#of course he had to be the antihero- but hear me out it i s fitting

[anime-simp-0]

Hi there! I am so sooooo happy to see other people with a Bakugo obsession - his character development is one of the better ones in my opinion.

If you are open to sharing some headcanons (but of course no pressure! Writing should be enjoyable!) - how do you think Bakugo would be with an antihero s/o with a personality like Deadpool? I imagine them having a really smart mouth that drives Bakugo up the wall lol but also being kickass enough to stand toe to toe with him. What do you think?

I'm so sorry this took me so long my courses kicked my ass and i had to put literally everything else on the backburner. But! I got it done lol

i can totally see this. to me, bakugo definitely seems like the type of guy to go after someone who can not only hold their own against him in a fight, but also in a conversation. i think it's very important to him to have an s/o who can put up with his bullshit and call him out at the same time. i also think that he secretly finds it really sexy that you can put him in his place so easily with your smart mouth. well, as long as your not using it to make him lose his mind ( even if that is your favorite pastime). regardless of his stereotype of just being a stubborn hothead, he is actually quite levelheaded. He knows he overreacts sometimes. he knows that he doesn't always think things through. so, he needs someone who can call him out. and that's why you're so perfect for him. you're just as stubborn as him, which none of his friends could believe so it was quite a shock when he proved it, and it keeps him on his toes. it keeps your relationship interesting.

i think that bakugo himself fits the definition of a hero rather well, but that doesn't mean that all of his actions do. yes, he himself aligns with heroic standards, but that's more for the sake of keeping his license then morals. i think the more experience he gets as a pro really changes him and his perspective on good and evil. this also gives him the ability to recognize that heroic ways don't always solve the problem.

for the record, when i think antihero, i think of an oliver queen/green arrow situation here. don't judge me 😓

having said that, i think that bakugo doesn't necessarily like your antihero decisions either. he understands them, yes. and he can see the good you do and your good intentions. and he'd be damned if he ever told anyone who you were in the shadows. hell, he'd rather take a bullet to the brain then risk you getting arrested for being a vigilante. and that's the problem. you would be. your methods are unorthodox. you get the job done, but at what cost? how much blood has to spill before you are the one that doesn't get back up? at least as a hero he has protection. backup. you go in blind and pray for the best. and it kills him to see your busted lip and bruised knuckles. yet you hide it well. everyone he works with just sees you as his kickass, badass partner. the only one he listens to and smiles for.

but he knows the truth.

he knows why you do what you do.

because again and again heroes let you and the people you cared about down. you got sick of waiting around to be saved. so you saved yourself. you got your hands dirty. but the farther you went in, the harder the dirt was to wash off your hands and now you can't. you can't stop. you can't turn away. not from all of those suffering people that the heroes won't help.

so, for now, he'll be quite. he'll clean your cuts while you sit on the bathroom counter with him between your thighs. he'll get you ice for bruises and learn how to do stitches. he'll even help you come up with a cover story. because as much as it pains him to see you in pain, he knows your happy. that it's worth it to you. and as long as he gets to hold you when everything is said and done and hear you whisper you love him as you fall asleep, as long as he can feel the way your chest expands as you breath against him and hear the soft sighs against his neck, he'll learn to love these moments enough to forget about how you got in this state in the first place. he'll learn to see that you don't just do it for them, but for him too.

[tanzoshi]

𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲?

     The antihero .

ah yes, hello edge lord. it is lovely to see you again. you my dear, are the incarnation of duality, and you might think of claws and venom mixed with grace but alas, nothing near as poetic. you my friend, are mixture of what is seen as right, and what is questioned.   you follow the path of your own two feet,   you know the twists and turns of life's forests quite well if I do say so myself. and you can meander along them wonderfully. you strive to stay true to a certain sense of principles you might call your code, but whereas in reality, those would be your morals. people tend to see you as strange. sharp edged and glinting you hide behind a cloak of chain mail but really you just prefer to show off your imperfections first. unlike many who scramble to make it as if their flaws never existed, you proudly raise yours up. saying,    "this is me, this is the worst of me, now you know what to expect."   and might I say, it is quite an intriguing mindset, for truth be told, the ones that love your spikes and craters are the ones who appreciate your softness the most. you wish not to be loved as something lovable, but as a monster. for aren't we all just beasts in human skin? you are brave, but you are lonely. you know quite well how to scare off most, making even the heroes with the boldest bravado creep away with their tails between their legs. you are not a villian, sometimes you play the part a bit too well. but nevertheless you are no hero either. you put yourself first, but if one wins your trust then may the gods have mercy on those who might wrong them. you long to be a poetic mess of sorts, and well, if the ink sets in long enough you might just become that sooner or later. but for one who is so dead set on truth you sure do hide a lot don't you? please, step out of the shadows, there is a difference to not making your flaws visible and to simply acting as if you're the most despicable person in all the realms. it's because you're afraid of attachment is it not? well let me tell you a little secret, everyone is. you say you wish to be left alone for eternity but than why are you craving connection.   you wish to be known and understood truly,   but you snarl and push the ones that might be trying away. please little wolf, accept you are lovable. you are not some ravenous beast that terrifies the multitudes, sure, you are not for the faint of heart but that does not make you an inkling less perfect as you are. young antihero, step into the sun. you would do better actually reaching for the things you want rather than pining for them in the darkness.

[imemeyoumemeweallmeme]

Quotes from “Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier” as starters

But today could be the day I finally make a difference!

Where are you off to today, you no good piece of shit?

You’ve got to dream a little harder!

It took you long enough, you shit-eating dog.

Oh, so you think you're better than me just because you can read?

Just try to keep your fat face out of that motherfucking book.

Why am I the only one who sees things as they are?

Oh, ___, sometimes I feel you're my only friend in this world.

Today, things got a little out of hand and a lot of good people are dead.

Did we get the loaf of bread back?

Why do you even bother visiting us commoners anymore, you aristocat?

I sure hope you haven't goofed this one up, ___.

Tsk, tsk, tsk, look at this mess. Dead bodies in the street.

Did you know in this barbaric country they only give you money if you work?

Who would seek employment when life offers such enjoyment?

You're only in trouble if you get caught.

My father says that you must marry me now, or I'll bring dishonor to my entire family.

I can't give up on my dreams and settle down just 'cause your dad's being a dick.

‘Cause you stole my daughter’s hymen!

That’s completely fair, but in my defense - dude, your daughter’s hot.

My ass cheeks…they're hanging out.

And what's this? Blood. Blood on my ass cheeks. Tell me, ___, how the fuck did it get there?

Oh I am grateful for your tiny ass, ___!

This really is an act of war, ___!

Do not feed me shit and call it couscous, ___!

Well an hour free is better than a lifetime in a cage. Being fed and pampered and cleaned up after. What kind of a life is that?

When are you going to learn that your actions have consequences?

One of these days, you're going to learn that life isn't about dreams coming true. It's a series of compromises and disappointment.

That's supporting a corrupt system. You're a part of the problem.

I want everything, and more!

My secret is simple, really. Anyone could do it. I just follow the golden rule!

Always treat others like sisters and brothers and they’ll do the same for you.

I get back what I give!

My hunger blinded me and forced me to act like an animal.

But we're not animals. We're gifted with minds to reason and hearts to love!

I think that's enough fun for one day, eh, ___?

Well, we have our own golden rule here. Whoever has the gold…makes the rules.

The gold that my neighbor earns through his labor is gold I’ll never see.

So keep your mouth shut and your palm open, and you may just get...filthy stinkin' rich!

You could start by telling me your name.

I suppose this will be the end of me.

I am a servant to the people, and therefore your servant.

Magic does nothing if not touch the soul.

I want to know your story, I want to know your past, I want to know your future too.

Fill my days and nights with the tale of you.

I never cared for stories until you entered mine.

Let’s make ours the story with no end.

Their mouths aren't fit to hold a donkey's shit.

Many years ago, I took my finger…and I pushed in my penis…and it hasn't come out since.

A very wise and enthralling tale, ___. We can all learn a lesson from it, I expect.

Where's my opium?

Speak now, ___! And don't fuck it up!

Well, maybe I have a new purpose now.

That is what your story is about.

I wish I had the power to rewrite this tale.

Never stop wishing it, ___.

We will be reunited one day, and unlock wonders beyond your wildest dreams!

After all, I must be pretty great, if you believed in me.

I only hope you haven't fallen prey to some sex-crazed ruffian!

Right this way, babe.

This is so unfair! Poor people need slaves just as much as rich people do! Maybe even a little bit more.

Of course it's a free thinker like who's struggling to get by. And all because of our totally corrupt class system.

I hate the class system. That's why I said, "Fuck it, I'm never going to school again."

So, you abandoned everything, to be free? That is so brave.

Brave? Me? Yeah.

All my parents ever did was support me. Give me a place to stay, tell me they loved me, no matter what. They were really bad parents.

How's a thirty-three-year-old kid supposed to know how to survive on his own?

But that is not fair! ___’s a victim of circumstance!

Don't look at me like that! These are my orders from ___.

Wait, wait, what? You slit people's throats? I didn't tell you to kill anyone! This is awful!

___, no. That is just an expression.

I'm gonna have so much gold I could swim through it! Like a pool. Do you think people can really do that?

Once I get my mind set on a chick, I just can't move on until I get this nut out.

I can’t wait to be a rich dude!

Stealing is so much easier when you’ve got already tons of gold.

We’ll get our happy ending tonight.

We weren't sure if you were ever coming back, ___.

Everyone, look at my ass!

You received the manhood of a badger?

Those are stretch marks, they happen.

Oh, I see! You received the manhood of a tiger!

Did you hear that, lads? ___ made love to a tiger!

Tiger fucker! Tiger fucker! Tiger fucker!

I DID NOT FUCK A TIGER!!!

Am I not a thing of beauty? Don't you want a piece of this? Wouldn't you gladly give up all of your worldly possessions just to greet me when I come home from a one-sided massacre, and bathe my sweaty, bloody body with your tongue?

Oh…you. Aren't you busy ruining my life?

I noticed you weren't at dinner, but I saw you tried to poison my wine. Usually when you do that, it means you want to talk. What's up, are you mad at me?

You ripped my heart out and smashed it into a million pieces. And don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about.

He/she/they was perfect! Like if you cobbled together all the best features from all the best guys/girls/people, and then gave them a tragic backstory! It's like he/she/they was designed specifically to appeal to me.

I knew everything about him/her/them! He/she/they was my soul mate! My -- my -- God, I am freaking out, what was his/her/their name?

Believe it or not, I care about you.

I don't want to be prepared. I want to expect the unexpected.

Look, you're young. You don't exactly get how things work yet. And, while I don't appreciate any of your ideas, I do appreciate the fact that you HAVE ideas. Maybe one day you'll have some GOOD ones.

Sexual predators the lot of them! Their tactics target vulnerable, young girls, and build up false senses of trust and then isolate them on magic rides of sorts. And when the moment is right, they whip it out. You know... their songs.

Be wary of young boys who whip out their songs. A song is often a prelude to a dick.

A song is a dick in sheep's clothing.

Can't you see I'm trying to impart a life lesson?

I feel like you only come to see me when there's bad news.

I counted thirteen dead before the peacocks got to them.

How the fuck did you know it was me?

Because it IS you, you're just wearing different clothes.

Wow. Pretty AND smart. You're the whole shebang, babe.

Everything I told you the other night was a lie. Don't you trust me?

Ugh. Oh no. Okay, um, now I'm kind of feeling like everything about you that was attractive to me before isn't really there anymore.

No! No, I'm just being indecisive. It's still you.

I've just got to get back on that high that I was on before.

Look into my eyes and talk to me some more about the world's injustice!

Sure. Just let me roll this blunt first.

But I don't want her/him/they to love me. I just want her/him/them to fuck me.

You guys know there's a way to get people to think about sex without even talking about sex? You just gotta do it subliminally.

Hey, babe, it's such a beautiful night -- take off your clothes.

But…let me ask you this: is your penis an innie or an outie?

___ explained everything to me. He/she/they was just pretending to be a ___. For fun.

I bet the ___ is under that ___ sized hat!

Bullshit! Why would I pretend to be a ___? Just to get laid? That's not me.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa! Why are you picking on me, ___? Afraid I'll reveal your little secret?

Whoa! I thought I was just bullshitting you guys!

What made me think that I could get away with such a plot?

How does the golden rule apply in such a situation?

Whichever road I take, I will only encourage someone’s wrath!

‘Til now I’ve always traveled down the straight and narrow path.

But which way do I turn when the road’s become so... so... twisted?

You think you know me, as others think they know you, but there are two sides to every story.

I was prepared for anything, except for what ensued.

They weren't ready for my ideas.

Fortune favors the beautiful.

My only crime was love.

But the heart wants what it wants, and sometimes what it wants, is twisted.

I only wished to reclaim what was mine!

I only wished for equal rights for all!

I only wished to save her/him/them!

I only wished to be invited to the party!

I only wished to improve relations between the races!

I only wished to teach ___ responsibility… so he/she/they wouldn’t end up like me!

I only wished to give the people a voice… To help the miserable, lonely, and depressed!

I never knew my father!

It's an unfortunate situation…But you do have a choice.

What remains of a man when that man is dead and gone?

Why protect my reputation? I’m a dead man/woman/person either way!

How will they tell my story? How will they tell my tale? Will anybody even care?

Is it nobler in the mind to be well-liked but ineffectual, or moral but maligned?

If I hide to save my life, what has my life been for?

The road ahead may twist, but I will never swerve!

I’ll give them all the unsung antihero they deserve!

I’ve nothing left to lose, to the only path to choose is twisted.

So let them twist my words, let the people scorn me.

Who cares if no one will ever mourn me?

Let them bury the side of the story that they’ll never learn!

Let the truth be twisted!

Let my life be twisted!

I’ll be twisted, it’s my turn!

Your armies have abandoned you. Your ruling class is corrupt and we have come to put an end to your tyrannical rule!

You'll never end our tyrannical rule!

It is I who will be doing the fucking today.

It appears that ___ has cold feet!

Yes I am talking to you! Now get your ass over here!

I've got to become a sorcerer! Can you do that?

Yes, I do feel lucky. I've got a ___! But I think he might be a fucking moron!

My fuse is about this long right now.

You either need to back me the fuck up, or shut the fuck up. Got it?

And what's the last thing you wanna do before that happens? Take off your clothes. That's right, have sex! Hurry, take off your clothes.

I'm not going to take off my clothes in the middle of a battle!

My skin is melting!

Would you stop acting like an asshole for one minute?

I'm not a tease. I'm just…not a freak.

You're making sex seem gross and lame.

You got that, ___? We are not a thing anymore, okay?

We're just having our first fight. Maybe after some make up sex…

You're the guy who killed my parents. Where have you been?

Okay, Jesus Christ, I don't know what's going on here.

That's the trick! You just really have to believe your own bullshit!

It takes someone who believes they can change the world to actually do it.

This isn't fair! Life is supposed to be fair!

Your youth and your passion, and yes, your naïveté -- these give you power.

When I was your age, I thought I could accomplish anything I ever wanted and more! But I didn't. Perhaps no one does. But you have to think you will or you won't have the strength to try.

Maybe you won't make any big changes, but a few little ones that pave the way for the next generation. And then they'll make small changes and leave it to the next and the next! It's a bit like a carousel of progress. Always spinning towards a great, big, beautiful tomorrow. And tomorrow is just a dream away.

But what if tomorrow never comes?

Tomorrow always comes. Even if it comes without us.

What will I do without you to guide me? When I am lost, where will I turn?

You remind me of someone I knew long ago.

You’re the one who put it there -- the power in me.

The power to love one another is the greatest power of all.

No matter where life leads us, we’ll never be apart.

Through thick and thin, success or ruin, I’ll carry you in my heart.

I will treasure forever what the world will never see.

You are kind, and that’s enough.

I wish you didn’t have to go when our story’s just begun.

Then I wish you every happiness.

It was more money than I had ever seen. But I was able to count it.

And that's the end of the true story.

[fantasticstoryteller]

New Amsterdam Chapter 94

Peter crawled up the side of the wall. The back wall, of course, that no one was watching. Despite television, movies, and even crappy Saturday Morning Cartoons pointing this weak spot out for authorities, nothing was done about it. No one noticed Spiderman silently climbing a wall.

No one, except for Deadpool. Peter didn’t even flinch when the grappling hook shot beside him to hook over the roof only to retract for Deadpool to pull level with Peter as he crawled. “Spidey!” called the merc happily.

Peter grinned behind the mask. Even before they’d started dating, he’d enjoyed his interactions with Deadpool. Well, after the first few times, at least. “Hey, Deadpool,” he called back.

Deadpool gasped. “Spidey knows my name!” he squealed—softly, so as not to alert the people in the bank.

“Of course I know your name,” Peter said, glad the mask was hiding how he flushed. Deadpool had no idea how well Spiderman knew him.

A little niggling of a thought warned him that it would be better to tell the merc sooner than later. But—Deadpool had always looked up to Spiderman, ever since the first time they’d met. How would he handle knowing that Spiderman and dorky little Peter were the same person?

“What’s the sitch?” demanded Deadpool in a Serious ToneTM.

Peter simply looked at the merc with a smile, not that Deadpool could see it. “How long have you been waiting to pull that one out?” he asked.

“Early 2000’s? I think?” replied Deadpool.

Peter chuckled. “All right,” he said with a wry smile that, once again, Deadpool could not see. “The sitch is three armed criminals, fifteen hostages with one of them being a baby with colic.” Peter cocked his head as he listened, through the building and focused on the robbers as Daredevil had taught him to do. “The baby is starting to get on the nerves of the criminals.”

“Not hard to imagine. You ever hear a colic baby? Stupid question, of course you have. They are not fun to listen to.”

“What’s the plan?” Peter asked.

Deadpool gaped at him, completely silent.

Peter gently shook Deadpool’s shoulder. “You’ve been looking after the city while I was gone,” he said calmly. “You know it well. What do you think we should do?”

“I—don’t really plan much,” Deadpool muttered.

“All right,” Peter said calmly. “If this was just you, how would you save them?”

Peter watched calmly as Deadpool stared at him. “No,” he said faintly, “I don’t think that will work.”

“Well,” pressed Peter, “what will work?” He had a rough idea of the best way to defuse the situation, of course, but he wanted Deadpool to come up with a working plan that made the best use of both of their abilities. After all, Deadpool had been watching the city for him for a while now. Surely, during that time, he’d come up with a better plan than waltz through the front door, drawing fire from both criminals and police, to use his inability to die as a way to keep the hostages alive.

“Okay!” Deadpool said manically. “It’s like this: you are going to sneak in and slowly, carefully get the hostages out unharmed.”

“Okay,” agreed Peter. “And what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to dance De La Peters through the front door until everybody runs out of bullets.”

Or not. Peter let out a low sigh and hung his head. “Deadpool,” he began.

“Look.” Peter looked up as the antihero dropped to a crouch next to him. “Most important thing of a hostage situation?”

“Minimize casualties,” Peter automatically responded. He and Deadpool had had this conversation before.

“Exactly.” Deadpool nodded. “So, first—make sure they aren’t looking at the hostages. They notice their get-out-of-jail free cards leaving—”

“And the first thing they’ll do is start killing them,” Peter finished. He knew that; he’d seen it before. So had Deadpool. He sighed again before standing up and rubbing his hands together. “All right, let’s put your plan into action. Give me a few minutes to get into place before starting your distraction.”

“Yes, Sir!” chirped Deadpool cheerfully. His hand came halfway down, finger out to bop Peter’s nose, and Peter stared, frozen. Did Deadpool know? Had he figured it out?

Peter felt no fear at the idea. Instead—there was a bit of relief. If Deadpool had figured it out, then he knew that Peter was Spiderman and didn’t hate him for it.

The hand stopped halfway and Deadpool awkwardly hid it behind his back. “Er. Yeah. Let’s get this done!” he said nervously before running off the roof.

He didn’t know. It was clear to Peter that Wade still believed that Spiderman and Peter Parker were two different people. The way Deadpool was worried about showing too much physical affection towards Spiderman while dating Peter should have been sweet; shouldn't have left a pinching, hollow feeling in his gut.

He quickly, silently broke into the bank. He had a job to do; hostages to rescue. Then he could change back into Peter and get his hug.

[dangermousie]

2019 END OF YEAR KDrama Post

Wow, I haven’t made one in years. This is going to involve only dramas that came out in 2019 because I watched a hell of a lot dramas made prior to that and trying to figure out which ones will give me a headache.

DRAMAS WATCHED (In order of liking from most to least as opposed to pure quality; I am including if I’ve seen at least two eps AND feel it was enough to make up my mind; yes I realize that’s inaccurate, but that’s my list)

Extraordinary You -  A philosophy and religion course AND a love story, and perfect at both.

My Country - a brutal, passionate, intense masterpiece of a sageuk. This is how they should be.

Crash Landing On You - the two eps that have aired brought my joy in watching kdramas back to me so vividly. This is everything. 

Encounter - the perfect noona romance of the year for me. It seems to have little plot (powerful older woman, idealistic younger man) but the characters made me love them with an unhealthy amount of attachment and the mood is just perfect.��

Haechi - smart traditional sageuk with a heart. This one will make you love it but also respect it in the morning :)

Queen: Love and War - Period, romance, mystery, helpless king and feisty heroine. It’s everything I love in one package. 

Chocolate - if, like me, you like slow old-school melo with genuine grown-ups, this one is for you. Ha Ji Won and Yoon Kye Sang are both incandescent in this. 

One Spring Night - a rare slice of life that worked for me so so much. I rooted for the main OTP like crazy (I did skip all the sister stuff though because boring to me.) It’s just a breath of fresh air.

The Tale of Nokdu - a rare funny youth sageuk that worked for me (except, ironically, for when they tried to be politics-heavy and serious about it.) Wonderful OTP, funny situations and just generally a delight. 

Memories of the Alhambra - I can hear people screaming that I put this so high, but this is a faves ranking, not objective one, and I loved the unusual premise (it ultimately fell apart but it tried), and Hyun Bin’s performance was out of this world and the aaaaagnst and I enjoyed waiting for it each week until almost the end. That ending though!!!!!

Psychopath Diary - this is black comedy at its best and hysterical and smart and somehow got me invested in the hapless protagonist. 

Hotel del Luna - clever and funny and smart. Hong Sisters largely back to form. I found the sageuk parts more engaging than modern ones, but what else is new.

Search WWW - some parts of it worked for me more than others, but it had solid writing and cool characters and some interesting OTP(s). 

Love is Beautiful Life is Wonderful - has the weekend drama slowness but it lovely and fun. 

When the Camellia Blooms - it was well made and the OTP was great and the acting top notch, I just don’t tend to go gaga for slice of life dramas, especially ones involving market ladies, much. 

Flower Crew Joseon Marriage Agency - competently done, pretty period piece about nothing. It was enjoyable and forgettable at once.

Catch the Ghost - I put it as high as I did because the OTP really did have lovely chemistry but the story was a complete mess, the police work made no sense and the heroine’s character was like nails on a chalkboard for me.

Joseon Survival - I got about four episodes in and liked it a lot but then Kang Ji Hwan turned out to be a convicted rapist, they replaced the lead and I didn’t go back. I kind of want to because I liked what I saw and I am madly curious as to whether they changed the main character or just said he had a different face now, no explanation. 

The Last Empress - pure inconsistent trash but so entertaining!

Vagabond - I made it eight episodes in before I realized that I would have as much fun staring at traffic. It’s a competently done actioner but without more, actioners never work for me, so this was a viewer/drama mismatch.

Arthdal  Chronicles - incoherent, visually odd and boring, this is arguably the worst drama this year but I am giving it higher place because the cast really tries (even if it tends to fail because it has nothing to work with) and because it attempted something different even if it failed spectacularly. SO BAD.

Melting Me Softly - yes, my brain was fully melted by this soulless, charmless waste of Ji Chang Wook and my limited free time.

VIP - Any drama that makes the main mystery and thrust of the story who the husband cheated on his wife with is BORING. Seriously, this is not exactly Hercule Poirot. They wasted their cast - I have NO idea why Lee Sang Yoon agreed to be in this as a one note character and Jang Nara is playing a second scorned wife in a row but without even the entertainment value of her previous outing.

Abyss - aptly named. The best thing I can say about it is it didn’t offend me but oh boy was it dull.

Absolute Boyfriend - I loved the manga but it’s time to accept this can never be adapted well. They wasted the cast and that ending was just an insult on top of a trash heap.

The Lies Within - you cast that cast and deliberately have no romance. You are dead to me. 

Woman of 9.9 Billion - competently made, but it’s everything I dislike - dour unpleasant bored people behaving as if they are in a particularly dreary art-house French movie but without any nuance or interest the latter came provide. 

Love with Flaws - shrill, dumb, neither acted nor written by anyone trying at all. 

Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung - objectively, it’s not the worst drama on the list, but it’s everything I hate in one package - willfully ahistorical but not cleverly so, male lead incapable of acting, the characters so one-dimensional they disappear, this purports to be a period drama but about as period as a space ship. God, I loathed this. 

FAVORITE DRAMA

Extraordinary You - smart (so mind-bendingly smart) and moving and totally unpredictable and with so many things to say about free will and religion and self and nature of memory and narrative, this had an insane impossible premise and yet somehow managed to do it full justice and stick the landing. 

WORST DRAMA

People with Flaws - this is different from least favorite because even if I loathed e.g., Rookie Historian or Woman of 9.9 Billion, I recognized some positive features; it’s just certain things really rubbed me the wrong way due to personal preferences. But this shrill hot mess of a drama is really everything that’s wrong with dramaworld.

FAVORITE MALE CHARACTER

Prince Yeoning, Haechi - fiercely smart, strong, tormented by the duality of his birth (royal father, servant mother) but not letting this distract him from his purpose, loyal to the bone, and with integrity nothing can shake but where you can feel that it’s not easy and that it costs him.

FAVORITE FEMALE CHARACTER

Eun Dan Oh, Extraordinary You - a go-getter who remakes the world (literally); smart, cheerful, strong, beautifully human. She feels so real and yet is larger than anything around her. 

NEEDS TO BE MURDERED

Yi Seung Gye, My Country - a sociopath destroying lives in his quest for power and control, even the destruction of his own family barely gives him anything but momentary pause. He is the reason for the tragedy of MC. 

FAVORITE SHIP

Eun Dan Oh x Haru, Extraordinary You - their love is literally universe and god-defying. They have loved each other as different people in three separate worlds (and counting), and have defied loss of memory and even loss of self as well as death, the end of worlds, and their god and the narrative and literally anything and everything, to be together.

Runner Up: Soo Hyun x Jin Hyuk, Encounter: tender and decent and his bringing her back to vivid life and the way they love and support and compliment each other.  

Probably gonna be on list if doesn’t go haywire: Crash Landing on You: she is a SK heiress, he’s a NK officer, they have mad chemistry and so much potential.

NOTP:

Tae Mi x Morgan, Search WWW - love the actors, love the chemistry, love the characters in terms of the way they are written, but they are absolutely wrong for each other and there is no future of any sort but misery ahead. None of their issues are resolved but are swept under the rug. It’s a cautionary tale, not a romance. I did a long rant before so not repeating. 

BEST SECONDARY OTP

Scarlett x Ji Hwan, Search WWW - they stole the shippiness in the drama for me. Cooky and adorable and noona romance done right.

FAVORITE SCENE

Haru’s final disappearance, Extraordinary You - the lights start to go out, the world literally dissolving, Eun Oh and Haru clinging to each other, with his telling her she was his beginning and the end. His name, the one she gave him, is the last thing he hears. In a drama full of amazing scenes the very gist of which was defying the very creator and universe and meaning of existence, this was the one that stayed with me the most.

BIGGEST CRUSH

Seo Hwi, My Country - I have a thing for deeply honorable, deeply tortured period badasses with long hair and a death wish (see Choi Young in Faith etc.)

BEST SCENE STEALER CHARACTER

Yi Bang Won, My Country - he started out as an antihero and ended up as arguably a tragic villain (or maybe still an anti-hero) but oh boy, was he magnetic and fascinating and sucking out all the oxygen whenever he was in the scene.

NEEDS A SEQUEL

Memories of the Alhambra - WTF ending was that?! All that misery and no real resolution?! Dammit!

TROPE THAT NEEDS TO DIE

Youth Sageuk - I hate most of them! They are anachronistic and dumb and honestly, what is the point of having fully modern people in period clothes? Just make a modern show and call it a day.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT

Melting Me Softly - Ji Chang Wook’s first project back from the military was an unfunny, unmoving, pointless mess with not an ounce of genuine enjoyment despite the excellent pedigree of everyone involved in front and behind the camera.

Arthdal Chronicles - the makers made excellent Queen Seon Duk, Tree with Deep Roots and Six Flying Dragons. The cast was uniformly A grade. The result was an open-ended, boring, incoherent mess that looks like a bad sort of a drug trip and made about as much sense. 

BIGGEST GOOD SURPRISE

Extraordinary You - I had zero interest in yet another high school drama with no actors I recognized. By the end, EY was an emotional brainy twister of a marvel that became my favorite drama of all time. I’ve been watching dramas for over 13 years so that’s saying something.

2019 DRAMAS I HAVEN’T SEEN THAT I MOST WANT TO WATCH

The Crowned Clown - I love sageuks and cast and it looks so smart and emotional

Angel’s Last Mission: Love - my next contemporary - I watched a little and loved what I saw

Fates and Furies - I saw a few eps and classic melo is so up my alley.

Clean with a Passion for Now - I like the cast and it’s a year of falling for hot weird bosses apparently.

Graceful Family - I love makjang and Im Soo Jung.

The Secret Life of My Secretary - downmarket Beauty Inside and I loved BI.

Love Affairs in the Afternoon - artsy adultery FTW

Item - I don’t like crime stuff but I am here for Joo Ji Hoon.

My Strange Hero - seems a little cooky but I am fond of Yoo Seung Ho.

MOST ANTICIPATED IN 2020

King: the Eternal Monarch - Lee Min Ho and Woo Do Hwan and parallel worlds and written by Kim Eun Suk. Yes Please.

I should probably make one for cdramas too though that one would be rather shorter.

[thoughtfulfangirling]

I am on my Mad Max bullshit; you have all been warned. 

Last night, I attended a stream done by @docholligay of Sergio Leon’s “For a Few Dollars More.” I had never seen any of these movies nor were they really in my consciousness beforehand, so it was really fascinating to be able to hear not just about the West, but also these movies in general (her commentary). As she talked about how you don’t need to see any of the other films to watch any of them and observed the characterization of The Man with No Name, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Mythic!Max take and be, in general, reminded of Max Rockatansky. 

Of course the character is a pretty iconic one, and it only stands to reason that we will see similar like him as the media that comes before--whether consciously or not--will effect that which comes after. But still, I was curious if George Miller might have been pretty explicitly inspired by these movies. 

TURNS OUT HE WAS!

“When Miller and Kennedy decided on filming Mad Max in the anamorphic widescreen format, their creative touchstone was Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy and their successor, Once upon a Time in the West (all filmed in Techniscope, a cheaper alternative to CinemaScope). The pair told cinematographer David Eggby that shooting anamorphic would crucially enhance landscapes. Cars driving in packs would look especially potent. But filming in Panavision or Techniscope proved financially unviable and logistically prohibitive, so they opted to use a set of knackered but still beautiful Todd-AO 35mm lenses, which had been located at a Sydney rental house. Previously used on Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway (1972), only one of them in fact worked.

While Max isn’t as laconic in the original as he’d become in later Mad Max films, there is also a distinct flavour of Leone’s antihero, The Man with No Name (played by Clint Eastwood), in the rogue cop’s overall genetic makeup.”

It actually does make me want to see the other Sergio Leon films with The Man with No Name, because I love the idea of Mythic!Max even if I can only watch one of the Mad Max films repeatedly (and never could get myself to watch the orginal). I love the concept of “heroes” trying to mind their own business and begrudgingly pulled into helping someone else find closure. I dunno; apparently it’s a trope I like! 

I’d love to hear from other Fury Roadies who are familiar with the other franchise if they have any thoughts. I’ve now only seen the one film, but there were a lot of beats that just had the spirit of the Mad Max films I watched for people who are me. 

Yes. I will make everything as much about MMFR as I can, shut up. =P 

An aside: One of my favorite tidbits of info that sparked my MMFR connection was the fact that the villain in this movie played another villain in another movie which of course immediately invoked Hugh Keayes-Barnes to mind as Immortan Joe/Toecutter

Edit: I forgot to add (unnecessarily but shush) that apparently (I don’t explicitly remember it) in Thunderdome when Max fights... in the Thunderdome, they announce him as The Man with No Name XD 

[mst3kproject]

Black Dragons

 This is a bizarre and thoroughly mismanaged WWII yellow peril movie.  It features Bela Lugosi and Joan Barclay, both of whom we’ve seen before in The Corpse Vanishes, and was produced by Sam Katzman, who brought us both The Corpse Vanishes and Teenage Crime Wave (also The Giant Claw).  I liked The Corpse Vanishes.  It was fun, fast-paced, and in some ways surprisingly feminist.  Black Dragons is none of those things.

It’s 1942, and Japan has just bombed Pearl Harbour, forcing Americans to stop ignoring World War II.  Stock footage of stuff burning and blowing up is implied to be the work of a bunch of indistinguishable suited men who are sabotaging the allied war effort.  They’re standing around one evening congratulating themselves on how evil they are, when a mysterious Monsieur Coulombe arrives and talks privately with one of them, a Dr. Saunders  Coulombe hypnotizes or drugs Saunders somehow – and in the days that follow, the conspirators start turning up dead, each with a souvenir from the renaissance faire… oh, excuse me, a Japanese dagger… in one hand.  What the hell is going on?

Well, the ending is supposed to be a surprise, but I’m gonna spoil it for you to save you having to watch the stupid movie.  All the victims, plus Dr. Saunders, are actually Japanese operatives from the Order of Black Dragons who had plastic surgery to turn them into the doubles of American businessmen!  The originals were killed, and the duplicates took their places… and the surgeon?  He was a Nazi who did it as a favour from the Fuhrer, but afterwards the Order tried to kill him so that he could never reveal the plan to anyone.  He escaped, and went to the States to murder them in revenge for their betrayal!

As ideas for an espionage movie go, this one reaches near golden-age comics levels of absurdity and as such it’s almost kind of brilliant.  A movie that used this plot to its full ridiculous potential could be great fun – I especially like that it pits two sets of villains against each other, while the supposed good guys spend most of the film completely clueless.  Black Dragons, however, was rushed onto theatre screens within four months of the bombing of Pearl Harbour, and it’s an utter mess with no idea what to do with its premise.

For being made in 1942, Black Dragons mostly doesn’t look bad.  There are no scenes so dark you can’t see what’s happening, and we get an idea of things like the layout of Dr. Saunders’ house. The characters all kind of look alike but I’ve just had to accept the idea that all white men had the same face until about 1965.  The steps of the Japanese Embassy are obviously somebody’s house with a sign on the door, but I can forgive them that, and the voices sound a little brassy and indistinct but no more so than in The Corpse Vanishes.  The main technical flaw in the film is that most of it has a constant crackling noise in the background, sounding kind of like heavy rain. This is obviously a problem with the print itself, since it continues as we switch scenes from Washington to Philadelphia, and it is very annoying and confusing.

No, almost all of Black Dragons’ many problems are in the writing.  Just based on the premise you can guess that the movie is racist – we’ve got the ‘Japanese dagger’ that doesn’t look even remotely Japanese, and Japanese characters (even some of those who are supposed to look Japanese) played by white guys in costumes and makeup, speaking in fake accents.  And as for the racial issues inherent in the plastic surgery plot point... I don’t actually feel qualified to address those.

What is slightly more surprising is that it’s also egregiously sexist.  There’s a woman living with Dr. Saunders who’s supposed to be his niece Alice, worried about all the weird things happening around her.  She turns out to be a policewoman who’s there to spy on the fake Dr. Saunders, and she gets shouted at for being entirely incompetent when she fails to solve anything (it must be admitted that she didn’t try very hard).

Everything that surrounds this character is just terrible. She’s there to be one (1) pretty girl, like the film is trying to fill some kind of quota.  Alice is introduced when the chief of police suggests that detective Dick Martin might get somewhere by questioning her.  Martin responds, “let me guess, she’s fifty and flat-footed, and wears glasses.”  Oh my god, you poor thing, you might have to talk to an unattractive woman!  She flirts with Dr. Coulombe throughout the film, even as he hangs around being ridiculously off-putting and creepy.  The revelation that she’s a spy herself explains this, I guess, since she must have been doing it in the hope of learning something from him, but it never avails her anything and is, in the end, useless, much like Alice herself.

The worst moment is when Martin, who has been trying to get her to move out of this dangerous house, walks into the room and out of nowhere says, “Alice, will you marry me?”  She stares at him like he’s crazy and asks, “what for?”, and I swear to you he actually replies, “so I can beat you up.  It’s the only way I’ll get you out of here.”  I had to pause the movie and watch it again because I couldn’t believe I’d just heard that.  I have combed the internet for a gif that expresses a sufficient level of what the fuck for this line and I cannot find one.  I need Shikha again.

Black Dragons really has no hero.  The closest thing on offer is Detective Martin, who is honestly just as useless as Alice.  I usually enjoy movies that are just a bunch of bad guys trying to thwart each other, but this is actually Black Dragons’ biggest mistake.  If this were supposed to be a suspense film, then we really ought to be focused on Martin (and possibly Alice) trying to solve the mystery.  Martin sees the Japanese agents as upstanding citizens in danger, and he is doing his best to help them but has started to suspect that the victims aren’t as innocent as they appear.

That has the potential to be an interesting story with a surprising twist at the end, but Black Dragons is not told from Martin’s point of view.  Instead, the audience is privy to at least some of the secrets from the beginning.  We already know that the murder victims are the bad guys, because we watched them brag about it to each other.  We watch Coulombe killing them (though the way he behaves, it would be obvious he’s the murderer even if we didn’t) and hear him calling them by Japanese-sounding names before they die.  By the time we get to what should be the twist, we’ve already figured most of this out (while Martin hasn’t a clue), and the only surprise is that Coulombe’s motivation is personal revenge rather than being a government assassin, as I initially assumed.

A version of the movie that actually tried to keep its secrets secret could also have something I kind of hoped we would see but never did, which is the conspirators interacting with their families.  At least some of the men who were replaced ought to have had parents, siblings, wives, or children, unless they were chosen specifically for being orphaned bachelors with no friends – and that doesn’t seem likely when we know Dr. Saunders had a niece he was close to.  Watching the people around these men feeling like there’s something different but not sure what it is would have been nice and creepy, but Black Dragons is not that subtle.

It’s all doubly unfortunate because there is some cool stuff in this movie.  There’s a bit where rather than killing two of the conspirators himself, Coulombe tricks them into killing each other.  That was nicely done.  His creative methods of hiding bodies are fun, too.  The fact that he ultimately dumps them on the steps of the Japanese embassy with an unconvincing ‘cultural artefact’ in their hands seems like it ought to mean something, like he’s trying to either alert the Americans to the threat or the Japanese to his survival, but nothing is ever really made of this and we never see what the head of the Order of Black Dragons thinks of it at all, as he is seen only in flashback.

The biggest problem with the whole concept behind Black Dragons is the same one as in Hercules Unchained: they needed to make a movie really fast in order to capitalize on something, and just didn’t have time to figure out what they were actually doing.  Hercules Unchained was a movie that tried to have two storylines at one, neither connected to each other and one of them only barely connected to its main character.  Black Dragons isn’t even sure who its main character is. Dick Martin is the nearest thing to a hero, but an argument could equally be made that this story is about Coulombe as antihero.  The result is a film that’s trying to do too much and too little at the same time.  And of course, Black Dragons’ intentions are way less honourable than Hercules Unchained’s.  Hercules Unchained just wanted to capitalize on a popular film.  Black Dragons was capitalizing on a literal act of war!

A version of Black Dragons that tried to do justice to its silly premise would still have been a bad movie.  It would still be an old, grainy print with sound issues, and it would still be deeply racist (among many, many other things, there’s a particularly detestable bit where Coulombe insults the Japanese operatives by calling them ‘apes’) and probably still have that stunningly horrible line about how you have to marry a woman before you’re allowed to beat her.  But it would have been a much more interesting and entertaining bad movie than it ultimately ended up being.

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/23 & 10/25/2018: HALLOWEEN (2007) & HALLOWEEN II (2009)

By the time Rob Zombie made the bold move of remaking John Carpenter’s name-making classic HALLOWEEN, the horror rock-star’s directorial career had already proved to be incredibly divisive. His 2003 film debut, HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES drew a cult from among diehard fans of his music, but was largely panned by critics who identified it as a ramshackle, self-indulgent disaster. The movie was little more than a Frankensteining-together of Zombie’s favorite things, but he managed to follow it up swiftly with 2005′s semi-sequel, THE DEVIL’S REJECTS. With this project, he appropriated three of the principle characters from his cartoony, ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW-like first feature, and reimagined them as the redneck antiheroes of a story that plays like a cross between THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and THE WILD BUNCH. While DEVIL’S REJECTS showed major improvements in terms of drive and focus, it still felt unsettled. It is an emotionally confused movie that has trouble deciding whether its tale is more tragic for the innocent victims of its psychopathic protagonists, or more triumphant, for the Rejects’ anti-establishment swagger and charisma. Rob Zombie displays a refined aesthetic sense, and seems sincere in his storytelling, but he didn’t have much time to let these things ferment into a more potent cinematic brew before he stepped up to bat again with his controversial remake of the beloved HALLOWEEN in 2007. 

Reviled even by the likes of John Carpenter himself, Zombie’s dour, ponderous retelling of the archetypal slasher story was baffling to critics and genre buffs alike. Loaded up with clunky psychoanalysis that flies in the face of Carpenter’s original intention--Michael Myers is PURE NO-REASON EVIL, FULL STOP--this iteration of HALLOWEEN worked for few people besides Zombie’s hardcore stans. In spite of that very large and general problem, the writer-director was back again in 2009 with a sequel to his own remake. With HALLOWEEN II, he took two major creative risks: Bringing the ubiquitous Sheri Moon Zombie back even though her character died early in the first film, and centering the narrative on Laurie Strode’s psychological recovery, or lack thereof, from her original ordeal. It is easy to see how this setup would draw more complex and ambivalent responses. Mrs. Zombie’s appearance as the ghost of Myers’ mother, whose character is plagued by a lot of Jungian nonsense, was identified fairly as ludicrous by many viewers. On the other hand, Scout Taylor-Compton’s return as Laurie Strode takes a character who was little more than a cardboard cutout in the first film, and turns her into a convincing mass of trauma who undergoes a profound transformation over the course of this sequel. As with THE DEVIL’S REJECTS, HALLOWEEN II suggests that even while Rob Zombie can be an incredibly frustrating filmmaker, he still seems to be on to something. Even in my most stuck-up moments, when his smug use of slow motion and arias of unshocking cuss words make me want to forget everything I just watched, his movies nag at me in a way that I have a hard time describing.  I’m just now starting to formulate an understanding of why.

Often, I find myself asking: Who is Rob Zombie? First and foremost, he is a professional nerd. His music, art, videos, and feature films are strung together by his scholarship in all things genre, whether he’s invoking Tobe Hooper’s snuff-like realism, or the innocent sitcom pleasures of the Munsters. Zombie is vastly erudite about horror, and really anything remotely culty. This is actually to the detriment of HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES, which is so bloated with pop culture references that it almost chokes out the movie’s dubious originality. But while he has that irritating nerdy compulsion to competitively show off what he knows, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who buys and bags comics without even cracking them open. Rob Zombie is clearly, legitimately passionate; it’s heartwarming, and enough to make you want to root for him even when you don’t totally love what he’s doing. His craftsmanship is on point, too, as a multimedia artist whose talent has been abundantly evident since the early band flyer days. It comes as no surprise that he attended Parsons School of Design, and he occasionally shows his hand as an amateur film historian with a love for golden age Hollywood. So, whatever he wants you to think about his hellbilly stage presence, he’s clearly no hick, and no basement-dwelling dweeb either. He’s an educated artist with a background in New York City’s brainy ‘80s noise rock scene. It’s because of this that I find the worshipful attitude his films take toward their sociopathic murderers to be, well...kind of annoying. Why am I supposed to think it’s so cool, as the movies’ punk rock tone suggests, that the Firefly family tortures random bystanders to death for no apparent reason? Why doesn’t Rob Zombie know how tired the whole “scary clown” thing is, and has been for a long time already, even when it’s someone as magical as Sid Haig under the greasepaint? Why do I feel like Zombie’s interest in pimps and ho’s is deeper than just exploitation pastiche, which makes it potentially worse than if it were just a shallow affectation? The thought of this Massachusetts-born college boy fantasizing obsessively about being so crude and violent and salt-of-the-earth is kind of lame. So, instead of just, you know, being a hater as usual, I looked it up--and discovered that Rob Zombie’s roots are actually in the fairway. As Wikipedia aggregates from various interviews: 

While raising their sons, Rob's parents worked in a carnival, but they chose to leave after a riot broke out and tents were set on fire. Zombie recalled the experience in an interview, stating, "Everybody's pulling out guns, and you could hear guns going off. I remember this one guy we knew, he was telling us where to go, and some guy just ran up to him and hit him in the face with a hammer – just busted his face wide open. My parents packed up real quick, and we took off."

Suddenly, it all started to make sense. Sure, the costumed popstar isn’t an undead cross between Jerry Lee Lewis and Charles Starkweather in real life, but he isn’t a complete poseur either. It isn’t immediately clear, from underneath his mountain of collectory movie references, that he is, more or less, writing what he knows. He isn’t just emulating his cultural heroes, he’s mythologizing his own childhood. 

In view of this, the key to Rob Zombie’s movies is not an awareness of horror history and semiology; it’s actually all about outlaw culture. So, back to 2007′s deeply flawed HALLOWEEN. It’s a heavily bro-y movie, in its outsidery way, that breaks up the Dr. Loomis-Michael Myers-Laurie Strode love triangle, and focuses almost entirely on building a Myers biography. The fascinatingly sullen Daeg Neergaard Faerch plays young Michael, a fatherless boy on the verge of snapping from the relentless torment coming at him from all directions: his slutty sister, school bullies who fixate on his stripper mom (Sheri Moon Zombie), and his mother’s latest violent, depraved boyfriend. Michael follows the serial killer script perfectly, graduating rapidly from torturing animals to brutalizing other kids to annihilating his sister, her boyfriend, and his mother’s beau one Halloween night when his sibling chooses sex over taking her little brother trick-or-treating. He soon finds himself installed in a mental institution where he moves on to slaughtering the staff. Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) spends years evaluating the boy, though he is ultimately stymied by Michael’s profound lack of humanity. As Michael increasingly retreats behind the folksy homemade masks he spends all day crafting, the opportunistic Loomis gives up on him, instead committing his energy to a money-making true crime/pop psychology book about Myers. Flashing forward, we find the hulking adult Michael Myers (played by the 6′8″ wrestler Tyler Mane) getting ready to bust out of the asylum and wage war on his home town of Haddonfield. There we finally meet teen dream Laurie Strode, a spunky babysitter with a gaggle of gal pals who are perfect grist for the slasher mill. In the final leg of the film, Myers carves his way through Laurie’s social circle, in an apparent attempt to reunite with his sister: Laurie herself. Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif) reveals that when Michael’s despairing mother committed suicide years ago, he took her infant daughter and had her adopted out anonymously to insulate her from her family’s tragic history. Laurie, for her part, is unaware of anything other than her need to survive, which she only barely accomplishes.

Naturally, Laurie’s story is the weakest part of a movie that is otherwise so focused on male experience. That is, the experience of needing a father, the ambivalent and ambiguous craving for maternal intimacy, the trauma of having your masculinity impugned by your (fag-obsessed) peers, and perhaps even the undermining influence of academia and capitalism on a man’s natural-born strength and worth. When the newly-freed Michael Myers storms through a truck stop to begin his pilgrimage to Haddonfield, and Rob Zombie chooses to accompany this scene with Rush’s regal outlaw anthem “Tom Sawyer”, it tells you everything you need to know about this take on HALLOWEEN. Like the rampaging Firefly family in DEVIL’S REJECTS, Michael is certainly evil, but he also represents something essential about the formation of and reinforcement of one’s individuality in the face of castrating societal norms--something the carnies among whom Rob Zombie grew up would have found very relatable.

It’s worth noting here that, while the sexuality of the women in Michael’s life plays a role in his distorted development, he is not reacting to their sexuality in and of itself. Michael Myers is not driven by the kind of covetousness that we associate with the archetypal slasher, who gives sexually frustrated male viewers a vicarious thrill by punishing sluts and teases. Michael’s problem is that his mother and sister’s sexuality contributes to his isolation. His classmates use his mother’s profession against him, and that profession keeps her from being able to tuck him in at night. Similarly, Michael doesn’t get to enjoy Halloween with his family and the other neighborhood kids, because his sister is too busy getting laid. Michael is abandoned, even while he still has a home to return to, an outsider even in his own house. 

This leads me to an important point about why the portion of the movie that is devoted to Laurie's struggle is so ineffective. It is a flaw in the film, but a virtue of the director: Normal, attractive teenagers are not Rob Zombie’s people. He doesn’t even participate in traditional slasher movie misogyny, he’s so far away from thinking about them. His movies are full of badass women who are fully possessed of their sexuality, and who wield it like a weapon against hypocrites and assholes, and this is always shone in a heroic light. Moreover, he delights in casting women of all shapes and ages, often assigning them immense personal power, as in LORDS OF SALEM, an enormously satisfying movie about society’s original persecuted outcasts: witches. Rob Zombie is deeply committed to outsiders, and his definition of them isn’t limited to banal lawbreaking--he also rejects conventional beauty and our cultural obsession with youth. His films are populated by all manner of human beings, and the farther away they are from looking like model material, the more likely it is that they’re meant to be the heroes. On that note, whatever you think of his movies, you have to acknowledge that they are almost never dehumanizing. Zombie is an accomplished actor’s director who gets a full spectrum of emotion out of his performers, and who excels at creating a feeling of camaraderie within his ensemble casts. It is this surprising sweetness, and compassion even for the victims of the villains he lionizes, that makes HALLOWEEN II so peculiarly effective.

If 2007′s HALLOWEEN was a remake on which Rob Zombie couldn’t resist draping some of his personal hangups, HALLOWEEN II is almost a completely original and separate entity from what one thinks of as the franchise started by John Carpenter. In it, Michael Myers is presumed dead but his body is missing--and indeed, his character is missing for much of the movie. We find a disturbed, scarred-up Laurie Strode living with her surviving friend Annie, and Annie’s father, Sheriff Bracket. Laurie is dealing, poorly, with a heavy dose of PTSD. Along with nightmares and flashbacks, she also has trouble just being nice to people, or accepting affection. Annie and her father’s attempts to be charitable with their adoptive family member are no match for Laurie’s increasing surliness and mistrust of the world. Once a good-natured and optimistic young woman, her appearance becomes vagrant-like (curiously similar to Rob Zombie’s own casual look), her attitude is more and more nihilistic, and she develops a drinking problem. I’ve always wanted to see a movie with a slasher-like narrative foundation, but that focuses on aftermath and recovery, and recent gimmicky efforts like FINAL GIRL and LAST GIRL STANDING did absolutely nothing for me. HALLOWEEN II--at least, the superbly-acted Strode part of it--is the movie I’ve been asking for.

The other part of the movie is also interesting--or more specifically, it’s as ballsy as it is flawed. The movie gets off on kind of a bad foot when a title card quotes an obscure psychology text book called The Subconscious Psychosis of Dreams: 

WHITE HORSE - instinct, purity, and the drive of the physical body to release powerful and emotional forces, like rage with ensuing chaos and destruction.

This is the excuse we have for the fact that the ghost of Deborah Myers arrives with a white horse to compel her son to find his sister Laurie Strode, aka Angel Myers, to reunite their family, presumably in the afterlife. Deborah Myers is kind of a spectral cross between Glenda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West, at once welcoming and sinister, drifting in and out of Michael’s consciousness in the company of a sort of ghost of his childhood (Chase White Vaneck, who is no Daeg Faerch honestly). It might be easy to dismiss this anomaly as an expression of Michael’s mental illness, and his desire to experience an idealized version of his youth in which his mother still looks after him--except that later in the movie, during the final standoff, Laurie is shown to be physically affected by these spirits. Maybe the implication is that she and Michael suffer the same psychological ailments, but for them to share such specific hallucinations without speaking is borderline supernatural in and of itself. So, while Sheri Moon Zombie does her best with her impressive force of personality and compelling physical presence, it’s hard to say what this part of the movie serves. When I first saw the film, I was completely outraged by this, not only because it made no sense to me, but because it felt like a cheap ripoff of Sarah Palmer’s similar prophetic visions of a white horse in Twin Peaks. That was all I managed to make of it. 

Today, I still don’t love it, but I have more trouble faulting Rob Zombie for trying to make HALLOWEEN his own, something more than a remake. He also does this by truly letting go of the Shape. The famous William Shatner mask was blown in half by Laurie at the end of the 2007 HALLOWEEN, and scarcely makes much of an appearance in this movie. Michael Myers is a disheveled drifter, literally haunted by his past, whose only real aim is to find a place to belong. It’s sort of funny, in retrospect: When John Carpenter made the first HALLOWEEN, he-by-way-of-Dr. Loomis declared Michael an empty shell of a person, someone who was simply born evil, as reflected by the empty-eyed mask he wears. For some reason, though, a whole legacy of directors just couldn’t resist trying to explain Myers away. The original HALLOWEEN II then says, “Well...what if Michael Myers is on a rampage because LAURIE STRODE IS HIS SISTER? What’s that you say? Why is that a reason to rampage? Ummmm...” And then HALLOWEEN 4 sees him pursuing other young female relations of his, and then in subsequent movies there’s an accursed rune, and druids, and immortality rites, and by the time you get to HALLOWEEN 6 you have this absurd stone soup of bad ideas. It’s a miracle that this franchise became such a thing. Rob Zombie makes the same fundamental mistake, but at least he tries it in the simplest possible way, asserting plainly that Nurture, not Nature, made Michael into a killer. Now, terminally lonely, he’s like a clown waking up in his trailer to find that the carnival left without him. Exiled from mainstream society, he seeks out what remains of his family, who, due to his own violent actions, has grown up more like him than he may have imagined.

I’m not saying I think this was the best thing to do with HALLOWEEN 2. Personally, what I crave in horror movies is something that is farther beyond explanation than this--something that gesturally resembles my life experience, but that plunges past the veil of mundanity into a deeper, darker world of primordial fears and urges, addressing things that unsettle me because I cannot rationalize them. For me, horror is definitionally incomprehensible, and Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN diptych is fundamentally sane. But, I think what I’ve discovered is that these movies are not proper horror movies, in spite of their relentless sadistic violence. They are outlaw fables, with more DNA in common with something like EASY RIDER, than with FRIDAY THE 13TH. It’s funny to watch myself coming to a compassionate understanding of these movies that are themselves about outsiders and rejects who are specifically deprived of understanding. My goal in all this was not so much to convince people of the value of these movies, which one might reject on any number of reasonable counts, but to explain to myself why I keep coming back to them. It isn’t to condescendingly heckle them, and it isn’t just because they’re often handsome-looking, or because they’re so emotionally authentic even when the narrative is less than compelling. It must be because, even when I’ve found him challenging, I can’t help seeing Rob Zombie as a person with vision, someone who heroically eschews common consensus on taste and sense-making--the consensus even among horror fans and his own cinematic heroes--in order to say what makes sense to him personally. Finally, he has begun to make sense to me, too.

[thecraftgremlin]

The Big Project Venom Redemption Rundown Post

For a little while now, I’ve been vaguely talking about this big weird complicated fan... thing... project that I’ve been wanting to get started. This is that; Project Venom Redemption.

(What is project Venom Redemption? This project is a series of concept art pieces and storyboards exploring how a modern Spiderman cartoon might handle the character of Venom and their shift over the years from villain to antihero. The pieces are meant to represent a series-long arc of the hypothetical cartoon centered on the characters of Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote. The narrative draws inspiration from decades of comic, cartoon, and film depictions of the character as well as fan interpretations.)

It’s a bit of an unwieldy explanation, but it doesn’t really fit into any category of fan work I’m aware of.

Obviously I’m only just getting started on the artwork and boards, but this is a basic outline of the entire story arc:

- Classic Venom origin story episode(s). Spiderman gets a new suit, suit is an alien, Spiderman gets rid of alien, meanwhile Spiderman also leads to Eddie Brock being disgraced, alien’s angry, Eddie’s angry, they team up and make a big angry monster that wants to kill Spiderman, you know the drill.

- Villain!Venom antics. We see a progression between Eddie and the symbiote from two beings grudgingly working together for a common goal to a partnership.

- Day-in-the-life type episode with Eddie and the symbiote. Here we get a glimpse at what they get up to and talk about (mostly) separate from Spiderman and their revenge quest. We get to hear some backstory for the symbiote, mostly about how they were outcast by Klyntar society. We get a better sense that Eddie and the symbiote genuinely do like each other, and some foreshadowing to their building romantic feelings for each other. This is also the episode that introduces Eddie calling the symbiote Vee, which is for all intents and purposes their name for the rest of the series. Also, this is a Valentine’s Day episode. Because it fits the themes and also chocolate.

- Several fights where Venom seems conflicted over trying to kill Spiderman. Similar to Planet of the Symbiotes, Peter picks up on this and assumes that Eddie’s morals have kicked in and he’s having second thoughts. He starts to appeal to Eddie during these fights, trying to split them up. This eventually leads to…

- The break up. Venom gets close to actually killing Spiderman in a fight, but hesitates. They start having a full on Gollum-style argument with themselves, one side saying this is wrong and they need to stop, the other saying Spiderman deserves this. Peter tries again to encourage Eddie to fight the symbiote’s desires, but it seems to be making the situation worse. At the height of the argument, an unfamiliar voice in Venom shouts “LISTEN TO ME!” and Venom de-forms. Eddie lunges to attack Peter, but he’s bound to the ground by the symbiote. Peter realizes that it was never Eddie who was trying to protect him, it was Vee. Eddie and Vee argue more, then Vee unbonds from Eddie completely and leaves. At first Eddie tries to attack Peter, blaming him as he’s wont to do, but he soon collapses in despair over the loss.

- Vee and Peter-centric episode. Peter hears rumors of a “demon” living in the church where Eddie and Vee bonded, thinks that it may be the symbiote, and he turns out to be right. When he finds them, Peter demands to know why they were protecting him and why they left Eddie, but they don’t answer. He figures out that when unbonded, they can’t actually speak, and he tentatively lets them bond with him enough to talk. Vee explains that for their whole life, their hosts have treated them as an object at best and a slave at worst. Peter was the first host who treated them with kindness, so when he rejected them for what they were they wanted revenge just like Eddie. But as they fought with him and heard how he spoke about them, it became clear to Vee that he was never aware that they were sentient with any feelings to hurt. It made less and less sense to them to be angry at Peter, but Eddie still was. They hoped that they could change Eddie’s mind and keep Peter safe from him while they worked through it, but Eddie refused to listen and Vee had to leave. They apologize to Peter for everything they did to hurt him, but Peter apologizes right back. He’s sorry that he was another person to treat them like an object, and that he blamed them when they were trying to keep him safe from Eddie. Uncertain about where to go from here, Peter leaves Vee on their own as a tentative new friend.

- Peter and Eddie team up episode(s). While out doing his Spiderman thing, Peter stumbles on Eddie, who looks like absolute hell. He’s made a full 180 from blaming his mistakes on others to despairing self-pity. Peter doesn’t really know what to do with him in this state. Meanwhile a symbiote-related threat, let’s say Carnage, emerges in the city. Peter’s immediate instinct is to go to Vee for help, but they’ve left the church and he has no real way of finding them. The only other person with symbiote experience he can turn to is Eddie. It’s a huge effort getting him put of his spiral, but Eddie grudgingly agrees to help him. This eventually leads to a confrontation where Eddie and Peter are pretty badly beaten, on the verge of losing. At the last minute, Vee comes in and protects them. The three eliminate the threat together. When everything’s said and done, Vee starts to leave, but Eddie stops them. He literally falls to his knees and begs Vee to forgive him. He tells them that he knew what they were doing was wrong, but he was still so angry that he didn’t care. He knows he’s made so many mistakes, done so many awful things, but he doesn’t want revenge anymore. He doesn’t even want the power they give him. He just wants Vee. (There may or may not be a love confession in there somewhere.) They bond again with a kiss.

- Episode that starts out with Eddie brooding about everything he’s done wrong and how he has no purpose until Vee says “Screw that, let’s be heroes, like Spiderman!” We really get to see Vee’s romanticism about ideals like true love, heroism, and justice here. Eddie on the other hand is more cynical, still in self-pity mode and unable to believe that a screw-up like him could ever do good in the world after everything he’s done. Eddie and Vee try and fail to emulate Spiderman’s “friendly neighborhood hero” style. In the end, Eddie tells Vee that they can’t be a hero like Spiderman, they have to be a hero like Venom.

- Episode where Eddie reconciles with Peter and they become Spider-Allies for real. This is where we really get to see Eddie and Vee trying to build a new life together, transitioning to a more stable, healthy existence with positive relationships with others.

Some other tidbits about the arc:

-Some themes of Eddie’s character arc are personal responsibility and later taking responsibility versus self pity, overcoming toxic masculinity, and rejecting societal “normality” for happiness.

-Some themes of Vee’s character arc are personhood, what truly makes a monster (and why Vee is NOT a monster), the value of romanticism, and finding self-worth as a victim of abuse.

-And of course the big theme of their arc together is

-Eddie’s favorite term of endearment for Vee is “Angel.” Not super relevant to the story, but it’s cute and I wanted to share.

-A few things about symbiotes in this universe:

-They don’t have names. They may use a nickname, but they don’t self-identify with a name like a lot of other species do. I’m aware that the “Vee” nickname is a fanon thing, but I thought it was useful for this context so I shamelessly borrowed it.

-They can’t really communicate with their host unless they’re at least somewhat aware of their presence. This is why Peter wasn’t aware that Vee was sentient, he thought they were just an inanimate suit and didn’t think they could speak to him.

-The Agents of the Cosmos as a group no longer exist in this universe. Klyntar is currently ruled by “parasitic” symbiotes. Vee was born after the Agents were disbanded.

So, yeah, these are my ideas so far. I’m hoping I’ll be able to flesh them out more as I work on the art elements of the project. I can’t guarantee I’ll get every idea out in a polished form, but I figure I can at least try while I’m still excited about it.

[marveldc-imagines-hub]

Ice Packs (Wade Wilson x Reader)

A/N: This is one of the many non-requested pieces I’ve had in my drafts forever, and I was recently really drawn to finally writing the piece. It ended up taking a different turn than I expected, but I’m really proud of how in 

Warnings for swearing and some sexual humor because, duh, it’s Deadpool aaaaaannnd a little bit of angst maybe. Is this considered angst? I don’t know. Also, minor Deadpool 2 spoilers (mention of Cable, Domino, and the events regarding Vanessa) but Deadpool 2 spoilers nonetheless; this piece takes place after it.

Anyway, enjoy!

~~~

Tapping on the window of your (number) floor apartment drew your attention away from the evening activity you were pursuing. Upon further inspection--turning your head a few degrees to the right in order to peer out said window--you felt yourself relax as you recognized the white-eyed, masked face looking back at you.

“Hold on a sec, Wade--I mean Deadpool.” You hummed softly as you sat your things aside. Pulling the plush blanket draped over your shoulders closer against your person, you stood and shuffled over to the window. With the suited and warm-bodied antihero leaning close to the glass, probably to keep himself from falling down the apartment building’s side, the glass panes were becoming increasingly foggy.

“Heya, [Y/N]!” Wade greeted, tumbling through the window after you opened it. Now that he was in a lighted area, you noticed darker patches of red on his bodysuit, which was scuffed and torn in places. Still, despite his looks the smell of dirt and blood that clung to him, the behind-the-mask, avocado-looking man seemed cheerful enough.

That is, until he made his way to your couch, walking stiffly and softly grunting every couple of steps.

Immediately, your brows furrowed in confusion and worry. You had been friends with Wade long enough that he had incredible healing abilities and, even if he was in pain, he rarely showed as much.

“Wade, are you okay?”

“Hey, hey, hey!” The antihero, despite his currently distressed situation, was at your side in moments, tugging you against him and covering your mouth with a gloved hand. With comically shifty eyes in every direction, he continued, “The mask isn’t off, little troublemaker! Anyone could hear and figure out my secret identity!”

You rolled your eyes and swatted the undoubtedly dirty glove off away from your face. Using the sleeve of your sweater to scrub your face clean from any possible grime, you replied, “I’m the only one here, nutjob. Don’t contaminate me with your filth, jackass.”

Wade--Deadpool--gasped softly and placed an oh so delicate hand over his chest, feigning hurt. “You’ve wounded my soul, [Y/N].” After a moment of waiting for a reaction that wouldn’t come, he dropped the act and, chuckling, agreed. “Yeah, that fight was brutal. You’re probably right not to touch me.”

“Seriously, though, Livepuddle, what’s wrong?” Watching him continue his hobbling to your couch, despite the fact that you had just told him to stop his contamination, you were filled with concern again. Perhaps his healing abilities had disappeared somehow?

“Oh, yanno--” He waved his hand dismissively as he plopped onto the couch and stressed across it. “--just a little stiff after war. I may have been impaled once or a few times, and not in the fun way. Also, it’s Livingpuddle. If you’re going to insult my shitty superhero title, at least do it right.”

“Same difference, ballsack-lookin’ dipshit.” Sitting on the nearby end table’s edge, you tried to steer the conversation back to the topic of your concern, “Normally, that’s not enough to make you groan and hobble a drunk old dude. Seriously, Wade, what’s going on? Did you lose your healing or something? Is it bad?”

The blank eyes of the Deadpool mask shifted slightly as Wade glanced over your concerned face. After a moment, he sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Dammit, [Y/N], why’d you have to do those sad eyes? You know I hate sad eyes. I don’t deserve sad e--” The man stopped in the middle of the phrase and jerked his head to seemingly stare at the wall in which the window he had climbed in was occupied. “Hey! Stop listening to 500 Miles by The Proclaimers when you’re writing something heartfelt and sad! At least listen to Cher or something!”

“Wade, now’s not the time for your weird, out of body bullshit,” you grumbled. You had been friends with him long enough to have witnessed these many of these strange, loud monologues; therefore, they weren’t very surprising but they could certainly be annoying when you were trying to have a serious conversation.

“I’ll admit, that song has a good twang to it but it’s way overplayed.”

You couldn’t tell whether that comment was in reply to you, or if he was still having an imaginary argument. In mild frustration, you reached out to grab his wrist, in hopes of also grabbing his attention once again--

Only to have him hiss slightly and yank his arm away.

The two of you shared a wide-eyed look, yours of surprise and his of… Well, you couldn’t be sure. As the realization of situation donned on you, you retracted your hand and instead rested it in your lap with it’s twin.

“Is it the cancer?” you asked softly.

Yet another soft grunt escaped mask-covered lips as Wade looked away and gently squeezed the wrist you had tried to grab.

You gave him time to choose his words and, eventually, he spoke again, “Sometimes it hurts. A lot. Especially after regenerating and healing, it gets really bad in places. The pain from a fight isn’t s bad.”

“I’m so sorry, Wade.”

“Don’t be. I don’t need the pity.”

“It’s not pity, it’s empathy.”

“I don’t deserve any of it.”

Thick silence bloomed again in the dim light of your apartment living room, and you leaned back on your hands as you tried to think up a way to help your friend. Slowly, an idea formed.

“I’ll be fine,” Wade murmured after a few more minutes of gruesome silence.

“What if we numb it out of you?” you thought aloud in response.

Even with the mask covering the antihero’s face, you could tell his eyes were glittering with a dark humor. “What? With death or alcohol and drugs? Maybe all three?” Then the humor lightened a bit, and you could vaguely see the grin and wiggling of eyebrows behind red fabric. “Or maybe another, more physical activity?”

“Shut up and undress, Wade.” You hopped up from the end table and walked towards the kitchen, hyperfocused on your fridge.

“Hah, fourth time’s the charm!” Wade jumped up after you, albeit slower than he normally would have, and marched after you. “The kitchen? How inviting, [Y/N].”

“Stop that. I’m getting ice.”

“Ice?”

You nodded. “And lots of it.”

When you gave no other response, Wade sighed and leaned against the kitchen doorway--only to grunt softly and pull away again. “Enlighten me, you teasing little minx.”

You visibly cringed at the pet name and, after grabbing all the ice packs and ice trays in your freezer to place then on the counter nearby.

“It might work, or it might not. Either way, it’s worth a shot-- Hey, that rhymed! Anyway, I know it’s unlikely that it’ll take away all of the pain, but people use ice baths to for muscles and pain and stuff pretty often so--”

“Waterloo’s good, but what about Super Trouper with that Cher appearance? Now that had tears in my eyes! When the old cast danced with the new one? Iconic!”

You huffed as you tossed the last couple ice packs into your bathtub, which was now partially filled with water, every non-food icy item from your freezer, and several bags of ice you’d accumulated after a trip to the gas station down the street. “Could you please stop talking to the voices in your head?”

Wade scoffed from his current perch. He was sitting gingerly on the edge of the closed toilet next to where you stood. He had stripped out of his suit and its dangerous accessories--you had to lend him a pair of boxers that you’d often but no longer would use for sleep shorts in the process--and now skeptically awaited the ice bath you were preparing for him. You had also helped him clean off the blood and grime from his battle earlier that night, and now you could tell by the newer looking scars and pinker patches of skin where Wade’s skin and a smaller appendage or two had regenerated.

“I’m not talking to the voices in my head,” he replied, as if that were assuring, “I’m talking to the narrator. See, Super Trouper’s a bop!”

“What the fuck, Wade.” Rolling your eyes, you stepped away from the tub to admire your work. After making sure it reached your standards, you gestured for Wade to stand--which he did unwillingly, followed by a low grunt. “Get in the tub.”

“I’d be much more willing to do so if I had a buddy to join me.” Despite the pain he was still in, the scarred man managed a toothy smirk to go along with his flirty words. “Perhaps, take a chance on me--?”

“Sir, get in the tub before I physically fight you into it.”

“Kinky,” was his only reply. Realizing he was getting nowhere in the current situation, Wade got to his feet and stepped into the tub. If he gained goosebumps, they weren’t visible on his scarred body from you vantage point; however, he gave a shiver and a quick “Woo!” in response to the cold before dipping his other foot in. Placing one hand on the shower wall and the other on the rim of the tub, he slowly lowered himself into the icy water and adjusted said ice around himself.

You took his place on the toilet lid and watched in anticipation. Of course, you weren’t expecting anything to happen very quickly; you weren’t really sure what you were expecting at all, considering the circumstances and the person you were trying to help. Still, if Wade’s pain worsened for some reason, or he started to turned purple and blue before the pain started to lessen, you wanted to make sure that he knew he didn’t have to stay in the ice bath if it was a useless endeavor.

However, as you watched, Wade began to relax in his icy spa. He was a little too tall to fit in the small apartment tub, so his feet rested on the edge and he sunk sunk down until only the tops of his shoulder, neck, and head were above the water. He rested his head next to the faucet, closing his eyes and sighing, and for a moment he seemed more serene then you’ve ever seen him.

He was in pain frequently, you knew, due to the cancer he still endured and the constant regenerating that he dealt with as a bodily defense against it. He was in pain more than frequently, actually, but some days it was worse than others and he hated showing the pain either way.

You were pulled from your heavy thoughts when Wade shifted, turning his head and opening his eyes once more. Seemingly calmer and a bit hesitant now, he shifted and raised one arm out of the tub. While reaching the wet hand out to you, he muttered, “Thanks for worrying about me.”

You responded by gripping his hand and squeezed. “I know it’s difficult to bounce back after losing someone. I also know that while people like Cable and Domino care but they’re smart enough to not get in your way. I, on the other hand, am dense and will continue to bother and irritate you out of affection.”

Wade Wilson didn’t talk. However, you could see the different kind of pain that bloomed in his gaze--before he closed his eyes and turned his head away again. You would have thought he was upset with you if he hadn’t squeezed your hand.

It was quiet after that. You continued to tightly hold Wade’s hand while he rested, keeping a close eye on his condition. It could have easily been some hours, and eventually, he began to doze off, his head slowly tilting back in your direction and leaning against the rim of the bathtub. You took that moment to rest your head on his--if it roused him, he didn’t show it--and mentally wished him well, as if the connection would take your thoughts and slam it into his own head to the point that the wish would come true. Then, you gently shook him awake to move him to a more comfortable spot as thoughts of napping with frostbite creeped into your mind.

Dramatic? Perhaps, but still a risk you weren’t a fan of taking.

[plotbunnyshipper]

Book Recommendations

Instead of writing I’ve been spending my time re-reading so many of my favorites in my free snippets of time. I figure I’ll list a few in case anyone might feel the need for picking up a new book that may become one of their favorites.

Fantasy is always a favorite of mine in its many sub-genres, also first person storytelling is not a requirement but helps for immersion in the story when done well. And listing these out and going over them again it just reinforces my love of snark and sarcasm and antiheros.

I also have zero hesitation about starting a series a few books in, or in the middle and then going through everything else. (Did this with Black Jewels Series, Chronicles of the Shadow War, The Hollows). Tend to have a lot of YA in here because I grabbed lots of random when I was younger, and nowadays don’t get to read as much brand new other than new authors on Ao3.

List here (not in any sort of order), details below the cut. When the whole/most of series is fantastic I try to list the series rather than the individual book. If you see some in here that you also love and want to suggest a few not listed back at me, please feel free. Even if these aren’t ones you know or love, feel free to recommend, here or in an ask, even an anon one. I love reading, I’m not grabbing as much random published as I used to but published or online, it’s all good. I still remember the first fanfic author that I adored. To this day I’ll still go back and reread the Sailor Moon fic she wrote because it was just that good, so really. This list is by no means complete, they’re just the ones I have on my Kindle and closest bookshelf.

Chronicles of the Shadow War by Chris Claremont and George Lucas

Uprooted by Naomi Novik 

Queen’s Thief Series by Megan Whalen Turner

Various throughout the designations below by Neil Gaiman

Neverveil series by Amy McNulty  

The Sleeping Prince Series by Melinda Salisbury

The Sin Eater’s Daughter by Melinda Salisbury

Red Queen series by Victoria Aveyard

Fairy Keeper by Amy Bearce

The Enchanted Forest series by Patricia C Wrede

The Raven Ring by Patricia C. Wrede

Anne McCaffery - Harper Hall/Pern series, Tower and Hive series, Acorna series

The Black Jewels Series by Anne Bishop

Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas

Three Dark Crowns series by Kendare Blake

Necromancer/Firebug Series by Lish McBride

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

The Hollows by Kim Harrison

Enchantment by Orson Scott Card

The Others Series by Anne Bishop

Georgina Kincaid series by Richelle Mead

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips

Wicked Saga by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Antigoddess series by Kendare Blake

Night Huntress by Jeaniene Frost 

Meredith Gentry series by Laurell K. Hamilton

Hunter: Thieves series by Lexi Blake

Dissonance series by Erica O’Rourke 

The Host by Stephenie Meyer

The Last Girl by Joe Hart

Secondborn series by Amy A. Bartol

Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton

Beastkeeper by Cat Hellisen

A Madness So Discrete by Mindy McGinnis

VIP series by Kristen Callihan

Lonely Kings series by Ava Lore

High Fantasy

Chronicles of the Shadow War by Chris Claremont and George Lucas (Shadow Moon, Shadow Dawn, Shadow Star). Picked it up what ended up being the second book randomly at the library, not reading anything about it and was like that name, Elora sounds really familiar, and then hmmm this Thorn Drumheller seems an awful lot like Willow from the movie. Had loved the movie and was very happy to figure out that this was a ~15 years later sequel. 

Uprooted by Naomi Novik - Pulled me in at the start and was a wonderful read. First Person, which I love, pulled in familiar myth and fairytale elements as well as great original elements. Same world but different characters sequel is Spinning Silver - also very good but not as good as the first. If you need additional reasons to read the author is one of the ones helping with Ao3 - “Her own adventures include pillaging degrees in English literature and computer science from various ivory towers, designing computer games, and helping to build the Archive of Our Own for fanfiction and other fanworks. Novik is a co-founder of the Organization for Transformative Works.“

“Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.”

Queen’s Thief Series by Megan Whalen Turner - Good god do I love an antihero. And a first person thief? It takes me back to my love of the Raven Ring. The worldbuilding, the (as much as I find the term obnoxious due to overuse in almost any story that incorporates BDSM to describe someone baiting or attempting to top from the bottom) sass, the antagonizing by the main character. It is a YA so when things happen that are ‘reveals’ later on you’ll notice them, they’re not “OMG I’m so surprised!” but it’s very, very well done. First book - Aces, second book also fantastic, third....hmmmmm would like the POV’s from the first and second books rather than this new one, but has a great scene I’ll quote below.

The Thief (Book 1)

“Are you really named after the god of thieves?” “I am.”

“Well, how could they tell what you were going to be when you were just a baby?”

“How did they know what you were going to be when you were a baby?”

“My father was a duke.”

“So my mother was a thief.”

“So you would have to grow up to be one, too?”

“Most of the people in my family thought so. My father wanted me to be a soldier, but he’s been disappointed.”

Behind us I heard Pol grunt. He no doubt thought my father’s disappointment was justified.

“Your father? He did?”

Sophos sounded so surprised that I looked over at him and asked, “Why shouldn’t he?”

“Oh, well, I mean…” Sophos turned red, and I wondered about the circulation of his blood; maybe his body kept an extra supply of it in his head, ready for blushing.

“What surprises you?” I asked. “That my father was a soldier? Or that I knew him? Did you think that I was illegitimate?”

Sophos opened and closed his mouth without saying anything.

I told him that no, I wasn’t illegitimate. “I even have brothers and sisters,” I told him, “with the same father.” Poor Sophos looked as if he wanted the ground to swallow him.

The King of Attolia (Book 3) condensing down a tiny bit with the [...]’s

The king couldn’t lie on a deathbed with a sense of dignity. The attendants were all on the verge of breaking into laughter, and the king, far from minding, was enjoying every minute of it.

The queen’s lips thinned.

“I am very sorry,” the physician said helplessly.

“Stop apologizing and hurry.”

“Your Majesty, I…” Petrus looked as if he was about to cry.

Ornon spoke firmly from behind the doctor. “Your Majesty is upsetting his physician.” […] The doctor bent over the wound again. The king made a face, but was silent. The doctor looked up momentarily in astonishment but returned to his work, eager to finish before this reprieve passed.

The king lay still and made no sound. As Petrus pulled his first stitches tight, the king took a deeper breath and didn’t let it go. After a long count of ten, he softly released the breath and took another.

There were three people between Costis and the queen. Costis knocked all three of them aside like pegs in a counting game and dropped to his knees in time to catch the queen as she collapsed into his outspread arms.

He’d seen her, white as wax, from the corner of his eye and, seeing her waver, had known she was fainting, but too late to do anything but catch her.

“The queen!” someone shouted in alarm, and the king erupted like a wild animal caught in a snare. […] “My stitches, my stitches!” the physician yelled.

“Your Majesty, Your Majesty!”

“Damn your stitches!” he snarled. “Let me up.” […] He splayed his hand across the king’s face and slammed his head back hard against the pillow. Keeping his hand planted on the king’s face, he leaned over and roared into his ear, “The queen is fine!”

Eugenides was still. The men around the bed froze as well.

“Irene?” the king called.

“She fainted. That’s all,” Ornon said more quietly. “There is a great deal of blood. She is a woman and she was upset. It is not a surprising reaction.” […] On the bed, Eugenides stirred restlessly. “Upset at the sight of blood?” he said. “Not my wife, Ornon.”

“Your blood,” the ambassador pointed out.

Eugenides glanced at the hook on his arm and conceded the point. “Yes,” he said. […] “Get on with it,” said the king. He hardly seemed to notice when the stitching began. He looked toward the doorway, toward the queen, but spoke to the Eddisian Ambassador. “I think, in future, Ornon, I will stick to upsetting my physician.”

Stardust by Neil Gaiman - Lost too many copies, including my first edition of this by lending it out and never getting it back. I’m having trouble trying to say why you need to give these Neil Gaiman books a chance but goodness, all of them, all of them! I’ve never read a bad one. He’s got a beautiful and enticing way of writing - Favorites in order American Gods, Good Omens, Smoke and Mirrors (short stories), Stardust, Ocean at the End of the Lane, Coraline, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish.

American Gods

“You working for our man then?” asked the bearded man. He was not sober, although he was not yet drunk.

“It looks that way,” said Shadow. “What do you do?”

The bearded man lit his cigarette. “I’m a leprechaun,” he said, with a grin.

Shadow did not smile. “Really?” he said. “Shouldn’t you be drinking Guinness?”

“Stereotypes. You have to learn to think outside the box,” said the bearded man. “There’s a lot more to Ireland than Guinness.”

“You don’t have an Irish accent.”

“I’ve been over here too fucken long.”

“So you are originally from Ireland?”

“I told you. I’m a leprechaun. We don’t come from fucken Moscow.”

Neverveil series by Amy McNulty - First person, great worldbuilding. Also representation of POC for the majority of characters if you’re looking for a book with that particular feature. Cyclical, fallible main characters, overall a fast and enjoyable read.

The Sleeping Prince Series by Melinda Salisbury

The Sin Eater’s Daughter by Melinda Salisbury

Red Queen series by Victoria Aveyard - YA

Fairy Keeper by Amy Bearce - Loved the first of this series, not as much the following books, first one, Fairy Keeper, is definately worth the read. YA

The Enchanted Forest series by Patricia C Wrede Classic, some of my first favorites.It is a youth series but I will never ever stop loving it. Also the Magic & Malice books.

The Raven Ring by Patricia C. Wrede - the first time I remember falling in love with the antihero as a young reader. It is fantastic.

Anne McCaffery - Read Dragon Drums in 5th grade by random pickup at the library and was hooked. From there went through the other Harper Hall/Pern series, then the Tower and Hive series, then the Acorna series. A great mix of both fantasy and sci fi, and fantasy with sci fi history.

Dark Fantasy

The Black Jewels Series by Anne Bishop - it was difficult to get into this at first, for me, I owned the series for a couple years could not get into it no matter how many times I read the first chapter. Then I picked up and read one of the “short stories” more of a novella, “The Prince of Ebon Rih,” in Dreams Made Flesh. One note - ignore the names of the three main male characters. Just... I love *LOVE* this series but ‘Daemon,” “Lucivar,” and “Saetan SaDiablo” are...just ignore that and you’re good. Strong women and men, family and friends, who have a fierce love for each other, tremendous amount of snark that I adore, if only there were more books on Surreal, and Saetan, and Tersa, and Rainer, and Chaosti, and the First Circle of the Dark Court, and anyone, I would read any additional stories in this series. There are so very many passages I’d use to try and draw interest so I’ll just grab a few

Karla let out a screech that raised the hairs on Saetan's neck.

"You've got tits!" Karla pulled open the blue jacket, revealing a silver, just as skimpy top. "So do I, if you call these lovely little bee stings tits." Smiling the wickedest smile Saetan had ever seen, she turned back to him. "What do you think?"

He didn't stop to think. "Are you asking if I think they're lovely or if I think they're bee strings?"

Karla closed the jacket, crossed her arms, and narrowed those ice-blue eyes. "Sassy, isn't he?"

"Well, he is a Warlord Prince," Jaenelle replied.

Ice-blue eyes met sapphire eyes. Both girls smiled.

Karla shrugged. "Oh, all right. I'll be a polite guest." She stepped up to Saetan, and that wicked smile bloomed. "Kiss kiss."

He refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing him wince.

Yet another

"Are you lost?" 

Daemon glanced over to where Lucivar leaned against a doorway. "I'm not lost," he snapped. Then he stopped pacing and sighed. "But I am very confused." 

"Of course you are. You're male." Grinning at Daemon's snarl, Lucivar stepped into the courtyard. "So if one of the darlings in the coven offers to explain things to you, don't take her up on it. She'll sincerely be trying to help, but by the time she's done 'unconfusing' you, you'll be banging your head against a wall and whimpering."

"Why?" 

"Because for every five rules you'd learned in Terreille about a male's proper behavior in a court, the Kaeleer Blood know only one of them—and they interpret it very differently." 

Daemon shrugged "Obedience is obedience." 

"No, it's not. For Blood males, the First Law is to honor, cherish, and protect. The second is to serve. The third is to obey." 

"And if obedience interferes with the first two laws?" 

"Toss it out the window." 

Daemon blinked. "You actually get away with that?" 

Lucivar scratched the back of his head and looked thoughtful. "It's not so much a question of getting away with it. For Warlord Princes, it's almost a requirement of court service. However, if you ignore an order from the Steward or the Master of the Guard, you'd better be sure you can justify your action and be willing to accept the consequences if they won't accept it, which is rare. I got into more trouble with the High Lord as my father than as the Steward."

And another

In lieu of a knock, she walloped the study door once and then stomped up to the blackwood desk where Saetan sat watching her, a glass of brandy raised halfway to his lips. 

Daemon and Lucivar, comfortably slouched in two chairs in front of the desk, just stared at her. 

Now that she was there, she wasn't quite as willing to address the High Lord directly, so she half turned toward Daemon and Lucivar and tossed out the question, "Don't I have the right to decide if I want a male in my bed?" 

The air behind the desk instantly chilled, but Lucivar said blandly, "Graysfang?" and the air returned to normal. 

The smirk in Lucivar's voice had her turning toward him fully. "I don't know about you, but I'm not used to sleeping with a wolf." 

"What's wrong with Graysfang staying with you?" Daemon asked. 

The soothing tone he was putting into his voice only infuriated her. "He farts," she snapped, then waved her hand dismissively. "Well, so do the rest of you." 

Someone made a choking sound. She thought it was Daemon. 

"Do you resent his being there because he's a wolf or because he's interfering with another kind of male warming your bed?" Lucivar asked. 

Maybe it hadn't been meant as a slur that she used to be a whore, but she took it as such because then she could vent her temper on him. "Well, sugar, from where I'm standing, there's not much to choose between you. He takes up more than his share of the bed, he snores, and he gives slobbery kisses. But if I had to choose, I'd pick him. At least he can lick his own balls!" 

A glass hit the desk with an ominous thunk.

Surreal closed her eyes and bit her lip. 

Shit. She'd been so focused on being mad at Lucivar, she'd forgotten about the High Lord.

Different book in the series, Queen of the Darkness

“I could have handled that bastard.”

Falonar looked insulted. “It’s a male’s right to defend and protect.”

Surreal bared her teeth. “I’ve heard that song before, and-”

“Then you should heed that song, Lady - and respect it.”

“Why? Because poor little me isn’t capable of handling myself in a fight?” she said with venom-laced sweetness.

“Because you’re deadlier,” he snarled. He paced a few steps away from her, swore, paced back. “That’s why males defend, Lady Surreal. Because you females are deadlier when you’re roused-and you’re merciless when you’re riding the killing edge. At least if I go down first in a fight, I don’t have to deal with you afterward.

”Not sure if she’d just been complimented or insulted, Surreal said nothing.

Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas - First person, great worldbuilding, very very similar elements to Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels series in everything from the mannerisms, to the Illyrians vs Eryins, to the need of draining power descriptions and customs (I was 100% convinced it was Anne Bishop venturing into first person and ghostwriting an alternate version of the Black Jewels world for a long time). Didn’t care for the romantic lead in the first book, thankfully the hinting of book 1 transitioned into book 2 and <3 oh I love it. Supposedly a sort of inspired by classic fairy tales (like beauty and the beast) but it’s not like you’re sitting there reading a progression of that story like other books do. The Throne of Glass series is also very good, more original but again very Anne Bishop in it’s feel/wording (the purred words, midnight voices, the level of protectiveness bowels turned to water when terrified) 

Really enjoy the series but since I posted so much of Anne Bishop I figure I’ll just do a quasi related suggestion of threesomes that I found fun and funny. Court of Wings and Ruin... for now editing to avoid spoilers

“You never know until you try,” Helion purred.

The three of them in bed...with him? I must have been blinking like a fool because [<3] said to me, Helion favors both males and females. Usually together in his bed. And has been hounding that trio for centuries.

I considered--Helion’s beauty and the others...Why the hell haven’t they said yes?

[<3] barked a laugh that had all of them looking at him with raised brows.

[<3] just came up behind me and slid his arms around my waist, pressing a kiss to my neck. Would you like someone to join us in bed, Feyre [...]?

My skin stretched tight over my bones at the tone, the suggestion. You’re incorrigible.

I’d think you’d like two males worshipping you.

My toes curled.

Mor cleared her throat. “Whatever you’re saying mind to mind, either share it or go to another room so we don’t have to sit here, stewing in your scents.” 

I stuck out my tongue. [<3] laughed again, kissing my neck once more before saying, “Apologies for offending your delicate sensibilities, cousin.”

A Court of Frost and Starlight

If both of us went in there, I knew my sister would see it as an attack.

So it would be me. Alone

[<3] kissed my brow. “If someone propositions you, tell them we’ll both be free in an hour.”

“Och.” I waved him off, banking my powers to a near-whisper within me.

He blew me a kiss.

I waved that away, too, and slipped through the tavern door.

Three Dark Crowns series by Kendare Blake -

Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Romance

Necromancer/Firebug Series by Lish McBride - first person, hilarious, and fantastic

Hold Me Closer, Necromancer

Oh, good, he was crazy and scary. What an awesome combination. I let  go of his wrists with one hand and leverages myself back enough so I could pull my T-shirt out of his grip. I dropped to the floor, knowing full well that he let me do it.

Freaks & Other Family

I tried to walk on my own to Mrs. W’s car, but Ramon got tired of watching me wobble like a baby deer and scooped me up and carried me.

I grinned at him. “Take me to bed or lose me forever.”

“I can’t believe you’re Top Gun-ing me right now. We almost died.”

“I’m going to blame the head injury,” I said, patting his chest. “You’re supposed to say, ‘show me the way home, honey.’“

“I will do no such thing, and you can’t blame it on the head injury, because you say those kinds of things to me all the time.”

“This is true. Let’s go on a crime spree then, and we’ll blame that on the head injury.”

“You can’t even walk. We need to get you home so you can rest,” Ramon said firmly.

“Yeah, so we can then explain to James how we both managed to completely rune the top-of-the-line tuxedo rentals we’re wearing.” Top-of-the-line to me. James had sneered openly at them before throwing up his hands in despair, which wouldn’t stop him from berating us. If anything, I think he’d find it more insulting somehow, and the fact that we’d ruined only semi-decent tuxes instead of really nice tuxes would just be salt in the wound.

Ramon paused as we both thought that over. Mrs. W pulled ahead of us, fishing her keys out of her clutch.

“Shit,” Ramon said. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

We both stared out into the night, silent as we contemplated our impending dooms.

“Head injury,” we both said at the same time.

“We can definitely blame the suits on that.”

“And if he doesn’t buy it,” Ramon added, “then you can just pass out again.”

“Deal.”

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

American Gods by Neil Gaiman as someone who was always a fan of Gaiman, and have been pleased with how the miniseries is doing with it’s adaptation because this has been a love since I got my my hands on it. It doesn’t hurt that Mad Sweeny’s chaotic love of fighting is personified so well by OitNB’s Pornstashe. The only thing I was dissapointed in was due to my prior knowledge of Norse Mythology and the whole “You can call me Wednesday” thing was shouting out what appeared to try and be a “reveal” towards the end. Fantastic incorporation of mythology and characterization. Just...love. Ocean at the End of the Lane is also

The Hollows by Kim Harrison - Again, couldn’t start at the start but jumping in mid series and I was in love. First Person, amazing worldbuilding

Enchantment by Orson Scott Card - very well done. Hate the male vocal reader he uses for his audio books (something about his voice grates on my nerves) but I’d suffer through to listen to this. A great twisting of various fairy tale elements into this, clever things that I wouldn’t have considered at the time of reading this. Very well done. Very. 

The Others Series by Anne Bishop - Not as loved as the Black Jewels but it has some characters I’m invested in now so I’m reading any and all of the series.

Georgina Kincaid series by Richelle Mead - Main character is a succubus by contract, having to corrupt souls to fulfill her contract with Hell and none too pleased about it. I was agonizing waiting for these to be released.

Succubus Blues (Book 1)

Statistics show that most mortals sell their souls for five reasons: sex, money, power, revenge, and love. In that order. 

I suppose I should have been reassured, then, that I was out here assisting with numero uno, but the whole situation just made me feel.. . well, sleazy. And coming from me, that was something. 

Maybe I just can't empathize anymore, I mused. It's been too long. When I was a virgin, people still believed swans could impregnate girls. 

Nearby, Hugh waited patiently for me to overcome my reticence. He stuffed his hands into well-pressed khakis, leaning his large frame against his Lexus. "I don't see what the big deal is. You do this all the time.” 

That wasn't exactly true, but we both knew what he meant. Ignoring him, I instead made a great show of studying my surroundings, not that that improved my mood. The suburbs always dragged me down. Identical houses. Perfect lawns. Far too many SUVs. Somewhere in the night, a dog refused to stop yapping. 

"I don't do this," I said finally. "Even I have standards.” 

Hugh snorted, expressing his opinion of my standards. 

"Okay, if it makes you feel better, don't think of this in terms of damnation. Think of it as a charity case.”

Wicked Saga by Jennifer L. Armentrout - First person, apparently I have a thing for snarky, territorial, hand sized coworkers in UF books.

Wicked

“Tink.” I sighed.

“Whatever. I think you should just get some action from him and kick his ass to the curb.”

My mouth dropped open. “Okay. That is the most bizarre string of advice I have ever heard. You don’t like him, but you think I should have sex with him and then get rid of him? And obviously I can’t because he’s a member of the Order.” That was the one thing I didn’t tell Tink --what Ren truly was. “You make no sense.”

“I make perfect sense. In my world, you don’t even have to like another to have sex with them. It’s all about the natural urges to get it on and...”

As Tink ranted on about the peculiars of his species’ particular mating preferences, I picked up the sugar canister and dumped a small pile of sugar on the counter.

“You just need to let those animalistic--holy brownie balls!” Tink dropped to his knees in front of the pile of sugar. He started moving the tiny granules to another pile, counting softly. “One, two, three, four, five, six...” Pausing, he glanced up with a frown. “Where did you learn that?”

I shrugged as I bit down on my lower lip. “Saw it on an episode of Supernatural.”

and

“Okay.” I placed the stake on the bistro table then reached up, tucking my hair back. “I can explain, Ren, but I need you to let him go.”

“You heard the woman,” Tink said. “Let me go.”

Ren’s gaze flew from the brownie to me. “You want me to let this thing go?”

“He’s my thing--I mean, he’s not a ‘thing.’ He’s a brownie, and he’s okay. He’s not going to hurt anything. I swear.” Walking over to where Ren stood, I ignored the way Tink Glared at us. “Please.”

“He’s a brownie, Ivy. What in the hell is he doing here?” He turned his gaze back to Tink, and the brownie paled since the edge of the knife was still near his throat. “And what do you mean he’s yours? I come into the kitchen and he’s sitting in a bowl of Frosted Flakes like a walking, talking rat.”

“I am not a rat, sir! I am a brownie and damn proud of it, you overgrown--”

“Tink,” I warned, then wrapped my hand around Ren’s wrist. His emerald gaze flicked to mine. My heart was slamming against my ribs. As upset with Tink as I was, if something happened to him...

“His name is Tink?”

I nodded, “Well, that’s what I call him.”

“Am I high? I’ve got to be high.” He glanced back down at Tink and scowled. “Is he wearing doll pants?”

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips - Another random library snag. Greek gods in a modern setting, full of apathy from a millennia of existence

Antigoddess series by Kendare Blake

Night Huntress by Jeaniene Frost - first person, great world building, fallible characters, lots of character investment over the series, sexy.

Meredith Gentry series by Laurell K. Hamilton - surprised myself by pretty consistently thinking - ‘While I like the varied and inventive sex, I really like the characters so I wish there was less sex and more story” when usually I don’t have complaints about the amount of sex in any given story, I’m cool with PWP works but I was hoping for some magic fix for Andais, like making her mortal and giving her another child then cutting out a good amount of the crazy due to those actions. Didn’t happen. Merry and her harem of men get it on for significant portions of especially the second onwards books, and again I can appreciate lots of magical explicit sexytimes I also wanted more progress on the characters. Also pet peeve of disliking men with long hair was constantly reinforced with a majority of the fae having waist/ankle length hair. The movie that played in my mind gave them haircuts really fast.

Hunter: Thieves series by Lexi Blake

Dissonance series by Erica O’Rourke - always enjoy when there is a new idea/twist and the reality bending in this was quite nice. YA, but I could not put it down.

Sci Fi & Dystopian

The Host by Stephenie Meyer - Was drawn to this one by the cover, it’s a gorgeous eye with a pupil ringed in (according to the story silver, but the cover makes it look icy) brightness. I walked past it a hundred times going “Ohh Pretty!” before finally springing for the audio book from the library - was exceptionally well read. Did not pay attention to the author or read any info about it and enjoyed it very much. Had I realized it was by the lady who wrote Twilight I wouldn’t have read it, I’m glad I didn’t realize and did listen to it. Very well done dichotomy of the main character(s) as two distinct personalities and thought processes. YA verging on New Adult about the aftermath of a relatively peaceful alien invasion. According to the things I’ve heard/memes I’ve seen of Twilight this author has a thing for a team whoever and team whoever2 triangles.

The Last Girl by Joe Hart

Secondborn series by Amy A. Bartol

General Fantasy or More YA

Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton - fantasy western

Beastkeeper by Cat Hellisen

A Madness So Discrete by Mindy McGinnis - 

New Adult

VIP series by Kristen Callihan - fun, fast read, first person, Bands

Lonely Kings series by Ava Lore - again, fun, fast reads, first person, bands

[elementalwriter67]

Blind to the World of Color Part Two

Pairings: Jason Todd x Reader

Word Count: 4773

A/N: welcome to part two of Blind to the World of Color, and yes there will be a third part that will probably come out next week, but I would just like to thank my friend @clea-nightingale who helped me in writing this part and convinced me to make it three parts.

Summary: It’s been years since Jason’s death and it’s safe to say that (Y/N) has changed and not in a good way. She’s turned her back on being a hero and even being an antihero and she’s become a full-blown villain going by the name Queen of Gotham.   

Selena paced the floor of the Batcave her hands shaking and a fire in her eyes as she waited for Bruce. She was going to tear him the biggest of new ones. She hadn’t had any problems with (Y/N) leaving her to work with Bruce, she understood the need to be with your soulmate and besides she liked Jason but now she was regretting allowing (Y/N) come here. An hour earlier (Y/N) had shown up at her apartment crying, sobbing, and barely standing and babbling in between hiccups. It had taken her half an hour to calm her down enough for her to tell her why she was crying and the news had both hurt her and pissed her off. So she’d stayed with (Y/N) until the poor girl had finally cried herself into a fitful sleep and once she was sure that (Y/N) wouldn’t be waking up anytime soon she hurried over here to tear Bruce a new one. 

“Selina? What are you doing here?” Bruce asked as he came down the stairs that hung above the computer.

“How dare you!? Do you have any idea what you’ve gone?!” Selina shouted at him and Bruce cringed as he came to stand at a safe distance away from her.

“She told you?” He asked and Selina scuffed.

“Of course she told me! Why wouldn’t she tell me?! You were supposed to protect them, Bruce! You promised her that you would bring him back alive! Do you have any idea what breaking that promise did to her?!” Selina shouted and he glared at her.

“How do you think I feel Selina?! I wasn’t fast enough to save Jason! I lost him too! She’s not the only one that lost him!” Bruce shouted back and Selina stalked up to him and got right in his face.

“Yeah, but you didn’t lose your soulmate today did you?” She asked her voice a scary sort of calm as she glared up at him and he didn’t say anything at first. “Did you?!” Selina screamed when he didn’t respond and Bruce looked down at his feet in shame.

“No, I didn’t.” He responded.

“Exactly you didn’t. She’s broken, Bruce. More broken than I’ve ever seen anyone in my entire life. It took me half an hour to calm her down just enough to hear what she was trying to say! She’s broken and hurt and I don’t know if she’ll come out of this whole Bruce. Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Any?” She pressed and Bruce looked back up at her and there was sorrow and hurt in his eyes, and for a brief minute, Selina felt bad for yelling at him because after all, he’d lost a son today. But then she remembered the broken girl who was currently curled up on her back in her apartment and what little remorse she had vanished.

“Where is she, Selina? Please, I need to talk to her.” He pleaded and Selina shook her head as she stepped back away from him a stern glare in her eyes.

“No. No! I’m not going to tell you where she is Bruce! You stay away from her! If I see you near her or if you try to get near her I can not promise that I won’t try to kill you. She doesn’t need or want to see you right now or ever again probably. She’s broken Bruce, and I honestly don’t know if she’ll make it out of this whole but I know for a fact that you showing up will not help so you stay away from her. And while you’re at it stay away from me because I got through this without slapping you next time I will.” Selina stated as she turned away from him and stalked towards her bike and then speeding away from the cave and back to her apartment. Bruche was tempted to follow after her, try and convince her to let him see (Y/N) or at the very least find out where (Y/N) was but he knew Selina and he knew that if he tried to follow her she’d know and miss lead him.

Sighing he walked over to the chair in front of the computer and sat down in the chair rubbing his forehead. He looked up after several minutes to see Alfred standing on the stairs holding a tray of tea and looking at him.

“Do not worry Master Bruce everything will be alright in the end,” Alfred said as he walked forward and set the tray down on the little table beside the computer and Bruce sighed softly, he could see the sadness in Alfred’s eyes though he hid it on his features well.

“I hope so Alfred,” Bruce muttered as he took the teacup that Alfred offered him.

~Years Later~

“(Y/N) are you almost ready in there?” Selina called through the bathroom door and (Y/N) sighed in a half-tired/ half annoyed way as she put the finishing touches on her makeup and checked to make sure that her wig was covering all of her (h/c) hair.

“Yes, Selina I’m done.” (Y/N) called back as she turned around to face Selina when she opened the bathroom door and a large smile spread across Selina’s face as she stepped into the bathroom and grabbed (Y/N)’s hands.

“You look amazing (Y/N), like the true Queen of Gotham,” Selina stated looking over and (Y/N) squeezed Selina’s hands as a small smile spread across her face before she pulled her hands out of Selina’s.

“Thank you Selina, and thank you again for letting me use your bathroom to get ready my place is…..inadequate when it comes to bathroom amenities.” (Y/N) stated smoothing her hands down her black dress with a slit in the skirt that showed off her left leg up to just above the halfway point of her thigh. Selina chuckled at her softly as she walked out of the bathroom to lean against the back of her couch and (Y/N) followed her out of the bathroom.

“That’s the price of being a villain sweetheart, bad hideouts,” Selina said and (Y/N) rolled her eyes. All throughout her life after Jason died not once had Selina outright argued with her about the path that she had chosen and stayed with her helping her out every now and again whenever (Y/N) found herself needing it. But Selina hadn’t been exactly subtle with the little digs she made about (Y/N) being a villain now but (Y/N) let them all slide because she owed a lot to Selina and she liked her. Besides she knew that Selina was just worried about her and the little jabs that she made about her living situations and how being a villain wasn’t all that it was cut out to be was just her way of showing that she was worried.

“Whatever you say, Selina, anyways I really have to go I don’t want to be late for the annual Gotham Charity ball.” (Y/N) said as she grabbed her little clutch purse off the stand near the bathroom, opening it she double checked that she had everything she would need for this evening before looking back up at Selina a confident smile on her face.

“And what exactly will you be doing at this Charity event?” Selina asked as she followed her to the door and (Y/N) giggled, turning back to her with an evil smile on her face.

“Now, Selina dear, here would the fun be if I told you what I was going to do?” (Y/N) countered as she walked out of Selina’s apartment before she could say anything about what she planned on doing.

~At the charity ball~

(Y/N) forced a polite smile on to her face as she made her way into the large crowd searching the sea of people for the person she was here to threaten. Her smile grew into a satisfied one when she finally spotted him and she made her way through the crowd and up to him.

“Mr. Smith correct?” She asked when she came to stand in front of him and he looked at her in mild surprise.

“Yes, I’m sorry do I know you?” He asked and (Y/N) smiled her eyes traveling up and down his body taking note of the tailored suit he was wearing. ‘Cleans up nice for a Black Mask thug.’ (Y/N) thought to herself.

“Oh no, I’m new to Gotham but I’ve already heard a lot about you and I was simply wondering if you’d like to dance?” She asked in a flirtatious tone trying to make it seem like she was enjoying being here and talking to him. She hid a disgusted shiver that ran down her spine when he looked her overtaking in her exposed left leg and the plunging sweetheart neckline of her dress, and she was extremely glad that before she came over here she’d slipped her hidden knife up the sleeve of her arm. He tried anything she fully planned on slicing his throat.

“Who wouldn’t want to dance with a lovely lady like yourself?” He asked in what she assumed was his best attempt at a flirtatious tone and she giggled in response as she ducked her head making it seem like she was flattered and only slightly embarrassed at the compliment when in reality she was rolling her eyes.

“You’re quite the handsome man yourself.” (Y/N) flirted back as she took the hand and followed him out onto the dance floor. (Y/N) rested her hand on his shoulder as he took her hand and placed his other one a little too low on her hip and she took a deep breath through her nose before releasing it slowly and smiling at him as they began to dance. As stealthily as possible she slid her knife into her hand, making sure that it was still hidden from any of the other partygoers, she moved her hand closer to his neck.

“I don’t believe I ever got your name miss.” Mr. Smith continued to flirt and (Y/N) smiled at him as she batted her eyelashes.

“Oh my name’s not important, what is important though is” -(Y/N) leaned forward so that she could whisper in his ear, her voice losing that fruity tone from before- “how much you value your life, Mr. Smith.” She whispered as she pressed the tip of her knife against his throat and his body stiffened but (Y/N) kept them dancing.

“What’s the meaning of this? Who are you?” He hissed and (Y/N) giggled making it seem like he had just told her something funny in case anyone was looking at her.

“Take a guess, Mr. Smith, now we have a bit of business to discuss.” She stated her smile never leaving her face as she looked at him and he gulped. He went to pull away but (Y/N) pressed the knife harder against his throat and tightened her hold on his other hand.

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that Mr. Smith, try and make a scene and you won’t be the only one dying tonight.” She threatened and he gulped again glancing around the room. (Y/N) raised an eyebrow at him waiting to see if he was going to do anything.

“Fine. What do you want?” He growled and her smile grew as she lessened the pressure on his neck just a little.

“Smart man. What I want is for you to come with me and we’re going to have a little talk and if you agree to what I have to say then you live and so does the little treat I have. You say no you and the treat die.” She stated in a matter of fact tone and his brow furrowed in confusion.

“What treat?” He asked and she winked at him as she slid her knife back up her sleeve.

“Oh, you’ll see. Now come on.” She said as she began walking towards the exit that leads out to the rest of the Mayor's manor. (Y/N) didn’t look back to see if Mr. Smith had followed her, already knowing that simple curiosity would get him to follow her as she walked into one of the vacant rooms that her men had cleared. She nodded to her men who stood by the door to the bathroom with AK-47s in their hands and they nodded back in respect and she smiled as she turned to face Mr. Smith as he walked into the room nervously.

“Close the door.” She waved her hand and one of her men moved and closed the door, before standing in front of it blocking the way.

“They’re so well behaved, aren’t they? Fear and respect the perfect combination of controlling people.” She said as she looked at the man standing in front of the door who kept silent and an emotionless face. She looked towards Mr. Smith to see him glancing nervously at her guards.

“Who the hell are you lady?” He asked and she giggled again as she reached up and took off her wig.

“My apologies, I’m afraid I had to hide my real identity or else they wouldn’t have let me into the ball in order to see you.” (Y/N) said as she held the wig in one hand and the man gasped in shock as he jumped back.

“The Queen of Gotham.” Mr. Smith’s voice trembled when he spoke and she smiled evilly at him as she put her wig back on and glanced at the man who stood in the door who nodded answering her silent question.

“Surprise. Now Mr. Smith why don’t you have a seat and we’ll get started.” She waited patiently for Mr. Smith to sit which he did hesitantly and stiffly as he constantly glanced around the room now terrified that he would certainly die.

“What do you want with me? I swear I don’t know nothin!” He shouted and (Y/N) rolled her eyes.

“That much is clear, but I’m not here to learn what you know, no I’m here for something completely different. Do you know what I’ve learned since I’ve become a villain Mr. Smith?” (Y/N) paused as she began pacing slowly and methodically in front of Mr. Smith and he shook his head, afraid to speak and she smiled. “I’ve learned that everyone has a pressure point, a point that if you squeeze hard enough will get them to do whatever you want. Everyone’s pressure point is different but everyone does have one including you Mr. Smith.” She stated and his brow furrowed in confusion as he stared at her.

“What are you talking about?” He asked and (Y/N) snapped her fingers smiling at him. The guy by the bathroom disappeared inside before he forced a tied up and gagged woman and little girl out of the bathroom.

“For instance, your pressure point is your precious little sister and your niece.” She said and Mr. Smith’s eyes widened as he looked from (Y/N) to his sister and niece.

“Let them go! How did you find out about them?!” He shouted and (Y/N) smiled.

“I know everything about everyone in Gotham city, I’m not the Queen of this city for nothing. And I’ll let them go after you do what I tell you to do.” She said and he stared at his sister and his niece for he looked at (Y/N) again.

“What do you want me to do?” He asked and (Y/N) smiled.

“Now, that’s what I wanted to hear. I want you to go to your boss Black Mask and deliver a message for me, say no and I kill your sister and mentally scar your niece. Failure to deliver the message or try to get out of our deal in any way and I kill your sister and your niece disappears, do we have a deal?” (Y/N) asked and he hesitated before answering which caused her to raise an eyebrow at him.

“Fine, you monster, what’s the message.” He growled and she smiled walking up to him and leaning down and getting in his face.

“I want you to tell your boss that he’s been betraying our deal and I’ve let a few things go for now but if he keeps this up and doesn’t stop immediately I will destroy him physically, mentally, and his criminal empire. I have been kind to him so far but not any more so tell him he better remember our deal or he dies.” (Y/N) threatened her voice dead serious and Mr. Smith gulped before nodding his head.

“A-Alright and then you’ll let my sister and niece go?” He asked and she nodded as she stood up and spread her arms.

“I’ll let them go, completely unharmed provided you don’t fail me.” She said and he nodded.

“Alright, I’ll do it.” He said.

“Fantastic, now get going Mr. Smith you don’t want to keep them waiting.” (Y/N) motioned for the guard to move away from the door which he did quickly, opening the door for him. Mr. Smith quickly stood up and scurried out of the room and (Y/N) waited until she couldn’t see him before she said anything.

“Tell Zazz to follow him and make sure he does what he’s told, you  take the woman and the girl and leave the same way you came I don’t want anyone knowing what when on in here, understand?” She asked looking at the guards who nodded their heads.

“Yes, ma’am.” They said and she nodded once before she walked out of the room putting her mask of enjoyment and peasantry once again. (Y/N) didn’t return to the ball though instead she made her way to the exit only to be stopped by the one and only Bruce Wayne and she had to mentally and physically restrain herself from hitting him or attempting to kill him.

“Mr. Wayne hello.” (Y/N) greeted pleasantly as she forced a smile and Bruce’s eyes widened slightly as he looked at her and she knew that he was trying to figure out why she looked so familiar and she prayed like hell that he wouldn’t.

“Do I know you?”  He asked and she shook her head.

“No I’m afraid I’m new to Gotham, my family just moved here and I was simply making the rounds and making my parents happy by coming to the ball I was just leaving actually.” She said and Bruce nodded.

“Ah well, it was nice to meet you Ms….” “Peabody.” “Ms. Peabody.” Bruce finished and (Y/N) forced herself to keep smiling as she nodded once at him.

“You two Mr. Wayne.” She said as she walked around him keeping her steps even and calm as she walked away from him and down the steps to her limo that was waiting for her.

“Where to miss?” Gerald, her driver, asked when she slid into the back and she sighed falling back into the seat.

“Home Gerald, as quick as possible.” (Y/N) stated and Gerald nodded before he started the car and drove off. With a tired sigh (Y/N) took off her wig and tossed it onto the seat beside her.

“And we’ll be ditching the limo to Gerald.” She said.

“Of course miss.” He responded.

~Early evening the next day~

(Y/N) smiled as she laid her head on Jason’s chest, her arms wrapped tightly around his waist as he gently swayed them in their living room. Jason’s chin was resting on top of her head and she couldn’t remember a time in her life when she was more relaxed than in this moment and she never wanted this to end. Lifting her head off of Jason’s chest she looked up at him a soft happy smile on her face as she looked up at him her world brilliantly lit in color.

“I love you, Jason.” She whispered her voice full of joy and Jason smiled as he moved one of his hands from her lower back to cup her cheek and she leaned into his touch as he stroked her cheek with his thumb.

“I love you too (Y/N) but it’s time for me to go,” Jason said softly and (Y/N) stiffened as she shook her head her arms tightening around him.

“No. No! Don’t say that! Don’t say that, please! I don’t want this dream to end!” (Y/N) cried burying her face into his chest and Jason chuckled sadly as he placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her away from her a sad smile on his face. (Y/N) could feel tears welling in her eyes as she looked at him, she hated this part.

“I’m sorry (Y/N). I’m so, so, sorry but I have to go times up you know that.” Behind Jason (Y/N) watched as the scene faded from a loving and warm apartment to a warehouse with a wall of crates behind him. The soft music that had been playing in the background changed to an annoying ticking sound of a bomb counting down. Fear filled her eyes as she looked at him and shook her head hurriedly reaching up and grabbing Jason’s face as cuts and wounds appeared on his face and he was now wearing his Robin uniform. Tears started falling from her eyes as she tried desperately to make her dream change back to what it had been as she stared at the bruised and bloodied face, his domino mask was ripped and there was a large gash on his forehead. Blood oozed out of the gash on his forehead and when he gave her a small sad smile, revealing his blood covered teeth and she squeezed her eyes closed still trying to desperately turn her dream back into something pleasant and not this nightmare. When she opened her eyes again she was still looking at the beaten face of her soulmate.

“No, no. Jason please no. Don’t leave me, please don’t leave me not again.” She pleaded with him and he reached up grabbing her hands with his before gently removing them from his face and holding them so they hung in between them.

“I’m so, so, sorry I didn’t say goodbye to you before I left (Y/N) but I have to go we can’t stay here forever.” He said and she shook her head squeezing his hands.

“But I want to stay here! I don’t want to leave! I don’t want you to leave! I don’t want to lose you again Jason! I can’t lose you again! I want to stay here! With you! Happy and in color! Please, Jason, don’t leave me! Please!” (Y/N) pleaded her voice cracking and tears falling in earnest. Jason let go of one of her hands and lifted his up and cupped her cheek as he leaned down and gave her a soft kiss. (Y/N) could taste the metallic tang of blood on her tongue when he pulled away and she whimpered as he let go of her other hand and stepped away from her.

“It’s time to wake up (Y/N),” Jason said and (Y/N) sobbed.

“No! No! Please, Jason no!” She shouted before the ticking stopped and everything exploded.

(Y/N) jumped awake her heart hammering in her chest and her body was covered in a cold sweat and her hands were fisting the thin sheet that covered her legs. Her breathing was ragged and she closed her eyes forcing herself to breathe normally and calm down, slowly she let go of the sheet before opening her eyes again. She stared at the wall of the little room she’d made for herself in the compound she had secured as her base of operations. She sighed tiredly before swinging her legs off her cot and then standing up, she walked over to her chest and opened it revealing her folded up costume which was a modified and more adult version of the costume she’d worn back when she was with Selina. Minus the things that had identified her as Catwoman’s sidekick, and now it wasn’t all leather too. She had made her costume more combat ready with a sleeker form of body armor like what her Batgirl costume had been made out of, and while it wasn’t all leather it still had the form-fitting sexiness that Selina’s has. Grabbing her costume she got ready for her night of causing mayhem.

Minutes later she was walking out of her small room, double checking that everything was secure and where she wanted it. Her whip, which was tied loosely around her waist over her actual belt. Attached to her actual belt were two holsters each one containing a special folding hand fan that she’d modified, and then around her thighs were two more holsters each containing a high caliber and high powered handgun that she had forced Nygma to make for her.

“Your Highness! Your Highness!!” One of her goons shouted and she sighed rolling her eyes underneath her face mask.

“What is it?” She asked annoyed and frustrated as she stopped walking as she ran up to her and (Y/N) was immensely glad that she didn’t drop to her knee in front of her. Sometimes people took her name as Queen of Gotham a little too seriously for her liking.

“The families under the Black Masks control, all of their generals have just been killed.” She informed (Y/N) slightly out of breath and (Y/N)’s eyes widened underneath her mask.

“WHAT?!” (Y/N)’s voice was full of rage and the goon quickly backed away from her, not that it would do much good though.

“Th-their g-generals w-were killed, a-all of-of them.” She said as she stumbled over her words and (Y/N) growled stalking towards the goon and grabbing her by the neck.

“By who?” (Y/N) growled squeezing the goons neck and watching fear and panic filled the goons eyes as she reached up and grabbed at (Y/N)’s wrist.

“B-By s-some g-guy c-calling h-himself the-the R-Red H-Hood.” She stuttered out and (Y/N) growled again as she threw the goon down to the ground and straightened herself out again calming down slightly.

“Red Hood huh? Well, send someone to Black Mask tell him it wasn’t me who had his men killed because he’s certainly stupid enough to think that it. Do we know why he killed their generals?” (Y/N) asked and the goon nodded.

“We-We do. He did it to get the families on his side, they’re kicking up money to him now.” The goon answered and (Y/N) nodded slowly humming softly to herself.

“Are they now? Send someone to one of those families have them tell that family that the Queen wants to speak to this Red Hood.” (Y/N) said and the goon nodded her head rapidly.

“Yes, your highness.” She rushed to confirm before she ran off to go do what she was told and (Y/N) smiled underneath her mask as she watched her goon run away.

“Fantastic, maybe we can use what this Red Hood guy is planning to our advantage.” (Y/N) mused to herself as she walked towards the exit.

(Y/N) stood on the rooftop just casually fanning herself as she waited impatiently for Red Hood to show up if he was even going to show up. She closed her eyes as she breathed in deeply through her nose and out again. Her eyes snapped open when she heard someone land behind her and she spun around hitting a button on her fan as she did that caused blades to extend from them and as she extended her arm out on the turn the blades shot out of the fan and at her possible assailant in a wide arch.

“Woah!” The person shouted as they jumped out of the way and (Y/N) smiled under the mask, standing up a little straighter and closing her fan and then sliding it into its holster. There was a long moment of silence as the Red Hood climbed back onto his feet and cleared his throat looking at her.

“So Queen of Gotham, huh?” Red Hood asked crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned against the entrance to the roof.

[mrmichaelchadler]

War of the Words: Calum Worthy, Jackie Long, and Joseph Kahn on Bodied

Joseph Kahn’s “Bodied” is unlike anything you’ve seen before. It’s a hyperactive action-comedy set in the world of rap battling, where brilliant minds fire jaw-dropping disses at each other and the arena is a safe space for non-PC culture, no matter how offensive. In a story co-written by Joseph Kahn and Alex Larsen (with a screenplay by Larsen, known as the battler Kid Twist), "Bodied" takes the form of a rap music “Whiplash” as a dorky white kid named Adam (Calum Worthy) becomes the protege to Jackie Long’s character Behn Grimm, a master battler. Adam’s initially teeth-gnashing anthropological interest in the rap battle world (and in the use of n-word) becomes an impetus for him to genuinely join the scene, where his analytical skills become an asset in establishing himself as a rapper. 

This is the third feature film by music video director Joseph Kahn, who has always had a sharp eye on pop culture (“Torque,” “Detention”) and makes the experience of rap battling all the more in-your-face with his kinetic filmmaking. Kahn has also written criticism before from his filmmaking perspective, as with this incredibly eye-opening blog post on “The Dark Knight” and action editing. He's always been a filmmaker to watch out for, and now with "Bodied," and a recent mysterious meeting with Marvel, Kahn is making a mark of his own. 

RogerEbert.com sat down with Worthy, Long, and Kahn to discuss their wildly entertaining film, the preparation that went into coming off like real rap battlers, the blessing this project got from executive producer Eminem and more. 

My first question is for you, Joseph: “Bodied” definitely takes place in 2018, but its needle drops are like “new classics” of hip-hop, including J-Kwon, Yung Joc, DMX. Why those songs? 

JOSEPH KAHN: There’s a particular era of rap music that has a beat that’s funny to me, quite frankly. Now, rap is not funny. It’s not party music anymore. 

What about Soundcloud rap? 

No, I think it’s all laid back. The beat feels too laid back. The type of comedy I’m going for is high energy, and with propulsion. At the time I was making the movie, it just felt like the funniest beats to put against a white guy, that era of rap sounded really funny to me. And it seemed like the type of music that he simply should not be listening to. 

Jackie and Calum: What scared you the most, and excited you the most about this project?

JACKIE LONG: I don’t think nothing too much scared me about the project, at all. I wasn’t scared to do the project, but the best part was taking the project. I know it’s a very controversial movie, so that was the biggest thing for me, the controversy that it was talking about with free speech. I was happy to take the role. 

Did that particularly excite you, the non-PC nature? 

JL: The world needs to hear what this movie is talking about. You gotta definitely not be afraid of nothing, so this is like the perfect movie for that. 

CALUM WORTHY: The biggest thing that scared me about this project was some of the material that I had to say. Coming from where I was coming from, where I was protected by this major brand for a kid’s network, I was leaving that and suddenly I was putting a lot on the line to tell this story I cared about, knowing that I could face some backlash from my audience, however much I am an artist. And what excited me was the character of Adam, he’s the antihero, almost to the point of being a villain, and with some extremely complex choices. He defends his friends who are rappers for most of the movie, and then ultimately stabs him in the back. It’s like a Shakespearean theme. 

How did you guys iron out your rap battles, which are like Shakespearean monologues themselves? 

JL: Since the first day we met, it was work. We knew we both had to take each other under each other’s wing and make a good movie. We already knew what was expected, and we knew how this man would craft it. So if we do the right thing and study it and do what we’re supposed to do, we know we’re going to do a good job, and lucky enough he’s such a good sport, he wasn’t one of them actors who’s like, 'Nah, I’m going to do my own shit, I don’t need this shit' it was like we really bonded and really went to work. And deep down with the other battle rappers and doing research. 

CW: You know it’s a good script when every time you say the words, it triggers that emotion, it takes you to that moment. When I was practicing the raps with the other rappers, I wasn’t able to say the lines without being triggered emotionally, the way I wanted to on set. And obviously you try to keep that for the day, but that’s how you know you’re dealing with a really good script. 

Were you guys rehearsing constantly with the battle raps?

JL: On the double rap, that was more of a spontaneous scene, we had the other battle rappers do that. But the other stuff that we had was all written by Alex Larsen, who wrote it word for word. Our words were more telling the story of our characters, the other battle rappers, theirs was their story as well, but they could ad-lib because they’re professionals. 

CW: This was a script that was so tight and so smart, it was the smartest script I’ve ever read. I didn’t want to change a single word because every single line pushed the movie forward and the story forward. 

It’s almost like doing a basketball movie, but the other actors in it with you are Lebron James and Michael Jordan. 

That’s intimidating. 

CW: It’s extremely intimidating. And I’m not cool, I’ve never stayed cool in my life. 

But when you’re working on that finale, which is like a 40-minute rap battle, how do you keep that energy? 

CW: You rehearse it like a play. 

JL: You got good background actors as well. They gave us good energy. IF we didn’t have them as well, to feed off that energy, we couldn’t have probably done what we done. You need background, and there were some great background actors to give us that energy and to make us really feel like we were battle rappers. Some of the shots that we did sometimes was without them even knowing what we were about to say, and he shot it to capture real cheers. At the end of the day, when we were getting that message from them about how good we was, for me I was like ‘I’m going home to really study and kill this. I got these battle rappers, they’re vouching for us. Shit, this is amazing.” So I thank the background actors as well. 

They provide an immense energy. 

JL: They hung in with us man, and I thank the background actors. I started with that world, I come from that. I used to do background. And people always ask me, ‘How did you start?’ I say ‘background acting.’ I don’t say ‘extra’ because that’s disrespectful, I’m a background actor. And you can only move up if you take it serious. So, any background actor out there, my message to you is don’t go to set and get at the girls or dudes or go get the food, real ask the actors if you get the opportunity, what classes did you take, what did you do to get into acting? Ask questions, don’t just get in there to meet somebody, really watch the craft of the actor that you like. 

Joseph, how did you work with Alex to write the story? 

JK: We designed the story; film is architecture. It’s only two hours, and it’s maybe 60 to 100 scenes, so we worked out all of the scenes and motivations, and what should happen and why they happen. You really do think out all of the thematics, before hand. Then some motherfucker has to write that script. And I was off busy. My original intent was actually to cowrite it with him, and I was thinking 'I’ll do the dramatic stuff, he’ll do the rap stuff.' And then this dude, has a fucking writing … he’s a literature major. I’m directing all of these commercials and music videos, and then a couple months later he’s like, “Hey, I did a first act.” And I read it, and it was brilliant. I was like, ‘This dude is a better writer than me.’ And I said, ‘Alex, write the rest of the script,’ and there it was. 

Why is he not touring with you guys? 

JK: He’s hibernating. He’s in a moose barn milking his moose. 

JL: He kinda look you!

Is he white? 

JK: He’s a white dude who’s in Canada and milking his moose. 

CW: Talking about Justin Trudeau. 

That’s the energy of the movie: a lit major talking about rap music. Did you guys have a lot of debate about this stuff? There’s so much discussion in the movie it could be its own college course.

JL: We only had 22 days of shooting man, we couldn’t discuss too much shit. We had to really learn our lines, work, go home and get whatever rest we could, and come back to work. The discussion was for the people, the fans. 

Doing an interview for this kind of movie seems kind of pointless because it’s not about getting answers? It’s the discussion. 

JL: Exactly, we want you to leave the theater and be like, ‘Wow, did you fucking hear what they said? Oh my god.’ That’s what the movie’s about, it’s not about us giving you answers. Everybody got something that relates to them in this movie, everybody. I don’t give a fuck what race you are. 

CW: It’s an unusual theatrical experience, because right now content for the most part, is watched individually, we watch it on our own. This is a true group experience, and you want to experience it with a crowd, because it starts conversation. What some people laugh at, what some people get hurt by, that’s what’s exciting about this movie. 

Do you guys see that there is a set of rules that do form in the movie? Some definite no-nos? Completely open to non-PC limits? 

JK: I think that’s one of the fun parts about the movie, that the rules keep shifting. The rules shift. There are no rules, essentially, because there are no rules to life. What is a civilization? It’s an agreed upon set of terms that we all do to not kill each other, essentially. Because we are predators, human beings are predators. We did not get here and have seven billion people in the world because we don’t kill things, we kill everything. We eat it, we knock animals out of their homes, and kill each other, and each individual civilization, these little communities that we have, are agreements that “we are going to sit next to each other and we’re not going to kill each other.” That’s it. Period. 

We’re just going to get along. And not offend each other. 

Right. So then we have different communities get together, and the actual act of battle rapping is this wonderful, interesting metaphor for how we can essentially start poking each other for the kill, but stop. When you insult somebody for fun, and they accept, you’re literally challenging them not to kill you. 

… Joseph, what kind of books are you reading these days? What podcasts are you listening to? 

JK: I can go check my Kindle. 

Jackie and Calum: What kind of blessing did you guys get from executive producer and music supervisor Eminem? 

JL: He gave Joseph more advice than he gave us, and he gave Joseph advice on the movie, pointer tips, stuff on the actors, who they are. I never got to speak with him, the only thing I know about him through Joseph, is that he thought that me and Calum was real battle rappers. 

CW: The best part about having him involved in this film was knowing that we get his stamp of approval. Because I think that for fans of rap, they’re always wanting to make sure its legitimate when actors are portraying a rapper. With Eminem involved, we weren’t going to make this film unless one of the greatest battle rappers, if not the greatest battle rapper of all time was approving it, and making sure that it was legit and authentic. 

JL: When he thought that we were battle rappers, I mean, that’s when you know that the movie was good. We not no damn battle rappers. 

JK: You want my reading list? The Stranger by Albert Camus, Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen, Leonardo da Vinci biography by Walter Isaacson, Cognitive Semiotics of Film by Warren Buckland. The Wall by Sartre. 

So you got some existential shit, and semiotics, but you’re also interested in pop. 

JK: Buckland’s best book is his one on Steven Spielberg, it’s really funny. 

Are you going to do any more criticism? 

JK: I spoke at Stanford, like six months ago and taught a bunch of film classes there. And they want me to be an artist in residency, but I don’t have time. 

from All Content https://ift.tt/2AGLbfz

[samanthasroberts]

10 things you didn’t know about your old pal Bender from ‘Futurama’

Bender Bending Rodriguez may be a fictional robot from a canceled sci-fi cartoon show, but to fans, he’s so much more than that. This misanthropic, lovable antihero has anger issues and every sort of vice, but under the filth is a heart of gold. Before you start your next binge-watch of Futurama, take a gander at these fascinating facts about Bender.

10 things you never knew about Bender

1) It’s canon that Bender is a Mac

In the season 1 finale, the Planet Express crew takes a tour of the Slurm Factory where we get to see them hang out with good ole’ Slurms McKenzie. Earlier in the episode, Professor Farnsworth scans Bender with a new device called an F-Ray, whereupon we discover that our dear friend Bender is powered by a 6502 microprocessor, the same processor that was used to power the Apple II. In an interview with Vulture, writer David X. Cohen explained why. “This is straight from me,” Cohen said. “When I was in high school, I spent many of my teen years until five in the morning programming video games of my own invention, so I became extremely and intimately familiar with this chip. It ran at 1 MHz—we’re used to hearing GHz nowadays—and so you had to be a nimble programmer to get it to do what you wanted it to do.”

Screenshot via Vulture

2) Apple was all over Bender’s funeral

In season 7’s “Forty Percent Leadbelly,” the world briefly believes Bender has been killed by a train. Apple funded Bender’s funeral, though apparently in the future, the company barters for ad space. During the funeral, folk artist Silicon Red sings Bender a Mac-themed eulogy, including the lyrics:

“Then the steel driving man ran his train through the wall, and crashed him flatter than a MacBook Air, lord. Crashed him flatter than a MacBook Air.”

Screengrab via Pixa

3) Bender has a John Hughes connection 

Bender was named after John Bender from The Breakfast Club. Played by Judd Nelson, John Bender was a tough bully from the wrong side of the tracks who hid a soft and sensitive side underneath his gruff demeanor. We have no idea how that inspired Bender. 

Photo via Giphy

4) Bender’s antenna is a multitool

Bender’s antenna is more than just a transmitter. Over the course of the series it has been a beer tap, a popcorn butter pump, a flusher, a snooze button, a timer, a voice mail notification system, a voicemail deletion button, an audio tape dispenser, a pager, an unintentional cable signal blocker, and a timer for Bender’s internal digital camera.

Screengrab via Ann Marie Jukic/Pintrest

5) Bender came off the assembly line like this

Bender was built in the year 2996 in Tijuana, Mexico, by Momcorp, and he came off the assembly line as an adorable little tyke, though one with attitude. His first words as a baby were, “Bite my shiny metal ass,” spoken as he enjoyed his first beer.

Screengrab via Reddit

READ MORE:

11 intergalactic facts about ‘Starship Troopers’

12 magical facts about ‘Gravity Falls’

10 plucky facts about Disney’s ‘DuckTales’ you never knew

20 schwifty facts about Adult Swim’s ‘Rick and Morty’

6) Bender is mortal

Unlike other robots, Bender does not have a backup unit to house his data in case his body is destroyed. Momcorp saw this as a defect and had Bender ordered to be destroyed, but he was saved by Hermes. This also means if his hard drive is destroyed, he will die once and for all.

Screengrab via YouTube

7) Despite being born in 2996, Bender is one of the oldest beings on Earth

In the movie “Bender’s Big Score,”we learn that Bender is actually millions of years old thanks to his use of the Time Sphere. Time travel through the Time Sphere is one way, so each time Bender is sent back in time he’s forced to wait thousands of years in the limestone cave under Planet Express. There is no exact accounting of how old Bender currently is on the show.

Photo via The Infosphere

8) Bender has a soul

Although he lacks a backup unit, Bender apparently does have a soul. In “Ghosts in the Machines,” he is killed by Lynn, an ex-girlfriend and suicide booth. His ghost haunts the Earth, only able to communicate by possessing other robots until he proves himself worthy of resurrection by saving Fry’s life. Apparently, his soul left his body without his hard drive being destroyed. At least he had fun as a ghost.

Photo via Tenor

9) Don’t assume you know Bender’s family history

Bender’s grandmother was a bulldozer. We learn this fact in “The Beast with a Billion Backs,” when Leela is trying to shame him into trying harder during a game. Leela shouts, “Come on, Bender, your grandmother could push harder than that!” Bender says, “No crap! My grandmother was a bulldozer.” Way to gender shame, Leela.

READ MORE:

What the heck is a plumbus?

The joyful, existential dread of Mr. Meeseeks

Who is Mr. Poopy Butthole?***

‘Rick and Morty’ quotes that’ll blow your mind and crush your soul

10) Bender’s most common words are only partly what you’d expect

Although his character is known for a wide range of profanity, it isn’t until “War is the H-word” that we officially learn Bender’s most frequently uttered words. They are:

1. Ass 2.Daffodil 3. Shiny 4. My 5. Bite 6. Pimpmobile 7. Up 8. Yours 9. Chumpette 10. Chump

Photo via YouTube

Editor’s note: This article is regularly updated for relevance.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-your-old-pal-bender-from-futurama/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/05/26/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-your-old-pal-bender-from-futurama/

[allofbeercom]

10 things you didn’t know about your old pal Bender from ‘Futurama’

Bender Bending Rodriguez may be a fictional robot from a canceled sci-fi cartoon show, but to fans, he’s so much more than that. This misanthropic, lovable antihero has anger issues and every sort of vice, but under the filth is a heart of gold. Before you start your next binge-watch of Futurama, take a gander at these fascinating facts about Bender.

10 things you never knew about Bender

1) It’s canon that Bender is a Mac

In the season 1 finale, the Planet Express crew takes a tour of the Slurm Factory where we get to see them hang out with good ole’ Slurms McKenzie. Earlier in the episode, Professor Farnsworth scans Bender with a new device called an F-Ray, whereupon we discover that our dear friend Bender is powered by a 6502 microprocessor, the same processor that was used to power the Apple II. In an interview with Vulture, writer David X. Cohen explained why. “This is straight from me,” Cohen said. “When I was in high school, I spent many of my teen years until five in the morning programming video games of my own invention, so I became extremely and intimately familiar with this chip. It ran at 1 MHz—we’re used to hearing GHz nowadays—and so you had to be a nimble programmer to get it to do what you wanted it to do.”

Screenshot via Vulture

2) Apple was all over Bender’s funeral

In season 7’s “Forty Percent Leadbelly,” the world briefly believes Bender has been killed by a train. Apple funded Bender’s funeral, though apparently in the future, the company barters for ad space. During the funeral, folk artist Silicon Red sings Bender a Mac-themed eulogy, including the lyrics:

“Then the steel driving man ran his train through the wall, and crashed him flatter than a MacBook Air, lord. Crashed him flatter than a MacBook Air.”

Screengrab via Pixa

3) Bender has a John Hughes connection 

Bender was named after John Bender from The Breakfast Club. Played by Judd Nelson, John Bender was a tough bully from the wrong side of the tracks who hid a soft and sensitive side underneath his gruff demeanor. We have no idea how that inspired Bender. 

Photo via Giphy

4) Bender’s antenna is a multitool

Bender’s antenna is more than just a transmitter. Over the course of the series it has been a beer tap, a popcorn butter pump, a flusher, a snooze button, a timer, a voice mail notification system, a voicemail deletion button, an audio tape dispenser, a pager, an unintentional cable signal blocker, and a timer for Bender’s internal digital camera.

Screengrab via Ann Marie Jukic/Pintrest

5) Bender came off the assembly line like this

Bender was built in the year 2996 in Tijuana, Mexico, by Momcorp, and he came off the assembly line as an adorable little tyke, though one with attitude. His first words as a baby were, “Bite my shiny metal ass,” spoken as he enjoyed his first beer.

Screengrab via Reddit

READ MORE:

11 intergalactic facts about ‘Starship Troopers’

12 magical facts about ‘Gravity Falls’

10 plucky facts about Disney’s ‘DuckTales’ you never knew

20 schwifty facts about Adult Swim’s ‘Rick and Morty’

6) Bender is mortal

Unlike other robots, Bender does not have a backup unit to house his data in case his body is destroyed. Momcorp saw this as a defect and had Bender ordered to be destroyed, but he was saved by Hermes. This also means if his hard drive is destroyed, he will die once and for all.

Screengrab via YouTube

7) Despite being born in 2996, Bender is one of the oldest beings on Earth

In the movie “Bender’s Big Score,”we learn that Bender is actually millions of years old thanks to his use of the Time Sphere. Time travel through the Time Sphere is one way, so each time Bender is sent back in time he’s forced to wait thousands of years in the limestone cave under Planet Express. There is no exact accounting of how old Bender currently is on the show.

Photo via The Infosphere

8) Bender has a soul

Although he lacks a backup unit, Bender apparently does have a soul. In “Ghosts in the Machines,” he is killed by Lynn, an ex-girlfriend and suicide booth. His ghost haunts the Earth, only able to communicate by possessing other robots until he proves himself worthy of resurrection by saving Fry’s life. Apparently, his soul left his body without his hard drive being destroyed. At least he had fun as a ghost.

Photo via Tenor

9) Don’t assume you know Bender’s family history

Bender’s grandmother was a bulldozer. We learn this fact in “The Beast with a Billion Backs,” when Leela is trying to shame him into trying harder during a game. Leela shouts, “Come on, Bender, your grandmother could push harder than that!” Bender says, “No crap! My grandmother was a bulldozer.” Way to gender shame, Leela.

READ MORE:

What the heck is a plumbus?

The joyful, existential dread of Mr. Meeseeks

Who is Mr. Poopy Butthole?***

‘Rick and Morty’ quotes that’ll blow your mind and crush your soul

10) Bender’s most common words are only partly what you’d expect

Although his character is known for a wide range of profanity, it isn’t until “War is the H-word” that we officially learn Bender’s most frequently uttered words. They are:

1. Ass 2.Daffodil 3. Shiny 4. My 5. Bite 6. Pimpmobile 7. Up 8. Yours 9. Chumpette 10. Chump

Photo via YouTube

Editor’s note: This article is regularly updated for relevance.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-your-old-pal-bender-from-futurama/

[chrisoncinema]

The Year in Review: 2017 Honorable Mentions

Originally this post was just going to list my top ten films of the year and provide a brief commentary on the honorable mentions that didn’t make the cut but I got carried away with the latter and wrote way too much. So here’s a holiday surprise: a full summation of my year at the movies for you to enjoy as I work on my top ten list.

2016 Addenda

Silence and Paterson were two 2016 films that I was only able to see in early 2017. Had I been able to view them when they were first released, both would have made my 2016 top ten list (which never got a proper post but is accessible via my twitter) and both would have vied for spots in my top three. I highly recommend that everyone watch both films. They are both challenging films in their own ways. Silence is emotionally exhausting; moments of shocking brutality and quiet delicacy abound. It’s an examination of faith worth mulling over regardless of your worldview or philosophy because, in the end, faith is an emanation of our basic humanity. Paterson is similar to Silence in its singular voice and vision. It is meandering, seemingly plotless, and deceptively simple, but sometimes one has to walk slowly in order to see clearly.

Films I Missed

As seen above, every year there are a number of films I am unable to see because I didn’t have time or it wasn’t playing in Michigan or I didn’t have the press credentials to get into a screening. This year, the most disappointing miss was Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Threadwhich, apparently, didn’t make it to my local art theater. I’ve loved Anderson’s last three films (and enjoy his entire filmography, in varying degrees) and believe Phantom Thread would have made it onto my top ten list this year, had I been able to see it. Other films I missed this year, in no particular order, include: A Quiet Passion, The Post, Menashe, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, I Tonya, Menashe, Graduation, Manifesto, Dawson City: Frozen Time, Call My By Your Name, and The Square.

Honorable and Dishonorable Mentions

Despite missing a lot, I saw more films this year than I have in a long time. This meant that my top ten list was an enjoyable challenge and that a number of films, for a variety of reasons, didn’t make the cut. These are their stories…

Lemon was the worst movie that I saw this year – or, at the very least, it was the movie I disliked the most that I watched all the way through nonetheless. The anti-comedy antihero that Tim Heidecker played to cringey perfection in the weird and wonderful The Comedy should be hereby retired with Brett Gelman’s new film. I think Brett Gelman is a very funny comedian and his wife, Janicza Bravo, who directed Lemon has a unique enough directorial voice but, in a year of terrible men, we didn’t need this one. In a year of interesting commentary on race, we didn’t need this half-hearted, cynical, frustrating attempt.

Lemon

I swore off comic book movies years ago and have only watched DC movies out of morbid, masochistic curiosity (I did not see Wonder Woman or Justice League, for the record, and don’t plan on ever watching them). That said, the first superhero movie to pique my interest in years was Logan. I hadn’t seen an X-Men movie since First Class, which I found rather pointless, but, as a childhood fan of the X-Men comics, something about Logan seemed different. And indeed it was.

Logan works incredibly well as a neo-Western road movie that happens to feature mutated humans with superpowers. Hugh Jackman is probably the best actor to ever lead a comic book movie and here he finally has a movie that is worth his time. The three leads that form a quasi-familial unit in the form of Patrick Stewart, Jackman, and young breakout Dafne Keen, all perform incredibly well together and individually. The movie falters when it tries to introduce its villains and an action-y plotline. The dude with the Anakin Skywalker hand was sufficient, the evil doctor guy played by Richard E. Grant was introduced too late to matter, and the robo-Wolverine or whatever he was called was just kind of awkward and weird and dumb. Still, I was genuinely moved by the end of this movie – brought closer to tears by this movie than any comic book movie I’ve watched. It’s not a great film, but it’s a very good comic book movie. Count it among the few classics.

Another movie that I was surprisingly moved by was Okja. I felt like I had this film’s number from the start. Not that predictability is inherently negative, I just didn’t think I’d get that much out of it. But this movie is incredibly well-crafted. The performances from Jake Gyllenhaal and Tilda Swinton are so over the top that they actually work as caricatures of evil people. This movie feels like a live-action anime. It has the energy, the flow, and the colorful cast of characters. The message is simple and perhaps a bit obvious but it works. And while I will continue blaming it on the severe cold I had while watching the film, I did get choked up at the end. Also, Paul Dano continues to be a tragically underrated performer who needs to be cast in way more projects.

Okja

Okja was very good at world-building and, unsurprisingly, Blade Runner 2049 was great at it. I was wary of this film going in and didn’t even know if I’d ever watch it – tired as I am of reboots and unnecessary sequels. Much to my surprise, though, I was captivated by this movie when it was simply following Ryan Gosling’s K through his detective work and personal life. His relationship with his holographic girlfriend is as weird and sweet and inventive as Her. Denis Villeneuve is a director I’ve written about beforewhose work I enjoy – Arrival remains his best film. Roger Deakins, as widely reported, does great work as he always does in this film. Unfortunately, 2049decided to be a legacy act. The second half of the movie is bogged down in a plot that ties the film in with the original completely unnecessarily.

2049 falls apart when it dredges up old Harry Ford in his all-too-ordinary gray t-shirt. Is he playing Rick Deckard or is he someone’s aging stepdad? Credit where it’s due: Harrison Ford performs dutifully and effectively in this movie but 1: I can’t watch Harrison Ford in a movie anymore without it completely taking me out of the narrative (Oh look, it’s ancient curmudgeon Harrison Ford. Remember Indiana Jones?) and, more importantly, 2: there was no reason why this film needed to bring him back. As I said, there were so many interesting directions this film could have gone but, like The Force Awakens, it grinds to a halt so we can see Harrison Ford react to stuff related to a movie he was in a hundred years ago. Also, Jared Leto is a scenery-chewing nuisance who should not be cast in anything ever. My suggestion: if you didn’t see this movie in IMAX, just wait and watch the 90 minute version I’ll inevitably make in 2018.

And while Blade Runner and Star Wars provided science fiction fodder for franchise devotees, horror fans were treated to a vast array of unique offerings. A horror/drama that got a little over-hyped for me was Raw. As with most gross-out horror films, there were early reports of people passing out and throwing up in screenings. With that in mind, I prepared myself for something truly shocking and was, honestly, somewhat disappointed. The story centers on a college freshman who discovers she has a hunger for human flesh. It’s a fun film if you’re a fan of body horror but even so the scenes get rather formulaic. There’s some great, atmospheric stuff in this movie, including some solid cinematography, but the moments when something gross is about to happen are never a surprise. Raw's great failure is its ending which ties such a deliciously messy story together too neatly.

Raw

Another horror film that could be accused of receiving too much early hype was, of course, mother! This movie is incredibly effective as a comedy of manners. Darren Aronofsky does an amazing job of capturing the panic and confusion of actual nightmares where you know the people populating your dream should be able to hear and understand you but their blank, unresponsive stares simply add to the horror. I had no idea what mother!was actually about or where it was going while I watched it and I found myself disappointed in myself once I realized. The thing is, though, even when the film’s narrative fully commits to its pedestrian eschatology, it’s still churning out moments that are absolutely bonkers. The ways mother! doesn’t work might be more interesting than the ways it does (Javier Bardem and Michelle Pfeiffer are particularly effective; Jennifer Lawrence remains an amateurish performer) but…I kind of loved this film in all of its sadistic, messy glory.  

I really wanted mother! to make it into my top ten list simply because it felt so different. That is, until I saw another film about the dismantling of domesticity: The Killing of a Sacred Deer. I should state for the record that I was not a huge fan of Yorgos Lanthimos’s last film The Lobster. That film always felt a bit obvious and stunted to me – though I’m a big fan of both Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz. Sacred Deer is a similar beast. The deadpan, monotone dialogue takes a lot of getting used to and I’m sure it’ll be a sticking point for a lot of viewers. It remains an interesting and puzzling choice by Lanthimos who seems to want to strip his films of melodramatic artifice while writing screenplays that contain the drama of Greek tragedies. 

Sacred Deer is a film that knows it’s weird, knows you think it’s weird, but also knows it’s weirdness is making you feel weird. If you can let yourself get into it, this is a pretty rewarding film reminiscent of The Shining (I know this is blasphemy but I actually like it more). Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman both give incredibly performances with what is surely challenging material to work with. The film’s real star, though, is Dunkirk breakout Barry Keoghan. As his character grows more strange and sinister, he somehow becomes even more magnetic. Regardless of what you think of the movie, Keoghan is one of the best performers of the year.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Of course, one cannot discuss the year’s horror films without mentioning Get Out. I have to admit I had trouble with this film for a number of months. I really struggled to see what everyone else was seeing in it. That is, until I watched Detroit. Both films are ostensibly horror flicks where the great evil is white power. Kathryn Bigelow’s film posits itself as a visceral work of journalism but beneath that facade, it’s clear she has nothing to say. Her camera is in a constant Paul Greengrass-esque tremor whether it’s a tense moment or not. Detroitis false immediacy. Detroit is torture porn. Get Out, on the other hand, has a voice and it came to make a statement. Get Out, like They Liveor Night of the Living Dead before it, is not high art. It is, for better or worse, a reaction to the sociopolitical milieu that surrounds it. Hopefully it will soon be considered the first of innumerable, blockbuster works by filmmakers of color that invades the cultural consciousness. For now, Get Out is a film that manages to be both scary and funny thanks to Jordan Peele’s vision and direction.

Logan Lucky and Baby Driver were two films by directors whose work I enjoy and admire immensely that just didn’t quite bring enough to the table to make it into a top ten list. Both films are self-assured, fun, and full of magnetic characters (save for the titular Baby) but they also seem to be exercises in style over substance. Still, I’d recommend both films in a heartbeat.

Another film that comes highly recommended by yours truly that seems to have been completely forgotten is The Red Turtle: an animated, nearly-wordless folk tale about nature, love, and letting go. The Red Turtle is refreshingly simple and unassuming – I’ve heard it described as a children’s film and, while a patient child may be able to sit through it, there’s a depth and maturity to the story that will speak to anyone who would stop to listen. Come for the animation, stay for the beautiful score and sound design.

The Red Turtle

Speaking of design, a couple films that look incredibly good are A Ghost Story and The Beguiled. Both films held spots in my top ten list but were knocked out. I really wanted to love A Ghost Story – I felt like I was really giving it my all – but about two thirds of the way through the film, it starts to preach about what it is and some of the mystery and nuance is lost. Visually, it remains one of the most interesting films of the year, but the story remains half-baked. The same could be said for Sofia Coppola’s new film. It features some of the best cinematography of the year and incredible performances from everyone involved. The aforementioned Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman give it their all; Kirsten Dunst is strong as ever; and Elle Fanning continues to prove she is one of the great young actors working today. The film’s only real fault is its table manners. Reserved and cautious, when the film finally boils over, the room has already chilled.

I also saw The Florida Project this year. I have very little to say about it, apparently. As I’ve been putting it off through this whole post. I thought it was…fine. It’s good, not great. Willem Dafoe is very good in it. If you want to know how I feel about the ending, I’m in the camp that thought it completely undercut the emotional depth and complexity that the film was just about to reach.

So there you have it – my year at the movies, save for my upcoming top ten films of the year. As I said above, many of these films could have, or perhaps should have, been in my top ten list. And if you were to ask me in a few months, some of them might return. As these things go, art is subjective and fluid, but I’m very excited to share the films that I found the most engrossing and moving this year. Some will be obvious, but hopefully some will be new discoveries for you. Come back New Year’s Eve to find out!