid and i want to see how the series and books depictions differ. jonathan stroud had a very close hand in the production of the series so im curious to see how his now 10 year old books and attitudes in them hold up. Anyway, i was curious if that was something that was also as obvious to you as it was to me? my mum's English and i grew up with a kind of baseline understanding of english class struggles (despite the fact that she's from the south and grew up relatively rich) and the attitudes in England surrounding worker's rights and unions and so on, so its always interesting me to see how other people see these issues and how they're presented in media.

for example i absolutely love the casting choices of all the main characters, i think they really perfectly exemplify the struggles portrayed in the books that something as big as The Problem would affect on all working levels, including the class of children which honestly i find is a class of people that goes overlooked a Lot in stories, or at least in the way jonathan stroud does it. Lucy and lockwood are both excellently portrayed i think, and their intrinsic struggles to connect and attitudes are products of their upbringings and backgrounds and i think the series does an excellent job of portraying that (as much as I can say this without revealing spoilers hgjkfdls), with lucy being a northern working class girl from a poor family and lockwood, despite not having a close family, being raised objectively middle class and having relatives who go hunting.

anyway its!!! very good!!! i think the series is a fantastically faithful adaptation of the themes and ideas of the books so far, and also almost every setting looks EXACTLY how i pictured it which makes me absolutely feral hjgfkdsl

but yes idk if this makes much sense but aaahh I'm glad you're enjoying it all!! i really can't wait to see what you think of the second book and the rest of the series!!

also cos im curious: did you read the book before watching the series? and if not, do you think the series holds up as a story in its own right without needing the background of the books to watch it? cos while i think it's a brilliant adaptation I'm wondering how well it plays out as a story on its own without having to read the books first

I'm delighted at how many Lockwood & Co. fans there are, I’d never heard of the books before the Netflix adaptation, but it seems like there’s a bunch of you!  It’s lovely to be able to discuss things already even if I’m not sure I’ll have a lot to add just yet, since I’m only on episode 5 of the adaptation and halfway through the first book. (I didn’t want to burn through the episodes too quickly because it’s such a charming series, so I decided to switch back and forth between them and the books, which helps keep my memory fresh of the show when I read the books, so I can take note of the differences.  There are some differences, but ones that generally seem like really good ideas for a TV series adaptation, like I already like the tweaking of George’s character and I really loved the Norrie backstory.) I don’t know that I would have clocked the class theme on my own--but I’m not that far into any of it yet, though, I know how the first book turns out, of course--I can’t say that I felt it was necessarily a strong theme in the adaptation in the sense that it was driving the plot, but it is very much there, Lucy’s character is very much that of a working class type of character.  And, when you mentioned it, I can pick up on it in the book as well, especially as I’m just getting to the introduction of John Fairfax commissioning the team for a case. I’m also not sure where I’m going to land on the aspect of having children with so much more autonomy given to them, like the scene where Barnes comes by and they’re just totally blase about how he’s trying to tell them to be careful, openly laughing about how worked up he seems after he leaves, just struck me as very “this is a series aimed at young readers so it’s going to have young kids as protagonists, it’s not meant to be taken super seriously as commentary on 15 year olds being allowed to run their own agencies”, but other times the consistency (and Barnes’ comments from the adaptation) of how characters who have faded talent are treated make me think that, once you get a bit outside Lucy’s perspective, that maybe there is something to the idea that there’s commentary on these kids having this tremendous burden placed on them. Right now, the concept of adult supervision seems to be set up as an obstacle to be overcome, that Lockwood & Co. are freedom because they refuse to work with adults, but how much of that is because of course they would think that?  Lucy’s whole backstory is that she never had parents who took care of her or were involved in her life, just punished her and used her for her talent, so of course she’d view them that way. Anyway, I’m looking forward to getting further in so that I’m not just half-baking my thoughts on the themes and might actually have stronger views on things!  And as long as people avoid spoilers, I would love to hear commentary on what kind of themes to be watching for!

[mylifeincinema]

My Week(s) in Reviews: January 29, 2023

Reading The Count of Monte Cristo this month really left me little time to catch many movies, but I did get a few new ones in the past couple weeks.

The Whale (Darren Aronofsky, 2022)

I had some major issues with this one, especially the disgusting screenplay and Aronofsky’s direction in the latter half of the film.

Brendan Fraser, though... Wow!! He takes this character and ignores all of the ugliness to bring an empathy to a man who’s all but given up entirely. There’s a sincerity to the way Fraser plays up the character’s flaws that never makes it seem like judgement is being passed or fun is being made (that’s left for the Aronofsky to do, for some reason), and how he blends those flaws with the character’s heart makes for some moments of overwhelming emotional richness in a film otherwise devoid of it. Fraser’s co-star Hong Chau and Sadie Sink are pretty damn fantastic, too. It’s a shame the film they’re in is so judgmental and ugly. - 5.5/10

The Woman King (Gina Prince-Bythewood, 2022)

Not very good... at all. No, Prince-Bythewood didn’t even deserve Oscar consideration, never mind one of the five spots, and hell no Viola Davis didn’t deserve a nomination alongside powerhouse performances like Cate Blanchett and Michelle Yeoh’s. If anyone deserved awards attention, it was Lashana Lynch, who stole every second of screen-time she had. And even then, the film surrounding her is so painfully formulaic and dull that it made her great performance less memorable by association. - 4/10

A Man Called Otto (Marc Forster, 2022)

I LOVED Fredrik Backman’s book. That being said, while the film stays mostly true to the heart of the book, some of the bigger emotional moments lost some of their heft in the adaptation, as did the excision/changing of some of the material in the flashbacks. Thankfully, the cast - especially Tom Hanks, who while not quite as curmudgeonly as Ove in the book, was really damn good - and Forster’s ability to maintain the balance of humor and emotion throughout made this book fan happy with the final product. - 7.5/10

All Quiet on the Western Front (Edward Berger, 2022)

It’s been sitting in my Netflix queue since like a month before it even dropped, and for some reason it just kept slipping through the cracks. After its impressive showing in the Oscar nominations last Tuesday, I figured it was time I gave it a go. Damn. Let’s just say I’m glad I did so before I locked and posted my Best Directors and My Top 10 Films of 2022 lists.

This is one bleak, filthy, visceral, and brutal anti-war film. It’s focus on the people fighting makes even the bigger set-pieces feel intimate, yet no less exhausting. The direction and camera work is just stunning, patient and unforgiving and technically impressive. The makeup is so effectively grimy it had me wiping mud out of my eyes sitting warm and comfortable on my couch. And the performances were chock-full of a hope-tinged desperation that made each and every inevitable death all the more soul-shattering. - 9/10

Enjoy!

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.

[renewedmotionforjudgment]

Like you I am so tired of cdramas with children as leads lmao like we get 300-400 cdramas every year since 2019-2020 and 90% are absolute trash (no wonder with the way they do productions, no one cares about the writing or the story) and then even in that measly 10% and sometimes it's much less tou have to wade through heaps of CEOs and gods and generals that look like children, is it so difficult to cast men who look like men, in the majority of cases for the women they're quite young in age but almost all the men are these accomplished capable very frequently supernatural very old beings I need to see some dudes over 30 I'm begging. Cdramas are frequently butchered by censorship but damn if they don't butcher themselves first most of the time, the day they start caring about the quality of writing and storytelling they provide and realize that good shows equal profit is the day cdramas take over the world. I don't understand how the country that gave us something as fantastic and smart as ming lan keeps churning out utter garbage the rest of the time, it's not even a matter of preferences, most of these shows you are legitimately incoherent messes that make no sense, you can't even comprehend the motivations and actions of the main characters. It also sucks bc they have such great novels they don't have to modify much just adapt the entire thing and change the little stuff that doesn't translate well from book to screen and they can't even do that, I have never seen a single book fandom enjoy its adaptation, it seems they adapt these books just to put even less effort into the writing than humanely possible... It pisses me off bc they have my favorite tropes and settings, I'm such a sucker for historical period shows/ smart female leads/ rich fantasy worlds/epic angsty love stories with life or death stakes and the good stuff and when they do them well they're great but they so rarely do so when they have literal blueprints to show them the way.

I swear to god China’s desire/goal of creating an idol industry to rival South Korea after the Hallyu ban singlehanded destroyed cdramas. Well, that and censorship.

And it’s not even that everyone is young and looks like children. I’m old enough to remember a time when most of the main cast went to theater school.

[stevensavage]

Dungeons and Marios: Honor Among Brothers

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I consider the films Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and the Super Mario Brothers movie to be successes as good films. I found them both enjoyable, but also find that both of them work because the people behind them made similar choices.  There’s a lot of lessons there, and you know me, I’m definitely going to write it down. 

Let me pause to note I do not consider them to be of equal quality.  The Dungeons and Dragons movie is fun, emotionally resonant, and both grand yet very human.  The Super Mario Brothers film is a fun romp with some clever choices, but not as deep.  But the lessons - even where they both don’t succeed - are illustrative.

So how did two different films do same things, let’s take a look.  There are of course spoilers here, so here there be dragons (or Koopas).

Be Fun and Entertaining

Both movies are actually fun.  There’s action, there’s jokes, there’s actors and actresses giving it their all.  I had a good time at both. Super Mario Brothers was so snappy and tight I didn’t even take a break.

Fun can be forgotten, especially when you already have other things on your mind like adaption.  But you have to give people a reason to pay attention beyond “hey I adapted this.”  Be it Chris Pine being a charisma bomb or a brain-twisting Mario scene where the infamous Rainbow Road is realized, give people a reason to enjoy it.

You can also tell people enjoyed making them, both have a joy to them.  Which probably says a lot about why they work as well.

Don’t Run Away From What You Are

The Dungeons and Dragons film is just like the games - not the books.  A group of confused dumbasses get into trouble and save the day.  It feels like a gaming session, right down to bad luck and unwise choices.

The Super Mario Brothers movie is colorful, bright, and strange. There are moments it has homages to the games and gameplay, but outside of those it runs on a kind of game logic.  It feels like a game and doesn’t apologize at all.

This is what people came for.  I do not come wanting an explanation of Mordenkainen’s magic or how to use a Fire Flower.  I want to see hypercompetent stupidity and someone yelling “wahoo” he stomps on evil turtles.  And I got it.

Use It But Don’t Overexplain

Dungeons and Dragons brings decades of history, rules, rules changes, rules arguments, novels, adaptions, and more.  What do you do with that?  Well, it’s raw material but you tell a story first - ten minutes of rules are boring but the sorcerer Simon struggling to “attune” to a magical item is interesting because it’s about a person.

Meanwhile the Mario film inherits a disjointed series of games and events without an exact timeline or even consistency.  The film takes a pile of stuff and forges it into a setting but also doesn’t explain it much.  Power ups just exist - what matters is how you use them.  An industro-solarpunk kingdom of apes just exist - what matters is if you can make them allies.  Tell a story - besides people already bought into the premise of plumbers teleported to this cartoony realm anyway.

The stuff you adapt is fuel for an actual story.

Get A Cast That Works

Want a good adaption?  Get a cast that will embrace the roles and bring things to life so people feel and enjoy the film.  Even the best script is nothing without the right cast.

Dungeons and Dragons cast is stellar.  It’s like a movie filled with leads that just happens to center on Chris Pine’s bard, Edgin.  From the humor to the pathos, the cast brings you into the film.  A few characters might have been used better or given more depth, but everyone used what they got and then some.

Super Mario mostly does the same thing.  Jack Black owns his role as Bowser and brings pathos to the character (more later).  Anya Taylor-Joys Princess Peach is fantastic, badass, and charming enough she’s sort of the main character at times.  Charlie Day is terribly underused as Luigi, but clearly brought is A game.  I could compliment others, but you get the idea.  The film is inherently ridiculous but the cast is game, as it were.

Now Chris Pratt is the elephant in the room.  Regarding his problematic statements, I looked into them for this article, and it appears he’s not bigoted, but is not always thoughtful or good at reading a situation.  Regarding his acting, he can “phone it in” but can really shine when he sinks his teeth into a role.

That being said, his Mairo performance was extremely generic.  It was enough to move things along and make Mario human, but he didn’t add anything to the role.  Whether it’s his fault or the scriptwriters, I’m not sure.  I also noticed the animators did some amazing expression work with Bowser and Peach and wondered if they were more restrained with Mario.

Either way, lesson learned - get a cast that’s good and let them go.

Give Us Real Emotional Arcs

The Dungeons and Dragons movie brought tears to my eyes, once during That Scene at the end (if you saw it, you know), and once afterwards when I realized how I related to a character’s speech.  The movie has multiple emotional arcs that bring it to life, give characters reasons to do things, and help you connect.

This is not consistent among the cast or characters, and I blame the script.  It’s a perfectly fine script, but a few more scenes could have done wonders.  But what is there is good.

Believe it or not Super Mario Brothers does this too, multiple times.  In fact, there’s a scene where Mario and his original nemesis Donkey Kong find out they’re a lot alike.  When a cartoon plumber and a big monkey share parallel emotions, you’ve done something right.

However Super Mario Brothers also doesn’t dive into the emotional arcs as well as Dungeons and Dragons and is poorer for it.  There’s some unused potential, from Mario feeling defensive about Luigi to Princess Peach’s isolation as a lone human in her world.  There’s unexplored character motivations, such as Toad’s heroic drive that differentiates him from his fellows.  I feel there’s 5-10 minutes of cut footage that made it a better movie.

But the lessons stay the same.  In fact  . . .

Give Us Relatable Villains

Hugh Grant, playing con-man Forge  charms his way through the Dungeons and Dragons movie in a way only he could.  Daisy Head’s creepy sorceress Sofina is something out of a horror film, and you believe she’d like nothing more to murder the idiots surrounding her.  Both get scenes that aren’t just villainy but humanity - Forge finds a joy in adoptive fatherhood, and Sofina snaps over how annoying Forge is in a relatable way.

This is great, they’re enjoyable.  They get human moments - but only the acting covers the fact they’re otherwise paper-thin characters.  Both could have shown more depth with just a few tweaks or an extra scene or two.  The actors clearly work with what they have, but there could have been more.

Meanwhile let me commit blasphemy - Jack Black’s Bowser in Super Mario not only gets to be relatable, his character is better handled than the villains in Dungeons and Dragons.

Yes I went there.

Black’s Bowser is a terrifying warlord and a hopeless romantic.  Madly in love with Princess Peach, he hopes to impress her and marry her instead of conquering her kingdom (sort of).  Throw in Black’s performance with excellent animation, and Bowser becomes sympathetic, a kind of ridiculously Shakespearean character of extremes.  If anything, I felt there was more to explore.

Both films add villains with some understandable traits.  Super Mario does it better.  Forge and Sofina aren’t interesting enough on their own, but Black’s Bowser feels like he could carry an entire film.

Do A Film Not A Preview

As I’ve said before, I will compliment the Marvel movies on sheer competency. However, I’m also extremely tired that the interlinked nature of stories seems to “wash out” the films.  There’s that need to keep the mega-franchise going, and there’s a certain “safety” in choices that wears thin.  Make something that stands on its own – like these films!

Dungeons and Dragons and Super Mario Brothers are delightfully standalone.  They do their job, they deliver.  Sure you may care due to the games - in fact it’s the only reason to care about Super Mario Brothers.  But both stand on their own quite well and in a satisfying manner.

There’s just that thrill of being able to “close the book” and move on with each.  Both deserve sequels of some kind, but its nice to see them deliver and be done.  It helps the people making them focus, and it means each film is reliably complete.

In Conclusion

So there you have it.  Both of these adaptions based on games, both wildly different, really succeed due to the same choices.  Embrace what you do, don’t overexplain, get the right cast and real emotional arcs we feel.  That’s it.

It feels unnecessary to explain this, but maybe the fact I feel this says volumes about the poor media I’ve seen - and how I enjoyed these two pieces.  Let’s learn from them, and maybe apply these lessons to things beyond giant big budget movies.

Steven Savage

www.StevenSavage.com

www.InformoTron.com

[centaurianthropology]

A ‘NY by Night’ Introduction, for All My Poor Followers with a Morbid Curiosity

I’ve been watching Ny by Night since episode 1, and I have to say that I’m obsessed with how good this show is!  Every player is at the top of their game, the main cast is fantastic (and distractingly lovely across the board), and the characters are so fascinating.  I watched the first few seasons of LA by Night, and though I enjoyed it, I never really fell down the rabbit hole with it.  But this show has exactly the right ingredients to get me deeply engaged, and the core of that is the main cast of characters.

For those of my readers who may not yet be watching NY by Night, it’s a live-play series that airs every Friday.  It’s set in the Vampire the Masquerade RPG system, which has lore that’s a bit too deep to get into here, but the simplest explanation is that all the characters play vampires.  The standard ‘party’ is called a coterie, a group of vampires, usually recently turned, that have been thrown together by circumstance to try to survive the nights they now find themselves in.  There are 13 different clans, or types of vampire that one can play, each playing into various folkloric beliefs about vampires.

I’ll probably be writing up my thoughts about individual episodes, but for the curious amongst my followers who might be interested in getting into a really cool new live-play series, I’ve written this as an introduction to the world, the characters, and at least briefly to the story so far.  This means that the intro contains loose spoilers up to episode 4, so for those who want to go in completely blind, maybe just dive in.  If you would prefer a simple non-spoiler intro it’s this: this is a great introduction series to Vampire the Masquerade, has a fantastic core cast of characters, and is a delightful watch for horror fans, goths, and anyone who wants to dive into a live-play series that tends to be a little darker than D&D.    

The coterie is particularly young and inexperienced in this campaign, which is great for the new viewer who might not know what’s going on.  The oldest of them was turned about 4 years ago, and the youngest having been turned barely 6 months ago.  This means that a lot of concepts and world-building need to be explained to these baby vamps either by the limited knowledge of their oldest member, or by NPCs. This acts as a nice introduction for the characters and an audience who might not be familiar with the World of Darkness or Vampire the Masquerade.

Our newly-formed coterie find themselves in The Bronx, which is currently controlled by the Anarchs, one of three major political organizations of vampires in this world (there are other minor political factions, but they haven’t come up in the story yet).  The Anarchs are, as their name implies, vampires that believe in self-governance and a lack of large-scale hierarchy and structure.  They tend to me more accepting than the other vampire political organizations, but their weakness is their lack of organization, which makes them easy to pick off.  In New York, they are very much the political minority.  

Across the river in Manhattan are the Camarilla, the dominant political faction, defined by meticulous rules and hierarchies meant to keep their members safe and secret. Their strength  is their organization and their unity.  Their weakness is their rigidity and their inability to adapt to changing times.  

Finally, in the shadows, having been kicked out of New York about 50 years prior to this story, are the Sabbat.  They are an organization that believes vampires to be so beyond humanity that they don’t need organization or rules or secrecy.  They are the most in touch with and accepting of their inner monsters, and range from uncontrolled and disorganized murder machines to a highly organized medieval death cult, depending on which group of Sabbat are in play. In most games of VTM, they are the antagonists.

In a world filled with older, far more dangerous creatures of the night, with huge political machinations they barely understand at play all around them, our coterie of baby vampires are particularly vulnerable.  Hence, these 4 very unlikely allies are now working together.

In no particular order (because I could never choose who is my favorite amongst the four, as they’re all amazing), the coterie consists of:

Margot ‘Fuego’ Walker – the youngest of the coterie.  Fuego is the most closely tied member of the coterie to The Bronx, having been born and raised in the area, from a sprawling family tied in with the borough and their politics.  She served on the borough council before a vampire from the Camarilla turned her and planted her back in her own community as an attempt to undermine Anarch control in The Bronx.  Her sire’s name is Rafferty, and he, and by extension she, are Ventrue, a clan that play into the vampires-as-greedy-controlling-capitalists trope.  Fuego finds herself torn between her love for her home and her community and her desire for power and control brought on by becoming a vampire.  She seems to be trying to square this circle by vying for power in The Bronx, trying to control it in order to protect it. She is intelligent, seductive, a master manipulator, and tries to appear less dangerous than she really is.  She is played by Aabria Iyengar.

Serif – Serif is a little older than Fuego, but acts younger.  She has a plucky, spunky attitude and a love for graffiti art. She is a well-known local tagger to the Bronx, where she as been living for at least a while.  She is not originally from the Bronx, and her background is shadowed in some mystery.  Her sire is someone named Argus, and they are Ravnos, an uncommon clan of nomads and artists. They play into the vampires-as-illusionists trope, and she can cast minor illusions and vanish into shadows. We recently found out that her mother is a ghoul, a human who is addicted to the blood of a particular vampire and acts as a servant to that vampire.  It seems likely that Serif’s sire is also the vampire that controls her mother.  Beneath her good humor, smiles, and easy-going demeanor, there is a lot of anger and resentment in Serif that I’m really excited to see play out.  She clearly wants a group to belong with, and she was the first to really embrace their coterie.  She is played by Mayanna Berrin.

Reyes ‘Rey’ Malcolm – Rey is about the same age as Serif as far as turning goes, but is physically the oldest of the group, being a ‘jogging in the morning’ 50.  He was originally from the Bronx, but moved to Manhattan to make his fortune.  It’s unclear what business he was in, but he was successful enough to have a penthouse. He also, at some point, got into money laundering, and was apparently well-versed in it.  Within the past year, Rey was ‘mugged’ in an alleyway, and crawled back to his penthouse to find himself changing.  He and his unknown sire are Gangrel, usually the ‘outlander’ vampires who are most in touch with nature and their animalistic nature.  It seems like his embrace was a touch of irony on behalf of his sire, and Rey has gone from a successful businessman to ending up back in the Bronx with his self-control shredded, massive anger issues, and a tendency to fly off the handle and try to confront every problem with fist and claw.  He’s a deeply conflicted character, wanting to be a gentleman (he regularly holds doors for ladies, stands when they enter the room, etc) and a smooth operator, but ruled by a beast that wants him to give into his basest nature.  He regularly makes poor choices, and is fairly easily manipulated.  Of all of the coterie, he is the least happy with what he has become, and has the hardest struggle with his monstrous nature. He is played by Joey Rassool.

Isaac Brooke – Isaac is the oldest of the coterie, and somewhat their de facto leader.  He was a member of a gang called the Midnighters, who are mostly street racers, though he was apparently more involved in a protection racket.  He got involved with people and things he didn’t understand, and instead of being killed, he was embraced about 4 years ago.  Since then he has made a meticulous study of his new existence, and has become the group’s best source of information about the world of vampires, about clans, and about the politics around them, even though his perspective and knowledge is fairly limited.  Interestingly, Isaac and his sire (a being called Vacla who is male or female or neither depending on their mood) are Tzimisce.  Like Serif and the Ravnos, Tzimisce are rare, but unlike Ravnos, who generally give off a neutral impression to other vampires, the Tzimisce tend to garner reactions that range from distrust to revulsion.  This has to do both with their close traditional ties to the Sabbat, for whom they acted as spiritual leaders, and also for their particular aptitude for the discipline of Vicissitude, or flesh-crafting.  They are vampires that lean hardest into body horror, and twist both themselves and those around them into whatever form suits them.  They are traditionally associated with torture and sadism.  Isaac, however, is both very young and seems to have been made outside the Sabbat, and with little understanding of his clan’s traditional place in that Sabbat or even of Vicissitude (or at least that’s what he claims).  He projects an eerie calm, a possessiveness that is common amongst Tzimisce, and a weird friendliness that seems at least part a push-back against the overwhelmingly negative reactions he gets when other vampires find out what he is.  Despite his clan and the very real danger it puts his coterie in, Isaac seems to care about them to some extent, and has gone out of his way to provide them with shelter and advice and as close to friendly help as he’s able to give. He’s played by Alexander Ward.

These four are still early in their story, having established domain (a very small area that they have been given to control by older and more powerful vampires in their area) of the neighborhood of Port Morris.  They face a run-down new home, an eye-sore of a high-rise building project meant to gentrify the area that Fuego especially wants to detonate, and a ‘monster’ that seems to bode very ill for the coterie and for all the vampires in New York.

Because if that monster is what they think it is, the Sabbat are back.  And both the Anarchs and the Camarilla are in huge trouble.

[therealvinelle]

You or The Muffin made a post on your dream cast(s), but I’m not really familiar with those references/actors (with the exception of Bowie and Jean Claude Van Damme and Clint Eastwood I think you mentioned). Is there anyone you would choose that’s a little more recent (80s-present)?

Our dream cast.

Our dream voice cast, for those interested.

Fun fact, both those posts were composed together, so yeah we share these opinions. We composed this one together as well.

Keep in mind that this list is... well it's for Twilight as I would make it. Which means that of course we’re casting a Didyme, nevermind that she’s been dead for thousands of years, but Denali who?

And once again we’re disrupting the time-space continuum and casting big name actors you’ve definitely heard about as they were ten, twenty, or thirty years ago.

Alright, so newer and shinier Twilight fancast, this time with a few alternatives because decisions are hard:

Alice: ... Audrey Hepburn.

I'm sorry. I tried. I tried to be modern, but I got to Alice and originally we thought Saoirse Ronan, appearances be damned because Ronan is a great actress, only to realize Ronan should be Renesmée.

So we're back to the dream cast. Audrey Hepburn was a tiny, pixie-like, yet ridiculously beautiful woman. Like Alice, her growth was stunted due to prolonged starvation during the War, so she's the perfect casting in a way no modern Western actress is going to be. She was also an amazing actress, just absolutely magnetic each time she graced the screen. She would be a fantastic Alice.

Aro: A young Tom Cruise.

Cruise is an absurdly beautiful man, and at 173 cm he is the right stature as I could never cast a tall actor for Aro. He's a very good actor, so I'm sure he'd be up for it. Also, he'd look great with chalky petrified vampire makeup on. He'd pull it off. I want to see this.

Optionally: Cate Blanchett

Yes, she's a woman. But that's what acting is all about, you play someone you're not. It's more a thing in theatre than in film that men can play women and women can play men, but I say fuck the rules, we're doing it theatre style. And Blanchett absolutely have that enigmatic, ethereal, otherworldly quality I'd want for Aro.

Bella: A young Sarah Michelle Gellar

Gellar is a petite beauty, she is spunky yet adorable, and very charming, the people of Forks and the Cullens would very believably gravitate towards her. Most importantly she has the acting chops to pull it off. She would portray an amazing Bella.

Caius: Daniel Craig

The man is the right age, he's someone you don't mess with. Craig has perhaps a touch too charismatic, but he's good enough that I'm hopeful he could tune it down.

Carlisle: A young Leonardo DiCaprio

DiCaprio is ridiculously attractive and has a bad case of The Babyface™. Watching him try to convince people that he’s 30 years old and has adult kids would be absolutely hilarious, and very faithful to the books. He’s a talented actor, too, very versatile.

Optionally: David Tennant

Tennant doesn't look the part, he is handsome but handsome in that particular way when flawed features come together handsomely. He does however have the perfect charm, gravitas, and energy for the character, so I think he could make a great Carlisle. 

This is where the magic of movie adaptions come in - you’re not going to be able to translate directly from text to screen, that’s impossible. If you embrace that and make some bold choices, you stand to make a truly spectacular adaption. One of the reasons why the Twilight films failed is that they were too faithful to the books while failing to understand the spirit of them, whereas the TV miniseries adaption of His Dark Materials switched a lot of things up and is absolutely amazing for it.

Demetri: Robert Downey Jr.

Ridiculously charismatic and talented actors cast in bit parts and making them shine is a passion of mine.

Didyme: Cate Blanchett

Look, Blanchett had to be in this somehow, and we could think of no one more appropriate. She has too much enigma for Esme, is too womanly for Alice, and once the idea for Didyme was had it was hard to weasel out of. 

Cate Blanchett would be convincing as Aro's sister, as a woman who haunts her lover and brother even thousands of years after her passing, an enigmatic and divine woman who can never be forgotten.

Also she's my fancast for her brother, so this works out quite nicely. Why cast someone who merely looks like Aro’s actor when you can just cast the same actor.

Edward: A young Johnny Depp

Very few men are otherworldly beautiful. There are countless handsome men, yes, and many beautiful ones, but Depp has extreme and symmetrical features that come together beautifully. Robert Pattinson does too, for the record, so what makes me prefer Depp is the fact that he is an incredible actor. Pattinson is good, but Depp is the kind of talent who can power through even the worst scripts, give him nothing and he will give you the world. He’s on Al Pacino’s level, this man can salvage anything.

Emmett: Terry Crews

Terry Crews is a mountain of a man, he's massive. He'd nail Emmett's infectious cheer, too. He has a very symmetrical and attractive face that follows the golden ratio beautifully, so I could buy him being a vampire.

Esme: Anne Hathaway ten years ago. Ref one, ref two.

She’s out of this world beautiful and has the perfect Esme aesthetic. Hands down best Esme. The fact that she’s a very good actress helps.

Felix: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

He’s got the physique for the part and would be absolutely menacing.

James: Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt is a character actor who tragically got lost in the blockbuster scene. He’s good, he deserves cool parts. So yeah, Pitt as James. I think he’d be absolutely amazing for the part, it’d be the kind of performance where you can tell the actor was enjoying every second on set.

Jane and Alec: Child Dakota Fanning

Fanning was a good choice for Jane, it's just that she was slightly too old when she was cast (and they made her look even older!) and the screenwriters had written a different character than the one in the books (and not for the better - I’m all for changing things in an adaption! But, well, she was Marvel levels of bad villain). And as Alec is a bit part and supposed to be nearly identical to her, I’d just have Fanning play him as well.

Jasper: Clint Eastwood, every time.

Optionally: feels like blasphemy to even have an “optionally”, but here we are. If you somehow haven’t heard of the guy, then… er. No, sorry, I’ve got nothing. Know that I tried, though.

Marcus: Tom Holland

The man has such babyface, which fits since Marcus is 19.

Just Tom Holland, sitting around, looking young and depressed.

Renata: A young Natalie Portman

Yes, yes, Renata is a bit part, I know that, but this is my Twilight we're casting for so I do what I want.

Portman fits the physical description for Renata, and I find that description to be relevant to her character. She's a teeny tiny woman charged with protecting the most important man in the world, and gifted with intouchability. Portman looks is beautiful enough to fit the bill for a Twilight vampire, and tiny enough to stress the absurdity of this 5′0″ woman being anybody’s bodyguard, nevermind Aro’s.

Renesmée: Child Saoirse Ronan (Though Adult Ronan works too, she’s my cast for the hybrid gremlin period.)

She was an extraordinarily talented child actress, and she’s beautiful while odd-looking. I could absolutely believe I was looking at an otherworldly hybrid when looking at her.

Mostly I think Renesmée is going to be a very hard part for anybody, as the given actor will be portraying one of the most ridiculed characters in recent pop culture. It’ll take major talent to get the audience to care about Renesmée, but I think Ronan, if anybody, could do it.

Rosalie: Margot Robbie ten years ago

She’s out of this world beautiful, and more importantly she’s an incredible actress. She would be incredible for the part.

[tanadrin]

Dev Patel and the Green Knight

I finally got around to seeing The Green Knight. Overall, I enjoyed it--David Lowery does a good job capturing the essential weirdness of the tale, which is very much about taking a mundane circumstance (a Christmas feast) and suddenly catapulting the reader into a mythic otherworld through the intrusion of the alien and monstrous, and the fantastical costumes, dramatic lighting, and dissonant score all contribute very well to a sense of otherness that permeates the original story.

But I find it interesting--and, I'll admit, a little frustrating--that no modern film adaptation of medieval literature is really capable of taking the story it's adapting on its own merits. This isn't an objection to modifying the source text, or taking it in new, non-literal direction. I can think of plenty of adaptations of work that play with the source material in interesting ways, and are better for it. Even very faithful adaptations like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings are inevitably going to alter the source based on the need to adapt it for the screen and the whims of the director. But when it comes to medieval classics, texts like Beowulf or Gawain and the Green Knight are always held at arm's length. An ironic layer is always interpolated into the original story, and even in modified form the story is never allowed to stand on its own.

Contrast, for instance, modern retellings of Arthurian legend; or Wagner's Nibelungenleid; or something like Neil Gaiman's book of Norse mythology. These are all adaptations of much older stories, all medieval; and the authors typically happy to let the stories operate on their own terms. In fact, that is often a selling point: dipping into these tales is a way of sampling an alien culture, one that is remote from us in time rather than space, and part of the sense of heightened drama is the understanding that these stories do not necessarily depict the world in the same way that modern realist prose does. They are fairy-stories, in the Tolkienian sense, and something not quite even like "high fantasy," which, although it is a genre which owes much to the mythic tradition, is usually *told* in the same manner as other realist fiction. And you could take these stories and re-cast them in a realist mold--that's definitely been done with Arthurian legend, either via anachronism or trying to place them in an era-appropriate historical context, and even that yields something quite like the original in tenor, even if the language used to relate the story is often very different.

Watching this movie, I was *strongly* reminded of Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf, in that this did not feel like an attempt to adapt Gawain and the Green Knight for the screen. It felt like an attempt to tell a story *about* Gawain and the Green Knight (the text), a story which does not stand on its own. You don't have to have read the text to understand the movie (although I think some directorial decisions would be a bit mystifying if you hadn't), but the movie definitely situates itself *as a response* to the text. Which is an odd choice! Actually, another good point of comparison is Spike Jonze's Adaptation. It started life as an adaptation of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, but Charlie Kaufman sort of gave up writing that halfway through and wrote a movie about the difficulty he was having writing *that* movie, and the result is something very weird (and very good) that is full of metafictional elements that depend on the existence of this other work, in a way that a straight retelling of The Orchid Thief for the screen obviously would not. And while The Green Knight isn't that extreme, it is definitely playing on the structure of the medieval poem, and replying to it.

The core of the movie (as I understood it) is a tension between young Gawain's aspiration to knightliness, his ambition which is born at least in part from his mother's encouragement, and his own failure to live up to the heroic ideal of greatness. Not chivalric--this is a movie in which the ethos of chivalry makes not even the briefest of appearance, which is weird given that it's nominally an Arthurian romance, and that the chivalric ethos is extremely important to the original text. Instead we have a generic greatness being described, one which is associated with renown, with taking part in mythic events, and with achieving high rank and honor. In the service of seeing her son obtain all this, Gawain's mother seems to cast some kind of spell, whereupon the titular Green Knight appears at Arthur's Christmas-feast; and as in the poem, a game of beheadings is proffered. Gawain accepts the challenge, beheads the knight, and the knight rides away, promising he'll meet Gawain a year and a day hence at the Green Chapel. So far so straightforward. When Gawain sets off a year later to meet the knight, his mother gives him an enchanted belt to keep him safe from harm. Gawain goes on to have a couple of side-of-the-road adventures and mishaps, the kind of thing that's par for the course when you're telling an Arthurian romance, until he arrives at the house of a mysterious benefactor, just about a day away from the Chapel, who grants him hospitality until the day of his challenge.

Now, in the original story, this is where Gawain gets the magic belt, and it's hugely important: Gawain and his host promise to exchange anything they might receive at the end of each day, when the host has been out hunting all day and Gawain has been in the house recuperating from his travels. During this time, the host's wife repeatedly tries to seduce Gawain; and Gawain is trapped between the imperative not to sleep with his host's wife (a major violation of the rules of good chivalric conduct!) and the imperative not to offend the woman (also a violation of those rules). He succeeds, for the most part; he is forced at one point to give his host a kiss at the end of the day, since the wife kissed him; this is shown as him holding nothing back and acting in good faith on the vow he made to his host. When Gawain finally rebuffs the wife for good, she insists that, even if he won't sleep with her, he should at least take a magic belt she has woven that will keep him from harm. He does; but he does *not* give this to his host. When he finally goes to the Green Chapel, the Knight returns the original blow as promised--but only nicks Gawain lightly. He reveals himself to be none other than the host who was sheltering him; the nick was his reprimand for withholding that final gift, but because of his good conduct he is otherwise left unharmed. The whole thing was a test of sorts, one which Gawain passed. Despite flinching at first from the blow, and keeping the belt secret, he shows himself ultimately to be a man of good (albeit not perfect) conduct, and *that* is why he wins honor from the whole affair.

The movie takes this basic narrative and alters it in key places, completely changing the valence of the whole thing. First, Gawain gets the belt at the beginning of his quest, as mentioned; he loses it on the way, but when he reaches the castle, the wife of his host (who succeeds in seducing him with a handjob) presents it to him as if she had woven it herself. He does not actually engage in the game of exchanged with his host, who is *also* not the Green Knight. And we're treated to a monologue about the color green from the wife that feels beat for beat like it's been ripped off from someone's undergraduate essay about Gawain and the Green Knight, which is a little weird even in the context of the rest of the movie. Finally when Gawain reaches the chapel, the knight goes to return the blow--and Gawain completely chickens out and flees. We are then treated to an extended sequence of Gawain returning home; being feted as a hero; earning his knighthood (presumably by lying about what happened); succeeding Arthur as king; him abandoning his low-class beau once she bears him a son, and marrying a princess; going to war; his son dying in a war; and finally, as an old man, being trapped in his throne room as a besieging army breaks its way inside. Just before they do, he removes the magic belt from around his waist, his head fall off, and bam--we're shown this has been an Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge thing this whole time, and the Green Knight has not yet landed his blow.

Gawain finally takes off the belt, throws it aside, and tells the knight to go ahead--and the knight bends down and congratulates him. In context, the reading seems to be this: the belt is a talisman of Gawain's mother's influence, of external expectations for what kind of man he is. The Knight is Arthur or perhaps an agent of his, and the test in *this* case is whether Gawain can be his own person. All the events leading up to this point are perhaps a part of the original magic Gawain's mother cast, an effort to Lilith Weatherwax her kid to greatness by putting him into an epic story. Implicitly, then, the Gawain and the Green Knight we all know is the false version of the tale, the tale as Gawain's mother would have it told.

This is all very clever. But I'm afraid it's so clever it falls apart in the end. Because the structure of the original story that this depends on is dependent in turn on taking the whole notion of chivalric virtue seriously, which this movie plainly does not. Gawain is shown as irreverent and lustful and a bit of a party animal--lovable and good hearted fundamentally, but definitely not an Arthurian hero. That's fine, but that's a very modern sort of character, one that feels out of place in a movie that is trying very hard also to be tonally unmodern, firmly embedded in a mythic otherwhen of Arthurian legend. Moments of slice-of-life mundaneness, while charming, strain mightily against the epic tone the movie tries to take in other places, and strange events like a ghost seeking her lost head or immense giants striding the landscape. We are jostled: are we in the land of myth? Or are we in historical Britain? We cannot be in both!

And this is a movie that was definitely made by people who had read the original text; not just the original text, but also a great deal of criticism *about* the original text. The movie namechecks the theme of fivefold symmetry that's incredibly important to the structure of the poem; there's the aforementioned undergrad essay about colors about 3/4th of the way through; and there's the fact that the structure of the original plot (down to Morgan LeFay in disguise as an old woman in the host's castle) is present in altered form in every detail. But none of these details add up to much. There's a weird homoerotic kiss with the host that implies that in fact *he* wanted to sleep with Gawain, in addition to his wife; the ghost Gawain encounters early on tells him the Green Knight is in fact someone he knows (and therefore *can't* be the host; I think it's implied to be Arthur, like I said, but this is never quite confirmed), and while all these things *about* the original poem are shown, none of them ever get integrated thematically into the plot.

I think as a result, whatever Lowery was going for, the whole movie kind of falls apart in the end. And that's a pity, because somewhere in there is just a really weird, visually striking, really gripping, embellished-and-polished-for-modern-sensibilities-but-also-thematically-true-to-the-source retelling of Gawain and the Green Knight. And that would have been a much better movie! What are we to make of this, a movie that purports to be telling a story-behind-the-story, but one that leaves no room or context for the original? After all, Gawain in the end does *not* flee, does not return home a coward and a liar; presumably, he earns his honor, and can be honest about what happened. But if he is honest, none of the rest of what we have been shown makes a lick of sense, or has any point.

One feels a bit as if modern directors, when confronted with medieval texts being a bit weird, a bit alien in their worldview, instead of realizing that's actually something people like some of from time to time, feel like they have to construct an artificial bridge between the Middle Ages and the present day. But because it is invariably metafictional and self-referential, as if to say "don't worry, we know nobody REALLY wants to watch a bunch of boring medieval shit played straight," it comes off as cringing and ashamed of its source material. This isn't a plea for historicity! Gawain and the Green Knight is not history. But one does occasionally want to see an adaptation of one's favorite works without directors being ashamed of the text they are adapting! And since most people will not have read the original, I am rather confused about what the director intends for the audience to get out of all these references that are dependent on it, but don't stand on their own merits within the narrative of the movie itself.

The acting was good, the set design and costumes were terrific, I loved the slow and measured pacing and the weird score, and the design of the Knight himself, and the landscapes and almost everything else about the movie. So I don't think it's a waste of time, especially if you have read and enjoyed Gawain and the Green Knight, in the original or in translation. But it's definitely a pity to see a movie that was, well, *almost* great, but ended up merely OK.

[elite4steffi]

Watching Every Movie Adaptation of Cinderella

6. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella (1997)

As far as I’m concerned, this is THE definitive Rodgers and Hammerstein Cinderella. Where do I begin? I love how it uses “The Sweetest Sounds” to introduce Cinderella and the Prince- it’s a great way to show how similar they are. The costumes are amazing, very colorful and whimsical, yet somehow they feel natural against the equally fantastical sets. The special effects in this movie are bad. I love them, but they’re very bad.

This movie should serve as a blueprint for excellent colorblind casting. Not coincidentally, it also has the best overall acting since the original Disney’s Cinderella in 1950. (Though it should be noted that the tone of the movie is campy and theatrical, which I personally enjoy). Brandy is the absolute picture of beauty and kindness. Bernadette Peters is by far my favorite stepmother. Unfortunately, as any fan of Bernadette Peters knows, she literally never ages so she looks approximately the same age as her daughters. The addition of “Falling in Love With Love” is a great way to show off her voice and gives the audience a better understanding of the stepfamily’s characters. Paolo Montalban is a charming and likable prince, with a great singing voice! Whitney Houston is definitely my favorite Fairy Godmother so far, with her powerful voice and sparkly hair. The ensemble definitely features better dancers than the main cast.

Cinderella’s ball dress is a little underwhelming, but does include an excellent tiara. And now, to talk about the real gems of this movie: the ball and the trying on of the glass slipper. The choice to use only shades of blue and purple for the ball gowns is absolutely brilliant. The result is enchanting and gives the perfect feeling of fairy tale romance. (I actually rewound “Ten Minutes Ago” and watched it twice- it’s just that good!) I’ve yet to see a better slipper-trying-on-montage than that of this film. The variation in socks and tights is a simple choice but creates an excellent effect.

Overall, this is an extremely strong contender for my favorite Cinderella movie. I could sing its praises all day. And while it’s not without flaw (I mentioned the special effects, and like many Cinderella adaptations it has some pacing issues in the second half), I would recommend this movie to any viewer, especially young children.

[ja-khajay]

Stuff I read (and liked) this year

As promised, here’s a list of the novels, comics, manga, etc... I read this year, focusing on the ones I enjoyed and would recommend to people. Under a cut, this is going to be a little long.

-------- Books --------

Favorite book of the year: Stranger in the Woods, by Michael Finkel

Non-fiction. Based on the interviews of the man himself by the author, it is about a man who felt so unfit for society he decided one day to leave it, and spent the next 28 years as a hidden hermit in forest in Maine. The book details how he survived there, how he was eventually found, and some of his reasons for doing so. It’s a great reflection on the nature of loneliness.

Indian creek, by Pete Fromm

...Yet another detailed tale of living alone in the woods. This time, the diary of a student who spent a winter in the mountains to help tend for salmon hatchlings, and how he spent the rest of his days hiking, hunting, meeting the locals. It’s a fun little book who, being set almost the whole world away from where I live, was a nice way to travel.

Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones

I don’t feel the need to explain this one since everyone and their mom has seen the movie adapted from it. The book, that I first read a decade ago before I actually watched the film, is a less romantized, more spirited telling of the same story. The writing is absolutely delightful and so is the world it paints, and it’s the first time in ages a book had me laughing out loud during my entire read.

-------- Comics (BD) --------

Favorite comic of the year: Monsieur Désire?, by Hubert and Virginie Augustin

A discreet young woman becomes a maid for a decadent, unbearable, byronesque young lord. Caked in the rigid and oppressive social hierarchy of the victorian era, you follow a mental and verbal joust between the two, as the lord tries his best to offend and corrupt his new unrelenting servant, to little success. The writing and especially the dialogues were stellar, drawing me into the tense atmosphere, watching this trainwreck of a character flamboyantly destroy himself. While there’s no precise content warnings that I can give, this is a mature and heavy story.

World of Edena, by Moebius

Anyone who’s followed this blog for over a month knows how much of a Moebius fan I am. Edena combines the vague, dreamlike, wordless storytelling from stuff like Arzach or The cat’s eyes with an actual plot. While I haven’t completly finished the story, the evolution of the main characters and how the story is told have been great to read through, and as always the art is beyond gorgeous. Unfortunately suffers from some good old sexism in the writing that even if minimal, tasted sour

Le roman de Renart, by Joan Sfar (book 1)

Sfar’s work always has a signature vibe of being dreamy and light without being light hearted, of being down to earth but drifting in the fantastical, and this one is no exception. It’s an adaption of a series of medieval folk tales I grew up with, who uses the same characters to tell an original story. If you’re familiar with icons like Renart as well as other mythological big boys like Merlin you’ll fit right in. There is something special in how the dialogues are written, who feel natural in a way that you’d overhear in a street corner and is very special to me.

The mercenary, by VIncente Segrelles

Another one I post about a lot on this blog. The mercenary is a king on the throne of fantasy cheese. The worldbuilding is interesting at times but the writing is a pretty pathetic display of glorious old time sword and sorcery sci-fantasy 10 years too late for it’s prime (warning for ye old sexism and orientalism that plagues the genre, cranked very high...) but you come and stay for the art. The entire thing is drawn in a series of hyper detailed oil paintings with an insane eye for technical detail, from the engineering of the weaponry, to the architecture and weather, to the anatomy of the fantasy creatures... Each panel stands out as it’s own painting which makes even flipping through it without reading the scenario a treat. Click here to see more of the art, in my Segrelles tag.

The ice maurauder, by Jacques Tardi

A short story about mad scientists entirely drawn like a 19th century engraving. In great Tardi tradition everyone is ugly and mean, it ends terribly, it’s both a hommage to the genre of late 19th cent. to early 1900s dramatic adventure novels and a critical eye on it, and it’s morbidly funny. Most people I saw online hated the way this was written but I’m not them and I really recommend this book. Die mad

-------- Manga --------

Favorite manga of the year: it’s a tie between the following two.

Cats of the Louvre, by Taiyo Matsumoto

Most wonderful comic I have read in ages. The story follows a bunch of semi-feral cats secretly living in the Louvre museum’s attic, and the small group of humans who share their life, walking through the museum as the night watch. When the cats are together, they are represented in a humanoid way, but still act like animals, and “become” cats again when a human is nearby. The plot is a sort of supernatural mystery centered around a kitten who walks around paintings. It’s a love letter to art, sincere and beautiful, with a unique art style and great characters.

Memoirs of amorous Gentlemen, by Moyoco Anno

A sex worker in early 20th century paris starts writing down a diary of the clients she meets, in a quest to cope with the troubles of her life. You follow her, her colleagues, and her bittersweet relationship with an abusive lover. I don’t have much words about this comic, but the art and writing both are amazing, it’s the perfect length and drew me in like little series had before. Obvious content warnings as this is an adult story that talks about sexuality, but also depicts both mental and physical abuse.

Hana, also by Taiyo Matsumoto 

A very short story, this was not made to be read as a comic originally, but served as storyboarding and visual development for a play, and the way it is written follows that. Hana is a slice of life story set in a fantasy world, of a young boy, his family, his village. Despite the setting being an original one, the character interactions are refreshingly... normal, and there is no huge plot to speak of, just a bit of the life of these characters. The art is beautiful, entirely black and white, with a scratchy style and an emphasis on contrast. Matsumoto is on a speedy road to becoming my favorite manga artist haha

Delicious in Dungeon, by Ryoko Kui

While not marked as my year’s favorite, I still consider this series among my favorite manga ever. The art and writing are amazing, and it’s both heartfelt, well concieved and plain hilarious. The story follows several parties of dungeon diving adventurers each on their little quests with a premise of our protagonists, on a panic rescue mission, surviving in the dungeon by cooking and eating the monsters they come across. From a DnD party turned cooking manual dinner of the week beginning, the plot creeps up on you and slowly thickens. I don’t want to spoil anything about the overarching story of this because it was a delight to discover for myself. While everything about DinD rules, I am especially fond of the design philosophy of the author, who puts great detail in the practicality and biology of what she draws, as well as the character writing. Everyone even side characters has so much charm and depth to them, the cast is so diverse and entertaining...! Each character is just a bit lame enough but endearing, and has their own little backstory that shows in the way they exist. It’s a delight

Chainsaw man, by Tatsuki Fujimoto

I went into CSM expecting a borderline campy hyperviolent dumb fun thing to read and was very surprised to find an uncomfortably well written story about a teenager being groomed. The hyperviolent dumb fun fights are here nonetheless and the series still qualifies as shonen for some reason, but the more mature character writing as well as some truly outlandish visuals make it something very special. If you can’t stand shonen, not sure you will like it, but if you don’t mind it, worth trying.

Witch hat atelier, by Kamome Shirahama

The oh so elegant fantasy seinen every cool kid started posting about this year, who I also succumbed to and fast. Witch hat is hard to explain, as most of it’s plot revolves around the rules of the world it’s set in, specifically the regulations around it’s magic and the social and historical reasons for them. It’s about growing up, learning, disability, making art. You follow a little girl taken in by a witch as an apprentice, her magical education, and learn little by little why her lovely teacher is so willing to break a lot of rules... While a bit too gentle and pretty for my taste at times, Witch hat has great worldbuilding and explores sensitive themes I rarely see in manga, much less in fantasy. And Berserk wishes it had art this good

[mattzerella-sticks]

How I’d Fix Titans on HBO Max

So this is just a little post to release some pent-up steam about the Titans show because this is the third season, and this is the third time I’ve let myself be bamboozled into thinking I’d enjoy the major storyline. And I’ve got a lot of thoughts since the first season about things I’d’ve done differently if I were given creative control of the show.

DISCLAIMER: I’ll only be plotting out the season story beats, as this is what I believe is the worst crime of the show. I think the casting is fine, even if a few wouldn’t be my first choice (*cough* Iain Glen as Bruce Wayne *cough*). My only note for set design is BETTER LIGHTING. I’m not the most well-versed in cinematography; I do think they’ve improved over the seasons, but pinpointing all the little details will take too much time and that’s not what this is focused on.

Starting with SEASON 1:

Trigon should not have been our s1 big bad. The audience for Titans will mostly be made up of people who probably were introduced to comics and these characters from shows like Justice League and Teen Titans, the latter of which already handled the Trigon storyline very well with most of the heroes Titans decided to use. Besides that, the SFX for Trigon alone would - despite the massive budget HBO Max allowed for projects like this - ultimately disappoint (and we were... at least I was). It’s not like animation or comics where the depiction of the battle between a massive demon and a team of superheroes would be better resolved. Exploring Raven’s powers and origins, however, was the right choice for season 1 since - in George Perez’s Titans - Raven was the one who assembled them together. Yes, this was to battle Trigon in the end... but it doesn’t have to be that way.

The season 1 threat should have been Sebastian Blood and his cult. It seemed like they were the B-villains, but the followers of Trigon felt kind of generic and, like Trigon, disappointing. There’d be a lot more freedom to handle this because Brother Blood wasn’t as well explored in Titans media, the only incarnation being from the Teen Titans cartoon but stripped of his cult-and-demon origins. Infusing these elements back into the character would make it original and, if done correctly, timely. Like, a good representation of who Sebastian Blood could have been is a portrayal similar to James Wolk as Joe Keene, Jr. on Watchmen the series; someone who is viewed favorably with good press but ultimately runs a secret cabal with many followers a goal of world domination under the banner of ‘The Four-Eyed Demon’. And to do this, they need the Demon’s daughter.

Which brings us to Rachel. Having her be pursued still works as a great set-up, however instead of followers of Trigon they’re followers of Sebastian Blood. She needs help. Especially if we keep the scene of her foster mother being murdered. Instead of Dick, though, she runs into Starfire.

And our entry point into Starfire would be different, too. We find her on an alien spaceship, in its jail, but then she sees visions as the ship passes over Earth and invigorated by the machine’s malfunctioning (due to Raven’s spirit, as we’d find out), Starfire manages to escape and finds her way to Rachel. Saving Rachel ( “I believe we can help each other”). In this way the Starfire and Raven relationship replacing the Dick and Raven relationship as the crux of season 1.

I’d still include Dick, albeit in a different capacity and with a lot changed. When he finds Rachel and Starfire, it’s because he was investigating activity in the area (he’d been tracking the cult for a while). He’s working undercover but also as the Robin persona. He still believes in the mission while, at this point in the story, Batman has given up and retired. This is because Jason Todd had died a year ago, and because of this and thinking it’s his fault - Bruce gave up and abandoned Gotham for parts unknown to deal with his grief. Dick helps Starfire and Rachel, and together the trio leave for elsewhere - Dick aware of how the cult needs Rachel and haunted that he couldn’t look after Jason, he sees how he can protect Rachel and clings to tha, Rachel curious about why a cult would want her and what her origins are, and Starfire, free of her imprisonment and indebted to Rachel but also homesick as she didn’t leave of her own choice. Over the course of the series they’d grow closer as a family, especially when Gar joins them (I would keep the Doom Patrol episode because that episode served its purpose well, of being a backdoor pilot - maybe change a few things but those details are so minute it’s not worth mentioning).

A big change - no Hawk and Dove. I think Minka Kelly and Alan Ritchson were great choices and acted well with what was given to them, plus I enjoyed Hank’s backstory and think, if they wanted to, a Hawk and Dove miniseries would have been fantastic to explore that better (and allow for a better paced introduction between Dawn and Hank). That being said, my main reason for cutting out Hawk & Dove is two-fold. First, how they killed Dawn’s mom and Don Hall. That was so dirty and so badly conceived. Second, the weird love triangle between Dick, Dawn, and Hank. It just made no sense. 

Instead of Hawk and Dove, I think a better choice to introduce into live action would be Karen Beecher and Mal Duncan - Bumblebee and Herald. Especially after reading their issue of ‘Secret History of the DC Universe’. Have Mal want to be a hero, then meeting Karen, and not wanting him to go it alone she joins him with her tech. They are approached to join the Titans and do, only being superheroes begins to put a stressor on their relationship. And one night Karen and Dick, a little drunk, a little sad from events that will be explained in s2 hook up. Once this is found out Karen and Herald leave and this marks the end of the Titans. This will also tie into Dick’s feelings about how he felt he keeps losing his family, and the Titans breaking up was viewed as his fault, so instead of being against personal relationships he is the one trying to make this new team - Starfire, Raven, and Beast Boy - his third chance). Instead of Dawn being knocked into a coma, I say it should be Mal (because then we can get Karen trying to save him and giving him robotic vocal chords which will allow him to do more, like sonic screams or whatever a la Vox, his post-Infinite Crisis identity). This will also further shine a light on their issues, because while Mal gave up heroics altogether, Karen would suit up time to time and Mal feels like Karen used his coma as an opportunity to give him powers because she wants him to be someone he’s not.

Their adaptation of the Nuclear Family was iconic™ so that’d definitely stay in (especially because Nuclear Family - one of the values they in the group believe in lol). The convent episode, too, although instead of flashbacks to Dick’s past we should have Starfire and how she grew up being the prisoner of warlords and experimented on; which is why she’s uneasy leaving Rachel with the sisters and then explodes when she sees Rachel strapped down because it triggers her. We will also have some of these hallucinations in the asylum scene. The episode with Dick and Jason would be replaced by the aliens who captured Kory coming back to take her to their planet, the team coming together to rescue her.

The biggest diversion, I think, would be after the asylum episode. The group escapes, except there’s no Arella, and it’s believed that Rachel sacrificed herself to tear the organization down and without her the group goes their separate ways. Dick goes to Donna Troy because he wants to know why, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t keep anyone around. Starfire is stuck on Earth and unsure about what to do next after finding out, in the replaced Jason Todd episode, that her sister sold her to the enemy. Gar doesn’t believe Rachel is dead. The three of them (plus Karen and Mal) receive visions from Rachel and realize that she’s still in danger and go to help.

Rachel is being held by the Cult of Blood and are working on setting up the ritual. By the time the group arrives to where she is, she is a happy member, and she tells them that they should join and be saved. They’re confused by the dreams they have - it’s Raven’s soul self fighting against her chains.

This season would culminate with the Cult of Blood capturing the group after Dick, not knowing when to leave well enough alone, rushes in and gets ‘baptized’ into the Cult and is brainwashed like Raven (although not like in that dumb dream episode that was ridiculous). He, like the others, are in attendance for the wedding between Sebastian Blood and Raven (which would be creepy because he’s 32 she’s 14), but at the pleading of Starfire Dick is freed from his mind control and releases them and they fight to free Rachel. It’s too late, however, as the ritual is completed and the ‘kiss’ is Sebastian drinking Rachel’s blood. Doing this opens up a portal which sucks up Sebastian and his followers, and is only closed after Starfire breaks through to Rachel and she gets control and closes the portal herself. The group leaves, stronger than ever, and assured that being Titans means more than being a team.

We’d get after credits scenes of the cult learning of Sebastian’s demise and their next plans, saying that “Junior” will have to be prepared earlier tha expected. Then, the other after credits scene - because Raven’s portal caused disasters across the world (”Raven ‘cleansing’ the world for Trigon’s arrival) - is Superboy breaking free.

Also, goes without saying, RAVEN WOULD HAVE HAD A BETTER WIG!

SEASON 2:

Goes without saying that season 2 would explore themes from the 1st season. Dick Grayson defining himself by who he is surrounded by, a season long search for an identity that is his and not what’s given to him (by Batman) and settling into the role as a leader as Nightwing (also, by retiring Robin, he won’t let the past haunt him). Starfire settling on Earth, her choice, and making friendships and relationships that last and help her realize this is her home. Raven is struggling to control the darker aspects of her powers after them being awakened during the ritual while also allowing herself to be a teenage girl. Beast Boy trying to fit in with this group while also wanting to prove that he can do more than just ‘turn into a green tiger’. Karen and Mal’s relationship would definitely hit rough patches (especially when Mal leaves the team and Karen because he only stayed with the team because of Karen). Donna recovering from the trauma of the original incarnation of Teen Titans, which is brought to the forefront once we introduce Deathstroke as having returned.

The second season, however, would start out not with any of these characters but with the continuation of the second after credits scene that introduced Superboy. That was one of my biggest gripes with the second season, how DELAYED the introduction of Conner was. You don’t have that scene and then keep us waiting for five episodes. Second season we enter on Superboy from the JUMP. Do the entire ‘Conner’ episode but only changing the ending, where instead of him saving Jason (because remember, Jason’s ‘dead’ at this point). Instead of that, he and Krypto are stumbling around a non-descript city, lost, unsure of what to do with their power, until they see a broadcast of the Titans saving people and realize that’s where they should head. On the other side of this, Mercy - having failed in recapturing Superboy - hire Deathstroke to go and find him. He accepts, and begins on his trail. This will help tie the antagonists’ storylines together so it’s not as disjointed as it felt in season 2 (instead of competing for the narrative they share it).

Then, we have the Titans doing their thing - Robin, Bumblebee, Vox, and Wonder Girl back in their costumes while Gar, Raven, and Starfire are training and learning while also helping take down villains in the San Francisco base. There are memories there, sure, but the others are doing their best to make it look like it’s not bothering them, Donna especially. We can have Arthur Light break out and go on a warpath for the Titans, and this can be our lead-in to the backstory episode of how the Titans became the Titans (because ‘Aqualad’ was one of the worst episodes of anything I’ve ever seen, badly written, poorly edited, and so misplaced). We see Robin, Wonder Girl, Aqualad and Speedy - Mia Dearden - coming together to chase down Dr. Light after an alert came in to the League that went unanswered because the League was busy dealing with something else. While fighting him, they receive help from Mal (in his Guardian identity) and Karen, and together they decide being a team is great and it’s nice having peers instead of mentors working iwth, so they form the Titans.

While in the midst of the big climactic battle with Dr. Light, where he’s firing on innocent civilians, he hits Superboy and nothing happens and Superboy helps them defeat Dr. Light. As they welcome Conner and he explains why he’s there, he’s struck in the back by a kryptonite bullet and we see Deathstroke watching from above telling Mercy it’s done. “So you’ll be bringing the subject back?” “Actually... there’s some business here I’ll need to settle first.” We’ll have another scene where, in an apartment, a young girl with white hair is watching footage from when Superboy was shot and recognizes a blur on the rooftop. She tells her brother, who tells her to leave it alone and if they lay low maybe Deathstroke will leave without realizing they’re here. She tells him that, despite what he or their mom thinks, she’s going to take care of him once and for all. This is Rose and Jericho.

Superboy is in a coma, the team trying to save him as the bullet didn’t fully kill him. Donna is shaken because it reminds her of what happened in the past, the last blow that spelled the end for the first generation of Titans. We get some more flashbacks. Showing Dick and Karen getting closer while Mal sort of stews silently, Aqualad getting into fights with everyone because he’s been trying their patience a lot (kind of like the friend you only hang out with because your dad is friends with his dad), and awkwardness between Donna and Mia since we learn they were interested in each other but never acted on it (because Donna is a lesbian and her and Aqualad were compulsory heterosexuality PLUS they could only mention Roy Harper but not actually show him). Soon we find out that Donna is being called back to Themyscria to finish her training, and the team throws a goodbye party. This is where Mal and Karen have a fight and she gets a bit too drunk, so does Dick because Donna is his best friend and he’s going to miss her, and they both have been feeling stress, so they hook up. Also, Mia leaves to tell Donna that she’s in love with her at the airport, and asks if it’s okay if she comes with (”It is an island full of women after all. I’m sure... this, us... would be more accepted than here.”) Before Donna can say yes Mia is shot dead by Deathstroke before her eyes. This, coupled with Mal finding Dick and Karen in bed together, leads to the Titans’ disolvement. We’ll see Kory comforting her while Dick searches for who shot the bullet with Karen and Mal, fearing that Donna might be right - and angry when she is.

They save Conner and he joins the Titans just in time to help them face Deathstroke, but also have to contend with Rose who isn’t on Deathstroke’s side but also isn’t friendly with them. It’s only when Jericho comes to them and explains his and Rose’s backstory, of being Slade’s kids, do they understand and work out an agreement to help take down Deathstroke and his backers (who turn out to be Cadmus).

Meanwhile, with Deathstroke taking too long, Mercy approaches Conner with an offer to let them help him and that the Titans are only pretending to be his friend, meanwhile they only care about his powers; but in the end they’re kids and don’t know what they’re doing. When this fails to work, they kidnap him and Krypto, replacing him with a version of Conner who is obedient to them to work as an infiltrator. Mercy then approaches Deathstroke, showing him she has a guy on the inside, and tells him that she’ll help him take down the Titans but they’re doing this her way.

Eve, imprisoned by CADMUS, helps Conner and Krypto escape (by sacrificing herself or not by sacrificing herself, dealer’s choice), and they hurry to the final battle between Deathstroke & Cadmus vs. the Titans. Just when it looks like they have Deathstroke beat, ‘Superboy’ turns and starts attacking the others. Conner hasn’t arrived, and it looks like everyone is down for the count. The fake Superboy (Match) has Kory in his grips and is attacking her, only for Donna to recover and tackle him. She batters him, punches him, and as she’s about to strike him again he uses his laser vision to strike Donna through the heart (a la Graduation Day - a much better way to ‘kill Donna’ then by electricity). Superboy arrives too late to save her, but he does take the other Superboy away before he explodes (Mercy’s final play - it would’ve killed Deathstroke too). Conner is still alive, and he’s saved everyone. In the confusion, Deathstroke slipped away.

We wind down, Rose and Jericho promise to hunt Deathstroke down and make him pay for his crimes. This will at least explain why they aren’t in s3 (which sucks, because Rose was GOOD). Raven still promises to bring Donna to Themyscira and work on bringing her back. Conner isn’t blamed for Donna’s death and they reassure him that they’re his family and welcome him back. Dick has taken on the Nightwing mantle and accepts the responsibility of being a leader, and that while he might not have been mature enough in the past, he can’t let that define him - only he can define who he is). Kory wants to go with Raven, but understands that she needs to stay with the team and only wishes Rachel luck, hoping Donna can return from the dead. Mal rejoins the team, he and Karen promising to be better to each other. Gar’s feelings of uselessness will continue because, as Conner’s best friend, he should have known something was off.(I don’t see this plot point ever being fully resolved until maybe later on).

Deathstroke wouldn’t die because you don’t WASTE Deathstroke! Killing Deathstroke cuts off so much potential in terms of storylines. I mean, there goes the Judas Contract which, despite us already having a varied animated retellings, would be beloved if done live-action and right.

Also, sorry to my DickKory fans but season 2 would lay the groundwork for some DonnaKory endgame - although the main romantic struggle would be between Dick, Donna, and Kory, with Kory at the middle and Dick and Donna the best friends who fight over her.

SEASON 3:

If we are working within the parameters of this season, and want to tackle Red Hood, there is a possibility that I’ve been thinking over and will expand upon here.

As I’ve mentioned before, Jason is dead. Because of this, Batman has abandoned his crusade against crime in Gotham because he feels there is no point to his battle and can’t continue. He’s been gone for a long time, however, this is the season where I would introduce him. He comes to visit San Francisco and Dick a very changed man, smiling, brightly-colored clothes, very into new age mysticism (”This is Batman?”). We find out that, after Jason’s death, Bruce went out on a new mission, to find a way to be at peace over the things he can’t control, and so through this journey he’s discovered inner peace and how to live despite all he’s lost. And he’s come back to Dick to share this knowledge with him, as a way to make up for indoctrinating him with these bad habits and instead lead a healthier life (crimefighting being like a drug). This will put Dick in a crossroads, questioning if he’s doing this (this being heroics) because he’s trying to use it to heal or if he really is meant to be a hero. This will be the season where the driving question is - Why Do We Don the Masks?

At the end of the first episode, however, we do the scene where the crime bosses meet up and Red Hood introduces himself, saying that he’s going to be taking control of all the criminal enterprises in Gotham.

This catches Barbara’s attention, and so she contacts Dick to fly back to Gotham and help contain this. After her appointment as Commissioner, she’s made great strides in helping clean up Gotham - especially in the tough months that followed once Batman retired (”Joker’s been imprisoned in the Slab, and he’s been abnormally quiet”). They still come up against costumed criminals but the police are better prepared to fight them, especially with help from Barbara, who knows the strategies, and Lucius Fox, CEO of Wayne, who helps develop non-lethal tech for the police to use in the battles. What’s also been helping is a small group of crimefighters who have taken to the streets, picking up the slack after Batman’s disappearance. (Barbara, “But this Red Hood... he might be too much for them to handle. We don’t want another me, or worse... another Jason.”) Dick promises to help, with both Red Hood and this group of kids - especially because one of them has taken to calling himself Robin.

That’s right! I’d introduce Young Justice in s3 - composed of Robin (Tim Drake), Spoilers (Stephanie Brown), Hawk and Dove (Hank Hall and Don Hall). Tim saw what was happening to his city after Batman quit, and decided enough was enough and became a vigilante to honor him and Jason, taking up the Robin mantle. He met up with Stephanie Brown, daughter of criminal Cluemaster, and brother Hank and Don Hall, who were working as vigilantes targeting molestors (very in-line with how Titans showed them, they’d just be younger). They’ll end up in a situation where they’re in over their heads, only to be saved by Nightwing who tells them with no uncertainty that they need to shut their operation down or else they’ll end up hurt (because they’re untrained).

Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, Starfire isn’t handling Donna’s death nor Rachel’s absence well, and is being inundated with strange visions that is making her act out of character. What’s not helping is that Bruce Wayne has decided to stay in San Francisco with them while Dick is in Gotham. Conner and Gar are enjoying this relaxed, free-spirited Bruce (he’s like the fun uncle), but it drives Kory crazy. These visions are from her sister, and even though she hates her for selling her, after finding out she’s on Earth and trapped somewhere, she goes to rescue her with Gar and Conner at her sides. They resuce her and bring her back, and Blackfire ‘apologizes’, telling Starfire that it was either Kory or their planet - and as the eldest she made the tough choice so their people wouldn’t suffer anymore harm. Starfire accepts this and welcomes her back. Also happening in San Francisco, Karen and Mal are at a crossroads because of a new development - she’s pregnant. This has put a stop on her hero journey, and while she is excited about being a mother she also wants to be a hero and we see more of them trying to work through their problems. Gar is also using Bruce to indulge himself so he doesn’t have to think about being the ‘useless’ member of the team, using his powers like a party trick to feel like he’s useful, which worries Conner.

In Themyscira, Raven pours through their texts to see how she can resurrect Donna. While there, she befriends and is aided by a young girl, Cassie Sandsmark, who is staying on the island with her mom while doing work (archaeology work); together, they find a way to reach Donna in the afterlife through an ancient ritual most of the Amazons are wary of. This doesn’t stop them, and together they perform the ritual. Raven journeys into the afterlife while Cassie is there to wake Raven if things look rough; while in the afterlife she hears the voices of Sebastian Blood and the ‘dark’ side of her, but is reminded of who she’s searching for by a soft, familiar woman’s voice and makes it to Elysium. There Rachel finds Donna and Mia, together. Donna is wary about going back, because she is happy with Mia; but Mia and Rachel remind her that there’s happiness down on Earth and there’s a lot left to live for. Donna agrees to follow Raven back, but not before saying goodbye to Mia who tells Donna she will find love again, only she shouldn’t be afraid this time to say something about it. I’d also love to see a way to involve Dark Angel somehow, maybe as a dark force approaching to prevent Donna from returning to life?

Nightwing is working with Barbara to shut down Red Hood’s operations, but it’s not going too well. It’s starting to feel like Nightwing is being taunted now, too, because a lot of what Red Hood is doing feels personal, like he knows Nightwing behind the mask. Ultimately, when Red Hood catches Young Justice and gives them a good beating, Dick stops him and it’s revealed that Jason is under the helmet. We then find out how he was brought back to life when, just as Dick has Nightwing beat, someone intervenes and saves Jason - Thalia al Ghul. We get an episode dedicated to Jason’s backstory, where he wasn’t killed, only badly beaten to the point of death. However, it was assumed he died because of the explosion. Bruce couldn’t find the body, he assumed it had been obliterated. Really, Jason had wandered away and was found by strangers and admitted to a hospital with severe brain damage. One day someone came to collect him, Talia al Ghul. She brought him to her home and used the Lazarus Pits to revive him, then trained him in assasinry so he could do the one thing Bruce never could - save Gotham.

Dick, while recovering in the Manor with the kids from Young Justice, calls up Bruce and tells him that Jason is alive. This will lead to Kory finally confronting Bruce and yelling at him that he hasn’t ‘found peace’ and instead switched coping mechanisms. This inspires Bruce to return to Gotham, the Titans following him (save Karen and Mal). Donna and Rachel meet them there, and we get the reunions plus Young Justice meeting the Titans.

We get reports that the Joker has escaped the Slab, and we find out Jason has kidnapped him. As the team investigates across Gotham, Dick goes on his own to where he knows Jason has Joker. They fight, with Jason threatening to blow them all up because as long as the Joker is dead it doesn’t matter. “He deserves it. He deserves it for all hat he’s done. For what he did to me! Please... why can’t you let me do this?” Bruce arrives, at that point, to tell him why. Because it won’t change things. Jason yells at Bruce, then, and Bruce accepts it. We also hear from Bruce about why he didn’t kill Joker, though he was close. Bruce admits that he snuck into Arkham with the decision to kill the Joker, but stopped just outside his cell. He realized that it wouldn’t bring Jason back, just as it wouldn’t bring his parents back, and he didn’t want to disappoint Jason by becoming a killer. Jason and Bruce make up, though Joker still dies - Thalia kills him. “If you won’t ensure a safer world, my Darling, I’ll do it for you.” She then detonates the explosives to escape and the three barely escape with their lives.

You’d think they’d get some rest, then, huh? WRONG! Because while searching for Jason, Blackfire betrays Kory and reveals she sold Kory so she could secure her position as ruler of Tamaran. A warship then appears in the sky where Blackfire takes Kory, announcing that Gotham will be the first city to fall during the invasion.

The s3 finale would then be the Titans vs. aliens as they drive off the alient threat, with Donna, Jason, and Dick working together to free Starfire from her sister. We’ll get a final battle between Starfire and Blackfire where Starfire asserts her status as the stronger sister, and that while she wishes Blackfire wanted a relationship between them, she won’t cry over it anymore. Blackfire takes her fleet and leaves Earth after facing humilation, and the group returns to Wayne Manor to celebrate.

Bruce has decided that, not only will he return to Gotham, but Batman will be coming back. He won’t be alone, as he’ll have a team with him. Jason decides to stay in Gotham and work on his relationship with Bruce, although knowing he will have to go out and find Thalia at some point. Hopefully by then, Tim and Steph will be well-prepared to stand on their own as Robin and Spoiler - inducted into the Batfamily. Hank and Don choose to go with the Titans back to San Francisco, especially since they were very impressed with their teamwork and Gar, who was able to transform past a tiger into something else.

We won’t be involving the Scarecrow in this. Scarecrow’s involvement wasn’t about the Titans and more of DC trying to tie him in elsewhere since Fear State will be starting soon. Plus *spoilers* Bruce killing Joker was the worst decision for Titans to do. It only served to do away with Bruce Wayne so he wouldn’t be involved in the show anymore which they could have easily solved if he wasn’t introduced too early. Keeping the Titans in Gotham for the entire season feels incongruent to who the team is and what the team is about, so if they divided the storyline between Gotham and San Francisco it’d probably play easier and allow for the characters to grow in their own way instead of being chained to the one prevailing storyline that is Under the Red Hood. And when they come back to San Francisco the Titans realize the benefits of training the youth of heroics and commit to teaching Rachel, Gar, Conner, Hank, and Don - and they introduce Cassie who joins them after getting the go-ahead from her mom and Diana. While Karen might not be able to delve into heroics for awhile because of her baby, she can still help by teaching. This will then lead into the next season which would be Titans vs. H.I.V.E. Academy, reintroduction of Slade, and bringing Terra into the fold while also having Rose and Jericho return, too.

Season three would sort of test everyone, give them the option to walk away from being a hero or choose being a hero, and strengthens their resolve to continue, comforted by how this is their choice and it’s what they’re good at.

If anyone from Titans reads this and wants me for s4 feel free to contact me

[jesuisgourde]

gay/queer references in Peter’s journals

Again, I have probably missed stuff due to going through pretty quickly and also due to having stared at this document for so long, everything has kind of blurred together.

Sometime close to the day that Carlos & I watched 'Love And Death on Long Island' (and afterwards paraded through the tea rooms of Picadilly) we both filled in application forms and were tres excited to be invited to the same group 'interview' - twas more like an audition though. I got the part. Carlos never. This did not bring any animosity - we both know that success for either of us is magnified a million times if it is shared by us both.

from 'A Diamond Guitar' by Truman Capote "Except that they did not combine their bodies or think to do so, though such things were not unknown at the (Prison), they were as lovers. Of the seasons, spring is the most shattering: stalks thrusting through the earth's winter-stiffened crust, young leaves cracking out on old left-to-die branches, the falling asleep wind cruising through all the newborn green. And with Mr Schaeffer it was the same, a breaking up, a flexing of muscles that had hardened. It was late January. The friends were sitting on the steps of the sheep house, each with a cigarette in his hand. A moon thin and yellow as a piece of lemon rind curved above them, and under its light, threads of ground frost glistened like silver snail trails. Tico Feo had been drawn into himself - silent as a robber waiting in the shadows."

Then a meet with Bounds Green's African prince outside whitechapel tube, rugged lookies at I in military attire & to a ruptured Albion rooms tidied in hours and now lids drawn heated on the eyes. A young looking fella has a crush on me.

Jackie/Camillia/Marie/Kate/Chris/V. churchill Jackie/Evelina/Jasmine/Sachi/Dalston/Sussie Sandra/Carlene/FP/Jay/Dalston/Kraut

There sat a young black man, perhaps in his early or middle twenties. He looked for all the world like the archetypal rude boy. Clean, cheap reebok, nike, adidas variously rolled, laced & zipped about his lean, spreadeagled body that hung loosely about the waiting room chair. Gold & tattoos adorned his person, and a blank animal look was attached to his clear face. He sat before me in a row of four empty chairs, staring at polished floor or the mundane television. A balding white man minced in & all perceptions were suddenly proven to be false as they embraced and snuggled up to each other, giggling & whispering & touching each others noses.... very much in love, fingers crossed for the blood tests.

[Image: an article from Gay Times of an interview with Peter. For some reason, the portrait included alongside the article is of Carl wearing a grey and black t-shirt.] Name? Peter Doherty Age? 22 Where are you? I'm on the motorway just north of Southampton. What kind of day are you having? (Vaguely) Erm... quite misty. Something's waiting around the corner, but there are no corners on the motorway, so we'll just have to wait and see what lies ahead. Maybe something will happen tonight.... What's this we hear about you once being a rent boy? Well, when times are hard, duty calls. How long ago was it? When I was 19, about three years ago. How do we know this isn't just a Shaun Ryder-type lie? 'Cause if it was, it would make me a complete scumbag and I'm not, and I'm not interested in that kind of pantomime. It wasn't a very happy time. I didn't really enjoy it. Why did you give it up? (grimly) Well, certain people disappeared... and anyway, ultimately I found myself no longer in such a vulnerable position anymore. Dawn broke, and I realised that it was a beautiful world after all. Have you done any other dodgy jobs? All of us in the band have tried to deal, but it's not good if you like the drugs too much. You just end up using them yourself! I once was a gravedigger. I used to do it with my mate in Willesden Green cemetery. We didn't actually do the digging, a machine did that, but we used to have to fill them in. It was pretty grim work. So are you gay then? Love is love, wherever it comes from. I'm not anything, really. I am a very sexual person but... I dunno, I believe in liberty... The Marquis de Sade has a lot to answer for... Do you get a lot of gay fans? Yeah - well, there's one guy in particular. He's very shy and he follows us around. He brings in letters and cards and stuff, but he's very quiet. I think John (the bassist) is the main pulling power in the band. Are you jealous about that? Nah! I've known him too long.

You know I'm alright i dont even care i like it when they stare & stare call me queer, dear oh dear a million things & what I wear He's real hard when he's with his mates but I'll saw him again & he was too late

Dear NME I'd have thought after the Gay Times piece, the interview with Rapture fanzine & our recent gig at the Slum Club everything would be clear. No it still remains to give a big hearty fuck off to all these twisted suburban types calling me a liar. Vulnerable young men & women all over the world find themselves victims of circumstance.

she was dressed in suit & tie & lightly etched-on moustache. 'I've always wanted to kiss a bird in the back of a taxi.' she says, running her hand up the fishnet ladders of my thigh. Stepping onto the front line in Bow puddles, elevators, buzzing doors,

[Image: the original page in the book has been preserved. Two paragraphs have been boxed off with biro. They read:] “...cast Richard Burton and Rex Harrison as bickering queer barbers and then much more uncompromisingly in William Friedkin's adaptation of The Boys in the Band (1970), which introduced some of the plainer four letter words in the English language to the screen for the first time. 'Who,' asks Cliff Gorman, in his brilliant portrayal of the most effeminate of the homosexual group as they gather for a soul-searching party, 'Who do you have to fuck to get a drink around here?' Other homosexual manifestations to occur in movies around this time included an elliptical but unmistakeable male fellatio scene in John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969) when Jon Voight, as a broke and disillusioned Texas stud importunes in a New York cinema....”

[Image, top left: a blurry photo of John onstage, playing bass. Image, top right, sideways: a photo of the band onstage. Carl and John are on the left, sharing a mic. Peter is on the right, playing guitar and singing into his own mic. Image, centre left: a torn photo of Peter sitting in a chair, shirtless, playing guitar. Only his bottom half from the chest down is visible. Image, centre left: a torn photo of Peter sitting in a chair, shirtless, playing guitar. Only his top half from shoulders up is visible. Image, bottom left: a torn fragment of a photo. What looks like a denim-clad knee and a yellow carrier bag are visible. Image, bottom middle: a photo of someone's knee in torn jeans, taken from under a table. Image, bottom right: a torn photo of Carl in a black sleeveless shirt, posing with his fingers in his mouth.] [A paragraph from the original page of the book has been left exposed and boxed off with black biro. It reads:] “The Boys in the Band was displaced by an immeasurably more powerful portrayal of homosexual groups, Fortune and Men's Eyes (1971). Set in a Quebec prison, this disturbing, factually based drama vividly recounted the corrupted of a heterosexual convict trapped in a tough, potentially vicious homosexual society. In one horrifying scene, a weak, put-upon prisoner is gang-banged by his fellow inmates; in another, the 'hero' is blackmailed by his cellmate into accepting him as his lover for the duration...”

Like a cat on a hot tin roof Like a macho man in a roomful of poofs I have tried in my way to be free.

[Written in Peter's handwriting] Jerome... is that how it's spelt? [Written in someone else's handwriting] Yes it is [Written in Peter's handwriting] Can I read you something? [Written in someone else's handwriting] Yes please.....

I insist, new book of Albion, befuddled by drugs I may yes about 2 but I do not miss out entirely on the subtleties of the inhuman relation ships that are this the mainstay of my stay here in one bounce of a loaf. Boys are fooled into fooling with boys. [...]

More general references/some extra explanations:

“The boy looked at Johnny” is a line from Patti Smith's song “Horses,” part one of a three-part song called “Land.” In the song, a young man named Johnny is assaulted by another man in a locker room; he then mentally journeys to other fantastical lands and visions. A lot of people interpret it as being about gay sex, although some people interpret it as being about a stabbing.

Peter quotes and references Jean Genet's writing and works about Jean Genet many times. While Genet's works are nearly all about crime and prison (one of Peter's main interests and points of fascination), all of his works are very explicitly gay. The Thief's Journal is more about Genet's various lovers than it is about his criminal history. Our Lady Of The Flowers is about a drag queen and her criminal lovers, and is also extremely erotic.

(“Jerome” is Jerome Alexandre, vocalist of The Deadcuts, who was friends with Peter and Mark Keds.)

[chibimyumi]

🍵Japanese Reactions☕ Kuromyu 2021

Dear everyone, I received overwhelmingly many questions about Japanese audience reactions, so here you go!

Methodology:

For this post I logged out from Twitter to avoid any bias because of my own user algorithm, and just simply searched the term “kuromyu” (生執事) , and selected “latest tweets”. As you can see, all posts have the word 生執事 in bold, meaning that was my search term.  There are a LOT of reactions, I can’t possibly discuss them all. What I did was just search at any random point of time, and take every other comment. I censored the usernames of the commenter to protect some (ceremonial) level of privacy.

I watched the Kuromyu costume rehearsal and cried, this is not it，，I think it might be better to go to Osaka [performance] without expecting too much I shouldn’t expect the Kuromyu of until last time

Honestly no matter how often I watch [the musical] this time’s Kuromyu is fantastic... as someone who knows the energy of the original comics, I really enjoyed it...

In Kuromyu Violet and Chesslock were the real thing

Like Violet’s way of walking being so slothful it was like the real thing, and the rapping of Chesslock in the cricket scene was cool

The reception of this time’s Kuromyu is entirely polarised, and indeed [this production] has a very different taste than the ones until now so I also understand the people who criticise it, but I think that’s fine.

Click “keep reading” for (a LOT) more reactions. Don’t lie to yourself and not click it, I know you all want the tea. Here’s the tea (ÒvÓ)ノ☕

There’s so much thought going on now I have seen the PV of Kuromyu. Eh? Because he [probably Konishi (Ciel)] has roots in Tennis [Probably prince of Tennis] once he holds the cricket it just looks like he’s swinging a tennis racket.

Bocchan is just too big, I’m not sure about that.

I only watched until half way ー

Calling it the Prince of Cricket is too befitting😂 Such singing and dancing, the youthfulness is exploding. They sure have stamina. #Kuromyu

Ah ーSomehow a lot of memories just popped up tears really are welling up... even though my deep-seated grudge has now passed, my obsession for Kuromyu surfaced, and it felt like it got beaten to a pulp by its big brother...

My heart is recovering through the Kuromyu DVD but the big brother is still the big brother... sob...sob (the dirty wailing of an otaku)

TLN: Big brother here means something’s superiour or better.

It became this production that made me think: Never mind the actors but is it the problem of the makers? Erm. I think it’s a waste. Is it because it’s the footage of the first day performance?

I don’t have the feeling that it’s not that, but that it somehow became cheaper? Is a really strong thought I got from this performance. With this line-up [of cast/staff] it should have been able to create the high quality of Kuromyu, but the impression is that it was a mess.

I finished watching kuromyu. Erm... somehow... it was a theatre production that strongly reminded me of the first Lycoris (the cheapness of the set), felt like they tried to create the feeling of🎾but failed, and tried to do something trendy (🎤) but then the production lost the sense of unity.

Well Mr. Tate’s [Tateishi] Sebas was good, and Undertaker’s acting was good (make up...)

I’ve watched the stream of Kuromyu countless times and gotten used to the songs, and even though I miss the old Kuromyu, maybe it’s not so bad that somebody who can’t let go is rewatching something countless times. If next time they will do the Cult Arc or the Witch Arc I’d be pursuing it. Honestly I want them to stage Lycoris again ←

Kuromyu was this place where I got stimulated by Yuta’s TOHO quality, Ms. AKANE [Madam Red] and Ms. Son [Akisono, Frances]’s Takarazuka quality. The synergy of everything, the original manga’s story, actors, music, directing all were so perfectly done in the past three productions they sure have become a tremendous bar. Once again Yuta, thank you for playing Sebas for us for three times 🥺✨

Kuromyu really was too fun, I’m in trouble

Honestly ------------- Kuromyu was so fun !!!!!!!!! Yasue-kun, you also go watch soon!! Ah, you going tomorrow???

It might be quite unsatisfying for people who only watch Kuromyus that are like Imperial Theatre grand musicals, but I think it’s good that it’s a bit like the Kuromyus of the beginning of before when they adapted the manga arcs

I watched Kuromyu and had fun 😊

I cried, I laughed, it was amazing anyway!

It was the first time watching a musical for me but I think I’ve been sucked into it...

Shall I buy the DVD, I’m indecisive 🌀🤔💭

Now I’ve seen the PV of Kuromyu I don’t think it’s worth going at all... Even in the PV the vibe of 2.5D was ridiculously strong...

My friend went to watch Kuromyu and gave me the review: “I’ve seen all sorts of 2.5, why did they do this for Black Butler. It’s trivial.” I’ve only seen the PV so I won’t say anything, and I really get what I’m refraining from saying. But Mr. Kuma once tweeted the descriptions of Black Butler, I guess it’s fine that the Boarding School Arc feels like this 🤔

Click here for the translation of this tweet. The description of the Weston Arc is as such:

(To the people who will be going to see it I’m sorry)

They did say that the staff along [with the cast] would entirely be renewed, but I feel like they’re actively trying to shake off the fans of Kuromyu until now   I’m a bit sad but I guess I won’t be watching [Kuromyus] anymore... I feel like      But I am buying the stream    I’ll think about it after I’ve bought it...

Anyway about Kuromyu, my mom said she wanted to watch it too so I watched it again with her yesterday, and she sure had a lot to say 😶 My father pulled this weird face of “what is this even” and I had to see him off halfway 😑 I thought about buying the stream of the final performance, but I guess I don’t need a second viewing. I don’t feel like watching the archive either. I really liked the Kuromyu of until now, my shock is too big.

At the beginning [of the musical] we looked back on Lycoris, Circus and Luxury Liner... kinda like some sort of recap, but I thought “huh?”... now I just want to watch that. I used to like Kuromyu, I really have trouble accepting it this time it’s painful.

But honestly when talking about Kuromyu it’s the Sebas with the superb voice who sung about the dynamic with the little lord full of emotion and built the world view, and for better or for worse the world view of Kuroshitsuji is maintained through Sebaciel, the songs, the directing of Sebaciel, but what happened there. Whether you should watch it or not. The past 3 productions were masterpieces、、、

But Sebas is not Mr. Furukawa, Ciel is not Reo-kun and even Mr. Izumi’s [role] of Undertaker was unfortunately changed, this is the new Kuromyu huh...

I watched the stream of the first performance.

I liked the songs so I checked, and I knew it.

This time has a lot of laughing factors, and I thought it was good it had a fresh cast.

I didn’t expect the cricket scene to be taken that far. I thought it was Tenimyu.

Kuromyu, this time be it the story, script, directing or casting, I thought: “it’s more enjoyable to take up this [musical] while temporarily erasing the memories of until now ～🎶”, and I watched the theatre piece without looking back to the past productions, and that was the right decision   To the people who came to love Kuromyu of until now, it’s safer to watch it while temporarily erasing the memories.

Did Kuromyu turn into Tenimyu half way?! I thought,

and the Elite Musical → 2.5D Musical transformation I also felt

Konishibocchan being cutesy was cute, and the P4′s desperate faces resonated all went by in a flash

Above was the report from the theatre ☺️

I went to Kuromyu

I went into it knowing it’d surely be something different from the past productions so it indeed turned out to be so

There were parts that made me go “erm the script....” and also this part that made me go “was it really necessary to make Undertaker descend into that dream in Act 1 just because you wanted to give him stage time??”

I went into 2 shocks gradually

Sebas doesn’t sing He only sings properly at the very beginning of the beginning Even though he’s Sebas There’s no ending solo Even though he’s Sebas

You’re the ♪ah~a~a~ number-one main character though!! That’s why this one!!! Is the N・E・W production--!!!!

I am in shock

I   A M  I  N   S  H  O  C  K  ANGER!!!

I watched the Kuromyu stream!

It was TOTALLY 2.5D~❕❕😁It was also a school setting and the Tenimyu vibes were strong (laughs)

It’s a bit of a shame that Ciel isn’t played by a child actor anymore, but because he has more stage time than Sebas has this time I caccept it.

Sebas and Ciel’s visuals are also good ~ ☺️ 

It’d be even cooler if they increased the fight scenes with Sebas though.

@ivvy_toshiki [Tateishi Toshiki (Sebastian)’s Twitter account]

Thanks for the hard work in the performance.

Today I saw the “first viewing of Kuromyu” of my dreams 🥀😆 Regardless of what I could say Sebastian’s beauty is from beginning to end spellbinding ☺️  My eyes were very happy. moreover, the songs and the killing were also AMAZING 😍 my eyes were nailed to Sebastian. I want to watch it again 💕☺️  I wish that the performances will go without a hitch until the final performance ❕

I was so happy to see the recap of the past productions

I really liked the Circus Arc (original comics), and even though it was comedy it really dived into the darkness! That was the story I also didn’t expect to see the Luxury Liner Arc So Undertaker, for real... for

Up to the last time there weren’t that many songs in total, but there were songs like I shall become your pawn and sword and the contract that made me go BATHUMP--- I have to rewatch this number!!! It’s a shame that this time there were no songs like that.

#Kuromyu

Calling it the Prince of Cricket is too accurate 😂 They sang and danced so much, the youthfulness was bouncing off it. What stamina they have. #Kuromyu

What’s different from the last time is the strong 2.5D vibe...... Until now the ages [of the characters] were fairly faithful [to canon] and in a good way there was no 2.5D-ness and I could just enjoy it as a proper theatre piece This time both the casting including the music had a strong 2.5D vibe for better or for worse #Kuromyu

Very personally! Matsushita’s Sebas was “heavy as the evil of evil and beautiful”, and Furukawa’s Sebas was  “evil, strong and unapproachable and beautiful and gorgeous”, and Tateishi’s was “light hearted and beautiful and a florid kind of evil”!! (My vocabulary is failing me) All Sebastians have a different aura about them it’s fantastic!!! #Kuromyu

The new Sebas is good

Overall

It’s this arc so that it’d get a chit-chat idol? vibe was within the expectation The cricket of the second half had a bad vibe and I was sick of it It might have been different had I watched it live I don’t like the Boarding School and Green Witch arc that much to begin with I am looking forward to the appearance of the real Ciel That's it for now

I don’t know why I’m mentally dead but it must be that, I watched the Kuromyu stream and I am thoroughly dead, mentally dead, but as I managed to say this I’ve reached a level that I recovered a bit??? I am too tired but I don’t feel like sleeping, but if I doze a bit then I realise my fatigue and feel like sleeping unnecessarily

This time’s kuromyu... erm I guess I’ll quit 🤔

I’ll be rant-puking for a bit

I’ve seen a lot of Tenimyu and A-stage [Mankai A3] but it’s not like I wanted to see that in Kuromyu... What I wanted to see was Kuromyu...

I watched the video of the Kuromyu PV? but it’s impossible. Watching the PV [I thought] children should be played by children... and as I watched their interaction it’s not the character building I had in mind... and there’s no wound on the vice principal’s forehead. I planned to watch the stream of the final performance, but I’m hesitant about spending more money to watch that... If I can’t accept Ciel and Sebastian I can’t watch this, that’s just me...

Now I’ve read the reviews of Kuromyu all are saying it went back to 2.5D, and I think that it’s not worth going after all. It’s probably because the Kuromyus until now far surpassed the quality of 2.5D... I guess it’s fine if one were to go for the cast, but I really loved the Kuromyu of until now.