#like obviously the very early stuff was clear but more modern era i lost my fucking mind when i learned about the boncas

[dandp]

Literally got instantly feverish and had to pause it when the BONCAs came up I'm actually not strong enough to hear them talk about that

[davidmann95]

Sooo… Superman and the Authority?

magnus-king123 asked: Your thoughts on Superman & the authority Give it to me...lol

Anonymous asked: Seeing Bezos take his little trip into space the same day Morrison puts out a Superman comic that touches on how far we’ve fallen from the days when we dreamed of utopian futures where everyone explored the stars was a big gut punch. Not used to Superman being topical in that way.

Anonymous asked: What'd you think of Superman and the Authority#1?

This is far beyond what I can fit in the normal weekly reviews, so taking this as my notes on the first six pages, with this and this as my major lead-in thoughts:

* Janin's such a perfect fit for Morrison - the scale, the power, the facial expressions selling the character work, the screwing around with the panel formatting as necessary to sell the effect, the numinous sense of things going on larger than you can fully perceive amidst the beauty and chaos. It's a shame he wasn't around 25 years ago to draw JLA, but I'll take him going with Morrison onto other future projects.

* His intro action sequence is such a great demonstration of why Black actually does have something to offer, and also how he's such a dumbass desperately needing Superman to save him from himself.

* While Jordie Bellaire didn't legit go with an entirely monochromatic palate the way early previews suggested, it's still an effect frequently and excellently deployed here. And glad to see Steve Wands carry into this from Blackstars since there's such an obvious carryover from its work with Superman.

* "Gentlemen. Ladies. Others." Great both because of the obvious - hey, Superman's nodding at me! - and because it's a phrasing that reinforces that this take on him (and let's be real Morrison) is old as hell.

* I'm mostly past caring about whether this is an alt-Earth Superman until it becomes indisputable one way or another, this and Action both rule so what does it really matter? But while there are still a couple signs in play suggesting some kind of division (the Action Comics #1036 cover, Midnighter up to time-travel shenanigans) the "lost in time" quote clearly thrown in after the fact to explain how he could have met Kennedy outside of 5G that wouldn't be necessary for an Elseworlds, the assorted gestures towards Superman's current status quo, the Kingdom Come symbol appearing in Action, and that Morrison would have had to completely rewrite the ending if this wasn't supposed to be 'the' version of Clark Kent going forward as was the intent when they first planned it all say to me that no, no fooling around, this is our guy going forward one way or another.

* Janin and Bellaire making the first version of the crystal Fortress ever that actually looks as cool as you want it to.

Anonymous asked: I like that Superman and The Authority is basically the anti-All-Star; instead of the laid back, immortal Superman who is supercharged, we have a stressed, ageing Superman whose tremendous powers are fading. The former will always be there to save us, but the latter is running out of time and needs to pull off a Hail Mary. Also, he mentions in his monologue to Black that he was "lost in time" when he met JFK, so maybe he is the main continuity Clark. Or he's the t-shirt Supes from Sideways.

* You're absolutely right - the power reversal is obvious and the ticking clock in play seemingly isn't for his own survival but everyone around him as he wakes up and realizes all the old icons grew complacent with the gains they'd made and he's not leaving behind the world he meant to. Both, however, are built on the idea of preparing the world to not need them anymore - it'll still have a Superman in his son, but that'll only work because of the others he empowers and inspires. The question is what happens to Clark if he's not going to live in the sun for 83000 years.

* Clark's 'exercise' here does more to sell me on the idea of Old Man Superman as a cool idea than however many decades of Earth 2 stuff.

* Intergang being noted alongside Darkseid and Doomsday speaks to how much Kirby informed Morrison's conception of Superman.

* This isn't exactly the most progressive in its disability politics but at least it makes clear Black's being a piece of shit about it.

* It's startling how much Clark can get away with saying stuff in here you'd never expect to come out of Superman's mouth. "I made an executive decision" "Privacy, really...?" "You have nowhere to go, Black. Nothing to live for." "There are few people in my life who I instinctively and viscerally dislike, and you've always been one of them." It only works because there's zero aggression behind it, he's just past the point of niceties and being totally frank while making clear none of these assessments preclude that he cares and is going to unconditionally do the right thing every time. He is absolutely, per Morrison, humanity's dad picking us up when we're too drunk to drive ourselves home.

* The story doesn't put a big flashing light over it, but it's not even a little bit subtle having the material threat of the issue be a ticking timebomb left by the carelessness and hubris of generations past.

* Manchester keeps trying to poke the bear and prove his hot takes about Superman and it's just not working. The front he put up under Kelley is gone after decades of defeats, and as Morrison understands what actually conceptually works about him as a rival to Superman underneath the aging nerd paranoia he's exposed as what he absolutely would be in 2021: a dude with a horrific terminal case of Twitter brainworms. I was PANICKED when I heard there was an 'offensive term' joke in this, I was braced for Morrison at their well-meaning worst, but it's such a goddamn perfect encapsulation of a very specific breed of Twitter leftist who uses their politics first and foremost as a cudgel and justification to label their abrasive, judgmental shittiness as self-righteousness (plus it's a killer payoff to a joke from way back in his original appearance). Cannot believe they pulled that off when they're so very, very open about basically not knowing how the internet works.

* @charlottefinn: Manchester Black using his telekinetic powers to force someone he hates to fave a problematic tweet so that he can screenshot it and start a dogpile

@intergalactic-zoo: “Once they cancel Bibbo, Superman won’t be *anyone’s* fav’rit anymore!”

* Friend noted this issue had to be fully the conversation because the whole premise stands on the house of cards of these two somehow working together, and with three 'silent' inset panels the creative team pulls off that turning point.

* So much of this feels on the surface like Morrison bringing back the All-Star vibes with Clark, but when he drops a "That's all you got?" in a brawl you realize what's underlining that bluntness and confidence in the face of failure is that deep down this is still the Action guy too. This dude ain't gonna get wrecked in his Fortress while the other guy chuckles about him being A SOFT WEE SCIENTIST'S SON!

* Bringing up Jor-El made me realize that Morrison already spelled out that this is the final threat to Superman, what he faces at the end of the road:

"Now it's your turn, Superman."

* A l'il Superman 2000/All-Star reference with the Phantom Zone map!

* There's so much intertextuality going on here even by Morrison standards - Change or Die with the old hero putting together a team of morally nebulous folks out to 'fix' everything, Flex Mentallo with the muscleman trying to redeem the punk, Doomsday Clock with the fate of the world hinging on whether Superman can get through to a meta stand-in for an idea of 'modern' comics cynicism, DKR and New Frontier and Kingdom Come and Multiversity and Seven Soldiers and What's So Funny and All-Star and Action and the last 5 years of monthly Superman comics and Authority and probably Jupiter's Legacy and Tom Strong - but none of that's needed. You could go in with the baseline pop cultural understanding of the character and not care about any of the inside baseball shit and get that this is a story about a leader of a generation that let down the people they made all their grand promises to as inertia and day-to-day demands and complacency let him be satisfied with the accomplishments they'd made long ago, looking at a new era and seeing the ways its own activists are dropping the ball. The only thing that fundamentally matters in a "you have to accept you're reading a superhero story" sense is that because he's Superman he's willing to own up to it and listen to people who might know better about some things and try to set things right while he and those who'll take his place still have a chance. And yes, the oldster looking back on their legacy with a skeptical eye and hoping for better from the next generation, hoping most of all that their little heir apparent can fulfill the promise inside of him instead of being a provocating little shitkicker, is obviously also autobiographical.

* The overlaying Kennedy reprisal is such a great visual of a sudden intrusive thought.

* The Kryptonite secret is the obvious "This is going to matter!" moment, but "He lied about his son" is a bit that doesn't connect to anything going on right now so maybe that's important here too? More significantly, the Justice League can't actually be the villains here but that Ultra-Humanite's crew are in an Earth-orbiting satellite makes pretty clear what's up.

* I've said before that between Superman, OMAC, and a New Gods-affiliated speedster this was going to use all of Morrison's favorite things. King Arthur playing a role isn't exactly dissuading me.

* Love the idea that all the antiheroes have their own community in the same way as the capes and tights crew. They definitely all privately think the rest are posers though and that they alone are Garth Ennis Punisher in a mob of Garth Ennis Wolverines.

* Manchester's fallen so far he's gone from trying to convince Superman to kill to convince him to dunk on people for their bad takes and Clark just doesn't get it. Official prediction of dialogue for upcoming issues:

"According to these bloody Fortress scans, the only thing that can restore your powers is an unfiltered hit of dopamine. Don't worry, Doctor Black has a few ideas."

"Hmm. Maybe I'll plant a nice tree?"

"...fuck you."

* Ok I already talked about how great the Fortress looks in here but LOVE this library.

* A pair of pages this seems like the right spot to discuss from Black's original appearance that underlines both his and Superman's inadequacies up to this point:

Responding to the problem of "the government and penal system are hopelessly corrupt" neither of them has any actual notion of what to do about it in spite of their respective posturing beyond how to handle individual outside actors - each is in their own way every bit as small-minded and reactionary as the other. Clark's coming around though, and he's holding out hope for the other guy.

* Superman: Have a lovely mineral water :) proper hydration is important :)

Manchester Black: *Is a dude who can get so mad he vomits and passes out. At water.*

* That last page is the one to beat for the year, and does more to put over the idea of this as an Authority book than that Midnighter and Apollo are literally going to show up. It also feels like Morrison tacitly acknowledging all the ways the premise could go or at least be received wrong - from Superman saying 'enough is enough' to who he's bringing into the fold to go about it - in the most beautifully on-the-nose fashion imaginable. Maybe they'll save us all! Or maybe they'll drown us in their vomit.

[littlx-songbxrd]

so I just went on a really fascinating rabbit hole on historical hair dye-warning for some disgusting cosmetic methods (this is also way longer than I though it would be but I got very fascinated by the topic)

as for going blonde:

during the roman empire, prostitutes were actually required to have blonde hair and it is through analysis of this that we have most of the early information of hair coloring. wigs were used, which obviously doesn’t help answer our question, but there was also a method of burning certain plants and nuts and using the ashes to lighten hair colors.

now we get into gross stuff. in the modern day if you have dark hair that you are dyeing pretty much any color (aside from specific circumstances) you are absolutely 1000% going to need to bleach it. Great!! modern science has created safe synthetic bleach that is specifically for use in hair. however this was only created in the later twentieth century when hollywood popularized light colored hair.

prior to the invention of what we modern humans know as bleach, people still needed to bleach things (leather used a bleaching process, as did cloth/thread, and of course it was used in cosmetics) so, you might ask, what did people use as bleach?? the answer is urine (human or animal) as it contains natural ammonia in it, which is one of the primary ingredients in bleach. (one of the most disgusting methods I discovered was used was putting the ashes of the crushed up plants and nuts together with literal bird poop to create a paste and then peeing on it. I almost gave up here😭)

later in the elizabethan era in england blonde and red hair was popular. blonde was achieved by using cumin seeds, saffron, and oil and celandine. this method was wildly expensive though.

one doctor in the 1600s successfully used straight up acid to dye hair blonde but that was wildly unsafe so for a long time women just started wearing wigs.

it wasn’t until 1856 that hair coloring became popular again and it was due to the invention of the first synthetic dye, which was the purple shade called Mauvine

once again though, this does not help alastair as it is not until 1920 that true blonde hair was achieved with synthetic dyes, and even through the mid twentieth century it was sometimes an outright dangerous venture because of the unsafe nature of the chemicals.

as for going back to black:

originally, black was the most popular choice for dyeing hair, primarily to cover the signs of aging, as well as for women to distinguish themselves from prostitutes. ancient Egyptians actually used henna to cover gray hairs, and during the same time greeks and later romans used various plant extracts. these extracts were highly toxic though so one method also used was fermenting leeches (like the actual animal) in a lead container for several months. (ew) henna was probably the most popular during ancient times, but berries and crushed nutshells could also be used to darken hair tones

wikihow suggests using henna or indigo powder mixed with coffee ground to get a black color, but it also says that this wouldn’t get lighter colored (such as blonde) hair dark enough. henna is definitely the most historically accurate and it seems that the common consensus is that it was the most reliable method.

it is important, however to note a few things historically here.

1. aside from the ancient egyptians covering gray hairs, men rarely used unnatural hair color. in the western world men used powder and pomade (as well as wigs) to keep hair clean and presentable during the 17th and 18th centuries, which is the closest the modern world came to popular modifications for men’s hair.

2. since women were the primary targets of hair dye, it was generally incredibly ornamental and not very practical. there was a trend in the 18th century of pastel hairstyles, often using wigs, and for the past three centuries before alastair was dyeing his hair, styles achieved notoriety through shape as opposed to color.

3. by the time alastair was dyeing his hair, unnatural colors weren’t popular at all really. natural styles were coming back into popularity in all aspects of fashion, and since women were the only people who ever dyed their hair and the styles didn’t demand it at all it would have been incredibly hard to find access to any of it.

4. it is important to remember that alastair dyed his hair to appear more eurocentric like his father. with how racist and classist the western world was at this time there was absolutely no reason for white europeans, especially the english, to have the necessary products to appear more ideal accessible for those they didn’t want to benefit from the eurocentric society.

tldr: if alastair wanted to bleach his hair he would have had to do some pretty disgusting stuff to it (or I found another suggestion that said using something highly acidic like lemon or lime could work!! all hope may not be lost lol) and to dye it back to black his best bet was henna or a similar plant based stain!

I don’t know how clear this is since i’m on mobile but I hope you found this as fascinating as I did! I really like doing this stuff so if there’s anything else your curious about let me know!!

I absolutely found this incredibly fascinating! I am also on mobile now so I am sorry for my spelling mistakes already

Acid??? ACID????? OH GOD NO

So according to CC Alastair had

And I QUOTE FROM THE ANON WHO SENT ME HER ANSWER

✨magic dye✨ which she never elaborated on

So now I'm imagining if hed miss the vender (i hope there was a vender to this magic dye) to get to him, imagine him trying one of the methods you told here

God thatd be horrifying

Highly acidic lime works pls i cannot think acid-

Oh no now I wanna write an angty fict about thus anon what have you done

It is all very interesting thought! Didnt know they used to dye hair to distinguish from prostitutes!

Also now that I remember Cordelia DID use henna on her hair if I remember correctly, they probably DID have it in the house

So I'm sure it wouldnt have the immediate result it had on Alastair in canon

But we can always dream he used henna and CC just unrealistically described

Or what? Did he find MAGIC DYE in one night?

Anyways

I LOVE ALL THIS AND ITS SO FASCINATING

You are making my inner fasion nerd thrive truly

[obtusemedia]

Ranking Lady Gaga's albums, from worst to best

Being a Lady Gaga fan can be an exercise in frustration.

Gaga is far more ambitious than most popstars — I doubt we’ll ever see Ariana Grande or Ed Sheeran make an album as left-field as Born This Way or ARTPOP. But she's also far less consistent, with numerous misbegotten projects.

Gaga's undeniably successful, with five #1 hits, an Oscar and multiple iconic music videos to her name. But her messy album rollouts and tradition of underperforming lead singles make her feel like an underdog compared to the more polished, precise careers of her contemporaries like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé or Bruno Mars.

Gaga is kind of a mess. But she's our mess. This album ranking will cover some records I can't stand — albums that make me constantly hit the fast-forward button, or albums I ignore altogether. But there isn't a single record on here that wasn't a bold move. Even the "back to basics" albums made strong aesthetic choices.

So let's dive into the career of the most fascinating Millennial popstar.

#8: Cheek To Cheek (2014)

This really shouldn't count. It's a Lady Gaga album in name only. But, technically it's a Gaga album, so here we are.

I've got nothing against Gaga having fun playing Rat Pack-era dress-up with Tony Bennett. She's a theatre kid at heart, and I'm sure every theatre kid would kill to make a Great American Songbook covers record like this. It sounds like she and Tony enjoyed themselves, so I'm happy for them!

...but I'm sorry. I can't be objective about Cheek To Cheek, it's the opposite of my taste. There's only so many bland lounge ballads I can take.

BEST SONGS: I have to pick one? "Anything Goes" is cute, I guess.

WORST SONG: "Sophisticated Lady"

#7: A Star Is Born (2018)

Let me first make this clear — A Star Is Born, the movie starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga? It's a masterpiece. It's electrifying and tragic and I'm still upset it didn't sweep the Oscars that year. There's even a cute dog! You won't hear me say a bad word about it.

But A Star Is Born, the accompanying soundtrack? It's extremely hit-and-miss.

Yes, it includes arguably Gaga's best-ever song and one of the greatest movie hits ever written, "Shallow." And there's plenty of other great tunes in the tracklist too — "Always Remember Us This Way," "I'll Never Love Again," the "La Vie En Rose" cover.

Even the country-rock songs from Bradley Cooper (who, reminder, is not a professional singer) are mostly good! "Black Eyes" RIPS, and "Maybe It's Time" feels like a long-lost classic.

But sadly, there are so many mediocre filler tracks on this thing. The second half of A Star Is Born's hour-plus runtime (Gaga's longest!) is padded with generic songs like "Look What I've Found," "Heal Me" and "I Don't Know What Love Is." The only good one out of the bunch is the silly, intentionally-bad "Why Did You Do That?"

In the movie, these filler tracks serve a point – they're meant to show Gaga's character selling out. They work in the movie when you hear them for a few seconds and see Cooper make a drunkly disappointed scowl. But I don't want to listen to them, and sadly, they make up half the album.

In other words — A Star Is Born would've made an incredible six or seven-song EP. But as an 63-minute-long record? It's a slog.

BEST SONGS: "Shallow", "Always Remember Us This Way," "Maybe It's Time"

WORST SONG: "Heal Me"

#6: Joanne (2016)

After Born This Way and ARTPOP, I get why Gaga needed to make a more lowkey, back-to-basics album. I also understand that many of these songs have extremely personal lyrics for her.

But is a down-to-earth album what I really want from our most outré popstar? Not really.

Luckily, Joanne is better than that description suggests. Yes, there are some bland acoustic ballads and awkward hippie-era throwbacks (two styles that are really not in Gaga's wheelhouse), but there's also some Springsteen-style heartland rockers! And those go hard in the paint.

Joanne works best when Gaga works the record's dusty aesthetics into her brand of weirdo pop, like on the sizzling "John Wayne," the winking "A-YO" or the delightfully extra Florence Welch duet "Hey Girl."

The record also has "Perfect Illusion" — a glorious red herring of a lead single that sounds nothing like anything else on Joanne. It's a roided-up mixture of woozy Tame Impala production and hair metal histrionics, and it rules. It might be Gaga's best-ever lead single! (at the very least, it's her most underrated.)

And there is one slow tune that's unambiguously great: "Million Reasons," another solid Gaga lighters-in-the-air power ballad pastiche.

Despite what some Little Monsters may tell you, Joanne isn't a disaster. There's some great stuff in there, and even the worst songs are just forgettable. But it's still far from her best.

BEST SONGS: "Perfect Illusion," "Diamond Heart," "Million Reasons"

WORST SONG: "Come To Mama"

#5: Chromatica (2020)

When Chromatica was released near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it had been seven years since Gaga had released music in her classic gonzo-synthpop vein. I can easily picture the record serving as an "ugh fine, I'll give you what you want" response to the many Little Monsters annoyed with Gaga's half-decade of folksy ballads and Julie Andrews cosplay.

I'll say this about Chromatica — outside of The Fame Monster, it's her most consistent record. There's not a single track that's a glaring mistake. And the three singles — "Stupid Love," "911" and the triumphant Ariana Grande duet "Rain On Me" — easily stand among her best tracks.

But although "all bangers, no ballads" album sounds rad in theory, it doesn't really succeed in practice. Chromatica is solid, but it's also a very same-y record. It feels like Gaga had one really great idea for the album ('90s club music with super-depressing lyrics) and repeated it over and over and over again to diminishing results.

There are some songs that are able to separate themselves: the three singles, of course, as well as the goofy "Babylon" and "Sine From Above," the Elton John duet that's the closest Chromatica gets to a ballad. But by the end of the album, you feel more worn out than electrified.

Also — and this is probably unfair, but still — Chromatica came out just a couple months after another retro-dance blockbuster pop album: Dua Lipa's magnum opus, Future Nostalgia. That's not a flattering comparison.

BEST SONGS: "Rain On Me," "Stupid Love," "911"

WORST SONG: "1000 Doves"

#4: The Fame (2008)

Out of all of Gaga's records, The Fame is most like a time capsule. It REEKS of late '00s/early '10s pop — which isn't an entirely fair criticism, seeing as Gaga popularized that era's sleazy, synthy aesthetic. It's also not a bad thing! I don't mind a little nostalgia!

As you already know, The Fame's singles are masterworks. "Just Dance," "Poker Face," "Paparazzi" — these tracks have titanic legacies for good reason. And although it's probably the least-beloved of this album's hits, despite being a total banger, "LoveGame" should still be commended for having arguably the most Gaga lyric ever (you know, the "disco stick" line).

And even though those tracks are front-loaded on The Fame, there are some gems deeper in the tracklist. "Summerboy" is basically Gwen Stefani covering The Strokes (so obviously, it's great). "Eh, Eh" is adorable. "Starstruck" is the most 2008 song ever recorded, with aggressive Auto-Tune and Flo Rida showing up to make Starbucks jokes.

Sadly, The Fame still feels like Gaga before she became fully-formed at certain points. The back half has a number of songs that feel like generic club tracks forced by the label, and "Paper Gangsta" is one of the clunkiest songs in Gaga's catalogue.

But at the very least, the bad songs on The Fame at least serve as little nostalgia bombs for that era of pop. And the best songs are untouchable classics.

BEST SONGS: "Paparazzi," "Just Dance," "Summerboy"

WORST SONG: "Paper Gangsta"

#3: ARTPOP (2013)

For much of Gaga's career, she's been ahead of the curve. She tries something, and a year or a few years later, other popstars try something similar to diminishing results.

That doesn't just apply to the successful stuff, like Gaga's extravagant music videos inspiring many copycats from 2010-2013. It also applies to the mid-late '10s trend of legacy popstars making a controversial record with risky aesthetic or lyrical choices that backfired: reputation. Witness. Man of The Woods.

Gaga did this first, with ARTPOP — arguably the most abrasive, and bizzare major label album released by a major modern popstar. And she did it better, because unlike Swift, Perry and Timberlake, Gaga's weirdness was for real. And it was in service of some prime, hyper-aggressive bangers.

ARTPOP isn't Gaga's best work — some of her experiments on it are major misfires, from the obnoxious "Mary Jane Holland" to the bland Born This Way leftover (and Romani slur-utilizing) "Gypsy."

But when ARTPOP is on, it's ON. The opening stretch in particular, from "Aura" to "Venus" to "G.U.Y." to "Sexxx Dreams," is chaotic synthpop at its finest. Those songs took Gaga's classic sound to an apocalyptic, demented extreme, and they're fantastic.

"MANiCURE" is a great glam-rock banger, "Dope" is another classic Gaga piano ballad, the title track is some sikly-smooth dreampop; even the misguided, clunky trap anthem "Jewels N' Drugs" is bad in a hilarious, charming way!

Trust me: ARTPOP will go down in history not as a flop, but as a gutsy, underrated record from a legend. Less Witness, more In Utero.

BEST SONGS: "G.U.Y.," "Venus," "Sexxx Dreams"

WORST SONG: "Gypsy"

#2: The Fame Monster (2009)

Objectively speaking, this is probably the best Gaga album.

It's her one record with no fluff, no filler — only 34 minutes and 8 tracks, all of them stellar.

It's the record that took Gaga from "wow, this new woman is a fresh new face in pop!" to "this woman IS pop."

It's the record with her signature track, "Bad Romance," which was accompanied by arguably the greatest music video of the 21st Century. (It also has my absolute favorite Gaga track, the relentlessly catchy "Telephone.")

I don't think I need to explain what makes mega-smashes "Bad Romance" and "Telephone" and "Alejandro" great, nor the accompanying legendary deep cuts "Speechless" and "Dance In The Dark." They speak for themselves.

However — the sleek, calculated perfection of The Fame Monster, while incredible, isn't something I return to often. It's just not the side of Gaga that's my favorite. That honor would have to go to...

BEST SONGS: "Telephone," "Dance In The Dark," "Bad Romance"

WORST SONG: "So Happy I Could Die" (but it's still pretty solid)

#1: Born This Way (2011)

One of my favorite podcasts is Blank Check. The concept of the show is to analyze each movie by a famous director — in particular, those who had big success early on and then got a blank check to make whatever crazy passion project they wanted. Here's a great example: because Batman was a massive hit, Tim Burton got to make whatever Hot Topic-core movies he wanted to for decades, from Edward Scissorhands to a creepy Willy Wonka remake.

That long-winded tangent is just to say: Born This Way was Lady Gaga's blank check. By early 2011, she had conquered the pop universe, notching hit after hit after hit. Every other pop star was copying her quirky music videos. So the label let Gaga do whatever she wanted — and she didn't waste that opportunity.

Born This Way is wildly overproduced. It's both extremely trend-chasing (those synths were cutting edge at the time but charmingly dated now), but also deeply uncaring about what the teens want (I don't think Springsteen and Queen homages were big at the time). And I love every messy, overblown second of it.

From the hair-metal/synthpop hybrid opener "Marry The Night" to the majestic '80s power ballad "The Edge of Glory," Born This Way starts at an 11. And Gaga never takes her foot off the pedal for the album's entire hour-plus run time. Clanging electric guitars, thunderous synths and Clarence Clemons (!!!) sax solos collide into each other as Gaga champions every misfit and loser in the world. It's gloriously corny in the best way possible.

Born This Way is also the perfect middle ground of pop-savvy Gaga and gonzo Gaga. It doesn't go quite as hard as ARTPOP, but the hooks are stronger. And the oddball moments are tons of fun, from the sci-fi biker anthem "Highway Unicorn" to the goofy presidential-sex banger "Government Hooker" ("Put your hands on me/John F. Kennedy" might be the greatest line in pop history).

Born This Way will always be my favorite Gaga album. It's armed with nuclear-grade hooks, slamming beats, and soaring anthems. Although it's not as untouchably pristine as the Mt. Rushmore of '10s pop classics (for the record, that's 1989, EMOTION, Lemonade and, of course, Melodrama), Gaga isn't best served by meticulousness. She's proudly tacky and histrionic, and so that's what makes Born This Way an utter joy.

BEST SONGS: "The Edge of Glory," "You and I," "Marry The Night"

WORST SONG: "Bloody Mary"

[arecomicsevengood]

On Alan Moore’s SUPREME

It is an understatement to say we live in interesting times. These are chaotic times, and I hope we survive long enough to learn from them. I do not know how they will be remembered. I only know that I do not believe that hindsight is 20/20. Rather, nostalgia has distorting effects that render eras in caricature. I know this because while people often look at things and say “hey, remember the nineties?” with this quasi-ironic tone meant to pigeonhole things according to a handful of superficial traits, I actually feel like I do remember the nineties, and they were not that, but they were very far from where we are now.

I recently tracked down collections of Alan Moore’s run on Supreme via my local library. Supreme was a character created by Rob Liefeld at Image. Liefeld and Image are both prime examples of what people think of when they think of “1990s comics,” though their influence continues to this day, maybe stronger now than it ever was then. The backlash against this stuff that followed, which involved a great deal of nostalgia, that you see in things like Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ Kingdom Come, or Kurt Busiek’s Astro City, is, I would argue, way more definitive of the era, in that there was maybe a “square” or defensive reactionary tone that seems more out of step with the modern moment, maybe because they essentially “lost.” Moore’s Supreme is about comic book reboots, and comic book history. It’s pretty nostalgic, but it’s also one of the more optimistic Alan Moore comics: The reaction against the superficial Image work also included a rejection of the “grim and gritty” aspects of Moore’s eighties work.

These Supreme collections are out of print, which is weird. While new stories continue to be told set in this universe Rob Liefeld created, but I think it’s pretty widely acknowledged that Moore’s comics were the best things to come out of there, the stuff where the ideas make the most sense, where there’s material that can be expanded upon. I know Brandon Graham took material from Moore’s work for his Prophet run. The recent Warren Ellis/Tula Lotay Supreme: Blue Rose derives from concepts in Moore’s run. It’s vastly tonally different, aiming for some sort of slow-paced Solaris vibe of mystery, which Moore’s run explains in such a way that it feels like Ellis’ run would have less of a reason to exist were his source text widely available.

I read Moore’s first issue at the time of its release, and was not that into it. When I think of the comics I was into at the time, I understand why: Thinking of Mark Waid/Humberto Ramos series Impulse, or Christopher Priest and Mark Bright’s Quantum And Woody, the emotional connection I had with those books as a reader is basically impossible to imagine anyone having with Supreme. I don’t think Moore was interested in doing that: I think he was trying to crack “nineties comics” and was seeing a bunch of dumb garbage it was very easy to think mixing in some pastiches would improve.

Also, the character is basically just Superman, and while in some ways Supreme is “better” than, say, Scott McCloud’s Superman Adventures, in that a good deal of work and thought is being put into creating these riffs on the Superman concept, Rick Burchett’s art, drawing Bruce Timm designs, is more appealing than what Joe Bennett comes up with, though, so it’s kind of a wash. Chris Sprouse comes on board later, and when he’s drawing the book, it’s great. The book moves from being “kind of a slog even though it’s clever” to “actually pretty fun.” After working together on Supreme, Moore and Sprouse would launch Tom Strong together. That’s another comic I stopped reading early on because I wasn’t getting that much pleasure out of it. Both Supreme and Tom Strong have flashback sequences drawn by other artists (in Supreme, they’re usually handled by Rick Veitch) that are also meant to be reference some other genre or historical moment, fleshing out backstory but also demonstrating Moore’s cleverness, which is two-fold: it’s both the cleverness of a plotter, telling stories pithily, and the cleverness of a student of comics showing how much he knows, via jokey parody. This becomes tedious when baked into the structure of every issue of a comic, but it’s also how Supreme gets to have Rick Veitch pages, which are welcome when the stuff set in modern times is drawn by people whose work isn’t fun to look at. Still, it’s a superhero comic where the core of most issues is not a fight but an extended vaguely comedic riff.

Another person to continue on to Tom Strong is letterer Todd Klein, who does a great job here, enough so that, when late in the run there are issues he didn’t letter, they’re demonstrably worse and harder to read. Tom Strong does have a different colorist than Supreme though, and in some ways there are weaknesses even in Sprouse’s issues that can be laid on the coloring: It’s “nineties” in a true way, in that it’s tied to the computer coloring that was then state of the art. I am pretty sure I read the later issues of Tom Strong in collections a roommate owned, but I remember none of them. Most likely I will forget these issues of Supreme. The most impressive thing about Moore’s run is the long-term plotting, that the payoff to a year’s worth of stories is set up very early, and points that would pay off later are seeded throughout.

Still, in the mind of a kid, a year is a very long time. A developing brain pursues a lot of interests. There are very few comics I read every issue of for a year: To do that would cut into my ability to take chances on comics like, say, Alan Moore’s first issue of Supreme, when I’d never read any of the previous ones. Another reason I didn’t follow the title as a kid is this: By the time you get to the point where you have a preference for good superhero comics over bad ones, you’re also interested in non-superhero comics. The best stuff in the series are later Chris Sprouse drawn stories that work effectively as superhero comics, where multiple villains fight multiple heroes, and jokes are made steadily. This all follows up on groundwork laid earlier in the run.

These collections are not published by Image, but rather a book company called Checker I am pretty sure is no longer in business. The books at my library were not in great condition, and they’re not very well-designed. There’s an Alex Ross image on the front,  and Rob Liefeld on the back, alongside text that gives bios of Moore and Liefeld but says nothing about the Supreme comics the books contain. The interiors use Alex Ross drawings between issues, to cover for the original cover art being largely abysmal. I’m pretty sure Liefeld could reprint them at Image, although “this comic is drawn by a ton of different people, and quality varies” is not an appealing sales pitch. There were also other flashback stories, drawn by the likes of Melinda Gebbie and Kevin O’Neill, that ran in the original comics but aren’t in these collections, which I would hope a future reprint would restore. Around this time, Moore also did a run on Youngblood with Steve Skroce that was never collected, fondly remembered by some but also compromised by the fact that the last few pages currently extant, were drawn by a considerably worse artist.

What’s fun about these Supreme comics is that, for all the nostalgia for the past they contain, they’re still dense with ideas. It’s clear that what Moore appreciates about the old Superman comics he’s explicitly homaging is the imagination therein. He’s riffing, but extrapolating as well, these aren’t pure analogs. There are these science fiction or mythic elements all pressed together. I’m not saying there’s much that originates with Moore here, but in his bricolage things feel new, it’ll get your neurons firing. This is truly wild: the concept of the Supremacy, where all the alternate Supremes hang out, and its corresponding Daxia, where all the alternate reality versions of his nemesis hang out, both built in limbo, is surprisingly similar to plot points on the show Rick And Morty.

There are comics that are better than Moore’s Supreme, many more of them available now than there were twenty years ago. I read them, I write about them, and much of my championing of them stems from a preoccupation with storytelling. But there is a different kind of substance to these stories. It’s not “substance” in the sense of meaning, or emotional content. The substance is the sort of idea-space you swim in while reading fantasy or science fiction. I like to think that if you’re reading this you consider yourself a smart person, and that manifests itself as a certain snobbery in certain ways. Maybe you don’t read that sort of stuff as much as you did when you were a kid. As an adult, I’ve got other hang-ups. It is maybe a form of solipsism, though it stems from empathy, or a desire for it, obsessed over my own ability to relate to others. This is the stuff that makes up the content of “literary fiction” whereas I think of being a kid and trying to be imaginative or imagine possibilities beyond reality as essentially a spiritual quest. Reading this collection I could sense I wasn’t engaging it enough, even if only a portion of the pages were drawn well enough to make me want to engage it.

Moore is a spiritual person, obviously. You can listen to him talk about his work and artmaking and time and life and death and find a great deal of comfort. So much of his work is deeply reassuring and helpful, even though much of it is dark and more pessimistic than his Supreme run, and it’s often done through these genre pretexts. His work is much richer than what’s propped up by current trends, and it’s all informed by this grand history of literature, where what follows in Moore’s wake is frequently hollow because it doesn’t have this grounding in possibility and potential, but is instead premised on the observable. I’m making fun of Warren Ellis here, his obsession with science magazines and the idea of Moore’s run of Supreme as an observable phenomena after Moore made it exist.

It’s easy to view the way you engage this type of work as escapism, and there is truth to that, I think, when you’re an adult reader. I do think that when you’re younger, engaging with this stuff is more of a building a toolkit of ideas to engage with existence in a way that will stave off existential woe one encounters as they age. I frequently have this feeling that I am more tired than I used to be. My head is now subject to this feeling which is for all intents and purposes stupidity that maybe stems from trauma of having bad things happen to me (I have repeatedly been the victim of violent crime) and anxiety over things still to come. (Whether it be more crime or fascism or whatever, the complete collapse of the social fabric.)

There’s a feeling of being enervated I want to chase and have no idea how to, but it was genuinely present in my past. I know I can’t find it in nostalgia, in binge-reading old comics. That is 100% a trap and I know that the feeling I want is actually dependent on the absence of nostalgia, of being awake to there being possibilities in the future I can barely foresee. Moore’s run of Supreme taps into this energy, and he doesn’t think of it in a nostalgic way, the way he viewed 1963. He was engaging the moment, and finding the energy and collaborators that would propel him into the America’s Best Comics line, the sort of “better things” that might exist for a person in the near future that it is in the moment impossible to foresee. In all likelihood, the ability to manifest these things comes from a receptivity to potential that these comics evince.

Last week I turned 34, then the next day I found out my editor at The Comics Journal, Tim Hodler, was leaving it. I’m aware I need to leave Baltimore, get a new job, embark on a career path, enter into a new relationship, change everything about my life; all of these things both for their own sake but also to hopefully get the gears turning in my brain so I can write fiction again and feel that I am doing something.

When I read these book collections I was sort of wishing that like 2/3 of the pages were redrawn so that a book could exist which would have a reason to be read. Now I’m writing about it so I can remember I read it, and trying to explain why I’m doing so inevitably becomes about dissatisfaction with what is potentially giving way to something better, but I’m as overwhelmed by the facts of my own existence as Chris Sprouse would be at the fact that all the pages I would want him to redraw were already drawn by other people. Moore’s Supreme run can be reduced to these things that are essentially truisms: It’s “a moment in time,” “a transitional work.” This is true for so many things, but it is better to be these than the other thing that so much amounts to, a dead end.

[kindcaptivity]

First Impressions of “Happier Than Ever”

Getting Older and Billie Bossa Nova were my faves. I Didn’t Change My Number was probably my least favourite.

Under the cut for length.

Positives Lyrically, the titular song “Happier Than Ever” has a lot of content but manages to feel light and I respected that. When I first heard it, the guitar and lyrics reminded me of going to the corner shop on rainy days and having half-thoughts about things. I thought that the lyrics were OK and I sympathised with them a bit. Halfway through, it becomes a rock song and I thought, “That’s innovative,” but I didn’t really feel it. I don’t feel a lot of modern rock. If you like Nirvana and Green Day, you’ll really enjoy it because it hits that niche. I predicted a rock song on the album, especially because Billie likes modern rock and I thought that she should do one, and I know that HTE is going to be big. The singing is sort of similar to “Getting Older” to the point that I confused the two songs a bit at first. 

My favourite song was “Getting Older.” I took one look at the lyrics and I thought, “This feels so cliche. I can’t relate to this.” The one lyric that I picked out that I somewhat sympathised with was her talking about opening the door to crazed fans and rehearsing her lines and I thought, “Ah, I can see that.” However, I put the song on and the music itself gave me chills. There’s a part where the reverb says, “Anybody else” and the tune that’s played there repeats itself several times throughout the song. My eyes snapped open and I thought, “That’s music!” I am definitely adding this to my playlist. I thought that the opening was scratchy, but I understood it on second listening. When she said, ‘Happier than ever,’ I thought, “Ah, that’s going to be on-the-nose,” but she plays a little bit of xylophone over it and it felt very thrilling. The song ends abruptly and I didn’t like that at first because it seemed cliche, but I enjoyed it after listening to the whole album. Overall, it’s my favourite song.

When I first played “Billie Bossa Nova,” I was taken aback by how submissive Billie sounded. I thought, “I’ve definitely heard this somewhere before” and my first thought was that it was the Mii Music (i.e., Billie has been known to sample video-games). Once I got over the lyrics, I rewound it and I really enjoyed it. The tune became great after the initial beat; the sound was so crisp and sudden. You could tango or break-dance to it. Each verse, the beat kept blossoming. I can tell that it’s going to be a hit or a cult classic. I never could have imagined it from the title. I expected something with a large bass boost, but the actual song sounds sort of Spanish. If you’re listening for one song to dance to, this is it!

“Everybody Dies” is good. It feels very intimate and friendly towards the end. I got a version that was scratchy halfway through, so I don’t know. That’s the only song that I didn’t hear right. I’d love to listen to it again when I get a better copy, but I think that I like it. I expected it to be depressing and cliche, but it was surprisingly friendly and calm. I felt mellow after listening to it.

Out of the singles, I liked “Your Power” the most. The string-plucking felt very delicate, bohemian, and hopeful. That song made me start waiting for the album. It felt vague and left me wanting more. The lyrics were very haunting and clear. I expected not to like it because it was so bohemian, but I did like it quite a bit. “Try not to abuse your power / But having it’s so strange” has such a soft, half-spoken vibe.

I thought that “my future” was poignant when it came out. I remember enjoying the beat drop, the lyrics becoming very high and melodic, and the soft ending. If you listen to the lines, “Aren’t I someone? (Aren’t I someone?)” and “I’d like to be your answer / ‘Cause you’re so handsome,” you’ll know what I mean. I thought that it felt more like a teaser than a song, but it sort of was.

“NDA” had my favourite lyrics out of the singles: “On his way out, made him sign an NDA.” I really like when Billie does lyrics about female empowerment. A lot of the album is from the perspective of female disempowerment including the dance songs. “NDA” had a beat that sounded like tip-toeing. I liked it for the same reasons that I liked the beat in “Getting Older.” She has done that style before. It’s good if you like Autotune but a bit simple and reminded me a lot of music from the early tens like nightcore, which was never my style. 

“OverHeated” was blood-chilling. I don’t think that I could listen to it again. If I’m correct, it’s about her breasts trending. Thankfully, the beat was not as dark as the lyrics. It’s just sort of curious and reflective. I remembered it from teasers. I don’t think that I could have finished it if the beat was dark. “Overheated” is obviously a reference to her taking her hoodie off because she was too hot. There was a moment where she said, “Did you really think this is the right thing to do? (Is it news? News to who?) That I really looked just like the rest of you.” I thought, “That’s so sad,” but she doesn’t actually linger on it in the track. I feel bad for her. There’s a bit where she laughs after saying, “Stop being flirty” that ironically tried to sound a bit homoerotic and sly. It was good. Then, she sped up her talking a lot for the bridge. I thought, “That’s crunchy. I love it!” It’s classic Billie. I wish that she didn’t put down other women in the lyrics, but I understand that it comes from her wanting to be a model when she was younger. Overall, it’s a great song lyrically and the beat lands.

Negatives I thought that I’d like “Halley’s Comet” more based off of the title. It was OK. It tells a very nice story, but it’s more ambient than anything. The song opens with Billie talking about her dreams and about how Halley’s Comet comes around more than she does. I thought, “Nice! What next?” The story never really goes anywhere after that though and she talks about being awake.

“GOLDWING” opens with choral vocals. I thought, “This is great! I predicted it!” I wish that the vocals went higher, but I just feel happy that there was any choral music, especially because I know that Billie isn’t used to this. Then, it switches into being a remix, which is not my style. The first time, I thought that the lyrics were a bit self-congratulatory. The second time, I realised that the lyrics are about Billie avoiding being recognised in public and being lied to by media personnel. I just didn’t connect to the beat or lyrics, but there’s a bit where she says, “Just to sell you in a year” and I thought, “Hm, that’s sad.” I could barely hear it on the track though, so I think that I overestimated its importance. 

“Oxytocin” was vaguely unsatisfying, perhaps because it was the first song that I heard. The title surprised me because I expected it to be on a more upbeat song, especially since Billie wore that pink hoodie with the word, ‘Oxytocin’ on it. It has a suggestive clapping beat and the lyrics were very sexual. Halfway through, I thought, “Ah, the beat’s going to drop finally,” but it didn’t. It introduced Arabic influences like Britney Spear’s “Toxic.” The ending committed to the beat drop and was nice, but I wasn’t a fan of the concept. It seemed like it was playing into the industry standard for women. My favourite lyric was her murmuring, “I wanna make you yell” at the end. It sort of hit that sexually aggressive vibe without being disempowering.

“I Didn’t Change My Number” opens with very aggressive dog sounds. I thought, “That’s amazing.” I actually stopped for a moment and thought, “That’s the most aggressive dog sound that I’ve heard on a song so far,” but I like that sort of stuff. Sadly, the beat was dry and the whole tone of the song is sort of petty and spiteful. I think that it’s the most petty song so far. I couldn’t vibe with it.

I remember hearing “Therefore I Am” on the radio and thinking, “Hey, a new Billie song!” It felt loud and new but sort of half-finished. I went home and played the music video on my laptop and I didn’t really like it. It felt a bit proud and vindictive. “Lost Cause” felt like that but sexual, especially with the music video. I would put those songs near the same category as “I Didn’t Change My Number.” If you’re one of the people who said, “Billie is in her flop era” after hearing those songs, I would recommend that you listen to the album because it’s just one style of song that she does.

“Male Fantasy” never recovered from the opening lines about Billie watching adult films, but the chorus and second verse were gentle and relatable (i.e., “I got a call from a girl I used to know / We were inseparablе years ago / Thought we'd get along but it wasn't so / I worry this is how I'm always gonna feel / But nothing lasts, I know the deal”). The last lines of the album are about how she can’t hate. I thought, “That’s good” and expected it to end on a high note, but it didn’t, which was mildly depressing. The album could have been in a higher key sometimes and I wanted a few of the songs to go harder.

Aesthetic I don’t like the aesthetic. I’ve tried to, but I don’t. All of the brown tones feel very unapproachable. I understand that it’s meant to be “old-timey,” but it just gives me the Uncanny Valley Effect. I cannot dig the blonde hair. I don’t especially like blonde, but I do know people who can pull it off. I don’t think that Billie is one of them. At moments, I thought, “Is she trying to challenge our pre-conceived notions?” So, I tried to push through and like the hair, but I just do not think that it is Billie’s style. I do feel excited to see the new MVs. I hope that my opinion changes and I just haven’t seen enough of the new aesthetic.

Conclusion “Not My Responsibility” was more word poetry than anything, so I didn’t include it. The beat was dark. I remember first watching the video and feeling both happy for Billie directly standing up for herself and concerned for Billie taking a more sexual approach. The sound is clear and sudden.

The album deals with one subject and becomes very heavy (e.g., Male Fantasy and OverHeated). Overall, it made me think a bit about relationships and how women are seen. I think that I want to be in a relationship less now. The album made me think about how lonely and disconnected being a human feels.

I don’t know if these opinions will change. If a song is playing everywhere, I’ll definitely find it more catchy. I can’t wait to hear BBN and add “Getting Older” to my playlist. I’ve looped that song so many times. I’m sure that there will be a lot of thinkpieces about the album. I can’t wait to see what everyone thinks.

[erictmason]

Top 10 Disney Movies They SHOULD Remake

The Great Disney Remake Train shows no sign of stopping, especially after its most recent entry, “Beauty and the Beast”, managed to make a killing at the box office despite being, y’know, pretty Not Good At All.  Combine that with the fact that, last year, they were even willing to do a remake of “Pete’s Dragon”, a movie which has only ever been a cult classic at best, and it becomes clear there’s basically no aspect of its considerable film library Disney isn’t willing to mine going forward.  So, rather than bemoan the admittedly-tiresome reality of just how Corporate that strategy is, I thought I’d take the opportunity to think over a few Disney films that I’d actually like to see receive a remake.  The only criteria here are pretty simple:

1.) If Disney publicly attached its name to the film in question, regardless of in what capacity, it’s eligible.  

2.) The movie cannot have been remade by Disney already, nor can a remake be, concretely, in the offing.  There are a lot of prospective remakes supposedly under development at Disney right now, but if they don’t have as much as an announced director, I don’t count them as really underway.

Otherwise, though, it’s basically all fair game.  So let’s see what Disney movies might, in fact, have something to gain by being revisited, shall we?

10.) Atlantis: The Lost Empire (Gary Trousdale/Kirk Wise, 2001):

I don’t necessarily share the immense nostalgic affection with which quite a few Disney fans view the original “Atlantis: The Lost Empire”.  Even so, I do feel like it’s a movie with an easily workable core and a solid cast of characters which, by virtue of the rather-desperate circumstances under which it was made (the movie was pretty transparently aiming to capitalize on the then-recent explosion of Anime into the American mainstream, to the point where some suspect it cribbed more than slightly from “Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water”), came out rushed and incoherent.  A remake, able to capitalize on the aforementioned Nostalgia cache the move has built up over the years thanks to its atypical-for-Disney aesthetic and tone, could very easily step in and fix those flaws (not least of all by doing more to address the White Savior stuff that fuels the plot).  As well, I can’t help but feel like Live Action/full-stop CGI animation could prove a much better fit for the Mike Mignola-designed aesthetic of the original.  And, if nothing else, don’t you want to find an actress capable of bringing Kidagakash to life?

9.) Oliver and Company (George Scribner, 1988):

For the most part, the beginning of the “Disney Renaissance”, that period of consistent box-office and critical success Disney experienced during the late 80’s and early-to-mid-90’s, is credited to the 1989 release of “The Little Mermaid”.  And to be sure, that mega success is unquestionably important.  But prior to that, Disney kept itself afloat with somewhat humbler success stories.  But where, to my mind anyway, 1986’s “The Great Mouse Detective” is basically perfect as it is, its successor, a peculiar attempt to translate Charles Dicken’s classic “Oliver Twist” to modern-day New York City with animals as its primary characters, feels like an interesting concept marred in the execution.  Keep the animal conceit, sure, and maybe some of the songs too.  But dump the more dated stuff (Bill Sykes as a predatory lender especially) and try to find some way to put Dickens’ edges back into the story a bit.  Definitely work to make the cast better defined and more engaging, too. Do all that, and you could wind up with a version of this story that is just crazy enough to work.  

8.) Condorman (Charles Jarott, 1981):

You know what’s all the rage these days at the movies?  Superheroes.  And wouldn’t you know it, Disney currently owns the absolute cream of that particular crop in the form of Marvel Studios.  But, as the smash-hit successes of both “Deadpool” and “Logan” over at 20th Century Fox have shown, audiences are also growing hungry for works that poke fun at, deconstruct, and do something to meaningfully comment on the nature of the genre as a whole.  So far, though, Marvel Studios proper, and thus Disney itself, has yet to capitalize on that quickly-growing trend.  The thing of it is, though, they already have a perfect vehicle to do so if they choose to use it.  The original “Condorman” is not an especially good film, awkward and uneven as it is.  But its dopey attempt to send up Spy Films and superheroes, combined with the brilliant design of its title “hero” (in reality a dorky comic book artist who stumbles into an espionage plot almost purely by accident), creates, to my eye at least, a perfect blueprint for a potential remake to run with in a sharp, satirical direction.  

7.) The Aristocats (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1970):

The 1970’s were not one of Disney’s better periods, either creatively or financially, and a lot of that can be seen pretty clearly in “The Aristocats”.  It’s not without its charms, to be sure, but it’s also pretty obviously just “101 Dalmatians” all over again, except with contemporary-England-and-dogs swapped out for old-school-France-and-cats.  Still, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that idea, and hey, as far as I’m concerned, cats could always use more movies about them that portray them in a positive light.  Plus, the opportunities for a remake to improve on this one are almost painfully obvious: heighten the absurdity, tighten the pacing, and if you’re really feeling daring, maybe do more with the class gap between O’Malley and Duchess the original only ever lightly touched.  It’s the absurdity element that feels especially key to me, though, especially in terms of differentiating “Aristocats” from “101 Dalmatians”.  The original’s best moments are unquestionably its most ridiculous, after all, and amping that up, could do a lot to inject the movie with a more unique and enjoyable sense of personality.  

6.) The Black Cauldron (Ted Berman/Richard Rich, 1985): At this point, "The Black Cauldron"'s reputation as one of the biggest flops in Disney history precedes it, even given the not-insignificant cult following it's picked up after finally receiving its first home video release in 1998 (nearly a decade and a half after its theatrical run).  But lost in analysis of its contentious place in the studio's canon is the fact that it's also a weirdly garbeld adaptation of the first two books of Lloyd Alexander's "Chronicles of Prydain" cycle of fantasy novels.  And as often happens in those cases, that means there are a lot of details that go unexplained or unresolved, from running gags like Flewder's harp and its breaking strings to significant plot points like the magic sword Taryn discovers.  But a big recurring choice in a lot of Disney's remakes of late is restoring elements of the source material that the previous Disneyification left out, and I don't know that any movie in the canon would benefit from that choice more than "The Black Cauldron".  You can keep the broad structure of the original, i.e. the characters of the first Prydain book, "The Book of Three", placed into the general plot of the second book for which the film is named.  But not only can we add some clarification around the edges (seriously, it is so easy to connect the story of that sword to even the heavily-revised version of the Horned King Disney created), more importantly we can also implant a lot more of the arch tone the books had, which would go a long way toward reconciling the original's rather confused take on the more-than-slightly deconstructionist story elements, to say nothing of likely making the movie less of a chore to sit through.  Supposedly, a new "Chronicles of Prydain" movie is in fact under development at Disney, so who knows?  Maybe we'll get the chance to see if this idea could actually work sooner than we think.

5.) The Black Hole (Gary Nelson, 1979): You've probably noticed a running theme of my choices here, namely that a lot of them come from eras where Disney, facing the loss of its traditional audiences in the wake of a changing cultural landscape, decided to start experimenting well outside their usual wheelhouse.  And perhaps the most wildly experimental periods of them all occurred in the late 70's and early 80's, when Disney committed its efforts to making some surprisingly-dark Sci-Fi/Fantasy live-action films.  But where 1982's "Tron" became a cult classic (if not an especially strong box office success) and 1983's "Something Wicked This Way Comes" has its Ray Bradbury source material to keep it alive in the cultural memory, "The Black Hole" has more or less fallen down the memory hole.  Not that it's hard to figure out why; its grim, existential tone and nightmarish imagery (most noticeably its robotic villain Maximillian) combined with its vague, confusing plot make it a movie without much in the way of a natural audience.  And while that sort of thing is no easier to sell to a massive audience now than it was back then, there is nonetheless too much potential that can be dug out of "The Black Hole" without really having to alter too much of the fundamentals.  Working to really dig into the sense of cosmic dread of the original, clarifying the moral and personal conflicts that drive its central antagonist, the Captain Nemo-esque Reinhardt, maybe easing up on the cutesy robot sidekicks (or else leaning into them as a way to underscore just how unnerving the atmosphere really is)...but most importantly, working to earn the frightfully illogical ending of the original.  Of all the picks on this list, "The Black Hole" strikes me as the least likely, because even today an outright Horror movie seems outside the Disney purview...but for that very reason, it feels all the more compelling a choice.

4.) The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Gary Trousdale/Kirk Wise, 1996): Even just a couple years ago, I don't know that I would have put this one on here at all, let alone this high up.  Disney's first "Hunchback" movie, while certainly not perfect, is nonetheless one of the more uniquely mature and well-crafted entries in the canon, and I don't know that the various simple nips and tucks one could make to it (like committing to the Gargoyles as solely creations of Quasimodo's imagination, as was originally planned) would really warrant a full-blown remake.  But then, early last year, I learned about a Broadway-style stage musical based on the movie (adapted from a German production from 1999).  This version, though it retains the original's soundtrack and some of its creative choices, incorporates a lot more of Victor Hugo's brutally-dark novel into the story (in particular, it is one of the only adaptations ever that allows Frollo to be the archdeacon of the cathedral as he was in the book).  That is not a choice I ever would have expected Disney to sanction (indeed, the original German version is a much more straightforward adaptation of the Disney movie), but now that I know they have, I'd say it is a very, very intriguing notion to bring that idea to the big screen.  Like "The Black Hole", that would indeed mean a movie the tone, themes, and aesthetic of which would indeed be well outside the studio's usual box, but not only is that a risk the company can afford to take more so now than ever before, I'd say there's a not-insignificant audience out there that is waiting for them to make exactly that kind of choice.  After all, as Disney and the studios it owns take up more and more space on the release schedule, a movie like this one could be might be welcomed as a positive sign that the studio can and will use its power position to take genuine risks.  

3.) The Rescuers (Wolfgang Reitherman/John Lounsbery/Art Stevens, 1977): Sometimes, you want to see a remake because the original has some kind of untapped potential; a wasted premise, an unexplored thematic angle, that sort of thing.  Other times, you want to see a remake because you love the original, and simply want to see the thing you love expanded upon.  That isn't quite the case for how "The Rescuers" wound up in this slot; I do love that movie, indeed it and its sequel (the very first Disney-made sequel to one of its animated films, and by a fair margin the best of them to date) are among my personal favorites of the Disney canon.  But you know what else I love?  The original "Miss Bianca" books by Margery Sharp, to which the film version, whatever else its merits, bears only the faintest resemblance (in particular, as you might note from the admittedly unofficial name I gave to the series, Bianca herself is much more emphatically the main character).  It's another case, in other words, of a Disney movie whose remake could benefit tremendously from returning to the source material and re-integrating it into the overall mixture.  But it's also the case, to my mind at least, where it's not only the easiest to reconcile the original movie with said source material (like "The Black Cauldron", the original movie essentially plucks the characters from one book and plugs them into the plot of another, though the attendant adjustments to the characters are less radical in this case, and the plots of both books have a lot more overlap), but also the easiest for me to envision what, exactly, the resulting movie would look like.  I realize that one can count, on one hand, without needing all the fingers, the number of actually-good movies centered around realistic tiny CGI characters interacting with a real-life environment, but I can think of no story more ideally suited to the format than "The Rescuers".

2.) Bedknobs and Broomsticks (Robert Stevenson, 1971): When one thinks of "splashy Disney musical primarily done in live-action but with significant animated elements", one naturally thinks first of "Mary Poppins".  Which makes sense, because "Mary Poppins" is a stone-cold classic (with a sequel/remake/??? on the way in the not-too-distant future, in fact).  But, even as its attempts to replicate that earlier success are pretty transparent, "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" has always struck me as an underrated little gem in its own right.  An ambitious narrative combining witchcraft with World War II, magical talking animals, and more, it's always resided mostly in "Poppins"' shadow, but its peculiar, distinctive identity not only could stand a bit more attention, it feels like a strong enough basis for a story that a second bite at the apple would seem warranted.  A remake in the present day would not have to contend with the legacy of "Mary Poppins" quite so tightly (even setting aside the aforementioned new "Poppins" film coming down the pipe), which means it wouldn't feel the need to imitate it quite so consciously, allowing the particular personality of its own story to shine through.  Because, for real, especially these days?  The idea of an older woman, seeking to explore the full potential of her abilities forced to contend with the relentless destruction of the Nazi War Machine, as seen through the prism of her reluctantly taking on a group of helpless kids in need of shelter?  Almost feels too relevant, on multiple levels, to The World Today, even as you don't need to draw the necessary lines all that explicitly to make those connections compelling.  And that's without even touching a finale that feels like it's begging for the modern effects industry to give it a go.  A "Bedknobs" remake, in other words, would not only rehabilitate a too-often-overlooked original, but provide a great experience in its own right.

1.) Robin Hood (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1973):   Hear me out on this one, folks.  I love this movie too, a great deal.  A lot of people my age do; even as it is still largely considered "minor" Disney at best, it has become a real nostalgic touchstone for a whole generation of kids.  And it's a great deal of fun, with wit and genuine whimsy and wonderful characters and even a remarkably adult perspective on Romance that is nonetheless entirely in keeping with Disney's usual fairy-tale love stories.  But even with all those things being true, it was also made on a nearly non-existent budget, not only forcing large chunks of it to be done by way of re-used animation (with some swipes going back as far as "Snow White And The Seven Dwarves", for goodness sake), but forcing the whole thing to just sort of...stop, rather than properly end.  It seems to me a remake could easily resolve both those problems (oh what I would not give to see the film's originally-planned ending executed properly), without losing an ounce of the special charm that made the original such an enduring movie for me and so many others.  Heck, it might even provide Disney a good excuse to do a cel-based movie for the first time in over half a decade, since they have every reason to think this thing would have a strong built-in audience that will show up no matter what and can thus afford to risk one last try at the olden ways.  After all, two of their biggest hits of 2016 were "The Jungle Book" (a remake) and "Zootopia" (a movie about anthropomorphic animals, with a fox as one of its lead characters no less).  Still, it's the creative more so than the financial potential that secures "Robin Hood" the top slot here.  The original is a good, special movie, but there is so obviously a great well of potential right there in plain view, begging for the opportunity to truly realize itself.  And that's the best reason for a remake there is, in the end.

[sassphicdragoness]

@l1nkp1t​ tagged me :D Thank you, dearie!

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (or however many you have altogether). See if there are any patterns. Then, tag your favorite authors.

So at least half of these will be stuff that I’ve written, and some will be collabs that I’ve done with my partner in crime, @lady-drake​ and have not been published as of yet.

--

1.) Untitled Prompt - F!Corrin x F!Robin

“I’m still not sure if I can do this… what if he says no?”

“Then he’s an idiot, or it’s just not meant to be. There are other fish in the sea, Corrin.”

‘Like me…’

“I know… I’ll try not to get my hopes up to much. But fingers crossed, right?”

2.) In Sickness - Silas x F!Corrin

“Ah-choo!”

“Bless you.”

Corrin blew her nose for the umpteenth time that day, and then sniffled hard as she pulled the handkerchief away. She offered her thanks and collapsed onto the chair across from her husband, her arms folding on the small table. She rested her chin on her hands while Silas reached over to caress her face. “You’re not getting sick, are you?”

3.) Untitled Prompt - Chrom x F!Robin

If anyone had told Robin that she would be propositioned by one of the most popular guys in their school, she would’ve thought they were absolutely off their rocker. As it stood, here she was staring up at the six foot tall pretty boy while he asked for her assistance on schoolwork of all things.

“You’re in all of my classes, and I know you’re the school’s biggest nerd in terms of every subject ever.”

“…How observant of you.”

4.) Villian AU - Link x Pit

To say that the world had been thrown into utter chaos was a gross understatement. The world had been completed trashed and Skyworld wasn’t the only victim.

Hades was long defeated, peace having returned to Skyworld, but in the span of four years, something had gone horribly wrong - and there was no clear answer to the multitude of questions floating around.

All hell had broken loose, yet rumors flew throughout all the realms – Palutena was nowhere to be found, Viridi had been exiled to a distant realm without warning (or she’d at least fled). Hades was still gone as well, but the last person anyone expected had since taken his place.

Pit, former captain of Palutena’s Guard, was now the God of the Underworld (and Skyworld, in extension). Even more terrifying? He had the immense power to back up such a title, taking immediate control of the Underworld, rebuilding that realm’s army. With Viridi and Palutena out of the picture, both the Forces of Light and Forces of Nature had fallen under Pit’s control as well. Like the god before him, Pit spread rumors to the humans below of a certain seed existing that granted all wishes – and sure enough, the humans began to fight fiercely for dominance of a seed that never actually existed in the first place. All the souls lost in battle went to a good cause though: it sustained his troops as well as his own life force.

5.) Rivalry - Link x Pit

Smash Bros. wasn’t just about proving who was the strongest or most powerful fighter. It was mainly a tournament built for uniting warriors from different corners of the world, and naturally, rivalries formed when personalities clashed, egos were bruised, and similar fighting styles were discovered among distinct fighters.

In Link and Pit’s case - how about all of the above.

6.) Master/Pet with Tender Sex - Vaati x Link

‘Master… Master…?’

Carmine eyes slowly opened, meeting with caring blue eyes. A hand combed gently through wisteria locks while the blond stayed kneeled on the floor at the mage’s bedside. It wasn’t like Link to be up this late, and Vaati shifted so he was sitting up, back braced against the elegant headboard.

“Is everything alright, dear?”

7.) Keepsake - Link x Pit

“I don’t want to leave just yet.”

“Me neither. I wish we had more time together, but…”

“…yeah. Time to head back to our respective homelands.”

8.) Guardian Angel - Link x Pit

Being a hero meant facing danger at every possible turn.Sharp wit, quick feet, skilled swordsmanship, and heightened awareness - they all meant the difference between life and death. Link made sure to be careful, but luckily, he had his guardian angel looking out for him.

9.) Caffeine - M!Robin x Dark Pit

Robin may have been a night owl, but he was also a morning person. He was an expert at going to sleep at four in the morning and waking up two hours later to prepare for class. Today was no different – winter break was over, and now he was walking to his first day of classes as a college junior. With his messenger bag strapped across his chest and a small cup of coffee in his hand, the snow-haired male was all smiled as he headed to his first class of the day: English literature.

10.) Nonsexual Acts of Intimacy - M!Robin x F!Corrin ; F!Robin x F!Corrin

Most couples celebrated their anniversary with a fancy dinner date at a romantic restaurant. Robin and Corrin preferred things more simple and sentimental – hence the massive banana split with all the fix-ins sitting on the table for them to share. With fond smiles, they clinked their plastic forks together – “Cheers!” – and dug in.

It was surreal how much time had passed. It felt like it as only yesterday that they were at this very ice cream parlor sharing a sweet treat, and then confessing their immense feelings for one another. Hard to believe that was two years ago – their sophomore year. Now, here they were, enjoying their last ice cream date a week before they were to walk across the stage for their bachelor’s degrees… Time sure did fly fast.

(The following have not be published yet! Numbers 12 - 20 are collabs with Drake!)

11.) Untitled Prompt - M!Robin x F!Robin

“We can put a path through this forest…. that will lead us to this village – we can stock up on rations and supplies… and then travel around this ravine until we reach the bridge…” Amber eyes scrolled carefully across the map, eyeing the red X’s she’d penned with her quill before nodding in approval. “That should do it…”

“Sounds like you have our next route planned out.”

12.) Untitled College AU - M!Robin x F!Corrin

"Third time's the charm, they say..."

Corrin stood outside the building where the first of four classes would start. It was 8:30 bright and early in the morning, and naturally, Corrin was still tired and wished to go back to the comforts of her warm bed. Alas, she had to begin the first semester at her new college after leaving two previous ones. She hoped that Valla University could give her more incentive to stay than her last two colleges could give....

13.) Other Side of the Coin - Chrom x M!Robin x F!Robin

It was over. The battle against the Grimleal had ended with their defeat, and the Fell Dragon was sealed for another thousand years. Ylisse could breathe easy knowing they would be ensured an era of peace thanks to their king and his fellow Shepherds.

But for what would be his greatest victory, and thus celebrated, Robin instead felt a dark shadow looming over him.

14.) Vitriolic - M!Grima x F!Gryma

So this is what it felt like to be banished from your own realm that you worked so hard to conquer, only to have some uppity ass, goody goody dragon god decide that you're too much of a threat and she gives you a choice: die by execution or banishment to a completely different timeline. Obviously, Gryma took the route that ensured she still kept her head on her shoulders, and willingly decided to jump timelines. Wherever she'd ended up clearly didn't result in a victory on the human's side.

Everything was in ruins, the stench of blood hung in the air, the banners of the Royal Ylissean Family hung in dirty tatters from the damaged palace. It was positively a most beautiful sight seeing such death and destruction... But whomever was responsible for bringing down Naga's accursed spiritual descendants was nowhere to be found. Good. That meant this was hers to claim now...

15.) Sensual Seduction - M!Robin x Dark Pit

While Robin was out handling a few things, Dark Pit was left to himself for the next couple of hours in their shared dorm. Said errands apparently didn't require the tactician to wear his usual clothing, which the angel took full advantage of. Once Robin was out of the room, Dark Pit had snatched the signature robe he always wore and threw it on himself. Tossing himself onto the bed, the angel wrapped himself in the coat, bringing the oversized sleeves to his nose and inhaling deeply. Such a pleasant scent of bergamot and ozone from the magic he used, it was a turn-on for the angel, and was the sole reason he stole the coat from time to time. He simply loved Robin's scent and loved how warm said coat was around his lithe body.

16.) Untitled Vampire AU - M!Robin x Dark Pit

Robin really tried not to make a habit out of breaking into others houses in the middle of the night, but circumstances rarely left him any other choice.It was a full moon, his sensitive eyes seeing the faint rays illuminating the streets and roads in a pale blue glow, in areas where streetlights were either burnt out or never put up. It made moving around at night that much easier for him, something he had grown comfortable with in the years where he had to do these "emergency runs". Daytime was approaching in a mere few hours, and he really didn't want to spend a whole day waiting in a shady alley for some unlucky passerby that might never come in order to just go home.

17.) ‘I Unknowingly Slept with my New Boss’ Modern AU - Chrom x M!Robin

Robin wasn't the type of man who believed in luck. Anything that happened in life, good or bad, happened for its own reason and wasn't directly linked to something else that had happened to him before. He worked for what he had, putting one hundred percent into everything he could to live a fairly comfortable life.

However, if there was one thing Robin would wish he could have better luck in, it would have to be romance. He was no stranger to dating, and had one or two fairly steady relationships, but nothing that lasted longer than half a year. Robin wasn't opposed to the life of a bachelor by any means, but once he had known what it was like to be emotionally invested in another human being, he found himself longing for it from time to time after the relationship had since been broken off. One night he found himself beginning to sink into the familiar feeling of loneliness. Rather than let himself be consumed by melancholic memories, he decided to do something productive instead; and as if by chance, that was the same night before his first day at a new job.

18.) Of Lace and Stockings - F!Robin x F!Corrin

"Did you need anything from the store while I'm out, love?" Corrin zipped up her hoodie and tugged her purse over her shoulder, her gaze set upon her girlfriend as she walked over to her desk. Standing behind her chair, she wrapped her arms around Robin from behind and rested her chin on the other girl's shoulder with a soft smile.

"Hmm, I don't think so." Robin paused from her focus on homework and leaned back into Corrin's embrace, a fond look on her face as she tilted her head and matched her grin. "Just remember to grab more milk, we're completely out."

"Already wrote it down on the list." Corrin answered with smug confidence. She covered Robin's lips with her own in a sweet kiss and a firm squeeze around her shoulders. "Should only take me an hour to get everything." With that, she left one more kiss on her cheek before separating from her and heading out the door.

19.) Silence is Not Always Golden - Link x Pit

'Going to a new school in a new town... how cliche is this day going to be?' Pit laughs to himself. Though he might have been joking, he wasn't too far off the mark - He, his brother and their mom had just recently moved from their old home to a new place in the countryside a few towns over. It was different than the urban setting he was used to, but he liked it - mainly for the reason that there was a better chance for him to actually spread his wings for a change.

20.) Fated Childhood - Silas x F!Corrin

"I think we should be safe to travel through the Wind Village.... Hopefully we won't run into any Norhian forces along the way." Corrin's hand still gripped her blade tightly, crimson eyes scanning the barren horizon of the desert-like village ahead. She turned her head toward her freshly recruited childhood friend with a concerned expression, and asked, "Do you know if King Garon may have sent anyone in this direction?"

"It's possible. We'll want to keep our guard up until we know we're in the clear." Silas responded after a quick moment of hard thought. One hand tightened its hold on the reigns for his horse and the other on the long pole of the lance he had brought for the mission they were on. He also watched for any signs of Garon's forces, keeping his mount at a steady trot that Corrin could follow. "That being said, I don't like this... doesn't everything seem too still and quiet to you?"

"It does..."

--

THAT WAS REALLY FUCKING LONG YAY. 

As for patterns, I tend to do introductions and opening lines with dialog or as a vague setting before I go into details. I love to give my readers something of a thought-provoking or interesting introduction to really grab their attention and pique their interest, because a title alone shouldn’t be the thing that makes a reader interested  - the intro can’t be generic or cookie cutter. So I always try to avoid that. :D

I’M TOO LAZY TO TAG, STEAL AT WILL LOL

[adhd-ahamilton]

Lams, either canon era or modern AU, 1, 2, 3, 12, 14, 17, 22, 24, 28, 29, 30 (I'm so sorry, feel free to pick and choose from these haha!)

*cracks knuckles*(These are gonna be historical verse, in the context of my ficlets,unless I commit otherwise!) (Also sorry for the wait!! I actually had almost all of this done one the day I said it’d be done, it was just the last 10% that got me lol.)

1. Who is the mostaffectionate?

Alex. For obviousreasons, he’s usually the one to initiate things. (In fact Johnjust kind of straight up basically never initiates through the earlystages of their relationship, because while letting gay things happenis bad, willingly choosing and encouraging gay things is worse to hisconscience. This, uh, isn’t particularly viable of a relationshipin the long term, though.) But Alex is also just the more physicaland touchy of the two of them in general, and is the one more nervousof rejection and needing reassurance. John needs those things too,but not as much as Alex.

2. Big spoon/Littlespoon?

They both do iteither way pretty evenly! They both probably would have a sliiightpreference for being big spoon under normal circumstances, but it’sreally not a big deal and they’re mainly just happy to be close(and warm).

3. Most commonargument?

Heh, I’ve beenthinking about this kind of thing lately but I haven’t quitesettled on much? They definitely seem to be pretty similar people whounderstood each other really well so I feel like they’d be on thesame wavelength a lot. And from the letters they seemed to be prettygood at dealing with each others’ emotions, particularly Ham withLaurens’ depression. But, they both did seem to have various issuesgoing on with their emotions in general, and they were both verypassionate and hot-tempered people with a penchant for being blunterthan they really should. (Also, like, I always imagined Ham being theone to immediately go for the jugular in arguments, but Laurens isthe one who responded to a very mild and possibly imaginary farewell from a good friend by just fucking going off at him about every reason whyhis political views are terrible, so... IDK man.)

So I’m not toosure. Clearly, the situation they’re in as a couple is not an easyone - any people would have to work hard to keep it a positive thingunder those circumstances. Add in that there’s a war going on, andthey’re working day and night and regularly risking their lives,and everything else about the time period... there’s a whollle lotthat would make people frustrated and argumentative.

Though I do thinkthat they probably had at least a few heated discussions aboutpolitics, which may or may not have involved them actually agreeing,but not realising until half an hour in, because they both just takesuch staunch and antagonistic stances.

12. Who initiateskisses?

Alex, for thereasons above~ (Some of the happiest moments for him are the fewtimes John initiates one!)

14. Who kisses thehardest?

John, once he gets abit settled into the relationship. Alex has many reasons to kiss, andkisses in many different ways, but for John, Alex is the first personhe’s kissed who he actually wanted to kiss (with Kinloch it wasessentially handjobs and not much else), and the significance of thatis not lost on him. Kissing, to him, is important.

17. Who says I loveyou first?

Honestly, John isprobably the one who first uses the word in the broader sense ofloving his friend. Alex is definitely the one who uses it first in aromantic sense - aaaaand that’s something that’s gonna happen inan upcoming ficlet, so I shouldn’t say too much more. :P

22. Who cooksmore/who is better at cooking?

I don’t know toomuch about this, but I think that, historical verse, neither of themwould really cook? Like John wouldn’t, obviously, but IDK whetherHam ever really would, either?

So modern AU answer:John doesn’t cook. Has never cooked. Lacked, in fact, the kind ofearly exposure to cooking that teaches you normal common sensethings, like the kind of general temperature range you cook things inan oven at, or to put oil/butter in a pan when frying stuff. He findsthis very embarrassing, but doesn’t really want to practice,because it is very embarrassing and also he doesn’t want anyone toknow. He could give you a decent explanation of the effect ofclassism and the way privilege has allowed him to lack the knowledgeto prepare something he has consumed multiple times a day for hisentire life and needs to survive, though? Which is almost the same asactually knowing how to cook?

Alex DOES know howto cook because, of course, he lacked that privilege. I’m moreshaky on Alex’s background in Joy to the World verse but hedefinitely had extended periods of needing to cook for himself. So hecan mainly cook standard Western individual meals, as well as some traditional PuertoRican stuff he remembers learning from his mum. He’s not, like,super great at it, though? He doesn’t actually enjoy cooking allthat much. It’s just kinda boring to him. And he’s never greatwhen he has to work at someone else’s pace. So he mainly just makessimple stuff. And, y’know, hasn’t always eaten properly, becausea) it’s cheaper, b) he has ADHD and that’s just kind of a thingthat happens when you have that.

24. Who whispersinappropriate things in the other’s ear during inappropriate times?

A L E X. John canbarely bring himself to say normal relationshippy stuff, heh -there’s no way he could bring himself to this. Alex, on the otherhand, would definitely do it. And in fact, given his tendency ofmumbling to himself as he thinks, I feel like he’s the type whowould, if he lets his guard down, just end up muttering streams ofexplicit nonsense during sex.

But I also thinkhe’d do it deliberately? Their experiences with sex are very verydifferent. Alex has had a lot of experience to do it and figure outwhat he enjoys and how to have good sex with another person andexperience pleasure. John...hasn’t. So I feel like Alex would wantto talk a bit, to like, reassure him of the good aspects of it, andhow he’s enjoying it, and to give a lil bit of guidance.

28. What do they dowhen they’re away from each other?

Not very well, bythe sounds of it.;; Which, y’know, again: it’s war. Andcommunication is limited to sending letters back and forth. So it’spretty reasonable.

In general,though... Alexander tends to experience extremes in his emotions, andtends to get very anxious about the people he really cares aboutabandoning him, or not loving him as much, etc. So he tends to obsessa bit when separated from the people he cares about. Definitelycomplains to at least Lafayette and probably just to the peoplearound him in general about the unfairness of it all and how much hemisses him. But at the end of the day, he still has a hell of a lotof work to do, so he does still get on with things.

John, on the otherhand, is pretty much always fighting against rising tides ofdepression in him, and during the war is one of the worst periods forhim. So when things go wrong in general, his brain’s first responseis usually ‘oh. well, I should’ve known. Nothing good ever happensbecause I don’t deserve to be happy and this is just the way theworld is.’ It’s already deliberate work for him to be happy withAlex and in their relationship; when they’re separated it gets alot harder. So he mainly gets sad and distant. But, again, he’salso a very diligent person and he always manages to pull himselfinto working p much as normal, unless the worst of the apathy takesover.

29. one headcanonabout this OTP that breaks your heart

I can never stopwondering what Hamilton must have thought and felt post-Combahee. Wealready know that he was aware that Laurens was tempted by the ideaof suicide. I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have learned of thecircumstances of his death. I wonder what he thought about it. Did hewonder what impact he had on it all? Whether he should have saidmore, or said different things? Or left him alone altogether?

30. one headcanonabout this OTP that mends it

I’m glad that Hamilton didn’t die, then. There’s this strong temptation in all of us to romanticise death, especially in the context of romance - I mean, that’s part of the reason why the Achilles myth still affects people so badly today, right? But death isn’t honorable or glorious or romantic. It’s awful. I’m glad that as sad as he clearly was, he was still able to keep living and being happy and having a whole bunch of children he clearly loved. Even if Hamilton made a lot of mistakes in his life as well, and still died too young, I think Laurens would be really satisfied by how much he did even after his death.

And even before that, they affected one another so much. Who knows how much harder things would’ve been for Laurens if he hadn’t had Hamilton there, reassuring him that he was loved and good and helping him to manage his depression? And it’s so clear how much Hamilton changed by being with him - becoming so much more open to other people. They were so good to one another in their lives. Even if it was cut terribly short, it was still so important. And now, 200 years later, people are still learning about this relationship and being inspired and comforted by it. That’s really wonderful! I mean... in a way, it’s lasted for not just 5 years, but 200, hasn’t it?