#might even break out the blu rays

[mylittleredgirl]

yeah i’m probably just going to watch all of discovery season two, a twist no one could see coming

[dennisboobs]

Was considering buying (ridiculously overpriced) Sunny blu-rays to (very, very legally) rip them (for Personal Use archival purposes), decided to test on a blu-ray I already own, realized my external drive only reads DVDs, successfully ripped a DVD, but then was sent down a rabbit hole trying to see if I could use my (again, very, very legally) hacked PS3 to rip the .iso (I can) since it is indeed a blu-ray player with an attached PC-adjacent machine...

Long story short. If you see me spending $70 on seasons 1-5 on DVD and 6 on blu-ray, no you didn't, but also expect a 1080p season 6 bloopers upload in the near future.

definitely not from me, though. no way. i would never do that. i'm not a pirate. i'm just a good ole upstanding wiki admin.

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Spamley

Debut: Ralph Breaks the Internet

Hey, remember the Ralph Breaks the Internet craze of 2018? What a time to be alive! Disney's film about What If The eBay Was A Place was an instant hit, due to the fact that everyone knows the Internet, and everyone wants to see a movie about it! You couldn't stop hearing about it! No wonder it won the Academy Award for best animated film! I think it beat out some movie about spiders, or something...?

Kids today might not remember, because 2018 was so long ago. They're too obsessed with their new age sexymen, like Raymond and the big balls Dwarf. But this movie wouldnt've been the cultural phenomenon it was without one character taking the world by storm: a certain J.P. Spamley!

The Internet fell in love with Spamley at first sight, flooding social media with memes and fan art about the loveable green prick. He rose to the highest ranks of the Tumblr Sex Man for a good while! You couldn't scroll for a few minutes without seeing his catchphrase, "Now's your chance to get rich playing video games!"

What kind of a megacorporation would Gisnep be if it didn't capitalize on Spamley's popularity? So they held a special Spamley Sweepstakes event on November 2019, allowing fans to donate money in honor of Spankley himself! All proceeds would go to Bob Iger and Baby Yoda, and if that's not wholesome, I don't know what is. Those who entered even had a chance of winning WILD prizes, like:

That's it that was the only prize

See him in theatres! This is what Disney told us all to do, and we listened! Little did we know they were doing this to hide a dark secret! If you buy the Blu-ray version of the movie, you can actually manipulate the Scene Select to watch the movie out of order and make some... strange things happen. You can look up a walkthrough online, but the gist of it is making Vanelope kill all the Disney Princesses. Especially Merida. And when you do, you unlock a weird alternate ending...

Spamley NEO is the secret true main antagonist of the film, and he wants to take over Oh My Disney to spread spam and advertisements! No! Not Oh My Disney! Please, for the love of God, NOT OH MY DISNEY!! You have to kill him. You have to destroy your Blu-ray copy of Ralph Breaks the Internet now. I hope you're proud of yourself.

[kaijuno]

I found an interesting movie.

This movie, Lowlife, from 2017, starring absolutely no one you've ever heard of before, is bad ass. Its like Breaking Bad if it was directed by Robert Rodriquez.

The movie is about a group of lowlives, a drug addict, an ex con, a luchador wrestler and a neo nazi, who team up to stop a human trafficking ring run out of a taco shop.

This movie has done something I've never seen before - One of the characters is a Neo-Nazi Skinhead who turns out to actually be one of the best characters in the whole movie with one of the greatest character arcs I've ever seen. Its funny and also pretty dark at times, oozing style.

The director hasn't made anything since, but here's hoping that he makes more like this soon. Apparently, all the actors and crew are his friends. This is an ultra low budget movie, but it doesn't even show - Production value is on point.

EDIT: It is on Prime and AMC+ In North America, maybe other countries. It was on Tubi at one point, might come back. There are new copies in eBay of the blu ray and DVD. And there's also "other methods" if everything else fails you .

[plague-of-insomnia]

what kind of accents do you think the cast has? im a dub main for various reasons (one of my friends had a reading/memory disability so i ended up watching dub w them) so im kinda used to everyones dub accents.

but bards defo got an american accent right? (not in the dub, but im thinking manga terms?)

and ik soma & agni have barely a trace of an accent but does that mean they sound basically british?

and does finny have a german accent? sieglinde? diedrich?

idk food for thought?

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

(Sorry it’s been a rough couple days and I didn’t realize I hadn’t published this yet.)

Hey anon… so I’m a bit confused as to if you’re asking about the Japanese accents in the various anime, the English dub accents (or some other dub), or just my thoughts on what their various accents would be like based on the manga and independent of the anime.

Now I have only watched Kuro in English bc that’s the only thing that was available/that’s available on what I have at the moment (though I’m finally getting the blu rays for BoM and BoA so I’m hoping they’ll have the Japanese to try that out for once), so I can’t make judgements based on that. (And I’m not a good one to ask about Japanese accents anyway, lol.)

I also favor dubs bc of my disability. I love hearing the Japanese but it can be hard for me to follow sometimes, and even english alone without captions I can struggle with (please fix this, CR!!! Grr), so I feel you there.

Also not sure which characters you had in mind with this ask (other than the ones you specifically mentioned). Since kuro has so many, I guess I’ll just focus on a few. I want to make clear I am American and Latine, so I am not an expert on British regional accents by any stretch, or the historical accents of the Victorian period, so I’ll just do my best. Some may be partly inspired by how the characters are written in Japanese, since there’s a bit more… complexity to the Japanese language in regards to things like formality, rudeness, etc, that may not convert into English when translated in writing.

This is a long post so I’ll use a readmore to keep it a bit less chaotic. Below the break I’ve broken down my hypotheses on how some of the major players might talk:

Sebastian

As a high-ranking servant who regularly interacts with the nobility, Sebastian would have a high-class accent, and it is reflected in how his Japanese (and even his English) is written. It is a fairly neutral, polite manner of speaking. I’m sure the Victorians probably had a term for this accent (a high-class servant accent), but if they did, I don’t know it lol.

Ciel

Most nobles like him would be educated in a public school like Weston, like his father was, and those schools taught a standard accent that often varied slightly from school to school. So everyone who went to Weston would have a similar manner of speech. Ciel has been “home schooled” his entire life, aside from a short time at Weston for the investigation, so his accent might have been slightly different than his father’s. Nevertheless, especially under Sebastian’s tutelage, he would have learned how to speak properly (if he didn’t already). Still, unless Sebastian intentionally had him learn the Weston/public school accent, anyone who speaks to him would know he did not go to school, but was taught by tutors/governesses instead.

Bard

Yes, Bard is American despite his dub accent. We don’t know where he’s from exactly, but we can assume it was probably somewhere west of the Mississippi (that’s about 1/3 of the way west if you’re looking at the US map, going east to West, if you’re not familiar with our Geography).

I say that bc the river was the first real demarcation of the frontier. It’s likely he was living somewhere like Texas or Oklahoma. Ofc where he’s from would affect his accent, but I imagine it as a kind of cross between a more neutral southern midwestern accent (“no accent”) and a subtle Texas or OK one. Which that’s hard to explain unless you really know regional US accents, bc most of Texas doesn’t sound like most people think it does. The accents really change depending on what part of the state you’re in, since it’s such a big place. But basically not too heavy an accent but a bit lazy, definitely coarse and brutish since he was a soldier and a farmer. Lots of slang and not big on politeness. (Which he definitely is in Japanese.)

Mey Rin

She’s interesting because she’s one of the few characters who has a couple different ways of speaking. She has her “maid” voice and her “assassin” voice. The first one stutters a lot and uses imperfect grammar, as reflected in the English translation when she repeats things, like “I’m not one to talk badly about my betters, I am.” The second does not have this quirk. Not sure if the first is meant as an affectation as part of her idea of what a maid is, or if she just has such a divide he her personality/personas that she speaks differently when she’s wielding a gun. Since that wasn’t really mentioned in her subarc, I doubt we’ll get an explanation. We do know she was likely a child of immigrants from China, but not whether she was born there or in England before she was orphaned. But it is unlikely she has any hint of a Chinese accent since she was orphaned so young. She definitely has more of a working class accent, especially when compared to someone like Sebastian.

Finny

I had momentarily forgotten that Finny didn’t speak English when he first came to the manor. It’s likely that he would have had some kind of German accent, but I expect that Sebastian would have drilled it out of him, considering how strict he was with Sieglinde and Wolf, and Ciel didn’t blink an eye.

Finny’s accent in English never struck me as particularly high class, either in the manga or anime, but in one of the recent chapters, Theo makes a point to compliment his “upper-class accent.” It does seem highly probable that Sebastian played a hand in how he speaks, since he probably was the one who taught him English.

However, the fact that it came up in this sub arc could indicate his way of speaking is significant, somehow tying into what’s going on with Undertaker and the orphanage. Either way, his accent is apparently closer to Ciel than Mey.

Snake

Snake is tricky, because he almost never speaks as himself (I’m still not 100% sure what pronoun he would use for himself in Japanese, and even he doesn’t seem sure lol). He speaks via his snakes, and they all have different ways of speaking (which I think the dub does a decent job of, personally). So I can’t really say, but for the most part I would probably say his accent(s) would be closer to working-class, but he might have gotten some lessons on speaking from Sebastian, since, as a footman, he would have been expected to speak at a higher-class level than other, below-stairs servants would.

Undertaker

Like Mey, UT has two manners of speaking. He has his “humble old undertaker” accent, which is Cockney-esque (I don’t wanna do a disservice by saying it IS that), definitely a lower class accent. Then he has his “revealed” voice, or how he speaks after he reveals himself on the Campania. I have not read this arc in Japanese so I cannot base this judgement on how this shift is portrayed by Yana, only based on the translation. But it definitely seems to be a higher-class accent than the other one. It’s likely that it’s his “real” accent, while the other is part of his cover persona. However, we don’t know anything about him or his background from when he was alive, or even how old he is. For all we know, that accent could be an affectation too.

Agni & Soma

I know their dub accents annoy a lot of people, since Yana specifically mentions how they don’t have an Indian accent. I expect both of them would speak with a British accent, probably something close to how Ciel speaks, most likely, since Soma would have been educated by tutors and Agni probably was as well, since he came from a very high-caste family. I would expect that if their dub accents has been closer to Yana’s intent, they would sound more like Hakim in the dub of the anime Emma. That’s how I imagine them, anyway.

Sieglinde & Wolfram

I expect both would have German accents when they speak English, especially Wolf. Sieglinde might do a better job of working to improve and lose it, but I don’t think Wolf would, partly because of his animosity toward Sebastian. I like to imagine he sounds like Hans in the English dub of the anime Emma, and I really hope we eventually get the Green Witch Arc animated and dubbed so we can get a hot German English accent 🥺.

Diedrich

Dee, on the other hand, I think would not have a German accent in English, especially not in the present. I think he probably was educated in English before he went to Weston, likely by a private tutor, probably someone British, and then when he went there would have acclimated to the public school assent there. So probably he would sound like Vincent did, but I expect he’d throw in some German every now and then, especially when he gets irritated, lol.

Lau

Lau is originally from China, and his accent (as far as I know?) has never been remarked upon in the manga. We also know nothing about his background except that he rose quickly and at a young age to be head of Quin-Bang. I would assume that he speaks English very well, and the only hint at his origin that I’m aware of in the Japanese is the kanji (character) for the pronoun “I” he uses, though he doesn’t pronounce it as it’s normally done in Japanese nor does he with a Chinese pronunciation. I would take this to mean he probably has little if any hint of a Chinese accent when he speaks English, and since he keeps company with nobles and was able to pass as a doctor, he likely speaks in a high-class accent.

I hope that satisfied, anon. This was a fun and different ask. I apologize I didn’t publish it sooner.

[torahoes]

(IDOLiSH7) Torao Mido - An Idol's Daily Life Rabbit Chat: Part 2 - High-difficulty level florist

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Tsumugi Takanashi: Good work today. Thank you for letting us join you for the variety show recording today!

Tsumugi Takanashi: The group gesture game was really exciting, wasn't it…!

Torao Mido: Your group's teamwork was truly remarkable. Yotsuba guessing Nikaido's sloth was a little too impressive!

Tsumugi Takanashi: They often play the gesture game during breaks, so they seem to be good at it! Especially with 'sloth’, which is apparently Yamato-san’s specialty…!

Torao Mido: So that's what it was. To me, he just looked like a person who had fallen over.

Tsumugi Takanashi: ŹOOĻ seemed to have a hard time with "florist", right?

Torao Mido: That's completely on Touma. When the topic is "florist", would you normally go with picking flowers as your gesture?

Tsumugi Takanashi: I- It was quite difficult, I'm sure > <

Tsumugi Takanashi: But it was wonderful to see everyone trying their best to guess and answer things like "acorn picking" or "a harvesting farmer" correctly!

Torao Mido: We wasted too much time. If we had moved on quickly, we could have gotten a better score. Haruka was frustrated about it as well.

Torao Mido: I'll make sure to train Touma for the next time.

Tsumugi Takanashi: Yes! I'm looking forward to the next time everyone plays the gesture game together.

Tsumugi Takanashi:

Tsumugi Takanashi: Thank you for letting me visit the green room after the recording! Everyone was really lively, weren't they?

Torao Mido: Yeah, I mean, when you have 11 guys gathered together...

Torao Mido: Our manager even joked that the green room suddenly felt like a boys' school during recess.

Tsumugi Takanashi:

1) You were talking with Riku-san, weren’t you?

Torao Mido: He brought back bonito flakes as a souvenir, saying it was a local specialty of the filming location. I mentioned that I might like it when we were working together as 'TEA take' and Nanase remembered that.

2) You were talking with Nagi-san, weren’t you?

Torao Mido: Rokuya had given me a Blu-ray box set of Kokona before, so he was asking me about my progress. When I said I hadn’t watched it yet, he was really excited about scheduling a viewing party.

3) Did Utsugi-san say anything else?

Torao Mido: It seems he didn't really get to hang out and have fun with friends much back in his school days, so apparently just watching us is fun for him. It would be nice if he joined the conversations more instead of just watching from the sidelines, though.

Torao Mido: You were also talking to Haruka and the others, weren't you?

Tsumugi Takanashi: I heard that a new latte art cafe opened near their school, so we were discussing that! It seems that him, Iori-san, and Tamaki-san made a few detours there together on their way back...!

Tsumugi Takanashi: They said animal-themed latte art was popular, and I was shown some photos. There was a fluffy, soft cat perched on the cup, and it was incredibly cute...!

Tsumugi Takanashi:

Torao Mido: He sent that in the ŹOOĻ group chat too. It's the one where three-dimensional bears, dogs, and whatnot are made from foam, right?

Torao Mido: So that's what's popular, huh.

Tsumugi Takanashi: Yes, I'd love to try visiting the cafe as well! Even though it feels like a shame to drink something so cute > <

Torao Mido: By that, are you pleading me to take you there?

Tsumugi Takanashi: What!? No, not at all!

Tsumugi Takanashi: I've been told the location of the cafe, so I'm sure I can go there alone without any issues.

Torao Mido: I didn't mean to suggest that I would just be escorting you there, though.

Torao Mido: As always, you're an intriguing woman.

Tsumugi Takanashi:

Torao Mido: By the way, I heard that Touma is planning to visit the IDOLiSH7 dorm sometime soon.

Torao Mido: I was invited too, but it might be difficult for me to make it due to work.

Tsumugi Takanashi: I see > <  I heard that he made plans to drink with Sougo-san at the dorm while he was there to borrow his CD!

Tsumugi Takanashi: I'm also planning to drop by with some refreshments, so if you can make it, please come!

Torao Mido: Ah. Drinking with one of the Osakas? I'll make sure to warn Touma not to make any blunders.

End of Part 2.

[aetherspoon]

Hi total stranger here sorry to jump into your inbox but I saw you mentioned a drive that allowed you to bypass the truly awful 4K uhd settings that I've literally only just heard about?

Oooo, my first ask!

So, I'll post the short version here and the long version under a cut.

The short version is simple - I have a USB UHD (4k) BluRay drive from LG. At the time I bought it, it had firmware that could be upgraded to some unofficial firmware that can avoid that garbage. That drive isn't recommended anymore, which is why I'm not bothering to give you the model number, but if you look at this site:

It will give you the list of drives that ARE recommended for this type of thing. You can even buy some pre-flashed drives from people if you don't want to mess with that.

My drive has worked fine for me, but admittedly I've only used a few UHD discs on it (and a whole lot of normal blu-rays and DVDs).

Now, the longer version is under the cut, including one of my patented totally normal (blatant sarcasm tag here) analogies that still somehow work.

-----

I'm going to use an analogy here, because that's how I explain tech.

Let's pretend your Blu-Ray (regardless of whether it is UHD/4k or not - see my notes at the end for a fun fact) is a VIP performing at your exclusive club called Blu-Ray Drive. You'd think that, because you own the club, you can watch the VIP perform, right?

Wrong.

You see, the club has a bouncer by the name of AACS. Every VIP insists on one of their bouncers being at the club, deciding who to let in and what they get to do. The bouncer doesn't actually work for you, they work for the VIP, and no VIP will come to your club if you don't have one of their bouncers.

Also, just for more paranoia, every VIP will have its own list of who and what to allow, along with where they're allowed to stand. Each time you have a new VIP come to your club, they give their own list; if the bouncer sees the list is newer, they throw away all of the old lists and only keep the newest one. On top of that, AACS is a nationalist asshole that decided to only allow people from their own country in, because the VIPs want to charge people differently based on their nationality.

The VIPs even require some fancier clubs to have a courier continually delivering them new lists (this is where that UHD/4k Internet connection thing comes from).

All of the stuff you want is inside of that club, but the bouncer won't let you in because you're not on the list (and might not even from the right country). And you can't just sack the bouncer because then no VIP will play at your club.

You heard of another problem at a similar club (Club DVD), where their more local VIPs required them to hire a bouncer named CSS. However, CSS wasn't paid very well, was near sighted, and never bothered to update the list; all of your friends just called themselves "Maria Wang" and CSS let them in. Your VIPs know about that though, so they insist on the updating list thing and giving their bouncers eye exams. So what do you do?

Simple. You call a buddy and they kool-aid man through the back wall of your club shouting OH YEAH!, of course.

This is a completely logical analogy, I know. I should really commission an artist to draw this.

This buddy is called LibreDrive. Your VIPs still have their bouncer - anyone who doesn't know about the secret entrance still goes through the bouncer. The people who do know - including you and your friends - just go through the secret entrance instead. The VIP company is none the wiser.

-----

Now that my completely logical analogy is over, what does this actually mean tech-wise?

The way DVDs work is by using an encryption technology called CSS. However, in late 1999, someone figured out how to break the encryption, mostly because they did a really lazy job in making it to begin with. This is DeCSS. There were huge lawsuits, poetry made using source code, a whole lot of weird things. Today, we don't even need DeCSS; the encryption on DVDs are so bad that a modern computer can brute force decrypt it in seconds.

Fundamentally, both DVDs and blu-rays work the same way. There is a portion of the disc (DVD or blu-rays) that no drive is allowed to directly read. This contains the encryption information for the rest of the data on the disc. That encryption information is used by the player as to what is and isn't allowed to read the disc and what parts they ARE allowed to read. This is also where region locking comes in, where it checks what region your drive is set to and allows/denies discs to play based on that region; this is called CSS. If you are old enough to remember the bad old days of WinDVD and PowerDVD, those applications had encryption keys allowed by the DVD drive to play back the video content on the drive.

Anyone remember those cheap knock-off "region free" DVD players that used to be really common in the 2000s? They just ignored CSS entirely; the drives themselves can still read all of the data on the disc, it was just CSS telling the drive what it could or couldn't read.

Anyway, the movie studios, seeing their "beautiful creation" get ripped apart like that, wanted to make sure that it didn't happen the same way with their next technology.

Where blu-ray differs from DVDs is how it isn't using CSS at all, but something called AACS instead. It makes this list into a continually updating list; every time your drive (whether it is in a computer or a standalone player!) sees a new disc, it checks that hidden encryption information for a list of what is and isn't allowed to access the drive. If the list on the disc is of a newer version than what the drive currently has in its firmware, the disc will actually flash the firmware of your blu-ray drive with the new allow/deny list. Then it checks again - does the firmware match what the disc has? If so, it continues. If not, it refuses to play no matter what. From there, the rest of the process is basically the same, checking any player for a list of keys allowed to play it. If it sees a key not allowed (say, your ripping software), it says no and stops everything from reading it.

Unlike DVDs with CSS, these keys are actually pretty darn secure... and even if they weren't, studios would just release an updated allow/deny list and suddenly your computer can't rip discs anymore because the latest version of Frozen came out.

UHD (4k) blu-ray players take this one step further and just continually update that allow/deny list across the Internet rather than waiting for new discs to update that allow/deny list. This is why a standalone UHD blu-ray player needs WiFi, by the way. It isn't used for anything else.

So... how to avoid it? You could use a leaked key and basically hope that it isn't updated. This is how most blu-ray ripping software works, which is also why they need continual updating while movie studios play cat and mouse. And with UHD content, that's a really tiny window of time that you can do unauthorized things with the drive.

Remember our surprise tool - the drive itself still has to be able to read everything, it is just AACS stopping us. If we can somehow just get a drive to not care about AACS, we'd have access to everything we care about.

LibreDrive is a custom firmware that basically lets all of the above still happen, but any program aware of LibreDrive can just use it to access the full disc. It acts as an intermediary between the physical drive itself and software on your computer, similar to AACS itself. Like the analogy said, you're kool-aid manning a security hole into the drive's encryption. AACS is still happy because it can still update its firmware allow/deny list, you just bypass AACS entirely. Every byte of data on the blu-ray is accessible to whatever programs know about this security hole, which includes programs like MakeMKV and anything using the open source (and illegalish - see below) LibDriveIo library. Fun fact, you can just copy that library in to VLC and it'll use it.

Unfortunately, you can't just flash LibreDrive onto any drive. Basically, someone needs to be able to read the existing firmware on a drive in order to know what to modify to open up that security hole. This means you need specific drives on specific versions of firmware to flash LibreDrive.

The industry, however, caught on to this. They started requiring drive manufacturers to encrypt their firmware, so some newer revisions of drives that used to work now don't - this is the case with my drive.

And that's... the rest of the story.

Now, my notes:

You know how I said UHD/4k and regular blu-rays work the same? Yeah, it isn't just that they work the same - sometimes they're actually the exact same drive. Some regular blu-ray drives can actually read UHD discs, they're just not allowed to by AACS because "fuck you that's why". LibreDrive can work around that, too.

Illegalish? Well, circumventing copy protection isn't allowed under the US's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), outside of specific scenarios. And the US's copyright laws tend to get copied over to a lot of other countries as a result of the trade deals they make with each other, hence "illegalish". You make your own moral call, my morality says that personal use to rip your own media should have always been legal and I should be able to play a Brazilian version of the Phantom Menace if I want to.

Some additional source reading material: https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18856 for "What is LibreDrive", which explains the same thing I did but without my fun analogy and using more technical terms. It also includes the full list of drive firmware that works with LibreDrive.

[nelson-riddle-me-this]

COLUMBO THOUGHTS:

s1e2 "Death Lends A Hand"

Okay so kinda big deal bc I'd skipped this episode in my dedicated series watch I started last year! Not on purpose, but the way I was watching e1 & 2 of season 1 were lumped into one big video file and so I forgot it existed. So really delightful to return to early Columbo and with an episode that was new to me!!

SPOILERS BELOW (for this episode and the other 2 Culp appearances)

As far as performances from series favorite Robert Culp this might be my fave of his! Like he's always exceptionally good at being mean and stern and being annoyed with Columbo, but something about the intensity of this feels different.

With how methodical and premeditated Culp's other two murders are, this one being a 'crime of passion'/manslaughter surprised me. Also THE SLOW-MO GLASS BREAKING AND HER FALLING!!! Like it's visually so cool. And very novel. The overlay shot where we see what Culp does after killing her, but as two different reflections in his glasses on an unmoving face - is very cool. It goes on a bit long, but it's very cool and I expect would be especially novel for audiences in 1971.

The score is by 4-time early Columbo composer Gil Mellé. It's got the spooky quasi-aleatoric spacey murder music thing, and a definite jazz flavor. Both me and the jazzer friend I watched it with were a bit thrown by the sudden capital juh-Jazz that starts when Culp gets into his car after killing this poor woman. Not that *J*azz is inappropriate for that moment, but something about that specific cue undermined the shock and weight of the sequence before. Maybe that's what they wanted, but I doubt it. I hear the blu-ray set that's out has versions of these episodes without music. It'd be a fun project to rescore some of these and fix some of those things that bother me.

Loved the detail of Culp knowing the name of one of his P.I.'s kids - just the sort of detail that helps a story feel 'lived-in'. I was shocked by Columbo playing up the astrology and palm-reading stuff LOL. The show depicts that sort of thing from time to time, but I don't remember Columbo himself hyping it outside of this. Of course it's part of the act to lower their guard, to make them think he's a fool, and as an excuse to get what he's really after (in this case examining the killer's hand and ring).

Ray Milland is fun to see, though part of me thinks he's not quite right in the role. He's not especially sympathetic somehow, which is maybe why they brought him back as a killer in "The Greenhouse Jungle". Some really great comic moments - Columbo complimenting Culp as being a 'man of purpose and intent' and immediately walking into a _closet_ is HILARIOUS. Lots of fun moments too with him snuffing out the golf instructor our victim had an affair with. I also thought it was hilarious that the golf instructor kinda lamely admits that he's not even really good at golf, pulling in women is the only thing he's decent at. Which like wouldn't be so bad if we felt he was a thoroughly charming person. But like it reads less as 'local rich women can't get enough of this studly golf instructor' and 'well I'm not really interested in the golf anyway, and at least he's not my husband - so I guess it's exciting enough. I can tell my bookclub friends I slept with my golf instructor and then I'll be cool.'...

The 'gotchya' is effective and satisfying. The mechanics of it are a bit paint-by-numbers. But this was so early in the run, it probably wouldn't have seemed so if I'd watched it in order. Still, the 'trick the killer into searching for evidence and catch them in the act of that' is worn. But also there's only so many ways for this all to play out!

Good episode, good early Columbo. Also shoutout to the victim cuz how she confronts Culp at his beach house is SOOO SATISFYING!!

[thefloatingstone]

Do you think anime today are made with too many safety nets? Like gone are the days where something experimental or risky (risky in terms of something not seen before)

Yes but I think it's also a ratio thing.

In the entirety of the 80s, 256 were released. In 2022 ALONE 106 anime were released. There is a VAST amount more anime released today, and as a result, a good majority of it is extremely "safe" from a business point of view.

However I think the biggest culprit for this is simply one of money. 1980s Japan was going through an INSANE economic boom. On top of this, the "Straight to VHS" market hit the scene in 1983, which enabled anime to be able to show things which were technically illegal for Japanese broadcasting. Because straight to video anime were not technically broadcasted. This is why OVA from this time period tend to be as hyper-violent and sexual as they are. It was the first time anime actually had the medium in which it could show those things and this new freedom had many anime studios go to an extreme just to explore these new possibilities.

These days, anime animators are paid less than what's considered the legal minimum wage in Japan. But because anime is such a huge profit for Japan, the Japanese government overlooks the breaking of worker's rights. Animators in japan have not had a wage increase since the late 90s, and many of the artists who work on animation make about $400 to $500 a month. While also being expected to live in Tokyo (one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in) and essentially work 24/7 to make deadline. It's reaching a point where, because the people funding anime do NOT want to spend more money but their animators are actively dying from being overworked, have started outsourcing the animation part of anime to overseas studios like the Philippines because they don't have to pay as much. Or their NEW fun little tactic which is to hire amatuer animators off twitter from young kids who REALLY want to work in anime as their dream who are easier to exploit and misuse because they are young, inexperienced, passionate and naive. WATCH OUT FOR THIS. It's becoming more common.

Most larger anime shows also know their main money won't come from broadcast or even blu-ray sales (although Blu-ray sales are EXTREMELY important as far as an anime's success goes) the REAL money comes from merchandise sales or a push of sales in gacha games that are tied to the anime in question. Basically the way Pokemon works at this point. Where the games only exist to justify the existence of merchandise.

So the producers of anime want shows that they know will translate well into merchandise sales. The big merchandise target which these companies like tend to be men aged 18 - 25 who don't yet have families of their own. Because they tend to have a lot more disposable income. However, as things have changed and shows like Sailor Moon have proven, women are also willing to spend large amounts of money on merch. But due to the social structure of Japan, statistically women are less likely to spend the same amount of money because society pressures them more to work towards starting families and focusing their money on building households. (something Japan itself puts extreme pressure on especially with their declining birthrate but even before this just through their traditional family values).

This is why if you compare the amount of shoujo and Josei anime that come out per year versus the amount of Shounen and Seinen anime, it's not even CLOSE in numbers. And what shows MIGHT appeal to women just as men tend to still have cute girls in them to push figurine sales.

It's created an extremely hostile environment where artists simply do not have the means to actually be creative because they are being bled dry for no money.

BUT, because of the sheer number of anime that release per year, it IS more likely to have hidden gems come out made by people who genuinely have a great passion for what they make. It's just that before these would be the anime that outshines everybody else, but because there is just SO MUCH shovelware anime, it can be a little harder to see in the crowd of 5000 isekai and gacha anime.

The industry is not in a great place right now in terms of a creative environment. But it doesn't mean quality isn't there. It's just the quality anime won't be the "biggest" anime of the season or the most talked about or the one you see the most merch for.

Except for Mob Psycho 100. MP100 is GENUINELY one of the best anime to come out in the last 10 years. It uses experimental mixed media in its animation, the animation itself is top tier, and its story and characters are extremely unique for the anime medium.

ALSO! there is an anime coming out for one of my favourite current running manga "Kaiju No. 8". Monster Number 8 is part of a new breed of manga that's part of a branch of Shounen Jump called "Jump+". Shounen Jump has for DECADES demanded its manga writers provide a chapter PER WEEK for publishing. Similarly to anime, this bleeds manga artists dry and leaves them often with debilitating health conditions due to overwork (I have a manga by Satoshi Kon where he talks about getting Jaundice while making the comic due to overwork).

Jump+ on the otherhand works differently. The manga do NOT update per week but have larger gaps between updates with short breaks sometimes by the artists.

AND GUESS WHAT???

IT MEANS THE QUALITY OF THE MANGA HAVE GONE UP!

WHAT A SHOCK!

Anyway apparently Kaiju No. 8 is getting an anime adaptation and I am extremely excited.

(He's upset because he pissed through his nipples on the street)

Seriously tho. Kaiju No. 8 is about a 30 something year old dude who works as "monster clean up" which is basically the guys who have to mop up the guts of whatever Kaiju the heroes blew up that week.

until he accidentally becomes exposed to something which gives him the ability to shapeshift into a monster. He reapplies to the Kaiju-fighting division being one year under the cut-off age, an entrance exam he has failed multiple times in the past, but gets in this time (but barely iirc. It's been a while since I read the beginning. (of course if the defense division ever sees him in his monster form they will kill him which is probably not the smartest career move but I mean WHAT ELSE IS HE SUPPOSED TO DO?)

AND THEN THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP HAPPENS.

Where his hero buddies who find out he is also a kaiju have to help him BOTH fight the monsters attacking the city while ALSO keeping his powers a secret from the OTHER officers in the division. Specifically his best friend who then pushes himself to be BETTER at the defense thing specifically so his friend (who's named Kafka by the way because of course) won't transform to protect him and potentially get himself killed by the defense division.

It's so good. Please... I am weak for power of friendship stories....

Everybody protects each other and care about each other so much...

I just hope the anime can get something good out, because already from the sneak peaks we've seen, the quality seems to be the same level of mid most major anime have these days. But hey. At least it's not CG.

[astoundingbeyondbelief]

Kaiju Week in Review (December 4-10, 2022)

GigaBash's Godzilla DLC is now available, and they defied expectations (well, my expectations) by offering a lineup of Heisei Godzilla, Kiryu, Showa Gigan, and Destoroyah. I can't offer any insights into how they play, since I haven't had time to delve into this game, but they certainly look great.

An extremely special collection of Godziban episodes are out on Blu-ray and DVD. The main attractions are two all-new specials ("The Greatest Monsters on Earth" and "Mothra vs. Bagan"), starring the imposing lineup above, plus the entire Destroy All Monsters cast. Extended versions of the season 1 episodes "Son of Minilla", and "The Godzilla Who Came on Christmas Eve!" are also present, and the Blu-ray adds on the Godzilla Fest 2020 special episodes "The Xilien Who Turned Red" and "Lullaby of the Skies" and a behind-the-scenes featurette. Both formats come with a sizable booklet too. They're pricey, as is typically for Japanese home video, so as eager as I am to watch Bagan get pulverized by a couple of moths, I'll probably wait for someone to rip the Blu-ray.

Godzilla: Monsters & Protectors - All Hail the King! #3 is mostly Ghidorah doing Ghidorah things (although this might be the first time he's burned down Westminster, good for him). King Caesar can't wake up soon enough. This issue also plays a bit with All Hail the King's status as an unplanned sequel. In #2, Cedric questioned why King Caesar didn't intervene when Godzilla was on the brink of destroying the world in the original comic. The Shobijin have many abilities, but breaking the fourth wall isn't one of them, so they gave a vague answer about destiny, and it's just adding to the friction between him and Karen, a member of the family who can communicate with the shisa. Interested to see where they're going with this.

Tickets for the U.S. limited release (January 11/12) of Shin Ultraman are now live. Since Fathom primarily books at Regal, Cinemark, and AMC theaters, Fandango should allow you to see most anywhere it's playing near you. I will be dragging as many people as I can to the subtitled showing.

Mill Creek has issued the 1992 animated series Ultraman Kids: 3,000 Light Years in Search of Mother on DVD. I know nothing about it, and those designs are powerfully unsettling... but it's never even been subtitled before, so good on them?

Normally I wouldn't bother mentioning the millionth Godzilla crossover with a mobile game, but The Ants: Underground Kingdom is an unusual pick—it's a strategy game where you run an ant colony. These are clearly special ants, since the teaser shows them giving Godzilla a boost after King Ghidorah knocks him down. (I'd rather see him take on the ants from THEM! though.) The collaboration runs from December 16 to January 14.

[ajstudio]

Abridgecard finds Cocaine Bear.

---------

Alucard is getting the hang of the changes in society after rematerializing back into existence. While paying a visit to the Goodwill store Abridged Alucard finds a unique little gem.

---------

Abridgecard: Why are we here? There's a Michael's on the other side of this place.

Persephone: They are closed due to inventory. While it breaks my heart that one of my favorite stores is closed I would be passing up an opportunity to repurpose some old goodwill rags into some real gems. There's nothing better than getting some good fabric for a steal!

Abridgecard: What about Hobby Lobby? Don't they sell fabrics? Or did they stop while I was gone?

Persephone: Oh, no. They still sell fabrics. I'm just checking here first before I go there since I know I'll be there longer.

Abridgecard: Ah!

Persephone: My cousin's art teacher found this expensive blouse for $5. I found some workout pants from Glein Clein for $6 a pair when they'd be worth $50 if I bought them online. And when I am not looking for clothes to wear I find clothes made of good material I can use to make purses, shirts, and pants. I even made my prom dress out of clothes from the Goodwill store in my area.

Abridgecard: *reacts to some of the items at the store as he makes his way to the section with the VHS, DVDs, Blu-rays, and videogame *Can-can girl teapot, Pig Cleaning Lady Cookie Jar, The Muppets plush dolls, Pacman arcade game, pictures, Sophia (Golden Girls) Bust Bank, a hippo Bhuda statue doing yoga, grinning mugs, and a duck wearing a pope hat*

Abridgecard: Oh, Vampire Knight. Of course, they would be in a Goodwill store because no one wants to keep those books any more than their Twilight novels. OH, WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT! It's Twilight! Let's see. We have one. Two. Three copies of Twilight. Four Eclipses. Two Breaking Dawns. And one New Moon. Any me novels? Hey, it's the untitled goose game for the Switch. *Turns around to find a Pacman arcade game* Oh, that's so cool- Aw, it's not working!

Old Lady: The Pacman Game? I wanted it for my laundry mat to entertain my customers but the people that work here say it's not working.

Abridgecard: Wait! Wait! Wait a minute! Why donate it if it's not working?

Old Lady: Decoration, maybe? Someone might want it for their man cave. Or gamer cave. I don't know what gamers call their gaming room these days.

Abridgecard: Huh? What's this? *looks at the case and reads the title* Cocaine Bear? *snickers* Are you fucking real!? Is it about a bear doing drugs? *reads the back* 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Oh, fuck! This shit sounds hilarious! Oh, shit! I left my wallet at home! *spots Persephone at the checkout counter*

Goodwill Employee: Would you like to make a donation to St. Jude's Children's Hospital?

Persephone: Yes, please.

Goodwill Employee: Oh, you have three DVDs. Is there another one you'd like? It's buy three get one free.

Abridgecard: *slaps the DVD on the counter* I will have this one!

Persephone: 🤭😂😂🤭 (He timed that perfectly.)

Abridgecard: Please do this for me. I left my wallet at home.

Persephone: What did you pick? *looks at the cover* Oh, my goodness!

Abridgecard: *bends over to whisper in her ear* We are watching this tonight.

Persephone: Did you check to see if the disc is *opens the case* Oh! The disc is inside case.

Abridgecard: Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be?

Persephone: Sometimes people will donate the case without double-checking if the disc is inside. I learned this the hard way with a Celine Dion album that was missing the CD.

Goodwill Employer: That happens a lot here.

Persephone: Or the case might have the wrong item inside. I bought a copy of a game my friend lost only to find out last minute the case contained a completely different disc inside.

Abridgecard: What was the game?

Persephone: I wanted to get Warriors Orochi for the PS2 for my cousin. But the case contained a Dora game for the Wii.

Abridgecard and Goodwill Employer: Ooooooo!

Goodwill Employer: It wasn't even for the right console!

Abridgecard: You know what. I think some kid might swapped the game out of the case with his sister's and taken off with it.

Goodwill Employer: Oh, that's probably what happened.

Abridgecard: Also, why don't you just double-check the cases before putting them on the shelves?

Goodwill Employer: I don't know, but I guess I could make a habit of it starting now. I'll check once someone takes over my shift.

Abridgecard : Hey, here's an idea. Why don't you just take all the mismatched games and movies, hand them out on April Fools Day, and tell everyone there're mystery boxes?

Persephone: Or you could just sell the cases themselves and sell the games and DVDs separately? But what you could put them in if they don't have a case?

Old Lady: Would you hurry it up? I've been waiting here for fifteen minutes already!

Persephone: Oh, I'm sorry! I'll be done right this instant. *hands over Cocaine Bear to the Goodwill Man* I'll be taking this.

Abridgecard: I also want this. *sets down the pope duck*

Persephone: Oh, it's cute! Did you name him yet? *hands the duck to the cashier and then realizes Alucard could've just warped back home to get his wallet*

As Alucard and Persephone leave the checkout counter, Alucard notices an old woman handing the cashier a DVD called The Diary of an Angry Black Woman with an old black African woman on the cover.

Abridgecard: The Diary of an Angry Black Woman? I wonder who passed off the old lady.

Persephone: Oh, did you see another movie you wanted to watch?

Abridgecard: Nah! Just looking at the stuff the old laundry mat lady bought.

Persephone: You know, I've seen that movie, the sequels, and the plays.

Abridgecard: Really?

Persephone: Oh, yes. My friends and I used to watch them. The first two movies were a big part of our teenage years. They were hilarious, but the scriptwriter Tyler Perry, who also plays Madea the old black woman on the cover, isn't afraid to tackle the touchy issues that an older generation would just try to swipe under the rug.

Abridgecard: Oh!

Persephone: To best describe Madea in a way you would understand, Alucard, if I had to pick a spirit animal for you Madea would be the perfect choice.

Abridgecard: Oh, now I need to see this movie! *pulls out Cocaine Bear* Right after we watch this!

Persephone: Well, the good thing is I already own most of the DVDs. My favorites are Boo 1 & 2, the Christmas Specials, and Madea Goes to Jail.

Abridgecard: Well, I guess it was bound to happen.

Persephone: I just want to give you a heads-up about the Madea movies. Despite what the trailers and covers may imply, the movies also focus on a family member of Madea's or someone she'll meet later on and the challenges they face. Madea can be a bit of a troublemaker and probably should have been locked up a long time ago. But just like a good family elder, she offers guidance when they need it. She's kinda like you.

Abridgecard: Are you saying I should be in jail?

Persephone: I wasn't trying to imply that. But realistically, the inmates wouldn't be safe with you. You would probably be put in solitary confinement.

Abridgecard: That's not nice.

Persephone: I'd come visit you.

Abridgecard: But would you break me out?

Persephone: No.

Abridgecard: Ow!

Persephone: But I could afford it I'd bail you out and I'd visit you until I could.

Abridgecard: And with that, you're forgiven.

Persephone and Alucard spent two hours indulging in their leisure activities. Persephone spent her time examining fabrics and restocking her art supplies, while Alucard followed her around with two garden gnomes. They then had a double movie night where they watched Cocaine Bear and Madea Goes to Jail. While watching the movies, Alucard was reminded of his past experiences of hijacking lifting cranes while performing his crazy antics.

[adamwatchesmovies]

Unstoppable (2010)

No matter how spectacular or unbelievable, real events need a few key qualities to be worthy of a film adaptation. The real-life CSX 8888 incident meets all the criteria. With two charismatic leads, loads of twists and turns that raise the stakes and some good old-fashioned thumbing at the man, Unstoppable packs a lot of entertainment in its 98-minute running time.

At the Fuller Yard in northern Pennsylvania, the engineer (Ethan Suplee) jumps out of his locomotive to change an incorrectly aligned track, accidentally leaving the unattended train with the throttle at full speed. By the time yardmaster Connie Hooper (Rosario Dawson) realizes they have a runaway train filled with explosive materials barreling down the track, the only people who might be able to stop it are veteran railroad engineer Frank Barnes (Denzel Washington) and Will Colson (Chris Pine), a young train conductor.

If there’s one aspect of the film that will make or break it for you, it’s Tony Scott’s trademark, frenetic camerawork. There are constantly helicopters circling the 777 locomotive and the film is often shot from the perspective of a news reporter on one of those helicopters, which means there are a lot of unsteady shots, particularly when things get intense. Although I can’t say I was too fond of this choice, news footage-like camerawork is appropriate for a film based on true events. There are small bits of writing here and there that might also rub you the wrong way (the ultimate fate of the man who left his post, for example) but they’re minor issues when we consider everything the film does well.

Denzel Washington and Chris Pine are great as the heroes. Both of the actors have charisma to spare and play well off of each other. Each is given their own miniature story (with everything that’s going on with the train there’s not much room for too much else) and their own arcs together as a team. It’s just enough for you to care about them and worry about whether they will save the day… even before you realize the magnitude of the disaster that awaits everyone should they fail to stop the train. They seem like imperfect but perfectly relatable guys, the kind you could easily see at your weekend BBQ. The same can’t be said about the higher-ups we see throughout the film. Some might say they’re over-the-top but from my experience in the workforce, they're not so exaggerated. Even before the movie starts you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that AWVR’s vice-president won’t listen to Frank and Will and within the movie, you understand why, which makes him less cartoonish - though no less sympathetic.

We have a decent foundation with the great actors and easily grokable characters but ultimately, this film is about the train and the peril it represents. This is the kind of movie that’s always throwing some new wrench at our protagonists. Once Unstoppable gets going, it just never stops… sort of like the train itself. Thankfully, our heroes are smart and resourceful. Their plans always seem more likely to succeed than the ones the authorities propose. Seriously, some of the tactics they come up with are so ridiculous and obviously flawed that you’d laugh them off the screen… if this was a work of pure fiction.

Unstoppable would be a great movie to sit down and watch with your dad. It’s got plenty of tension, the stakes are high, the antagonists are easy to dislike, you’re eager to cheer for the heroes, and the energy throughout makes its running time fly by like nothing. It’s just an all-around solid piece of entertainment. (On Blu-ray, January 14, 2022)

[sleepymarmot]

Tokyo Godfathers (2003)

Wanted to watch this on Christmas, but I was too busy with an entirely different story about a baby abandoned and found on Christmas Eve and improbable coincidences. Then I decided to make it my first new film of the new year: it had been on my watchlist for more than a decade, so finally checking it off would be an auspicious start for 2024. I didn’t realize the movie’s events started on Christmas but ended on New Year, so turns out, I didn’t miss the time window after all.

It feels like this film should be a hit on Tumblr. Found family of marginalized misfits? I’m surprised it’s not a staple of the winter holiday season over here.

Especially since it has some things in common with a Tumblr (and my own) favorite, Disco Elysium. Self-hating alcoholic who missed his chance to become a family man; his queer companion, with some amount of romantic tension between them; a kid who’d rather spend time on the street than with dad at home; a mystery that has to be solved as soon as possible; an odyssey through the eclectic and neglected spaces of a city that seems to be a character in itself; finding hope in the middle of hardship and beauty among rubble and garbage. Even the style seems similar.

The environments might be my favorite thing about the film; beautiful, stylish, detailed and realistic yet harmonically coexisting with the more cartoonish characters. (This short article on Substack has some interesting info about it; I plan to watch the Blu-ray documentary feature that served as one of the sources, but not right now.)

I spent all of my brain power on processing the language and didn’t have much left to properly appreciate the story, so I don’t have anything original to say here. I was slightly bored at the beginning, and started to get into the film more when the protagonists encountered the yakuza and the impossible coincidences started piling up. I imagine the story would have been quite bleak if it stayed realistic.

Maybe I was too tired, but the plot stopped making sense at the end. So who abandoned the baby? Sachiko? Why would she kidnap the baby to raise it as her own, then abandon it, then try to run away with it again?

Interesting that all three characters are homeless by choice; all of them have people to come back to. They aren’t exiled from their families, they have exiled themselves. Their misery is caused not only by society’s failure to care for its vulnerable members, but also by their own guilt, shame, and fear. They cannot bring themselves to face their past, until fate forces them to do so. Their Christmas miracle is to reunite with the people who still love them and want them back in their lives. I think that in a story made by a left-leaning writer today, the protagonists would declare that the found family is the only real family they need, and would be far more resentful of characters like the doctor who told Gin to fix his life himself. This film seems uninterested in society as a net of systems and institutions that traps people in rigid roles, and more interested in it as a collection of diverse individuals who stumble upon each other’s paths, usually without understanding but also usually without malice. The film’s approach to social justice is to humanize the downtrodden, instead of condemning the system that left them in that condition. Perhaps it’s just an earlier stage of the same artistic process? Anyway, in the middle of the current “eat the rich” fad (which, to me, seems pretty hypocritical coming from directors and producers who are rich themselves), it’s nice to watch a story that doesn’t waste screen time on toothless satire and instead spends it on character development for the protagonists.

This is the second time within the last couple of years that I watched the work of a previously favorite anime director after an enormously long break. Your Name made me question my respect for Shinkai; Tokyo Godfathers, on the other hand, did not disappoint me in Kon — only made me mourn him all over again. I’m pretty sure I first made a note of this film with the intent to watch it back when he was still alive. Strange how a life-affirming story whose optimism relies on realism-defying eucatastrophes, in the end, reminded me how fucking unfair the real world is.

[mygreatadventurehasbegun]

PHANTOM!!!

I got to see one of my favorite movies on a big screen today!

First, a couple random things about the day...I worked early this morning before the movie, and tried to pick up a Bruegger’s sandwich beforehand, so I could eat my lunch during the first movie...but the line was so long, and the people were moving so slowly, that I had to leave without a sandwich.  And the mall where my theater is located doesn’t have any kind of restaurant where I could pick up easy to hide food...and there was no way I was going to pay $17.00 for a pizza at the AMC that is probably 97% grease....so my lunch was gummi bears and a diet coke.  Only really bring it up because by the end of Phantom, I was starting to feel the fact that I needed real food and water, lol.

Also, my theater just...forgot to turn on the screen.  1:00 rolled around and we waited...and waited...and after a few minutes, myself and someone else, I believe went and told an employee that nothing was happening in our theater.  A few minutes later, the screen pops on, with the Creature of the Black Lagoon playing with no sound...so they basically had pressed play in the booth but didn’t think to look in the theater.  So, they rewound it back to the beginning and we started fresh...and then after a couple more minutes, they finally turned off the lights (after a reminder from another audience member).

ANYWAY...here’s some random thoughts from watching Phantom ‘43 in a theater:

~I don’t know if something was up with our print, but it seemed a lot less clear in comparison to my Blu-Ray...the colors were more muted and darker...just a little thing that I mostly only noticed at the beginning.

~I was right about some people being confused at the beginning...because the movie opens with singing in French, with no subtitles.  It was one of the only times I heard talking in the theater, thankfully...but I think the people talking were using an Audio/Visual tool to help them hear the movie or read captions...and I think since there are none for the opera scenes, it made it challenging for them.  Sadly, they left about halfway through.  A couple other people left after about 30 minutes, too...I imagine they might have been expecting the Lon Chaney film.

~THE MUSIC SOUNDS SO GOOD IN A THEATER, HOLY SHIT.  I was like a little kid, listening to Nelson Eddy sing....especially that final opera...that sounded unbelievable.

~CLAUDE RAINS/ERIQUE CLAUDIN.  HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT YOU CAN BREAK MY HEART EVEN MORE??  I CANNOT.  When he is playing his concerto on the piano after being fired, you can see him choking back tears and I wanted to cry with him.

I mean, look at him!!  

I never fully noticed this when I would watch it on my TV...but now...so. many. feels.

~The sound design is really enhanced in a theater.  When M. Pleyel tells Claudin to get out, you can hear how ragged Claudin’s breath is...he is about to lose it...not in a rage way, but in a desperate, trying not to cry way.  Again...ow, my feelings...

~I only heard the audience laugh two, three times in the entire movie...one is when M. Vechers is doing his “long nose, big red beard” shtick in the manager’s office.  The other times were during Anatole and Raoul’s banter...I’ll get to that.

~I feel like Jane Farrar never gets enough love for her role in this movie...she’s a great diva bitch and her voice is STUNNING.

~So, we’re in the lair...and the concerto is playing above, and Claudin is playing the piano...Christine starts to recognize the song, and the shot on Claudin, once again, BREAKS MY HEART.  He has this look on his face where he sees her recognize the song, and he’s thinking that this is the first step to her learning the truth.  It’s such a quiet, subtle moment that is hard to catch at first, because of the mask...but damn.

~The most audible laugh from the audience came from our favorite bromance/romance, Anatole and Raoul.

A: “That Policeman!”

*knock”

C: “Come in!”

R: “Christine! *sees Anatole*  Oh.”

A: “Oh.”

That dejected “Oh” from Anatole got a real nice chuckle from my audience...and I’m sitting in the back just silently cheering that these two are about to go start their new life together. :)

All in all, this was such a great time...I never thought this movie would be shown on a big screen (especially by AMC), so this was a really nice treat!

[strings0fcontrol]

Just a weird lil observation undeserving of tags

I just realized that I spat out roughly 40k words (+/- 38k are published, the rest are still all over my notes. It might even be way more than 40k) in less than a week, including a plot. I was doing this casually. I didn't plan a plot. I'm just writing down whatever weird lil scenes my autistic brain is sewing together in real time. I've watched Hannibal once. About a month ago. I've been roleplaying (primarily) Hannibal since. Sometimes Will. All of this is from memory. And the few snippets I picked up along the way in interviews. (What I'm trying to do is rewatch the show, scene by scene & really take it apart, but I'm currently struggling with that since I gravely miscalculated, fucked it up & realized I don't have a Blu-ray device for the CDs. So, I first need to get that sorted out. Hannibal, on Netflix, isn't available in Germany, so you can see my problem here.)

Now, my autistic half is relatively manageable, it's quite similar to Will's manifestation & after my formal diagnosis, I've gotten a very good grip on managing my triggers & generally, staying in control of them. Most of the time.

On the other hand, my ADHD is a dominant infernal disaster dumpster hellscape of problems, always taking detours through the wild lands of distraction. We have a love/hate relationship. I'm (usually) highly medicated just to function bc I have the attention span of a fruit fly, I'm severely traumatized & my energy levels hover in the negative realm. The meds are fucking up my liver, so I haven’t been taking them over the semester break/pause, whatever it's called in English, which means I'm usually completely & utterly useless in that state. Strong executive paralysis. So, the fact that in my unmedicated state, I've managed to vomit out roughly 40k words of a novel in less than a week is an incredible milestone. I'm not even sure if the story is good. I'll have to rework it on a couple of corners. This is also just phase one, since I'm now, once I rewatch the show, going into phase two, where shit will really go wild & the actual story begins. I didn't even think I'd make it past the first chapter. I was sweating to make it to 6, I was crying when I reached 10 & I nearly fainted when I made it all the way to 14. And, once again, I'm so very glad that Hannibal has touched my little world, bc not only do I love that show, the books, the movies, everything, it's pulled me out of my depression & given me something to be happy about, bc those (almost) 40k words mean I shouldn't give up on myself just yet. I'm not a complete disaster. There's still untapped potential. There's still energy. I can feel the fire in my soul again, I feel alive again, I'm curious again, I'm feeling joy again & so much more. I'm very grateful for that little revelation. So, my sincerest thanks to the universe & to everyone involved in the show, movies & books.

Danke. I'm feeling my spark again, thanks to you. It's been dead for nearly 15 years. And. I want my future self to look at this when the insecurity strikes again. Believe in yourself, child. Believe.

[chaosgodray]

So, there's something that needs clarifying. My Gender Identity is "they/them enby on feminizing hormones who presents very masculine." It's unwieldy and kinda silly. Valid, but unwieldy.

Thing is, it's intentionally a transitory stage of my life. I'm invoking denial tropes while medically going full throttle because, well, there are a few factors. So first off, my job is not a safe space. My boss is a transphobe. (He's also a moron and a doormat, but he's a transphobe). I work at a warehouse manning a security checkpoint; I deal with a wide variety of smelly people who drive big rigs for a living. Not all of them come off as the kind of people who would respect me as a trans woman (certainly not as an openly nonbinary person). I don't present male because I necessarily want to, but because I have to for safety reasons. Hence the goatee, an easily maintained demarcation of alleged maleness that I don't think looks godawful like what i look like with a full beard.

Point two: I've been so up my ass in doubts that I didn't take my hrt for about 3 months, and on top of that I kept getting denial haircuts or thinking "I'll just buy a wig hahaha" (BAD IDEA 0/10 do not reccomend). So while I've been on HRT since Jan. 2021, there's three months of stalling in the middle thereof.

Third thing, the big one: I'm plural. I'm self-diagnosed with OSDD (the non-amnesiac variant of DID) but my therapist and psychologist at the time both made no effort to deny my feelings. I have had significant dissociative breaks from my/our "core identity" that, in our mind, reinforce our confidence in the self-diagnosis.

the main factor of that is, "Ray" refers to a larger group of people than a single individual. it includes at least Jake, Ray, and Rachel, and potentially also includes Blu-Ray, Jennifer, Refraction, Hyperion, Barry, Rose, and Calem. This is the level zero and level one of our concentric rings model of our plurality. While pronouns, genders, appearance, sexuality, memories, even SPECIES varies among us, the ten of us share enough in common that we can't tell each other apart sometimes, and (this is the kicker) MIGHT NOT ACTUALLY ALL BE SEPARATE PEOPLE. (Rachel and Jennifer might be the same alter, same with Ray, Blu-Ray, and Refraction. Rose we genuinely had to invent/retcon an explanation for because they fronted for a few days without realizing if they were a new person or not and we haven't seen them since.)

It gets more confusing. Jake is explicitly, actually [DEADNAME REDACTED], the host from earliest memories to 2018-2019 or so. He was functionally DEAD for like two years before we did an edible and had a really bad reaction. To quote him at the time, "I'm vibing with my deadname, my brain is convinced it's 2018, and please close the curtains and turn out the lights because I can't stop staring at the sun." Weed is fucking wild. And he not only stuck around, he took his life back.

So let's talk about Ray. Not Ray the singletsona we project to the world, Ray the alter. but to talk about ray we have to talk about nate. Nate is a bigender foxkin roseboy nature spirit. He is adorable but not very mature. Thing is, She was the host for the first few months of our being open about our plurality, because no one else was up to the task or wanted the job. This was like spring of 2021 and Rachel (1) (we assume) was dormant after an identity crisis that resulted in our acceptance of our plurality. (it's possible we've been plural since ~2017, but definitely since 2020). Once Nate realized he wasn't up to the task, having had a series of mental breakdowns that lost us the only job we've ever had with growth potential, she basically CREATED Ray to be the mature adult we needed to host the system. Ray traded off hosting with Nate, blended with basically everyone at one point or another, stopped existing only to come back, blended with nate long term, blended with jake long term, possibly blended with jennifer to re-form rachel before rachel became a separate entity who may have absorbed jennifer (also jennifer is actually rachel 2 and rachel is rachel 3)...

its complicated, and we barely understand this. and keep in mind, this has in no way stabilized. going back to the beginning of this post, we are actively doing fucky gender stuff that doesn't necessarily make sense, and this is why. The "pilot" of the body isn't consistent or easy to determine most days.

Just the easiest example: Jake and Ray. Jake and Ray look very similar (and like the body). Jake and Ray have the same underlying personality. Jake and Ray are so good at pretending to be each other they fool themselves. What's the difference between Jake and Ray? Jake wears jean jackets and uses he/they. Ray wears flannel and uses they/them (usually). sometimes, jake and ray blend into RJ. Who is RJ? The same person as jake and ray, they just are both simultaneously. maybe. IT'S CONFUSING.

Then there's Refraction, aka Empty Spaces Ray, Blu-Ray aka more effeminate Ray with blue hair, whatever the extant version of Rachel is aka Rule 63 Ray, Rose aka Butch Rachel, Hyperion aka angry horny dragon Ray with no filter and many fewer inhibitions...

BUT

there is a plan. As we move forward in our transition, the progesterone scrip we got recently takes effect, we properly grow our hair out, our breasts get too big to ignore (and we finally buy a damn bra for them), we (hopefully) get an orchiectomy, we lose a little weight on our stomach (or it redistributes in a more feminine/sexually attractive fashion), we shave our body more often while needing to do so less, etc.. We can blossom into a beautiful woman.

Something that's been happening recently is pretty bad dysphoria attacks that coincide, with or without us realizing, with Rachel fronting. Our goal is simple: let the HRT work its magic, give it a little push, and then Rachel takes over as host. Ray disperses, Jake goes dormant (he doesn't feel like he fits in in our social circle that's mostly trans women since he's on the line between cis and nonbinary, and it embarrasses him). The others come and go as they please.

This post ended up longer than I intended but if you value me/us as a friend or just want an insight into how plurality works for some systems (no two systems are the same but some work similarly), please give this a thorough read. it'd mean a lot to us <3

signing off,

Jake, Ray, Rachel, Refraction, Barry, Calem, Hyperion, Blu-Ray, Rose, Jennifer, Nate, Serena, Maisie, Shockwave, Ginger, Lilith, Spider, Steven, Shelby, and Toby

The Sunbeam Collective