#some goofuses

[herpsandbirds]

I have been down a bit lately and your blog brings me so much joy. I don't suppose you have any good pictures of rat snakes being just silly goofy guys? I love them. (Colubrids in general are just Very Good Snakes and I love the ones we've got here in Ohio.)

GOOFY RAT SNAKE EH???

Here are some leucistic Texas and Black Rat Snakes being goofuses...

photograph by RodentPro.com, LLC

photograph by underground reptiles

photograph by Anthony Caponetto

[hardpacker]

ummmmmmmmm we noticed you don't have any cows...? ...freak?

ok i have no idea why my humble little post has more than 5 notes and i certainly didn't make it for weird trad/rad SWERFs and kekistan goofuses to enjoy. joy is the province of the brave and you are cowards of another kind. i have stolen all your cows. now you're just Some Fuck

[hajikelist]

You get up to some real nonsense when you gather a large group of nerd goofuses together

[creekfiend]

I never heard of bluetick dogs before I started watching Moishe grow up on your blog! May I ask what some of his breed-specific mannerisms are? Is he a kind of working dog that needs a bunch of jobs? Or more of a chilling out dog?

Honestly I only have personal experience with our weird neighbor's dogs. Because they keep fucking showing up at our farm 😂 but his have really nice temperaments. A couple of his older dogs turned up here like a year or two ago and just vibed around the place like goofuses. We closed them in our shed/pen area to keep them safe while we tries to contact the breeder and they were here for over 24 hours and just... chill. Very sweet. Very smelly. Very dog neutral and people friendly

In general the impression I get about coonhounds is they should be like that -- although I hear some lines or breeds can produce aggression problems, like a friend of mine with a redbone says she hears about aggression popping up sometimes with those but idk

They're pretty much only used by old school hunting guys who are pretty offline compared to a lot of other dog breed communities and who tend to have pretty different priorities as well. But I will say that the local blueticks have all been exuberant at times but easygoing, not hyper or anything. And hounds should always be dogs that 'pack up' easily which is nice in multidog households

Its always a toss-up how a dog from lines mostly bred to live in kennels will adjust to living in a house but all the coonhounds I know of who are pets have adjusted just fine and tend to be lazy in the house

Moses has been an easy-ass puppy. He self regulates astoundingly well and I'm honestly jealous because he will do stuff like PUT HIMSELF DOWN FOR NAPS when he gets tired, which... **looks at Lambchop** lol

My mom has been really sick recently and not as able to get him out and was expressing guilt about it to me the other day because Moses has been just FINE about napping with her in bed all day apart from a couple like, 30min bouts of puppy silliness/zoomies etc. Like he just doesn't care.

Definitely not the same vibe as, like, breeds that you hear "they need a job" about, lol, I think those tend to be herding type breeds and they adjust less well to being pets than scenthounds, when you take one from a working farm sitution and make it a house pet, but that might be an overly broad generalization

With coonhounds they're not going to be super like, handler sensitive (or sensitive at all lol) and that's where the "stubborn" thing comes in I think. Although since Moses showed up SO early, and we have been raising him carefully and with lots of puppy culture foundations, his handler focus is honestly much stronger than I expected but I don't know how much of that is due to his innate temperament etc as I don't know any of his immediate relatives. In general the adult coonhounds that I've met seem to have a "yes I love you so so much let's kiss okay I'm going to go do hound stuff now bye :)" approach to people, lol

In general they'll follow their noses!!!!!!! They'll run off and they'll bay. That's what they were bred to do. Moses' baying is really weird sounding and yelpy right now like a goofy teenage boy 😂 we started really strong with his recall and check-in training to try and balance any "running off" tendencies he might develop in adulthood but right now he's amazing and gets lots of cheese for coming to find us when he has off leash time around the farm. Unlike some other dogs that might have "run off and tree an animal" urges, coonhounds don't seem to be fence testers in my limited experience

BUT YEAH I have a data set of like, 4 dogs?? In terms of personal experience. Anyone else who has more please feel free to weigh in. If you got this far, here is my mom's little buddy for ya :)

[annoyangle]

Do you have a favorite natural disaster that happened in human history?

APART FROM THE ONES I CAUSED, BIG FAN OF THE TUNGUSKA EVENT! THE UNIVERSE HURLS A BIG LUMP'A STUFF AT THE PLANET! TALK ABOUT A COSMIC WAKE UP CALL! YOU GUYS DON'T KNOW HOW LUCKY YOU WERE! IMAGINE IF THAT THING HAD HIT A POPULATED AREA INSTEAD OF SOME UNDERPOPULATED FOREST LAND! YOU'D STILL BE CARRYING ON ABOUT THE "DAY OF FIRE" OR WHATEVER HILARIOUS NAME YOU'D COME UP WITH TO COMMEMORATE THE DESTRUCTION! DON'T BELIEVE THOSE GOOFUSES WHO SAY IT WAS A MICRO BLACK HOLE OR A PORTAL OPENING OR A SPACE SHIP LANDING OR ANY OF THAT. THAT'S JUST SILLY. ALL CONSPIRACIES ARE TRUE, BUT FACTS ARE STILL FACTS, BUB! THERE WERE ONLY THREE RECORDED SPACE SHIP CRASHES ON THIS PLANET - THE TRILAZZX BETA, THEIR SCION THE TRIMAXION DRONE, AND OF COURSE THE SUPPRESSED, SPECIES-WIDE MEMORY-ERASED LANDING OF THE MARTIAN INVASION FORCE IN THE 1890s! YOU CAN THANK THE MEN IN BLACK FOR THE REASON YOU DON'T ALL HAVE SPACE TRAVEL, RAY GUNS, HOVER TECH AND ANTIGRAVITY SWIMWEAR NOW. ALL THAT STUFF WAS SUPPRESSED "FOR THE GOOD OF HUMANITY"!

[ask-the-bluewallau]

GREETINGS AND SALUTATIONS!!

Welcome to the BLUEWALL AU!

A humble Kindergarten AU where these goofs are Freshmen!

Now, I must confess that I have a whole LOT planned for this AU. So please, go FERAL [but not too feral ;] when asking!

This includes :

Family Members

Changes in Relationships between Characters

Waiting-to-be-discovered Bluewall Lore

And YOU got the power to change and discover ANY OF THIS by asking! There are stories to be MADE damn it >:DD

Speaking of asking, I think you should know some stuff about how this will opperate.

This is probably pretty important stuff right here

Oh yeah, Rules here :

There are three categories of ask receivers :

Students and Guards

Mrs. Otis (Principal)

Me!

You can continue events and conversations! Think of it like texting, you can respond to my responses!

However, the outcome and effects your ask has on a character is COMPLETELY up to me so, be wise with what you say.

IN ORDER FOR THIS TO PROPERLY WORK THOUGH.

I highly suggest to not use Anon to easily differentiate yourself from the crowd of Anons, however!

If you do plan to use Anon, I beg of you, choose some sort of defrentiator, whether that's with a code word or symbol at the very start of your ask.

Otherwise it's gonna be like :

It's just easier for me, hyeheh ^^

As for uploading,

I will try my very best to upload every (possibly other) weekend? But, y'know, school n' stuff. So. Just hang with me if you have the patience too ,:)

And also..

Orange prolly means it's something worth asking about.

Blue is simply emphasis.

So, take note of that :]

[masquayla-the-splendid]

Istg if I go on the SatAM tag one more time and see some goofuses throw unessecary shade I will have to intervene./hj

I mean I don't like Sonic Underground, but I don't go into the tags making consistent posts about how much I think it sucks and does not deserve to exist.

Like bro if you got that much distaste toward the show, then how about you make your own tag for such festivities? (Ex. Sonic SADam. Get it? Because yas think it's sad that the show exists?)

But oh, it's not as fun when genuine fans see slander on the tag of the thing they like.

I mean I get that I can just block and move on, but like it's also just as easy to have a basic level of decency and spit on something else that's actually worth your time. Like idk, Forces. But that's something we can all agree that sucks, so it takes the fun out of poking at fans of a very niche show I guess. Grow up, you square heads.

Sally's relevance won't kill you, and neither will people sharing their passion about a fictional character from an obscure media source you happen to dislike.

Okay rant over. Have a good day! :]

[artbybai]

Thoughts on avians, birds even?

If you were a bird what bird would you be?

Hecc yeah birds, those funky flying fluffadoodles

Tbh their personalities never fit their aesthetic, and I love them for that

Whether it be big, regal birds of prey that gotta hop around on the ground awkwardly and act like big goofuses, or tiny angry chatty lil house wrens yelling about something in their precious, fussy manner, whilst (alongside chickadees) generally being the equivalent of miniature winged chihuahuas, you can’t go wrong with birds.

Birds are the best. If I were a bird I’d probably want to be an owl of some kind (Guardians of Ga’Hoole was my gateway to joining the Bird Fandom LOL)

[ladylingua]

just some ninth house goofuses at comic con today

[neptuniadoesstuff]

Smtn...

I feel like some ppl (irl & online) don't understand that when they do smtn bad & they know it's bad & yet still do it & then get mad at the ppl criticizing them for doing the bad thing... I feel like they really shouldn't be doing it if they REALLY knew how bad it was.

But when you're also criticizing someone for doing a bad thing, you must remind them what they are doing is not good & if they don't listen, it's best try at a different time. But repeat after me, DO NOT GO HARRASSING THEM OR SEND OUT ANYONE TO ATTACK THEM! If they however (the person doing the bad thing) ends up being toxic over your criticism of what they're doing is bad, best you can do is report, block, & go away & not ever talk to that person again until they find out BY THEMSELVES what they're doing is bad.

This is just smtn I wrote about today due to some posts of a person's on here who I'm not gonna say the same of (even if they uh... made some very strange stuff about a certain group of ppl who did some horrible things irl which I'm not gonna get into bcs... I h8 irl tragedies & talking about them makes me uncomfortable as all hell & the fact there's a fanbase about those guys makes me... feel weird... AGAIN NOT SAYING WHO, I AM NOT MAKING U GOOFUSES FIND THIS PERSON BCS SOME PPL ON HERE DO NOT UNDERSTAND COMMON SENSE!)

[justinmoviereviews]

The Class of 2022

Bringing this feature back out. Some pretty good films this year.

Dog - Reid Carolin and Channing Tatum

If a movie about a damaged guy getting saved during his darkest night by a dog doesn’t make you weep, you don’t have a dog.

Barbarian - Zach Cregger

This movie slaps so fucking hard.

Don’t Worry Darling - Olivia Wilde

Basically I think this one was killed by its press tour. I think the critic class decided liking this wasn’t worth the risk so collectively expelled it, but going in without any idea anything had even happened I thought it was the best movie so far in the nascent Deconstructing Toxic Masculinity genre that’s become one of the few acceptable avenues for mainstream films. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the twist is so much more interesting than the Stepford Wives aura that hangs over this suggests it will be. And it’s a pretty good looking flick.

Bros - Nicholas Stoller

A very sexually explicit, funnier than average romcom. Allison’s take: I can’t tell if he’s making fun of romcom tropes or just using them. 

The Banshees of Inisherin - Martin McDonagh

More than any movie he’s ever made, this one invites interpretation. I’m still working on it, and I don’t imagine there’s a definitive explanation, but right now the one I like is that this is a movie about death. I’m not sure whose death. I look forward to watching this several more times.

Confess, Fletch - Greg Mottola

Has there ever been a talented actor worse at understanding his gifts than Jon Hamm? The dude is an unknowable phantom with the face of Adonis, not an Apatow comedian. This is not a bad movie, but the guy at the center of it doesn’t fit and never feels natural. They would have been better off with just about anyone else. Even an unknown would have worked better than our man.

Amsterdam - David O. Russell

For awhile this movie has a Thomas Pynchon quality to it, where a ragtag group of goofuses stumble into an evil global shadow conspiracy they’ll never defeat or understand or even directly encounter. Its so good for a minute that I wondered if Thomas Pynchon was somehow involved (maybe he is, I didn’t look into it). The end wraps everything up too neatly to really spin into anything great, and it ends up as an enjoyably forgettable ride, which I guess befits David O. Russell’s late career stage as a guy living in the purgatory of Netflix after missing a bunch of Oscars he still can’t believe he didn’t win. 

Prey - Dan Trachtenberg

I don’t know. It’s solid, I guess.

Emily the Criminal - John Patton Ford

This is a B action movie that caught extra attention because it stars Aubrey Plaza. A lot of people liked it. I’m happy for them.

Nope - Jordan Peele

Let’s see here. My first take was that it was his weakest movie because it didn’t have any neat core conceit at its center. Get Out was a revelation, and Us was I thought basically a perfect movie, a really cool idea from a filmmaker very good at realizing his cool ideas. Nope is more of a regular old flick. But the more I thought about it the more I saw that as a strength. I think most movies are not as good as Us, but it’s ultimately kind of a very expensive Twilight Zone episode. This movie is doing something he hasn’t done yet, which implies he’s going to continue to grow and get more ambitious. I still think there’s something a little undercooked about this one, and the mystery at the center is a little less cool than I think he wanted, but its beginning to seem very clear that greatness awaits.

Men - Alex Garland

If this guy wants to spin conceits out for awhile and then have his movies devolve into lunatic madness, I’ll come out for it every single time. The title and current political moment made me think this would be more of an indictment of the gender, another in the series of aforementioned Deconstructing Toxic Masculinity movies, and it’s sort of that, but its much more elemental, personal, and bizarre. I fucking love this director.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery - Rian Johnson

Like most sequels, some of the plot points go over the top as the movie attempts to outdo the original, and the billionaires are actually dumb plotline feels ripped directly out of leftist Twitter, but as long as Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig are involved I’ll watch every Knives Out movie they make. This is what happens when you let talented people do their jobs. Also as far as I know this is the first movie that includes Covid as a central life event. I love that for some reason. It is a central life event, its like making a movie about World War II.

Bodies Bodies Bodies - Halina Reijn

I’ll be honest, I was pretty drunk when I watched this on a plane. So this will be an impressionistic review. I thought it was pretty fun. There’s one scene that feels like it was written by people outrightly mocking woke culture. Pete Davidson is in it.

Everything Everywhere All At Once - Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert

For the first hour I thought this was the Matrix, and wished that, as a movie about the literally unlimited nature of the universe, it was a little more creative. The second hour changed that thought. It is basically the Matrix, but while that movie was drab and minor key (by design) this movie is colorful and kaleidoscopic and wild and never ever ever not fun. The moviest movie I’ve seen in a long time, by which I mean a piece of art that could only be a movie, and one that pushes into new places what a movie can and should do. It’s big and beautiful and weird and exciting, and at 139 minutes it whooshes by. We’re in a weird place with representation at the moment, but this movie doesn’t feel like its correcting an error about who gets to star in Kung Fu movies, instead the Chinese heritage of the family is a natural part of the plot and makes the movie more than it otherwise would be. It’s hard to imagine this isn’t the best film of the year.

The Northman - Robert Eggers

The verisimilitude alone is worth the price of admission. I can’t think of a movie that’s setting feels so real since the Revenant. This is, and I guess I mean this as a compliment, the most normal movie Robert Eggers will ever make. If the Lighthouse was pure uncut Eggers, just a gonzo madhouse of his shit, this is basically Gladiator with a couple of spirit visions, which come to think of it Gladiator also had. I looked into it and learned that his compromise with the studio to make a big budget picture was to sacrifice final cut, which makes a ton of sense in retrospect and which I’m guessing is responsible for the movie’s worst parts, like when the main character monologues to himself about his motivation and plans for no reason. This is my take: the whole time I watched it I wanted it to be weirder. But as a bloody Viking flick, it’s a good movie. 

The Menu - Mark Mylod

A movie about a great chef who got so tired of cooking for shitheads that he went insane. Pitched at a tone that, for me, made any level of insanity make sense. The characters in this movie aren’t unlikeable so much as they are urgently deserving of death. And you’re never, for a minute, worried they aren’t going to receive it. It’s been a good year for fun horror flicks.

X - Ti West

Except for the obvious reason--they’re both primal feelings--it’s never been fully apparent to me why these movies are always structured to be one half sexual titillation then one half slasher-horror. But while in the 80s they just pumped them out cuz they made money, now we’re getting all sorts of deconstructions and meta commentaries and sex as terror merges. Anyway, this is the most cerebral sex ‘n’ death horror movie I’ve ever seen; the most knotty, the most intellectualized, the most constructed in its creators’ heads. I felt a sourness at first--Barbarian and The Menu are two brilliant horror movies that do something genuinely new rather than comment on the old method in increasingly myopic ways--but that’s gone now. The things this movie does are just too fun and smart. I guess every one of these flicks is in one way or another punishing you for enjoying the T&A it gave you in its first hour, but this is the first to make you watch its monsters actually fuck. The final line is both a compliment to the movie I’m not sure it deserves, and an objectively fantastic last line.

White Noise - Noah Baumbach

Nothing says Fuck It Netflix money quite like the existence of this movie, an admiring adaptation of a book that’s essentially a novelization of Jean Baudrillard’s ideas. I remember liking the novel a lot, and finding it, for a book about mass hysteria over everyday life, oddly soothing. This movie is mostly faithful to the book, but it isn’t soothing. Baumbach uses chaos and claustrophobia to convey the story’s existential anxiety rather than the artificial feeling of meek contentment that is DeLillo’s chosen mode. The movie is noisy and full of static and incredibly ugly, like watching an 80s sitcom through a fishbowl. Interesting choices, but not pleasant ones, which matters when you’re watching a movie. But Noah Baumbach is an obvious fan, and he understands the ideas he’s working with. He even gets in some pretty good Noah Baumbach jokes. It’s an amazingly timely story too, as we head into the fourth year of a global pandemic that has foregrounded our collective anxiety and shrunken our worlds to a degree that can’t not be causing long term damage. There’s a scene here where a guy in a quarantine camp riles the crowd by demanding his fear not only be recognized but made the center of the public’s attention, which if anything is quaint when put up against what the MAGA mutants in this country actually want. But here’s what I kept thinking about while I watched a movie that I liked but that never truly distinguished itself from its very good source material: in 1985 Don DeLillo wrote a book about the fear of death as a uniquely modern condition of our sad and shrinking reality. These days, that condition gets called anxiety and we validate it on social media. Our culture sucks now.

Father of the Bride - Gary Alazraki

Shit! I watched this right before I got married. I didn’t realize it was a 2022 release. It’s pretty good! Nice and warm. Andy Garcia is a boss. Recommended for right before you get married.

Elvis - Baz Luhrmann

- Here’s a movie I thought of when I was watching this one that I think would be good: young Elvis spends all his free time watching the black people in his town make the music he loves. Most of the movie takes place in churches and after-hours clubs. It’s musical performance heavy. It ends right as he’s being discovered.

- Here’s what I assumed this movie would be: A shy kid with a lot of talent gets discovered by a sleazy manager. He rises to the top, meets a girl, then money, fame, ego, and the influence of shady characters bring him down. A lot of musical performances.

Baz Luhrmann likes his spectacle, but I can’t believe how shoddy and lazy this movie actually is. There’s no structure, no real story, no actions of consequence. It's a three hour montage of events I don’t even believe really happened. Did Elvis really feel strongly about Bobby Kennedy’s death? I sort of doubt it. Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman were trite, but here’s a director looking his audience in the eye and saying “I know you hogs like this shit.”

Tar - Todd Field

This movie is such a slow burn I didn’t even realize she kept two houses until it was almost over. It doesn’t tell anything and it takes its sweet time showing. Some of its early scenes feel largely pointless. I wasn’t sure why at first, other than the fact that it’s a type of storytelling, but upon consideration I get it: the movie is told in the first person. It doesn’t tell you anything for the same reason I don’t wake up every morning and tell myself the address of my house. This is the story of a monster told from her point of view, and as the movie progresses you start to see the cracks in her self-image. Its slow and controlled and quiet, with an intensity hovering offscreen that peaks its head in just enough to let you know its there. Because of the narrative style there’s a ton of stuff I missed, and more than any other movie I’ve seen this year I look forward to watching this again.

All Quiet on the Western Front - Edward Berger

It felt for awhile like we were done with old fashioned war flicks, and modern war movies would all have some kind of stylistic or thematic bent. But this is about as simplistic and plain a story as you can come up with. So maybe the lesson is you can do whatever you want as long as you do it really well. This is an incredibly effective movie. A battle scene where the French close in on the Germans like an unfeeling horde of aliens will stay with me for a long time. A scene at the end which exposes the brutal evil of men who control the lives of other men will as well. Maybe I’m getting softer, but this is the most haunting and disturbing war movie I’ve ever seen. We can do terrible, unspeakable things to each other, and we can do them for no reason. One way of understanding this movie is that it’s about the humanity of a nothing special enlisted man, and follows him until he finally loses it. It’s also about the machinations of power that control his life from afar without any humanity at all. Also, it looks and sounds incredible.

The Fabelmans - Steven Spielberg

At this point, you should know what you’re getting from Spielberg. His movies are impeccably made, stories told seamlessly with warmth and craftsmanship. He’s the ultimate major key filmmaker, with an intuitive understanding of how to compel audiences that the movie says he’s had since he was a kid. The Fabelmans is, for better or worse, a Spielberg movie. My sense is that how you feel about it will be determined by how you feel about him. If you think he’s the best to ever do it, you’ll probably appreciate this career retrospective about how he discovered the power and joy of cinema. If you’re cooler on him, maybe you’ll wonder why he gets to do it but Martin Scorsese or Federico Fellini, two guys who also probably grew up with cameras attached to their hands, don’t. I guess the obvious answer is that those guys never would, which is probably one of the reasons I like them more.

Black Adam - Jaume Collet-Serra

Jaume Collet-Serra is responsible for two of the best schlock masterpieces of the century, the Shallows and the Commuter, so I am hopeful he’s just paying his dues now before they’ll let him go back to cooking those up, and not that he’s been swallowed by the Comic Book Movie Industrial Complex, which really does gobble up everything cool or interesting or unique about filmmaking. That said, like most of them are, this is a perfectly fine beer watch. The Rock, who is straight up one of the most likeable people on the planet, has been a real life superhero ever since he didn’t care what your name was.

Triangle of Sadness - Ruben Ostlund

I got big The Lobster vibes from this one. Both from the structure--part 1 takes place in a hospitality center, part 2 takes place in the wilderness--and from the overt strangeness that keeps you on your toes the entire time; both movies could go anywhere. Ostlund makes so many choices that are so fun; one highlight being a drunken mock debate over economic policy between the ship’s raging alcoholic captain and a Russian oligarch who accidentally became incredibly rich and now lives with an acutely Russian nihilistic joie de vivre. The movie begins as a pretty open satire of wealth and grows increasingly hysterical until it suddenly transforms into something else--something smarter and more deft. A bunch of seemingly useless rich people are all forced to pivot into a society where none of their material gifts will benefit them at all, and do better than expected. What is Ostlund saying? I’m not sure. But another way he reminds me of my man Yorgos is that he sets up a wild premise and then explores it as he thinks it would go in real life. Its a fun way to make movies.

Bullet Train - David Leitch

So you’re an excellent filmmaker, just dripping with talent, but you’d rather make snappy action flicks than three hour Capital-F Films about classical music conductors (I loved Tar, just making a point). I can’t believe how good this movie is. Fast, witty, bouncing through timelines and stories with a throughline that keeps expanding and gets fuller and more fun as it chugs along. This is like if Guy Ritchie took better drugs, or if Tarantino didn’t have final cut. Brad Pitt is one of the best actors on the planet if you can find interesting things for him to do. Here he plays a reformed underworld professional who speaks almost entirely through New Age self-improvement jargon as he tries to find a new life path for himself. And that’s maybe the fifth best thing this movie does. 

Argentina, 1985 - Santiago Mitre

This is a pretty downbeat movie. The dialogue is spoken at a low tone, the color palette is dark and brown, it never gets too loud. Knowledge of the country’s history would help--I needed Google for things every Argentinian already knows. Otherwise this is a very straight trial movie, all the way down to the verdict resting on the prosecutor’s ability to give a sufficiently inspiring speech. Most of the movie takes place in the courtroom or a law office. One of the protagonists comes from a comfortably fascist background and at one point has to attend the world’s worst family gathering, but otherwise there’s very little on the periphery.

Nanny - Nikyatu Jusu

The structure is fucked. This movie takes ages to get started and then rushes its ending. It feels very messy and less clear than it wants to be. I'll need to chew on it some more, but I think the idea here is the titular immigrant nanny is carried through a consuming anxiety about the family she left behind by an African spirit that is committed to her survival but isn’t necessarily benevolent. It’s really not a horror movie, and the beats it hits in service of the genre are largely unnecessary and fairly lame--I think we can go ahead and put a period on scary dream jump scares. But despite its flaws, which are all just novice direction shit, I really liked this. It looks great, and it has a control over its tone that makes it consistently engaging even if it doesn’t ever really cohere. I’m starting to think the reason why there are so many good horror movies now is because they’re cheap to make and aren’t beholden to existing IP--essentially they’re a bush league for promising young filmmakers. I suspect Jusu is more interested in exploring the African experience in America than she is in the genre. It will be interesting to see what she does next.

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair - Jane Schoenbrun

I should say that the Internet didn’t invent loneliness, and things like these online sinkholes are just a new outlet for an old problem. If more people are isolating and detaching from reality, that has more to do with our culture and our politics (which the movie knows. A shot of a boarded Toys ‘R’ Us is as grim and unsettling as any of the webcam freakout scenes.) This is an incredibly effective film about a culture I don’t understand and have anxieties about. It seems pretty documented that more people are in fact isolating and detaching, and if they’re leaning into the type of solipsism that creates this stuff, that’s a fertile topic for new filmmakers. Maybe too fertile. Jesus Christ, this movie.

To Leslie - Michael Morris

The thing is, she’s really good in this! She’s not a sympathetic character for most it, she’s a full on addict, using the people who care about her and taking advantage of the Samaritans dumb enough to feel empathy for her. She’s resentful of the help she needs and then livid when people stop helping her. This is a movie I would not have heard about were it not for the insurgent Oscar campaign, but am glad I saw it. Sometimes its nice to watch small, universal stories play out. The third act redemption maybe comes a little too easily, and I’m not sure I buy what inspired it (a Willie Nelson song, apparently), but I’m just noting that for my own memory’s sake. This is a good one.

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths - Alejandro Inarritu

There’s a scene here where the main character climbs up a giant pile of dead bodies until he reaches the top, where Spanish conquistador and founder of Mexico Hernan Cortes is waiting for him, and they get into a conversation about heritage. It’s a ripe scene, and its been set up perfectly, but the conversation isn’t as profound or layered as it could be, or that the height the director is reaching for suggests it should be. Then after a few minutes, some ash from Cortes’s cigarette falls on one of the dead bodies, who sits up to complain about it, and it’s revealed the whole thing is a scene from a film someone is making. Its not the first time and not the last time you want to throttle Inarritu. You’re one of the best filmmakers currently working, why do you keep fucking up your own good ideas with this jokey shit?!

I want to take my time with this movie because it deserves to be carefully considered. It is, without hesitation, the most ambitious movie of the last few years. My theory on Alejandro is that his life’s goal is to be Fellini; both this and Birdman shoot for the same surreal modernism that the Italian legend mastered back in the ‘60s. This one doesn’t get there the same way Birdman didn’t, and one of the reasons, at least in this case, is that he keeps telling us what he’s thinking instead of showing us. This film looks incredible, and the camera moves with the same fluidity it did in Birdman, but he runs out of tricks sooner than he should. His ideas could be conveyed visually, but instead he just has his characters say them out loud. 

All that being said, I loved it. I loved it more than I loved Birdman when I first saw it, before I decided it was a failed version of 8 1/2. This is also a failed version of 8 1/2, but it’s playing with a different set of ideas. Instead of being a satire of the industry, it’s considering Mexican identity, and its ultimately more interested in mortality than in the morass of being alive. It’s incredibly rare to get a director who swings this hard, who’s given the space to work out his ideas like this, or who even has the balls or vision to try. A lot of this movie doesn’t work. But the parts that do are incredibly good, and his visual sensibility is unparalleled. This should be a -10,000 lock for best cinematography, but it won’t win because no one saw it. Which is to the detriment of the discourse. This movie deserves to be debated and raged over. It deserves to have partisans and detractors who crucify each other online. The culture would be infinitely better if we got three of these a year.

Vengeance - B.J. Novak

Parts of this movie are so good I had trouble believing the bad parts could be as bad as they were. A New York journo douchebag goes to deep west Texas for the funeral of a hookup he barely remembers because she’s told her family that they’re in a serious relationship, then stays because he thinks he’s found a podcast. The parts about Texas are fantastic; his dialogue is sharp and interesting--down here we don’t have police, we have Mike and Dan--and incredibly well observed. During a scene at a rodeo somebody is eating a giant barbecue chicken leg, someone else is eating potato chips covered in queso. But B.J. is playing a guy so cartoonishly dopey it feels beamed in from a different, much worse movie (sample dialogue: “Have you ever been in a fight?” “Like a real fight, or like a Twitter fight?”) Scenes where he’s on the phone describing the story to his incredulous producer give off Hallmark Christmas movie vibes. It’s so much worse than the stuff around it that I figured it had to be intentional. Maybe he’s the villain or something. But no, he just learns to love these simple people and their small town. One other thing, Ashton Kutcher, playing a sort of deep Texas ghost, is legitimately amazing here. Easily the best thing in it. If people had seen this he’d have been nominated. It’s that kind of performance.

Babylon - Damien Chazelle

Damien’s learned how to direct. Watching the guy who’s floundered (in my opinion) ever since his his tiny little arthouse flick about ambition put him on the map get these giant scenes to work makes me legitimately happy for him. There’s a moment during the party scene at the beginning where he turns the bacchanalia into an organized dance sequence, which feels like a guy making a choice; we’re going to stick classic film elements in the middle of this chaos, because we like them and we can. As far as I can tell the idea here is simple--turn the end of the silent film era into the fall of Babylon, or the Weimar Republic, or Vichy France, or any other era of decadence that was always going to be on borrowed time. Was it really like that? Is this a story that needed to be told? Who knows? And who cares? Unlike with First Man, he’s justified his decision by doing it well. There’s a scene here where a cruel and careless death cuts to a giant party, and its more effective--drunk and sobering--than when Scorsese did it in the Wolf of Wall Street.

RRR - S.S. Rajamouli

Maybe I’d feel differently if I was better versed in Bollywood; as it stands this film represents the entirety of the industry to me. Maybe this is like showing a person who’s never seen an American movie before the Avengers, and an Indian friend who liked it tells me it is not representative of Bollywood. But it ultimately doesn’t matter. First of all, I think it’s genuinely awesome that this has become such a crossover sensation, and that more people are getting exposed to world cinema. Second of all, this movie whips so much ass. It took me a minute to get used to the style, but once I did I was all the way in. The first film ever to get me pumping my fists in my living room. And a thing I’ve always believed is that being good at dancing is incredibly manly.

KIMI - Steven Soderbergh

There are two ideas in this that I like a lot: 1. what would the kind of trauma most thrillers like this are about do to a person after the movie ends?, and 2. what does a corporation that has to pretend it cares about ethics after #MeToo and Believe Women even though it obviously doesn’t look like in the year of our lord 2022? More than any other top shelf filmmaker I can name, Steven Soderbergh doesn’t seem to have any throughline other than that his movies are all made with a certain level of quality. There’s no thematic cohesion that I can find, other than a healthy dislike for companies and governments, and not really any stylistic one either, other than that his movies are all really neat and tidy. And while he used to get nominated for Oscars, for the past few years he’s seemed to be content pumping out genre flicks like a gun-for-hire Woody Allen, which I wonder if is just him being prescient about the state of the industry now. This is a quick little film, something that comes out by the truckload in the era of Netflix, but if you watched it without knowing who Steven Soderbergh was you’d be surprised by how good it is.

Watcher - Chloe Okuno

Didn’t really respond to this one. The acting’s not great, the pacing is off--she gets pretty scared pretty quickly--and beats that should hit hard land harmlessly. High point: Bucharest seems like a cool city.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio - Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson

Guillermo is very good at putting the things he likes in movies that are ostensibly pretty one-for-them--some of these images belong on his highlight reel. There’s also a sweetness here that’s got his name all over it. This was apparently a years in the making passion project, and I have no doubt the animation is a triumph, but its a status as a Kids Movie papers over some storytelling messiness that bothered me as a person who doesn’t care about kids movies. At its best this movie makes me wish he’d gone full tilt into del Toro creature madness. Fuck the kids, man.

Women Talking - Sarah Polley

My take on this movie was that it’s the first piece of art to explicitly lay out the tenets of modern feminist philosophy, like a No Exit for the 21st Century American leftist political moment. I have never felt less equipped to give my opinion on a film, but suffice to say I liked this and thought it was intellectually interesting. Here’s the best I can do: this is an interesting one. Less interested in anger or revenge than in compassion and the value of forgiveness, and by value I mean worth, as in what do we gain by forgiving and what is the toll that forgiving will take on us? It’s that kind of a movie, managing emotional states with a philosophical detachment. Deal with the problem first, figure out how we feel about it later. Every atrocity visited upon these women is described in a matter of fact way. Nothing is shown.

The Good Nurse - Tobias Lindholm

This is firmly in Movie of the Week territory, all the way up to a soundtrack and establishing shots straight out of Law and Order, elevated slightly by its inclusion of two of our better actors.

Top Gun: Maverick - Joseph Kosinski

Loses points with me because it sags in the middle; I don’t care about Maverick’s guilt over his friend’s death or his romantic life. It’s great when he’s in the air. This whole movie should take place in a plane. Late period Tom Cruise is beloved by many, but not by me. I feel like he should have more to say at this point in his career than lying about his age.

The Whale - Darren Aronofsky

A very strange film. I’m not sure what to say about it. I wouldn’t call it pleasant, exactly. The main character’s morbid obesity seems almost like body horror at times. The plot seems simple enough; a guy makes the decision to remove himself from life after he loses a loved one, but it’s never quite that movie. I’m not sure if he’s a good person or not, or if he’s meant to be. He left his wife and daughter for someone else and was never in their life afterwards, though if you listen to him, he tried to be. I wondered if he’s someone that seeks out the good in others and extends that to himself even if he doesn’t deserve it. But if that’s the case, why is he killing himself? There’s also a religious element that fits in somewhere, but I’m not sure where. I thought about this movie the whole car ride home. I’m still working on it. 

Empire of Light - Sam Mendes

Sam Mendes makes almost comically beautiful movies. This one, about a ragtag group of theater employees in England in 1981, takes place mostly in a movie theater, which is lit up and shot to look like a museum exhibit. This is a perfectly decent flick. It’s well paced, a simple story told well, emotional in the right places without being manipulative. It’s pleasant when its over. Not gutting, but pleasant.

Spiderhead - Joseph Kosinski

Quick, self-contained, well made, not too expensive, fun and kinda trippy, with a neat little twist at the end. I remember watching The Discovery a few years ago and thinking it was going to be the ur-text of a new genre called the Netflix Movie, and buddy was I right. These things now are being assembly-lined out by the dozen, and most of them are largely decent if a little bloodless. Sooner or later they’ll feel so packaged AI will start writing them, but until we get there I’m fine recommending a movie like Spiderhead. It’s a little bloodless in a way the similar genre grind-out KIMI isn’t, but it’s eerie while still being fun, holds its tone almost the whole way through, and includes the best Chris Hemsworth acting I’ve ever seen as a jocky nerd charming sociopath.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - Ryan Coogler

The first one isn’t perfect, but like a lot of people I walked away from it thinking I’d just seen Marvel’s highwater mark. This one is even better. While the original stood above the rest by looking at real racial politics through the lens of a comic book movie, this one doubles down by bringing in a second superhero-ized colonized civilization with its own ideas about how to respond to the world at large and has the two of them meet and discuss. It even throws in for good measure a complex political dynamic at the top of the Wakanda power structure where every argument makes sense and is defensible. And while my biggest issue with the first one was that it could have used more world-building, some of the scenes here look genuinely great. All the standard Marvel movie objections apply--the dorky jokes, the dumb action scenes, the weirdly dark color palette these things are apparently mandated to have--but Ryan Coogler is possibly the only director franchised into the MCU who seems interested in making or allowed to make real movies.

Pleasure - Ninja Thyberg

A thing I learned the other day is that the movie Deepthroat was one of the highest grossing films of 1975. It is amazing to imagine the families of America lining up en masse to watch a movie, the premise of which is that a woman was born with her clitoris inside of her throat. I wouldn’t call Pleasure a return to a more sex positive past, exactly, but it’s explicitly sexually graphic in a way I’ve never really seen before outside of an actual porno. Parts of it are about the dark side of the porn industry, but other parts are about the light side, or the harmless side, and most of the characters are basically decent people. In fact one case this movie is making, maybe unintentionally, is that the ugly parts of the porn star life aren’t really any different than the ugly parts of the Hollywood life, or the sports life, or the investment banking life. The cost of success in this economy is your humanity, whether that means getting double-raw dogged in the ass or outsourcing a factory to Pakistan.

Ambulance - Michael Bay

Worth watching. Pretty fun. Basically incoherent. I will use this space for two observations: 1. Michael Bay has a fully singular visual style that if I had to give name to I would call Saturday afternoon barbecue full of hopefully not racist white men getting weepy after the fifth round of Coors Light, but its his, and as far as I can tell he created it, which means he fits my definition of an auteur. 2. Jake Gyllenhaal might actually be my favorite actor. He is incredible in this movie. I want to call it my second favorite performance of the year after Cate Blanchett in Tar. He’s not the most naturally gifted actor, it will never come as naturally to him as it does to, for instance, Cate Blanchett, but he makes up for that by going completely in on every role. He slips into raw nerve-ending panic within the first five minutes of being on screen in this movie. I think he also might be one the smartest actors in Hollywood. He has one particular line reading in this about a collection of plush flamingos that is so good, and so indicative that he knows exactly what he’s doing and what makes what he’s doing good, it singlehandedly bumps the movie up a letter grade.

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #164: To Fall By Treachery!

October, 1977

Oh hey look!

Whirlwind, Living Laser, and Power Man Not That One! Apparently the theme of this iteration of the Lethal Legion is The Worst.

Then again, the previous version was run by Grim Reaper. So maybe every version of the Lethal Legion is just terrible.

What even qualifies these guys to be the Lethal Legion? Sure, two of them were in the previous incarnation but I don’t think Grim Reaper okayed any franchising. The man is very particular about intellectual property.

Not much to say about the cover. A cool enough battle scene with the Lethal Legion kicking the Avengers’ collective asses. Except for the POV person.

Maybe the Avengers would be doing better if Hank Pym had stayed Ant-Man. Because lets be honest: Ant-Man? Kicks ass. Yellowjacket? Largely ineffectual.

Anyway, lets begin.

WITH FANSERVICE.

He’s single, ladies and gentlemen.

Anyway again, with a filler the previous issue, the Avengers have finally gotten some quiet days to relax, heal, and clean up from the previous several catastrophes.

Now the Avengers can finally look into what is even the deal with Wonder Man. He was raised as a zombie due to the Grim Reaper’s scheming but regained his own memories somehow. During the Grim Reaper’s attack, Wonder Man revealed that he wasn’t quiet human anymore, with eyes that crackled with energy. Ultron’s encephalo-ray had only a temporary effect on him due to this.

So whats the deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal??

Well. He’s become a creature of living energy. His cells are like miniature fusion reactors more than living tissue. Even though his body seems to simulate normal life-signs and functions, he has a totally unique physiology (for now).

He probably wasn’t even dead those years he was dead! Confusing, I know. But perhaps it would be better to say that he was dormant and... metamorphosing. Like a beautiful ionic butterfly.

These answers come from a scientific huddle between Tony Stark, Beast, Black Panther, Yellowjacket, and Alice the lady biochemist.

Her last name is apparently Nugent and she becomes Doctor Spectrum at some point. The things one learns when one just wants to know if a character has a last name.

Anyway, Beast was part of this scientific mosh-pit but he cuts out early, feeling superfluous. Why would Tony Stark even call in a lady bio-chemist? Doesn’t he know that Beast worked in a bio-lab and also is currently insecure about his usefulness to the team?

Doesn’t help that because Beast was too busy making jokes, Black Panther got to all the best exposition before he could.

So basically Beast is feeling underappreciated and useless.

This kind of goes back a ways. Not only has Beast felt useless on the team due to being knocked out or kidnapped or whatever so many times, he also feels like everyone is judging him by his cover and forgetting what he can do. Told to carry heavy things. Yelled at for joking. Disregarded when actual science stuff happens.

Things have gotten so bad he actually misses Patsy, where before he seemed to resent her presence.

I miss Patsy too.

Anyway, can anything break Beast out of this funk? Maybe a dozen hot dogs with mustard.

Except no. The cart guy runs when he sees a blue gorilla man in a trenchcoat very politely attempting to engage in commerce.

WILL NOTHING BREAK BEAST OUT OF HIS- wait what’s happening.

A mob of women has spontaneously manifested to fangirl over Beast. Just clamoring and trying to touch his fur and he has the biggest shit eating grin.

I guess these girls don’t hate and fear mutants. Although its my theory that the Marvel universe is just full of furries because Tigra faced a very similar response in issue #215 when she was on the Avengers roster.

People in the Marvel U just love people with a full-body fur coat.

And are rudely handsy and slut shamey. For shame, the Marvel public.

ANYWAY. Believe it or not, Beast getting his esteem back via effusive female appreciation actually ties into the plot.

A mysterious monocle man with an N ring drives by the growing crowd and hopes that Beast doesn’t recognize him. OH IF ONLY HE DIDN’T HAVE TO DRIVE HIMSELF LIKE SOME KIND OF PROLE.

But, yeah, no, Galactus could run by and Beast wouldn’t notice it right now. You’re good, monocle guy. Well, not morally. You know what I mean.

Monocle man heads to the docks to meet up with... POWER MAN (no not that one).

But the original. The cheap knockoff version of Wonder Man. Eric Josten. He who did a crime and destroyed the Avengers just because he was smitten with Enchantress. And then quit crime because she abandoned him. And then recrimed because Black Widow told him to. And also was in the first Lethal Legion even though there were no morally dubious ladies to tell him to. That Power Man.

Wanna know something hilarious? Between then and now, Luke Cage beat the shit out of Josten for possession of the Power Man name. And Luke Cage doesn’t even really like the name. Perhaps beating up Eric Josten was reward enough.

Eric Josten doesn’t like being reminded that he lost his own, uninspired name and hucks a crate weighing tons at Mysterious Monocle Man, or Count Nefaria for short.

Count Nefaria would be dead and this story would be a lot shorter had he not been smart enough to hide behind a hologram.

He offers to increase Josten’s power should he agree to be in his employ and dang but Josten is impressed by this dude not getting crushed by a crate. He’s in.

Count Nefaria sets him his first task: breaking two others out of prison. We can guess who because they are on the cover.

SEVERAL DAYS LATER, the Whizzer is relevant to this book again.

He’s listening to the news, as old people are wont to do, and not being retired very well. For example, he reads about a prison break and wonders if the Avengers will need help corralling the escapees. And hears about a bank robbery that the police are helpless to stop and immediately springs into action, getting into costume and racing towards the door.

And nearly kills Scarlet Witch.

She was coming to visit his old man self because at this point, he’s still her dad. And to avoid running over her, he slams himself into a wall. ... I know people prefer Magneto as the twins’ dad but are we absolutely sure that this man isn’t Quicksilver’s dad?

Anyway, Wanda starts yelling at him for almost dying again. Whats he doing risking having another heart attack and going out to fight bank robbers? You’re retired, the Whizzer! Tony Stark gave you a nice, undisclosed job and you have a nice home and at least one child who visits! Relax and enjoy your retirement!

And then she steals the bank robbery all for herself.

Also, we finally get the retcon for that time Scarlet Witch flew with Wanda wishing she still had that experimental flying belt she was testing for Stark. Everyone get that? EXPERIMENTAL FLYING BELT. But it didn’t work so we’ll never see it again.

Plot hole filled.

At the bank robbery, the obvious suspects are bank robbering. Living Laser, Whirlwind, and Villain Formerly Known As Power Man. But they are bank robbering on Count Nefaria’s orders.

Hmm... why would a richie rich hire supervillains to rob a bank? Or drive his own car?

But no time to wonder about that. This is an Avengers book so lets see some Avengers. Lets see some Avengers entering the scene by smacking Living Laser in the face with a shield.

Because if there’s one constant its that Living Laser definitely deserves to get hit in the face with a shield.

Although. I’m not sure whats wrong with Hank Pym here. He’s all standing not shrunk but telling Cap he’ll totally shrink on command but why wouldn’t he already be shrunk? Wasp is already shrunk. She knows where its at.

So this is a fight.

Power Man charges forward and WHAM!s Cap before he can get his shield back.

Weirdly, Cap doesn’t recognize him. Despite Power Man embarrassing the kooky quartet and being the impetus behind Cap rage-quitting the team like a Hawkeye.

... So maybe that’s why he doesn’t recognize him. On purpose.

Apparently Hank did finish those power-ups to his and Jan’s powerset he promised to do before he got amnesia because he and Wasp are faster than ever.

Nearby, Black Panther squares up against Whirlwind because... ...? I guess he probably has the best reflexes on the team. Or maybe they have a grudge match because of that one time they fought in a garage.

Anyway, Whirlwind puts the spin cycle on Black Panther.

Geez. Its like when a cat grabs the pull cord for a ceiling fan.

Cap breaks off to catch him which loses the Avengers the advantage since Living Laser is able to recover.

Remember, he once took over a South American country. He was a big deal in his intro issues and a significantly less of a big deal anytime else.

Free of distractions and standing in front of the Perez store, Living Laser prepares to atomize both Cap and the Panther when suddenly Scarlet Witch enters the fight and is MVP again.

I’m digging that she’s consistently so competent recently.

She causes a water main to break, geysering Living Laser up into the air, and causing thousands in property damage that Tony Stark will probably have to pay for.

Huh. Its not clear whether this is her upgraded control of nature powerset or the probability manipulation one. It could go either way.

With Scarlet Witch evening and perhaps bamboozling the odds, Power Man convinces the other two that its time to go. Living Laser melts the street into tar to slow the Avengers’ pursuit.

So the Avengers don’t even bother. Cap decides its too risky for Yellowjacket and Wasp to pursue alone. There will be another chance to get those goofs.

In the meantime, he reflects that the team has been falling short of its rep lately. A subject which he has a lot of bitter, unspoken words about.

Meanwhile, in a secret laboratory, Nefaria has wind blowing his cape indoors. Perhaps small vents set near the floor.

Anyway, there are some scientists. And they are working on something called Project N because of course Count Nefaria would have a Project N.

These scientists were in Nefaria’s employ when last he showed up and tried to blackmail the world with a Doomsmith Command System because the obvious step up from weirdly squeamish Not-Mafia leader was Obvious Bond Villain.

He was stopped by the X-Men but Thunderbird died stupidly and pointlessly, punching a jet to death.

The scientists quit when Nefaria couldn’t pay them, having gone bankrupt on his Obvious Bond Villain scheme but now he has bank robbery money to get them their back pay so they’ll finish the project for him.

One of the scientists even helped design the machine Zemo used to create Wonder Man and later Power Man.

And speaking of Power Man, those three idiots Nefaria duped into working for him are the ideal subjects for the project.

DUN DUN DUN?

Oh and once the Lethal Legion has exhausted their usefulness and Nefaria has sent them off to their doom, he will enjoy “dismissing” the scientists. A phrasing that none of them decide is at all ominous nor do they draw a connection between themselves and the other lackies that Nefaria just said he was going to get rid of.

I mean, look at this. Look at how the lettering changes for that line. He is definitely going to kill them and is only being slightly subtle about it.

Whats that thing about the difference between Intelligence and Wisdom as DnD concepts again?

Meanwhile upstairs, the Lethal Legion squabble. Because most villains dislike each other. I think its a matter of big personalities.

For example, Living Laser is complaining that bank robbing is beneath him. And fair enough. His MO tends to lean more towards pointless destruction and coups. Whirlwind doesn’t like to work for anyone else. Plus, this mansion is dusty and there are no servants so Whirldwind correctly deduces that Nefaria has gone broke and is using the three of them to steal him some quick, easy cash.

But Power Man believes that Nefaria is going to boost their powers and doesn’t think the other two should be so high and mighty when he had to break them out of jail.

Before this verbal spat can escalate, Nefaria calls them down to the lab to totally increase their powers swearsies.

The next day, the Avengers sit around and gossip.

Even though Iron Man is the Avengers Chairman he’s been awfully absent lately. Sure, his employer (how did anyone ever fall for this?) Tony Stark has been having troubles but that’s no excuse! The Avengers need their leader in this trying time!

And Captain America intends to discuss that very subject! Once they have quorum. DEMOCRACY!

Beast finally shows up and brings them up to quorum. He’s been missing for two days but hey, bright side, he’s in a lot better mood.

Captain America: “Beast! Where have you been for the past two days?”

Beast: “Well... I promised Barb, Sue, Melanie and Paty I wouldn’t tell -- but it was a gas!”

Has Beast just come back from an orgy? He’s gone for two days, in the company of several women who presumably were the ones who were groping him on the street, and he smugly insinuates that he’s not going to kiss and tell.

(Fun? Fact: Paty is a reference to Paty Greer, a Marvel artist and Head of Production. That’s, uh, an interesting way to cameo a coworker.)

I can’t believe that this is where Beast’s insecurity plotline was heading. Or rather, I could because I’ve read these issues before, but if I hadn’t I can’t believe that this is where Beast’s insecurity plotline was heading.

I’m not even mad.

Oh anyway suddenly a car is thrown in through the window.

The Lethal Legion have returned for a rematch.

Cap tells the Avengers to hang back until they can be sure that the injured Wasp is okay then they can attack as a group. TEAM WORK, y’know?

But Power Man inadvertently activates Wonder Man’s McFly button by calling the Avengers cowards for not immediately leaping at people who threw a car at them.

I mean, he couldn’t have known that Wonder Man has been dealing with a fear of death, not eased by learning he didn’t even actually die the first time.

Actually, that’s what has Wonder Man so nettled in this particular instance. Power Man went through the same process he did but he didn’t pay the same price Wonder Man did. He didn’t die. He didn’t become some inhuman (but not Inhuman) thing. So fuck you Power Man, you can’t be as strong as Wonder Man because you haven’t earned-

WHUMP!

Yeah. Wonder Man that wasn’t the most brilliant move right there.

Of course, one setback and Wonder Man’s confidence shatters and he’s hesitating in battle again. Of course freezing up in the midst of three supervillains is REALLY ILL-ADVISED.

So despite Cap’s tactical plan going to blork he figures heck with it, charge anyway.

And having draped an unconscious Wasp over his arm and declared that medically there’s nothing more he can do for her, Yellowjacket leaves her and joins in. Also, calls dibs on Power Man. Because that’s how superheroics work.

Usually superheroes also stop crimes instead of waiting for people to attack them at home but the Avengers flipped the script.

Beast leaps at Whirlwind and clings to his back. And manages to hold on despite the spin cycle! Good job Beast!

But then Power Man just peels him right off Whirlwind and punches him into the horizon. If this comic weren’t a coward, he would have made the Team Rocket twinkle.

At least now he’ll be air dried after running through the wash.

Power Man then goes looking to finish off Wonder Man. Professional rivalry or some such? But Yellowjacket intercepts him because he’s got Dibs. And he also enhanced his supersuit by integrating his disruptor gun into the suit powered by his shoulder wing vibrations.

See, now the giant shoulder wings aren’t completely pointless!

Actually, I think he uses them to fly? But I like to think it was mostly ornamentation. Like some nice rims on your car? Because the Yellowjacket suit was originally designed when Hank was going through a chemical induced disassociative middle life crisis episode?

But So Last Season strikes so soon and while Yellowjacket’s disruptor blast hurts Power Man when he thought nothing could hurt him, it isn’t enough to stop him.

It is enough to make him really peeved so now Yellowjacket goes crush, okay? And next, Luke Cage!

And then Power Man’s muscles go all rubbery and he falls over with the slab he was hoisting falling on top of him.

Wonder Man is a bit bummed. He should have been able to take him out from the start. What kind of hero was he that he couldn’t beat up everything forever the first try?

The Avengers really need a therapist on staff. I think being able to talk to someone about these things would help instead of just bottling it up. Or Wonder Man can do what Beast did to improve his esteem.

Anyway, Living Laser and Whirlwind also find themselves with superpower performance problems and Black Panther and Scarlet Witch take them out easily.

Black Panther is not afraid of flipping off a gift horse though and claims that he totally could have beaten Living Laser either way. I mean, probably. That’s his function as a hero in these books. To win, either way, eventually.

And more of Scarlet Witch’s power confusion. I don’t think hurling a bench at someone is really tapping into natural power but also what probability are you altering so a bench just launches itself across a street?

Seconds later, Beast shows up. That is an amazing rate of speed. He was tossed into the horizon! He really booked!

Anyway, despite what Black Panther said earlier, now he’s saying they were cheated of their victory against the Lethal Legion. The Lethal Legion were someone’s dupe and sent them here to be defeated. And beating up villains gift-wrapped for you doesn’t count as a win in Black Panther’s book, no sir.

Perhaps things change later but this kind of cements these thing villains as goofuses. Power Man was already there, having lost his name to Luke Cage. Living Laser was pretty much there too. Despite stealing the Serpent Crown, his second big outing against the Avengers left him an afterthought to his stolen superpowered tyke bomb. And Whirlwind got shot in the nipple once by Yellowjacket. So, okay, maybe they were always goofuses. But this cemented it by making them patsies too.

Oh and the Avengers don’t have to wait long for the other shoe to drop as a giant shock wave makes a sine wave out of the street, tossing the Avengers hither and yon.

BU-THOOM!

The non-secret mastermind of this whole thing shows his face. Again. To the Avengers. We’ve seen him before in this issue and they’ve seen him before a LOOOOOOOONG time ago, back when he believed in the silliest of plans and not personally murdering people.

And like an RPG boss or a pokemon, Nefaria has evolved into a stronger form: EVIL SUPERMAN.

I mean, we’ll get into it more later but basically evil Superman. One of Marvel’s many.

I like his cape askew. Its distinctive but also ludicrously pretentious. That and the giant N on the belt makes this pretty peak Nefaria.

Oh and he’s totally going to kill the Avengers. Yeah. He no longer has qualms about dirtying his hands. With murder blood.

I’ll have further Nefaria thoughts at the end of this story.

Next time: EVIL SUPERMAN

[holdharmonysacred]

Actually made it to near the end of the first Arsene Lupin book and something I love about the way all the short stories in it are written is like, whenever the narration is from literally anyone else’s point of view, Lupin comes off as this cool badass phantom thief superhero kind of guy, but then it jumps to Lupin’s actual point of view he tends to end up looking like a god damn fool, just an absolute clown. There’s so many delightful scenes like him getting his ass kicked by a completely different burglar, or him getting caught red handed during one of his heists by the lady he has a crush on and just sheepishly putting everything he was about to steal back because getting caught by your crush doing crimes is embarrassing. He’s not quite at Joker P5′s “you can find him at McDonalds trying to eat a fuck-off huge burger” level of buffoonery but boy howdy is there a gold mine of content here.

[cerealmonster15]

FREE SUMMON YEAAAAAA

[coyoteprince]

so i'm strictly aro and my roommate is somewhere on the ace/demi spectrum and we were wondering..we've seen lots of sexy times but are there any fae like us?? 👉👈

of course there are! You just don't hear about it much since the story is focused on two pent up lovesick goofuses. The fairies of Widderwood may be very casual and open about sexuality and such but that doesn't mean every single one is looking for sex and/or romance. They're people (and heavily meant to reflect the queer, autistic, and overall brainweird community, at that) with just as varied experiences, identities, and feelings as humans are.

Simon in particular is trans and ace, though he has had sexual experiences, and would be considered somewhere either aro or demi in the romantic field. My green willow nymph (he doesn't have a name yet OTL) is also ace leaning. Waite would be recognized by some as being demi.

This is also just more of a fun fact I guess, but I don't usually set out to give characters too specific identities. They tend to develop or 'tell' me over time what they are, rather than being an active choice by me. Simon in particular is a good example of this- one day after some time, I realized that ace was the right word to describe him, it just clicked into place. Degare, on the other hand, first was intended to be a strict sexless aroace, but uh. obviously took the reins from me and basically smacked hard into the far opposite wall over a long length of time!!

[noodyl-blasstal]

Some shorts which happen after my day 6 fic for @blupjeansweek

1. Shhhhhh

There were three things in this world Lup loved to do in her spare time. Kissing her boyfriend, blowing stuff up, and winding Taako up.

The latter had been much easier recently because Barold was a genius. He had first suggested it after Taako had switched out her bath salts for baking powder crystals and added vinegar to her bath oil. They hadn’t told Taako they were dating yet, wanting to just enjoy themselves before the inevitable gloating. Now they could put it off some more while also spending a lot of time making out.

Taako had alternated between glee and fake retching when he walked into the kitchen to find Barry seated on the kitchen island, Lup stood between his legs, her hands in his hair, his at the base of her neck pulling her deeper into the kiss.

“FUCKING FINALLY!!!! You absolute goofuses finally got it together. Jeezy Creezey it should not have taken this long.”

Barry looked at him blankly, then laughed

“Oh. Oh, Taako no, we’re not together or anything. This is just friend kissing - you know, practice. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Taako stared at them both, opening and closing his mouth before wordlessly turning on his heel and slamming the door. They heard his screams all the way from his bedroom.

2. Family game night

Barry had his own key now, but he still knocked before using it. Just to be polite. He opened the door one handed, careful not to knock over the stack of pizza boxes he had balanced on one arm.

“We’re in here!” Lup yelled from the kitchen diner.

Barry only just managed to hold on to the pizzas as he opened the door and the twins and Kravitz yelled

“SURPRISE”

The three of them stood in front of a huge homemade banner with ‘FAMILY GAME NIGHT!’ emblazoned across it.

Barry laughed, just about holding back the tears. Gods, he loved them all.

3. Seaside

Lup was going to murder Barold. Or at least divorce him. Well, she’d have to marry him first. But the point stood.

They’d all mocked him when he decided to bring goggles on the beach trip, but this was the fourth time he’d popped up out the surf, grabbed her, and flung her into the waves. Don’t get her wrong, she absolutely loved it, loved every second of it, and he bloody well knew it. But it was too adorable. She hated his stupid beautiful face, and his stupid adorable pineapple print swim shorts, and his massive ridiculous googles because every time she saw him she just loved him more and it truly wasn’t fair.

Lup felt a familiar tickling at her ankle, and this time she anticipated him. When he popped up, she wound herself round his neck and refused to let go. Peppering him with tiny kisses until he cried with laughter.

She was keeping him forever.