#its weird and how you end up with cults and/or corruption. putting anyone in that kind of position will never end favorably for the people

[millesbianforce]

I don't think anyone should idolize any historical political figures regardless of if they were in your personal political sphere

[thelordofdarkreunion]

Magnificent Scoundrels- Explanation of Caution

Part II of “Pariah”.  Sorry it took so long for me to get this out, but I had to re-write it four times.  The first was too boring, the second too weird, the third too long and too boring and so on.  On to the story!

Aboard the Omen

The marines looked up with barely concealed hatred at Cain.  The man in question barely noticed it.  He watched, impassively, as the Valhallan Guardsmen tore through the marines’ personal possessions, tipping over containers, opening drawers, and searching every inch of their quarters and person.  Teams of Imperials were searching the entire ship, weapons at the ready, bayonets fixed.  For what exactly, Adam Vir and the crew of the Omen didn’t know.  Only that every member of the crew, alien and human alike, were being held at gunpoint as Imperial Guardsmen walked through the ship’s long halls.  

“Nothing on the Captain’s logs, sir,” said one of the Valhallan officers.  Vir looked at her with a frown on his face, arms crossed.  He had allowed them to do what they wanted to avoid any bloodshed or misunderstanding.  He was getting rather fed up, though.  If this continued for long, or if things got violent… he still had the Iron Eye suit on under his clothing.  Kill Cain and the guards, if necessary, get to the armory, take back the ship.  Chaplain Tope walked into the room.

“Nothing, Commissar.  Not even amongst the xenos,” he reported.  Cain turned to face him, black greatcoat swirling.  

“You sure?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Tope.  “They can all stand in the presence of Imperial relics and prayers.”  

“Good.”  Cain keyed his comms.  “Colonel?  Major?  Have you found anything?”  

“Nothing.  No signs.  We used their blueprints to search the entire ship.  Everything is clean.”  Vir couldn’t take it anymore.  

“What’s going on, Cain?  What are you looking for?”  Cain turned to him and seemed to be musing things over.  He spun around.

“You.  Marine.  What is the proper procedure if you’re being charged in battle?”  The marine looked at him strangely.  

“Uh… fortify a secure location or take the high ground?  Fight back from defensive positions?”  Cain nodded slowly.  Good.  

No signs of taint.  No mutations.  No psykers except that Emperor-damned xeno.  The marines don’t show any signs of excessive violence or willingness to get into close quarters.  No murders in training.  No odd cliques or groups.  The entire ship is exceptionally sterile and clean.  No strange blights or markings.  No signs of drugs or orgies, thank the Emperor.  No perverse and blasphemous symbols painted in blood or other… fluids.  They can all stand being around Imperial holy relics and Jurgen.  Nothing.  Nothing wrong or out of the ordinary throughout the entire ship.  Trust them or not.  

You are Commissar Ciaphas Cain, noted for his mercy.  Hero to your men for not cleaning house when other Commissars would have.  You have orders to investigate.  You have already trusted xenos.  You have already trusted Vir.  

Innocentia nihil probat.  Innocence proves nothing.  Trust leads to a poor end.  Your life matters the most, above all else.  Hate the xenos.  Cleanse the xenos.  More trust leads to heresy.  That way the path of damnation lays.  

He came to a conclusion.  Compromise.  

“Admiral Vir, I believe this has once again, been another, uh… cultural misunderstanding.  Forgive me for my thoroughness.”  He looked over at the still put-off stare of the Admiral.  “I believe I told you that it’s better to explain too much caution than suffer for not enough.  If you’ll come back to my office, I’ll be happy to explain.”  Nodding slightly, the same expression still on her face, Vir followed him out of the room.  The Imperial Guardsmen stared at the marines for an eternal, awkward moment before their officer snapped at them and they retreated from the room in an orderly fashion.  The officer presented a salute, then turned on her heel and marched after them.  The marines stared at each other.  

“What was that all about?” asked Ramirez to no-one in particular.  The other marines shook their heads with varying degrees of anger and perplexity.  

“I’m not sure.  But I think I know someone who might…” trailed off Maverick pensively.  

In the (Temporary and Borrowed) Office of Commissar Cain 

Vir followed Cain’s billowing greatcoat back into his office, the place where this mess had all started in the first place.  

“Sit down,” offered Cain.  “Want anything to drink?  Tea?  Re- uh, actually… I believe your word for word for it is coffee?”  Vir rubbed his forehead.  

“Yeah, sure.  Coffee is fine.”  Cain nodded.

“Jurgen!  One tanna, one recaf.”  Cain looked back at Vir.  “Tanna leaf tea from Valhalla, recaf is coffee.”

“Recaf, re-caffeinated… makes sense.”

“I suppose,” sighed Cain as the drinks were brought in.  “Now, on to business.”

“Yes.  I would quite like to know what all of that was about.”  It was more of a statement than a question.

“...yes.  Of course.”  Cain rubbed his neck as he tried to find a way to explain.  “Where I come from there exists… a corrupting influence, is probably the best way to put it.  Uh…”  His hand drummed on the side of his mug.  “Now, again, where I come from, there are… some… who have… unnatural abilities.  They can do… strange, strange things, among them telepathy.  However, to access these… abilities puts them into contact with this corrupting influence.  Without the blessings of the Emperor, the havoc these individuals can wreak is enormous.  It is much, much better to be careful in these sort of situations.  I am sorry that this might have been a breach of trust, but if you or anyone else here were actually corrupted and hiding it, the damage to everyone and everything else would have been catastrophic.”  He paused, and offered a sincere smile.  “If there is any way to repair this mistrust, please tell me, and I shall do my utmost.”  Vir waved him off.

“S’alright,” he muttered into his coffee.  Another damn misunderstanding.  He sighed to himself and looked up.  “Now, what about Jurgen?

Maverick entered the Imperial chapel.  The temperature here, in contrast to the rest of the Valhallan quarters, was quite mild.  While she’d known that the Imperials had built a small chapel on board, she’d never been there, instead meeting Chaplain Tope in the sparse grey of one of the Omen’s conference rooms.   She didn't quite know what she had been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this.  

The lighting in the room had been toned down.  The normally cheerful white of the rest of the Omen was gone, replaced by a faint yellow glow.  Dripping white candles lit an altar, their flames barely flickering in the ship’s recycled air.  Kneeling before the altar, his head bowed in prayer, was Tope.  A gilded statuette of the golden Imperial eagle was placed reverently on top, next to the candles and a heavy leather bound tome.  The entire room had a dark, almost oppressive, gothic feel to it.  It was such a contrast to the normal Omen it stopped Maverick in her tracks.  

Was that a… skull floating in the corner?  She did a double take.  Yes, indeed, there was a human skull floating in the corner.  Some sort of metal anti-gravity device was placed where the skull normally connected to the vertebrae, and a heavy red prosthetic, glowing an eerie red in the dim light, covered one of its eye sockets.  What the hell…?

Above the altar was a painting of a man.  He wore a suit of strange armor made of gold, carved and gilded to an almost astoundingly impressive degree.  His hair was jet black, and flowed to his shoulders.  A massive flaming sword was held in one hand, and a corona of golden light illuminated his body.  But it was the expression of such utter righteous fury that took her breath away.  This was someone who knew what they were doing was right, and would have no problem utterly annihilating anyone in their way.  This figure could only be one person: the Emperor who the Imperials so fervently worshiped.  

Tope finished his prayers, made some sort of strange symbol with his hands towards the altar, then smiled over at her.  

“Chaplain Maverick.  How can I help you?”  Chaplain.  Not corporal, not just Maverick, chaplain.  Interesting.

“I was wondering… exactly what just happened?  Why was Cain searching the ship?  What was that all about?”  Tope nodded, and smiled again.  

“Ah, yes.”  He paused for a moment, thinking.  “Tell me, chaplain.  What do you believe?”  Maverick looked at him oddly.  

“Uh, well… I’m not with any particular religion.  I’m really just here to attend to any sort of spiritual needs of the crew.”  Tope gave her a strange look.  That’s not what he was asking.  

What do you believe?

“I believe that there are other… things out there.  Spirits, if you will.  I can… feel them, almost.  If that’s… what you mean.”  Tope nodded sagely.  

“Of all the people on this ship, Cain and the Guardsmen included, I feel as if you are the wisest person here.  I think you understand the most.”  Maverick looked at him oddly again.  Tope continued.  “You see, you are a marine.”  He gestured at her physique.  “You are quite strong, quite physically capable.  As a marine, having seen battle, having seen death, I’m sure you are also quite mentally strong as well.  But there is more to that, as you well know.  Spiritual strength.  The strength of faith.  The strength to resist what is beyond.”  He gave a small, kindly, laugh, then a reassuring pat on the shoulder.  

“Faith alone shall save.  I saw your face when I explained our religion to you.  There is a reason we worship the Emperor.  He is the guardian of humanity.  Everything about the Imperial Cult can be summed up with one simple phrase: the Emperor protects.  Always.  And if you have faith in Him, he will protect you as well.”  Maverick nodded.  So, that’s what they were afraid of.  The beyond.  Apparently, it was a lot worse where they came from.  Good to know.  Tope reached over to a side table, barely visible in the dim lighting, and picked up a heavy leather book with (of course) a golden eagle on the cover.  

“If you’re ever interested in learning more, read this.  It might help answer some of your questions.”  Maverick took the book and nodded.  

“Of course.  Thank you for your time, Chaplain.”  He nodded in response.  

“Any time.”  Maverick turned and walked briskly out of the room.  She decided not to ask about the skull.  

Cain pursed his lips.  “Yes, of course.  The reason why this all started in the first place.  Jurgen.”  Vir’s one good eye looked at him expectantly.  Cain sighed.  “Again, if this gets out, I’ll be forced to kill you.  Just a reminder.”  He took a sip of his strong-smelling tea, then began.

“Jurgen is a blank.  The people who I told you about earlier, the ones who can manipulate reality and other such things, are called psykers.  They draw their power from a strange, corrupted place, as I already mentioned.  Jurgen is the opposite of a psyker.  He doesn’t change reality, he anchors it.  Any sort of… things… tricks…” he struggled for the right word, “Things that do not exist in reality, any changes cannot… take effect, if you will, near him.  He shuts down their power, usually with a fair amount of pain for the manipulator.  I’ve seen all sorts of reactions to him, from fear, to pain, to outright secures and unconsciousness.  Usually any psykers cannot bear to be near him,” he finished.  He considered something for a moment, then continued.

“It should also probably be noted that blanks are extremely rare, hence the need to protect what Jurgen actually is.  Also, there isn’t any way to stop this power, so, unless you have any ideas, your alien is just going to have to stay away from him.”  Not that I’m too terribly concerned about it.  

“I understand.  I guess I just have to think of something,” mused Vir.  He stood up.  “It was good to clear things up, Commissar.”

“Of course.  The pleasure’s all mine, Admiral.”  Vir walked out of Cain’s office, nodding to Jurgen as he left.  Wasn’t that interesting?  He’d never heard of anything like that before.  Someone who could block… well, magic.  Knowing some of the things he did, knowing the nature of some threats out there, this was a handy tool indeed.  Yes, this could end quite well if he played his cards right. 

And there we have it.  Unfortunately, Conn is just going to have to stay as far away from Jurgen as possible and/or try not to read the minds of anyone close to him.  As usual, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, criticisms, or requests, feel free to ask!

[marginal-notes]

TLOK Episode One a.k.a. Korra immediately goes on a rampage

So, as mentioned, I’m finally getting around to watching The Legend of Korra with all of my terrible tastes and general thoughts. 

Don’t give me spoilers, my indignation will be funnier without them. 

What I Know About Korra Going In:

If the show can have all of Aang’s bending teachers still around for the audience’s nostalgic pleasure, Suki better be alive and kicking too or I am going to throw a fit

Technology progressed pretty intensely in ways that I will want to pick apart later

Listen, what the fuck is Republic City. Why. Why does this exist. Show you better answer me fast with why this exist for a legitimate in world reason that isn’t just: “The audience is a bunch of American kids and teenagers and we want to uphold the liberal ideals of democracy because of course that’s the motives of the victors after a global war of probably unprecedented scope despite like, Zero (0) indication that the idea of democracy was rattling around anyone’s heads in ATLA.” 

If this is the reason, I’m going to quit watching. Disgraceful. Disgusting.

Something involving anti-bender sentiment.

Something involving something called the Red Lotus which I am side-eyeing the shit out of 

Bloodbending?????

Spirit World shenanigans and Avatar backstory that’s on thin ice with me. 

Love triangles. UGH. TERRIBLE. WHY DOES MEDIA DO THIS. WHO FINDS THIS INTERESTING. PLEASE RAISE YOUR HAND SO YOU CAN EXPLAIN TO ME. 

Alright, here we go. 

WELL, 30 SECONDS IN AND I GOT MY WISH FOR AN EXPLAINATION ABOUT REPUBLIC CITY.

Avatar Aang and Fire Lord Zuko transformed the Fire Nation colonies into the United Republic of Nations, a society where benders and nonbenders from all over the world could live and thrive together in peace and harmony.

Okay. I’m.... I’m going to withhold judgement for now until I watch like, literally more than 30 seconds to fully form my thoughts about this move. I THINK IT’S A DUMB MOVE AND IF THIS IS WHY PEOPLE KEEP HAVING FIRE NATION DEMOCRACY FICS I QUIT.

So. We get a panning shot into this city. Very urban city that’s the product of the industrialization and like whatever the hell that propaganda voice over is talking about. 

As a method of setting the scene and immediately letting the viewers feel and know the passage of time between ATLA and TLOK, I love this shot. There’s no mistaking this for being immediately after ATLA. We’re listening to one of Aang’s kids. There are skyscrapers. The Fire Nation palace in ATLA probably counted towards the architectural development towards urban skyscrapers, but that architecture is fully formed by TLOK. Brilliant. 

I'm the Avatar! You gotta deal with it!

What a cute brat. Her poor parents, oh my god. 

Also, is she supposed to be a prodigy. 

Again with immediately setting contrasts against ATLA. Very cool demonstration, extremely effective distinction between Aang’s journey around the world trying to find teachers and learning how to bend in the middle of a war vs. Korra at peacetime with a whole entire facility dedicated to her. 

Not sure about how I feel regarding the White Lotus’s presence. 

IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE KATARA????

That's your grandmother, Meelo.

Does he not visit his parents. It can’t be that hard to swing by for like. Yearly festivals if the Water Tribe has those. I don’t see why not. Maybe something for when the winter night ends, I can see that being festive. 

Tenzin do you like. Not call? Not write?? Sir???

Oh my god, Pema. I hope she really likes kids, despite how rowdy they are. 

Wait. How old is Tenzin. Thirties to forties? 

How old is Katara. 

Is this going to be a repeat of the Fire Nation royal miracle babies. 

I get that, but I don't think keeping me locked up in this compound like a prisoner is what he had in mind.

Going by the episode title, I bet we know what Korra has in mind. Speaking of this compound, where’s the Southern Tribe? The aerial shots look like it’s in the middle of nowhere. Is she so far removed that she doesn’t even spend time with the tribe she was born into? Cause that sure as hell wasn’t how Aang was raised. 

Honestly fascinating as these contrasts keep coming. The bizarre presence of the White Lotus. The way her teachers come to her instead of her seeking her teachers the way Aang and Roku did. 

The Avatar must have always been a special political figure, without any good contemporaries to our world, to be honest. Back in ATLA, we see that Roku isn’t beholden to Fire Nation citizenship - he seems to transcend that. And it honestly seems important that Roku and Aang went out to the world, experienced the other nations and their ways of life. I think Aang does have a line regarding this. 

Because Korra’s situation? Can easily turn into a nightmare, given the realities of what being the Avatar could easily mean. 

OKAY THIS SHIP. Very cool looking, very neat, I continue to love every visual manifestation of the passage of time between ATLA and TLOK. One small question. What’s with the rigging poles. 

(source)

To be fair, this is a battleship from the British navy, but aesthetically I think we can say this is a fair inspiration. From what I remember while researching the coal fic, the rigging and poles there serve no function. It’s aesthetical. At best, there’s a limited function, but it’s predominantly for aesthetics in the transition into the ships like the Titanic with no rigging at all. 

Which raises my question about WHY ON EARTH?? The Fire Nation navy in ATLA??? Were clearly way past this stage in design? Literally during Sozin’s time too??? Almost two hundred years before this current shot in TLOK? Why would the ship design regress like this??? The Water Tribe ships probably wouldn’t evolve into the designs that Europe used? Earth Kingdom ships would probably be more inspired by East Asian designs which also wouldn’t end up with this system for sails? 

Where does this aesthetic come from. 

IS THAT A CAR. 

....

.......

..........

I am not qualified at all for dissecting the potential social and cultural explanation for the western influenced aesthetics appearing. I am but an ignorant banana, I don’t know shit. 

.......

oooooooh this is going to slowly annoy me isn’t it.......... 

That will be twenty yuans.

[Jaws theme]

The city's huge. I bet we could find a place to rustle up something to eat.

You know, I’ve seen plenty of weird shit in Central Park and around NYC before. Korra, you are so unprepared.  

Are you tired of living under the tyranny of benders? Then join the Equalists!

Oh boy. Let’s.... let’s put a pin in this thought. I’ll come back to it once I know more about what’s going on. Because. This will either be fun. Or I’m going to have to create a second spite fic folder. Please, show, don’t give me reason to create a second spite fic folder. 

On a different note though, I really do love the choices so far for setting up this show’s forward path. There’s no way to mistake this as a rerun of ATLA. This is it’s own separate story and I love that. I really do respect that. The way the different threads are emerging feel really smooth: 1) the impact of Korra’s isolation towards her culture shock in the giant city - which must smell and sound REALLY weird to her; 2) her prodigious talent in the physical, exciting parts of bending meshing with her teenage nature and also clashing with the spiritual parts of being the World Bridge; 3) the absolute hot bed of chaos every part of Republic City must be. 

Kinda funny that people would still have sideburns in the same style as from like. Seventy years ago. Vintage. 

Mr. Chung, please tell me that you have my money, or else I can't guarantee I can protect your fine establishment.

My terrible taste in interests rears its head again. Listen, you cannot imply something like the mafia or the triads exist in universe and not have me immediately ALL OVER THAT. Republic City, you are such a mess. Like, for this alone, I might write a single fic for TLOK that’s just about trash collection and disposal. And corruption. And- 

I am fascinated by the genetics and molecular/cellular biology behind the yellow and white eyes in this universe. 

Police! Freeze where you are!

Bitch what the fuck. How many of these rigid airships are part of the police. Are all of them for the police? Are the police literally patrolling people from the sky? 

Also, that better be helium in those ships instead of hydrogen by this point in time. I’ve already made my post about the fleet of hydrogen ships in Sozin’s Comet. 

How much property damage is being inflicted thanks to these couple minutes. The police just. Stab the brick work. There have got to be so many bitchy lawsuits about that. 

This poor girl’s culture shock. 

HEY I HOPE THAT POLICE OFFICER SWUNG THEMSELF ON A CLOTHLINE, NOT AN ELECTRIC LINE LIKE I FIRST THOUGHT. 

HEY YOU CAN RIP SOMEONE’S SCALP OFF LIKE THAT. 

HEY WHAT IS WITH THIS WHOLE SCENE. 

HOW ARE THEY JUST RIDING ON THOSE WIRES, HOW MUCH TENSION IS IN THAT STUFF. 

HOW DOES THAT ZEPPLIN MOVE THAT FAST AND LIKE. AGILE. 

YALL. 

WHY DOES THE POLICE STATION LOOK LIKE THAT

Well then, why are you treating me like a criminal? Avatar Aang and your mother were friends. They saved the world together.

Oh this bit is fascinating, I love it. It’s only been 18 minutes, but the level of sheer propaganda everywhere trailing after Aang is really cool. There’s so much I want to know now about how Aang got from the end of ATLA, where he probably wasn’t thinking AT ALL about this kind of cult legacy forming around him, to this. 

Lin Beifong’s shut down of Korra’s attempt to use her status as Avatar is great. Just because Korra’s born into this elite role and then locked up and probably pampered in her compound, where everyone is well aware of her status and what it means, it doesn’t mean she gets to strut around with no idea how stuff works or the context behind what she’s seeing and then doing whatever she wants. 

Contrasts, love ‘em. 

On a different note, the design of this room. 

As far as I can tell, it’s a dim, doorless room, which is honestly. Really terrible design. And it says something about the way the Republic City police functions and how that reflects on the chaos of the city itself. 

Putting someone dragged into the police station in a dim room without any door as a sign of a possible escape is just a terrible idea. The only thing you’re going to succeed in is making the person tenser and more belligerent. Your suspect or witness gets more nervous, gets more combative, gets more unreliable in this kind of environment. In turn, the police probably starts feeling more and more entitled to harsher retaliation. Conflict resolution? De-escalation? That really doesn’t look like its in the core of the city police. They’re wearing armor for god’s sake. 

Everything so far in this first impression of the police is really damning about their attitude and Lin Beifong’s leadership. Rather than using a rappel line down from the airships, they damage buildings. In chasing Korra, they further damage property. The armor, this freaking room. The fact that so much about the active police shown so far depends on metalbending, which implies that very few people can join the field police. The fact that for the gang to be so blatantly in the open about their presence and territory, there must be dirty cops on their payroll. 

There has to be so much Lin Beifong hate in this city. 

I have done my best to guide Republic City toward the dream my father had for it, but you're right. It has fallen out of balance since he passed.

If anyone tries convincing me Republic City was ever in “balance” they’re a punk ass liar. I don’t think the city could have ever been in balance, whatever that is. The way it was created, the speed it expanded, the life that must be lived there - balance? Don’t kid me with that propaganda. 

Tenzin could be trying to find a balance alright. I just wonder how many people vehemently disagree with his idea of balance. 

Hello? I'm Korra, your new Avatar.

Well, TLOK is definitely in the era of mass distribution of news and the idea of public sentiment at a level never seen before. This is going to be very interesting for its populist implications, along with other developments regarding politics. 

Oh Korra. Did no one try rehearsing this with you? This is a terrible first impression for you to give to people. 

Also, what is this building. Is this like a city hall? Why is the roof on the building to the side slanted like that. That’s an angle I’d expect from like. Snow concerns. In northern Europe. 

Love that Avatar Aang propaganda. Starting to feel like we’re going to see a lot of it going forward. 

Oh my god, everything about this press briefing (?) is highly concerning. This rampaging teenager suddenly appearing without any warning or announcement. The clear lack of script or practice. The open location just to anyone instead of to a select set of journalists who would be sympathetic/under government control. Lin fucking Beifong and Tenzin being the only people accompanying Korra on the stage. 

What a disaster. 

FINAL THOUGHTS

You know, I’m enjoying this more than I expected to. The general writing is great, the use of visuals and other small details to set the time and place is excellent, the worldbuilding implications are rich in potential. I’m looking forward to exploring where the plot threads introduced so far will lead towards!

[smallestclowninthecircus]

Season 4 notes

Ep 121: mmmm tape recorder turning on without them knowing goes brrr. AAAhjhdsjfhjdf "do you mind if i call you jon" its like "can i call you elias?" is this the dream guy with the tendrils? who wants to bet the boat is captained by peter lukas? big man if it killed yall how are you still here. oh boy the tape is doin that thing. who do we think it is? did he wake up? hmm. ep 122: lol jon. 6 months!?!? bruh quit movin big man. he just Knows things sometimes you know how it is. nah b/c i can relate to feeling like other ppl/ things arent real, thats the biggest mood BUT i think it is kinda pretentious to entertain the idea that youre the only Real person. If you dont see a body dont believe it. i'll hold out hope for a bit. theres not a new archivist is there? surely i wouldve heard about that. oh god peter what changes did you make. ep 123: web development. hope its about spiders. she blames him. bruh why. if they hadnt done anything the world would've ended piss off melanie. why are ppl acting like he chose to be in a coma for 6 months. we know this they just appear. no longer "head archivist of the magnus institute, london" now he's just "the archivist" covered in spiders? cuz ik the spider has to do with controlling what youre doing and all this stuff but i cant think of how this connects to that. ep 124: ugh vertigo. is michael crew an old man? oooh. fairchild. how did he know it was martin? hmm. GRR I LOST MY NOTES AGAIN. FROM EPISODE 125 - part of 131. ep 131: bruh he's so hard to understand big man ur voice is so low. Jared Hotworth. the boneturner. "the ones i helped find their proper bodies" name a better top surgeon? our favorite trans ally? ep 132: woo field trip into the coffin! static lol. he says "chill out im just poppin in for a quick recall mission" is the rib thing actually gonna work? bruh it feels so odd and contrived but he's an odd man with some odd powers so idk. rip that archivist ayyy statement time. voices? recordings? are those tape recorders? was it the tape recorders? did they pull him back? i hope so b/c if the rib thing actually worked im gonna be so disappointed. ep 133: predicting the lonely? tundra. like the lukases. hmm. sanikova! like sanikov land. so its the hunt? i suppose? yeah. so daisy's clearly rejecting the hunt, which makes sense cuz she doesnt seem to like the entities that much. wait so are we just not gonna talk abt all the tapes playing on the ground?? no? ep 134: not an archival assistant anymore? Adelard Decker (or however you spell it) i recognize that name. 15th power. i was right there are 15. the extinction? im trying to remember what ive heard. oooh spooky. no i gotta be real i dont understand this fear but i'll believe you that its a thing. ew lukas is so squealy. lukas can turn invisible? oh boy. oooh martin put the tape recorders there. lol lukas is worried he's gonna be an avatar of the eye. ep 135: yoo its the third Daedalus statement! maxwell rayner (reiner? reigner?) i dont know who that is but ik its somebody. is he the cult leader guy? church of the divine host? 4 people?? what? did they kidnap somebody and keep them up there?? oh dear jon are you dying? did he try to See or Know or whatever? why does everyone call basira detective lol. ep 136: he was the one from the spider movie that ate ppl right? the special effects artist? is it annabelle cane? "its a joke jon" lol. hmm they wanted to record the therapy session with melanie? i wonder who that is. i almost wanna guess annabelle cane but im not sure. ep 137: this is the one! he went to the other place and read the war statement but it wasnt the one she took. not the music again. sounds like the slaughter. who the heck is eric lol. "the watcher's crown" like the crown of eyes we saw in the piccrew ep 138: oh boy Robert Smirk time. is that elias? as unhelpful as usual. if new powers can be "born" can others die out? did jonah magnus wear the watchers crown? maybe they were born from our fear or maybe our fears were born from them. ceaseless watcher does ceaselessly watch so. idk what you want

big man. yeah jonah for sure did something. ep 139: agnes!! lol that one dude threw off all their plans thats so funny. BUT this does tell us something. the tree in the backyard of the hilltop house? not made by her. it going down didnt kill agnes. im guessing gertrude tied agnes to the house using the tree? u good jon? cuz every time you try to Know smth intentionally it seems like it causes you great pain. how come he can do it accidentally with no problem but the second he wants to know smth of plot relevance he gets a headache or whatever ep 140: lol pagan exultation. classic. "oh thats my rib" lmaoo. ppl are always so mad at jon and his Eye powers except when it benefits them. they're like "oh you shouldnt do that its not right" and then all of a sudden they want to know something and its all "oh cmon jon its the only way" ep 142: oh god jon what did you do. its interesting she's giving her statement in the way that they do when jon Asks. did he see her in the Coffin? and so he's following her? ok cmon jon you're supposed to let them come to you. lmao ikr martin. "start to hear the blood" "suure." lmao ep 143: lol that awkward moment when gertrude is already dead. big J if you die im gonna kill you. bruh. ayo helen? i guess it worked? ep 144: lol this reminds me of that one edgar allan poe story where he kills the old dude with the weird eye. spooky music stuff. lol thats my favorite symptom of a heart attack its hilarious. so its smth abt the location probably? bro i feel like you should write down the numbers idk. 162830165049 564846474827. seems like the distortion? like the kinda thing that causes you to go crazy because of the numbers. oh boy is it the extinction again. bro what?? im?? his dad just died and he's like eh. martin dont be mean. he's being all lonely again. big man ur pushing ppl away. oh god its fucking squealy boy. ep 145: that almost sounds like breekon/hope... Arthur? agnes. aah was he from the lightless flame cult. a tree. lol he's just ranting rn. hehehe fuck landlords amirite. yay someone tells jon outright to go to therapy. now do it big man. ep 146: oh great! the distortion! i'm making a spiral themed building in mc right now! jon maybe accept you did a bad? nah this goes back to what i said before. they're fine with him compelling ppl when its convenient for them but otherwise its "no jon you cant, youre a monster jon" the tapes didnt turn on. i spose that means its not important? i agree with daisy, this seems unecessarily dangerous. ep 147: is that a tape? the first tape? well that went better than i expected tbh. BAHAKJASHDJKF she did the "can i call you jon" like nikola says "elias, can i call you elias?" damn annabelle is such a girlboss. oh! the one thing from the picrew. its been a while since ive connected smth to that. lol all the other avatars always talk abt their patron so lovingly and the jon just. absolutely hates the eye. ep 148: lol thats the most elias thing. "i just like the way it sounds" ep 149: did he disappear? bruhh. ur lonely powers are popping off i guess. oops i accidentally deleted my notes for 150 - 152 ep 153: thats the cult right? yeah. it doesnt sound like the church of the divine host? idk. if it is the church of the divine host then they worship the dark right? so is the eleventh the dark star or wtvr? it almost sounds like the corruption b/c of the oil or grease or whatever. oh dear what happened. oh its the hunters. theyre so annyoing. not an "it" he has a name. he's a person. is this a page from the skin book? ep 154: oh shit this is gerry's dad! oh shit he quit! oh dear god. jon don't you do it. haha martin. yeahhhh... is he gonna tell the others? cuz you know theyre gonna get mad if he doesnt. oh also picrew connection! the bandages over the eyes? yeah thats this im guessing. ep 155: oh good he told them. oh my god what did you do. lol i have no mouth and i must scream. nah you get none of my sympathy you're straight up murdering ppl. its like the desolation, destroying lives to sustain your own. ok but taking their statements doesnt

kill them. oh... bye melanie. ep 156: lmao imagine if the tape recorder spoke back. oh boy decker! i swear we got a statement from him already. oh god mirrors scary. They're gonna eat the body arent they. Yup... sounds like the flesh or the slaughter, but I'm not sure. Could be the extinction for sure. Smth at the center! Like Helen mentioned. God Peter you dick. Ep 157: peter's just so :/ another decker statement i see. a statement about the corruption? hmm. maybe its not abt the corruption. the extinction. lol pandemics. topical. John Amherst. helen? lol i can hear admiral purring in the background. oh cmon helen dont be like that. im trying real hard to like you but you make it so difficult. ep 158: did they fucking free the stranger? im gonna lose it. you absolute dumbass. im sorry who is that? jonah magnus? my guy. peter. you absolute dickhead. that's elias. (im p sure i had this spoiled for me that elias is jonah) oh dear this is her death. god peter you prick. i hope this is a pop off martin moment and not a "martin you idiot" moment. i hope the hunters kill the stranger entity. or she kills them. furry daisy pop off! yeah fuck you peter martin can make his own decisions. you know that clip from Twisted where jafar says "ok what the fuck was that" martin D: ok like i know its gonna work but still D: D: ep 159: peter you bitchboy. because if im alone i cant hurt anyone else. imnotgonnacryimnotgonnacryimnotgonnacry do it do it do it do it. pop off jon. ok its a pretty good idea for a ritual i gotta be honest. she didnt even have to blow it up lol. oh dear that was certainly a noise. "he gets you" did he not have jon already? he's back! our boy is back! awwww thats so cute. ep 160: oh right this is the thing in the safe house. i love him. "obviously im going to tell you if i see any good cows" martin my beloved <3 :)) oh boy who is this. fuckin. people. jonah you dick. gahh. you can tell he's trying to resist so hard lol. ohh. hehe keep an *eye* on him. altho if the extinction is a real thing he needs to be marked by that right? lol he sounds so intense im sorry- i want martin to just burst in and be like "look at this cow i saw!" its so dramatic and for why.

[skeletorific]

How do you think the Beforus Ancestors(Aradia, Tavros, Sollux, Karkat, Nepeta, Kanaya, Terezi, Vriska, Equius, Gamzee, Eridan and Feferi)were like? I love your Alternian Ancestors stuff so far and was curious what you Interpretation of the Beforus ancestors were.

oh HELL yes I am about this.

Aradia Megido, the Tombkeep: I see Aradia as being born a bit later than the others, while the coddling laws are at their strongest. Rather than put up with that, as quickly as she can she removes herself from Beforan society to the very outskirts. Like their Alternian counterparts, Beforan’s are often avoidant of the notion of death. However, in their case, it is not because death is a failure of the dying, but a failure of those around them. It is not seen as a natural cycle but something to be abhorred and feared at all costs. As such, tombs are kept, but they are far away from the rest of civilization and usually talked about in hushed tones. Aradia grows up among these tombs, befriending the local ghosts and considers them her own coddling charge. She guards the tombs from any who get too curious, or more often, from well-meaning government officials looking to tear down monuments to such “nastiness”. What they find instead is an angry little girl with powerful psiionics. She becomes something of a bedtime story for young grubs, even long after her passing. They say she still haunts the halls.

Tavros Nitram, the Menager: In parallel to his obsession with Fiduspawn, I see Beforan Tavros as being some variety of animal handler, using his fully fledged wings (and his bronzeblood bankroll) to travel the world and collect rare and exotic creatures to his own plot of land, to tend to and train. Some know him as a kindly soul, treating all beasts with the utmost love and dedication. He seems like some kind of fairy tale figure, surrounded on all sides by animal companions who he communes with. To others, this is reckless ecosystem mixing, but then, what do scientists know anyways. He prefers the hero title a bit more, as it aligns more with his intentions anyways. Eventually one of his expeditions ends poorly, with him being confined to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. Outwardly he dies content to let his coddler and his animal friends care for him for the rest of his life, but there’s a restless spirit that he passes down to his descendant.

Sollux Captor, The Dronebee: Completely and utterly unremarkable in every way. Sollux contented himself with working his function as a goldblood. His technical ability was fostered at every turn by a Beforan education system eager to see a lowblood embrace their “natural talents”, but while he made minor waves in the programming circles in which he moved with his often unique approach to coding, to most he was just one worker among thousands, very valuable of course! Every worker is valuable :) But ultimately.....not worthy of notice. Which is fine: that’s how Sollux likes it, and more than that if left him time to pursue more personal projects, such as a little game later known as sgrub. Just because he’s not vocally complaining doesn’t mean he’s not compiling a list. From his perspective, Beforan civilization is a ticking timebomb anyways. Why shouldn’t he be the one to start the countdown?

Karkat Vantas, the Advocate: Look, I know we all love revolutionary Karkat, but I think something we forget is that Karkat was pretty pro-system even as late in the game as Act 6. So, for the Beforan model.....well, every system needs its bootlickers. Karkat Vantas becomes a mouthpiece for some lowblood lobbying groups, acting in vocal support of the Empress’s coddling plan. Its not all love of power: legitimately there is a part of Karkat that tries to see how this is good. Healthy. The needs of his friends are being met, they’re safe, and attended to. Surely all of that is worth a little......infantilization, right? He deals with a lot of criticism from other lowbloods for being a sellout, and though he does his best to cultivate a calm unflappable demeanor so craved by Beforans, I guarantee Beforus has more than a few Grubtube compiliations of Vantas meltdowns that Kankri watches when he needs a good cringe. As he got older he slowly began to question the system he’d spent his whole life building, but ultimately lowbloods don’t live long enough for those kinds of regrets.

Nepeta Leijon, the Believer: What, you think clowns have the monopoly on weird religious communes? Nah. To be fair to Nepeta, her commune’s status as a “cult” is probably more indicative of Beforan prudery than anything else. Her sect, the Righteous Assembly of Withdrawn Renegades (or RAWR for short), is dedicated to the principles of free love and a return to the natural. Within the massive tunnel and cave system in which they live, trolls are free to strip themselves of signifiers like caste and clan and live as the gods intended: covered in dirt, chasing something furry, and flirting furrociously :33. While Nepeta in life insisted there was no leader it was her effect on people that kept them coming back for more, and while the commune purrsisted after her eventual death, ultimately its membership dwindled. Meulin was brought up among some of the last vestiges of it, and some of their old hideouts have been inherited by the Lost Weeaboos.

Kanaya Maryam, The Prioress: Literally, the prior. One of the earliest trolls, widely considered the Matriarch of Trolls in some sense. In her time she revolutionized many of the practices of auxiliatrices, ensuring greater safety for the grubs and greater care for the mother grubs. Many of the norms now in place for jadebloods are in large part due to her own influence. Despite her farreaching influence (and the fact that she left behind a journal of her practices), not much is known about her personal temperament. Quick readers may catch a certain dry sarcasm behind her words, and the especially studious scholar may note slight reference to a few great lovers (and a few great disappearances, *cough* rainbowdrinker *cough*. Her greatest secret is her brief and tumultuous kismesis with Vriska Serket, notorious Mafiosa, but only a very few historians have ever uncovered it. In part, her long shadow may have contributed to her descendant’s eventual anxiety regarding her prescribed role,

Terezi Pyrope, the Gumshoe: Beforan justice is tricky. As opposed to Alternia, there are in fact actual laws in place that aren’t just “don’t fuck with highbloods”, but in many ways its almost more corrupt. More often than not the courts are more concerned with petty infractions than it is with actual injustice, and furthermore, inter-caste tension remains a huge concern that bubbles up in violence. After a few years badgering olives for traffic tickets while watching actual fully fledged crime families get off scott free, well....Terezi had had enough. She took her pursuit of justice into the real world, working as a private detective for hire. She’s notorious for her, erm....quirks, but she’s a fastidious hunter and a careful investigator when she wants to be. She brings em back alive. USU4LLY >:).

Vriska Serket, the Mafiosa/Mapm8ker: Let’s be clear, a lot of Vriska’s society was laid on top of her and it was abuse from which she struggled to free herself. However, what does one do when freed from society, but seek to shake things up a bit. She’s still a thief of Light, make mistake, and she slowly works up the ranks from card shark working the tables to in charge of a small army of foot soldiers, smuggling mindhoney to goldbloods (who have been restricted “for their own good”) and sopor slime to clowns. She’s the flamboyant head of her own criminal empire, with the code of only stealing from those she deems worthy and a reckless approach to life

However, most of that isn’t generally known. And to the outside world, she’s just a simple cartographer, travelling the world to assemble some nice, safe, boring maps. Indeed, when her journal was finally unearthed by her descendant, she couldn’t help but wonder if these exploits were true, or simply a story her ancestor liked to imagine herself into on her off days. Tough to say.

Equius Zahhak, the Showpony: Alright, y’all knew I couldn’t stay away from that one. Equius was something of a puzzle to his descendent when Horuss actually went back through his (meticulously kept) caste records. By all accounts, he was an intelligent, capable, hardworking man. A tinkerer in his off hours, he was a pioneer in the field of robotics, and by all accounts not romantically unsuccessful. And yet, the man never seemed concerned with making a name for himself. Instead, over the course of his long life, you could perpetually find him at the shoulder of someone more powerful and important than he was. Was he....a bodyguard? Trophy husband? Butler? Hard to say, but there he was. Trotted out like the loyal steed he was.

Gamzee Makara, the Borrower: A peculiar legend of clownery regards a strange “hobo looking motherfucker what will wander into your hive and be all and snatching up your most secretous things for the messiah’s wider purposes”. So far as is known, he is not malignant, although its not unknown for a troll to occasionally disappear while running after him to retrieve their stolen items. Even without that possible threat, its usually not worth it to chase after him: the things he takes have a way of ending up back in your hands, one miraculous way or another. Gamzee is an itinerant monk, wandering the countrysides. Some passerby he’ll occasionally offer aid to, or proverbs. Which might be helpful if anyone could decipher what they mean. Ultimately he’s a happy man, if prone to fits of temper and bouts of melancholy. Still, as he notes, he’s got motherfucking friends all over these globes :o) what’s a motherfucker gotta be lonely for?

Eridan Ampora, the Magician: Well.....the Empress doesn’t exactly need Orphaners. As such, the violets are largely left to their own devices. Given they’re often prone to creative endeavours, Eridan found his own outlet. He became renowned as an illusionist, and at one point his shows were capable of drawing large and massive crowds, who would gasp in awe at his tricks and wonder if the violet really did have a trace of magic in his blood. He seemed to like the idea, eventually penning a popular grubling children’s series about a boy with those very abilities (which eventually found its way into the young hands of his descendent). However, celebrity wasn’t necessarily the best mix with Eridan’s temperament. He was prone to some truly disastrous quadrant outings, as well as developing several more addictive habits to drown out the oddly oppressive loneliness that permeated him. These bad habits were only worsened by the worst thing to ever happen to Eridan Ampora: the internet. With access to videos of his performance, most were pretty easily able to spot the trick of it, and hell hath no fury like a cyberbullying teen going after a b list internet celebrity. He took it as a sign to swear off the craft forever and lived the rest of his life on book residuals, alone, drunk, and miserable

Feferi Peixes, Her Highness: Not as much to say about this one, as Feferi is the one we have the most information about. Like it says on the tine, she instituted the coddling system on Beforus. This was widely considered a Bad Idea by those victimized by it, but you couldn’t pay anyone in Feferi’s court to tell her that. The Empress is sweet tempered and excitable, it’d be like telling a child 12 perigree night is cancelled. Perhaps the great irony is that as Feferi gets older, the thing that frustrates her most is that it feels like no one takes her seriously as a person. Merely as a figurehead. Still, she lives her life on Beforus ultimately convinced this is what’s best for the greater good. 

[bedlamgames]

Q&A #93

Next update is very close to being done, so time to get back on the answering questions horse. Plan is to also do these as twitlongers for those that no longer want to deal with tumblr. 

Anonymous said: The good news is that for explicit content posted in the past, tumblr seems to be willing to let it stay (if my reading of their announcement is correct) -- you may be able to keep this blog as an archive, but wherever you choose to move I'd gladly follow. (I'm already pledged for a dollar on Patreon so that shouldn't be a problem.)

Actually, belay my last message, creating your own website might not be a bad idea. I know that SilverBardGames has their own website and that's like my other indie game developer (with explicit content) that I follow. Word of mouth might still work to spread the good word.

That’s the plan. I do definitely need to sort out a website though sometime. If this experience has shown me anything it’s that relying on a single resource is a baaaad idea. 

justanothorguy1 said: Where are you going to post you new download links for you games?

Will still post them here, the patreon, TFGames, and the Collective. Will also post them going forward on the twitter. 

rafaelivri said: 1. Somehow my slaver that I recruit started with cum lust+++. Is this even intentional (that they can have it from the very beginning)? 2. Any way to get rid of it? 

Worked out what was causing that and it should be fixed in the update. 

Anonymous said: I'm not sure if this a bug but recently I've been getting a lot of slaves and slavers whose descriptions say that they're barely taller than a goblin.

Maybe a weird run of RNG? Not heard that from anyone else yet so one to keep an eye on I think. 

Anonymous said: was wondering if theres a walkthough for no haven somewhere? i played a bunch of it and interested to figure out what i missed

There is a wiki which you can find a link to on the No Haven page here. Not something under my control though so no idea if there’s a walkthrough out there. 

Anonymous said: watch as your posts get flagged anyway tho *shrug*

Been over a month and no flagged posts so worked out how to handle that apparently :D

Anonymous said: I don't think your link in the latest blogpost is supposed to lead to some tony mo and his videogame loveletters on patreon.

Oops missed a character in the copy/paste. Thanks for the spot. 

Anonymous said: i had a idea for a no heaven maybe some content where your bed warmer slave takes control of you in bed if there dominate and your secretly submissive. and if the there a dominator or hypono they start taking more control of your over time secretly controlling you and camp form behind close door.

That’s been on the books for awhile where certain slaves will be very dangerous to have as a bedwarmer. For a start those mantras coming in the next update just might end up being used on you in future updates. 

joyfullyunadulteratedruins said: Is the Hypnopics thread gone? That's the only way I can download No Haven now, and the download link here is still on version 0.821

Looks to be still there to me?

Anonymous said: [no haven 0.832] imgur a/d4SJMAC is it intentional that a fel person doesn't want to get corrupted?

[no haven 0.832] imgur /a/J0ooMqC the love being desecrated drone until entirely embedded sounds to me like the check doesn't have to be done anymore, but I keep having to do it.

Yeah for some reason they may not always think that you have their best interests at heart :)

That other one is a temporary bodge of their thoughts to overwhelm their resistance. In future though there will be more permanent alterations possible like with slaves in the next update. 

Anonymous said: Could we, in the future, have a fourth-wall option to discard a slave or slaver? No reward given, just a simple deletion. It's happened to me a few times where assignments that involve specific slaves - such as the lamia in Dance the Night Away or the drow males in the Deep Mtns quest - bug out at the turn in and leave behind a slave you cannot get rid of. Also been numerous times where I've gotten an abysmal roll on a slaver and had to wait for a guaranteed disaster quest to get rid of them.

Previous anon here who was asking for the fourth-wall purge. Yes, I am aware that there's a quest to remove unwanted slavers. However, since you can't reliably force it to pop, its usefulness is inconsistent at best. Also, it gives a payout and only works on slavers - the purge I'm asking for would be more universal and give nothing. Just a convenient deletion to improve gameplay. The accompanying picture could be a screaming stickman being sucked into a black hole.

I’d prefer to fix bugs rather than do workarounds if possible. Been down that path before and it only complicate things badly. 

The reason why there’s no outright dismiss a slaver is that from the beginning on of the challenges I wanted was some of your own slavers so just booting them would lose a lot of fun possibilities. 

Saying that I do want to do more with morale/reputation so that slavers have a chance to get fed up enough that you can drive them away. I’m also planning a new assignment which will be a risk free depending on choices way to dump unwanted slaves without need for chancing the Whore Makers.  

Anonymous said: Hi! Thank you for for that great game! Some questions about the future: 1) Will we have any mechanics with C:Devices and C:Enchantment in the near future? 2) Any plans to expand the list of slave trainings with anal/vaginal tranings or something else?

Thank you!

Maybe not near, near future, but certainly sooner rather than later as both I want to have as encampment roles. Next update also has some of the groundwork for enchanting. 

Yes absolutely more training is coming including bimbo training in the next update. 

nh-maikochan said: Bug report: Had a slaver level up and had the option for the aspect "Friends in High Places", however, when I clicked on -View Choices-, it instead gave me the entry for "A Friend in Every Port", however the text for that made reference to Scouting the Deep Mountains instead of the Dreadsea Coast. "Aspect: A Friend in Every Port - Requires Friendly and two Scout the Deep Mountains Success or Crits, awards an additional two assignments on Scout the Deep Mountains Success or Crit results."

So just had an interesting bug. I took a slave to auction, my camp leader going along on the assignment, got a critical result, and while the assignment said that the slave was sold, she ended up coming back with me. Some factors that may have had an effect: Had gotten word that bimbo slaves were in demand, and the slave was indeed a bimbo and my leader has Inquisitor, which activated giving me an assignment.

First one I’ve sorted for the update. 

Other was that slave bimboborn? Cause I think that might be causing issues with selling. 

Anonymous said: Hi! What do you think about oppotunity not only gain new perks when slaver lvl up, but to remove existing ones, such as Unruly or Reserved for example? Thank you!

My current plan is to use hypnotic to tackle those unwanted mental traits. Certainly not a bad idea though. 

Decided that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to pull in questions from other sources to give as much info as possible out in one place at one time. So going forward I’m also going to be including some of the questions asked elsewhere along with including the answers I made. 

From TFGames: I'm a little confused as to biomancy and hypnotism and changing other characters. The odds seem to really not like being "in the field" but I can't figure out where else to be? Also, I can't seem to figure out what hypnotic triggers actually do when you put them on a slaver. Is there a way to alter someone's personality via hypnotism or domination? In terms of customization and exporting... is it just the char-gen where you can export a character? Is there a way to say, see a slave get captured, manipulate or change them via training and influence, turn them into a slaver and then export that character and see what happens on their career? Alternatively, is there a way to change the names of the slaves you capture and slavers you recruit? For say, immersion purposes >.> Or generate and specify your own "number two" ?

Hypnotic triggers on slavers currently are used for respect checks which are when a slaver doesn't want to do something like go whore themselves out, where a slutty outfit, or be corrupted and you need to persuade them. Using the triggers is a lot more effective than some of the other options. In the next update triggers will also be used on slaves to help with their training and unlock new bonuses. In future those slave mantras will be able to be used on anyone including yourself, and I'm also planning extra usage to deal with annoying traits like reserved and unhinged. Currently it's just the main character. I'd like to do more, but given I also want to move away from rags I'm not planning to do anything with it for now. There is an option to nickname under help and options. I don't think it's ideal though in the current implementation and it needs another look sometime.

From TFGames: Is there any get mind controlled content besides the "dreams" ascociated with Lacey's toy?

Being possessed is the main one which is a rare outcome from corruption which then has a bunch of follow up text at end of day, during respect checks, and leadership challenges. The Quick as You Like mini-adventure if you go on it assignment has MC content, especially if you 'win' the race. There's the hidden cults when you go into town where you can lose control. There also might be some assignments that have a bit of MC action if you go on them. If you're submissive there's also mind control content in the story line assignment to unlock the hidden area and slave auctions.

From the Patreon: A suggestion to add more interplay with your slavers in NH - in the "Talk" menu add a topic called "ask for rumours" where you can ask your slavers if they have any leads/tips. Depending on certain factors they could offer you a tip-off for a mission (type & quality determined by slavers type and your relation with them), to be added to your list, in exchange for gold/supplies/days off/sexual favours. Could also lead into leadership challenges if you rely too much on a slaver. Slavers could also have an x% chance of approaching you for a chat each day and ask you for things and you could choose what to charge them (no charge leads to a relation increase, refusing outright leads to a decrease). Would be a way of getting slavers to wear things/do things that they otherwise wouldn't and vice-versa. Looking forward to the update.

That's a really neat idea. Added it to my to do list.

[theophenes]

The one where Mike talks about Wrestling, because writing plots for other people’s characters is easier.

fOkay, so I’ll be the first to admit that it’s been a while since I’ve actually seen more than friggin’ clips, but there are two things that have recently been trending, that have stuck in my brain:

John Cena wants and Undertaker match, despite the fact that Taker is getting too damn old for this shit.

And the current tag team champions are Bray Wyatt (basically some sort of yokel cult leader with a rocking chair who convinces everyone under him to rock beards) and Matt Hardy (Equally crazy, regularly changes personality by walking into a lake, pretty certain he thinks he’s some sort of God or something)

The reality is that Taker, as much as he is the original god-damned icon, and one of the longest standing people in this business, the reality is that he needs to retie. And frankly, he deserves to retire in fucking style. No amateur shit. No small-time stuff. Nah, he needs to o to hell in a balze of glory. Frankly, this would take msot of a year to set up, but it’d be good. 

It starts simply enough. We get a few of the usual promos leading up to Halloween, through September and October. Weird jump cuts, random shots of Taker shoveling dirt, dragging the coffin, et cetera, the usual stuff. All hype, no clear knowledge.

Mean while, the tag team belt goes up in August, and is lost to, crap, I dunno, Brand new day in a 3v3 (Not like they couldn’t get a third for this, we’ll say Wray brings back Randy Orton under the Freebirds precedent). Anyhow. Hardy blames Wray for bringing in “The Serpent, whose energy corrupted our team” and Wray “Questions the convictions of a broken man.” By mid october, they’re regularly not helping each other in tag matches. Wray decides to put Matt’s convictions to godhood to the test, pushing him to fight the symbol of his failing resolve: A tag-team of Jeff Hardy and Daniel Bryant, doing the team high-flyer bullshit that makes and audience roar. This becomes a feature event at the end of september. It goes badly. Wray manages a win, but he has to go dirty to do it, forcing Matt to snap between his personae to save Jeff from a near-fatal blow at the last minute. Bryant gets to be angry about a bunch of things, and looks good while the audience watches him get a dramatic fake injury.

First week of October, Cena gets a match against Seamus, makes a big monologue (he loves making fun of that guy, seems like a good warm-up) and the match goes on, but is interrupted by Kane, in the classic demon mask (You didn’t think Kane wouldn't get to be the last big Taker story, did you?). He bombs Seamus, causing Cena to lose by DQ. He then grabs a mic. “You demanded my brother’s head at Wrestlemania,” he begins, growling in his usual ominous routine. “You demanded the dead man. You claim to rise above the hate. To be beyond it. Above it. You are not above death, Cena. Death takes all. Death...consumes us. Empowers us. In order to defeat Taker, in order to earn it, you must first fight the true Demon. Slay the demon, and you shall have your match with death!”

Dramatic? Over the top? Damn straight. Bray Wyatt, lacking a tag team partner, gos back into singles matches. He gets into some okay fights, but cuts promos going back to creepy shit, occasionally cut by taker. Everyone knows the match. Bane and Cena doing a cage match. Bryatt, meanwhile, seems crazier than usual. Mumblings about prophecies. About angels and devils. Claiming that the only way to defeat the false gods is to slay a Demon, and taunt death. Everyone thinks he’s talking about Cena. He’s not.

In a few weeks, we get our pay-per-view. A cage match between Bane and Cena. No interruptions. But before it, a new match. Daniel Bryant versus Finn Balor Tables. Bryant decides to wear his cape, Fina goes out in his more normal get-up (the classic paint was nixed because fighting Marvel and Disney over the Venom resemblance seemed like a bad play a month after the movie). Bray Wyatt, shows up, interfering on Bryant’s behalf, although Bryant clearly doesn’t want the help. Ominous masked figures, doing the weird cult thing, grab Balor after the count, running with the body. Wray knocks down the security trying to stop him, and just grins at Bryant. Cena fights Bane, and wins in the rather boring way he usually does.

In November, he gets another promo, where he explains/sermonizes that the demon’s blood was strong enough, after being tested by the dragon. However, it required a cleasning, holy power to draw its true strength out.

After a series of escalating matches where Bryant ends up defeating multiple former members of the Wyatt family, and removing their “brain-washing” by kicking their ass in the ring, Bray and Daniel get a PPV feud going. Bray “summons” his demon Finn in a new look during the match after the lights flicker, and then they fight. The new “Demon of Wyatt” runs amok, and then the match ends.

The new, Wyatt-endorsed “Evil Finn” persona shows up, with perfectly normal Finn doing perfectly normal face stuff, and demon Finn doing weird heel stuff. They never acknowledge each other’s actions or bouts.

 In January, we get more Taker promo’s. Two weeks in, at Raw, Cena has a match, and it ends with the ring going dark. Taker emerges. He grabs the mic. “You have defeated my brother, and we are good to our word. At wrestlemania, we will fight.”

Cena hesitates. “We?“

Taker grins. “Soon, you will learn.”

Bray gets more ambitious, deciding to tag-team with Demon Finn for the tag championship. They win, but again, the stage darkens. Kane emerges, saying there can only be one demon. Only one monster. Bray agrees, and says the mosnter will fight on Raw, in February. However, each demon msut offer their flesh, to prove who is mightier. Bray spends time as Demon Finn’s “manager/handler” in the interim, while Kane occasionally shows up and power bombs somebody to prove his point. They get their fight. However, Kane, being a crafty, weird half-demon, decides to make it a tag-team event. “A demon should bring his sorcerer,” he declares, and who else comes out to confront Wyatt? Jeff hardy, wearing some bizarre, hell-fire outfit, chanting sorcerous lines. Hardy and Wray brawl. Finn and Kane fight. They lose the title, as demon-king Hardy distract Wray, causign him to lose “control” over Finn.

However, Wray has another dirty trick up his sleeve. The same masked cultists that kidnapped Balor appear, and take the weakened Kane and Hardy, overwhelming them with numbers, dragging them away, one of them helping a now-titleless Wray limp out of the arena, leaving the title in the air (this gives management a chance to use a 2v2v2 tag-team event to decide who should get the belt at a big pay-per-view or foreign show).

 Another week passes, and another. We get a new promo segment. In it, we have video of Bray holding the mask of Kane, and the hair of Hardy. He rambles on, about having stolen the mantles of the great demon and the false prophet, and now only needing death’s own head for his collection. He claims to have stripped them of their falsehoods, leaving them to rot.

A new, clean Kane that resembles the corporate look, no mask, no growl, and a weirdly sedate Hardy appear on stage for a few weeks. Jeff and Matt go back to being a tag team again, while the “new” Kane takes some time off for now. 

It’s almost March, we’re near to Wrestlemania, and people are talking. Where is Kane. Is Bray going to debut his plan at Wrestlemania? Why haven’t we heard from Taker all month?

Three weeks before the big night, answers come. Taker appears, alone, monologueing. Cena interrupts the monologue half-way through, because Cena never lets anyone else talk. Cena goes on about how he’ll take on the Undertaker, how he’ll fight and win, because that is what he does. Cena demands his match at Wrestlemania, and gloats about how he defeated Kane--and the lights darken, silently.

When the lights go back on, We see the ring surround by masked figures, the Wyat family’s strange enforcers we see Bray standing there, looking at the other too, smiling. He speaks about he too, has defeated the demon, and throws Kane’s mask at Takers feet, spitting on it for good measure. “You desire vengeance, dead man?”

Taker holds up two fingers. “Two coffins, then.”

Bray smiles. “I’ll bring one for you, your brother wasn’t using it.”

Wrestlemania. Half a year of build-up. Cena enters first, with his usual fanfare. He charges in heroically. He waves to the crowd.

The next entry is Taker, complete with the old entrance. The druids, cloaked and hidden, not seen for years, bring in the coffin.A brief montage of the dead man shows up, but he arrives at the ring confident. Angry. Ready.

Wyatt arrives, flanked by his cult. his champion, Finn, is pushing a different coffin, cast in what looks like iron. It seems to smoke. Finn is wearing what looks like a remodeled version of Kane’s face mask. It looks more like an Alice Cooper video, to be honest.

The match begins, Cena and Wyatt both charging for Undertaker. Taker holds up well--he still has the skills, but it’s two on one, both eager to put taker in the coffin. And then, right when it looks like Bray has the pin, Cena on the floor in pain, the gray coffin opens, and out comes Kane, charging over the ropes at Bray. Finn attempts to stop him, but gets knock to the floor. Kane alternates between fighting Bray and punching Taker, because if anyone is going to end Taker, it’s Kane, damnit.

This four-way clusterfuck lasts for over half and hour. Pins, chokeslams, stunners, lariats, the damn works. After an eternity of fighting, Cena and Kane manage to toss wray into the wooden coffin--and it breaks in two. He returns the favor, whipping Kane into the “stone coffin,” which shatters. Cena gets chucked through the Spanish announcers table, because it should never survive. Taker gets pinned by Wray. Cena pins Kane. They face each other. Wray, making a show over the fallen Taker, performs the Last Ride on Cena. Cean kicks out, attempts and STF on Wray. Wray has no choice but to prove himself as the Dead Man’s successor, forcing him to imitate the Tombstone piledriver.

After the bell is called, the four men slowly walk out of the Arena, happy to Retire the Phenom with a true potent successor. Bray, as tribute, starts wearing the dramatic leather from time to time. Finn occasionally uses the Kane mask during a PPV entrance. And both of these men get to retire to the hall of fame in style, knowing their legacies, of the undead cult-leader and his twisted demon-spawn brother, are celebrated and honored by some damn talented wrestlers in this generation.

[lynchgirl90]

The #TwinPeaks Season 3 Blu-ray is a Wonderful Package for 2017’s Greatest Piece of Narrative Entertainment

David Lynch‘s stunning Twin Peaks season 3, also known as Twin Peaks: The Return, comes to Blu-ray as a must-have box set loaded with fascinating and revealing looks behind the production. Just as they did so many years ago, David Lynch and Mark Frost have created a TV event unlike any other before, and probably unlike anything that will ever come after it. Here, as one cohesive Blu-ray, we have the chance to watch the saga unfold from beginning to end, which might very well be the best way to experience the show. Our Twin Peaks season 3 Blu-ray review below pulls back the red curtain and journeys into the unknown. Join me?

The Owls Are Not What They Seem

The greatest piece of narrative entertainment from 2017 was not in movie theaters, but rather playing on Showtime over the course of one weird, wild summer. Defying the odds, premium cable channel Showtime parked a large amount of money on David Lynch’s doorstep and convinced him to come out of semi-retirement to resurrect his cult TV series Twin Peaks. The results were stunning.

Lynch, the brilliant, mad mind behind Blue Velvet, Lost Highway and more, hadn’t made a film since 2006’s Inland Empire, yet any fears that the iconic filmmaker might have grown rusty in his time off were quickly assuaged as the beginning of the new Twin Peaks unfolded. Lynch and Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost had pulled out all the stops to return audiences to a place both wonderful and strange, and we all got a lot more than we could’ve possibly bargained for.

The importance of the original Twin Peaks can not be overstated. TV as we know it today, everything we lump into the “Peak TV” category of high quality, cinematic television, can trace its roots back to what Lynch and Frost did with the original Twin Peaks. He brought the auteur theory and the avant-garde to mainstream primetime TV, and television has been paying tribute ever since. The original Peaks only lasted two seasons, but after its cancellation in 1991, the show took on a life of its own, its cult fandom growing to monolithic proportions. Lynch revisited the town with 1992’s prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which polarized audiences and took the mythology of the series into even stranger, near-indecipherable directions. Something curious happened after that: the show became even more popular, but the show that newer fans seemed to latch onto wasn’t actually the show that Lynch had created.

A meme-ification of Twin Peaks had set in, fueled by the Tumblr generation fond of sharing out of context screen grabs and quick gifs that may look amazing but don’t even come close to capturing the aura of what Lynch was going for. So when Lynch and Frost announced that “That gum you like is going to come back in style,” there was an uneasiness with how modern TV viewers would react to whatever it was they were about to witness. We live in the age of the live-tweet, where audiences have trouble putting their phone down to entirely focus on their entertainment, and are instead prone to firing off an instant reaction with the hopes of raking up a few “likes.” This is not the ideal type of viewing experience for something created by Lynch, and if audiences thought they were going to be in for instant gratification with the new Twin Peaks, they were setting themselves up for failure.

The same foul fate would befall the aforementioned Tumblr generation, who apparently wanted nothing deeper than endless shots of cherry pie, black coffee, and Audrey Horne’s saddle shoes. Anyone who dares to cruise the Twin Peakshashtag on Tumblr while the new series was airing likely found themselves in a world of woe, with Tumblr users bemoaning that the new Twin Peaks was denying them their dream of Special Agent Dale Cooper and Audrey Horne finally falling into each other’s arms at the Double R Diner while Shelly Johnson serves them up a slice of pie. In short, what they wanted was fan service. And fan service is not what David Lynch traffics in. I doubt the term even exists in his vocabulary.

Instead, Lynch provided viewers with one of the most audacious 18 hours ever committed to television. A daring, mind-warping journey back to the town of Twin Peaks and beyond. He blew a big, black hole into the very mythology of the show, and created something stranger than anyone viewing the original series would’ve imagined.

I Am Dead Yet I Live

The original Twin Peaks began as a procedural drama, then blossomed into something nearly unclassifiable. After local teen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) is found murdered, FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) arrives in town to investigate. Cooper gets to know the town, and the townsfolk, as he tries to crack the Palmer case.

And then things get weird.

Twin Peaks made what many consider to be a huge mistake by wrapping up the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer rather quickly, and then becoming stranger and stranger until it found itself canceled. The problem: the series ended on one major cliffhanger, with Cooper trapped in The Black Lodge, an eerie, extra-dimensional location populated with backward-talking people, billowing red curtains, and flashes of lighting. Meanwhile, an evil Cooper doppelgänger, connected to the malevolent force known as BOB, took the real Cooper’s place back in the real world.

There was never any real chance that Lynch and Frost would quickly sew up this dangling thread, however. Instead, when Twin Peaks returned to Showtime, it expanded the mythology of the series and took viewers on a long journey that was all part of Cooper’s return to the real world. But Cooper isn’t the real focus of Twin Peaks. Laura Palmer is. For Lynch, Laura Palmer is a representation of horribly wronged innocence. Fire Walk With Me revealed the traumatic events leading up to Laura’s death, and Lynch’s focus seems to be on the cosmic injustice of it all. The cruel blindness of fate. Laura Palmer is a force of something pure and good in the universe, and no matter how hard Cooper might try, he can never really save her. But perhaps that’s not what’s important. Perhaps what’s important is that he’ll keep trying.

Twin Peaks season 3 has Cooper escape the Black Lodge by taking the place of hapless, corrupt Las Vegas dwelling insurance salesman Dougie Jones (also played by MacLachlan). In reality, Dougie is a “tulpa” – a being created from the selected thoughts of different individuals. Tibetan mythology describe tulpas as “extra bodies that were created from one person’s mind in order to travel to spiritual realms.”

Rather than have Cooper escape the Black Lodge and come back to the real world acting like his old self, Lynch and Frost have the agent stuck in a childlike state, as if all the years stuck in an alternate dimension has blasted away a part of his consciousness. Then, in the most delightfully devious twist of all, Lynch proceeds to keep Cooper in this state through nearly the entire series. There are triggers that we keep expecting will snap Cooper out of his Dougie state: coffee, pie, etc. But Lynch isn’t interested in an easy way out. Instead, he engrosses us into the life of Dougie Jones, as the traumatized Cooper adapts to his new reality with Dougie’s wife Janey-E (Naomi Watts) and son Sonny Jim (Pierce Gagnon).

You could practically hear the groans of certain viewers as Lynch refused to break Cooper out of the Jones family mold, yet this material provides us with some of the most incredible moments of the revival series, and gives Kyle MacLachlan a chance to shine, playing up both the comic relief elements of Dougie Jones (see: Dougie in a casino yelling “Hello-oooooo!” at slot machines) mixed with more heartbreaking scenes (see: Dougie watching Sonny Jim with a look of profound sadness on his face).

Twin Peaks sets up a horde of new characters, almost all of which become memorable almost instantaneously – a feat few other shows can pull off. There’s the Mitchum Brothers (Jim Belushi and Robert Knepper), who are both trying to murder Dougie Jones before growing fond of him on the basis of a dream. There are two assassins (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tim Roth), who spend most of their time in a van shooting the breeze when they’re not shooting people. And most important of all, there’s Diane (Laura Dern), Cooper’s old flame who teams up with FBI Director Gordon Cole (Lynch) and company to find out what happened to the real Cooper. Dern, with her various wigs, foul mouth, chain smoking and multi-colored manicure, steals every scene she appears in.

But what of Twin Peaks, the town that started it all? Lynch brings us back to the town, and gives us a glimpse into the lives of old favorites: Shelly (Mädchen Amick), Bobby (Dana Ashbrook), Big Ed (Everett McGill), Norma (Peggy Lipton), Andy (Harry Goaz), Lucy (Kimmy Robertson), Hawk (Michael Horse), Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn), and more, but the new season isn’t so much interested in closing out their stories as it is showing the effects of the passage of time. That’s not to say there aren’t narrative conclusions. In one of the new season’s most satisfying moments, Big Ed and Norma finally seal the deal on their romance after years apart. Lynch stages this in a lovely way, with Norma’s hands coming from just off frame onto Big Ed’s shoulders, while Big Ed closes his eyes in contentment.

These lovely moments are contrasted with stark, disturbing horror. In the opening episode alone, a nameless, shapeless monster escapes a containment unit and lays waste to a pair of lovers in a scene drenched in blood and confusion. And at the center of the series as a whole is the terrifying notion that evil, in all its forms, will almost always come out ahead. After nearly 18 hours, Cooper manages to alter time and save Laura Palmer from her teenage demise. Yet the aftershocks of this change are not ideal – the world as Cooper (and by extension, the audience) knows it has been altered forever. The final few seconds of the series find Cooper and Laura in a state of limbo, with Cooper absently wondering “What year is this?” before Laura, looking up at the house that once held such trauma and abuse for her in another life, emits a piercing, blood-chilling scream that seems to be echoing across time and space itself (note: if there was an award for Best Scream, Sheryl Lee would be the clear winner).

What are we to make of this cryptic, haunting conclusion? The beauty of Twin Peaks is that Lynch and Frost aren’t interested in providing us with clear answers. One of the quotes from the revival series states, “We are like the dreamer who dreams and lives inside the dream.” This is as clear a Twin Peaks mission statement as we’ll ever receive. The series as a whole is a dream that the audience is living inside, and like dreams, the narrative is open to endless interpretation. And best of all, no interpretation can really be considered incorrect. You can take away a million different morals from Twin Peaks as a whole, but I think a strong case can be made for the unsettling message that evil – in all its forms – will frequently come out ahead. The important thing is for committed, determined people like Dale Cooper to continue to try to stop it anyway. Cooper may not always succeed, but we can take some sort of cold comfort in the fact that he’ll try anyway.

Phenomenon

The Blu-ray special feature Phenomenon is broken into three distinct parts: Creation, Life After Death and Renaissance. As a whole, this feature is a fun but mostly boilerplate look at the series as a whole. It’s quick and to the point, and was likely originally cut to serve as more of a commercial for the revival series than a truly in-depth look at Twin Peaks. Creation looks at the show’s origins, from its time on ABC to the fan reaction, including the popular “watching parties” that had audiences coming together to experience each weekly episode as a group. Life After Death examines the growing cult fandom that sprung up after the show had been canceled. Fan magazines and conventions gave Twin Peaks whole new life and kept the series alive for an entire new generation born after the first show had long been canceled. Renaissance is a crash-course in bringing the show back to life on Showtime. Again, there’s no real insight here or depth. Lynch and frost pop-up for quick soundbites, but anyone hoping for the creators to delve into the process of bringing Twin Peaks back from the dead need look elsewhere.

Behind the Red Curtain and I Had Bad Milk in Dehradun

Richard Beymer, who plays Twin Peaks character Ben Horne, shot these two mini-documentaries that appear in the Blu-ray special features. There’s no narrative thread to these two features. Instead, they provide a raw, uncensored look at Lynch and company on the Black Lodge set, setting up shots. These two features provide us with what will become a running theme of the behind-the-scenes footage provided on the Blu-ray: shot after shot of Lynch at work.

If you ever wanted to sit back and watch David Lynch direct, the features provided here are a gold mine. They also provide an amusing, even charming look at how normal it all is. Lynch deals with such strange, dark, violent material that it can be easy to think of him as a dark, brooding weirdo, but the footage here shows him as an affable, laid-back fellow who knows exactly what he wants from a scene and how to get it. These slice-of-life moments give us an opportunity to see Lynch help Kyle MacLachlan tie a necktie, or give Sherilyn Fenn a cigarette as he talks with her about her character. Speaking of cigarettes, get ready to see a lot of them. Lynch is constantly smoking in these behind-the-scenes moments, an American Spirit cigarette always perched in his mouth or resting between his fingers. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself longing for a smoke after watching all of this.

The only downside to this, and other behind-the-scenes features is that some of the magic of the show is lost. We’re peeling back the red curtain here, and seeing how the sausage is made. The otherworldly nature of Twin Peaks drops away as we see numerous crew members making everything come together. In one amusing moment, we see Lynch and company watching a clip from the original Twin Peaks on YouTube so they can match a shot up to a new scene

In A Very Lovely Dream: One Week in Twin Peaks

Filmmaker Charles DeLauzirika put together this on-location feature that goes behind the scenes. Not much of the material here is very comprehensive, but it does provide a fly-on-the-wall look at the production, including actors discussing how strange it was to step back into roles they hadn’t played in more than two decades. The best moments come when we get to watch Lynch direct – almost always through a megaphone. If you’re looking for a bit more, however, this isn’t the feature for you. Instead, you should move quickly to IMPRESSIONS: A Journey Behind the Scenes of Twin Peaks.

IMPRESSIONS: A Journey Behind the Scenes of Twin Peaks

Without question, the best features on the new Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series Blu-ray release are the series of behind-the-scenes films bundled together as IMPRESSIONS: A Journey Behind the Scenes of Twin Peaks. Longtime Lynch documentarian and friend Jason S. shot these 10 revealing, fascinating films (each runs about 30 minutes), covering almost the entire filming schedule of the new series.

Once again, we have Lynch constantly smoking his American Spirit cigarettes, but these features are much more in-depth than Behind the Red Curtain and I Had Bad Milk in Dehradun. We get to watch as Lynch and his crew come up with character names on the fly, and cracking up when he thinks up silly-sounding names. This feature also reveals how hands-on Lynch is: at one point, we see him sculpting one of the show’s props himself – a spout made of styrofoam that will eventually serve as the giant teapot-like contraption that took the place of the dearly departed David Bowie.

Again, the best moments are those when we get to watch Lynch direct, like a sequence where he chats with Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern in a motel room set. Lynch has nicknames for all his actors, and it’s charming to listen to him refer to Dern as “Tidbit” and MacLachlan as “Kale.” Later, he has to talk Dern into letting makeup artists cover her face in bread dough. After the scene is complete, Dern gets payback by applying the same dough to Lynch’s face. It’s a charming, funny glimpse into the carefree, friendly atmosphere prevalent on Lynch’s sets. “I wouldn’t have a career if it wasn’t for David,” MacLachlan said once. “He pretty much brought me up in the film world and spoiled me; we’ve all spoken about how the set is, he creates the environment and the joyfulness and the creativity. I’ve been spoiled forever working with David.” The footage here is proof positive of that statement.

Still, there are moments where Lynch can lose his temper. In one sequence, not filmed on set but rather in a meeting with his crew, Lynch gets frustrated when he’s told that they’ll only be able to film in one location for two days. The filmmaker grows apoplectic at this time constraint, shouting, “Why do I only have two fucking days?” and complaining that given the chance, he could spend “weeks” on certain sets “dreaming up new ideas.”

The only negative thing I’ll say about this feature: the footage is (sporadically) narrated by Josef Maria Schäfers, in what I presume is an attempt to mock (or perhaps pay loving tribute to) the existential narration that filmmaker Werner Herzog usually gives his documentaries. The narration here is unnecessary and distracting and grows truly tiresome after a while.

Goodbye, Margaret

Other features on the Blu-ray include a series of David Lynch produced promos for the series. Lynch managed to avoid having to cut a proper trailer for the Showtime revival, and instead put together these abstract clips that teased the tone without giving anything away. Also included is a behind-the-scenes photo gallery, a series of alternating versions of the Rancho Rosa production logo that started each episode, and the full San Diego Comic-Con 2017 Twin Peaks Panel, which you can watch in full above.

As a whole, the Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series Blu-ray is a must-own for any David Lynch or Twin Peaks fan. There’s a wealth of material here beyond the series itself, but best of all is the opportunity to watch the episodes back-to-back, and watch as the create an elaborate, hypnotic saga the likes of which we’ll never see again.

Full list of special features:

BLU-RAY AND DVD:

IMPRESSIONS: A Journey Behind the Scenes of Twin Peaks

Phenomenon

Rancho Rosa Logos (2:25)

San Diego Comic-Con 2017 Twin Peaks Panel (61:26)

David Lynch Produced Promos

The Man with the Grey Elevated Hair (29:40)

Tell it Martin (29:08)

Two Blue Balls (24:14)

The Number of Completion (29:17)

Bad Binoculars (28:08)

See You on the Other Side Dear Friend (30:00)

Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers (26:44)

A Bloody Finger in Your Mouth (26:49)

The Polish Accountant (28:05)

A Pot of Boiling Oil (38:32)

Part 1: Creation (4:40)

Part 2: Life After Death (4:50)

Part 3: Renaissance (4:50)

Behind-the-scenes Photo Gallery

Piano (1:02)

Donut (:32)

Woods (:32)

People (:32)

Places (:32)

Albert (1:02)

In – cinema (1:32)

BLU-RAY EXCLUSIVE:

A Very Lovely Dream: One Week in Twin Peaks (27:09)

Behind the Red Curtain (29:17)

I Had Bad Milk in Dehradun (28:11)

Link (TP) 

[galimatios]

fear thy fortune chatlog notes

thinking abt the underdeveloped au i have in that weird off color fantasy universe that i realized is probably similar in ways to bloodborne even before i knew abt bloodbornes plot but this is nice bc i can solidify parts of it and i can probably also combine it with the knights au i have

OK I FORGOT TO PUT A CW HERE BUT CW FOR ABUSE MENT AND GORE MENT

somewhere located in present day west asia slash east europe theres a country divided into numerous states in which princes and princesses (princex (poc)/princen/etc for gender neutral options) are perpetually in contest with eachother for the right to be the divine ruler of the country

monarchy is not guided by blood, rather the church is responsible for finding the chosen candidates via prophecy, fururesight, dream interpretation, etc, and these kids are taken from their homes and reared as royalty the nature of this country is ... severe. pain is a gift, proof that one is alive. much ceremony is based in sacrifice, bloodspill, bloodsports, and pain endurance. magic as practiced by the church is extremely powerful in terms of healing so almost all wounds can be healed provided the heart still beats its essentially one big huge freakish cult of a country that has customs that seem barbaric to outsiders

the divine ruler of each state is the princens, though more often than not their councils do most of the governing with the princen merely being a puppet figurehead. they go through rigorous training to sharpen their minds and endurance against all types of pain, so training includes physical, mental, emotional trials in which the princen is supposed to keep a clear mind, concentrate on mediation or some mantra, bearing whatever is thrown at them. additionally they receive the best training in both combat and politics as well as magic. not all princen can withstand the requirements ofc so they.. vary quite a bit in terms of stability/constitution. its a p sick system even without the knights added in bc thats super messed up

the knights essentially belong to their princens in heart body mind and soul, and each princen receives exactly one knight soulbound to them. they also undergo the same scouting process once the princen is identified, and they undergo similar training except theyre also essentially brainwashed into believing their entire purpose in life is to serve and protect their princen no matter what. obviously this aint healthy! knights delude themselves into it so hard theyll fight for the system that literally abuses them! but thats how cults work

that being said knights are extremely powerful. they act as the sole bodyguard of their princen and believe me you dont want to get inbetween a knight and their prince. they are known especially for their brutality when their lords are threatened. it is extremely common for limbs to be lost in skirmishes btwn assailants and a knight

this takes us to the games! which are essentially gladiator coliseum type bloodsport contests between knights of different princens. its a pretty big affair like how the Olympics are for us so the fanfare the cheering the everything is all there i prob dont need to describe it in detail but its very violent. its considered practice for the knights before the true battle-royale type event thats even BIGGER bc it determines who becomes god-king of the country. this time the princen join their knights in the battlefield and basically whoever is left standing is the new king

is it worth it? probably not bc i think being king actually means being killed to be sent up to the heavens bc god kings dont need bodies any longer in truth the entire debacle is a distraction set up by the church to keep the country under its own control. its super corrupt. the council behind every princen is actually made up of high ranking church members that convene regularly to manipulate the politics of the region

but thats mostly the governing sphere of this world. the commonfolk are removed from most of this violence aside from the indoctrination by the church and the messed up religion they practice. a lot of the belief system here relies on this concept of karma and fate over free will. fate is oppressive, cannot be changed, but god do they try that belief ties into how princen and knights are fated to be pairs, how princen are fated to either ascend to godhood or die trying

but there is one way to manipulate fates in this world there exists in independent of the church a monastery that practices the art of transferring karma. think of karma as a type of currency that can be spent, saved, used, etc. lots of good karma may be distributed amongst loved ones via a ritual headed by a monk, or bad karma can be "paid off" essentially. the amount of good/bad karma a person has directly affects their fortune and luck. this practice is more or less outlawed by the church but the monastery is slowly gaining power over the commonfolk and the church mostly leaves the poor folk to rot anyway- their agenda mostly concerns the monarchy

altho i can definitely see tensions rising with the witch hunting as influenced by the church. particularly nefarious visions may result in blame being thrown around and commoners getting killed for crimes they have yet to commit and thats thanks to the teachings of the church

anyway as of rn though the monastery is still pretty small but it is an old, ancient organization with magic that runs far deeper than the magic of the church. it is a much more subtle magic- monks practice little offensive magic (they are a nonviolent sort anyway) but the ability to exchange karma is rare and has far more reaching impact in the long run i imagine they have strongholds further to the east but anyway theres one trump card the monastic order has

a subsection of the order is dedicated to the keeping of miracles. and miracles are... monsters! they are semi-physical manifestations of literal suffering and the sheer emotional energy provided by them is enough to give miracles the power to.. well. perform miracles.

when a person dies in anguish, there is a chance that their bodies will not decompose the way they are meant to. instead they slowly dissipate, bodies turning coal black and ashen to the touch. these cannot be disposed of the normal way (curses, contamination, all kinds of horrible things happen) so instead these corpses get locked up inside brick cells within the monastery

once, one of these was opened only to reveal that the bodies were gone- only a humming, massive shadow that seemed to move as if made of flies or soot combined. and it spoke, too. this was the first miracle created it was discovered then that these creatures had immense power but could not leave the rooms they were imprisoned in, touch sunlight, and similarly they could not die

imagine like the witchs nightmares in pmmm and you get what its like to be a soul trapped in a miracle. u get to relive ur worst fears and regrets forever. it suck miracles also cannot direct their powers towards their own will, only the will of others. ofc they are still monsters and exact a price for their services, whatever it may be.

a meeting with a miracle does not come cheap or without consequence, bc although miracles can be performed, karma always rebalances itself in the end. monks tasked with guarding and curating the miracles are called gatekeepers and are often someone close to one of the souls trapped in the vortex anyway i think thats the basics of everything in there... i got an au w cyrus as a prince and alex as his knight and instead of sticking around for their inevitable deaths the pair run off into the countryside far far away

actually i think something went wrong in the ceremony. cyrus and alex win godkingship of then... something goes wrong. probably the whole die-to-ascend thing is a secret kept from the princen and the public and. alex does a thing a knight should not do a refuses to let the ceremony continue. and im p sure as soon as cyrus learns of the truth hes like haha well fuck that

then they spend the rest of their days actually experiencing what life is like outside of a freakish cult and my fucking feels

i think.. meanwhile the monastic order grows in influence and power making them the enemy of the church... and jonah (yonah in this au) sacrifices himself to the miracle containing his brother in order to give the miracle a corporal form. which means august and company now have a physical conduit for all that power they had.

bad news for the church! bc august was unrightfully killed bc of a prophecy saying that hed become a huge threat and a killer

funny how prophecies work!

so now hes out for blood and he probably uses his own charisma and power to stage a coup against the church and basically the country goes to hell and i think at this point cyrus thinks. i got out of there alive. i need to do something about this. so he and alex probably join in and become arbiters of the game esp since cyrus and alex were probably the best synced, most skilled prince/knight duo the church had seen up to that date so theyre very powerful. ofc theyre still only two people so i really wonder how theyll step in btwn these two opposing parties

augusts side isnt good either bc august... is only out for revenge and self interest. he has no interest in fixing the country or helping anyone in fact once august is firmly seated on the throne of power he probably declares himself god-king anyway the end game probably looks like augusts body (which is jonahs body) being destroyed and the miracle contained in it finally put to rest jonahs soul must have something to do with the exorcism process- theyve tried to exorcise miracles before and only ended up upsetting it into violent outbursts anyway thats enough rambling from me time to paste this all into a blog post

god what if august picked keith to be his knight. thats messed up. keiths so easy to manipulate and hed be such a wildcard of a knight. he has more magic potential than alex and hes faster on his feet. im imagining bloodlust frenzy almost hyena-like behavior. also i mostly just want to see keith being violent and evil and i have an outfit in mind that would look great with a little splash of red

think like minimalistic ouji but like all black and keith with knives and serving a clearly twisted (even more than usual bc of the miracle’s influence) august

god even better the aftermath of augusts death TIME FOR THE FUCKING FEELS TO KICK IN BC now Keith has no purpose/he FAILED to protect his king WHICH WAS HIS ONLY PURPOSE IN LIFE then alex coming in with cy and just no, you have inherent worth. what happened wasn't right im upset this is how alex and keith become family in this au

miracles i think in this case are definitely more of a means to an end i think narratively ie jonahs brother being killed and augusts soul being trapped within it- tho i think its a good tie-in into how the severe paranoid cultish way the society works ends up producing a lot of People Dying In Extreme Anguish

almost a buildup of sickness so to say.. a plague of the soul that's a cool avenue to go down tbh the idea that miracles are more like viruses spreading misfortune in the long run for some quick gain in this life but bc karma always collects her debts if i throw in some nice reincarnation that would effectively damn someone in their next life... that implies that this story may need to expand across different generations

mechanics being so much bullshit has happened in this country it houses multiple miracles whereas elsewhere its like one, or none, very few in their histories except possibly during wartime and famine

since magic is Exists in this it makes sense that the emotional energy combined w ambient energy would manifest in some kind of grotesque Being

oh no thats maybe why the church is manipulating things by purposely generating that emotional trauma in its society its producing unprecedented amounts of energy they can utilize as magic power oh  no thats super bad august would definitely take advantage of that bc hed definitely figure the truth out once hes back to being alive

im upset bc i think they use princens and knights to specifically create emotional energy

energy released upon death which typically happens after a knight/prince duo has been chosen... then the resulting STRONG ass char plague on their bodies are collected to make artifacts? yes

gems created from the ashen plague are embedded into a huge mandala that actually ... is the god-king itself

[rcstartthemachine]

The Owls Are Not What They Seem

The greatest piece of narrative entertainment from 2017 was not in movie theaters, but rather playing on Showtime over the course of one weird, wild summer. Defying the odds, premium cable channel Showtime parked a large amount of money on David Lynch’s doorstep and convinced him to come out of semi-retirement to resurrect his cult TV series Twin Peaks. The results were stunning.

Lynch, the brilliant, mad mind behind Blue Velvet, Lost Highway and more, hadn’t made a film since 2006’s Inland Empire, yet any fears that the iconic filmmaker might have grown rusty in his time off were quickly assuaged as the beginning of the new Twin Peaks unfolded. Lynch and Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost had pulled out all the stops to return audiences to a place both wonderful and strange, and we all got a lot more than we could’ve possibly bargained for.

The importance of the original Twin Peaks can not be overstated. TV as we know it today, everything we lump into the “Peak TV” category of high quality, cinematic television, can trace its roots back to what Lynch and Frost did with the original Twin Peaks. He brought the auteur theory and the avant-garde to mainstream primetime TV, and television has been paying tribute ever since. The original Peaks only lasted two seasons, but after its cancellation in 1991, the show took on a life of its own, its cult fandom growing to monolithic proportions. Lynch revisited the town with 1992’s prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which polarized audiences and took the mythology of the series into even stranger, near-indecipherable directions. Something curious happened after that: the show became even more popular, but the show that newer fans seemed to latch onto wasn’t actually the show that Lynch had created.

A meme-ification of Twin Peaks had set in, fueled by the Tumblr generation fond of sharing out of context screen grabs and quick gifs that may look amazing but don’t even come close to capturing the aura of what Lynch was going for. So when Lynch and Frost announced that “That gum you like is going to come back in style,” there was an uneasiness with how modern TV viewers would react to whatever it was they were about to witness. We live in the age of the live-tweet, where audiences have trouble putting their phone down to entirely focus on their entertainment, and are instead prone to firing off an instant reaction with the hopes of raking up a few “likes.” This is not the ideal type of viewing experience for something created by Lynch, and if audiences thought they were going to be in for instant gratification with the new Twin Peaks, they were setting themselves up for failure.

The same foul fate would befall the aforementioned Tumblr generation, who apparently wanted nothing deeper than endless shots of cherry pie, black coffee, and Audrey Horne’s saddle shoes. Anyone who dares to cruise the Twin Peakshashtag on Tumblr while the new series was airing likely found themselves in a world of woe, with Tumblr users bemoaning that the new Twin Peaks was denying them their dream of Special Agent Dale Cooper and Audrey Horne finally falling into each other’s arms at the Double R Diner while Shelly Johnson serves them up a slice of pie. In short, what they wanted was fan service. And fan service is not what David Lynch traffics in. I doubt the term even exists in his vocabulary.

Instead, Lynch provided viewers with one of the most audacious 18 hours ever committed to television. A daring, mind-warping journey back to the town of Twin Peaks and beyond. He blew a big, black hole into the very mythology of the show, and created something stranger than anyone viewing the original series would’ve imagined.

I Am Dead Yet I Live

The original Twin Peaks began as a procedural drama, then blossomed into something nearly unclassifiable. After local teen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) is found murdered, FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) arrives in town to investigate. Cooper gets to know the town, and the townsfolk, as he tries to crack the Palmer case.

And then things get weird.

Twin Peaks made what many consider to be a huge mistake by wrapping up the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer rather quickly, and then becoming stranger and stranger until it found itself canceled. The problem: the series ended on one major cliffhanger, with Cooper trapped in The Black Lodge, an eerie, extra-dimensional location populated with backward-talking people, billowing red curtains, and flashes of lighting. Meanwhile, an evil Cooper doppelgänger, connected to the malevolent force known as BOB, took the real Cooper’s place back in the real world.

There was never any real chance that Lynch and Frost would quickly sew up this dangling thread, however. Instead, when Twin Peaks returned to Showtime, it expanded the mythology of the series and took viewers on a long journey that was all part of Cooper’s return to the real world. But Cooper isn’t the real focus of Twin Peaks. Laura Palmer is. For Lynch, Laura Palmer is a representation of horribly wronged innocence. Fire Walk With Me revealed the traumatic events leading up to Laura’s death, and Lynch’s focus seems to be on the cosmic injustice of it all. The cruel blindness of fate. Laura Palmer is a force of something pure and good in the universe, and no matter how hard Cooper might try, he can never really save her. But perhaps that’s not what’s important. Perhaps what’s important is that he’ll keep trying.

Twin Peaks season 3 has Cooper escape the Black Lodge by taking the place of hapless, corrupt Las Vegas dwelling insurance salesman Dougie Jones (also played by MacLachlan). In reality, Dougie is a “tulpa” – a being created from the selected thoughts of different individuals. Tibetan mythology describe tulpas as “extra bodies that were created from one person’s mind in order to travel to spiritual realms.”

Rather than have Cooper escape the Black Lodge and come back to the real world acting like his old self, Lynch and Frost have the agent stuck in a childlike state, as if all the years stuck in an alternate dimension has blasted away a part of his consciousness. Then, in the most delightfully devious twist of all, Lynch proceeds to keep Cooper in this state through nearly the entire series. There are triggers that we keep expecting will snap Cooper out of his Dougie state: coffee, pie, etc. But Lynch isn’t interested in an easy way out. Instead, he engrosses us into the life of Dougie Jones, as the traumatized Cooper adapts to his new reality with Dougie’s wife Janey-E (Naomi Watts) and son Sonny Jim (Pierce Gagnon).

You could practically hear the groans of certain viewers as Lynch refused to break Cooper out of the Jones family mold, yet this material provides us with some of the most incredible moments of the revival series, and gives Kyle MacLachlan a chance to shine, playing up both the comic relief elements of Dougie Jones (see: Dougie in a casino yelling “Hello-oooooo!” at slot machines) mixed with more heartbreaking scenes (see: Dougie watching Sonny Jim with a look of profound sadness on his face).

Twin Peaks sets up a horde of new characters, almost all of which become memorable almost instantaneously – a feat few other shows can pull off. There’s the Mitchum Brothers (Jim Belushi and Robert Knepper), who are both trying to murder Dougie Jones before growing fond of him on the basis of a dream. There are two assassins (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tim Roth), who spend most of their time in a van shooting the breeze when they’re not shooting people. And most important of all, there’s Diane (Laura Dern), Cooper’s old flame who teams up with FBI Director Gordon Cole (Lynch) and company to find out what happened to the real Cooper. Dern, with her various wigs, foul mouth, chain smoking and multi-colored manicure, steals every scene she appears in.

But what of Twin Peaks, the town that started it all? Lynch brings us back to the town, and gives us a glimpse into the lives of old favorites: Shelly (Mädchen Amick), Bobby (Dana Ashbrook), Big Ed (Everett McGill), Norma (Peggy Lipton), Andy (Harry Goaz), Lucy (Kimmy Robertson), Hawk (Michael Horse), Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn), and more, but the new season isn’t so much interested in closing out their stories as it is showing the effects of the passage of time. That’s not to say there aren’t narrative conclusions. In one of the new season’s most satisfying moments, Big Ed and Norma finally seal the deal on their romance after years apart. Lynch stages this in a lovely way, with Norma’s hands coming from just off frame onto Big Ed’s shoulders, while Big Ed closes his eyes in contentment.

These lovely moments are contrasted with stark, disturbing horror. In the opening episode alone, a nameless, shapeless monster escapes a containment unit and lays waste to a pair of lovers in a scene drenched in blood and confusion. And at the center of the series as a whole is the terrifying notion that evil, in all its forms, will almost always come out ahead. After nearly 18 hours, Cooper manages to alter time and save Laura Palmer from her teenage demise. Yet the aftershocks of this change are not ideal – the world as Cooper (and by extension, the audience) knows it has been altered forever. The final few seconds of the series find Cooper and Laura in a state of limbo, with Cooper absently wondering “What year is this?” before Laura, looking up at the house that once held such trauma and abuse for her in another life, emits a piercing, blood-chilling scream that seems to be echoing across time and space itself (note: if there was an award for Best Scream, Sheryl Lee would be the clear winner).

What are we to make of this cryptic, haunting conclusion? The beauty of Twin Peaks is that Lynch and Frost aren’t interested in providing us with clear answers. One of the quotes from the revival series states, “We are like the dreamer who dreams and lives inside the dream.” This is as clear a Twin Peaksmission statement as we’ll ever receive. The series as a whole is a dream that the audience is living inside, and like dreams, the narrative is open to endless interpretation. And best of all, no interpretation can really be considered incorrect. You can take away a million different morals from Twin Peaks as a whole, but I think a strong case can be made for the unsettling message that evil – in all its forms – will frequently come out ahead. The important thing is for committed, determined people like Dale Cooper to continue to try to stop it anyway. Cooper may not always succeed, but we can take some sort of cold comfort in the fact that he’ll try anyway.

[jsmulligan]

Epilogue

Like a lot of other people, I was disappointed with no Festival of the Lost this year.  Didn’t think about posting anything about it before, though.  The only thing Festival related I’ve written is the epilogue to “A Not So Simple Patrol”.

Needless to say, spoilers for that story if anyone was reading it over at fanfiction (and I’ll probably open an account at AO3 and start posting it over there as well).

Epilogue

So often the years seem go to by quickly, so much more-so lately than they did when I was younger.  There was so much happening in the first half of this particular year that it passed in a blink, but then everything changed.  I was changed.  And everything slowed to a crawl.  These last several months have been a grueling slog of rehabilitation and adaptation.

First, I lost my leg.  I have mostly grown accustomed to the cybernetic prosthetic that was built for me, but I swear the thing is a fraction of a centimeter shorter than my original leg was.  The doctors insist that it was built to specifications taken from scans Elgan had made of me, but I feel lopsided and it annoys me.

Second, Zillah left.  I only met her during the craziness of earlier this year, but her absence now was noticeable.  She had left with Lady Efrideet to somewhere on the outer reaches of the solar system.  The Iron Banner had come and gone a couple times since then, but she had yet to return.  She hasn't requested to have her possessions sent to her or have her room at the Tower reassigned, so I keep holding out hope.  Another Iron Banner is scheduled to begin tomorrow.  Something to look forward to, perhaps.

Third, there seems to be a reluctance to let me back out in the field.  I was kept close while I adjusted to my new leg, but I have gotten to the point that I am confident enough in its function to get back to business.  However, it seems that someone finds my presence around the Tower beneficial for new Guardians and I have fallen into a mentoring role with the freshly revived Titans.  Honestly, I enjoy it, it's just another change to get used to.  Also, whoever came up with the “Tower Dad” moniker needs to make themselves known so that they can get a swift and well-deserved punch in the face.

Regardless of how fast or slow they feel, the days tick by as they always have, bringing with them the usual customs and celebrations.  This day, in particular, marks the beginning of the Festival of the Lost.  The Festival is a City tradition that spread to the Tower, a time of remembering those that have passed on.  It's a weird mix of somber and fun that always seems to somehow brighten spirits.

I rolled to the edge of the bed and reached down, picking up my leg and attaching it.  I flexed it a couple times to get all the connections in place, then stood to my feet.  After that, it was slipping on the undersuit and putting on my armor.  Fitting for the day, Elgan has set out an old Pacorus armor set, armor that had been dedicated to lamenting the dead, bearing my customary green and gold paint job.  It was outdated armor, wearing it now would mostly be ceremonial.  Complimenting it was the Mark of the Lost.  Dressed for the day, I picked up the wrapped item from my nightstand, tucked it in my belt, and scooped up a bag full of candy before stepping out into the hallway.

I might not have been in my usual gear, but the colors and wolf emblem emblazoned on the shoulder made me recognizable enough to other people that I received several warm greetings on my way topside.  Once I reached the plaza, a scene of delightful chaos greeted me as Guardians and civilians alike dashed around the space wearing elaborate masks representing everything from a simple engram, to wild animals, to Oryx the Taken King himself.  A Hunter dressed in a particularly ridiculous representation of everyone's favorite Cryptarch jumped from where he had been hiding.

“Feed me the blood of your enemies!” he roared.  “A million deaths are not enough for Master Rahool!  I demand a tribute of engrams!”

Before I could even being to attempt to respond, he sprinted away cackling and howling.  This caught the attention of the real Rahool, who looked none too pleased at the impersonation.  His clear annoyance made me grin inside my helmet.

I made it through the plaza without being the victim of any more pranks or scare tactics, though I was a witness to many masked characters jumping out at people passing by or Guardians in Traveler masks leaping off the Tower. Entering the hallway, I couldn't help but admire the decorations and lighting likely put up by Eva Levante.  She usually considered herself to be a “master of ceremonies” for these types of events, encouraging participation and handing out gifts and treats.  Sure enough, as I passed her work stations, I saw a sizable group gathered near her.  I continued on, my destination just a bit further.

Opposite the Speaker's chamber was a large, circular door.  This door remained closed much of the year, but rolled opened for the Festival.  Inside was the Memorial to the Lost, an intricately carved chunk of black stone where the names of lost Guardians were carved.  The walls or the room also bore decoration, holding relics from, or carved images of, legendary figures in the history of the City and the Tower that stood over it.  I stepped up to the memorial, finding all the familiar names.

Donvan, the leader of my first fireteam.  Sarai and Baruch, two other members of that old team.  I searched for other Guardians I had served with as well, recalling faces and moments shared.  Elgan appeared over my shoulder, quietly observing the ritual.  Eventually, I reached for the object at my waist, the final thing I needed to do here today.

I carefully unwrapped the cloth from around the object, revealing a Hunter's knife.  This particular knife had been held to my own throat at one point in the recent past.  Elgan's shell clicked in a manner I recognized as confusion.

“Why do you have that?” he asked.   “I assumed you had disposed of it.”

“No, I never had any intention of doing that.  I had actually planned to return it to its owner blade first, but didn't have it when he made his unexpected return.  I wasn't sure what to do with it after that, but then I knew there was only one choice”

I knelt down by the memorial then, spreading the cloth on the ground by the base.  Holding the knife flat across my open palms, I set it down gently on the cloth.

“I don't understand,” the Ghost chimed in.  “He tried to kill you.  You did kill him.  He was a danger to everyone around him.  Why are you honoring him like this?”

“It's more in honor of who he was,” I replied.  “When we figured out who had attacked me, I had you find all the information you could on him.  There wasn't a lot, but it did give me some notion of who we were dealing with.  I've been going over all of it again ever since that day on Venus, trying to understand, to make sense of what happened, and what I found was a very different Guardian than the one that tried to kill me.

“Something happened to him.  I don't think it was being corrupted by the Darkness.  Lakshmi hinted at something in the hospital room, about him being exposed to whatever that War Cult Device is too many times. I think whatever it was broke him mentally.  He lost part of himself, and then exposing himself to SIVA the way he did pushed away anything that was left of Jaeger.  In the end, he was a shattered shell of what he had been.  He deserved better.  We all do.”

I stared at the knife for several moments before rising back to my feet.

“Light go with you, Jaeger-10.  Hopefully you've found a measure of peace.”

I turned then, leaving the dead behind.  Having honored them, it was now time to celebrate the fact that I had yet to rejoin them.  The City below beckoned, and I had a bag full of candy demanding to be distributed. Making my way to an express elevator, I rode down to ground level.

As expected, the Last City was alive with activity which would only increase as the day went on.  Most decorations had already been been put up over the last few weeks, but there were still a few people hanging banners and lights or setting out candles.  A group of children ran by in masks, laughing and attempting to scare the people they passed.  It looked so much like the activity on the upper plaza that I wondered if it was just universal behavior or said something about the maturity of most Guardians.

I removed my helmet, tucking it under my arm and just watched the scene.  Compared to the Golden Age, or whatever came before that, I'm sure this would be a sad display.  Right now, in this place, this little bit of happiness and peace was enough.  This right here is what Commander Zavala means when he talks about, “The Dream of the City.”  It still wasn't the most comfortable setting for me, but maybe one day we would push back the forces of Darkness enough that the idea of living life this way wouldn't seem so foreign.  For now, it was enough to be around it and maybe make their lives a little better.

Another group of children ran by me.  This time, one of them stopped.  A little girl with brown hair and eyes that matched.  I recognized her instantly as the girl who had been in the pack of children following me and Scott-20 when we came looking for Zillah.  I knelt and held out a hand.  She smiled and darted over to me, slapping the extended hand as she had before.  I took two pieces of candy out of the bag I was carrying and she eyed them greedily.  I pretended to consider it for a moment, then closed my fingers around those two, placed the rest of the bag inside the old Pacorus helmet, and held it out to her.

“Take it,” I told her.  “Share it with your friends.  You'll need it to keep all the spooks away tonight.  If the candy doesn't turn them away, just wear the helmet and that should do the trick.”

Her eyes grew wide and she grabbed the bag before offering a simple, “Thank you.”

She turned and fled after her friends, waving the bag over her head and shouting.  Watching her go, I turned and headed in the opposite direction.  With no real direction in mind, I wandered the streets a for a few minutes, taking in the sites.  My stomach reminded me that I hadn't had anything to eat yet, so I stopped in a little diner for some eggs and bacon.

After eating, I spent a few more minutes in the City, then headed back topside with the two remaining candies in hand.  The City might not be the life for me, but there was a small measure of “normal” that I could actually hold on to.  I strode purposefully through the living quarters and found the door I was looking for.  I knocked and Celeste answered.  Behind her, I could see the smaller figure of Astrid, the mini-Titan that Cayde had suggested Celeste try to help mentor.  I smiled and held up the two pieces of candy.

“Happy Festival of the Lost, you two.”

[sj4iy]

Translation: “Owari no Seraph: Glen Ichinose, the Fall at 16″ Chapter 01 - Translation Summary [Part 2 of 2] (Spoilers!!)

Continued from Part 01:

Glen realizes that the seal is the former technique of the excommunicated Hina family and thinks “The one who would still inherit something like this is…” as he bites his thumb and attempts to write over the seal with his blood.  Just then, the body (with a demon face) comes alive and grabs him around the throat.  It starts screaming “Stop it!  Don’t touch me! If you touch me, you’ll suffer divine punishment!”  The police start freaking out that the corpse is talking as it tries to kill Glen, but he then grabs it by the mask and smashes it against the wall.  He asks if it’s a god, and it replies that it is a god of vengeance.   It says that it gives prideful humans divine punishment just as a large gross hand comes out of its mouth.  For a moment it looks as if it has grabbed Glen, but suddenly he’s behind it.  He says “ugly technique” and rips the hand thing out of the god’s mouth.  It screams and returns to normal.  The police wonder what that was, and the reply is “This is the Onmyouji, the crafter of the “Mikado no Tsuki”…”  Shigure asks him if he knows who the crafter is and he replies that there were clues, but that for now, he will destroy the barrier that the person is trying to make around the city.  He rubs his thumb across and tells the curse to return back to the crafter and go to the grave.  In a house, we see a black stream enter the eye of a girl wearing a fox mask.  She screams “Stop!” and grabs her head.

Glen is looking at the eye of the dead girl, and says “It must have been terrible to die by a curse.  My religion doesn’t believe in an afterlife, but if there is one, rest in peace” and everyone pays their respects.  He then says “let’s go” to the girls.  Meanwhile, Aoyama is walking angrily down the street and complains that the Mikado no Tsuki is a false religion that was eating the town.  But then he realizes that the strange things in town didn’t just start, which is why he left home 10 years ago.  We see him as a kid being thrown into a wall by his dad.  His dad says that “brats should listen to what their parents say!”  His little sister holds him and cries “Big Brother Daigo” and he says “This is strange, dad, why did you start drinking so much after mom died…”  He then says that his dad has been deceived by that strange religion and was ripped off by it.  His dad tells him to shut up, that Mikado no Tsuki will bring his wife back, and Daigo begs his dad to open his eyes.  His dad swings at him.  Time passes, and we see Daigo telling Misuna (his little sister) that he’s going.  She begs him not to leave her there and he says he’ll return so he can take care of her and save her.  We see her crying in the distance as he thinks “I said that and ran away.  I left my little sister.”

We see him looking at the Aoyama house as he opens the door and says “I’m home!”.  A young lady peeks around the corner and asks who’s there so late.  When she recognizes him, she embraces him excitedly (she even says she remembers his smell).  She says “You reall came back” but he says “…no” and that he was just running away after fighting with their dad.  She says she’s happy he came back and he says he’s sorry.  He asks where their father is, and she say’s he’s out.  Daigo asks if he’s still with the Mikado no Tsuki religion and she says she doesn’t talk much with father anymore.  He looks around the house and asks if it’s always so dark, and she says that since she’s always alone, it became a habit.  He asks her why she’s stayling so close to him and she says that it’s been so long (anyone getting weird vibes by now?).  He tells her that when their dad gets home, he’s going to tell him that he is taking her with him and he bought a house in order to do so.  She says “you remembered your promise”.

Later on they are sleeping and she climbs on top of him and says “Hug me, big brother” (with her clothes coming off, btw).  He says “What the hell are you saying?” and she says “people who love each other hug, right?  I guess I’m not attractive enough” and he replies “love each other…we’re siblings!”  She says “And?  Are you unable to hug me because I’m unclean?”  He asks her what she means by that, and what their father did to her.  She says he was too late coming back, and we see a flashback.  Her father comes in with someone and says that the crafter of the Mikado no Tsuki is finally bringing back her mother.  She tries to say that such a thing can’t happen, and asks who it is.  The dad says his name is Tenkon, and that “You and I can birth your mother, Hina-san will help us.”  He grabs her and tells her to get undressed and birth mom.  She resists but he rips her clothes.  She runs away but he says “If your mom comes back, everything will be alright, that’s what Hina-san said!”  She says “No, no!”  He grabs her from behind and she says “Brother, hel-“  We see her swing around and she cuts his throat.  Tenkon just says “oh my” and asks her what she’s going to do (as she sits there in shock and covered in blood).  He says “if you obey me, I can do something.  Even bring back your parents and give you back your former happiness.  But how far would you go for that?”  He gives her a fox’s mask and says “Without sacrifice, there can be no value.  Will you present value in order to obtain happiness?”  She takes the mask and says “So that I can live with my big brother again…” and puts it on “I’ll do anything.”

Back in the present, she asks him to hold her, and that everything will be okay if he sleeps with her.  “Tenkon said we can give birth to father and mother.”  He tells her to get a grip, and wants to know who told her such a thing.  “Was it Mikado no Tsuki, that damned cult…” but he’s cut off as she passionately kisses him. He cries and says that it’s his fault for running away.  She says it’s okay, because he came back.  “Comfort me, unclean as I am”.  Just then Glen opens the door and says “Sorry if your aroused right now, but it’s over.”  He then says “Sorcery of a corrupted relative…it’s prohibited to invoke that here.”  Glen pulls his sword and Daigo shields Misuna.  Glen knocks Daigo against the wall and says “I’ve come, just as I promised.  To end you.”  But once again, Daigo grabs Glen and tells Misuna to run, saying “This time I’ll be the one to stay, so you…”  Then he sees that she has put on the mask and is changing into a monster.  She says “you’re in my way…” and Glen kicks Daigo away and they start to fight.  Daigo says “Misuna, that’s…” and she says “Don’t look at me, brother…at this terrible form…”  She says “I want to die, I want to die already.  That’s why” but then the demon takes over and says “I’ll kill youuuu!”  Glen fends it off with his sword and asks Daigo “hey, civilian, is this your little sister?”  He replies yes, and Glen asks “do you want to save her?” and he asks “You can save her!?”  Glen says it’s impossible for him, that he can only kill her at this point…but he if he can use Daigo, he can do it.  He tells him to “Curse her to live”.  That no matter how corrupt or how ugly, curse her to live.  Daigo asks if that will bring her back to normal, and he replies that he’s not a god, he’s only a sorceror, and that the only thing he can do is curse.  Glen tells him to decide to curse her or kill her.  Daigo says “I want her with me!” and Glen says “I’ll accept that curse” and throws a seal on Daigo.  Glen’s sword crackles and he says “I’ll curse you with real magic” and cuts the ogre away from Misuna.  There’s a rain of blood and Daigo frantically looks for Misuna, who gently floats into Glen’s arms as he stares at a bloody mask on the floor.

Several days later, Daigo finds Glent practicing his sword out next to a river.  They talk a bit about the monster, then Glen asks about his sister.  Daigo says she’s in a Mikado no Tsuki-run hospital and that she awoke from her coma today.  He says that he heard that the person who cursed his sister wasn’t Mikado no Tsuki, that he had been excommunicated decades ago.  Daigo apologizes for accusing Glen and that he came to give his thanks for saving his sister, but Glen says “I didn’t do it for your sake.  The curses in this area are my jurisdiction.  The person who cursed your sister is captured and the incident is over.  Get lost, you’re interrupting my training.”  Daigo asks “for someone like you with status, prestige and power, what do you want from getting stronger?”

Then there’s voiceover over some flashback scenes of Glen’s youth: “That’s what I asked Glen Ichinose on that day.  The world still wasn’t destroyed yet.  On that day.  No matter what it seemed like he had.  But that kind of person wasn’t supposed to exist.  Everyone grasps onto weakness, everyone is frustrated by something, cries and screams.  Despite that, they believe in the future and continue forward.  Even still, it’s not good...and they curse someone-

It is said that a person carries as much burden as they have strength, the stronger we become the larger the reaction, He who hurts another hurts himself.  This is a tale of destruction.

The tale of Glen Ichinose, whose sadness and deep despair caused the downfall of the world, and his own destruction

That’s all for this month.  I will try to continue doing these summaries since Noragami is on hiatus.  As usual, sorry for any typos or mistakes.  Thanks!

[qrhymes]

Death Note (2017) –What means being a good adaptation?

Keep the soul, the spirit of the original work.

I know this answers is vague and not really a factor in the goodness of a movie ‘cause you can still be faithful to the original themes of a work and still suck (The suckiness can take a plenitude of forms), however I firmly believe that the first step to be called a good adaptation (not necessarily a good movie or series or whatever) is breath the same air and meaning of your source material even if the plot, the story or even your character change in the process (That’s the reason that the so called “Spiritual adaptations” are a thing).

So, what are the elements that this movie needs in the first place to be called a good adaptation?

The original Death Note, to me at least, it’s a story about how “absolute power corrupts absolutely”; you give the power to decide who lives and dies to a teenager that subsequently becomes, in the spawn of a few day, in a full time sociopath (And yes, one of my absolute problems with the original is the lack of a natural transition between Light and Kira, but you can argue that that was the point) with a god complex.

I know that a lot of people see the series as a study of morality, a conflict between ideologies; the means justify the end, etc. However I have never been able to see this part of the conflict because the series never explore it’s moral dilemma beyond the superficiality of “Is It right to kill criminals?” that is and interesting and deep question that could sustain an entire work however the thing gets reduced to a “if you are not with me you are against me”.

Death Note is juvenile work and its simplicity in how develop its main question proves it…however, even if its wannabe main theme its underwhelming, Death Note still has a lot of goods and greats during its run.

The hypocrisy and the delusion of Light are great pieces for a tale how power corrupt, the entirely Kira cult, our perception of justice and the hypocrisy in those system it’s another interesting point, Ryuk as the wild card of the series is fantastic, the entire Kira task force is amazing and, at least for me, the great savior of the series.

L becomes what Light never could, a morally gray figure, that actually have weight in a morally ambiguous story of the meaning justice and what is right. L may be in the role of the traditional good guy, however he’s selfish detective that only take the cases that he finds interesting, a man that keeps in line with the law but is not afraid to push that lines to its limit, despite his gimmicks and status as a Sherlock Holmes 2.0 L comes along as a very flawed individual, not really seeking justice for the hundreds of thousand, but just challenge for his intellect. The Kira case is a passion project from him…Not really what you could call a hero, however in this kind of work it’s exactly what we needed, a hero antagonist with a lot of shades of black, whose sheer charisma and personality make, maybe not a paragon, but a compelling and lovable character that a lot of people, me include it, fell in love with.

Finally Death Note is a great mystery series, a tense police drama with genuinely thrilling mind games, an incredible pace and an overall fun ride with a ton of memorable scenes and twist, Death Note is a lot of thing and addictive as fuck is one of them, the flow of the series is so good and that is one of the better aspect of the series, what makes it so accessible is a well put and enjoyable show…so how many of these points got checked in the movie.

…Well Ryuk was…actually pretty great…

Ryuk is easily the best part of this movie, he is creepy, unsettling, menacing but also a lot of fun to have around and his character is the closest to his counterpart. I also like how the movie treats him.

He is different; less cooperative, less friendly, more malevolent but still this guy that it’s doing what it’s doing just for the lulz, and his final delivery “You humans are so fun” close his character in a really high note.

And yes, a lot of the credit goes to Defoe’s performance. I don’t know if he gives a fuck about the source material but it doesn’t matter, he is having a blast with role and so are we.

So Ryuk was fantastic…the rest of the film not so much.

There are a lot of issues here, but in general we can summarize all in two great issues. First, the movie it’s afraid to actual challenge the audience, is a tame product, one that goes for the secure route, lacking a lot of the boldness of the original material.

Even if you want to think the best of Light, he still was playing at least the role of anti-villain, someone that has do what he has to do to accomplish his objective, it’s his choice to use the Death Note, to kill criminals, the people that chase him and even his own followers when they stop being useful to him (And don’t we forget the sheer placer that the guy has with out-smarting his opponents. Yes you can argue that some kills were a necessary evil, however he enjoy some of those kills too much for someone that was still claiming that was doing all of that for the greater good). And yes, the ultimate power to kill is a factor of seduction, of course. However is still a choice that Light makes on its own…here he has to be convinced to use the note, first from Ryuk invoking dream like sensations and power fantasies and then by Mia which apparently is getting off from using the note…I mean, leaving aside that Light was probably asexual and aromantic, him using the note here feels more like he trying to impress her that trying to clean the world from criminals and yes, I don’t buy that part of his characterization in the original work, but that part built up in his hypocrisy.

Meanwhile here Light it’s treated more like a victim of circumstance, that tries to avoid targeting innocent people and just going as far as I goes just because the influence of Ryuk and Mia

Apple anyone?

This what I mean that its more tame or secure, the movie goes all the way trying to make Light likable, justifiable and innocent that forgets to add the aspect that make his original counterpart interesting, either as the idealistic young man that falls from grace trying to make the world a better place or the hypocrite, self-centered teenager that justify his murder rampage with delusions of justice. Both are great in the own right, Light Turner however, he is just another protagonist.

However trying to make Light good is just one side of the badness of this movie, the other side is, well, make L look like the bad guy.

As I said before, the magic of L is that he pulls out the character that Light never could and it is just painful seeing get butchered in this version.

L in this version is just a weirdo that likes sweets a lot, seats in weird positions and covers his faces, and yes the original L was that…in the surface.

That’s the second biggest problem of the film; it’s an adaptation of Death Note, but just in the surface.

L was great not because he was quirky or adorkable or hot, he was great because he has a role in the story, he was a contrast to Light (A contrast that doesn’t exist in this version), a perspective in the meaning justice (a side that not is precisely completely innocent or even all that lawful or good) and an interest take in the hero-antagonist.

In the movie L gets stripped from his “sympathetic inspector antagonist” and demoted to a full “inspector Javert” trying to murder Light in the quart of the movie. L it’s just another detective, there is not substance to his character, he wants to resolve the case ‘cause this is what he does. The only attempts to go with something with him is his breakdown after Watari is killed but that twist just make his character even more cliché, becomes it striped him completely of his anti-hero status to become the villain…I mean the secondary villain for the sake of…the Hollywood Formula?

This L is not really a bad or a shitty character, his problem,  in the same way that with Light, is that he is just another character, unmemorable, bland and lacking any kind of role or meaning aside of being a secondary antagonist

I would talk about Mia/Misa, but her character it’s so far away of her original depiction that it would be pointless.

Mia is a weird thing really. Not only is her introduction forced as fuck.

I mean the whole scene was something like “Hey wanna see me kill some random people”.

But the really confusing part just comes in her character. I mean what is she? A sociopath? Is she drunk with power? Is she using Light for that reason? Or the Note just makes her wet? And then the movie makes her the Big Bad, with a really stupid plan and a death also kind of stupid. A twist for the sake of a twist that only serves to cement Light as a great schemer in the last minute…as a character she was the worst in the whole film. She was in the movie because she was Misa counterpart but she has no purpose other than make Light more likeable.

…

Do you remember how tense a suspenseful the anime/manga was? There is not of that here.

Death Note was thrilling supernatural drama, with a lot of twist and turns, mind games and, overall, a great police series. As I said in the begging one of the best things of Death Note is how its flows.

Death note 2017, it’s not a mystery, it’s not a police drama, even the supernatural elements are reduced to their minimum…And it comes down to the begging, the great problem is that this is just a very tame superficial adaptation, the note, the candies, the shinigamis, the KEIKAKUs, but without the substance or the style (Even the genre) that make the original first half so great.

[lefilmdujour]

Another 500th movie celebration

My Tumblr just reached the 1000 movies mark, so I figured it’s time I write something about my last 2 and a half years of movie viewings and recommend 50 more movies out of the ones I’ve seen since the last 500th movie celebration.

Times have been strange in the last couple of years, and my movie habits have reflected it. There have been times when watching films was all I would do, but there have also been moments of complete disconnection from the medium. I went from watching several movies every day to spending months avoiding anything to do with sitting through a movie. 

Part of it had to do with the space I share with my demons, but mostly there has been a change of pace. My laptop died, it took me months to get another one only to also die on me. On the other hand, an enormous chunk of my viewings have been in cinemas or squats, which is a very positive change but led me to watch more recent films in detriment of classics or ancient underappreciated gems. I also got my first TV in over a decade this month, and my very first Netflix account last week, so I may be exploring streaming a bit more, although so far I am not finding the experience  at all satisfying. All pointless excuses since I went through 500+ movies in a little over two years, which is not bad at all.

It was hard to pick only 50 movies this time, and the list would have probably looked a little different if I did it tomorrow. Regardless, here are 50 movies I recommend, and why. Random order, all deserving of love and attention.

Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff) - This movie is unfairly  ignored in the best comic book adaptation lists out there on the internet. The opening scene is memorable, the soundtrack is a lesson in early Blues, and the characters are quirky and well written.

Hate (Mathieu Kassovitz) - An absolute classic about the class system in France and its tendency to end up in riots. Beautiful shot and highly quotable. Saw it a few times, the last of them with a live score from Asian Dub Foundation. One of the greats.

Audition (Takashi Miike) - Whenever I’m asked about my favorite horror movie, I tend to fall back on this one. Audition is very slow, starting out soft but with an underlying tension that builds until the absolutely gut-wrenching finale that makes us question our own sanity. Brilliant subversion of the “hear, don’t see” rule, just the though of some of the sounds used in the most graphic scenes still send shivers down my spine.

Kedi (Ceyda Torun) - A Turkish documentary about street cats, what’s there not to like?

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (Park Chan-wook) - The third in the loosely-connected Vengeance trilogy by Park Chan-wook, and my favorite of the bunch, especially the Fade to Black and White edition, in which the movie very gradually loses color as the violence grows. A visual masterpiece.

Paterson (Jim Jarmusch) - The poetry of routine. Adam Driver is one hell of an actor.

Love Me If You Dare (Yann Samuell) - Two people that obviously love each other but are not mature enough to follow it through. Frustrating. Beautiful. Made me sob.

The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel) - I am realizing that a good part of this list deals with frustration. A group of people finds themselves unable to leave a party for no apparent reason. Buñuel is a genious in surrealism, I have yet to watch most of his Mexican period.

The Mutants (Teresa Villaverde) - Kids on the run from themselves. Strong visuals, very moving interactions at times. A hard but very rewarding watch. Teresa Villaverde’s entire filmography also gets a seal of approval.

Bad Education (Pedro Almodóvar) - A movie about sexuality and problematic relationships, taken to unbelievable extremes.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu) - The adventures of Mr. Lazarescu as he struggles to find help for the sudden pain he feels and ends up being passed on from hospital to hospital. Felt very real. Sold as a comedy, but I found it terrifying. 

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos) - A classic greek tragedy brought to the modern age. My favorite Lanthimos film, ranking slightly below Dogtooth. The deadpan acting and the unnerving sound serves as wonderful misdirection.

It’s Such a Beautiful Day (Don Hertzfeldt) - Three shorts stitched together to create a confusing, philosophical, absurd, funny and deep masterpiece. The animation skills of Don Hertzfeldt needs more recognition.

Amores Perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu) - A movie so good it didn’t even had an English name. Three tales of love, violence and loss, all linked by a dog.

Endless Poetry (Alejandro Jodorowsky) - Jodorowsky’s romanticized auto-biography, played by his own sons.Bohemian and poetic.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer) - Show this movie to someone who refuses to watch silent movies. The acting is so impactful and emotional, and the use of close ups was highly unusual for the time. A 90-plus years old masterpiece.

Everything is Illuminated (Liev Schreiber) - Sunflowers.

Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan) - I have a soft spot for war movies, as to remind myself how brutal people can be to their fellow man and how meaningless the concept of nations truly is. This movie in particular achieves greatness due to its usage of sound, the best I’ve heard in recent memory.

Vagabond (Agnès Varda) - Be careful of what you wish for yourself, you may end up frozen and miserable in a ditch (spoilers for literally the first few seconds of the film).

Stroszek (Werner Herzog) - I know Herzog mostly through his documentaries. His voice brings me the feeling of a deranged grandpa sharing stories of a reality tainted by dementia. I have yet to explore his fiction work in-depth, and this has been my starting point. Stroszek is bleak and desperate but humor still shines through it at times. Ian Curtis allegedly hung himself after watching it. Not sure if this story is real, but it once more feeds into the Herzog myth.

HyperNormalization (Adam Curtis) - Put together through found footage and newscasts, HyperNormalization is an unforgiving study on how we got to where we currently are. Fake becomes real. Trust is an abandoned concept. “They've undermined our confidence in the news that we are reading/And they make us fight each other with our faces buried deep inside our phones”, as AJJ sings in Normalization Blues. Which you should also check out.

Chicken with Plums (Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud) - A man decides to die, so he goes to bed and waits. An apparent simple plot that uncovers a world of beauty and poetry, as life passes slowly through the man’s eyes.

The Florida Project (Sam Baker) - William Dafoe was born to play the role of a motel manager. He is so natural in his role that I think he would actually be great in that job. The rest of the movie is great too, but his performance is the highlight for me.

Lucky (John Carroll Lynch) - Speaking of great performances, Lucky is Harry Dean Stanton’s final movie and a great send off. IMDB describes it best: “The spiritual journey of a ninety-year-old atheist.“

Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders) - More Harry Dean Stanton. The desert plays a more than decorative role in this wonderful movie, representing the emptiness that comes from estrangement. A story about reunion and all that can come from it.

On Chesil Beach (Dominic Cooke) - I sometimes cry in movies, but this one shook me to the core. A play on expectations and reactions and their devastating impact on relationships. We all fuck up sometimes. Try not to fuck up like these characters did, not on that level, you will never be able to make up for it.

The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson) - An absolute classic. A movie about the concept of family.

No Country for Old Men (Coen Brothers) - Murder mysteries and bad haircuts.

Dawson City: Frozen Time (Bill Morrison) - I highly recommend this documentary for anyone who professes their love for cinema. The story of how hundreds of lost silent movies were preserved though sheer luck and human stupidity. Seeing these damaged frames coming back to life is truly magical.

Mandy (Panos Cosmatos) - Some films turn into cult experiences through the years, some selected few are already born that way. Mandy is a psychedelic freak-out and Nicholas Cage fits like a glove in its weirdness. If you didn’t catch it while in cinemas, you’re already missing out on the full experience. Mandy is filled with film grain, which adds to the hallucinogenic experience with its continuous movement, a feature that does not translate when transferred to a digital medium. 

City of God (Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund) - A masterpiece of Brazilian cinema, very meaningful and relatable if you grew up in a similar environment. One of the most quotable films in my memory, something that gets lost in translation if you don’t speak Portuguese. My Tumblr is mostly pictures because I “só sei lê só as figura”.

Loro (Paolo Sorrentino) - On the topic of languages, I watched this Italian movie with Dutch subtitles, by mistake. It is actually an interesting exercise, watching something without fully grasping every word and letting your mind patch the pieces together to make a coherent narrative. Impressive cinematography, amazing script. I learned a lot about corruption, not everyone has a price. I also learned I can speak Italian now.

Roma (Alfonso Cuarón) - Beautiful shot, every frame of it can be turned into a picture. Roma is about the meaning of family, seen from the eyes of someone who will never be part of it. A lot of people considered this movie boring and pointless. These people probably have maids at home.

Bad Times at the El Royale (Drew Goddard) - Engaging heist movie, well developed characters, amazing soundtrack.

Melancholia (Lars von Trier) - The World is coming to an end and the date and time has been announced. How would you react to these news? Would it matter?

Climax (Gaspar Noé) - A very scary experience, equal parts trippy and evil like all Gaspar Noé’s movies. A dark ballet that that shocks and confuses the senses. Dante’s Inferno.

Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold) - A strong story about ambitions, neglect and survival. Katie Jarvis is very realistic in her performance, a little too much judging by her history after the movie.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour) - An Iranian feminist movie about vampirism and records. Watched it with live score from The Black Heart Rebellion for extra cool points.

Another Day of Life (Raul de la Fuente & Damian Nenow) - Based on Ryszard Kapuściński‘s autobiography, Another Day of Life consists of rotoscopic animation sprinkled with interviews. A look at the Cold War in the African continent, and an important watch for everyone, especially Portuguese and Angolan nationals.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino) - Rich in dialogues and paced very slowly until the insane climax, this is probably the best Tarantino film after Pulp Fiction. Filled to the brim with cinematic references, it’s a delight to all film nerds. Looking forward for an Bud Spencer/Terrence Hill film adaption with Leonardo Dicaprio and Brad Pitt after this.

The Beach Bum (Harmony Korine) - Google’s top voted tags: Boring. Mindless. Cringe-Worthy. Forgettable. Slow. Illogical. Looks like this movie didn’t resonate well with the audiences, but then again Harmony Korine’s stuff is not for the masses. I personally think this is one of his best movies, a true exercise on nihilism. The main character is lovable and detestable in equal parts, and every action is pointless. Such is life, the only meaning it has is attributed by yourself.

The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky) - A man reflects on his life. Memories tend to get fuzzy, conflicting and confusing. More like a poem than a narrative. A dreamy masterpiece.

The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice) - The most charming child of this list, she couldn’t memorize the names of the characters she interacted with so they were changed to the names of the actual actors. The innocence of childhood in dark times.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Roy Andersson) - A series of absurd vignettes connected by a pair of novelty items salesmen and their struggle to bring a smile to a grey World. Slow, but humorous and delightful. An unconventional and memorable ride.

Man Bites Dog (Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel & Benoît Poelvoorde) - Fake documentary about a serial killer. Heavy, gruesome and hard to watch, despite the false sense of humor in some scenes.A glimpse at the darkness of human nature.

Tangerine (Sean Baker) - Shot with cell phones. A story about love, gender and friendship. Funny, sad, touching.

The Guilty (Gustav Möller) - Focused on a shift of an emergency dispatcher, the camera focuses only on his face and phone interactions with the callers.A very effective thriller, its setting leads us to create our own narratives just to subvert them at the most unexpected times.

Cold War (Paweł Pawlikowski) - Loosely inspired in Pawlikowski’s parents, Cold War is a beautiful love story set against impossible odds. Powerful and heartbreaking. 

Parasite (Bong Joon-ho) - Poor family scams rich family. Rich family takes advantage of poor family. Everybody feeds off of everyone. Drama/Comedy/Thriller/Horror/Romance about control, delivered in a masterclass on cinematic rhythm. Best film of its year for me.

The Straight Story (David Lynch) - More than the fact that this movie is radically different than the remaining Lynch work, The Straight Story is a wonderful exercise in pacing and storytelling. Mr. Straight’s stories allow us to fill in the blanks with our imagination, and their impact in him is also felt in us. An underappreciated gem in its apparent simplicity.

Thank you very much for reading.

[adambstingus]

5 Reasons Wrestling Fans Are Giving Up On The WWE

In the late 1990s, something weird happened that made everyone suddenly start giving a crap about wrestling. It was called “The Monday Night Wars,” and it basically boiled down to this: Two wrestling programs went head-to-head every Monday night in a battle to nut-slap each other out of existence. What made it so damn addicting was that you could watch these organizations being pricks to each other in real time. They poached each others’ stars on a regular basis. WCW would announce WWF spoilers live on the air to prevent people from switching over to their show (which was taped). Hell, at one point, WWE sent a group of wrestlers to interrupt WCW’s live broadcast, which was being performed in the next town over.

Eventually, Vince McMahon won. He bought WCW, and that was that. Unfortunately, ratings have been dying ever since, and they recently admitted during an interview that they don’t know how to fix it.

I do.

Don’t get me wrong here. I’ve never worked in the industry. The only people I’ve ever wrestled didn’t know it was going to happen until I pounced on them. I don’t know how contracts work or the process they use for creating an episode of RAW. But I do know what made me start watching wrestling, what made me continue watching wrestling, and what eventually made me say “Fuck wrestling.” And I know a whole titload of people who feel the same way. The short version is that WWE has lost sight of what makes a TV show (not just a wrestling show) interesting. The long version is a lot more complex. So for the people who aren’t afraid of words, let’s break that down …

#5. The “Creative Department” Basically Doesn’t Exist

Some time around 2008, the WWE switched its content from beer, cursing, blood, and ass to a TV-PG rating. Wrestling fans love to speculate as to why that happened, but there’s no single underlying reason. You could easily write several books on possible causes, ranging from the double-murder/suicide of Chris Benoit the previous year to an attempt to clean up so they could sell more toys and video games. They’re a publicly-traded company with stockholders to protect. So be it. But there’s a reason I’m bringing this up, and it’s a pretty important point.

When fans talk about how the Attitude Era was so much better (and they talk about it constantly), they often attribute its high ratings to the adult-oriented content. While I’m sure that cursing and titties did play a role in its popularity, what they forget to factor in (aside from the fact that the Monday Night War itself was a huge selling point) was that in that era, every major character had a storyline. Stone Cold was fighting back against a corrupt boss who was actively trying to keep him from becoming the face of the company. The Undertaker had a dark secret from his past: a little brother, whom he thought had died in a fire, was found to be alive and coming for revenge. Mick Foley was slowly going insane and developing split personalities. He was easily manipulated by Vince McMahon, and was being used as a pawn in a greater plot.

Nobody does a “fuck your mother” look quite like Vince.

It sounds silly, doesn’t it? Then again, Star Wars was about a boy with space magic and a sword made out of light who defeated his robot father with love. The point is that everyone had a deeper motivation than just “I want to be the champion.”

I can’t remember the last good storyline in the modern era of wrestling. They’ve started a few, but it doesn’t feel like anyone in the company knows how to follow through and deliver on them. For instance, they created a mysterious redneck cult called “The Wyatt Family” who are super creepy. They often speak in vague, ominous riddles, which is pretty cool, because it makes you want to stick around to see what it all means. For months, the WWE built up their coming debut, and when they finally arrived, it was pants-shittingly awesome:

So they’re coming after Kane? Awesome. Why? What do they want with him? In the following weeks, we’d find out that they were going to show him the true meaning of the word “fear,” and they were going to turn him into the demon that they know he is. Even more awesome. So they’re going to recruit him into their cult? Turn him to the Dark Side?

Nope, they had a match, and after the Wyatts won, the plot was over. Kane didn’t join their cult. The Wyatts didn’t progress into a bigger, better story. It turns out that Kane just needed some time off to go film See No Evil 2, and having the Wyatts “injure” him was a means of explaining his absence from TV.

Keep in mind, this is the most interesting story they’ve had in several years. The majority of the others boil down to, “I want to win this match because I can wrestle better than you.” They set up a match between The Rock and John Cena one year in advance, based entirely on the storyline “John Cena talked shit about me.” That’s not an exaggeration. That was the whole story: a “meet me in the playground after school” beef. And what that tells us as fans is, “If these two extremely popular guys wrestle each other, you will buy tickets or subscribe to our network, no matter what.” I’ve put more effort into wiping my ass than the “creative” team put into that booking, and that’s become par for the course in the WWE.

So how do they fix that? A good start would be to come up with defined stories for every single person who enters that ring. Give them a reason to be there. Hell, give us a reason to be there — make us come back next Monday because we have to find out what happens next. This isn’t some radical idea. This is TV 101. It’s something they understood back in the Attitude Era, and I’m blown away that they don’t understand it now.

#4. There Is No Longer Any Suspense Or Surprise

In the industry (and for hardcore fans), championship titles mean one thing: This is the person the WWE has marked as the company’s highest standard. For most other fans, it is a prop. It’s the reward that a hero receives for overcoming the odds and defeating the villain, or the trophy a villain receives for being extra good at evil. Either way you look at it, whoever holds that title is the good guy or the dickhole, as both a performer and a character.

There’s a very simple formula that all of wrestling has used since the invention of pay-per-view, and it goes something like this. Good guy wrestles bad guy every week for a month. He loses most of those matches because the bad guy is a cheating asshole. They then have a match at a pay-per-view, and the good guy finally wins the title. The audience feels vindicated. Now, you either up the ante for their story and take it to the next level, or that match becomes the ending point to their feud, and you introduce a brand-new story with a brand-new dickhole.

And you know his name is Chad.

It doesn’t always play out that way, but that’s the general idea. It’s Pavlovian; you feel good when the hero wins, so you keep coming back for that payoff. It’s emotional heroin. It’s a way to coax people into buying tickets, and it totally works. If you’re going to see a title change hands, you’re going to see it there, so you might as well buy a ticket and see it firsthand, right? Actually, it’s not quite that simple.

Let’s go back to 1999, when WWE hit their highest ratings. Because of the Monday Night War, both companies had to constantly surprise the audience. They were forced to do something every week that, if you missed it, made you think, “FUCK! Why did I pick that night to feed my kids?!” The easiest way to accomplish that was by throwing away the old pay-per-view payoff format and make new champions on the totally free TV show. That year, the WWE World Heavyweight Championship changed hands 12 times. Six of those times happened on regular TV.

In 2015, the title changed hands four times (two of which happened in the same pay-per-view). Of those four, exactly one happened on RAW. In fact, if you don’t count the one time they held a tournament to claim a vacated title, the last time a heavyweight championship was “legitimately” fought for and won by a challenger on regular TV was November of 2010. Before that, June of 2009. Before that, July of 2006. Before that, September of 2003.

And the belts are really weird-looking now.

But that’s the big title, right? What about the Intercontinental Championship? It’s not as important in the eyes of regular fans, so there should be more flexibility in moving it around. In 1999, that one changed hands 10 times (technically 11, but that’s the year Owen Hart died, so there was a special circumstance involved). Five of those were on TV. In 2015, it happened five times — only one of them wasn’t on a pay-per-view.

So what am I tuning in for, exactly? There aren’t any compelling storylines, so it’s definitely not for that. I’m not being surprised by an underdog coming out of nowhere and upsetting the champion. Any time they introduce a match and say, “This is for the title,” I can say with near-certainty that the title is staying right where it is. You can predict the outcome of those matches before they even start. It takes away 100 percent of the suspense. At that point, I’m just watching two guys pretending to fight … and that’s just kind of weird.

If the WWE wants people to start giving a crap again, they’re going to have to reintroduce the element of surprise. If not with the championship titles, then at least with some good old-fashioned heel turns (good guy suddenly turns bad) or face turns (bad guy suddenly becomes good). That used to be a weekly occurrence back in the height of wrestling’s popularity, but now they follow the same rules as title switches, which is “NOPE! If you want to see that, you’ll PAY for it, fucker!”

#3. There’s Something Modern Wrestlers Don’t Understand About Their Roles

One of the most valuable assets in all of wrestling, regardless of the company, is a good heel. Someone the fans genuinely hate. It’s a lot harder than it sounds, because a lot of guys who try end up sounding like an actor who’s playing the role of a villain, instead of a man with genuine disdain for the audience. The person who can do that is vital because when he finally gets the shit kicked out of him by the hero, the audience feels retribution. His defeat is their reward for tuning in week after week. He is an emotional catalyst.

But there’s a second part to that role. Given enough time, most heels will inevitably develop a following. Or another wrestler will need to take over that spot in order to prevent the show from becoming a bucket of dead squid. At that point, the villain needs to flip and turn into the hero. Very few people are able to do that.

For example, here’s what Alberto Del Rio looks like as a heel:

Every part of that is fucking vile. Not just his actions — beating up a lowly ring announcer — but also the look on his face, the sound of his punches and kicks, the way he smugly holds up his belt to the crowd as if to say, “There’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it.” Watching that makes you want to hurt him.

That is what Alberto Del Rio was born to do: Be a remorseless punching machine. He plays the part of an evil turd perfectly. Here’s what he looks like as a babyface:

Every part of that is fucking vile. Not just his ridiculous “I’m a good guy now” speech, but also the way the words unnaturally flop out of his stupid suckhole. The fake gas station manager’s smile. Trying so hard to convince us that he’s on the level. He wasn’t trying to trick the audience there — he’s just that bad at playing a babyface. Watching that makes you want to hurt him.

Now I want you to take a look at Stone Cold Steve Austin as a heel:

That’s a pretty damn good heel. It feels like he’s going to come right out of the screen and kick your ass, just for having the gall to watch him on TV. Let’s see what he looks like as a babyface:

Oh. Well, hell. It’s almost like he kept the same exact ass-kicker attitude, except he pointed that aggression toward established heels instead of established faces. Huh. That’s weird. I thought that when a wrestler went from villain to hero, he had to put on a big-ass smile and give everyone an enthusiastic thumbs-up. I mean, I know that Stone Cold became one of the biggest stars the WWE has ever seen, but surely he was a fluke, right? Nobody else could make that work …

This is why people have a hard time accepting guys like The Big Show, Roman Reigns, and John Cena as babyfaces. When they’re playing heels (or at least thugs), all three of those guys can pull off “scary ass-kicker.” We know that when they enter the ring, someone’s getting skull-fucked. But when they switch roles and become babyfaces, they turn into smiling, thumbs-up, pandering jackasses, and it’s embarrassing. It’s not that the audience doesn’t believe in them as good guys. It’s that we don’t want them representing us.

Let me put it this way, because this is a huge topic of debate among wrestling fans:

The hero in that ring represents the audience. He or she is a projection of who we want to be. They’re not just defeating the villain for their own purposes … they’re saving us from his bullshit. When we see ourselves projected into the spot of the good guy, we want that representation to be badass. We don’t want to be Superman. We want to be Wolverine or Deadpool or Punisher. Sometimes, Bugs Bunny:

The people who want to see John Cena turn heel aren’t just saying it because they’re sick of him playing Superman. That’s a big factor, but it’s not the whole reason. A huge part of their argument is that they know what happens when you take a stale, played-out babyface and inject him with ruthless brutality and anger: He becomes unpredictable, he becomes a threat … he becomes interesting. Then, after a year or two, when you finally switch him back to the hero role, he keeps that ruthless attitude, and we back him 100 percent. Every guy in the videos I linked above has gone through it, and it made them better characters.

But what you don’t do is start high-fiving audience members and sucking their assholes for cheap pops. Am I right, people of beautiful NORTH CAROLINA?! The second a babyface starts doing that is the second we start firing up the “boooooring” chants.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-reasons-wrestling-fans-are-giving-up-on-the-wwe/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/174253353677

[allofbeercom]

5 Reasons Wrestling Fans Are Giving Up On The WWE

In the late 1990s, something weird happened that made everyone suddenly start giving a crap about wrestling. It was called “The Monday Night Wars,” and it basically boiled down to this: Two wrestling programs went head-to-head every Monday night in a battle to nut-slap each other out of existence. What made it so damn addicting was that you could watch these organizations being pricks to each other in real time. They poached each others’ stars on a regular basis. WCW would announce WWF spoilers live on the air to prevent people from switching over to their show (which was taped). Hell, at one point, WWE sent a group of wrestlers to interrupt WCW’s live broadcast, which was being performed in the next town over.

Eventually, Vince McMahon won. He bought WCW, and that was that. Unfortunately, ratings have been dying ever since, and they recently admitted during an interview that they don’t know how to fix it.

I do.

Don’t get me wrong here. I’ve never worked in the industry. The only people I’ve ever wrestled didn’t know it was going to happen until I pounced on them. I don’t know how contracts work or the process they use for creating an episode of RAW. But I do know what made me start watching wrestling, what made me continue watching wrestling, and what eventually made me say “Fuck wrestling.” And I know a whole titload of people who feel the same way. The short version is that WWE has lost sight of what makes a TV show (not just a wrestling show) interesting. The long version is a lot more complex. So for the people who aren’t afraid of words, let’s break that down …

#5. The “Creative Department” Basically Doesn’t Exist

Some time around 2008, the WWE switched its content from beer, cursing, blood, and ass to a TV-PG rating. Wrestling fans love to speculate as to why that happened, but there’s no single underlying reason. You could easily write several books on possible causes, ranging from the double-murder/suicide of Chris Benoit the previous year to an attempt to clean up so they could sell more toys and video games. They’re a publicly-traded company with stockholders to protect. So be it. But there’s a reason I’m bringing this up, and it’s a pretty important point.

When fans talk about how the Attitude Era was so much better (and they talk about it constantly), they often attribute its high ratings to the adult-oriented content. While I’m sure that cursing and titties did play a role in its popularity, what they forget to factor in (aside from the fact that the Monday Night War itself was a huge selling point) was that in that era, every major character had a storyline. Stone Cold was fighting back against a corrupt boss who was actively trying to keep him from becoming the face of the company. The Undertaker had a dark secret from his past: a little brother, whom he thought had died in a fire, was found to be alive and coming for revenge. Mick Foley was slowly going insane and developing split personalities. He was easily manipulated by Vince McMahon, and was being used as a pawn in a greater plot.

Nobody does a “fuck your mother” look quite like Vince.

It sounds silly, doesn’t it? Then again, Star Wars was about a boy with space magic and a sword made out of light who defeated his robot father with love. The point is that everyone had a deeper motivation than just “I want to be the champion.”

I can’t remember the last good storyline in the modern era of wrestling. They’ve started a few, but it doesn’t feel like anyone in the company knows how to follow through and deliver on them. For instance, they created a mysterious redneck cult called “The Wyatt Family” who are super creepy. They often speak in vague, ominous riddles, which is pretty cool, because it makes you want to stick around to see what it all means. For months, the WWE built up their coming debut, and when they finally arrived, it was pants-shittingly awesome:

So they’re coming after Kane? Awesome. Why? What do they want with him? In the following weeks, we’d find out that they were going to show him the true meaning of the word “fear,” and they were going to turn him into the demon that they know he is. Even more awesome. So they’re going to recruit him into their cult? Turn him to the Dark Side?

Nope, they had a match, and after the Wyatts won, the plot was over. Kane didn’t join their cult. The Wyatts didn’t progress into a bigger, better story. It turns out that Kane just needed some time off to go film See No Evil 2, and having the Wyatts “injure” him was a means of explaining his absence from TV.

Keep in mind, this is the most interesting story they’ve had in several years. The majority of the others boil down to, “I want to win this match because I can wrestle better than you.” They set up a match between The Rock and John Cena one year in advance, based entirely on the storyline “John Cena talked shit about me.” That’s not an exaggeration. That was the whole story: a “meet me in the playground after school” beef. And what that tells us as fans is, “If these two extremely popular guys wrestle each other, you will buy tickets or subscribe to our network, no matter what.” I’ve put more effort into wiping my ass than the “creative” team put into that booking, and that’s become par for the course in the WWE.

So how do they fix that? A good start would be to come up with defined stories for every single person who enters that ring. Give them a reason to be there. Hell, give us a reason to be there — make us come back next Monday because we have to find out what happens next. This isn’t some radical idea. This is TV 101. It’s something they understood back in the Attitude Era, and I’m blown away that they don’t understand it now.

#4. There Is No Longer Any Suspense Or Surprise

In the industry (and for hardcore fans), championship titles mean one thing: This is the person the WWE has marked as the company’s highest standard. For most other fans, it is a prop. It’s the reward that a hero receives for overcoming the odds and defeating the villain, or the trophy a villain receives for being extra good at evil. Either way you look at it, whoever holds that title is the good guy or the dickhole, as both a performer and a character.

There’s a very simple formula that all of wrestling has used since the invention of pay-per-view, and it goes something like this. Good guy wrestles bad guy every week for a month. He loses most of those matches because the bad guy is a cheating asshole. They then have a match at a pay-per-view, and the good guy finally wins the title. The audience feels vindicated. Now, you either up the ante for their story and take it to the next level, or that match becomes the ending point to their feud, and you introduce a brand-new story with a brand-new dickhole.

And you know his name is Chad.

It doesn’t always play out that way, but that’s the general idea. It’s Pavlovian; you feel good when the hero wins, so you keep coming back for that payoff. It’s emotional heroin. It’s a way to coax people into buying tickets, and it totally works. If you’re going to see a title change hands, you’re going to see it there, so you might as well buy a ticket and see it firsthand, right? Actually, it’s not quite that simple.

Let’s go back to 1999, when WWE hit their highest ratings. Because of the Monday Night War, both companies had to constantly surprise the audience. They were forced to do something every week that, if you missed it, made you think, “FUCK! Why did I pick that night to feed my kids?!” The easiest way to accomplish that was by throwing away the old pay-per-view payoff format and make new champions on the totally free TV show. That year, the WWE World Heavyweight Championship changed hands 12 times. Six of those times happened on regular TV.

In 2015, the title changed hands four times (two of which happened in the same pay-per-view). Of those four, exactly one happened on RAW. In fact, if you don’t count the one time they held a tournament to claim a vacated title, the last time a heavyweight championship was “legitimately” fought for and won by a challenger on regular TV was November of 2010. Before that, June of 2009. Before that, July of 2006. Before that, September of 2003.

And the belts are really weird-looking now.

But that’s the big title, right? What about the Intercontinental Championship? It’s not as important in the eyes of regular fans, so there should be more flexibility in moving it around. In 1999, that one changed hands 10 times (technically 11, but that’s the year Owen Hart died, so there was a special circumstance involved). Five of those were on TV. In 2015, it happened five times — only one of them wasn’t on a pay-per-view.

So what am I tuning in for, exactly? There aren’t any compelling storylines, so it’s definitely not for that. I’m not being surprised by an underdog coming out of nowhere and upsetting the champion. Any time they introduce a match and say, “This is for the title,” I can say with near-certainty that the title is staying right where it is. You can predict the outcome of those matches before they even start. It takes away 100 percent of the suspense. At that point, I’m just watching two guys pretending to fight … and that’s just kind of weird.

If the WWE wants people to start giving a crap again, they’re going to have to reintroduce the element of surprise. If not with the championship titles, then at least with some good old-fashioned heel turns (good guy suddenly turns bad) or face turns (bad guy suddenly becomes good). That used to be a weekly occurrence back in the height of wrestling’s popularity, but now they follow the same rules as title switches, which is “NOPE! If you want to see that, you’ll PAY for it, fucker!”

#3. There’s Something Modern Wrestlers Don’t Understand About Their Roles

One of the most valuable assets in all of wrestling, regardless of the company, is a good heel. Someone the fans genuinely hate. It’s a lot harder than it sounds, because a lot of guys who try end up sounding like an actor who’s playing the role of a villain, instead of a man with genuine disdain for the audience. The person who can do that is vital because when he finally gets the shit kicked out of him by the hero, the audience feels retribution. His defeat is their reward for tuning in week after week. He is an emotional catalyst.

But there’s a second part to that role. Given enough time, most heels will inevitably develop a following. Or another wrestler will need to take over that spot in order to prevent the show from becoming a bucket of dead squid. At that point, the villain needs to flip and turn into the hero. Very few people are able to do that.

For example, here’s what Alberto Del Rio looks like as a heel:

Every part of that is fucking vile. Not just his actions — beating up a lowly ring announcer — but also the look on his face, the sound of his punches and kicks, the way he smugly holds up his belt to the crowd as if to say, “There’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it.” Watching that makes you want to hurt him.

That is what Alberto Del Rio was born to do: Be a remorseless punching machine. He plays the part of an evil turd perfectly. Here’s what he looks like as a babyface:

Every part of that is fucking vile. Not just his ridiculous “I’m a good guy now” speech, but also the way the words unnaturally flop out of his stupid suckhole. The fake gas station manager’s smile. Trying so hard to convince us that he’s on the level. He wasn’t trying to trick the audience there — he’s just that bad at playing a babyface. Watching that makes you want to hurt him.

Now I want you to take a look at Stone Cold Steve Austin as a heel:

That’s a pretty damn good heel. It feels like he’s going to come right out of the screen and kick your ass, just for having the gall to watch him on TV. Let’s see what he looks like as a babyface:

Oh. Well, hell. It’s almost like he kept the same exact ass-kicker attitude, except he pointed that aggression toward established heels instead of established faces. Huh. That’s weird. I thought that when a wrestler went from villain to hero, he had to put on a big-ass smile and give everyone an enthusiastic thumbs-up. I mean, I know that Stone Cold became one of the biggest stars the WWE has ever seen, but surely he was a fluke, right? Nobody else could make that work …

This is why people have a hard time accepting guys like The Big Show, Roman Reigns, and John Cena as babyfaces. When they’re playing heels (or at least thugs), all three of those guys can pull off “scary ass-kicker.” We know that when they enter the ring, someone’s getting skull-fucked. But when they switch roles and become babyfaces, they turn into smiling, thumbs-up, pandering jackasses, and it’s embarrassing. It’s not that the audience doesn’t believe in them as good guys. It’s that we don’t want them representing us.

Let me put it this way, because this is a huge topic of debate among wrestling fans:

The hero in that ring represents the audience. He or she is a projection of who we want to be. They’re not just defeating the villain for their own purposes … they’re saving us from his bullshit. When we see ourselves projected into the spot of the good guy, we want that representation to be badass. We don’t want to be Superman. We want to be Wolverine or Deadpool or Punisher. Sometimes, Bugs Bunny:

The people who want to see John Cena turn heel aren’t just saying it because they’re sick of him playing Superman. That’s a big factor, but it’s not the whole reason. A huge part of their argument is that they know what happens when you take a stale, played-out babyface and inject him with ruthless brutality and anger: He becomes unpredictable, he becomes a threat … he becomes interesting. Then, after a year or two, when you finally switch him back to the hero role, he keeps that ruthless attitude, and we back him 100 percent. Every guy in the videos I linked above has gone through it, and it made them better characters.

But what you don’t do is start high-fiving audience members and sucking their assholes for cheap pops. Am I right, people of beautiful NORTH CAROLINA?! The second a babyface starts doing that is the second we start firing up the “boooooring” chants.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-reasons-wrestling-fans-are-giving-up-on-the-wwe/