#joshua noble

[nb-n0v4]

posting these wips for my dr who x supernatural thing bc I'm having so much fun drawing these unironically and I'm gnawing the bars of my enclosure

[haveyouseenthisseries-poll]

[ozzyonedge]

Happy 16th Anniversary to Fringe, which first episode was aired on September 9th 2008

[aethersflood]

-- Are you certain about this? -- Am I certain? I am the Phoenix. I will do what I must.

[mikimeiko]

Fringe | Season 1 (2008-09), J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci

[showclubpod]

Coming next week, we discuss season 1 of the sci-fi cult classic - Fringe!

[super-gates-blog]

[escherstrange-ffxiv]

#18: Hackneyed

Good entertainment in Ishgard is so hard to find! Last week Lady Chassaigne hired a fortune teller to entertain her guests and I felt utterly sorry for that poor girl. Not only did she look like she learned to read her deck a week before the event, but she had no grace nor practice. Her delivery was stiff, and don't even get me started on her fortunes! "Today fortune smiles on you," as opposed to what? She could have thrown her cards up in the air and it would have been more interesting than her dull, hackneyed lines.

The problem is that everyone loves a good fortune teller - why else do we still tolerate that buffoon heading the Astrologicum - but finding one who balances accuracy and showmanship, ah, there lies the rub. The ones who are all spectacle embellish their lies with sparkles and ribbons; the ones who can see distress all with their plain speech. And don't get me started on the 'Echo-blessed' adventurers; not a single one possessing the slightest etiquette, like the one who called Baron Serrurier a Lord. Fury, everyone felt the mortification that night.

However! The servants have been whispering about the Losstarots, word has it the elder brother can bring the dead back to life! I knew you'd agree that would be quite a show. There were other rumours that he can scry into one's darkest secrets, but that would be too scandalous, of course. Naturally I was curious and as my luck turned out, I found the brothers walking along the Crozier. The elder lord really is as handsome as they say, even moreso in person with those piercing green eyes- anyway. I invited him to dinner and offered an introduction to some people who would be interested in his services, and you would not guess what happened. Why, his brother, that brat of a lordling, stood between us and said:

"If you seek entertainment for your guests milady, I'm certain any hunter can fetch you a cage of trained opo-opos for a very affordable sum. I assure you they will be classier than your crass as hells invitation. Good day."

And then he just pulled his brother away without letting him have a word! Who taught him to speak like that to his betters?! I certainly would not be surprised if that one was an impostor, what with that odd lilt in his accent, trying to pretend to have an Ishgardian accent, no doubt! Anyway, I found a lovely string quartet for the evening and nothing of value was lost.

Honestly, I don't know what the Aubemarles see in them.

[oliviadunham-forever]

#Fringe - Gene❤️

[tortoisesshells]

if you were in control of a dark shadows adaption (or, hypothetically, could alter the original; whichever you find more interesting to think about!) what does your ideal version of 1795 look like? are there things you would change? things you’d want to keep?

Let me preface this by saying I do genuinely like or appreciate a lot of the 1795 arc! When it's at its best, it's a tragedy born out of hubris and the terrible things we'll do for the people we love (or the terrible things we'll do to hold on to love. or the problem of love without respect). I'm up to episode 741, and the confrontation between Joshua and Barnabas over the latter's coffin is still one of the best scenes in the show, for my money. That said; Broadly speaking, most of my problems with 1795 either have to do with characterization, or with historical context: that DS's unwillingness to delve into historical realities undercuts its ability to talk about monsters, and that it completely mishandles Vicki to the point of functionally ruining the nominal main character (who, to be fair, was already being pushed out).

Historical Context: DS loves the past, conceptually, but it really doesn't deal in historical conditions, and that's on full display in 1795 - witchcraft trials? zippers? claiming a house built in the early 20th century, with the attendant architectural style, was actually built in the years leading up to 1795? okay. I forgive that, because we do live, narratively, in a world with witches and vampires and curses and passenger rail service north of Portland, ME after 1965 - and in a make-believe world where the costumes are as good as a budget of a crisp single and a pb&j can make 'em. I say this mostly lovingly: DS simply is not the kind of show that cares about historical plausibility, let alone accuracy. Plus, Reverend Trask was great, and on the basis of giving Jerry Lacy scenery to chew on, the witchcraft trial plotline is excused.

More seriously and damningly, I do think it's a glaring omission on a show being made and aired in the late 1960s to have three characters said to be from the (fictional) wealthiest family of planters and enslavers on Martinique and have that go unexamined and unpacked, especially when commentary on class in Collinsport has been a constant undercurrent (sometimes more of an under-trickle, or under-vague-breeze) since episode one - and because Joshua Collins is very explicit about how beneficial the connection between the two families will be for the Collinses, who always need cargo for their ships. [Since David Ford's here, you'll forgive the reference to 1776: "Molasses to Rum" playing vaguely in the background] But that's the problem with Post-Barnabas DS. Since there's a Collins running around befanged and literally drinking the blood of others, the show's lost interest in discussing how, exactly, the Collinses became wealthy and powerful, beyond the odd occasional reference to the fishing fleet and cannery or, in 1795, the shipyards. We've got a real vampire, what do we need all that metaphorical monstrosity and class/race/gender analysis for?

As a choice the show's made, I think it fundamentally undercuts one of the show's most reliable and interesting points of commentary: how charming and human some monsters are, or that humanity and monstrosity are not entirely mutually exclusive conditions.

also speaking of monstrosity. the show excuses Barnabas for so much outright evil because he preys on sex workers, primarily, and other assorted poor men and women of Collinsport, who the show ... doesn't really see as people. but that's a separate but not unrelated rant.

Characterization: really, this is about Vicki. So much of what I dislike about 1795 has to do with Vicki's characterization changing for the worse (granted, I think this problem starts much earlier, but see digression a below) once she hits the ground in 1795, AND that the 1795 arc continuously insulates her from the important parts of DS's narrative. If the whole point of Vicki landing in the past was to explain how it all began (whether that's Barnabas's vampirism, or the opening of the great house at Collinwood - Sarah's ghostly goals are unclear here), she's party to neither: Vicki spends very little time in Collinwood, and is kept completely apart from even a hint of knowledge that Barnabas is a vampire. In effect: Vicki, as nominal main character, gets sent into the past, but not as a character - she's just a windowpane, or a magic mirror as far as her importance to the narrative goes. Which is unfortunate for her, because as a character taking up space, she's given screen-time without agency, intelligence, or inner life. The only change that being dragged by her puppet strings through 1795 effects in Vicki Winters is a rope-burn from a failed hanging, an infected gunshot wound, and a I-wish-he-were-more-permanently-dead rebound boyfriend whose response to Vicki panicking about being hanged was to slap her for being hysterical.

Forgive me for being unimpressed.

As far as fixing it goes - there's where I've been striking out. She's fatally passive in 1795 as written. Why doesn't Vicki try to figure out how to get back to her present? (and if she doesn't, perhaps ... gesture at why Vicki might feel like there's not a lot to return to in the present? She nearly jumped from Widows' Hill about 10 episodes before 1795 started.) Why does Vicki persist in making herself suspicious, when she was introduced as a character hampered more by inexperience than true ignorance? In the idea 1795 that lives in my head, why wouldn't Vicki try to figure out who the real witch was, because - given her experiences with the supernatural! - surely a witch might be any help in getting her out of the 18th century and back into the present? End of day, she needs a real plot which doesn't end with her in prison unconnected to the Collinses. Whether that's searching for an escape hatch back to the Swinging Sixties, or Sarah's ghost giving her clear instructions - some kind of a goal! - Vicki either shouldn't exist in 1795 (recycle Moltke as another Collins sibling? that would add a wrinkle to the question of Vicki's antecedents) or she has to be given something to do.

&, finally ...

Digression A: In fairness to the 1795 arc, I think the arc was only following a pattern of characterization and plot involvement that started with Barnabas's arrival: first, that Vicki initially wasn't really involved in the Barnabas plot because she was more involved with the Liz & Jason plot, and, unfortunately for Vicki, everyone still talks about Barnabas, where no one (alas for Patrick and Bennett!) talks up the blackmail thing; second, I think, that the one-two punch of the definitive end of the era of metaphorical monsters & the Burke recast meant that a lot of the dramatic tension that Vicki was carrying either got dismissed or dissipated. We're not playing Jane Eyre any more, we're doing Dracula: Vicki's relationship with Roger and David no longer bears any dramatic weight. We've completely sidelined the question of Vicki's origins, so whether or not Liz is her mother doesn't matter (and the revelation and dismissal of Liz's not-actually-monstrous conduct sort of defangs that relationship, too? oh, Liz isn't actually a murderer? so mother or not, there's no strain on her relationship with the conspicuously virtuous Vicki.). Burke's no longer threatening to burn down Collinsport for revenge, and all of his various relationships with the Collinses or Collinsport denizens have gotten abruptly normalized, so there's no tension to his relationship with Vicki any more: he's rich (don't ask where the money came from), he's in love with her, and now he's chummy with all her friends/stand-in family members. He doesn't even have conversations that are totally just about pens or guns with Roger, for god's sake. The show kicked out all the pillars Victoria Winters as a character had been built on, and it only gets worse after 1795. No wonder Moltke left.

[leavingubehind]

[ozzyonedge]

11 years ago, January 18th 2013, the last episode of Fringe was aired.

It was the best show, and I miss it dearly.

Time for another rewatch?

P.S. Non of the gifs are mine. Unfortunately I'm too senile to recall where I got them from. Probably here on tumblr.

[fashioninpaper]

Fringe Paper Dolls by PIETRO VESCOVO

[planstransamanacanalpanema]

Props to the TV show Fringe, for having easily one of the most disturbing first 3 minutes if anything I've ever seen on broadcast television. This show has everything, post 9/11 airline hysteria, disintegrating flesh, and the ever present threat of poor depictions of diabetes on television. Congrats! 🎉🎉🎉

[possibility221]

Fringe and Sherlock Holmes